Update from SD
The flight to San Diego, as always, was uneventful and quick. I've never really had a bad flight. I've experienced major turbulance in a tiny turbo-prop plane, but for some reason it didn't frighten me at all. I was kind of fun!For me, travel problems always occur before and after the actual flight.
As you know, the family left 7 days before I did, leaving me to patter around the house alone. I planned my week to avoid long lengths of time where I would be sitting in the dark, moping, and drinking. This plan called for me to accomplish a large number of chores on Friday and Saturday, leaving Sunday wide open for packing, cleaning, dog washing, and some last minute shopping.
Unfortunately, I started to feel the effects of sleep deprivation over the weekend and spent most of Friday and Saturday shoveling and sleeping and otherwise feeling sluggish. I figured out on Sunday morning that I was coming down with something.
But, no rest for me, I had things to do. So, off to the shower I went.
ICE COLD
For some time the wife had been complaning that the water heater was acting up, but I never experienced it myself. I thought we just had an old unit that ran out of water easily.
Well, it turns out that my water heater problems were three-fold: it was filled with sediment, we had been running on one heating element (instead of two), and the upper heating element (the only one that was working) was now burned out.
It took me about 4 hours and two trips to the hardware store to figure all this out.
In order to change the heating element, we had to drain the tank, which was impossible from all the sediment. After many tries, I gave up. I would have to siphon the water out with a hose from the top. This would take hours and hours and hours. But how would I get the sediment out?
I can't. Got to get a new water heater.
So, my dad offered to help me pick one up Monday morning (flight was leaving at 4pm Monday afternoon). Then, we would start siphoning the water, and he'd screw in the pipes and hook up the wires while I was gone.
So, this killed my whole plan. Everything fell behind schedule and I was left scrambling until the last minute, but I made it to the airport on time and in 4 hours I was breathing in the sweet, warm, seaside air.
The week out here went well enough. Met my new boss. We don't really get along. Opposite ends of the battery, I guess. I think we understand each other, which should be enough.
Notes:
I had forgotten how many "porn-quality" women there were out here. One trip to Starbucks in the morning and I saw more perfect 10s than I would see in a month in Milwaukee.
We had bad weather out here this week, which is the ultimate relative statement. When you come from
One of our top testers is leaving the company next week, so this trip gave me a chance to say goodbye in person. He asked if I would ever consider moving back to SD. He said he would keep me in mind if his new employer ever hired a new writer, ...IF I would consider moving back. He also suggested I would make a good QA engineer, which is what I've been taking classes for this past year. It was nice to hear that from someone I have a lot of respect for. I told him I would consider moving back, but that's just wishful thinking. I think there's no way I could do it now.
The plane trip to Japan tomorrow is about 12-13 hours. I always pick up a new video game to help pass the time on the plane. I got the Star Wars RPG Knights of the Old Republic. This game takes places a few thousand years before the first Star Wars movies when the Sith and the Jedi did regular battle. You can choose your path to destiny, the dark side or the side of the Jedi. You learn a lot of geeky Star Wars things that aren't in any of the movies, ...for example, it's against the Wookie culture to brush their teeth or groom themselves in any way.
I'll write more on the plane, and try to post some pics from Japan.
I should say, I'll try to write and post.
<< Home