Recent stuff
Apr. 26th, 2006 10:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
murakoziTime for another post about various recent happenings.
I was down in Kentucky again last week on a work trip to attend a briefing for some government folks. Overall the meetings were positive if not exactly thrilling. Looks like the contract and such are gonna go through which will mean some work for me. The outlook for the contract looks good, though the gov't types involved, due to the nature of their work, tended to be quiet, reserved, and fairly noncommittal about everything. There was a definite pecking order going on, which I suspect is also a product of their work and environment.
We flew into Nashville, home of one of the more boring mid-sized airports in the nation, and drove up to Bowling Green. Unfortunately, that's not horse country, it's cattle country, so I only was able to spot a few ponies while there. Lots and lots of moocows though. At one point, when just starting the drive back to Nashville for the flight home, we passed a pasture with one very content looking Angus bull stood surrounded by a bunch of cows. He was just standing there and dozing and seemed to be saying "Fresh grass, plenty of cows...yeah, life is good."
Got a call on the cell last night about some potential work travel next month. Turns out it'd be around the Preakness weekend, so that could be kind of a pain. As it's being projected now, it'd be heading down to KY for training on a product we've sold for a long time but that I've never worked with, then returning here for Preakness fun, then immediately heading down to Louisiana to demo/support the product at a disaster exercise thingy. Whee. Even ignoring the 'When am I supposed to actually get some sleep so I can be coherent?' aspect of it all, it's just a big pain in the butt. I really don't want Katie left alone for all that time and she's proven that if someone comes to check on her, she can't be found. Last time I did that the poor person couldn't tell if Katie had been eating or drinking and was afraid she'd crawled off somewhere and died or something. Putting Katie in a kennel or at the vet would blow her tiny, senile kitty mind right up. Having a geriatric cat is almost like havin kids. I just don't feel comfortable leaving her for days and days on end like I could in the past.
Then there's the fact that LA ranks somewhere at the bottom of my list of states I really want to visit. Yeesh.
On a brighter note, the new radio and XM tuner I ordered for the car arrived yesterday. Now it's a matter of arranging the installation date. That part is web based, so now I'm waiting to be contacted to see whether May 6th (the first Saturday date listed as available) will work. Hopefully it will and I'll soon be cruisin around with broadcast and XM capability as well as a CD player that actually works when the temperature is above 65 degrees outside. I'd briefly toyed with the idea of putting the units in myself, but decided to let experienced folks do it. I've not put a radio into a car in nearly 20 years. Looking on the web, I found assorted installation guides for my car and discovered that, while not super tricky, it'd still be a big PITA to do myself. The portion of the console from the driver's door vent to the center vents all comes off as one piece which involves removing 4 screws and a lot of 'gentle prying.' I could easily see myself breaking that dumb thing or not being able to get it back in place properly. Then there's actually mounting the separate XM tuner somewhere and such. Add in my lack of a garage and the joys of fussing about with all that while parked outside in hot weather and it doesn't take me long to think that paying to have it done is worth it.
EDIT: I just got the email confirmation for the radio installation, along with contact information for the shop. I called 'em to confirm the date and the guy said I could actually bring it in on Saturday. Yay! 'Course they'll only say it'd be done 'sometime before 6pm' so I'm going to have to figure out what to do for (potentially) hours. :/
I was down in Kentucky again last week on a work trip to attend a briefing for some government folks. Overall the meetings were positive if not exactly thrilling. Looks like the contract and such are gonna go through which will mean some work for me. The outlook for the contract looks good, though the gov't types involved, due to the nature of their work, tended to be quiet, reserved, and fairly noncommittal about everything. There was a definite pecking order going on, which I suspect is also a product of their work and environment.
We flew into Nashville, home of one of the more boring mid-sized airports in the nation, and drove up to Bowling Green. Unfortunately, that's not horse country, it's cattle country, so I only was able to spot a few ponies while there. Lots and lots of moocows though. At one point, when just starting the drive back to Nashville for the flight home, we passed a pasture with one very content looking Angus bull stood surrounded by a bunch of cows. He was just standing there and dozing and seemed to be saying "Fresh grass, plenty of cows...yeah, life is good."
Got a call on the cell last night about some potential work travel next month. Turns out it'd be around the Preakness weekend, so that could be kind of a pain. As it's being projected now, it'd be heading down to KY for training on a product we've sold for a long time but that I've never worked with, then returning here for Preakness fun, then immediately heading down to Louisiana to demo/support the product at a disaster exercise thingy. Whee. Even ignoring the 'When am I supposed to actually get some sleep so I can be coherent?' aspect of it all, it's just a big pain in the butt. I really don't want Katie left alone for all that time and she's proven that if someone comes to check on her, she can't be found. Last time I did that the poor person couldn't tell if Katie had been eating or drinking and was afraid she'd crawled off somewhere and died or something. Putting Katie in a kennel or at the vet would blow her tiny, senile kitty mind right up. Having a geriatric cat is almost like havin kids. I just don't feel comfortable leaving her for days and days on end like I could in the past.
Then there's the fact that LA ranks somewhere at the bottom of my list of states I really want to visit. Yeesh.
On a brighter note, the new radio and XM tuner I ordered for the car arrived yesterday. Now it's a matter of arranging the installation date. That part is web based, so now I'm waiting to be contacted to see whether May 6th (the first Saturday date listed as available) will work. Hopefully it will and I'll soon be cruisin around with broadcast and XM capability as well as a CD player that actually works when the temperature is above 65 degrees outside. I'd briefly toyed with the idea of putting the units in myself, but decided to let experienced folks do it. I've not put a radio into a car in nearly 20 years. Looking on the web, I found assorted installation guides for my car and discovered that, while not super tricky, it'd still be a big PITA to do myself. The portion of the console from the driver's door vent to the center vents all comes off as one piece which involves removing 4 screws and a lot of 'gentle prying.' I could easily see myself breaking that dumb thing or not being able to get it back in place properly. Then there's actually mounting the separate XM tuner somewhere and such. Add in my lack of a garage and the joys of fussing about with all that while parked outside in hot weather and it doesn't take me long to think that paying to have it done is worth it.
EDIT: I just got the email confirmation for the radio installation, along with contact information for the shop. I called 'em to confirm the date and the guy said I could actually bring it in on Saturday. Yay! 'Course they'll only say it'd be done 'sometime before 6pm' so I'm going to have to figure out what to do for (potentially) hours. :/