Sunday, February 27, 2005

Road Trip

Road Trip


Random thoughts of a pink-eyed road warrior

I had to drive to Texas and back this week. All part of moving home, it's a long story that I won't bore you with. But I had to drive 1300 miles in a couple of days, and my mind got to wandering a time or two ...


  • Why do you never see a police speed trap when it is raining?

  • Texas road kill - skunk, armadillo, hound dawg.

  • There are way too many Country radio stations in Texas to be considered healthy.

  • What's whith that Mexican music? It sounds like a mixture between Spanish and Bavarian ... Flamenco meets lederhosen, Spanish guitar meets oompah!

  • Ohh that Cajun stuff in Louisiana is just as odd.

  • So what do American road builders have against corners?

  • ... and why do they make the roads out of concrete and Teflon?

  • I hate cruise-control-induced synchronised driving. There is absolutely no sense in 'overtaking' another car ar the rate of 1 inch per fortnight!

  • Fountain drinks in gas stations. Amazing. A 3 pint 'cup' of Coke costs about $1.20. That's less than 75p in real money. I wish they would learn how cheap these drinks are in Britain, and then install them in service stations everywhere - and stop charging £3 (about $5.40) for one pint of the stuff in the pubs!!!!

  • What's with the temperature here??? 80 farenheit in February!

  • Is there really any need for those heeeeeeeeuuuuuuuge trucks just to go to Walmart?

  • Looks like CB radio technology here has not moved on 20 years ... they're still using Firesticks and k40s. Wow.

  • Why don't the police cars get a proper paint job over here?



    Police Volvo - UK motorway patrol colours



  • MacDonald's burgers really do taste the same everywhere.

  • Waffle House is the perfect on-the-road junk food!

  • There may be 12000 radio stations between Mississippi and Texas, but the ones that do not play Country seem to have only 12 songs that they share between them.

  • ... and about 237 adverts.

  • Armadillos really are ugly - but it sure seems hard to crush them.

  • You can smell a squashed skunk from about a mile away!

  • The trees are budding everywhere.

  • There seem to be little clumps of miniature Daffodils wherever I look.

  • The City of Martindale, Polulation 691. That's not a city, it's a friggin' hamlet!

  • But it has its own police force of 2 and they are hot on speeders! ... nothing else to do, and they need to earn their own pay somehow.

  • If you are ever in the region of San Marcos in Texas you must try Mamacita's
    mexican restaurant. They have a machine there in the restaurant that churns out fresh tortillas all day. Yummmmm. Fresh-baked tortillas. Oh heaven.

  • And the HEB store around the corner has the same. You can buy fresh hot tortillas all day.

Cold Fusion user group conference

Scotch on the Rocks


Cold Fusion user group conference, May 2005

I just got this notification about a Cold Fusion User Group in Edinburgh holding a conference in May 2005 ...


Scotch on the Rocks, May 26/27 Edinburgh University


The Scottish ColdFusion User Group is both proud and excited to announce a two day conference covering Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7.

Taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland on the 26th and 27th May, you are invited to join speakers, including representatives from Macromedia, Firstserv and InterAKT, as they present on why ColdFusion MX 7 is the fastest and easiest way to build and deploy Internet applications.

There will be a number of big prizes up for grabs, including a copy of ColdFusion MX 7 Standard, as well as an iPod. To top this off, each event attendee will go home with a gift, which will be included in their goodie bag.

As well as all the fun during the day, the Scottish ColdFusion User Group will take you on a pub crawl on both the Thursday and Friday nights, so prepare yourself for an almighty hangover.

Tickets for the event are 25(GBP), which covers both days attendance. Registration for the event will open soon.

More details including confirmed speakers, sponsors, as well as promotional documents including how to sponsor the event, can all be found at http://www.scottishcfug.com



Edinburgh is an absolutely gorgeous city. If you have not been there before you should use this conference as an excuse to go. Here's some photographs of Edinburgh that I took a couple or three years ago to help publicise EuroTAAC.