mick's blog

I just got to witness the Shuttle Discovery fly by on the back of the 747 carrier on its way to Dulles where it will go to the Air and Space museum on static display. We were in a conference room and fortunately were on the side where we could see it quite well. We could see the chase-plane clearly - the formation was impressive.

Here's a link to the NASA site on the piggyback flight.

 A group of coworkers and I plan to go down to DC tomorrow after work and check out the cherry blossoms in the Tidal Basin. Tomorrow should be in the middle of peak viewing time (info here). Hopefully I'll get some good photos and it won't be too crowded. The festival won't start until Friday so that might help some. I'll post photos later.

We've been back home a couple of weeks now, and I'm back to my commuting to DC every week. Hawaii is starting to fade into a nice memory. I'm hoping that we get a chance to return one day. There are plenty of photos in the gallery if you want to look.

In the mean time, we're focusing on small things - friends and family, minor house projects, and I'm doing some upgrading to the Hearthstone Data Center. :-) Here's a page describing the NAS build.

Next will be finding time to make visits to the White House (Madge, TN version) and to Poverty Flats for long overdue family visits and distribution of souvenirs. Then there's a tentatively planned trip to Houston to visit more family. I think we'll stay busy this year...hopefully not TOO busy!

We're slowly packing up and enjoying our last few hours here in Hawaii. The Waikiki Beach Marriott staff have been excellent hosts and the room was fantastic.

View from room

I suppose my status has something to do with it, but they gave us a fantastic room in the corner with views of the mountains, Diamond Head and the ocean. Two balconies so we could open the sliding doors and have a wonderful breeze through the room. They gave us a late checkout so we don't have to leave the room until 6pm this evening.

I had a great time going to dinner twice (once last week and then tonight) with my cousin. We had a great couple of visits, and last week they even had to kick us out of the restaurant as they were trying to close up! It was great to catch up on the changes she and Jim are making, and how exciting her new job is. It's crazy that we have to both travel hundreds (thousands in her case!) of miles to get to spend some time together. It was well worth it though. Hopefully we'll cross paths here in the DC area again in the coming months.

Just a quick well-wish out to you all - here's hoping to a joyful and prosperous 2012 for all of us. I've again been slacking with my blog entries here as most of my infrequent updates have ended up on Google Plus or Facebook. I'll try to do better at putting things here first and linking to them outside.

I hadn't really paid attention, but my old install of Blojsom had gotten whacked in a bugged Fedora update a while back and I never got around to fixing it from backups. It's working now and you can get to it from the Old Blog link in the right nav from my blog page. It's pretty entertaining although it's a pain to see older entries in each category. The Blojsom software handled all the nav with the calendar, but since the entries are all 7 or more years old, the calendar isn't useful.

Anyway, have fun exploring if you like. Of course the "Really old blog" still works as it's straight html and is hosted right on the web server.

Great...the wheel broke off my rollaboard. This is a traveler's nightmare (probably one of several). I'm not sure if the cabbie broke it when he got my bag out of the trunk or if that was just the final straw. Well, the only good thing is I can get a new,  better bag now. I guess I shouldn't complain - this bag has served me well for 10+ years. I just have to lug it home on Friday.

All this traveling is starting to wear me out. Pittsburgh again this week, then back to Reston (DC area) next week. I think I'll just work remote the short week of Thanksgiving and get just a little break. Then it will be back to it. I right now have Dec 22-30 off - I hope that holds up. I've been extended on my current project to the end of January, so more Pittsburgh and DC. Somewhere in there I have to spend a couple of days in Las Vegas for a company leadership meeting.

Oh, well - I'll build up my frequent flyer miles quickly ;-)

We went fishing on Saturday (Oct 22, 2011) at Natchez Trace State Park near Lexington, TN. and had a great time! I picked up Trey around 9am and then stopped by and got Sherman and little Sherman around 10. We took the Durango so we had plenty of room - we even took Trey's little 4-wheeler. He calls it his "bike". We got to the Pin Oak campground at around 12:30 and met up with Mom, Ruthie, Shelli, and Henry. Pop, Forrest, and Cash were out on the water when we got there, but they showed up around 45 minutes later. In the mean time, we went down to the play area and let the boys wade. Cash and Forrest joined us down there. Then we got the word that lunch was ready, so we headed back up to the campground.

Lunch was really great - lots to pick from. The campsite has a nice, big picnic table and we had plenty of room for everything and everyone. Skookie came down and joined us also - he was staying in the lodge. The boys rode around on the 4 wheeler while the grown-ups finished lunch.