Flu Haiku

One oh two point five.
Please, not pneumonia again.
I hate being sick.

Business Travel

I fly a decent amount depending on the project I'm on. As I've mentioned before, I'm a fan of Continental Airlines mainly because I was able to reach mileage milestones that gave me elite status. Unfortunately they don't have direct flights from SFO to San Diego (where my current project is). This is usually the case since Continental's hubs are Houston (their main one), Cleveland, and Newark. So basically, if I fly Continental, more often than not I have a stopover in one of those cities. And this a problem for good amount of airlines. Bay Area airports (SFO, OAK, and SJC) aren't really hubs for any major airlines that I'm aware of. That could all change with Virgin Airlines.

Right now they're ready to fly but don't have approval from the Department of Transportation. That sucks! They'll be based out of San Francisco and their first cities they plan to fly to are New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC, San Diego, and Las Vegas -- all awesome destinations. Go to the site and see what they could bring to low-cost airfare.

I know, I know. I get excited over stupid little things but when a company compels me to become a fanboy, I dive in. I could easily become a fanboy of this airline, especially if I could earn elite status again.

Sorry if this was a boring blog for you. But for those who are on airplanes a good amount of time, Virgin Airlines would be a great option to have.

"German for whale's vagina"

For the next couple of weeks I'll be on a new project down in San Diego. If anyone's down there and wants to meet up feel free to let me know.

Blue Marble

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam." - Carl Sagan

I suppose this is kind of a weird blog but I'm sitting here at home watching Cosmic Voyage on one of the channels I have and it reminded me of that quote above and I thought it was amazing. I know, I know. It sounds like I should be high, right? Cosmic Voyage? I mean, come on. But I'm not. Anyway, then it reminded me of this video which I thought was crazy (great music and all)...



And then! In the Cosmic Voyage I think they did a remake of the "Powers of 10" video (I think Jeff may have showed me that one) but this time Morgan Freeman was narrating. So I looked for it and here it is (the new version)...



And for some reason, I just think it's freakin' amazing. I guess it's sorta geeky and you may find no interest in it at all but I think it's kind of profound, especially when you think about it as Carl Sagan put it. I started to put it in the perspective of what's going on in the world and it makes you think. Interesting stuff, in my opinion.

2006 Year in Review, Part 2

I thought this might happen... I wouldn't follow up my previous blog with what I said I would. Ah well... Here's some quick hits:

Work
It's been an interesting year for work -- pretty much my first real work since graduating. I worked for four different clients, worked in three different cities, and actually didn't mind it too much. In all, it brought me out to Cleveland (Akron), Seattle quite briefly, and Santa Clara (haha, which probably doesn't count as a different city). But it also took me out to Las Vegas for a conference, and Irvine for our headquarters. I hope there will be other nice places to visit soon. Which brings us to...

Travel
On the Boeing 737-800, you typically do not want to be in the 29th row since it sits directly across from the restrooms. A broken door that doesn't allow it to fully close when unoccupied can be brutal. Luckily I was able to move. However, on a 737-700 there's only 25 rows in economy class, and the only time you want to be in either seat B or E (which are typically middle seats) is when you're in row 12. In lucky row number 12, it's an exit row and there is no window seat. So the middle seat pretty much becomes a combination of a window and an aisle. It's pretty nice. The row after it, 14 (there are no row 13's in planes), is also sorta nice if you get the window seat because there is no seat in front of you.

These are things I learned during my various trips while away on business. Continental Airlines has a fan in me. Since February I've accumulated a little over 110,000 miles with them. Of course, not all of those are actual miles I've traveled, but I think it's a cool little statistic. It's sort of sad that the biggest thing I looked forward to when traveling to Ohio was reaching various mileage milestones. 50,000 took a while, but after that it was pretty quick.

Friends
My friends seem happy, and that's always a good thing.

Family
My cousin got married and that was pretty awesome.

Life
Life is pretty good right now. I'm "working" from home which is never really a good thing because of my ADD, but it's ok. Work hasn't gotten mad yet.

Future
Who knows what the future will bring? Alls I knows is that this blog will come to an end. Now.

I know. It was a half-assed effort but I have to get back to "working".

2006 Year in Review, Part 1

I'm sitting here at work in Akron, Ohio on what is probably my n-teenth trip out here and I got to thinking that this year has been an interesting one. Who would have thought that a Filipino boy from the slums of San Jose would be finding himself in Akron of all places? I looked back at a blog I had on December 30th of last year that I posted while sitting in a Tampa, Florida airport. In it I had written that I was slowly assimilating into the working world and lo and behold, here I am, seemingly assimilated. It's crazy to think what has become of this year.

I also wrote myself two new year's resolutions. One was to lose weight you fat ass. That one didn't work too well. But the other, to make 2006 a kick-ass year, is open to interpretation. And that brings me to this blog. I haven't blogged as much as in my hey-day but for my own, and my future self's, stake, I write before you my 2006 Year in Review. To tell you the truth, it's probably not going to be very interesting so if you don't read it, you won't have missed much. But I plan to touch upon the following topics over the next couple of days and hopefully I'll be able to judge whether or not I accomplished what I set out to do at the beginning of the year.

- Work
- Travel
- Friends
- Family
- Life
- Future

I don't know that they'll all be separated by topic. Some of those may only be one or two comments long and may also spill into other topics. But I thought it was a good starting point for review. So there you have it. If you have any suggestions, feel free. Here we go...

What the Pho

I had dinner with some of the team today and passed by a restaurant named "What the Pho". I thought it was amusing.

If you didn't know, yesterday (Happy Birthday, Pa) I flew out to Seattle after dinner. Today I started on a new project with a company you may have heard about. In fact, three others (Thomas, JJ and Ei) are on various projects for the same company but I don't think they're here in Seattle. Not yet at least.

So I'll be flying out here doing the consulting thing for the next month or so. It's sorta interesting to be back on the plane with the Monday through Thursday schedule. I had gotten used to having a local gig. But at least this isn't in Ohio. I don't even know if they've heard of Pho in Akron.