Everything Else

Landed in Auckland

Details: Published on Thursday, 16 February 2012 07:42; Written by Russ; Hits: 25

Landed in New Zealand.

After thinking I was going to sleep for most of my flight, I unfortunately didn't. For some reason, as tired as I was, I kept tossing and turning. I would doze off for a few minutes, but I just kept waking up. It was annoying. At least I was laying down with my eyes closed so I did get some rest, although it wasn't actual sleep. Tylenol PM will be on the menu on the way back.

After many hours of lack of sleep, we had about 2 hours left of the flight, and breakfast was served. It consisted of a smoothie, coffee, cereal, toast, and an omelette. Once again, the food was good.

Once we landed, we got off of the plane, and walked down through the terminals of AKL, and ended up at immigration. The process was super smooth, and if you're a kiwi or australian, I guess you just get your face scanned and can walk right through. I have a feeling we don't have that kind of awesomeness at home. I guess I'll find out in a month.

Walk down to baggage claim and I wait. And wait. And wait. Oh hey! My golf bag, wait for my suitcase, wait for my suitcase. You might be able to predict where this is going. It's humid as fuck. It's 70 degrees at 4am, and it's been pissing down rain for who knows how long. After about an hour of sitting there at baggage claim, I come to the realization that my generic black roller suitcase that looks like about 70% of the luggage that passed me by on the conveyor is probably either gone, or didn't show up. I really need to get different luggage, or buy a can of bright orange spray paint.

I go over to the Air New Zealand desk and go file a claim, it sucks, the lady was very friendly and helpful. She gave me a toiletries back full of essentials so I can get by, I head to customs.

I now know that if you bring golf equipment to another country, the grass that might be caked on your shoes could be considered a biohazard for the wellness of a country. They were more concerned about the shoes than clubs, she examined what little bits of grass and dirt were on the cleats from Harding Park, gave them back, and we scanned them. I guess San Francisco grass isn't going to throw a red flag here.

After all of the mumbo jumbo of being accepted into the country, I go pick up my rental car and add on $100 to the prepaid sim card my buddy Stu hooked me up with before I left the states. You can use $50 of that towards 2GB of data which is actually a pretty decent deal.

I walk over to my sweet Hyundai 4 door wagon through the pouring rain in the rain, wearing a t-shirt since I ditched my jacked an hour before with my golf bag, backpack, and a flat white (pretty much a shot of espresso with some steamed milk). I'm tired as hell, I'm delerious, I'm in a foreign land. I load up the car with my stuff.

OK! Let's do this! I consider myself a good driver. I learned to drive when I was 12 in Argentina in a manual Daihatsu minivan, and to this day, I've never been involved in a collision.

I get in the car. It's right hand drive. I think to myself "This should be interesting". The ignition is in the same place, things look familiar. Oh wait, blinkers and wipers are reversed. Did I mention it's raining, dark, and I pretty much haven't slept since I woke up the day before in San Francisco? Off I go, after fiddling with the lights and wipers. It's hard to see, I have a bit of a foggy brain. The signs are different, and I'm driving on the opposite side of the road that I'm used to with no idea of where I'm going and where I'm at. I thankfully have Google Maps and a data plan. After I get out of the parking lot and around a couple of roundabouts, I'm still utterly confused, but sort of starting to get the hang of it. Oh hey! There's a Dunkin Donuts! We don't even have those on the west coast! I find it rather amusing that there's so much of the same corporate stuff around within the first few minutes I'm on the road.

I get to the highway, in the dark, in the rain, trying to signal, yet I keep turning off my wipers instead, which is starting to get on my nerves. After a while, I realize I'm doing a few things quite possibly incorrectly. The right lane is probably the fast lane, I'm hugging the left side of the lane since I'm not used to judging the distance from the right side of the car to the left, and I'm driving way under the speed limit.

Eventually, I make my way over to my hotel right by downtown Auckland, knowing in the back of my head that check in isn't until 3pm, I was hoping I could get in my room early, get a little rest and grab a shower. I have no such luck. I decide to drive around a bit, and quickly come to the conclusion that it's a bad idea. I'm too tired to want to deal with the intricacies of right hand drive. I go back to the hotel after about half an hour of getting somewhat lost around town, more than likely during the morning rush since the sun is for the most part up on the other side of the clouds and rain. I park the car, change to a golf shirt that I happened to have in my golf bag, brush my teeth in the hotel lobby's bathroom and drop off my bags with the concierge. It's about 8am. Once again, I'm tired, delerious, and it's raining.

To be continued...

First International flight in a long time

Details: Published on Thursday, 16 February 2012 01:29; Written by Russ; Hits: 31

2/13/2012
I'm on an fuckin international flight for the first time since I went to Argentina in roughly 91, Europe even earlier… problably the 80's.

I developed a fear of flying after I flew to NY with my mom in 98 to visit my sister. I thought the plane landed halfway through the flight. More than likely, I was probably just nervous and we had a little bump on the flight when I was half asleep. I was supposed to go to Thailand in 10/2001 with my dad. 9/11 happened. Getting me on a plane was near to none.

Back then, there was no in flight WIFI, there weren't screens to watch movies, nor GPS to find out what body of land or water you're over, your tailwind, speed, altitude, all that awesome stuff. For some reason, it makes me feel better just to know what the hell is going on. Surprisingly enough, there's no WIFI on this flight. At least the in flight entertainment isn't bad. I've already watched a crappy movie and read half of a golf magazine, over ate, took a walk around the plane… Coach fuckin sucks.

We've come quite a way with the advance of technology on flights since I went to Argentina, or even NY. I remember being happy to have a Sony Sports Walkman and 5 tapes! As far as I remember, I was in a middle seat towards the back of the plane in straight up shit town.

As these thoughts go through my head, for some reason, I'm thinking them in Anthony Bourdain's voice. I should probably turn off my tv before I go to sleep at night, stop watching No Reservations/Layover, or maybe stop enjoying the finer things in life, but this is making it more entertaining for me to type and to actually deal with the flight. I'm not going to stop enjoying nice things as long as I can afford them (thanks Vegas during Thanksgiving for the epic win that's paying for this trip!)

Speaking of enjoying the flight, we've been in the air for about 4 hrs, we're getting near Hawaii, I still have roughly 8-9hrs to go. I'm sitting in Business Premier, upstairs on a 747-400. This seat turns into a bed. I was greeted with champagne when I boarded this sweet tube of metal with drink coasters on the sides that apparently are the wings. At SFO, I had the pleasure of hanging out in the EVA lounge where I had a couple beers and some snacks, met up with my buddy Mike that works for United as a mechanic after he got off work, had a beer, then boarded.

Since the glass of champagne, and my drink order for when after we took off, I've watched a movie, enjoyed a 4 course meal, each course paired with a different wine or whatever.

I started out with white to pair the chicken/cucumber spaghetti appetizer. When we ordered our meal, I decided on a Pinot with the short ribs dish (was fairly decent considering what I would expect from an airplane meal), followed by a Merlot that just sorta showed up. They're all New Zealand wines. They're tasty!

I feel like I've been too nice to everyone working this flight compared to everyone else aboard, but they're awesome, friendly, and super attentive. Did I mention the hot towel I got after we took off? [whoa hey, this flight's getting bouncy, and I'm surprisingly not freaking out. Why the GPS turned off momentarily is moderately disturbing though][I would not be able to sleep through this bounceytown]

Back to me writing about shit… During the dessert course, which consisted of a scoop of strawberry and a scoop of coconut ice cream, they brought out a tasty white dessert wine.

For the final final, there was a cheese plate with tasty water crackers, along with what were almost really skinny wafer cookies. They were actually crackers. Port was the pairing for that, and I feel fat, dumb, happy, and sleepy. That's the idea, right? Get all the people that paid enough lathargic enough to fall asleep.

Do you know what's annoying me right now? All of the measurements on the GPS are in metric! I know metric, but I'm used to the imperial system since I've lived in the US my entire life. It takes a bit of getting used to.

I also have a feeling that I might develop a rather strange vocabulary during this trip. Hiring cars, having mates, and renting a trundler to push my golf clubs around. My math might also improve while having to try to figure out the entire conversion for a month.

Time to save this and get some sleep. That wine is making me want to sleep. I hope I can get a good 7 hours before I land. Not sure if I want to turn this into a bed, or just be layed back. #FirstWorldProblems.

Test from iPhone app

Details: Published on Tuesday, 14 February 2012 00:54; Written by Administrator; Hits: 24

Test from Eva lounge at SFO

Posted from my iPhone using Joomla Admin Mobile!

Factory unlocked iPhone 4s Jailbreak

Details: Published on Thursday, 26 January 2012 10:01; Written by Russ; Hits: 50

Thanks to all the iPhone devs.

I got a factory unlocked iPhone4s for too much while planning for my soon to be awesome overseas trip, and wanted to jailbreak it for the benefits of sbsettings and mywi mostly.

http://www.greenpois0n.com recently came out with a jailbreak for the A5 processor.

I tried and tried and tried. Started out with 0.1 beta and finally got to 0.3 of the osx app.

Unfortunately, I had to restore ios 5.0.1 to defaults, then jailbreak, then restore.

I can't complain... I'm jailbroken and factory unlocked now!

Ah wayback machine

Details: Published on Tuesday, 24 January 2012 07:08; Written by Administrator; Hits: 48

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