My Trip to a Work Conference in Dallas, Texas

Here we are, waiting for the plane in Grand Rapids. It was pretty foggy, and I'm very attractive.

As you can see, it is very foggy.

Here is the plane we would be taking. It was quite small.

Here it is again, and it's still small. I was slightly nervous, as I don't care for planes, and this one appeared to be run by rubberbands.

We've landed at Midway, and I found this sign funny. I think it's be funny if a plane crashed into another plane at an intersection.

Here we've landed in Dallas.

We're getting a ride to SIL, where our conference would be. This is 6 Flags, Dallas, smack in the middle of everything. They're pretty much stuck, cause they can't expand in any direction.

There's six flags again, and just behind it (to the left) is the Texas Rangers' Baseball Stadium.

Here's a slightly better shot of the stadium. It was a ways away, but we got a pretty good look at it around the bend (I wisely got no good picture of it.) It's that bluish structure under the steak sign.

yes...Lonestar Dentist. That would be frightening.

Here we have Mike Perez (from ABS) [left] and Jon Hirst (from Devtech) [right] with Dave in the middle. Dave and I hung out with Mike quite a bit, as he's a really good guy, and quite funny. We played a LOT of ping pong, as there really wasn't much else to do in the evenings.

Here's a blurry Mike, and Dave.

Here is a video of me playing a little ping pong. We met a few of the girls that were reading/studying in the community room, and later they joined us (a guy and a girl) in a doubles match.. and they pretty much wasted us. But it was fun, and I was charming.

This is the room I had all my meetings in. There were two tracks, a Tech/programming track, and a strategy track. Dave was in the training track, and I was in the strategy track. My track had 9 people in it. You can see Mike Perez there. There was also a really old (as in, 1984) map of the world behind him which I found fascinating. (I liked searching for countries that no longer existed.)

This is a scan of the room I was in.

We were on a campus for linguistic study, and the campus was kinda small, but there were parts of it that were really pretty. Plus the weather was perfect: Warm, with no humidity. We were told (repeatedly) that it wasn't usually this nice there.

Here's another shot. They had about 5 of these buildings in a circle, with a nice lawn section in the center.

And then there was this. yeah, I have no idea.

Here was a museum that I didn't go in to.

Here we have the dorms. This is where we stayed, and where the ping pong was played.

This is why you don't set your clothes on tall shelves that haven't been dusted....ever.

Here's our room. Those beds are the size of our bodies, and no more.

Here's a look at the dorm room as I'm waiting for my ride to pick me up to take me to the airport.

I took this shot for my roommates, as I knew they'd appreciate it. In yet anothe rexample of how I can injure myself doing anything, this is a scrape I got playing ping pong the night before.

Here's a look around the dorm area of campus.

Here's my plane to Midway, shot through the blinds (they didn't move), while I'm waiting in the Dallas airport.

Here I am just outside of Midway aiport, waiting for BDF to come pick me up.

Here's BDF parking his jeep (*bling bling*) at his place.

Here's BDF's place. He's got a nice TV, and his place was hella tight.

Here's the other side of BDF's place.

Here's the bedroom.

The Kitchen.

And here's his computer desk.