Wednesday, March 18, 2015

San Diego


Two weeks ago I (Arthur) went on a business trip to San Diego.  My company was in need of a new screen printer as Blanche, the old frail old lady of a screen printer I have spent a decent portion of my career keeping alive, finally expired after a long and fulfilling life (maybe someday I'll write a post about the names of all my machines).  San Diego was hosting a large electronic manufacturing equipment expo, so my boss and I took off to scout the screen printers.

Among the many experiences this event provided, travel was by far the most trying.  We arrived to work on Monday expecting to leave Kansas City via airplane Monday afternoon headed to Dallas; instead, the airline had already rescheduled our flight for the next day due to the weather in Dallas.  Waiting until Tuesday was unconscionable; we had meetings set up for the morning with multiple potential suppliers.  Instead we opted to fly to Chicago to Denver to San Diego, putting us in San Diego (theoretically) at 11 p.m. Monday.  Ironically, flight delays in Denver kept the pilot who was to fly us to Chicago from arriving in time for us to make our flight to Denver; instead, we spent the night in Chicago and got up at 3:30 in the morning to catch a flight down to Dallas (where, mind you, conditions had cancelled our initial flight).  Flying from Chicago was no problem, but when we arrived in Dallas, we where delayed, not by weather, but by a sick stewardess who had to be replaced.  We arrived in San Diego at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday; humorously and/or infuriatingly, had we kept our original flight, we would have arrived 4.5 hours earlier.

After scrambling to take in as much as we could with the 3 hours the expo was open that day, we did get in some recreation.  We ate at a wonderful Italian restaurant and went to see the Midway aircraft carrier.  One thing I was especially looking forward to was seeing large naval ships in the harbor.  In all the years I have read about the size of these monsters, I have failed to wrap my mind around the scale of these things.  We walked by the Midway, three iron football fields floating in the bay, four stories rising above the surface, three hiding below.  Heck, forget the football field, its bigger than the stadium where my high school career took place.  And the United States has 10 active carriers today that are just over twice as big!!!

We didn't stay especially long; it had been a long day and there was a lot to do the next day.  We spent the next day checking out screen printers as well as checking out some of the latest and greatest technology.  I picked up some new techniques for testing the value of components in-circuit, which in itself was worth the value of my plane ticket, and drooled over ECD reflow profiling boards (engineers are weird).

We were invited to a wine/beer-tasting party thrown by an equipment manufacturer we have purchased several pieces of equipment from over the years that evening. It was a fascinating event with live musical entertainment and approximately ten staffers doing everything from recommending selections from the extensive wine and craft beer cache to walking around with hors d'oeuvres.  The expense of the party halfway made me shake my head; I figured that the company would have to sell 6 pick and place machines as a result of this get together to make the entire enterprise a profitable venture.  Regardless, I had a wonderful time speaking with others in the industry.
 Next morning, we were up a 3:30 a.m to be ready for our 6:00 flight.  Mercifully the return trip was not near as eventful as the first leg.  We touched down at KCI right around 2 and I was back in my lovely Alex's arms four hours later.  Even in the travails of travel, Omnia Vincit Amour.

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