March 26, 2007

Business Trip to Orlando

Back in March of 2007 of was working at Community Connect. As one of the product managers there, part of my job entailed helping them develop features for mobile phones. This meant that whenever there was a CTIA Wireless conference, I'd get to attend. The last time I went to CTIA in 2005, it was out in San Francisco [See: Business (and Guns!) in San Francisoco] , this time around, CTIA was in Orlando, FL. So I booked a ticket and a hotel and hopped on a plane.

Monday, March 26th

benjamin, irwin — I came into work on Monday morning and brought my travel bag with me. My flight wasn't until the early afternoon and I wanted to try to get a little bit of work done before I had to head out.

As an added bonus, the new camera I'd ordered was delivered just in time for me to take on my trip! Since this trip basically turned into a giant camera test, I'll tell you that the camera was a Canon PowerShot SD 1000. AKA - The best camera I've ever owned. If you're looking for an awesome, cheap camera. Look no further. When I bought this camera back in March of 2007, it cost around $350. As I write this today (June 2008) it's $175! Deal o' the century.

Anyway, I started snapping pics as soon as I got it out of the box. Here's Benjamin and Irwin hard at work. Exciting!

While I was checking out all the new features and settings, I discovered that the "movie mode" now had a new had a "time elapse" feature! I hid the camera in plain sight and filmed this time-elapse movie of Benjamin "working." Haha.

A little past noon, I left work and hopped a taxi to the airport.

Then I made sure I could use my new camera to take pictures of myself where you can't really tell that I'm the one holding the camera. (Which is important when you travel by yourself!)

As soon as the plane was in the air, I took out my cam and began dicking around with the manual settings. I was playing around with the white balance in this pic...

...and after a bit of futzing around, I managed to set up a custom "vivid color" profile so that all my pictures would turn out super-saturated and cartoon-y looking (which is the way I like 'em!).

Then I started playing around with the camera's depth of field . Foreground blur!

And using the macro setting, background blur! Check out the crystals of frost around the little hole. Pretty neat, right?

Being little rules. This little kid that was sitting in the seat in front of me was seeing the world from 30,000 feet for the first time and it was clearly blowing his tiny mind.

Time-elapse video of the plane approaching the airport and then landing in Orlando! It's really cool to see how the wing-flaps move when the film is sped up. (Features extra-special "surprise ending!")

airplane ˆ video

After landing, I picked up my rental car...which was very blue...

...and then hit the scenic Florida highway. Orlando bound!

This guy's ready for bed! (By the way, the awesome Misfits + Alfred E. Neuman shirt was given to me by Amy K when she was the manager of the aNYthing store for a little while. Thanks, Amy! I'll miss the Teenage Unicorn so bad!)

Tuesday, March 27th

Tuesday morning I got up bright and early and hit the convention center floor to check out CTIA.

I was feeling cruddy all day and by the late afternoon I realized that I had a pretty nasty fever. (Prolly picked up a bug on the airplane). I spent the rest of the night laid up in my hotel room drinking lotsa juice and watching a fantastically awful Real World marathon on The MTV.

Wednesday, March 28th

I woke up super-early on Wednesday, but even after taking a monster dose of DayQuil, still couldn't seem to motivate to hit the early-morning sessions of CTIA. Instead, I decided to hang out in my hotel room and play around with my new camera some more. Here's the view of the hotel's pool from my room. And using my new camera's zoom...

...I was totally able to take sneaky pervy photos of teens sunbathing by the pool! Pervtastic!

Around noon, the DayQuil kicked in and I was finally feeling well enough to leave my little air-conditioned cave and venture out into the Florida heat.

On the drive over to the convention center I stopped to grab lunch at some absolutely ENORMOUS Thai restaurant that was located in a strip mall!

Then it was on to the equally spacious convention center for more wireless "action." Actually, to tell you the truth, this convention was B-O-R-I-N-G! What I didn't realize at the time was that there are two CTIA events every year. There's the consumer-based wireless show that happens every year out in San Franciso (which is the one I went to last time). The other one that happens every year is geared more towards huge, corporate vendors and isn't consumer-focused (read: interesting and fun). Meh.

The only thing that was sorta cool was that big corporations = lotsa dollars, which means that they can afford to hire "big shot" keynote speakers. Like...

Thursday, March 29th

...two former presidents? For seriously? After I got over being impressed for like 10 seconds, I realized that W's Dad and Hillary's husband probably didn't have too many earth-shattering things to say about the wireless industry, and elected to skip the keynote...

...and spent my morning packing up and getting ready to head back to NYC. But not before I used my new Pervo-Cam...

...to take more sneaky bikini photos! I love how this photo totally looks like she's making eye contact with the camera while she tucks some nipplage away! Naughty! And speaking of naughty...

I had to check out of my hotel at noon and realized that I had seven hours to kill in the Greater Orlando area before I had to head to the airport to catch my flight. So I used the hotel lobby's wifi to do a little interweb research and was delighted to discover that Orlando is home to a Jesus-themed Christian amusement park called "THE HOLY LAND EXPERIENCE!"

I jotted down directions and hopped in my rental, giddy about the prospect of getting to play cultural anthropologist for the day hoping to observe the not-rare-enough species *fundamentalignoramus americanus* in its natural habitat!

I found the right exit off the highway, but then for the life of my couldn't find the place! I was pulled over in a strip mall parking lot trying to look at the tiny map that was in my rental car's glove compartment when I saw a minivan with a "BUSH CHENEY 04" bumper sticker. Half-kidding, I decided to follow it figuring it would lead me to the "promised land," and sure enough, I-shit-you-not...

...a couple of turns later I was following the van down a service road to The Holy Land Experience! Hahahaha!

I parked my car, which only cost me $15 (In God We Trust, indeed)...and then the next thing I knew I was crossing the pavement and headed towards the entrance to the "*living, biblical museum* that promised to "*take me 7,000 miles away and 2,000 years back in time to the land of the Bible.*" Where its "*combination of sights, sounds, and tastes will stimulate my senses and blend together to create a spectacular new experience!*" And how much does this spectacular new experience cost you may be wondering?

Why only the bargain price of $35 (!!!) holy dollas! I paid my admission, managed to pass through the NON-BELIEVER ATHEIST detectors without setting off any alarms, and found myself in the heart of the world's largest (only?) Bible Theme Park!

Oh, by the way...have you heard the news?

**HE IS RISEN!**
Hahahahahaha. (Any other Sopranos super-fans out there remember Janice's narcoleptic boyfried Aaron who used to proselytize by asking people whether or not they had "heard the news?" Or is it just me that's a huge dork?).

After wandering around the grounds for a while taking in the sights...

...I picked up a guide to the park and read up on some of the attractions. Turns out I was just in time to catch the a performance of the musical that was featured on the cover of the guide...

...CENTURION! According to the guide:

"Centurion is the story of one Roman soldier's journey to save his servant from certain death. In his desperation he must turn to the Jewish Messiah for help. Presented on the steps of the Great Temple, Centurion is a powerful, dynamic musical with a message of salvation for all people."

I sat down a skeptic, but after a few minutes I came to the realization that even Christian musicals about the bible are pretty dope if you throw in enough dagger-wielding soldiers from Imperial Rome.

Oh! I forgot to mention that in the brochure I picked up, the last page had a section called "Guest Conduct Policy" which included the following gem of a line: "*For your safety, only Holy Land Experience employees are allowed to dress in costume.*" Little known fact: They were forced to add this disclaimer after...

...Fabio showed up to the park in his bathrobe last year and pretended to be Jesus all day.

I watched the musical until I couldn't bear it any longer ("it" being the Florida heat, of course) and then retreated to the air conditioned Shofar Auditorium to check out the huge replica of what the city of Jerusalem looked like in 66 AD!

Check out the all the lil' rooftop parties they had going on back in the day! Them Christians is cuh-razy!

The detail is pretty great, right? This photo almost looks like a real castle shot from a helicopter or something! I spent another hour or so wandering around checking out the exhibits (all-the-while dodging overly-friendly Christians who were really intent on learning where I "worshipped" in NYC) before I decided I had to pack it up and head to the airport.

As much as I've made fun of this place, and as much as I don't believe in Jesus (or any omniscient, bearded-men in the sky for that matter), for the record I'd like to say that The Holy Land Experience actually *was* a pretty cool experience. They actually kept the whole "Jesus" thing pretty low-key and all the exhibits were pretty great depictions of what the city of Jerusalem was like back in the day. I don't know if it was thirty-five-dollars "worth it," but I will admit that I was pleasantly surprised.

Orlando Airport. Waiting to board. 7:34pm sunset.

So: the flight takes off uneventfully; we've been in the air for about an hour, I'm kicking back in my seat, watching some reruns of *The Office* on my little Jet Blue tv set, and then a flight attendant comes down the aisle and drops off a little goodie bag o' snacks! I looked up to thank her, and although I only caught a glimpse of her before she continued down the aisle, I realized "I KNOW THAT LADY FROM SOMEWHERE!" Now mind you, I'm that guy that ALWAYS thinks he recognizes people from somewhere, but after racking my brain for a few minutes, I realized that the snack-totin' flight attendant was...

emilie, me — ...my friend Emilie's mom that I'd met once back in April of 2004 when I went to go see Emilie's photography show! And the crazy thing is, she totally remembered me too! (here's the pic from the only other time we met!). We hung out in the back of the plane and chatted and then before long...

Monday, March 26th

Tuesday, March 27th

Wednesday, March 28th

Thursday, March 29th

HE IS RISEN!