Week 3.2 - Texas 1: Cowgirl 0

Ever had a bad work day? If not, here is am example for you.

Sunday afternoon/night - My laptop stopped working properly. Many hours were spent on the web with some guru IT friends (thanks guys, you know who you are, thx 4 ur patience & time) trying to troubleshoot it. I tried just about everything bar throwing the laptop out the window. No dice. My prep work for a training class hasn't been completed and it is almost 4am Monday morning.

Mon 6:45am – Foggy outside. Left the hotel for the client's 8:00am training class. The client was only 10 minutes drive away so I thought I would have plenty of time to actually hop onto their network and set things up in the training room.

Mon 7:10am - I was lost somewhere in downtown Dallas trying to get onto the highway. HANA (ie. the Hopeless Avis Navigation Assist device) was giving me "download error" "no GPS Signal" and "You have left the route - creating a new route" instead of ACTUAL useful directions. It must have been the fog. I didn't have a map either.

Mon 7:15am - Still lost, the fuel gauge light came on. I was running out of petrol. I had no idea where petrol stations were. I was still somewhat lucky at this stage and stumbled onto a one eventually. The petrol station guy gave me directions.

Mon 8:30am – At client’s training room. I could not connect to the client's network due to security reasons, and no wireless access was available so I could not access the training server over the internet.

Mon 10:00am - Half way through the class, this lady came into the training room and informed me that I have parked in a VIP Restricted area and my car was about to be clammed and towed away. I ran down and drove my car to a different area (which by now had this big orange sticker stucked onto the side window saying VIOLATION - PARKING IN RESTRICTED AREA). Ok, fine, whatever. I had past the point of caring.

Mon 11:30am – Finished the training class in 2.5hr when it was suppose to last three 4hr sessions. It was mostly due to the fact that I could not setup any test data for hand-on work activities due to my laptop problem, and partly because I had no idea how much details I was suppose to go into with the topic. Well everyone was half asleep anyway.

Mon: 6:15pm - Finished at 2nd client around 5:45pm. I had an hour to wait before I was due to meet up with my PM to catch up on client progress. It was like around 35C one minute and the next minute there was something like flash flooding. Water was spraying up so high from cars around me as we drove along the road that I could not see a thing out of my windscreen. I tried to navigate to the PM's place using HANA and of course, no GPS signal again. I seriously thought my car would lose its grip and get carried down the road like you see on TV.

1. Storm front approaching 2. Downpour at red light

Mon: 7:45pm - Got to the PM's place and caught up with him. He offered for me to take a break and wait for rain to stop and I could use his internet connection to do some work in the meantime if I wished to. I really just wanted to go home as I was tired and in a bad mood and still had to prepare materials for the class on Tuesday.

Mon: 8:45pm - I stopped on the way home, went into this diner thinking I would quickly get something to eat instead of ordering room service at the hotel again. Bad idea. I shouldn't have – I felt worse after a horrible sandwich.

[At this point, I will forgive you for thinking gee is she going to stop complaining? But wait! There is 1 more to go!!]

Mon: ~9:00pm - I got in my car and slowly pulled out onto the main road to head home.

*bbbbbeeeeEEEEEEPPPPP* (note: just approaching horn, no screeching from tires)

*BAAAM!!*

My car was spun ~90 degree and ended up on the nature strip. Oh just great. To top things off, I got hit by a car. Lucky for me I wasn't out another foot or so, it could have been me instead of the front panel and wheel that got mangled *shiver*. But blxxdy hell, this just couldn't be happening. Not in ONE DAY!!

Alright, I surrender, Texas. You win this round. I'll get you back another day.