Flights were direct on USAirways/republic, out was on an embraer erj170, which is pretty good for seat space but not great for legroom. Return was on an erj145 (the 2-1 seat layout). Tiny seats and I couldn’t even pretend to stand up in the aisle, which had a clearance of maybe 5 foot 8, so I was practically crawling in it. Not something I intend to aim for…. I’ll stick to the 2-2′s in the future if I can.

Louisville itself was uneventful — we spent a lot of time onsite, and went to Buck Head’s again for one dinner (it was pretty good). Watched some curling. Really, not much to say there.

Right now I’m in Minneapolis. This is the first solo business trip I’ve taken, so I guess that’s a bit of a milestone. I’m on this trip to install a dev server on the site here, so it should be pretty easy.

Flying in out and back are all southwest, via midway. I was initially uneasy about flying Southwest, because of the no-assigned-seating thing (fearing a long line-up and a big free-for-all scrum), because of the whole we-only-fly-737s thing (they spec out as having some of the smallest seats in US airframes), and because of the very recent, very salient, very relevant-feeling Kevin Smith “too fat to fly” episode. I’ve been sort of yo-yoing in the 350-360 range pretty much since the days got short… something like seasonal depression or something I guess.

Well, it turns out that so far, so good. You do online check-in on southwest, and get into it fairly early, and you end up in the A group and find a place to sit. Flying in the middle of the week, middle of the day, seemed like both flights so far were running between 1/2 and 2/3 full, so all the middle seats were open, and while the seats are certainly no 777 seats, they’re also not as bulky as big modern seats, so the seats themselves don’t take as much space as the seats on a lot of other planes. I was actually, just barely, comfortable on both the trip from IAD to Midway and from Midway to MSP. Nobody gave me crap about being big, and with the open space I could pretty easily spread out after takeoff. So that was cool, I guess.

Anyway, so now I’m chillin in a Fairfield literally across the parking lot from Mall of America. I wandered around there tonight to find food (ended up just grabbing a slice at Sbarro). Mall of America is almost surreal … it’s definitely pretty huge, but other than the massive surplus of materialism, the most striking thing I noticed was the food courts. Every one of the standard-issue mall type food court spots was waving samples at everyone walking by. It’s such a buyer’s market getting cheap food on a weeknight, you could hit the two courts sampling and leave full without spending a dime. It’s also kind of a trip how they have like 3 or 4 roller coasters (including one that looks pretty goddamned intense) right in the middle of the mall, where most malls put the food court. To say nothing of the store with the 9 foot tall vases. I wish I had brought my camera on this trip.

Oh, also, Minneapolis in February…. not really a good idea. Just saying. It’s pretty bitter now that I’m acclimated to the mild winters of temperate Maryland.

Right, so … tomorrow onsite, then tomorrow night red-eyeing it back to dulles (again via midway). Might follow up the post, might not.

Per usual, I’ve got some pics from around Houston up in the gallery. It was good times. I think the coolest thing about this trip was probably that there’s this pretty unique motif for the streets, which centers around stainless steel and sort of futuristic-looking decorations. So like, in part of the city, all of the light posts are mirror-polished stainless steel, all of the street signs are suspended mirror-polished rings, etc. It’s pretty neat.

For food, we hit one place in the Galleria mall itself: a Japanese Fusion restaurant called Kona Grill. I had a chicken dish, which was like ideally cooked and just ridiculously delicious. Coworkers had slightly different dishes, but generally the same reaction: that place makes a pretty respectable dinner. As a bonus, we had a waitress named Pepper, who was like ridiculously cute, but I think stretched a little thin on the tables she was covering.

We also hit a place a block or two down called Maggie Rita’s. Predictably, they’re a mexican/tex-mex place. We all got fajitas, and they were great… but I can’t think of a time I’ve had bad fajitas. Tortillas were a bit inconsistent though … I think you probably get better tortillas at places like Guapo’s around here or Pappasito’s in Texas. Still, I was satisfied.

JW Marriott hotels have kind of a weird room layout compared to a normal Marriott, I learned. I’m not sure how I felt about it, but it wasn’t bad. Probably a bit better on the bedroom area privacy (couldn’t hear hall-goers and no beds on shared walls), but overall I didn’t care too much, since I was there to sleep.

Not too much eventful to report about the flights. Flew American Airlines, MD Super-80′s all four hops (IAD->DFW->IAH, back the same route). I’m not a fan of the super-80 or the md80/md88 setup in general, but the flights were at least on-time and largely annoyance-free. Three of the four had in-flight wireless, but it was like $14, so I didn’t partake. Per usual, got back right in time to catch the peak hour or so of Friday evening rush hour, which wasn’t a great time. I finished reading Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers on the flight there. Thought it was stellar, but I don’t really feel like writing a book review, so … yeah, it’s good, and definitely recommended!

Anyway, that’s it for that…

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.

The flight out sucked about as much as expected. We flew United out of Dulles. Outbound, it was a 757, complete with miserable 17 inch seats with no damned legroom at all. Very uncomfortable until the person sitting next to me found a seat where she could talk with her husband, so I got to spread out a bit which made life a bit happier for all parties involved.

The flight back was on a 777, which was exciting. That’s a damned nice plane, let me tell you now. Seats are wide enough for me, belts are big enough to accommodate someone a fair bit bigger than me (versus the 757 and older jets that I just about max out). Headroom to spare, adequate legroom even in economy. It was a good experience. The 777′s takeoff is gentle, and the landing is really smooth…. you could barely tell we touched down, no big jerk or impact sound like smaller jets get. And the cruising speed…. with our ~50mph tailwind for better than half the trip, we were cruising in the 600mph ground speed range at 39000 feet. It was pretty awesome. It’s also neat that it’s just as ridiculously huge as it is. If you get the choice between other Boeing jets that currently exist or a triple-7, my recommendation is the 777, hands down.

Wednesday dinner was nothing special, went out to the Applebees near the Denver Airport Marriott. Hotel had reasonably good free wireless, friendly service, nice decor, but a sort of lower-middle-tier concierge lounge offering. Didn’t get a chance to check out the exercise facilities though. Interestingly, that hotel is sort of out in the middle of nowhere, in a little campus that’s basically 5 or 6 hotels, maybe two other commercial buildings, and a couple restaurants. I guess there’s other residential stuff nearby, but it definitely felt a bit desolate.

Thursday, after the install, we went to downtown Denver and hung out there for a while, ate at a restaurant called Racine’s. Pro tip: if you order the “Mile High Nachos” there, make sure that you’re splitting them with at least one other person (probably more), and that the only other thing you order is beverages. They are literally like a foot and a half tall, just a mountain of nachos and toppings. Rest of their food was pretty decent — we all had southwestern-type fare, but it was hard to appreciate after filling up pretty much entirely on the nachos.

Denver and Aurora (Co) are interesting. Downtown Denver is basically as built-up as cities get. Even fairly late, it seemed like there was a good amount of life on the streets, like people were out and about and there were things to do… like it was a walkable/drivable/bikeable city with lots of mixed-use sorts of areas that just totally vitalize a city. I liked it, thought it was a neat setup… and it’s apparently REALLY bike-friendly. Like, there’s cyclists freaking EVERYWHERE. It pretty much felt like the diametric opposite of Phoenix, which was a ghost town after 6 pm even in very comfortable weather.

The other interesting counterpoint to Denver’s presence of night life is Aurora, and the associated Denver suburbs. They’re basically the textbook definition of suburban sprawl, the very antithesis of urban life. It definitely didn’t feel close, or walkable, at all. Definitely very …. separated, and much more sparse.

The other interesting thing about them is that those cities are sort of right on the edge of the rockies. They’re not quite mountain cities, inasmuch as they’re relatively flat, but out east of them there’s nothing _but_ flat, and out west of them there’s well-defined mountains all over the place. Sorta neat, I guess… it makes it hard to lose your bearings. Confused where you’re facing? Find the mountains!

We didn’t really go out and do much outside of driving around, so I don’t really have much more to say about it. The airport’s main terminal is a neat design, and there’s some other pretty cool architecture and scenery around, which are worth looking at. And solar panels in surprising quantity. But yeah, the trip was pretty ordinary. I’d definitely go back and try to find stuff to do if I had a week or two out there though.

On the flight out, I read about half of Terry Pratchett’s “Carpe Jugulum”. It was pretty good… finished the rest up Saturday or Sunday night (don’t remember which). It’s fairly standard Discworld fare, but if you’re into that, it’s pretty good. Also picked up “Outliers” on the way out, but haven’t had a chance to crack it open yet.

At some point I’ll post some pics from the trip, but … for now, nothing, ’cause of the lazy. HaHA!

So this trip, we went to Houston. Having seen Dallas before, I’m somewhat compelled to make direct comparisons. Both Houston and Dallas are absurdly sprawled-out. There’s literally miles of open space between anything and anything else… having access to a car is NOT optional in Texas.

Houston seems a little “greener” than Dallas, from what I was seeing. At least, it seemed like it was home to a little bit more foliage and a little less sandy soil, but overall I’m guessing it’s probably not a whole lot different climate-wise.

In downtown Houston, we got dinner at this place called Cabo, which was apparently like 2 blocks from the hotel Kennedy stayed in the night before he was killed, or something like that. Cabo itself had pretty excellent food, looked like they specialized in tex-mex style seafood, but the service was pretty crap all around.

Downtown Houston is fairly nice, with an interesting trolley/light rail system that serves a decent chunk of the city, and a couple of interesting sights, but there’s a lot of one-way street action, and a lot of weird signage and weird traffic rules near the trolley. We didn’t get to see a whole lot of the sights or wander around at all, because right when we finished dinner it started absolutely POURING. By the time we got back to the hotel we were under a tornado watch, that progressed to a warning by the mid evening.

We also went north, still in what I think is considered Houston, but was really just sprawled out suburban space north of the airport. Caught a restaurant called Pappasito’s, which apparently has locations all over Texas, and one north of Atlanta. Excellent food, great Fajitas especially. Everyone was pretty happy with it… so yeah, highly recommended. Service was good too.

On the airports front, Houston International Airport is nicer than DFW for aesthetics, but not as stylized as Phoenix Sky Harbor or as airy as Dulles. The layout’s a bit odd, and the security line sucked more than Dulles security, but it was ok.

Atlanta International Airport blows, though. It’s basically a long linear building with all the different terminal areas in a straight line, front and back of the building, with the runways and taxiways all on one side of it. So when you land, you end up taxiing for like 20 minutes to get to your gate, it seems like. The decor isn’t as bad as DFW, but isn’t particularly inviting either.

For the flight info, we did two hops both times. Dulles to Atlanta, we rode a Canadair CRJ-900, which is relatively tiny, a 2-2 layout with a total of about 60 seats. Seats were on the smaller side at 17.5 width 31 pitch, but the middle arm flips up, getting an inch or two extra if your seatmate’s not also a large person like me. The Atlanta->Houston jump was an MD88, which is a bit larger but the seating frankly blows (17 inch width, 30 inch pitch). I got moved to an empty row to get some extra space, but was between the engines and couldn’t see out the windows as a result.

The trip back, both hops were on MD90′s, which are basically MD88′s with the layout reversed. Same deal on the seating: it blows, but can be alleviated a bit by flipping up the armrests. No legroom for someone my size, but probably fine for someone smaller. The MD90 had the added bonus of tv screens that flip down from above the seats, and I guess you can catch the audio for them from your armrest, but I didn’t really care to.

The return trip, both our original flight and the connection were delayed pretty heavily by the same weather system that prevented us from exploring or doing interesting stuff, and by the replacement of a malfunctioning sensor, so I got to spend a LOT of time waiting around in both IAH and ATL. Wasn’t particularly fun, let me just say.

The install itself went decently. Not too great, but not too terrible either. We were pulling out old equipment and putting in new stuff, but even though it was a square-hole netapp rack, the depth was set too shallow to use the Dell rapid rails. We worked around it with cage nuts and rack-mountable shelves and some netapp custom rails for the storage arrays, and arrived at a better end than we did back in Phoenix, but … there’s always something, you know? Also, a Netapp standard rack is slightly too shallow to comfortably accommodate dell poweredge 1950′s with infiniband cables sticking out the back, unless you put the curved front door on the back or leave it open.

I tell you, there’s always something.