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Happy Birthday To . . .
Jan. 17th, 2006 09:56 am. . . Benjamin Franklin, John Jacob Astor, Emperor Joshua Norton, Al Capone, Nevil Shute, Eartha Kitt, Vidal Sassoon, James Earl Jones, Muhammad Ali, Jim Carrey, Kid Rock, and me bro, Nat!
Jan. 17th, 2006
Pre-Arisia Report: Atlanta
Jan. 17th, 2006 10:20 am-One thing that made my Arisia more complicated than usual, is that I had a business trip Right Before. Wednesday, I left work at 1pm, stopped by Village Barber in Stoneham for a quick (and much-needed) haircut, then drove to Logan. The big temporary signs up said, "LONG-TERM PARKING USE CENTRAL GARAGE," so I drove to the Central Garage . . . which had signs up saying "LOT IS FULL". A gentleman at the entrance asked me, "How long?" "Long-term," I said. He directed me to lot E-2. Parking was fine there, and the shuttle got me to terminal B, no problem, but lot E-2 will return to our tale later.
-All goes well straight through to the Sheraton hotel and the next morning. My job is to train people in how to support our product. Not employees of our company, but rather people we're hiring for this task. (Of course, I should put "we" in quotes, since I'm getting laid off at the end of the month.) So, anyway, I went into this with minimal preparation. Partly because the guy in charge of getting me down there didn't give me much to work with, partly because I had little emotional investment, and partly because I'm a software engineer, not a trainer.
-Which means I was bit surprised to find it went really, really well. It was a smart group, and they picked the stuff up fast. When I had them drive the keyboard and mouse, they clearly had gotten the gist of what I was teaching. They asked good questions. I got lots of compliments. Apparently, I'm very good at training people. We'll return to this thought later, too.
-So, they thank me, and load me up with corporate-branded shwag, and drive me to the airport Friday morning, and I wing my way back to Boston. I land around 4:45 . . . and I have a 7:00 panel at Arisia. Will I make it in time?
-All goes well straight through to the Sheraton hotel and the next morning. My job is to train people in how to support our product. Not employees of our company, but rather people we're hiring for this task. (Of course, I should put "we" in quotes, since I'm getting laid off at the end of the month.) So, anyway, I went into this with minimal preparation. Partly because the guy in charge of getting me down there didn't give me much to work with, partly because I had little emotional investment, and partly because I'm a software engineer, not a trainer.
-Which means I was bit surprised to find it went really, really well. It was a smart group, and they picked the stuff up fast. When I had them drive the keyboard and mouse, they clearly had gotten the gist of what I was teaching. They asked good questions. I got lots of compliments. Apparently, I'm very good at training people. We'll return to this thought later, too.
-So, they thank me, and load me up with corporate-branded shwag, and drive me to the airport Friday morning, and I wing my way back to Boston. I land around 4:45 . . . and I have a 7:00 panel at Arisia. Will I make it in time?