I was in West Virginia over the weekend for work. Here's the story...

WV was just so ... boring. The only exciting thing on the whole trip was the first day when I was driving from the Charleston airport to this factory in Sissonville which is about 15 minutes away. So anyway, I had directions from Google Maps and they seemed to be panning out ok, until right in the end where it asked me to take this road called Tolley Hollow Road and claimed that 1 *** Drive would be at the end of it.

So I turn into Tolley Hollow Road and it's this tiny little single lane road which seems to snaking higher and higher into the mountains. All I see along the way are these little trailer homes right out of Blue Collar TV and I think to myself, "Something is wrong here but then again Google Maps seems to be saying I'm on the right track." After about 10 minutes of a road which just kept getting worse, I look ahead and see that it's not paved any more!! I stopped and after maybe 3 tries succeed in turning around. This old Southern gentleman had stepped out of his trailer home and was curiously watching this Indian guy driving a red Mitsubishi Galant struggling to turn around.

So I say to him, "Hi sir, I seem to be lost, I'm looking for the factory of *** corporation."

"*** Corporation, haven't heard of them."

"They make spark plugs"

"Ah! You mean the spark plug factory, yeah, just follow Tolley Hollow Road all the way back to CR21, go past the highway bridge and turn right on River Bend Road."

"Thanks so much, I had directions from a computer but this is where they got me!"

Anyway, it turns out that Google Maps was not just a little bit off but more than a mile off, in the wrong direction! Next time, I plan to use MapQuest. You should too!

The rest of the WV trip was boring. We had some snow/rain on Sunday which made driving a mess. Apparently there were a lot of wrecks but I missed all of them. I spent Sunday and Monday night at the bar of the hotel and explained to a couple of Australian dudes the finer points of American football while watching the Colts comeback and beat the Patriots!

Happy New Year 2007 to everyone who's reading!

After a great time in Las Vegas and a lot of thinking during the long flights (I was just traveling for the whole day, on the 29th and the 1st!) I decided on quite a few things.

Goodbye Internet. It was nice knowing you but I need to get out more in the real world. No more hours spent on Slashdot, Digg, del.icio.us and scans_daily. That time shall be spent in the gym, at bars, and generally out of the house.

I'll still update this blog but it's going to be much fewer and far between. And the updates will be about stuff I did out there!