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

Well I'm very glad to report that our 3rd Windows expert is back after having to take care of a few family emergencies, so I'm back onto my 1 day / 2 day working schedule (that's 1 day working, 2 days off)... So today is once again a working day.

Today is a very bad air quality day, and it is also raining quite a lot. Last night we actually got completely soaked on our walk back to the apartment, so much so that I had to put on a full change of clothes. Almost reminds of me of the buckets that fall in Texas. (almost...)

Here is a common picture I take out of the stairwell of the apartment, if you can see you might be able to tell that is Watercube somewhere out there:

A little later that same day, here is a picture of National Stadium, which the building actually looks quite nice, but again the air quality and viability is almost the worst sense I got here 1.5 weeks ago.

Lunch took place at DHQ, and was the usual (not so good), but at least I found out that the building does have regular "happy rooms" as some of my friends here enjoy calling the ahem... men's room. Happy day, I finally have somewhere to sit down and ready my email via Windows Mobile ;-)

Dinner was at a place right around the corner, and the guys are obviously trying to help me find my 5 star dish (a rating I only give to the hottest of hot's. To clarify a 6/5 is something that cannot be eaten by any mortal, and completely wastes the food, a 5/5 is hot enough to almost kill you, but alas you will just live in pain for about 2 hours, and again when you go visit that Happy Room).

The pictures here include the name of the place (so I don't forget), and the first bowl is spicy level 7, well according to the restaurant. Also by the way, we were only the second person that was willing to attempt a 7. I'm happy to say that the food was edible, and it successfully burned my tongue and mouth off my face, and I would be willing to award this a 5 star rating in my book. This dish was so hot we ate for about 20 minutes (very slowly), and were able to summon our kung fu skills of absorbing great temperatures only so long, quickly abandoning the bowl for a few more bites of our restaurant rated 3 star (about 2 stars in my book). A word for the wise, you can put "dry pot's" 7 Star's next to hell and brimstone in the dictionary. - Great eatz....

After we summoned our breath back, and returned back from the barely living, we walked back to the DHQ to finish off our 1.5 hours of shift, and went back to the apartment for the night.

I'm still working on a better Panoramic from yesterday from the apartment. Assuming my machine is up to the task, and 2GB of RAM will complete the stitching, I will be uploading the finished image soon.

-Chris

Well today started out kind of slow, but we needed to head over to the Microsoft office. On the way out I saw something that reminded me of what my girls would try to do... (notice the three girls on the box swing that are not exactly "vertical")...

For lunch I met up with a few PFE's from Beijing, and we went across the street to a great local restaurant. Lunch here consisted of Honey BBQ pork ribs, Beef, and Kung Pow Chicken (pretty spicy, 3/5 on my scale).

After lunch, I tried a little bit of Vista's Stitching feature, and outside of some bad reflections in the window, it turned out much better than my manual attempts:

For dinner we went to our Favorite Thai Place, Very Siam, and had some great new dishes we had not tried before, as well as my personal all time favorite (Phad Thai).

After dinner we went back to the DHQ and I attempted my first ever 360 degree Pano of the whole OCD. A few parts are not great, and I'm planning to try again on a better quality day, and with less blurry parts. Also this photo is taken with a Vivitar 10.1MP camera, and then stitched with Native Windows Vista Tools (Live Gallery). It took about 10 minutes for vista to do it's magic, and the source is from 17 different images 3648x2736 at around 4MB each, and the combined image now is  24065x3121, but only 10MB in size. If you would like a raw copy of the image, with much better detail, and zoom-ability, send me an IM or email, and I'll get it over to you.

Here are some pictures later when the opening ceremony Rehearsal started. This is outside where some of the actors and workers are preparing to enter the stadium on queue. It requires a special ticket to see the inside of Birds nest for a Rehearsal night, and usually only those people with "connections" are able to snag one.

We wrapped up the night with a team picture of Senior Experts team 2 and 3.

Michael, Hai-Jun, and I ended up the night working on COD4 on Veteran, we are getting very close to finishing the game, it is getting very difficult. Anyone else been able to get 1,000 on achievements? I'm up to 760.

-Chris

Always nice to see we can still Punk some people... Anyone want their copy of Vista still?

http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/

Well today was a very slow day, we finished our 16 hour shift yesterday, with pretty much no issues (well and given that many of the production systems don't go online until later this week)...

Here is a very poor man's panoramic, with a point and shoot, no tripod, and no skill.... but the picture is of the best weather we have seen so far on the trip, so...:

Here is another from the south view:

Here is a great picture of the north, with a very clear view of Watercube, from the stairwell of the apartment:

For Lunch we went to the east side of town to the business district (right by the Microsoft Office), for some Indian. This place was tourist city, at least half the restaurant was not from APAC... I fit right in, they took Amex, and had a killer Buffet, so.. no complaints ;-)

I took this shot from the apartment window, thought it was an interesting view of the kids playing ball.

For dinner we met up with Dan Holme (http://intelliem.com/), and Craig Lau (CIO/VP of Info Tech for NBC). This made for a great dinner of conversation about SQL, Windows, the Olympics, and just plain good food to eat.. If I had been smart I would have taken pictures.. but alas I was deep into the moment.. (sorry..) We went for dinner at the Hunan Province Beijing Office restaurant, and had some really great food, some of which was pretty spicy (3 star out of 5 on my scale). It was great to talk shop with some big players on the NBC/Broadcast segment, it sounds like they have had some great challenges in the past that they have overcome with some very exciting and creative ways, including dealing with live Video saving/streaming and editing, all while the broadcast is in progress. Very exciting stuff, and we have an open invite to go see the IBC (their broadcast datacenter)... most likely we will be taking them up on that..

After dinner we went back to the apartment, and played COD4 till like 1am.. (these guys are starting to get better, but I'm still smoking um, usually 15 points ahead..) ...

-Chris

Well air quality is still very bad today, and I'm starting to wonder if there is really any change at all... According to so many new reports there is around a 20% decrease in pollution particles in the air, but when you get a view like this, it's hard to believe:

Today is another working day, and we were needed onsite around 7am to get breakfast, and to start our shift. Security into the office building has greatly increased, and I would call it even worse than Airport security, with a complete bag and belongings search. They successfully looked through almost every item I had in my backpack, and I watched them checking under the hood of car's, in the trunk, under seats, and doing a complete examination of anyone wanting to get into the OCD. It took about 15 minutes to get through security, with a pretty light crowd. I think we will be needing to provide a little more time to get onsite next time.

As an aside, my working schedule has officially changed to every other day. This will accommodate one of our peers for Senior Windows Support to attend to some serious family matters. So this means I have tomorrow off, but I'll be back on Wed for another 16 hour shift.

Today was a little slow in the morning, and I got some work done with Microsoft Certified Masters. Saturday as the last day for rotation 2 (the last internal class rotation), and I will be working on reviewing the certification lab over the next 4-5 days. The first public rotation will be open in November, and will be hosted in Redmond for 3 weeks.

Also this building we are working in to support the Olympic Committee, while pretty modern, is missing one critical thing. A sit down toilet. For the purpose of keeping my blog semi-clean, I'm going to just reference this, oh so true, blog posting on the subject. Warning, some content not appropriate for most anyone:  http://www.banterist.com/archivefiles/000348.html

Moving on to a better story, here is some public announcement information about Microsoft's products and services in play at the Olympic Committee. I've stated these before, but here is the public notice from last month. http://en.beijing2008.cn/bocog/bocognews/headlines/n214110880.shtml

"Additionally, Microsoft China will also provide the BOCOG with dedicated technical account managers and services in system design, system design review, system testing, system tuning and implementation and 24/7 support during the 2008 Beijing Games time."

Products in use include, SQL Server, Windows XP/Vista, Server 2003, Exchange Server, MOSS 2007, OpsMgr 2007, Active Directory, and many others. We have three support teams of senior experts that provide escalation support for the other Tier 1 , and Tier 2 support engineers. The teams include SQL, and Windows senior experts, and will provide support during 16 hour shifts. Given one of our engineers being called away, we are down to 2 windows senior experts (which I'm one of) and 3 SQL senior experts. BOCOG also is using a Support Contract from Microsoft Premier, which includes a Technical Account Manager (TAM), and the TAM will help facilitate that the customer is getting the best use of the products deployed, and that they will have access to the right engineers to solve problems quickly.

Well it turned out for the most part today was very slow, we had a goofy Print driver issue that came up with Windows XP, but looked like a Group Policy push problem, no root cause, it just started working.. bummer. I like finding the answers.

Here are some pictures on our way out for dinner, you can see birds nest, national stadium, and the water cube. There are also some pictures of ,

For dinner we went right around the corner to a sushi restaurant, which was rated as ok, but maybe not the best in Beijing. The restaurant is more Beijing Style. Overall pretty good food, and the sushi reminded me of home.

On our way back to the office we were told that we had to find a different security gate, and we ended up walking around the OCD for about an hour looking for the right entrance to take. During our walk around we had 2 girls, maybe 16-17 following us for about 1/4 mile, who finally had the nerve to walk up to talk to me, as they wanted to practice their English. It must have taken much bravery to do this, but they actually spoke very good English, even though they were extremely nervous. It was great to be able to make their day, I think they were very happy they had the chance to try speaking in English to a foreigner. If I was smart I would have gotten a picture with them. Oh well...

On the way through the OCD to DHQ, we were able to get some pictures (not that good as they are at night, and my camera still sucks), but we also got to hear, and see much of the rehearsal's for the opening ceremony, which happens on the 8th.

Here is a strange picture of one of the lamp posts, looking up to the top of the post:

Our building (the DHQ), was very interesting tonight, as they had the lights enabled, and were showing pictures, and images on the sides, here is a picture, if my camera were a little better I would be able to show it off more:

Well that's a wrap for the day, not too much technical, it was actually a very quiet day.

-Chris

Well today started out later than usual, we had very little to do today since it was a very bad day outside for weather, and it's a Sunday, which means tourists are out like crazy. So around 9am we rolled out of bed, and proceeded to have a good day of XBOX ;-) Sometimes you just need that day, and I really "Needed" to get Hai-Jun up to speed on Call of Duty 4.

Around 11:30 it was time for lunch. One of the closest places was in restaurant ally.

We picked Pizza hut, as we had already had McDonalds twice on this trip. Started out with some hot wings, and potato salad, and finished off with a good combo supreme pizza.

On the way back to the Apartment, you can see this ok view of Birds Nest.

Around 5pm we met up with one of the SQL engineers who was working a shift today, Lei He, and we went out for Korean BBQ at a local restaurant, very good food, and it was my first time having Korean. we choose the pork, beef, and some vegetables, which were all very good, and a little spicy (2/5 on my scale), all of it was finished off with some ice cream:

After dinner, we went back to the apartment again, and finished up with some email, work, and of course Call of Duty 4.

Nice relaxing day, tomorrow is another 16 hour shift, and it will be when our shift changes to every other day (one on, one off).

-Chris

Today was our day off for working 16 hours yesterday, for some reason when I'm traveling I need much less sleep and I often wake up without an alarm to help me, so each morning it seems I have been waking up at around 7am, even though we were up until around 1am. Oh well ;-).

So today was a very slow and relaxing day, the air quality is not that good again today, and it's a Saturday, which means everything is very busy with tourists, so we will leave more tourist runs until later next week when it's less busy. We made our run over to the shopping area again to finally get the right power converter for the XBOX.  On the way over this time, it was funny to see the AMD and Intel office right next to each other, I wish I could have taken a better picture with both in the same view, but you can see from the pictures that they are right next to each other.

This time at the shopping mall/flea market, I took some pictures of the shopping area:

After buying the right adapter (300w 220v to 110v), we went to pick up Michael, and went for lunch, this time we went for food from Shangdong, which is a Middle Eastern province. The food was fantastic, and they even had real Kung Pow chicken, which reminded me more of Sweet and Sour Chicken. We also tried some Beef, fish, and some bread, which reminded me of a croissant.

After coming out of the restaurant, we had a very exciting view, and for anyone that knows me, you know how much I love AUDI's.., now if only they were the R8's... ;-)

After lunch we returned back for some XBOX time (finally).... both of my friends here have never played before, so it was fun to expose them to Halo 3, and Burnout, we also tried some XBOX Live arcade games. Around 4pm Michael had to get ready for his night shift which will be 7pm to 7am. Hai-Jun and myself went out to the business district of Beijing (east side of town) around 7pm to find some Thai food, which I had been craving for quite some time. For those that know me, I love THAI food, and Pad Thai is my favorite of all dishes. I can happily report that the Pad Thai at this restaurant is exactly like it is in the US, and included Shrimp, Chicken, Tofu, and it was extremely tasty. Spice was around 2 stars (which is very light for me, but it was a great dinner). We also tried the Green Curry, which was more like 3 starts, and the grilled pork was also very good. To finish up we tried some of the desserts (finally our first dessert of the trip), and they were FANTASTIC. The first was like a sweet yogurt, with many ingredients, some were types of rice, and fruit. The second desert (wish I had taken a picture before we started eating it), was essentially shaved ice, and Mango, it was very sweet, and exceptionally delicious. I hope to go back to this place at least once more before I leave.

After a very filling dinner, we took the taxi back to the apartment, and finished up the day with some more XBOX time...

Here is a picture of the apartment building during the day:

Tomorrow should be another relaxing time, as our next shift isn't until Monday. One of the Windows Experts on the team however, has had a family emergency, and most likely our shifts will change from 1 day on/2 days off, to a new schedule of 1 day on/ 1 day off. So this means I will be working, Monday, then Wed, then Fri, etc. So I will end up working about 4 more shifts than originally planned, which isn't too bad at all, and hopefully working these shifts will allow this person to take the time needed to help his family.

-Chris

Well today started early, we were required to be on shift by 7am, and breakfast ends at 7am. So we were out of the apartment by 6:20am, and onsite shortly after.

As the designated Senior experts for support, we are used as an escalation for the other 2 tiers of support already in place (some as long as a year). So for the most part we will wait for big enough issues to arise that need attention, but we are also required to understand how the environment works, so that we will be better prepared for any failures that may affect the Games, and different Venues. The Olympic committee is using a large number of vendors, but I'm part of the Microsoft team providing support to several technologies in place like SQL, AD, SCOM, MOSS and Search. The deployment is actually quite large and could top 150,000 machines, and 400 servers. A very impressive setup to support all of the games.

Our shift today was actually very quiet, but we spent the time learning the environment, and keeping up on those wonderful daily tasks, like email ;-)

After lunch we took one of the bus lines around the OCD (Olympic Common Domain), and were able to see most of the major venues and facilities. After a stop at the south bus stop we found something interesting. Some missile launchers and other military items. Overall there must have been at least 16-20 rockets hidden under the camouflaged, and very well protected.

It was rumored that the China Military would have anti terrorist devices deployed, and very mobile, but it was exciting to actually find them in place, and they are very well hidden. Here are pictures of me with some of my colleagues after a ride around the OCD, and with our great find.

After returning back to the office, we were able to get back to work, which again was quite slow, very little to do as not many of the games systems are online quite yet. Around 7pm we went up for dinner, which overall the food catering is not good at all, many of the workers complain of the quality as well. So around 8pm we felt hungry still so we slipped over for a quick bite to eat at our favorite local Duck restaurant (same as Day 1). This time I got some great pictures while we were eating, and of the chef cutting the duck for us at the table. A very good meal, but alas I was not willing to try the duck head...

On the way back to the building there was a great view of the DHQ with some of the lights turned on. This building was meant to look like a circuit board with all of the components. This building is very tall, with 11 floors overall. BOCOG is on the 11th and 10th floors.

After getting back to the office, I went back to the TOC to meet with some of the team there, and actually had a problem I was able to help address. One of the SQL clusters was failing because of an out of system resources notice (event ID 1450). There were some complications with failing over resources from one node to the other, but I suspected System PTE exhaustion, when they told me they experienced system lockups and reboots. After some deep diving we found that /3GB was enabled, and the Free System Page Table Entries counters returned back less than 5,000 on many of the cluster nodes. Best practice for this is to make sure Free System PTE's are around 10,000 or better. You must be careful with this Performance counter, as before 2003 SP1, it would report back incorrect information. So I finished my write up suggesting the use of /USERVA=3030 to start with, you will most likely adjust USERVA down in 64MB increments until each of the Cluster nodes would have at least 5,000 Free PTE's, but up to 10,000 is best. The full issue is explained in KB #316739. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316739. This can be a very common issue for servers that are using /3GB, and especially true if they are not 64-bit, or use PAE to address memory beyond the 4GB limit. Most likely we will be adjusting SCOM 2007 to now watch for this counter on all servers, to make sure this will not affect the games in any way.

Our shift ended around 11pm, and I made a call home, as my wife is just about to leave Idaho to go up to Oregon, on her "long way" to Spokane, WA to see family while I'm gone. They left the same day as me, and had been staying in Idaho with her family for a few days before continuing on to her Sisters house in Prineville, OR. After staying there for about a week, she will continue back up to Spokane, WA, where most of the rest of our families live.

So as for tomorrow, and Sunday, we will be off the next two days, but since the air quality is not good right now, and it's a "tourist" weekend, we will most likely finally go get the right sized power adapter for the XBOX, and have a relaxing weekend, while I teach some newbies how to play Call of Duty 4...

-Chris

Day 3 was pretty busy with lots of errands and work. We started out by running again over to Zhongguancun to try to find the video cable for the XBOX. After some looking around we found a vendor that wanted 165 YMB, but we were able to negotiate it down to 150, but based on what we had seen online this was still too high, so we walked around to competing vendors, and found prices ranging from 198 down to one that said 80. We took the one at 80 YMB, which was very good price. Around $12 US.

After leaving Zhongguancun, the market area, we went to the Microsoft Office, which was on the north east side of town. Here are some pictures from the 23rd floor where Microsoft Premier Field Engineering sits.

For lunch we ate at a local place right next to the Microsoft office, which served Shanghai style food, which is usually more sweet. It was quite good, including Beef, Chicken, and Squid.

After working at the office for a while, we took a taxi back to the apartment to see if we could finally get the XBOX working, and have some relax time before dinner. After getting everything hooked up, and getting the video configured, the XBOX seemed to be working, yahoo.... well that was until about 15 minutes later when the power converter got too hot, and shutdown. It seems the XBOX is drawing too much power, and is exceeding the 200W limit. Oh well, looks like we need to wait another day or two to get a larger power adapter.

So after the disappointment of not getting the XBOX to work, we met with Michael and went for dinner. This time they took me to a place on the west side of town, with an ethnic group that is Muslim/Turkish, called Uyghur (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_people).

The food has a little more western feel, and taste, and one of the items was very much like Vanilla Yogurt. Much of the food is Lamb, Chicken and Beef, and 2 of the dishes we got were very spicy. The first picture here on the left, was almost exactly like Roast Beef, it was very tender, like it had been cooked in an oven for most of the day.

We wrapped up for the night and went back to the apartment. I made a call for work around 11pm, and went to bed finally at Midnight, since tomorrow is our first working day (16 hour shift), we have to be up and onsite by 6:30am to get breakfast.

-Chris

This is pretty neat to hear that Bill G. will be about 1 block from my apartment to watch the Olympic Games.

http://tech.sina.com.cn/it/2008-07-23/09142345048.shtml

Bill had to drop about 1M RMB to rent the place, which makes it around $150,000 US, but this building by far has the best view of all the Olympic venues, such as Birds Nest, and the Water Aquatics building.

The building as of now is still being finished, and it seems construction is going very quickly so that it will be done in time for the games.

Good luck Bill, and hope the view is great.

-Chris

Well day 2 was pretty exciting, we started off pretty early with lots of errands, and other tasks that needed to be completed. in China if you are a foreign visitor that is not staying in a hotel you must register with the local police station. So since we are staying in an apartment I needed to go do that. So after some discussion with the police officer, which according to my colleagues, People in public offices, like the police are not that friendly and usually are completely driven by rules/laws, we found out that I needed to finish activating my Accreditation Card, so off to the Olympics building, BHQ, to complete that first. The activation took 5 minutes, but then we had to return to the police station to finish my registration, which was bout 20 minutes from the BHQ building.

After all that was complete, I was able to go to the DHQ building to meet a large portion of the team, which includes people from many different vendors, such as Linux, Windows, SQL, Oracle, Search Server, Network, and many other technologies. After asking my peers here, I'm unable to take any pictures of the Technology operations center, but I will say that it looks amazing, there are at least 300-400 people working on the 11th floor, and there are 3 tiers of support. Many of then engineers, and tech leads  joke that there should be nothing for the senior tier to work on if all goes well. I like to joke back that this is why I brought the XBOX 360 ;-).

After meeting the team, and the project lead, we left to go to Zhongguancun, a shopping market area, where we could get a 220v to 110v power convertor for the before said XBOX.  This market/store is like nothing I've seen before, it is about 5 or 6 floors in a very large building, and on each floor there are very small "cubes" of space where individual vendors can sell their products, so on each floor there are at least 1,000 vendors with a 10x10 space. So overall there must be at least 5,000-6,000 different unique businesses, and vendors working from this building. It was very overwhelming to see all of the people, and merchants, I think I could have spent hours and hours looking though this place. After some time, and asking around we made it to the 5th floor where we found a merchant that understood what we were asking for, and was able to provide the adapter. Hai-Jun, my peer from Shanghai, was able to negotiate the price from 65 Yen to 50, which makes this roughly $8 US, which is unheard of, when i was in Newark I looked at some adapters there and they wanted $50/US for the same thing. So needless to say I continued to look around the shops and everything was very inexpensive, and all major manufactures, as well, like Dell, HP, Canon, Sharp, Sony, etc. One last stop before we left included a quick purchase of a SIM Card, which actually ended up taking 45 minutes, by the time we figured out which one we needed, and tested it with my phone; which didn't work, since it seems my phone is still locked to Cingular. So now i have another task to work on. Before we left the market area we stopped for lunch in the "mall" like food court, and i was able to try some Goose, and Pork with Rice. Overall the pork was pretty good, and reminded me a lot of Chinese Barbeque Pork in the US, but I did not like the Goose at all, very strange flavor, and had very little meat. I was able to take a picture of the outside of the building (from floor 6), but what really caught my attention were all the bikes:

After finishing lunch we caught a taxi and went downtown to the forbidden city, which was absolutely amazing, it cost 60 Yen to get in, and we walked through it in about 1.5 hours, which was pretty fast. Here are a few pictures of the palace, and many of the places the Emperors worked, and lived.

After finishing the forbidden city, we took the train a little further to the east from the Tian'Amen West to Wangfujing, where we stopped for a quick Starbucks, and walked further down to an ice cream place, where we waited for our peer, Michael to wrap up for the day. When we was finished, and on his way to went over to a place for dinner, over in the Gongyuan area, the restaurant we went took last night was called GongYuan ShuLou, which means The Sicuan restaurant in the Gongyuan area. At the restaurant we ordered several dishes with Beef, Chicken, Fish and vegetables, and some were very spicy, 3 stars or 4 stars, which I thought were just excellent. Here is a picture of one of the dishes that is made up of Chicken and Peppers.

After a very filling dinner, we hailed a taxi, and returned back to the apartment, where we finished unpacking from the day, and I started to setup the XBOX (very important), after setting it all up, I realized I didn't have the AV cable, since i used HDMI at home, I forgot to pack it. So tomorrow we will have to take another visit to Zhongguancun to purchase another one. I think we will be able to find them since I can find them on EBay, and EachNet (EBay in China). The good news is that it appears the power adapter is working though. ;-)

After setting up our new wireless router, and getting all packed in for the night, i finally called it at around Midnight.

One last note on some things I've noticed around in China is that everyone seems very excited and supportive for the Olympics, it's advertised on almost every building and corner, it's usually printed on most documents, and receipts, and seems to really be something that China is very proud of being able to host. I can't wait to see it in action in about 15 days.

I'll update again tomorrow morning, for now it's off to breakfast, and Zhonguancun to find the AV cable.

-Chris @ 9:15AM Thursday

Well this day started way too early. After wrapping up some necessary work on Certified Masters, I was finally able to pack up and call it a night at around midnight. 3:45am CST came really quick. Getting to the plane was easy, and the first leg of the flight was easy going, San Antonio to Newark runs around 3.5 hours. After a very short layover of about 15 minutes, it's onto the B777-200 I go. Luckily I was able to use miles to bump to business first, which added a lot more food/meals, and a few extra's, like the leg room, and the almost lay flat seats. The flight left Newark at around Noon EST (Midnight Beijing time).

This flight actually goes direct from Newark right to Beijing, but goes up over the North Arctic, and down over Russia/Siberia. Outside of the 12 hour change (which I'm sure I'll pay for tomorrow), the flight was fantastic. Meals included: Nuts, Salmon, Soya braised chicken, Fresh greens salad with goat cheese, and pecans. I had the Stir-fried beef for dinner, and right after that came the fruit and cheese cart, and the dessert, ice cream sundae, with Caramel, Nuts, and even a cherry. Later that evening (morning Beijing time), Had some Char siu pork and egg noodle soup, and some cheesecake. Before landing we even had a breakfast, I picked the cereal.

After landing I went through customs, and immigration, it was actually quite simple, they sent me straight through with very little checking on my paperwork. The terminal we landed in I think is new, because it looked fantastic, reminded me a bit of Houston's E terminal.

After meeting up with some of my colleagues we took the subway/train to SanYuanQiao, where we transferred to the blue line and went to Jiandemen, where we got a taxi to take us the the apartment. Our apartment is located right across from the Aquatics center, and Digital Beijing Building (DHQ). During the time on the train, I was able to get a very good view of Beijing (northwest corner anyway), and it was very impressive. Talking to my peers here it sounds like there have been significant changes, and construction over the last 2-3 years, so much of Beijing is different then it was in the past.

After getting into the Apartment, we unpacked, a bit, and then left to go see what was close, and we ended up eating at this great restaurant, known for it's Duck. I sat back, and let the experts order, and about half of which I wouldn't be able to tell you what it was, but the parts that were the best were the Spicy Tofu, and of course the Duck. Here is a picture of the front of the building:

After dinner, we went over to the "office" to take a look around, and it was very impressive. The building is so much bigger in person.

Most of the pictures I took were late at night, and my camera isn't very good at that, because if I disable the flash it turns of picture stabilization, so I'm going to have to take more pictures during the day.

After walking around on the 11th floor (top floor) of the building, we wandered around the test of the OCD (Olympic Green Common Domain), and took pictures of all the buildings, It was really great to be out looking at all the different venues, especially since the whole area was pretty much empty. I can see there is much work still being done, as almost every building has some type of construction, clean up or Landscaping being completed before the Olympics start.

Here are a few of the pictures that came out well last night:

Anyway, so after coming back to the apartment around 11pm, I called back home over Unified Communications (thank you MSIT), and called it a night around 12:30. I have been up for around 60 hours now with only 6 hours of semi sleep in between.

BTW it's REALLY HOT over here in the 90's but very humid, and I thought Texas was hot...

More to come after today is done (since it's 9am here)...

Glad to hear that China is getting prepped for the potential of terrorists during the Olympics, but it's still not a very promising statement...

"Remain calm, don’t fight back and try to send a text message to the police.

That’s how Chinese police have advised people to respond if captured by terrorists during next month’s Olympic Games, the official Xinhua News Agency said Friday."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25735129/

Here is a pretty cool view of Mars in Widescreen Panorama using Microsoft Research HDView.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/11/1195385.aspx

The new guide for Repadmin use has been released and covers some great scenarios around monitoring, and troubleshooting. This is a great guide to keep in your tool kit. Notice the date says 2007, but that is wrong, this was released yesterday.

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=122830