On the road again: a long trip, day 9Silicon Valley, day 4CONtraflow, New Orleans, day 1

I'm never going to like a morning that starts with me rolling into the shower at four a.m., so today did not have a happy start for me. Two flights with a two-hour layover between them yielded about eight hours of head pain from almost complete ear congestion. Now, though, my ears are nearly back to normal, which is a treat.

DFW did bring the joy of the Red Mango parfait, three hundred delicious calories that brighten any day.

Unfortunately, DFW also treated us to a royal clusterfuck as the airport authority closed the Skytrains for a while. Walking from where we were to where we needed to be was possible but would have meant trudging for several miles--which is exactly what we started to do. We then encountered the aforementioned Red Mango, however, and could not pass it by. By the time we had enjoyed our treats, the trains were up and running.

We hit the rental car here at high rush hour, so the twenty-five-minute drive from the airport took more like a hundred minutes, none of them fun.

Now that I'm at the con hotel, though, all is well. Pre-con dinner with the con team was fun, the hotel is fine, the bandwidth (free) is better than what fancier hotels charge high daily fees to use, and my work is almost done.

Sleep awaits, and I cannot wait to greet it.

Oh, yeah: how great is this?


Insanely great, that's how great.