Working remotely remotely

For several years now I have worked remotely for a company headquartered in Texas. This provides me with ample travel opportunities, and some freedom that most people don’t experience when commuting to the office.

In the past I have gone to Vegas and continued to work part of the time, spent a month in Chicago while working, and even moved from Calgary to Winnipeg for a few months without mentioning it to my employer for over a month.

This is a new one for me though, as I write this post I’m sitting in Bow Valley Campgrounds, located in Kananaskis Country on the Alberta side of the Rockies, writing this blog post on my laptop with a EVDO card. Almost 1Mb/s, only 150ms to Texas, this is not far off of the earlier cable modem deployments in the area.

Life is good.

The seven stages of waiting at an airport

I’m sitting at the airport waiting for my flight, heading down to Texas again! — Due to bad weather in Dallas area the incoming plane is late, so oddly our outbound flight on the same plane will be delayed. Go figure.

It’s interesting people watching, especially watching how people react as they find out the flight is late — I think I’ve seen six stages of grief so far, but we’re waiting on the inbound flight before stage seven.

Okay, in fairness not too much disbelief, this *is* a commercial airline afterall.

No sir, there isn’t any way to connect you through another airport and arrive faster then a direct flight that is only expected to be 45-60 minutes late.

One guy was rather irate, he’s been sitting in the airport since 7-something in the morning. Why so long? Well, from what I overheard, he was booked on the 7am flight, slept in and didn’t quite make it. hah. oops. I’m unclear as to what he thinks yelling at the gate staff will do to get the inbound plane here faster, but since I’m on the same flight, I suppose I’ll benefit too if he manages to talk the gate staff into building a new plane out of whatever spare parts they might have kicking around.

At this point it’s pretty calm, although it would be nice if Susan Bdukchkkcuaktrk would “present herself” sooner rather then later, it’s getting pretty scary listening to all the different ways the gate staff has tried to mangle the name.

Ahh well. An hour delay in the airport isn’t bad, although if you ever have the opportunity, don’t make the same mistake I did: When Harvey’s asks if you want fries, for the love of $DIETY, say no, it’s a trap! They’re only offering you fries because they’re desperate to get rid of ’em. I cannot stress this enough, they’re horrible.

On the plus side, I have free access to the Calgary airport hotspot as part of my EVDO service, so that’s a nice perk — I not only work from home, but I work at the coffee shop, the airport, and anywhere else that has EVDO or wifi.

I tucked Lori in my big suitcase so I could bring her with me since we don’t have the spare cash to book a seat, they’ve got all the suitcases out in the sun so at least she’ll be nice and warm for the wait.

Life is good.

Screw you guys, I’m going home

Welp… Had a great time in Texas, as always. This year the annual Christmas party was at Lone Star Park, which for those that don’t know, is horse racing. It’s “Pepsi Can Month” at the race track. Normally I’d insert a joke, but it was actually fun, so kudos for a new and interesting company party destination.

For whatever reason, since I’ve been down in Texas I haven’t gotten more then an hour of uninterrupted sleep, and only once did I get more then three hours of sleep in a whole night. I do *not* function well on less then three hours of sleep.

I also suspect American Airlines thinks I need more exercise, as very consistently when I check in at DFW, I get pointed to D27/D28, then the flight gets changed to D38/D39/D40 — I’m thinking it’s AA’s way of telling me to go for a walk more often. Either that, or they’re telling me to take a vacation as the the plane parked at D28 when I started this post is going to Mexico, and the next one is going to Costa Rica…

Quick update… I make it over to D40 just in time to get a gate change notification on my Treo, we’re back to D28. Spanky.

On the plus side, in only six hours from now I’ll be with my Lori again.