June 1, 2005
mailman day

i am in boston today trying to figure out how to get thunderbird to open pdfs in preview.app. if anyone in the area wants to get together for dinner tonight, mail me.

posted by jacob around June 1, 2005

June 5, 2005
whew for a minute there

it just didn't add up.

the strangeness started when i landed, and a lot of people stayed on the plane. i got off, went through customs, and then went to look at the departures to see what gate my connection was at. strangely, there were no flights to CDG listed. i went through security, and then noticed that my flight had gotten in 90 minutes early, and my connection wasn't leaving for another six hours. there was free wireless in the departures lounge, so i thought i'd see if there was an earlier flight to paris that i might be able to get on.

"that's strange," i thought. "there are no flights from shannon to paris. maybe shannon isn't the name of dublin's airport, and i'm still supposed to be on that plane!"

it certainly explained why the airport was so small, among other things.

so i pack up my laptop and try to find the departure gates. the plane i was on is still there, but there's nobody at the gate and the door is locked! i see another aer lingus plane at another gate, maybe there is someone at that gate. no, it's not even at a gate.

at this point i realized that my day is going to be even more exciting than i originally anticipated.

i walk back to my gate, and there is someone there! i run over, and tell him that i'm still supposed to be on that plane. fortunately, they're still waiting for one person and i get on without incident.

the thing that's still bothering me is this: the guy at the departures gate, and the people at security all looked at my boarding pass, yet none of them mentioned that the airport i was at wasn't on the boarding pass.

also i think i was the only person on the flight not wearing any green.

new jsb tour dates.

posted by jacob around June 5, 2005

June 5, 2005
wish you were here

the excitement did not stop in ireland.

i made it to paris without further incident. i had the address of my hotel in an email from my coworker who was in paris a few weeks ago. i was just going to take a taxi (i hadn't done any research into how to get from the airport to the hotel), but that email said there was a TGV station right by the hotel. so i asked someone, and 5 or 10 minutes later i finally found out how to get a train ticket, and got on a train.

the train ride went smoothly. i didn't miss my stop, and i easily found the way to my hotel. only problem was, there was no reservation for me. a few minutes of email investigations later, i discover that i'm not staying at that hotel. i devise a train route to get me to the location of my new hotel, and set off.

strangely enough, almost the same thing happened when i went to new jersey.

the bad thing about the new hotel is that it's somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes away from our customer's site. the good news is that it's more or less in the city, so i set out on foot for a little sight seeing.

i was getting pretty tired of walking, and it may have been approaching midnight (i wasn't sure my iPod's clock was right - it was still pretty light out at 10:15 or so) so i decided to try and take the metro back to the hotel.

the only problem is nobody had explained the different lines to me, so i had no idea how to interpret the signs in the station. i walked into a station, walked around it inside for a while, and then the next thing i knew i was outside again. eventually i found another station, and luckily enough i found the train i wanted to take, and now i can go to sleep.

i imported 3 months worth of pictures, here are the only two worth posting:

i wish they both came out a little better.

posted by jacob around June 5, 2005

June 6, 2005
paris: day two

Nat Friedman wrote: > On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 01:08 +0200, jacob berkman wrote: > > > i am staying near gare de lyon. where should i eat? > > Eat at le train bleu. I didn't this time and really wish I had. i went there tonight, since it's so close to the hotel. i can see why you like it, but french cuisine is "difficult" for me. between not knowing french (maybe up to half of the english menu is still in french) and not really eating french food as a kid, i really have no way to anticipate what each dish will actually be like. for example, one dinner in 2000 with miguel i ordered some duck something. it wasn't anything like i expected (you know, something more chicken-like), but it was good. so i ordered some duck tonight, and instead of the thinly sliced meat that i remember from 2000, i got 3 pieces of super-fatty very red meat. but i'm a trooper now (i had already eaten quite a bit of sausage i never would have until maybe a year ago), so i went at it with vigor. a little too much zest, it turns out, because i tried to eat a piece that was way too big and fatty for me. usually, in these situations, i have to spit it out, but i was too embarassed. so i sat there with this huge hunk of fat in my mouth for a good five minutes, sweating like i'd just killed a man, trying to relax enough to be able to swallow it. i had to take at least two sips of water during this time, followed by a timeout session with my dinner roll. other than that, it was pretty good though. my dessert ordering conversation went like this: waiter: <something in french> me: yes could i have the raspberries with whipped cream, please? waiter: fresh cream? me: whipped cream? waiter: fresh cream? me: whipped... cream? waiter: fresh cream? me: umm, yes. thanks. i got whipped cream. the raspberries weren't as good that place by le select that we ate at in 2001, but a mouthful of awful raspberries beats one full of bird fat any day of my week. seriously, is duck actually some specific species of lazy deer? also, not knowing the language means missing out on the little things. like when you think they're asking if you want to sit in the smoking section, to which you reply, "no," and then they seat you in the smoking section, because they were really asking if you wanted to sit in the *non*-smoking section. wow, it's late. - jacob

posted by jacob around June 6, 2005

June 8, 2005
mon quatrième jour à Paris

i think i'm finally starting to get hang of things.

this morning i took the 14 instead of the A to the B; much faster. unfortunately, the B train i got stopped at every stop between where i got on and where i was going. if i get there a little earlier i think there's one that only stops twice.

my failover demo went off without a hitch. i have thought (although i don't think i've mentioned it) that 1.4.1 and 1.4.2 were great releases at the time, but 1.4.3 is truly excellent, if you want to fail over a lot. 1.4.4 looks to be even better.

i walked with one of the guys from the company i'm visiting, and asked him for dinner recommendations. see, choking down monday's dinner gave me the strength and courage i needed to get through the piece of beef i was given for lunch yesterday, but i wasn't feeling very inspired to try my luck stumbling into some place at random.

anyway, he recommended chez Clément, while his girlfriend suggested Le Patio Provençal. i don't remember why, but i decided on the latter. he also said to look on pages jaunes for the address before i set out.

unfortunately i forgot to do this, and when i did remember, i didn't go back. for some reason i thought i could find it on my own.

i could take two trains to get there, or one and then a short walk. i decided to walk, so once i got above ground i spent a good 15 minutes trying to figure out which way was north. a problem i have with paris is that all the buildings are the same height, so if you aren't near the river, the eiffel tower, or sacré cœur, it's hard to tell which way is which. i am glad i got new contacts before i came here, though, because i've had to do a lot of street and metro sign reading.

i eventually got to where i thought the restaurant was, but quickly realized i was not going to find it by accident, and that i am an idiot. so i took the metro back to the hotel. i looked the place up on the internet, and realized that, while i was very close, i would not have found it. back on the metro (the 14 is awesomely fast), and i quickly found the place. i was so excited to have finally found it that when the waiter told me they were totally full, and to try the place next door (which was even more crowded), i almost cried.

so i walked around a bit, and then decided to try the other suggested place. the only problem was that i hadn't looked up its address when i was back at the hotel. i knew it was on the champs-élysées, so i took a metro over there.

after walking around the arc de triomphe, i spotted chez Clément right away. i even remembered walking by it on sunday night!

i have discovered a few differences between boston and paris. first, almost all of paris smells funny, while in boston it's just east cambridge. second, i have never seen a policeman in boston urinating publicly. in my 4 days in paris, i have seen two. this may have something to do with the previously noted difference.

the third is that the sun sets upwards of 10:30 here. i have probably seen more sun here this week than i did all winter in boston.

so anyway, after trying to find a place for like 2 hours, i finally sit down as the sun is setting behind the arc de triomphe, lighting the sky up like... some sort of pink thing. i would have taken a picture, but i figured that google had nicer ones. this one is the closest, but i was much closer and there were fewer cars.

unfortunately they had neither of the two things i originally ordered.

but, as far as non-salmon goes, it ended up being a good dinner and put me in a really good mood.

which is what i needed, after going to sleep last night flea-bitten and hungry.

posted by jacob around June 8, 2005

June 8, 2005
hey man, slow down

i fell back asleep after my alarm went off for another 40 minutes. in my rush out the door, i left my prized map of paris in my hotel room. no time to go back to get it.

then, the metro was so crowded it wasn't possible to walk down the stairs. fortunately trains came by like every 2 minutes so i was on my way shortly. luckily i got the fast RER train and wasn't late.

also, i wasn't the only one who slept in. one of the guys here strolled in an hour or so after me. he uses some gtk mp3 player as an alarm clock, and it had crashed overnight. good times.

today we were going to test a lustre patch on a configuration that wasn't normally supported by lustre. we started a benchmark test on it, and within a minute or two all the machines involved were unresponsive to proddings over the network. i assumed the patch broke things and all the nodes crashed terribly, but it turns out my pessimism was unfounded. perhaps unfounded is a bit too strong here, but in any case we went to the data center only to find that the power went out for the 4 racks we were using.

i was supposed to leave today, but on tuesday it became quite apparent that i would need another day. it was cheap to change the flights, and the hotel had room, so it wasn't much of an issue. due to some miscommunication (my fault), nobody had extended the reservation as of last night, but i was assured it would be taken care of. except that this evening, five hours after checkout time (with all my stuff still in the room), i was told that they were unsuccessful at extending the reservation the night prior.

but apparently it didn't occur to anyone to email me this last night, while i was still at the hotel. unfortunately, i can't get too mad, since it's all fixed up now. at least i think it is, because it's 8 pm and i'm still at the office. i guess going up to sacré cœur is out for this trip, but i might still try to get to place d'italie because it sounds familiar from one of my previous trips.

posted by jacob around June 8, 2005

June 10, 2005
une nuit de destin et au revoir

finding nothing of real interest in place d'italie, i walked around for a while. there were a bunch of indian places, but eventually i decided to try the place i couldn't get into yesterday. i headed to the nearest RER station, still having an RER ticket left. it was a little after 10 at this point, so i was worried that the restaurant would close, and when i saw the next train was coming in 15 minutes, i decided to walk to a metro station.

but before i reached one, i saw the bright green neon sign for LE SELECT, which meant that la coupole was across the street. i had found where i was going to have dinner.

the last time i ate at la coupole, in 2001, was when i got sick and pretty much had to stay home for the rest of my trip. i've been convinced that as long as i stay away from mollusks, though, i'll be fine.

the menu had not a trace of english, but melon, jambon, saumon, and riz bismati were pretty clear to me. there were a few words i didn't understand with the salmon dish, but i figured where's the adventure in knowing exactly what you're getting? a quick check on the desserts menu pointed me to the raspberry and chocolate cake that i remember so fondly from 2001.

first off, the melon et jambon was excellent. i think i had it in 2001 as well, but i didn't remember it being so good. usually, canteloupe and watermelon makes my gums itch, but none of what i had in paris did this. i wonder why.

a while later i found out what some of the words i didn't understand with the salmon was. one of them was mussels, and there were some other little things in there that i really couldn't identify. it didn't matter, i wasn't eating them. the salmon and rice were fine, but by this point i was distracted with anticipation for dessert. it arrived and was exactly what i wanted. it only came with three raspberries, but they were so ripe and delicious that it was better than the whole plate at le train bleu.

it was pretty late and i had to get up early to go to the airport, so i didn't stop at le select on my way to the metro for one final trip to the hotel.

stumbling upon la coupole was the perfect way to end my trip. after a rough couple of days, i really enjoyed my last two nights in paris. hopefully i'll get to go back soon, as phil hasn't been and i think he would really like it.

posted by jacob around June 10, 2005

June 16, 2005
cnn is a metaphor for the onion

"I was so distraught, I needed some way to find an artistic response," he told the Chicago Sun-Times. Now, he says he sees falling as a metaphor for life.

...

"What kind of a sick individual is he? Tell him to go jump off the Empire State Building and see how it feels," Rosemarie Giallombardo, whose son Paul Salvio died in the terrorist attack, told the (New York) Daily News. "He's an artist? Go paint a bowl of fruit or something."

-- cnn

i guess he was so distraught that he slipped into a coma for three and a half years. what's he going to do when he hears about iraq?

posted by jacob around June 16, 2005

June 21, 2005
is this a... what day is this?

os x is kind of like a crappy radio station; a mix of 70's (bsd), 80's (mac os), 90's (NeXT), and today.

posted by jacob around June 21, 2005