Flying to Seattle
Written yesterday, posted today:
I'm in the middle of flying to Seattle for STOC. Obviously I'm not posting this from the plane, but I'm kind of bored so decided to write this entry which I'll post later. I haven't really done too much traveling in my life, partially due to monetary constraints but mostly due to the fact that I'm lazy, and tend to stay where I am unless someone makes me go somewhere else. So I've never really done this traveling for fun thing that most of my friends have. This makes me get excited about things that I'm sure aren't exciting at all to most people. For example, I was just in the middle of a sunset. We were at about the same height as a cloud next to the plane, and it was a dividing line -- below it everything was pink, and above it was the normal blue sky. It was really cool looking down and seeing a pink sunset instead of looking up. Also, we flew over some mountains (I can only assume the rockies) which still had snow on them. I didn't get to ski nearly enough this year. Next year I have to make sure to make time for more skiing.
So I just realized a couple days ago how much traveling and stuff I'm doing this summer. Seattle this week, back for a week, then Princeton reunions, then back for a week, then the approximation algorithms workshop in Montreal, then home for a week, then being a counselor at the UVM math camp, then visiting the Duluth REU. I thought I was going to have a productive summer of working in Pittsburgh, but apparently not. Well, I'll just have to be productive on the road. Duluth should be a good opportunity to work, and part of the reason for going to STOC was to work on our paper with Seth. This makes submitting anything to SODA extremely unlikely, though, especially since we seem to have run into a fairly major problem in our approach to the main problem I've been working on lately. Oh well.
Oh yeah, and yesterday was Black Friday, the day when all the CSD faculty get together to evaluate all of the CSD PhD students. Running the traditional Black Friday TG fell to me and william, since most of the active members of Dec/5 aren't actually in CSD (Ben is in LTI, Serge is in ISRI, etc.). So I bought $450 worth of sandwiches from Panera, helped set up all the food and the beer, and cleaned up afterwards. It was kind of a long day, but pretty fun. Lots of hanging out chatting with people, which was nice, especially with people that I haven't seen for a while like Virgi and Ryan. And the night before was the GSA end of the year party, followed by a bunch of heading out to Silky's for awhile, so I've been extremely social lately. Silky's was, as always, a lot of fun, although I still suck at the shuffleboard there. I think I lost three or four times to Dan and Serge. Each time I lost I had to buy the next pitcher, too, which got fairly expensive. But it was still a lot of fun.
I'm in the middle of flying to Seattle for STOC. Obviously I'm not posting this from the plane, but I'm kind of bored so decided to write this entry which I'll post later. I haven't really done too much traveling in my life, partially due to monetary constraints but mostly due to the fact that I'm lazy, and tend to stay where I am unless someone makes me go somewhere else. So I've never really done this traveling for fun thing that most of my friends have. This makes me get excited about things that I'm sure aren't exciting at all to most people. For example, I was just in the middle of a sunset. We were at about the same height as a cloud next to the plane, and it was a dividing line -- below it everything was pink, and above it was the normal blue sky. It was really cool looking down and seeing a pink sunset instead of looking up. Also, we flew over some mountains (I can only assume the rockies) which still had snow on them. I didn't get to ski nearly enough this year. Next year I have to make sure to make time for more skiing.
So I just realized a couple days ago how much traveling and stuff I'm doing this summer. Seattle this week, back for a week, then Princeton reunions, then back for a week, then the approximation algorithms workshop in Montreal, then home for a week, then being a counselor at the UVM math camp, then visiting the Duluth REU. I thought I was going to have a productive summer of working in Pittsburgh, but apparently not. Well, I'll just have to be productive on the road. Duluth should be a good opportunity to work, and part of the reason for going to STOC was to work on our paper with Seth. This makes submitting anything to SODA extremely unlikely, though, especially since we seem to have run into a fairly major problem in our approach to the main problem I've been working on lately. Oh well.
Oh yeah, and yesterday was Black Friday, the day when all the CSD faculty get together to evaluate all of the CSD PhD students. Running the traditional Black Friday TG fell to me and william, since most of the active members of Dec/5 aren't actually in CSD (Ben is in LTI, Serge is in ISRI, etc.). So I bought $450 worth of sandwiches from Panera, helped set up all the food and the beer, and cleaned up afterwards. It was kind of a long day, but pretty fun. Lots of hanging out chatting with people, which was nice, especially with people that I haven't seen for a while like Virgi and Ryan. And the night before was the GSA end of the year party, followed by a bunch of heading out to Silky's for awhile, so I've been extremely social lately. Silky's was, as always, a lot of fun, although I still suck at the shuffleboard there. I think I lost three or four times to Dan and Serge. Each time I lost I had to buy the next pitcher, too, which got fairly expensive. But it was still a lot of fun.