The complete opposite of Day 0 – Chris & Day 0 – Part 2 – Chris where September the 9th never ended, Friday the 7th never happened! I departed SFO on Thursday the 6th and arrived on Saturday the 8th. I did however book a flight for Friday morning to Kerikeri #fail. Fortunately, I figured this out back in Vancouver when my phone advised me that I should be boarding!
Today was a case of hurry up and wait. After spending the morning catching up on some life admin I decided to change my plans and actually go into San Francisco.
Turns out i’m almost as bad as Danielle at doing nothing!
Continue readingOk so today is our last day! Well last day together. Due to some poor planning, and we shall not name names, but Danielle has a direct flight to Auckland tonight and Chris has 23 hours in SFO…
Continue readingToday we opened our eyes to find that Sault Ste Marie had disappeared! The fog was some of the thickest we have ever seen.
Continue readingAfter a good sleep for both of us we enjoyed the hotel breakfast and finished packing. Today the focus is on logistics, we need to move into Hilton in town and return the rental car to the airport.
The drive into town was intense. Fortunately Apple Maps works great with very specific lane guidance. Without this we would have been very stuck. It’s the kind of stuff that Danielle’s mum’s nightmares are made of… LOTS of lane changes across 10 lane freeways. It feels a bit like LA where you can’t hesitate you just need confidence.
Continue readingDay 8 was all about waiting (for Chris) and MORE traveling (for Danielle)
Continue readingOk so Day 7 is Friday here and my LAST day alone. Back home in New Zealand, Day 7 is departure day for Danielle!
Today i visited the Scandinave Spa in the Blue Mountains. https://www.scandinave.com/blue-mountain/en/
The website doesn’t really do it justice and as a digital detox there are no phones or photographs allowed. This is something they don’t make a big deal about on their website, but is a central theme of the place. If I get time I’ll try to write a more complete review, but for now here are my fleeting thoughts. (Spoiler, I really loved it)
Continue readingToday was very chill. No set agenda nothing needing to be done so after a pretty good free hotel breakfast I decided I needed to get over my new found fear of driving.
I mounted my faithful steed pictured and drove to a local mall. It was *MUCH* better driving in daylight without having just flown in from DC. While it’s still a lot harder than driving at home as you need to be always concentrating it wasn’t so bad.
The mall was big but nothing special except for it contained a Legoland. Normally this would excite me a LOT but previous research found that they have a really weird policy that you must abduct a child before they will allow you in as an adult! No opportunity arose to snatch and grab a child so I stuck that one off the list.
Continue readingToday marked the start of my actual holiday. I know with all the conference parties it might have looked like i was on holiday but you would be mistaken. That was all very serious work!
Today after a sleep in and MUCH less of a hang over I decided to explore. With the death of the Queen and the 1 year anniversary of mums death I felt that a trip to Arlington cemetery would be appropriate.
Continue readingAs indicated in yesterdays post today started off rough. After getting to sleep around 3am I woke feeling very sorry for myself just before 9. I hurried to the conference to catch the morning keynote from the FBI deputy director on the cyber landscape.
After the first session I returned back to my hotel to top up on fluids and have a nap. The map ended up being longer than planned but I did feel a lot better for it.
The afternoon keynote was GaryVee (Gary Vaynerchuk). He lived up to the hype and was very motivational. The best take away I got from him was:
Basically stop wasting time on your hiring process because your still going to make mistakes regardless, trust your gut and exit someone sooner rather than letting issues become the normal and drop this concept everyone has to do the slog before they get promoted. If someone is excellent they will do you more good in a role with more autonomy.
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