December 2006
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Saturday, 12-23-6
I've been slacking in my updates and we've been getting a lot of traffic over here. Remember that "7th Son" podcast by JC Hutchins I'm always talking about? I'm now on his "Agents of the Ministry" page and he has linked over to my homepage. So I saw a bit of increased traffic from that but it really hit the top end this week. I listen to another podcast about Disney World (Inside the Magic) and in one of his shows he was talking a bit about being a generation that grew up on WDW. I sent him an e-mail and a link to the page with Becca's annual picture in front of the castle thinking he'd get a kick out of it. He read it "on air" and posted the link on his page. Traffic at my page blew up. Now, I'm just a small-time nobody. "Big time" traffic at my site equates to a slow day at any other person's page. We usually have between 20 to 40 people check out the site every day. The Disney podcast dropped on Sunday night. Monday we had 88! I know, to all you REAL webtechs out there, 88 is nothing but hell, I'm surprised when even one of you reads this. I know I'm not very entertaining or even very interesting but 88 in one day? We finished out the week close to 1200. That is almost six times the usual traffic. By the way, I DID warn Ricky that the rest of my website is not "Disney Rated". I wouldn't want people checking out the site and then getting upset. I am stupid and mundane but I can get ugly too.
So, I hope something hilarious happens over the Christmas break or I'll still have nothing to write about here. Mom and Dad are coming up tonight; they'll be here until Monday. Tuesday we're driving up to Atlanta to visit Jerry, Scott and Jeremy. We'll be back on Wednesday and I'll get to rest until Tuesday when it's back to work. Of course by rest I mean do all the chores around the house I've been putting off.
Alright, I'm gone for now. Happy Yule to you all! May the coming light give you hope, health and happiness.
Friday, 12-15-6
What a week. Albany, GA and Greenwood, SC are both so far of the Interstates that I was beginning to feel like I was back in the woods of Pennsylvania again. How can these places be a two hour drive from major roads? Easily, they're only 70 miles out, but the back roads to get there are 30MPH. I actually followed a fucking tractor for three miles!!! Georgia was bad but South Carolina sent me over the edge! We spent the night in Greenwood (not to be confused with Greenville, a real city) and by the time we finished work, Heffner and I decided it was time to get Crowned again. This place sucked, the work sucked, our FAA tech sucked, and we had just learned we had to be in Orlando the next day which meant another long-assed drive. It was time to get hammered! So, off we go in search of a liquor store. Now I know why they talk about backyard moonshine stills in the south. Because South Carolina has like a total of five liquor stores all spread out all over the state! We drove all over trying to find one. I finally decided to drive in to Columbia because we had to go that way in the morning and surely Columbia will have a liquor store right?!
On the way there, I saw something cool. Some redneck (back roads, remember) had suspended a VW Bug from two trees and had some lit up reindeer as if they were pulling it like Santa's sleigh. I mentioned to Heffner that I wish I had the camera out when we drove by. I considered turning around but we were already too pissed off about everything else to bother. When I got home today and checked my e-mail, a friend had found a picture of that very same house on the web and sent it out to everyone. Kind of cool. Now there are two of those "Redneck whatevers" that I've seen in person. (The first was OpaLocka airport with the Redneck Control Tower) It just goes to show people are really seeing these things, not just Photoshopping them together. Oh man, I Photoshop edited a picture I took of Heffner this week but I can't show it here. It's hilarious but a bit too racially charged to put out in public... Plus, I wouldn't want him to take any heat for something I did.
Anyway, driving into Columbia right? We drove around for 45 minutes trying to find a liquor store. I was just in Kentucky/Ohio last week and there was a liquor store every 50 feet! I guess there's nothing to do up there but drink. Finally, we find one but it's dark. We go to the door and sure enough it's locked. The sign says they close at 7pm. WTF!? We see another one on the way to the hotel, closed at 7pm. We give up and check in. We ask the desk clerk about the liquor stores and he says it's a state law, all liquor stores close at 7. He says the laws have exceptions but only in the "tourist" towns like Charleston or Myrtle Beach. So Heffner officially gives up, I go to the closest supermarket and pick up two huge bottles of cheap wine. Of course, the wine didn't make a very good replacement and barely even got us buzzed. The next morning we check out and drive in to Orlando. While waiting on some of the FAA people, I start filling out my expense report and I look at my hotel receipt. Room charge, county tax, bed tax, and right there black and white, "Tourism tax". Those bastards have the balls to charge me for tourism but won't keep the liquor stores open later like in the tourist cities...? If I thought it would make any difference, I was going to drive back up there just to grab that clerk by the lapels, drag him over the desk and staple that bill to his forehead until he admitted that it was wrong. If you charge me a "tourism tax" I expect to be treated like any other tourist city in the great state of South fucking Carolina and that means I wanna buy booze at 8:30 at night!!!!
Thursday, 12-7-6
So, I work up bright and early this morning with a smile on my face. It was cold. All week I was upset because I couldn't open the windows and the forced heat was dry as hell. All I could do was turn it down, not off. So I set it as low as it would go and have been living with it. I leave the curtains open and that seems to help. Well this morning it REALLY helped. It was snowing outside and the room was noticeably cool. Teresa called and I told my little grey lie to her again. I told her I was on my way in to work and would probably couldn't get a flight out until Friday afternoon at the earliest. She already knows the return flight is set for Friday 10pm so she wasn't too surprised. I finished up my work early yesterday and I'm typing this up in the airport waiting on my 11am flight home. I occasionally surprise her by driving home early but that got old so I haven't done that in a while. When she comes home from work today she'll still think I'm in Cincinnati until she sees the truck in the driveway. Of course this could all backfire. The flight could go down and she'd have no idea I was on it. She's try to call me in the afternoon like she always does and get no answer. Nothing unusual, very often I'm in an area with no cell coverage. When she doesn't hear from me tonight she'll start to worry. By then, they will have the passenger manifest and start calling the "next of kins". Why do I have to turn everything into a morbid thought? Kind of spooky if it does go down huh? My last communique predicting my own demise. Creepy.
Well, this morning I got out there and wanted to drive around a bit before the flight. Enjoy the weather. I spun the tires a little in the parking lot. I was surprised how little pressure it took in this car. Better be careful. I slid into the gas station, brakes pumping. Oh shit, it's bad out here. Better be extra careful. I saw three bumper fights on the way out to the airport. I left plenty of room in front of me as I came to the stop sign. Good thing too, I needed all of it. I slid to within a foot of the guy in front of me. As I came to a stop, the guy behind me slid off the road into the ditch. The guy behind him hit pretty hard. OK, it's not dangerous out here, it's downright treacherous out here! No more time for sight seeing and playing in the snow, it's time to get the hell out of here and get to the airport. I needed to take a left and the State Police are directing traffic into the lanes. There's a pretty decent wreck up ahead and we're all waiting in line. There's an Explorer behind me that seems to be having trouble staying on the road. We're stopped! How is he moving around? Well as if in answer to by question, the delivery van in front of me does the same thing. Another gust of wind and the van slides two feet to the right. I see his tires start to turn but they're on an inch of ice and going nowhere but round and round. Oh shit, I want to be anywhere but here right now. I keep inching forward just to keep from sitting still. The plow comes by and drops the road salt behind him. I pull off the road and turn around. Anywhere is better than sitting here waiting to get smacked from front and back. I found my way to the rental return and I was never so happy to turn the car over to someone. If it were my car I would have been a little less concerned. If I wasn't afraid of missing my flight I would have been a lot less concerned. Anyway, here I sit at the Delta terminal waiting on flight 5280 home.
I read the news today (oh boy) and they were all upset because this is the most diverse shuttle crew we've had to date. 3 white, 1 Indian, 2 black. The last shuttle crew was all white. Are these people looking for something to be upset about? I'll give them something to be upset about; elevator trolls. That's right, elevator trolls. Those morons that have no idea how elevators work. You've got the kid who gets in on 1, gets out on 2 but leaves by pressing all the rest of the floor's buttons. Meanwhile, you're going to 17. Or, his overactive father who keeps pressing the button to call the elevator, even though it's already lit. Maybe by pressing it repeatedly it will wake the elevator up? What the hell man? Or, when we get in the car, the guy that has to hit the "door close" button every time. This is not the 1930's man, they close automatically. There's no old guy in a hat manually driving the elevator. I've NEVER seen the door close button make the doors close any faster than when they shut automatically. They're there for emergency operation. Last night I came in and a guy was getting out of the work out room and got into the elevator with me. I'm going to 6, he hits the button for 2. I guess working out is good and all but walking one flight of stairs was too much for this guy. AHHH I hate these elevator trolls!
They should be boarding the flight here soon, wish me luck. Maybe they'll 'pre-board' and that will give me something to bitch about...
Tuesday, 12-5-6
The DSL modem at the house went down Friday. I called tech support and they went through the usual spiel about "did you try this, did you try that?" and I did my best to bite my tongue. It's amazing how these techs have no idea what to do if you take them off the script. If I try to tell him that I already tried this and that and I know that it is xyz, he just freezes up for a second and starts over again like he never heard me. So after an hour of "troubleshooting" he declares it to be a bad modem. Duh. I said it could be that an hour ago. He overnighted a new modem to me and we should have it tomorrow. Tomorrow was Sunday. It never came in. Teresa called them back when it didn't show up on Monday either. Turns out the tech didn't "overnight" it and the paperwork wouldn't even be processed until Monday night. It finally arrived tonight and Teresa called me and we went through the replacement/configuration over the phone. It turns out there is another problem. This one allowed the password to take but still won't allow access to the net. They're sending out a tech tomorrow. So, the house is without internet. Teresa has a lot of work to get done with Girl Scouts and stuff. Becca is just going through withdrawals not being able to log on to VMK.
I got tapped to fly here to Kentucky to finish up some jobs. I had originally asked why I didn't drive up here until I saw the map and realized Kentucky is a little further than I thought. I'm also in the northernmost part of Kentucky, Covington. Everything is referred to as Cincinnati, Ohio. I guess a little thing like the Ohio River and a state line won't stop cities from eating up the suburbs. I caught the 6am flight and was ready to work by 9. When I got in I found out Bob had slated the entire day as a "travel day" for me. No one was expecting me until Tuesday. Oh well, what can you say about a guy who wants to get the work done huh? It was 16 degrees when I got the rental car and a few snow flurries started to fall. It was nice. This morning I came out to the car and it was iced over. Oh yeah, I forgot about all this fun stuff like ice and cold engines. But it was nice. I was driving out to one of the sites and (of course) listening to music. After Slayer's "Hallowed Point", Bing Crosby came on and told me "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas". For the first time in a while, it really did feel like at least winter, if not Christmas. I couldn't feel my fingers because they were so cold. There was ice and snow on the road and the air was clean and smelled of snow. I was really starting to miss those "long" drives around Christmas when I was a kid. Back then, Plainfield to Norwich was a long drive to me, now it's nothing. Regular travel and growing up will do that to you. But I remember being in the back seat, Dad driving the car to Nana and Pop-Pop's house. Mom would be playing "Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters". My sister and I would be looking for Christmas lights, my brother bundled up in blankets. It was always cold and snowing. That's what I think of every time I hear Christmas music. The next song was "Scorched Earth Erotica" by Cradle of Filth. Nostalgia has a limited time offer. It's over quicker than you think.
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