Digital Impulses

Dinner @ Benihana and Scrabble

Quiet Friday, with a delicious dinner at Benihana followed by a trip up to P.V. to play Scrabble with Bert.  The dinner at Benihana was OK and there was no tension between the wife and I which was a welcome respite.

I was in PV playing Scrabble from 2030 to about 0130.  The Scrabble session was marred somewhat by Bert's petulant, bad sport behavior due to him having to put back a draw of tiles because I hadn't drawn my replacement tile yet.

I once again let him get under my skin and promptly fell into a funk that caused me to lose both games.  I have to really work at maintaining my composure and rising above Rojas's bullshit tactics.

Sheesh.

Mac Mini gets an Ethernet cable

In a move I should have done a long, long time ago, this evening I bought a 15-foot Ethernet calbe and connected my Mac Mini DIRECTLY to my Linksys N Router.

Seeing as to how this is the machine I seem to spend most of my time at home and seeing as to how I manage all of my music, images and iPhone from here, having this machine using Wireless to connect to my router and thereby the Internet made very little sense.

Already I am seeing improved snappiness when accessing certain web pages and while downloading podcasts via iTunes.

Well, what's done is done and now I have the fastest connection possible attached to my main mac.

Better late than never, as they say.

Free, I am Free!, At last!

Nice!

This evening after work I stopped by my local AT&T store and picked up a wireless card for my work laptop. 

The card I decided to go with is the AT&T USBConnect 881.  The card was $174.95 (Incld. $24.95 tax) but I will get $100 back via a mail-in rebate.  Also, my company has a corporate discount program, so I will be getting a discount off of the monthly plan that offers unlimited data.

This is a BIG deal, as it allows me the COMPLETE FREEDOM to work from WHEREVER I WANT.  Having been granted the  authorization to work from home or anywhere else by my boss last week in Colorado, this was the last piece of the puzzle I needed to be completely untethered from the office.

For those who know me, this is pretty heady stuff, as I now have the ability to work from wherever I like, whenever I like.  Mom's, my office, my bedroom, a park, Starbucks, Barnes and Noble... the possibilities are endless.  The mind boggles.  Well.  My mind boggles.

Free. Damn, that's cool.

More GoDaddy stuff: brodymitchellmarshall.com is no more

Just now went through the process of CANCELING the domain 'brodymitchellmarshall.com', which is a domain I gifted to a co-worker in a dumb, spur-of-the-moment, "what was I thinking? moment.

She never did anything with it, so I have canceled it, just have one less thing generating emails from Godaddy.com and ICANN, nattering at me to administer these useless domain names.

This is turning out to be a productive Monday, at least on a personal level.  Yay, me.

GoDaddy stuff

Terminating lafurniturerestoral.com
Just now got off the phone with GoDaddy.com to put the final nail in the coffin of the ABORTED "LAFURNITURERESTORAL" web design project I was involved with back in 2007.

The $4.99 I was billed for "Business Registration" was refunded to my on-file credit card and that takes care of that.  God, what an unproductive nightmare that was.

Good Riddance.

A trip to Viejas Casino in San Diego County

144 miles one way.  Nearly 300 miles round trip.  That is what my Sunday after returning from a week-long business trip to Colorado consisted of.

After getting a really late start (we left the house well after 1300), We drove to the OC to pick up the truck from the teenager and then from there we headed out for the rest of the trip to Viejas Casino.  The trip was uneventful and we got there with the aid of the on-board navigation system on the Explorer.

On the way to Viejas, we stopped in Oceanside for a gas fill-up and lunch at the Denny's next to the gas station.

We arrived at the Casino just after 1600 and met up with the wife's family who were over here visiting from Tijuana.  After the meet and greet, we ended up playing the slots at the Casino for a couple of hours and then called it a night just after 2000.

The trip back home took just over 2 hours and we ended up encountering just a little traffic between San Diego and the O.C.  By the time we got home right before 2300, I was *dead* tired and just walked straight from the truck to my bedroom. 

My head hit the pillow and I fell almost instantly asleep into the deep sleep of the bone-tired. 

What a long day.

Boulder, Colorado Trip: Day 7

Having packed everything up last night and taken it down to the car, I awoke this morning a few minutes after 5:00 and started making sure I had absolutely everything else I needed to take with me back home to California.

Checking out of the Millennium Harvest Hotel in Boulder, CO
Once I got everything together and made one last scan of the room, I went downstairs to the lobby and checked out of the hotel, paying for the movies I had purchased on my own personal credit card.

Driving back to Denver International Airport and returning the Rental to Budget
From there it was out in the 23 degree weather to the car for the drive back to Denver International airport to return the car at the Budget Rental Car lot.  The return of the car was quick and painless and involved nothing on my part other than agreeing to leave the charges on the same card it was rented on.

It was bitterly cold in Denver.  I was wearing thin sweatpants and that was a major mistake. Lesson learned.

Catching my flight back to L.A.
A few minutes waiting in a shuttle bus led to a short trip to the United terminal at the airport.  Although it involved a train ride and a rather long walk, I made it through the execrable TSA security checkpoint relatively stress-free, with just a minor delay related to a bottle of screen cleaner fluid that was in my laptop bag.  Of course, the TSA jacked the bottle, but I didn't care.  Whatever.

The Flight
I made it to my gate with a few minutes to spare and before I knew it, we were boarded and I got a Window seat in 20A, where i was joined by a nice woman and her little daughter who was just an angel.

The flight itself was completely uneventful and I felt absolutely ZERO motion sickness. It was absolutely awesome.  I passed the 95-minute flight by watching  the "Steal This Film Part II" movie on my iPhone and dozing on and off.  Towards the end of the flight, I got a couple of pictures of some mountainous ranges over  Arizona that turned out better than expected. 

Below is one of the better ones:

Back in Cali
We landed at LAX just after 10:30 and it took forever to walk from my gate over to the United baggage claim area where I was able to get my suitcase.  After picking up my suitcase, I walked outside and found a Taxi in short order that drove me over to La Gran Via Bakery to see the wife.

Eventually I made it home just before noon. 

This concludes my series of posts on my 2008 week-long business trip to Colorado for cross-training.

Boulder, Colorado Trip: Day 6

Tourist!

The Egg and I
So this morning we went to breakfast at a nice restaurant called "The Egg and I", which is a place that Mark discovered on a trip to Nevada and just loved the food. The food was really good and the ambiance was great also.  I had a Whole Wheat Blueberry pancake and it was just delicious.  I really enjoyed the food there.  Highly recommended.

The Continental Divide in Colorado
After breakfast, we stopped by the hotel so that Mark could pack and I could grab a jacket.  We then took for the hour long drive over to the Continental Divide.

Suffice it to say, this was truly some of the most awesome scenery I have ever seen.  There was snow everywhere you looked and trees and mountains everywhere also.  Below are some of the pictures we took:

At the 'Summit"

At the Continental Divide

I intend to place the rest of the images we too over on my Flicker account.  I will post a link to it once I have uploaded the images there.

Although it took a while to get there, it was well worth it.  I really love Colorado!

Shopping
After the trip to the Continental Divide, Mark dropped me off at the hotel and took off for Denver as his flight leaves later this evening.  I stayed in my room relaxing and packing my bags for a while before getting dressed and going out to do some last minute shopping and getting a bite to eat.

After the shopping I came back to the hotel and having sitting here relaxing and updating my blog.  I think I am going to call it a night, as I have an 0825 flight back to L.A. and that involves driving to Denver International Airport which can take almost an hour.

Good night and more from L.A once I am settled in back home.

Boulder, Colorado Trip: Day 5

Today at work here in Boulder, Colorado was pretty good.  The team that is training us was pretty busy all day, so not a lot was done in that respect.  We had a late lunch at a place called "Brothers B-B-Q", which was really excellent.

After lunch, we did a little more work and then our boss decided to cut us loose for the rest of the week, and so tomorrow we have a free day in which to do whatever we want in terms of the touristy, picture-taking thing.

Mark is taking a late flight back to L.A. tomorrow evening and I will be returning home on Saturday morning.  This has been a fun and excting week here in Colorado and I look forward to getting home and facing my new challenges and responsibilities with recharged batteries and a renewed sense of purpose.

It's going to be an interesting rest of 2008, that's for sure.  :=)

Boulder, Colorado Trip: Day 4

Hectic, draining day at work once again.  Although, it was good in a way, because before I knew it, It was 1200 and time to go to lunch.

I made significant progress in my understanding of some of the technologies we are going to be using at work and that was both gratifying and rewarding.  I am starting to feel like I can wrap my head around the concepts involved and as such, the fear factor is reduced when returning to work in Los Angeles next week.

Towards the end of the day, I got some one-on-one face time with my boss and the result of that was some very good news.  I ended the day at work on a very high note, to say the least.

After work, I crashed for a while back at the hotel before going out to dinner with Mark at the local California Pizza Kitchen. The food was great and the conversation was good too.  After dinner, I drove over to the local Barnes and Noble here in Boulder to see if I could find a book on JetSpeed, Portlets or HP OpenView and alas, I struck out.

So, back to the hotel to crash for the night.  I am dead tired, but it's a good, positive tired. 

Yay me.  :=)