Brief Recount

I should write at greater length, but I'm tired and hoping to get a full night's sleep.

Yesterday was a lot of running around. We visited my nephew at Tiger Direct, where he now works. In the evening we also walked around some upscale shops in Raleigh before having some delicious pizza at the Mellow Mushroom.

This morning we were up bright and early to go watch my niece perform with her community volunteer group. The group she is in will be performing children's shows at libraries, schools, and the like. This morning's performance was an informal 'inaugural' performance of How the Grinch Stole Christmas and was delightful. In the Spring they will be performing shorter pieces adapted from Shel Silverstein works as well as works from other writers.

We've also spent a lot of time exploring the PS3 and having a good time with it. I logged into the new Playstation Home service and explored it. There's not much there now, but it should be a killer app in the future. We also downloaded tons of game demos and checked them out. Keep your eyes open for some 'little' games called The Last Guy and Pixel Junk Eden, which we all enjoyed for their innovative and addicting game play.

That's about it for tonight. I really need to get some sleep! Tomorrow I'm looking forward to meeting up with my friend Perry, a fellow comic whom I havent seen for  few years.

"Games lubricate the body and mind."— Benjamin Franklin

National Lampoon's North Carolina Vacation

And what a wonderful day it was!

Woke up, fell out of bed, and dragged a comb across my head at 2:30 AM in anticipation of Super Shuttle calling to tell me they'd be around early. A couple minutes before 4 AM, I went outside to wait. I expected, having not shown up early, they would at least show up on time. Silly me. Shortly before 4:30 AM I called and asked where my shuttle was. After 10 minutes on hold, I was told the shuttle would be around in twenty minutes and would take me alone directly to the airport. No worries, I thought, there's still time. Twenty minutes went by and instead of a shuttle appearing I got an automated phone call saying that the driver was fifteen minutes away. It was more like twenty, but he did get me to the airport with time to run through security and check-in.

An hour or so into my flight to Hotlanta it occured to me that I had no boarding pass for my connecting flight. I was due to arrive in Hotlanta at 2 PM and fly out agin at 8 PM. (Not my fault. Delta moved my first flight up 5 hours after it was booked.) I began to wonder if I was going to have to retrieve my bag and re-check in for the second flight. So, upon arriving, I talked to a ticketing agent and he assured me that my bag would go to Raleigh with me. I also asked if I could get on an earlier flight. He put me on standby for a flight at 4:20 PM.

I located the gate and waited for the flight to start boarding. I was first on the standby list. Shortly before boarding, the agent at this gate announced that the flight was full and there would be no standby passengers on the flight. In fact, when I talked to him he said that I should just get on my originally scheduled flight because the flights to RDU were all booked solid. On a hunch, however, I waited. I don't know if they all do it now, but Delta has a monitor showing the status of all standby passengers, upgraders, etc. It also shows whether or not there are empty or untaken seats. When all the passengers had boarded, there was still one unclaimed seat and I was the only person on the standby list. I asked him about it and he scribbled a seat number down for me and let me board.  *phew*

The flight to Raleigh was a little over an hour, and when we landed the weather was nasty. In fact, the guy sitting next to me said he was surprised they let us land because of the severe storm and tornado warnings in the area! But I was on the ground in Raleigh, and my brother was waiting for me. That was all that mattered... until my bag didn't show up on the carousel. Turns out my bag never left Hotlanta— as I had expected. As I write this, we just got in from a Midnight run to Wal-Mart so I would have something to wear tomorrow.

It can only get better from here, right?

"A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving."— Lao Tzu

Leavin' On A Jet Plane

Once again I write these words mere hours before I'm to get on a plane and fly across country. That is the level of dedication I have! I'll finish this post about 10 PM and the alarm is set to ring at 2:30 AM. Lat time around, I was scheduled to be picked up between 3:45 and 4:00 AM so I set my alarm for 3 AM. However, at 2:30 AM I received a phone call saying the shuttle would arrive in 45 minutes. Surprise! (And it arrived in almost exactly 45 minutes.) This time I intend to get a jump on them. My scheduled pickup time is 4 AM, but I intend to be ready by 3. Ugh.

I am not looking forward to the first leg of my flight. Because Delta's hub is in Hotlanta, I have to make one really long flight from Ontario to Hotlanta. I am going to be so stiff and sore by the time I arrive. I have a window seat and hope I can make the entire flight without getting up. (Although, I know you're supposed to get up a stretch if possible.)

Everything is packed and tomorrow morning I only have to throw some toiletries in my shaving kit and then throw the kit in my bag.

Since I'm taking my laptop, I should be able to post a couple times while I'm away. Stay tuned!

Ache, Rattle, and Blow

I can only assume that this will be the first of many posts that begin with the phrase "I awoke with one of my bad headaches today". And it was a doozy too. They start small, a dull ache that invades my morning dreams. When I awake with one of these headaches I know there's a fifty-fifty chance of getting rid of it before it gets bad. Usually popping some ibuprofen and going through my morning ablutions is enough to determine how it's going to go. If it's not gone by the time I'm finished, then it's going to be with me half a day or longer. This morning I was not lucky. I couldn't shake the headache. I also couldn't eat anything and had no caffeine around. After staying up for a couple hours, I grew overwhelmingly tired and went back to bed. I slept a few more hours, fitfully, and awoke with my head throbbing worse than before. But, I made myself stay up, and made myself get a big Pepsi from 7-11. Sipping the caffeine and popping another dosage of ibuprofen eventually broke the pain and got me hungry. After eating, it went entirely away.

One of the reasons I got the headache was probably due to the winds that started up last night. They blew all night and hammered my house through the first half of the afternoon. By early evening they had finally abated.

And, to top things off, there was a nice earthquake this afternoon just before 4:30. (Click this link to read the USGS report.) Even those of you in southern California may not have felt it because it wasn't very big, but I felt it because it turned out to be a mile or so from my house. It was fairly quick and I felt no swaying— just a quick jolt. There don't appear to have been any sizeable aftershocks either.

I discovered that I under-reported the setup time on my laptop by an hour because this evening I remembered to run updates from Microsoft. 70 were found and installed and then another 7 optional ones were found subsequently. That added another hour to my official setup time. On the plus side though, I received the case that I ordered from Amazon and it's nicer than I expected. It's largely neoprene, very slim, and very light. I also received the 16GB flash drive that I ordered for use as a backup and synchronizing device between the laptop and my desktop.

Out of curiosity, I logged onto Starbucks website to check out their wifi options. I know they've been offering some deals. Turns out if you register one of your Starbucks cards and use it at least once a month, you can get two free consecutive hours of free wifi usage a day. That's a good deal and not that hard to keep up on— particularly since I already have a registered card that I use at least once a week or so. I don't intend to use my laptop much for communication and web browsing, but it's nice to know I can use it for such when I'm away from home.

In about 27 hours I'll be leaving home again and heading out to Raleigh, North Carolina, this time to visit my brother and his family. I'm very excited about the trip and wish it were going to be longer than 4 days. (They are all very busy!) I wasn't going to take my laptop, but now I've decided to bring it so I can keep up on my email, etc.

Well, that's about it for my mundane Tuesday. Back soon.

"I was married once— in San Francisco. I haven't seen her for many years. The great earthquake and fire in 1906 destroyed the marriage certificate. There's no legal proof. Which proves that earthquakes aren't all bad."— W. C. Fields

It's That Kind of Neighborhood

I meant to write last night— in fact, my goal is to post every day— but something happened next door. A couple times late yesterday night I heard loud reports from down the street. They sounded like gunshots to me, but they could have been anything loud. The first one was from quite a distnace down the street, and the second one, an hour or so later sounded like it was a block or two away. Then, sometime after midnight, I was playing WoW and I heard a car idling what seemed to be a few houses away. Since I frequently hear cars idling to drop off or pick up people at all hours of the day and night, I didn't think anything of it. But, after a minute or so of idling there was a another very loud report coming from very close to my place. It was followed by the tinkling of glass, and my first thought was that someone threw a bottle at one of the street signs nearby. Immediately afterwards I heard the car speed off.

Since these kinds of random events happen a lot in this neighborhood and are impossible really to track down, I rarely see the deputies come around afterwards. I don't even expect to see them any more. But, last night, about 15 minutes later I heard another car pull up and idle on the side of the road. Expecting another 'attack' I made myself go outside so I could grab a look at the car and maybe catch the license plate. To my surprise, however, there were two county deputy cruisers parked along the street in front of the house immediately behind me. (It's the house I used to share with Dale a long time ago.) Over the next hour a few more cops and deputies arrived and departed, but there was no overt activity. I heard voices, but couldn't make out what anyone was saying. (I stayed in my house the whole time.) This morning when I left my house, I was going to drive around the corner and take a look, but I forgot. My guess is that a car window got shot out or something.

That is what passes for excitement these days.   :/

Yesterday morning I spent about two hours configuring my new laptop. Those of you who know me through work may be surprised to learn this, but I fucking hate configuring new computers. It's so slow, and I have done it way too many times. To the manufacturers' credit though it's much easier these days than in days past. Of the two hours I spent, one hour of that time was just letting the virus checker complete an initial scan. Everything else went quickly. I added a wireless laser mouse because I hate laptop touch pads. I also added a few utilities, such as Google's Chrome browser. The official Vista rating is 3.0, which is not that great, but I have no problems with it yet.

Today I did some Christmas and birthday shopping. Thankfully I have the opportunity this year to hit the stores while most people are at work. I was able to get everything done quickly. The worst part of the shopping was picking a couple cards out at the Hallmark store. Hallmark seems to have abandoned the non-singing, non-gimicky cards. I spent more at the card shop than on some of the gifts.

By now the newness of my blog has worn off and the mundane-ness has worn in. I doubt there's anyone reading anymore so I won't exhort for comments.

"Win or lose, we go shopping after the election."— Imelda Marcos

Uncle John Goes to the Parade

I may be too tired to write anything of interest tonight, but since I skipped yesterday...

Tonight I had the distinct pleasure of watching the Redlands Christmas parade. Pat called me this afternoon to tell me about the parade and I leaped at the opportunity. Like I've said a few times, I get so bored. There was no way I could turn down his invitation.

I watched this parade in a previous year. Katie, Pat and Lisa's older daughter is a girl scout and her troop walks in the parade. On that occassion I joined their family on a very cool evening and Katie walked by us without any of us seeing her. Tonight I wore a sweatshirt and a jacket for what turned out to be tee shirt weather. (In fact, at one point I pointed out to Pat and Mike that the rest of the country would be decidedly angry at us for watching a Christmas parade in tee shirts.) Tonight Jessica was also old enough to walk with her girl scout troop. And, since Lisa is now an official troop assistant, she also walked. So it was just Pat and Mike and I watching the parade this year... and both Jessica and Katie got by us without any of us seeing her. (We did, however, see Lisa, who spotted us first and pointed out that she seemed to be in charge of wheeling unknown children through the parade.)

In addition to girl scouts, there were several troops of boy scouts, the city mayor, several council members, old muscle cars, various charity organizations, and all the local schools of every level in attendance. I expected to see tractors, but I guess there's just not enough agriculture left in or around Redlands for farm machinery.

After all the girl scouts walked by and we confirmed that we'd somehow missed the girls again, Pat and I split for the car. On the way back, Lisa called and said that she and the girls were ready to be picked up. Perfect timing. Dinner was at Famous Dave's BBQ a few minutes later. Yum!

My other event of the day was buying a laptop. I've been pricing and speccing them for the last month or so. With my severance check in the bank, I wanted to finally make the purchase. I expected, however, to delay until returning from North Carolina next week, but on a whim I went into Office Depot. There I found a nice Compaq that was $749 but which had— today only— an instant rebate of $250, bringing the price to $499. That was in my price range. I added a wireless laser mouse, and looked for a carrying case, but I'll have to get that elsewhere. I believe I got a good deal.

Well, I haven't been nearly as amusing or snarky as I'd like to be tonight. Guess I'm just too tired.

"Campaign behavior for wives: Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Lean back in the parade car so everybody can see the president."— Eleanor Roosevelt