DAN’S BLOG

Right now I am blogging from a moving RV, flying down Interstate 10 through Benson AZ. We left home yesterday on our 2 week trip to and from Texas. It’s just Mom, Dad, and me in the RV on our way to visit Steve and Sudi for Thanksgiving. I’ll be shooting video with me new Canon HG20 HD camcorder. Editing will be difficult because my P4 3GHz HT laptop processor is too slow to grind AVCHD video in realtime. Here’s some pics. SO far it’s been mostly rocks and cacti. Today we stopped at a date farm and got date shakes. They were tasty!

Today was my last day at work here in Little Rock. I am flying home tomorrow morning. I ended my day the same way I began my first day, by ordering a pizza from DAMGOODE PIES. LOL. It was goode. A few days ago my coworker Jason and I went to Mimi’s Cafe for lunch. It’s an interesting place with an ecliptic sort of French / New Orleans theme. Below is a picture of the electric tourist trolly that runs the tracks around down town and past my hotel. Today was rainy. I hope tomorrow’s weather is better.
A couple days ago I discovered that my room does in fact have a closet with hangars!!! It’s behind the tall mirror! It was very well hidden. I found it while in the shower. I was taking a shower when it occurred to me that my bathroom was an odd shape and that the wall beside the shower mush have a void in it. I got out, pulled on the mirror, Poof! Closet! Gee too bad I didn’t find it sooner. LOL. In other news, I learned that Samsung/Sprint finally released Windows Mobile 6.1 for my Samsung ACE phone. There are many improvements in 6.1 that 6.0 doesn’t have, including GPS enabled for applications like google maps, picture mail, fancy new themes, MS Word/Excel/PowerPoint and more! I tried installing the upgrade via my laptop and it failed. I tried it on my work laptop and it also failed. My phone got all messed up too. The phone still worked but the keypad was totally locked out. I could not even answer incoming calls because the answer button didn’t work! I did a hard reset to restore the phone to normal and then the next day Jason had me try the upgrade using his Vista laptop. That worked perfectly. So… um… Cough..Vista fixed my phone. I feel dirty.
See you all at home.

Well, here’s a little update for you all.

Here are some pictures of the NSOC I snuck in. They’ve got the big screens just like we have at work but their cubes are a lot smaller than my old cube was. Of course I don;t have a cube anymore, just a desk, so there’s that. LOL.

These pics are from lunch one day when my coworkers Greg from San Diego, and Ben from Little Rock, went out to lunch. The place is called the Flying Saucer. I can’t imagine why! The last food photo there is from a fancy steak restaurant Greg and I went to for dinner another night. I think it’s the most expensive steak place around. It was almost $100 for the both of us. Though there were plates that easily reached the $50 to $60 range I think.

My personal Laptop did not enjoy the flight over. It was fine the first day but on the second day my screen began to cut out. It would shutdown after a couple minutes. I found that putting it at 50% brightness caused it to stay on indefinitely. So I figured this is a sign that my back light inverter is going bad. I ordered a new one for $10 on eBay and had it shipped right to my hotel. Using borrowed screwdrivers from someone at work, I took apart my screen and replaced the inverter. At first it seemed to work, but when I tapped on it the screen began flickering really fast and making a buzzing sound. Also the bottom right corner of the LCD panel’s metal frame became really hot. Upon further dissection, I found that the high voltage wire leading to one end of the CCFL tube had a cold soldier joint and it pulled straight out of the rubber insulator. Not having a soldiering iron around, I stripped the wire and shoved as much of it as I could in there. It’s working great now that there is no arcing going on. If it acts up again later I will have to do some more surgery and soldering.

Final story. Last night I was sound asleep, and at about 5AM I was awoken by a beeping sound. At first I thought I had set my alarm clock wrong. Then I got up and realized that it was the fire alarm! I looked out my window and didn’t see any fire trucks or crowds. I checked out my room door and the hallway, although loud with the screech of the fire alarm, was not on fire and there was no smoke. I went and quickly put on my shirt, shoes, Black Berry, and grabbed my wallet. Then I took the stairs from the 5th floor to the 1st floor where I gathered a small crew of other guests along the way. The stairs end outside and we walked around the building and reentered into the lobby. There I found ab out 30 or so guests and the Hotel employees told us that someone had opened an alarmed fire door which set off the alarm. They turned off the alarm and told us we could go back to bed. The only problem was the elevators had automatically turned off and the door to the stairs requires a key form the lobby floor. SO we all sat there for about 5 or 10 minutes while they got someone to turn the Elevators back on. Wasn’t that fun!!!

Here’s some more pictures from yesterday and today. I have been going in to work at noon and staying until late, like 10 and 11PM. This is so I can train both day and night shift people. I’m a little tired this morning because the night shift guy called me at 6AM with a question and I was not able to fall back asleep after that.
After my usual complementary breakfast, I checked my e-mail using my complementary internet, and then I went out for a walk. I wandered around a few blocks and down to the river. On my way back to the Hotel I picked up a frozen item from Copper Grill and Grocery. Looks to be some kind of spicy spaghetti. That place must be good because it was filled with construction workers from a nearby construction site. I’m keeping my frozen dish in my fridge for a late night meal. It’s hard to find open restaurants around here at 10PM. Good thing I have that Fridge and Microwave.

I am on a business trip for work from today Sunday November 2nd to Thursday November 13th. Today I flew out from San Diego where I caught a connecting flight in Dallas Fort Worth to here in Little Rock Arkansas. The flights weren’t too long compared to the first time I flew, Which was a nonstop LAX to Heathrow London! The first flight was on time. The second was delayed a short while for mechanical maintenance. Once in Little Rock I picked up a Hertz rental car and used the Magellan GPS that I brought along to find my way to the Hotel. Magellan succeeded in getting me a little lost but I did find the place. Going in to work shouldn’t be too hard since it is only a few blocks straight down the road. This Hampton is real nice and real empty! Their parking garage is still under construction. The Hotel only opened up early October. I don’t think they have many guests here at all. I’ve only seen the lady at the front desk, the bellboy, one other guest at check in, then the other guest again when going back to my car for my stuff, then the other guest again when we both happened to go downstairs to ask about where to find food. I ordered pizza for delivery from a place called “DAMGOODE PIES”. Hahaha. Their hold music was custom made for them as well with a guy singing about how good their DAMGOODE PIES are. Here’s some pics.

This past Saturday a bunch of us went up to The Edison in L.A. The Edison is a bar and lounge built inside Downtown L.A.’s first private power plant. It still has all the boilers and generators inside! It’s full of historic items and old decor. We drove up there at 6PM. When we stopped by, they told us that there was a private event going on and to come back at 8PM. So we had dinner at a nearby pizza place. It was very delicious. We ordered a group package that consisted of 3 pizzas, a pasta, and a salad. Afterward we spent more of our free time in a Japanese book store and a small coffee shop. Finally it was time to go back to The Edison. We managed to slip in without them requiring a $20 per person cover charge. It must have been our period specific garb. I found The Edison to be very cool and I loved the atmosphere. We managed to get 4 small tables and push them together. Soon after we arrived, the place filled up rapidly. Most seats were reserved ahead of time. You will notice birthday boy, Scott, there enjoying a 30-year-old Scotch… (cough)$75(cough). The music was real interesting though towards the end of the evening I didn’t like how loud it got in there with the music and so many people talking loudly. Here’s some cool photos. It was real dark so photos were difficult, though some came out superb!

The Rally Races that is! On Saturday 9/27/08, Dave, Jason, and I came along with Scott to watch Scott race his blue Subaru STI around a dirt rally course. It was quite a blast. This was the first time that the event holders had a race at this particular location in Chula Vista. I’ve never been to one before. So there’s two firsts. Blue Subaru STI’s must be real popular because there were 4 or 5 of them there! Spectators were few in numbers which provided for a very layed back day. In all there were probably 30 to 40 cars racing. They ranged from a rented red mustang to a little old Ford Fiesta. The course started off mostly flat and dry. They had a water truck wet it down at times to keep dust to a minimum. As the day went on lots of big rocks surfaced on the course which made it extremely bumpy and somewhat hazardous to paint jobs. The worst damage to Scott’s car was a couple dings on his rims. However one car tore it’s entire front fender liner out and another lost a rear bumper. Then there was the car that lost its front right wheel when it ripped off the hub which still was bolted onto the car. Dave, Jason, and I got loaner helmets and got to go around the track as passengers with Scott. Fun fun. Here’s some pics.

I’m doing a little construction in my server room. I shutdown all the servers today to move things around. Here’s some pics of what the new server room looks like and of me removing my old rack to bring to my new house. I replaced it with a smaller temporary rack.