Dispatch #4 Part b 7 Nov, 2011 & 9 – 11 Nov, 20011
Screven and Atlanta Georgia Georga Tech, Atlantas World of Coco-Cola and CNN
7 Nov, 2011 In between Historic Savannah and Bonaventure Cemetery I took a trip to explore a little of my own family history.
My Mother grew up in a little town in Georgia called Screven. I have never been there and she is long gone now but I thought it would be nice to visit Screven. There is a distant cousin whom I had never met. He lives in nearby Jesup, so that is where I started.
I rented a car from Enterprise, it seems they were out of economy cars so they gave me a convertible for the same price. Woo Hoo. that made the drive more pleasant.
Here I am flanked by Cousin Troy and his wife.
Troy took me to the local Cemetery where and the grave of my Great Grandfather as well as others.
He also took me past the High School that was attended by my mother.
I sent Troy a copy of this picture of my mother in high school with a Screven athletic uniform on.
Troy and I in front of a Cotton field near his home
On a practical note , I discovered that Savannah is a beautiful city with terrible bus service to the airport and that was where I needed to go to pick up my rental car. I happened to get an incredible rate on the car, just $9 per day through hotwire but I wound up taking taxis both to and from the airport which ate up all the savings and then some.
Note to self, it may sometimes be well worth it to rent a car in town, even at full rate.
9 Nov, 2011 After I finished with Savannah and Screven it was on to Atlanta Georgia.
Here a momentous thing occurred, I stayed with my first Couchsurfing.org hosts, Jamie and Hilary. He sells these condos downtown with magnificent views, she works for CNN.
Couchsurfing is partly about saving money but another huge part is meeting locals. It was great meeting them both. Jamie gave me a tour of the building he works in and Hillary got me a tour of CNN HQ.
We even went out one night to a movie (Tower Heist). I think this is the first theatre movie I went to in over a year. And they took me to a small local art gallery reception. Things I would have never done on my own. It was cool.
10 Nov, 2011 My first agenda item in Atlanta was to visit the Georgia Tech Campus. I did not graduate from Tech but I did spend a couple of years there and thought it would be cool to revisit and see how the place has changed.
I stopped in at the old dining hall. Here you could get a meal ticket that gets you 3 squares a day for the entire term. It was always a debate. One one hand it was cheaper and super convenient but while the food wasn't bad, did you really want to eat at the same place all quarter? But you felt bad going someplace else for variety once you had a pre-paid meal here.
And something telling and a bit disturbing happened when I was there. I was told I could not take pictures here (after I snapped this one). Okay I said and left, but WHY? Do they really think there is some big security risk.
And does this mean that a student who pulls out his phone and snaps a pictures of his buddy while they eat is breaking the rules? Can someone explain to me the rational?
If I had more presence of mind I might have asked the person who approached me, but I doubt she knew. She was just following her directions.
Overall thought the experience was really fun. You know how if you return to a house you grew up in it
seems smaller. I would not expect that to happen once you were college
age but strangely the campus did seem just a bit smaller to me. The campus looked good. Some of it is updated but enough remains this it was still familiar to me.
The student center has changed a lot. Speaking of food choices they now have Taco Bell, Subway and other outside vendors operating right on campus in the student center. None of that when I was there. Also there is a huge campus run restaurant in the student center as well. I had lunch there and it was really nice and quite bustling as opposed to the old hall which seemed to be barely operating.
In my day we thought it cool and innovative that they had a "Music Listening Room" where you could pick out a record album from their collection, plug in headphone and they would spin it for you as you sat in a comfy chair.
That is all obsolete with iPods. Laptops and iPhones abound now (unheard of in my day). And NOW they have a bowling ally, pool tables and even several video game stations for students to use. How times have changed. There was an ATM machine on campus in my day and I got my very first ATM card to use in that machine. Now three banks have ATMs in that same spot.
Now for a good story. I took my first computer programming class in the computer science building (FORTRAN). Get this, we had to punch cards. When you were done you handed your cards in at a window and a few hours later came to get them back along with your printout where you typically saw a mistake on line 2.
The computer was (yes it was one computer) was a Cyber 74 made by Control Data Corp. It was a huge main frame with a 64 bit word width (like many modern laptops today). You could view it through a window but lowly students could not enter.
The window where we passed our card decks in is still there (blocked off). The card punch area entrance was at the top of those low stairs.
The area where the Cyber was is still visible through a glass window, it's chock full of nondescript server racks now. Any one of those servers must have many times the power the old Cyber did (they were so proud of that thing).
And now the best part. As I was wandering around someone asked me very nicely if he could help me find something.
I said no, I was just a former student looking around after 35 years etc. It turns out that this guy had been there for over 35 years (job security). He remembered the Cyber and the key punch machines and he said " You may even have handed me one of those decks of punch cards. I sometimes worked at that window way back them".
It was a trip down memory lane.
They still have geek humor in this building
Still 10 Nov, 2011 Okay so much for memory lane. Atlanta is not a huge tourist destination but Coca Cola has always been a big economic presence and they have the "World of Coca Cola" museum within walking distance of Tech so I decided to go.
A guy telling us about all the collectable antique Coke stuff they have on display
A guy in a Polar Bear suit, must have escaped from the Darma Initiative
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As one might imagine it's a huge promotion for Coke with a 3-D movie (They call it 4 D because they shake your chair from time to time).
I like 3 D movies and it was fun (though the shaking was just annoying and added nothing). Another feature was a film with many of Cokes "best" ad's from over the years. Funny thing though, when you see a bunch of these ads back to back it becomes even more blatantly obvious how manipulative they are as they try to create an unconscious association between Coke and "Happiness". I don't think you are intended to pay that much attention to these commercials, and who does. They are intended to work on another level. When you do pay attention, they have the subtlety of a jack hammer. It's a great lesson in how advertising works. But maybe I was not seeing these presentation in quite the light they wanted me to.
I think in years gone by they had tours of real high speed bottling line. Here they have the tourist version, it does fill and pack the souvenir bottles they give to visitors and it runs very slowly. You can see the overhead conveyor (not belt) carrying bottles to the exit area.
And then there was the tasting area where you could try Coke soft drink products sold all over the world. Some taste pretty normal. A couple of the ones from China were, umm I guess they are an acquired taste (i.e. they were awful). The Delaware Punch from Honduras (second from the left) tasted just like liquid bubble gum, like it or not.
And just imagine, you exit through a huge gift shop. Every produce you could ever want emblazoned with the Coke name. Well, okay. So I paid $16 to be sujected to a ton of Coke marketing.
Final thoughts on the World of Coke. Way back when I was attending GA Tech, Coke used to run tours of the an actual bottling line. As an engineering student I always wanted to go some time, but I never seemed to get around to it. It would have been fascinating to get up close to an actual working production line. That's one reason I wanted to go on this tour. But now all they have is this tourist crap, no longer run by the production department. Nope, now it's just another perfidious corporate marketing gimmick. I guess I shoulda gone to the legitimate attraction back when I still could have.
11 Nov, 2011 The Cable News Network CNN is based in Atlanta. One of my hosts, works there and got me a ticket to the tour. (Thanks Hillary)
This vehicle displayed in the lobby was used by news crews in the Middle East
This is purported to be the tallest escalator in the world. It carried tourists up into CNN World.
In this area they gave a demo of a weatherman's green screen and a Teleprompter
The news floor
And Guess What, you exit through a HUGE CNN Gift shop.
