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| Yup, it’s
been a while since my last post. A lot’s
happened in the past few months, but I guess it’s all old news now. The last few days have been fun, but not
exactly exciting from an outsider’s perspective. If you’re bored, feel free to read
and judge for yourself. If you’re
strapped for time, feel free to give me my 2 eProps and take off. 
I’ve
spent the past few days in Dallas
for work. I got a call from a client
last week who wanted a last-minute visit, so I hopped on a plane out to good
ole TX. For you non-car folks… feel free
to skip the first section.
Wheels for this trip
Alamo had some seriously strange pricing going on last
week. A full size car only cost about
$2/day more than an economy car. And, I
had a coupon that gave me $10 off my rental if I got something larger than a
mid-size car. So, I reserved a full-size
car before arriving in Dallas
for cheaper than an economy one. So far
so good.
I land in
Dallas on Wednesday night after 11pm and finally
get to the Alamo rental counter by
11:45pm. No one was there. Instead, they had 4 electronic computers at
which I was supposed to check in, similar to an airplane e-check-in. This system allows me to take the rental
slip, and then pick any of their full-size cars that I want. For a car lover like me, who always enjoys
getting a different rental car each time, this system is perfect. Rental slip in hand, I walk outside in
anticipation. The full-size car section
was rather large, easily containing more than 20 parking spots… unfortunately, only 3 of them were occupied
and two of them were Chrysler minivans.
With the right people and right activities, minivans are definitely
great vehicles have. Unfortunately,
those activities were not in the plans for this weekend. The third option, a Pontiac Gran Prix, was
acceptable, but it turns out that someone had locked the doors and taken the
keys.
After
some long-distance bitching at the main Alamo
800 number, and some in-person bitching to the National Car Rental rep (who all
tried to force a minivan on me), I finally prevailed sometime after 12:30. My whip for the weekend: 2007 Chevrolet
Impala SS.
Only two
words can describe a car with the combination of 303HP, 323lb-ft torque, front
wheel drive, 3700+ lbs, soft suspension, and an open differential (just
confirmed this last part): utterly worthless.
No wonder GM is going belly up.
You’d think someone out of the
hundreds or thousands of people who participated in building this car would
come out and say “Hey, this is a dumb idea!”
Ah well… that’s the power of group think, I guess.
Apparently
this car has new cutting-edge technology call Active Fuel Management that dynamically shuts down 4 of the 8
cylinders while cruising to provide “superior fuel economy.” Based on my mileage for the trip (16.2 mpg on
mostly freeway driving), I’d say GM’s not gonna be saving us from global
warming any time soon.
Thursday
Thursday
was relatively uneventful. Just did a
bunch of stuff for work, but capped the day with the food of the gods:
Freebirds. More importantly, it was
shared with some good friends, followed by some low-key hanging out a friend’s
place.
Friday
More
work. Yay! This was followed by a mediocre, but
overpriced, dinner with my client.
Fortunately, this day also ended on a good note, hanging out at Walrus
with my Dallas Azn Crew followed by late night grubbing at Pluckers. Good people, good food, good times.
Saturday
Early
lunch w/ an ex-coworker, followed by more work at my client’s office. Yay! X 2.
Ah well,
the rest of the day was great. Highlights:
- Hung out w/ good friends
- Rudy’s BBQ.
 - Found out that someone makes
up all types of random, exaggerated stories about me and tells them to
their mom.
- After a thorough inspection and analysis, a drunk woman complemented me on my hair
- Another drunk woman fell backwards while sitting in a high bar stool. Would be funnier if she didn't crack her head against the concrete floor.
- Went bowling, which I totally suck at, but in the last game, got a spare or strike in all but two
frames, where I left only one pin in each.
I was well on my way to my best score ever until time ran out after
the 7th or 8th frame L
- Migas @ Café Brazil
Sunday
I drive
to the airport, refill my fuel-thirsty beast, and then pull into the Alamo car rental return section where everyone simply
parks their cars in a long line. I park
behind another renter, the attendant walks around my car, opens my door and
leans in to ask: “Any problems with the car?”
Just as I’m about to answer, I get rear-ended by a woman in another
rental car! Phew! Good thing the car was out of my hands. I grabbed my bags from the trunk and took off 
Unfortunately,
it was not meant to be a perfect weekend.
Upon arriving back to SF, I found an email with disturbing news. A business partner of mine (pretty much a
coworker, though he technically worked for a different firm) crashed a plane
that he was flying. Though we haven’t
known each other for that long, we’ve been working on a project together, and
he was simply a nice, cool guy. 
R.I.P.
When I
was in TX, I lost a coworker there due to a motorcycle accident. He was also a nice, cool guy… actually, he was also an accountant, like the
guy above. So, based on my large sample
size of 2, if you know any nice guys that are accountants, you’d better say
your goodbyes now.
Coming Up…
Gotta
work here in SF for a few days, but on Friday, I’ll be getting my eardrums
blasted at Austin City Limits! 3 days of
music, sun, friends, food, and fun. Woohoo!
This’ll be followed up by a day of work in Dallas, and 3 days of hanging out at the Red
Rock Casino in Vegas for a conference. I’ll
probably have some interesting stories from my travels… hopefully I won’t be
too lazy to post ‘em.
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| So, I spent Thurs night through this morning camped out on Dxxx's sofa. Fortunately, Dxxx has a massive library of DVDs, X-Box w/ Forza 2, and an HD TV, so if there's any place to be an invalid, this place ain't so bad. I still don't feel fantastic, but today's the first day I haven't had a fever, so I'm finally starting to be productive again. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it up. Thanks for all the calls, emails, IMs, txt msgs, and Xanga comments! P.S. It does suck that I wasted a trip to NYC sitting around by myself in an apt. Didn't get to see any of my friends so far, and probably won't be able to see most of them now. | | |
| Oh yeah, so NYC isn't all bad... one cool aspect: My client's office is the top floor of a 27 floor building right next to Ground Zero. It has a fantastic view of the construction going on there... | | |
| I'm in NYC right now, and it's been an odd week. Monday For the first time in a very long time, I had absolutely nothing I had to do. I had just finished my finals, so I had no school work, and I had no projects to work on. Those of you who know me (which hopefully you do, if you're reading this blog) know that I don't ever have nothing to do, but that was indeed the case. So, what did I do? I watched Spiderman 3 by myself :-p That night however, I found out that I had to leave the next day for NYC. I booked a direct flight from OAK to JFK on Jet Blue. Tuesday I had to get up pretty early, b/c my flight was at 7:30am. This was my first time on Jet Blue, and I had heard good things about Jet Blue, so I was looking forward to the flight. On the plane, I definitely wasn't disappointed. There is noticeably more leg room than other airlines, and the DirecTV was a nice bonus. I even forked over an extra $5 to watch Namesake, which would probably appeal to you other brownies out there... The only sucky part was that I had booked a last minute ticket and got stuck in the middle seat. Unfortunately, on the way there, the weather at JFK worsened. We circled for a bit, but the weather was too poor to land, so we ended up landing in Buffalo to refuel. Buffalo was supposed to be a 45 min stop, so they didn't let us off the plane... then there was another 45 min extension, and then a 15 min, and then the pilot said "I was walking around the plane, and I found a dent, but don't worry, we have fix-a-dent here so, we're okay now." OMG..... "fix-a-dent"? By this point, it was really hot in the plane, and I just start feeling really crappy. After a total of 5 hours of 45 min and 15 min extensions (never 30 min or 60 min extensions, for some reason), we finally took off and arrived at JFK an hour later. During this entire 11 hours, there was no real food except for a pack of blue potato chips. I was so hungry that I had a ridiculous headache and was simply too tired to move. You'd think Jet Blue would've learned from their previous experience and their announcement of a "Passengers Bill of Rights", but apparently not. Wednesday I woke up the next morning completely covered in sweat, but I was shivering. Eventually, I felt semi-normal and left around 11AM to meet my coworker. The rest of the day was relatively uneventful... Thursday (today) I woke up after 7 hours of sleep not covered in sweat, but still just felt kinda off. I just had a glass of water, but felt like I really needed to eat something (get some sugar), but Dxxx (the coworker whose place I'm staying at) didn't have anything to eat. I told Dxxx that I didn't feel good, but it wasn't serious, so we got on our way. The subway was so packed we had to skip the first train. The second train was also packed but we shoehorned in there. It was so hot and stuffy that I felt more crappy. At first I tried to shake it off, but I was also wearing a heavy jacket and I could remove it b/c I couldn't move my arms. I began feeling really dizzy. Then all of a sudden, the entire upper half of my face started twitching uncontrollably, squeezing my eyes shut (not just my eyelids, but my cheeks went up, and my eyebrows/forhead came down, so I couldn't see). I kinda started freaking out, but I didn't want to say anything and sound like a whiner, but finally said "Dxxx, I really don't feel so good", to which he responded "Well, quit talking about it!" (as a joke).... As he finished his sentence, everything turned white and I collapsed, but didn't fall over because the subway car was so packed there was no room to move. Dxxx grabbed my shirt and pulled me over to a seat where a lady got up from for me. He said my face was completely pale. I was sweating like crazy, dizzy, and my entire arms and parts of my feet felt like they were asleep. I sat there bent over, with my head between my knees, until we exited at the next stop. I sat on a bench for about 15 minutes until my arms stopped tingling. Finally, we went outside, got some apple juice and a big cookie from a street vendor. We stood around for a while and walked the rest of the way to the office. I kinda want to go back to Dxxx's place to lie down, but I'm afraid to be by myself for a bit, in case something else happens, so I'm sitting a client's office, but not really focusing since I'm still a bit light-headed and my head has a dull pain. I talked to my sister and she said it sounded like "Vasovagal" somethingortheother aka fainting, so I Googled it to find the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasovagal_syncope I don't think it's anything too serious, but just in case, my sister has her doctor friends around here, who've volunteered to take me home and watch me or check me into a hospital if something else happens, so hopefully I won't need it, but it's a good back up plan to have if necessary. | | |
| R-i-d-i-c-u-l-o-u-s-l-y fun weekend. | | |
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