Work has been rewarding and interesting with meetings most afternoons to discuss and work through various issues with the program and mornings spent working on the actual coding. Of course, some of the fixes are quite quick and are done more or less straight away during the meeting.
For lunch on Wednesday I went out by myself and found a Chinese buffet. The next 2 days we went out as a group, with different visitors from Schlumberger, once to the same Thai restaurant as Monday and then to an Indian yesterday. One was an ERD expert and the other a hydraulics domain expert, according to their business cards. The K&M guys and myself had a bit of a laugh at these titles and I asked if Expert was higher or lower than Wizard or Guru.
On Wednesday, I drove across to a shopping area across the road and found a golf shop that I wandered through for a while and then went on to the big Mall where I had dinner at a seafood place. I was quite restrained having just a crab salad.
On Thursday I took a diversion on the way home to look at the Pavillion. This is a major outdoor venue and last night they had Linkin Park and others and this Friday Tom Petty will perform. They also have the Symphony orchestra there. I couldn't see the stage area as it was all locked up. They have a couple of groups of bronze statues in the forecourt area.
I also had my first "driving on the wrong side" incident here. I'd driven through the back way and wanted to get to the main gate. I turned left on the road to go the couple of hundred yards to the entrance and quickly realised it was a 2 lane road heading straight at me. I quickly turned off in to the entrance way. I also went through a stop sign the oher day. They have 4 way stop signs at a lot of intersections in this area and also on some T junctions. I went straight through one of the latter. Also this morning I went through a red light when it changed to green, but just for the turning lane. Fortunately traffic is light and there was no danger in any of this situations but it is not how I normally drive and I felt at the minimum, a bit sheepish.
Tony and Lisa had me over for dinner on Thursday. They have moved into this new house in just the last few months. It is a large 2 story place and most of the houses in the Woodlands area are like this. There are 3 bedrooms around a living area upstairs with the master downstairs, along with an office, formal dining and sitting areas and a huge kitchen with informal dining and living rooms. Of course there is a pool with a spa as well as an outdoor eating area in the back corner. The garage houses an Audi and the new toy - a Porsche.
The Woodlands itself is a pretty high-end area. It was carved out of a forest and the major roads in the area are still tree lined. The residential areas are off these roads, hidden behind the trees and are generally have only one or two entries so there is no through traffic or are on winding country lanes. The roads within tend to be loops and cul-de-sacs.
There has been a lot of rain this week with a tropical storm over Florida extending its influence even this far away. They have been having rainfalls measured in feet over there and the TVs has had images of streets well underwater. They were predicting 30” in some areas in yesterday’s weather forecast.
Yesterday was the first day of sunshine and with temps around 90, the humidity was also high. Hopefully it will stay dry and I’ll be able to play golf this weekend.
Yesterday’s lunch and meeting was with Paul, who is part of the software team for Schlumberger. Schlumberger is a major oilfield service company, originally well known for their wireline logging services but now expanding into many other areas. K&M was a private company that specialises in drilling engineering and in particular in extended reach and horizontal wells. In May, it was sold to Schlumberger, so essentially we are all working directly or indirectly for that company. It seems to have been a good match as well as obviously a financial triumph for the owners, one of whom has bought a plane with his windfall.
The meeting with Paul is typical of the synergy that has come from the sale. They also have software that deals with similar areas as the TAD software I have developed for K&M. They have been impressed with some of our features and are looking to improve their product by implementing some and at the same time we will be able to take some of their features and algorithms into our product. Paul is transferring to Beijing later this year as that is where they have their major software development centre. My throw away line about getting to visit China was received with serious consideration. Do I sense yet another blog in the future?
Yesterday, just about everybody was gone well before 5pm and once our meeting was over, I was almost chucked out so that the remaining couple of people could lock up and leave. I was hoping to play golf this weekend so decided to look around the golf course, one of which I drive through on the way home. It is one of those courses that winds through the residential area so that they have a lot of golf course side lots. This makes it hard to find out where the club house is and I drove around quite a lot before finding it, after talking to a couple of people in the area. The first one is a private course and several of the guys in the office are members. Weather permitting, they are suggesting a Sunday afternoon game. I also found the public course – two courses in fact at a resort and within a mile of the private course. This also looked pretty good and I may get a round there this afternoon. It's not cheap - $85 per round at both courses, which includes a cart and $40 for club hire. However, Tony has agreed to let me use his clubs today and after 2:30 the green fees on the public course drop to $45.
I’m planning to visit the Houston Space Centre in the morning. I haven’t managed to get there in my previous 2 visits but this time I at least have my own car. This assumes I’ll wake up early enough after I (hopefully) get back to sleep shortly.
Last night I headed for the mall with the idea of buying some new bras. It was a waste of time shopping in Thailand since they just don’t have much in my size but I felt I’d be well within the normal range here. I bought one pair with the thought that if it was comfortable I’d get a whole heap before I go back. The jury is still out on this.
I had dinner at Landry’s seafood restaurant. This is a bit further upmarket than the previous fish place. In the end I had the fisherman’s platter and a Blueberry Mojito. This is a Vodka/Blue curacao based cocktail with lime, blueberries and mint floating in it. Very nice and quite refreshing. I had thought about an appertiser but gave it a miss. A good thing too as I couldn’t quite finish the main course. They do give very generous servings here. Any earlier thoughts of desert also went by the wayside.
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