Made it back from Toronto around 8pm today. Just as well mom insisted that dad give me a ride to the airport this morning. There wasn't much traffic at 4:30 am, but if I had driven myself, and parked in the daily lot, I would have had to drive home in gridlock in the pouring rain after dark, which I would have found totally nervewracking.

I had to wait on line for a cab for about 45 minutes, and then the usual 25 minute drive took an extra twenty minutes because of the rain, the time of day, and the express lanes on I-78 were closed for a portion of the way. Then, there was a 0.5 mile section of the local lanes where the water was a good 6" deep. The fixed-rate cab fare to my town was $37. I felt bad for the cabbie, so I gave him an $8 tip.

Three of us from my company showed up. Torpedo Tits, who picked me up at the airport after I got through customs and called her, and the sales person assigned to the client's account. Our timing driving into Toronto was good, and we managed to get on-street parking right across from the client's office. We arrived five minutes before we were due to go on, and met the sales account exec there. The client let us go over about five minutes. TT started off by doing the first 15 slides, I did the next 15, then sales exec wrapped it up with the last 18.

My section was the technical one about the statistical modeling and I didn't really speak to each slide individually, but would show the first of three similar ones, go into some detail, then breeze through the next two, onto the next section, etc. As I was looking around, I could tell that perhaps two or three people really understood it, and some of it zoomed right over many of their heads. But I guess I sounded authoritative enough that the few questions that were asked were intelligent ones.

My answers were truthful, and in the case of seasonality, and seasonal bias, I said that yes, if there is a seasonal bias to it, it would be Spring, because that's when the fieldwork was conducted for the custom studies upon which we based our model. Good answer. Correct answer. And the guy who asked the question turned out to be the guy who developed the algorithm for our Canadian Outdoor model a few years ago. I didn't know at the time it was he, but he knows his statistics shit better than I do, so when I got into the kind of frequency distribution algorithm we used and why we chose beta binomial over gamma poisson for indoor vs. outdoor, he completely "got it."

Some eyes glazed over, but that probably prevented them from asking stupid questions, so it might actually have been a good thing. The people to whom they look amongst themselves as the brain trust on that front weren't poking holes in what we did to develop the model. At worst, they were talking about ideas they had for improving/expanding the data behind the model in the future in conjunction with one of the syndicated research companies' databases, rather than relying on custom research as was done for this.

As far as customs goes, it was a little bizarre. I went through Canadian customs and immigration in Canada, as expected, but on the way back, anyone bound for the U.S. went through U.S. customs in Canada. God only knows what was done about immigration for Canadians landing in the U.S., because any of them could have followed me straight out the door without going through immigration. It was completely different coming back from London. I went through immigration in the U.S. with a U.S. passport, but there was nobody manning customs for us at all. When I came back from Costa Rica, I had to get grilled at Miami at both customs and immigration, before transfering to a NY flight.

I was instructed to lie to Canadian customs about the nature of my visit, and just said it was for meetings at my company's Toronto office. It was partially true. Got away with it, and I managed not to get arrested. Coming back home, the U.S. customs guy grilled me a bit then told me "You look beat." I refrained from telling him "Thanks, buddy!" and replied "Yeah, I had to set my alarm for 3:00 this morning to catch my flight up here." Good enough. "Next."

Seldom does my company send me on business trips. I'm not in sales or client support. But I did notice today that 2/3 of my business trips over the past 5+ years have been international. Why can't they send me to our Salt Lake City office during ski season, or Tampa in January? I've never been to either of those offices--ever. Chicago, yes, in Winter. Bleh!

I need to catch up on my sleep this evening, because I'll probably have to pick up Steve around 1 am on Friday when he gets back from his Ukraine trip. He may get in really late Thursday, but who knows?

Enough babble. I'm only good for about another half hour this evening, before I have to crash. And I have to be in the NYC office tomorrow, pretty much on time.