Bits and Pieces

I wait far too long between blog posts, and then I find myself searching for interesting things to write about. I guess my life, if not boring, is at a minimum mundane.

I’m adjusting to actually being in the office all week this week; it’s been about a month since I did an actual five-day in-office stretch. It’s not too bad.

Took Andrew and Rebecca out for dinner last night, then they watched the girls while Becky and I went to see the new Pirates of the Carribean movie. My take on the movie: parts of it were quite fun, comic even, and it certainly hearkened back to swashbuckling movies of old. My main grip with it was that it didn’t really resolve much; it was too directly setting you up for Pirates 3, which will come out next year. It felt much more like the end-of-season cliffhanger on a TV series than the satisfactory conclusion of a movie. But still… Johnny Depp is hilariously over the top.

I picked up a Virgin Wireless cell phone yesterday to be my travel phone. Roaming is horribly expensive on our current US Cellular plan, and we don’t really need it often. However, now that I’m traveling more for business, it’d be nice to be in touch for less than $0.69/minute. So I now have a pay-as-you-go phone that I’ll use for my travels. It has a Cedar Rapids number, which I’ll be happy to give you if you’re wanting to keep in touch with me while I’m on travel.

What else?. The folks and Aaron are coming down this weekend to celebrate Laura’s birthday. Andrew interviewed for a job here in Cedar Rapids yesterday; it sounds like he’ll be living here and taking some classes as Kirkwood this fall. I heard rumor that Aaron may be looking at moving to Florida… but haven’t heard anything specific yet.

So that’s the (mundane) news from Iowa today. When I think of something more interesting, I’ll be sure to post it.

Traveling Adventures

Tuesday through Thursday of this week took my on my first trip ever to Seattle, WA. Several of us from work were headed out to talk to the big airplane manufacturer from that area. And hey, Seattle was nice. Very nice. The trip there, however… well, it was an adventure.

I departed the Eastern Iowa Airport at 6:55 am and took a little turboprop up to Minneapolis. From there, we had a connection on Northwest Airlines to get to Seattle. At this point in our little drama, I"ll let the pilot handle our narration.

9:25 am

“Hi folks, this is your captain here from the flight deck. We have to wait just a couple of minutes for air traffic control spacing, then we’ll be on our way.”

9:35 am

“Hi folks, your captain here again. The ATC spacing wasn’t going to take this long… but while we were sitting here, the self-test on one of our electronic devices indicated a fault with a battery… so we’re going to have to turn back to the terminal and get maintenance to look at it.”

9:45 am

“Hi folks, your captain again. To do this repair, we’re going to have to ask that you all deplane while the maintenance crew works on the plane. You can leave your personal items here on the plane, but we’ll need to ask you to deplane for a little while. Thanks.”

10:30 am

“For those of you on Northwest Airlines Flight 171 to Seattle, we have some good news, the battery has been replaced and everything seems to check out, so we’re going to get ready to reboard the plane at this time…”

11:30 am

The airplane takes off en route to Seattle.

12:03 pm

“Hello folks, your captain here again… we’ve had a minor hydraulics issue, really nothing to worry about, it’s just a redundant system, but we’re going to have to turn back and land at Minneapolis.”

“I’d apologize, but that would infer that we did something wrong up here… so we’re going to have to fly around an hour or so to burn off some fuel so we can land. So sit tight and I’ll get back to you in a little while.”

1:37 pm

“Hi folks, your captain here again… it took us a little longer to burn off fuel than we thought. But now we’re headed back in to land at Minneapolis. When we land, you’ll probably see some fire and rescue units on the runway there waiting for us. It’s just a precaution. They’re very cautious there at Minneapolis and the trucks aren’t really needed but they’re going to have them out anyway, haha.”

“Now, one of the few things that was affected by this hydraulics issue was the steering on the nose wheel. That means that we won’t be able to taxi off of the runway, so they’ll have to bring a tug out to pull us in. So, it’s not a big deal, but it’ll take a little while. So sit tight, and thank you for your patience.”

At this point the plane comes in and lands, and it’s a very tough landing. Well, the landing is OK, but the thrust reversers don’t kick in on landing, and the pilots have to stand on the brakes to get the plane to stop. Finally the plane pulls to a stop and yep, there are the fire trucks.

1:53 pm

“Hi folks, about this little delay… one of the things that happens when we land like that is that we used our brakes quite a bit and so they got kind of warm. And it’s nothing to worry about, not a big deal, but the folks here at Minneapolis are very cautious, ha ha, and they want to watch them for a few minutes as they cool down. So sit back and relax, and they’ll have us to the terminal in just a few minutes. Thanks.”

2:02 pm

The tug attaches to the plane, and slowly and jerkily pulls it around to a gate on the far end of the Northwest Airlines terminal. Finally it slows to a stop.

“Flight attendants, disarm doors and prepare for arrival.”

2:07 pm

“Flight attendants, re-arm the doors!”

2:11 pm

“Hi folks… Those of you on the left side of the aircraft may be seeing a little bit of smoke out your windows. It’s OK, it’s not a big deal. The plane is fine. But it appears that the tug that pulled us in got a little warm and caught fire, so the emergency guys appear to have that under control, and we should be deplaning shortly.”

“Flight attendants, disarm doors and prepare for arrival.”

2:20 pm

“Hi folks, we’re about ready to get you off the plane here. If you’re a first-class passenger, when you get off, head to gate F7 for your courtesy package. The rest of you, we’ll have a courtesy package with some meal vouchers here at the gate. We are planning on having another plane ready for you to depart again here shortly, our current scheduled departure time is now 3:40 pm.”

At this point, the story becomes less eventful. A new plane is found, and we make it to Seattle at 5:30 pm Seattle time, only about 5 hours later than originally planned.

One of my co-workers on the plane was formerly a Delta airlines pilot and has thousands of hours in 757s. He spoke to our pilot afterward and found out that the main hydraulic system had totally failed shortly after takeoff. That means that in addition to not having nose-wheel steering, we only had electrical power for the flaps (allowing only 20 degrees of flaps instead of the usual 30 degrees), we didn’t have much in the way of thrust reversers, and there was an assortment of other pieces that were disabled. My co-worker said that there are about six pages of checklists that the pilots have to go through before landing in that condition. Yikes.

Here’s to hoping that our next trip to Seattle (scheduled for the first week of August) is slightly less eventful.

I had that dream again...

Yeah, that dream. The one where Andy Osenga and some other unidentified people are holed up with me in a house (not my house, dunno what house it is) when bad guys show up with guns. We call 911, but the cops are in on it, so no help there. We are tricky, though, and manage to escape out the back way. We run behind a little hill and hide and we’re laying in the water in this lake, peering over the hill, watching the bad guys search through the house.

Maybe the bad guys were looking for the automatic weapons that we had found hidden in the attic of the house; they were up there in the rafters next to the 100 baud modem. I don’t know the answer to that one.

What does it all mean? I report, you decide.

What A Difference the Shoes Make

I bought a new pair of Asics running shoes over the weekend and wow, what a difference they make! Beside the fact that they don’t tear up my heel like the old ones did, they also have a much greater amount of padding and bounce when I run. What a nice change! Here’s to hoping I stay disciplined with the running so that I wear this pair out sooner than the last pair. :-)

I love used CDs

Last night, FYE at Coral Ridge Mall. Hem’s Rabbit Songs. Used. Price: $4.99. But wait, there’s 20% off on all used CDs today. Final price $4.00. W00t!

A quick update: this is a terrific album. Beautiful music. Wowza.

Chance Meetings with Friends

It has been a nice morning thus far. I got up at my usual early hour, got motivated enough to go run (woohoo! it feels good.) and then decided somewhat on a whim (and also influenced by the absence of any milk in the house for my cereal) to go grab a light breakfast at the little restaurant in the Hy-Vee grocery store. I took my Bible along to read a little, and figured it’d be a nice way to get the morning started.

Not two minutes after I walked in, Sam walked in behind me. He and I used to have breakfast there on a regular basis, but my busy schedule put an end to that a couple of months ago. So it was really serendipitous this morning to have him show up and join me for breakfast. We got to chat for a bit, mostly about work and stuff, but still just good to catch up.

So Lord, I hope You’re not too put off that I didn’t read like I was planning to; that one Psalm was good stuff, though. I will assume that You decided it was more important that I visit with Sam this morning. And I’m OK with that. Thanks.

Holiday and Vacation

It’s now been 10 days since I’ve actually set foot in my office. Last week was the conference to Atlanta, and then I took Friday off. Now it’s Monday, and I get today and then tomorrow off for Independence Day. It’s gonna feel weird to actually go back to work… but there will be a lot to be done.

This weekend we have the whole family here at the house; Ryan came in from Chicago, Aaron is back from Panama, Andrew and Dad and Mom came down from Wisconsin, and Rebecca is now in Cedar Rapids but she came over here to spend the night with the family. Good times. Aaron has become a total Caedmon’s Call fanatic :-) and has become very, very good on the guitar. It’s fun to be able to just sit down and sing Caedmon’s or Derek Webb songs with all the harmony and stuff.

This morning after breakfast I went on a long bike ride - probably 15 miles or so. It’s been too long since I’ve been out for a good ride. It feels good; I need to be more active. I gained 5 pounds on my business trip last week; too much good food and too much sitting on my backside.

This afternoon we’ll grill out and then I dunno what we’ll do tonight - Rebecca’s gotta work, but the rest of us will still be here until tomorrow.

Atlanta: Impressions

This is the first time I’ve ever visited Atlanta. I’ve driven through a few times, but that doesn’t count. I’ve driven around the north end of Atlanta for a while the past few days, and there are things that stick out. There are churches everywhere. I didn’t think that Iowa was that godless, but I can’t believe how many more churches it seems like there are here. And BIG churches. Wowza. There’s also a lot of Chick-fil-a restaurants. We have one in Cedar Rapids, but I think there’s one on every corner here in Atlanta. But all the signs still say “Closed Sunday”, though, so that’s cool.

I have a theory that not all of Atlanta is under construction, but I’ve yet to see too much evidence to back that theory up. I’ve seen construction everywhere. There’s construction at the airport. There’s construction at the hotel/convention center where I’m at. I’ve been to two shopping malls, there is construction at both of them. I’ve been through road construction on every trip so far. Sheesh people, get things fixed already!

I am a bit surprised that the accents I’ve heard so far aren’t that thick; certainly not near so much as the ones I heard in Tennessee and Kentucky last week. Maybe I just haven’t talked to the right people. My waitress last night had a German accent; the guy I’m listening to at the conference right now has an Indian accent so think I can’t even understand him. Maybe I’ll get a better reading on accent tonight when I have dinner with Jeff and Adriene.

All in all, Atlanta has been A-OK so far. That being said, there’s no place like home.

Road Trip: Andy O CD Release Show

After hearing the announcement that “much rock will be had”, I decided if I could make it work in my schedule, I’d head on a road trip to Nashville to see Andrew Osenga’s The Morning CD release concert. The schedule worked out, and next thing you know, I was on the road.

It’s not as bad a drive as I’d feared from Cedar Rapids to Nashville. I left at 4:30 am, and with very minimal stoppage I arrived in Nashville by 2:30 pm. I checked into my motel and then left to drive around and aquaint myself with the Nashville area. I drove past one shopping mall that was very dead, and then another one which turned out to be the Green Hills Mall that Andy Gullahorn sings about. After having located Mercy Lounge and how to get there, I went back to my motel to crash.

I apparently gave myself too much time to get down to the Lounge, because I got there about 30 minutes before the published “doors open” time. Deciding to escape the heat and humidity outside, I stuck my head in and managed to hear the end of Andy and the band’s sound check.

There were two openers for Andy; the first was Dave somebody; he sported a Napoleon Dynamite-style afro and a bunch of falsetto vocals with his acoustic guitar. Not bad, but not very memorable. The second act was Matthew Perryman Jones. MPJ is one of the Square Pegs, but I hadn’t heard any of his music until that night. He was very good. He played a few songs solo, then brought Andy O, Cason Cooley, and Eric Weigel up to play with him. Again, very good stuff. I bought his new CD Throwing Punches In The Dark after the show.

Then it was time for Andy. He was playing with a full band: Cason Cooley on keyboards, Eric Chris Weigel on bass, Paul Eckberg on drums, and a guitarist Jason Feller on guitar, and a percussionist whose name escaped me. They played a lot of music from Andy’s new album The Morning, starting out in album order with In Gym Class In High School, After The Garden, and White Dove. He played a few songs from his earlier album Photographs, including Kara and When Will I Run. The highlight of the night was probably his rocking Santa Barbara from the new album. It is a classic roll-the-windows-down rock and roll song, and it was great that night.

I thoroughly enjoyed the show, and also the chance to meet a bunch of folks, some I had already met, some I had not. This is where I name drop (though is it really name dropping if the people are only “names” to a few people?) : Geof Morris (of rmfo.net fame), Ron Davis (aka Ronzilla) of moreron.com, a couple of other dot.netters, and then in addition to the aforementioned band members, there were Jeremy Casella, Chris Mason, Andy Peterson, Ben Shive, Randall Goodgame, and oh yeah, Andy O’s wife Alison. Very cool.

After helping carry Andy’s gear down to his car, I called it a night and crashed hard at the motel. The following day brought me back on the reverse trip from Nashville to Cedar Rapids; again about a 10 hour drive. It was a great time, well worth the drive. As I told Andy, next time I’ll come back, but I’ll bring my wife along. :-)

Well whaddaya know?

CID has free wireless internet in the terminal. My flight was delayed by about 15 minutes, but now I guess it’s about time to board. I wonder if DFW has wireless? I guess I’ll find out in a couple of hours.