Thanksgiving weekend roadtrip

I just came back from the roadtrip we took for the extra long (American edition) Thanksgiving weekend. We drove to see the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and stopped by Las Vegas, Nevada.

Driving right through the night, we arrived in Grand Canyon early Thur. morning. I got about ~2 hrs of sleep that night in the car. But the tiring journey was definitely worth it, to see one of the 7 natural wonders of the world! If you haven't seen the Grand Canyon, trust me, you have to check it out, it's one truly amazing sight.


We decided to hike one of the trails along the Canyon. It was actually quite a lot of fun. The trail is literally going straight down the edge of the canyon, if you slip and fall, well... that's it. Can't help ya there. Going down was fun enough, but going back up ... that was a real bitch. I still get winded just looking at the pictures.

Next day, we made our way to the Fabulous city of Las Vegas. On the way, we stopped to stare at the monstrous structure that is the Hoover Dam. This thing powers pretty much all of the desert area in the Western US. It's scary and awesome at the same time. It's one of the seven civil engineering wonders of the US. Gotta pay my respekt!


We spent the next day and a half in Vegas, which coincidentally also included my birthday, Nov. 26. Vegas is always fun. Some underage illegal gambling, hitting up the Aladdin buffet, spending quality time with my hombres at DejaVu Showgirls, were all good ways to celebrate.


In the end, we collected a hella lot of mileages on our rentals, saw beautiful sights, came away with awesome times and good memories. Some photos found here.

Welcome to the Shark Tank

A bunch of us Actel interns, plus one Altera intern, went to watch a San Jose Sharks game last night at the hp pavilion. Sharks vs. Flyers. The game was quite entertaining, but lost enthusiasm near the end. San Jose won the game blowout style 6-1. That was the score by the end of second period, so the third was kind of uneventful. Nevertheless, seeing 7 goals scored was "niiiiiiiiiice", as Borat puts it. Interestingly enough, none of the big names got in on any of the action. Forsberg, Gagne, Thornton, Cheechoo, they were all really quite throughout the game.

The really cool part of the night was 1) everyone in the audience scoring free pizza from Round Table for the Sharks scoring 4 or more goals. 2)For one of those audience participation contests that goes on during the game, our section got picked to compete against another in a dance off contest. Basically, whichever section dances the best wins the prize. Thanks to some hip old dude who really tear it up, out entire section won $10 gift certificates to Dave&Buster's. He was sitting close to me, just one row behind. Now, what you're suppose to do, is grab one ticket and pass the rest on, but everyone was taking 2 or more. The stash even came back to me by the end. So in total I earned $40 worth of Dave&Buster's fun. All this for a $25 ticket, not too shabby.