Boston - Business Trip

It is raining here in Boston. Well, technically, it is Waltham.
Consider Waltham sort of like San Jose to the Bay Area, where there are lots of high tech companies and sort.
This is already my... I can't exactly recall, but I've been here now at least 5 times or so, and though most of my Waltham trip has been for internal reasons, such as training, I did come out here once on a business trip.

I miss my D80. Not that I had any chance to take real pictures, since I am either stuck in the office, restaurant, or hotel room for the most of the day, but just the fact that I do not have my camera makes me feel like a Christian without a bible, soldier without swords/guns, a camera-man without the camera... But I do not have a camera and there is really not much I can do at the moment.
It doesn't help that there is a beautiful forest behind the conference room I am located in, snow-covered from the last storm a few days ago, melting from the gentle rain...

Like anything in life, business trips can be good and bad.
The good:

• Rack up airline travel mileages (if you care)
  
• Accumulate credit card reward points (if it applies)
• Hotel honors/rewards membership (depending on the hotel)
• Travel to new places that I would not go otherwise
  
• Experience new culture/food/people
  

The bad:

• You really need to travel a LOT to rack up enough points for free ticket (unless you fly SW)
• Unless you use these hotels frequently, these rewards are not as useful
• Some trips can keep you away from home for extended period of time (unless you want to?)
  
• Some trips can force you to go where you know you do not want to go (Fresno anyone?)
  

OK, so any other feedbacks? What are your thoughts?

SDL: Idiom Acquisition

So I've been working for Idiom a little over 3 years now. It's been an exciting journey, where I am first introduced to a semi-career change, coming from an engineer, to now a customer-facing consultant/project manager. I must say I have learned a lot in the past three years. Sure, I have not learned much of a new technology, but I have been grilled and trained in people-skills, how to work and manage people and projects. Stressful, yes, but valuable learning lessons.

Idiom is still a private company, so we always wondered where we would be a few years down the road. Well, that change is now upon us. SDL, a large European-based company has officially acquired Idiom as of Monday, February 11th, 2008.

What does it mean for me? I am not sure. Yet.

In the globalization market, SDL and Idiom are the two major competitors, and now that the two major competitors have become one entity, this will have major impact on the customers, for sure. We can only hope that the change will be for the better, both for the customers, as well as for the employees.

But what does this all mean for me? I do not know yet. Hopefully before the end of this week, or this month, there will be more updates. In the meantime, I need to find out the full details on my stock options, as well as the stock exchange price now that I am part of a public company.

Otherwise, it's business as usual. I am still on the bus, though, we will see for how long. Already some 15+ people have gotten off the bus, and that's a substantial number of people given our size.

Company Outing at the Butler and the Chef

We have the company get-together at SF, named The Butler and the Chef. Though the weather wasn't quite the ideal, at least we found a pretty good parking spot directly in front of the restaurant. I guess not that many people go out to eat in a rainy day.

The restaurant was actually located in the SOMA, South Park area, which is really close to where I used to work, right out of college. I actually used to go out to a couple of restaurants in the South Park area for lunch breaks and stuff. Good old days.