So on the bus on the way to work today, I saw a few signs that reminded me of various friends, or at least, of their names.  I may take photographs of the signs at some point in the future, and I may keep updating this as I see more such things.  Let's be honest, though.  I never finish the projects I start, so this'll probably die a quiet death.


Hope Christian Fellowship (much funnier if one knows Hope)
Cannon Rd
Kemp Rd (East and West)


There are some people whose names I'll never see anywhere in Greensboro, and therefore, whose names I really want to see somewhere.  Unless there's a Beauchamps Elysees (ok, that wasn't funny, but it had to be said), I won't be seeing Davey's last name anywhere, for example.

Once again, I'm going to try to write up con reports for StellarCon.  We'll see how far I get this year.
I spent the first part of the week visiting Cara and company at UVA.  That was a lot of fun, but I didn't get much done for StellarCon.
I got home at 12:30 or so Wednesday night/Thursday.  Reesa, who was crashing at our place, gave me a huge hand reviewing the layout, and found like 6 or 7 things that could be improved by shifting layout and stuff.  The end result looked pretty good on paper.  I went to sleep at like 5 am.  I spent Thursday writing a grad school essay and then running errands.  I called Liz to ask what auction supplies she needed.  It went something like this:
L-"index cards"
Y-"Hope just got 1000."
L-"baskets"
Y-"on my list"
L-"pens and markers"
Y-"check"
L-"candy?"
Y="ok"
We also got food supplies for the con, which was good because I never know what i can eat, and bad because we didn't end up eating much of it.  Also, taking Reesa into Walmart is an...interesting experience.  I have learned that I am a rank amateur in the ways of ADD.
We stopped at my grandparents house to drop off a computer for my brother Eli to borrow for use in doing some homework so he wouldn't have it hanging over him all weekend.  I got to see my mother and Eli and Ilana as well, because they were already there,  and we acquired a Galia, who wanted to come and help out when we went out to High Point.
We stopped at my place and picked up the dealer room supplies and a computer.  I really have too many of those (let me know if you want to buy one).  When we got to the hotel at 9 or 10 pm, badges were nowhere near done, and Dealer affiliations were not on the dealer badges, so Jeff was nice enough to reprint them, along with those of my staff.  I also found out that ConCom badges were going to be pink.  Oh goodie :D.  They turned out purple in some photographs, though.  I spent a bunch of time working on dealer packets and such.
We got home at like 3, and I proceeded to print stuff until after 4 am.
We met my mother to go to breakfast at 8:45 am, only we were running very late.  Breakfast was good, though (we ate at the Plaza Cafe in High Point), and we made it to the hotel by 11:00 AM. 

About the first thing I found out when I got to the hotel was that the hotel was running way behind.  I had expected that all my staff would have to do was make sure that all the tables were in exactly the right place.  We did this in that none of the tables were there, and we put them in ourselves.  As we were doing this, we had dealers arriving.  To give you an idea of how busy it was, the Convention Manager was moving chairs.  Nevertheless, we managed to finish up, thanks, in a large part, to the help of about half the con staff on site, and dealer check in started in earnest.  Once I got my walkie, it became much easier to take care of stuff.  My staff did an amazing job of keeping people out of the dealer room who weren't supposed to be, but thee were a few issues with dealer badges and guest badges for various folks that need to be worked out for next year.  It didn't help that the badge machine exploded or something, which prevented the creation of additional badges.  Overall, though, things went pretty smoothly except for a few late-comers, but that's pretty standard.  I did end up sticking around in the Dealer Room for an extra hour, and did not get out of there until 6.  I was going to go to opening ceremonies, but I was too hungry, so I went back to my room to grab a bite to eat.  I swung back down to the Dealer Room to make sure Reesa had everything under control and then went to a reading by Mur Lafferty at 8.  It was very cool.  She read us parts of several things, not all of them published yet.  It was fun.  While I was there I got the first compliment regarding the dealer room, and thankfully it was not the last.  Somewhere in all of this, I discovered from Liz and Davey that we would be unable to watch Battlestar Galactica that night, because the hotel did not get Sci-fi channel.  We were scheduled to be on  the Battlestar panel at 11, right after the new episode aired.  I had the dealer room closed down by 9:30 and everything was pretty cool.  Everyone was there, and it looked very good. 
I don't remember what I did for the next hour and a half, but it probably involved hanging with some folks, or something.  I think Will (one of the security people) was there.
The Battlestar panel was pretty good.  I didn't have that much to say, and Brandon took it over in any case.  (When did I ever become hesitant?  This sort of thing happened to me last year as well.)  At midnight, I went to the dance, and while I didn't necessarily impress anyone, I at least had fun.  I eventually got tired and went to Klingon Karaoke, where I somehow ended up singing "Be Prepared" from the Lion King, with Liz holding the mic.  It was awesome, and I am definitely singing that again next year.

After Klingong Karaoke was over, i went to look in on the NasfiC bid party and found it to be a bit lacking so I went up to the 8th floor to a party there and watched people drink while Eli was bugging me.  I had no alcohol, but ended up meeting a friend of Warren's named Nurit who was very cool.  We ended up talking for a while, until the party was over at about quarter to 4.  I ended up going back to my room at that point and was asleep, more or less, by 4:30, in time to be up at 7:30 or 8.

Hopefully, I'll get around to writing part 2 on Thursday.
 

So I haven't really posted anything on here in the two and a half weeks that I've been away despite having near-constant internet access. I'm at the Vancouver airport getting ready to head home. My flight leaves in a bit under an hour, and have to say that though I've had an excellent trip, the timing for going home is just right. I had a blast at MathFest, and got to meet a whole bunch of cool people, and I've got a bunch of stories to tell from it. I had an excellent time in Philadelphia and got to see family which is, for me, always a great opportunity. I know some people like to be as far away from their families as possible, but I'm not one of them. THis past week at SAGE Days was absolutely amazing, and I have learned so much. The topic was Mathematical Graphics and Visualization, and I'm about halfway done with writing a 3D Graphing function for PiScript (Uses Python to write postscript). I met a lot of cool people there too. My flight is boarding soon, so I'll finish by saying that although the trip has been great, I'll be happy to be back home again.

±Yair±

I think that I'm addicted to the SuperLab. I worked a nine and a half hour shift here, and yet three hours later, here I am, still in the SuperLab. I think I may need help.

For those of you who think that I'm joking...you're right...mostly. I really should spend less time in the labs. Hopefully, my two and a half weeks spent without the labs will help. I don't know that I've spent two and a half weeks without going to the labs since I got hired here. 'twill be weird.

That's all for today.

±Yair±

Davey asked me to post this, and after all the help he gave me moving, I'm in no position to say no.

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, even if we don't speak often, please post a comment with a completely made up memory of you and me. It can be anything you want -- good or bad. When you're finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people don't remember about you. Or, if you don't want to post it, but want a completely made up memory from me, say so at the end of your comment and I'll reply with one. But consider posting. It's fun to see what utterly unbelievable nonsense comes up.

So, with a lot of help from Davey and Richard, all of my stuff has been moved, and I'm now in my new apartment. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, but after living in a one bedroom apartment, the two bedroom apartment is like a castle. It has a moat and everything. It also has such things as a real pantry, and *gasp* a dining room area. In any case, it's now raining, so I'm going to put off cleaning up the old place until later, and watch a movie now, and relax and stuff.

I'm going away right after Trinoc*coN and my birthday, so the party I want to throw is being tentatively scheduled for August 23rd, and we will call it a back-to-school party. Anyway, more details on everything later.

±Yair±

In one month's time, I will be moving from my current apartment to another one in the same complex. I didn't realize until it was really too late to do anything about it that because of my moving date, I will be unable to go to LibertyCon :(. In the meantime, I must add packing to my list of things that MUST GET DONE. I'm sure I'll be issuing a call for help with moving my stuff once I know the precise dates that I have access to the new apartment. Until then, if anyone in the Greensboro area has a surplus of cardboard in box form, I'm pretty sure that I can find a reasonably secure home for it.

±Yair±

P.S. I hate moving.
P.P.S. At least I'll have a living room that's fit for company...maybe.
P.P.P.S. I'm having too much fun with post-scripts.
P.P.P.P.S. Seriously...this should probably stop now.
P.P.P.P.P.S. This is the very last one.
P.P.P.P.P.P.S. That was a lie.

So I'd probably have more to say if I'd been able to post on Friday night when I finished this book, but I don't use computer on Shabbat (Hebrew for Sabbath), so here goes.

The book is The Name of the Wind. The author is Patrick Rothfuss.

This is an extremely unusual book. It's a fantasy novel, but it's told, for the most part, from a first person perspective, which is fairly unusual. Although it took a bit for me to get into the story, it feels like such a very human story that it's hard not to enjoy it and it eventually becomes hard to put down. I don't want to give too much away, so an overview is available here. If I had to mention one nice touch in the story that doesn't really give too much away, I'd have to say that it's the herbivorous dragon, I mean, how cool is that? The magic system, "sympathy," is also very well done, although there's also a fair bit of talk of "names." Anyway, it's rather well told, and I definitely recommend it.
Unfortunately, book 2 in The Kingkiller Chronicle, called The Wise Man's Fear, won't be out until next April but it may very well be worth the wait. The Name of the Wind is some 700 pages long, but the author has locked himself into a trilogy, through various story elements, so there's no danger of another Wheel of Time.

±Yair±

For no reason that I can pinpoint, I feel like writing another post today. I just "finished" my Russian lit paper. I put finished in quotation marks because it's 2/3 of the correct length, and only has 2/3 the requisite number of sources, but it felt done, and the final deadline was 20 minutes away, so I submitted it. I just need a D in the class anyway. I'm still hoping for at least a C or better, but hoping and getting are two different things, and as along as I pass, my other high grades should be sufficient to not damage my GPA more than it absolutely has to, and let's be honest here. Graduating Summa would be nice, but I'll probably still graduate Magna and ultimately, it's not going to matter that much because by that point, I'll already have gotten into graduate school, unless I'm very, very unlucky. Anyway, that's probably enough for today, and I'm not at all sure whether or not you can expect any more of these.

±Yair±