Boston

Before I started my current project I have only had two trips to the Boston Area. In September of 1988 I went to Lexington, MA for Sun Microsystems SunOS 3.X System Administration training. I had moved from Syracuse, NY to Atlantic Highlands, NJ in June of 1988. At the time of the training class I had yet to take the train into New York so spending a week in the Boston area was a big deal for me. It was during this week that I attended my first Major League Baseball game at Fenway (Boston Red Sox vs. the Baltimore Orioles).

As far as I can tell Fenway is a great place to see your first game. At the time I was big NY Mets fan so I did not have to deal with Yankee guilt. The Yankees were going to be in town over the weekend and it was a big series between the two division rivals.

The week I spent in training was a great week. I had a car so I drove into Boston every night to eat dinner. The weather was just starting to move from Summer to early fall so it really showed off the Boston area in a positive light.

I thought I would have had more opportunities to return to Boston but all of my training classes were in other cities either in Baltimore or California. However, at the end of 1999 I joined Cambridge Technology Partners (CTP) and I attended a two week New Employee Orientation (NEO) located in 8 Cambridge Center (pictured above). However, this trip was not nearly as much fun. I had some reservations about working for CTP and I was planning on relocating back to the NY/NJ area from Charlotte, NC.

This will be the first project I have ever worked in Boston. I have worked on projects all over the US and I even managed one project that had resources in London, Tokyo, Sydney and Stamford, CT but I only traveled to London. This is also my first trip to Boston since the Big Dig was completed.

I forgot how much I liked Boston on my first trip there. For the most part it is a big college town with a large list of Universities and Colleges that are close to each other. Also, Boston appears to have been able to retain its older buildings while at the same time building the new buildings that are required to support a modern work force.

I have yet to go over the the Harvard side of Cambridge but I have walked around the MIT campus and I have explored the Back Bay neighborhoods. MIT is located in the more industrial side of Cambridge. In fact the last time I was in Cambridge the NECCO factory was almost on the MIT campus. On my first trip through the MIT campus this week I was looking for the new Frank Gehry designed building and I also wanted to get a picture of the NECCO factory. While I found the Gehry building I was disappointed to find the the NECCO had been relocated that old factory had been converted into a Big Pharma Research center.

I am staying in Cambridge again this week so I am going to make the walk over to the Harvard side.