SDWest Day 5: Winding Down with Food

Well the last day is always the hardest and poorest choices. Sitting here in the last session time hoping for a useful talk on Managing Software Debt. We will see.

We ate at the Mall's foodcourt. Lots of Asian food to choose from along with Mexican. We went to find Joann some cold remedies which we found at a Walgreens finally. Seems she now has David's cold. No telling if Steve and I will get it too now. Oh well. All part of the business trip I guess.

I took a forty minute walk at lunch and saw lots of mallards and cranes. Nice walking paths here in Santa Clara/San Jose.

We will drive up to San Ramon (~27 miles) to try a Texas BBQ place called The Back Forty. The original place is up the road another 10 miles so we will stop short at a newer one. It is basically up the road toward the Livermore route. A review will be forthcoming over on the Bubbaqlog hopefully tomorrow or the next day.

I love my girls this much!!!!!!!!!!

SDWest Day 4: Down The Stretch

We have noticed that the last days of SDWest always seem to have less big name speakers and fewer titles of interest. But that is good in away since it helps us narrow down what we want to go see. Finding one speaker every one hour and one-half is good enough.

Nothing notable to report. Lunch was at an In-N-Out burger. The menu has four food items... hamburger, cheeseburger, double-meat & double cheese burger, and fries. And drinks are a minimum too. When we arrived they were on number 54 and we were 72. It took us less than five minutes to get our food. Luckily we found a table big enough for all three of us...luck? Well Joann jump on it when it opened about the time we got our food. When we left they had already went around the number counter past 99 and were back on 50-something. The place was packed and busy. They crank out the food. It is pretty good too. Except for a special sauce a lot like the Special Sauce on a BigMac. Turns out K.T. and Jon Dahl really like this burger joint.

The cardinal picture was just to add some color to this post. I found it online and it was free.

Well time to start another day. I miss and love my girls. See you in one more sleep...God willing and the creek don't rise. :) This Much!!!!!!!!!!!!

SDWest Day 3: Fun Day

Well Day Three was a bit slower. Only hit two presentations out of four but went for a couple of walks and got to visit with Steve and Joann a good bit. One talk was on how folks have succeeded with Agile. It was ok but nothing new to report. The other was a good talk by Dewhurst on C++ idioms.

I worked on making examples of how we use the boost library to design our software. Sorta how we design things.

We decided to eat at Olive Garden and had soup and salad. Yummmy.

I picked up a book yesterday hear at the conference called "Presentationyen." It is very interesting and exciting to think about doing better presentation which at the lab we really need.

No new picture today.

SDWest Day 2: A Better Day

The 2nd Day of SDWest was a bit better than the first. My hip is better but only because I did not run on it in the morning. The two tutorials I went to were actually pretty good. Reminders of good ways to write software in any language. Also one polished up a topic on Agile planning that I have been at a loss on....User Stories. Now just how to apply them is the question.

For lunch Steve and I did our usual tradition, on travel, of eating at a Wienerschnitzel (The Der). Joann excitedly came along with us since she claims to have never had a chili-dog before. Only a hotdog with catsup is all. It was Derlicious. She may be hooked. :)

We found (thank you Mr. GPS) a small street in downtown Sunnyvale that had a ton of cafes and restaurants. It seemed like a popular spot in the middle of nowhere. We ate at an Indian place (Tumeric) and the food was good. We tried one of those blossom ball things (a samosa) that is is posted here. It was good but did not have much punch. Then after dinner we found a new/used bookstore next door to browse.

Catching Up on Things

Palm Sunday Girls












When it rains/snows outside then you slide inside.










Carlsbad Entrance









Going In









Looking Back Out and Up. See the little person near the top.








Neat Formation.








Family photo in the dark. Had to edit it to see us well.










Resting at the Bottom.









Resting at the Top.










Em. She gets her braces off at the end of May.








ALittleBit helping Mom.

One England Travel Event I Forgot...Don King

While sitting in the Houston airport at our departure gate on the way home from England I heard someone say loudly something like Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas or something. Being it was the day after Thanksgiving no surprise but then I slowly turned my head to see who it was. And there on one of the carts that carries folks from one gate to the next and what not was Don King the boxing promoter. He was waving at folks and saying Happy Holidays or something. I forget what he said now because at this point I was so tired from our trip that I had even forgot I saw him. The girls were in the bathroom and missed the sighting.

I only remember last night because I was watching old boxing clips on ESPN and saw Don King. Then I said hey I forgot I saw him in Houston airport.

Oxford - Christ Church

Well we (The Adamses that is) got up a tad late today (Thursday). Steve got up feeling a bit better but a trip to the coast was not in order today. After slacking for a few hours Steve and I finally got around to visiting the Dunedin Hospital here for my blood tests. We found the place with little trouble and found it to be in a very beautiful old Victorian-like house. After a bit of resistance they said they could take my blood and my money (on credit card) and do the testing for my doctor to look at for me and send me dosage adjustments on my rat poison. They were very friendly but they had to actually draw blood from by arm since they do not have the testing equipment local. They either called or faxed the results to my doctor who told me I need to reduce my dosage since my ratio was high. High meaning my blood was too thin. I will need to do one in a week. I will try to do it on Wed so the results can be gotten back to the doctor on a non-holiday. At least that is my plan.

So after that we loaded up and went to Oxford which is about 40 miles away. It was a fun trip because Gwen and I had fun trying to communicate about the navigation in Oxford and all the roundabouts. At one point we are driving in Oxford proper and Elizabeth has been asleep. We pull up to a light and are waiting for it to change to orange then green (yes they use a christmas race track like light signal to get you going.) We are looking around the street and notice a bakery called Queen's Bakery. Just at that moment Elizabeth wakes up and without missing a beat points at the bakery and says, "I want to eat there." Which sends up laughing since she seems to always be hungry lately then the first words out of her mouth upon waking up is that she is hungry. :)

We finally drive thru the city center which turns out to be off limits to private cars during daytime hours but since we did not know this then we were driving right thru it. We finally find a parking lot to pull into and started walking back to the center. Gwen finds the Christ Church College Memorial Lawn which part of Oxford University and we proceed to walk thru it. We find the entrance for visitors in the old College and pay admittance and starting taking a self tour of the school. Of course we find the College shop almost immediately and get a few postcards and a spoon for Emily. Then on to the Christ Church Cathedral where we saw an old and beautiful church. Turns out that John Wesley (Methodist) was ordained in this Cathedral. After looking around a good bit we headed out for more stuff to see.

We went to the Great Hall (dining hall). They advertised that it was the hall where Harry Potter sat under the hat to find out his fate but when talking to the guy who was stationed there that they wanted to film it there but one of the restrictions to do so was that they could not interrupt the school which means no interrupting the meals of the students. So they went off and built a set that looked just like it for six million dollars (pounds I forget.) It was big and long and had the long tables set for dinner. There were alot of portrait on the wall of folks who had attended the College. One was Lewis Carroll and another was William Penn. I found William Pitt also.

Then we found our way back to the car and headed home. This was around five o'clock and we battled busy roundabouts again on our way home. Stopped at McD on the way into Reading for food for the kids. April and Steve had some nice Indian food ready for us to eat too. It was yummy. I do enjoy Indian food which I have not had since leaving Lubbock back in 1994 when we visited an Indian restaurant in Lubbock. When we moved to Santa Fe I was told that it had one of the best Indian food restaurants in the country. I guess the Nolen's and myself..maybe Gwen will have to visit it now.

Well it is late and we need to head to bed.