He Doesn't Even Care...In my Own Defense

Well, this is my first post on the blogger and I think I need to start by defending myself a little...It's not that I didn't care that Karyn had just set up the new blog site, I had just finished working two days that were 16 and 10 hours non-stop respectively and I was not really with it in the evenings! It's not that I don't want to type out things about what's going on, I'm just not the sort of person who will give a play-by-play of my day if nothing exciting has happened...Not how I do story telling.

So, for those of you who don't know, I'm currently in California and have been here now for almost a week doing a system installation and then traveling to libraries to meet with them and present our product. It's been a good trip so far with some interesting things that have happened. I'll do a quick breakdown of each day since there has been something interesting every day.

Day #1: Got to the airport in Calgary at 4:30am and was in San Francisco by 8:30am. After a brief disorientation to get my rental car I was off on the I-80 North to St. Helena where I managed to get my first glimpse at the Golden Gate Bridge and I went on the Bay Bridge...You've never experienced bridges until you go across one of these types of bridges since they're so long!

St. Helena is located in the Napa Valley, known around the world for their wine. Serious money in that region and a lot of the homes looked like mini-castles. Kind of made me sick. The St. Helena Library is an interesting library as well since they are probably the only library in North America that has their own vineyard and have bottled wine! They lease out the land but their name goes on the label!

So I ended up doing training with the director and his tech assistant and set up one of the machines at the library as well (they purchased 6 from me). It ended up being kind of late and I got back to the motel sometime around 7:30pm and I was beat! This was partially due to the fact that I didn't really sleep much on Sunday night as I was unpacking from our West Coast Trail Trip and packing to go to California for a week and a half. Another reason...it was HOT! About 42ºC actually!

Day 2: Started out the day a little late as my wake up call didn't come through but ended up at the library around 8:30am. I spent the entire day setting up the remainder of their computers and doing some troubleshooting as I was setting up a different type of system than I was used to. At the end of the day I decided to set up my demonstration machine that was shipped to me as well that I was planning on using for my "tour" after. I took it out of it's travel suitcase, set it up, and turned it on. It stayed on for about 5 seconds before shutting off and did that once more...then it never turned on again. I tried to open the case to look around a little and found out it had been damaged during shipping...What gave it away was the huge dent in the bottom of the computer (looks like it was rammed with a forklift). Well, Userful's own fault for shipping stuff in suitcases. I ended up borrowing an extra system from the St. Helena Library that I'll be shipping back once I'm done my tour and it saved me from having a week here in California without a demo system. Again, it was 42ºC

Day 3: This was my day of training and presentations at the St Helena Library. I trained their staff on our system in the morning, did some fine tuning for their systems in the early afternoon, and then presented to a few libraries in the afternoon that made the trip from as far as an hour away. Once I was done that I drove to Red Bluff which was about 180 miles away. The drive was good and bad...The good part was the road was a mountainous one with nice curves and the like. The bad is it was 42ºC again and I was roasting! When I got to Red Bluff I tried to find my motel (Super 8) but couldn't. I ended up going into another one and asked where it was and it turns out that this motel was switching to a Super 8 in a month and a half and someone got a little excited to put it up on the Super 8 website. Ugh...Well, I went for dinner and the walk there was long as I was pretty tired, probably dehydrated from the drive, and hadn't eaten in 9 hours. Got a nice sunset picture though!


Day 4: My day started with breakfast at Shari's. The motel clerk told me that I shouldn't go to Denny's and Shari's was much better...Yeah right. It was like Denny's with a different name. I ate breakfast but it did not agree with me at all. I did a presentation for the North State Library Cooperative members (some people drove like 3 hours to come see it!) and then had the afternoon to drive about 4 hours to Eureka on the coast. Again, it was really hot and the drive in that regard was miserable! It was 39ºC when I left Red Bluff. The drive itself was one of the best I've ever done. Very windy roads through the mountains and beautiful scenerey. I would have loved to stop and take pictures but it was too hot! I ended up stopping 2 times at convenience stores for a 500ML juice to keep myself hydrated. When I did end up getting to Eureka I had a serious case of swack and swass, actually it was swody, but the temperature had dropped on the coast to only about 13ºC. I was kind of cold. That evening I went for a little walk around Eureka and had a quiet night in the hotel room watching Clear and Present Danger on the wall (a 4 foot screen) thanks to having the projector.

Day 5: I started out the day with a local breakfast place and could not believe the situation I got in. I went to a place and decided I wanted pancakes (note plural). I ordered 2 pancakes and the waiter said "Are you sure? They're pretty big!" I said, "How big is Big?" At this point you can refer to the picture! It's no wonder Americans are fat! I only managed to down half of this before I was finished. One could easily feed two people! I did my presentation at the library and hopped in the car for my next presentation in Crescent City, about 2 hours up the road at the most Northern Tip of California. The drive was spectacular as I ended up going through some old redwood forests. When I got to Crescent City I went to the library and asked for the director and found out she was not at the library. I though she had totally forgotten about our meeting and I was a little disappointed as I had driven all the way here to do a presentation and it was a waste. I walked out to the car and when I got there I decided to go back in, take a quick look around and get an idea of the library's computer program, drop off some information, and then do a web demo when I got back to Canada. Well, I did all that and as I was dropping off the information the guy in the back overheard the conversation I was having with the reference librarian and as it turns out he was expecting me as he deals with the computers! Good thing I didn't leave. Anyway, this guy turned out to be really annoying but I did my presentation, grabbed some dinner, and called it a night.

Day 6 (Today): Today was my day to explore Crescent City and the surrounding area. I had plans to go on a hike here, take some pictures in the Redwood National Forest, and enjoy myself. Well, as it turns out I woke up at 11:30 to housekeeping knocking on the door and decided I wasn't ready to face the world until I watched I, Robot and The Chronicles of Riddick on HBO. Around 3pm I emerged from my room and went on a drive to the forest. I stopped along the way at a river where there were people cliff jumping. It looked like a lot of fun and I took a few pictures but they didn't really work out that well. Needed a better zoom lens. While I was there I learned from someone that poison oak is all over the place around here which made my plans to go on a hike (in my sandals) less attractive. I decided to just drive through the forest and take some pictures. Well, it was quite the drive! The trees are massive here and it sure did make me feel small! The area that I was in had a very narrow road winding THROUGH the trees and in some spots it was JUST big enough for a car to fit! This is also the area that they filmed Star Wars: Return of the Jedi so that was kind of neat. On my way out of the forest I was passed by a truck that had 4 goats in the back in a cage. It was an odd thing to see someone driving into the Redwood Forest with goats! I went and took some pictures from a lookout over the ocean as well as a couple beach shots during my 2 mile walk along the sandy beach. On the way back through town I took another couple shots of an old lighthouse and boat in the harbour with some success and grabbed some dinner.

Tomorrow I drive all the way back to Eureka, through Red Bluff, and then down to Williams (8 hours) after which I go to Salinas and then back to San Francisco to finish off my trip. Looking forward to the rest of the trip but more importantly getting home. Sorry for the long blog but I had a lot to say (for once!)

Cheers!