(nothinsevergonnagetinmyway) Again

Wasted days, wasted nights
Try to downplay being uptight...
-- "(nothinsevergonnastandinmyway) Again", Wilco

Saturday I headed out the door at 5.30am -- just like I was going into work early. I'd been up late the night before finishing up "Zone One" by Colson Whitehead, which ZOMG is incredible and you should read, but I did not want to read while alone and feeling discombobulated in a hotel room far from home. Cab to the airport, and I was suprised to find I didn't even have to opt out; the L3 scanners were only being used irregularly. I noticed the hospital curtains set up for the private screening area; it looked a bit like God's own shower curtain.

The customs guard asked me where I was going, and whether I liked my job. "That's important, you know?" Young, a shaved head and a friendly manner. Confidential look left, right, then back at me. "My last job? I knew when it was time to leave that one. You have a good trip."

The gate for the airline I took was way out on a side wing of the airport, which I can only assume meant that airline lost a coin toss or something. The flight to Seattle was quick and low, so it wasn't until the flight to San Diego that a) we climbed up to our cruising altitude of $(echo "39000/3.3" | bc) 11818 meters and b) my ears started to hurt. I've got a cold and thought that my aggressive taking of cold medication would help, but no. The first seatmate had a shaved head, a Howie Mandel soul patch, a Toki watch and read "Road and Track" magazine, staring at the ads for mag wheels; the other seatmate announced that he was in the Navy, going to his last command, and was going to use the seat tray as a headrest as soon as they got to cruising. "I was up late last night, you know?" I ate my Ranch Corn Nuggets (seriously).

Once at the hotel, I ran into Bob the Norwegian, who berated me for being surprised that he was there. "I've TOLD you this over and over again!" Not only that, but he was there with three fellow Norwegian sysadmins, including his minion. I immediately started composing Scary Viking Sysadmin questions in my head; you may begin to look forward to them.

We went out to the Gaslamp district of San Diego, which reminds me a lot of Gastown in Vancouver; very familiar feel, and a similar arc to its history. Alf the Norwegian wanted a hat for cosplay, so we hit two -- TWO -- hat stores. The second resembled nothing so much as a souvenir shop in a tourist town, but the first was staffed by two hipsters looking like they'd stepped straight out of Instagram:

They sold $160 Panama hats. I very carefully stayed away from the merchandise. Oh -- and this is unrelated -- from the minibar in my hotel room:

We had dinner at a restaurant whose name I forget; stylish kind of place, with ten staff members (four of whom announced, separately, that they would be our server for the night). They seemed disappointed when I ordered a Wipeout IPA ("Yeah, we're really known more for our Sangria"), but Bob made up for it by ordering a Hawaiian Hoo-Hoo:

We watched the bar crawlers getting out of cabs dressed in Sexy Santa costumes ("The 12 Bars of Xmas Pub Crawl 2012") and discussed Agile Programming (which phrase, when embedded in a long string of Norwegian, sounds a lot like "Anger Management".)

Q: How do you know you're with a Scary Viking Sysadmin?

A: They explain the difference between a fjord and a fjell in terms of IPv6 connectivity.

There was also this truck in the streets, showing the good folks of San Diego just what they were missing by not being at home watching Fox Sports:

We headed back to the hotel, and Bob and I waited for Matt to show up. Eventually he did, with Ben Cotton in tow (never met him before -- nice guy, gives Matt as much crap as I do -> GOOD) and Matt regaled us with tales of his hotel room:

Matt: So -- I don't wanna sound special or anything -- but is your room on the 7th floor overlooking the pool and the marina with a great big king-sized bed? 'Cos mine is.

Me: Go on.

Matt: I asked the guy at the desk when I was checking in if I could get a king-size bed instead of a double --

Me: "Hi, I'm Matt Simmons. You may know me from Standalone Hyphen Sysadmin Dot Com?"

Ben: "I'm kind of a big deal on the Internet."

Matt: -- and he says sure, but we're gonna charge you a lot more if you trash it.

Not Matt's balcony:

(UPDATE: Matt read this and said "Actually, I'm on the 9th floor? Not the 7th." saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com regrets the error.)

I tweeted from the bar using my laptop ("It's an old AOLPhone prototype"). It was all good.