I spent a few days this week down in Atlanta with both Jeff (OpenNMS consultant extraordinaire and Georgia resident) and the gang over at Wellstar, one of our older clients (since 2004). It’s funny how much work with do in the health care industry, with companies like Cerner, Fairview, Hershey Medical Center, as well as having our oldest customer in Children’s Hospitals of Minnesota (circa 2001). There seem to be growing requirements on hospitals for network-enabled services, and thus a solid network management platform like OpenNMS is becoming even more of a requirement.

I’m not a huge fan of Atlanta the city, as the sprawl is a little too much for the country boy in me, but we’re actually up in the Northwest corner (Smyrna/Marietta) which has been quite enjoyable.

First I want to apologize for not posting in awhile. When you write a blog you are always on the lookout for new “blog worthy” ideas, and I have about 20 posts in the queue, going all the way back to April and the OUCE. While I still hope to get to those, I figured the best way to break the silence would be to just write something, so here it is.

I’m still playing Ingress, and so after Jeff picked me up at the airport we went hunting for portals. There is a tremendous amount of history in the area, often reflected in the available portals, and it is amazing to see really nice monuments and museums to rather specific things, such as the role trains played in the Civil War.

It’s always fun to visit with customers as well, and to help me absorb some of the local flavor we went to the Marietta Diner for lunch. It was hard to walk past the dessert case without wanting to dive right into it.

Toward the end of this short trip we went up to Kennesaw State University. They had a gorgeous campus with some of the largest brick buildings I’ve ever seen at a school. While the students had just left, one of them left a little reminder in the concrete that gave me a chuckle.