Sheep Guarding Llama

For all intents and purposes I got no sleep last night.  It was after two when I had gone to bed and my alarm was set for three fifty five.  I woke up two or three times during the night so there was very little chance for me to have actually slept.

Alarm went off and I got up, packed up the room and got in the shower.  Was out the door at a quarter after four.  I drove up to the airport without a map.  That was pretty easily.  It is a little under half an hour to get up there.  At that time of the morning it was incredibly easy to do the drive.

Getting through security at the airport ended up taking way more time that I was used to.  Even though San Jose is a very small airport with only two terminals, not all that dissimilar to Dallas Love Field, the security line was all backed up at five in the morning.  It took at least twenty minutes longer than usual t get through security.

The first flight went fine.  I was on US Air this morning departing San Jose at six twenty and flying into Phoenix where I had a brief layover, during which time I managed to just get a veggie breakfast taco and a restaurant called “Humble Pie”, before boarding the Phoenix to Dallas leg of the trip.

I got my laptop out and put in most of the time in the air from Phoenix to Dallas was spent either catching up on SGL for the past three days or doing some cleanup of my email.  Sometimes it is nice to not have access to WiFi while flying because it forces me to be disconnected which makes catching up on stuff a whole lot easier since nothing can be flowing in at the same time that I am cleaning stuff up.  It was decently productive flight time.

The flight was fine.  The descent into Dallas was pretty exciting due to a high level of turbulence, but it wasn’t bad.  It was raining a little when we touched down.  The girls had requested donuts but it was going to be too late to get donuts from a store as everything closes in Texas so I spent twenty or thirty minutes hunting down a Dunkin Donuts inside of the airport before leaving the secured terminal area.  Not exactly what I wanted to be doing instead of heading home to see the family.  But gotta make my kids happy.

I arrived in Terminal E and had to ride the train to Terminal A parking where the Spark had been sitting.  I found it without any effort and was on the way home.  There was quite a bit of rain and so the trip took more than half an hour instead of the customary fifteen minutes.  So altogether I probably lost an hour in the process of getting home.

Got home and relaxed with the family for a little bit.  Dominica went to the salon at four and I watched the kids.  It was quick and she was home in an hour with some shopping done and dinner from LA Burger – probably my last time to eat their amazing burgers which, of course, didn’t come out quite as I wanted. Argh.

We watched a few episodes of The New Girl while we ate.  We really should have done a bit of packing today but the girls really wanted to hang out with me.  I spent a while just laying on the bed with them jumping on me as they like to do.

We got the kids to bed at a decent time.  Liesl was just heading to bed when the Vielmas arrived to hang out.  The kids babysat and the four of us all went out for dinner and dancing.

It was pretty late before we got to bed and just as we were getting ready for bed we must have woken up Luciana because she came into our room in a haze and asked to sleep with us.  She rarely does this.  So she snuggled with us all night.

Busy day today at Pertino.  I got up around seven, got ready and drove into the office.  Only my second day driving around and I feel like I am getting to know town a bit.

I was one of the later Spiceheads to arrive and I had to jump almost immediately onto a call for Dominica’s office.  We have so much going on there that needs my attention that I’m doing something nearly every day.

The main part of the day was all scheduled events at Pertino.  Whether group meetings, one on one user experience testing, company town hall or being filmed by a video crew (that’s the third time this year that I’ve done film work, I’ve done that for Pertino, Spiceworks and Drobo.)

For lunch today we had pizza like we did the last time that I was out with Pertino.  California certainly seems to have amazing pizza.  It is the only region of the country that I think, in any way, competes with New York for the quality of the pizza but the style is pretty different.

It was a very productive day, lots of good work done at Pertino.  Before we completely wrapped up for the day, Craig took my out for a ride in his new Tesla S P85 – the all electric sports car that we have been looking at for a few weeks.  I’ve wanted an electric car for a while and this one is really amazing.  It is big and luxurious but also a sports car giving the best of a luxury sedan and a hard car sports car in one while having enough seating for five to seven people and lots of trunks space.

The ride was amazing.  I have definitely never been in a car like the Tesla.  Truly amazing.  The acceleration is truly unreal.  And the interior space is so much more than I would have guessed.  Far more practical that I thought.  We could probably do away with having the SUV completely with a Tesla.

After the day was done I ran back to the hotel and freshened up, dropped off my stuff and then drove up to Testarossa Winery where we had the “after work” wind down party.  I drove up on my own since I was coming from a different hotel as everyone else but managed to pull in as the same time as AJ, Jeff and Kris.

We all had a really nice time there.  My first California winery too.  Got a chance to hang out with a bit of the Pertino crew for a few hours.

After the winery the Spiceheads went down to the Willow Street Pizza (the same pizza place that Rich, Mark and I went to before going to Pertino the last time that I was in California) and did beers and pizza.  Some of them were there a bit before Kris and I arrived, since we drove down to the hotel, dropped off the car and walked from there.  It was a brisk evening but as long as we were walking quickly the temperature was great.  But it is too cool to hang out outside without a jacket if you aren’t moving around enough.

The pizza was excellent, just like last time, at Willow Street.  We had a good time just the Spiceheads hanging out.  One of the girls wanted to do kamakazis by the pitcher at the Black Watch because apparently we did that last time that we were here (not a memorable enough drink for me to remember that we had these but Dominica confirmed that we did) so we walked down there, did a quick pitcher (which was really just a big glass) and then went back tot he Tollhouse where everyone else was staying and joined Nick and his wife Jenn out on the patio and had California wine out there until people straggled off to bed one or two at a time.

After midnight on Kris and I were left awake.  He had to walk back to my hotel with me because he left his iPad in my rental car and I needed to get that back to him.  So we went back there and ended up standing out on the street talking till about a quarter till two.

Once back in the hotel I decided that I was going to have so little sleep that I had better pack everything now and be ready.  So I spent twenty odd minutes getting everything possible picked up and packed and only the bare necessities for tomorrow morning left out.  Had all my clothes ready to go and everything.   I got to bed at a quarter after two and my alarm was set for five minutes before four.  A very short night indeed.

I will be driving to San Jose airport first thing in the morning.  Then dropping off the rental. Flight to Phoenix.  Layover (short.)  Flight to DFW and back home around two tomorrow afternoon.

Up at four this morning, a very early morning for me.  I was pretty tired, but not too bad, when the alert went off.  I showered, finished packing and got out the door at a quarter after five.  My flight is scheduled to depart DFW Airport at seven thirty so that is plenty of time to casually get there, check in, get breakfast and relax waiting for my flight.

I got the airport and parked at Terminal A.  Of course, once I was in the airport I discovered that I was flying out of D21.  Argh.  That is a long way from A.  I went through security at A and was stopped and needed to be patted down.  I went through the machine with nothing on me but it flagged me on my right side.  Where they patted me down was exactly where my scar is so I am wondering if my scar (from my appendectomy) is so bad that it shows up on the body scanners.

I got to my terminal to wait.  There was some concern that it was not the correct gate because the DFW flight boards were changing every few seconds claiming that I was flying out of either A10 or D21.  It went back and forth with another flight to the same city on a different airlines about once every ten seconds.  Very concerning.  The airlines said that DFW is aware that the signs don’t work and give wrong information but any reports to them of such are ignored and the airport doesn’t care if they work or not.  Typical.

Terminal D has a great food court and shopping area.  I went there and got myself an Einstein Bros. bagel with smoked salmon cream cheese for breakfast and ate it at the gate.

We boarded the plane on time, no issues there.  I got a row to myself, very nice.  But we had mechanical issues.  So the flight that was supposed to leave at seven thirty did not end up leaving until more like nine thirty.  That was a really long time to be sitting on the tarmac and the air conditioning was one of the things that was broken so it was pretty warm in the cabin.

Once the flight got underway I paid for ninety minutes of Internet access on the flight so that I could log in and work for the office while I was flying.  That worked out perfectly as it kept me connected and able to work right up until noon when it would have been lunch time anyway.  I got a ton done in that stretch including keeping up completely on Spiceworks which is pretty amazing to have done considering that I was on the go continuously from five in the morning!

The flight today was a direct one on American.  DFW to San Jose.  The route took us over the Texas Panhandle and over southern Utah which is gorgeous if you get to watch it out of the window.  I cannot wait until I get to do a cross-country drive with the girls when they are older to go see all of the American west.  So much that I have never really gotten to see.

On the flight they showed Gatsby which I knew was out and had won some awards but knew very little about other than that it had Leonardo Dicaprio starring in it.  I didn’t watch it and didn’t have ear plugs but I did see that there were some actors that we like and especially one of the main stars of Jhoom Barbar Jhoom which we love and the girl who played Sally Sparrow from our favourite Dr. Who episode, Blink, had the female lead!  So we are going to have to watch that movie if only for them.

The flight wasn’t too bad although getting in so late was not fun.  I had been planning on getting to San Jose really early in the morning so that I would have two entire days there.  But it was more the middle of the day when I finally arrived.

I got a rental car at the airport, a Mazda 2.  I have never driven a Mazda 2 before and it proved to be a really good little car.  Very easy to drive, plenty of space and quite comfortable.

I drove from the airport to Los Gatos without needing a map or GPS.  I was really proud of myself since this was my first time driving in California.  The last time that we were in Los Gatos we just took cabs everywhere or Rich drove us around so we didn’t have to worry about knowing where anything was.  I had a little difficulty finding my way around Los Gatos but that didn’t last long.

I found my way to my hotel, the Garden Inn of Los Gatos, which was right on Main Street making it pretty easy to find.  I was lucky that they had cleaned my room early and they allowed me to check in right away.  So I got in, settled in, in packed, got online and made sure that things were okay at work and then freshened up.

The hotel was a quirky California bungalow style hotel that I am guessing was not built with the intention of having been used as a hotel.  It felt a lot more like it was meant to be small apartments.  The hotel had a full kitchen in every room and a little work nook.  It was odd, felt a little bit like the cottages in Bar Harbor that I used to stay in with my parents when I was young, but it was nice and comfortable and easily accessible.

I was pretty hungry so I stopped by Main Street Burger, which is supposed to be pretty famous, for a veggie burger.  It was good but not as good as Mooyah and definitely not as good as LA Burger.

Once I was all settled in I headed out to go to the Pertino offices which I was able to find without map or directions.

I was into Pertino before a lot of the other people were even to their hotels.  I had a good jump on the day.

I set up at Pertino and worked for the office for a bit but with the time difference there was a lot of time to work in California even after work back home was done.

Once the office work was finished I sat down with the Pertino product team and we put in several hours of working on use cases, feature requests, interface and management ideas, etc.  It was really productive time.  That was about two in the afternoon until six.  While I was there all of the other Spiceheads, including AJ, were out at the Computer History Museum, which I went to the last time that I was in Los Gatos.

At six the plan was for everyone to go back to the hotel and regroup for dinner at Palacio, the same restaurant where we kicked things off the last time that I was out with Pertino.  I was the only one coming from the office instead of from the hotel.  I drove down and parked at the restaurant and was one of the first ones there.

We are twice as many Spiceheads as the last time that we did this and this time nearly everyone has a “plus one” with them so it was a ton of people at dinner.  This was my first time meeting most of the Spiceheads attending.  There was Nic (and Jenn) from Las Vegas, Mike (and Adrian) from Lexington, AJ (and Jeff) from Syracuse, Chris from Birmingham and Jeremy (and Jenn) from South Dakota.  Hopefully I got the list right, very hard to remember everyone correctly, especially when I am bad with names in general, and I’ve never seen the “plus ones” names written, so if they are misspelled, oops.

Dinner was excellent.  Palacio is really nice.  From there the group split a bit.  Many people went back to the hotel.  Jeff Pierce came out and joined us.  I drove my car back to the hotel so that I would not have to drive later.  Then I walked back down to meet everyone at the Black Watch.

We were not out very late.  Everyone has a little bit of jet lag and we are starting at eight tomorrow morning so we need some sleep.  Eventually just Jeff and I were left.  We hung out for probably another hour at the Black Watch then we drove around looking for food.  Nothing was open.  We ended up settling for snacks at 7 Eleven being the best thing that we could find.

Jeff drove me back to the hotel and we hung out there for a while talking in the courtyard.  It was probably one thirty, if I was to guess, when I went into the hotel and got to bed.

Today ended up being my only day in the office for the week. The last two days were just too busy to go in and early tomorrow morning I am leaving for San Jose where I will be until Saturday morning.  Two days of hanging out and consulting with Pertino.  AJ is heading out as well, flying in from Syracuse.

I worked from home a little this morning and was in the office by mid morning.  Doue had said last week that lunch was on him today so at one he, Dan and I went to Mooyah to get lunch.  The weather was great today, probably ninety two outside, so we sat out on the patio and ate there.  Funny to think that ninety two is nice and cool to me now.  That is so not me.

We got back to the office and got back to work.  But it wasn’t long before we had an emergency announcement come over the loud speaker that just said that we were having an emergency and that we had to evacuate the building.  Um, okay.  So we did, everyone piled outside into the parking lots.  We didn’t have enough notice to tell anyone that we were abandoning the building so no one knew to pick up work from us.

Since it was late and we were completely useless outside I just got in the car which was right out front and ran home and worked from there.  Once again demonstrating that being in the office was pointless – no matter what the intentions are, the amount of work completed while at the office is fractional compared to what is done from home.

After I wrapped up work for the day Dominica made herself dinner (because I already ate) and we watched the last two available episodes from this current season of Hot in Cleveland, one of our favourite shows.  The next to last episode had an awesome reunion of the girls from the cast of the Mary Tyler Moore show.  I’m so glad that they managed to do that while they are all still able to do it.

Then we watched more of the second season of The New Girl.

Luciana slept much of the day.  She has been sick, possibly since Friday.  She threw up in the car on the drive down to Houston but we thought that that was because she had chocked on a fruit snack but now we are not too sure.  She was definitely under the weather by Sunday and had a fever by Monday.  She still had a slight fever today and at some point during the day she got sick on our bed but we did not discover it until this evening when she finally woke up and came out to see us.  But by then she had had twice her normally sleep and her fever had broken.  It was never a high fever but she seems much better after that.  She mostly spent the entire evening just snuggling on the couch with us, though.

Dominica was starting to feel sick today, she probably caught was Luciana had.  Liesl, so far, has escaped any signs of it.

We tried out best to get to bed on the early side.  The girls did not want to go to bed nearly as early as we did.  It took some fighting to get us into bed by eleven.  That only leaves five hours of sleep for me before tomorrow when I have to be up early for my flight to California.

Was planning on going into the office today but it just did not happen.  Too much to do.  I worked all morning and then in the early afternoon had to go into Dominica’s office to help with some stuff there.  That went well but went later than I had anticipated.

Luciana put herself to bed this afternoon, she has a fever and is not feeling well.  So Dominica said that Liesl and I should just go to dinner at the club on our own and just bring home food for Dominica.  But I got home and started getting Liesl ready when Luciana woke up and came out to see us.  She said that she wanted to go to dinner so Dominica and Ciana got ready and we all went to the club for kids’ night.

Realistically tonight was probably our last time to go to the club.  Maybe we will make it next week but we will be so busy that it seems unlikely.  I’d really like to make it to La Cima before we completely leave but I don’t know when we could do it.   Only a few days left before I head north to Connecticut.  Still trying to work out those plans, too much up in the air.

Dominica’s back was hurting her tonight so we couldn’t hang out at Brookhaven as long as the girls would have liked.  They love that we have discovered the “activities table” that they have for the kids there.  Liesl eats her food quickly and asks to go colour and do crafts with the ladies that run the school at Brookhaven.  They are getting to know her.  She has so much fun doing craft projects with them.  Luciana does too but mostly just colours and she does not eat as fast, I think that she forgets that if she gets her food done that she can go do fun things.  So Liesl finished and disappears and Luciana wonders where she has gone.   The girls would have been happy with another half an hour at least but we had to get moving.

Quiet night at home since Dominica just needed to sit and relax.  We watched two episodes of Hot in Cleveland that we had not seen yet and then we put the girls to bed.  Once they were in bed we popped in Prometheus that I had gotten on BluRay a few days ago.  This is the first of a trilogy that together, in theory, functions as the prequel to the Alien Quadrilogy.

Prometheus was pretty good and they seem to be doing some interesting things with the Alien mythology and playing off of some Greek themes.  Ridley Scott did a great job as always.  There is a rumor that the sequel might be in the works soon.  We hope that there is, we want to see where the story is being taken.