wake up dammit

May 24, 2005

19 hours of travelling and I’m sat in front a tv that’s 5 feet off the ground trying to focus on re-runs of CSI or something that’s got loads of earnest looking americans picking up suspicious objects from the floor of smoky warehouses in slowmotion and then cross fading to a train that goes over your head like what it does in the French Connection until some words or other slide into the frame and then just as I get it the adverts cut in and there’s a massive Nissan Globalwarmer driving across a desert with a boat in the back of it and a caption comes up at the bottom saying ‘professional driver in a simulated desert thats not real so dont do this at home in wisconsin because itll be all your fault when the chassis falls to bits and a flying camshaft takes out Mrs. Pantiles at number 47’. I must be dead in Colorado.

7 years ago all this was fields, well, probably a golf course, but now it’s full of hotels that you can see from 17 miles away but apparently I can’t find the entrance to without driving the wrong way up highway 36 and then taking a turning onto Interlocken and then realizing every turning here is called Interlocken so I’m no closer to my bed than I was 18 hours ago when I got out of it at 7 in the morning and said goodbye to my family like it was a trip across antartica but they actually were still asleep and just kind of said ‘yeah, er, bye’. in between then and now, which seems like about 5 fat tires and 2 bar meals in the tap room talking to Brad about cutting your thumb and listening to Tom going on about wine which is just a bit warm, but definitely not corked, I managed to squeeze in a bus a plane and a chevy cheapskate. oh, and a taxi to the bus station, where Ron dropped me off as we saw a couple kissing each other goodbye and he said ‘youre not getting one of those mate!’ and he was right, even if I offered him double the fare. I usually stay in a rubbish hotel in the heathrow flight path the night before flying out, well its practically on the runway, just at the point where they dump 10 hours worth waste over berkshire, but the flight to denver leaves at 15:50, so rather than taking 2 weekends out I decided to take the bus in the morning to the airport, because the bus isn’t that bad really. unless it’s sunday morning at 7 oclock and the driver has obviously just had a row about eggs with his wife and will happily call the IT specialist an ‘arsehole’ who just put his bag in the luggage compartment marked in his head as ‘gatwick’ instead of the secret one called ‘heathrow’. that was the longest 4 hour bus journey ever. so I get to heathrow about 4 hours before I need to and because I’ve checked in online, I can’t check in yet and so I have to sit in the pre-departures ‘seating area’ which is like finding a dry piece of newspaper to sit on at glastonbury – funny for 2 seconds. 2 hours later I can check in, but that’s alright, because my online check-in means I ‘beat the queues’. apart from the queue that is everybody who has checked in online for British Airways, which is the longest queue of all queues in this collection of queues that is a check in area at heathrow airport.

anyway, as Patricia says, BA’s service onboard is impeccable, even thought the 777 I’m sat in is pants compared to a 747-400 and I’m damned if I can work out when Hotel Rwanda is going to start, so I end up watching Hide and Seek instead which has that 6th sense twist that you kick yourself for not seeing an hour before and then de niro goes all cape fear/tribble, which just isn’t so good at 60, especially when you can see him in Meet the Fockers on channel 16 on the screen on the seat next door. kind of takes the tension out of it when he’s simultaneously wielding a blood-spattered spade and rescuing a toy dog from a toilet . still, dakota fanning was a great dark-haired miseryguts. I managed to squeeze in another film I’ve already completely forgotten about before we landed and no sooner had I stepped off the Avis shuttle bus than I realized I probably couldn’t find my way out of airport in the chevy preferredaccount without at least breathing some real air. I stopped for a while in the car lot and remembered that last time I came here with Chris, Air Force 1 was just landing and we watched it taxi up to the gate where will smith and tommy lee jones appeared from a range rover and we got whisked away to the marriot in Boulder.

having eventually negotiated InterlockenEverywhere I was checked into the Omni and there I sat on the end of the the bed, after a couple of swift ones in the tap room talking with a nice woman from StorageTek about Malcolm Glazer and bikes, flicking through the interactive services menu to see if the bar bill was already on my online statement which it wasn’t which I though was interesting but actually soon realized that just meant I should go to bed and stop being so sad. for some reason I woke up on the hour, every hour, until it was time to get up again. I can’t explain that, but I’ll probably not try and program the radio alarm clock and the p800 and the tv and wake up service all at the same time tonight.

I’m the only person in the world and nobody understands me

May 18, 2005

I’ll probably die an herioc/tragic death and will be mourned forever by enigmatic trench coats sitting in underground coffee bars making 50 pence last all afternoon and only looking up from their shoes to check their eyeliner. that’s right, 17 years old on a houseboat in Beaulieu-Sur-Mer, writing poems about psuedo-hitlers and jesus incarnate and I’m trying to look insanely mysterious, smoking marlboros which filter through my hair and only giving myself away occasionally when I sneak a look at the 24 year old barmaid who’s bringing me another Orangina and giving me a smile I think says she understands the torment of genius, but actually means something like does your mother know you’re here.

its 1984 so my walkman DC2 and 5 band SEQ-50 are sat on the table top next to the Pernod ashtray and my book of tortured genius. inside, a UX90 slowly rolls its way from one spindle to another and the amorphous head picks up Atrocity Exhibition and pipes it onto my head, my eyes fixing on an imaginary point in the distance in the hope that that makes me look seriously intense without actually drawing attention to myself, which would just be intolerable. I continue scribbling stuff down about death and righteousness and misunderstanding until the tape starts squeaking with the pressure of over-use as The Eternal comes on and I get that moment of teenage futility where you just look at the harbour wall and consider crashing against the rocks. except we’re going to Monaco tomorrow and I’ll get to see the underpass and swimming pool where the grand prix goes and where they had that crash in that film once, so I start chewing on a polo, thinking that will rid me of any cigarette smoke and leave 2 francs or something on the table and try and get up and leave without anybody looking at me, especially the barmaid who I’ve now become obsessed with.

so we go the the swimming pool and I’ve never been in a salt water swimming pool before and I think it’s horrible. the sort of thing I would make my own children do now and wonder why they don’t think its really exciting to swim in a pool next to the sea, which is the sea, but is a pool. we also visit some sacred fountain or other and drink water that tastes like nails and I try and scare people with my terrible hair and then we head off to Orange, where I get to scale the walls of the roman theatre and pose like a centurian, but I don’t need a helmet, because I’ve got my helmet hair. genius.

I guess I got to spend about a week of my life being eternally miserable and wanting to throw myself off a parapet and I’m only reminded about that now because its 25 years ago that ian curtis hanged himself in his kitchen, thinking everybody would be better off without him. I’m about to go to the gym and row 5 kilometers to get back to where I started by going nowhere in between, so I guess that’s about the same as what I did in that week, and I’ve still got Closer playing, although it’s upmixed to 5:1 surround sound in my office, so nothing really changes, I just don’t work in a record store anymore.

hola you

April 15, 2005

somebody rang the cheese alarm so here i am waiting with bait on my breath. just got back from the Costa del Sol and i’m overjoyed that i’ve stumbled back into a pressure silo full of spring flowers and songs. sharks and hitler, that’s what Andy says. mind you, it’s sharks, hitler, ghosts and balls these days. know what I mean?

£545 for a family of five on our favorite creaky budget older-than-average cabin crew airline, EasyJet to get us to the south of Spain where we’re met off the plane by 17 handlebar-sporting, Ducados sucking Mercedes drivers holding up white cardboard with other people’s name on. “snr. Armstrong? snr. Armstrong?”, “excuse me”, “snr. Garibaldi? snr Garibaldi?”, “excuse me. mind the cases, kids”, “snr. Dermatitis? snr. Dermatitis?”, “excuse me. mind the cases, kids. I think that’s it, no hang on. excuse me. WHERE’S THE BLOODY INFO DESK IN THIS BLOODY AIRPORT?”

and relax. pick up key for Seat Cordoba SDi (S for sloooow). drive like tourist down wrong side of autovaía. throw cases into house. up to roof terrace and find it’s 75° and sunny at 6pm and laugh like imbecile to self. 2 and a half weeks without phone, email or office.

lucky me. free town house in Nerja, 40 minutes from Malaga. day trips to Frigiliana, Competa, Malaga, days on the beach at Burriana, quick stroll into town to the Balcón de Europa to watch hugely unentertaining street theatre. Apparently, standing still for a very long time dressed as a pirate is very lucrative these days. you only move when some hapless fool drops 1 Euro in your tin and then you move v e e e r r y s l o o o w w w l y like you’re really made out of wood or something. I tried it myself. I sat on the beach with una cerveca and didn’t move for a week. only very slowly, when I had to slap a wooden bat around like an idiot trying a swat a plastic ball my son had launched about 15 metres to my left directly towards the enormous paella fire in Ayo’s bar.

still, it’s good to be back. ha. hahahaha. hahahahahahahahaha. “you could work out here couldn’t you? it doesn’t matter where you work does it? you’re remote working. could be England, could be Spain. what do you think?” er, I guess. actually…

you get that? from that?

October 25, 2004

ok, so I dropped into Stanford Shopping Center before leaving for the airport. I had a gap I’d previously left in my suitcase and I had to fill it. It didn’t matter what with. Just stuff. I had an hour, so I figured Macys, Nordstrom, Crate & Barrel, ooh, Apple Store, Hair International (maybe not that one), and just see what appeals. Macys – nope. Nordstrom – how miserable are you? Crate & Barrel – nice bag, got one already though. Apple…

It’s not a big Apple store. There’s not really much to poke. At best, you get to finger some accessories and try and figure out where the base units are (they’re under the base units), but that’s about it. Half an hour later, I’m escorted out of the building by Dwight and Chan in their black polo necks, just for drooling onto a30″ Cinema Display. They shouldn’t make them so rampantly desirable. It’s their fault.

Anyway, 10 minutes left and I’ve looked at all the blow-up pillows in Brookstone, so I’m just heading back to the Chevy Preferred Customer, when I pass the Bose shop. I’ll never be able to afford anything in there. Move along. But hang on, what’s that thing? That looks nice, must be a new one of those Wave Radio things. I’ll take a look. Now, I don’t own an iPod, much to my chagrin, but then I work from home and never go out in daylight, and then it’s only down to the paper shop down the road, where I’m still allowed to go unattended, so, when I see this thing is a SoundDock Digital Music System for an iPod, I’m walking out. That is, until the lovely Mike, with his bluetooth headset and braces (teeth and trousers) starts showing it to a couple who actually look like they might have some money. “You just take your iPod”, he oozes, “or iPod Mini, it works for that too, and you slip it in the dock (ooer) and then…”, and then he left the most dramatic pause ever witnessed. I was looking at my watch when the sound started coming out. I thought someone had put the home cinema system on in the next room. The sound that came out of this 6.5″x12″ waffle was just unbelievable. I can’t begin to explain it here, but I’d just suggest you take your iPod along to your nearest Bose outlet and demand they give you a damn good docking, to hear for yourself. You’ll not spend a quicker $299. Well, apart from that time in Union Square…

freaking out on the golden gate

October 22, 2004

So, at the end of the week, it’s always nice to get out of town and take a ride. This was last friday, mind, but I mean, it takes a while to do this. Winding down from the terrible excitement of an ops review and an ecstatic all-afternoon discussion about layout frameworks and content layout assembler template managed things, and not forgetting the Jager incident, it was time to take a trip over Woodside and hit the coastal highway in the tasty Chevy Corporate. First stop, Bucks in Woodside. Now, that’s some place. Chris tells me that all the deals go down there, so while I wait for him to make me a deal, we get something called a 2x2x2, which is pretty much the best breakfast you can get, except there’s twice as much as you can eat. As usual. I could live in these hills. But I don’t, so I wave Chris off on his bike and head over the 84 to the Pacific.

A bit twisty. The Jager’s coming back. And those pancakes. And the sausages. Hurgh. Ah, there’s the sea…

Here’s the thing though. You come over here in mid October and it’s 90 degrees and you sit in the office all day. You head over the hills to the beach and it’s suddenly fricken freezing and total cloud cover. Hmph. I am going to Half Moon Bay and I am going to sit on the beach. Whatever. So, I do that for a while and there is nobody to see for miles, which is a bonus, but I’m getting all morose on the beach on my own, so back in the lovely Chevy Marketeer and up the coast a bit.

All the way up the coast in fact. I was only looking for somewhere to pull over to take my jacket off, but I ended up in Golden Gate Park with that “I’m a tourist” sign stuck on the roof. I swapped it out for the “I’m in a rental car” sign and burned down the middle lane, swerving violently about for the sake of it. After a near miss with a Dodge Enormous I settle down, and succumb to the fact that I’m going over the bridge whether I like it or not (Chris tells me later he’s never done the bridge, so me being resigned to it is a bit lame. it’s such a drag).

The bridge is looking bad. Mean and bad. I’ve done the vista point on the north side before, and it’s been glorious, day and night. Lucky I guess. Right now, the clouds are at about 50 feet and the mist is just clinging on to the structure. Oh well, no majestic sweeping panoramas on the W1 today. I know. I’ll walk across. I’ve never done that. Ooh, bad idea as it turns out…

So, I set out on foot to see how far I get. Quite ok. Dodging the day bikes and the mental Tour de Bridge carbon fibre brigade. Not many pedestrians. Carry on. The one thing I notice is it’s so bloody loud. I mean, that traffic at 4pm on Friday is like a hurricance – six lanes steaming by at ear height. Carry on. The first moments of weirdness happen when you’re ‘off concrete’ and ‘on-bridge’. Take a few steps, look over the edge. Take a few more, look over the edge. Stop, look up, and then…look at the size of that thing. The first suspension tower is right in front of you, and that thing is huge, man. I mean, it’s huge. When you take the route round the outside of the thing, which hangs out over the water, the sense of scale is overwhelming. So that’s where I start freaking. Right then, I’ve taken a couple of classic wide shots with the SF skyline just about visible. Let’s just take a quick one to get some idea of the size of this thing. Ok, there noone around, good. Hang on. There’s really noone around. Anywhere. Look both ways and there’s no bikes, no pedestrians, no CHP to check whether I’m hanging over the edge. Nobody. K. That’s alright. Just a bit odd. Right, let take that shot. Point the camera w a y u p t h e r e to the top. Lean back. Back a bit. Looking straight up now, straight at the camera display…

All I can say really, is that being totally alone, on the most massive man-made structure around (megalophobic), high over the huge, sea-like SF bay (thalassophobic) and losing the horizon and any reference to my spatial positioning I was suddenly in cold panic. I pretended I wasn’t though. I mean, somebody might have been looking. I took that shot and then pretty much ran all the way back to the vista point car park, where I set off the car alarm instead of unlocking the doors and hid in the toilet. Or I would have done, if the toilet wasn’t being cleaned. I actually hid in the ladies toilet. There.

Anyway, I made myself better by doing a ‘Taxi’ down Van Ness and onto Market, whereupon I drove the car straight onto the pavement and left it there, like something out of The Deadpool and dashed into Macys, where a very nice man sold me some Puma underwear. They had Lycra and everything.

edge of darkness

October 19, 2004

You know, there’s nothing I like better after a hard days graft than to settle down in a nice cosy corner of a Cali cafe and just quietly discuss organizational structures with people who know as little as I do. But of course, this being the final date of the tour, mentalism was predetermined and hopelessly unavoidable.

I mean, you start the evening with a nice chat at the Blue Chalk and maybe even grab a sausage or two, but at the point where you’re shouting at the dessert menu then really, it’s time to pack up and leave by the back door, shedding a few solo artists on the way. Not this time though. There’s this place, see. This place I was warned about. The place where the law enforcement gather at the bar to bear witness to the social outkasts as they linger around the ‘DJ booth’ and just kind of half-dance around on the sticky carpet. They’re possessed, see? I mean, it’s not right. How can people behave like that?

Well now I know. It’s the 8th layer of hell. It’s Jagermeister. It only took 12 of them and and I was just grunting around the edge of darkness like a 12 year old stuck on Avril Lavigne. I should know better, but they made me do it. Project managers. Can’t live with them, can’t make a fool of yourself and have really bad pictures end up on your own camera without them

either, either, or

October 13, 2004

You know I can’t discuss it. I mean, I already know, but it’ll take a couple of weeks before I can tell you, right? Anyway, Halloween jokes and all, it’s great to get out and about. Tonight in Palo Alto we had good fun with the Italian sausage, but you know, I have to eat that now, so lets take a snap, quick. Oh, and another. Let’s see, that’s not getting posted. Chris and I will get the Jergens and the rubber gloves out later and see what comes of it.

Really, beyond the jetlag and thousand yard stares, these are great people. I mean, I get to sit round a table with them and shout at the TV and stuff and share those funny and touching program management moments and either, either, or the other stuff which makes the 5000 miles worthwhile. You see, I know what you’re talking about, so lets work together on it and drag the collective understanding up out of the mind puddle of brain wrong. Never really thought schemas would be quite such an exciting prospect, but I mean, it all comes down to data models, right? Pass the spoons. That’s my silverware.

toy legs

October 11, 2004

Have I got toy legs? How am I supposed to sit at this desk for the rest of today? Kenny doesn’t sit at a desk, he kind of lies underneath it at an impossibly cool angle, with his fingers clawing up at the keyboard like some meticulous squirrel. I mean, it’s literally 2 feet high this thing. I just met some of my remote co-workers for the first time and they must of thought I was some kind of oversized ape in this bizarre toy cupboard office. Not the kind of first impression I was intending to make. Anyway, we’re out in Menlo Park tonight at some place which does good ‘an proper British food, right? I mean, I was at some Vietnamese place for lunch and now this. What’s it like over here? I’m gonna get a right fat one, I tell thee.

struck by lightning

September 27, 2004

to Nice this weekend then, which is nice. Sans children, not done for years. A couple of great friends getting married at Fayence, you see, at the beautiful 12th century Chapelle de Notre-Dame des Cyprès. We only had the local wine straight from the vineyard across the dusty road after service didn’t we? On a tressle. Sweet. Mind you, the goings on the night before were right mental, mate, I tell yer…

Straight into Nice Côte d’Azur airport on Friday night, on that there easyJet. Only cost us 17p. After reclaim de baggage we headed straight for the Europcar rental desk to begin our perfect weekend. Cross the arrivals lounge and through the car park in the balmy French evening air and everything is nifty. All smiles. All signing. But what’s that? Felt a touch of rain there. Ah, well, I just love getting caught in a warm summer shower. It’s so Frrrench. 20 paces later. What the..? Bleedin heavens open right up don’t they, and we’re lashing across to the poxy tent affair they have set up outside the desk. So I head in to the desk and natch, there’s about 20 other limp email printouts in front of me, tapping their Marlboro lights on the counter and threatening to lamp the guy behind the desk who’s saying “but we ‘ave non keeeys pour you”.

Anyway, cut a long one short, we got free upgrade to a Passat and headed into Nice to locate the Novotel. Neil, our mate, he’s got a booking at ‘Le Cheapo‘ by the train station, so we have to drop him first. Simple right? Well. 2 hours later, we’ve been driving the wrong way round Nice in the maddest thunderstorm ever, aquaplaning across 3 lines of traffic on the autoroute, and we’re not really getting any closer. We’ve got a multimap printout of 1 square kilometer, and we’ve never been on it. So, we’re just pulling out from between a derelict garage and a block of flats right, when THWACK, the loudest, most intense cracking noise you’ve ever heard, comes from the roof, and I’m thinking breezeblock launched from the 17th floor. By a bazooka. We look up for the house-shaped dent, but nothing. Oh well. We crack on. We’ll have a look in a minute. 30 seconds later, I’m driving the wrong way up some train tracks or something when I get a moment of clarity. “We just got struck by lightning“. All quiet. Then freakouts in the Passat and we’re swerving all over the Promenade des Anglais trying to jump out and stuff. Weirdness, I tell yer. We stopped after a bit and Neil pops out to take a shifty. “No dents mate, not a scratch. You know though, we’ve got a pretty big aerial”.

So that was that. We got struck by lightning and my teeth went a bit funny. Of course, being in a Volkswagen Faraday Cage meant it was ok, but, you know, at the time…

The wedding itself was perfect, and the weather Saturday & Sunday was spot on. On the Sunday, we headed to the seafront, to see the Nice Triathlon. I tried very hard to spot some Sun sponsorship, but it was mostly French television and carbon fibre, with a few ladies in swimsuits, which was nice.

Things what I writ