Fairly Realistic

I’ve been in Texas for nearly a day now. Let’s recap:

Our flight was pretty good, especially since we got the exit row and the plane was mostly empty. We flew on Northwest Air. They threw some pretzels at us and a can or two of pop. No meals though- they were a part of a cut-back. I’m not sad that we didn’t get a microwaved batch of air-food. Darn We at in Detroit at a restaurant called, “PB &J.” You guessed it: they only server peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They had several signs up that read, “Peanut butter may contain peanuts.” For real? Peanut butter is made of or has come in contact with… peanuts?

Next we flew from Detroit to Austin. Austin is cold, cloudy, and rainy. I must say that I expected it to be warm and sunny and was quite looking forward to that part of the trip. Oh well, at least there is no snow We are staying at the Omni hotel downtown which is really nice. There is free WIFI too!

I wrote a pretty awesome searching application on the flight to Austin. Apparently it violates a few rules with iMIS, so we won’t be distributing it outside of the office.

We ate dinner at an all-you-can-eat ribs and meat house. It was very, very good. Dinner was with a few clients who were very cool and a lot of fun to hang out with. Then we came back and hung out at the reception… err… bar until late. I had a lot of very interesting conversations with a lot of interesting people. I spoke with two older and semi-reserved women about strip clubs and how they are so popular in Texas. The people here are very willing to get crazy and talk to me about anything… until my boss comes over, then they go right back to business/technology talk. It’s a really funny transition

Observations
- Thus far I’ve only heard two or three people talk about guns and shooting. (Mind you, in a serious context.)
- I’ve been about one hundred ten-gallon hats both on men and women.
- About 30% of the people here are wearing cowboy boots.
- Since yesterday was Fat Tuesday, I have seen tons of drunk people
- Everyone drives a truck
- Everyone has his/her windows tinted
- I’ve seen two pimped-out taxis (which we’ve been riding in)
- Everything is bigger in texas- including the people
- I’ve heard ten or so people say “ya’ll”
- There has been a lot of country music playing in a lot of places
- People really are friendly down here- everyone says hello and makes eye contact
- A lot of Austin is run-down and shack-like
- Sinks are weird. The hot water is left for on and right for off. The cold water is the exact opposite.

Pictures from Texas