I have had my Kyocera 2235 for about three years. It is an ancient phone by today’s standards. My wife has had a Kyocera SE44 for a little over two years, and the battery life is abysmal. It was a nifty, different phone at first, but the novelty of the slider wore off quickly.

We’ve been out of our Verizon Wireless contract for a few months and we’ve been talking about signing a new contract and getting fancy new phones. I’ll be getting a phone from work, so I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue to have a personal phone. As it turns out, it’s not much more expensive to have a family plan with two phones than it is to have a single phone; also, one of the phones I liked was on sale, 2-for-1 as well as a $50 rebate. So I was sold. My wife and I both now have the Motorola Razr.

I’ve put off buying a new phone for so long. I never liked the idea of a phone being more than a phone, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find phones without cameras or some other gimmick. However, my resistance to the idea has finally disappeared. The Razr really is a pretty sweet phone, even if it does seem like all the trendy people I hate so much are buying it in droves. After using archaic technology for so long, the large color screen and downloadable applications are really impressive.

Until tonight, I never understood why people would set their ringer to music. These new phones have so much more than the electronic chirps of my old phone. I set my ringer to “latin dance” and had so much fun browsing the ring tones available for download. I had hoped to find The Imperial March, but struck out.

Finally, my trip to North Carolina is over. It’s not that I didn’t like North Carolina; quite the opposite, I really enjoyed what little of the state I experienced. Still, it has been a long week and I’m glad to be home. I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to try any of the restaurants or visit any of the places that were recommended to me by friends, but I expect this won’t be the last time I’ll be sent to RTP.

We repeated Thursday’s presentation to an attendance of only three. While the turnout could have been better, the interactivity with those who did attend was excellent. Over two sessions, based on questions from the audience, I took three pages of notes on improving the presentation or adding features to our API. All in all, I think it was very worthwhile.

Getting home could have gone better. It wasn’t all that bad, but I was tired and was faced with several hours of flying between me and my bed. Our flight from Raleigh-Durham to Dallas-Ft. Worth, initially departing at 4:53 PM, was delayed until 6:15 PM. Unlike my co-workers, I didn’t have an EV-DO for my notebook, so I could spend the extra time checking my e-mail—not to say that’s a bad thing. Strangely, while I was stuffed into seat 29F—again in one of those terribly uncomfortable McDonnell Douglass S80—my co-workers had a wonderful flight up in first class. Oh well, at least I got some sleep.

We landed at Dallas-Ft. Worth at 8:38 PM—three minutes after our connecting flight left for San Diego. Fortunately, there was another flight leaving for San Diego at 9:52 PM and we were able to get seats on it. One of my coworkers managed to be bumped to first class again, but this time I was able to get seat 20D, exit row aisle. We were in another McDonnell Douglass S80, but this one had been recently refurbished. The seats were new and comfortable and the leg room in the exit row was vast. If you have even moderately long legs and you know you’ll be flying on one of these awful S80s, try to get a seat in the exit row. It turns the flight from unbearable to comfortable.

After we had checked in for our San Diego flight in Dallas and settled into the terminal to wait, I looked up and saw Dickey’s Barbeque Pit. I suddenly realized how hungry I was and, entering the restaurant, the fragrance of the barbeque instantly made my mouth water. I don’t know if the food was really good or if it was only because I was really hungry, but the barbeque brisket sandwich and pecan pie were amazing.

It’s good to be home.

My first business trip has been exhausting. In the days leading up to this trip, I was excited. I’ve never visited North Carolina, and I’ve heard from one friend in particular who loved living in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area. I had hoped to see some of the sights and experience some of the local culture. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time for any of that. Each night I worked into the wee hours of the morning on the slides for our training sessions.

When setting out on the project to proofread and provide input on the slides used in our training sessions, I never expected for it to take as long as it did. The presentation still needs work, but the concensus seems to be that my changes have done much to help the overall performance as it were. Good thing, too; we really wanted to come out to North Carolina and impress our long-distance co-workers. Hopefully we didn’t entirely miss the mark.

During my first week at Qualcomm—only two weeks ago!—I attended the training session which I am now helping to deliver. Immediately, I formed a vision of what I thought would be the “perfect” presentation. Much of what I feel a presentation should be came from a talk I attended last August, given by Damian Conway. He was so dynamic and entertaining, yet informative at the same time. Incidently, Damian was in town to present a couple of his talks at Qualcomm, to the very people who are now my co-workers. With that in mind, I set out to redesign our presentation.

It was a lot of work.

It’s still not perfect.

In truth, I doubt it will ever be, no matter how much effort I expend. There will always be a detail to polish or an aside to add. That is part of what makes it fun.

The rest of what makes it fun is the performance. I only presented one-sixth of the slides to the attendees, but I feel I made it as dynamic, entertaining, and informative as possible with as little preparation—and as little sleep—as I had. I even have an entire page of notes, took during the performance, detailing ways to improve the presentation.

Unfortunately, I won’t be applying any of my ideas to the presentation prior to our next performance, which happens to be tomorrow. I’m far too tired to do it right, and I don’t want to surprise the rest of my team. No, I’ll just create a snapshot of this presentation, post it on our wiki, and save the improvements for another time and place.

Tonight we were treated to dinner at
Neo China in Cary, a short drive from the facility at RTP. The food wasn’t very good. At least, I didn’t care for it; but, I wasn’t very hungry. I had asked if it was family style, as Chinese restaurants tend to be, and was told it wasn’t. The waitress even took all of our orders individually. Well, it turned out to be family style, and the large plate of orange chicken I ordered mostly went to waste. I seem to have made the mistake of eating some of the charred orange peel that was mixed in with the chicken; at least, I think that’s what I ate. I have a short list of restaurants recommended to me by friends who have lived here in the past, but it seems these will have to wait until I return some day.

I am looking forward to getting a full night of sleep tonight, and to returning home tomorrow. I won’t set foot inside my house until 10:30 p.m., but it will be good to see my wife, my cats, and my own bed again.

I really need to start getting more sleep on this trip. Going to bed at 2:00 a.m. and getting out of bed at 6:00 a.m. is growing old. Thus far, I’ve remained awake at night to do the work that the daily meetings are preventing me from accomplishing. After tonight, I will have put the work behind me.

Tonight I need to finish the slides we will be using in our training sessions on Thursday and Friday. I don’t know how much of the presentation I will handle, but I’m pretty excited at the prospect, considering this is only my third week on the job.

We ended up going back to NCSU for lunch today, after a failed attempt to find our way to Chapel Hill. Four dollars and thirty-one cents at the Farmhouse bought me two slices of some of the best New York style pepperoni pizza I’ve ever tasted and a soda. Hey Rachael Ray, I still have $35.69.

We did a bit better for dinner. A couple of the locals recommended Stonewood Grill & Tavern. I’m glad they did. Our waitress—the first accent I’ve heard on this trip—recommended the swordfish bruschetta. Excellent. The fish was grilled just right while the bruschetta and balsamic reduction complemented it perfectly.

As anyone who has had my acquaintance for more than five minutes knows, I love microbrews. If nothing else, this trip has presented me with the opportunity to sample local beers I otherwise would never discover. Tonight, with dinner, I enjoyed two pints of Red Oak. It was fantastic. I’ll keep watch for a growler I can ship home as a souvenir of this trip.

Flying from one coast of the United States to the other for a business trip can be brutal. Under normal circumstances, one might have the opportunity to gradually recover from the three hour time shift. Perhaps by sleeping late or napping throughout the day. The same is not true for business trips.

Still operating well within the Pacific time zone, I didn’t go to bed until 1:00 a.m. this morning. Incidently, the beds here at the Marriott are amazingly comfortable. We got an early start today, so I was out of bed at 6:00 a.m. In my world, that is really 3:00 a.m. Believe me, it felt like 3:00 a.m. At times, I barely managed to stay awake through our morning meetings. Fortunately, by early afternoon my circadian rhythms caught up to me and I had come fully awake.

Lunch was a real treat. Our host brought in authentic North Carolina barbeque. I wasn’t thrilled with the ribs, but the pulled pork, fried okra, and hush puppies were wonderful.

Nothing special for dinner tonight. We were tired and wanted nothing more than to return to the hotel. Following a brief meal at Moe’s Southwestern Grill, we retired to the Marriott’s concierge room to recap the day’s meetings and prepare for tomorrow’s.

I don’t know how much time passed, but I finally had to excuse myself. I wasn’t participating in the conversation and I had a presentation to prepare. Four cups of coffee and four hours later, I managed to have the existing presentation proofed and about a third of the slides reworked.

I still have the better part of three days in North Carolina. Hopefully I’ll get another chance to explore the area.

Today not only heralded my third week as an employee of Qualcomm, but my first business trip as well. So far it has been an exciting experience.

After a mere two hours of sleep (thanks to a late flight returning home from Phoenix), I boarded a 6:30 a.m. flight from San Diego to Dallas/Fort Worth. After a chopped brisket sandwich at Cousins Bar-B-Q, I boarded another flight to Raleigh/Durham. The aircraft for both legs of the trip were McDonnell Douglas MD-80s. As anyone who has been aboard one of these dinosaurs can attest, little attention is paid to leg- or elbow-room. The flights were uncomfortable, but I nevertheless managed to nap and arrived refreshed in North Carolina at 4:00 p.m.

I was supposed to have dinner with our hosts, but at the last minute dinner became a managers meeting, leaving me to fend for myself. Not content with the nearby fast food, I insisted on driving until I found local flair. I spent some time lost in the town of Cary, but eventually found my way to North Carolina State University where I had dinner at Porter’s Tavern, across the street from the university proper. Appropriately, I sampled a local porter which I found very tasty. The fresh fish was also quite good. Perusing the menu I noticed the food, while not very different from what can be found in California, is prepared in a subtley different manner. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I will detail this further as the week progresses and I have sampled more of the local cuisine.

After dinner, I walked the length of the business district bordering the university campus. Colleges, like so much else in the eastern United States, differ from their western counterparts. UCSD, for instance, can be considered a small city unto itself; separate and distinct from the city in which the Post Office would claim it resides. In the east, particularly those colleges I saw scattered throughout the city of Boston, there is a natural blending. On any given street, a handful of buildings could be classrooms, university offices, even dormitories. Here on the east coast, colleges and cities have a symbiotic relationship; they are not the Frostian neighbors that are found on the west coast. I find this creates an unique sort of town. The combination of old America and prevalent student life gives these towns an atmosphere not found on the west coast.