A week in London

Last Friday I made arrangements for last minute work travel. Turns out two projects I work on both had lots of things going on this week and all of the work was being done out of the London office so it just made sense to head out there myself instead of trying to coordinate everything over email with a seven hour time difference. Actually it was the first time I'd done international travel for the office and while I have looked forward to getting to do it for some time, it was quite a difficult week.

For one thing, the time zone in the UK is a sweet spot for turning one into a workaholic. You get in at a reasonable hour and spend your day working and just when the day is about to end, folks from the States start coming online and sending you emails. There just is no good time to turn off your computer and walk away from work so you end up working say, from 8 to 11. And then you go back to your hotel and work on emails some more.

Also, jet lag, it seems as if it is much easier to recover from when you don't say, work 15 hours a day. Go figure. ;)

The week was rather hellish but it was productive as intended, and the story has a happy ending. Myself and two other engineers on the product met up for fish and chips at a pub and spent the day walking around London and seeing the sights, ending up at the Tate Modern and then going to an interesting neighborhood (the East End I think?) at night for dinner and drinks. Getting to see a bit of the city besides the few blocks between office and hotel really took the edge off the week.

CBS, how I hate you. Let me count the ways.

The start of March Madness means that I have to interface with CBS. This is why I hate you CBS:

You are always showing the wrong game. With four to pick from, I guess the odds are pretty good that you will pick the game I'm least interested in to show. Especially when I live on the west coast, which means CBS thinks that I care about Washington state and Arizona. I can't name a single team west of Colorado that I give two shits about. Damn you CBS!

So I go onto your website to get the streaming video, yay! Except, wait a minute, what's this? You only work with Windows machines running IE! Are you kidding me?!?

Damn you, CBS.

On the way out of Silicon Valley...

We stopped for burgers and I took this shot of Brad eating one. I happen to love it and am not sure why.

Our new apartment is moved into and almost feeling like a real home. I kind of go a little nuts when I'm living in place without Internet or my TiVo, which was all of last week due to Comcast and their awesomeness. Thank God for 24 on DVD amirite?

One of my coworkers stopped me in the hall and asked me how preparations were going. I assumed she meant for a small presentation I have to do at work tomorrow, so I started talking about that. She looked at as if I was nuts and said, "No, about the wedding." I guess I need to give back my girl license now, not assuming everything in the world is about my upcoming wedding.