Tag: Europe

San Diego and Dreaming!

Another trip to San Diego and another great time! I love that city and it makes me want to move there even more every time I visit!

Last week was VERY productive! Aaron got here early on Thursday morning and we went out for breakfast and then came to the office. We analysed everything and worked through the numbers and what not and found out that we can save my company 43% per-month on phone costs, which amounts to around $65,000 over the next 12 months! Insanity! I was basically unable to believe it for most of the time. I kept sitting here saying, “We have to be missing something”. Thankfully we put a line item in for a monthly cost called “Fluff” @ $1,000 and we also built in 50,000 talk minutes @ $0.035 so hopefully that’ll absorb anything we missed!

Friday night we all went out to WeHo and I got WAY to drunk, but oh my god was it tons of fun! It was a good time just like what we used to have. Got home about 3ish and was up till around 4am. Got a call Saturday morning from work about something not working which was very very annoying.

Got up about 9ish and was planning to leave for SD much earlier, but everyone was slow and the drinking was crazy, so Kris and I went to breakfast and then picked up Aaron and off to SD we went. Got down there and I was going to take the scenic route down and just chill in the beach cities and what not, but Aaron wanted to go to TJ, so we headed there. It was a very interesting experience to say the least. I got some really cheap shoes and Kris got some really cheap Alc! Yay!

After that we headed to the hotel room which ended up being a Euro Style hostel! We were NOT expecting that at all but it was a REALLY cute place and had it been in Europe and wasn’t so fucking expensive it would have been perfect. When we got there Aaron apparently knew the front desk clerk guy which was a little AWK.

Went to the room and relaxed for about 30 minutes and then headed out to the house of blues for appetizers and a drink. Aaron said he was tired and went back to the hotel. Kris and I metup with his friends at the Yardhouse for dinner and we were there forever. It was a TON of fun, but they all just kept talking and talking. After that we went next door for a drink and then headed back to the hotel room. I think we got back at like 1:30ish or so and slept till 9:30 the next morning.

Got up and ate breakfast with some of Aaron’s friends and then headed to Cabrillo point which was just amazing! From there we went and toured Kris’ old college which was CUTE as hell and then headed back to LA. Dropped Aaron off at the airport and then went home for a few hours, took a nap then Jason, Kris and I watched 2 more freddy movies.

A letter to Const…

Dear Constantine.

I just wanted to write you this morning. I did a lot of thinking and a lot of crying last night and just wanted to follow up with you before we talk tonight. I hope that you understand how much I care for you and how much you mean to me. I hope that while you’re thinking of what you want, that you’ll go back through all the photos of us and that you’ll think of how much fun we’ve had and how close we’ve gotten over the last 8 months. I hope that you’ll think of the times in Europe when we’re just wondering around. I hope that you’ll think of the nights we spent there hanging out and drinking tea and talking and playing cards. I hope that you’ll think of that first day we met and watched the fireworks. I hope that you’ll think through all this.

I love you and every part of you. Every moment we are not together my body aches. I love it when you smile, I love it when you talk, I love your voice, I love to see your face in the morning and I love to see your face every night. I love that we can talk nerdy, but we can have fun as well. I love that you camp and are adventurous, I love your wardrobe, I love your taste in music, I love your deepness, I love that we can read books together. I love how smart you are and how much background you have. I love that you’ve been so devoted to one company. I love that you’re so talented and creative with photography. I love that you are not afraid to be WE.

I wish that I would have been telling you all these things before. I wish that I hadn’t taken advice from an asshole. I wish that I hadn’t been afraid to show you how much I really cared for you.

That first night we met, that most wonderful July 4th. I wish that we could have cuddled up more on that blanket on the beach under the stars. But I’m so happy that shortly after that we’ve had the chance to be so close and spend so much time together. I don’t want to see that end. We’ve both made mistakes over the last few weeks/months. I want to take this time to fix those mistakes and not to give up on WE.

I admit that I am jealous and I will try on that very hard, it’s hard for me to not get to see you so at all after we’ve spent so much time seeing each other every weekend and 2-3 nights a week. I admit that I am sad when you go out and have fun and I am sitting at home, but I will work on that. I feel like I am missing out on this part of your life while you are there, and that makes me sad. I want you to have fun while you are there and make those steps that you need to take so that when you come back we can be even closer and even more in love. I want you to get back to your roots of photography and find whatever else you’ve been missing while with me.

And once you find that, I don’t want you to lose that when you come back. I want to share in that part of your life. I want to see you go out and do more photography here, I want to start climbing with you. I want to share in these things with you, I want to learn and see how happy you are when you do them. I want to be happy with you. There’s nothing more in this world right now then that I want you to be happy. But I want you to be happy and be able to be WE. I want us to be happy together.

At the same time, I too have fallen away from a lot of the things that I like doing and that I used to spend a lot of time with. Programing random things, painting, doing various project, etc. While you are away I will work and am working on finding these individual things in myself again. I want you to share in these things with me too. I’d like it if you were to start biking with me. Even if it’s just a cruise up and down the beach. I’d love to share with you in painting the picture in my room. I’ve always loved photography as well and would love to learn a little bit from you. I’ll never be able to be as creative as you are, but I’d like to make my photos a little better.

I think the spark you talked about last night gets lost in every relationship. A spark of first meeting can never last, the fire eventually dies down, but as long as the coals are still glowing hot, the relationship survives. It’s the same as riding a roller coaster, the first time you have a huge spark, but by the 10th time, you just enjoy it and you become familiar with it. I think we’re at that spot in our relationship and now that you are 1,600 miles away we have to work a little harder to keep the coals burning bright. I feel that if we both work on this though, and work on the things we’ve discussed, that we can keep the fire burning and I hope that when you come back in April and when you finally return in the fall that we can have this amazing relationship and I hope that it will last for years and years.

In conclusion, I just wanted to get all this out there and say it in writing. I want you to know that I love you and that I’m terribly sorry for not expressing this earlier. I will work hard on the things we’ve discussed. I only want to be happy with you and for you to be happy.

Love,
Chris.

American Gardens Suck

This weekend. I have decided that American Garden suck. They are just a hodge podge of mixed in plants and it alwasy just feels like most of the stuff is just an after thought. I went to Descanso Gardens this weekend and although it was nice. I really like European gardens much better.

Anyways, Overall this weekend has been very stressful. Const and I got in a huge fight on Thursday, we didn’t talk again till Friday afternoon and I felt like shit at work. I didn’t sleep and what not, so I just left work early and came home and was sad overall. Friday night I went to dinner with Sirin and her sister which was nice. Went to Green Temple again.

Saturday I freaked out again about Constantine going out. My fault completely because I’m crazy and this whole long distance thing sucks. I hate hate hate it. Miss him so much. I wrote him a big email which I feel like a fool now for sending to him. I also got in a big argument with Jason and ended up going to Erick’s house to chat and drink away the sadness. lol

Sunday I went rock climbing again which was tons of fun, well it was fun AFTER Const called me and we talked and got a lot of issues taken care of. I hope that he understands why I am so crazy about this stuff now and that hopefully he’ll be a little more understanding and responsive.

Rock climbing I did so much better at this weekend because I wasn’t as tired as last and I bought climbing shoes! I did an amazing job this weekend. There were some little kids with use as well and they are just crazy. One thing was that everyone kept telling me how amazing Const is at climbing. I can’t wait to get out there with him now and see what’s up. They also kept talking about other things he’s done and I feel like there’s so much more to him that I’m missing, and it makes me sad that I missed a lot of this past parts of his life. It also makes me really sad that I am missing out on this part of his life in Houston. Although he tells me about it, it’s not the same as being there to share in it. Again, another reason I hate long distance.

I can’t wait to see him on the 11th. I told him today, this is the closest I’ve let someone get to me since Andrew, and I feel very vulnerable right now with it all.

Anyways. That’s about it.

Photos are here.

I’m so Lucky

To be able to work with such smart people at my office.

Everyone there really seems to know their shit, no bullshit, etc.

After seeing these people in this training class and hearing the kinds of questions they have, it’s amazing that they are able to keep the jobs they have.

We were talking about Character sets the other day and the professor was explaining how Oracle will convert a date format to whatever format the User has specified in their session. IE, I’m in the US, so I have a US char set. Therefore I can tell Oracle today’s date is ’01-12-2008′ and it will know that means January, 12. Not December 1 as it would be in Europe. However, if I’m in Europe and have some european char set, it will give me todays date in 12-01-2008.

So some girl asks. “So what if I have a user in China and they enter their name in Chinese, will Oracle convert that to English?”

Are you fucking kidding me?!? WTF! And this girl is a DBA at Edwards Airforce base! A couple days before that the professor went off on a tangent about the primaries and electoral colleges, etc. The same girl asked what an electoral college was. This woman was freaking in her 40’s! How do you NOT KNOW what an electoral college is?

UGH. Seriously! And these DBA’s were asking questions that they should ALREADY KNOW! I mean seriously, I’ve hardly touched Oracle, I know how to install it, I know how to write SQL and PL/SQL, and that’s about it! But I knew alot more about the advanced Oracle setup then they did. Most of them had NO BACKUP policies in place, no RAID on the servers, nothing. So basically if there’s a horrible crash, they lose EVERYTHING.

How do these people get to the positions that they have? I don’t freaking get it!

Prague and Vienna Photo Tour Movies

Well I’ve been spending a lot of my free time arranging these and going through all 1,500 photos. But here’s a movie of my favorite sites in Prague and Vienna.

You can download the FULL movie here. (Please note, it’s 350megs, so it’ll take a while).

Or watch it individually in the following two youtube clips

Prague:

Vienna: