Musings of a (Formerly) Displaced Chinese RooBoy

Just returned from Thanksgiving weekend in Chicago. Did some tourist stuff like Field Museum (where "Sue", the largest and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex fossil is kept), Black Friday shopping on the Mag Mile and State St. (good bargains to be had if you go to the shops at 5 AM!), Old Water Tower , Lake Michigan and looking at the cheesy shops on Navy Pier . The Bulls are not the biggest sporting team in Chi-town - that honor belongs to the NFL Bears and to a lesser extent, MLB Cubs. The range of Bulls merchandise was limited in sports shops. Also caught up with Chris Q for dinner. The weather was uncommonly warm (60 F) so it was kinda disappointing not to see any snow. Nevertheless, the holiday mood was definitely in the air, with decorations, trees and music everywhere downtown. Will post some pics when I get home in 2 weeks (I have a project go-live this weekend and won't be going home).

The next-gen video console war is now in full effect, with the PS3 (launched last Friday with only 40,000 units in the US) and the Wii (launched Sunday with more units) fighting for your dollar with the XBox 360. I think the PS3 is over hyped - the 360 has graphics comparable to the PS3 and is cheaper. The Wii has some really innovative games using the Wii Remote. Star Wars lightsabre fights anyone??? I might go down the route of getting a Xbox and a Wii - hooking the Xbox to my HDTV will be sweet! Gears of War look awesome.

Looks like we're heading to Chicago during Thanksgiving week, airfare and accommodation courtesy of SouthWest and Hyatt. The Bulls will be on their annual "Circus Trip", so I won't get to see them play at the United Center. To fund the frequency of travel, I need to increase the frequency of hopping between Hyatts to get enough FFNs to cover Chicago and Europe - time to live out of the suitcase again!

We will be heading to Europe in mid December and catch up with Mike/Grace and Chris/Simone. It's gonna be cold but we'll get to experience a real "white" Christmas, chilling out in London, Athens and Berlin. Thankfully Hyatt is running its annual FFN promo now, so some of the accommodations will be free.

The project I've been working on in San Diego for the past 9 months went live over the weekend, meaning the system is now operational in production. The bad news is that this project will have 5 more go-lives until it is fully operational and I can get outta here! The next go-live is 4 wks away...