It’s 4am in Billings Montana and I am stepping out the door of my hotel into the dark -10 degree morning. Today I am going down underground, and if I miss the 8am train down, I am SOL. On a good day, it’s 2 and a half hours to the mine, but today is not a good day. Today, is blowing snow and intermittent white outs.

It takes us three and a half to get there, in one of the more difficult journeys I’ve had in my travels. I watched an eighteen wheeler disappear into a cloud of white not thirty feet in front of me on I-90. Peace with God was made. We made it to the mine got our gear on and made the train just at the stroke of 8.

During the twenty-minute ride into the heart of the mountain, I pondered my objectives for this trip, run our first syncs underground, see how reliable the underground wireless access points are, and get the Surfaces in the hands of some real users. I am excited to give this sync procedure a spin in the real world. If you’re interesting in learning more about how I am managing the sync at a technical level, check out my deep dive into syncing here.

We spent the next 5 hours driving the endless tunnels of the mines in Kubota. The wireless access point had a surprisingly nimble internet connection, which is a huge relief.  Then came the all telling moment, put it in the hands of a miner, explain as little as possible on how to use it, and see what happens. It’s always amazing the things you write that seem to make perfect sense to you as the developer, but to everyone else in the world who didn’t write, have no idea what the hell it is you’re expecting them to do.  Things went well for the most part, users were able to get in and start trainings, recertifications, etc. Definitely some buttons and text that needs to be adjusted to be more intuitive, but for a cold hand off to a guy driving a mucker underground, a better than expected user test.

Now that we know we have a reliable pipeline for syncing data to and from the Surfaces underground, I want to work with the client to identify what other data would be useful to sync across devices. The file formats of their training materials run the gamut. PDFs, Word docs, Video, Powerpoints, Excel, anything goes with the training materials.

I gotta say, on only a few hours’ sleep, today was an exhausting day. The commute to the mine is about the equivalent of the commute from Seattle to Portland, but it is certainly an experience to be down where the action really is. To see the drilling, and bulldozing, and just how effing dangerous it is down there, validates that the software that I am building is important. Even better, I validated that it works, so we’ll chalk this day up as a hard-earned victory.

Below are a couple of videos of my journey, WARNING: IT IS VERY LOUD DOWN THERE!