Not Necessarily Interesting News

The picture below says it all. One of the good things about getting a California assignment.

With nothing to do last night I decided to go to a local AAA baseball game. The River Cats are a farm team for the Oakland As. It’s a decent stadium. A bit bigger than Round Rock’s. The view of Sacramento over the right field wall is very nice. The sunset lit up the Tower Bridge quite nicely. I didn’t stay til the end and I’m glad I didn’t. The game went 14 innings. One of the old Express players, Brooks Conrad, plays for them now so it was cool hearing a familiar name over the P.A.

I also had to test posting blog entries from my iPhone. 🙂

and how!

…and how!

Yes, I did it. I bought an iPhone 3G. Bit of a hassle with AT&T to get it done but I did. Once I heard from guys at work that they had it connecting to the VPN to check internal mail I was sold. Now, I just need Tom-Tom software for it to be perfect.

I got it jailbroken without much issue which was needed to get around a VPN bug in the phone. I’m not totally in love with it. My old iPod is far better for straight music listening so I’ll probably keep it around for now.

I’ve found a couple of cool apps that’ll make my life on the road so much better.

• One is ‘Wikime‘. It’s a app that uses your location and finds articles in Wikipedia that are tagged with a location near you. Great for finding those little known things while in a strange city. And only $.99.
• UrbanSpoon – Find nearby restaurants easily
• Now Playing – find movies at nearby theaters with rating, trailers, etc
• Simplify Media – Lets me listen to any song in my entire library at home while on the go. Makes up for the tiny, by my standards, 16GB of storage.

It’s a fun toy. Not perfect. The battery life leaves a bit to be desired but it’s a fun toy.

Ok, so I’m on the road a alot. A whole lot in fact. After I get done teaching at 5:30 I have nothing to do in all these strange cities. What I started to do way back on Day 2 of Baseball season was visit the local MLB park and catch a game. Here we are more than 1/2 way through the season and I’ve managed to catch a game at, I believe, 8 parks. Not a huge number but pretty decent considering I didn’t pay for any of the travel associated.

I’ll try to list the parks in order of visit.

• Safeco Field (Seattle)
• AT&T Park (San Francisco)
• Chase Field (Phoenix)
• Nationals Park (Washington D.C.)
• Camden Yards (Baltimore)
• Coors Filed (Denver)
• Yankee Stadium (New York City)
• Rangers Ballpark (Arlington, TX)
• Fenway Park (Boston) Can’t really count as no game was played that day though I do have a pic of me atop the Green Monster

I’ve missed seeing games in about 5 other towns as no games were played the week I was there. Very sad. I was hoping to hit 1/2 of the fields this season. It’s looking like I won’t make that goal. I should get close though.

Ok, now my favorite fields:

My overall favorite was Chase Filed in Phoenix. I liked the design of the roof and the rotating outfield walls. It also had the best value as far as ticket prices. I paid $6 at the window for a decent seat near right field.

Safeco was also really nice though I couldn’t enjoy it. It was about 35degrees at game time and they decided to leave the roof open. The wind off the water chilled me to the bone.

Yankee Stadium was a lot smaller than I pictured. I dont understand what was so wrong with it that they need to replace it though. I got a great seat off a scalper just before game time. I was right behind home plate, about 15 rows up. For $35. Amazing.

I absolutely hated Rangers Ballpark. Traffic into that place sucks. And public transportation? In D/FW? Hah! It took me an hour and 45 minutes to get to the park. I spent 45 minutes driving the last 1.5 miles. It would have been easier to walk in from there. We missed the first 1 1/2 innings because of it. I’ll never go back there. The upside? The Yankees kicked the Rangers’ asses.

I’d post pics of myself outside each of these parks but I had my backup drive go bad without my knowledge and when I reinstalled my laptop I couldn’t get them back. Let’s say I’m not happy about that little development.

This past weekend we picked up a new ride. Ok, new to us that is.

It’s actually another Land Rover. A 1991 Land Rover – Range Rover – Great Divide Edition #101 of 400. Quite a mouthful. It has a manufacture date of May/1990. That makes it over 18 years old or 2 months younger than we’ve been married.

I got hassled by my sister for buying a ‘gas guzzler’ instead of some hippy-mobile. I told her I was thinking of the environment when I bought it. By buying a used car I saved it from a landfill/being junked. Also, I saved the world by not requiring the use of all new resources to build me a new car.

Likewise, it is far cheaper to keep an older car running if you’re the least bit mechanically inclined. I do all my own maintenance on my Defender. They are both fairly electronics-free. I did the math with the help of an MPG calculator I found online. At $4/gallon I’d need to drive a new Prius about 150,000 miles before I’d break even on the purchase price between the two vehicles. I also assumed paying cash for that new car which wouldn’t happen. So add in finance fees and you push that break even point out closer to 200,000 miles. I drive on average about 6,000 miles/yr (even less now that I’m travelling all the time) which means 200,000 miles is a long, long time. Over 30 years to be exact. That also assumes any repairs are equal. This is totally not the case. I sure as hell know I won’t be messing with the engine, motors, and batteries in a hybrid in my garage at home. So now I’d have to pay dealer prices for any repairs, driving up the costs of a hybrid well above my ‘old’ truck.

Best of all, show me a hybrid that can drive 30 miles from the nearest road, all in leather swathed comfort, and get me the hell away from everyone else. 🙂

Ok, I knew I’d be on the road a lot when I took this job. I guess I didn’t think about exactly how much I’d be on the road. Not that it’s bad. I’ve been to many, many places I’d never been before. I thought I was fairly well travelled before this. Not even.

In the last 9 weeks I don’t think I’ve been home more than 48 hours at a stretch. I’ve been to Denver, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Secaucus, Raleigh, San Antonio, and last week Boston for the big Red Hat Summit. I know I’ve forgotten a couple towns in there.

I’ve seen baseball games in Seattle, Phoenix, Denver, D.C, Baltimore, and New York. Getting to see a game at Yankee stadium before they tear it down after this season was a treat. I got to tour Fenway Park last week during an event for the Summit but can’t count it in the list because the Sox weren’t playing.

I’ve reached Platinum status on American Airlines already. Starting to really rack up those miles. I’m doing about 6-8K miles a week right now. My hotel points are also banking fast. For every week or so on the road I earn a free night in a hotel. I’m learning how to realy work the frequent traveller racket to maximize my milage.

I also have hundreds of pictures from all my travels I need to upload but when I’m home I don’t have the time. I find all I want to do is sit on my couch or take out our boat. 🙂

Ok, I’ve totally neglected my blog for the past few months. Life has been so busy with Red Hat that I haven’t had time to stop and think. I’m starting to settle into a routine and will start posting about all the places I visit. So far, Seattle has been my favorite.

Right now I’m in Phoenix. Last week it was Mountain View, CA. Before that Seattle. Next week D.C. My head is spinning.

We also hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon over several days last month. Adventure of a lifetime that. Check Shannon’s blog for a trip report.

Shannon said it better than I ever could.

Well, I’m really into the new job. I’m currently doing training in Anaheim this week. I got in earlyish on Sunday and decided to drive down to San Diego and check out the old neighborhoods. The drive down I-5 from LAX was a shock to say the least.

I know things can’t stay the same forever but I was amazed at the changes in Orange County since I was last through here nearly 15 years ago. My grandparents lived in Orange County while I was growing up and we visited them very often. I remember the drives up from San Diego as a kid in the 70’s. You’d clear Oceanside and there’d be the nothingness of Camp Pendelton. If you were lucky the Marines were doing amphibious assaults and you’d get to see boats, tanks, helicopters, and Marines all over the place. After Pendelton you had the sleepy town of San Clemente, then San Juan Capistrano. After that it was miles and miles of orange groves all the way to Santa Ana with a small break in them near Irvine.

My drive down I-5 was so disconcerting because I couldn’t tell where one city stopped and another began. There used to be clear lines between towns. Orange groves and farms. Now it’s one big megalopolis all the way down to Camp Pendelton. It’s the only reason that it isn’t one giant strip mall from San Diego to Santa Barbara. I didn’t see a single orange grove, just seas of Best Buys, Old Navys, and Bed Bath and Beyonds. It’s nice to know you’re never more than 3 miles from a Marshalls or Linens and Things I guess.

Now the good parts. In-n-Out and Yoshinoya. I also hit a Rally’s in San Diego. All of these were places I knew I’d have to eat while here. When I heard I was coming out they were the first things I thought. Why is that? Why, when you think of places, is a lot of the time the first thing that comes to mind is the food? Mention our trip to New England a couple years ago and I’ll bring up the clam chowder we had in a little place dockside in Maine. Mention going to Disneyworld and it’s the Sweet Potato Pancakes at the Boatwright Restaurant or the former buffet at Akershus(now ruined by becoming a ‘Character restaurant’). It always happens when talking with people and their trips. They mention the food. I guess good food is tied deeply to our memories.

I did gorge myself on a large Beef Bowl with extra beef from Yoshinoya this evening and am paying the price for that. It was worth every bite. 🙂

Yes, I am re-employed. As of the 3rd of January I will be working for Red Hat Inc. My official title is Global Learning Services Instructor. I will be doing Red Hat Linux training all over the U.S. Mostly confined to the Central U.S. It’ll be about 75% travel. It’s a lot of time on the road but it seems like a fun job.

I got the initial call from a recruiter about 3 weeks ago. Over the first couple of weeks I had three phone interviews. Last Tuesday I was flown to their site in Westford, MA, near Boston, for a day of face-to-face interviews. I thought they went well but didn’t hear back for almost 2 days which really had me sweating.

On Friday I got a call that they were preparing an offer and to be ready to get it via email. The offer came in on Monday morning and was a pretty good offer. I took all day reading over the paperwork and faxed it back Monday evening making it official.

I fly to corporate headquarters in Raleigh, NC on Jan 3rd to start orientation and then my training.

Years of riding the contracting bandwagon at IBM have finally ended. It made for the best Christmas present my family could ever have gotten.