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Outside of the office, there are four trees along the road. They’re prime parking spots. On these hot summer days, it makes a huge difference to have some shade in the afternoon, rather than baking the inside of the car for hours. So every morning, I always hope to score a tree as I pull into work…

I’m glad I’m not using the MobileLife Album service on T-Mobile.

They apparently shut it down on June 30… and sent an email to their customers on July 18. Thanks for the warning, guys!

Linux kernel 3.11 was released today. The release name?

Linux for Workgroups

Hah, that’s awesome.

Why do most microwaves have a Popcorn button that, when pressed multiple times, will pop multiple bags of popcorn? Does anyone do that? I can’t imagine how two (or more!) bags of popcorn would even fit in a microwave…

I’m on a conference call with an eBay sales team, and Nick and I have been counting all of the sweet “salesey” words they’re using. Our favorites:

“value proposition”
“onboarding” (six times!)
“eck cetera”
“best practices”
“strategic partnering”

Ahh, every day I’m thankful I’m not a sales guy.

Dear everyone who is sending resumes to me to apply for our development position here at Zing:

Please don’t put an objective on your resume. They’re just vapid and silly.

Thanks,
Jeff

Last night the sky was really dark just before sunset, and lightning danced in the eastern sky. We’d been sitting around the family room reading books, so we went outside to watch the approaching storm. Suddenly it started hailing. It was fierce and fast.

Kyra picked up one of the hailstones. It was actually just about golf-ball-sized!

After a few minutes, the hail stopped and it poured rain for another ten minutes or so, then abated and became a quiet, calm evening. Strange stuff.

My fourth and final day in the United Kingdom was a mix of meetings and sitting in Heathrow waiting for my (delayed, again!) flight. It was a ten-hour flight back to Denver, and since I can’t really sleep on airplanes, I spent my time reading a book, learning to play Go, and looking out the window.

It’s amazing how big the Atlantic Ocean is. I mean, it’s just blue from one horizon to the other. It was kind of dull for a few hours, and then suddenly I saw chunks of ice floating in the water. Before long we crossed over land. Assuming a great-circle route from London to Denver, I assumed we were passing over the southern tip of Greenland (later I checked, and indeed we were). It was so cool. The land was nothing but snow and rock, with ice floes easing into the ocean and huge rivers of glacial ice moving through the valleys. It was sheer white with a little black rock interspersed here and there. No sign of civilization, or life at all. The snow was perfectly smooth and unending. There were points where the clouds were literally sitting atop the snow– I assume it’s because of the cold or something.

Later we crossed Newfoundland and Hudson Bay, again seeing a lot of floating ice and vast expanses of snow. Over Minnesota I saw why that state is called the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes. There seemed to be more water than land. There were quite a few small villages, some roads connecting everything, and lakes peppered across the landscape.

I left around 6pm and landed at 8pm, so we were more or less keeping pace with the sun. Since I’d been up since 7am London time, and didn’t get home until 9pm Denver time, it was basically 21 hours of daytime. Strangely, I didn’t feel all that tired… jet lag wasn’t really a problem at all on the trip.

All in all, it was a fabulous experience. I’d love to go back sometime, as long as I could avoid so many meetings!

Day Three in England didn’t involve London at all. I spent the day in meetings again, and after we finished I realized I didn’t have as much time as I’d like to head back into London for the evening, so I decided to explore Reading.

There’s a 184-mile-long trail called the Thames Path that runs along the River Thames (surprise!) through a large swath of England. The river is a block north of my hotel, so I thought I’d head along a portion of the path. It was a gorgeous evening (again) and there were plenty of walkers, joggers, and bikers on the path.

An armada of ducks and swans passed me on the river. There were hundreds of them– far more than shown here– and apparently there’s a little area that’s a “duck and swan preserve” where fishing and hunting are prohibited. It made me wonder if, farther along the river, it’s okay to blast the ducks with a shotgun or something.

Many people with houses along the river own long, narrow boats like this one. I guess they’re the British equivalent of the American RV.

There were many people paddling long kayaks, and others sculling. Very British. Some of the houses along the north bank are amazing. They have lawns that look like the greens on a golf course and huge boats moored along the shore. Must be nice.

The walk was really nice. Unlike my time in London, there weren’t any cars or throngs of people. It was very quiet, and the river was no more than twenty feet from the path. I walked about four miles to the next town, then hopped a train (of course!) back to Reading for a bit more wandering.

London, Day Two. The first part of the day was only marginally more fun than sitting at the airport and on a plane for 14 hours: I was in business meetings literally all day. Although it wasn’t exactly thrilling, it was in fact the reason I’d been paid to come out here, so I figured I should put a smile on my face. In the end it wasn’t too bad– I met some cool people, learned a few things, and came up with some ideas and projects that will (hopefully) lead to more business in the future.

After the meeting closed, the rest of the group decided to head to an Indian restaurant and then over to a pub to get drunk. I excused myself and headed back to London.

Since I’d seen the tourist-ey sites yesterday, I thought today it would be interesting to wander a bit and look at architecture. London is a fascinating mix of old (and I mean Middle-Ages old) and modern buildings. Sometimes there’s a really interesting dichotomy as two such opposite buildings are next to each other.

There’s a lot of cool stonework:

There are statues all over the place. From what I can tell, Lord Oliver Cromwell is sort of the British equivalent of George Washington.

I passed this statue, which didn’t have any label, but I swear it looks like Ronald Reagan. I can’t imagine why he’s standing in central London.

I liked this shot of a modern office building…

… contrasted with a thousand-year-old abbey in downtown Reading.

Although the British are very nice about telling you which way to look for traffic…

… most of the street signs left me wondering where the heck I was.

The Grand Canal was a cool area.

A cool idea: two ping-pong tables sitting in the middle of a public square. Alas, I had neither paddles nor a worthy opponent.

Finally, the Monkey Puzzle!

It was another wonderful evening in London. I was getting adept at navigating the public transportation system, and hopped on the train back to Reading for the night.