Window on Technology and Vacation !?!

I had initially submitted an abstract for the IBM Technical Leader Exchange conference in Orlando. The good news was that my abstract was accepted as Innovative Showcase. It was a great exercise for me in conciseness and relevance of my contribution to current IT trends.

I decided to do some vacations in Florida after the conference. My first stop was in Miami South Beach for diving. It was a great experience—mostly because it was not necessary to wear a Long John. For all non-divers: A Long John is a diving wet suite that is covering the whole body. It’s always a pain in neck to slip in! I did diving for two days. The first trip was going to a reef in Miami and the Neptune Memorial Reef, which is the largest man made reef ever conceived. The strange thing is that it provides an extraordinary living resting place for the departed.

On the second day I was going to Key Largo for diving. The many reefs that lay within the John Pennekamp Marine Sanctuary are some of the most popular dive destinations in the world. It’s great for snorkelers and divers alike as the reef touches the surface in places and slopes down to a depth of about fifty-five feet nearby.

Here, I was able to see the Christ of the Abyss statue, which is a 8 1/2 foot, 4,000 pound bronze sculpture of Jesus Christ that stands in 25 feet of water. I can tell you—it was one of the most cryptical dives I ever had. To see this statue of Jesus Christ at a moment’s notice in the deep blue see was absolutely cool!

After two days of diving I went to Cocoa Beach to visit the Kennedy Space Center to view a rocket launch of an Altas V rocket that transported a navigation satellite into space. If you’re interested in space exploration then you have to visit it the KSC, too. It’s a very inspiring place to see all the technology they used to sent a man to the moon or they are still using for the International Space Station. You can find all photos from this vacation on the corresponding Flickr set.

Dahab Vacation Photos

I know, it is a long time ago since I wrote my last blog entry—a thousand pardons. Two weeks ago I received from my diving buddy all photos from my vacation did in November in Dahab. Dahab is a small town on the southeast cost of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt located approximately 100 km northeast of Sharm el-Sheikh. You can find all photos from this vacation on the corresponding Flickr set.

My six most favorite photos are in the following:

Photo 1 : Devil Firefish (Pterois miles)
Photo 2: Me (Heiko J Schick)
Photo 3: Spanish Dancer (Hexabranchus sanguineus)

Photo 4: Red Sea Anemone fish (Amphiprion bicinctus)
Photo 5: Endemic Sea slug (Nembrotha megalocera)
Photo 6: Octopus (Octopoda)

My Vacation in 2007

Finally I did it—I’m on vacation! Normally I don’t have the strong feeling that I need vacation, because I never need a long downtime to recharge my batteries and I also don’t like to travel alone. In other words, I still have 25 days vacation left, which are five working weeks in Germany. My master plan is to take three weeks of my vacation in November and the other two weeks in December between Christmas and New Year.

In November I will stay one week in Albstadt, the town where I was born and raised, to visit my family and friends, read books and watch some movies I haven’t seen yet. Despite this, I have to put winter tires on my car before we get snow, which is on my personal hate list on number one. The other two weeks I will go with a good fellow to Dahab for scuba diving. I love scuba diving because it gives you the weightless possibility to see the world through other eyes. Some of my friends would say that they love scuba diving because it’s the only way to stop me talking. Sometimes, when I get excited, I talk to way too much. People then tend to compare me with a streaming processo, but I think I should stop talking about my bad attributes. ;-)

Dahab is a small town on the southeast cost of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and was Bedouin fishing village, located approximately 100 km northeast of Sharm el-Sheikh. We already was in January in Hurghada for scuba diving, but we didn’t had the chance to do night diving or to attend a Nitrox course.

For all non-divers among yourself: Nitrox is a gas mixture composed of nitrogen and oxygen. Normally this includes normal air which is approximately 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, with around 1% inert gases, primarily argon. The most common use of nitrox mixtures containing higher than normal levels of oxygen where the reduced percentage of nitrogen is advantageous in reducing nitrogen take up in the body’s tissues and so extending the possible dive time and reducing the risk of decompression sickness.

You can find my favorite diving pictures of our last vacation in the following. I’ve modified them with a graphical editor to remove the blue coloration which you normally have under water—especially if you don’t do a white fader. ;-)

With that fact that I have no Internet, no laptop and no bits and bytes in my vacation in Egypt, don’t expect the next blog entry before November 25.