Wednesday October 3, 2018
So I worked a full day at Arlo. Oh you have not heard I joined a startup spun from the womb of NETGEAR. They went public August 3rd, 2018 on the NYSE. From June 3 which was the CEP (customer engagement platform) to now has been a whirlwind of doubling the applications. I went live with Lithium our community August 26, and now I’m traveling through Copenhagen on the way to Berlin to take a car service to Szczecin Poland where the call center for EMEA lives. 4 countries is 24 hours! Woot! Woot! I’m my own version of trains, planes, and automobiles 🤪.
The meals on the plane were very good. Hot crossed buns which Niamh is playing on her recorder was in full force. Much better than the breakfast burrito from Aer Lingus. Real chunks of chicken for dinner. Who knew? I did try to sleep I really did but it was useless. Instead I watch Magic for Humans with Justin Willman. Slightly too adult for the kids but a good watch. Watched Hitman from 2007 which was pretty good. Lastly a super adult series called end of the f**ing world which is good but bad in a tragic way.
Thursday October 4, 2018
Made it to Copenhagen! Customs is great here. No line to get out. I told the officer I was going out for a pint and for some food. I tried to get into the SAS lounge but did not have a business ticket. I did check that my bag would make it through without me picking it up for 7 hours. Everyone I talked to said it will be fine. Hopefully my bag will show up in Berlin. Dum. Dum. Dum. Dramatic cut away with an inquisitive look in my eye.
I walked over
The the taxi line and asked the guy to take me to food and a pint. This very much confused him. I then asked for him to take me to his favorite place for food and a pint. He gave some bullshit answer that needed to give him an address and he would take me. Whatever not so friendly taxi driver.
Whipped out travel advisor app and picked some with 4+ stars sorted by distance. Oh look a 20 minute walk to a bistro. Hope they serve beer. Ta-Da Kystens Perle which is close and on the water. Fancy. Luckily I had also enabled the is open now option in the search as that has happened in the past to show up to a closed place 😂.
This place is hoppin. A funny quaint place and the have beer! I get the local favorite on tap, Carlsberg, and it is good. It goes great with grandma’s omelette which is filled with potatoes and topped with real bacon and cherry tomatoes.
I ate it all and it was good. Wonder if they will let me squat here for 4 hours and work. Hum…
Yup. I squatted. It rained i did work. I’m tired. Been up now for 27+ hours and am sitting at Berlin gate B7 at 18:47 when flight leaves at 20:10. Oh hum. While I was at Kystens Perle I had more beer and an americano coffee drink. The coffee on the plane was thick black strong stuff. This was much nicer.
Along my walk the apparently have dogs with baskets bring you things.
Also need new shoes without holes in soles when traveling to wet cold Nordic countries.
Wonder if I can get the soles redone? Really like these shoes of 3 years. I’m surprised they lasted as long as they did 😬. Maybe Santa will pick me up a pair with some underwear. Yup I’m going for stuff that will fit in his Santa sack as a Tesla Roadster is hard to stuff in his bag.
I finally got to the hotel at 11pm after 2 hour van ride on the autobahn. The autobahn is just a four lane road (2 lanes each direction) with the occasional roadworks crew. I think he got up to 85 at one point but we where in a van and I am a dumb American so he was not going to drive fast. We did get passed by an old BMW super fast and some other car, but it was not a huge amount of cars screaming past at breakneck speeds on their way to Poland.
Friday October 5, 2018
The room is a bit of a disappointment. The bed is an unfoldable futon and for a weird reason I have another twin in the room so the room sleeps three? There is no bar of soap or conditioner. I’m pretty sure the shampoo and and the body wash are the same thing and the old thing different about them is one says shampoo and the other says body wash. The tub shower is this 3 foot one step up monster with a round shower curtain thing on one end. It is not horrible since my back does not hurt, but is not great either. Ha. At least is is clean and the front desk person was nice. I sprung for a room with breakfast.
I woke up at 4:30am and rolled around for another 3ish hours and came down to breakfast at 8 to eat an omelette, two tiny chocolate croissants, and 3 tiny cups of orange juice. I left the hotel to walk to Convergys, a 20 minute walk which took 25 since I amble about unlike my speedy wife who walks with purpose damn it. I mean if your going to walk you had better walk fast and walk like you mean it.
I tailgate into the building and see my name on the TV. Cezary texts me and he is on his way in his car, but gets his boss Adam to come and collect me. I take the elevator to the 2nd floor and say hello to everyone on the call center floor and figure out the water and bathroom situation. We pop out (Adam, Cezary, and Wojciech [pronounced woe-check] to a place called Columbus Coffee which strangely has the same sort font/signage of another coffee house from Seattle. However this is only a Polish franchise and has a hot kitchen or at least a full English breakfast which two of my colleagues had (sausage, beans and eggs) but I had a second breakfast which consisted of a salami paninis which was pretty tasty and had bell peppers in it, but no cheese, just a nice helping of butter.
Raffaele aka Lello, and David appeared from cork at around 3:30 pm which we patiently waited for them for lunch at which time Wojciech was starving since he didn’t eat breakfast. They arrived and we went off to have lunch were I had a polish local beer and ‘turkey with black berry and pear sauce’ with a side of chips which was very good. It was served hot with turkey patties, but not ground up turkey, but turkey chunks with a pear cut in half which was still firm but warmed up by the turkey. Who knew.
Then proceeded to work until 9pm and the FO’d back to the hotel to drop my bag off to head out for some grub. Went across the street to the Nowy Browar with my Cork buddies to have a typical polish dinner which turned out to be pork knuckle and a huge amount of beer.
It was so good I decided to have another.
I then got back to the hotel around 11:30 to then work until 2am which consisted of me calling the help desk to ask very nicely to finish setting up 18 more agents so they could log into Salesforce via SSO. Anywho was happy to work with beer and call the Fiona. Turns out there was some sad news as our old neighbor who moved to Vegas about 7 years. Super sad.
Saturday October 6, 2018
Up at seven bright and shiny. Woot! Woot! Sat in the hotel and typed out all of Friday and the Lello and David appeared. Then we just chilled out int the hotel breakfast a area until 11:30am. I think the best past of th morning was not the foos but this old guy who was using support canes (the canes you use to support your entire forearm) decided he didn’t give a flying two cents that I was at a table just typing away on the iPad. I thought to myself he was alone and there was still room for my two buddies to sit down. Then a younger old guy came and brought him breakfast? I think the guy with canes was pushing more then 85 and the younger guy was around 65, it took cane guy 5 minutes just to sit down.
Of course 15 minutes later Lello strolls in and he finds another table and we sit at it. Eventually David finds us and we hang out. Cezary mention some WWII underground tunnels to check out so I looked it up and it seemed pretty cool. Tours started at 12 and by the time the two guys got back downstairs the time had changed past 12. So we toured and walked and drank beer. It was a very nice. We stopped by a church built in the 70s since the old was was destroyed in WWII. Then we had some beer a bit down the ways from the church. Kept walking and went and had another beer next to the river. Then tried another place , but Cezary arrive and was walked to a tapas place across the way. I had some beer with my tacos. On the way back stopped in and pick up some vodka and beer to take home with me.
Ate a nice bruschetta at the hotel bar and then walked all over at 9 am. We found a table at a pizza shop and had another beer. They would do take away but not let Lello order a pizza at 9:45. Oh well.
I was online doing questions by 10 and doing change requests and preparing for go live until 2am at 9am..
Sunday October 7, 2018
We are live! Arrived to work at 8am and proceeded to do cool things. At 9am setup kb.arlo.com and launch community updated. We stayed until 2 and went to Columbus coffee for lunch. I had an ice coffee and a cheese platter. Back to work to proceeded to stay until 7pm. We walked back and got into the Nowy Browar. The night before was packed, but had another big beer and another cheese plate.
I really could not sleep and rolled round. Called Fiona at 12 ish. Fixed a community thin and then back to sleep. However I just rolled around and the work up
Monday October 8, 2018
Had a shower in the quirky shower tub thing. Had another good testing day. Pizza for lunch with no drinks. Hum. Had dinner at a fancy place and I’m super tired.
Tuesday October 9, 2018
Woke up and packed. No omelette guy again as it was too early. They ran out of chocolate filled croissants so had normal ones that were bigger. Walked to Convergys with my bag. Worked for an hour and a half and now am in a fast car to go back to Berlin. I misplaced my global entry card which is a bummer as it was handy to skip the lines. Wonder if there is a lost and found? At each airport? Otherwise need to get a new card for 25 bucks.
Made it to Berlin. I’m to Check-in at A9. My driver asked what terminal and i didn’t know what to tell him. Unlike the state each gate serves different airlines. Swiss air check-in was happening when I arrived, but they do not check people in until 90 minutes prior to flight.
I did manage to have a German beer for lunch.
So all is ok for now 🤪
I managed to check in to the flight today to Denmark and got an exit row seat on the isle in the front- 12c. Hopefully will be ok.
Some old guy had giant tubes of toothpaste like 6 of them and the security person said to check them or throw away. At the gate while waiting for the plane he was yelling into his phone in some language. Good times. I tried to ask where lost and found was to try and find my card but don’t think the guy at the desk understood. If it is in Berlin then oh well.
The seats on the plane coming and going are super thin. Oh well.
So I arrived in Denmark and my bag came off the plane so I do get a fresh change of clothes! Fiona will be happy about that 😜 I got a taxi which took around 20 minutes to get to the city center and it cost 315 DKK which is 48 dollars. That seems pretty expensive to go 20 minutes.
Fiona would like the hotel, Hotel Danmark, which offers free wine from 5 to 6. I signed up Fiona to receive the spam since if we stay 7 nights the 8th is free? I was stuck in a call but the front desk lady offered me a glass but I opted for the home grown beer instead which was pretty tasty.
I found a place that is old to eat at, ‘restaurant puk’ and had a burger. It was actually pretty good, a little well done, but the onions upon onions made up for it.
The other place the cabby mentioned was poo-poo’d by the hotel since the food was mediocre or you have to be drunk to eat it. The guy recommended ‘warpigs’ which was a far walk for meat, but they do have their own beer. There are a few good places in the old meat packing street and they serve meat!
I did try another beer
at the restaurant which is ok. I might have to try another. Apparently we are going to Sweden 🇸🇪 in April and not to any place in Asia. Which I’m happy to see family with new kids but hope to make an adventure out of it. Wonder if the old people will also be attending on the trip?
Wednesday October 9, 2018
Copenhagen is pretty cool. Ate at the Cafe next door and passed a few bikes. Besides the bell ringing which thankfully stopped at midnight and started at 8am, was the ding ding of bike bells through the open window.
Ate the cafe it was a hipster blues place, and instead of numbers they gave you toys to identify tour meal 🤪 I got a horse. I also got a black coffee, yes I think I’m going to the dark side and becoming a coffee drinker, but not hot coffee (let’s not go crazy).
Off to the airport to get the flight to SFO.