A History of Seth: This is CNN . . . Center

Wow. I think the only thing further behind than my blogging is my expense reporting for these trips. Hmm. I'm gonna have to fix that tomorrow. Pictured here is architecture in Atlanta's rail transit system, called MARTA. I took MARTA from the airport to CNN Center since it was basically point-to-point.

I guess this says "take mass transit"? I received helpful suggestions from several MARTA employees who saw me toting my suitcase around. They really could not have been more helpful. I enjoyed taking the train instead of a taxi for a change. I arrived in the middle of the day when there were plenty of trains running and it wasn't that far. I did have to transfer once though. And yeah, on the return trip, there was a random crazy person having a very agitated and occasionally profane conversation with himself. My brother was in Atlanta the following week. He didn't like taking the MARTA. But he arrived late, and there weren't many trains running. Taxi is probably the way to go after rush hour.

The Georgia World Congress Center, site of the Microsoft event I was in town to work on. I thought it was a nice facility.

This is an external shot of the Omni Hotel at CNN Center. Those black squares are missing windows. One of the guys on the glass repair crew said they would be there through December.

The Omni to the left, and CNN headquarters center. Philips Arena is on the right.

See?

Behind me was the Georgia Dome. Its web site claims it is the largest cable-supported dome in the world. I didn't go inside it on this trip.

I walked in the door and asked the security guard where the registration area was. He pointed to this giant banner and said "over there." Right . . . .

Here's a picture of the registration area. There were words on all of the lighted headers, but you can only make out part of the words on the one on the far left. The rest were washed out by the light in the picture.

This was my first trip to Atlanta and the first time I stayed in the Omni Hotel. So that means new hotel room pictures!

My room at the Omni. Kind of an ordinary room, but very nicely decorated.

Back towards the door.

Of course, the beds don't stay that way.

A mighty stack of pillows.

The desk and chair.

A picture of the bathroom.

Out of my window to the right, I had a (very low) view of the atrium in CNN Center. At the right you can see the top of the highest free-standing escalator in the United States--or maybe the world, I forget.

And this was the view out of my window to the left.

Dinner for you . . .

. . . and a few thousand of your closest friends. I wasn't the only person who thought this was picture-worthy. I took this picture on my way to breakfast, and on the way back, I saw another guy taking a picture with his cell phone camera.

This is the view of the window right outside my room. In it you can see one of the rigs used by the guys who were repairing the glass.

And this is looking down. Unbelievably, construction crews started using a jackhammer every night at midnight when I was there! The first night it went on for about an hour. It was unreal.

A view of Atlanta at night from a window in the hotel (not my room).

A close-up of Coke HQ.

A view of the Atlanta skyline from a different window in the hotel. A corner of Centennial Park is in the foreground.

You can't see it in those other photos, but there is still plenty of evidence of damage from the tornado that went through downtown Atlanta earlier this year. I don't know what building this is.

The Westin (center) had its fair share of damage, too.

CNN Studio Tour Ticket

I had a few hours to kill before my flight so I went on the CNN Studio Tour.

CNN Studio Tour Pass

Apart from learning that the escalator was the tallest free-standing escalator, I learned that the studio occupies space formerly occupied by the briefly-lived theme park (The World of Sid and Marty Krofft) based on Sid & Marty Krofft's characters. Other than that, I didn't find the tour that informative. I guess maybe it's because it's not the first time I've been in a TV studio. But really, what you can see in the background on CNN newscasts is what is there. I think if you've watched CNN enough, you've seen snippets of everything you'd see on the tour. I think I would rather have gone to the theme park.

This is CNN . . . Center.

An entrance to Centennial Park.

OK. Centennial Olympic Park.

Microsoft had closed the park the day before for a private event, disturbing some local homeless people, or so I heard.

This is a great law. Unfortunately it didn't keep a young guy coming up to me and asking me if I wanted to buy magazine subscriptions for his school. I dismissed him curtly, as I was busy.

Busy doing what? Silly question. Geocaching, of course. Actually, I had messed up a tiny cache and was trying to repair it without destroying it when he decided to come up to me and bother me. And I was running out of time to go catch my plane. I tried to find a multistage cache in the park, too, but ran out of time and had to leave it unfinished. I also had a guy move in to try to steal my laptop while I was searching. Sigh. So if you don't mind the panhandlers and thieves (at around four in the afternoon on a weekday, mind you), Centennial Park is a nice park I guess.