Sunday February 25th - Thursday February 29th 2024 - Work trip to San Diego

 As it happens occasionally my life sometimes whip saws from one extreme to the other. After a full year with no travel for work and only about 6 days in the office even, this week was 12 hours a day of co-workers, mostly from New Jersey.  It was really fun and we ate *so* well but also *so* much.

My trip to LAX didn't go well, partly because I shouldn't have chosen LAX as my airport.  Flying from Rochester isn't easy and most of the time it comes down to either having more than 1 stop on the way or leaving ROC at 5:30 am.  Plus there are fare rules for work travel so not every possible flight is possible for me. I looked at numerous possibilities including the obvious of flying into San Diego but flying to SD was about 1200 dollars round trip at least.  I was really tickled to find a round trip itinerary that didn't require any early departures but it was from LAX.  The funny this is I really thought I booked from Orange County including when I checked in for my flight in Rochester.  

This meant that instead of having an hour long drive after landing I was going to have 2 or more to get to my hotel in suburban San Diego.  But it turned out that the drive time was the least of my problems.  The first flight from Rochester to Detroit was delayed about 2 hours.  I had a huge long layover in Detroit so I didn't miss my next flight and it was delayed too so I had lots of time to kill.  The 2nd flight (Detroit-LAX) was 'payload optimized' which meant the cargo hold was full of cargo and checked bags and there was NO room for gate checked bags.  So every single rollerbag etc that people waddled on the plane with had to be stowed on board.  Since I checked a bag and had a Comfort + paid upgrade I usually feel like I've done my part to not crowd the overhead bins and try to put my backpack up in a bin so I have all the legroom available that I'm able to have.  As the line of people boarding nearly ground to a halt and the announcements about bin space got more serious I had somebody hand me my backpack. Unfortunately it pretty much fills the under seat area. So I spent most of the flight (other than takeoff and landing) with it standing up between my legs.  And I was in a middle seat.  It was certainly one of the most uncomfortable 4 hour flights I've ever had.  Thankfully the staff and both my seat neighbors were kind and there weren't any babies or loud people on the flight.

By the time I landed, got my bag and braved the chaotic and very slow rental car shuttle process, it was 11 PM before I got into my rental car.  I got to the hotel at 1 am (4 am Eastern time) so I was basically up 20 hours that day with just a brief head bobbing nap on 1 flight.  The hotel was newly upgraded to a new version of their front desk software and neither the night person nor the supervisor the next day knew how to 'uncancel' my late arrival no-show automatic cancellation.  I had to be walked to my room (that i wasn't officially in) and let in by the night front desk person.  This turned out to be an omen for the overall hotel experience.  The room and property overall were great but that reservation snafu at the start resulted in my stay being billed in 2 separate stays, my room key expiring 3 times and several fruitless phone calls while they tried to sort it out.  If they can't find some documentation for the 1 night stay they setup after my auto-cancel thing they are going to refund it.  It's pretty bad when not even the day supervisor can explain the charge on my company card.

The reason for the trip was ostensibly to learn how to deploy Nutanix (virtualization) clusters.  I went to Tokyo for that Nutanix install but this time we wanted to learn the details so well that we won't need professional services for the rest of the installs we will be doing including a much larger install in Las Vegas this month.  So Tuesday and Wednesday my co-worker and I worked with a Nutanix engineer and peppered him with a lot of questions.  There were also elements of our install that didn't go by the book so we learned a lot from having him lead us through troubleshooting efforts.  I enjoyed our time with the engineer and he joined our larger group for lunch both days which was nice.

Our reseller for Nutanix (and a lot of other things) organized a VERY opulent dinner to Javier's in La Jolla.  The shrimp, scallop and Ahi Ahi ceviche appetizers were a real treat for me.  For dinner I had a crab and shrimp enchilada and a seafood stuffed Poblano pepper.  For some reason there was a shrimp tostada I didn't expect along with lovely fancy refried beans and a glass of Pinot Noir from Oregon.  Our sales representative also came with a ton of swag.  I got a sporty pull over jacket, a metal travel mug and 3 kinds of girl scout cookies which was fun.

On Thursday we tried to turn the volume and pace down a bit with slightly less indulgent meals and less frenetic activities.  I started my day by going down to Tierrasanta to do laundry as I didn't quite have enough to get through.  I also went on a very short (1 mile) walk along a canyon near Tierrasanta but I came around a corner and was quite close to a large coyote.  A coyote wouldn't be very threatening if I weren't alone but it was really quite close and just reminded me of the possibilities of running into other wildlife so I turned around at that point but it was a lovely little break on my own.  Back at the office, I dug into learning more about some of the tasks my coworker will be doing next week when he does his first solo Nutanix implementation in Athens Ohio.  It was good to put my thinking cap on and learn by doing.  I did have some anxious periods when I put the cluster into a broken configuration and didn't know how to fix it but our Nutanix engineer was generous enough to join us for a support call even though his official duties were done when he left our office.

I wrapped up my last night in San Diego with a simple beet salad dinner and a glass of wine at the hotel which shares the same large landscaped grounds as the hotel I was at.