Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Boston Trip - Day 2 - Time for Training

After staying up way too late the night before in my room because I couldn't get to sleep, 6:30 am came really fast and considering for me it was actually 4:30 am was exhausting.  I wanted to get to the training room around 8am.  I figured out this very first morning that with only me to get ready and not have to go anywhere except for down the elevator that I did not need to get up quite so early to get ready for the day - what a pleasant thing that is. The one unpleasant discovery of the morning was figuring out that I had not packed a pair of my jeans which I needed to go with one of my shirts and I had planned on wearing the next day.  I was going crazy in my room looking in my empty suitcase and through all my drawers and realized I had washed them and laid them out to dry and they never made it into my suitcase - damn it!   I made myself some coffee and took my time getting ready and then finally headed downstairs.  I walked into the room and there was definitely a little bit of a culture shock.  There were people from everywhere and about 50 of us in the class.  I found my co-worker, Jared, and parked myself next to him in the front row since I knew for sure that when we went back to work we would be working together on our Data Warehouse project.  We hadn't seen Jared the day before so we all caught up quick while finding our seats and eating some breakfast.  As our class started the instructor went around and was guessing what different types of companies everyone had come from.  There were huge corporations, insurance companies, banks, etc. and then here are us 4 from a small local government.  Next we needed to find out who came the farthest for the training - this was unbelievable to me - there were people that came from Peru, China, Kuwait - they flew in from all over the place.  We all immediately knew that this training was a very, very big deal and felt pretty damn lucky to be there.  We had a fabulous first day of class all about requirements gathering which is a piece of my job that I thoroughly enjoy and the training in that we were receiving was going to help me out in all aspects of my job other than just the data warehousing project.  I was thrilled and excited.  They also served us lunch everyday and the first day was great.  They had a huge spread of food and waiters in a private room for us and even dessert.
I was fretting about the missing jeans and needed to go do some shopping.  Jared of course took off after class since his wife was still there and was out sightseeing and I drug Derik and Mark out shopping with me. We walked around some new areas of town and stopped in multiple stores and I tried on only a few pairs of jeans and the shopping was a bust, but the guys were troopers.  I was shocked that they went with me, but it was pretty apparent that I wasn't go out and wandering by myself.  We found another nice place to eat.  After supper we hit another store and still no jeans to take home.  I would have to make due with what I brought with.  We headed back to the hotel and Derik decided to skype with his family and stay in for the night.  Mark and I met up and walked back to the Irish Pub we were at the night before.  We had a few beers and enjoyed some conversation.  We were sitting at the bar and eventually started talking to the two other guys that were sitting there.  One guy was from Boston and had stopped in for a few beers and the other guy was a programmer on a business trip from Canada.  The Canadian guy was one weird dude.  He did not have good street smarts and definitely fit the profile of computer geek (although I'm sad to say that all 4 of us probably were because we were all talking the talk, ugh, what have I become?).  We had a lot of good laughs though that night, but of course again nothing with me goes with out incident - so here come's # 2 of our trip.  As the Canadian guy was getting ready to leave the bar and was saying good-bye to everyone I am an idiot and asked him which hotel he was staying at.  Yes - I know now how horrible that sounds and how a man would take that from a woman.  My interest was not in him and the his room.  I of course go into curiosity mode and travel agent mode and want to size up the hotel - what's it like, is it nicer than ours, how much does a room there a night cost - but no I just blankly say - what hotel are you staying in.  My co-worker looks at me like "what the hell?" and the Canadian nonchalantly tells me his hotel and room #.  I gasp of course and scoff and say that is not what I meant!  I just wanted to know if it was a nice hotel and what accommodations it had.  I do not want to come to your hotel room weird Canadian guy! Once that was covered and everyone once again laughed at me then it was time to head back to the hotel.  It had been another long day and night.  Again back in my room I could not go right to sleep.  Who knew that a 2 hour time difference would affect a person this much.  I had another beer and checked facebook and such and finally went to bed.    

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