In Dubai, I'm very aware that this is the farthest I've ever been from home:

• The travel time is more than 24 hours "subjective" time. By this, I mean that I left Boston at 10PM Sunday (Boston time) and arrived in Dubai at 11PM Monday (Dubai time). This works out to about 17 hours objective time, but ends up feeling like a lot longer.
  
• Dubai is so unlike home it's a very surreal experience.
  

I've seen so much, I'll just sum up things that stand out and random thoughts/impressions:

• If you think of a particular airport as huge, and it's not the Dubai airport, well, you've never been to Dubai. I'm under the impression that all of Logan Airport would fit inside the Dubai terminal...
  
• Dubai is like Disneyland for architects. If an architect had a crazy idea -- no matter how crazy or impractical, he'd be able to find somebody in Dubai willing to fund it.
  
• It wasn't enough for Dubai-ans to build crazy buildings on normal ground -- they've gone and created crazy artificial landmasses on which to build crazy buildings. We drove around on "the Palm" (the main one -- unbelievably there's more than one), but didn't get to see "the World"...
  
• Dubai-ans really love their towers.
  
• Bostonians, remember how horrible it was driving downtown during the construction of the Big Dig? How the routes through certain neighborhoods would be different from one day to the next? Dubai is like that all the time,
  everywhere, not just in certain neighborhoods.
  
• No matter where you are in town, easily more than 50% of the buildings within sight are currently under construction.
  
• Remarkably, given the above, new construction in Dubai has slowed drastically due to the recession...
  
• On Tuesday I got to go wading in the Persian Gulf. The water was so warm it was completely unlike any ocean experience I've ever had before.
  
• Later on Tuesday, Stefan and I went on an amazing desert safari. It included:
  
  • Mad crazy driving of SUVs over shifting sand dunes (only certified tour guides get to drive like this -- it's clear I lack the desert-driving skills required).
    
  • Being happy the vehicle we were in had a roll cage installed even though it proved unnecessary...
    
  • Stefan and I jumping off of steep sand dunes.
    
  • Sunset in the desert over reddish-tan sand.
    
  • A ride on camelback.
    
  • Getting to take a 4-wheeler out over the dunes in the dark (we did get to drive ourselves on this one, although we were accompanied by a guide).
    
  • A huge feast out under the stars.
    
  • A belly-dancing performance.
    
  • An after-dinner shisha while reclining on cushions under the stars.
    
  
  
• Dubai-ans really love their rotaries.
  
• Wednesday's training session was good. I did another zero-PowerPoint-slides presentation.
  
• Doing this style of all-day training is exhausting no matter what country you're in.
  
• Wednesday evening Walter and I went into "Old Dubai".
  
• Throughout the "Gold Souk" section, I was approached approximately once per minute with an offer to sell me a watch, a Rolex, a "copy watch", etc.
  
• The "Spice Souk" is an olfactory assault, but in a good way.
  
• Taking a boat across the river to another part of town, it hit me that my life-long impression that "desert" equals "lack of water" isn't actually correct. In reality, "desert" equals "lack of vegetation".
  
• I've always enjoyed hummus, but fresh-made here is easily ten times better than a grocery store tub back home.
  

If I had to sum up Dubai in one word, it would be "overwhelming".

It's 1:50AM Dubai time. I have to check out of the hotel at 5:30AM to get to the airport on time, so I'm off to catch a little sleep. I'll next have 'Net access in Istanbul.

Work is sending me to Europe again. I'll be gone almost two weeks. The intinerary looks something like this:

• Sunday 18 Oct - Leave Boston
  
• Monday 19 Oct - layover in Frankfurt, fly to Dubai
  
• Thursday 22 Oct - Fly Dubai --> Istanbul
  
• Sunday 25 Oct - Fly Istanbul --> Stockholm
  
• Tuesday 27 Oct (early) - Fly Stockholm --> Brussels
  
• Tuesday 27 Oct (late) - Drive Brussels --> Amsterdam
  
• Friday 30 Oct - Fly Amsterdam --> Washington, Dulles --> Boston
  

I'll be out of touch phone-wise, but should be on email every couple days. I'll post pictures when I can...

The Clones and I are spending the week at Greater Lowell District Cub Scout Day Camp. This is my first year on Staff there. I'm helping run the Action Archery Program, which turns out to be nowhere's near as dangerous as it sounds.

Anyway, click here to see my pictures so far.

Back online in Rome. I'll be posting pictures in the usual place on Flickr as I get the chance. You can get to them directly at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davehenry/sets/72157618861629254/

Tomorrow (Friday) looks like a visit to the Vatican and/or the Colloseum...

Well, apparently the feedback from our partner was good -- they're willing to pay to bring us back to run more trainings. I'll be running 3 or 4 trainings back-to-back-to-back in each of 5 different cities over two weeks.

Monday I fly out and will be going to Paris, and then Rome. I'll spend the weekend in Rome - which should be awesome. Then the second week I'll be going to Oslo, Stockholm, and Copenhagen, and then flying back to Boston on the 6th.

All of the cities except Stockholm will be brand new to me, and I'd happily return to Stockholm...

I'll be unreachable by phone while I'm gone, but I should have access to email at least once a day. I'll try to get pictures posted as I go, and will post a link to them here.

Dave: 1, Tent Caterpillars: 0

Before last night we had a nest of tent caterpillars in the peach tree in our backyard. What the little guys hadn't counted on was that one of my torch-style cigar lighters is broken. Well, it still works, in that it produces flame more-or-less on demand, it just no longer produces the tiny little blew blow torch-like flame. Instead it spouts a 6 to 12" tongue of blue/yellow flame like some sort of mini-flamethrower.

Which makes it a wonderful cigar lighter if you want to scare the crap out of people around you, but I digress.

So after lighting my cigar to begin yesterday evening's yardwork¹, I stood on one of the deck chairs and burned that tent right out of the tree. I managed to do this without setting fire to any of:

• the tree
  
• myself
  
• the yard
  
• the house
  
• the neighbors
  
• the neighbors' houses
  

Success.

---

¹ Smoking a cigar is the only thing I have ever found to be effective in repelling mosquitoes. Apparently I taste particularly good or am somehow otherwise excessively attractive to mosquitoes. Deep Woods Off! doesn't work, Deet doesn't work, everything else I try, I still get bitten. Light up a cigar and the blood-sucking pests flee. My theory is that they're very concerned about the effects of second-hand smoke, which makes sense when you consider that they must have really tiny lungs...

Let me start off by apologizing to residents of New England. I think the rain we had last week was my fault.

You see, on Monday I bought a new lawnmower.

This, naturally, caused it to rain so I would be unable to use said lawnmower.

I needed a new one because my old gas engine mower, which never ran smoothly at all last year, finally died right about the end of lawn-mowing season. I decided to replace it with an old-fashioned push-mower, figuring that gas prices are too high, I might as well do something "green", and besides, it's not like I don't need the exercise. Oh, and the grass was finally approaching the point where if a child get lost in the yard, not only would we need to organize a search party, but that search party would need to set up a base camp, and it's just not that big a yard.

I finally got the chance to try it out on Saturday. Let's see how the new mower stacks up against the old in a number of hypothetical situations:

Hypothetical Situation: Very Tall Grass
Power Mower: If the grass is very tall, it simply slows the power mower down a little bit. It bends the tall grass down under the spinning blades and chops it all up.
Push Mower: If the grass is past a certain height (and, given the rain caused by the purchase of the mower, it was), the push mower bends it over, and then the blades pass harmlessly over the bent-over grass. Actually getting the grass cut requires running over the same spots multiple times from different directions.
Advantage: Power Mower

Hypothetical Situation: Need to Run the Mower Over the Same Spot More Than Once
Power Mower: The blades are always spinning. If you need to go over a spot more than once you simply pull it back towards you, and it cuts moving backwards as well as when it moves forward.
Push Mower: The blades rotate only when the mower is moving forward. Pull it backwards and there is not cutting going on.
Advantage: Power Mower

Hypothetical Situation: The Clone You Send Out to Clear the Sticks From the Front Yard Does a Less Than Stellar Job of Stick-Clearing
Power Mower: When encountering the unexpected stick, the power mower alerts you by making a loud cracking sound and then shoots small pieces of stick out its right-hand side.
Push Mower: When encountering the unexpected stick, the push mower alerts you by suddenly coming to a complete halt, jamming its handle into your solar plexus.
Advantage: Power Mower

Hypothetical Situation: Dog Poop
Power Mower: The power mower deals with dog poop by grinding it into tiny particles and spraying them out its right-hand side. It's like a bonus fertilization of the lawn.
Push Mower: The push mower deal with dog poop by cutting it into inch-log fragments and spewing them back in the direction of the mower's operator. 'Nuff said.
Advantage: Power Mower

Hypothetical Situation: MPG
Power Mower: I used maybe two and a half gallons of gas in the power mower last year.
Push Mower: On Saturday I covered as much distance with the push mower as I did all last year with the power mower (see "Very Tall Grass" and "Need to Run the Mower Over the Same Spot More Than Once" above...) for zero gas consumption.
Advantage: Push Mower

Hypothetical Situation: The Exercise Factor
Power Mower: Pushing the power mower and maneuvering it around would give the operator some exercise.
Push Mower: Pushing the power mower and maneuvering it around is exhausting, sweat-inducing, back-breaking, muscle-straining work (see "all of the above" above...)
Advantage: It's not clear...

Overall, the power mower wins hands-down for ease of use, but I'll grant that the push more is more "green".

Speaking of green, there's one thing I'd really like to see be less green, and that's our swimming pool.

Before this weekend, the water was so deeply green that I was beginning to wonder whether or not the pool had somehow become bottomless over the winter. Now, following the application of a double-dose of the chlorine "shock" and a double-dose of algaecide, the water you can once again tell that the pool does, in fact, have a bottom. The water, while less green, is by no means clear.

Still more to be done...

When I went out to shovel this morning, I found two separate very clear sets of tracks in the new-fallen snow.

The first was from a rather large cat who came up the driveway, spent a while trying but finally succeeded in squeezing under our gate, went under the deck, out the other side, and left via the diagonally-opposite corner of the back yard. The straight-line of the path taken leads me to suspect this cat's done this before.

The second was from a smallish rabbit who explored our front yard, came into the driveway, spent a while underneath my car, then hopped off further down the street.

Then I saw cardinals in at the neighbor's birdfeeder.

I'm hoping the increased animal activity is an omen of an early spring.

1. I'm home safe from Europe. More about the trip later. For now, you can see the more than 2,000 pictures I took here:
   European Tour - January 2009
   
   
2. I started the Linear Algebra class. More on that later, too. For now, I seem to be grasping it, but feel like I'm stretching to do so, so it's probably just about right.
   
   
3. Tomorrow morning is the Pinewood Derby, so we've been busy building cars. Like last year, I'm using Flickr to document not only the event itself, but the also builds. You can see what we've got so far here:
   Pinewood Derby - February 2009
   

The score so far:
Countries: 4
Plane flights: 5
Presentations scheduled to give: 4
Presentations given: 7

You learn a lot when you travel. Here's some brief bits that some to mind:

• The phone company telling you you'll have service overseas is not the same as having service overseas.
  
• Plane flight is uncomfortable in any language.
  
• People are generally friendly and very welcoming to the tourist in the group.
  
• After midnight, German TV becomes soft porn.
  
• Turns out there's more than one airport that is the "Frankfurt Airport".
  
• Same is true for Venice...
  
• Europe gets some weird version of MTV that actually plays music...
  
• The Germans are still talking about this guy who came out last June and presented for an hour with only one Power Point slide. Apparently, doing over an hour and a half without any slides is even more impressive - or at least different than what they usually get.
  
• Venice is even more beautiful than I ever imagined it to be.
  

More as I get Internet access.

Oh, and picture being uploaded to my European Tour 2009 Flickr Set as I get access.

My last act before fleeing the country was to register for Linear Algebra for undergraduate credit at the Harvard University Extension School.

I officially are a student again.

kirisutogomen, mathhobbit, and treptoplax: I'll be needing your cell phone numbers and 24x7 access between now and the final exam... :-)

I'm off to Europe!

The partner I did training for in Germany last June asked work if they could send me back to train them some more. (In the current economic climate, having your company's largest European partner ask for you, specifically, can't hurt...) Work said, "well, money's tight, we don't know..." Partner said, "what if we paid for flights and hotels and you cover the rest?" Work said, "hey, that'll work." Partner said, "well, if we're going to pay to bring him out, we want him to do training in all our offices." I said, "Wow."

So, during the next week and a half or so, I'm running trainings in 4 cities in Europe, plus I have this coming weekend to myself. I managed to find a cheap airfare deal, so I have a 24-hour side-trip to Venice -- a place I have always wanted to see. The rest of the trip I'll have a couple seasoned European travelers with me, but the Venice trip is my own personal adventure into a country I've never been to and where I don't speak the language.

The schedule looks something like this:

• Tue 13 Jan - fly Boston to London
  
• Thu 15 Jan - fly London to Dublin
  
• Fri 16 Jan - fly Dublin to Frankfurt
  
• Sat 17 Jan - fly Frankfurt to Venice
  
• Sun 18 Jan - fly Venice to Frankfurt
  
• Wed 21 Jan - fly Frankfurt to Stockholm
  
• Sat 24 Jan - fly Stockholm to London to Boston
  

I expect to have Internet at the training venues if not at the hotels, so I'll upload pictures to Flickr as much as I'm able to.

I am, obviously, most excited about the Venice portion of the trip. I've always wanted to see Venice. I'll be staying at a hotel right on the Grand Canal. You can see pictures of the place here. I'm looking forward to walking the streets of Venice, to smoking a cigar while riding a gondola, and, ideally, getting involved in a high-speed jet ski chase through the canals, although I'm prepared to be happy with just achieving 2 out of 3 of these.

Trips reports, etc. upon my return. See you in a couple weeks!

Does it seem reasonable/possible that I'd be able to take Linear Algebra II without taking Linear Algebra I first? Or is that just madness, to be avoided at all costs?

U. Mass, Lowell only offers "I" during the fall, but I could take "II" in night school starting this month, but I'm not sure how much of a jump that is.

Today I begin a new feature of this blog: Unseen Reviews. In an "Unseen Review", I review a movie I haven't actually seen, based only on what I've been able to figure out about the movie from the trailer and movie ads.

Black Snake Moan looks to be, and I say this completely without any exaggeration whatsoever, the greatest movie EVER.

It appears to be a movie where the plot revolves entirely around Christina Ricci spending the entire movie chained up in her underwear. I mean, what more do you need to know to realize that this is pure cinematic genius? The only thing that could be wrong with this movie would be if it's too short. Clearly this is something that I must see on the Big Screen...

To tell the truth, I'm actually surprised that Hollywood hasn't thought of this concept earlier. I'm hopeful that it turns into a whole series. Just imagine the sequels: Jennifer Garner Spends an Entire Movie Chained Up in Her Underwear, Jessica Biel Spends an Entire Movie Chained Up in Her Underwear, Elisha Cuthbert Spends an Entire Movie Chained Up in Her Underwear, Jessica Alba Spends an Entire Movie Chained Up in Her Underwear... The whole idea is pure box-office gold.

For a movie I've never actually seen, I have to give Black Snake Moan 5 out of 5 stars...

A New Year

First, the obvious: Hello, and welcome to 2009. Happy New Year to you and yours.

A Clean Sweep

Two things I'm doing to get ready to face 2009:

1. I'm going to stop taking posting to LiveJournal so damn seriously. I have all these ideas I keep thinking about posting, but then I never do because I have this idea in my head that I need to write it all out very thoroughly and well-developed. I don't know why I think this - I mean it's not like this is a professional blog (like the internal one I'm starting up at work, or the possible public one that might be coming soon (more on those later)). LiveJournal (for me anyway) is about staying in touch and having fun. So, I officially give myself permission to post short, off-the-top-of-my-head stuff when it occurs to me. If I come up with a better thought-out version later, I can always post a follow-up.
   
2. I'm getting really organized and disciplined on my 3x5 card tracking system. When I use it, it works. When I don't, things slip through the cracks. I've been pretty good about it the past couple months, but I want to kick it up to the next level. I'm up to too much stuff that I have no intention of dropping and given a choice, I'd prefer to excel at all of it. :-) (I'll post more later about why I, one of the more High-Tech geeks I know, has chosen to go so Old School for this.)
   

A Request for Help

To really put number 2 into effect, and to start making the card catalog functional rather than decorative, I need to find a hole punch that will put a 3/8-inch hole in standard index cards.

It turns out that your "standard-size hole punch for three-ring binders, etc. punched a 1/4-inch hole. That's big enough to allow the metal guide in the catalog drawers to go through the cards, but not to allow them to be flipped through. With a 3/8-inch hole, the cards can stay secured in the drawer and be flipped through easily.

Now, I know for a fact that, at some point in time, people manufactured 3/8-inch hole punches. As proof of this, I point to every library card catalog that was ever easy to use, and well as the measurement I took of the hole in the cards that came in one of the drawers of my card catalog. So, logically, there must be some out there somewhere.

I, however, have had exactly zero luck finding one. I've tried every office supply store I know in the area. I've searched online. I've called all the big chain office supply places I could think of. I've called Staples' specialty store (did you know Staples had a specialty store? I didn't before this search).

So, I appeal to y'all in the hopes that someone has better luck with search engines than me, or just that someone might know where to find one. Ideally, I'm looking for two different things:

1. A small hand-held 3/8-inch single-hole punch for doing one card at a time.
   
2. Something that will let me punch a 3/8-inch hole in multiple 3x5 cards at once (I've thought about using a drill press to put a hole through an entire 100-pack of cards before I use them, but I don't know if this would work and I don't own a drill press).
   

Any pointers to where I might acquire either (or especially both) of the above will earn not only my eternal gratitude and esteem, but also, upon successful acquisition, a Bonus Point. :-)

Happy 2009 everyone, and best of luck on your own quests in the new year....

I saw remcat's results, so here are mine:

Your result for What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test...

Conscientious, Fulfilled, and Spiritual

26 Renaissance, 19 Islamic, 20 Ukiyo-e, -35 Cubist, -40 Abstract and 18 Impressionist!

Take What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test at HelloQuizzy

So, I haven't posted in a while, in part, I think, because I have this idea in the back of my head that my postings should be well thought-out and have some sort of profound point. Well, this one meets neither of those criteria.

Near Hallowe'en, things always get busy for our family, and this year was no exception, but this time I took more pictures.

Friday there was a Hallowe'en party at ATA and then pokerclub.

Saturday Clone #1 had a soccer game, then we drove up to Maine for a Hallowe'en party with letterboxers that remcat knows.

Sunday Clone #2's Cub Scout Den had an outing for which I ran the game.

Outside of the activities I managed to accomplish a few of the things I had wanted to this weekend, including applying my CDO to my Flickr sets and collections.

For those of you who don't follow pokerclub, click here to view the announcement of the upcoming tournament.

Lots more to write about. Traveling to Orlando tomorrow for a work conference. Will try to post on some between-session downtime.

I spent most of Friday evening with my friend Mario and his pick-up truck. We drove to Watertown and picked up the beautiful piece of furniture you see in the picture.

Yes, those of you born before 1980 will recognize that as an actual library card catalog. This one was originally in a library at the Harvard Business School.

I've wanted one of these since I was a child. Some people will get this idea immediately, others won't, and those born later than 1980 are still wondering what this thing is and why it needs 72 drawers...

If you're in the group that gets it, well, I need say nothing more. But, if you find yourself in one of the other two groups, I'll try to explain.

First, you have to remember that there was a time when there was no Wikipedia, there was no Google, personal computers were not everywhere, and, in fact, there was no Internet.

OK, sorry, I should have warned you, or at least built up to that more slowly.

Anyway, back then if you wanted to know something, you couldn't just look it up. You had to go to the Library, and then you could look it up. Libraries were the Storehouses of All Knowledge, and (it feels to me anyways) contained even more books than they do today.

Of course, since there weren't PCs or workstations everywhere, you couldn't just walk up to a screen and type what you were looking for and have it tell give you a recommended list of books along with reviews and feedback and "X number of people found this book useful in answering questions similar to yours".

Well, how did you you find the knowledge you were seeking then?

The card catalog.

If the library was the storehouse, the treasure trove of all knowledge, well, then the card catalog wasn't just a map -- it was the keys to the kingdom.

Within those drawers were hand-typed 3x5 cards that listed the books according to the Dewey Decimal System. You could look up these cards by title, by author, or by subject matter.

The Dewey Decimal number on the card you found would lead you to the correct section of the building, like a clue on a treasure hunt. It'd lead you to the right aisle, or if you were really lucky even to the correct bookcase. You'd still have to scan the shelves to find the exact book yourself -- and even then it wasn't certain that that particular tome would contain the exact knowledge you were seeking, which would mean another trip back to the card catalog -- but that was part of the fun.

Maybe you know someone who can always find things on Google. They've perfected the art of not only narrowing down the search criteria, but also of finding other ways to phrase it so that the search returns effective results. Working a card catalog well was like that, only it was hands-on.

If you were experienced, you'd look things up 3 or more ways up-front, scribbling your titles and Dewey Decimal numbers on slips of paper the library provided so that you had you first best guess and 2 or more contingencies ready, saving yourself the return trip to the catalog, as it was likely to be centrally located, but the shelves you would be searching might not be.

Combination Treasure Map and Keys to the Kingdom of the House of All Knowledge. Who wouldn't love one of these things?

It's been a while since I revealed the Secret Plan, and I figured that some of you are probably wondering, "So what's Dave's status with MIT?"

That, plus I could use some help.

( Click here to get the whole background story. )


( Click here to skip ahead to the part where Dave asks for help. )