There’s a new roommate at the HoR! Let’s look at the HoR history.

Residents:
Mike D., Jesse, Mark, Tom, Sander, Jon Abad, Liz, Shaun, Brian, Michael K, Michael P, Kevin…

and now…

Nick!

Welcome to the HoR Nick.

Last night I rented a Rug Doctor from Lowes. The Rug Doctor is a rug shampoo machine designed for home use. It was about $25 bucks to rent the machine for 24 hrs, and another $19 for a giant bottle of rug doctor rug cleaner that will last… probably forever.

At first glance, the equipment looked fairly complicated.

I hastily flipped through the how-to pamphlet, quickly gave up, plugged it in, and went for it. Thankfully they had little warning stickers everywhere: “DON’T POUR ANYTHING IN HERE!” screamed a bright yellow sticker on the Doctor’s discharge cannister.

It turns out it’s pretty straight forward. 1/2 Cup of rug cleaner per gallon of water. Pour in, turn on, hit the spray button, drag across floor.

It worked great! Not flawless, but much better than even the best of dry vacuums. Carpet shampooing is a rare event at the HoR so I really took my time. I used the equipment for maybe an hour and a half and cleaned 3 rooms.

Added bonus: that carpet cleaner smells great. The rugs at the HoR now radiate the faint smell of flowers*

Overall, I would rate this product strongly. It’s effective and easy to use. Way to go Rug Doctor!

*manly flowers.

I’m back in the states after an exciting Luxembourg trip. Europe is such a beautiful place. Equally as amazing to me is how close Europe is. Six hour flight from the east coast? That’s nothing! Heck, you could go for a weekend. The only annoyance is the dollar value, and with good planning that hurt can be dramatically reduced. Are there any readers of MikeDiDonato.com who don’t have passports? If so, go here and learn how to get one. It’s so worth it.

I returned from Luxembourg in time to get some work done at the House of Rock. We’re accepting a new resident tomorrow so, at the moment, my life is rife with sheetrock compound and primer. Thankfully, things haven’t been all work. Sandwiched between Luxembourg and Labor, was an epic night of Karaoke.

Yes, Shaun, Darcy, SarahS, and I joined a legion of Darcy’s posse at the Koy for an epic singfest. The gold star for the night goes to Darcy who has been struggling with confidence since an ill-mannered Karaoke patron criticized her duet a while back. Finally, after months and months of confidence rebuilding, she agreed to take the stage solo again. She sang Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and knocked it out of the park!

Awesome job Darce!

Tuesday evening Mick, David, and I decided to venture out from the hotel and find a restaurant. We had a lot of work to do, but the weather was beautiful, we needed an escape from the business centers, and this was a great opportunity for a taste of the local culture.

David smartly asked the front desk which way we should go to find food.

The hotel staff offered the following advice: “Just follow the path outside, and you’ll be led straight to a restaurant!”

And thus began the Luxembourg adventure of 2010.

The Luxembourg Adventure of 2010!!

The problem here was that we didn’t realize there were two paths leading away from the hotel. We followed the one below. This was not the path that the hotel receptionist had in mind.

Check out the sweet use of mortor between stones to create a grass path in the stone path.

Random Castle Museum

Everything started off well. We passed by a beautiful castle (with an awesome modern structure in the background – more about that later). There were amazing views of the valley below and the architecture was breathtaking!

David and Mick... perplexed

After a fair bit of walking the road seemed to come to an abrupt end, but off to the left the path turned to dirt and seemed to enter what appeared to be a strange maze of walls.

... where are we going?

things were getting strange

We entered the labyrinth. We weren’t overly concerned as the path was well worn and it had to lead somewhere. Things got stranger still as we entered an underground.

This looks promising... right?

The depths of Luxembourg

A passage climbs to the surface

The white brick path returned after we exited the underground. Still, no sign of restaurants.

David... still walking

Finally, the path turned into a road and we entered into the old city of Luxembourg.

Quaint, Colorful, and Beautiful

The city is so beautiful and so characteristic of central Europe.

After a good hour or hour and a half, we finally found a restaurant. While my coworkers probably would have appreciated a more efficient means to get to the restaurant, I was pleased as punch. It was such a beautiful walk through a beautiful city.

The Restaurant

The dinner was super high class. I had a small steak fillet with an avocado sauce served with an EPIC side of mashed potatoes. After dinner we tried to find a more efficient way to get back to the hotel and got lost again.

Luxembourg is all about the random castle/tower

Thankfully, we recovered our bearings quickly and got back in time for a decent night’s sleep.

Luxembourg? Awesome.

I almost forgot! A weird thing happened when I opened my luggage.

I had used one of those TSA locks – so presumably once my bag left Boston, it was fairly secure. At each traveling location, it was raining aggressively – so it wasn’t too much of a surprise when my bag showed up at the baggage claim thoroughly soaked. In fact, the moisture had penetrated the suitcase itself a bit resulting in some damp clothes.

But far stranger than any of this, was that when I opened my bag… a shirt that I do not own toppled out – completely drenched. It’s a women’s linen Liz Claiborne button up. Mind you… my suitcase was locked.

I have no guesses on this one.

I am an extremely paranoid traveler. For international travel, I like being at the gate 3 hours before the flight. For domestic travel, 2.5 hrs before flight. Some of you that travel regularly might find this ridiculous, but I really don’t like dealing with travel stress. It’s nice knowing that I have no worries through security.

Unfortunately, travel still finds a way to wig me out. Such was the case with this trip to Luxembourg. I was at the gate 3 hrs ahead. All looked well. Until the phone calls detailing that my travel companions were all horribly late.

My boss was stuck in Charlotte. And the company president was stuck on the Mass pike. It should be said, I was not ready to rock this trip solo. As the plane was boarding, I was standing nervously waiting just inside security. 40 minutes before the flight takes off, the president made it.

My boss did not. He made it to Logan but got caught in shuttle bus traffic. Shuttle bus traffic?

We get on the plane. Six and a half hours later (it’s fairly telling that this felt like a short flight – I don’t even think I checked my watch) we land in Paris where we have 45 minutes to travel what felt like 3 miles through packed hallways and eternal lines.

For those of you who haven’t experienced frequent international travel, never accept a flight option that gives you less than 120 minutes at Charles de gaulle airport. I honestly have no idea how we made it to our flight. We sprint walked with our luggage through customs, through security, and probably at least a mile and a half to a new terminal.

All’s well that ends well? I’m in Luxembourg and as usual, I’m all sorts of jet lagged.

Provided all went well, I should be in Luxembourg when this post appears. I’m flying Air France to CDG (ugh) and then heading from CDG to Luxembourg, Luxembourg. I’m not sure how far outside of the city our meetings will take place, but being that it’s such a small country I can only assume we won’t have far to travel once we land.

I have brought my camera so hopefully tomorrow (or later today) will see an update with a few pictures.

Until then!

Jon Abad asks:

From now on, i’m ranking my projects in Devil to Details ratio instead of “easy to hard”… what should the units be?

I love this.

Jon explains further:

I read somewhere “the devil to details ratio was all out of whack”
which is what made me think of it as a great measure of project or task complexity
i think ideally, you want to get to 0 devils
initially, you’ll have an unknown quantity of both
but you’ll say i have “10 devils in 20 details”

or if its really bad, 100 devils in 20 details

Anyone have any recommendations?