I totally botched going to see the live Pottercast yesterday. For some reason, I was under the impression it started at 8pm. When I went to check the location, I realized it started at 5pm and we were going to miss it… brilliant. I do this sort of thing a lot, that is get incorrect information stored in my head. Dammit! I should go reserve my book right now, or I will probably forget.

I have been getting up early for the last few weeks – like 8:30 or so. Today I got up early to go buy a card for a wedding I am attending only to find the stores closed. I think it must have been 10 years or so since I went to a store and found it closed because I was there too early. It’s a nice feeling.

I’m back, and I have pictures. Here are some notable ones:

My New Nephew

My Old Nephew

Notice the License Plate

Uncut

WW2 Memorial

As you can probably tell, I didn’t get a chance to go the Holocaust museum since I only had about 2 hours of spare time. Instead, on Tuesday, I walked to the WW2 memorial which I hadn’t seen before.  It is easily the nicest memorial in DC. I particularly like all the metal castings (is that the right word?) depicting scenes from the homefront and battlefront. I took a bunch of pictures of them. Take a look – here.

The conference was very nice. I met a lot of people who do relatively similar research, although the most interesting talks I heard were on origami and image recognition (i.e. how programs could identify the subject of a picture without human input).

I got an LG vx8600 after dropping my old phone with an already dying battery in the pool (you might remember that this was a replacement for one I left in a cab in Denver). The new one is quite nice in that it is very slim and can play mp3s, take video etc… It actually stores everything on a 2 GB micro SD card which makes it extremely easy to sync with linux (i.e. ignoring included crapware). Good work LG on not being evil.

I leave at 11pm tonight to go to Florida. I am visiting my parents there until monday and both of my sisters will be there for part of the time which is nice.

After than I will go to Washington DC until the Thursday to attend the CSGF Fellows conference. The conference is pretty nice, because the talks are very diverse and not too detailed oriented so that I can understand them. Last year I decided to randomly go to the spy museum which was somewhat neat and somewhat disappointing. I think this year I will go to the Holocaust museum – I have already done all the stuff on the “mall” – so, I’d like to do something new.

Anyway, I will post pictures.

It’s back

Why on earth is Paris Hilton getting sent to jail the top story on digg.com?? Is this digg or not?? And why is the story on slashdot at all? And why are people so vicious? Yes, she’s a twit and probably deserves it, but I don’t get how people can turn so self-righteous that they are positively giddy about someone else’s suffering. Anyone who really loves to see other people getting their comeuppance could probably use a little themselves.

Also, thanks mom (pronounced mum), for the 50 lb package that was bigger than a suitcase that I carried 5 blocks to my house Do you think I am out of shape or something?