Bought a beachfront condo/cottage in Hawaii!

We have bought the cottage unit we’ve been going to on holiday to for the past few years. It came up for sale, and seems like the ideal combination of investment and holiday place. Plus we can rent it out when we’re not there. The whole process of buying it took about 100 days from start to finish, due to an insane amount of repeated paperwork and various delays, but finally the escrow closed today

Anyway, here it is!

Holidays

Right, who is coming to St. Thomas on holiday with me? You are allowed to bring only what you can cram into a very small bag. Snorkelling gear, icy cold beers, and a cool hotel room with a view of a palm tree lined beach are included. No laptops, phones, or any other form of electronic gizmo will be permitted. You can bring a small paperback book, if you insist, and I hope you like fruit.

Log Cabins and God

Who knew that 45 minutes drive from here are log cabins in the mountains with snow and ski lifts and jolly crumpets by the fire while a blizzard howls outside? Amazing. We have booked a couple of days over New Year in this little place at Mount Baldy:

Do you find it cute? There will be snow, and some skiing, hopefully. I haven’t skied for some years, so will be a little rusty. Also, I am a fair weather skier: I like sunshine and good visibility and deep powder, rather than freezing my nuts off on a chair lift in a blizzard (which happened more than once to me, most notably at Zermatt where I was convinced I would die). It’s snowing at Mt. Baldy now, so a couple of weeks of that, plus some sunshine for when we are there, would be great thankyouverymuch.

In unrelated musings, I emailed a chap about a spare part he had listed on his website, and received the following reply when I followed up asking him for a shipping quote:

HI,

Sorry,

I have been helping a person who is going to die of cancer maybe in the next week or two and have not had time to do much else.

I’ll get back to you asap.

Sorry and hope you understand.

God Bless,
Scott

First of all, TOO MUCH INFORMATION. Second, YOU OWE ME NOTHING, NO NEED TO APOLOGISE, Third KEEP YOUR RELIGION TO YOURSELF: I’M NOT INTERESTED.

Observations in Vegas

The scintillating view I am enjoying waiting for the next session:

Vegas is a bit much after a couple of days. The noise of jangling, pinging and beeping of the slot machines is incessant. People, typically middle-aged women, sit in front of these machines for the whole day, getting through goodness knows how much money and packets of cigarettes. They plug themselves in to the machines: they all have these players’ club cards that they keep on coiled plastic strings, which they insert in a slot in the machine when they sit down. It looks a bit like an intravenous feed, like the machine is sucking them dry. Some people have given up trying to walk the insane distances, and noodle about on electric carts. One guy, in a room on the same corridor as mine, had fallen asleep in his cart, outside his room, presumably just too tired to get up and swipe his room key.

The hotels are huge, and directions poorly signed. They don’t want you to find your way around: they want you to wander around, give up, and sit down at a slot machine: the only place there are seats.

I have a problem with the poker machines: I can’t lose. Well, I can lose, but it takes me *hours* to get through a few dollars. At the other extreme are the fruit machines: the ones which are covered in incomprehensible symbols and flashing lights that are supposed to indicate the winning combinations, but just end up being confusing. Putting money in these machines is literally like throwing it down the toilet: and you can get through large amounts because the cycle time is so short. At least with poker and blackjack you have to think.

Last night I got especially frustrated. I kept going down to about a dollar in reserve, and expecting to lose it, but the machine would then give me four aces, or a royal flush, or some other big win. I’d shoot up to five dollars or so, and start whittling it down again. In the end I had to cash out, with $1.69 left: I was exhausted.

What I really need is something in between: something that I can play for an hour or so with $10. As it is, $10 would last about 5 minutes on a fruit machine, and four hours on a poker machine.

I was sitting next to a guy called Roy, who was enthusing about how great the Riviera is, and how he had been coming here for years. I guess he was about seventy: a very pleasant chap. The drinks hostess knew him, and people would pass by and say “Hi, Roy!”. He had a girlfriend who was also about seventy. I say girlfriend, because I sensed that she was just that. She was dressed like a twenty year old bimbo – my Mum would say “tarty” – but also very nice. In fact she fitted right in, with her low cut top and tarty appearance. Perhaps, when she’s at home, she dresses in frumpy frocks and sensible shoes.

The drinks hostesses are something else. They are nearly all about fifty or more, and yet they are wearing these skimpy gold coloured outfits with fishnet stockings and high heels, and “in your face” bosoms that are immodest to put it lightly. Still, it’s a job, right?

Begas

Tomorrow we are going to Las Vegas, or “Begas”, as Muffet calls it. My purpose is to attend a conference starting on Monday, but in the meantime I’m looking forward to a bit of relaxation Vegas-style with Sarahparah and Muffet.

This last couple of weeks I’ve been attempting to port a ridiculously complex and overblown application to Windows. This thing is so big I had to split it into *five* DLLs, to avoid the 65536 member limit on a DLL. It’s absurd.

And it’s still not working, although I am *this* close ::holds up forefinger and thumb indicating 2 femtometer spacing::

So much for that. Do you ever wish that interviewers would ask politicians questions they don’t know the answer to? I do. I am so tired of them being able to answer, or rather, not answer, but say a lot anyway. I want to hear something like:

Interviewer: Senator Obama, would you like to state your understanding of the Casimir Effect?
Obama: (pauses for a moment) I’m sorry I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about
Interviewer: Hoorah! My physics training trumps yours.

I should also post about my chat with MAD BIN LADY … but I will leave that for another post.

Ireland? Ireland? It’s just a fat-assed island!

Hands up who’s been to Ireland!

::counts hands::

Hmm … not many of you! Well, I have. I went to Dublin for a wedding once, and liked it well. At one point we got lost, and stopped at the side of the road to ask a flat-capped Irishman the way. Not only did he tell us the way, he also wanted to get in the car and take us there! It was a little too much. Also, he had no teeth. While in Dublin, I stayed in an old house that had splendid views out across an estuary. It made one want to write a novel, any novel, it had a literary flavour about it. The house was owned by two old dears who spent all their time (as far as I could tell) baking scones. Those scones were very good. Very good indeed. I’m sorry, but I’ve just come. All in all, I liked Ireland a lot, despite the fact that it rained all the time I was there.

But what is the obsession in this country with Ireland and St. Patricks’s Day? I don’t get it. I understand there are plenty of “Irish” people here (i.e. people who have ancestors who lived in Ireland), but the same can be said for “Italians”, yet we don’t have a St. Paolo’s day where we all are supposed to zoom around saying “Ciao” from our Vespas, do we? Come to that, St. George’s Day passes here with nary a whimper from the itinerant expatriot English, and you’d think there’d be much more of a fuss about THAT!

Is it just because of the Guinness?

Reno

I am in Reno. There are lenticular clouds. It is chilly. I cashed out $5.75 playing poker last night. I am already sick of networks.

Time for some Snippiness

There is something very therapeutic about ranting at an airline company. Perhaps it’s because travelling by air is such a fucking awful process these days, an opportunity to let off steam is that much more nectar-like.

Dear Steven M.,

Thanks for your reply.

I’m afraid I don’t find the response at all helpful.

The restriction on the use of upgrades internationally is perplexing,
to say the least. It appears that upgrades can only be made on
flights to Central America, and other unusual locations that I do not
fly to. I fly to Europe often, and want to upgrade on those
flights. That is where I earn my upgrade balance, and that is
obviously where I want to spend them. Being able to use upgrades
on a flight to Nicaragua is of minimal, approaching zero, interest
to me and I suspect the majority of your long haul customers.

Your explanation of why upgrades are not redeemable on flights to
Europe (provisioning of cabin amenities etc.) makes little sense to
me: the premium cabins should be provisioned for maximum occupancy
if you allowed upgrades, because they would be full.

It is especially galling to be on a flight to and from Europe, and
see empty seats in Business and First, while sitting in Coach. In
fact it is completely unacceptable that there are empty seats
in the premium cabins when you have Gold, Platinum etc. members
sitting in Coach. That is a slap in the face for your regular
and faithful customers on these flights.

Although I have been in the AAdvantage program since 1993, and always
specify American when booking trips with my travel agent, I am
now sufficiently irritated by these issues that I intend to start
using Delta and United in preference.

Yours sincerely,
Cogshifter

In other news, do you want to join my playground gang? We send secret messages to one another, we reckon girls smell, we hate Edmund Haynes, and we are all upset we didn’t get picked for the first Eleven.

The Circus … MI5 Operations between 1945 and 1972

Before I get onto the topic at hand, let me just describe my day at the airport yesterday. I arrived at Madison airport at midday for a 2pm flight to O’Hare, and from there to LAX. At 1:45 we got on the airplane and sat down, whereupon we were told that there was “weather at O’Hare” and we wouldn’t be allowed to take off until 3:45pm (why the existence of this weather only transpired once we were about to take off was, like most such events when travelling on airlines, not explained). The captain said that we would be allowed to get off, which we all duly did, and formed a queue at the gate, where two assistants started re-booking people. My turn came, and it was obvious that a 3:45pm flight from Madison would get in too late at O’Hare for my connection. Accordingly, after a lot of typing, the chap issued me tickets on a 4:30pm flight to Dallas, and from there an 8:30pm flight to LAX.

4:30pm came and went as I sat at the gate, without any announcement of a delay, and I resolved to return to the desk. The same chap I’d dealt with earlier (he was earning his money that day!) told me that this flight too was delayed, and would now be leaving at 6:30pm, to get in to Dallas at 9:00pm, half an hour too late to make my connection to LAX. What did I want to do? I had no fucking idea what I wanted to do, except get home, but I elected to take a chance, and hope the 8:30pm flight to LAX in Dallas would be delayed sufficiently that I could make it.

I then wandered some more around the airport: there was lots to see there and I was highly entertained. NOT. I decided at 5:40 that I should perhaps get something to eat, as I had not eaten so far that day. The first food joint I went to seemed promising, but I was curtly informed (perhaps “gleefully” is a better adjective) that it was closing. Yes, closing. At 5:45pm. When restaurants outside airports are just opening, this one in the airport, where people are arriving and departing at all hours, was closing. The logic escapes me. So I went and had a small pizza at another place: it was, frankly, rather disgusting, but I ate it gamely, anyway.

At 6:30pm we boarded the flight, and miraculously it took off promptly. At Dallas, we arrived at 9pm, and I hurried off, took the train to another terminal, and ran to the gate where, amazingly, the LAX flight was just closing, and they were calling my name. Even more surprisingly, the spare seat was a window. The downside was that it was next to a very large Australian bloke who continually burped throughout the journey. I think he had had a hot dog just before boarding, but it might have been onion rings … I couldn’t quite place the taste.

So, all’s well that ends well. Except when I got to LAX it became apparent after some waiting around that my bag hadn’t travelled quite as quickly as I had in Dallas, and was not on my flight. By now it was 11pm LA time (1am Madison time), and I my temper was short. I stood in a queue for the baggage tracing service, together with about fifty other disgruntled travellers. Finally, my turn came, and the chap told me that my bag would most likely be just arriving on Carousel 3, from a later flight that had come in from Dallas. He was right … it was. So then I buggered off home, tired but happy.

As travel stories goes, this is not bad: I’ve had, and heard of, a lot worse. But it was really my own fault, which made it harder to bear. My mistake was booking an itinerary that involved O’Hare, breaking cogshifter’s #1 rule of US domestic travel: NEVER GO VIA O’HARE! 80% of the time, if you go via O’Hare, you get delayed, in my experience. The daft thing is, the airlines, and especially American, continue to use this godforsaken airport as a major hub, despite its awful track record, despite the fact that it is well known to suffer from bad weather often and frequently, and so snarl up essentially the whole of the country due to obvious knock-on problems that ripple up and down the east and west coasts. I’ve no problem with O’Hare as a source or destination for travellers, but it should be strongly deprecated as a layover stop.

I will talk about MI5 in a post to come later.

Snigfargled from scirocco

I decided to be anti-social and blow off the “reception and dinner” this evening. Frankly, after spending the whole day from 08:30 listing to nerds talk about Web 2.0 and other irrelevant Grid technologies the last thing I want is talk about Web 2.0 over a glass of cheap plonk, and then have to sit down for a three course dinner with a table full of nerds talking about Web 2.0 for an hour and a half.

I opted for the solitary burger instead.

In other news I am finding it difficult to sleep in this hotel. Come to think of it, I am finding it difficult to sleep in hotels period. I used to sleep like a log when in a strange bed, but no longer. I’m tossing all night.

Apparently I am weirder than 89% of other LJers. Who knew?

So, Cogshifter, your LiveJournal reveals…

You are… 14% unique
(blame, for example, your interest in thermionic vacuum tubes)
and 5% herdlike
(partly because you, like everyone else, enjoy tea).
When it comes to friends you are popular. In terms of the way you relate to people, you are keen to please.

Your writing style (based on a recent public entry) is intellectual.

Your overall weirdness is: 48

(The average level of weirdness is: 27.
You are weirder than 89% of other LJers.)

Find out what your weirdness level is!

A Strange Thing Happened On The Way to Madison

My electric shaver packed up. It was fully charged when I left Pasadena, but was dead when I came to use it this morning. Perhaps whoever it was who inspected my bags in LAX needed a shave: we shall never know. This means I will have to go commando for the rest of the week.

This morning it was drizzling, but I set off on foot anyway, walking all the way down from the capitol building to the place where the conference is being held. On the way I passed a couple of interesting used bookstores that I resolved to visit later. I bought an umbrella in Walgreens, but it blew inside out as soon as I erected it.

After sitting through some rather tedious talks I had lunch with a colleague, and then decided to beetle off back to the hotel, where I somehow fell to sleep on one of the beds in the room. On awakening my mouth felt like a used coffee filter left to dry in the midday sun and then spritzered with fetid water. So I upped and went off in search of a Starbucks. Finding one nearby, I ordered a double tall orange mocha and sat outside in the sunshine, looking at the Madison folks go by. There were a lot of very nubile blond girls wearing ponytails which bounced up and down as they walked by. A disreputable fellow sat down nearby and asked if I had any money. He seemed pleasant enough but I said no anyway, and so he pulled out a Kool and lit it, inhaling deeply on the menthol vapours. “Tastes like pussy.” he said, in a matter-of-fact sort of way. “Oh, really?” says I. “Yeh … lots of pussy around here.” This information was imparted as if he was a fellow gold prospector evaluating the likelihood of finding a nugget in a local stream. Presently, he left, so I made my way to one of the bookstores I had seen earlier.

It was fantastic, the epitome of what a used bookstore should be like. Small frontage, cavernous inside, with several floors. The little old lady who runs it told me there used to be 250,000 books, but now there were only 150,000. Deep in the bowels of the shop I came across a chap who was leafing through a thick tome. “Do you know anything about criminal justice?”, he asked me. I wish I knew what his follow up question would have been if I’d said yes.

It was near closing time, but the old lady came down and asked us if we wanted longer to look, which was nice. I resolved to come back another day, but picked out a 1966 “AA Members Handbook” from the UK Automobile Association. My Dad used to get these books when he was a member, and they are full of maps and road signs and information on all the towns in the UK. What a find! And it cost me $5 … which is how much a used book should cost, IMHO, not $55 like you have to pay for the crap in the used bookstores we have in Pasadena.

Everyone here is so very pleasant. It’s not the plastic pleasance which is so common in Southern California, but it’s more of a naive pleasance that assumes everyone is as nice as you are.

Tonight I will maybe try an Italian restaurant just outside the hotel. Last night, in the hotel, I did not eat well.

A Nail Biting Finish

So we have one of the two passports in hand. We depart on Tuesday morning for Puerto Vallarta. Will the second passport arrive in time i.e. on Monday morning.

I love last minute tension like this. NOT!

Monterey Bay Aquarium Syndrome

This is a social phenomenon first identified by sarahparah during a visit some years ago to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Let me illustrate with an example. When I chose to take a photo of this hot dog near the Baltimore Aquarium, there was *nobody* within 50 yards of me.

Within seconds I was surrounded by about a dozen people, half of whom were also getting their cameras out. So you can expect to see a few pics of this hot dog on Flickr imminently.

This curious behaviour was extremely noticeable in the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Several times, to avoid the crowds, and have a little respite from the pushing and shoving, sarahparah and I would locate ourselves far from the madding crowd, nearby some non-functioning unlit tank. Sure enough, in a very short time, the location would be *heaving* with folks, all peering into the unlit tank, dropping baby bottles, rustling crisp packets, and so forth.

In the end it became quite good sport … we would deliberately locate the most uninteresting, exhibit-free location in the building, and stand there, perhaps looking intently at a plain concrete wall. It never failed. We would leave shortly afterwards, with the posse of idiots scrummaging down for a view of … nothing.

Is this a variation of the same syndrome that causes people to wait in carparks for people loading shopping into the boot of their car, so they can have their freshly-vacated spot, rather than driving another 20 yards for an empty one?

"Working from Home"

Yesterday I was “working from home”. Actually I was taking a “Personal Day”. Using up some of my “Accredited Vacation”.

Basically I was fucking about with the MGB.

I removed the pedal box, and the brake and clutch master cyliners. I removed the passenger seat to afford better access to the handbrake adjustment mechanism.

There has been a dog in the car at some point in its history. Also a woman who liked bright red lipstick. There was a little blue plastic card under the seat, with some writing on it. It said “I am a little blue card with some writing on me, and a hole in my top. Thanks for reading me.”

At lunchtime bovril and sarahparah came from work to help me push it into the back garden, which went without a hitch (get it?).

Tomorrow I am travelling to Baltimore, which irritates me because I would far rather stay at home and tinker with the choke cable and twin SU carbs.

Cows

It is sort of weird to be driving your daughter to school and have to stop while a herd of cows crosses the road in front of you. This does not happen in Pasadena.

Also there is a lot of mist that lies low over the fields in bands, which looks rather surreal.

Irritatingly, my new laptop does not have a PCMCIA card slot, so I cannot upload my Fondue pictures. It has a slot that *looks like* a PCMCIA slot, but in fact is some other type of slot that is a new invention introduced so that we all have to start replacing our PCMCIA cards.

Did I mention I dislike Dell slightly?

What’s with all this “my work here is done” stuff I’m seeing on LJ? It sounds like something a super hero in a Marvel Comic would say. Is that what makes it amusing?

1993

September 11th 1993 was the first and only time I have flown Business Class transAtlantic. It was with American Airlines, on my way to Colorado Springs. I remember eating a very good steak on board, and being offered an excellent St. Emilion Grand Cru Classée. Good grief, that was 13 years ago!

Do Not Disturb

Dear Silly Housekeeping Staff Lady,

If I have taken the trouble to hang a “Do Not Disturb” thingy on the outside of my door, because I had to stay up until 1:30am waiting for my bloody bag to arrive before I could extract my spongebag and clean my teeth before going to bed, I do not expect to be woken at 8am by loud knocking and shouts of “housekeeping”. What were you thinking? Fuck Off.

Sincerely,
Cogshifter

Travels

Breakfast in LAX, sweaty armpits in ORD, sunshine in Indianapolis, bag somewhere else.

Ah, the joys of travel, ameliorated by the cute girl who served me my Black Angus Burger this evening, and made a very convincing case of why she found my English accent so sexy. I’m still falling for this one, so all you nubile American ladies on my LJ list are welcome to try it anytime you like.

In other news I do not have my bag. Did I mention that already?

People I Hate On Airplanes

After sitting for a total of over twenty hours in coach class, I am ready to share my top ten list of People I Hate On Airplanes:

1) People in the seat in front of me who let their pillow fall down the crack between the window and their seat into *my area* and expect me to repeatedly return it to them

2) People in the seat in front of me with big hair who every now and again run their hands through it, flicking it about, and shedding countless millions of dead skin flakes and other germs and whatnot into *my area*, and occasionally into my “beveridge”.

3) People in the seat next to me who don’t realise that *my area* is not to be encroached on, even by a millimetre, despite the fact that my current body position leaves that part of *my area* temporarily vacant.

4) People in the seats behind me who strike up a conversation at the start of a 10 hour flight and do not stop until landing 10 hours later, despite the fact that everyone else around them is trying to get some shut eye, and particularly in view of the fact that their conversation is asinine in the extreme and moreover contains statements of “fact” that are so egregiously wrong they should be arrested and tortured for idiocy by the placement of lighted splints under all fingernails.

5) People in the seat in front of me who insist on leaving their seats reclined during the “meal” (a term I use euphemistically) so affording a space of two inches between my mouth and the back of their seat, and consequently making it an almost impossible task to get a forkful of rice into my orifice without showering it down the inside of my shirt.

6) People who, despite the fact that everyone else is trying to sleep, and the fact that they are sitting on the sun-facing side of the aircraft, insist on leaving their window blinds “in the up position” (i.e. “up”) so blinding everyone else, while they gaze moronically at the barren arctic wastelands of norther Canada for hours on end, as if it is interesting.

7) People sitting in the seat behind me who, whenever their bladders give up again, which seems to be every hour, use my seat back as a lever to hoist themselves vertically, so juddering me out of my fitful dozing and dislodging my noise cancelling headphones.

8) People sitting anywhere nearby who fish out laptops and start clattering away on them, possibly writing a latterday War and Peace or guffing on in an email about how they are sitting in a plane and how the email they are writing will get sent once they land, at some point when they manage to find a place with wireless connectivity, et cetera, blah blah blah

9) People who cannot stop rustling about in their bags in the overhead lockers, whether it be to first extract a hairbrush, or to then put it back, or to get out their spongebag, or to put it back, or to get out a trashy paperback novel, and to put it back.

10) Basically, everyone and anyone else on the flight. As far as I am concerned, by the time the plane has “begun its descent”, they can all FUCK OFF!

Tension Mounts

Hello, Good Evening, and Welcome to the “Let’s Sit On The Edge Of Our Seats Until The Last Minute Wondering If Our Passport Will Come Back From San Francisco In Time To Go To India Next Thursday Show”, with special guest star Eamonn Andrews. In this episode we watch in trepidation as our passport gets sent off in a plain brown envelope. We wait a long time for any news of it. There is lots of sex, and some tit flashing. Then the deadline approaches, and we start to get nervous. There is more tit flashing, a poll, and arguments about water bottles, which don’t hold water. The deadline draws inexorably closer. Finally, the tension is too much and we eject our impatient load into the welcoming orifice of email, splashing it over the mound of our POP client. Will anything come of it? Will new Visas spring eternal (or for ten years, whichever is sooner) from the fruit of our loins? Or will our passport remain barren, bereft of cyrillics and archaic annotations? Will we ever see it again?

This episode has it all: passports, boobies, sex, money-shots, and madness. Don’t miss it.

Curry Extravaganza in West LA

A group of us went down to the Pakistan Consul’s residence last night for a buffet meal. The house didn’t look very big from the street outside, but once we were inside the property it was apparently huge, on five levels, with an attractive swimming pool, jacuzzi and fountain at the front. The Consul was a friendly chap, a polished host, and he first plied us with soft drinks, and then harder stuff for thosewho asked. Afterwards we ate excellent curries and other food.

A Prandial Orgy in Seattle

Did I mention that I had a very pleasant evening dining with gfrancie and reenigne on my last day in Seattle? I remember being impressed with gfrancie‘s Milanese yellow leather gloves, and a very impolite Italian Rosé, which slipped down a real treat, despite its arrogance. I began with a Clam Chowder that defies a choice of adjective, it was so good. Then my round of bacon-wrapped beef arrived, sitting atop a mound of delicately flavoured mashed potatoes, in which several Brussels Sprouts lay patiently waiting for orthodontic mastication. There was also some sort of rich sauce that nappéd the ensemble, so heightening the intensity of flavours to a level that meant I had to quietly announce “I’m sorry, I’ve just come”. This went unremarked, however, as my dining partners were obviously engaged and fully distracted by orgasms themselves.

Live Watering Hole

I’ve been watching, and listening to this:

http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/wildcamafrica/wildcam.html

a live video feed from an African watering hole. Pretty cool. The sounds are evocative, to say the least.

Last week San Diego for iGrid followed by Seattle/Port Townsend for gfrancie and reenigne‘s wedding. This was a good bash, starting gently with a service presided over by a priest who expertly tailored his words to satisfy both the religious requirements of the ceremony, whilst at the same time making them accessible to the heathens in the congregation, like myself, who I’m sure he felt needed marinating in Holy Water for at least six months. Then we wandered over to the Palindrome, which was filled with a wild assortment of LJers and bride/groom family members (a lot of whom fell into both camps).

Oh my goodness me, it was a revelation to finally clap eyes on some of these folks: the smouldering amai_unmei, who was so hot she left a trail of charred floorboards wherever she went – while Mr. searob looked suitably pleased, the strikingly beautiful, fresh-faced and mischievous thiscantbesoy, and her erstwhile and highly personable cohort, kodyo, the slender, elegant and refined claritapita, the bouncy, fun and indefatigable closh2, the affable couple wankle and pixelwench. kristenlou and sarahparah trod a fine line between being outrageous and just darned naughty, while philixir and I looked on with a mixture of trepidation and smugness. The possibility of multiple boob-squeezing was always there, but remained tantalisingly out of reach.

A brilliant event, with excellent sausage rolls. I hope the happy couple will have as good a life as those sausage rolls were to eat.

Choices

Given the choice between listening to a talk entitled “Solving a Complex Hermitian Representation of E.coli Gonads using Higher Order Methods and Wanking”, or going shopping for shirts and CDs, what would you choose?

Yes, quite. I bought myself a couple of cheap linen shirts at Old Navy: a green one and a white one, and one with a bit of shite on (but not really), a Steve Hackett CD and a Ry Cooder CD. The Virgin Megastore here has an extremely good selection.

And now some photos. I have decided that I will caption photos I post in this journal … and the first one is called “Complexity”:

Nibbles, Girls and Magazine Photos

Your starter for ten: Which magazine’s May edition features a photo of something made by Cogshifter on its front cover?

A bonus for 10: if you are female, would you appreciate being oggled by about 100 male physicists at a wine and cheese reception at a collaboration meeting, or not?

A further bonus for 10: Do you object to being given a small saucer-sized plate on which to place large slices of melon, large hunks of cheese, crackers, and 12″ long teriyaki beef skewers, at a wine and cheese party, or do you think it is fair enough, and a reasonable way to stop people from gorging themselves in an unseemly fashion?

To go to the next round, answer the following question: do you like to be sprayed with particulate matter from someone else’s mouth, as they speak in a loud obnoxious voice at a wine and cheese party?

Addendum: lest you feel I am too critical of said wine and cheese party, I must say that the smoked salmon was EXCELLENT

Skype and Barcelona

Those of you paying attention will remember how I was recently asked by a colleague if I had Skype, and I had replied wittily that I didn’t, that it was just how my trousers hung. Well, I got interested in Skype and downloaded a copy both for the desktop and the PocketPC. It works great! Importing the Contacts from Outlook, Skype told me that my old friend Steve, with whom I had been on the Marrakech adventure, was also a Skype user, in Zurich.

Well, I had a bit of a chat with Steve at the weekend, using Skype, and the quality was brilliant. Much better than the phone. He told me he uses it for business calls from Zurich to the States: it’s much cheaper. I am sold. Subsequent to that conversation he sent me a few photos. In this one you can see a young and skinny Cogshifter, with backpack and sleeping bag, standing in front of a bunch of those awful tacky bits of art you see so often on the pavements of Europe. This is in Barcelona, the only bit of greenery I remember of the whole trip, and was taken just after Steve and I had been to sample some Spanish porn at the local cinema, which was accompanied by the sounds of rustling Spanish macintoshes and the occasional “Olé” at the moments of release.

Woefully Behind

I am woefully behind on my LJ reading. I’ve missed just about the whole weekend, what with the excitement of the tree, and the cackling over the tubes. The week has now started with a colossal amount of male cow excreta flying around and I am weaving and ducking to avoid it. I feel a major rant post coming on in the fine tradition of LJ. But not tonight, Josephine!

At the end of the week I will be travelling to Salt lake City. This always fills me with dread because it means I can’t get a decent cup of coffee from the moment I leave the airport until the moment I return to it. Come to that, I can’t seem to get *any* coffee. Nobody drinks, nobody coffees, nobody teas, nobody smokes, nobody has any vices at all other than hunting Elk and Malibu and Moose. I will be regaled with hunting stories along the lines of “And there he was, a bare twenty yards distant, a magnificient Moose, his head held aloft, sniffing the crisp morning air, his massive antlers quivering in the breeze, and so I shot him.” To which my response is usually “Oh. Where can I get a cup of coffee?”

Then, at the end of the next week, I will be going to Pittsburg. I have no idea what to expect from Pittsburg other than chilly privates. At least it will be an excuse to wear some of my winter gear (although I may leave the crampons in the cupboard).

And then …. and then and then and then and then and then and then at the start of December I need to go to Geneva. And then we are going to Florida for New Year, and then I need to go to Boston for GlobusWorld in February, and then what? I dunno, maybe I will ask to go on the next Shuttle launch as a scientific instrument.

Filled Croissants

Update: it’s level-pegging and even-stevens between the chocolate filled and the plain unadulterated. Give the ham and cheese a chance! To sway future voting I would like to offer this:

Night Lights

I have a sparkly view from my hotel room:

Chimichangas

Last night I went out for a quick nosh at a Mexican place I’d spotted, just over the road from SLAC. I went with my colleague, who has an “interesting” personality.

The waiter came up and we ordered drinks. I asked for a strawberry margarita, but the waiter chap advised it was very sweet, so I switched to a regular. My colleague asked for water. He likes wine, but gets drunk very easily and has a terrible time with it. More than a couple of sips, and he’s anyones. Normally a quiet chap, he apparently gets belligerent and loud and obnoxious.

He’s also sugar intolerant. He has very low sugar levels in his blood. Apparently, if he eats any sweets he gets a surge of blood sugar and then a correspondingly deep trough of low blood sugar and faints etc.. So he has a hard time picking food. He is the only person I know who does not like eating.

Then we had to choose our food. I said I would have the chimichanga. He said, with a big smile on his face, that he had picked that too, but seeing as I had picked it he was forced to have something else. I laughed weakly. Then he said he was joking, and asked the waiter for a chimichanga. Then he said to the waiter “Can you just give me the meat and not the tortilla it’s in?”. WTF? So I said “They’re going to have some trouble deep frying a chimichanga if it doesn’t have a wrap around it.” The waiter looked perplexed. My colleague explained he didn’t want the flour wrap thing around the meat. The waiter suggested fajitas. OK, says my colleague, shrugging. The waiter asks what sort of tortilla he wants with the fajitas. My colleague says he doesn’t want tortillas. He’s getting a little exasperated. The waiter is long suffering, and says he understands; my colleague just wants meat. My colleague says yes, he wants a chimichanga without the wrap, and why can’t they do that. He seems to think the waiter is being stupid or difficult or both. The truth is neither. Oh boy. Now I’m under the table, in a ball, cringing and sobbing gently to myself.

When my colleague’s food finally came it was a bowl of chili.

Served him right.

Which airport for Princeton?

Help requested from Eastern LJ friends (and anyone else who knows):

I am being offered Newark or JFK airport as being the nearest for my trip to Princeton. It seems JFK is a bit further away. Which should I pick (to minimise my hassle and travel time)?

Back from the Salty Lake and Snow Covered Land

Just back from the land of golden turd coils, or are they beehives? I got a bonus! Woo hoo. This improved my mood somewhat. Also, they increased my commission! Woo double hoo. This improved my mood some more. The inability of Delta Airlines to return me to LAX on time dampened my spirit, and that was exacerbated by the SuperShuttle driver from Hell who decided that he was solving a misère version of the Travelling Salesman Problem i.e. what is the longest path between N cities, where N is the number of people to be dropped off?

Did he get a good tip? He did not.

Location, Location, Location

I am seized with an urge to document the locations of everywhere I have lived since a tot.

• Nunthorpe, Nr. Middlesbough, Yorkshire (5 years)
• Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire (6 months)
• St. Albans, Hertfordshire (11 years)
• Woolton Hall, Fallowfield, Manchester (1 year)
• Victoria Road, Fallowfield, Manchester (1 year)
• Woolton Hall (1 year)
• Some Victorian house in Sheffield, the room was octagonal (3 months)
• Endcliffe Rise Road, Sheffield (9 months)
• Hostel, St.Genis, France (1 month)
• Rue des Asters, Servette, Geneva (2 months)
• Avenue Wendt, Servette, Geneva (6 months)
• Rue de l’Athenée, Old Town, Geneva (6 months)
• Rue Gilbert, Meyrin, Geneva (6 months)
• Chemin Tavernay, Grand Saconnex, Geneva (12 months)
• Route des Ceytines, Pregnin, France (10 years)
• Rue de Champ COlomb, Ornex, France (1 year)
• California Boulevard, Pasadena (1 year)
• Vinedo Avenue, Pasadena (2 years)

Migros

First, a creme brulee for gfrancie and ratphooey

Then, a visit to the Migros, Val Thoiry, in France. The cheese, charcuterie, meat and fish counters. These pictures are primarily for kissmyassets, but other food lovers may enjoy them:

Laguna Lice

Here we are in Laguna Beach. The Pacific Ocean is thundering in the distance. We can see it from our hotel window.

I have laid in a supply of Frappuccinos in the room fridge.

There is a Lush-like smelly shop downstairs.

So we should be OK.

Famous People

After gassing on about my having met Michael Palin, I was struck by what a sheltered life I’ve been leading, since he and President Pervez Musharref are the only two famous people I’ve actually met. While Iwas in Pakistan, I also met Minister Butt, who is a hot shot over there, and so I suppose I can count him as well, but I’d be surprised if anyone reading this has ever heard of Mr. Butt.

More about Pervez and Pakistan …