So we head over to the Enclave to do some swimming / hot-tubbing. (Brady, I called, you didn't answer). Not being a fan of cold water, I'm chilling in the hot-tub while the other people are in the pool. We've been out there for about 15-20 minutes or so and a girl and w guys come out of an apartment to the pool area. The girl is wearing a baby-blue bikini despite the big sign saying "NO BIKINIS - BYU appropriate swimwear only". She starts to get in the hot tub, I glance up, say something along the lines of "Hey, how's it going?" --- She looks at me for a second, and responds with "I'm engaged" and sits down. I'm absolutely stunned, I really had no idea what to think. A simple "pretty good" would have sufficed, it wasn't like I was trying to get in her scantily-clad bikini; just trying to be friendly.... so this is just one of the many reasons I've given up on being friendly, it doesn't get you anywhere. There is apparently no purpose in being nice to people because people are jerks, and being nice is apparently an open invitation to treat me like dirt.

So guess what world, "Screw you." Making the effort just isn't worth it.

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So Connecticut was fun. I hung out with people and enjoyed seeing old friends. M+M graduated, in the gym since it was raining. My family all got front row seats. Then we went to Applebee's for dinner. Mike, Evan, and I pitched in together and bought them each an iPod Nano. Mollie got some nice bookends, and will get a new laptop for school. Megan got an expensive, new clarinet for school. Then it rained some more (~5 days). We went to the Groton Sub Museum, and toured the USS Nautilus (first nuclear sub). That was kind of fun. And then it was pretty much time to fly back to Provo.

I started working on updating Mike's project called flacenstein. It's a music manager that stores the music in lossless FLAC format, and then allows you to convert it to other lossy (or lossless) formats on the fly. So you get a nice clean copy for whatever format you need (m4a/aac for iPod, mp3, ogg...). It's been falling behind on the times, and was no longer functioning based on the disappearence of some of its dependencies. So I went and found replacements for those dependencies, and it's alive again (it definitely fits its name well). I'll keep plugging along with it to add functionality. Currently it saves a CD just like a cd, one audio block, and a TOC that says where songs begin. I want to add the functionality to extract individual songs from the album, as well as be able to listen to the lossless version and choose songs instead of just the whole album. (Maybe writing a plugin for another app would be easiest, we'll see).

Flying back to Provo was an absolute mess. I was supposed to be on a direct flight from BDL to SLC at 7:15 am. So we get to the airport at a little after 6. Ok, 1 hour, that should be alright. Well, the terminal is a disaster area. There are about 500 people in there all trying to check in for flights and get through security. The design is awful and so there are only about 8 check-in kiosks for Delta (SLC has 25+). And after you finally get your bags checked (30+ minutes) you have to fight your way back through the crowd in order to drop them off with TSA. Then you get to stand in line for security which is a mass of people backed up to the far edge of the terminal, touching the windows. This takes about 1 hour 15 minutes. So it's about 7:45 by the time I have the security person check my boarding pass. My flight still reads "boarding / go to gate". Of course no one is interested in letting you go ahead of them because your plane is about to leave, and the TSA people don't care. So I get through security, and check the next bank of monitors, and my flight is zipping down the runway, and is now airborne.

I go to the gate to see if there's an agent there that can help. There is, but they don't want to help me because they are busy with the flight that just came in, I need to go somewhere else. So I call Mom, who calls the house, where someone looks up the number for Delta so that I can call someone to help me. I sit on hold for 30 minutes or so, and then the agent would be happy to book me on a flight the next morning for $588.27, as I realize that she's quoting a price for me I get quite unhappy and tell her that I'm not paying for that, that I'm sitting in the terminal and want things fixed, so she says she can't help me, that I have to talk to someone in the airport. I go back to the gate, and once again no one wants to help me there. So I give up and leave the 'secured' area. But now there's not a soul in the terminal. About 5 people in line for security, and no one checking in for flights. The only people there are the 25 or so standing in line at the Delta desk trying to get their flights fixed because they got screwed over just like I did.

So I go stand in that line for about another 1 hour 20 minutes. My flight was at 7:15 mind you, and by the time I talk to someone it is about 10:45. She is clearly as frustrated as everyone is, and apparently has given up using the party-line of "I can't help you", figuring it will probably be easier to make the 30 people in front of her happy and deal with her boss, than to try telling them all "you're screwed" in not so many words. So she curtly asks me where I was going, and what my name is. I then stand there for while she hacks away on her computer furiously, and then makes a quick call to someone. About 2 minutes later she walks to the other desk, comes back and hands me a ticket for a Northwest flight that leaves at 5:20 pm. Being happy that she was able to do this, I almost forget to ask what's happened to my bags that I checked at 6 am. She's back on the computer, and then informs me that my bags appear to have made it onto the flight I was supposed to be on, so they should be waiting for me in SLC. Grand, Great, we'll just ignore the FAA regulations about bags being on planes when their owner isn't.

So I go back home and have lunch with the family while I wait. Mike's flight is at 5:24 so we come back up to the airport at about 3:00 to make sure we don't miss our flights. Of course again, there's not a soul there now. So I breeze through check-in (3 minutes), and then into the security line (about 10 people). I have now been tagged for extra security screening (YAY!). So After they paw through all my carry on items, I'm free to go (10 minutes). Awesome, now we have 2+ hours to sit around at the gate and wait. I whip out my laptop and begin hacking on flacenstein. Then Mike wanders by again to say that his flight was delayed, but so was mine, so it's even. But his plane shows up before mine does, so he leaves first. So at about 6 or so my plane finally leaves. I have a layover in Minneapolis; but keep the same plane, but I they let us deboard. So I get off and grab a bite to eat at Burger King, and then sit down and read my book ("Cryptonomicon"). The flight is supposed to leave again at 9:05 Central Time. We board the plane, and get in our seats, and as it's about time for the door to be closed the pilot informs us that they need to change one of the tires before we leave. 30 minutes later, the pilot informs us that they changed the tire, but cut the hydraulic line in the process. This repair will take somewhere from 1 hour to 1.5 hours. So he lets us get off the plane. We are then told that there is another flight coming in at about 10:45, and if our plane isn't fixed by then, we'll transfer everything over to this other plane. At 10:50 or so they tell us that the hydraulic line is fixed and that they are just checking it now, so we can board the plane and be ready to take off. So we all get back on the plane. 11:15 ticks by, and the plane is boarded, but we haven't moved yet. 11:20 something and the pilot tells us that they keep ending up with air in the hydraulic line (bad) so they have to bleed it and try again. 2 tries doesn't so we wait a little longer until they get some different equipment in order to try again. Eventually they get it figured out, and the plane finally takes off around 11:45.

We get into SLC at about 2:00 Mountain Time (so this is now 4 am Eastern Time, and I have been up for 23 hours, off of 2 hours of sleep. Awesome.). I finally get off the plane, and then after to trudge over to the other terminal to get my bags from Delta. There's no one in their baggage claim office at this point, but I see some employees hauling bags from a conveyer belt into their storage room. So I go hang out in front of the storage room, and someone eventually comes out and says I can just go in there. So I do, and find my bags (luckily). During this whole time, Bryce has been out in the park + wait, napping I guess. So I call him up, and he picks me up. We get back to provo around 2:40 or so. And I eventually get to sleep around 3:00 (or 5:00 ET, which means I've now been up for 24 hours).

All in all it was the worst travel experience of my life. Quite frankly I might just drive next time.

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I'm home in CT until the 26th. So all of you out there that aren't reading this, let's do something. I have no idea what I'll be doing during this time; I might be redoing this site to use mySQL and PHP; allowing it to be much more versatile, and use much less space.

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Hey Hey! I'm 21, how about that. It's time for a fashion update with Josh. By the end of the day I'll be kickin' it in style eating dinner with my friends, and watching a movie... Wish everyone were here to enjoy it.

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I have been in a most excellent mood recently. With my success working on my lab's webpage and my recent position of web admin for The 100 Hour Board as well as the planning of my birthday party this friday I have just been quite content. We watched The Saint outside Saturday night on the projector, and we had good group of people out this time. It was really warm and comfortable too, and no streakers this time (yes we did have two streakers a few weeks ago).

I am now really learning PHP and MySQL in order to work on my first project associated with The Board. Oh, and one of my characters is now King in Battlemaster (an online game I play); so that's pretty cool too. I'm going home to CT in a couple of weeks which will also be good.

I bought a bookshelf, it now holds my books, so they are much more organized, I'm quite happy about that as well. I finished 'back slash' last week by william h. lovejoy. It was alright, it could have been better. I started 'The Day after Tomorrow' by Allan Folsom and am about half way through. It's pretty good, but has a fair number of unnecessarily detailed events.... other than that though the writing is good, and so far the plot is good as well. It's kind of a cross between Robin Cook, Michael Crichton, and Tom Clancy.

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