It’s usually pretty easy flying out of Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. They’ve changed their security procedures so that each gate has their own security checkpoint for screening passengers and baggage. This makes it nice and easy to pick up your boarding pass, get through a quick line where they check your documents, and make it to your gate.
But then once you get through the security at the gate you’re stuck. You’re already checked into your flight, so other than a toilet in the room you have nothing to do but sit and wait for the hour before your flight boards.
Well… looks like they’re finally shoving us in the plane. Take care, I’ll see you on the other side.
You are now free to move about the world, except if the seatbelt sign is on.
It turns out I didn’t actually miss Carnival, just the first day, I finally got the front page of the site back up, and I helped develop a new service tool in class today.
Wow, my timing sucks really bad this time. The Netherlands celebrated one of their biggest festivals of the year last night, and I arrived the morning after… I’m like the lame plan B chaser to the hot orgy. (Or maybe not.) I really need to start doing a tiny bit of research about the places I’m going to visit before I go.
On a less lame note, I put together a little video from one of my fish tanks. I’ve added it to the site on the left, but you can also get it directly from youtube here.
Apparently upgrading Wordpress to 2.7.1 has totally hosed my front page. I don’t know why nothing is showing up there. I’ve poked at it a little bit, but obviously not enough to fix it yet. I’ll probably need to just build an entirely new front page that doesn’t use the wordpress backend at all. Sigh…
But, I should have plenty of time to look into that next week. I’m going to be back in Eindhoven for another week of training. As always, that means a couple long nights where I can’t sleep. So, I should have lots of time to rebuild the front page.
In more interesting news, Sophie (our puppy) is trying to learn how to stand on the back of the couch so she can get closer to the fish in the living room tank. Some things are funny enough to just let them happen.
Note how nice the tank looks with the new plants in it. Thanks a lot to Eric from the GSAS for donating those to me.
Most days seem to just go okay. But then there are days like today.
That keeps life interesting right? When every, blessed, simple little thing goes wrong?
You would think when the motherboard of a computer blows up it would be a pretty strait forward thing to replace. And it probably would be, except when that motherboard is the heart of a $1+ Million microscope.
And that’s just the start of how interesting things can get. I’ve got 4 versions of software, 3 versions of hardware, old school network connections, new school hard drives and drivers and $500,000 worth of cameras and detectors to get working again.
But then again, the last time I did this everything went smoothly. Right up until the end when the backup of the finished product hosed everything and took me all night to start over on. So maybe a little fun upfront isn’t so bad.
For a while now I’ve been thinking that I would be better off if I was able to sell my truck. It doesn’t get bad gas mileage, but it certainly doesn’t get good mileage. With the cost of gas going up and up it, it can really start to cut into the bottom line when the job calls for driving more than 20,000 miles a year.
The problem is, with the price of gas going up, the value of my truck just keeps going down down down. In fact, the last time I took it into a dealership, a few months ago, the guy there said they wouldn’t even buy it. Not that it’s not a good truck, just that they couldn’t sell it. It seems that no one is buying them anymore. No wonder Ford’s hurting.
But on the other hand, I don’t really want to sell. It runs great, it drives good, I don’t have a car payment, and the gas bills really aren’t keeping me from buying steak when I feel like it. So it has worked out fairly well for me.
And hey, since it’s not worth anything, there isn’t any depreciation for putting tons of miles on it. Plus, it is really convenient to have a truck when you’re working on the yard on the weekends. Boy do I hurt today.
Well… my wonderful heated hand grips didn’t last long. Something went wrong in the control box and they burned themselves out. The company that sold them to me has agreed to give me a refund, but I have to send everything back. Luckily it doesn’t look like the fault caused any permanent damage to my battery.
So, I’m totally without my bike for the next few weeks probably. When I installed these grips I had to destroy one of the old grips to get everything off. The bike is looking really sad with just the bare bar ends. Hopefully I’ll get a new pair in the mail soon and I can get everything back together again.
Until then: keep your leather up and the rubber down.
I was finally in the country for a super bowl! We had a lot of fun watching it too. Well, not Beth, she was glad to be at work so she could miss it. But my friends and I did.
We started out down at the local pub for the first half. It’s always fun to watch events like that in a crowd. Plus an excellent micro-brew and a Great Dane laying on your lap just makes it feel like home.
At half time we ran up the hill to my place so we could break out the snacks and pizzas. It was a bit quieter without the crowd, but the picture was better on the home TV. God bless digital broadcasting: I get most of the local channels over the air here in HD. Who needs cable?
The outcome of the game wasn’t very surprising after seeing the first quarter, but it was still a game that you had to watch till the end. Lots of fun.
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