I had referenced my raw notes that the raw notes for my trip to the MIT Media Lab information:Organized and Changing Places symposiums were here on my blog. So, I thought I better post them. If you would like to view the completed trip report in PDF format, click here. If you want to see the raw notes from the trip (not nearly as nice as the document!!!) then click the MORE... button.
Okay! First off, had I not saw the last 20-30 minutes of this movie when Chip and Shannon were up for the celtic rock concert (that was when I saw it, right guys?) ... then I would have never actually watched this movie.
I'm happy that I did watch the whole movie though. It entertained me, and made me happy. At the very least it answered all the questions of why are the cows dressed up like Indian women, why is the dog running around under a box, and what the heck was with the Rugby team standing around making a guy eat frozen quiche?!?!
If you get the chance, watch the movie, and let me know if I am just strange or something. I enjoyed it though!
Wow, three blog entries in one day! This one, is totally about life and love. Click the MORE... button if you really want to read it!
I have the reputation, rightfully so I recon, of not visiting my friends. Fortunately for me, they'll not let a little drive get in the way of visiting me however. I got a call at 8:30am (yes, look at the time stamp from the other entry from today) from Dan that he, Suz, and the kids were coming down to do some Geocaching in the area! I crawled back in the bed, slept till 11am and then sprung out at the motivation of someone getting my butt out of the house and walking like I should be doing every chance I get.
They got here about half past noon and we grabbed a bite to eat, then starting caching. We actually did a great job today. We found 5 caches (2 of which I'd previously found). The kids were great and enjoyed themselves greatly. I have to admit that Geocaching is even more fun with kids! I'm sure Ceylon will enjoy it more when he is older than 7 months. :) Thomas (5) and Simone (3) had a ball though, and so did we adults. Suz captured 3 miles of walking on her pedometer for the day, so not too bad with the youngsters. We were rained on (well drizzled on) for the entire extremely humid day. That wasn't enough to dampen the spirits though, lots of fun all around.
We found, Out of the Frying pan, Two Ponds, and Cache Aid !.
I should definitely be in bed right now, not sure why I'm not actually. I patched and updated my machine this evening, then I got to thinking about upgrading to a new system. After thinking about it though, it makes no sense. My current system is quite capable of handling my needs for a while longer. In order to get it out of my system however, I may go ahead and build my nephew a system. Though, I will probably wait till I get back from Trinoc*coN at the start of October. I had told him around Thanksgiving anyway.
This day has started off wonderfully!
Is this a special day for reflection? What would make this day decidingly more special for reflection that any other day? The date of course. 9-11 will never be thought of as just another late summer day when the pools are closed and the kids are back in school. Instead it will be the day when the first extremely large scale terrorist activity was successfully completed to the delight of fanatics. It will be the day when some 3000 people were killed on US soil by a few people with box cutters. It will be the day when hijacking an airplane becomes a lot more risky for terrorist.
I am sure many keepers of blogs are writing in regards to this day and the events of last year. Not to go along with the flow, but instead to just record my reflections I thought I would do the same. We all know the events of that day on the large scale. A few days ago I re-posted an email I had sent on 9-12-01, today I want to post a more detailed recollection of my day and how I viewed the events.
The following was from an email I sent a dear friend last year on Sept 12th after the attacks. As everyone, I'll never forget that day.
Manhattan was eerily calm and quiet last night and this morning. All the times I've been there with you were so very radically different from now. We walked up to Central Park from 51st last night at about 7:30pm and there were no cars, hardly any people, just a couple of lines of firetrucks waiting to go downtown for relief. West Drive (all roads in Central Park actually) were closed down and folks were just walking their pets and actually stopping and talking to each other in the middle of the streets.
I had went up yesterday morning for meetings in the Time & Life building and watched the towers burn on the bus trip in from Teterboro, NJ airport where the AOL plane lands. It goes through the Lincoln Tunnel and we were sitting there fixing to go through at about 9am. We made it onto the island, and had half a day of meetings before the started evacuating the buildings around Rockefeller Plaza.
Obviously I didn't get home last night and ended up rooming with another AOL-Virginia person who was up there. We took the Amtrak Accela back this morning. The walk down 7th avenue through Time Square was simply unbelievable. Our group of 8 folks going to catch the train were the ONLY people in the center island of Time Square when we were crossing. There should have been lines waiting for tickets to shows and the like! During the 17 block walk down at 8:30am we only had to stop once for crossing traffic. We saw less than 10 cabs and only a handful of cars. No honking horns, hardly any noise, everyone less rushed and even displaying "social graces" that I've never seen in NYC before. There were way less people walking than even any weekend we were in Manahattan.
Downtown DC was somber as well when we got in, though nothing like Manahattan. I don't know anyone personally that was caught in either attack.