Down in Mississippi…

Traveling for the holidays has us staying with Tiff’s folks in Picayune this week. Kris and Candice scheduled Addisyn’s first bday party for Sunday (pics) so we were able to make that. Amazing how fast kids grow/change that first year.

Managed to get by Southern and visited with some of the profs I worked with there. Nice to catch up with those guys, compare war stories, etc. They tried to rope me into a LUG meeting, but I got saved from that one by dinner plans. It was rather depressing to hear about the general state of OSS within IT planning there. They seem to be following the old vendor lock-in ways without even considering any of the better options out there. Ah well…

Dinner was excellent. Caught up with Wesley and Eryn and grabbed some sushi at Sakura. Food was decent, company was much better. Got into some rather lively discussions about religion, politics and just life in general. Rather amusing that Wesley lives ~3 hrs from us, yet we have to meet 800+ miles away.

Ended up grabbing a beer over at the ol’ End Zone. Seems Hattiesburg now has a smoking ban, so I missed out on the whole smoky, hole-in-the-wall-bar experience I was hoping for. Did get up with Chris and Jennifer, and kicked Chris’ ass at some pool for old time’s sake.

As nice as it is to visit old friends and family, I can’t fsking wait to get back home. I could write volumes about how backwards things are here, but it would be rather pointless. Suffice to say it’s at least 5 years behind in tech, and attitudes are even further in the dark ages.

(With apologies to Sublime for the title)