Back from Europe

I had a great trip to Europe. In Rome, we visited the Colosseum, Palace Hill, Piazza Navona, and Argentina Square(where Julius Caesar was assassinated). Rome is a very old place and not what I imagined. A lot of graffiti covered ancient walls which was somewhat disappointing. Also disappointing to find out was that the Roman Catholic church “recycled” some of the ancient Roman and Egyptian ruins and artifacts to build their monuments. Don’t get me wrong, some of the works were astonishing, it’s just a shame that they came at the expense of other astonishing works.

Greetings from the United Kingdom!

The company has me traveling this week for the European IS meeting. So far, I’ve made it to Burnham, UK which is about 30 minutes west of London. It’s a sleepy little village with some brick tudor-style buildings that date back some 600-700 years. The “high street” or main street as we’d call it back in the states consists of a quaint little village that reminds me a lot of Solvang in central California. The streets here are a lot more narrow than in the U.S. and they drive on the opposite side of the road which has caused quite some confusion, but I’m starting to adapt. The quality and selection of lagers and ales here is incredible rivaling that of many micro breweries back in the U.S. Homes here are very small. The 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 1 car garage company house that I’m staying in is about 1200 sq. ft. with a lot size of approx. 2500 sq. ft. And I thought that houses in the U.S. were small!

Been busy and new iTunes.

So I’ve been a bit busy with a large move of servers from our current data center to our new facility 10 miles away. While it doesn’t seem like much, the amount of coordination and communication involved in moving 107 servers each with different applications and owners can be a daunting task. Fortunately, we came through relatively unscathed with the exception of a major issue with our network provider. I did have some time over the weekend to install the new version of iTunes 5.0. What little free time I’ve had lately, I’ve put into BattleField 2. Check the Team AlphaForce link for more info.

Another Real Estate Podcast

Another good podcast that I’ve been listening to is Bill Fitzpatrick’s “Master Real Estate Course”. Not a true podcast in the sense, but whereas Palmer Often’s “Real Estate Rant” gives you some general inspirational ramblings that loosely match some of Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad” series, Bill Fitzpatrick uses more of a drill-sargeant, Stephen Covey approach and provides very specific actionable steps to reaching financial freedom through Real Estate in a “how-to guide” fashion. A self-proclaimed “shaolin master”, Bill’s series of podcast courses also includes success, small business, and his “action principles” which provide “mantras” on how we should live our lives (this is the Stephen Covey-lie part). Check out Bill’s site at http://www.success.org.