Hey Ladies….

Ok, I had lots of cash leftover from my trip to CA (well, not LOTS, but lots), so I went to the bank to ditch as much of it as possible into the bank before I pissed it away… I managed to piss away a bit of it though…. I bought the Beastie Boys Video Anthology done up all sweet-like by those crazy folks over at the Criterion Collection. The videos look rad, and all the sound mixes are available in Dolby 5.1 as well as the original 2.0 mixes… :)

I have heard that this disc is chock-full o’ features, like multi-angles and such, so it should keep me busy during my downtimes..

Phew

I stayed in the Mountain View Inn Best Western last night, which was crazy-nice. It had better be for $185 a night!!!!! Holy crap that is one expensive hotel. :)

Well, so my interview at “unnamed company” went rather well. As with the phone interview, there were a number of questions I had difficulty with, but this time around, the number I could answer was much greater. :P

I had to sign an NDA, which is (on one hand) cool, since I got to hear about some really cool things that I wouldn’t have heard otherwise, but OTOH, it is scary how much I am owned by various companies. :)

I took Caltrain back from the interview to Chris’ apartment, and I am currently awaiting her arrival from work. :) It was about a 40 minute train ride from “unnamed company” to here, and it was a 15 minute walk from the station to the apartment which is cool. While the public transportation here isn’t QUITE up to NYC standards, it is damn-fine.

In other out-of-order news, I met up with Kate yesterday for some pizza in downtown San Jose. It was great to see her, and to also see San Jose in the light (last time Chris and I went there, it was quite dark). It was great seeing Kate again, and if I do end up out here, we will probably hang out frequently.

Whoa

Ok, this is kinda weird. Chris had to go into work early today, so I am just here chilling in her apartment. I figured I can use this time to brush up on various topics for my interview tomorrow. I also might get together with Kate today if time permits.

Anyway, so Chris left for work today, and I was here, and I kinda realized that she has already made the transition into the “Real World”, and that I am just a few weeks from doing that myself. Wow… This is kinda freaky.

She made din-din for me last night, and it all came out great! I also had to take her car to the store to fetch some gravy (since we forgot it), and it was a pretty fun car to drive. First time I had ever driven a Saturn, so..

Other than that, it should be a pretty laid-back day… I have a cut in my mouth, which is pretty bad, I must have bit down hard during a dream or something. Whatever caused it, it sucks alot. :(

The Earl

Ok. I understand that you can put just about anything between two slices of bread and call it a ‘sandwich’, but I am of the opinion that you should be able consume the entire thing without it falling apart into a slimy mess.

The interview nervousness is starting to set in. :)

“So, where are we headed today?”

Ugh. Today blew so badly. Wait, I should backtrack to my last entry….

So, the stuff at NASA continued throughout the week, Thursday night we had a DCS vs. MCS game of Laser Tag, which rocked. I did _really_ well, getting some of the best scores of the two teams (we had some non-SOFIA people playing, we couldn’t get a game all to ourselves).

Friday afternoon, we were done with NASA stuff. I have to say that while this week was enlightening and fun, it was very difficult and tiring to sit through all these presentations, etc.

Before we went back to the hotel, we toured a few more facilities at NASA. We saw “Hangar 1”, which is the gigantic hangar you can see from 101 that was originally built to house US Navy Dirigibles. This structure was immense (you could fit 3 Titanic’s in it with the doors closed). After that we went to see the vertical motion simulator that pilots and astronauts use to simulate flight. It was like a gigantic X-Y plotter.

After our tours, we headed back to the hotel, and I stayed behind while everyone else went to San Francisco. I guess it was a combination of being tired and not feeling touristy. So I took a nap for awhile and eventually contacted Chris. I got a ride out to Cisco and hung out there for awhile (actually getting to meet a few of her co-workers, which was cool). I also got to hear her IP Phone’s funky ringing ability. We left after we got all her Linux problems solved (She didn’t need my help for that, I’ll tell you.. :P).

We headed back to her apartment and watched a movie but ended up falling asleep rather quickly. We woke up Saturday and hung out all day, going out to eat, shop, etc. She returned me to the hotel at 2am Sunday so I could check out and catch my plane. I am really glad I got to spend some time with her; our relationship has been really strained since she moved, and I think that this time we healed a little bit… (At least I did.)

So the DCS team left the hotel at 4:20am to catch our 6:25am(PDT) flight. We made it in time, but we cut it a little close. Boba lost his ticket (which is why we left the hotel at 4:20 instead of 4), and we left him behind to deal with the ticket counter. He never made it on our plane, and I am not quite sure how he made out…

Today was flight-hell. I got back into Rochester at 4pm(EDT), but a whole day of flying really tired me out. I went to the Continental desk to get my ticket back to NJ (7pm), and the lady told me that there was an earlier flight (5:30pm) that I could be put on standby for. She took my bag and I went to the gate. I got on the flight, and ended up in EWR by 7:20pm. That is when the fun began…..

So I get there, am greeted by Mom and Larissa, and we head to the baggage carousel… What fun that became. My bag never appeared, and when I went to claims, they said that my bag was still coming in on the original flight I was scheduled for. I grudgingly agreed to wait for the later flight to come in so I could get my bag.

That flight was scheduled to arrive at 8:25pm, which came and passed. I tried to ask people for help several times, to no avail, and the screens told me that the plane was “ON TIME” and scheduled to arrive at 8:25pm (of course, it was already 9:45pm at this point, so it was obviously inaccurate).

I then went on a wild goose chase around the airport trying to find out information about when the flight was going to arrive. I was ultimately found out that the plane hadn’t even left Rochester due to bad weather, and that my bag was stranded there.

I went to the Baggage Claim again to ask if they could ship my bag to me once it arrived. The kind woman there (who was able to deal with me, and as you can imagine, I couldn’t have been that fun to deal with), told me that my bag had been in Newark all along, and showed me to my bag, sitting in a big pile. Apparently my bag came up separate from the rest, and no one bothered to tell me that the 8 times I asked about it. Bastards.

I am tired, jetlagged, and frustrated. Thank god my dad has a Cable Modem now so I don’t have to deal with no bandwidth in addition to all this. :)

When you say object, what do you really mean?

Greetings from cisco. I am visiting Chris after our meeting at NASA today, and we are going to grab some chow in a little bit (once we stop hacking on her kernel).

We visited the Kuiper Airborne Observatory today, which is the plane that SOFIA is replacing. The plane is decommissioned, but they rolled it out for us to see today (which probably cost $10,000). While we were in the hangar, we got to see the 747 that carries the Space Shuttle around. That plane was getting new landing gear.

As I said, my updates are sporadic lately, I am returning to Rochester on Sunday, but 3 hours later I am flying home to New Jersey for a week. Should be some good decompression time, because this week has definately hosted some frustration for all parties involved.

It’s going to be a long night….

NTOSKRNL.EXE can eat me.

My machine BSOD’ed twice today, and it has something to do with my IDE drive…. I will have to figure it out after I get back from California….

I finally finished up my presentation, and I am currently tying up a few loose ends before my trip tomorrow. My presentation ended up not being as bad as I imagined, but I have to brush up on some other technologies that I might be quizzed on when I give it. Luckily I don’t have to go to bat until Tuesday.

I am all moved out, as some of you guys know… It is good in a way, because moving sucks, but now I am kinda a vagrant right now…. My PC is set up here at work so I could finish up my presentation (and so it had a place to live).

It now looks like I might be travelling back to NJ after I get back to Rochacha. It will be good to get home, I haven’t been back since the very beginning of summer.

So that’s it for now… I will try to update when I can on my trip…