Trip to Alpharetta - Part 2

Well, this morning the alarm went off at 6:30 just like I programmed it. I went for the buzzer, since I figured it would be annoying enough to actually wake me up, and while I was right, it wasn't entirely effective. I had to be there at 8:00 and my ride was coming at 7:30...


At 7:43, I get a call from the woman who gave me a ride in from the airport to catch a lift with another lady who was going downstairs since she was runnng a little behind. I wasn't even out of bed yet, but very, very grateful she called.

So I jumped out of bed and threw on my predetermined outfit for the day and charged out the door to head downstairs. I wasn't sure what to expect since it was 7:50, and way past when the other guy was supposed to have come and gone. As I walked out, I saw him in the parking lot just waiting there for me. It is a good thing I didn't catch a ride with anyone on the way. He was totally cool about the whole thing, and we headed in for the day's non stop meeting.

Nothing of note from there on during the day. It wasn't boring, and I even learned a thing or two, especially concerning a site that the sum total of my learning of it to date was "such-and-such is on this site." I figured it was little more than a repository for documents since that's what every department I knew of used it for. I was wrong.

You see, I was pushing an idea for a "knowledge base", which would be a sort of search engine to find absolutely anything about anything in the company from general HR information to product operation information. Kind of a pipe dream, I knew, but I thought if even a tiny piece of it came about, I'd be happier.

My idea was a place where someone would place information that would be readily searchable about everything. It would be updateable by whatever department would be responsible for it, and people could find whatever they needed by a simple search. I wanted this, because I needed it. I wanted to know the information about a lot of things I just couldn't find, and through yesterday's discussion, I learned a lot of other people needed this too.

Well, turns out this site that I've had access to for the last year has this functionality already. Not only that, it contained what amounted to a company intranet site to have company specific info as well as a search engine that crawl within the documents for answers. Once I finally figured out what this thing was, I was in love. I said we need training, and to make it even better, it as built in training about all of its functions, and individual departments can build and maintain their own site in a more graphical "web-ish" format, as opposed to just a document respository. So it's way cool.

There were several revelations like that when we were coming up with things we thought we short on. People knew of places where the information could be found already, so all we needed to propose was training or information about what's already there, which is bound to make the bigwigs happier, since they won't need to spend much of any money to put the idea out there.

This evening, I took a walk to WalMart to see about getting some local souvenirs for the Queen and the Princesses. I figured I'd track down some T-shirts that said Georgia on them, but when I got there, I was immediately concerned. It took forever to find the shirts and every one of them were sport shirts. We got to choose from Atlanta Braves and Georgia Bulldogs. Great.

Well, knowing that they would take whatever I got them as a gift and love it, I went with the Georgia Bulldogs since they id say Georgia. I found some shirts for the Queen and the older two that were red with the name written in white with pretty fonts, but Sassy Pants was the one that really made out; she got a pink jersey that just said Georgia on it. I figure she'll be excited over that.

Just one day left (well, actually, I leave in the afternoon), and I go back home to see them. Not much time left.

Trip to Alpharetta - Part 1

so today, I left for Atlanta, leaving the Queen and the princesses to fend for themselves for three days, and it was a parting that left us all on the verge of tears. You see, as I've said, we've rarely parted, so this is something fairly new for us all. The plan was to make it as easy as possible on the princesses, so we decided it was best to have them drop me off and then pick me up at the same place on Wednesday. That gives them a sense of open and shut when it comes to my going.


I have quite a few movies on my iPod, so I had plenty to watch while I waited in the airplane terminal after saying good bye to them at length. I managed to watch one movie during the length of my waiting in the terminal, in flight, and then waiting at the other end for my ride, which is a while other story altogether.

I rode with one of the other people on the committee, and in my humble opinion, she drove a little on the crazy side, but it wasn't all her fault. You see, we got one of those GPS direction devices that lets you know where you are and gives you directions to where you're going. The deal with these is that they aren't always entirely accurate.

It started when we were just leaving the temrinal and got the verbal instructions to veer to the left at the fork. Or at least I could swear that's what it said. I do admit that at the time, I was just getting used to its instructions. Well, actually, it has the voice of a woman and the woman who was driving said people usually give these trackers names of ex's because they are demanding and even temperamental. It was a Magellan brand, so I just call it Maggie.

Turns out at that fork in the road, we should have gone right instead of left, so Maggie reconfigured the route to take into account going the wrong way. We got to figuring out the directions pretty well after that, so we we thought we getting good when Maggie declared that in 2 miles, we should stay to the right on I-75. No problem.

A little later, Maggie said keep to the right on I-75 in half a mile. Still, no problem. So we approach the fork where one way goes on I-75, and the other goes on US-85. Suddenly, Maggie says to stay left onto US-85. Well, that was too late, and we went onto I-75, leaving Maggie to reconfigure the route again.

Once we got turned back around, the rest of the trip went without much of an incident until we got into Alpharetta. There, I noticed that the route looked like it was turning around on one road. After a quick check, I noticed the route ran down a road and right back after hitting the end. I told her to go straight, and all was well.

We hit our first address, and found out she'd given me the wrong address. D'oh... I told her about the address on the itenerary, and she remembered that address as being the correct one. So we went to our second destination, and got there only an hour late. Yay for us.

The meeting parts were ok. It was interesting to see some of these people face to face, but I'm not sure it was worth the time away and all.

The rest of the day was uneventful. However, lunch and dinner were both covered, so that was a big bonus. I did discover that the USB cable I brought to charge my cell phone didn't work for recharging my cell phone, so I figure I'd ask the guy who was giving me a ride here tomorrow morning. I thought I'd just call him at 7:15 or so before he left his hotel, since the plan was that he'd pick me up at 7:30. All the same, I will turn off my cell phone to preserve what battery I have left since I'm in the yellow after so much use today.