Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be, but first I need more coffee.

Year: 2010 (Page 7 of 7)

Nothing To See Here

The year is officially a quarter over. Where does the time go?

Tomorrow is April 1, 2010. In some parts of the US it’s already April 1. Haven’t decided what April Fool’s Joke I’m going to do. I’ll have to be creative because everyone is expecting it. I may have to do a double reverse trick.

I don’t remember all of their names, so I’ll make some up for the ones I can’t recall. This happened when I worked at Domino’s Pizza way back in the early 80’s. Let’s call them Brent, Cindy, and Mike. One of the tricks we use to pull on new people was sending them back to the walk in cooler for dough patches. When you make a pizza you take the dough ball, dip it flour, and flatten it with your hands. Then you stretch it and sometimes spin it as well to get it to the right size to put on a pizza screen. Sometimes the dough tears. If it’s small you just pinch it back together and make your pizza. If it’s too large, you toss the dough ball and start over, though it’s rarely too large.

Well we’d been doing this trick for a while, “accidentally” tear a small hole in the dough and send the driver to get a dough patch. They’ll go and look and not find it. You can sometimes get them to go back a second time before they catch on. Tell them they’re behind the olives or something.

So Mike and I concocted the reverse prank. We told Brent, “Hey, let’s send the new girl, Cindy to go and get a dough patch.” Mike and I had made some fake dough patches and put them in the walk in cooler. So Brent, tears the dough and sends Cindy who doesn’t know anything about the joke, promptly finds the dough patch and brings it back up. Brent says, “What’s that?” She replies, “A dough patch.” And of course everyone has a big laugh at Brent’s expense.

Time Marches On

I have flown on three trips this year: Atlanta, Dallas, and Tulsa. All through DFW or to DFW. My favorite terminal in DFW is Terminal D. It’s the most modern and has better restaurant selections and more elbow room. And there seems to be plenty of places to plug in. If you have an iPhone this is very important. Because the battery life on a iPhone is woefully short. Laptops too I suppose.

I remember hunting for an electrical outlet in Chicago’s O’Hare airport one time. I found one along a corrider with a glass wall. It had outlets reserved for the battery powered carts terminal employees drove all over the place. There was no seats. Just floor. About a half dozen travelers were lined up against the glass sitting on the floor, including me, all plugged into a few outlets. Fortunately no carts needed charging so we weren’t shooed away.

I can’t remember how many times I flew last year, but I do know I went through the Pittsburgh airport. It reminded of the airport in Langoliers film. It was mostly deserted except for one small shopping area in the center of the X shaped terminal bldg. And this was at 5pm. We reboarded our plane and flew on to Charlotte, NC and got there about 9ish. Their airport was hopping. Lots of foot traffic and shops were open.

I don’t fly that much but have been doing so a lot more the past few years. There was a time when I was nervous when I flew and then there was a time when I was terrified when I flew. And now I’m back to being slightly nervous. I knew the airline stats about crashes so logically I knew the odds were low. It was firmly clinging to statistics that kept me boarding planes no matter how I felt. I can tell when other passengers are freaked out more by flying than I am.

Though there was this one time when we took off from Puerto Vallarta and we lost an engine. Everyone got real quiet. I guess that’s the sound of 200 sphincters puckering. There was a lot of clapping when we landed back at PV’s airport. Flew home the next day. I think the trick is to calm my overactive imagination and not watch documentaries about plane mishaps, disastrous or otherwise. Because I can think of hundreds of mostly unrealistic ways for a plane to go down. It was like trying not to think of pink elephants. The most likely explanation is those worry brain cells all died and now I won’t panic unless the plane has rolled over.

Anyway, I wasn’t planning on writing much at all. More like a sentence or two. I’ve not really proofed what I’ve written so it probably doesn’t make much sense. I’m probably writing more in this post because I’m avoiding doing some necessary work like gathering documents needed to get our taxes done.

The thought I had in mind with the title is that it’s 2010 and it’s mid-March already. One quarter of the year is almost gone.

One last thing. Tulsa airport has this small world vibe to it. I’m always running into people I know there. I don’t know why. It just happens. And on my trip back from Tulsa I ran into someone I knew. For me I thought well, small world indeed. For them I think I was the last person they would have wanted to run into, much less be on the same plane for an hour. So I kept a respectful distance.

Chicken and Waffes

I went to Altanta for PyCon this weekend. It’s a huge geek/hacker convention for fans of the Python programming language. I’ve attended it for the past 5 years and have always enjoyed it. I don’t do enough programming in python but it always reminds me of why I should. And yes the language was named in honor of Monty Python.

This was my first trip to Atlanta and the state of Georgia. I learned a few things:

1. It is no longer Carter Country
2. They do not have Billy Beer
3. It’s very cosmopolitan
4. Downtown Atlanta is very conference/convention friendly
5. The wait at the chicken & waffle place is two hours

Chicken & Waffles

PyCon 2010

I’ll be attending PyCon 2010 in Atlanta in a couple of days. This will make my 5th trip to the conference. I started going because I inherited a Zope website. Zope isn’t the best introduction to Python but there you have it. I went because it was the closest I’d thing in price and time to getting more information about Zope. At the same time I got to learn more about Python and how cool it was. My eyes were open to the world of Python.

Although the freelance work I’m doing now is WordPress, I’m looking for opportunities to use Python. I helped to start a user group in Tucson called TuPLE. It stands for Tucson Python Language Enthusiasts. It is a small but very active group. So active in fact. Five members of our little group will be attending PyCon this year. Wow! Last year three of us went.

Super Bowl Sunday

I won’t be watching the Super Bowl today. I think the last time I watched it was in 2000. I’m indifferent to who wins. I have discovered if you like shopping at one of your favorite big box stores, going during the Super Bowl is the best time. The aisle are mostly empty so you can avoid the crowds. It would probably be best to go during the 2nd half. There might be a rush at halftime.

I remember the big hullaboo over the Super Bowl commercials during the dot-com era. EDS’s Cat Herder commercial I think is the best one I’ve ever seen. I don’t know what they are selling, but I love it anyway.

And for those of us who lived through the dot-com bubble, who can forget this awesome E-Trade Super Bowl commercial.

Speaking of the dot-com bubble I lived through it. The company I worked for went belly up. Ironically, they weren’t a dot-com, though they were a web company. They’d been profitable for several years but then they got dot-com fever and expanded without getting the proper financial backing. At least that was what I heard. I wouldn’t have been hired if they hadn’t expanded. The job lasted of all about six months.

During my tenure, one of the employees had been in the process of buying a house. He managed to scrape together the money and then the company went away. He held an anniversary party after the company had gone belly up. Most people showed up. Even the two former owners. At the party, Office Space was shown. There were a few moments during the movie when I could tell one of the former owners was feeling mighty uncomfortable. Too bad none of us got a cathartic release when the company died. At least not like this scene from the movie. Would have felt better. At least for a little while.

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