A Business Trip

While I have been working at SPX for over two years now, I have only had to take two business trips. The first was while I was still a contractor and was doing some work on the Mercury project. The second was just a couple of weeks ago, and it was to finish integrating my portion of the J2534 project ( PassThruIoctl ) with the rest of the system.

Actually, we really didn't do much integrating. Instead, we finished developing the code and waited on a couple other developers to finish their stuff, too. So, we could have done most of the stuff during those two weeks back at the Portage office instead of traveling to Owatonna, MN. However, it was good to see the other office and was a nice opportunity to meet co-workers there, as well as get to know the co-workers I had traveled with.

Aside from missing my family and my home, the only other big problem was eating. I love eating out, but when you do it every day, you need a big variety. There were really only about five different restaurants that we went to regularly, so it got old pretty fast.

The best part of the trip was that it inspired me to try to take more of a leadership role at my company. After seeing that there is more at SPX than just the Harley project that I had been working on since I arrived, I woke up to the desire to be more than "just" a software developer. I spoke with my local Department manager and made my desire to be a project lead known. Happily, his response was warm and encouraging. The next step is to express this desire to my boss, who was on a business trip of his own recently (to present the results of the project I was working on.)

In the mean time, I am working on a new project, which will involve writing scripts in a proprietary language to interface with specific automobiles. Additionally, I am still the sole developer on the Harley project.