32 Days - Warm

I looked at the weather when I got up and saw it was supposed to be about 70 today. I wore short sleeves. Everyone onsite was commenting that I wore it. Probably because I always wear my two flannel long sleeve shirts. I just dont want to ruin any of my good shirts.

So this morning I went with our translator Michael to the tshirt printing company. He had to go with me so I could get there and translate. It was a small office in the middle of the city. He spoke good english. I went there to pay him to get the proof made. We should have it in a few days. Now we have to decide how many to get of each size. Its a little tricky since we have both asian sizes and european sizes, and on top of that, the labels on the shirts (the size label) will not be an equivalent to something we know. The shirts that say "M" are actually an asian small which for some reason is a US XL. So yeah really confusing.

At work we got the touchscreen installed and I updated the graphics for the new characters which I posted above. These are the characters for our pavilion. I think they call them mascots. Im sure the owners will like it.

We also had this event at our hotel which I got an invitation to. It was described as "a traditional chinese culinary journey". It was located on the fifth floor and had good views of peoples square. They had little stations with food like dumplings, jellyfish, peking duck, noodles and some other stuff. Casey, Tom, Yag and myself went. They also had wine and beer. We all ate a lot. It was pretty good, and free. The hotel staff knows us and were very nice.

After that we went to the Big Bamboo expat bar and had drinks to celebrate the ATP and Nates departure from Shanghai. Its a long night and I am tired. Also two other pics from the site. Giant yarnballs and the second one was just funny.

33 Days

So 33 days left. We did some more testing of the system today and we are still having minor problems. We did not notice them because of the issue previous. It was sort of covering it up. Not much else happened today except for a good lunch. Michael and I walked to this restaurant he heard about. Its hard now since they closed the gate easiest to get out. So the place we went to, is known for their noodles and dumplings. I think all places in china are known for their dumplings or noodles. It was really good. I really enjoyed it. I want to go back but Michael (our translator) has to go back home to get his IDs and things. He got his wallet stolen a while back.

Tomorrow morning I am going to tshirt place to get the proof made.

Thats about it for today. Oh a video of casey running the one mirror ball with the lights tracking it realtime. In case you dont know whats going on there, the mirror ball is hanging from 3 lines that are attached to winches. The navigator system calculates where the ball needs to move and adjusts all three winches to make it move there in 3d space. It is also calculating where to move the lights to follow the ball. Its all done realtime.

34 Days - Monday

Today as soon as we got in there were a lot of people scurrying about. A couple of the big barco projectors were turned on and they were running content on part of the stage. We found out that a dignitary was coming onsite to see the pavilion. We ran the show for them and they walked out before it was even finished. We spent the rest of the day cleaning up some items on the touchscreen and taught Tom how to use it. Also Casey made some progress in his area and got both his lights working. I also setup some cues for the lighting and sound guys to test timecode with their hardware. I think they are a little over their heads.

I also sent in the artwork to get the tshirts going. I am excited about it. Lastly I think Nate is going to leave this weekend. There is not much more for him to do.

I think tomorrow night I might see if we can finally do the team dinner to celebrate our progress. I am getting a little bored here and I miss my wife so much. I am excited about the landscaping that we are getting done to the backyard. It will be nice.

Thats it for today. I plan on doing some more videography tomorrow of the system running.

35 Days - To Bund or not to Bund...

Today was our day off - Sunday. I felt like I should go to the Bund. I read online that it just opened today or yesterday. I finally got the motivation to go down there. What a bad idea. I would say that there were a million people there, but there were really 10 million. I couldnt even get onto the Bund which is an area near the water that follows the river. Its quite picturesque with the Pudong in the background.

I stopped at the temple supermarket on the way home using the subway and got some sushi for dinner.

36 Days - Saturday..

Today was a strange day. The entire ADK team and Murayama team are now moved into the control room. Its about 12 to 15 people in there with desks and lockers. They filled up the entire room and are just about to take over our small area. Nate and I worked on the new low limits for all the balls. The stage is now raked (sloped) and the owners want the balls to be able to match the angle of the stage. This is an interesting problem since the video content that controls the height of the balls can no longer go flat at the lowest point. So now that the motors have their limits set to match the stage I have to convey to the content guys how to make content to get this angle and not trip the limits of the motors. I attached a video of one of the arrays running into its limits. You can hear the brakes clicking as they go into their limit. I also loaded some new content from the content guys that looked really interesting. I filmed the new piece with my new tripod which I like a lot.

There is a restaurant in our pavilion which is called uncle fast food. There is a picture of it. Casey said its not like the colonel is your uncle (referring to KFC). Which reminds me, we had KFC for lunch so I wasnt very happy. Yag did bring dunkin donuts so I had a chocolate mochi which was chewy and good. The uncles fast food also is called UFF. They are known for having really good dumplings.

Tonight I went to dinner with Yag and Casey. Yag wanted Indonesian food. Casey and Yag had tried to go to this place the night before but they needed reservations, so tonight we were set. It was hidden off the street and had a nice sized pond with lots of plant life and outside tables. It was a really nice place. The food was good too. I had some shrimp with noodles and some rice. Yag had shrimp too and Casey had some fish with bones in it. The shrimp all had their heads still on but the meat was prepared and easy to pull out of the shell. It was a really nice setting with the plants lit up. It was "Earth Hour" and I forgot to turn on the oven and leave the fridge door open, but I noticed the blue LED lighting under the highways here turned off to observe this event.

The top picture was our space today. If you can see on the left hanging from the truss are 6 very large moving lights. These are the newer barco moving projector lights. They are about 40k each. I think there are about 18 total in our building. They should make some spectacular imagery. Too bad it will partially make it harder to see our system run.

Tomorrow I have off and dont have much planned. Mclane lost my laser so I might get another. He said he would pay for it. Other than that I am going to sleep in and watch some TV. I will get sushi and maybe a pizza.

37 Days - Half day off..

Today all of the team except for myself and Yag had a day off. We had to go to the first show control meeting. There was a little bit of confusion, but Odawara-son knows whats going on. They also started hanging the projectors, shall I say moving light, combination projectors. These units are about 40k dollars each. They have about 8 of them for the main showroom area. I am quite impressed. I also got some more non-definite information about upcoming programming. It seems that there is enough work for me until april 25th. They are deciding April 2 if I am going to be staying until May 2nd. If they cannot make up their mind I will be staying until April 25th. Seems kind of a strange way to do it. I just feel like if they change my ticket to the 25th, I will end up changing it again since we wont be ready.

I also went to the camera store today and bought a travel tripod. I just needed something that I could use to video the BGA running.

Thats about it for today. I think we are having our celebratory dinner tomorrow night on the fix for the motors and completing the ATP (acceptance test procedure).

38 Days - Firmware works..

We tested the new motor firmware today and everything seems to be working well. We are working on some improvements to the operator screen and for the first time in navigator history, a help screen that shows how everything works. Its all looking very nice and appley. I dug my own hole here, its all graphics created on an apple, but I think I can do the same things in photoshop on a pc. My goal is to create some very cool template packages that has a style or theme, and it will come with all the buttons and indicators to build your user panel. Maybe Amanda could help me out on some design ideas.

They closed the entrance gate that we use to get in and out of the site today. So now we have to walk all the way north on the site to get to another gate. On the way we passed a lot of interesting buildings. Im sorry for not being able to get the whole building, but they are certainly neat. There are some pictures of them. I have no idea which pavilions they are.

39 Days- Firmware complete

Today we finished loading the firmware into the motors. Yes it took three days to do 1008 motors. Lunch today was mildly disgusting. I decided to try something else instead of my usual fried rice. I decided to get the noodles which this place is known for. They actually make them right in the front of the store. I got the beef and noodles. When I first tried it, I was surprised how soft they were. Just about too soft. Then I realized the taste. They put that cumin spice in everything. I dont like that spice to begin with, or most any other curries. Then it seemed like it was a bowl of oil. I couldnt tell if the soup was oily flavored or if it really was oil. Yag showed up a little late to lunch, and brought dunkin donuts. I have never seen such a poor variety. Mostly round cruller types with different toppings. I remember in high school writing that program in computer science that tracked bakery goods, and I also remember not knowing was a cruller was at the time. Mclane wanted his boston cream, which there werent any. He picked up another but it was filled with blueberry, so he threw it out. I guess I was just mostly disappointed with lunch. Oh, we also got the dumplings which I like. Those are also soaked in oil. They say all the food here is sweet and oily. Great, not really.

Tomorrow we will start testing the new firmware. We had 2 motors which didnt take the upgrade so we have to look at those. Also, I will be helping Casey with the graphics for his touch screens.

Thats about it. I miss my wife.

40 Days - Sick..

Im not going write much today. I am sick. My stomach has some issues. Im not sure if its what I ate last night or maybe I drank some water that wasnt good. They say not to drink any water out of the tap, and I try really hard not to. I even brush my teeth with the bottled water. So I am just going to rest and hopefully this bug will pass.

41 Days - TK is here..

Today is Tom Kong's first day onsite. He was surprised how far behind everything is. We spent the day uploading firmware into the motors to fix the issue. I had previously only tested the new firmware on 144 out of 1008 motors. So we now have to do the rest. I think it will take us 2-3 days to finish it up. Tom is a really good guy to have here. He doesnt know that much about Navigator, but he can fix anything electronic. He has this toolcase, which I call the mary poppins toolcase thats filled up with parts. Somehow he manages to bring everything you would possibly need, even to build circuits on wirewrap or breadboard something. I had previously worked with him on the Stratosphere lighting upgrade. He contracts his engineering services out to this company called Lightning Strikes. They make those huge strobe lights that we used there. So he designed the entire electrical system for those very high amperage strobes.

I had a lot of trouble with my laptop today and I spent 4 hours trying to get the motor software to work. I was ready to throw the laptop off the grid and go home. Everyone there kept me calm which helped a lot.

42 Days - Sunday Off..

World Financial Center - the third tallest building in the world. I paid 150RMB to get to the highest floor, which has a glass floor. There is a large cutout at the top of the building and the highest observation deck is at the top of that cutout. You can walk along the glass floor. Most people paid to go up there, but were afraid of the floor. Even by the windows there was glass areas, so most people were afraid. There are a lot of pics. I will try to explain them. The one of the expo site you can see the chinese pavilion the upside down pyramid, well look across the river, you will see a white bubble looking thing (not the flying saucer). Well further right you will see the wooden conical building and right above that one is our building. The pictures with the white observation deck, some of them you can look up and see the higher glass walkway observation deck.

The pictures near the top show the Oriental Pearl TV tower. I have a shot of the bottom and one of the baubles (yes thats how they spell it). Pretty gaudy looking thing.

There is also a video of the elevator ride. Pretty trippy lighting. Notice the height display. Pretty cool. You should be able to enlarge all pictures and maybe the video. If you cant see the numbers in the video it got up to 435 meters.

So since it was nice out I decided to do something touristy. It wasnt nearly as fun by myself. I hope I will get to go back with Terrie. It will be so much better with her. I miss her dearly. I love you Terrie!

43 Days - Saturday Off

Today we had off. I didnt do much. I slept in till about noon. I closed all the curtains and got some good rest. I spent a lot of time remoting into my home computers. I am trying to get some stuff setup and most of it seems to be working.

I also spent a great deal of time reading manuals for my big camera. There are so many functions that I needed to know how they work. I also played around with the custom firmware that allows some flexibility. It automates things like focus pulls and sets up the audio so that it works better. The 5d was designed for still photographers, but has caught on like wildfire for cinema usage. The last episode of House is to be recorded on the same camera that I have. It is even beating out the 25k Red One camera. I have a number of things on my list to accessorize the camera and make it better for video recording.

We are supposed to go out tonight but I havent heard anything from anyone yet. I am not too worried if we do or we dont.

Thats about it for today.

Tomorrow, I think I will go to the camera market as well as temple food market for sushi.

44 Days - Show Balls Done

Today we finished swapping out the test balls for the show balls. Everything went pretty smoothly. I have to say that Casey can really eat a lot. For lunch Mike asked if we wanted to try dumplings and I was curious. He asked if we wanted beef or mushroom. I didnt really care either way. Domino, who Mclane named, strangely has took to his name well and his one job, getting us lunch is working out really well. He got us two bowls of dumplings, I had my rice and Casey got his spicy potatoes with his noodles. He was in heaven. He ate so much. He pretty much finished off the two bowls of dumplings, the veggies and his soup. The dumplings were pretty good. There are pictures above of before and after Casey ate.

We have off both Saturday and Sunday this weekend. Nate is back in Shanghai, and Yag will be back Monday. On Monday we will commence loading the new firmware and then do some testing. The facility is coming together but still no activity on the audio, video and lighting portions of the main show.

It was really warm today. I think it was around 75. Everyone was out. I decided to go to the local market to get some laundry detergent when I got to the hotel. I also got some basic supplies like juice and milk.

Tomorrow I am going to the temple foodmart for sushi. I think I will also hit the camera store again and look around for some more specific things.

Sunday I think I might try to do some actual sightseeing. Maybe go up in the Pearl Tv tower or the world financial building, which is still the third tallest building.

45 Days - Show Balls..

Today was the day that we started to change out the wooden balls for the plastic "show balls". Everything went pretty smoothly. As you can see by the picture, there are a lot of balls hanging from the ceiling and they are not done yet.

I was in the control room and heard the sound of water splashing onto the ground. I didnt think much of it, but it kept going on and on. I decided to peek into the HVAC room and couldnt see much through the vent. I went back to work. It was still going on. I decided to take a better look around. I went into the hallway, to see if I could get into that room and I found the door. I saw that there was a large pipe leaking lots of water into this room. It seemed like it was raining down right on top of the dividing wall between that room and another room. I told Mclane about it and he didnt seem very concerned. I expected that. He came over to look and at the same time we saw some plumbers actually running around. I guess they knew what was up.

I ordered Papa Johns for dinner tonight. I like it since its 3 meals for me. Nate should be back in town tomorrow night. I think we are off both days this weekend.

Pictures of the conical building next door and Norm Schwab!.. yes hes working on a couple pavilions, one of them being the aviation ride, with Scott Miller (both of who worked on bubble).

46 Days - We fixed it!

So today I went into work wondering if the new firmware we loaded onto the motors would fix our issue or not. I was pretty confident that they found the issue.

I started off with a small group of 18 motors. Everything seemed ok. I always ran the nearby group of 144 motors for comparison (which had the old firmware). RIght off the bat, a motor on the old group failed. The new group ran fine. I added all the motors, so it was 144 to 144 new to old. I ran it for 8 hours continuous today and not one problem with the new firmware. The older firmware had 10 errors. So I think we fixed it.

It was so nasty on site today. They were sweeping, and grinding all day. My laptop was covered in a layer of dust, and I kept wiping it off. It was just nasty onsite all day today.

Also, our translator Michael got me a new sim card which has a data plan on china unicom. Everything works great on it, which I was surprised at. I also went to a local bakery and got some bread and a treat. This was a new place that I decided to try and their sliced bread tastes a lot like challah. Its really yummy. I also got this danish, which had some sort of sweet pasty filling. I dont know what it was, but it was good.

Please check out the video below.

47 Days - There may be a fix..

This morning I was supposed to have a conference skype call with a bunch of different people and companies regarding the issue we are having with the ball grid. It turns out that it was the following day. Also at the same time when I got up I had some email from one of the manufacturers that explain they had found the possible root of the problem. They sent us some new software. I was pretty excited.

I got to work and spent all day loading this software onto a portion of the ball grid. It was really slow. It took all day to do 144 motors. Tomorrow I plan to run the system for about 8 hours and monitor for any issues. It should be a pretty boring day. I am hoping it will be really boring. If we get some issues, then we will know that this isnt fixed yet.

I went for sushi with Casey. He eats everything. He loves Japan and would live there if he could. We asked the front desk where to go, hoping for a different place and we went to where they suggested. It was just ok. There are two other sushi places that I have been to already, that Yag likes, so I am curious what Casey would think.

Tomorrow Casey is going to be surveying the space he is working in with a total station. This device is a surveying tool that calculates the distance to an object along with all the angles and stuff. Its a pretty expensive tool that he rented for his part of the project.

Thats it for now.

48 Days - Monday

Mike took us to the noodle place that he likes for lunch. I wish I had my camera. There was a guy out front of the restaurant cooking, pretty much outside of the door to the place with two pots and lots of steam rising off them. There was a cutout in the window to pass stuff through to him. Inside there was a guy at a table making noodles. He would pass the freshly made noodles to the guy outside and he would cook them up. The store was about 12 feet wide and 35 feet deep. A row of tables against each long wall. We sat down on little orange stools. It was me, Casey and Mike. I ordered their beef fried rice along with mike and Casey got the beef noodles. I had the rice once before, when Mike had it delivered to the site. Casey really liked it and cant wait to get more. I paid for everyone. It was 25 yuan, about 4 dollars!. I think we will go there a lot. I may try the noodles tomorrow. It was interesting how he made them, He kept on stretching the dough and twisting it.

They starting hanging the static balls around our "moving" balls. I guess the ceiling will be covered with them. I remember hearing a while back that the ceiling will have 10000 balls when they are done.

For dinner I ate the sashimi I got yesterday. It was really good, except not very filling.

49 Days - Sunday off

So its Sunday, and its so foggy outside that I cant even see the nearby buildings. In fact, I cant see anything. It reminds me of looking outside an airplane window through clouds and storms. I didnt do much today except watch a few movies and surf around on the internet. I went to the temple supermarket and got two trays of sushi and some pineapple. I was surprised at how expensive the pineapple was. The sushi was good as usual. I got a salmon tray and a sashimi tray. I think it will be fine tomorrow. I wont go more than a day, but I know they make it right there. Ill take a pic of the sashimi box tomorrow, it looks really good. Thats about it. Im looking forward to talking with my wife and parents tonight. Im getting a little lonely here.

I also got a gift package from my wife that had some goodies which I am thankful for. I love you honey.

50 Days - First Saturday Off.

I didnt do very much today. I slept in and relaxed. I decided to take a walk down to the electronics mart. I was looking for a new butane soldering iron, which I didnt find the brand I was looking for. The one I had was broken at the jobsite and I was authorized to get a new one and expense it. They had lots of good regular irons by Hako, which I may go back and get one. Not much else today. Tomorrow I will go to cybermart and start shopping around for lasers for my friend.

Thats it for today. Not much to report. It was extremely packed on Nanjing road shopping area though.

51 Days - Warm!

I cannot believe the weather here in Shanghai. Earlier this week, on Monday, it was extremely cold, windy and rainy. It then snowed Tuesday morning. Today it was 68 degrees outside. It was still cold enough in the building that we ran the heaters.

We got our client signoff on the system today. Although there are a few outstanding issues that we need to work on, at least we will now get paid.

For dinner tonight Nate decided he wanted to go to the Brazilian Steakhouse that we passed on our way to the pub last night. We called it the meat fest. I have never been to one before, but the basic gist is the waiters walk around with skewers and deliver different kinds of meat. Im sure Julie would love this place. Anyways we got there and found out it was only 99 yuan per person, all you can eat. Thats about 14 dollars. We sat down and immediately they started giving us meat. It was pretty good. I am not a fan of the fatty meat, so I had to cut away the gristle. They came around with all different types of meat, all of which were pretty good. Sometimes they slice it off the skewer for you. And the waiters would go "take, take". You grab your little tongs and grab the piece of meat. It was interesting. I am so full now. I had to get rid of the taste in my mouth, so I got some mocha gelato at the subway station. It was ok, nothing great. I have to say though, they have the most shovel looking spoons I have seen yet.

I am pretty sure we are off both Saturday and Sunday. Not sure what I am going to do. Probably look around the electronics store tomorrow and Sunday, probably stay in and rest.

52 Days

Today we prepared for our ATP process which is where the client will sign off on the system.

Nate wanted to find a place to get dinner so I told him about the "smart-shanghai" map. He found an irish bar. It took us a while to find it but once we got there it was worth it. It was a huge facility with multiple bars on multiple levels. We settled at the bar upstairs. I ordered guinness and the meat pie. It was really good.

Then out of nowhere, Brock and his buddies showed up. He worked at the bubble project. He is working on the opening ceremonies for the expo. They have 4 barges with large 18m wheels with lighting and fireworks on them. We talked about some of the stories at the bubble. It was fun.

53 Days

Not much going on here. We have some very impressed people with the user screens now. We are almost done. Also attached are the tshirt designs I have been working on. Any comments would be helpful. Its extremely late here, so I should go to bed. We are changing our schedule again. Starting at 10am instead of 3pm.

I went to get a haircut today. It was a little tramatic for me. So they shampoo your head while you sit in the chair, but then they open up this door in front of you that tilts down, and its a sink. So while you are sitting in the chair, you lean foward and plant your head into this sink contraption. Problem is that your nose is practically touching the bottom, so I was getting a little claustrophobic and panicking. I couldnt breathe. Anyways after that was over I was ok. The seats were all motorized and had outlets on them. Pretty cool. And it was busy in there, like 10 chairs on either side, women on right, guys on the left.

54 Days - Success.. with the capture..

So last night I spent two hours sitting up in the grid waiting for that motor to fail. We have a cyclical trace running so if a motor fails, we have 4 minutes to stop the trace and save it. I had no luck. Nate went up for a while, about an hour and no luck for him. Then Yag went up. After about 20 minutes, we had a motor fail. It was like pulling a slot machine. We werent sure if we had a motor on the truss we were monitoring. We had to quickly drill down into the menus on the navigator software to see if it was the right truss. Finally, success. Yag had luck. We sent off the trace to Taras, and he already has some information from it. It seems that the motor manufacturer is not doing something right.

On the food front. Well, we are not eating anything strange. I still get up every morning and have my oatmeal. Then at work when we go in about 230, I will eventually eat an instant noodle bowl. Then when I get home around midnight to 1am, I will have a snack. I hope one evening this week we can all get a good dinner.

Casey is due to arrive tonight at about 7pm. He is going to be in shock when he gets here. He has never been on a chinese construction site, only Japanese. He is coming to program the cylinder 4 system. In case you dont know its a smaller project with 6 winches. 2 sets of three that hang a ball from each set and they can fly the ball around in the space. One ball is a mirrored ball, and the other one lights up with LEDs from the inside. Its a much smaller system, but I am going to help him with the lighting and show control system. There are also two moving lights, one on the ceiling and one on the floor that will follow the mirrored ball wherever it travels in space. The navigator software does all the math for this, and its very cool. I will get video once it starts running (not for weeks).

Thats it for today.

55 Days - Monday back to work

It was hard going back to work on Monday. I knew that we had a long and dreary day trying to capture this fault. What makes it so hard is only about 1 motor has this issue out of 1008 during a 8 minute run. We are only connected to 18 motors to monitor at a time, so its pretty bad odds. Not much else going on here today. I really miss my wife. I hope this programming schedule gets decided very soon so I can book her tickets to come out here. I have a running list of things I want to do with her when she gets here.

Thats about it for today.

56 Days- more exploring..

Today was our day off. I wasnt sure if I wanted to go back to the big electronics store and look around some more or go to this other computer mall. I decided to venture over to Pudong (across the river) and go to this other computer mall. It was pretty easy to get to. I got out of the subway station and walked about 10 minutes to this place. I try to research where I am going before I go. I found that seeing a picture of the place before I go helps. I also found out that the intercontinental hotel was right across the street. I found that hotel when exiting the station and walked that way. I found the building pretty quick. I walked around inside for a while. I really dont like the style of everyone asking you to look at their merchandise. Its always "hello".. "come look at ipod" or something like that. I just want to browse around. I was looking for a mouse for Nate and some cheap speakers for myself. I found Nates mouse and then found some really cheap USB speakers. I realized when I got home that they dont have an aux input. They were only 10 dollars, but will work on any computer. Above is a picture inside the mall, and yes, all the shops are computers or computer parts/accessories.

On my way home I stopped at the temple station and picked up some more oatmeal and ramen, along with some sushi. The sushi at this market is really good and cheap.

I told terrie that I would post more video of the balls but I am having trouble posting it. Its a large file and blogspot wont allow me to upload it.

I was going to make pancakes this morning so I went to the conveinence store last night. I wasnt sure if I bought milk. Its strange to me to have to test everything out to see if I like it or to make sure what it is. A picture of the carton is above. It was not milk. It was yogurt. Yuck. James said he almost bought a carton of heavy cream at one point. Another strange thing is the Asahi brand that makes Japanese beer, also makes milk.

57 days

Im sorry but this video is so funny. I keep on replaying it. I sent it to the office and I got a bunch of replies back asking for me to get his resume.

We are still working on this issue onsite and working evenings. Its weird since I sleep in, for the morning, and hang around the apartment, then go to work late. We dont get a good dinner, usually instant noodles. We have lots of snacks, but I feel like I am living off junkfood.

Thats about it for now. Its really cold, windy and rainy here today. Around 41 degrees.

58 Days - Another long night..

So I think I might have missed a night. We are changing to the evenings and now I do this a day later in the morning. I guess I will have to catch up at some point. Me and Nate worked until 230am last night. Of course we started at 3pm the day before. We are still working on trying to get this one last issue resolved. It has been rainy and cold. This morning its even raining harder. There is occasional lightning and thunder. It sounds very different here.

I went over to dunkin donuts this morning, since I was getting a little tired of the oatmeal. I got a mochi donut. It was called a double chocolate mochi. It was sorta filled with a slightly rubbery chocolate filling. I thought it tasted good. They have a bunch of other flavors including green tea. I posted a picture of the one that I got.

Not much else to report here.

58 Days - switching schedule..

We are now switching to evenings to work since some of the other crews onsite need the area that we are working. We are now working from 3pm till when we want to stop. As far as the project goes, we are a bit in a holding pattern. We have a pretty major issue with the motors, and are waiting from the manufacturer to see if there is a error in the firmware. I hope this is true. If so, we will have to load firmware in all 1008 motors which will take a couple of days. Everything else seems to going well. We are doing groundbreaking work on the user screens as seen by the screenshots I posted. The bottom one is an old style panelform from the bubble. This one broke a lot of rules on layout. You can see that its hard to tell which items are buttons and which are indicators. Also, our signature font "Eyechart" is used all over the place. The new one (top) that we are working on has transparency and drop shadows. I really love the LEDs that I made. Yes, I made those in photoshop. All the buttons I made in photoshop, and the background was made in keynote on the apple, which is presentation software like powerpoint. Scott Fisher was uber impressed with what we did. He immediately wanted to know how we made it all, and more images so he can start including it into his presentations and manuals.

Id like to wish my beautiful wife a very happy birthday. I will make her pudding pie when I get back to vegas. I miss you so much honey.

Lastly, I am very excited that we got "funded" to produce the project tshirts. Me and Nate will be working on a slick design. I hope we can come up with a cool tagline.

59 Days - Long and rainy..

I wasnt sure what was going to happen today. Nate and Mclane stayed late last night. It was cold in the morning and drizzling. The subways were packed, but it was just me and Yag since the other two stayed late.

I made a lot of progress today on the userscreens and they look really "hot" as nate puts it. Its our last day with Jo today. Yag is taking her out to dinner for all her help. Im not sure where we are going.

As it turns out Nate wants to stay late again since Taras can help us remotely and the time difference works out for him to sign in while we are still there. We ended up staying till about 1130 so I missed dinner with Jo. There were ironworkers there welding almost overhead, and they finally left. It was interesting. Nate kept the balls running so they couldnt get near the array. Of course this wasnt on purpose, we were actually running tests. Eventually everyone left except the security guards. We heard the rain coming down. We were both hungry. And I kept on thinking of the Papa Johns resting in the fridge at the hotel. I was able to get a lot done in the quiet and nate finally got to a stopping point so we left. It was raining good and nate didnt have an umbrella. I had my yellow one. We trudged through the mud and most of the cobblestone pavers were loose. When you stepped on them, they would squirt up water onto your shoe! So my sneakers were soaked. We finally got a cab back to the hotel and I get to sleep in a little in the morning.

Thats it for today. Maybe I will post an image of the userscreens. I am learning how to make glass buttons.

Jason

60 Days - Papa Johns and Papa Beards! Together!

Today it was cold out again. We had the heat running under our programming table at work. We got a lot done and we are now looking at the future schedule. I am not sure yet, but there is a 50% chance I will be going to Macau with Nate for a week or two. We have some time here that we will be waiting for the client to finish installing stuff for show control. So we will see what happens.

Yag and I decided to grab dinner together. She frequents the Shabu Shabu. Im not sure who of you has heard of this, but I never did. Its also referred to as "hot-pot". She befriended one of the girls at a place that is pretty far to walk to, near the sushi place that we found. Anyways, I will say now that my right hand is really tired from using chopsticks. You have your own bowl or hotpot, and you pick the soup, so I picked the Korean spicy. It had tons of hot peppers in it. Then they boil it and you dunk in your meat and you let the noodles, veggies, and dumplings cook. I got the broad noodles. It wasnt what I thought. They were very thick and heavy, and slimy. So they were extremely difficult to pick up. I also got fillet, which is not as good as sirloin here. If I go back I will try the sirloin. We also got pork dumplings, which were actually fish dumplings. They were ok. I got potatoes, my vegetable. It was so hard to eat. We also got these lemon-lime drinks that came in a carafe that were very heavy on syrup but had natural lemon and lime juice.

After we were done we walked around the rest of the food court. Lets just say I almost threw up in my mouth a couple of times with the pungent foul smells wafting around that place. We went downstairs and exited the building. We realized that we should have stayed inside the building and got into the subway station. We went back in and went downstairs. Another food court, except names I recognized. Subway, Cold Stone, and, what what what? Papa Johns!, Amazing. We kept walking, and another slam dunk, Papa Beards!. Now I am in trouble. Papa Beards in walking distance from the hotel. I am in trouble. I thought I was going to lose so much weight being here. I havent gained anything so far, but this isnt good.

So thats whats going on here.

Pics, top, part of my meal. If you look at the very top you can see those greenish sticks on the tray, those were my noodles. The middle one was Yags hot pot, and the bottom pic was inside the mall where we ate. I think the mall was called "City Rascals".