Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is the big day, we are doing a joint event between the Upstate NY SpiceCorps event which Danielle, Jeremy and Kasey are running and hosting at Danielle’s house and SpiceCorps DFW which is getting together at our house here in Carrollton.  AVer is sponsoring the event today and as they do video conferencing so it is perfect because both groups are able to watch each other on camera, and we have the projector and screen that we got last week for our local SpiceCorps event so we get to reuse that already.

I was home today to help out with getting ready for the event.  We aren’t expecting a big crowd, just like a dozen people for this “small” event.  We don’t have food being catered or anything.

Today’s event was on the very early side as the NY groups starts earlier than us normally plus there is an hour of time difference so we needed to be up and running by four thirty in the afternoon.  For the first while it was just Dominica, Chris and I on video as the NY event ramped up with Liesl and Luciana running around.

By the end of the evening we ended up with eleven people in DFW and about the same in NY.  The event went pretty well and the AVer did a good job.  I gave a presentation on “One Big RAID 10 – The New Standard for Server Storage.”  The talk went over pretty well.

It was a nice evening.  Relaxing, interesting presentations and not too much stress from having too many people.  We didn’t go crazy late tonight either, just until around eleven.

Another day of just “waiting” to see if news comes in.  Nothing today.  Not a peep.  After the call last night we were pretty confident that we would hear more today but we didn’t.  Not a thing.

I was in the office as usual.  Normal day, with the added stress of maybe having to leave for Houston at any moment.

I am holding off on writing my SGL updates because we can’t discuss the project while it still might happen.

Just a “normal” day at work today.  No real news.  Everyone is calling around and emailing all day long waiting to get more information about the job in the middle east.  We were told that likely it would be a few days, but we really have no idea.  We are waiting on pins and needles; everyone is quite nervous about it.

This evening, while we had some people visiting the house, I got the call to head to Houston to get ready to go to the middle east… but before I had the chance to respond to that call another one came in contradicting that one.  There had been miscommunications and we really are not going tonight after all.  Argh.  This is getting frustrating quickly.

This makes us hopeful that the job really is going to happen since they made the mistake of almost sending us.

It is much cooler today in Texas.  I got up around seven and got into the office.  It was only seventy four outside as I was driving in.  Dominica left the Spark totally empty last night, to the point where it was blinking and freaking out, so I had to very carefully drive straight to the cash station because I ran out of gas.

Today was spent finding out more details about Saudi Arabia.  We found out today where we should be going and that we might be going at any moment.  Visas are being prepared for us and, in theory, we could be heading to the Middle East as early as tonight and likely sometime this week.  It’s a security job on the east coast near Bahrain.  Pretty cool and very excited (and nerve wracking.)

Still no word today about the “trip” to Saudi Arabia.  I talked to some of the team today and, obviously, everyone is quite anxious.  I hate this about consulting, the people who are sending you places and causing massive upheaval in your life seem to almost always forget that the weekend is the most stressful time for you because you are stuck for a long period of time without necessary information and then they also, universally, forget that the “business minute” one minute before 8:00 Monday morning is 4:59 on Friday afternoon.  I can’t tell you how many times I have been requested to do a project first thing on Monday and the people with the information leave on Friday thinking that it is “three days away” and don’t realize that they have to have coordinated with me by the time that they leave the office or there is no way to do so before it is too late.

So we are sitting and waiting.  More work at the house and hanging out with the family today.  Fingers crossed.