back home

Ah yes. Got home, suprisingly. Great conference.

Discussion will follow. For now, the picture that's worth 10,000 dollars: Jakob Nielsen taking a picture of the Microsoft's job postings.

got my hairs cut

What Susan assured me would be a "nice trim" turned into a hair holocaust, just when I was getting used to my somewhat-long hair. People in Montreal are in for a treat.

fun bunch

Working on the corporate phonebook has taught me one thing - I work for a diverse organization. No, not diverse in the usual way, since everybody's white: we have looked far and wide to collect the 6000 weirdest-looking people out there.

Makes me so proud to be a part of this team.

no, not OK

Ummm, heck no! A) Why is my document is not saved? B) How can I save it? C) Definitely not OK, you dirty, dirty Word!

whata trip

Ah yes, so we're back from a weekend in NYC. Every time I go there, I have an immense quantity of fun, but then can't wait to get back because a) I get exhausted, and b) I run out of money. This time was no exception.

OK, so the Chinatown bus took Susan, Linda (Susan's friend) and me to Canal St. Fung Wah did something out of character - they pretended to have some sort of an attempt at customer service. Their idea was to hand out quarters with a badly composed paragraph on a piece of paper that said something to the tune of "Us good, give quarter to the driver. Us bad, use quarter to call and complain." We suspected that the driver would be paid only in coins, so we surrendered them to him.

Anyhoo, soon enough we reunited with Eugene and his girlfriend Heather (who, by the way, proved to be a fantastic tour guide), and got dinner at a place that was decorated by tennis balls glued to the wall:

Heather and Eugene then took us to a very confusing bar that was populated by guys that looked like mechanics from the 50's and one go-go dancer. Oh yeah, what made it even more interesting was that the bar had a Detroit theme (no, no, we didn't get shot at). We then wandered over to another place that was actually pretty sweet - and again, there were go-go dancers... this time dressed like nerds in their underwear:

Next day started off foggy, and as is the custom, I got in trouble with NYPD:


We ran away from the cops and walked ALL around, starting off in Times Square, visiting the Garden, coming down 5th Av with a mandatory stop at H&M. Susan almost slapped this dog, thinking it was a mosquito:

Afterwards, we shipped Linda off to fly out of JFK, and had the rest of the day to ourselves. What did we do? Clean Eugene's apartment. Why? Let's just say I've seen many nasty college crashpads, but this one was probably in the top three based on the amount of junk lying around. Keep in mind that it was spotless when Eugene moved in... Susan found this piece of bread that may have been bought then:

Later on in the night, we made it back to East Village, walked around Union Sq., and met up with Daisuke and the rest of New Yorkas. Fun was had by all, as the Asian glow on Daisuke's face would seem to indicate.


Yours truly was happy drunk - Sue claimed that I actually wanted to dance. Yup, that doesn't sound like a sober me. Doesn't look like it, either:

Next morning, Sue and I had a grand ol' time walking around Dumbo, this "up and coming" neighborhood in Brooklyn next to Manhattan Bridge. We got some brunch (which definitely helped in the hangover department), then went off to shop for some ridiculously cheap stuff in Chinatown. Quite conveniently, the bus was waiting to take us back Boston.

Thanks to everybody for showing us a good time! Be back soon ;)

interesting read

Back from NYC - I need to take a breather before I can cover the weekend on the blog. In the meantime, read this. One interesting quote: "Tehran and Moscow have been working closely in Afghanistan for more than a decade; they're now developing a joint strategy in anticipation of U.S. withdrawal once President Bush leaves office."

NYseee

Heading for NYC today, gonna see my bro and Daisuke, yeeeaah!

Not going to see Sunny since he's traveling again, booo!

call in sick

The Sawx are opening tomorrow at Fenway. Local newscasters were explaining the rules behind calling in sick, so that people could watch the game - and they were completely serious, too.

Gotta love Boston.

good point(s)

I was listening to NPR (getting old...), and caught the tail end of a Boston University debate on the strategy in Iraq. A professor from University of Chicago was explaining that blindly enforcing democracy on every country under the sun may not be such a good idea. He made two points that I thought were pretty good:

- The track record of US ain't all that hot. In fact, it's nothing short of terrible. US of A tried to instill democracy (by force, if necessary) in 35 developing countries. Out of those, only one was a success - Colombia. Yes, Colombia is our crowning achievment, a stable, safe, and prosperous country that it is today. Fantastic.

- The new Bush doctrine ("democracy by whatever means necessary") is a significant incentive for countries like Iran and North Korea to get busy developing nukes. After all, what's the biggest deterrent against outside invasion? Exactly.

sat. nite

OK, let's review:

First, went to a dinner party with the most eclectic mix of people ever. One guy, who at some point of his life escaped from Tibet, was playing flutes. Yup, not flute, flutes - he offered us to pick them from a bag, and played a different tune on each. Some of the flutes were made by him - from PVC pipe! Amazing. There was also Susan's coworker from Afghanistan, some dude from Sweden, sys admin from a family of psychiatrists, and a whole bunch of other people.

One guy, a Danish project manager now working for Microsoft, was softened up by red wine, and confirmed that Vista is a total ripoff of OS X. I knew it!

Anyhoo, then I switched to my second job of late - personal driver. Dropped off Susan and her friend on Lansdowne St., and then met up with Mr. Stevens and his new romantic interest... who just happens to be Susan's younger sister. After that, back to Lansdowne, then off to Chinatown for some late nite Chinese food.

Now, as promised, some pictures.

Whitest person ever - dancing up on the stage:

Whitest person ever, giving Anne a much-needed lift:

switcheroo

This item is awesome, and is only a few bucks on eBay:

Before I got it, we had RCA cables sticking out all over the place. Want to use the PlayStation? Find the right cable, plug it in... too much work. With this guy, the inputs can be switched by pressing a button. Nice.

frisbee

So I joined a frisbee league, and oh is my ass kicked. First of all, I didn't realize how much strategy was involved in ultimate. Second, I forgot how much running was involved. Third, I'm definitely not in the same shape that I used to be in back in my track days. Forth, it was freakin' cold! Maybe 20F?

By the way, we won a really close game, not that I had anything to do with it.

HEADline

Headline from my company's news: "W3C Manager Gets Rewarded from Below".

T'cked off

So I'm doing Oracle portal training in Boston, and I was gonna rave about how convenient it is to take the T, not have to drive, etc. etc.

But, guess what? They closed my station on me! Imagine that! That's right, Davis Sq. is closed just when I need it... I didn't even know they could do that.

Just my luck.