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| en route to denver for dry air, cold
beverages, and some supercomputing. osama
bin laden and his al-qaeda goons are really starting to annoy me. that's a two
hour line you're looking at.
|
|
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| the hundreds of people behind
me. a $9/hour rent-a-cop walked around shouting "triple line"! 5 minutes later,
"double line!". 5 minutes after that, "single line!". it was pure chaos. |
|
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| if hired by oakland international airport,
i will immediately implement a policy to have carry-on luggage inspectors fly with
passengers to their intended destinations. that should create the right incentives
for them to actually care. |
|
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|
eric fraser inspecting his
flight information. arriving less than half an hour before takeoff, his
schedule thus far appeared to be optimal until . . .
|
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| EERRRRRRKKK!! SCREEEECCCHH!!! the
plane lifted off then immediately nosedived creating a huge trail of smoke
for me to examine while pondering my uncertain fate! eventually, we stabilized.
|
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|
albert goto, whose friend is
a former united airlines employee, tells us that the delay essentially means
the plane has hit the magical "15 bad things wrong with it" threshold. damn
you, united airlines!
|
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|
human resources at airports really ought be to dynamically reassigned
to meet fluctuating demand. queueing delays would be shorter, customers
would be less irate, everyone wins! :) instead, we have . . .
|
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| long lines and really really
annoying personnel working the counters! that woman on the right (behind
the terminal), for example, was operating in "highly irritable" mode
and made it a point to not hear anything we were saying.
|
|
 |
| of course, having eric
as our negotiator solved that problem. he busted out the jedi mind
trick and got us five spots on a previously fully booked flight
just a couple hours later. awwwww yeah! |
|
 |
| hours later, here we are
in denver, home of the denver broncos and err.... not much else. |
|
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| as you can see, this is
an immensely popular destination. |
|
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| we missed all the big parties
on opening night and thus ended up having to buy our own drinks. grrr...
|
|
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| during the trip, someone commented that
every big city that matters has a clocktower building. after wandering around
denver for a week, it became readily apparent that this does not hold in all cases! |
|
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| the frenetic pace of the ultra-competitive
business world in downtown denver. |
|
 |
| fraser preparing for some payback
for
san diego.
|
|
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| the yardstick by which success
is measured in denver. when you've moved into the "executive tower", you
know you've made the big time. the dirt brown walls are an especially
nice touch. |
|
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| and here we are arriving for
yet another instance of the scxx series of supercomputing conferences. |
|
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| not surprisingly, it was held
in the denver convention center. like you really cared to know that. |
|
 |
| inside the building, it was
like a 533 soda reunion or something. i bumped into alan mainwaring,
steve lumetta, and even
saw klaus schauser in
the distance. (all three aforementioned people not shown!)
|
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|
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| beware of the marketroids.
|
|
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| more of the show floor. the view
from my camera is consistent with my actual vision that day. one hour of
sleep!!! ARGGGGGGG.... |
|
 |
| over the wall, we have our
pals from myricom. according to
some trade rag, they're the producers of the infamous
"mirror net"
high-speed networking technology. heh . . . :)
|
|
 |
| pete and albert trying to blast
bits into the ether. i felt so old school with my wired ethernet card
with nowhere to plug into. no one would let me play their reindeer games
at sc2001. *sniff sniff* |
|
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| unprecedented amounts of bandwidth
in a network specially designed for sc2001. impressive, indeed. |
|
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|
vern paxson's bro tool sniffing the
network for passwords transmitted over insecure connections. nothing
incriminating! *hmph*
|
|
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| the steak shop right across our hotel
where we just missed bumping into britney spears!
the food, by the way, is terrible!
|
|
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| chillin' in the blue bar after
a hard day of schmoozing. |
|
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| manning this booth must be
the easiest job in the world. |
|
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| a visualization system by sgi
that allows interactive exploration of any place on earth with 1mi x 1mi per
pixel resolution. shown here: afghanistan.
|
|
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| more of that. |
|
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| now what could possible get a bunch
of supercomputing nerds to stand around looking so attentive? |
|
 |
| the university of florida's
dancers of course! now, you might be wondering what this has to do
with supercomputing. hmmm . . . |
|
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| i don't think she writes fortran code.
|
|
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| or
mpi programs.
|
|
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| does anyone really care?
probably not. to quote a person the floor, "that was by far the
best thing i've ever seen at supercomputing!" *sigh*
|
|
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| on my way back to civilization.
the maze at denver airport. |
|
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| this place is a paragon
of efficiency and thoroughness when it comes to checking carry-on luggage.
i breezed right through yet was subjected to far more checks than i was
in oakland. good job, denver. buh bye!
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index
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