Category: travel

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the sheets and pillow are calling

Hey there Tuesday people.

I’m off again today, taking the corporate sawmill shuttle across the state a ways to work over there for a couple days.  More of the “meet and greet” business, with a little effort thrown in to justify the whole thing.  So, an evening in a hotel and two days away from the fam… could be worse I suppose.

I’m just dreading the 4:45am rise-and-shine… which means I better get to typing here – I got music and Halloween for you today, not much to write home about.

Lately, I’ve been on this soul music tear – acquiring (through absolutely unquestionably legal channels) tons and tons of vintage 60s and 70s soul records to try and flesh out my collection. In the process, I’ve found some simply amazing stuff – the cream of which so far has got to be material by one O.V. Wright. Someone I’d never even heard of before, it’s hard to believe this guy isn’t held in the same esteem as classic performers like Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye. His voice is incredible, full of emotion, and his songwriting isn’t so serious that you can’t get a chuckle here and there. And the music, oh man the music. All the right horns and cymbal crashes in all the right places… this stuff makes you feel.

Anyway, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Some seventy albums into my bender, I realized I’ve now got too much to appreciate before something new comes along – and I’d better come up for air and actually take in some of what I’ve grabbed. Soul is a relatively new area for me, so I’m excited to get educated. I know, you’re riveted right no.  I’ll continue to thrill you with the following, I’m sure…

I was thrilled today as I came up with a really neat concept to “soup up” the Halloween prop setup. Right now I’ve got live power (at 120V AC) running all around the place to power the props. I’ve long worried about this being unsafe, as a lot of my connections are simple wire-nut jobs and could conceivably be susceptible to shorts (and, less plausible but still a concern, human contact). Today I hit upon a way to move most of the dangerous high-voltage hookups under the safety of the front porch roof enclosure – and wire the props in the yard with low-voltage 12V power.

Additionally, I dreamed up a way to reduce the amount of clutter I have by triggering the coffin “popper” and ceiling “dropper” from the same motion sensor. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but to me it means a lot less wiring, a lot cleaner interface between the props, and some cool new features. For instance, both the dropper and the popper can have (timed) associated sounds and targeted lighting now, in addition to the always-on “ambient” soundtrack that was there last year.

What’s more, if everything goes right – in addition to springing down on you from its hiding place above with a blood-curdling scream and scary spotlighting, the ceiling dropper will now spray a burst of fog towards you as well. It’s probably hard to visualize, so I’ll just post a video when I get it working.

Ahem… I’m outta here.  With such an early start to tomorrow, the sheets and pillow are calling.

Before I go, I keep meaning to mention that Ben posted his pictures from our abbreviated John Muir Trail hike over at his site.  Check them out here.

Goodnight.

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hey john, you can have your trail

Monday morning and, if I were the lying type, I’d tell you that I’m writing this after midnight Sunday… having just returned from our successful epic six-day JMT hike.

But, y’allz, I’m an honest Joe, so I’ll fess up: Early evening on Thursday we reached our third campsite after a long, but surprisingly bearable, sixteen mile trek and decided (in a groupthink snowball of unanimous rationalization) that we all felt accomplished enough with our ~40mi three-day adventure, and would rather be in a hotel eating a meatlover’s pizza and sipping some cold suds than bedding down again on the ground in our filthy clothes to wake with the sun and do it all again for three more days.  So that’s just what we did.  And, by late Friday afternoon we were in our respective homes, taking our respective showers, kissing our respective significant others, and easing into clean duds.

Didn’t bother me much to end early, and now that the trail has beaten us twice I think we’re officially done with it.  My pride is somewhat salved knowing we put in some good effort, and I’ve seen about ~70mi of the thing… so I count that as a neat experience.  Good enough for me, I suppose.  Oh, and I did blog while out there in the wilderness.  I saved the entries on the iPhone and upped them sometime this past weekend.  Scroll down to check them out if you’re interested.

Switching gear now, moving onto the normal stuff: I want to talk about Keaton for a moment.

Lately, she’s been protesting naps and bedtime more and more.  Saturday, for instance, she refused to go down for either – repeatedly getting out of bed, opening her door, and leaving her room. After several frustrating rounds of this back-and-forth game, I decided we need a way to “keep” her in her room (the bedrooms in the house don’t have locks on them).  So, call me a bad parent or whatever you’d like, but I improvised a door-locking mechanism out of a bungee cord and the nearby hinge of another door.  We used this “lock” with success Saturday night around 1am when Keaton just refused to say in her room/bed.  I secured her door and got back into bed with Sharaun.  And, after about ten or fifteen minutes of tearful protest she finally accepted her lot, crawled back into bed, and drifted off to sleep. Yeah, I feel kinda bad for having to “lock” her in there… but it’s what’s working for now.

Well folks, it’s creeping up on midnight and I better hit the sack and send this thing to the presses.  Love you and hope I didn’t lose you last week while the blog languished during the hike.  Talk to you soon; same place, same time.

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second day: hard

Our shadows stretched out long in front of us as we made our final ascent down to the lakeshore that is tonight’s campsite. It was a long day, much more arduous than yesterday – partly because we had a 1,900ft cumulative elevation gain and partly due to the altitude and second-day soreness.

At some point during the day we all encountered difficulties, although Anthony had the worst of it – succumbing once again to altitude sickness and losing his lunch and the day’s liquids somewhere along the trail (and then twice again before hitting they sack). Erik’s also showing small symptoms of a possible cold, with a sore throat and cough. But, tomorrow is another day… and we’ll just have to see how it goes.

Actually, it’s eight o’clock right now and all of us are tucked into our bags for the night (it’s not even fully dark outside). However, we’re all more than drained and it’s just too chilly to sit around outside. So, we decided to retire early. With luck, the night will restore our bodies an spirits (and be bear-free).

Tomorrow should be a little easier, with a mostly downhill morning and a small climb in the afternoon. If we feel OK, we may entertain the idea of pushing on into the Mammoth area… but, after today, that’s a big “if.”

Until tomorrow (or when I have a connection to post this), keep sending us positive thoughts!

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Day one & feeling good

It’s around 5pm on Tuesday and we’re all sitting around in a circle at our first campsite.

We ended up trekking a bit more than a mile further than we’d planned as the rangers warned us about an “aggressive” bear active in the area where we’d originally planned to stay the night. And, actually, having been able to check out the intended site on the way here, we’re at the better place.

Asking around the circle, everyone seems to be in good spirits, and I think we’re all happy with our stamina the progress we made. Then again, we’re still hiking on (relatively) fresh legs and aren’t trail-beaten yet.

It is absolutely gorgeous up here, and the trails aren’t as crowded as we expected for the holiday-led short week. I’m trying to take in more of the scenery this time around, instead of watching the feet in front of me and the terrain coming up.

Tomorrow sees us at our highest elevations for the whole of the hike, and likely our most brutal day in terms of exertion.

Wish us luck!

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somebody set me up the bomb

Man is it ever a blue-sky gorgeous day up here in Oregon.

I mean, the weather is about as perfect as anyone could ask for.  One thing about Oregon, when the weather is on, it’s on.  One other thing about Oregon, the weather is hardly ever on, and when it’s off it’s off. But today, it’s definitely on.  Blue skies with just enough wispy white clouds for accent, and temperatures in the mid 70s.  Anyway, it’s not that beautiful from within the walls of this stupid cubicle… but I still have the memories from the minute I was outside the car and restaurant at lunch.  Savoring them now…

I got ambushed at work today friends; straight-up entrapped, set-up.

See, I was asked to come up here today for what’s known at my sawmill as a “face to face” meeting.  This is where a bunch of people who work together “virtually” on a daily basis physically come to a central location and meet each other, well, face-to-face.  It’s a common meeting here, and also a very valuable one.  It’s my belief that you can talk to someone for years over the phone and through e-mail and never really “get them” at all.  One lunch sitting across from each other though, one beer after a conference, and you can “feel out” personality quirks, working styles, and all other manner of useful (read: exploitable) information about coworkers you’ve only known as voices.  So, anyway, I was looking forward to the face to face.

My role in the meeting, as communicated to me beforehand by the meeting organizer, was simply to meet, greet, and listen.  There was a published agenda, and I wasn’t on it.  So for me this was more of a networking trip than a working one, at least as far as the face-to-face goes.  But, about an hour into the meeting, they turned on me y’all.  I was handed the plug for the projector and the entire room turned to me as the leader said, “Dave, do you want to present your material now?”

My material?  My material?!

My face was hot, I was stammering.  People were looking at me, I was still holding the cable for the projector… hovering it near my laptop like I might hook it up.  But for what?  I have no “material;” I have nothing to share, I’ve prepared zero.  I’m not even on the agenda.  No one told me I was supposed to present, no one asked me to bring data – I’m just here to shake hands and exchange business cards and ask how your kids are doing.  I do the only thing I can think of:

“I didn’t actually prepare any material for this discussion, as it wasn’t on the agenda,” I said, regaining a little piece of my composure as I did, each word coming out in a voice a little more confident than the last.  “I can, however, give a brief verbal update.”  I proceeded to talk, talk, and talk.  I wasn’t really sure where I was going, but at least I was dumping real information – facts.  You can’t call me on facts, even if they are things that won’t become fact for months.  I start to see heads nodding along with me, I hear “mmms” of approval and understanding.  It’s working… I’ve got ’em.

But then, just as I thought I was beginning to roll: A challenge.  Someone asks me when they can have my information, wants to pin me down to days and hours and minutes if he can.  Information that I’ve not created yet, and now they’re telling me they need it yesterday and I’m holding up their schedule.  The tone in the room changes, gets more aggressive towards me.  “Tell you what,” I say, “We need some more information from you too before we have the whole picture here.  Surely my piece isn’t the only piece causing delay. When do you plan to have your data available?”  “Any day now,” the challenger replies.  “That’s my timeline too, then,” I reply, a little smug.  I mean, vague is OK for you – it must be for me too, right?

“Well, let’s put a date on it…” he follows.  “OK,” I say, “When can you have your data ready?”

What’s this?  What have I done here?  Now who’s on the spot, Mr. Challenger?

“I can have mine in two weeks,” he says.  “Then so can I,” I reply.

Done.  Didn’t exactly turn the tables, but at least got 100% of the heat off me.  Still, wasn’t my best showing by a long shot.

Thing is, I know these guys are antsy to have some particular data for me.  I should’ve been able to read the ruse, to see their game, and could’ve come in over-prepared.  I wish to the Heavens that I’d had that foresight and come in with a fully decked-out presentation I could throw up on the projector – man I wish.  But nope, I had to wing it.   Next time, perhaps… I’ll be a little more cautious, a bit more suspicious of motivations.  Da bidness world is hardcore, y’allz… hardcore gangsta bidness.

The day ended a lot better though.  I drew up in front of my folks’ place (where I stay when I have to work from the Oregon sawmill), and we went out for dinner at one of my favorite outdoor pub-eatery places.  It was a long relaxed dinner over beers, a good time.  Fine way to turn around an off day.

And now, I’m off to bed and then back on a plane tomorrow.  Have a good weekend readers, I love you.

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walk, cake, pack, sleep

Another day at work.

A friend from Shanghai was in town so we all went to lunch.  Last time I had a meal with him it was at an outside cafe in Bangalore, India.  This time we had Italian right here in town.  When we got back to the office, he came over to my desk and presented me with gifts for both Keaton and Sharaun.  The Chinese culture sure is a gift-giving one.  Keaton got this little bobble-type figurines, what look like grandparents, the woman with a fan and the man with a pipe.  Sharaun got a wine bag/cover thing, deep green faux silk with Chinese characters on it.  So thoughtful.

After dinner tonight Sharaun and I and Keaton took a family walk.  We hoofed our way over to the house of some friends of ours to check their garden while they’re away traveling.  And even though their wasn’t much of a harvest reaped, we did have a nice walk at least.  I like walking past the lines of homes in suburbia, I’ve always had a fascination with the little microcosms of other peoples’ lives that goes on inside them.  I walk past and look at things like how they keep their yard, what cars they drive, if their lights are on, and what I can scent as we pass by.  The guy with the six cars is doing laundry, I can smell his dryer exhaust; and someone at the house with brown-dead front lawn is grilling over charcoal out back.  The family at 703 just put down a new layer of mulch around the trees and planters, looks sharp.

As soon as we got home it was time to put Keaton down, and now I have to get an outfit packed for the second day of my overnight two-day-quick trip to Oregon tomorrow.  I’m shooting for an early bedtime (I did back out of the concert plans after all) so I won’t be quite so burned out on the plane tomorrow.  Sharaun bought this little two-serving piece of chocolate cake when she went up to the grocery store, and I think I’m gonna have my half with a glass of milk here soon (she ate hers as soon as we got back from our walk, she has a weakness for chocolate).  And now, it’s something around ten o’clock and I’ve really done nothing.

Until Oregon then, keep your monitors warm for another round.  Goodnight friends.

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I waited every minute I was gone for that kiss

Yes. Back at home. When I got here, Keaton was still asleep. But, when she woke up, she gave me the biggest hug and sloppy kiss. I waited every minute I was gone for that kiss.

If I felt like I did well on my first public outing of the presentation, then I knocked it out of the park today. I mean, I’d say something here about not wanting to brag – but, I really did rock it.

Such is the norm with doing material multiple times; the quality tends to improve with the familiarity, at least until that saturation point when you’re bored of the routine. The second time through the material is always a good one, lots of opportunity to incorporate stuff you got as questions the first time around, and enough initial feedback to hone in on what folks are after (likewise skimming that which isn’t particularly well received). But, at the end of my half-hour turned hour banter, I actually got applause. You don’t get applause at technical conferences, especially when your presentation is pitched as a “class.” Well, maybe you do… but it’s not the norm. Made me feel good.

Another good thing that came out of this trip was a massive amount of networking. I see my customers and their representatives often enough, but it’s great to get to see them all in one condensed period of time. Even moreso in a cramped 26th floor presidential suite bent over tubs of beer and ice. Good things come from creating and maintaining professional networks, I’ll always believe this. And, the networking on this trip is no exception. In the course of a couple days, I was requested to come visit China, Japan, Israel, Taiwan and Germany.

I mean, the way business goes at the sawmill, there are always travel-heavy times and travel-light times, and I’m about to go through six or so months of travel-heavy. Perhaps the crowning jewel in the upcoming travel though: The Germany trip is to Munich at the end of September. And, that means I’ll be a two-year returnee to Oktoberfest. It’s been a while since I’ve lived the road warrior life… pretty much since Keaton’s been around – but despite missing her and Sharaun so much while I’m away, I’m actually looking forward to some travel. (Just don’t tell Sharaun I said that.)

The birds ate every last piece of fruit off my trees. Some ten odd apricots, and two plums. Just ate them down to dangling pits. Last year they ravaged my strawberries and pecked my tomatoes. I hate those birds.

Goodnight to you, internet people. Sorry my writing’s been off, I’ma come scrong next week.