Bratislava is a nice change of pace from Budapest and Prague. Therefore, it would have been better for us if we could have stopped in Bratislava after Prague and Budapest, but you can’t just go rearranging the geography to suit your itinerary. Bratislava is between Budapest and Prague on the train line, so that’s the… Read More »
So far, the weather had been cloudy and cool. Today we had a nice change with a bit of sun and warmth. Unfortunately, this was to be a rare combination over the next week or so. The first week of June was surprisingly cold in central Europe. Most days, the temperature didn’t cross 15 degrees… Read More »
I should have known that if I didn’t immediately start writing blog posts about the trip, I would fall woefully behind. Now, it’s actually July 23rd and I’m nearly two months behind on backdating posts from our trip to more or less correspond when the events actually happened. Well, I’ll give it another try.
Treat the taxi drivers at the Budapest train station like a bad mariachi band in a Mexican restaurant. Avoid eye contact at all times and pretend you can’t hear them. All the guide books warn you about these “hyenas” (the guidebook’s term, not mine). One was particularly aggressive towards us. He came up to me… Read More »
Why is there a horrible food product sold in the States that is called Vienna Sausages? Tiny, tasteless (unless you consider tin-flavored sawdust mixed with lard to be tasteful) sausage-like items stacked like vertical sardines in a can bear no relation to the sausages served in Vienna. So, after arriving in Vienna in the evening,… Read More »
After waking up around 5 am, we got a ten minute ride to a BART stop with a friend. About an hour later, we were at the BART stop at SFO for our first flight to Chicago. After a 4 hour flight and a 3 hour layover, we boarded a flight to Frankfurt. Fortunately, by using a big… Read More »
We now have our tickets for the 3 first round matches in which the US national team will play at World Cup 2006 in Germany this summer. Woohoo!! We leave for Europe near the end of May, two weeks before the games begin. Our current itinerary has us heading first to Vienna, next to Budapest,… Read More »
I never thought I would write “fast” and “DMV” in the same sentence (other than, perhaps, “I conducted an involuntary fast while waiting all day at the DMV”), but I was actually in and out of there in 10 minutes today while renewing my Driver’s License. In fact, the whole DMV experience was pretty damn… Read More »
The winter of 2004-2005 brought a deluge of rain to the Bay area. Heavy rains will cause underground mice tunnels to flood and collapse. While I was away on vacation for about 9 days during the heavy rains that winter, some of the neighborhood mice decided to take up residence in the engine compartment of… Read More »
Microsoft recently announced that Speech Server 2007 will provide support for speech applications written in VoiceXML. In order to penetrate the enterprise market for speech applications, Microsoft really had no choice. SALT-based applications remain as rare as hen’s teeth in the enterprise. Ok, maybe not that rare, but certainly the number pales in comparison to… Read More »