As I was writing my last missive I felt an hungered. Eventually my desire to catch up on stuff was overtaken by the rumblings, so off I went for lunch. Found a nice-looking burger place, parked nearby, strolled past a Subway, and realized that all I ever wanted was a good sub. The Subway was right across the street from a CalTrain station and I mulled over just heading on up to San Francisco for the day. Ultimately decided against it, as I’d be arriving at 5pm with no idea what to do with myself.
Instead I walked around downtown Mountain View. Some really neat parts, like an exclusive-looking Fraternity of Eagles lodge, and a museum for locks and keys.
Now that’s a key. 
Check out the price tag on that thing.
Ended up in a book store and thought I’d look around in the sci-fi section for another book to add to my collection, but something called me to the history section, and I found a couple of really cool books. One on “America’s violent birth”, having to do with the revolutionary war and such. Flipped open to a random page that was talking about the complexities involved with prisoner exchange between the British and a revolutionary force that they couldn’t afford to grant legitimacy to through the use of official negotiation channels.
Another book had to do with poisons used in the 20th century, and the story of how we learned to detect and neutralize them. A random page described a period of history during the Prohibition era where the U.S. government would deliberately poison alcohol, to disincentivize people from drinking it. Didn’t work of course.
So I picked both of them up and may end up taking a break from the expansive Culture universe for a while.
It was getting on to evening and I wasn’t sure what to do with myself, but then I remembered that the Apple Park visitors center was a thing and nearby and I’d wanted to go for a while. It was fantastic. All y’all would love it.
The next day was church. Attended the Stanford ward again. Showed up quite a bit early so I took a stroll around the neighborhood, and ended up walking through some Stanford dorms. Came across the largest crane I’ve ever seen in person. Like, I know Bagger 293 is the king of cranes, but this thing was still seriously impressive.
Double rainbow all the way.
Monday and Tuesday were more meetings. Of course I got to be in Sunnyvale during the best snowfall Washington’s seen while I’ve been there. Headed back Tuesday night, and got to catch some awesome sunset views.
There’s the Apple Space Ship. 
The cats were happy to see me.
After I’d settled in back home I hopped online to do some more work. A large project I was in charge of coordinating was worrying me; we’d presented several options that’d satisfy the security requirements we’d been set, each of which entailed a nontrivial amount of design and implementation work that I was very worried about finishing on time. We hadn’t yet settled on a concrete plan of attack and we needed to get moving on something.
In my sleep-deprived state I had an epiphany.
I could see an entirely new way of designing our system that had far fewer dependencies and unknown unknowns. I spent the next morning at work selling my proposal and it seems to be gaining traction among stakeholders. So Wednesday was a really good day. May end up finishing this project on time after all.
I left work early that day to try and catch up on some zzzs. That trip to Sunnyvale really took it out of me, felt like I was “switched on” 100% of the time.
On Thursday it was looking like snow again this weekend. Of course I had plans to fly out to Utah on Friday evening and miss the whole thing. Well, to be accurate, the flight was at 7pm, and snowfall was predicted at 1pm. This was looking like it was gonna be even worse than the previous week’s weather, which cancelled flights and caused our office to declare a snow day, advising all employees to stay home and off the roads.
Feeling nervous about my prospects of making my evening flight, I decided to move it forward. Luckily Delta had issued a weather warning and was waiving all flight change fees. My options were 5:50am or 11am. I wasn’t feeling particularly lucky so I went for the earlier one, knowing that transportation would be an issue. I didn’t know how reliable Lyft/Uber was 4am. To be safe I booked a taxi as well.
I spent the rest of the night frantically packing. Frantically because it was 11pm and I have a history of missing flights when I’m running on insufficient sleep. I had previously acquired a box of swag I needed to get to BYU ahead of our recruiting trip; I had a shipping label all printed out but by the time I’d made the flight change it was too late to get the box to a UPS store. So I had to creatively pack the swag in with my luggage.
My internal clock did me right and I woke up on my own, on time. I spent some of the morning taking pictures of the two cats, as it’ll be the last time I’ll see them at my place. This Sunday their owner is coming by to pick them up; I gave her the garage door code so she can just let herself in. Then I’ll hire a cleaning service to deep-six the place. Can’t have a meal without finding a cat hair somewhere in the food.
Anyways, I could see that my Lyft ride had been confirmed, so I called to cancel the taxi. That turned out to be a mistake, as my driver cancelled and was replaced by a new driver, who’d be there about 20 minutes later than I’d’ve liked. I called him to confirm that he was on his way and he didn’t pick up.
So I drove off on my own. However I neglected to cancel my replacement Lyft, and got a phone call on the road from the driver, who’d shown up after all. I explained the situation and how he’d arrived too late and hadn’t answered when I called. He ended up cancelling the ride, which I feel bad about because I think that somewhat negatively affects a Lyft driver’s ability to get assigned rides in the future. But nothing I could do about that at the time.
What I could do was offer a little prayer that Old Silver could make it to the airport parking garage on what little gas I’d left in the tank the night prior. I came close to biting the bullet and taking an exit to find a gas station, but told myself he’d make it, and make it he did, though making my way from the airport when I return is going to be a real nail-biter.
I was annoyed that due to my first Lyft driver cancelling I’d have to incur the cost of parking at the airport for a week, but I think Google will pay for at least four of the seven days.
Made it to the gate in the middle of boarding. Spent the first part of the flight writing this up, and the rest of it catching up on sleep. Got picked up by Dad at the airport and the kind folks at his office were nice enough to lend me wifi access and a conference room for the day.
See ya tonight!
