Alpharetta Day 3

At the end of the third day here, it becomes considerably less interesting. More classified conversations in which we endeavor to solve the problems of the company as reflected on the yearly employee surveys, and while there were some humorous comments, I don't remember any of them because there was just so much chatter throughout the day. It starts to drone out as the day goes on so that when it's all over, all you remember is a dial tone.

Lunch wasn't quite as cool today as it was yesterday. I don't think I mentioned before that yesterday, we had barbecue beef and/or chicken along with mac and cheese and pudding with nilla wafers. Talk about a dream lunch. Today was quite the opposite. We had beef and chicken along with something masquerading as a "salsa" which people refer to as a "corn salsa." This was corn tomatoes, onions, cilatro, etc. If we look up "salsa" in a Spanish-English dictionary, we find the definition is "sauce." I can guarantee you that this quasi-salad was in no way "sauce." I had some beef, some chicken, and a couple cookies. Yummy lunch.

For dinner, we went to the Cracker Barrel. A lot of people thouht it was silly for one of us wanting to go to the Cracker Barrel when they're all over the country, but one person had a preference, and the rest of us didn't care. However, it was quite good. I'd forgotten that Cracker Barrel had some really tasty biscuits. Our destination, however, brought up a funny story from one of our people (it was just the Tulsa people that went there).

Apparently, there was a program that was a code cracker of some sort, and as it was an internal program, someone just called it a cracker. Well, some member of upper management got ahold of this program and had a fit over the name indicating that the name was derogatory. Points to you if you know why someone would think "cracker" would be derogatory. Being a language guy, of course, I knew that one of the five or six definitions of cracker is derogatory.

Naturally, we all understood that a cracker in programming is something that break a code of some kind. A cracker is also one that can open a safe without knowing the combination - they're called safe crackers. There was even a Price Is Right game called Safe Cracker. A cracker is also a crispy, baked, yeast-free, bread product. A crack is a break in something, and by English rules, a "cracker" would be one that causes such a break.

But no, this person threw a fit because "cracker" is also a derogatory term for white people primarily used by the African American populace. What was sadder than this is that most of the other managers had no idea what she was throwing a fit about, and the derogatory form of the word had to be defined for them. It was just a name for a program used internally, so no one really cared in the end what they decided to call it, so they changed the name to appease this person, but really, it was a silly deference to a word.

The Queen and Princesses went swimming today, and I understand they had a lot of fun. Even Sassy Pants opened up and played freely in the pool at the Queen's grandparents' house. I got t talk to them earlier, and everyone sounded good.

Tonight is my last night in Alpharetta, and I'm looking forward to heading home. I did hit the fitness room for an hour tonight, and this time, I kept my heart rate down to a reasonable level (between 130 and 150) by doing a combination of running and walking. After all, I'm only trying to stay fit and burn the fat a bit so I stay healthy. I'm not training for the Olympics. No need to push myself to the breaking point trying to run 6mph for an hour. No, I was at 4 - 4.5 most of the time, which some 10 minute bursts to 5 and 6 here and there. It was nice.

Tomorrow, we wrap things up here and tour our data center which is in this area. We have a server that we call "the Atlanta server," and we et to see where that is housed. It'll be cool. The next time I write something on here, I'll probably be home.