Back to the East Coast

Well, today ends my one month stint in Seattle and I'm returning back to the East coast.  It's going to be a big adjustment heading back because I'm fully acclimated to the divine weather here in Seattle, have gotten really used to the independent lifestyle and I'm going to have to start being a grown up again b/c I've http://www.magenic.com .

Leave it to me to head back home during an escalated terror alert.  It's been pretty much unbelievable. I flew home for a few days last week and screwed up my reservation for the flight back so I had to catch a different plane other than the one I was scheduled on.  Unbeknownst to me, the airline automatically cancelled my return flight without any indication of it.  Yesterday morning I woke to these horrible images of people, what seemed like millions of them, waiting in huge lines at http://www.portseattle.org/seatac/, so long that they went outside of the airport into the parking lot.  They media was warning everyone that wait times were at *least* three hours and they had 'man on the street' interviews with some people who arrived 4-5 hours early and still missed their plane.  My plane was scheduled to leave at 12:30 PM.  So I left Bellevue last night, returned my car early, and decided to get a place down by the airport.  That turned out to be quite  a chore b/c it appears that so many people missed their flights due to the extended wait times, that they were all rescheduling later and had rented most of the available hotel rooms around the airport.  Fortunately the Hilton had rooms so I was in luck. (I was pleasantly surprised to find out that many Hilton hotels have started using http://www.selectcomfort.com/ which, if you don't sleep on one, don't know what you're missing).  Anyway, I arrive here at the airport at 9:30 AM only to find that my ticket was cancelled.  They just cancelled it. No notice, nothing. I called customer service and they couldn't have been less helpful.  They said "It's on the third page of your contract right there in black and white".  They offered to get me on a stand-by flight for a mere $1,050.00 but couldn't guarantee that I'd even leave today and told me it didn't look very likely b/c the planes are really full.  So I just scheduled a one-way flight back to Atlanta for a small fraction of that. Since I had to buy another ticket to get out here and had to buy another one to get back, that whole purchase was pretty much a total waste - it's really annoying but I guess I should just chalk it up as a stupid tax.

So my plane leaves at 11:30 PM tonight.  Things are much better here today than they were yesterday but they are still pretty nuts.  They just instituted a "one bag" policy meaning just what it says - you can take one bag on the plane with you and only one.  That was  a *** b/c I had two.  I went shopping at the Microsoft Store yesterday and bought just about everything i could get my hands on, another Media Center PC Keyboard, a few XBox 360 wiress controllers, a bunch of 360 games, Microsoft Mouse pads with 4 USB ports.  So I was totally loaded up.  Problem was that I had it in an Xbox360 bag and there's no way I could check it in and have any prayer of it making it's way home undamaged.  Forunately, there's this place called "Ken's" in http://www.portseattle.org/seatac/ that sells luggage (and you can temporarily check your luggage down there if you're waiting for a flight so you don't have to lug it around with you).  So I bought another bag and loaded all my stuff in it.  It really would have sucked if Ken's didn't come to the rescue.

I was one of the lucky ones.  As you probably already heard, the terror threat involved people using liquids to perpetrate the act so they prohibited Shampoo, Deoderant, Soap, Shave cream, cologne and the like (for some reason all the Air France flights were moving right along, as were the flights heading toward Eugene, Oregon).  The second bag thing was causing a lot of people problems too.  They woulnd't bend on this either - if you had two carry on bags, only one of them was coming on the plane. You could check it in or throw it/give it away but those were the only choices.  So there were a lot of people throwing away cosmetics and stuff that they just bought. Even though you could check it in, you'd have to get back in line to do it, so unless you had an extra hour this wasn't an option.  I saw a crew of dreadlocked/skateboarder types over by the garbage cans asking everyone "If you're going to throw that out, can you just give it to me?"  They had cardboard boxes and looked like they saw the news reports and decided capitalism wasn't so bad after all.  After about 30 minutes I saw security ask them where they were flying to or who they were waiting for and since they weren't flying or waiting, they were asked to leave.  Yes, it's just an assumption on my part that they were looking to sell all those cosmetics but I don't think I'm too far out on a limb to infer that these dudes went way out of there way to collect expensive soaps and lotions for personal use.

The whole place is way calmed down from yesterday but you can almost feel the tension in the air.  The lines are *really* long, even now.  Everything is running late and there's a ton of traffic in and out of the airport (since I had a day to kill, I went walking around the perimiter to kill some time and grab  something to eat).

Another bummer for me was both of my phones decided to quit working.  The Q has some problem with the keys. No matter which key you hit, it thinks you're pressing the number 8.  Most of the keys don't work either and although the job dial works, you can only scroll through three numbers before it tries to 'select' something. It totally sucks. I hope it's temporary and I hope I got the maintenance plan on it.  The way my luck has been going today and yesterday, I'm guessing I probably didn't get the maintenance plan.  The KJam's screen stopped working.  I can still use it, but the screen won't accept any input.  None.  The screen was locked too but forutnately I figured out that you can use Unlock and * together in case of the hardware buttons not working. I really love both of those phones and they are both pretty damned reliable - it's a weird coincidence that they both decided to quit working at exactly the same time.

So it's 6:09 PDT right now and I'm at the far end of the airport, one of the only ones that isn't crowded.  I have a really long flight back - 8 hours flying time plus a 3 hour layover. That puts me in Atlanta at 11:something tomorrow morning.  Then I have to drive back to Greenville, get packed and stuff, then be back in Atlanta for work Monday morning.

Originally, I was planning on only taking two weeks off in between jobs but the offer got extended and it's been a lot of fun (next blog posts will be related to the stuff I was working on)  Taking an entire month to work at Microsoft is definitely something I'd like to do again.  Being immersed in Sql Server this whole time has been great and I got experience I probalby never would have otherwise.  All good things must come to an end though and although i'm going to miss it out here (Bellevue has to be one of the coolest places I've ever hung out at - i could definitely get used to living there full time), I'm stoked about my new job.  Magenic is a killer company and everyone I met that works/worked there is beyond cool.  My homie http://www.blogusmaximus.com just started working there and like me, he's living in Greenville and working out of the Atlanta office. Kim and Sara are in Greenville so I'll still be there regularly but I don't think I can do all the driving Chris does - I've been doing something similar for the past year and it's rough.  So I gotta find a place to live down in Hotlanta - which seems like it'll be way cool. There's a huge .NET Developer scene down there and I have quite a few friends down that way.  Seasons are changing quickly but things look to be pretty cool