Rick Rambles – A blog

Unemployment. The days go very quickly. I look for a job. I try to learn French, I study for the CISSP test. I eat. I go to coffee shops. I hang out on facebook.
People say that they wish that they could do what I am doing. Everyone has the power to do what I am doing. All they have to do is quit their jobs. People tell me that they cannot quit their jobs. Why not? What are people afraid of? I think part of it is that the grass is always greener. The other thing is responsibilities. Am I irresponsible? I would have to go with a qualified yes. I am currently not in debt. Ok, I owe on my house and car. The house is worth much more then I owe (http://realtor.com tells me that) and the car… (http://cars.com) well it’s close. What other responsibilities do I have??? My children… At this point I told them all that I would pay for ½ of their colleges. I am keeping that commitment. Other then that the rest is gravy. My expensive are low and I don’t really care too much about the future or retirement.
I think that is the key. Worrying about the future. Well, I am not worried about the future. Do you know why? Well the things that you worry about don’t happen. It’s the unexpected things that happen on a boring Tuesday. I firmly believe that I will be just fine in every way. I will be happy and financially secure… somehow. The universe of happy thoughts will bring fortune my way. Am I crazy? Well, who is not?
I am going to enjoy this time in my life as much as I can. I am going to enjoy the time off and I am going to study languages and I am going to travel and I am going to wait for that awesome opportunity to fall gently in my lap. And when it does I will seize it. There is no such thing as a lost opportunity…there is always someone to capitalize on it.
Now, what do I want for the future? The underlying want is happiness for me (always first, sorry world; not) and for the ones I love. The rest of you people, good luck. What will make me happy? First and foremost is money. Yup, there it is, I like money. Why you ask, well money is security. Now the real question is how much money do I want and much more importantly is how hard do I want to work for it. I know for a fact that if I really worked at it. I mean really worked at it forsaking all else I could be pretty rich. Now the problem is that I really don’t want to work that hard… so I settle for well off. How well of. Well starting off as a poor black boy, well of is not that rich. Working my last gig, I was comfortable. Now unemployed, not so much. Enough of that for now.
What am I going to do for work? As I said I will wait for the opportunity to fall into my lap, but I may help it a least a little. I will apply for the ultimate job of caretaker of the island on the Great barrier reef. If I get it I will be set for a year, and then who know what. I think I will just image that for a while. I may apply for a job in New Zealand too… the great barrier reef job just might… we will have to see.

Filing for unemployment…
It first started before we  left for Utah.  January 1.  It was a holiday, the web site was closed!  Please what kind of web site is closed just because the office is???  Well CT DOL is…  I kept rescheduling filing until I was able to get in.  first the site crashed and gave me page not found errors.  then we got to Utah and it told me that my info did not match what they had on record.  Then I tried to call and got most of the way through the Voice response system.  That is also only available when the office is open…  makes no sense.  They should hire me to just fix the system.  It is .net asp pages.  Piece of cake to fix!!!  Anyway I get through the questions and they tell me that I have to talk to a person…  fine.  Then they tell me that they are busy, I should call after 1:00 I will hear a series of clicks and be connected…  goodbye…  I hear clicks and then a dial tone…  I do this several times… see definition of a moron…
I get up real early the next day Jan 9 to try to get a jump on them…  no dice!  They tell me that they are busy and they hang up on me again…  I don’t even get to wait on hold!  Arg!  So I take the hint and I wait until 1:00.  Exactly at 1:00 I call back.  They don’t immediately hang up on me!  Progress!!!  Instead I wait 45 minutes on hold….  Ever 10 minutes or so the muzak restarts and you get a faint hope that a person may pick up… or worse…  you will be disconnected and have to start over!   I do like the fact that every 10 minutes or so they encourage you not to hang up and they are doing their very best….
I finally get a real person!!!  I felt like it was a major accomplishment!  She was pleasant, spoke English, was understandable and nice!  Bonus!!!  She did ask me all the questions that I had filled out 7 times on the web and once more on the phone, but hey.  Then she asked me other questions about dependants and work that I was prepared for.  She then threw me a curve and asked about my weekly pay… oh no, I had to look it up, would she wait, was I screwed?!?!?  No it only took me a couple of minutes and my bank has WAY BETTER computers :>  I answered all her questions and she said that I was all set!!!
It was a full-time job filing for unemployment!!!  Good thing that I did not have anything better to do!  Actually I was cleaning out my filing cabinet that had things that were over 10 years old…  oops…  not done yet, but I will be later…

It was VERY VERY VERY cold.  Now, we like to ski, but not that much!  We slept in until about 9:30.  We had decided that we would drive the hour over to Snowbird today because it would be an hour later and an hour warmer when we got there.  Also it is supposed to snow Tuesday so we will ski closer to home that day.  Tomorrow we are going to ski Solitude.    Today we skied Snowbird.  When we got into the car it was -5 degrees!  Ahhhh…  but it was sunny.  We took our time.  We even ventured over to this really cool curvy road into the mountains.  It turns out to be this VERY exclusive gated neighborhood.  We turned around and came back down.  We did take some nice pictures though.   We cruised on over to Snowbird.  It was a very nice drive, clear bright sunshine, no traffic, and the gps knew where we were going.  We got there and we were immediately confused as to where to go and what to do.  We managed to ask several people where to get tickets and the lodge and so forth.  We had to take a shuttle to the main lodge.  The good news is that the temp got all the way to 20 degree in the bright sun.  the bad news is that the mountain reported 7 degrees.  But no wind.  We managed to get our tickets and the ticket guy told us where to ski.  I dropped my skis in a rack so we could change and I turned around and Marlo was nowhere to be found…  She had disappeared on me before so I figured that she had done it again.  I tried to think of where she might have gone.  I went to the second floor and looked in the café.  I went to the first floor and looked in the locker area.  I finally went to the place where I had last seen her.  I was pretty peeved at this point.  Well it turns out that she never went anywhere and I was the one who disappeared….  Marlo, not so happy.  Opps…  sorry…
We got a locker and I was chatting with some guy that was familiar with the mountain.  He gave us the opposite advise about skiing and turned out to be SO right!  We had an AWESOME day of skiing.  We took the tram to the top and went to the sunny side of the mountain.  There were still lots of powder left from the day before.  I even managed to cut some new tracks.  We got off the tram and Marlo was a little intimidated.  I hid that fact.  This was a big place with some serious slopes…  Marlo wanted to stick to the blues.  I wanted to do a little more.  We separated on the trek over to the back side.  I ended up running into a bunch of cliff warning signs…  ahhh!  And I forgot my cell phone…  I managed to survive.  Good thing.  It was the first run!  We then took the lift up to the top of the back side.  There were two ways down.  One around the blues into the shade and one big black trail back down to the lift.  It did not look that steep until we got to the top.  IT WAS STEEP!!!  I sucked it up and down I went.  I took it easy and managed to get down without incident.  I met Marlo at the bottom.  We had walky-talkies so we could communicate.  It worked out well, because we could hear them though our jackets.  I would just tell her to look left or right and there we were.  One time we were really far apart but she could still hear me without the radio…  she just yell that she can hear me.  Another time she was sitting just below a ridge and some nice guy just pointed to us…
So my second run down the steep mountain did not go quite as well…  see my bindings are not quite tight enough.  Some say that I don’t ski with much finesse the rest  say that I don’t ski with any…  I have strong legs.  Stronger then my release setting.  I pull out sometimes when I could keep going.  Crash number one… not too bad the ski just let go.  I climb back up and without much trouble I get then back on.  Well I am feeling pretty good about now and decide to push a bit…  not my best plan…  I come cranking down and make a hard cut.  The powder sucks up my skis and decides not to let them go.  I launch out of my bindings.  I don’t twist out, I don’t go forward out, I pop straight out of both skis at the same time.  I fly straight down  the mountain in a lovely arch that puts my head well below my feet.  Fortunately my head gets driven into the snow all the way up to my shoulders and my feet continue the arch on down the mountain.  At no time did my body bend at all.  This was all done completely stretched out.  I may have yelled and obscenity just before my head was driven into the snow.  At the culmination of my perfect round out, I landed on my feet just about two body lengths below my skis.  I climbed back up and got my skis back on.  It was a spectacular fall.
Apparently, Marlo had decided to try out the crashing thing that run as well, so we could compare stories at the lift.  Turns out that she ended up chasing her helmet down the slope a ways.
It turned out not to be terribly cold.  We were well dressed and managed to stay warm enough.  Of course I sweated and got cold and hot and my fingers froze a couple of time.  We still managed to have a great day.  We went to the warming hut before our decent.  They did not even have a map in the place….  We skied down, got the shuttle and got back to our car.
We decided to go back to the Spur to get some buffalo ribs and find out what happened to Scuba.  She ended up eating and drinking and trying to get the bar to pay for her, but she ended up paying and going on her way.  She made an impression, because the bartender that we talked to was not the one that was there…  the ribs were good!  We cruised some shops and talk to an artist Gary Johnson.  He does some really detailed work.  We have to look him up.  Marlo bought a card from him.
Then we went to the Mart. And got some stuff.  We got home and saw a bunch of people in our hot tub.  We decide to check it out.  It was -3 degrees out…  but hey other people were in there.  Well the heaters could not keep up and the water was not hot.  We froze!  Home to a nice hot shower.  We got the mummy movie at red box and managed to get the dvd player working.  The tv was not even a stereo tv so we heard the movie from the right…
Off to bed.
Tomorrow we ski Solitude.  EVERYONE says…  ahhh Solitude you will like that so we are ready.   Watching the weather channel…  snow tomorrow!  Tuesday we ski the canyons…

2009-01-09 – AT&T Hotspot Starbucks WestFarms
So they told me yesterday that I should be able to get access to any AT&T hotspot, so I figured that I would try.  So far, not so good.  I connected to the access point, but cannot get an ipaddress….  Well it turns out that this store is closing and it is still the old T-Mobile network and they can’t do anything for me…  I think I will try the one in west Hartford center…  I can be a  bit obsessive about internet access….
Ok, I want wifi…  I am going to West Hartford Center to try again…
Starbucks, La Salle works…. Friday, January 09, 2009

Phone support in general…
So there I was sitting in the airport in Salt Lake.  I had been without internet for many, many days.  Too many days.  I felt so disconnected.  No weather, no directions, no ski reports, no facebook…  So sitting there in the airport I attempt to connect to the hotspot.  This should be easy.  I connect to the access point and it gives me the logon screen.  There is an option to logon with my AT&T account.  I had read that I was supposed to have hotspot access, psych.  Well that does not work.  It tells me that my account doesn’t not have “partner hotspot access”  please call this number…  well I have nothing else to do but watch Marlo drink and wait for a plane.  So I call.  The end of the story is that no one helps me.  The long inbetween involves hanging up, transferring, talking to people with no  clue and broken promises.  The worse thing is even after you enter your account number the next person asks for it again!!!   I give up on AT&T for now and attempt to use my credit card.  I get through the process and they want to download software onto my laptop, WTF. They do not need to add any software to my laptop to authenticate to their proxy server!  I decline that and call AT&T back.  The guy tells me that he will get the right people on the phone for me and even wait with me, how nice.  He even offers to call me back on my cell.  Then he tries to sell be a cell plan….  Hello, I am not happy with what I am getting now, bad to sell me cell service.  Hello, I am already not happy with their service and they try to sell me more, duh.  Well they have no clue and promise to call me back and don’t.
After I get home I find out that there is a plan that includes partnership sites for $9.99.  I try to sign up for next time and it tells me to call another number.  I call and they, Dan, is actually helpful!!!  He looks everything up and determines that I can’t have partner access because I live in CT!!!!  WTF…  he is confused but supportive…  oh well.
I then try to remove services from my home phone and get no love once again…  it is on my list of things to do…

We met the family. They are so nice. They welcomed us into their home, fed us good food, and we laughed and talked for hours. The funniest thing is that they thought that I was going to be quiet like Lauren!!! Ba Ha ha… Not so much huh :> The food was good, the conversations was… well … mostly in Spanish! There was a couple of conversations going most of the time with broken Spanish, broken English, and even a little french thrown in. My head hurt :> We took a couple of pictures, but I forgot to take pictures of them!!! Bummer, they were cute. they were both shorter then Marlo. More later… head hurts, no comprendia espaniol….

They have all finally been uploaded. I tried to pick a good photo to highlight the album. the 106LCanon is from Lauren’s camera and the first bunch are from a desert that she visited before she met up with us. I will fix that up.
They are still at http://www.brantct.com/pics…

OK, I have been slacking. I have most of the rest of the notes from Titicaca done, but not published. I have done very little while in Santiago, but hey, I’m on vacation! :> Santiago is very relaxing. Our apartment is awesome. It is in a GREAT part of town. It is about 8 blocks from where Lauren is, right down from the metro, next to gobs of restaurant and two grocery stores!
Santiago Day 1
Crashed at the Holiday Inn. Found our apartment , We met Lauren went out to dinner.
Day 2
We took the tour bus all over and saw the city, out to dinner with Lauren
Day 3
Took a taxi to the other side of the city, had a great lunch, went to the zoo, rode the gondolas, ate a GREAT Argentina steak.

Marlo is FAMOUS!!! She had her picture taken for her Emergency Room reconstruction and there she is on Route 691 West right before exit 7 on the right hand side! Bigger then life! Someone email us a picture of … the picture :>

We have arrived in Santiago, and it is WAY nicer then anything we saw in Peru.  We have settled into our apartment and have a great view!  Off to eat and explore and as you probalby have come to expect … more later!!!