Wednesday first day in the office

Breakfast

Is provided in a buffet style in what must surely be [a] the least breakfasty place in the world and [b] probably going to be the fitness centre once this is all done.

But as we leave breakfast we get a look at the hotel in daylight:

Now, I'm sure that sooner or later I'll get a nice picture of the place, and the view has been pretty, but what would the fun of that be?

The bus journey

Now, it is said you can walk from the hotel to the IBC in about 20 minutes or you can take the bus. In about 20 minutes. See, thing is, they didn't do the roads too well and the buses - which drive on the right - can't turn left. So we end up at the airport before we can go round a roundabout - or circley-ways as the yanks call them - so we can head back to the IBC. Now, we're still in the woods as some of the turns can only be made by aiming at X and hoping you miss X, don't crash into Y and end up in Zed. And then we're at the IBC.

The IBC

I'll post some pictures of the International Broadcast Centre tomorrow when the weather's worse but it's a big ol' place. With airport type security and more on the way in. So you don't have to empty your bag or anything but you can't take a bottle in. Or a flask. So my nice new empty water bottle is now in recycling. Very apologetic, they don't understand, it's the IOC's rules. Something with having to drink Coke and not water. But there's a way around this.

Customer

Now, to get into the Customer area, which is about 1/3 the IBC, you need an Customer Staff badge. To get the Customer Staff badge, you have to go into the Customer area. You can see the problem here, right? Luckily someone got me mine.
But once through all this rigmarole, you need a coffee. But that's OK cos Customer have provided a solution:

Free Starbucks. Except the coffee is made by Russians and therefore kicks a bit. First coffee where not only does the cream float, but also the sugar lumps. And you do need them.

And now to our office past a stack of TVs for the various settops.

I then meet folks again, they say hello make sure I've got everything including a chair. Which is nice as they'd like things running by Friday if possible [Championship Games?]. Oh and at at least 15Mb/s and some at 25Mb/s.

So that's us busy then. We can just about manage 15Mb/s but 25 is out of reach. However, recording and playing back are possible if done as separate tasks. That's a massive startup script for the hospitality suite, but we can do this. It's for the troops after all.

And after that it's lunch. But Customer have thought of that:

And have provided an all day restaurant, with views of the mountains.

So I've battled with the data rate with base and I have looked at the disk partioning that needs doing for the boxes. And I'll continue with that tomorrow.

Dinner was in the other restaurant at the hotel - Italian for those folks not from Italy...