AdamB, Reactivated.

Red Pandas

2007-03-29T11:43:00.000-05:00

Ah, Animals

2007-02-25T13:32:00.000-06:00

From the San Diego Zoo VIP tour:

I'm so close!

This is called a springhaas. It was a little annoyed we were playing with it as it is nocturnal.

Fun pictures of foxes, a baby elephant, and also some random Disneyland pics after the jump.

Enjoy the Silence

2006-11-28T16:51:00.000-06:00

Pretty good cover I was just listening to:
Enjoy the Silence: "1. Enjoy The Silence - Tori Amos
"

Updates

2006-11-28T10:34:00.000-06:00

Blogger was acting up a while back and I got out of the habit of updating. The past month.5 has been pretty busy:

1. Long trip in NYC...Halloween was great!
2. A second, shorter trip to NYC.
3. California for a week for Thanksgiving.

Pics to come!

My Celebrity Look-Alikes

2006-10-16T18:38:00.000-05:00

Hmm...

The Bars Aren't Temples...

2006-10-10T02:17:00.000-05:00

So Farid didn't know what a mullet was, and I explained it to him the other day, and pointed him to Mullet's Galore. He said that actually this hairstyle is now becoming quite trendy here and in Europe as well...AWESOME.

In any case Saturday night Farid and I went to a local nightclub where I spotted the above twinnly-dressed techno-mullets. The dancing was pretty awesome; I told Farid the people-watching was everything I could have hoped for and more. Eventually we went out on the dance floor and showed everyone how it is done ;-).

The weekend was work-filled mostly, and it is looking now with my meeting schedule like I will need to put off real sight-seeing until my next trip back.

One Night in Baku

2006-10-07T06:29:00.000-05:00

Last night Farid and I met up with his friend Togrul at a small bar/nightclub in central Baku. It was the first time going out since I've been here and it was night to have a drink or two and relax. The club itself was pretty cool, with chandeliers and lasers and the like (it was actually designed by Togrul), though too dark to get a good picture. They had a singer there that was actually pretty good. She was singing modern techno-type songs like Kylie and had a backup track going. At first I thought it was Karaoke but that turned out not to be the case. People-watching was pretty good.

I spotted this pictured gem (Azeri-Mullet). The key interesting point about this mullet was that it was very smooth on top. Otherwise, it was pretty surreal as it got a little later into the night as all the music was Western hip-hop stuff like Snoop Dogg, 50 cent, etc. I had my first tasted of Russian vodka (Ruskiye Standard or something) and also Turkish beer (a pilsner which was pretty good).

I also, for the first time, heard about Bluetooth-messaging. Essentially, if you are sitting in a club or something, you turn on your Bluetooth and you can send pictures and messages to other bluetooth phones. Guys also try to get dates this way. Pretty funny...people have the strangest bluetooth names. I suspect this doesn't happen in the US because cell providers "lock" this feature of phones, but here in AZ it is quite common I guess.

Meetings Galore

2006-10-06T11:42:00.000-05:00

The past few days have been a whirlwind of meetings. For three days, there was the Alcatel (Azerbaijan Computer and Telecom) conference, then meetings with various people, and preparing for those meetings. And of course US work in the evening hours.

I'm looking forward to taking some time off saturday to see some of Azerbaijan!

First Impressions of Baku (from 10/1/06)

2006-10-04T15:09:00.000-05:00

Driving from Farid's summer home to the city center of Baku, I was first struck by the number of trees lining the road. I had somewhat expected something similar to Cairo in terms of vegetation, and was surprised to see how green everything was. Many of the trees looked recent, as in the past 5 to 10 years, which gave my entrance to the city a definite feeling of going to somewhere new and growing.

Another surprise was the lack of covered women. Farid explained that Baku is mostly 'fake Muslims'. The women aren't covered and other traditions ignored (such as Ramadan).

Baku is less crazy than Cairo in terms of driving, but drivers are still pretty aggressive. On our way in we witnessed a high-speed police chase, which strangely ended in the driver and the cop knowing each other and laughing at the side of the road.

As Farid explained, the country is very wealthy from oil. All the cops drive BMWs and outward displays of wealth are quite common. As we drove in, we saw all type of nice car, including a Hummer H2.

Farid and I walked around for a bit, and he's getting a haircut now in anticipation of our meetings this week (though he insists it's for the girls). As I don't have data service on my phone yet, this post like the two before it will probably be delayed.

Summer Home (from 10/1/06)

2006-10-04T15:06:00.000-05:00

I woke up after what seemed like minutes, but was in fact hours, at Farid's family summer home. I felt a million times better than last night, and although it was 3pm it seemed like it was morning. The rooster somewhere in the neighborhood that crowed every half hour didn't help to shatter that jetlag-induced fantasy.

Downstairs, Farid's mom (an awesome host) had a spread waiting. Just like my late night (actually early morning) meal last night, there were a million good things to choose from.

I told Farid over breakfast that he should talk to me in Russian first and then in English if I don't understand. Hopefully that will help revive the Russian I learned in high school but haven't spoken in 10 years.

The home itself was awesome...nice garden, great interior. And a nice view of the Caspian. Farid's dad actually designed much of the architecture which was pretty cool.

Zero 7 (from 9/30/06)

2006-10-04T15:03:00.000-05:00

Meeting up with people in Instanbul during my 12h layover didn't happen. So instead I rented a hotel room for the day and worked and napped.

The airport hotel was pretty nice for the price ($80), and I felt much better after taking a shower. The little touches were nice, too, such as when I asked for an iron and ironing board to the room, the housekeeping person actually ironed my clothes!

After taking a 4h nap and getting some work done, I walked around the airport for a bit. My first impression after landing was that the airport was DEAD. I soon discovered, though, that the gate areas appear dead bcause they are locked off except for about 1h before boarding. The actual main terminal area was pretty busy, and hd loads of high-end shops. My favorite item on display was Turkish Delights. I will definitely get some on my way back.

Boarding to go to Baku was the fastest boarding I'd ever done. No rows, etc. Just everyone up and bording quickly. As I was trying to acclimate myself to Rusiian by listening to discussions around me, I noticed something else: they were playing a Zero 7 song off the Simple Things album over the airplane's sound system.

In any case, I'm mid-flight as I write this. More to come after I land!

Turkish Coffee (dated 9/30/06)

2006-10-04T14:49:00.000-05:00

When in Turkey...
(Starbucks in Istanbul's airport)

SilverKey Egypt Dinner

2006-09-28T18:40:00.000-05:00

All of Us

Awesome dinner with everyone from SK Egypt. It was at La Pacha...very nice place in Cairo. It was great to see everyone in person!

More pics on flickr.

Le Caire

2006-09-19T01:02:00.000-05:00

I've been in Cairo since last Wednesday night. So a lot to update.

SILVERKEY IRAQ
The trip was mildly adventurous. It started with an Iraqi taxi driver (Assyrian) who was pretty friendly; he suggested I start a branch of SilverKey in Northern Iraq. He said there was a ton of money there now (he's hearing it from his relatives), but that Bahgdad is a nightmare. SilverKey Iraq. Hmm. Has kind of a ring to it. Anyone know anyone there?

TYPICAL TRAVEL ADVENTURES
I missed my KLM flight by 5 minutes. But I didn't really miss it, I arrived too late; 55 minutes before the flight took off. I offered to even not check baggage and still no dice. Their justification is security. I could see that if the security check was being performed by a drunk hampster with an abacus, but it's a frickin' Do Not Fly List. It's a computer; the check takes 2 seconds. Jeez. Annoying.

Anyway I started negotiating with the checkin person and ended up getting a standby ticket on Air France. Fortunately, something was wrong with the computer and it didn't print "standby" on the ticket. Play time. So I went up to the Air France ticket counter like nothing was wrong and started chatting up the agent. About 5 minutes into it, she said "Wow, for some reason I can't find your e-ticket." "Really? Wow that is weird. I have no idea why." So she went and talked to a supervisor who then just added me onto the flight.

The plane sat on the runway for 1h due to weather, so I missed my connecting flight in Paris. Not so bad I guess. Charles De Guall was a typical pain in the ass. I love how the path between gates involves a bus ride, multiple escalators, twists and turns, and obscure signs that leave you playing "where's waldo" trying to navigate them. The last step was the most tricky as the previous one led you to an abandoned check-in counter area. You go through a secret door to find a little security checkpoint that will let you get to the terminal. I half expected the security guard to tell me "you have been le punked, Monsieur".

Charles De Gaul was uneventful after the initial treasure hunt. Wifi. Sent Dody etc my third (and hopefully final) arrival time.

WHISKEY-SOAKED LUGGAGE
The flight to Cairo was somewhat interesting. I sat next to a professor of Middle Eastern Studies from Columbia College in New York. He was going to AUC (American University of Cairo) for a year to teach there. So we had some good conversations about Middle East Politics. His big thing was that "institutions" needed to be constructed for any kind of sustainability in Iraq (local court systems, ways for people to resolve issues with neighbors peacefully, etc). And of course America's foreign policy having to change. He told me that out of 300 or so billion dollars spent on the war on Iraq, less than 6 million or something has been spent on reconstruction. Ouch. So instead of spending money making sure the power doesn't go out, the US has been spending money sending more soldiers to handle the civil unrest driven by power outages.

Sitting next to us was a loud drunk French woman who for the majority of the flight had me scared my bottle of Jack in the overhead compartment had cracked and was smelling up the plane. However she ended up being pretty impressive as for all her drunkenness she somehow managed to build health clinics for street kids in Cairo. She said there were over 200,000 street kids in Cairo and she just wanted to do her part to help solve the issue. She had previously spent time in Afghanistan also helping kids. One thing she mentioned that I was surprised by was that there are areas of Cairo that still don't have running water. She mentioned for example an area right outside the pyramids where the government periodically brings water trucks that people go out to to get water. Pretty surprising. But what I found more suprising (and relieving) was that indeed my bottle of Jack (well Dody's actually) was intact and had not, in fact, burst all over my clothes.

LUGGAGE SMUGGLING
I arrived in Cairo as planned at 7:30pm and was happy to see Yasser waiting for me past customs. It was only after I saw him that I realized I had forgotten to pick up my checked bag before I went through customs (oops). I tried to go back in, and was of course stopped by security. The young security guard didn't understand what I was saying I think, but said he wanted 10 euros to let me pass. I negotiated him down to 10 dollars (I didn't have euros, so that was easy), and then went back for my luggage. It was a pretty shady payoff as when I was leaving the secure area with my luggage I had pretty obviously put $10 underneath my passport and handed it to the guy. I guess I'm not really cut out for the CIA if I can't even pay off a security guard serruptitiously.

THE OFFICE
The last time I had seen our office here was when I had scoped it out in January for signing our lease. It had undergone a huge transformation since then. Walls were gone, computers were in, and a large SilverKey banner greated me at the door. It was cool to see everything so professionaltown, almost like a real company :-). I met all the developers and staff face to face for the first time (I'd met only a handful of them before). Although I arrived at 9pm, everyone was still at work. As I have since discovered, most of our staff works until around 11pm here (they start around 11am, although Dody comes in around 8 and our UI designer Shaima around 9).

Around 10:30pm everyone started dodging around in their seats and I thought, "wow, they must really get into coding," until I realized that they had started a full-office Unreal Tournament and were shooting each other with rail guns and the like. One of the devs told me before Dody was married (er, got a girlfriend) he used to stay and play also and would shout out in pain every time he got hit.

SIWA
The next day, at 1pm, Dody decided to arrange a trip to Siwa, an oasis about 10 hours east of Cairo. I'd heard a lot about Siwa from Yasser and decided to go also. In a matter of a few hours we had an impressive 8 person trip, involving 4 trainees from Alexandria as well. The trip there was pretty cramped with the 8 of us in a van, but the van was pimping with A/C and even "mood" lighting in the back so it wasn't all that bad.

We arrived in Siwa around 8am the next day. Siwa the town itself I didn't think was so impressive. It was just kind of a little village with dirt roads and mud houses and the like. What was impressive was the greenery. In the middle of the desert, it was just a huge green, well, oasis I guess. Anyway we biked around Siwa all day and saw ruins and the like which were somewhat interesting.

THE DESERT
When we returned to Siwa we packed into two jeeps and headed out to the desert to camp. The ride through the desert was crazy. Dody, Marta (Dody's gf), and I sat in the back of one jeep on two long benches. The driver (our guide), kept on banking, swirving, and overall bumping us out of our seats. Early on, he drove up a dune and then did a "controlled" slide down a 80 degree bank on the other side. A controlled slide means you slide down the dune and you look like you're going to crash head first into the ground, but then in the end you somehow live.

After that first slide, it was a little nerve-racking because you never knew whether at the top of the next dune you would continue going forward or drop. It didn't help the stress levels that our driver would try to play "chicken" with each other with near misses. Another sweaty-palms moment would occur when the driver would go up a dune, only to barely come short of the top. In that case, the engine would die and we would slide back down the dune in reverse, inevitably buring the bottom half of the jeep in the sand. Then the driver would get annoyed and make a big loop in the sand, until he hit an even faster approach speed for the dune, and then try again. You hoped he made it, but at the same time it was a little nerve racking to hit the top of a dune so quickly, not knowing whether the other side was a 100 foot drop or a plateau.

I found out later that the drivers to a lot of the swirving etc for us ("to keep us entertained on the trip"). I think knowing this the next time the trip will be more fun. If you know you're getting on a roller coaster, you know what to expect. But if you get on a merry-go-round and all of a sudden the horses drop 100 feet, that can be a little disconcerting.

SPLIT PANTS
About an hour into our ride, the jeeps stopped on the top of a dune and we all piled out for sandboarding. Sandboarding is like snowboarding but with sand and no ski lift. After the sandboard gets waxed up, you hop on it (either standing or sitting), and then slide down a 300 foot or so sand dune. The hardest part by far though is getting back UP the dune. The problem is the dune is very steep, and as you climb, you start a sand avalanche, which then makes it even harder to get up. Dody went down first, and was having a hard time making it back up with the sandboard, so I just walked down the dune to help him. By the time we managed to crawl backup, I was so dead tired (mind you, I am used to just sitting in front of a keyboard all day) that I just lay on the sand for about 15 minutes catching my breath. After that, I was reluctant to sandboard down myself, not worried so much about the somewhat scary angle of descent, but more so about the work it would take to get back up.

I eventually did take a trip down. About 3/4 down the dune, I realized I was headed straight for Yana and Mustafa (two AIESECers from Alex). They had just gone down on a snowboard together, and had a fairly impressive wipeout. Yana's pants had ripped apart in the back, and Mustafa had injured his toe. So as they were recovering from their injuries, I realized I was about to cause them some more damage. I debated just continuing and hoping they would jump out of the way, but in the end decided to instead fall off my board and do a faceplant in the sand. If I had to do it again I would have continued and just hit them if necessary. Probably they would have just been bruised and I would have saved myself from tasting sand in my mouth the rest of the trip.

SURROUNDED BY DESERT FOXES
Camping was a real relief after the jeep trip. The sunset over the desert was amazing, and gave me a chance to actually see the desert without worrying about diving down a dune. It was really very cool. The dunes are perfectly formed and smooth, and there are rock formations throughout the desert that stick out like little sculptures. Seeing the sun set over the desert was even more amazing as the colors and contrast between the sand and the dunes and the rocks were even more pronounced.

The camp itself was two jeeps parked together in an L and a makeshift windbreaking partition errected between them. The guides cooked an excellent meal and afterwards most of us layed out and looked up at the stars. I had never seen so many, and we could even see the milky way which was very cool. Later everyone played cards but I was jetlagged and just fell asleep.

I woke up in the midddle of the night freezing cold. At one point I guess the guides passed out blankets but I was already asleep. After a few moments, I realized not only was I freezing, but also I was covered head to foot with sand, and could barely open my eyes from the sand caked on them. I noticed that Megan, who was sleeping on a mat next to me, had a little extra blanket hanging off her, so I very slowly grabbed a little bit for myself and then kept on pulling until I had some coverage. I wasn't as sly as I thought as she later told me she was being nice and let me have some slack.

Daybreak came and I woke up with again sand all over. I think if I had to do it again I would sleep with the blanket over my face. Dody had the right idea with some kind of robe with a good that covered his whole face. I felt refreshed nonetheless from the sleep I did have and started exploring a little. Megan pointed out some tracks which were pretty interesting, and I walked around the rest of the camp looking for more. I ended up finding three sets of tracks that the guide identified for me: a scarab (big beatle), a desert rat (which was carrying something), and a desert fox. They had all come around us in the night. The beatle was the most adventurous and came the closest, then the rat, then the fox (on the very outskirts of the camp). I was a little disappointed that I didn't see the fox, and tried to track it back to its home but the tracks went way into the distance.

Daytime in the desert isn't that interesting and we all became quickly bored after breakfast. We invented a few games like "make strange footprints in the sand", "compare your footprint to someone else's footprint", and "climb up the dune then back down again." Our favorite in the end was "toss the half-full water bottle around."

STRANDED
After the jeeps were packed, we headed out across the desert back towards Siwa. On the way, we stopped at a hotspring. This was pretty relaxing and a great way to get the sand out of everywhere. Unfortunately the hotspring had a lot of sulphur which would get on your skin and clothes. I suggested that this probably had special restorative powers which made ME feel better at least. Googling "sulphur baths" later I found I was actually right in a way.

After the hotspring, we then traveled further to a cold spring. This was a much larger pool of water and interstingly had fish in it as well. At first I only saw small fish (really tiny, like minnows), but then we realized that if we sat still, big fish would come from the center of the lake to eat the small fish.

As we were sitting in the cold spring, we heard the jeep start up and saw it drive away. The other jeep was there so we weren't worried, but it got me thinking "what if we were stranded here, how long could we live?" I asked the question and we all agreed that if we were stranded, we would have plenty of fresh water, and could also catch and eat fish. We would need to form a primitive society, I expect, in which case I thought maybe I could assert myself as the leader and build a new civilization in the sand. We had earlier decided that, if needed, we could trade Taher to the Bedouin desert people, so probably we could have some startup capital for infrastructure etc. But the jeep came back so there wasn't the need.

MR. PRESIDENT
After the desert we headed back to Siwa and hung out at a place called Salt Lake, which at this time of year is more salt than lake. We played cards ("Asshole") for about 4 hours and had lunch there as well. The restaurant where we were on the lake was actually a date farm, and so it was very easy to just get fresh dates. The card game went unusually well for me, and I ended up winning six hands in a row, thus making me "President" for six terms in the game. After a while I could tell that winning hands wasn't winning the hearts and minds of the "people", so as President I made a game rule to give better cards to some of the less fortunate players. The people were still grumbling and eventually I was ousted. It's true what they say about it being lonely at the top. Although you have riches and power, the most important thing ends up being the admiration and satisfaction of the plebs, and plebs can be hard to please.

FOREIGNERS
The trip back from Siwa to Cairo was pretty much the same as going there, except we stopped in Marsa Matruah, a coastal town and had some delicious fish at a restaurant. It was nice because you first go in the back and pick your own fish. I had hoped that the fish would be alive, but it was freshly caught so that was fine. It was delicious. The only downside was that our bill ended up being much more than we thought. It turned out that the waiter had marked "foreigner" on our bill, and there were a bunch of "miscalculations" on it. We had each looked individually on the bill to see how much we had to pay (instead of just dividing the total), and when we added up our individual bills they didn't add up to the total. Thankfully we had two native Egyptians who got that sorted out.

On the way back to Cairo, Marta helped prepare me for my upcoming Azerbaijan trip by giving me all kinds of tips and hints (she lived there for a while last year). I'm pretty excited to go there. She showed me pictures (on her blog, via my Crackberry) of Fire Mountain which looks cool. It's a mountain, that's on fire. Wow. I thought flaming drinks were fun, so I gotta see this.

WORK
Work here is pretty much the same as work at home. Long days, deadlines etc. It is nice to work here with the developers though as it is easier to communicate about what needs to get done etc. and see the progress of the systems we are working on. Everyone here is really smart which is fun to see as well. We have a ton of whiteboards in the office which are filled with code and diagrams. Periodically someone will get up and excitedly section off a corner of the board with some obscure thing that only they seem to be able to read. I tried that, it's pretty fun.

DRUGS
I ended up extending my stay here by a few days, as I quickly realized there was still much to do, and I should stay longer also to make the trip hassle here and back worthwhile. As a result, I needed to fill some prescriptions that I had. I was told that here there really isn't the red tape of prescriptions, you just go to the pharmacy and ask for what you want. I found this to be exactly the case. I just wrote down the effective agent name on a piece of paper, the pharmacist looked up the brand name in a little book, and handed me the prescription in question. Cool, fast, and I spent $5 on $45 worth (after insurance, in the states) of prescriptions. I imagine that those drugs back in the states probably cost my insurance company over $100 and here I can by them for $5. Screw going to Canada for drugs, people should come to Egypt. Make a vacation out of it and load up on prescriptions.

More pictures of this trip

Urge Vs. Rhapsody

2006-08-16T18:15:00.000-05:00

I am testing out Urge as Rhapsody keeps being annoying and disconnecting after a while when I'm listening to the radio.

The first thing I've noticed is Urge has MUCH better sound quality. I think maybe Rhapsody streams at 64kbps or something and Urge is at 128kbps. Rhapsody sounds tinny compared to Urge.

Goat on a Tortoise

2006-08-15T18:15:00.000-05:00

Wisconsin Aug 2006 054

More pics here of my recent Wisconsin trip.

Happy Saturday!

2006-08-05T10:55:00.000-05:00

Woke up to find enom was having DNS issues with nomadlife. Nothing like technical fires to wake you up in the morning.

Wicked Awesome Pierogi Fest

2006-08-03T17:46:00.000-05:00

Kate, Beth, and I went to Whiting, Indiana for Pierogi Fest. It was super hot, but we braved it for the succulent pierogis and sausages.

See more photos here.

Awesome Ben Stiller/Jack Black/Owen Wilson Unaired TV Show

2006-07-17T17:46:00.000-05:00

In case you a haven't seen it:

Tee Hee

2006-07-16T12:01:00.000-05:00

This is how I pass time in the office too:

I can't wait!

2006-07-07T07:56:00.000-05:00

New Borat Movie

Maine

2006-06-30T14:55:00.001-05:00

Went to Maine last week for Kate's friend's wedding. Really beautiful state; lots of green. It has the highest % of forested land in the US, per one mainenian. It was a blast...lots of tasty lobster, clams, and mussels. Enjoy more pics.

Terrible Parenting

2006-06-29T13:30:00.000-05:00

Hilarious

2006-06-16T23:06:00.000-05:00

This guy is pretty funny.

Catalina Island Fox

2006-06-15T22:14:00.000-05:00

It's the little things sometimes :-).