Hello from the Oakland Airport.

Hello from the Oakland Airport.

Thursday Evening July 7, 2011 (first travelogue of this trip).

First of all, these next few posts will be a bit confusing. I did the first post from Dillon for the family vacation and was too busy to do any further posts. I will catch up on those posts – hopefully next week.

On Tuesday 7/5 we left the campground early and drove home so that I could get ready to fly out that night. Some of you who know me, know that I always try to arrive at the airport at least 2 hours early and usually 2.5 hours. Well, as I headed down the mountain, I hear that I-70 was closed due to an accident. It was in an area where there is almost no alternatives. The sad story is that I missed my 6:45 flight and had to take a 9:45 flight.

I got to Oakland about 11:00 PM and rented a car. I had loaded my destination (The Marriott in Walnut Creek) into my Hand held GPS. Only problem, was that there was a lot of construction at my first exit (big work lights that blind you and an exit you can't see). I ended up taking the Bay Bridge to the island in the middle. There, the construction had closed my entrance back on the bridge going the other way. It took me a bunch of time to get back on track and I arrived at the hotel at 1:30. Had to get up at 5:45 so that I could get to my appointment.

This trip was to present our new fire detection and suppression system to a very large potential end user. We did all of the preparation work at the suppression vendor's shop and that worked well, as their shop was well equipped..

The project has grown in complexity by a factor of at least two – depending on how you categorize the project changes, the factor is really more like three. I had spent a great deal of time during our family vacation to make a detailed display and test all of the new components.

The preliminary testing yesterday went exactly according to our design. Today the customers came to the shop for our presentation and then we traveled to their location to do an simulated installation on one of their large pieces of industrial equipment. Again, the system functioned flawlessly.

The project is a huge technical success and I think the customer was very impressed.

Unfortunately, the team dynamics are a real mess and I am very frustrated. These issues are not new. I would love to detail a few of the issues, but that would not be very professional.

I can only hope that I can find a way to continue working on the project.

That is all for this trip