Ramblings From Justin Penney

The 2004 Supercomputing Conference was held in Pittsburgh this year. I was sent there since my work had a booth there. We also had an area in AMD's booth and Mellanox's booth.

I was pretty excited about going becuase Hot Water Music was goign to be playing at Mr. Smalls Theatre on Tuesday. The show ended for the day Tuesday at 6:00. This gave me time to walk back to the apartment, change clothes and get a bite to eat. Doors for the show opened at 6:30 so I figured getting there around 7:30 would be good.

There are two cab companies in Pittsburgh: Yellow and Peoples. I called Yellow and sat on hold forever. Called Peoples, they said to try back in thirty minutes because they had no cabs available. Called Yellow back they had a forty-five minute wait. Called Peoples back it was up to forty-five minutes. So it's 7:30 now. I'm ticked off.

I walked across the bridge back downtown hoping to find a rogue cab, or at least a meal. I try flagging some cabs down when a guy passing by said, "good look doing that in Pittsburgh." Great. I ask him about the local eateries and he directs me to a place called Tonic. I went in and the only vegetarian meal they had was a pumpkin ravioli with brandy cream sauce. It was probably the best thing I ate all week, I highly reccomend this dish!

Since my hopes of rocking the night away were done I started walking around downtown. I saw a guy with a bunch of punk band patches all over his jacket. I asked him about what to do in Pittsburgh. He mostly gave me blank stares and said, "Ummm... I don't really know." Alot. So I'm talking to my wife on the phone as I'm walking back to the aprtment when I pass a strip club and mention it to her. She said I should go but I didn't.

About 9:00, which was maybe 15 minutes after getting back I was so freaking bored! For once I listened to my wife and I walked back over to the strip club. It was nice. It was cheap, at least as far as strip clubs go. It was really strange because they wore pasties, I'd never seen that in real life before. Weird. So I got a little drunk, spent a lot of money and went back to the apartment to go to bed.

The other major highlight of the trip was Sree's Foods. It's an Indian deli that is super cheap ($4.00) for rice, three curries and a piece of nan. Awesome. It was very spicy and VERY filling.

I'm also jealous of Chicago. I was there for two hours on the trip to, and five hours on the trip home. There is so much cool stuff going on there. From the museums to the plethora of great shows. It's just rediculous.

# posted by Justin @ 9:40 PM