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We figured we had taken out all the bad stuff -- for instance, we poured out the bottle of lamp oil. Likewise for the hot sauce, glue, etc. So nothing to worry about, right? Well... Have you ever seen an electric tennis racket? Battery powered, it's perfect for zapping mosquitoes. And believe me, we have plenty of mosquitoes here; as a result, this is an item that sits around on our living room coffee table. You can see where this is going, right?

So I turned around from weighing a box in one room to see one of the packers, holding the racket by the round end, with a remarkable expression on his face. After we explained what the thing was that had just bitten him, he seemed much more impressed than upset. But Carrie and I still felt kind of bad.]]> http://www.cjones.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry070128-011036
I was looking on TSA's web site -- you know, the overworked, grumpy people who make you take your clothes off in front of hundreds of complete strangers every time you try to get on an airplane... Umm, anyway, I saw this link titled, no kidding, The Screening Experience. So I had to share it.]]> http://www.cjones.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry061218-032830 For want of a nail, the shoe was lost?" Well, that was how work went one day last week.

We had some engineers in, replacing the control unit for an alarm system. Somehow replacing the control unit broke the sensor on the door, so that had to be replaced. The door in question is a vault door, which had its internal mechanism interfered with by the bolts on the new sensor; so the door stopped working. We fixed that, closed the door, then discovered that messing with the door's mechanism had confused the lock. Whoops; it's not good to be on the outside of a vault when you discover the lock doesn't work. Anyway, we managed to cajole the lock into working, after which we took it apart and fixed it, too.

So yeah, when I went home it was about 1:30am. But I learned lots about alarm systems, vault doors, and locks.]]> http://www.cjones.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry061211-111525
Once again, the ball was great. Not as good as last year's, mostly because the DJ played lousy music. But the company was great, as was Carrie's outfit. Once again, she made her own dress, out of beautiful silk and in a Chinese style. And once again, she looked outstanding in it. We don't have all the pictures up yet, but here and here are a couple nice ones. Note the lovely Carrie in each.

Did I mention she looked really nice?

It was also most excellent to have our friend Sarah visiting us. She had planned on bring a friend or two along, but it unfortunately didn't work out. We of course showed her around the island(s) for a few days beforehand, and it was generally just nice to have her around.

Umm, there were some other highlights of the night. Let's see... The Marines somehow managed to get a Conga line formed out of a bunch of diplomats. That was pretty impressive.]]> http://www.cjones.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry061210-041500
And yes, we're both very excited.]]> http://www.cjones.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry061210-011108
The smaller of the two islands of Malta is named Gozo. On Gozo, there's a beautiful natural arch in the limestone rock that makes up the islands. Actually, there are a number of such arches, but the most iconic one is called the Azure Window. You can find a nice photo of it here. Now, of the people who've visited us in the time we've been here, we've pretty much taken all of them to see this spot; but I never realized just how tall it is. It is, in fact, about twenty meters above the water, or six stories. Even that didn't sound like much, though, until I was standing at the top of it, preparing to jump off.

You see, when we go rappelling we always tie a knot in the end of the rope. The theory goes that the knot keeps you from going right off the end of the rope and plunging to your death from a tall cliff. The reality is that we never mess with cliffs taller than our rope is long -- but it's still good safety practice. I can't explain it, but somehow that knot has always bothered me. I've wanted to go rappelling without that stop knot at the end, to break free of those restraints and just continue floating down into eternity. Okay, not really; mostly, I just wondered what it would be like to rappel off the end of the rope.

Proving that the entire previous paragraph was not a non sequitur, we figured the Azure Window would be the perfect spot to rig up a rappel, with no stop knot in the end of the rope, over the water. And that's just what we did. Here's an album of pictures from the event, with a few favorite photos. We took along our fun next door neighbor and, in a stunning career move, my boss and his wife.]]> http://www.cjones.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry061210-010217 NetBSD and Apache would be examples of the good stuff. And now I can say I've got even more examples of the bad stuff.

To make a long story short, this weblog has been dysfunctional for quite some time. I tried many things to fix it, but I eventually gave up and switched to something called Simple PHP Blog. Not surprisingly, I found it by searching Google for "simple blog software." At this point, I'm happy with it; it looks like it has many fewer things that can go wrong with it.]]> http://www.cjones.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry061006-095649
Malta is old. Really old. I mean, when the Phoenicians showed up here a few thousand years ago, there were ruins on the island. To an American accustomed to 250 years of national history, it's kind of staggering.

The culture of people responsible for building the temples that became those ruins probably had a very descriptive and creative name for themselves. We modern people cleverly call them the Temple Culture. They were apparently pretty sophisticated, because they had some impressive temples which they made without metal tools. One temple complex that's been excavated and now open to the public is called Mnajdra (pronounced kind of like "Em-nigh-dra"). It's on the Southern part of the island, close to another temple complex called Haġar Qim.

Mnajdra and Haġar Qim consist of stone structures made from huge slabs of the local limestone. The interior spaces became narrower near the top, and they were capped with wooden roofs. Mnajdra is particularly interesting because it's oriented carefully with respect to the solstices and equinoxes. I've grabbed a link to an image from a page describing the temple complex.

To be specific, there's an altar at the back of the temple, in a room which was presumably kept closed at all times. Keep in mind there was a roof on the temple at the time, so this room never saw direct sunlight. Well, almost never. On the equinox, if the interior door was open (which we presume it was), the rising sun would be perfectly aligned so as to light up the altar for a few moments.

As you can imagine, this attracts some attention. We figured we might as well join in with the rest of the mystics, witches, druids, new age crystal worshippers, and tourists this year -- after all, it's our last opportunity to see this. So this year, the equinox was on September 23rd rather than the normal 21st or 22nd. A few days before, there had been a notice in the paper that the Mnajdra temples would have a special opening for the event. It didn't give a time, but we eventually realized we could figure it out: It would be at about sunrise. We also checked their Internet site, and it said there would be a special opening on the morning of the 23rd, for the equinox. It also didn't give a time, but by this point we weren't too worried.

So we got up early and showed up there a little before sunrise. Sure enough, there were four gate guards -- or ticket takers or whatever -- sitting there, and a small passel of maybe a dozen tourists there as well. But all was not quite as we had expected: the gate was locked, and the other tourists were standing around outside the fence.

We (Carrie) had a discussion (argument) with the gate guards that went kind of like this:

"Hi! Is today the special opening of the temples?"

"No, it's tomorrow."

"Umm, isn't the equinox today?"

"Yes, but the special opening is tomorrow."

"But tomorrow won't be the equinox..."

"The opening is tomorrow."

"So... The notice in the newspaper, and the announcement on your web site, that said you'd be open this morning; those were both lying?"

"(unintelligible)"

So, with that business concluded, we walked over to where the other tourists were standing. I should note that some of the "tourists" were, in fact, Maltese who had come to see this. I also want to point out that there was a photographer inside the fence, inside the temple itself in fact, taking pictures and getting in the way of us seeing very much. We figured she was the reason for the unexplained schedule change.

The sunrise was beautiful, and the lighting up of the altar was impressive as well. But a funny thing occurred to me while we were all standing there, laughing and making jokes about the photographer inside. If we had been a group of Americans standing outside looking in, we would have been completely unable to enjoy what was going on. People would have been carrying on with the guards, yelling, calling various people on their cell phones, and generally making a big ruckus. But the crowd there, while definitely offended at how we were being treated, were still able to take in the show and get a few good pictures.]]> http://www.cjones.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry060820-074907
After getting up at 0500, we crossed eight time zones and arrived in Billings at 1830 -- for a total of about 21 hours travel time. We decided to relax with a short walk to get the blood flowing in our legs. In fact, we took almost every opportunity to walk for the entire two weeks, since walking in Malta really isn't that pleasant.

We had the next day, Sunday, to relax. Monday and Tuesday were spent partly at my dad's cabin near Roscoe, except that I was shuttling Carrie back and forth to Billings for some much-needed dental work. It turns out she had flossed a filling out of her tooth about a week before the trip, and she wanted to get that taken care of. She ended up with a root canal, which was kind of a two day process.

Wednesday morning, we left with the two Lindas for a drive out to Port Townsend, Washington. It was a lovely drive, and really nice to see that kind of scenery again. It was a two-day trip, with us stopping for the night in Spokane.

We arrived the next day in Port Townsend, and it was really nice to meet Ben's family, see where they live, and have a lovely dinner with them. We tried to get a little wedding prep done, but things were mostly closed.

Friday is when the non-stop insanity started. Carrie and I didn't have 15 minutes to spare until Monday night. The first thing, of course, was wedding prep. Carrie headed up the flower-getting expedition while I took care of programs. Then we made Rob take us out sailing (I like to think of this as important de-stressing time for the father of the groom) and got back in time for the rehearsal, followed by the rehearsal dinner.

The next morning we got up and started getting ready for the wedding. Things mostly went without a hitch, though it was busy. The plan was for Lindsay to walk along the beach to the park where they were getting married, which was really a lovely walk. Partway through, I realized I had forgotten the statement she was going to read in the ceremony, so I got to run back for that. The ceremony was beautiful, though. It was in a gazebo in a park by the shore, and the weather cooperated nicely. The ceremony itself was in a Potawatomi style, with an officiant who is a good friend of Lindsay's.

The reception went until the wee hours of the morning, though I think Carrie and I skipped out at midnight. I was quite pleased to learn that they had open mic toasting, so I got to start that off with a nicely embarrassing Ben and Lindsay story.

Just in case it's not clear: I'm thrilled that Lindsay is now married to Ben. They're a great match for each other, and I think they're going to be happy. It doesn't hurt that his family rocks. And here are some pictures of the whole thing.

Anyway... The next morning, we got up at 0400 to catch a ride from my very patient father out to the ferry landing. We missed the 0520 ferry by about five minutes, so got to wait around for the 0705 one. Once we got to Seattle, we caught a bus to Sea-Tac and made it just in time for our plane. Which sat on the ground for an hour because there was fog in the San Francisco airport. Grr.

But we made it to San Francisco. Grabbed a rental car and a SIM card for my cell phone, and took off for Brandon and Alison's wedding. We changed clothes in the car, pulling over just long enough to swap drivers. When we pulled in to the resort and ran in, we ran into the groom's party, standing at the back, preparing to walk down the aisle. So we exchanged a quick hug and sat down.

By this point, we were completely wedding-photo'd out, so you'll have to use your imagination when I say it was a lovely wedding there on the coast, with a beautiful view of a storm on the horizon. We got to meet Alison, and we got to spend a bunch of time hanging out with Derek and Krista. Oh yeah -- and we got to meet Krista, too! So that was all good.

We left the reception when it ended at 10ish, and drove back to SF where Carrie's adopted little brother lives with his wife. We made it in around midnight and promptly collapsed. The next morning we were up at 6 to go to breakfast with them. Brian and Bridget were very kind to let us crash at their place, and it was really very nice to chat with them and meet Bridget. Too bad we had so little time, though.

We then drove down to SRI where I had a meeting with my old boss, Carla. We did some negotiating, and it looks like I'll be working there again come February or March. It's hard to be certain six months away, but it sounds like there will be some fun projects coming up, too.

When we finished at SRI, we drove to the airport and took off for Denver. As luck would have it, we were on the same flight as Derek and Krista, so we swapped our seats around to sit together. So we had yet more time to chat with them, which was definitely a good thing.

So we got to Denver, Carrie's parents picked us up, and we all went to Chuck and Debbie's place for the evening. Finally we had a few minutes to relax, such relaxation being greatly aided by Debbie's fabulous kahlua chocolate cake.

The next morning we had more of Debbie's excellent baked goods and then took off for Carrie's parents' place in Nebraska. We stayed there until Friday, which was the most relaxing part of the whole two weeks. Then we turned around, went back to Chuck and Debbie's, then hopped on the plane to come back here.

For a few months prior to the trip, Carrie and I have been unable to sleep in past about 7am; our biological alarm clocks have been set to about 6:30, much to our regret. Similarly, on this two week vacation, we were always waking up around 6. This morning, though, we slept in until 11:30. :-D]]> http://www.cjones.org/blog/index.php?entry=entry060623-094729
We're going to visit a good friend in Moldova, so we need tickets. Last time we went somewhere from Malta, we had to deal with three local travel agents before we found one who would sell us tickets. The first travel agent had simply told us, "You don't want to go there," after we explained to her where Iceland is. The second very cooperatively booked our Iceland trip -- to Italy! (Apparently she thought we didn't want to go there, either.) The third one actually got us where we wanted to go, but missing a day of hotel reservations in the middle.

So we decided not to deal with Maltese travel agents again. Ever. Plan B was to buy tickets on one of the charter airlines that fly out of here. You see, Malta heavily taxes airline departures and uses the revenue to subsidize the national airline; as a result, none of the discount airlines have come to town, because they don't want to compete with Air Malta on uneven footing. But the charter airlines are still around, and they have massively cheap tickets available. The problem is, their primary customers are, well, charter groups. If you're a private individual, you have to wait until two weeks before your travel date to buy a ticket. It turns out that the flights are sometimes full of charter customers by then, which leads us to...

Plan C. This is the 21st century, right? So there are tons of modern, easy to use, online travel agents. Let's just go to Orbitz (or Expedia or Travelocity or whatever) and buy tickets. Sounds easy, right? Well, American travel agents don't sell tickets unless your itinerary starts or ends in the U.S. What's up with that?

For Plan D, we figured that the 21st century would have reached Europe, too. So we found an European online travel agent; they claim to handle travel all over Europe, as one would expect. But this is Europe, so the first question the web site asks is what language you want to do business in. Choose English? That means you're using the UK branch of their business. Which doesn't seem to offer those new fangled "E Ticket" things. And will only mail paper tickets to a UK address.

Sounds bad, but we're increasingly well connected as time goes by. We came up with a Plan E, which involved having the tickets mailed to a friend in London. He would then FedEx them to us here, and we'd pay him back for the (ouch) international FedEx shipping. Funnily enough, this is exactly what the crazy UK branch of the European travel agent recommends. Unfortunately, by the time we got the logistics of this all worked out, the online travel agent decided that those tickets weren't available, after all. Not in economy or business class.

We were ready to give up at this point, but we really needed to get off the island for a bit. In desperation, we forged on to Plan F. This wasn't so much a plan as a lucky hit on Google: an American, online travel agent who claimed they could sell intra-Europe tickets. (I figure the Airline Gestapo haven't caught up with them yet.) So we wrestled with their dysfunctional web site and eventually came up with an itinerary that was more pleasant than what we had been looking at: only about nine hours each way. This particular combination of airlines didn't offer E tickets, so they'd have to mail them to us, but they said they could do international FedEx with no problem. So we hit the "purchase" button and waited for something to happen.

Specifically, I waited for them to charge our credit card; I was checking up on them online. When that didn't happen after a day or two, I called them in Florida. No, they hadn't purchased the tickets yet, because they were suspicious of my American credit card being used from Malta. And no, they hadn't emailed me or tried to call internationally. But yes, if I would just fill out a verification form (with the same info I put in their online form) and email it back to them (from the same place I filled out the online form), they'd process the purchase. I still don't understand what additional security this verification stage was supposed to provide, but I figured I'd play their little game. Again, wait for the charge to show up on the credit card. And wait. And call again.

This time, they told us that our itinerary (which they offered on their web site) wasn't acceptable because it involved too many airlines. The airlines didn't all have agreements with each other, so the travel agent couldn't actually issue the tickets. Besides, (have you been counting days) there wasn't enough time anymore for FedEx to get the tickets to us here. However, the itinerary was actually reserved in our names, and we had a confirmation code. Maybe if we contacted the airlines ourselves, we could get them to take our money in exchange for the service they claim to offer -- getting from one place to another.

Okay, so we're up to what, Plan G? Right. The G probably stands for, "Good luck." Carrie went to the main Air Malta ticket office in the capital, Valletta. Oh, sorry, the main ticket office can't sell tickets; maybe you should try the ticket counter at the airport.

Plan H. Airport. Ticket counter. Less than helpful ticket agent. Confirmation code. ID. Credit card. Eventually, yes, the foul bureaucratic machinery hiccupped and, in a moment of carelessness, allowed us to get our tickets. Mostly. Does H stand for happy? No, we Americans are never happy, are we?

Plan I was Carrie looking over the tickets and realizing that one leg of the journey hadn't actually been ticketed. Being an American who's never happy, she wasn't satisfied with the idea of getting ourselves from Moldova to Romania in lieu of the un-ticketed flight in our itinerary. She went back to the counter, paid a bit more money, and got those last tickets.

I'm hoping there won't be a Plan J, M, or Q. We'll see how this trip goes. I've heard the expression that, "Getting there is half the fun." Now that I read it again, it sounds pretty ominous.]]>