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...