1/13/12

Greetings from a frozen West Des Monies, IA.

The weather was great this week until Wednesday evening.  We were getting highs in the 60′s and then all of a sudden the wind shifted and now it is nasty cold out. (21 right now at 4:00pm). Did get about an inch of snow, but the wind strong enough that it is mostly in drifts around yard. It has not been above freezing the last two days.

I leave for Florida tomorrow afternoon.  May get some snow showers in the morning, but nothing that would prevent my flight from leaving.  Orlando has not been exactly balmy the past few days with highs in the lower 60′s.  Extended forecast looks like some highs in the mid-70′s for next week.  Hope it works out like that.

Work has been extra busy for me this week.  Worked hard to get things squared away before my 2 week absence.  Don’t want to leave a mess for my manager.  Have several large projects that will need lots of my attention when I return.  Also have some new projects that are starting to ramp up that I will need to get involved with soon.  Took some time to set my “Out of Office” reminders, voice mails and submit time sheets for the weeks I’m away.  Then made sure I knew how to check the voice mail for my work phone.  Think I’m good to go.

The first week in Florida will be staying at Disney’s All Star Movie Resort.  It is the cheapest Disney hotel available for the conference at $85.00 a night.  Not expecting it to be very nice, but does not really matter because I will not be in the room much.  One cool thing Disney does is provide Magical Express Motor Coach service from the airport to the hotel.  Upon my arrival I go to a special desk, give them my baggage check ticket and board the buss.  They will pick up my luggage for me and have it delivered to my room a few hours after I arrive.  This is done at no extra cost.  Works for me.

The conference is divided into sessions and I have a total of 26 different sessions selected to attend – 5 or 6 different ones each day.  They provide web sites and iPhone apps to help me keep track of it all.  My butt will probably be tired of the conference room chairs by the end of the first day.  Seems like they never have much padding on them.  :)

Brining my Kenwood ham radio along.  It is about the size of a walkie talkie and would enable me to talk via the local repeaters in Orlando.  One of the repeaters is connected to the internet via EchoLink – so it may be possible for me to chat with John with it.  It is more of a geeky endeavor then being practical… but will be cool to try out.

They usually have a celebrity appear as part of the opening session.  Will be interesting to see who they get.  I know they have Anthony Bourdain scheduled for the closing session.  On Wednesday evening the conference has SeaWorld rented as a private party. Not been there before so should be cool to check out.  The remainder of the conference I will be listening to technical sessions about Lotus products, programming, best practices and where they are heading in the future.  My department will be moving to Notes 8.5 as a development platform in the next year – so want to ramp my skills back up for it.

Last week I misplaced my eye glasses.  Can’t find them anywhere.  I’m sure they are somewhere in the apartment, but have looked everywhere.  Decided to order a new pair online using Zenni Optical.  Have seen them advertised online as offering complete glasses for $6.95 a pair.  Their website was easy to use and I ordered a pair for $28.95.  That price includes shipping.  Crazy cheap.  Pictured them being made out of aluminum foil, rubber bands and plastic wrap.  They arrived today and they are actually quite nice.  They seem quite substantial and look like I expected.  Have paid a whole lot more for glasses that are not as nice.  Will definitely order from them again.

Poor John will be left behind with Prince in Iowa.  It will not be all bad for him because he will have less interruptions for his school work.  He seems to like his current classes – networking and web design.  They seem quite technical and involved, but he likes the challenge.

Next Monday he has a meeting with a tax person to go over setting up relations with them.  Now that we own an apartment building we want to be able to take advantage of any available tax benefits.  In the past John did our taxes using TurboTax, but he thinks our situation has outgrown the software.  It would be cool to get a nice tax refund this year.  Would help fund the long list of projects we have:  new hallway carpeting, painting the exterior of the apartment building, build storage shed, have new windows installed, build a new deck on our apartment, replace the front windshields of the RV and on and on.

Not much else going on.  Need to get some laundry done yet tonight.  Plan to pack in the morning.  Need to load some movies onto my iPad to watch during the flight.  Have a direct flight on the way, but go through Denver on the way home.  That will suck.