Thursday, January 19, 2006

Nervous Day

Today hasn't started well. I got up at 8.20 which is 50 minutes later than I wanted, managed to get my self sorted and to work by 9 SO not that bad. In the frantic rush however I left my keycard to the hotel room on the desk in the room. So I'm locked out. I'll have to go and talk to whoevers on duty at the main desk. They usually only appear to have one person on so I don't know how they would deal with it. Hopefully it won't be a problem.

Yesterday was productive. Had Teriyaki for lunch. Wrote lots of code that doesn't work very well we've found. So it's also given me plenty to do today. I stayed in the office with three other people till 9pm last night. The option was there to stay later but I was kinda drained and I had reached a nice stopping point that I could pick up easily today. I will require coffee however.

Oh, found a new thing in America. A place called "Jamba Juice". It sells smoothies basically, but they're all designed to keep you fit, healthy and full of energy. Which is perfect when in a all-evening programming binge. I went in with Dave who thought I'd been there before, so after he ordered and went to sit and wait, I was left at the counter completely confabulated with the "menu". They appeared to have colour coded the teas, shakes and smoothies, and a collections of 'boosts'. I was already well over my head so I told the girl behind the till I had no idea what this place was. So she very kindly came out from behind her till and offered to guide me through the menu. Now what she did was what the Americans call explanation, and what I call "Reading The Menu Outloud". So with no further information after my short degree in Smoothies, I chose the Strawberry Nirvana (hey, it's Seattle), in an 'original' size cup (20 fl.oz.!!) with an 'Energy Booster' which included but not limited to Gingseng, Amphetimines, Grog and the tears of a thousand humming birds. Not bad for $5. It took about an hour to drink, tasted like a liquid hubba bubba, and had the texture and apperance of something you would insulate your roof with but I nearly ran back in there to buy another when I finished that one. So I have a feeling that'll be my refuge from now on.

Almost got ran over today. Waited patiently for my white man to come up, began to cross, being careful to watch for stoopid drivers and bingo I found one. This j***t***g***s**o turned left in front of me. So he was facing me when I was crossing, he pulled out in to the intersection through a red light, accelerated to avoid an on coming car and almost went over my toes as he tried to stay on the right side of the road. It was a big ford pick up too so I would have been toast if he'd hit me. So I did what anyone would do at 8.50am who hadnt had breakfast, tea or coffee and waved my arms and looked at him with an angry expression. That ought to make him think twice.

I will be mostly programming today, so I may be here all night. The good part is that it's late enough in the week to start drinking again (yay) but the bad news is I'll have to work way in to the evening. I'm starving already so I may have to try what I planned to do yesterday and go and buy sandwich material. Meh, I'll see how it goes.

I'll let you know if I get back in my room.

-Outie.

PS. Thanks to Annabel, you won't be working today/tomorrow
http://www.xfm.co.uk/Article.asp?id=154331