andy’s place…

Sitting here, 11 hours before my return flight, I’m looking out my window at the memorial I just left.  National WWI Memorial and Museum.  Well worth the trip… and the price of admission.

The rest of this town though, eh.  It’s nice, it’s clean, but where I am there isn’t much to do when you don’t have a car.  Everything closes at 6 PM minus a few restaurants, drinks are far too expensive to use as entertainment, and the TV sucks.

My last resort for entertainment, the free Internet in the lobby, got ruined by this infestion of wannabe cougars and soccer moms selling crap jewelry and bringing it all to a convention here.  So the lobby is flooded with these yap-yap-yap, where are you from, that’s pretty, I should sell that BS  and a bunch of drunken women taking every seat in the sports bar.

Oh well, it lets me sleep more.  5 AM wake up call, 9 AM flight, back home by 2:30 on Thursday, and back to the rat race again…  more REED fun than you can shake a stick at after pointing yourself in the eye with it.

What a day…

5 AM - Get up, and get ready in a rush, only to find out that since I have been gone so much lately, I let my grocery supply dwindle, so I had nothing for breakfast.

5:40 AM - Walk into the 24 hour Wal-Mart to buy breakfast… Cheetos for breakfast is solid.  Pound half a Mt Dew in the airport before the security checkpoint.

7 AM - Plane is late to take off.  I’m getting worried since we already have only about 15 minutes to get from the concourse I arrive at to my departure concourse, which is clear across the MPLS airport.

9 AM - Somehow, we still arrived early.  Blaze through the airport on a tram that went slower than my running speed (if you’ve seen me run, you know), find the next plane, and listen to someone talk all through the announcements of boarding times and then wonder when they will announce the boarding time.

11 AM - Surprising amount of room in the DC9-50.  First flight with beverage service of the day.  Northwest changed their policy to only provide beverages on flight hops of 1 hour or more.  Pierre to Minneapolis is two 42 minute hops.  Dammit, I, I mean you, paid good money for my ticket, I want my “free” ginger ale you bastards!  Is it sad that I’m excited that we might fly through a thunderstorm?  The gal in the seat next to me was a little worried about me after I said that.  Now I know what it feels like to be Midget…

12 PM - We must have some rookie pilots in the area.  Air traffic ahead of us is so slow that we are damn near stalling the engines of the DC9-50 and already are doing S patterns to slow down.  When we finally get to the runway, the plane bounces (which is awesome), and the pilot stops with the plane’s nose in another runway.  FAA violation for the win…  oh, and no storm.  grr…

12:30 PM - Got the baggage, then have to watch someone I’m with figure out the way to get a shuttle, then tell me that the “pickup” spot is the civilian parking instead of the booth labeled “Shuttle Pickup”.  He suffered more though, black shirt in 98 degree heat while I stood in the shade of correctness

1:15 PM - After paying only for a one-way shuttle pass because someone thought it would be cheaper to take a taxi back on Thursday (23 miles in a taxi is never cheaper than 12 bucks, sorry), we make it to the hotel, and I nearly forget my baggage in the van since I wanted out and away from Toothless the Magic DriverMan.  I got it though, and off into the awesome hotel.  No sarcasm here, this place is nice.  35 foot waterfall from the gym area, large rooms, awesome bed, good atmosphere, and it’s connected to a skyway mall…

2 PM - Wandering the skyway mall with someone that points out everything is fun….  you should try it sometime.  Oh, and all the while, we are supposed to be finding the location of my class for Monday.  We had to divert to the Science Hall, Planetarium, Extreme Theater (walked by it), and a few other spots.  Mind you, these were cool, and I have some great pictures for later when I get them posted up, but it wasn’t the purpose of the trip.  We finally found the place though, short skyway walk away, and a hop across the street.  Should be easy in the AM.

4 PM - On my own, wandering the rooms, gym, pool area, shops, and such…  snapping more pictures, and yacking on the phone.  This is actually what I enjoy in a trip.

7 PM - Hit the lobby, wait for my company to arrive to go eat.  Everything is closed on a Sunday night, so we find a hotel restaurant and bar after wandering for 30-45 minutes and reading every sign along the way, wondering if we, in our travel apparel of jeans, shorts, and one WoW t-shirt, will qualify for the Hyatt Skies restaurant, which should be a business attire place if memory serves me.

8 PM - Finally eating, and sadly, in Kansas City, MO, I had the best Mojito I have ever had.  Isn’t that a shame… not the coast, but middle of the plains KC has the best one.  Too bad I had to enjoy it while the bar TV’s had the ESPY’s on, hosted by Justin Timber-Douchebag and his magic army of fairies.  It’ll be over soon though.

9 PM - I’m here in the lobby writing this post.  Took a while…

In 8 hours, I’m on a plane to Kansas City, Mo.  3 days of training on Juniper gear, 4 days of fine barbecue…  and 5 total days affected by the trip.  Not bad though, can’t complain, it gets me out of the state, which I haven’t left in a while.  Omaha about 8 months ago, road trip 13 months ago.  I don’t get out much… heck my car hasn’t left the city limits in 12 months.

I really need to get out more.  Someone let me know of what is going on while I’m away… email, msn offline, whatever.

So after a 3 day road trip to Madison, Brookings, Sioux Falls, and Vermillion, I come home thinking that today will be a day of golf and beer.  No….  golf tournament is cancelled due to a “crisis” that none of us can fix with our equipment.  The only fix is for the upper tier to not be tools and accept that this is their fault.  The last change that could be made to the hardware will have to be made before someone might think that code is the problem…

Well, I get to leave all of this soon…  it will be off to training on Sunday morning…  5 days in KC MO, and then back to the grindstone…   Looks like I’ll have another shot in SF on the 28th, but it appears it may only be one day, not two.  So, looks like my brief visit with Sonja will be my only contact with the SF crew for a while…

I’m about to being a long week.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m in Madison, Brookings, Sioux Falls, and Vermillion over the course of Monday through Wednesday.  A busy technical schedule hauling heavy, expensive equipment and installing it at the schools.  Looks like I’m staying in a decent hotel in Sioux Falls (Holiday Inn City Centre) at least…  might need someone to join me at Buffalo though

Thursday is the golf tournament.  The opportunity to look like a fool again for one day on the golf course while drinking during the morning/afternoon.  I’m a horrible golfer, but this should be interesting…

Friday, it’s open…  maybe I’ll run to Sioux Falls for a relaxation break…  not sure.

So, for the last 4 weeks, my work life has been consumed by assisting folks with the deployment of a new application.  While I’m not of liberty to discuss details about it specifically, it just amazes me about the level of stupidity, emotional attachment, ignornace, defensiveness, etc… regarding it have come out.

For a simple web application, one or two servers should handle it for a simple number of users (you can define simple yourself here).  When you have a near 5 user to 1 server ratio, and it still sucks, wow…

Although, this has been an interesting experiment in learning new techniques to prove that my equipment is not causing the slow performance, random “kick outs”, error messages, etc…  I’ve gotten sick of the experiment.  On Monday, I’m out of it and onto my next project…

Seems that as I get older, I’m constantly reminded that July in the month of the wedding….  last year, 3 of them in July I attended, one I was in.  This year, 5 days in, and I had one to attend.  Nice short ceremony, and filled with the fun of a nervous groom for a short while reciting his vows to the clergyman.  And of course, since I knew the musicians, and all of the people from my office attending this had their BlackBerry’s with them, we had to bombard the musicians, while they were up front on stage, with email to distract them.  Wasn’t enough to make them mess up, but we did have a lot of weird looks around the church while we had our fun….

Thankfully, while my family gives me grief that I’m not married yet, in the office, I had a long while before that grief gets to me…  there are a couple guys on my team that are approaching 40 that haven’t gotten hitched yet, so they need to get through this step before the attention gets to me.  That keeps me happy.

Gotta love paid holidays while you get to celebrate a major event in history with friends and family…

So, in trying to keep up with the Jones’ around here that seem to be blogging daily, since I actually had something happen today other than wake up, go to work, come home, sleep, repeat… I thought I would share the details.

July 3rd was spent finalizing work stuff for the week, then hitting up a neighborhood on the outskirts of town where a local, very populace family comes together for a large fireworks display.   It’s sad when a private group can put on a better show than what a city can…  although this year both were good.  47 minutes of non-stop fireworks, all Class B license (good stuff).  I have no idea what it cost, but 10-20k isn’t out of the question…

July 4th was all about prepping for my hosting of the family 4th event.  After the Fort Pierre rodeo (no, I never go), they launch the biggest fireworks show in this part of the state.  Being that it’s on the other side of the river (the big one Seth, the big one), and that I live on the river, I have the best view.  So I invite the family in for fireworks, food, and a late night show.  Despite my efforts with a former controlled bug spray, the lack of wind resulted in the neighbors mosquitoes coming over to bite us.  Not horrible, but enough to be annoying.  Had too much food, as I was told my guest list went from 5 to 9, but wasn’t planning on 3 of them not eating…  so I have some serious leftovers…

All in all, a lot better than the previous 2 weeks in the office chair.  But now, I’m prepping for a wedding on the 5th, and then my month of travel really starts….

July 14 - Madison

July 15 - Brookings

July 16 - Vermillion

July 17 - Pierre for golf tourney

July 20 - 24 - Kansas City

July 28 - 29 - Sioux Falls

And probably a North Dakota trip in there somewhere, a Nebraska trip is likely in August, and maybe Boston in late August.  My limited supply of luggage is going to get a work out…  as will my tail in all these crappy minivans I’ll get to ride in.