What Happens in Austin Stays in Austin

I am in Austin for the wedding of an old college friend. Some of our mutual friends from college are also coming. Yay!

Pictures from PAX (and other stuff!)

I've uploaded 3 rolls of film onto Flickr. This includes many (but not all) of the pictures taken on my camera at PAX. (The others are in the roll currently in the camera, so I'll post those later.) Each roll of film has 25 pictures, so there are 75 unique pictures to see.

You can find all 81 of the pictures I uploaded on this page (assuming I didn't screw up the url... I have this vague feeling that the public url should be different; let me know if this works). How did I get to 81, you ask? Well, 81 is 9^2, you see, because base 9 is just like base 10... if you're missing 1 finger! (I accidently uploaded the same roll twice and wrote some snarky comments I didn't want to erase. I'm such a winner.) The rolls include stuff from Zurich, PAX, Colorado, Florida, Caltech, and the Dallas airport.

Here are a couple of pictures we discussed previously:

1. Me + Microsoft PR guy.

2. The model from the booth at PAX.


I didn't discuss this picture from PAX, but I think it came out well.

Now it's Lemming's turn to post his pictures from PAX. :)

Sam and Matt's Wedding: A Review

Here's another post that I should have written about three weeks or so ago.

Anyway, in early March, I went to the wedding of former Techers Matt Reese '01 and Sam Bench '01. (Matt is now officially known as Mr. Bench.)

The wedding was held in a cabin in Estes Park, Colorado; this allowed for a lot of hanging out because most of us were staying in the cabin. Sleep was rather sparse but flicking was plentiful. In fact, that was my favorite part of the weekend, because I really don't get a chance to do traditional flicking very much anymore. The wedding guests included one very close friend of mine (Jit Kee Chin '01) and some people I had not seen in a very loooooong time (such as Selwyn Scharnhorst '00 and Jaideep Singh '00). I volunteered to help do gofer work in the kitchen a couple of times, but Jit Kee knew to keep me away from there, because this likely would have led to a negative contribution. (It's good to have that kind of reputation.)

Stephen Shepherd '00 conducted the wedding, and the neuroscientist in him came out in several of his comments. Anyway, the fact that he presided over the wedding was highly amusing.

A few people also arranged it so that The Ride started playing (though it was stopped after a few bars) right after the vows were exchanged. (I knew it was coming and my heart rate still went up!) The reaction from the audience was a mixture of horrified shock and utter confusion, so it was very easy to tell who went to Tech (not that one couldn't already do that).

Anyway, it was very fun and very tiring, and it was especially nice to hang out with some people I hadn't seen in many years!

What happens in Estes Park stays in Estes Park

Tomorrow morning, I have a flight to Denver (I know, right when the March Meeting is ending) followed by ground transportation to Estes Park, Colorado. I will be attending the wedding of Lloydies Sam Bench '01 and Matt Reese '01 and a lot of Techers I haven't seen in many years (and some friends I have seen more recently than that) will be there. It should be very fun.

The timing of the wedding was purposely aligned with the end of the March Meeting in order to maximize the number of physicists attending it. (Matt is a physicist and was responsible in part for the Lloydie-Scurve dinner at last year's March Meeting becoming a Lloydie-Scurve-Yalee [how does one spell Yalee?] dinner.) In fact, the first formal e-mail announcement was titled something like "March Meeting and wedding" and was timed to be just before the abstract submission deadline for the March Meeting (and included a reminder about that). It was really quite classy.

There is a small chance I'll run into one of my friends at the airport (given the relative timing of my flight in and her flight out), though I don't know about relative airlines, so I'm guessing that won't happen. I'll hazard a guess, however, that I will see some meeting attendees that I know who are not people attending the wedding. It's just a matter of whom.

I almost forgot: this will be my first flight in which I am not taking a laptop with me since March 1998, when I was visiting grad schools.