Sacramento Trip 3/23/2026

Last week, I traveled to Sacramento for work. This was not the first time I've been to Sacramento and will likely not be the last, but outside of meeting up with a friend and having a relatively successful work trip, this was a fairly frustrating trip. 

My folks were traveling elsewhere so they were unable to watch Miko. I had to board him at the local vet hospital which I was fairly concerned about. I would always prefer having him stay with my parents because he's comfortable with them and their home. It's basically his second home. Boarding him to a new place was stressful for both me and I'm sure him. Fortunately they're also a vet hospital so if something were to go wrong, he'd be fine. He was sick from stress on Monday sadly. When I picked him up, he was ecstatic to see me. I can tell he was barking a lot as his voice is a bit strained. This has happened before sadly. Other than that, it went okay but I would rather not do that in the future. 

Lodging was a nightmare. Due to the current government shutdown, TSA lines were abysmal. The longest I've ever had to wait in line for security was probably 45 minutes a few years ago during Christmas. This time it was close to 2 hours. My flight had to be delayed due to this as well and I almost missed my connecting flight too. Insanely stressful flight. On top of all that, I spilled kung pao sauce onto my pants in the airport. Nothing will be as bad as my 13 hour layover flight from Seattle during Christmas 2022 but this was a close second. 

So fast forward to 3 AM, 3/23. I get the rental car easy and I'm on my way to the hotel. I booked my hotel and flight via my company's internal travel service. I had to take a red eye as it was unfortunately the most convenient through BWI. I learned that the way this internal service works is it will book the hotel for the day AFTER your flight if it's a red eye. The logic being land on 3/23, hotel on 3/23. Makes sense on paper until the hotel won't check you in because check in for that day starts at 3:00 pm. For some fucking reason, they couldn't just add a day to my existing reservation so I had to make a second one. This back to back check in/check out/check in was a constant problem with the Holiday Inn system. They couldn't figure out my receipt, and when I finally checked out on Friday, they charged me the same amount for 1 night instead of 4. Normally that's a plus but now I'm just waiting on them to fix it and I can't submit my expense report and be reimbursed by my company until it's resolved. I have no idea why they couldn't comprehend the idea of two separate bookings. I may end up being out $425 if they realize the mistake in the future. On top of all this, literally every single time I went to my room, I had to get a new key because they all stopped working, without fail every day. This was a terrible Holiday Inn and I'll never stay there again. 

What also bums me out about that hotel is it's the wrong Holiday Inn. This is more on me, but I didn't know there was a second one in that area. I wanted to stay next to the BJs Brewpub restaurant that I went to last year. It was a nice restaurant and within walking distance from the OTHER Holiday Inn. I did manage to go there throughout the week though so that was nice. They have an amazing in house red ale. 

The plus side of this trip was the work side went really well. Not to go into specific details but this was the first solo commissioning trip I've been in charge of and fortunately nothing major went wrong. If something did, it would've been a really rough time because I'm the only test engineer there and I wouldn't have been able to complete everything. 

At the end of the trip, I went up to a retro game store to meet with an online friend! This was a great time. The store was called Fire & Ice Games. It was without a doubt the biggest retro store I've ever seen. 

I picked up two games, Beyond Good & Evil, and Star Fox Adventures, both on Gamecube. The former, I've been curious about for a while and I decided to treat myself. The latter, I had a copy but lost at some point. The staff were all super friendly and personable. I had a great conversation about Pokemon Ranger Guardian Signs and PMD Explorers of Sky with a nice person who worked there. I thought I was the only person who loved that game, lol. She gave me the title of "Best Guy From Maryland" lmao. It was super cool meeting up with a friend in person for the first time. This was a fantastic end to the trip. I wish I had more time to hang out but I was afraid of the TSA lines given what I had to deal with in BWI.

Fortunately my flight back didn't have any massive wait times for TSA and I was able to fly directly to BWI instead of a layover. One thing that was super weird was the people who took my rental car return. They offered to take me to the airport in a gesture of convenience, but the airport shuttle was literally right there. They told me "yeah this'll be faster, just leave your stuff here and we'll take you." That was a clear scam, or even worse a kidnapping attempt. They weren't very good at it tbh. I should probably report that. 

All in all, this was an okay week. Some really high highs, but some low lows. I feel a lot more confident in my profession at the very least.