Update from San Diego – 5 Dec 06

Greetings from San Diego!  This week has been flying by swiftly so far.  I awoke at 0330 yesterday morning to catch a plane from DC to San Diego.  After a layover in chilly Cincinnati (16 degrees), I arrived in San Diego at 1040 local time to a nice warm 75 degrees.  After picking up the rental car and then picking up my boss and another coworker, we travelled about 45 minutes to the contractor’s facility to start our afternoon program management review that would run until about 5:30PM (which was really 8:30PM Eastern….a mere 17 hours afterI had started the day).  This trip is for meetings on the $1B National Geospatial Intelligence Library program that I will be running as the program manager starting in Jan 07.  After a short trip back to the hotel, it was dinner out at the local “On the Border” mexican restaurant and then back to the room for sleep! 

This morning, my internal clock went off at 4AM.  I watched more news by 6:30AM than most people see all week as I was too awake to sleep!  It was back to the plant for a design review that ran from 8AM until about 3:30PM.  After that, the contractor provided me with an program overview briefing until about 6:30PM and then a plant tour that went until about 7:15.  After the tour, we left the plant and came back to the hotel for dinner at a great Mongolian BBQ.

Tomorrow, we will have a technical review that will run from 8Am until probably 6PM or so, and then I will work my way back to the airport to catch a red-eye flight back to DC, via Atlanta.  All in all, a whirlwind trip!    My biggest frustration with my new job is that I keep asking and searching for an overview of the program that starts out at the 50,000 foot level and works its way down to ground level, but everyone wants to give me particular details, assuming I know what the heck they are talking about.  I need the big picture first, so that I can better understand the context of the program details.  I am getting to the point where I can only conclude that few people really understand the big picture, therefore they can’t articulate it to me.  It makes the job that much more difficult since most of the people here have been working in this environment for so long that they don’t know how to bring a newcomer into the organization and help them get up to speed.  Oh well, enough whining…..time for bed!

I wish I had more time to explore San Diego.  It has been 10 years or so since I have been here, and I forgot how nice this area is.