There and Back Again


A Geek's Tale



This is the story of an eleven-day trip from central Pennsylvania to "the heart of Silicon Valley" for a, for lack of better terms, geek convention. The Forum is all about teaching technologically-inclined kids more about their way of life, and it's being held - rooms and conventions - in the Fairmont hotel, allegedly the most reputable hotel in San Jose. Should be fun for all, eh? And thus, it shall be recorded.

The purpose of this chronicle is four-fold: because I'm bored; because I need to keep a log of the trip to justify the grant I got; because I feel like it; but mostly, because I've always wanted to write something titled "There and Back Again."

Along the way, you'll probably (am I unsure of this?) encounter Revision Notes. These were added to the account long after the chronological point in which they occurred, and so instead of editing them into the document in a logical way, were simply tacked on.

Also, there are a few links within here. Some are informational, most are pictures. None of these pictures were taken by me; thus, they aren't half bad. Also, none are hosted by me - so please, respect the bandwidth of others, and don't abuse the picture links. The world thanks you.
Later note: Due to the idiocy of others, many of these image links have been removed. Apologies.



Sunday, July 27th

I awoke at the ripe hour of 6 o'clock AM EDT. Pardon the lack of detail at this point, as I didn't really have enough energy to pay attention to what was going on; suffice it to say, I got to the Harrisburg airport. My first plane took off from Harrisburg to Chicago at 8:20, and arrived at approximately 9:15 CDT. I was seated next to two elderly women. I played a small (very small) bit of Circle of the Moon, but slept most of the time. The Chicago airport had weird lighting on the concourse tunnel I went through - like a combination of a trendy mall and a Chuck E. Cheese or something.

My second plane took off from Chicago to San Jose at aroung 10:30 CDT (was supposed to leave 15 minutes earlier, but apparently traffic at the airport is murder). I'm on the plane as I write this, and the flight is scheduled to last slightly under four hours.

I'm sitting next to a (retired? middle-aged?) couple. They're nice folks, but they're no geeks, that's for sure. I started playing Final Fantasy V a little while ago, got the Bahamut summon, and am currently saved in Istory Falls, the last of four temple-like areas in the third world of the game; following this, there are a few minor side-quests, then the final dungeon.

There are a bunch of people on the plane going to NYLF - I only know of two for sure but it's pretty much a given what with the Rubik's cubes and Bill Gates discussions. Apparently my RIAA sticker got a good chuckle, and that makes it all worth it.

So far, though, besides CotM, FFV, Bahamut Lagoon (did a side-quest), and the plane food (gourmet frickin' tortilla chips!), not much has happened of any interest. Oh, wait, and I started working on 'Net Wars again. Holy crap.
Revision note: this has still been the last I've so much as looked at the map.

*Several hours pass*

"I can say with a fair amount of certainty that this has been the most agonizing day of my life."
-Myself, while standing in line to enter the Fairmont San Jose hotel

It took two hours to get from Harrisburg to Chicago. It took four hours to get from Chicago to San Jose. It took four and a half hours to get from the San Jose airport to the Fairmont registration desk. The flight's baggage was late coming in, so I had to wait a good half hour or so for that to arrive; then I had to wait in line for another 45 minutes to get a bus ticket; then I had to wait an hour for the bus. The bus trip took about 20 minutes - but this was followed by a two-hour wait in line, extending well out onto the block, to get inside the hotel and register.

Following this, I checked into my room and sat down for a while. And here I am.

The hotel is nice, almost worth the wait to get in. Room accomodations are little more than you'd expect from a respectable hotel (they also have a television with hotel services, like Playstation games (which you must pay for) and "Hot movies" (porn (which you must also pay for))). The hotel itself is laid out nicely - I already almost know where I'm going. And the second level of the main building, allegedly, has free wireless Internet access, whch I shall surely be testing later in the night.

I've registered myself with my "Tech Talks" group, of 25 kids (including myself). My roommate's last name is "Sturm." Heh heh. I wonder if he's ever played Advance Wars 2.

Anyhow, must be off to go to a mandatory policies and procedures and cake and whatnot meeting at the ballroom. Oh, and I did a quick-and-dirty fix to the iBook (thank you Multiple Users control panel) so that no one can just up and use it unless they happen to know my level-5-super-secret password. Giddyup.

*A few hours pass*

Well, that was fun. Met the people in my Tech Talk group. At least a handful of them are quite interesting people. Should be a good ten days. With my ability to elaborate on anything using meaningless hand gestures and obtuse vernacular, and with my physical appearance, I've apparently earned the unofficial moniker of Bill Gates. Greeeaaat.
Revision note: this nickname stuck until the final day of the Forum.

The meeting also allowed me an opportunity to meet Sturm. He looks like he might be of Eastern-European descent, funnily enough. Of course, I have little idea what a person of Eastern-European descent should look like. He said he hasn't played AW2, but I'd forgotten that Sturm is also mentioned in AW1, which he has played. Sturm also appears to like the Xbox (?!) and dislike the Gamecube (?!?). But, hey, I'm known for my persuasive skills.
Okay, so I'm not. Meh.
Revision note: I'm still not sure what Sturm likes in regards of consoles, but he has/plays a Gamecube.

I roamed around in the hotel with the AirPort on just a little while ago - that allegedly-free wifi network apparently doesn't exist. Unless I'm looking in the wrong places, the advisor lady just got confused with something, because of all the areas from which I could connect to the FAIRMONT network, though they all gave me a signal, none of them gave me outside access (AIM didn't work, and Mozilla brought me to a Fairmont web page that said "Initializing..." and did nothing). I also detected quite a few other networks, one of which asked for a password, but the others didn't do anything (even give me a signal). Obviously, they're from the NYLF Techies. Cute little bastards.

There are other attendees with laptops, though I only noticed maybe one other iBook (and it was titanium, certainly not a clamshell). Just on an off note.
Revision note: I did see another clamshell user later on. What're the odds?

Breakfast is early tomorrow morning, but I've pretty much got no choice but to show up for it, because I missed dinner tonight by about two minutes and all I've had to eat in the past 12+ hours is a brownie. As for tonight, I dunno, maybe I'll play some music or something. Who knows. We're not allowed out of the hotel after 10, and not allowed out of our rooms after 11, but other than that apparently anything goes.

I'll have to get a seat in a computer lab tomorrow (there are a bunch of labs - including a roomful of iMacs!), so as to check my online haunts and maybe play some Starcraft. According to the propaganda I've read, the computers in the hotel are freely available to install crap on, as long as it doesn't break anything.

Oh, and my Audion free trial runs out ...tomorrow I think. Nutbunnies.

Crap, I just remembered that I forgot to set the VCR to tape the first episode of Big O Season 2!



Monday, July 28th

Sturm (which is the name I shall heretoforth refer to him as, simply because of its coolness) woke up at 6 this morning to get a shower. I got my own last night, so I had my watch alarm set to go off at 7. Breakfast was scheduled from 6:45 to 7:45, so we got there late, didn't have to wait, and got food. Then had another Tech Talk meeting. Hooray.

Then we went to the keynote speech with Craig Barret, CEO of Intel. He talked for about an hour on various things, mostly relating to either the progression of technology (he liked to mention Moore's Law a lot) or getting into the technology field/industry (things like taking business chances and whatnot). Then there was a 20-minute Q&A session - most notably, someone asked about his personal feelings on DRM (the questioner mentioned TCPA and Palladium, but Barret didn't). Barret said that there are four basic elements of the whole digital rights fiasco:
-Copyright holders should have their rights honored
-Blatant pirates should be punished for stealing the property of others
-Fair use should be honored
-Content producers should make their content viably accessible

His stance seemed by all means fair. While he did agree with the prosecution of pirates, he also (vocally) agreed that we all need our right to Fair Use respected. And he recognized that the music industry in particular failed in the fourth respect, in not getting its content to the new viable medium (the Internet) until too late.

In the end, though, I don't know how much his personal philosophies - if he was even being truthful - impact Intel's decisions, since Intel is making Fritz chips (the hardware component of Microsoft NGSCB/Palladium). His speech was entertaining, though, and he had some fun tech demos of robots killing each other and trees able to detect when they're on fire.

Also, at one point, he said that when you're thinking of making a decision, always ask yourself the three 'M's: what your manager would think, what the media would think, and what your mother would think of you if you did it. He was counting the 'M's off on his fingers, and when he got to Media he inadvertently flipped the audience the bird. To this day, I don't think he realizes he did it.

On my way out of the ballroom I passed by the main hall with computer labs. I stopped in the iMac lab, and much to my dismay, found that (at least on the two computers I checked, which looked identical in setup to every other one) not only was there an absence of an AirPort card, but the Internet Connection preferences were blank (it was set to Internal Modem, but no phone number was in the field). However, now that I think about it, it's entirely possible that they were hooked directly into an ethernet line. And now the room is probably filled to occupancy (as I passed by the main PC lab, and briefly visited, every single computer was occupied in a LAN shooter, with lines/crowds behind them). Blast.
Revision note: they are hooked into a network with ethernet cabling.

I just tried my own AirPort again, and decided to leave the "Initializing..." page on (just in case, I tried Opera and Mozilla at the same time). Good thing I did, because I found it actually took me somewhere. It showed me the "thefairmont.net" (their Internet access service) EULA, which among other standard EULA elements, mentioned payment. So now that I at least know it can get somewhere, I'll check again from the area that's allegedly free. I've got nearly two hours until I need to be somewhere (excluding lunch).
Revision note: as it turns out, no matter where I am (if the network can be detected) all I have to do is enter a name and password assigned to NYLF attendees to get free access.

Oh, and as for gaming progress, last night I finished the Istory Falls dungeon in FFV, and this morning in CotM I killed Death. Hooray.

*Pause*

Holy shit, I just got the wifi network to work. I connected in the lobby (and downloaded three CotM tracks - the wireless bandwidth gets me an average download speed of at least 50 kbps); tried again in my room, and it says there's a signal, but the connection appears to be extremely strained (I could barely get to /., and Battle.net didn't work at all). I'm guessing, though, that I should be able to connect from the lounge area on the ground floor of the main building - so it's all good. I got to check my news sources, and I know I missed some /. stories, but if it was important I'm sure the Reg would have covered it. Which reminds me, I bookmarked some Reg stories that I need to go back and read later.

Also, I got a reply to my email to Panic about Audion registration - there used to be an option to register only the mp3 player for $20 (as opposed to the player/encoder combo for $30), but apparently that option is gone now. Nuts. My free trial still hasn't ended, incidentally.

But anyway. Wifi broader-than-homeband access. W00t.

I think I'll skip lunch today. I had a good breakfast (corn flakes, a pastry, bacon and milk - better than usual), and I'll try to get a nice dinner. Maybe tonight I can wail some mad tunez out the hotel room or something.

*Hours pass*

Sturm is a Mac user. Hooray. As a matter of fact, he's blissfully ignorant of about everything not Apple. I had to tell him what AMD was, haha.

Later on I went to a seminar about being a software programmer versus a software architect. Well, that's what it was supposed to be about, the lady giving the seminar actually just talked about different IT jobs and how the industry was doing horribly right now.

So, yeah. Boring seminar, boring Tech Talk stuff. Free wifi access. That's about it.

I'm downloading EV Nova (again (agh)). I hate this server; I wish a better mirror would host it, geez. I also downloaded all three Lords of the Rhymes tracks. Must listen to them later - this area is too loud.

I brought my SC and BW discs with me. So some guy passing by asks me if I'd be interested in getting a big LAN game together. One thing led to another, and now the discs are being copied. Giddyup. Hopefully my CD-key won't be compromised - after all, it's kinda the only one I got. Of course, the game isn't expensive if I need to replace it, but oh well.

So, a little later, I'm listening to the LotR tracks (score!) and the EV Nova download cancelled itself (augh). Hey, but guess what, the wifi connection is accessible from my hotel room. Hurrah for router kids. I started trying to download EVN again, then stopped when I noticed how horrible the reception/bandwidth is from this floor.

Perhaps tomorr-
Crap. Connection's cut. Ahh, it's all going to hell.
Oh well.

That's about it for now. Until next time.



Tuesday, July 29th

The schedule for this morning was similar to yesterday's. The speaker was Vance Coffman, CEO of Lockheed Martin. He mostly discussed issues in the engineering market as of now, and stuff that LM does. He placed a heavy emphasis on the hiring of women and minorities - heavy to the point where everyone thinks he's a closet racist/sexist who's overcompensating. There were a lot of questions, but nothing particularly interesting (except Coffman's mention in one of the responses that the information was "classified").

So, that was over, and then lunch and wifi time. The bandwidth is really suffering - I'm not sure if the hotel's cutting it down, or if it's becoming more popular, or what, but my downloads which were formerly at a rate of at least 50 kbps are now down to around 5. I don't have a prayer of a chance of downloading EVN on a single battery charge like this. Hopefully things'll fix themselves by later in the night, or something.
Revision note: it never 'fixed' itself. Too much network traffic. Damn Counterstrike junkies.

We're going to Santa Clara University later. Might be interesting. Might be boring as hell. I dunno. After that is dinner/free time and then more Tech Talk (groan). Funny story from this morning's Tech Talk meeting: due to an incident, the kids have been warned not to leave the room with their bathrobes on. Also, two of the kids on our group missed most of the meeting because they slept in. It was pretty funny at the time.

In case I hadn't mentioned it before, in several of the rooms on the ballroom floors there are pianos - and at any given time, it's a fair assumption that every single one of these pianos is being played. Not by hired professionals, not by hotel staff, but by NYLF attendees. Some of them are pretty good too. Who'd've thought?

Oh, and Sturm borrowed CotM from me the other day. He still has it, and he's played it so much that he's almost up to the same point as I am (after I had it for over a week). I kinda miss it. Meh.
Revision note: he beat the game by the end of the conference.

Oh, and my Audion trial ran out last night, so I'm limited to half-hour sessions. Grr-baah.

*Hours later*

Santa Clara was ...meh. Could've been worse I guess. We got to see robots act like idiots. One of the speechy guys also did a short presentation that included a movie of Asimo, the Honda robot! The two "greatest" (in a humorous sense, not necessarily a truly great sense) things about the university were (1) that there were several highly attractive women roaming around the campus, and (2) that it's supposedly a religious institution. You wouldn't guess it from seeing the tech buildings, but the head honcho has his minister's white collar and everything, and there's a largish church on the campus. Now that's what I call funny.

In exchange for giving Santa Clara our names and addresses (who would I be fooling, they could get it easily enough anyway), they gave out free pocket radios and headphones. The radio is basically useless, but the headphones are a nice backup set if nothing else.

I visited the iMac lab again today. I tried downloading EVN onto one of the computers in there, to see if it would be any faster - it wasn't. I guess more people are discovering the network (I noticed last night and this morning that a lot more kids have their laptops out), and thus the bandwidth is suffering tremendously - the EVN download didn't even get to ten megs before the connection became too poor to continue. Though, in that case it may still be because the host server sucks the big one - but even besides that, the hotel's bandwidth is definitely suffering. In any event, I now despise EVN simply because of this pattern of unfavorable experiences.

While I was there, I also noticed:
-a bunch of people playing a LAN game of Starcraft (though I don't think it was from my disc copies, I guess other people brought their own - but I did see some copying/imaging taking place, and I guess CD-keys don't matter much on a LAN game, do they?)
-an attendee who works for Blizzard, checking on a discussion forum for World of Warcraft, signifying that the game apparently does still exist (he said something about it being in alpha stages right now)
-I'm getting a lot more used to OS X (hoo-frickin'-ray)

In the Tech Talk this morning, the Challenge Room was again mentioned. The Challenge Room is a computer lab in the hotel which houses a closed network of PCs, and the 'challenge' is for users to 1337-h4x0r and crack their way through several levels of security. The fanatical Challenge Room kid in the group mentioned that the computers ran WinXP, and I remembered an article from the Register about an exploit where if you boot a WinXP system from a Win2000 CD, it gets around most or all of the security measures. So I mentioned this to him; and in the lab, I found an article on it and attempted to print it out.

Trying to deal with the network printers was an arduous task indeed. I'm not precisely sure how long it took, except too long, because I realized by the time I got out of the lab that one of my earlier attempts had worked. So now I have a printout of the article to give to him at the next Tech Talk meeting, which is incidentally less than an hour from now.
Revision note: I later found out that the cracking things were on a network, not on the client machine, making my article basically worthless. Meh.

I went to grab some dinner after leaving the iMac lab, but noticed that everything looked pretty unappetizing, so I just took a slice of bread and a milk carton. Oh well. The breakfasts have consistently been good, and it doesn't look like they change an awful lot, so there's good news. I should be able to survive okay skipping a meal a day (it's what I do during the summer anyway, I usually wake up too late to take advantage of breakfast).

So, for the time being, I'm sitting up in the room trying to find a wireless network I can hijack. I've had lacklustre (in-joke) success so far, but I remain hopeful. And bored. Mostly bored.

And I'm addicted to the Lords of the Rhymes music.
Hobbiton, it's on!

*Hours pass*

In this evening's Tech Talk meeting we got in groups for our project we need to present next week. I'm with a handful of eccentric geniuses. Hooray.

I decided to check my Port5 stats, and noticed that it's pushing at the roof of my limits right now. So, given the impending potential dilemma and my enhanced bandwidth this week (it's still better than what I get at home), I've decided to move Mirkonia's operations, by and large, back to Tripod. I'll keep images and animations and stuff on Port5 for remote loading, but the site itself will be back on Tripod time-willing. Oh, while I'm on the subject, the network is working better from upstairs in my room now, so yippee.

I was looking through the channel guide a little earlier, trying to find Cartoon Network to prepare myself for watching Big O. While roaming the menus I thought I accidentally ordered a porn movie. So I called down to the front desk to sort it out (apparently the order didn't go through anyway). It was really funny at the time: "Hi, uh, I think I just accidentally ordered a porn movie."

I played some of my wacky multimedia for Sturm (he was highly amused), then we watched Big O. Stayed up later than usual, but hey, what harm can it do?



Wednesday, July 30th

I missed my alarm. Sturm woke me up, thankfully, at 7:20. So I had 40 minutes to get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, and get to the morning's meeting. Apparently, everyone (including our group leader) overslept this morning, and is still tired. So, we talked about boring stuff for a short time and then went to today's speaker, Ms. Christine Hemrick of Cisco Systems. She had a sense of humor, and an obsession with Scott Adams, but for the most part her speech was really, really boring. She mentioned some interesting stuff in her presentation - like IPv6 for instance - but didn't go to any depth for any of it.

Then in the Q&A session there were no less than three girls that asked about women's roles in business (they were the only girls asking questions, incidentally). I mean, jeez, she already answered that. Just because you've got breasts doesn't mean you can be an idiot. Not on my time anyway. I guess. Actually, I'm unsure of this now, but the point is, it was stupid.

After that was the mad rush to get out of there as fast as possible. I got up to the room, and here I am, exploiting the wifi network's range to try and fix up wisemirkon.tripod.com again. Bah. Tripod isn't being friendly to FTP services - it looks like I might have to use their own crappy jsp pages.

I hate Port5.
I hate Tripod.
Grr-baah.

After some passage of time, I think I've got the Tripod site all ironed out now. Only time will tell if it'll all work out.

*Later*

Boy, have I got a story for you.

Well first off, I missed lunch because of my site move (also I was downloading more Circle of the Moon tracks, just out of laziness). So I went to my seminar, something about industry standards (I can't remember the precise name) instructed by a lady from Sun Microsystems. So I figured it'd mostly be about Microsloth breaking XP's Java support, which could be pretty interesting.

Anyway. I got there ten minutes early, sat there for ...ten minutes, and then the guy who's in charge of the whole Forum stood up in the front of the room and told the room full of geeks that the Sun person was called away on a personal matter; the seminar was cancelled. He put out a bunch of little slips to get into different seminars (three of them, though two were actually the same seminar in different rooms). I took a white slip (the italics mean it's an important fact to remember later), and went into the other building for a seminar on the future of databases or somesuch, with a handful of other kids who had also taken white slips.

So we got to the room, which was at a far end of the building (we passed by a largish pyramid-stack of plastic cups on a table on the way there; here's more from the cup-sculptists), and a lady at the door told us to go away because the room was full. We passed by the cups again on the way to the other future of databases room, where the kids from the standards room who'd taken green slips had already gone. Of course, we were about ten minutes later in getting there than most everyone else. But the instructor still wasn't there. And the room was packed.

We kept waiting. About ten or fifteen minutes after we got there, and were wondering where the hell the instructor was, a guy stood up in the front and unintentionally alerted us to the fact that the seminar wasn't even scheduled to start yet (this particular seminar begun half an hour after most of the rest, apparently).

So we waited for another 20 minutes or so and the instructer still hadn't showed up.

Someone got back up in the front and said that she was "stuck in Silicon Valley traffic" but should be here soon. And then more time passed. Eventually the guy from before got up in front of the room and said that she wasn't coming, she had originally been informed that she didn't even need to be there until tomorrow (so apparently this was short notice at best). And we went off - except, there was a catch. The way the schedule was set up for today, we were supposed to have Tech Talk sessions immediately following the seminars - so we couldn't just go on our merry ways. A guy who was in charge called all the people with white and green slips to follow him.

We followed him to the other hotel building, to the elevators, and to a room on the 20th floor of the tower. It wasn't exactly easy stuffing 30 or so people into a small room, especially when there were only about two dozen chairs. I got to sit on the floor. Hooray.

We sat there for about ...half an hour? I wasn't really keeping track. But it was a while. And nothing happened. See, we were supposed to have our impromptu Tech Talks in rooms on the 20th floor, but the lady who was supposed to conduct one of them was rather uncontactable. After sitting there for a while, the guy came in and said that the people with white slips (I told you this would be important) were to leave and go to another room back on the ground floor for Tech Talk, because it looked like it wouldn't be happening for us anytime soon.

So we went back down to the ground floor, to the Garden room. As a group, we discussed how much the entire situation sucked, and why the hell were we doing this, and so forth. We got to the Garden room eventually - and noticed that it was full to the brim. So, the white slippers collectively decided, "Screw it." And we went on our separate ways. I went to the Crystal room (iMac lab), which was conveniently nearby. Ironically enough, the room where the standards seminar was going to be was right next door.

I played some LAN games of Starcraft (not Broodwar; the expansion had been installed, but there was only a disc image for the original game on the computer). First I got pwned by some computers on BloodBath (2v2c, my partner died early), then I got pwned by some humans on Big Game Hunters (4v4, one of my allies dropped out early on because his iMac ...had a seizure). This took up a good amount of time; then I returned to my room, and well, here I am.

Tech Talk isn't for another two hours, so I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do now - I've officially given up on downloading EV Nova. Maybe I'll try B.net - it could be potentially dangerous with this (lack of) bandwidth, due to network traffic, but hey, why not.

There's nothing quite like drinking Coca-Cola from a wine glass.

*Yet later*

I found a nice alternative to Audion - MP3 Strip. It's a control strip module that's like a miniature, easy to control MP3 player. And by organizing my music in folders, I effectively have a simple-to-navigate playlist. Kick-ass.

I went roaming downstairs again, and some people stopped by to admire the iBook (more than usual). I tried playing some dance music (Kung Fu Fighting) for a couple of kids, but the poor speaker of this thing combined with the nearby piano made it too unviable.

I've yet to do something remarkable here. Sure, I was one of the first to have a laptop out roaming the floors, I'm one of two (that I know of) clamshell iMac users, I'm the only person I know of with an anti-RIAA sticker - but I feel like being a spectacular attention whore, and what I've done so far doesn't cut it. Incidentally, I've written my AIM name and email address on my nametag... just in case (I'm bored).

That reminds me.
I'm bored.

I feel like roaming some more... but there's only half an hour until we need to be in the rooms, and I'm not sure what I could accomplish anyway. Maybe tomorrow.

Oh, and MP3 Strip can only play MP3s. So I guess I can't add the Dead Parrot Sketch (a wav) to the playlist. Oh well.



Thursday, July 31st

I'm goin' to Apple! That's right, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA! Score!
Okay, now to the less important things.

I sorta woke up at 7 this morning, but then I laid there tired for another half hour or so. Completely missed breakfast, then went to Tech Talk. The advisor lady basically told us that everyone working at the hotel hates us now, and we're not allowed to do much of anything. Then I found out I was going to Apple. Hooray.

This morning's speaker was Jennifer Corriero, a 23 year old founder and head honcho of TakingITGlobal, an Internet organization trying to push the influence of younger people in technology and IT politics. Her presentation wasn't as flashy as Barret's, but unlike the previous three speakers who more or less inherited their positions, Corriero is an original success story, so her information was much more relevant than the others' to us. She wasn't as attractive as her picture made her look, but well, that would have been hard to do.

During the Q&A session, one kid borrowed some glasses and acted like an ubar-nerd - he made up a fake name (something with Reginald in it), said he was from Ramrod, Tennessee, "aka Viper in the MS Hearts tournament," and asked her a question about an online dating service and trouble getting women to join it (I never heard the full question, we were so busy laughing). She answered it seriously, but it was still really, really funny.

I was informed after Corriero left that the Apple group is going to be leaving roughly 45 minutes earlier than everyone else - leaving me much less time to roam and/or eat lunch. I'm not sure if I'll even get a chance to eat anything this afternoon, meaning I will have skipped three consecutive meals (excluding the cake I stole from a random table last night and some of the cookies I brought along for the trip).

*Hours later*
Oh, and somewhere around here, I encountered the maximum filesize for a Simpletext document. Moving it to Appleworks. I hate how it handles pure text files, but meh.

At 12:15 PM four busloads of kids, myself included, left for Apple. It was maybe a half-hour drive, not excruciatingly long but not exactly across the street either. A handful of kids brought their iBooks on the bus, and combined with iPods, OS X, and a bunch of stuff I don't have/can't use, I felt very... obsolete.

When we got to Apple, the first 45 minutes or so were spent in the Apple Store. Yeah, it's a cheap money-grabbing gimmick, but I think I speak for most of the group when I say I didn't mind that at all. It was cool seeing all the stuff they had, and I bought a nice black Apple-logo shirt.

After that, we went to a meeting room and were given a presentation/demonstration on some of the latest and greatest stuff from Apple. The guy first introduced himself a bit, talked about Apple's role in the industry, and then went on to present *drumroll* the G5. Yes, the freaking G5. I saw it. I'm a witness. I even got to touch the detachable metal plate (drool).

It's no portable computer, that much I can say. This is a big, honking piece of hardware - and it has more than enough specs to show for it. The guy explained the power of 64-bit processing (several billion times more powerful than 32-bit computing), the enhanced RAM capabilities (4 GB max memory for 32-bit; 18 exabytes max memory for 64-bit), how the processor architecture is prepared to last the next several decades without falling behind, and the elegance of the hardware design. I'm more than a bit speechless about it all.

Then he showed us iChat AV, along with the Apple webcam (iSight). The video (and VoIP) chat features are fairly seamless, and he almost inadvertently revealed a few incredibly nifty iChat features - for instance, if you drag a PDF file icon into the text box, it'll send the file to the person you're messaging; but if you drag it onto the message panel, it changes the background of the panel to look like the file (complete with tiling). That is just kickass.

He also briefly showed us the 17" Powerbook, and tried to get the keyboard backlighting to work, but apparently the stage's ambient light was too much for it to activate for more than a split-second at a time.

And he also showed us the preview (on the Apple website) of Panther (OS X 10.3), and specifically, Exposé (the kickass window management doodad).

After he left, two people came in to talk to us about the iPod and the iMusic online store. It was a pretty interesting overview of the whole thing (though not a whole lot more in terms of information than what you can find in all your common news outlets), and they tried to emphasize that their current goal for the store is to, eventually, have the entire North American music catalogue on it (including indie labels). Also, they're working on worldwide distribution and support.

And that about wraps up the general overview of the Apple visit.
Oh, except I forgot to bring my camera. Thus my purchase of the shirt. I knew if I didn't bring something back from Apple I'd never hear the end of it (including from myself).

But anyway, Sturm got back from dinner and informed me that the meal tonight is crappy meatloaf. Given that I don't even like "good" meatloaf, I think I'll skip dinner tonight (I grabbed some lunch before I left, though - some surprisingly good lasagna).

For now, I'm not quite sure what I'll do. Tech Talk is in an hour, and I'm not sure what I can really do in that time.

Oh, and despite writing my email address and AIM nick on my tag, I still haven't gotten anything from forum attendees. Sigh.
Gotta do something incredible...

*Time passes*

Here's an update on some recent events:

-The project that my group (the Tech Talk groups were divided into three, and each resulting subgroup is responsible for researching and presenting a project on a chosen topic) is working on is pretty much underway. We present in four days. Meh.
-I had an interesting (no, really) discussion with some people (most of whom are in my project group) about philosophy and theology. Never expected that.
-And, I implemented a guest user account of sorts for the iBook, just in case Sturm (or someone else?) wants to try to use it.

There's probably more I should say, but I'm tired.
Goodnight.



Friday, August 1st

Skipped breakfast again. Sleep is tastier. Fortunately, though, Sturm went down and brought me back a mini-box of cereal. Good kid.

Tech Talk. Boring. Briefing on the baseball game we're going to tonight, went over more crap that we're not allowed to do because the powers that be hate us all. Then we went to the morning speech, which was by a panel of people in the gaming industry.

The moderator of the panel was Dan Morris, game reviews editor for PC Gamer magazine. The panelists consisted of Hayden Blackman, producer of Star Wars Galaxies; Laura Fryer, director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group; Jason Morales, a programmer at S2 Games; and Col. Casey Wardynski, project originator and director for America's Army. First they introduced themselves, then they went into a full-on Q&A session.

The majority of the questions sucked. There were no less than three that asked about the impact of video game violence on real life violence. There were a handful that asked about the use of realistic graphics. And some questions were just plain unintelligible. They were being asked by people who you could tell had played a few games before, and thought that making them is neato-keen.

The panelists themselves, by and large, weren't very helpful either. Dan had some good input and anecdotes, which was great; but the rest were much less than impressive. The Colonel never stopped talking about the army, and his experiences with AA, pretty much solidifying the theory that outside of AA he has no experience or even knowledge of anything in the industry. Fryer was always harping on the Xbox (of course) and XBLive, and conveniently dodged the few good questions (one was about Xbox Linux, and another was about mod chipping, but she turned both answers into a dodgy explanation that it's in the hands of their hardware producers, like nVidia and Intel).

The Galaxies guy was at least competent, but it was hard to respect him on the basis of Galaxies simply because it's, from what I've heard, much less than what it's cracked up to be. He (and Fryer too) also tried to justify their own laziness repeatedly; for instance, making it almost sound good when developers choose to use a preexisting engine instead of developing a new one, or making sequels instead of innovative games, or putting lackluster storylines in their products.

And the S2 guy didn't talk much. Which suited him, I guess, because he was probably the only person there who actually knew the code, and was hence the ubar-geek of the panel; but I would have appreciated hearing more from a fellow code-monkey.

So, yeah, all 1500 or so of us are going to a baseball game tonight. We board the buses at 3, the game doesn't start until 7. I have no idea when we'll be back.
It's a shame, too, because I was planning on holding a miniature party of sorts in the elevator lobby tonight.
Maybe tomorrow.

As for now, I have about 2.5 hours between now and my afternoon seminar ("Bipedal Bugs, Galloping Ghosts and Gripping Geckos: BioInspired Animation, Robotics, Artificial Muscles and Adhesives" (which sounds a lot like a few Wired stories I've already read)). Within that time, I should probably get some lunch; but for now...
Sleep.

*Far too long a time later*

My seminar was great. An energetic, ...large man (I think his name was Robert Full) explained the work that was being done in adapting biological processes, like insect walking and gecko climbing, to robotic devices and other practical uses. It was really interesting, and he had a lot of demo videos on walking robots, super-adhesive bandages, and lots of stuff like that. It was really good.

Then, we went to a baseball game.
Graagh.

I wouldn't have minded the cold and the boredom so much if it hadn't eaten up nine hours of my day. On the plus side, the kids sitting in the rows behind me had lettered signs spelling out "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US," and many, many pictures were taken of it. =D

So we didn't get back to the hotel until midnight, bedchecks (necessary before sleep or shower) weren't for another half hour, and we need to be on a bus tomorrow morning at 8 to go on another pointless trip.

I think I'm becoming ill from lack of sleep.



Saturday, August 2nd

I awoke and showered at roughly 7 this morning, and it wasn't long after that - and checking my online news - that it was necessary to prepare for bus boarding for the Santa Cruz boardwalk.

This trip, unlike the baseball game last night, was actually rather enjoyable, primarily (well, wholly) because of the boardwalk's arcade accomodations. Myself and four other people with whom I've become acquainted in the past few days played miniature golf when we got there (because the main arcade hadn't opened yet), and afterwards thrust ourselves into the immersive and respectably-equipped arcade facility.

Soul Calibur, House of the Dead III, Raiden (the original), Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and Warzaid were but a few of the games we partook in. This, a brief trip to a food vendor (funny story: a girl had what was apparently a Japanese phrase tattooed on the small of her back; one of our group pondered out loud what it might say, and I suggested "This end up"), and an even briefer stint on the beach which involved me writing "www.thinkgeek.com" in the sand, made up the entirety of six-or-so hours.

It was an enjoyable trip.

Time is running short. Tonight we have a Tech Talk meeting from 7:30 to 9:15, in which we present the drafts of our project things; tomorrow is a trip to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco with roughly the same schedule as the Santa Cruz trip today, also followed by an evening Tech Talk meeting; Monday is primarily occupied with the final presentations of the projects, a trip to the Tech Museum of Innovation, and some brief evening activies (a dance, karaoke, and "ComedySportz"); and Tuesday is a final Tech Talk meeting followed by departure.

*Time passes*

After Santa Cruz, I really didn't do much of anything at all today. At the Tech Talk meeting we basically finalized plans to finish the projecty thing, and I went downstairs a few times to check on things. There was a "Casino Night" activity scheduled for tonight, apparently they took the Imperial ballroom of the hotel and turned it into a small, fake-money casino. I didn't play, though - even with fake money, gambling + me = badness.

Also, Sturm and I noticed last night that there's a channel on our televisions that's exactly the same as a changing advertisement on some big banner blocks downstairs in the halls. So I checked today, and found that indeed, the screens of the blocks are just TVs in glass cases. I brought the room's remote control down to see if it would change the channel (which would be really, really funny), but it didn't.

Tomorrow we're going to the Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. Could be interesting. Maybe.



Sunday, August 3rd

I slept in this morning, because we don't need to be out for the buses until 8:45. Hooray. I'm actually feeling not-very-tired this morning (though still mildly ill).

I talked to some people in the NYLFTech IRC channel last night, and a guy who went to San Fran yesterday said that there are arcades there too. So the trip shouldn't be disappointing.

*Hours later*

Perhaps my last statement was wrong.

There was only one arcade at the wharf (there were two at the beach), and it wasn't as impressive, I thought, as Santa Cruz's.

The arcade was open from the get-go, though, so we (same small circle as yesterday, pretty much) immediately made our way there. After an hour or two, apparently the rest of the group left while I was playing Time Crisis 3; and for the next three hours, more or less, I was on my own.

I wandered around pier 39 (the "main attraction" so to speak). I never ate breakfast this morning, and I never ate lunch at the wharf either; I went to an Alcatraz gift shop (they have boat tours, but they're so popular you needed to make reservations weeks in advance), bought some postcards, got a pack of skittles and another of starburst; that was all I ate. I didn't drink anything either, until on the way out I picked up a bottle of water.
Revision note: I never actually sent the postcards.

While wandering through the many venues - around the edge of the pier, through the center aisle, on the second-story balcony walkways, out on the sidewalk connecting it to adjacent piers - I searched for my missing comrades. Much later, I ran into two of the earlier group. I decided to follow them for the rest of the outing. And that's pretty much the end of that story.

When we finally got back to the hotel, I immediately went to my room to get the papers I needed to type up the feasibility statement for our project. I also felt it necessary to check my online haunts. When I finally got back downstairs, I found that not a single computer was available in both the research labs and the iMac lab.

So I grabbed a small amount of dinner - they have a casserole or some crap like that, I just took out the stuff I wanted - ate it, and came back upstairs. I'm going to type up the statement and upload it to my website so I don't have to type the whole thing downstairs, I can just grab it online and print it out.

*More passage of time*

Well, I had to go down and work on it some more because of formatting, but the statement worked out pretty nicely. As for the rest of the night's events:
-A kid covered his face and right arm in blue tape
-I printed out an article from Yahoo! News on how wifi networks are degraded by a single poor-bandwidth user, which could explain a lot in the hotel
-I finally decided to hold an elevator-lobby party on the ballroom floor, with cheez-its (they were rather good) and sprite, plus the iBook playing tunes

That was pretty much it. The elevator lobby party was a flop for the most part (I put a message on the iBook that said "Sprite & Cheez-Its are free. They're not drugged. Really." in 72 point text, but most people didn't trust me); I'm planning on doing the same thing tomorrow night, but with more supplies (I'll have to buy some stuff from the local store), and more people (invite the Tech Talk group?).
Revision note: this never happened.

Ah the life I lead is sad.



Monday, August 4th

This morning I made sure to wake up a slight bit earlier than usual, because I needed to put on a monkey suit. Today's the day: today we present our project things. They're on trifold boards (yes, the same kind that accursed science fairs use) in the Imperial ballroom of the hotel; we had to get there around 10 to set it up.

Our project group was 'A' (there were A, B, and C groups in each Tech Talk group), so we were judged first. The presentation guys weren't as impressive as they could have been... but, meh. Afterwards I wandered around and looked at other projects, including one to "Save the Nuns" (get rid of smog, or a bus of nuns might careen off a cliff and into the hands of a pit lord), and another with anime space kitties. Attendees got to vote on their favorite projects, and my vote went to the space kitties.

A few hours later, when the judging was done, they revealed who went on to the final round of judging (to determine the winners in each category). Here I learned that our project didn't advance, and thus, I didn't have to be in formalwear anymore; so I took off my dress shirt and replaced it with my Apple shirt. With that and the jacket and pants on, I felt like I was Steve Jobs or something.

I pretty much floated in and out of the iMac lab for a good part of the afternoon. Then I had dinner - fairly unremarkable, I can't even remember what it was. There was a Tech Talk meeting, and none of our three groups had advanced, apparently. Oh well? Oh well.

A while after that we went to the museum of technology across the street. Our Tech Talk advisor said that attendance was mandatory, but we could leave anytime we wanted; so I looked around in the gift shop for a little bit, then went back to the hotel and... wandered around. I guess I didn't have much of anything to do after all.

Being the last day, and me being the way I am, I later went outside to the big fountain in front of the hotel and sat there, staring at it, as people continued to drift from the tech museum back to the Fairmont. I reflected on the past several days. It's been a good trip; you might expect me to say "but, I'm glad I'm going home" - but I'm not.

I got away from all the troubles and hassles of home for a solid week and a half; I enjoyed the company of many fellow geeks; I partook in some interesting speeches and seminars; I visited Apple, and saw a freaking G5; the hotel was one of the nicest places I've ever stayed; and the area itself is, despite what I know goes on underneath, friendly to look at. It's a nice place. I wouldn't mind staying longer, or coming back again.

When I got back to the hotel, I just wandered around in circles until by chance I ran into some of the circle of friends I'd been hanging around with for the past few days. We then collectively wandered around and talked, I gave out my email address, and that was pretty much it.

Then I went back to the room, laid down, and relaxed. Eventually Sturm got back and we watched some TV - Family Guy was on, and then we saw the first episode of Fooly Cooly (FLCL?), one of the new shows on Adult Swim. It was at this point that I realized I completely forgot to watch the first episode of Big O Season 2, which was on last night at 11. Curses.

So at the prompt hour of 12:30, I entered the realm of sleep - but not before finally getting Circle of the Moon back from Sturm.

Apologies for the brevity of this day's entry - I didn't actually write much of it until two days later.



Tuesday, August 5th

Ahh. Yesterday may have been the effective final day, but today is the true end of the Forum. I woke up early this morning because I needed to finish packing, went to stow my big bag in a room they have reserved for temporary baggage storage, then went to the final Tech Talk meeting; which was nothing more than handing out final papers (i.e. an overview of the Forum and a certificate of completion), exchanging contact information, and our faculty advisor giving us some candy. She could be pissy at times, but she's a nice person - and, as I found out later, a *nix fan.

Most people have already left. There are shuttle buses running from the three main airports (Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose) to the hotel and back at certain times. My flight to Chicago doesn't leave until 11 PM, and the latest shuttle to the San Jose airport is at 1, so I'm just waiting around in the hotel until they kick me out then. The wifi bandwidth is really clear now that everyone's gone. I downloaded three Matrix Reloaded tracks, and a Tetris theme techno remix, at a rate faster than I could actually listen to them - which was, and still is, something that never ceases to amaze me.

Things are wrapping up here, pretty much. I won't be home until tomorrow around noontime, so I should probably conserve battery power as much as possible - might have to stave off FFV and Bahamut Lagoon in favor of finishing this chronicle (I've skipped some sections which I must go back and fill in later).

The hour fast approaches.
So, until much later, au revoir.

*An hour later*

As I walked through the hotel to grab my bag and go to the shuttle bus meeting point, I noticed something:
It was really empty.

I'm not sure if kids were still playing pianos, or if there was ambient hotel music I hadn't noticed before, but elegant music was playing; and all the tables that had formerly been in the halls of the ballroom level for us to sit at during meals were gone. Even the halls of the room levels seemed eerily quiet.

The past week and a half was like nothing else I've ever seen. It's as if chat room conversations and bulletin board discussions - just general meetings of geeks, for technical purposes or for hijinks - had come alive. And now it's gone, dead.

I often get a feeling of emptiness when I finish a book, or a movie, or a video game which profoundly affects me; something so great and exciting, that I can only wish my real life could be as fulfilling. I had that same feeling walking out of the hotel; the difference was that this had actually happened. This was something that was, and could again be, part of my life.

I hope I can come back again next year.

Anyway, I got to the airport, and there's a touch-screen system for an easy check-in. But my flight doesn't leave for another ten hours, and it doesn't let you check baggage more than four hours in advance; so I guess that takes care of me for a while.

For now, I'm just sitting outside the check-in typing.
And a feeling of emptiness is gradually overwhelming me.
After last week, it's going to be really, really hard readjusting to dull, Pennsylvania life.

*Ten hours later*

Boy, was that fun. I spent about five and a half hours sitting there, intermittently eating Cheez-Its from my bag, playing Circle of the Moon (I'm up to Dracula now), and doing nothing.

I went to the plane gate as soon as I could, just out of sheer boredom. There was another kid there from NYLF, and we started talking after a while. He's from Lansing, Michigan, and he chose to take a late flight because he thought we'd be doing things at the Forum all day today. Poor guy.

Another NYLF kid showed up after a while, too, but unlike the two of us he hadn't spent the day in the airport; he was out and about with his aunt and mother (who had apparently come along with him on the trip). One of the places they visited was the Winchester Mystery House, and they told some stories about it. Sounds fascinating.

It would've been nice if we were the only people on the plane, but eventually the other passengers had to show up at the gate. Rats. The plane took off at around 11 PDT, and four hours later we should be in Chicago. Until then, I'm revising the chronicle (and finally putting that USB light to good use).

*Some time later (it became Wednesday somewhere around here)*

After the plane arrived in Chicago, I found out where the Harrisburg flight departed (words of advice: never try to find anything in the Chicago O'Hare airport at 5 in the morning). Then I sat there. Explored around in Circle of the Moon (which I also did a bit of on the previous plane). Three hours later, I got on the (rather small) plane to Harrisburg, and the next two hours were a blur of semi-sleep. Then my parents picked me up at the airport and we went home.

And I guess that about wraps it up.

Fun facts I've forgotten to mention:

-There's an Indian casino in San Jose called "Cache Creek"
-I brought Robotech Battlecry for Gamecube along with me assuming that someone would bring a Gamecube, but I didn't find out about anyone with a Gamecube until the final night of the conference
-The bathrooms at the Fairmont had telephones next to the toilets
-There were tons of GBA SPs, techie shirts (I saw several for McAffee), and techie humor shirts (at least half a dozen people had the "10 types of people" shirt)

Of course that's not all. But it's all I remember. So if you want a good account of the trip, maybe you should ask someone else.

But anyhow, that's all, folks.