Road Trip Day 29 - 2007-08-17

Here is a map of today's drive:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=Little+Rock,+AR&daddr=Reynoldsburg,+OH&sll=35.40423,-93.25298&sspn=1.325286,2.581787&ie=UTF8&z=6&om=1

Check out the pictures I took today:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10306971@N03/sets/72157601523422801/

Today I drove from Little Rock, Arkansas to Reynoldsburg, Ohio to see a long-time friend of mine named Brian. We met about 12 years ago playing X-Wing vs. Tie fighter together online: we both flew for the same squadron (a group of folks that competed together) and have stayed in touch ever since. I'd never seen him in person before, so I was looking forward to that.

After saying goodbye to Steph I drove for about 12 hours to arrive in Reynoldsburg by 10:30PM. Brian showed me around his place and then told me that he had to go back to work for a bit to take care of a few things. He works for Victoria's Secret doing IT support and offered to show me around the distribution facilities they had just built. Of course, I was quite eager to see it since I love seeing manufacturing and other types of automation.

Unfortunately, I couldn't take pictures in the facility, but it was really cool. There were these high-tech conveyor belts going all through the building. Brian informed me that they were completely electro-magnetic which makes them quiet and very energy efficient. Also, each section of the belt has rollers that can be activated to slide the item on that section to one side or the other. Combined with the overhead barcode readers at various points in the belt, it allowed specific items to be delivered to different areas across the building.

After getting the grand tour and seeing Brian fix up a few broken workstations, we headed back to his place to play Gears of War on his X-Box 360. The game is a first-person-shooter and is quite fun. I was very impressed by the image quality the system could put out (1080p) and how nice it looked on his TV. He even has surround-sound speakers for the full effect. Very cool!