Monthly Archive for September, 2006

last day at turner

Published on September 1, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Today is my last day of employment at Turner. I parked in the main garage at the Inforum since I'll be turning in my parking card today. My desk was all cleaned out and I spent the day wrapping up some final tasks. One of the things that I've been working on recently has been a performance optimization project and I was tracking the progress using Google Spreadsheets. It worked out really well.

I cleaned up all of my personal things from the laptop and signed off for the last time. I turned in my laptop and blackberry to Jeff H. He took me down to HR and I turned in my ID badge, parking card, building access card, and SecurID fob to Rhonda in HR. I left early around 12:30pm.

It didn't take me long to get home. When I arrived I helped Jen pack up and we headed to the airport around 2:30pm. This was my first time checking into a Delta flight as a paying passenger. I wasn't sure how to use the Kiosk as a customer. Jen and I figured it out.

We checked two bags and the ticket counter lady was very nice. It turns out that we were at the airport super early and had about three hours to kill. I found a power outlet near out gate so I busted out the laptop and checked to see if there is any free WiFi access in the Atlanta Airport. There never is but I check anyway. So instead I made use of my cell phone's slow GPRS internet connection via a bluetooth link.

For some reason Gmail wouldn't work. I think it is because it was trying to use a SSL connection and that is different than port 80. The proxy I go through must not allow that service. I had a sudden craving for a Chick-fil-A milkshake so Jen and I wandered around the airport until we found on. Sadly this airport location didn't sell milkshakes. Instead we split a small white chocolate moose frozen yogurt from another place in the same terminal. It wasn't as good as TCBY.

We headed back to the gate and waited for our flight. Jen read her book while I listened to my Wheel of Time audiobook. It was very relaxing and I almost dozed off a couple of times while listening.

It was finally time to board the plane. It looked like it was a full flight as the standby board showed only 2 seats open with seven standbys waiting. We were in zone 8 so we boarded nearly at the end. There was a huge amount of overhead space free – probably due to the new stupid liquid restrictions.

After the aircraft door was closed I looked around and noticed that there were several open seats. That was odd considering what I saw on the list outside in the gate area. The flight was super fun. I was able to work on the laptop and had enough room to do so despite being in coach. I spent nearly the entire flight working on my journal notes while Jen read her book. This made the flight to San Antonio go by really fast.

It was still daylight when we arrived despite being about 7pm. It took a while to get our luggage and then we hopped on the shuttle bus to the Avis place. Once there we picked up a four-door white Pontiac and headed out. I called up Craig and we made plans to meet for dinner at Sushi Zushi.

Craig was waiting for us at the restaurant when we arrived. There was a bit of a wait but we didn't mind and sat outside. It was great weather out today. Craig ordered a bottle of Escansia Cabernet and I ran back to the car to change into some sandals. Once seated inside, we had a really great time eating lots of different sushi along with pot stickers and edamame for appetizers. It was a really fun night out.

We went back to Craig's place and began to watch the extended edition version of Dune. Craig opened up a bottle of wine that Adam made and we had some of that – it wasn't my favorite. Jen got tired and went to bed about thirty minutes after we started the movie. I ended up going to bed about half-way through because I was really tired too and we have to get up pretty early tomorrow morning.

texas football

Published on September 2, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

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.

water & mojitos

Published on September 3, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Today Jen and I slept in a bit. It was a long day yesterday. We decompressed and hung out in the hotel room for a while. I checked the iPod sync in iTunes that was running overnight and calculated that it took somewhere between 18-20 hours to complete over the OpenVPN link. I'm very disappointed in the slow speed.

(Jennifer reading in the living room of our suite)

Larry and Amy and the kids were on their way over to Pedernales Falls State Park. We made plans to meet them there. Jen and I headed out and stopped at a Mexican restaurant called 'Flores' near Dad's place. Jen and I had a couple of breakfast tacos and I ordered two to-go for lunch later.

We made it to the park at around 11am. Larry & family were in the same spot as last year. Jen and I hung out with them and played with the kids. I took some pictures but not as many as last time.

Larry went out to go fishing with Tucker and then Lily. They all caught fish (perch – sunfish) and were excited about it. The weather today was a lot nicer than the weather yesterday. It was a bit cooler and partly cloudy which was a relief.

At around 3pm a lot of people started showing up around the area of the river where we were camped out. It got very crowded very quickly. This prompted us to head out. We left the day-use area and drover over to the main falls area. Amy and Lily stayed in their car while Jen, Larry, Tucker, Cal, and I walked around a bit down by the falls.

(Callum looking cute down by the falls)

I had my absolutely fantastic & awesome (can I fit any more adjectives in here?) sunglasses on and was able to see fish hanging around underneath the surface of the water due to the polarized lenses.

(Jennifer overlooking the falls)

It was getting a bit late and we had dinner plans so we headed out. Jen and I went back to the hotel to take a shower ad change. We originally had plans to meet Larry, Amy, the kids, Dad, and Jill at Hula Hut but Dad wasn't feeling good so he and Jill passed on dinner plans tonight. So instead we all decided to have dinner some place else nearby in the downtown Austin area on 4^th street called 'Manuel's'. It's supposed to be a trendy Mexican place.

Jen and I arrived there to meet Larry and the family. Jen wasn't too happy about the place – they didn't have a lot of 'Jen-friendly food'. We shared an entree and enjoyed our time at Dinner with them.

After dinner we all went out separate ways. Earlier, when walking to the restaurant, Jen and I passed by a wine bar called something like 'Uncorked' – we thought about ducking in there for some after-dinner wine but instead decided to go down to a tappas bar called 'Cura Libre' that Larry recommended.

Cuba Libre was a really cool place. As we entered, curtains at the front of the place automatically parted aside for us to enter – on a sensor. The place was actually really empty, probably due to it being a Sunday evening.

We sat at a cool little table in the back against the wall and looked at the menu. This place has twelve different kind of mojitos which is awesome! Jen and I each ordered a regular mojito and they came with a cool sugar cane stirrer thing. We talked and had a nice time there. I also ordered another mojito variant with Red Bull in it. It wasn't as good but was indeed quite different.

Eventually we left and headed back to the hotel and eventually went to bed. I shouldn't have had that Red Bull because I couldn't sleep and laid in bed until about 2am when I finally fell asleep – it was actually pretty frustrating.

austin to san antonio to houston

Published on September 4, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

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!

spending the day in houston

Published on September 5, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

By the time that Jen and I woke up the kids were already at school. We relaxed a bit around the house until Larry and Amy returned from dropping the kids off at school. They brought some koloches which I've never had before. They were quite delicious! I also helped Larry get the bluetooth phone-link thing set up in Amy's new Lexus.

After we did that, Larry and Amy took us out looking at houses. They are currently looking to build a house in a slightly different part of town and are very excited about it. We looked at one lot where they are hoping to build a house and then looked atanother home under construction across the street. These houses are very large and fancy. The one we looked at had a custom-built room to store wine.

Next we had some lunch. We went to a Thai place that Larry and Amy love. This is the place they used to meet at when they were dating before they got married. Jen and I split an order of a Pad Thai dish with tofu. It was fantastic!

After lunch we went back to Larry and Amy's house and began to pack up. Larry and Amy were feeling sick and had made arrangements to go see a doctor so they were going to have to leave shortly. Jen and I decided to head up to the airport early to avoid bad Houston traffic since the airport is across town. Our flight isn't until 7pm but we left the house at 2pm.

It actually didn't take very long to get to the airport so we had a lot of time to kill. I called up Casey to find out the schedule of flights from Houston to Atlanta. He saw that there was an earlier flight leaving at 5pm with open seats.

So Jen and I decided to go to the airport and switch to the 5pm flight instead. We checked in and paid $50 to switch to the 5pm flight. After going through security theater we waited at the gate only to discover that our flight was delayed for almost 2 hours! Supposedly there were weather problems. Jen and I walked around the airport and went to a bar where we each had some drinks and played skip-bo (it's always wise to travel with skip-bo).

When we got bored we went back to the gate and began to watch 'V for Vendetta' on the laptop. We were so involved in the movie that we nearly missed the boarding of the plane! During the flight we watched more of the movie but didn't finish it by the time we landed in Atlanta.

I also somehow lost one of the foam pads to my wonderful headphones (Sennheiser PX 100). This made me very upset. After we deplaned and got our bags from baggage claim, we went straight home. I made a PB&J while Jen and I watched the rest of the movie on our big-screen television. Jen went to bed.

I stayed up a bit and noticed that our car rental receipt was very high! Apparently they charged us for mileage because we picked the car up in San Antonio and returned it to another city. In the seven years that I've been using Avis I've never been charged for mileage before and in fact when we went to Napa last year we picked the car up in San Fransisco and returned it to San Diego with no charge for mileage.

This made me very angry. I called up Avis to complain. Eventually they agreed to waive the charge and explained that 'some locations' will charge for mileage and that I need to check the fine print. If they had not made it better they would have lost a loyal customer, so they did a good job by dropping the charges.

unemployed

Published on September 6, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

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.

first day back at delta

Published on September 7, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Today is my first day back to Delta as an employee. When I pulled up to the guard-house, the guards recognized me and welcomed me back. They signed-me in as avisitor. When I entered the building the receptionist recognized me too. How nice! I waited in the lobby for Kristi. She arrived and took me up to her office on the 9th floor. We chatted and I filled out some paperwork.

Once that was done I headed up the stairs to the 11th floor and met with Carole. We talked a bit about my roles and responsibilities. Then she showed me to my desk. It's in a great location. It's a window-cube facing north and in a corner. It's really quiet which is nice.

I have a display-phone with my old extension. Within two hours, I received a phone call from production control about a failed job. They didn't even know I was gone and just called my number since it was the same as before. How funny is that?

I went out with everyone in Carole's group for a team lunch. We went to the Marriott hotel for the buffet. Carole paid for everyone's lunch. It was a bit weird because when I left Delta, they took me out to the Marriott lunch buffet too.

After lunch I went over to the main Delta security office to get my new ID badge. My new 'date of hire' is 090706 which is going to take a lot of getting used to. When I got back to my desk I had a new PC ready! I think that's a record for a 'newhire' to have a new PC the same day they start. I didn't have an LCD monitor though – it's a 15-inch tube monitor which is really hard to get used to. I'm supposed to be getting an LCD monitor soon.

We originally planned on going out to dinner with Scott but canceled. When I got home, Jen had dinner ready which was super-cool!

sunset on lake lanier

Published on September 8, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

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.

engagement dinner

Published on September 9, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Jen and I skipped the gym this morning – we had a lot to do. Instead we cleaned up around the house. I cleaned the bathrooms and Jen did a ton of food prep stuff for tonight.

Both of us went to the store to get some last-minute supplies and cake for the dinner party tonight. When we got back home we made cool little party favors with good chocolate.

People began to show up around 7:30pm. We were having a dinner tonight to celebrate Tom & Terry’s engagement. Scott came over and brought Adi. Next came Tom & Terry. Katie and Chris never showed up. For dinner we had salad, grilled steak, portabello mushrooms, mashed potatoes, grilled peppers, & grilled onions. With dinner we had red wine and following that we had cake for desert.

outside at orient express

Published on September 10, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

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.

real work

Published on September 11, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Work has been great. I’ve been talking with a lot of people who found out that I was back. I have to admit that it’s getting a little tiring answering the same questions all the time, “Why did you come back?” & “What was it like over there?”

I’ve also started to get some real work done with is nice. Larry also appeared back on IM after a hiatus. It’s nice to be able to chat with him during the day again.

While I was at work Lisa came over and her and Jen went shopping at the Ikea store. Jen bought some things from Ikea and also bought be two new shirts from Express.

When I got home, Lisa was still over. Her and Jen were up in the living room playing lots of fun music via XMBC. I stuck around long enough to grab a bite to eat and headed out for my weekly gaming session.

After I got home, Jen was awake but went to bed shortly after I got home. I stayed up a while (probably because I had a red bull earlier) and wrote-up an account from my character’s perspective on the new journal site for our gaming group.

last wine dinner?

Published on September 14, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

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!

network printer

Published on September 15, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Today I made it into work around 8am. I’m mostly settled in now which is nice. This morning I met with Carole to discuss my work assignments and talk about what I’d like to work on. That’s really cool that she’s giving me so much latitude!

James E, Jeff C, Casey T, Alex D, and I all went to lunch together to this tiny little hole-in-the wall Mexican place where no one spoke a word of English so Casey had to order for us. I had a carnitas burrito and it was really good.

One of the things I really had a hard time doing before I left Delta was completing my weekly status reports – I was usually so busy that I never had the time to do one properly. Hopefully this time I won’t fall into that pattern. So today I completed my first status report. There are a lot of things I want to accomplish and change so I’m pretty excited about the coming months.

Also this afternoon I attended a meeting about the Interline Receivable project release. We have a lot of work ahead of us! I ended up leaving a little later than expected – around 5pm.

This evening Jen and I watched ‘Pink Panther’ – it wasn’t that good. Once we finished watching the movie, I cleaned up the study downstairs and am really happy with the results. I also played with the new ‘active’ 16′ USB cable that I ordered from NewEgg.

I wanted to connect the HP PSC 1315xi printer to the gentoo linux box (turing) in order to serve-up the printer since that computer is the server. One big problem is that the printing capabilities from linux over the network are really limited. There is virtually no scanning to speak of, save an obscure TWAIN driver which doesn’t work very well. And printing from Windows is basically flinging around a postscript file – there is no paper settings, etc. I’m really disappointed with this and put the printer back on the windows machine. I think we need a ‘network enabled’ printer as a better solution.

Originally I was planning on having all server-type functions on the linux box so I can enable aggressive sleep settings on the windows machine. I’d like to reduce the electricity usage, keep the room cooler and perhaps prolong the life of the PC?

out and about along I575

Published on September 16, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

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.

spending the day with siblings-in-law

Published on September 17, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

It was nice to sleep in late today. After Jen and I eventually woke up, we headed over to Scott’s house. We haven’t been around in a while so it was nice to see all of the changes that he’s made. He has a ‘new’ foyer and it looks great. He’s thinking about putting in a fountain with some rocks – like they do in Japan. I also got to see his new Xbox 360 and new LCD HD television. It looks nice on the wall.

We played with Adi and her many toys. It’s fun to throw a toy around outside for her because she’s so fast – like a horse! Afterwards we had Bagels and coffee (actually Jen and Scott had coffee). Scott gave me a video card that he doesn’t have a use for and it’s actually quite nice. It’s a Nvidia AGP GeForce FX 550 w/256MB of RAM. Jen borrowed some painting supplies and we stored some boxes of CDs and bar stools in Scott’s massive basement.

After we got home, Jen relaxed while I installed the new video card on the gentoo linux box (turing). I’m planning on using the old AGP video card for my desktop PC at work so I can have a dual-headed display.

We got dressed and headed out to Katie’s house at about 5:30pm. Katie and Chris invited us over for a dinner. Katie was excited to be using her new china and kitchen stuff. We started off with some merlot and moved on to a really great Cabernet.

For dinner we had a great ribeye steak, mashed potatoes, and some other things. Following dinner we had some blackberry pie from Greenwoods. It was all very good!

After dinner the four of us played Mille Bornes. The last time I played this was when I was just a kid with my parent’s and grandparents. I had a great time! Eventually Jen and I went home and headed to bed early.

eclipse

Published on September 18, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

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.

trying to compile vim 7

Published on September 19, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I slept in pretty late today which currently is unusual for me! This morning I signed up for the ‘VRT’ session this Friday. It’s supposed to be really great and I’m looking forward to it.

Today I also got my new pager but it was the wrong kind. Carole told me that I should be getting the other kind of pager soon. I inquired about Blackberrys as they are a lot more useful than pagers since it is email based. She still doesn’t have any information on that.

Kyle H. and I had lunch today. It was great to catch up with him as it’s been a long time since we really talked. He’s a little nervous about the IBM outsourcing thing and doesn’t know what’s going to happen.

I spent pretty much all day long today trying to get Vim 7 to compile on our system but had no luck. I tried to build it using cc, ansi cc, aCC, an older version of gcc, and new version of gcc – nothing worked. It’s really aggravating working on this outdated HP-UX OS. I wish we were running linux!

Today I worked late and didn’t leave until about 6:30pm. When I got home Jen was really sweet and had a mojito waiting for me and we had a fantastic salad consisting of cheese, croutons, almonds, and fresh lettuce from Costco (the kind with the roots still attached). After the salad we had some leftovers from Katie’s dinner the other night. I really like the brown potatoes.

Once we finished dinner and cleaning up, we began to watch ‘Rumor Has It…‘. I wasn’t too excited about the movie and didn’t watch all of it.

shopping after work

Published on September 20, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

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.

book club day

Published on September 21, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Alex D, Casey T, Sameer P, James E, Jeff C, and I all went to ‘Chow Baby‘ near downtown for lunch today. While we were waiting for our table we spotted Melissa and Weslyn there. We chatted them up for a few minutes and then had our lunch. I built a pad thai type dish and enjoyed it very much.

This afternoon I attended a leadership meeting with the business for the project that I’m on. The meeting was supposed to go until 5:30pm but we ended early at 5pm. I went straight home and was happy to see Jen.

Shortly after we both got home, we drove over to Katie & Chris’s house for our monthly book club meeting. Before heading up to Katie and Chris’s place, we loaded an extra folding table to give to them. Traffic was unusually light. Instead of the usual hour-long drive up I75 and I575 to the Woodstock area, it only took about thirty minutes. We were the first to arrive.

When we arrived, Chris was working away at the stove. Katie showed up a few minutes later. We had wine and waited for everyone else to show up.

This month we are read ‘On the Road‘ by Jack Keorouck. This book wasn’t one of my favorites (Jen didn’t care a whole lot for it either), it did spark some good discussion.

kidney stone

Published on September 22, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

(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.

quick jaunt up to harrisburg

Published on September 23, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

As the sunlight peeked through the curtains in our bedroom we pleasant awoke to a beautiful Saturday morning. I encouraged us to get out of bed and head to the gym.

After a quick workout we headed home and packed for our upcoming adventure. We drove down to the airport in Jen’s super cool blue Saab. No problems at the gate or with security. The new security regulations regarding liquids are a bit annoying but we survived. On the plane we were not able to sit next to each other but I later found out that we got the last two seats on the plane.

I sat next to a soldier returning from Baghdad for a two week vacation. He said that he’s been traveling for about four days now and is almost home. He was really tired. We chatted a little about the situation in Iraq and he sounded pretty beat down about everything. Part of his job is to train the Iraqi police so that they can be self-sufficient. Unfortunately there is a lot of corruption and whenever they find good Iraqis to lead the police, they get assassinated. He seemed really frustrated about the whole situation and told me that he used to not think that it was fair to compare Iraq to Vietnam, but now he thinks otherwise.

We arrived in Harrisburg with no problems and got our rental car. A Chevy Mailbu, drove straight to Mom Mom’s house and were greeted with pleasant aroma of dinner in the oven. We sat down and caught up on all the recent gossip while sipping on some cocktails. Mom Mom knew we were avid wine drinkers but unfortunately only had on sweet light wines. We sat down to dinner of pork, green bean casserole, and sweet potato/apples and corn. Mom Mom also got us some pecan pie for dessert. We finished the evening with a game of Skip-Bo. Mom Mom wasn’t a big fan. Around 7pm we headed out to check out our hotel.

After heading out we headed down to Carlisle. We drove around for a bit and were surprised to find a college. After exploring the area we continued on to our hotel. We checked in and freshened up a bit and headed out to grab a light snack. We opted for a quick bite at a pizza joint. After our food we headed over to Borders. I purchased an extremely expensive “imported” photography magazine. Jen bought a full fledged book for a few dollars less then my magazine.

The rest of the evening was spent winding down in the hotel.

long journey back to atlanta

Published on September 24, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

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.

first time to kaiser

Published on September 25, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

It was an uneventful day at work, although I was quite tired. I left work early and went to Kaiser for the followup appointment for the kidney stone incident.

The appointment was for 4:40pm. I had a few minutes to kill so I stopped by Eckerd to check to see if they have this ‘5-hour energy drink’ that Larry keeps raving about – they did not.

I’ve never been to Kaiser before. There was no copay and the doctor saw me and we talked about stone. He didn’t have any real info but did say that he’s pretty sure that I passed. He was concerned that the ER did not give me a filter to catch it. They were supposed to do that when they discharged me.

I got home and had some tofu rubens with Jen before I left for my weekly gaming session. I did a writeup following the game.

packing for the trip

Published on September 26, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

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!

ATL-PUJ (flt #242)

Published on September 27, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Our flight today wasn’t scheduled to depart until 9:45am. For some reason Jen wanted to get up at 5:30am!? Since we packed the night before we didn’t have much to do in the morning. I remained in bed as long as possible after Jen woke up.

Eventually it was time to wake up. I was still pretty tired as this was day three of not getting enough sleep. I hope to make it up tonight. I showered and dressed and we were all ready to go.

We left the house at about 7:15am and drove down to the airport. After our negative experience with the Atlanta airport park-and-ride during our last two trips, we decided to park at ‘The Parking Spot’ this time. We made it down there in no time at all. Parking was easy and we got on a bus right away.

Once at the airport, we made our way to the newly-remodeled international check in area and had some trouble with the kiosk (they now have kiosks for international check in – cool!). A very friendly Delta agent got us checked in with no problem.

After that we went over to the E concourse and walked to gate E-34. After about an hour of waiting, they began to board the plane and gave us our seat assignments (4C & 4D).

I was a little surprised to see that they were operating an MD-88 for this flight. The ‘business class’ was actually just a standard first-class area and there was no meal service and no televisions on the 4-hour flight.

After we reached cruising altitude, I extracted the laptop from my pelican case and worked on my writeup from Monday’s game as well as my journal. I did all of this in the beta version of Word 2007. It’s really nice – especially the new anti-aliased fonts.

It took just over three hours to reach Punta Cana and the flight was uneventful. The airport looked pretty cool because it had thatched roofs and was an open-air design. Jen and I were among the first to deplane and made it through immigration and customs very quickly.

Our checked luggage was delivered in record time too. We grabbed the bag and made our way out of the airport. I found a taxi driver and we set off to the Riu Palace Punta Cana resort. It took about thirty minutes to drive there and the fare was $28.

As we drove up to the hotel, I noticed that it looked very nice in front. We unloaded from the taxi and made our way inside. It was quite lavish and looked like a palace. Checking-in was easy and we were given the room key, a safe key, and had to put on a white plastic bracelet to wear at all times.

A bellboy took us to our room and delivered our luggage. The room was really nice. It’s a ‘junior suite’ with a king-sized bed, a nice bathroom, mini-bar with drinks (including vodka, rum, brandy, and gin). The room is ‘split level’ with a living-room area on the lower level. There was a sleeper sofa, coffee table, dresser, and television. The room also had a balcony overlooking the courtyard of the hotel. In all it was quite nice.

(our hotel room at the resort)

Jen and I quickly changed out of our stuffy airplane clothes and put on shorts and sandals. We were starving so we went down to the buffet restaurant place. There was a ton of food there and it was difficult to decide what to eat. I got a mix of fruit and pasta. Jen got a bunch of fruit and cheese. They had a ton of different things to choose from. Jen was a little disappointed that there wasn’t really an option for a salad.

With some food in our bellies, we went back to the room, changed into some swimwear, and went down by the pool. The pool was really nice. There were two main sections with the smaller one being elevated and an ‘invisible edge’ design in which the water is level with the lip of the edge of the pool.

We used our special towel cards to get a couple of towels. What’s with these Caribbean places being so restrictive with the towels? Jen found a couple of chairs for us to sit at and we planted ourselves near the pool.

I busted out my iPod to listen to some hot ‘Wheel of Time’ action while Jen read her book. A short while later, the drink guy came around and took our drink order. We each had a mojito. Because drinks are included in the all-inclusive thing, I won’t go into too much detail about what we had to drink. Suffice to say that I had mostly mojitos the entire trip and Jen rotated between Gin & Tonic as well as experimented with different tropical drinks. The mojitos were actually quite good! In addition to the normal ingredients (sugar, lime, rum, mint, club soda) they also put in some sort of red alcoholic ‘bitters’ powder.

There were many more Europeans at this place than Americans. In fact I would wager that the large majority of people were from Germany. This makes sense because the resort (Riu) is German-owned.

Jen and I had a really nice time hanging out by the pool and ordering drinks (we also ordered a lot of water so as to not get too dehydrated). A guy wielding a machete came around with a wheel-barrel full of coconuts selling them for a dollar each. Never have had a real coconut before, I bought one. The guy used his machete to cut a hole in the top so that one could drink the coconut ‘juice’ out of the top. Despite my expectations, it wasn’t as good as I thought it would be.

(an old beached ship right off the coast)

We left the pool are and walked down the beach. The water was a magnificent aqua-blue and looked really nice. Jen and I walked down the length of the beach eastward for quite a while. It was quite nice.

(Jen sitting on a coconut tree at sunset)

As late afternoon approached, Jen and I left the pool area and went back to our room in order to clean up and get ready for dinner. We put on some nicer clothes and went back downstairs to the buffet restaurant to have some dinner. This resort also has some ala carte restaurants but you must make reservations in the morning and since we were not there this morning, that wasn’t an option for us.

We went down to the restaurant and sat outside. Jen and I had some red wine. I wasn’t a fan of the wine and didn’t finish my glass. For dinner I had some mashed potatoes, pizza with bacon, and some fruit & cheese. It was pretty good but I think I would get tired of it after a while.

After dinner we sat outside in the main plaza-bar area and Jen ordered both of us a cappuccino with a shot of amaretto added. It was actually bearable and pretty good. I think that Jen was excited that there is at least one way that I like coffee.

We played two games of skip-bo. Jen won both. I vowed to get revenge in a rematch tomorrow. It was pretty late and we were both tired so we went to bed.

german-speaking spanish al sharpton

Published on September 28, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

We woke up around 7am and went downstairs for breakfast at the same buffet restaurant as before. I liked breakfast. They had home-made sugar-coated doughnuts that were quite tasty. I also had some bacon, fruit, and a good muffin. Jen had a light breakfast.

After breakfast we changed and went to the workout facility. They had some weights, elliptical machines, and treadmills. Jen and I both ran on the treadmills. I forgot what it was like to work out with my large iPod instead of the shuffle.

I only worked out for about thirty minutes and left to go make reservations for us to have dinner tonight. The way the dinner reservations works is that you go get in line at 10am and select the restaurant that you want to eat at. The two reservation times are 6:30pm and 9pm. I made reservations for us to have dinner at the gourmet restaurant called ‘Oscars’ at 6:30pm tonight.

With that taken care of, we went out to the pool. This time we got some chairs closer to the bar so that the drink guy would pass us by more frequently. It was a nice day. Jen and I went swimming a lot and also hung out at the swim-up bar. Jen wanted to be adventurous and tried a bunch of tropical drinks that she’s never had before.

(Jennifer reading her book by the pool)

We split our time in the pools and on the chairs for most of the day. It was fun to play around in the pool with Jen. It was also not too crowded so there weren’t a lot of people around.

While we were hanging out in the pool, a guy came around advertising different activities. I was interested in the horseback riding and signed-up to go tomorrow morning. I was supposed to go pay for it today but by the time we went to the hut where you pay, they were already closed. We’ll try again for tomorrow or Saturday.

(fisheye view from where I was sitting by the pool)

After spending the day at the pool, Jen and I went back to our room to shower and get cleaned up to go out to dinner tonight. We went down to ‘Oscars’ at 6:30pm and it was nice. They gave Jen a rose and seated us at a table in the back. The restaurant was a lot smaller than I imagined. We both had the steak and I thought it was very good.

Once we finished dinner, we sat outside in the plaza bar area again and played skip-bo. I won the first game and was quite excited about my win. It looked as if it might rain soon so Jen and I headed into the bar inside a theater area with a stage.

We continued our skip-bo game and Jen noticed that the group of people next to us were also playing Skip-bo! She was so excited about this that she talked with them and found out that there is also another German couple playing skipbo too. Three different groups of people playing Skipbo at the resort – what are the odds?

On the main stage, the ‘show’ started and it was quite a sight to behold. A guy who looked exactly like a Spanish Al Sharpton came on the stage and called up random couples to participate in a game. He spoke in German. It was quite surreal.

He had each couple on stage dance to a German waltz and then some old-school American Rock & Roll music. I loved the fact that he was speaking Spanish-sounding German but looked just like Al Shaprton.

Once the ‘competition’ was over, another guy came out. He was the lounge singer. Behind him came six dancing girls dressed in pink spandex jumpsuits who danced while he sang different songs. This went on for several hours.

A couple of older guys were sitting at the table in front of us with two attractive young women. Jen told me that she thought that they were escorts because they looked like natives and the old guys definitely looked like tourists. One of the old guys looked just like John Kerry which I thought was pretty funny.

Jen loved it. It got a little repetitive for me. But fortunately Jen was so fixated on the scene that she didn’t pay enough attention to her skip-bo game and I defeated her again. I finally won two games and was very happy.

The show winded down at 11pm (thankfully it didn’t go all night) and we left to retire to our room.

hanging out under palm trees on the beach

Published on September 29, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I set the alarm early today because I wanted to go down by the beach and photograph the sunrise. I hit the snooze button a few time and finally gave up. I wasn’t going to wake up to go see the sunrise. I did, however, get up around 7:30am and walked over to the beach hut to see if they were open in hopes of salvaging our horseback-riding trip. They were not open. I went back to the room and crawled into bed.

Jen and I slept in and went down to breakfast around 9am. After breakfast we walked over to the place to make dinner reservations and signed-up to have dinner at the Japanese restaurant called ‘Yokohama’ for 9pm.

We went back to the room and got changed into our swimwear. I wanted to spend some time at the beach today since we were at the pool the last two days.

After some searching around, Jen and I found a set of chairs under some palm trees on the beach. I loved it. You could see & hear the waves crashing as well as see the gorgeous aqua-blue water. Jen and I played in the water and had a great time. It was really quite nice.

(view of the trees above where we were sitting on the beach)

The surf was all sandy so there was no real place to go snorkeling but we did see a boat with the label ‘snorkel taxi’ which I presume will take you to some nice reef area to go snorkeling.

(view of the ocean from where we were sitting on the beach)

Because the majority of guests at this place are European, there were a fair number of women who were topless. This seemed to inspire Jen and she went topless too. She said that she liked it – especially when the wind blew.

Jen and I also signed up for some horseback riding tomorrow morning at 8:45am. We paid in cash so we were set to go tomorrow.

After hanging out at the beach for a good-portion of the day, we went back to the pool area and spent some time at the pool. Jen really likes the swim-up bar. I wanted to go to the beach so we headed back to the beach a little while.

I had too many mojitos and sort of passed out while laying on the chair on the beach. The sun started to go down and Jen woke me up and we went back to our room.

(Jen took this photo of me as I sat by the pool after having a lot of mojitos)

I was really tired but Jen convinced me that we should go out and get some coffee. So we went out to the plaza bar area and sat outside. We each had two cappuccinos with a shot of amaretto and it was very good. This woke me up. We played some more skipbo and I defeated Jen again. I was so excited.

Next we had a vey light snack of cheese and crackers from the buffet restaurant while we waited for our 9pm dinner reservation. While we snaked Jen tried some cabernet but didn’t care much for it.

Finally it was around 9pm and we went to the ‘Yokohama’ restaurant to have our dinner. It was quite thematic with a very Japanese feel. The sushi wasn’t that good mainly due to the rice tasting old. Jen ordered the chicken and I ordered the steak. It wasn’t as good as last night, but it was still a nice experience.

I think the themed restaurants are a lot like the same themed restaurants in Epcot at Disney World. In fact, a lot of this place feels like a theme park. Jen told me that it felt a lot like a cruise ship but only nicer. I think that we’ve been spoiled by going to places like Kauai and the ultra-fancy resort in Cabo.

Because of the two cups of coffee, I had a hard time falling asleep and didn’t sleep until about 12:30am.

ghetto horseback riding

Published on September 30, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

This morning I actually got up at 6:30am and went out to go photograph the sunrise down by the beach. It was early enough that the sun wasn’t up when I got outside. As I walked down by the pool there weren’t really anyone around.

(view of the hotel courtyard grounds at sunrise)

There was, however, this one lady wearing a bikini was posing by the pool. It was so odd because the sun wasn’t really out. She had a DSLR mounted on a tripod and was taking a lot of pictures of herself by the pool.

I went down to the beach and got some photos just as the sun was coming up. To my horror, the photos were coming out foggy. It turns out that it is so humid that my 15mm fisheye lens was fogged over due to the extreme temperature & humidity change going from the hotel room to the outside. I had to wait for the lens to warm up before I could clean it off and take some photos.

(this is what it was like with the fogged-up lens)

With the fogging problems solved I had a great time photographing the sunrise over the beach. I haven’t taken many photos this trip so it was nice to get out and do some serious shooting this morning.

(the beach at sunrise)

(another view of the beach at sunrise)

About thirty minutes later I headed back to the room. On the way I saw the bikini-lady still out by the pool photographing herself (about thirty minutes later) – strange.

I went back to the room and saw that Jen was getting up too. We lounged around some and then got changed to go on our horseback-riding expedition. We walked over to the lobby of the Riu Bamboo? Hotel and caught a ride on a truck which reminded Jen and I of a troop-carrier. We were the only patrons going out today it seems.

The truck ride took about thirty minutes and the two guys took us to a little ranch somewhere else on the island. It seemed a little sketchy but then again I’ve never seen horseback riding in the Dominican Republic before so I’m sure it was all normal. The main guy, the guide, had us wait behind while he talked with the ranch-owners in a low voice.

After a bit he brought out a horse and told Jen and I in a hushed voice how to operate the horse (i.e. move the reigns to the left to turn left, etc). It seemed pretty odd that he spoke in a low voice around the ranch owners.

(Jennifer mounted on the horse at the ranch)

Finally we mounted up and headed out. It was the guide-guy, Jen and I. We rode a ways down a duty road and finally came upon a littered beach. It was pretty fun to be riding a horse again – especially on the beach. The trail ride lasted only about an hour.

(Jen and I on the beach during our horseback ride)

We made it back to the ranch and dismounted. I was pretty saddle-sore even though it was only about an hour. I don’t know how those guys in ‘Texas Ranch House’ were able to work in a saddle all day long.

Jen and I loaded back up in the troop-carrier truck and were off. We had to stop at some junk-shop (gift store place) for about ten minutes. I think the horseback riding tour guy had some sort of arrangement with them to bring people by every time they have a tour.

A young guy named ‘John’ greeted us and it became apparent that he was our personal shopper. He showed us some sort of male potency herbal thing. Sadly Jen and I weren’t interested in buying anything. I bought a couple of post-cards for $1.

We went back to the hotel and quickly showered and packed. I called the front desk to make arrangements to have a taxi meet us at 12:30pm to take us to the airport.

When we checked out, the taxi was waiting for us so we left. It took about thirty minutes to get to the hotel. The taxi-driver reminded me of Larry because he did crazy driving maneuvers by passing cars with barely enough time to get back into our late.

Once at the airport, we checked-in and were told to wait twenty minutes for our seat assignments. Jen and I waited twenty minutes and then got our seat assignments for 4A & 4B. Two large tour buses arrived and a lot of German’s piled off and went straight to the customs and security area so we had to wait quite a while in line in order to get through security.

As we went through security the guard had a hard time with our boarding passes and seemed unsure that they were really boarding passes. After he studied them for what seemed like an eternity, he let us pass – strange.

We made our way through security and into the terminal. It reminded me a whole lot of the terminal area in Cabo. It was nicer than the St. Maarten airport. Jen and I were hot and thirsty. We got a liter of water and ate an apple while we waited.

Finally it was time to board. We were in zone 1 since we had business-class seats. Once we boarded, we had to wait about thirty minutes for the rest of the passengers to board. Eventually the plane departed and we left Punta Cana.

For the duration of the flight, Jen read a book while I worked on my laptop. The flight attendant guy knew that my seniority date was just three weeks ago and made a comment about this. I told him that I had actually been with Delta for eight years but since I left for six months, my seniority date was reset.

The rest of the flight was uneventful and pretty nice. I worked on my laptop the entire flight and had a few crown & cokes. The flight attendant came by a few times to give us more snacks – I love those sun chips!

After we arrived in Atlanta and deplaned, I was shocked to see an extremely long line in the immigrations area. In over a dozen times going through immigrations I’ve never seen it so bad. However despite the line being long, we proceeded through it very quickly. The INS agent asked me where I worked and when I told him Delta, he asked to see my ID. That’s never happened to me before.

The wacky way Atlanta is set up is that when you arrive from an international destination, you must claim your luggage, go through customs, and then re-check your luggage. You do this even if you are leaving the airport which is really frustrating because it adds more delays to have to claim your luggage twice.

Getting to our car was a lot easier with the ‘Parking Spot‘ company than it was with the atlanta park & ride. I think we’ll continue to use the Parking Spot because it is faster and cheaper. They also give you a beverage when you leave. Jen and I were both thirsty and left with two bottles of water – how nice!

As we hit the road we discussed dinner. We were both pretty hungry and I decided that we’ll go to Orient Express. We drove up to Vinings and parked at Orient Express. It was a nice night outside so we decided to sit outside. Jen and I had a delightful time. I was also a lot more hungry than I thought. We had some pot stickers to start with. I had a ginger salad and then ate most of Jen’s hot & sour soup. After that I had the ‘Ninja Roll’ (about eight pieces and quite good!) and six nigiri. I loved it all and was sufficiently stuffed by the time we left.

After dinner Jen and I went home and unpacked. I checked email and noticed that google reader was updated with a really nice new interface. I was actually thinking about switching to another RSS reader service but don’t need to now.