Adventures in SAS land

Last week I flew down to Cary, NC for the JMP Discovery Summit.  JMP is a statistical software package that Dan (most-senior statistician in our team of 3) really really likes.  I used it for a few classes in grad school (classes in which the professors happened to really really like it) but mostly used some other packages.  It is pretty useful though (and the conference helped demonstrate more of its usefulness!)

JMP is created by SAS and this conference was held on their mystical wonderland of a campus.  They were Forbes top company to work for...I think this year they got beat out by Google but...still near the top.  I was talking about the trip to Dan and Dave afterward, and Dan said "Whoa, did we just send you on a recruitment trip?"  Haha :)  I'm pretty happy with where I'm at, but it was fun to listen about their 35-hour work weeks and masseuse on campus and sheep who keep the grass cut around their solar panels...

Anyway, the conference was neat and they really took care of us (all meals provided, breakfast through dinner - dinners were at special places each night).  Lots of interesting sessions and I made some friends!

 I knew my AXO sister Sarah lives in Cary now so I got in touch over fb and it worked out great for us to meet up for coffee!  Lovely welcoming to NC :)

 Second special dinner event: at the Museum of Natural Sciences (the first was at the home of SAS co-founder John Sall, and I wanted to take pictures but felt a little geeky doing so).

 Bus tour of SAS campus: here are the solar panels maintained by short sheep

 Building where we had our sessions

 Nice little pond area

 The Cary Academy

 At the country club for our third dinner event (I think this country club is also owned by John Sall.)

 Feeling fancy

 Sculpture inside the building where we had our sessions.  They really like art here.

 With Beth, the first friend I made at the conference, standing under the SAS pi sculpture!

 Lovely

 We went on a bit of a walking tour of the campus to get back our hotel after the conference was over...found this gem...exactly 23 MPH, please.

 Matrix drive!  Yeah!

 Off the patio of the Umstead Hotel & Spa (alternative hotel option for the conference...the Embassy Suites was much cheaper, so in the interests of my company I went for that one.  But we checked out the lobby of the Umstead, it's quite fancy.  Also owned by John Sall?)

So long SAS, it's been a pleasure!

Seafood Festival

Another cool thing arranged through my job:  bus trip to the Seafood Festival in Hampton Beach, NH!  By the way, that's not the same thing as "the Hamptons"...I had to Google to find out the distinction.  We paid to jump on the charter bus to get us to the festival, and it was REALLY nice not to have to do the driving ourselves for the 4 hour trip!

Lots of vendors had little stands set up with a variety of seafood delights, and there were some tents with stuff to buy...that was about it, we just did a lot of eating :)  Pretty awesome.  There was also some music playing, and a lobster roll eating contest.  Here are some pictures of the food and stuff.

 Add two more states to our list!  Massachusetts...

 ...and New Hampshire.  Live Free or Die, y'all.

 First selection: lobster mac & cheese.

 Lobster quesadillas!

 Pretty beach

 Lobster roll eating.  Kinda gross but impressive

 This guy in the middle was meant to win from the beginning

 He got a belt!

 Windy

 Do you like my new sunglasses?  They're $5 and say "DG" on the side (I saw a DG logo on the table, that had fallen off one of the other pairs).  Keepin' it classy.

 Fried ice cream!  Om nom nom

 Lobster bisque in a bread bowl ohhhh amazing.

Also amazing was this apple crisp.

We ate at lot and got to hang out by the beach.  I'd say it was a wildly successful day!

Whitewater Adventures

Okay, so this post is about our whitewater rafting trip on August 25...meaning I'm not quite a month behind on my blog posts (but getting close). 

I love that my company has a "Newcomer's Club", they put on some interesting lunchtime presentations every other week and they also host outside events...like whitewater rafting!  I signed up Brad and me for the trip, and a group of about 30 "newcomers" and families drove up to Wild Waters Outdoor Center near Queensbury (close to Lake George and the Adirondacks, which we didn't get a chance to explore yet).  The rafting trip lasted all day, with a brief stop for lunch on the shore (they tossed around sandwiches kept dry in a large pack on one of the rafts!)  We rafted 3 miles down the Indian River and 14 down the Hudson.  Our guide was a hoot!  (note the rubber duck on her helmet in the pictures) and it was fun getting to know some of the other newbies at my company.  Our guide told us over and over that we were her favorite raft (perhaps with tips in mind, but she was pretty convincing!)  She was happy that we paddled hard and followed directions.  Paul, one of the guys from work who we carpooled up with, said he figured we did such a good job because "we're engineers...we know how to follow the rules and yet also be creative!"

Anyway, it was a really fun trip, no one fell out of the raft, gorgeous day for rafting and the views along the river were beautiful!

 

Attractive rafting gear!

 

Sadly my waterproof camera got really foggy so most of those pics are no good.

 

 Beautiful

 Menfolk before we put the raft in the river

 And now for the impressive-looking pro pics...note Lucy's awesome ducky.  Brad and I were in the two seats in the back.

 Brad's working hard...I'm just happy?

 Drill team smile always...even in crazy rapids

A Day at the Races

Playing catch-up on blog posts...I have several weekends' worth of fun times to share, and it keeps piling up!  So, first up we have our trip to Saratoga Race Course, the Saturday after we got back from Texas.  We had heard that we should go to the races at least once, for the experience...we had the weekend free, so we went!  We had NO idea how to go about placing bets, but luckily they had a "Betting 101" tent so we could learn some basics. 

 The atmosphere was so fun -- it felt like a tailgate! 

Our first bets!  We did win-place-show on two horses (betting on the horse getting first, second or third) and the two horses finished 4th and 5th :-/ oh well!

 We looked at the odds (and the names) and chose horses #4 and #5...then realized their colors were green and gold!  Perfect.

WINNING.  Overall we lost about $6 but we did have a couple of winning horses :)

It was a loong day (would have been even longer if we had come early in the morning to watch the workouts, as originally planned!)  Amazing how long it drags out for under 20 minutes of actual racing!  But it was nice out in the sun and fun to get caught up in the excitement.