San Diego in a flash

We are very used to non-rev travel. It's how we get around. We are lucky that we live in a major Hub, have no kids and know how to pack efficiently.

Last weekend was my last weekend off for a while. We wanted to take advantage of the time off so we headed to San Diego to visit the zoo.

Getting there was a challenge. With all of the fare sales, planes are getting really full. This sucks for us! Thursday night things looked grim. I had five ways for us to get there:

Dallas - Santa Ana - flight overbooked

Dallas - Los Angeles - flight overbooked

Dallas - San Diego - flight overbooked

Dallas - St. Louis - Los Angeles - just 5 seats open on each flight

Dallas - Burbank - flight nearly full but expensive rental cars

Friday morning things went nuts. On the way to the airport we could either try for the direct to Los Angeles flight or go for the Dallas-St Louis-Los Angeles option. While walking across the employee parking lot I made the choice to go for the direct to Los Angeles option. The flight was to depart at 6:15AM. The St Louis flight left at 6:40AM. I figured many real passengers would miss the flight. I was wrong. We didn't make the flight by 5 passengers. We didn't have time to make St Louis flight as it was across the airport. Crap.

Now we were in a tiffy. All the other options were all very full. I had to think outside the box.

After hammering away on my laptop, I found a way...through Austin. I booked us on an 8:50AM flight but noticed a flight leaving at 7:25AM...just a few gates away. We walked down to the gate and hopped on the flight. Once in Austin things got odd.

We had 3 hours until the Los Angeles flight left. There were only 4 open seats. At the time we were the only standbys...things look good.

Two hours to go we were sitting by the window when I noticed a plane being escorted by fire trucks making its way to the terminal. It was an AA MD80. The plane deboarded and I noticed all of the passengers were waiting in the gate area. This flight was not supposed to come here. Turns out this flight took off from Austin headed for Chicago, had an engine issue, and returned to the airport.

The engine issue was minor, appeared to be just a sensor malfunction. There was no smoke, fire or visible trauma to the engine. What happened next at first appeared to screw us....but turned out to be a great thing.

The Chicago flight was transferred to another AA MD80 standing by. This other MD80 was the plane that was supposed to be used for the Los Angeles flight. This would mean our flight was delayed. Things began to happen quickly. All of the top tier passengers for the Los Angeles flight were rebooked through Dallas or Chicago. This opened up several seats for us!

In the end there were plenty of open seats on the Austin to Los Angeles flight. Nice.

Once we got to Los Angeles we headed to Budget for our rental. I haven't rented from Budget in years. Alamo/National is our preferred company. Budget is like Thrifty/Dollar in that they aren't streamlined and easy to use. With Alamo/National I can pick my own car 99% of the time. Not with Budget.

I rented the cheapest car possible. The agent said they were out of base cars but would give me a "free upgrade" to a compact car. My options were a Hyundai Elantra or a Chevy HHR. Hmm.....give me the Elantra. I asked about a few other cars that are in the same category as the Elantra (when renting from Alamo/National), but the agent said it would be $10 a day for just about any other car. Whatever....I'll take the Elantra. They offered a navigation system for $10 a day. Who rents these anymore? I bought a $99 Fry's special last year and hacked it to be a TomTom. Most people have portable navigation units...why not pack them and save a few bucks while traveling?

The Elantra was decent...the XM radio worked. The IPOD/USB jack didn't work with my Zune. No biggie...again XM.

The drive down to San Diego took a while. Lots of traffic. We did find a In-N-Out burger though.

The hotel was in an awesome location, very close to downtown.

We checked in and then walked around the Gas Lamp district. With the Comic Con convention in town there were A LOT OF DORKs around. I felt really hip.

During dinner we were surrounded by dorks. Kelli actually had beer. She never has beer at home.

After dinner we headed to Tivoli's bar. We really liked this place, very down to earth. Of course there were a bunch of dorks here as well. Lots of people watching.

I stumbled out of the bar around 10:30 and we headed back to the hotel. Good times

The next morning we had the awesome Holiday Inn Express cinnamon rolls before heading to the San Diego zoo. The hotel had a free zoo shuttle. We arrived at 8:20AM....the zoo didn't open till 9AM. We were glad we were early. Once the gates opened we hopped on the first bus tour without waiting in line. The bus tour covered over 70% of the zoo. We saw a lot.

After the tour we walked around for a few hours before heading back to the hotel.

The flights back from Santa Ana were W-I-D-E open. During the drive back we wanted more In-N-Out burger. The first TWO.....yes I said TWO, had lines out the door and crazy long drive thru lines. We headed way out of town before finding one with only a really crowded dining area. With our bellies full of deliciousness we arrived at the airport an hour before the flight.

With such an open flight, we could pick our own seats. For some reason Kelli picked aisle seats across from each other for us. Hmm...her row was empty, but the two seats next too me were full. Thanks Kelli!

Before the flight I moved to the window seat next to Kelli. We would have the middle seat open. Once on the plane I was really glad I moved. The seat Kelli put me in was next to a couple with a 2 year old lap child. If I had been stuck there we would have had a divorce in the sky.

No further travel is planned for me until Tokyo in October. I am sure we will go somewhere. I might head up to Portland/Seattle with Kelli in a few weeks. She is going to some punk rock concert up there.

Below are photos from our trip....I actually wrote captions for a change!

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Baby Parenting Video

New video to help with my parenting skills. Now I know why Kelli got the dogs!



Baby HD from summer of tears on Vimeo.

I'm not the worst proposer in the world

So when I asked Kelli to legally be responsible for me it went as follows. I mentioned we should go to dinner. I tossed up a few ideas, but subtly pushed for Chilis. Why Chilis ?? Well that's where we first met.

We went to dinner and about 3/4 the way through she took a bite of her burger and began choking. What was she choking on? The ring! I began slapping her on the back until an off duty copy pulled me off because he thought I was beating her. Kelli slumped over and began flailing on the floor like a fish out of water. I was able to kick her in the back at the right spot to dislodge the ring, which shot across the floor, coming to a stop right in front of a drainage hole. I asked her to marry me as I was being dragged out in handcuffs. She coughed up "yes."

Ok so that was all a lie. We went to Chilis where we met. During the meal I reached in my pocket and pulled out the ring which was still in the box. I placed the box on the table and said, "well all of our friends are getting married, we might as well go ahead and do it." Kelli was stunned, but teared up and said yes. I tell you that to show you this, a guy who proposed in a worse way than I! The video is cued up...just hit play! was cued up. Just skip ahead to 5 Minutes 36 seconds. Doh!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCqvdwI6q5o#t=5m36s

The video is from a podcast I watch/listen to called Diggnation.

I love a great deal

So Thursday I was headed to Lowes to get finishing nails to reattach our baseboards. While there I decided to check out the prices on the Black & Decker lawn equipment. Glad I did!

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Lowes was having a sale on all cordless electric lawn equipment....10% off. On top of that they had 12 months no interest. Hmmm. The price on the shelf for the mower was $399. Amazon.com has the mower for $366. With the 10% off the prices are pretty close. Of course I would pay tax in the store.....but 12 months of free money. Hmmm... Then I noticed the cordless trimmer for $75. Same price on Amazon. Hmmm....after a quick text to my financial advisor (aka Kelli) it was a done deal. I thought my total would be $360 for the mower ($399 - 10%), $68 for the trimmer ($75 - 10%), $15 for trimmer string and $3 for nails. So roughly $445 plus tax.On my way to the checkout I passed a display for compact flourescent bulbs for $10. The display stated buy them now and get $10 off your next purchase. Hmmm.

Now I was the complicated shopper I hate. I went to the service desk and asked if I bought these bulbs now is it an instant coupon or a mail in rebate. After a minute or two he figured out it was instant. Deal.

I bought the bulbs and then he hang up everything else. The mower rang up for $323! The price on the shelf was wrong! This was now way lower than Amazon. The trimmer as $67.47...right on the price. For some reason the cashier rang up every item 10% off instead of just the electric items. Not a big deal, but all told I paid $408.84  + $33.73 in tax for a TOTAL of 442.57. Wow. The mower alone last week at lowes would have cost nearly that much. I got a cordless mower and trimmer for the price of the mower alone! On top of all that I get one year free money! Kelli and I take advantage of a lot of interest free offers. To make sure we don't screw up we setup automatic payments to them. Never had an issue.

For 5 years I have suffered the indignity of a cord shooting out of the back of my mower. No longer! The Black & Decker cordless mower does a great job for our size lawn. Now I can do it cordless baby!

I won't be the biggest dork in town

This upcoming weekend is going to be my last weekend off for at least a month. My schedule this month was decent in that I had Thursdays-Saturdays off (for the most part). Next month I have mostly Tuesdays thru Thursdays off. Wanting to have one more "normal" weekend...Kelli and I are heading out of town.

I spent the day yesterday looking at the map below, thinking about where we have been, where we would like to go and most importantly....how full the flights are.



Flights to Santa Ana and Los Angeles are decently light on Friday. Return flights from Santa Ana are very accomidating Saturday. Santa Ana it is.

Initially I was planning on a trip to Universal Studios. I get discount tickets through work. Then I saw they had listed this weekend as a "black out" weekend for certain pass holders. This wouldn't effect the tickets....but it could be very busy. Scratch that idea.

I then pondered what else would I like to do in California? After a bit I remembered that I am indeed married. WWKWTD (What Would Kelli Want To Do)? Ahh! The San Diego zoo!

San Diego is just 90 miles south of Santa Ana. We can't get a flight to San Diego direct (way too full). We can still fly to Santa Ana and rent a car. So that's what I set about planning.

I noticed all the hotels had REALLY high prices. I just assumed it was the norm. We have enough points between us to simply use points for the hotel room anyway. Kelli booked a Holiday Inn Express in downtown using her points. I booked a rental car using my employee discount. Total cost for the trip will be under $90.

Once everything was done I searched 'visit San Diego' and my mouth dropped. I saw the reason why the hotels were so expensive.

Damn Comic Con! The town will be full of comic book loving dorks! In addition freaks who love the Twilight series (and they are freaks!) will be in town as well. The only positive note is that maybe the zoo will be less busy.

My mother in law has had the same computer for over 6 years. Six years! She bought the computer shortly after Kelli and I met. It was nice then. Top of the line. I have replaced every computer I own at least once since then. She needs a new one. An IMac would be perfect but even the new series of Net Top computers would work. What's a Net Top computer? Well it's a small computer designed for people with basic desires....email, basic office work and web surfing. No fancy gaming, video editing, or graphics. The computers are modeled after Netbooks (which I am still researching).

Kelli is loving her Kindle DX. She is also loving my Zune 8GB.

We head to Japan in three months.

Watching TV off the grid....or is it on the grid?

So over the last month I have become hooked on podcast. My Zune got me started. I listen to audio podcast about a variety of topics. In addition I watch video podcast.

After about a week I figured out how to watch podcast on our huge TV via our XBOX 360. I would manually download higher quality (480P and 720P video) to my Windows Home Server and then use the XBOX 360 to stream them to our TV.

Today I found an RSS feed program (http://www.whsaddins.net/) to automatically download podcast to the Windows Home Server and simply stream them to the XBOX 360.

There are a TON and I mean a TON of high quality (in both video and content) video programs on the Internet. There are sitcoms, news shows and more.

Some households (although a very small percentage), have gone off the grid by canceling cable TV contracts and getting all extra content off the net. In response some cable companies are starting to impose download caps on Internet data plans. Downloading all this video takes a good chunk of bandwidth. The cable companies want consumers to pay for TV....and not get it free through the Internet.

For the most part Kelli and I watch network (NBC,ABC,CBS and FOX) television. We have a few shows we watch on standard cable TV and just two shows we watch on premium cable stations. If I can somehow find a reliable source to download the episodes in full quality....we could cut the cord...and save $800+ a year. Just a thought.

Growing up today

Something just blew my mind. Gianna and Haley (two of my nieces) will grow up thinking that pictures taken with a camera will always display right away on the back of the camera. They won't know any different. The idea of "we will see the photo later after we go to a store" will be foreign to them. I doubt they will ever have to seriously use a library. Hmm.....our own offspring will grow up even more advanced (not only because they will have half of my super superior genes, but because our house is much more wired than the average house).

I have been on the "internet" since 1993. Over sixteen years. Many of my high school and early college papers used sources on the internet as references. I still remember trying to figure out how to quote an internet source.

We now have a Google Voice phone number. This is huge. I am going to discuss with Kelli the idea of getting rid of our home phone. . I can also easily set up Google Voice to route specific calls to specific phones. For example when my Dad calls our phone number (which is an 682 area code , like our cell phones) the call will route first to my phone. My mother in law calls, it will go to Kelli's phone. When my sister in law calls it will go to hell. Just kidding Jami. The system can be set up to ring any number of phones at the same time.

When we get a voicemail the message will be transcribed and sent as a text message to our cell phone. There are many, many more features. Total cost???? FREE!!!!!!!

I eat lunchables at work to save money (cheaper than airport food). I enjoy them. I ran into a problem though.

The package includes a little 6.5 ounce water bottle and a packet for making kool-aid. The kool-aid packet states add to 8 ounces of water. Hmmm yeah....it makes some REALLY potent kool-aid.

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Now some really cool photos I took while at work.

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By posting these photos I am using both of my college majors.....Photojournalism and Sociology. Booyah!