Blogs: Vitacora y Edgeek

Unas cuantas fotos de Portland... vean mi Flickr que ahora si le estoy poniendo fotos... por lo menos hoy.

A few pictures from Portland. Check out my Flickr. I am actually putting pictures in it... at least tonight.

Una casa muy bonita a la orilla del río (cuyo nombre no recuerdo) que pasa por Portland:
La rueda que mueve el teleférico de Portland... me gustó como quedó la foto:
Con Juan Manuel, el gerente de gobierno y educación de Intel para el cono norte de Sur América:
En la ¨entrada¨ a Chinatown, en Portland, OR:

I had some computer trouble, so the previous post, dated march 5th, is actually from the 3rd.

I hadn't updated my Wireless driver, and that caused a "blue screen of death" type of error. Fortunately the people at Intel were able to fix it. I wasn't the only one.

I got to Portland at around 10PM, after a 4-hour flight from Houston. I slept most of it. There was a van waiting for us... correct... I waited with John Woodrow, from the UK, for our van to arrive and got the hotel a little past 11pm.

They were out of rooms in the smoking area, so I'm stuck in a suite where I can't smoke. That kind'a sucks. I didn't remember how much it sucks to smoke in this country.

Now that the first day of the roundtable is over (it was Sunday), we are taking a look at the new version of the Intel Teach Essentials course (the one we do in Colombia). It looks pretty cool, with more pedagogical content, new materials and the use of collaborative online tools such as Google docs, blogs and a wiki.

It's time for lunch, so I'll run there and post some more later.

So far it's been real interesting and fun. I hope we can bring this new version to Colombia soon (this year) and hopefully one of the other programs.

I didn't get much sleep last night. There was a party with the new group of Senior Trainers from the Intel Teach program and I was there until around 1AM dancing like a maniac… with a maniac. I hadn't even packed and if it weren't for my dad's help I wouldn't even have bought dollars for the trip. When I got home, the Ogre was half awake and she kept me company while I packed. We talked until around 4AM. I had to be at the airport at 6:30.
Other than being only half awake, things went smoothly at the airport. Security checks were mostly quick, as well as check-in. There is a great smokers' area in the airport in Bogotá, and I spent most of my time in it, sleeping and smoking, and people-watching. When I guessed it was time to board I went to the gate, and it worked great: My seat in the back of the plane, next to a lady and her daughter (I'm guessing daughter). The younger one had a very annoying tone of voice: something similar to the Ogre's sister-in-law's… that very high pitch that almost hurts your ears. Fortunately I slept most of the flight and didn't hear their unending chatter but for short whiles.
The plane took off almost on time, at around 9:30AM and we were landing in Houston at around 2PM local time (1PM Colombian time).
Immigration was pretty quick and I didn't have any trouble there. Then the customs people decided they wanted to manually check my bags, and the poor lady who had to do it was unable to put everything back in. It took us a little while to manage, but all went well. I left my bag at the connections thingy and starting walking around the airport looking for a smoker's bar I had been told about by the maniac girl. It doesn't exist anymore, but looking for it I walked around most terminals… and this is a huge airport. Finally I just went outside, stood 25 ft. away from the entrance with the other cool people, got a match from a real friendly Texan who ended up giving a whole book of matches, chain-smoked two cigarettes, and went back inside.
Now I'm sitting at the Fox Sports Skybox, watching like 7 different sports at the same time and drinking a Sam Adams (they didn't have the winter brew tho). I hope they don't lose my bags on the way to Portland. It's been a long day, with very little nicotine, but I'm glad I'm here. I'm glad I don't have to think about the bureaucracy, draft letters or put off fires and answer urgent calls for a couple weeks. I'm excited about the Roundtable in Portland, and very excited about meeting good old friends in Boston next week.
Kalina will be coming up from NYC next Saturday to do lunch and maybe just chat and walk around Boston in this cozy March weather. I'll ask her to help me shop for some herbs and stuff I wanna bring back… she must know the Chinese market pretty well.
Well… I'll finish my beer and figure out how to kill one more hour of this unending layover in Houston… maybe just another beer and more American sports. Maybe I'll look for a bookstore and try to find Jenkin's Convergence to have some reading for the plane. That's the one thing I've already realized I forgot: airplane reading stuff. I didn't even get to load enough new podcasts on my Palm to be entertained

Si se saliera con la suya con la suya, sería en Las Vegas, en algún casadero 24 horas. Pero no va a ser así. Será en algún lugar en la costa oeste de Estados Unidos, en California o en Oregon, posiblemente. La propuesta fue en Lisboa, la luna de miel no me la imagino, pero puede ser desde India hasta una isla caribeña. Otro más se une al club de los que se casan. Yo el rabino lo hizo primero, milo después y ahora archibaldo. Los dos ya casados viven felices. A este tercero espero que le vaya tan bien como a los otros dos. El pequeño ogro con el que vivo y yo brindamos hace un momento, con una copa de vina blanco, por archibaldo y la hija de Elrond. ¡Felicidades, enhorabuena, buena suerte...!

My video card is all wrong and I don't have bluetooth anymore! My computer broke down. I took it to a shop, they tried tons of things and in the end said the motherboard had something wrong. They changed it. I used to have a Thinkpad T41 Series 2373 Model JU9. The board they put in it is a T41 2373 7FS. This whole thing sucks.

If I didn't need my computer so much every day, it would be back at the shop getting the right card. I don't know if they did it on purpose (giving me the wrong board), or they just didn't know better. It us just plain wrong and it has to get fixed.

One of the main reasons I got this PC was the graphics card, and now it's not there. I'm getting new machine as soon as I can (when I visit the US next week), but that does not mean this machine shouldn't work perfectly. I'll probably turn it into a Linux box when I get the Macbook with parallels desktop and make sure I can run Guild Wars on a Macbook running Windows XP and Parallels.

All this trouble with my pc is what has led me to want to get a mac... the board breaking down, some weird Windows error a get just too often,... and the possibility to run Windows on a Mac and thus get Guild Wars to work (I hope, anyone tried Guild Wars on a Mac with Parallels Desktop?)

Let's just hope Apple's stuff DOES work better than PCs. I love the advertisements.

I spent about 6 hours today at the American embassy. Mostly waiting to be called for fingerprints and then for the interview. I got a consular officer that didn't seem to nice. She denied the applications of the 4 people in front of me. I wasn't worried, though. I had an invitation from Intel. It all worked out well. I got the visa.

Now it is certain: I'll go to Portland on May 3 and fly to Boston on the 9th. I'll be there until the 17!