Thursday, July 24, 1997 -- Adrenaline
Lions and Tigers and Bears,Oh My!		We had customers in today. I was very nervous, because I wasn't sure if I had done enough programming work to show them, and let them have a good "comfort" level. I shouldn't have worried. A truism of this sort of thing is that you get the most praise for the thing you spent the least amount of time on. Which of course happened to me as well. One screen, that I'd spent maybe 2 or 3 hours on, gave them the comfort level they needed. Also, I was able to talk. I've never, ever, had troubles in a meeting where I felt comfortable enough to talk, and was given the time to. One of the reasons the St.Louis meeting failed so miserably, is that the BigVP of Finance kept being so aggressive, that I didn't have time to explain my vision. That, and I hadn't captured enough of my vision onscreen. We ate on the 27th floor of the Charlotte Plaza building. That's the top floor of that building, but it's still not the tallest building here in Charlotte. The view was wonderful, and if not for some trees, I could have seen my apartment. When we got back, we were essentially done with the meeting. The customers broke up,and Bossman and I talked with Judy, the IT person from Tampa, and the VP of Finance from San Diego. Anne, the VP of Finance, told us about her hunting trips to Africa and Alaska. She's not exactly the type of person I'd have expected to go hunting. She's the kind of person who gets excited when there are little corporate gifts (T-shirts with our logo on 'em), but you know there's a tough core inside. She's the only woman VP of Finance at our customers. So, BossMan, Judy and I listened to Anne tell us about shooting,skinning, cooking and eating a bear. At one point Judy looked over at Anne, and asked the question we were all thinking. "Why do you hunt?" At first Anne was mildly defensive, like I've seen hunters before. I'll admit Judy asked the question kind of like "Why would you shoot Bambi??" (although she didn't use those words). Anne looked over at Judy and said, "Why do people ride roller coasters?" Judy and I said, "For the rush, of course". Anne nodded, "It's the same thing. Hunting is dangerous, especially when you are hunting predators like Bears and Lions." I said that I could see that, but would still prefer a photo-hunt. I realized that I was a bit on an adrenaline high today, too. I had potentially placed my job on the line, today. Or rather, I had, but I had also made sure that I was covered. If our customers had been really upset with what we'd done, I could have been sent packing. So there was the risk. I really enjoyed it, giving that demo, talking with people, assuring them that I understood their problems, and suggesting solutions. It's one of the the things I like about my job. It's an odd thing for a computer geek to like about his job though. Most of us hate these little demo things. We're typically introverts (I am), and don't get along well with non-computer people. But I really enjoy these limited-group interaction things. Maybe I'm in the wrong career. Generic Joe's A Typical Male