Alpharetta Wrap-Up

So the trip is over, and I made it home in one piece, though not fully without incident. On the morning of the 18th, we went to see where all the servers were housed, and it was actually really, really interesting just how much redundancy they build into places like this. They apparently haven't had the servers go 100% down since 1988 (I believe).

It works like this: there are power stations on both side of the two buildings that house these servers. One station feeds to one building and one feeds to the other, but in the event that a station goes down, the building who loses it will draw power from the other side. If they lose power altogether, there are huge batteries in the basements that will power the building for roughly 30 minutes until the main backup generators kick in. They will kick in in about 30-90 seconds, so 30 minutes is a lot of redundancy to begin with. There are thousands of gallons of diesel stored under these buildings, so these generators can run for a little over a week on generator power to allow time for the power to come back on. Pretty impressive, in my opinion.

I learned that with servers of this magnitude, the hard drives are not stored inside the machines, but they get their own rack. The servers link together for more power and speed and access the hard drives which can be individually removed and or replaced as needed, since there are multiple backups of everything. The floors that we walked on were not the base of the floor itself as vents pushed air up through the floor to cool these beasts and miles of cables also ran in the spaces under our feet.

The control center for these servers that show error messages and that sort of things looks like a NASA control room out of a space movie. Monitors are everywhere, and people just sit there and stare at them...waiting for something to happen.

Following the tour, we made our way to the airport, and got there is no time flat. This allowed plenty of time for us to wait in line at the ticket counter and then wait in line at the security check. I really have no qualms with the security thing. It doesn't annoy me or make me crazy. I don't find it invasive in the least, though they ended up sending both my carry on and personal item through twice because the machine "cut it off". Oh well.

The hop from Atlanta to Dallas was uneventful and almost early. It missed being early because the previous flight was leaving late. Hm... This was a harbinger of what was to come. Our flight to Tulsa was supposed to leave at 5:20 which would put us in at 6:24. That didn't happen. We checked the time and it was delayed thirty minutes. So we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And finally around 6:00, we started...BOARDING. That flight had left late from wherever it had come from so it was late getting in and once we were on board, we sort of figured out why. You see, I was coordinating with the Queen on when I was getting there so she could pick me up and we could do our weekly dinner with my parents and siblings. Well, as we were waiting on the plane even longer, we hear this little (paraphrased) announcement: "Ladies and genetlemen, sorry about the delay this evening. We're having a little problem with a liner in the rear baggage compartment, and it's giving us some trouble in shutting the door. We're moving some things around and got it closed, but our center of gravity is off, so we're not going to be able to take off until we get our numbers lined up. We'll let you know as soon as we have it taken care of so we can take off." Or something like that.

Anyway, about 6:25 or so, we finally backed out of the gate and took off. The flight was uneventful and smooth from there, and I think I spotted the Red River (the border between Texas and Oklahoma) from the plane's window. That was neat.

So I got back without any major problems and only one delay, and did see the family that evening. Not sure if I'll participate in the group that took me to Georgia the last couple years again, because it always causes considerable consternation among the Queen and Princesses. I've found that I can be a bit of a homebody after a time, and don't like to go that far away. The time in Alpharetta was ok. The fitness center had a good treadmill that I couldn't break and I ran every night, but that hardly substitutes for home.

It is good to be back.

Complete iPod Randomness

So I'm not home yet, but this was just an observation as I listen to my iPod through the computer. I was going through the list of songs I hadn't heard yete since around April 9th, and sorted it by length to see the longest one. The longest song was called "Better Man" by Oasis and has a run time of 38:03.

I thought to myself, "there's no way an Oasis song is 38 minutes long." I mean, Oasis is cool, but they don't do long songs. Their max is usually around 5 minutes, so I suspected a "hidden track." Now, these hidden tracks worked ok when we were doing CDs and it was the last track and we forgot to stop the disc when it was done. But now we're in digital content, and while we can sometimes forget about it playing, I rarely play albums in song order. Not only that, but my iPod can literally go for weeks non-stop, so hitting a sudden 30 minutes of total silence between the two songs on this 38 minute track only makes me momentarily wonder if there's something wrong with my iPod. It's just not cute or cool anymore.

Now, I'll have to go home, extract this one song, load into my MP3 mixer, cut it into two songs, and figure out what that instrumental thing they did is supposed to be called, other than "Untitled Track." Or I might just tell the iPod to stop playing the track after the 3 minute song that was at the top of the track. Who knows? I will probably forget about it by tomorrow anyway till it crops up again.

Oasis isn't the only one that did this to me. Third Day plugged an actual song at the end of a long track that's mostly silence, and at the end of "Be", Pain of Salvation pulled an 11 second "joke" at the end of a 5 minute track where the opening part of the track is all of 30 seconds long, if that.

Oh well, such is life in the digital age.. You just can't appreciate the gags of yesteryear.

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.

Alpharetta Day 2.3

With my second night in the fitness center, I thought I would try and push myself a little harder. Last night, I ran in ten minute increments, and then stopped for a minute to get a drink. I did this for about 40-45 minutes before calling it a night. Tonight, I ran for 40 minutes straight. Did 6 mph for 10 minutes, then 5 mph for 30. Of course, after I checked my heart rate there at the end when I started walking at 3 mph, I found I probably should have slowed down at 30 minutes instead of 40. My heart rate was at 174 when I started walking and my high rate, according to the chart on the machine, shouldn't be over 152. I think the max heart rate for my age is around 184.

So I walked for twenty minutes to let my heart settle down, and it finally did. I have a good, low working heart rate for that last twenty. Don't know what I'll do tomorrow. I really am more for the low "fat-burning" heart rate than the high cardio one. I guess I'll try to keep it down.

On another, more interesting note. When I was running, some guy came in and worked out on an elliptical machine. I was still running when he left. After that, a guy who had walked and run on the treadmill next to me came in again tonight. It's almost like I found a work out buddy. Yeah, almost. He came in after I was at the 45 minute mark, so I left before he even started running tonight. I also noticed the treadmill stops you at 60 minutes for a cool down. I was done anyway, but it was amusing.

So after a workout and a shower, I feel much better about that chocolate torte. Mmm, that was yummy... And guilt-free too.

Alpharetta Day 2.2

So it's after dinner, and I got to talk to the Queen and the Princesses. I was very happy to hear their voices. I miss them quite a bit. Thursday night won't come soon enough. I'm getting ready at this point to run downstairs to the fitness center to run for 45 minutes or so to work off the rather awesome dinner I had. Oh yeah, I found something on the menu other than a hamburger.

I had a 10 oz. Top Sirloin with garlic mashed potatoes. I skipped the salad, though. The steak was well done and very, very good, even without the steak sauce, which I added once I had a few bites. The garlic mashed potatoes were made in house and had just the right amount of garlic so you could taste it, but it wasn't overwhelming.

Now, for dessert, when the guy asked the first time, everyone was saying, "no thank you," and being all good about taking it easy on the intake. Then one person ordered a New York style cheesecake with raspberry topping followed by the guy next to her ordering a mini sundae "so she wouldn't be all alone." Well, that led to someone else ordering a key lime pie, followed by another sundae or two, and then some more pie anad cheesecake. Finally, I decided "what the heck, I never get dessert," so I ordered St. Barth's Chocolate Torte. This was a French style chocolate cake served hot with chocolate fudge drizzled on it with a side of vanilla ice cream, also with the fudge. The guy on the other side of me (the one who didn't get the mini sundae) stared at this sweet monstrosity and made comments like, "look at the size of that!" and "there must be over a thousand calories in that thing!" Heh, that's what she said.

Anyway, it was really, really good, and I don't regret a bite. I've got a high metabolism and I'm going to run anyway, so none of it is going to stick with me. I told the Queen about it, and she hated me...but in a good way.

Tomorrow, after the meetings, there is no dinner planned, and the way people were talking, it sounds like an "on your own" kind of evening, so I'll probably walk around here and see what the Walgreen's has in store for me.

Oh, and the unanswered question from yesterday... It turns out the connection here is room based. I called it up tonight and it hit the hotel screen commanding me to agree to their terms. I tried my Linux VM and it did the same thing, so I confirmed it through the Linux system, and all is well. Well, mostly. There's an irritant going on at the moment. I have the computer plugged in (since it's wired in the rooms), and even though I'm plugged in, the connection keeps dropping. They claim it's 50 times faster than dial up, but I beg to differ. First, my download last night was about a sixth of the speed at home, and second, when it won't stay connected, the speed is 0.

It just autosaved again...finally. I guess I don't suspect the network cable itself, but the overall connectivity. After all, I'm in the time frame at the moment when I'm sure everyone in the building is on, and they probably don't have the bandwidth for the full tilt usage, which would explain the slow download yesterday despit the fact that it's a cable internet connection, which is faster than DSL. I'd probably better post before I lose the connection again.

Alpharetta Day 2.1

So there's not a lot of time at the moment to write much since I'm in a waiting pattern before heading to the restaurant for dinner. It's called the Village Tavern and is so close to the office here that it is pointless to head back to the hotel first. I had a look at the menu before leaving Tulsa, and it's all very hoity toity in its selections, so finding something for a plain and dry guy won't be easy since they fluff up pretty much every dish.

The meeting was a day long of jabber, as the rest of the days will be as well. There isn't a whole lot to report from the meeting since we have the "Vegas Rule" in these meetings, meaning that "what is spoken in this room stays in this room." We don't spread it around or let it out, since we can talk about anything and the HR rep just closes her ears to it. Hence, the day was amusing and informative, but there isn't much to say about it.

I'll chatter more about it all later once I get back from dinner, but I figured I'd drop something now while I had a couple moments, just so the Queen and the Princesses had something to look at. I do miss you all over there, and I'll probably give you a call later. I'm an hour ahead, so I should be able to get with you before bedtime. Love you.

Alpharetta Day 1

So it's that time of year again, although earlier than last year. And this year, I have a computer to actually keep in touch with, so I can post what's going on at least daily.

The morning started early, as you might expect. The flight was scheduled to leave at 1015, which means get there around 815 or 830 to get all checked in and settled before boarding at 945. Unlike last year's, this year I didn't have a direct connect flight. Instead, it jumped through Dallas and onto Atlanta from there. The first flight was really really short. The itenerary says an hour and ten minutes, but they include the entire from taxi out to taxi in. I was hoping to watch most of a movie, but all told, I got maybe 30 minutes of view time out of that 70 minutes, if that. Yeah, leave it to me to complain that the flight was too short for me.

Anyway, something interesting on that flight was that I think I was sitting over or near the landing gear. Now, if you've been on a plane, you know when the landing gear goes up and down. It's that load clunk noise that makes you think the bottom has fallen out of the airplane. When the landing gear went down this time though, I heard the loud rush of air outside as the plane was descending. That was a bit wild.

I would also like to add that this flight did not have the standard stewardess intro where they show off the seat belts and try on the oxygen mask. No, we got to watch a video showing that. That was different. We also had a celebrity pilot. Jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker was the captain on my first flight.

When we hit Dallas (I was traveling with 4 others from my office in Tulsa), we had time to get something to eat before heading onto the connecting flight at 1245 (read, 1215 to board). I did not have a lot of cash to bring for food and such, so when I saw a McDonald's in the airport, I figured I'd get off cheap there if I hit the dollar menu and got a water to drink. Hm... Well, the McDouble from my local dollar menu was 1.39 there and the "small fries" is actually a medium because they don't have small. ?! The medium fries cost more than the sandwich and they hit me for 3.77 for a McDouble, medium fries and a water. I glanced at the prices of the value meals and figured I did pay less for my overpriced burger.

On the second flight, I had a little bit of a problem. You see, the overhead bins are sized to be about as deep as the maximum carryon size or the height of a rolling suitcase. This also happens to be the width of three seats...or thereabouts by my observations. Well, apparently, when there are only two seats on one side of the plane, the overhead bins are resized accordingly, though they should theoretically hold two of these rolling cases end to end, and that would work...if there was one overhead bin per seat set. In fact, it works out to maybe one per one and a half rows.

What does all this mean? Well, they wisely set up the boarding in seating groups, starting at the back of the plane and working their way to the front. I was in seat 8B, exactly one row in on the coach section. This means out of six groups, I was in group six. This also meant that everyone else who wasn't sitting in my row has taken the space in my row's overhead bin. My suitcase was in the overhead bin on row 26. It took me a little while to disembark.

And how about the prices of food on the plane? Wow, do they not want to sell that stuff or what? Seriously. I think they had Grandma's chocolate chip cookies (that you buy at Wal-Mart for 50 cents) for $3, and a bag of Cheese nips (also 50 cents at Wal-Mart) for $4! Yeah, no one else saw anyone buy cookies either. But we did have our second celebrity pilot. The first officer was our second president, John Adams. Still flying after over two hundred years...of being dead. He didn't say much...

After we landed in Atlanta, we grabbed the checked luggage for those that checked and headed out to get the rental. Since there are five of us, we were getting a van. Now, I asked about getting some corvettes (it would take three, and I would drive the third one myself if I had to) or maybe a Hummer, but in the end, we got the van (of course). Now, it's a nice little Honda Odyssey, so it's not like we got a Bum-V (Butt Ugly Mini Van...yeah, I made that up on the spot while we were talking about the vehicle), but it also isn't the coolest rig on the lot.

Now what I'd really like at this point is for my network cable to stay plugged in. I grabbed a cable from home before I left, but what I failed to notice is that this cable is missing the tabs to keep it plugged in. So it doesn't lock in place. This means that it unplugs itself if I type for too long and shake the laptop slightly here and there. It's a pretty stable laptop, so it isn't shaking much. But I've had to fix it three times while typing this post. This means that the Skype session with the Queen later will be really interesting.

Anyway, while heading out in the bum-v, we only got lost once (as I understand it...I was watching a movie and killing my iPod's battery). And it was only once because the person riding shotgun pulled out her iPhone and got the GPS going to get us where we needed to go.

We got to Alpharetta somewhere in the vicinity of one person's hotel. For some reason 4 of us are in one hotel and 1 loner is in another. She knew we were close to her hotel, so we had dinner at Ruby Tuesday's. I had a burger. I also learned that I'm not alone in my picky, plain and dry palette. Someone else in our group oreder one plain and dry. Not only that, he says the phrase hoity toity in reference to food with lots of "decoration" on it. When I said it, he was surprised. I wasn't aware it wasn't a common phrase.

Leaving the restaurant, we needed to find person 1's hotel, so we drove the wrong way out of the mall area where the Ruby Tuesday's was, and did a u-turn in a parking before heading back out. Following the GPS, they found the La Quinta Inn...it was the parking lot we'd u-turned in only moments before. We had entered it from the back. D'oh...

We got her unloaded and headed over to our place of residence until Thursday. The story gets shorter from here. We checked and I got the internet working, Skype installed, and here I am.

The only final comment is in regards to logging into the hotel's net connection. This was funny. Everything I'd read said the connection was free in the rooms. Even the flyer next to the modem here says it's free. When you sign in, it implies that there is a cost to use...although it doesn't say how much. I signed in and all is well for now. We'll see about the one day free thing later. Maybe it refreshes daily or something. The funny part was this: I decided to pull up my virtual box to see how Linux would behave. After all, it was a different amchine logging into the same connection. Linux went right to the net without going through the hotel's splashpage website.

I can think of two explanations for this. Either the connection is driven from the central server that assigns addresses to each room and once I agree to the connection, it was agree for the room regardless of the computer that logs in. Or the connection is assuming that most people will use Windows (or even Mac) and doesn't have a Linux provision.

After considering it, it is probably the former, and loading Linux tomorrow will yield their little splash screen asking me to agree to the terms. They probably reset nightly. If I get the screen to agree to the terms tomorrow, though, I'll it the Linux machine first...just to see.