a week in the life

Recently, a couple friends and family members have asked me "what exactly is it you do?" It's a fair question, so I will now provide you a glimpse into my weekly routine by detailing my activities this week:

Monday:

• 5:30 wake up, finish packing, check flight status
  
• 6:15 discover that Delta has managed to already screw up my flights for this morning and decide to call Delta customer service. I'm a "Gold Elite" frequent flier with Delta, which means they provide me with a unique 1-800 number that connects me to an American in Atlanta rather than "Mike" in Bangalore. Nice. I got a hold of Stephanie at Delta who tells me that the crew who flew the MD-80 into Lexington last night got in late, and they need to rest more before they can fly again. Delta has re-routed me on some flights that get me into San Francisco at 6pm (instead of my original 11AM scheduled arrival) and includes a 4 hour layover in Atlanta. No thanks, Stephanie, what else have you got? She routes me through Cincy instead of Atlanta, which gets me to SF at 10:30AM.
  
• 6:30 hop a cab to the airport. I normally drive myself but my car is getting its 25,000 mile service. I've had that Scion for 2.5 years now and it's never needed anything but scheduled maintenance. Don't ever buy a BMW, ever.
  
• 7:20 - a 24 minute flight from Lexington to Cincinnati with a male flight attendant who thinks he's a real comedian but ought to just shut his trap. No one wants to hear his cheezy humor at 7:30 in the morning (or anytime during the day, for that matter)
• 8:00 - arrive at departure gate for flight to SF. Delta reminds us that although this is a 4.5 hour flight, there is no meal service, so we should feel free to hit the food court before we board. Thanks. I'm on the list for an upgrade to first class, but don't get it. Typical.
  
• 8:45 - cram onto a 757. I've got the window seat but no one likes a plane with 3x3 seating. You've either got to ask everyone to get up when you need to hit the can (if you've got the window) or you get your elbows bruised by the service carts and you have to get up every time someone else in your row needs to hit the can (if you're on the aisle). We all know about the middle seat. When I'm president, it'll be illegal to have a row with 3 seats and only 4 arm rests. Most people I know have 2 arms.
  
• 9:15 (EDT) - we've crossed the 10,000 ft mark so I can break out my noise canceling headphones. These are a must-have for the frequent traveler, as they not only drown out the noise of the plane engines, but they also significantly muffle the crying kids, loud women yapping, and many of the other noises that so often molest your ears on a plane. I plug in my phone which is also an mp3 player and fire up some tunes. I've also downloaded a Sudoku game which is a great diversion.
  
• 10:45(PDT) - arrive in SF, claim bags, catch BART train for downtown. Lug bags up to office, and I'm the first one to arrive. My co-workers have all been delayed in their travels too and don't show up until after lunch. This is officially the worst summer for air travel since the Bureau of Transportation Statistics started keeping track in 1995. Neat.
• Monday afternoon we spend catching up, planning our tasks for the week, and arranging meetings. Also, the refrigerator for our floor is right near our workspace, and some jerk has left some milk product in there for (apparently) 10 years or so and it's well past science project at this point. So every time someone opens up the fridge, we get blasted with the noxious fumes of beyond-sour milk. It's terribly uncivilized. These California Hippie IT folks who sit near us have posted signs around the office featuring a cute little kitten named "Misty" to remind us that "everytime you download a virus or use mp3 file sharing applications, Misty cries. Please don't make Misty cry." So I created a sign for the refrigerator that says "every time someone opens the door to this refrigerator, Misty gets sick to her stomach. Please clean out your old food so Misty doesn't gag." We'll see how effective this proves to be.
  
• 5pm - walk to the hotel with Brian. He and I are both staying at the Sir Francis Drake (SFD), and considering the way we eat out here, we need to do all the walking we can. The folks at the SFD love me and have again upgraded me to a "towers suite." Upon check-in to hotel, call Ella.
  
• 6:30pm - meet Mike and Brian in the lobby to head for dinner. Sometimes the team eats together, other times we don't. Tonight we hit the E&O Trading Company for some outstanding Asian cuisine (shrimp, cliantro & lime pad thai for me).
• 9pm - Get home from dinner, crash. I've been up for 20 hours at this point.

Tuesday

• 7:00AM - rise and shine. walk to work, still full from dinner so I skip breakfast. Meet with some PG&E folks to collect more information about their software applications. Work on our master spreadsheet where we track all our research
• 11:20AM - lunch at the cardiac cafe. It's actually called the Beale St. grill, but we have re-named it (appropriately) in light of the greasy-spoon nature of their food. Still, we love the place and eat here at least once a week. We normally head for lunch at 11:30 to beat the rush, but someone has decided to take one for the floor and clean out the fridge. The smell was so overwhelming that we left early today.
  
• 2pm - meet with a senior IT director at PG&E. ask him about other (previous) projects that have attempted to do what we're doing, why they failed, and what kind of information he can provide me about PG&E's software portfolio. He's extremely helpful, interested in our work, and extends our 30 minute meeting to 60 minutes just so we can get into more detail. This is typical of the meetings we have with PG&E folks. They are excited about the work we are here to do, and all have been very helpful.
  
• 5:30pm - head back to hotel, call Ella
• 7pm - meet Mike at our favorite Irish pub for a beer, then wander down Columbus ave and find "Joe Dimaggio's" where we decide to have dinner. Garlic herb roasted rotisserie chicken with yukon gold potatoes and carmelized onions. Nice. I told you we need the exercise.
  
• ~8:50pm - Barry Bonds hits #756 and the entire bar erupts with cheers. It was a home game for the Giants so all the locals are glued to the tv.
  

Wednesday

• 6:30AM - rise and shine. Brad has scheduled us for a day of meetings today starting at 8am. We will make him pay for this upon his return - he's working from his home in Colorado this week.
  
• Most of the morning and afternoon - blah blah more meetings and research. We're making good progress again this week, it's just tedious information gathering work.
• 11:32 - at exactly 23 hours and 59 minutes before my flight, I check-in online and print my boarding passes. This places me at (or near) the top of the standby list for an upgrade to first class. They're rare, but oh so tasty when you can score one.
  
• 11:45 - discover that I can order from my favorite deli here online and have my order waiting for me to pickup. The additional bonus is that online, they take American Express. At the store, they only take MC/Visa. Us EDS types prefer to use our corporate AmEx cards because it minimizes the amount of cash we need to use, and for our expense reports EDS will pay AmEx directly. This also means that whether or not a restaurant takes AmEx can be a deciding factor in how often we frequent it, if at all. I introduce my co-worker Mike to the deli as well. I order two cookies - one chocolate chip, and one peanut butter chocolate chunk (for Brian). Mike orders a salad - he tries to stay away from the carbs. We walk to the deli, pick up our goodies, and I hit the Jamba Juice next door to grab a smoothie (which will be my lunch).
  
• 6:30 - leave work, call Ella.
• 7pm - walk around Union Square, find an Indian bar/restaurant and enjoy a fabulous Madras Tamarind Chicken dish. Eating by yourself is never fun, but if it's good food you can eat at a good bar with fellow business travelers, that makes it more tolerable. Try eating on your own in in a foreign country - that can really stink.
  
• 9pm - return to room and call Joe to discuss Barry Bonds. Pack, Pop in my dvd of Office Space to laugh at all the painfully accurate office humor in this spectacular movie.
  

Thursday

• Up at 6AM and in the office by 7. I had been working on some important research finds this week, and I want to bring some closure to them before I fly home for the weekend. I think mostly because of the effort involved in traveling to a client's site each week, I find myself wanting to be super-productive while I'm on site. Part of it too is that work serves as a distraction from the fact that I'm 2,398 miles from my wife, my dog, and my bed. The travel on this project is a lot easier though because San Francisco is such a wonderful city. I once had a project in Findlay, Ohio and man was that awful. It's a friendly, all-American town, and I'm sure it's a very nice place to raise a family, there's just absolutely NOTHING to do there.
• 7:30AM - Brian arrives and takes on the task of putting together an Excel formula that will greatly reduce our workload. We both know what we want to do, but neither of us has a clue how to get this spreadsheet to do it. God bless Google - 30 minutes later Brian has worked up exactly what we need.
  
• 8-9:30AM - continue working on our findings, print boarding passes, report our progress to Frank, our fearless leader. Check Delta.com periodically to see if they are going to delay my flight. Oddly, they do not.
  
• 9:30 head for the BART station to take the train to the airport. It takes a little longer than a cab but it's way cheaper and (contrary to what some may think) we do try to keep our expenses reasonable. Most times when a company hires consultants on for a project, the contract will specify that we must keep our expenses to x% of our total bill. The percentage can range from 12% to 18% depending on a number of factors. PG&E I think asked us to keep it to 17%, but of course we'd really like to keep it even lower than that. Spending $10/week on airport trips versus $90 in a taxi is an easy way to do this. We also rotate people home as the project progresses. Each of the next few weeks, at least one or two team members will be working from home. There is rarely a need to have 7 people on the ground, and keeping one or two guys home is another easy way to save costs.
  
• 11:30 - Delta's flight to Atlanta boards on time. I again do not get upgraded to business class. The list for upgrades is 20 people long, and I'm number 16. They had 2 open seats. Really, they shouldn't even advertise that "we'll upgrade you if a seat is available" if in fact it never happens.
  
• 7:45PM EDT - land in Atlanta and try to hop an earlier flight home to Lexington. I'm booked on a 10pm flight that gets me home at 11, but there is an 8:15 flight that probably had some seats open on it. I am informed that they can't put me on the earlier flight because I would be "voluntarily separating myself from my checked baggage." After some investigating, I learn that if my 10pm flight was delayed, I could've asked them to put me on the earlier flight. Now, my bags still wouldn't have come with me on the earlier flight, so I'm not sure of the logic here. Wait, did I just use the word "logic" in talking about an experience with an airline? I apologize for that.
  
• 11:16pm touchdown at LEX, the most beautiful airport in the world, even at night. I cannot stress enough how wonderful it is to have my home airport be Lexington's Bluegrass Airport. It's basically 1 step above a grass strip but we get jet service, there are maybe 10 gates total, only 2 baggage carousels, never a long line at security - it's wonderful.
• 11:20pm Ella and Tobi pick me up at the terminal and drive me home.
  

Friday

• Sleep in
• Do some work - file expense report, time card, check plans for next week
• Write letter of complaint to whatever airline I flew this week
• Play Nintendo
• Water plants
  
• Watch DVR shows

And there you have it, a week in the life. It's tough work being an international man of mystery, but someone's gotta do it.