back in Hilton Head....

Well,

back in Hilton Head Island again. Hopefully I'll get this wireless install completed....
Don't have any beach view..... :-(

But I have to say they gave me a really nice room this time :-)

home again home again

After a few days of hanging out with my friend from Hawaii, I'm finally home again. I've never been in a first class before where the seats didn't recline...strange. Even with the bigger seats it made it hard to sleep.

only in vegas.....

Only in Vegas.....

cleaning out pictures on my phone...

I was cleaning up the pictures on my phone and came across this one from my stay in Boise a few weeks ago. Some friends and I were out at a bar and saw this in the driveway out front....



Because of the street lights the color is a little strange but it actually is a pink "Hello Kitty" scooter with a sidecar :-)

back in vegas

Well I'm back in Vegas again...
Spent all day today working. Didn't get in until late last night. My10:00 flight turned into a midnight flight.
On the positive side I did get an upgrade to first class :-)
Currently I'm writing my blog while being buzzed by a 5 inch long remote controled helicopter. I guess you might say I don't work in the most serious office environment.
The new apartment near MARTA does make dealing with Hartsfield a whole lot easier...

starting anew

I was going to post this yesterday but I got a call from a contract that sent me down to Mobile Al. at 4:00 am....so I decided to get what sleep I could instead.....


Here it goes....

I realized over the last few weeks that the only person that was keeping myself from doing what I wanted was myself. I realized that I had been sitting in my comfort/safety zone (cocoon if you will) waiting for life to happen. I was trading my future happiness for safety. It scares me to death, but I realize that if my life is going to be what I want and if I'm truly going to give myself a chance to be happy, I have to leave my cocoon. So over the next few weeks I'm going to making changes to my life, some small and some larger. I'm going to starting asking "why not?" instead of "why?". I have been forcing myself to go out and do things. I'm going to start doing things because I want to or they seem like fun rather than being completely logical.
I'm going to start living...instead if sitting around like I've already given up on life. I'm picking myself up my the scruff of the neck and throwing myself out of my comfort zone! The first action is a small one but something I've been doing the "why" instead "why not" question for years and talking myself out of it over and over again. Tomorrow I'm going to start flying lessons, I am going to get my pilots license! Wish me luck!

heading home

Went back to San Francisco to help my friend setup a computer lab for her special education students. Hopefully be back in GA by this weekend...

Boise

Spending a few days with a friend up in Boise. I'm having to share a room with a 6 month old golden retriever puppy. I had forgotten how much energy puppies of that age have. Maybe a good couple mile run with him in the mornings will help.

Prayers do get answered

The friend that I drove out to California with has been through more than any person should in one lifetime. I've been praying for her for most of the summer. She is a one of the nicest people I know and I couldn't understand why life was giving her such a cold shoulder. She went with her faith in God and made a move to a town she had never been to with her 4 children. Some people thought she was being foolish but I've never seen a situation where everything was more right. She has found a home here in California. She has been happy since she got here. Everything has just "fallen into place". The job, her house, everything. I put out some requests to friends in the bay area for equipment to help put together a lab for her students and everything needed has been volunteered. The first day we were at a coffee shop and the person sitting next to me turned out to be a special ed teacher in the same school district. He seemed to be really dedicated to special education. As I listened to them talk I realized that both of them really are passionate about special education. I can't explain the joy I have in my heart seeing her finally happy and feeling at home. I feel privileged to have played some small part in her finding her happiness. When I leave to come home I'll have no worries about her because I know shes found her home.
Good luck, my friend, in your new life, you have truly been blessed.

day 7

Since there weren't many campgrounds or things to see between Salt Lake City and Vallejo CA. Decided to just do a marathon tag team 900 mile drive. Got into Vallejo late and I just crashed on the floor with my sleeping bag.

day 6

Day 6. Drove most of the day and spent the night in salt lake city. Getting ready for the long haul across the desert.

day 5

Decided to set the GPS to avoid interstates through Colorado. Boy did that prove to be a good idea. Wound up going Colorado 24 and 82 and saw some awesome scenery. If anyone gets a chance to take this route I HIGHLY recommend it. Pictures really don't do the scenery justice since it's 360 degrees all around you. Some of this scenery helped settle the turmoil that's been in my soul this summer.

Although the altitude made running a little hard a view like this helped.





Word fail me for this view....Pictures don't even get close to the reality...




If the view wasn't enough it's filled with rainbow trout.
There is also a small hydroelectric power station hidden at the edge of the lake...




and then the small beauties up above 10,000 feet

Day 4

Day 4, Dodge Kansas. Looked around boot hill and wandered around front street. Took a nice long run about 5:00am before packing up to get "out of dodge" :-).

Day 3

Day 3 Ottowa Kansas, not much of anything there. Basically just a walmart and a couple gas stations. I have been missing the gym, but I found something at walmart that consists of a couple handles and different size surgical tubing. It may not be as good as the gym, but using it correctly it does leave a burn in the muscle groups, so it must be doing something.

day 2

Day 2, Paducah Kentucky. Went down to the flood walls for the city. They have a series of murals on the walls with plaques that explain each mural that show the history of the city, very interesting and will worth seeing if you happen to get to paducah

The cross country adventure begins

Well today is the first full day of the 10 day cross country tour. A friend and I are driving from Atlanta to San Francisco. Yesterday was interesting. I'm obviously not the most accomplished camper. I couldn't get the campfire started, but did manage to set the steaks on fire on the camping stove :-).

These are going to be our "hotel rooms" for the next 10 days. Mine is the small orange and blue one on the right.






Although it was really peaceful and calming to fall asleep between the noise of the
creek ....




and the broook.....



That were on either side of the campsite.

not working at home

I've decided that working from home when you're at home all day and all night alone is probably not the best thing for a persons psyche. Since I can work from anywhere I have connectivity. I've decided to start working from the local coffee houses. Yes, I know I don't drink coffee, but they do have teas and chai. It's also nice to get out some....

Yikes, am I that old??

I got the mail today and had an AARP card addressed to me in it. Did somebody change the retirement age when I wasn't looking ?? :-)

time for some changes

I had a lot of time and occasions to think over the last couple of weeks. I've decided that it's time I made some changes in my life. As soon as I get back from my next trip I'm going to start implementing some of those changes. Stay tuned......

downhill run

After a LOONG day yesterday. (Started work at 6:00am and ended at midnight) I'm finally on the downhill run. We finish at 6:00pm tonight and then I should be able to start boxing up the network about 7:00pm and be on the road by 9:00pm. I think I'm going to try to get a few hours under my belt and then overnight at the GA welcome station. That way the drive tomorrow won't be so bad. It appears that this has been a reasonably successful trip for GreenPoint, yay!

nerve wracking day

The day didn't go quite as well as I had hoped. Although the motorhome did just fine, I was working with the firewalls for the conference. We had a small problem develop that could have very easily turned into a big problem. Naturally, it occurred while all the bigwigs from MS were giving talks/demos include Gates and Balmer. So I spent a number of hours sitting on pins and needles until we got to lunchtime and could take the risk of modifying the firewall configs. Fortunately, the small problem never did develop into anything larger and we were able to get the fix in place without disturbing anyone....whew.... The rest of the day was relatively boring...thankfully

plugging along

I'm still down in Orlando plugging along with this show... The motorhome is up and going and actually running as a backup connections for the show (A nice surprise to not JUST be doing a demo with it)







I also had a friend come down with me. He kind of needed to get out of town for a few days. I've been teaching him the basics of networking and cabling (and been getting free labor out of him :-) )

things we miss

These photos are examples of everyday beauties that we in the modern world seem to miss in our hurry and bustle. We seem to look at television for beauty when it may be sitting outside our back door. For me, I find God in these simple but awesome beauties much more than any televised/recorded/man made things.

Having a little fun

We got done with work early today and since the show hadn't started we decided to take the evening off and go down to Disney. Boy has it changed since I last went more years ago than I would like to admit :-)

posting from Orlando

Been working my tail off all weekend to get the motorhome up and going for a demo. Ran into a number of problems but so far have managed to overcome most of them. Also helped a friend move a bunch of stuff out of her fathers condo down on the Florida coast. Boy it has been HOT the last couple of days working outside in the sun....

silly dog

Well, I just got done spending the last 20 minutes in the tall briars in my neighbors yard trying to extract my dog from them. The silly thing saw a rabbit took off and yanked the leash out of my roommates hand. Then he went running through the woods and got the extensible leash tangled throughout a whole forest of briars.. not much fun in shorts... :-( The leash had to be abandoned, there was no way on earth to get it untangled without cutting it into pieces

woohoo

It looks like somebody just lost a bet with me....



I wonder if she remembers making the bet :-)

A new direction for me

Being Sunday, This post is going to have a religious theme. I don't know what it is about this summer, but it seems that 4 of my close friends are having personal/emotional challenges. For the first time in a while I've found myself kneeling by the side of the bed before sleep praying. There's nothing that I can do directly for any of them so, I've been praying for God to help them through their hard times as well as for some peace in my currently turbulent soul. I've even found a new place to pray that I hadn't thought of before... between sets at the gym :-)

amazing person

I was in downtown Athens last night and met a gentleman who was an artist. The most amazing thing about this person is that he has no hands! He is missing one arm completely and is missing the other arm just above the elbow. He uses markers and does all his drawings with his mouth. He is really quite good. His drawings are much better than I could dream of doing with two good hands. Quite amazing!

new routine

I'm trying a new workout routine. I'm getting up first thing in the morning and going to the gym. I'm then taking the dog for a run last thing before bed. It seems to work better because I was always running out of time before I could get to the gym and would miss workouts.

let's see if it actually works

Well, I put a bat house up this week. Supposedly bats are the best non-pesticide way to get rid of mosquitoes and other flying/biting critters. The house is supposed to face south and catch the morning sun. They're also supposed to be near a source of water. Since I have a creek in the back yard I suppose that counts. I've installed it like instructed so lets see if it works.

finally!

After several weeks of trying to find parts for the boat we got to play in the boat in the water instead of the driveway :-) . Unfortunately there was no water skiing. My roommates girlfriend pulled out at the last minute and by that point everybody else we knew already had plans. So we were left without a spotter...bummer :-( . Maybe next time. We did get a chance to take the boat all over the lake and stopped and went swimming ...so it was a pretty fun day. Unfortunately my roommate forgot to take his cell phone out of his pocket before going swimming...oops. I don't think the phone is going to recover from that experience. Just to prove that we really did get to the lake, and it all wasn't a heat induced hallucination in the driveway, here are some pictures...



Kind of have the "wild hair" thing going after riding in the boat with wet hair :-)

not as quick as I once was

I realized today that it's not that easy to keep up with kids half your age when doing sprint training. I guess we all slow down a little as we get older. I guess that I should consider myself lucky that I can at least keep up with the slow college students :-). I've been thinking of not doing rugby practice this summer and just concentrating on fitness and strength training, and then once I'm fit, going ahead and restarting practice. After 25 years most of the basic skills are instinct reactions and won't take more than a week or two to get them back. I guess I'll sleep on this I see what I think during the next practice on Thursday.

new route

I decided to start running different routes so I could cut down on the boredom while running. I tried a new route tonight and my dog decided that we needed to stop at every new stop sign, tree, telephone pole, bush, mailbox, and fire hydrant. Now that I'm done I feel like one arm is about 2 inches longer than the other because of the amount of time I spend dragging him away from the interesting new things to smell ..... :-)

interesting alarm clock

Apparently during my last road trip I left the storm window outside my bedroom window cracked by about 1 1/2 inches. During my absence it would appear that a small family of nuthatches moved into that space. So I have taped down the blinds on that window and unplugged the lamp on the table next to the window, so they won't be spooked or disturbed. So every morning just after sunup I hear some rustling and then 3 or 4 little voices chirping and muttering. Followed by the parents leaving and returning to the nest several times. It would appear at the moment I don't actually need a real alarm clock :-)

more good news

I just got an email from an old friend that I was worried about. It was good to hear from them and I'm doing much better knowing that they are OK.

good news

Got my lab reports back from my annual checkup and they said everything was perfect! Went out last night and watched a friend play at a local bar. They were actually pretty good. At this point in time I could have done with a slightly different song selection.

getting ready for orlando

A friend and I spent most of today getting the motorhome ready to go to Orlando. We still have a little more work to do, But we're basically ready to go. I sure hope this dog and pony show goes well down there....

Boy what a surprise

Wow what a surprise I got at dinner tonight. I went out to dinner with one of my closest and dearest friends as well as ex-roomate and found out that he had signed his divorce papers yesterday. Having been in his wedding, I never could have imagined him and his wife getting a divorce. But I guess things weren't going as well inside the marriage as they appeared from the outside.

back on the road again

well it' looks like I'll be on the road most of the rest of the summer. My contact in Hilton head called and they are finally ready to do the rest of the wireless network install so they want me down there the first or second week of July followed by 2 weeks in Orlando followed by a week camping trip driving to San Francisco.

finally getting the house under control

Since we're both bachelors, the had kind of gotten out of hand. My roommate and I spent several hours today working on it and it's finally getting back to the point where we're not too embarrassed to have people over now. It still has a way to go to be called spotless...

would have been more fun in the lake instead of in the driveway

My roommate and I picked one of the 100 degree days to work on his boat. We spent all day bent over the engine in 100 degrees. On the positive side we figure out what was wrong and got the engine to run. So, we're one solenoid away from the lake. :-)

happy birthday Janie

I have a friends mother who has adopted me. She happens to love teddy bears. As fate would have it I was buying some parts for work at Fry's and saw something that was soo darn cute I just new I had to buy it for her birthday (which was coming up soon). It's a teddy bear that is designed to hold a small mp3 player. Since she doesn't have one, and probably wouldn't want one anyway, I guess we'll figure out how to hook it up to a FM radio..... :-)

back home again...

Well,
I made it back home again. I of course got some surprises in the mail...such as a note that my car insurance company is ceasing operation in GA. It never fails. Whenever I go out of town for a few weeks something goes wrong and I find out about it in the mail when I get home. Of course by that time it's festered long enough to be a pain in the rear. There has to be a Murphy's law about traveling......

Anyway, I went down to Phoenix by small plane right before I left LV. I wanted to post some pictures. The desert looks a lot different by small plane rather than up above the clouds like in a big Jet.

The dogs seem happy now that the warm weather is here. They're spending most of their time sleeping on the deck.

wow what a night

I'm not from the southwest. I'm not really used to the windstorms that the desert generates. At home in GA, windstorms like these would be blocked by the trees, not out here in Vegas. I'm fine on a rocking boat in fact I sleep like a baby on the water. I'm good to sleep in a moving car or an airplane. However, a moving house is something I find it hard to sleep in. I was laying upstairs in a 3 story house and as the wind would gust I would actually feel the house twitch and move. I thought it was all in my mind untill I went to the bathroom and notice the water in the toilet was swaying with the movement of the house....
All in all it was a very poor night of sleep for me....

useless USB devices

Last week at interop got me looking at some of the useless usb devices that are available.
I won't give the usb light too much flak because I've actually found it useful on late night flights.
However, the usb coffee warmer and the usb personal massager are getting pretty far out there.
Now I've found devices that make these look highly useful. One that we had on the servers at interop was a "USB humping dog" yes that's right, a USB humping dog...

here is a video





I have also seen a USB Hello Kitty that waves it's magic wand and sings to you as you work, and the ever popular USB pole dancer complete with tiny disco lights in the stage!!??!!

It's late so on this note I'm going to sleep. Maybe my subconscious will dream up some crazy USB device that everybody will buy and I can just go ahead and retire. hmmm..... the USB pet rock............ :-)

Back in vegas again..

Well,
I'm back in Vegas again. Been in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center for the last few days. Hope to get out into the outside in the next few days....
For those of you that are following this blog.... Here's a web cam showing one of the booths that I'm working in.....


http://45.0.5.43/view/index.shtml

the bronco has returned

Well, my car has been found. Without tooo much damage. The steering column is of course trashed and the side window is busted out. But besides that it's not to bad. They stole most everything from inside...(the owners guide ??!!??) some change a bunch of old cassette tapes. But amazingly enough they left/missed the most important thing in the car.... my RayBan's... so those are safe and sound at my house now.... I'm not letting them stay in the car at the repair shop anymore :-)

Maybe a good nights sleep...

Wow what a day.... It started this morning with a call telling me my car's been stolen and ended with a front row seat to a hit a run accident. Maybe if I get a good nights sleep tomorrow will be a little less eventful.

family reunion down south

Well,

I just returned from West Palm Beach Florida. I went down for a few days to see my cousins, a whole tassle of second cousins(the next generation of the family) and my aunt. I had a pretty good time seeing everyone. We all don't together enough so this was a chance to catch up. I didn't take any pictures because I was staying in a hotel in the industrial section of WPB (yes there IS one). It was an interesting trip to get down there. I went from San Francisco -> Atlanta -> Athens -> Charlotte -> West Palm Beach. Between 11:00pm on thurday and 2:00 Pm on Friday. It was quite an adventure in San Francisco Airport. I had gotten there and checked in when there was some sort of security breach. Everybody got hustled out of concourse #1, and of course everyone had to go through security again. I was really expecting the miss the Athens -> Charlotte leg of my trip, but somehow made it. Instead the plane was late arriving and I missed the Charlotte -> West Palm leg. I did get on the next plane to WPB so all was not lost....

Back at Hotstage

Well, much to my own suprise I'm back in Belmont at Interop hotstage again. I working with the VOIP group in the InteropNet Labs. Once a year a bunch of us get together in a warehouse in Belmont California. It's a little frightening to think how many years of our lives we've spent in this building. However, It's a great chance to work with some of the top people in the networking industry, as well as a chance to hang out with some good friends that I don't get to see often enough.....

We even have webcams mounted in different spots around the building....

http://45.0.5.43/

onto my present...

Next stop was in Fernandina Beach. I went up to visit a friend that I hadn't seen in years... She's know living beachfront... The view were absolutely unreal....


South
north...



east....



rough life huh ?

visiting memories....

After visiting my parents I drove by the house that they built and the house that I spent my young life learning how to crab and fish in the marshes surrounding it.....

Hi mom and dad

I went to savannah this weekend for a rugby tourney. I had a GREAT time. The unusual thing about this tourney was that it was on Fri and Sun. So saturday I went to Florida. I went down to visit the memorial garden that they're buried in. I left to roses (1 yellow, 1 pink) for them in the garden. It's actually a very pleasant location......


There's also a little chapel next to the garden that is open 24/7/365......



I just hope my parents aren't too disappointed with me.....

sheba's at it again....

My paralyzed dog is at it again.... This time she managed to just about demolish the kitchen by knocking over the dog fence we have in the kitchen....

This message was sent from a T-Mobile wireless phone.

I woke up this morning on January 1st and after blech weather and rain for most of December. This is what I saw....









After losing everybody in my family, the holidays are a little hard on me. This made me realize that as long as we still live there is still hope for the future. It made me feel much better. Strange how the little things can do that sometimes......

Here's pictures of my dogs hanging out on a nice winter day. They look so harmless. Hobbes ( the big one) is pretty harmless. Sheba (the smaller one, the boxer) is actually paralyzed from the ribs back.






Before you feel sorry for Sheba, I've never seen any animal with the kind of determination and spirit that this dog has. The paralysis has not slowed her down much. She has a wheelchair but only uses it for long walks, the rest of the time she gets around by balancing on her front two legs. She actually does quite well that way. Manages to get into a lot a trouble with just two legs as the following picture shows. I had put the dogs to bed for the night in the kitchen and Sheba decided that she wanted out to wander around the house. This is what I found after I met her at the top of the stairs.......




She actually managed to break the teeth of the lever arm of the child's gate....

The wheelchair was stored in the hallway so she did this on two legs.... :-)