Category: General

Off to Phoenix

So my last update was about my Adventures in Portland.  And now, around a month later, I’m off to Phoenix, Arizona.  You may think I travel alot, but these two most recent trips are a bit of a fluke in my normal travelogue.

This journey is pleasure for me; work related for the wife.  I’ll be traveling with  Jackie and Kari, our first big family adventure.  I hope to take in some of the sights of the southwest, eat some good food and most importantly spend some time unplugged from all of this and plugged in to my family.  Fret not ye internet friends, I do plan on updating flickr with photos and whatnot.

This will be Jack’s first flying experience post-9/11.  And for Kari, her first flying experience ever.  We’ve been talking about airplanes and watching videos on YouTube in an attempt to get her excited.  It’s about 10:30 right now and the little varmit finally fell asleep at 10.  I hope she’s ready for a 7:30am flight!

I hope my internet access is more accomodating on this trip.  I’ll be bringing the D40 with us, along with my Mac.  Not to mention the DS and iPod Touch. 🙂

Photo (postcard?) by dbostrom – Licensed under Creative Commons

Adventures in Portland

Skyline

I’ve returned from Portland, intact if not a little tired.  Portland is a beautiful city, with a lot to see and do.  Their downtown area is about the same size as ours.  Two things struck me as very interesting.

Nice Coat

First, the city is by far the cleanest city I’ve ever visited.  I don’t recall seeing any trash on the street.  It actually appeared as thought everyone in the city pitches in to keep the place looking nice.  Yes that is a homeless man walking around in a sleeping bag.  They all stayed to themselves in the city and didn’t bother me at all.  In fact I was quite impressed by their age.  Most of them were younger people.

Isengard

Second, everything is larger than here in STL.  The sidewalks are twice as wide, the buildings go right up to the edge of each block, and speaking of city blocks, they seem to be larger as well. I think this has to do with the city being so far west. They just have more space to spread out!

The conference went well, we were the last presentation to go (for the day and the entire conference!)  We had a good turn out of about 50 people, all of them were paying attention to us the entire time.  

The next Fall SIGUCCS conference will be next year in St. Louis.  I encourage anyone working in higher education & technology to attend.  I plan on writing another paper for next year myself.

I’d talk more but I’m tired and need to get caught up.  The rest of my photos are embedded below and can be found on my flickr set.  Josh has some photos up on his flickr as well. His take on our adventure can be found on his blog (Parts 1,2,3,4,5)

Mmmmelting Macbook Pro Followup

$40 bucks later I have 5 new keys and have discovered how this all happened.  The people/person living here before us replaced a few of he bulbs under the cabinet with the wrong size.  They were too large and were putting out too much heat and too much stress against the covers. Those two mistakes lead to my Mmmmeling Macbook Pro.

Lesson to be learned?  When buying an old house make sure to check your under the cabinet lights!

Going to Portland

This weekend I’m heading to Portland to attend the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services (SIGUCCS) 2008 Fall Conference. (Phew!)  The short and long of why I’m going is that I co-authored a paper (pdf) and have been asked to present it on behalf of my employer.  Josh, the groovy brains behind this whole adventure, will be joining me.

While I’m there I hope to see some of the city, eat some good food and drink a pop.  I’ll be staying at the Hilton in downtown Portland which looks to be very nice.  I’m less than a mile from the Panic offices so I might swing by to take a picture or something.

I’ll be updating Twitter and Flickr while I’m traveling so you can see all the cool stuff.  I’m also going to (finally) get some use of this iSight and talk to Kari and Jack over the internets.

As an adventure inside this adventure I’ll also be driving 4 hours (each way) to visit my maternal grand parents, whom I only recall meeting once in my life.  They live in West Richland, WA which means I get to travel across some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.

I’m very excited to get the chance to visit Portland.  I’m half afraid I might not want to come back!

UPDATE:  ZOMG!  There’s an Apple store less than a block from the hotel!  I CAN PLAY WIF NEW MACBOOKS?