Soldier Ant 

Oh, and did I mention what a fantastic week it is to be in the Boston area? On Sunday I caught Game 2 at the pub downstairs at the Marriot (eating a late dinner after a horrific set of airport delays coming into Boston Logan airport.) There was a decent crowd gathered at the bar -- from the heavily accented cheers that went up intermittently, I'm guessing most of my fellow barflies were local Bostonians.

I have this weird talent for visiting cities at the exact time that they win sports championships. June of 96? Stopping for one night in Denver on a cross-country drive with my friend Mark. Just happened to be the one night that the Avalanche (a brand new team) won the Stanley Cup (Denver's first-ever professional sports championship.) Much mayhem ensued, including Mark and I yelling 'Avalanche!!!' at the top of our lungs downtown. (Under threat of beating from a roving band of toughs in the back of a jacked-up pickup truck.)

Or October 28, 1995 -- the very night that I moved into my new apartment near midtown Atlanta? The Braves beat the Indians to (finally) clinch a World Series victory. People were shooting off guns in my apartment complex. I thought they were celebrating the Series. Turns out that people in Atlanta just like to shoot guns every once in a while.

Mind you, I'm not saying the Sox have this tied up. Anything could happen. All's I'm sayin' is that I fly out of here tomorrow night, so they'd really better consider a sweep if they're looking for my help in clinching it.

I'm back in Columbus from Boston, and glad to be so. Some pleasant surprises from my trip:

Ben carved out an evening for me, and took me for some fantastic sushi at Blue Fin. We met his friends Josh and Amanda, who are lovely people.

I discovered that Sun has an local (probably a sales) office in Columbus! Not more than a mile from my house! With ~20 floating loaner-offices for use by remote workers! I'm going over there tomorrow to scope the space out.

Excellent.

So, I'm in Denver. Actually, near Denver - Broomfield to be exact. (Which is everything it's cracked up to be.) Here's how my weekend went.

Friday, 10am. On a call with my manager (our weekly 1:1 meeting) I start to feel odd twinges of pain in my abdomen. By 10:30, the call is mercifully coming to an end as small malicious drunken dwarves with razor blades for finger nails start to twist my entrails with glee. ("Me Gold!" they gloat..)

It's like that scene in Hellboy, when Kroenen stabs agent Clay in the stomach like 12 times in 2 seconds... It's just like that. Every 2 minutes for the next 4 hours! At this point I am blaming food poisoning.

Then the fever sets in.

For the next 15 hours, I rock and turn on the couch, or in bed, or on the floor, riding a pitching rollercoaster of body temperature. (With, of course, the accompanying muscle aches and spasms.)

There's more, of course. Vomit, crap, tears and swearing. The wife is an angel, and deserves her Halo right now. (Pun intended.) My fever broke on Saturday morning, but I was a mess most of that day anyway.

I woke up this morning convinced that I could not possibly be on a plane bound for Denver tonight. 3 minutes wrangling with Sun's after-hours travel consultants corrected that error. Had I tried to postpone the flight by even a day, the airlines would've cancelled my whole itinerary, forcing me to rebook (at super-freaking-high 'last minute rates.') So, thank you airline industry, for ensuring that I've brought my life-threatening, eviscerating, disemboweling, emasculating-ly painful flu bug across 1,500 miles to share with a plane-ful of your passengers (and the lovely city of Broomfield.)

Whew, what a week! Where to begin? So you know that the week started on a sour note. Things looked up considerably after that: stomach settled, fever dissipated. I spent a couple sluggish days in Broomfield, but fortunately my coworker Jeff was coming off of a cold too, so we forgave each others long vacant pauses, and wandering asides. (And still managed to get some work done, too!) A highlight of the stay in Colorado was stealing away for a couple of hours with an old AOL colleague, Dan Pacheco.

Ain't it funny the way the world works? Once upon a time, Dan and I found ourselves on opposite sides of your classic corporate turf-war -- his team were the business owners for products that my team was building. They had the requirements, and we had the constantly-extended 'blockage palm' (internationalization will take a year! no new features until Q4, bl-blah-bee-blah blah!)

Our Product Managers invented an amusing little phrase -- "Danage Control" to describe their (twice and thrice-daily) attempts to accomodate requests, ideas and directives from Dan. He's just a guy with a lot of passion, and a lot of ideas, and I could tell even then that being one or two steps removed from his implementation team was a hard pill for him to swallow.

So Dan and I went to Boulder, had a long sit-down at The Walnut Brewery, laughed about those times, and exchanged notes on how our circumstances have changed. Dan's got a great gig going with an ambitious local paper looking to transform their business (and leveraging Dan's long history in technology and community.)

Most importantly, his passion and drive are now completely unfettered. (If you've never worked for a large organization like AOL, you may not realize just how difficult it is to get any damn thing done.) He's driving the strategy, he's hiring the developers, and he's seeing his master-plan take shape. Good on you, Dan! Keep it up.

Dan failed miserably, however, in his attempt to fulfill my one request while in Boulder: The Mork and Mindy House remains a mystery to me.

After Broomfield, it was on to the Bay Area, my old haunt. I'm staying in Mountain View on this trip (much better than Redwood City, where I stayed last time. This puts me closer to friends.)

So far:

• One delightful dinner with my friend Shannon. We went looking for Ti Couz, but ended up settling for tapas instead.
• Two fantastic breakfasts with Bradley, wherein we got to talk about life, work, loss and everything in between. And he gifted me with a free Flickr Pro account afterward!
• One fierce throwdown with said Braddles, Matt and Rich. Halo 2 thursdays, with new map downloads and my wife playing from home!
• A visit to La Costena for the burrito that haunts my memories.

So that's my week. I'm writing this down for my future benefit, so please forgive the easy, breezy 'Dear Diary' feel of it all.

I'm still in California on business, and have had many truly nice opportunities to catch up with friends in the evenings (and over a nice weekend in San Francisco). A smattering of my week...

On Saturday, Bradley and I started our day in Woodside, with the hog-riding accountants that congregate at Alice's Restaurant (which, I discovered, is named after the Arlo Guthrie song, not the other way around.) Here's a tip -- the sausage gravy there is incredible, made from real chunks of what tastes like chicken-apple sausage. Yum.

After Alice's we tooled up Skyline and ended up in San Francisco, enjoying some touristy delights (the Golden Gate's northeast lot for cheesy 'me and the bridge' shots.) North Beach, the murals at Coit Tower, walking the Filbert steps. Caffe Trieste and the Stinking Rose. Much good conversation. It was a great day.

Sunday was spent with my friends Mikol and Sandra, and their adorable son Ezra. (And his impressive collection (15!) of foam-fabricated 'blasters.') After brunch at Park Chow (and some open-faced egg sandwiches that -- no lie -- represent all that is good and true about living in our fine republic) we spent a lazy, fun hour at Bernal Park.

Hitchin' a ride, originally uploaded by soldierant.

Monday was mostly work, but a side-trip to the Yahoo! campus for lunch with a bunch of my old AOL friends. K-Lo, Erin, D-Rob, Lance, and Matt.

Erin and kLo (and dRob's tatted up arm), originally uploaded by lantzilla.

That evening I got to see many of the same folks again for craft-night! (My first ever.) Matt led us through paper pop-up cards. I made a cool little elf that springs out of the card. And tonight (Tuesday) was movies with most of the gang again. Hitchhiker's Guide, which I enjoyed -- the designed elements were really well-done, and I thought it was well-paced. It's been enough years since I read the book that I remember almost none of it, so if you're one of those people who don't think the movie lived up to the book? Of course it didn't. Do they ever? I don't wanna hear it..

Hipster Trailer, originally uploaded by soldierant.

This is one cool little trailer. The wife and I spotted it on US-70 last week, just West of Cambridge, OH and I had her snap off a couple of shots on my crappy Treo. You can get them made-to-order, and -- while I am easily 30 years too young to be having a 'ditch it all and live in an RV' late-life-crisis, this little baby could make me rethink that position. (For small stretches of 6-8 days, of course.)