Manic Week

I'm home! This morning, at 9:15am, I waltzed back into my apartment after a crazy week in San Diego. It was quite manic, to say the least. Let's step back a few days and catch up....

First of all, I love public transit. Ever since NYC has opened up the AirTrain, which lets me take the subway to a train that goes to the terminals at the aeropuerto, I have been their number one customer. Last week was no different: carry-on luggage in tow, I headed to the subway. I was in a bit of a rush thanks to a difficult and unsuccessful Linux installation on my lappy-top. Just to make sure that I'm sweating amply, the subway decided to break on the way to the airport, leading to a nice 15 minute delay. Then the AirTrain wasn't running as normal, so we'll tack on another 15 minute delay there. Annoying. When I walked up the gate, sweating profusely (sucked to be my neighbor ;o), I went directly on the plane and began to relax....

Fast forward 6 hours later: My wallet is on my lap. I had bought one of those ridiculously overpriced, over-calorized, and over-chemicalized "meals" (since they don't give them free anymore) before playing a few hundred games of solitaire and watching Alexander (lacking, lacking....). Having earned a reputation as someone who always loses things (I really don't understand why I'm stuck with that), I told myself to remember to put my wallet in my backpack. No problem, that's standard for my "prepare for arrival and cross-check" checklist, along with raising my seat-back and stowing my carry-on items securley in the seat in front of me. Laptop? Check. Power Cord? Check. Book? Check. Extra bag of semi-edible pretzels? Check. Wallet? ......

Fast forward 12 hours later. It's break-time after an intense morning session and I reach in to grab my wallet from my backpack. Gone. Missing. Stolen. Or was it....? I start making frantic calls to my brother's house - it's not there. American Airlines lost and found in San Diego - it's not there. Check the car - it's not there. I wasn't so worried about my credit cards and I didn't have any cash in there (I'm cheap), but I was terrified at the prospects of flying back the following week without ID. And what about buying lunch every day? And what about paying for parking every day? And and and and.... => stress. Not good. So I pillaged the snack tables during the break and took like three bagels, some fruit, a few extra drinks, some cream cheese, and some butter. If I did this every day, I wouldn't have to pay for lunch. Sweet.

At lunch time, I wandered outside of my room to take a break before starting to devour my plain bagel(s) and fruit. What do you know? I run into a former co-worker of mine who I was friends with! Sa-weeet! I gave him my sob story and he offered to pick up my lunch. I thought about the yummy bagel(s) waiting for me, free of charge, in my backpack in my windowless conference room. But, in the end I decided to go for the barbeque in the sunshine next to the marina instead. Decisions, decisions....

At the end of the day, I put in another call to American Airlines to start tracking down my plane and see if it ended up somewhere else. They traced it back to New York, so I called the NY American Lost and Found and also called the SD airport Lost and Found and left messages with both of them. Then, my phone rang, and I pulled it out of my pocket and it began to illuminate with light rays (cut to angelic-sound: "aaaaahhhhhhhh"). They'd found it in the SD airport, which was conveniently right across the street from the hotel where my training was. Wow. So I grabbed one of my new "friends" from my former employer, haggled him for $10 in exchange for a ride home so I could pay for parking, and then we headed across the street to the airport, where my wallet, credit cards, and cash were all waiting for me. WHEW! Enough of the stress!!

The rest of the week went by pretty well. I was quite busy learning how to detect hackers on corporate networks and learning about the intricacies of (geek speak warning) IP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, etc. etc. etc. Intrusion Detection, baby. Snort, TCPDump, Windump, XProbe, etc. etc. etc. (/geek speak). It was AWESOME!

I got to hang out with some of my old SoCal gang a few of the nights, including Sandy & Daniel, Graham Hufford, and my old high school buddy Russell Tanner, and of course got to spend a few quality nights hanging out with my brother, sister, sister-in-law, and my unborn niece/nephew. Jamal Haines? I think that has a nice ring to it ;o) .

On my only off-day, Wednesday, my brother treated my sister and I to a race and lunch at the local indoor, environmentally friendly go-kart track. These things hauled arse and got wickedly sidewise and fishtailed around turns on the rubbery track surface. It was totally fun showing everyone how to drive....at least until I decided to do a donut on one of the turns. Oops, there goes my lead.

To cap an otherwise good trip, I did a little shopping before my red-eye flight and decided to help my sister upgrade her computer's hard drive (you know, the thing that makes noise). Being an IT professional who can decode hex datagrams in binary, I can add new peripherals like a hard drive with my eyes closed. After about an hour of fiddling with the damn thing, I decided to RTFM (Read The Funny Manual) and actually installed the software that came with it. After following the detailed instructions, I found out that her computer was so old that it wouldn't support the drive, so I followed the instructions to get it to work. Sure enough, it totally foo-barred her computer, leaving it totally useless. About 15 minutes before I had to leave for the airport. DAMNIT!

$400 later, there's a new Dell on the way to her house....

To cap the week, I thought I'd give Super Shuttle a try for a ride home since my bag was full of really heavy books from my training. $20, not a bad deal, really. This morning, when I arrived at 5:45, I called them and let them know I was there. They said to wait for the guy who was coming for me. A half hour later, I called them back and asked (in nicer terms) what the hell was going on, where was the dude. "Please Hold". They hung up on me. An hour and a half after I arrived, they arrived. Now, it takes me an hour and half to get home on the subway, so you can see where this is going. And now, since it was 7:15 in the morning, we were heading to Manhattan during rush hour. Wonderful. 3.5 hours after I arrived, I got home. Justin was not a happy camper. That's the last time I neglect my duty to ride mass transit.

A very manic week, indeed!

J. , up too late tonight