gonkulair

Well, that’s just it. I’m home, after a long trip begun many days ago, I have returned. Everything went as smoothly as expected when you just want to get home. I had a wonderful flight on Air New Zealand from Auckland to Los Angeles. If you have a chance to fly ANZ, I highly recommend them. They are courteous, and the cabin is almost as nice as business class on other airlines. Their in seat LCDs are bigger than most and they had by far the biggest and best selection of movies, for free. I got lucky in that we had a very friendly check in person who “maintenance blocked” the seat next to mine and fellow crew member’s seats. I lifted that arm rest and got a pretty darn decent amount of sleep. We have the advantage of a little thing we call bus effect, but still it was very comfortable. I had a really nice, but kind of wierd guy next to me, but like I said he was really nice. The best part was, as soon as the plane took off, he donned a red and white stocking cap and think black rimmed glasses. I knew where Waldo was, he was just one seat over. He was a pleasant guy, with very little understanding of the in-flight entertainment system, so in the Geek Squad spirit, I was more than happy to offer my services and give him a quick tutorial. He thanked me and then had tons of questions and it was really fun talking and explaining to him my take on how the system worked. The best part is, the system required an upgrade after we landed and it proved me correct, they run an embedded version of Windows CE and they restart them at the beginning of each flight to improve stability. I leave any Linux/BSD comments out, or did I . After landing in LA, I proceded through the slowest security check point ever and headed to my gate on the other side of the airport, we boarded the plane and of course then the PA kicked on. “Upon a walk around inspection, my first officer noticed a fluid leak from the left wing.” explained the Captain, “we’ve had the maintenance team inspect it and they’ve found a hydraulic control system valve to be the culprit.” At this point, I’ve already missed my connecting flight in Chicago. My fellow crew member, Raf(ael) and his wife were in the front of the plane, and she ensured me that they, United Airlines, have almost hourly service from O’hare to Minneapolis/St Paul. I headed to the Customer Disservice Desk, and was informed that I should head to the Gate for the 2pm flight and get on the waiting list. I did just that, only to find a bigger line and an announcement that they wouldn’t be taking any additional people on the waiting list. My smile changed to a frown, and I headed back to my original flight. Upon sitting down, they made an announcement that we would be reboarding shortly and leaving for Chicago. Frown mode off, smile mode on. The flight to Chicago was a nice nap, and upon deplaning, the counter agent informed me to go to another gate for the 9:50pm flight to MSP. 10 minutes later I was enjoying a Quizno’s sub waiting for boarding to begin. We left on time and 1 hour 9 minutes later we were on approach to a very snowy Minneapolis-St Paul international airport. After a very, very soft landing and some additional reverse thrusting, we were cruising along on the taxiways heading to our gate. The funny thing is, this woman with kids in front of me overheard the pilotz weather vox and she heard that it was “poor braking conditions” at MSP. She kept talking about it, so I said “Listen, the plane on the ground doing 100MPH is safer than you driving your car in the same snow at 40MPH. The plane doesn’t care about the pavement condition for steering, it has the control surfaces and jet engines that all rely on the air and not the runway surface for control.” It worked, whether it’s completely true in the real world or not is up for argument, but physically speaking it makes good sense to me, and she bought it. No harm, no foul. I took a taxi home, and tipped my driver well because he took every consideration while driving in less than ideal conditions. When I walked through the door, my beautiful Jen was waiting for me sleepy eyed and smiling. I pulled in a small snowbank, cleaned that up and went to bed. I didn’t want to get up this morning because the bed was way too comfortable, and Jen hit the snooze button a record number of times. Finally, I drove her to work and now I’m making this, the probably last(chronologically), and probably final post. So to all I say “Hello there, it’s good to be home.”

Local Time 17:29(GMT+12) Saturday 11 March, 2006

So I got my flight details today. I leave on the 15th of March in the evening and get home the 15th of March in the evening 2 hours later. That International Date Line is a funny thing. For now it’s a matter of sitting here, waiting and sorting gear on the 14th. Gonna try and get a few things done and see some more stuff. Tonight is Dori’s birthday and we’re going out for drinks and dinners and stuff. Anyhow, not much more to post. I did add an xfire banner to the bottom of the page so you’ll can see how much time I’m wasting on BattleField 2, but it doesn’t quite seem to be working right. Maybe I’ll look into it tomorrow morning…

Local Time 18:32(GMT+12) Thursday 9 March, 2006

If you haven’t already heard the news, well then let me tell you. The remaining dates of the tour have been postponed, and well, they’re sending us home. I should be leaving sometime in the next 10 days with my final destination being that of my beloved home, Minneapolis. Jen sounded pretty happy that I would be coming home, and well, it’s been fun out here, but I have to admit that I have a bit of a smile on my face. I long for being able to cuddle with Jen, sleep in my own bed, drive my own car and last but not least the constant and predictable speed offered by my home internet connection. I am not, however, looking forward to all of the “see you laters” (goodbyes) in the next week. Nor am I looking forward to the 20 hour flight home, and the accompanying Jet Lag. The good part is, it’s similar to that of flying to Europe, I just add 5 hours to the time and subtract one from the day. You know what else I’m looking forward to? Chipotle. I haven’t had one in over a month, and it’s a craving nothing can cure, well except a Chipotle burrito of course. To all of you, I will not say that this is my last post, but it is definitely the first of the last. I’ll try and get some of the final pictures up, and I’ll be posting as I get more news on the recent events and what it involves for us to pack up and leave. Safe travels, and I’ll see you soon.

Local Time:GMT+12 - 18:59

Yesterday (4 march) we left Buenos Aires for Auckland, New Zealand. Our flight out of Buenos Aires to Santiago went smoothly and we all arrived in time with about 45 minutes to wait at the next gate. After sitting for 2 hours, we were given the bad news. Our flight had been cancelled and would not depart until 10:30am on the 5th, about 12 hours later than planned. So they loaded us up on a bus and sent us to a hotel in Downtown Santiago. We had about 4 hours to sleep before we need to leave to go back to the airport for our flight. Most of the 14 or us went to sleep. 2 individuals had other plans. James took off and went to a bar, returning just in time to get his wake-up call. Andrew decided to have a stand-off with his mini bar. He ended up winning and had a grin like a cheshire cat in the morning, it was quite funny. After getting to the airport and waiting for about 2 hours at the gate, we finally boarded the plane and departed. about 14 hours later we were in New Zealand. Now it’s about 7pm on the 6th, so I pretty much lost the 5th, which I’ll get back when we go to Hawaii. My plan today is to stay up as long as possible and reset my body clock so I can adjust to the new times for the next month.

So yesterday we flew into Buenos Aires, Argentina. This land is famous for it’s beef, among other things of course, but I’m focusing on the beef. I headed out with a couple of guys and we headed to a place called “La Brigada” quite famous (but small) for it’s steaks and such. Upon arrival we found that you needed to have a reservation or wait for 2 hours. Since we were hungry, we forged on. We found another little place and they prepped a table for the 13 of us that had somehow come together throughout our epic journey. OK, so it was a 12block walk, but we were hungry. We had wonderful salads, appetizers and wine to start. Then came the main course, I orered Medallon de Lomo (Beef Tenderloin) and Papas Fritas (steak fries). The tenderloin was huge and cooked perfectly. I ate the entire thing despite it’s 16oz weight. It was the best. We finished up the meal with more drinks, and the manager/owner offered us all complimentary champagne. We graciously accepted and toasted to the 2 members who are leaving after Buenos Aires. In the end, our meal for 13 including 6 bottles of wine, booze and top cut states came to a total of 750 Argentinian Pesos…at an exchange rate of 2.7P/1USD that’s about $277USD for 13 people. We ended up each putting in $100pesos and leaving a 73% tip, because the food, service and people were excellent. This place was a great find and probably one of the better steak meals I’ve had in my life. Afte the walk home, I had a drink in the lobby and went upstairs. Watched some Cartoon Network en Espanol (which is getting easier) and then passed out. Today’s going well, and we’re probably going to be here all night, but it’s a wonderful office, with decent speed internet and good company.

Today was the show in Santiago, Chile. It was fairly uneventful, until about 3pm. That’s when things started smoking and popping. Upon unplugging everything and checking the lines, we found that we were getting a 390V electrical service between the hot and ground lines. Not a good thing when you’re expecting a 240V service. So after narrowing it down and finding a decorative light that was shorting to ground, we replaced the power conditioner and we were back up and running. I learned a lot about 3 phase power generation and it’s distribution, it was very educational and somewhat entertaining. Luckily we have a Cat Entertainment Power guy who speaks Spanish fluently. Other than that, it was a fairly normal day. I fixed computers, saw a rock show and loaded some trucks. I’ll probably drink some beer tonight too.

One last thing, here’s a funny little video. It’s a guy doing shadow puppets of two monkeys on a date, it’s really quite funny.
click here

We flew into Santiago, Chile this morning on a charter plane…ah charter plane. We then loaded buses and headed to the hotel, where we had a wonderful breakfast outside beneath the towering Andes. I’m now back in my room, waiting for 12pm to go out and about with the power guys and Dori. I think we’re going to get a car and go do some stuff. We have today and tomorrow off, so I’m looking forward to sleeping in and playing some Battlefield 2 online with some of the other Geek Squad agents. Apparently the server that BFGTech is cobranding with us are doing so well, they gave us another 3 servers and we basically control what goes on them and what we play. Super Duper fun it is. Well, I’ll post a picture from my awesome room as soon as the morning haze dissipates. I can see downtown Santiago and the Andes Mtns surround it all, it’s pretty sweet looking. It’s good to be back in a spanish speaking country, I have a clue how to speak the language, and I’m much more capable at faking it because I know the important words and how to pronounce them. The Portugese in Brazil sort of threw me for a loop, it was really really hard to get something so simple as a Large Chocolate Shake at McDonalds…Hey, I’ve been a good boy, and I’ve lost 13lbs since I left less than a month ago, I deserve it. Besides, I skipped lunch yesterday because I was sleeping, and had worked my butt off loading out. Anyhow, a good day to all and keep reading.

Right now we’re done with Sao Paulo Brazil. The most exciting thing was pretty much when Bob the video guy threw an orange smoke marine flare in the seats after load out. Wait, I take that back, I forgot about the crossload from pallets out of an airplane into the fruit trucks at the airport. That was pretty fun. They’re also shooting an iMax HD 3D version of the show, so we have a whole bunch of extra film equipment to load/crossload. When we picked it up at the airport, they forgot (yah right, more like didn’t care) to send a representative to pack their truck. Mistake for them, we packed the truck tighter than I’m sure they’ve every seen, and when we were done, we put every remaining load bar in the backend of their truck, so they would have to take them all out. We also put some in right next to each other and twisted them around so their handles were together, this makes them even harder to get out. A lesson to be learned, don’t ever piss off a group of roadies then expect them to load your equipment.

On a side note, the rumors of Brazilian beauty and style are true. The people here are extravagant, and “Amazon Beauties” was brought to light by the people (ladies) here. The other crew members did real well, however, I still prefer my foxy brown polish girl, she’s got more charm and she speaks the english good.

Our two Mexico City shows were the biggest yet. The estimate is around 90,000 people per show. You can tell when you’re here. There are times where the people cheer louder than the sound system, that’s over 110dB. The people here are also very enthusiastic, so they yell and sing along a lot. There are times when they are singing, and rather than hearing the band, you’re hearing the people singing the song, kind of funny. They could sing in the parking lot for free. Today my friends Dennis, Andy and I hijacked a golf cart to go get the ticket stubs from the door, it was hilarious, and we had to drive up on curbs and around blockades to get there, laughing all the way of course. Then, the golf cart started getting slower because we apparently took the one with an almost dead battery. We ended up pushing the thing, with 3 passengers up the hill back to the production compound. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but the heat and altitude made it a serious task. After the show, we loaded out and I managed the stage hands bringing gear up the huge (100m) ramp. It was long hard work that took a very long time, I was wiped out after we finished, but it was a really great workout. After I had finished I took part in the crossload, which is where we unload the trucks onto air pallets for the planes. Since Mexico City to Sao Paolo, Brazil would take like a week by truck, we fly the gear on cargo planes, 3 of them to be exact. The crossload was a new experience and quite fun as far as work goes. To finish it all off, we were served a catered breakfast right on the tarmac, surrounded by show gear, forklifts and cargo planes.

After a successful show last night, we loaded out all the gear and put it into trucks to transport it to Mexico City. We finished around 4:30am and the last trailer doors were closed with a couple of smacks on the side of the trailer to spur it into motion. We headed back to the hotel and got our quick 3-4 hours of sleep before boarding a bus to the airport around 9am. An hour and twenty minute flight later, we were in Mexico City and heading to the hotel. Obviously, from this post, I’ve gotten online and checked my email and now I’m going to retire to some TV via the slingbox and my recently purchased internet connection. Tomorrow we leave around 6am and begin working at 8am. I’ll try and get some more pictures and hopefully a funny story or two to post for you all. Buenas Noches Hombres.