The Northern Arc

Pulled out of the driveway early this morning, posting this from the road. Today I’m driving north/northeast for seven or so hours before turning due east. My goal is to reach Exton, Pennsylvania by Sunday night. Splitting almost 1,400 miles into a three-day trip puts me somewhere around eight hours a day — wimpy by my standards, but probably a bit safer than my normal method of “drive ’til I fall asleep, then start looking for a hotel.” Today I’ll be cruising up and through Missouri, so if you live along that route and want to grab a coffee with me or something, respond here or send me an e-mail. The closer you can meet me to the interstate, the better. I’ve already semi made plans to meet up with people in Springfield, St. Louis, and Columbus, with several other stops pending.

Yesterday my last new toy for a while arrived on the front porch — an Acer Aspire netbook. Mine came with XP Home (ew) loaded on it so I’m debating whether or not I’m going to reload it with XP Professional (so I can join it to my domain here at home) or throw either Fedora or Ubuntu on there and make it my uber-mobile Linux machine. With no PCMCIA slot I can’t use my Sprint Air Card with it, but it does have built in wireless, and where there’s a wireless signal nearby, Robbo will find it. While cracking WEP encryption from the front seat of my truck was always fun, these days it’s barely necessary these days, what with all the free wifi spots around. So, no longer necessary, but still fun. As my buddy Myles would say, “Aw yeah.” Anyway, I’m taking it with me and plan on messing with it next week quite a bit. Expect a review (shocking) sometime next week.

I killed my old power inverter on my last road trip by sticking an AC plug inside the unit’s vents while not looking and shorting it out. Someone remind me to pick one of those up tomorrow before I get too far from home. I only know of three places that sell them: Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and every truck stop. I guess the bigger the better at this point if I’m going to be running/charging at least one laptop, maybe two — not to mention multiple USB devices including a cell phone charger, GPS, and an external USB drive with all my music on it. Last night I synced the drive with my server and it finished some time this morning. Nothing like taking six months worth of music along for a three-day drive. Gluttony, it’s what’s for dinner.

And speaking of too much media, I of course have my Kindle with me. I still like it and am still using it. I’m currently reading Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing. I love books by authors that encourage people to write. It works every time. I’ve written 2,500 words a day over the past two days on one of the books I’m working on. Hopefully I can stay in “the zone” while I’m away.

As always, I have mixed feelings about this trip. I hate myself for choosing to drive, but you do what you gotta do. By stopping and meeting people along the way, hopefully I’ll make the most of it. Because of this work trip, I’ll be missing Sawyer Willrath’s first birthday (this weekend), my nephew Griffin’s third birthday (next weekend), the birth of my neice’s son Hunter (inducing on Tuesday), St. Patrick’s Day, and spring break (my kids are out of school and daycare all next week and we had hoped to do something together). But, you know what? You do what you gotta do to pay the bills, and in these times I would be an ass to be anything but appreciative for the job I currently have. I’ll just have to deliver presents when I get back.