Well, its Christmas and the sun is still out, the skys are blue. The temperatures still around 65F (18C) its warm enough to wear just a t-shirt and jacket.
I wonder what the weather is like in Manchester 😉
Monthly Archives: December 2006
Drinks with Deb
Nikki and I met up with Debbie to exchange gifts. Nikki had got her an excellent “Eightball Budda”. Unfortunately Budda had to take a break from his wholesome life and enjoy the whole Molley’s experience.
Christmas Day
Nikki’s family’s have a tradition of going to her aunt and uncles house (her uncle is actually Larry Kenyon). They had prepared a great brunch buffet, including some excellent mexican style food. Now I was very happy with the mexican food!
After yet more present exchanging and champagne we sat, relaxed and chatted; ooh and played around with Larry’s new Philips Photo frame, which is actually very good.
Pre xmas celebrations
With work out of the way until the new year, Christina and Laeres threw a pre-holiday party. On our way home at about 11 we got a call from some other friends to head out for more drinks….how could be refuse.
Text to follow….
Watching Handel’s Messiah
One of my colleagues’s wives was performing in Handel’s Messiah. Now this isn’t my usual cup of tea but this was quite good. The performance was at San Mateo High School, who obviously have some wealthy benefactor since the school is just amazing. The picture below shows the concert hall.
When buying the tickets I didn’t realize that this was a sing along Messiah. There were lots of very serious people there. The hall was separated in tenors, sopranos and so on to give an amazing effect.
The nice part was that kids from the school were also performing, both singing and in the orchestra. A nice and completely different evening.
Dinner Party
Having completely moved into my apartment I finally got around to inviting some people over for dinner. For this special occasion I chose to prepare extra large meatballs and spaghetti. With 9 people round for dinner the table had to transform to its large configuration which was more than big enough.
Unfortunately my camera did not come out this evening, so there’s no evidence 🙁
Busy Busy Busy
I’m not exactly posting much at the moment as I’m very busy with work. More and more stuff will be added later.
Silicon Valley Driving
Silicon Valley driving is probably the worst I’ve ever seen. Take a look at this very simple list from Sigalert.com on all the accidents that have happened approximately a 2 hour period.
The problem isn’t the number of cars on the roads, or the quite frankly terrible road signs, it’s the drivers. In Silicon Valley they appear to give drivers a license regardless of their ability. It seems that changing across 3 lanes while braking sharply to get to a freeway exit is perfectly fine. Last week I watched in horror as the driver of an SUV undertook a Golf an while completely alongside decided to change lanes. The Golf was clearly in sight, not to mention she was passing it. Honking on horns and shaking of fists were involved but to my amazement the person most annoyed was the driver of the SUV who obviously thought they had the right of way.
Merging onto a freeway isn’t as easy as you might expect either. There is a complete absence of road-markings to show when a lane is merging or leaving the main road. Here’s some ariel views, the first one from the UK, the second 2 from California.
In the UK example we see hashed areas showing merging and leaving sections, the continue for a considerable distance. Although it is hard to see on the USA pictures, the lines dividing the lanes simply stop about 30 feet before your lane ends. The rule appears to be you continue to drive and hope that nobody hits you. My approach to this is that if I accelerate i’ll get in front. That way, if they him me in the rear it’s their fault. 🙂
Christmas rush
The Christmas rush has now begun. This year is a little more than normal for me as its crept up. Not only did I move country, which meant hours of shopping when I arrived anyway, but also Thanksgiving is right in the middle of things. As soon as Thanksgiving is over there’s about 4 shopping weeks until Christmas. Given that I also have to co-ordinate sending cards and gifts to England I’m a little behind at the moment. As usual Amazon has come to the rescue in a lot of cases, and eBay.
Of course, Christmas isn’t nearly as big here as in England which is clear when you discover that the cinemas are open on Christmas evening. These lucky Americans have found a way to escape spending the entire evening watching repeats of ‘Allo ‘Allo with their families.
More on this topic will follow in Ovi Magazine later in the month.
Death of Macbook Pro
Friday was a sad day, when packing away my things at work I placed my Macbook Pro on the side of the desk turned around and knocked it on the floor. Now my desk is quite high, about 4 foot in fact. The laptop took a 45 degree dive for the floor landing firmly on the corner by the hard drive. I’d slept the laptop so the drive was not spinning and it all powered up as expected.
When I got home things were not so good. The drive started getting io errors and while the machine would boot all applications crashed on launch.
After a painful file by file copy of any good data off the drive it was time to put a new drive in and see how things went. With a new harddrive in there everything was working perfectly. The case is still a little bent (by about 1/8th inch from end of end) but that should be fixable.