Guess where I am?

Oh yeah...CHICAGO, BABY!!! Just got here, and I'll be here for a week. The picture you see is from my hotel room...I can see that sign, some of Lake Michigan, the Chicago River, and Millenium Park from the window of the 26th floor corner room they upgraded me to. SWEET!!!

Dallas two weeks ago was OK, but I didn't get there until Sunday night (Monday morning) at 1:15 AM...LOOONNNNGGGG story. I may try to write it up later. At least I got a night in Philly, though Rick's Cheesesteaks at the Reading Terminal Market was closed :-( :-( :-(. This was from my hotel room there:

But...I'M BACK IN CHICAGO!!

New Relient K CD rocks!

"We should get jerseys/Cause we make a good team/But yours would look better than mine/Cause you're out of my league."

--Relient K, "I Must Have Done Something Right"

Hmmm...I need to try the above pickup line sometime :-).

I love these guys, and their newest CD (Five Score and Seven Years Ago) is no exception. Between them & Five Iron Frenzy, you could have a block of songs at a wedding of "Really cheesy love songs," including this one. Good stuff :-) :-) :-).

Also...here's what snow in Boston looks like:

I'm supposed to be heading out to Dallas tomorrow. With the weather now & forecasted for tomorrow, we'll see what happens. I'll report if I get there.

Laterz!

If you don't like the weather...

...wait 5 minutes!

Wednesday: 68 degrees & sun.
Today: Mid-40s, rain.
Tomorrow: Winter storm warning for 6 inches of snow.

Gotta love Boston in March :-). This snow should get us above the record for least snow in a year...the least ever was 8.2", Boston's Logan International Airport has only had 6.8" so far.

Current temp in Dallas: 73. And it's 9:30 at night there. I'll be going there Saturday :-).

It's a special day...

Today's date: 3/14

Thus, from all of us math geeks...happy National Pi Day!

"Well, you can use the Port-a-Potties!"

Trained at a military base this past week. Quite an interesting experience! Some members of the military live on the base, and the base had everything--restaurants, a bowling alley, recreation center, a tire place, a gas station, etc.

The training itself took place in a building that looks like it could've been converted from a barracks. The room itself was pretty bad--you couldn't see the projector screen unless ALL lights were off, the heat wasn't great, and there were no drinks or bathrooms. When I asked where the bathrooms were, the quote in the title is what they told me. No joke! Luckily, there were also some bathrooms in a nearby building, though I had to be escorted there.

The class itself, though, was great! Most people were around the same age as me & my TA, and we had a lot of fun together. There were a couple of Steelers & NY Giants fans, so I got to rib on them about their lack of success this past year, though they got me back by reminding me how many Super Bowls the Eagles have won (which is exactly 0.) For the most part, dinner wasn't very exciting, though one night, we went into Bel Air, MD, and there was a magician entertaining at the restaurant we went to. Very cool.

Flights back:

US 3676 BWI-PHL:
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AWI3676/history/20070309/0210Z/KBWI/KPHL

US 854 PHL-BOS:
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/USA854/history/20070309/0444Z/KPHL/KBOS

BWI-PHL, all of 90 miles and 20 minutes in air, was uneventful, except that they couldn't find a jetbridge operator once we got into Philly.

PHL-BOS was another story. Got upgraded (this makes 25 upgrades in a row, not counting flights booked within one hour of flight time), but that was about the only good thing. Rule #1 about PHL-BOS or BOS-PHL flights is that after about 2 PM, they WILL be late. This was no exception. After switching gates, we start boarding around 11 PM (for a 10:45 flight), and then everything SLOOOOOOWWWWWWSSSSSSS down. Overhead space started running out, and people from the really late 8:30 flight were trying to get on ours. Then there was the first class passenger who, uh, had a bit too much to drink before stepping on the plane. But the FA's did a good job handling her, and we got in the air, only to hear this:

"Current temperature in Boston: 10 degrees."

?!?!?!

We landed around 12:30 AM (only 30 minutes late, after all that). The drunk passenger was completely conked out, totally oblivious to the fact that we had pulled up to the gate. At least the bags came out pretty quickly for such a full flight.

Got home around 1:15 AM, fell asleep around 2, and didn't wake up today until 12. It felt good :-).

Later!

BWI flights and next haircut?

Greetings from Bel Air, MD! Flights here were interesting...first, SLC-PHX was late due to a late inbound flight. Turned a 58 minute connection into about 25. But...I got to see the Grand Canyon! From an airplane window, at least. It was off to our right, and I never realized just how large it was. That thing is huge! But it's also really really cool. Now to get to it by land sometime. God is so beautiful!

PHX-BWI wasn't eventful. A bit bumpy at first, we then watched Night at the Museum. Not bad, though it's not going in my DVD collection anytime soon. Lunch was lasagne with shrimp; not bad for airplane food. Got into BWI 15 minutes late, but my bag made it, even with the short connection. Phew! Drive to the hotel took about 35 minutes.

Today, I drove around Baltimore. I hadn't been in Baltimore since 1988, on a Cub Scout trip. It's quite nice in the Inner Harbor area! I also got to finish off the Baltimore Interstate milage I hadn't yet covered (I have an Excel spreadsheet where I keep track of the Interstates I've been on.)

Now...as for the other part of the title, it's time for me to get a haircut. I've gotten a flattop for almost as long as it's been since I last went to Baltimore. What do others think? Should I go for another one, or something else? If something else, then what else? I know nothing about different hair styles; after all, I'm an engineer :-)!

Now off to "enjoy" Aberdeen...

Final SLC thoughts

The week is over. The teaching today didn't go too badly; we got done around 3 PM, an hour early. That's typical for this course. As for my impressions of SLC, I think Zach, the TA, summed it up best when he said, "This feels like a large suburb." Salt Lake really does feel that way. I'm personally not a suburb fan--I just find them all to be the same. They do have some nice things here: the Rockies, as per my earlier pictures, and the Mormon temple does look nice:



Where would I rank it? Unofficially, #11, below San Jose, above Buffalo.

Next trip is next week. I'm flying directly to Baltimore from here. Here's my itinerary:

US Airways flight 42 SLC-Phoenix 10:31 AM - 12:12 PM
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AWE42/history/20070303/1833Z/KSLC/KPHX

US Airways flight 83 PHX-Baltimore 1:10 PM - 7:20 PM
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AWE83/history/20070303/2032Z/KPHX/KBWI

I've been upgraded to first class on both flights. Yay!

Later, peeps!

The perils of teaching

...so I'm trying to teach one of our most notoriously difficult courses, and I come up with what I think is a brilliant idea for the flow of a chapter that's a tough chapter to have a flow for. Of course, this idea was 5 minutes before teaching the section, but hey, improv is half the fun of teaching, at least for me.

Well, you can guess where this is going. The idea blows up in my face due to a bug in our product I wasn't aware of. So what should've taken 5 minutes took closer to 30, and I was already behind 30 minutes due to an extremely slow lunch restaurant. Plus, I got to finish the day by looking like a fool in front of 15 people. Now my confidence is shot, and I'm not looking forward to tomorrow, when I have to finish up the section.

Off to prepare...