Saddam Hanging Video...

If you're in to that sort of thing, here's a link:

[Saddam Hanging Video]

And if you're not, don't click on the link.

I've been thinking about this since yesterday when I heard it was imminent. And I still don't have my thoughts all sorted out. Some of the analysis I've read says that we botched even this chapter in the Iraq mess. This is mostly from Juan Cole - he really knows this stuff.

I'm not saying he shouldn't have been executed. Well, I guess, honestly, on some level I don't think anyone should be executed. I remember when capital punishment was a no brainer for me. And now that it's not, I think it's something for people with no brain to favor. Or something like that.

Anyway - from what I've heard, the Bush fans are saying this is a step forward and another signpost on the road to victory. I think his death was a forgone conclusion from the moment they found him in that hole.

OK, so I finally have the whole Sunni/Shia thing sorted out. Saddam was a Sunni. The Sunnis are a minority in Iraq. But since Saddam was in power, they held a disporportionate amount of power in the Iraqi government and the Baath party. And the Shiites, who are a majority, suffered greatly under Saddam. The U.S. has historically, well, since the revolution in Iran, anyway, been anti-Shia. But now the U.S. is supporting the Shiites in Iraq. Even though we still don't like the Shiites in Iran.

OK, so we are talking about two sects of the same religion here. Sort of like Baptists and Catholics. Now, there was a major religious holiday this weekend. Something to do with commemoration of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son. The Shia celebrate the holiday on Sunday. The Sunni's on Saturday. It is illegal to carry out an execution on a religious holiday, so the Shia held the execution on Saturday. Sort of a slap in the face to the Sunnis. You know, their holiday isn't the real holiday.

And the trial? Well, let's see - we replaced the first judge who was not to our liking. Then three members of Saddam's defense team were murdered. Wouldn't that be grounds for a mistrial here? Or at least some sort of ling recess? Anywaym, the remaining members boycotted the trial to protest the lack of security afforded them. So they were summarily replaced with some rank amateurs. The prosecution introduced mostly hearsay evidence. And that's about all I remember off the top of my head.

Again, I'm not saying he wasn't guilty - I'm just saying the trial was a mess, like just about everything else.

OK, I also remember hearing several months ago that the outcome of this trial wouldn't matter too much because there were other trials and he would be kept alive for those. What happened to that plan?

I also really wanted to hear what sort of dirt he would have brought up about our government's former dealings with him and his country. Not that they were relevant to his trial; but it would be nice to hear, for example, what he and Rummy discussed the day that famous picture of them was taken.


And perhaps some of the details about attempts at diplomacy before this War and the first one. And about where he got the weapons of mass destruction he used on his own people (the U.S.). Somehow I get the feeling that that's one of those facts that most people think is a punchline.

Whatever. I'm not thinking about it anymore - it's just another one of those things that, if I had my choice, it wouldn't have been allowed to happen. Like the new Safeway going up in town that's going to bankrupt our local market. Everyone else is stoked that they won't have to drive to Clearlake anymore. I just think about how HArdester's has always supported the community - Little League, the fireworks show, Middletown days. And how when we had a bad water alarm they gave free bottled water to all of us.

Wow, did I ever get sidetracked. Anyway, the thing that's bugging me now is not the fact that Saddam hung, but my own morbid curiosity that made me watch the video.

I'm curious - how many of you reading this will click on the link and how many would rather not see it?

The Half Finshed Christmas...

'Twas the night before Christmas and...

...holy crap is it really 2:15?

I don't know how Dodgeball (www.lafarine.com) does it.

I must have spent 12 hours baking today. Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread and Muffins, Mexican Wedding Cookies, Rum Balls, Pumpkin Roll Cake, Pumpkin Pie, Banana Creme Pie, I just finished the PeanutButter Blossoms with a little help from Rachel. I didn't get to my Triple Chocoloate Disaster Cookies, and I may not.

I'm spent. Ready for bed.

This is the half finished Christmas. OK, the front of the house is done. Except we wanted something different for the peak. But whatever, it's done. But Jake and I did that right after Thanksgiving. Everything else?

Well, the house is decorated upstairs, but we never quite finished, so the boxes are still out instead of in the garage. An we didn't get any decorating done downstairs, so we kept the boxes out. And Christmas started 2 and a half hours ago, but we might have people over for NEw Year's so we may finish decorating - so I guess we leave the boxes out? It just feels like we're not done.

I blame it on having to go to Trinidad for a week so close to Christmas. That really kept me from getting a lot of things done, and a lot of Rachel's things depended on me doing my part, so a lot of her stuff slipped, too.

Oh, and the golf cart - never quite got around to hooking up Christmas lights. I got the body off the gas cart and tried hooking up the wires. It worked for a minute, but then smoked. So it goes unfinished. But we still had fun driving around looking at lights the other night.

And like this blog post. There should be lots of pictures of everything I baked. But I can't find the cord for the camera and my laptop doesn't like 2 gig SD cards, and I never got around to updating the drivers and so, this is it. No pictures. No way am I going to wake up Rachel and ask her where the cord is - even though I'm just about certain she knows. So no pictures - a half finished post.

What's funny is that I am stressing out about all of this unfinished stuff, but tomorrow morning is going to be great, and we will spend the day with friends and family, and that will also be great.

Enough is enough. It's never perfect. But it's always perfectly fine.

So I'm off to bed.

TriniBlog Day 5

I took a few pictures today. But not many. I'll fill you in on the nasty 22 hours of travel it took to get home, but for now, just wanted to let you know I am back home at the Hotel Yorba, safe and sound.

Oh, but I have to mention this - The Exit Tax.

Exit tax?

Yes, exit tax.

It costs TT$ 100.00 just to get out of Trinidad. That's after you buy a bunch of magnets and Duty Free Rum and such to get rid of the TT dollars you have left in your pocket. You've got to come up with 100 of their dollars or you are stuck on the island.

Triniblog Day 4

I found my lucky project rock.


It was in the safe.


We had our meeting with the customer. That's the customer smiling on the left.

And there was some discussion, but I was able to get an acceptance document for the delivered work.


I thought I was done with all that, but it seems my life is still a constant struggle for acceptance.

Not a lot of pictures today. I was busy all day. Then Lester picked me up.

Here's a picture of Lester in what has been my chariot all week (except for yesterday with Terry). If you're ever in Trinidad, look him up. Lester Taxi - 868-797-2244. He'll show you around, get you around, and keep you safe.

I blurred out his plate except for the 'H'. I don't know why I did that, except that usually when I see cars on TV or the internet, the plate is blurred out. Here in Trinidad, all personal vehicle plates start with 'P.' All taxi plates start with 'H'. All heavy vehicles start with 'T'. That makes no sense, right? Well Lester explained that 'T' is for 'truck' and 'H' is for 'hire.'

He had some time and we decided to get dinner together. We looked for a local place with either some music or some food I hadn't tried yet. We couldn't find anything open. But we came across a Tony Roma's, and he said he'd never been to one. So I decided to take him to an American meal. The menu and the food, as far as I can tell, is genuine USA Tony Roma's. Good ribs, standard menu, nothing out of the ordinary. No goat or oxtail.

The only weird thing was the Thousand Island Dressing tasted like pickles. I couldn't eat it.

Funny thing - another me and nice clothes and food story. I decided to take off my white dress shirt for the ribs, and I didn't notice that the ribs were sticking off the side of my plate - my side of the plate. I pulled my shirt back and leaned forward to take it off and...


...got barbecue sauce all over my T-shirt. But my dress shirt was spared. If you haven't heard it, ask me to tell you my ribs with the customer story from when I did a project for Aspect and Discover Card. It's a good 'un.

When I was packing up my toiletries, I saw this in the bathroom.


So if I had brought an electric shaver, I would have needed that adapter I bought after all. I'm tempted to charge my laptop in there just to say I used it, but the outlet clearly says, "Shavers Only." I guess at one time all of the outlets were like that. And maybe in some places they still are.

Now I'm off to pack. I need to get up at 5:00, get showered and out the door to check out by 6:00 and meet Lester downstairs. Then it's off to the airport early for security. Then on to my 9:00 AM flight. Then Miami and, I think going through customs. But I'm not sure because as far as I know, I don't change planes. So maybe I go through customs at SFO? We'll see. I plan to sleep as much as possible. Eyeshades and iPod. Or is it iShades?

Whatever. I'll be in San Francisco at 4:45 PM or so, PST. I get four hours back with the time difference, so that's a total of 11 hours of travel. 14 if you count from when I leave the hotel.

Thanks to all for the support while I've been away. It helped a lot. And thanks to wife and boy for picking me up at SFO on a Friday night. I know how much that sucks. I can't wait to hug you both.

TriniBlog Day 3

I slept better last night. That was nice. Lester had some other things to do so he sent Terry for me. Nice guy. Talkative. Good driver. And his car smelled like cherries. He makes his own special concoction and sprays it on the seats and mats.

I got to work at 9:00. Steve came in and we went over to TSTT again. We got help from one of their DB Admins, Derrick. He wasn't really familiar with the Informix database where the business names are stored. And the data is goofy. There has to be another data source somewhere because their web application has all the data I need to make some big improvements.

I did the best I could today with what I had. To quote Butthead:

But if you let it dry, you can shellac it.

So tomorrow, we'll present the best we can do to TSTT. I think they will be impressed. And we'll tell them how much more we can do with the better data source. And how easy it will be to use "Press or Say" to speech enable their entire IVR. And how much better we can do with speech rec over touch tone for credit card numbers. And if all goes well, I will be coming home on Friday having accomplished what I set out to do. I better find my lucky project rock.

I went to a market today. That was weird. They have Hi Lo supermarkets, but I don't think I'll get the chance to go there. This was a market. And since I woke up hungry in the middle of the night last night, I decided to get some provisions and try some new things. The store had pretty much all of the things you would find in a corner market in the states. And a lot of things you wouldn't. There was a freezer with frozen meat. Chicken. Pork. Goat.

Goat?

Yes goat!

Liquor was overpriced. And aside from the liqour, none of the brands were familiar. They had things that looked sort of like Hostess cupcakes, only they weren't Hostess. And they looked a little odd. The had Peanut Butter, but no Skippy. There were raisins, but no Sun Maid in the familiar red box or tub. There was water, and they had Evian, but I opted for Blue Waters. They had cookies, but no Oreos. Only Double Stuff Oreos. But I don't like those. And they had granola, but not Grape Nuts.

Here are my provisions.


If you click on that picture to enlarge it, you might be able to see the best before date on the tub of Matouk's Crunchy Peanut Butter. 14 APR 06. So I won't be eating that.

There was even someone begging for change outside who asked me for something to drink. I gave him the three TT$1 bills I had in change. That's like 50 cents.

Here's Derrick and I working.

Then we went to lunch at the mall. This is the mall.

The Food Court was interesting. There were two Chinese Food places. And there were five places with different names selling pretty much the same things. I walked around the whole place twice, trying to figure out how and why people would choose one stand over another. Then I went to the one with the longest line, assuming that that one would have the best food. Perhaps it was the cheapest food? I don't know. But it was good.

When she handed me my change, I said, "Oh, good, I can bring some coins home for my boy."

She changed another dollar for me when she heard that.

All this for TT$46.25.

That's barbecue chicken and pork, rice, beans, and macaroni pie.

Macaroni Pie?

Yes, Macaroni pie!

No goat?

No goat! Just can't bring myself to order it.

Lester and I had a little chat about fast food the other day. He said that McDonald's came in for a while but they didn't last. He said everybody complained that the portions were too small. That whole plate above and a Sorell Fanta was under US $8.00.

They do have KFC - it's one of the most popular "restaurants" he says. But he thinks it's crap. They also have Pizza Hut and Popeye's Chicken.

Haven't seen a Starbuck's yet. But I'm told they are around in other cities.


Here's one of the most interesting power strips I've ever seen in a computer room.

I laughed at it at first. And then I realized, I could never MacGyver something like that. And it works. Also, it turns out I didn't need those international power adapters after all. Maybe I'll get to go to England or something.

Here's a picture of a Volkswagen Bora.

Bora?

Yes, Bora!

Not a Jetta?

Well, they have Jettas, too, that look just like this, but this Jetta is a Bora.

I went to the gym tonight. I felt like an idiot. I wore one of the workout outfits I bought while working at Nautilus. And it was late and I didn't think there would be many people there. But there were. And I was the only white guy. In my stupid blue Nautilus shorts and top that magically wick sweat away from your body, with my iPod, reading about race riots in Watts in the 60s in Zinn's People's History. But I got my sweat on. It was a rickety old treadmill, but I got my sweat on. The place was filled with guys lifting free weights in jeans and T-shirts and wife beaters.

Like I said, I felt like an idiot. But I got my sweat on. I skipped my wimpy shoulder exercises.

I'm for bed now. Big day tomorrow. And I have to find that rock.

Rachel, wish you were here.

Scratch that, I wish I was there. And I will be Friday.

Oh, notice there is no alarm clock. And my cell phone doesn't know what time it is because it can't get a signal. So I set the alarm on my rental cell phone and stick it under my pillow. At 7:45 it vibrates, rings, and says, "It's time to get up. The time is 7:45." And then I hit snooze and shut my eyes and then it vibrates and rings again and says, "It's time to get up. The time is 7:50." Then I get up.

It works pretty good.

Oh, pne more thing. The lamp is plugged in to this rickety loose power outlet in the wall at just about mattress level. When I lay down, the light flickers on and off. Sometimes it stays on, sometimes it stays off. When it stays off, I wiggle around and stop. Sometimes it stays on, sometime it stays off. When it stays off, I wiggle again. When it stays on, I lay very still and read.

So far, I haven't been electrocuted.

I can't imagine what it would be like to go somewhere like this where everything is different and they don't speak English. Or Spanish. At least I spoke Spanish in Mexico.

I know Lisa and, recently, Michele (with one 'L' - not a typo) went to China. I now have even more respect for those strong women.

It sounds like somebody is fixing an elevator with a rubber mallet in the next room.

Oh, and since I've been here, I've watched a whole bunch of Dog Whisperer and Sleeper Cell.

Goodnight.

And here, kind of like Aloha in Hawaii, Goodnight means both hello and, um...

Goodnight.

TriniBlog Day 2

I had a little trouble sleeping last night.

Here's the view out my window...

That's a waterslide that's only open on weekends and national holidays unless you have a group of 75 or more and they will consider opening it during the week. So unless I can find 74 people and TT$ 1,500 (US$ 250), I won't be riding on that.

Hear's the view if I lean off my balcony. I might get a dip in the pool, and I will spend some time in the gym - that sort of peachish red building is the gym.

Lester picked me up this morning and I went to the Voice Outsourcing offices at 9:00 as agreed. There was a wicked downpour, and Jerome got held up. So did Steve. And they had a crisis conference call on a project in Haiti. So we had a brief meeting and did some work. After their conference call, we went to the Woodford Cafe and I had some local food.

I had Pork Stew, corn pie, and Callaloo Soup. The soup is spinach boiled in cocnut milk. And it had a consistency like pudding somehow. I think there was some egg in it or something. And rice with Okra.


Here's (L-R) Me, Jerome, and Steve at lunch.


Then Steve took me here, the customer site. It's a lot like customer sites in the States. Badges and all. A cold server room, and less than ergonomically ideal working conditions for consultants. We did some work, but hit a road block when there were no DBAs there to help us get the data we needed. I did load the new grammar I built and it worked pretty well. Better than what they had before, anyway. I also discovered that a lot of names that were last name, first name were doctors and lawyers and architects. So there might be something we can do with those if we can get the right fields pulled from the database.

Lester pciked me up. I priced steel pan drums. TT $3,200 after haggling for a pretty new one. That's over US$ 500. So nope. Maybe I can find an inexpensive used one somewhere, but Lester says they are hard to come by because for Carnival, every Steel Pan band wants as many people as possible.

Then he took me to the The Hot Shoppe for Roti. It's grubbin'! It's like a burrito but it's got different tastes, and curried potatoes. And the wrap is roti bread - a whole wheat bread, I'm told, but it tasted like it had chick pea or corn meal in it.

Cars here are either really small or really big. There's a Ford Ka. Teeny little thing. Looks kind of like a street legal golf cart. They make a 1.6 liter Jetta- no turbo. Ours is a 2.0 and a little underpowered. They tax you based on engine size here. A lot of Lancers. And a lot of Used cars importaed from Japan (I think because of the laws there about how many miles you can put on an engine). On the big end, I've seen a few Land Cruisers, a couple of Land Rovers, and one old Defender 90. No Hummers. No Ford Expeditions or Lincoln Navigators. The small cars make sense because the roads are narrow. The big cars make sense because some streets are practically off road because of the steep hills and pot holes. Rims are a big deal here. I've seen several cars where I'm sure the rims cost as much as the vehicle. And in addition to alarms, they have these transmission locks that look like the put The Club to shame.

It's a little weird being one of the few white people. It made me a little uncomfortable at first. But people don't seem to be at all racist here. And they had people of African descent working at the Indian Restaurant last night.

I've never seen anyone not Indian in one of those before.

According to the CIA World Fact Book, the ethnic groups are: Indian (South Asian) 40%, African 37.5%, mixed 20.5%, other 1.2%, unspecified 0.8% (2000 census). I guess since I'm Swedish, Spanish, Itallian, and Irish, I'm technically in that 20.5%, but it feels more like I'm in the 1.2%, if not the 0.8%.

I commented to Lester about how the women here are strikingly beautiful and he said, "It's the mix - the mix is good to us."

More tomorrow.

Sis, don't call back - it's four hours ahead here and I'm for bed.

Here I am...

This is the farthest I have ever been from home.

I'm helping a Trinidadian company deliver a speech enabled business directory assistance application for the local phone company, TSTT. I have a long history with this project. A little over three years ago, I met with people from OLTP/Voice Outsourcing in Indianapolis. We worked up an estimate for what this project would cost. And then we didn't hear from them. Until about five months ago. They have some basic functionality, but it's not working very well. So I'm here to help.

I was pretty freaked out about this trip. I looked at the map and found Trinidad off the coast of Venezuela, and I don't know why, exactly, but I had a real sense of dread about leaving home. I know I get a little agorophobic when I have a trip coming up, but this was something else. It's my first time out of the U.S. since we went to Baja in '91. And it's the first time I've ever needed to use my passport. On Saturday night, we watched Pirates of the Carribean, and seeing all that open water and everything just added to my dread. It was so bad, I didn't even get to see Travis and Julie and Sadie who were in town over the weekend. It sucked.

But I did an awesome job of packing.



One suitcase. Just one, Cuz.

Rachel had the great idea of staying at a hotel near SFO on Saturday night. I was a little reluctant, but if we didn't, we would have had to leave at 3:00 AM to get to the airport. Once we got packed and out the door, the dread went away. It was a nasty drive at the beginning - stormy, rainy, and a lot of wind. Fortunately there was nobody on the road, and once we got over the hill, the weather got better.

She dropped me off at the airport on Sunday and I flew all day. First to Miammi. Then I had a nice long walk from gate A27 to gate E7. Bienvenidos a Miami, indeed - get your sweat on. Then a three and a half hour flight to Trinidad. Then customs. Then baggage where I found TSA once again failed to close my luggage properly. But fortunately, I packed so well, everything was there.

The good folks at Voice Outsourcing recommended that I not rent a car and go with a txi service they recommended. I rented a phone and called Lester of Lester taxi. He was already at the airport, waiting for me.

Check this out...



I don't care that he spelled my name wrong, I felt like a rock star.

And I'm really glad I went with the taxi. Cars are right hand drive here and the roads are crazy. Crazy, I tell you. Plus it was dark and raining. I really don't think I would have been able to find my hotel on my own. But Lester got me here, no problem.



It is hot here. And muggy. It's about 85 degrees during the day, even when it was overcast and raining. At midnight, it's still muggy, and about 82. The air is thick. Everything smells different. I wasn't able to see much last night, but today, Lester drove me all around. It's beautiful here - very green, lots of trees. And it's also very poor. Part of it is the style of architecture - even new homes look sort of old. In the poor neighborhoods, it's better than the shacks we saw in Mexico, and it looks a little like the trailer neighborhoods in Clearlake - only there was more garbage around. The middle class neighborhoods all had security gates, and some even had razor wire on the walls. That was weird. And the richer neighborhoods were generally gated communities and even then there were walls, gates, and razor wire.

Check out this mango grove.



Those must be some good mangoes.

Paul's probably the only person who will appreciate this - Lester took me to Brian Lara's house. The government of Trinidad gave it to him. Here you go, nice job hitting 400 none out. Oh, and they let him import a Mercedes duty free. I forget the first three letters of his license, but it ends in 400. Lester has seen him around. Here's me in front of his house.



And here's me and LEster at Ft. George.



And here's a shot from up at Ft. George.



That's it for now. Sleep now. Work tomorrow.

Driving Around Trinidad with Lester

Lester drove me around Port of Spain today. The roads here are something else again. Very narrow, lots of blind turns, pedestrians and such. And the potholes - we are talking suspension wrecking, rim denting potholes.

I saw a lot of cool things. Here's some of them...




Note: check back - it takes a while for videos to post.

I was 1 of 77,000 or so...

...last weekend at Big Game. So this is a Blue and Gold post.


I forgot my camera, but remembered my phone can take pictures. Not bad.

Cal won, but not by enough, and the BCS stuff waspretty much over and done with anyway. And it was my very first Big Game despite growing up in the Bay Area, 5 years of college there, and still living in the Bay Area.

But it was more than a game. I went with Tony and Eva and Dre and stayed with Tony's Mom and step Dad. We went out to dinner at a great Chinese restaurant in Benecia. Yes, Benecia. 7 courses, lots of talk, huge koi in tanks, and plum wine at the end of it all. I slept on the couch and they woke me up at like 6:30 or some ridiculous pre dawn time.

We met some of Bob's friends and went to our reserved parking spot a half mile or so away from the stadium. We got unloaded and set up and we grilled ribs and teryaki chicken skewers. Drank a few pops (Tony's word for 'beers'). Rachel and I made her Asian potato salad and chinese chicken salad the night before. That went over well.

Then we walked up to the game. And watched it. It was fun, but REALLY crowded. I somehow felt old and young at the same time. I met some people who looked about my age, but they graduated in '98. And others who looked my age but got out in '87. I could identify with a drunken youth talking loud and being obnoxious. Although he looked like a frat boy and I didn't go that route. I hope he gets his s%*t together and graduates.

So anyway, it was fun. Oh, but I sustained an injury. Memorial stadium can be treacherous. All that cement and all. I misstepped upon returning from buying a sweathirt for Rachel (she looks so adorable in it) and banged up my shin pretty good.



It still hurts a bit.

Other than that, here's a couple of things I've cooked recently:

I'm proud of this one - I call it, "pasta ala whatever I've got lying around." Lima beans and peas in sort of a tomato cream sauce.


And the other night I made this battered Japanese dish - pork cutlets with Tonkatsu sauce. I did up some tofu slices for Rachel. I also made a little cabbage salad kind of like a kale salad Ted made for us once. It was pretty good. Rachel loved the way the tofu came out.


Yes, it was fried, but I think that's OK once in a while.

That's it for now. Lots of craziness coming up that I'll fill you in on later.