Category: Travel

Travel posts

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MCNP light bulbs

The MCNP training course I’m in is starting to set off some light bulbs in my head now.

It’s been a pretty good course so far. Being able to work on example problems under guidance has really helped and I think I’ve figured out more about MCNP in the last three days than I have in the last three months of going through the manual. It’s also helped with being able to make more sense out of what I’ve read in the manual so far.

ding
dingdingdingding*

Fortunately it hasn’t been all work. I’ve been able to get out and explore some eating destinations around Albuquerque and check out a few area attractions like the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center and the Sandia Peak Tramway. Tomorrow I’m planning on a quick lunchbreak visit to the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History.

A picture of me standing at the Sandia Peak Tramway station. The sign next to me says "Welcome to Sandia Peak Elevation 10,378 ft"
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Las Vegas excursion

Travel pain aside, my weekend excursion to Vegas was a pretty good time.

On the way, there were cool sights like this to see. Not entirely sure where the plane was, but the pilot said we were passing by the Grand Canyon when I started taking these pictures.

Went to Vegas mostly to meet up with Rick and Mike and hang out. Since Sara is in that area too, we met up with her also. We were supposed to be there for Mark’s “wedding”, but he stood us up. We still had a good time anyway.

Took me a little bit to track down Rick when I got into Vegas, but eventually I tracked him down. After dumping my stuff off in the hotel room, we headed off to wander the strip and find some grub. First stop was the Vegas Hilton to see what was left of the Star Trek Experience. The Experience is gone, but oddly enough the Starfleet logo remains on the Hilton’s sign out front.

Remnants of the Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton

Then we hopped on the monorail to the end and decided to wander the Strip starting at the Luxor back to our hotel (Circus Circus). Turns out the Strip is a lot longer than it looks on the map.

The next day we met up with fellow geek Sara and spent a good chunk of the morning in the geek nirvana known as Fry’s. After, we decided to go for wings at, fittingly enough, Buffalo Wild Wings (a bit of an inside joke).

The rest of the evening we spent hanging out and talking at one of the hotel bars.

The trip home took almost as much time as I spent in Vegas.

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AirTran travel fail

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that the more flying I do, the more annoyed with it I get. This weekend was no exception.

Seriously, if you’re flying AirTran out of LAS (Las Vegas) and either haven’t done online check-in the night before or have bags to check, make sure you show up at the airport at least 3 hours before your flight. 4 hours would probably be better.

My 3 day excursion to Vegas was a lot of fun until it came time to leave. Not in a “sad to leave fun Vegas” sort of way, but in a painful “3 hour wait in line to check in at the airport for a flight that’s delayed 2 hours” kind of way. AirTran has no check-in kiosks at their desk, so you’re back in the 80s waiting in line to check in. If you’re checking luggage, you have to wait in line anyway. It’s a pretty long line. The only reason I didn’t miss my flight out of Vegas was because the in-bound flight was delayed. To be fair, I believe the Las Vegas airport has some generic check-in kiosks that I could have used, but it wouldn’t have made much of a difference anyway with the delayed flight. I still ended up missing the connecting flight back to CHS, but fortunately the delay was caused by mechanical problems with the plane so AirTran put me up in a hotel in ATL to wait for the flight out the next day.

Leaving ATL was only a little less painful. Between two gate changes and the plane the flight crew was on being delayed by weather, my flight was only about an hour late getting off the ground. I think I finally made it into Charleston about 14 hours after I was supposed to have arrived.

Ugh. Maybe I’m just getting crotchety in my old age, but I’m really starting to dislike flying. A lot.

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Back from our road trip

Back from our DC vacation. We went up there to visit with the wife’s cousin and some of her family there. Had a pretty good time there, although there wasn’t as much time to tour around DC itself as we might have wanted. Still got to see a few things.

Arrived at the hotel just north of DC (in Laurel) on Friday. First order of business was to find the nearest dog park. After being cooped up in their crates for 6 hours (with a couple of stops at rest areas to stretch a bit), we needed to get them out and running around. Thanks to Google, we managed to find one that was pretty close to where we were staying and spent some time hanging out there for a while letting the dogs run.

Then it was off to the Bay ‘n Surf down the road. Nice little place, good seafood although a little pricey. They do have what is probably the best crab cake ever though.

Next thing we had to do was find a Chinese restaurant that did Dim Sum. Owing to the sad state of Chinese food here in Charleston (a topic for another blog entry), this is something we look for whereever we go. Saturday we jumped on the Metro and went down to Lei Garden in DC’s Chinatown area (much smaller than I would have expected) where we found a passable dim sum that was pretty tasty, although somewhat pricey for dim sum. Their selection was also a little smaller than other places I’ve been to. Then we spent the day downtown checking out some of the National Mall. Sadly I forgot to grab the camera, so no pictures of our adventures. We hit the National Air & Space Museum (very cool and fun stuff to check out) and the National Museum of American History. On the way back to the Metro, the wife spotted a sign for the Hope Diamond exhibit over at the National Museum of Natural History which naturally she just had to go see.

The rest of the evening we spent hanging out with the wife’s cousin and family.

Sunday we were pretty pooped out from all of the walking the day before, so we didn’t do too much. Went to check out Tony Cheng’s Seafood Restaurant for dinner. Pretty good food, but again a little on the pricey side. The dishes are pretty large though, and we did end up getting 2 more meals out of it, so in that respect it comes in pretty resonably on the value scale. Then it was more hanging out with the wife’s cousin.

Monday, it was finally time to head back, so all our stuff and the dogs got stuffed back into the mini-van we rented and we hit the road.

With the price of gas these days, I’m surprised anybody can afford to do road trips at all. Our little sojourn up to the DC area and back was maybe around 1300 miles and ran up a gas tab of about $180. Ouch. Well, we still had a good time. Maybe we’ll head back one of these days and stay a little longer next time.

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Off to Vegas!

Wow, a whole week without a single entry. Ever get so busy that you have a hard time keeping track of what you’re supposed to be working on? That’s my problem right now. Too many things going on.It’s starting to get me a little bit behind on my equipment surveys. I’ve got technical support for a bunch of clinical research protocols that are starting to get ramped up and a couple of research projects that need to get finished up among the many things starting to pile up.

Yesterday a Shimadzu portable unit with integrated digital detector fell into my lap for acceptance testing. TPTB decided to bring one in on a trial basis for the week. An interesting compact unit powered by Windows XP of all things. The detector is a scintillator based aSi:H flat panel detector about 35cmx43cm tethered to the portable by a long cable. The portable unit itself wasn’t terribly remarkable. The integrated flat panel detector was pretty neat, although I didn’t have much time to spend doing a more thorough evaluation of the panel itself.

One thing that’s kind of bugging me about the DR software vendors use is the exposure area masking they do. Of the two digital units I’ve tested so far, both of them mask off the unexposed area of the image. It’s probably convenient for the radiologist looking at the image, because they don’t have to deal with a large white unexposed area. For me, the masking makes it a little bit difficult to test the radiation/light field alignment because my light field markers usually end up being in the masked area. So far I haven’t been able to find any way to get the software to turn the masking off. Mightily inconvenient if you ask me.

For the next week, I can put that stack of things to do away (at least for a little while) while we head off to see the sights and sounds of Las Vegas. This will be our first trip there and we’re looking forward to it. Many things planned, including going to see Mystere, some horseback riding and the Atomic Testing Museum. We’re flying out tomorrow afternoon, and coming back next Friday night. Should be cool. Look for a few blog entries and pictures in the gallery while I’m there (if I can get online).