Flights were direct on USAirways/republic, out was on an embraer erj170, which is pretty good for seat space but not great for legroom. Return was on an erj145 (the 2-1 seat layout). Tiny seats and I couldn’t even pretend to stand up in the aisle, which had a clearance of maybe 5 foot 8, so I was practically crawling in it. Not something I intend to aim for…. I’ll stick to the 2-2’s in the future if I can.

Louisville itself was uneventful — we spent a lot of time onsite, and went to Buck Head’s again for one dinner (it was pretty good). Watched some curling. Really, not much to say there.

Right now I’m in Minneapolis. This is the first solo business trip I’ve taken, so I guess that’s a bit of a milestone. I’m on this trip to install a dev server on the site here, so it should be pretty easy.

Flying in out and back are all southwest, via midway. I was initially uneasy about flying Southwest, because of the no-assigned-seating thing (fearing a long line-up and a big free-for-all scrum), because of the whole we-only-fly-737s thing (they spec out as having some of the smallest seats in US airframes), and because of the very recent, very salient, very relevant-feeling Kevin Smith “too fat to fly” episode. I’ve been sort of yo-yoing in the 350-360 range pretty much since the days got short… something like seasonal depression or something I guess.

Well, it turns out that so far, so good. You do online check-in on southwest, and get into it fairly early, and you end up in the A group and find a place to sit. Flying in the middle of the week, middle of the day, seemed like both flights so far were running between 1/2 and 2/3 full, so all the middle seats were open, and while the seats are certainly no 777 seats, they’re also not as bulky as big modern seats, so the seats themselves don’t take as much space as the seats on a lot of other planes. I was actually, just barely, comfortable on both the trip from IAD to Midway and from Midway to MSP. Nobody gave me crap about being big, and with the open space I could pretty easily spread out after takeoff. So that was cool, I guess.

Anyway, so now I’m chillin in a Fairfield literally across the parking lot from Mall of America. I wandered around there tonight to find food (ended up just grabbing a slice at Sbarro). Mall of America is almost surreal … it’s definitely pretty huge, but other than the massive surplus of materialism, the most striking thing I noticed was the food courts. Every one of the standard-issue mall type food court spots was waving samples at everyone walking by. It’s such a buyer’s market getting cheap food on a weeknight, you could hit the two courts sampling and leave full without spending a dime. It’s also kind of a trip how they have like 3 or 4 roller coasters (including one that looks pretty goddamned intense) right in the middle of the mall, where most malls put the food court. To say nothing of the store with the 9 foot tall vases. I wish I had brought my camera on this trip.

Oh, also, Minneapolis in February…. not really a good idea. Just saying. It’s pretty bitter now that I’m acclimated to the mild winters of temperate Maryland.

Right, so … tomorrow onsite, then tomorrow night red-eyeing it back to dulles (again via midway). Might follow up the post, might not.

2010, 2%. That’s the goal.

So …. 2009. It’s been a year. I started 2009 out with a review of 2008, and it was… well, 2008 was a pretty decent year, all told.

2009 has been sort of a lost year for me, in that I’m amazed that it’s over, and I leave it with little sense of immediate accomplishment. No major life transitions have hit me this year.

On the health front, I mostly feel pretty good. I still have yet to get new glasses, to see a doctor at all, to see a dentist at all, so I’m not _really_ taking much more care of myself than I was. But I am conscious of what I eat and consciously addressing my worst habits, eating a little less on the whole, exercising a little more on the whole.

I got a bike, a surly cross check 62cm – the largest size frame they make. But I’ve put maybe 20 hard-fought miles on the bike, so the cost average is somewhere in the $50/mile range right now. Shortly after I got it, the city tore up my street to repave, and then didn’t actually resurface for like 3 months, and given the fear of pinch flats and general unpleasantness of riding on grated-up streets, I didn’t get much riding in in the summer. More than that, my weird sleep cycles that have me not seeing weekend mornings took their toll on my ability to ride, as did my weird dietetic cycles. Most of the biking that I did was in my absurdly hilly neighborhood, and I discovered that I’m pretty rapidly hitting the lactate threshold whenever I try to climb a hill around here, which sort of puts a damper on a lot of riding. But it’s still fun, getting the bike up into the low 30’s on a flat or a light downhill is exhilarating, and I look forward to doing more of that next year.

I joined the gym at work, and started a workout regimen back about a month ago, that mostly consists of 3mph on a treadmill at 3% incline for between 40 and 60 minutes, and some strength work. I don’t have a specific goal in mind, other than to make it there at least once a week for now. It’s had me feeling better.

I also did spent some time playing tennis with my roommates this summer, and completely failing at basketball with them and some other friends back in late spring. Tennis was fun. Didn’t get serious enough to keep score, at all, ever, at any of it though — we’re all pretty much failures at sports, but it was a good time. Took several walks in the 3+ mile range, a couple in the 5+ range, and started using bikely.com to chart out both walking and cycling routes in the neighborhood. I also spent some time exploring the nearby forest preserves … thinking in 2010 I’ve got to look for a pair of hiking boots and do some more serious trail-hiking out in the local state parks. Seneca Creek sounds neat, and I’m thinking of doing an expedition out in the direction of Shenandoah National Park for some hiking too. To say nothing of my interest in cycling part of the C&O canal, but I’m not sure if I’ll have my bike mileage limit up to the point where I can successfully approach a full-day c&o run in the next year. Probably not at the current rate of improvement.

I also got a heart rate monitor, partly because of biking, partly because of tennis My rest heart rate is certainly a little concerning, but I’m taking it as a sign that I need to drop some caloric intake and do some more light-to-moderate exercise to get healthier. I think I hit my peak weight this year, which was in the mid 360’s, which is also alarming. But right now I’m in the mid-350’s, and slowly drifting down ever since I joined the gym and started paying attention. It’s still a big concern though, and I could definitely see myself 50 or 60 fat-pounds lighter, if not that 50 or 60 net-weight pounds lighter.

On the entertainment front, I think I’ve put about 6, maybe 7 or 8 hours total this year into playing bass. Another hobby that per-hour has turned out to be quite a bit more expensive than expected. It’s cool though, when I make time to pick it up, I enjoy it quite a bit.

I’ve pretty much given up on anime at this point. I think the only series I’ve been following is Dragon Ball Kai, and I already know how that whole story turns out. Still, it’s good nostalgia. Still following a couple Manga series, so I’ve got at least a little shounen-action-cred left. And gotwoot’s still alive, albeit in a slightly paralyzed state with the fansubbers being scared off from posting on the front page, and the forums at their perpetual rumble. I’m going to have to make a vbulletin migration to 4.x a 2010 priority and do it myself, or it’s never going to happen.

My roommates and I went to a memorable concert: Dethklok and Mastodon on Halloween at the Patriot Center. I ended up getting not a single decent picture, and I don’t think I wrote about it at all before, so I’ll write a bit here: we showed up before the first opener. There were two openers: High on Fire and Converge. Both were surprisingly good for opening bands. I liked High on Fire better for the musical style (which is a little more grungy, a little less punkish). Converge had better (insane, frenetic) energy and was a real crowd pleaser, but they were also a lot more punkish, fast and loose, and a little out of the line of my more melodic tastes. Mastodon played through their entire Cracke The Skye album, which was ok, but honestly kind of unengaging — it’s their newest album, but maybe not their best for a concert performance. But then they broke some stuff out from remission, leviathan, and blood mountain that was pretty rockin’, and we had a good time there — but the dethklok show completely brought the house down, had the whole place literally rocking to the music. It was a blast, but also a valuable lesson: next time at a metal show: ear protection, not optional.

Speaking of memorable activities, how could I forget attending the Obama inauguration, in the bitter cold. My roommates and I made it in at around the Washington Monument, immersed in an absolute sea of people, watching the proceedings on the giant screens they had set up because even though we were “there” we were like a mile and change away from the proceedings. And even though I subsequently spent a week recovering from the knocked-down immune system and the moderate flu that set in after the trip, it was totally worth it.

Back on the work front, I did a bunch of traveling, all around the country, which was interesting and got me quite a few interesting experiences and enough hours in planes and airports to be considered a veteran business traveler. Also spent a lot of time in various airport Marriotts and became pretty decent friends with the coworkers who went along. It was a good experience, and I got to sample a dozen or so cities on a dime that wasn’t my own. When I’ve got someone to go with and a bit more financial stability, I can definitely see myself going back to a lot of these places (and others) for my own tourism reasons, which is interesting because I never really had the opportunity to do any really touristy stuff growing up.

Work was also pretty engaged for other reasons. The project that had all the travel also had a big web portal that I helped architect, and built the systems and most of the security setup for it, and managed to guide through the whole deployment process from start to finish, which was big points on the work-kudos scale. Then I also did a big incident response and recovery after a moderately-important system got compromised. I’ve led up on a couple projects and contributed to a bunch of others. Really, I’ve pretty well integrated myself into the team at work, and I’m as close to having hit my stride as anyone really gets in a world of moving targets, to the point that the other admins depend on me pretty heavily for a lot of stuff. I’ve also been put on the “recommended for promotion” list, so it’s possible that I pick up a job title upgrade in the next few months. Or maybe not, there’s no promises there.

A lot of my life has been revolving around work. It’s pretty much work, eat, sleep, repeat. I’ve also dumped a lot of time into gaming. I picked up a ps3 specifically and solely for disgaea 3, into which I put in something like 250 hours I think. I picked up legit copies of a couple games I had non-legit copies of before that I found myself playing all the time. Spent the first half of the year in and out of rock band, which I haven’t played at all this month for lack of compelling new DLC. I put a couple dozen hours into simcity 4, probably logged a bit over 100 hours in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne this year (some on a twinked-demons hard-mode replay, the rest on a clean-room hard run that I’m almost done with). Spent the last week or so immersed in Dragon Age: Origins (and by immersed I mean 65 hours in 6 days, which is absurd). Not a lot of other games on the docket this year, I’ve been mainly focused on deep plays of a few games, rather than broad-spectrum gaming, but it’s been pretty satisfying.

I didn’t read as much as I had hoped in 2009. I only really made it through 6 or 7 books total, which is sort of a sad showing for a nerd like me. I’m thinking of a furniture upgrade just to give myself a comfortable place to settle in with a book.

I started down the road of the wine snob, with six semi-random bottles I bought on my birthday. Took me till thanksgiving to get through them all. I learned a few things about my tastes and likes and dislikes from the experience. I learned that I don’t much care for Sherry, it’s ok but not something I’d go out of my way to drink. I discovered that a Ruby Port gives me more of a hangover on less than half a bottle than a full bottle of whiskey. And that half a bottle of ruby port is not enough to get me more than a slight buzz. I learned that wine-buzzed is sort of a more mellow, slow-onset, long-lasting buzz (versus the fast-onset, fast-retreating liquor buzz). That Pinot Noir is a bit too delicate for my palate, and that the flavors of a pinot grigio aren’t up my alley. I liked a Davinci Chianti Classico, and a young, cheap Ravenswood Merlot made my favorites list. I am lukewarm to the Cabernet Sauvignon I’ve got in front of me right now, which is fairly strong and bold, but without a whole lot of complexity or well-defined flavor. I could see myself finishing off the bottle tomorrow, but it’s not my favorite wine in the world.

The big problem I have with the whole wine scene is that apparently a lot of the wine you can buy is categorized as “too young to drink” … and it’s hard for someone who’s just starting to know when a wine is “ready” — you just about need a sommelier on-call to tell you what’s good and what’s going to be good in a couple years. It’s kinda crazy.

On the music tastes front, I haven’t moved too far from the beginning of the year to now. I went through a serious Megadeth kick, and the tail end of a serious Buckethead kick, but I’m back to my some-chillhouse some-classical mostly-random default as of late.

Personal life wise, I am still pretty much just here. My social life is not particularly extensive or interesting, and there’s not really much to say about it. Hopefully that’s something to change next year.

Lastly, on the financials front, I’m better than ever. I’m close to 5-figure savings, I’ve got less than 16k in student loans and less than 16k in car loans, a little in the stock market (where I’m taking a beating, I bet half the money I put into it on a bad horse, and missed my opportunity to dismount). And I’ve built up a pretty decent chunk in retirement mutual funds thanks in no small part to corporate contribution matching. It still adds up to a negative net worth, but only just barely. At the current rate, I’ll be debt free and have a mid-range 5-figure savings balance by the time I make this post in 2012, so I think I’ll be looking for my non-rental house in either 2013 or 2014, depending on a lot of factors and assuming no pay raises or promotions. And pay raises and promotions are likely (though no pay raise for this year, ’cause of a corporate-wide “curve bending” operation). Considering my life of sensible excess (it’d be relatively easy for me to cut my monthly expenses in half) that’s not doing too bad.

Right, so that’s 2009. It’s slight progress on a lot of fronts, but no game-changers. May 2010 see improvements where appropriate.

Per usual, I’ve got some pics from around Houston up in the gallery. It was good times. I think the coolest thing about this trip was probably that there’s this pretty unique motif for the streets, which centers around stainless steel and sort of futuristic-looking decorations. So like, in part of the city, all of the light posts are mirror-polished stainless steel, all of the street signs are suspended mirror-polished rings, etc. It’s pretty neat.

For food, we hit one place in the Galleria mall itself: a Japanese Fusion restaurant called Kona Grill. I had a chicken dish, which was like ideally cooked and just ridiculously delicious. Coworkers had slightly different dishes, but generally the same reaction: that place makes a pretty respectable dinner. As a bonus, we had a waitress named Pepper, who was like ridiculously cute, but I think stretched a little thin on the tables she was covering.

We also hit a place a block or two down called Maggie Rita’s. Predictably, they’re a mexican/tex-mex place. We all got fajitas, and they were great… but I can’t think of a time I’ve had bad fajitas. Tortillas were a bit inconsistent though … I think you probably get better tortillas at places like Guapo’s around here or Pappasito’s in Texas. Still, I was satisfied.

JW Marriott hotels have kind of a weird room layout compared to a normal Marriott, I learned. I’m not sure how I felt about it, but it wasn’t bad. Probably a bit better on the bedroom area privacy (couldn’t hear hall-goers and no beds on shared walls), but overall I didn’t care too much, since I was there to sleep.

Not too much eventful to report about the flights. Flew American Airlines, MD Super-80’s all four hops (IAD->DFW->IAH, back the same route). I’m not a fan of the super-80 or the md80/md88 setup in general, but the flights were at least on-time and largely annoyance-free. Three of the four had in-flight wireless, but it was like $14, so I didn’t partake. Per usual, got back right in time to catch the peak hour or so of Friday evening rush hour, which wasn’t a great time. I finished reading Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers on the flight there. Thought it was stellar, but I don’t really feel like writing a book review, so … yeah, it’s good, and definitely recommended!

Anyway, that’s it for that…

On the work part of the trip, the install was a mess. We ended up in a datacenter that made our sloppy cable-buildup over the last decade or so in the server room at work look absolutely solid pro. Had space issues and problems finding adequate power to run the whole node, and ran into mysterious network config issues including but not limited to a bad cable and a weird switch configuration, and the normally expected router hiccups. Think we were there a bit over 5 hours, which is close to our record longest.

The weather was pretty scuzzy, and one of the coworkers was meeting up with some family, so we ended up just kind of driving around the downtown Atlanta area in the rain and not really stopping or walking around at all. We did see quite a few people getting pulled over and/or arrested though… so there’s that. I’ve got some pictures of the scuzzy rainy drive over at the gallery.

The one interesting dining place we landed at was a seafood joint/bar called Spondivits. I had the “deluxe platter” (some regular crab legs, a couple king crab legs, half a lobster tail, a bunch of pretty big shrimp, and a handful of specialty-cooked oysters), which was impressive looking, respectably well-prepared, and filled me up pretty well for about what you’d expect to pay for a meal like that. Atmosphere wasn’t great (you know …. it was basically a so-so bar with a seafood menu), but had reasonably good service and pretty good food. Not sure I’d go back unless I was really hankering for some crab or something though.

Flight both ways was an Embraer ERJ-175, which has decent seat comfort and a decently high cabin for being a 2-2 layout plane. As a bonus, the flight attendant ad-hoc upgraded me to economy plus on the trip down, so I actually had enough legroom for a change… which was nice. IAD->ATL is a pretty short hop though.

Overall, I was sort of luke-cool on this trip, I guess. I wasn’t really feeling it. I think after better than a year or this and something like 8 trips down, I’m sort of burning out on this whole work travel gig. It’s kind of annoying, it eats up more than half of the week, and we don’t really get any opportunity to really get to know the cities we visit at all.

I’ve got one more trip to Houston slated to lift off in 6 hours, and probably another visit to Minneapolis sometime around December, or possibly the beginning of next calendar year, but I think that’s all we’ve got planned for now, so I’m kinda burning out on it at right about the right time I guess.