Netherlands pics

netherlands

assumption crushed

So I was eating dinner in Amsterdam next to the window. Watching all the people go by was a trip. I was trying to guess their nationalities. And, I was across the street from a coffee house, so I could watch people's expressions as they went by. The kids...I mean young adults...cracked me up. Anywho, not the point. There was this lesbian couple who stopped in front of the souvenir store. They were both pretty girls. Now let me digress and say that sometimes my husband messes with my hair, which I hate when we are out and I went to the trouble of fixing it. I always thought that if both members of a couple were girls, they would both recognize this and not mess up each other's hair. This couple proved me wrong and messed with each other's hair. And that made me sad - guess you can only get away from hair messing through careful training of partner.

Local news

http://www.wsbtv.com/video/18552314/

This cracked me up. Perhaps if you don't watch the Smyrna city council meetings, you won't see why. But this is not new news. Ergo, not news, perhaps. And the one local citizen they interviewed is a little crazy, as seen in the citizen input of the city council meetings. Guess there wasn't much going on in the world on Friday.

concerts in 2008

I did pretty good in going to concerts last year. I will probably never get back up to the volume of my college days, but 2008 yielded a pretty impressive list.

Shawn Mullins
George Michael (at last!!!!!)
Indigo Girls
Amy Ray
Marc Broussard
4 Dave FM acoustic sunset shows
REM
Jimmy Buffett

crap, I think there's more, but my memory isn't what it used to be.... I'll add them as I think of it.

non-music:
Colin Machry and Brad Sherwood
Jon Stewart (front row!)

feel....guilty....

The neighborhood sushi place we used to go to regularly lost its alcohol license probably a year or more ago. Since the day we went in and couldn't order an adult beverage, we have probably been back once. Maybe. So we went there the other day, because it is close and we're drinking less trying to lose weight. The waitress, who I think is the co-owner, remembered us, and when we ordered, said something about "the same thing" and something about how they didn't sell wine anymore. Sigh, so sweet. We really like being remembered. Then, she had to leave early because her child was sick, so the sushi chef, who is her husband and I think the other co-owner, started talking to us, and he remembered us too! And then we felt very guilty for not going for such a long time. Plus, it is really good. And close by, which can't be discounted w/ today's high cost of gas.

another commercial

OK, apparently I watch too much TV. The new VW commercials http://www.coloribus.com/paedia/reels/volkswagen_interview_with_beetle featuring an old VW beetle interviewing various people perplex me a bit. Not just because they are boring and stupid, but because they highlight how much nicer the old beetle body style is than the new beetle's body style. I don't think they are changing the body style though, the web site doesn't hint at it. So it perplexes me. Why make me want a shiny old body style beetle when they only sell new body style beetles? Why?

awesome commercial

I just saw the best commercial with Meatloaf in it, singing the Paradise by the Dashboard Light song modified to sell AT&T Wireless. It was awesome. http://youtube.com/watch?v=o5YMVO7-8ns It also had this woman bringing in a large piece of raw meat which I wonder was supposed to allude to his role as Eddie (and dinner) in Rocky Horror. I could be reading to much into it.

Which reminds me of another AT&T commercial that bugs the hell out of me. There is some dude playing pool and his alter-telephone-ego says that he won't answer the phone because he is a "dillweed" and doesn't have coverage blah blah blah. However, a dill weed is a rather pleasant herb. The correct word is "dickweed". Duh. And I can see that even with today's lax standards on profanity on TV that "dickweed" is probably not allowed. So choose another word, not something that sounds somewhat like the right word but has nothing similar in meaning! I did find that one: http://youtube.com/watch?v=lZY3zKl3px8&feature=related

Apparently not everyone can wink with either eye. Yay me.

Sun Tech Days

I finally got to go to Sun Tech Days this year. I had tried last year but was not able to get off from work. They do a really nice job with it. The first day I went to one of the training classes. It was good, but a little superficial. It is hard to cover much in depth in a day. They provided lunch and snacks. The second day was technically the "Tech Day". The seminars were good, and it was interesting that the emphasis was more of ease of development and GUI type things than on enterprise and scalability. GUIs are very in nowadays though.

The seminar notes and everything are on the site. Here's what you don't know until you are there. They provide breakfast danish, and box lunches. Unfortunately, I had no idea they would provide boxed lunches and had already purchased lunch before I found out. They also had a cake in the afternoon break that was delicious. They gave away a lot of tshirts and backpacks. They had about 10 computers set up with internet access. You could bring your laptop for help installing Solaris. After the last seminar was over, they had heavy hors d'ouvres and beer and wine. And amazingly enough, all that goodness was FREE!! I can only imagine how nice JavaOne must be considering you have to pay to go to it.

Indigo Girls

Last month Mandy and I did three nights of Indigo Girls concerts in a row. Although I might be getting a little old for 3 late nights in row, it was still lots of fun. It was hot that weekend, but after over a week of 100+ temps, in retrospect we were really lucky with the weather. The third night was filmed for HDNet - can't wait to see that on TV!!!