roadie.

four days worth of stuff to write about. i wish i could think blog. i do it all day. walking around thinking oh i need to blog about this or blog about that. but right now, being on tour, working remotely and talking to a lot of folks i pretty much get back to my hotel room and crash. wednesday. worked at the battery park starbucks for most of the day. met a nice guy who is running a start up. a tech startup. he was a cool guy. we shot the breeze about one note which he is beta testing. we also ended up chatting with some folks from london who were interested in the tablet pc. before i left another guy came over to chat about working on wifi. regular little tech community. i think as hot spots pop up more and more people will look forward to going out with their computers. it's like being alone, together. dinner with the local nyc and new jersey user group leaders was a great evening. a couple of the guys have been ibm experts since back in the day. fun to hear stories about big blue's early days. also fun to hear the ups and downs over the years with microsoft. thursday. the play was amazing. amazing. not sure i've said lately how much i love doc's blog. going to see him in a little over a week. friday. i drove! in new york city. found a great shop for gals that would like to look cute even when they're doing the w. w. saturday. stood at a kiosk today for seven hours. took down some comments from the people i chatted to. figuring out a way to post my notes. b.

theater.

in NYC. i love this city. walked from the upper east side to canal st.and back. found heaven on 39th and 5th. where will i be thursday night? catching this play: the exonerated. saw a documentary about it awhile back and was hoping i could get a seat. review to follow on friday. jp stewart sent me this. check his out. using my favorite starbucks website to pick out my worksite tomorrow. b.

headphones.

god's gift to the leery traveler. b.

monday.

looking for local bloggers i came upon this. it is a neat way to find new blogs, by geography. i realized while i'm on the road i should see if i can meet up with some of the folks who blog around the u.s.a. - i'm afraid i'm too late to hook up with the cleveland folks, but i'm going to make an effort from nyc on. if you're an ncy blogger and your free for coffee weds and/or thurs this week - send me mail: bethg @ microsoft.com. if you're a long island blogger and you make it out to the rooseveltfield parking lot this sat or sun i'll be there with the loews movies in motion tent showing off some microsoft stuff. stop by and say hey. trains, buses and automobiles. today i took the cleveland rta train to the airport so i could ride a shuttle bus to the car rental center to drive 40 miles to find out that weight watchers is closed on holidays. okay, so no weigh in for me. but i did find some other bloggers who share in my efforts. check out the mayor. he's one of the folks who like me recently joined chris pirillo's brain trust. great conversations going on - but i must admit i feel a bit out of my league. doing a whole lot of reading and learning right now... zoo. while heading back to return the car mentioned above i took a detour to the cleveland metropark zoo. am i the only one who finds this a little disturbing? i stood there until he twitched a little just to make sure he was alive. the zoo was amazing btw. going to work on my second photo story with the zoo pics. chances are it will be too big for me to post here because i took 60 plus pics and 10 plus movies. i'm going to work on it while i'm on the road and then burn it to a cd for my nieces. sort of a random present i guess, but it sure beats a pack of postcards. b.

tired.

so tired. going to take the night off. back tomorrow. b.

ribs.

goodness. five days of ribs ribs ribs. i had a sample yesterday. take a look... big pig.jpg winner.jpg kudos.jpg lunch.jpg table for one.jpg viva la minis! saw a sneak preview of the italian job thursday night. loved it! it's fun, fast, and smart. sort of like an ocean's eleven for gen y. which is funny because i think the original of this was somewhat a homage to the original of that. make sense? had dinner last night with five local user group folks. two leaders from the greater cleveland pc user group, two leaders from the local mac user group, and one fella who runs a newsletter type user group devoted to pcs. really nice people who like the group in philly gave me some more insights into the wows and woes of windows. one of the coolest things i learned last night is about a program called computers assisting people - check out their website. hoping to see more programs like this in the future! b.

recipe.

ingredients. one minolta diamage x. one 128mb kingston sd card. one dazzle 4 in 1 card adapter. one fujitsu tablet pc. one microsoft travel mouse. one stsn internet access box (love hotels with high speed). result: my first photo story ever! go easy on me. i'm a aspiring director - emphasis on the aspiring. the plan is to get pretty familiar with all sort of media type activities this summer and see if i can really capture what's going on while i'm on the road. enjoy. cleveland (medium quality) oh and if you wonder what the heck i'm going on about. check this. b.

red eye

why o why did i take the red eye? just finished my fifty minute tour of the rock and roll hall of fame. i have a seriously short attention span. the u2 retrospective rocks (literally). talking to strangers can be a good thing. lots of nice folks helping me out today while i explore my new home for the next five days. b.

head hurts

blogging from my phone. the mind reels at all the possibilities. b.

exsqueeze me?

i had recently switched from t-mobile to attws. i had 30 days to "test" and either keep/cancel my service with attws so i decided to hang on to t-mobile just in case. needless to say i am now back with t-mobile. not for the reasons you might think. as far as customer service, features, signal strength, etc attws is comparable to t-mo. i switched because i discovered (after 3 weeks of use) that you are not guaranteed an SSL connection via mmode. it seems that they assign ip addresses dynamically each time you log on and there are only so many secure connections to go around. at some point your phone can no longer get assigned one of these ip addresses and you become phona non grata. since i use outlook mobile access that was the one deciding factor between the two services. i won't bore you with the process i went through to discover this issue, however, it dawned on me that it's amazing the high level of knowledge and comfort with technology someone would have to have in order to navigate much of what is going on in the wireless space. needless to say there are a couple of sites that help me do so: check out phonescoop and howard chui forums if you find yourself looking for tips, tricks, and inside info. couple of great sites run by a couple of great guys. b.

phlog.

groovy. had a filling replaced today. did you know that fillings have a life span of 15 - 20 years? made me feel really old to think i have fillings that are older than a lot of the folks i come into contact with during the day. my dentist gave me a radio headset to listen to and wouldn't you know it john cougar's (nee mellencamp) "hurts so good" came on at some point. oh the irony. met some amazing people while in philadelphia last week. had dinner with six folks who represented a spectrum of computer enthusiasts and was able to listen and learn a lot about their views on windows. when i have a chance to sit down and get it in writing, i'll post some of the things we talked about. b.

six.

who knew the number six could be so darn important. the six on my cell phone is grumpy and i need to push it super hard, otherwise nothing happens. jeez - how many sixes can one person need to access?? well it turns out a lot. pick a number tomorrow and see how many times you find yourself using it on your cell phone, whether it's looking up a name in contacts, making a call or sending an sms i bet you end up using it a lot more than you'd expect. b.

extreme makeover.

all time t.v. low for me. watched extreme makeover on abc. the gal i saw was karen. if you're so inclined they have before and after pictures on the abc site. after several surgeries, hair/makeup makover, and multiple sessions with a personal trainer there was a dramatic difference in how she looked. all the arguments for and against plastic surgery, reality t.v., and society's emphasis on looks aside the thing that disturbed me the most about this show was having the fiance of karen say repeatedly how beautiful she looked after her extreme makeover ~ and never once, not once! saying, but then again i always thought she was beautfiul or something along those lines. sad. dr. cornel west in the matrix reloaded! saw him speak a few years ago and was awestruck. when i saw matrix reloaded in philadelphia the audience in the theater with me was predominately african american. when the face of dr. west flashed on the screen there was a burst of hoots and applause. when i saw the matrix relaoded in seattle last night and his scene came up there was nothing. no reaction. i'm assuming either a. folks knew who he was and didn't feel anything either way or b. no one knew who he was. sad. b.

bluetooth.

ten minutes to matrix 2 reloaded. blogging from my theater seat over a bluetooth connection. yippee. b.

gogurt.

how have i not heard of this?! i guess gogurt showed up on the shelves a couple of years ago. i am having a hard time picturing how it works because it's the consistency of regular yogurt in a tube. mechanical engineering at it's best. matrix reloaded. i have a ticket for tomorrow. missed seeing it tonight by about 10 minutes. but on an up note i think iam seeing it at a very very interesting movie theater. pics to follow. bridge.jpg lobby.jpg lobby2.jpg ladiesroom.jpg barfood.jpg mediaimmersion.jpg matrix.jpg b.

math.

it makes my head hurt. i love problem solving. i love puzzles. i love foreign languages. but i have not mastered math in any sort of way. i want to though. it's my mt. everest. today i was asked to use more math than i have since my senior year in high school. my first thought: sad. when i get back to seattle i'm going to get some math exercise books. hey a big shout out to all the people who have sent me mail with product feedback! it's cool to look at windows xp through your eyes. please keep it coming! b.

random.

headsets. cool or stupid? i'm really leaning towards getting one, but i'm still uncertain. i have to say though i currently love the commercial in which a guy appears to say to the woman sitting next to him "i think you're the most beautiful woman in the world" - when she responds that she's attracted to him as well, he pulls out an earphone and says, "excuse me?" can't remember the product, but something along the lines of wireless service. strange picture of the day. saw this in the front window of an ophthalmologist's office as i was walking back to my hotel. oh and if you ever need to find a starbucks in philadelphia.... b.

travel.

it wears me out. there is so much i have to write about tonight, but sleep beckons. also tom waits is on the local pbs channel - so i'm gonna curl up and let him sing me to sleep. b.

apple.

went to the grand opening of the bellevue square apple store this morning. one word: cool. b.

headlines.

i find this disturbing. there had to be a better way to cover this incident. how about: in-flight door malfunction causes passenger deaths. granted it is still a pretty gruesome thought, but at least it doesn't cause one to hear sucking sound effects when reading the headline, or picture every movie you've ever seen when the back of a plane is blown out (thinking alias, alive, x2). packing to head to philadelphia tomorrow. i'm going to be in training all week and then next friday night i'm going to be taking a whole bunch of folks out to dinner to hear what they think about microsoft and windows. i'm super excited! a few folks have already sent me notes as a result of my buddy chris (hi chris!) sending out a link to my email addy in his lockergnome windows daily newsletter last week. since i'm going to be on the road - this is a good chance for me to have a bunch of virtual pen pals. something to think about. a windows user wrote to me today and said even though he's happy with our products for the most part it bothers him that they don't ship with manuals anymore. i have noticed a lot of products seem to ship with less and less documentation. i may be exposing myself as an uber geek (if i haven't already), but i will hang out with a maunal to a new product for a couple of days, usually reading it before bed, until i feel i have the hang of all the ins and outs. the latest one i curled up with was the new sony sport am/fm radio walkman thing. if i hadn't read the manual i probably would have never discovered the tune into t.v. feature. it's cool to walk around the block and listen in to the evening news on king 5, or kiro 7. on the other hand when when i decided i was going to get super proficient with visio, i did have to get myself a book, i bought visio 2002 step by step which was very helpful. not sure if anything that comprehensive would be included in the box, but it's a good question, where should documentation end and then more in-depth books take over? ps. a day after i bought the book someone sent me this. doh. b.

sick.

this week i tried benadryl. claritin. dayquil. contact. and some generic stuff from the med cabinet at work. all i can say is they all made me feel loopy and nauseous. oh and i still had a stuffy nose, sore throat, achey head, and phlegmy cough. getting on a plane in less that 48 hours - woopee. watched manor house this week. since i'm a huge fan of upstairs downstairs and have seen the remains of the day & gosford park umpteen times ~ it's not a stretch to think i would tune in. it was a thoughtful walk through history. definitely catered to my fascination with reality t.v., but made me wistful to think that you could have that type of programming be engaging and educational. curious to see if somehow american t.v. tries to duplicate this show as they do so often with british shows. the mind reels at the untasteful possiblities. favorite guy on the show - the kooky chef who looked like a muppet character. b.

cheating.

i'm not an encyclopedia of star trek trivia and/or history but i'm enough of a continuity purist to be completely annoyed that the borg is a part of tonight's enterprise episode. bah humbug. why i love my tablet pc! reason 3,642: yesterday i was giving a presentation to a room of fifteen or so folks. my co-presenter and i had put together a short deck of powerpoint slides which i ran from tablet directly onto the screen. with my pen i was able to make notes, highlight important bits of info and generally keep the group pretty interested with a random doodle here and there. ink in computing will probably be fairly common at some point, but for now it still makes me smile. b.

mug.

got the mug. walked 88 miles for it. i'm pretty sure i'm certifiable at this point. only walked 5K steps a day, obviously i'm a little too motivated by external rewards rather than an internal drive for health and well being. also managed to get sick over the weekend. it's strange to lose your sense of taste and smell yet still have hunger pangs. we went out to dinner tonight and i looked at a menu of absolutely amazing dishes with no delight. if you have a chance pick up An Anthropologist on Mars by Dr. Oliver Sacks. he describes a patient who essentially loses the "sixth" sense or sense of self in a three dimensional plane. think of it like this - if you raise your hand above your head, you know it's there. you don't need to see it to know your hand is currently above your head. this woman, however, had lost that sense. her limbs would stray in space and she would not be aware that had happened. i once saw Dr. Sacks read at the elliot bay book company. he read from this book. it was delightful. i especially liked the fact that he likened having a couple of pints of red hook esb as taking a vacation from your frontal lobe. made someone who is in many ways a legend in the medical world seem just like a guy you could site down and have a chat with over beers or coffee. b.

bubble.

it doesn't take much these days to remember the economy is struggling. in the last five years seattle construction exploded into a building boom, where it seemed as if there was a new building going up in any available space. while walking home from downtown yesterday i noticed how many of those work sites seems to be at a stop. these pictures were taken in a four block span. b.

weekends.

i've had a couple of fabulous weekends in a row. ever since my segway arrived i've begun walking more. wwah? yah. walking. the deal is i got the segway for all of those trips that are too far to walk but definitely too close to drive. anything under 2 miles seemed to fit the bill. now, however, i've ammended it. segway is for anything between 4-10 miles, otherwise (if time permits of course) i walk. i realized after many segway trips that places were closer than i had realized. last weekend, my husband i walked from our house to another neighborhood for dinner and a movie. roundtrip was a little less than 4 miles and made for a really nice evening. on sunday we walked to the seattle zoo. we racked up 6 miles on that trip i took a couple pics with my phone. yesterday i walked downtown. 4. 3 miles and more phone pics. last night saw x2. something really unexpected happened. while we were waiting for the film to start a young guy, jeans and sweatshirt wearing, hands in pockets, stands in the front of the theater and introduces himself as a son in the family that owns the theater. he thanks us for choosing the majestic bay "we realize you have many choices of where to see your films" - tells us the one thing we'll never see on their screens is commercials: "you didn't pay for them, you shouldn't have to see them" - gives us some history on the theater - and then throws some t-shirts in the audience before wishing us happy watching. i knew their was a reason i liked going to this theater. looks like i'm not the only one who is a fan. saw a faboo documentary today. bounce: behind the velvet rope. favorite line from the film: "i don't like quiet nights, because then i don't get to do what i like to do, which is beat up people." you have to give the guy credit for being honest enough to know he has violent tendencies and purposely seeking out a legal outlet for those energies. 84% closer to getting the mug. ref: 4/15/2003 8:51:02 PM b.

trickery.

after posting props to kashi below; i remembered the dr.pepper bloggergate from awhile back. full disclosure: kashi did not tell me to say i like their stuff. a husband of a friend does work for them and introduced me to the beyond cereal stuff. i did not. did not. did not. just see a commercial for the remake of the in-laws starring michael douglas and albert brooks. x-men 2 t-25 hrs. b.

mmmmmm.

what i'm eating right now. the one thing that w.w. has done that rocks my socks is made me go out and find some great snacking alternatives. just had the peanut butter choco nutrition bar good gawd it was like a reeses peanut butter cup on steroids. b.

hitting the road.

it's been awhile, but it's time for me to get back on the road and start chatting with folks. my summer schedule includes stops in philadelphia, cleveland, nyc, long island, pittsburgh, hartford, washington d.c., dallas, des moines, san francisco, detroit, and chicago. i'm hitching a ride with the loews movies in motion tour, of which microsoft is a sponsor. we'll be showing off some cool stuff and the team organizing was nice enough to let me tag along in order to learn more about the world of windows. i've been heads down in mobile devices for so long, i honestly didn't give much thought to the other microsoft products (oh - except xbox of course) ~ and so it's time to get up to speed. i plan on doing a little learning and experimenting on my own while i'm out and about using both movie maker and media player to capture the tour and the folks i meet. i've already sent mail to a bunch of user group leaders and mvps asking if i could meet them and learn more about their thoughts on windows, computing, and experiences of those they work with. here's the deal if you a. live in one of the above cities and b. found this message and c. feel like telling me your thoughts on microsoft, windows, and anything else tech related feel free to send me a mail - my email addy is bethg and then add @microsoft.com (sparing myself from the spam harvest - see 4/29 post) i can meet ya for coffee or even come by for a visit (every it pro's dream - a microsoft employee who is all ears!) i head out in the next couple of weeks and will be flying around the country until september or so. apologizes to our global users, my first foray out is u.s. only, however, i have dreams of making my way to several countries before the year is up. whether you're in ecuador or egypt you can at least track my travels starting here on may 16th - i promise to keep the pictures and videos small for dial-up folks :) b.