Old Man Winter isn’t my best friend.

I decided to go to my grandmother’s house for the weekend and to see my buddy Mitch up at law school this weekend. I didn’t know until a couple of weeks ago if our project would be going on or not so I had to buy the ticket later than I thought. I ended up getting a ticket that wouldn’t get me into Roanoke until after midnight. Unfortunately I found out later that the rental place closes at midnight and I needed to get in earlier. Out went the call to my travel folks for the second week in a row. They really are a top notch crew. They got me on a flight that would get in at 9:30. This would work out a lot better.

When I got to the airport in Dayton the connecting flight had unfortunately been canceled do to weather. Apparently parts of the country were in white-out conditions (did you see the plane slide off the runway in Chicago). So when I got to the counter the clerk wanted to get me back onto the flight that got in after midnight. I told him that wouldn’t work because of the rental arrangements and he got me onto a flight through Dulles on another airline. FYI so far Delta had treated me better than anyone else since I started traveling.

I think all of the changes to my travel arrangements triggered something in the computers because I got flagged for an extra special security check. I remember LJ getting the same treatment back when we went to Vegas. Now of days they got it down to a routine procedure. My boarding pass was put into an orange envelope and I was ushered into another line. I put my stuff through the scanner and then they hauled it over to the super special table. I got super special magic wand-ed over my whole body – That was fun – while then went through my bags by hand. Hmm fun. I’ll have to remember not to make some many changes in such a short time. I don’t think I need the super special treatment at security again.

Most flights started getting canceled so I was worried that I would get stuck in Ohio. There was a little scare, I had already gotten onto the plane and it pushed backed and was de-iced, but then we went no where. The city shut the runway down for 20 min. Luckily once it was cleared we took off.

Dulles was a blur, as I got of the plane onto a shuttle then right back onto another plane. No waiting time thanks to the delays in Dayton. The flight to Roanoke was actually about as long as the flight to Dulles. When we landed they didn’t use stairs to let us off the plane they had a gang plank. It was sleeting hard in Virginia and the plank was slippery. We all had to hold onto the hand rails with a very strong grip and shuffle down the plank to keep from falling. I then got to have the fun of spending 20 minutes clearing the ice off the rental and an extra hour driving on slick roads to get to the house. It was 1 am before I finally got in. But I’m happy because I got where I wanted to be and only was delayed by a few hours so that’s ok with me. I’ll tell you what though, at times it seemed like the weather was doing its best to keep me from traveling.

Update:

Before posting this: Currently I am in the Roanoke airport. I don’t know what is wrong with Delta but they moved me to another Airline again. In Dayton they put me on United and now I’m on US Air. That must have cost them twice as much as what I paid for a ticket no wonder the airlines are in trouble. So I got the super special treatment at security again. Whohoo. Let’s stop the terrorist.

Also of interest is the fact that I went to and visited Mitch today at UVA; beautiful school, great area. The funny thing though that I drove 2 ½ hours from Charlotte to Roanoke and now I’ve been rerouted to through Charlotte to get to Dayton!!! Craziness, just plain Craziness. Hopefully I will get to Dayton tonight.

Working at McDonalds

Well I never thought that after getting a college education and being hired by a top consulting firm I would end up working under the golden arches!....

No I wasn’t the fry-cook.

No I wasn’t the cashier.

No I wasn’t on drive-thru.

No I wasn’t even cleaning.

I was telecommuting.

After trying to work at my grandmother’s house with the company dial up I had to find someplace with high speed internet and hopefully wireless. Believe it or not the only such place in Bedford is the McDonalds. I suppose I could have gone to Roanoke or Lynchburg the closest cities and find a coffee shop but I didn’t think I would have much work to actually do. I was wrong! Instead I took a couple of conference calls, worked with several people on project related issues, worked on the Statement of Work for the current project (the one that should have been signed in October), and host of other activities. All-in-all I probably spent 4 hours hanging out in the McDonalds working.

I think it is really interesting thought that with a cell phone, my laptop, and a good connection to the internet I can work from anywhere. A lot of the work I don’t even need the internet. But when I do I can tell you for sure dial up is not even close to sufficient. The tools we use are simply just too bandwidth intensive. These tools, such as eRooms – a place on the internet everyone store project files—take more than five minutes per page to load. If you have to do 30 or 40 activities that is 1 ½ hours to 3 1/3 hours just waiting on pages loads. It’s just not going to happen! Well I guess I should be thankful for the development of wireless and the fact that equipment and services are so available; even if you do have to go to a McDonalds on Friday to telecommute. I personally like telecommuting much better in my own living room.

SOLD and billable

Well it took long enough but the project I am working on finally sold. We have been working on a temporary Statement of Work that has been extended several times. This new Statement of Work will take the project to the finish line next July. This means that I will be traveling to Dayton for the at least the next few months. I also have been working on the task of mapping data which could lead to being put on creating/capturing master data for the customer. This would mean that I may be on the project until the completion of the project next July. I also am now billable on the project as I had been shadowing. That means that I am actually making the company money instead of being a mooch!

It is also time already for mid-year reviews. This means a lot of extra paper work and meetings that don’t contribute to anything but keeping my career on track. I hope that my project manager agrees with my self assessment. We are rated on a five point scale. You want a 1 or 2, 3 is ok, and you want to stay away from 4 and 5; though I have done quite a lot on this project so I am not too worried about it. We shall see after my PM checks off my appraisal my councilor will meet with me and go over it again. Then I think he goes over it with the partners in the office. Then it is put away until the end of the year and compared with the second half of the year. We will have to wait and see.

Utility Door

I finally decided to do a lot of the maintenance on the house that I have literally been putting off for years. The first item on this list was replacing the utility door that leads to the basement from the back of the house. The original door must have been put in back in 1905 when the house was originally built. It was panel door hung in a wood door frame. The door was simply put in on top of a pile of rocks! So over the last hundred years dirt had seeped in under the door and filled the gaps in the rocks. This led to the frame rotting out – it did last for 95 years or so – leaving a gap between the door and the ground about an inch and a half across the bottom of the door. It has probably run the heating bills up quite a bit over the last few years.

After ripping the door frame out of the wall I needed to poor a foundation to set the door on. I had already purchased the concrete but when I mixed it and poured it into the simple 2x4 form I had built I found I only had half of what I needed. So I had to run back down to the Home Depot and buy more. I had planned to have the door out and foundation finished by two in the afternoon. Unfortunately due to having to work that morning (Saturday) and it taking longer to prepare the foundation, in addition to the extra run to home depot I didn’t finish until 4:30 so I was unable to hang the door the same day. Just for some more fun it decided to rain as I was finishing the foundation. But it came out pretty good anyway.

The next day I went to hang the door and Minnesota was experiencing 60+ MPH winds. So after an hour or so of battling I had the door hung. I used a level and shims and got the door basically perfect level. This was only the second door I have hung so was doing most of the work on limited experiences. When the door was hung I was surprised to find that one side of the door was flush with the wall and the other was flush on the bottom and sticking out several inches at the top. I checked with the level and sure enough the door was hung well so I checked the wall and it wasn’t level!!!

Well this was past my abilities (I hate to admit it but I can’t do everything) so I called up a friend of mine who is professional. CQ is as good a carpenter as there is. I did have to wait for the Vikings game to finish for him to come over, but he worked so fast it was absolutely amazing. He first loosened the screws and pulled out the nails I had used and then pushed that corner back in for a bit. After that he re-shimmed the door and tightened all of the screws it took at most 10 minutes and he did it all by eyeball. He then went to the depot with me and cut the cedar to finish the job. It took him less time to cut and install the trim as it took to go to home depot and back. When he was finished the door even swung and latched better.

The finished product is really doing its job. The basement is now noticeably warmer and dryer. I couldn’t be happier with the results. Maybe the third door I put in someday will be an easier job.

Halloween

Last night was Halloween and last Saturday we had a Halloween party. There was a pretty decent showing, except that people don’t seem to stay as long as they used to. I would guess maybe 50-65 people showed not too bad. Unfortunately my younger brother couldn’t make it – I found out later he had car problems – we were really looking forward to having him there. Most people showed up in costume too, which is a good thing; though LJ still hasn’t broken his string of skipping out on the costume. The night went pretty late with most people staying until the middle of the night and others until what we can only describe as early morning. I was in general happy with the turnout and the party. Nothing really crazy happened but it wasn’t boring either, everyone seemed to have a good time.

We even put out a nice spread of food for the first time. RB would let me just through some chips and dip. Instead we had to go to the grocery store and create a nice spread that included: Ship and marinara sauce, cheese – crackers – summer sausage platters (with 4 kinds of cheese and 2 kinds of crackers), pretzels, mixed nuts, 3 kinds of chips and salsa, cocktail wieners, and cheese/chili dip! KS added some veggie dip and we had a ton of food. GM and AL put together a nice little cash bar in back so if people didn’t just want beer they were set there too.

The next day was defiantly as much fun as the night before. After 5 hours or so, it was time to wake up and clean. This was the only time I had as I was going to parents for dinner and flying out the next morning. But it really wasn’t that bad. The new floors clean up really fast, I’m glad I had extra poly put on. The yard only had a little garbage in it and most of peoples empties the night before made it to the trash can or recycle bin. It did take some time to clean the kitchen. The dishwasher was already half full so we filled it and ran it right way then hand washed everything else. That’s ok running on so little sleep my mind didn’t really know what was going on anyway so it was done before I knew it. Next year though I think maybe it should be at someone else’s place! But I’ve said that for the past 5 years!

Entertainment Committee Continued

Well Wednesday night we had another lead. This time a town called Yellow Springs. While it is not the most happening place it is a very nice area and shows a lot more life than Dayton. We were told by one of the clients that we should go to a restaurant called the Winds. It was actually pretty contemporary. They had nice art works hanging over every table, a nicely stocked wine bar, and very good menu to select from. The patrons of the restaurant all looked established and educated and everyone was nicely dressed. I guess this doesn’t really matter but after virtually living at the mall for the last three weeks it was nice to be somewhere that seemed a little less Mc Suburban sprawl. In fact it was the first time we’ve gone anywhere that was not a Chain, fast food, or in a strip mall.

It was also after a long day of work – we left the client sight at 8:30 or so at night after leaving the hotel at 7:45am – that was semi stressful. So the change of pace was very welcome for every one. While the town it self didn’t offer any new entertainment options for the group event it does seem like a nice place to hang out. Nice pubs on a couple corners and several ma and pa stores, diners, and restaurants.

The funniest part of the night was the wait staff giving our partner grief because he wanted a cheese sandwich with his bowl of chili! She asked him where he thought he was eating and told ‘sandwiches are for lunch this is dinner’. We all had a good laugh over that. But of course like anytime you go out with the team for dinner it becomes a long night. I didn’t get back to the hotel until close to 10p. Well we will keep exploring the area and try to find interesting places.

Entertainment Committee

Quite honestly there is absolutely nothing to do in the Dayton Ohio area. Mind you it’s not a metro just an area. You can go to eat, drink, bowl, go to an arcade, go to a mall, or see a movie but that is it. There are some local sports but you can’t get in unless you inherited the tickets. I know this because Mike, the other SA on the project, and I were tasked to find a place to have team event. This would include the Deloitte personnel and the client resources. So a couple nights a week we try to check out some leads. So far however none of them have turned out very well for us. Right now as it stands our options are Bowling, Pool, Laser tag, or just catering a party somewhere.

The first place we decided to check out is called the Oregon District. We were told it was an area of town going through an Urban Revival. Thinking we may have found the place to be in town, we got directions, checked out the website, and drove Downtown to check it out. While the area is certainly going through a redevelopment it is primarily residential. Nice redeveloped buildings and a clean close to downtown neighborhood. The main attraction was a 4 block section on one street that had a few stores: antiques, music, art, and other eclectic venues. Unfortunately the definition of an antique store includes the Goodwill and the definition of restaurant includes a bar with appetizers. There are a couple nice places to dine and an Irish pub but that is it.

Next as we were so close to downtown that night we decided to check it out. They do have a nice riverfront and the local AAA baseball team may be fun to watch; but if you plan to do anything downtown, get there before 5p. They shut everything down. We saw a nice looking diner – closed. We saw a couple other restaurants – closed. Gas stations – Closed. They might as well have slid the sidewalks under the buildings at sun down and closed off the entrances to the area. The only thing open was the hospital. And that is not a place I think you want to hang out at just for fun.

So the next day we looked online and found some listing for go-karting. The partner on the project thought this was a fun idea so we decided to check it out. The only location in Dayton was 20 minutes away and we got lost on the way. Side note I need to trust my own directions, we got lost because I didn’t think the directions I had wrote made sense and second guessed them – I was right the first time we should have just followed the directions! So since we were lost we decided to get some dinner. We found a little diner just outside of Kettering called Marx and stopped in. It may not have been the best idea! The menus were photo copies and they had stop stocking a third of the items needed for half the dishes, the salad bar was very suspect, and menus – because they were laminated – were used as place mats. I had an ok grilled ham and cheese but poor Mike ordered a French toast. It was the first and only time I’ve seen French toast that was fried in oil.. Not good.

So after our fine dinner we turned around corrected our navigation mistake and continued. After another 10 minutes we came to a part of town we were not expecting to. We were after all looking for a go kart track. The area was as close to a red light district as you can get. There were no kidding a dozen adult establishments with in a 2 mile area concluding with a Hooter’s when we finally came to our next turn. At this point it was time to start looking for the address ending in 31. We located 29, 30, 32, and 33 but no 31. We did pass an unmarked garage, but that didn’t look like a go kart track. It wasn’t it was a go kart parts supplier. At the end of this nights strange adventure all we found was Fried French Toast and a go kart supplier.

Another quick note: While we can’t find anything to do there are a ton of place to buy adult beverages. We passed 6 or 7 businesses that are drive through liquor stores. Literally they were pole barns that you pulled up to a cool and ordered a 12 pack and a bottle or what ever, paid, and then drive out the back of the building! What a strange place. I though there wasn’t much to do in Des Moines! Glad I get to come home every week.