life as a dog…

This was a completely forgettable trip.  The job was a bust, and spending only 24 hours in one location doesn’t really mean anything at all.

I’m not sure what the next trip is going to be.  As of right now, it looks like Orlando followed immediately by Switzerland.  Both of them are confirmed, last I knew.  Of course, something could come up in between now and then (they are almost 2 months out).

Got to the jobsite around 4:30 instead of 4:00.  Not like that extra 30 minutes meant anything.  Everything seemed to be going well for the setup.  There wasn’t a whole lot to do on location.  The signal was being sent via satellite to our home office.

BUT… it was a disaster at the home office.  They got the audio and video signals no problem.  The output, on the other hand, wasn’t so nice.  For some unknown (at this point) reason, audio was not being sent out.  Attempts were made to correct it…and failed.  Needless to say, it was a failure.

The event finished at about 10:30am.  Since I was the one on site, I had the unfortunate position of being our in-person rep.  Not a fun conversation at the end of the job.  There wasn’t a whole lot I could say or do, since I wasn’t at the office where everything was being done.  Didn’t matter though…the client was obviously (and rightfully) incredibly unhappy with the turn of events.

I left the location and headed back to my hotel, hoping to maybe catch an hour of sleep.  That didn’t happen.  So I checked out at noon and made my way toward the airport.

The flight was delayed about 10 minutes…no big deal.

I’m back home now…and desperately need sleep.

Day 1 is complete.  A long day, but not much to actually do.

I got to National Airport for my flight.  The flight was full.  I have to say…I absolutely HATE this “zone” system the airlines have implemented.  Zone 8?  Zone 8?  I figured I’d be lucky to get any overhead space.  Thankfully, I did get space.  And to make it worse…they actually had a Zone 9!

The zone system makes absolutely no sense to me.  If they want to get people in quickly, wouldn’t the window seats be seated first?  Oh…but not with the zone system.  When I got to my row, the person with the aisle seat was already there!

The flight was uneventful.  Only about 1 1/2 hours long.  Arrived in Atlanta and went straight to the rental car counter, since I didn’t have any checked bags.

I rented from E-Z Rent-a-Car this time, since they were the cheapest.  I won’t do that again.  The car is seriously skanky dirty.  They told me it had a full tank (it didn’t).  A little Kia Rio.  I would never buy a Kia after driving this thing.  It feels SO cheap.

Sonic was next.  None in DC, so I have to get it when I can.  It was good.

I had planned on getting some sleep once I got to the hotel (since I had to be at the job site at 9pm tonight and 4am tomorrow), but that never happened.  I needed to print out my boarding pass for tomorrow when I got to the hotel.  But they don’t have a business center and apparently management doesn’t like it when people are allowed to print on the printer behind the counter.  Candlewood…get with it.  Get a business center!

I got to the job site at the prescribed 9:30pm time.  Nobody was around.  I called everyone and found out they came EARLIER.  And that the A/V crew would begin setup at 11:00pm.  Always nice to find these things out later.  So I had to come back at 11:00.  Wasn’t much to do except make sure there is an audio/video feed for the satellite truck tomorrow morning.  This is our second time doing this, so I’ve dealt with the people before.  It was pretty easy the first time…same with the second.

Between 9:30 and 11:00, I went to Kinko’s to print my boarding pass.  But of course, at 10:00 at night, the computers are all being used.  The only available ones were “special” ones for design.  So they cost more to use…even though I was only printing a boarding pass.  What really pissed me off is that it starts charging as soon as the desktop appears.  So I’m getting charged while this slow ass computer is trying to start up Internet Explorer.  And while Internet Explorer takes forever to open a webpage.  I swear they must be using dial-up.  That, or they purposely have slowed the thing down.  What I could do at home in about 2 minutes took close to 10 minutes.  And of course, even though they only charge what, about 10 cents for a copy, they charge 50 cents for a printout from the web computers.  Highway robbery, I tell ya!

After finally getting to the setup, I came back to the hotel.  So much for any meaningful sleep, since I have a 3:00am wake up call.

It’s time to go back to Atlanta.  Or more appropriately, Duluth.  This is the second job we’ve done for this client.   Exactly the same as the first.

The schedule:

• Wednesday: Fly to Atlanta. Drive to Duluth.
• Thursday: Event.  Drive back to Atlanta.  Fly home.

Nice and quick, eh?  At least I’ll get to have some Sonic!

So my first international trip for work is done.  It wasn’t bad at all.  It’s been a long time since I’ve flown internationally, so I was probably a little more concerned about travel issues than I needed to be.  But it all went smoothly.

Oh…and one thing I completely forgot about.  I was flipping through the channels on the TV.  They were obviously mostly Spanish.  But there also was a block of German channels, a block of Italian channels, a block of English channels (both English and US).  And… a porn channel.  We aren’t talking Playboy Channel soft porn…we’re talking close-up hard core porn.  Go figure.

Now it’s on to the fun job of going through receipts and such.

Next trip is Atlanta next week.  Other trips on the horizon could be St. Louis, Orlando and… Switzerland.  Switzerland isn’t confirmed yet, so I’m not going to get my hopes up…but it could happen.