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I'm writing this 35,000 feet up in the air over central Texas, as I fly back in to Austin after a week in San Jose for the Embedded Systems Conference. Flying is one of the few times where I actually have time to sit and re-group, and even write a website update! To say I've been busy over the last month or so is an understatement, as I prepared training and labs and code for 3 events all happening with-in 5 days of each other. The first one was the one I'm flying back from, and we had 125+ people in each of the classes. It was by far the largest class I've ever taught, but amazingly it all went pretty smoothly.
The only real hiccup wasn't related to the class, but was the Internet connection in the hotel and convention center dropping down to early 90's 14.4k internet speed because of all the engineers trying to get on. You'd think in Silicon Valley of all places they'd be able to figure out that they should have more bandwidth.
I fly up to Montreal then on Monday to do another class for some distributors, but that will be a lot less hectic (I hope!). And even though it'll be my 3rd trip up to that particular part of Canada-land, I still won't have the chance to really check out the city since I fly in late, teach all day, and fly out early the next morning. Which normally wouldn't be a big issue to do sight seeing that evening, except the company I'm visiting is in the middle of suburbia and nowhere near public transit. Eventually it'll work out where I can stay a few extra days on my own, but alas not this time.
The week before this though I was in Florida for my friend Alyson's wedding. I met her freshman year of college, and it's crazy to think that now everyone's getting married. I was wondering when this would happen, but now I know at least 6 people getting married this year. Unfortunately I won't be able to make them all, but I'm starting to really feel old now. Me and Kara haven't set a date yet, but it's still tentatively planned for next Spring.
While we were in Florida we spent a few days at the beach (Daytona and Siesta), went up to UF for a day, and also went to Disney World. Thank goodness for the Unofficial Guide touring plans. I hadn't had to really worry about crowds for years since we had our annual passes while we lived in Florida and could just go during the deserted off season. But trying to do everything in a park in only a day was hectic. Feet killed us by the end but we did manage to see just about everything. Did Magic Kingdom and Epcot this trip, and plan to do MGM next trip when I'm in Orlando again for work in June. And thank goodness I kept my UF student ID, which I used to claim Florida Residency to save about $70 on tickets for those 2 days. Disney is soooo expensive for out of state!
I also used Priceline for the first time ever, and it definitely won't be the last. I did have a $22/day car rental reservation, but Pricelined it down to $12 a day. Then I got a $140 hotel room at Embassy Suites for only $52 a night. And with free hot breakfast! It takes a little bit of research to figure out how low to go, but well worth the time. Definitely recommend it if you're not super particular about location or amenities, and most importantly, know your travel plans won't change since they charge your credit card after you win the bid and it's entirely nonrefundable for any reason. Just pick anything 3* or higher and you'll be fine and get the biggest discounts.
As usual when I fly I pick up newspapers left and right to read on the plane, and so I can finally feel like I'm caught up with what's going on in the world, from the Gulf oil spill to Greece's financial issues.
And then I have my phone to play MP3's off of (Lady Gaga's Telephone on repeat, it's so catchy!). I'm still using the Bose fancy headphones I picked up while I interned at Intel. They bought them for everyone since it was so noisy in the server room I did benchmarks in, and then gave them to me as a goodbye present. Still getting a lot of use out of them 6 years later. My only complaint is that if the battery dies, you can't play music out of them then. All the other noise suppression headphones from other companies just don't do the noise cancellation without batteries, but you can still use them like regular headphones. Not these. Very annoying to have a battery die on you in mid-flight.
Speaking of flying again, if anyone reading this (yes all two of you and the 3 internet search crawlers) flies Southwest, they're doing double flight credits until mid-May. So one round trip is worth 4 credits instead of the regular 2. Took advantage of this with my flight to San Jose, and even coming back from Florida. It took a lot of finagling, canceling of flights and rebooking, but I LOVE Southwest since it's always incredibly easy and free to change flights or cancel tickets. They just credit your account for any cancellations, or charge you the difference is the flight you switch too is more expensive. And if the flight you switch to is cheaper, you get that amount credited to your account. Everyone else charges like $150 to change anything! And you get two free checked bags. And I swear I didn't have anyone paying me to type all this while on a Southwest flight. I promise!
I can see Lake Travis out the window, so we're almost home. Got to turn off the laptop and post this once I get home. I like seeing Austin from the air though, seeing my apartment complex and Zilker and downtown. It's good to be home and good to see Kara again after a whole week of being away. I honestly have no idea how we did 9 months half a world away, it seems like just a bad dream now :)
Oh and I just learned that ctrl+a highlights an entire document. Makes cutting and pasting so much easier.
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