I know a lot of people that say that they’d miss the seasons if they moved to Hawaii. I’m not one of those people. I’m happy with having a single, awesome, sunny season. But one thing that I realized is that the seasons definitely do add a nice pacing to the year. And for someone like me that is really bad at mentally measuring the passage of time, a month can flash by without even noticing.

That doesn’t bother me too much since most of my recognition of the seasons boiled down to something like the following:

Spring: being happy it was no longer Winter, but really just waiting for it to be Summer

Summer: being happy

Fall: being sad that Summer is over and dreading the approach of Winter

Winter: being rather miserable and basically just waiting for Spring to bring a reprieve

That basically left me only 3 months total to really enjoy myself… and if those few months happened to be fairly busy with non-fun stuff, it was particularly painful.

Now, without having been here a year, it’s had to say what annual patterns will really imprint on me. There’s one huge one that I’m extremely excited for – and that’s the arrival of the whales. That highlight aside, I’m sure there’s other things that will be noted and measured year-to-year. They just escape me right now.

The other important thing to consider is that I lived in Massachusetts for over 30 years before finally moving. The passage of the northeast seasons is somewhat ingrained into parts of my brain that I can’t even access. It will definitely be a little while until I’m able to mentally decouple what the seasons “should be” and what they really are.

Until then, regardless of the speed at which time appears to fly by, I’ll try to just enjoy the great weather and total lack of the “bad” seasons.

It’s “long” (around 10m), but I’ve happily watched it a few times.

As I start taking more video, I’m sure I’ll be posting it more regularly as well.

Enjoy

I know some people are always going to be content spending endless hours on the beach from sun up to sun down. I’m not one of them. I actually can’t stand just hanging out at the beach. For me, the beach is that sandy place that I have to walk across to get to the water.

What you need to know about Maui is that there’s not a huge night life. If you need dance clubs and the sort of activity you’d find in a city, you’re much better off heading to Waikiki on the island of Oahu. However, if you want to kick back and relax in one of the most beautiful places in the world after a long day of having a great time – this may be exactly where you want to be.

To get the most out of your time, you’re going to want to get up early and start your activities when the sun’s still low in the sky. This has the obvious benefit of being a bit cooler but also the earlier you get out the fewer other people you have to deal with. For popular activities, there can be A LOT of people to contend with and it’s nice to get in and out with as few hassles as possible. You’re typically going to have to make a reservation with the company that you’ll be doing your activity with and you won’t have any idea how many other people are in your group unless they say what their maximum size is. Some snorkel boats can easily pack 50+ people and drop you all off in the same exact place… and a popular spot will see many boats visiting at the same time. I heard one person mention that the popular dive spot Molokini can see over 3,000 people in an average day.

I’m sure a lot of people think that the last thing they want to do on vacation is get up early. I can sympathize. But if you’re coming to Hawaii from the East, you’re already looking at anywhere between a 2 to 7 hour time difference depending on where in North America you’re coming from and the time of year you’re visiting (Hawaii doesn’t follow Daylight Savings Time, so there’s a one hour swing for almost any timezone). So even if you want to sleep in, you’re going to be getting up “early” anyway — so you might as well do something with that time. Plus, if you stay in the routine of getting up early every day on your trip, it’ll make readjusting to your original time zone easier when you finally head home.

With all of this said, you still need to pick what you want to do. Some very obvious choices are:

• Snorkel trip to Molokini
• Go kayaking (you can paddle to snorkel spots, anchor and then snorkel right out of the kayaks)
• Learn to dive or get on a dive trip with one of the local shops if you’re certified (remember your C-card!)
• Watch the sun rise or set from Haleakala
• Walk Front St. in Lahaina and do some shopping
• Hike any of the multiple hikes around the island
• Drive to Hana
• Go on a whale watch (in the Winter months only)

With the exception of a trip to Hana (which can fill an entire day) and Haleakala (which will be pegged to sunrise or sunset unless you visit in the middle of the day), most activities are going to let you start early (between 7am and 8am) and last to sometime around lunch. Once you get lunch and possibly clean up, you’ve got the rest of the day to do “something”.

If you want to maximize your time and fill it with “stuff” that’s not necessarily just lounging, then the best formula to follow is to make all appointments that you need to schedule (snorkel or dive trips, kayaking, boat rides, etc) as early in the morning as possible. Then, leave yourself a bit of time for lunch and then plan those activities that don’t require appointments (free snorkeling, shopping, hiking, beach time, etc.) for afternoon until sunset. The vast majority of planned activities you end up doing tend to last only about half a day and keeping this in mind really helps plan out your time.

I understand that many people aren’t big planners, but even these people are going to want to try to plan things out for a few days when it comes to activities that require reservations. You’d be surprised how quickly various trips and events can fill up. A small amount of planning can ensure that you’ll get to do everything that you want.

Yes – that means that I boarded an airplane and flew through the air in order to play a card game.

I don’t tend to talk about Magic that much, mainly keeping the chatter isolated to my twitter feed, but it’s something that I used to fill a lot of my free time with before moving. I was regularly playing a couple times a week in organized events back in Boston. Unfortunately, there is zero organized play on Maui. We don’t even have a game store here. As such, the only options are to either find people to play with (I’ve found a couple, and they’re few and far between) or go somewhere else to play.

Luckily, Oahu has a pretty big Magic community and it’s really close. From wheels up to wheels down, I timed our flight as 20 minutes. They list the trip as a 40m flight, but that’s to take into account the time pulling away from the gate before actually taking off and all the taxiing after landing. Also thankfully, my credit card accrues Hawaiian Air miles, so the flight itself is “free” – leaving just the hotel to pay for.

It might be a bit extreme, but it’s something that I really enjoy and only will end up doing this maybe 3-4 times a year at most. That’s quite a far cry from playing 2 or more times a week.

At the end of the day, the lack of Magic players is really the only thing that I have to complain about with Maui. And if that’s all I have to complain about, I’m probably doing really well.

Turns out that after I booked my time for North Carolina, I still had almost two weeks of vacation that I needed to take or else I’d lose it at the end of the year. I’m still carrying over a full week — it’s just that anything in excess of that is lost. I’m not a fan of these policies, but I understand them.

The notion of the “staycation” drives me nuts. I’m at home all the time. And taking time off just to sit around and not do anything is one of the worst ideas ever. If I’m going to take my earned vacation time, I want to go somewhere and do something. So faced with all the time off, I immediately booked a trip to the west coast.

After I get back to Boston on Tuesday, I have nothing planned (aside from the xmas run around).

Hopefully, the next time I’m leaving Boston via air it will be headed to Hawaii — but more on that later.

I left with a decent amount of congestion that made decent into PDX very uncomfortable. My sinuses didn’t want to calm down so I couldn’t equalize without a lot of effort. It took a couple of days before I felt decent, but it happened and we had a good time.

Ended up doing some work on my right arm beginning a cover-up on the piece that I started a long time ago. Going to end up being a full underwater sleeve. We only outlined about 1/4 – 1/3 of it and will pick up next time I’m in Portland.

On the return flight, something happened that I didn’t know was possible. We had boarded early and we were hoping to get off the ground early too. While we were waiting, one of the passengers was talking to one of the flight attendants. From the sound of it, they knew each other or the passenger was an airline employee. She had told the flight attendant that they were still waiting on a 3rd person to show up and that he hadn’t boarded yet. This was pretty much exactly when we were going to be closing the front door and pulling back from the gate.

They held the plane another 10-15m, then shut the door and pulled the gate back. At that point, the two people that were waiting on the third, asked to get off and the airline actually brought the ramp back and opened the door. Then, at that point, they finally heard from their missing party member who was just arriving… so they held the plane for him to get on.

We started out looking like we were going to depart 10-15m early but actually departed about 35m late for one single person.

What pisses me off is that I know that a plane wouldn’t be held for me. Or anyone else I know. It’s the inequity that’s annoying.

That all said, the flight back itself was uneventful. I slept for about 90% of it. Going to bed at 1:30am and getting up at 4:30am to get to the airport definitely had its benefits in that regard.

I couldn’t get to bed until about 3am due to being on pacific time and got up early this morning. Once up, I had to deal with some BME server problems and ended up getting a VERY late start on the day. With my errands ran, I’m now sitting on my butt watching Predators.

Still have the rest of today and the weekend before I need to show up at work — which I’m digging. Until then, I’m not even going to check my email.

The power issue aside, let me summarize how awesome my current situation is: I’m sitting in a chair, while flying 34,000 feet in the air, while talking to people hundreds and thousands of miles away via the internet.

If that’s not enough to BLOW PEOPLE’S MINDS, I don’t know what is.

Think about trying to explain this to your grandparents when they were teenagers. They simply couldn’t comprehend everything beyond people being able to fly. Then, think about telling their grandparents.

To quote Arthur C. Clarke:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Think about that for just a minute and realize how true it is. Imagine something as commonplace as television and how it’d appear to someone from the 1400′s. Not only would their mind be blown, but you’d also be considered a demon or a witch. These are people that thought magnets had special quasi-magical properties… and we have people living 170-280 miles above the surface of the Earth in orbit.

Simply incredible.

At the end of the day, I think what’s important to remember is to try not to take things for granted. We live in increasingly incredible times. What would be considered impossible just 20 years ago is not only possible, but commonplace for so many people.

With the integration with my MacBook, all the Mail settings (I pull down from 3 different servers) and all of my contacts were imported without issue.

Battery life can definitely wind down with hours of app use, but I don’t think that anyone should expect otherwise. On the flip-side, the iPhone seems to charge rather quickly, so while it’s a PITA to have to stop and charge it, it luckily doesn’t end up being a problem.

At the end of this week, I’ll be in Portland and away from my laptop a lot more. We’ll see how that works out. Tomorrow I’ll be back in Boston, which I’m excited about.

Tomorrow I fly out to Wilmington, NC for a few days. I’ll be back in Boston for two days. Then I’m leaving for Portland, OR on the 10th, returning on the 18th.

It’ll be nice to get out of Boston for a bit. The real stress will be the airports. BOS-ILM needs to connect through Charlotte, which is a pain in the ass. I always have to cross the ENTIRE airport to get from my arriving to departing gates. At least BOS-PDX and back are non-stop flights. Can’t beat that.

I’ve been neglecting this blog for a bit. It also happens around this time each year. I also noticed that I have 113 spam messages to blow away. You’d think that getting a lot of spam would be some indication of popularity. That doesn’t seem to be the case. At least they’re being captured. Better than comments being filled with garbage Viagra ads.

Hopefully fun things happen and I’ll have more to chatter about.

The week of 12/8 I was nighttime upgrader and I was scheduled to work the weekend of 12/13. That got bumped, but completely ate my Friday night. Then from 12/18-12/25, I’ve been on-call, which means 24-7 support coverage by phone. I also did that weekend work that got rescheduled this past weekend. It’s all very exhausting and totally screws up my sleep schedule.

So on the 25th I’ll be “free” for a few days before I go into two solid weeks of traveling. Just being away from work will be nice… but traveling has its own exhaustion associated with it. I just wish I was going somewhere warm and tropical. I need to get somewhere to dive soon else I’m going to go stir crazy.