UEA Trip to San Diego

Hello from the great state of California. I was teaching last week up in Seattle and then flew down to San Diego to go to SeaWorld and the 'Seaport Village' with the rest of the family over the weekend. Since I had to teach in Sunnyvale this week I just flew up here from San Diego yesterday.

Jill, Ryan and Alysha drove down last week to Las Vegas Wednesday after work... then picked up Joe after school on Thursday to drive the rest of the way down to San Diego. They took McKinley to the San Diego Zoo on Friday, we went to SeaWorld on Saturday, and then Sunday down at Seaport Village (by the Embassy Suites we stayed at before) - then I flew here, and they went on to Coronado Beach and Hotel for the rest of the afternoon before driving back to Vegas.Jill was really looking forward to seeing McKinley at the Zoo and SeaWorld... and she wasn't disappointed! McKinley LOVED the Shamu show (Karrissa... the Shamu Whale show?) - so much that we went back at night and watched it again.

Though McKinley was talking about 'See Sharks' for the last couple of weeks... she actually slept in Jill's arms all through the shark pavilion. But I carried her through the Penguin exhibit and she loved those as well as the Polar Bears with Jill later in the day.

Kylie was just perfect - laughed, entertained herself and hardly made a peep all day. I'm sure Karrissa is going to post some of the Zoo pictures as well on her blog.

I got soaked on a couple of the rides - but Karrissa and Joe really got drenched. We had to get some new clothes for Karrissa... Don't get in the front seat of the 'Atlantis' roller-coaster/water drop ride.

I think they'll go shopping at the outlet stores today then drive on home.

Here's some photos from the great weekend in San Diego!

Grandma 'G' (pronounced with a hard G sound like M) and 'her' girls

Poppa with McKinley watching the whales

Shamu!

Winward Family after a day in SeaWorld

Right Before Atlantis - Don't they look 'Dry and Comfortable'?

After Atlantis - are those wet rats?

Dolphin Area - Where Brent' almost jumped in years ago - they have the same schtick today.

Family After a long day - over 13,000 steps on my pedometer!

McKinley Enjoying the Shamu Show

Waiting for the Killer Whale show to start

Nice stroll around the harbor in San Diego's 'Seaport Village'

Private AM-105 Class for Boeing in Renton

I had a chance last week to spend some time back up in the Great Northwest. The weather was nice and crisp... just as an autumn day should be. Oh, but I was also in Seattle... so I also got grey skies and rain. But when it's pretty there... it's very pretty.

The class was held at one of the office buildings in Renton - I had to get a special pass, showing my passport and everything... whoo whoo.I had a chance to visit for a long dinner and lots of talk with my old friend from High School - Dave Conger. Dave was working the the Microsoft campus and so we met at King Wha's in Burien on his way home. (best Mongolian Beef in the world!)

After four hours of talking, and solving the world's issues, we decided to make it a night.

Another evening I had a chance to go to the Seattle Temple. This is where Jill and I were married nearly 27 years ago! The outside was getting a face-lift... but the inside looked great (already been upgraded with new tile, wood, and furniture)Then on Thursday had a chance to do a little 'field trip' over to the plant where they produce the 737s, pretty cool to see the production line there. The planes move forward at two inches per hour... working their way down to total completion in a little under five days. They contain over 327,000 individual parts!Perhaps this will be their newest plane that can go faster, eh?But the facility was stopped due to a labor union strike. (don't get me started on Labor Unions!)

The fall colors in the trees were really something to see. Bright reds, oranges, and yellows... these are just from the trees around my hotel.Then off to San Diego for a little vacation with my family!

Development of VoIP Portion of AirMagnet Course

I've been a bit lazy and not staying up with my weekly blog... (slap on the wrist) - So this is from two weeks ago.

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I've been tasked with an upgrade and enhancement to a course I've been teaching for AirMagnet. I needed to add a section on Fundamentals of Voice over IP as a prep for the AirMagnet VoFi Analyzer product. So this week was spent in that development

Flying over to San Jose to meet with the team who developed the VoFi Program and sitting through a VoIP generic class so I could glean something on how to best teach the basic fundamentals of VoIP. I learned a lot from the developers and basically nothing from the class. Sometimes it is a bit frustrating in this industry of IT Training... not everyone is very good at what they actually teach.

This instructor was a retired Southwest Bell engineer... old, boring, and was tied to the history of how telephone companies did things... not about the great technology we have today to use IP packet to transmit voice conversations. These enhancements in voice traffic are what made all those expensive long-distance calls of the past now drop down to mere pennies... So I'm kind of on my own, well me and about 15 books, to pare down to a single 1-2 hour lecture.

So here's a picture of a mix between old telephones and new IP networks...

Syncrude and the Athabascan Oil Sands

This week I was hosted by a company Syncrude who is the world's largest producer of Synthetic Crude Petroleum from processed Oil Sands. Not only did I have an opportunity to teach and discuss topics with these fine folks, but was able to go to their plant to do some on-site analysis and see the workings of Oil Sand recovery and processing.

The Oil Sands are a tar-like substance embedded in about 300' thick layer across hundreds of square miles of northern Alberta. In order to get to the oil sands... they must first remove a layer of muskeg, a swampy spongy bog, then about 250'-300' of more earth called 'overburden' to finally get down to the layer they are looking for. They just move the overburden to the side and reuse it later to reclaim the land and return it to a condition better than before without the muskeg so you can have a forest back instead. There is now a thick layer, 300' deep, of sticky black sands impregnated with Bitumen, a tar-like substance. They used to use huge Drag Lines with a monstrous bucket to scoop up the sands and then extremely large scoops and conveyors to transport the material back to the processing plant. But today they use those HUGE trucks and big shovels to load and transport the sand. These Haul Trucks are the largest in the world and can carry between 400 and 600 tons per load! The processing starts by removing the sand from the Bitumen with hot water and agitation. The Sands and water come out and go to a tailings pond to let the sands drop out leaving water on the top of the pond. The Bitumen continues on to more processing to 'crack' the long carbon chains into smaller chunks thus transforming the tar into Light Sweet Crude oil that is sent via pipeline down to refineries to get us the gas and other petroleum products we use. This is a fairly expensive method to extract oil at around $30 per barrel, but with oil selling at $100 per barrel it is fairly lucrative.

They mine over 600,000 tons of oil sands per day, processing this into a Million barrels of oil each day! This plant alone accounts for about 20% of all of Canada's daily oil production. For those of us in the US... this is included in the 'foreign oil' we consume.

Oil production is a dirty, messy, stinky proposition - and the area around the mine is ugly, ugly, ugly. But as they finish mining an area they are required to reclaim the land. Putting back the overburden and re-landscaping the area back to a livable habitat. They spend 100s of millions each year in this reclamation, making forests, lakes, streams, out of what once was some of the ugliest spaces on the planet.

In researching for this blog I came across this graphic of Energy use in the US that I found interesting... spend a moment learning what it has to say.

Eragon Trilogy?

I received a copy of Christopher Paolini's new Book Brisingr for by Birthday last week. Knowing I needed to do a bit of 'review' before reading the new 'final' ending to the Eragon Trilogy I watched the Eragon movie... the book was so much better... then I thought to read the second novel Eldest before launching into this latest tome.

The new book is pretty big, and I was already pretty loaded going up to Canada for a week... so I purchased the Eldest for my Kindle and left the Brisingr at home...

Well I finished Eldest the second night in Canada... What to do... what to do... I really wanted to keep reading the next book but I left it at home. I was thinking of having Ryan overnight it up to me. But that would be a bit expensive. The Kindle couldn't get it's normal 'cell phone' connection in Canada (Kindle's Wireless Service is only offered in the US) Bummer...

Then I remember all the copies of my purchased Kindle books are available online at Amazon.com for download. So I purchased a Kindle version of Brisingr, downloaded it to my laptop, then transferred it via USB cable to the Kindle. Voila, I could keep reading.

I finished Brisingr on the flight down from Edmonton to SLC.
Just in time to find out the author had more story to tell and Brisingr is not the last book in the trilogy... but the third of four books in the series. Bummer no closer yet for our hero and his Dragon!

Now another long wait till we can find out what happens in the story.

Tagged from Daughter Karrissa

My daughter Karrissa tagged me and I haven't done one for a while so here it goes:
A- Attached or Single? Attached
B- Best Friend? I'm not a 'best friend' kind of guy... "alone but not lonely"
C- Cake or Pie? Definitely cake!
D- Day? days that are dark and cold... makes me 'come alive' to have a nice 'crisp' day
E- Essential Items? Wallet, Pen, iPhone, Laptop, Internet access
F- Favorite Color? is Black a color?
G- Gummi Bears or Worms? Bears
H- Hometown? Orem, UT
I- Indulgences? Buying gadgets & technology (but then again... I get paid for this)
J- January or July? January... great weather (I can wear my vest) - July is TOO HOT
K- Kids? Two girls- Karrissa and Alysha and Two Boys - Ryan and Brent
L- Life is Incomplete without? Family... technology is pretty cool too
M- Marriage Date? December 19th, 1981
N- Number of Siblings? 1 older sister, 1 younger brother (deceased) and 1 younger sister
O- Oranges or Apples? Crisp apple... or an orange is someone peels it for me
P- Phobias or Fears? What's a phobia?
Q- Quote? "I am bamboo."
R- Reason to Smile? I'm flying home in a couple of hours!
S- Season? Fall-Winter-Spring! anytime where the temp is below 60 outside
T- Tag? Anyone in my family that has not done this tag.
U- Unknown Fact about Me? I like to dip my fries in Mayo - learned it in Europe
V-Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animal? Not so much steak... but pork and chicken.
W- Worst Habit? Repeating what I say and also saying the same thing more than once.
X- Xray or Ultrasound? Huh... silly question. You couldn't think of any other 'x' word huh?
Y- Your favorite food? Pork Chops with Mushroom gravy and good mashed potatoes
Z- Zodiac Sign? Libra, as if it matters - on a side note, I knew this guy with my EXACT same birthday and time... funny how we had absolutely nothing in common. Zodiac... schmodiac.

A week in Ft. McMurray Canada

I spent this last week in Ft. McMurray Canada teaching a private custom WLAN Class to a bunch of fine folks from Syncrude at the Keyano College campus. This BOOMTOWN of a place is rapidly growing by leaps and bounds! Currently over 75,000 people call this place home... in addition tens of thousands of 'contract' workers come up and work on construction projects that are going on. Over 7 Billion in construction projects just this year!Trucks are everywhere! Big trucks, little trucks, construction trucks, haul trucks... for those of you who love trucks... this is Truck Heaven!

The town was initially a trading post for the Hudson's Bay company back in the late 1800s where the Athabasca and Clearwater rivers joined up on their way North to the Artic Ocean. (Kind of weird to me watching a river head North...)

The elevation here is only 850' or so - so today on my way home I'll head 'up to Utah'... but actually 1200 miles dues South of here.

Today the main industry around here is the mining and extraction of oil from the Oil Sands in the land around here. Over 300 billion barrels of oil in the ground up here! Surpassing even Saudi Arabia's oil reserves.

This place is in the middle of a 'Taiga' or 'Boreal' forest... a band of forest that wraps around the world at these lattitudes covering Northern Canada, Scandinavia, Siberia, and the lower part of Alaska. There are trees EVERYWHERE!I also learned about 'muskeg' - the soft spongy lowland swamps that exist all over this area. I wondered about that term from watching the 'Escape from the Barrens' movie the kids used to watch.

In this economy houses are selling at a premium... scary high premium... A 35 year old single-wide trailer for $300,000... a little tiny 'house' with tiny yard... $640,000. No wonder jobs around here have to pay so much. Just working at McDonalds or Pumping Gas pays $18 to $22 per hour. Not bad for kids who still live at home. Its such a temptation many kids are dropping out of high school just to hold down two jobs and have lots of cash to play with.One afternoon after class I went on my 'recoinoiter' kind of drive out in the areas around the city, and while on a little dirt road trying to find a place to turn around I came across this fox who stopped and looked at me.This place must get very cold in the winter... look at all the parking stalls have electrical outlets for engine warmers. I hear it has long periods of -40... brrrr.Though this is still in North America, and only some 1,200 miles North of Utah... my flight up here cost much more than even travelling to Europe. This 'boomtown' is hard to get to. I barely made it here on Sunday when the AirCanada portion of the flight from Calgary to Ft. McMurray was oversold... and if it wasn't for a nice man who got up out of his seat to let me have it... I would have been driving up the 12 hours from Calgary to Ft. McMurray.

But now I'm on my way home... yea!