Today was the corporate barefoot cruise out to Rose Island, not much for me to do today but kick back and enjoy the ride. There were some initial concerns about rain but the weather was great. We sailed out to a point off the island and went snorkeling. There were a few young ones on the boat who were a little anxious, but seemed to get the hang of things with a little coaxing. I ended being the one doing a little coaxing, and eventually they got into pirate mode:



( More Jealously and cuteness follows:  )

The reef was pretty dead, meaning that it was in pretty shallow water and didn’t have a lot of diversity, but snorkeling in any warm water is not something to complain about.

Movie link of young Sea Turtle.

I really enjoyed the Bahamian crew, they turn their accents on and off like a switch. When they don’t want you to understand them, or they are in a hurry, they speak a crazy pigeon style that’s sort of an amalgamation of Irish, and Jamaican accent that is so thick that even though they are speaking English, you can barely make out every fourth word.  It turned out they really enjoyed hanging out with people that weren’t out to get totally hammered and obnoxious, so a good time was had by all.

Dinner at the resort’s Chinese offering place, which was fine. Later that evening, I had some dessert at Nobu Japanese restaurant in the casino. While in the casino, I spotted the man himself:

Celebrity Sighting: Michael Jordan at the Blackjack table in Atlantis.

I checked out the tobacco shop by the casino, and the prices are ridiculously high, so will have to head into Nassau for smokes sometime this week. 

Cool Site: Add a google map to your site - Excellent break down of basic api use with google.

Taking the night off from the usual haunts to take care of some items around the house and what not.

Booked travel plans for the great northwest. Will be arriving in PDX on the 23rd and will be there untill the 30th.

The last few weeks have seen some fantastic shows come through:

1) Doc Martin and Mark Farina at the Vanguard.
  - I'd have to say that the Vanguard is now THE spot in Hollywood for quality dance music. What a great show. Great sound and a very non-hollywood crowd. amazing time.

2) Dubtribe's last LA performance.
  - Dubtribe was great, played all the hits, an almost spiritual experience. They will be missed.

3) Lisa Shaw and Aquanote at King King.
  - My first impressions of King King are not bad, Pretty boxy venue, but still good. Lisa was in top form, and Aquanote's back up set was great!

On the work front:

Work is damn near all-consuming right now, minor bug fixes, design and requirement reviews for next year's products, and inline releases are keeping jack a very busy boy. I never intended to have 50 hours be the average work week. Still I'm finding it very rewarding. Still no new hires in my dept yet, but hopefully some will show up soon.

I was in Fry's the other day, and there it was: the 2006 product line. I got that weird feeling that I got when I saw it last year too. Cool to be a part of that, yet still strange.

The re-org had a surprise up it's sleeve, we lost a big-wig. However, I'm very excited by his replacement, and I think things will get better than they have been.

The company Party was held at a large club in hollywood, and I made some good connections with the management there. (the new Madonna mashup [gasp! yes, freakin' Madonna] I got went over huge with the saturday night attendants!)

evidence follows:


The Podcasts have been gathering legs. I checked the logs for December and some episodes that been downloaded over 200 times already! Bandwidth seems to be doing ok, so I will probably cross post it a little. also, for those not techincally savvy enough, you can listen online at Odeo

LA Sighting: Homeless people camp on the sidewalk in actual camping tents.

That's all for now.

Cool Site: 50 coolest websites of 2005 - 50 cool sites in one (well, mostly cool.)
Cool Site: Samarost2 - amazing  and addictive flash game