Archive for October 2002

22 October 2002

Sometime last year I noticed grocery stores selling these small, oblong tomatoes called “grape tomatoes.” When they’re ripe, they are crunchy and sweet, less juicy then a regular tomato or a cherry tomato. I don’t remember ever seeing them before, and it turns out they were created pretty recently.

18 October 2002

One year ago today: Miguel and I were cheerleading for the Evolution hackers. And yes, as of tomorrow Ximian is three years old. I don’t think I had any idea what I was getting myself into when we started this thing.

This week has been so utterly draining. Yesterday Miguel and I flew down to DC for an Open Source in Government conference at The World Bank. We gave a quick talk, and then I stole a lot of sugar packets with “World Bank” printed on one side, and the logo printed on the other. I have heaping handfuls of them in my backpack.

10 October 2002

I’m on Northwest flight 390 right now, on my way from Detroit back "home" to Boston. Detroit’s new airport — just opened in February — is absolutely gorgeous, probably the nicest airport I’ve ever been in. It’s big and spacious and bright and airy and clean, with moving walkways and flatpanels everywhere and a quiet, fast indoor electric tramline between the north and south ends of the terminal. It’s so neat and orderly — so tasteful — that it almost reminds you of one of the better European train stations, like the one at Schiphol in Holland. But then there’s the aggressive use of space: so distinctly American, there’s no mistaking it.

And of course the ceiling is arched like all airport ceilings are, in imitation of the shape of a wing. I think Dulles, near DC, was probably one of the first airports to do that (though at Dulles it’s inverted so the ceiling is actually cupping the underside of an enormous invisible airplane wing), but it’s everywhere now. The new terminals at Charles de Gaulle in Paris are breathtaking, shaped like huge angular wings with thousands of white crossbars tesellating the ceiling high above you. I wish my camera were working.

It’s a pretty effective modernization, or at least, it’s a big improvement over the 70s psychedelic-futuristic design in the older Charles de Gaulle terminals, which have these transparent pneumatic tubes worming around everywhere, shuttling people from one level to the next. And they play this strange jingly music in them; I think it’s supposed to sound like a computer or something.

Actually now that I think of it, it sounds almost exactly like the music they play in the Tunnel of Lights at O’Hare, the underground walkway that joins the midfield terminal and the main terminal. I don’t know what it is about O’Hare but everytime I connect through that airport, I always have to change terminals, and this usually means hauling ass down the tunnel of lights to make my flight, foregoing the crowded walkway and hitting the gate just in time.

Which reminds me, I very nearly ended up spending Monday night in Phoenix. For an undisclosed reason the captain kept the plane at the gate in Boston for nearly an hour before backing out and taking off, which put my 45 minute connection in grave danger. And I was flying America West, one of the shittiest airlines in the sky, all my experiences with them have been so universally bad.

I usually take my shoes off on the airplane, and I remember a couple years ago on an America West flight into Vegas, a flight attendant stopped by my seat and tickled the bottom of my foot. “Nice socks,” he said, and smiled. And then when we landed, JFK junior had just died and they came on the PA and said “We at America West are saddened to have learned about the unfortunate death of John F. Kennedy Junior earlier today. We hope that you are all as…sad as we are. ThankyouandwelcometoLasVegas.” What the fuck, right?

On Monday’s late-leaving Boston flight, when I sat down the back of my seat broke off and whacked the guy behind me. “Can you please put your seat back up?” he asked. “Dude, I can remove it altogether and put it in the lavatory if you want.”

Anyway, when we got to Phoenix the plane landed at 9:35pm, and I was catching the last flight out to SFO at 9:36. So after we touched down and people started to reach up for their baggage, I got up and shouted, “Some of us are trying to avoid spending the night in Phoenix, so if you don’t have a connection, please sit down so that we can have a chance of making it.” And I tore out of there and ran through the terminal, hurdling rows of chairs, and barely made it onto my plane, seconds before they closed the door; if I’d been a minute later I definitely would have missed the flight. America West is no good.

Okay, time to turn off all electronic devices and return my tray table and seatback to the full upright position for landing.

9 October 2002

A couple hectic days in California now coming to an end.

Chema flew up from Mexico City yesterday afternoon to meet with me. We spent about five hours together in Palo Alto, doing some planning. We’re getting together again tonight at the airport, before I fly to middle America to do some more sales. I think I figured out what’s going on here: it’s nearing the end of the year, so the sales department is pulling me into all their calls now, trying to meet the yearly quotas.

6 October 2002

Back in Boston from a long-ish trip in Helsinki, Frankfurt and Paris with the sales guys. Sales people are pretty crazy, back-to-back meetings all day every day and flying to a new country every 48 hours. I went through about 60 business cards and, last night, about three bottles of wine in Montmartre.

Flying to Helsinki.

My camera broke the first day, in Helsinki, when I plugged it in to charge it at Tuomas‘s house. He’ll be hearing from my lawyer.