Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Weekend goal: accomplished! ...No, it wasn't "clean the house" or "sweep and pull weeds on the patio", though I did wash a load of laundry each morning. My goal for this past weekend was to spend both afternoons at the pool. I already posted about "#PoolLife" for Saturday. Here's Sunday.



Years ago my father would critique my photos, "Son, the picture's empty. You need people in it." Well, aside from the fact that landscape photography is a thing— and it's always been my thing, whereas his was portrait photography—there are people in this photo. Two of my neighbors are sitting in the deep shade off the left, and those are my feet at the bottom center. My feet are in the frame on purpose because this is a photo I made while floating around on my back in the pool, barely a care in the world on a warm weekend afternoon.

I seized the opportunity when I saw the weather would cooperate with us this weekend to lounge around by the pool all afternoon each day. I cleared the schedule and said, "Let's plan to stay home and enjoy the pool." Still it took a smidge of effort each day to get out, versus lounging comfortably inside the house, but I'm glad I did it.

I didn't just float around on my back sipping margaritas all afternoon. I mean, I only had one cocktail, and it wasn't a margarita. 🤣 Before floating around lazily I did aerobic exercises in the pool. I got my pulse rate up for 30 minutes or so then treating myself to lounging around. Oh, and I didn't drink alcohol in the pool. That was for after, while sitting on the deck. I'm responsible that way. 🤣

Hawk and I have made hotel reservations for a trip next week. We're taking extra days off ahead of July 4. For our 6 nights in 3 different cities (we're driving) we looked first at the main brands where I have elite status and frequent guest points: Hilton, Marriott, and IHG. And out of 6 nights we booked... none of them at these hotel brands. They're all too expensive!

We saw rates of $250-300/night or higher for the areas we checked. And we're not staying in Beverly Hills or Manhattan, BTW. We're looking at roadside motels in the mountains of California and Oregon. I'm willing to pay a reasonable premium to get the benefits of my top-tier elite status (or next-to-top tier) with each of these brands, plus earn more points, but these price premiums were completely unreasonable. We booked all 6 nights at lower-rung hotels. Are they as nice? Probably not. But they're also literally half the price of Hilton/Marriott/IHG.

This week a few colleagues and I ran a booth for our company at a small trade show. I say "small" because it wasn't even a trade show, per se. It was a "Developer Day" at a major bank that's one of our customers. This "Developer Day" was like a trade show, though, in that it was an exhibit showcase by multiple vendors, plus various internal teams that platform our solutions. We had table on the exhibit floor.

Here are Five Things:

1. Like with most trade shows, the most common question we got was "So, [Company Name]... what do you do?" But unlike most trade shows, once we gave a one-sentence explanation identifying how we're used in an internal platform, almost everybody was like, "Oh, yeah, I use that daily. Cool." Thus the challenge I put to my team internally was, How can we increase our brand awareness within the bank?

2. We had a good spread of swag...at least to start. We had logo hats, logo socks, USB charger/adapter cables, logo air fresheners (like for a car), and the old trade show standard, logo stickers. I quip at least to start because we sold out of the hats pretty quickly. They were gone within the first hour. The socks went next. Then the charger cables. The air fresheners were a dud until all we had left were those and the stickers, then everybody at least took a whiff of the air fresheners to decide if they like them. 😅 We had, like, a bazillion of them, though, so we packed most of them to send back. I took two home thinking Hawk would like them, since they're lavender. She was skeptical at first but then noticed they were lavender— and purple. She took both.

3. I was bemused at how fast attendees scooped up our merch. I've written before about how all trade shows have a certain class of attendee, the "swag hound". These people cruise from booth to booth, not really interested in what any of the vendors do but feigning just enough interest to hoover up all the free giveaways and enter drawings for big prizes if there are any. Typically, in my experience, swag hounds match one of two stereoptypes: students/very entry level tech workers (i.e., people who are still impressed by getting cheap things for free) and, oddly, mid- to late career government employees (who maybe also are still tickled to get cheap things for free 🤣). But the attendees at this show were all software developers well employed by a major bank. You'd think if they wanted ballcap or a pair of socks, they could afford to buy them.

4. Yes, socks. They're the "it" thing for trade show swag right now! I was very much 🙄 when I saw this fad emerging two years ago— like, really, socks? People can't buy their own socks?—  but it works. Socks are just enough different from the trade show standard of t-shirts that they attract an extra dollop of attention. And my company's socks are actually pretty good quality. Plus, the logo design is just subtle enough that I can wear them with business casual/business dressy outfits when I'm visiting clients. When people at the bank were skeptical about our socks, I stretched my leg out alongside the table to show them I was wearing a pair.

5. Getting colleagues to stay in the booth was a problem, as always. I get it, most people hate standing in the booth waiting for questions— or waiting for real questions instead of people feigning the minimum interest level required to bag our swag. It frustrates me when colleagues who are supposed to be there with me wander off the moment there's a lull... because "Just text me if it gets busy" doesn't work. When it gets busy it gets busy. And when I have a crowd of people in front of me all trying to ask questions it is NOT the time for me to ask them all to wait while I pull out my phone to frantically text people. This show was like many, where I often found myself in the booth alone— because I have a stronger "This is the job I'm here to do" ethic than most of my colleagues. But this time I kept my frustration at bay by choosing to believe that my colleagues who skipped out of the booth were having high-value conversations out in the hall. Were they having high-value conversations? I'm sure they had at least one or two. For the rest of the time that's simply what I chose to believe while I was manning the booth, and facing the crowds, solo.

We brought our Nissan Xterra to a mechanic earlier this week. The "service engine soon" light had come on after the car occasionally stalled out at idle and had recently started having trouble catching ignition. Although we brought it this time to a trusted local mechanic, Mr. Le, I dreaded getting a repair bill like we'd gotten from the Nissan dealer the last few times we went there for repairs. The dealer always seemed to find $1,400 of things wrong with the car and their explanation always was, "You got it muddy."

We followed up with Mr. Le yesterday to check the status. Good news/bad news: It was so simple he'd already fixed it. Without giving us an estimate first. But it was just $150.

"Problem simple," he said. "It your drain sensor."

I'm familiar with at least the names of parts that could explain the problems we'd experienced, and drain sensor isn't one of them. Plus, there isn't even such a thing as a drain sensor, AFAIK.  I asked him to tell me again what part was broken.

"Grain sensor," he said louder, emphasizing the Grr- sound of the word.

Knowing our Nissan is not a farm tractor I was pretty sure it doesn't have grain sensor. I asked again.

"Brain sensor! Brrrrrrrrrain sensor!"

Yes, he trilled the R good and long like a first year Spanish language teacher teaching kids the difference between "r" and "rr".

I silently asked myself what all the sensors are that rhyme with drain, grain, and brain. I couldn't think of any. I decided the conversation wasn't getting anywhere I would stop asking Mr. Le for clarification and just go pay the bill. At least then I could see the description of the part printed on the bill. 🤣

It turns out it's the crankshaft position sensor (CPS). I guess the guy was trying to say "crank sensor", though I've never heard any other mechanic call it that. Others have always called it "CPS" or used its full name.

At least Mr. Le fixed it for $150 instead of $1400 and blaming the problem on mud.

There's a water leak in our condo complex. These happen frequently with the landscape irrigation system; squirrels and other critters chew chew the half-buried plastic pipes. This leak seemed a bit more persistent than a landscaping pipe, though. Water was leaking steadily, not just for the 15 or 30 minutes a day that the irrigation system runs. Concern about the problem led to a robust discussion in our neighborhood email forum.

"Supergirl has looked at the water leak", the HOA president assured us.

That was certainly an autocorrect mistake. 🤣 Our landscaper's name is somewhat similar, at least in terms of how autocorrect works, to "Supergirl". But I couldn't resist picturing this...



...with the help of Google's Gemini AI.

That's right, AI. The thing that's going to take all of our jobs in a few years. We'll be sitting at home, surviving off our unemployment checks— at least for the 13 weeks those last— but we'll be able to entertain ourselves by prompting AI to draw pictures making light of our woes!

I made that first picture with a simple prompt like, "Draw a comic book style picture of Supergirl as a plumber." I then refined it a bit to include cues about where the leak is in our neighborhood and got this:

The other day I went digging on one the shelves in my freezer. It's the one where I store frozen meat. I knew I'd find a few surprises... though finding surprises wasn't the main point. Mostly I wanted to understand what I have so I can make plans to eat it. Still there were a few surprises.



As you can see in the photo, I tend to part out meat into small packages before freezing it. We're a two person household. And Hawk doesn't even eat much meat. A medication she's on has a side effect of making meat, especially red meat, taste bad.

Another thing you can see in the photo is that I write the dates on packages of meat when I freeze them. Often I just write MM/DD... which as you can see from the packages that are MM/DD/YY isn't enough. Multiple packages are from 2 years ago! Some without years in their date could be even older. 😳

I defrosted those shrimp from nearly 12 months ago and ate them for dinner Friday. They were a little freezer burnt and had lost some of their flavor. But they weren't bad. And now they're gone— and not in the trash. I hate it when I leave food too long and have to throw it out because it's gone bad or gone tasteless.

I defrosted a package of ground beef and made part of it as a hamburger this evening. The meet was getting gray, color-wise, but still tasted fine. The way I pack things in the freezer, setting them in air-tight bags and squeezing out most of the air. helps them stay fresh better. I'll make the rest of the package of ground beef for a meat sauce to enjoy with pasta tomorrow. Or maybe I'll make a burger again.

I also defrosted one of the packages of chicken. I've put that in the meal plan for tomorrow night. We'll see how it goes.

I mused yesterday that I was a slug on my day off. Well, today I had the day off, too. It wasn't a public holiday (yesterday was Juneteenth) so I took PTO. And today on my second day off I was slightly less of a slug.

Like yesterday I started the day by sleeping in. I didn't sleep in anywhere near as much, though. I was out of bed before 8. (It helped that I wasn't up half the night sleepless and with stomach problems.) I still frittered away the morning... though we got in a dip in the hot tub before I went out for lunch.

On the way home from lunch I ran one small errand then got back to frittering. Hawk suggested we go out for a hike instead of just frittering. I agreed. We changed into our hike-y clothes and drove out to the Sunnyvale Baylands.

It was a nothing-special hike, just a walk in a local park. Hawk is still getting over sickness so we didn't want to commit to anything big or strenuous. It was good to get out. The conditions weren't great, though. There was a strong wind on the bay, and the smells from the sewage treatment plants in the area were fierce. 💩😷 Also, the water was green. Bright green. When the bay looks like a bazillion people went 🤢🤮 it's kind of a turnoff. BTW, the green water isn't literally because 🤮; it's most likely because of a high concentration of algae or other microorganisms, and they can also contribute to the water smelling like 💩.

Despite the conditions we got a good hike in. I know because my feet were achy at dinnertime.

For dinner I had "freezer surprise". I'd dug through one of the shelves in the freezer earlier in the day and uncovered a bunch of stuff I'd forgotten I have. I defrosted and ate one of those finds, a package of precooked shrimp.

Tonight I'm frittering again. Hawk hopes she'll be up for a bigger hike tomorrow. Maybe we'll go back up into the mountains, like when we hiked at Russian Ridge two weeks ago. If not, maybe we'll get together with friends who are hosting a boardgames day.

For several weeks we'd been planning to travel this weekend. Tomorrow is Juneteenth, which is a company holiday, and I used PTO for Friday to have a four day weekend. It'd be our first trip of the summer. Unfortunately we decided Monday to cancel it. Why? Because we're still sick.

Hawk visited the doctor on Monday and was diagnosed with bronchitis and an ear infection. I'm still getting over my cold... which may actually be/have been bronchitis, too. We hope to be better by tomorrow or Friday, but just in case we're not we made the tough decision to cancel our travel plans.

I hate missing the opportunity for a vacation, even a short one. Being sick really sucks.

Yesterday I wrote about trying shit beer just because it's well reviewed in a Buzzfeed listicle. Well, there was another beer on one of those shit lists that I was keeping in the back of my mind. Not because it's actually shit but because I've had it before and— at the time at least— didn't think it was shit. I mean, how could this beer be shit when it didn't just impress 10 random bartenders surveyed for a 2020s Buzzfeed listicle but inspired a blockbuster movie franchise in the 1970s and 1980s?

That's right, this beer inspired a movie.

I'm talking about Smokey and the Bandit.

And it wasn't just a touchstone of American cinema from 1977 but it also launched the career of movie star Burt Reynolds.

And the beer? I'm talking, of course, about Coors Banquet.



"Wait," you might be thinking, "Isn't Smokey and the Bandit about Burt Reynolds exuding ``country cool'' while outfoxing a bunch of incompetent Southern sheriffs who are trying to write him speeding tickets?"

Yes, it is about all that. But the driving motive of the story, the thing that kicks off all the action, is beer. And not just any beer, but specifically Coors Banquet.

It's part of American folklore that Coors, based in Golden, Colorado, didn't distribute its beer west of the Mississippi River until 1986. For decades people who traveled across the US found that this really tasty beer that was available in Western states wasn't available in the rest of the country. Among beer aficionados it became notorious. Travelers would bring cases home with them. Coors is even reputed to have been carried aboard Air Force One multiple times, as presidents Eisenhower and Ford were fans of it. Thus the MacGuffin for Smokey and the Bandit in 1977: a wealthy gambler in Atlanta challenges a truck driving team to bring him a shipment of 400 cases of Coors Banquet— illegally— in time to show off to his peers at a racing event. They have to drive from Georgia to Texas to fetch it, then back in record time to deliver it.

So, after that wind-up, how does it taste?

It's... not shit.

Unlike other "shit" beers I've tried— unlike pretty much all other traditional mass-produced US beers— it doesn't have a nasty taste. It doesn't have a nasty taste at the beginning that fades away, it doesn't taste nasty at the end. It doesn't taste nasty on its own, it doesn't tasty nasty with food. It just tastes... decent. Like mass-produced US beer if it... wasn't shit. 😳

Mind you, it's not a richly flavorful beer. It's basic beer. But it's decent basic beer. Like, I could set this alongside any of countless basic European beers and it'd fit right in.

Mind you #2, this is not Coors Light. The "Silver Bullet" is a hugely selling beer, propelled by the sales and marketing behind its lower calorie formulation. It's lower in calories and also way lighter in taste. Coors Banquet is the original Coors and has a richer taste.

So, pop open a gold label Coors and watch country-cool Burt Reynolds outfox a bunch of dim-witted Southern sheriffs trying to write him a speeding ticket.

Every so often I get inspired by one of those Buzzfeed listicles, "We asked 10 bartenders what shit beer they like." Of course they don't actually call it shit beer; they use some euphemism like "cheap beer" or "traditional American style lager". Y'know, the pisswater American macrobrews like Bud and Miller, except not Bud or Miller. Usually. That's how I was inspired to try a 12-pack of Miller Hi-Life a few years ago as part of my ongoing beer tasting project. Verdict: pisswater beer was kinda... pisswatery. Well, after a few years I was motivated by another of these "shit beer that online randos say they like" listicles to try Narragansett Lager.

Those of you of a certain age who hail from Rhode Island, all maybe 200,000 of you, may object to my lumping Narragansett in with shit beers. 'Gansett is your state brew! There was a time decades ago when regional beers were more prominent— and generally they were better, if even by a little bit, than the nationally distributed swill of Bud, Miller, or what Schlitz degenerated into.

The fact that Narragansett is a regional beer from all the way across the country made me wonder if I'd be able to find it here in California. It turns out it's not so hard. My trusty regular source, Total Wine & More, keeps it in stock. I picked up a 6er of it when we were out last weekend.

The first thing of note about Narragansett is that it come in 16oz. cans. It sells for a price similar to packs of 12oz. cans, though, making it a bit of a deal right there.

The next thing I noticed, when I poured it into a glass, is that it foams into quite a head if not poured carefully. The glass pictured (right/above) is an 18oz glass, and that's not even the full can I managed to pour in before the head filled it up.

So, how does it taste? In a word: Uhh....

Uhh is because this beer starts out nasty. It has a sour, skunky taste at first sip. Fortunately that clears up quickly and the beer becomes somewhat pleasant, if bland. But still, starting out icky and then only improving to "bland" is hardly a recommendation.

Maybe I should stop trying to believe these Buzzfeed listicles that the best shit beers are any good.