Beautiful day in the neighborhood....

Tuesday was a lovely day in Atlanta. The weather was perfect, not too hot, but sunny. Susan and I met Kell, Peter, Andy, Robert and Doug for lunch at Fat Matt's Rib Shack. Kell and Peter, along with another guy named Jeff, built a great company called Onyx Technologies which was acquired by the Telecommunications Division of HNC Software where I was VP of Operations back in 2000. Andy, Robert and Doug were three of a team of very dedicated employees that they had recruited to their company.

I worked with them for about two years until HNC Software was acquired by Fair, Isaac and Company. I think these guys are one of the best teams of software engineers that I ever worked with in my career. I am happy to see that they are back together again at Rent Bureau (except for Kell). I miss working with them, but I would do it again in a heart beat if the chance ever arose.

Fat Matt's serves up some of the best baby back ribs that I have ever eaten. I shouldn't have, but there was no way I was going to be in Atlanta and NOT have some of those delicious ribs. So once again, I fell off the wagon and ate some red meat. Oh well! I'll have to be extra good when I get back to SoCal.

After lunch, Susan and I headed to downtown Atlanta and went on the CNN Center tour. Kind of interesting, but nothing special. I certainly won't pay $13 to do it again. After that tour, we walked over to the Georgia Aquarium. This was definitely worth it. If you get the chance to be in Atlanta looking for something to do, I can highly recommend it. I have included a couple of pictures above. The entrance of course and then the main attraction there which are the Beluga whales they have there. The male in the center of the picture is about 12 feet long and weighs in at 1700 pounds. After we left the aquarium, we strolled though the Olympic Centennial Park where I took another picture.

We strolled through the Atlanta Underground and discovered that it is mainly a tourist trap. Lots of stores selling tourist crap. Nothing special.

We then cast around for a place to have dinner in downtown Atlanta and decided on McCormick and Schmick. It was very, very good (Duh!), but expensive. We did enjoy it, especially the Georgia popcorn shrimp.