Not your typical coffee shop patron

I was attempting to exit a coffee shop on Milton Keynes' Midsummer
Place mall when I walked right into a dalek. I imagine it was
browsing through the attached bookstore to obtain some insights on hu-
mans, but getting sidetracked by marauding space monkeys or some such,
hence the cautionary signage.

Monmouth Coffee

Mmmmmm.  And it's just a block from Forbidden Planet science fiction bookstore too.

More updates later since Monmouth Coffee is supposed to be a mobiles-free zone.

Still no luck

I'm still working on the dead computer.

New rule: mission-critical personnel should not be running nonvirtualized Windows. It's just too fragile.

Kristiana had a basically successful day at work yesterday, but it's only the beginning. Tonight she'll work late reconfiguring everything, and tomorrow will be Day One of the new setup, which is nearly always a trying time.

Early morning in the hotel lobby

Our 1st-floor room is very nice, but it's hard to be on differing
sleep schedules in it - light anywhere means light everywhere! I
awoke at about 5:30am local time and hope I didn't wake Michael as I
departed - the door is a bit loud.

So here I am, in the Courthouse Hotel Kempinski just past 6am, far too
awake to stay in bed, but only in my comfy clothes so going past the
lobby is out of the question. How nice if I could get some tea to go
with my book while I wait...

#*@%!

My computer, which was working fine yesterday, gave unable-to-hibernate errors last night and isn't booting today. Just a perpetual blinking cursor. BIOS tests seem to suggest that memory and HD are working so I HOPE it's just a corrupt MBR and nothing more, or this is going to be a really frustrating trip. I've planned on doing roughly two weeks worth of work during the three week trip, and there are strong business reasons not to back down from that.

Kristiana is downloading an Ubuntu Live CD to burn for me which should give me more tools to diagnose the problem - and to fix it if the MBR theory is correct.

The worst case scenario in which I buy a computer in the UK and have all my data overnighted to me on a portable drive and then build myself a working development environment on a hotel Internet connection is really ugly, but feasible if it comes to that.

OK

We're all checked in. Sleepy now. No updates for a while.

We've

Made it into London, but not yet to our hotel.

Paddington Station.

We're here

We've landed in London. All in all a pretty nice flight. I'll tell you about it later.

Time to strap in...

It won't be long now before we are on our way to London!

Here's Michael

Relaxing in his comfy berth!

We be lounging

We made it to the airport. Here's Kristiana in the Virgin Atlantic upper class louinge.

This post is for our parents

Who may be tracking our every move. We're enroute to the airport. Fans of Kristiana should note she doesn't have her lipstick on yet in this photo, but has since taken care of it and looks even more beautiful.

Packing, part 3

Ready to go.

Three hours to pickup

It's not as bad as it looks.

Packing, part 1

Kristiana's Travel Boots of Cuteness, ready for deployment.

Robin News

Hello Friends and Family --

As many of you may be aware, "Robin" is our working title for our child-to-be.  We decided to go with a working title because (a) we weren't sure what sex baby was (Robin makes a good girl or boy name), and we didn't want to say "it" or "baby" all the time; and (b) we/I feel it's much more agreeable to talk to someone who has a name, even if it is only a temporary name. 

Our latest news, as of our 20-week "anatomy" ultrasound last Friday --

Robin's brain is developing normally

Robin has a normal, 4-chamber heart

Robin has all fingers and toes, etc. -- in fact, everything looks good/normal!

The sonogram techs *think* that Robin is a she, but this is still uncertain.

So here we are at the halfway point (Robin is due June 5th).  Here's one of our best pix -- I think *she* has a cute nose! 

Of course I am biased.

 

Love, 

Kristiana & Michael

Kristiana Kincaid

kkincaid97@mac.com

415.990.5123

Sent from my iPhone

Astounding decaf

I have long argued with people who insist that decaf coffee is inherently weak, uninteresting, not full-bodied, not real coffee, or just generally lame. Those people are closed-minded and stupid.

This unbelievable fair-trade organic Peruvian decaf from Barefoot Coffee Roasters makes them even stupider. Absolutely first-rate French press by any standard.

Now I have a phone that takes and mails pictures

All summer Kristiana had a phone that could take pictures and ail them. I didn't, and envied her that ability. Yesterday I got a new BlackBerry 8310, which has a camera (with REALLY BRIGHT flash), various media thingies, and GPS as well. And it's smaller and thinner too, and still has a full keyboard. Snazzy.

Unfortunately when I mailed a photo to Kristiana, it showed up on her end as a winmail.dat file, not the expected JPEG. Ewwww.

But when I send a photo to myself, a coworker, or gmail, it comes out fine. So let's see how Blogger handles it.

Reno

Well damn. Not even 6am, and I've already flatlined my camera battery.

I'm in Reno at my friend Margaret's behest, helping her get her home office set up. Internet, wireless printer, faxing, new computer, etc., etc. She's grateful for my help with this IT stuff. But she shuddered when I told her my fee: getting up long before dawn, because this is balloon race weekend in Reno.

I've come to the Great Reno Balloon Race three or four times before, but not in the last few years. The day begins early - we left the house at 4:15, which is early even for me, especially at altitude - so we can drive somewhere near the field, make our way through the streets

Halloween is here

I know because I saw great big crates of it on dollies outside the florist near my office.

 

No photo, unfortunately (gotta get me one of those cameraphones).  But stacks of big boxes labeled "Halloween" at your local stores can mean only one thing:  it's early August.

 

I haven't posted in a week because nothing's been happening.  Kristiana and I have both been sick, which isn't interesting to write about no matter how hard I try.  It's not even the mildly-entertaining, schadenfreude kind of sick; just ordinary sore-throat, sleepy-all-day, open-the-refrigerator-and-can't-remember-what-you-were-looking-for kind of sick.  We're mostly over it now.

 

In other news...there is no other news.

 

See you when there is.