A Message from position 57.55.08S, 064.58.11W

After nothing for a few days, I was pleased to get a message this morning from Pam, onboard the Explorer II. Here are some pertinent excerpts:

Thank you for the “Welcome aboard” email. It was hand delivered in an air mail envelope when I arrived.

My internal clock has no clue about the day or time. I decided to sleep until I was ready to get up around 10:30 ship’s time.

Here we are, in the middle of the Atlantic/Pacific coming up to the convergence. I already feel it in my being, not in a sea sick way, just a constant reminder that these 2 oceans have met. The captain referred to this as small swells. Kinda nice being lulled to sleep last night.

The room is comfy. Again I took pics before making a mess of it. The curtains are tilting about 15degrees. Didn’t try showering today. I’ve used the tub to anchor loose things. Okay, we’re really heaving now….

I bought 1 hr of internet time ($27US) which I’ll use for the next 10 days onboard. Oh, how I wish I could send you some pics. There’s a very happy one of me as we head thru the Beagle Channel. I’ve met a picture taking buddy, a business analyst from Chicago. She wants a pic of her in her U of I sweatshirt with a penguin for her alumni mag. We are getting to know each other’s cameras as well as our own for such documentary shots.

Today there were several albatross sightings. Since I don’t know exactly what they look like I’m not sure I could claim seeing them. There are some gull type birds following the ship’s wake. Long wings but smaller bodies than all the seagulls we see at Granville Mkt.

I’ve saved this msg as a draft and now will make my way to the library to mail it. The Library has public terminals and WiFi.

It sounds like pretty rough seas to me. It’s a good thing she took some Bonine (like Dramamine, but with less drowsiness) with her, just in case it gets any rockier.

As near as I can figure out, here’s where that Longitude and Latitude position is (roughly) on Google Maps (I think it’s the white dot at the centre of the map):

Off She Goes

On Monday, Pam and I drove down to Seattle, where we stayed at the Raddison hotel, by the entrance to the airport. She slept well, despite more than the usual amount of ‘travel butterflies’. Given that she was headed to Antarctica, I can imagine why there might be some of those.

We said our good-byes Tuesday morning by the airport loading zone (as shown above). I didn’t hear from her during her layover in Los Angeles, but got an email on Wednesday morning from her that explained why:

“I was quite nervous at that point, in LAX. The Seattle leg was a little delayed but the distance between domestic and international terminals was unmarked. I didn’t know how far away it was. The airport is being reno’d and you had to walk outside to get to the Int’l terminal. How odd for a city that only drives.”

The next photos she put on Flickr are of her hotel in Santiago, Chile. It certainly looks luxurious, and I think it would make a nice destination in and of itself.

Our Jeweler on the Lam

When I proposed to Pam, I had already gotten a ring at Alpha Omega Jewelers in Cambridge. It was a small shop in Harvard Square, family run, with not spectacularly high or low prices. In the years since then, we used them for not only our wedding rings, but other bits of jewelry.

So, I was not without a fair amount of shock when I read this headline on the web site boston.com:
Alpha Omega liquidation sale set to start tomorrow

What was even more shocking was why they were liquidating our old family jeweler:

The investment consortium that bought the assets of Alpha Omega Jewelers in a bankruptcy court-approved sale said that the liquidation sale of the chain’s inventory will begin at its four stores tomorrow.

Everything must be sold before Ross-Simons, a Rhode Island-based chain, assumes the leases of Alpha Omega stores at Natick Collection and the Prudential Center in Boston, and items will be discounted to ensure fast sales, the consortium said.

The chain’s other two stores are located in Harvard Square and at the Burlington Mall.

According to stories in the Globe data base, Alpha Omega Jewelers filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code last month. The filing came after owner Raman Handa unexpectedly left the country with his wife, son, and daughter, prompting the company’s bank to seize Alpha Omega assets and temporarily close its stores just before Christmas.

That’s right, they were going bankrupt because the owner fled the country with his family. Suddenly my mind filled with all the plots of Jewel heists, with the thieves heading for Mexico, having deposited some of their misbegotten wealth in a Swiss Bank Account…

And to think I was served by Mr. or Mrs. Handa (I never learned their names, nor do I remember them particularly well), who might have been planning their disappearances for years!

Or perhaps it was something less glamorous and far more depressing, like mounting debts and “a threat to himself or a member of his family”.

It’s all a Blur

First, some Fun Geekery
Before the ‘official’ start of this post, here’s a neat picture of what this blog looks like if you bring it up in the iPhone’s Safari browser:

Thanks to John Biehler for this screenshot from his iPhone. I got the plugin for WordPress that formats the postings properly for the device, and I have to say it looks like it works really well. Lets hope that I’ll be looking at a similar view soon (more about my imminent iPhone in Canada as it gets closer to a reality).

Recent Past and Near Future
The days really do seem to be going by with increasing speed, with Pam’s departure for the ‘Great White South’ coming sooner with each passing day. She leaves for Seattle, flies to Los Angeles, Santiago and Ushuaia (Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina) and then boards the ship with the Antarctic Peninsula as it’s destination the second week of February. Tomorrow, being the first day of February, really does feel a whole lot closer to the start of that journey for both of us (and she had a big grin on her face this morning as she went through many of her clothes and other equipment that she’ll be taking with her, as well as counting Chilean and Argentinean Pesos for her brief stops in those countries).

I’m also busy with many activities besides work. In fact, the past 2 weeks have had me out in the evenings several times, including attending the Launch Party 3 at the Lamplighter for Strutta, Sun, Techvibes, and Layer7 the first Blogger Meetup of the new Year (See Jan Karlsbjerg’s excellent write-up), as well as some dinners out with Pam at some restaurants that we’re trying out because of Dine Out Vancouver, including ( Aqua Riva by the Coal Harbour Waterfront, Bistro Pastis in Kitsilano, and tomorrow night, the Goldfish Pacific Kitchen in Yaletown) which goes on for a few more days). In addition, the holiday gift that Pam had gotten me, an XO OLPC (One Laptop Per Child Laptop) arrived, and I’ve been playing with this toy a bit as well - indeed the photo with me in the Blogger Meetup shows it off. I hope to be able to use it when the weather gets a bit better, as a way to connect to our Internet router from the park nearby our building to surf the net and post to this blog in the open air, a sort of hi-tech+nature goal I’ve had for some time. I’ll try and post the pictures from the unboxing of this charming piece of technology soon.

Before Pam leaves, it looks like I’ll be doing another one of those working weekends at IBM. Well, at least this time it won’t be during a bad snowstorm. Or it shouldn’t, despite the fact that we’ve been getting an awful lot of snow lately for this area (including enough to force many to work remotely earlier this week). While she’s gone, I’ll be attending my third Northern Voice, which will keep me busy enough while she’s exploring the Antarctic ice floes…

Back from Baltimore, and a Dubious Honour

Welcome to 2008!

We’re back from an extended Holiday Season visit to my brother and his family, my parents, and some social calls on both sides of the continent. Highlights included seeing my niece dance in the Seattle Ballet’s Nutcracker for the second year, and a Roast Goose New Year’s Day dinner with my parents in Baltimore (including Spaetzle, Green Beans, and Red Cabbage - the theme was clearly German Cuisine). I’d not had roast goose before, and it is a treat, particularly if you like ‘dark’ meat. Even the breast meat on this bird is dark!

Pam was able to swing north to Massachusetts for a few days to visit with her brother and his family, while I helped my Dad upgrade to Leopard. A good thing, too, as his upgrade was just as difficult as mine (once again taking 3 attempts, and ending up with a call that went to 2 Apple Tech Support Reps and ultimately required a clean install, as well as us manually installing all applications and moving all of his email accounts, documents, calendars and address book entries - just as I had to).

The trip to the States was not without some culture shock (it always hits me, despite my best efforts to prepare for the differences). On our flights there, my seat companions were constantly reading Bibles. On the way back (with a stop in Cincinnati, where I was able to get some Cincinnati Chili at the food court, a delicacy of my undergrad years), we were amazed at the throngs of soldiers everywhere, with make-shift lounges set up in all of the airports we were in. Religion and the Military: not a great combination for me.

I’m still recovering from a nasty cold that I caught while away (which unfortunately, my father also caught and in his case it has since turned into Flu). Work starts up, but for me it’s just a week as the following week I’ll be in San Francisco for MacWorld Expo.

Speaking of things in Tech, my brother alerted me to a somewhat puzzling honour for our family:

Drucker : next gen Windows Mobile smartphone from Palm
January 6, 2008 – 11:22 am

Now that all of Palm’s flagship Treo 750 smartphones have been upgraded to Windows Mobile 6, it’s now time to look forward to 6.1. Engadget reports that the next high end Windows Mobile phone from Palm is code-named “Drucker”. Here’s what we know so far about Drucker:

• GSM/EDGE/HSDPA
• runs Windows Mobile 6.1
• 2 Megapixel camera
• 1500mAh battery
• 320×320 screen
• Bluetooth

Drucker, which will be a replacement for the Treo 750v, will be the first smartphone from Palm that supports WiFi. It’s also the first to match current Palm OS-based smartphones in terms of screen resolution. Drucker is expected to have a retail price of £270 (about US$534), and will probably be available first for Vodafone.

I have nothing to do with this phone, and frankly, I’d probably never buy a phone using Windows Mobile. I wish they had at least code-named the Palm OS phone with our last name, but then again, these days, if it’s not an iPhone, I’m not all that interested. I’m less and less satisfied with my frequently-crashing Treo, and I doubt if a new one is in my future. I’ve been a Palm user for perhaps 12-15 years but it’s clearly time to move on if the best they can do is to use Windows and code-name the device after our clan. (Heh).