This is year three of the trek to Orlando for the day job. It’s never a trip I am excited about so I try to make it more interesting by adding some extra time at the end or the beginning of the trip to spend time with my sister. It makes it more palatable.
This year, I decided to arrive early. We made plans for this a couple of months ago and then her work travel plans changed considerably and where we were going to separate on Monday we had to move that up to Sunday. Not really a big deal, just a minor change of plans. It meant that instead of showing up at the hotel on Monday, I got to work from the hotel on Monday. And that turned out to have a really cool moment.
I’ve been talking to my sister, and just about everyone who asks, or doesn’t, about what really frustrates me about where I live and what I wish I had. A few years ago I wrote about some of the issues of manufactured demand and things like that, and probably about what I find frustrating about where I live. I live in a suburb. And where I live there are a few dining options across the street from me. But I still have to get in my car to go get take away food or to dine in, because the road/street between me and the food is too dangerous to cross on foot. So what I want is to live where I don’t have to have a car to get a few groceries or take away or to dine or…whatever. I want to be able to walk to places and have public transportation that works and is reasonably reliable.
As it turned out, for my Monday in Orlando, that I spent working from the hotel, I got to have a little of that experience. I lived on the outskirts of Orlando many years ago. And at the time I don’t think I would have considered the downtown area to be livable. I’ve been really pleasantly surprised the last couple of years to find that city center/downtown Orlando has become a bit more livable. And that was what I got to experience. I got hungry for lunch and the hotel restaurant wasn’t serving lunch so I needed to go find some. I headed out to the grocery store for some snacks and maybe a ‘grab and go’ meal. On the way, there was a food truck stopped, selling homemade pasta. So I changed my plans. I grabbed some food at the truck, then headed back to the hotel to eat it. If it weren’t quite so warm outside I might have gone over to the lake to sit and eat. As I was walking back to the hotel with my food I was thinking about how this is exactly the type of experience I want to have on a regular basis. I want it to be a daily normal. That was my cool moment.
Most of the rest of the trip was ok. One of the things that usually happens at this event is that they give the group a problem to solve. Which, of course they did again. The day job is pushing for more automation and AI type of solutions for time consuming processes. I’m pretty sure it has a lot to do with an aging workforce and a tendency to not have layoffs. Which is good on the one hand, we don’t generally have to worry about our jobs. On the other hand, it means we run very lean and are less likely to replace people as they retire. So of course our problem to solve was centered around this sort of thing, and the expectation was that we create a process solution that was scalable and used AI and/or Agentic AI. Yes, I work with some very smart, and technical people.
And yes, I have railed against AI and continue to for specific reasons. But when they tell you it’s ok to use it to make your job easier and more manageable, and you’re a one person team. Well, it becomes time to at least start to consider it. Not only for my day job, also for helping me with my Art Store.
I subscribe to a tool for my Art Store designed to help me with the ‘office work’. Not the painting, drawing, and general creation, just the office stuff. Things like finding the right hash tags for social media, research that takes time and analysis and effort that I would rather spend in creating art. It can also help with finding niche groups and several other things. When I first got it, I was very interested and excited. Then as I started playing with it to see how I might use it, I got a little disappointed because at the time one of the main features was writing product descriptions. It all sounded the same and very ‘canned’ and that just didn’t sit well with me. So I haven’t been using it. I haven’t been doing a lot of the work I need to do for the store either but that’s a whole other issue.
Anyway. After the day job event with the AI stuff, it does have me reconsidering how I can use the tool I have to make the stuff I need to do to get my art noticed, easier, and hopefully more effective. So I guess the trip wasn’t the waste I was fearing it would be a few days before I left as I was staring at a drawing I was longing to work on but wouldn’t be able to because of the trip.
The trip back was much more eventful than the trip down. I was sent a notice six hours before my flight that it was delayed by almost and hour. Ultimately, we had four gate changes and seven delays before, while already on the plane, it got canceled. I don’t think the first delays were due to weather, however, the last ones were which means all they do for you is rebook you. That was also a challenge and at that point I had reached the end of my reserves for dealing with anything. Fortunately someone helped me get rebooked for the 5:00am flight the next morning. I spent the night at the airport because it wasn’t worth trying to get an uber, a hotel, an uber, and go back through security for a flight that was boarding at 4:20 in the morning. I did make it back home. I walked in the door of my place at 10 to 8:00 am and was able to do my 8:00 am deploy, my 8:30 am meeting, and my 10:00 am meeting before taking a short day and logging off. Not my best flight experience but I suppose it could have been a lot worse.
I think I have finally recovered from all the travel and the airport shenanigans and now I’m getting back into the groove of things. I don’t have a lot of pictures to share this time. I barely had the phone camera out and never took the regular camera out. We didn’t make any runs to a theme park or anything else, just a trip to the mall for something that ended up costing me more than I expected. My sister is very good at helping me spend my money. That’s ok. It was needed.
I’m planning on getting back to the art this week and might have pictures and more art stuff to write about for the next post. See you soon.
Cheers!