Bleh. I wish I could say this was a productive weekend, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

About the only thing that I can say I did that was constructive (other than meeting a friend for lunch Friday) was that I took a number of steps towards a personal tech project that I had been planning and working on. I’ll reveal more about that later, as I don’t really want to say anything publicly until I actually get it working. Also, it might sound a bit pathetically geeky… heh. Otherwise, most of my weekend was spent working on my PC and getting it back up to about how I had it before the wipe and reload in terms of functionality. It’s not been easy, as Vista tends to be really annoying in terms of program installation and compatibility. Still, I’ve been working around it.

The next couple of days should be interesting at work. Two of my IT coworkers (specifically, the network and system administrators) are leaving for a couple of days to go to New Orleans and see Monday Night Football at the Superdome. As a result, I’ll be more or less on my own doing support work. That’ll be fun, let me tell you. Ah, well… I’m sure I can handle it. It’s a good thing I’ll be at the office an hour early tomorrow, though, as it’ll give me a chance to catch up on some of my own work before the deluge starts.

Ah, well… guess I should finish up on this work I’m doing right now, and make sure everything else is running smoothly, and then consider sleep. Fun fun…

Nemesis316 just showed us this comic he made over on #mortalkombat, and I personally thought it was hysterical. Those of you not familiar with the goings-on over at Mortal Kombat Online might not understand some of it, but like I said, I was highly amused… :-)

I’ve been home from Mexico for 32 hours now. Do I feel like I want to go back? … eh, not really.

I arrived at Intercontinental Airport at around 4 PM or so, just in time to see my coworker Anderson come down a courseway. You know you’re working for a company that requires a lot of travel when you encounter coworkers at the airport who are on different business trips than you. After having dinner at Chili’s Too (the airport terminal’s small Chili’s), I met my coworker and fellow traveller Brent at the gate, and off we went to Villahermosa.

In a way, I wish I had thought to start taking pictures with my cell phone’s camera as we arrived in Villahermosa. We had quite a light show as we made our final approach into the airport, with storms coming into the area. When I was last in Villahermosa, the airport was undergoing renovations; they apparently finished them since then, as the airport looked a lot nicer and there was no construction to be seen. We grabbed a taxi to the Camino Real hotel, checked in, dropped off our bags… went to the bar for a few drinks, and then retired to our rooms.

The next morning, we were picked up from the hotel by our Mexican coworkers, and taken down to the plant. I won’t get into details of what was discussed there (my bosses won’t appreciate that), but the facility was quite out of the way in Cardenas. It’s always fun to enter a facility with guard towers… heh. (I didn’t dare ask if they were manned.) Anyway, after a long day at the facility we returned to Villahermosa. On the way back… I wish I had thought to use my camera AGAIN, as we passed a movie theater, and one of the movies being advertised was “Serpientes a Bordo”. :-) Anyway, after being dropped off at the hotel so we could put away our equipment, we were picked up after an hour or so to go to Rodizio’s, which is a Brazilian steakhouse similar to Fogo du Chao. Although, I WAS surprised… when we arrived at Rodizio’s, I saw that in the year since I had last been there, a Bennigan’s had been built and opened next to it. It’s the first time I’ve heard of a Bennigan’s outside of the United States. We had a good meal there, and then retired to the hotel for drinks.

The next morning was rather uneventful, as we made our way to the airport early and then returned to the United States. The only thing that really puzzled me, though, was the fact that I had my bags searched twice. The first time was when going through security, which is to be expected. The second time was when I was boarding the flight itself. *sigh* Was it because they thought I’d be bringing liquids from the secure part of the terminal onto the flight or something?

I think I’m going to start putting my suitcase in checked baggage. Having to throw out both my shaving cream and my deodorant was not something I really wanted to do, and quite frankly buying replacements I’d only use for a couple of days was a waste of money. As long as I don’t have to put my laptop in checked baggage, I’ll grin and bear it. If that happens, I’m going to look into shipping my damn equipment. I don’t trust the airlines with my electronics.

Ah, well… at least I’m back home, and getting caught up with work. Now I can just relax and enjoy a drink, and hope I don’t have to go back anytime soon. :-)

It’s the start of another week, and in a few hours I’ll be on my way to Mexico on a business trip. I can’t say I’m entirely looking forward to it, but there’s no point getting bothered. At least it’s just for two nights.

I do have to admit the morning didn’t start out too well. I’ve taken a vow: next time I’m at a remote location, I’ll ask someone else to make the coffee if I’ve never used the coffeemaker before. I was jonesing for some brew, and went ahead and tried to make a pot. I put the filter together and poured water into the appropriate spot. I then pressed brew.

… only to find that the coffeemaker had its own dedicated water line running into it, and that pressing “BREW” caused it to get water from there as well. Oops.

Fortunately the overflow of weak coffee was mopped up, and the only real casualty (other than two rolls of paper towels) was my dignity. Still, I think from now on I’ll keep from brewing coffee without familiarising myself with the coffeemaker first.

As for this weekend, it was pretty uneventful other than three things. One was the upgrade to Windows Vista, and the other was the router replacement (both of which I already talked about). The other was an outdoor barbecue that Meredith and Jonathan threw at their house. I must say, the food was damn good, and it was fun seeing the gang again, so to speak. Otherwise, one could argue it was the calm before the storm of this week.

In any event, support tickets have just arrived, and I must attend to them. I’ll post from Villahermosa once I get there.