Travels

There are 246 posts filed in Travels (this is page 8 of 25).

Unvacated

We drove back into Raleigh about 1:45 PM today, having reluctantly turned in our keys to the beach house. Half of the drive was through mild-to-heavy rain, which made our pace a bit slower than I had hoped. It also took more energy from me, the driver, than I expected.

I’ve got lots of catching up to do with blogging the trip but it will probably wait for another night. The short version is that it was a wonderful family vacation, with everyone getting along, lots of different activities and good weather.

I may add more later tonight or I may just succumb to the call of my own bed.

Enjoying the Outer Banks

We’re halfway through our vacation to Nags Head and the Outer Banks and have had a load of fun so far. If you asked the kids they would say that simply riding the waves has been their most favorite activity but we’ve done far more than that.

Sunday night upon arriving, we unpacked, made dinner, fixed our beds, and settled in for the night.

We spent Monday morning on the beach, riding waves, building sandcastles, and simply relaxing. In the afternoon Kelly went for a 4+ mile run and I went for a 17 mile bike ride. We had hauled our bicycles down with us to the detriment of our gas mileage. So far I’m the only one who’s ridden one. We hope to get the family out on a bike ride tomorrow, weather permitting.

Monday afternoon the kids took a nap in preparation to see the play The Lost Colony. When they awoke, we made dinner and drove to Manteo for the show. It was the first time I’d seen it and I enjoyed it, though the kids were fading as it ran a bit long.
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Turning my Ubuntu laptop into an access point

Our beachhouse for the week was advertised as having an Internet connection, so I was looking forward to being able to do some blogging while I’m here in addition to checking out the area’s attractions. It turns out the Internet connection advertised consisted of one wired connection to a dead cable modem. WiFi would have been great, but having no connection whatsoever simply burned me up.

I called the management office on Monday, Tuesday (twice), and today in order to get someone to fix this broken cable modem. As we walked off the beach today at 3:30 PM, the guy from the local cable company was waiting to get into the home. He quickly determined that the cable modem’s AC adapter was the culprit and got the blinky lights working with a fresh replacement. After a few fumbles in fixing things, he was on his way and we had at least a wired connection to the Internet. But how to share this with the other devices in our geeky family?
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Nags Head

We spent the day yesterday packing for a week at Nags Head and got here around 5 PM yesterday. We’re staying at the “Serenity” beach house in shouth Nags Head, specifically at 10113 S. Colony South Drive. It’s a huge beachhouse. We’re not even using half of the bedrooms in it.

We brought our bikes on this trip, to the detriment of our minivan’s gas mileage. It was worth it, though, as there’s a long sidewalk/walkway just outside the house that runs for miles in either direction.
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Congress examines Amtrak’s food and beverage losses

I’m a fan of Amtrak but I have to admit their food car is a joke. To pay almost 10 bucks for a hamburger to be reheated in a microwave is outrageous. What’s even more outrageous is that it costs Amtrak $16.15 for that same pathetic burger.

Time to require some accountability for Amtrak. Replacing the food car with a car of vending machines would be a good start.

Amtrak loses millions on its food and beverage service, and a congressional committee wants to know why.

The company’s food and beverage cars have lost $833.8 million over the last decade, including $84.5 million in 2011, according to testimony at a congressional hearing Thursday.

The reason: the difference between Amtrak’s costs and what it charges passengers. For example, taking overhead into account, each cheeseburger costs Amtrak $16.15 and each can of soda costs $3.40. But Amtrak charges passengers only $9.50 and $2 for those items.

via Congress examines Amtrak's food and beverage losses – USATODAY.com.

Sweetie weekend

Atop Hanging Rock

Kelly and I have enjoyed a wonderful “sweetie weekend” hiking around Hanging Rock State Park in Danbury, NC, after Kelly took the kids up to stay with Kelly’s parents for a few days. We boarded the dog Saturday morning and headed west, stopping by the Tanger Outlet mall to get a few clothes. Then we headed up to Hanging Rock to spend the first of two days hiking around this beautiful park.

Upon arrival at the park’s visitor center, Kelly asked the park ranger what trails he suggested. Peering around the room, the ranger noted there were no kids in tow and suggested we try one of the more strenuous trails: Moore’s Wall Loop Trail. We took that advice and set off for the trailhead near the lake’s bathhouse.

Moore’s Wall Loop Trail is a challenging hike in one direction and not so much the other. We opted to go counter-clockwise towards the highest point in the park, Moore’s Knob, and that proved to be a very tough climb! It was step after step for what the ranger said was 700 steps until reaching the base of the lookout tower on Moore’s Knob.
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High-Tech Border Checks Will Blow Spies’ Cover

Wired has an absolutely fascinating story about how the U.S.’s border security paranoia has unwittingly made it very difficult for spies to use false identities. With biometric checking in effect, the days of a spy entering a country on a false passport are quickly coming to an end.

The increasing deployment of iris scanners and biometric passports at worldwide airports, hotels and business headquarters, designed to catch terrorists and criminals, are playing havoc with operations that require CIA spies to travel under false identities.

Busy spy crossroads such as Dubai, Jordan, India and many E.U. points of entry are employing iris scanners to link eyeballs irrevocably to a particular name. Likewise, the increasing use of biometric passports, which are embedded with microchips containing a person’s face, sex, fingerprints, date and place of birth, and other personal data, are increasingly replacing the old paper ones. For a clandestine field operative, flying under a false name could be a one-way ticket to a headquarters desk, since they’re irrevocably chained to whatever name and passport they used.

“If you go to one of those countries under an alias, you can’t go again under another name,” explains a career spook, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he remains an agency consultant. ”So it’s a one-time thing — one and done. The biometric data on your passport, and maybe your iris, too, has been linked forever to whatever name was on your passport the first time. You can’t show up again under a different name with the same data.”

via CIA’s Secret Fear: High-Tech Border Checks Will Blow Spies’ Cover | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Kings Dominion

At Kings Dominion


Yesterday the stars aligned where it became possible for the family to spend the day at Kings Dominion along with Kelly’s brother, David and his son, Wesley. It had been two years since we took the kids to Carowinds and in that time our kids gained a lot more confidence in what they wanted to ride.

True to form, Hallie led the way, never backing down from any ride we suggested to her. She prefers the wooden coasters and enjoyed a few rides on the Rebel Yell, KD’s version of Carowinds’s Thunder Road. She didn’t even blink when I challenged her to ride the biggest, baddest coaster in the park, the Intimidator 305 (though I had to gulp when she actually accepted the challenge)! We were both laughing when we walked off that ride, and Hallie got the chance to introduce her mommy to it. I am amazed by her bravery.
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Digiboo DVD download kiosks

Movie Booth DVD download kiosk


Remember last year when I spied that intriguing DVD download kiosk in the Seattle airport? Looks like it is similar to the kiosk service put together by a startup company called Digiboo, according to a news story today.

The rental service, from Santa Monica, Calif.-based Digiboo, is being introduced at a time when consumers are shifting away from movie rentals to online movie streaming. Whether the Digiboo kiosks mark the next evolution in watching video, or just another dead end like the Betamax VCR, they illustrate the enduring allure of the movies even as technology morphs them into new forms.

[snip]

The first kiosks were installed at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Next up: the Seattle and Portland airports, Thomas said. If the concept is successful, thousands of kiosks will be put in a variety of public places, he said.

I thought initially today that the booth I saw might have been a Digiboo booth but the article seems to indicate that Digiboo hasn’t been installed at the Seattle airport after all.

I guess the mystery remains as to who owns the DVD download kiosk at SEATAC.

Update 12:10 PM: I did a little Google sleuthing and believe the “Movie Booth” kiosk I saw was from a company called LightSpeed Cinema in Los Angeles. I found one press release from December 2008 that mentions that LightSpeed Cinema is Santa Monica-based, as is Digiboo. Are these companies one and the same? I’m guessing they are and the DVD kiosk I saw in Seattle is an early Digiboo model.

Here’s Digiboo’s website. Also, this press release offers more details on the company.

Hall of Human Origins

Me as Homo neanderthalensis


The day after Christmas, Kelly and I spent the day in downtown DC, checking out museums. While Kelly wanted to see the Hirshhorn Museum, I was fascinated by the National Museum of Natural History. All the time I lived in Great Falls, VA, I never once ventured inside this museum until yesterday.

While the dinosaur bones were intriguing to me, I was really fascinated by the Hall of Human Origins showing the evolution of man over millions of years. I’ve long been fascinated by the thought of human species that once co-occupied the earth and here I was getting my first look at them.
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