Chris

Phoenix: Day One

We made it here in one piece. We had a ordinary flight, nothing spectacular. Kari actually fell asleep for about a third of it, so I think she’s ok flying! The only downside was the 15 minute we sat on the tarmac after landing. Ugh.

After getting ourselves completely turned around in downtown Phoenix (Dear Jackie, I’m sorry) we grabbed a bit to eat at a local restaurant (warning! full-sized jpegs ahoy!) then headed over to the Arizona Science Center. They have a nice setup with lots of things for Kari to do. Not to mention that they had the Start Trek: The Exibition!

We (ok, really I) had a great time looking at a lot of the original props and costumes from all the Star Trek TV shows and movies. They had some of Kirk’s original suits, the original communicators…ZOMG NERDGASAM. But wait, it gets better. They had the set of the “The Next Generation” bridge that you could walk around. Kari sat in the Captian’s Chair and I was her Number 1. Jackie was hiding behind a wall pretending not to know us.

Our room at the resort is nice. It’s about a half an hour outside downtown Phoenix and therefore very quiet. It’s built and owned by the Pima and Maricopa Indians. All in all not a bad place to spend 3 days.

I’ll be updating the blog while we’re here. You can find all the above photos and more over on my Flickr set.

Edit: Nearly a decade after posting this a kind gentleman from Wild Horse Pass reached out to me and informed me that my link to the resort’s website was out-of-date. Given the incredibly and enjoyably random polite request, I’ve updated the link. – Chris 08.30.2018

Off to Phoenix

So my last update was about my Adventures in Portland. And now, around a month later, I’m off to Phoenix, Arizona. You may think I travel alot, but these two most recent trips are a bit of a fluke in my normal travelogue.

This journey is pleasure for me; work related for the wife. I’ll be traveling with Jackie and Kari, our first big family adventure. I hope to take in some of the sights of the southwest, eat some good food and most importantly spend some time unplugged from all of this and plugged in to my family. Fret not ye internet friends, I do plan on updating flickr with photos and whatnot.

This will be Jack’s first flying experience post-9/11. And for Kari, her first flying experience ever. We’ve been talking about airplanes and watching videos on YouTube in an attempt to get her excited. It’s about 10:30 right now and the little varmit finally fell asleep at 10. I hope she’s ready for a 7:30am flight!

I hope my internet access is more accomodating on this trip. I’ll be bringing the D40 with us, along with my Mac. Not to mention the DS and iPod Touch. 🙂

Photo (postcard?) by dbostrom – Licensed under Creative Commons

Adventures in Portland

I’ve returned from Portland, intact if not a little tired. Portland is a beautiful city, with a lot to see and do. Their downtown area is about the same size as ours. Two things struck me as very interesting.

First, the city is by far the cleanest city I’ve ever visited. I don’t recall seeing any trash on the street. It actually appeared as thought everyone in the city pitches in to keep the place looking nice. Yes that is a homeless man walking around in a sleeping bag. They all stayed to themselves in the city and didn’t bother me at all. In fact I was quite impressed by their age. Most of them were younger people.

Second, everything is larger than here in STL. The sidewalks are twice as wide, the buildings go right up to the edge of each block, and speaking of city blocks, they seem to be larger as well. I think this has to do with the city being so far west. They just have more space to spread out!

The conference went well, we were the last presentation to go (for the day and the entire conference!) We had a good turn out of about 50 people, all of them were paying attention to us the entire time.

The next Fall SIGUCCS conference will be next year in St. Louis. I encourage anyone working in higher education & technology to attend. I plan on writing another paper for next year myself.

I’d talk more but I’m tired and need to get caught up. The rest of my photos are embedded below and can be found on my flickr set. Josh has some photos up on his flickr as well. His take on our adventure can be found on his blog (Parts 1,2,3,4,5)

Portland

Internet is sparse. Send supplies. This is a frontier!

Mmmmelting Macbook Pro Followup

$40 bucks later I have 5 new keys and have discovered how this all happened. The people/person living here before us replaced a few of he bulbs under the cabinet with the wrong size. They were too large and were putting out too much heat and too much stress against the covers. Those two mistakes lead to my Mmmmeling Macbook Pro.

Lesson to be learned? When buying an old house make sure to check your under the cabinet lights!