5 Days in Seattle

It's great to be home after the 5-day business trip, which I named The Trip That Was Not Necessary. I debated some with the project leader about even going but was not sufficiently convincing. I was to go there to examine some classified information and change its format so we could use it in some software in St. Louis. The St. Louis facility that we would use is not currently authorized for the classification and handling level of the information but supposedly would be later in the year. That level of information is very specific, and I knew that our software would not need information of that kind. The part of the information package we would use would have to be separated from the higher classification, and then Seattle could just send it to us, and we could work on it here. But, facts such as these were not part of the equation here. The project leader's boss said we should go for a week and do the data transformation. Since they hadn't seen the data, they couldn't know how long it would take. Well, what I deemed common sense did not prevail, and since my agreement with the company is that they pay me and I do the stuff they say, I generally have to let them win.

So, after the typical airport stuff, near 4 hour flight, and the drive to the company facility, I met in person many of the people with whom I've been working remotely for the last year and a half. That part was ok (maybe some day we'll put our pictures in our remote meeting software -- or not, knowing how un-photogenic some of us are -- think of how you look on your drivers license...).

It took 10 minutes of conversation to determine that the information we would need was not at the higher classification of the Seattle facility but was at the current level of the St. Louis facility. There were issues getting the information sent from Seattle to St. Louis, but we figured that out in another few minutes.

For those who are interested in security, this is how it works. If a computer network is authorized for classification and handling level B (which is higher than A), and information at level A is loaded into storage on the network, simply copying the A information from a network machine to a CD or DVD makes the disc classified at B, even though the information is still classified at A. The security policy says this because there could be B information in the network, so all outputs must be classified B until proven otherwise. Seattle's problem is that they don't have a trusted offload procedure (which most sites have) to create media with A classification. This is an administrative issue rather than an engineering issue, and they didn't think it could be changed any time soon. However, an engineering solution, which is legal, was soon worked out. Since the Seattle facility obtained the information at the lower classification on read-only discs from other organizations, they can send the originals to us in St. Louis and make copies (which would automatically be at the higher classification until they fix their little administrative issue) for themselves if they need discs.

If that wasn't exciting enough, then the next stage of the conversation revealed that Seattle has an unclassified version of the data, where the same data elements and just have different values.The format and semantics of the data elements are all I need to either transform the files into our software's input format or to modify our software to accept the data in their format, whichever makes more sense.

So, I was done. However, I still got to stay for 5 days. It was because they didn't want to change tickets and lodging because both would incur extra charges. And, I think I sensed an element of stubbornness in there as well. Well, it's probably good that I'm old enough to be patient. From a work standpoint, it was somewhat the same as working at home or any company facility (since I could now work in the open office area and didn't need to be in the classified room). Network access was a little slower (most of my servers are in St. Louis), and the office chatter was distracting as always. The real down side was not being with Gloria and not having very good meals.

We didn't eat any place that even came close to eating at home. Now, if Michael were still living in Seattle, he could have found some good places, although they might be quite far from where I was. On my previous trips, Michael and I went to dinner in the evenings. Those were fun times, to talk to him and get a good dinner.

This is getting to be a long post, but one more business trip story. In the past few years, I was sent to Washington DC, Bingen WA (about an hour from Vancouver), and Seattle. Each time, when I mentioned to the management that I could visit my children, they became more and more amazed, concluding that I had family nearly everywhere.