I’m back home from the
Star Party.
Just think of 1000 people camped in the desert with hundreds of telescopes, seminars on the universe and lots of dust.
We saw planets (Mars prominent), nebulas, clusters, globules and galaxies.

I’m posting this from home but I could have posted a message from the desert.
One vendor had a truck full of computers and a satellite link.
We had wireless internet in the middle of the desert!!
It’s everywhere.

Finally made it home. The
pictures of Helsinki
are up on my
picture pages
.

Now I’m off to send a few days in the desert at the
Oregon Star Party
.
I’ll see the close Mars through a good telescope tonight.
Back Sunday.

My meetings are done so I spent today on a walking tour of the town of Helsinki. The Tourist Bureau has a brochure of paths around the city and descriptions of what you’ll see along the way. Being and engineer, I, of course, came up with a better route that combined two of their paths.

Most of the streets and sidewalks are made from granite cobblestones. This is none of that bricks on sand stuff they do in the States. There must be granite under the granite because the cobbles stand up to trucks, busses and cars on the busyist streets. Granite is everywhere here. It sticks up out of the ground between building. It is used for street curbs, building fronts and garden accents.

Everyone has a cell phone. Walking down the street you bump into business men, housewives, kids all answering, talking, texting or playing on their cell phones.

This is a very civilized and safe city. Women are walking home late at night and the city bus drivers carry money and make change. There are bad guys somewhere (people live here, after all) but much of the protections from criminal activity that I see in the States, isn’t done here.

target="onepic">
height="60" width="80" alt=""/>

My walk took me through the embassy district (on a hill overlooking the bay).
The American Embassy is a compound even here in far off Helsinki.
Cut granite blocks toped with tastefully green painted iron fence does not take
one’s eye off the large security center or the local plice van parked outside.
The French, British, Estonian, etc embassies are not similarily protected.

The sidewalks are wide throughout the city with a line down the middle
making a lane for walkers and a lane for bicycles.

Well, time to start packing — I’m off to the airport early in the morning.

target="onepic">
height="60" width="80" alt=""/>

target="onepic">
height="60" width="80" alt=""/>

target="onepic">
height="60" width="80" alt=""/>

target="onepic">
height="80" width="60" alt=""/>

Most of the day proper was spent inside a building. But, at the end of the day, we all set off for our “social gathering” which was dinner in the old customs house.

I took the tram (electric trolly) down to the market area and walked through downtown Helsinki to our dinner. The street musicians were just setting up. The three I ran across were a pan-pipe musician, a pair of ladies with a cello and violin and a tall fellow who was an operatic tenor. Beats a guitar or saxaphone.

Our dinner started at 8pm and included what was essentially a drinking game that had external facilitators organizing the activity. We broke up into teams and we each had to identify several containers of liquids (alcoholic, fruit juices and pop) and then make a punch out of them. We then had to make up a story around the punch and then present the skit/song/poem/… to the rest of the group. My rap performance took first prize. LOL.

Well, I didn’t get out of the party until midnight. I didn’t know it was that late and it took me a while to realize that my tram wasn’t running any more that night. So I walked back to the hotel across Helsinki. It’s not like I was alone either. The bars and pubs were still hopping and people were walking on the streets. I didn’t get into bed until 2am.

Tomorrow I’ll do some sight seeing and take pictures. Blog you then.

Helsinki is externally a drab town, in my estimation.
But I think that’s because it enjoys such cold weather most of the
year. The outsides tend to be simple concrete but
time and detail is given to the insides of the buildings.
My hotel room has 4 pane windows which gives you some idea
of how the weather must be the rest of the year.

The temperature is just right by my measure — 60’s with
overcast — but it’s a little humid which makes it seem warm.
That, matched with the fact that the hotel room does not
have air conditioning and the bedding is designed for frigid
weather, makes it seem warm and unconfortable for this
west coaster.

The people of Helsinki are very friendly but reserved. I
first noticed the latter when I entered the airport from the
plane — despite there being many people, the airport seemed
hushed. If you ask a question, they will help you with a
smile but they don’t meet your eye on the street and they
don’t greet strangers walking by with a smile.
These must be relatives to the reserved Norwegians
Garrison Keeler
is always talking about.

The northern Europeans know how to do bathrooms and bathroom
fixtures. The hotel room is small by American standards, but
the bathroom and fixtures are well ahead of even some of the
upscale hotels I’ve been in. Marble and functional fixtures.

The Luftanza flight to Helsinki was long. Or at least it seems that
way since I haven’t had much sleep the last 24 hours.
We were served a light meal of cheese, pasta and meat.
Very good.
But the most interesting points (as least to an American) is
that they actually served the meal with metal utensils - yes,
an actual metal fork and knife.
You’ll not find that anywhere in America.

Helsinki is the place to go for conferences.
Well, all of Europe seems to be — I even met someone I knew
who was going to
SIGCOMM
.
The lady I sat next to on the flight to Helsinki was going
to a geophysics conference and there is the look of amny of
the people on this plane — there are a lot of English
as first language people on this plane.

There is more smoking in the Frankfurt airport than in any
place in the States.
There are smoking areas but they are inside. I didn’t find
the smoke oppresive but it was definitely more than most
Americans are used to these days.

There didn’t seem to be a lot of that anal security that we’re
getting in the States. I had my passport checked once
in Frankfurt (and that was to get into the security area
and not getting on the plane) and I didn’t see a single armed
soldger type hanging around. In Frankfurt, air travel is pretty
much the way it used to be before 9/11.

I mentioned that I drive to spend one night with my family
between jaunts out of town. This morning, I left Black
Butte at 10am to get to the airport for my flight.

Black Butte is one of those holiday resorts where the
lower upper -class go to play. We’re talking homes that
cost more than good homes in the big city. My parents
ended up with a condo there because my father organized
their bridge group to go together and buy a condo there
when it was just being built. Prices have risen enough
to where we couldn’t afford to buy the condo today.

I had to go a different way to get to Portland because
the usual highway was closed because of fires. In fact,
Black Butte Ranch was on Phase 2 pre-evaculation status
so my family had everything packed so they could throw
everything into the car and be off at any moment.

This meant the area was full of smoke, also. Normally,
from the Ranch
you can see several snow covered mountain peaks set against
blue sky,
but this week you were lucky to see the trees on the other
side of the golf course.

So the drive back to the big city smelled of smoke and
the views were limited. I drove over to Redmond, up
through Madras,
through the
Hot Springs Indian Reservation
(and past a few casinos, of course),
through
Government Camp
and past
Timberline Lodge
and finally down to the big city.

The next week or so will be on the road. This week I’m in Santa Clara, California doing business work.
I get back to Portland on Friday but, rather than stay at home, I’m driving to
Black Butte Ranch
to spend one night with my family.
Then on Saturday, I’ll drive back to Portland and get on a plane to
Helsinki, Finland
to attend a conference.
I hope to put up some pictures before I come back — it’s a computer conference so I’ll have connectivity.
Conference on Monday and Tuesday, then I get one day to see the city before getting on the plane back home.

No, not really home, because I immediatly drive to central Oregon to spend two nights looking at the stars at the
Oregon Star Party.

Maybe I’ll get to recover on Labor Day.

A thunderstorm comes over, rain pours down and the roof leaks.
Normal companies would put a bucket under the drip, but
a large ISO9000 compliant company will put out a specially
labeled container to do the job.

target="onepic">
height="60" width="80" alt=""/>

target="onepic">
height="80" width="60" alt=""/>

I haven’t been updating this much.
Work has been keeping me very busy and I don’t feel like sitting down and playing on my home computer after slaving over a hot computer all day.
And I’ve been working a lot on the
remodel
.
I’ve finally updated the
construction pictures
although I still need to add some commentary.

I’ve been doing a lot of the finishing work — painting, trim addition, cleanup and running errands for the contractors.
I don’t need to pay someone else $35 an hour to do that.

But I have some more entires to put up here — I’ve been taking pictures and have some to blog.

And, just as I update this, I have to hit the road for work.
First a few days in
Santa Clara, California.
Then a night at
Black Butte Ranch
before flying to
Helsinki, Finland
.
I’ll have connectivity in Finland so I’ll be able to upload pictures from
there.
Stay tuned.

Meetup.com
lets people sign up to meet.
It coordinates subject, place, time, etc.
The next Portland, Oregon
Weblogger
meetup is scheduled for August 20th.

All of you Portland people, signup at
Meetup.com
, vote for the meeting place, and I’ll see you on the 20th.