Dim Red Glow

A blog about data mining, games, stocks and adventures.

Vacations and Project 106

Real quick update.... not a whole lot going on right now.I went to aruba and vegas since i  last posted.

the trip to aruba was the worst vacation i've ever been on. why? well while nothing catastrophic happened lots of really crappy stuff did. here's the list. I hurt my back a week before going... making sitting for long times hard and a lot of things impossible. My connecting flight was canceled. I got stuck over night in chicago (despite it being on a new noon when the flight was canceled) which lost me a day of vacation (thanks American Airlines :( ) my next morning flight was at 5:30am. i usually get up around 11am... and was already on 3-4 hour sleep so I was exhausted in a way i shouldn't have been for a leisure vacation. They lose my bags. lesson learned pickup your bag if you have a canceled flight. dont leave it overnight.

My accommodations weren't a resort. This my fault but was a shock when i got there. I thought it was but it was a condo :( This means no comforts or even a gift shop. everything i need is about a mile walk away. Like you know, clothes i didnt have cause of the lost bag (thanks american airlines). There is no bar (wet or otherwise), no place to get clothes/gift shops, no restaurants, no casino, tv was basic cable, no... well anything except a pool and a nearby small public beach. even people didn't exist. the place was so empty. the pools were nice though. There was 1 near by restaurant that did a special 8 course meal thing i did. but otherwise it was a pretty giant waste/not a vacation.

The island is a desert, so not to much to look at (cactus and everything) and it was so windy! I skipped/missed 2 of the 3 excursions i planned because of my back and the canceled flight. My ear got clogged with wax Saturday night right before the 8 course meal (so i had this delightful ringing muffled sound in right ear for the rest of the trip). Turns out there are no pharmacies open in Aruba Sunday. Not that they really could have helped i didn't get it cleaned out till Wednesday at the doctors office. i had allergies Saturday night... and full on sickness Sunday night (flew back Monday). So yeah. all in all it was terrible/felt like work.

Vegas was the exact opposite. i stayed at the Belagio and while it was really nice they did have a few bad things that surprised me. the sink liked to suck air when someone else in the hotel flushed a toilet which means it would go "glug" in the middle of the night. the hall smelled of mold and clearly had a broken pipe right before i got there... so yeah odd for being a fancy hotel.

The pools were amazing as was the food. i saw 1 show (Michael Jackson one). I think i'm just done with musical shows cause it was kinda boring/not my thing. Also I played in the vegas GP which went terribly but they refunded my money. the did this to compensate us for waiting around. They had technical issues so we sat for like 2.5 hours doing nothing (they also gave me a free entry to another gp later that year. i was done with GPs but... free entry so yeah maybe i'll do one more)

I got pretty badly sunburned at the pool. apparently the shirt i wore down took off a lot of my suntan lotion :( let that be a lesson to you all; reapply at the pool. the pool though, amazing! drinks/good times/books/swimming/lots of people. yeah no complaints there.

Finally (unrelated) i've put together another website to track the various things I've been working on. check out project106.com when you get a chance. The site itself is just a living document about the rest of the projects. Many of which I'll mention here eventually.