Torpor

I am glad that today is almost over. It's not that it was a bad day; nothing necessarily bad happened. I've just spent the entire day in a state of torpor. Even as I sit here typing this I barely have the strength or motivation to keep my head upright. I feel like I just want to let my whole body go limp and melt into a pile of ooze on the floor. It's been that way all day.

I might think that I was getting sick, except that I don't feel that sick. I might think that I didn't get enough sleep last night, except that I was in bed at 11:30 last night and slept until 7:30 this morning. I might think that I was hungover, except that it's been several days since I've had anything to drink at all and several weeks since I've had enough to drink to produce any sort of an effect on me.

In short, I don't know what's wrong with me. I can only hope that when I wake up tomorrow I don't feel the same way. Wish me luck.

What's That Smell?

Over the last couple of days, I've noticed the distinct smell of burning electronics whenever I entered my office from another room in the house. It was strong enough to make me take notice but not so strong that I went searching for the source of the smell. Well, this morning, I discovered the source. When I came into my office this morning I noticed that the power light on the computer that I use as my web server was flashing and that the computer was pretty much otherwise dead.

When I tried cycling the power little wisps of white smoke started to float out of the back of the power supply. That's usually a pretty good sign that you have a dead power supply. The three of you that read my blog regularly may have noticed that it was out of commission all of this mornning. I stopped by Staples on my way home for lunch, picked up a new power supply and now my blog is operational once more.

Turning Thoughts Into Words

From "The Adolescent" by Fyodor Dostoevsky:

Ah! so you, too, suffer sometimes because a thought won't go into words! It's a noble suffering, my friend, and granted only to the chosen; a fool is always pleased with what he says, and, besides he always says more than he needs to; they like extras.

A Thanksgiving Feast

I am happy to report that for the second year in a row nobody has died as a result of my Thanksgiving cooking. All of Ohana Utah congregated at my house yesterday evening for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. I was responsible for the Thanksgiving staples (roasted tukey, cranberry sausage apple stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, praline sweet potatoes and thanksgiving sweet potatoes), Ben and Jessie brought the pies (a wonderfully delicious chocolate pecan pie and a traditional pumpkin pie), Marci brought a veggie tray and jello, and Lisa and Les brought the rolls.

Here is a photo of some of my handiwork:



And this is what it looked like after the devouring:



Unfortunately there is not enough of a difference between the two pictures. I'm afraid that we are going to be eating leftovers for the next week or so :)

A Perfect Weekend

As I sat next to Holly in bed this morning eating breakfast, she told me that this weekend had been a perfect weekend. Wow, a 'perfect' weekend. 'Perfect' is a strong word and yet I tend to agree. I couldn't help but feel that we had created something beautiful this weekend. It wasn't tangible but it was still real. It was a beautiful memory; a beautiful experience. Hopefully this will be only one among many more beautiful and perfect weekends which still lie ahead of us.


Click on the picture above to see more pictures from the weekend.

Me and You and Everyone We Know

Watch it, love it. It's too bizarre for words.

Priceless

400 thread count brushed pima sateen sheets: $150
Shower curtain for guest bathroom: $20
Matching towels for guest and master bathrooms: $80
Smelly Candles: $20
Carpet Cleaning: $130
Maid Service: $100
Convincing Holly that I'm not a slovenly bachelor when she comes to visit this weekend: Priceless

Cliff Jumping

As requested by Master Fob:

2 names you go by: svoid, Daniel

2 parts of your heritage: Huh?

2 things that scare you: Transvestite hookers and awkward silence. But especially moments of awkward silence with transvestite hookers.

2 things you are wearing right now: My Harley T-Shirt (from Barcelona, Spain), Fruit of the Loom Boxer Briefs (from Spanish Fork, Utah).

2 of your favorite bands or musical artists (at the moment): I don't like answering questions about favorites, so instead I will list a couple of artists whose albums I have recently purchased and enjoy: Aqualung, Anna Nalick, The Killers

2 favorite songs (at the moment): "Waiting for the Night" by Depeche Mode, "All These Things that I've Done" by The Killers. I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier.

2 things you want in a relationship (other than real love): Trust, Adventure, Passion, Honest and Open Communication, Humor, Comfort. Oops, I guess that I want more than two things in a relationship.

2 truths: (1) A question this open ended is begging to be answered by a humorous and witty quip. (2) I'm not clever enough to think of anything humourous or witty to say.

2 physical things that appeal to you (in the opposite sex): Who would have thought that this would be the most difficult question for me to answer? I've answered every other question and had to come back to this one. I think that the reason that I'm struggling with this is that I can't deconstruct my attaction to the opposite sex. What appeals to me is the whole thing. There aren't parts or things that I find particularly appealing in a general sense across all women. Some trait that I might find appealing or attractive in one woman may not produce any effect in me when encountered in a different woman. That leads me to believe that it wasn't really that 'thing' that appealed to me but that it was the woman herself.

2 of your favorite hobbies: Riding my Harley, Shooting Pool.

2 things you want really badly: Love, To be happy with what I see when I look at myself in the mirror. Hopefully one will facilitate the other.

2 places you want to go on vacation: Australia, Russia.

2 things you want to do before you die: Katie Holmes and Jessica Alba... at the same time. Just kidding (unless Jessica or Katie is reading this right now, in which case I'm totally serious). No seriously, I would like to travel and see the world and to learn to play the piano.

2 ways that you are stereotypically a dude/chick: See previous question.

2 things you are thinking about now: Whether or not anyone will be offended by my response to the question before last. Whether or not I care.

2 stores you shop at: Albertsons, Target.

2 people you would like to see take the quiz: Holly, Chris.

Oh yeah

Oh yeah, here are some pictures that we took at the Miller Horticultural Domes. Click on the picture below to see the rest of the pictures.

Memoirs of a Weekend in Milwaukee

I would like to tell you about my weekend in Milwaukee with Holly, but I'm struggling to find the balance in between informational and intrusive. I'm tempted to just give an itinerary of events, but somehow I think that leaving all perspective and reaction out of the accounting would make for a pretty boring post. The whole dilemma reminds me of an excerpt from the opening paragraph of Doestoevsky's, The Adolescent; a book which I picked up this weekend. He writes:

I am not a literary man, do not want to be a literary man, and would consider it base and indecent to drag the insides of my soul and a beautiful description of my feelings to their literary marketplace. I anticipate with vexation, however, that it seems impossible to do entirely without the description of feelings and without reflections (maybe even banal ones): so corrupting is the effect of any literary occupation of a man, even if it is undertaken only for oneself. The reflections may even be very banal, because something you value yourself will quite possibly have no value in a stranger's eyes.

I'm going to try something new and just list random good memories from the weekend. They are not in any particular order, chronological or otherwise.

• Watching Holly laugh as she discovered the picture that I picked for myself on her smell phone.
• Getting "lost" in the corn maze at the Miller Horticultural Domes.
• Using the wrong inflection and saying, "I liked that?" when what I really meant was "I liked that!". Holly, unphased by the question responds, "Yes, I think you did".
• Listening to a bunch of hair stylists shout at each other in Ukranian while waiting for Holly to get her hair done.
• Doing about 90 miles per hour down I94 from Madison to Milwaukee trying desperately not to be late for my breakfast date with Holly.
• Being treated to breakfast at Perkins by Holly. She sneakily stole the check while I was in the bathroom.
• Hanging out with Mom (Holly's Mom) before going out to the movies on Saturday night.
• Staying up all night with Holly before my 6:30AM flight back home on Sunday.
• Standing at Holly's workplace amongst the jobless, homeless and disabled all dapperred up, reeking of cologne, and holding a dozen roses in my hand waiting very nervously and uncomfortably for Holly to finish up with her client and come meet me.
• Seeing the look on Holly's face when she realized that I had actually flown all the way from Utah to take her out to lunch in Milwaukee.
  
• Hearing the phrase, "I can't believe you are actually here in Milwaukee", about a 100 times while we were having lunch together.
• Hearing about one of Holly's friends asking her, "What did you do to him in Mankato???"
  

Additional Flushes

For some reason this amused me in my sleep deprived state this morning. Apparently this is a problem in the Detroit airport...

I'm freakin' out, man

So, I'm sitting in the bathroom in the Denver airport and I hear over the intercom, "Just to remind you, Detroit is in the eastern time zone. Please adjust your clocks accordingly." What? Detroit? What city am I in? Was I that out of it this morning?

Apparently I was. I am sitting in the Detroit airport right now and not the Denver airport. It makes sense now that I think about it. That's why the flight was so short. Detroit is much closer to Milwaukee than Denver is. It also explains why I was hearing flight announcements for destinations like Flint and Kalamazoo. I thought it was really strange that there was a direct flight from Denver Colorado to Kalamazoo Michigan.

The good news is that discovering that I am in the Eastern time zone instead of the Mountain time zone just shaved 2 hours off of my layover.

Sleep Deprivation in Denver

It's 7AM and I'm sitting in the Denver airport. I didn't sleep a wink last night. Not wanting to waste a single minute of my visit to Milwaukee, I was hanging out with Holly until 3:30 in the morning. My flight was scheduled to leave Milwaukee at 6:30 in the morning. I decided that it wasn't even worth trying to sleep for an hour before waking up at my originally scheduled time of 4:30.

I was dragging ass by the time that I got to the airport. When I checked in at one of the Northwest electronic ticketing kiosks, I discovered that my flight to Minneapolis had been cancelled. Instead I was going to be routed through Denver and had an extra 25 minutes before my flight left.

I felt like the walking dead by the time that I got to my gate. I chose a seat where I could lean back and rest my head on a pillar behind me and tried to get some sleep. As I drifted in and out of consciousness I glanced up at the monitor displaying the flight information above my gate: departure time, 6:55AM, current time, 542. I drift back out of consciousness again. What time is it? Departure time, 6:55AM, current time 542. Good, still plenty of time.

One more time in and out of consciousness. Departure time, 6:55AM, current time 542. At this point it should have disturbed me that I had been in the airport for more than 45 minutes and yet not a single minute had passed according to the clock I was looking at. It should have, but it didn't; I was too disoriented. Later I would realize that the reason that the clock never changed was because the current time that I was looking at, 542, was actually the flight number and not the time at all.

As I slept I dreamt that I heard someone calling my name. It sounded something like, "Will the passenger Daniel Christensen please report to gate...". Wait, was that a dream? I open my eyes and look around. The terminal is empty. All of the other passengers that had been surrounding me during my last period of consciousness had now vanished. Had I dreamt them too? I was confused and disoriented. My flight didn't leave until 6:55 and it was still only 542.

Still I thought that I had better check with one of the gate agents. For some reason I looked around and tried to locate the source of the voice. It occurred to me that the voice must have come from the PA system and that the direction of the voice would not only be impossible to discern but would be totally irrelevant even if I did. Still I looked. As I scanned the terminal I was disturbed by how empty it was. Not only were the passengers gone, but all of the employees seemed to be as well.

I finally located a lone gate agent. As it turns out he was actually manning the gate sitting directly in front of me, but as you've probably been able to gather, I really wasn't all that lucid at this point. "I think I heard someone call my name", I said to the gate agent. "Are you Daniel Christensen?". "Yes, why?". "You really need to get on that plane. It's about to leave without you." Holy Crap. I had almost slept through my flight departure.

The flight from Milwaukee to Denver was way too short. I passed out as soon as we got into the air and what felt like 2 minutes later we were touching down in Denver. This was and probably will be the only time in my life that I wish that the flight would have dragged on for hours longer than it needed to. Why couldn't they have just circled for a couple of hours? Didn't they know that I needed the sleep?

So, here I sit in the Denver airport. I have nearly 5 hours to kill before my next flight leaves. I figured that 5 hours of dead time in an airport justified the $6.95 for wireless internet access. I have books to read but I don't think that my mind is clear enough to handle reading Doestoevsky right now. Then again, I'm not so sure that it was a such good idea to write either.

Belated Novelloween

I know that Halloween was a couple of days ago now, but I just got this picture back from my sister. Marci and Malina decided to come to Novell this year for Trick or Treating. I had invited them in previous years but it seems like there was always something else going on. Malina came dressed up as Pocahontas. We had a lot of fun walking around to all of the offices on my floor and collecting candy.



I felt obligated to explain to everyone that we bumped into that this was my sister and niece and not my wife and daughter. One of the guys on the Agent team seemed relieved to hear the explanation. He told me that he had been certain that I didn't have kids since I rode a Harley and people who ride Harley's just aren't married and don't have kids. He was confused when he saw me walking around with Marci and Malina.

My candy supply was almost overstocked this year. I went from giving out single pieces of candy to giving out two pieces to giving small handfuls. As time wore on, I was worried that I was going to have to take a bunch of candy home with me and starting stuffing large handfuls of candy in the halloween bags and buckets of confused and delighted children.

Survival

Today was that fateful and dreaded day where the company I work for enacted the lay-offs that have been rumored for the last couple of weeks. Fortunately, I am still employed. In fact, my team has weathered the storm fairly well. Unfortunately, we did not escape unscathed. Two of my team-mates have been given walking orders. I'm sorry to see them go and wish them both the best of luck.

These boots are made for walking...

I bought a new pair of boots tonight. My other boots were literally falling apart after this weekend. I'm not thrilled about the white stitching and I think that it may take a while to get used to the higher ankle but they are awfully comfortable and seem to be pretty durable. The yellow laces were replaced by black ones before I even left the store.

Weekend at the Cabin

I spent the weekend with a buddy, JP, up at his cabin near Duchesne. He bought the cabin a couple of months ago and has been coming up every couple of weekends to work on it. I was recruited this weekend to perform various feats of manual labor in exchange for.... well, spending the weekend at the cabin. The cabin, although unfinished, was pretty nice. It sat 20 yards from a river and was bordered on two sides by towering canyon walls.



The labor turned out to be pretty light. I originally thought that I had been recruited to tear up the old linoleum in the cabin. But it turns out that we were hanging some light fixtures and patching a bunch of spots in the drywall that JP had ripped up a couple of weekends ago trying to locate the wiring.

I almost would have preferred ripping up the floor. It's hard to screw that up. Patching drywall on the other hand is much more challenging since you have to cut a new piece of drywall to fit exactly into the hole that you were patching. I got a little better with every piece that I did, but let's just say that I have no delusions about quitting my job as a Software Engineer to go hang drywall for a living.

My biggest blunder of the weekend had nothing to do with our construction projects. As I was stoking the fire in the wood burning furnace, I rested my hand for a split second (that's all it took) on the steel furnace doors. I have only two words to describe the experience: SEARING FLESH. I think that it might leave a scar.

Restless

OK, I'm ready for winter to be over already. I'm sitting at home right now wishing that tomorrow was going to be 75 and sunny and that I could be planning a trip on my bike right now. I'd even settle for driving my car somewhere. But anywhere within driving distance in the whole state is forecast to be cold and rainy tomorrow. Blah!

Other random thoughts:
1. Monday is Novelloween. That's where everyone at Novell brings their kids to work to go trick or treating. The halls bulge with little munchkins who make out like bandits since the offices are packed more densely into building H than houses generally are in suburban neighborhoods. Kids get a lot more candy for a lot less effort. A bunch of us stopped at Sam's club today at lunch to stock up on candy for the event. Between the 5 of us that went, we probably walked out of Sam's club with 30 or 40 lbs. of candy. It was disgusting.

2. I had my annual competency review today and it was determined that I am indeed competent. Hooray for me. I can't believe that they call them "competency reviews". The very phrase seems to imply that you are incompetent.

3. During my review I broached the subject of telecommuting. My boss said that he'd look into it but it didn't sound very promising. It was a tempting idea at first. When you spend all day locked in your office slinging code you can't help but wonder, "Why couldn't I do this from anywhere?".

But when I really started to think about it, it occurred to me that I easily spend a couple of hours a day directly interacting with other people. Whether it's reviewing someone else's code, helping a co-worker solve a problem, working with CPR, participating in a design team, soliciting feedback from co-workers, or just everyday communication and coordination, I spend a reasonable amount of time every day face to face with people. It wouldn't be impossible to do all of that remotely, but it would be much more difficult.

4. Some of you may have heard about the impending layoffs. Rumor has it that 10-20 percent of the company may be out of a job soon. The original rumor was that it was going to happen this past Tuesday. It didn't happen. The new rumor is that it will be next Wednesday. We'll have to see. I kind of just wish that they would get it over with already. Nobody likes to have that kind of thing hanging over their head. Oh and by the way, I think that I'm legally obligated to tell you when speaking about work matters on my personal blog that this blog represents my personal opinions and not those of my employer.

Reaching New Lows

I weighed in this morning at 268 lbs. This represents the lowest weight that I've been at in 8 years. About 5 years ago I had gotten down to the low 270's but I put all the weight back on after I got into a mountain bike accident and broke my collar bone.

Heft on Wheels

I just finished reading "Heft on Wheels" by Mike Magnuson. It is not among the normal genre of books that I would read, but after I discovered how much my friend Chris was inspired by the book I had to give it a shot. My copy of the book arrived in the mail on Friday evening and a day and a half later I have read the entire thing cover to cover.

The book was fairly light and easy reading, but it was a lot of fun. I think that it was particularly interesting to me since I could identify with Mike's fight against his weight and his desire to turn his life around. It was also fun because I was familiar with some of the geographical settings in the book: Milwaukee, Eau Claire, Mankato.

Competitive cycling isn't really my thing, but the way that Mike describes how he feels about cycling is very similar to how I feel about hiking. I'm tired of my weight getting in the way of things that I love to do. I almost laughed out loud as he described how he used to rationalize his comparative performance on a bike to his friends who were thinner and in much better shape:

So if I'm out there riding with you, and you think you're a badass cyclist, a hammer, a machine, and you're feeling all smug about yourself because you're a few hundred yards ahead of me on that long, long hill, let me tell you, buddy, if I can see you on the road ahead of me, if I'm anywhere close to you, I'm really kicking your ass.

It amuses me because I've had the same thoughts going through my head on the trail. Sure, some 19 year old punk just jogged past me up a 20% incline. But what is that guy, a buck twenty? He's not doing any work hauling his ass up this mountain. Thinking about it that way, I'm probably in better shape than he is or at least than he would be if he was hauling around all this extra weight. Yes, it's a rationalization. And yes, it's absurd.

The most depressing thing about reading the book though, was the realization that I am just now, after working my ass off to lose 55 lbs over the last 5 months, still 15 lbs heavier than where Mike was when he started his epic quest. It's not that I want to be content with where I am permanently. But it would be nice to be content for long enough to work up the motivation to lose the next 50 lbs. I'm not ready to hate myself that much yet.

Mistaken Identity

A couple of days ago I setup my web server so that it would run statistics on everybody that visits my site. It's something that I used to have running all the time but when my old webserver got hacked in february I didn't bother setting it up on my new server.

One of the things that the program tracks is the list of people that have linked to my site from their web page. Most of the time I will see a list of websites that I recognize, usually the blogs or personal websites of friends and family, but every once in a while I will discover that some random person on the internet has discovered and decided to link to my blog.

Whenever this happens I'm always curious to figure out who linked me and why. So, when I came across a link to my site from skazatraskazzz.blogspot.com, I was a little curious; all the more so because this was actually a person's blog and not just some random website.

When I first loaded the web page I quickly scanned it over and could not see any obvious references to me or my website. Even searching for the word "svoid" on the page produced no results. In a moment of brilliance it occurred to me that if the site had linked to mine then there would minimally need to be an href somewhere in the document that pointed to my site. So, I opened up the HTML source of the web page and searched one more time.

It turns out I was linked from the current article right at the top of the page. Hmm, I must of scanned past it in my cursory examination. The article was a bit lengthy so I decided to start reading from where my site was referenced rather than read the whole article from the beginning.

As I start reading I pick out that he's talking about two people called Dan and Holly. Wait, is he talking about me? I read a little further and he mentions a wedding in Mankato. Hmm, maybe he just picked up that detail from reading my blog. This must be a case of mistaken identity. Surely this person has got me and my blog confused with some other Dan that he knows.

I decide to start at the beginning. The poster mentions that he ran into an old friend of his on the previous weekend and that as he was talking to her (OK, maybe this is one of Holly's friends) some strange guy came up and put his arm around her. Wait, that could have been me at any point during the last weekend. Except that I don't remember running into any of Holly's friends. I'm racking my brain but I just can't remember.

He goes on to mention that the name of the fellow is John Abu-Saba. Who the hell is John Abu-Saba? That doesn't even sound like a real name. Is he speaking in code? Am I John Abu-Saba? I'm confused.

As I scan over the rest of the article I pick up a few more clues: the poster went to school at UW Eau Claire (the same place as Holly) and even makes mention to a party at Holly's apartment that I might have been at years and years ago. The only problem is that certain details don't add up. For instance, I didn't show up to the party with a bunch of friends and we didn't drink up all of the alcohol and leave.

I'm freaking out. What's going on here? Who the hell is this person and why are they telling lies about me?

As I reach the peak of my paranoid delusion (just before the black helicopters start to show up), I glance up in the upper right corner of the blog and notice the author's name. Andrew Fefer. Andrew Fefer? Sounds familiar... can't quite place it... Oh yeah, Andy! All of the sudden, everything becomes clear. Andy was (and still is) a good friend of Holly's from college.

I read over the article a couple more times and realize that Andy isn't even referring to running into Holly in his opening paragraph. It was someone else entirely different. John Abu-Saba is probably a real person and definitely is not me. As I read the article with a little more clarity, I feel silly that I ever thought that I might be. Oops, I guess that's what I get for starting in the middle of the article.

Twice Defeated

I attempted to climb to the top of Spanish Fork Peak for the second time this year via the Maple Canyon trail. In hindsight it really wasn't a very bright idea to attempt this hike in mid October. About 3 miles into the hike I found myself hiking through a mixture of mud and snow and dealing with near freezing gusts of wind. Still I put in a valiant effort.



I went a little further on this expedition then I did on my August Expedition and got up over the saddle where I could see all of Utah valley. I even climbed to the top of one of the smaller peaks and got this 360 degree video. Alas, when I tried to walk the last half mile along the ridge to Spanish Fork peak, I came to a spot that was impassable due to fallen trees and too much snow on the trail. I guess that I'll have to try again next year.

Penny For Your Thoughts

I had a girlfriend once, Christy, who had the most annoying habit. Whenever a period of silence lasted for more than 3 seconds, she would inevitably chime in with a phrase that came to haunt me, "Penny for your Thoughts". It was like a compulsion. She couldn't stand to think that I had thoughts going through my head that I wasn't sharing with her.

Over the course of our year-long relationship I became conditioned to prepare myself to respond to the inquiry, "Penny For Your Thoughts", any time that I drifted into a period of quiet reflection. I lived in constant fear of that question. To this day, even though Christy is long gone and all but forgotten, I still catch myself posing the question or imagining someone else posing the question to me, "What's on your mind?".

Of course, I realize how absolutely ridiculous that is. What does it even mean to interrupt your own thoughts to ask yourself what you're thinking about? That's the damage that has been done.

As I was writing my previous post, "Installment 1 (of ?)", something didn't feel quite right. It was a story that I really wanted to share with friends and family but I felt like I was taking liberties by including personal information that Holly shared with me.

After ruminating all day, it finally occurred to me that if I were not careful, I might be inflicting a "Penny For Your Thoughts" style psychosis onto Holly. Should she have to live in constant fear that anything she tells me might end up on my blog? Or that our personal experiences might end up on my blog? Would it affect the things that she says or does around me?

With that in mind, I don't think that I will publish "Installment 2" of my story. Sorry.

Installment 1 (of ?)

Poolhall Philosophy
A while back I was shooting pool in my basement with some friends from work and tried to describe to my friends my relationship with my teenage girlfriend, Holly. Although there were both good and bad memories, what I remember stressing to my friends was that the emotional magnitude of that relationship has gone unmatched in my life.

Some of the best and worst memories of my life are tied to Holly. I wondered myself, and posed the question to my friends whether or not the emotional magnitude was the result of the passionate relationship that I had with Holly or if it was the result of run-of-the-mill teenage romance? Does everyone remember their teenage love the way I remember Holly? Will I ever again in my adult life feel the depth of feeling that I felt when I was 17 and in love?

After a little bit of deliberation, in between shots at the pool table, we arrived at the conclusion that it was just a case of teenage romance. That kind of passion does not carry over into adult relationships.

History Lesson
Although I have talked with Holly on and off over the last 5 years of my life, I've spent very little time with her in person. The last time that I saw Holly was when I rode out to Milwaukee in 2003 for Harley's 100th Anniversary. I showed up to help her and her boyfriend move into a new apartment. Needless to say, there wasn't much opportunity for intimacy given the circumstance.

Our communication has always been a little spotty. We may go for several months where we communicate fairly regularly and then follow that with 6 months where we hardly talk at all. Frequently what resumes communication is when one of our birthday's come up. I have been sending Holly flowers on her birthday for the last couple of years now. It is usually followed shortly thereafter by a phone call or an email reinstating conversation between us.

This year was no exception. Several days after her birthday she called me up to thank me for the flowers. What was different about this conversation was that Holly seemed a little dissatisfied with her life. She was in the middle of training for a new job that she wasn't sure that she was going to enjoy and it sounded like things were on the rocks between her and her boyfriend. Over the course of a two hour long conversation, I felt as if she were saying to me: “Make me an offer. Give me a reason to leave.”

While I was on the phone with Holly, I was playing along and kind of flirting with her and encouraging her to make changes in her life and was even hinting that I might want to be part of what she changed her life to. As soon as I hung up and started thinking about the reality of the situation it scared the hell out of me. I had always reserved a spot for the idea of Holly and I getting back together in my abstract reality. But it was just that: abstract, distant, unreal.

Back in my present reality it occurred to me that it had been a really long time since the two of us had been together. The little bits of chit chat that we had participated in over the last couple of years didn't really make for a solid foundation for a relationship. Would we even still get along?

I can say with a near certainty that I placed a much greater significance on that phone conversation than Holly did. She had probably just had a bad day and needed to blow off steam. Still it felt like she had given me a little piece of string to pull on. If I had the desire to pull on it I might find that that little piece of string led to a larger prize. At the time I just didn't have the desire. Let me rephrase that, at the time I didn't have the balls. I was afraid of what I might find at the end of that string. It was easier to keep Holly in the abstract.

Writing Into the Void
I never followed up on that phone call. In fact that phone call marked the beginning of one of our “off” periods. I was crazy busy at work for most of the spring and it didn't even occur to me to email her for several months.

Sometime in July the itch struck up again. That not uncommon. I spend a lot of time traveling on my Harley over the summer and eventually I feel like sharing my adventures with someone. Holly is usually high on that list of people.

I sent her several short emails letting her know what I had been up to over the summer and asking how her new job was going. Several weeks passed without a response. Normally I won't bother writing a new email without getting a response to a previous one, but for some reason this summer I felt like writing Holly even when I wasn't sure that she was reading or even receiving the email that I sent her.

After a couple of emails sent like this I was beginning to feel like those scientists sending radio waves out into space in search of alien civilizations. It got to where I wasn't really expecting a response. I was just broadcasting my voice out into the nothingness. I sent her some pretty bizarre stuff under this guise. I remember in one email I told her about some dreams I'd had the night before. In one dream the two of us had gotten married. In another I was making out with my sister-in-law. Both were really bizarre.

I had always planned on going to Owen's wedding. But it had never occurred to me to bring a date until I received the official invitation addressed to “Dan and Guest”. The wheels in my head started turning. How fun would it be to go to a wedding with Holly? The wedding was even in Minneapolis, well within traveling distance from Milwaukee.

I broadcast another message into the void asking if Holly wanted to be my “Plus One” for Owen's wedding. I thought I was being really clever making a reference to an episode of “Sex and the City”; a show which I knew she watched and I had just started watching enough recently to make silly references to. I didn't really expect to get an answer to the message. It was just another message broadcast into the void. I wasn't disappointed. No response came.

Hello? This is the Void Returning Your Call
At least a month passed. I went on my vacation to Glacier National Park and rode the entire length of the Western Coast of the United States. No response from Holly. I spent a week in Barcelona for work. No response from Holly. Two weeks prior to the wedding and Dad was in town visiting. No response from... Wait. What's that flashing light on the answering machine? “Hi Dan. This is Holly. I'd love to go with you to your friend's wedding in Minneapolis...”. Holy Shit! She called back.

I panicked. The Void is not supposed to return your phone calls.

Fortunately, I already had a busy weekend planned with Dad. This gave me a good excuse not to call back right away. I spent the weekend alternating between states of elation and terror. It was really cool that she called up out the blue and said, “Yeah, lets go”. Just hearing her voice on the answering machine brought a smile to my face. On the other hand it was really terrifying that she called up out of the blue and said, “Yeah, lets go”. Even in my abstract reality I had imagined having to convince her at least a little bit.

Over the course of that weekend the notion of spending a weekend with Holly had settled in and didn't seem all that terrifying anymore. After all, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I figured that even if the weekend turned out to be a total disaster, at least I would have another “Holly” story to tell.

I gave Holly a call on a Monday evening; two days after she had left the message on my answering machine. Upon posing the pleasantry, “How are things going?” I was barraged with stories of how horrible and miserable her new job was and the negative affect that it was having on her life and well being. I was overwhelmed. It explained why she hadn't responded to any of my emails recently. She works from 7 until 5 or 6 everyday and is often double booked with appointments to see people who are applying for state benefits. She explained that she is so busy at work that she rarely even takes time for lunch.

With every new horrible detail that she told me I was more convinced that the plan of getting away for a weekend was a good one. Eventually I brought the conversation around to the trip. I used the computer to buy a plane ticket for her as we were still on the phone cementing the plans for the weekend.

It hadn't even occurred to me at first to fly her up to Minneapolis. But the more that I thought about it, the more it occurred to me that a 5 or 6 hour drive from Milwaukee to Minneapolis is a little grueling. Besides I thought it would “sweeten the pot” if she didn't have drive; even though she had already agreed to the trip when she had just assumed that she was going to be driving. And, I will guiltily admit, that I was a little anxious to “show off” the financial affluence that I had gained since graduating college.

The plan was now set in stone. The tickets were purchased and the hotel room was reserved. We were both taking the day off on Friday, flying into Minneapolis in the afternoon and leaving early Sunday evening.

Hot Date

I flew out to Mankato Minnesota this weekend to attend my friend Owen's wedding. My good friend Holly graciously agreed to be my date for the wedding and flew up from Milwaukee to join me. The weekend was euphoric. Even after all these years Holly still has an intoxicating effect on me. I hope to elaborate on the details in a different post. For now, it is late and I need to get to bed.



Click on the picture above to see more pictures from the weekend

P.S. - In case you are wondering after you look at the pictures, yes, I did actually rent a bright yellow "banana" mustang convertible for the weekend :) In my defense I didn't know that it was going to be yellow until we picked it up from the rental garage. Holly and I just busted out laughing as soon as we saw it. For a split second I considered exchanging it for a less offensive color. But then I asked myself, "How often to get a good excuse to drive around in a bright yellow mustang?".

Car Troubles

My trusty Cavalier of 10 years is starting to show signs of aging. Twice in the last week and a half, ironically both times while I was shopping at Albertsons, I've turned the key in my car's ignition and have been greeted by deafening silence. I was going to have the car looked at immediately after the first time that it gave me trouble, but Dad was in town and it seemed awfully inconvenient to be short a car when you have company. This was despite the fact that Dad tried to persuade me to bring the car into the shop.

Besides, the car started just fine the next day. I figured that it was an isolated incident. Every time that the car started just fine over the next couple of days made me all the more confident. I had been planning to take the car into the shop soon anyway. I figured that once I arrived at the abstract time in the future when it was convenient to drop my car off for a couple of days, I might mention to the mechanic that once upon a time I had trouble getting the car started. After all, it was just an isolated incident.

The moral of the story is that I deserved to get stranded at Albertson's tonight. That's what I get for being such a dumbass and not having the car looked at right away. Luckily, Marci was home and came to rescue me.

Does anyone want to take bets on whether or not I have really learned my lesson yet? Even as I am writing this post, I am thinking, "Hmm. I am heading out of town this weekend and have to drive to the airport. It would really be more convenient if I could just wait until I got back from Minneapolis before I take the car in. What are the chances that this could happen again before this weekend?". Is anyone available Friday afternoon to drive me to the airport?

Glutton for Punishment

I have now hiked to the top of Angel's landing twice this year. I was down in Zion for the weekend with my sister, Marci, my niece, Malina and my Dad. I took Friday off of work and Dad and I rode down to Zion National Park on highway 89. We met up with Marci and Malina who drove down separately in their car.

On Friday night we did a short hike on the Canyon Overlook trail. This morning we hiked the lower, middle and upper emerald pools and then started the Angel's landing trail with the intention of stopping at Scout's Lookout. Of course, once we were up at Scout's lookout, Marci couldn't resist hiking the rest of the way to Angel's Landing. So Dad stayed back with Malina while Marci and I continued our trek to the top.

Searching in Dark Places

I installed Google Desktop Search on my computer yesterday. It indexed my entire hard drive overnight and has turned up some pretty amusing relics from my past that were tucked away in some deep and dark places within my meticulously disorganized file hierarchy. This excerpt from a letter that I wrote in 1997 I thought was particularly amusing:

Other than that things have been pretty boring around here. I’ve been my usual self staying up all hours of the night pounding away on the keyboard figuring out how to program in Assembly Language, how to take over the World, and How to get laid. (either individually or all at the same time…it doesn’t matter much to me) I’m getting real close to programming in Assembly Language and World Domination.

Unfortunately little has changed since 1997. Although I am no longer trying to write assembly code of my own, I've spent much of the last week at work debugging through someone else's disassembled assembly code. Oh yeah, and I haven't had much luck with world domination or getting laid either :)

I Put a Spell on You

I will probably never buy a full album on iTunes. However, one of the things that I really love about iTunes is that I can hear a song in a movie, often an older song, and I can go find and buy it from iTunes. I recently picked up I Put a Spell on You (which I recently heard in the movie, Just Like Heaven), At Last (which was featured in an episode of According to Jim) and La Mer (which is from the movie L.A. Story). God bless iTunes :)

Chain Blogging

I was reading Master Fob's blog and decided to perpetuate his chain blog entry because it sounded interesting.

Here's the deal:
1. Delve into your blog.
2. Find the twenty-third post.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

Here are the results from my blog:
The 23rd post was entitled, "Blind Date" and the fifth sentence was, "In accordance with Murphy's law, I hopped into my car at 5:30 PM. turned the ignition and greeted by the sound of a free spinning starter motor."

The Gay Science

Here are some quotes that I highlighted recently while reading Nietzsche's, "The Gay Science".

• "How often I see that blindly raging industriousness does create wealth and reap honors while at the same time depriving the organs of their subtlety, which alone would make possible the enjoyment of wealth and honors; also that this chief antidote to boredom and the passions at the same time blunts the senses and leads the spirit to resist new attractions. The most industrious of all ages --ours-- does not know how to make anything of all its industriousness and money, except always still more money and still more industriousness; for it requires more genius to spend than to acquire."



• "After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave -- a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. --And we-- we still have to vanquish his shadow, too."



• "But how could we reproach or praise the universe? Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful, nor noble, nor does it wish become any of these things; it does not by any means strive to imitate man. None of our aesthetic and moral judgements apply to it. Nor does it have any instinct for self-preservation or any other instinct; and it does not observe any laws either. Let us beware of saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is nobody who commands, nobody who obeys, nobody who trespasses. Once you know that there are no purposes, you also know that there is no accident; for it is only beside a world of purposes that the word 'accident' has meaning. Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life. The living is merely a type of what is dead, and a very rare type."



• "The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. 'Whither is God?' he cried; 'I will tell you. We have killed him--you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not the night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light the lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.'
  
  'How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us--for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.'"



• "Egoism is the law of perspective applied to feelings: what is closest appears large and weighty, and as one moves farther away size and weight decrease."



• "Those who want to mediate between two resolute thinkers show that they are mediocre; they lack eyes for seeing what is unique. Seeing things as similar and making things the same is the sign of weak eyes."



• "For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is--to live dangerously!"



• "At bottom I abhor all those moralities which say: 'Do not do this! Renounce! Overcome yourself!' But I am well disposed toward those moralities which goad me to do something and do it again, from morning till evening and then to dream of it at night, and to think of nothing except doing this well, as well as I alone can do it. When one lives like that, one thing after another that simply does not belong to such a life drops off. Without hatred or aversion one sees this take its leave today and that tomorrow, like yellow leaves that any slight stirring of the air takes off a tree. He may not even notice that it takes it leave; for his eye is riveted to his goal--forward, not sideward, backward, downward. What we do should determine what we forego; by doing we forego--that is how I like it, that is my placitum. But I do not wish to strive with open eyes for my own impoverishment; I do not like negative virtues--virtues whose very essence it is to negate and deny oneself something."

Fall Colors

I rode both the Nebo and Alpine loop this weekend. The colors were awesome. Here are some photos that I took:

Big Loser

As of this morning I have lost 50 lbs (325 to 275), 6 inches from my jean size (from 46x30 to 40x30) and 1x from my t-shirt size (from 3x to 2x). Hooray! My new goal is to get below 250 before the end of the year.

Bald Mountain

What do you do when you return from a week long trip to Barcelona? But of course, you climb a mountain. Well, I at least I did anyway. I've been meaning to hike to the top of Bald Mountain since mid July when we had a picnic up at Mirror Lake. For one reason or another I kept coming up with excuses not to go (despite hiking lots of other places). I finally decided that this morning was going to be the morning that I conquered the mountain.

The trailhead is about 90 miles from Spanish Fork. The ride was a little chilly on the bike at 10 in the morning. The ride got progressively cooler as I ascended into the mountains. Mine was the only Harley at the trailhead. Apparently the idea of riding a Harley to go hiking was so foreign to the ranger that he let me through without paying an entry fee.

Although the trail ascended quickly, it wasn't the steepness of the trail that was killing me. I was struggling to find oxygen in the air that I was breathing. I'm not sure if my lungs had just grown accustomed to the Mediterranean air in the past week or if the fact that the trailhead started above 10,000 ft had something to do with it. The hike was about 4 miles roundtrip and ended at Bald Mountain Peak with spectactular views of the lakes below.

Travel Day

I left my hotel in Barcelona at 10 AM this morning. I arrived home in Spanish Fork, UT at 10 PM tonight after 20 hours of travelling. I'm tired. Good Night.

Final Night

Tonight is my last night in Barcelona. I should be out partying right now but I feel like I've done my share of partying for the last week. Instead tonight was my earliest night of the entire trip. I was back in my hotel room by 10:30 PM. This trip has also been characterized by sleep deprivation. I haven't gotten more than 5 hours sleep any night since I've been here. Some nights I've had as few as three. Luckily the reason that I didn't get any sleep was because I was out having so much fun :)

Today was the last day of Brainshare. I worked up in the Migration Lab for a short morning shift before tearing everything down at 1:30 PM. Our plan for the afternoon was to take a train to Montserrat and visit a monastery up in the mountains. After mobilizing a group of about 15 people and getting everyone to meet at a train station on the other side of the city, we were disappointed to find out that we didn't really have enough time to go. One of the folks at the train station told us that if we were to leave when we did that we would ride on the train for 2.5 hours (1.25 each way) and only get to see the monastery for 30 minutes before it closed.

Chaos ensued once everyone in the group was clued into the unfortunate news. We sat on the street for 15 minutes and argued about where we should go instead. Eventually we lost three people who went off to Port Olympic while the remainder of us headed in the direction of the National Art Museum. Rand and I were the next to go. We stopped outside of the art museum for beer and ice cream while everyone else headed inside. I don't think that we intentionaly intended to lose the group, but when they didn't come back out we just went our own way.

We started aimlessly wandering the mountainous streets to get to the "Castle on the Hill". The Castle was an old military fortress that housed a museum. Unfortunately we had left our only map with the other group of people. When I say aimlessly wandering I am really putting the emphasis on wandering. We were damn near walking through peoples back yards. It was clear that we were forging paths that had never been walked by tourists before.

The castle was cool but I think that the weather detracted from the experience. It was hot, humid and, as a result, sticky. We were also both pretty beat from walking for a very, very long time. I took a brief nap in the sun on one of the stone benches while Rand found the bar. When I woke up, the sweat on my t-shirt had dried and left nasty, crusty salt stains.

Rand was pretty excited to walk through the military museum considering that he had served in the army. I wasn't dying to see the museum but neither was I opposed to the idea. We spent about an hour walking through the inside rooms of the castle looksing at old knives, guns, swords, rifles, armor and cannons.

Our plan for descending from the castle back down to the city was to take a funicular (a sky tram). Unfortunately we discovered that the tram that left from the castle hadn't worked in quite a long time. This meant more walking. We had actually managed to pick up a map of the city inside the castle but we didn't bother consulting it. We figured that if we were to just head downhill and towards the ocean that we would eventually end up back somewhere where we could hop back on the subway.

About halfway down the mountain (hill) we discovered a second funicular that descended into the harbor. We rode the rest of the way down suspended several hundred feet above ground and ocean. The tower that the funicular stopped at was still a couple of hundred feet above ground and required that we take an elevator the rest of the way.

Eventually we found our way back to the subway and back to my hotel. We wanted to go out to dinner but I needed to wash the stickiness off of me first. We also thought that we would check if anyone else had made it back to the hotel and was interested in going out to dinner.

The other group had not returned when we left for dinner. Rand needed to do some shopping so we decided to kill two birds with one stone and eat at the mall. We stopped at a sausage shop in the mall called "Kurz & Gut". When I found a sausage that was wrapped in bacon and covered in cheese, I knew that I was good to go. They also served beer... in the mall. Spain Rocks! After dinner we stopped at a Hagen Daaz shop for desert. Why don't we have a Hagen Daaz store in America?

Harley and Hard Rock

Today was the day for all things American in Spain. There were three of us scheduled in the migration lab and it wasn't very busy so I decided to cut out early and go search for Harley Davidson of Barcelona. The quest took me through some busier parts of the city. The streets and sidewalks were so crowded in some spots that I had to get off the bike and walk.

Navigating in Barcelona is challenging due to the fact that the names of the cross streets are almost impossible to discern at a glance. Usually the street is marked by a small sign that is placed on a building on the street corner. Of course the sign is designed to aesthetically blend with the building that it is placed on, instead of being designed to stand out and be visible. On some streets the sign wasn't right on the street corner either. You might have to look quite a ways up the street to find the sign. And I swear some streets were not marked at all.

When I finally stumbled onto Harley Davidson of Barcelona I was surprised to find it marked by little more than a 12 inch square sign. I expected the dealership to be a separate building with a towering bar and shield marking the spot. Instead it was a shop tucked inside a much larger complex of shops. Considering how tiny the place was on the outside I couldn't believe how big it was on the inside. Not that it was huge, but it was about the same size as the dealership back in Orem.



The only problem was that I couldn't find any t-shirts for sale in the dealership. This was, of course, the whole purpose of the expedition. When I asked, I discovered that I was actually in the repair shop and that the showroom was half a block down the street.

The lady working in the showroom was really quite friendly and spoke reasonably fluent english. After picking out a shirt I spent a couple of minutes talking to her about the state of Harley in Spain. She said that the reason that I didn't see many Harley's on the street in Barcelona was because the city was so crowded. Most people take their Harley's out on the weekend and ride into the country instead of through the city. She said that even the owner of the Harley dealership rode a scooter to work during the week. Wow!



I also discovered that the reason that they don't have rentals anywhere in Spain was because they could not get a company to provide insurance for the rentals. She mentioned that an English company was currently considering providing the financial backing for the insurance rentals. By this time next year I may be able to come back to Spain and rent a Harley in Barcelona. She said that keep an eye out for me when I came back :)

Later that night I headed out with the whole team to explore the city. We headed first to an old Gaudi (sp?) designed cathedral that was still under construction called the La Sagrada Familia. It was incredibly ornate and meticulously detailed. One of the adornments on the cathedral was a sculpture of Jesus hanging naked (and anatomically correct) from a horizontal cross sticking out from the side of the building. Being a smart ass, I commented that if I was the son of God I would expect to be better hung than that (referring to the anatomically correct portion of the sculpture). Rand later pointed out the pun that was unintended but still pretty funny (hung on a cross).



We wandered aimlessly through the streets of Barcelona for an hour or so before deciding to find a place for dinner. Apparently Tony had really wanted to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe, so we headed in that direction. We had to wait for just over an hour to get a table but there was a bar and the music was good so it wasn't too painful. By the time that we sat down for dinner I had already put down 3 beers. Over the course of dinner, a traditional Spanish dish of Barbecued Ribs and French Fries, Rand made it his personal mission to ensure that I never ran out of beer.

Just when I was convinced that I was finished drinking Rand orders "Dos Mas Cerveza". One more me and one for him. I still had half of my previous bottled still finished. Just for fun I decided to try drinking double fisted from both bottles. This was not a very good strategy. I ended up getting beer all over the table and myself. The worst part was that when I asked the waitress for some napkins to clean up the mess she brought me another beer to make up for what I had spilled (which was nowhere near a full bottle's worth of beer). So, I went from having half a bottle left to drink to having 2 and a half bottles left to drink.

I was pretty sauced by the time that we left the Hard Rock. As we walked through the streets of "Old Town" we stumbled across some freaky tree people. From a distance it looked like moving statues of trees. As I got closer and closer I was amazed at the detail of the statues. The faces looked like they were made of real skin and real eyes. Just then as I was inspecting the statues from about 6 inches away I heard Dean drop some coins into a jar on the ground. Holy shit! Those are real people. It scared the crap out of me.

When we got back to the Princess Hotel where I had parked my bike I discovered that my bike had been molested while I was gone. They had taken the rubber grips off of my handlebars and taken the adjusting clamp off of my seat. Luckily they did not steal the seat itself which was worth 55 Euro. I was pretty pissed. The funny thing was that the bike was parked 20 feet from the entrance to the hotel (which was patrolled by security guards) in a well lit and heavily travelled area. Bastards!

Working for a Living

Tuesday, September 12th

Tuesday was the second day that I really felt like I was working to pay for the privilege to be sent to Spain by Novell. My only official shift ran from 10 AM until 2:30 PM. But I voluntarily agreed to sit in on a meeting that ran from 4 PM to 6:30 PM. with some of the GroupWise partners who had scheduled a "summit" in regards to the GroupWise API's. It was actually kind of cool to meet with a large number of our partners in person and hear their opinions on the state of the GroupWise API's.

Shortly after the API meeting I was scheduled, along with everyone else, to work "Meet The Experts" from 7:30 PM to 11 PM. Again, it was interesting to meet and talk with customers but it really made for a long day. I was really pleased with the amount of interest in the GroupWise Outlook Connector. I was also pleased with the number of Exchange to GroupWise migrations that heard of (some past and some future) during Brainshare.

The highlight of the night was meeting a female GroupWise administrator from the Netherlands. She was kind of cute and she seemed to be flirting with me a little. Even though I answered all of her real questions in the first couple of minutes she ccontinued talking to me for nearly half an hour with trivial questions and superficial chit chat. I really felt like she was fishing to be asked out.

Unfortunately I didn't have the balls to follow through. If I was wrong (which I had recently been with the female park ranger at the Redwood National Park campground) then it would actually be really unprofessional of me to be hitting on a customer. On the other hand, if I was right, I probably woudn't have slept alone that night. Oh well.

By the time that we finally left around 11:30 PM I was pretty exhaused from standing all day and tired from only gettting 4 hours of sleep the previous night. Surprisingly I still really felt like going out and doing something. Drinking was out because my stomach was still recovering from the previous night's debacle. Unfortunately it sounded like most everyone else was kind of tired and just wanted to turn in for the night. There isn't much to do in Barcelona at midnight if you aren't drinking.

I walked home from the convention center. About half-way home it occurrred to me that I should go out and ride my bike for a little while. I had doubly motivated. First, I had been working all day and hadn't really gotten any good exercise. Second, I hadn't had a chance to ride the bike since it was repaired earlier in the afternoon.

I was also pissed about the note that the rental company left in my room. They left a note saying that they were concerned that the reason that I kept getting flat tires was because I was "over the specifications" of their mountain bikes. I was pretty offended. They were basically saying that I was too fat to ride their mountain bikes.

So, I was additionally motivated to ride the bike to prove the bike rental company wrong: I was not getting flat tires because I was too fat to ride a mountain bike. I was a little cautious for the first couple of miles but after that I quit worrying about the tire blowing out. I really think that I just got unlucky three times in a row. It could have happenned to anyone.

The ride was successful. I didn't get a flat tire in nearly 15 miles of riding. I rode out the beach for the first several miles until I got back to the statue of columbus. From there I decided to take a different route and return home through the city. It was 2 AM by the time that I got back to the hotel.

The Beach and Bike Trouble

It is ridiculously late here (going on 3 am) so I am going to try and make this as quick as possible. I will probably fail, but at least I am going to try.

The highlight of the day was definitely all of the topless women on the beach in Barcelona. I swear that I didn´t seek them out but no matter where we went on the beach there were just women who didn´t seem to have any problem with taking their tops off to sunbathe. I´ve heard before that this is common in Europe, but this was my first time experiencing it.

Besides the (literally) half-naked women, it was also pretty cool to swim in the Mediterranean Sea and to just kick back and relax on the beach. I went with Scott Clayton after we were done with our shifts manning the lab at Brainshare. We took the subway from our hotel down to the beach which was another first for me.

Another highlight of the day was the Brewfest sponsored by the Messaging Architects. At every Brainshare The Messaging Architects throws a big party and invites customers and partners to come celebrate with them. The beer and food is all free. I´ve met quite a few people from TMA over the last couple of days but this was my first time to really sit down and get to know Pierre, the head honcho at TMA. He´s actually a pretty cool guy. In fact, I´ve really enjoyed meeting all of the folks from TMA.

After the party I walked back to the hotel with Rand. We stopped at a bar on the beach put down a few more beers before returning home. I was pretty sauced.

The lowlight of the day was definitely the bike trouble that I had. The plan this morning was to wake up early so that I could go to the beach before my shift started in the morning. When I went to retrieve the bike from the parking garage I discovered that the front tire had gone flat overnight.

Hoping that the flat was just a fluke, I walked the bike all over town trying to find a place where I could pump some air into the tire. Unfortunately, the tire was legitimately and permanently flat. I couldn´t determine the cause of the flat (i.e. there weren´t any obvious punctures) but there was a big hole in the tube and the tire wouldn´t hold any air.

Unfortunately the bike rental place didn´t open until 10 AM. I left a message and emailed them to let them know about the problem. If I could have found an open shop I would have just replaced the tube myself. I told the bike rental place that I worked from 10 to 2 and that I was hoping that they could get the tire repaired before returning in the afternoon.

When I got back to the hotel I checked on the bike and was unpleasantly surprised to find out that the tire was still flat. After talking to the lady at the front desk I discovered that the tire was not still flat, it was flat again. Apparently the bike rental place had fixed the tire but it had gone flat again in between the time that they left and I returned. I was pissed.

I called up the rental place and raised holy hell. I told them that I should be refunded the price of the day´s rental since I had essentially lost a day of riding due to faulty equipment. The manager of the bike rental place didn´t seem to agree. He kept stating that they could not be held liable for punctures that I made while riding. I tried, to no avail, to explain that I hadn´t even ridden the bike before it got it´s second flat.

We finally agreed that they would come and repair the bike again. I wasn´t going to waste any time waiting for them, so I left by the subway to go to the beach with Scott. When we returned several hours later I found a different bike in place of the one that I had rented. They had upgraded me to the next level of mountain bike. Although I was still upset that I had lost a day of riding I was happy to see that the company was at least attempting to make me happy.

The happiness didn´t last long. When I got on the bike to ride to the Brewfest I discovered that the tires, although not flat, barely had enough air in them to support my weight. Granted I probably weigh a little more than the average European male, but I would still expect to have a bike delived with the proper amount of air pressure. I rode the bike to the same gas station that I had found earlier that day and filled the tires up with the proper amount of air.

After that I was convinced that I had finally gotten over my bike problems. I was riding to an event with free beer and all was well with the world. That is until my rear tire went flat just as I passed the conference center. I was so frustrated that I felt like I wanted to hit something.

I was determined not to be too late for the Brewfest and to not spend my entire evening dealing with the flat tire. So I just parked the bike by the convention center and walked the remaining 2 miles to the restaurant where the Brewfest was being hosted.

The only problem with leaving the bike where it broke down was that it just meant that I had to walk it home later at night. By the time that I got back to the area where I had parked the bike it was 2 in the morning and I was pretty sauced up. Walking the bike the 1.5 miles to the hotel was not all that much fun in that condition.

I was able to get ahold of the bike rental place earlier in the evening and they are going to try one more time to repair the bike. The manager swore that this never happens to them. He even went so far as to ask whether or not I had this problem with bikes back at home... as if I had anything to do with the tires going flat. I hope that I don´t have any more problems like this tomorrow.

Barcelona Photos

Here are the photos from the first couple of days of the trip.

Barcelona by Mountain Bike

Sunday September 11th

Today was a good day. I wasn't sure that it was going to turn out to be this morning, but it turned out OK. Nothing in life is free. That was certainly the case with the dinner that Messaging Architects treated us to last night (which again, I am still very grateful for). Somewhere during dinner though I committed to showing up at Brainshare at 10 AM to help Svetlin troubleshoot some problems that he was having with the VMWare image for the demo. I also committed to a meeting at 11 AM to get an overview of Messaging Architects products so that we could plug them during the migration demo.

Had I not made those commitments we weren't scheduled to do anything until 1PM when we needed to show up for a brief Brainshare meeting with Ken Muir, the director of GroupWise and then would have had the rest of the day to play in Barcelona. By midmorning I was slowly starting to see my relaxing Sunday starting to melt away. Svetlin was a little late showing up and when he finally did we didn't catch him right away. It was 10:45 by the time that we all met up.

We were supposed to meet Greg from Messaging Architects in the solutions lab for our 11 o'clock meeting. Unfortunately, the conference center event staff kicked us out of the solutions lab just before 11 because they were worried about safety as they were making adjustments to the scaffolding that held all of the lighting for the show. When Greg showed up at 11 noone was in the solutions lab, we were all in the migration lab. It was after noon by the time that we finally hooked up Greg. Just when I finally managed to get everything lined up for the Messaging Architects product overview I couldn't find my 3 co-workers who were also supposed to be sitting in on the training (it turns out that they went out to lunch without me).

Before I knew it our 1 hour 11 o'clock meeting had turned into a 1:30 PM meeting and ended up lasted for nearly 3 hours. It was 5 PM by the time that I finally left the conference center. And I was glad to be out. Officially I was scheduled to work the migration lab from 6 to 9 PM. However, since the migration lab didn't open until Monday morning I got the night off. If I hadn't already worked most of the day I probably would have just worked my shift in the solutions lab instead of the migration lab.

Although my morning wasn't an ideal morning spent in Barcelona, at least I can say that my missions were accomplished. We figured out the problems that Svetlin was having with the migration (it turned out to not be a problem at all), we got a fairly in-depth demonstration of the Messaging Architects' products and we managed to do a dry-run of the migration demo.

The fun really began in the evening. When I got back to the hotel I called up a bike rental place and rented a mountain bike. They delivered it to my hotel about 45 minutes later. I decided that my first ride would be down to the beach on the mediterranean coast. I probably rode down 5 or more miles of beach. I stopped at a beach bar and had a few beers before walking through the tide on the beach. It was awesome.

I stopped back at the hotel briefly around 8:30 to see if anyone had called with plans for dinner. No one had. The lab closed at 9PM and I figured that if I just camped out at one of the exits that I would run into someone from GroupWise. So, I rode back to the conference center and camped out. Within 15 minutes the whole team that was working that night walked out together. They told me that we were going out to dinner at “La Gavina” in Port Olympic.

Since we had just eaten in Port Olympic the previous night and I had ridden past it earlier in the day I felt pretty comfortable that I could find my way on the bike. The only problem was that when I got to Port Olympic I couldn't find any restaurants called “La Gavina”. I must have asked half a dozen people and none of them had ever heard of it. As I poked around for people who spoke English I got pretty good at uttering the phrase, “Hablo Ingles?”.

I finally found someone who knew where “La Gavina” was but he was only able to mutter a few words in English. I did manage to make out that the restaurant was not in Port Olympic. He told me that it was in a port up the road. It sounded like he called it “Port Aquis”, although I think that may mean “Next Port” rather than refer to the actual name of the port.

I rode around for a couple of hours before finally giving up. At some point I realized that even if I managed to find the restaurant that everyone that I was trying to meet would already be long gone. The night wasn't a total waste though. It was pretty cool to ride through Barcelona all lit up at night. I stumbled onto the “famous” statue of Columbus in the city center before turning around.

I stopped at a bar on the beach for dinner and liquid nourishment. Since I hadn't had lunch and had been riding for the last 5 hours I was pretty famished. Dinner was pretty light but the 4 beers that I had definitely weren't. I wonder if you can get a ticket for driving a bicycle while intoxicated. I'm just kidding, I wasn't that drunk. In fact, I only just barely had a buzz going. But the beer tasted awfully good after all of the riding that I had done.

I got back to the hotel at about 12:30 AM. A few minutes later Scott Brown knocked on my door and let me know what happened. It turns out that they got bad directions to the restaurant. They ended up spending quite a bit of time finding the place as well. Scott showed me where the restaurant was on my map. Ironically I had ridden right past it and just didn't notice the sign. I didn't feel so bad when Scott mentioned that the sign wasn't very visible from the road.

Now it's time for bed. I think that I'm going to wake up early tomorrow and go for a swim in the ocean before working my shift. Good night.

Jet Lag

Friday September 9th - Saturday September 10th

Today was a crazy day. In fact it's been so long since I've slept, it might even qualify as a crazy two days. I did wake up at 4:30 am on Friday morning like I originally planned. That gave me a whole 3 hours of sleep. Since that time I have only slept an additional 2 hours or so on the flight from Philadelphia to Barcelona. Believe me I tried but I just couldn't seem to.

I purposely kept myself awake on the flight from Salt Lake to Philadelphia. I figured that in order to make up for the Jet Lag between Philly and Barcelona that I would want to sleep for the entire international flight. When we arrived in Philadelphia at 3 or 4 in the afternoon exhaustion was already starting to set in.

That didn't keep down my spirit of adventure though. I was determined not to waste a trip to Philadelphia without checking out the city. We had nearly 4 fours until we boarded the next leg of our flight. That was plenty of time to get into the city, have dinner and then return to the airport. Half of the group that I was traveling with (Dean Lythgoe, Tim Draper and his wife) was on-board with the dinner-in-philly plan. The other half of the group (Scott Brown, Scott Clayton, Dirk Giles and Morris Blackham) had managed to disappear in search of the international terminal before we even had the opportunity to convince them of the superiority of our plan. Fools!

Apparently finding a place to eat a Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is not such an easy proposition. We were met with blank stares as we asked half a dozen people for directions to the best Philly Cheese Steak in town... and that included two different taxi drivers. Our luck improved when Dean randomly chose and printed out directions to Pat's King of Steaks restaurant. After a little bit of badgering the cab driver finally conceded to knowing where “Pat's” was and even informed us that it was indeed the best place in Philly to get a Cheese Steak Sandwich.

We were all starving and filled with hope as we piled into the cab. That hope was replaced by trepidation as the cab driver began to navigate the streets of Philadelphia. He had this bad habit of not stopping for red lights. It wasn't bad enough that he ran the lights, but he actually did so consciously and carefully. When the light turned red about a 100 yards or so ahead of us he would actually begin to slow as he was approaching the intersection. This led to a false hope that he might actually stop. Instead he only slowed down to make sure that he wouldn't hit anybody by driving straight through the intersection.

As we got deeper and deeper into the inner city of Philadelphia I think that we were all beginning to worry. We all had imagined that Pat's was actually a TGI Friday's sort of a place with a happy and fun atmosphere tucked into some recess of the sprawling urban metropolis. Instead we found ourselves driving through inner city ghettos. I kept waiting for a bullet to come whizzing by my head. When we finally arrived at Pat's it was apparent that we were really in for a taste of the local experience.

The menu consisted almost entirely of different ways to cook a Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich. Who knew that there were more than 20 different ways to prepare a Philly Cheese Steak? The seating for the place was all outdoors. The sandwiches were, in fact, pretty damned good.

Our flight left Philadelphia at about 8 PM and with the time difference arrived in Barcelona at 9 am the next morning after a 7 hour flight. My plan to sleep the entire flight quickly evaporated. I was able to doze off for a couple of hours after dinner but that was basically it for the whole night.

When I woke up they were showing “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” as the in-flight movie. I'm a little ashamed to admit that I actually wanted to see that movie. I refrained from purchasing headphones because I thought it would be more important to try and get some sleep. I pretty much ended up watching the whole movie without any sound. It will be interesting to rent the movie when it comes out on video to see if the actual movie dialogue was as interesting as the dialogue that I imagine while watching the movie with no sound.

Even though my body was tired when we landed it was just hard to think about catching z's when the sun was rising. I was also way too excited to sleep. As soon as we touched down I forced myself to perk up so that I could be sure to soak in the whole international experience.

Barcelona is a very cool city. It appears to be a fairly heavily populated area, yet you don't feel overwhelmed or downtrodden by concrete and asphalt. The streets were clean and there was still quite a bit of natural landscaping that kept the city from looking like an urban war zone. This was in stark contrast to the city of Philadelphia.

Luckily we were able to check into our hotel rooms about 4 hours early. The hotel rooms are awesome. Everything is in decorated in a modern décor. I have a corner room where two of the four walls are basically nothing but large glass windows covered by motorized blinds. The bathroom was also all glass. After sliding a translucent “privacy” panel out you could see into the bathroom through the shower from the room. And while you were taking a shower you could see into the rest of the room. Even the TV was modern. It's a 21” flat screen TV monitor. Way Cool!

There were a few quirks about the room. For the longest time I couldn't figure out how to turn on the lights or the air conditioning. I must have tried every switch in the room 3 times. Finally a noticed a small plastic panel near the door of the room with an arrow pointed on it and a slot just big enough to fit a room key. I couldn't even begin to imagine why you would want to insert the room key into a slot once you were already in the room but I decided to give it a shot anyway. No sooner had the card entered the slot than the whole room started whirring to life. The air condition turned on, the lights turned on and the blinds started to raise.

We only stayed long enough to drop our bags off and then we embarked on the 1 and ½ mile hike/walk to meet up with the other folks from Novell at the Princess Hotel. Because we were booked so late, we ended up in the overflow hotel. Everyone else was in a hotel that was just a few steps away from the conference center. In the long run I think that I actually prefer our hotel. It's nice to wake up in the morning and not be immediately surrounded by hordes of conference attendees. It makes it easier to get away from “work” when I'm not actually at the conference center.

I've committed to walking the distance between the hotel and the conference center every day. I figure that it will be a good way to get exercise while I'm away from home and to and will help to make up for all of the extra food that I will be eating and the beer that I will be drinking. I also think that walking gives you a better chance to connect with the city and see the “real” Barcelona.

I, and the other 3 guys that were brought over to do the exchange migration, were invited to dinner by the generous folks at “The Messaging Architects”. They were same folks that pushed Novell to send a few more people to help them run the Exchange migration workshop (i.e. I wouldn't be in Barcelona right now if it weren't for them). We went to a really nice seafood place right in the marina.

I decided to be adventurous and order the seafood stew, which was listed as a “Local Special”. It was basically every kind of crustacean that you can imagine smothered in a sauce or gravy. The monk fish was awesome. It was my first experience peeling prawns from their shells which was made all the more challenging by the sauce that the prawns were smothered in. Lucky for me one of the girls, Rumiana, from The Messaging Architects ordered the same thing and walked me through the whole experience. Rumiana was cool. Too bad she lives in Montreal.

Even though I had barely slept in the last 60 hours, I decided that I was going to fight the urge to sleep after dinner. Instead I decided to go out drinking with Rand and Greg from the Messaging Architects. I was surprised when Rand passed up a bar/discoteque in the marina where you could spy girls dancing half-naked in bikinis on bar tables as you walked by. I tried to convince him to turn back for the next mile or so but he wouldn't listen. We ended up hanging out in a little hole-in-the-wall bar with pool tables. I got schooled by Greg who was pretty good with a cue. I did manage to win 1 out of about 5 games.

As I stumbled home through the streets of Barcelona at 2 in the morning I was surprised at how much activity there was. The streets were teaming with the 18 to 30 crowd that was out partying on the weekend. It didn't seem to phase anyone that it was 2am. I was tempted to stop at a couple of places and join the party but I figured that, for the first time all day, I should be responsible and get some sleep.

Getting Ready

I should really be in bed right now. It's a little past midnight and I just finished packing. I've been running around all night trying to get ready to travel tomorrow morning.

After work I had to stop by Provo Town Centre to pick up some new clothes. They want us to wear "business casual" at Brainshare and I'm afraid that it's been a long time since I've worn anything but jeans and t-shirts to work. I was able to dig out and dust off some button-up shirts from my closet but even if I had pants that were nice enough to wear they probably wouldn't fit any more. When I moved into my house a year and a half ago I threw away all of my smaller clothes that I had been lugging around for years because I figured that I would never fit into them again.

I picked up three pair of dockers, a black belt (not karate related) and some colored socks. I spent way more time than I should have picking out the belt and the socks. At least I had a good excuse for the belt. I couldn't find the right size and style that I was looking for. I found the right size in a similar but wrong style and I was able to find the right style in the slightly wrong size. I was convinced that if I looked hard enough, just one more time, that the missing belt would suddenly materialize before me.

After a few dozen passes over the belt rack I thought up the bright idea of asking one of the sales associates to check the inventory on the computer. The computer, which never lies, told us that there were at least two of the exact belt that I was looking for in stock. Unfortunately that didn't make it any easier for us to find. Eventually I gave up and just bought a different, more expensive belt.

There was no excuse for the amount of time that I spent picking out the socks though. I used to have a female co-worker whose pet peeve was guys who would wear nice pants with plain white socks. She would go on and on about how stupid these fashion challenged individuals looked. Her ranting must have embedded itself deep within the dark recesses of my brain because now whenever I go shopping for socks to match nice pants (which, thank God, is not very often) I start to break out in a cold sweat wondering whether or not Carlene would be pleased with how I matched my socks to the pants that I am wearing.

The marathon started once I got home. After I ate dinner I decided that it would be a good idea to do all of my dishes so that my house wasn't rat infested by the time that I get home next week. Although, now that I think of it most of the dishes that I did tonight have already been sitting in my sink for nearly a week. Would it really have hurt that much to leave them there for another week? It wouldn't be the first time that I've had a two-week old sink full of dishes. I guess there is just something about coming home to a clean house after being away on a trip.

While I was doing my dishes I started my laundry. A couple of the dress shirts that I had dug out of my closet were way back from when I originally interviewed at Novell 4 years ago and it looked like I didn't bother to wash them before hanging them up in my closet. The sleeves were still rolled up and everything.

Of course after washing and drying all of my dress shirts I had no choice but to iron them as well. I felt dirty. I can't remember the last time that I had to dig my iron out of the closet. A sensible person probably wouldn't have bothered to iron a bunch of shirts before packing them in luggage. But, I wasn't sure whether or not there would be an iron at the hotel that I'm staying at and I figured that it would be better to have ironed shirts with a few fold marks from being packed than to look like I just pulled my shirts out of the dryer.

Somewhere in the process of doing my dishes and laundry it occurred to me that I forgot to get an adapter to plug my laptop into the European style electrical outlets. I actually had the opportunity to do so earlier in the afternoon when I stopped by Office Max but I just completely forgot about it. So, I made a late night run to K-Mart to try and find the converter.

K-Mart didn't have the converter and sent me packing to WalMart. I hate shopping at WalMart but I was desperate. If I didn't buy the converter tonight I would be stuck buying it at the airport for like quadruple the normal cost. Ironically WalMart had stocked the converters just a couple of days earlier but then all of the sudden the computer decided that they weren't selling and so it pulled them off the shelves and took them out of stock.

As I was walking out of the electronics department I couldn't resist the urge to look at the audio cd's as I walked by. I figured that if there were a group of people that were more evil than Walmart that it would have to be the RIAA. And if anybody deserves to get screwed by Walmart's lowballing tactics it is certainly the recording industry. So, I decided that I would reclaim some purpose to my trip to Walmart by buying some music (I know, shame on me).

I picked up two new CD's. Gorillaz', "Demon Days" and Kanye West's, "Late Registration". I would discover several hours later that it was actually me that got screwed in the end after all. I had accidentally picked up the "Clean Lyrics" version of "Late Registration". Walmart may not even sell the "Explicit Lyrics" version for all I know. I was pretty pissed when I found out. Not that I'm dying to hear a bunch of swearing, but I prefer to hear the album as the artist originally conceived it and not the watered down version meant to appease people with sensitive ears. I would return the CD but it will be at least a week until I will even have the opportunity and then I'm pretty sure that most places that sell music will not allow you to return or exchange anything that's been opened.

Wow, it's quarter to one now. My original plan was to wake up at 4:30 am so that I could work out before leaving. I'm not sure how well that plan is going to work now. I just hope that I don't accidentally sleep in and miss my flight. I guess that the best way to prevent that is to get my ass to bed. Good night!

Little Sahara

I went four wheelin' in the Little Sahara Sand Dunes today with my sister's brother-in-law, Chris, and his fiance, Shannon (hmmm, I just realized that I know another "Chris and Shannon"). It was my first time on an ATV and in sand dunes. I had an awesome time. Gotta get me some of them. Click here or on the picture below to view the rest of my pictures.



The only negative to the whole experience was seeing how poorly the dunes and the surrounding areas were taken care of. There was trash everywhere. It was kind of like people just didn't care.

There seemed to be a certain type of person that was into dune riding. You could almost smell the redneck testosterone in the air. Although, I was surprised how many good looking women I saw today. Unfortunately most of them had their arms wrapped around a tatooed guy with no t-shirt and no helmet cruising at about 90 mph through the dunes.

Hmm, what does that say about me when I disparage guys who ride four wheelers shortly after admitting that I want to become one of them?