The Traveling Engineer

This has been a crazy week for me. I'm currently sitting in a hotel room at the Sainte Claire in San Jose.

It actually started early last week. After being pulled to another project for a few weeks, I got put back on my original project. A new contract got signed and it turned on lots of work. One piece of that work was flight testing at Camp Roberts. So we had a week to prepare for a trip. Part of my task on this project is overall system integration and operation. Secondary tasks are to have the tools and equipment for mobile development and testing, and also payload (i.e. video) design. Needless to say, when you don't touch something for 4 months, and then you have a week to make sure it all works, fix what doesn't, and be able to use it 3 hours from home, it is a lot of work. That was last week.

On Friday, the family went up to Fresno. Because we did not go up for Easter, we thought it would be a good idea to invite all the grandparents over for dinner so they could all see Hannah. It was a great evening. Hannah was in a good mood and was very interactive and showing off what she can do (she's taking a few steps, now). We drove back home Sunday morning so I could go back to work and finish getting things ready to go.

I left early Monday morning with 3 other guys after being told by my boss that he was too sick and that I would now be in charge as the Test Director for the trip. Flight testing is actually a lot of fun. Camp Roberts is beautiful, being just north of Paso Robles. Working outside for a change is fun and having 3 other guys all working together, discussing issues and ideas openly, along with some jokes, too, really make the work enjoyable.

In February, I was able to get permission to attend the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose. I attended the Exhibition portion of this show 5 years ago in San Francisco while I was finishing college. Now I got to attend as a working professional and go to some of the classes. The original plan was to fly to San Jose Tuesday evening, attend 2 days of the conference, and fly back Thursday night. When the Camp Roberts trip got scheduled, it actually worked out just right, otherwise that would have taken precedence over the trade show. It made no sense to drive back to Simi Valley just to turn around and fly to San Jose that night. And flying from San Luis Obispo to San Jose just didn't seem right. So I figured I would drive--I had to rent a car anyways, so why not just rent it in Paso Robles. Turns out Paso Robles doesn't like to give cars for one-way travel. So, when we got done around 5pm Tuesday, I had to ride back to San Luis Obispo, pick up a car, and drive back North to San Jose. It took me a total of 2 hours (counting eating dinner) and I was back where I started at Camp Roberts.

I got to my hotel, the Sainte Claire in D.T. S.J. at 10pm. I spent the next couple of hours catching up on emails and discovering what it was I really was to be doing the next day. So today I walked around the Exhibition, entering contest after contest (iPhones, iPods, and Wii's), and gathering all kinds of free, cheap, crap. Tomorrow is a day of classes before I head to the airport for a 8:50pm flight to Burbank.

Throughout all of this, I've come up with a few thoughts:

• Traveling non-stop is not as fun as I may have thought. Traveling to one place, staying a couple days (1, 2, 4, etc) is fine. But staying at one hotel for a night, then moving to another for a couple nights, and so on, is very draining. You really start to lose track of what day it is and what you are supposed to be doing.
• Eating alone is fine as long as the meal price is, say, less than $15. Tonight I spend $50 on dinner, all by myself. Just me, my plate of food, and my glass of Chianti. I've never eaten at such a nice place all by myself.
• I'm not sure if it is me getting older (and not being so naive), just luck, or the fact that I'm more observant since I'm alone, but I've run into some weird people, and just don't feel as comfortable walking thru town by myself. There was a weird dude yesterday at the gas station in Paso who was barefoot looking around the corner at me. Tonight I walked to Ben and Jerry's and rather than continue walking around a plaza to finish my dessert, I went up to my room to eat it.

I'll be back in the office Friday and all next week before another 2-day trip to Camp Roberts.