Archive for December, 2005
Holiday Coding Roadtrip 2005 Day 3:
Wednesday, December 21st, 2005
I was woken up at 4:45am. It was my turn to drive. I took a 3 hour stint at the wheel. We finally made it to DC at about 1:45pm. We finally got to the condo of Henry’s cousin Ralph and his roommate John. After we moved our stuff inside, we all decided to take a nap until the owners of the condo came home. For dinner we went to the Dogfish Alehouse. It was a pretty good restaurant. They had gigantic portions. After dinner we went back to the condo for a bit of TV, then an early night of sleep.
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Holiday Coding Roadtrip 2005 Day 2:
Wednesday, December 21st, 2005
We woke up early in the morning and embarked on a search for breakfast. Well first we embarked on a search for Henry’s friend David, who in turn was taking us to breakfast. We ended up after a 35 minute wait at a nice little restaurant called “Orange with a Peel�? The food was very good. I ended up ordering Chai Tea French Toast. Good but it did not have as strong of a chai flavor as I had hoped. After breakfast we had to make a short detour at Bed, Bath, & Beyond to pick up some pillows for Dave’s place. After finally making it back to Kathleen’s place we kind of sat around as some of Kathleen’s roommate’s friends made cookies for their cookie party that evening. But those plans were not ours…
At about 5:30pm we all piled back into Henry’s CRV to make it up the street a few blocks (who really wants to walk any distance in 10 degree temperatures!) to get to the Aragon Ballroom. We had tickets to the All-American Rejects, Coheed and Cambria, and Fall Out Boy show that was taking place there. Never being much of a fan of the All American Rejects I’m somewhat dismissive of their performance. Next up was Coheed. Since this was going on the 6th or 7th time I had seen them I knew what to expect and so I tried to get as close to the stage as possible so I could take better pictures. But some incredibly hip 15 year old decided that was not the case. As I continually tried to get pictures of Claudio and the rest of the band, a hand swatted at my arm and knocked the telescoping part of the lens back into the camera. It was broken. Needless to say the set was phenomenal, but the camera was a total loss. Fall Out Boy was also phenomenal, and the night was great altogether…
Once we had gotten back to the apartment, I had the most horrid headache. As we managed to pack up the CRV to head on into the night (towards DC) I became quite ill. I’ve got no logical reason for it except nerves. That being said I was obviously the first person to sleep on the road to DC. With the CRV being packed up, and the three of us inside, at 12:44am we were off into the night!
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Holiday Coding Roadtrip 2005 Day 1:
Sunday, December 18th, 2005
We met Henry’s friend Chris up in Kalamazoo where he joined our trip. We first stopped in Kalamazoo at Crow’s Nest. Very good food! From there we finally got back on the road towards Chicago. We did a bit of brainstorming along the way and came up with a few good ideas. We finally made it to Chicago at about 5:00pm. We ended up hanging out with Henry’s friend Kathleen for the evening. We started searching for someplace to eat. We started out by taking the train to Giordano’s. We didn’t even bother to see how long that wait was. After that we ventured down to the Cheesecake Factory. Wait time: 2 hours. After that we decided to take a bit of a jog out of the way to P.J. Clarke’s for dinner. With a wait time of only 45 minutes, we decided to take it! They gave everyone more than enough food. After gorging ourselves we went to the Apple store before making our way back onto the train to Kathleen’s apartment for the evening.
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Holiday Coding Roadtrip 2005 Day 0:
Sunday, December 18th, 2005
I woke up at 8am to go have breakfast before my first tech talk @ 9:30am. The first tech talk was given at my high school, for the IT class. The class was one which I had taken back when I was in high school. The talk was really quite interesting. We covered what I do as an MSA, but more importantly what the students can do for themselves, and what they will be learning when they head out into college. I also made sure to cover the importance of social networking. I was actually asked to stay until after school where I gave a second tech talk to the Technology Club. The second talk was very much the same, except that I also focused even more so on the importance of networking. The two tech talks went well. I had never realized the disparity between college curriculum and what high school teachers teach.
After school I had an appointment for a hair cut at 5pm, after which I waited until Henry came to pick me up. I waited and waited…well we finally got on the road….on Saturday. Actually my parents were the most defiant out of anyone. I just really wanted to get on the road. Henry didn’t get into Clinton Township to pick me up until about 11:30pm. Hooray lack of being on time! We got to Grand Rapids about 2:30am We decided to try to head to a very good little restaurant called Yesterdog, so that we could get a little bit of food before we bed down for the night. After finding out that Yesterdog was closed, we headed to Grand Valley about 3:00am. After some frozen food, and family guy, we all finally got to sleep about 5:00am. Now it’s about noon on Saturday and we’re off to Chicago.
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