Archive for February, 2008

America – Part 2

February 27th, 2008

Well, I’m now in my third week in the United States and so far I’m enjoying it, despite the large numbers of differences other than the obvious accents and driving on the wrong side of the road.

The most noticeable differences that I’ve encountered so far have been when going out. It’s strange having to tip bar staff for every drink I buy (along with making drink prices rather expensive) and also the very strict male:female ratios that some places seem to enforce when letting people in (not a great thing when I’m here with work and work in IT with mostly other guys). This has only really been noticeable once so far, which was on Saturday when a few of us went to a comedy show (after being thrown out of a bar by the NYPD earlier in the night) and then went to find a bar for a couple of beers afterwards.

While this might seem negative there’s a load of positives. The transport system runs 24/7 and is pretty reliable too. This makes getting home from a night out at 4am both cheap and easy (especially living only a few hundred yards from the station). The snow also doesn’t seem to cause quite as much suffering as it does in the UK, with the infrastructure actually handling it without issue.

This weekend a few of us are heading to see the New Jersey Nets on Sunday, and possibly the New Jersey Devils on Friday so that should be good.

Of course, fitting this in with the training is a whole load of fun, as we’ve got early starts two days a week and a late night on one of the other days… in this case tomorrow when we have a C++ assessment. So with that in mind I’m having a rare night in watching some TV.

 

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America

February 10th, 2008

As part of my graduate training with work, I get to spend six weeks in the United States of America working in New York, which is due to start tomorrow – so I’m now sat in my apartment in Jersey City.

Yesterday started with the trip to Heathrow airport for the flight, which all started well but we soon discovered that we couldn’t check in easily as there’d been some mess up with thetickets or something. As a result 2 people got free upgrades from economy to premium economy, and through the use of the names-out-of-a-hat technique I was lucky enough to get this.

The next seven hours were spent sat on the plane, mainly watching films on Virgin’s in flight entertainment system – which is pretty good (with the exception of the slow interface).

Upon landing there was the fun with customs, where we got directed down to the side that’s supposed to be for US citizens only, which didn’t go down too well with the officer there – who said (whilst stamping the passports) “welcome to the United States – try not to have too much fun”. Baggage was then collected and a cab taken to the apartment here.

The place itself is very nice, although the view isn’t too great from the 10th floor where I am as there’s a lot of high rise buildings around here that block the view of the Manhattan skyline.

A few of us then went for a wander, got wet in the rain, and eventually ended up in a bar and grill not far from here. As my first taste of a proper American place it wasn’t too bad, and the prices were pretty similar to those in the UK… only in dollars not pounds… so it was rather cheap.

Today will see some more exploration, as all of the grads are here now and we’ve got all day before the 8am start tomorrow morning.

 

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Superbowl XLII

February 3rd, 2008

In the midst of all the primaries and other political events in the US at the moment comes a diversion – the spectacle that is the Superbowl. This year sees the undefeated New England Patriots take on the underdog New York Giants in Arizona’s University of Pheonix stadium. Of course there’s the pride of winning the Vince Lombardi trophy, but there’s more to it this year, even if you’re not a fan of either of the teams involved.

The Patriots are currently undefeated this season, having won all 16 regular season games and the 2 post-season games leading to the playoffs, although this hasn’t been without some controversy after they were caught making illegal tapes of the New York Jets in their opening game of the season. Since then though, they’ve beaten everyone that stood between them and their current position on the brink of becoming only the second undefeated team (and the first to go 19-0).

The Giants, on the other hand, have the chance to become only the fifth wild card team to win a Superbowl, and having almost stopped the Patriots in the last game of the regular season there’s no doubt that Eli Manning and co. will be out to win this time. On their way to the Superbowl the Giants have won 10 consecutive away games, including big upsets in the playoffs against the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers. They’ve got it all to play for.

Taking all this into account has left the Vegas bookies offering a 13 point margin in favour of the Patriots. This seems quite large, considering that the Giants were ahead for a lot of the regular season finale, and held the Patriots to only a three point win (pretty good going considering the way that the Patriots obliterated a lot of teams; the most notable being the 52-7 victory over the other NFC wild card team – the Washington Redskins).

For most people, the Patriots are the team that they love to hate; they’re unbeaten, they’ve had the “Spygate” thing hanging over them and the way they walked over teams on their way to the Superbowl has left a lot of people who will be getting behind the Giants. The Giants of course are the underdogs, and everyone likes a good underdog story. Well, everyone apart from Patriots fans who will be hoping that the team manages to make history tonight.

Both teams are truly in with a chance, the Giants proved they could contain the Patriots during the that game at the end of the season, and with their upsets in Dallas and Wisconsin they’re certainly not to be written off too soon. The Patriots are still a force to be reckoned with, especially with both Tom Brady and Randy Moss setting new records for touchdowns this season, and with Donté Stallworth, Wes Welker, Lawrence Maroney and the rest of the offence being as dangerous as they are, there could well be fireworks during the game.

It might be after 11pm here by the time the game kicks off, but I full well plan on watching it in its entirety.

 

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Asus Eee PC

February 3rd, 2008

This week I purchased as Asus Eee PC as a laptop for me to take to the US and generally as a replacement for my IBM X21 with its broken screen and having had a few days of use, I’m really happy with it.

Sure, it’s tiny and doesn”t have much in the way of power (although at 900MHz/512MB of RAM it’s more powerful than my X21) but the keyboard is still more than big enough to allow me to touchtype on it with minimal mistakes and the screen is big enough for most uses. As noted in Skumby’s blog post on it it doesn’t really work too well with websites such as Google Maps.

By default the Eee comes with Xandros Linux installed, although the manual does have instructions on how to install Windows XP and which elements can be removed in order to make it fit on the 4GB drive, most of which is actually taken up by the restore image. For me this is fine, as it means I have access to the utilities that I’m used to on my other machines. At the moment there seems to be a limited number of additional packages available in the official repository, but from what I’ve read this is increasing.

All in all it’s a very nifty little device that will certainly do me fine for my portable computing requirements.

 

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