The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

I headed to Heathrow at 6am this morning only to learn that my flight to Munich, Germany was canceled. So on the drive in, I tried to find another flight, but nothing would get me there with enough time to get much done before catching the flightg home this evening. So I am now on the Heathrow Express train heading back into London to try and do our meetings via conference calls, which is tough for an all day meeting.

In the end, I went from home to the office as usual, but took a long detour via the airport!

I had to do "hard reset" on my phone, which is the very cool HTC TYTN II. I must have installed something that was making it lock up quite often. However, now that it is set back to factory settings, the built-in GPS works, which had never worked before now. So I have installed the Live Search client (see http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/livesearch/default.mspx) which includes maps, easy ways to find places, traffic info, and driving directions. The cool thing is that it can center on my location via the GPS. This means I can be lost in London and use it to pinpoint my location on the map and then find a good pub neaby and directions home. Right now I am sitting on the bus heading into work and I have Live Search following my route and sometimes asking if I am lost. Aparently, the driving directions and the bus route don’t quite match.
 

I spent the day in Brussels talking to commissioners, members of the European Parliament, heads of various units, 30-40 kids from around Europe, and a variety of people from software and telco companies. The topic was how to make the Internet safer for kids and was part of the Safer Internet Day. Remember, the European Union consists of 27 "states" and 23 languages. I was only standing in for others from Microsoft who were not able to attend, but it gave me a good understanding of how complex and bureaucratic it is to create policies in an environment as complex as the EU. I am now positive that I never want to do government work!    

We finally made it to Bath today and lucked out with sunny, but cold weather. We didn’t get into a bath, but I stuck my finger into the one at the Roman Bath museum/tour – and yes, the water is nice and warm. The picture here is of the Royal Crescent, which is certainly an impressive looking building. Click here to see the photos.
The countryside is beautiful, but we really only saw it from town or from the train. We did see canal boats on the way there while on the train, so maybe we can take a long weekend canal boat trip and get back to Bath someday, but we all admit that it isn’t the most exciting town, despite the beauty. Interestingly, it is a World Heritage City.  

I had something new happen this evening (Friday) as I was waiting for the bus home. I was standing at the curb reading The London Paper, which is one of the free daily rags. Bus 24 pulled up and opened the door right next to me and the driver asked if he could have a paper; he was pointing to a pile of them next to me. I said he could have mine, so I handed it to him, he thanked me, closed the door and drove off. Nobody even got on the bus – he was only after a paper. :-)

I now work on a team in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, & Africa) focused on Windows Live, MSN, and Search. We just launched a new blog called "Live in Europe" to highlight some of the features and promotions specific to these products in Europe.

After a smooth ride home to London (sunny and cool) from Seattle (rain and cold) and after sitting in far too much traffic near Heathrow due to the rugby fans heading to the first Six Nations game in Twickenham, I arrived home exhausted. But after a quick nap (a kip in England) and a shower I was back to normal dog walking duties.

I am in Seattle this week working and not really doing much else – not even going to Microsoft’s main offices in Redmond. I am in a week of all-day meetings in downtown Seattle, so I am truly a visitor, which seems a bit weird. I am staying at the Marriott on the waterfront, so I get to see the WA State ferries float by, which is one of the nice and unique things about Seattle compared to other cities.

I did get out and play for an hour today and visited Easy Street Records and picked up a few new CDs. It’s a great store to discover new music and with the exchange rate in my favour (GBP vs USD), it means that CDs are cheaper in the US than in the UK.

Here is Milo’s card to his girlfriend Daisy. You can make your own here. You need to have photos on a Windows Live Spaces site or on Flickr, and hopefully everyone has started using Spaces to share their photos with friends and family like I have been doing and as I suggested in an earlier blog entry.

We spent the weekend enjoying Champagne with friends in Reims, France. We visited the old Roman chalk caves of the Ruinart champagne house and the tasting area of the Pommery champagne house. The Ruinart caves are impressive and are the only ones listed as a historical site, but we all preferred the champagne at Pommery even after trying a couple of the very high-end ones at Ruinart – I wouldn’t turn one down if offered to me though.