-
Travel blog – Day 7
No sign of bugs this morning and throughout the day. My “attack” on them yesterday seems to have paid off. Let’s see tomorrow. The heavy metal band across the street was playing into the early hours of the morning. As…
-
Travel blog – Day 6
(this was supposed to be a boring driving day… little I knew 🙂 After yesterday’s problems with Julio, the car, the night ended quiet with lots of book-related writing. In the morning, the bedbugs were back 🙁 This time I…
-
1TB sort done in 68 seconds by Google
This 3 times faster than the previous known record. For those who don’t know, Jim Gray et al established a series of tests, including the 1TB sort, in order to give database vendors a playground for honest comparisons. The results…
-
Travel blog – Day 5
I think I slept for 11 hours. The combination of bugs the night before (I think I only slept for 3 hours or so), an exhausting day 4, and a nice bed resulted in a lot of sleep. Didn’t manage…
-
Travel blog – Day 4
The day started very early. I couldn’t sleep all night because of blood-thirsty bugs. Originally I thought it was mosquitoes. Even though I was trying to ignore them, their bites kept waking me up. Then, at around 6am it occurred…
-
Travel blog – Day 3
Another great day, different from yesterday. I woke up feeling that I needed more sleep. The hotel experience was not good, even though the lady-owner was very sweet, telling me how much she liked Greece and that she wanted to…
-
Travel blog – Day 2
After a wonderful first evening in Valladolid, I returned to the hotel, taking some photos on the way (this is a view of my hotel’s interior). I worked on that Web book for a while. I couldn’t sleep… the…
-
Travel blog – Day 1
As you can probably imagine, this blog will be full of travel-related entries for the next couple of weeks. I may still post the odd technology-related one though. You’ve been warned 🙂 Arrived in Cancun around 6.30pm and got my…
-
Good comments about our coffee-related endeavors
Jay has some good feedback on our “How to GET a Cup of Coffee” article. Thanks Jay! We are monitoring the Web for any feedback that we can use for our upcoming book on the same topic. We encourage everyone…
-
Adventure ahead: I am off to explore the Maya civilization
Just booked my flight for a 2 1/2 week trip to explore the Maya civilization. I am flying to Cancun (no, I am not going to stay to any of the holiday resorts). I am going to immediately hit the…
-
Obama’s win
It’s been fascinating to watch the entire world paying attention to the election results of one country; a testament to the global role of the US today. I don’t really believe in political labels (“left”, “right”, “socialist”, “communist”, etc.) but…
-
Ski season
Just bought my 10-day pass for Whistler 🙂 Can’t wait to hit the slopes again.
-
Savas is moving on (to search for ET Life!!!! 🙂
After two wonderful years working for Tony Hey‘s Technical Computing and then External Research teams, it’s time to find a new challenge. I talked to various teams (inside and outside Microsoft) and found lots of interesting opportunities. At the end,…
-
PDC 08: Day 3 Highlights
Here are some of my highlights of PDC 08 – Day 3 I missed the Rick Rasid’s keynote because my early-morning Chem4Word teleconference overrun but it was important. I attended the Windows 7 context-aware API talk, which was interesting. The…
-
PDC 08: Day 2 Highlights
Here are some of my highlights of PDC 08 – Day 2 (yesterday) Keynote 1: Lots of new technologies… Windows 7, VS.NET 2010, .NET 4.0, Silverlight outside the browser (great demo Marc! :-), and Office apps in the browser. Keynote…