September 2005 Archives

Sometimes I should probably keep my little jokes to myself.

The other day on the shuttle from the train station to the office, somebody made a remark that they "got gypped." Before I could stop myself I said "Hey, I'm a gypsy and that offends me."

In spite of the big smile on my face, I think some people thought I was being serious.

Have you heard of Sudoku? It's great!

Sudoku is a number puzzle in a 9 by 9 grid divided into nine 3 by 3 boxes. Each row, column, and 3 by 3 box contains the digits 1-9 exactly once. The LA Times started publishing it alongside the crossword puzzle this summer and about a month ago I got hooked on it.

I like it for a couple reasons: First, you need no arcane and/or trivial knowledge to complete it. Crossword puzzles require vocabulary and the ability to unravel obtuse hints, Sudoku requires you to be able to count to nine. Second, you can finish them fairly quickly. I can almost always complete the one in the paper during my train ride. Third, they Will Yield. If you get stuck you can always apply the Hammer of Brute Force to them and eventually tease out the answers.

For more information - and a new puzzle every day - look here.

Earlier this month I was forced to go on a business trip to Europe. We went to Paris for a global technical conference with fellow Disney Channel folks, and then from there to Amsterdam for IBC, a broadcast trade show.

We got a special tour of the Eiffel Tower while we were in Paris. It was somewhat surreal to trundle off the bus and realize that I was standing in the shadow of the freaking Eiffel Tower. I managed to not say "Holy Crap, that's the Eiffel Tower!" out loud but you can bet I was thinking it pretty hard.

The "special tour" meant that we got to go up to the broadcast tower section - two levels above where the normal tourist tops out. It was breathtaking, and a little sobering to be 320 meters off the ground with little more than a two inch pipe railing between you and a quick trip down.

I took some pictures:

A self-portrait at the base. I got good at taking the "up the nose" shots on this trip. (The trick is to not dip your head down into your chest. If you do that, you'll give yourself up to three extra chins. Not attractive.)

This is the tip top of the Eiffel Tower, from the uppermost catwalk/broadcast transmission level. As you can see, we were pretty close to the top.

I took this shot by sticking my super-long gorilla arm out over the railing. I did remember to put the wrist strap on - well, at least before I took the second one.

I took this picture from the upper broadcast level. Daniel and Chris are on the lower broadcast level in the foreground. The Place de la Concorde is in the upper middle of the picture, with the Tuilerie Gardens and the Louvre to the right.

I stitched together this panorama in a vain attempt to capture what was special about the visit. The afternoon was perfect, the light was amazing, and the city was literally laid out at our feet. From left to right you can see the Arc de Triomphe, Sacre Couer, the Louvre, and Notre Dame Cathedral.

Yes, I know there are some problems with the panorama at some of the join points, and the color matching is off. I'm sure you can still get a sense of the great time I had at the Eiffel Tower.

Had I mentioned that we went camping over Labor Day weekend (along with everybody else in Los Angeles)? No, no I hadn't.

We did. As a farewell to summer, we headed up the nearby slopes of Mt. Pinos (be careful how you pronounce that, now) for a weekend trip with some friends.

Katy and the kids headed up Friday afternoon and I joined them after work that evening. On Saturday we were having a fun time around camp when we noticed a plume of smoke rising to the east. The fire seemed to be between us and the freeway home.

Later in the afternoon we went down into town to see what the situation was. The road to the freeway was closed - not that it would have done us any good to get to the freeway, as it was closed in both directions. On top of that, the power was out in the small towns that dot the area. I figured that I was going to have to plan on taking the back way out of there the next morning, as I had a flight out of LAX early Sunday afternoon. We kept an eye on the smoke plume but it was quite a ways off and didn't really concern us.

We had just finished up dinner when the campground host came around with an update. The road that led to my "back way out" was being threatened by the fire, and the forest service was saying that they might have to close it in the next hour or two. They were recommending that people evacuate unless they were prepared to be stuck there for a while.

It didn't take long to decide what to do.

We broke camp quickly and were on our way in a half hour. Both the kids were upset - both of them were having problems making the distinction between "fire threatening our path out of here" and "fire threatening us" - but we kept calm and tried to keep them busy and reassured that we were safe.

Of course, by the time we got off the mountain the fire seemed to be under control and the road to the freeway was open. After all the commotion, we were home about 45 minutes after we pulled out of the campsite.

(But it might not have been a drill.)

I like to read news on the internet. I do not, however, like to register for newspaper websites. In general, if an article is behind a registration screen I won't read it.

But now I have a tool for getting around these barriers: http://www.bugmenot.com.

Bugmenot.com is a clearinghouse for known good logins to websites requiring registration. It's very simple to use - you go bugmenot.com, you enter the website you are trying to get into, and it gives you a username/password combination to use.

Try it. You'll like it.

Okay, okay, I'll post something.

Good grief! Who wants to look at a blank page, anyway?