|
|
|
eating cheese with my vegan colleagues
Thursday, June 15 2017
room 515, Hyatt Hotel, Downtown Columbia, South Carolina
Today was the first day of the TED-Talk-style phase of the ConvergeSE conference. Da, Ca, and I all showed up at the venue (an auditorium in the University of South Carolina Alumni Center) at 9:00am so we could get checked in, get our name lanyards, and get a seat for the kickoff talk. I was perhaps a little underdressed for a conference, but I wasn't the only one there wearing flip flops. There's really no other footwear that's going to work with my feet in South Carolina in June. As for the opening talk, I don't remember anything about it other than thinking that it was like the dullest TED Talk ever. What followed was a talk about the importance of team diversity, which was a bit more interesting, though there was little in there that I didn't know already. There were other talks, and I followed along, though I can't say my mind was being blown. [REDACTED]
At some point, Ni joined us and was with us when the four of us took an Uber (or was it Lyft?) to lunch. The place Da had selected was Lamb's Bread, soul food vegan restaurant that wasn't trying to be anything it wasn't. It was black owned & operated, and it had the trappings of a hole-in-the-wall. There were, for example, dropped ceilings that had been repaired with black duct tape. Everyone but me ordered various combo plates of soul food (mac & cheese, various bean and collard green dishes, faux pork ribs, etc.) while I ordered the Philly Cheese steak, which was only a little smaller than a football and took a long time to prepare. It was incredibly greasy (in a good way!) and kept falling apart as I ate it, and I kind of wished I'd been alone for that, but it was delicious (though not quite as delicious as the PCS at Blackbird Pizza in Philadelphia).
Allison made her first appearance some time this afternoon just before a talk about personas, which is an abstraction of an archtypal human used for UI design, marketing, and other customer relationships. She and I sat through that talk, but it didn't offer much more to me than knowledge of the existence of such a thing, which I'd only learned of minutes before. I caught the next couple of talks upstairs. One was about "functional" Javascript programming, but it was being presented on version of Javascript not supported in many (or perhaps any) existing web browsers, and it hurried through the interesting parts while lingering endlessly on the dull stuff. After that came a 40 minute talk on a new CSS technology called CSS-Grid, which promises to finally separate content from design on complex web pages. It looked great, though it's not supported on a number of still-common Microsoft browsers that moms, dads, and large non-profit donors tend to use. Fortunately, for the websites I build (which are only ever loaded on Chrome or Safari), it looks like CSS-Grid is available now.
All of us but Allison (she was probably already there) went back to the Hyatt to unwind for a bit. I lay on my bed sipping my carry-on gin and poking around the web on Hyrax, my trusty HP laptop. By the time we were ready for dinner, dark clouds had gathered and we had to take yet another Uber. We went to a veg-friendly Mexican place called Tios, where I quickly ordered a $3 margarita. I also ordered a burrito that seemed like it could be made vegan if one were to withold the cheese.
The storm arrived in ernest before our food came out, and the staff prepared the front with sandbags against an expected temporary rivulet.
Unfortunately, my burrito order got screwed up (as I expected it to) and it came out with cheese. But I didn't complain, didn't send it back, and didn't mention it to the others; I never send food back unless something is seriously wrong, as I want to avoid saliva and if I sent it back, I knew it would simply be thrown out. So I ate it quietly, cutting it with my fork to avoid tell-tale cheese strings. At this point in my veganism, the cheese just seemed vaguely gross and unpleasant to me, though it wasn't enough so to keep me from choking it down. It's good to remind myself periodically that it's not something I want to eat.
Somewhere in here, I mentioned that Gretchen had big breasts and "no-ass," which is weird considering that I'm an "ass man." With the exception of Da, the others at the table were delighted with this info, though it made Da squirm. He has difficulty differentiating between funny and distateful overshares.
Next we walked along the strip of bars between the convention and our hotel, trying to find one that looked fun. World of Beer looked too douchey, or, as I put it to Ni, "they need more fat goth chicks to scare away the douchebags." We ended up at an Irish Pub next door called Moriarty's, which was pretty much dead. This might've been a function of the loud outdoor air conditioning unit and the fans blowing air around on the porch. I turned the one near us down in stages as I sipped a mediocre IPA Ca thought I would like. Eventually Allison showed up, wraithlike as always. She was excited to go to a bar called Bourbon, and so that was where we eventually went.
Bourbon was up near the State Capitol, where all of South Carolina's many rightwing Republicans gather to make life difficult for women, minorities, and the poor. It looked like some of those people, their aids, and their trophy wives were in Bourbon tonight, which made our motley crew stick out like a sore thumb. It didn't help when we said we were only there for drinks. Allison seemed to know exactly what she wanted, so she ordered three glasses of some obscure Japanese whiskey that had been aged 12 years. I ordered separately, since sazerac is my jam in a place like this.
[REDACTED]
When the bill came, it turned out that the esoteric Japanese whiskey had been $30/shot, which was absurd. Divided between three credit cards (I'd drunk Da's, so I paid for his), it wasn't so bad. But Jesus, we won't be letting Allison order off the unpriced menu again any time soon.
As always, we wound things up at the Art Bar. Ni and Allison went directly home and Da debrief with is girlfriend via cellphone while Ca and I drank big 24 ounce cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. The scene tonight was mellow once more. Eventually Da joined us and Ca left. Da showed me a bunch of his old projects, including some crazy animations involving complicated physics. I'd never seen anything like it before. He's a talented guy when it comes to the front-end.
My huge Philly cheese steak at Lamb's Bread.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?170615 feedback
previous | next |
