After all the hassle yesterday today was just perfect. I had a Sunday out with some nice girls from work going to Napa valley for enjoying ourselves, wine tasting and having fun. Jacqueline did all the planning and as usual it was just perfect. I don’t quite got it though how she managed the perfect weather. Sunny, not too warm, blue sky and beautiful clouds. I haven’t seen so much colors in nature… well… since I moved over to Ireland. We went all day by car. The green grass, the blue sky, yellow flowers, white clouds – the scenery looked like being painted instead of being real. I enjoyed looking out of the car’s window and trying to compare it with the wine yards in Provence I saw some years ago.
We started with a Champagne tasting at Gloria Ferrer Caves & Wineyards having some local, tasty brie and french baguette. We were sitting outside on a balcony looking over the vineyards. I tried myself a glass of Carneros Cuvée which was tasty and maybe the best wine I tried during the day.
From there we went for lunch to a place called the girl and the fig. There I enjoyed a cheese selection with some dried fruit and nuts and duck confit with potato hash. Both shared with Jacqueline, and I had a glass of Fig Royal 
From there we drove a bid through the area. When one of the local girls left we decided to do a few more wine tastings, first at Black Stallion and later we stopped at Rutherford Hill.In black Stallion we met an Irish woman serving us local wines. We tried their Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvingnon and the North Coast Muscat. I liket the Pinot most…the rest was tasty but not really my liking. I mostly enjoyed there my british english lesson. While I was saying the first wine we tried was even worse, Caroline just mentioned the second one was better but didn’t wow her either. Fun stuff
The guys at Rutherford were a bit disturbing especially when they started dancing. And seriously, I *hate* coming in somewhere far away from Germany and listening to Nena’s 99 Luftballons… WTF? They wanted to close up soon so they invited us for a free wine tasting of several wines. I tried some of them – Sangiovese, a Petit Verdot and a Terlato Devils’ Peak – but there wasn’t anything outstanding either. Arriving at Mumm we just saw them closing up so we went the way back to San Francisco while enjoying the colorful sun set.
I quickly did some shopping, got replacement head phones and my own eye-fi card and a bit more stuff. When I got back to the hotel I run in a colleague who was just arriving. I quickly changed my room, then we went out for a light dinner to meet up the others. It was funny seeing all those broken faces from the jet lagged Europeans. Today it was also the first time that I got praised for existence – apparently me joining the team decreased the long distance travel rate for all the locals here.
I was wondering if I post this to the blog. But I want to tell that anyway, so I just put it here. Yesterday I arrived in San Francisco with some unpleasant experiences…
this trip started being odd as soon as it came to its end. My
headphones are broken. Literally broken. I hope we have the bill
somewhere. The tiny metal thing which you put into the device fell
off. I thought that’s a really bad thing…
… until I got questioned at immigration. After questioning I got two marks on my customs card: I / BAC. Which means, I weren’t allowed to just pick up my luggage and leave but by getting to another immigration office. There I met a really pissed-off Neil, a desparate Caroline and Foram – three colleagues – telling me that they were waiting there already for 5h and that another one wasn’t even allowed to go on the plane in London. I got questioned why I am in US again so soon and why I need so many trainings (WTF) but luckily I could leave after 20 minutes, just minutes after the others left. I wanted to give them a ring to wait for me but than I got dragged out to baggage control. Which was completely strange. I spend there 2.5 h not knowing what the matter is. They unpacked my luggage 3 times, I got questioned by five or six guys in total and they just disappeared and appeared again. I got bored and wanted to play on the phone, I got reminded that these devices weren’t allowed. I got asked why I was in China, Hong Kong, India and in Ukraine, and how tall I was, what I do for living, when my family was born, how much I weight, how my relationship to one of my work mates is, what’s Jaspersoft is doing, why am I travelling etc. And they kept walking off with my passport and coming back asking for more questions. One guy just made me feeling really pissed. He was asking “how tall are you?” – “162″ – “centi meters?” – “…” I threw in every possible way an exception in that moment. I also needed to go to the loo, and was accompanied by two customs officers, one was waiting in front of the woman’s bathroom the other one came even into it. I was tempted to write my us-born manager a text “your country sucks” and I am quite sure I will share this thought with him soon. I don’t want to travel ever again to US!
It was also interesting to recognize how CCTV works: when I was playing on my phone a phone on the desk rang a minute later and one of the customs officers let me know to turn off my phone… wtf. I think eventually I was allowed to leave at the end was because it was the end of their shift. I was there for almost 3 h and watched a lot of people just getting there luggage checked *once* and then they were allowed to leave.
At least the guys were friendly, so I got some water and one offered me a chair… although too late because I was already sitting on the luggage belt and considering if it was ok just to lay down. I asked them for coffee, a bed and a shower instead 
One of the officer was kinda funny, he said my accent were killing him, it didn’t sound neither irish nor german to him. My offer to let me go to avoid it he declined. He also recommended to get another mail address, stupid me, I gave my standard one. I ensured him it is not a political statement but a nerdy thing. I lost him when I started about Star Trek and MMORPG. Anyways, they kept asking and asking until I offered them giving me pen and paper and some questions to answer while they were
away to make it more efficient. I won’t do this again, as he got serious and told me that all other options were worse… urhg.
Eventually I arrived in the hotel which isn’t nice either. After a short night I am looking forward now to fun day with the girls. Let this day be exceptional good…
Mal wieder geht es Richtung Westen, diesmal nach San Francisco. Reisen ist wie immer, der Tag begann viel zu frueh, im letzten Moment hab ich noch gepackt, Maurice, mein Taxifahrer, musste wieder warten, weil ich gerade aus der Dusche kam, als er schellte. Wie immer bewahrheitet sich Murphy’s law am Flughafen, bin ich zu frueh, ist hier absolut nichts los. Die lounge ist fast leer und wieder einmal schaue ich auf eine neblige Startbahn. Hoffentlich landen wir puenktlich, ich mag nicht wieder quer durch Heathrow rennen muessen.
Irritierenderweise wurden die gates umbenannt, B23 ist nun 313. Keine Logik zu erkennen, vielleicht haengt das mit dem neuen Terminal zusammen, dass dieses Jahr eroeffnet werden soll. Die neue Zufuehrung ist schon fertig, es ist ein beindruckender Bau, erinnert ein bisschen an den Rumpf eines Flugzeuges. Ich kann nur nicht glauben, dass sich das bei den zurueckgehenden Fluegen rechnet.
Bald ist boarding, ich hoffe, das wird der letzte long distance trip in der naechsten Zei sein. Die letzten Male gab es jedesmal zum jet lag irgendeinen Bonus, eine Erkaeltung oder eben keine Stimme. Vielleicht werde ich ja zu alt dafuer Besorgniserregend in dem Zusammenhang war mein gestriges Gespraech mit Brudi. Wir tauschten uns ueber Gebrechen und Altern im Allgemeinen aus. Wir sind zu jung fuer diese Art von Gespraechen! Mal sehen, ob sich die diesjaehrigen Reise- und Treffplaene erfuellen, wir sind in London, Dublin und Aix verabredet. Yeah!
just this morning i came across First 5,000 “iBad” petition signatures delivered on giant iPad on DefectiveByDesign.org
The response to our iPad protest and petition has been tremendous: 5,000 people signed in the first 24 hours, with coverage in the technical press, Digg, Slashdot, Reddit, The Guardian, NPR, and more. The petition is still running, so please sign and share it with friends–help us hit 10,000 signatures by the end of the day!
Today Defective by Design will deliver the first 5,000 signatures on a giant iPad tablet, direct to Steve Jobs. We’ll send another tablet for each new block of 5,000 signatures.
Many iPad jokes later I still don’t know why I would want to have this bigger, magical, revolutionary, extra ordinary product (via kepana)
