Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

I had to swing by the office to take care of a few things before I can go home.

I am wrapping up and will be heading home.

I hope to make a couple of blog posts tonight before the memory fades on this past weekend's adventures.

Laterz

We made it to Austin last night around like 3:10 AM or so.

To be quite honest, I remember that it was after 3:00 AM but not by how much. And I didn't bring in the pad of paper we have been keeping notes on, so I have no idea of what the final mileage was. I will get the pad out and do a spreadsheet later today.

In terms of gas mileage, Jeremy did a little experiment and kept to speed of the car between 60 and 65 for one leg (ie between stops for gas) the gas mileage improved from having been like 25/mpg twice in a row back up to 27/mpg.

The difference was that the times when we were getting 25/mpg, our speed was about 70 mph. So that extra 5 mph, cost us 2/mpg which is like a 7.4% loss in gas mileage. I completely attribute this to the kayak on top of the car. I mean the thing is like a giant sail, it produced quite a bit of drag (in part because you can feel the semi-trucks pass the car more with the kayak, than you do without it).

Anyway, we made it to Austin, if we want to take a look at it in a 24-hour day perspective we made it in two days. We left at about 11:00 AM EST (10:00 AM central) on Friday and arrived in Austin at about 3:00 AM on Sunday morning, so a whole 7 hours to spare.

In calendar day terms, it took us three days, since we left on a Friday and didn't arrive until Sunday.

To keep from going insane on the trip we listened to some audio books. I have been searching for "Dealers of Lightning" the story about the Xerox PARC lab and their quest for the technologies that led to the modern office (personal computers, GUI based operating systems [read Windows and Macs), laser printers, Ethernet and scanners).

That was a good book, it was about 5 hours long. Jeremy also had iWoz on his iPod, that on the other hand was 9 hours long.

All I have to say is, "Your the man Woz, your the man!!!"

I mean, Steve Wozniak was quite obviously an engineer ahead of his time and was able to do some real pioneer engineering work at Apple in the creation of the Apple I and Apple II. He also invented the Universal Remote.

Now, iWoz is an auto-biography, so the book was written by him about him. I am glad that he didn't talk about himself in the 3rd person, though he definitely is very proud of his work, as he should be. But a good chunk of the book definitely sounds like he is patting himself on the back just a little too much. Jeremy and I joked around that Woz should be talking about himself in the 3rd person in certain parts of the book, just because while slightly more modest, it seemed like he was just short of being one of those really stereotypical athletes that talks about themselves, their accomplishments and what they like in the 3rd person.

"Woz likes it when Woz pulls off a great prank."

There were a couple of times when we thought Woz should have had a catchphrase like

"Cuz, I'm Woz mo-fo!"

or

"Because, I'm Woz biatch!"

Again to be fair, the book was good and Woz is an amazing engineer he did some truly breathtaking feats of engineering in his day. And much of his flair for reducing the number of chips and reworking a design to be more efficient is probably a trait that more engineers should have.

The Dealers of Lightning books was great, not sure I said that yet.

Well I am going to be leaving to take Gina to the airport soon. She is going to be in Vegas for a few days at a trade show.

If my schedule was a bit more flexible I would be going with her, but the rest of September is already going to be pretty jam packed. And, well after 28-30 hours in a car, I can't say that I would be looking forward to a 3 hour plane flight to Vegas.

Before I pack it in, let me just say this. Do not, whatever you do, do not drink the "Mt Dew: Game Fuel". I mean I don't think it is poisoned or anything, but it just doesn't taste good in my opinion. A couple of the web comics (CAD || PA) I read was making fun of the stuff, but from a marketing perspective, because of the fact that Halo3 is the main sponsor of this sugary noxious concoction, I mean the taste to me is sort of like orange drink that has a bit of extra carbonation and someone proceeded to blend up some skittles and nerds and then add that to the orange drink.

I mean, we bought it because we were still a good hour from the house at least and I needed a pick me up, but didn't want to drink an energy drink as this would probably prevent me from getting any sleep when I got home. So I figured I would try the Game Fuel and see what all the fuss was about.

Yeah, just don't bother. I mean drink the Code Red or LiveWire if your looking for a sugary Mt Dew alternative soda. Or you know what just drink some water or get a V8. God I sound old.

Oh well.

Laterz

Summer Vacation is over.

The flight from Detroit was ok, but the landing in Dallas was horrible.

The drive from Dallas to Austin wasn't too bad. Gina and I stopped in Waco and had dinner at the Cracker Barrel.

Gina got home about 5 minutes or so before me.

I was greeted by several happy pups when I opened the door.

I popped the first Harry Potter movie into the DVD player as Gina finished reading the last Harry Potter book.

She won't tell me the ending. She wants me to read the book. I think I can handle reading the last 150 pages, I had been reading over her shoulder on the plane and got to about the last 150.

Well, it is time for bed, gotta go to work in the morning.

Laterz

That is what our outdoor weather station we have setup on the covered sun porch has read for the last couple of days.

Inside the humidity has fluctuated between 41% to 52%.

Needless to say, the humidity sucks.

We have had rain every day for the last several days. This morning it sprinkled on my way into work and then poured for about an hour, give or take 10 minutes.

Now it looks like we are getting some sun shining through the clouds, but off in the distance I can see that it is raining.

Obviously, Texas needs rain. People who have never been here, know that Texas is a state that needs rain.

Right at this moment, I don't think Austin needs anymore rain. I know that my coworkers in Dallas feel the same way.

However, I think I will gladly take rainy days over 100+ degree days.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

The Boston trip as a whole was a good one on a personal and a business level.

I am too tired to rant about it properly at this time. But let me just say this, I will think twice before getting on my cellphone while on federal property.

I'm watching the Sopranos finale, I missed it as I was in route to Boston last time.

Laterz

I picked him up from the airport yesterday afternoon.

I was a bit late, I got caught up folding clothes and hanging towels out on the clothesline. Which, now one of the posts for the clothesline needs to be replaced. It has snapped at the base. I had noticed that it was rusting pretty bad right where the dogs had been marking it, I figured it would probably last a couple of years.

So that will be a project for next Saturday. I will try to get that in the ground before taking Jeremy back to the airport. I fly out to Boston on Sunday for the eBay Developers Conference.

On the way back from the airport, we went through downtown and over to the UT campus. I haven't been down there in a quite a while. We hit "Einstein's" an Arcade right there on the 'Drag' and played some video games. Then I got us lost looking for the Dobie mall, I thought it was north but it was south.

So along the way we stopped in at 'The Hole In the Wall' and had a quick beer and shot a game of pool. Asked directions to the Dobie.

It was very Hot yesterday, and 'It is very Hot' was said many times, mostly by Jeremy.

We browsed and each bought a graphic novel at Funny Papers, the comic store in the Dobie mall.

Then we headed towards home, stopping at HEB along the way to pick up some stuff for dinner and lunch stuff for Jeremy for the week.

I gotta go.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

It is raining here.

It was raining when we left to go to Dallas.

It was raining harder in Dallas (last Friday).

It was raining when we flew to Detroit.

There was no rain in Lansing while we were there. (Which was excellent. Remember, I am solar powered.)

The weather was OK in Detroit (on Tuesday).

It had recently rained in Dallas when we landed (On Tuesday).

It rained HARD during the day on Wednesday in Dallas.

It was cloudy, but no rain on the way back to Austin.

It started raining during the night.

And the stream going down the street makes me think I will be washed away.

(I will try to snag a photo)

Laterz

Well maybe not a cover band of the 70s but rather a band that covers the 70s.

I am trying to find the name of the band, but haven't yet. Scratch that, I think I found it on the venue's website, "K-Tel and the Hit Machine".

I got invited out to hangout with some friends that I had not spoken with in a while.

The band played a wide variety of of music from the 70s, possible a song or two from the early 80s.

If you read my recent post pertaining to music, you might wonder 'What does Ben know about music from the 70s?'

Not much really. But I did recognize some of the music, so I must have heard it somewhere. Maybe it was something that Mom and Dad listened to while I was young. Or maybe I just heard it in a movie.

Who knows.

I need to hit the sack. Emma is grunting at me that it is way pass her bedtime and that she is tired.

Laterz

Using a script that Jeremy had put together for his HikeBikePaddle site I was able to load data from my GPS unit into a Google Map.

I need to 'borrow' the script and modify it to keep historical track of the coordinates and what not.

In the meantime, I took screenshots of the script's output.

I just can't seem to shake this feeling of being tired.

I normally try to get to bed around 10 or 11. This was easy when I was sticking to the schedule of no caffeine after the noon hour.

That hasn't been the case lately. With the deadline for the launch of Jaduka coming up, I have been burning the midnight oil the last few days. I crawled into bed close to 2am last night.

I got the blog software installed on our shiny, speedy new web servers that our IT group put together in a miraculously short time.

"Once more into the breach, dear friends..." is how I feel lately.

I will be in Dallas all next week for the launch of Jaduka. So what does Shakespeare have to do with Dallas & Jaduka? Not a whole lot. But I remember back in high school when we were getting close to opening day for the musical or play. We would hunker down, focus on what needed to be completed, got a little more serious about it all. We would start to have night rehearsals. Parents would bring in food (potluck style) for us so that we could eat dinner and get back to learning lines, sewing costumes, constructing sets.

It has been about 14 years since my first round of night rehersals and 10 years since my last. I don't remember everything, but I remember that it was usualy about 2 weeks before the opening night, maybe 3. I remember that the various teams really came together during night rehearsals. Comradery between everyone grew, rivalries more often than not would be cast aside in the interest of the common goal.

So I am looking forward to spending some time with the Jaduka team in Dallas. Not sure if my mom will be able to drop off casserole though, maybe she could overnight one. From what I hear we are going to try play some a running game of Monopoly (or two). I look forward to taking all the monopoly money away from my co-workers.

It should be an interesting week. Our company is fairly distributed between the three corporate offices of NetworkIP. Two graphic artists and myself are down here in Austin. The President, VP of Marketing, Director of Marketing, Director of Sales, and Market Development Manager are all in Dallas. And we have an Account Executive in Longview, TX.

The bulk of the call processing and API development staff for NetworkIP is down here in Austin. The Dallas office is primarily Sales and Marketing. The Longview office is the headquarters and houses the bulk of the staff. Support, Operations, Accounting, IT, and application/web development lives in Longview, TX.

It makes for an interesting triangle setup when you look at it on a map. Dallas is 180 miles from Austin and 120 miles from Longview. Austin is about 260-300 miles, depending upon which way you got to get there, 260 straight shot, 300 if you go to Dallas and hang a right.

Well, I best get back to the grind.

"Once more into the breach, dear friends..."

laterz