Hilton Phase Two (Catering) #

Hilton HQ is based in Beverly Hills and this second phase of the project had a large number of Microsoft Employees working on this project. There were still a fair number of old M1/One, Inc employees there as well, that were offered full time employment by Hilton. It was great to reunite with old friends. The section of the project that I worked on was in the SQL Reports. There was a guy from the UK, I believe his name was Richard Blackwell, who wrote a book about working with SQL Reporting Services and in the back of the book was source code on building an engine within an application to leverage SQL Reporting Services. We were using his engine and he just happened to be on vacation in Southern California during this time so we invited him to the team. He worked with us at the Beverly Hills facility for a week or two and then continued working with us from the UK. There were 3 of us on this team and I did all the criteria pages and got to work on the easier reports while the other two guys worked on the more challenging reports.

I was not a first choice for this project I later learned, but the backup. The original guy could not get past the security and insurance requirements that were in place for outside vendors to work there. He was coming from a software consulting company that was not qualified and this situation really surprised the Microsoft Consultants that were working there that they even asked me about this. How was it that I as an outside independent was able to land this contract when contracting vendors could not. I then told them about when I was working on phase one of this project they were determined to get me on the project because I was working on a very critical part of the application that they helped me get in contact with the right insurance company that their legal and security department like and what kind of insurance to get. After we got that insurance we never let it lapse and kept going with it. That was why I was able to swoope in and land this contract directly with Hilton.

I was still living in Simi Valley at the time and there was a tester that also worked on the project and she lived in Simi Valley so we car pooled together and split the cost of the fuel. Allowed us to drive in the pool lanes but those did not help us that much. One of the things about Beverly Hills is that it is quite a ways from the freeway. This is one of the reasons you don’t hear of bank robberies in Beverly Hills, you have no were to run. Banks that are close to the freeway get robbed all the time as we have built a great system of escape routes for the robbers to take.

The work on the Hilton project only lasted about 4 or 5 months for me. Then it was time to start looking for my next employer.