a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
My bags are packed, almost. I’m leaving for Amsterdam in the late afternoon, to get me to Cape Town, South Africa. It’s winter down there, of course – with the climate somewhat similar to here in Seattle in winter time. (Think cool weather, clouds and drizzly rain). I think Cape Town does have more sunny days than Seattle even in winter, so I do expect to see some sunny weather.
I am getting an impromptu refresher/ education of the bridges around San Francisco Bay, because I have to. There is the 
famous Golden Gate bridge, of course, and the Bay Bridge – but until now I have not really paid attention to the other bridges that cross San Francisco Bay. I had to drive back our shared rental car to the airport. Those in the know recommended I take the San Mateo bridge route, and that’s what I did. Even though it’s a little farther, there would be less traffic to deal with.
The original bridge, known as the San Francisco Bay Toll-Bridge, opened in 1929 and was then the longest bridge in the world. It reopened in 1967 with a modernized span. So with Google Maps’s voice over directions I used many highways and byways and made it to the airport in good time. But after I had gone through the security check point, I discovered that I left my jacket in the rest room outside the secure area. So off I went, and I did find it – and again through the whole security rigmarole. Oy vey.
I checked in with the field crew again this morning for 3 hrs or so, and around lunch time started to drive back to Walnut Creek. (Walnut Creek is the name of the municipality on the east side of the Bay where our hotel and project office is).
It was a long drive up! .. partly because I couldn’t resist making a brief detour to Monterey, which made me run into rush hour traffic in the San Jose area. Man! California has a lot of traffic, I thought. (Of course, California is not alone in this in the world).
It turned out to be quite a day of travel for me. After arriving at San Francisco airport, my colleague and I rented a car and drove out to Walnut Creek – on the east side of the Bay. So that allowed me to check in and meet the project’s team members. HOWEVER, there are annual maintenance activities scheduled for a facility in the Paso Robles area, and moi is going to represent the team there tomorrow to observe the work methods and gather information for suggestions as to which improvements could be made to the systems that support the scheduling and execution of the work. So we figured I’d better hit the road sooner rather than later to escape the traffic around San Francisco, and off I went around 2.30 pm. The drive went well, and I pulled into Paso Robles off of US-101 right at about 6.00 pm tonight.
I got confirmation today that I will start to work on my next project assignment on Monday. It is at a utility company located in the Bay area.
San Francisco airport (SFO) is where I will fly to, but the location of our project office is in Walnut Creek to the north-east of the city of San Francisco. I could fly into Oakland airport as well, but the flights there are not as plentiful as the ones to SFO.
My United Airlines flight back to Seattle was booked for the usual Thursday night fly-back (bought and paid for three weeks ago), but I wanted to take the first flight out Thursday morning*.
*Flight MH17, Air Algerie crash in Mali last night with 166 on board, Taiwan airplane crash on Wednesday that killed 48 .. maybe all of this made me just want to get the flying over with and get home!
Anyway – these days airlines charge $200 for any ticket change, and I wanted to avoid paying the penalty. My firm’s travel agent recommended to go to the airport early Thu morning, and have the airline agent change the ticket on the spot – then there would no change fee. ‘Plenty of seats left’, there should be no problem.
Alright. That meant I had to get up at 4.30 am, be there at 6.00 am for the 8.04 am flight. I actually did a check of the seats on the flight as I left the hotel : 5 open ones. So I had a shot at it. But forty minutes later when I showed up at the United Airlines counter to claim one, they were all gone. No other flights until the afternoon, and the afternoon flights were full, anyway. Of course. Great. (Not great). Plan B could have been to go to the gate for the 8.04 am flight and hope that seats for no-shows will open up .. but no – ‘I’m not going to do that’, I told the United Airlines agent.
What to do? Spend 12 hours at Denver airport? No. Go get a hotel room to catch up on the sleep I lost this week? Let me check Alaska Airlines, I still have some frequent flier miles in my account, I thought, as I considered my options. Sure enough, there was a 7.00 am flight with open seats. I booked it with miles – hey, why is the internet so slow? It’s 6.05 am already and I have to make it through security and to the gate! I thought.
Security was painfully slow, but done with that, I ran to gate A-52 (52 means it’s a long way there!) .. and made it with just a few minutes to spare. I was on my way home early. Yes!
It was warm here in Denver today : 94 °F (34 °C), the skies clear for most of the day.
I took a few more pictures during lunch time and after work of my favorite Denver buildings.
Ah, the joys of summer : long days of sunlight, nice weather*, hopefully some time away from work to relax. But for frequent travelers (me), there are even more people at the airport, the airplanes seem even fuller, and sometimes you have to wait 15 or 20 mins for a taxi whereas in winter there is no wait at all. (Admittedly winter brings other travel challenges like snow!).
*Or not so nice? It’s warm and very dry, and out in eastern Washington State howling winds fan a set of wildfires called the ‘Carlton Complex’ that have scorched 213,000 acres so far.
I had previously posted a picture of the Denver Gas and Electric building lit up in orange and blue. Here is one of it lit up in lavender, the way I found it on Tuesday night after we had dinner. It’s hard to say if this building or the Colorado State Capitol is my favorite Denver building .. but I’d say this one wins!
Our flight was delayed by at least an hour, the United Airlines agent announced, ‘they are working on the APU, the air .. ‘ Auxiliary Power Unit! chimed some mechanically- minded passengers to help her out. But right after the announcement, she said ‘Don’t go anywhere! The APU has been fixed!’.
Honeywell invented the APU in the early 1950s. It is really a gas turbine engine, typically in the tail of the airplane, providing electricity for starting the main engines, enabling the air conditioning, running lighting and flight equipment, and more.
Here are some answers a pilot provided on a message board I found on-line (the questions can be inferred from the answers!).
1. Yes, an aircraft can be operated without an operating APU – it can be a maintenance-deferred item for a certain period of time.
2. Yes, the airport needs to have the following in the event on an inoperable APU :
a. Ground Power Unit (GPU) or land-side power connection – to power the aircraft while the engines are off
b. Air Start Cart to provide pressurized air to start the engine without the APU
3. Yes, engines can be restarted in flight without an APU
4. Yes, the APU is usually turned off on the ground when the aircraft is connected to ground power and it is also turned off in flight
5. Yes, regional jets are somewhat more prone to APU issues
P.S. Alright, so the USA lost the game against Germany 0-1. I watched the last 10 minutes or so in the building lobby (and reportedly President Obama took time out to watch the game on Air Force One). The US team still goes through to the knock-out rounds though, where it will face Belgium on Tuesday.
It was Bike to Work day here in Denver today. The Denver Post reports that Denver is second only to San Francisco in its Bike to Work day participants (30,000 to SF’s 40,000). We were skeptical of the 30,000 number reported for Denver, though. We did not really see more-than-usual bikers out on the street this morning. Anyway : the idea is that encouraging people to try biking to work one day will result in some of them doing it regularly. Of course, if one lives far away, one can bike to the nearest bus station or train station, and then bike to work from one’s arrival bus stop or train station.
I went to lunch by myself today, a somewhat rare occurrence since all three colleagues I normally go with were tied up with other commitments, or out of the office.
But that way I can walk around a little bit longer and take a picture here and there of anything that moves – or doesn’t move! -and catches my fancy.
The guy in front of me in the security line this morning had his Eddie Bauer polo shirt on inside-out. Hmm. Should I tap him on the shoulder, and tell him? I thought. I decided to mind my own business and not to. He was not on a business trip and not likely to embarrass himself too badly, anyway.
Monday is done. Yay!
It’s summer, school is out, and so the airports in Seattle and Denver are full of families traveling everywhere. Even at 4.30 am this morning, there were lots of cars dropping off passengers, something we do not normally see.
It was warm here in Denver today, with temperatures reaching 88°F/ 31°C.
Traffic was so bad out to Denver airport today that my taxi driver never got to use interstate I-70 the way he normally does. There were several construction activities and lane closures to deal with. We ended up driving all the way along 56th Ave that runs parallel to I-70. My appeal to airport planners : please please please do not build an airport 30 miles out of the city, and not provide mass transit to and from it – a train or a shuttle bus (with a bus lane). A freeway filled with 10,000 cars does not work anymore.
We are wrapping up Cycle 2 of our 
system’s testing, but there is no rest for the wicked. We have a big planning meeting for Cycle 3 tomorrow. If we were building a Boeing (which we are not, luckily), we have now tested the wings, the fuselage and the engines separately in what is called Cycle 2/ String Testing.
In Cycle 3/ Integration Testing, we will put them all together and see if our ‘airplane’ can actually fly. So! Can we walk through all the screens from start to finish for an integrated business process with real data, and without stoppages or data errors? The final cycle, Cycle 4, is called User Acceptance Testing.
Here are pictures from my walk after work in Denver downtown on Tuesday night.
It’s Thursday, and so I get to go home. As I stepped into the taxi outside the Denver office, it started to rain : big fat splattering drops. Soon after, hailstones came down with the rain as well.
Denver has four major taxi companies operating at the airport. A fifth one’s application was turned down by the authorities in 2008; the founders sued, the Colorado Supreme Court finally found in their favor, and now Mile High Cab will start operating as well. Then there are the new digital age taxi business start-ups called Uber and Lyft that operate very differently. Drivers bring their own cars, are ordered by one’s smartphone with all one’s payment information set up already, enabling the passenger to literally hop in and out of the car without ever needing to deal with cash or a credit card to pay the driver.
For now I still use the traditional taxi companies when I emerge out of the airport, mostly because there are always cabs available at the taxi stand right there. So the wait time for me is zero. Yes, on the back-end I have to pay with cash or credit card – not as smooth as it would have been with say, Uber, but that’s OK. If I had used Uber, I would have more trouble to deal with up front : wait for a little bit, and then be on the look-out for the driver/ his car’s number plate, or tell him exactly where I am.
