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Our equipment hasn’t come in yet. Who knew importing near-military grade GPS equipment to Saudi Arabia would be problematic?

We’ve been twiddling our thumbs 8,000 miles from home for 3 days. Our hosts are great, the food is excellent, the  accommodations  very nice. It still sucks to be just sitting here.

285 cable channels, 15 in English. There’s nothing on. Though there is the Mecca channel… all Mecca all the time, with these long slow pans of the place. And there’s like 150 channels of religious singing, 60 channels of  unintelligible    (to me) talking heads with headdresses…

I really need a portable mouse. The trackpad on my laptop is getting old.

I’m not getting over jetlag nearly as fast as I would if I weren’t sitting around all day. Ugh, a 10 hour time difference!

High points so far

• the Saudi style dinner we had 2 nights ago was quite an experience!
• walking part of Riyadh and going to the top of Kingdom Tower.

If you care to, email or comment on this post to allay my homesickness. Please don’t call my cell, it’s $2.50/min whether I pick up or not. But I can call you via Skype when I have wifi…

From the roof of our apartment in Riyadh

The sound of all the prayers being sung from the innumerable mosques just after sunset is indescribable.

I’m off to Saudi Arabia today with my coworker Jack for Earthmine. I’ll be back, albeit jetlagged,  November 3rd.

Next, US cross country trip!! approximately November 14-22nd

1. San Francisco
2. Washington state
3. Utah
4. Colorado
5. Michigan
6. Washington DC
7. Flying to Nashville for Thanksgiving

(mouseover: And what about all the people who won’t be able to join the community because they’re terrible at making helpful and constructive co– … oh.  )

I get my news from The Daily Show and my blogging advice from XKCD.

Unconstructive comments will be marked as spam.

I listen to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks. By far the most entertaining  audio program I have listened to in a very long time is Black Jack Justice #36 – Journeys End.

Want to make your next drive go by just like that? Download and burn this radio play today!

The bad news:  This appears to be the very last episode of the series. I certainly miss it!

The good news: Listening to this episode won’t cramp your enjoyment of the other 35 episodes!

Overlooking Putrajaya Malaysia at dusk from the infinity pool of the Shangri-La Hotel.

I just installed WPBook in a vain (as in “in vain”) effort to allow my Facebook friends to continue to read my blog.

My blog posts are now forwarded to my Facebook Wall.

I used Wordbook for about a year but it recently broke :-(. I’m sure the Facebook people don’t like this functionality because it sucks people away from their one-website-internet plan. So we’ll see how long WPBook lasts!

Someecards knows exactly what I don’t want.

On these long flights for work I get to see a lot of movies. Here’s the tiny reviews of my latest flight.

She’s Out of my League – sweet, funny, and hopeful! (if just a little crass… But then that’s part of it)

Prince of Persia: the sands of time: really cool and eyepopping action

The A-team: only saw 20 minutes, a little too “noisy” for watching on a plane, shaky-cam, noisy soundtrack

500 days of summer: homey, real, lyrical like a ballad, don’t get the wrong idea but I found it a little disturbing how honest it was.

A vignette for you…

The Old Dog

One day an old German Shepherd starts chasing rabbits and before long, discovers that he’s lost. Wandering about, he notices a panther heading rapidly in his direction with the intention of having lunch.

The old German Shepherd thinks, ‘Oh, oh! I’m in deep doo-doo now!’ Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. Just as the panther is about to leap, the old German Shepherd exclaims loudly, ‘Boy, that was one delicious panther! I wonder, if there are any more around here?’

Hearing this, the young panther halts his attack in mid-strike, a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees. ‘Whew!’ says the panther, ‘That was close! That old German Shepherd nearly had me!’

Meanwhile, a squirrel who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the panther. So, off he goes..
The squirrel soon catches up with the panther, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the panther.

The young panther is furious at being made a fool of and says, ‘Here, squirrel, hop on my back and see what’s going to happen to that conniving canine!

Now, the old German Shepherd sees the panther coming with the squirrel on his back and thinks, ‘What am I going to do now?’, but instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn’t seen them yet, and just when they get close enough to hear, the old German Shepherd says…
‘Where’s that squirrel? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another panther!

Moral of this story…

Don’t mess with the old dogs… Age and skill will always overcome youth and treachery!
BS and brilliance only come with age and experience.