All of the photos from California have been added to the gallery along with new pics from Carowinds in North/South Carolina.

Six Flags Magic Mountain and Knott’s Berry Farm

Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure

Various Beach photos

Carowinds

I’ve had a BlackBerry with unlimited data plan for around 9 months now and have gotten little use out of it.  Even though CellularSouth, my regional provider, claims 3G speeds (EVDO) between the small screen of the Pearl, the horrible built in browser, and flaky YouTube streaming, I only end up using it for Facebook, Gmail, and the wonderful Google Maps application.  …Thankfully my provider doesn’t disable the internal GPS in order to get you to pay a monthly fee for their services like some national providers.

While I’m stuck at work however, or at local airports not willing to provide free wireless I’ve really been wanting to leverage my unlimited data plan and tether my BlackBerry to my laptop and leverage the modem function.

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Apparently this is what I learned today.  Click for big.

I’m really not sure what we are getting ourselves into with this system.  Its going to be a beast!

For the next two weeks I am in southern California for training with IBM. We need a minimum amount of training in-order to bring in our new software platform, and luckily enough I was able to leave town with short notice.

This morning I headed to the airport en route to LAX. After a short 4 hour flight I made it to LA. First stop was naturally for the best food Califronia has to offer.  I’ve read people cheesing over In-N-Out for years and even the dude supports a 2×4.  I ordered a double double and to show my leet knowledge of the “secret” menu some Animal Style fries that my intestines still haven’t forgiven me for.

Not sure where this fits on the nutritional pyramid.

In-N-Out has kind of a cult following. There are fan sites, people exposing all of the secret menu items, and pondering the reason John 3:16 is on the bottom of the cups. Even the airport location I ate at has a video on Facebook.

The burger was tasty, but it wasn’t anything amazing. It was fairly greasy, and similar to what a fresh Sonic burger might taste like if they existed. The animal fries were interesting, but I wish I had gone with ketchup instead. I’ve heard I have to try a Tommy burger out here as well, so we’ll see how they stack up.

After In-N-Out I headed west to Venice beach. Venice was a strange place. It was cool in the sense that there isn’t anywhere else that’s really like it. For me it’s like New Orleans. I appreciate its uniqueness, but wouldn’t rush back to visit. It provided a great afternoon of people watching and entertainment though.

I found some parking just past the canal neighborhoods and headed north up the beach. It was mostly cloudy and about 65, but that didn’t stop a lot of people from getting in the water.

All of the pics from Venice can be found here. There was a group of street performers going several stunts and telling jokes for the crowd. They were pretty entertaining, even if shameless in their cash grab.

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So earlier this year when Six Flags over Georgia had their usual 1 Day sale on Season Passes, I let it pass. At the time I hadn’t planned any trips and last year I bought a pass for Dollywood and Six Flags over Georgia and only used each once.

I was starting to kick myself a little bit because in the past few weeks I started to get some tentative plans to hit the St. Louis and Washington D.C. parks. But earlier this week I was even more frustrated that I didn’t have my pass in hand because I received approval on Wednesday for a set of training courses over the next two weeks in Southern California; very close to Magic Mountain

Way to push your product at the right time SF!

So here I am with plans to hit 3 Six Flags properties on the year I
decline to get a pass. I am due to fly out in two days so its much too late to order it and have one mailed. However, this afternoon I got a letter from Six Flags themselves. To my surprise, SF through some cosmic wizardry anticipated my need and decided to mail me a season pass anyway that I could activate online should I be so inclined. The photo from 2006 should really go though

2006 Mike ...wow

Great timing, ready to go!

Awesome job Six Flags! I was considering skipping Magic Mountain because I’ve never been a fan of doing parks alone and it will be a bit out of the way, but now I think I have to get up there and get the credits.

So I got a wild hair, and decided to actually post something on my blog today, but was surprised to find my site was completely down!

IT: Its a head banging good time

For some reason WordPress was having problems accessing the database. I did a quick check of my Webhost’s cPanel, and the database itself using MySQL and everything checked out. I confirmed other databases I had hosted still worked fine, which put the problem back on the WordPress installation and Database. The wp_config.php file was exactly the same as it was when I last touched it a few short months ago.

Exhausting all of my stellar trouble shooting skills, I turned to the Google Machine. After 10 minutes of trying various search terms, I came across another WordPress user who had this problem a few days ago.  It seems WordPress randomly gets tired of using the same database login and decides to just stop working until you give it a new friend to play with.  Five minutes later I have a shiny new database user created and a updated wp_config.php file uploaded.

…I bet you can guess where that got me since you are reading this post.  So now I have two perfectly good database user IDs, only one works for every database other than WordPress.  I’m reminded how much I hate technology and full of self-loathing that I have made it my career.  I encounter way too many issues that are resolved without determining a root-cause.

MacRumors really hosed up with their MacWorld update feed.  …and now their site seems to have crashed.

It seems someone has hacked thier update feed.  I’m getting texts from people that can get to the site that the updates range from STEVE JOBS HAS DIED to STEVE JOBS IS GAY.

I just want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.  I’m off to visit my family and then hopefully going out tonight with friends that have come in town.  Have fun and be safe!

Expedition Everest from my Animal Kingdom 2008 Album

After a lot of experimentation with different CMS tools and Gallery software, I have finally decided to try WordPress with Gallery 2 Integration; using the WPG2 plugin to tie the two applications together.  For now, I have settled on the Mandingo theme for WordPress and the pre-packaged, minimalist Siriux theme for Gallery.  They have been tweaked a little bit to look a little cleaner, and will likely get modified more in the future.

I’m still working on getting my images re-sized, commented, and uploaded.  Hopefully I will be able to set aside some time to work on that over the Christmas slow season at work.