Standing in the Field @ Valley Forge

Standing in the Field

Notes from SJS Application Server Field Engineering

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Monday January 10, 2005
Travel: Problems, Small Airports, MacWorld SF

This week I'm out at Sun's corporate offices in California. A bunch of us software folks are getting some advanced training and some face time with the product engineering folks. This is a good thing, especially considering the new versions of Java Enterprise System and Sun Java System Application Server around the corner.

Unfortunately, I live in an area with relatively poor access to airports. I can drive east an hour and a half to a major airport or I can drive west an hour and a half to a smaller airport. Driving to the major airport is tough during rush hour and is susceptible to all kinds of traffic, parking, and security delays. The smaller airport, Harrisburg International, is a much more pleasant drive, the service is great, and it's generally just easier getting in and out. They even promote themselves as the "antidote to the big airport".

So, when the flight schedules work out, I choose to fly out of the smaller airport.

Now I'm a pretty seasoned business traveler. I think that I'm pretty savvy about the whole process. I pack light. I always have my iPod so that I can kill time. But most importantly I try to keep a positive attitude about the whole experience. Because when you travel frequently, you are going to run into problems sooner or later. My cardinal rule for travel is to be nice to gate agents and to trust them to help you. I've had lots of issues when traveling, some of them my own fault, but the airlines have always done the best the could for me. (Everyone should have to watch the TV show Airline before getting upset with a gate agent.)

So when I ran late on Sunday and missed my flight I was optimistic that the airline would be able to help me out. Unfortunately, however, being at a smaller airport does limit your choices significantly. Harrisburg only has a dozen or so gates, and they are divided between a lot of airlines. Combine that with a flood of people heading to San Francisco for MacWorld and some bad weather on the west coast and I was pretty much out of luck. I'm stunned at how crazy San Francisco is over MacWorld. The flights are packed. Changing car and hotel arrangements has been near impossible.

Anyway it's been a stressful day and a half getting here. I finally made it to my hotel room. I guess the lesson to learn from this experience is to know when the system has a small tolerance for failure and to plan accordingly. I suppose the same thing could be said about software system design. A skilled system architect should be able to know in advance where to the stress points of a system will be and to put plans in place to reduce those risks.

That's a big stretch to try and create an analogy, but you'll have to forgive me. It's a been a long day.

(2005-01-10 23:42:08.0) Permalink


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