half a cat

Whoaaa there parder. A little splash-n-dash here on the blog before I get back to the hectic life that is my Monday, bullet style.

• Weekend was one of the best ever, nothing like spending a whole day with someone. I spent 75% of Sunday on or near the bike in pursuit of fun for Portana’s bday (birthday, not fancy french bum washer…). Great day of riding, hit small rain sprinkles during 90F heat, boy does that help, especially since I have the new fangled helmet. Lunch at the Grizzly Bar, talk about great food. I love a Prime Rib “sandwich” that is a steak with a dinner roll. Mmm, yeah, that piece of bread is soooo not getting used, and we are just going to call it a steak! Alaskin King Crab for appetizer, just about the best seafood I’ve had in ages. I think I may have hooked someone on Maker’s as she orderd one on the rocks while we waited out the rain deluge. There is something about a sexy woman drinking brown liquor on the rocks that makes her seem very mysterious This single day probably made my week, if not month.
• Lou in town! More stories later, but great to have a friend from college here in MT. It was fascinating to hear about the whole crew, oddly making me a bit sad that I’ve not kept in better contact, but then again I’ve always been horrible at keeping in touch with people. I think something about “living in the now” pokes in there…
• Chatterbox HJC 60. Total piece of crap. I thought it would be nifty to have an intercom for the road trips on the bike — chit chat and tunes the whole way. Yeah, first off, not that much talking you really want to do, just lose yourself in the ride. Second, wind noise. It kills. This thing is getting returned ASAP, and purchasing a direct splitter for the iPod and an extra set of ear buds. Net savings: $200+ USD. And to the person who suggested I get a windshield to help cut down on wind noise: yeaaah right.
• Work…you @#$@#$ers. On top of the week-a-month travel fun, aka HELL, to ORNL, I’m going to be spending almost 2 entire weeks outside of Denver for work meetings at the end of the month. That boosts this month’s travel+out of town work days to 18. This had better be the last month at ORNL, getting really sick of 25-50% travel, so not what I signed on for. To boot, other than doing my job and helping my company out immensely, no real benefit to me. Bitter? Nooo, not me. Selfish? Completely, but then again I’m just asking to have a semi-normal life. Oh yeah, and I am pretty sure there is at least 1 more trip to ORNL that will have to happen right after this Denver excursion, so looking at 3 weeks straight out of town. Booo! I guess this is the price to pay for working from home. I am very excited about the supposed pending return to recoding lots of internal tools. Coop: Remember the Shaver’s joke about rewriting ltest in python — looks like it is going to happen
• Northwest & 6.35am flights out of TYS. Bullshit! If you are going to cancel the flight because YOU HAVE NO FUCKING FLIGHT CREW, please do not mark the flight as leaving late due to “required crew rest” and then cancel it 30mins before takeoff. If I had known it was going to be canceled, I could have slept in past 4am and perhaps gotten a few hours of sleep. You do get bonus points for having reclining leather chairs in the terminal, made it quite easy for me to sleep the 5 hours until the second flight took off. This is the second day in a row, the last being end of June trip to ORNL, that it has taken me ALL DAY to get back to Billings on second rate flights after you botched this one up. Second, get the @#$@#$ing airport security guys to let us in the line so we can get our flights rescheduled. Note to self, never ever ever ever again schedule early flight, take the 8.40am one and be glad that it takes off on something approaching a routing basis. Yeah. Nothing like scheduling the early red-eye flight to get home just to spend 14h+ in the airports. My butt hurts.