Jefke.com

sorta like logan’s run, ok well not at all actually.
so i’m on the road again. though this time i’m travelling by day not by night, which, i’m thinking, sorta sucks. why? well i can’t have my traditional 34 oz beer before getting on the plane, for one thing. and the getting up really early to pack, that sucked too. ok ok, i know i could have packed last night, but i didn’t wanna.

my driver, bob, was a super nice guy, he even had a paper in th back seat for me. again i still feel weird that i didn’t tip him, even though technically i did tip him as it is an auto 18% with the cost of the reservation.

I tried to be all super slick and checked in to my flight lastnight online. that went well, but since i was checking a bag, i still needed to go to the eticket kiosk, and once there, it took me 3 mins to find my damn boarding pass to check the bag. so it would have been faster to just check in hwne i got here anyway. oh well. at least i got to choose my seat last night. i’m on a little plane this time, adn i was able to get a seat on the left, so i don’t have any row mates. wmahaha .

at the security checkpoint, i was directed off of the main line to the xray machines, to what i thought was the first class/superninja short line. oh the line was short, but only b/c it was for that new fangled machine that blows puffs of air on you and then smells them to see if you have 80 pounds of plastic explosives strapped to your body. teach me to wear a tie whilst traveling. i bet that’s what made them pick me out.

The head of the 5 families
so i’m going to cleveland, then drving to the small town where our client is located, once there i’m meeting up wiht a group of corporate/plant maintenance engineers (rockers) and driving to cincinatti (cincy as they call it) to go to another facility owned by the client for a big meeting where representatives from all of the manufacturing plants will, er, meet to discuss an upgrade to the software they use to track repairs and maintence to the machings that make all the shit that they sell. why am i going? just to listen and get to know people, i guess. what do i know about the manufacturing of consumer packaged goods? well, nothing really, and i know less than nothing, if that’s possbile about software that is used to schedule and maintain manufacturing equipment.
what’s funny is, the level of detail that’s gone into the preparations for this meeting. i have had no less than 4 emails about where i will park my car whilst i’m in cincy. the team lead wants me to park it at his house, as it will be more efficient. you see, it’s on the way to cincy. so when he drives me back–it’ll save time. ok i’m game. i’m a little nervous about the whole 3 hr car ride with the client thing. i mean, i’m pretty good with people, and i’m a pretty good consultant (i think), but there is a little bit of role playing going on when i’m at/with the client. and well, as i act like the consulatant i’m supposed to be, it’s tiring. now in a meeting that’s one thing, there are tasks at hand, things to accomplish, bullshit to spread around. but a 3 hr car ride? man, i’m gonna hvae to dig deep. i should start getting into character now, but i don’t want to peak to early.

so for the next 2 days i will be surronded by people, whose whole career-if i understand correctly-is to try and prevent mini disasters, and, i assume, if they can’t prevent them, fix them. now i consider myself a worry wart, but can you imagine the personality of a person that is a professional worrier? alls i can say is this will either be the most fun i’ve ever had, or really really really boring. either way i’m cool with it.

uh oh, i think that my flight is delayed–too much fog. that introduces risk. risk is bad. delay=downtime. downtime=bad, bad=bad. oh, i’m already starting to think like them.