Skyping

One upside of spending 2.5 days in a hotel room waiting, waiting, waiting unable to leave my PC incase something needed actioning quickly, was it gave me a chance to catch up on some virtual retail therapy. I wanted to try Skype (a *Free* internet phone service). I emailed Zogger and we got it all set up and running in a matter of minutes. Needless to say I couldn't tell him where I was but we could still shoot the breeze. I also managed to chat with Prue while she was waiting to fly home to San Francisco. I was so jazzed I bought myself a UK phone number that connects to Skype. So if you live in the UK and don't have Skype but want to chat to me any time you can call me on

+44 161 408 1689 (ie (0161) 408 1689)

I thought the 408 part of the number was cool because in the UK that's my area code.

If you have broadband you can Skype me from your computer: Rod_Crawford.

 

This probably the best piece of technology, I have seen all year.

 

3 Days in Plano, TX

Well, I guess the stories out… ARM bought Keil Software. I get to help the company get integrated and will be spending 2 days a week for the rest of the year in Plano, Texas- home of Frito-Lay and the only place I know to have a cockroach museum.
The folk at Keil are really friendly (I’ve been and met with them a couple of times already) so all in all it should be challenging and fun.

This last week didn’t quite go according to plan, but then these sorts of things seldom do.
Tues 4:45am I fell out of bed and headed to the airport to fly to Dallas and drive to Plano. When I got there I was told not to visit the company until the deal was signed- Day 1 spent in my hotel room.

Day 2 was much the same with some additional retail therapy thrown in. BTW my hotel was not in downtown Plano. It was on an industrial estate, so there wasn’t much to see.
BTW if my hotel had been in downtown Plano there still won’t have been much to see. Downtown Plano is a one horse town; literally, one of the 2 restaurants it possess has a stuffed horse outside it.

Day 3 Lawrence (who arrived the night before) and I tried to find a cup of coffee in downtown Plano, only to be told that the two coffee shops had gone bust. Sigh!
Finally things started to happen and I went to Keil to tell them about the acquisition, meet and greet. We had some fun, cake, champagne and a raffle of all their old logo clad giveaways. I got home around 11:00pm for a few hours sleep before going to Sunnyvale to brief the ARM, Inc General Manager on what we going to tell the Sunnyvale folk. I ended up doing most of the briefing to the Sunnyvale folk which was quite fun especially since quite a few of them were wearing Halloween costumes.

Dude where's my building?

On Saturday Paul and I went back to Leicester on the train together (it being a little over 25 years since we met). We retraced our steps back to the James Went Computer Science building where we did our degree and... the 16 storey building was gone! There was literally nothing left and we stood on the patch of tarmac where it had been and wondered.

Riding the Rail

Well here I am on taking the Light Rail to work at last.

The bus to the light rail station goes right past my house (I was the only one on it) and the Light Rail from Campbell (the next town)  is really so much easier than sitting in a traffic jam for up to an hour- I can actually do work on the way to work!

 

Going over the freeways and looking down at all the poor suckers crawling along feels really good.