Hello from the Seattle Airport

Hello from the Seattle Airport

Drafted:  Friday Afternoon,  April 11, 2014   (first post of this trip – and only one {grin})

Posted:  Monday  April 14, 2014 from home.

I often mention that this blog is really a travelogue.  I only post when there is travel related stuff to talk about.  The readers that we have certainly do not want to read about a lot of minutia taking place in our lives {big grin}.

I have been in the Seattle area since last Sunday.  I taught Shaft Alignment and Mechanical Drives courses this week on the early shift (6:00 AM – 2:30) at Boeing.  Normally these are my fun classes to teach, but I had 3 out of 5 of the students who kicked back, put their feet on the table and went to sleep!  No attempt to hide the fact that they were sleeping.  I finally got a Boeing person to read the riot act to them.  Since they are technically our customer, I did not feel like I should really come down on them, but I gave them plenty of comments to let them know I was not a happy camper.  In all my years of teaching and presenting seminars (over 45 years) I have never had that many really rude students.  The two that did not sleep apologized to me about the terrible behavior of the other students.  I know that it really affected my attitude.  I tried my best to give them a good session, but I could tell that I was not at my peak.

If you follow my blog, you will recall that the last few months of 2013, I was in the Seattle area a large percentage of the time.  Then the spigot turned off.  Boeing made some demands of NTT for course revision and that resulted in no classes being presented for the first three months.  In addition the other instructor, who was also an interim manager of the group, returned to an instructor only position and has priority over the schedule.  Where that leaves me is anybody's guess. 

I really got tired of all the travel last year, but I would like to do a class a month or so.  Like so many things, it seems to be feast or famine.

As usual, I stayed at the Holiday Inn in Kent.  Unfortunately they are converting to a Ramada property next week.  I detest Ramada Inns!.  The location of the hotel is ideal for our classes, but I will find another Holiday Inn that will work.

During the hiatus,   I started a major shop project – the rebuild of my '59 BC-150 International truck.  I am having a ball working in the shop!!! I have been averaging maybe 25-30 hours a week – not bad for an old fart {grin}.  I have been trying to document the project at:  http://beltguy.com/bc150/bc150.htm  I am having some problems with the website.  It works but some of the thumbnail pictures do not display.  The thumbnails that don’t display will produce the larger version.  The software I am using (MS Frontpage) is no longer supported by GoDaddy and that causes all kinds of problems.  I will begin converting to WordPress format in the near future,  In the meantime, you can get a feeling of the size of the project.

While our blog has been rather sparse the past few months, our travel plans suggest that we will be on the road a bit more over the next few months.  Stay tuned.

Per my usual track record, I did not finish this post in the airport – thus the delay in posting.

That is all for this trip.