|
Thursday, December 5, 2002 |
|
I've now posted London Photos!
Enjoy! |
|
29 November 2002 Tara Copthorne Room 1016 Today was a bit different than initially intended. We woke up much later than we expected, as we hadn't set a wake up call and had been out late with Lisa King over at Grosvenor House. We got up in time to wander over into Knightsbridge to Harrod's. Harrod's is quite possibly the largest monument to consumerism I think exists in all the universe. Five floors, One block wide by one block long, and packed full of everything from figs and kiwi in the food halls to Cartier and Tiffany jewelry in the Egyptian room, to makeup, cologne and perfume in the grooming section, to Bruno Magli shoes in the footwear section. Prices? Sky high. A leather wallet was £50 or so. Shoes started at £99. Ow. We left Harrod's and moved over to Harvey Nichols, which was slightly less packed and hectic, but no less expense. Our trip there was short. Walking out, my shoulder's tendonitis was flaring up and we discovered that you can't get naproxen sodium or naprosen in the UK without a prescription. You can however get codeine. Huh. What a switch. I took 4 ibuprofen and about an hour later, life was tolerable. We walked up to Hyde Park Corner and saw the Wellington Arch and the Artillery Memorial. If it's one thing the British understand better than anything else it's appropriate memorials. The cenotaph, the memorial for the war dead in both major conflicts of the twentieth century, just says "Our Honored Dead" and sits in the middle of Whitehall. Yet, we're tearing up the Mall in DC to place a giant memorial to the dead from just World War Two. Unbelievable. From Hyde Park, we went up to Piccadilly Circus and admired the Eros statue, as well as the giant Plasma screens in what could be the analogous location to Times Square in New York. It was there in all its touristy glory. From there, it was down Regent Street to St. James Park and then to Trafalgar Square for some tea. Got a picture of the Admiralty Arch for Erik and Dad. I'm sure they'll appreciate that. We had tea in a little chain called Garfunkel's, including a treacle cake with custard. Oh so good. We headed there to an Internet Café to check email and post blog entries. I successfully sent a few emails before deciding that I'd had enough technology and it was time to move on. Let's stop here a moment and have a brief discourse on the idea of the "Internet Café". We walked into a room that ordinarily would be considered disheveled. We paid via change at an LCD kiosk. I set down £0.50 and received 29 minutes of connectivity. We struggled to find a working machine, as more than 15% of the machines were down, either missing mice, missing keyboards, blue-screened or just frozen. Frustrating, let me tell you. It was such a pain to get logged in, this should not be. A ways back, Dan Hon was talking about computers that should just work, and I think he's got a good point. This is one such space where machines should just work. And in this case, they did not. Can I guarantee Macs would have done better? Not against cases of missing mice/keyboard, that's for sure. Bluescreens? Possible. Frozen up? Possible. Macs tend to just work a lot better. Set up a simple applescript to wipe out the changes made to the machine whilst in use, no problem at all. Internet Cafés ought to be more functional than they actually are. But as long as they'll be packed to the gills, with no complaints, then there will be no change. Where's the switch ad, Steve-o? We went back to the hotel briefly, and then off to dinner at Wagamama with Lisa. We had a small booth at Wagamama...which was its own alcove of the restaurant crammed into the basement floor between Regent St. and Haymarket. Our single bench in the alcove had us all sitting together on the same side. Side technology note: the ordering system at Wagamama was done via PocketPCs using 802.11b wireless cards in them. I had my dinner ordered wirelessly. Granted, they got my order partially wrong, so, go figure. I think that may have been human error. The concert at St. Martin-in-the-Fields was next. We wandered across Trafalgar Square passed, of all things, a statue of George Washington (donated by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1921) to the Church. Our seats were off on the right side, and the group was overall quite good. After some intonation problems in the opening Violin Concerto, they settled down nicely. The cello soloist sounded as if he had a bit too much rosin on his bow and as a result, the harsh attacca in the lower register blurred together a bit too much producing a garbled angry sound that C.P.E. Bach doesn't have generally. I was disappointed in his play. The Vivaldi was glorious as was the Pachelbel's Kanon. The acoustics were incredible, I was just blown away by the depth the sound travels and the rich bass the room can provide. So amazing. Wandering back to the Hotel, we passed through Leicester Square and the theatre district, which was beautiful at night. All the theatres and cafes were full, the lights were bright, but not overbearing, and it was gorgeous. Got a couple of nice photos, but overall, the day was not much for photography, dark and overcast, we weren't able to get many good photographs at all. We'll just have to try harder tomorrow!
Tomorrow looks like Market Day, we're headed up to Portobello Road first in the AM, then who knows from there! Meeting Lisa at 1300 at Tamarind for real honest-to-Ned curry. mmmmm. Curry. |
|
"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." -- US Postal Service Motto Four inches or so of soft, fluffy white snow fell on the Washington, DC area last night, but I still braved many miles of snow covered roads this morning to come into the office. Why, you ask, do I feel it necessary to risk life and limb and personal property to meander into the office? Because I'm an IT Professional. It's what I do. The IT Professional is the new lifeblood of any company that owns more than a few computers. We handle their email servers, their file servers, their network technology, their software needs, their long-term digital infrastructure planning. We are the new "doers" of the 21st century economy. Without geeks there would be no cell phones, no email, no internet, no SMS, no weblogs, no independent punditry on a grand scale, no modern technology. So today, we need a new adaptation of the Postal Service's motto. Neither ice, nor rain, nor network failure, nor spammer, nor DDoS Script Kiddie, nor snow, nor power outage, nor fire will stay these men and women from the completion of their appointed duties. There's some kind of pride thing involved with being here today, I think. I like the fact that I got up early, picked up my other coworker who could make it in, and drove on in through the snow.
I'm proud to be an IT guy today. And if you've made it on in, you ought to be proud, too. |
Last update: 6/28/03; 9:44:21 PM .
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
