Day 4 of our Orlando Adventure...

Ok, thank God that's the last time that alarm goes off so early. I've been dreading waking up wondering what piece of electronics I'm going to kill next. My iBook died on the morning of day 2. The battery of my camera also wouldn't hold a charge, so no digital pics. Day three saw the dramatic death of my GPS. I give up. The only piece of working electronics I have left is my phone so I'm wondering when it'll meet its maker.

We decided to hit MGM again today. Gotta ride the Tower of Terror a few more times and the Rockin' Roller Coaster. Also wanted to hit Who Wants to be a Millionaire. I missed getting in the hot seat by a hair. Next we decided to drop by the back stage tour as we had a bit of time to burn. We just missed getting on the tour that was leaving so we were at the front of the line. A girl walked out from behind the corner and walked up to a guy next to us and 'volunteered' him to follow her. She left and came back around so I jokingly said 'pick me! pick me!' and she did. Crap. I was only joking. I followed her around the corner and saw a mock-up of a PT boat sitting in a pool. She led me to a small cabana with 3 other 'victims' and said remove you shoes and socks and anything you don't want to get wet. Oh, shit. She then proceeds to hand out rainsuits and rubber boots. I got all dressed up and we followed her out onto the 'stage' where I saw my family sitting in the front row. I still had no idea what the heck I was in for. The girl said I was going to be the mechanic and that I had two instructions. 'Don't stand up and don't look left.' Um, okay. The person doing the show introduced us all and pointed to a small mockup of an engine room and told me to take a seat. I was told to answer the phone when it rang. I took my seat. The one with two conspicuos handles on it and waited. The MC said to the crowd that once I answered the phone they were gonna drop 1000 gallons of water on me. I looked to my left and sure enough about 15 feet above me and up a ramp was a couple of really big bathtubs dripping water.

The phone rang.

I answered and just kinda blabbed into it. I heard a noise to my left and then the sound of a shitload of rushing water. My wife said that just before the water hit me I mouthed into the phone 'Oh, damn.' I dropped the phone and grabbed those handles for all I was worth. Lemme tell you, getting side-slammed by 1000 gallons of water is, um, interesting. I now understood the don't stand up, don't look left rule. I couldn't have stood up if I wanted. It was all over in a few seconds. They did some stuff with the other folks and then edited it into a small movie. My family said it was great. I'll post pics once they're developed.

After my soaking we headed out. Next stop was Downtown to hit DisneyQuest again and some last minute shopping. This time I made a 5 for 5 coaster on the build-your-own coaster ride. Much better. You spend nearly as much time upside-down as right-side up. I told Shannon she had to do it and with much trepidation she got in. Afterwards she said 'Again! Again!'. We did that a few more times and headed out for that last bit of shopping before having to catch a plane at 8:30.

The flight home is uneventful. As I sit here on the plane the flight isn't even 1/2 full. I've got my own row of 3 seats as does everyone on the plane that wants one. Most folks are catching naps by folding up armrests and making small beds.

We'll be back in two years again. Next time we'll try to add a couple more days. 4 days isn't enough to do everything.

Day 3 or How I killed the Tower of Terror

Damn that alarm. I know 7:45 isn't that early but, geez, it sure seems like it after being up to nearly 1AM. Today we are headed for Animal Kingdom and MGM Studios.

First stop, Animal Kingdom. Got inside and headed straight for their premier attraction the Kilimanjaro Safari. I must say I was impressed at this attraction. The wall and fences are hidden so masterfully you think you really are travelling through Africa and that there's nothing between you and that cheetah or lion. You think there's nothing stopping a lion from walking over to a gazelle and getting a quick meal. The giraffes were out and about and walked right up to the truck. For me the coolest part was seeing the Defender 90 they had parked there to look like poachers were working the area. They had treated it to look rusted which made me laugh. Aluminium, which is what the body is made from, doesn't rust. We did this ride again because it was so neat. We also hit 'It's a Bug's Life' which had decent effects along the lines of 'Honey, I Shrunk the Audience'. A few more stops and we are on our way to MGM.

First stop, Tower of Terror. We walked right in and went through the little orientation and boarded a car. Oh. My. God. This is the coolest ride in all the parks I think. It takes you up 13 stories and drops you. When you hit bottom it yanks you back up as quick as you fell and drops you again. And again. And again. About 1/2 dozen times. 'We totally have to do this again' we said. Those were quite fateful words as you will soon see.

On our second trip through The Tower I was sitting against the outer wall to get a better view, not that it really mattered. During one of the bounces my seatbelt caught my fancy homemade belt clip just right and released the GPSr into weightlessness. Not a good thing but it's shock-resistant and should be okay I thought. On the next bounce it managed to work its way under the seat. Oops. That's not good but still retreivable. After the ride stopped I started reaching around under the seat trying to find it and all I found was thin air. The ride operator asked what I was looking for and I told him my GPS went under the seat. I showed him where. He said that hole goes out of the car but don't worry, there's a platform under the car to catch those kinds of things. I'll have a maintenance guy grab it for you. You can get it in a couple hours at the front gate. As he's saying this the whole ride goes into emergency shut-down and all the lights turn on. 'Hmmm, weird.' he says. About 10 maintenance guys pour out of the woodwork as the lights go on. I say 'It looks like you've got other problems. I'll swing by to pick it up later'. Right then a maintenance guy yells through a crack in the ride asking if anyone lost anything that looks like a remote control. I say that could be what I'm missing and he hands it to the ride operator. The operator turns to me holding the remains of my GPSr. Aw, crap. It was squished. The mechanic said it survived the fall but when the next car came through, it managed to lodge itself on the tracks and got run over by 6 tons of pissed off elevator car. He explained that the wheels of the cars have sensors and if they notice any kind of obstruction they stop immediately. Looking at the damage to the back of my GPSr it looks like it managed to stop the car in under 6 inches while ripping the rubber armor to shreds. Quite impressive. Once I had my now useless GPSr I skulked off before anyone realized who had caused the wait to ride the Tower to get 10 minutes longer. I got a plastic bag from a vendor and went on with my day. That was a very expensive ride to say the least.

Next we had to try the Rockin' Roller Coaster. An Aerosmith themed indoor coaster. Dakota was crying about not wanting to ride it as we boarded and the operator made him give her a thumbs-up before she would let us continue. For all his trepidation, when we got off he said that was the coolest ride ever and we did it again. A quick run across the park to catch the Indiana Jones Stunt show. My sis got picked to be an extra and ran around like a fool on stage in front of a few hundred people. She did get a much better view of the explosions than we did though.

We nox had to hurry back to the hotel to change to meet some of Shannon's friends who live in Orlando for dinner. Dinner went well and we dropped by Downtown again for a bit afterwards.

Yet another long day. I'm going to need a vacation from my vacation.

Day 2 of our Orlando Adventure...

We woke up this morning to rain. Bummer. The front that passed through Austin 3 days ago made it to Florida. What are we gonna do? Stay in the hotel? I think not. It's just water. Today we are headed to the Magic Kingdom and maybe Epcot for dinner later.

We decided to eat breakfast at the hotel restaurant. They had wonderful sweet potato pancakes. Very filling and not too expensive. Time to head to the park for some rides and pin trading for Dakota.

Arrived at the park around 10AM. It seems to be quite dead because of the rain. That's a good thing. Most of their rides are inside things and the rain looks to break up in a couple hours. I've been looking forward riding the ExtraTERRORestrial Encounter so we headed that way first. Damnit. It's closed for renovation. Okay, let's hit Dakota's favorite, Buzz Lightyear's Space Spin. It's a giant video game you ride through and shoot at the bad guys with laser guns. The rain broke up around noon and it turned into a nice day. We of course hit the scariest ride in all DisneyWorld, It's a Small World. Then on to what is probably my favorite here, the Haunted Mansion. Dakota just loves looking for the 'Hidden Mickeys'. Once we got off this we had to hit the attached gift shop. My wife was in heaven. She collects Nightmare Before Christmas stuff and the shop was packed to the gills. I think I got out for under $200. Nice thing about staying on-site is we can have the purchases delivered straight to our room and not carry them around all day.

Sadly a few rides we wanted to hit were closed. Thunder Mountain was one of the biggies. I guess when you kill off a few guests on this ride in California they shut it down to take a good look at it.

One of the things Dakota loves to do is trade pins with the 'Cast Members'. Many of the park employees wear lanyards with pins on them. These pins are for trading with guests. All you have to do is approach them and ask to trade. You pick out one of theirs you like and give them one in return. If you are vigilant you can get 'Cast Exclusives' which are pins that you can't buy. You can only get them by trading with Cast. These are more rare and sometimes quite collectable. Some Cast Members wear green lanyards. These are for trading only with kids under 12. Dakota loves trading just to trade. He'll pick the first pin he fancies. Doesn't matter to him that he's giving up a collectable pin to get a cheapy. We try to discourage giving away the rare ones but the final decision is his. On this note yesterday, the day we arrived, was Mickey's 75th B-day. they released a few limited edition pins that we picked up. We have had several of the 'Pin Hounds' as we call them(professional pin traders that are in it for a profit) offer to trade for them for anything the had showing. We always refused.

We left MK around 3PM to head over to Epcot for a few more rides and dinner. We ate at my favorite place in Epcot, Akershus, in Norway. They have an awesome menu served semi buffet like. Their venison stew was to die for. I think I had 3 bowls. We hit a couple more rides and then it was time for Illuminations, the big firework show. Impressive as always.

We dropped Dakota and my mother off at the hotel and my wife, sister, and I headed to Downtown for some shopping. I'm always in heaven at the Lego store. We managed to find a couple more of the limited edition pins at the pin trader store and snapped them up. Whe pin trading you are best picking a theme as there are too many to try to collect them all. My sister is doing Mickey, my wife of course is doing Nightmare stuff, and I'm trying to complete a set of 'Safety' related ones featuring a warthog that are Cast Member pins. I've managed to score 3 out of 12 in the set. I'll keep trying.

Big day tomorrow. Got to get some sleep as it's now almost midnight again.

Went to go upload today's entry to the blog and the iBook kacked. Had to switch to an old school notepad and pen for my entries. Had to recreate yesterday and today's entries for lack of ability to use the iBook. Shit.

Day 1 of our Orlando Adventure

This is the first installment in the story of our 4 day trip to the Land of the Giant Rat. My iBook died on the trip so I'm having to transcribe from my notepad into the blog since I don't have access to the entries on the laptop. I'll add them with the correct dates as I go.

Oh, Dear Lord. I didn't realize that there was such a thing as 4 o'clock in the morning. I figured night ended around 2-3AM and days started around 8-9AM. When that alarm went off it scared the hell out of me. Luckily we were all packed and ready to go. Note to self: No more 6AM flights.

We got to the airport about 45-50 minutes before our flight. Usually this is more than enough time at the Austin airport. Not so this time. We figured we'd save space and take just one bag for my wife, son, and me. That was all well and good until Mr. ESL weighed our bag. Oops. We were at 62.5lbs, the limit is 50lbs per bag. My sister had to pull out the extra bag she had packed to bring souveniers back in. We offloaded our battery chargers, batteries, and otehr heavy items. We could have all brought 2 bags each, each one weighing 50lbs for a total of 300lbs. The logic that we had saved 240lbs+the space baffled our little rocket surgeon counter worker. Whatever.

When I sprung it on him that I'd be checking my sidearm he went nearly white. I guess Ahkmed was from a country where self-defense isn't allowed. Normally it's an easy process to check in a firearm. They check that it's empty and stored properly, put a tag in it, and send it on its way. This guy had no clue. He asked for help from a security guard who just looked at him. Our brain scientist finally found the right tag and filled it out. He then wanted to attach it to the handle of my bag. I had to explain to him how it's suppoed to work. The form/tag goes _in_ the bag. I didn't want a bright orange "steal me" tag hanging off my bag.

I had my GPS with us on the flight out so my son and I could see where we were, our speed, and altitude. I was amazed to see our top speed was around 675MPH. We got into a nice little tailwind there I guess.

When we arrived we picked up our rental car, went by the hotel to get our room, drop off luggage, and pick up our Ultimate Park Hopper passes. They let you into _all_ the Disney parks as often as you want. You can spend a morning at MGM and afternoon at Animal Kingdom then go eat dinner at Epcot. The only way to go.

After that we hit Epcot. Our first stop was the new Mission: Space ride. Oh. My. God. It was freaking cool. You pull I'd say around 4 Gs during "lift-off" and the feeling of weightlessness was pretty convincing. I know how they do it but still marvel at it. They use a giant centrifuge to spin you to get the Gs but you get no feeling of spinning, only of pressure on your back like a rocket. Not to be missed. We of course hit Test Track, one of Dakota's favorites. We bummed around the park for a while seeing the sights and stopped in Morocco for dinner. They had a decent lamb sandwich.

Once we had our fill of Epcot we caught the ferry from our hotel to Downtown Disney for some fun and games. We stopped by DisneyQuest for a bit and rode the Build Your Own Coaster ride. That was cool. You get to design your own coaster on a computer then ride it in a motion simulator. In loops you really go upside down. Another don't miss ride. We built a rating 3 out of 5 scary coaster. I thought it was kind of bland but we didn't have time to do a 5-of-5. I'll have to come back and do that.

Back to the room around midnight to collapse and finish my trip notes. We've been on the go for almost 20 hours. I'm beat.

Idiots in cars...

I was driving home last nite up 183 and noticed the guy next to me in an Acura reading some sort of business presentation. His eyes were firmly on his paperwork in bumper-to-bumper stop-and-go traffic. Nice.

I just love these types. Trying to drive, talk on the phone, put on makeup, and drink their Double Tall Half-Caff Lattes from Starbucks. Do you really think your full attention is on the road when you're doing this? Geez.

I decided it was time to screw with Mr. Businessman. I managed to get ahead of him. Not a tough proposition when he's reading and doesn't notice the car ahead of him has moved. He would roll slowly behind the person in front and notice they'd stopped at the last second. I'd let a good size gap open in front of me and I'd slowly creep forward and let him get used to creeping at like 3-5 MPH right on my bumper and then out of the blue I'd slam on the brakes. He narrowly avoided hitting me a couple of times. I guess having a big ol' Land Rover stop dead when you don't expect it wakes you up. I do know that I'd drive away from any 'contact' with nary a scratch while my radiator-height trailer hitch would go right though his grill. After a few rounds of this I think he finally gave up on his paperwork out of frustration.

: Mambo 8 from the album "Office Space" by Perez Prado

Let's call them what they are...Shysters...

I was on my way to work this morning and like every morning I get to sit for several minutes trying to get through the intersection at Anderson Mill Road and 183. It was a decent morning. A bit drizzly but I put the top on the Defender so I was staying dry.

For some reason I noticed a black late model Honda Acccord pull into the parking lot at Half Price Books. I watched a quite shabbily dressed lady get out of the car. Didn't look like she should be driving a car like that. I then watched her walk around to her trunk and get something out. Don't ask me why I was watching her. You do these things when you've got no radio to listen to I guess. It looked like a piece of cardboard or something. I then assumed she was headed to the UPS Store right next door but she didn't head that way. She started walking towards the intersection with her what I now guessed was a sign. Sure enough. She set up shop on the corner with her sign begging for money. *sigh* I guess there's enough suckers in the world to make it a decent paying line of work and no tax -free to boot.

It confirmed suspicions I've had for years. I have only ever been tempted to give money to one of these folks once. There is a lady that begs on the same corner fairly regularly. I don't know why but she seems genuinely ashamed that she's out there. She never looks you in the eye just at the ground and I've seen her crying several times. I just wonder where her two kids are they she claims she has on the sign. Probably with the nanny.

The Matrix Revolutions...

I don't want to spoil the movie so I'll keep any details to myself.

My wife is a huge Matrix fan so of course we were going to see the new one on opening night. That wasn't enough though. She wanted to see it on the BIG screen. I heard the IMAX theater in San Antonio was showing Matrix Revolutions and we got tickets to that. Shannon called in the first hour they were available last month and got us a seat.

The great thing about seeing it down there was they have assigned seating. No sitting around for hours to hope to get a good seat. You just need to show up about 10 minutes before the show and find your seat. This is the way it should be. I hate that whole waiting in line thing. We had about the best seats in the house. Middle of the row at the top. You never want to be in the front row at an IMAX showing, it'll kill your neck craning to see the top of a 7 story screen. Once we were seated, the movie started. No trailers. No commercials. It just started. I hate the 14 commercials that theaters insist on showing these days.

Let me say this about seeing a movie on IMAX. Ho-lee Shit, it's awesome! When a character's eyeball is taller than you it's freaking impressive. An IMAX screen is probably about 4-6 times the size of your average screen. The picture was very clear. You'd think that blowing it up to 70mm would result in resolution loss but it didn't. The Wachowskis planned on it being released on IMAX and filmed accordingly. As for the movie itself, I liked this one better than number 2. No 10 minute Britney Spears video of people dancing sans underwear like in the second movie. I felt that was a bit gratuitous. The fight scenes were good. They used less computer generated action. I thought the "Burly Brawl" in Reloaded looked very fake and detracted from the film. Of course, anytime you get to see Carrie Moss running around in PVC is a good day.

Of the three films I still prefer the first. Call me a purist. If I had to pick an order I'd say 1 then 3 then 2. If you get the chance to see Revolutions on IMAX though, do so. You won't regret it.

: One of Us by Joan Osborne

New toy goodness...

I bought my wife a new toy yesterday. She's training to run a marathon and needed music to run to. She had been trying to use my iPod but they don't take well to running and they tend to freeze after a while. They are hard drive based after all and tend to crash when subjected to shocks for too long. I went out and found one of the new Rio Chiba 256 mp3 players. It was perfect for her use. It's solid-state so skipping isn't a problem and it only weighs a couple of ounces. It's main drawback is that it's only 256MB but that's still 4-5hours of music so it should be okay. It can take an expansion SDD card up to 512MB for 768MB total, but those are still a bit expensive.

A nice thing about it is it's supported by iTunes under Mac OS X so you can drag-and-drop just like my iPod. I hooked it up to load some music and couldn't get anything to copy over. I'd drag songs and they wouldn't go. I started to get pissed. I finally gave in after an hour and called support. Don't get me started about outsourcing support to India, I could hardly understand the guy. He put me on hold to talk to someone and came back and said I was probably trying to copy AAC files. I checked and sure enough, I was. I tried an MP3 and it copied over no problem. The problem with this is my wife is not going to be able to use music downloaded from Apple's music store. Damnit. I can work around that but it's a big pain in the ass.

Now if I could figure out how to get it to mount in Linux I'd be set. I'll keep trying.

: Gogos - We've Got the Beat

A Scary Halloween...

Well, we did our yearly over-indulgence for Halloween again this year. Flying zombies, headless scarecrows, fog machines, and a suicidal pumpkin all were on hand. We set up the grave yard in our yard with two fog machines for atmosphere. A headless scarecrow and blacklights completed the spooky effect.

For the big scare I rigged up our mummy, named Grand Master Z, to do a little flying this year. I rigged up a pulley system I could control from inside the house. I also hooked up our stereo system to a DSP I borrowed from a friend. When a victim/trick-or-treater approached the door I'd let GMZ fly down out of one of our eaves where he was hiding and pump 200 watts of evil laugh right in the treaters' faces. This caused many a scream that could be heard for blocks according to people I talked to. We had several kids run away and refuse to approach the house to get candy after they were scared. The funniest was a teenage girl who fell down throwing her candy all over the yard and then running away without picking it up.

It was a kind of slow year though. We only got about 75 kids this year with a normal year topping 150 or so. We figured because it was Friday a lot of people had parties and such and the kids were at those. Bummer. I really look forward to scaring kids. Halloween is probably my favorite holiday.