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Fri, 19 Dec 2008 @ 16:13 || CES || TravelShane and I will be going to the CES 2009 show Jan 9th-12th in Vegas. Should be fun. I went with my sales manager back in 2005, and had a blast. Back then it was all about USB devices. I heard last year was the year of the LCDs. We'll be meeting up with my friend Wayne and his wife Susan and staying in their condo.I put our names in for tickets to watch a taping of Jeopardy. Haven't heard back yet, not sure we got in. I did get tickets to see LOVE, the Cirque du Soleil Beatles show. Back in 2005, we only covered about 2/3rds of the show. Friday night and all day Saturday we walked the show floor. We skipped 1/2 a day Sunday cause we were too tired. This year I hope to see the entire expo. link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment Tue, 11 Nov 2008 @ 09:25 || Logan || TravelAt the Logan airport a little early, and turns out my plan is delayed. I have a few extra hours to spend in the great Boston airport.Met with a friend of mine last night who has lost around 60lbs in only a few months. He did it following the Atkins plan. I'll have to look in and see if I can do the same, need to ask the doctor if it's safe. Overall the trip out here was productive. I'm not sure I enjoyed the visiting the family part of the trip as much as I anticipated. It's only once a year... link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment Wed, 05 Nov 2008 @ 20:52 || Boston || TravelGot into Boston for a two day conference this afternoon. Flew out here with my two business partners and one of our employees. Should be an interesting two days.I wasted some of my miles on upgrading my ticket to first class. Other than having the stewardest top off my glass of water a few times and the seats being larger, I didn't notice much of a difference. I'm only on the waiting list for first class on the way home, not sure I care if I make it or not. I have a bunch on miles on United, which I almost never fly, so I figured why not use it to upgrade. While it was probably more comfortable, I'm not convinced it was a big enough difference to warnet the miles. However, I don't know what I'd do with the miles, they're pretty much worthless to me. After the conference, I'm staying the weekend to visit my brother up in Gloucester. Elyse is staying to visit with relatives in Connecticut. We fly back on the same flight on Sunday. link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment Thu, 17 Jul 2008 @ 17:09 || Porch Swing || TravelOn my two recent trips to Topeka, each morning as I parked at my client's site, across the street was a woman swinging on her porch swing with a cup of coffee and a smoke,It wasn't a very attractive house, neither was the woman, but seeing her swinging back and forth with seemingly no cares, while I was mentally preparing myself for whatever the client was about to throw at me, kinda helped me set my attitude. Moved me from my normal grumpy curmudgeonly self to a less grouchy person, not sure if I actually became pleasant, but I moved in that direction. Maybe I need a porch swing at the office.. need a porch first. link to story || 1 comment || Add a comment Wed, 09 Jul 2008 @ 19:14 || Topeka Again || TravelFlew out to Topeka last night. Mindy and I drove into the airport together. She flew to Tampa to visiting my aging mother. Mindy's flight was about 2 hours before mine, after seeing Mindy off I was able to catch up on a little work.Mindy got to see the demon horse that guards DIA. I keep meaning to write up a blog post on how hideous that thing is. I got into my hotel around midnight. Got the same room different floor as the last time I was out here. Even though this place is a dump, it's probably the best that Topeka has to offer. So far it's been very humid and sticky. It's also oddly smelly. link to story || 3 comments || Add a comment Tue, 17 Jun 2008 @ 07:30 || Farty Chair || TravelHello from Topeka KS. So far the weather has been nice, no tornados yet. We're staying at a Ramada a few miles from our client's site. The hotel's not bad, however it's very dated. I'm definitely back in the 70s. The only newer item in the room is the farty chair.I aptly named it the farty chair, as each time I sit on it, just like a whoppie cushion, it emits a long loud fart. I'm getting up and sitting down more than necessary as it makes me laugh. link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment Thu, 29 May 2008 @ 10:04 || Heading to Orlando || TravelSorry for the lack of posts, I seem to be saying that a lot, so this will be my last apology.The last few weeks we've been very busy at work. I'm working at one main client that is taking most of my time, but also juggling other smaller gigs and getting the company ready for the RSDC conference next week. I fly out tomorrow morning with my sales manager Beth, we will be spending a day in Tampa then going over to Orlando on Saturday. This year the conference is more packed with events than last years, which I was hard pressed to attend everything I wanted to. I think IBM is taking the cue from Disney World and making sure there is too much to do in the time allotted. This year we will have 5 employees at the conference, between all of us we should get good coverage. I fly home the following Friday, most of my employees fly back Thursday, I'm staying an extra day to visit my Mother in Tampa. link to story || 1 comment || Add a comment Sun, 04 May 2008 @ 17:18 || Makers Faire day II || TravelJust got back from day II at Makers. Turns out the faire closed at 6 on the second day, so once we finished checking out everything we missed on day I, we called it quits.Adam from Mythbusters was there speaking, we hung out in the back of this large room, but could barely hear him, the room was packed. From what I could make out he was explaining his career, and and a bunch of slides showing models he worked on both in the shop and the finished movie shot. I have a few more pictures.
More pics in the comments...
link to story || 2 comments || Add a comment Sun, 04 May 2008 @ 10:36 || Makers Faire day I || TravelYesterday Shane and I attendeded the Makers Faire. It was a lot of fun. We met my freind Wayne at the hotel around 9am and drove up to the faire in San Mateo, about a 30 minute drive. We weren't able to see everything in one day.Ran into Sarah, she's an old employee of mine, was there with her significant other and thier little one. Both Wayne and I were wiped out around 6pm. A lot of the faire involved lights and fire, so Shane and I are going to head back tonight to see things all lit up. Here's a bunch of pictures. They don't do the faire justice, the Steam Punk area was very impressive as was the cycle area, the food vendors and the makers area.
More pictures in the comments link to story || 1 comment || Add a comment Thu, 13 Mar 2008 @ 19:34 || Airport || TravelAt the San Jose Airport. It's changed a bunch since I was thru here a few weeks ago. I'm camped out in the Burger King dinning area, as they seem to have trashed the comutter tables. Lots of construction, they are close to finishing the new terminal.As usual I'm here too early. You can never tell traffic out here, well it's always bad, but sometimes it's really bad. Today it wasn't too bad. My usual gas station was closed, so it took me a while to find another one. This week went by quick, was productive enough at my client, but didn't get what we had scheduled done. That required special paperwork that wasn't started till I got out here, and as most paperwork implies, it doesn't happen over night. Most likely we'll need to push it through the next time I'm out here. link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment Sun, 09 Mar 2008 @ 20:26 || Headed out || TravelSitting at the airport again. This time back at good ole terminal A. Flying out on Frontier this time. Need to build up my freq flier miles again. I perfer being home, but it's nice to be maxed out on a couple of the Airlines plans.While going thru security my laptop backpack broke. The zipper won't close anymore. I have a bunch of IBM bags from all the conferences I've been to, but they are all on the wrong end of the flight. This will give me another excuse to go to Fry's. I'll see if I can hit Wayne up for some pliers and see about fixing my backpack, it's only a zipper, how hard could that be to fix? However, I've had this backpack for at least 4 years, maybe longer, I know I bought it at Fry's, but not sure which contract I was on. I'm pretty sure I had it when I was traveling to San Diego each week, which was most of 2005. I probably bought it in 2003 or 2004, so I'm due to buy a new one. I should build one out of duct tape, like the duct tape wallets. That should look good going thru security. link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment Mon, 18 Feb 2008 @ 19:54 || Traveling again || TravelWaiting for my flight out to San Jose. Flying United this time :( My office manager thougath the times were better. They are, but I hate United so much I'd rather travel later on Frontier.She knows better for next time, I didn't make her cancel the tickets this week, but told her she needed my approval before booked me on United again. I didn't travel as much as I usually due last year and she only came on board late spring2007, so it's a understandable mistake. I haven't had yto hang out in DIAs terminal B in a long time. It's changed a lot. I got to the airport as I don't have a frequlent flyer status with United and I couldn't skip the line at security like I usualy do. There wasni't of a line and it went quick, so I have an hour to kill at the airport. Looks like they've changed a lot, but while I'm an expert on terminal A, I don't have much context to go on. I was able to locate a number or unused tables on the second floor near the Harley store, pretty quiet, not many people. This flight gets me in about an hour and a half eariler than my usual Frontier flight, so I'll have time to go to the store and get the travel stuff I don't bother to fly with. The Albersons near the hotel has a decent travel size section, so I can toss what I don't use before I fly home. I hate having to do the plastic bag thing. link to story || 2 comments || Add a comment Sun, 16 Sep 2007 @ 20:45 || Weather Delays || TravelAirlines shouldn't get to claim as much as they do on weather delays.I got to the airport early as usual, and find out that my 9:30 flight is delayed till 10:30. If it actually leaves at 10:30 it should get in around 1:00am, which is an hour after all the car rentals close. I'll be stuck paying for a taxi tonight and then trying to get a rental car in the morning before my 9:00am meeting. They claim it's weather related. Due to all the bad weather this afternoon, all the planes left late, so they are late returning. I checked to see if I could swap my flight for one in the morning, but they were all full and since it's weather related they couldn't guarantee me a seat if they had one. So.. I'm waiting at the airport for the 10:30 flight and will deal with the taxi when I get to San Jose. If we would just build high speed trains or pneumatic tubes traveling would be much easier.
link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment Fri, 14 Sep 2007 @ 06:38 || Too many dinners || TravelThis trip to Boston I've meet someone for every lunch and dinner. It's been fun, but I've over eaten and gone way off my diet.I'll probably need to eat only salads for the next few weeks to make up for it. Which I doubt I'll be able to do, I'm headed to San Jose for the next two weeks and already have 1 lunch meeting setup. Luckily it's with someone who is on a no-fat diet, so maybe I'll try and order what he does.
link to story || 2 comments || Add a comment Thu, 13 Sep 2007 @ 05:35 || Boston || TravelBeen a busy week. I flew out to Boston Monday night. Tuesday I met my friend Chuck for lunch and dinner. It rained pretty much all day, between eating I ened up logging into a client's site most of the day trying to troubleshoot an annoying problem.Yesterday, I attended a backup seminar in Andover with my brother. Was interesting, learned a few things, dedupe, which I have never heard of is apparently a big deal in the back up world. Had lunch with Brenden then headed back to the hotel to continue troubleshooting. Met up with another friend for dinner, Wayne, different Wayne from the one I know in San Jose, we ended up talking till the restaurant closed. link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment Mon, 03 Sep 2007 @ 21:27 || September Travel || TravelNot sure if I'll file this under travel or annoying. Probably just travel.Looks like most of this month I'll be back on the road. Next week puts me back in Boston for a few days, which would be nice, however, the days I need to be there are mid-week which pretty much kills the week for me. I booked the Boston travel from home on Friday and then got an email saying the timing might not work, so I'll have to have my office see about salvaging the ticket I purchased. Normally it's not a big deal, however I didn't use my normal airline so I'll see how accommodating this airline will be, If they aren't very accommodating, I'll probably out the bastards in the blog. The two weeks after I will be in San Jose again, I need to fit three weeks of work into two for two different projects. Otherwise they'll be a third week for San Jose.
link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment Sat, 25 Aug 2007 @ 17:49 || I hate United || TravelWednesday's flight was a nightmare. I flew from Boston to Chicago then to San Jose. After waiting a few hours to get on the 5pm flight from Logan to O'Hara. the flight in was uneventful. Deboarded the plane around 6pm Chicago time and looked up the gate for my 7pm flight to San Jose.The other gate wasn't too far, I walked down to it after stopping at the restroom. As I approached the gate the sign switched from "San Jose" to "Riverdale". Thats never a good omen. I found a monitor and looked up my flight again, it still had the same gate. I was also wondering where Riverdale was, the only Riverdale I knew was inside a video game, A little while later they post where the new gate is, and they also mention the flight is delayed till 7:30. By the time I got to the new gate, the flight was further delayed to 8:00. At this point I figure I now have time to grab dinner. I found a sub shop and got something to go, and went back to the gate. The flight was now delayed till 9:15. At this point I called my Sales manager Beth, as I was meeting with Kim in San Jose and I was going to get the rental car. I didn't have Kim's contact info (thats fixed now) so couldn't warn her I was going to be late. While I was talking to Beth, and my cell phone was dieing, the flight got delayed more and was showing 10:40. Just around 9:00 they announced they found a different plane and would be boarding as soon as it got to the gate. Which they did, and we pushed off around 9:20 just as it started raining. After about 30 minutes waiting on the runway, the pilot announces they have all but 1 runway closed and we're around number 20th for takeoff. Another 40 minutes or so passes and he announces they have closed the airport and we might be going back to the terminal. After about an hour he announces he thinks they will open the airport again soonish and we'll be on our way. Another 30 minutes and he starts the engines and we start moving, maybe 20 minutes latter we're in the air. I got into San Jose around 2am. By the time I got my luggage, found a cab and got to the hotel, it was almost 3am. I got stuck with the middle seat, with all the delays and other flights being canceled, no one was interested in helping me switch seats. link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment Wed, 22 Aug 2007 @ 12:09 || Logan || TravelSitting outside a "au bon pain" near the United checkins. Karl and I both have 4+ hours till our flights and they are behind different security areas. So we're hanging out here till it's closer to flight time. Not that we're great company, I'm updating this blog and he's off looking at the gift store.Had lunch with an old friend and colleague from my PictureTEL days, he also, has the bird blog that I have up as a link on the left side under, "other blogs", I'd say he runs it, but he hasn't updated it since July 1st. He mentioned I was annoying and I recalled I enjoyed annoying him. We used to bet on silly things a lot for lunches, I would normally win, he's not a very good gambler. I owed one lunch over a recent bet that he probably rigged, in fact it could be the reason he hasn't updated his bird blog, covering the evidence.. we made a bet over how many eggs his bird would lay, he won, so I took him to lunch. More than a little annoyed at United. They have me sitting in a middle seat on my Chicago to San Jose connection and wouldn't move my seat till I get to Chicago. I say "wouldn't", because they obvious could if they wanted to, I'm sure the entire plane isn't reserved yet, otherwise they wouldn't have offered to switch my seat when I got to Chicago. They blamed the computer system and waved me off. I'll go back in an hour and see if I can switch my seats then, hopefully get someone who doesn't hate their job and wants to be helpful. link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment Tue, 21 Aug 2007 @ 06:45 || Getting in || TravelAll three officers flew into Boston this week. On Sunday, Elyse left Denver about 11 in the morning, Karl left around 4 and I left just after 5. I got into Boston first. Elyse second and Karl last.I guess I need to retrain my employee who makes travel arragements. I know she was trying to save us a buck and that the travel was made over a two week span, but it would have been nice to be on the same flights, or at least not have riduclous layovers. link to story || 1 comment || Add a comment Sun, 19 Aug 2007 @ 13:19 || Headed out || TravelFlying out to Boston this afternoon. Got stuck flying United, (I hate United) as Frontier doesn't fly to Boston and Jet Blue only has the red-eye.Only going to be in town for a couple days, I fly from Boston to San Jose on Wednesday. Then back to Denver on Friday. Karl is joining me in Boston and Kim is joining me in San Jose, hopefully both are productive trips. All three officers are going to be in Boston this week, but we're all on different flights, weird. link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment |
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