Apparently I'm the anti-christ.  Happy Halloween (belated).  I spent the weekend visiting Melissa and Sean.  Went to a great party in the city on Saturday night, and watched scary movies on Sunday.  A great Halloween.   

yea, I'm alive.  Here's the update from the 100,000 level...

• Promoted (yay)
• Work sucks (worst project ever)
• Labor day in MSP
• Turned 25 (woah a quarter century)
• Splitting time between DSM and SAC (I'll let you do the research)
• Need a vacation, I'm thinking a weekend in Hawaii in Nov. (or anyone want to go to Europe)\

I will post again, in the mean time spend some time adding to the excitement over at Scotty's

Last week I got to work from the client's office in Sacramento, and never having been to CA before I decided to take a long week and see San Francisco, and a little bit of wine country.  It was an eventful trip, I had my first In-N-Out burger, attempted to kill countless CA drivers (I swear they all drive like they're in IA, the traffice problems would be pratcially non-existant if they would just drive like Chicago-ians), saw the headquarters of HP, Google, and Stanford's campus, caught up with Andy, caught up with Lep, saw Alcatraz, and wine country.  Photos are online.  Carlie promised to write captions, so I'll put them up as soon as I get them from her.

As you might have noticed, when you go to www.rosswirth.com it automically directs you here (rosswirth.typepad.com), also the webcam image is gone from the left panel.  I switched hosts for my website, and I'm in the process of moving things around and making some changes (specifically to the photo galleries, which is why I haven't posted any Berlin or Falling Water photos).  I was however going through photos today (in search of a new desktop image) and I came across one that I had forgotten about from my weekend in Berlin the other month.  It's priceless, I almost didn't get the shot.  Take a look at what the back of the bus says...

Ok, so I'm looking for a bit of input...

As you know I travel constantly for work, and I have a company issued laptop (Compaq Evo N610c), but it's heavy, and it sucks!!!!!  Chances are I will not be receiving a new one for 2-3 years.

So here's where the question comes in, If I keep saving my Marriott points until around mid-September I'd have enough to get a Sony T series for free.  So the question is should I blow my hard earned Marriott points on this computer?

It would leave me with no Marriott points to use for vacations, etc.  But then again I've only ever used points for one stay, I tend to go with a group of people, and in that circumstance it's usually better to pay for a room and everyone split.

Anywho, please comment...

So every time I travel internationally I have some experience which I base future travel plans on. This trip, I decided that I am not flying internationally in coach again, and that I'm not flying through Memphis (what a pit of an airport). i'll post about Berlin (including pictures) later this week. On a seemingly unrelated note, I now know for a fact that Kid Rock wears "Rainbow" brand flip-flops (or thongs for those of you from the 80's), more on that to come.

Well I'm off to Berlin for the weekend. I had a free international ticket that was going to expire, so I figured why not back to the homeland. What am I going to do there you ask? I haven't decided yet, i've got 8 hours to think about and read my Lonely Planet on the plane (which includes how to get from the airport to the Marriott). Between the free ticket and the Marriott points for the hotel, it should be a pretty cheap trip.

Hi all, I'm back from Roma!  The photos are up (http://www.rosswirth.com/gfx/roma05/) in a temporary location....  Enjoy...  Descriptions and better formatting to come... I'm in the process of moving all my photos over to rosswirth.com and off of typepad, since i'm over my quota here...

Ciao ciao...

one week and one day until I board that sweet sweet first class international flight to Roma!!!!!

So I was on my flight from O’Hare to

Detroit

this morning (which departs at 6AM).  I was dozing as I usually do, when the flight attendant reached across me to place a drink in front of the person sitting next to me, I caught the movement out of the corner of my (mostly closed) eyes.  My first reaction was to twitch or put a hand up to stop the oncoming “threat” but fortunately I realized before I moved what was going on.

And into my mind popped a friend of mine who is shall we say a bit more twitchy than most, easier to surprise/scare.  So in my mind’s eye I see this series of events played out but instead of me it is my friend who is half-asleep and being reached across when she senses the movement, and swats her hand out to fend off the unknown person unwelcomingly entering her personal space, only to be rewarded with a lap full of hot coffee.  I amuse myself, I guess I’m easily entertained.