In Austin, Track me!

We've arrived in Austin, and I'm trying to add some location tracking to the blog. So far google latitude has the answers!  See me on the right column -> !  I'll try to get Noelle to enable this on her phone, since she has Verizon and I have AT&T. It's nice to have both providers, since often only one of the two is available. 

We've arrived at our friends house, and I'm excited to plug the fridge into shore power (note the hot pink extension cord), enjoy some a/c, and not drive for a few days. :)

On to Austin!

We were just a tiny bit sad to pack up and leave our campsite at Abilene state park. It was a neat spot complete with fireflies that kept trying to get into the van (I think they liked our Christmas lights). We also had almost the entire campground to ourselves, which was a welcome change from the madness that was Sedona on Memorial Day weekend.

We have been cranking out the miles early in this trip to make back to back wedding weekends, first in Austin and then in Ft Lauderdale, FL. We did spend 2 nights in Sedona, AZ to give ourselves a break from driving and do some hiking. The luxury of spending 2 nights in one spot made me excited for the rest of this trip when we will have more time to meander and settle wherever for as long as we want.

Any sadness we felt leaving Abilene was soon replaced with excitement as we hit the Texas back roads, saw some armadillo road kill, and headed to Austin, my favorite city in Texas. Soon I'll be trading my hiking clothes for a bridesmaid dress and I could not be more excited to celebrate the wedding of Kate and Matt!

Pictures from the road, day 1-5

5 days, 1600 Miles!

Full days of driving so far!  Van is running great! Noelle and I are a bit worn out with the long drives. We've been staying at regional and state parks. Calico ghost town, Cococino National Forest outside Sedona, Santa Rosa Lake in New Mexico, and tonight, Abilene State Park in Texas!

Last weekend I went moto-camping with some friends who share the interest.  I learned a lot about adventure traveling with these guys.  Our trip in the Vanagon will reflect some of what I've learned on the road with these guys.  This last trip we did our annual Willits Brooktrails -> Shelter Cove via Usal Road ride.  It was awesome.

Terrestrial and Lunar Phases

Tonight I saw some pretty disheartened Facebook postings from a couple friends.  It's amazing that a bad day can trick us into feeling we've done so much wrong and our hopes are misplaced… then we wake up the next morning and feel much better about life.

My mother-in-law is convinced that lunar phases influence us.  She suspects the full moon is a point of resolution and prologue to that is a build-up of tension.  It's all hippy bs, but when I saw the sad posts, I googled to find out what lunar phase we are in.  

We just passed into the last quarter, in case you were wondering.

The Earth has phases, too.  We call them "seasons."  Seasons definitely affect behavior.  We're halfway through spring, now.

I work on an online game with millions of unique daily users, mostly Americans.  I asked one of our product managers (PM's) if they've calculated correlations between good weather and drop-offs in players using our game.  

This question only seems to arise when the weather is nice.  When the weather is nice, PM's generally go out and enjoy it.  They'd rather not stay in the office and do extra work while this is happening.  

This leads me to believe the correlation is probably there, but it's very hard to prove.

Apparently it was really nice in Shelter Cove, CA today.