the time has come once again. the time where i get bored looking at this site and and decide to give it an extreme makeover. i've got an idea in the works. be warned the makeover will be primarily cosmetic. don't expect loads of new and interesting, never-before-seen looks behind the scenes. you'll know it when you see it. until then, enjoy the final "blue dots" phase.

hope you enjoyed your thanksgiving. we headed down south to rochester for the festivities. had a great day with my parents and my sisters family. no football, or parades but did catch a few minutes of shrek 2.
the holiday madness now officially begins. stress will mount, blood pressures rise, and arrangments for assorted events and gatherings will commence in earnest.
within the past hour, i have actually completed 90% of my christmas shopping. thanks to master card and al gore for creating the interent. for the first time my wife and i are actually sticking to a modest budget for each other, instead of the free spending free-for-all process that we have employed in the past. makes much more sense to me on so many levels!
plan to string some lights on the outside of the house, and organize my digital holiday tunes on my ipod. more later...

here are a couple of pics i snapped from SoCal...mostly my hotel and santa monica beach. nothing too spectatular although the weather was awesome. wish i would have had a chance to take more.

my part of the project is complete and i belived we accomplished all we had set out to do. i arrived back in minneapolis last night at about 9:20. it was great to get back home! the flight was truly one of the best i've had. the eye candy leaving los angeles, starting out flying out over the pacific then banking back over the city, over hollywood (spotting the famous hollywood sign on the hill) while the sun was starting to set, was a site i will never forget. shortly thereafter when it was dark you could clearly make out las vegas from 35,000 feet. it was a brilliant strip of red, purple, & white lights with darkness all around. even landing in minneapolis we cruised over downtown which was all lit up...spectacular. no turbulants to speak of. i personally commended the pilot on my way out, told him "nice job". if i had one complaint it was that the meal that was served was a joke, but i had already eaten anyway:-) i have picked out a few pics i will want to post but i don't have the time and energy to do it now. more later...

today has been an extra long day but we made a lot of progress on the second site. as this is my last night in SoCal, i have plans to head out with the lead tech guy, who i have sort of bonded with, when we're done here. last night i did venture out for a while and found a nice restaurant on santa monica blvd. not sure what's up for tonight although i'm pretty gassed and have a lttle bit of a cold going. can't sit in my hotel room on the last night though! may have time to hit manhattan beach before the airport? looking forward to getting back home tomorrow.

well the first site is done...save for some final clean-up that the lead tech will do on friday. tomorrow we head to site two which is only about 2 miles from the hotel. still not a lot of free time to take advantage of, no photo opps to be had. last night i did venture out for a couple of hours. headed north towards downtown LA, past the staples center and cruised sunset blv and found an "in-n-out burger", which was recommended by a frequent LA traveller. probably the best burger i've ever had, and i've had a few. the double-double with raw onions was worth the 15 minute wait. tonight i'm thinking about taking 10 west towards santa monica, through west hollywood, and the heading north on 405 to santa monica blvd to see what, if anything, is going on there. hope to hit site 2 hard tomorrow and hopefully be close to wrapping up there on thursday. i hope to get away thursday in time to check out manhattan beach before i have to catch my flight home. we'll see. more later...

ok, day one is in the books. are at least nearly in the books as technically i am still at the client site. today went a little differently than i expected as apparently we weren't due to show up until noon. this allowed time for ben and myself to head down to newport beach to train the 3 techs assisting us with the project. it was about a 45 minute trip, one way, with a considerable amount of traffic. i realized it is much easier to travel around in pairs, i drove and ben was the navigator. driving around, especially at night, while trying to read a map is not ideal. took a couple of pics of the hotel this morning..that's about as far as i've gotten with the digital documentation. not sure what else is going on tonight so this might be my only update til tomorrow. we'll be able to start much earlier tomorrow so hopefully we'll have site one wrapped up by noon? i've officially concluded that the idea of travelling is much more glamorous than actually travelling itself. more later...

greetings from the city of angels. i made it here this afternoon on time and on schedule. actually, my flight arrived 15 minutes earlier than expected. i found the hotel pretty easily except for a couple of minor navigational mistakes once i got close, but all in all it was noneventful. my hotel, the crowne plaza in commerce, ca, appears to be a huge casino, which also happens to be a hotel. i've never been to las vegas but i imagine that this is as close as you can get without actually being in nevada. gambling does nothing for me so i won't be losing or winning any big money while i'm here. i called the head tech and we have made arrangements to meet in the morning for breakfast. we are not supposed to arrive on the site until noon so we will be heading to newport beach to do some training with a couple of the other techs. i wanted to get a feel for where the site was in sante fe springs (approx 8 miles away) so i did a drive by tonight. it's sort of an industrial area which is kind of what i expected. the second site is less than 2 miles away from my hotel so i'm not too worried about that one. it will be interesting to see how all this goes. i suspect that tomorrow will be a pretty long day. well, it's 9:55 local time, but my body is telling me it's really almost midnight. i'll check in later when i get a chance. haven't even gotten the digital camera out of the bag yet. hope to have some downtime later in the week. that's all for now...

just checking in one more time before i head to cali...have a few things to wrap up before i go. hopefully the high-speed access from my hotel room will work and i can e-mail and post blogs. don't have to much of an agenda yet, other than of course the work-related stuff. hope to have time to do some wandering around. i think i will. i used to be a seasoned traveler (when i got the great northwest airlines discount from my mom) but i have traveled less over the last few years. it's usually kind of a hassle to get to where you are going but i'm hoping that things go smooth this time. God-willing i will report next from LA! more to come...

haven't posted in a little while. there are a few things to report. first off, happy birthday to my sister becky! ok, yesterday was her birthday, i'm a day late and a dollar short as usual.
going to L.A. (commerce and santa fe springs) this coming weekend on a very rare business trip. coincidently, the last time i travelled for work was 1997, it was in california (san francisco) and covered the same time frame! (november 14-18).
i hope to have an opportunity to see some sights and take some pics so we'll see how it goes. i will be bringing my laptop so i sort of have an intention to do some "on location" blogging from L.A.
also have a big wedding to attend this weekend. a softball buddy of mine, who i have probably logged over 1,000 games with in the last 15 years is getting married on saturday. much to do before i leave on sunday!
more later...

as promised, here are a few halloween pics. the kids did the rounds with mom (even owen!) and netted the usual assortment of candy. i stayed back and dished out the goods. though we only have one previous year to compare it with trick-or-treaters seemed to be down this year. i'd say between 25-30. a pretty nice night all things considered and not too cold.