...with other peoples time. (note to business contacts: Don't be offended by my grumbling. I'm a good soldier, but bitching is prime blog-fodder.) So I get to fly out for business today (Sunday). If I had flown out tomorrow morning I wouldn't have arrived until 11am. They want to start at 9am. I was also booked on a flight that leaves at 3pm with a 3 hour layover in Atlanta. The flight leaving at 8pm only has a 30 minute layover. Even if my time is worth nothing, we could have billed out 4 hours of my travel time tomorrow (weekday) , but only 2 hours of today's travel time. I understand the reason for business travel, but I rarely seem to see anyone acknowledge the costs to the traveler (except of course the traveler himself.) I happen to love my wife, my king-sized waterbed, and all the other stuff I'm leaving behind when I travel. There should be some incentive for doing it, like combat pay, or something. I'm sure good work is appreciated (or more likely expected), but my psyche is happier with a tighter/more concrete sacrifice->reward feedback loop. Normally when I book my own business travel, I'll tack on a vacation day or two to explore like my .Net Advisory Council meetings. That can actually make the trip seem fun. Also the 10th is our 4th ( Fruit/Flowers) wedding anniversary (the real one, not the sham we invited our friends & family to... but the handshake, kiss, and subsequent $3000 tax refund that marked the start of our commitment to each other. (PA still has common-law marriages... and no you don't have to live together for 7 years. Read the law ) With luck, things will be go well and I'll be able to come home early for it. Also, I at least know it can't be as bad as my first business trip 8 years ago, when I essentially re-coded the my entire project on-site (can import data from a network != a multi-user client/server database application.) Also with luck, I'll get to Houston tonight. I'm taking the later flight, but I'm on standby. I called Airtran and confirmed that there are plenty of empty seats... but it sure would suck to be stuck in ATL overnight.