Shortly, The Update

I realized today that I haven’t been very post-y for a while, so I thought I’d offer a quick update. Bullet-style, natch.

• A couple of weeks ago I had my first week-long vacation since my honeymoon seven years ago. Nik and I spent a night in Santa Cruz with a hotel room that overlooked the ocean, had a nice romantic dinner and spent a very long time the next day trying to find a decent place to eat lunch. Later in the week we headed down to Southern California for several days where we met up with Lister and Whimsy. We went to GenCon and spent some time at Disneyland as well.
• GenCon was fun but a touch disappointing, probably because most of the events were expensive (which meant they were pricey on top of the already hefty registration fee just to be an official con attendee). We had fun and I am certainly glad I went but I don’t know that I’ll make it a habit when the cons we have locally are just as fun plus they’re cheaper and don’t involve lengthy car rides down I-5, also known as “The Boringest Highway Known to Man.”
• Disneyland was amusing as usual, although my previous conclusions that Disneyland is, at this point in my life, probably best enjoyed somewhere down the line when children are involved. California Screamin’ is still one of the most well executed roller coasters around though so I’m not really complaining, but a lot of the rides feel like they could use some fresh ideas. Even when they do try something different like with the Space Mountain makeover, the end result is sorta underwhelming. The bottom line with the new SM is that it’s faster, darker and some of the space-age stuff in the main loading room has been updated (but not changed drastically) but the actual ride itself is missing some of the more thrilling dips and turns. Lacking any serious drops or loops or anything else it’s only claim to fame above a ride you might find at a cut-rate park like Santa Cruz’s Boardwalk is the darkness and some nifty light effects at the beginning and end of the ride.
• Immediately after returning home from vacation I started my new job at LiveOps. Granted it has only been four days so far (last week was cut short by Thanksgiving) but I really like the new place. Most of the jobs that I’ve had in the tech industry involve co-workers who go on and on about how great the job used to be; here I feel like I’m finally working somewhere that the good ol’ days are now.
• Speaking of Thanksgiving, we had a nice one with Nik’s family. But can I just say how much it drives me insane when people insist on calling it “Turkey Day?” We were listening to some idiot DJ the other day on Sirius who went off on a Thanksgiving tangent wherein he must have used the phrase “Turkey Day” about thirteen times. What makes that remarkable is that what he was saying didn’t require him to use any specific proper noun after about the second time because it was perfectly clear what he was talking about so it was almost like he was drilling the phrase into listeners’ heads. To what end that might have been I have no clue, but it was so annoying that even Nik (who was trying to nap in the car at the time) caught it and knew exactly what I was talking about when I brought it up later on.
• My schedule is going to be full on lunacy for the next few weeks as I train for this job; I’m supposed to shadow all the various engineers at the Network Operations Center (NOC) for a week each but since the NOC is technically supposed to be open 24/7, the shifts range from regular 9-to-5 style to crazy swing shifts. Adding to the madness is the 4×10 schedule (four ten hour shifts) so updates may be few and far between for a while. I mean, I’m currently writing this at 2:55 am, so you know something has got to be weird right now.

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