Chris​Hubbs​.com

OK, so bad travel plans notwithstanding, I made it to Denver on-time on Monday evening. Tuesday was spent in an all-day FAA DER Recurrent General Training class (boring), and today and Thursday I’m attending the National Software and Airborne Electronic Hardware Conference. It’s sponsored by the FAA and NASA Langley Research Center, and there are some really interesting topics if you’re into safety-critical airborne software. Which, I know, none of you reading this are. :-) So enough about the conference.

Haven’t really seen much of Denver yet, though I may atone for that this evening and travel about. I’ve just got too many things on my to-do list for this week. Sermon prep for Saturday, new Conversation Cafe website (now branded Topics On First - check it out! - but it’s still the beta version of the site), planning orders of service for the fall, updating church bylaws and membership covenants… so much to do, so little time.

Denver is a little bit frustrating, location-wise, because you think you’re in Colorado, there should be mountains… but there aren’t really any mountains in Denver. You can see them off in the distance, but they’re still too far away to get to without some more serious time driving than I’ll have. Oh well. Maybe one of these summers we can hit them for a vacation again.

Well, lunch hour is almost over so it’s time to head back to the conference. Good times.

So today was the day I finally ventured outside the good ‘ol US of A; traveling to Montreal, Quebec for the next round of SC-213 meetings. No big details, pictures, or etc so far, but it was nice to actually have decent travel this time around. The flights were more or less on time, the lines were short, the rental car big enough (the PT Cruiser has an amazing amount of leg and head room!) and the hotel comfortable.

Now it’s just after midnight and I’m sitting up too late working on an andrewosenga.net redesign. I finally got the layout working more or less how I want it… now it’s time to make it pretty. Well… that can wait until tomorrow.

This week has brought me to Augusta, GA for the quarterly SC-213 meeting. The inevitable first question/comment I’ve gotten from friends when I say Augusta is “did you take your golf clubs along?” So as a preemptive strike: no, I don’t play golf. I’ve never hit a ball in my life. Yes, I know they have some fancy course here where they play some tournament every spring. I even know that a guy from Cedar Rapids happened to win that tournament last year. But it doesn’t mean I’m gonna be playing it in my spare time. :-) I will probably drive by it at some point just to have done so.

You don’t want to read the litany of my travel travails; suffice it to say that Monday I was scheduled to get into Augusta (including drive from the Columbia, SC airport and everything) by about 6 pm - I ended up getting in about 10:30 pm. Not so much fun.

Yesterday was the first day of meetings, and it was fairly useful. Last night I was looking for something to do and noticed in the paper that the local ECHL hockey team (the Augusta Lynx) was playing at home. The arena was only six blocks away, so I headed over, bought a ticket, and watched my first hockey game in some time. The game was poorly-attended (maybe 300 present) and the local team gave it a good effort against the first place Texas Wildcatters, but took too many penalties and couldn’t seem to pull the trigger and shoot the puck on the few power plays they had. Final score: Texas 3, Augusta 1. (As a side note: I went to look up the Wildcatters to find out where they are located in Texas; their team website actually didn’t say, any place that I could find. Poor website content. The ECHL site tells me they are in Beaumont, TX.)

So now I’m eating breakfast and getting prepared for another day of meetings reviewing this document my committee is creating. Good times.

Business has brought me this week to Oklahoma City, square in the middle of the Sooner state. I’ve been to the Tulsa area many times (my grandparents having lived in Collinsville for twenty years), but while I’ve driven through OKC on I-35 a multitude of times, I don’t recall ever having stopped; certainly I’ve never stayed here overnight. So it’s like visiting a new place, which I really enjoy - a chance for observations, to learn a new city.

My first impression of OKC was at the airport. I like the OKC airport. It appears to be fairly new, is large, open, airy, and bright. It’s a fair bit larger than my home port of Cedar Rapids, but not immense; twenty-some gates and a three-story parking garage. It was only a short walk through the terminal to the Hertz desk to pick up my key, then a short stroll to the parking structure to my car (a Toyota Corolla, very nice). The Hertz #1 Club Gold, letting me skip the paperwork and head straight to the car, is worth every penny.

Shortly after leaving the airport, I ran into the seemingly inevitable road construction. In this case, the construction is on Meridian Ave, the main drag that heads north out of the airport and up to I-44 and my hotel. This trimmed a four-lane highway down to two rather narrow lanes, and made the waits at traffic lights frustratingly long. Still, the trusty Never-Lost GPS system in the car got me within visual distance of the hotel before announcing “You have arrived.”, and I could handle it from there.

My next impression of OKC came from the hotel that the Federal Aviation Administration selected for our training this week: the Clarion Meridian Hotel and Convention Center. The hotel seems to be a microcosm of the city as a whole, trying to move forward from the dusty, tired, and worn trappings of the old oil and ranch business into the technology of the twenty-first century. The hotel dates to probably the 1970’s. It was originally all exterior-entry rooms, but some time later in an attempt to upgrade an additional hallway was built outside the room doors, allowing for climate-controlled access to the hotel lobby from the rooms. The room itself has had fresh paint and sports two 25-inch televisions with local cable, but it’s still obviously a remodel and the layout just isn’t quite right.

Driving through the city the past couple of nights I have seen the same contrasts; on one side, dusty, dated businesses feeling like the older southwest of the 70’s and 80’s; on the other side, a trendy, new city whose Dell Computer campus gives you another reason to compare it to Austin, TX. My restaurant choices thus far have been limited to the “new” side of things; I ate at a “grill and brewhouse” on the north side of town tonight that was very tasty. I might still be tempted to try an older steakhouse tomorrow night… I guess I’ll see what sounds good when my class has wrapped up.

The instructor at our class today told us he’s lived in Oklahoma for most of his life. He described OKC as “a great place to live, and an OK place to visit.” Now, when the Oklahoma tourism folks originally created the “Oklahoma is OK” slogan, I’m guessing they weren’t intending the suggestion of mediocrity that our instructor gave us, but after being here two days I’m thinking he’s closer to the truth. In many ways, the situation that OKC finds itself in reminds me of my home state of Iowa; a good, solid midwestern state, a good place to raise a family, a place struggling to find its way beyond its agricultural roots into technological opportunities. Not a super-exciting place to visit, but that’s OK. It’s a lot less hassle than the more exotic destinations, too. For this traveler, this week, Oklahoma is, indeed, OK.

It’s 8 AM in Seattle and this hotel restaurant is a pretty comfortable place to sit and write.  The in-room web access doesn’t seem to be working, but the wi-fi in the lobby works just fine, so I can sit here and catch up on news and email whilst eating from the voluminous breakfast buffet.    It’s fairly cloudy and cool this morning, but there’s the threat of sunshine this afternoon, which would be nice.

I’m in town to support a meeting with a customer, but it still leaves me with most of the morning (the meeting doesn’t start until 11) and a good portion of the afternoon (the meeting is over by 2 or so) free.  Couldn’t manage to get a flight back home tonight on short notice, so I"ll be leaving on the early (5:45) flight in the morning.  Such fun.

This is my third trip to Seattle, and I really do enjoy the area.  So beautiful with the mountainous terrain, all the water, and I just adore the cool weather.  After the meetings today I’m planning on heading downtown to the Pike Place Market; for sure a tourist location, but it’s been recommended by a couple friends so I guess I’ll give it a go.  I’ll be sure to post pics tomorrow when I get home.

Well, I’ve pretty much finished up here at the restaurant so I think I’ll move to the lobby, find a plug-in for this laptop, and start working on some work stuff.  Should be at least moderately productive today.  :-)

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.