Please do not say "definitely" when you mean "certainly". They are NOT the same thing. Everyone (even Google) seems to think that they mean pretty much the same thing; but I disagree. My argument is the following:
"Definitely", I think, means "by definition". When a girl says: "I'm definitely going to Josh's party tonight!", she's expressing herself imprecisely! She is not going to the party "by definition". What she is really expressing is her willingness to attend the party, and with that, the high probability of that event happening. But it is not true "by definition". It will become true because she wants it to become true. So really, she is ascertaining the fact that this event will occur (her attending the party). A more precise way to express this, then, is "I'm certainly going to Josh's party tonight!".
And this is, of course, just my own personally-biased, etymologically-based argument.
And at the creation time of this entry, I also had another word which I was going to present here. But it's been about a month since then, and I forgot it. I present my apologies.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Sullen
The air is heavy, all sounds are dull...
I was going to rhyme some phrases to describe the current mood in the office, but I quickly ran out of words this time. Today was not the happiest of days at the office. I don't know about the mood of each person there for certain, but today was the first day, since I started working there about a year ago, that I've felt the office itself have an air of sullenness.
I really mean the office itself felt gloomy. Four dismissals since two fridays ago, and even then most people were still cheery and discreetly joked about it. But this last fifth one felt like they took the wrong Jenga block out of the tower. Nothing really came crashing down (except maybe morale), but for a while there, I could feel that everything was changed.
It looked pretty much the same, people seemed to be doing pretty much what they usually do, but the feeling was right there, heavy, thick, almost solid enough to lean on.
***
That was little less than a month ago - I'm finishing off this entry due to previous incompleteness. Sorry for not taking care of you like before, Blog. I keep trying.
I was going to rhyme some phrases to describe the current mood in the office, but I quickly ran out of words this time. Today was not the happiest of days at the office. I don't know about the mood of each person there for certain, but today was the first day, since I started working there about a year ago, that I've felt the office itself have an air of sullenness.
I really mean the office itself felt gloomy. Four dismissals since two fridays ago, and even then most people were still cheery and discreetly joked about it. But this last fifth one felt like they took the wrong Jenga block out of the tower. Nothing really came crashing down (except maybe morale), but for a while there, I could feel that everything was changed.
It looked pretty much the same, people seemed to be doing pretty much what they usually do, but the feeling was right there, heavy, thick, almost solid enough to lean on.
***
That was little less than a month ago - I'm finishing off this entry due to previous incompleteness. Sorry for not taking care of you like before, Blog. I keep trying.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Moon Aura
The apartment complex that contains the apartment whose address I currently use as my mailing address also contains a pool area, which in turn contains a swimming pool (and a hot tub). During the spring and summer months last year, I used to go there as often as I could to enjoy the amenities that the pool area had to offer: swimming, cool water, hot water, a great downtown view, and the occasional pretty girl(s) dressed in swimsuit(s) with whom I frequently engaged in introductory, frivolous, pool-style conversations with topics such as where were we from, what did we "do", how long had we lived there, how long could we hold our breaths, alcohol, hookah, and Austin nightclubs.
But as Summer fell and Fall rose, it seemed that the pool was not being well taken care of. One day I went to swim, I could taste a bitter chemical taste in the water. (And some people have asked "well, why did you taste it?". And in case you were wondering too, it's just common to get some water in your mouth while swimming - it becomes natural when immersing your face in the water all the time) It was a terrible taste, but it was slight at first, so I thought I could still swim every now and again, ignoring the taste. But it got stronger. And stronger. And stronger. And stronger. And then I just decided I couldn't do it anymore. I always tried to ignore it, but eventually my body reacted to the taste with discomfort and nausea, so I sadly decided not to go swimming there anymore until the pool was not bitter-tasting anymore.
And the year passed by. And every now and again I would walk into the pool area and put a handful of water into my mouth to taste it. And it kept on tasting bitter and chemical, again, and again, and again. Until last Saturday. Last Saturday night, I thought I'd give it another try and, whoopee! hurrah!, the pool's water didn't taste bitter anymore! I was so excited! I went to my apartment, and thought about going to swim right then and there, but it was already after 2000 (hours), so I procrastinated my swimming until the next day.
The next day (Sunday), I slept until early afternoon and procrastinated so much on my daily activities (by activities including playing and finishing the XBox Kung Fu Panda game, which by the way, is PRETTY GREAT!! (considering it came free with the XBox)) that it was already 2230 before I decided to give swimming another try. So I walked out dressed in shorts, t-shirt, tennis shoes, and a towel on my shoulder, ready to enjoy the pleasure of swimming once again. But as I was walking towards the pool, I realized that the current winter weather might hinder my idea of swimming that night being pleasant.
So I walked to the hot tub and took off my shirt and shoes. The air temperature must've been around 40F, 45F tops, because my bare feet felt hurt, stung by the cold rock pathway under it. I quickly got into the hot tub and relaxed, trying to get ready for the cold swimming session ahead. After I was wet enough, I got out of the hot tub, and stepped into a two-feet depth of swimming pool water. It felt very cold, but tolerable, so I went in two more feet. Several parts of my body were hurting by now, but I decided I could live with it once I got warmed up by swimming. And then I plunged into the water, and then I felt it - my feet hurt so much that they seemed to go numb, my fingers felt frozen, and my brain went into survival mode. I swam one 15-m length of the pool and hurriedly got out, my feet stinging like crazy when they touched the floor, and my testicles cramped up tight, as if snuggling to get warm. I thought "I can't swim too much if I feel like this", but I decided to give it another try. So I walked around the pool and tried again. And again all the hurting, freezing, numbing sensations came back. So then I sadly decided to leave the pool area and come back when the weather and water became warmer.
On my way back to the apartment, I looked up at the sky. It was CLEAR. I saw no clouds, only dozens of stars of differing colors and sizes, and a big, round, silver, bright, beautiful moon. The moon looked awesome (By the way, I would like to start using aweful as a word. I understand awful has negative connotations associated with it, so I'm defining aweful as an adjective that describes something which does not only deserve and produce some awe (as awesome describes), but that deserves and produces all possible awe! (In that context, we should also refrain from saying things like somewhat useful, but that's another story)). I could clearly see its bare "continents" and dry "seas", and several silver halos surrounded it with quiet magnificence. Though humid and cold, I kept on watching. It was so pretty and calm - the great shining silver moon "floating" so high up in the "sky".
Then the halos reminded me of a visual effect I sometimes like to produce on objects around me. Looking at an object somewhat unfocusedly for a while, I may begin to see a trace of color around the object, which I like to think of as being the "aura" of the object, but could very well only be an obscure (for me) optical effect that acts on the edges of objects, and that's visible only when observing the object closely (and they could also happen to be the same thing). So I did that with the moon. I stared at it for a while and focused on the edges, and tried to achieve the same effect. Sure enough, after a while, I saw the moon's "aura" appear, right beside the moon's edges. It was of a beautiful intense night blue, and the moon itself had blurred to a shining white ball with almost unnoticeable irregularities on its surface. It was quite a beautiful color, so I continued watching, playing with the focus a little bit here and there, and as I refocused in a certain way, I saw the moon's aura change. It became bright shining violet. This aura seemed thicker and stronger than the blue one, but there was still a thin trace of the same intense blue inside the new violet halo. It was beautiful. And then I noticed the moon itself, right in the middle. It now didn't seem as solid as before, but it was just a big white shining circle, and on the surface I saw 3 internal tangent ellipses, concentric with the circle, radially symettrical, so that it resembled a great white shining atom, its brilliance slightly stirring as if alive. (Will post drawing when I manage to draw something similar to what I saw)
For some reason, looking at the moon made me want to try to swim in the pool again. And so I plunged into the water again. And it was still just as cold, and it felt just about as painful as before. I decided three times was enough for one night and went back to my apartment to warm up.
Please, please, if you read this, try to look at the moon this way. Ignore the cold if any - you won't regret it. It is GREAT!!! GREAT. GREAT. COMPLETELY AWEFUL. Now I want to look at the moon every night to see how its aura changes as its phase changes too. I'd like to do the same with the sun too, but I'm pretty sure I would sustain permanent eye damage if I did. And can't do it with other stars - they already look too small to try to find a recognizable border around them (although I have recently seen stars that twinkle between yellowish and red, bluish, and sometimes even green. Once I saw a star that was so multicolored that I thought it wasn't even a star. But sure enough, it stayed there for at least 30 minutes, so I can't think of what else it was). But yeah, the night sky can be much more entertaining and pretty than it may seem at a glance.
But as Summer fell and Fall rose, it seemed that the pool was not being well taken care of. One day I went to swim, I could taste a bitter chemical taste in the water. (And some people have asked "well, why did you taste it?". And in case you were wondering too, it's just common to get some water in your mouth while swimming - it becomes natural when immersing your face in the water all the time) It was a terrible taste, but it was slight at first, so I thought I could still swim every now and again, ignoring the taste. But it got stronger. And stronger. And stronger. And stronger. And then I just decided I couldn't do it anymore. I always tried to ignore it, but eventually my body reacted to the taste with discomfort and nausea, so I sadly decided not to go swimming there anymore until the pool was not bitter-tasting anymore.
And the year passed by. And every now and again I would walk into the pool area and put a handful of water into my mouth to taste it. And it kept on tasting bitter and chemical, again, and again, and again. Until last Saturday. Last Saturday night, I thought I'd give it another try and, whoopee! hurrah!, the pool's water didn't taste bitter anymore! I was so excited! I went to my apartment, and thought about going to swim right then and there, but it was already after 2000 (hours), so I procrastinated my swimming until the next day.
The next day (Sunday), I slept until early afternoon and procrastinated so much on my daily activities (by activities including playing and finishing the XBox Kung Fu Panda game, which by the way, is PRETTY GREAT!! (considering it came free with the XBox)) that it was already 2230 before I decided to give swimming another try. So I walked out dressed in shorts, t-shirt, tennis shoes, and a towel on my shoulder, ready to enjoy the pleasure of swimming once again. But as I was walking towards the pool, I realized that the current winter weather might hinder my idea of swimming that night being pleasant.
So I walked to the hot tub and took off my shirt and shoes. The air temperature must've been around 40F, 45F tops, because my bare feet felt hurt, stung by the cold rock pathway under it. I quickly got into the hot tub and relaxed, trying to get ready for the cold swimming session ahead. After I was wet enough, I got out of the hot tub, and stepped into a two-feet depth of swimming pool water. It felt very cold, but tolerable, so I went in two more feet. Several parts of my body were hurting by now, but I decided I could live with it once I got warmed up by swimming. And then I plunged into the water, and then I felt it - my feet hurt so much that they seemed to go numb, my fingers felt frozen, and my brain went into survival mode. I swam one 15-m length of the pool and hurriedly got out, my feet stinging like crazy when they touched the floor, and my testicles cramped up tight, as if snuggling to get warm. I thought "I can't swim too much if I feel like this", but I decided to give it another try. So I walked around the pool and tried again. And again all the hurting, freezing, numbing sensations came back. So then I sadly decided to leave the pool area and come back when the weather and water became warmer.
On my way back to the apartment, I looked up at the sky. It was CLEAR. I saw no clouds, only dozens of stars of differing colors and sizes, and a big, round, silver, bright, beautiful moon. The moon looked awesome (By the way, I would like to start using aweful as a word. I understand awful has negative connotations associated with it, so I'm defining aweful as an adjective that describes something which does not only deserve and produce some awe (as awesome describes), but that deserves and produces all possible awe! (In that context, we should also refrain from saying things like somewhat useful, but that's another story)). I could clearly see its bare "continents" and dry "seas", and several silver halos surrounded it with quiet magnificence. Though humid and cold, I kept on watching. It was so pretty and calm - the great shining silver moon "floating" so high up in the "sky".
Then the halos reminded me of a visual effect I sometimes like to produce on objects around me. Looking at an object somewhat unfocusedly for a while, I may begin to see a trace of color around the object, which I like to think of as being the "aura" of the object, but could very well only be an obscure (for me) optical effect that acts on the edges of objects, and that's visible only when observing the object closely (and they could also happen to be the same thing). So I did that with the moon. I stared at it for a while and focused on the edges, and tried to achieve the same effect. Sure enough, after a while, I saw the moon's "aura" appear, right beside the moon's edges. It was of a beautiful intense night blue, and the moon itself had blurred to a shining white ball with almost unnoticeable irregularities on its surface. It was quite a beautiful color, so I continued watching, playing with the focus a little bit here and there, and as I refocused in a certain way, I saw the moon's aura change. It became bright shining violet. This aura seemed thicker and stronger than the blue one, but there was still a thin trace of the same intense blue inside the new violet halo. It was beautiful. And then I noticed the moon itself, right in the middle. It now didn't seem as solid as before, but it was just a big white shining circle, and on the surface I saw 3 internal tangent ellipses, concentric with the circle, radially symettrical, so that it resembled a great white shining atom, its brilliance slightly stirring as if alive. (Will post drawing when I manage to draw something similar to what I saw)
For some reason, looking at the moon made me want to try to swim in the pool again. And so I plunged into the water again. And it was still just as cold, and it felt just about as painful as before. I decided three times was enough for one night and went back to my apartment to warm up.
Please, please, if you read this, try to look at the moon this way. Ignore the cold if any - you won't regret it. It is GREAT!!! GREAT. GREAT. COMPLETELY AWEFUL. Now I want to look at the moon every night to see how its aura changes as its phase changes too. I'd like to do the same with the sun too, but I'm pretty sure I would sustain permanent eye damage if I did. And can't do it with other stars - they already look too small to try to find a recognizable border around them (although I have recently seen stars that twinkle between yellowish and red, bluish, and sometimes even green. Once I saw a star that was so multicolored that I thought it wasn't even a star. But sure enough, it stayed there for at least 30 minutes, so I can't think of what else it was). But yeah, the night sky can be much more entertaining and pretty than it may seem at a glance.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
45^2-4^2
Glückliches neues Jahr 2009!!!*
*Restricted to the Gregorian Solar Calendar. Variations between time zones and cultures may apply. Batteries not included.
Yup, it's January again. (I didn't really see you soon, did I blog? :S ) Month of beginnings, according to the Gregorian Calendar. Did you know it's still Christmas back in the 'ole Julian Calendar? I just found out that the only difference between these two calendars is that, in the Julian calendar, a year is considered (on average) 365.25 days long, and in the Gregorian Calendar, it's considered 365.2425 days long. Cause of all the leap-year rules and stuff. Summary of leap-year rules below:
(The last rule ROCKS!!! It allowed me to have uninterrupted 4-year intervals between ALL of my birthdays (so far), even through our last transition between the milennia!!)
What differentiates 365- and 366-day years is, of course, whether they contain February 29 (YEAH!!!!) as one of their days. So that's about it. It's now January for most of us "modern" citizens of the world, Christmas for Old-Style Orthodox churches, and month 12 of the year WuZi according to some online chinese calendar converter I found on Google.
Speaking of January, there was a venetian guy who painted the following:
and named it "January". I guess it depicts winter-activities... I like the realism achieved by it. Except for the guy (angel?) coming down in a cloud at the top. And for the fact that it only seems to apply to northern-hemisphere areas, of course.
Wikipedia also told me that the name "January" comes from Janus, the roman god of doorways, beginnings, and endings, and that also based on that name is the word "janitor", who nowadays is supposed to take care of halls and doorways. Sort of.
Anyway... with a new year comes with a new life. Really? No, not really. But it does come with lots of anthropocentric reminders of a lot of cycles occurring all around us - the changing seasons, avian migratorial patterns, non-human-animal reproductive and behavioral cycles, annual taxes, anniversaries of special occasions and holidays, more reminders of our constant aging, and more.
This annual renewal has also persuaded me to resume my blogging again, for which I am glad. Many months have passed since my last entry, and many formerly-fresh experiences have now faded into the blurry past. Quite a shame too, since I've had an intense last few months in several aspects. But I've restricted myself not to post about some of those aspects here, so some will be excluded.
Looking back through my blog, it seems I've neglected to even mention some of my main events. Well, I believe a summary will have to do for most of it:
As part of the dev team for one of our projects last year, I got to travel to several different parts of the country:
I traveled to Scranton, PA 2 or 3 times during the summer (during which we stayed at the Hilton, which was very nice because they had an indoor, bigger-than-most-hotel-pools swimming pool next to a big hot tub, an awesome breakfast buffet every morning, a piano for everyone to play on the second floor directly over the lobby, and it was immediately next to a GREAT nightclub called Olympus or something like that, where under the influence of Red Bull I would talk and dance my stress and nights away with all these tourist New Yorker girls that seemed to party there every weekend with flashy dresses and fashion styles) for a major deployment on a new facility. One of the remarkable memories about that facility was the time when we went into the facility's freezer area to perform tests and to replace a piece of hardware. It was COLD in there. -20F is enough to make your bare nose freeze from the inside almost instantly, numb the tips of your extremities in under 3 minutes, and activate your inner survival instinct after 10, right around when a dizzy brain and the loss of balance make you wonder if you'll still manage to reach the EXIT door in a conscious state.
The city and countryside around it were nice, but not truly spectacular, so I took very few pictures of the place. I think having forgotten the camera back in Austin, TX was also an influencing factor. There was only this one foggy, humid morning during which I looked out the right car window, and the forest to our right appeared to be smoking with steam. "Smoking Trees" was my thought, and I posted it on my GTalk status for several days.
The next important deployment I went to took place in Memphis, TN, even though our hotel was located in Southaven, MS. This deployment took a little less than 2 weeks, and it happened right before my first trip to Pittsburgh, which I believe is more thoroughly narrated in other entries. I also passed through Chicago to visit my family too, and though I ended up paying an extra $200 to get back from Pittsburgh... oh well, that's another story.
So one of the deployment places I haven't yet blogged about is Concord, NH. We were (so very) lucky to arrive during the Fall season, because it is then that the trees' leaves there change colors and render a magnificent display for everyone to admire. I don't think I can describe it well enough with text, and as you know, a JPEG is worth 2^10 words, so:
Blurry picture of colored trees minutes before landing:
Felled leaves next to Louis' legs:
Nice combination of colors next to Dimitris' Pizzeria:
And now the ad:
*More pics available at http://picasaweb.google.com/antoniojl/FireTrees
So the deployment itself went very smoothly. The customer was happy, we got to rest almost-decent amounts of time each night at the hotel, and I was even able to return to Austin two days early before Halloween. Everything was good. There weren't any nightclubs next to the hotel, but there was a fancy restaurant called "The Common Man" with a rustic theme that served quite delicious meals and breakfast buffets, where we sometimes went to feed our hungry selves.
If I recall correctly, the second deployment to NH was the first leg of a two-stop tour through two facilities, the second of which was located in Longmont, CO. It was still technically Fall, I believe, but what was falling this time was snow and rain. The air was usually at about 20F, and I got to walk outside while it was 11F. It became an important nicety to warm up the car for everyone else several minutes before we drove off. Weather must've been colder/moister this winter than on past winters because, on the day we left for Colorado, there were reports everywhere about hundreds of thousands of people in New Hampshire having outages due to broken power lines all throughout the state, leaving them in danger of freezing (to death). One night we left the facility, and it was stinging cold and raining. Oscar, Jason, and I got into the SUV, and the windows were all covered in ice. Jason and Oscar buzzed down their windows, and the layer of ice outside remained intact, making a perfect ice window. They didn't seem to think it was very impressive, because then they just smashed the ice down, and then buzzed them back up. Too bad I didn't take a picture - it was really cool (truthfully).
So after Concord, NH came Longmont, CO. We flew off on Dec 12th in the morning, and when I found out I had a layover in Chicago, I called my dad and asked him if he could come over to the airport for about an hour so we could meet for a lil while. And he did! So we met, hugged, bought some milk and chips to eat, talked for about 40 minutes, and then I ran off (really) to catch my second flight going to Denver, CO, only to find out that the flight had been delayed and that there really wasn't that much reason to run like I did.
When we got to Denver, CO, we went outside, suitcases and all, and waited for the Budget shuttle to arrive. It took a LONG time to get there. I'd say at least half an hour - we saw at least 2 shuttles from every other rental car company pass by before a Budget shuttle picked us up. We were cold and bored, but at least we were happy, as shown by the following picture:
The CO deployment was even smoother than the NH one, and we even received praise and thanks from the facility workers in the form of comments like "Now I love my job". That was good to hear. However, what I remember the most about this trip is the scenery. Boulder, CO itself already has an impressive landscape, with the Rockies beside it and everything. But then it SNOWED. And the whole world was covered in WHITE. And it was AWESOME!! (See below)
It was AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME. Snow-White
trees.
*See link for more pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/antoniojl/WholeWhiteWorld
After the NH-CO tour, I came back to Austin, stayed here about a week (during which I went to karaoke with a lot of people from work and had a great time eating lots of homemade pizza at Nicole's Christmas Eve party), then flew away and visited my mom and my dad and my brother and my aunt and my uncle and my cousin and my dad's pet dove and my aunt's pet dogs in Chicago and went running to the lakeshore with two of my bros and went all the way up to the Sears tower's skydeck to see the view and spent some nice family time with all of them for about five days. I spent a considerable amount of my time in Chicago reading "Pillars of the Earth" and playing Heroes of Might and Magic III with my bro, but I also watched some Redbox movies (Ironman, Wall-E, Stardust) with the rest of the family while we ate cookies and chips and drank coffee with milk. I spent New Year's Eve peacefully with my mom and dad. It was a fun week overall.
The night before I left back to Austin, my sister (who's been travelling around the world and who was in Vietnam at that time) called and surprised us saying that she would be back in Chicago the next morning. "How coincidental", I thought, and so I went with my dad and my bro to pick her up at the O'Hare airport and tell her "hey" before I left for my flight back to Austin at the Midway Airport. It was nice to see her again too.
So then, let's see... I came back to Austin, spent my weekend away, and then... vacation time was over. Office time came again. And so... I've been coming to the office every day since then. And... that's what happened. More or less.
I also ran about 7 miles two nights ago because I had gained a lot of weight. I now weigh 166lb, and though that's an improvement on the previous 169 (13^2), it could still get a lot better.
So, I know, this blog entry was kind of sloppy. But I'm kind of in a hurry. Maybe some parts of it will be refined afterwards. But for now, it'll have to do. Bye!
P.D: For anyone curious enough to wonder what this entry's title means but not curious enough to figure it out for him/herself,
Yup, it's January again. (I didn't really see you soon, did I blog? :S ) Month of beginnings, according to the Gregorian Calendar. Did you know it's still Christmas back in the 'ole Julian Calendar? I just found out that the only difference between these two calendars is that, in the Julian calendar, a year is considered (on average) 365.25 days long, and in the Gregorian Calendar, it's considered 365.2425 days long. Cause of all the leap-year rules and stuff. Summary of leap-year rules below:
| Example | Applies to |
|---|---|
| The year 1801 contains 365 days. | Gregorian, Julian |
| The year 1804 contains 366 days because it's a multiple of 4. | Gregorian, Julian |
| The year 1900 contains 365 days because, although it's a multiple of 4, it's also a multiple of 100 | Gregorian |
| The year 2000 contains 366 days because, although it's a multiple of 100, it's also a multiple of 400. | Gregorian |
What differentiates 365- and 366-day years is, of course, whether they contain February 29 (YEAH!!!!) as one of their days. So that's about it. It's now January for most of us "modern" citizens of the world, Christmas for Old-Style Orthodox churches, and month 12 of the year WuZi according to some online chinese calendar converter I found on Google.
Speaking of January, there was a venetian guy who painted the following:
and named it "January". I guess it depicts winter-activities... I like the realism achieved by it. Except for the guy (angel?) coming down in a cloud at the top. And for the fact that it only seems to apply to northern-hemisphere areas, of course.Wikipedia also told me that the name "January" comes from Janus, the roman god of doorways, beginnings, and endings, and that also based on that name is the word "janitor", who nowadays is supposed to take care of halls and doorways. Sort of.
Anyway... with a new year comes with a new life. Really? No, not really. But it does come with lots of anthropocentric reminders of a lot of cycles occurring all around us - the changing seasons, avian migratorial patterns, non-human-animal reproductive and behavioral cycles, annual taxes, anniversaries of special occasions and holidays, more reminders of our constant aging, and more.
This annual renewal has also persuaded me to resume my blogging again, for which I am glad. Many months have passed since my last entry, and many formerly-fresh experiences have now faded into the blurry past. Quite a shame too, since I've had an intense last few months in several aspects. But I've restricted myself not to post about some of those aspects here, so some will be excluded.
Looking back through my blog, it seems I've neglected to even mention some of my main events. Well, I believe a summary will have to do for most of it:
PA & NH & CO Deployments!!
As part of the dev team for one of our projects last year, I got to travel to several different parts of the country:
I traveled to Scranton, PA 2 or 3 times during the summer (during which we stayed at the Hilton, which was very nice because they had an indoor, bigger-than-most-hotel-pools swimming pool next to a big hot tub, an awesome breakfast buffet every morning, a piano for everyone to play on the second floor directly over the lobby, and it was immediately next to a GREAT nightclub called Olympus or something like that, where under the influence of Red Bull I would talk and dance my stress and nights away with all these tourist New Yorker girls that seemed to party there every weekend with flashy dresses and fashion styles) for a major deployment on a new facility. One of the remarkable memories about that facility was the time when we went into the facility's freezer area to perform tests and to replace a piece of hardware. It was COLD in there. -20F is enough to make your bare nose freeze from the inside almost instantly, numb the tips of your extremities in under 3 minutes, and activate your inner survival instinct after 10, right around when a dizzy brain and the loss of balance make you wonder if you'll still manage to reach the EXIT door in a conscious state.
The city and countryside around it were nice, but not truly spectacular, so I took very few pictures of the place. I think having forgotten the camera back in Austin, TX was also an influencing factor. There was only this one foggy, humid morning during which I looked out the right car window, and the forest to our right appeared to be smoking with steam. "Smoking Trees" was my thought, and I posted it on my GTalk status for several days.
The next important deployment I went to took place in Memphis, TN, even though our hotel was located in Southaven, MS. This deployment took a little less than 2 weeks, and it happened right before my first trip to Pittsburgh, which I believe is more thoroughly narrated in other entries. I also passed through Chicago to visit my family too, and though I ended up paying an extra $200 to get back from Pittsburgh... oh well, that's another story.
So one of the deployment places I haven't yet blogged about is Concord, NH. We were (so very) lucky to arrive during the Fall season, because it is then that the trees' leaves there change colors and render a magnificent display for everyone to admire. I don't think I can describe it well enough with text, and as you know, a JPEG is worth 2^10 words, so:
Blurry picture of colored trees minutes before landing:
Felled leaves next to Louis' legs:
Nice combination of colors next to Dimitris' Pizzeria:
And now the ad:
*More pics available at http://picasaweb.google.com/antoniojl/FireTrees
So the deployment itself went very smoothly. The customer was happy, we got to rest almost-decent amounts of time each night at the hotel, and I was even able to return to Austin two days early before Halloween. Everything was good. There weren't any nightclubs next to the hotel, but there was a fancy restaurant called "The Common Man" with a rustic theme that served quite delicious meals and breakfast buffets, where we sometimes went to feed our hungry selves.
If I recall correctly, the second deployment to NH was the first leg of a two-stop tour through two facilities, the second of which was located in Longmont, CO. It was still technically Fall, I believe, but what was falling this time was snow and rain. The air was usually at about 20F, and I got to walk outside while it was 11F. It became an important nicety to warm up the car for everyone else several minutes before we drove off. Weather must've been colder/moister this winter than on past winters because, on the day we left for Colorado, there were reports everywhere about hundreds of thousands of people in New Hampshire having outages due to broken power lines all throughout the state, leaving them in danger of freezing (to death). One night we left the facility, and it was stinging cold and raining. Oscar, Jason, and I got into the SUV, and the windows were all covered in ice. Jason and Oscar buzzed down their windows, and the layer of ice outside remained intact, making a perfect ice window. They didn't seem to think it was very impressive, because then they just smashed the ice down, and then buzzed them back up. Too bad I didn't take a picture - it was really cool (truthfully).
So after Concord, NH came Longmont, CO. We flew off on Dec 12th in the morning, and when I found out I had a layover in Chicago, I called my dad and asked him if he could come over to the airport for about an hour so we could meet for a lil while. And he did! So we met, hugged, bought some milk and chips to eat, talked for about 40 minutes, and then I ran off (really) to catch my second flight going to Denver, CO, only to find out that the flight had been delayed and that there really wasn't that much reason to run like I did.
When we got to Denver, CO, we went outside, suitcases and all, and waited for the Budget shuttle to arrive. It took a LONG time to get there. I'd say at least half an hour - we saw at least 2 shuttles from every other rental car company pass by before a Budget shuttle picked us up. We were cold and bored, but at least we were happy, as shown by the following picture:
The CO deployment was even smoother than the NH one, and we even received praise and thanks from the facility workers in the form of comments like "Now I love my job". That was good to hear. However, what I remember the most about this trip is the scenery. Boulder, CO itself already has an impressive landscape, with the Rockies beside it and everything. But then it SNOWED. And the whole world was covered in WHITE. And it was AWESOME!! (See below)
It was AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME. Snow-White
trees.*See link for more pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/antoniojl/WholeWhiteWorld
After the NH-CO tour, I came back to Austin, stayed here about a week (during which I went to karaoke with a lot of people from work and had a great time eating lots of homemade pizza at Nicole's Christmas Eve party), then flew away and visited my mom and my dad and my brother and my aunt and my uncle and my cousin and my dad's pet dove and my aunt's pet dogs in Chicago and went running to the lakeshore with two of my bros and went all the way up to the Sears tower's skydeck to see the view and spent some nice family time with all of them for about five days. I spent a considerable amount of my time in Chicago reading "Pillars of the Earth" and playing Heroes of Might and Magic III with my bro, but I also watched some Redbox movies (Ironman, Wall-E, Stardust) with the rest of the family while we ate cookies and chips and drank coffee with milk. I spent New Year's Eve peacefully with my mom and dad. It was a fun week overall.
The night before I left back to Austin, my sister (who's been travelling around the world and who was in Vietnam at that time) called and surprised us saying that she would be back in Chicago the next morning. "How coincidental", I thought, and so I went with my dad and my bro to pick her up at the O'Hare airport and tell her "hey" before I left for my flight back to Austin at the Midway Airport. It was nice to see her again too.
So then, let's see... I came back to Austin, spent my weekend away, and then... vacation time was over. Office time came again. And so... I've been coming to the office every day since then. And... that's what happened. More or less.
I also ran about 7 miles two nights ago because I had gained a lot of weight. I now weigh 166lb, and though that's an improvement on the previous 169 (13^2), it could still get a lot better.
So, I know, this blog entry was kind of sloppy. But I'm kind of in a hurry. Maybe some parts of it will be refined afterwards. But for now, it'll have to do. Bye!
P.D: For anyone curious enough to wonder what this entry's title means but not curious enough to figure it out for him/herself,
45^2-4^2= 2025-16 = 2009
which is the number that sets the tone for this entry.
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