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Quick but lengthy update.
[Written at the hotel last night, and the airport on Tuesday.]
2/24/2003 8:20 am (Pacific)
So, I get to the airport. That actually went very smoothly, really. At the last minute, getting out of the house, I realized I hadn't packed stamps in case I wanted to write to anyone (I always think I will; I almost never find time, even if I want to). Then, I couldn't find the stamps. At the last minute I remembered they were probably up on a desk in the computer room. I have no clue now what memory trigger made me remember that, or why they were there, but they were. I grabbed some - and put the rest back in the mail center where they ought to have been in the first place; that way, Scott will have a hope of finding them if he needs stamps while I'm gone. :)
All that made me maybe 5 minutes late out the door, but it is for this that I follow the "arrive two hours early" guideline even though, at my local airport, it is patently absurd and a waste of your time to do so. I told myself I was arriving early, breathed twice, and went out the door.
Which is when I found that I'd bought toilet paper last week and forgotten to take it in. (I had too much for one trip and put off the second trip out to the car in the cold - and this is what happens when I do that....) Okay, toilet paper in house, luggage in trunk formerly occupied by the TP, back out the door. (I hope Scott's as amused to find the toilet paper in the front hall as I was to find it in the trunk. He probably will be.)
Then I realized that, oh yeah, when we'd thought Scott would drop me off, we'd meant to have him refill the car. And it was showing lower than it had been the night before; I wasn't entirely sure it would make the airport, and I was sure I'd be unhappily hunting for a gas station on my return. (I get back at about 5 pm on Saturday, which would preclude Scott playing in his game, which I don't want to do. So the company is paying for parking in the economy lot again.) So, a stop at the gas station.
Rant on: WHY do I always pay so little attention and then stop at the gas station near I-5 on the north Wilsonville exit? Yes, it's conveniently located, but driving out of my way would be faster and less stressful. They are perpetually understaffed; sometimes they don't even have enough people to keep a rough track of who arrived when. They are slow. They are expensive, since they're "conveniently" located. And I know better. (Which is to say they had one person pumping gas. During the first part of proto-rush hour (6:40 or thereabouts). Despite the moans of those who never learned to pump gas, and despite largely being one of them, I really wish this state would legalize self-serve.)
So, 20 minutes down. Reminded myself that (a) I had an hour of leeway in my chosen arrival time versus the "drop-dead" point, and (b) I deliberately estimated the drive time at the height of rush hour, which this wasn't. It was actually a very pleasant drive; I passed the view area along I-205, over the river in Clackamas County, in the dawn light (pre-sunrise, but by a matter of minutes). And I really wished I had time to pull off. Mt. Hood was completely visible in the clear air, the snow on the upper reaches tinged pink by the rising sun. It was like something out of a faerie story, it was gorgeous. As it is, I only stole glances at it while driving. (Mt. St. Helens was clear for a while later in the drive, though by then it wasn't quite as spectacular, it was still really cool.)
Arrived in economy parking as anticipated, found a parking spot in the same row as the shelter (always go to red lot, at Portland International; blue lot is first on the roundabout and fills first, so there's a better choice of spaces in red). Just had time to repack my luggage so my purse was in my backpack (bringing me to the required carryon) before the shuttle arrived. Reached the airport at my originally intended time, never mind the drop-dead point.
This is where it got really amusing. We're under heightened security, of course, because of the terrorism alerts, which I'd largely ignored. I sort of anticipate that anything I bring with me may be searched at the airport, so whether it's more or less likely, enh. Now they're searching vehicles that approach the terminal, and that includes shuttles from long-term parking. The light was red as we came up; they pulled two of the cars, but they didn't pull the others or our bus for the random search (but they do, according to our driver, which makes sense). The guy seated nearest the front was commenting about how the random searches didn't seem very effective, since they were letting far more cars go through than they were stopping and terrorists would probably send several in and not care if some were caught.
He made the driver nervous, but there's a hole in his logic, which is this: if a random search turned up explosives or anything else terrorist-related, I strongly suspect that every vehicle and maybe everything, period, would be stopped, cleared out of the area, searched, etc. I would imagine the same thought has, after all, already occurred to several people. But I do think the driver was not comfortable with his passenger's comments. :)
Checkin was really easy. They had the line moving fairly quickly. I didn't even stay to see my checked luggage checked. (All luggage was being routed through TSA search points. I handed mine over, confirmed there were no set locks on it - I have a couple locks, but they hang off the zipper tabs when I check it, rather than actually locking anything - and then went over to check in. I've got my receipt, they've got the tag and the bag, they'll sort it out.)
Then we hit security. Early morning on a Monday sucks, but we're talking 5 am early morning. As it turns out, 7:45 or so is not a bad time to hit the security checkpoints, on a Monday morning. It was fairly quick and none of my luggage got searched there either (much to my surprise; I did expect the backpack to come back, since I had the digital camera, download cords for the digital recorder, two battery rechargers and tons of batteries, all in the camera case, stuck at the bottom of the backpack). Just realized I forgot the power cord for my digital camera; oops. I don't use it too much anyway, and I have plenty of batteries, so I'll just have to cope with that.
The guy ahead of me did get searched. They held his carryon for a long several seconds in the machine. Then they put it back through, flipped over, after shaking it slightly. They held it in there again for a while. There were three people staring at the screen and exchanging low-voiced comments. And then he got searched. Big shock, that was predictable at that point. :)
They've really made this more efficient. I'm not sure I believe it's any more effective, but it is more efficient than when they started. It's not really significantly inconvenient and it's no worse than travel before 9/11 in terms of average inconvenience, from what I've experienced. (Today was well above average.)
I was at the gate by 8. With a flight at 9:20, once again, I left too much time. And I love it that way, because it makes it easy to banish worries. :)
2/25/2003 8:18 pm (Eastern)
You know, there's a lot to be said for having some time to yourself and being warm, comfortable, and well-fed. I'm a very happy programmer right now. We looked at the site; it all looks good. Since this is a new center, they have been training on the same hardware they will use when they go live, which considerably lessens the risks involved in this. Training today ran until 4 pm, so we introduced ourselves to each other, learned "our" area of the center, fiddled around, contributed bits to a crisis on another system, and swapped war stories from earlier lives (some of them years ago).
Of course, we also initialized the live database, started hunting for a nuisance bug, put together a patch build to bring in a few fixes made since their last build, defused an ill-timed test on the server during training, by someone not aware that his actions would impact training, confirmed that some pre-existing data "oddities" had all been cleaned up, and a few other tasks along the way. But we were constrained from, say, installing the live system and testing it, by the fact that we had a class training on that hardware.
I can't say I mind. I'm a bit tired now and punchy, because from my perspective I got up very early. Although, I am not nearly as out-of-it as the other programmer from my office out here. Not remotely. I transition time zones pretty well.
So far, I'm nowhere near per diem. They tell us to toss receipts and always just bill the per diem rate, so I am dutifully doing so. However, I track expenses for my own purposes - to see how much I am over or under spending. In this case, our hotel has a refrigerator and a microwave in the room! Okay, I'm in love, and there's a grocery store basically within walking distance (but not laid out for walking; I took the rental car).
See, if I go out to eat, we have people who delight in eating gourmet to make up for the sadness of life on the road. Problem: I don't often taste the difference between good and really good food. (Bad and okay, yes. Good and really good, no.) Nor do I particularly like sit-down restaurants, which waste a fair bit of your time for not so much response. Every once in a while, with friends or loved ones? Sure, I guess. But it makes me feel like more of my time is being wasted, on a trip; I don't like it then. Also, there's only so much I can take of watching R., the programmer from our office. It's a joke that when he is on-site, he always orders the biggest thing on the menu and then can't finish it. He didn't when we stopped for dinner after arriving last night, so maybe that's not true, but he definitely did order more than he could eat. (Me? I ordered a bowl of clam chowder. And barely managed to finish it.)
So far, just yesterday and today, I'm about $45 ahead. And I have a puzzle magazine, a bag of cheetoh-clones, three watermelon wedges, a green salad for tomorrow's dinner, a blueberry danish for tomorrow's dessert, enough Sprite for my whole stay in 16-ounce bottles, and a tin of tangerine altoids (which the project manager introduced me to, and which I was surprised to find I liked, as regular altoids I do not like). I had a microwaveable lasagna meal, a watermelon wedge, and the other blueberry danish for dinner. In retrospect, I should have bought one more microwaveable, but I suspect I will want to go out to dinner with the team either tomorrow (when we're sure we're ready for go-live), the day after (when go-live has worked), or both. If I'm wrong, the store is very nearby. There's continental breakfast at the hotel, which means I have lunch and snacks during the day (probably I will continue with Subway, as there is one very near to the client site). I don't foresee coming away from this trip feeling like I spent more than I could afford to.... :)
So, back to the story where I left off yesterday. Of course, this was before I boarded my first flight. Where, of course, I got selected for a check at the gate for the first time ever. Big shock. It was much like a check at security and very boring, nor did it take very long, so color me pleased. I found a spot to put my carryon despite the delay and got on with my trip. (There were a lot of "random" selections, to the point where the gate agent apologized to the TSA guy and asked if he should call another one, but they were handling them pretty well. Funny was when the 11-year-old girl was selected for it. Her father wanted to know if he could stay with her, and was assured that was permitted to parents but, he was slated for the same fate anyway. Hee.)
Anyway, after that I read a bit on the plane and slept a bit. (I always do this on flights, even if I'm not tired. I should have been but didn't feel it - till on the plane, then, knockout!) Anyway, the book is The Memory Bible by Gary Small. It's interesting, but so far, not endearing itself to me in a lot of areas. They advocate these memory techniques that rely heavily on visualization. So I - who am not a visual thinker, being able to hold only one or two coherent images in my mind at once (while I can manage far more than that in coherent concepts, provided you let me ditch the images) - gave it a shot, at any rate. Let's put it this way. After genuinely trying to get their techniques and applying them, I did 20% worse on the objective test than I had the first time. That wasn't very effective! Other parts of the book are about other things, so I am reading through trying to find what is useful to me, but I am now discarding all of this idiot's visualization clap-trap. They are probably lovely exercises if you are a visual thinker, and/or if you are amused by or interested in absurdity. I am just disgusted, and that does not seem to help me remember anything except that I disagree with this guy about this being "the" way to remember. Tying words to digits on a phone so you can visualize them seems dumb to me. I find it much easier to remember numbers by dialing them, by how your hand has to move on the phone.
So, yeah. Book? Vaguely interesting, vaguely amusing, other than that, enh. Yay for libraries, book will be returned happily when I am home.
Then we got to Chicago O'Hare. Now, I wasn't thrilled about this connection in the first place (50 minutes to change planes, which is what I get for having someone else deal with the reservation, but I still think that was best as I really was tired of trying to make it behave!). Joy of joys, we were put into a holding pattern. Oh, yay. It was supposed to be 15 minutes initially, but it ended up being maybe 10 instead, and then we were back on track.
As it turned out, I was seated next to a guy who was more Clueless about weather than I ever was. As we are landing at Chicago and taxiing in, he's talking about whether he'll have to drive to his destination, as he's heading up to a local airport in Wisconsin and he's sure the weather there is worse. Possible; far from guaranteed, and predicated on a very bad assumption on his part, as he was going on about how great it was that it wasn't even freezing here, see how the snow isn't sticking.
Okay, when the folks who have ever lived where it snows regularly have finished snickering, I'll continue with this.... Right, then. As I'm sure you can guess, there was snow on the grass, snow on the long-parked vehicles, snow on the pavement in little areas that weren't in use, snow on the outlying buildings that hadn't been cleared, snow falling from the sky in small doses, and yes, snow-clearing equipment actively driving around the runways and occasionally requiring the aircraft to slow down to allow them to cross paths without making it a contact sport.
Righty-oh, I'm sure they do that as a practice drill when it's above freezing and nothing's sticking, because otherwise the ground crews and pilots all get so bored. Next!
So we get into C concourse, very near the underground walkway to B, and check the monitors. Whee, we need B3. Across and most of the way to the end. I can tell I've been in Chicago way too much; I knew where I was going, and after I looked across (just before going into the underground walkway) and saw where B7 was (as it happened to be easily in view), I didn't even rush too much as I knew we hadn't far to go at the opposite end. Oh, four or five gates - a good walk - but not really bad like it can be sometimes. We got there about 5 minutes after our flight was scheduled to start boarding, having walked briskly but no more.
Our flight wasn't boarding. There was a plane there; the gate was ours; and the luggage info for the arriving passengers had the right flight number. However, we were short a crew. Turns out their crew was at the end of their day, and our crew was in one of the inbound flights...that, you guessed it, wasn't there yet. (It wasn't the over-traffic that had caused us and others to end up in a holding pattern; it was some delay at point-of-origin. Presumably out of the northeast but since they didn't tell us which flight our once-was crew was on, no idea.) They found us another crew and started boarding maybe 15-20 minutes late. Not bad, really. They made the time up in the air and we arrived on time at Atlanta.
The desce
nt into Atlanta was gorgeous. As we began it, it was dusk, after the sun had set but before the oranges and golds were gone. It deepened into dusk's midnight blue and then to night as we landed (aided, no doubt, by the fact that we were landing), and it was truly glorious to watch the progression - and to watch the lights on the tall buildings in the distance. It really was pretty. If I have time, I think I want some Atlanta post-cards; unfortunately, we needed to head on up to our hotel (an hour's drive away), and there don't seem to be any up here. But it was quite, quite pretty. Also a bit surreal when, at one point, it hit me that it was still 4 pm back home and Scott was most likely at work still.
We drove up; with luggage claim (Atlanta airport? Huge, and not well laid-out, at least not for United passengers), car rental claim (off-site but such is life, got a nice car), and all that fun stuff, we weren't up here 'til quarter till nine local. Part of the "fun stuff" involved trying to stay on the local freeways; as soon as I got on 85 north, it dumped me back off on a road leading to the airport. On the easy side, I just drove back through the airport and back to 85 north. (That would not be so good today. They are now searching every car and shuttle bus that drives in to that airport, as of this morning. Every. Single. One. I love the orange alert....)
Once I got back on the roads, I was okay, but R. wanted to chatter about the site and try to learn about it. Since I was dealing with unfamiliar 7-lane-wide freeways, that had a tendency to just sort of dump you off with very little signed warning, after dark, this was not a good time to try to chit-chat about business. I think my favorite was when we made the transition from 85N to 75N. He wanted to ask me about the site right then. I'd ended up barely making it into the correct lane to exit, and was now in the left lane of a freeway, with only the HOV lane to my left. The speed limit was 65, I was doing 70, and people were passing me on the right. I was trying to get over so they would pass on the left, and by the way, no I do not want to talk. SHUT THE FUCK UP. I managed not to phrase it that way, but I think my tone must have been a bit sharp, as he did actually stop blathering. If you want me unstressed and chatty, then YOU DRIVE. Which WAS an option YOU declined. Grrrr.
We stopped at Red Lobster for dinner when we got there, where I had that bowl of clam chowder; $5 for dinner isn't bad but it still irked just a bit. Then we checked in and I found out I had a microwave and fridge. Joy of joys - but that first dinner was a good thing, too. Picked me up after the day and, trust me, the per diem could absorb more than I can eat short of going to a certain select set of restaurants. :)
Then the hotel, and checking in. Oh, bliss. Lots of bliss. This is a Holiday Inn Express; I'm used to them being pleasant but nothing spectacular, and was looking forward to that. (Trust me, after 9 at night, stressful driving, and fed, all I wanted was a clean, safe room with a clean, comfortable bed. They manage that.)
Well, this is better than anticipated. No high-speed net, alas, but since I have heard about the two places that have that option (more on them later) that we've tried out here, I do not give a crap. I am very pleased with this. I have a king room at the AAA rate, which is pretty well begging for the low-end rooms, and I don't care. If you rearranged, you could put a king and a double in here; you could add a cot without rearranging, as there is that much room between the wall of the bathroom and the table next to the bed. The TV is nice (I suppose; like all TVs, it seems to have drivel on), and the radio is nicer (I found a station that has NPR in the morning and classical at night, in the time frames I listen while at a site). Better, better, best, the bathroom is larger than the normal hotel bathroom - a bit more floor and counter space, less of a crammed-in feeling, and there is the refrigerator and microwave that I mentioned above. Yes, it's a hotel room, but it's a very nice one for the price.
Then again, it's also responsible for the butter. *scowls darkly* See, they have continental breakfast, so I got various bread items and some butter yesterday. And hunted in vain for a knife. No knives. So I figured, heck, I'd just get it out of the package and use one half the bagel to apply it to the other half. I was planning to bring everything up to my room anyway, so a little gracelessness would go unobserved. It did. And for that, I'm deeply grateful. I was trying to squeeze the butter lump out of the little plastic holder onto the bagel below it when the whole thing somehow went flip-squish in my fingers. Net result: the butter left the packet, all right. In an upward trajectory, and smacked me on the chin. *sigh* Ah, well, minor mishaps.
As far as what I've heard about the two other hotels we tried: one offered moldy bread at their continental breakfast and also failed to clean the rooms many days; the other failed to quell guests so noisy that our trainer couldn't sleep until 1 am or so....
I like this hotel we're in now just fine, thanks.
2/24/2003 8:20 am (Pacific)
So, I get to the airport. That actually went very smoothly, really. At the last minute, getting out of the house, I realized I hadn't packed stamps in case I wanted to write to anyone (I always think I will; I almost never find time, even if I want to). Then, I couldn't find the stamps. At the last minute I remembered they were probably up on a desk in the computer room. I have no clue now what memory trigger made me remember that, or why they were there, but they were. I grabbed some - and put the rest back in the mail center where they ought to have been in the first place; that way, Scott will have a hope of finding them if he needs stamps while I'm gone. :)
All that made me maybe 5 minutes late out the door, but it is for this that I follow the "arrive two hours early" guideline even though, at my local airport, it is patently absurd and a waste of your time to do so. I told myself I was arriving early, breathed twice, and went out the door.
Which is when I found that I'd bought toilet paper last week and forgotten to take it in. (I had too much for one trip and put off the second trip out to the car in the cold - and this is what happens when I do that....) Okay, toilet paper in house, luggage in trunk formerly occupied by the TP, back out the door. (I hope Scott's as amused to find the toilet paper in the front hall as I was to find it in the trunk. He probably will be.)
Then I realized that, oh yeah, when we'd thought Scott would drop me off, we'd meant to have him refill the car. And it was showing lower than it had been the night before; I wasn't entirely sure it would make the airport, and I was sure I'd be unhappily hunting for a gas station on my return. (I get back at about 5 pm on Saturday, which would preclude Scott playing in his game, which I don't want to do. So the company is paying for parking in the economy lot again.) So, a stop at the gas station.
Rant on: WHY do I always pay so little attention and then stop at the gas station near I-5 on the north Wilsonville exit? Yes, it's conveniently located, but driving out of my way would be faster and less stressful. They are perpetually understaffed; sometimes they don't even have enough people to keep a rough track of who arrived when. They are slow. They are expensive, since they're "conveniently" located. And I know better. (Which is to say they had one person pumping gas. During the first part of proto-rush hour (6:40 or thereabouts). Despite the moans of those who never learned to pump gas, and despite largely being one of them, I really wish this state would legalize self-serve.)
So, 20 minutes down. Reminded myself that (a) I had an hour of leeway in my chosen arrival time versus the "drop-dead" point, and (b) I deliberately estimated the drive time at the height of rush hour, which this wasn't. It was actually a very pleasant drive; I passed the view area along I-205, over the river in Clackamas County, in the dawn light (pre-sunrise, but by a matter of minutes). And I really wished I had time to pull off. Mt. Hood was completely visible in the clear air, the snow on the upper reaches tinged pink by the rising sun. It was like something out of a faerie story, it was gorgeous. As it is, I only stole glances at it while driving. (Mt. St. Helens was clear for a while later in the drive, though by then it wasn't quite as spectacular, it was still really cool.)
Arrived in economy parking as anticipated, found a parking spot in the same row as the shelter (always go to red lot, at Portland International; blue lot is first on the roundabout and fills first, so there's a better choice of spaces in red). Just had time to repack my luggage so my purse was in my backpack (bringing me to the required carryon) before the shuttle arrived. Reached the airport at my originally intended time, never mind the drop-dead point.
This is where it got really amusing. We're under heightened security, of course, because of the terrorism alerts, which I'd largely ignored. I sort of anticipate that anything I bring with me may be searched at the airport, so whether it's more or less likely, enh. Now they're searching vehicles that approach the terminal, and that includes shuttles from long-term parking. The light was red as we came up; they pulled two of the cars, but they didn't pull the others or our bus for the random search (but they do, according to our driver, which makes sense). The guy seated nearest the front was commenting about how the random searches didn't seem very effective, since they were letting far more cars go through than they were stopping and terrorists would probably send several in and not care if some were caught.
He made the driver nervous, but there's a hole in his logic, which is this: if a random search turned up explosives or anything else terrorist-related, I strongly suspect that every vehicle and maybe everything, period, would be stopped, cleared out of the area, searched, etc. I would imagine the same thought has, after all, already occurred to several people. But I do think the driver was not comfortable with his passenger's comments. :)
Checkin was really easy. They had the line moving fairly quickly. I didn't even stay to see my checked luggage checked. (All luggage was being routed through TSA search points. I handed mine over, confirmed there were no set locks on it - I have a couple locks, but they hang off the zipper tabs when I check it, rather than actually locking anything - and then went over to check in. I've got my receipt, they've got the tag and the bag, they'll sort it out.)
Then we hit security. Early morning on a Monday sucks, but we're talking 5 am early morning. As it turns out, 7:45 or so is not a bad time to hit the security checkpoints, on a Monday morning. It was fairly quick and none of my luggage got searched there either (much to my surprise; I did expect the backpack to come back, since I had the digital camera, download cords for the digital recorder, two battery rechargers and tons of batteries, all in the camera case, stuck at the bottom of the backpack). Just realized I forgot the power cord for my digital camera; oops. I don't use it too much anyway, and I have plenty of batteries, so I'll just have to cope with that.
The guy ahead of me did get searched. They held his carryon for a long several seconds in the machine. Then they put it back through, flipped over, after shaking it slightly. They held it in there again for a while. There were three people staring at the screen and exchanging low-voiced comments. And then he got searched. Big shock, that was predictable at that point. :)
They've really made this more efficient. I'm not sure I believe it's any more effective, but it is more efficient than when they started. It's not really significantly inconvenient and it's no worse than travel before 9/11 in terms of average inconvenience, from what I've experienced. (Today was well above average.)
I was at the gate by 8. With a flight at 9:20, once again, I left too much time. And I love it that way, because it makes it easy to banish worries. :)
2/25/2003 8:18 pm (Eastern)
You know, there's a lot to be said for having some time to yourself and being warm, comfortable, and well-fed. I'm a very happy programmer right now. We looked at the site; it all looks good. Since this is a new center, they have been training on the same hardware they will use when they go live, which considerably lessens the risks involved in this. Training today ran until 4 pm, so we introduced ourselves to each other, learned "our" area of the center, fiddled around, contributed bits to a crisis on another system, and swapped war stories from earlier lives (some of them years ago).
Of course, we also initialized the live database, started hunting for a nuisance bug, put together a patch build to bring in a few fixes made since their last build, defused an ill-timed test on the server during training, by someone not aware that his actions would impact training, confirmed that some pre-existing data "oddities" had all been cleaned up, and a few other tasks along the way. But we were constrained from, say, installing the live system and testing it, by the fact that we had a class training on that hardware.
I can't say I mind. I'm a bit tired now and punchy, because from my perspective I got up very early. Although, I am not nearly as out-of-it as the other programmer from my office out here. Not remotely. I transition time zones pretty well.
So far, I'm nowhere near per diem. They tell us to toss receipts and always just bill the per diem rate, so I am dutifully doing so. However, I track expenses for my own purposes - to see how much I am over or under spending. In this case, our hotel has a refrigerator and a microwave in the room! Okay, I'm in love, and there's a grocery store basically within walking distance (but not laid out for walking; I took the rental car).
See, if I go out to eat, we have people who delight in eating gourmet to make up for the sadness of life on the road. Problem: I don't often taste the difference between good and really good food. (Bad and okay, yes. Good and really good, no.) Nor do I particularly like sit-down restaurants, which waste a fair bit of your time for not so much response. Every once in a while, with friends or loved ones? Sure, I guess. But it makes me feel like more of my time is being wasted, on a trip; I don't like it then. Also, there's only so much I can take of watching R., the programmer from our office. It's a joke that when he is on-site, he always orders the biggest thing on the menu and then can't finish it. He didn't when we stopped for dinner after arriving last night, so maybe that's not true, but he definitely did order more than he could eat. (Me? I ordered a bowl of clam chowder. And barely managed to finish it.)
So far, just yesterday and today, I'm about $45 ahead. And I have a puzzle magazine, a bag of cheetoh-clones, three watermelon wedges, a green salad for tomorrow's dinner, a blueberry danish for tomorrow's dessert, enough Sprite for my whole stay in 16-ounce bottles, and a tin of tangerine altoids (which the project manager introduced me to, and which I was surprised to find I liked, as regular altoids I do not like). I had a microwaveable lasagna meal, a watermelon wedge, and the other blueberry danish for dinner. In retrospect, I should have bought one more microwaveable, but I suspect I will want to go out to dinner with the team either tomorrow (when we're sure we're ready for go-live), the day after (when go-live has worked), or both. If I'm wrong, the store is very nearby. There's continental breakfast at the hotel, which means I have lunch and snacks during the day (probably I will continue with Subway, as there is one very near to the client site). I don't foresee coming away from this trip feeling like I spent more than I could afford to.... :)
So, back to the story where I left off yesterday. Of course, this was before I boarded my first flight. Where, of course, I got selected for a check at the gate for the first time ever. Big shock. It was much like a check at security and very boring, nor did it take very long, so color me pleased. I found a spot to put my carryon despite the delay and got on with my trip. (There were a lot of "random" selections, to the point where the gate agent apologized to the TSA guy and asked if he should call another one, but they were handling them pretty well. Funny was when the 11-year-old girl was selected for it. Her father wanted to know if he could stay with her, and was assured that was permitted to parents but, he was slated for the same fate anyway. Hee.)
Anyway, after that I read a bit on the plane and slept a bit. (I always do this on flights, even if I'm not tired. I should have been but didn't feel it - till on the plane, then, knockout!) Anyway, the book is The Memory Bible by Gary Small. It's interesting, but so far, not endearing itself to me in a lot of areas. They advocate these memory techniques that rely heavily on visualization. So I - who am not a visual thinker, being able to hold only one or two coherent images in my mind at once (while I can manage far more than that in coherent concepts, provided you let me ditch the images) - gave it a shot, at any rate. Let's put it this way. After genuinely trying to get their techniques and applying them, I did 20% worse on the objective test than I had the first time. That wasn't very effective! Other parts of the book are about other things, so I am reading through trying to find what is useful to me, but I am now discarding all of this idiot's visualization clap-trap. They are probably lovely exercises if you are a visual thinker, and/or if you are amused by or interested in absurdity. I am just disgusted, and that does not seem to help me remember anything except that I disagree with this guy about this being "the" way to remember. Tying words to digits on a phone so you can visualize them seems dumb to me. I find it much easier to remember numbers by dialing them, by how your hand has to move on the phone.
So, yeah. Book? Vaguely interesting, vaguely amusing, other than that, enh. Yay for libraries, book will be returned happily when I am home.
Then we got to Chicago O'Hare. Now, I wasn't thrilled about this connection in the first place (50 minutes to change planes, which is what I get for having someone else deal with the reservation, but I still think that was best as I really was tired of trying to make it behave!). Joy of joys, we were put into a holding pattern. Oh, yay. It was supposed to be 15 minutes initially, but it ended up being maybe 10 instead, and then we were back on track.
As it turned out, I was seated next to a guy who was more Clueless about weather than I ever was. As we are landing at Chicago and taxiing in, he's talking about whether he'll have to drive to his destination, as he's heading up to a local airport in Wisconsin and he's sure the weather there is worse. Possible; far from guaranteed, and predicated on a very bad assumption on his part, as he was going on about how great it was that it wasn't even freezing here, see how the snow isn't sticking.
Okay, when the folks who have ever lived where it snows regularly have finished snickering, I'll continue with this.... Right, then. As I'm sure you can guess, there was snow on the grass, snow on the long-parked vehicles, snow on the pavement in little areas that weren't in use, snow on the outlying buildings that hadn't been cleared, snow falling from the sky in small doses, and yes, snow-clearing equipment actively driving around the runways and occasionally requiring the aircraft to slow down to allow them to cross paths without making it a contact sport.
Righty-oh, I'm sure they do that as a practice drill when it's above freezing and nothing's sticking, because otherwise the ground crews and pilots all get so bored. Next!
So we get into C concourse, very near the underground walkway to B, and check the monitors. Whee, we need B3. Across and most of the way to the end. I can tell I've been in Chicago way too much; I knew where I was going, and after I looked across (just before going into the underground walkway) and saw where B7 was (as it happened to be easily in view), I didn't even rush too much as I knew we hadn't far to go at the opposite end. Oh, four or five gates - a good walk - but not really bad like it can be sometimes. We got there about 5 minutes after our flight was scheduled to start boarding, having walked briskly but no more.
Our flight wasn't boarding. There was a plane there; the gate was ours; and the luggage info for the arriving passengers had the right flight number. However, we were short a crew. Turns out their crew was at the end of their day, and our crew was in one of the inbound flights...that, you guessed it, wasn't there yet. (It wasn't the over-traffic that had caused us and others to end up in a holding pattern; it was some delay at point-of-origin. Presumably out of the northeast but since they didn't tell us which flight our once-was crew was on, no idea.) They found us another crew and started boarding maybe 15-20 minutes late. Not bad, really. They made the time up in the air and we arrived on time at Atlanta.
The desce
nt into Atlanta was gorgeous. As we began it, it was dusk, after the sun had set but before the oranges and golds were gone. It deepened into dusk's midnight blue and then to night as we landed (aided, no doubt, by the fact that we were landing), and it was truly glorious to watch the progression - and to watch the lights on the tall buildings in the distance. It really was pretty. If I have time, I think I want some Atlanta post-cards; unfortunately, we needed to head on up to our hotel (an hour's drive away), and there don't seem to be any up here. But it was quite, quite pretty. Also a bit surreal when, at one point, it hit me that it was still 4 pm back home and Scott was most likely at work still.
We drove up; with luggage claim (Atlanta airport? Huge, and not well laid-out, at least not for United passengers), car rental claim (off-site but such is life, got a nice car), and all that fun stuff, we weren't up here 'til quarter till nine local. Part of the "fun stuff" involved trying to stay on the local freeways; as soon as I got on 85 north, it dumped me back off on a road leading to the airport. On the easy side, I just drove back through the airport and back to 85 north. (That would not be so good today. They are now searching every car and shuttle bus that drives in to that airport, as of this morning. Every. Single. One. I love the orange alert....)
Once I got back on the roads, I was okay, but R. wanted to chatter about the site and try to learn about it. Since I was dealing with unfamiliar 7-lane-wide freeways, that had a tendency to just sort of dump you off with very little signed warning, after dark, this was not a good time to try to chit-chat about business. I think my favorite was when we made the transition from 85N to 75N. He wanted to ask me about the site right then. I'd ended up barely making it into the correct lane to exit, and was now in the left lane of a freeway, with only the HOV lane to my left. The speed limit was 65, I was doing 70, and people were passing me on the right. I was trying to get over so they would pass on the left, and by the way, no I do not want to talk. SHUT THE FUCK UP. I managed not to phrase it that way, but I think my tone must have been a bit sharp, as he did actually stop blathering. If you want me unstressed and chatty, then YOU DRIVE. Which WAS an option YOU declined. Grrrr.
We stopped at Red Lobster for dinner when we got there, where I had that bowl of clam chowder; $5 for dinner isn't bad but it still irked just a bit. Then we checked in and I found out I had a microwave and fridge. Joy of joys - but that first dinner was a good thing, too. Picked me up after the day and, trust me, the per diem could absorb more than I can eat short of going to a certain select set of restaurants. :)
Then the hotel, and checking in. Oh, bliss. Lots of bliss. This is a Holiday Inn Express; I'm used to them being pleasant but nothing spectacular, and was looking forward to that. (Trust me, after 9 at night, stressful driving, and fed, all I wanted was a clean, safe room with a clean, comfortable bed. They manage that.)
Well, this is better than anticipated. No high-speed net, alas, but since I have heard about the two places that have that option (more on them later) that we've tried out here, I do not give a crap. I am very pleased with this. I have a king room at the AAA rate, which is pretty well begging for the low-end rooms, and I don't care. If you rearranged, you could put a king and a double in here; you could add a cot without rearranging, as there is that much room between the wall of the bathroom and the table next to the bed. The TV is nice (I suppose; like all TVs, it seems to have drivel on), and the radio is nicer (I found a station that has NPR in the morning and classical at night, in the time frames I listen while at a site). Better, better, best, the bathroom is larger than the normal hotel bathroom - a bit more floor and counter space, less of a crammed-in feeling, and there is the refrigerator and microwave that I mentioned above. Yes, it's a hotel room, but it's a very nice one for the price.
Then again, it's also responsible for the butter. *scowls darkly* See, they have continental breakfast, so I got various bread items and some butter yesterday. And hunted in vain for a knife. No knives. So I figured, heck, I'd just get it out of the package and use one half the bagel to apply it to the other half. I was planning to bring everything up to my room anyway, so a little gracelessness would go unobserved. It did. And for that, I'm deeply grateful. I was trying to squeeze the butter lump out of the little plastic holder onto the bagel below it when the whole thing somehow went flip-squish in my fingers. Net result: the butter left the packet, all right. In an upward trajectory, and smacked me on the chin. *sigh* Ah, well, minor mishaps.
As far as what I've heard about the two other hotels we tried: one offered moldy bread at their continental breakfast and also failed to clean the rooms many days; the other failed to quell guests so noisy that our trainer couldn't sleep until 1 am or so....
I like this hotel we're in now just fine, thanks.
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If you flew into O'Hare from the east, across Lake Michigan, you probably flew right over my house, just as you approached the lake. :)
Tangerine Altoids? must find!
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Another useful thing is to have something to fiddle with while you're listening to things. I used to crochet in class for that reason. It would keep my hands occupied so my mind could focus on the information.
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