My Random Thoughts

OMG - Here I sit at SFO waiting the long wait until my flight (I’m taking the red-eye and not looking forward to it). The acoustics in this place could be better, unless you were aiming for an echo chamber. I already have the start of a headache. I am working (yeah, can’t ya tell), I’m getting hungry, it’s noisy and crowded and the Friday before an almost holiday weekend.

There will be noise. There are a lot of people here, they are talking, it is noisy. But why oh why must you let your baby shriek? This place is build like an echo chamber (see note above) and you are letting your child do that cut-right-through-to-your-spine-shriek that only little children can do. She’s doing exactly *because* is sounds like an echochamber, but yet you do nothing to teach her that maybe it’s not appropriate to squeal at the top of your lungs at every little thing for the last 45 minutes. I just thank goodness that I’m not on that plane and pray that there isn’t one of those on mine! Ok, I get that at that age you may not be able to teach them not to do it and it’s not like you can take them outside.

Earlier there was a kid running back and forth up the aisle. Where I’m sitting right now isn’t crowded, he wasn’t in the way. I thought it was a fabulous way for him to burn off some energy. Now one was really here and he could run back and forth. I’m glad shrieker baby is squealing in joy and happiness, I really am, but could you but a bottle in his or her mouth? Any more of that and my head my explode.

i have a set of ear plugs for the overnight flight. I may be digging them out shortly, but I don’t know if even that will help. This has been a long week (a good week, but a long week) and I can’t wait to get home.

So, I’m in Santa Clara, during hurricane season and look no hurricane!!  Is the curse broken?

000
ABNT20 KNHC 290902
TWOAT
TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
530 AM EDT THU JUN 29 2006

FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC…CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO…

A TROPICAL WAVE INTERACTING WITH A LARGE UPPER-LEVEL TROUGH
IS PRODUCING WIDESPREAD CLOUDINESS AND SHOWERS OVER THE
EASTERN CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE LESSER ANTILLES… AND ADJACENT
ATLANTIC WATERS. UPPER-LEVEL WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO REMAIN
UNFAVORABLE FOR ANY SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENT OF THIS SYSTEM OVER THE
NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS AS IT MOVES WEST-NORTHWESTWARD AT 15 TO 20 MPH.
HOWEVER… BRIEF PERIODS OF LOCALLY HEAVY RAINFALL AND STRONG GUSTY
WINDS…ESPECIALLY OVER HIGHER ELEVATIONS… WILL BE POSSIBLE
ACROSS MOST OF THE LESSER ANTILLES THIS MORNING… AND OVER THE
VIRGIN ISLANDS… PUERTO RICO… AND THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC TODAY
AND TONIGHT.

A DISORGANIZED AREA OF SHOWERS LOCATED ABOUT MIDWAY BETWEEN BERMUDA
AND PUERTO RICO IS MOVING NORTHWESTWARD AT 10 TO 15 MPH.
UPPER-LEVEL WINDS ARE UNFAVORABLE FOR ANY SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENT
TO OCCUR.

ELSEWHERE…TROPICAL STORM FORMATION IS NOT EXPECTED THROUGH FRIDAY.

I think I like that there are no storms expected through Friday. I want to dive on Saturday. I hope the oceans aren’t too angry. I need to get wet!

 

I like the Bay Area in small doses. There is something about this place that is charming, yet it is just strange enough to make me flee back to the normalcy of the east coast. Well, Palm Beach isn’t exactly normal, but its a strange that feel familiar.

The first time I was in the Bay Area - EVER - was a little over 10 years ago (and when I say a little, I mean mere months). I am in roughly the same place. In fact, I will have dinner tonight at a place I ate at while I was here for the first time 10 years ago, but I digress.

I had just finished grad school, started consulting and promptly came out here to work with a little company called Netscape, you may have heard of them. I was in Silicon Valley, during the height of the dot.com boom, with Netscape (THE NETSCAPE) as a client. For an almost geek, it didn’t get any better than this! It was everything that has made it into the pop culture about the boom time, people wore jeans to work, they served sushi in the cafe, frisbe was played in the halls. And the people were geeks!

So, as I’m here again, working for another well known client, in the same general area. I was thinking it wasn’t the same, until I was standing in line at Peet’s getting coffee. The people were that same level of strangeness that I’m not used to. There was the geek wearing the flashdrive on lanyard around his neck. Not a badge for a company, but a flashdrive. It warmed my heart to see that the people haven’t changed, although the alure that was once there has faded.

When I’m back here in another 10 years, working with another high tech, I hope to see the same geeky technowannabes wearing their flashdrive, or whatever almost high tech device is in vogue. Although what I’m really hoping is that I’m not in this business in 10 years.

Yeah, so I forgot what a stressful and tiring time testing through go-live is. And the tech team is keeping even worse hours than i am! Poor guys.

My travel was pretty much uneventful. I get to Atlanta, board, only to have them announce that the ramp closed due to bad weather. So they held off on boarding for a little while, at least we finally did leave. I get into SFO an hour late and feeling bad because I was meeting a co-worker and she was already going to wait an hour for me. Turn out her flight was late as well and she didn’t get in all that much earlier than I did. That turned out good. 

Her suitcase didn’t make it - glad I was able to do carryon!  A crazy night later and it’s Monday morning. I’m just hoping to get through this week!

So, while I was surfing I came across this interesting tidbit

“One important element of staying connected to the world is to maintain friendships,” he said. “And we actually have numbers on this. People who see six friends a month actually do better long term. So, if you’re gonna put a number in the back of your mind, try to reach out to six folks that you care about every month.”

Hmmm, I must do more to reach out to six friends every month. Things get so busy, sometimes its hard to find the time. Work is taxing, by the time the weekend comes I’m just plain tired.

I will say this - I do appreciate every friend I have, even if I don’t reach out to them like I should.

Last fall, everytime I went to California a Hurricane (or at least a Tropical Storm). I scheduled a trip to Cali the first week of the month, and didn’t have a storm, but the original trip was scheduled for the 12th and that’s when Alberto blew up.

So, I leave Sunday, come home Friday night and look what is in the atlantic:  

 

000 ABNT20 KNHC 230859 TWOAT TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL 530 AM EDT FRI JUN 23 2006 FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC…CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO… THE BROAD AND DISORGANIZED AREA OF LOW PRESSURE CONTINUES TO BE CENTERED A COUPLE OF HUNDRED MILES NORTHEAST OF THE BAHAMAS. UPPER-LEVEL WINDS COULD BECOME A LITTLE MORE FAVORABLE FOR SLOW DEVELOPMENT DURING THE NEXT DAY OR SO…AS THE SYSTEM DRIFTS TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST. ELSEWHERE…TROPICAL STORM FORMATION IS NOT EXPECTED THROUGH SATURDAY. $$ FORECASTER AVILA/MAINELLI

 

Let’s hope that nothing happens with this one.

I got my hair done tonight. Oh it felt great. It’s been 3 months since I’ve had it done. I just can’t seem to find the time. It seems to take forever and I don’t want to spend the time at the salon. Maybe I’m not a typical girl, but it just seems like such a waste of time, even if it does feel great.

The funny thing about it is the goal is to make it look natural. You spend the time and money to make it look like you didn’t spend time or money. I just don’t get it. Ah well, it’s better than the gray hairs that were starting to root out. I had a 5pm appointment and actually felt guilty for leaving work early to get there on time. Yes, I realized leaving work means leaving my house, but I was still leaving work.

Next week starts UAT testing for my project. I keep having panic attacks. This is such an important thing, I don’t know if I’ve got everything taken care of. I’m so tired right now, but i know as soon as I lay down i’ll be wide awake thinking about all of the stuff I didn’t get finished. I think I’ll watch some Star Trek and see if I can relax.

At least it wasn’t one of THOSE Mondays. It was a busy busy day, but pretty good. Overcast and blah because of Alberto being out there.

Sheba has decided that the left side of my desk either isn’t big enough or she wants to read my screen. She’s taken to laying in the circle of my arms while I’m working.  Its so cute.

He got named today - TS Alberto. It’s about 2:45pm and we’re getting a rain band from him. It’s in the Gulf, but seems to be a fairly big storm area, as we’re getting rain.

I know hurricane season starts June 1st, but normally we didn’t have to worry about a storm until August. This is the 2nd year that we’ve had a storm blow up at the start of the season. I guess we are in for an active year once again.

This was the week I was originally supposed to go to California - that’s why we have this storm. I went last week because Rob was already going to be there. Let’s see, so the next storm is going to come around the 25th. That’s my prediction, that’s my next trip to Santa Clara.

TD One

Originally uploaded by DivingDuo.

Well, it’s 2 days late - last year the first one formed June 8th. Somehow I didn’t think it would take long for this season to kick off.

I guess we’ll go to Sam’s Club later to stock up on water (KIDDING)