There and Back Again

Hit the pubs last night with my roommate Frank, good time was had by all. Things were kinda dead, but the beer and the converstation were good.

Hopefully this weekend things will be a bit more lively.

Pubs in Ilford I’ve been to:
The Great Spoon of Ilford
Que Pasa
Eastsides
Jonah’s

That least about 3 in the town Center to visit, then its time to investigate the surrounding area.

Last night I went on a walk in Valentines Park, it was huge. Much larger then any park I remember back in Phoenix actually. Had lots of tree covered areas, but not so many trees there wouldn’t be room to kick around a ball. Ball fields for football (thats soccer), cricket, and bowling. Plus tennis courts and a small lake.

I’m going to attempt to take a walk there every night so I can keep on the weight loss trend instead of getting fat again. (especially since I just bought some 36 jeans, were not going back to 38)

So last night after spending yet another evening after another morning working I decided it would be nice to go get a Drink at a Pub. So I walk the 4 blocks away sit down at the bar, and get told the place is closed. So very annoying it was like 11:15, so I walk home, on the way back stoping in a little shop to get a snack and a 6 pack, and all the alcohol was locked up. Major suckage, guess you got to get drunk early in London.

Well im sitting outside using a BT access point, that would be the slickest thing ever if A. they covered more then the town center and a couple pubs, B. they didn’t cost 15pounds for 24 hours of access that should pretty much be the monthly rate, at most double that (there is no monthly rate that I could find).

Oh and even though it was beautiful and sunny out 15 minutes ago now it looks like rain, im going to have to buy an umbrella.

I bought myself a weekend rail/tube pass and visited Central London on Saturday and Sunday. It was quite amusing, saw the tower of London on Saturday took the tour and all that jazz. On Sunday I just did a little bit of walking (and riding) around the city. I saw Regents Park, Picadily Circus, Trafagalar Square, Parliment, and Westminster abby.

Today its back to work, well sort of, I don’t have high speed internet yet and I can’t get my modem to work so for now im using this internet Cafe. They don’t have wireless so im using one of their computers so no vpn. This afternoon im going to try find one of the hotspots the net says are here in Ilford, and then I can vpn and check my Cisco mail and all that fun.

Well im almost on London time, though I have no time keeping devices so I don’t ever have a clue what time it is. I stayed up to 10 last night with a couple hour nap, and woke up at noon today. I’m out doing a bit shopping now, I really need an alarm clock but i’m not having a lot of luck. I just want a cheap clock radio one, but I haven’t found them anywhere.

I bought a weekend tube pass today, so this weekend im going to go into central London and be a tourist. I thought about going today but im out here in section 4 and the ticket is £5 and I didn’t have any plans made, so i figured i’d plan a bit today and rest up a bit more, im still pretty dead.

I have a land line now, so hopefully i’ll get high speed internet setup early next week and I can stop spending time in this internet cafe (thats what it calls itself even if its just 2 rooms of computers) and start using my laptop again. That or i have to find a wireless hotspot around here.

The shopping here is pretty good even though i can’t find an alarm clock/radio, Maybe for now i’ll try to get a cheap clock from one of those £1 stores so I have a clue to what the time is when the kids next door wake me up playing in their backyard.

I got in London today my plane landed at 9:00 am, the flight went well though i wasn’t able to get any sleep. I took the express train to paddington station (which was a £13 ride) and then a taxi since my luggage weighed a ton (100 pounds or so), that added another £50 on the trip. Just to keep the money flowing out the door I paid a deposit on the place (£180) and now im out shopping since we are doing the its your own food thing, and they don’t have any food anyway.

My roommates Simon and Isabella seem nice, i’ll get some pictures once I get Internet ordered (got a phone in my name in a couple more hours today) or i find a place with wireless internet access.

(looks like i’ll need to fix something on my setup so £ sounds up right as well)

Well the first flight is done, we left Chicago 50 minutes late but i had a long layover so it worked out fine. Of course once i got off the plane here i was a little confused since I couldn’t even find a sign telling me which terminal Virgin Atlantic is in, but I found some airport guy in a red coat to help me out.

Now its for the long plane ride, I can’t wait.

Today is the day, My first flight leaves today at 3:15 from Chicago’s Midway Airport. 2 hours latter I land in Newark change planes and leave for London at 925, that flight should be around 6 hours and 40 minutes which means I arrive in London Heathrow at 9:05am.

Then it will be time for a couple hours on trains to get across town to the flat im sharing.

Now the planing and waiting ends and the excitement starts.

Just when you thought things were bad enough your cell phone rings, and what do you hear when you pick up the phone. Its Hillary Duff, only its not its a recording advertising her new movie. So you look at the # to see who to complain too and your phone #.

Will it never end.

Update, its even worse, one of your co-workers sent it to you on purpose. But the fun part is you too can send a Cindarella Story to any phone.

Well I found a place to live while im in London. 7 days left until I leave.

Oh and you might want to check out my travel clock and map.

Well thanks to the joys of having 2 ip address on my server I got php5 setup without breaking to much (upgrade to mysql 4.1.3 at the same time so i had to rebuild php4 to get it to connect to the db).

Hopefully I’ll be hosting my first fully php5 app by the morning. It looks pretty neat so far, its a fan fiction library my sister has been working on.

She will be releasing her framework and some other code under the GPL at some point, i’ll post a link when that happens as well.

Hopefully the php5 transition goes smoothly I think a lot of the new features will help improve my productivity and php acceptence in enterprise markets. I just wish the upgrade wasn’t such a huge deal for those of us using lots of OO in php4. The change in references is going to leave me with hundreds of hard to debug errors that I have to find tens of thousands of lines of code. Oh well maybe I can use the compat flags and upgrade slowly.

I’ve had a busy weekend, drove to Michigan on friday night for my nieces 1st birthday. Wasn’t much of anything just cake and ice cream. First time i saw my little sisters new house (well trailer). It was decent, I think she and her husband Aaron will fit well into the neighborhood. Its pretty laidback, just a little redneck.

Saturday morning I went to my nephew Patrick’s T-ball game, not what I call loads of fun but at least it was short. Then I drove to Chicago with Patrick in tow (well in the backseat), the driver was neither short or fun. Met my mom at the bank she works at in Bridgeview, she wasn’t done yet so I took Patrick to Haunted trails, we played a round of miny golf, neither of are very good, but I did get a free game by hitting the ball in the skulls head on the last hole. We finished time playing video games. Then it was off to blueberry hill for lunch and then back to Mom’s apartment to kill time.

In the evening we went Navy Pier, visited the Childrens Museum, went on a boat tour, saw fireworks, and rode on the ferris wheel. Patrick had a great time and I think my mom did as well, it was ok for me, but not really what i needed. Plus it brought up lots of memories of last time I was there with Megan.

Today I went to the White Sox’s game with Patrick, My mom, and her boy friend John. It was a pretty good game, a nice stadium, had a bit of fun (oh and hte sox’s won). It was kid’s day so at the end of the game all the kids got to run the bases (yea I was excited as well). I’m pretty sure whoever was running things was a moron. Took them pretty much 30 minutes before they got hte line working the way it should, we cut in line a bit so that helped cut down our wait.

And now im back at my Mom’s place doing loads of nothing, tomorrow morning were taking the train into the city to see some musuems (i think the museum of Science and Industry). That will be interesting since i don’t actually have the day off work so i’ll be working before we leave for an hour or so and then in the evening when we get back. Of course i don’t expect a whole day in the city I don’t know if i could take that much time in a museum with a 6 year old.

Oh and i got some toys from work so now I have a nice alumumin external firewire/usb case for the 80gig hd I had sitting around. Now all i need is the right firewire cable (my laptop has the mini-firewire connector) so I don’t have to use slow usb2.

Its been a busy couple weeks for me. I’m going to attempt to blog again on a regular basis since i’ll be out of the country soon and no one will have a clue what im upto otherwise.

June 26 a bunch of co-workers helped me move the majority of my apartment into storage, I finished up the rest of the moving by the 29th and moved out that day. All my stuff fits in a 5×8 storage unit and my car. Well the car is really just 2 suitcases with cloths and some random stuff my sister is going to E-bay for me.

I picked Megan up from the airport on the 29th and started driving to Sturgis, Michigan. Leaving town on I-17 the fun began, a nice sized rock hit my windshield leaving a chip (did i mention i just got the windshield replaced 4 days before). Looks like its too big to fill oh well thats my luck.

We made it to Albuquerque New Mexico that first night (8-9 hours of driving), got up pretty early the next day and drove what seemed like forever (ok like 13 hours) and made it to Lincoln Missouri (just before Springfield). Another night in a motel and then made the final leg of the trip, 10 hours of driving latter we were in good old Sturgis.

One 3rd my Dad got married, ceremony didn’t take too long things went well, i found it quite weird.

On the 5th I drove to toledo to goto the zoo with my mom, grandma, 2 sisters and their husbands and gaggle of kids, It was tiring and annoying (way to many strollers) i don’t recommend that sort of thing. Everyone

I was in Sturgis (stayed with my sister) til last night when I drove to Megan to Chicago so she could make her plane this morning. I’m staying at my mom’s until friday when i’ll drive back to Sturgis so i can pick up my nephew Patrick and driving him back out here Saturday morning, my mom and I are going to take him to a baseball game and a couple musuems.

Its been a pretty good trip so far, I enjoyed spending time with Megan I really miss her. Sometimes I wish I could just move on, but what we had sticks with me to tightly to just let it float away.

Its been nice to see everyone but now its too the less fun part of the trip, wraping up stuff here in the states, working and attempting to find a place to live in London.