Well I’m back from San Jose. It was a nice quick trip and had a good time. Thursday was a rough day of traveling. I somehow made it to the airport on Thursday (on 4 hours of sleep) for my 7am flight. sheesh, that’s way too early! I had a layover in phoenix and arrived in San Fran around noon. A coworker was supposed to pick me up and drive me to San Jose but her car broke down so I took the CalTrain. Navigating public transit is always a bit difficult for me! I hopped on the airport tram, then jumped on the BART, then transfered to the CalTrain to take me to San Jose. For some stupid reason I assumed the BART ticket would be a valid transfer to the CalTrain. I got on the train and started chatting with the guy next to me who happened to be a DJ from Atlanta who worked for ESPN. He was out in San Jose for the Stanford/USC game to do a show and the pregame party. While talking to him he said something about paying $5.25 for his ticket. I said I only paid $1.50 for mine and it got me on just fine! At that point I realized I didn’t have a valid ticket. Oh well, the Minneapolis light rail is an “honor system” so I thought maybe this was the same and I’d get lucky. About 30 seconds later a guy approached me and asked for my ticket! I showed him my BART ticket and played dumb. Thankfully he was nice to me and let me get off at the next stop and buy a valid ticket instead of fining me $125! The guy was really nice and gave me instructions for catching the San Jose downtown shuttle. Riding the train was very comfortable and definitely a nice way to travel. I got off at the San Jose station and hopped on the shuttle downtown. The shuttle driver didn’t speak much English and I ended up getting off a long ways from the convention center. After asking for directions and getting bad information a few times I _finally_ got decent directions from a coworker. I finally arrived at the convention center after a nice hour long walk!
A group of us had a fantastic dinner at an asian restaurant then went back to the hotel for a drink. During that time my boss said something like “you’re coming out to San Diego right?”. I was a little surprised! I knew the company would be moving eventually but we just signed a new lease on office space in St. Paul so I didn’t expect it to come up quite yet. I’ve never even been to San Diego and leaving the midwest would be a HUGE commitment so I couldn’t commit to anything.
Friday was a busy day of strategy sessions. It was fun but exhausting. There are just so many strong personalities in our group which makes all decisions difficult. We made good progress though and our new CEO did a fantastic job IMO. Saturday night we went out for dinner then took it easy for the night.
On Saturday Steve, Corey and I went to grab breakfast. Steve said we were looking for a place called “Pegasus”. As we got close to the address I saw a place called “Peggy Sue’s”. hahahahaa, I guess Steve misunderstood the hotel concierge or something. We couldn’t help but laugh!
we had some time to kill so Corey, Mark, and I decided to visit a historical landmark in San Jose called the Winchester Mansion. It was a giant mansion built by the crazy widow of the president of the Winchester gun company. As the story goes, Mrs. Winchester consulted a Boston psychic who told her that in order to appease the spirits off all the people killed by her husbands firearms, she must build and house and never stop it’s construction! She held nightly seances (in a room with one entrance and three exists, one of which lead to a room which had no exit!…kookoo!) and was a very bizarre (but talented) individual. As we walked through the very odd 110-room mansion filled with windows containing 13 stones, 13 ceiling panels, staircases leading to the ceiling, doors opening to walls, and other very strange oddities, I could help but quoting the SeaLab 2021 “Bizzaro” episode! Seriously, this house was really weird!
We cut the tour short since we were running out of time to catch our flight. We confused the cabby and I was certain we were going to miss our flight (not cool!). Luckily we made it to the airport just in time to catch our flight home. I got in around 12:30 and was really happy to be back home!
Mare got home today from her weekend trip up north to visit her parents. We had a nice relaxing day at her place watching football and eating Chinese food. It was so good to see her again and spend time away from work/the computer!
Now I’m just bummed that it’s Monday already. I have to go to our system builder tomorrow to verify our install procedure. We were supposed to start shipping boxes on Friday but apparently the guys there havent’ been able to verify the install procedure. It’s been frustrating because EVERY SINGLE TIME I’m there things work flawlessly! I think the problem is that the guys doing the installation don’t have a clue technically and don’t even know what an IP address is! The installation procedure is literally 2 input prompts, press enter once, reboot, open a browser on the windows machine on the same network and enter the IP address in the IE address bar. It really couldn’t be much simpler! I guess I’m just frustrated.
well time for sleep. Hopefully this week will be a bit more laid back….