A Day In Yosemite

I was in Fresno last week, and found that I had an opportunity to zoom up to the friendly neighborhood National Park - Yosemite - and make a quick acquaintance. I was there a total of 16 hours. I figure, better to have a whirlwind visit than no visit at all!

Fresno is in the San Joaquin Valley, essentially the irrigated desert of Central California between the coastal range to the west and the Sierra Nevada to the east. Driving out of Fresno, I slowly lost the 100 degree temperatures as I climbed into the mountains. The last few miles to the park entrance became amazingly twisty, with substantial banks in each curve. What a perfect place to drive a convertible!

My first surprise was that it was another 45 minute's drive from the South Entrance to Yosemite Valley, along more twisty roads. I eventually counted over 200 curves in the road between the South Entrance and the tunnel to the valley. Immediately after you exit the tunnel, the valley is laid out before you and it's stunning. I had time to do a little quick research before I came, so I was forewarned of the traffic and the Tunnel V

iew viewpoint and parking lot. Crowded! And the light wasn't very good, so I snapped a couple quick photos and moved on. The clock was running before sunset and I had a new camera to break in.

I was spending the night at Curry Camp, a fun, various-degrees-of-camping community at the far east end of the valley. I'd managed to snag a last minute cancellation for a heated cabin, which were very basic - two beds, a small dresser, heavy plywood walls, no toilet or sink - but the top of the pile for Curry.

But the view was million dollar. This was the view outside my front  door. The reverse direction was equally stunning, as Curry Camp backs up to a sheer wall up to Glacier Point, one of the highest points along the valley.

I dropped my stuff and hustled over to the visitor's center, feeling desperately short for time. By then it was almost 6:30, sunset would start to get interesting in an hour. and I still had no idea where the best vantage point was. I walked right by the famous Ansel Adams Gallery, as much as I wanted to spend an hour there. Finally, I got an excellent tip from the Visitor Center's ranger, well worth the minutes spent: Sentinel Dome.

Sentinel Dome is a formation on the south rim of Yosemite Valley,  three quarters of the way to Glacier point. It's a short hike off a small parking lot, but at a little over 8000' elevation, the last climb up to the dome gives you a workout.

Well, the view up there is spectacular. 360' of the Valley, Half Dome, Vernal Falls, and the Sierra all the way to Nevada. As icing on the cake, this is also where the fallen remains of the Jeffrey Pine made famous by the Ansel Adams photograph. Estimated to be over 400 years old, it died in the drought of 76-77, even though rangers and hikers carried buckets of water up to it. I took a bunch of sunset photos, though the conditions were pretty hazy, including some photos of a couple with their new baby. I'm still trying to figure out how to stitch  together panorama shots with Photoshop Elements 6 - most frustrating! It was easy with Elements 2...isn't it supposed to get easier, not harder??

It was a long, twisty drive back in the dark to Curry, and I was on a mission: I hadn't had dinner yet and it was 9:30. I managed to scream up to the Curry pizza shop literally 5 minutes before they closed at 10, and finally ate half a medium pizza at 10:30 after a very full afternoon and evening. I haven't been so hungry for a very long while!

Walking  back to the cabin from the car, it felt like a grown-up version of Boy Scout camp - very dark, lots of people walking around with flashlights or sitting in the dark, well-used camp building and grounds.

Next morning I was up and out at 5:45 AM to go wildlife (read: bears) photo hunting*. I got some decent photos of Bridalveil? falls, and walking back from the falls encountered a couple of juvenile bears playing around, foraging, and trying to dig through the garbage cans. By 8:30 I was out of there and headed back for my 12:30 flight out of Fresno!

I'm posting photos shortly to http://picasaweb.google.com/sean.deuby/ADayInYosemite. Once I can figure out how to make those damn panoramas...

- Sean

*The Norwegians have a great saying. In a land where the summer nights are very long - but the winter nights are longer - they take full advantage of the summer and say, "You can sleep in the winter!".

Technorati Tags: Yosemite,Yosemite National Park,Yosemite Valley,Sentinel Dome,Curry Camp,Fresno

 

PS - Since beginning this I've heard about the wildfire west of Yosemite that's wreaking havoc for the homeowners in the area and possibly threatening the park. Here's hoping that damage is kept to a minimum. If you've never been to California in the summer, it's really quite surprising how dry much of the state is. When driving east to the park through all the bone-dry grassy landscape, I couldn't help but think it was like a tinderbox. The fire was started by the sparks from a fired weapon. Geez, it's a miracle they don't have more wildfires more often than they do.

Lush Life

My favorite classic jazz album of all time is "John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman", made in 1963 when I was only four years old.

The signature tune on this album is the definitive recording of "Lush Life", a bittersweet song about failed romance. Coltrane did an instrumental of it, and Nat King Cole recorded it too, but Johnny Hartman's interpretation of it on this album is just amazing. He has the most gorgeous voice, and he wrings everything from this song; you just revel in the sound of it. I'm not one for jazz ballads in general and vocal ballads in particular, but this is a significant exception.

I first heard Lush Life around 1989, in the early morning. I was going to a bike rally out of town, so the alarm was set to wake me up early. It was early enough that the local public radio station was playing overnight jazz, and the radio came on in the middle of Coltrane's solo. The realization that this was something special quickly woke me up, and when Johnny came back it, I was fully awake and paying attention with both ears. What is this, I was thinking.

Like I first heard it, the song is best appreciated in a dark room. Use a nice audio system and Johnny's lovely voice will flow over you. Listen to the lyrics, and listen to the unusual last note Johnny sings.

Remarkable facts behind this album:

• The song Lush Life was composed by Duke Ellington's legendary composer and arranger Billy Strayhorn. He composed the lyrics to this world-weary song when he was only 16.
• Hartman had never heard the song until he and Coltrane were en route to the studio and heard Nat King Cole sing it on the radio. Hartman immediately decided that song had to be included in their album. It was made that same day in one take!

I just looked out on Amazon where you can play and download the tunes, and 123 reviewers give it 5 stars, 9 give it 4, and only 2 anything less. Even on little notebook speakers you can hear how special Hartman's voice is.

Technorati Tags: John Coltrane,Johnny Hartman,Lush Life,Billy Strayhorn

Pilgrimage

A different kind of lobster claw

I'm in Broomfield, Colorado, doing customer work with Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. Very interesting work, but more on this later.

I had dinner at a combo restaurant / brewpub, and though the

restaurant was pretty forgettable (as was the beer), they had a unique little device in the lobby: a lobster game. 

As you can see, it's setup like the kid's game where you attempt to pick up toys or candy with a big claw. Invariably you never get anything. Well, in this one the bin is full of salt water and lobster! If you can catch one, you can have it. It costs $2 per attempt, and I suspect the success percentage is about the same - but for a different reason: These "toys" are experienced and wily.

I watched one fellow pick up a lobster pretty easily, but once out of the water the lobster wiggled a little bit and got himself out of the claw and back into the tank. I suspect they make a decent profit on this game!

Technorati Tags: lobster,lobster game,broomfield

Good ISP!

I was shooting a video (yes, my ugly mug on camera) at the Microsoft Lincoln Square building in downtown Bellevue today, a really amazing money-is-no-object-for-good-working-conditions kind of place. Just for fun, I ran a speed test on their internet connection. The results were so amazing I immediately took a screenshot of it:

Just in case you can’t pick out the numbers, that’s almost 10 Megabits/sec up, and 81 Megabits/sec down. That’s OVER 10 times the bandwidth any of us (non-FIOS) people get. I resumed some FTP downloads I was doing, and man, those little download progress bars were flying! Note the ISP is Microsoft itself, with a ping time of .4 ms J.

The Kindle: A Bookshelf In Your Hand

"I need to read something before I go to sleep. I don't care if it's the newspaper the fish came wrapped in; I have to read a little."  - Robert Heinlein, Glory Road (paraphrased as remembered)

I finally broke down a couple of weeks ago and purchased a Kindle, Amazon's electronic book reader. i'd been thinking about it for a while, then decided that despite the price and potential drawbacks I'd give it a try.

Why a Kindle, rather than simply reading books from my phone or computer like I've done many times in the past? The first reason is that I'm using an AT&T Tilt running Windows Mobile 6. Though the Tilt (aka HTC Kaiser) is arguably the most powerful and flexible phone platform out there, ebook reading requires the Microsoft Reader for pocket PC. This product is terrible, and what's worse has really awful support. I purchased several ebooks, and whenever it tries to open them, the reader on my phone gets a memory leak and eats up all available memory until it hangs or crashes. My attempts at getting this fixed have largely fallen on deaf ears. Plus there's the battery life consideration; phone power on a WM6 is always a concern and this is just another drain.

What drew me to the Kindle is the idea of doing book reading - just book reading - better than anything else electronic on the market. Replicating the book reading experience as closely as possible. Carrying ALL my books, not just the one that fits comfortably in my travel gear, with me.  I loved reading Bill Bryson's A Brief History Of Nearly Everything, but I never want to have to schlep it around with me again.

What do I love about it?

• Its electronic ink display is unlike any electronic reading surface you've ever seen. It's monochrome, which at first feels like a step backward. But compare it to the physical book reading experience: 99% of the books we read are monochrome anyway. The brighter the environment, the easier it is to read.
• It has a long battery life, longer still if you only turn the wireless on when you need it. Under normal circumstances I don't even turn it off, I just put it on standby. And it has a great screensaver with very nice monochrome graphics of famous writers or book illuminations, or tips.
• Its wireless communication with the world's biggest bookstore is an inseparable part of what it is. You don't need a computer. You can order a kindle-ized book (generally $10 or less) from either your device or the Amazon kindle store, and it'll download in the background. Voila! You have a new book! It's increased my book purchases (which Amazon of course loves) because it's so easy. Just like the itunes model, which I'm sure Amazon used to enlist publishers.
• I now carry a selection of books with me, and I can read whatever suits my mood. For example I have, David Sedaris' When You Are Engulfed In Flames, David McCullough's John Adams (a massive book to tote around), American Vertigo by Bernard-Henri Levy, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, and a Wall Street Journal subscription I'm trying out. (I started with print, moved to print+web, and am now just web edition. I think I still favor the web edition, especially with the wireless problems at my location.)
• It has a dedicated font button which allows me to easily adjust the font size. This is great, because I can easily switch the size depending on whether I have my reading glasses on or not, or how good the light is. Thank you Amazon for the design decision!
• It has essentially unlimited storage. It will hold 200 books, but you can add an SD card to increase local storage. Further, Amazon keeps the record of your purchase, and you can erase and re-download a book any time.
• The actual hand holding experience is okay. it's nice and thin, but had several relatively sharp images. I learned last week that Mark Russinovich has one too (that Bill Bryson experience might have turned him too, as I know he was reading it at the same time), and he complains about how the lower-right corner pokes your hand when you hold it in your right hand. I was using it in its paperback-like cover, but turns out it's most comfortable and natural to hold it in your left hand. Nonetheless, the ergonomics need some work; the Next Page button on the right is huge, and in general it's almost impossible to pick it up while on without accidentally turning the page. If you want to show it to someone, switch to a book you've already read or risk losing your place :-|
• There's the geek experience. This thing turns heads because it's not just a new device, it's a new type of device that's still extremely rare. I just got my luggage inspected and 20 (friendly) questions from the TSA guy searching my luggage! They thought I might have had a notebook computer in there.

What I don't love so much about the Kindle:

• The display flashes completely black briefly when you "turn the page". The manual says this is because the page is refreshing itself with each turn, and it sounds reasonable. But it's disconcerting to be reading a sentence and having a big black flash in the middle of it.
• There's very little in the way of graphics at all beyond the screen saver. It's certainly capable of it, so the lack makes me wonder if it's just because it's new enough that no one has gotten the hang of it yet...or because the screen saver graphics were painstakingly rendered by hand.
• I have almost zero connectivity at my house with the Verizon network it uses. My workaround is to purchase a book on the computer, then carry the Kindle out for an errand or something and the book downloads.
• The ergonomics are still 1.0.
• Though the selection is enormous, I can't find all the books I'd like in Kindle format.

And finally - I still have to bring a magazine along for when I'm not allowed to have electronics running at takeoff and landing!

Technorati Tags: Kindle,Amazon Kindle,Kindle review,Robert Heinlein,Mark Russinovich,Bill Bryson,David Sedaris

Speaking At TechEd 2008

It's been a very busy week here down in Orlando at TechEd 2008 IT Pro, Microsoft's conference for IT professionals.

I gave one session on the new, deeply-disliked Volume Licensing methodology everyone has to use to deploy volume versions of Vista and Windows 2008. Despite the dryness of the material, the DISLIKE of the material, and the lateness of the hour (5 PM), the session was well received! 223 people (about an 85% full room) with an overall rating of 7.75 of a possible 9. (The top rated sessions are getting 8.4's and 8.5's.) From the comments, demos would have pulled it higher...but there's just about nothing to see in volume licensing. I'll have to work on that.

I spent much of the rest of the time running around doing odds and ends and occasionally hitting sessions in between. A few interesting (to me, anyway) anecdotes:

• Picked up lunch for Mark Minasi as the poor guy had been blowing and going all day; he had no time at all between his sessions. By the time I'd hiked out to his breakout room, the session - a roundtable on security with him, Mark Russinovich, Steve Riley, and a couple of other folks - was so full it was locked out. (They're the conference stars and get very high ratings on their talks.) So, I sat outside, did some work, until the session was nearly over. When it finished, Minasi bolted out for his next session before I could give it to him. Before I could chase him down, I said hi to Russinovich, and HE ate it!
• On MarkR's advice, I found and introduced myself to Michael Leworthy, the Windows Server Infrastructure session chair, to express my interest at speaking at IT Forum (Tech Ed in Europe), and it was a productive discussion. Who knows, maybe I'll make it over there...
• Got a Vista question answered. (The only way to turn hibernation back on after you've deleted the hibernation file is to run powercfg /hibernate on - works like a charm)
• Helped connect some people together, always a feel-good kind of activity
• Got to hang out with my friend Guido Grillenmeier a little bit, always looked forward to as he's based in Frankfurt.
• And of course, got to spend time with my MVP buddies Gil, Joe, Brian, Laura, and catch up with my Intel friends Derek, Alix, and Roy. Gee, this makes me sound like more of a social butterfly than I really am! You see, 95% of my time is spent working out of a home office where my audience is usually just two dogs :).
• Received a cache of uber-schwag for MVPs only, told by secret MVP word-of-mouth-net. I knew there was a reason I was an MVP!

Tonight is the conference party at Universal Studios; Microsoft rents out a large chunk of the place, and there's food, drinks, and beer & wine right out on the sidewalks (at least there was the last time I was at one of these shindigs). Plus the magazine is throwing something too. Decisions, decisions...

Technorati Tags: TechEd 2008,volume licensing,VA 2.0

Voices Inside My Head

It's been a while since I've posted anything, mainly because nothing too drastically interesting has been going on. Lots of work, but how interesting is it to hear about someone else go on about their job? Plus, I've been writing quite a bit and I'm not quite the dedicated author that will sit down to write after a day full of writing.

Because of all my travel I broke down and finally bought a pair of Bose noise-reducing headphones. I'd stayed away from them because of their price, their size, and relative lack of usability. (Where I'd walk through an airport connection with earbuds in, I won't do it with clunky headphones) I'd been using very nice Shure E4D earphones, which get a lot of fidelity in a tiny ear-fitting package, and since they fill the ear canal do a decent job of cutting down outside noise.

For my wife's work (she's a professional clarinetist) we'd done a listening test with several good-quality headphone manufacturers - AKG, Audio-Technica, my Shure earbuds, and the Bose. Somewhat to my surprise and chagrin, we discovered we preferred the Bose above all the others. (I'd considered Grado too, but never quite went down that road.) I say chagrin, because I didn't expect the Bose to perform as well and of course they're very pricey. But I think the noise reduction helps in almost all circumstances to help you hear fine details.

So, we got the Bose for her. Some time later, I borrowed them for an overseas trip to Geneva. They turned out to be a lifesaver because I ended up in the noisy tail of a 747, and they did a remarkable job. After I changed jobs I bought myself a pair of the QuietComfort 3s, the on-the-ear (supra-aural) kind with the rechargeable battery.

I haven't regretted it, and finally come to the main point for this post: it's been fun rediscovering the details of the music in my music library. I, we, all of us, don't listen to music sitting down in our living rooms any more. I haven't upgraded my main speakers for probably 15 years. I should, but nowadays you have to purchase a matched set of home theater speakers and, as I said, I just don't sit in front of them for music any more. We have our house wired for audio, with good speakers in every room, so It's just kind of everywhere.

I find my detailed listening now happens when I'm traveling and have the luxury / necessity of sitting still in one place. One thing that's different with real headphones is that I've discovered deep bass again. And not the ridiculous overemphasized bass of some popular music, simply the true bass of whatever I'm listening to. Of course there's greater detail in all ranges - Joni Mitchell's voice, Jaco Pastorius' lyrical bass, Freddy Hubbard's rich trumpet, the pizzicato of the Tokyo String Quartet playing the Ravel Quartet. I recommend the experience!

I hate Mears shuttles

I'm in Orlando to speak at the spring Windows Connections conference. The conference has been here in the spring for several years, so you'd think I'd learn by now to never take the Mears hotel shuttle. Once again, thriftiness won over convenience. So, once again, I wait for an HOUR for a shuttle to the Grand Hyatt. And seven of us are crammed sideways in a shuttle with what seems like no functioning seatbelts. You'd think I'd learn.

Forget the Energizer Bunny. This is still kicking butt 135 years later.

I'm listening to Brahms Symphony No. 1 while I work. Terrific, moving piece, in a much more dignified way than the "heart on your sleeve I'm crazy" of Tchaikovsky.

Brahms was 40 years old when he wrote his first symphony (of only 4). It took him over fourteen years to complete. He was terrified of being compared to that guy who came before him, uh, what was his name? Oh yeah...Beethoven. And yet in my opinion every one is a masterpiece, not a note wrong. They're extremely well-thought out compositions of formal symphonic structure. And yet, the  melodies just stick in your head for the day after you've heard the concert.

His symphonies aren't Grand like a Mahler symphony (whom many would call overly emotional and drawn out) or wildly romantic like Rachmaninoff (whom many would call too romantic). Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of both Mahler and Rachmaninoff; I probably listen to them more than I do Brahms. But my wife is preparing for a performance of Brahms 1, though, so it's floating through the house. What got me to writing this is the main theme of the fourth movement; I don't know what it is - it's just the strings, no brass or percussion, no fireworks, no explosions or kung fu - but it gives me chills every time. The beginning of the movement is introduction and it sets you up for the main theme; you'll know it when you hear it.

I think you should listen to this free performance of the last movement by the Columbia University Orchestra while you work today. The entire symphony is here.

Technorati Tags: Brahms,Symphony No. 1,Beethoven

Legs

I'm waiting for my flight to board at SeaTac airport, watching the people parade as I listen to Earth, Wind & Fire's "Getaway". Amazing how often people's gaits match the music.

If people had three legs instead of two, do you think more music would be in triple meter?

Jeremy's Karaoke at the EMP

Last night for the MVP party, Microsoft rented out the entire Experience Music Project in downtown Seattle. Part of the EMP's mission is to involve people in the music, and to that end they have a karaoke stage with a real (and solid) backup band, not just some machine. A procession of would-be rock stars tried their 4 minutes of fame (at least among other MVPs). Most were really horrible, but my friend Jeremy was an exception. i was warned by someone that he was actually quite good, so I scrambled over to the stage in time and shot this video:

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,MVP Summit,EMP,Experience Music Project,Karaoke,Jeremy Moskowitz

MVP Summit 2008

I and many of my fellow MVPs are up in Seattle this week for the 2008 MVP summit. It's split between the Washington State Convention Center Center, and the Microsoft campus. This year most of our time has been spent on campus with the various product groups, Directory Services in our case.

It's been a good week so far, though a new cold knocked me down hard for the first few days. I literally snuck out to my car in the parking structure and took a short nap to get me through the day! (And no, I hadn't had a drop to drink the night before.) Nothing like feeling bad to make you appreciate feeling good.

This morning's session is on the design planning for the AD implementation of PowerShell. AD missed the boat on PowerShell for the release of Windows 2008, to the chagrin of AD administrators around the world. The good news is that Dushyant Gill is running through their ideas before the MVPs now and getting great feedback...and they're apparently early enough in the design cycle to incorporate a lot of our feedback into their design. So some of the flexibility of the final AD PowerShell implementation will be as a result of MVPs like Joe, Dean, and Joe Kaplan.

My friend Nick Whittome called me last night to tell me he just passed both the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. Knowing Nick and how much he likes his drink (and the fact he said he'd had a few), I was initially skeptical, but it turns out they were both in town for (a different!) conference. I was disappointed that NIck hadn't charged up and done the old "arm's length photo" op, like he'd done with Steve Ballmer.

Technorati Tags: MVP,MVP Summit,Powershell,AD,Nick Whittome

A Beautiful Part Of Vegas

I was experimenting with photo uploads to Flickr the other day, and came across this photo of mine from DEC (Directory Experts Conference) from spring of '07. It's a photomerge of the mountains around Red Rock Canyon State Park, taken from my hotel room at the Red Rock Casino. Just beautiful! Yet another reason why we all encourage the conference organizers to get us back there...

Technorati Tags: Las Vegas,Red Rock Canyon,Red Rock Casino,DEC,Directory Experts Conference

Pb:J Ratio and Its Correlation To Age

As I was hurriedly making myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, it occurred to me that there is a hitherto unexplored "golden ration" in our lives. In my statistical sampling of, well, one, I realized there's a direct correlation between one's age and how much peanut butter vs. jelly that goes into a PB&J.

When you're younger, it's all about the sweetness. The peanut butter mainly exists to glue the two pieces of bread together. So about a 1:3, even 1:4 ration? As you get older, you enjoy the flavor and texture of the peanut butter. Is this analogous to Stilton cheese and single malt scotch being adult's preferences? Plus, more PB makes for a sandwich that sticks with you longer (no pun intended).

Eventually you're up to the 3:1 or even 4:1 in favor of the peanut butter. Of course, it tapers off after that; you won't find many PB&Js with just a dash of jelly.

On whole wheat, mind you; I am an adult. But that doesn't extend to the PB - I'm still a Jif Chunky guy. I figure I can indulge myself in the little bit of added salt.

Technorati Tags: Peanut butter,PB&J

When will it sink home?

I'll know that expensive gas, and the impact of global warming, will have finally been accepted by the average North Texas suburban consumer when I no longer walk past at least one car sitting in a parking lot, windows up and engine idling, on a 70 degree sunny breezy day. I see this and think, "We're never going to turn it around in time."

Technorati Tags: Global warming,selfish idiots

Bellevue Denizen

Since joining Advaiya, I've been spending a fair amount of time in the Seattle area as I get ramped up with the company. Since they're based in Bellevue, I'm typically camped out somewhere nearby. This gives me a chance to check out how Bellevue has changed since I first came up here in 1989 to bicycle through North Cascades National Park.

Digression: Bellevue isn't in North Cascades National Park. It isn't anywhere near it; NCNP is about 4 1/2 hours north. Bellevue is an "east side" suburb, on the other side of Lake Washington. It's where my friend Craig lived when I first came up here. I introduced him and his friends to blue frozen margaritas. Oh, the stories...

Bellevue has become pretty hoighty-toighty since I was first here. This is synonymous with downtown and West Seattle-ites saying "<sniff> east side". The city bird, I think, has become the tower crane. There's no less than eight of them hovering over its small downtown as office building and (extremely expensive) condominiums are going up all over. Microsoft has a big presence here in a high-rise way; they have an office building whose cafe is on the top floor and commands a stunning view of Lake Washington and downtown.

I've been frequenting a restaurant here named the Tap House Grill, (tagline "Giving Beer The Respect It Deserves") a combination of good food and 150 beers on tap. Now there's a challenge I relish! It's nice to get back to the hotel from work and be able to walk wherever I want to go.

Technorati Tags: tap house grill,bellevue

DEC is a busy place

I get a great kick out of the fact that many of my fellow DEC attendees try to do a daily blog about the conference...and never get past the first day :). It's a really busy time, with sessions and events keeping you going from 7:45 to 11 or 12 or later. Much easier to just wait until the end!

Technorati Tags: DEC,DEC 2008

The First Annual Wook Lee IT Pro-Am Memorial Challenge

One of DEC's unique traditions, besides the ubiquitous rubber chickens*, is its annual Challenge.

Every year, Microsoft group program manager Stuart Kwan issues a challenge at the end of his keynote. This challenge was to Wook Lee of HP, who at the beginning of the challenge was HP's schema czar and directory architect. The challenge was typically to provide technical guidance of some aspect of Active Directory, but presented in an unusual manner...within 24 hours. Last year he presented secure authentication in the form of a Kermit the Frog karaoke sing-a-long, in Powerpoint, to the tune of The Rainbow Connection. And he did it remotely, by telephone.

This year, because Wook is in a different role at HP and HP IT won't let him attend, Stuart Kwan has altered the Challenge to be the "Wook Lee IT Pro-Am Memorial Challenge" ("Memorial" because Stuart declared humorously that Wook is just dead to him, because he couldn't attend either of two conferences). This evolution of the Challenge is now handled by volunteer committee, which I joined.

The Challenge is to talk about Active Directory forest recovery in the form of a movie poster. At least I think that's what it was, because we all only saw the Challenge once from Stuart's deck.

Our response was to create "Indiana Joe And the Forest Of Doom", a movie poster featuring:

• Joe Richards as Indiana Joe
• Dean Wells as Outa Ram
• Jorge de Almeida Pinto (aka Princess Jorge) as Willie Boot
• Stuart Kwan as Shortly Rounded
• Cameo appearances by Wook Lee and Guido Grillenmeier as the Phantoms

It was well received, hopefully setting a good standard for future Challenges.

 

*One of the speakers brought in 75 rubber chickens in his luggage from The Netherlands. Why Gil needed imported chickens I'll never know.

Technorati Tags: DEC,DEC2008,DEC 2008,rubber chicken,Wook Lee,Stuart Kwan,Dean Wells,Jorge de Almeida Pinto,Guido Grillenmeier,Pamela Dingle,DEC Challenge

DEC 2008, Chicago

I've spent the last few days up here in Chicago, at the Chicago Hilton on Michigan Avenue, attending DEC (Directory Experts Conference) 2008.

It's unquestionably the premier conference for Microsoft directory and identity geeks. There are sessions that dive into directory topics deeper than you'll find anywhere.

DEC is a little bit of a different conference because, though it's expanded to nearly 1000 attendees, it retains its small conference feel and proudly has small conference traditions. Where else would you have

• Reverence for the recurring theme of rubber chickens
• An annual, and usually bizarre, challenge from a high level Microsoft program manager to a customer
• Over 100 Microsoft attendees, which is about a 1 to 7 ratio. This is the place where you almost have to avoid having lunch or 1:1 talks with Microsoft directory or identity service team members.

It's also the one time in the year you can be sure to catch up with a broad range of your fellow directory experts. The DS MVPs have a second chance a month or so later at the annual MVP Summit in Redmond, but for the many many really good and broad-ranging experts that aren't MVPs, this is the place. So, it's been nice doing the catch-up dance, especially as I've changed jobs and people are curious.

Technorati Tags: DEC,DEC 2008,DEC2008,Chicago,Microsoft,directory services,AD,rubber chicken

Sneaking in a little culture

Tonight I went to my first poetry reading - and it was an enjoyable experience. Billy Collins, who was Poet Laureate of the US for several years, was at our local community college for a writer's seminar, and he did an open reading at a good-sized meeting room that was quite full (probably a few hundred people).

The only reason I'd even heard of him was because he's been on A Prairie Home Companion several times and we found him witty and entertaining. His reading this evening of a number of his poems was in a similar vein; none were boring and many were very thoughtful or hilarious.

He's apparently been criticized for his poems being too popular, or perhaps not highbrow enough. This is fine with me; as someone that's never been interested in poetry, more intricate styles probably wouldn't appeal to me.

My 14-year old son, who was dragged to this by his mother, hated every second of it and kept bugging us with excuses to try and leave - even though there were a large number of young people all around him, just a few years older than him greatly enjoying it. Oh well, incomplete human beings.

Here's a haiku of his I saved from the evening, because it so succinctly describes the business traveler. I've been in this exact situation.

Midwinter evening

Alone at the sushi bar.

Just me

And this eel.

Like the bow of a ship

This is a photo of Mt. Rainer, poking up through the clouds. I took this outbound from Seattle with my camera phone (AT&T Tilt 3MP, not bad!). Note the broken up clouds eastward behind the mountain; this is its "rain shadow". At 14K feet, Rainier disrupts the weather around it so that weather coming in from the west drops its moisture on the mountain. The Paradise Inn on the western slope has received up to 90 feet of snow in a winter!

Technorati Tags: Mt. Rainier,Seattle,AT&T Tilt

San Antonio, with links to Seattle

I zipped down to San Antonio Friday afternoon to hear my son's middle school orchestra perform for the Texas Music Educator's Association annual conference. Apparently it's enormous. His orchestra was selected to perform as essentially the top middle school (in Texas that means grades 6,7, & 8) orchestra in Texas.

I had a meeting in the morning, so I dashed out right afterward. Though the flight was delayed, and of course there was the rental car / airport construction / directions / looking for parking downtown / finding remote parking at the Alamodome / throwing myself in front of a shuttle bus to keep things interesting, I amazingly trotted into the performance no more than two minutes before the first announcements! <whew>

On the flight down there, I sat next to a little old lady who was telling me about her niece, a flute player that had spent time in Ireland and managed to stay there a few months longer by busking on the streets of Dublin. (NO, busking is the perfectly honorable profession of playing the street for money given by passers-by. Downtown Dublin, especially on Grafton Street between Trinity College on the north end, and the lovely St. Stephen's park on the south.) "Very nice, very nice," I said as I tried to fall asleep.

"Then she went off to the west coast to perform, and met and married Dale Chihuly."

"Excuse me?? She married who???"

"Dale Chihuly."

"Not just a Dale Chihuly, the Dale Chihuly?"

She proceed to regale the now-fully-awake me with stories of the couple going to the Clinton White House for dinner with the Russian Ambassador, and Dale wearing sneakers. Not just any sneakers, apparently, but sneakers that he paints and customizes!

The kid's performance was terrific. I say that objectively; there were music teachers in the audience during the performance shaking their heads in wonder at the violin and cello solos in Capriccio Espagnol, and the violins (especially the firsts) had a very polished sound for the Faure' Pavane. Audience members were very enthusiastic in their praise of the students as they passed by on their way out.

I had enough time to walk a couple blocks over to the Alamo (there's an NPR StoryCorp trailer there), and have a Lone Star beer at the history Menger Hotel bar literally next door. A quick dinner at a pricey restaurant on the Riverwalk, and I was off back to the airport!

I did have one other interesting episode. P.S. - I did a little research, and it wasn't the Russian ambassador, it was Boris Yeltsin himself, in 1994. Apparently Leslie can speak Russian, so she was in heaven. And yes, the New York Times specifically mentioned his sneakers.

Technorati Tags: Chihuly,Dale Chihuly,San Antonio,Rice Middle School,TMEA

I Hate Purehost Webhosting

For the last 24 hours I haven't done much other than try to fix the damage Purehost has done to my email service and website.

My (and about 12 other people's) email stopped working yesterday afternoon. Thinking it was one of Purehost's email servers I didn't worry about it at first. Then, I tried checking mail from the web and was denied, and logging into the admin account it said I didn't have an account. Whaaaa?

I sat en-queue for about 30 minutes, waiting for a "live chat" tech support person. They explained to me (with about five minutes between every exchange, he must have been talking with 10 other people) that my account had been deleted that afternoon due to non-payment. Non payment? How can I pay for something I never received an invoice for??

After several more exchanges (i.e. 15 minutes) the rep gave me the contact email address. It was a bogus combination of two existing email addresses and some extra characters - nothing I'd ever created or supplied. So, the billing requests went to that account. No response was received. In fact, ever message should have hard bounced. Yet Purehost never tried to look beyond that address. Can't they look at addresses that are being used for the account or something? Have they ever heard of a phone number? Instead, they wiped the account, about 20 email addresses, the mail that may have been queued for deuby.com in its email server, and my entire website.

Is that how you treat a customer that has been with you for four years??? The only way they could put me back together again was to sign up fresh, and pay for them to restore my data from backups. At that point I decided that walking over hot coals was a little more desirable than signing up with them again.

The day has been spending finding a new provider (WEBster Computer Services, so far so good), signing up, spending 45 minutes on hold with Purehost to get a live technician to repoint the nameservers for deuby.com to webcs.com's DNS servers, recreating all the email addresses, mailboxes and passwords, aliases, and forwarders, and then coaching email users through the reconfiguration necessary to make the new email config work.

The website was out of date, but it's a total writeoff. I'd rather lose it and rebuild it than pay Purehost another dime.

An entire day wasted of the one week I took off between 10 years of work - due to sloppy account procedures and no flexibility in customer service. I hope that this company sinks to where it belongs.

Technorati Tags: web hosting,purehost,purehost.com,webcs.com,webster computer services

Time To Change

"Nothing endures but change." Heraclitus

After ten years, today's my last day with Intel. It's only the second company I've ever worked for as a grown-up. I wouldn't have left, but management edicts forced my hand, and it looks like it's going to be a very positive move. I've accepted a position as an enterprise solutions strategist with Advaiya, who provides high-level strategic consulting to Microsoft. I get to work with Microsoft on some strategies, develop white papers and presentations on its new technology, and deliver this content in a variety of situations both in the States and internationally.

If you haven't done much of this sort of thing, leaving a big company is pulling out by degrees. When you're ready, you take a deep breath and make the plunge to tell your manager. That gets the ball rolling, and you're now really committed (even if you've kidded yourself that you could back out of your offer acceptance from the new company). Then you start telling individuals, and send out the big "goodbye letter". Then responding to all the well wishes. Then working on the handoff of all your duties. I'm proud of the fact I made all my meetings (and even contributed to them :) ) right to the end.

I was spared the daily "So you're really leaving, eh?" conversations around the water cooler because I'm 1400 miles from my nearest co-workers. As cliche' as it sounds, it really is true that your employer isn't nearly as wrapped up in you the employee, as you the employee have your head wrapped around the job: the Intel termination process is a matter of processing a little paperwork and bang, you're done.

Two weeks' notice doesn't seem like much after ten years and the depth of the big program - the Numonyx NOR Flash divestiture - I was working on. But with a well-thought out transition and some advance notice to my successor Derek Weigel, it was pretty well done with a few day's to spare. And you don't want to be a lame duck in the office for too long.

It's a good time to make little resolutions, change things. I've been hitting yoga class more regularly - in fact just before my LDO (last day office) meeting. I don't enjoy it as much as other forms of exercise, but conversely I notice the results of practicing regularly more than almost any other form. We're having house work done after seven years in the place - tile, fence, carpet - so that will be good. And I'm throwing out or shredding a lot of old papers :). I have a new bike that needs some riding (see below).

As I settle into a new job and routine, I'll certainly be posting here on whatever I find to be interesting - technical, personal, or otherwise.

Technorati Tags: Intel,leaving intel,quitting intel,advaiya,Numonyx,quitting your job

Flying the friendly skies of Intel

After ten years of working for Intel I've finally flown on the company air shuttle. It's air travel the way it used to be, plus some of the best of the way it ought to be.

The shuttle service was established to get executives, and eventually employees (though I'm not sure about the history) between Intel's four largest locations in the western US. Having long been a distributed company, I guess it was determined - and it certainly must justify itself now on cost savings in the current environment - it was cheaper and faster to fly directly between sites from nearby regional airports than to pay for literally hundreds of employees per week to fly commercially. I know it enables folks to do a quick overnight or day trip where it wouldn't otherwise be feasible. Thanks to Intel's generally egalitarian employee policy, you may find yourself sitting next to Paul Otellini or Craig Barrett instead of a rank and file employee.

The way it used to be

Since we have to go through badged security and already have basic background checks as employees, the ticketing, check in, and boarding process is blissfully simple. Our flight was delayed considerable due to heavy ground fog, and here's where another difference showed up: it's the friendliest boarding gate I've ever been delayed at. Of course, this isn't because we're just naturally friendlier people (as a bunch of engineers and technologists I'd argue the opposite in fact); lots of the travelers were in groups, and of course we're all Intel employees. There's also interesting secondary behavior going on as a result, like about an 80% working-on-notebook ratio, and after about 90 minutes of waiting an increasingly urgent search for wall outlets :).

(Travel tip: Pick up one of those little 3-outlet wall plugs from Monster for your travel kit. If you're stuck in an airport, and all the wall plugs are full, just walk up and wave this mini-outlet and they'll let you right on.)

The way it ought to be

The jets aren't fancy corporate-style Gulfstreams or Lears; they're workhouse Embraer regional jets. We get some basic snacks just like the commercial flights. The flight attendants are very friendly, however, and all the seats have AC power because of course everyone on board pulls out a notebook and starts working!

On the return flight from Santa Clara / Folsom to Phoenix, I flew on the single-seat side, exit row. This is apparently Craig Barrett's reserved seat when he flies back to his home base in Phoenix. I found out because people kept asking me if I could see "CRB" scratched into the seat tray!

Technorati Tags: Intel,shuttle,air travel,Craig Barrett

Half-A-Hundred Yudansha!

Yesterday we had another of our more-or-less annual black belt tests at the Okinawan Karate Club of Dallas, the club Ilene Smoger and I co-founded in 1984. Frank Gannon and Sean Robinson marked the 49th and 50th students we've promoted to shodan (first degree black) over the years of our school. They were fitting examples, too; they are dedicated students and their test showed it. Over their careers at OKCD Sean has attended over 700 classes, and Frank over 1000! My remarks to each were, "Congratulations! Now get to work." Training in karate only really begins with one's black belt.

We also did a surprise promotion of three of our second-degree black belts (nidans), Wayne Murphy, Greg Chesley, and Michele Elefante to third-degree black (sandan). Well deserved!

As part of the testing tradition of our school, the testing board - nine yudansha (black belt ranks) strong - each also had to demonstrate something. We do this as a way to show that we have some reason to be up on the board beyond just being around long enough, and to keep us humble with the realization that we too could screw up :). Lots of video and photos were taken, and I'll post a few of these or links to them here.

My demonstration went off acceptably (no one was hurt), belts were distributed, photos were taken. Then we went home, turned around, and went to our annual (post) holiday party. We hold it just after the holidays to avoid the scheduling difficulties. It's always a great time; everyone knows and has trained with everyone else at one time or another, so you have a deeper bond than any casual party.

Technorati Tags: Okinawan Karate Club of Dallas,karate,okinawan karate,shodan,black belt,Ilene Smoger,Sean Deuby

MVP Again!

Happy New Years to me! Every New Years Day for the last four years I've received a message from Microsoft that says

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2008 Microsoft® MVP Award! The MVP Award is our way of saying thank you for promoting the spirit of community and enhancing people’s lives and the industry’s success every day. Your extraordinary efforts in Windows Server System - Directory Services technical communities during the past year are greatly appreciated.

A very nice way to start the year. Well, I got that message again this morning, so it marks five years of my involvement in the MVP community. At first I wasn't sure what to make of it, but as time has passed by I've become very grateful for the interaction with Microsoft, the community of very sharp fellow MVPs, and the professional exposure it's given me.

Thanks, Microsoft!

Technorati Tags: MVP,Most Valuable Professional,Microsoft,Windows Server,Directory Services

Tarmac!

The other day, I treated myself to my first new road bike in 17 years - a Specialized Tarmac Expert. Carbon fiber, Dura Ace, Ultegra, Mavic. Need I say more? A picture's worth a thousand words, though.

My old friend Dennis was the owner of Pine Lake Bicycle, my local bike shop when I was growing up. He’s about 5 or 6 years older than I am, but because he owned the bike shop while I was in high school I thought he was MUCH older (with MUCH longer hair). He’s been semi-retired to Scottsdale focusing on his golf game for a number of years now. I learned how to do weight training in high school by riding to the shop in the summer before it opened, and Dennis and I worked out with free weights. That and other stupid things like riding TOSRV, the Tour Of the Scioto River Valley in Ohio – 105 miles per day out and back, Columbus to Portsmouth, on a weekend – with no base miles at all, in April. Maybe that’s why Dennis’ knees are wrecked.

The really crazy stuff used to happen around the bike shop in the winter when it was dead-dead-dead. I remember Dennis and his co-owner Ray had a mechanic assistant they used to persecute (in a fun way) named Ronnie. Before they used cable ties to hold bikes together in cartons, they used industrial-strength rubber bands. After a summer of building bikes they had an awesome collection, and found innovative things to do with them. They used to have awesome rubber-band fights, and kept nailing Ronnie. He naturally got paranoid and harder to ambush. I remember one time Ray actually hid up in the drop ceiling above the acoustic tile with a tile pulled aside to shoot Ronnie as he came into the store. Another time they attached all the rubber bands together (there must have been a hundred of them), and stretched them out in front of the shop. It stretched out like 60 feet. Ronnie came around the corner, Ray released the one end, Ronnie went, “AAAAAHHHH!!” a second before he was enveloped in a cloud of rubber band :)

Aaah, good times :).

Technorati Tags: Specialized Tarmac,Pine Lake Bicycle,bike shop

Town Hall Meeting...In A Very Nice Town

Earlier this year, I received a mysterious invite to spend a day at Microsoft to talk about the IT Pro* community and Microsoft. It was sufficiently off the wall - phone call from some admin with a followup email - that I pursued it. I found they wanted me to be one of three panelists to talk about data center consolidation - and the other two were Microsoft Vice Presidents! I backed away from that panel in a hurry, being both unqualified to speak about datacenter consolidation (even without VPs) and on the express train to an RGE (resume generating event) by being an Intel employee pontificating with MS VPs! So many of my professional colleagues I know from speaking and writing were invited - Mark Minasi, Darren Mar-Elia, Gil Kirkpatrick - we began joking about them closing the doors and turning on the gas :). There were also prominent bloggers from ZDNet, university people, and journalists present.

They let me go despite my panel decline, and the trip even tied in nicely with an already planned campus trip for the Longhorn (now W2K8) Technology Adoption Program. It was held in the Microsoft Executive Briefing Center, a very posh place - all the free espresso drinks you could want. And the "conference room" we were in was filled with leather sofas for seating; not a task chair in sight.

One of the day's discussions centered around Microsoft's involvement with IT Pros and what they could do to improve their relations. This was a worthwhile discussion because for most of its history Microsoft - being a company full of developers - has been much more developer focused than IT Pro focused. What really made it special is that the 50 or so of us invited guests shared the discussion with Steve Ballmer (CEO in case you didn't know), Bob Muglia (Senior VP), and Ron Marsevitch (VP). They listened, asked a bunch of good questions, and took down notes to follow up on. Well, what was interesting is that they themselves didn't take down notes; they had minions from their entourage in the back that took a note whenever they raised an eyebrow :).

To round off the day, we went to dinner with the VPs at Columbia vineyards in Woodinville just north of Redmond. My friend Mark Russinovich, who had recently joined Microsoft as a Technical Fellow, showed up for the free food and drink :). I shared a table with Bob Muglia, Gil Kirkpatrick of NetPro, Karen Forster of Windows IT Pro, and a couple other interesting folks. Gil was able to give Bob visibility to Gil's DEC (Directory Experts Conference), the premier industry conference for directory service people. Many of Bob's own employees are regular attendees; in fact the conference has a huge attendance from Microsoft. It's not often you get to have dinner with such an interesting group!

*IT Pro is one of the two major categories Microsoft splits its customers into. (The other is Developer.) IT Pros generally don't write code; instead they evaluate and deploy Microsoft products in the enterprise.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,IT Pro,Ballmer,Muglia,Minasi,Russinovich,Kirkpatrick,netpro,Windows IT Pro

They Don't Call It The Kaiser For Nothing

After months of waiting for phone hardware for the various carriers to arrive for the holidays, and for our two-year Verizon contract to expire, we went to AT&T yesterday. We need data now for our phones, and though Verizon did come out with some good PDA phones finally, the data charges are just too high. We would have paid $90 / month for full data packages alone on two phones. I hope we don't regret the move; one of the reasons we went this weekend is because I'll be traveling and can test the AT&T network coverage where I tend to land during the AT&T 30-day return period.

A nice fringe benefit of going to AT&T is the Tilt, aka the HTC (manufacturer) "Kaiser". Calling this thing a phone is a vast understatement. It's a notebook computer shrunk to something you can fit on your hip, to my knowledge the most powerful "phone" in the US. It's got a big keyboard, display, Office Mobile, GPS with voice directions, WiFi (all bands), about 10 different kinds of network compatibility, stereo Bluetooth, etc. etc. It's going to take several weeks to figure everything out! Full review of the thing at http://www.mobileplanet.com/b.aspx?i=151856.

Technorati Tags: AT&T Tilt,HTC Kaiser,HTC 8925

I Love Joe Morgenstern

I was just perusing an old Wall Street Journal Weekend Journal while cleaning off part of my home office desk this morning. Much as I hate the clutter, I try to never throw them out until I've at least glanced at them. (Of course I have a mount about a foot high by the base of the elliptical. This either says something about my ellipticizing or the Journal; I don't care to figure out which.)

Joe Morgenstern, the Journal's movie critic, has an article about how much he hates seeing standard-def TV in 4:3 being stretched into 16:9 widescreen format on flat panel screens. Right on! Besides the obvious effect of distorting the picture, the few pixels on the larger screen make it look so much worse. And people don't seem to care, or notice the difference.

My family notices the difference (I think), but they definitely think I obsess about getting movies only in widescreen format. They think I've really gone around the bend when I complain about movies displayed in letterbox format on a 4:3 screen - thus having black bars on the SIDES of the picture (an undistorted 4:3 picture on a 16:9 screen) and on the top and bottom (the letterbox format the movie's being displayed in).

A good read, it's public at http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119041125710335666.html.

Technorati Tags: joe morgenstern,movies,widescreen,letterbox

Mike Breton's Lights

It’s that time of year again, and a coworker of mine from Intel is at it again. Mike Breton is an automation wizard in Folsom CA, and look at the results when he turns his focus to Christmas lights!

· 14,427 lights

· 85 Strings + snowman, penguins, drums, presents, train, snowflakes, & nativity

· 61 Extensions cords

· 47 Amps (5649 watts)

· 16 Songs

· 200+ free candy canes

Visitors in their cars merely have to tune to FM 94.5 to hear the synchronized music / light show!

This is a good (THX) introduction:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEOS9Krq4g4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69XraWxSUvU&feature=related

Have a look at http://bretonlights.com/Breton_Lights/Welcome.html and sign the guest book!

Technorati Tags: Christmas lights,automation,Mike Breton

GC photos and video are posted!

I've finished the Grand Canyon photos, and a reduced size video to my Picasaweb albums at GrandCanyonThanksgiving. It's also viewable in reduced size in the slideshow viewer on this page.

Technorati Tags: Grand Canyon,Bright Angel Trail,South Kaibab Trail,Skeleton Point,Tonto Plateau

A little post trip discovery is always interesting

I was nosing around, looking for some other GC photos and references to GC features so I can get them right in my captions - which of those rock spires is Vishnu Temple, and which is Zoroaster

Temple? - when I came across the photos pages of Susanne Riehemann. She's taken some gorgeous photos of the Canyon (among many other places), from below the rim, at http://doors.stanford.edu/grand-canyon/index.html.

If you've ever been to Maricopa, or Powell, or Hopi point, you know they're very distinctive and stick out quite a bit. Susanne's photo from the Tonto Plateau shows you just how much they really do jut out from the rim. I took a photo of my wife on our honeymoon from the very tip of Powell Point (I don't think I could wrench myself out there any more), and always wondered what the drop was like.

Now I know! Fall 350 feet past the Kaibab, bounce off the Toroweap, fall another 350 feet past the Coconino, tumble down the Hermit / Supai, take the long fall 450 feet past the Redwall, tumble down the Muav Limestone until coming to "rest" on the Bright Angel Shale of the Tonto Plateau. Ouch!

Technorati Tags: Grand Canyon,Powell Point,Kaibab,Redwall,Tonto Plateau

Back from The Canyon!

We're fresh back from spending Thanksgiving weekend at the Grand Canyon. This is the second time we've done it, and it doesn't disappoint. The temperatures on the South Rim are snappy cold (8 degrees F one night), but the hiking conditions in the Canyon are as safe as they get: 40s and sunny. Combine that with a couple of layers, a light pack, and a lot of up and down, and you have some serious fun! Working on the pictures for the next couple of days...

Ireland photos

I've finally waded through most of the photos, and have begun posting them to http://picasaweb.google.com/sean.deuby. Check 'em out. I'll be unable to post the rest for about a week, but will continue working on them.

Thursday - Dublin

We got up and out to the train station for Dublin the next morning, Rachel squeezing the three of us into her teeny Peugot. (I thought it was a two-seater until I looked closely at the back seat!) I was reminded of two butterflys in a press. Not that I would ever compare Connor to a butterfly. I called "shotgun!" immediately on seeing how tight the fit was. Rachel kindly made sure we were on the right train (Dublin, not Belfast thank you - that's for the next day).

We spend just this day in Dublin, walking all over the town center. The first thing we did was walk to Trinity College (where ex-president Martin Sheen is studying) to see the Book Of Kells. The college campus is an oasis from the chaos of downtown Dublin because it's surrounded by the college buildings, with only one or two entrances, and everything faces inward.

Not to put too fine a point on it - Kells was underwhelming. What was interesting - and jarring - is how the whole exhibit is organized. We stood outside the building that housed it in a nice summer sun, by a very green lawn with "Keep off" signs :). The line was quick and we were soon inside. Straight into the gift shop! Tickets there, then into an entrance hall that explains the details behind the book and its illustrators. Then, you go into a dimly lit room to see the open book itself (it's turned to a different page every few months - imagine having the title of "Official Kells Pager Turner") and a couple of others. It's a very old book, in excellent condition, with the finest illuminations of any surviving medieval book. That said, of course they're drab in comparison with today's colors. It is interesting, however, on consistent the text is; it could have been typeset by a machine rather than created by hand.

From there you go into what for me was the more interesting place, the Long Room. The Long Room is the old library, straight out of something from Harry Potter. Long and relatively narrow, it's two storeys of books on either side of a long corridor. It just oozes old. It smells it too, of old musty dusty books. When we walked through, several workers were carefully replacing books that had been worked on or otherwise restored, carrying them up a tall book-ladder one or two at a time, with gloved hands. To my surprise, I leaved these books can be checked out with a reader's card; the only caveat is that they must be read only in the nearby reading room.

The surreal part of this experience occurrs at the far end of the room, where you walk down a wide stairway...and leap forward 200 years into the very modern gift shop, only feet (rather, meters) from where you first walked in. The gift shop is directly underneath the Long Room.

We left Trinity and walked west to the Temple Bar district of pubs and shops in a cobblestone, auto-free area of several blocks. It was relatively calm at noon on a Thursday, but the district has a reputation for rowdy "stag" and "hen" parties. On a recommendation from a woman Sharon talked to in a Dingle pub, we searched out Burduck's, apparently the oldest chips shop in the city. There's no place to eat in the shop so we carried the huge brown-paper wrapped packages to a city park right next to Christ Church cathedral. We'd hardly sat down when we were accosted for some of our food by a homeless guy, who turned abusive when I refused. And for all that, the fish was really oily and the chips (fries to us Yankees) soggy! If he had only timed it a little better we would have gladly given them to him :).

Photos, and posting

Several people have asked me where all my photos are. Well, it's an embarrassment of riches; I have over 1100 photos from the trip! I'll only inflict a very small subset of them on everyone, but it's taken a lot of time to just go through them all and make adjustments. I should be able to post them in a couple of days.

I'm also looking for (free) utilities that will do page creation / photo uploads / thumbnail creation, and ideally a place for comments as well. Any suggestions?

Though I'm back I'll continue to post updates for the trip days. I wrote in a travel journal because I didn't have much internet access during the trip.

Wednesday - Off to Dublin!

One aspect of staying above a pub I hadn't considered: when you head out in the morning, you get to knock around the place before it's even open :). Before we left Kenmare, we stumbled on the regular Wednesday morning market. We did a little shopping, bought some delicious lunch provisions - Kerry Blue cheese, olive bread, miscellaneous goodies - then hopped in the car and headed out.

Driving across country - thank goodness for the ring-bound atlas of Ireland, insist on nothing less - we stopped for a late lunch in Cashel, host town of, well...the Rock of Cashel .

It's an impressive old castle / church complex perched on a hill at the edge of town. It's the highest point in the area, so it commands good views (and therefore was hotly contested by the local rulers until they handed it over to the Church around 1100 AD). The tower of the complex, tall (90 ft) and very longlasting, was also built around 1100.

We got back to more typical Irish rain while we were there - low cloudy with periods of rain sweeping in and out every 10 or 15 minutes.

As we worked our way towards Dublin, we slowly graduated to larger and larger roads - from the narrow and twisty rural country roads, to the better and faster secondary roads, finally to the motorways into Dublin and the ring road around it. After days of brief maximums of 100 kph, we felt like we were flying on the motorways!

We didn't go into Dublin after this long day's drive; instead we headed the additional 45 minutes north to Drogheda, an ancient medieval town (founded in 911 AD) on the river Boyne. Nick and Rachel have their first home there (anyone interested in a nice house with easy access to the train to Dublin??), and offered it for us to spend a couple of nights. Rachel greeted us there and we took her out to dinner at the "d" hotel in Drogheda, a sister hotel to the "g" in Galway. (Drogheda seems like an odd choice for this hip style of hotel; I wonder how it's doing?) The place was empty of practically all furniture, but her kind neighbors brought in a sofa and a couple of beds for us to sleep on!

Tuesday - Skellig Michael

The big event of the day for Tuesday was a trip to Skellig Michael. It's a special place in the world awarded to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We had to drive from Kenmare at the base of the peninsula to Portmagee at the very tip, which covers half the famous Ring of Kerry. Though the roads are equally famously narrow, because we left in the morning, we were off the ring before the tour buses came charging through. I had to drive kinda fast to make it there in time, which was kinda fun :). Sharon drove back; she's much more comfortable than she was (as I am), but I think she must be thinking of converting to Catholicism after spending time in this country because she keeps exclaiming "Jesus!" when oncoming trucks suddenly appear in a narrow country lane.

The trip to Skellig was a much more, er, direct, experience than I'd anticipated. Twelve of us got onto a a small boat, and with little ceremony headed out to sea. Skellig Michael is 6 km straight out into the Atlantic. WE all perched on what seemed like a large deck hatch, and Connor & I lucked out and had the windward side. I was vindicated in my Connor-nagging because he'd whined about wearing anything other than old running shoes, jeans, and a hoodie pullover. At our insistence he wore his new Gore-Tex light hikers and brought his waterproof / breathable jacket. One of the crewmen handed out slicker jackets, and we zipped up our jackets and used the slickers to keep our legs dry. MY legs dry; Connor got his pants soaked because he didn't need the slicker in the first 2 minutes of the ride, so he removed them from his pants. Live and learn - maybe.

We were very lucky in general, though, because the weather was again so mild. The debarkation from the boats to the tiny pier is up a very narrow, exposed steep set of steps with a rope as a rail. This is the very beginning of your upward journey at SM. After an inital flight of steps, you follow an inclined path for a ways (some of which is covered to keep you guano-free in a bend favored by the local gannets).

Not far past a heliport jutting out over the water, you come to the first in a series of almost 600 steps up the side of the island. Now, any one that's done a moderate amount of hiking can say that though they're steep, the steps are wide and excellent. The would be a small part of a mainland hike. However, they're very exposed - a fall would seriously hurt you, and quite possibly put you in the ocean with little chance of rescue. I suspect this is why the heliport is there.

Where it's not steps or rock, it's green ground cover of some kind, dotted with tiny white flowers - a uniform carpet.

The place is simply spectacular. You spend almost the entire time exposed on one side or another because SM is basically a jagged volcanic rock ("skellig" means "splinter" in Gaelic) jutting up out of the ocean. The peak of the island is 700 ft above sea level, and at the very top is a cross that pilgrims climed up to, then kissed. (The monastery is on the other peak.) This very tough pilgrimage was apparently enough to buy your way out of many sins! Other than where the small monastery was, we saw one place on the entire island that was flat enough to hold about 30 people. The island is not large at all, and a fear of falling could make the trip a real challenge. I had to keep reminding myself we saw it on a sunny, fairly clear day. Most of the time it's cloudy, misty, foggy, with much rougher waters - making the climb much tougher.

Skellig Michael was founded by monks in the 6th Century, to be isolated from the restof the world (they accomplished THAT) and the monastery was inhabited for 500 years. Hard to imagine, scraping out a cold life there. But 10 lifetimes, probably 33 generations, did. They fought off Viking raids, one of which took their abbott.

On the return, the pilot took us right up to Little Skellig island. This is preserved as a bird sanctuary, and it's well-used by them. There are 20,000 pairs of gannets (a sea bird that dives from 30 meters into the water to catch fish as deep as 15m - they sound like a large rock dropped into the water) on this rock, so many that the flanks are white with them (and their guano) and thousands of birds form a loose cloud wheeling overhead.

Wehn we passed close, we saw some seals and most amazingly a man maneuvering a currach boat in the inner lagoons. He might have been some kind of scientific observer; if he rowed the 6 km out to the island in that little boat, that's very impressive! And probably very unsafe.

After our Skellig adventure, we had lunch at the Bridge Bar in Portmagee, where Sharon declared it had the best brown bread (aka Irish soda bread) she'd yet tasted. A sunny drive back to Kenmare completed our day.

Monday - Kenmare

We drove from Dingle to Killarney (a tourist center full of tour buses and souvenir shops, making us thankful we didn't book rooms there) and out the other side, through Killarney National Park (I probably don't have the name right). Nonetheless, it's a beautiful drive.

It's also a very narrow drive, with a very twisty turny road about 2/3rds the size of a Plano subdivision road to accomodate two cars passing, or if you aren't lucky, a car and a massive tour bus passing. We timed it to avoid this on almost all of our time on Dingle and Iveraugh peninsula roads, so it was an enjoyable drive though the park and down into Kenmare.

We chose Kenmare on the Rick Steves' Ireland recommendation, and he was right. It's a nice little town, a bit more touristy than Dingle but also a bit more modern in subtle ways. We stayed at O'Donobhain's, a B&B above O'Donobhain's bar and restaurant...how convenient!

Staying at city B&Bs is interesting. There's a little door next to the bar/restaurant entrance, and the residences are generally on the floors above. Srain Eoin in Dingle had the basics, while here in Kenmare O'Donnabhain's has a little more of an established big(ger) city feel to it. The B&B has a second toor to the outside which is locked at night for security purposes. Since they only give you one key, this can lead to logistical problems. I stayed late to hear the accordion player and found myself locked out of the place! Fortunately two guys were going in, and I convinced them I was a good guy by showing them I was a cyclist like them.

I managed to leave my €24 phone card in the public telephone the next morning, not being used to phone cards, but was able to confirm a lucky reservation to Skellig Michael that morning.