Ready to Sleep

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Well, it looks like my last post, Random Stop?, attracted the most comments I’ve had on a post since I wrote about Ernest Angley.  Writing about a hot-button issue like illegal immigration and wondering aloud if the police were racial profiling at a trafic stop AND getting a link from Esbee will do that.  I haven’t responded to most of the comments because I’ve been working in Chicago since Sunday night and I’m just now getting the chance to sit in front of my computer for the first time since then.  I’m sitting in O’Hare waiting for my flight back to GSO and honestly I’m too tired to respond effectively.  I’ll do it tomorrow when my brain’s a little less fuzzy.

O’Hare’s fun for people-watching but not much else.  The internet connection I paid $6.95 for is agonizingly slow.  The same people who are fun to watch are often also rude, and many smell a little ripe.  Maybe that’s the food court.  Anyway, it’s a nuthouse.  That makes for a great contrast with the GSO terminal, which is so quiet you could hold a meditation session in one of the 80% of gates that aren’t used at any given time. 

Here’s how quiet GSO is.  My flight out on Sunday night was scheduled to take off at 7:50 p.m.  It was delayed an hour so I was hanging out in the little Sam Adams bar near the gates on the United side of the terminal. Tiger was struggling down the back-9 at the US Open and I was enjoying the show with about 10 of my fellow passengers.  Unfortunately the bar shut down at 8:00 (8:00!) so we all had to leave, but luckily the TV was left on while the cleaning crew was doing their thing so we watched through the security gate.  The cleaning crew finished right after Tiger teed off on the 18th and they shut off the TV so we all returned to the gate and a guy did a play-by-play while listening to the broadcast on his iPod.  Classic.

I think we were the last flight out since the approximately 30 people on our flight were the last people in the terminal and the gate agent was so desperate to get rid of us he helped clean the plane when it arrived from some exotic locale, Minneapolis I believe.  I think he had a party to get to. 

I love flying out of GSO, but I wonder how long it can survive with so few passengers.  Normally I’d mark up the experience to an anomaly, but the airport has been this sedate all four years I’ve been using it regularly.  Sadly, it only seems to be getting worse.

Oh well.  No more travel for a while, which is nice.  I’ve met lots of interesting people over the last week and a half, which makes the travel more than bearable, but I’m looking forward to being home for a while.  Not sure if Celeste and the kids feel the same, but they’re stuck with me so I think we’ll all adjust. 

Random Stop?

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Just drove home from a birthday party near Pittsboro, NC. As we were driving north on NC-87 we encountered a road block being manned by sheriff’s deputies and state troopers about 14 miles south of I-40. They were checking everyone’s IDs and either letting them through or pulling them to the shoulder. I thought maybe it was a DUI checkpoint or an effort to nab people whose inspection stickers were expired, but then I noticed that all the cars being pulled over had Hispanic passengers. They also barely looked at my ID before wishing me a nice day and I could swear the deputy never looked at my windshield.

Now I’m wondering if we were in one of the counties mentioned in Sen. Dole’s campaign ad that features sheriff’s praising her for securing funding from a federal program that enables local law enforcement to identify illegal immigrants in their jails and have them deported. I’m not sure, but I don’t think the program allows locals to act like ICE agents and go out and find illegals, rather they are to use it to ID illegals who have already commited a crime.  Well, other than immigrating illegally.

My gut tells me we were seeing an NC version of an immigration sweep and the road block was a pretense to find illegals committing a crime. Me thinks a lot of those cars are going to be found to have broken tail lights or some such thing.

Of course it could just have been a coincidence that all the folks who were pulled over when we passed by were Hispanic. Or that all the Hispanics had some kind of problem with a license, or title, or tags, or stickers or something. And yes there could be some other explanation, but my gut tells me it was a roadblock specifically set up for illegals

Oh, and don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with deporting illegal immigrants (don’t get me started on our screwy immigration system though), but I don’t know if this type of activity would be an appropriate use of the federal funding. Please do correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the Feds are pretty territorial about immigration enforcement. I’m thinking they wouldn’t be too happy if they found out that local sheriffs were proactively pursuing illegals

Notes from the Road

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The trip to San Diego ended up being a good one.  No flight delays and great weather definitely helped, but being able to spend a couple of days talking to some really smart people from companies in a variety of industries was really the highlight.  If I’m going to spend four days away from the family it’s great to be able to learn a lot in the process, and the best way to learn is to surround yourself with people smarter than you are.

It’s also fun to have a "small world" moment.  One of the people I met this week grew up a mile from one of the neighborhoods I lived in while growing up in Northern Virginia and since he’s a year younger than my brother they actually went to elementary school together.  He now lives in Atlanta and since I had a layover in Atlanta we ended up on the same flight home, and when we ran into each other at the airport he invited me and another person from the conference into the Delta Lounge as his guests.  Drinking free cocktails is a great way to pass the time at an airport.

In one of the conference sessions I attended I set next to a guy from a health care company and in the course of the group discussion he talked about a technology that had turned into a home run for his company. Ends up they had licensd it from Wake Forest University.  That conversation helped reinforce to me how big a player WFU is despite its diminutive size and I’m darn glad we have it here in Winston-Salem.

Finally, on the last day of the conference I was trying to figure out how to kill the five or six hours I had until my flight.  A couple of other conference goers had cars and were staying for the rest of the week so they offered to drive a bunch of us into the town of Coronado from the hotel, and then after doing some sightseeing and dinner they offered a ride to the airport to those of us flying out that night.  So we got to walk through Coronado, see the beach, have a nice dinner and then have a comfortable ride to the airport.  And as I mentioned before we also got to hang out in the Delta lounge.  Nice!

Makes me wonder if fate has a nasty trip in store for me to try and even things out.

100 vs 70

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I’m in San Diego to attend a conference being held at the Loews Coronado Bay Resort.  It’s a great location any time, but when the temp outside is 70 with a gentle sea breeze and the temp back home is closing in on 100 with that lovely North Carolina humidity it’s even better.  Thankfully the conference organizers have scheduled some form of networking event on the terrace each day so we don’t spend all of our time in windowless meeting rooms.

BTW, it’s a lot more fun to attend a conference than to organize/run one.  My company’s a sponsor of the event, but the way the conference is structured we aren’t stuck in an exhibit booth like at other events. We’re expected to participate in the interactive sessions and we’re invited to participate in all networking events.  Makes for long days, but considering how many truly interesting and smart people I’ve met it’s definitely a great experience.

Conference link: Frost & Sullivan’s 4th Annual Innovations in New Product Development and Marketing 2008

People Being People

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I’m flying to San Diego today on business and of course it offers a great people watching experience. I connected through Atlanta which means I got to ride the train between terminals. The doors of the train began to close and a woman who had just gotten on and who was jabbering away on her phone realized thaty her teenage daughter wasn’t with her. She jumped in the door to prevent them from closing and to give her daughter a chance to get on. She assumed that the doors would just pop back open like elevator doors but they just kind of squished her. A man standing behind her stepped up and helped pull them open and let her daughter on. Here’s the deal; the woman never stopped talking on the phone except to yell at her daughter to hurry, not even to thank the man who helped her. She didn’t even nod. The rest of us just shook our heads and kind of smiled at each other.

Sadly this type of thing is just too common, but this incident doesn’t match my all-time favorite which was the guy in an O’Hare bathroom who was talked on his phone while using the urinal and walking out of the bathroom. Of course he didn’t wash his hands, not that he would normally, but he was far too busy talking to do it anyway.

links for 2008-06-06

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Behold the Power of Email

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A couple of days ago I wrote about an email I’d received concerning the decision by the county to eliminate all but one position at the Tanglewood Tennis Center.  Well, lots of other people received that same email and forwarded it to others, and many in that larger universe of people decided to let the powers that be know that they thought it a bad decision.  That resulted in the following email hitting my inbox last night:

Hi Everyone~
 
Thank you just seems so small in comparison to the
overwelming outcry of support that you have given to keep our Tanglewood
Community Tennis Center Family intact and running as usual! I just received a
phone call from Mr. Sanders-Pratt (Assistant County Manager) that they are going
to leave me in my current position at Tanglewood Community Tennis Center! All of
the programs that you know, love and support will continue through the season
with the State Combo Tournament in November!
 
I have heard through grapevines that some are planning
to attend Monday Night’s Commissioner Meeting. You all have gone to such major
lengths for us and I am so thankful to you all for that to be unnecessary now!
 
All of this could not have been acheived without this
"Tennis Community Family"! Gordon and I cannot thank you enough! It has just
been so overwelming and amazing to see so many people that came together as one
big tennis team to win this match!
 
I do not know how far all of these emails have reached.
I am sending this to the same ones that I sent to before in hopes that you will
contact those that you have to help spread this great news!
 
Again, Gordon and I cannot believe the overwelming
support everyone has shown for us! We will never forget all the friends we
truely have in all of the tennis community!
 
~Gordon, Angie, Samantha and Ryan~

Looks like the lights will stay on for at least the near future.

Personally I don’t think it was the "noise" alone that caused the county folks to reconsider their decision.  It might have enlightened them to the fact that more people use the tennis facilities than they thought, but that alone wouldn’t have done it.  After all, there are lots of public courts in Forsyth County that require no full time staff and are available to all players.  I’m thinking that having multiple people point out the potential revenue lost from events like the BMW Combo is what tipped the scales and helped them realize that cutting a couple of positions would cost more than it would save.

links for 2008-06-05

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