I actually got back from my Vegas trip last night, but I’m glad to be back home. Not just because home is comfortable, or because the trip wasn’t fun, but because I finally have a chance to slow down a little bit and not have quite so many heavy demands on my time. And it means that I can get back to 7-8 hours of sleep per night, and can actually go to bed before 5am. The last 6 weeks of 4-6 hours of sleep was getting brutal. Zzzzz.
Pizza Expo was fun… we had more people interested in our Point-of-Sale software than we thought we might. And those that gave us the time to give a demo were pretty impressed by what we’ve done. I’m not sure how many sales we’ll end up with, but it was certainly worth our time and effort to go and exhibit at the show, enough that we already signed up for next year. And you can’t argue with the free pizza, bread, cheese, chicken, and drink samples the different food vendors give out liberally. Yum.
Driving that far by myself always scares me a little bit. When I’m the only one in a car I get pretty bored, which makes it hard for me to remain alert. So generally I avoid driving more than about 2 hours by myself if I have a choice. But thanks to the magic of long podcasts, Wake Up Juice (known to the rest of the world as Coke or Dr. Pepper, which I don’t normally drink otherwise) and a lengthy phone call in each direction, I was able to stay very awake and alert without any hint of drowsiness at all. Sigh. Maybe I’m getting over my tendency to get tired behind the wheel? I guess we’ll find out when I head back to Vegas next month for NAB. Exciting!
This Vegas trip was generally not good for my technological devices. My Zune has developed some screen problems (I believe from being crushed by the weight of two laptops), and my USB hard drive really started acting up… it decided to corrupt about half of my music collection, and all of the video files I carry with me. Not that I don’t have other copies (I do write backup software after all), but it was a little inconvenient. But I think I can fix the Zune, and the dying hard drive is still under warranty. Note to self: stop buying Western Digital hard drives; they always fail on you. D’oh.
One good thing that happened to me technologically was that my GPS saved me a ton of time on the way home. There was an accident on I-15 as I was leaving Vegas, so my GPS popped up a message telling me so, and it automatically routed me around it. It had me exit from the freeway just before traffic came to a dead stop, and put me back on just after the lanes opened back up. Very smart. It probably saved me 30 minutes. Woohoo!
I’m getting so ready for the cold weather to be over. I’m not a fan of the cold… Summer is by far my favorite season, even though for several years running now I have felt like I wasted them by staying inside the whole time. Hopefully this year I’ll actually leave my dungeon and see the sun. Natural light!
Lately I have really become a fan of the TV show Chuck on NBC. The ads that NBC has been using to promote the series since its inception 18 months ago had always scared me away; they play up the sexiness of the Sarah Walker character too much and focused too little on the premise of the show, which is about a kind but geeky guy (Chuck Bartowski) who “accidentally” has his head filled with top secret intelligence by a former roommate. He then has to be protected and hidden from the bad guys by CIA (Walker) and NSA (Casey) agents, all while attempting to continue his otherwise mundane life. While it does have a few moments here and there, fortunately the show is much milder in the exploitation department than I would have guessed from the previews. I enjoy the humor that comes from the Chuck character (Zachary Levi) – his ineptitude makes him hilarious, but his innocence makes you love him. Sarah “Jennifer Rebecca Katie Lisa O’Connell Franco Burton” Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) is both absolutely gorgeous and is intriguing on many deeper levels (why does someone who cares for someone and secretly craves a normal life so deeply still want to be a spy?). Both Zach and Yvonne are pretty good actors too; their characters are easy to connect with, and you can tell what they are thinking and feeling at just a glance. The whole Chuck/Sarah thing (known to fans as Charah) is the most intriguing part of the show and it keeps me invested as long as the relationship is growing. I actually teared up a little bit in this last episode where Sarah openly admitted to a fellow agent that she had feelings for Chuck, and also a few minutes later when Chuck told Sarah (in a round about way) that he loved her. Maybe its the geek in me that hopes that someday a beautiful woman will see past my nerdy exterior and see my inner self that makes me connect with these characters, I don’t know, or maybe its just that its a fun show. But I very much enjoy it and its Charah plot line. Tender.
Tonight for movie night we watched Signs. I love that movie. But then again I love any movie that addresses spirituality in a positive light. We see way too much anti-religiosity in every form of media these days, so it’s very nice to see it portrayed in an uplifting way. Yay!
Okay, it’s 2:30am, which is about where I want to be for my new bedtime. So I’ll stop my textual vomit and head off to bed now. Thanks for staying with me in this lengthy random post.
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