Always Another Windmill

I leave tomorrow evening for 2 weeks in Uganda, for work.  Looking forward to at least parts of the trip–I’ve gotten in touch with a couple of friends from when Weirdbird and I lived there for 5 months or so in 2002, so I’m really looking forward to catching up with them.  The work should be good to0–lots of tilting at windmills there!–but these trips are always pretty intense, and it’s hard being away from WB and Zag for so long at a go.

I’d say there was a chance that there would be minimal posting for a while, but that’s already the norm here, so instead I’ll say there’s a chance that posting may go up while I’m away!  Stay tuned . . .

I spent last week working in Chapel Hill, which was mostly great, except for missing out on all the exciting developments back at home.  Managed to see quite a few friends, which was nice, and met at least a few of the dozens of new people who have joined our offices since we moved to Cambridge last year.

I ended up renting a car, and I think I ended up spending more time driving in 5 days in Chapel Hill than I have in the last 5 months in Cambridge (excluding vacations), which was sort of surprising. It’s not just that public transit is somewhat minimal in the Triangle (at least, for where I needed to be), but also that there is construction everywhere.  Big construction.  Taking an hour to for what should be a ten minute drive type construction. Rewidening roads they just finished widening a few years ago. There’s certainly construction in Boston, but Boston and Cambridge are, for the most part, finished.  There’s nowhere left to put anything.  Chapel Hill and Durham are nothing near that level of density, so it’s apparently construction from now until the end of time. Fortunately, Durham is home to a really great jazz radio station, WNCU, so I had stuff to listen to all that time in the car.

Now I’m home for  week, and the off again to Uganda on Saturday.  This is quite a month.

We might not have flying cars, or household robots (well, unless you’ve got a Roomba), but we have apparently reached a point in history where a team of amateurs can launch a digital camera into space, and recover it with the above results. So cool.

And totally my dad’s kind of project. I can’t wait to see the photos.