Thursday, 26 July 2018, 8pm

Running along the edge of craziness, trying to keep on the sane side, continues this week as I'm working a customer POC that keeps threatening to go off the rails in various ways big and small. As I noted in a previous blog, the first two days this week were dominated with problems caused by rough edges in our product ( Read more... )

Taiwan Travelog #9
Back at the Grand Hyatt Taipei - Sat 2 Oct 2010 - 9pm

After lamenting and feeling so guilty earlier today being such a couch potato instead of getting out and about in Taiwan (see previous blog about "The unglamorous truth of international travel") I did finally summon the energy for some sightseeing ( Read more... )

Taiwan Travelog #8
At the Grand Hyatt Taipei - Sat 2 Oct 2010 - 3:30pmInternational travel is rarely the glamorous life it's cracked up to be. I hear from my friends, my relatives, even my coworkers that my life must be exciting and charmed because I "get" to travel around to so many places. I write "get" in quotes because my boss used this line on ( Read more... )

Taiwan Travelog #7
At the Sheraton Taipei hotel - Sat 2 Oct 2010 - 11:30amI arrived in Taipei yesterday afternoon. Riding the train in from Hsinchu was easy. It was practically empty and the stations were like ghost towns. Once in Taipei it was still about 0.8 miles to my hotel. I decided to walk it to see more of the city. Not the greatest idea as ( Read more... )

Taiwan Travelog #6
Aboard Taiwan High-Speed Rail - Fri 1 Oct 2010 - 2:30pmToday was a nearly pointless day with the customer. Our main technical contact was out on vacation and so was his boss. There was nobody there for us to work with! After how much they were gnawing on our collective leg the past several weeks for me to travel halfway around ( Read more... )

Taiwan Travelog #5
Sheraton Hsinchu Hotel, Hsinchu Taiwan - Thu 30 Sep 2010 - 10pmOur sales guy came by to visit us and the customer this morning. We've been having difficulty getting software stack #3 of 3 to build on our platform so we proposed doing a 4th project instead. Of course, for the customer, as with pretty much every customer I've ( Read more... )

Taiwan Travelog #4
Sheraton Hsinchu Hotel, Hsinchu Taiwan - Wed 29 Sep 2010 - 10pmI got back not too long ago from my first day onsite with our prospective customer here in Taiwan. My team member, Freddy, and I are out here trying to wrap up the technical work required to make the sale. We agreed to do 3 prototypes for them. The first was finished ( Read more... )

Taiwan Travelog #3
Sheraton Hsinchu Hotel, Hsinchu Taiwan - Tue 28 Sep 2010 - 10pmIt's been a long day but I'm finally settled in at my hotel in Taiwan. My flight landed around 9pm. Hsinchu is about 50 miles west of Taipei. The airport is between the two cities, not terribly convenient to either one. You have to take a shuttle bus to a train ( Read more... )

Taiwan Travelog #2
Tokyo Narita Airport - Tue 28 Sep 2010 - 5:30pmI'm jotting down a few thoughts at a sushi bar at Tokyo Narita airport while awaiting my connecting flight to Taipei. I must say, eating fresh fish in Japan prepared by a master chef standing 3 feet away from me is a real "doesn't suck" aspect of international travel. I'll make a ( Read more... )

Since travel at my current job has dropped to nearly nil I thought I'd pull another set of travelogs out of my archives and post them here. This series is from October 2010, two jobs back, when I was dashing around the world to close sales for my company. That job was tough but exciting.

Taiwan Travelog #1
Monday or Tuesday - Traversing the ( Read more... )