A Day (or Two) in the Life of Scott Hanno

Ok, I think that I'll finally do something different this week and write this edition on my way back from Syracuse. I'm on a plane right now from Detroit to Memphis and then after a lay over there I'll be back in PCB in a few. Maybe I should start from the beginning though and I decided at the last minute to attend my Uncle Leo's 80th Year Surprise Birthday party which was up in Lowville last night. I booked a flight last Sunday night and decided to take Friday off and flew home that afternoon and got in about 7:30pm Friday night.

I got to the airport on Friday and my brother picked me up, we weren't too sure what to do for dinner but he suggested the Casinos in Verona close to where I grew up. But then we didn't really want to drive that far and his son was working at a restaurant not too far away so we decided to go there for dinner and it wasn't half bad. And even though the place is known for its pizzas, my brother doesn't like them very much so we both had the fish. My nephew came out from the kitchen and met us and dang if he didn't look different from the last time that I've seen him. That's when I also found out that the had decided to join us for the birthday party the next day which I thought was great.

And after dinner we went back to the house, hung out and called it a night as it had been a pretty darn long day. The next morning (or early afternoon) I met up with my friend Brian who works at the airport and was just getting off work so we went to Hooter's for some wings and watched some of the SU game from there. We also went somewhere else after that that was like a locals hangout for one more, it was called the Clam Shed or something like that. After that he took me back to Tim's and then Tim and I both went shopping trying to figure out what to get Leo for his birthday. We ended up getting him a novel and a matted picture frame for one of the pictures from my Mom's wedding which I guess was ok - we were thinking about trying to get him tickets to a basketball game but that didn't work out too well. After that we went home and framed the picture, wrapped everything up and then it was time go hit the road.

We left the house about 5:30pm for what I guess takes about an hour and a half, dinner was suppose to start at 7pm and guess that we got there about 15 minutes late. But when we walked in I think that only one person knew for sure that we were coming and I went over and talked with Leo and it took him a while to even figure out who we were - but with 83 people at his party he had a lot going on! We had dinner shortly after that and then watched a DVD that the family had put together showing the Life of Leo from the younger days and it was really done well, I even have a copy of it and if I can figure out how to use it I'll be sure to share them. I was also freaking out that I left my digital camera in my suitcase at my brothers so I have no pictures to share of the party either but I'm hoping that everyone else will share the one's that they took at some point.

I had a really good time and saw a lot of the family again and it's been a really, really long time and I think that just about everyone was there except for one of my cousins who I wish could have made the trip. The drive back to Tim's wasn't too bad until we got down to about Rome but by the time we got on the Thruway it was snowing like crazy. My nephew ended up driving home and I was glad that it was him - and he did very well keeping us on the road too and we made it back home safe in one piece.

I woke up this morning about 6:45am and had to leave Tim's house by about 7:30 to catch a 9am flight back to Florida. And we had probably gotten close to a foot of snow overnight but other than deicing the plane before taking off we didn't even have any delays. And the weather up there was cold but it was ok, I just don't think that I would want to have to wake up and deal with it every day ..... it would be like Groundhog Day over and over again and you never walk up from that bad dream, at least until sometime in April I'd say.

And now I'm home safe and sound but I'm kind of worn out - I'm surprised that you don't actually rest more while flying than you do and it always wears me out. And I walked out of the airport terminal in PCB this afternoon and the sun was shining and it was at least 70's ...... it felt REALLY good to be home. But I won't mention that I think that it had been raining all weekend as I missed that part, it just felt nice to be back in some warmer weather again! And it's back to work in the morning for a full week, actually I'm starting out in the hole from stuff that I normally would have done over the weekend but didn't but hopefully that will be ok.

I hope you have a great week - and I'll talk with you again sometime soon.

Ps - I apologize in advance for all of the people that I didn't see while I was in Syracuse, it was a last minute deal and didn't have much time for anything else ...... well, I could have probably blew off Hooters to free up a little more time ...... but I'm sorry just the same and hope that you can forgive me :o\

posted by Scott @ 9:48 PM

Here it is another Sunday night and I spent most of my weekend trying to get caught up on work after being in DC last week on Thursday and Friday. It was an ok trip and almost a little too short for my liking, I went up Thursday morning and came back Friday night. It kind of wore me out too just traveling and not sleeping in my own bed and I slept quite a bit this weekend as well.

I flew up on Northwest and it was a pretty uneventful trip, unlike my Delta flights these days as NWA's planes actually work. But I did kind of get bummed out on Friday as I found out that they don't have any customer service left to them either and I'm beginning to think that all of the airlines are about the same. I get to the airport on Friday and got my boarding pass from that automated thing and noticed that I didn't have a seat assignment - then I get to the gate to get a seat and the guy just tells me that he'll let me know if I have a seat 10 minutes before departure because they are oversold - no apologizes or anything, just a wait over there and I will let you know if you are leaving here today. But at least I did get on my flight and my flight through Memphis was right on time and got home after picking up the pup about 10pm on Friday. And all that for a four hour meeting Friday morning that we've been trying to schedule for at least the last month and a half - at least we can now say that we've been there and done that.

It was a pretty nice weekend too and it was in the mid-60's yesterday and closer to 70 today and kind of sunny, just another normal day I guess. I didn't even go outside yesterday though (other than to grab dinner) and worked and slept most of the day away. This morning I was still trying to get caught up but then I did end up getting most of my chores done after that. I also messed with my work laptop yesterday and finally got my wireless card to work in it with my home router, my original intention was to see if I could get the software installed so that I could try and pick up Wifi access at the airports when I'm traveling and think that I did that as well - now I'll just need to remember to bring my card with me and give it a try.

I'm swamped at work though and really need to stop traveling so much so that I can actually get some work done - I think that I've been up in DC three out of the last six weeks. I'm also having to learn a whole new system with my new Sheraton that is taking me a while to figure out, they have a week long training class for the system at the end of March that I would really like to try and avoid attending. As long as I can figure out what I need right now to do my job I can pick up the rest of it as I go and that's usually how I learn everything. There just doesn't ever seem to be enough hours in the day to get everything done - do ya know what I mean?

And I really don't have all that much to talk about tonight and last week seems like a blur that flew right by, my Valentines Day was uneventful and tomorrow is suppose to be a "corporate" holiday - but I'm sure that I'll be working the entire day away as none of the hotels observe it and I've got all of my normal stuff to get done. So I guess that's about it for another day, have a GREAT President's Day holiday and I will talk with you again sometime soon. And have a great week too!

posted by Scott @ 9:51 PM

Sorry about the password thing but if you are reading this now I guess that you figured it out. It was just that I was watching a news article on tv the other night about people who actually got fired from their jobs for talking about their bosses or giving away information that they shouldn't ...... not that I ever do such a thing but just to be on the safe side of things. I might do away with the password protection after a while who knows, maybe I'll get over it but at least you have to know me pretty well to figure out what the info is - or ask me for it.

And here it is on another Sunday night, another weekend has come and gone and it was a pretty decent one at that. I think that it was in the mid-60's yesterday and partly sunny and today it was probably closer to 70' and sunshine - and I wasn't even the slug that I've been for what seems like the last month. Montie and I went out and picked up the yard some and then cleaned off the sidewalk using this acid stuff - there is some stuff on it that I guess is from the gutters dripping on it but it still won't come clean totally. I've been thinking about using that Behr semi-transparent concrete sealing stuff on it but I'm a little afraid as to how it will come out and certainly don't want to do the whole driveway - so I think that if I do anything with it I'll do the back patio first and see how that comes out. The examples that I've seen look great - I'm just a little afraid that it won't look so good for me. And today we got the house all cleaned, the groceries shopped and the laundry is done - and haven't done much sitting around either. Oh, and I got my haircut yesterday too - Montie didn't but he's not shaggy enough yet.

I've been doing alot of research about VOIP phone service and decided to try out using Vonage and have had it for the last couple of weeks. So far for the most part so good, the upside is that I hopefully can get rid of two of my old phone lines that I use for work which will save me close to $50 a month, plus long distance is included which will save me at least another $15 which really adds up over a year and should save close to $800 a year. The only downside is that I had to get a Tampa number but that just means that one of my hotels can call me local - and I'm thinking about getting another "virtual number" for $5 more dollars a month for San Antonio and then they can call me as a local call too. I'm just a little skeptical about how well it works and have only had a couple of glitches - but after a couple of more weeks I'll be ready to ditch a couple of my landlines. They have tons of free features and is nothing like the old phone company - you can even get your voice mails sent to you as e-mail attachments, all of it is pretty cool. If you ever want to check it out you can click here - and if you decide you want to go for it let me refer you and we both get a month of service for free - so let me know for sure if you ever wanna try it.

I'm also on this saving money kick for some reason, I think that it started when I moved over to MSN Billpay for my MS Money program and was paying CheckFree $9.95 a month and MSN is only $5.95 with three months free, then I decided to get rid of AOL which I did more than two weeks ago and I don't miss it (you can still access everything on the web anyways) which saved me $15 a month, then I decided to move my home security monitoring from ADT to another company which is $22 a month less - and just those few things save me $500 a year - plus the $800 I'm gonna save on phone service ...... and I'm still trying to think of a few other ways but I don't think that there are many left ...... still looking at my lawn service and I'm thinking that I could do what they do for a whole lot less.

Not too much else going on, I can see that the lawn is slowly starting to green up and think that it's only a few more weeks before I'll be mowing that thing again. I can tell that it's close to spring though as the pine pollen is all over the place (it's this yellowish powder stuff) and that's the first sign that spring is in the air :) Montie is doing fine but I think that I need to head up to DC in the near future as we have to reschedule the meeting that we cancelled a few weeks ago - and that'll be for like a day and a half. Oh, and I'm still really loving my new vacumn cleaner - it's so easy to break out the on-board attachments and clean in every nook and cranny ...... nook and cranny - is that really a saying?

I also did my taxes the other day using H&R Block on line and had them done within 30 minutes, e-filed and they were accepted before I got up the next morning - now they'll just deposit them into my account and we'll be done. I'd recommend them if you haven't done your's yet. The only downside about doing my taxes this year is that I paid like 1/2 the interest on my house that I did last year due to refinancing - so while I didn't get as much back this year I'm sure that I still made out ahead. Oh, and one last tip and if you have to try and remember thirty eight thousand passwords when surfing the web you should check out RoboForms, I've been using it for the last few months and it's a great brainsaving tool and is well worth the $29.

I guess that's it for another week, my cold is now all gone and I'm back to my old healthy self so hopefully the sun will come out tomorrow - for both you and me that is! Have a great week and I'll talk with you sometime soon. Night!

posted by Scott @ 9:54 PM

Hello everyone and welcome to my Daily Life thingy! And it's another Sunday night and you know me - here I am to give you another recap on my life. I spent all last week in Annapolis MD and got my fill of the snow and the cold and traveling and missing my pup - and I've been home since Friday and have been enjoying every moment of it. We ended up taking over a hotel Thursday night so that was delayed by a week and I wasn't even there by the time that it happened, but it's done now and I get to add another hotel to my pile.

And what a trip it was at that, we were suppose to leave on Sunday so after rearranging my schedule to get all of my weekend stuff done on Saturday (which I did for two weeks in a row) our flights got cancelled from Atlanta due to the ice that they got. So we had to rearrange it to fly out Monday morning and the only way that I could get to Atlanta by 2pm on Monday was to take a 6am flight from here through Memphis and then on to Atlanta - I was worn out by the time that day was done. But the fun really began on Thursday when I was headed back home - I had a 4pm flight and got to the airport about 1:30 and hung out, had lunch and did some work. The snow was really starting to pick up and I thought I might be in for a long trip - but little did I know how long that was going to be. We got on the plane a few minutes before 4pm and we missed out push back on time and had to sit there, then they had to de-ice us as the plane had been on the ground for more than an hour. Then they said that there was a "wheels up" thing in Atlanta and they weren't accepting any more planes for a while and we sat there for another hour and the got the go ahead to leave. But then they had to de-ice us again and finally after about 2 and a half hours we headed out to the runway. We got all the way to the take off position and then the captain came on and said one of the sensors wasn't working right and while he wanted to make the news someday he didn't want to do it this way. So we had to head back to the gate to have it checked out - but all of the gates were full so we sat there for another hour. Then we got to the gate and they worked on the plane, and after the fourth hour they gave us the option to get off and try to catch another flight - but didn't tell us how many seats they had on the flight to Atlanta. I got off but it didn't really matter as within the next half hour they gave up on the plane and everyone else got off - and we waited and waited and no one had a clue what was going on.

We finally got on a flight that boarded around 9:30pm but then didn't leave until after 10:30. Of course by the time I got to Atlanta is was midnite and the last flight to PCB was at 10:30pm but at least Delta was nice enough to put me up in a crappy Holiday Inn for the night and book me on a 9am flight on Friday morning. I got home at like 10am and went right to work as I was all ready behind the eight ball, one heck of a 24 hour period that's for sure!

I think that I spent a good five hours just sitting on a plane that day. Plus with all of the diseased people sitting near me for all of that time of course I got sick and spent the weekend with a cold. My poor ears have been popped and think that it was because I fell asleep on the flight from BWI to Atlanta and woke up when we were about to land and couldn't hear a thing - and they still aren't quite normal yet either. I spent most of the weekend trying to get caught up and ready for next week - even though it was a pretty nice weekend and was close to 70' both days. Being sick and behind in my work wasn't all that fun of a weekend.

Oh well - I guess that it's just about time for a new week to begin so lets just hope that it's better than the last one. I hope that all is well with you and that your team won the Super Bowl - I think that it's a crock that the radio can't even say that due to the trade mark thing - who ever heard of such a thing? Take it easy and I will talk with you later.

posted by Scott @ 9:58 PM