Where In The World Is Sum1?

Food Trucks In Buffalo!

         This week I'm in Buffalo, NY with the City as my customer.  It's a custom designed class that required a lot of work on my part up front.  I'm actually delivering 2 courses, and a portion of the networking course I teach.  The first two courses were written by me, one about two years ago, the other was just finished last week!  So in a way, they're my test audience, what we'd call my pilot class.  But their manager knew that up front, and asked that we deliver this since they know so little about this new product.  The problem is, it's also new to us, so I learned it while I wrote the course.

         With Buffalo sitting on the northeast end of Lake Erie, and Niagara Falls emptying into Lake Ontario, you know where I went once I arrived on Sunday.  I'd also mentioned wanting to snap a good photo of Nikola Tesla's statue, and I'm sure many of you thought I was nuts for wanting that, or terribly geeky.  But if you Google him, you'll see he was at the forefront of working with alternating current, and invented the induction motor.  Before the induction motor, everything was DC powered, requiring carbon brushes, which created a lot of dust, and are a lot harder to maintain.  The induction motor is widely used in every day applications, such as your vacuum cleaner, garbage disposal, fans, and almost any simple AC motor application.  Admittedly some of his ideas were a bit 'out there' (a death ray?), but he was pure genius through and through.

         The falls were beautiful of course, but I was surprised to see ice in many places.  I know the falls froze over this past winter, but I'm pretty sure that water kept flowing under the ice.  For the first time, I went on the Maid of the Mist, and saw the falls up close and personal.  It was a good time, once I'm glad I did. I spent most of Sunday afternoon there before driving back to Buffalo to settle in.  I'm at a Hampton Inn, and they upgraded my room this week, so I'm in a 3 room suite.  The bathroom is HUGE, so big that if I talk loudly in there, it echoes.  The living room is bigger than the one in my house, and the bedroom as big as mine at home.  There's a 48" flatscreen TV in the bedroom and living room, so i'm being terribly spoiled this week.

         Tuesday nights, from May 3rd to mid-October are Food Truck night in Buffalo.  They gather at a small square on the SE side of town (Larkin Square), and sell their stuff.  Additionally, a small local band plays their hearts out, making for a nice evening.  The band tonight played everything from Stevie Wonder to Led Zeppelin, The Beatles to The Who, and almost anything in between.  It rained a little, but not one seemed to mind.  Tomorrow night at Larkin Square is a gathering of local authors, all there to sell, and sign, their books.  Any guesses on where I plan on being tomorrow night?? 

         That's about it for now, till next time (two weeks from now in Manassas Virginia), y'all be good, and continue to write your stories and poems.