Supporting Microsoft - a blog by Chris Ransom

Save US$5,550 on the Microsoft Certified Master Program of Your Choice (Worldwide)

Today, Microsoft provides additional support to its customers and partners by offering a limited-time 30 percent discount (US$5,550) for the Microsoft Certified Master programs, allowing to you to save on your training investment.
If you're a seasoned IT professional focused on the Microsoft platform, it's time to differentiate yourself from your peers while bringing further IT efficiency to your organization. The Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) advanced training and certification programs have opened their classroom doors for candidates from around the world in Redmond, Washington, United States. The classes are designed for IT professionals with approximately 10 years of experience in the industry and focus on one of the following core Microsoft Server technologies: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008--Directory, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, or Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.
A recent survey of program graduates reported increased productivity and billable rates for some certified individuals.

•Learn more about the Microsoft Certified Master Program.

•See the full schedule of classes and register.

Apply now. Upon acceptance, provide payment by February 14, 2009, to save US$5,550 on the Microsoft Certified Master program of your choice (a 30 percent discount).

Note: Offer expires on February 14, 2009. No other offers, including discounted beta training classes (50 percent discount), may be combined with this offer.

The MCM registration site is now open, and for the first public rotation the price is 50% off..

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/master/register/default.mspx 

Here are the prereqs for the Active Directory MCM:

Also you must have at least the following:

You must have the following exams below completed in order to qualify for the Microsoft Certified Master: Windows Server 2008: Directory.

Pricing structure

Nonrefundable program application fee: US$125
Program fee: US$18,500
Non-lab exam retakes: US$250
Lab exam retakes: US$1,500

Note The program fee includes the price of first attempts at passing all required tests, including the final lab exam.

Participants who attend the first public beta rotations (training program and exams) will receive a 50 percent discount. Public betas for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 are scheduled for October 2008. The Windows Server 2008 Active Directory public beta is scheduled for November 2008.

Good luck, hope to see you in November...

-Chris

Well it should be obvious now that I've fallen behind on the "daily" blog entries, so I'm going to do one big catch up for a couple days here at once.

Day 30:

Today I spent a long term learning about the camera, and features, and how best to use them. We had a great dinner, one of the best so far, at a place on the east side of town near the bar district... The restaurant was called "The Middle 8th Restaurant".

Day 31:

Today was a great day we we finally were given upgrade accreditation cards, which will give us Press level access to any of the venues. The purpose of the cards was to allow us access to the Info Clients, which are responsible for all the search, and venue information.

I was able to sneak in and watch some of the diving finals, and then went over to birds nest to see some of the track & field finals.

Day 32:

Today I spent most of the day at the Microsoft office catching up on Expenses, and email (had about 1200 emails in my filtered inbox)... yikes!....

On the way back, I got an interesting shot of the Subway almost empty (a rare case)...

Ok, all caught up.

Well I've been waiting long enough to finally get a good camera, and today was the day. After much research and advice from some friends and colleagues, I'm going to go buy the Canon 450D (Rebel XSi) camera. It's a great entry SLR camera, and should provide me enough time to buy all the lens and accessories before I need something with more power. After shopping around for about 4 hours we finally found a great shop, and price, and we finished the transaction, and went for a great early dinner (around 3pm).

After a good dinner, I went out to the OCD, and though I'd get some new pictures using the new camera, here are a few of the good ones:

After finishing the rounds I went back to DHQ to met with a few colleagues, and found that we have recently received a few upgrade cards that can be used to enter some of the venues. So using these cards I was able to go into the Watercube, and Bird's Nest to take some additional photos.

On the way back to the apartment I caught this cool sequence of color changes on the Pangu Plaza.

Overall a very good day, and love the new camera. The only thing missing now is a zoom lens.

-Chris

<UPDATED 8/22/2008> Added Today Show Video link, and a few still pictures with me in the shot.

Well today was really slow at work, but I went out for some dinner (at the busiest McDonalds I've ever seen)

There was a line to get into the McDonalds, to then wait in the line to place your order, to then stand in another line to wait for your order... Crazy busy...

Here's a video from in the store:

On the way back, I went by the Morning Show's booth to see how busy and crazy it would be. And to my surprise it was very active with a large amount of athletes, including Michael Phelps. Not the best of pictures, sorry, best I could get ;-)

And here is Phelps (well the back of him anyway).... as cool as he is, he sure didn't like turning for the camera, and was quick to run off after the interview... but I guess that happen when you are the most famous Olympian in the world.

I'm pretty sure I made it on at least 4 or 5 different shots of the Today show, so I'll look through and see if I can find me and post a picture from the better angle.

I found some video from the Today show that you can watch that shows the other angle of this view (I'm in the video around the time Phelps starts at around 29:00):

Here are a few pictures where you can see me in the video, I'm in the back left in the dark blue shirt:

-Chris

Yeah sorry, today was a run to a nice place for some Dim Sum, and off to Pearl Street to pick up some more items, and yes, that's right, no pictures...

Tomorrow I'll have better one's ;)

-Chris

Today was a nice relaxing day, but had to head over for our "back way" into the US/China Softball game. I didn't have a ticket, but had some connections with some folks that had another way in. (lets just say I was someone's brother-in-law for the day) ;-)

It turned to be one of the best days period weather wise and a great day for some softball.

After waiting in our special line to get into the game we ended up with pretty good seats in the out field (hey they were free)..

Here I am with a couple of the Microsoft folks that also came along.

Ending up with a great Korean food, we walked back to the Subway. on the way back we walked by the Grand Hyatt, and had a great view of some really high end cards, but since it was at night, didn't get the best of pictures...

-Chris

Today was a working day, but luckily I was able to get out for an extended lunch, and made it to the Women's Individual Gymnastics finals. My seats for this one were not as good as the other day's team finals, but still pretty good view of the venue:

Most of the video's I've been uploading to YouTube are being flagged as copy righted by NBC, and the IOC (Olympic Committee), so I'll work on some other ways to get those online for everyone to see.

Outside of Gymnastics, and the push between Luikin, and Johnson, it was a normal working day.

I'll leave the results of the match up to NBC, where you can see highlights, and the final scores. It was very close, and Shawn ended up with Silver, and Luikin with Gold. Congrats to them both, they did a fantastic job, and it was great to watch.

-Chris

Today was a great day, it started out very early though (5am), having to get over to the train station. There are many ways to get to the Wall, and there are several spots along the wall that are open to the public. The section of wall we want to go to today is called Badaling. This section of the wall is quite popular, but also very beautiful.

Today Michael, and Hai-Jin are working, so I'm going to go to the wall with a guy that works for Atos Origin.

We caught the train at Beijing North station, and even got 1st class tickets, for 17 YEN each way. The train is actually quite modern, and has significant leg room, and features. The train ride should take about 1 hour from Beijing, north to Badaling. The train station itself, was not very up-to-date, and in many cases was paved for only 50%, the rest was muddy, or rocky, or you even had to walk across the tracks to exit the station.

Once the train got going the view was quite amazing, we even caught an early peak of the Great Wall. (most of those sections are not open to the public, and are not renovated.)

After arriving at the station we purchased our return ticket (ahead of time to beat the rush), and then went on to the entrance to the Great Wall. And when we got to the gate, we started our journey of waiting in line for the crowds ;-) This is an occurrence that will happen much throughout the day.

The ticket sign actually had a nice saying: (Free of charge for people with isabilities), not quite sure what those are, but maybe I have them?

This is the inside of the security gate, it's very busy to go through security, but overall it was much easier to get through than those around the Olympic Venues.

Here I am on the way to the top, the sign behind my head states the Olympic saying "One World, One Dream". The climb to the highest section of this wall is actually quite difficult, and a very long run. There are frequent places to stop, and it's advised to take your time.

This is a top down view of the entry area, which includes the ticket booth, and security checks. There are also many vendors there selling items like Water, and hats. This section of the wall is one of the most popular, as it's difficulty isn't the worst, but it has great views. There is a section of the wall with rock "attached", and on a very clear day you can see parts of Beijing. Beijing is about 65 KM's south east of this portion of the great wall. The wall was constructed in the 1400's, and renovated many times throughout the 1600's, and 1700's.

There are 8 watch towers that go up to the top, there is also a 9th, and 10th tower that starts to come back down the other side of the hill. The 7th tower is usually where a majority of people will stop for lunch, and then return back down the hill. We arrived at the Great Wall around 9am, so the crowd is actually quite light, and we found it much easier to go the Wall with this few people. There are a few places in the wall where there are sentry gates to the outside of the wall. The stairs on the inside of those gates have huge steps, as you can see in the second photo here. The third photo is a great view of the 8th tower.

This poor guy didn't do so well, and passed out right at the top of the 7th tower. When medic's were unable to wake him, they carried him down the Wall.

Here are two Panoramic photo's, the first one I left cut so that you could see the different high's and lows of the terrain. The second one is boxed in, and has a good view of the people walking on the Wall.

On the way back down the Wall at around Noon, you can see the amount of people has picked up, and it was actually quite slow. Then it started to rain (and a lot of rain is an understatement).

When the rain started pouring, we finally made it to the 3rd watch tower, which was crammed completely full with people. By pure luck we squeezed in as well, and found that we were stuck for about 20 minutes since there was no one really interested in going out in the pouring rain. There were about 30 or 40 people waiting outside the tower to get in, begging for everyone to squeeze in more so that they could fit as well. It took quite the squeezing, and negotiating of the crowd for us to get through on our way out. After some time we finally broke free of the tower, and ended up having a similar fight through Tower 1, and 2. Then we had the 800m walk to the train station, where it was flooded, and packed full. Luckily we bought our tickets earlier that day, so we were able to fin a seat, and wait until the train got there, and we could go home.

Overall it was a very good day, a little adventurous for the two non-Chinese folk, but we did well, found what we needed, and we even caught a cab to go get some Korean BBQ dinner.

-Chris

Ok, here is the update, sorry for the delay, we went to the great wall today (14th), and it took up most of the day.

Today was great (13th), I had some help finding tickets to some of the Olympic games, and one of those sets included tickets to the Women's Team Finals. If you follow Gymnastics at all you would know that our women's team is quite good this year, and is lead by Shawn Johnson, of Des Moines, IA. China is historically quite good in this category, so having the two teams be close, provided some added excitement.

Since I had to purchase tickets in a pair (unable to find only 1), I invited Dan Holme to come with, and we ended up with really great seats. Here is a picture from our seat. Just to the left of us is the Olympic Family seating, and to the left of that is the Press Boxes, so you can see we have a really good seat, especially to watch the uneven bars.

The girls did quite well, but had a few mistakes on the high beam, and the floor exercise, which ended up costing them about 2 points, allowing for China to take the Gold. I have lots of video from the event, but it's taking a very long time to get these up to YouTube from here. I'll update the blog when I can get the video uploaded.

Here are a few more pictures from the event:

After watching the competition, and award ceremony, I wondered the rest of the OCD (Olympic Common Domain), and found some new places I didn't know about on the north end of the grounds.

Johnson & Johnson, has a great building there, that has spent significant time and money on the Earthquake that hit China, and the Terracotta solders. Here are a few pictures of some of the things inside their building.

These Terracotta solider's are the real thing, which is a very rare thing to find around Beijing, as they are so protected. Johnson & Johnson has a significant investment in protecting them, and only brought 4 of them for display in this building. There is a full story written on a sign in the building, but my pictures were not so good of that, so I'll write it here:

"The warriors you see around you were discovered in 1974, in the city of Xi'an --- 900km northwest of Beijing. Two farmers, looking for a good place to dig a well, began to unearth Terracotta shards near the mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shi Huang.

2000 years earlier, Xi'an was a city like Athens, Cairo, or Rome --- one of civilizations ancient capitals. These warriors are a profoundly important link to those times. Their discovery shocked the archeological world. In fact, Emperor Qin's Terracotta Army is considered one of the most significant discoveries of the 20th Century.

There are many thousands more of these warriors hidden below the earth surrounding the Emperor's grave. They are citizens of a vast subterranean city, most of which remains unexcavated.

But who was Emperor Qin? And why did he create this magnificent army?

Emperor Qin was China's first emperor. All Chinese school children learn that Emperor Qin did three things: Created one unified China out of half dozen warring, feudal states, connected the Great Wall to protect this vast empire, and mandated a common script and common system of measurements so that people throughout the empire could communicate and trade with one another.

In short, Emperor Qin created a civilization."

After finishing up at the Johnson & Johnson building, I went over to the Volkswagen/Audi display, and was pleasantly surprised. This is a special Olympic edition Audi R8, which is by far my favorite sports car. The rest of the display was quite impressive as well, and I caught a full video of the "Show", I'll get it uploaded tonight, if I'm able.

After finishing up drooling over the R8, I went through the big Olympic store to see what was for sale (quite expensive if you ask me).

We wrapped up the day with a quick dinner, and some desert, and I got ready for a big day tomorrow at the Great Wall.

-Chris

Well today was just another day at the office, overall we have had a very good games, all the systems are running as expected, and we have had only a couple things make it to our "third tier" desk.

Later in the day I took a walk around the OCD (Olympic Common Domain) to take a few pictures, and to see all of the activity.

Here are some pictures of the Samsung building in the  OCD, each night they host live music. I'll upload a few videos I took to YouTube later tonight.

I also took some pictures of a few of the exhibit buildings around the Samsung plaza, all within OCD. One of these buildings is actually covered in live plants (looks like moss), and has a river flowing over the building and walls.

Tomorrow will be an exciting day as I have some tickets to go see the Women's Olympics team finals in National Indoor Stadium. There is a very high chance that they will be able to rival the China team for Gold, but we will see.

-Chris

Today, I started out going to Silk Street Market to pick up a few things for some friends back in the States. Silk Street Market is known for good deals, lost of bargaining, and lots of tourists. This is the second time I've gone but my room mate/Colleague's dad is leaving to go back home today, so I'll be taking this adventure solo.

I took a few pictures from inside the building today. Today I actually did quite well, I ended up getting a TAG Formula 1 watch for around 75 RMB, and another pair of Oakley's for 50RMB. I was also sent on a mission to pick up purses for Sarah, and family, but found that the one's I'm asking for are too new, they say it takes about 3 months before they are sold at these stores.

After a few hours of walking around, looking at items, and watching others bargain for deals, I took the Subway back towards the apartment. This photo is of Line 1 (red line), that is the oldest line. There is no air conditioning, and it's always packed full. Too the point where you have to be willing to squeeze in the door just enough that the doors will still shut. Luckily I only had 1 stop till I transferred to line 10 (the newest line), which is air conditioned, and not as busy.

When I got off at the Transfer station to Line 8 (by the Olympic Green "OCD"), I was offered a ticket to go see the Hockey match tonight. Asking a price I was told 800 RMB... which is kind of laughable actually, I worked back and forth a while with the guy and ended up at 400. I think I could have gone less if I had spent the time. Looking at the time, I realized I only had 30 minutes to get north to the Hockey stadium in time to see the game, so I caught the Olympic Bus Line 1, and made my way to the game. It was actually quite busy getting into the stadium, as the entrance handled both the Hockey stadium and the Tennis stadium right next to it.

The first game was Canada vs Australia, which sounded like a good match up. My seat was actually quite good, up on the 4th level almost center field, and under the canopy (which was good as it looked like it was going to rain). Australia Stomped in this game, and it ended with a 5 point lead.

Here's a Panographic from where I was sitting:

Oh yeah, and this guys shirt really does say, iPood. Funny take on IPod. Notice the guy on the pot is listening to his iPod. ;-) Any connection you want to make with iPod and Crap, you are more than welcome...

After a quick break, it was time for game two. Here is a shot of the entry and concessions stand area:

Game two was South Africa against the Netherlands. Great game, but again one sided, NED won the game 5 points ahead, to Zero that is...

I have some video I'll upload to YouTube Later today of the games.

-Chris

Well today was a good relax day, one of the first days I've had over 8 hours sleep since I got here. Which was very nice.

Since my roommate/co-workers dad is here, they had some errands to run to, so I met up with Michael, and we went to lunch at a Beijing Style restaurant. In the first picture the dish on the left is a vegetable wrap, with a sauce made with Horseradish sauce, quite spicy, but very good.

One the way back to the apartment we drove by the other Microsoft Office which hosts the Research and Development Groups, this office is in the University section of town, so it's actually an odd place to have a big business office.

Around 4pm there was a huge Rain/Thunder storm that came through, and lasted up until around 10pm, hopefully the rain will help clear the air, since it's been really bad for the last 4 or 5 days.

I ended up watching most of the Olympic games for today on the TV. In China only CCTV can broadcast the games, but in the US there is great coverage by NBC, and in a separate post, I'll write about the new Media Center Plug-in for the Olympics Coverage that is quite good.

Tomorrow should be a little busy, as I'll be heading into Silk Street (solo), to get a few last things I've been needing to pick up.

-Chris

Well this morning came across fast. We were up until around 2am trying to catch all of the Opening Ceremony between TV, and in person out in the Olympic Common Domain (OCD). I uploaded a few videos from last night onto YouTube, and Soapbox (still figuring out which one I like more). Here is a picture from the morning of the Torch.

Today was a pretty quiet day, only a couple issues I needed to work on, and nothing really critical. The day went by very quickly, and around 3pm I thought I would take a quick walk around the OCD to see what was really popular. Our exclusive access to the OCD is no more, as this place was packed. Men's Gymnastics Qualifications are today at National Indoor Stadium, and the whole area is full with maybe 10,000 or 15,000 people wanting to attend. I took a few pictures while I was out, and as promised early, I took some pictures of the different style buildings, and area's from down in the "lunch" area, which has McDonalds.

Here is the NBC booth in action:

And a very busy McDonalds, being that it's the only "Western" food, and actually the only restaurant in the OCD.

-Chris

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26104003/

Well today is the day, the opening ceremony for the Summer Olympics in Beijing. Today is going to be an extra busy today for me, as I have to jet over to the Microsoft Office to finally finish grading all the Microsoft Certified Masters test from the July, 2008 Directory Technologies rotation.

Around 6:30pm I finally finished up, met with the PM for Masters - Directory, and took off to get back to DHQ in time for the Olympics opening ceremony. Since they were supposed to be kicking off around 8pm (8pm, 8/8/08, since 8 is a lucky number). I took the subway from the Microsoft Office (business district on the east side of town) over to the Olympic Green line 8,ked got off to find that all access had been blocked, and there was close to 500 people standing around the station entrance. Asking around, I was told that I could not enter here with my OCD Access badge, as it was closed down, and I was told that I needed to go south 4 blocks so that I could go around the blockade. So I started walking, and walking. Ironically I was the only person wanting to get South, everyone else wanted to get North to watch the fireworks. The sidewalks were full with hundreds of people, and at times I was forced to stand still completely surrounded by a sea of people. It was by far the largest group of people I've been in. I was eager to get to the DHQ so that I could get a better view of Birds nest, and the finale. So after walking south for 6 blocks (not 4), I had to walk west for a few blocks to get around the section that was all closed down. While I went north I ended up going through 11 security checks, 2 of which turned me down, and made me walk around further (a few blocks around each time). End of the story I didn't get to the DHQ building until almost 8:45pm. You can see from the picture here that the Pangu Tower was broadcasting pictures and video of the Opening Ceremony and fireworks. This building just recently got finished, and was in the news as supposedly having a suite that Bill Gates purchased (which turned out to be a false story). This building complex is actually made up for 4 different buildings all in a row.

Once I got into DHQ, there were many great views, but very hard pictures to take given the glare from the lights inside the building. Here are a few attempts at the Birds Nest, and Water Cube.

You can see the water cube is set to rotating colors, but I personally enjoyed the multicolored (Red, Yellow, Green and Blue), and this is the first time we have seen this style used. The Rolling Pinks has been used over the last few days, so we've seen that one before.

Well out of at least 30 or 40 pictures, I caught at least one of the good shots of the fireworks:

After waiting until around 11:50pm (the longest we dared), we went out into the OCD to get some closer photo's and maybe some video of the Finale. On the way over to the Birds Nest, I caught a nice pic of an escort waiting for the end of the show:

Also shot a few more of the water cube up close and personal, the one on the left shows the "bubble's" in more detail.

Here is the torch getting lit, it actually started up like a fireball, and for a minute I wasn't quite sure what it was. I'll get another shot from up on the 11th floor later so you can actually see the torch itself. Right after the torch was lit, they went right into the fireworks, here are a few mixed shots. I also have uploaded 3 video's to YouTube that you can look over as well.

YouTube videos are here: (don't ask why I'm hosted on Japan's server right now, I don't know)

http://jp.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=chrisran

ALSO I'M VERY HAPPY TO REPORT THAT I HAVE TRACKED DOWN TICKETS TO SOME OF THE GAMES. For now I have tickets to the Artistic Gymnastics on the 13th and 15th, which are both Women's finals events. These didn't cost as much as I thought they would, thanks to some friends helping me negotiate for great pricing. I'll be on the look out for some additional tickets to non-gymnastics tickets next..

After finishing up the pictures, and wandering the OCD for a little while, I went back to the Apartment at 1:30am to crash for a few hours, as tomorrow we work a shift (up at 6am).. Till tomorrow (or eh, today...)

-Chris

Here is a video I shot last night from within the Olympic Common Domain right next to Birds nest.

If you go directly to the YouTube video, you can select to view it in High Quality.

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=1cQn7c64X7M

Microsoft has made a formal statement now of the use of SharePoint to power the search portal.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/149541/microsoft_sharepoint_powers_olympics_portal.html

Well today was another day at the Microsoft office. I'm trying to finish up all of the Microsoft Certified Masters tests, and since I can only do that from the office, I have to commit a few hours each day to get over to the office, get setup, and then to get back. Most likely I'll be back tomorrow as well.

It seems the air quality over the last 3 or 4 days has been really bad, maybe even the worst since I got here 2 weeks ago. About 6 days ago, we had a 2 or 3 day stretch were the sky was clear and blue, and it was absolutely fantastic, but the rain has left, and we are back to smog. Hopefully this will clear up for tomorrow, since it's opening ceremonies for the Olympics.  The fireworks may be difficult to see if this doesn't clear up. The good news is that it sounds like we may get some rain over the next 2 or 3 days, so perhaps later next week we will have clear sky's once again.

We stopped in for a quick lunch at a local Hot Pot place next to the Olympic Common Domain (OCD). The food at this place was great, and while I'm trying to decrease my pictures of food on the blog, and increase my pictures of other things, I couldn't help but post about this. A traditional hot pot, is a type of soup (or several types of soup, as in our case), that is put on a burner at the table. So while you sit there the soup is warmed up to a rolling boil. Once it's hot enough, you can take many different types of meats and vegetables, and place them into the soup to cook them. Many things usually take 5 or 6 seconds to cook, other things like potatoes, and some vegetables, you leave in for a while so that they soften. you can see from the first picture, the soup on the right is made with more peppers and spice, and so it has a nice red color to it, and has a little more oil. The one on the left is better for vegetables, and is more creamy. I also added a picture of the guy that made up our noodles. These are made by hand, and he swings them around like a baton, until the noodle is thin, and stretched. Once it's finished he adds one to each of our soups, and we get to enjoy. It was a great show to watch him work his magic.

Another crazy site on our way back to the apartment was some wonderful Beijing driving. Now first off, I have to say the lines on the road that usually tell you which side you belong on, yeah those are just a general recommendation in Beijing, and pretty much no one listens to the rules. you basically can do anything you want to get from point A to point B, you just better be out of the way if the car or truck is bigger than you. Also Car's have the right away not pedestrians, so if you are going to cross the street, take your chances, and run quickly. It should be comforting to know that the truck on the right was a gasoline tanker, and these were maybe 3 inches apart when they first stopped. The second picture is of the bus leaving when the light turned green. 

I went back to the apartment to work on some email, and other things, and to play a little XBOX, that is until my drive started making some crazy noise, and now I cannot use any disks. I tell you with this thing it's been one thing then another, then another, and now the drive is dead. Following some guidance I found on YouTube (the most reliable source around), I tried some tricks with stiff paper, plastic, and a penny. None of which worked, so I'm going to leave it drive less for the next 3 weeks until I get back to the states to send it in for repair. So for now it seems XBOX Live Arcade will be the answer.

More inline with what I'm here to be doing ;-), I'm currently attempting to find Olympic venue tickets for sale (hard task indeed), and I'm working the most on finding tickets for the Women's Gymnastics, as I find those to be the most interesting, and I think we have the best head to head competition with China here (other than Basketball US vs China, but those tickets are 10,000RMB right now). The US Olympic team is quite strong, and is lead by a few fantastic athlete's, like Shawn Johnson, you can watch a great summary video of Shawn here: http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=OnrS4o-dQLE. I'll update back if I'm able to track down some tickets for the events.

-Chris

Well today was another working day for BOCOG out of the DHQ. With only 2 days left before opening ceremonies, everyone is moving much faster, and today was a longer day, as we had several hot issues we were working, but around dinner time I took a walk through the Olympic Common Domain (OCD) to see what was new, and how busy everyone was. The OCD is going to be closed down to even those with an Accreditation card for the next 48 hours (we think), while opening ceremonies, and other activities take place. There will be close to 70 heads of state from all over the globe attending the opening ceremonies, and security will be much tighter than normal.

Here you can see the stair well and escalator that takes you from the main floor of the OCD down to the entrance for subway line 8 (the Olympic Green line). Subway line 8 is currently open but only for those that have access to the OCD. The bottom of the escalator is also the location of the only restaurant in the OCD, McDonalds. McD's is currently not open but should be soon.

I thought this was a very interesting design, and it's amazing how different each building in the OCD is from each other. Around this same area are several courtyards that are from several of the different providence's around China. When the OCD opens back up to us, I'll try to get some better pictures of those lower courtyards.

Sorry about the quality of this picture, my camera isn't great for night pictures as stabilization is disabled without the flash... This is the NBC broadcast stand where the Morning show, and all of the Olympic first hand news will be presented. You can see that everyone is very hard at work getting this finalized, and they are already setting up video, sounds, and seating. The front of this stand faces birds nest, and potentially the Watercube depending on the camera angle. So if you watch NBC broadcast, you should see the presenters, and they will appear in front of the Birds Nest.

Here is a picture from outside the OCD, and you can see there are large numbers of people that roam the grounds at night taking pictures, riding bikes, and a few nights ago many were flighting kites, playing games, or just hanging around. It's always fun to see everyone out at night. Given the heat during the day, I think everyone enjoy's the cool night breeze after a good dinner.

This is also a great time to get some pictures of the Watercube, and Birds Nest, as they are all lit up. The Watercube actually can display images, such as fish, whales, and text. Periodically on this side of the Watercube you will see those images, or text that states the Olympic saying "One World, One Dream". Watching the fish and whales swim across the side is also quite breath taking.

Around 11pm we ended our shift, walked back to the apartment, which is about half a mile away, and crashed.

-Chris

Well today is Tuesday August 5th, only 3 days away from the Olympics opening ceremony, there are many activities going on around the OCD in preparation, this includes many practice runs on the fireworks, and other venue's. Tonight is another rehearsal of the opening ceremony shows. Fireworks will most likely be done tomorrow night.

Today we are off work from the TOC, and so we wanted to head back over to the Microsoft Office so that I can continue running through the Microsoft Certified Masters tests from the last rotation (grading these takes quite a long time, and my connection is only good at the Microsoft Office)... Before we head to the office we went for some lunch at a very well known restaurant for something called Beggar's Chicken. Beggar's chicken actually has a very good story behind it, and has been around a very long time. It is rumored that a long time ago a Beggar from Yu-shan, Chang-shu, caught a chicken, but since he was a beggar, he did not have a kitchen or other place to cook the chicken, he took this chicken whole, and wrapped it in a leaf, and covered it in mud. He then buried the chicken in the ground and covered it with dirt. Above the spot, he built a fire, and used the heat from the fire to heat the ground, and therefor cook the chicken. After a long while he took the chicken out, and the mud was now hard as rock, and he chipped away the rock, and was able to eat the very tender, and flavorful chicken.

This traditional way of cooking this meal has been around for a very long time, and we thought it would be great to try this from one of the local restaurant. Since it takes so long to cook a chicken this way we needed to reserve it the night before. The food here was fantastic, and I snapped many pictures of the different dishes, including the desert fancy work.

After working for 5 or 6 hours at the office grading the Microsoft Certified Masters test, we grabbed a quick bite to eat for dinner, and came on back to the apartment. On the way home I snapped a few pictures of some things that looked interesting, such as the count down clock near the MS office (3 days, 1 hour left), a live road traffic sign (notice the red, yellow, and green colors), and of course the traffic (which remember most of the road traffic has been reduced to help with air pollution):

As an aside, I'm happy to report I've finally finished the COD4 missions on Veteran, and I'm now looking to Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent to occupy the late hours of the day ;-).

-Chris

Well today we had a very important mission, I had a list of supplies and things I needed for many family and friends back in the US and we were going to try our best to get all of it. So first things first, breakfast and lunch, well maybe today we will just call it Brunch.

We started off with some Killer Dim Sum (best I've had so far)..

After brunch we went to Silk Street market, which was very busy with international travelers, and we even saw a few Olympic competitors (fencing). Silk Street is huge, and we spend several hours here negotiating prices, and finding good bargains. I made sure to get many things to take back to the US. I will be trying to get back here at least once more before I leave.

For Dinner we went to a very up scale Hot Pot restaurant (and the price reflected it), but it was pretty good food, and quite the experience.

And after returning home, I thought I'd send some pictures of all the goodies back to the US. So here is the stash from two days of buying, and around $500 US (most of which is in the high end pearls)

Overall a good day, and man was Silk Street fun, if you think you like the excitement of EBay or something like that, this is so much better. I ended up getting a pair of Oakley's at the end (without any help from my "Local" friends) for about 45 YEN ($7 US), the original price started at like 650 for foreigners, or 200 for locals...

-Chris

Well today is another working day and while the sky looks pretty good,

we actually have a few things we need to attend to today. First off, we need to run over to the BHQ (BOCOG's headquarters building), we need to help with a failed cluster that has an evicted SQL node.

We ended up spending most of the day at the BHQ working through root cause analysis and some forensics on the issue, and around 3pm we went back over to the DHQ to wait for another issue.

Overall the morning was quite busy working on these issues, and we were offline for most of the day, but after finishing up our shift around 11pm, we went back to the apartment, and called it a night.

-Chris

Well today is a down day for us, but I have a significant number of MCM:Directory certification labs to grade from the last rotation and the only place I can get a reliable connection back to Redmond is from the Microsoft Office, so we went over around noon, first stopping for a bite to eat at a place called Bellagio.

After a nice lunch we went across the street to the MS office, and I was able to grade about 7 tests, these things take about 2 hours to grade given the complexities of the test, and needing to validate how each student followed the directions. I can see this is going to take me a few more days, since I have around 25 of them in total.

At around 7pm we called it for the night, and one of the PFE's in the office took us to an authentic Korean restaurant just down the street.

After dinner we caught a cab back to the OCD, hoping to make it back in time for the fireworks trial run which was scheduled for tonight. On the freeway on the way back we had a car stop in front of us so quickly that our cab was forced to rear end the car (first car wreck in China)... So needless to say we were delayed for a bit, finally another cab was free that went by and we switched cars, but by the time we got close to the OCD the fireworks were already going off.. Here is a quick attempt to get some pictures in the car.

After finally getting back to the apartment at around 11pm, I made a few calls for work, and called home to Sarah, and then called it around midnight. Tomorrow should be a better day we will be on shift.

-Chris

Well we started out the day a little later than most, not leaving the house until around Noon, after some very long and stressful attempts at finishing COD4 on Veteran. The Epilogue mission is quite difficult, and I'm still going to have to work on this one.

We met up for a quick bite to eat at a Beijing Duck restaurant downtown near forbidden city.

After lunch we went down to a very busy market place right around the corner where I was able to pick up some things for the family.

After a look around and finding a few things, we went over to the Beijing Pearl Market, which is basically a 4 or 5 level building with all kinds of shops. Here is where I was able to get some pearl necklaces of very high quality. These AAA and AAAA grade usually go for around 1000 - 3500, but we were able to negotiate our way into about 200-400 a piece, depending on the quality.

BTW today was one of the clearest sky's, it was very beautiful, but also made it very hot and humid.

Here was an odd bike loaded to the absolute top of it's capacity.

We ended up with a quick dinner at Pizza hut, because Michael had to work his night shift, and Hai-Jun had to go meet with someone for dinner.

-Chris