After being in my apartment for 2 months, I realized there was a window that I had never looked out of - or at least had never looked out of during the day time. Upon peering out of it today though (see previous post), I realized the view looks like the ghetto of a 3rd world country. Very odd - especially considering the views out of the other windows are so cool.

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

Just a cool pic

Just a cool pic

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

Star fruit with bree balls

Star fruit with bree balls of course.

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

Yup. That is my arm.

Yup. That is my arm.

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

I must say - i

I must say - i love taking the shuttle back home after work. It is hard to explain why. It sort of feels like taking the bus to an away soccer game. Chatting with friends. Listening to music. Getting some shut eye. It's pretty cool.

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

Rather funny - I was looking at the blog, and saw a picture of my mom with her helmet on, and then my post that reads "There seems to be a whole lot of people in this city who have a few screws loose." Looks as though the message is in reference to my mom... which it is not :-) My mom has her act together, I just happened to catch her with her helmet on right after we had gotten off of our bikes.

Anyhow, my 'rents were here this weekend which was a lot of fun. We saw a bunch of things, and ate a bunch of other things. Some things we both saw and ate. Two pics down is of (from left to right): Dad, Aunt E., Mom, Aunt B.. Picture above that is of Dad and Mom in SF botanical Garden.

There seems to be a

There seems to be a whole lot of people in this city who have a few screws loose.

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

91

91

It is so freaking got

It is so freaking hot out

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

That is one of the

That is one of the most cute dogs i have ever seen

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

I love the smell of

I love the smell of fresh mowed grass

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

Felt my first earthquake today!

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3971752.html

I have been waking up at 6:00am the last few days, and today I woke up at around 5:15 - layed in bed for a while, then felt my room shake at 5:20 - 5:30ish time. Wasn't sure if it was a quake or not - have been checking the inter-web for the last hour or so to get confirmation - and finally got it. Cool :-)

Great title to this article.

Great title to this article. MINING THE MOON. STEP ONE: BOMB IT

I must say i do

I must say i do like this waking up at 6am thing while it lasts. But i don't expect it to last long.

Is there some chemical / substance you can put on a mirror so that it does not fog up? Seems like there should be if there is not already. Even if it is just some sort of wax that makes the water bead up - that would still do the trick. Perhaps my showers are too hot and too long, but it sort of makes the notion of a mirror in the bathroom useless for me if it just fogs up when I actually need it after my shower.

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

Back to mobile blogging :)

Back to mobile blogging :)

I am going to interupt my travel log for a non travel post. In the web clips area in gmail (the little area near the top of your inbox that gives you news, and other random things) I saw a link to a news article with the title:
"Oil prices fall on Zarqawi's death"
It just seemed to sum up the current state of the world - the Iraqi war, the focus on oil in our modern economy, terrorism, and just all around the dehumanization of events and the focus on money. Maybe I am reading into it too much.

In Copenhagen (Kobenhavn). But before we cover that topic - I need to recap on Berlin events that transpired after my last post. Well, just a single event really. I am really just speechless thinking about it. How does one openly discuss such things? I will stop beating around the bush: I saw what could only be described as an absolutely surreal appearance at our after-conference party, by David Hasselhoff of Night Rider / Bay Watch fame. I (and many others) grabbed some low quality video footage of the event. Thoughts of this spectacle keep me up at night - sometimes laughing, sometimes crying.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4798642060201159553&q=david+hasselhoff+berlin

Anyhow. I am now in Copenhagen, which turns out to be an amazing little city. It has a really cool downtown area with narrow brick streets - some are pedestrian only. Really fun to explore the city. Turns out though that there are 30,000 Rotary international folks here this weekend as well - so that complicates things. We were having an extremely difficult time finding hotels. In fact, we were told that all hotels in Copenhagen, as well as the neighboring town in Sweden were booked solid. Luckily we have an inside connection here who hooked us up - so that is great. Flying over from Berlin we met one of the Rotary folks. Then taking a cab from the airport to the hotel, we met a second one. Then last night we gave them a ring, and were able to meet up with them and 100 or so other rotary party goers as they went on a pub crawl. It was a blast. There should be (or will soon be) pics in my photo album covering many of these events that transpired.

That's all for now kids.

Second berlin post (and probably last - for this trip to berlin at least). So, just some observations of differences between employees in Cali, and employees in Europe - which may be able to be generalize to all people between the two locations. Also, some observations about Germany/Europe in General.

1) Smoking. Simply amazing how many people smoke here. Seems like the majority of people smoke. Not only that, but I have gotten so used to the smoking laws of NY and CA, that I am so shocked to walk into a restaurant, or hotel lobby and walk through a cloud of cigarette smoke. There are many things that America does that I do not want to see spread throughout the world - but I think that is one of the places where we are on the right track. Having to walk through a cloud of smoke wherever you go when you are a non smoker really sucks. Your clothes smell atrocious, not to mention your lungs, eyes, and who knows what else. Maybe I'm being whiney on this one...

2) External Beauty. People here are stunning. Not to say that there are not stunning people back home - I have verifiable evidence that there are :) but none the less, there seems to be a greater number here. I'm not really sure why this is. Not sure if it is specific to the folks at work, or if it applies across the general population as well.

3) Energy. The power outlets here are bizarre - but actually not what I was going to say about Energy. What I was going to say was that the people here are full of energy, seem to be very full of life, happy, wanting to party and have a good time, root, cheer, yell, etc. It is really cool. Makes the rest of us look like cold stone statues.

That's it for now. Perhaps more to come from second leg of the trip - if not, then to be continued when I am back in Verizon land.

In berlin. My phone doesn't work here since Verizon network is stupid. Ah yes - more shannon ranting about Verizon - oh well. Anyhow, I'm without cell phone - which also means without mobile blogging. But, I can still do a real blog post. In fact this will probably end up being one of my longest posts ever, since I have a real keyboard to type on.
So - trip so far:
Night before I left, I didnt go to bed until 12:30 or so. Then woke up at 4:00am to pack and such before the trip. Got to the airport, and flight was delayed a bit, then during the 5 hour flight to Newark we ended up cutting back and forth all the way across the country to avoid T-storms, so ended up taking an hour longer than it should. So, instead of getting to Newark at 4:00pm, we got there at 5:56pm. Meanwhile, our flight from Newark to Berlin was supposed to leave at 5:55. We (Jason and I) got off our plane, and realized it hadn't left yet, so we ran for probably 5 minutes with our backpacks to get from point A to point B - and made it on time. Then we had our 7 and a quarter hour flight to Berlin - went over part of Canada, Iceland I think, Scotland, who knows where else. Saw "Driven" with Sly Stallone - not a great flic. There is this one scene which is just ridiculous - one dude steels a car because he is pissed off, then sly steals another one to chase him down to tell him to not be so pissed off - it was a really stupid scene - just put in there so they could have a scene with racecars on city streets. Oh, speaking of movies, I saw Garden State. For some reason before seeing it, I first thought it was this very violent movie - must have been getting it confused with some other flic. Then when explained to me, I figured it was a chick flick. Anyhow, after seeing it, I realize it is hysterical and an all around great movie. Wish I seen it earlier. Really funny. I still have this image in my mind of this one scene where they shoot a flaming arrow into the air, and they all run around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to not get hit by it - and then the girl giving this hilarious look to the other guy of "please get me out of this place!". So funny. Ok, well, my description was not funny at all - but the scene was, I promise.
Anyhow, got side tracked. Long, but essentially uneventful flight to berlin. Arrived at 8:00am or so. Customs was really easy - they didn't check bags, we had no papers to fill out, or anything - we just walked in - showed them our passports - they swiped them, and stamped them, and let us in. This was actually my first EU passport stamp. I was a bit disappointed to see how dull they were compared to other cool stamps (Mexico actually has a really cool one). Jason showed me how informative they were though - they tell you which country in the EU it belongs to, how you came in (car, flight, etc), and some other info.
Moving along - we got to the baggage clain, and realized that our bags had not made the flight. We were not that surprised considering we had to run to get our plane in Newark. There were 6 other folks from SF to Newark to Berlin who also had the same problem. We chatted with them for a bit. They were cool - they were here for the World Cup (I'm so jealous).
The rest of the day yesterday we cruised around Berlin. We met up with Jason's Roommate from SF who is in Europe for a while for business. Saw some cool sites. I will post them to my pic section when I get a chance (for one, I need the actual cable that is in my luggage that still has not arrived).
That is all for now. By far the longest post ever to my blog.

Heading to berlin for work

Heading to berlin for work with jason. So fricking tired.

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.