life as a dog…

After about a month and a half of not having much work, things are picking up.  November started to look super busy – 6 cities, 8 jobs, 20 days.  But unfortunately, 2 of those cities were removed from the schedule.

I was on a call with our group at work.  Our production coordinator asked me if I would mind working on a job in London.  Um…hello?  Duh?  London is the one place I’ve never been that I really want to see.  But… I will believe it when I see it.  I’ve been able to get to Hawaii, Switzerland and Spain for work (and Canada shortly).  But there were also possibilities of Italy, Germany and London that never came to fruition.  Actually, I’m not sure if the London one was really London.  I was just told England.  So it could have been anywhere…but the subject matter doesn’t seem like something that would be done outside of London.

So maybe…just maybe… I’ll finally get to London.

In the past few months, I’ve backed up everything important on Mozy.  I’ve not been real happy with Mozy, either.  Little things that they should be able to handle.  I thought about trying Backblaze, but the thought of having to go through all that backup time AGAIN is not fun.

This last week, however, Mozy saved the day.  One of my external hard drives starting having some issues.  I was hoping it was just the housing.  I took the drive out and hooked it by just a cable and it seemed to be working fine.  But something told me to get everything off it.  I started to do just that.  About halfway through…it died.  It would be on for about 30 seconds and then I would hear “Click.”  Then nothing.  If I pulled the USB cable and plugged it back in, the drive would come back…for about 30 seconds.

So…time to give Mozy it’s day in the sun.  I told it to restore the entire contents of that drive to another drive.  It took about 2 days, but it finally finished.  Funny thing, though…some of the files had been altered in the mean time (by me, that is).  Mozy had BOTH versions online.  I had to go through and figure out which was the newer of the two.  Small price to pay for the fact that I had all my files.

It was all my music files.  About 11,000 songs.

There are many places work travel has taken me.  Mostly just little areas around the US.  Occassionally (ok, twice) international.  I wasn’t sure if I’d ever make it to Hawaii.  But that has now changed!  This may be my longest trip, as well.

Day 1 – Tuesday

I had only one stop, but it was in Atlanta.  I was stuck in a middle seat from Atlanta to Honolulu.  A 10 hour flight in a middle seat.  Thankfully, my iPhone’s battery was sufficient.  I was able to watch a couple movies and a couple TV shows to make the time go faster.  Out of those ten hours, I probably only slept about 30-45 minutes.  I also spent about 30 minutes walking around the plane.

Once I got to Honolulu, I picked up the rental car and headed to the hotel.  It all went fairly well.  The only real downside was traffic.  Traffic is horrible out here.

The hotel had fresh pineapple juice for incoming guests.  Wow… fresh pineapple juice…that’s some good stuff right there.  I got myself settled in to the hotel and decided to go for a drive.  I figured it’d be a good idea to try and knock off at least one place that I wanted to see, since the last day I’m here is the only day I know I have free.  So I headed toward Pali Point.  I wasn’t disappointed.  The view is unbelievable.  Windy as hell, too.  From there, I drove down to the north side of the mountains and looped around the east side of the island.  I think I passed Robin’s Nest.  Can’t say for sure…you can’t see the house from the road.  Got back to the hotel and got myself in bed for the early morning.

Day 2 – Wednesday

I had an 8:00am call time, so I went to bed at about 9:30pm.  Problem is, I was still on Eastern time.  So I ended up waking up at 2:00am feeling fully rested.  Then again at 3… and 4… and 5.  I finally just got up about 5:30.  Instead of arriving on location at 8, I got there about 7:15.  I was set up and ready when the A/V crew arrived at 8.  Everything was pretty much tested and ready at 10am.  My schedule said I’d be done at 1:00pm, so I thought if we got everything tested, I might get out of there at about noon…another full afternoon I could explore.  But that was not the case.  The client wanted to do a rehearsal…that was expected.  But the people who were going to be on camera…did not have a specific time to come by.  So we waited…and waited…and waited.  We finally were finished at about 4:30pm.

There really wasn’t much time afterwards to do anything.  I ended up driving west… to an area that I was told wasn’t really worth going to.  Figured I’d get that out of the way – even though it was recommended to not bother, I had to still see it.  This was also about as close as I will probably be to Pearl Harbor.  I’d go, but I really don’t want to spend that much time there.  The North Shore is my prime goal – that’s what I’ll be doing the last day I’m here.

Day 3 – Thursday

Today was the first of the show.  Everything started out well.  It quickly went downhill.  However, it was not my company that was having the problems.  It was another one.  Another one that pretty much refused to admit it was their’s and was trying to put it on us.  This even though I sat down and showed them the problem they had and how it was not our problem.

The problems were taken care of about midway through the day.  Everything went well after that.

I didn’t really have any time afterwards to do anything, so I just did a quick drive around Diamond Head.  After I got back to the hotel, I went for a walk down Waikiki.  I really have to say… I do not like Waikiki at all.  It’s way too touristy.  It reminds me very much like walking down the strip in Vegas.  Not that I have a problem with Vegas – the touristy-ness of Vegas is a given.  That’s part of the whole experience.  I guess I just don’t want that experience here.

Day 4 – Friday

Today at the job site was pretty uneventful.  Everything went according to plan…there were no issues with the webpage at all.

Once I was finished, I headed out again to explore.  This time I went up Likelike highway and looped back down Pali Highway.  I didn’t really have much time and the cloud cover was pretty thick.  I did end up getting some shots down at the Waikiki beach of people trying to surf and bodyboard.  Tomorrow I probably won’t be able to do much – it’s a later day than yesterday and today and I have to take the computer to Fedex afterwards.

Day 5 – Saturday

Everything on the job went *almost* perfect.  We had a webpage problem early on, but that was taken care of… especially good since the fix was done before it was noticed by the client.  Wrapped up the day, packed up the computer and dropped it off at Fedex.  I still had some uploading to do, so I decided to do that from the hotel.  I figured today would be the day to not try and drive around anywhere.  Each night I’ve missed sunset back at the beach by only 20-30 minutes I think.  I was going to do that on this day…but as soon as I got back to the hotel… the rain came.  Fitting, I guess.

Day 6 – Sunday

I drove all over the frickin’ island.  North Shore, Waikiki, Windward, central, Diamond Head, Punch Bowl, Pali Point, H1, H2, H3, H201, Arizona Memorial.  The unfortunately thing was that it was pretty cloudy wherever I went.  Only toward the afternoon did the sun really start to come out.  I was also hoping to see the giant waves on the north shore.  But this day they decided not to show up.  The waves were only about 4-5 feet, I think.  I could see some pretty large ones way way out…but there was no way to gauge how big they were (or get pictures of them).

Honolulu Airport really needs to invest in air conditioning.  I understand the whole “oooh…paradise….so warm” crap…but come on.  Nobody has a flight less than 5 hours.  I don’t know of anyone who likes to get on a plane ALREADY sweaty.

Day 7 – Monday

Even though it was a 2 stop flight and an hour drive after that, travelling back wasn’t completely awful.  Getting those two stops allowed me to stretch and walk around a bit.  There was one thing that I was not happy with though… Delta.  My flight out to Hawaii should have kicked me to Medallion status.  That means priority boarding and possible free upgrades.  I got neither – and I am pretty sure there were open First Class seats in the San Francisco – Detroit leg.  That also just happened to be the flight I was in the very back of the plane and the seats did not have the legroom the other two did.  At least there was nobody in the middle seat.

Looking back.

I’ve always wanted to get to Hawaii.  Now I have…and on someone else’s dime to boot.  As I said before, I really don’t like Waikiki.  That may cloud my view somewhat, but I can honestly say at this point, I doubt I’ll come back to Hawaii.  It just really didn’t do anything for me.  I know a lot of people love the beach, but I’d much rather spend time in other areas.  Give me a choice of Europe or Hawaii…I’ll pick Europe every time.

I think I also figured out why I still like Vegas with its tourists but not Waikiki.  Las Vegas has other access points.  You don’t have to drive down the strip ever.  Not so with Waikiki.  There is only one street that goes along the beach…and it’s one way.  Vegas doesn’t have rugrats running around.  While some people wear pretty trashy outfits in Vegas…they are worse in Waikiki.