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Greg's GrottoGroovy Baby! 9月22日 My Rugby World Cup TripI just got back from my Rugby World Cup trip to the UK. It was one of the most awesome trips I have had <8-)
My brother Rob, good friend Tim and I have been planning this for a very long time.
Tim flew in from Dusseldorf and he and I arrived at Heathrow just before lunch on Thu 13th Sep. We got a car out to Guildford where my borther Rob and his family are in temporay accommodation. They are in the process of moving to Johannesburg. Tim and I spent the afternoon exploring the Guildford High Street. Guildford is a very old town and was the mid point stop between Portsmouth and London. There is a bunch of rich history here.
Rob had the day off work on Friday so the three of us took the train into London. This was my first time in the UK, so Rob and Tim did a great job showing me around. We arrived at Waterloo station and walked down to the Eye. This was a great way to get introduced to London. We then walked around to the Houses of Parliament, past Westminster Abbey, down St James to Buckingham Palace. We then walked back to Westminster and walked down Whitehall, passing Downing Street, and the Horse Guards. We stopped at the Clarence Pub for lunch and then walked on to Trafalgar Square.
We then caught a cab and down to the Tower of London and did a quick tour there. We met the first female Beefeater and saw the Crown Jewels. Awesome!!!!! We then took a cab to Covent Garden. We needed to get Tim a Wallabies jersey for the game the next day and there was an Australian shop there. We were successful in getting the jersey and then caught the Tube back to Waterloo. We partied at Rob and Shell's place that night with another Aussie couple - Hi Mark and Sue <8-), after watching England get spanked by South Africa.
We got up on Saturday and got started a bit later than we had planned. We needed to drive up to Cardiff for the game which started at 2:00. There was way more traffic than we expected and we really thought at one point we weren't going to get there for kickoff. We arrived at the Backpacker's across from Millenium Stadium where we were staying. We were expecting parking, but there wasn't any. Rob had parked the car outside the hostel, we had 20 mins to get to the stadium. We asked worst case for leaving the car where it was. Worst case was, the car would not be towed and we would get a 25 quid fine. We left the car there and headed to the stadium. We didn't get fined <8-)
We walked into the game just as the teams were running onto the pitch. The buzz in the stadium was electric. The singing f the national anthems was a real highlight. There were many more Aussies there than we expected and we got a great rendition of "Advance Australia Fair" going. The Welsh, famous for their singing, especially at the Rugby, did not disappoint with the singing of their anthem, "land of my Fathers". It was awesome. Thanks to Tim we had amazing seats, right on half way, 17 rows back.
The first half of the game was a cracker. Australia were well in control at half-time. We thought we had it won at half-time and Wales came out with a different attitude in the second half. It wasn't until a bit of magic from Latho that the game was put away and we came away victors. Attendance 71, 022.
Cardiff itself was alive after the game. We went to the Prince of Wales pub for many drinks afterwards. Then it was on to a great estaurant, La Fossa? for dinner after that. Gareth was a Welsh friend of Rob's who joined us for the game and afterwards and he was a great host for the evening.
Sunday was the Fiji Vs Canada game at 1:00. I had got up reasonably early and went for a walk to take some photos. Then the three of us went down to Cardiff Harbor for breakfast. I was expecially keen to go down there as this is where some scenes from Doctor Who and Torchwood had been shot. Great shows if you aren't already watcing them. We then went back to Cardiff itself (not far away at all) and did some shopping in a Rugby shop. We also went to Cardiff Castle. In the end we didn't have time to go in but it was great to see from the outside.
The Fiji vs Canada game was a great match and Canada were extremely unlucky not to win. We had great tickets to this game too. The crowd was much smaller so we were able to move right down to the front. It was a great experience. That afternoon we drove back to Guildford - the end of an amazing Rugby weekend.
Rob was back at work Monday, and Tim was heading back to Dusseldorf. Tim and I headed into London again. We caught the train and went to the Churchill Museum. This was great. After this Tim headed off to the airport and I wasleft to my own devices.
I walked back up to Trafalgar Square, from there to Picadilly and from there to Liecester Square. I continued walking down Picadilly, through Mayfair to Wellington's Arch. I then walked around Knightsbridge and stopped off at Harrod's to get a present for Di from Tiffany's <8-) I then caught the tube back to Westminster and toured the Abbey. So much history. I loved it. IT did nothing but wet my appetite for another trip back. I then caught the tube back to Waterloo station and back to Guildford.
One of my Rob's friends, Mike Davis, I also went to Uni with him was also now staying with Rob and Shell too. We had a good time catching up and had a great dinner that night.
On Tuesday I headed down to Portsmouth for the day. I was interested in seeing the Historic Docks there and I was not disappointed. The HMS Warrior, HMS Victory and Henry VIII's favourite ship the Mary Rose were all there. A harbour cruise was included too which was great. Saw a lot of Royal Navy kit and Falkland Island campaign ships. I then went up Spinnaker Tower for a brief tour before haeding back to Guildford. Rob and Mike picked me up from the station and we went to Woking to have a session in the cricket nets there with some friends of Rob's from work. We had a great time, and then went to a pub in Guildford for a while afterwards.
Wed was time to leave. Rob and Shell took me to Heathrow and it was back off home.
It really was one of the best trips I have ever had. UpdateSo its been a while since I made a post. Nearly 6 months at Y! now and things are going really well. Family is settling in to life in Gilroy well. I have been asked by many for some pics of the new house. I have added a new album with some piccies.
cheers,
greg <8-) 8月8日 15th AnniversaryHappy 15th Anniversary Di!!!!
I am on my weekly sojourn to Burbank today but we are having dinner this evening. We are going to Germany over Thanksgiving to visit the McGrath's and we hope to do a delayed something special there.
4 months at Y! last week too.
cheers,
greg <8-) 5月7日 Di hits the big 40!!!!Di hit the big 4-0 today. While I have done things to make life as interesting as possible over the last few months for her, like moving us to a new state, new job etc. Di has been wonderful supportive of it all. And I know she missed not having her firends here to help her celebrate her big day.
She got a new digitial camcorder as well as a new digital camera. She seemed pretty happy with it all <8-)
We went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner tonight and had a great time.
Time here is just flying. 5 weeks into the new job already. 4月20日 MongoWe had some sad news yesterday. We took our 18 yo cat Mongo to the Vet yesterday becasue she was doing poorly. She didn't come back with us <8-(
Di adopted her the year we got married. She was a stray in the aera we were living in. She has been with us ever since. Moved with us in Canberra and the took a drive to Syndey with us. Took the long journey across the Pacific to Seattle with us, and most recently drove down to San Jose with us.
She definately had a good life and we will miss her a lot. 4月15日 Happy Birthday Sammie!!!!Sammie turned 8 yesterday. I am pretty sure she had a reat day, despite the fact we are in a completely different city from her friends, and the place she has pretty much always known as home. We have now been in temporary accommodation in Sunnyvale for two weeks.
We started yesterday (only the second wet day we have had since being here) with Sammie getting up to unwrap her presents. We had a great home cooked breakfast courtesy of Di and then the kids watched Viva Pinata. They are having withdrawal symptoms from the game as th 360 i spacked up with the rest of our stuff.
They we packed ourselves up and headed to Monterey. We were pretty sure Sammie would get a kick out of the aquarium there. So in torrential rain, we headed down the 101 through Gilroy, which will soon be our new home town, on down to Monterey. The aquarium was truly awesome, even though it was packed. We had a great lunch there and then did a work along Cannery Row. By this time the sun had come out and it had stopped raining and although a ot cool it was a great afternoon topped off with some Dippin Dots - the ice cream of the future - as Harry loves to remind us.
We then headed back to San Jose and stopped off at the house in Gilroy we know we have a contract on for a quick look. We can't wait to get settled in there, but it will still be a few weeks before that happens. Then it was back to Sunnyvale. Sammie loves Kookaburra Wings from the Outback Steakhouse so her birthday dinner request was for those. We found the closest Outback Steakhouse and headed off for dinner. Turns out we ended up in Cupertino, right opposite Infinite Loop and the Apple HQ.
All in all a great day was had by all <8-) 3月23日 Last Day at MicrosoftToday was my last day at Microsoft after 9.5 years.
I am leaving to pursue an awesome job opportunity down in Silicon Valley with another company. The family and I are in the process of packing up the house so we can move down next week. I can't wait to start and everyone is looking forward to the sunny weather <8-)
It was very sad saying goodbye to all my friends and colleagues but I know that I wlll stay in touch with the majority of them.
Onward to the next adventure <8-) 3月7日 Happy Birthday Harry!!!!Harry turns six today <8-)
He got some kewl presents from the family this morning. Lots of his favorite things <8-) He was a very happy boy. 1月26日 Happy Australia DayBrought to you by the new embedded video feature <8-)
I love our national anthem (and I know the words and can belt it out <;-) ) but this was pretty funny nevertheless.
1月15日 Australia Day PartyAfter having a beautiful home cooked lamb curry last night, I came across this today...
Makes me feel a little homesick <8-) 11月9日 New Spaces UpdateYeah so its been a while since I posted here. I promise I will get a full update done in the next few days. Things have been pretty busy though.
We released a new update to Spaces yesterday and you can read all the details on The Spacecraft.
One of the things that has changed for me is that I am going to be working on the Spaces gadget platform moving forward. So I am super excited about the new support for get/set preferences we released. You can see my post about this on the Spaces Developer Platform space.
cheers,
greg <8-) 5月25日 Spaces URL ChangesThere have been a lot of comments on The Spacecraft about the upcoming Spaces URL changes. Here is some insight into why this is happening.
Spaces has grown very quickly into one of the Web’s mega services. So quickly in fact that we just passed the 100MM user mark and have had to do some architectural changes to ensure that Spaces can be deployed in multiple data centers. We needed to deliver a system that allows for Spaces to be distributed across multiple data centers without requiring a URL that included the data center name. How unkewl would that be? Can you imagine telling your friends and family that the URL to your space was http://cluster25.dc1.spaces.msn.com/gphipps?
So we have developed a DNS (Domain Name System) based solution that allows us to redirect requests to the right data center and allows us to keep a better looking URL. Moving the Space name into the domain name is a requirement of that. We also heard the pain we created for our users with the URL change made in our release in January and to help mitigate this upcoming name change we have worked with the following companies to proactively address the associated ranking issues:
In addition, we have dialogs with the following search engine companies
I can’t promise that this will be a completely seamless transition; but rest assured we are working hard to make this as seamless as possible. Doing the rearchitecture work and making the move to Live Spaces was not possible for a number of technical reasons. This is why we can’t move straight to the spaces.live.com name. However, we believe that when we do move to Live Spaces that will be the last time we have to change the URL. This isn’t something we decided to do lightly. We have had to make a ton of tradeoffs from both a technical perspective and the impact to our users. Thanks for making Spaces your home. We do care what you think and we are listenting. 5月23日 Congrats Harry!!!!!!Harry graduated from pre-school today!!!!!!!
It was a great event this morning. Lots of fun was had by all thegraduates singing their songs and receiving their diplomas.
On to Kindergarten <8-) 5月8日 Happy Birthday Di!!!!For yesterday <8-)
I am pretty sure she had a great day. She loved the VIP tickets to Cirque De Soleil I got her. 4月20日 Game 2: Ranger's v' M'sWent to the game last night. I had completely written the M's off when they started the bottom of the 8th down 6 - 2. I was glad I stayed to the end. One of the most exciting games I have been too. While the crowd was small, it was electric as we got up to support our heros.
Just before the game we got to see Jamie Moyer warming up in the bullpen throwing to Kenji-san. It is awesome to be able to stand within a few feet of these guys as they do there stuff.
Go M's |
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