I Has a Sad

Well, shit.

My man Borepatch is shutting down his site-

I can understand not wanting to fire up and run the free ice cream machine every day.
I have the same feelings myself all the time.

His was one of the many that I subscribe to on my RSS feed. And as I was doing some checking, it seems like way too many of my feeds have gone dark. Some were 'meh' and some are missed terribly.
Borepatch will be one of the latter.

Fortunately I have had the pleasure of his company on a couple occasions and plan on continuing this trend as often as I can arrange it.
He's not that far away, and is in a city where I already have familial ties, so I will be in the area now and again, and I will make time to meet up with him as often as our collective schedules permit.
I see many two-wheeled meetings in the future-


The only time a goodbye is painful is when you know you'll never say hello again.
Fortunately for me, this is an 'Until we meet again' situation...
For others in the blogosphere, it may well be a sad goodbye.

Take care BP...


TBG - - ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Bear With Me...

Been trying to get my head above water-
I have several Shanghai stories to share, and an item or three from the DC/ Indy/ Oakland whirlwind...

I'll never get caught up if this morning is an indicator...

Attend me:
Sept 28 - Oct 14 - Shanghai (and an extra night in Chicago)
October 17 - October 23 - Washington DC - Indianapolis - Oakland CA.

And when I walked into the office this morning my man Slaw catches me as I'm talking to Bookkeeping.
Slaw: "Hey... You got any plans for the weekend?"
YT: "No...."
S: "I need help. Can you make a quick trip to Malaysia?"

Holy crap.

So...
6:00pm - Jax - JFK
JFK to Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi to Kuala Lumpur.

I'll give the hand-carried case of correct equipment to the tech (who took the WRONG equipment with him initially), headslap him, and get back on the plane and head home.
Back Tuesday.

FML

TBG

Shanghai Surprise

As always- Shanghai is a challenge.

Getting there is a 20 hour nightmare, and once on the ground, the CBD is hell-and-gone from the airport in PuDong.
Count on at least an hour, one-way.

But once you're in your humble abode, things get better.
Or, at least you hope they will.

I was prepared to rise to challenges this year, but there was one big change that caused me a good bit of inconvenience-
Google (and Google products) are strictly forbidden behind the Great Firewall...
There are work-arounds, but every Interweb connection goes through filtering and censorship that was pretty effective.
(VPNs are usable, but being the cheap  bastard I am, I won't spring for paid service, and since I'm on vacation I couldn't (ethically) use the company VPN)

Case in point- any website that was on the whitelist would still load slowly.
and if there was any Google APIs (like AdSense) those segments would stall the page load or just hang the process entirely.
A monumental pain in the ass, really.

This was new for this year and it was really bad. I was for all intents and purposes incommunicado for most of the trip.
I did post a few Instagram photos and did a couple tweets, but as a rule, I was too busy to do much blogging even if connectivity was good.

TBG- ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Light Blogging

This weekend was the Perfect Child's 21st birthday.

Big milestone calls for big celebration.

Saturday night saw a gathering of celebrants come from as far away as NYC and Philly, to about 25 or so locals. The Estrogen Palace was awash in adult libations and drinking games...
Rousing games of Quarters, beer pong, flip cup, and I think Truth or Dare since one of the Older Crowd who shall remain nameless  was seen topless in the game room.
(Uncle Jay's beverage of choice- Angry Balls - Angry Orchard Cider and Fireball cinnamon whiskey. Wow.)
At Midnight we had to go to Pete's Bar in Neptune Beach to officially get "carded" and imbibe (legally).
Statistics for the house party are a little fuzzy-
6 or 7 12 packs of assorted beers, a keg of Mich Ultra (aka- sex on the beach beer- f'ing near water), 2 bottles of good vodka and a liter of Cuervo silver; handles of rum, Fireball, Cuervo gold, and a case of various wines.

Suffice to say, the PC was doing the technicolor yawn at about 3am.

Sunday found us all (YT, TWWKMT, Peej, Pete, Roberto, Britt) in St Augustine at a bed and breakfast, recovering from Saturday, the heading out to a big late lunch and a 9 location pub crawl... Barleys Irish, George & Dragon, Columbia, Colonial Tap House, Pizza Time, St George Tavern, Sangria's, White Lion, and an outdoor bar with no name...
Good times- and no worshiping the porcelain god this time.

Now back to real life- airport runs for visitors, house cleanup, and for me, conference calls and prep for Singapore.
Life is good.

Never Fear...

Not to worry, Constant Readers...



No worries- just busy as hell.

TBG- ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Remiss In My Obligations to the Constant Readers

I know- I've been slacking.

I've been dealing with hardware and staff issues-
Getting hardware installed and getting our hard-working staff to their venues and getting them oriented- pointing out the various flora (look- bare trees) and fauna (look- snipers in that blind up on the hill) as we make our way to the sites.

We did get out one evening and I was able to enjoy my favorite local specialty-
Khachapuri-

Great googly moogly it was good!
The other kids at the table had the lamb shislek and I had a little bowl of lobio...
Tasty.

A few more pics from around the venues...


Olympic Dogs-
A few of the strays around the Olympic Park.


SpongeMark sends a little reminder in Engrish about not flushing bog paper in the hotel bathrooms.


And they've started gluing down the manhole covers.
(At least the ones that are still intact.)

Let's see- Some of the security forces that are on-station here in Sochi.
The Freddy Kruger Ninja Squad is here...


The high-stepping Radio City Snow Commandos


I'm not sure who these guys are, but I just suggest staying in your hotel room after dark. You don't want to run across these guys near an open manhole cover...

TBG- ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Happy Belated New Years

I've been so busy I've been letting the scheduled post autopilot handle my content the last few days... So Happy New Year everyone...
(Except our friends that don't celebrate the new year at this time on the calendar. Chinese new year is on Jan 31, and Jewish new year was back in September, so they are good to go.)
But I did want to post about the fireworks here is Sydney...

They (Sydnians? Sydneyites?) are very pumped that they are the first big city to celebrate the New Year due to the fact that they are located so far east on this side of the International Date Line.
Folks in Brisbane have them beat by a few degrees, but since Sydney observes Daylight Savings Time (a/k/a screw-with-your-head-twice-a-year-time) and Brizzy doesn't, they get first crack at the midnight stroke.

And they do make quite a party of it.

I avoid downtown like the plague- I've heard tales- plus this year they are playing the Knockout game with gusto... There are several people in comas as we speak from this BS, so I just avoid all the areas that this crap is likely to happen.

As for the fireworks:
Wow.


Speaking of 'wow', today's been a roaster...
38 C (right at 100 F) at 3 today- just ahead of the storm front.
Its cooled down to 30c (86F) now.

I'm hoping for a nice rain shower to roll through this afternoon or evening.




TBG- ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Incommunicado

Been kinda quiet 'round here, eh?

Been wondering why?


Because we were On the Beach...


Of course, during the 4 days we were on-island, it was never this quiet...
Once we were back on the boat heading for Cayo Hueso, it was a much more peaceful place again...
After all - 8 hard-drinking campers can only endure so much peace-and-quiet before the urge to break something overpowers one of them...
Then all bets are off.

I can happily report that all clothes stayed on for the majority of this trip...

A more detail AAR is coming anon. Stay tuned.

TBG- ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Моё судно на воздушной подушке полно угрей

I know- I'm slacking.

I'm just slacking on the website...
I've actually been busier than a vibrator in a women's prison here in Kazan.

Long days, and really short nights and some really redicking fuckulous conditions that I will expound upon later.

I can tell you that this is a place where you will find quite a bit of makeshift repairs and expediencies...

(Click for hugeness)
This widowmaker was a winner we found during setup...
Sean was moving one of our air conditioners and it almost bit him.

Another excellent example was a delivery UTE that arrived at the site when we were heading out one evening...

(click for bigness)
Yeah- that's the bottom of a water bottle, cut off and slapped over the neck of the fuel filler.
Oooo, I feel so safe in this place...

On a more festive note, we were celebrating the fact that we got moved to a hew hotel last night... There was a small tent serving beer and some kind of meat on a stick (we have found it's better not to ask) next to the new hotel.
We has just ordered up a round of drinks and put in our dinner order when an older gent at the table next to me leaned over and started to try to talk to me...
Through really broken Engrish, slurred Russian and hand gestures, he challenged me to an arm wrestling match.
Oh Ghod.
That last time this happened was in '97 in Miami during the Sony-Ericsson when we were arm wrestling at Hooters and broke one of their tables and were asked (nicely) to leave.
When I picked up the waitress and threw her over my shoulder and headed for the door, the "nice" demeanor of the management evaporated and there were police involved.
So, needless to say, I was hesitant to agree to this dude's request.
I had visions of the rather flimsy table getting destroyed and getting arrested for violence & mayhem, or the off chance that this guys was some kind of Tatarstan Arm-Wrestling savant and he knows some esoteric elbow-fu and could kick my ass blindfolded.
More likely, it would go the other way I wind up hurting him and waking up in a Gulag the next morning because I snapped some local politician's father's arm.

Trying to avoid this...

However...
Egged on by the entire bar, we did engage in one round of Bras de Fer...

Literally, the entire place was cheering (for him, I'm pretty sure), and the end result did not result in injury, damage or even hurt feelings...

Yeah, I beat him like a rented mule. Just because he's a drunk old guy, I'm still a benevolent and patriotic American and I don't care if it harelips the Pope, the Roosky is going down.
'Merica! Fuck Yeah!

And, of course, to the winner belongs the spoils.
Sometimes it's good to be The Big Guy...

TBG- ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Dearth of Freee Ice Cream

I got nothing today.

How about some "awwww"... Because Black Labs rock.

"I'm Batman!"


TBG- ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE