Legends of Caltech: The Weekend

The book release party was on Friday night. Many of you were there.

Yesterday was the book signing and a brief honor just before the main seminar day session in Beckman Auditorium. There was a bit of a communication issue (hmmm... that's eerily familar) and Autumn and I were not informed that we were supposed to go into the side entrance of Beckman (well, the regular entrance would be ok as well) and that we had reserved seats in the front. We were sitting in the back so we could escape after our names were mentioned and we stood up because neither of us had any desire to see the talk. I was not informed that I was supposed to pick up a name tag (because I hadn't registered for Reunion Weekend), so I had to spend several minutes convincing the ushers to let me into Beckman in the first place. (Actually, it occurred to me in advance that this might happen and my general reaction was one of extreme amusement. A big part of me was hoping that they wouldn't let me in because that would have been truly spectacular.)

The book signing was rather busy. Thankfully, some of my friends stopped by, so it was good that I had a chance to see them and talk to them for a little while. Autumn and I signed a lot of books over a 2 and a half hour period. Jorge Cham was also there signing for a little while. We got more customers than he did this time around, and that obviously had a lot to do with the timing and general event. As of 2:30 pm, 167 copies of Legends III had been sold (since it's Thursday 5/10 release; I think the bookstore started actually selling them on 5/11). About 250 copies each of the first two books in the series are sold every year, so we're doing quite well. Of course, the sales of our book will eventually stabilize as well, though it should be at higher than 250 because our book has an ISBN (so that it should show up on Amazon.com at some point).

One of people who showed up to buy the book and get an autograph yesterday was Tom Apostol. He had met Autumn before (from when she dressed up as a giant copy of Tommy I -- this picture is in the book) and he asked her to sign the book. Autumn pointed out that he should get my autograph as well, but he decided to dis me and go right in line to buy the book instead. I would expect better of a fellow mathematician. :) Ah well... you can't win them all.

Today was the Rickets-Dabney House reunion dinner. I recognized a few people from the late 90s, including one person whose gender seems to have changed in the intervening years. (I can give a little more detail privately.) I talked a bit about the new book (and the fact that we want submissions for Legends IV) and then we raffled off a few free copies of Legends III. One of the Alumni Association (AA) people at the event accidently gave me a raffle ticket, so I joked around at the end of my "speech" (unlike Tom Mannion, the other speaker, I didn't use a script) about hoping that I won one with mine. I then went back to my seat. Another AA person then drew the first winner, which turned out to be me, which gave me the perfect opportunity to make an additional snarky comment publicly. (She had previously stated that I wasn't eligible after I first made the joke.) I was highly amused! (Actually, most of the audience members were rather amused by this.)

More interesting news: I found out from Tom Mannion that somebody is planning to produce a documentary about pranking at Caltech, so I'm going to be having lunch (or dinner) with that guy, Tom, and current Lloydie (and former ASCIT President) Todd Gingrich (who contributed to Legends III). I told Tom about the idea of trying to get a modern version of Real Genius, and this will be an excellent way to proceed in that direction. The meeting probably won't occur until after the school year, so I'll keep you posted on this new development.