sonotmetal

This is Krog tunnel (Old Fourth Ward)

2009-09-22T20:30:37Z

This is the street that leads to one of the three "finalist" lofts Lisa and I looked at when buying...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolinesmith/3942460747/

s/

Muppets!

2007-06-29T22:10:20Z

Common People

2007-06-02T17:33:25Z

Joe Jackson is cool. Ben Folds is cool. Will Shatner is a window into the black side of an event horizon. God bless them every one.

We're getting by.

So yeah...

2007-05-26T11:14:30Z

Right, then. So Lisa arrived this morning @ 0700 and will be with until next Saturday. I can't guarantee that I'll be posting much between now and then, what with the working and the exploring a mysterious European capital with my wife and all. Talk amoungst yourselves.

Lisa will be here in two days

2007-05-24T19:11:12Z

Two days! Happiness.

I miss my cats. Sadness.

That is all.

More fun with Google Maps

2007-05-20T16:29:55Z

I made a new Google Map. Because I can.

Here.

Ramble ramble ramble

2007-05-20T14:58:25Z

Today marks two notable milestones for me. First, I have been in Sweden for exactly three weeks. I have seven more to go before returning home. Lisa comes to visit for a week starting next Saturday and, suffice it to say, I am looking forward to that. Today also marks the 35th anniversary of my glorious entrance into this realm. All praises and glory be. On this day, in the wee morning that the old folk used to call the witching hours, my dear Mother (blessed be her soul) unleashed upon the world that child which would become me. I don't think she knew what she was getting into. Please don't hold it against her. She really is a lovely woman.

There is rumor that the team will go out tonight to celebrate my glorious birth via a trip to the "Viking Bar." The Viking Bar, as I understand it, is a replication of a true medieval drinking establishment housed somewhere in the cellars of Old Town. It's supposed to be authentic with mead and hunks of braised meat and no silverware. I'm not sure if we'll have mastiffs and wolf-hounds to gnaw the bones we toss in the corners or not. I'm virtually certain they're not going to allow me to strip down to my skivvies and go berserker on some random English monastery, which kind of sucks, but we'll see how it plays out. I must admit the idea has its allure, though.

"How did you spend your birthday, Sam?"

"Raping and pillaging the countryside."

"What?@!"

"You want some more wine? I got it from a nice German peasant girl..."

"Are you drinking out of a human skull?!??"

Yesterday we did our first truly touristy things since arrival. Cathy, our project manager, Sheldon, our technical consultant and I decided to stop working long enough to visit Djurgarden. Djurgarden is a large park and recreational island just to the west of Gamla Stan. It has an amusement park (small by American standards), an open air "living museum" called Skansen and two or three of Stockholm's many more traditional museums. The island, more properly called Kungliga Djurgarden, was originally a royal game and hunting preserve. Kungliga = "the King's", Djurgarden = "Game garden." The eastern half of the island is still undeveloped except for many walking and biking trails. We went to see the Vasamuseet.

The short story goes something like this. During the height of the Swedish Empire the King commissioned a massive galleon to project his power and help with the on-going war(s) with the Poles and the Germans. The Vasa was pretty much the Titanic of its day, larger and more elaborate than anything ever built in Sweden. It had two gun decks instead of one. It was ornately decorated. It was huge. The shipwright wanted to have more ballast to counter-weight the size of the hull but the King wanted the ship to be light and maneuverable in order to fight effectively. It was built. It was launched. It sank in the harbor less than a half-mile from where it started. ("..so we built a castle in the swamp. It sank. So we built another castle. It sank too. So we built another castle...") Official story of the time was that the men on board failed to lash down all those cannons and they all rolled to one side, listed the ship and she went down. More likely she just needed more ballast. The lesson for Kings? Listen to your engineers.

Regardless, in the late 50s some local fisherman cum treasure hunter used a home-made core sampler to find the wreck. Because the Baltic is too cold to sustain the little wanker lifeforms that eat timbers in the open ocean, she was pretty much intact. They raised her, put her more or less back together and floated her to her new home in the museum. 400 year old man'o'war pulled from the depths of the harbor. Pretty damned nifty, really. And I'm telling you, she's HUGE. A massive ship. Now....

Raise your hand if you knew there was ever a Swedish Empire.

I mean, COME ON! Massive naval battles between the Swedes and the Poles? The Poles had a navy? Dude, Poland doesn't have a navy! Poland doesn't even have a history. I'm sure if there were an actual history of Poland, if the Swedes ever dominated large swaths of northern Europe and controlled all trade in the Baltic Sea, someone along the way would have told me about it. Right? Next thing you'll try to tell me there was a Polish superstate...

Other notable items from yesterday include buying sunglasses -- more difficult than you think when all that is available are those weird, pimps-n-hos mega-block shades all the Euro-trash wannabes wear in the States -- and the ferry ride from Gamla Stan to Djurgarden. That was the first time we actually took a boat even though we're totally surrounded by water here. I love boats. Sheldon, Jason and I are planning to take one of the cruises up the Baltic to Helsinki (Finland) and Tallia (Estonia.) On the way home yesterday Sheldon and I saw a flyer for a "Black and White" version of that trip which features DJs from around the world -- basically a floating rave in international waters. We so have to do that.

I know I keep threatening..

2007-05-15T19:29:25Z

..but I still haven't gotten the big "what the hell has Sam been doing for the last three weeks" post done. It's just so damned daunting to start. I mean, there's the story about the fucked-up wiring in the video monitor for the in-flight movie on the way over, and the story about the six hour layover in Charles De Gualle because the French are fucking morons, and the bit about me getting into Stockholm on 40+ hours of waking time, and that only gets me through day 2, so it's all very difficult.

Last night we went straight from work to dinner at Axel's house. Axel is the sales guy that owns the account that I'm working on here and he and his lovely wife Sylvia (and their 4 and 2 year old sons Bruno and Otto) had us over for traditional Swedish tapas -- pickled herring and spiced vodka. I went light on the vodka for lingering fear of the schnaps from Saturday night, but the fish was good. After the fish the broke out a six course Thai meal from the delivery place down the street, just as an after thought in case we didn't like the herring. And of course, there was beer. Today has been lost completely in nothing but meetings and client work and exhaustion. Tomorrow I'll wake up and think "holy crap, I'm still in freakin' Scandanavia" and then follow up with "Lisa is still 5000 miles away."

Obviously that's the bit that sucks (and sucks and sucks and then wakes up and sucks some more.) Today was Day 17 of being separated from she-who-makes-me-kinda-sane. Prior to this trip we hadn't spent more than 12 days apart since 1993. Yeah. 1993. And that 12 days (2/3 of which were spent in Santa Clara, CA, the rest on weekending with Angie-love in bee-u-tee-ful Portland, OR) was by far the outlier. Other than that stretch it's something like no more than three days apart since we moved in together in the Roswell Road apartment (with Elsabet and the Korean For Crazy Person and, eventually, Paul.) So this whole not seeing Lisa for 2.5 months thing is really hard. That's why I'm flying her over end of the month and charging it all back to my company. Screw that shit. Married folk should see each other more often than full moons occur.

This all sort of ties back into the debacle of the in-flight movie system on the flight over. Delta provides complimentary movies via the back-of-seat video monitors on trans-atlantic flights. You get a list of about 20 movies to choose from, categorized into groups like Family and New Releases and the like. I decided early on that I wasn't going to sleep over (stay up all night, all day the next day, crash hard on arrival in Stockholm and reset the body clock to +6 time) so I had a lineup of three movies to entertain myself. First up was Deja Vu with Denzel Washington. So here I go, punching the touch screen appropriately. "English" please. MGM intro. "Why is the theme from Rocky playing?" "I don't want to watch Rocky Balboa." "Did I mis-punch?"

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. "Rocky Balboa." WTF?! Moving on.

Maybe if I play Rocky Balboa I'll get Deja Vu? Or maybe I'll get The Queen. Yes, dear Delta, Helen Mirren _so_ won an oscar for her portrayal of a washed up former heavyweight champ who gives it one more valiant go. Bottom line is every movie icon is linked to a different movie. 8 Mile launches Field of Dreams. That Will Ferrel flick with Kenneth Branaugh's old lady narrating in his head launches Charlotte's Web. I randomly punch Casino Royale and freakin' Happy Feet starts. This chokes me up and delivers the first "you're leaving your wife for 10 weeks" blow to the gut because we had left Happy Feet sitting in the DVD cabinet for weeks prior to my leaving and Lisa always wanted to watch it together but I never got 'round to it.

I eventually settle for The Last Mimzy which turns out to be Casino Royale. This continues all flight long. I literally have to punch through every title in the system to find Deja Vu (some Dutch foriegn language film about dying.) And the kicker? This was only happening in my seat. Everyone else's system worked fine. The Polish bloke next to me kept giving me weird looks when I would browse through the Childrens' Movies section and launch an R rated Bond flick. I bought him off with a Delta coupon for free beer, noting his dismay when the attendant told him it would cost him $5 American to have a drink before dinner.

And that's just the flight over. So, yeah, I keep threatening to lay a real doozy of a journal on you, but most likely you'll get fragments and pieces along the way. That's sort of my way of things anyway.

New pictures

2007-05-13T20:59:29Z

I've moved the Stockholm photos over to Flickr . I was not fond of Photobucket's interface. There are maybe 10-15 new photos uploaded in addition to the original sets. I took some shots walking back through Gamla Stan today.

Two weeks down

2007-05-11T19:21:57Z

Eight to go. Jason and Dan want to go clubbing tonight. The single boys want to go look at the single girls. I want to turn a latch handle and walk into my garden and hear Isaac paw-swimming on the door. I want to turn off the lights at 10:00 on a Friday night and fall asleep with my wife.

I will not go out tonight.

Some pictures and a map

2007-05-06T16:39:38Z

I'm going to try to finish a journal on the last week this afternoon. It's somewhat daunting to start. The flight from Atlanta seems like a month ago already. It has been a week.

As a(nother) placeholder, here are some photos I've taken this week, most of them this weekend. Of course I am baffled by the LiveJournal embedded image interface. So as I am want to do, I will ignore it and hack my own solution together instead.

You can see the photos by clicking HERE. From the image that launches click BACKWARDS through the album in order to view things in some semblance of chronoligical order. I may go through and edit things into more managable "albums" later. 'Til then this is what you get.

Also, interested parties can go HERE and track my itinerant wanderings (like a rat in a maze.) If you're so inclined.

Okay. More later, in witty, mentally engrossing narrative form. Or spotty link-ridden modern "blogger journalism." One of the two. Depends on how I feel after dinner.

*UPDATE: I'm directing my mother to this journal as a way of keeping up with her baby boy's travels across the globe. Try to avoid mentioning the the debauchery of my college years in the comments. Thanks.

Well, I'm here

2007-05-01T20:13:26Z

At some point I will 1) adjust to being +6 hours on my body's circadian rhythms, stop being exhausted and 2) stop working 12 hours per day (on Swedish national holidays no less) and post something interesting. I have a couple of photos I've taken of Stockholm with more to come over the weekend I think.

For now, I am firmly embedded in the Norse homelands and trying to decipher Swedish signs for the underground.

More to come...

This is interesting

2007-04-26T19:59:21Z

In 2003 (?) the BBC aired a series called "Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief" narrarated by Jonathan Miller (all around brilliant guy -- Wiki him.) It's the antithesis of American television as it mostly involves various thinkers -- scientists, philosophers, playwrights, etc. -- sitting around talking about religion and why they have no use for it.

I mention this because, though you won't find any mention of it on the PBS website, PBS is actually showing the series starting May 4 (in the slote where Bill Moyers normally runs.) It seems notable to me that an American broadcaster is actually showing a series on atheism as something other than "what them God-forsaken heathens of Europe do."

If you can't make the viewing (say you're going to be stuck in Sweden that day) you can watch the episodes here:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=history+of+disbelief&hl=en

Things I've done today...

2007-04-26T18:51:52Z

1. Participated in first round of conference calls in prep for Ericsson on Monday.

2. Went to see the doctor for overdue blood pressure checkup.

3. Lost traction on wet pavement trying to stop before riding headlong into the truck that stopped suddenly on the ride back from doctors.

4. Maintained control without rear traction well enough to guide bike into soft shoulder with the cool, soft grass.

5. Laid bike down in cool soft grass.

Things I have not done today:

1. Ran headlong into suddenly stopped truck and died.

Many thanks to mystery lady Mindy who stopped and helped me dig the bike out of the ditch. Some broken faring and a bent but functioning gear shifter and a bruise on my leg is a happy day considering the alternative.

I was probably going to fast for conditions and was distracted thinking "why do I still ride all the way to Alpharetta to see a doctor -- in the rain?" The car in front of the truck was turning left across traffic and the truck must not have seen him until late because he hammered the brakes pretty suddenly.

I did not die. Yay, not dying! This incident combined with Therkleson's run-in with Roswell Road motorist ladies Monday suggests to me that this is a dangerous week to ride a motorcyle.

The Greatest Showdown In the History of Everything, part 43098

2007-04-19T18:55:42Z

As most of you know, I am a baseball fan of some magnitude. I know things about baseball you do not know. I know things about baseball your fathers do not know. I know things about baseball that baseball does not know. It is as such -- baseball fan, baseball guru, baseball messiah -- that I enter this weekend with a heavy heart. Because you won't be able to take a shit within 100 yards of baseball this weekend without having to hear -- again -- about the Greatest Rivalry In The History Of Every Universe That Ever Historied A Rivalry, about the Biggest Showdown of Sporting Giants To Ever Grace The World, about the motherfucking Yankees vs. the motherfucking Red Sox, as if this were any more crucial or important a set of games than say, a late April matchup between the Brewers and the Reds, or the O's and the Devil Rays, or the Marlins and the Phillies.

Fuck. Me.

Despite what Ken Burns may have led you to believe, they play baseball south of Jersey and west of Buffalo. Really. And there are better series than this to watch this weekend.

If you're a baseball fan.

I have new pictures

2007-03-30T18:24:58Z

What you can't tell from these pictures is that I'm not wearing any pants.