Writing Wrongs

The purpose of this whole train to Reno exercise was to see snow-covered scenery from about Colfax to the mile-high summit, and maybe beyond. There was major snow in the higher elevations, October 22nd through the 24th, Nov. 8-11 and 16-18, but the last week has been like summer and it has all melted off the trees and all that is left is a trace covering in the shaded areas.

It's still beautiful scenery, but I've seen it so many times before.

The only good news is it means we won't be fighting snow on the bus ride back to Sacramento.

So kind of a wasted trip, there were things in the Bay Area I would rather have been doing. But you never know till you do it, y'know?

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I left the hotel in Sacramento a little bit early to walk a few blocks to the downtown Starbucks, which also had no SAC mugs on display. I asked, they said they had been discontinued.

The place was way closer than I thought, so I was at the train station way early, more than an hour. I sat in the second row of benches for people needing assistance to get to the train (which translates as a 1-mile cart ride). The official writings claim the track is now 0.5 miles further from the station than it used to be, but they lie. That's just the first track, and it doesn't mention the steep incline or the stairs up to the platform at the end.

I don't know what 1800's genius designed them, but the benches in the station -all of them - have heaters inside, and metal grids at the top of each bench, about 18" wide and 12" deep, with about a foot in between each one, and I found myself sweating without knowing why.

The readerboard showed the train was going to arrive at 11:23 instead of departing at 11:09, so it was a longer wait. Finally, at 10:55, the nice man with the cart gathered us up for the first trip, and it was like a Disney ride through the wastelands. The new setup is open, but it is far from complete, he said. Apparently there will be a stadium in the middle. Huh?

As it turned out, the train actually arrived on time, there was a whole car of people getting off at SAC, which the Reno folks got to use, pick our own seats. Strange but true, the windows were clean.

Camera battery was down to 1/4, so I put in the first of my two spares, but it was also down to 1/4. When I took it out I saw th big black X I'd marked on the bottom, which really should have been a "?"  because I wasn't sure it was having trouble holding a charge could have been the GPS too). Now I'm sure. So I'm down to my last spare. I don't expect to be taking pictures from the bus.

Without the snow, I didn't take as many pictures as I might have. But that's okay, they are already in my portfolio from previous trips.

Arrived half an hour early, probably because there were not a lot of passengers after SAC, and the weather was so good.

Silver Legacy is a short walk from the station, it was actually longer to walk through the casino and across the skybridge to the reception desk. Bought a 24-hour wi-fi card, found my room on the 17th floor. Very big, 2 Queen beds, not much of a view with their big faux geodesic dome in the way. Just in time for sunset, and for three fire trucks to pass by. Deja vu.

Checked out the wi-fi, it wouldn't log in with Chrome, had to switch to Firefox. 

Found a quicker way out than the way in, and walked to Starbucks about 5 blocks away. No Reno mugs, they said there never have been, but they had a Lake Tahoe mug. Never been there, so no.

Back to the strip, I needed a baseball cap. I took my Thailand floppy hat, but it just doesn't hack it, gets in my face too much. There is a series of cheap souvenir shops on the main drag, all owned by the same people, which have made their windows opaque with murals of local scenery and trademarks. They are all out of business. :-(

The last remaining large souvenir store on the block had a a sale on a Reno cap which was just what I was looking for. I can see why it didn't sell - the design is too subtle. No one even the least bit buzzed would recognize it as a Reno hat. Also found a nice mug for <$2, compared to $10 for the Starbucks model. and a T-shirt which says "What happens in Reno goes on Facebook".

Time for dinner. I knew dessert was going to be at the ice cream/bakery in the El Dorado, so I scoped out their restaurants for dinner, but all of them were too dark to read in, including the buffet. Next to the ice cream place was a small eatery, they had a nice well-lit table which worked. Excellent service, fast, country fried steak was okay, way too much mashed potatoes, could have used more string beans and red bell pepper. Yummy.

Then next door for a banana split. Bad timing, the people ahead of me had ordered banana splits for all 8 of them, so by the time mine came up they only had to-go containers.

Parked myself facing the bar TVs, the last CRT TV screens left on the planet. Did not watch the Notre Dame game as much as I watched the cocktail waitresses. Very sexy outfits at the El Dorado. After dessert I went to the sports betting place and watched the last 5  minutes of the Notre Dame game from there, surrounded by people who had money on it. Mostly on Notre Dame.

Back to the Silver Legacy, time to get ready for bed.

Plans for tomorrow:
Amtrak bus leaves at 11:25. I will probably have time for breakfast first
Switch to Capitol Corridor train to SJC
Hope my car is still in the parking lot where I left it.

Ran out of tissues in the kitchen this morning, and when I went to get one from the cabinet under the sink in the small bathroom, I was hit by a cloud of moldy smell, and saw that all the TP and tissue boxes were soaked. A leak under the sink which I did not notice, maybe for a couple of weeks. I rarely need to look in that cabinet, and rarely use the sink. Went online this morning and placed a work order, but no one showed up today. Tomorrow, probably.

Work was work, a last minute snafu kept me there till almost 7.

Home, flipped between the football and baseball games. Football game was boring, for a change the baseball game was not. Giants were ahead 9-0 then it started pouring down rain harder then I've ever seen it at that ball park. With only half an inning to go (assuming the home team didn't blow a 9-run lead) the officials had them keep playing. It was a mess. They really should have stopped for an hour to let the field drain and the rain slacken. But the momentum was too high, fans were on their feet, and after one pitcher allowed two men on base, The Beard II was sent in to make the final out, which he did, pop fly to the infield, easy catch if it wasn't in a deluge. He made it, no worries.

I am thrilled that the Giants came back from near-elimination in two series in a row, and I was not even thinking that this meant a World Series is next. As far as I am concerned, no matter what happens they are The Little Team That Could™ and that's enough for me. I hope they win the series, but it would be best if they play their next four games like they played their last two, sans torture.

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Am furious about the Lance Armstrong witch hunt. He has hurt no one, and he has saved many lives. He made a spectacular recovery from cancer to become one of the best endurance athletes of all time, and that would have been true whether he won 7 Tour de Frances or just finished them. I think the latest findings are a crock, due process has not taken place, and the Tour president is a total asshole for saying Armstrong should be forgotten. If the allegations were true, and I don't think they are, it's the Tour which should be forgotten for its shoddy testing, and their president should resign in disgrace.

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Been coughing a lot. Dry cough, just a reflex, so this evening I broke out the flowering Jasmin tea. It helped a little, but not enough.

Last night I took 1/2 a vicodin, and it worked pretty well on the knee pain, and did not put me to sleep at work. The knee is not bothering me tonight so I'll skip it.

Yesterday I finally opened the tub of Tollhouse cookie dough and baked 2 1/2 dozen. I'd bought the tub originally planning to make the cookies for the Green Room for our final week, but there was a ton of food those three nights, so I never got around to it. Now I have munchies in the freezer. I like taking the frozen ones out and nuking them in the microwave for a few minutes

Now that my San Diego trip is done, I sat down with Word and put together my itinerary for Conflikt fil convention in Seattle at the end of January. I will be 62 by then, which gets me Amtrack's senior discount (better than the AAA discount) but not Hilton's, for which one has to be 65. When I thought I would be flying to the con, I booked just the weekend (Friday-Sunday) at the con hotel, but taking the train will add 2 days because it gets into SEA after 9 pm and the return trip starts at about 9 am. Awkward. Hilton has a pay-in-advance rate which is $1 less than the con rate, and when we get closer to the date and I am sure I'm taking all that time off, I'll cancel the con rate reservation and book the full Thurs-Mon at the pre-pay rate. It's a no-refund, no-changes rate. The regular rate is $15 a night more than the con rate.

Time now to get the shirts out of the dryer and hung in the closet.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
???

Packed too light at first, the folding day pack was too flimsy, so I grabbed the Interop day pack which has a built-in laptop section. By reflex I put the netbook in there, but that made it heavy so I took it out again. I only needed the phone for the internets this trip. Took Central to the park & ride lot I've been using for the past 15 years, and it was locked up. There were plenty of cars in there, but not nearly as many as usual, and it seems the new landlord Enterprise (Budget used to own it) is using it to store in-transit rental cars.

So I went onto the airport grounds but could not figure out how to get to the parking garage, so I parked in the too-expensive daily lot, which is very close to the Southwest terminal. That worked out well.

As usual I was there way early, thought about upgrading but they wanted $166, so I was in section B 52, which landed me a seat by the window in the second to last row. The last row was occupied by a WASP man, his foreign wife, and two little girls who were competing to see which one of them could kick a hole in the back of my seat quickest. They also had the "whine till Daddy says yes" thing down to a science, and it took the WASP middle-age male flight attendant three minutes to get them to put the tray back up, after which they cried as lot.

They were endlessly entertaining, too bad the flight is only an hour and a half.

I had no plan for how to get from the airport to the park to collect my theater ticket, so I asked at Information. She said to take the airport bus downtown (senior rate is $1.10 and I'm old enough there), then catch the #3 or #7 and get off at Laurel and walk into the park, the theater would be right near the entrance.

I didn't have any change, so I bought something at Starbucks which gave me a couple of quarters, I figured 15 cents was not a huge sacrifice. I got the #7 (no transfers on this system so it cost another $1.25), and when we passed the zoo and still had not gotten to Laurel I knew something was wrong, so I got off, walked three blocks to the zoo asked how to get to the theater from there. There is supposed to be a free tram, but there are no stops marked anywhere, and the info person said they don't come to the zoo. WTF? But he gave me a map, and pointed to a path. The theater is all the way on the other side of the park from the zoo, directly across.

That turned out to be more than a mile.

Signage in the park sucks. They have maps lost of places, and some of them have "you are here" markers, but as soon as you leave the map you are on your own. I was going to The Old Globe Theater so I thought I'd hit pay dirt when I started following Old Globe Road, but it dead-ended behind the botanical gardens.

Finally found it near the art museum, there was a sign which you pretty much had to trip over to see. Got my ticket, and headed for the park exit, the plan being to catch a bus to the hotel. Google maps told me the #3 bus, at Juniper and 4th. That was about a mile from the museum. No tram, no buses run into the park from that direction. When I sat down at the bus stop I looked up the hotel again, saw it was only 5 minutes' walk away, so I walked (the bus passed me just as I left the stop). 

The hotel did not have my reservation, but they had rooms at the rate I'd seen online (I had not prepaid) which was $69 plus the trimmings, on the AAA discount. Nice enough room, queen bed, small balcony overlooking the street, microwave and fridge in the bathroom. Air control unit cleverly hidden behind the very nice long desk. Flat screen TV connected directly to cable (no cable box), inside a lovely wood cabinet. Huge walk-in closet. Pretty nice for the price. America's Best Value Inn, I'd recommend them except then they would always be booked and I'd never get a chance to stay there again.

Vegged for a couple of hours, then walked a few blocks to a restaurant called Hob Nob Hill, which was very nice, had the lamb shank which was excellent and reasonably priced, which included delicious mint sauce.

They called a cab for me, which I took to the park, about two blocks from the theater is as close as cars can get. $6 was well worth it.

I was half an hour early, so I people watched and took some photos of the buildings until the doors opened. Lovely fairly new theater, comfortable seats but could use more leg room. I was dead center in the Orchestra section, and at curtain time it looked like there would be no one in front of me. But just as 8 a ton of people poured in, and after 10 minutes the house was full. And here I thought Bay Area people were bad about showing up at the last minute.

The show was Allegiance, a musical set in a Japanese interment camp in Wyoming during WWII. I'll have a separate review in a day or three, but for now, let me just say George Takei has much better acting (and singing) chops than they ever let Sulu display, Philippina Lea Salonga and Chinese-American Telly Leung gave tour-de-force performances as Japanese-American siblings, and the show has changed a lot since I saw an investor's preview in May 2010, some for the better, some not so much. It is a powerful, emotional story, my eyes were not dry from the second minute till the end. SOme of that was not from the show itself, but from the fact that when I lived in Seattle some of my high school friends' parents had lived through that, and I had no idea how horrible it had been. It made me truly ashamed to be American. The Kubotas were neighbors, their grandchildren were friends of my sisters. My oldest sister was on Seattle's first sister city committee - the city was Kobe, Japan. The there was my high school crush, Mary Tahara and her mother Rose.  And so on. Anyway, the show was Worth Full Price™, which includes the $100 ticket, the flight from SAN, bus fare, taxi fare, the hotel, the dinner and all that walking.

After the show there were no taxis anywhere, so I walked all the way back to the hotel in an intermittent light drizzle, which was not so bad, it was still about 67°, the streets are well lighted and there were a lot of Our Nation's Youth in various states of punk-ish dress heading into the park for some nefarious Saturday night purpose or other.

Back to the room, took me a while to get to sleep, ­ but it was a comfortable bed,  so I was asleep before midnight.

Long long long long flying day. Left the hotel at 9 am, Phuket airport by 10, arrived in Bangkok at about 2:30, walked about a mile to the complete opposite side of the airport and up two floors to check in for Taipei. Left BKK at about 4:30, Arrived in Taiwan at about 9 pm (1 hour time zone diff),  through their dinky transfer "security"  by 9:30, and then had 1.5 hours to kill before boarding for SFO. I had no Chinese money, the newly opened Starbucks' credit card machine was down. My US$ were in my carry-on, so that was no help, but I asked at the EVA lounge if there was a currency exchange, an there was one pretty close by. Cashed in 2,00 baht, for Taiwan money, got a frapuccino and a mug and got online with the laptop till it was time to go to the gate.

Plane was half an hour late boarding. Full flight, lots of children but they behaved themselves. Good thing about red-eyes, I guess. More on that later, maybe. Arrived 30 minutes late at about 8:40, was through passport control & customs by 9. The Super Shuttle guy could not find my reservation, even with my confirmation number, so I ended up paying again (emailed them for a refund), and after a tour of Palo Alto and Mountain View got to the apartment at about 10:30. Yes, all the same day.

Just for grins checked the mailbox and discovered that my vacation hold order had been ignored. Nastygram to USPS tomorrow. Stuck in my door was The Letter from the apartment (July 24) saying my lease is up October 6 and they want to know ASAP if I'll renew. I don't need to tell them until Sept. 6, and the answer will be "no".

I've showered, unpacked, taken care of What Must Be Done.

Plans for tomorrow:
Pick up Domino and bring her home
Work
YOTB, maybe

How about that. Cleverly hidden upstairs behind the escalators (which go down to a featureless holding pen which seats 200) are a couple of publicly accessible desks with power, reasonably comfortable chair and blazing fast free wi-fi. Well, almost free, there are several connections sponsored by hotels and companies and you have to watch their ad to get to the free part. But here I am.

The shuttle was 5 minutes early, but I was waiting for it 20 minutes before it was due. Then we blew that lead to pick up a student at a Stanford dorm. The trip was fine until we got to the airport, which was cleverly designed so that people have to fight across several lanes of traffic to get to the arrivals lanes, which tied us up needlessly because we were going to departures. Once past the traffic jam (10 minutes) there was almost no traffic. Only 4 passengers in the van, a young couple got off at SW, the very cute student and i were dropped off at the international terminal - she was going to Singapore.

Got checked in pretty quickly. despite my unpacking most of the heavy stuff into the checked bag, my carry-on was still 3 kilos over. But she gave me a pass on that.

Thought about having dinner at one of the food court places, but figured there would be places open past security. TSA was a joke. They sent me to the family line instead of the singles line, behind a family of 5 Hispanics with brand new USA passports, who were severely English-challenged. And apparently there was something not quite right with dad's passport, but a conference with the other desk person cleared that up. Meanwhile about a dozen people passed through the other line. I switched lines for the baggage check. Only two people ahead of me, breezed right through. I forgot to take off my watch, they didn't say a thing. Love that attention to detail. They really need to lose the "take off your shoes" thing. It's demeaning and it hurts those of us with flat feet or Planter's.

Past TSA there was very little in the way of food. One deli and one Japanese place. Both were in "we're closing soon" mode. Got a sandwich at the deli. It included pasta salad and fruit pieces. I also bought a bag of dark chocolate chip cookies and a diet Coke. As I sat down to eat, a stream of screaming children made their way to the Japanese place. One mom was carrying her daughter by an arm and a leg. Save it for the flight, kid.

Boarding in 50 minutes. I'm starting to fade, it's been a long day.  With luck I'll get some sleep on the plane.

From my last post, this morning:
Moved my only surviving VCR into the computer room, only to find it does not have S-Video, and my capture card has only cable and S-video inputs. Silly me, I should be able to daisy chain the cable through the VCR. Problem solved.

Other plans for today are to process the photo shoot pictures and post the best ones, watermarked, on Flickr, make a modem ringtone, maybe re-capture some of my old theater clips and put higher resolution ones on the web site. Maybe enjoy the sunshine.

Got the VCR set up after some false starts. My capture card, which I thought had one cable connector for TV and another for FM radio, actually has one for digital TV and one for analog TV (aka VCR). Killed my cable modem connection while discovering that. Now all is well, except when I put the tape cleaner into the machine, it was obvious the audio heads were shot. I went online and bought a replacement machine for about $60 (eBay). After which a friend offered to give me her old one.

Ordered a new, better GPS unit for the camera this morning from a company in HK which has been very good to me. Got email offering to send me the next gen of that model, which is officially not out till next week, if I don't mind it not coming with the new gen manual or the wireless remote (both of which will ship in 2 months). The next gen will be about $40 more but they will send me the new one at the same price I paid already. I said okay. It should be here later in the week, plenty of time to learn it before Thailand.

I processed the photos from the model shoot, they are here. Some of my favorites:
 





I achieved a watermarking breakthrough - something I needed to figure out before printing the Worldcon art show entries - turns out that in three easy steps, the first one being entirely not documented, one can position it at any corner. I like the lower right, since that's where artists traditionally sign their work. I could build a signature just as easily, but no one would be able to read it.

Made the modem ringtone and texted it to my work buddy. And my middle sister. She has not mentioned it.

And the VCR problem nixed the video captures for now.

I finished the cat fence, Domino yelled about it for a while, then settled down to watching the world through it.


She eventually jumped up on my lap (I took the photo from a chair in the other corner) and stared out of that side (it's mirror image of the side you see here). Until she got bored and went inside and parked herself just inside the patio door, where it was cooler. It was about 86° when took the photo, 74° indoors.

Oh, and while I was putting the finishing touches on the fence, I used one of the small tables to push myself from kneeling to standing, and my hand went completely through it:



That was a surprise. The rest of the day I mostly napped, in between reading from Jar Jar Biggs Must Die. Lunch was two lean cuisine entrees and four amazingly delicious sweet corn cobettes.

Changed both litterboxes, ordered another 3-pack, which should do me till vacation. It is getting very close. I am starting to get pre-post-travel regret.

While I was puzzling out the capture card, I updated the drivers for the display adapter. AMD/ATI has made that a 30-minute install. Too many gamer features, out of which one cannot opt.

Shopped for Nikon's latest greatest telephoto zoom lens, which I dearly want, but no one has it in stock. One site had a message from last year blaming the floods in Thailand for the delay. The lens is, indeed, made in Thailand. When I get to BKK I'll see about buying one, which will mean paying some $$ at customs on the way home, but I can live with that.

I also will be buying a suit, Thai silk tie and dress shirt when I get there. It's not the bargain it used to be, but they also have learned that fat old white guys are really that large. Used to be they didn't trust their measurements, and instead trusted their (always wrong) instincts about that.

Time for dinner, maybe an hour ago.

Plans for tomorrow:
9 am team meeting
call Kaiser about travel shots
BASFA?


 

This is the best whale shot I got Sunday. We were maybe 50 feet away.

Monday morning the plan was to walk across the street to the Carriage museum, and see what they had there. Backstory: When I worked for the Daily Astorian in Oregon in 1973-4, my friend Hilary (with one "L") who had directed me in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, invited me to meet her friend and his carriage collection. I did a photo spread for the newspaper. Her friend was quite a legend in the science fiction community, though I was mostly unaware of it at the time. I just knew him as Graham. Hilary and I are still in touch (last week she sent me a cool card - she always addresses the envelopes in calligraphy, so no matter what is inside, the envelope is a keeper.). He was Graham Doar, who wrote several early sci-fi TV classic episodes back in the late 40's, early 50's.  Anyway, I went there knowing photos would be amusing for Hil.

This one caught my eye

It's a very interesting museum, lots of carriages but also a huge collection of saddles and tack. Very poor display, though. Most of the vehicles are up on a ledge or out in the back parking lot not on formal display. The saddles are behind glass, and some clever person designed signs for each one set inside a horse shoe, but they are too small to read.

It's free, it's worth going to and making a small donation. There were no humans anywhere near the displays  when I was there.

Checked out of the motel as a family of 6 Japanese tourists invaded the alleged breakfast offerings. I had seen two of them the day before - they were hard to miss. Two women in neon pink, one in very tight jeans and one in stretch pants. Both had amazing round bubble butts. Turns out they were a mother-daughter team. More on this family later.

Walked to the main drag, the bus went by when I was half a block away. Decided waiting half an hour for the next one was less painful than walking 20 minutes. It was 10:15, I was in no hurry.

Bus took 2 minutes to go that 20-minute walk distance. Win. Walked a block to the 24-hour coffee shop, had iced tea and one of their giant almond croissants. Wandered across the street to the train station, an hour and a half early. My Kindle kept me entertained, and so did the occasional eye candy, which included the Japanese family. They were seated in front and to the side of me. The way it broke out was: young man and young woman, in their 20's, maybe married, maybe just engaged. His parents and her parents. He was really cute and had that Japanese assertiveness gene, and I just really wanted to ( TMI here ) But that passed quickly when he showed his romantic side. As soon as they were seated, the young couple plugged in their laptops and tried for a wi-fi connection, of which Amtrak has NONE. FAIL!. He figured this out in no time, put his computer away and fired up a Japanese soap opera on her machine, and they snuggled together and watched it. Later in the trip, he gave his dad some help with a new tablet. Nice guy, I wish him well.

The camera went off by accident, I swear. :-)

Her dad, OTOH, was extremely annoying. He sat there much of the trip cracking sunflower seeds with his teeth, using his cavernous mouth as a sounding board. It sounded like cracking walnuts in a cave.

The train was packed. I was lucky to have no one seated next to me, but my "window" seat had the divider between the windows, so totally crap for photos. I hardly took any. The lounge car had three or four very loud drunks and no empty seats. Where were all these people going on a Monday? Sheesh.

The ride was mostly uneventful until San Luis Obispo, where there was a crew change. The new conductor made the announcements which th previous crew had neglected, such as "drunks will be put off at the next stop". They sobered up pretty quickly. He also pointed out interesting sites and sights, and gave some Little Known History. For instance, who knew that Norma Jean was the first Castroville Artichoke Queen? One thing he missed, though, as we passed through San Miguel, I saw a sign on a bar called The Ranch, which said "We Now Serve Mexican Food", as if it was the only non-Mexican place in town and had succumbed to popular demand by offering tacos or something. When I got home, I found them online here. It appears to be a gay show bar, which only serves Mexican food.

We were side-tracked once, and for some reason we didn't start up again until 15 minutes after the other train had passed. There was a lot of slow going, for no apparent reason.  Even though we were a little bit late, we were not late enough to get a true sunset over Elkhorn Slough, so I faked it with manual shutter/f-stop settings.

Nice sepia tone look was the result.

We arrived in San Jose just about on time, I drove home to a very vocal cat.

As usual, all my best photos are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/how3ird/sets/

Restless night. Went to bed @ 10, to sleep @ 11 (?) Up several times. 7 am alarm got zapped immediately, and I was out of bed in 10 minutes. Did all my morning stuff, finished packing, decided to bring a pair of jeans cutoffs after all and finished packing again.

Out the door by 8:10, at the RR station by 8:30. Parked, got my tickets, got the parking permit, back to the car to put the permit on the dash and find a better spot than next to the dumpster. Got my stuff out of the car and into the station, which was much less of an eye candy parade than on weekdays. It seems they have added two more tracks, and shifted Caltrain to them.

They now have someone to hustle Amtrak passengers to the right platform and the right place on the platform in plenty of time. Train was about 5 minutes early, but hustler got us out there 20 minutes early, promising it would be there in 10.

Coast Starlight: There was a lot of slow going, for no apparent reason, and the fastest piece was pulling through santa barbara at the end of my trip. We were early to all the stops, as a testament to how very padded the schedule is.

There were two annoyances on the trip. Last one first: A boy of about 10 was playing his gameboy with the sound up just enough to be at the edge of hearing for me, two rows ahead and across the aisle. His parents finally shoved earbuds into his head, maybe half an hour later. This was at Paso Robles, where a dozen people got on without tickets because the ticket office is closed weekends there, and they had not gone online to reserve one which could be printed at the machines. The conductor passed right by the kid twice, and stood about 5 feet away, but didn't say a word. He was too busy chatting up the ticket buyers.

The other annoyance started as soon as  got seated in San Jose. The guy one row ahead, across the aisle was on his phone for half an hour, trying to get someone in LA to help him figure out the sales catalog. The LA guy finally tells him he has to go, it's his daughter's graduation. And I'm thinking, "you're on a train, it's Saturday, put the work away already".

But no, he figures he will attack this on his own. He fires up his Sony Vaio industrial strength laptop, uses his cell phone as a wi-fi hub, and tries to make a VPN connection. It keeps dropping on him. He's on a train, we're going through places where there is no data signal, but what does he do? He calls his tech support person. He tells the person he is sure it is a hardware problem, must be the vibration of the train has scratched the hard drive. He has apparently not noticed the 8 other people in our car who have their laptops running just fine. I don't know what his support person told him to do, but what he did was run either a surface scan or other last resort operation on his hard drive. The kind that takes several hours. He expected it to run for a few minutes. The fact that it was running at all should have told him there was  no hard drive issue. Anyhow, he sat there for about an hour watching the useless progress bar in the dialog box, then set the machine aside and read a magazine, then went back to reading his catalog. The good news is it got him off the phone, and kept him off. And probably kept him from doing any real damage. .

He finally went to the snack bar, which gave me a chance to see him from the front. 50-ish hippie wannabe, long brown hair in a pony tail, work shirt and pants, and very worn hard-toed work boots. It finished as we were approaching Santa Barbara. I'm glad I was not going to be there for the trip to LA.

Just as an aside, I worked for Sony laptop QA a few years back, and those Viaos  had to withstand a drop of 6". No way would a little train rattling affect them.

Oh, one more annoyance, but it's a given on Amtrak. They never wash the windows. One would think that on their premier sightseeing train they would wash the windows at every stop.

As always, the scenery is always interesting, often beautiful. I'll post pix when I get home.

Walked from the station to the Day's Inn. The plan was to plug in my phone (it was down to 50%) and get online and write this, then go to dinner at one of the harbor restaurants, and find the boat I'll be whale watching on tomorrow afternoon. It was a slightly longer walk than I thought, and when I got there the power was out. Strange but true the electronic key worked. But nothing to plug into, no wi-fi. And it was chilly out there. Fog had been the order of the day, and it was much cooler here than San Jose.

So I put on my windbreaker, popped my kindle into a collapsible pack, slung my camera over my shoulder and headed for the harbor.

The lights were out at the intersection.

None of the harbor restaurants were open, they closed when the power went out.

I got some interesting shots of a sea urchin fisherman unloading his catch with the help of a forklift and a long rope because there was no power to the winch on the dock.

So, plan B. I walked about a mile and a half to the Santa Barbabra Fish House. I don't know why I didn't stop at the first place I saw. This was the 4th (skilled the pizza place and the Mexican one). What attracted me was the sign outside which said most of the fish were caught locally. Big fat lie.

When I walked in it was about 7:30 and it was still light outside. I was able to read the menu no problem. I was seated immediately, but it took 5 minutes for a waiter to show up. I ordered a sparkling water and a cup of clam chowder. After I had finished the watery, bland chowder in the tiny cup, he took my order. It took me a long time to decide because nothing on the menu was local. Atlantic salmon, snow crab, Chilean sea bass, Maine lobster, Mahi Mahi, and on and on. The only item which stood a chance of being local other was petrale sole, so I ordered it.

It arrived 20 minutes later. Meanwhile, the sun had gone down and there was not enough light to read by. I sat there, ignored, couldn't catch any waitperson's eye. There was a bread plate, but no bread. When a minion finally slipped my oerder  onto my table and ran away, the sole  tasted soapy. The waiter asked me if it was excellent, and I told him it was ok. He asked what they could to to make it taste excellent, but I had no idea. He ignored me for about 15 minutes, I finally flagged him down for my check. Paid cash, over-tipped. Will be posting a nastygram on Yelp.

Walked back, looking for possible sweets. Checked out the coffee shop  - free wi-fi, open 24 hours, but they had run out of cakes & such. I'll probably park there after the cruise tomorrow.

As I got closer to the harbor, I saw all the lights were on. The motel was lit up too, wi-fi is working but I needed to get the login code from the office.

So I'm happy enough.

Plans for tomorrow:
Free breakfast in the hotel office, but it's a tiny place so probably will need supplementing outside.
Hit the local camera store and see if they have a better x-300mm zoom than the one I'm using. It doesn't seem to focus past 200mm.
Buy a sweatshirt or jacket to take on the cruise. It's going to be very cold, if today is any indication
Play tourist
whale watching cruise at 4pm

Last night I opened my safe box and saw the pile of passports. The latest one (12/2008-12/2018) was at the bottom of the stack. It's the pretty, artistic new passport, and I thumbed through the visa pages and was momentarily surprised they are all blank. Then I remembered that the last time I was out of the country, my passport only had 3 months left on it, and the airlines had changed their rule to require 6 months. For tourists, a stupid rule. And airlines should not be making up their own laws.

EVA gave me a hard time about leaving the country on a perfectly good passport, but when I pointed out that I had a return flight booked in less than a month, and the passport was good for 2 months longer than that, they let me fly, but with a warning I might not be allowed to fly back.

Long story short, I did have some problems getting through immigration at Malaysia and Singapore on my way back, but none at SFO. The officers at Malaysia and Singapore understood how ridiculous it was to try to stop someone from going home on a valid passport - they could arrest me, but they would end up deporting me anyway.

I took out my 1998-2008 passport and marveled at all the visa stamps. Since December 2008 I have been unemployed or a contractor for all but 10 months. WHen I had time to travel, there was no $$, and vice versa. Plus I was making frequent trips to Seattle to see my parents.

Up at 7, did not recognize the phone's alarm, somehow it was set to old style phone ring instead of one of my raucous ringtones.

Had the hotel's buffet breakfast at about 9, back upstairs to pack. lemmozine hiked in from his far-flung hotel and we went to Denny's where he had breakfast and I had a Coke & a chat. Many smiles. Chat is not really a valid description of what one does in Lem's presence, it's more like two streams on consciousness trying not to get too tangled up. A good time, always, keeps me on my toes, so to speak. We agree on a variety of radical POVs, and disagree on a few.

Back to the hotel, I caught the 12:20 shuttle to the airport. I was the only passenger, which surprised me since they have a noon check-out time.

TSA was not so bad, except the body scanners, they insist, can't see through a leather belt with no metal on it. Bullshit, I'm sure. We really have to get rid of this security theater crapola and return to sanity.

Found the cleverly hidden computer-friendly desk at the end of Alaska's last gate. Free wi-fi cut out after a while, so I went in search of lunch (clam chowder). The sports pub had Ivar's, which saved me a long walk. After lunch I walked to the central circle anyway, since I had the time and wanted to look at the fancy chocolates kiosk.

Back to my gate at 3 for a 3:30 boarding. It kind of just happened, the announcement was made using the gate next door's PA system, which somehow could not be heard in our gate area. Meanwhile the pages from two terminals away came through loud and clear.

Smooth flight, no infants. None. It makes sense, the Gypsies live in the PNW, all the San Jose babies had been taken there and sold.

20-minute wait for the park-and-fly shuttle, much longer than usual for a 6 pm arrival.

Stopped at Fry's on the way home for some sundries, and to see if they had a better carry-on case than the one I was using. It will be in the dumpster tomorrow. Fry's only had short squat ones for laptops.

Home, Pumpkin looks sick. The cats have two water fountains (I unplug them when I travel because the motor will fry if it runs dry), a big one which was in the old apartment and a new huge one. The huge one was totally dry, the big one did not look like it had been used at all. I think Pumpkin has forgotten that there are two bowls of water, and stopped drinking when the huge one went dry. Will call the vet tomorrow. And buy another huge water fountain.

W2 arrived from my Netflix gig, which was only 1.5 months of 2011. The contract agency sent me two letters suggesting my income (or lack thereof) might qualify me for the Earned Income Tax Credit. Which reminded me that all three employers from 2011 used ADP for payroll, and I had not updated the address. The W2 arrived with my old address, and no forwarding sticker.

Skipped BASFA. Maybe next week. Tonight I needed to take care of the litter boxes, transfer the photos to the PC and convert them to JPEG, catch up on Quicken and spend time with the cats.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work