Farewell Austin

My turn to host the final beer tasting on the Sunday night. We had a beer with a witch's face on it, whose name now escapes me, followed by Tripel Karmeliet, both also pretty reasonable. We were going to meet up with the Dell guys later that evening to see a blues guitarist of some repute: Alan Haynes. We played it safe and ate in the hotel, which turned out to be reasonably priced.

Upon arrival at the venue we couldn't get in, and it didn't seem that busy. Eventually we found it was the staff Thanksgiving party, so their website had it all wrong about Alan Haynes. There was plenty of other live music to choose from, so we met the Dell guys and made decision. This is the first band.
It was OK but totally dominated by the harmonica player and they had trouble staying in time with each other.

We could see another band setting up across the street so decided to try that one out. There is no cover charge at most places so swapping around was not an expensive proposition. The place was almost empty so we got front row seats. Once these guys started playing, the place started filling up.

From the first song, it was much better. No dominant Harmonica and they kept it tight so immediately it was an improvement. The lead guitarist on the left was pretty good and drummer and keyboard players were old pros. The bass guitarist was a worry. I'm pretty sure he thought he was Angus from ACDC, but he had a whole lot of tongue action going on for one song, so was also channeling someone from Kiss as well. The lead guitarist was something else. He had all the moves:

I think again this was a case of thinking I was a bit more than an amateur photographer.  When I left early I was acknowledged as I left. I wanted to stay, but we were leaving the next day and I had to pack in the morning. Phil Laxton who is a bit of guitarist himself stayed on longer. He really appreciated the band and is responsible for all the whistling you hear in the videos. I need to work out how to adjust the default sound levels for the videos. They were maxed out the whole time and of course this results in the distorted sound. Decent video coming soon. Here's one that is small enough to upload as is. I really needed a tripod.

The next morning we had breakfast with Dell and a guy from DPI in Victoria. He was also there last night and I need to send him some of my photos as his iPhone was not cutting it in the dark. We then got a couple of Ubers for the 6 of us headed out to Dell. They showed us some of their engineering vertical solutions.

After some presentations we got another couple of Ubers and headed down the road to TACC. I was in an F150 - a roomy, true American experience. They pay far too little for petrol over there!

We toured the facility. They have more than one HPC installation. The first and largest one is called stampede and is multiple hot aisle contained pods of this sort of length. I'm in a cold aisle.

They also have some newer alternative architectures:

They are trialing some cool technologies (excuse the pun):

The above 2 shots show the oil cooling trial with a mostly empty vat in the first one and some storage on the left and blades on the right in the 2nd.

We then took an Uber to the airport and went through the checkin and not too unreasonable security process. There was not too much of a queue on a Monday at 3:00pm. We had time to grab a late lunch before our flights. Again the food wasn't too expensive. The decor was a worry. We were sitting in a bar decorated in honor of a Texan football player called Earl Campbell. This was OK in an American way, but the fact that this guy played in the 70s and 80s seemed a bit dated.

For me a 3 hour trip to LAX with plenty of time in between it and my International flight to Brisbane. I must have been tired. I misread the board, which was difficult to read compared to what I saw at Brisbane airport, and sat at the wrong gate for ages. Eventually I worked it out and had a stroll down the other end. I was lucky the long day made sleeping on the home leg a bit easier.