London Calling–Part II

Like I said, I'd been to London twice before, and have "done" most of the tourist things.  But that doesn't mean on my time off, that I didn't do some of the touristy thing and revisit some old favorites.  And I got to check the last two items off that "Must See" list.

Below is a set of pictures from all around London.  They are roughly in chronological / geographic order.

Bank of England.  And another underground sign.  I shot a lot of them, but didn't publish many here.	Trying to recreate the classic pose from HERE.
Gringotts Bank – Also the Bank of England	St. Paul's Cathedral – I walked by St. Paul's so many times, it was almost like it was stalking me
St. Lawrence Jewry	Saint Alban Church Tower, Wood St. London.  It seems like 90% of London is built on or around old church grounds.
I love the red filter in Chinatown.  I was lookin' for the place called Lee Ho Fooks.  Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein.	When I was in London 20 years ago, I saw the juggle on the taller unicycle in this very spot, juggling fire.
Trafalgar Square with the anti-Trident nuclear sub rally going on.	The gates of Buckingham Palace.
The London Eye, peaking out from behind they Horse Guard Parade.	The London Red-Eye.
St Margaret's Church; the little parish church.  Not to be confused with Westminster Abbey, which sits behind it.	Westminster Cathedral, the Catholic Cathedral in London.  Not to be confused with Westminster Abbey.
These are the newest photo op stars in London:  The Levitators.	Yoda & the Goldman.  These aren't the only two.
Careful Dick, Batman is readying the Bat-Pole.	Scope, hanging out with the Queen.  See the flag?  She's home.
Platforms 9, 9 3/4, 10, and 11 at King's Cross station.	And I'm heading to the Hogwarts Express!
Tower Bridge at night.  Not to be confused with London Bridge.	I have a thing for the Underground signs.  This is right outside where I was staying.
Me, Richard, & Mike, crossing at Abbey Road.  The drivers in the area must plan routes around this intersection.	Abbey Road Studios gift shop.  Not to be confused with the Westminster Abbey gift shop.
I would hate to wake up in bed with this horse's head next to me in bed.	Flowers in Hyde Park.
I took a lot of pictures of flowers.  Not just for Cora.	Allow me to introduce you to an old friend, Peter Pan.  I have visited him in Kensington Gardens each visit.
They have moved the pigeons out of Trafalgar Square.  They have found a home in Kensington Gardens, by the Round Pond.	This gate at Kensington Palace is where all the flowers to Diana have been on my previous trips.
This little dog took himself for a walk.	St. Margaret's Church at Parliament Square
The Esme Percy fountain in Kensington Garden.	We refer to these as "Eric Pictures" where I take a picture of something through something else.
Went with a vintage look for this one.	It's almost 2 o'clock, better get moving.
Do you even need to have a "Keep Out" sign?	I'm on a boat, headed to Greenwich, in the Mean Time.  I am also weary.
Is that guy doing what I think he's doing?	At least she said, "Yes".  That would have been awkward if she would have said, "No" while trapped on a boat.
Did you see "Thor: The Dark World"?  This is where the big battle took place.  They cleaned it up nicely, it appears.	Prime Meridian @ Greenwich Royal Observatory.
Dolphin Sundial.  The gap between their tails.	I'm East.  I'm West.  I'm East.  I'm West.
This ball isn't in Times Square.  It drops every day at 13:00.	At 221 B. Baker St.  Just dropping in on an old friend.
I was really hoping to see the horse bite or kick someone.	And this is the Sherlock Holmes Pub.  Located no where near 221B, but not far from Scotland Yard.
He's smiling, but he will pop a cap in your ass.	While I was there, I went to see The Doctor.
Last time I was here, this pool was a flower garden.	Imperial Camel Corps Memorial along the Embankment.
St. Bride's Church: The inspiration for the tiered wedding cake.	"Defend the Children of the Poor & Punish the Wrongdoer" – Old Bailey courthouse.
Coworker Lalie & her fiancée Richard.	Coworker Mike and I on our way to Abbey Road.

And now, off to Brussels…

London Calling–Part I

For the last 2 years at work, we've been working on a big project, and this February / March, we finally started rolling it out world wide.  As part of that rollout, I was tapped to visit our European offices in London, Brussels, and Geneva.

This would be my 3rd trip to London.  I'd been there roughly 10 and 20 years ago, totaling just over a month's time.  I only had a couple of items on my "Must See" list: Abbey Road crosswalk & the Royal Observatory at Greewich.  It would be my second trip to Brussels, my other one was maybe 25 years ago, and I'd spent maybe a day there in Brussels proper that trip.  And it was going to be my first trip to Geneva. (More on that later.)

Cora didn't get her passport in time, so I was flying solo.  I was also flying business class!  It is an nice way to spend 8 hours, but I wouldn't pay for it myself.

And relax, I'm not going to give you a blow by blow recap of the trip.  To be honest, I worked a lot.  During the week, I usually didn't leave the office until 7:00, and then went back to my apartment, ate something, then Skyped with Cora and worked the rest of the evening, because the Chicago people needed my help.

I stayed with City Apartments.  It's a short term apartment rental company that owns a number of buildings around central London.  Sort of like Airbnb meets a hotel.  I stayed with them last time, too.  You get a pre-stocked kitchen, cleaning supplies, a clothes washer, TV's in the living and bedrooms with free movies (I never even turned them on), internet, blah, blah.  I would highly recommend using them.  I was there for just over 2 weeks, and it was so nice having a real 1 BR apartment to come back to, vs. a hotel room.  I'm not a "hang out in the bedroom" person, so it was nice to have a sofa to crash on, and a bedroom to sleep in.  (I stayed at the 4 Cloth St. location.  Between the Barbican & Smithfield's)

It was a great location, I could walk to work in about 10 – 15 minutes.

Love Lane.  Lead right to my office.	A section of the London Wall that used to circle the medieval city.
And not a Target in sight.	This whole trip, I became infatuated with photographing neon lights.
The Girdler's Company.  I fell absolutely in love with this little hall tucked in with the skyscrapers.	And they had some beautiful flowers.
And flowering trees.	"The Ward of Cheap" This sounds like the worst honorary title, EVER.
There was a Subway basically right outside apartment.  This was a common dinner.	I never ate at this subway.

As I said, I was working some long hours while I was there, so instead of going out much after work, I would head out at lunch.

Bank of England	The City Wing – I giant pigeon wing growing out of the sidewalk.
The Kindertransport statue, Liverpool Street Station…	I found this particularly moving…
And touching.	But this is a statue called "The Gardner" outside of the Brewers Hall.
This little sunken garden of the Churchyard of Saint John Zachary was a favorite.  Visited it almost every day.	"The Three Printers" statue in the courtyard.
Back to "Love Lane" and the Shakespeare statue.  I tried climbing up there to see if the head tilted back to reveal a red button that open the entrance to the Bat-Cave.  No such luck.	This is Leadenhall Market, also known as "Diagon Alley" from the first Harry Potter film.
The Parish Church of St. Michael, Cornhill.	Damien Hirst's "Charity" by The Gherkin.  Statues with teddy bears.  Or, "A Girl & Her Pickle"
And now, two churches with blue glass buildings behind them.	St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate.

To be continued…

That Time I Turned 50

Hey!  I’m 50.

Went to Star Wars.  Not bad.  But disliked one of the characters.  Pretty boy.

And then we had dinner at Bob Chinn’s Crabhouse.

Good day.

I know this is short, but I just wanted to mark the occasion.

Windows Live Writer Is Dead–Open Live Writer

So, I was creating our 2015 update for my Christmas Letter blog.  I had been working on it for weeks.  Cora sent me her text and pictures, go everything layed out just right, and went to publish it to blogger, and got an error. [Not Found]

Tried again.  Same error. [Not Found]

A quick Google search lead me an article that, apparently Google updated their authentification API, Windows chose not to update Live Writer, so there we were.  The two apps won’t talk anymore.

That occurred 2 FREAKIN’ DAYS before I tried to post my Christmas Letter.

PANIC! (not at the disco)  I’ve been using and pimping WLW since 2009, and this is the moment it decides to betray me?

We’d already mailed out our Christmas letters with the link to the site.  We HAD to get this letter posted.  Bitting the bullet, I pasted the post into Blogger’s web editor.  And felt sick.  I changed the fonts all up.  Some was big.  Some was small.  It wouldn’t scale the picutres like I wanted to.  And it freaked out when I put two spaces after the period at the end of a sentence.  It took over an hour to get a passible version loaded up.

---

While all the above drama was going on, I was routed to a fork of Windows Live Writer called “Open Live Writer”.  I downloaded it that night, but they didn’t have it working that night.  Now it appears to be working.

I’m writing this post on it.  So far, so good.  Can’t really see much of a difference so far.  Well, except for the fact that it works.

We’ll see how it posts out.

Car Wars Episode 8–The Tension Mounts

My oldest nephew got married a month or so ago.

The wedding was late Saturday afternoon down in Peoria; about a 4 hour drive.  The Daughter had a lot going on at college, so she wasn't going to come with us.

So, Cora and I got our act together, and got ready to leave a little after 9:00 am on Saturday.  Car loaded, I turned the engine over and …

THUNK!

Cora and I looked at each other, and I said, "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that."  But backing out of the garage, I could tell that I had no power steering, so I pulled back in and shut it down.

Now what?

We're making the wedding that's not in question, but how?  We unpack the laptops, and found that the Enterprise car rental is only open for 3 hours on Saturday, but it is the 3 hours we need.  And it is only a block away.  We call them up, reserve a car, and walk there in 5 minutes.

We get a VW Jetta (no a diesel), and I make sure that I know where the outlet is for our GPS (aka "Croc" since he has an Australian accent).  I can get us to Peoria fine, but I really don't know my way around, or where, exactly, our hotel or the wedding location are, and the base model Jetta doesn't have a nav. system.

We circled around, transferred our stuff from one car to the other, ran a couple of errands that we had to knock off, and hit the road.  Later than we wanted, but still with plenty of time to make Peoria.  But since we were running late, had the GPS on so that I could track ETA.

And so, it was with no surprise that we weren't out of the metro area when Croc gave me a low battery warning.  It was plugged in, but neither power outlet was working.  Must have blown a fuse.

Thanks Enterprise!

We roared down I-55 to I-74 and when we got in range, Google maps on the phone did the trick.

The wedding was probably beautiful.  It was difficult to see because it was an outdoor wedding and we were looking directly into the setting sun.

But the reception and hotel were nice.

Tech Tuesday - Windows 10 Upgrade

This weekend, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade my laptop from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10.

One word of advice – Pre-download the installation.  It's pretty big.  You don't have to install once you download, but when you do, you will definitely save yourself some time.

I'm not sure how long it took.  I started at 11:45, but after lunch, when it started in the heart of the install, Cora and I went to the Post Office, storage, The Home Depot, and Target; so we were gone for a couple of hours.  When I came home, I needed to log in.  It asked a handful of questions, I chose some defaults, and about 15 minutes later, I was done.

I mean, it was no big deal. 

No programs to reinstall.

I launched Chrome, and it even had my previous tabs still open.

I really haven't run into any issues.  I haven't explored any of the dark corners, but so far, so good.  Even my Nintendo emulator ran fine.

I'll keep you updated.

Have you done the update?  If so, what issues did you run into?

Space Meme

The other day, I read this Gizmodo post about Alan Bean.  He painted the below picture, and was also the 4th man to walk on the moon.

There's a meme running around the internet with it the caption:

"My Nose Itches"

And that got me thinking about what I could do:

And I think this is my favorite…

Rubble Rubble

So, if you've worked in an office, you know of the "office fridge".

And if there's an office fridge, there's going to be someone who takes food that isn't theirs.

We had one.

HAD

Here's some lessons (hopefully) learned by our thief:

1. If you are going to take people's food with names on it, don't make it be your Directors.  They have the power to hold a grudge.
2. Stick to the fridge on your floor.  There are cameras in the elevator lobby.
3. If you do go to other floors on your raids, eat the food where you stole it.  There are cameras in the elevator lobby*.
4. If you are going to steal half a pizza in the box, don't walk through the elevator lobby empty handed, and then two minutes later, walk back our carrying a pizza box.
   
   THERE ARE CAMERAS IN THE ELEVATOR LOBBY.

How would you like to explain that one to the family:

Wife:  You're home early.
Hamburglar:  Yeah.  I got fired.
Wife:  What for?
Hamburglar:  Stealing food out of the fridge.
Wife:  Well, you're gonna be eating out of garbage cans, because I'm kicking your sorry behind out the door.

===================================

* This is also where the non-emergency stairwell is, so taking the stairs isn't an option, either.

But Not Forgotten

Recently, we lost a blogger.

Lisa Rohrbaugh.  The Butterfly Farmer.

Like most, her blog had gone quiet long ago.

And she rarely updated Facebook.  But over the weekend, her Facebook page was updated to say that she pad passed from cervical cancer.

We never met, and I didn't know her well, but she was a kind and tender soul, and the world is diminished by her passing.

She was also an artist who made me these blog banners.

Farewell, Lisa.  You will be missed.