Off Topic Discussions

[BigAl01]

A few days ago, my wife Sandra and I were able to visit the AMD facility in Austin, Texas.  We are on a road trip to see the solar eclipse in Kerrville, Texas and that event occurred on 08 April; now we are working our way back to Virginia.  Sam and Wally welcomed us into their offices and Sam gave us a wonderful tour of the public relations areas and several labs where they have Systems Under Test (SUT).  I was permitted to take some pictures in the public relations area, as shown below.  We are grateful to the whole Red Team for this opportunity to see some very cool stuff,

The entrance sign. The building where Sam and Wally work. Some devices with AMD components in them. A very nice presentation room. A gaming area where employees can reduce stress. Myself and my wife Sandra with Sam. He is holding that guitar with a computer built inside it.

[johnnyenglish]

Awesome! Just awesome. 😊

[YourLocalRyzen777]

nice

[cpurpe91]

Looks like you had a blast, friend. The floating table looks awesome. Did you get to see the eclipse?

[BigAl01]

Yes, we saw the eclipse from start to just a few minutes prior to totality, then the clouds obscured the remainder.  We got the darkness of totality.

Waiting for the start. The moon moved from right to left. Just prior to totality.

[cpurpe91]

Those are beautiful images. I was not in a totallity zone so it wasn't all that dark. I was going to ty to get images but I don't have a great quality camera.

[BigAl01]

The above images were from iPhones.  Others with our group got better pictures but the clouds ruined half of the experience.

[Dragokar]

Amazing and I am glad they made it able to visit them.

[ajlueke]

Hey, I have the same shirt.  Looks like a fun visit.

[johnnyenglish]

Only saw the shirt now, looks like you dressed all up for the event 😆


Again, I'm super jealous of the visit. Hope you had a blast there.

[eebiii]

Awesome!! I know @BigAl01 and your wife had a great time. But it would have been cool if @Sam_AMD walked in and you were sitting at his desk with your feet propped up playing on his PC. LMAO

[Sam_AMD]

It was great to have @BigAl01 and Sandra with us for a day! I enjoyed our conversations while giving them the tour!

The floor where Wally and I sit is called WWM (World Wide Marketing Organization) which consists of Social, PR, Channel, and Product Marketing. 

The "Presentation Room" is referred to as our "Media Room" (a.k.a. Theater) where major, company-wide presentations take place. 

The "Gaming Area" is our retro-arcade. It also includes a shuffle-board, ping pong, foosball, and last but not least a Nintendo-64 station! 

Friends! If any of you happen to be in Austin, shoot me a PM, I'll be more than happy to give you the Tour! 

@BigAl01 I hope you got home safe! (I believe you avoided the storm, right?)

[BigAl01]

We are in Kentucky now, and we did a bourbon tasting at Lux Row Distillery.  We have driven through several storms, the worst being the drive from Tulsa OK to St. Louis, MO yesterday.

One of the stills.

[eebiii]

Grab one of those stills and throw it in the back of the car. I have an idea! 😀

[mengelag]

This is Awesome!

[BigAl01]

We returned safely late this afternoon (15 April 2024); we picked up our two cats that were boarded at the vets and we petted our two outdoor cats that were fed by a service while we were away.  Happily we avoided any serious weather (I fear hailstones in particular) and overall a great trip.  

Our outdoor cat Tiger really missed me. As usual, he meowed quite a bit upon my return. He did this when we returned from a trip to Egypt earlier this year in January.

[cpurpe91]

I'm glad you made it home, my friend. You always take the best trips.

[BigAl01]

If anyone's curious, I've built a web page to document our trip.  It's called, "Road-Trip-To-Totality-2024.php" and it took me 17 hours to construct, because I do it all manually.  This is how I share our trips with others - I just send people a link.

We stayed at a B&B in North Carolina.

[eebiii]

What a great vacation!  "Road-Trip-To-Totality-2024.php"

I would be visiting those war museums also. I cannot figure out which gun this is?

It looks like a 40mm AA gun, maybe Bofors?, Kind of has some similarities to a German 88. Could be an AT gun? Can't figure it out so let me know.

I think I may plan something like this for my wife and I for our 20th anniversary. This is really cool, and I enjoyed the webpage, great job!

[BigAl01]

Thank you @eebiii ; I think that's a German 88mm flak gun, the kind that was used by Rommel in Egypt to knock out the allied tanks.

[BigAl01]

This was the best image captured by one of our group in Kerrville, Texas.  We couldn't see this with the naked eye.

You can see the sun's corona in this image during totality.