Moving Offices

Sartory Coffee
Originally uploaded by /k.

Over the past year, I have used the local It's A Grind as my office away from home. While it has served with distinction, I had chosen it mostly because there wasn't anything else available. However, in the last three months everything has changed; Three new coffeeshops have opened in the greater EDH/Folsom area. There is now a Starbucks that I can almost see from my house, a Peet's (Bay Area favorite) and an independent coffee shop in EDH. The independent shop, Sartory Coffee, has emerged as the early frontrunner for a share of my mobile office coffee drinking. Sporting slightly higher quality coffee than Starbucks or It's A Grind (but probably not Peet's), Sartory breaks new ground by serving beer and wine. This is obviously a huge plus. They are open outrageous hours (nights until 11:30 PM). Of course, they have free internet (I'm posting from it now). And finally, they show movies on Monday night. Shelley and I caught part of Chocolat last night.

Lab Side Car

Lab Side Car
Originally uploaded by /k.

These may be the happiest Labrador Retrievers in the entire world.

Bridge Out

Bridge Out
Originally uploaded by /k.

So my very brief and slightly illegal trip to Venezuela is coming to a close. Jorge and I got up at the crack of dawn (really quite before the crack) to catch out 9:30 AM flight. Why did we get up at 4:30 AM to catch our 9:30 AM flight ? Well, it seems that the Venezuelians had a small engineering issue about their main bridge on the highway that goes to Caracas Intl airport. Appartently, it fell into the water. This photo shows were the bridge used to be. While they are working double time on building a new one, travelers are enduring 2+ hour drives to the airport. Of course, this is better than when the bridge first collapsed. I guess the old detour was 6 hours.

Caracas Skyline

Caracas Skyline
Originally uploaded by /k.

Finally made it to my hotel in Caracas around midnight last night. The normal shenningans happened on my flight out: AA cancelled my morning flight and threatened to strand me in Dallas again, then Delta wanted to kick me off their flight in Atlanta when I was rebooked. Oh, and possibly having a visa violation in Venezuela. Oh well, I'm here for the week and it seems like a good time. Climate and geography seems a lot like Colombia (they were once the same country) and I haven't gotten any "Yankee go home" comments from Hugo's supporters, so I think I might like it here. Of course, all of this could just be the Brahma talking.

Q'Bole Cinco de Mayo

Q'Bole Cinco de Mayo
Originally uploaded by /k.

Just to illustrate Kelly's earlier report on the Cinco de Mayo shennanigans (or would that be trucos ?), I submit this photographic evidence. Look closely at the young lady in the right of the frame. No, they weren't giving out Jose Cuervo mini-skirts. Yes, she was wearing the Jose Cuervo sombrero around her waist. At 6 PM. I assume that she ended up being taken home in this. And she wasn't even one of the drunk ones.

Rattlesnakes and Bobcats

Bobcat
Originally uploaded by /k.

Hmmm . . . this is some sage advice about the dangers of the great outdoors: bare naked in orangevale: Rattlesnake Training. I think that the only things that I could add to it would be (a) certainly don't stop and get a closeup of the rattlesnakes while they are sunning themselves and (b) the same holds true for bobcats. They may be cute when they are holed up in a tree but don't not under any circumstances stop and make them pose for a picture.

Upgraded Laptop

So I took the plunge and updated my laptop to Ubuntu 06.06 beta 2 tonight. Overall, not too bad of an experience. Just two major problems and both of them I have had before. The first, and most annoying, was the loss of my trackpad configuration. It lost it's tap click setting and was clicking on everything in sight due to my thumb-dragging. After figuring out that I needed the evdev module loaded to get the Xorg to attach the synaptics driver, I was fine. The sound problem has proved more elusive. I had the same issue when I initially installed Ubuntu 05.10 so I just need to remember what I did. Something about my module loading order...

BTW, my background is a promo shot from the upcoming freerider epic ROAM and is available here.