The past week was a pretty great vacation, starting with a cruise on Royal Caribbean, a quick visit to Kennedy Space Center (yay annual pass) and finishing with touristy things in the historic part of St. Augustine.
There are a few hundred photos to go through and several cruise and vacation related blog posts tumbling through my head. Lots of stuff to do over the next few days as I get used to non-cruise life again (can’t seem to find that buffet anywhere, and Ronald has stopped bringing us bread!).
Browsing around Gowalla to see what interesting things there were around for my last night in Albuquerque. I found this giant red arrow, so I went to see.
It’s this giant red arrow at the corner of a Whole Foods parking lot. Not entirely sure what it’s supposed to represent, and there aren’t any descriptive plaques or anything that say anything about it. There it is though.
The MCNPtraining 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.
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.
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.
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.
