So, I’ve been sold to ORNL for the summer. Yup, I am officially a ‘tech whore’ now. This is much more fun than my years as a ‘bio slut’ in college - they haven’t even stuck any needes in me…yet! I am here to help provide that ever so poplular happy finish with getting Lustre configured and running on their 5000 node Cray XT3. With this assignment comes a 3 week initial stay in Oak Ridge, followed up with one week per month return visits to boost morale and compile expense reports.

So far the stay has been pretty good, and as usual I will leave it to my skill with bullet lists to explain.

  • hotel is not bad. I have a king bed and A/C. TV channel selection sucks.
  • There is nothing to do in Oak Ridge besides eat at chain restuarants, and bad ones at that.
  • Knoxville is close enough (and I rated a rental car for this trip).
    • I recommend getting down to the Old City and to the strip.
    • If only one - do the Old City, but if during “college season”, do the strip. UT girls.
  • I was lucky enough to make some friends right off the bat, so I’ve had great tour guides for bars and restuarants here.
    • Putting together cute girls and this southern accent is very nice. Very nice.
  • Work has not been too bad, the first week went quite smoothly, second week has been waiting around for massive hardware problems. Waiting sucks.

I’m not feeling that creative at the moment, so I will expand on this more later….