Another delightfully lazy day in the Tri-Cities area of eastern Tennessee. The two year old has been pushing limits, as usual, and the girl has slept a lot of the day away… and when she’s been awake, she’s been doing cute baby stuff like smiling and cooing.

I don’t believe it will get any warmer than 70 today. Nice. A much needed reprieve from our looooong Florida summer.

My condition feels even better today. Still very much there, mind you, but starting to approach something I’d consider livable. Perhaps this is the start of something wonderful.

Some of the day was spent rifling through some of the boxes in storage, where I came across our old Legos:

And a Marklin train starter set:

We packed the car aggressively this trip, but there still isn’t any spare room, so these won’t make it down to Florida until a future trip. Probably for the best, anyway, as the kids aren’t old enough. Tomorrow we’re planning to get out and about, either playing at my brother’s family’s house or going to one of those places where they have a bunch of inflatable bouncy houses set up in warehouse.

It was overcast and drizzly much of the day, but we still managed to get outside some. For me, this was the first full day of being on Allegra to try to fix my face pressure issue. For son, it was his first time riding in a wagon! I pulled him around in the garden wagon. We went down to the end of the road and back, and then I pulled him up and down the hill on his grandparents’ property. He loved it! Afterwards, he wanted to get out and run up and down the hill. Since it’s a great way to tire out a two year old, we did that for 20 minutes or so.

As for the Allegra, I can’t tell if it’s working, or there are other factors at play. I started taking it on advice from a doctor here. The doctor’s office was able to schedule me for a same-day appointment, even as a new patient, but it was mostly an uncomfortable and unfulfilling experience. I felt I was greeted with a generous helping of skepticism about my condition, which only improved slightly when I furnished a two page write-up from my maxillofacial expert in Orlando. Perhaps my expectations were too high as an out-of-towner.

I do feel significantly better than when we arrived here in Tennessee, but I don’t know whether that can be attributed to the Allegra, to not having the stress of work, to being outside in the fresh air in sub-80 degree temps, to being able to play and laugh with the kids, or what. I’m taking my part of this vacation a day at a time and trying hard not to do anything to aggravate my condition. It’d be amazing to drive back to Orlando feeling normal or mostly normal again. Of course, by the time this is published I’ll know whether that happened or not.

My brother and his family came by for dinner, which included teriyaki flank steak and 1905 Salad, so it was all good.

As expected, the Boy was a little standoffish around all the new people, but got into it towards the end and was running around and carrying on with the rest. The baby did what babies do.

We left the house at 11am, on the dot, and arrived at the Hampton Inn and Suites in Clinton, SC, around 9pm. It was a long day.

The kids were mostly good, on par with what I expected given their ages and personalities. We stopped at several rest areas along the way to eat and stretch — one near Jacksonville, another just after crossing into South Carolina, and then the last one about 15 miles from Clinton. At the last one, we assessed how we were all feeling and made an informed decision to stop.

Stopping for the night is non-trivial with two kids, as there’s no just-pop-inside-with-an-overnight-bag. Still, every much the right move given the circumstances. It started to drizzle as I was unloading the car, and the last leg of the trip is through mountains. Ups and downs with screaming, over-tired kids, limited visibility, rain, and a driver fast approaching sleepytimes? No thanks.

Son was weirded out by the hotel room, but he only napped for a half hour in the car, so he was at a disadvantage dealing with everything being quite tired. He was a trooper, though, and while none of us woke up feeling what I’d call “refreshed”, we were glad for the stop. The room is a little tight for what is termed a “suite” but we’ll make the best of it.

Today can be summed up with the following photo:

You’ll notice in the following trip diaries that I ran out of steam. This is actually a good thing, as it means that I was relaxing and spending time with my family instead of poking an iPad screen for hours.

September 3, 2011

I had a pretty shitty week at work. I don’t really care to be the LAN administrator at work, but somebody has to do it, and I’m pretty good at it (subjectively, I guess), so here we are. Anyway, last week the T1 lines into our office went down — for a few days. This is generally bad. Our customer support system relies on those lines. People in the office need them to be able to get beyond our office to fetch mail, access the wireless network, exchange cat photos, and browse Reddit and Facebook.

Basically, I woke up at 7am on Monday morning and then didn’t sleep again until late Tuesday night sometime. During this time I was working feverishly to set up duplicate functionality in another data center so our customers’ needs could be met. It was very much a two-steps-forward, one-step-back process… when it wasn’t one-step-forward, two-steps-back.

After all this stress, I felt that I needed some time off. I’d neglected helping my wife with our 2 year old and 2 month old during the outage; that made me feel like crap. I had nearly a month of vacation time banked, and I didn’t have any time-critical work obligations due in the next few weeks, so we felt it was as opportune time as any to hit the road.

Tomorrow, hopefully by late-morning, the car will be packed and cruising up I-4 towards I-95 and points north. We’ll hit I-26, swing to the west(ish), and find ourselves in Johnson City, TN, either late tomorrow night or on Monday if we have to stop. Again, we’re doing this 11 hour drive with a 2 year old and a 2 month old. Don’t know what to expect. We may make it to Jacksonville before it’s unbearable.

In the time since we (somewhat spontaneously) scheduled the vacation time, I’ve been thinking about what I hope to accomplish. I don’t take extended vacations from work, mainly because of guilt. This time I’m determined to try to truly escape being on an iPhone leash 24×7. I’ve attempted to set appropriate expectations with people at work. My phone won’t be set to automatically pull work emails. My out-of-office says that I’m trying not to be disturbed but if it’s an emergency then I can be reached at my personal account.

For two weeks, I’m going to make an honest effort to try to find some perspective. As clichéd as this may sound, I feel I may have lost sight of the big picture, and perhaps escaping the normal and routine will help reset my point of view.

Does it seem like a lot of pressure to put on a family road trip to eastern Tennessee? Probably. But I didn’t know what else to do. I hope you’ll follow along for the next few weeks. It’s my intention to post a little something every day, even if it’s to say “Nope, too rainy, didn’t do anything!”. There should also be a photo or two.

• 2000, maybe? Stayed with a friend from DCL in West Hollywood, after being picked up at Burbank airport. I believe he lived between Santa Monica and Sunset Blvds., but it might’ve been between Melrose and Santa Monica. The neighborhood was decent enough, and it was nice staying in a neighborhood, as opposed to some of the other places in L.A. (below). We went to Fry’s and The Getty and a few other L.A. type places.
• 2001, maybe? This trip was for work. The company I was working at was in Costa Mesa, down in The OC, and I stayed right around the corner at the Westin South Coast Plaza. Nice hotel, easy training gig. During the week, the work schedule did’t leave much time for sight-seeing. However, since I lived on the East coast and it was a two week engagement, I stayed over the weekend instead of flying back. Instead of staying in Costa Mesa, I booked in at the Hilton in Woodland Hills for the weekend. With nothing to do, I asked the concierge there for suggestions, and she recommended the Topanga Bluegrass Festival. It was a rainy, dreary day in Malibu, but stunningly gorgeous in the Valley. The part of Costa Mesa I was in was more commercial than where I stayed before, and could’ve been Any Suburb, USA. Woodland Hills seemed more residential and upscale, but I wouldn’t take my word for any of it since it’s been so long and my memory is hazy.
• 2007, maybe? Another work trip, this time for a large Cisco conference at the Anaheim Convention Center in, aptly enough, Anaheim. This time we stayed at the Doubletree Anaheim. Prime location, with easy walks to the convention center, Disneyland, and Morton’s and Ruth’s Chris. It helped that this was a trip with an expense account. This trip did have some built-in fun times, so myself and a co-worker cruised down to Newport Beach in a rented Grand Marquis (awwww, yeahhhhh) on Saturday and checked out the food and sights. A stop at Dave & Busters and Disneyland’s version of Downtown Disney was in order, as well. It was my first trip to Disneyland and, as someone who worked in the WDW Magic Kingdom for awhile, it was kind of surreal.

If I were visiting LA for vacation, where would I stay? No clue. Every site I’d want to visit is so far from each other that it hardly matters. Suggestions welcome.

Anyway, we passed a fine morning here, and even though I had a disappointing hot dog, I think the boy enjoyed himself. We got to see birds and ducks and tigers and bats and an alligator that may or may not have been real depending on whether you ask Rowan’s mother or father.

We left to go home around lunchtime so Rowan could have his nap. The benefits of living adjacent to the parks, eh?

After Rowan was up and fed, we headed out to Magic Kingdom. Now, as far as I recall, I hadn’t been to Magic Kingdom since I worked there in Cash Control in the summer of 1996, and the Mrs. hadn’t been there since 1989. Plus, I don’t think I’ve been the MK at night… ever? That can’t be true, but I honestly can’t remember a time being there at night. Anyway, we took the ferry over, which is a nice ride. It was basically dark by the time we got to the main gates (5:30 or so) which made picture-taking difficult but we managed to squeeze out a few. First stop was on the WEDway People Mover — which it’s not called anymore, but it will always be WEDway to me. We did a lot of walking through the night, but eventually made it around to see the whole park, and while the only “attractions” we went on were the WEDway, Treehouse, and Riverboat, we still had a great time.

Two parks in one day is a lot of work for sure. There’s a lot of overhead involved in going to a park, and that’s coming from people that live 5 miles away. Dressing Rowan, packing a cooler for him, driving to the park, getting parked, packing the stroller, walking to the entrance, having bags searched, going through turnstiles… you’re exhausted by the time you even walk in. Then double it — that’s what we did today. And for some reason I’m still up talking about it, so that’s my cue to wrap up.

Some random observations before I leave you:

• I never realized they got rid of the ride on top of where you board the WEDway. What was that ride called? It was cool because it was rocket ships instead of Dumbos and it was so high up.
• I’m wondering if Transportation is cost-neutral. Does the price of parking ($14 for cars) cover the cost of running the monorails, ferries, parking attendants, trams and tram drivers, and so on?
• I was really impressed that the Liberty Square Riverboat is an actual paddlewheel steamship. Steam. That means boilers and pistons and heat and a lot of maintenance. It’s very cool to me that Disney hasn’t mucked with these. I appreciated feeling the heat coming from the boiler and seeing the pistons turn the wheel. It’s a nice touch in a place where you question the authenticity of everything.
• Along the same lines, I’m glad the ferry is there from TTC to MK. It’s another case where the numbers might be better business to add a monorail or two instead, but taking that boat across the lake is part of the experience.
• For some reason I was under the strong impression that Tom Sawyer Island was closed for good ala 20,000 Leagues, but this isn’t the case. Unless my parents took me when I was really little, I’ve never set foot on it. I’m adding it to the list for next time.
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is probably the kind of thing my son would’ve enjoyed. It’s sad that I can’t share this experience from my childhood with him.
• Turkey Legs were calling out to me. They’re low in carbs and it was Thanksgiving. Still, they did not woo me this time.
• There are no less than 280 carts you can buy popcorn from at Magic Kingdom.
• Parades are Serious Business.

Overall we had a great time at both parks, which is fortunate because we gave $DIS about $800 today for an annual pass for a year.

This is the Burj Al Arab hotel, arguably one of the finest in the world. Located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the Burj is notable for its height, opulence, and architecture. Oh, and its mayor on Foursquare: me.

The issue is, I’ve never been to the Burj Al Arab. The closest I’ve ever been is probably Venice, Italy, which is still a ways off. So how is this possible?

The Foursquare API doesn’t do any validation of check-ins. If you pass along a venue code (409315), approximate latitude and longitude (25.14134,55.18546), your user ID and password, and pretend you’re doing it from an iPhone, Foursquare will check you in there. It’s not hard to do… it just takes a few lines of scripting. This isn’t a new issue (see here, for example), but what’s not clear is what’s being done about it. Since Foursquare and their partners provide certain perks to venue mayors, the potential for mischief is obvious. Dollar beers for the mayor of Moe’s? Give me the venue details, a cron job, and a few days or weeks, and unless someone else is also subverting the system, I will be mayor.

What’s the fix? Not sure, honestly. The API could require the lat & long are validated as true somehow, perhaps using some sort of digital signature, but that opens up a host of other problems when you’re dealing with devices from different vendors. Since location validation wasn’t designed in from the beginning, either, it means there’d be a period of time where you’d need to accept signed and unsigned updates until everyone updates their client. A big job, to be sure.

For now, I won’t be checking into the Burj Al Arab anymore… we’ll let nature take its course again. I wonder what Easter Island is like this time of year. Hmmm…

There’s no doubt that moving to Florida was the best move we’ve made, but still… damn… it’s hot here in the summer, all the time. I could seriously go for some high 52 and low 47 weather right about now.

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