A Fortnight of Kate
Will be moved to its appropriate place in the timestream sometime in the future. Just wanted to get this all down so I'd remember it if I was looking for it.
The group-that-didn't-go-to-Russia was supposed to have a screening of Four Seasons Lodge, but at the last minute, it changed and I didn't notice, which was sort of okay bc as my impossibly sweet sister said, "ew, old people kissing." Instead we watched The Last Survivor and I got a lesson in African history and was tired of the word genocide by the end.
Conservative TNG brought in Pete Hesgeth of Vets for Freedom to speak. He's clean cut, well-spoken - reminds me of Nathan Petrelli actually. I don't think he's remarkable, but as I watched him speak, I realized that military is just as much a language as, say, technology, and the ability to translate that into something civilians can grasp is even more important. Esp. for policy. I saw this in my own life when NavyBoy first joined: I'd ask him questions and he couldn't figure out how to answer them without compromising something, whereas what I was asking was things like, Can a helicopter fly from NY to Paris? 'cuz ahm smaht like that. Nowadays he knows he can say things like "it makes a big boom" and that's probably the level of detail I was looking for :)
I was ridiculously jazzed after going to a MITEF panel called, "There's An App For That." I've never done anything with MITEF before, but some of the speakers were quite good. Our host was a lawyer, as was the dude from Verizon; no offense to the lawyers on my flist, but they didn't have much worth hearing and they took too darn long to say it. When asked, the Verizon dude seemed most concerned about privacy, cryptography, and when does a cell phone cross over to becoming a medical device. The best line of the night though was an attendee who introduced me to his wife and said, "Wasn't it smart of me as a technologist/entrepreneur to marry a patent lawyer?" *giggles*
Michael Bramlage from Nokia was absolutely brilliant. One of the questions posed was "What makes a cell phone different?" He talked about how phones have senses: every phone can hear, you interface with them tactilely, etc. Moreover, they know ALL about you, they're everywhere, always on, in reach: there's an opportunity to become emotional about it. Considering I already love Farinelli more than most people, and it only connects me to my friends when I'm in WiFi range, I'd believe it. I wonder what Disney is doing to take advantage of this. Jaspreet Singh from Sapient talked about that emotional engagement and talked about writing fo the different form factors.
I ran into an old cow orker from my white shoe days, actually, the fellow who recruited me. I still can't tell how much of my enjoyment came from revisiting old glories and how much from using my brain, but I walked out thinking how much I love tech and how I wish I could do this stuff all the time.
Went to see Tales of Hoffman at the Met with a new friend. It's a lovely production and sitting in the top-and-back, I appreciated the orchestra and the singers(!) even more. I didn't much care for the music though - I still haven't figured out why I like some Mozart (The Magic Flute and that bit from Master & Commander), some Phillip Glass (Akhnaten and the score to The Illusionist), and some parts of Tristan & Isolde, but not Italian or French stuff. It was interesting to recognize that it's so post-Freudian and I was very happy that my companion could tell me so many interesting things about the opera. How much more interesting to do stuff with an aficionado. And I'm very thankful nyghtowl told me to stay for the orgy in Act III. Still, at 3.5hrs on a school night, I don't think I'll be doing that again soon.
The group-that-didn't-go-to-Russia was supposed to have a screening of Four Seasons Lodge, but at the last minute, it changed and I didn't notice, which was sort of okay bc as my impossibly sweet sister said, "ew, old people kissing." Instead we watched The Last Survivor and I got a lesson in African history and was tired of the word genocide by the end.
Conservative TNG brought in Pete Hesgeth of Vets for Freedom to speak. He's clean cut, well-spoken - reminds me of Nathan Petrelli actually. I don't think he's remarkable, but as I watched him speak, I realized that military is just as much a language as, say, technology, and the ability to translate that into something civilians can grasp is even more important. Esp. for policy. I saw this in my own life when NavyBoy first joined: I'd ask him questions and he couldn't figure out how to answer them without compromising something, whereas what I was asking was things like, Can a helicopter fly from NY to Paris? 'cuz ahm smaht like that. Nowadays he knows he can say things like "it makes a big boom" and that's probably the level of detail I was looking for :)
I was ridiculously jazzed after going to a MITEF panel called, "There's An App For That." I've never done anything with MITEF before, but some of the speakers were quite good. Our host was a lawyer, as was the dude from Verizon; no offense to the lawyers on my flist, but they didn't have much worth hearing and they took too darn long to say it. When asked, the Verizon dude seemed most concerned about privacy, cryptography, and when does a cell phone cross over to becoming a medical device. The best line of the night though was an attendee who introduced me to his wife and said, "Wasn't it smart of me as a technologist/entrepreneur to marry a patent lawyer?" *giggles*
Michael Bramlage from Nokia was absolutely brilliant. One of the questions posed was "What makes a cell phone different?" He talked about how phones have senses: every phone can hear, you interface with them tactilely, etc. Moreover, they know ALL about you, they're everywhere, always on, in reach: there's an opportunity to become emotional about it. Considering I already love Farinelli more than most people, and it only connects me to my friends when I'm in WiFi range, I'd believe it. I wonder what Disney is doing to take advantage of this. Jaspreet Singh from Sapient talked about that emotional engagement and talked about writing fo the different form factors.
I ran into an old cow orker from my white shoe days, actually, the fellow who recruited me. I still can't tell how much of my enjoyment came from revisiting old glories and how much from using my brain, but I walked out thinking how much I love tech and how I wish I could do this stuff all the time.
Went to see Tales of Hoffman at the Met with a new friend. It's a lovely production and sitting in the top-and-back, I appreciated the orchestra and the singers(!) even more. I didn't much care for the music though - I still haven't figured out why I like some Mozart (The Magic Flute and that bit from Master & Commander), some Phillip Glass (Akhnaten and the score to The Illusionist), and some parts of Tristan & Isolde, but not Italian or French stuff. It was interesting to recognize that it's so post-Freudian and I was very happy that my companion could tell me so many interesting things about the opera. How much more interesting to do stuff with an aficionado. And I'm very thankful nyghtowl told me to stay for the orgy in Act III. Still, at 3.5hrs on a school night, I don't think I'll be doing that again soon.