still catching up...
week of 11/6
- after our three days of halloween revelry, i had a fairly gentle re-entry into the work madness...
- most of monday was conf calls and packing. i was heading out for 8 days on the road, including a weekend in sjc with lots of activities planned, so i had everything and the kitchen sink: gym climbing gear (shoes, harness, chalkbag, climbing clothes), riding gear (shoes, helmet, glasses, bike clothes), 6 days of work clothes, and a variety of hanging-out clothes. i ended up taking a 26" pullman and a duffel bag of gear along with my usual laptop rolly and shoulder bag. what the hell - if i'm going to check bags, it's as easy to check two as one...
- i was planning to wear my stompy boots on the plane, and i didn't want to be carrying luggage down the stairs in stompy boots, so i left the boots at the door and was packing in sock feet... and promptly proceeded to fall down the stairs. for the first time in the new house. fairly impressively, too - i was carrying a duffel bag and my laptop case, and my foot slipped off a step near the top of the stairs, so my bags and i tumbled ass-over-teakettle down to the landing. no bones broken, but i banged the shit out of one knee and one of the bags left a big mark in the wall. that's what i get for trying to plan ahead... murphy is a bitch.
- due to a slight time miscalculation, i ended up at the airport 15 minutes later than i would have liked - especially considering i had to check bags - but the lines were short, so there was no harm done except to my sanity. the flight was uneventful; i didn't make my upgrade on the long leg to vegas, but i did get first class from vegas to sjc. and the best part was indigo_rose99 meeting me at the airport when i arrived! *bouncebouncebounce* she was in town for the week teaching a stats class, and i had scheduled my trip to coincide with hers, but arriving at the same time was complete luck.
- most of monday was conf calls and packing. i was heading out for 8 days on the road, including a weekend in sjc with lots of activities planned, so i had everything and the kitchen sink: gym climbing gear (shoes, harness, chalkbag, climbing clothes), riding gear (shoes, helmet, glasses, bike clothes), 6 days of work clothes, and a variety of hanging-out clothes. i ended up taking a 26" pullman and a duffel bag of gear along with my usual laptop rolly and shoulder bag. what the hell - if i'm going to check bags, it's as easy to check two as one...
- tuesday was a long tough day at work followed by a most enjoyable evening...
- i spent most of the day setting up uac 2.0 demo configs with a coworker. we have two different factions creating demo setups - one east coast, one west coast - and for historical / political reasons they don't communicate well at all. i work well with both of them, so i'm trying to bridge the gap, for a number of reasons: to reduce duplication of effort, to eliminate the confusion that would result from having two conflicting setups, to get the L2-oriented folks talking to the L3-oriented folks, and to finally get this stuff nailed down so we can push it out to the field... so the plan was to set up both config sets and pick one to move forward. this would have worked better if we weren't both completely distracted by the panicked push to finish all sorts of documents for the upcoming uac 2.0 launch the following week. and if i hadn't run into a big technical snag very late in the day which had me tearing my hair out and casting aspersions on bill gates' parentage. :(
- the day did have its good points, too... one of the things i love about going out to headquarters is that there are so many people there. :) seriously, i don't generally have a sense of isolation in working from home - probably because i'm on the road so much - but every time i go to a corporate office i run into friends, colleagues, neat people doing interesting stuff... and especially in the sunnyvale office since most of the netscreen oldtimers (well, the ones that are left, anyway) are there. so i had several chance encounters of the rewarding / fascinating / serendipitous variety throughout the day - a very pleasant lunch with my coworker lori (ubergeek in the QA group) that expanded to include her SO mike (ex-teammate of mine, now working on documenting best practices), drive-by hello'ing of several west coasties, and hallway conversations with all sorts of odd sorts. :)
- however, by that evening, i was completely fried. indigo_rose99 picked me up after work, and we headed over to sushitomi - one of my favorite sushi joints in the country - for dinner with tiger_stripes and my coworkers mike & lori. it took me at least 3 glasses of sake to approach social functionality, but fortunately my friends love me very much and are happy to pick on me gently and feed me & pet me until my ruffled feathers are smoothed down. mike managed to hold his own despite being completely outnumbered by the "female brainiac club," as he termed us, and it ended up being a most enjoyable evening.
- i spent most of the day setting up uac 2.0 demo configs with a coworker. we have two different factions creating demo setups - one east coast, one west coast - and for historical / political reasons they don't communicate well at all. i work well with both of them, so i'm trying to bridge the gap, for a number of reasons: to reduce duplication of effort, to eliminate the confusion that would result from having two conflicting setups, to get the L2-oriented folks talking to the L3-oriented folks, and to finally get this stuff nailed down so we can push it out to the field... so the plan was to set up both config sets and pick one to move forward. this would have worked better if we weren't both completely distracted by the panicked push to finish all sorts of documents for the upcoming uac 2.0 launch the following week. and if i hadn't run into a big technical snag very late in the day which had me tearing my hair out and casting aspersions on bill gates' parentage. :(
- wednesday was more of the same, on all counts...
- for some reason, when planning trips to california, i always end up scheduling morning conf calls / online meetings on east coast time. it always seems like a good idea at the time - after all, i'll be up anyway - but in practice it means i don't get to work out in the morning, which is how i usually take advantage of my east-coast-5am-wakefulness. on balance, i think the workouts are more worthwhile. besides, i'd been hoping to use the demo setup from tuesday for the meeting, and the technical issue meant i couldn't get the remote access piece to work right. so i ended up staggering into the office 5 minutes before meeting start and using a much more limited demo environment... but the customer was impressed and the account team was thrilled. i have a hard time remembering that, in general, all my audience sees is the things that i can do, and i'm the only one who knows all the cool stuff that i wanted to do but couldn't. it always feels like cheating, to me, to get praised/thanked for doing something that they thought i did well when i think i could have done it bigger / better / faster...
- the rest of the day was more like yesterday - more demo config, more distraction with launch material, more running into coworkers and finding about more interesting things that i would love to get involved in if i could just freakin' clone myself. or have more hours in my week. or something. also, i got to see my coworker abby, newly engaged, with an enormous sparkly diamond on her hand which she was happily waving under the nose of anyone who crossed her path - very entertaining. :)
- after various email negotiations, cyberjack & crobson planned to meet indigo_rose99 & me at google, grab a light snack, hit the local rock gym for a bit of climbing, and then head over to abby & chris's for dinner along with mike & lori. the best laid plans of mice and men... i had another brain-breaking day and indigo_rose99 had a long day at class, so after the google tour, we adjourned to chez cyberjack & crobson for a bit of relaxing and book-geeking before we headed over to abby & chris's house with l-stboy in tow. dinner was a hoot - it's always nice to successfully mingle multiple milieux, and i found it totally gratifying to watch my crazy work friends, my crazy burning man friends, and my best friend in the world explore each others' myriad forms of niftiness. :)
- for some reason, when planning trips to california, i always end up scheduling morning conf calls / online meetings on east coast time. it always seems like a good idea at the time - after all, i'll be up anyway - but in practice it means i don't get to work out in the morning, which is how i usually take advantage of my east-coast-5am-wakefulness. on balance, i think the workouts are more worthwhile. besides, i'd been hoping to use the demo setup from tuesday for the meeting, and the technical issue meant i couldn't get the remote access piece to work right. so i ended up staggering into the office 5 minutes before meeting start and using a much more limited demo environment... but the customer was impressed and the account team was thrilled. i have a hard time remembering that, in general, all my audience sees is the things that i can do, and i'm the only one who knows all the cool stuff that i wanted to do but couldn't. it always feels like cheating, to me, to get praised/thanked for doing something that they thought i did well when i think i could have done it bigger / better / faster...
- thursday brought new forms of work madness and continuing social fun...
- i have a new teammate who is taking over the function of liaison between field and product management for our security products. since 33% of that function was previously on my plate, i am all for this. he came on board in early october, and provided me with the perfect excuse to come to california while indigo_rose99 was here: i set up a series of meetings to introduce him to the various product managers over a couple of days. and when i say "a series" i mean that we met with 16 people over thursday and friday.
- and did i mention that the panic level on completing material for the uac 2.0 launch was rising steadily? i'd been reviewing a monster load of content for an internal advisory tool, and the product marketing manager who owned it was heading straight off the deep end. so in between meetings and over lunch i was going through this mammoth document for the Nth time, coordinating review info from the east coast team (L2 background) since this was another area where the west coast (L3 background) folks weren't talking with them directly, and just generally trying not to lose my mind.
- indigo_rose99 picked me up after work again, and we drove up to mountain view to have dinner with her friend greg who i met back in our PEG days... in addition to being a nifty geek with a cool job, he also happens to be dating ms. darwin awards, which i just think is wildly neat. :) we had a fabulous meal at amarin thai - their forest curry seafood hot pot is amazing.
- i have a new teammate who is taking over the function of liaison between field and product management for our security products. since 33% of that function was previously on my plate, i am all for this. he came on board in early october, and provided me with the perfect excuse to come to california while indigo_rose99 was here: i set up a series of meetings to introduce him to the various product managers over a couple of days. and when i say "a series" i mean that we met with 16 people over thursday and friday.
- and friday darn near did me in.
- we started off the day meeting with my ex-teammate mike and his new team for an overview of their efforts to define a best practices standard for securing open access networks. from there, more meetings with product managers, lunch with the entire beta-test team, and a final round of meetings just to wrap things up. i think my brain was running out my ear by the end of the day.
- also, yet another fire drill on launch docs. the product marketing manager from thursday realized we didn't have a good overview of symantec's NAC offering and promptly freaked out; i got up on east coast time again and spent a couple hours familiarizing myself with their solution before hopping on board the meeting-go-round. by mid-afternoon i had a pretty good idea of what was going on and had managed to start revising our internal overview (in between meetings, of course). overall i probably spent about 4 hours pounding on it, and was fully prepared to work on it over the weekend... when the product line manager popped up and said he was already working on it. now, i don't mind doing things in a panic, at the last minute, under fire, and with very little information... but it bugs me to no end when i find out i'm duplicating someone else's effort in doing so. i sent him my draft and my notes and wished him luck with it. note to self: the next time ros (product marketing manager) springs a leak, remember to ask questions like, say, "who else is working on this?" before jumping in with bail bucket...
- and, after all that, we had the biggest social evening yet! indigo_rose99 picked me up at work yet again (i was completely spoiled. and very grateful.) and we headed to planet granite to pull some plastic, along with cyberjack & crobson and my coworker mark. we had a fabulous time climbing and kibitzing and entertaining a 2-year-old future climber and climbing some more. indigo_rose99 particularly kicked ass - i wish i could take her back in time to her 9-years-ago-self from the infamous greenway climbing trip, just to let her old-self see how much fun her new-self is having. :) the gym nazis from my last visit were nowhere in evidence, but we did run into the cute gym worker who tied in with us last time, and it turns out he guides in the valley area, so that might be a neat option for future trips. l-stboy showed up after a work function to cheer us on, and we all adjourned to thai spoons to meet tiger_stripes & russ, their friend daryl, and lori & mike for dinner. tiger_stripes introduced us to the joys of yellow curry crab, in addition to their usual excellent fare...
- after dinner, most of us followed l-stboy, cyberjack, & crobson home for further socializing. crobson brought out beads, cyberjack shared books, l_stboy provided yummy drinks... and i completely hit the social wall. somebody handed me cravings, and i found a nice comfy pile of pillows and Went Away for an hour. (i looked up at one point and indigo_rose99 was explaining to crobson that it's okay, i just do that, and the best thing to do is let me finish the book, at which point i'll come play with them again... it's so nice to have friends who know me that well - and love me anyway. *wry grin*) we ended up hanging out until 2am, which was probably unwise (especially considering that indigo_rose99 had to get up at 5am to catch her flight out - ouch!) but definitely worthwhile!
the absolute best part of the week was getting to see indigo_rose99 every single day for a week. and there are umpty-eleven contenders for the second-best part of the week, too... i love my awesome friends, and my passion-inspiring job (even when it's inspiring me to passionately bang my head against my desk), and the incredible gamut of neat things to do in silicon valley! and we haven't even gotten to the weekend yet... but i have laundry to fold and some work email to poke, so more on that later. - we started off the day meeting with my ex-teammate mike and his new team for an overview of their efforts to define a best practices standard for securing open access networks. from there, more meetings with product managers, lunch with the entire beta-test team, and a final round of meetings just to wrap things up. i think my brain was running out my ear by the end of the day.