Searching in Dark Places

I installed Google Desktop Search on my computer yesterday. It indexed my entire hard drive overnight and has turned up some pretty amusing relics from my past that were tucked away in some deep and dark places within my meticulously disorganized file hierarchy. This excerpt from a letter that I wrote in 1997 I thought was particularly amusing:

Other than that things have been pretty boring around here. I’ve been my usual self staying up all hours of the night pounding away on the keyboard figuring out how to program in Assembly Language, how to take over the World, and How to get laid. (either individually or all at the same time…it doesn’t matter much to me) I’m getting real close to programming in Assembly Language and World Domination.

Unfortunately little has changed since 1997. Although I am no longer trying to write assembly code of my own, I've spent much of the last week at work debugging through someone else's disassembled assembly code. Oh yeah, and I haven't had much luck with world domination or getting laid either :)

I Put a Spell on You

I will probably never buy a full album on iTunes. However, one of the things that I really love about iTunes is that I can hear a song in a movie, often an older song, and I can go find and buy it from iTunes. I recently picked up I Put a Spell on You (which I recently heard in the movie, Just Like Heaven), At Last (which was featured in an episode of According to Jim) and La Mer (which is from the movie L.A. Story). God bless iTunes :)

Chain Blogging

I was reading Master Fob's blog and decided to perpetuate his chain blog entry because it sounded interesting.

Here's the deal:
1. Delve into your blog.
2. Find the twenty-third post.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

Here are the results from my blog:
The 23rd post was entitled, "Blind Date" and the fifth sentence was, "In accordance with Murphy's law, I hopped into my car at 5:30 PM. turned the ignition and greeted by the sound of a free spinning starter motor."

The Gay Science

Here are some quotes that I highlighted recently while reading Nietzsche's, "The Gay Science".

• "How often I see that blindly raging industriousness does create wealth and reap honors while at the same time depriving the organs of their subtlety, which alone would make possible the enjoyment of wealth and honors; also that this chief antidote to boredom and the passions at the same time blunts the senses and leads the spirit to resist new attractions. The most industrious of all ages --ours-- does not know how to make anything of all its industriousness and money, except always still more money and still more industriousness; for it requires more genius to spend than to acquire."



• "After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave -- a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. --And we-- we still have to vanquish his shadow, too."



• "But how could we reproach or praise the universe? Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful, nor noble, nor does it wish become any of these things; it does not by any means strive to imitate man. None of our aesthetic and moral judgements apply to it. Nor does it have any instinct for self-preservation or any other instinct; and it does not observe any laws either. Let us beware of saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is nobody who commands, nobody who obeys, nobody who trespasses. Once you know that there are no purposes, you also know that there is no accident; for it is only beside a world of purposes that the word 'accident' has meaning. Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life. The living is merely a type of what is dead, and a very rare type."



• "The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. 'Whither is God?' he cried; 'I will tell you. We have killed him--you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not the night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light the lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.'
  
  'How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us--for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.'"



• "Egoism is the law of perspective applied to feelings: what is closest appears large and weighty, and as one moves farther away size and weight decrease."



• "Those who want to mediate between two resolute thinkers show that they are mediocre; they lack eyes for seeing what is unique. Seeing things as similar and making things the same is the sign of weak eyes."



• "For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is--to live dangerously!"



• "At bottom I abhor all those moralities which say: 'Do not do this! Renounce! Overcome yourself!' But I am well disposed toward those moralities which goad me to do something and do it again, from morning till evening and then to dream of it at night, and to think of nothing except doing this well, as well as I alone can do it. When one lives like that, one thing after another that simply does not belong to such a life drops off. Without hatred or aversion one sees this take its leave today and that tomorrow, like yellow leaves that any slight stirring of the air takes off a tree. He may not even notice that it takes it leave; for his eye is riveted to his goal--forward, not sideward, backward, downward. What we do should determine what we forego; by doing we forego--that is how I like it, that is my placitum. But I do not wish to strive with open eyes for my own impoverishment; I do not like negative virtues--virtues whose very essence it is to negate and deny oneself something."

Fall Colors

I rode both the Nebo and Alpine loop this weekend. The colors were awesome. Here are some photos that I took:

Big Loser

As of this morning I have lost 50 lbs (325 to 275), 6 inches from my jean size (from 46x30 to 40x30) and 1x from my t-shirt size (from 3x to 2x). Hooray! My new goal is to get below 250 before the end of the year.

Bald Mountain

What do you do when you return from a week long trip to Barcelona? But of course, you climb a mountain. Well, I at least I did anyway. I've been meaning to hike to the top of Bald Mountain since mid July when we had a picnic up at Mirror Lake. For one reason or another I kept coming up with excuses not to go (despite hiking lots of other places). I finally decided that this morning was going to be the morning that I conquered the mountain.

The trailhead is about 90 miles from Spanish Fork. The ride was a little chilly on the bike at 10 in the morning. The ride got progressively cooler as I ascended into the mountains. Mine was the only Harley at the trailhead. Apparently the idea of riding a Harley to go hiking was so foreign to the ranger that he let me through without paying an entry fee.

Although the trail ascended quickly, it wasn't the steepness of the trail that was killing me. I was struggling to find oxygen in the air that I was breathing. I'm not sure if my lungs had just grown accustomed to the Mediterranean air in the past week or if the fact that the trailhead started above 10,000 ft had something to do with it. The hike was about 4 miles roundtrip and ended at Bald Mountain Peak with spectactular views of the lakes below.

Travel Day

I left my hotel in Barcelona at 10 AM this morning. I arrived home in Spanish Fork, UT at 10 PM tonight after 20 hours of travelling. I'm tired. Good Night.

Final Night

Tonight is my last night in Barcelona. I should be out partying right now but I feel like I've done my share of partying for the last week. Instead tonight was my earliest night of the entire trip. I was back in my hotel room by 10:30 PM. This trip has also been characterized by sleep deprivation. I haven't gotten more than 5 hours sleep any night since I've been here. Some nights I've had as few as three. Luckily the reason that I didn't get any sleep was because I was out having so much fun :)

Today was the last day of Brainshare. I worked up in the Migration Lab for a short morning shift before tearing everything down at 1:30 PM. Our plan for the afternoon was to take a train to Montserrat and visit a monastery up in the mountains. After mobilizing a group of about 15 people and getting everyone to meet at a train station on the other side of the city, we were disappointed to find out that we didn't really have enough time to go. One of the folks at the train station told us that if we were to leave when we did that we would ride on the train for 2.5 hours (1.25 each way) and only get to see the monastery for 30 minutes before it closed.

Chaos ensued once everyone in the group was clued into the unfortunate news. We sat on the street for 15 minutes and argued about where we should go instead. Eventually we lost three people who went off to Port Olympic while the remainder of us headed in the direction of the National Art Museum. Rand and I were the next to go. We stopped outside of the art museum for beer and ice cream while everyone else headed inside. I don't think that we intentionaly intended to lose the group, but when they didn't come back out we just went our own way.

We started aimlessly wandering the mountainous streets to get to the "Castle on the Hill". The Castle was an old military fortress that housed a museum. Unfortunately we had left our only map with the other group of people. When I say aimlessly wandering I am really putting the emphasis on wandering. We were damn near walking through peoples back yards. It was clear that we were forging paths that had never been walked by tourists before.

The castle was cool but I think that the weather detracted from the experience. It was hot, humid and, as a result, sticky. We were also both pretty beat from walking for a very, very long time. I took a brief nap in the sun on one of the stone benches while Rand found the bar. When I woke up, the sweat on my t-shirt had dried and left nasty, crusty salt stains.

Rand was pretty excited to walk through the military museum considering that he had served in the army. I wasn't dying to see the museum but neither was I opposed to the idea. We spent about an hour walking through the inside rooms of the castle looksing at old knives, guns, swords, rifles, armor and cannons.

Our plan for descending from the castle back down to the city was to take a funicular (a sky tram). Unfortunately we discovered that the tram that left from the castle hadn't worked in quite a long time. This meant more walking. We had actually managed to pick up a map of the city inside the castle but we didn't bother consulting it. We figured that if we were to just head downhill and towards the ocean that we would eventually end up back somewhere where we could hop back on the subway.

About halfway down the mountain (hill) we discovered a second funicular that descended into the harbor. We rode the rest of the way down suspended several hundred feet above ground and ocean. The tower that the funicular stopped at was still a couple of hundred feet above ground and required that we take an elevator the rest of the way.

Eventually we found our way back to the subway and back to my hotel. We wanted to go out to dinner but I needed to wash the stickiness off of me first. We also thought that we would check if anyone else had made it back to the hotel and was interested in going out to dinner.

The other group had not returned when we left for dinner. Rand needed to do some shopping so we decided to kill two birds with one stone and eat at the mall. We stopped at a sausage shop in the mall called "Kurz & Gut". When I found a sausage that was wrapped in bacon and covered in cheese, I knew that I was good to go. They also served beer... in the mall. Spain Rocks! After dinner we stopped at a Hagen Daaz shop for desert. Why don't we have a Hagen Daaz store in America?

Harley and Hard Rock

Today was the day for all things American in Spain. There were three of us scheduled in the migration lab and it wasn't very busy so I decided to cut out early and go search for Harley Davidson of Barcelona. The quest took me through some busier parts of the city. The streets and sidewalks were so crowded in some spots that I had to get off the bike and walk.

Navigating in Barcelona is challenging due to the fact that the names of the cross streets are almost impossible to discern at a glance. Usually the street is marked by a small sign that is placed on a building on the street corner. Of course the sign is designed to aesthetically blend with the building that it is placed on, instead of being designed to stand out and be visible. On some streets the sign wasn't right on the street corner either. You might have to look quite a ways up the street to find the sign. And I swear some streets were not marked at all.

When I finally stumbled onto Harley Davidson of Barcelona I was surprised to find it marked by little more than a 12 inch square sign. I expected the dealership to be a separate building with a towering bar and shield marking the spot. Instead it was a shop tucked inside a much larger complex of shops. Considering how tiny the place was on the outside I couldn't believe how big it was on the inside. Not that it was huge, but it was about the same size as the dealership back in Orem.



The only problem was that I couldn't find any t-shirts for sale in the dealership. This was, of course, the whole purpose of the expedition. When I asked, I discovered that I was actually in the repair shop and that the showroom was half a block down the street.

The lady working in the showroom was really quite friendly and spoke reasonably fluent english. After picking out a shirt I spent a couple of minutes talking to her about the state of Harley in Spain. She said that the reason that I didn't see many Harley's on the street in Barcelona was because the city was so crowded. Most people take their Harley's out on the weekend and ride into the country instead of through the city. She said that even the owner of the Harley dealership rode a scooter to work during the week. Wow!



I also discovered that the reason that they don't have rentals anywhere in Spain was because they could not get a company to provide insurance for the rentals. She mentioned that an English company was currently considering providing the financial backing for the insurance rentals. By this time next year I may be able to come back to Spain and rent a Harley in Barcelona. She said that keep an eye out for me when I came back :)

Later that night I headed out with the whole team to explore the city. We headed first to an old Gaudi (sp?) designed cathedral that was still under construction called the La Sagrada Familia. It was incredibly ornate and meticulously detailed. One of the adornments on the cathedral was a sculpture of Jesus hanging naked (and anatomically correct) from a horizontal cross sticking out from the side of the building. Being a smart ass, I commented that if I was the son of God I would expect to be better hung than that (referring to the anatomically correct portion of the sculpture). Rand later pointed out the pun that was unintended but still pretty funny (hung on a cross).



We wandered aimlessly through the streets of Barcelona for an hour or so before deciding to find a place for dinner. Apparently Tony had really wanted to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe, so we headed in that direction. We had to wait for just over an hour to get a table but there was a bar and the music was good so it wasn't too painful. By the time that we sat down for dinner I had already put down 3 beers. Over the course of dinner, a traditional Spanish dish of Barbecued Ribs and French Fries, Rand made it his personal mission to ensure that I never ran out of beer.

Just when I was convinced that I was finished drinking Rand orders "Dos Mas Cerveza". One more me and one for him. I still had half of my previous bottled still finished. Just for fun I decided to try drinking double fisted from both bottles. This was not a very good strategy. I ended up getting beer all over the table and myself. The worst part was that when I asked the waitress for some napkins to clean up the mess she brought me another beer to make up for what I had spilled (which was nowhere near a full bottle's worth of beer). So, I went from having half a bottle left to drink to having 2 and a half bottles left to drink.

I was pretty sauced by the time that we left the Hard Rock. As we walked through the streets of "Old Town" we stumbled across some freaky tree people. From a distance it looked like moving statues of trees. As I got closer and closer I was amazed at the detail of the statues. The faces looked like they were made of real skin and real eyes. Just then as I was inspecting the statues from about 6 inches away I heard Dean drop some coins into a jar on the ground. Holy shit! Those are real people. It scared the crap out of me.

When we got back to the Princess Hotel where I had parked my bike I discovered that my bike had been molested while I was gone. They had taken the rubber grips off of my handlebars and taken the adjusting clamp off of my seat. Luckily they did not steal the seat itself which was worth 55 Euro. I was pretty pissed. The funny thing was that the bike was parked 20 feet from the entrance to the hotel (which was patrolled by security guards) in a well lit and heavily travelled area. Bastards!

Working for a Living

Tuesday, September 12th

Tuesday was the second day that I really felt like I was working to pay for the privilege to be sent to Spain by Novell. My only official shift ran from 10 AM until 2:30 PM. But I voluntarily agreed to sit in on a meeting that ran from 4 PM to 6:30 PM. with some of the GroupWise partners who had scheduled a "summit" in regards to the GroupWise API's. It was actually kind of cool to meet with a large number of our partners in person and hear their opinions on the state of the GroupWise API's.

Shortly after the API meeting I was scheduled, along with everyone else, to work "Meet The Experts" from 7:30 PM to 11 PM. Again, it was interesting to meet and talk with customers but it really made for a long day. I was really pleased with the amount of interest in the GroupWise Outlook Connector. I was also pleased with the number of Exchange to GroupWise migrations that heard of (some past and some future) during Brainshare.

The highlight of the night was meeting a female GroupWise administrator from the Netherlands. She was kind of cute and she seemed to be flirting with me a little. Even though I answered all of her real questions in the first couple of minutes she ccontinued talking to me for nearly half an hour with trivial questions and superficial chit chat. I really felt like she was fishing to be asked out.

Unfortunately I didn't have the balls to follow through. If I was wrong (which I had recently been with the female park ranger at the Redwood National Park campground) then it would actually be really unprofessional of me to be hitting on a customer. On the other hand, if I was right, I probably woudn't have slept alone that night. Oh well.

By the time that we finally left around 11:30 PM I was pretty exhaused from standing all day and tired from only gettting 4 hours of sleep the previous night. Surprisingly I still really felt like going out and doing something. Drinking was out because my stomach was still recovering from the previous night's debacle. Unfortunately it sounded like most everyone else was kind of tired and just wanted to turn in for the night. There isn't much to do in Barcelona at midnight if you aren't drinking.

I walked home from the convention center. About half-way home it occurrred to me that I should go out and ride my bike for a little while. I had doubly motivated. First, I had been working all day and hadn't really gotten any good exercise. Second, I hadn't had a chance to ride the bike since it was repaired earlier in the afternoon.

I was also pissed about the note that the rental company left in my room. They left a note saying that they were concerned that the reason that I kept getting flat tires was because I was "over the specifications" of their mountain bikes. I was pretty offended. They were basically saying that I was too fat to ride their mountain bikes.

So, I was additionally motivated to ride the bike to prove the bike rental company wrong: I was not getting flat tires because I was too fat to ride a mountain bike. I was a little cautious for the first couple of miles but after that I quit worrying about the tire blowing out. I really think that I just got unlucky three times in a row. It could have happenned to anyone.

The ride was successful. I didn't get a flat tire in nearly 15 miles of riding. I rode out the beach for the first several miles until I got back to the statue of columbus. From there I decided to take a different route and return home through the city. It was 2 AM by the time that I got back to the hotel.

The Beach and Bike Trouble

It is ridiculously late here (going on 3 am) so I am going to try and make this as quick as possible. I will probably fail, but at least I am going to try.

The highlight of the day was definitely all of the topless women on the beach in Barcelona. I swear that I didn´t seek them out but no matter where we went on the beach there were just women who didn´t seem to have any problem with taking their tops off to sunbathe. I´ve heard before that this is common in Europe, but this was my first time experiencing it.

Besides the (literally) half-naked women, it was also pretty cool to swim in the Mediterranean Sea and to just kick back and relax on the beach. I went with Scott Clayton after we were done with our shifts manning the lab at Brainshare. We took the subway from our hotel down to the beach which was another first for me.

Another highlight of the day was the Brewfest sponsored by the Messaging Architects. At every Brainshare The Messaging Architects throws a big party and invites customers and partners to come celebrate with them. The beer and food is all free. I´ve met quite a few people from TMA over the last couple of days but this was my first time to really sit down and get to know Pierre, the head honcho at TMA. He´s actually a pretty cool guy. In fact, I´ve really enjoyed meeting all of the folks from TMA.

After the party I walked back to the hotel with Rand. We stopped at a bar on the beach put down a few more beers before returning home. I was pretty sauced.

The lowlight of the day was definitely the bike trouble that I had. The plan this morning was to wake up early so that I could go to the beach before my shift started in the morning. When I went to retrieve the bike from the parking garage I discovered that the front tire had gone flat overnight.

Hoping that the flat was just a fluke, I walked the bike all over town trying to find a place where I could pump some air into the tire. Unfortunately, the tire was legitimately and permanently flat. I couldn´t determine the cause of the flat (i.e. there weren´t any obvious punctures) but there was a big hole in the tube and the tire wouldn´t hold any air.

Unfortunately the bike rental place didn´t open until 10 AM. I left a message and emailed them to let them know about the problem. If I could have found an open shop I would have just replaced the tube myself. I told the bike rental place that I worked from 10 to 2 and that I was hoping that they could get the tire repaired before returning in the afternoon.

When I got back to the hotel I checked on the bike and was unpleasantly surprised to find out that the tire was still flat. After talking to the lady at the front desk I discovered that the tire was not still flat, it was flat again. Apparently the bike rental place had fixed the tire but it had gone flat again in between the time that they left and I returned. I was pissed.

I called up the rental place and raised holy hell. I told them that I should be refunded the price of the day´s rental since I had essentially lost a day of riding due to faulty equipment. The manager of the bike rental place didn´t seem to agree. He kept stating that they could not be held liable for punctures that I made while riding. I tried, to no avail, to explain that I hadn´t even ridden the bike before it got it´s second flat.

We finally agreed that they would come and repair the bike again. I wasn´t going to waste any time waiting for them, so I left by the subway to go to the beach with Scott. When we returned several hours later I found a different bike in place of the one that I had rented. They had upgraded me to the next level of mountain bike. Although I was still upset that I had lost a day of riding I was happy to see that the company was at least attempting to make me happy.

The happiness didn´t last long. When I got on the bike to ride to the Brewfest I discovered that the tires, although not flat, barely had enough air in them to support my weight. Granted I probably weigh a little more than the average European male, but I would still expect to have a bike delived with the proper amount of air pressure. I rode the bike to the same gas station that I had found earlier that day and filled the tires up with the proper amount of air.

After that I was convinced that I had finally gotten over my bike problems. I was riding to an event with free beer and all was well with the world. That is until my rear tire went flat just as I passed the conference center. I was so frustrated that I felt like I wanted to hit something.

I was determined not to be too late for the Brewfest and to not spend my entire evening dealing with the flat tire. So I just parked the bike by the convention center and walked the remaining 2 miles to the restaurant where the Brewfest was being hosted.

The only problem with leaving the bike where it broke down was that it just meant that I had to walk it home later at night. By the time that I got back to the area where I had parked the bike it was 2 in the morning and I was pretty sauced up. Walking the bike the 1.5 miles to the hotel was not all that much fun in that condition.

I was able to get ahold of the bike rental place earlier in the evening and they are going to try one more time to repair the bike. The manager swore that this never happens to them. He even went so far as to ask whether or not I had this problem with bikes back at home... as if I had anything to do with the tires going flat. I hope that I don´t have any more problems like this tomorrow.

Barcelona Photos

Here are the photos from the first couple of days of the trip.

Barcelona by Mountain Bike

Sunday September 11th

Today was a good day. I wasn't sure that it was going to turn out to be this morning, but it turned out OK. Nothing in life is free. That was certainly the case with the dinner that Messaging Architects treated us to last night (which again, I am still very grateful for). Somewhere during dinner though I committed to showing up at Brainshare at 10 AM to help Svetlin troubleshoot some problems that he was having with the VMWare image for the demo. I also committed to a meeting at 11 AM to get an overview of Messaging Architects products so that we could plug them during the migration demo.

Had I not made those commitments we weren't scheduled to do anything until 1PM when we needed to show up for a brief Brainshare meeting with Ken Muir, the director of GroupWise and then would have had the rest of the day to play in Barcelona. By midmorning I was slowly starting to see my relaxing Sunday starting to melt away. Svetlin was a little late showing up and when he finally did we didn't catch him right away. It was 10:45 by the time that we all met up.

We were supposed to meet Greg from Messaging Architects in the solutions lab for our 11 o'clock meeting. Unfortunately, the conference center event staff kicked us out of the solutions lab just before 11 because they were worried about safety as they were making adjustments to the scaffolding that held all of the lighting for the show. When Greg showed up at 11 noone was in the solutions lab, we were all in the migration lab. It was after noon by the time that we finally hooked up Greg. Just when I finally managed to get everything lined up for the Messaging Architects product overview I couldn't find my 3 co-workers who were also supposed to be sitting in on the training (it turns out that they went out to lunch without me).

Before I knew it our 1 hour 11 o'clock meeting had turned into a 1:30 PM meeting and ended up lasted for nearly 3 hours. It was 5 PM by the time that I finally left the conference center. And I was glad to be out. Officially I was scheduled to work the migration lab from 6 to 9 PM. However, since the migration lab didn't open until Monday morning I got the night off. If I hadn't already worked most of the day I probably would have just worked my shift in the solutions lab instead of the migration lab.

Although my morning wasn't an ideal morning spent in Barcelona, at least I can say that my missions were accomplished. We figured out the problems that Svetlin was having with the migration (it turned out to not be a problem at all), we got a fairly in-depth demonstration of the Messaging Architects' products and we managed to do a dry-run of the migration demo.

The fun really began in the evening. When I got back to the hotel I called up a bike rental place and rented a mountain bike. They delivered it to my hotel about 45 minutes later. I decided that my first ride would be down to the beach on the mediterranean coast. I probably rode down 5 or more miles of beach. I stopped at a beach bar and had a few beers before walking through the tide on the beach. It was awesome.

I stopped back at the hotel briefly around 8:30 to see if anyone had called with plans for dinner. No one had. The lab closed at 9PM and I figured that if I just camped out at one of the exits that I would run into someone from GroupWise. So, I rode back to the conference center and camped out. Within 15 minutes the whole team that was working that night walked out together. They told me that we were going out to dinner at “La Gavina” in Port Olympic.

Since we had just eaten in Port Olympic the previous night and I had ridden past it earlier in the day I felt pretty comfortable that I could find my way on the bike. The only problem was that when I got to Port Olympic I couldn't find any restaurants called “La Gavina”. I must have asked half a dozen people and none of them had ever heard of it. As I poked around for people who spoke English I got pretty good at uttering the phrase, “Hablo Ingles?”.

I finally found someone who knew where “La Gavina” was but he was only able to mutter a few words in English. I did manage to make out that the restaurant was not in Port Olympic. He told me that it was in a port up the road. It sounded like he called it “Port Aquis”, although I think that may mean “Next Port” rather than refer to the actual name of the port.

I rode around for a couple of hours before finally giving up. At some point I realized that even if I managed to find the restaurant that everyone that I was trying to meet would already be long gone. The night wasn't a total waste though. It was pretty cool to ride through Barcelona all lit up at night. I stumbled onto the “famous” statue of Columbus in the city center before turning around.

I stopped at a bar on the beach for dinner and liquid nourishment. Since I hadn't had lunch and had been riding for the last 5 hours I was pretty famished. Dinner was pretty light but the 4 beers that I had definitely weren't. I wonder if you can get a ticket for driving a bicycle while intoxicated. I'm just kidding, I wasn't that drunk. In fact, I only just barely had a buzz going. But the beer tasted awfully good after all of the riding that I had done.

I got back to the hotel at about 12:30 AM. A few minutes later Scott Brown knocked on my door and let me know what happened. It turns out that they got bad directions to the restaurant. They ended up spending quite a bit of time finding the place as well. Scott showed me where the restaurant was on my map. Ironically I had ridden right past it and just didn't notice the sign. I didn't feel so bad when Scott mentioned that the sign wasn't very visible from the road.

Now it's time for bed. I think that I'm going to wake up early tomorrow and go for a swim in the ocean before working my shift. Good night.

Jet Lag

Friday September 9th - Saturday September 10th

Today was a crazy day. In fact it's been so long since I've slept, it might even qualify as a crazy two days. I did wake up at 4:30 am on Friday morning like I originally planned. That gave me a whole 3 hours of sleep. Since that time I have only slept an additional 2 hours or so on the flight from Philadelphia to Barcelona. Believe me I tried but I just couldn't seem to.

I purposely kept myself awake on the flight from Salt Lake to Philadelphia. I figured that in order to make up for the Jet Lag between Philly and Barcelona that I would want to sleep for the entire international flight. When we arrived in Philadelphia at 3 or 4 in the afternoon exhaustion was already starting to set in.

That didn't keep down my spirit of adventure though. I was determined not to waste a trip to Philadelphia without checking out the city. We had nearly 4 fours until we boarded the next leg of our flight. That was plenty of time to get into the city, have dinner and then return to the airport. Half of the group that I was traveling with (Dean Lythgoe, Tim Draper and his wife) was on-board with the dinner-in-philly plan. The other half of the group (Scott Brown, Scott Clayton, Dirk Giles and Morris Blackham) had managed to disappear in search of the international terminal before we even had the opportunity to convince them of the superiority of our plan. Fools!

Apparently finding a place to eat a Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is not such an easy proposition. We were met with blank stares as we asked half a dozen people for directions to the best Philly Cheese Steak in town... and that included two different taxi drivers. Our luck improved when Dean randomly chose and printed out directions to Pat's King of Steaks restaurant. After a little bit of badgering the cab driver finally conceded to knowing where “Pat's” was and even informed us that it was indeed the best place in Philly to get a Cheese Steak Sandwich.

We were all starving and filled with hope as we piled into the cab. That hope was replaced by trepidation as the cab driver began to navigate the streets of Philadelphia. He had this bad habit of not stopping for red lights. It wasn't bad enough that he ran the lights, but he actually did so consciously and carefully. When the light turned red about a 100 yards or so ahead of us he would actually begin to slow as he was approaching the intersection. This led to a false hope that he might actually stop. Instead he only slowed down to make sure that he wouldn't hit anybody by driving straight through the intersection.

As we got deeper and deeper into the inner city of Philadelphia I think that we were all beginning to worry. We all had imagined that Pat's was actually a TGI Friday's sort of a place with a happy and fun atmosphere tucked into some recess of the sprawling urban metropolis. Instead we found ourselves driving through inner city ghettos. I kept waiting for a bullet to come whizzing by my head. When we finally arrived at Pat's it was apparent that we were really in for a taste of the local experience.

The menu consisted almost entirely of different ways to cook a Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich. Who knew that there were more than 20 different ways to prepare a Philly Cheese Steak? The seating for the place was all outdoors. The sandwiches were, in fact, pretty damned good.

Our flight left Philadelphia at about 8 PM and with the time difference arrived in Barcelona at 9 am the next morning after a 7 hour flight. My plan to sleep the entire flight quickly evaporated. I was able to doze off for a couple of hours after dinner but that was basically it for the whole night.

When I woke up they were showing “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” as the in-flight movie. I'm a little ashamed to admit that I actually wanted to see that movie. I refrained from purchasing headphones because I thought it would be more important to try and get some sleep. I pretty much ended up watching the whole movie without any sound. It will be interesting to rent the movie when it comes out on video to see if the actual movie dialogue was as interesting as the dialogue that I imagine while watching the movie with no sound.

Even though my body was tired when we landed it was just hard to think about catching z's when the sun was rising. I was also way too excited to sleep. As soon as we touched down I forced myself to perk up so that I could be sure to soak in the whole international experience.

Barcelona is a very cool city. It appears to be a fairly heavily populated area, yet you don't feel overwhelmed or downtrodden by concrete and asphalt. The streets were clean and there was still quite a bit of natural landscaping that kept the city from looking like an urban war zone. This was in stark contrast to the city of Philadelphia.

Luckily we were able to check into our hotel rooms about 4 hours early. The hotel rooms are awesome. Everything is in decorated in a modern décor. I have a corner room where two of the four walls are basically nothing but large glass windows covered by motorized blinds. The bathroom was also all glass. After sliding a translucent “privacy” panel out you could see into the bathroom through the shower from the room. And while you were taking a shower you could see into the rest of the room. Even the TV was modern. It's a 21” flat screen TV monitor. Way Cool!

There were a few quirks about the room. For the longest time I couldn't figure out how to turn on the lights or the air conditioning. I must have tried every switch in the room 3 times. Finally a noticed a small plastic panel near the door of the room with an arrow pointed on it and a slot just big enough to fit a room key. I couldn't even begin to imagine why you would want to insert the room key into a slot once you were already in the room but I decided to give it a shot anyway. No sooner had the card entered the slot than the whole room started whirring to life. The air condition turned on, the lights turned on and the blinds started to raise.

We only stayed long enough to drop our bags off and then we embarked on the 1 and ½ mile hike/walk to meet up with the other folks from Novell at the Princess Hotel. Because we were booked so late, we ended up in the overflow hotel. Everyone else was in a hotel that was just a few steps away from the conference center. In the long run I think that I actually prefer our hotel. It's nice to wake up in the morning and not be immediately surrounded by hordes of conference attendees. It makes it easier to get away from “work” when I'm not actually at the conference center.

I've committed to walking the distance between the hotel and the conference center every day. I figure that it will be a good way to get exercise while I'm away from home and to and will help to make up for all of the extra food that I will be eating and the beer that I will be drinking. I also think that walking gives you a better chance to connect with the city and see the “real” Barcelona.

I, and the other 3 guys that were brought over to do the exchange migration, were invited to dinner by the generous folks at “The Messaging Architects”. They were same folks that pushed Novell to send a few more people to help them run the Exchange migration workshop (i.e. I wouldn't be in Barcelona right now if it weren't for them). We went to a really nice seafood place right in the marina.

I decided to be adventurous and order the seafood stew, which was listed as a “Local Special”. It was basically every kind of crustacean that you can imagine smothered in a sauce or gravy. The monk fish was awesome. It was my first experience peeling prawns from their shells which was made all the more challenging by the sauce that the prawns were smothered in. Lucky for me one of the girls, Rumiana, from The Messaging Architects ordered the same thing and walked me through the whole experience. Rumiana was cool. Too bad she lives in Montreal.

Even though I had barely slept in the last 60 hours, I decided that I was going to fight the urge to sleep after dinner. Instead I decided to go out drinking with Rand and Greg from the Messaging Architects. I was surprised when Rand passed up a bar/discoteque in the marina where you could spy girls dancing half-naked in bikinis on bar tables as you walked by. I tried to convince him to turn back for the next mile or so but he wouldn't listen. We ended up hanging out in a little hole-in-the-wall bar with pool tables. I got schooled by Greg who was pretty good with a cue. I did manage to win 1 out of about 5 games.

As I stumbled home through the streets of Barcelona at 2 in the morning I was surprised at how much activity there was. The streets were teaming with the 18 to 30 crowd that was out partying on the weekend. It didn't seem to phase anyone that it was 2am. I was tempted to stop at a couple of places and join the party but I figured that, for the first time all day, I should be responsible and get some sleep.

Getting Ready

I should really be in bed right now. It's a little past midnight and I just finished packing. I've been running around all night trying to get ready to travel tomorrow morning.

After work I had to stop by Provo Town Centre to pick up some new clothes. They want us to wear "business casual" at Brainshare and I'm afraid that it's been a long time since I've worn anything but jeans and t-shirts to work. I was able to dig out and dust off some button-up shirts from my closet but even if I had pants that were nice enough to wear they probably wouldn't fit any more. When I moved into my house a year and a half ago I threw away all of my smaller clothes that I had been lugging around for years because I figured that I would never fit into them again.

I picked up three pair of dockers, a black belt (not karate related) and some colored socks. I spent way more time than I should have picking out the belt and the socks. At least I had a good excuse for the belt. I couldn't find the right size and style that I was looking for. I found the right size in a similar but wrong style and I was able to find the right style in the slightly wrong size. I was convinced that if I looked hard enough, just one more time, that the missing belt would suddenly materialize before me.

After a few dozen passes over the belt rack I thought up the bright idea of asking one of the sales associates to check the inventory on the computer. The computer, which never lies, told us that there were at least two of the exact belt that I was looking for in stock. Unfortunately that didn't make it any easier for us to find. Eventually I gave up and just bought a different, more expensive belt.

There was no excuse for the amount of time that I spent picking out the socks though. I used to have a female co-worker whose pet peeve was guys who would wear nice pants with plain white socks. She would go on and on about how stupid these fashion challenged individuals looked. Her ranting must have embedded itself deep within the dark recesses of my brain because now whenever I go shopping for socks to match nice pants (which, thank God, is not very often) I start to break out in a cold sweat wondering whether or not Carlene would be pleased with how I matched my socks to the pants that I am wearing.

The marathon started once I got home. After I ate dinner I decided that it would be a good idea to do all of my dishes so that my house wasn't rat infested by the time that I get home next week. Although, now that I think of it most of the dishes that I did tonight have already been sitting in my sink for nearly a week. Would it really have hurt that much to leave them there for another week? It wouldn't be the first time that I've had a two-week old sink full of dishes. I guess there is just something about coming home to a clean house after being away on a trip.

While I was doing my dishes I started my laundry. A couple of the dress shirts that I had dug out of my closet were way back from when I originally interviewed at Novell 4 years ago and it looked like I didn't bother to wash them before hanging them up in my closet. The sleeves were still rolled up and everything.

Of course after washing and drying all of my dress shirts I had no choice but to iron them as well. I felt dirty. I can't remember the last time that I had to dig my iron out of the closet. A sensible person probably wouldn't have bothered to iron a bunch of shirts before packing them in luggage. But, I wasn't sure whether or not there would be an iron at the hotel that I'm staying at and I figured that it would be better to have ironed shirts with a few fold marks from being packed than to look like I just pulled my shirts out of the dryer.

Somewhere in the process of doing my dishes and laundry it occurred to me that I forgot to get an adapter to plug my laptop into the European style electrical outlets. I actually had the opportunity to do so earlier in the afternoon when I stopped by Office Max but I just completely forgot about it. So, I made a late night run to K-Mart to try and find the converter.

K-Mart didn't have the converter and sent me packing to WalMart. I hate shopping at WalMart but I was desperate. If I didn't buy the converter tonight I would be stuck buying it at the airport for like quadruple the normal cost. Ironically WalMart had stocked the converters just a couple of days earlier but then all of the sudden the computer decided that they weren't selling and so it pulled them off the shelves and took them out of stock.

As I was walking out of the electronics department I couldn't resist the urge to look at the audio cd's as I walked by. I figured that if there were a group of people that were more evil than Walmart that it would have to be the RIAA. And if anybody deserves to get screwed by Walmart's lowballing tactics it is certainly the recording industry. So, I decided that I would reclaim some purpose to my trip to Walmart by buying some music (I know, shame on me).

I picked up two new CD's. Gorillaz', "Demon Days" and Kanye West's, "Late Registration". I would discover several hours later that it was actually me that got screwed in the end after all. I had accidentally picked up the "Clean Lyrics" version of "Late Registration". Walmart may not even sell the "Explicit Lyrics" version for all I know. I was pretty pissed when I found out. Not that I'm dying to hear a bunch of swearing, but I prefer to hear the album as the artist originally conceived it and not the watered down version meant to appease people with sensitive ears. I would return the CD but it will be at least a week until I will even have the opportunity and then I'm pretty sure that most places that sell music will not allow you to return or exchange anything that's been opened.

Wow, it's quarter to one now. My original plan was to wake up at 4:30 am so that I could work out before leaving. I'm not sure how well that plan is going to work now. I just hope that I don't accidentally sleep in and miss my flight. I guess that the best way to prevent that is to get my ass to bed. Good night!

Little Sahara

I went four wheelin' in the Little Sahara Sand Dunes today with my sister's brother-in-law, Chris, and his fiance, Shannon (hmmm, I just realized that I know another "Chris and Shannon"). It was my first time on an ATV and in sand dunes. I had an awesome time. Gotta get me some of them. Click here or on the picture below to view the rest of my pictures.



The only negative to the whole experience was seeing how poorly the dunes and the surrounding areas were taken care of. There was trash everywhere. It was kind of like people just didn't care.

There seemed to be a certain type of person that was into dune riding. You could almost smell the redneck testosterone in the air. Although, I was surprised how many good looking women I saw today. Unfortunately most of them had their arms wrapped around a tatooed guy with no t-shirt and no helmet cruising at about 90 mph through the dunes.

Hmm, what does that say about me when I disparage guys who ride four wheelers shortly after admitting that I want to become one of them?