Here are a few pictures from my last trip to El Paso for work. Yes those are real coyotes! They came and ate scraps outside of the window at this steak restaurant. I’ll be going back in a few weeks. Hope to go to Roswell NM, and Carlsbad Caverns.

Raymond, Tim, Justin, and I decided to go to St. Louis for the grand opening of Arch Reactor the local Hackerspace up there. They had made a post to the hackerspaces.org mail list inviting everyone out to there space.  I asked a few members if they would like to go, and we made a weekend trip out of it.

I had spoken with a few of the Arch Reactor members beforehand and made arrangements to crash at a members apartment.   We left Friday night in the middle of a snow storm.  Lucky Tim is from upside down Vermont and thus knows how to drive in bad weather.  A 6 hour drive took us 10.5, but thanks to my Droid we never missed a beat with Pandora.

Once in St. Louis we found a McDonald’s to get food and then napped in the parking lot.  Then we traveled over to the Arch and did the touristy things.  We walked around the museum and rode up in the Arch.  Being about lunchtime we headed over to Arch Reactor were we hung out for the rest of the night.

The open house was tons of fun.  They probably had 50 or more people show up.  They had a Maker Bot and a CNC, along with a bunch of old and new computers.  There was some cool art, and a few talks.  Tim and I even showed off the photobooth and gave a short talk about it.  OH! and they had life sized Jenga!

As expected after only a few hours of sleep and parting all day with only caffeine to keep us awake, we crashed hard Saturday night.  Sunday morning we had lunch with a member of their space and headed home.  The drive home way way easier than the one going up.   On the way through Illinois we saw a sign for Metropolis, IL aka Superman’s Home.  Naturally we stopped and saw a giant Superman at the courthouse.

Here are the picture I took, I’ll update it later if anyone else has posted their pictures.

I took a little vacation over the holidays.  I headed up to the coldest place on earth….alright maybe it wasn’t the coldest place, but it sure felt like it.  I went up to Wisconsin to see my Dad and Step-mom as well as other people and family.

I headed out early on the 22nd and thankfully I made it there without any problems.  I didn’t have any canceled flights our anything like that.  After arriving in the frozen tundra the first thing Dad and I did was head to the cheese store.  Not to far from the airport is a place where they make fresh cheese.  We got a few bags of cheese curds and a couple blocks of cheese.  I looked at getting a cheese head hat, but decided against it, because of baggage space limitations.

Most of the time was spent just hanging out with family.  We went to see a movie, went out to eat a bunch.  You know the normal family stuff.

I did get to see the grave stone of Jessica.  I posted about her in a post called 10 years ago… It was nice to see the stone, she was a very good friend of mine, and I don’t think I have ever actually seen her stone.  The fist time I was there to see her grave site there was just a plaque.

Also got to hang out with a couple friends including @grinningsoul who I have never met in person but have talked to online for almost two years.  It was awesome to meet someone for the first time you have known and followed for a while.  <–That sounds very stoker like, thanks social networks.

All in all I had a great time….well except for the cold!

I went on a work trip to Hawaii in the middle of November.  We were on Kauai, which is very small and very old.  Not much to do there, but I guess I wasn’t there for vacation so what can I expect.  Here are some pictures from the island.

Last month I had to go on a business trip to Israel.  On my way back I had an 8hr layover at JFK and jumped a taxi into the city.

Israel was a pretty cool place to visit.  Chicks are fine, and out number the guys by like 3 to 1.  The hotel I stayed in was right on the beach and the Mediterranean Sea was beautiful.  One day I got to go on a tour around the Sea of Galilee and some other Holy places. Other than being there on a business trip it was a pretty cool place to go.

So I only got to spend about 4hrs in NYC but it was awesome to see.  I walked around Time Square most of that time, then made my way to 5th Ave.  Found lots of cool places that I have only heard about on TV.  I can’t wait to go back sometime and spend more time.