AlaskaAir Aviation Geek Night

A Night With @AlaskaAir

This week I had a unique and truly awesome experience thanks to the good people behind @AlaskaAir’s twitter presence (Most specifically Elliot).  I was one of 12 people chosen to participate in Alaska Airlines Aviation Geek Night!  We went out to their Seattle flight operations center -the training center for pilots and flight crew.

Our night began with some traditional “in flight snacks” of peanuts, pretzels and and a selection of Jones Sodas while we watched a nice promo video on Alaska Air’s customer service culture.  Marketing hoo-haa you say?  Perhaps, but I can tell you that the flights I’ve been on have lived up to the image they portray in the video.

Then we split into small groups for the big fat geeky fun part of the night.  The first activity for me was flying their multi-million dollar 737 flight simulator.  This thing is so realistic that the pilots train exclusively in it… the first time they fly an actual plane it’s full of passengers!

One of compatriots @imperfectsense videoed my landing on her iPhone (watch it here). It looks worse than it was, honestly, but I did hit pretty hard.  She called out that it felt like a carrier deck landing, and I think I flatted a tire, but hey I got it down in one piece!    I flew it all the way in on manual, didn’t use the autopilot at all, so I was pretty proud of that – lining up on the runway was the toughest part IMO.   Actually, harder than landing was driving the plane across the tarmac!  Holy cats!  You steer with your feet (one pedal for each) and you break with your toes, plus there’s a little hand wheel near your left hip that’s VERY touchy.  I about got motion sick from that part of the simulation.  Once I was stopped at the gate the trainer told me to do the “Airplane (movie) thing” and drive the plane through the terminal, which was quite honestly creepy, that simulator is so realistic that both the co-pilot and I winced as the wall of the building approached!

After having fun in the sim we went off to flight attendant training.  Our first order of business was to learn to put out an airplane fire.  They had a little computer controlled fireplace and a big cart full of extinguishers and turned us loose one at a time to put out a fire.  After watching us bumble they gave us some training and had us try again.  The first time very few people got the fire out, after the training most of us got it in under 10 seconds.

Next up we boarded the plane and got a “crash course” (HA!) in removing airplane over-wing doors. Each of us getting a chance to try both the older style (aka “classic door”) and the new spring-assisted ones (soooo much easier).  We then learned how to open the main forward doors and once the emergency slide inflated we got to evac the plane.  SUHWEEEEEET!   I had so much fun that I went back and did the slide again!   We also learned the proper technique of exiting the wing without a slide – a process that requires the pilot to put the flaps down and you to sit on the wing and slide off the side about 15 feet above the ground.  FUN!

We learned about the kind of safety, self defense, and first responder training that the flight crew goes through.  If you ever thought of them as in-flight waiters and waitresses – then stop it, these guys and gals are hard core!

We ended the evening with a sharing of photos, stories, and videos before heading back into the real world, each of us a bit more confident as travelers and a bit more impressed by the men and women who haul our privileged butts from one end of the globe to the other.

Thanks so much to Elliot, our hosts, pilots, flight crew, and everyone at @AlaskaAir that made this happen.  I had a great time!

P.S. To see what the other attendees thought, check out the #ASAGN twitter stream and the photos from the Seattle Social Media Club.

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Late breaking news – I was quoted twice in Harriet Baskas’ MSNBC.com story about her experiences at ASAGN.  Thanks Harriet for the nod!  :-)

Harriet Baskas writes msnbc.com’s popular weekly column, The Well-Mannered Traveler. She is the author of the “Stuck at the Airport” blog, a contributor to National Public Radio and a columnist for USATODAY.com.

Comcast Cares? I beg to differ!

My name is Brian Herman, and I hate Comcast

Here’s my Comcast customer (dis)service experience for the week.   I’m new to Comcast, I’ve only had my account about 7 weeks.

Wednesday

I arrive home late and find my internet is down, I turn on the TV and it’s dead too.  I call Comcast support and fairly quickly end up connected with a nice guy who tries to help fix my problem remotely.  He’s VERY friendly and chatty.  He recognizes that my cell phone area code is Colorado and talks to me about his friends in Denver, he sees my street address in Seattle and tells me how much he loves the Queen Anne area.   When he can’t fix my problem remotely he sets me up a service appointment for 10-2 the next day.  Sadly he can’t move it further forward and that means my wife is going to lose her morning waiting for service, but I understand.  Then, without prompting he offers to comp me for 3 days of “down service”.  Overall this is an awesome experience, I’m pretty impressed with them (admittedly my expectations were low based on what I’d heard from other Comcast customers)

But here’s where it all goes south.  I explain to him that I have to be in meetings at work all day on Thursday and that my wife is in town for the week.  I ask that they have the technician call her number in the morning to get access to the apartment.

Looking back at it I now realize that the “3 free days of service” should have been setting my expectations for how long it would take to come fix my problem!

Thursday

I’m in the middle of a meeting with my VP when my phone rings.   I ignore it.

15 minutes later it rings again.  I ignore it again.

90 minutes later I am between meetings and check my messages… I have 2 calls from Comcast, the first saying they are at my apartment and the 2nd saying they are giving up and moving on to their next customer. !$%@#$!

I text my wife, who proceeds to spend the bulk of her afternoon on the phone trying to get these bastards back to the apartment, they will not help her.  The best they can do is noon-4p on Friday.

At 4:30 I’m between meetings again and I call Comcast and lay into them.  This was their mistake, in fact the agent admits that the correct number to call (Sandy’s) is right there in the work order).  I tell them I want a supervisor to call my wife’s phone and make this right.  This process took 15 minutes and made me late to an interview with a potential new-hire, NOT a cool experience.

A supervisor does call Sandy, she offers to get her into the morning slot (8a-noon) but will NOT assure her that we are a priority and will get the first slot of the day, promptly at 8a.  Sandy really pushes but they will not commit.

The agent says to Sandy “I’ve already comp’ed you a week of free service, what else do you want from me?”   I’ll tell you what want you twit,  I’m paying for a service, it’s the service I want, not the money.   I don’t need a service discounted, if I didn’t want to spend money on cable and Internet then I would not have signed up. After Sandy spent her entire day sitting in my apartment with no internet, no tv, and unable to go enjoy her day and take care of the errands she’s in town today, a few $$ off the bill isn’t going to make things right.  What I want at this point is I wan’t my !$%@^ time back!

That night I needed to check-in for our flight back to Colorado.  Without internet access I went and sat on the dirty stairs in a parking lot a few blocks away where I could pick up a free wi-fi signal and get checked in.

Friday

Today is our last day in Seattle.  We are planning to do some shopping and go hang out at the beach before leaving for the airport at 2:30.   I’ll be in Colorado all next week and when I return I want my internet and cable working.  I particularly

At 8:05 my phone isn’t ringing, my doorbell isn’t ringing and I call Comcast.  The automated system tells me that I am scheduled for service between Noon and 4, not 8 and noon as promised by the supervisor last night!  !@#%!$#^!

After a long hold time I speak to an agent (Gwen) who says she can not help me but will put me through to a supervisor.  After 18 minutes on hold the call gets dropped.

I call back in and after 8 minutes on hold the next agent (Allison) says the supervisor lines are all very busy (gee can’t f*ing imagine why) and she will put me in the call back queue.

15 min later…

30 min later…

45 min later, I call back.  Another 15 minutes on hold and I’m talking to the supervisor (Marlana) finally.  I tell her my story including the now-60 minutes waiting for a call-back and she says (I wouldn’t make this up) “Wow, I’m surprised by that because I’ve not been all that busy this morning.”   Which tells me that freaking Allison didn’t put me on any damn call-back list at all.

Marlana explains to me that Comcast’s priority is always “no-dial-tone” problems and that the ENTIRE tech crew has been working the ENTIRE morning on nothing but that.  Seriously.

Now I’m a reasonable person and I get that Aunt Mabel having no phone is a bigger deal (health and safety) than me having TV.  On the other hand, broadband *IS* my dialtone, it’s how the world reaches me and vice versa.  And I’ve been down for 2 days and getting hosed by Comcast, so you’d think that would move me up the priority list a bit.  You’d be wrong.

Marlana can not possibly help me this morning, 12-2 is the best she can do.  Now I explain how I’m leaving the state for a week promptly at 2p and they must get there around 12 and get this sorted.  She assures me that she’ll keep an eye on dispatch and make sure that I’m taken care of.

She gives me her extension so I can work with her directly (a nice touch) but when I ask what number to call so I can dial the extension (cuz that’s not an option on 1-800-comcast) she says “oh, you have to call the usual number and wait for a customer service agent, then tell that person to IM me and to put you through to my extension. (that’s not so helpful).   I wonder if this is the process her husband has to use when he calls to see what time she’ll be home for dinner?  I’m thinking no.

….

12:30 – guess who hasn’t shown up or called?   I call the number, I ask for Marlana’s extension, I am hold for 17 total minutes before I am connected.  She talks to dispatch and tells me “everyone is still busy, but you’re next up for whomever comes free first”.

1:50 – I call again… I speak to a support agent and ask her to IM Marlana and put me through to her extension.

1:52 – while I’m on hold the tech calls me and says he’s just finished his job and can be to my house in 15 minutes.  I tell him I need to leave at 2:20 PROMPTLY or I miss my plane.  He starts driving and asks me to describe the problem.  I tell him what’s happened and the troubleshooting I’ve done he says “well the problem clearly isn’t in your house, something’s wrong at the connection box”.  Well DUH, that’s what I’ve been saying for 2 days…

While I was on the line with him the operator on the other line disconnects with me.  I do not get a call back from her nor from Marlana despite the fact that I’ve been told twice in the last 2 days that “any time we lose contact with a customer on hold we call them back”.  Nice.

2:10 – the technician shows up. He asks how my day is.  I tell him “It sucks, but that’s not your fault.”  He replies “I appreciate you saying so, you’d be surprised how many people yell at me!”  I’m thinking to myself “no, I’m really not surprised at all”.  Poor guy, it’s not his fault, he’s just a hard working tech, he’s not manning the phones.

2:12 – He heads to the junction box in our building, it’s in an unsecured room and it isn’t locked shut, nor is there a “trap on it to keep people from messing with it”.   My cable is dangling from the wall; someone disconnected it.  He screws it on and my cable is working in less than 2 minutes.

2:20 – I leave for my bus.

At this point my wife has been in waiting in and around my apartment for 14 hours and I have been there for 6 waiting for Comcast – that’s 20 person hours.  Between us we spent over 300 minutes of cell phone time calling and waiting on hold.  All so that a guy could walk into an unlocked room, open an unlocked box and screw a cable onto a connector.  If *ANY-FREAKING-ONE* at Comcast had done their job right, had taken just 10 seconds to do things properly, none of this would have happened.  Let me recap.

• 7 weeks ago, random tech doesn’t install a trap on my line when he hooks it up
• unknown date: Random cable tech doesn’t lock the cable box when done working on it
• unknown date: Random cable tech doesn’t lock the room when leaving
• 2 days ago someone goes into room and unhooks my cable either maliciously or mistakenly
• Tech arrives at my house but calls wrong number, twice, despite the fact that the number was listed in the work order (I made the customer service agent read it back to me)
• Supervisor promises morning service Friday morning but doesn’t update our appointment in the system
• Twice I was disconnected while on hold with support, I did not get called back.
• Customer Service agent won’t wait on hold with me for a supervisor, offers to put me in the “supervisor call-back” queue and promises I won’t lose my place in line, yet an hour later the haven’t called me back and the supervisor I speak with tells me she hasn’t been that busy.

Now, I would drop Comcast immediately but there’s just one little flaw in my desire… THEY ARE A MONOPOLY.  I could drop them for cable and go with one of the dish providers but what would I do for broadband?  I could go with Qwest DSL I suppose… choosing between Qwest and Comcast is like choosing between Malaria and Cholera… gee which one should I pick?

Comcast, if you ever wondered why people hate you, it’s because every single person I’ve told this story to has told me “yup, that’s happened to me before too”.  This isn’t an isolated experience, it’s a common one.

I recommend you take some of your massive advertising budget and spend it on hiring and training good customer service people.   Having @ComcastCares on Twitter is not gonna get it done.  You need to take a lesson from a company that doesn’t suck at Customer Service and make some real changes over there.

I HATE YOU.

- Brian Herman

Unhappy Comcast Customer of just 7 weeks  (I wonder how the next 7 weeks will go)

PS:  this entire blog post was written while on hold with Comcast on Friday morning – except for the final bits which of course happened after the problem was resolved.  The upside is that I didn’t waste any additional time preparing my rant, they gave me plenty of free time to do it.  Further note, all images used were found on line, I had no trouble finding unhappy customers to link up with, no photoshop work required!

Thoughts from the Fuselage – Part 2 – May & June 2009

Thoughts from the Fuselage: Part 2– May-June 2009

Ideas, thoughts, musings, and drivel captured while commuting by air.

May 15th

♫ Ozomatli’s “Love and Hope” is a fantastic tune!

♫ Enjoying R.E.M’s “iTunes Originals” album – thanks Barb!

May 18th

An SLA doesn’t necessarily assist in obtaining high quality results, rather it provides the basis for conflict negotiation when things don’t go well—something like a pre-nuptial agreement.

Thinking more about that… I don’t want an SLA that tells me what you’ll do when things go wrong… what I want is for things to actually NOT GO WRONG!

May 22nd

Why do airplanes have a different style seatbelt buckle than automobiles do?  One of them must be “better” so why doesn’t the other industry adopt the design?  I’m sure someone will say “blah blah blah each is best suited for it’s purpose.”  Hogwash.  Pick one and roll with it!

I love me my Jones’ Soda on @AlaskaAir!  Why would you drink coke/sprite/pepsi/slice/crap when you can get this stuff?!

♫ “She Says” by Howie Day – Love this song!

Overly ludicrous safety precautions continue to get worse by the month:  After pre-fight BS announcement ordering us all to turn off everything we own that has a switch on it, the flight attendant made the guy next to me turn off his Kindle!  Girl, it’s a freaking BOOK not a remote control for a trident missile on the USS Seawolf.  Geezus. I’m half surprised she didn’t make us remove the batteries from our watches.  #WindowDressingSecurityBullShit

♫ It’s a shame that The New Radicals only did one album, their stuff was really good.  I recommend you check it out… some is very Rolling Stones like (”You Get What You Give” & “Someday We’ll Know”); other stuff is edgy and cool “I Hope I Didn’t Just Give Away the Ending”, “Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too”).   Go spend the $10 for it, hell that’s cheaper than a burger at Red Robin.

Woman sitting next to me ordered a vodka and cranberry.  She drank the juice, then opened up a packet of Emergen-C Acai Berry flavor (which smells HORRID) and then dumped the vodka in and drank it!  HOLY !#$%!

Reading travel safety tips and spotted this gem:

Abductions by car: If someone orders you or tries to force you into a car, you must do whatever you can to stay out of that vehicle. “That means they are going to take you to the secondary crime scene, and nothing good ever happens at the secondary crime scene,” [safety expert Robert] Siciliano says. “That’s where they identify the body.”

June 15th

DIA pissed me off in a big way today.  They’ve changed their long-term parking shuttle bus routes and they are no longer predictable.  All of the business travelers on the bus were PISSED today when it took 20 minutes to get from our cars to the airport (usually takes 5).  Then I got to the security line… seriously, the DIA crew must purposely try to make things inefficient.  Guys, go take a look at how security is done in Las Vegas for some clues on how to handle crowds.  But once I got to the gate, @AlaskaAir handled things beautifully, as they always do.  Great service picked up my mood.

♫ Norah Jones singing “Be My Somebody” makes me happy, I think I’ll play it twice.

I’ve put on a few pounds since moving to Seattle… it’s party because I don’t eat many home cooked meals anymore, partly because ice cream is my comfort food at night, and partly because I eat junk when traveling.  I thought I’d try getting back to more healthy eating starting today.  As a result I bypassed the yummy Jones Sodas and the pretzels on the flight, opting instead from some bottled water.  I’m starved and thinking ahead to lunch today… salad?  Sigh.

June 19th

A nervous flyer asked me if I’d give up my seat so she could sit with her husband (who had the seat next to me).  I happily did it… WTF was I thinking!!!!  I was in a bulkhead row, which is great for laptop use and easy egress from the plane when we land.  Now I’m back about half way and am behind a dude who keeps moving his seat forward and back, trying to purposely snap my laptop screen off.  I’d take this as a sign that I shouldn’t work tonight, but that’s simply not an option today.  OH HOW I HATE THEE, SENSE OF CHIVALRY!  Next time I’m keeping my row 6 seat.

♫ “Body and Soul” by Anita Baker… damn that’s smooth!

In the airport today I saw a hardcover edition of a new Jason Bourne book!  I had no idea one was coming out.  I loved the 3 movies (though never read the books). Now I’m hoping they make this into a movie too… and soon, before Matt Damon turns into Harrison Ford.

Ahhh, the drink cart and the little packets of kibble have arrived.

Hey, um, dude?  Quit with the bouncing in your seat already!  It’s like I’m sitting behind a 200 pound 5-year old.  I swear you’re gonna snap the screen off my laptop and then I’m going to strangle you with my headphone cords!

What the hell is a cheddar corn stick?  And why are there Barbecue Soy Nuts in my pretzels?

Want to scare your PM in 2 sentences?  Have the Director of your dev team say this: “The risk is that the scope of our project may not be what the customers will find useful. Managing expectations will be important.”   – Oh, I feel a storm comin’

♫ Jimmy Buffett’s cover of James Taylor’s “Mexico” is fantastic and always makes me want to go somewhere tropical (not necessarily Mexico!  Of course I’ve never really been, so I don’t really know).  That guitar intro is so lazy and carefree… a nice addition, wish JT had it in his too! 

Maybe I should learn to play guitar? Just what I need, another hobby!  (Been thinking about keyboard lessons too, there’s a place on my bus route.  Of course I could just practice my trumpet instead… but it’s hard to sing along with!)

Thinking about my very favorite person in the whole wide world!  Who’s yours?

It would be possible for it to be hotter in this plane, but only if it were on fire.

Wow, reading thru today’s thoughts it sounds like I’m a Grumpy Bastard (TM), but actually I’m in a great (albeit feisty) mood!  Sandy hates it when I’m wound up like this, she won’t be so glad to see me!  Sass annoys her. 

♫ Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)” has such a great funk ending!

Look! A monkey==> @(^_^)@

Ut-oh, I just got “the look” from the flight attendant for having my laptop open past the announcement.  Ohhhh, the tap on the shoulder too… sigh.  I’m sure the plane will crash any second now… I’ve got to stop buying my laptops from “Evil Overloards’ House of Deadly Plane-crashing Laptops” so I don’t have this problem.  Must go now!

June 22nd

Flying Southwest today because for some crazy reason Alaska Air’s flights were about 3x their normal price for this trip – I’m back with them next week though.

Just recalled how odd it is that @AlaskaAir announces upon landing that “we’ll be existing through the forward left door today” – you know… like 99% of all flights ever.

The Seattle Freeze

There’s a supposed phenomenon known as the Seattle Freeze. It is said people in this town are openly friendly, almost in an extreme, but they don’t easily dive deep into new relationships. So people seem nice but they don’t really want to be friends with you. Seattleites (I love that word) are somewhat polarized about if it’s a real thing or not.

I’ve read blogs and forums discussing this and many people say it’s absolutely true and “happened to them”. So far I can not comment on the validity of this; I’ve not been in town long enough to form any friendships. But I can tell you that the people of Seattle are amazingly welcoming! This is nothing like what I’m used to in Denver

My wife points out that Denver’s culture stems from it’s old-west roots and the cowboy ethos of ‘minding your business’ still pervades our sensibilities. That’s not to say Denverites (not as cool a word) are cold, but there’s a definite edge. Random conversations with strangers take place when required and scarcely go beyond the basics of “nice day” or “your dog is so cute!”; restaurant workers are polite enough but don’t really engage beyond the dance of their profession and store workers will largely ignore you unless you approach them.

Not so in Seattle. From my first meal there I was taken aback by how engaged my server

was in talking to me, she was really pushing a conversation not just an ordering process. The folks at the coffee shop are overwhelmingly bubbly and have a way of lifting up your day (imagine your best Starbucks barista and then double it). I have a little pub down the street from my apartment and I’ve been 3 times, when I walk in the door they call “Hey Denver!” from the conversation that I had with a waiter on my first visit and they come and TALK to me. I’ve had strangers seated at the bar strike up detailed conversations about not just the game on TV but about my job, my move, and their lives in Seattle.

None of these conversations have been superficial and when I revert to my learned behavior of neatly wrapping up the topic and going back to “minding my business” these people don’t give up on it, they ask another question or come back to something I’d said earlier and continue the conversation.

My apartment is on the ground floor and rather than ignoring me sitting in there, people wave at me when walking by! People chat me up at the bus stop. I don’t know if there is a Seattle Freeze or not, if there is it will take me months to discover, but in the mean time these people make it hard not to feel engaged in the city and its culture.

I’ll keep you posted!

To blog or micro-blog, that is the question

Way before Twitter caught the attention of Oprah, Shaquille O’neil, and Obama, people were trying to decide what it was and if we needed it.  I’ve heard it called Lifecasting, Braincasting, and half a dozen other silly things.  My favorite handle is “micro-blogging”.  But what does that mean?

 

Micro-blogging (and yes, for me that’s Twitter but there are other platforms) at times is a great way to meet new people and build relationships.  Other times it’s works like an RSS feed, bringing me news and interesting information.  But I’ve found micro-blogging doesn’t stimulate new learning the way that traditional blogs can.  To me it’s the difference between reading the headlines of a newspaper and reading the editorials.  I enjoy the deeper thought process and interactions that happen in blogging.

 

Many people think of blogging in terms of their own writing, putting their thoughts out for others to see.  But blogging isn’t about writing – it’s about conversations.  In my opinion, you aren’t an effective blogger if you’re just writing an online diary and hoping people read it.  You need to engage in conversations and see what others have to say.  Hopefully some of that is in comments on your own blog but much of it needs to be in you following other blogs and responding to then.  Sometimes my best ideas start out as comments I write on someone else’s blog, which I later expand on and build into my own more fully developed blog posts, or they just become things that are part of my thoughts/beliefs/learning but never get written down at all.

 

I think of it this way, blogging is an intimate dinner party filled with deep discussions and debates; Twitter is a happening cocktail party where you’re having short conversations and meeting interesting people but not getting into much detail.  Some of the people at that cocktail party may later become business associates and perhaps even friends, but most will just share interesting thoughts or funny stories and that is an enriching experience too!   

 

Don’t miss either party, they are both worth your time.

 

It’s not easy, being green…

It’s so hard to know what is the right “green” behavior.

Is it better to throw away a still working incandescent bulb and replace it with a CF bulb?  Or should I wait for the old bulb to die before putting it in the landfill?  I hate waste… which is worse, wasting the bulb or the electricity?

Truly, a green car

 

Which is better for the environment, using an electric garage door opener, so that the door is open when I get there and I can pull right in, or opening the door by hand and having the car idle while I do it?

 

I know that you don’t get something for nothing (that’s physics man) – so using your car stereo or headlights puts a drain on your engine (uses gas).  Or does it?  It is possible that the alternator produces more electricity than the battery can store, so it’s just going to waste, maybe the headlights are “free” to use?  What about an elevator… I usually take the stairs when no one is around and ride the elevator if someone else is there waiting… I mean it’s going up anyway, right? I’d assume that it requires more electricity to raise an elevator with 2 people in it than it does with just 1 person, but what if the motor doesn’t adjust it’s power output based on need, it could be that it supplies the same power regardless of the weight in the elevator. 

 

I have heard that the reason trains and big trucks are left idling for long periods of time is that it takes more gas to start them than it does to idle them for hours.  I’m not sure if I believe that… but I assume there is some waste in starting an engine… so what’s the break even point?  I have taken to turning my car off when waiting for trains, but maybe I should at long stoplights too?  I can’t believe it takes more gas to start my car than it does to idle for 2 minutes at a major intersection.

 

This past weekend I drove 42 miles round trip to recycle styrofoam blocks.  On the upside, I completely stuffed every square inch of my vehicle, taking 5 completely full 55 gallon trashbags of the stuff to be recycled.  But I burned 2.5 gallons of gas doing it… did I do the right thing?  My wife says “styrofoam in the landfill is forever, your car emissions will get cleaned out of the atmosphere over time” but I’m also thinking that the petroleum used is gone-forever, never to be replaced… hmmm… 

What is a boy to do?

Thoughts from the Fuselage – May 2009

Thoughts from the Fuselage – May 2009

Ideas, thoughts, musings, and drivel captured while commuting by air.

Pat Metheny’s “First Circle” is one of my all time favorite pieces of music.  Try the live version on “The Road to You”, it surpasses the studio version.

Captain announces Seattle weather as partly cloudy and 57, eliciting gasps of pleasure and “oh wow” from the passengers.

The sight of Mt. Rainier never ceases to amaze me.  It’s 14k size dwarfts the 14-ers in Colorado because it starts @ sea level whereas the Colorado mountains start from a base of 6k feet.  But more than that, Rainier’s solitude magnifies it’s grander and it’s conic shape belies the power of it’s creation and the danger inherent in its very existence.

Oh Captain (my captain), we haven’t hit so much as a ripple in the air in over 60 minutes, are you ever going to turn off the fasten seatbelt light?  Did you forget about that those little cokes they served us a while back?  That’s it, I’m getting up, and just to spite you, I’m gonna walk through first class and use their fancy front-of-the-plane toilet!

At least a quarter of the people on the Monday-morning run (aka, the commuter special) have noise canceling headphones.  They all look so relaxed.  I think it’s time to cash in my 2 year old loose change jar and get some for myself.

Does anyone else actually read the in-flight magazine?  I do it every flight, every time. But now that I’m traveling regularly I’m screwed because I’ve already seen this one.  I don’t want to read it again… but habits die hard, $5 says I thumb through it at some point prior to landing when they make us turn off our iPods – the longest 20 minutes of any trip.

Captain arrived 45 minutes late for our flight because of Seattle traffic.  When he gets on the PA he explains the situation and apologizes for the inconvenience.  He says “We have a favorable 75 knot tailwind which will shorten our flight time down to just 2 hours, so we’ll keep the petal to the metal and get you there as quick as we can!”  That made me smile.

Today I cashed in my piggy bank (I’d been saving coins for several years) and bought a pair of Bose QC2 noise canceling headphones.  So far I’m liking them, though they don’t let my ears pop easily as we climb and descend.  The music sounds great and they really do take the edge off the engine noise. I can’t wait to see how they perform on my daily bus ride to work which is so noisy my earbuds can’t keep up.

OH MY GOD!!!!!  A 737 just passed us, heading the opposite direction, just a bit off our starboard and a little lower.  I have *NEVER* seen a jet that close in the air; it was close enough that there was no mistaking it as a 737.  Moments later we flew right over his contrail.  WOAH!  I’m sure it wasn’t as close as it seemed, but it was way closer than I’d have liked!

Neighborhood Pride

Something that has really struck me is the tremendous sense of pride that Seattleites take in their neighborhoods.  It’s a real source of identity for them in ways that Denver simply doesn’t have. 

 

Frankly the Denver-metro area doesn’t really have the concept of neighborhoods.  Yes there’s 5-points and Capital Hill and a few others near downtown, but mostly people talk about their towns, not their neighborhoods.  Englewood, Westminster, Northglen, you can’t even tell them apart.  I’ve never felt a sense of identity from those towns.

 

In Seattle it’s broken down at the neighborhood level – Ballard, Magnolia, Queen Anne, West Seattle, Capital Hill, First Hill, Phinney Ridge, Green Lake, Madrona, Columbia City, Beacon Hill – These are all neighborhoods that I’ve learned about in my first few weeks in town (to say nothing of the dozens of surrounding communities I can name).  And everytime people talk to me about where they live they litterly begin lobbying me to live where they live.   And in group settings the conversations take on a competitive edge!  Here’s a typical exchange that I’ve had over and over again in the last 2 weeks: 

 

• (unknown)Ballard-Fan: Where are you looking to live?
• Me: We’re really liking the feel of West Seattle.
• Ballard-Fan:  WHAT?!  Why would you live there?!  You should come look at Ballard!
• Me: Yeah, I’ve driven through there it’s really nice looking.
• Ballard-Fan:  Serioulsy, we’ve got the locks, these great Scandanvian restaurants, fantastic old houses, and it’s sooo funky!
• BeaconHill-Fan joins the conversation: Yeah, but really you should check out Beacon Hill, the commute is SO much easier and the access to the highway rocks!  Plus we’ve got the light rail connection coming this year.
• GreenLake-Fan gets up and walks over:  I’m in Green Lake, you can not beat the lake area, with beaches and buskers and families all around.  The festivals are fantastic. People run and bike along the lake, we’ve got the zoo, we’re near the university…

 

It’s wild!  

 

Leaving Old-town Longmont is hard but no matter which neighborhood we choose I know I’m going to find a strong sense of community and that’s important to me.  And by the way, the West Seattle crowd might be the most devoted of them all!

My Sun-set

 

A few people (well more than a few) have been asking me what prompted me to leave Sun and Colorado for a new job in a new city.

 

I’ve always been a Sun guy, in fact I took a pay cut to join the company 8 years ago.  I love their products, I love their innovation, I love their culture, and I especially love their commitment to doing the right thing.  I had a great career at Sun and it was hard to leave that all behind but there’s something special in this job at Amazon that I couldn’t resist.

 

At a high level, I’m a program manager (which is an uppity way of saying I’m a project manager with a big scope).  And while I have great passion for Project Management that alone wasn’t enough to lure me, after-all I was one of the leaders of project management in Sun IT.  It’s what I get to program manage that’s so awesome.

 

About 2 years ago I began hearing a buzz about “Web 2.0″ and “social media” – this was new to me and I began poking around the space to see what it was about.  What I learned was that the social/community aspects of these so called “social media” tools were really about taking the static “go-read-a-web-page” experience into an interactive place where you gain value not just from the content the provider puts out but from what the community builds around it. 

 

I’ve played with blogging and micro-blogging, wikis and twikis, document repositories and collaboration tools of all kinds all with an eye toward helping PMs manage their projects and teams.   As I shared my thoughts with the PMs in Sun IT I found the usual bell curve of reactions from the team:  from enthusiastic to interested to skeptical to “why the heck would anyone do that?!!” 

 

Interestingly those reactions were more varied tool to tool than they were person to person.  It wasn’t that Bobby loved the tools and Sally hated them, it was that some of the folks who couldn’t see the point of micro-blogging got totally into wikis and some of the people who loved micro-blogging didn’t see the value in a more traditional blog.  The lesson to me is that social-media isn’t a single tool, single type of communication, or even a single idea.  The whole point, like the content itself, is that social-media is whatever you WANT it to be.

 

So… what’s the job then?   I’m responsible for knowledge management and social media programs for Amazon’s technology workers!  What was a hobby area for me at Sun, a place where I played with new ideas and how they fit in with project management, is now my day job!  I will be running projects to deliver those tools, and more importantly, the communities around them for Amazon’s employees.

 

I’ll explain more about what “knowledge management and social media” mean in the coming weeks but for now I need to get back into the routine of blogging.  I wouldn’t be much of a leader if I said “hey Amazon, you should be blogging” if I wasn’t doing it myself! My posts might be spotty for a while as I get established in a new job and a new city, and I’ll be busy getting my family ready to move here too, but I’ll be writing more as time goes on, thanks for sticking with me!

Back to the Gym!

I’ve been pretty quiet on the blogging front lately. After getting off to a promising start last year I moved into a new house and began spending a majority of my time stripping wall paper and painting walls (that was of course after packing and unpacking a house full of goods) instead of blogging. Then I got started again but got kinda busy with work for a while and stopped. That stretched into the Christmas holidays which is a busy family time and for the first time in years I stayed off the computer completely. Then I got started up again in the new year only to go radio-silent while I explored some new career opportunities at Sun, Google, and Amazon.com.

In the days since my decision I’ve been swamped with closing down work, saying goodbyes, and trying to plan a move of myself and eventually my family to Seattle. There simply wasn’t time for writing. But these things are just excuses…

Blogging is like working out – if you get a few sessions in a row under your belt you get into the routine and you do well. But as soon as you miss a couple of days it’s pretty easy to miss weeks and then months and suddenly you’re not a blogger, you’re just someone with a stale web page. So it’s time to push myself “back to the gym” , to get into the routine, to share and participate in the conversations that are happening and maybe even build some (mental) muscle.  See you there!