Travelblogging: Atlanta
So I went to Atlanta last week for yet another node install.
On the work part of the trip, the install was a mess. We ended up in a datacenter that made our sloppy cable-buildup over the last decade or so in the server room at work look absolutely solid pro. Had space issues and problems finding adequate power to run the whole node, and ran into mysterious network config issues including but not limited to a bad cable and a weird switch configuration, and the normally expected router hiccups. Think we were there a bit over 5 hours, which is close to our record longest.
The weather was pretty scuzzy, and one of the coworkers was meeting up with some family, so we ended up just kind of driving around the downtown Atlanta area in the rain and not really stopping or walking around at all. We did see quite a few people getting pulled over and/or arrested though… so there’s that. I’ve got some pictures of the scuzzy rainy drive over at the gallery.
The one interesting dining place we landed at was a seafood joint/bar called Spondivits. I had the “deluxe platter” (some regular crab legs, a couple king crab legs, half a lobster tail, a bunch of pretty big shrimp, and a handful of specialty-cooked oysters), which was impressive looking, respectably well-prepared, and filled me up pretty well for about what you’d expect to pay for a meal like that. Atmosphere wasn’t great (you know …. it was basically a so-so bar with a seafood menu), but had reasonably good service and pretty good food. Not sure I’d go back unless I was really hankering for some crab or something though.
Flight both ways was an Embraer ERJ-175, which has decent seat comfort and a decently high cabin for being a 2-2 layout plane. As a bonus, the flight attendant ad-hoc upgraded me to economy plus on the trip down, so I actually had enough legroom for a change… which was nice. IAD->ATL is a pretty short hop though.
Overall, I was sort of luke-cool on this trip, I guess. I wasn’t really feeling it. I think after better than a year or this and something like 8 trips down, I’m sort of burning out on this whole work travel gig. It’s kind of annoying, it eats up more than half of the week, and we don’t really get any opportunity to really get to know the cities we visit at all.
I’ve got one more trip to Houston slated to lift off in 6 hours, and probably another visit to Minneapolis sometime around December, or possibly the beginning of next calendar year, but I think that’s all we’ve got planned for now, so I’m kinda burning out on it at right about the right time I guess.