Scion United Homebound

Our last day at the Scion United event was fairly un-eventful and felt really long. I stayed up late the night before putting the pictures and post up about the event so Kerry woke up before me at around 8am. We got dressed and headed back down to the cafe for another breakfast of sausage egg sandwiches and coffee.

We took a small walking tour around the hotel. They have a botanical garden, beach and doc that we hadn’t seen yet (Kerry took pictures, but I don’t have those pictures yet). So after the short tour, we headed back up to the room to finish our packing, checked out of the hotel and headed down to where our last bus ride was going to take us to our cars. We waited for a short time for our bus to get up front, boarded the bus and … waited.

30 miniutes past, an hour, finally 2 hours of waiting on the bus and we are told we are finally going to go. Turns out, the computer system that the marketing company uses to track everything (including who’s cars are where) was down and it made for a serious mess at the event site. Our bus was held at the hotel because at least there we could use the bathroom in the hotel, get food and drinks from the cafe etc. Some people weren’t happy about it, one pair of guys called a cab to take them to the event site (which was funny, because they only got their car one or two people ahead of me).

My car was parked up in the same area that we had the event in and if rumor has it, my car was in the group that actually got filmed/photographed for the ad campaign. It was covered in a nice healthy coat of dust, but otherwise unscathed. I heard a lot of horror stories about people with massive scratches, dents, dings and general damage but to be honest I didn’t see any of it, so I’m not sure what to believe and what to pass as over-reactions.

I was however, out of gas. I droped the car off with about 240 miles on the odo and a quarter tank of gas. When I picked it up, I still had around 240 miles but was completely out of fuel. I’m still not really sure why they had it idle through a couple gallons of gas. I heard some speculation that they had headlights on or something to that effect for shots, but my drivers side low beam is out so you’d think that puts my car out of the running, or perhaps they just used the high beams.

I was able to make a stop and take some better pictures of the Scion xD “Hot Lava” RS1. I also spent some more time talking to the couple from Pennsylvania. They both have Scion’s, and both scions got picked to attend the event, but they only drove their BSP tC (represent!) because of the prices of gas.

The wheel in the last picture is not the wheel that will come on the RS1 off the lot though. The RS1 will have plastic wheel covers instead which is really lame. Kerry really liked the xD so I think I’m going to have to give Damon (of Elk Grove Scion) a call to see what we’d be into if we traded her aging Passat in on something (probably a used xD if any exist).

On the way out of the event they gave each owner a numbered badge (to be stick on the car I assume). I ended up number 243 out of 500 (I’d be interested to hear from #1 and #500). We left the event site and stopped at the first gas station to fill up on fuel (for both the car and us). I wasn’t paying attention to the pump I drove up to, and it wasn’t until I went to put my card in that I realized this was not an average pump. There must be a race track or drag strip in Boulder, because the gas station had 100 octane gas (for $5.999 per gallon).

After that the trip was fairly un-eventful. It was almost 2:30 by the time we got on the road so we knew we were going to be getting back late. We stopped and had lunch in Primm (a town on the Nevada side of the border with a casino, fashion outlet and some fast food places.

For a while along the way home I trained with a couple of other Scions but eventually they all pulled off onto other highways. We had dinner in Fresno, and finally arrived home a little after midnight.

In all it was an awesome trip and I’m glad that I was invited. I’m still waiting to see the event pictures posted up on Scion’s website. And I’m looking forward to seeing the commercials pop up. So keep your eye’s open for my car on TV in a few months!

Caples Creek

[fa:p:a=caples-creek-2007,id=519448938,j=l,s=s,l=i]Kerry and I did a short, but fun little overnight backpacking trip this weekend. We had intended to stay two nights, but after hiking all the trails around, and since neither of us thought far enough ahead to actually bring some kind of entertainment, we sat around quite bored and decided to come back a day early. It was a fun trip, somewhat uneventful, but relaxing. I was glad to get all my backpacking gear out of boxes and back to good use. I’m hoping to plan and execute a longer trip towards the end of the summer. The exact destination isn’t really decided, but I have a few ideas and I am pushing to do a 50 mile trip (we’ve got 10 days). 50 miles requires quite a bit of planning and preparedness, so we’ll see what happens. But for now, thats the goal.

Otherwise, its late.. and I’m going to turn in.

Of Bicycles and Mercedes’

So today, my girlfriend and I hop on our bicycles to go for a nice ride in todays beautiful weather. We rode around exploring the trails that Folsom has to offer and eventually passed through Livermore Community Park. We pause for a little bit because My b-day is coming up and Kerry was point it out as a possible location to have it. After that, we head back down the road.

We get probably a third of a mile down the road and a lady in a brand new white Mercedes SUV (ML-something). Flags us down and says we hit her car in the parking lot of the park we just left. Since she’s parked in the middle of the road now, I told her to drive down to the next street and we’ll take a look at this dent she claims we put in her car.

Map of storyline. Point A is the park, point B is where we exchanged information.

Below is a picture of the dent. It sucks, but it was really small and all I had with me was the cell phone camera.

The lady said she had a picture (or video, it wasn’t really clear) of us denting her car, which she refused to show us. So we refused to give her our information. She was adiment and said repeatedly that she was a police officer and it would be easier if we just gave her our information. After we continued to refuse she called her office in Sacramento (I wasn’t sure if she was PD or CHP). I heard her tell a quick story that we hit her car, quickly ran away and were now refusing to give our information. She asked to be patched through to Folsom, and after she got off the phone she said an officer would be there in a bit to take our information (first question… is that legal? more later).

After a while of waiting, she got on the phone with what seemed like a few people, but she was speaking softly so I don’t know who she called, or what she said. She came back to us and said that the officer would be another 30 minutes and that she was going to go back to her family in the park and we would need to wait for the officer or give her our info now. I decided to f waiting, and gave her my first name and phone number only so that we could be on our way.

Once Kerry and I got back home, I printed the picture and we headed over toFolsom PD to make a report for our records, and possible a harassment report since this off-duty officer (I think she even called herself a Sargent but I could be wrong) seemed to be threatening us with her police status. When we got to the Police Department they told us we cannot file a report since the incident was on private property. I expressed that it was a Folsom city community park, but still… I could not file a report.

So we went back home and I dialed up CHP to see if I could do anything there. I was told they couldn’t really do anything and I believe I got patched to the Folsom PD office and gave them the story and they said the same thing again, that there was no report I could file since it was out of their jurisdiction, that I would have to settle it all privately through insurance. I further explained that the lady who owned the Mercedes had said she was an officer and she had called to have an officer come out to take our information and the lady on the phone said she didn’t have any call like that come in. And if they had, there would have been nothing the officer could have done.

So that leaves me to now. I have her name and phone number but I’m not planning on doing anything more than I have. She has my information so if she wants to have something done about it she can call me. Mostly I just wanted to get it off my chest.

But I wanted to see if anybody here had any other advice, other things so I know I’ve done my due diligence. I’d rather not have it go through any insurance nor do I want to have this end up becoming some “hit-and-run” because we left the parking lot (we certainly didn’t “speed” away on our bicycles though), but I’m also not going to hand her a couple hundred bucks cash to fix a dent that we didn’t cause. The only thing close to the right height is the handlebars of the bike, and they are completely wrapped in rubber. The lady wouldn’t pull her car away from the curb far enough for us to put the bike next to it to see if it was even the right height either.

Sorry if its a bit long winded, but a lot happened in the period of only about an hour.

Delays

I didn’t have many chances to hop on the computer to post any updates. Tyco kept us all rather busy most of the time. I’m currently sitting in Dulles, which once again doesn’t have any free internet so I’m writing to you in notepad and when I get home I’ll post this and fix the timestamp.

Unfortunately my flight home from here has been delayed two hours. There was some nasty weather recently here on the east coast that screwed up flights over the weekend, and I think an airport like this takes a while to recover. So I’m just sitting here listening to “Death Cab for Cutie” and people watching.

Saturday I went out to a couple of the manufacturing plants related to the Amp Netconnect division of Tyco. First was their cable manufacturing plant, where they literally start from a copper rod and un-mixed PVC to create CAT 5, 5e, 6, 6A and 7 cable in all sorts of configurations. Including the new shielded CAT 6 which I expect the consumer market will see in a year or two. Shielded, as well as 6A are both capable of carrying the 10 GBit / second transfer rates that seem almost ridiculous over copper. We also visited their stamping and molding facility that makes all plastic and metal pieces like RJ-45 jacks and plugs. It was all pretty cool to see, even if it was a little rushed. We had some drinks back at the hotel and a mini trade show, and dinner also at the hotel. I of course had the fillet, although I was a little disappointed that it was only about a 4oz cut.

Sunday was a long day. Breakfast was at 6:30, which if you take into account the time change was 3:30 am in California. We spent the morning in what was basically a marketing and demo seminar. I would like to point out I had sat through about 4 hours of seminar around the time you woke up. Did I mention I got up at 3:30? Remember the bad weather I described earlier? It effected us in Winston-Salem NC as well, and we were to be playing golf in the afternoon. As we drove out to the course we went through an absolute down poor and I was pretty well convinced I wasn’t going to be playing golf. We got to Tanglewood (yeah, that’s right, I played at Tanglewood) and sat in their clubhouse for a little while and eventually it cleared up. We played a full 18 holes in what turned out to be a really nice round of golf. I ended up playing in the rough most of the time. My drives were just plain off. So I was a pathetic 45-ish over par.

Today we went out to Wake Forest University to get a demonstration of a integration system that ties together disparate systems (that’s disparate not desperate). I’ll save you the boring talk, it was cool but I think I’ll have a hard time finding a client who can make good use of it.

And that brings us basically up to now, where I’m sitting in the airport, listening to Death Cab for Cutie and people watching (although I just spent the last few min writing this). So I’ll leave you with that long post and go check on my flight again. Wish me luck.

“Promotion” & North Carloina

I’ve been with Electrical Design Consultants for a few weeks shy of 5 years, and I strongly belive that it has been one of the best places for me, mentally, socially and financially. When I was hired I was asked to take on some programming and application mantinance tasks, and unfortunatly I never really got out from under it. Until now. I have a meeting Monday with my boss to finalize the purchase of a project management system that will alivate a vast majory of my programming responsibilties, finally freeing me up to design and an engineering internship.

Along with these new responsibilties comes some nice cushy bonuses, like training seminars. The industry I work in (generally refered to as the construction industry, but more specifically the design portion of that) is run, frankly, but a lot of politics. Wire is Wire is Wire, and there really isn’t any way around that. So when a company like Amp Netconnect wants to sell you on using their wire, they do it by a sly means of indebtment that is commonly refered to as “schmoozing” a client. The wonderfull cushy bonus I was refering to above is that now I am the client, and I get to be schmoozed every once in a while.

This is where the rest of the title comes in. Tyco (who owns Amp Netconnect) is flying me to North Carolina and putting me up in the Graylyn Confrence Center (along with a bunch of other people from around the western third states) for an event that includes a tour of their manufacturing facilities, a day of seminars (training/marketing on their equipment and products) and a golf event.

I’d never heard of Graylyn Confrence Center (not sure why I would have), so I went and looked it up online, and below is a picture they have on their site of the facility where I will be staying (I’m still trying to pick up the pieces of my jaw). For a full screen slideshow, click here or the picture below. (I had this slideshow embedded in the post, but I removed it because I thought it might take a while to load on slow connections).

My boss has also put me on the team that will be doing the future Raging Wire projects, so I’m greatly looking forward to that. But for now, I should get back to work.

Rivercats Baseball Game

I went out to the Rivercats game today, they are the local AAA team for the Oakland A’s and generally not a bad team. The tickets and dinner beforehand at the Rio City Cafe was all curtesy of CJS Lighting. I took my camera out and took about 150 pictures, most of them are trash, so you likely will only see around 25, and for now I’ve only processed 13. Couple of interesting events, a sketchy call at second base got the away teams coach out on the field for a lavishly long yelling session with the ref, that got him kicked from the field, and shortly after the Rivercats loaded the bases and brought home 3 guys on in infield error. But instead of recapping the whole game for you which would be boring, I’ll just show you a pretty picture and direct you to the gallery where you can find the rest of them.

This particular picture was actually a mistake, at least in part. I had the camera focused on the batter, but at the last second as I want to depress the shutter the autofocus locked on to the net and this is what I got. I actually liked it because its something diffrent, its not the typical baseball picture, the focus is on the guy on deck, both literally and figurativly, instead of on the batter. So I’ll step down from my poetic soapbox and let you enjoy the picture for yourself. Click the image to see the rest of the pictures.

Happy Halloween

Halloween falls on a Monday this year, which is a little hard to deal with if you are actually trying to trick or treat, but it makes for good parties over the weekend. Saturday night Keith, Chadd, Meghann and I did a little pre-game warm-up carving to get into the mood (actually Keith and Meghann weren’t going to be able to make it to the big event Sunday night, so this was their party). Keith, Chadd and I did some fairly typical pumpkin carving. Keith’s and mine are designed to go together, originally Keith’s was going to be puking on top of mine, but after all the carving was done we decided it would look better the other way around. Meghann’s Pumpkin was the definite winner of the night. She started by taking a bit of time to come up with a totally original design and draw it out while the rest of us watched my completed Philmont video. Then she took probably about an hour to carve a magnificent pumpkin that expresses a design that I think is pretty novel. I’m sure you can see what it is, but just in case you cant it’s a girl holding an axe toward her like she is going to strike her face, because there is a spider dangling in front of her. Below are a couple of the good pictures, or click here to see the whole gallery:

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I was able to get together with friends again Sunday night for our second (now annual) pumpkin carving party. Irene and Charlie were kind enough to host the gathering at their place again this year so I thank you goes out to them. We had a nice pot luck dinner around 4:30. My favorite dish was probably Michelle’s Meatballs, but the desert of choice was Joanne’s Pumpkin Cheesecake bars. We started carving around 5:30 or so and a couple of us didn’t finish until around 8. I did two pumpkins myself, one is a cannibal pumpkin, the other is designed for putting a large flame in, either a road flair or a toilet paper roll soaked in some kind of slow burning fuel (like kerosene). Below are a couple of the good pictures, or click here to see the whole gallery:

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phpBB Projects on the Horizon

Got a little bit of work into a project I’ve been wanting to work on for quite some time now. Mostly in some preliminary thought and design. But I also spent a little bit of time and created a character to go with the whole project. What I’m trying to do is create a all-in-one phpBB development solution. My first portion is the bugtracker which will be a port of the php BugTracker system.

Eventually I want to try to either integrate or re-design some kind of a “forge” like sourceforge into it also. mamboforge looks like a great system, so I may just port that but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.