San Anto

Just getting back from a full week of activities back in the hometown of San Antonio. I know it’s only been a little over three months since I last left TX, but it seems like a lot longer has passed. For starters, it’s weird to be able to go out and not have to count pennies (this summer as a vagabond) or go out with friends who also happened to be home for the holidays (a classmate of mine held a brief unofficial class reunion).

Let’s review a bit. The most annoying part of this is that I both departed and arrived from San Jose airport, even though I live a good 60 miles away from the damn place. On the other hand, I did get to TX and back for under $250, and I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before. In about an hour and half, I will be arriving home to the apt in SF. That will be almost 4 hours since I arrived at the airport. American Airline’s insanely slow service doesn’t help matters, but you get the picture.

So anyway, back to last week. I got up really early, traveled a couple thousand miles, and got in just in time for dinner at my aunt’s house, and was able to take my aunt’s Toyota and pick up Miles and head to Hamilton’s house for a solid jam session. I’ve always admired Ham’s musical gifts, and this night was no different as he had some how gotten his hands on an accordion, and had picked up the instrument’s intricacies with ease. We had fun playing guitar, playing music and talking high school.

Thursday morning I got up an hour before an important client call at noon, probably said about two sentences over the course of the meeting, and went back to sleep for four hours. That night Miles and I were off to a new bar(for me at least) called Limelight. I have to say, it’s probably the coolest bar I’ve been to in San Antonio. On Thursday there was a solid hipster presence (I felt oddly like I was back in SF) and some great house music being spun by a local DJ. The Lone Star beers were only $2 and the company was great. There was Dave C. behind the bar, and we later met Evelyn, Roseanna, and a host of her friends from St. Mary’s and elsewhere. Somehow, the whole lot, along with Miles, invited me and convinced me to come to a quinceñera of sorts for Evelyn that Saturday night. Evelyn is 21 years old. So I gave her crap about that and made a lukewarm commitment to attend.

Friday morning was more sleeping in, a little more work, and lot more sleep. Love it. That night I was pleased to meet up with some good friends that were actually in my graduating class – Austin and David. We met up at a place called Boneheadz. It was a classic San Antonio dive bar that probably only survives because of nights when they show Spurs games. I convinced the two to head to Limelight, where I had had a great time the previous night. Except on Friday there was a goth/metal band that was scaring away pretty much everybody. We got a couple of Lone Stars and then left. Austin was tired, but David and I went back to his parent’s place (so high school!) to watch a movie. The Simpsons movie was played, but none of it was watched as we caught up and reminisced. I bought David a bottle of some good California sparkling wine to celebrate his graduation, but we plain forgot to drink it that night.

Saturday all the family began to arrive. And the tamalada started. My aunt and uncle’s house way out in far west San Antonio was taken over by almost twenty hungry Mexicans, eager to cook tamales and share stories. It was good company, but that night I had plans. By seven I was out the door, on my way to Miles’ house to get dressed for the fake quinceñera. The only problem was, I had rsvp’d to Drew, another classmate of mine, much earlier to attend a reunion of sorts at his house. I really wanted to see some of the people that were going and I had promised to go. So I got dressed in one of the Donnelly’s finest tuxes (it was a black tie event for crying out loud) and headed over to Drew’s casual party. Miles and I were, of course, way, way too overdressed. But hey, I always say better over than under dressed. S we sucked it up and schmoozed for about an hour. I saw tons of people I wanted to talk to more, but of course, there would never really be enough time to catch up, so Miles and I headed off to Club Gireaud (or something like that). It was a classic, old school, Alamo Heights-type event. I would say about 2-3 hundred packed into a gorgeous club, with great food and free booze. Everyone was looking stunning (especially the ladies, if I do say so myself) and bragging about their family’s accomplishments. A few things stood out to me: 1) Where else in San Antonio would there be so few Mexican’s? 2) Almost all the kids went to TX for college (props to Ms. Fitzsimmons for bucking the trend), and 3) despite initially feeling like an outsider, I think was like a fish to water and had a great time chatting and socializing with San Antonio’s Heights crowd. By around eleven all the old folks were beginning to trickle out and the bars started getting longer lines as my-age type folks took full advantage of the hosts’ generosity. We danced, drank, and met good people. Miles and I also took a cab home that night. And I can’t speak for him, but I sure was feeling that party the entire next day.

Sunday was more family time as most of my actual immediate family finally arrived from Colorado. In keeping with tradition, they barely escaped a major snowstorm to reach us in TX. The rest of the tamales were finished and the conversation carried on to everyone’s plans and current goings on. It was the last night before Christmas Eve, so it was probably my last night to see people other than my family (even though I do love them, I gotta get away at night). So Emma, Britney, Miles and I met up at Zuni grill that night for pink margaritas. Yes, this would be the same Zuni grill that three out of the four of us worked at approximately 4.5 years ago. Unfortunately, there was a recent round of firings, and it appeared that every single person we worked with had, sadly, left. So we chatted with the waiter, and bounced by the time we were the last people to still be sitting down at the restaurant. Luckily, a group of other folks was, at that same time, meeting up at a martini bar called swig. This was probably the classiest place I had ever been to in San Antonio. And still cheap drinks – I was happy. There we met up with Matt Stolhandski, Trevor, Lauren, Delaney, and Jacki Deer. It only seemed appropriate that I finished out my trip with folks that were a year older than me at ISA. Everyone seemed to be doing very well with their latest adventures in life. A few of us weren’t quite ready to call it quits so we headed back to Delaney’s place for a last round of beers and high school gossip. But at 3, it was time to say goodbye and we headed home.

Christmas eve and Christmas day were the usual affair of food, beer, fun, and sleep. Santa brought me a brand new iPod classic, which made me very happy. But there a few burnt out pixels, so Santa is bringing it back to the shops to beat the elves and get the problem fixed. Should be back soon. I put a lot of thought into the presents for my family, and I think they were very pleased. My favorite was a painting I made of a favorite picture that my mom has of me and my sister in classic Jalisco traje and dress. I wasn’t sure if my mom was going to dig it, but I think she did. Props to Tim for introducing me to the world of painting about a month ago.

So after an hour and a half, the album I’m listening to is about to end, and the train is finally about to arrive in the city. I look forward to a weekend of rest (wasn’t I just on vacation?) and a couple of good New Year’s parties coming up. I guess I’m back home in San Francisco. But I think I left my heart in San Antonio.

Work

It was about nine at night. Tiredness usually started to set in at this point in the night when consecutive late nights at work seemed to pile up with no sign of letting up soon. The tunnel was dark on both ends. I decided to get a final tea for the day, about my fourth, to push through the last bit of work.

As any good consultant might do, I was crunching through some numbers – nothing difficult – but they just weren’t working out. Our team had a hypothesis that product A made up to 90% of a business’ revenues. But when I ran the numbers of a few different clients, some fell in line with that hypothesis, and some were completely off. The equation to calculate for the monthly spend of product A was particularly confusing. I was spinning my wheels here and if it’s one thing we learned over and over again in training, it was to not let those wheels spin and ask for help. Plus, if one thing is sure about my co-workers, it’s that they’re incredibly intelligent and could easily help me through any confusing math.

My particular section (product A and product B) for the project was shared between me and another senior co-worker. He was fresh out of prestigious business school X and was eager to show a young college-grad all that he had learned in the three extra months that he had been working before me. I liked him, and for the most part we work well together. But, like any person you spend close companionship for a sudden and endured amount of time, we had a couple small, well things, and might have snapped at each other a little bit. It didn’t help that this young MBA was dealing with a college-grad that has been describe by his peers as ‘maybe too confident for his experience and age.’ By nine at night, there were already a couple of snaps recorded for the day.

But I relented, because even this maybe-too-confident associate isn’t too proud to ask for math help. I went over to my partner’s desk across the floor to ask for help. We went through all the calculations. Of course I was wrong. And he was wrong a little bit (but not nearly as wrong as I was, although I would never say anything). We worked everything out, but darnit, the end answer was still the same. Different clients had different revenue mixes. I took a quick break to go back to my desk and find some literature that might help.

That’s it! The revenue mix depends on how much of product B you have because product A was static.

I ran to tell my partner and drew out a quick graph, showing a straight line for product A and a slope of about 2x for product B. “It makes sense, but product A is not static.” Oh yeah. Shoot. “Well,” he told me, “let’s add it up. These fees are fixed for product A. One, two, three. Then there is a $1 charge for each of product A. 1x. Then there is a $.50 handling fee for each of product A. 1.5x. So y=1.5x+172. Product B doesn’t have any fixed costs. There is again a $1 charge and a $.50 handling fee for each of product B. So y=1.5x. Hmmm.”

The first graph was erased and a new one drawn up. But if they both had a slope of 1.5x, then they were parallel and the difference is always the fixed costs of product A. As I was drawing the graph, my partner told me, “That doesn’t make sense. Not when the different client revenues are added. The difference isn’t $172 every time.”

“Well,” I said, “there is always an addition to product B, for archiving purposes.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s call that z. y=1.5x +z.. But that still gives us the same slope and a parallel line, just higher.”

“If the x axis is months, then z will always be added each month. So it’s a function of x.” There was no need for that extra caffeine, this puzzle got my brain pumping again.

“Yes. Actually, it is x.”

“Yeah, that’s right, since the same number of product A is archived and lumped into product b at the end of the month.”

“That makes y=2.5x for B.” A third and final graph was sketched out with line A starting high and slightly increasing while line B started at the axis and climbed quickly.

That’s it. It just depends on the number of product A and product B to get a client’s revenue mix. So simple. We gave each other congratulatory high fives in honor of our intellect – or rather our ability to remember seventh-gade math. We quickly rang our manager, who was delayed at the airport, to give him our findings.

“That’s good. Our client will want to know that. But there’s one problem. We want to know about the revenue mix for the entire market, not just one client of theirs.”

Ugh. Our heads dropped at the same time. “But, it depends,” I tried to plea.

“It depends for a single case study, but we need to know where the market is.” It was no use, he was completely right.

I set back to my desk, fresh algebraic equations in hand, to work out some more numbers and try to get a sense of the market. There’s just no pleasing anyone in this line of work. That’s what is so frustrating some times. But then again, that’s why it’s fun and stimulating as well.

I’ve been enjoying my job for the past three months.

TX get ready...

I'm heading back in a little less than six hours now. Can't freakin' wait.