Atlanta for CHI 2010: Day One

Monday morning Toni, Jerome, and I had classes to attend so we decided to leave for CHI together after our 10:00 algorithms class. Jerome rode with me to my apartment to pick up my glasses, which I forgot, and then we picked up Toni. This is us at the beginning of our trip, and is probably one of my favorite pictures from the trip. Check out how Jerome is lurking...

We grabbed some lunch at Chick-fil-a and drove the couple hours to Atlanta, which was pretty uneventful. Once we got to Atlanta we checked into the lovely Motel 6, which actually wasn't too bad. The worst thing about it was that Toni and I had a room next to the front door. Toni had already stayed there one night and found out that you hear everything from that room: phone calls to the desk, doors opening, and of course, the roar of I-75 directly next to your window. But hey, it was cheap and clean and only a couple blocks away from the conference hotel, so we weren't complaining.

Toni and I sat around for an hour and then headed to the 4:00 session. I didn't know until I got there but my friend Evie was there!

Evie has been working on this game called Snag'Em designed for social networking at conferences. We tried to play but I think that not enough people at the conference signed up to find anyone. That's okay, though. 

For dinner we we went to a Mexican restaurant called Mama Ninfa's, which I know I've been to before, although I don't remember when. I ordered this cheese casserole thing that I envisoned as peppers, onions, and mushrooms covered in a layer of cheese, but it turned out to be pretty much a bowl of cheese with a mushroom in it. It was delicious, although terrible for me, I'm sure. Here's a picture of all of us.

Over dinner, we reminisced over old code that we held in common with our UNCC friends--Haptek code, VR_Walking, VGIS...we laughed a lot about grad student code and how terrible it is. I hope that I can leave better code than that for my successors.

Instead of walking, since Amy and Cathy's husbands had drove into the city, we piled into one car so they could drive us to the hotel. Jerome almost disowned his research family by saying he would walk but we made him get in the car. Here's a picture of how close our research group is:

Good thing they drove us home--there were some slightly sketchy people in our hotel parking lot. We went to bed and got ready for the rest of the week.