Back from the Conference

Did you miss me, O Vast Readership?

We left for Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon. The trip down was uneventful, until we got off the interstate and tried to find the hotel. Construction made things more complicated, but we were able to navigate to the hotel without too much of a challenge.

The conference went well -- I presented on Wednesday afternoon, and got some good questions. I went to a number of interesting talks, a number of boring talks, met some new people, and caught up with longtime friends. I talked to a lot of people about a lot of different things, including load balancing, high-performance computing education, and the latest gossip from my old department. I made some new contacts -- staff members at other labs, professors at various universities, and students who will soon become colleagues.

We were planning to spend today at the Atlanta Zoo or the Aquarium, but the inclement weather made us change our plans. Last night it was extremely stormy -- a tornado damaged a large piece of downtown, 10-15 blocks south of where we were staying -- and more storms were supposed to arrive by 11 a.m. So we headed home this morning, driving through some heavy rains, but making it home safely in the early afternoon.