Tag: travel

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I’m on my way to WordCamp US today, and I’m flying out of Terminal 2 for the first time in over ten years. I hardly recognize it; it’s been significantly built-up at some point.

I had a vague memory that I’d taken some pictures the last time I was here, and I was correct! A quick run through my stuff on Flickr gave me these images from 2007:

Compare those to these pics I snapped today. The Vino Volo location is where that blank wall in the last shot used to be.

It’s really quite impressive. The whole thing is brighter, cleaner, and significantly busier than I recall it being.

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I mentioned on a previous trip that I’ve entered the world of single-bag packing and thought I’d share it with you. I’ll also list what’s in my bag.

Here’s the almost-finished pack, only missing my laptop charger and toiletries:

This is pretty much everything I need for a four-day trip. My bag is a GoRuck GR1 26L. Inside the bag, from left:

Now, inside the Tacti-Tech organizer:

I just picked up this pouch recently, and so far, other than the fact that it doesn’t include its own MOLLE straps, I love it. In here:

  • An Analogue Super NT.
  • An OEM Super Nintendo controller, because I don’t have an 8bitdo SN30 yet, which I’d use for most casual play.
  • An AverMedia LiveGamer Portable 2. It’s getting a shakedown this weekend; haven’t used it yet. Won it in the staff raffle at last year’s Combo Breaker.
  • Various cables: one Apple Watch charger, one Lightning-to-USB cable, one Lightning-to-USB-C cable, a mini-USB charge cable, a USB 3DS charging cable, two USB-C to USB converter dongles, a 64GB SD card for the Super NT, and a USB key attached to this Tuxedo Mask lanyard. (I always bring my own lanyards to tech conferences, tournaments, and meetups because I like adding a personal touch.)

All told, the pack is moderately heavy, but it’s workable. I put my Kindle Paperwhite in the slash pocket on the front:

It doesn’t feel over-stuffed and I can just carry it with me during travel and not have to worry about anything. The only other thing I’m bringing is a light jacket, and that’s easily worn everywhere or waist-tied to keep it on my person. (That jacket is my original N7 hoodie from the Bioware Store, which is still the most comfortable light jacket I have ever worn.)

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Welp.

I arrived at Chicago O’Hare airport this morning as my layover only to find that my flight home to St. Louis was cancelled. So instead, I’ll be sitting here trying to fly standby on every flight for the rest of the day. (The first guaranteed seat I have isn’t until tomorrow morning.)

So let’s test Liveblog!

Want to ask me a question about basically whatever? WordPress? WordPress imports? Life? Work? Fighting games? Other games? Send me a tweet or a comment on my Facebook post and I’ll try to answer your question here.

Otherwise, you get whatever I want to talk about. Good luck.

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This past week, I was happy to attend the WordPress.com VIP Intensive Workshop with my colleagues and some of our clients, spend time with them chatting about all things WordPress and VIP (and even some things not), and learn a ton of things myself—including attending a security workshop taught by my colleague Mike Adams.

The last dinner we had as a big group (both the VIP team and our clients) was a fantastic time and we had some great conversation. (Special guest photographer on some of these shots is the one, the only Peter Slutsky.)

As you can see, the grounds where we stayed, learned, and worked for three nights are just fantastic. It rained a bit much in the early going, but once the sun came out it was beautiful and just a great place to retreat and spend time building relationships with the people who make WordPress.com VIP what it is.

Some shout-outs are due post-event:

All these people (and more) had a bigger impact on me than they probably think. I saw—time and time again—people talking about problems and then going and starting to solve them, collaborating on the potential solutions, and walking away having learned something.

It was the first time it struck me how much of a community WordPress developers (and really, developers of all stripes) tend to be. And it was about fixing real problems not just for themselves, but for other people who would run in to those same things down the line.

This is why I’m renewing my effort at upping my game, engineer-wise. This is something I want to be a part of and contribute to. I want to have these conversations more often.

Now, if I can just clone myself so I have enough time to get everything done…

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This past Sunday I completed my second-ever journey to Europe, this time to the wonderful city of Vienna. I will tell you more about this trip and why I enjoyed it later. I will also post pictures for you later.

First, I will recount for you a transatlantic tale of woe. Though it has a happy ending, be assured that while it was happening I was very quickly reaching the end of my proverbial rope, and wasn’t sure whether I should collapse into a heap of pathetic crying or flip out and snap at the airport staff, security, or various others involved in my “experience” at Toronto Pearson.

At this point, I suppose I am fortunate that the TSA doesn’t exist in Canada.

Continue reading “Point A to Point B (and points in-between)”

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We’re back in St. Louis after a day trip up to see Amanda’s mother and visit with her while she recovers from surgery. The good news is that it looks as though she is doing much better than even yesterday, but we still do not know when she will be able to leave the hospital.

Amanda and I thank you for your prayers and wishes for her recovery and for our safe travels. Thankfully, the children made the trip with a minimum of fussing. They really were very well-behaved in response to our asking them to bear over twelve hours in the car.

Tomorrow is a day for getting some web work completed and also for relaxation.

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I just recently collated the photos I took while in South Dakota into a flickr photoset for your viewing enjoyment, including some pictures of Wylie Park and its Storybook Land sculpture garden. There are some very interesting pictures in there; I hope you’ll take a look at it.

I’m still adding descriptions, and haven’t caught up yet, so there’s an incomplete story there, but I will eventually get around to posting something for a good number of the pictures. The park was semi-closed post Labor Day, so I was the only one there and managed to get quite a few shots of stuff that would have been more difficult had there been more people present. My timing was good.

There are also some pictures I took while making the drive from Aberdeen to Sioux Falls on Route 12 and Interstate 29, two of which have also been grayscaled and added to my wallpapers photoset.