A Houston Snow Day (Just In Time)

In case you missed it on Twitter, the news, or on the Weather Channel, it snowed in Houston earlier this Month.

As a native northerner (I'm from Ohio), a few flurries here and there is commonplace for me (I'm used to the white stuff falling from the sky), but things were a little different in Texas.

When it started to snow, I noticed that businesses started to close early and people were getting off the roads (including yours truly). My co-workers at Oil & Gas in Houston advised me of the same.

The best part was watching people take pictures of their snow covered cars with their smartphones.

Moving around the country and observing and living through different climates is one aspect of the IMLP Program that goes beyond one's daily work.

Video Via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/etee/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

6 Months in Houston, Texas: It's Hot.

1) The state is huge.

262,000 square miles.

2) There are a lot of people living in Texas.

24.33 million people.

3) It's hot here.

90 degrees in October!

For my third rotation, I migrated South (again) for the winter months to work for the GE Oil & Gas business in Houston, Texas, and more specifically, the drilling & productions systems sub-business.

Houston is filled with Energy companies - I'm originally from Ohio and have never seen so many companies focused on energy in one city - but I'm getting used to it, as I see the Marathon Oil Tower on my drive to work.

My current rotation is scoped as "technical" - which is one requirement for us Energy IMLPs to "graduate" from the program (along with completing our greenbelt project and the bootcamps we've mentioned in previous posts).

I'm focusing on leading a web application development project for global resource scheduling for the Oil & Gas business. It will allow for increased visibility into daily operations of the GE Oil & Gas field personnel- who work to install, maintain, and fix our products in use by our customers around the world. It's a project where the benefits are not something that one has to explain - just talk to someone who works in the field service industry and they'll tell you.

As a project lead, my responsibilites vary from vendor management, architecture design, interface design, presentational speaking, functional requirements gathering and budget management to name a few. 

Since this is a global project,  I speak to groups of people from 3-4 different countries on a daily basis- Italy, India, and the UK to name a few.

So, even though I'm in Texas and I was out by the pool last weekend while many of my friends were dealing with the first snows of the season, I'm operating on "global time."