Author: ShanV

  • July 26 – Bourg-Saint-Maurice – Lanslebourg – Briancon – Barcelonette

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    The next morning we had breakfast and headed out to Lanslebourg.  Along the way we passed through Col de l’Iseran which is the highest mountain pass in the Alps. We stopped for a coffee in Lanslebourg and spotted a bunch of people in parachutes drifting off the winds from the mountain face. From Lanslebourg we…

  • My summer 2008 travels in Europe – Part 2: July 25 – Frankfurt/St.Tropez – Annecy – Le Grand-Bornand – Bourg-Saint-Maurice

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    Having made my way through St. Tropez, I was off to the French Alps to meet up with my Microsoft colleagues driving down from Frankfurt.  We arrived in Annecy, a beautiful town in the French Alps with a clear blue lake at its center. We enjoyed a lazy lunch and ran quite a bit over…

  • My summer 2008 travels in Europe – Part 1

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    This blog post was written while I was in transit in Europe but I couldn’t post it to my site until now.  After being overdue for both a new car and a long vacation, I decided summer 2008 would be my time to take European Delivery of a new BMW 335i hard-top convertible. I arrived…

  • New Vista Machine

    I just got a new Dell XPS 420 with Vista and I’m putting together a post that outlines the software and config things I do to a new Windows machine.  This post will be updated as I refine it. Install OS: Take a trip to Windows Update Windows Search 4.0 (If it’s not on WU…

  • 800 messages processed per day

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    Over the past few days I’ve held off on emptying my deleted items folder in Outlook to get a better sense of the number of messages I “process” per day.  The average over the past three days with very little varyance per day was 800 per day.  Granted this does include RSS feed posts I…

  • Apple, don’t try to fool your users

    It really annoys me when a software vendor tries to bundle other applications with the one you downloaded and installed.  It’s even worse when they try to do it through their crapware auto update mechanism.  Adobe is guilty of this and so now is Apple.   The problem here is that I only want QuickTime…

  • When a product with promise disappoints…

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    In mid-May I bought an Argus Bean 5 MP camera from Best Buy.  I was captivated by the industrial design and ruggedness of the camera.  It can clip like a carabiner to a bag or belt loop, is weather resistant and has pretty simple controls.  Though it is designed for kids, I thought it would make…

  • Bay to Breakers 2008

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    I can’t remember my time for the last two years, but this year I managed to finish at 1:20 which meant I finished probably in the middle of the runners, before the walkers, most naked people and all drunks. After finishing, I walked back to the 5 mile mark and met up with some coworkers…

  • First post from my xo

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    I wanted to try out a scenario I have been desiring for a while now so I took my new xo to yerba buena gardens, got on the free wifi and did a little browsing, capped off by this post. One of the reasons I got the xo was that it has a screen with…

  • Finally, a Windows Mobile phone that excites me

    I’ve had a few WM phones and while they have all done a decent job in the utility department, they have always lacked a few key features which kept them from mobile phone perfection.  The iPhone is probably the device that is closest to my perfect cellphone but it too lacks key features that I…