We have a big QA audit coming up on Tuesday and we may require some documents or other responses from you. For anyone with TS hardware we have new antivirus software to be installed and a few other polcies that need to be adopted, followed by a signed acceptance letter returned to KZ.

I think you'll find all of this pretty low-drag, and it will help us not just comply with our new policies but also have better control of our environment in a way that really does not add much overhead at all.

Thanks everyone for your prompt attention!

Ed

Wow and I haven't posted annything on the blog since before tax day, how shameful! I am going to have to insist that you all (9707 visits to date!?!) pester me whenever the blog goes silent for a week or more. Lets see, whats new:

- we've got a new email system, finally we can get away from Microsoft on the server. There are a few oddities in the web client which can be easily handled: 1. messages by default will cluster together in their "thread" - go to preferences to disable this if you have trouble with it. If you seem to be missing some emails this is likely the culprit. 2. html may be off by default - fix this in prefs as well if you wish. Also bear in mind that we can now connect *any* email client to the server via secure IMAP so if you've got one you like better than outlook (mozilla anyone? apple mail?) you can now use it. And your iPhones too. Thanks to Alex for setting all of this up and transferring files over as well.

- we had another successful conference in San Francisco not long ago, with myself, Nick and Laura attending. It was nice to come face to face with folks from the west coast, including a number of smaller companies we may not otherwise have met. Overall a great event (as all VIB events are!) resulting in a healthy number of new prospects for tcVisualize and even a few for Trident. The 360 degree integration concept is still blowing people's hair back.

- speaking of which, Laura and I will be stepping into Paul's role throughout June and Paul will be moving on to new things starting in July. We all owe Paul a debt of gratitude for his tremendous hard work in trying to grow and expand our business.

- we have a new company quality policy which includes elements of SDLC, testing, validation, documentation and more. The new policy represents a *vast* improvement over the prior and I honestly believe it will be of great use to all of us going forward. All software developers in the company will be required to take training on the new policy (and adhere to it) as well as GCP overview and 21 CFR Part 11.

- a few other policies are coming out soon but believe me, they are all streamlined and useful, or I never would have let them come to be.

Thats all for now!

Ed

I've long liked haiku. I love a 3rd line surprise! I heard this last night:

haiku's are simple
but sometimes they don't make sense
refrigerator

OK so that was mostly entertainment, but, to prove that I really do like haiku, I promise to write and post a few in the coming months.

E

ps: Kenny in Rogan's spot this Sat.!!!

pps: another E-travel disaster blog in the works!

As I type this, Spike TV is running a replay of the most recent Ultimate Fight Night Live, headlined by our sponsored athlete and good friend Kenny Florian, who (spoiler coming) will beat Joe Lauzon in round 2. If you missed it, now's the time to catch it!

Ed

You were right Ed, those heel hooks were scary for a bit. Wonder how KF's knees are feeling lately! Kudos to his ability to slip them though and go on to win. Blood-Flo.

I saw the replay as well. Kenny looks like he's reached another level. Although Lauzon had a couple of take downs in the 1st, he had to work like a dog to keep Kenny at bay. Kenny is one of the most dangerous fighters from full/half guard. The very end of the 1st round was a small preview of what was coming in round 2.

By the way, I think I errantly said that Kenny is commentating in UFC 84 - he is actually taking Rogan's place at UFC (Serra v GSP!) in Montreal this weekend. That would have been a great one to see live, I bet.

Well, I was hoping that we would not have to do any anti spam stuff but unfortunately the bots found us and started advertising all manner of unwanted garbage. As a result I have implemented an extremely simple method to stop spam: commenters need a password. For now we have one password for everyone, which we will send out in email internally. (Any external readers feel free to request it!). If this doesn't work (for whatever reason!) we can go to the next level with jpg decoding, IP banning, etc.

(... and our night out last night was splendid as well!)

I dont have much of a link this early but I'm **almost** calmed down enough to even consider sleeping now. First round in Kenny's headling fight against Joe Lauzon was very exciting, back and forth, but second round was all Kenny. Eventually I think Joe just realized he could not do anything and shortly thereafter the ref stopped it - not so much because Lauzon was out but more because he was completely stuck and eating endless punches. Yea Kenny you did it again! We're all proud of you more than its easy to express.

As for the rest of the week, we've hit home runs in every major event so far, including in my opinion the night out where we welcomed half a dozen new TS folks to the fold with an *old school* Roadhouse night, including a game of settlers and a late nite coda at the Radisson because Nick just happened to have a bottle of Bushmills in his car.

All that and the week is only half done.

Kenny will be replacing Joe Rogan as commentator in the upcoming UFC 84!

Too busy to write much but here are some highlights:

- multiple tcVisualize and Trident IWR demos lined up
- big meeting with [important pharmaceutical] about the future of IVRS
- big internal meeting Tues to discuss architecture, etc.
- internal demo of tcV + Trident in New London office, Tues
- big night out at Roadhouse, Tues night
- Ajaya in town Tues -> !!
- Kenny Florian HEADLINING on Spike TV, live national TV Wed night
- (plus Wed. is April fool's day - be careful!)

I think of all this stuff, I am most exceited for the big night out since we have so many new people now and its been so long since we've all hung out together. This will be a great way for everyone to get to know everyone and see some of our software as well. Plus, how often is Ajaya in town!

(This means, btw, that our India IVRS support operation is officially kicking off!)

This morning we finally got our press release out discussing the concept we unveiled in Rome: that a parameter driven IWR and parameter driven simulator mesh perfectly and create vast efficiencies compared to where the market is today. The most obvious improvement was demonstrated when we ignored the traditional 12-week study setup lead time by setting up, simulating, then launching a study live in Trident IWR in less than 30 minutes in front of a big audience (and with their input!).

Will Trident IWR (and its undelying concepts) come to dominate the $300M/yr IVRS market? Only time will tell!

In case you've been wondering what stomach ailment could possibly have laid me out for 2 weeks (since returning from Europe), we finally have an answer:

... which I guess is mainly associated with bad poultry, or, of course, animal feces. Since I tend not to come in contact with alot of animal feces I wracked my brain for the last time I had poultry (not as often as you'd think in Rome and Israel) and I think the answer is: it was on one of the flights. It might have even been the one over there, or maybe the one from Rome to Tel Aviv. Maybe Alex and Robin remember. (Did you guys choose the pasta, btw?)

In case you are curious, the remedy is to take 5x500mg Erythromycin tablets all at once. With food, I guess, since they aren't great on the stomach in and of themselves. Hopefully this is the end of the line for our friend Jejuni.

Having completed some blog-housekeeping activities, I realize that I'd better write about the Israel trip now before I forget everything. As things stand right now, I've been in a bit of a haze since returning due primarily to this monstrous, demonic stomach bug which has kept me from smiling much but finally seems to be subsiding a wee bit (knocking furiously on wood).

So, my traveling companion Harald and I have an 11PM flight out of Rome and so we figure, what with the increased security and whatnot, we'll leave the hotel at 5PM just to be sure. Trouble is, you can't even do anything or talk to anyone about anything more than 3h before your flight. This axiom seems to be true regardless of how long security is going to take - it may take the whole 3 hours, but you still cannot begin anything prior to 3 hours before your flight. Therefore, my advice: arrive exactly 3 hours prior to your flight. So we ask a nice info desk guy where a good place to eat is and he's looking at us like we're nuts (we figure its language barrier - Harald is German speaking English and I'm American and we're in Italy). Finally the guy manages to say something like: "Every place in Italy has great food, except airport". So we get some nasty airport food and try to work, but now my laptop has begun to reboot every minute or so and things aren't looking so good for the big demo in Israel.

By 4AM, we are claiming our luggage in the airport in Tel Aviv. The airport is big and modern and spacious and incoming security is not what you'd think - not overwhelming at all and the type of thing that happens is you're walking along in some random place and a planinlydressed young woman walks up next to you, and, still walking, starts asking questions about what you are doing and where you came from, where you are going etc. Seems like a highly qualitative model and so far I'm impressed.

Lets assume we got to bed around 5am with a plan to meet again at 10am (!?!?) and ultimately meet up with our host Ariel. Its Thursday (I think, or maybe not) and this is going to be a down day where we can sleep and rest and visit and plot world domination, etc. And prepare for the demo the next day. So the VooDoo miraculously starts working again and I'm doing some kind of dance that I think it will like to stay that way for the demo. Next thing I know I'm up and headed out to meet some people in Jerusalem. Met some potential customer folks and some more Rockwell folks, splendid people all. After a while, it was time to finish work and go out sightseeing (completely arranged by Ariel) so we piled into a Chevy Trailblazer (you don't even want to know how expensive and rare these are in Israel) and traveled directly to some of the oldest and most holy places in the world, according to 3 different religions. The walk into the center of the city takes us through a long series of twisty stone alleys all lined with shops and shops and shops and people hawking all sorts of wares (many seeming repeated over time). Finally we come upon the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and enter it. Inside there are amazing relics, tombs and sites that I will not try to describe. Suffice it to say that groups of the devout were moving from place to place, sometimes spontaneously breaking out in hymns. Despite my ignorance and lack of preparation for such a visit, I was awestruck.

After a time we moved onwards and visited the Western Wall, wish according to one source is "the most sacred spot in Jewish religious and national consciousness and tradition...". In order to approach this wall we (the men) need to cover our heads and so luckily there are a batch of cardboard head coverings forthe taking and I put one on and approach the wall, where various devout Jews are praying and moving and communicating with or through the wall in just about the most earnest manner that I could imagine. I am distracted by a few panhandlers (surprised as well) as well as a few kids with M16's milling about, as well as the unfortunate fact that my head covering keeps falling off and I keep scrambling to replace it. Nonetheless the impression is made on my mind and my senses and I see now for sure why people *actually travel*, rather than just read about things in books or on the internet.

Just beyond the wall can be seen a brilliant gold dome which I was unclear about, asked some ignorant questions, and somehow now am still unclear about. I believe that the adjacent space to the Western Wall (or very close anyway) is a Muslim holy site and is actually off limits to Israelis and therefore, our guide being Israeli, we did not visit it. Finally, we walked around a small section of the wall of Jerusalem, which Ariel promised me we could actually walk all the way around and come back to where we started ("only about 4 miles!") but we were getting tired and hungry and the parking garage might have been ready to close its gates so we piled back in teh Chevy and headed over to - you'll seriously never guess - a rooftop barbequeue at Ariel's place.

This post is getting long so I will leave it by saying that Ariel's barbequeue and hospitality could be rated on a scale of 1-10 at approximately 11, and I hope some day to be able to repay such a wonderful experience. The following day the meeting with our potential customer went swimmingly, as well I think as it possibly could have, and so all is well with a successful trip.

On the way back I got a real taste of Israeli airport security (too many wires and electronics I guess) including the multi phased dump-out-all-your-stuff, bombscan and catscan everything, put a whole bunch of it in a box to be checked into luggage, and come into this back room for the patdown and metal scan. I guess they didn't like it that I didn't have a special letter from the potential customer we visited. Oh well, live and learn. At least it was interesting. I recall during the back room search the guy was really nice and apologetic and I was really not very put out, he said something like " you don't understand, there are people who want to do terrible things to us". Hey, this is no problem at all, I'm thinking.

12 hours in a middle seat between two guys, and I've got the only in-flight entertainment system on the whole plane which does not work. Nor does my light or fan or call button, but the guy next to me mercifully left his light on while he slept so I could sort of lean that way and read. Aided by a series of J&B on the Rocks's, I did not move once from my seat the entire flight. In NJ I missed the connection of course, but luckily caught the next one after having to claim my luggage and re-check it (??) including the new box with all my electronic stuff in it, including my poor poor VooDoo. Home at last and I'm realizing that we really do have it good in the US, and despite how awesome both countries were, I really do not like to travel much.