Catnip anyone?

So it seems that cats are really, really determined where feline crack is concerned. Yes, that simple herb called catnip. I put it up on the top shelf and must have left the doors to the cupboard open, cause the cat -- the neighbors cat, and not even my own -- found his way up there. He was looking downright stoned when I found him.

He climbed...


Need to leave the espresso machine on to see just how determined he is... Of course, you have to love a cat that is sophisticated enough to show a preference for Apple - Blake's iMac in this case.

Ah cats. I should take some videos of them and upload them to YouTube. I'm sure no one's done that yet.

NY Giants?

I left Kim's house while the score was 7 to 3 New England. I'm now looking at 17 to 14 Giants? Wow. Just goes to show you the talking heads don't know it all.

Of course, the best part of the Superbowl party was the rock stars:

Amazing underwater critters

I was on Ted.com this a.m. watching a video by Murray Gell-Mann and downloaded the HD version of this video on underwater astonishments. I love seeing how various forms of life can so well adapt themselves to their environment as to be invisible. The HD version is very cool and you can watch it through iTunes. There's even a pretty cool BMW commercial at the end.

Day 1 in the Refridgerator

I will say, the hotel does provide a nice breakfast. They'll whip up a batch of eggs any way you want, and there was a nice assortment of fresh fruit, muffins, cereal and juices. It was "free" which made it all that much better. As Grant noted, the coffee in the atrium area was far better than that brewed in our little underpowered room machines.

We piled onto buses for the trek to the Siemens motherland. There was at least three small buses the a packed in an assortment of Siemens folks destined to become more educated in the Siemens way or on Siemens equipment. What I could see of the snow-covered city reminded me of my childhood days in Michigan, and of why I got sick of living in the fridgid North.

The training facility was quite impressive. Rooms held an assortment of equipment mounted to the walls. Our teacher was very good and had just the right mix of enthusiasm to make the coursework enjoyable but not annoy. We all discovered our strengths of personality while understanding why some of us display certain annoying tendencies in the perception of other personality types. My DISC profile suggests that I'm perfectly evolved to get on a certain QA Manager's nerves. Ah, we all have our strengths :) Of course, he's perfectly adapted and positioned to make my life a living hell, so I'll behave.

We ventured out in the evening in search of pizza, and once again Jeff displayed superior winter driving survival skills - once we had dug the car out of the snowdrift and cleared the ice from the windows: once from the snow-fall, and yet again after he decided to hit the washers shooting a stream of water that instantly froze on the window. The pizza was nice, but IMHO somewhat bland.

After the previous night devoid of sleep I went to bed around 8:00 local time. We're now filled with coffee and breakfast ready of another day of indoctrination - er, training... The fun part will be returning to Atlanta to try all our new voodoo on our unsuspecting office peers (queue dramatic music and fade with demonic laughter...)

Welcome to Bulls Country

We landed in Chicago (finally) after a pleasant pause on the tarmac in Atlanta for 2 hours. Seems a little snow up north got everything backed up so we just sort of hung out for a couple of hours waiting for a window into the sky headed to Chicago. The flight was smooth and uneventful, with the possible exception for the Mile-Highers sitting next to Grant on the plane.

As we came in over Chicago we were greeted by a white and wintery world. Everything was covered in snow and it was still coming down at a good pace. By the time we found our way to the curb waiting for our never-to-show-up bus to the National car rental depot it was dark, cold and nothing like it was for Rich in Florida. Brrr!

Jeff didn't kill us driving on the snow-covered roads, which is always a good start to an adventure. It was neat seeing everything covered in snow, but dang is it cold. We arrived at the hotel at around 1:30am Atlanta time - the good new is the hotel is quite nice and has free wireless.

Well, it's 5:55 and time to head down the the "free" breakfast...then off to become a trained drone of the machine :)

Gatling gun...for rubber bands?

Holy Crap this is the ultimate in nerdism. The vid's a bit long but very cool.

Rock star, eh?

Kim, can you hear me? Hello?