I haven't had a big-girl engagement in nearly a year, what with all the marketing PowerPoints and sales events. This is going to be interesting. Trip Basics, Day 1 Travel: Amtrak Cascades 507 TUK-PDX (Business class, free wifi). I picked a beautiful window seat on what turned out to be the less-scenic side of the train, next to the door that wouldn't close properly, but overall it was wonderful anyway. This is the only way to fly. I wrote conference speaker proposals most of the way, and even briefly helped a colleague debug his TFS-Project Server integration. Lunch: Turkey havarti sammitch from the Bistro car. I forgot to use my $3 off coupon! Transfer: Uneventful, efficient taxi from the train station. Carfree living in downtown Portland: recommended. Hotel: Portland Waterfront Marriott, arranged by our customer. Martin ... read more

Welcome back! I am inspired by my good friend the HomebodyVoyager to try to see more of the areas where I travel (for my awesome relatively-new job with Northwest Cadence) and to blog about them. Today, I'm in Springfield, Illinois. Because of my prior experience writing software for the University of Washington, I've been sort of designated our liaison for software development teams in the public sector, which means I'm going to get to see a lot of state capitals. Springfield is one of those capitals that make it hard to memorize all the state capitals. I don't think folks outside of Illinois have much reason to know where it is or what goes on here. If you've heard of (or flown through) a city in Illinois, it almost certainly isn't this one. (See also: Olympia, ... read more

In 2006, as documented in "", we visited and I highly over-analyzed the Polynesian Cultural Center in Lā'ie. One of my chief complaints was that I felt rushed and limited by the tour guides we paid extra for, and I wished we could get away from them and explore the PCC on our own. So this year I was determined to make that happen. But first, since Lā'ie's a bit of a drive from Waimānalo, we wanted to break up the trip and get an errand out of the way with a quick stop at the Dole Pineapple Plantation in Wahiawa, from which Greg wanted to send his mother a pineapple. In 2006, we kids (Greg, Barb, Laura, me) made a 15-minute stop here for Dole Whip (a soft-serve pineapple dessert) and didn't really do anything ... read more

Today is Anne's 17th birthday! She kicked off her celebration in the Central European time zone yesterday via a Skype call from her family in Schenefeld - noon Sunday our time, just after midnight Monday theirs. After countless grill-related near-catastrophes, we managed to grill SPAM®burgers and very strange bright red hot dogs which we served with Velveeta® Shells 'n' Cheese. Anne was not convinced by my claims that this is pretty much the same thing as Käsespätzle, even after I reassured her that I've had Käsespätzle. The sun fell down behind the mountains promptly at 6:30 PM, so we supped in the dark on the lanai and argued like geeks about how to order our sightseeing backlog. We settled on Pearl Harbor for early tomorrow (Monday) morning and since that's enough planning for an Agile vacation, ... read more

We got in around noon, found the beach house with reasonable efficiency (it's ... read more