Ok, first of all, all my friends (and more) deserve a quick explanation. My internet is switched over to a new provider, so I'm back now for a good long while (and soon my personal web page as well, once I get the box back together).
As for the last few days, I went on a trip to DC. With the company that I work for, we just opened a new office a block from the White House, and I had the dubious distinction of being the one to fly out for 2 days and install the ethernet network, wireless network, printers, computers, and internet connection. Whee!
I flew out Thursday afternoon to Cincinatti where I laid over for my trip to DC. The planes were small Delta Connection planes with four seat rows and one aisle; the trips lasting about 1.5 and 1 hours respectively. I swear we flew lower than other larger planes I'd flown on before, but that may just be me, as I'd not flown for a few years.
One odd thing to me comes from my biological sciences background and interests (I love natural sciences, and money aside I'd probably have been a biological/microbiological/wildlife scientist). I'd noticed a number of years ago when I spent a summer in San Francisco that from way up in the sky, the ground looked like a sandy beach somewhere over the southwest. In fact, it was so striking as I wrote in my journal way up in the air, that I could have swore it was a beach...and it occurred to me how mathematical nature is....how precise, and despite all the chaos, how still very predictable and ordered it all is. Looking down from hundreds of thousands of feet onto dry windswept ground looked identical in form and composition to looking down at a beach with the tide out from 6 feet above it. In this case, it was the gentle folds of the eastern hills as we passed away from the flat farmlands of the midwest into the middle eastern forests and hills. It all was still so similar in funciton and formation...that no matter what micro or macroscopic level one is on...it's all ordered by the same laws, the same organics, chemistry, needs, math...just at different scales.
Anyway, heading into and out of DC, no one is allowed to stand up on the plane for the last 30 minutes of the flight (or first 30 heading out of DC) under penalty of diverting the plane. Weird....
DC was itself nice, although I'm glad I had a cab and was not driving. The route from Reagan Intern'l to the White House is a fast and furious rat's nest of on ramps and off ramps...with so many inter-connecting that I had no idea if we were even getting on or off anything in particular.
The weather was about 60, and a bit windy, which was nice compared to the barely warming-up 40's back in Iowa. I got in to my hotel about 5 blocks from the White House, dug in a bit, called home, and promptly headed to the office. The guards here are the same as any other major city at night: willing to let you in as long as you've the balls to just ask to be let in (and you look decent). So I got in and started unpacking the 10 boxes that preceded my arrival. After taking inventory, I headed back home and watched Underworld on my laptop while partaking of some room service before slipping into bed.
The next day was interesting...a few firewall issues had to be ironed out, had to locate a store to buy some supplies left at home (never network afar without a crossover cable...ugh), and wasted 2.5 hours on a possessed wireless card (provided by my boss, who expressed profuse apologies later when I explained the issues...he knew one of his cards was fuxed, but didn't know which one...now he knows
).
All in all, got most of the stuff done I wanted to on the first day except hooking up the printers. Sadly, purchasing on my company does not always go through the right channels (me). So I was met with three printers. One had no USB cable, the other had only a USB connection in back and was located only near an ethernet jack, and the other was located near, of all things, only a phone jack. Whee.
Spent Friday night wandering up to and around the Georgetown area...very happening place, very lively, and pretty fun for exploring it alone. Came back home with Haagen-Dahs(sp) in hand (Belgian Chocolate Chocolate malt...mmmm). Also, I must say, DC is cleaner than I expected, with far less homeless people in that area, despite the deep history of the city.
The next day brought more frustration with the printers, so I hopped a cab to a nearby Best Buy (within walking distance, but it's hard to pedestrian one's way across two choked freeways). While there, I walked 2 blocks to visit the Pentagon (later saw in from the sky as we flew out), got a ride in another cab past The Washington Monument, and headed back into the office to complete my tasks.
Of note..I never did walk the 1 block around the Executive Building to see the White House in person...but hopefully I will someday soon, as our recent ventures almost assure my team alone will double in size, with plenty of work to be done in the DC area with hefty government contracts.
The flight out was nice. Reagan Intern'l was dead for a busy airport on Saturday. Security checks, while thorough now, had absolutely no lines, and it was a very laid back airport and couple flights home on half full airplanes. I simply played Gameboy and on my laptop for the duractions.
In Cincinatti on the layover home, this dainty and somewhat cute redhead sat down across from my in the terminal, gave a nice smile and pulled out a magazine, greeted in return with a smile from me, but otherwise didn't think much of it. Soon though, a girl sat down next to her and talked, had someone take her picture with the girl, and wandered off. All I caught was that the redhead was heading home to Mississippi. A few minutes later, a guy, and even later two airline staff members came over and got autographs all. My interest piqued, but I still had no idea who this girl was...obviously television since I don't watch. So I get on the plane and the girl who had her picture taken sat behind me, and I found out it was a Lori Smith from Trading Spaces. Neat.
Of late note, another macro/micro issue hit me in the plane. The flight from Cincy to Des Moines took place for 1.5 hours from 9pm until 9:30pm (time change in there...), so it was dark. It was also clear. A quick glance at the sky showed me the constellation Orion (I'll explain my unwanted fascination with Orion in another post if someone reminds me) in a very clear sky. As I said before, the planes didn't seem to fly as high as I recalled, and I had a clear view of every pinpoint of light from farms, cars, and towns on the ground. It was rather beautiful, stars both above and below...and I realized while looking at the clusters of lights from towns, which snaked away like tendrils along roads to spread out amongst farms, barely outlining the back roads and busier highways, back into clusters of towns...that much as looking at a cell on a microsopic level, with the cells following their paths, clusters in the energy and differentiation centers, all going about their business, was much like the development of economics, people, cities, towns...all so much like the innerworkings of little cells with their nuclei and outer areas. So many things can be broken down into such simple forms in life...we think we're so much heavier and above such "laws" as physics, chemistry, math, and thus biology...but really, it's all parallel. We only have our thoughts and our emotions that keep us "above" if one prefers that term.
Anyway....such a long post, hopefully one or two people enjoy the full of it.
As for the last few days, I went on a trip to DC. With the company that I work for, we just opened a new office a block from the White House, and I had the dubious distinction of being the one to fly out for 2 days and install the ethernet network, wireless network, printers, computers, and internet connection. Whee!
I flew out Thursday afternoon to Cincinatti where I laid over for my trip to DC. The planes were small Delta Connection planes with four seat rows and one aisle; the trips lasting about 1.5 and 1 hours respectively. I swear we flew lower than other larger planes I'd flown on before, but that may just be me, as I'd not flown for a few years.
One odd thing to me comes from my biological sciences background and interests (I love natural sciences, and money aside I'd probably have been a biological/microbiological/wildlife scientist). I'd noticed a number of years ago when I spent a summer in San Francisco that from way up in the sky, the ground looked like a sandy beach somewhere over the southwest. In fact, it was so striking as I wrote in my journal way up in the air, that I could have swore it was a beach...and it occurred to me how mathematical nature is....how precise, and despite all the chaos, how still very predictable and ordered it all is. Looking down from hundreds of thousands of feet onto dry windswept ground looked identical in form and composition to looking down at a beach with the tide out from 6 feet above it. In this case, it was the gentle folds of the eastern hills as we passed away from the flat farmlands of the midwest into the middle eastern forests and hills. It all was still so similar in funciton and formation...that no matter what micro or macroscopic level one is on...it's all ordered by the same laws, the same organics, chemistry, needs, math...just at different scales.
Anyway, heading into and out of DC, no one is allowed to stand up on the plane for the last 30 minutes of the flight (or first 30 heading out of DC) under penalty of diverting the plane. Weird....
DC was itself nice, although I'm glad I had a cab and was not driving. The route from Reagan Intern'l to the White House is a fast and furious rat's nest of on ramps and off ramps...with so many inter-connecting that I had no idea if we were even getting on or off anything in particular.
The weather was about 60, and a bit windy, which was nice compared to the barely warming-up 40's back in Iowa. I got in to my hotel about 5 blocks from the White House, dug in a bit, called home, and promptly headed to the office. The guards here are the same as any other major city at night: willing to let you in as long as you've the balls to just ask to be let in (and you look decent). So I got in and started unpacking the 10 boxes that preceded my arrival. After taking inventory, I headed back home and watched Underworld on my laptop while partaking of some room service before slipping into bed.
The next day was interesting...a few firewall issues had to be ironed out, had to locate a store to buy some supplies left at home (never network afar without a crossover cable...ugh), and wasted 2.5 hours on a possessed wireless card (provided by my boss, who expressed profuse apologies later when I explained the issues...he knew one of his cards was fuxed, but didn't know which one...now he knows
).
All in all, got most of the stuff done I wanted to on the first day except hooking up the printers. Sadly, purchasing on my company does not always go through the right channels (me). So I was met with three printers. One had no USB cable, the other had only a USB connection in back and was located only near an ethernet jack, and the other was located near, of all things, only a phone jack. Whee.
Spent Friday night wandering up to and around the Georgetown area...very happening place, very lively, and pretty fun for exploring it alone. Came back home with Haagen-Dahs(sp) in hand (Belgian Chocolate Chocolate malt...mmmm). Also, I must say, DC is cleaner than I expected, with far less homeless people in that area, despite the deep history of the city.
The next day brought more frustration with the printers, so I hopped a cab to a nearby Best Buy (within walking distance, but it's hard to pedestrian one's way across two choked freeways). While there, I walked 2 blocks to visit the Pentagon (later saw in from the sky as we flew out), got a ride in another cab past The Washington Monument, and headed back into the office to complete my tasks.
Of note..I never did walk the 1 block around the Executive Building to see the White House in person...but hopefully I will someday soon, as our recent ventures almost assure my team alone will double in size, with plenty of work to be done in the DC area with hefty government contracts.
The flight out was nice. Reagan Intern'l was dead for a busy airport on Saturday. Security checks, while thorough now, had absolutely no lines, and it was a very laid back airport and couple flights home on half full airplanes. I simply played Gameboy and on my laptop for the duractions.
In Cincinatti on the layover home, this dainty and somewhat cute redhead sat down across from my in the terminal, gave a nice smile and pulled out a magazine, greeted in return with a smile from me, but otherwise didn't think much of it. Soon though, a girl sat down next to her and talked, had someone take her picture with the girl, and wandered off. All I caught was that the redhead was heading home to Mississippi. A few minutes later, a guy, and even later two airline staff members came over and got autographs all. My interest piqued, but I still had no idea who this girl was...obviously television since I don't watch. So I get on the plane and the girl who had her picture taken sat behind me, and I found out it was a Lori Smith from Trading Spaces. Neat.
Of late note, another macro/micro issue hit me in the plane. The flight from Cincy to Des Moines took place for 1.5 hours from 9pm until 9:30pm (time change in there...), so it was dark. It was also clear. A quick glance at the sky showed me the constellation Orion (I'll explain my unwanted fascination with Orion in another post if someone reminds me) in a very clear sky. As I said before, the planes didn't seem to fly as high as I recalled, and I had a clear view of every pinpoint of light from farms, cars, and towns on the ground. It was rather beautiful, stars both above and below...and I realized while looking at the clusters of lights from towns, which snaked away like tendrils along roads to spread out amongst farms, barely outlining the back roads and busier highways, back into clusters of towns...that much as looking at a cell on a microsopic level, with the cells following their paths, clusters in the energy and differentiation centers, all going about their business, was much like the development of economics, people, cities, towns...all so much like the innerworkings of little cells with their nuclei and outer areas. So many things can be broken down into such simple forms in life...we think we're so much heavier and above such "laws" as physics, chemistry, math, and thus biology...but really, it's all parallel. We only have our thoughts and our emotions that keep us "above" if one prefers that term.
Anyway....such a long post, hopefully one or two people enjoy the full of it.
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
glad you had a good trip.