Today through Thursday is the 2007 edition of the FAA’s SW/CEH DER Conference. You can follow the link if you really want to know more about it; basically it’s a technical conference for those of us who work with the FAA to approve aircraft equipment and software. Good times. This year, the conference is in New Orleans, LA. It’s my first time in New Orleans.

The trip was a bit of a pain; my flights were from Cedar Rapids to Dallas/Fort Worth, and then from DFW to New Orleans. The first leg of the flight left about 40 minutes late, but no worries, I had a long-ish layover at DFW. Well, that long-ish layover turned into a very long layover, because my flight to New Orleans, supposed to arrive in NOLA at 9:20 PM, didn’t leave DFW until 10:15 PM. It seems to be a recurring theme when I travel to these conferences; last year I was driving through downtown Atlanta at midnight to find the hotel, this year, through downtown New Orleans.

Day 1 of the conference is always rather boring; it’s a general session where we get updates on the progress of various industry committees and information on what the FAA’s doing. We got 45 minutes this morning on how they’re gonna be using some new tools to do more uniform safety analyses of aircraft programs…. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Tomorrow and Thursday are more interesting when there are topical break-out sessions.

I just finished lunch at Ugly Dog Saloon, recommended by Scott as the best BBQ in New Orleans. It was pretty tasty. Now I’m thinking I’m gonna skip the next couple committee updates and go walk through the Riverwalk area across the street. Tonight I’m meeting Scott and Jacob for dinner. Tomorrow night I guess I’ll go hit the French Quarter and try to hear some live music. Should be fun.