Didnt work

Well my optimism was not rewarded. The flight was delayed, then they changed the plane, then they fixed a light on the plane, then they fixed some seats, then they loaded everyone, then they told the four standby passengers there were no seats. I am back in the hotel, this time without any luggage, no change of clothes no chargers, no nothing.

Great, off to sleep then :) Keep watching for updates....

More delays

I am sitting at Newark airport, which it has to be said is a relatively nice airport, at 9:16PM waiting on a flight which was supposed to leave at 8:55, and is now scheduled for 10:45.

Apparently the incoming plane has some sort of mechanical problem, and they have to find us a new plane. I can really see this being cancelled again, and even if it does go, I don't have a confirmed ticket. I should have just stayed at the hotel, and waited for my confirmed seat tomorrow night...

Stuck in NY

Due to landing at the wrong airport and having our flight cancelled, we had to fly to Newark today, where we had a 9 hour stopover.

The other guy decided that the flight tonight was too chancy, and he booked into a hotel to wait for his confirmed ticket tomorrow night.

I think I will give the flight tonight a try. The eternal optimist.

To kill the 5 hours in the afternoon we caught the train at the Penn Station to 34th Street in Manhattan. There were no plans, other than to get off the train and start walking. So we did, and it was pretty cool with zillions of huge high-rise buildings. Then we found ourselves standing outside the Empire State Building, which it has to be said is pretty big.

So we decided to take the tour, and some guy persuaded us to do some combined ticket thing that would get us expedited past the queues (or lines as they call them here) and also on some extra stuff. The queue jumping was great, we must have saved at least an hour (the queue was huge). The extra stuff turned out to be a video, which to be honest was interesting and informative.

Then it was into the elevator for the 82 flight ascent. Normally elevators count in 1's, but this one counted in 10's! It was pretty fast at taking us up, before the final 6 floor ascent to the roof. We decided to jump the elevator queue again, and use the stairs, which seemed like a good idea for the first two of the six floors.

Anyway, it was pretty cool. Although it was a bit misty I could still see for miles, but the weirdest thing was the noise. It was just like a loud static rumble, like you get from a TV, except more bass. Very weird, but cool.

... to Miami

Today we had no meetings, so it was just some time to send a few emails, and a conference call to dial into. After that it was off to the airport with my customary detours.

We stayed around Miami, so we were never too far from the airport, just in case. First stop was Miami Beach. Now, you have to understand that what we call a beach, like at Castlerock, is not a "Beach" in the US. Miami Beach is a town, or area, and yes, somewhere there is a beach too.

We arrived at Miami Beach, and to be honest, it just looked as bland as any other part of Florida, so we didn't even make it to the East coast real 'beach'.

Instead we went further South to Cape Florida State Park, on an island (or "key") called Key Biscayne.

This turned out to be smaller, and hence a lot less time consuming than we had expected, which was great. Unfortunately the lighthouse which had drawn me to this island was closed, although in the heat I don't think I could have managed to climb it anyhow. Nevertheless we managed to get a nice view of it from the beach, and IIRC we also spotted some nice birds ;)

On the way out of the park we noticed a sign for the curiously named "no name harbour". Needless to say, we just had to satisfy our curiousity, and see what features would cause a harbour to be christened "no name." Turns out its just so bland, that that was probably all they could come up with.

West again - in daylight

After the potentially cool place I found last night I thought I would make a concerted effort to get out there before sunset (around 8:30 in Florida). I managed to make it out in good time, to see that there was a park area, where there seemed to be a lot of private parties with boats who would go out fishing for the day.

It was a pretty cool place, obviously popular with the locals, and an epic setting on the edge of the glades.

I had studied the maps last night, and discovered that the road didn't actually stop completely, but in fact changed into a dirt track, and continued to a real road again after a few miles. Being the sort of person to try stuff, I had it in mind to have a go along this track, you know, just for fun. I was disappointed to find a big yellow barrier there to stop me :(

Anyway, I'd paid my $5 to get into the car park, and so I stayed and got a few shots of the sunset. Another cool evening. I do enjoy a good sunset.

Going West

Having tried, and exausted East, I thought I could give West a go. Unfortunately tonight work lasted longer than the daylight, so it was West in the dark. Before I travelled this time, knowing I probably wouldn't have the time to go hundreds of miles, I looked to see where I could go with relatively easy reach. Turns out there are a few places where roads go into the 'glades, and come to a dead end - so I tried one of those!

I went out a road called "Lox Road" which was perfectly straight for about 6 miles. Upon entering the road I could see a flashing light, which seemed close, but as I travelled towards it, it became clear that I was not close. After 6 miles I could make out a "Road Ends" sign, which of course I continued on past.

It seemed that there was dirt track beyond it but darkness and the thought of alligators disuaded me from going any further. So I just took a couple of long exposure shots, and went back to the hotel.

Going East

Tonight, after a long difficult day, I took the hire care and headed East, towards the coast. I didn't really expect to see anything new as I did some extensive coastal driving last time I was here on business. But I stumbled upon a pretty cool wooden pier at Deerfield Beach. So I duly paid my $1, and made my way out onto the pier where there were loads of folks fishing. I managed to see a guy reeling in a fish he caught. Pretty cool.

I also managed to see a fairly decent sunset. A grand evening in all.

Travel, and delays

Once again I set off for Florida today for more customer meetings. This week could prove to be another hectic one, with less time for sightseeing, but I'll try and squeeze a few sights in...

Today we had a relatively timely, quick, and painless flight from Belfast to Newark, apart from the usual disgracefully loud and messy N Ireland crowd.

I had risked booking a quick change at Newark, but upon arrival at Newark I discovered my flight would be delayed. This was also awkward because a colleague was going to pick me up from Ft Lauderdale.

Fortunately (?) his flight was delayed too, so he arrived at the terminal with the hire car just as I had picked up my luggage! Great timing! All worked out in the end. Me sitting down to a big steak burger at 2am (9pm local time). Madness.

Automating Clearcase

Playing around a bit with clearcase tonight. We will shortly be trying to use rsync to keep a remote clearcase instance up-to-date with our code. This will require quite a fudge on our part as far as I can see, but will still be preferable to using clearcase over a slow link.

The following are some commands, which I will no doubt be integrating into a nice automated script shortly. They do all the things I need to do - add view private files and directories to clearcase, upversion files that have changed, or back out files that are the same. The only thing I haven't got yet is automated removal of files / directories, but I suspect this will be the job of the script.

############################################
# mkdir : [view private object]
while(<>)
{
chomp;
print < < TAG;
mv $_ $_.1
cleartool mkdir -nc $_
mv $_.1/* $_
rmdir $_.1
cd $_
TAG
}
############################################
# create a new element
cleartool mkelem -nc -ci _element_name_
############################################
# show view private files
cleartool lsp -other -l
############################################
# show view private and checked out files
cleartool lsp -co
############################################
# list checkouts including directories.
ct lsco -recurse -short
############################################
# checkin or revert if not changed
# (always creates a new version of directory)
ct ci -nc _element_name_ ct unco -rm _element_name_
############################################
# if [checkedout but removed]
cleartool co -nc .
cleartool unco -rm _element_name_
cleartool rm _element_name_
cleartool ci -nc .

XP stops loading at mup.sys

Had a weird problem with a PC - it was all running perfectly normally, then one day wouldn't start. Starting in safe mode printed out all the drivers until it gets to the line ending in mup.sys, apparently something to do with USB drivers.

After that line the screen flashes a couple of times, and the PC reboots. Repeat. Forever.

I spent some time reading of the gazillions of people who have had the same issue. Some have tried changing disks, RAM, PSUs, reinstalling operating system, USB drivers, everything conceivable about the computer.

Then I stumbled on this post:
http://cyberiapc.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=5288&st=15&p=33885&#entry33885 in some random forum. Try "chkdsk". Just before this I had run fixboot, which hadn't really made a difference. chkdsk had to be run with a force, but reported a few errors.

Upon reboot, the machine started normally. Great, thanks OP!!

That's better

Woke up this morning feeling 10 times better. Still not perfect, but not poorly enough to mope around the house. Went to work, and worked almost 12 hours. I'm sure that'll help me recover ;)

Ill

Today I was ill. You might think this is not exactly blog-worthy, but frankly, I don't care. It's good to keep a record of these things. Last time was 13th August 2003 (see http://www.ccso.co.uk/sb/13Aug2003.html)

Got up this morning feeling not great, but thought it was one of those things that would pass by mid morning. But it didn't. I ended up bowed at the great white throne at work (which may I state clearly was cleaner after I was finished...) and heading home sick.

Spent the rest of the day between bed and sofa, not even feeling fit enough to walk, and generally feeling sorry for myself. Watch this space for more exciting installments...

More lawn, last lawn

Having a rather large site, we have put a lot of it into grass. This has been done in several sections, beginning in the summer of 2004 (http://www.ccso.co.uk/garden_blog). Today saw the last section of grass go in (I hope); a little area beside the road. We had originally thought of flowerbed, wall, and a variety of different solutions, but when someone suggested grass, I thought that sounds easy to keep :) So grass it is. Hopefully. It is all nicely seeded, all we have to do is wait for it to grow...