California (to be modified) (blogging is hard work) (i'm tired)

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Eric and Lois drove Zack and I down from Rapid City. Last night when we were driving south close to Denver, the sunset was beautiful although the sun was below the Rockies when we met them. We talked with Zack's aunt and uncle and talked for awhile, I made fun of Scott Abrahamson's racing carbon fiber road bike as much as I could. He was in the paper the next morning riding it to work. The front page had a big story on a bicyclist who was killed by a truck, and another section covered "ride your bike to work day".
We slept for a few hours and made our way into downtown Denver for the train.

The ride started with some switchbacks into the mountains with a great view over the Denver suburban area (minus the smog). The Rockies eclipse the Black Hills as far as sheer monstrosity is concerned. (Note the Rolex)

Trains are fantastic. The entire experience is a pleasure, starting with purchasing a ticket. Straight from Amtrak, a ticket halfway across the country cost less than $100. Travelling by airplane is not such an experience. Buying a ticket either requires paying exorbitant fees to a travel agent, using shady discount websites, or dealing directly with an airline. None of these are fun. Arriving at the airport, you need to find legal parking, get to the ticket agent, stand in line for baggage checking, take your shoes off and go through security, and finally arrive at your gate, where delays and a lack of personal space haunt the rest of your journey.(Zack and I talking about the train.)

Train rides rock.

There is no middle seat.

There is no cabin pressurization.

There are no seatbelts, useless safety instructions videos, or locking of tray tables before "takeoff".

And why do trains start at a place called a terminal? Terminal means "end".

Windows are big, and Colorado has wonderful scenery!

By a complete coincidence, we met Jesse Morris's aunt. We had lunch in the dining car on the first day, and played cards in the "cafe car" with an attendant who warned us against misbehaving -- he said he had duct tape and handcuffs in "his game closet".


Then, Nevada. In short, there's nothing there... just desert.
Winnemucca:

PS, if the video works for anyone, I'll post some more. There are many many hundreds of megabytes of video.

Windows XP!

I just got my new Intel Macbook and Windows! WOW!

(That's Chris in amazement, too.)Within minutes, I had the infamous blue screen of death. Boot Camp, if you're not familiar with it, is the 80 MB software package Apple released in conjunction with their 20th anniversary that allows a Mac user to install and run Windows. Boot Camp has you burn a Macintosh Drivers CD that allows Windows XP running on your intel mac to recognize things like the sound card, USB, firewire, wireless card, and who knows what else.

Anyways, my Macintelbook couldn't handle me pressing the "Start Video Chat" button on MSN Messenger. I guess the driver for the built in iSight on my Macbook didn't copy over well.

/rskjr