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rosminah invited me over for lunch today. She made chicken salad sandwich with balsamic blood oranges. Mmm, mmm.

Later I went out shopping for some shoes. I wanted a leather upper or a boot type of thing. I wanted black, but had to give up on that because couldn’t find much. At Big 5 I found some cheap clearance shoes that were in my size and OK, but they were only $9, so hey, it’s a $9 shoe.

Finally at Santa Barbara Outfitters I found a decent boot I liked, the Montrail Torre GTX:

They are pretty expensive, but they look like they are built like tanks.

CutePDF Writer is a neat little program for Windows computers to let you make free PDF files for web publication or distribution. It requires you to install GhostScript in addition. It will install itself as a printer called “CutePDF Writer”. When you want to make a PDF of any document, simply load the document into your editor/viewer/browser, hit “print” and choose the “CutePDF Writer” printer. A save box will then popup and you can select the filename and location to save too. In addition, my tests show it produces smaller file sizes than Acrobat does!

Thursday and Friday were warm enough to even dispense with my heavy winter jacket I had brought.

Thursday again was classroom in the morning and lab in the afternoon. I was feeling a bit more confident so was trying out more things in the lab session, despite a couple of equipment problems. I was quite pleased being able to make some pretty good stuff despite being a lot more inexperienced than some of the others in the class. Over in nearby Salina, Steve Fossett made history after finishing his solo non-stop around the world flight.

Friday morning we finished up are classroom work and had our final exam, which I got 97.5% on. Yay. Now I have a fancy certificate and everything. Class ended just before noon and I headed back to KCIA for my flight home. My DENSFO flight was delayed almost 90 minutes because of a hydraulic leak, but we only ended up getting in a bit more than an hour late. Still, that meant getting back home just past 9:30pm, so pretty long day.

Today was a bit warmer, -1 C this morning and up to 17C this afternoon. Turns out that just down the road in Salina, Steve Fossett took off on a round the world solo trip on one tank of gas yesterday, so there was a bit of local news that was also International news in the paper today. Today in class the afternoon session was making stuff. It was hard work and each bench only made a couple of things, but we got to see how most of the stuff works. Tomorrow we’ll have afternoon lab as well.

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It was crazy cold this morning at -6 C, and big chunks of ice all over the windshield. Had to use the little ice scraper thing for the first time in ages. Classes went quite well. I was thinking I’d be the furthest one from home in the class but there were some people from Phillipines there. Also one guy from Venezuela and two from Canada. But the rest were all US. Today was just lecture but tomorrow afternoon we get to do labs and actually make stuff.

Left the house in Santa Clara at 4:30am, drove to SFO for a flight to Denver and then on to Kansas City. Weather was just below zero C with slight snow flurries. Drove about two hours west to Manhattan, Kansas where I’m now in my room at the Ramada. They have free wireless internet throughout the hotel, and was very easy to connect without any stupid hoops to jump through. Will probably hit the sack early, cause very tired after the long day of driving.

Internet Fame Is Cruel Mistress for a Dancer of the Numa Numa (registration)

(February 25)

Woke up at 7am, got breakfast and met Dave and Suresh in the lobby and headed off for the airport. Took the subway to Kyoto Station and then bought tickets for the Kansai Airport Express train. Just missed the 9:16am train so had to wait for the 9:46am train. This made Suresh’s connection pretty tight, but Dave and I had plenty of time.

I gave the checkin the wrong e-ticket receipt, so they almost checked me in for the TPE-SFO flight and then were puzzling over what was up with that. And because they were Japanese, they were going to try to figure it out instead of asking me. Finally they asked if I had another e-ticket receipt and finally I recognized the mistake. That all sorted out, and I was on the way.

Back in Taipei took the bus back home and my cat was happy to see me. He was out of dry food though, so had to go pick up a bag while out getting my dinner. Had dinner, repacked and showered and back to the bus to the airport. Coincidentally got the same bus driver as I had coming in. He must have been surprised to see me back so soon.

EVA doesn’t have a special check-in line for Deluxe Class and I don’t have mileage status yet, but they do have a Diner’s Club checkin line, so I was able to use that and skip the long wait. There was a problem checking in because the Kansai Airport checkin had added a bag to that record and hadn’t cleared it out, so I had to explain the whole mixup again and eventually it was sorted out.

Deluxe Class turns out to be pretty much just right. Seats are almost as big as business class, not quite as much legroom, but enough that even I could stretch way out, and the seat reclined pretty far back. All in all, it’s the right amount of room I need for the right price. Service was pretty good, and food wasn’t as fancy as business class but plenty good enough. I was even able to sleep most of the way.

Getting in at SFO, there was no wait at all in the Citizen/Resident immigration line, quite a change from coming in in the morning where there’s a lot of flights all arriving at once. But this meant I had to actually wait for bags to come. Customs check was also pretty quick.

Hertz gave me a GPS unit in my car this time. Kinda fun to play with. Last time I got one was in Denver and the stupid thing sent me on an unfinished freeway that ended in the middle of nowhere. Anyhow, for kicks I entered in my Santa Clara address and it went pretty much the route I would have taken except for my Hichborn shortcut.

Finally was able to get to sleep at around 10:30.

Now spending the next couple of days trying to adjust to the jet lag.

(February 24)

This was the day for our conference track for APCAUCE’s part of APRICOT 2005. We had an afternoon with two sessions, the first one an update of my Tracking A Zombie Army 2005 presentation, then a panel with Dave Crocker, Jim Fenton and Meng Weng Wong talking about sender authentication proposals.

I had come down with quite a cough, and so did Dave, and Meng reported having a cold as well. I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to get my voice through the whole presentation without failing, so I had a bunch of water bottles and cough drops on hand. I came close to losing my voice a couple of times but eventually got in a rhythm and managed to make it all the way through. Dave and Meng managed to make it as well, and managed not to kill each other too.

All in all the sessions went quite well and after some prodding got some good audience questions and comments as well. I was pretty pleased with how it all went.

In the evening they had the closing social with another buffet and plenty of beer. They also had a sake cask opening ceremony and they gave out pine sake cups as souvenirs. It was fun, but I ducked out early so I could pack and get to bed early.

I forgot to mention it earlier, but our Monday meeting was sponsored by Microsoft who paid for the room and refreshments. Thanks! (Please no comments about me selling out.)