Saturday, November 4, 2006 @ 12:00 PM in General Travel
I just got back from my trip to Albuquerque, NM to interview with Eclipse Aviation for the Webmaster / Graphic Designer position. My old roommate Ramy works out there and let me know about the position opening and got me in contact with Eclipse.
I flew out Thursday afternoon and got into Albuquerque around 3:00 local time. I got to the car rental place and then went and checked into the hotel. After getting settled in, I got a hold of Ramy and met up with him after he got off work. We went downtown and had a few drinks, then met up with one of his friends from work and ate at Gardunos. I had the Flautas which were really good, and a Margarita which was also quite excellent. After eating, I went back to my hotel and went to bed so I could get up early for my interview Friday morning.
On Friday, I woke up, took a shower, ironed my clothes that got all wrinkled from the trip, ate breakfast and then headed over to Eclipse. I got there a few minutes early and checked in. The interviews started at 9 and I was in interviews until 3:00 that afternoon. I talked with several people and they also took me out to lunch at a nice Greek place (which was also part of the interviews). The lunch interview was with the IT guys and we talked about IIS, Apache, ASP, PHP, servers, programming, Vi, Pico and a lot of other awesome stuff :o. I was also shown around the facilities and got to meet a lot of people who work for Eclipse. All in all, I think the interviews went well and will hear back one way or another sometime this week about the position.
On Friday night, Ramy, one of his coworkers and I went to see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. The movie was awesome and I recommend everyone see it. Ramy and I have known about Borat since our sophomore years of college and have introduced many many people to it. After the movie we went to Frontier (a restaurant on the UNM campus that's open 24/7 and serves a mixed variety of food). I wasn't too hungry so I just had a lemonade. After that I went back to the hotel and went to bed.
I slept in on Saturday and then drove down to Old Town in Albuquerque. Old Town has a bunch of shops and restaurants, plus a lot of museums. I ended up eating breakfast/lunch outside at a sidewalk cafe type place. They had something called "Pizzadillas" on their menu, so I tried that. It's basically a quesadilla with pepperoni inside as well. They served some chips and salsa with the meal and I kinda relaxed there for a while. After walking around some more in Old Town, I went up to the airport. In Albuquerque, they have an "Aircraft Viewing Area" by the airport and I sat there for a while and watched the planes take off and land. It was a great place to relax because you have the view of the mountains in the background. Check out the photo gallery to see some of the pics I took of the area.
After that, I went back to the hotel and relaxed for a bit before Ramy and I met up for dinner. We had a late lunch / early dinner at Kelly's Brew Pub, then went up to the top of the Sandia Crest and got to see the view. From the top, you could see Albuquerque on one side, and off in the distance on the other you could see Santa Fe. It was a really neat place. We got there right at sunset and it was neat seeing the city lit up. After coming down from the mountain, we met up with some of Ramy's friends at an italian place. After that we went bowling and the 7 of us split a few pitchers of beer. We got about 5 rounds of bowling in and the best I got was a 148 I think. There seemed to be a direct correlation between the amount of beer consumed and the improvement of our game... go figure. The first game I only got in the 90s, then the second I broke 100 and it went up. By the last game, we all kinda gave up and were just messing around rolling the balls grandma style or seeing how fast we could launch them down the aisle. I got back to the hotel around midnight and went to bed.
I woke up at 5:30 this morning because my flight left at 8 and I needed to get to the airport early for security and everything. Plus I had to take a shower, check out of the hotel and return the rental car. The flights back were fine. I had a long flight to Ohare, then a short one from Ohare to Indy. I slept most of the way on both flights since I didn't have a book with me.
I have another phone interview with Apple at 8:00am tomorrow which should be cool. That means I should probably wrap this up and head off to bed soon since I'm still a little tired from traveling all day.
Be sure to click the link below to view some of the photos I took while I was there.
Teaser photos:
View Entire Photo Gallery
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