This week I'm here in New York to meet with the media.  Since I wrote the artificial intelligence in The Political Machine (which recently won Editor's Choice from the top gaming publication) there is understandably some interest in how Bush and Kerry behave differently in the game versus real life.

Of course, since it's a game, there's a lot of differences. But that's for another discussion - one on TV that is.

But media tours are hectic affairs. My trip out here was long scheduled. Unfortunately, the VP debate this week and the Prez debate were only recently scheduled so many of my appointments got zapped. So no O'Reilly Factor or Hannity and Colmes appearance this time.

Tomorrow I get to meet with Sam Donaldson which is pretty cool. Then on Wednesday it's Good Day NY and Fox & Friends.  There will probably be some other things that pop up. But I can't help but be a bit disappointed that they werne't able to get more stuff booked up.  The VP debate really kind of screwed things up.

It's just that I really don't like traveling very much. It's not the plane trip itself. I have no problem flying. It's just the utter feeling of time wastage.  The hour spent in the air port before getting to the plane.  I broke my foot a couple of weeks ago and while I'm able to walk, it's still pretty tender. Going through air port security wasn't terribly fun.

Then when you get on the plane you sit on that plane for what seems like another 30 minutes to an hour before it even takes off.  And when you arrive you have another 15 to 20 minutes of sitting on the runway there.  The net result is that even a short flight such as Detroit to New York consumes the better part of a day.  My 1:30 flight means I need to be there at 12:30. Which means I need to leave around noon. I may get in as 3:00pm but by the time I get to the Taxi it's about 4pm and nearly 5pm when I get to my hotel. It's just incredibly inefficient.

And of course, I'm very conscious as to the other things I could/should have been doing. I've gotten some good resumes in that I need to go over. I am trying to get the new building purchasing stuff done. And there's a bunch of new software that needs to get out the door.

And while I like many things about our publisher, I sometimes get the impression that they have little respect for me or our company.  I don't feel like they appreciate that it's kind of a big deal for me to take 3 business days out for something that represents less than 4% of our company's revenue. The VP debates were scheduled only a couple weeks ago but that's still enough time to have reschedule the trip. But part of me wonders if they just didn't want to lose money on the tickets and hotel reservations or something.  I really like the guys I deal with at the publisher for the most part. Friendly and intelligent people. It's not them but rather the higher up people that I tend to get that unappreciated feeling from.

I think next time I'll insist on satellite uplinks.