Travis Pettijohn: Blog

A work friend of mine introduced me to TripIt last week (I started traveling for my current engagement—back on the road!). It's a really great service. You forward all of your confirmation emails from travel agents/airlines/car rentals/hotels/etc, and it parses the data and builds a cohesive view of your travel schedule, complete with confirmation numbers and checkin/checkout times. Their mobile site gives you one-click access to flight status, too. The iCal feed lets me integrate it with my Outlook calendar and merge them into one view with the overlay mode. This is a BIG step up from manually entering every flight into Outlook (it's a good thing, too, since I seem to screw up time zones more often than I care to admit), and the process couldn't be easier: CTRL+F, CTRL+Enter. Done.

I'm taking some training for work right now, Delivery Management at Avanade Part 1, and we had a module this afternoon on customer relationship management. They showed some admittedly cool ways to visualize and track business relationships, but the idea of quantifying it in Visio and Excel didn't quite sit right with me. So when we were asked for "any final thoughts" on the last slide I chimed in:

"In this world of headcount and resources and FTEs, it's important to remember that people...are people first...and professionals second. I think you can do a lot to foster relationships by just being friends with people."

Throw your Excel Scorecard away, folks, and just answer this: Are you friends with your stakeholders? If your answer isn't Yes, then you have work to do.

Work sent me to the VS Live conference in Brooklyn. Since I had never before been to New York, I decided to take advantage of the paid-for airfare and take a week for myself. I stayed at Chelsea International Hostel (keeping it on the cheap) while I was paying my own way.

I didn't want to be a total tourist; I was more interested in experiencing life in Manhattan as a resident would experience it...find a cool coffee shop, find a good diner, explore the bar scene, don't take too many pictures.

It was also a social experiment: I don't know anyone in Manhattan, and I was traveling by myself. Would I be able to meet people? Could I have fun on my own?

• Saturday: ORD to LGA. Checked into the hostel and wandered around Chelsea. Went to Ground Zero (not a lot to see there, it's a construction site). Met a group of Brazilians on the subway (I just uttered a "hi" as I sat down next to a girl and she warmly said "hi" back; conversation ensued). I hung out with them as they went to Times Square and Hard Rock Café (lame, I know, but I didn't want to be a stick in the mud, so I went with it). Separated from them as they continued their overly-tourist pursuits with an agreement to meet up in Greenwich Village later. They were a few hours behind me, so I went on a one-man choose-your-own-adventure bar crawl. Met a bartender that was new to New York and she offered me her phone number to hang out (but then never returned my call...lame). Met up with the Brazilians for the last few hours.
• Sunday: Slept late. Found a coffee shop (Grounded). Went for a run in Central Park which was phenomenal. Saw Death at a Funeral and then went to bed (one of the down sides of hostel is that there's no privacy, no TV, no place to just lay low, so a movie theater was a good break).
• Monday: Found another coffee shop (Grumpy). Went to MoMA, saw Bourne Ultimatum, went to a pub near the theater and met business traveler named Sam and a drunken Scot who was passing through and had no place to stay.
• Tuesday: Found another café (Soy Luck Club). Went to the taping of Conan (and hugged him!). Met up with a friend from work who is staffed in Manhattan for dinner/drinks. While I was waiting for him to get off, I started searching for a bar. I asked a random stranger (Emily) for a recommendation and she walked me to a place near her apartment. I told her that her company would be welcome while I waited for my friend. She stopped home and then joined me with a few friends. We all hung out for the evening. Cool!
• Wednesday: Went for a run along the Hudson, read, met up with a former coworker's daughter in Brooklyn for a couple of drinks.
• Thursday: Metropolitan Museum of Art, went to a couple bars in East Village. Saw a stark naked fat white guy sitting on the steps of a building being subdued by police. Met a couple of nice girls at Leopard Lounge (Shanna and Rachel).
• Friday: Called Shanna to join me for The Cloisters (which she and Rachel had recommended) but she had just gotten home to Jersey after crashing at a friend's in Manhattan so declined. Went to Cloisters. Found a surprisingly good sushi restaurant (surprising because of how good the fish was compared to how poor the atmosphere was), saw 3:10 to Yuma, took a walk through the Meat Packing District (too posh for me), went to Burp Castle in East Village where I met Emily and her friend Matt, and a really cool bartender Rachel. Went to an all night coffee shop that serves beer to meet up with a few of their friends. Cool.
• Saturday: Checked out of the hostel, dropped off laundry, went to a coffee shop, picked up laundry, checked in at the Marriott at Brooklyn Bridge. Went for a run from Brooklyn to Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge, and back via the Manhattan Bridge. Absolutely one of the most beautiful runs of my life. Took a shower, laid low in the hotel because for the first time in a week...I could!
• The rest of the week was mostly conference related. I went to an Indian restaurant in Brooklyn Heights, went back to East Village a couple nights. Nothing especially eventful.

On a people-related front, I learned quite a bit. First, just reinforcing the fact that there are good, cool people everywhere—all you have to do is talk to them. Second, live your life for you and people will follow. The girl I met on Tuesday is a great example: I only asked for advice, offered to let her join me, and she ended up spending a whole evening with me. The conversation on Thursday was similar: I introduced myself as I sat down and let them know I was in from out of town and open to conversation, but didn't push. I let them talk while I read a paper, and a few minutes later they started asking me questions and invited me to join them.

I have to say: Manhattan is a really, really cool place. As a Chicagoan, I felt right at home and could happily live there. You have to have a little bit of a tough a-hole attitude; you have to walk with purpose down the street. Manhattan is a little denser than Chicago, their public transportation is a little better, but Chicago is a little cleaner and a little nicer. But they are both great places full of great people.

We're entering the Build phase of our project here...I just wrote out a truth table on a scrap of paper. Finally, a little break from winword and back to devenv (and the new and improved sqlwb).

I said to a friend at work today, "We've spent the last few weeks designing some really cool algorithms, and I'm excited to start breathing some life into them." And then I thought... does that make me a God? Breathe life into something. On some very basic level, a lot of what I do is just manipulating electrons (at least the programming part of my job... not so much the interacting with people part). Yes, I decided, I am an Electron God.

At a meeting yesterday (that I can't say too much about due to NDA), one of the presenters gave a great quote: "I firmly believe that God creates opportunity for those who step up and take opportunity."

Umar Saleemi asked me to help his page rank.

I recently started a second blog over at avabloggers.com. It will focus on technology, programming, work, stuff like that. This blog will continue to host content about my personal life, what I had for dinner, what movie I just saw, etc. Subscribe to the RSS or ATOM feeds if you're interested!

I just checked in to a flight tomorrow and noticed that I'm Gold on American now. That means I get to board with Group 1 regardless of my seat and I have the option of picking exit row seats. Rock on! I'm special!

On a coworkers recommendation, I downloaded and used XsdObjectGen from Microsoft's web site. I opened up the documentation and saw that one of the principal authors of the tool was Colin Cole. I worked with Colin on a project a not too long ago...shook his hand, had a beer with him even. I feel so special.

In any gathering of "tech people," there will be more guys named Mike than there will be total females.

(I read that in a slashdot comment a few months ago and it just popped into my brain, so I decided to share it.)

A lot's been going on in my life. I got assigned to a new client recently for work. Last week I went through an interview for this new project and was asked to come on board! After some bench time, it was a welcomed change to get back into the routine of work. It involves me traveling to and from Salt Lake City weekly which (so far) isn't as bad as it sounds. This is my first week out here. That's about all that I can say. Oh…there appear to be oodles of great-looking twenty-something females in this city. It's like I'm in bizarro land.

Last weekend I signed a lease for a new apartment. It's in Lincoln Park, on the corner of Lincoln and Belden (Belden is one block south of Fullerton). I'm pretty jazzed about it. The location is perfect (less than a half mile to the Fullerton El stop (Red, Brown and Purple stop there), a little over a half mile to Lincoln Park Zoo, and steps away from nightlife, restaurants and tons of entertainment). It's a one bedroom, one bath, has a nice kitchen and it has five big east-facing windows, three of which are in a bay configuration. The only thing that's odd is that it's carpeted. (In Chicago nearly everything is hardwood.) Oh well. The positives greatly outweigh that oddity. The lease starts 8/1 (but that's a Monday and I'll be in Utah).

On Monday all of the parts for my new HTPC arrived. I'll post more on that later as I build it. I didn't have time to mess with it since I had an early morning flight on Tuesday (though I did open every box and look at every piece). It's just sitting there at home, taunting me from a thousand miles away.

In related news, Windows Vista Beta 1 has been released, including an x64 binary. I might have to add a second partition on my HTPC for playing with it!

Last weekend I also placed an order for a new TV. It's a sexy, thin, 37-inch LCD flat panel by Philips. It's supposed to come in today or tomorrow for pickup at Best Buy. Now I get to move in to the new place and get all these fun electronics set up. It's pretty exciting!

I wanted to post a status update about the changes in my life right now. Tuesday morning I moved everything that I need to live day-to-day to Chicago (clothes, toiletries). I'm staying at my sister's house in the Bucktown neighborhood for now. She and her husband spend 90% of their time in Memphis, where Paul works (Brooke can work remotely for most of her job or she travels when she needs to), so I pretty much have an empty house to myself (it's a bit lonely).

Wednesday was my first day at Avanade. It was just orientation meetings: here's how you arrange your travel and here's how you get reimbursed and here's how you bill the client and here's how you check your voicemail and here's your company laptop.

Thursday and Friday I ticked items off of my TODO list that I had created on Wednesday: build your internal skills profile and resume, talk to people to arrange your client assignment, get the software installed on the laptop that you need for the upcoming project. I've been assigned to a project with "a leading financial services provider" in Wisconsin. It seems like a great project. They're working with some Whidbey/.NET 2.0 technologies, and also some agile methods and automated build management. Supposedly the Microsoft architect on the project is top-shelf, too. Monday morning I'll start at the client site.

Things are settling in nicely. The job is shaping up and the people that I've met so far have been friendly and easy to deal with. It's fun taking the L to work; I get a warm and fuzzy feeling taking public transportation. The commute from door-to-door is about thirty minutes and it's cheap and easy (just the way I like it). Of course, Monday morning I have to drive to Wisconsin. We'll see how it all goes. So far so good.

I've accepted a job with Avanade in Chicago and have officially tendered my resignation here at the U of I. My last day will be Friday, May 6th; my first day will be Wednesday, May 11th. I'll post more about the job search at another time. I'm going up to Chicago tonight for the Cubs game tomorrow (my birthday), and then lunch with my family on Saturday. This should be a good weekend: I have reason to celebrate!

Reposted from Boing Boing:

Three San Diego entrepreneurs plan to start a cut-rate outsourcing plant for software development three miles off the coast of Los Angeles aboard a used cruise ship moored in international waters.

Wired with a fat T3 pipe fed by microwave, SeaCode would employ 600 developers - the bulk of them non-U.S. citizens - who could crank out code around the clock at a lower cost and higher rate of efficiency than their American counterparts. The beauty part (at least according to the proponents) is that business would be booming, the headquarters could change sail wherever business took it, and RnR would be just a half-hour water-taxi ride away. In your neighborhood.

The weather today, as many of you know, is bad. The temperature has been right around thee freezing point, and it's been raining. That, of course, leads to freezing rain. I was driving this evening and all of the sudden I saw this huge sheet of ice falling. I think it was about four feet by one foot in size, just falling down in front of my car. At first, I was confused. I thought the sky was crumbling. I slowed down to give it time to reach the ground. I looked up and noticed power lines. The ice had formed on the power lines and fell right as I drove past it. How crazy is that?

As I was turning a corner, I watched the person turning in front of me slide across both lanes and smack into the pile of snow on the far curb. Way to slow down for the ice, buddy. I let him back out and then head down the street. I kept an ample following distance. Fortunately, this was in a quiet neighborhood street in Savoy, so there was no real danger.

Iffy and I watched Friends, then he came with me to The Fitness Center. He's using a seven day free pass. It was nice having a friend there with me. I don't mind going alone, but it's a little better when you know someone.

I got home from working out after 9. I had some chili for dinner. Right now, I have some blueberry muffins in the oven. The only problem is that I don't have a muffin pan, so instead I'm using a bread pan. So I guess I should say I have a blueberry loaf in the oven. It should work just fine. If it does, I think I'll bring it into the office tomorrow. Otherwise, I won't. We have a meeting at ten, so I have to actually wake up at a "normal" hour. Yuck. I really like that most nights, I don't set an alarm; when I wake up, I go to work. Tomorrow, I have to get up at like 8:30 or 9:00. That's rough. Just kidding :)