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 :-)