Swedegeek’s Blog

Day 3 in Cairo, still packed. We started with a couple hours at the Egypt Museum where a massive amount of antiquities are on display. Statues (many many shapes and sizes), sarcophoguses, and numerous other items from daily and pharonic life. Covering 1000s of years of artifacts in 2 hours is no justice but highlight was King Tut collection. So much gold!

We then made it over to the Citadel, a large fortress from 100s of years back which also has an amazing mosque built by the original Muhammed Ali in 1830. Plus a great view over nearly all of Cairo. Our second great tour guide who was amazing to have at the museum did not disappoint at the Citadel either.

Last stop was Cairo market area. This is about exactly what you’d expect from packed little shops as far as you can see trying to peddle their wares to every tourist walking by. Everything is negotiable. Couple good stories from there too.

It’s midnight and we leave in 3 hours for Luxor and Nile cruise. Excited but I should get some sleep. Probably no wifi until retun to Cairo on Friday. Until then, I’ll continue with the picture taking. Peace out.

Posting from my cell phone so this could be rough. Jet lag seems to have hit me as it’s 2am, we got up at 7am and have to get up again at 7… yea in 5 hours.

Well my loss of sleep is this blog’s gain. One word… Pyramids! Wow, how utterly amazing. We went into 2 today. Words nor photos can do them just. They are absolutely immense and amazing.

We were among the very last to get into the Great Pyramid of Cheops today. It’s a bit of trek up into the burial chamber, but very worth it. The chamber was basically emptied out by the time we got there. So we decided to try out the acoustic properties due to the special construction. Amazing echo and reverb for such a small room. Was very cool.

The Sphinx was also part of today’s tour. Its size pales compared to the Great Pyramids, but still extraordinary. Craftmanship of the adjacent buildings is still quite visible and hard to believe considering the lack of precise tools so many thousands of years ago.

After the tour, but much crouching in pyramids and hiking all over, we enjoyed some tea and snacks at the Four Seasons in Giza. Uh, rather nice place. Oh, and Jill had to argue with our assigned security guard, his boss and some police major that we didn’t want him to follow us around for the evening. That’s a story itself.

The evening plans finished with dinner at a great Lebanese restaurant. Then hanging out at Ali’s apartment again. Tomorrow is the Egypt Museum to see even more of this ancient history.

Okay should get some shut-eye so I make it through the day. Good night.

Just a little while ago, I went through approximately 100 posts from the Lifehacker.com. That may seem like a lot, and it kind of was, but I pre-lifehacked my Lifehacker reading. After much cajoling, I finally was convinced to start using Google Reader. To sum it up, it’s awesome. All my favorite sites with an RSS feed can now be read from a single source. How lifehack-ish is that?

Now that my brain is full of all sorts of neat ideas to save time, money and sanity while enjoying it all, I need to share some of these with you my loyal readers. I recommend the following for all three of you. Some of these go to other sites, but I found them first on Lifehacker. (more…)

Okay, this one is likely a bit more unrealistic than the Cairo announcement. It’s more of a bizarre story from last week. It was about 5:30 and I was still working away at my desk. I had my headphones on listening to Playdio.se and their crazy Swedish DJs. Out of the corner of my eye, I see this guy walk past my cube. (more…)

Last night I went to 2 very different events. Right after work, the head of Google’s Ann Arbor office, Grady Burnett, gave a presentation at the Lansing Center. From there, I stopped at home to pick-up Megan, then we went to a played called “Meeting in Munich” at St. Paul Lutheran Church. (more…)

It’s official. 2006 was the year of user-generated content. With the likes of YouTube and MySpace in the vanguard, end-users finally became what really mattered on the Internet. With those two sites alone cashing in over $2.5 billion on acquisition deals, more than a few took notice of all the content being created by countless, nameless and often unpaid Internet users. (more…)

If you didn’t guess, I’ve been doing some reading on writing lately. Lately, I’ve been trying to post a little more frequently, so I thought I should get better at the whole writing thing. Granted, I’ve come a long way since trying to pen that fantasy novel in seventh grade on a early model IBM PC (don’t ask, I’ve forgotten the entire plot… really!), but composition still doesn’t feel natural to me. There also a few writing projects that are coming my soon, so I figured I could learn a few tricks before I tackled them. (more…)

Latter Half of 2006 in Review… with Photos!

Well, here I am again after a rather lengthy hiatus. (I haven’t blogged since last year!) I had a pretty decent streak of postings within about a month this summer, but I apparently fell off the blogging deep end after that. So, to get back on track, here’s a quick rundown of the rest of my 2006 with photos when available. (more…)

Posting from Billings, MT as we’re here for my wife’s high school reunion. This trip out of Lansing is very much welcome. Better yet, with my reunion next weekend, we get another vacation only 3 days after this one!

Since we flew out to MT (get to drive 650 miles to MN next week), we had the joy of going through security at the Lansing airport yesterday afternoon. Everything was fine, until my carry-on bag needed to be scanned again. Odd. Then, they needed to search my bag. Even more odd. The TSA employee went right to my side pocket and dug down to the bottom. He pulled a pocket knife out of my bag. It was the smallest swiss army model you can get… tiny blade, file, toothpick, tweezers, that’s it. I hadn’t seen that thing in over a year. Oops! Dialogue then went like so:

“Is this your pocket knife, sir?”
“Yep.”
“You know you can’t have this in carry-on luggage?”
“Yep.”
“Do you have any checked luggage, sir?”
“Nope.”
“Would you like to check this bag, sir?”
“Nope.”
“Would you like to bring the knife back out to your car, sir?”
“Nope.”
“Would you like me to confiscate the knife?”
“Yep.”

That was the end of my pocket knife, or at least my possession of it. The TSA employee walked off and deposited it in some metal bin in the wall to join its contraband cousins confiscated from countless other unwitting passengers. I know the TSA is just doing its job, and I’m thankful for the additional security, but I was still amused for some reason. The guy just seemed so full of himself for thwarting any dubious plans I may have had for the little pocket knife that I didn’t even realize I had with me. Good job pulling something out of a bag that a machine told you was there!

I guess this isn’t really much of a rant, but my point is I think the TSA could use some interpersonal skills training so they at least act like they’re a little more understanding when it’s obvious people have unintentionally violated one of their policies.