Partner Development Team Meeting


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	Partner Development Meeting "Even the worst day of skiing is better than the best day of work"	Friday 27th January 2006

I think I have mentioned this before but if you start to write people expect you to write. I was at a team meeting with the other guys on the Partner Development team for the West and someone says. "Hey we need to take some photos for the travel log." I wasn't planning on writing a travel log for a couple of reasons: 1.) How do you make a travel log about a team meeting funny? 2.) How do you make a travel log funny without making all of your friends mad at you when you write about how guys don't seem to care how often they pass gas. I'll go farther then that. All the guys I know, whether they are in a bunker with one of five artillery rounds going off over head or sitting around a million dollar cabin in Tahoe, not only don't care but they have a tendency to rank it by; volume, aroma, and length. Women will blame it on the dog, Guys will steal credit for it, if it is loud, long and strong enough. I'll warn you now that the humor, if there is any in this Blog, doesn't improve so you might want to reclaim your life and skip the rest of this one. I know I'm disappointed that I have sunk to writing about flatulence but you have to follow your muse.

I have been traveling a lot. You know you are traveling a lot when your 8 year old daughter asks you if have divorced her mommy. Another good sign is if she asks what your other family is like. I'm not sure if she was trying to be controversial or if she really does wonder since I only spend the weekends at home, I did divorce Cheryl. I do try and spend time with her on Saturday, I spoil her by buying her junk and taking her to her favorite restaurant but I only see her, or have custody of her, on the weekend. Sounds like I am a divorced dad.

I left for the office on Monday before she got up for school and I'll be coming home on Saturday around 6:30 in the morning, so maybe I am spending less time with her and my son, than I would if I were divorced.

I start off the week in the Bay Area to meet with a partner, that wants to tell me that they have reduced staffing around Linux because don't see a lot of money coming from it. Since I am the Linux Partner Development guy that's not how you want to start your week. I do this meeting with my Boss and then we are going to drive over to Sacramento to work out of the Novell office. When we finish working there we will then drive over to his second home near Lake Tahoe. I'd say we were going to his cabin but it has one more bathroom and two more bedrooms then my one and only home so I'm not calling it a cabin.

We have been trying to do a team meeting for about four months but since everyone travels as much as I do this is the first time that we have been able to schedule it. I'm not a big fan of meetings which is kind of funny because that it what I do for a living. I meet with people. I have predawn meetings, breakfast meetings, morning meetings, lunch meetings, early afternoon, late afternoon, early evening, dinner, and late night meetings. You get the idea. I have a lot of meetings. When I am not in meetings, I'm in an airport on a teleconference while I am waiting for a flight to go to a meeting. In fact I'm in a meeting right now while I'm writing this. Most of the internal meetings are not what you would call great meetings, but I was looking forward to this meeting. One reason is that I get kind of lonely out here and it is nice to get to talk to your peers and find out that they have the same problems and issues that you have. The second reason is because we are going to get to go skiing. I moved from Utah a couple of years ago and have not seen a slope since.

I get to spend an extra day with my boss. This has pluses and minuses, one is we both like to talk. My friends know that I love the sound of my own voice. I'll talk about anything and enjoy it most when I'm talking about nothing. My boss likes to talk just a bit more than me or at least because he is my boss I let him talk when I would really rather be hearing my own opinion, not his. On the plus side I do get to hear his opinion which is good to understand if you're going to be working for someone. We get into his house around 7:00 pm. Charles Gonzales, my peer out of Houston, got in earlier to save money on his flight and was volunteered to cook dinner for the team, also to save money. The idea of saving money was a repeating theme of the meeting. Charles did a great job. I like to think of myself as a pretty good cook but I'm not brave enough to try and prepare a dinner for this team in a strange kitchen. We get a call from Mike Cannell who decides that it would save money if he waited at the airport for four hours until Mike Leishman's flight comes in and they can share a rental car. The two Mike's are with the church and Rick has brought enough wine to get a Roman Legion drunk so Rick, Charles and I sit down to dinner and try to finish off enough of the wine to impress the French. France is where most of the wine comes from by the way.. I disappoint Rick by telling him that Texas has a couple of pretty good winerys near Austin. He stops serving me since he assumes that I must already be drunk.

The wine we are drinking is from his Uncle's cellar. I'm pretty sure his Uncle never found a bottle of wine he didn't like. Some of the stuff we drank was 35 years old and cost $1.85 when it was purchased. We had to filter the cork out by straining it through a coffee filter but it really was pretty good, not Texas good, but surprising good for corked $1.85 wine. I was a bit surprised after dinner when Rick told me to do the dishes. Not that I resented it. Charles had cooked. Rick had driven us the 400 miles and it was his house. It is just that I haven't done dishes since Matthew was seven years old. I have not dried dishes since Katie was seven years old. It has been so long since I washed a dish I assumed that you didn't have to wash them anymore. Rick did offer to dry but I assume that was only so that he could inspect my work. I remember when I dried dishes as a kid, it was only so I could hand them back to my sister and say, "This one isn't clean."

Charles got tagged for telling everyone that he was a bit jet lagged at 11:30 since in Houston it was 1:30 am. I was right there with him. but I was glad it was him and not me. I flew out late, got up early, had driven 400 miles and it felt a lot later than 1:30 am to me, especially when I knew we had a 14 hour meeting to look forward to tomorrow. Everyone told Charles that he was a sissy for being tired and then we all immediately headed off to bed. We all slept really well. Breakfast was some very nice, very fresh, bagels that Rick had gotten by getting up 30 minutes before us, driving down the snowy hill and bought at a local bagel shop that had just opened. I think it was more to save money then it was to impress us, but it did both.

The meeting was long and since everyone at Novell has been trained by "Full Spectrum" it was full of words like "Alignment," "What's So," and "So what!". I have to admit, sometimes you just have to state the obvious. It will not fix anything but at least it makes you feel like you're not alone. We agreed that we need to provide training to our partners. We complained about the people that you need to complain about, complimented the people who should be complimented and basically solved world hunger. On the positive and negative side we didn't have any cell phone coverage or Internet access. Actually Rick had cell phone coverage which I'm not sure how he pulled off since he was the only one. That means that the meeting was very focused since we couldn't send messages or check our e-mail.

We broke for lunch after around 1:00 pm and then did a walk around the neighborhood. It is a very nice neighborhood. A million dollar home, next to a million and half, just behind a two million dollar home on the golf course down from the neighborhood ski lift. We noticed what I thought was steel mail boxes but turned out to be Bear proof trash cans. Rick was telling us how the black bears were a problem and Mike responded by saying, "Well you don't have to be the fastest guy in the group just faster than the slowest guy in the group." I'm trying to figure out who I am going to trip because all of these guys look faster than me, when a big hairy black bear comes trotting around the corner. At least it looked like a black bear. It was really a black dog but I have no idea what kind of dog it was. My guess would be some kind of Akita , Mastiff, Pyrenees ,Saint Bernard, California. Black bear mix. I know it surprised Charles and I was already thinking of the best way to trip him so it had me worried for a minute.

We finished the loop and because I'm a big fat guy and we must have been over a mile high I was ready to call it Mission Accomplished. I do 40 minutes on the Stairmaster on the days that I can not ride my bike but on this trip I got winded dropping my coat off in the third floor bedroom. We got back into the meeting and did the obligatory post-it note exercise. The one where you write down all of the things that are going well and all of the things that are wrong. Of course the what is going wrong finishes up just about the time you run out of post-it notes.

We finish up around 7:00 pm then head down to the Starbucks to sync up our e-mail and make some phone calls. It is a very strange crowd and our arrival doesn't make it much less strange. I'm waiting for one of the guys to finish and log off so I can use their login and sync up. The guy sitting between Rick and me is constantly licking the back of his hands and this forearms. He is tweaking like it is time for his methadone dose all the awhile talking to Rick about satellite and 802.11N . It always makes me nervous when the junkies know more about computers than I do. I keep thinking when Novell finally fires me, "Will I be a tweaking computer geek in the Starbucks talking about Linux."

It takes us about an hour to finish our calls and sync up GroupWise then we had off to dinner at the Dragonfly. It is a very nice restaurant and proves it is always nice to be in town with a local. We order a nice bottle of wine and I order an Arnold Palmer. I am aware of how closely my boss watches the budget but was a little surprised when he does a double take looking at the bill and says, "Who order the lemonade" I sheepishly answer, "I did." He gives me a dirty look, like I should be flogged, but then graciously agrees that he will pay for it, he leaves off the clearly implies, "This time." I feel like the rest of the group is warming up to me, most people don't, but on the rare occasion that it does happen I am pretty aware of it. We are still talking about work and I make the mistake of saying, "Look training is so important that I would fire one of us and hire a full time trainer before I'd do without it. I then realized that I had lost the crowd. The warmth left the room and I knew they turned on me when Mike asked, "How much do they charge for a lemonade here anyway." Then Charles leaned over and refilled everyone's water glass stopping at mine and saying, " Oh sorry you had the lemonade didn't you."

I was pretty quite the rest of the night. The only thing anyone heard from me was the tapping of my keyboard as I re-did my resume. The next day we did a quick wrap up of the meeting, reviewed our transportation and then we headed off to a "team building" exercise, aka skiing. I have a partner meeting in Portland on Friday which means I have to change planes in Salt Lake City so I only have time for skiing in the morning. Mike Cannell has a flight out an hour before mine so we decide to ride together. Mike Leishman has an even earlier flight so he has to pass on skiing completely. Charles saved $800 by flying out Friday morning on the first flight back to Houston so he and Rick could do another couple runs after we all get together for lunch.

Charles and I had to rent equipment. The weather was really bad, high winds, blowing snow so the rental guy recommended that we wait. Rick checked it out and decided that it would be good enough, so we decided to go ahead and rent. The manager really wanted us to buy the equipment insurance, which only covered minor damage. It was three bucks but I had already splurged on lemonade so declined. He really wanted to sell it to me. He gave me a look like it was a real mistake, then he looked like a mafia wiseguy and said, "youse really should consider getting the insurance, no telling what could happen on the slope." I tell him I have to pass and then while he is handing me a pole he says, "You know all you have to do is bend a pole and it is going to cost you $40 bucks." I tell him, "I understand." and as he hands me the pole I swear he holds it in his hands and flexs it to show how fragile the pole is. I have been skiing for 25 years and I have never broken a pole but I figure it will be worth the $40 bucks just so I can put it in this story.

We hit the slopes of Squaw Valley. Mike is on his snowboard, and the rest of us are on skis. I'm dressed in my usually grunt outfit, an old Novell jacket bluejeans, a goofy hat, gloves that are warm but don't match anything else I'm wearing, but since nothing matches it would be hard to coordinate the gloves. Everyone else looks like they belong on the slopes, I look like I belong in a Cardboard box behind the Salvation Army's soup kitchen. This has Rick talking to me like I should be on the bunny slope. I'm not a great skier but I'm a good skier. The wind is blowing at just below level one Hurricane with gusts in the 70 mph range. The specially built Funitel lift with a dual cable system lurches and I think, maybe I should be on the bunny slope. You have to have a worst day of skiing. You have the best day and so you have to have the worst day. Until today my worst day was in Switzerland that time the wind was so bad it blew down trees and power lines but at least you could see. Matthew always complains about how bad the skiing was in Switzerland. We are fair weather skiers. We lived so long in Utah that we began to skip skiing on the bad days, and then we decided not to ski on days that the snow was not prefect. If the weekend is going to be windy, or you see sleet in the forecast you skip skiing. There is always going to be another weekend and it is Utah so you are going to have great snow. If you get a ton of powder during the middle of the week you take a day off and hit the slopes. This day was a day I would have skipped in Utah. The wind and blowing snow cut visibility so you couldn't see the slope. The ride up on the chairlift was cold and miserable. But then again you know what they say the worst day of skiing is better than the best day of working. It was fun, in a cold icy way. We got a couple of good runs in and it is alway nice to ski somewhere new.

Rick and I did the last run together and he is a much better skier than I am. Charles did a couple more runs at the top of the mountain and then we all got together for lunch. We took some photos for the travel log and since Mike Leishman was already at the airport we called him and told him to take a shot of himself so we would have a kind of team photo after our first team meeting. Mike Cannell had a 3:00 pm fight and I had a 4:00 pm flight to Portland so we stole Charles' rental car and took off to the airport. The trip to Portland was uneventful, I did end up staying in downtown Portland which means I spent a lot more for parking then I did for the lemonade. Now the trip back from Portland, that was new experience.

You would think that as much as I have traveled I would be "seasoned" but I learn a new and always painful travel lesson just about once a quarter. The lesson this quarter is don't fly Alaska Airlines into San Jose if you have to change planes and fly out on American. I fly out of Portland on a code share American/Alaska Airlines flight. I get into San Jose Terminal "C". I have never been in Terminal "C" before so I'm a bit confused as I look for a screen telling me what gate my American flight to Dallas is leaving from in 38 minutes. I can not find it but I see a sign that says "American Flights Terminal A" I look for the "Skytrain" walk way, or any way to get from Terminal C to Terminal A.. I find myself outside on the curb. This is not good. I have wasted 6 minutes so I have 32 minutes to find a bus get over to the new terminal, get through security and get to the gate. My boarding pass says "Boarding Time: 5:58" or thirteen minutes ago.

I look around for whatever magic conveyance is suppose to whisk me from the cold wet curb of Terminal C to the loving warm arms of Terminal A but I am still a bit lost. Being lost makes most people stupid and since I start off with a head start in that department I do a really stupid thing. I walk pass the Inter-Terminal bus and get on the Rental Bus. Now I am not trying to defend my stupidity but I do want to explain it. I assume that since the bus is the same color and that there is two of them that I should walk pass the one that has its doors closed and get on the one that has its doors open. I am smart enough to ask the driver, "Will this bus will take me to the American Terminal?" He responds like I am speaking a foreign language which I am because he is wearing a Purgree and answers me in a "Monty Python" like Indian accent, "America?" He appears to be asking me if I am trying to get to America. I suppose so he can be the first to welcome me. I say, "No. American Airlines. Does this bus take me to American Airlines?" He then says, "No the bus behind will take you to the other terminal." I grab my bags and step off the bus just in time to see the Inter-Terminal bus pull away.

Time 6:13. I now have 30 minutes before the plane is wheels up. The next bus is another Rental Car Bus, and so is the next one. The next bus to arrive at 6:20 is a Long Term Parking bus, followed by a Rental Car bus, followed by a Long Term Parking bus, followed by a Rental Car bus. I would highly recommend renting a car at the San Jose airport, they run a lot of buses. My bus arrives at 6:33 just as I am stepping into a cab that I have illegally waved down with a $50 dollar bill. He looks at the $50 and says, I can't take you to the terminal you will have to take the Inter-Terminal Shuttle. I run back and jump on it just as it is starting to pull away, 10 minutes to wheels up. We get stuck at the cross walk since California is the only state in the union that a person actually feels safe stepping in front of a 14 ton bus. It takes 5 minutes so I am now 5 minutes from wheels up on my flight. I have given up and don't even care anymore. I assume that I will be in a hotel tonight or at the worst I'll be sleeping like Tom Hanks in "The Terminal" The flight I am missing wasn't scheduled to get into Dallas until midnight so I'll get in sometime Saturday afternoon. I have had worst trips.

We get to Terminal A , I jump off the still moving bus, run as fast as a guy that weighs 15 Stone 10 pounds can and race up the stairs to ticketing. It is 6:43 wheels up time. I look at the 37 people in the TSA security line and walk over to ticketing and ask, "What flight can you put me on to Dallas." She looks at my ticket and says, "This is a boarding pass. You don't need a ticket just cut in line. You have to understand who I am to know how painful that is. I spent 8 years in Catholic school, not todays real teachers, open to anyone Catholic school. I'm talking Mother Superior, Nuns in the classroom and not the sweater wearing Nuns, the full habit flying nun type nuns. The ones that would hit you so hard you skipped a grade Nuns. The ones that the Mafia learned that hitting someone with the Yellow pages or an 1967 History book wouldn't leave a mark so the coroner can not determine what killed you, type nuns. I then went on to spend 11 years in the Army. I don't walk on the grass, wear my hat indoors, spit on the sidewalk, drop trash on the ground and I don't cut in lines. The lady at the ticket counter sees the terror in my eyes. I look over at the 39 people in line and say, "What flight can you put me on to get to Dallas?" She takes me by the hand and walks me to the front of the line like I was a four year old girl. She turns to another lady behind the counter and says. This is the guy on flight 2426 to Dallas call the gate. I get through security, don't bother to put my shoes back on and walk / run in my socks down to gate 9. The guy greets me like I am an unaccompanied minor, I suppose because I am carrying my shoes, have my boarding pass clenched in my teeth, one arm in my suit jacket and my computer is hanging half way out of my bag. I have an overstuffed carry on plus a backpack/roller bag. I am the last guy on the plane. Everyone gives me a dirty look as I stumble down the aisle with one shoe on and one shoe in tucked under my arm pit.

I am sitting in the row 21. The flight attendant found a place for my bag over row 32. I don't care, I'll be home by 1:00 am. I called my wife just before they closed the door to tell Cheryl I made the flight. She lovingly said, "Don't wake me."

I was going to finish this story with the "Don't wake me." line, but after waiting calmly for the entire plane to empty, even one of the flight attendants got off before I did, so I could walk back to row 32 and retrieve my bag. I got to relive the experience of DFW after midnight. I am parked at A39H. That maps to Terminal A Gate 39 level H. Our arrival gate is Terminal C gate 23. I'm still pretty happy. I could have missed the flight and be sleeping in a chair at the San Jose airport. I know the airport like I know the back of my hand. I tie my shoes and walk over to the skylink

This is the train that connects the terminals and is pretty convenient. One issue is that it is inside security, which now that I think about it would be really convenient if they had one in San Jose. The problem with being inside of security is that you have to have a valid boarding pass to get to it, also if you check bags you are outside of security when you pick them up and they will not let you back in. So you really don't want to check bags. Any way, I walk over to the skylink and wait. They have two cars on each train, since it is after midnight they are only running in one direction so I stand next to the only other guy waiting and in about 5 minutes the train arrives. It stops and the train doors open but the terminal doors don't. It is late, I'm tired and now I can not get on the train that will take me to my car, in fact it is taunting me. I even put my hand in and try to pry them apart. I push on them, I swear quietly, after about 45 seconds the doors on the train close and the train drives away. The guy next to me throws his bag to the ground looks right at me and says, well I can not really write what he says because my site is rated by the ICRA and they don't allow me to use that kind of language with my rating. I'll paraphrase what he said, " #@%# ing damn it. They have to do everything thing they can to keep me from my baby." The first part which I had to leave off was repeated a number of times. He seemed to be trying to find the hidden camera because he said it looking at me, looking straight up at the ceiling, at the departing train, and to each wall. He did not seem happy and he wasn't alone. Well he was kind of alone because although I too was unhappy I did move away from him and wait for the next train at the other door.

I wasn't really sure what to do next. The next train could come and the doors might not open again. The doors could open this time but not open at the next terminal so instead of being stuck on the platform I could be stuck on the train. I decided to wait because I couldn't bear walking outside and waiting for another inter-terminal bus. The train came and this time both sets of doors opened. I got on one car and my vocal friend got on the other. It was a short ride to Terminal A . We got off and I followed the signs to gates 29 - 39. My new friend must have also parked at the end of Terminal A but he was a little faster than me. At the bottom of the escalator I notice the deserted terminal and remember that they sometimes lock the doors. I suspiciously start to walk to the exit nearest to gate 39 and notice my friend stop. Throw his bag to the ground again and start to scream. I don't hear what he is saying but I get the idea that he is unhappy. I start to walk the other way, it is still late, I'm still tired, and every step I take inside the building is going to have to be repeated except in the opposite direction outside the building. I walk past one set of doors, locked, another set, locked, third, forth, fifth, all of them are locked. Well not really locked, they are alarmed. I know this because before 9-11 I once gave up and opened one. The alarm went off and I told the guard that came to check it that I was sorry. Now it is after 9-11 and I don't think they are as forgiving. The sign says, " Door is alarmed. Exiting here will result in a $4000 fine and jail time " I walk past the sixth set of alarmed doors and think, "I have $4000 in the bank." The jail part is still kind of a bummer so I keep walking.

I finally find the one open door and walk out into the cool night air of Texas. I am a couple of parking garages away from my car but I'm free. It will take me 15 minutes to walk to the car but since it is now almost 1:00 am I will have a very short and very fast ride home. The traffic at one in the morning is pretty light. I get home, take a shower to wash the grim and memories away and then crawl into bed.

I don't wake Cheryl.

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