What time zone is this again?

I got home last evening after a full week in Denver, the first of the usual 2 trips there for database testing. I added to the trip this time by going out on Friday, meeting up with friend and co-worker Krissi (same friend as on the recent Disney excursions), and spending the weekend we arrived....working. There was far advance testing prep needed in than we could do (or than the test manager could do), but we did get through a tricky task each and also got our heads in the right place for the coming week of testing.

Sunday afternoon we drove back out to the airport to turn in our personal rental car (the database program manager having refused to pay for our weekend expenses--his budget is *extremely* tight), met up with the programmer for the water-use part of the database at the rental car place where he got a car at the gov't rate, picked up a contract programmer at the airport proper, then drove back to our hotel in Lakewood. Krissi headed in for an early night, but I went with the other two on a drive to Idaho Springs, Central City, then looping back to Golden and Lakewood. It was nice to see something other than Denver, Lakewood, and the Federal Center for a change...we are out here so often, there's a tendency to not do any sight-seeing during the week. The drive was also a chance to get to know Tong (the contract programmer)--I had had no contact with him before, and Todd (the water-use programmer) had been communicating with him by phone and email for a few months but had never met him face-to-face.

Beyond that, it was a full week on the database. We're making radical changes to the aggregate data database (the one that supports The Report) and are 18 months from release, so that testing was in the very early stages. I did a little on that, but spent most of my week in the main NWIS testing the groundwater database, which is adding access to some tables formerly used only by water use.

Today I seem to still be on Mountain Time--I got up late, went to Pastries A Go Go for breakfast as it seemed too much trouble to make coffee at home, went to the library, then home. Lunch was late again at Panera, then I went to the grocery store and home. Final excursion was to the Post Office with a Bookmooch book, then a swing by Whole Foods for creme fraiche, and home again. In between all these trips, picture me either with a book in hand or in front of the computer, but always with a cat in the lap, on the shoulders, or on the desk beside me.

Too fast with the luggage

This is an unusual complaint: AirTran was apparently too efficient with the baggage handling for my flight last night. Granted, my flight came in at the far end of D concourse, meaning I had a long hike to the center, then the train ride to Baggage Claim. I had the advantage of a seat toward the front of the plane, though, and didn't make a pit stop...so when I didn't see my flight listed on the board I assumed the bags hadn't made it yet. And I waited, and waited, was joined by a friend who'd been on the same flight, and we waited. The friend recounted waiting an hour for bags on a Delta flight last week, so we waited some more.

At 45 minutes after the flight landed, we gave up and went to AirTran's baggage service office. There were our bags--the AirTran employee said they'd been removed from the belts for security after we didn't pick them up. Could the bags have gotten to the terminal, spun on the carousel until considered abandoned, been removed and the flight info taken off the board, all in the 15 or so minutes before I got there? Or perhaps the flight just never got posted on the baggage status board. The real mystery to me is where the other bags from my flight were. Did I miss hearing an announcement of the carousel number (if so, my friend did too)? Do so few people check bags now with the fee$?

In any case, I waited an unnecessary 30 minutes or so after a long week of travel. Next time, I'll head straight to the baggage office if my flight isn't on the board.