Notes from the Left Coast

I just returned home from Los Angeles, where I went for a one-day meeting. That's right- I flew from DC to LA Tuesday, had a meeting Wednesday, then flew back Thursday. This may sound incredibly wasteful, and it is, but this was a Test Readiness Review and it was necessary to see the actual equipment. Believe you me, I make use of netmeetings and telecons whenever possible. And in this case, there were things we noticed that we wouldn't have seen over the phone. But I digress.

There were a few fun things I noticed on this trip to California. First, did everyone see this Ford commercial during the Superbowl? Well, the meeting was at a testing facility called NTS, and apparently that's where it was filmed. They showed us the centrifuge, and it looked the same (but I guess if you've seen one you've seen 'em all). I also found this behind the scenes video on YouTube that calls out the facility, so it looks legit.

The next fun thing was that I found a good modern rock radio station out there, and every day they did a little contest to win tickets to some concert or whatever (with the advent of XM I don't hear a whole lot of these things anymore). Around 5 o'clock every day they would do the eloquently named "Rush Hour Orgy." This entailed playing a ten-second sound clip that was three songs and one bit of movie dialogue all layered over each other- the first person that called in and could name all three bands and the movie won the tickets for that day. Easy enough, right? Both times I heard it there was only one band I didn't know. Anyway, they'd play the clip, and people would call in- but here's the thing: no one ever knew all the answers. It would be one thing if they guessed one of the bands wrong, but over half the callers would say "Okay, the movie was 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' and the bands were Def Leppard, Linkin Park, and I don't know the last one." Seriously. Or they'd say "One of the bands was Eurythmics, but I don't know anything else." THEN WHY ARE YOU CALLING IN? I can see that maybe they thought the last one would come to them when they were on hold, but once you get through at least guess! It's like on Cash Cab when people just say "I don't know." They don't use a shout out, they don't guess, they just take the strike. What is it with people? Anyway, it annoyed me everyday.

Finally, I stayed the final night at the Renaissance near LAX. I happened to notice the room service menu (I only get room service in emergencies- or in the UK when it costs about the same as going down to the built-in restaurant) and the breakfast section had an option for cold cereal: $6.00. I could go on about how ridiculous it is to pay six bucks for a bowl of Raisin Bran, but the next line read: "Add fresh berries or a sliced banana: +$7.00." Seven dollars for a banana? For real? Not only is that more than they charge for the cereal, but I just bought bananas for $0.50 a pound. Are they bringing you 14 pounds of banana? I guess hotels are like the airport, where they don't know how much things cost in the real world.

So now I'm back home after spending the weekend in DC helping Ramya move to her new apartment. It's a nice place, but it seems that the days when I could do manual labor for hours and not be incredibly tired and sore later are behind me. I feel like such an old man! I don't know how I ever did PAC. I hope everyone had a great weekend!