Just what the subject says... it has definitely been one hell of a week for traveling. Last weekend I flew from BZN to OAK. I was supposed to fly on Saturday afternoon/evening, but it turns out the flight was canceled due to maintenance issue; that was with Delta. On Sunday morning, Delta put me on a Alaska/Horizon flight instead since their flight was oversold due to the cancellation the night before. I was shocked when I found myself sitting in Seattle due to another maintenance issue for two hours.
Well, I finally got to Oakland and drove up to Sebastopol where my brother and his family lives. I stayed at their house until Friday and spent some time with my nephews; we had a blast! Plus my brother turned 50 on the 1st!! Man he's getting old; if you know him email him to remind him, HAHAHAHA!
On Friday I took the bus from Santa Rosa to Oakland and met up with some friends. It was really nice to see them since I haven't seen them in a year. Congrats go out to Jeff and Aimee (who got married) and Joel and Megan (recent engagement)!! Big thanks to Eric and Briti for letting me crash at your place too. I can't wait to get back, I really miss you guys!
Sunday holiday ended and I flew back to the UK for work. Of course, the plane I was on sat on the runway for 1.5 hours while they tried to figure out why one engine wouldn't start. Good times; three flights on three different airlines in a week and all had maintenance problems. What's the deal with that?
I finally got a chance to download Windows Vista RC1 from MSDN a few weeks ago, but didn't have a machine to install it on. I decided the candidate would be my Linux desktop at the office. After trying to get Vista to install a few times, I couldn't get past "Windows is loading files...", even after letting it go overnight. Today I had a few minutes while on a conf call and had a chance to poke around. The fix I found works and Vista was successfully installed.
The fix is to add the following to your .vmx file for Vista:
svga.maxWidth = "640"
svga.maxHeight = "480"
I found this information in the VMWare discussion forums.
It's been clearing up a bit here lately. This weekend Will and I decided to hike Sacagawea, the tallest peak in the Bridger Range at 9665 ft. The hike is only 2.2 miles, but you climb several thousand feet in that short distance; it's a good workout for sure. Didn't take a ton of different photos, but got a few that turned out pretty decent.
It was really clear up though which was a nice change. The weather was perfect too! Hopefully I can make it up there again soon before it gets too cold.
It's been 6 days since I returned to Bozeman, MT and not a single day has been clear. When I was flying in I could see the fires but must have been so out of it because I didn't really give it much thought. What really sucks is that I just got a new 20-200m zoom lens for my Nikon D50, and I can't even use it. I'm less then thirty miles from the Bridger Range, where the tallest peak is close to 10k ft and I can't even see them. Nothing at all... so sad.
From ABC News: "Heavy smoke has slowed firefighters battling a 280-square-mile wildfire and also prompted air-quality warnings for much of western Montana."
ARRRGGHHHHH!!!!!! Bozeman sure does suck without mountains!!
I can't beleive it's already been almost six weeks; time sure does fly. I was informed last Friday that I'm going back to the US next week. I'm looking forward to it, but at the same time, I'm not. I've met some really great people while in the UK, and I've had a blast here! I'm hoping that I will get to return soon.
This last week I finally made it to the London Bridge and Tower of London. So far the only thing I haven't done is check out the Eye of London, which would have been really cool; next time. I think it was bumped because the Notting Hill Carnival was going on when I would have gone to the London Eye. The Carnival was worth it though, it was a total trip. This year they had over 500,000 people there. There being the streets of London, not far from where I was staying (like .5 miles).
With yesterday being a bank holiday in the UK and the last day of Carnival, and me leaving tomorrow I have a lot to do today. Here is a first attempt at taking HDR photos (Tower Bridge):
