Seek! Locate! Intoxicate!
The weekend's alcohol intake probably rivalled a con's but without the guest talks to recover in. Lot of fun though ;-)
All started on Friday. Been building up to a big presentation/workshop (and trying to work in a couple of job interviews too), even skipped fencing on Thursday (didn't help that Ken was in Belgium and didn't get back to the UK till past 9pm). Not even another "U big wendy" message from Kate got me in... Still, the workshop went very well, from the feedback.
After all that, I was seriously in need of a drink. As it happened, in the evening there was a mini Renaissance reunion as Tim, one of the US guys I'd worked with a lot in Amsterdam and Utrecht, was in town. So, drinks, dinner and then more beers with Tim as the others had families to go home to... Lots of catching up and reminiscing. Oddly, the only guys who made it were veterans of the Dutch projects! Seems I scared some of them with my ability to recall the names of the guys we worked with on those projects. Other interesting thing: Tim, who's now at Macromedia, said he'd love to try to see if he could get me recruited. Also asked me if I'd be interested in licenses for Macromedia and Adobe software. "Hell yeah!"
Kate had proposed a Norfolkes curry night for Saturday. The plan for the next day was pretty straightforward - I was to pop round to hers, make another stab at inspecting her PC, wait for Simon to arrive and head up to Airsoft Armoury to put her SA-80 in for servicing and generally drool over the guns and other kit. Alas, the PC proved more intractable so we canned the trip to AA and headed to the pub for lunch and beers instead. Did also get texts from kabukivice who, regretably, appeared to be the only person who'd showed up for the London con pub meet...
Then, down to Euston to the Head of Steam for, yep, beers and to wait for Pete before heading over to Brick Lane. Kate proposed bus rather than Tube for the view but also entailed some walking around to get there. The others took the piss when I got the PDA out but, sure enough, the London street map on it proved invaluable in getting us there. We picked a curry house more or less at random and it did indeed prove to be pretty damned good. Just for a change, I stuck to mango lassis rather than Kingfisher though ;-) We did a bit more wandering round the area afterwards before another final couple of beers before dispersing.
Sunday - met Simon and Kate at Sloane Square to go see the National Army Museum. It'd been a while since I'd been there and it's still as fascinating as ever. Irritatingly, the Templer Gallery where the swords are was closed and the chap I asked seemed unable to tell me any more than that it was closed, which we'd kind of figured out by that stage...
We did have a minor panic afterwards, trying to find a pub. After a fair bit of wandering about, we found 3, one had only lagers and the next was closed. We were starting to get worried... We then headed over to the Hole In The Wall at Waterloo, so Simon wouldn't miss his train home, which served Broadside and had a pinball machine. Slightly embarrassingly, by some remarkable fluke, I managed to beat Kate's score by a very large margin which resulted in tart comments about my previous protestations about sucking at pinball...
After skipping a train or two, Simon eventually headed off, we stayed on for another few Broadsides and lots of interesting discussion comparing and contrasting social, educational, cultural and professional backgrounds and aspirations (you'd never guess we'd been drinking lots of beer, would you?) before we staggered off home. Just as well all I had scheduled for today was a telephone interview.
Rest of the week is filling up rapidly. Tonight: the Three Emperors Qing Dynasty exhibit with Liz (so skipping fencing again...), off to Aberdeen for the day tomorrow, meeting with Kate, DT and the other Simon from Norfolkes as the latter is in town, Thursday I hope to get one last fencing session in, Saturday there's LOTNA, Monday I fly to KL, and somewhere I need to try to fit in some time to make one more attempt to sort out Kate's PC - latest hypothesis is a bad case of software rot - Windows XP install's screwed...
All started on Friday. Been building up to a big presentation/workshop (and trying to work in a couple of job interviews too), even skipped fencing on Thursday (didn't help that Ken was in Belgium and didn't get back to the UK till past 9pm). Not even another "U big wendy" message from Kate got me in... Still, the workshop went very well, from the feedback.
After all that, I was seriously in need of a drink. As it happened, in the evening there was a mini Renaissance reunion as Tim, one of the US guys I'd worked with a lot in Amsterdam and Utrecht, was in town. So, drinks, dinner and then more beers with Tim as the others had families to go home to... Lots of catching up and reminiscing. Oddly, the only guys who made it were veterans of the Dutch projects! Seems I scared some of them with my ability to recall the names of the guys we worked with on those projects. Other interesting thing: Tim, who's now at Macromedia, said he'd love to try to see if he could get me recruited. Also asked me if I'd be interested in licenses for Macromedia and Adobe software. "Hell yeah!"
Kate had proposed a Norfolkes curry night for Saturday. The plan for the next day was pretty straightforward - I was to pop round to hers, make another stab at inspecting her PC, wait for Simon to arrive and head up to Airsoft Armoury to put her SA-80 in for servicing and generally drool over the guns and other kit. Alas, the PC proved more intractable so we canned the trip to AA and headed to the pub for lunch and beers instead. Did also get texts from kabukivice who, regretably, appeared to be the only person who'd showed up for the London con pub meet...
Then, down to Euston to the Head of Steam for, yep, beers and to wait for Pete before heading over to Brick Lane. Kate proposed bus rather than Tube for the view but also entailed some walking around to get there. The others took the piss when I got the PDA out but, sure enough, the London street map on it proved invaluable in getting us there. We picked a curry house more or less at random and it did indeed prove to be pretty damned good. Just for a change, I stuck to mango lassis rather than Kingfisher though ;-) We did a bit more wandering round the area afterwards before another final couple of beers before dispersing.
Sunday - met Simon and Kate at Sloane Square to go see the National Army Museum. It'd been a while since I'd been there and it's still as fascinating as ever. Irritatingly, the Templer Gallery where the swords are was closed and the chap I asked seemed unable to tell me any more than that it was closed, which we'd kind of figured out by that stage...
We did have a minor panic afterwards, trying to find a pub. After a fair bit of wandering about, we found 3, one had only lagers and the next was closed. We were starting to get worried... We then headed over to the Hole In The Wall at Waterloo, so Simon wouldn't miss his train home, which served Broadside and had a pinball machine. Slightly embarrassingly, by some remarkable fluke, I managed to beat Kate's score by a very large margin which resulted in tart comments about my previous protestations about sucking at pinball...
After skipping a train or two, Simon eventually headed off, we stayed on for another few Broadsides and lots of interesting discussion comparing and contrasting social, educational, cultural and professional backgrounds and aspirations (you'd never guess we'd been drinking lots of beer, would you?) before we staggered off home. Just as well all I had scheduled for today was a telephone interview.
Rest of the week is filling up rapidly. Tonight: the Three Emperors Qing Dynasty exhibit with Liz (so skipping fencing again...), off to Aberdeen for the day tomorrow, meeting with Kate, DT and the other Simon from Norfolkes as the latter is in town, Thursday I hope to get one last fencing session in, Saturday there's LOTNA, Monday I fly to KL, and somewhere I need to try to fit in some time to make one more attempt to sort out Kate's PC - latest hypothesis is a bad case of software rot - Windows XP install's screwed...