ZRL Ambigram

ZRL Ambigram, originally uploaded by Michael A. Lowry.

Next Tuesday will be the official laying of the cornerstone of the new NETL building at ZRL. To commemorate the occasion, I designed a ZRL ambigram. During the ceremony, a time capsule will be placed in the foundation. A print of my ambigram will be placed in the time capsule, along with a bunch of IBM memorabilia and examples of pop culture from circa 2009.

Update 2009-06-04 15:25 UCT—The time capsule has been encased in concrete in the foundation of the new building. Some of my photographs of the foundation-laying ceremony have been posted.

2009 ZRL ski weekend in Wildhaus

_MAL8481, originally uploaded by Michael A. Lowry.

This weekend it was time for the annual ZRL ski weekend. I joined my colleagues and their partners, friends, and family for two fun days of skiing in the Alps above Wildhaus, just nintey minutes' drive from Zürich. I made several friends and had an absolute blast on the slopes. Sunday we were treated to an entire day of good snow and glorious sunshine. I cannot wait to return to the mountains for more skiing soon. Take a look at my photos from the weekend.

ZRL in snow and sunshine

ZRL in the snow. Hover over the photo with your mouse pointer to see ZRL in the sunshine.

First day at ZRL

I'm just wrapping up my first day on the job at ZRL (here’s another photo).

Yesterday morning, I woke up to an empty apartment in Stockholm. I had consigned my stuff to the moving company the previous day, having spent the preceding week packing all of my belongings. The last two days were the busiest, and I probably wouldn’t have managed without the help of Lotta, Janaki, and other friends. I brushed my teeth, packed a few last things in my suitcase, and tidied up the flat a bit. I caught a taxi to the airport at eight o’clock, and arrived in Zürich around lunchtime. I caught the S2 train from the airport to Thalwil, and took a cab from there to my hotel, the Gästehaus Niedelbad, located just 5 minutes’s walk from IBM.

After leaving my bags in my room, I bought some groceries and had a late lunch at a picnic table in a park overlooking the lake. I met some American expatriates playing with their children in the park. It was nice to talk with some of my countrymen. One of them was even from Texas (Houston). After a walk around the neighborhood, I returned to my room for a nap. I had just a snack for dinner, chatted with a few friends online, and then crashed for the night. I don’t think I’d gotten a proper night’s sleep in two weeks, so it was nice to be able to catch up a bit.

My first day of work has gone very smoothly. I now have a badge, office, telephone, and a new MacBook Pro. Actually, I’ve had the Mac for a while now. My colleague Stefan sent it to me in Stockholm a few weeks ago so that I could move my files over to it from my old ThinkPad before handing that computer back to IBM Sweden.

My new workplace is situated on a hillside overlooking Zürichsee, above the village of Rüschlikon, and just 15 minutes by train from Zürich’s main train station. One of my primary tasks in the coming two weeks will be to find a place to live. I already have one apartment to look at, and I have a feeling I’ll see several before making a decision.

In the coming days I will open a Swiss bank account so that there will be some place for my salary to be deposited. I’ll also register my presence with the local government, through which process I will obtain my Swiss residence permit.

That’s all for now. I’ll post again soon, with photos!

I’m moving to Zürich

A while ago I took a trip to Zürich for a job interview. Well, ZRL offered me a job, and I’ve made up my mind: I’m moving there in a couple of months. It was not an easy decision to make, but I think I made the right decision. I will start work on 1 October, so I’ll probably move a few days before that date. More to come!

Budapest notes

I'm in Budapest for a week of technical courses related to the Tivoli software I work with in my new role at IBM Software Group. So far, so good. This morning I'm going through a bunch of hands-on labs that show the new features in the most recent releases of IBM's enterprise monitoring tools.

Budapest is beautiful. The weather reminds me of Texas: it was sunny and warm the first day, we had a thunderstorm that night, rain yesterday, and it's hazy and humid today. Last night I joined some Swedish and Norwegian colleagues for dinner at a traditional Hungarian restaurant on the Pest side of the Danube (the hotel is on the Buda side). After dinner, I walked a few blocks to a restaurant/night club where I had read there was supposed to be salsa dancing every Tuesday evening. Unfortunately, I was misinformed. The dancing is only on Fridays and Saturdays. So instead of dancing, I took a long walk along the river and took some photos of famous bridges and buildings. I tried out my D300's bracketing feature for the first time, taking several exposures of exactly the same scene, but with slightly different shutter speeds. I intend to combine the photos in the computer, taking the best-exposed portions of each photo. The result should be a single photograph with "high dynamic range." HDR is a relatively new set of techniques. Do a search on flickr for photos tagged with 'hdr' and you'll get an idea of what's possible. The result can be quite dramatic.

My colleague and friend Warren is here from Austin to give several talks related to IBM's workload automation products. Tonight we plan to find a brewpub and sample some of the local beers. If there's time, I might also take a dip in the Széchenyi fürdő (thermal bath) here. I went to that bath with my good friend Agnès when the two of us traveled around Eastern Europe together nearly sixteen years ago. I remember that the Hungarians had an amazing tolerance for heat. They sat unperturbed on the top bench in a sauna whose lower bench proved too hot for me. I also remember that bath as the place where I was treated to the best massage of my life. Not the sexiest massage, mind you—my masseur was a very large and very brusque Hungarian man. But it was the best massage. Afterward, I felt like a piece of cooked pasta.

I'll return to Stockholm Friday night. Saturday, I'll attend the wedding of my friends Sarah and Thomas. I'll also be tasked with taking photos at the wedding, so I'm excited about that.

Swedish wilderness, here I come!

_MAL0006.jpg, originally uploaded by Michael A. Lowry.

I've lived in Sweden for more than seven years but still haven't gone backpacking in the country’s expansive wilderness. That will change soon. On Saturday I got a new tent at REI — a “Mountain 25” tent from The North Face. My mom and dad offered to get the tent for me as an early Christmas present given that I won’t be in the U.S. for the holidays. I set up the tent in the meadow this morning. I think it’ll do just fine. With the rainfly, it’s a 4-season tent. That means I could even go camping in the snow if I were so inclined.

I’m going through all the old camping gear in the garage and trying to scavenge the usable equipment that's reasonably lightweight. Much of the stuff is too heavy for backpacking. When I went camping with the Boy Scouts as a youth, we went to most of our campsites by car, so weight wasn’t a big concern. I thought we had a couple of MSR stoves, but so far I haven’t had any luck in finding them. I also know I’ve got a 4-season sleeping bag hidden somewhere in storage. I’ll hunt for these items more later on in the week.

My plans to buy a car here have been put on hold for two reasons:
1. I don’t have a whole lot of cash at the moment; and
2. I don’t know how best to import a car from the U.S. to Sweden.

Solving problem 1 will just take time. I’m saving my money and trying not to buy things I don’t really need. Regarding the car, I probably should have used the loophole in the law that allows for the tax-free import of a car as an item of one’s personal belongings when one moves to Sweden. Unfortunately, I think it's probably too late for me to take advantage of this. I moved to Sweden in August of 2000.

It seems to be very expensive to import a car directly to Sweden from outside the E.U. The Swedish Custom Service has a web page indicating that one must pay 10% in customs fees on top of 25% in sales tax when importing a car to Sweden from any country outside the E.U. Importing a car from another E.U. country though is tax-free. So I'm thinking I could avoid Sweden’s high import duties and taxes by importing via a third E.U. member state. If anyone has ideas on this, please get in touch.

Saturday morning I’ll catch my flight to Newark and then continue on to Stockholm. I’m excited about returning home, but I’m also sad to leave my family. It has been a real treat to get to know my niece Evelyn a bit, and I regret that I won’t be here to see more of her first year of life.

Right now I’m taking a little lunch break from writing the redbook. I’m a bit behind on the writing, and will probably have to do at least some of the writing after I have returned to Sweden. The book is exciting to write though, an I’m learning a lot about the new version of TWS.

OK, time to grab a quick bite to eat and then get back to work!

Tivoli Top Gun, October 2007, Amsterdam

Here's our class photo, taken outside the hotel.

_MAL0114, originally uploaded by Michael A. Lowry.

Sick in Amsterdam

Greetings from Amsterdam. I'm here for the IBM Tivoli "Top Gun" training. It lasts all week, and I'll return to Stockholm Friday evening.

Yesterday, I got sick from something I ate, and I'm not a happy camper this morning. I have an idea of what it was that made me sick. Yesterday morning I went to Lotta's place to say goodbye to her and the cats before my two month absence from Stockholm. When Lotta opened the door to let me in, Sasha jumped up on the table and started licking the sliced ham Lotta had laid out for breakfast. I ate the ham without bothering to rinse it, and I suspect that's what caused my stomach problems. Already while I was packing I felt like something wasn't quite right. In the taxi on the way to the airport I had to ask the driver to drive more smoothly because I was feeling quite queasy. I managed to make it through the flight and even eat some dinner on the plane, but I got progressively worse as I made my way through Schiphol airport and took a cab to the hotel. I eventually had to ask the taxi driver to pull over so I could throw up. I felt much better after that, and checked into the hotel a few minutes later. I took a long hot bath and went straight to bed around 9pm. I slept fitfully, waking up in a sweat every half hour or so. I think I was fighting a fever pretty much all night long. This morning I feel weak and still have body chills, but I think the wost is past.

I managed to eat some fruit and cereal for breakfast this morning. So far, so good. I imagine I'll be okay this evening once the bug has had time to work its way through my system. I hope so, because I want to have a chance to see the city while I'm here. Ok, the class is beginning again, so I gotta go. Over and out from Amsterdam.

Training at Skytteholm

Hej from lovely Ekerö! I'm here at Skytteholm for three days of training to help me get up to speed in my new job at IBM Software Group. We just finished our second day, and I'm sitting at a table by the window in the small cabin where we've been meeting. Right now I'm looking out over the long sloping hill down to the Lake Mälaren about five hundred meters to the Southwest. The evening sun is casting a warm light on the land, illuminating the brown, green, yellow and orange leaves of the maple trees outside. In a few minutes I'll walk down the hill to the hotel and for dinner. Tomorrow is the last day, and although I am enjoying the time here on Ekerö, I am also looking forward to returning home to Stockholm. I have taken a few photos, and I'll post them when I get back!

Kista Entré

_MAL1181.jpg, originally uploaded by Michael A. Lowry.

This is the indoor foyer of the the South building of Kista Entré. Now that I've moved to IBM Software Group, I spend most of my workdays in this office complex. IBM's offices occupy two floors of the north building, plus a customer demonstration and briefing center on the ground floor.

I haven't eaten at the foyer restaurant yet; my colleagues and I usually walk to the food court at Kista Galleria for lunch.

Going to Austin for six weeks

I found out today that I'll be going to Austin for a six week assignment at the IBM International Technical Support Organization. I will be participating in an ITSO residency, helping to write a Redbook on an upcoming release of Tivoli Workload Scheduler. TWS is an IBM software program that I've worked with for almost a decade. I've particpated in several of these residencies in the past, and have always enjoyed it.

Austin is where I grew, up and my parents still live there; so the residency will afford me the opportunity to visit with family and friends. For six long weeks, I'll be able to work during the day and hang out with my loved ones during the evening and on the weekends.

The timing of the assignment is perfect. The residency will end in mid-November, so I plan to extend my stay a week or so using a saved vacation days. This will allow me to spend the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday with my extended family, who will all be in Texas for the occasion. I must say too that I'm looking forward to being able to escape from Sweden for a while during the time of year when the weather here is the most miserable.

Székesfehérvár

This morning I flew down to Budapest. I'll be in Hungary for a week of consulting work. The flight was smooth and quick. I had a nice chat with a girl on the plane named Annika. She was on her way to Split, where she'll begin a ten-day Croatian vacation with six of her girlfriends.

I picked up a rental car at the airport and headed straight for my destination. I won't have time to see the capital on this trip, aside from what I saw of it on my drive through to reach the M7 highway toward Lake Balaton.

I was last in Hungary almost exactly 14 years ago, when I backpacked around Eastern Europe with my good friend Agnes. I had forgotten how picturesque Budapest is. I'll definitely have to return when I have more time to do some sight-seeing. I snapped this shot out the car window while driving West over the Petröfi bridge.

Budapest seems more modern and clean than when I saw it last; one thing is for certain; there are many more new cars, shops, restaurants, and advertisements than there were 14 years ago.
On an unrelated note: Can anyone tell me what possessed me to shoot dozens of photos at ISO 1000 in the middle of the day?

IKEA is everywhere, including on the M7 just Southwest of Budapest.

Hitting the open road. Destination: Székesfehérvár.

It took me a while to find the place, but it's actually hard to miss. IBM's service delivery center in the city is located in the Videoton area, a decaying industrial park on the grounds of what was once a sprawling radio and television factory during the days of socialism. IBM must have chosen this place for the price. Pretty it ain't. IBM's building is quite new though and is very well furnished inside, with good network connections and the latest IP telephones. Neat!

This is my room in the newly renovated and well appointed Novotel Székesfehérvár.

The view outside my window isn't grand, but I've had worse. I spent the afternoon (on a Sunday!) setting up the computers in the classroom at the office, so with that and travelling I was a bit too tired to go out tonight. Tonight, I just sat in the sauna for a while to relax. I hope to see more of the city and sample some authentic Hungarian cuisine later in the week.