Category: General

Things so normal as to not fit neatly into any other area.

Categories
General Rants Travel Work

Thoughts on CES and Such

I have just about recovered from the ordeal that is getting ready for, staging, shipping, demonstrating, and tearing down a full show load out for CES.  I can’t say that I enjoyed it, or that I’d volunteer to do as much work again, but I’m glad its all done.

Severe pain came from the logistics of getting people (namely me) and equipment (some 80+ boxes of it) to and from the show.  As the largest single event in Las Vegas, CES is uniquely positioned to stress out every part of the infrastructure needed to travel, house, transport, and sustain a group of nearly 200,000 people for a week.  As much as I dislike the driving situation in the Bay Area, I now have to thank Las Vegas and their elegant street construction planning for reminding me of how much fun driving 5 MPH for an hour can be.

I now get to start planning for the next series of events, customer contacts, and traveling.  One can only hope that things go smoother the next time around.  A little less smoky smell and a lot more sleep per day can’t hurt, either.

Categories
General House Rants

Holiday Downtime, Drivers, and Renewals Oh My

After a short 3 days and change in OK, plus a day and a half in Tahoe, I get a short rest in San Jose for the next week.  Well, that isn’t really true, as I must now scramble to get all of the work done to make it to CES this coming weekend and all next week.  But at least for today it seemed a bit more subdued than usual, or maybe I’m just not sure what to call the time you have outside of work.

What did get me wondering about stuff is the temperature at the house, which is hovering in the 65F area and can’t seem to recover from that range.  Perhaps its from a week of having the heater turned off, but the poor thermostat just can’t seem to catch up to the temperature/time settings as they arrive on schedule.  In the meantime I’ll be wearing my fleece, thank you very much.

On the heavily annoying side of things are drivers who clearly don’t understand where they are or what they are doing, thus preventing me from making to or from any location in my usual speed and grace (which is to say I provide neither).  I’m not sure, but it seems that during the holidays people must fly to the Bay Area and drive around like lost, drunken lemmings just to spite me.

Finally I am spanked again for not having all of my end of the year memberships done.  I went to the R/C field to fly today and my membership in that club wasn’t completed, so I was sidelined.  I come home to find my AAA membership expired, and I’m sure all of my magazine and professional organization memberships have lapsed as well.  Can’t any of these things be setup on auto-pay?

Categories
General Travel

On the Track with the C6

I had the opportunity this past Thursday to go out to a real, honest to goodness race track and do some laps with the C6. This is the first time either I or the car has seen a track, so it was a lot of new-ness all around.

The track was Thunderhill and it was truly in the middle of nowhere, nearly 3 hours away (by my driving) from home. The track was full of twists, turns, and straight-aways and provided more proof that I have a much more powerful car than I am a capable driver. It was humbling to see so many cars blasting around the track at speeds far greater than I could hope to acheive in one short day.

It was a good experience and I should probably go again, but I think I’ll need some professional instruction first. This time was interesting, but with help I’ll bet I could to a lot more. I certainly now know that my car can do more.

C6 on the track

Categories
General Rants

Lost Wallets

I had the occasion last night and this morning to have completely lost my wallet.  This led to several panicked phone calls (sorry Steve and Paul) and a lot of tearing up the house.  In the end, I cancelled all my credit cards, my ATM card, and lost my Social Security card, requiring calls to replace them all.

I rarely lose things of such great value, but this time around I just sucked.  Moments after I put the call in on all these items I found my wallet, wedged into a small opening between the passenger seat and the rail it slides on near the carpet in the car.  This sucked, as I then had to go to the bank and watch them laugh at me for having the card they cancelled, then getting issued a new one while they cut up the old one.

I really do have to remember to put everything back in the right place when I’m done travelling, lest this incident become more commonplace and a lot more nerve wracking in the future.

Categories
General Travel Work

Lost in the Netherlands

On stop 2 of my long work trip I managed to get seriously lost driving from Amsterdam to Eindhoven in the Netherlands.  This seems to be a pattern with me and going places for work stuff these days: get off the plane, get in a rental car, drive around lost for hours.

In this case the rental car was a super crappy Mercedes A class mini-econo-box with a stick shift and a top speed of 130kph.  I did eventually make it to my hotel around midnight for a meeting the next morning at 9am.  But I proceeded to get lost searching for the next hotel in Amsterdam, so it seems that my navigation skills are sadly lacking.  Ditto on reading Norse road signs.

Categories
General Humor Travel

Nuggets of Strange Wisdom

I have been flying around quite a bit recently for the job and found that if I sit quietly in the cab or bus to and from the airport I can pick up on some remarkable gems from the local population. On tap from this weeks trip is this little nugget:

Don’t marry an American woman. They expect too much and are just too hard to deal with. I’m 56, retired, and moving to Thailand. Those are the women to have. My girlfriend is 26 and she’s thankful for the little things. That’s how a woman is supposed to be. And boy does it get the blood rushing again, if you know what I mean, even for an old guy like me.

This really isn’t my type of advice, but someone out there might find it useful.  Feel free to discuss it with your significant other and let me know how that goes.

Categories
General Rants Work

Commercial Flight Suckage

Again today I had to take a flight somewhere for just the day, then return home.  And again the wonderful TSA had to find a way to make it miserable.  In San Jose they have so few checkpoints that the line to get into the waiting area was out the door.  They also had only small paper signs telling people what could or couldn’t be taken on planes, so of course many people missed those signs and then got combatitive at the checkpoints.

On the way back, in Burbank’s airport, for an unknown reason all TSA checkpoints were shut down for at least 30 mins.  The national guard was on hand to randomly pick people for extra searches.  No explanation was given, but eventually the lines moved again, but not soon enough for a group of people to completly miss their flights to Phoenix, then get angry at the gate agent.

Thanks again TSA!  You’re the reason why we’ll all be traveling by bus in the not so distant future.

Categories
Flying General Rants

Birthday Day Stress and Lesson 5

The day started off a little rough, with an early awakening for a conference call, and didn’t really get much better from then on out. Yes, its my birthday, and my mother’s birthday, and now Steve and April’s newest born’s birthday. And sadly, it is also Ben Affleck’s birthday too. That was a real downer to learn about.

I did manage to sneak out of the office a little bit early and get in another flying lesson. This time it was all about not paying attention to the gauges and just “feeling” the plane. Good thing too, as the sky was busy with all sorts of other planes. In the end, I got a bit frazzled and really mucked up the landing, and made errors on the radio so that the tower people were confused, I’m sure.

Why is it that we celebrate birthday’s again? I think I’ll go sleep, then fly to LA in the morning, and think about it.

Categories
Flying General

Full Scale Flight

After three tries at it I believe I’m now committed enough create a new category for my newest activity: learning to fly.

This Saturday I flew with an instructor in a Citbabria trainer around the Western SF bay area. According to the instructor, I’m “a natural” and he kept asking me “have you done this before?” These are his words, not mine. Evidently I don’t suck, is what he is saying.

That’s good, because learning to fly takes time and money. And I’d hate to suck at it and not know that until a good chunk of my savings were gone. Luckily, it looks like I can just concentrate on not sucking and leave the rest of my worries til a later date.

Wish me luck.

Citabria

Categories
General Humor Rants

Friendly Reminder: I'm A White Guy

It seems that I keep forgetting that I am a lanky white guy.  This week I decided to go to lunch with some of the old NVIDIA co-workers at a local Indian food restaurant.  The food was good and I was careful to pick things I knew I could handle.  Or so I thought. When

I got back to work things seemed to be heating up just a bit in my stomach.  Then, of the course of a few hours, that spicy chicken got into a shouting match with my breakfast and things just went downhill from there.  Two days later I was still feeling the burn. I

I guess I’m not curry compatible.  Which is a shame, because that’s some good food.