Thursday, February 21, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
Into the Central Timezone
First off, kudos to Hyunjoo for handling the photo blogging you see below. Please keep in mind that the journey isn't really this visually exciting. We're posting mostly the highlights of the journey. Lots of grassland, cows are a distant second, cities/towns distant third. We're having a lot of fun still.
Thanks to the Super 8 Motel, we've got wireless this evening. It'll give me a chance to get caught up with my Electronic Village Online duties.
After over 17,000 ft. of ascent yesterday it was relatively flat-going today. We were able to make over 36 mpg averaged over 570 some miles. The fuel efficiency of the Honda Fit is a huge help. Been dreaming of a fuel-cell car, but that's off in la-la-land realistically. I keep forgetting to take a picture of the Fit loaded-up with all our stuff for my Uncle in Honolulu - sorry Uncle, it'll have to wait until tomorrow.
We got blasted with a shotgun of stones from an 18-wheeler that strayed into the shoulder of the road earlier. I'm going to have to get the chips in the windshield and hood fixed once we get into PA. Oh well, hazards of the trip. At least the roads have been relatively safe.
Thankfully, the weather has been on our side. Dad's suggestion that we stay on US 40 was a good one and it's been smooth sailing (knock on wood). Looks like the east coast has been getting some nasty rain, but I think we'll be west of all that weather as we drive up.
Back to you tomorrow for Day 3.
The leaning tower of water in Texas
OK, I know a lot of the other photos you see during our trip show signs and other objects that are "slanted" due to the way the iPhone takes pictures of high speed scenes, but this tower was really leaning the way it looks in the picture!
End of Day 1
Well we left Nevada and drove straight through Arizona. Hyunjoo now
understands what I meant by a "whole lot of nothing".
:-)
Actually I thought it was beautiful in its own way.
understands what I meant by a "whole lot of nothing".
:-)
Actually I thought it was beautiful in its own way.
So we drove about 570 something miles in a little over 8 hours. We
won't have to drive that far tomorrow. I'll be happy to make it to
Oklahoma City or maybe a little further.
Were having a great time so far. We're hoping for a little more
variety tomorrow, but I'll be happy with a safe journey.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Last supper
was our way to say thank you to everyone here for all their
hospitality. So, it's off to the east coast tomorrow at 8 am - bright
and early.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Follow Our Road-Trip Eastward
Well, we've finished 95% of the packing. We're keeping our fingers crossed that it'll all fit into our Fit (no pun intended).
The cross-country trip will take about five days. We're headed straight for Princeton and will move our stuff in storage from there.
Keep an eye out for updates from the road. I'll be posting our progress here.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Penn State... Here we come!
After almost six months, I found a job. We waited to find something good and I think we've found it.I applied for an Instructional Design position with the Continuing and Distance Education programs under Penn State's Outreach division.
I'll be running across different departments working on course design projects and working to improve the use of educational technology at those departments.
I'm extremely excited to say the least. This looks like the kind of work I'm really interested in for this next stage of my career.
I begin working March 1st which means we'll have to make arrangements to leave Las Vegas this weekend. Yikes.
I'd like to thank a lot of folks for helping me out. And I'll be doing that "in-person" in the next few days.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Getting Funky
important music appreciation classes.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Typical evening here
goes on here now that everyone is back home. Funny, I thought Ryan
just ate like an hour ago.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Hyunjoo driving
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Dinner time
gives me a powerful reason to procrastinate, but I've got too much
preparation to do.
Actually he just fell asleep. I think it's his nap time back in Korea.
They're home!
suspicious couple.
Waiting
mom had a good flight.
Friday, January 18, 2008
OGE crew in town
Click on slideshow to view a larger version or to download images.
Marc, Mike, Josh, and Audrey from The Outdoor Gear Exchange came into Las Vegas a couple days ago to climb at Red Rock Canyon before the Outdoor Retailer trade show in Salt Lake City. I joined them on their first day out climbing. We drove out to the first pullout: Calico 1 and hiked about 40 minutes to the Ultraman Wall at about 4100 ft.
It was a mostly cloudy day and the temps were in the high 30's. It was pretty cold standing around and I'm sure it got quite chilly on the longer routes. There are some long climbs there, well beyond the reach of a single 60M rope. It's good to bring extras with you in case you get too high to rap off the anchors.
It has been great to hang with the crew again. Lots of old and new stories to swap. Even though I'm not really climbing anymore, it's great to rekindle my past life.
We went out for a sushi buffet last night and they're off climbing again today. I don't know where they are today. I suppose I could drive around looking for their white Hyundai (?) they've rented, but I'd still have a considerable hike to find them. I guess we'll have to rely on more SMS texting.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
At the library
We're at the library right now. I'm trying to get some work done. I left my laptop at home because I was planning to do all my work on the iPhone. Unfortunately Google Docs doesn't let the iPhone edit docs only view them. On well. Thankfully I have a lot of editing to do on paper.
We're meeting up with the guys from the OGE later for dinner. I think they were interested in some sushi over at Makino. It'll be good to catch up about their day of (cold) climbing.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
New iPhone
Well, after getting the word from Steve Jobs that Apple wasn't coming out with a 16GB iPhone, I went with Hyunjoo to pick up my birthday present:
It does kick major butt! Sent from my iPhone
It does kick major butt! Sent from my iPhone
UPDATE: Looks like Blogger doesn't like images sent directly from my iPhone. I'll have to see if there's another photo system that'll accept emailed photos.
UPDATE: Found out that in order to post images directly from the iPhone, you have to have a GMail account and it must be set as the default email account in the iPhone's settings. Problem is that GMail isn't my default account, but at least I can still email directly from my Yahoo! account via the Mail app on the iPhone
Friday, January 11, 2008
A night to remember
This day has just cruised on by. I gotta get ready soon to head over to Winston's, Scott's brother, house. They only live a few minutes away. I already dropped Hyunjoo off around 3PM.
We're all headed over there to pay respects to Scott and Winston's mother. Koreans remember their deceased relatives on the anniversary of their deaths. Unfortunately their parents passed away at a very young age.
So, there'll be a ceremony of sorts this evening and then we'll have a traditional Korean meal there.
I've been pretty busy with my Electronic Village Online session for the year. I've returned to co-moderate the 2008 Teaching with PowerPoint session. Things haven't even really heated up yet, the session begins on the 14th.
I also just found out when my presentation will be at TESOL this year. I'll have to be in NYC around the start of April to give a quick series of presentations on our EVO session.
I was supposed to finish my cover letter for Penn State, but that might take another day. It's easy to get side tracked with seemingly important tasks, but I really need to prioritize.
They've finally started to build up the graded lots behind Scott's house. I fear his wonderful view of Red Rock Canyon will evaporate faster than I had originally imagined. With the poor housing situation every where, I'm surprised they're bothering to build new homes.
I'm still holding out on picking up an iPhone that "everyone" pitched in to get me. Thank you Mom & Dad, and Mom and Dad in Korea, Hyunjoo, Scott, Nayoung, Winston and Julia! Macworld in SF is next week and it would be extremely hasty to buy almost any Apple product right now.
Some folks speculate that Steve has so much to announce that he's getting some of the hardware upgrades out of the way now, like the Mac Pro. I'm not expecting the iPhone with 3G - I just want 16GB of storage (or more). So, I'm crossing my fingers.
I haven't really been watching much football, but I'll be keeping my eyes on the Patriots this Saturday after the wildcards are in. I can still remember the painful beating we took from "The Refrigerator" Perry back in the 80's.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Happy New Year!
To friends and family across the globe... Happy New Year!
Hyunjoo and I had a lovely evening last night. We were originally invited to a $400 inclusive package deal at a local country club with Scott, Nayoung, Winston and Julia, but we decide to explore the Strip on our own.
Hyunjoo really wanted to see the Stratosphere Tower on the Northern end of the Strip and I was excited since I've never been up close. We arrived around 7 and easily found parking. That's one thing great about Las Vegas. It's easy to find free parking in all the best locations. We walked around the casino and quickly decided to head down the Strip.
Our first stop was the "Worlds Largest Gift Shop". I doubt the moniker was true, but it was loaded with goodies only black-velvet art collectors could love. That's being a little harsh, but it was a scene to behold.
The cops had already blocked off the Strip to pedestrians only, and we were in a group of some of the first to walk down the middle of the road. It was kinda strange being the first ones. I kept looking around the usually busy street for some crazy car to some careening through, but of course nothing of the sort happened.
We walked on for about a mile in the brisk cold to the Fashion Show, across from the Wynn, and found a great place for dinner... the Capital Grille. We might not have had the view early reservations might have given us, but the setting was perfect and the food was delicious.
Around 9:30, we headed back up the Strip to the Stratosphere. It was colder out then, but we survived. We milled around the slot machines for an hour or so and listened to some live music playing. A little before midnight we head up to the Pool deck for the count-down we had bought tickets to earlier. There were a bunch of folks up there listening to a DJ and at the stroke of midnight we saw one of the most interesting fireworks displays I'd ever seen. From on the top of the tower, we were almost sprayed with explosives almost 115 stories directly above us. It was an incredible sight.
So, I hope you had a wonderful celebration and may all your resolutions come true!
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