Rodney, when do you think you need to be in Shreveport?
It wasn’t even clear if I was even going to go. We were on an impossible deadline and I really needed to be both in Louisiana and in Salt Lake City at the same time. The person who was my backup wasn’t available to cover for me if anything came up. The stress was pretty high.
Finally, we decided I’d be gone for 8 days; fly out on a Monday, fly back the following Tuesday. The trip was full of long hours and a million and one issues that I needed to deal with. On Wednesday night, I got to sleep at 4:30am only to get up at 6:30 to prepare for a client meeting.
Even after we passed our audit on Thursday, we still had numerous things that had to be followed up on. Saturday and Sunday were spent working only 4-5 hours each. Monday was the start of our training class. Now, people were using our systems and we found some spots that were not quite done. Even Tuesday morning, before my flight, I was making trips to pick up computer hardware and working on fixing even more issues. All the while, I had to keep up on email and deal with any outages.
It was exhausting.
It was just what I needed.
I realized about half way through the trip that while I was tired and I missed my family, I was having a good time. No, I was having a great time. I didn’t see much of Shreveport. We did go out to eat a bunch, but mostly we were in our call center the entire time.
But, what made the trip satisfying was a combination of two very important situations. First, I was so busy that I didn’t have time to think what I should do next. It’s said if you want something done, ask someone who is already busy. I dealt with whatever was most pressing at the time. I had an oil can and my world was filled with squeaky wheels. It helps me focus when I know what needs to happen next.
And I was the one making the decisions. I didn’t have to worry about someone else second guessing my priorities. I’ve helped launch four call centers now. I have a good idea of what needs to be done and when. Even if someone had wanted to second guess me, by the time they objected, I would be done and moving on to the next crisis. It was very clarifying to be able to work like that.
Secondly, I was accomplishing things. My job is a combination of maintenance and project management. Maintenance work means that when you get to the end of the day, your “work area” looks like it did at the beginning. It’s one of the drawbacks of computer work. Your desk looks the same at the end of the day as it did at the beginning .
But, last week, we were building stuff. We started with a room that was concrete and unpainted walls. We ended with a training room that had not only carpet and paint, but tables, monitors, computers, mice, keyboards, headsets and a bunch of other pieces. There is something very satisfying to get to the end of a long day and say, “I helped build that!”
As I flew home on Tuesday, I realized that I had a new appreciation for my job. I was excited to get back to the office on Wednesday. My tasks would be largely the same, now that this phase of our project is done, but a week away had rejuvenated me, almost like a vacation would.
Not every business trip gets me back to being excited, but this one was just what I needed.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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It didn’t work. I couldn’t make my rental car start. At what point did the technology become more smarter than me?
Wait! Don’t answer that.
I sat in the rental car lot of the Shreveport airport and stared at the instrument panel of a Ford hybrid. There was no key. Instead, I had a key fob with three buttons: unlock doors, lock doors and a panic button. I was seriously considering pushing that third one. I knew that the key fob had a proximity chip that would allow the car to run only if the key fob was near it. Right, got it. I’m here. The key fob is here. I pushed the “on/off” button, but nothing was happening: no engine start, no reassuring sounds at all.
I was defeated by my rental car.
This was a different trip from the start. I’ve always believed that people will travel by whichever means is quickest with a consideration toward cost. I was planning to be gone eight days on this trip. My car is still broken. I didn’t want to take my wife’s car and park it at the airport for 8 days. My company will reimburse for the parking, but it would be inconvenient for her to not have access to it for so long. (She’s been driving our 15 passenger van with it’s terrible gas milage while my car is being fixed.)
I took the train. Utah has been slow to adopt public transportation. Our cities were designed so that a six-horse wagon team could do a full circle in the middle of the street.
We like cars. If you are ever in Salt Lake City and something is “only” four blocks away, get a cab.
But, the train turned out to be a great option. For $4.90 I got on the train in American Fork, and a couple of transfers and an hour later I walked off at the airport. That was about the same amount of time it would take to drive and park. And, of course it was much cheaper than teh $7/day parking.
Flying used to be fun. Having a TSA Pre-check number makes the experience a little better, but flying is more drudgery than exciting any more. I was headed for Shreveport which is in the Central times zone. But, since my flight was on DELTA (Dang, Everything Leaves Through Atlanta)
I had to fly to the Eastern time zone before flying back West again. As flights go, it was perfect. That is to say it was decidedly uneventful.
And here I sat, stuck in my rental car staring at the instrument panel. Repeatedly pushing the on/off button changed the lights on the dash, but still didn’t start the engine. And then I noticed what those of you who drive hybrids or electrics probably spotted right away: an indicator that said, “Now Ready To Drive.”
Really? That would mean that I could just put the car in Drive and . . .oh look, it’s moving! And my introduction to hybrids was complete. My car had a feature that coached me on driving. It showed me how well I was doing at making gradual stops and mild accelerations. I eventually turned it off. I don’t need a car that is going to nag me about my driving. Especially when it won’t even allow me to make a satisfying “rev the engine” sound.
I guess I should be grateful that it at least let me steer. I can only imagine how confusing it will be when I get into a rental car a few years in the future that has no steering wheel.
The view from the train on my way home.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Yesterday the Villanova Wildcats defeated the North Carolina Tar Heels for the NCAA college championship. The game was very exciting, both teams were well prepared and Villanova hit a final shot with no time left on the clock to win by a single basket.
My team also had an important event this week. We also had a great win. The differences, of course, are huge, but I really wanted to work in a basketball reference to this post.
Just as a championship basketball team spends much longer in preparation than they do in games, my team put in long, long hours for a very short payoff. Three weeks ago, we made the decision to open a new call center in Shreveport, LA. Our deadline happened last Thursday. For a few short hours we got to see if our hard work paid off, as our client audited our facility.
In those two weeks, a number of important things happened. We had to strip down our training room to bare walls. We had to build a wall to make one long training room into two smaller training rooms. We had to paint the new rooms. We laid down new carpet. We brought in about a dozen tables. We installed and configured 31 computers. We cleaned the room, did work and cleaned it again.
We also had to make changes to our data center. It’s not really a data center. It’s called an MDF, or main distribution frame. It’s the room in your office building that has all the “server” computers. But, you can think of it like a data center. We had to install new locking cabinets. We had to install new routers. We had to install new patch panels. We had to install new core routers. We had to install new MPLS routers. We had to install new door readers and mag locks.
We had to do a lot of work and we had to complete it in a really short time. The audit was on Thursday. Wednesday night we were not done yet. We were still putting computers together. It took us all night. I left at 4:00 am and the team was still working. At 10:00am the client showed up for their 4 hour audit. We started by sharing a PowerPoint presentation about our new site. Next it was time for the walking tour.
Our client expected that we would lock up their access routers and patch panels. We showed them locked up access routers, patch panels, plus core routers and MPLS routers. More than they were expecting. Much more.
Next was our training room. The client expected a single computer that was setup to be tested.
Take your pick. They are all setup and ready for training to start on Monday.
Again, we had done more than the client was expecting. The audit went well. How well, soon become clear.
I don’t think we need to come back to audit the other rooms when you get them done.
Well, that’s good news. But, we’ll see you on Monday for the start of training?
No. I think we’re going to cancel our visit next week. Y’all are obviously ready to go. I don’t think we need to come back.
We had spent long hours preparing for our audit. Our preparation meant that we saved ourselves multiple additional visits. Had we not been as prepared, we would have had to spend longer getting them signed off on by the client.
The longer the preparation, the shorter the actual game.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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I’m not a nice guy.
What do you mean? You bought my engineers pizza for lunch. That seems pretty nice.
No, it’s not. It only looks that way. This was a straight forward bribe.
I’m in Shreveport for the opening of our new center. The schedule has been beyond crazy. What we normally do in 8 weeks we did in two. What we do in 12 weeks, we are cramming into four. Our engineering teams were all putting in long hours. I had two goals in coming to Louisiana. First, I needed to do whatever I could to get us to meet our aggressive schedule. And there were plenty of things to do.
My second goal, and ultimately more important for long term success, I needed to establish a relationship with our desktop engineering team. I’m responsible for the technical setup at our four call centers. But, I live in Salt Lake City. I don’t get out to the other sites very often. How do you influence people that you only see occasionally? That you might only see occasionally, but you talk to multiple times per week?
I don’t know if there is a “right” way, I only know “my” way. I’m only here for a few days. Two things impress an engineer, the first is technical prowess, or at least technical aptitude coupled with a willingness to work. This was actually the hardest to accomplish with the engineers here.
George, you guys are setting up the training room tonight, right?
Yup. It will probably take all night, but we’ll get it done.
Could you use any help?
No. We’ve kind of got a system. We’ll be fine.
They didn’t trust me. Or more accurately, they didn’t trust that I could be involved and do it their way. Trust is earned. And they had no reason to trust me.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that these guys were paranoid, or even overly suspicious. They had never worked with me. If you offer to help and get turned down, what do you do?
I stayed. I didn’t push, but I stayed the evening wore on. Eventually the engineers started to move monitors into our training room.
Hey, can I lend you a hand with those?
Who’s going to deny you the opportunity to haul computer monitors from one room to another? Right. Nobody.
Anything else?
Well, I absolutely hate taking those little twisty ties off the cords. If you wanted to do that.
Of course, I wanted to. Before long I was hooking the monitors up. It’s just a matter of plugging cables into the right places on the monitors and the computer. I moved on from monitor cables, to mice and keyboards. The hours wore on. I did all the grunt work. The tedious work. I vacuumed. I picked up litter. I dusted the tables.
I also participated in multiple conference calls all through the night as we tracked progress in other parts of the schedule. Finally, around 4:00am I came to the realization that we were going to make our deadline and that I was going to have to meet with the client in a few hours. But, I’d accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. I’d gotten the engineers to let me help them. And I’d done it their way.
The second way you impress engineers, is you feed them. This turned out to be harder than I thought. It started easy enough.
Steve, I want to buy lunch for your guys on Friday.
Sure, that’d be great.
Pizza?
You know it.
On Friday, I asked the site admin to order the pizza. Apparently, she had her own agenda.
Can you help me get them out of the IT trailer?
Well, if you can have the pizza delivered here to the conference room, that should work.
Once the pizza and the engineers arrived, it was clear that the engineers knew exactly what the admin had in mind.
You guys know she’s in our trailer right now doing her April Fools prank.
I swear if she touches my Star Wars collection I’m going to put that virus back on her computer.
The team peppered me with questions about the account, about process, about procedures. They asked me about the client, our own executives. They didn’t ask me about the other desktop engineers. They all knew each other. Eventually, they got around to asking me about the lunch.
I didn’t help y’all because I’m a nice guy. I’m not a nice guy. But, Shreveport is a shared site. When I need you to do something from me, I don’t want you to think, “Rodney?, wasn’t he one of the guys who hung out in the conference room?” No, I want you to remember that he was the guy who bought lunch, and who worked with you all night to get the training room ready. This is a straight up bribe. I intend to collect over the coming months.
Why tell us about it?
Because I might be mercenary and manipulative, but I’ve found that if you are up front and honest when you are trying to manipulate people, ironically, it helps.
It cost me a night’s sleep and $55 in pizza, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to pay off well.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Have you ever watched one of those scenes where the poor guy gets a plate of food dumped on him? Or had a glass of beer dumped on him? Or had a waitress drop a full glass of Coke that then shattered and went all over him? Was the victim angry? Did they laugh? Did they start yelling? And did you think “Here’s how I would act in that situation”?
It’s been a busy week for me. We had a big deadline at our new call center. Thursday was the day our client was on site to tell us if we passed the audit. We’ve been working for two weeks like crazy to get ready. Wednesday, the day before the audit, we had all hands on deck. The final step in bringing up a call center floor is actually putting the computers on the desks and then installing software on the computers. It’s always the last step and it’s always up against the clock. We were up all night on Wednesday. Well, the desktop engineers were up all night. At 4:00AM I headed back to my hotel to get a couple of hours sleep since I would need to meet with the client on Thursday. All in all, it was about a 20 hour, followed by three hours of sleep and then a high pressure client visit.
We passed our audit with flying colors. The hard work in the past two weeks paid off, and the relief was palatable. After the client left, we thanked the teams involved and those of us on the project team headed out to dinner at a local casino called “Margaritaville.”
I was exhausted. But, as I wrote earlier this week, the team dinners are an important part of any project team. The casino allows smoking inside. After living in a state with no smoking in buildings, it took some adjusting. I was tired, hungry and now my eyes were smarting from the smoke.
I don’t drink or smoke or gamble. But, I really enjoy the team I work with. As dinner continued, we made multiple trips to the buffett lines. The food was very good, crabs, ribs, salads, clams, Chinese and dozens of others I didn’t have a chance to try.
And then it happened. From the corner of my eye I noticed a server approaching. I never saw what she tripped on. But, the glass of Coke she was carrying smashed into the table, showering me with broken glass, ice and Coke. I sat there in shock as the server simply stood dumbfounded, her face looking like “I can’t believe that happened,” or maybe, “I think I just lost my job.”
So, what would you do? I was soaked.
The server disappeared and quickly reappeared with towels and napkins and a flood of apologies. “I so sorry.” “Are you okay?” My team just stared at me and waited for my reaction.
I could be mad.
No one would have been surprised if I yelled.
I could have.
I didn’t.
It’s fine. But, you know if I thought you did that on purpose, I would be SO upset!
And then I smiled and started to laugh. The server cleared my ruined meal away.
What did you have and I’ll get you another serving.
No, that’s okay. I can get some more. Accidents happen.
My team was a little surprised at my reaction. In fact, I was more than a little surprised at my reaction. I know the server was surprised, and probably a little suspicious. After I had retrieved another platefull of surprisingly good clams, I noticed the server approach out table again.
Hey, could I get another Coke?. . .In a glass this time?
She quickly reappeared with my refill. And I could tell that I had finally put her at ease with her response.
Here you go. . In a glass this time.
Am I a nice person? Are you a nice person? How would you know? We don’t often have the opportunity where those around us would consider us perfectly justified in losing our temper. Not just those around us, but the subject of our anger might even feel it’s justified. A lap full of broken glass, ice and drinks would fit that situation.
We show our character by how we treat those who owe us nothing.
If you asked me last week how I would respond if someone dumped a glass of soda on me, I would have said that I think that I would respond well. But, we all think the best of ourselves in the “What would you do?” scenarios. We are always the hero, the good guy, the gentleman who takes the high road. We are each the star of our own movie.
Occasionally we are put to the test. At least for a single moment last night I am glad to say I measured up to my inner standard.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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I’m in Shreveport. I’m meeting lots of new people. Today, one of these new people came into the conference room we were using as a base. She was kind of loud. She was actually more than a little loud. I thought she might be an assistant to the Call Center Manager. Or maybe a member of the Fun Committee. No one introduced us so I most kept quiet.
She continued to dominate conversations. She had opinions on nearly everything. Eventually I overheard someone else saying, “oh she’s a VP over operations.
That’s <bleeping> executive Vice President, to you!
In an instance my entire perception changed. Rather than loud, she was now forceful. Rather than “in everyone’s business,” now she was well connected with her team.
I have many strong women in my life, my mother, my wife, my daughter. I’m not threatened by female bosses. But, I surprised myself at how much my opinion was clouded by my perception of the role the woman had in the organization.
It definitely gave me something to think on.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Rodney, we are meeting at Crawdaddy’s Kitchen at 7:00. Are you coming?
I’ve got a lot to get done tonight. I’m not sure I’m going to make it.
Suit yourself.
Food isn’t that important to me. I don’t look forward to meals or eating out. I enjoy food, but I can take it or leave it on business trips.
And I really did have a lot to get done. But. . .
We were all in Shreveport, Louisianna to open a new call center. “We” includes people from Salt Lake City, Chicago and other parts of the country. We hold weekly project phone conferences, but we rarely see one another. This was one of those rare times.
Mark was a new addition to the on-site visits. He’d met many of the team on the phone, but never met them in person. I noticed a funny thing happening. We told stories. We gave each other a hard time the way a mostly male team will when they get together. I noticed that while Mark was fully accepted by the rest of the team, he fell silent at the times we told stories from previous launches.
I hadn’t realized how important this team was to me. We knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We had been asked to deliver on impossible timelines on multiple occasions. And every time we pulled together as a team and delivered. And at each of those engagements we ate. The stories of the dinners were nearly as numerous as the stories of the work.
Did I have time to go to dinner? Did I have time not to?
It turned out to be four of us at Crawdaddy’s Kitchen. We were all three from Salt Lake City. Except that Ammon had lived in Shreveport as a young man. He’d spent two years in Louisianna.
Have you ever had crawdads? I grew up in the Seattle area. I love seafood. Crawdads are not seafood, but they are close. Most seafood, be it oysters, or clams or crab or lobster has a unique way to eat it. Crawdads are no different.
We had Ammon to explain to us not only what to order but how to eat it.
While I don’t get super excited about food, I do like to try different foods. So, at our dinner I shared the plate of boiled crawdads and ordered a cup of shrimp gumbo. The gumbo was delicious. The crawdads were a different story. It’s sometimes hard to eat food that looks back at you.
You twist off the tail and peel it like a shrimp. The spices were pretty strong, but very tasty. It’s also very messy. Like eating BBQ ribs swimming in sauce.
Did you eat crawdads much when you were here, Ammon?
Sure. I like the tails. I guess you’re supposed to then suck on the head, but I never tried it and I don’t see a reason to start now.
Like I said, I like to try new foods.
You know that hot sauce from Mexico in the red bottles? Imagine if you were to inhale that? That’s what sucking on the head of a boiled crawdad felt like. It was weaponized hot sauce. I nearly passed out. I’m not going to try that again.
Teams are not just a collection of people who share the same manager. In fact, most of us in Louisiana this week do not share the same manager. Instead, teams are a group of people with a common goal and a collection of shared experiences.
If you want to be part of a team, make sure you take the time to share the experiences. Yes, you have time to go to dinner, even if you don’t have time. You can’t afford not to go.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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I don’t usually talk on airplanes. I don’t try to be rude, but, it’s hard to hear. You’re going to be with this person for an hour or two and then you’ll both literally go your separate ways. Why invest the time to get to know someone that you’ll never see again. That’s what made my recent trip to Shreveport, LA so unusual.
He was in the aisle seat when I walked on the plane. It was one of those small jets, a CRJ200. So, there were only two seats on each side. Honestly, he looked like anyone’s grandfather. (Which he turned out to be, but I’m getting ahead of the story. I don’t remember his opening question, but it was probably, “Where are you headed?”
He didn’t have a book, a magazine or anything else that might entertain him for the hour and fifty minute trip from Atlanta to Shreveport. “Here we go,” I thought. “He’s gonna want to talk.” Okay, no worries. We were sitting at the gate. The engines hadn’t made attempts at conversation an exercise in PROJECTILE TALKING yet.
One of the first things he mentioned was that he’d graduated from Julliard, the famous music school. I love music, but I was never in danger of being accepted into Julliard. The conversation wandered as we pushed away from the gate. He mentioned that he’d written an anthem for choir. Not only did he mention it, he quoted it. . .and it was beautiful. “This Place My Anchorage,” hauntingly blended imagery of the sea with images of Jesus Christ and eternity.
How odd to be sitting next to an 84 year old man at 30,000 feet somewhere over Eastern Georgia listening to him quote poetry. I mentioned that I had written songs for each of my 13 children. I’ve written them in a book. I had it with me because I’m working on putting it into a book of poetry.
He read stories about my children as I recited the lines. An impromptu poetry reading. He complemented me on adopting ten children. His had three children, two daughters and a son. His son died from cancer. He would have been just about my age had he lived.
I still don’t talk much while on a plane. But, every so often, it’s a good idea to put away the noise canceling headphones, and find out the story of the person sitting next to you. Noel Tipton and I are both glad we did.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Look – you’re my best friend, so don’t take this the wrong way. In twenty years, if you’re still livin’ here, comin’ over to my house to watch the Patriots games, still workin’ construction, I’ll kill you. That’s not a threat; now, that’s a fact. I’ll kill you.
– Chuckie, Good Will Hunting
You owe it to the your best employees to get them to leave.
That’s right. You should have a plan in place to get your best employees, in fact, all your employees to leave. My son recently went to work for McDonalds. He’s sixteen and excited to be working. But, he has no illusions about the future of his job. He understands it’s a first job and that he will eventually move on.
How about your employees? Depending on where they are in their careers, they will have different career goals. I once had an intern work for me who was a fantastic programmer. He came to me one day and said he had a chance to go to work for a startup.
That sounds like a great opportunity for you.
But, my internship isn’t up for another 4 months. I’m not sure about leaving.
Look, your career is your responsibility. This job offer looks like it would be a great next step. You’ve done a great job for us, but I don’t want to deny you this new chance for the last four months.
He took the job and it was the career launchpad that he thought it would be.
I had an engineer who worked for me, who had a similar opportunity. Ethan came to me and said that a software company wanted to hire him. He asked me for advice and asked if I would be a reference.
He wasn’t just an engineer, he was my best engineer. Truly brilliant. I not only offered to be a reference, I encouraged him to find out more about the job. Ultimately, he turned them down. Last I heard, he’d been promoted twice and was an Enterprise Architect at my old company. So, while he didn’t leave the company, he did leave the team.
That’s the real point. You should be giving your employees an opportunity to learn new things, develop new skills. Encourage them to grow. Will that mean they no longer stay on your team? Of course. But, as a manager, you have both a responsibility to the company AND a responsibility to your employees. You can make new opportunities available to them, or you can prevent those opportunities. However, if you try to keep them tied to your team by denying them the opportunity to get additional training, preventing them from going to interview elsewhere, limiting their exposure within your organization, you will kill the golden goose. In other words, the very characteristics that make them good employees will be damaged if you try to deny them the chance to grow.
Don’t be afaraid to lose them. If your team is known as a “launching pad” for promotions and career growth, you will have your pick of ambitious talented people clamoring to take the place of your super stars.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
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LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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I have to pack. . .twice. Both trips are important. Both trips are to places I’ve never been before. But, both trips are similar to countless trips I’ve taken before.
The trips are completely different.
One trip is for a single night. The other is for 8 days. One trip I’ll be sleeping in a strange bed. The other I’ll be sleeping on the ground. One trip, I’ll eat out at restaurants. The other I’ll be eating all my meals outside. One trip is by myself. The other is with eight to ten boys scouts.
Tonight I’m headed to a meadow in central Utah. We’re going to camp in lava tubes and tomorrow morning we’ll be swimming in hot springs. Monday, I have to head to Louisiana. We are opening a new call center.
I’ve gotten pretty good at packing for both types of trips over the years. I still remember my first scout campout. I was eleven. We brought our own food. I brought eggs and a cast iron frying pan to cook them in. My friend’s dad was the scoutmaster. My friend still remembers that campout, forty years later. That pan was heavy. For tonight’s campout, I probably won’t even pack until 3:00 for a 4:00pm departure. I’ll probably take a fork, a spoon and a large cup. You can pretty much eat any campfire meal with that combination.
The remember one of the early business trips I took, when I was working for Microsoft. I took a t-shirt and jeans. It’s what I wore to work most days. I never made that mistake again. I’ll wear slacks and pressed shirts during most days. When the client shows up I’ll wear a jacket and tie. I probably won’t start packing until Sunday night.
I’m headed to Louisiana by myself. There will be other people from work there, of course. But, I have no idea of their travel schedule. I’m not even sure we are in the same hotel. I am renting my own car. I’ll essentially be travelling alone.
Tonight I’ll load up my 15 passenger van full of boys, including two of my sons. We will travel together, camp together, eat together and come back together.
If I didn’t have to go to Shreveport, I’d stay home. If I could go camping for more than just tonight, I’d go for a week.
Ten years from now, I probably won’t remember my trip to Louisiana. Ten years from now, I hope I still have fond memories of the campout with my boys.
I’m taking two trips, but they couldn’t be more different.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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