Back in Ruston

Well we all made it back to Ruston without too much trouble. Pittsburgh turned out to be a pretty cool place. We were staying downtown so we walked to the convention center and such. One minute you would be walking past a modern skyscraper and the next you would pass a 200 year old stone building. It was a pretty cool place. The conference was interesting, we made our presentations and generally impressed the crowd. We won a second place award for Best Paper in one of the divisions and I have a nice plaque to hang on the wall.

I also got to watch the Pirates play the Yankees - Pirates won easily. It was a sold out crowd which was really fun to experience. I hope I can say the same thing when MSU comes to Ruston to play the Dawgs in August. There are lots of cool bridges around Pittsburgh, as there are three rivers that converge right at the city. I didn't get pictures of all of them but they were interesting at least. I should have taken some pictures to use in class - I teach one class where the students analyze bridges (trusses actually) and see how strong they are. We also took a ride on one of the inclines they have there. It is sort of like a ski lift to get you up the mountain face (really a big hill I guess.) The only problem with the trip was that on the way back to Ruston we were stuck in Houston from rain delays. Other than that, it was a good trip. Next up is Saratoga in the Fall - never been there either.

News from the front . . .

So the first day of the conference went well. I listened to a few presentations including on from Tech. The were ok, but in my opinion the Tech one was the best - and I am trying to be unbiased. Honestly though Tech can hang with any of these colleges. We have two presentations tomorrow so we will see if they are just as good as today.

The picture is one of the new truss demos from some company. It is sort of neat, but something we are already ahead of at Tech. I am telling you, we are on the front lines with a lot of the stuff we are doing. In one if the presentations earlier today, a school was describing their new program and it is pretty much University Seminar that we have had for a while now. Another was describing something we started doing 12 years ago.

Now it is time for my "woe is me story of the day." We went to eat at some famous sandwich shop where the sandwiches have french fries and cold slaw on the sandwich. I know that I tend to get stuff all over me when I eat messy food so I was being very careful not to drop food on me since I was going back to the conference. I actually made it through the whole meal without incident and felt quite proud of the accomplishment. Well a lady from across the room drops a bottle of tobasco and it splatters on me jsu as I am about to get up and leave. So I guess it really just doesn't matter what I do or how careful I am, I will leave any restaurant with food on me.

Made it to Pitt!

Well I made it to Pittsburgh with no troubles. The plane from Monroe was a little late, but no big deal. This is my first time in Pennsylvania and it is a nice place so far. We are getting ready to go eat, but everything is closed on Sunday - at least all the good places. I got registered for the conference and will attend a few sessions tomorrow. I don't have to present my papers until Wednesday so I have some time to actually get the PowerPoints ready. It looks like it is about to rain so I am hoping that the group makes a choice on where to eat soon. Maybe tomorrow I will have some inside information on the latest in engineering education - if you are lucky. ;)