General

Things so normal as to not fit neatly into any other area.

Some Flights, A Lot of Work

Aug 5th

Posted by mstroud in Flying

It’s been a month and I’m still pounding out the daily work schedule and trying to sneak in some flying where and when I can. Along the way I’ve slowed down my corporate travel, but that ends this week, as I start hitting the road to see customers wherever they may be. That can only mean less GA flying and a lot more bad airport experiences.

At least I’m still employed, right? I could have ended up like these poor hosers.

Too Much Travel, Too Little Flying (GA)

Jun 24th

Posted by mstroud in Flying

It seems that I’ve been on the road constantly, and that I’ve done very little general aviation flying.  Upon looking back at my schedule since January, it does appear that most every week and weekend I’m in another city or country, talking to a different customer or partner, eating at a new or similar restaurant and staying at another hotel chain.  I certainly have the flight miles (and nagging cough) to prove it.

I also have started lacking in my ability to get to the local airport and fly, and when I do get out to the airport these day my More >

Just trying it out

Feb 17th

Posted by mstroud in General

I’m going to try this new theme for a bit and see how it works for me.  Maybe more photo’s will slip into the design if things are easier (and more fluid) with this layout.  We’ll see.

977

Thoughts on CES and Such

Jan 15th

Posted by mstroud in General

I have just about recovered from the ordeal that is getting ready for, staging, shipping, demonstrating, and tearing down a full show load out for CES.  I can’t say that I enjoyed it, or that I’d volunteer to do as much work again, but I’m glad its all done.

Severe pain came from the logistics of getting people (namely me) and equipment (some 80+ boxes of it) to and from the show.  As the largest single event in Las Vegas, CES is uniquely positioned to stress out every part of the infrastructure needed to travel, house, transport, and sustain a group More >

Holiday Downtime, Drivers, and Renewals Oh My

Jan 1st

Posted by mstroud in General

After a short 3 days and change in OK, plus a day and a half in Tahoe, I get a short rest in San Jose for the next week.  Well, that isn’t really true, as I must now scramble to get all of the work done to make it to CES this coming weekend and all next week.  But at least for today it seemed a bit more subdued than usual, or maybe I’m just not sure what to call the time you have outside of work.

What did get me wondering about stuff is the temperature at the house, which is More >

On the Track with the C6

Oct 23rd

Posted by mstroud in General

I had the opportunity this past Thursday to go out to a real, honest to goodness race track and do some laps with the C6. This is the first time either I or the car has seen a track, so it was a lot of new-ness all around.

The track was Thunderhill and it was truly in the middle of nowhere, nearly 3 hours away (by my driving) from home. The track was full of twists, turns, and straight-aways and provided more proof that I have a much more powerful car than I am a capable driver. It was humbling to see More >

Lost Wallets

Oct 23rd

Posted by mstroud in General

I had the occasion last night and this morning to have completely lost my wallet.  This led to several panicked phone calls (sorry Steve and Paul) and a lot of tearing up the house.  In the end, I cancelled all my credit cards, my ATM card, and lost my Social Security card, requiring calls to replace them all.

I rarely lose things of such great value, but this time around I just sucked.  Moments after I put the call in on all these items I found my wallet, wedged into a small opening between the passenger seat and the rail it More >

Lost in the Netherlands

Oct 7th

Posted by mstroud in General

On stop 2 of my long work trip I managed to get seriously lost driving from Amsterdam to Eindhoven in the Netherlands.  This seems to be a pattern with me and going places for work stuff these days: get off the plane, get in a rental car, drive around lost for hours.

In this case the rental car was a super crappy Mercedes A class mini-econo-box with a stick shift and a top speed of 130kph.  I did eventually make it to my hotel around midnight for a meeting the next morning at 9am.  But I proceeded to get lost searching More >

Nuggets of Strange Wisdom

Oct 1st

Posted by mstroud in General

I have been flying around quite a bit recently for the job and found that if I sit quietly in the cab or bus to and from the airport I can pick up on some remarkable gems from the local population. On tap from this weeks trip is this little nugget:

Don’t marry an American woman. They expect too much and are just too hard to deal with. I’m 56, retired, and moving to Thailand. Those are the women to have. My girlfriend is 26 and she’s thankful for the little things. That’s how a woman is supposed to be. And More >

Commercial Flight Suckage

Aug 16th

Posted by mstroud in General

Again today I had to take a flight somewhere for just the day, then return home.  And again the wonderful TSA had to find a way to make it miserable.  In San Jose they have so few checkpoints that the line to get into the waiting area was out the door.  They also had only small paper signs telling people what could or couldn’t be taken on planes, so of course many people missed those signs and then got combatitive at the checkpoints.

On the way back, in Burbank’s airport, for an unknown reason all TSA checkpoints were shut down for More >

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