After an extremely hectic week,

After an extremely hectic week, I'm on the road. First stop, Minneapolis! I made it up here last night, in time to have tasy burgers at J Dylan's mom's house for his birthday yesterday, then we caught Seth Mulvihill's band playing at the Uptown Bar, then we came home, I stole his cable modem connection to use on my laptop, and then crashed on his futon. My flight to Vegas doesn't leave until 7:47 tonight (on ATA, which I've never flown). So, we've got some time to run around today. I've heard that they have Pepsi in glass bottles up here, and I'm going to stock up on them, so I can haul them back to Iowa with me when I return.

I also saw a Jimmy John's last night, near the bar, which means I can't leave Minneapolis until I eat there.

I'm in the Minneapolis-St. Paul

I'm in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, using their wireless internet connection to 'blog this. My flight leaves in about 45 minutes for Midway Airport in Chicago, where we'll pick up some more passengers before heading on to Vegas. For those morbidly interested, I'm going to be on AirTrans (ATA) Flight 111 from Minneapolis -> Midway -> Vegas, and you can track it here in real-time.

I've never flown on this airline before, and if for some reason I don't survive, consider that a negative review. :)

So, I've got 5 days

So, I've got 5 days to get my tech gadgets ready for my trip to Vegas. So much to do, so little time. My iPaq has gone dead, meaning everything saved to it, is lost, AGAIN. This happens every time I neglect it for a couple weeks, the batteries go completely dead, and your data goes "Poof!". I hate when I let it do that! So now I have to reinstall all the programs on it that I want to take with me. That's not so bad, but, I need to make new GPS maps for the Las Vegas area, as well as Minneapolis - St. Paul to use with my GPS receiver for it. Navigation of unfamiliar cities is much easier when you have a little map showing you exactly where you are. I used to know my way around Vegas quite well, but I fear much of the knowledge has been purged from my brain, so I have JD use my iPaq w/GPS to back me up, in case we get lost. I've also got to get my trusty Dell Latitude C640 ready to travel, and stockpile some DVDs for the plane rides ahead of me. That shouldn't be too bad, I need to make sure my AOL client is up to date too, there's nothing worse than getting away from your broadband connection, only to find that the last beta version of AOL that you loaded to your laptop is no longer able to connect to the service, so you have to find the closest Wal-Mart and scrounge up one of those ever-present CDs.

This will also be my first trip where I'll attempt to use my new wireless data connection via my SprintPCS cell phone. I've tested it with the laptop, and it works well, faster than dial-up even, but I've never gotten it to let me check my e-mail via the IMAP protocol, so it limits me to web-based e-mail. And, the few times I used it, it tended to kick me off after a few minutes.

I also need to check out the digital camera battery situation. Either one of my batteries, or one of my chargers has gone dead. Fortunately, I have two of each, for exactly this reason. You can never be too prepared. If I take the PCMCIA reader from my printer along with me, I can offload pictures on the laptop, without needing a larger USB flash card reader.

It's all about planning ahead, and hoping that airport security doesn't pick you out for the tedious spot check. I carry so many electronics in my laptop backpack that I'm sure it looks suspicious on the X-ray machines, and watching the security guards of dubious intelligence attempting to turn on all my devices gets old fast.

I had a very busy

I had a very busy weekend. My sister-in-law Karen came, with her fiance Pete, to stay with us. My friend J Dylan came down as well. While Holly enteretained her sister, and future brother-in-law, JD and I drove down to Monticello, Iowa on Saturday afternoon to take part in a surprise 30th birthday party for his sister. Much fun was had, and we played a lot of "Catchphrase" which is a good party game. I told her she's definitely getting old, as the party had broken up by 9:30 p.m. Now, I have a hectic week ahead of me, at least 4 meetings to attend, and I need to get as much done as possible, as I'm leaving for Vegas next Saturday. Kristin, my student assistant, is gone too, as her grandfather passed away Thursday, so I'll be on my own getting all this work done.

I'm trying out NewzCrawler as

I'm trying out NewzCrawler as my new posting tool, let's see if it works!  Hmm, a bit flaky... come on, work! It's posting the items to Blogger, but not causing Blogger to publish them to my weblog. I've submitted a support request to NewzCrawler, let's see where this goes...