Tag Archives: travel

1910 station

Del Mar Surf Station

My Life, ,

There’s a story along with this.

Growing up in Del Mar, when there was a train station, meant that my dad would occasionally announce ‘We’re going to Disney Land tomorrow!’ and that meant I was skipping school and we’d get up at 5am to catch the first train to Anaheim, get in before the park opened, and spend a day of fun. The train was always a wonderful adventure for me. I loved watching everything fly by as we zipped through towns. Solana Beach, Encinitas, all the places I knew in San Diego County, and then North County, and then DISNEY LAND.

When I was a teenager in boarding school, I would take the train home for break, from Santa Barbara to Del Mar. Again, we got up way early to catch the first train down, I’d get home at noon-ish and walk the mile (probably less) from the station to home. As I walked, I’d stop and chat with people I knew, my friends if they were out of school, or just people I’d known my whole life there. Sadly, in the middle of my senior year, the station closed.

The simple fact was back in 1995, Amtrak wanted to introduce the coaster service, which is a commuter train much akin to the Metra in Illinois. The Del Mar station would be great for this, but it had a postage stamp parking lot. Rightly so, Amtrak wanted the bigger parking lot, but the owners of the land where the station was did not agree (for whatever reason). At the time, I recall the town being a little split on it, too, where some people say it as a great way to introduce more revenue to our quiet surf town, and others thought there would be too much traffic for people. Del Mar isn’t exactly super-freeway accessible, after all. In the end, the station moved to Solana Beach.

Just now, I found out Del Mar is agitating to get a stop back. The Del Mar Fairgrounds is where the race track is, it’s also where the flipping county fair is held every summer. Where the old Surf Staion is located wouldn’t be great for that, and the mayor of Mar (Carl Hilliard) said in 2012 that there wouldn’t be a formal request for a new stop until they could build it by the fairgrounds. Personally I like that idea, though there needs to be an easier way to transport people from the fairgrounds to the town, so the restaurants can get more business. Maybe a fleet of Woodys, or trollies. That would be pretty cool.

url

Free WiFi

Travel, ,

urlMany airports (O’Hare) don’t have free wifi still. I imagine the original justification goes like this:

We have a captive audience, so if we charge them for wifi, we can make a profit!

Sounds great, except that most of us scoff at the concept of paying for wifi at airports, since we try not to spend a lot of time in them, and at least at a coffee shop, you get a good cup of coffee instead of marked up to the gills crap. So why don’t they go free now?

We’ve had wifi for a couple years, but clearly no one uses it since we’re not making the profit we expected. Why would we go free for something no one uses?

It’s not that I think wifi must be free, but I think that given the cost (and we all know what it costs, we all pay for internet), there’s not as much reason to charge as much as they do for it. Now if they said “Donate $5 to use our wifi, and we’ll use the money for diaster relief…” you’d probably get more people paying, instead of figuring out where to sit to scoop free WiFi.

As for planes themselves, I think they could take a page from Japan’s trains. You enter in your seat number and the code on your ticket (which is different for every train), and you get Wifi. Since planes have your names anyway, they could go one level up and require seat number, code, name (or FF number). Then if you have X number of miles, are seated in an exit row, or paid for a seat upgrade, you get free wifi. Or if you charged at ticket purchase “For an extra $2, you can have wifi…”

Anyway, I’ll be flying through DFW for a while now, since they do have free-wifi.

Photo on 11-2-12 at 12.03 PM

Tired Elf

My Life, ,

I’ve only been in California for two weeks.

It doesn’t feel like that. It feels like forever at not at all, both at the same time. Last week, I went to Tybee Island, GA, for the WordPress Community Summit which was totally awesome (save me getting sick on Monday night). I met a lot of people, got networking in, and talked about a lot of code, and learned how to make things better.

One of the things I didn’t do was suggest a topic to discuss at the summit. See, I know what I know, and I get to talk a lot because I’m a pretty up-front, agressive, ballsy person. I will speak up when I see a need to, and I’m not shy (just ask anyone from Monday, when I shouted for folks to keep it down). So for me, I needed to try and shut up and listen for a while. I kind of did this, though there was a failure on some ends. I have trouble not speaking my mind.

Ah well.

What did we talk about at WPCS? A lot! And there’s a lot to do, but I’m trying to do one thing at a time. I am getting better at delegation. I’ve started to pawn some of the Make/Support stuff off to other people, like Siobhan and Christine, who are way better than I am at organizing writers, and educating. I’m happy being a front-man for people, but I felt like I was dropping the ball a lot. But doing everything is a bad idea for anyone, so I’m picking one, Support, to be my main focus. We’re actually doing good. In order to do this, I have to hand off other sub-groups of Support, like Documentation, Education, etc etc. Hence why I’m the ringleader.

Things I did on Tybee:

  • Met a ton of people and promptly forgot their names
  • Learned how to better sanitize my code
  • Verified that everyone wants a plugin-check plugin and started working on one
  • Fixed my DreamObjects plugin
  • Installed ImageMagik on my server
  • Battered IIS7.5
  • Baked 150 mini pumpkin muffins

I think I liked it a lot more than the traditional WordCamp (which I mentioned to Andrea Middleton, the WordCamp Maven). Instead of being talked at for 45-60 minutes, I talked with people about things. I’d really like to see more un-conferences in the future for WP.

Oh and there was an open contest on whomever got the best picture of me to use as my new avatar. As soon as I collect them all, you guys will get a vote. This one was by Lisa Sabine-Wilson, whom I finally got to meet. We have a whole mess of pictures up at Flickr.

This is a lame post, but I’m tired!

MovingBoxes

Right Back Where I Started From

My Life, , ,

In 1997, I left college, packed my life up into a duffle bag, a camping backpack, a guitar case, and a trunk, and moved to Chicago. I ended there by happenstance. My old men (Arthur and my Dad) lived there, and I needed a new, safe, place to be. Chicago was a revelation. I’d never lived in a big city before, and everything was amazing. I walked or rollerbladed everywhere, then I started taking the CTA El and then the bus. I met and moved in with my wife, we moved to Lakeview, acquired furniture and pets, moved to Rogers Park, rode bikes, got a car, and now we moved 2100 miles to California.

I know, I keep saying all this over and over, but it’s still amazing to me.

So yes, I’m out here, I’m safe, I’m happy, and I had no furniture for a week. It showed up today. I highly recommend UsedCardboardBoxes.com and National Van Lines by the way. They were a little expensive, but they were good. No. Amazing.

Last Thursday at work I was informed I was giddy. Giddy. Me. And I really was. I was just filled with delight for being here, and working here. I played Table Tennis for 30 minutes (I had a lesson!) and I did okay. Everyone’s been really nice, checking in on me, seeming to be happy I’m here. I didn’t realize how crappy things were until now. I owe Jane for Short a thank you and a ‘You were right.’ She kept telling me I was more miserable than I thought I was. I didn’t realize I was drowning until I got that breath of fresh air.

The week zipped by with joy and ease. I didn’t mind extra work, or even working through lunch, because what I was doing felt productive. Even that guy who made the same mistake four times, and I had to edit his database directly to fix it. Four. Times. Friday DreamHost also did a beach cleanup with Surfrider, a group I raise donations for via JFO.

End of this week, I go to Tybee for work!

Moby Dick

I’m Very November

My Life, ,

Moby Dick

Moby Dick (Credit :Penny Arcade)

I’m kinda bittersweet. Or as we midwesterners define that feeling of happy/sad, I’m very November.

Germans usually have good words for this, which they get by mashing up two words into one. The jokes made in a recent “How I Met Your Mother” aside, it’s true that they have a really beautiful and unique way of expressing two things at once. Like umweltverschmutzung (world pollution) or the common schadenfreude, they take two words and make it a new one. I feel like they should have one that explains this in between feeling I have, where I am really happy about what’s coming, a little scared, more nervous, somewhat sad, and very excited.

Some of my friends said I was feeling schadenfreude, but that doesn’t sound right to me. That’s more of a term to be enjoying someone else’s misery, in my experience, and I don’t feel that way at all. I just feel really, really, excited, and a little sad. I can count the meals left with my friends on one hand. I can count the hugs I’m getting from their kids, too. And I will miss them a lot.

I think my friends are feeling mudita, which is a really cool Buddhist word that means they feel joy for me. They’re not jealous or envious, and while they are sad, they’ve seen me grow into someone who can do this. I do know that they’re happy I’m happy, and even though we’re all sad about the parting of physical ways, we’re happy.

I’m still quite whelmed about everything, and yet still keeping up and even with with work and WordPress (mostly, sorry about the meetup Thursday). But I will soon be getting on a plane and flying out to California. And by soon I mean hours from now. Wednesday they picked up my car (it should be there Monday night, we get it back Tuesday).

I guess, in the end, you can call me Ishmael, as I find it high time to get to the sea:

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

What I will miss (in no order at all):

Friday nights with the Hubbits. For almost 5 years that’s been a constant for us, in rain or snow, we’ve tromped over for Shabbat dinner. Sometimes it’s just eat, hug, and run. Other times we play board games with the kids, tell horrible jokes and puns, or discuss the meaning of the universe. I love them and their kids. I will miss them a lot. I’ll also miss their extended network. So basically if you’ve ever been to their place, you’re included in this.

My family. I have three cousins in-state, Taffy in Ohio, my aunt and uncle in New York, and my other uncle and aunt in Toronto. Nearby enough is now too far. On the other hand, I have my mom a couple hours away in California, plus my step-brother, and my in-laws in Oregon. Just different relatives is all.

WordPress meetups. I love the Chicago WP folks. I will miss once a month hangouts. Also knowing I could pester my ChiWP friends is going to be missed.

My landlord. I cannot express enough how amazing he is. This guy is just awesome and is the very model of what landlords should be. Polite, conscientious, attentive, caring, and respectful. I should be so lucky to have one like him again, but I suspect this was a once in a lifetime chance.

The timezone. So shoot me, I love Central time. TV is an hour earlier, I’m in the middle of the US times so I can talk to West and East coast friends without much effort. The move will make it harder to talk to my WPBFF, Andrea. Yes, that makes me sad.

….

Wow. Is that really it? I’ve lost touch with many friends who’ve moved ahead of me, though not for lack of trying, and it’s not like my email or phone are changing. But really I’ll just be the same online person.