I landed in Atlanta last night at about 11:00PM EST bound for Apache Con US 2007. I’m traveling with my wife, Marianne, who wanted to get out and have some fun as well as get a break from the kids.

We flew on Delta from Salt Lake City to Atlanta. The plane we took had a touch screen on the back of every seat. Each passenger could use it to watch TV, watch movies, play games solo or with other passengers, or listen to music. That was nice and all and made the 3.5 hour journey more tolerable but the coolest thing about they screens is that they run on Linux. When we first got on the plane, we sat down and the screens were off. At once, all the screens came to life and at the top of each screen was a small image of Tux. I watched the init scripts run for a few seconds and suddenly the image of Tux was gone and all that remained was a warm feeling in my heart knowing that I was using open-source software for my in flight entertainment.

We’re staying at the Westin Peachtree Plaza, which is where ApacheCon US is being held this year. The Westin is a 70 story hotel and according to one of the flight attendants on our plane, it’s the largest hotel in the United States. We’re staying on the 53rd floor and the view is quite amazing. If only I could open my window to throw out paper airplanes.

Today while I was geeking out with others from Apache, Marianne was trying to not get lost riding the MARTA and trying to avoid the pan handlers on her way to see the Martin Luther King Jr. sites here in Atlanta. In spite of a few scary moments going through some of the poorer parts of Atlanta, I’d say she had a good time.

I attended Hackathon today. It was a great to finally put faces to names. I met a lot of influential people at Apache such as Noel Burgman, David Jencks, Dain Sundstrom, Filip Hanick, and others. It was a great experience being able to talk about Tomcat, Geronimo, JAMES, and listen in on some of the APR discussions. I’ll blog more about the details tomorrow.