Today we had a meeting with the WonkaTech IT people at their offices in town. The broker people were there also, and I think it went well. They seem to have plenty of work and we’d be very happy to do it, so let’s hope it works out.
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With our last official day employed by Acme rapidly approaching, and no signs of any possible redeployment in the offing, we are packing up the Acme equipment: a bunch of software; two 4-year-old laptops; a cranky fileserver; and our fax/printer. 7 boxes in total.
We weren’t using laptops anymore, or the software either for that matter.
Today we drove into town to vist a local IT consulting/headhunter company. There’s a chance they will find us full time jobs, or failing that, sporadic contract work as “brokered contractors”. It’s a start.
When we got home this evening we checked the mail, and among other things was a card that said we’d been selected as a “Nielsen Family”, which means we get the chance to have a box attached to our TV that logs what channels we watch. It’d be cool if this actually happened in time for us to log our religious “Farscape” viewing, and thus boost the ratings of that program. It’s been cancelled but the producers of the show have said that if the ratings are good enough, further episodes could be made.
Home-cooked steak on the gas grill for dinner! After that we watched our DVD of “Fellowship of the Ring” – we had three hours before midnight and we wanted to drive down to the end of the street to watching the big synchronised firework display over the ‘Strip, so it seemed like a good way to pass the time, particularly as we were planning on seeing “The Two Towers” again with Derek and Teresa sometime in the next couple of days.
As it happened, midnight arrived faster than the end of the movie, so we “Took” a break and went out and braved the cold. We were not the only ones to do so! Lots of people driving out to find a place to pull over on a rise overlooking the valley.
They were quite good. Happy new year everyone.
At least according to Get Fuzzy (http://www.snoopy.com/comics/getfuzzy/archive/getfuzzy-20021222.html).
Lisa cooked a brisket.
Oh, and we pick Derek up at the airport this evening.
Today looked like Bleh. It was cold, grey, overcast, and occasionally raining. So what, you might ask? Am I complaining because Las Vegas got its one annual rainy day and I’m not happy about it?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy it’s raining. I think it would be Bleh even if it were sunny outside. For some reason, though, it was just a Bleh kind of day.
To cast off the elvish cloak of Bleh, we decided to go see _The_Two_Towers_, using our special free ticket coupon that came with the Extended DVD version of The Fellowship of the Ring.
The Regal Theaters at Texas Station were the nearest ones that would honour the coupon, and we arrived nice and early at 2:15, for a 3:30 showing. We needn’t have rushed, it seemed that although full-ish, it was not sold out and there were no queues or anything.
I feel strangely unenthusiastic about TTT. I’m not sure why. I think it is because I’ve heard and read so many superlatives used with respect to the film that to add my own seems strangely redundant. Perhaps because it wasn’t the religious experience I’d hoped. I certainly enjoyed myself, and I am looking forward to seeing it again sometime. I could perhaps wait until the Extended DVD version comes out sometimes next year, though. The Ext.DVD of Fellowship added so much to the theatrical release of the first movie that I think I can extrapolate the missing scenes from TTT, and this sense of missing out on the full story is perhaps part of the let down.
Also, I thought that Gollum was magnificent, but I felt hurt that most of the audience seemed to want to laugh at the most poignant moments…
So, the final episode of Firefly screens tonight. It only managed half a season before being canned. My friends outside the USA will probably not get to see this fine piece of TV, rats. Ironically, the final screened episode is actually the original 2-hour pilot episode, which remained un-screened until now.
I hear that the actors contracts run out at the end of January. Is this ironic? With the equally admirable program Farscape having its last episodes aired in January, there’s got to be some hideous joke about programming projects that I get involved in all coming to nothing.
Gah.
We heard nothing from the RP3 re-deployment dude today.
I did have a previously scheduled one-on-one meeting with my boss that was kind of enlightening about some of the team dynamics over the last few months, but basically he reiterated that our job positions have been eliminated due to lack of work in the pipeline. It’s clear that it’s nothing personal, at least as far as he is concerned.
Just another beautiful Las Vegas sunset. The ocatillo stands proud against the sky.
We woke up this morning after another troubled sleep. From the 15th floor it seemed as though the Sun was having trouble getting up as well, the buildings around the central business district were lit up in a very half-hearted way. Looking down we could see some people sitting in the hot tub down on the lower roof level – I wondered if they’d been there all night?
After a shower we got dressed, packed, and went downstairs to check out. Lisa attended to the details while I went and got us coffee and a bagel from Einstein Bros.
After sitting for a while in the crisp air and morning sun, we decided that we *would* try and visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West compound after all. It’d be a shame to miss it, seeing as we really didn’t know when we were going to be back here in Phoenix.
We drove East, then North on the 101 loop and exited at Cactus Road, which just kept going East… until eventually it hit Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd. We figured we were in the right place. In fact, straight across from us was the sign for Taliesin West, complete with double-spiral logo.
We arrived in time for the 10:00 am “Insights” tour. We took lots of pictures. It’s a fascinating place…
At about 11:30, got back on the road, took 101 loop West, then 17 North, then 74 (Carefree Highway) West to reconnect with 60 just south of Wickenburg.
We stopped at Wickenburg to top up the gas tank and for more coffee, another breakfast, and a pit stop. The Two Wheels Cafe had an interesting corridor between the booths and the toilets, through a narrow door and down a passage marked “The Necessary Trail”, pasted with cartoons and witty sayings. Beautifully painted doors on the bathrooms.
We headed North on 93 out of Wickenburg. There were many many traffic cops and speed traps. We made an extra attempt to ensure we stuck to the speed limit, as our Nevada license plates made us an easy mark.
It was a pretty uneventful ride home. We stopped again in Kingman to top up with Petrol and we were going to stop for a pot of tea or coffee but the road didn’t want to take us past anything interesting so we just kept on driving.
We arrived in Vegas in time for rush hour – hooray – but traffic wasn’t too bad and we got home at about 4:45.
The cats were acting weird, and had obviously had an “interesting” time while we were away. Kami was running around in a silly way, and Karma was hiding and refusing to eat any fresh cat food. Later in the evening they both settled down, a bit. They obviously had got on each other’s nerves a bit.
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