Thank You Katie!

Last Sunday Katie asked my about sending text messages to my cell phone while in Australia.  Earlier in May I talked to Verizon and was told my phone would work, but calls would cost $1.55/minute.  Since we need to call Pat when we arrive, that was an acceptable charge.

But when I asked Verizon about TXT messages, the reply I got this week was "your phone won't work in Australia"!  I checked further at Verizon International  and sure enough Australia is not on the International Roaming list.

Verizon does have an international phone rental program, but that's $3.99/day and $2.29/minute.  So at that cost we're passing on it.   But it's nice to know it's available.

I'm sure glad Katie asked otherwise we'd have been in for a big surprise when we arrived and tried to call Pat.  Now I checked and pay phones are available so we'll just use one of them.

Sydney Bridge Climb

Tonight I booked the Sydney Bridge Climb!  I'm so excited!  This will be soooo cool!  If you check it out, the engineer in me picked the Discovery climb which takes you all around various maintenance catwalks.  Be sure to check out the panorama on the web site.

So think of me on Thursday, 6/25, at 1345 'cause that's when my climb starts. (That's 3:45 am Friday to my Michigan readers!)

Correction 6/4:  In Australia we'll be 14 hours AHEAD, not behind, so I'll be starting the bridge walk at 11:45 PM Wednesday in Michigan)

I wanted someone to accompany me, but she's settling for the 200 step climb to the Pylon Lookout. Oh well....

Civil War Day at Greenfield Village

On Memorial Day we went to Greenfield Village and saw the Civil War camp.  The husband of one of Mary's friends commands "Briggs Battery" and is pictured here (wearing a cap with a red dot on top).  It was a very nice day, but it did get a bit warm since it hit 85 and we're not used to the hot weather yet. In the picture they had just hooked the cannon up to a team of horses and were about to take it down to the field to fire it.

Australia

One of the main reasons I'm starting this blog is to find a new place to post about our travels.  Mary and I started traveling in 2004 with a trip to North Carolina.  Our first major trip was to Alaska in June 2005 and  we haven't stopped since!

Now we are preparing to go to Australia and I wanted a blog where I could quickly and easily post about our daily activities.  I want to try out the email posting capability as that sounds very cool.  So you may see a few test posts here as I work out the kinks in that process.  I want to at least post a picture-of-the-day with commentary.

So, welcome to my Traveling DBA blog!

New Job

I recently changed jobs at DTE.  After bring a DBA (Data BAse Administrator) for 12 years, and being promised a Specialist position for 5 years, it finally happened!

The position was posted last November, interviews were started in January, but stretched

 into February due to scheduling issues, and I finally was told I had the new position in March.  But the agreement is that I will continue to support the new release of DTE's new Work Mgmt system, Maximo, which is scheduled to be implemented on May 31st.

In early May I decided it was time to move into my new office so my team leader, Kathie, organized a going away party. We went to Cheli's Detroit for lunch and then they surprised me with this cake.

I'm enjoying the new position very much and have reached several milestones - like Last Day On Call.  

First Post

Vox was nice, but I really liked my old manual blog better.  I'm hoping this one is more like that one.

I plan to post to a variety of topics, but most will be travel related.  

So hopefully the 3 or 4 people who read these posts will enjoy this and can keep up with what Mary and I are doing on our various trips since I hope to post daily when we are traveling.

Now I just need to figure out how to include pictures in my posts!  8-)