The Mayhem Papers

Today I had the pleasure of visiting the small village of Blarney and the castle from which it gets its name. I caught a city bus about 2 blocks away from my hotel straight to Blarney.  The ride was only about 25 minutes.  Not too bad of a ride.  Blarney was a cute little village and it was a short walk over to the castle.

It was interesting to see how small the inside of the castle actually is.  It was very obvious that people were much shorter when it was built.  The climb up to the top of the castle was crazy.  An extremely narrow winding staircase.  My shoulders brushed each side the entire way up.

Once I got to the top, I leaned out backwards over the open air to “kiss the Blarney”.  I still can’t get the taste of stone off my lips.

I settled in to the Clarion Hotel in downtown Cork.  Located right in the center of town, it’s a pretty good base of operations.  Plenty of interesting spots in the city within walking distance with the bus and train stations a short walk away for destinations beyond.  It’s a very modern hotel and they gave me a nice room on the top floor with a decent view of the surrounding area from the balcony.  Unfortunately, they hold the honor of having the most uncomfortable bed I have ever slept on so sleep is in short supply.  On my next trip, I’ll definitely avoid this place.  It’s a shame really, considering how nice the rest of the hotel is.  Oh well.

The McAfee office is very nice, full of very friendly people (even though the security guard looks angry) and very modern.  Not a bad view out the conference room window either.

forgive the poor iPhone picture

Not too sure what I’m going to do tonight.  I have a call from 5 to 5:30 with some folks back in the States and then my all important chat with my girls.  After that, will most likely find a place close to the hotel to eat and then lay around and read.

International business travel is so thrilling!

After a nice breakfast, I bid farewell to The Brehon in Killarney.  What a great hotel.  When I bring the girls back to Ireland, we’re definitely staying there.  The drive south through Killarney National Park was stunning…and freezing.  Here are some of the sights I saw during the drive:

(direct link or click on picture for full size)

This should have given me an indicator of what was waiting for me:

Following the GPS directions, I continued heading south along N71.  Little did I know that the path the GPS had chosen was the old N71.  Instead of following a nice 2 lane paved road, I headed up and over a place called “Priest’s Leap”.

see the red line? That's where I went

I had to add in the red highlight because the line is very small on the map…for good reason.  This ended up being one step up from a goat path.  The views were tremendous, but it was seriously one lane.  In fact, a biker had to step off the trail so I could get by.  It took about 5 minutes of maneuvering the one time I did meet another car going the opposite direction.

The view from the top was amazing.  It was EXTREMELY cold and windy.  No one around but me, some sheep

and some 80 year old Irish man that was apparently out for a walk on a fine spring day.

The road behind me

The road ahead

I managed my way up and down the mountain, all the while thankful for being able to drive a stick and drove the rest of the way down N71 to Cork.  I checked into the Clarion in downtown Cork and was given a pretty nice room on the top floor with a balcony.

Tomorrow is Monday, so I’ll be back on company time.  I’m looking forward to meeting the McAfee Ireland team.  Luckily I don’t have to rely on a GPS to get me to the office!

Last night I checked in at the lovely  Brehon in Killarney.  A very nice hotel with very friendly staff.  When I bring Maryanne and the girls back to Ireland, this is definitely where we will stay.  Luckily I was able to get plenty of sleep.  Granted, the 30 hours of no sleep and a melatonin definitely helped.  I woke up, had a nice breakfast and met up with Richard Clancy of Killarney Guided Walks for a guided tour of Killarney National Park.  The interesting thing about this is he does this every day at 11.  During the summer he waits at the local bike shop and anyone who shows up can go along.  During the winter months, you need to call ahead.

We met up around 11:10 (it was actually 11:20, but according to Richard that is 11:10 in Irish time) and I climbed into the back with his 2 dogs.  As a side note, cars in Ireland tend to be of the smaller variety, so here I am wedged into the back seat of a car with his 2 lively dogs introducing themselves to me.  It was a pretty funny scene.

Richard proceeded to lead myself and a British lady by the name of Emma on a walk around the smaller of the 2 lakes in the park.  All the while, the 2 dogs ranged around us.  It was a great day for it, the sky was bright and clear and the air had just a little bit of a nip in it to keep you cool while walking.  The area actually reminded me a lot of the area around Mono Lake in CA.  It was fairly hilly with a good mix of flora, including a few Monterrey pines and oddly enough 3 palm trees.

This is roughly the path we took:

After hiking for about 4 hours, I strolled around the town of Killarney with a milkshake in hand.  It’s going to be an early night for me.  I’ve already had dinner and bethed and it’s only just now 10 minutes to 8.

Here are some pictures I took today.  Click on any of them to see full sized.

Not sure what tomorrow will bring.  I may drive the Ring of Kerry, or I might just take the southern route back to Cork.  Either way, it should be fun.

After an hour delay in Heathrow waiting for the flight crew to eat their lunch (I kid you not), I arrived in Cork around 4:30. Very tiny little airport. Fairly modern, but pretty small. After waiting a nervous 20 minutes for my bag come out, I picked up my rental car and was on my way. Unfortunately it was now around 5pm on a Friday, so I had a good bit of traffic to contend with.

The drive out was very nice. Unfortunately the setting sun made it a little tough to get a good sense for the colors around me, the scenery was very nice. I’ve checked into the Brehon hotel and have taken a shower so I feel human again. Now debating on taking a 15 minute walk up the road to find some dinner or just ordering room service.

The flight from LAX was long and started off with an awkwardly heated exchange between the passenger to my left and the stewardess.  She told him that his laptop couldn’t stay on the floor in front of him during takeoff.  He proceeded to inform her that he was a plane mechanic crew chief in the Air Force and that he felt it was perfectly safe.  This young man was 18, maintained dual US/UK citizenship and spoke with a bit of a British accent.  The importance of this will become relevant soon.

He and the stewardess argue back and forth a bit and after he asserts his all encompassing knowledge as a crew chief she says, “well, I’m glad you aren’t a flight attendant”.  As she is walking off he mutters, “well, I’m glad I don’t have an accent”.

…wait, what?  Ok, firstly, he did have an accent.  Well, still does I’m sure.  Secondly, is that some sort of strange point of pride I’m not aware of?  I’m still a little boggled by this.  Luckily, young Sgt Troublemaker decided to go hop a couple rows back to have an empty seat next to him.  I was very happy with that.  Granted, it didn’t help me sleep, but it was nice to have the elbow room.

So, not doing too badly due to lack of sleep.  I’m all:

Well, I guess I need to work on looking a little more chipper.  I was welcomed with a nice bit of British banter by the lady at the customs counter.  I asked her if my hair looked alright in the picture she was taking of me and she had me come around to the other side of the counter to see it and informed me that if I was looking like that after an 11 hour flight, then I’m doing just fine.

Well, I guess I should start the process of adapting to the new time zone (Greenwich Mean IN THE HOUSE!) and grab some lunch.

Next stop: Cork International which happens to have one of the better airport codes: ORK.

Our corporate travel agent gave me a particularly interesting route to Ireland. The first stop from San Jose was the lovely Santa Barbara airport. The departure lounge for said airport was about the size of my living room. I’m only slightly kidding about that.  Here was the brave little plane I flew on:

After a 20 minute stop while we picked up more passengers, we were winging our way on to LAX. That flight took about 25 minutes.

Thrilling development: 2 hipsters have sat down next to me.  The nearest to me is wearing a sweater that I think Zoe actually owns.  His pants look like this:

notice the purple shoes

So now I’m sitting in LAX and was suddenly reminded that it is a dismal airport.  No free wifi, a significant lack of power outlets and furniture from the 70s that has probably not been cleaned in that long.  Only about an hour to sit here before my plane departs, so I imagine I’ll be boarding fairly soon.  Then a quick 11 hour flight over to London, a 2 hour lay over there and then the hour flight to Cork.  While it seems like a lot of hops, it’s really not that bad.  I think I prefer a couple stops here and there to stretch my legs.

Wish me luck on grabbing some shut eye during the flight.

On the eve of my work trip to Ireland and it looks like I have everything packed. I did have to make a quick run over to Target since I didn’t have a suitcase that fit a week’s worth of warm/waterproof clothing. A small tip for those going on a trip. If you use the iGoogle homepage, there is a “To Do List” widget. It is extremely useful for creating a list of things you need to remember to pack.

I should be posting here fairly regularly during the trip.

I just finished building Maryanne’s new computer.  It has 2 things that Maryanne enjoys…nay, demands in her electronics.  It is little and shiny.

check out the keys on top for scale

I have to hand it to the folks at Shuttle, they make an excellent chassis.  The video card was an extremely tight fit, but managed to fit in.  Now she has a new system that’s much faster than her older system and about 1/4 the size.

I didn’t post the stats of said box (which has been dubbed “Starbuck”) because Maryanne really doesn’t care that it’s an Intel quadcore system with 4GB of RAM and 896MB nVidia GTX260 .

I’ve been trying everything I could do (short of spending $2500 on a new DSLR body) to work around using a flash indoors.  I did learn a lot about experimenting with ISO and exposure as well as some interesting photoshop techniques, but it still wasn’t working out how I wanted. I finally broke down and decided to buy a fairly basic Canon Speedlite.  The difference was instantly noticeable.

Click the picture for more of this series

I was happy with these results since one of my self created rules about learning to be a better photographer was that I would not try to spend my way through it.  So far, so good.