joshkelahan.com

It is finally almost pretty close to being ready to be just about over. I mean the insane number of birthdays that people I know have this time of year. I’ve actually lost count. Just about everyone I know was born between September 1st and November 30th. How crazy is that? My uncle’s birthday is this Thursday and then my Mom’s birthday is right before Christmas, which doesn’t really count, but I figure I should mention it so she doesn’t kick my ass. My mom will be turning twenty-six again this year as she has every year since I can remember.

So I was at my grandma’s house this afternoon, and my uncle was putting on his parka (seriously, its not that cold) to go pick up the chicken (my grandma always has KFC on Sunday night for dinner). As he was walking through the living room, we had the following conversation:

Uncle: “So have you gotten me anything for Christmas yet?”

Me: “Dude, I haven’t even gotten you anything for your birthday yet.”

Uncle: “Oh you little stinker,” (edit: he talks to everyone like they are 4, its really annoying) “well I know what you can get me for Christmas, they are probably expensive, so maybe you can go together with your brother and sister.”

Me: “Oh? What’s that?”

Uncle: “I need a portable player, that plays the things like the DVD but for audio.”

Me: “Uhh…you mean a CD player? Like what you have in your car?”

Uncle: “Is that what that slot thing is?  I know they are flat like a pancake, and look like DVD’s are they smaller?”

Me: “No, they are exactly the same as DVD’s but they have audio instead of video.”

Uncle: “Oh, and I will need some headphones too.”

Me: “What kind of headphones do you like?”

Uncle: “I don’t know I have never had any.”

Me: “Didn’t I get you a sports radio a few years ago that had headphones?”

Uncle: “Oh yeah, I remember those, those went in your ears, is that them?”

Me: “Well they have ear phones like those that go in your ears, headphones that just sit on your ears, and headphones that go around your ears.”

Uncle: “Which are the best?”

Me: “Well, it depends on what you want to do, if you are going to be working out, I would say ear phones, but if you are just going to be sitting listening, I would say around your ears.”

Uncle: “Oh I won’t be working out or jogging or anything.  I just want to listen to music.”

I have a sinking suspicion that all he wants to do is sit in his apartment and listen to a CD. Of course there would be so many better alternatives. I think I will get him a portable player for his birthday, and then maybe some kind of little boombox or something for Christmas so he doesn’t have to use headphones in his apartment.

So as I sit here, I think to myself, all the times that I bought cd players, what kinds did I get. Well, Sony comes to mind, so I went to their site first. It took a while to actually find a CD player. Just about everything is mp3 or better. I so wish my uncle wasn’t mortally afraid of technology, then I could just get him a digital audio player and be done with it. Oh well, CD player’s are so cheap right now it doesn’t even matter.

All week this week my time has been completely screwed up. I don’t know why. I have been getting the normal amount of sleep that I normally would (what?), but I feel really tired. On Tuesday, I remember waking up in the morning and thinking, “Oy veh, is it Monday already?” And then later in the day, as I was leaving work, I thought to myself, “At least tomorrow in Thursday.”

Today when I got up, it was more of the same. But even more than the days previous, I seem to be having problems keeping my eyes open. I even cracked a window on my drive to work cause I was afraid I might fall asleep. Hopefully I am not getting sick.

Yesterday was my Birthday (I am 27 now, almost as old as you), and my work friends joined me for lunch at Iggy’s. I was not expecting that.  It was a good time.

I woke up yesterday at 4:30am, checked out of the hotel, walked the block and a half to the MAX line, and got on the train to the airport.  It only took about 30 minutes to get to the air port.  I checked my bags and waited….

The plane took off a little early around 7:30.  The flight from Portland to Chicago was for the most part good.  I took some pictures when we were flying over the mountains.  You can see them here.  But somewhere over Montana, and throughout Iowa, there was some crazy turbulence.  I couldn’t even read my book it was so bad, so I just listened to some music.

I was fairly relieved when we landed in Chicago, but at the same time, I really wanted to be home already.  I had a scheduled two hour layover, so I grabbed some McNuggets, and walked from gate to gate.  As anyone who has ever been to O’hare knows, there are a lot of gates.  The flight in from Portland let me off at gate K8, and my flight from Chicago to STL was leaving from H17.  It was at least a quarter mile.

So finally my flight was boarding, and I got on, and got ready for another 45 minutes of boredom during the flight home.  Shortly thereafter, this dude throws his bag in the seat next to me, walks into the back and starts yelling at the stewardess.  I guess he really didn’t want to sit next to me.  Then security agents were on the plane, and I was thinking they were going to drag that guy off the plane.  Something unexpected happened then.  One of the security agents sat down next to me and asked if I would be at all opposed to taking a later flight if they upped me to first class.  I agreed of course, and hopped off the plane.

I ended up having to wait another hour and a half for the next flight, but it was neat sitting in first class.  First of all, you get your drink before the flight even takes off.  Secondly, you can have whatever you want.  The guy next to me ordered a scotch.  I didn’t even know that was an option.   On American Airlines, the first class seats are the same size as the normal seats, the difference is that they are leather, and the armrests cannot be moved out of the way if you don’t like them (and I don’t).

There was a little bit of turbulence on the way to STL, but the flight was only about 30 minutes, so I can’t really complain too much.  I was kind of worried on the way back that they would lose my luggage, but it was sitting right there waiting for me when I got to the baggage claim in STL.

Overall, I really enjoyed the trip to Portland.  The conference was really interesting, and I am psyched that it will be in St. Louis next year.  Even if I don’t write a paper, I hope I have the opportunity to attend.  The Gala event is supposed to be at the Arch.  They were really excited about closing down a national monument for SIGUCCS next year.

In case you missed any of the pictures, you can find them on my flickr page here.  Chris also took some pictures, which you can find here. Or on his blog @ www.clkoerner.com (here & here).

I woke up this morning, and just inside the door to my room was a piece of paper. I went and picked it up, and it was your standard hotel check out paper.  I started freaking out.  My reservation is supposed to be for one more day! What the hell! Where am I going to stay!? OMG will I have to be in the airport until tomorrow!?!?

So I ignored it for a minute and used the restroom, when I was done with my business, I pulled up my hotel reservation online, and sure enough I am booked through tomorrow.  So I started looking harder at the paper, and as it turns out, they just put it under the wrong door.  Don’t these people know I have to present a paper to a room full of geeks two hours? I don’t have time to be stressing over someone else’s stupidity.

But first things first, off to breakfast.  Mmmmm melon, again….  It’s kind of disappointing that in a few short days it will be back to pop-tarts & crappy cereal.  Oh well.

Our presentation went well I think, though we did the whole thing in 15 minutes, so we were a little short. I am not sure however, if we had had a longer presentation if we would have been able to do it without going really far in depth.  There were several questions from people that seemed to want us to go more in depth, but we tried as much as possible to skirt around that. The biggest problem with our design, is that it currently requires Novell Zenworks’ Imaging Engine to put the files down on the computer.  I am sure there are other open source equivalents that do the same thing, but I don’t know what they are.  I guessed I was most surprised by the number of people in the room, we probably had at least 50 people I would say.  It was really weird standing up there in front of so many strangers talking, something I am not really used to.  I could feel the blood rushing up into my head as we switched back and forth throughout our presentation.

The closing plenary was very interesting, a discussion about “emerging social media technologies and ubiquitous computing for teaching and learning.”  There were some interesting bits about web 1.0 -3.0.  Where web 3.0 builds off of 2.0 adding semantec designs like the mashups between different technolgies like blackboard and facebook for example.  I wish that our full staff meetings were more like this at work.  It would be nice to hear about non-slu things, things that aren’t melt your face off boring.

After the plenary, I was cornered by someone who had seen our presentation this morning, and he was completly blown away.  He said that right now, our limiting bit is Novell, because no one really wants to have to buy zenworks (I can’t blame him). But if we could move to a completly open sorce alternative we could literally blow everyone else out of the water.  That really surprised me.  After the presentation this morning, I was concerned by the questions I mentioned earlier, and I wasn’t sure if anyone really understood what we were talking about.  But now I know that at least one person did, and he said he would be in contact.  Thats pretty cool I think.

I headed off to lunch, and went to a place called Pastini Pastaria.  It was kind of a swanky place, but the pasta ended up being really inexpensive. All fresh of course. :)  After lunch I walked a block down to Finnegan’s Toys, which is supposed to be the end all beat all of toy stores in Portland.  It was kind of a neat store, it had all the toys from back in the day: lincoln logs, kinder blocks, red wagons, chutes and ladders, Hi-Ho Cherrio, etc.  It was kind of neat, but it was a really small store, and so kind of disappointing.  I guess its one of those things that just seems to lose its magic as you grow older.

Next I headed over to the Portland public library.  Someone had told me that it was really nice.  The picture above is from the second floor.  There are more pictures here.  On the way back to the hotel I picked up some souviners for everyone (yay…hold your applause).

Tomorrow, I head back to the ‘ol STL.  In fact, by this time tomorrow, I should be back already.  My plane leaves early tomorrow morning, with a oh so lovely two and a half hour layover in chi-town. Woo?  I should be in STL around 5pm, which should put me at home around 6-6:30. I am not as nervous this time around as I was coming. Maybe its just cause last time it was the first time I had flown in years. Don’t get me wrong, there is still a little bit of apprension there, but nothing like before I flew out here. Hopefully, my nerves will stay calm(ish).

I woke up early again today for that free breakfast. It was the same as the last 2 days.  I think I have probably eaten at least a pound of melon this past week.  Don’t get me wrong, its very good; I wonder where they get such fresh tasting fruit.  After breakfast, Chris and I worked on our presentation a little bit.  We present tomorrow morning. Everytime I talk to someone here at the conference, they express intrest in our paper.  I wonder if they are really interested, or if they are just being nice.  I guess I will find out tomorrow at 8:30am.

For lunch Chris and I headed over to Red Star Tavern.  It was an upscale place, known for burgers around the Portland area.  The burger was actually very good, though I think it was an entire half a cow….I couldn’t even finish.

This evening was the Gala event at the Portland Art Museum. I looked around at some of the art for a while before eating dinner.  For the most part, I really don’t “get” most art.  There are some pieces that I liked, but the majority just fell into the WTF category.  The dinner was less than appetizing. Afterwords, it was back to the hotel, where I sit now writing this up.