Cripes. I was meant to write another 4 posts, and completely forgot, and only came back to write another post about mobile phones after reading Jason's post on his blog.
So I guess I'll try and write them all now...
So, another week off between Christmas and New Year.
I'm not sure whether I mentioned this before, but the reason I go away to the mountains every Christmas is because I really dislike the boring week off work, where everything is closed. Before I had a car it was even worse, because on Christmas day I had a choice between watching TV or chatting on MSN. I couldn't even get a bus to see my family, because no buses run on Christmas day. In the mountains however, it's just another normal day, only someone else cooks Christmas dinner for you. Sweet.
This year was different though. Due to Christmas day falling on a Saturday, I arrived back from the mountains on Boxing day, leaving me with 5 full days until the next weekend. What would I do?
Well, it was pretty quiet. I spent a lot of time sleeping, but I also decided to round up the people who were in London over the holidays and get together for dinner at Piccolino in Heddon Street. I quite like Piccolino and a booking for 8 people soon became 18, and then 22, so they gave us a private dining room. How posh! Everyone was happy and in a strange twist of events, there wasn't a single problem with the bill being short, so thanks to everyone who came for a) coming and b) paying your fair share.
Not much else happened during this week. It was boring. I hope I don't have another week this boring for a while (well, I suppose for another 6 or 7 years).
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
The epic journey to the Pyrenées...
It's been a while. A long while.
Over a month.
What's happened in that time?
1. Pas de la Casa Snowboard trip.
2. Another week off between Christmas and New Year.
3. 2011.
4. More Boris Bike shenanigans.
5. Vaujany Ski trip.
Let's start with 1.
It was a Christmas trip. As usual, we were due to travel just after the SantaSkate party, meaning not much sleep beforehand. The weather was looking iffy so I subscribed to the BAA text update service so I'd get a text to confirm the flight was scheduled.
It had snowed quite a lot but my text message arrived, saying the flight was scheduled.
So we stayed in Battersea the night before the flight (which was at 7am or so from Heathrow Terminal 5). The Addison Lee cab turned up, and for some reason charged us £100 to get to the airport. From Battersea. WTF?? I will never use them again. A black cab would have been cheaper.
So we get to the airport, all 5 of us, only to discover that all flights have been cancelled due to snow. Great. We were screwed, or so we thought. I stood there for a while wondering what to do. One friend ran around in a bit of a panic, getting annoyed. Another friend was preparing to accept that he'd lost his money, and another friend went to the British Airways desk (or rather the queue for it) to try and find out what was going on. The BA friend also suggested calling the tour operator. This proved to be a genius idea. A quick check of the website got us their number, so I called to see if there was anything they could do.
A nice lady answered the phone at 6am (on a Sunday) and said they'd called the travel agent the night before and left a message asking if we wanted to fly from Gatwick instead, as they had anticipated problems at Heathrow. Unfortunately this message was never relayed to me.
Aaaanyway. She said to me that they had chartered a flight from Birmingham airport, and that if we could get to Birmingham in time for the 1pm flight we'd be on it. I told her I'd call back, ran across the terminal to where everyone was waiting and told them about our new adventure.
We left the terminal the same way we came in, heading for the drop-off point. The queue for taxis was immense so it was out of the question. A nice Polish minicab driver agreed to take us to Euston for £60. A bargain compared to the £100 from Battersea to the airport. We all got on board and in next to no time we were at Euston Station buying train tickets. £40 each later, we were on the train. Things seemed to be going well. Until we got to Rugby. Apparently the train had been delayed not due to snow, but because of overrunning engineering work. We sat there for over an hour, expecting to miss the flight.
We got to the airport with 5 minutes to go before check-in closed, ran to the check-in desk to find that they didn't know about us. They contacted the ticket desk and all seemed to be going well until they noticed a couple of our ski bags. £25 each later and we were checked in, but it wasn't over yet. We didn't have much time before our flight was due to take off, so we ran past most of the queue for security and got to the departure lounge.
But the flight was delayed, for another 2 hours. Eventually we took off, and landed in Toulouse, 10 hours later than we had expected. This was a pretty good job, considering most people were not able to fly at all.
Unfortunately when we got to Pas de la Casa it was apparent that there was more snow in London than there was in the ski resort. There was enough to have a good time though, and we made the most of it. Then the storms came. First a powerful wind blowing most of the snow off the mountain. Then the rain, turning what was left into sheet ice. Then came the blizzards, making the conditions freezing in the air and on the ground. The result of all of this though, was that the last 2 days were 2 of the best powder days I've seen in years. We were snowboarding off-piste, making our own individual tracks in the snow just like you see in the cool snowboard videos in the pub.
All in all it was a great holiday. Yay!
And I've just realised this is a really really long blog post, so I'll write about 2, 3, 4 and 5 in subsequent posts rather than here.
Over a month.
What's happened in that time?
1. Pas de la Casa Snowboard trip.
2. Another week off between Christmas and New Year.
3. 2011.
4. More Boris Bike shenanigans.
5. Vaujany Ski trip.
Let's start with 1.
It was a Christmas trip. As usual, we were due to travel just after the SantaSkate party, meaning not much sleep beforehand. The weather was looking iffy so I subscribed to the BAA text update service so I'd get a text to confirm the flight was scheduled.
It had snowed quite a lot but my text message arrived, saying the flight was scheduled.
So we stayed in Battersea the night before the flight (which was at 7am or so from Heathrow Terminal 5). The Addison Lee cab turned up, and for some reason charged us £100 to get to the airport. From Battersea. WTF?? I will never use them again. A black cab would have been cheaper.
So we get to the airport, all 5 of us, only to discover that all flights have been cancelled due to snow. Great. We were screwed, or so we thought. I stood there for a while wondering what to do. One friend ran around in a bit of a panic, getting annoyed. Another friend was preparing to accept that he'd lost his money, and another friend went to the British Airways desk (or rather the queue for it) to try and find out what was going on. The BA friend also suggested calling the tour operator. This proved to be a genius idea. A quick check of the website got us their number, so I called to see if there was anything they could do.
A nice lady answered the phone at 6am (on a Sunday) and said they'd called the travel agent the night before and left a message asking if we wanted to fly from Gatwick instead, as they had anticipated problems at Heathrow. Unfortunately this message was never relayed to me.
Aaaanyway. She said to me that they had chartered a flight from Birmingham airport, and that if we could get to Birmingham in time for the 1pm flight we'd be on it. I told her I'd call back, ran across the terminal to where everyone was waiting and told them about our new adventure.
We left the terminal the same way we came in, heading for the drop-off point. The queue for taxis was immense so it was out of the question. A nice Polish minicab driver agreed to take us to Euston for £60. A bargain compared to the £100 from Battersea to the airport. We all got on board and in next to no time we were at Euston Station buying train tickets. £40 each later, we were on the train. Things seemed to be going well. Until we got to Rugby. Apparently the train had been delayed not due to snow, but because of overrunning engineering work. We sat there for over an hour, expecting to miss the flight.
We got to the airport with 5 minutes to go before check-in closed, ran to the check-in desk to find that they didn't know about us. They contacted the ticket desk and all seemed to be going well until they noticed a couple of our ski bags. £25 each later and we were checked in, but it wasn't over yet. We didn't have much time before our flight was due to take off, so we ran past most of the queue for security and got to the departure lounge.
But the flight was delayed, for another 2 hours. Eventually we took off, and landed in Toulouse, 10 hours later than we had expected. This was a pretty good job, considering most people were not able to fly at all.
Unfortunately when we got to Pas de la Casa it was apparent that there was more snow in London than there was in the ski resort. There was enough to have a good time though, and we made the most of it. Then the storms came. First a powerful wind blowing most of the snow off the mountain. Then the rain, turning what was left into sheet ice. Then came the blizzards, making the conditions freezing in the air and on the ground. The result of all of this though, was that the last 2 days were 2 of the best powder days I've seen in years. We were snowboarding off-piste, making our own individual tracks in the snow just like you see in the cool snowboard videos in the pub.
All in all it was a great holiday. Yay!
And I've just realised this is a really really long blog post, so I'll write about 2, 3, 4 and 5 in subsequent posts rather than here.
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Microsoft Burrito 2010 Professional
2 subjects. Microsoft and burritos. Who knew they could be so intertwined.
Well they aren't really, but they are the 2 main things I have to report on. I'll start with burritos. Burritos are always a good start.
So I was massively ill over the weekend. Like whoa, this is not right. First the reason for the illness (what does this have to do with burritos, I hear you murmuring). Last Friday we had our company Christmas party. Now our Christmas and Summer parties consist of a day of lectures on how awesome we all are followed by much partying and food and alcohol. It's a winning combination most of the time. Friday though, was not one of those times. I was already uncomfortable finding out that this year our conference was to be held 4 floors underground. Yay. No daylight then. But the real problem was it was so stuffy. Add to that workaholic consultants who MUST get to the conference even if it means infecting half the company with whatever disease they have, and you end up with.... half the company infected with some strange disease. So that knocked me out all weekend. Which meant I had to take Monday off. But by Monday I was able to walk again, so I walked to... The Flying Burrito :D
It was closer to my flat than I thought, and a worthy alternative to Burro Burrito which sucks. Now if only it opened more often.
What did I think? Meh, it's not going to take away Chipotle or Chilango's joint crown any time soon, but it's better than a lot of other places. Just a middle of the road kind of place. Lovely service though, and they have a loyalty card which is a bonus...
On Tuesday I went to Chipotle for my reference to be recalibrated. This is recommended after trying a new burrito, lest you forget how a burrito should taste. This time though, it was particularly tasty, not because it was any better made (actually slightly worse, had a containment failure due to defective tortilla), but because it was FREE! Yes, another FREE burrito courtesy of Chipotle. Now tell me, how can you possibly beat that? I'm going to have to sell out to the corporation and rank Chipotle above Chilango if they keep this up!
Now what does this have to do with Microsoft? Well, very little. The similarity is limited to the immense disappointment I feel when a new burrito place isn't up to scratch. I've felt this way lately about a number of Microsoft products. Here's a list of recent issues I've had.
1. Microsoft never used to support Exchange ActiveSync on hotmail. This prevented me from switching to iPhone or Android. They have since introduced this.
2. Windows Phone 7. What a pile of poo. What's worse is that Windows Phone 7 is also their official solution to the problem of Windows Mobile Device Center not working with 64-bit Outlook, knobbling my Windows Mobile 6.5 too. Apparently I should just get Windows Phone 7 which works through Zune instead. Except it's rubbish.
3. Hotmail has become all weird and difficult to use.
4. MSN changed the messenger smileyes and plastered adverts everywhere.
5. SharePoint 2010 is a pile of poo.
6. Hyper-V. Don't even get me started.
It's almost like Microsoft is trying to make their products look as shiny as Apple stuff but without making any of it work. Guys, you can't polish a turd, so either stop turning out turds in the first place or start selling them as turds so people aren't confused and disappointed.
I bet none of this post makes sense. Oh well...
Snowboarding next week. Wheeee! :D
Well they aren't really, but they are the 2 main things I have to report on. I'll start with burritos. Burritos are always a good start.
So I was massively ill over the weekend. Like whoa, this is not right. First the reason for the illness (what does this have to do with burritos, I hear you murmuring). Last Friday we had our company Christmas party. Now our Christmas and Summer parties consist of a day of lectures on how awesome we all are followed by much partying and food and alcohol. It's a winning combination most of the time. Friday though, was not one of those times. I was already uncomfortable finding out that this year our conference was to be held 4 floors underground. Yay. No daylight then. But the real problem was it was so stuffy. Add to that workaholic consultants who MUST get to the conference even if it means infecting half the company with whatever disease they have, and you end up with.... half the company infected with some strange disease. So that knocked me out all weekend. Which meant I had to take Monday off. But by Monday I was able to walk again, so I walked to... The Flying Burrito :D
It was closer to my flat than I thought, and a worthy alternative to Burro Burrito which sucks. Now if only it opened more often.
What did I think? Meh, it's not going to take away Chipotle or Chilango's joint crown any time soon, but it's better than a lot of other places. Just a middle of the road kind of place. Lovely service though, and they have a loyalty card which is a bonus...
On Tuesday I went to Chipotle for my reference to be recalibrated. This is recommended after trying a new burrito, lest you forget how a burrito should taste. This time though, it was particularly tasty, not because it was any better made (actually slightly worse, had a containment failure due to defective tortilla), but because it was FREE! Yes, another FREE burrito courtesy of Chipotle. Now tell me, how can you possibly beat that? I'm going to have to sell out to the corporation and rank Chipotle above Chilango if they keep this up!
Now what does this have to do with Microsoft? Well, very little. The similarity is limited to the immense disappointment I feel when a new burrito place isn't up to scratch. I've felt this way lately about a number of Microsoft products. Here's a list of recent issues I've had.
1. Microsoft never used to support Exchange ActiveSync on hotmail. This prevented me from switching to iPhone or Android. They have since introduced this.
2. Windows Phone 7. What a pile of poo. What's worse is that Windows Phone 7 is also their official solution to the problem of Windows Mobile Device Center not working with 64-bit Outlook, knobbling my Windows Mobile 6.5 too. Apparently I should just get Windows Phone 7 which works through Zune instead. Except it's rubbish.
3. Hotmail has become all weird and difficult to use.
4. MSN changed the messenger smileyes and plastered adverts everywhere.
5. SharePoint 2010 is a pile of poo.
6. Hyper-V. Don't even get me started.
It's almost like Microsoft is trying to make their products look as shiny as Apple stuff but without making any of it work. Guys, you can't polish a turd, so either stop turning out turds in the first place or start selling them as turds so people aren't confused and disappointed.
I bet none of this post makes sense. Oh well...
Snowboarding next week. Wheeee! :D
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