jcole’s weblog

Adrienne and I are currently in Grenoble, France. Overall the trip so far has been good… the flights were pretty uneventful, and we arrived in Paris on Saturday. We saw the Eiffel tower, and got rained on, so we didn’t make it to the top level, only to the 2^nd platform. Yesterday, we took the TGV train to Grenoble, which was awesome as usual.

After a bit of a snafu with the hotel booking, we finally got a hotel. I booked the hotel for Grenoble using Yahoo!’s self-booking travel system, and it claimed that the hotel was quite close to the office here, but it turns out it was an hour away, by car. We’re now staying in the IBIS Grenoble Gare hotel downtown.

Grenoble is a really nice city! It’s surrounded by amazing mountains, and the city has a very nice feel to it—I could live here! Adrienne’s out wandering around today, so we’ll see what she finds.

I bought my bike from REI Saratoga about 5 months ago in May, 2005. Within the first two weeks, the left pedal fell off the crank arm, having apparently not been tightened properly. I took it back and they replaced the crank arms and pedals under warranty (since they had been rounded off a bit as well).

A few months later, I had three broken spokes in the back wheel due to mis-tensioning. I brought the bike back to REI again, and they fixed it under warranty again. When I got it back, they had put the back tire on backwards, and didn’t inflate the tires properly. I brought it in at 75psi each, and they inflated to 45psi. The tires are stamped and rated at 65-85psi.

This morning, as I was riding into work, three more spokes in the rear broke. LAME. I’m not riding off road, I’m riding on the road, not hitting potholes, not abusing the bike at all.

I am not taking the bike back to REI for any more repairs. I’ll be visiting a real bike shop to get these spokes repaired, and get a general tune-up. If something actually broke while I was riding in traffic, I’d be screwed. I’m not comfortable putting my life in REI’s hands anymore.

So I’m in the copy room, making copies, minding my own business. The following scene occurs:

Woman is tending to some printing/copying.
Man enters.
Man: Hey, do you have a few minutes for me at 10?
Woman: Sure! I’ve got time for you at midnight tonight!

I’m sure it was meant in an innocent way, like “I’ve got time for you anytime“, but the scene that played out in my head was much different.

I’ve been working on booking some train tickets on SNCF for Adrienne and my trip this week. I’ve managed to get one booked: Paris to Grenoble. I’ve been working on booking the second: Grenoble to Munich via Zurich. In the process of working with the site, I noticed some internationalization problems.

There are a few “Confirm, Next” buttons that say “to be translated”, and apparently the delivery method for my tickets are “to be translated” as well. (I’m actually picking them up at the station.)

By far, the worst internationalization problem, though, is a far more subtle one. I’m having some problems booking the tickets because Citibank initially declined the transactions for possible fraud. I was trying to call SNCF and either book them over the phone, or figure out why they won’t sell them to me.

I found the “Conditions of use SNCF” page on their site, which mentions several times that one can call 08 92 35 35 35 and for only 0.35 EUR per minute they will be happy to help me. Expensive, but great! I’ll call them!

I faithfully dialed the number into my phone: 011 33 8 92 35 35 35. I got a French menu system—but the web page telling me to call this number said nothing about not having any English options there. OK, I can handle this. I listened very carefully and selected the option for “International Trips”, and then for “Other Lines”. I was connected to an operator, who greeted me in French. I asked “parlez vous anglais?” to which she replies “non, monsieur”.

Hmm. I can handle French menus, but I don’t think I can handle asking her why my credit card is being denied in French. I asked if she could transfer me to someone who speaks English. She tried to give me the number: zairo … eight … and I guess she gave up and hung up on me. Doh.

Part of internationalization is making sure that the information you are translating is relevant, not just directly translating everything.

While we were waiting in line at KFC tonight, this guy was waiting for his order. The nice cashier informed him that there would be a five minute wait because they ran out of Potato Wedges. His reply:

Guy: Will I be compensated?
Cashier: Huh?
Guy: Will there be any compensation, for the potato wedges?
Cashier: No.
Guy: Wow, that’s how it works here?

The guy was fully expecting some sort of compensation for having to wait five minutes. Amazing.

Heard over the cubicle wall today, while two co-workers were discussing Judaism:

Guy1: So it’s like Fight Club?
Guy2: It’s exactly like Fight Club.

Out of context quotes are the best.

Today, while I was riding the light rail to work, I was sitting in the articulated section of the train, next to my bike. There was another guy sitting with his bike. He was kind of old, and seemed a little crazy. He kept mumbling to himself and occasionally said non-sensical things to me.

We stopped at a station, and nobody was there. He half stood up, and was looking out the window intensely, and announced to me and the train:

They’ve got rainbow-colored leopards … with six legs!!

I replied, “Um, OK.” Crazy people rule.

Update: Well, things are not always as they seem. We took light rail downtown tonight to see a movie, and upon the train stopping at San Fernando station, what did we see? Rainbow-colored leopards, with six legs. Or at least art that appears to be such. Maybe the guy is slightly (but not much) less crazy than I thought.

That’s my proposed name for this month. I propose that we declare the entire month of October as a Friday. It has certainly felt like a Friday every day since the start of the month.

I announced my proposal to my cubemates earlier today, and mere minutes later, someone sent a message to an internal mailing list for stuff for sale:

Subject: FREE: banana

Better hurry, its rotting quickly.

Obviously someone else feels the same way.

Update:

Lots of people have replied to the banana thread, but the best reply (from the original poster) is:

Subject: RE: FREE: banana

Because this generated so much interest and people are really want to know, “how rotten is the banana?”. I put up a webcam so everyone can watch this banana rot away.

You can see a capture here:

Read the rest of this entry »

Andrei has been hacking on a toy that uses the OpenCV library to find faces in images. I was feeding it some images to try it out, and it found a “face” in an unexpected place in this image from my wedding. Kind of creepy.

This weekend, the VTA‘s Vasona Light Rail Extension was finally completely opened!

The Fruitdale station is a short 10-minute walk from our apartment, and takes me all the way north to Mountain View with no transfers. It takes 56 minutes to get to the Lockheed Martin station, nearest to Yahoo!, so it’s pretty comparable to taking the bus, train, and employee shuttle. The nice thing, though, is that I’ll get a solid hour to work instead of several 10-15 minute blocks.

The other upsides: It’s about 5 minutes from here to downtown San Jose, it runs every 15-30 minutes most of the time, and it runs from 5am to midnight, seven days a week. No more taxis back from San Jose Diridon unless we arrive after midnight!