11 February 2008

Spy devices

An interesting week. Remembering my rant from previously about camera phones, I was held up for 20 minutes on Monday morning at a railway crossing by track maintenance - a whole convoy of oddball little devices complete with blaring horns. Of course, no picture. It didn't actually occur to me until later that I could have taken a picture. Of course, that would be strange.

I had an interesting lunch with Fang at our local Chinese favourite - we ended up talking food with the restaurant owner on such topics as regional variations, Canton duck and durian fruit.











The tennis saga continues. Armed with a new variation on the combination, we tried to play on Monday night only to find that one didn't work either. Not fun. Since we've both been busy, neither of us have had time to try again.

Tuesday

We had some of these last night - quite enjoyable. What made me laugh though was that they are made with Northern Spy Apples - evidently not for sale in South Korea.


Pleo Evolution ( or lack thereof) - the most talked about thing at the Christmas party was the Pleo that Joe won. He had a hatching the next day - that was interesting. But apparently, Pleo hasn't evolved much. Such high hopes.... Apparently the software developer kit hasn't been released for our pleathery friend.

On the way home on Tuesday, I heard Spencer Rascoff, CFO of Zillow talking on NPR about the way Zillow's business has not been negatively affected by the housing market downturn. If anything, it has boosted use of their site (for those of you not familiar with Zillow, it tracks home sales and values - try it at zillow.com). Anyway, I worked with Spencer at Hotwire.com in the good old dotcom days. First person I've known be interviewed on NPR.

Claudia was out Tuesday night with her friends. The cat and I stayed in....

Wednesday saw more exciting stuff with some missing CSV files that later turned up. We had a great team lunch at the House of Chang again and I really must go back there for Peking Duck...

Since Wednesday was also the day prior to that great Hallmark tradition (Valentine day), we exchanged our stuff Wednesday night so we could pretend we didn't celebrate it. I got some really nice passport holders to go with my dual passports and Claudia got a pair of 2ct diamond earrings. The cat got the bow from the box.


Thursday - I had a discussion about the Mosquito. It's a device gaining popularity in the UK as a means of clearing an area of teenagers who apparently are susceptible to this frequency. Fascinating. Seems to work too.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5434687
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teen_Buzz
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7241527.stm

Frankly with some issues, Thursday and Friday were a blur. I worked from early Thursday until 7am Friday and then drove to the office for the rest of the day. Finally got to bed Friday night after being up for 40 hours. I love my job :)

Saturday, I was back in the office working on some support related issues. One of my colleagues, Daniel, wore an "Office Space" t-shirt that he had modified with a picture of Kevin, our director. Since Kevin was also in, it was quite funny. Those of you who know the movie will get this...



Lastly, Saturday on my way home I saw an advertisement on the side of a truck offering "a way to better health through colon cleanse and foot mineral treatment". Wonder if you get both at the same time?

Enjoy the week!



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is so funny about Spencer! What a small world. Brings back memories.......all bad.

If you have Chinese food often, try the bean curd! Delicious and my favorite Chinese dish. :-)

Unknown said...

I should add that the durian fruit is infamous because it smells really terrible yet the flesh is apparently wonderful Great if you can get past the smell. It's not permitted to travel with it on a plane and I presume any small enclosed space (like a train) because of the odour.