UnorthodoxY Archive It's wasn't what you thought

April 29, 2007

The Sound of Silence

Filed under: Music,Tech,Travel — SpaceDog @ 1:22 pm

Wow, no posts for three weeks — a new record.

Why so quiet? Well I’ve been in Moscow for work the week before last and the rest of the time I’ve been somewhat busy catching up with all the other things I was supposed to do over the last month.

Preparing for the trip was interesting, it was all very short notice and it’s been a while since I’ve had to work with a proper drop-dead deadline, and it’s been ages since I’ve had such a tight schedule to keep. In the end it all went as smoothly as I could have hoped for — even if our software isn’t as easy to use as I would have liked (particularly since I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to improve exactly that).

I was pleasantly surprised by Moscow, considering my last visit to was marked by close encounters with scam artists and dodgy policemen. This time everything was quiet, no scams, no police, not even that many strange looks. I did manage to get hopelessly lost by getting off at the wrong metro stop and not realising for an hour, and I managed to sleep through my stop on what I thought was the last train of the night (fortunately there was at least one more train going back the other way).

I found a couple of really nice bars that I’d go back to (and a few that I wouldn’t recommend). This is easier said than done as Moscow’s street layout and numbering is somewhat odd. I also found myself, pretty much by accident, back at a bar I’d been to with the Vodkatrain lot, these dudes were playing (sorry for the shaky video):

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I have more videos but the embedded player doesn’t seem to play nice with multiple videos.

All in all a fun, and worthwhile, trip. Now I just have to decide where to go next.

April 4, 2007

Short Notice

Filed under: Life,Travel — SpaceDog @ 12:49 pm

For the last few months my boss has been toying with the idea of sending me to a inter-company testing thing, basically a lot of companies get together and check that their software can all talk to each other like it should. I’ve been to one before and it was quite an interesting and fun diversion, but I’d pretty much written off all hope of going to this one as there weren’t a lot of other companies going and the higher-ups didn’t sound convinced.

However, at the last minute, they’ve decided that I should go, we may as well take the chance to find problems in a friendly setting like this rather than have them crop up in the middle of a demo in front of a real customer.

So the upside is that I’m going to Moscow in 11 days, I’ll get a bit of a break from the normal routine of work, I’ll get to meet some new people, and I’ll get a weekend in Moscow after it’s all over.

The downside is that I’m going to Moscow in 11 days. Eeek. That’s going to be cutting it a little close for comfort. That means that, as well as getting the software running on the (slightly flaky) team laptop, I’ve got to sort out accommodation, transport and a visa. Most of that I can do, but it’s going to be really tight to get the required paperwork together for a business visa, particularly with Easter this weekend.

Ah well, that’s what I get for thinking to myself that work had been getting a bit dull lately.

April 3, 2007

Progress …

Filed under: Life — SpaceDog @ 9:03 pm

Progress is late this month … a few things caught up with me at the end of the month, more details in the next post:

People Visited: 15 (2) [Feb: 11/2]
Places Visited: 6 (2) [Feb: 5/2]
Countries Visited: 5 (2) [Jan: 5/2]

Well it’s not great, March was always going to be a quiet one, April will be a bit better but not much.

See the January post for the details and the rules.

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