Fun and Games Dept

If you see a mountain, climb it. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this view on our flight yesterday.

So Earl, Jamie and I arrived in Vancouver, B.C. last night after our adventures on the flight from Atlanta. The flight was 2 1/2 hours late. We cleared customs, grabbed the rental car and went on a brief drive before heading to our hotel near the airport.

This morning I noticed that this hotel is great if you’re an aviation geek.

We leave on our cruise tomorrow, so today we are going to explore Vancouver a little bit and get acquainted with whatever one can do in Vancouver in 24 hours.

If they get me away from watching airplanes all day.

  
So last night I decided to wind down a little bit before falling asleep by watching an episode of “The Secrets of Isis”. If you’re not familiar with this show, The Shazam!/Isis Hour was a Saturday morning staple on CBS in 1976 and 1977. There were two seasons of the show, for a total of 23 episodes. I was a fan of both “Shazam!” and “The Secrets of Isis”, though my interest was stronger in the latter. Andrea Thomas, Isis’ alter-ego, was the cool teacher that everyone wanted. She cared about her students, had the most amazing speaking voice ever and seemed like a genuinely nice woman. I like to think that Joanna Cameron’s real personality came through her portrayal of Andrea Thomas and Isis.

At the end of every episode, Isis broke the fourth wall and relayed the moral of the story directly to the audience. The Saturday morning show sought to teach the viewer something, whether it was bad to play with a gun if you didn’t know what you were doing, we should always strive to respect the environment or that race and differences in people were no reason to be judgmental, among many other topics.

Watching these morals, which are included as an extra feature on the original DVD release from the mid 2000s, reminds me that these messages had a profound effect on my moral compass as an adult. I try to respect the environment, I certainly strive to appreciate the differences in all of us and I never played with a gun until I knew how to properly shoot one.  I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that once in a while I might think back to what Captain Marvel on “Shazam!” or Isis would teach us to do when presented with a certain situation.

Of course, I found Joanna Cameron to be absolutely stunning in beauty in her looks, demeanor and voice. It’s no wonder that she at one time was in the Guinness Book of World Records for having participated in the most television commercials.  Ms. Cameron retired from acting in the early 1980s and found other ways to contribute to society, first in the home health care field and later managing hotels in Hawai’i.

One of these days I’ll have to venture out to one of her rare appearances at a Sci Fi convention and shake her hands as a gesture of thanks. She certainly had an impact on this kid.
 

So a couple of weeks ago another telecommunications company contacted me regarding my web application development skills via my LinkedIn profile. I’ve chatted with this company before, the woman that contacted me used to work at another location at my present company, a year ago they suggested I apply for a position that seemed perfect for me. I had just started my current position and I wasn’t prepared to relocate; so I declined the offer.

They contacted me again with a different sort of approach: I could work from home with routine trips to the Carolinas to meet with other team members. The benefits and salary were very enticing. The challenge sounded exciting.

Last Monday I formally accepted the position of Senior Consultant. I start my new job on June 8. I gave my notice to my current employer mid-week last week, my last day of my current position is officially May 29, but with the last week of pre-planned vacation, my last work day will be May 22.

Needless to say, I am very excited about this new chapter in my career. I will be traveling to South Carolina for my first week and it’s my understanding that my job will technically be based in Greenville, though I will be working from home. Even though the opportunity sounds incredible and the benefits are quite nice, it was still a hard decision to make. As a guy in his mid 40s, I’m starting to approach that enjoyment-of-the-familiar vibe that we have going on, but ultimately the adventurer spirit within won out. 

One of the more exciting aspects of this opportunity is that it solidifies Earl’s retirement plans and goals and it gives us better options for relocation when that time comes around.

I have this whole “reboot” feeling now; I’ll be wiping the work projects slate clean and taking on new challenges. I’ll have a new computer and a whole new team to work with; I’ll be writing software with different purposes and goals from what I do today. I feel there’s plenty of room from growth, plenty of ways to learn. I feel energized.

Life is grand!

One of the my favorite things about traveling is the people watching. I am entertained by watching people carrying on in their daily lives. It’s one of the reasons that I tend to dress in a nondescript manner; it’s easier to just watch people when you’re part of the background.

I see so many people on trains and in airport terminals with headphones in their ears and I can’t understand why they want to shut out the world. The world around us is so very fascinating.

I can sit for hours and just watch people. I don’t really want to engage in conversation or anything, though I will talk with someone if they look friendly enough and we are in relatively close proximity to one another. I’m not comfortable with screaming “HEY” across an airport terminal, though I have observed that some folks do feel comfortable to do such a thing. They’ll even yell “HEY” across a large store or something. I like to keep my interactions on a more personal level.

People are fascinating. I once remarked to a friend that every person is making some sort of contribution to this life experience, even if that contribution is a negative one. No one is invisible. It’s amazing what you see when you watch people. Nuances, moods, mannerisms, all of this is fascinating to me.

I’m writing this blog entry in the Jeep in the remote corner of a grocery store parking lot. People are coming in and out of the store and battling the elements whilst doing so. How they deal with the wind and the rain, how they push their cart, whether they put their cart in the corral or not when they’re done, it’s all very fascinating to me.

Even though we’ve been in Pensacola Beach since Monday, the both of us having been working regular hours and Earl has been hobnobbing with coworkers after hours. Tonight was our first and only dinner date night in Pensacola Beach.

We opted to eat at Hemingway’s, one of the many beach restaurants here in Pensacola Beach. It was a very good, but not awesome experience. I wrote a review on TripAdvisor. I will probably link to it when it becomes a public review.

Earl and I took the opportunity of visiting western Florida to add state number 43 out of 50 to our “visited states list” today. Our rule for counting a state is that we must drive in that state for longer than 30 minutes, so today after work we made the relatively short trip along US 98 from Pensacola, Florida to Mobile, Alabama.

The drive along the gulf coast via US 98 is delightful; we passed through several small towns before ending up in suburban Mobile. Traffic was light, everything was green and the drive was pleasant.

We decided we wanted to get back “home” to Pensacola Beach for dinner, so when we got to Interstate 10, we hopped on and headed east. As a road geek and almost civil engineer, I’m always eager to see how each state treats their interstate highways. Alabama does well with Interstate 10. It felt “comfortable” to me.

We briefly toyed with the idea of adding Mississippi to the list as well, since it’s only 30 miles to the west of Mobile, but we decided to wait until we visit Memphis, Tenn. and then we’ll spend a good chunk of time in Mississippi and add it properly to the list.

There’s probably quite a few families in my immediate vicinity that are disappointed with the weather this afternoon.

Though we are in a vacation destination this week, Earl and I are working regular hours today and tomorrow. Earl is here in Pensacola Beach, Florida for conference meetings for work and since I basically can work from anywhere, I spent most of the day working on my work MacBook Pro via VPN. I had a most productive day at work today; I find the change in scenery to be very inspiring. I wrote some good code today and knocked out a few projects that I have been trying to get done.

Mother Nature shared a couple of beautiful thunderstorms with us today. I was able to watch the wind completely change in direction in less than five minutes. As a private pilot, it was a good reminder as to why we don’t fly our airplanes in this type of weather. As a storm chaser, it was awesome. A close-by lightning strike wiped out the hotel Internet connectivity for a few moments. Luckily, I travel with backups (more about my traveling technology in an upcoming post.)

Earl is out to dinner with his colleagues this evening; I was planning on walking the Boardwalk on the Bay side of the island, but it’s currently raining a little too hard to derive any enjoyment from that activity. I don’t really mind the weather right now because I’m wicked relaxed and feeling quite content. 

And contentment is good.

I’m writing this blog entry while sitting on a deck overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. Earl is in Pensacola Beach, Florida for a work conference for the week and I tagged along with him. This opportunity is another reason why I love my job; I am able to work as a “digital nomad” and basically do my job from anywhere. I write code, I talk on conference calls and I enjoy life from anywhere, all in one big swoop.

After getting settled into our room shortly before 4:00 Central and working a couple of hours this afternoon, I went for a walk along the beach and familiarized myself with the area I’ll be calling home for the next few days.

It was a very pleasant experience.