Apr. 27th, 2022

canyonwalker: WTF? (wtf?)
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog entry titled Stupid Meeting Tricks. It was about 5 sadly common fails people make in attending meetings unproductively or canceling them at the last minute. Just yesterday I saw an intriguing new form of meeting fail. I'm going to call this one, "Did you just drunk-text me a meeting invite?"

So, yesterday afternoon a customer invited me and a sales colleague to a meeting to discuss their use cases. It is a four hour long meeting. With no clear agenda. And less than 24 hours notice.

As if that weren't already ridiculous enough, he invited one of our competitors to the meeting, too. Like, we're supposed to share our project plans with someone literally trying to take that business away from us.

Oh, and the invite was full of spelling errors. There were 3 in the first sentence alone.

Sadly— or gladly, I'm not sure— this invite is legit. The customer's company culture really is rotten enough that they plan a four hour long meeting, with only a vague agenda, and ask everybody to come to it. 🤦‍♂️

canyonwalker: Uh-oh, physics (Wile E. Coyote)
Word came today that a business trip I was planning to take next week has been canceled. Actually, the whole event in Atlanta I'm traveling to support has been canceled; so there's no longer a need to travel.

Partly I'm relieved. This solves my concerns about traveling with the mask mandate suddenly dropped. I'm mostly settled with that being the new reality but not yet 100%. Now the point is moot... for at least another few weeks. (I have a trip to Austin planned later in May.)

It's also a relief to my schedule next week that I'm not traveling. During the past 24+ months of Covid remote working I've gotten accustomed to the amount of work I can do when I spend pretty much zero time getting from Point A to Point B. Going back to having to block out the better part of 3 days for just one meeting that I have to travel for, even if it's a long one like a workshop, seems horribly inefficient.

There's one aspect of this which is a bummer. ...Actually, two. One is I like meeting customers and prospects IRL. It's part of why I moved from development into sales years ago. The other bummer is that canceling trips sets me back on my elite status chase for the year. I need those miles! 😅

Edited to add: This is the second time some of these events have been canceled! They were originally scheduled for January, but the company pulled the plug on them right after the new year.
canyonwalker: My other car is a pair of hiking boots (in beauty I walk)
In my last blog about hiking at Pinnacles National Park this weekend I wrote about the signature experience - climbing the footholds blasted into the rock. It's one we enjoy on many of our trips there. This trip we found a new signature experience in addition to that.

One of the reasons the Pinnacles was upgraded from national monument status to the vaunted national park designation several years ago is that it's a habitat for the rare and endangered California Condor. Once near the brink of extinction, with only 27 individual birds surviving, all in captivity, there are now over 500 of the species alive, many reintroduced to the wild in California's Centra Coast region.

So, as you might have guessed, after all that climbing and crouching through tight spaces, we came out atop the High Peaks Loop and saw a California Condor sunning itself atop a large rock.

California Condor at Pinnacles National Park (Apr 2022)

Condors are huge birds. Adults can grow to about 4' (120cm) tall with wingspans of anywhere from 8-10' (2.5 - 3.0m). This bird, which I dub "Mateo" (can you guess why?), didn't seem quite that big. Mateo might be a juvenile.

Here's some video I shot of Mateo preening himself.


We've seen California Condors once or twice before in zoos. This was our first sighting in the wild. What a special way to cap a fun hike at The Pinnacles!


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canyonwalker

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