Apparently the convention center only has a half a megabit pipe for internet connectivity. This wouldn’t be so bad if it were just me, but with the crowd of presenters and staff all trying to sync up with their various home offices, that half megabit is like a big juicy porterhouse steak sitting all by itself at the all-you-can-eat buffet. I got a forkful, but I also got someone else’s fork stuck in my hand, and the maitre’d is nowhere to be seen.

I don’t remember it being this bad last year. Same venue, same staff… maybe the construction across the street has forced re-routing of lines or something. Dunno.

Upshot of all this… the presentations I needed to tweak are dependent on data I don’t have access to. Grrr….

–Howard

I’m here.

I got in last night at 6:15pm local time, 10:15am Utah time. The flight was long — seemingly interminable, with 5 hours to JFK, 7 hours to Dakar, and a final 8 hours to Johannesburg — but the seats were ALL equipped with flat-panel screens, so I got to watch movies to pass the time.

The Return of The King is a great time-passer. I also saw the live-action Peter Pan movie for the first time, and really enjoyed it.

Anyway, upon arrival I found that my usual deal-with-jetlag strategy of getting some natural daylight in the new location was not going to work. It’s winter in this hemisphere, and the sun had already gone down. Ugh.

Ugh Part II: The store that USED to have a wall full of New Rock boots now had a paltry display of seven styles, all basically the same ankle-boot shape. I won’t be buying boots here. I’ll have to see if I can find a place in Amsterdam or Hague that has more selection when I’m over there in a month.

Or maybe… just maybe… I’ll get by with the boots I already own. You know, save the money for milk for the kids and stuff.

Right now I’m sitting in the Sandton Convention Center not preparing my sessions. I need to fix that. It’s 1:00pm local time, and what I really want right now is a nap.

–Howard

I got everything colored. I’m still short on scripts, and when I return on Saturday I’ll be looking at coloring the coming week, creating a newsbox for Monday the 31st, filling the Premium Gallery for the week of the 31st, and cranking the buffer back up again with scripting, pencilling, and inking. It’s hardly ideal, but it’s the hand I dealt myself, so I’m playing it. I suppose I could do some more coloring tonight to lighten the load, but I’m tired.

Maybe I’ll do some scripting on the flight back. (Insert reference to exorectal flying monkeys here).

–Howard

I sat down to crank today, and noticed that it was PERFECT disc golf weather. I prepped images, and then decided that rather than rewarding myself for a long day in front of the computer by going out for some DG, I’d go play FIRST while the weather was right, run my pre-trip errands, and then come BACK and work.

Now I’m regretting that choice. The weather was great, but I couldn’t throw approaches for crap and my putting was slop. I ended up 10 over on 18, and the only bright spot was that on the 9 I usually play I was only 2 over. So my “fun” for the day was frustrating, and the shopping I did afterwards was hectic. Saturday at Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart? Ugh.

So here I am back in front of the computer coloring. I’m seven rows in to the 13 that MUST be completed before I depart, and I’m sick of it. What now? I told myself I was not getting out of the chair until the coloring was done. I imagined myself stapled to my desk. I projected a mental state of “nose to grindstone.”

What can I say? I lied, the staples came loose, and my mental projector burnt out a bulb. I’m going to get up and walk around.

When you eat a piece of cake, do you eat the cake first and save the frosting for last? Do you just eat the pieces as they come? Or do you do what I just did and lick all the frosting off first, and then wonder why the lump of licked-over, picked-over cake isn’t appetizing?

–Howard