Pirates of the Carribean and the lost dog

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UPDATE: Elise asked me to remove her portrait, so I complied(well, you know how it is with lawsuits and stuff).


As the weekend approached, I decided to call Armin(a swiss guy living here), to check if he had plans for the weekend. I suggested going diving in Monterey.

He was free actually, so we decided to go diving on Saturday. Came friday, and because of my supervisor going to India, I had to be briefed on systems maintenance. He was busy working with Marcos(our CTO) all of friday, so we had to do it on Saturday. For dinner friday, I stopped by the Safeway to get something to eat. I got a HUGE sub. Compared to Subways(a sub/sandwhich chain) 12" subs, this thing was a ginormous nuclear sub. It had two-three layers of roastbeef, another few layers of ham, and then some layers of turkey breast. See the picture to get an idea of the size. I shared it with Marcos and Dave.

I called Armin and told him about the change, and asked if he could go Sunday in stead.
We decided to pick up the necessary gear on Saturday though, to get that out of the way.

Friday evening, the guys decided to go to the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and me, Svein Magnus, Arthur, Elise and Marthe went to the local Century cinema at Mountain View for the 23:10 show. A few other guys were thinking of coming with us, but they couldn't decide. The undecisiveness has been a general problem here, I wonder what will happen when those guys have to make real and important decisions. I mean, if they can't decide wether or not to go to the movies two hours before showtime because they don't like long term planning, how the heck do they plan to make business decisions?

We were very surprised to find out that the US does not have seat numbers in their cinemas, so you actually had to get in a line in order to grab the best seats. In Europe we have been operating with seat numbers for decades, so this came as a great surprise to us. Well anyways, we got in line, where we got to chat with a Taiwanese guy. Nice fellow. A lot of people had also dressed up in pirate clothing.

As the hour approached, me and Marthe got to get some popcorn and sodas. It took quite a while to get it, and as we were aproaching the counter, the que started moving, and Svein-Magnus, Elise and Arthur went in to grab some seats. The americans have this habit of pouring liquid butter over their popcorn. We found that kinda gross, since the popcorn was heavily buttered to begin with. We opted out on the butter. When I got to the counter, I found out that they didn't accept credit cards, so I had to run over to Svein Magnus to get some cash.

They went in, and I waited for Marthe to finish. Arriving at the entrance, she had lost her ticket, so she frantically started browsing all of her bags and pockets in order to find it. She finally found at the bottom of her purse, probably under a load of makeup, magazines, moskito nets, survival kit, WMD's, extra set of clothing, and other female necessities.

The seats were not very good, but they had nice cup holders for your cup. The popcorn could definately do with some salt, it was very low on salt.

Anyways, the movie was ok. It wasn't great, but it didn't suck either. Although the first one had more surprises, it still had a few surprises.

As we got out, we went straight home, I planned to go to bed early, but didn't manage to actually go to bed before 03:00. At 08:30, Dave(our system administrator and my supervisor) phoned me, informing me that he was on his way to work. I joined him at about 9, for a few quick lessons on the system setup. We finished at around 11, and I headed back home for a quick lunch. I phoned Armin to tell him I would be on my way. I discovered the semi-finals of the World Cup were on, so I decided to watch those before I left.

I arrived at Armins place at around 15, and we set off to a local divestore to rent a drysuit for him. He wanted to try the DUI CLX450, but they only had a CFS300 he would fit in. We then proceded to Any Water sports to get his tanks filled and rent a set for me.

After finally getting our tanks, I drove Armin home, and I went back to bed for a quick nap. I had told David that he could phone me if he needed a ride to the airport, and he called me at 21.30 to ask if I wanted a pizza before he left. Sure enough I headed over and I arrived at his place in Foster City at approx 22.30. The neighborhood looked really nice, with canals and beachfront properties. Anyways, as he showed me around the house, he must have opened the garage door, because when we came out, the garage door was open. Now, this was a problem, since they have dogs in the front yard, and one of them, Goldie, had managed to run of while the door was open. This was definately not what we needed 1/2 hour before we were supposed to be at the airport. We searched around the neighbourhood for almost 20 minutes, and finally managed to find the animal, running crazy on a parking lot in a nearby complex.

I drove Dave to the airport and went home to grab some sleep.

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Photos

Marcos and David
Our CTO, Marcos, and our SA, David. Marcos in yellow.

Safeway giant sub
A giant Safeway sub

Safeway giant sub contents
It has two-three layers of roastbeef, another few layers of ham, a few layers of turkey breast and then some cheese, salad and God knows what

Arthur
Arthur Sund, one of my Grunderskolen classmates.

Marte
Marte Høegh, one of my Grunderskolen classmates.

Svein
Svein Magnus, my Grunderskolen roommate.