Traveling

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The culprit of my problems

Tuesday, July 4th, 2006

This is the ignition switch that went bad in my GLI. You can see a slight bit of melting on the casing of some of the wires, and the exposed copper in the middle of the hanging switch is where the main wire melted straight through.

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An interesting trip to say the least

Friday, June 30th, 2006

I had no idea how interesting my trip would be when I left my house shortly after noon today to head home to Walla Walla and see the family. Being the proud new owner of a 12,000 BTU air conditioner for my condo made the irony of my car’s air conditioner dying all the more piquant - particularly since it died in 100+ degree weather over by Yakima.

Sadly my story gets a bit more serious here. I drove to the VW dealership in Yakima and asked them to take a look at it. Given that my lights and blinkers were not working either I assumed it was a simple fuse. No such luck: the ignition switch in my steering column broke, and melted several wires.

Please everyone, don’t point out the irony of a VW with an electrical problem. I’m well aware at this point.

Unfortunately given the holiday weekend the parts they need to fix it won’t be delivered to Yakima until Wednesday, and I need to be back at work before then. Thankfully VW’s legendary service stepped in and got me a loaner car for a week. I drove my loaner home to Walla Walla, and then on Monday will drive it back to Seattle. Sometime next weekend (most likely Saturday) I’ll have to drive it back to Yakima to trade it in for my precious GLI.

The Yakima VW dealership is rather low rent and also specializes in Suzuki’s, and being just before the big holiday weekend were out of proper loaners. They managed to outfit me with an elderly used Suzuki, but I can’t really complain given that its a working car with air conditioning and I’m not really paying for it.

My final torture? The POS stereo in the Suzuki has no CD or aux input, and a weak antenna so the only listening options from Yakima to Walla Walla were either fire and brimstone christian talk radio, or the hispanic channel I can’t understand.

Oh the suffering! At least I’m here, and can spend a few days hiding from the world and enjoying my vacation. It could be worse - I could be this guy.

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Losses

Sunday, January 22nd, 2006

The funeral made for a very strange day. My grandmothers funeral was surprisingly beautiful and it finally really broke through to me and I cried a bit. I was really pleased to see all the people come out of the woodwork that my grandma has touched over the years with her boundless enthusiasm.

That evening I went out for a few rounds of drinks with Janet and my cousins. It was really good to talk about grandma and just be together. It’s been years since I’ve hung out with my cousins and it was really great to go be adults together.

The trip home was relatively easy, although the whole family was a bit on edge. It had been a stressful couple of days and I think we were all glad to be home and be able to relax. I’ve spent the last couple of days laying around recuperating and I feel much better for it.

Wedding bells again

Saturday, January 7th, 2006

Today Janet Toews and David Cowan joined hands in marriage. It was a beautiful ceremony and I couldn’t be more happy for the two of them. Dave is a great guy and I’m sure he and Janet will enjoy a long and prosperous life together. I took a ton of pictures at the wedding - you can check out the Flickr wedding photoset if you want to see more of them. This is another shot I considered putting up on the blog, but ended up settling on the laughing one because I thought it conveyed more joy.

Now I’m laying in bed in my hotel after trimming 700 photos down to the 91 in the site. I have a lot of processing work to do, but I wanted to get the images up quickly so that Janet could send them to her friends.

I’ve got a flight to catch in the morning and have to wake up in less than 4 hours. Insomnia sucks yo!

Old Phone

Friday, January 6th, 2006

A quick post of an image I shot today. I really like this subject - it’s an antique phone in the Gale Mansion where my sister is getting married. It’s from the 30’s and still installed into a nook in the wall. Tomorrow with better light I want to shoot this a bit more and see if I can get some bgetter depth out of it.

Re-hash

Friday, January 6th, 2006

Today sure started off crummy, but it ended on a decent note. My phone is still FUBAR, and I suspect that QTEK is going to be involved to get it fixed, but aside from that everything was surprisingly fun. My sister and Dave had their wedding rehearsal and I got a chance to meet a lot of his family.

I’m actually kind of looking forward to the wedding - although not as much as I’m looking forward to being home in my own bed. I suffer hotel insomnia something bad, and the whole jet lag thing is just making me miserable.

Also: I miss Skype!

Well that sucks

Friday, January 6th, 2006

So not only could I not sleep last night but when I woke up this morning my phone was dead. It won’t turn on, and I just sent an email to the manufacturer to check and see what they suggest.

Of all the things to happen while I’m traveling. Now not only am I not home, but I don’t even have a phone. I feel so naked…

Shiny shoes

Thursday, January 5th, 2006

Today was fairly mundane in Minnesota. Most of it was spent running errands for my sisters wedding and preparing the final details. Jet lag has me by the balls but I managed to take a nice nap today that helped get me back on track.

I’m starting to get a little bit excited about the wedding. I don’t really like being here in MN, but I’m very happy for David and Janet. I think that as much as I’m looking forward to being home that I’ll be able to look back on this week with some fond memories down the road.

I took this shot while waiting for Janet’s soon-to-be husband to get his tux fitted. I like the sharp black lines and the minor reflections!

Headed to a wedding

Wednesday, January 4th, 2006

As always I’m stuck on a plane with my powerbook and what do I turn to: blogging. The whole travel experience has not actually been that bad so far for once. My flight left on time, the attendants have been pleasant, and I’m sitting next to quiet people. The only downside is the obvious boredom - we really need to work on a decent boredom fix for airplanes if they ever want to encourage me to become a frequent flyer.

Time passes…

I’ve seen a lot about that whole Boeing/Connexion thing that will bring broadband internet to planes in the US soon and boy am I looking forward to that. It’s strange - even with offline browsing and RSS I still feel naked with out a TCP/IP connection. I’m just so used to being able to reach out grab information at a moments notice or contact one of my contacts world-wide.

It makes me look to the future and wonder when the ubiquitous network connection becomes taken for granted. At what point does everyone come to depend on it and its not just me who will feel strange when I’m not connected. Right now there are some people like me who live the constantly connected lifestyle, but the majority of people in the US (not to mention the rest of the world) view the internet and computers as something you use at home or at work.

The paradigm of a computer being a brick with a keyboard and monitor is starting to change. As we get better and better ways for computers to interact with people and retrieve/display information we will be able to push this out onto the rest of the population. Not everyone wants to carry a laptop - but once phones and computers merge then it won’t seem like such a burden and make the transition to a true utility.

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