Honolulu

Ahh, I've just returned from Honolulu. I flew out there Friday for a job over the weekend, fully expecting to be finished by monday or tuesday, and spend some time on the beach on Wednesday and Thursday. I could not have been more wrong.

First, I landed and met with CJ at the airport, since he got there about a half hour before me. We went to lunch, and then met with Charlotte at the job, discussing what we planned to do, the timeframe, and the requirements. Most especially, we went to grab keys.

We spent about three hours on Friday at the job in a meeting. Nothing actually started until Saturday. On Saturday we started replacing a lot of the panels, our engineer started the software working, and we got about 85% complete. Or so I thought. It was a short 9 hour day, and very productive. We all went out into Waikiki and drank.

Sunday, we arrived, and found that some major problems were happening, and that we were going to have a lot of work on our hands. We worked 16 hours on Sunday. Not a lot of time to drink.

Monday, by 8PM we were exhausted. We found a TGI Fridays, the bartender must have thought John was friendly, since she was a little flirty... it was alright, but nothing like a tall and a full stomach to make you not want to return to work. Only 12 hours on Monday.

On Tuesday, we knew there would be issues, but did not expect how severe it turned out to be. It seems a lot of the things we were expecting to just work did not happen, and we spent a considerable amount of time on Tuesday getting the system to catch up to where it ought to have been. THis, coupled with the nuisance that Tuesday was BAU for the site, made for a long day. 18 hours later, we returned to the hotel, tired and knowing that Wednesday would be no easier.

Wednesday, we started off at 7AM, just a few short hours after our arrival. I left at 7PM to catch my red-eye home (I worked on Thursday morning.) I got a call on the road from the airport from CJ, they were on the way back to the hotel, it was 415AM in Hawaii when he called me.

I was in Hawaii for 6 days, and never saw the beach, never touched sand, never swam, never got out really. I had a lot of things I wanted to do, and got stuck doing a catastrophic job to get a site up to where they were. I don't think I felt very good about the project.