Here’s a photo of Yours Truly playing AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long at the first karaoke night for the ng-conf programming conference in Salt Lake City. They didn’t have mic stands on the first karaoke night, but Brady from Rock the Mic Karaoke helped out by playing “human mic stand.”
For the benefit of those of you who’ve never experienced a Buc-ee’s, here’s some video I shot during my first-ever visit to one of these roadside stores that’s best described as “Imagine a Circle K, but on Texas steroids,” or “Picture a Wawa, but the size of a Walmart.”
Seen in my room’s bathroom at Hotel Vinache, New Orleans, on Thursday, July 29, 2022, where I stayed on a three-day bus trip from Tampa to Austin for StartupBus Florida 2022.
There are more photos from StartupBus Florida 2022 on my tech blog, Global Nerdy.
Sunday’s my day to check the grounds before my daily 10K bike ride.
Aside from some weeding that I’ll need to do over the coming week, the front yard looked good, so I decided to take some photos.
You can’t go for a bike ride without a bike. After eight years of pretty regular riding — and near-daily riding since the start of the pandemic — my bike was beginning to show its age. It was getting to the point that it would be cheaper to replace than repair it.
The supply chain for new bikes is a bit thin at the moment, but the local Facebook marketplace had a decent-sized selection. Once I’d filtered out the bikes that people got at Walmart (the bikes are so-so, and they’re usually assembled by the associate who drew the short straw), there were a couple of good picks.
I ended up buying relatively gently-used bike pictured above. It had new brakes and tires, and I got it for less than $200 from someone who lived a few blocks away and rode regularly with my go-to bike repair guy, Jorge, whose business is named Bike Haus (which I highly recommend). It rides quite nicely.
I usually drop by the Seminole Heights branch of Spaddy’s — a coffee trailer with patio area — on weekends for a Cuban toast with cheese and a cold brew with condensed milk.
All in all, a nice morning.
Two weeks ago, on Monday, July 25, I attended a send-off party for StartupBus Florida. Despite being in an open-air location on a breezy evening (there was a thunderstorm later that night), five people who were there ended up sick and testing positive for COVID.
Here’s a photo that shows how open-air the party location, The Sail, is:
I’d hoped that an open-air location would reduce the odds of anyone catching the latest COVID variant, which was proving to be very contagious. Here in Florida, the incoming reported cases had remained steady since the beginning of the summer:
Most of us were there for about two and a half hours. Near the end of the gathering, one of the guests mentioned that they’d started their throat had started feeling scratchy and they were feeling a little ill, and I suggested that they go home and test themselves.
And as a result, 5 people got sick. Two tested positive the following day, another got ill a couple of days later, and another a couple of days after that.
My recommendation: You might want to cut back on socializing in larger groups for the next couple of weeks.
For family, friends, and the curious, I’m posting some selections from my camera roll from last month’s trip to London.
Our flight left Tampa on Friday evening, and we landed in London on Saturday morning, a little before 9:00 a.m. local time.
Upon deplaning, we saw a couple of Queen tributes. Here’s the first one..
…and here’s the second:
We made the trip from Gatwick to London in pretty short order on the Gatwick Express, which ends at Victoria Station, and we took a cab to the hotel from there:
Auth0, my employer, put us up at the Sea Containers hotel, located right on the Thames’ south bank and just west of Blackfriars. Here’s the view from our hotel room.
After a nice post-flight shower and change of clothes, we stepped out the hotel’s riverside doorway and took our first proper trip selfie…
…and then we worked our way east along the river…
…then a tiny bit south…
…towards our goal, Flat Iron Square, for lunch.
It’s a fun, open-air beer garden with food stalls, tables aplenty, and a lively crowd. The South Bank seems to have no shortage of these places.
We got lunch from Lil’ Watan, who serve Lebanese food out of a shipping container…
…and drinks from the bar under one of the arches.
After lunch, we set off to explore the South Bank a little more. In my handful of trips to London, I’d stayed mostly on the north side of the Thames.
Southwark has a lot of railway bridges, and the locals have gotten pretty creative with the underpasses:
We passed by Crossbones Graveyard, and there were these great posters nearby:
And while we were in the area, I made sure to pass by this building on Redcross Street, which is known for its “Take Courage” ghost sign:
