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I skipped out on the last talk "on time". It was skipping out because he was going over on time. I had to use the bathroom, and, anyway, the talk wasn't the best one, but it had some okay parts, until the end, when he decided to do an "equation dump". (Like a wall-of-text "infodump" in webcomics, but for science. The other type of dump for science is the "data dump", which is common for astronomy talks).

Sounds good.

The internet at the motel we're staying has been down since 3 am the night before (I woke up and thought I'd check), so this is the first time I've been on in a while.

Went to the 40th floor of the Hyatt and took some crappy pictures with my crappy webcam.



The hotel has two towers; this is the top of the one I wasn't in.

A couple of more pictures from around the conference hotel (not where I'm staying, btw)

From the balcony of the third floor:





I didn't want to keep opening and closing my laptop, so I was carrying it around open and accidentally got this one of an escalator.



A smaller lobby



A lounge area. This is where I am as I type.


Abstract expressionism

Oh, yeah, there was some reception thing on the roof (but only five or so floors up). What was cool was that there was a pool in the open there, and at the end, a mallard and his mate were just swimming around there! I borrowed a digital camera from someone else and took a couple of pictures, so hopefully I'll get those eventually.

I'm not seriously expecting you to do anything about me being bored.

Not really, since I have a gamepad.

But I'm not bored in the sense of "having nothing to do".

Some of the people here rented a boat and went sailing around. I'd like to do something like that with FO, but as is, I'm just tired and maybe feeling a little down. So, I just went back to my hotel room.

It was probably dumb to, and I haven't used it yet, but I did bring it.

One thing I miss is playing my guitar. I had been playing it every day, but now I can't touch it for a week.

Anyway, we ate at a seafood place last night. I picked something that was supposed to have been caught local. It was okay, but no doubt about it: The seafood I had in San Francisco was much superior to what I've had in San Diego. Not even close. I think it's even possible that a seafood place we have in Ohio is maybe a little better.

We had lunch at an Indian buffet one day, and it was pretty good. It's not the best Indian food I've had (again, in San Francisco), but it was in the next tier, I guess.

We also went to a Japanese place another day, and split some sushi as an appetizer, and I also had a beef noodle thing as a meal. That was also good. Their sushi was more complicated than what we get in Ohio. Their dragon roll (which I didn't get -- it had eel) was made to look like an asian dragon, with a long tail, head, horns, etc. What we did get had all kinds of stuff on the inside and outside. I learned that you're not supposed to put the wasabi or ginger on the sushi. The ginger is to be eaten separately, to aid digestion (since you're eating raw fish). The wasabi is to cleanse the palate.

Haven't had any Mexican food that really blew me away. Kind of reinforces my belief that Mexican food snobbery is pointless.

Well, FO picked me up last night. I was so glad to see her after being away for so long.

I bought a book (The Green Mile) at the San Diego airport, but didn't finish it this time. For one thing, early in the flight, a kid was crying pretty relentlessly. I say kid rather than baby, because later in the flight I got a look at her, and she was about 2 years old. And it was really more shrieking than crying. I put up with it for a while, then realized, hey, I have an MP3 player; what the hell am I doing? So I listened to an album to block it out. But the time it was done, the kid either cried herself to sleep or finally chilled out.

But I also dozed for maybe an hour on that flight.

So, I ended up reading a little more than half of it.

Other thoughts on San Diego.

None of the cars there had any rust! That was amazing. Before we left Ohio, someone in our group said that our city was redneck because of all the pickups. There may have been fewer of those in San Diego, but I didn't really pay much attention.

They drive pretty aggressively there. And you can't drive too defensively yourself, because when traffic is getting thick and you need to change lanes on the freeway, you have to make and take your own opportunity. I did a lot of the driving in a van (that we rented); I'm not used to driving such a large vehicle, but by the end I had adjusted.

San Fransisco is as though it covered hills, while San Diego is like it was carved out of mountains. So, while there are a lot of elevation changes in San Diego, any given area is probably flat. But there were a couple of hills so steep that when I had to stop for a red light, then shift my foot from the brake to the gas, the car would actually start to roll backwards. I've never had that happen before, not even in the mountains of Tennessee. Looking back, maybe I should have put the van in low gear there.


There were some different animals than I've seen in Ohio (and some the same). I wish I had FO with me so my identifications could have been more sure. I think I saw a bunch of brown pelicans at the beach. That beach also had some squirrels that are smaller than what we have in Ohio (we have at least fox and red squirrels here; a smaller town has black squirrels, which may be a mutation or different strain [probably of the larger fox] or a different species altogether). I first thought they might have been chipmunks. FO says they could have been ground squirrels.


The pigeons there are huge. That's the main difference. I didn't see them much in the city, but one beach was loaded with them.

Near the aircraft carrier, I saw some black pigeons. It looked like a black pigeon was trying to mate with one that was reddish orange. FO said there was probably nothing unusual about the breed of those birds, though.