Wednesday and Thursday I made a quick cross-country trip. I flew from
my home in San Jose to Dulles (near D.C.) so I could attend a meeting
at Sun's office in Ashburn, Virginia. Sun's Ashburn office is an
unassuming building in a smallish office park -- not at all like Sun's
sprawling campuses in Menlo Park, Santa Clara or Broomfield. There's
good reason for this. It came along with the acquisition of a small
company Sun made a couple years back. The company, called SevenSpace,
brought the technology for Sun's Managed Operations service. The
ultimate in connected service, it allows Sun to completely run a
customer's data center remotely.
My meeting on Thursday was very successful, but only lasted half the
day. I decided I'd drive back to the airport early and just camp out
in United's club lounge -- they have good Wi-Fi and comfy chairs. Just before I turned
into the airport exit off the expressway I saw a sign that said the
Udvar-Hazy Museum was just a couple miles further up the road. I'd
read about it when it opened, but never had the chance to check it
out. I made a split-second decision and merged back onto the freeway
(using an almost legal maneuver). I'm sure glad I did.
It took only a few minutes to get to the museum, which is an extension
to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum (one of my favorite places).
The museum has a striking modern architecture, and is cavernous on the
inside. It needs to be big to hold all the cool airplanes and
spaceships!
My wife bought me my Cannon Elph for Christmas so I'd have a small
camera I could carry on trips when I stumbled across interesting
things. I was sure glad I had it. I even threw it into Movie mode and
took some short movies. Over the holiday break I'd threatened (half
jokingly) that I should start video blogging. Well, why not give it a
try?
I spent about an hour at the museum and then headed to the airport. At
the airport I popped the SD card from my camera into my laptop and
downloaded the movie clips. Then I grabbed some "open source"
classical music off a site I found on Google (that good wi-fi comes in
handy). On the plane I finished assembling a short collection of neat
things from the museum and put the sound track with it. Here's what I
manged to pull together. I hope you enjoy it.
Posted by Dave Wilson on January 05, 2007 at 11:15 AM PST #