Stuff Archives

Trying to get back into the habit of writing a bit more of what's going on, particularly when it's interesting ... well, maybe slightly interesting as a passing remark. I was up in Chicago at the beginning of this week and it just seems that every time I go there something happens - had to fly back and go straight into hospital just over a year ago. Last time I went I was diverted to Des Moines and when I finally got in, I only lasted a day before I had to fly out again (was supposed to be there for a week) due to a need at a client.

This time the being there went without a hitch, it was the leaving. My flight took off, then started shaking a bit and the captain made an announcement that the landing gear was stuck down and that we had to return to Chicago as opposed to carrying on to Dallas. Presumably we made an emergency landing as we were greeted by the fire trucks and ambulances that chased us to the end of the runway until we confirmed that we were OK. Now, I don't profess to being an aeronautical engineer by any stretch of the imagination, but I do know that of the two positions landing gear can get stuck in, down is definitely the one I prefer to hear about. The landing was fine .... which you can probably guess as I'd probably not be writing this otherwise.

Anyway, trundled off to the second plane. Next thing there's an announcement that there's a mechanical issue on that. Off to another gate for a third plane that did eventually get us to Dallas. Well, half of us - not sure what happened to the others - either frightened off or they got another flight. Minor problem though as I only got to my hotel at 2:00am and had to be up at 5:30 to go to a client and deliver a presentation. And not just any presentation, a sales presentation to a new client. Thankfully that went fine thanks to an excellent team, so off to return as had to get back to the Bay Area.

We drove to Dallas Love Field to drop off one of the guys who was also heading out, then went to lunch and then to DFW to drop me off. I have no idea why, but I checked my phone when I was curbside to look at the flight information. I really don't know why I did this, but it turned out I was booked to head back to San Francisco which is fine except for the fact that my car was in Oakland as that's where I'd left from. A call to my trusty assistant who admitted a boo boo, discussed a couple of options and decided to get a flight into Oakland .... from Dallas Love Field. Drove back over to that airport and tried to check in and the machine was having none of it. Back on the phone with my assistant how had now got me on the right flight, but the wrong day. Another quick change later and I'm on the right flight.

Everything from here went smooth. I did fall asleep waiting for my plane and woke up as they were boarding, so there was a close call there I suppose, but all was good.

It's interesting .... I've always been Mr Skeptical, particularly when it comes to urban myths or legends, stories that seem just a little bit too unbelievable. Notable ones where when we used to go fishing over in Ireland, there were rumors that folks from Germany were stealing pike to smuggle back and eat. Similarly, there are stories of the people from Eastern Europe that have come to England taking carp from the fisheries to eat. I've always taken these with a pinch of salt.

However .... the most ridiculous story of similar theme was when I first came to the States. There was actually a news item from a concerned group of one description or other over the safety of mustangs. The wild horses that is, not the cars. The news article commented that people from the UK were coming to the States and killing horses to take back to England and eat. I can't remember if it was claimed it was a delicacy or not, but I scoffed at such a thought .... for one thing, I could possibly see that you could get a pike into a cooler to smuggle back, but I wasn't quite getting my head around how you would get a dead horse onto a plane. Suddenly I feel stupid for not giving the report more credibility given the amount of horse meat that seems to be being sold in the UK as beef right now.

Perhaps I need to be a bit more like my brother who believes every story he's told.

I would say Vegas or bust, but I'm going with Mr O .... or the Big OC as he was advertising himself as at the darts. Tickets are booked to the 2013 NASCAR race, so we're about all set to head out there give or take the minor details of flights and hotels, but that's something we can address in a couple of weeks.

I've just created the framework for this year's race game and you can now register for 2013 NASCAR season. A more formal notification will come out when the drivers have been named so you can create your team and do your picks for the first race at the same time.

Believe it or not, this is a video to promote DC shoes even though the shoes only get about 10 seconds of air time. I'm also not 100% behind the logic of using car being driven to advertise shoes, but this is one amazing video so who cares? The first part of this video from the Bay Bridge to just before he circles the cable cars is my commute into work. Clearly he chose to shoot this whilst I was on vacation otherwise you'd have seen me sneak by on the inside on the freeway off ramp. Seriously ... well, a little bit more seriously, I've looked at that off ramp and wondered if you could take a car sideways all the way around it - it almost seems built for it. Clearly the answer is yes although I shan't be trying it anytime soon.

Gotta give a lot of credit for having Travis on the bike, but hats off to Ken for some pretty stylish driving.

Somewhat late in posting this completely irrelevant post, but it's sort of a continuation of my luck with taxi drivers. During my last visit to Houston, I ended up in a taxi back to the airport which was sort of interesting. It kind of started when I noticed the TV in the cab and asked what it was for. Not a flat screen display, a full 14 inch tube type TV. Initially I was told this was to play videos for the passengers.

Time passed and I ended up getting the life story of the driver that seemed to be full of ups and downs. To keep a long story somewhat short, he'd split up from his wife and seemed to be trying to get me to agree with him that it was all her fault ... yep ... and then you get halfway to the airport and you realize that the TV is in the cab because that's where the driver is living ... hmmm. Next we find that he thinks he's a music star and has created a CD with the song “ain't no drama with President Barrack O'Bama”. But oh no. Just creating it isn't enough when you've got a captive audience. How joyed I was to listen to this track that may or may not have had more lyrics in it, but all I can remember is a continuous repeat of the title.

So, you're in a cab with a homeless guy, completely down on his luck. He then started to ask me how I ended up needing walking sticks and then says “whenever I think I've got it bad, I see someone like you and realize it could be worse ...”

Way to make me feel on top of the world.

So, I'm heading off to Laguna Seca Raceway this weekend as I've been invited down to watch a friend of a friend race ... not that I really need much of an excuse. Anyway, did a quick search on Google maps and found the directions somewhat interesting towards the end. I'm rather looking forward to this drive.


Yes, I did re-run the map and start from a generic place rather than my home address.

I was rather hoping for a different symbol on the right to represent the corkscrew.

I find myself back in Tombstone some three years or so since we visited on the road trip. This time I'm with the wife and my little partner pictured below.
The age old question of why Doc Holiday's girl was known as Big Nose Kate springs to mind. On the stage coach tour, they gave us the now common answer that it wasn't because she had a big nose, but was in fact due to her sticking her nose into everyone else's business.

The working theory that we have is somewhat different and, as I understand it, stems from hours of drinking research in The Stag. We now believe that she was called Big Nose Kate ... because her name was Kate.

Oddly no Americans seem to find this funny.

Today, everything aligns and the answer to all of the above is indeed 42.

I believe the answer to the answer (42) is that it is the age when the number of birthday cards/wishes you get from corporations exceeds the number you get from friends.

So many thanks to all the airline, credit card, insurance, pizza, coffee .... companies for all the birthday wishes and offers. Particularly those enticing me to go into debt on my birthday - nice thought with those special low interest rates.

To my friend s  - cheers mate. See ya soon.

There comes a time when we need to sit down and talk about fannies. And that time is now. I think you've been with us long enough that we can have a good open and honest chat. The first thing about fannies is that the differ considerably depending on which side of the pond you reside. One could indeed say that the difference is a front or rear perspective on an opening. Well, it's not the opening that we're interested in today, more the valley. And the larger question of what does one do when they find themselves in Fanny Valley?

I have absolutely no idea what the answer to this question is, but I do find myself well and truly in Fanny Valley. Let me explain. I've just signed up for this wonderful service provided by Google where you can look at stats about your website. It's predominantly focused on helping you manage your site and to enable you to improve it in search ratings and the like, so of relatively no use to me for this site as I have absolutely no concern about what are the key words that give the most hits for this site as I'm not trying to generate any revenue from it. Very helpful from a management perspective as it tells you things like if there are broken links and which pages those links are coming from. Even though I'm not trying to generate any revenue, I still want the site to work.

OK .... so where on earth am I going and what does this have to do with fannies or fanny valley's. Well, the one thing the tool does is to tell you where your site is linked from and for some absolutely unknown reason to me I have a page linked from WikiWorldBook under “Fanny Valley”. Don't believe me? Here's the link. You have to look carefully as it's a bird picture they've linked.

The one thing that keeps coming to mind is whether or not this is a place in Wales.

It's been a while since I've posted any of my wisdom about traveling to any random stranger out there that happens across this blog. Mainly because I've not been too well, so went through a bit of a period with no travel. Also, I'll caveat that there aren't actually any pearls of wisdom here, just stories.

So, the first story is from last year when I was traveling back from one of the cities I've been going to a lot. Before I get to the story, I need to fill you in on a conversation that a team I was working on had a few years back that can be best described as “you know you're too fat when ...” There was much discussion and I have to admit that I'm in danger of moving into this category, but the main theme was around the belt extensions you get on a plane - the gist being that if you need to ask for one, it's probably about time to look at some diet options. Anyway, I think I can go one better. Not sure if everyone knows, but if you touch the sides of the metal detector when you walk through, you set it off. Well, the woman in front of me waddled through and set off the metal detector as she bounced off the sides of it. The security person informed her that she couldn't touch the sides and she summarily “backed up”, turned sideways and attempted to maneuver through that way. No joy, still touch the sides. I'm therefore going with the quote as being “you know you're too fat when you can't get through the airport security metal detector without setting it off”.

What happens next is that you get the wand and pat down instead. Wouldn't you have just died laughing if the person coming over to do the check said “looks like we're going to have to put in for overtime to do this one”. But they didn't .... sadly.

Onto the next. I've noticed that taxi drivers have no clue where they're going these days and rely solely on GPS. I'm in Houston right now and the taxi I just got, the guy just passed me his GPS system and grunted “address”. I told him I didn't know how to use his system as I really couldn't be bothered to figure it out, so he pulled over to read the address I'd got for the hotel as he couldn't understand it by me saying. He still failed to get the address into the system as he couldn't spell “Houston”. I suggested he move to Seattle where the ability to spell Houston wouldn't be so much of an issue.

OK, last one and this isn't related to travel except that I came across it whilst at the airport. I was looking through some apps on ye olde download store and came across an app for children that had really poor ratings. The app was to teach kids the alphabet sort of thing and the significant number of bad ratings were due to the fact that it claimed E is for Fire Truck. I haven't seen the app and may give the benefit of doubt to the programmer coming from a country where a Fire Truck is referred to as an Engine. I don't know if they spell out the word or not (clearly I didn't opt to download it). I did quite like the fact that one person had posted that when their son asked why is it E for Fire Truck, he replied it's E for Elephant, but the elephant took too long to get here and was overtaken by the Fire Truck.