If you’ve been following my twitter feed (or facebook statuses) you’d guess I was roadtripping down to Nashville to see a Dave Matthews concert. Here’s some rough thoughts to get down before I forget them.

Still wondering when we’re going to start heading ’south’ to Josh’s folks place.

Josh’s mom can cook for me any night of the week. I wonder if she’s found the sausage I hid in her fridge.
(Insert hidden sausage jokes about your mom here.)

Why am I always staying at the top of Embassy Suites? Don’t they have lower floors? Any why were the cockatiels always asleep when I looked at them, but I heard them every morning when I was trying to sleep?

Fresh kegs are always welcomed. Even the Bud Light was spot on this weekend.

930 miles total, good times. What did I do for Earth Day? Drove additional 320 miles for doggy daycare, but it was worth it.

Seen on trucks: “Farm boys plant it deeper” and “Silly boyz, trucks are for chics.”

Taking 65 from Louisville to Nashville is a more scenic route than 24 was coming back.

OMG did we see tree damage. Icy winter, I guess.

57N had construction, so we took a Benton-Ida route 37 detour. Was neat to drive through Benton again, around the square, seeing the old places. Decided not to go look at Granny’s old place. It’s still there, untouched, in my mind.

I didn’t buy anything at Starbucks, but I pooped there.

The traffic in Nashville seemed really screwy. Lots of exit here, get across 8 lanes of traffic in 1 mile, exit here, loop 270 degrees around, repeat. Who designed these highways?

Getting out of the concert was nuts. Too much traffic, not enough direction. Too many flashing reds/flashing yellows not getting the job done. GPSes are so totally worth it.

Hotel Business Suite had fast enough computers, but was like 90 degrees. Pay-for-wifi sucks.

Need smarter smart phone. Took over an hour tonight to catch up on tweets, and that was after occasionally reading them on the current phone.

Vanderbilt’s stadium grass felt great on bare feet, but you put your shoes on to go to the port-a-potties.

Did not know Jason Mraz was two years older than me. And his hat is older than both of us combined.

Did not kick MC’s ass in cribbage, not even once, but played masterful Euchre.

Weather for the weekend: NICE. 80s/90s, sunny (or some clouds, not dark), windy. So glad I repacked to include shorts. Was not expecting it to be THIS NICE.

You can find Cubs fans anywhere, even in an SEC school parking lot.

Organic trip to Maker’s Mark Distillery materialized after almost no arm-twisting. Was told other bourbon tours not as good. Wouldn’t know – was only one I really wanted to visit.

Was a little giddy driving down the Bourbon Trail. THE TWISTY, WINDY, TURNY, CURVY, shoulders? oh no, we don’t need shoulders BOURBON TRAIL OF DEATH. Driving to a distillery should not be a white knuckled experience. Good thing the sample was small, we might not make it out of there.

Got to dip my fingers in 12′ diameter, 12′ deep 100+ year old vats of sour mash. It was delicious. Tasted like cereal and beer.

Visiting the Maker’s Mark family really did feel like family, from the last minute unscheduled tour, to the sassy merch counter lady, to the surprisingly good Mint Julep bottle sample, to the workers out front painting shutters.

Maker’s Mark did an excellent job of their ‘mark’ branding. I could have spent hundreds in that gift shop.

Totally going back when my barrel is ready. (They send you a golden ticket.) Next time, more sampling and dipping! And trying that place on 65 the employee recommended when we were relaxing in the parking lot.

Lesson: the tastier the barbeque, the more it’s going to hurt later.

Everyone on Broadway/2nd in Nashville was either going into a club/bar, leaving a club/bar, or carrying their music gear (drums, guitar, etc.) to the next gig. Live music everywhere, but with a party of 8 and full bellies, and beer at the hotel room, we just window shopped — didn’t go in. Need to check out the Nash nightlife when rooming within walking distance of downtown.

Nashville needs an open liquor law so you can properly street roam around Broadway.

I drove all the time this weekend and didn’t look at a GPS once. Damn thing kept beeping from the back seat, tho.

If you let Andrea pick the CD, it’s going to be Sting.

Cue the discussion, yet again, about what defines a bourbon and when whiskey is spelled without the e.

Could have been the heat, could have been the booze, could have been the intensity, but I couldn’t stop the tears during the tin whistle solo in Bartender (opened the DMB set). Jeff is an amazing sax player, but it just then sunk in I wouldn’t hear Roi anymore. So I took off my hat and enjoyed the song.

First time ‘tweeting’ during a concert. It’s kinda fun. Liked how 4 of us noted the ‘last stop’ tease.
What drum tease did Carter do in his closing drum solo set?

Dave did a nice job of something old, something new. The new songs need to evolve; drop their pop roots and blossom into some kick ass jams. Will reserve judgement until the new disc drops and have heard it again this summer.

BTW, this was DMB concert number 25 for me, I think. 26, 27, and 28 already purchased/scheduled. May consider one night of Deer Creek.

Vandy’s stadium is small, but looks like a fun place to play. Got serious claustrophobia walking out their tunnel with 20k other people, not moving quickly. Unnnngh. Go Commodores!

I think everyone in Tennessee wears sandals. And tank tops. And smiles.

It shouldn’t surprise me, but it does: We can all be adults, but go away for a weekend and act like children. In good and bad ways.

I like how every DMB weekend requires brand new bottles of condiments. Somehow I wound up with the mustard and mayo. See you in Alpine!

(If I missed anything, let me know and I’ll update the recap.)

In an attempt to stay focused and not allow the urgent-immediate/important things box out consideration of not-urgent but important things, I’m trying to dedicate Thursday mornings to reading/thinking/considering/writing/pondering. I might not make every week, but I can at least try. My management seminars call this “big rocks” — if you fill your bucket with small pebbles you’ll never have room for the big rocks. Put the big rocks in first and the pebbles will fill in the spaces.

Through blogging or twittering I’m going to try to make this social: keep others informed on what I’m reading, invite discussion, solicit suggestions. Big Rocks could mean anything that helped me in my job, but right now IT governance and remodeling on campus is a big topic, so I’m starting there.

Last Thursday’s goal was reviewing the IT@Illinois Concept papers and Chuck’s Concepts about Concepts white paper. I only got through the Illinois Tomorrow paper, but I have three pages of typed comments. (My first week and I’m already behind.)

This Thursday I might be traveling, so I want to read a few more things ahead of time to ponder in the car. I hope to get through the rest of the concept papers.

The next goal is to review the Library Service Models: reskimming the Budget+ report from last April about the future of the library, and then reading the New Service Models (NSM) Action Plan (April 2009). I care about the university libraries, as a student and staff member, so this is interesting to me. But in a larger sense, I see the NSM program as a resource to better understand IT@IL. Like campus IT, the library was faced with “do more with less” and has spent the last two years in a process of evaluation, communication, and now action. They’re essentially ahead of the game for what we will face as IT@IL. What can we learn from their experiences? How far apart should IT@IL and the library be? (You probably can already guess my thoughts on this.)

There’s a talk/discussion on Friday about the Action Plan but I’ll be out of town. Will someone go and take notes for me?

IT@IL people: Even if you don’t read anything about the NSM, check out these three things discussed at the Feb 4, 2009 faculty meeting: www.library.uiuc.edu/nsm/spring2009update.html. From the PPT: Guiding Principles: Interdependence, Resilience, Deep engagement in research and teaching communities, Commitment to building strong, responsive collections. That directly parallels many of the IT@IL concepts.

If any of my library friends are reading this, do you have pointers to any other ‘must reads’ that have come out of the library program? Anything good from the project teams bubble up to the top?

A coworker forwarded this around today:

top - 00:19:39 up 23 days,  1:29,  4 users,  load average: 2.69, 2.38, 1.77
Tasks: 207 total,   2 running, 204 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
Cpu(s): 12.6%us,  1.0%sy,  0.0%ni, 77.8%id,  8.5%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.2%si, 0.0%st
Mem:  16432232k total, 16347460k used,    84772k free,   147064k buffers
Swap:  1048568k total,  1048568k used,        0k free,   940724k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
22848 astudent  25   0 14.3g  13g  820 R  100 84.5   1872:33 nano

We’re all a little curious how you can even get nano (aka pico) up to 14 gigs of RAM. Ick.