Clint Sharp’s Blog an’ Vlog

So I promised pictures of the plane I was on that was diverted due to a cracked windshield in mid-flight. Only one was worth posting, so here it is:

So like all things, good and bad, the Trip from Hell ended. Luckily the flight in Dallas was not delayed too significantly, and I made it in nearly on time.

The rest of the week hasn’t been nearly as interesting or entertaining unfortunately. I’ve been entertaining myself this weekend on LinkedIn, which is basically a business networking site. You sign up (usually from an invititation from a friend), and then you link in all your other friends. Through them, you can make contacts at companies you may be interested in working for or doing business with etc. I’ll have 8 people connected once everyone acknowledges my invites. I think I need to meet more people.

Tomorrow’s Oscar night. We’ve watched all 5 Best Picture nominees this year. Finding Neverland probably wins for the most heart-touching story, even though J.M. Barrie was probably a pedophile in real life. The Aviator probably wins for Best Picture though, and it was overall probably the best movie. Mel would be able to better tell you who all are going to win in every category though. Perhaps she’ll provide her review of the Oscars tomorrow. In the mean time, I probably need to update my resume.

So, I made it to Dallas last night, and American Express did get a hotel reserved for me. I spent the night, and thankfully that went off without a hitch. I’m now waiting in DFW. The flight to Seattle is delayed (what else is new), because the plane we were supposed to be on hasn’t left Oklahoma City. So I’ll probably make it to Seattle today, but as usual I’ll be late. Does anyone make it on-time anymore when traveling by air?

So it’s time to make another update. I did get in line to be reaccomidated awaiting boarding for the flight on a new plane. After waiting in line for 30 minutes and the line not moving, I decided to just go have a seat and deal with it in Dallas. Shortly after that, they began boarding the plane again. The plane boarded as normal, and after sitting there for approximately 15 to 20 minutes after everyone was on board, it became obvious that there was another problem. Basically, from what we were told, the plane that they replaced our plane with had a 6×10 (don’t know if that’s inches or feet, assume inches) hole in the bottom of the engine. Don’t know why someone gave us a plane to board that wasn’t safe to fly to begin with, but sure enough, it became time to get off another plane without being even to Dallas.

So, after that, while seeing a line about a mile long to be reaccomidated, I was able to get American Airlines AAdvantage Platinum desk to reaccomidate me. This freed up a significant amount of time, but as it stands, my flight to DFW is now delayed because the plane that I was supposed to be on going to Dallas (which is now leaving at about 8:45 or so, which will put it in about 10:15 or so, about 6 hours late) has been allocated the plane we originally were supposed to get. So now, I’m waiting for another plane from LaGuardia to arrive to take us to DFW. You can read my other posts to see what a nightmare this trip has been, but this appears to just be par for the course. If there’s one thing this job has taught me, it’s definitely gotta be patience. Oh well, at least I’m in the US and have wireless internet access. I hopefully will make it to Dallas tonight, and if I’m lucky, I’ll make it to Seattle tomorrow.

The BlackBerry severely limits the size of my posts, sorry. So, it’s starting all over again today. I’m currently sitting in Miami. Not unusual for me, but Miami isn’t on my itenerary. Our original destination was DFW. Unfortunately the co-pilots windshield cracked (pictures to come later) and we were diverted here. Luckily, it didn’t shatter and suck the pilots out due to explosive decompression. I’m going to miss my connection in Dallas now, so I guess it’s time to get in line for re-booking.

So, Saturday night was spent outside the San Juan airport. I got sick again from that, and after spending another 3 hours waiting for my hotel room (they seemed confused as to why I didn’t want to just go to the bar, probably because at that point I had had 2 hours sleep and hadn’t showered in two days), I spent the remainder of Sunday blowing my nose and trying not to move much as to not aggrevate the mind-numbing headache I had.

Well, it looks like I spoke too soon. As I’m typing this on my blackberry (which is pretty cool in and of itself), I’m considering which uncomfortable place would be the most comfortable to try to get some sleep.

This is the first time I’ve been on standby and been handed a boarding pass with a seat assignment and had it mean I’m still on standby. Every hotel in San Juan is apparantly full. I had Amex check them all. I guess it’s time to accept my fate and find a spot on the floor.

For those of you that travel frequently on airlines, you know why this is so exciting. I have experienced yet another day where I’ve spent an entire day trying to go from point A to point B. How far apart these two points are rarely matters. In this case it was probably about 1000 miles as the crow flies. No matter, now I’ve got a boarding pass with a seat assignment. When my first flight was late and I missed the connecting flight (could have made it, but there’s no way to get through Customs and Immigration in less than 45 minutes if you’ve checked bags) I got rerouted through San Juan, which meant another wonderful day of sitting in the American Eagle departure lounge waiting for my flight (in this case about 6 hours). However, up until about 30 minutes ago I was waiting for a chance to get on the flight, and now I’m waiting with a confirmed seat, which means I’ll actually get to my destination today (albeit 9 hours late).

Luckily I usually bring entertainment with me, in this case a laptop with an GPRS/EDGE card and an iPod. Although the iPod seems to be stuck on Sarah McLachlan recently, don’t know why that is (actually it seems to have just changed to my Beatles playlist, imagine that). It helps to able to get on the Internet from anywhere, because at least then I can IM, IRC, and make stupid blog posts :). I suppose I could be working, but what’s the fun in that? Plus, it’s Saturday, and I figure by sitting here I’m fulfilling my obgligation for working.

Actually, speaking of work, we found out that Cingular International Headquarters functions will be moving to Atlanta by the end of 2005. This means that, barring some burr up my ass that makes me decide that Atlanta doesn’t suck, that my job will be over by the end of the year. Time to start considering new options I suppose. There’s quite a few opportunities in the Seattle area, so I could decide to stay or I could decide to take another contract position and maybe go to another country to work for a while. I’m also considering going back to school (although I still have to maintain full-time employment to do it). I’ve considered looking at UW to see if they need any IT people, as their benefits for employees going to school are pretty good. I don’t know how competitive their salaries are, but I guess these are things I’ll flesh out over the course of the year. I’ll get a 60 day notice and a month’s worth of severance based on tenure, so while that’s not outstanding, it could definitely be worse.

So, time to head to St. Maarten and install a server, then I get to come home. The rest of the trip has been postponed due to an outbreak of Chicken Pox from my last trip to Puerto Rico. Out of the 9 of us, 2 of us had had the Chicken Pox and everyone who hadn’t had it got it. We’re really short staffed right now. Should be a fun week.

At night, inside the house of Sharp
A creature tiptoes in the dark
To pacify the urge to chew
The creature nabs a human’s shoe
Such pleasures only charm so long
When no one’s there to say it’s wrong
Around the doorway, down the stairs
To sniff a cat perched on a chair
A skillful nose detects a treat
Cat cookies simply can’t be beat
Important business now aside
The creature needs to go outside
Depsite it’s desperate whines and moans
It can not wake the human bones
Best effort given, it waits no more
It squats above the moonlit floor
The creature leaves the mess behind
Intent upon more fun to find
What pleasant luck to simply happen
Upon a pile of fast food napkins
This frolic could go on all night
If not for mornings first sunlight
For that is when it’s plain to see
Such capers aren’t reality
A dream while sleeping sadly fettered
But she would if we would let her

Melanie

So I haven’t made a post here in a while. I’m not exactly sure what the last post I made was in fact. Whoever actually reads this will be happy to know I’m fine. Maggie and Melanie are doing fine as well. I suppose it’s just another day.

Most of you I’m sure are probably interested in how things are going at Cingular. We’re all still in a holding pattern (most of the Blue side is in fact. Blue is what we call the former AT&T Wireless internally). There have been some layoffs, mostly for redundant positions in Legal, etc. Some of these have been casualties of Cingular policies on the number of paralegals to one Attorney etc, including two in our department. Seeing as we probably do more with Lawyers in International than just about anyone else, this seems a like a good place to make an exception, but they’re still trying to figure out just what the hell having an International division is all about (which in our case, it’s about making exceptions to nearly every rule).

I’m about to leave for a trip to Grand Cayman. I was rather upset earlier to learn that I had not paid enough attention to my travel reservations and learned that I’m going to lose almost an entire day on travel since I’m not leaving till tomorrow at 10 PM. I’ll also be hitting St. Maarten (which Melanie is incredibly peeved about) as well as Barbados on this trip. It’s time to migrate us off the Linux machines we’ve been using for the past year as our PDCs to Windows. Time to conform I guess :). Numerous factors leading up to that decision, and anyone who really cares why a Linux/Samba installation didn’t work out for us, the reason can be left pretty much at Messaging. Nothing beats Exchange right now, especially when you need Blackberry Enterprise Server. Oh well, we’ll trade one set of problems for another.

As far as I know, we’re still safe for the next 6 to 12 months. The current feeling around the office is that there’s only room for one headquarters and that most of our functions will move to Atlanta over the next year to 18 months. That’s fine. I’ll probably be ready for something new by then anyways.

I also need to make a post about my new Mac sometime soon. I’ve got some interesting thoughts on things I didn’t consider previously with my Windows versus Mac debate (I still think the value proposition isn’t there for the masses, but it’s some damn cool hardware for a geek ). Perhaps I’ll have something interesting to write about after I take this 6 hour Alaskan flight direct from Seatac to Miami. That’s going to be a long flight.