new places on Friday night

- Taverna Plaka. The kids from the Mexico/Spain study abroad were having a get-together, and they managed to gather almost everybody who went, and we headed over to this Greek ... tavern... off of Piedmont. It was terribly interesting... the beautiful 30-something Atlanta folk, dancing around the restaurant to Very Loud middle-eastern music (often atop the sturdy tables, actually), bellydancers, lots and lots of alcohol... and thankfully, very nice fresh hummus and vegetables and pita and coffee. It was good to see the kids from the study abroad :) We're all getting old... a bunch of them are already graduated and working out in the world and getting ready to head off to other cities, and several have already done so...

- But before I went to visit the LBAT kids, Tim neuroticmonk and I headed over to Fry's Electronics, out in Duluth. Fry's is unendingly nice... either it was designed by techie folk with other techie folk in mind ("this is the sort of store that I'd like to go to..."), or somebody's done some homework on making a shopping environment specifically conducive to making Tim and me feel at home. They've got electronics, tools, appliances, computer parts of all sorts (with motherboards actually out on display instead of in those little boxes! And aisles and aisles of obscure adapters, and manual KVMs and shelves upon shelves of the most beautiful cases, and...), A/V stuff, funky toys like scooters and puzzles, books, a coffee shop... and reasonable prices, on top of all of this! *dances* It's unlikely that I'll be seen in the Buckhead compusa any time soon...

- As a result of that expedition, I've got a new 160-gig HD... I may have to partition it up and maybe NFS some of the space over towards hackmode...