Sunday I had no official responsibilities (there was an interesting workshop being held, but I would have had to pay an additional registration fee or sneak in unnoticed to attend), so I decided to be a tourist of sorts. My primary objective was the Atlanta History Center, but since it did not open until noon on Sundays I had plenty of morning to kill. I left my room around 10:00 en route to Sublime Doughnuts since I saw it on a map and have a special place in my stomach for artisan-quality doughnuts. On the way I saw much of the Georgia Tech campus, which is rather more extensive than Lehigh (though thankfully much flatter as well). The most interesting quality of the Sublime doughnut (I splurged on a Honey-Glazed Cinnamon Swirl and a Yin Yang Twist) is their extreme fluffiness. I think I prefer my doughnuts more thick and chewy, but it was an interesting taste: better than mass-produced Dunkin’ Donuts but in no way able to help me forget the loss of Sunrise Valley Donuts.
After much waiting around I took a bus back to the main subway line and a train to the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel, where I picked up my conference materials. While parts of the METRA train lines are at ground level and others are even elevated, the Peachtree station is ridiculously far below ground level. Then I took the train, another bus, and a good long walk to the Atlanta History Center, arriving around 1:30. In the four hours before closing I was able to see only the Metropolitan Frontiers and Turning Point: The American Civil War exhibits, and had to rush through the end of the latter. The exhibit was a good, thorough survey of the war, but for someone who is already familiar with American history in broad strokes, I would have much appreciated a greater focus on the Battle of Atlanta and the role that Georgia played in the war. Most of the information here, while presented in its own unique way, was the same as any other historical museum that would cover the 1860s. I was disappointed to find almost nothing about the Reverend Doctor MLK, Jr., but there is another entire center devoted to his life in the area.
When the museum closed at 5:30 I walked / bussed / subwayed to Underground Atlanta, a commercial district where ground level had been paved over with viaducts such that there are now streets and businesses entirely underneath the heart of the city. I was thinking about stopping at a “real” restaurant for dinner, but obnoxious hawking from the employees at What The Chicken drew me in. (Perhaps this is an Atlanta eatery theme?) Their freshly cut, breaded, and fried chicken fingers were much better than the par-cooked, frozen kind that you can get most places, and the side dishes were good too. After exploring the rest of the subterranean concourse, I subwayed / walked back to my room and got to sleep soon after 9:00pm.
I was volunteering Monday to earn my free conference registration, which involved moving some equipment between various rooms and then collecting tickets at a tutorial that I did not bother trying to follow. Then I spent the late morning and afternoon in a workshop on Goal Directed Autonomy, of which my advisor was a co-organizer. When I arrived, I discovered that he had an upper respiratory infection and could barely speak above a whisper. Thus, I spent the lunch time scrambling to understand his slides and in the afternoon gave two presentations on work that was not mine. All things considered, it went well. The workshop as a whole was interesting; this is not necessarily a new idea but is a new terminology, and just about everyone had their own unique interpretation of what it should mean.