Ben’s Blog

We brought Sammy home on Saturday. He was very shy the first few days, but has finally warmed up to us. He just needed some time and lots of treats.

We were worried at first because he didn’t want to interact with us, he just wanted to go in his cage. But by Monday he was playing fetch, chasing my heels, and even went for a long walk (over a mile) with both of us. He is now settled in.

Sammy Pictures

Note in the first picture he still has the tape on his ears from getting them cropped.

My wife took a business trip to London, so I joined her for the last half of the week. We had a great time, London is an interesting city with lots of history. I definitely want to go back again and spend more time there. Since we were pressed for time, we only spent a half day at the British Museum and the National Gallery, but those trips could easily take a whole day by themselves.

London looks and feels very different from Washington, DC. Some obvious things like cars driving on the left, and street signs on the buildings rather than posted on the corner. But lots of little things too, so it really felt like we were getting “away”.

THURSDAY

I arrived at the airport, and took the “tube” to our hotel. When I got out of the tube, it was a bit tricky to find my way to the hotel. None of the streets had streets signs! It turns out they actually did, but just in the wrong spot. They have their signs on the buildings located at different spots.

I got to our hotel, and then took a 6 hour nap. I didn’t sleep on the plane, so I was able to catch up a little bit.

Caixia came back from her meeting, and then we went for a walk. We walked down Thurloe St, and eventually found an Italian restaurant “The Spaghetti House”. We had a good meal, but it was a bit expensive (£35, or $70), mostly due to the weak dollar.

We then took the long way home, going through Hyde Park, and saw the Arch of Wellington on the way. The park was very nice, plenty of flowers, a small lake, and some aggressive squirrels that we saw climb up one young ladies leg.

Right near our hotel we stopped for dessert at a French cafe. I got the lemon tart with hot chocolate, and Caixia got the raspberry tart and Latte (£10).

(Check back for updated notes on Friday - Sunday)

Day 1 photos

Day 2 photos

Day 3 photos

Firebird, one of my favorite software development tools, finally got some recognition today. It won SourceForge’s Project of the Month award.

Firebird is a great database - its open-source, free, and powerful (it has stored procedure, triggers, etc). It just never seems to get mentioned because of the other more popular open-source databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc. Its good to see it finally get some well-deserved recognition.

We went to Orlando for a 5-day long weekend. Had a great time seeing Magic Kingdom, Sea World, and Animal Kingdom.

We stayed at “Reunion” resorts. They had some great pools, one had water slides and a raft float.

Orlando Photos (on Google)

My nephew is visiting from China, and so we took him trick-or-treating for Halloween. He dressed up as a very muscular Spider Man.

Also included in the link below are the pictures from our trip to Skyline Drive and Lurray Caverns.

Skyline & Halloween Photos (on Google)

On Fridays I work at home. After lunch Caixia’s Mom came to come get me for something. I didn’t understand her, so I followed her to the garage. I finally figured out she had found a snake.

We looked for 3-4 minutes and didn’t find it. We moved the cooler and there it was right next to the wall. I got a badminton racket (my weapon of choice) and gave it a good hit on the head. It quickly went and hit under one of our garage shelves (see pics).

Normally I have a policy of live-and-let-live with animals. But a snake that has made our garage its home is an exception. The thought of just leaving the snake there wasn’t bearable. So Caixia’s Mom built a wall of boxes around the shelf, while I cleared off everything, so we could tip it over and get the snake underneath.

We finally tip it over, and the snake is gone! We pulled up the board underneath to see if there was some hole it could crawl out, and there was nothing.

I look back at the shelf and wonder if it could’ve crawled into the tubes that hold up the shelf. I lift the shelf and it feels very light, it definitely doesn’t have the weight of a snake in it. I then start to scan around the garage to figure out where it could’ve gone.

Caixia’s Mom goes and gets a stick and starts probing the tubes in the shelf. On the 4th and last tube she yelps. Nothing comes out of the shelf though. So we start taking off the sections. Nothing after the first 3 sections. Seems like a false alarm. But to be thorough (like Dad taught me) I break apart the last section for good measure. Sure enough, the snake body is exposed, and its trying to back itself out.

The snake tries to get away, and I hold it down by its head using a broom. Her Mom runs and gets another broom, and starts whacking. She was pretty deadly with it, see the above pictures.

So the moral of the story is, if you have a shelf like ours in your garage, there could be a snake (or several snakes) in there!

My cousins entered a video contest last weekend. I think they did a great job. Click below to hear the story of “Tennille” (her real name) as she gabs with her friends about men.

Here is a direct link to the Video on YouTube. If you like it, please go there and give them a good rating and comment.

There’s also an Outtakes Video.

I found a very cool optical illusion on Wikipedia. To get it to work for me, I had to get my eyes close to the monitor. It didn’t work if I was sitting back.

Updated 6/14: This has since been taken down from YouTube. I thought for sure whoever posted it got the written permission of NBC…

If you have 4 minutes to kill:

I found a link for managing your time called Big Rocks First.

I liked the analogy of treating your important tasks as the “big rocks” to put in your bucket (your day). Its similar to the Bin Packing Problem from Systems Engineering.

Bin packing is considered a hard problem (to solve perfectly), but there is a very simple algorithm for getting a near-optimal solution (e.g., 99% efficient). The algorithm is just “put in the biggest items first to leave the smallest space left over”.

Its pretty neat that you can use that simple algorithm to help out in your daily life.