Indiana, oh Indiana....

Greetings... I haven't posted since Cincinnati because there's been a gruelling amount of work to be done. Last week all this hit critical mass as I tried to schedule 3 travel engagements in March and then a trip to India and the Philippines for April. As of today, my lovely wife's birthday, India and Manila have dropped off the April date in order to be scheduled for a later time. Client work and planning drove the decision, although I deeply am sad not to be going with my friends Vikas and Meghna.

Nevertheless, I am writing from Indiana... my first stop of at least one more visit (next week) to the midwest. Next week I'll be in St. Cloud for 4 days.

To be precise, I'm in Auburn, Indiana. A quiet but growing town northeast of Fort Wayne. Fort Wayne is northeast of Indianapolis a couple or so hours. Indianapolis is about 1 hour north of where I spent some of my favorite childhood years in Bloomington, Indiana.

Getting here was a pain though - when travel is fun, it's fun. When it isn't, it sucks. There was fog in Dallas this morning and it stacked up delays into DFW airport, so my flight was delayed an hour - finally left at 7:30pm CST and had the quietest two hours of my last two weeks on the flight. I watched "A fish called Wanda" on my iPod. I was on another American Eagle (read: tiny-ass) plane. But it was smooth, and I was pleased to see snow on the ground as we landed, even in the dark. I had to drive about 40 miles to the hotel from Fort Wayne, and it was cold, quiet, and relaxing.

There must not be many people at the La Quinta I am staying at because I am in the largest room. I think it is almost the size of our apartment in Dallas. It's a wheelchair accessible room, so there's lots of space. A large entry area, "living room" with TV and chairs and large work area. To provide bizarre counterpoint to the whole "disabled" experience, adjoining the living area is a huge room with a king-size bed -- and get this -- an in-room, huge whirlpool sauna. Right next to the bed. I feel a little like I'm expected to host a wild wheelchair accessible party.

Partying is not what I'll be doing however. Tomorrow is an all day training by our client on eforms, and then on Wednesday, more of the same. With any luck, my cohort, Vikas, will arrive. He was delayed worse than me today and is stuck somewhere I can't remember because of snowy weather - he came from New Jersey. He was supposed to land at the same time as me tonight - now he can't make it until 12pm tomorrow at the earliest. If all goes well, we'll finish up around 4pm on Thursday and fly back to Dallas, to arrive around 11pm. I'll be documenting all the processes and workflow and technology we use on Friday.

On Sunday, off to St. Cloud until Friday morning. More about that later. It's been a long day and I need my sleep.

I will close by saying it's nice to be back in Indiana, even if NE Indiana is less attractive than Bloomington, at least nature-wise. It's more industrial here. But, it was cool to see "Hoosier pride" stickers, and the state bird (Cardinal) printed on signs. Maybe I'll see some live ones tomorrow when it is light out.

Until then... off to bed.

Home... again

Just a short note for the moment... just got in, about 9pm CST after a bumpy but eventless flight. We left directly from the client office to the airport, so I didn't have time to update the site.

An intense couple of days: 2 day workshop, 8 hours each day. I captured 13 pages of data on process, technology, and publishing. After the formal "day" on Wednesday, our team would meet, have dinner, and then do work from these meetings to prepare for the next day. I ended up having to install an open-source content management system on my pc and did a demo today. I am very sleepy.

So I haven't eaten since 12pm EST, so I am ravenous. Burger Bar was just called and we're gonna go pick up and eat. This weekend I will post a handful of pictures and write more about the trip. Hang in!

Travel...again

Travel sometimes begets drama. For example, I did not expect when I woke up this morning that the following things would happen: Vikas didn't make our flight, I would be on an extremely tiny plane, and that as a result of turbulent weather, I would watch a man barf after we landed.

It's been a day. Worked most of the morning getting things ready, then went to the airport with Vikas. We had a leisurely lunch then went to the gate. As we arrived, the announcer people were explaining that they had overbooked the flight and due to weight restrictions needed to eject some people (after trying to bribe some volunteers with $250 and a next morning flight). Vikas was one of 7 people randomly selected to be denied boarding. So I went on without him, and he started looking for another flight.

The plane was tiny. 3 seats across, 18 rows. "EMB" is the plane type. Extremely Miniature Boeng, I thought. I could have reached from left to right of the plane if I lay on the floor. Tiny! Which meant a lot of turbulence. Going up it was like being on a roller coaster. The flight itself was smooth and we arrived fairly quickly because we had a tailwind behind us. Supposed to be 2:15 flight time and it took around 1:45. Up then down. The landing was pretty rough -- not as rough as the landing in Seattle last year for the windstorm, but because of the smallness of the plane it was a little more intense. I really felt like I was the plane rather than I was in the plane. I wasn't so worried except the last couple of seconds as we were hovering over the runway and the plane rolled pretty dramatically from wind. The pilot handled it fine and we didn't even bump hard.

As I was leaving the restroom, I watched a guy who was on the plane walk in and approach the trash can. He was beet red and he barfed pretty dramatically. Guess the flight didn't sit too well with him. He looked fine a few minutes later at the baggage claim.

Picked up a car at Thrifty about 10 minutes later (the car is a convertible, although it's not going to get much use this snowy, windy, cold couple of days). The drive to the hotel was about 40 minutes, and my internal GPS failed me -- a rare occasion. I partially blame Google Maps for having 3 of the roads and exits wrong. But I turned the wrong direction 3 times. I was able to undo it quickly, but still, my pride is a little wounded. It was dark out, never been here before, google maps told me to go West and meant East. So, still. My GPS rocks.

Checked in to the hotel and met Mike in the lobby (he's our sales minion). Doubletree gives you a warm cookie on arrival. This would have been perfect because it's cold and wet outside, except when I went out to move the car to a parking spot, I dropped the little cookie bag onto the pavement and it rolled out. 5 second rule doesn't apply when it's wet, so I chalked it up to the universe telling me I didn't need the extra calories anyway. /cry

Mike and I had dinner, talked about work, then he went off to a conference call. I went to my room and took pictures of it -- I think the square footage of the room is bigger than the plane I was on. So now just relaxing. Vikas just called and he arrived and we are going to meet when he gets to the hotel. I am about to review documentation for tomorrow and figure out what I am going to capture from the analysis.

So that's it! The day starts early so I will check in later in the afternoon. I want to see comments about the space shuttle - so watch for it!!

Cincinnati Snow

So a lot of people have asked how Cincinnati went. I guess we are all busy because it hasn't yet. I leave for the airport in a couple of hours to head out that way. Subscribe via RSS, below! You will be notified when I post!

The last few days have been a blitzkreig of preparation for this event. On top of that I have spent a lot of time working on several projects at once. It' not so bad, actually. Keeping busy is good for me, but finding the right level where it's not hands-on-my-head stress is the challeng. So far, no 'home-alone' moments. The work level is just about right.

I'll be arriving in Cincinnati tonight about 6pm with my compadre Vikas, who is a great system guy. Snow and rain is expected as we land. I'm renting a car. I've never driven in snow/slush. Hilarity is sure to ensue. However, I am banking on the fact that it's been warmer there and the ground is not so frozen. Plus they are in the north, so they are prepared for these things. The drive is about 30 miles from the airport.

The trip is going to be very quick, so probably not a lot of excursions into Cincinnati proper. I'll have Vikas take pictures as we pass through, and I'll try to find things to write about that you all find so inexplicably interesting/funny.

For the plane ride I'll be reading workflow diagrams (fascinating!) or Al Gore's 'Assault on Reason', which I am in the middle of. Pretty fascinating, for real. He has an interesting perspective on a lot of the political issues going on in our age, with a lot of analysis, history, and context I totally didn't think about. I've been more active in this latest political campaign than I ever have been, and there's an explainable reason why, interestingly. You'll have to read the book to find out why though. Neither of the candidates I've contacted have a solid space policy yet. Irritated, but is to be expected. For late evening cool down, I'll be watching episodes of Battlestar Galactica, lent by my brother on DVD. Good show!

Speaking of space. Space shuttle Atlantis lifts off tomorrow - don't forget to tune in. I'll be in a workshop, so will miss it... booo!!! So, watch for me and post some comments about what you thought. I have to add in my little bit of 2009 NASA budget proselytizing:

WASHINGTON - NASA announced a $17.6 billion budget for fiscal year 2009 to continue exploring the solar system, building the International Space Station, studying Earth from space and conducting aeronautics research. NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale said the increase [of about 1.2 billion] for NASA's 2009 budget demonstrates President Bush's commitment to the agency's missions. With the increase, NASA still accounts for less than 1 percent of the federal budget. The NASA budget includes $5.78 billion for the space shuttle and space station programs, $4.44 billion for science, $3.5 billion for development of new manned spacecraft systems and $447 million for aeronautics research.

Think of how much more we could do with technology and innovation if we spent 2% of the budget - about $120 per YEAR per American, via taxes (we currently spend about $60 a year). That's not even a month's worth of gas for most people. Grrr.

OK. I gotta go. Lots to do, travel, blah blah blah. See you in Cincinnati tonight.

Let there be travel... again!

Whoa. The last week and a half has been work work work. I know I talk about how low key my job can be sometimes, but when we throw down the work, we really do it. All of the sudden I have five projects to work on all at once, and in several timezones.

The main project is for a publisher in Cincinnati, so guess where I am going next Wednesday? Strangely enough Cincinnati's airport is in Kentucky and our client is on the NE side of Cincinnati. I'm only staying for two nights, so probably the most I'll see of the city is when I pass through it in a cab. There's a slight possibility of going into town on Thursday, unless the client wants to take us to dinner. Here's what my unofficial, official travel-guide Fodor's has to say about Cincinnati. And here's a wiki page. Now you know.

What will I be doing, you ask? We're doing an analysis workshop to help them movie from a print-centric publishing model to a single-source publishing model (so they can send out their content into web pages, cell phones, etc). If you're interested in this you can read along at one of my other blogs, The War on Error - a publishing blog. Don't go if you aren't into publishing. You'll be bored. And I need to add more content soon.

Aside from that I am working on a project to automate some publishing software for a company in Australia that makes music lessons. Also, maybe doing some XML training for a company in Washington D.C. I am not even daring to think that I might get to go to Australia this year. That would require a vacation. What happens if I go on walkabout and never return? National Geographic readers will point at pictures of the extremely pale dude playing the didgeridoo next to the natives and remark how badly I need to wash my hair.

Guess it has been a while since I last wrote. Life has mostly been work and play lately. Dawn and I are still enjoying Dallas greatly. We work a lot, then we go out and have fun a lot. We've been working out a lot too - not as much as we want of course, but well more than we did during most of our existence in San Antonio. We make up for it by eating a lot of really good Dallas food with our cohorts Tom and Jen and a few of the other folks we've met. We play World of Warcraft a lot, for stimulating and often bizarre social interactions with the online gaming world. And we slay much evil and are rewarded with phat loot. Shout out to Div, with whom I aggro lots of skettis for epic flying mount rep. Don't worry if that didn't make sense to you.

In closing you will note I am on a different blog server than the one I used for NASA stuff. I'm not terribly happy with blog software these days and since I don't have time to write the code for one myself, I switch around a lot. I'll be posting my travel stuff here for the Cincinnati trip, at least, so check back - put the link for this site in your Favorites, Bookmarks, or whatever the kids call it these days. Check in, anytime. I'll write more stuff about me in here as well, as opposed to stuff about NASA, although you might see some of that here too.

Well that came out of nowhere

Why does my perception of the world seem so fast these days? I got up this morning, early, and we (Dawn, Tom, Jen, and I) went walking on the Katy Trail. I noticed how cold it was, and breezy, and how felt that certain sense of "morning-ness" that you get when you are out walking in the dark on a cold-brisk morning. It's a very different sensation than the conditioned daily office air.

Despite the fresher experience of the walk, I still feel like I was focused just off-center. Like my perception was just behind the present moment. Or just ahead. I didn't feel saturated in the moment like I used to when I was younger. I remember being outside in rainstorms and just feeling the sensation of the storm in the moment -- not when it was going to be done or what happened before. I remember playing outside and feeling a spacious moment around my activities.

Now it seems like everything is so fast - even the slow things, like my focus is always somewhere else. But that somewhere is nowhere.

Then there's other times like when I'm playing WoW where I feel like my attention is hyperfocused and I can handle vast amounts of information happening to me in a single moment. So it's not like I don't have practice or can't handle it... but I just often feel like I am floating just behind or ahead of myself. What's up with that?

Maybe we are all in such a keyed state of hyper-attention we forget the moment point. Or, we haven't accellerated up to the keyed state we are capable of achieving and the off-focus feeling is just wind resistance.

Hmmm. I dunno.

Meanest Mom

Of course I don't mean my own mom.

Check this out - a mom sells her son's car because there was alcohol in it:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/01/09/mean.mom.ap/index.html