the last 2 weeks

hey,

for some reason the picture which shows my office has not been uploaded. so i take care of that right now:
















Two weeks ago we went to Monterey, which is located 40 miles south of San Jose on the Monterey Bay. Monterey is a nice coast town. We went to the Bay Aquarium there. This is a exhibition of animals from the ocean.














picture of a shark in a big aquarium
















many small fishes in the big aquarium.













some jellyfish.












and yesterday there was a farewell party for some new zealander guys who have finished their internship and go back in their home country.
the guy to my right is kyle. he is one of the guys that are leaving. on the very right side is jacques, my former manager who did all the paperwork before i got here.










begin of september we will go to LA and watch the NASCAR race series. we will be there a whole weekend. that'll be fun.

today it rained for like 5 minutes. the first rain since may. very interesting. now it won't rain again until end of september or october. the last weekend it was especially hot, around 40 degree celsius. the air was not refreshing, more like the air that comes out of a hot oven. i never was in a place that hot before.

so i am tired, all party this weekend... so

see ya around.

hello everybody,

it has been a long time since my last entry (at least 2 to 3 weeks). and in that time some


some weeks ago i bought myself a digital camera to make photos on my own.
and my first picture i took was my office desk. i share my office with a guy from new zealand and his part looks more tidy than mine does ;)












since end of june the work site has a beach volleyball field. every week now i play on this field. there is a so called sand volleyball league in our company and we play in teams of four.

but i still play 2 on 2 with stefan, another coop from germany. he is the guy with the black shirt on the right.
due to the very stable weather conditions one can play every day for hours. there was no rain since beginning of may.









apart from the sports we also have recurring events like a dinner party. somebody would cook for the others and then we would sit together and play games. especially tabu is very funny. and difficult at the same time. it is not so easy to describe words in another language when vital words for description are taken away. the next people to stage a dinner party are sebastian and me. i think we will cook something chinese or so...really!
















last week we went to sixflags waterworld (http://www.sixflags.com/parks/waterworldconcord/index.asp) in concord, about an hour drive from san jose. that was a lot of fun even though a lot of the rides were closed. the best ones were the halfpipe and the tornado ride. unfortunately, lots of people had the same idea and it took more than half an hour of waiting for each ride. so we got on four rides in about 3 hours. the park also had some disadvantages. there were no real areas where on e could lay down and rest. those areas were mostly in between the rides. the second worst thing was the concrete. it was burning hot. you could barely walk. and you were not supposed to get on the rides with shoes. however the next water park we go to will be raging waters (http://www.rwsplash.com/) in san jose, even if the rides are not that spectacular.


and finally, last week there was a human foosball (or human kicker) tournament at work. i hope everybody knows how a foosball (german: kicker) table looks like. but this time the players were humans on a rope rather than a steel bar. that was a lot of fun.





























and by the way, the guy in the middle of the picture witht the grey shirt and jeans is my manager, my direct superior.












so have a lot of fun! we have the july 3rd and july4th off. at least a long weekend!
see you!

World Cup 2006

jippiii, germany won its first game. a good start. we watched it at work. it was highly official. the only very unfortunate thing is the time. when it's 15 o'clock in germany here it is 6 o'clock in the morning. yesterday friends of me started this early in the day to watch the england - paraguay game. i did't get up that early but today i did because a friend of us came to watch the next game. so i watched almost all games except one.
the games are all shown in american tv. i think it's for the first time ever. however they always talk about their team and really think that they might win the world cup. let's see how they fare tomorrow against the czech republic. the us games are also shown at work.

in the last weeks since the yosemite visit nothing noteworthy happened. the other guys went to sequoia national park (this with the huge trees) . i didn't go there because i didn't feel well. i guess i will go there at some point. i don't know when, though.

i wish luck to everybody and the favorite team wins at the world cup. i certainly hope that germany makes it but...well let's see.

have fun!

Yosemite National Park

on saturday we went to yosemite national park. this park consists of a beautiful valley. the vally is about 200 to 250 miles away from san jose. driving time was about 4 to 5 hours (for one direction). therefore we rented a car. on the left picture you can see the rental car, a toyota camry.







the five of us that went to yosemite taking a break.












finally arriving at yosemite. we had to wait 20 to 30 minutes to get in the park. there were two lanes and everybody had to pay a fee. fortunately sebastian already had a pass.










at the height of about 2000m we entered the valley. in the back one can see a waterfall, but this is not the largest one.

















it's really beautifull there.













huge rocks and steep walls characterise the valley.












in the back one can see the 800m high waterfall. in the summer this waterfall disappears because of the lack of water. at the position this picture was taken there were millions of mosquitos. i was already biten five times.









at the park itself we went on one of the trails hiking. we wanted to go to the mirror lake and take some pictures. what we didn't know was that the trail was partly flooded. in this picture we had no idea what lay before us.











this is one end of the mirror lake.













this is one example how the trail looked like. everything was flooded. so we climbed over rocks and through the underbrush to the side of the trail to reach the other side.










an example how this looked like.



























we went by the mirror lake. though we didn't know it we had already passed it. so we went the full round trail through a small valley of this river.










this is the half dome. i think it is the highest mountain there. there were even some rock climbers on the steep wall!












finally we reached the other side of mirror lake and there we found the information for the tourists we were looking all day long.













































at the end of our trip we visited the large waterfall. one can go directly to the place the waterfall comes down.

















directly below the waterfall.


















of course these were not all pictures we took. we got lots of them at gallery.trashgroup.com and on http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitorrodrigues/sets/72057594140724423/


the landscape there is really nice! always worth a visit even though its 4 to 5 hours away.

tennis and barbacue

hi folks,

usually i write the posts on sunday evening but this time it comes a little bit later. i just couldn't write it in the middle of the night because i didn't feel like it. that has to do with the cold i have caught. that troubled me the whole weekend and will continue to do so for some more days, i think. now you are probably wondering...how do you get a cold with temperatures of 20 - 30 degree celsius and no rain? i am simply not used to air conditioning. we have an air condidtioning system at work. and i believe that it is set to be pretty cold. but thats not good when you get outside and there are some 30 degrees. then somehow you can catch a cold easily.
does anybody know how to prevent against this? but i can't turn off the air conditioning and i can't lower the temperatures outside. the differences will even be greater in the summer. speaking of temperatures. in the last few days they have risen to almost 30 degree celsius with sunshine all day long. even in the nights 15 - 20 degrees. no rain.
nonetheless i played some tennis with some friends. over here there are public tennis courts and one can use them for free! even in the night one can play because the courts are equipped with lights.
yesterday evening we had a barbacue at a friends house and watched the icehockey game the san jose sharks agains the edmonton oilers. there are the playoffs right now and the sharks started very good. but yesterday they lost again against edmonton. it is some semifinal and they play best out of seven games. that mean whoever wins four games advances to the next round. the other one is out. unfortunately edmonton leads with 3 to 2 games. so they just need to win the next game. too bad, because the sharks won the first two games.
icehockey is pretty big over here. in san jose there is an arena...the hp arena where they can play but for the playoffs you won't get any ticket. they are sold in an instance.
in june there is supposed to be a car race in san jose downtown, like the formula one in monaco. but i don't know which kind of cars will drive there.
so thats it for now...i have to go to work.

have a nice week!!

seventh entry

so this is the seventh entry. that means that almost as much weeks have gone by since i arrived. time is moving fast. but probably you all know that.
last week was kind of normal again. the only exceptional event that happened was a health checkup at our cafeteria. everybody could go there and let their blood test on cholesterol and glucose values. other things measured were the body fat and the bloodpressure. additionally everybody could get a massage for maybe 5-10 mins there. i'm not going to disclose any values here...everybody that needs to know knows already :)

so half of the work day was spend on this event. in other words, i didn't work that day too much ;)
today some of the volleyball team i'm playing on wednesdays went to santa cruz again. it took us one and a half hour to get there. the distance is about 25 miles. the road was jammed by traffic. it seemed that whole san jose wanted to go on the boardwalk and to the beach. finally we made it and had some fun on the beach playing beach volleyball. i don't think there are any pictures. the sand there was so hot that i eventually got a blister on the left foot. i never had this before so i can barely walk now. i hope it goes away as fast as it appeared. but i didn't get any sunburn unlike some other people that were pretty red in their faces.

so what is going to happen next week?
on friday we ordered cable tv. and tomorrow the cable guy is supposed to show up. that mean we have to work half a day from home. so at last we will have cable tv at our apartment. the tv itself we already bought some days ago.


maybe i will step up the rate of posting blog entries. but i can't promise anything.

sun and car

this week nothing special happened. except for some party at work :) we had some fun talking to other people at work. the weather was nice and i got a small sunburn around the neck. here it was about 25 degree celsius in the shadow. no clouds at all. the last few days were this warm.

finally i am assigned to some "productive" project. doing testcases is also important but i like to have a challenge. and my new project this certainly is. after some weeks this will be evaluated and assessed by my manager.

today i have made two pictures of the car a lot of people were waiting for.
one can clearly see the effect of the sun onto the finish and paint of the car. but it drives good and that is all that matters. i don't care about looks.































today (sunday) we went to los gatos. unfortunately sebastian forgot the camera. los gatos is actually looking almost european. lots of buildings build of stone. most buildings here are normally build with wood so that they withstand an earthquake. there was a main street with lots of small business. quite unlike san jose, no high buildings just real nice. next time we go there there will be definately pictures.

thats about it. see you around!