Charlie Chan, cure for insomnia

Twenty-some years ago when Alice and I were young and broke, Saturday night entertainment consisted of a bowl of popcorn (popped on the stove, pre-microwaves) and whatever movie was on television. We lived in the suburbs of the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN. One of the Minneapolis stations was running the old Charlie Chan movies.

The only reason these are memorable to us is that week after week, Alice would fall asleep 15 minutes before the movie ended. In other words, just as Charlie was solving the crime.

Well, the magic still works. I put Charlie Chan on Broadway on top of the Netflix queue and got it last Thursday. We watched it Friday night. Alice was out like a light about half way through.

Cube sweet cube

OK, last post on the subject of cubicles. Been in the cubes for a couple of weeks (minus travel days). It's not quite as bad as I thought it would be. Not sure if the folks around me work some odd hours. Or maybe we're all on different days working from home. The noise level isn't bad overall. Some phone conversations, but I do plenty of those.

One hassle came up today. I did a talk via web and conference call. To reduce extraneous noise on my end, I had to pack up the computer and go to a conference room. Could be worse.

Saner schedule achieved

Whew, dodged a bullet. The travel agency came up with a different itinerary for my Sydney and Beijing trip. It came in a few hundred more expensive but not enough to cause management to balk.

I'm now doing a straight three-legged route.

• Houston to Sydney via Los Angeles
• Sydney to Beijing via Guangzhou
• Beijing to Houston via Newark

The other good news is that all of the flights will get me miles on my Continental account. Houston to LA and Beijing to Houston are Continental so those will count towards getting me to higher levels of elite. The other legs are on carriers that give miles on Continental.

The travel I've now got booked puts me within striking distance of platinum. That'd give me access to the Continental lounges all next year.

Miles and miles

I just got a few thousand more miles added to my October travels.

Due to screwy airline pricing, round trips are hugely cheaper than one ways. So I'm doing a round trip from home to Sydney with a round trip from Sydney to Beijing in the middle of it. This reduced the fare by $5,000 from a more sane and simple point to point route.

My trip home at the end will be Beijing to Hong Kong to Sydney, lay over 6 hours. Then Sydney to San Francisco to home. From the time I lift off the ground in Beijing to wheels down at home will be almost 42 hours in transit. Ugh.

The total trip is nearly 30,000 miles.

The paperwork is in for approval now. We'll see.

Thumping noise and shaking house

After being rained out twice, the city crew is out front with a backhoe.

The sidewalk in front of our house had settled unevenly and is a nasty tripping hazard. The settling also affected one section of my driveway. The sidewalks here are the city's to maintain, the driveway was a judgment call by the crew boss. He decided the settling was caused by problems around the sewer that were their fault.

They are out there this morning, beginning at 7am, ripping out most of the sidewalk and the affected section of the driveway. It's partly manual labor but mostly a big ol' backhoe thumping away to break up the concrete. Some of it seems to be extra stubborn. When they thump down on those the whole house rattles.

Plan is to demolish it all today, lay sand, forms and rebar. Then pour and finish the replacement tomorrow.

The crew boss and backhoe operator is one of my neighbors from the old house. He's really precise with the demolition. We have a big circular flower bed around a tree in the front. The edge is defined by stacked stones. The driveway segment they're demolishing is less than a foot from one edge of that bed and he hasn't disturbed a single rock.

Update: Added picture. I didn't get a picture of the demolition in progress. This is how it looks this morning. Bottom leveled, forms and rebar all in place. As of now there's a crew standing about waiting for concrete to arrive.

October: 27,000 air miles

This has all been in flux for the last several weeks but it looks like it has settled out and will actually happen.

I'm scheduled for some more international travel in October.

• Back to Sydney, Australia the week of October 8th. That means leaving as early as the 5th. The trip is close to 24 hours and a day gets lost crossing the date line.
  
• Straight from Sydney to Beijing, China for the week of the 15th.
  
• Home for the week of the 22nd
  
• Up to Vancouver the week of the 29th.
  

I'll be teaching classes in Sydney and Beijing. Vancouver is the company's annual user conference. I've got a speaking gig there and will be back up staff for one of the booths, doing product demos.

Further out is a slim possibility of a trip to Sao Paulo either the week before or after Thanksgiving. And a week in Florida in mid-December.

If I can get enough of those trips on Continental, I might make Platinum Elite and get free access to the clubs. Probably going to come up short, though. No Continental or code share flights to Sydney. And the Continental route from Beijing back to Houston is via Newark.

Hunkered down for Humberto

Tropical Storm Humberto sprang up off Galveston today. I was completely oblivious to it until the facilities folks at work sent out an email. Chances of anything more than a good rain are slim. If you look at a county map of Texas, our house sits in the northernmost tip of Brazoria county. We're in the 20 to 30% band on the National Hurricane Center's tropical storm wind prediction chart. Humberto is expected to hit Galveston overnight and head to the northeast.

We dragged all the patio furniture into the garage. The new house has a single-car garage door that opens on the patio so that was all of a five minute job. There's enough wine in the chiller for a few days in case we get rained in. :)

Update

Humberto decided to visit someone else. About 15 minutes after we pulled all the patio furniture into the garage it became obvious that we weren't going to get so much as a good rain out of this one. Not that I'm complaining, mind you.

Busch Stadium waiting...

Raining here in Busch Stadium the third. Roofs may not be "pure" but there are no rainouts at Minute Maid!

This game did get played and with only a 30 minute delay from the original start time. Watching them pull the tarp back and make all the water disappear down a drain in shallow left field was pretty fascinating.

Trying to come up with the handful of stadiums where I've seen a baseball game.

• The old Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, MN. Saw the Twins there. That stadium is long gone. I think Mall of America is on that site.
  
• Shea Stadium. Saw the Mets play the Astros probably 20 years ago.
  
• SafeCo Field. Saw the Mariners there in 2002 and met some of my cousins for the first time (long story there).
  
• Astrodome. We've been in Houston for 27 years now. Not sure when we went to our first game at the 'Dome. Dome dogs, Dome Foam, Dome Patrol. No rainouts and always comfortable. The big scoreboard that lit up when the 'Stro's hit a homer was a sight to behold. The TV recreation of it in the new park is a pale shadow.
  
• Enron Field and Minute Maid Park. Originally to be called The Ballpark at Union Station before high flying Enron paid big bucks for naming rights. The ball park was the beginning of the renaissance of downtown Houston.
  

Lightning struck plane...

Just after I posted about being off on a trip to St. Louis, they announced that we'd be delayed.

Seems the airplane was coming from Baton Rouge and it had been struck by lightning while on the tarmac there. Everyone from my flight tried standby on the next flight, which worked for only a couple of folks. After not getting out on that later flight I found that the original flight was back on and the plane was on its way from Louisana to Houston.

To make a long night into a short story, I arrived in St. Louis 3-1/2 hours late. The only trouble this caused me was navigating a mostly unknown city at 11pm. Printed directions are all well and good until you're alone in a rental car driving in the rain and the dark. But even with a construction detour I managed to get where I was going without any wandering about. So all's well that ends.

Oh, and about the plane that was struck by lightning: I rather suspect that lightning struck nearby and emp-ed out the electrical systems. It was checked out by maintenance and sent on its way. So that's the plane I flew on to St. Louis. Heck if the captain and rest of the crew are OK to fly in it, how bad can it be?

Off again

Off on a short trip. Continental ExpressJet to St. Louis. The terminal segment at Houston Bush Intercontinental for these little planes is more like a bus station than an airline terminal. Weather report for St. Louis is miserable. It's either going to be hotter than Houston or it will be raining. I've got a two day meeting with a customer on this trip, coming home Friday morning.