Just like Fight Club…

I feel like Edward Norton at the start of Fight Club. The bit where he’s living in a sleepless limbo. On Monday I got to work 2 hours late. Yesterday I was 4 hours late. Today, I got in on time, but I only got 2 hours sleep so I’m next-to-useless. I feel physically sick and my chest feels really heavy.

Last night I tried an over-the-counter sleeping remedy and some booze. Neither worked!

On the positive side, I got my copies of my PL/SQL Tuning book this morning.

Cheers

Tim…

The Vampire Armand & Blood and Gold…

During the long flights and airport delays, I was able to get through a couple more of the Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice.

The Vampire Armand – As the name suggests, this fills out the life of the character Armand, introduced in the previous books. As always, it was written in a style that made it very readable, but there were two things that put me off this book. First, there is little new to this story, it just adds more detail to events told in the previous book. It’s not until you read the last 150 pages that you get some good additions to the previous book. Second, the life of Armand is essentially a story of paedophilia. It’s flowered up to make it seem less shocking, but all the same, it’s just plain wrong! I don’t think it would be a crime to ignore the twisted “Mills and Boon” begining and just read the last 150 pages.

Blood and Gold – This book was 746 pages, and the majority of that was re-telling previous stories from the viewpoint of the vampire Marius. There were times where I was sure I had picked up “The Vampire Armand” by accident, such was the similarity. As most of these characters are interwoven, especially Marius and Armand, you expect some crossover, but it just seemed a bit lazy in this case. So much had been said about Marius and Armand in the previous books, there seemed little to justify whole book here. That said, it was very readable and the few additions to the characters were interesting. I guess if you took a break between reading these two books it wouldn’t seem so bad, but reading them back-to-back makes this weakness glaringly obvious.

Cheers

Tim…

SAW III…

I forgot to mention, on my last “planned” night in San Francisco I went to the cinema to watch SAW III. I’f you’ve seen the previous films, this follows the same format. It’s basically a gore-fest! The audience was very vocal, which made the show all the more entertaining. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Now I’m in Amsterdam…

So I got the the plane this morning, but we were delayed again because the planes batteries had drained overnight. We had to wait a couple of hours for them to be charged and the plane retested. Everything was fine, so we moved on.

As a result of the delay I missed my connection, so I’m stuck in Amsterdam for a couple of hours before my connection.

In addition to the rooms and food we’ve been given $250 off any flights with KLM. To be fair, they did their best to keep everyone happy.

Hopefully, I’ll get home today…

Cheers

Tim…

Still in San Francisco…

I went to the airport. I got on the plane. The plane had a faulty clock! I waited for 2 hours. I got off the plane. I waited for 2 hours. The plane was cancelled. I got on a bus. I got a room at the Hyatt. So here I am, at the Hyatt at KLM’s expense, for an extra night in San Francisco. You gotta laugh…

By the way, the bus driver nearly killed us three times on the way to the hotel. First, he couldn’t decide which way to go, so he aimed for the central reservation. This caused screams from most of the occupants. Next, he nearly hit a guy whilst changing lanes. Finally, we nearly crashed into the back of a car. On this occasion I screamed, “Break!” I get the feeling someone doesn’t want me to get home in one piece! 🙁

Cheers

Tim…

I’m the SF tour master…

Yesterday I went on three tours.

First was the Alcatraz tour. I didn’t realise it was an army base before it became a prison. Another interesting point was that the families of many of the staff lived on the island also. The audio tour included the voices of inmates, staff and their families. Very interesting stuff. Oh yeah, and the native american occupation of the island. They are doing some refurbishment and some of the concrete is being dug up and removed, so you can buy it. I now own a bit of “The Rock”. OK, it’s just concrete, but it it makes me laugh to think about it.

Next was the Downtown Loop tour. This was an open-top bus tour of the downtown area. It’s pretty cool to hear about some of the history of the city.

Next was the Golden Gate tour. Another open-top bus tour. It was really cold and windy, but I managed to get sun burned. I’m not the lobster-kid!

This morning I continued the tour theme with a trip to Muir forest and Salsolito. The forest was awesome. They’ve got some big trees over there!

Tonight is my last night in San Francisco. I start the flight back to the UK at about lunchtime tomorrow. Tomorrow morning will be a packing and last-minute shopping frenzy!

Cheers

Tim…