Jeff Billimek’s Journal

Jen and I woke up at 6:30am to the sound of Craig's very loud alarm clock. We each took a shower and dressed. It didn't take long to pack up and head out. Last night we made plans with Craig to all go have breakfast at a great place called Grumpy's . So we drove over there separately since Jen and I will be continuing on to Austin afterwards. We got there a few minutes shy of 8am so they were not open yet. Once we got in and sat down for breakfast, I had a fantastic breakfast burrito with bacon, egg, potato, and cheese. Jen had the Huevos Rancheros but didn't lie it too much. Craig, the big eater, had two breakfast tacos.

After breakfast we parted ways and headed to Austin. It didn't take very long to get there since we were on the North side of San Antonio, outside of loop 1604. When we reached Austin, we went to the Four Seasons where Amy, Larry, and the kids are shacked up. This was at about 9:30am. Dad was also there and Jill was with him.

I went with Larry and Tucker up to their room for Tucker to change into something for the football game. Next we met with Dad downstairs and the four of us headed out in my rental car to park for the game. Jen, Jill, Amy, Lily, and Cal will stay behind at the hotel and hang out by the pool. We parked at a lot behind the University COOP bookstore like we've done before and walked through campus to the stadium. It's such a festive atmosphere walking through campus on game day because there are a lot of excited people all converging on the stadium.

Today Texas and playing against North Texas university and it's the opening game of the season since they won the national title last year. They are sporting a new freshman quarterback and it should be an exciting game. Our seats were pretty good and were close to the field. I noticed that since last season they added a whole new section as well as a super large jumbo-tron. I remember when I went to school at UT about ten years ago they added the jumbo-tron and it was a big controversy. Now that this new one is even larger and has advertisements all over it, I wonder what the student newspaper is saying now. Oh how some things never change.

The stadium was packed. We were sitting in direct sunlight and it was very hot out today. In fact it was almost unbearable. Because Texas was doing so well there was also a lot of standing. Texas did great in the football game. In just the second possession they scored a touchdown and that set the pace for the rest of the game. Texas stomped N. Texas and won by a large margin.

After the first quarter, I left the seats with Dad and went with him when he went to go take a smoke break. I talked with him about going back to Delta and we discussed that for a while. Eventually we went back to our seats and it was still really hot. Tucker was getting a little bored so I gave him some silly putty that Jen had me bring along for just this occasion. He loved playing with the silly putty.

At halftime we went inside. Cousin John and uncle Tom were at the game too so we made arrangements to meet them under the stadium. It was nice to see John and Tom again. Dad talked with Tom, Larry and I talked with John, and Tucker played with his silly putty. John is close to finishing his PHD and plans on remaining in southern California for about two more years with his girlfriend, Michelle.

We were pretty hungry and decided to leave early. John and Tom went back to the game while Dad, Larry, Tucker, and I headed out. It took a while to get to the coop where we were supposed to meet with the girls who were shopping. We had to wait a while for them. By this time, the game was over and there were lots of people everywhere, it was chaos. Finally Dad, Larry, Tucker and I left to go get some food. I was starving!

Once we got to the car, we headed down to Iron Works BBQ . It took a long time to get there because of all of post-game traffic and people. I was so happy to finally eat there, it's such a treat to go there when I visit Austin. I had the usual: a chopped beef brisket sandwich and iced tea. It was delicious!

After the late lunch we wet back to Larry's hotel where we met up with Jen and the others. Jen had bought me a cool UT t-shirt and some notepads. I specifically asked Jen to look for some UT-branded notepads for me to use at work when I take notes. She also bought herself some really comfortable-looking squishy flip-flops.

We didn't stay very long because we wanted to get checked into our hotel. We drove over to the Doubletree and checked in with no problems. One of the things that I like about this hotel is that they give you a cookie at check-in. Today we got some fantastic chocolate-chip & nut cookies.

The room was great - it was a nice big suite. I set up the laptop on a table in the dining room area and got connected to the internet. I really wanted to see how OpenVPN would work over UDP as opposed to TCP. There wasn't much difference and I was a little disappointed. I also saw that Vista RC1 was released, so I initiated that download remotely so I can install it when we get back home.

Jen and I showered and changed for dinner tonight. We made plans to meet Larry and Amy at the Driskill Hotel for dinner. I know that parking will be a problem since all of these places are downtown and it's the night of the football game, so Jen and I got someone from the hotel to shuttle us over there. We arrived a little early and looked around the lavish & historic lobby of the hotel. Craig used to be a bartender at this hotel!

Larry and Amy showed up and we proceeded to the restaurant, 'The Driskill Grill' which is a very fancy & stuffy restaurant. After we got seated we had some cocktails. I ordered a mojito and enjoyed it thoroughly. Next we had our fancy dinner and it was pretty good. After dinner we had some coffee and desert to finish it up. The bill for the four of us was $400 and Larry and I split it down the middle. What an expensive dinner!

We left the restaurant and Larry & Amy were pretty tired so they wanted to get back to their hotel and call it a night. Jen wanted to get back too so Larry and Amy gave us a lift back to our hotel in Amy's new car.

Before going to bed I attempted (as an experiment) to sync my iPod in iTunes with the music library which is hosted on the linux server back home. So I was syncing over the openVPN connection. It took all night long - I estimate about 6 hours total. How inefficient is the syncing process (it wasn't even adding or removing songs from the ipod, just determining what needed to be synced). I suspect that for some reasoniTunes need to 'inspect' the entire mp3 for each one that is on the iPod. It doesn't seem like a very efficient approach.

Jen and I woke up this morning and quickly packed up and checked out of the hotel. I complained about the sound of the elevator noise in our room. It turns out that our suite was right next to the elevator and we heard this awful noise anytime an elevator went by. We also had a problem with the room's clock radio being broken. They compensated this by knocking off a day's worth of parking fees.

After we left the hotel we drove over to the Whole Foods in downtown Austin. It's a super-cool place. It was really nice and new and I had a great time walking through there. I actually think that Whole Foods started in Austin. Jen and I bought some bagels and doughnuts to take to Dad's house.

We drove over to Dad's place and had breakfast with Dad and Jill. The doughnuts were great! We talked and spent a couple of hours with them. Eventually it was time to go as we needed to be in San Antonio.

The drive down to San Antonio was short and pleasant. We went straight to Grandmas house. A lot of people were there already: John, Tom, Barbie, Chris, Grandma, Loretta, and Jimmy. Jen and I had a really great time. All of my relatives make Jen feel very welcome and she appreciates that.

We also gave everyone the pictures that Jen and I made for them. Eventually it was time to have 'dinner' (it was still pretty early). We had some great beef brisket, sweet rice, and some other things. Loretta brought some turkey for Jen since she doesn't care for beef as much.

A while after dinner, people began to head out. Jen and I also decided to head out too since it's supposed to be a 4-hour drive to Houston. I most of the way and about halfway there we stopped at this gigantic truck stop gas-station place in the middle of nowhere. It's called "Buckey's" and is the largest gas station I've ever seen. Jen used the restroom (although the line was very long) and I bought some candy.

A little further down the highway was the little town of Schulenburg, TX that we stopped at. I took Jen over by the cathedral-like church in High Hill. She really liked it. We also went to go see Grandpas grave.

After this, Jen drove the rest of the way to Houston. About seventy miles outside of Houston traffic started to get really bad. It was really slow and painful. I couldn't see any reason for it other than there being a lot of cars. There was no accident or anything like that. For some reason I wasn't feeling that great either.

Jen and I took a toll road and eventually got a little turned-around trying to find our way to Larry's house. I took over the driving and, after a call to Larry for some directions, was able to make it to his neighborhood. Jen and I were both pretty hungry but wanted something light to eat. We drove around Larry's neighborhood a while but were unable to find anything. While we were searching we passed by a Whole Foods so we decided to stop there and get some food to eat.

This turned out to be a great idea. Jen built a salad with tofu (to go) for us to take and I picked out some cheese and fresh bread. We also picked up a bottle of wine and made it over to Larry's house.

Their place is really nice. It's quite large and fancy-looking. I can't believe that they want to move into another house! The kids were already in bed once we arrived. Jen and I sat in the dining area and had our food. It was great! I felt so much better after having some food in my system. The wine was really good too.

Larry was watching a Florida college football game up in the 'media room'. He had a new 50-inch plasma HDTV and the picture looked awesome. I was able to take a look at Larry's study and his new computer with four monitors. It was actually really hot in there from the heat produced by the computer and four monitors. That's an important factor to consider with a lot of monitors: they produce a lot of heat. I took some time to help Larry get his wireless router set up and configured so his laptop will work correctly on the network.

Jen and I were pretty tired and went to bed. We slept on a king-sized sleeper sofa upstairs in the game room. We also had our own full bath too - it was nice!

I guess I'm technically unemployed today. I don't start my new job until tomorrow so I'm in-between jobs. It's actually pretty nice being home with no work at all to worry about. I'm actually a little surprised that I'm really relaxed about starting at Delta tomorrow. I guess it's because I know exactly what to expect.

Jen and I had a leisurely morning and went out to get pedicures at a place called 'Angel Nails' off of South Atlanta road. I've never had a pedicure before and it was quite nice!

Afterwards we went to Home Depot and bought some house supplies. Once we finished with that we went to Willy's next-door and had some lunch. I had a quesadilla and Jen had veggie nachos but was very disappointed in them and complained a lot. Next we went grocery shopping and bought a bunch of stuff.

For dinner tonight we had tofu rubens. As always they were excellent.

Today was my second day back to work at Delta.  I’ve been fitting into my old position quite well but have made some tweaks along the way too.  I have a pretty big list of things that I want to try to get changed and things that I want to work on too.

After work today Jen and I went up to Lake Lanier for a sunset sailboat cruise that Jen’s dad arranged for us.  It took a while to get up there and Jen was nice enough to drive.  We met Lisa and Alan up there who were also coming with us.

Aside from the four of us, Jen’s Dad came along as well as the captain of the boat.  It was a wonderful time.  We brought along some wine, cheese, and bread.  We sailed around and enjoyed the sunset.  It was really nice weather and I’ve never been out on the water at night before.

Eventually we returned to the marina and headed out.  We were both tired and I drove home.

Jen wasn’t feeling very good today. We went out for lunch to Orient Express & sat outside because it was so nice out. I had sushi but Jen had vegetable soup because she wasn’t feeling very well and her stomach hurt.

After lunch we went to the Publix in vinings to get some medicine for Jen. We used the self-checkout and, like always, had trouble with the process.

We drove up to Jen’s parents house for dinner where we had some awesome broccoli bacon stuff, chicken & rice, rolls, and finally strawberries & ice cream for desert. Katie talked a lot about volleyball stuff.

I got into work really early today - about 6:30am, and consequently got home early from work.

Jen and I headed up to the Town Lake exit off of 575 for the monthly wine pairing dinner at ‘Bennie’s Chophouse’ which used to be called, ‘Stonebridge’. There were a lot of us at this wine dinner - eleven of us. It’s hard to believe that this started with just Katie and now it is such a huge group.

This is actually the first wine pairing at the restaurant under the new name & new owners.

This month’s dinner dinner featured Spanish wines that I wasn’t too impressed with. Jen and I both agree that we prefer ‘new world’ wines much more than ‘old world wines’. I really liked the second course which had bacon on it.

It also looks like this will be the last time that BK (the former owner of the restaurant) will be running the wine pairing. There’s a good chance that this will be the last time we attend one of these wine pairings too. It was a lot of fun while it lasted!

Jen and I decided to skip the gym today after we woke up.  Instead we made some awesome breakfast burritos together.  They were really good!

Next we got ready and headed out for Katie’s volleyball game.  On the way we stopped and picked up Jen’s mom.  From there we drove to Reinhardt college.  Katie is the head coach of the women’s basketball team there.  When we entered the gymnasium we saw that Chris was already there.

As we watched the game, Jen went to the concession stand and bought me some candy.  That was so thoughtful of her! I brought along some requirements from work to go over while we watched the game.  Sadly Katie’s team lost three out of the five games.  After the games we split ways with Chris and headed out.

The three of us drove over to the Canon city center area and had some coffee and tea at a local Starbucks.  After this break we dropped off Jen’s mom and proceeded to go shopping.  We went to ‘Tuesday Morning‘ and Jen was super excited to find some things that she’s been wanting to buy from West Elm but they were a lot cheaper here.  She wanted to see if other locations had more of the same stuff so we drove down to the location near Highway 5.

While Jen was digging around for her furnishings, I placed a call to my grandmother to see how she is doing.  Next we went to the Barrett parkway area and I got a haircut at a new place called ‘Studio 8‘.  I was pretty happy with my haircut and it was ‘only’ $35.  I’ll probably be going back.

After the haircut we went over to the ‘Los Bravos’ Mexican restaurant where we made plans to meet some friends.  We were the first ones there.  While we waited for the others Jen and I had some drinks and chips w/salsa at the bar.  Tom and Terri showed up and we headed outside.  I was great weather outside.  Lisa and Alan showed up followed by Katie and Chris.  Jen and I had some bean dip along with some chicken soup and cheese enchiladas.  We had a nice time.

It was a fairly uneventful day at work today. I spent pretty much all day working on getting the ‘Eclipse‘ IDE to work. One thing that I really liked about working at Turner was the fact that I got to use Visual Studio since we were developing an ASP.NET application. I love coding in vim but there’s a lot to be said about a great IDE - especially intellisense.

I had a really tough time trying to get Eclipse to plug into the HP-UX aCC compiler to do ‘remote’ builds. Sadly I could never get it to work. There’s no problem with java, but our project’s codebase is about 50% java and 50% C++. This exercise raises a whole philosophy on how to do development. Some people feel that IDEs are bad in that they act as a crutch for the developer and that all coding should be done by hand. Others feel that an IDE is a tool like any other to make developers more efficient and free up time to focus on good coding and not menial syntax-driven activities. I lean more towards the second line of thought.

When I got home I saw a really nice surprise in the mail from the IRS. Aside from income tax refund checks, it’s rare to get something good in the mail from the IRS!  This was related to our problems from earlier.

Jen and I had a quick dinner and then I headed out for my gaming session at Clint’s house. I had a great time although my character almost died and is close to level 3! I wrote a writeup (complete with pictures!) afterwards.

Jennifer made some “Chinese style” vegetable soup for dinner.  Afterwards we went to Borders where Jen picked up a copy of ‘On the Road’ for the book club.  I’m listening to the audio book.  Next we went to Pier One and then Sports Authority where we bought some racquetball equipment.  We’d like to use the racquetball courts at LA Fitness sometime.

(Jennifer wrote this entry for me and I only made some modifications & additions)

I woke up today and did that annoying thing called ‘getting up for work’.  Jen preferred to lounge leisurely in the comforts of the bed.  I left home and went downtown to the old Macy’s building for a Delta Propaganda rally thing.

Shortly after arriving I encountered a SHARP pain in my right side at approximately 10:14am.  Being unfamiliar with the pain I called Jen for advice.  Not sure of the symptoms Jen called Kaiser to verify insurance and speak to and advice nurse.  She then passed that information on me in a voice mail.  Unfortunately the pain was growing worse and I was hunched over on the floor and unable to dial the phone properly.

A very nice lady who was working the event saw me and asked what was wrong.  She was a flight attendant and knew the right questions to ask.  She strongly suggested that we go to the emergency room.  She grabber her friend, Danny, (another flight attendant) and they ushered me out to her car and we drove over to Piedmont Hospital.  During the drive in her car, the pains continued to grow worse.  During the car ride I handed my cell phone to Danny and asked him to call Jennifer to let her know what was going on.  It was now at the point where the pain was more intense than anything else I’ve experienced before.  Little did I know that it would get even worse.  My hands and feet began to tingle all over.  At this point I was beginning to hyperventilate a little from the extreme pain and was pretty scared because I didn’t know what the cause of this was.  I guessed that it was either a problem with my appendix or a kidney stone.

I got checked into the ER and was on a wheelchair at this point.  The pain continued to get worse and I had to grit my teeth in order to talk and answer questions.  They wheeled me to a back room where a nurse took my vitals and asked questions about allergies, etc.

I was then left waiting in that back room for what seemed like an eternity wallowing in ever-growing pain.  Danny came over and told me that he called Jennifer and that she was on her way to the hospital.  He was really nice and was trying to be supportive.

Eventually I was wheeled into another room within the ER (room #16) and was told to remove my shirt and get on the bed.  The hooked me to with an IV and gave me a little saline but no medicine for the pain.  The pain was so intense that all I wanted was some sort of pain relief.  I still had not been given anything for the pain and was extremely nauseous as a result.  Jennifer arrived with her mother and looked very worried.  Shortly after she arrived I vomited from the pain-induced nausea and the nurse finally gave me an injection of some morphine -type stuff to make the pain go away.

Almost immediately the pain began to fade to a distant feeling.  It was such a relief to have the pain gone.  They were pretty sure that I had a kidney stone and needed me to give a urine sample as well a send me through the cat-scan machine.  It took a while but I was eventually given a cat scan and was able to give a urine sample.

Mom also arrived.  I think Jennifer called her too.  It was nice to have so many people at the hospital for support.  After some additional waiting, a doctor came in and told me that I had a very small kidney stone (about 1mm in diameter) and that it was nearly in my bladder so the pain should be mostly done with now.  He prescribed some powerful pain medication and I was discharged.

Mom took me home and dropped me off while Jen and Jen’s mom went to the pharmacy to fill my prescription.  I didn’t have my sunglasses on me and everything outside seemed way-too bright it actually hurt to keep my eyes opened. I think that this is from the injections that they gave me. I tried to take a nap while Jen was gone.  The morphine-type painkiller injection they gave me really messed me up.  While it did kill the pain, it left me in a strange state.  I wasn’t drowsy but I was also not alert.  I couldn’t focus or concentrate on anything - not even watching television.  I can’t correctly describe how horrific it is being in this state.

Jen and her Mom showed up about an hour later.  They stopped by Willy’s to get us all some tasty treats to eat for lunch.  We ate lunch and then Jen’s mom left.  I took two of the pills from my pain medication prescription.  The medication is Endocet.  It also left me in this wacky non-concentrating state and I hope I don’t have to take these pills anymore because I hate the feeling.

Jen and I took it easy and watched two movies.  The first one was ‘Stick It‘ and it wasn’t that bad - at least from what I remember because I was in a drug stupor the entire time.  The second movie was ‘The Benchwarmers‘ and it was pretty bad.

After watching the movies, Jen drove me to my car which was still downtown in the parking garage.  I collected my car and went home.  We went to bed early.  As I started to go to sleep, at about 10pm, the sharp pain began to creep back and I got the chills.  I didn’t waste any time and took an Endocet pill.  Nothing happened for about ten minutes and the pain was growing worse and worse - just like before.  I asked Jen to get me another pill and I took that one.  Shortly after I took the second pill the pain began to reside and I fell asleep.

We got up one hour earlier than expected because I don’t know how to set the hotel alarm clock. We skilled some time by driving around the homes in the area (big houses with 4 car garages costing $675K+) above Mom Mom’s town home.

Next we headed over to a place called ‘Coffee House’ for breakfast. Unfortunately they subscribe to opening late philosophy and didn’t open until 10:00. We then headed to another chain restaurant called ‘Bob Evans’, the Eastern equivalent of IHOP but slightly nicer.

After breakfast we headed back to Mom Mom’s. We chit chatted for a while and encouraged Mom Mom to go go sight seeing with us. She wasn’t that interested. I guess if you live near Gettysburg you probably have already seen it all. So we said our goodbyes and headed over to Gettysburg. We enjoyed the drive.

The day was slightly overcast and looked like it might rain. The visitor center was pretty crowded. We had fun looking at all of the old guns and canons. I bought a cool magnet with the guidance of Jennifer. We opted to try the driving tour on our own. After 3 stops we got distracted and ended off of the course.

(Jen at one of the canons at Gettysburg)

Instead of driving the whole course we then opted to head to downtown Harrisburg for snack before our flight. We drove around downtown but was disappointed to discover most things were closed on Sunday. As a result we just walked around aimlessly for a while before heading to the airport.

At the airport we had a ton of time to kill so we grabbed a drink in the sports buy located outside security. After some food and drinks we headed to our gate. Once at the gate we waited for a while before we were greeted with the discouraging news that our flight was delayed for an hour. Then another hour. Finally we were all boarded. Jen and I had the best seats (in my opinion) on the plane: 1A & 1B. We were all situated, ready to take off. The jetway was pushed back and the door was closed.

Then the jetway was brought forward again and the gate agent came on the plane and told us all that the flight had been canceled! Oh no! We all deplaned. There was only one more flight out to Atlanta tonight which was scheduled to depart at 7pm but had been delayed until 8:30pm. When I checked last there were only 25 unsold seats on that flight and about 45 people on this one that would need to be re-accommodated. This did not look good for Jen and I since we were flying standby. WiFi in the airport is free but down by our gate there is no signal for a working hostpot so I had to go down a couple of gates to get a signal. Once there I was able to access the travelnet and re-list us on the next flight. Jen and I then went out of the secure area back to the ticket counter to get reactivated on the next flight. This seemed better than waiting in the super long line at the gate with the lone gate agent.

This worked well but we had to go through security again. I guess third time is the charm because on this pass through security they confiscated the dangerous lotion that Jen had in her bag along with my 0.5oz sample of hair wax which is absolutely not a liquid - unless you consider something with the consistency of solid lipstick to be a liquid. I feel so much safer. I HATE THE TSA! It is nothing more than a Federal jobs program and a way to implement ‘security theater‘.

As we headed back down to the gate, things looked pretty bleak. There were a lot of people hanging around for the flight and after a while I was pretty certain that there would be only one seat left which meant that only one of us was going to make the flight. Sure enough, the gate agent called us up and she had only room for one of us. Deciding earlier that there was strength in numbers we opted to stay together. Jen encouraged me to stick it out. Surely someone on on the flight would give up and call it a night. Around 10:30 pm that is exactly what happened, a family of 3 with small child opted to forgo the flight. It was the strangest bit of luck but it cleared up 3 seats on the flight and guaranteed our arrival home.

With fingers crossed we boarded a plane for the 2nd time this evening. Everything was going well until we landed in Atlanta. The Atlanta airport was in complete gridlock from all of the delayed flights. We landed but remained on the runway for a good hour before space became available for us. It was a crazy scene as you looked out the window and saw planes lines up for miles. With no checked luggage we proceeded quickly to the park and ride for the airport.

Hartsfield has recently moved this location due to airport remodeling and ever since the service has been HORRIBLE. We WAITED and WAITED and WAITED for a bus. There is no logic, no order! After about 30 minutes of waiting we finally boarded the a bus to our car. when we finally arrived home it was a little after 2:15 in the morning. Our original flight at 4:50 would have put us in Atlanta around 7pm.

Ever since our delayed-trip home on Sunday I have not been getting much sleep – only about 4-5 hours a night. Last night was no different. I woke up and got ready for work but was dragging all day long. I can’t wait for our vacation which starts tomorrow.

Work was pretty uneventful. Carole told me that I should be getting the LCD monitor soon. I can’t wait to get it so I can work with two displays and be that much more productive. When I wasn’t in meetings today, I was doing a lot of work with managing unix accounts and setting up ssh.

Revenue Pipeline has grown so large that we have several different logins to different servers for each environment (development, system test, integration test, and production). It’s too much to keep track of. I created a google spreadsheet with all of the info that I’ll be sharing with the core team so we can all keep it up-to-date and accurate. I had some reservations about putting login & password info on a google spreadsheet, but frankly most of the passwords are weak anyway and all of these servers are internall-only so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Using a sharepoint site is just too unwieldly or I would consider going that route. I also added all of the login & password info to my KeePass database. I love KeePass!

The rest of my day was spent setting-up and managing keys for all of these unix accounts for ssh access. I have a large ‘authorized_keys’ file with all of the public keys of the different accounts that I need to access. I prune the file with the appropriate keys and then distribute to all of the different logins. This, to me, is much preferable than entering passwords. My next step (for next week) is to set up some screen scripts to have screen sessions for all of the different environments.

I also walked over to the Delta Credit Union to get some change. I got 5, $2-bills and 20, $1-bills. I wanted to have some singles to take with us to tip while we are at the resort. Even though it is ‘all inclusive’, I think some tips will be a good idea.

I worked late and didn’t get home until about 6:15pm. Jen had a large salad prepared for us and we ate it in the dining-room. She also opened up a bottle of some wine that Scott gave us. It was a 2003 Sebastian Cab. We loved it! After dinner we played three rounds of Skip-Bo – I won two.

Being cooped-up in the office today left me wanting to be outside. I took a walk around the neighborhood. Jen was being difficult and didn’t want to join me. It is so nice outside this time of year – I love it! I really love spring and fall in Atlanta.

When I returned from my walk, I helped Jen with packing for our trip and got the laptop all prepped to take. I was up late again (I went to bed around 1:30am). I packed my camera and electronic stuff (including Jen’s laptop) in my wonderful pelican case – I love this luggage!