Jeff Billimek’s Journal

We woke up today around 9am to the sound ff the orange juice squeezer machine as Anna prepared fresh orange juice.

Once again we had a lovely breakfast. Today it was a corn tortilla with eggs inside. We also had the other usual items: bacon, beans, cheese quesadillas, a fruit tray, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and coffee.

After we finished breakfast, we got ready and the car came to pick us up at 10am. The driver took us out of the compound and to the beach: Playa Santa Maria.

The driver dropped us off as close as he could to the beach but we still had to walk about 100 meters to the actual beach. We carried chairs, umbrellas, and an ice chest filled with lunch that Anna prepared for us.

(Arriving at the beach)

The sand at this beach was quite coarse - almost pebble-like. As soon as we got to the beach Larry set out to go snorkeling. Initially when we got there, it was fairly empty but more and more people showed us as the day wore on.

Jen and Amy went swimming too and a beach vendor approached me to peddle some jewelry. All he had were bracelets and I didn’t think that Jen wanted a bracelet but I did see a silver one that seemed like her style. The vendor told me that he wanted $40 for it - way too much.

By this time, Jen came by and looked at the wares. She liked the same bracelet that I originally found. I talked the guy down to $15 and bought the bracelet for Jen.

(Amy got this shot of Jen and I at the beach)

Larry went walking around to snap some photos at the beach. While he was walking around the rocky area he saw a guy who had been snorkeling and got washed up on some rocks. His back was all cut up and bloodied, so of course Larry snapped a photo.

(Be careful when snorkeling near the rocks)

We stayed at the beach around two hours and then headed out. The driver was waiting for us at the parking area and we loaded into the car. On the way back to the compound, we stopped at a huge liquor store called ‘La Europa’. It’s supposed to be the largest liquor store in the whole Cabo area. Once there we bought some wine and other supplies.

After this stop we went back to the villa. It was nice to actually be back in the compound. I think overall it is nicer at the resort than outside. We all took a dip in the pool - it was quite nice.

Jen tried to teach me how to float, but I’m too dense to float. We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting around the back. It was so nice outside. I worked on my laptop, listened to the iPod, swam, and sat in the sun. This was probably my favorite part of the entire trip.

(The back area of the villa where we spent the rest of the day)

While we were all outside, Jen made some of the best iced tea I’ve ever had. She had some ‘red tea‘ that she brought along. She made it in the ’sun tea’ style, it was so delicious!

Larry and Amy wanted to dine alone tonight, Jen wanted to stay in so it all worked out great. Jen and I watched ‘About a Boy‘ on the television in the living room. It was my first time to see it - Jen has already seen the movie.

While we watched the movie, Jen made some wonderful chips and guacamole dip that we ate all of. She also made some leftovers from breakfast. It was all quite good.

We opened a bottle of malbec that we bought earlier and drank that too. It was a very nice time. After watching ‘About a Boy’ we watched ‘Galaxy Quest‘ and like before, that is a funny movie. Larry and Amy came back from dinner.

Once they got back we all sat outside in the back area and played two rounds of Pictionary. To my surprise, both were close games (we were both at the finish square at the end of each game). It was pretty fun - Larry and Amy get very serious about Pictionary. Jen and I had fun interpreting each others drawing styles. I think it was good for us.

I woke up today not feeling very good. Something was wrong with my stomach and I think it’s something I ate yesterday.

Larry went down to the beach in order to take some photographs of the waves. I sat in bed and worked on my laptop and then helped Jen pack for the return journey today.

I was feeling really crappy and didn’t like it. Amy packed up and we all left for the airport at 1pm. Anna packed us some sandwiches to take along on the airplane.

Before we left, Larry and I left Anna and the concierge lady a tip in an envelope. The driver came by in an Excursion and drove us to the airport. The drive took 35 minutes.

I drank some San Pellegrino to try to settle my stomach but it didn’t help. We had to wait about twenty minutes to check in at the America West counter at the small airport. Being that we were revenue passengers, we were able to get exit-row seats - this was pretty cool.

After we made it through security we had to wait about thirty minutes before boarding. I read my book while we waited. We boarded the plane but had to wait a while due to a weird rainstorm that came through. It was about a 25 minute delay.

After takeoff they kept the seatbelt sign on for a long time but eventually turned it off. At that time I was able to get m backpack down from the overhead bin and extract the sandwiches that Anna prepared for us. I also got out my laptop.

I ate the sandwiches and it felt good to eat given my current stomach condition. Because we were sitting in an exit-row seat, I had a lot of room in front of me. I took advantage of this and used my laptop.

We arrived in San Diego and had no problems going through the immigration and customs areas. I think the fact that the San Diego airport is small helps this.

Once outside the airport, Larry hailed a taxi and we got a ride over to his office. All four of us piled ourselves and luggage into Larry’s little BMW convertible car.

On the way to their house we encountered a bit of rush-hour traffic long the way. We finally arrived and saw the kids as well as Amy’s parents.

I’ve met him several times before but Amy’s Dad reminds me a lot of my Dad by looks and mannerisms. Jen and I had salad for dinner.

After we ate, we opened up a bottle of the wine we brought back with us from Mexico and sat outside to spend some time alone. I gave Jen her last birthday present which I had left behind in San Diego since it was too large to bring along. It was an electric toothbrush and electric flosser. I remember that Jen expressed a desire to have an electric toothbrush so I got one for her birthday.

We were both pretty tired. I was feeling a lot better and didn’t have the same intensity of stomach pains that I had this morning. Jen and I went to bed early around 9pm.

I woke up at 7am this morning and dragged myself into work. My body felt like it was a lot earlier since I had adjusted to west-cost time while I was out in California and Mexico.

Catching up on things at work wasn’t that bad actually. I had been keeping up with email and voice mail while I was away so it wasn’t too bad coming back. I did, however, catch up with a lot of my coworkers on what’s been going on that wasn’t covered in email.

To my delight, I was able to be pretty productive on my first day back from the long vacation. I worked on .jar property file items with Apache ANT. I also got two ‘new’ developers set up with dot-files since they had fresh logins. This is one of the items that I work on as an unofficial sysadmin for our project.

For lunch we went to a new diner-type place in College Park. It was pretty good.

I left work around 4:30pm. When I got home, I upgraded the photo gallery software to the RC1 release. This new release has a completely new theming system and I had to educate myself on it. It didn’t take too long to get the hang of it and customized to how I like it.

Jen got home shortly after I did. We made tofu rubens and a salad for dinner. It was wonderful! After dinner I worked on updating my journal.

While I was doing this I noticed a big problem that has been around for quite a while. All of the links to other pages in the weblog will always go back to the main page. This is not a good thing.

I set out and researched the problem. It took a long time but I was finally able to track it down and fix the problem.

It turns out that the rules I have in the .htaccess file don’t work the same under apache2 as they did under apache 1.3. My webhosting provider runs apache 1.3 and at home on the test/mirror site (gentoo) I run apache2. So the problem doesn’t appear on the local test site - only the main production site.

I stayed up very late tonight researching the problem and fixing it, but at least I got it fixed.

The root of the problem was with a ReriteRule that misbehaves under Apache 1.3. About a month ago I upgraded Wordpress to a beta version which uses some consolidated RewriteRules to handle links and such. This functionality broke under Apache 1.3

The .htaccess had this in it (which was broken):

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

# BEGIN WordPress
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /jeff/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (\?s=(.+))$ /jeff/index.php/$1
</ifmodule>
# END WordPress

I did some research and testing and changed it to this:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

# BEGIN WordPress
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /jeff/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ /jeff/index.php/$1
</ifmodule>
# END WordPress

The entire change revolved around the “RewriteRule (\?s=(.+))$ /jeff/index.php/$1″ rule. Specifically the regular expression, (\?s=(.+))$ wasn’t working correctly under apache 1.3. Changing the regular expression to ‘^(.+)$’ made everything right as rain.

While it took a long time to figure out, I was pleased to have a solution in place and working links once again.

I got permission to work from home today. There were no meetings scheduled with me in them, and I had a physical today so it all worked out well.

Jen left early in the morning to go shopping. She had off from work today as she normally does on Friday’s.

I worked from home until around 1:30pm when I left to go take my physical examination. I hate having to put on those stupid hospital gowns because my shoulders get cold easy and these don’t cover the shoulders well. And what’s with them being open in the back - that’s just silly.

Part of the physical exam is having the doctor probe and feel all over my body. For some reason this is ticklish to me and I giggle a lot. Very strange. The best part of the physical is when he does the reflex test with the little hammer where he hits the knees to see my leg kick. I love that part.

I also requested a hearing test this time because Jen is constantly telling me that I never listen to her and that I don’t pay attention. Unfortunately I passed the test. I told the nurse conducting the test about Jen’s complaints (me not hearing her) and she said that it is a problem all men have.

The last part of the exam isn’t so fun. They draw blood and I hate the feeling of the needle entering the skin.

As I headed back home I gave Carole a call to talk about something work related.

Later Jen came home and brought with her a brand new wine cooler device that she bought on sale from Target. It keeps up to twenty-five bottles of wine clime controlled for archival and long-term storage. We liked it a lot.

We woke up at the ungodly time of 3:45am and quickly dressed and packed. We left the hotel around 4:10am and began our drive to the airport. It actually took about 1.25 hours to get to the airport.

After dropping off the rental car (we only had it for about 17 hours), we hopped the shuttle bus to the airport and attempted to check in at the kiosk.

We were just under the 30-minute cutoff for check-in, so I asked an agent to assist us. Because we didn’t have any bags she agreed to check us in. We made our way to the gate as they were already boarding the plane (zone 6). After they boarded most of the plane, we got our sear assignments (10D & 10E).

I was pretty tired all morning since we had to get up so early. I listened to my iPod and slept during most of the flight.

We arrived in Atlanta around 9am and went home. It was actually quite nice getting in so early because we had basically a whole day free.

Jen took a short nap and I worked on photos downstairs. In fact I did that pretty much all day long. I processed photos from the Napa Valley trip and the Pacific Coast Highway and Hearst Castle trip.

Afterwards, Jen worked on organizing the storage room downstairs and we unpacked the wine cooler and set it up. We decided to keep it in the storage room. It’s pretty cool and I’m glad she bought it.

We went to bed around 10pm. I was really exhausted.

Despite being a Friday, I worked pretty late today.

I decided to go ‘above and beyond’ and create a development sharepoint site for the developers on our project. Sameer and I had been tossing around the idea and I finally pulled the trigger.

Sharepoint is quite easy to use once you get the hang of it. In particular I was pretty impressed with the ability to ’screen scrape’ certain sections of data from external website and present it embedded in the sharepoint site. I did this for the current price of the DAL stock as well as the current oil futures prices.

Over the past two or three weeks I had been looking into a transfer to another department for various reasons. This past week actually I went on two interviews for a new job. In the end I decided to stay where I am.

I spoke with Carole today about this and also about my career. I also spoke with the manager of the job I interviewed for to let the manager know that I wanted to stay in my current position.

Because I was working late, I didn’t leave work until around 6:30pm. We are having a family dinner at our place so I was running a bit late.

Jen’s parents, Katie, Chris, and Scott were all there when I got home. Scott just got in from Tokyo today so he was a bit jet-lagged.

We had some wonderful fajitas for dinner that Jen prepared. She did everything including the grilling. Even better than the fajitas was the spicy jalapeño black beans that Jen makes so well. It was a very good dinner.

Jen’s Mom brought over two delicious homemade-from-scratch pies. After dinner we ate pie and I showed everyone photos from our trips (on the Xbox via XBMC).

While Jen pained the upstairs bathroom, I did some other things. I balanced the checkbook, burned 2 DVDs, upgraded to a new version of TivoWebPlus, and upgraded the Xbox XBMC software to a recent build. The new XBMC software wasn’t that good and I found it to be quite buggy.

I also discovered some fascinating info on steganography and how easy it is to do now. After reading this fascinating article, I saw that there was even an ebuild for a linux program called ‘steghide‘. I tested out embedding a document into an image without changing the original image at all. This has some very fun applications.

Scott and Katie went out go running in order to continue training for their marathon in Chicago in October. However they got tired and called to see if Jen or I could pick them up. Since Jen was busy painting, I hopped in the car and drove over to the Floyd road parking area of the silver comet trail. Scott and Katie were waiting for me.

They inquired about getting some lunch so I called up Jen and we all decided to go get some fine Indian food at Swapna. The lunch buffet was great.

The day wore on and eventually it was time for us to go up to Katie’s house. Katie invited Jen and I over to have dinner with her and Chris tonight. She prepared bacon wrapped filets, potatoes, and green beans. It was all presented in the dining room with a very nice setup.

We had little namecards with fauna underneath our transparent dishes. After dinner we played Pictionary. There were some really tough things to draw. For example, we had to draw ‘Marx Brothers’ and also ‘Unanimous’.

Jen and I won both games - it was a lot of fun.

When we got home we saw that our eBay auction for the old 128MB MP3 player sold for $24!

I had a really disturbing nightmare last night. In my dream Jen and I were in Iraq. We weren’t soldiers, but we were in some sort of American embassy type place and we were the only ones in there. It was abandoned or something.

There was an angry mob of insurgents outside and they somehow found out that Jen and I were in there and they tried to get in. Jen and I tried to hide inside the building but they eventually found us. I told Jen to hide under a bed and I tried to fend them off but they killed me anyway and that was the end of the dream. Not a fun dream.

I had a lot more meetings today. I met Jen for lunch at her office. I picked her up and we went to Rolly Polly. Afterwards we went to REI and bought some clothing for my upcoming Alaska hiking trip. I wanted to have some non-cotton items to wear and they had a sale so it all worked out great. On my way back to work I stopped at the post office to mail the off MP3 player that Jen sold on eBay.

After I got back to work I continued working hard and ended up staying quite late today. I gave Casey a lift home after work and stopped at the grocery store to buy some groceries (Jen sent me a list of things to buy). I addition to groceries, I also bought some candy for Jen for a thing she’s doing for work tomorrow.

This evening Jen and I had tofu rubens and they were outstanding today. While she cooked dinner I helped her cut fake money out of printed sheets to use in her work thing tomorrow.

Scott came over. He was pretty excited about the house he wants to buy. We talked about that for a while and then went to bed eary.

I was up early this morning packing for my trip. For some reason I didn’t pack the night before. Because I packed this morning I was a bit late into work today.

Timing was great. On the way into work I finished listening to Harry Potter book 6. It was such a great book to listen to and Jim Dale did a terrific job.

As I was pulling into work I got a page from John S. to help out with some DB2 Connect problems. Because of this work, I was late to the staff meeting.

For most of the day I was pretty tied up with work in the integration environment. James, Anil, and I went to lunch at the Caribbean place. I love their jerk chicken breast dish.

Towards the end of the day I completed my weekly status report and Sameer was gracious enough to give me a lift to the airport.

Unlike the last time I went to Alaska, I didn’t have any trouble checking my bag. The airport was pretty sparse and there were no long lines through security.

Shortly after I got to the gate, I gave Jen a call. A little while later I got my seat assignment: 13F (an aisle seat). The flight departed at 6pm and it was a very long flight - about eight hours.

I tried to sleep on the plane but couldn’t - even with the fancy squish pillow that Katie gave me. Instead I watched the first in-flight movie, ‘Monster In Law‘.

The second movie was Madagascar which I did not want to watch. I got out my laptop and watched ‘The Running Man‘. That’s such a great movie. It is such a classic 80’s action movie.

After the movie I started to read my book only to realize that I’ve already read it! I brought the wrong book. This was very frustrating.

By the time we arrived in Anchorage I was dead tired. To my body it was after 2am. Larry’s flight didn’t arrive until thirty minutes after my flight did. I arrived in the older north terminal. Larry arrives in the south terminal. I took the shuttle bus over.

After a quick phone call I met up with Larry at the baggage claim area. He wasn’t feeling so good (he got some sort of flu earlier in the week). Once we got his bag we picked up our rental car from Alamo. It was an SUV, a Chevy Trailblazer.

We loaded into the car and drove to our hotel, a nearby Best Western. I was very tired. We checked in and went to bed. Larry brought along his trusty portable noise maker so sleep came very easily.

We slept in later than I would have liked. I went to bed early last night with the idea that I would get up before sunrise in order to take some cool sunrise photographs. However I must have been more tired than I realized and slept quite well. I’m sure I also slept better since Larry had his fancy portable white noise generator running in the room.

Larry and I woke up, showered, got ready, and packed up for our hike today. We left the room and had breakfast at the hotel restaurant. I had eggs, hash browns, bacon, and a muffin. It was pretty good.

After breakfast we drove to the outskirts of Seward to Safeway. This particular Safeway is shiny and new and fun to be inside. We headed to the deli section and bought some sandwiches and chips to take on the trail with us.

Once we concluded our business at Safeway we drove to the Lost Lake trailhead. Along the way we passed a sign for the ‘breath of life‘ race. This was close to the Lost Lake trailhead. Then it hit me: When I was in the ranger station at Exit Glacier yesterday chatting with a park ranger, I mentioned that I was going to Lost Lake today. She asked if I was in the race. I just smiled and nodded, not knowing what she was talking about. She must have been talking about this ‘Breath of Life’ race and it’s being held on the Lost Lake Trail!

The one day that Larry and I go to the Lost Lake trail is the day that a ton of people are doing some stupid race. So much for peace and quiet on the trail.

The Lost Lake trail is divided up into four different zones (in order): woods, berries, meadows, and tundra. Our hike started out in the woods zone. This is the most uninteresting part of the trail because we’re walking through a thick forest that blocks out much of the light and there isn’t much to see.

The berries zone is pretty fun because we pass along a ton of berry bushes. I believe they are raspberries and salmon berries. Larry was pretty excited about this spot because last time we got to eat as much berries as we wanted. This year, however, we didn’t see many berries and they were hard to find. Nonetheless we still found a fair share of berries. It was also in this section that we started to see parts of the landscape since we were not obstructed by trees anymore.

As we entered the meadows zone (my favorite part), we came across a cleared out grove of trees. This particular grove is a very memorable part of the trail as it looks like a perfect place for a camping spot. There is a cluster of trees circling around a large sheltered area with a soft ground. Indeed there was remnants of a campfire: a ring of rocks around a bed of ashes. It would be so cool to camp in a spot like this.

(Larry putting on warmer clothes in the grove of trees.)

The meadows zone is a healthy mix between alpine grassy meadows with clumps of pine trees. Things are open enough that you can see the beautiful blue sky and majestic mountains in the background. Little ponds decorate the grassy areas. Best of all, there were tons of blueberry bushes bearing as many blueberries as we could possibly eat. It was great.

(A little stream winds its way through a meadow)

(A blueberry bush photographed to make it look like a tree)

As we made our way through the meadows zone, we encountered the first of the runners. They were running very fast and coming from the opposite direction. For the next few hours we had to endure stepping off of the trail as runners (all 182 of them) ran by along the 14-mile trail.

(The runners kept coming and coming)

It was super sunny and clear outside. I used Larry’s 17-40mm lens with the polarizer all day long. I was so happy with the weather conditions - especially compared to the last time we were on this trail.

(Some of the only clouds we saw today)

When we reached the tundra zone, the wind became more and more apparent as there were no barriers to the wind and we were at a pretty high elevation. It was super windy.

We didn’t actually go all the way to Lost Lake partially due to the wind since it is all exposed. Instead we went off trail (to also help avoid the runners) and had our lunch behind some trees. It was so delicious. I really enjoyed the Doritos that I brought along.

(We decided not to go all the way to the lake)

After we ate, we continued down, off the trail, along the side of a valley not visible from the main trail. This gave us some great sights that we normally wouldn’t have seen.

(What a beautiful trail)

Larry and I took a lot more photos as we continued back along this valley paralleling the main trial. I also stopped to take some panoramas with the tripod. Along the way back through the meadows zone it was fun to take some new pictures with the sun in a different location in the sky than it was in the morning.

(Self-portrait of Larry and I using the tripod)

(Larry took this photo of me seting up for some panorama pictures)

My feet started to hurt as we made our way back down the seven-mile trail. On a more positive note, Larry started to feel better from his flu-like affliction earlier.

(The town of Seward off in the distance as well as the bay & pacific ocean)

We made great time on our way back to the trailhead. It’s always that way when you aren’t stopping every five minutes to take pictures. By the time we got back to the trailhead, my feet were in a lot of pain. The same thing happened the last time I was in Alaska - on the same trail actually. But last time I was wearing a different pair of hiking boots and this time I came armed with the doctor-prescribed metatarsal pads. I guess the pads don’t work.

Larry and I were starving and so we drove straight to Seward and had dinner at a place called ‘Rays‘. As an appetizer we had baked bree. It was good. I had the halibut and chips for dinner. That was excellent given that the halibut was very fresh. Out of the restaurant window we could see fishermen bringing halibut up to the little fish market area.

After dinner I called Jen but we didn’t talk very long - the roaming cell reception in Seward isn’t that great. We went back to the hotel and took a shower. It felt great to be clean and to massage my sore feet.

For the rest of the evening Larry and I used our laptops to upload and process our photos. I had photoshop and the panorama stitching software installed on my laptop so I churned out a few panoramas from some of the photographs I took today.

The hike yesterday was pretty rough so we slept in today until about 7:30am (11:30am eastern time). Unlike the previous mornings we went into town for breakfast. We went to a little dive restaurant that a lot of locals go to and the food was wonderful. I had eggs, hash browns, and toast.

After breakfast we went back to the hotel to shower, dress, and pack up. We checked out of the hotel and headed north of town towards the Ptarmigan Lake trail.

(Highway 1 in southern Alaska)

The idea was that we would hike a little of Ptarmigan Lake trail but we were running out of time so we skipped that. Instead we stopped at the entrance of the trail to watch some Salmon doing their swim upstream.

From there we headed northward towards Anchorage along highway 1. We stopped a few times to see some of the sights but it wasn’t very pleasant outside: drizzly and overcast.

(one of the places we stopped at along the way back towards Anchorage)

I drove most of the way to Anchorage. We went downtown and parked illegally at a courthouse lot in order to have a quick lunch at a place called ‘Humpty’s’ that Larry recommended. I had the Halibut and Chips - it was good!

Larry was running late to catch his flight so we made it a quick lunch. As we drove from the restaurant, Larry tried to call Mom to wish her a happy birthday but there was no answer.

We stopped at a Barnes & Noble bookstore because Larry wanted to get a book to read on the plane. I showed him ‘Night Fall‘ but he wasn’t interested since it was only available in hardcover.

He changed out of his hiking pants and into something more comfortable in the parking lot. I took Larry to the airport at 1:30 for his 2:30pm flight.

After I dropped him off, I headed back to the B&N and got some tazo passion-fruit iced tea and sat next to a power outlet to work on my laptop.

I called Jen and we caught up a little since we hadn’t been able to talk much while I was down in Anchorage. After talking with Jen, I purchased two hours of network access. I used the freedom of connectivity to check personal and work email. It was great to get caught up on work email.

It was also a bit worrisome when I noticed the 401k and T-Mobile accounts both locked out due to excessive login attempts. Was someone trying to hack into the accounts?!

Later I ordered a mint-chocolate frappuccino. It was way too strong and made my feel funny. I wasn’t able to drink much of it. Eventually my two hours were up and I lost internet access. I continued to work on my journal. I don’t know where the time went but it was about time for me to go.

I left for the airport and checked in with no problems. I got to the gate about thirty minutes prior to boarding. Because it wasn’t a full flight, I requested a window seat (to help facilitate sleep). The nice agent gave me a boarding pass with seat 29F (window seat). I had the seat next to my empty which was nice.

(looking out of my window at takeoff)

The flight home was about seven hours long. It was pretty rough because I tried so hard to sleep but just couldn’t get comfortable. There wasn’t enough room to lay out so it was a fairly miserable flight home.