A.I.

We saw A.I. at the Rio in Gaithersburg yesterday after lunch at the Hamburger Hamlet. I had never been to the HH before, and they did produce a fine hamburger. After living in University Park for 3 years, Gaithersburg's sort of jarringly outer-suburban. But it's pleasant, I'll give it that.

In general, I enjoyed A.I., though it wasn't spectacularly good. I wonder what Kubrick would have done with it. (Though after having seen Eyes Wide Shut, I no longer believe in his infallibility. Oh, yeah, and Barry Lyndon, too.)

Warning, a spoiler or two in the review ahead.

In a word, I found the whole thing pretty creepy...can you imagine having Haley Joel Osment as your kid? I would have dumped him in the woods even if he were the real one. Cree-py.

The plot ambles on, exploring this 21st (?) century post-global-warming society. It will from time to time take big leaps. Sometimes those leaps require a certain suspension of disbelief. (Don't the future police choppers have LoJack?) But mostly it's just a fairly interesting story with fairly distant characters and pretty cool special effects.

The original story upon which this is based is on-line here. Apparently there are two other sequel stories which also figure into the plotting of the movie, but I haven't seen them. Although Kubrick and Spielberg changed a number of things from the story (I'm disappointed that they got rid of the tapeworm -- that was one of the more believable parts of the story), the movie did have the feel of a science fiction story. Most SF movies feel to me more like some other genre -- typically western or thriller -- transplated into "the future." A.I. fell more into the speculative fiction genre I'm used to reading.

Anyway, 3 stars out of 5.

There is an interesting Washington Post article about Osment today. He sounds like a bright, interesting kid. But creepy.

Zardoz

I have seen the future and it doesn't work

Take Sean Connery. Put him in a ponytail, sideburns, a fu manchu mustache, and...oh, yes, a loincloth. Add a giant flying stone head. Make 2293 look strikingly like 1974 (when the movie was made). You probably couldn't get anything as messed up as Zardoz, the movie we watched last night.

The year is 2293. This giant stone head (Zardoz) tells people (Brutals) that guns are good and penises are bad. The people go out at kill other Brutals who have been reproducing. But lately, Zardoz has been getting his Exterminators to make the Brutals agricultural workers. Why is this? Well, you see, Zardoz is actually the creation of an Eternal who lives in a Vortex (where the women often frolic topless), and you see, some of the Eternals have become Apathetics, and the Eternals need food for them.

All this was going well and good (huh? it was? what?), until Zed (Sean Connery) enters the picture. An Exterminator, he kills the guy behind Zardoz (don't worry; he's an Eternal, he'll be back) and rides the giant stone head to a Vortex. Well, once that happens, life in the Vortex will never be the same, as Eternals alternately employ Zed as their flunky, lover, and executioner. There's also some trippy stuff with crystals. Who am I kidding? It's all trippy.

It's worth seeing if only for the overwhelming feeling of, "What is Sean Connery doing in this movie?" and "Why didn't Mystery Science Theater 3000 ever do this movie?" Oy. According to something Fox Movie Channel scrolled across the screen, Stanley Kubrick served as an advisor on this film. You think between him and Sean Connery, they could have prevented it from seeing the light of day again...

Pi

"Something's going on. It has to do with that number. There's an answer in that number."

Ah, how often have I said something similar? Well, probably not very often, which is why the movie Pi didn't, shall we say, speak to me as a mathematician. On a superficial level, it's cool to see some similarities between a movie protagonist and oneself. Hey, he's a number theorist? I'm a number theorist! Hey, he works with computers? I work with computers! Hey, he's trying to figure out the essential patterns in the stock market to predict exactly what it will do the next day? I own stock! Hey, he plays Go? I know people who play Go!

As you can see, the parallels break down at a certain point. True, the mathematics in here is slightly less flawed than in Sneakers or Good Will Hunting. But to a certain extent that's because there's less attempt at detail here. I didn't feel like I was watching a movie about mathematics; I felt like I was watching a movie about a crazy guy who worked on mathematics.

And that's about it. The movie is rather thinly plotted. Max thinks he can find patterns in the chaos; so too do two groups -- one is some sinister goverment or financial organization, the other a group of Hasidic Jews. He tries, they pursue him. There are a lot of scenes of flashing lights and dissonant noise. They didn't do too much for me.

All in all, it's got some intriguing scenes and themes, but to me it felt like an unpolished, although talent-driven, "art school" flick more than anything.

Sailing

In a half-hearted effort to provide some continuity, I'm providing aliases for my co-workers who are mentioned here more than once. This entry involves "Bill", who previously appeared as the host of a Goldpocket event. "Bill" asked me a few weeks ago if I was interested in going sailing that evening. I had much going on, making my life very hectic, so I had to decline. But on Wednesday he invited me again, and armed with 24 hours of notice, I decided to give it a shot. Part of the enticement was my job description: "ballast". I figured it would be fun getting out onto the water and watching everybody else do the work.

Unfortunately, those plans were altered somewhat due to the reduced crew size. The crew consisted of Bill, me and someone else who had sailed twice before. So we stopped off for supplies and headed to the water.

Fortunately, my role was reduced to doing fairly straightforward things under direction. "Let this line out." These tasks were complicated slightly by the fact that on a boat, everything has a different name. Ropes become lines. Left becomes port. I decided that in days of yore, sailors spent a significant portion of their time at sea, so there was no good reason for them to be able to communicate efficiently with landlubbers. These days, people who sail just like the lingo. I had to revise that opinion later when I realized that the terms "port" and "starboard" avoided questions such as "Do you mean my left or the boat's left?" at crucial junctions.

The Compromise left the pier at around 6, in time for the 6:36 start time of the race. Thursday nights in Annapolis are when "J-class" boats race. There are three classes that race -- J-22, J-24 and J-80. J-22s are 22 feet long, J-24s are 24 feet long, and J-80s are, of course, 80 decimeters long. We were in a J-24. And of course, we had no chance of winning. I am proud to say we completed the race without collisions, and we hoisted the spinnaker without incident. I am mainly proud to say "hoisted the spinnaker". I think "hoist" is the appropriate term.

At first, I was somewhat bothered by the amount of effort needed to sail the boat. I mean, how is this relaxing if you're constantly doing things with the jib sheet or boom vang or whatever these things are? But as I got comfortable with my main task (letting one line out and pulling another in during the tacking maneuver), I realized that for people who knew what they were doing, all of the tasks likely took on an air of ritual that was probably pretty cool. But given the relative inexperience of our "crew", the light winds kept things from getting too interesting. And Bill was good at letting us know what we needed to do when (while avoiding the other boats).

As I mentioned earlier, we had no chance of winning. As a matter of fact, we came in dead last. We successfully reset the spinnaker for a second race, but alas, the light wind meant that there was not time for another. So we slowly made our way back to the dock, tied up the Compromise, put away the sails and disembarked.

All in all, a nice, relaxing yet entertaining evening. I learned a little about sailing, didn't get hit by the boom, and hopefully I'll get a chance to do that again some time.

The Microsoft Interview

Today's Microsoft ruling reminded me of a story someone told me about a job interview he had at Microsoft. This was circa 1992. During the interview, they asked him a number of questions to determine whether he was clever enough to work there. One of them was, "Why is there no eject button on VCR remote controls?" He was proud of himself for knowing the answer. "Because if you're going to eject a tape, you're going to have to get up anyway to do anything with it, so it's unnecessary." Microsoft was pleased with his quick-wittedness, and he got the job.

Two things bothered me about this question and expected answer. One, there are VCR remote controls with eject buttons. (My parents had one at the time, and I thought it was great.) Two, there are valid reasons to want to eject a tape without wanting getting up. For example, you may have just taped something really good that you want to be sure not to tape over accidentally. Eject the tape, and your chances of doing that drop. Also, many VCRs take several seconds to eject a tape (I don't know, maybe they're checking to make sure they're not playing it at the time). By ejecting the tape from the comfort of your seat, it'll be all ready to put away when you get up there.

This story, to my mind, foreshadows a lot of Microsoft's behavior, in the courtroom or in the marketplace. They have the twin attitudes of "We're right, regardless of reality" and "We know what's best for the consumer." That's what makes a lot of their software annoying to use, despite the neat stuff it sometimes contains.

Not a Good Advertisement for Jupiter Research

"Whether they sit at 20 or 25 percent of marketshare, that's still a quarter of the online population."
--Analyst Lydia Loizides, Jupiter Communications, as quoted by Wired News.

My Good Friend Mickey Stern...

...is mentioned in a Washington Post article about a new venture he and his business partner (and brother-in-law) have started.

"Jumping the Shark"

I recently heard some folks on the local sports radio station using the term "jumping the shark". I had no idea what they were talking about until I ran across this Slate article pointing me to (what else) www.jumptheshark.com. The premise is that there's some way to tell when a TV series is "over" -- for example, when the show introduces a new kid, when two characters whose romantic tension had driven the show end up getting together. The canonical example is Happy Days, where an episode featured Fonzie jumping a shark on water skis.

This reminds me of a Saturday Night Live ad parody I saw several years ago featuring songs that marked a similar turning point for bands...when they're no longer cool, but have descended into self-parody.

X10

Have you been as annoyed as I have with the many "pop-up" (or lately "pop-under") ads from X10.com? Well, thanks to Plastic for pointing out a way to get rid of them. Click here.

And here's a Slate article on the ads.

Innsbruck Photos

Here are the long-awaited pictures from Innsbruck.

NewsTALK FEEDBACK

My father's comments on James Jeffords and Trent Lott appeared in Friday's Arizona Daily Star (his is the penultimate remark). He says they left out the part about Trent Lott not being able to get elected dogcatcher in Vermont.

New Orleans Pictures

I've posted 5 New Orleans pictures in this Yahoo! Photos album.

Ski Pictures

I've scanned 4 more ski pictures. They're the last 4 in this album.

Pencils in the Ceiling

While I was walking Teddy yesterday, I noticed a perfectly good yellow pencil lying in the grass and felt compelled to pick it up. Not that I needed any more pencils -- I've got plenty. And not that I was being good about picking up litter -- I wasn't going to throw it away, I was going to keep it.

I thought back to the last day of classes in junior high school. I remember there was a tremendous number of pencils that people had stuck in the ceiling. I don't know what the name for that type of porous tile is, but it holds pencils pretty well. I was just shocked -- I eventually realized that people were getting rid of their pencils because they had no intention of writing all summer. That seemed very sad to me, but at the same time it was a good opportunity to score some free pencils.

That, in turn, reminded me of something that happened to me in middle school. At the end of the year, everybody was cleaning out their lockers. One of the things we had an opportunity to do was to sell our used books back to the school to recoup some of the money our parents had spent on them at the beginning of the year. I noticed a lot of people throwing out their books instead. An enterprising youth, I rescued them and attempted to sell them back to the school. My capitalist urges were met with some irritation, and I was told that the money would go to the parents of the students who had originally owned the books.

That was fine, but at the time I didn't really understand why. Looking back on it, I still feel a little disillusioned by the waste these kids were willing to engage in and the explicit condonation of that by the school. I was upsetting things, and it was easier to get annoyed at me than to try to teach these kids not to be so spoiled.

Club Champion

My father won the Mountainview Men's Golf Association club championship. Congrats!

Ski Stubai

When my alarm went off at 7 AM, I was wide awake. This was a nice change from previous days when I had lingered in bed unable to shake the fog of sleep. Of course, I wasn't going to make the 7:20 bus to Stubai Glacier, but I had a good shot at the 8:30 one. After a shower, a nice breakfast at my hotel, and the purchase of a Coke from the usual bakery, I walked to the bus station. And walked. And walked. After extensive consultation with the map, I discovered that I had taken a wrong turn back in Albuquerque. So it was back to correct my course. I arrived at the bus station right by the Hauptbahnhof -- just like the tourist information center woman said -- at 8:40. Blech.

The bus stop listed the upcoming buses, and my bus wasn't one of them. If this were [insert your own culture about which the stereotype of lateness fits], no problem. But I was condemned to wait another 65 minutes for the next bus.

I decided to take a stroll around, since -- well, since there really wasn't anything else to do. Walking another block south, I found -- another, bigger bus stop! You weren't expecting that, were you?

So now I was in the throes, as they say, of a dilemma. Which bus stop was the correct one? Or did the bus stop at both? Or -- shudder -- at neither? I looked at the schedules posted at the big bus stop. One of them was labeled "Stubaital" and seemed to be waht I was looking for, but it did not have the telltale "Stubai Gletscher." So I went back tot he train station bus stop and waited. AS the buses came and went, evenutally a bus due to leave after 9:45 showed up on the electronic sign without the Stubaital making an appearance. Now the big bus stop seemed the better bet, so I wandered back. My suspicions were confirmed when I saw other people with Stubai Glacier brochures wandering around, and then when I was people loading snowboards on the bus.

Traveling public transportation is always a much more broadening experience than ending up on some sort of tour bus. As I got on the bus, so did two pair of Spaniards, and as they discovered each other, I was reminded that my Spanish is not so much better off than my German. Then again, Spanish accents can be tricky (especially Castillan ones). I also got to see Tyrolean schoolchildren got on and off the bus as it would through the rural valley. The Alps were, of course, beautiful, and I was particularly awed by the waterfulls tumbling down sheer cliffs as the snow melted with the coming of Spring.

As we were riding along, I was excited -- here I am, skiing in the Alps -- but I expereienced a certain amount of anxiety. Would I find a place to change? (Not a good one -- new rule, change first when skiing unless I know the place ahead of time.) Was I dressed warmly enough? Was I dressed too warmly? Was I out of my depth? Would I be able to figure out the lifts?

As usual, I was over-concerned. I got to the ski area, went to the ticket counter and used my new favorite phrase, got my lift ticket and headed towards the gondola.

The gondola was cool. I had never been on one before. You put your skis in a holder on the outside (if you had them -- which I didn't yet) and hop in for the ride. Once again, you're treated to spectacular view of the Alps. It was almost worth it to come this far just for the gondola ride. But I had come for more.

At midstation, it wasn't quite clear if I needed to get off the gondola. So I did, only to be waved back on -- I managed to move ahead several gondola cars in the process. Finally, I was at the top, and I needed to find some place to change. (I hate changing in WCs.) Then I rented my ski gear -- I had looked up my European shoe size (45) in advance -- and put my bag in a locker. (Another anxiety -- but the system wasn't bad. For AS 20 (~$1.25) you could rent a locker key (with an AS 200 deposit) for the day -- it's the best way I've seen so far.)

I then trudged up to the skischule to see if they offered English lessons. Ski lessons in English, that is. My English's fine, thank you. As was theirs, in fact. I took an hour long lesson with Erin. First we headed off to the kiddie area. [Why do I take a lesson? Well, it is always a decent way to get someone to show you the ropes of a particular ski area, and frankly, I know my skills need a lot of improvement in order to properly appreciate places like this.] This area introduced me to a new typle of lift -- the conveyer belt. Pretty cool, and pretty simple, as befits the kids' area. The slope itself wasn't much to speak of, and apparently after a couple of runs I had convinced Erin I wasn't going to fall down willy-nilly. So it was off to try another type of lift -- the T-bar. Here you rest your "bum" on a metal bar while haning onto the metal part, which is connected to a retractible cord that the lift pulls up the slope. No falls, so I guess I did OK.

For ther est of the hour, I practiced my turns on this short slope. It was OK, but not really any different than anything I'd seen at any of the American slopes (except for the spectacular backdrop, of course). I asked Erin if we could try something more challenging, but she said we didn't have time. (Should I have sprung for the 2-hour lesson? Hard to say.) She pointed out to me Trail 1, which ran parallel to the track of the chair lift. So then I did a run on my own -- where I realized that htis slope was in fact fairly steep, and only by turning perpendicular to the fall line was I able to keep from being too disturbed by this.

After fueling myself with some bratwurst, I was off to tackle Trail 1. The lift was very modern. It was a 6-seater chair lift. Apparently it's quite a feat of engineering to get a chair lift on a glacier, since the glacier moves a couple of inches a day. The chair also had a protective bubble that I could pull down, protecting myself from the sun and the wind. The lift ascended into the clouds and put me down there, where I realized that Trail 1 was pretty darn steep. I mean, a lot steeper than anything I had skied comfortably back home.

But there was nothing to do but ski down. So I did. There was a lot of falling involved, especially as my skis caught one of the piles of slush created by the melting snow. I did a lot of stopping, especially as the two-mile-high altitude began to take its toll on my lungs. Erin had estimated I'd take half an hour to ski down; it took me closer to an hour. By the time I made it to the bottom, the ski area was an hour or so from closing for the day, and I knew I didn't have the energy to make another run before the day was over.

So I went back, returned the skis, and picked up some souvenirs. I then took another spectacular gondola ride on the way back down and changed my shirt. I mean, I don't think anyone noticed, and who would care, but it was a lot nicer place to change than the WC. Once I got to the bottom, I had about 45 minutes to wait until the bus came. As I was waiting outside the little cafe/tavern at the bottom, their speakers started playing a Bloodhound Gang song. As the song started up, I realized that it was a particularly raunchy paen to a porn star called "Ballad Of Chasey Lain". I mean, I ordinarily don't have problems with raunchy lyrics, and I'd give you euphemisms of what was in the song, but this is really nasty. I wondered how many of the Austrians knew what it was about.

After the pleasant bus ride back, I stopped off to send e-mail to let people know I hadn't broken my neck on the slopes and went back to my hotel to take a nice long bath. Suitably rested and cleaned, I headed out for my last Austrian dinner. I went to the Fischerhausel, which was another restaurant that was supposed to be known for its Tyrolean cuisine. I was dining at appropriate European dinner hour (late), so the restaurant itself was full, and I ended up seated at the bar. That was cool, although the service was indifferent, as I got to watch drinks and dishes go back and forth with the upstairs restaurant via the dumb waiter. And I got to hear "The Ballad of Chasey Lain" on the stereo. You know, I don't think there's a radio station in America that would play that uncut. I enjoyed a nice lamb dinner. The proprietor asked if I wanted anything else, and I asked for a recommendation of some schnapps, which I knew was a Tyrolean specialty. His face brightened; "Good choice." He served me a very nice apple schnapps; my previous schnapps experience had been with peppermint, which tased more like medicine. I liked it so much that on my way to my room, I stopped at the hotel bar and had some pear schnapps. Good, but I like apples better.

The next day, and the trip home, was more or less uneventful. Despite the airline computers in Innsbruck and Frankfurt being down, I ended up with extra legroom in Economy Plus on the way home. Perhaps because of the computer problems, some of my luggage took an extra two days to get to me. But all in all, it was a great experience, and I can't wait to get back to Europe.

Thursday in Innsbruck

Thursday after lunch, the conference was over, and I was off exploring Innsbruck by myself. First, I went to the tourist information center, where I purchased a ski pass, which set me back slightly over $40. For this, I would get a bus ticket to the ski area (90 minutes away), equipment rental, and a day's pass skiing on Stubai Glacier. Not a bad deal. After that, it was off to the Apotheke to get some suntan lotion, as recommended to me by a Brit at the previous night's conference dinner. (Two of the people I had dinner with that night worked for Visa and Mastercard. They pretended to be rivals, but they seemed to get along fairly well.) I opened with what was becoming my favorite phrase, "Sprechen Sie Englisch?" After a suitable survey of the pharmacy's employees, they produced someone who asked whether it was for me. Then she looked at me, said, "You are not so dark," and recommended the SPF 20. She then started in on a discourse on the meaning of the term "SPF", which I tried to cut short politely.

When I got outside, it had started to rain, so I decided to occupy myself indoors for a while. My next stop was the Hofkirche (picture here). The Hofkirche was where Maximillian I commissioned his tomb. As noted earlier, he did not die in Innsbruck, so I guess that's why he isn't buried there. That's why what lies inside the Hofkirche is a cenotaph, a word with which I was not previously familiar. Unfortunately, the cenotaph was under restoration. I mean, I'm glad they're restoring it, but I'm not so thrilled with the fact that a) they were doing it during my visit -- so I couldn't see the cenotaph and b) nowhere did I find notice of this until I came upon the construction site in the middle of the Hofkirche. The Hofkirche also featured larger than life bronze statues which were fairly impressive, though the one of King Arthur appeared to be blocked by the construction. You know how some bronze statues have shiny noses because people rub them for good luck? Well, Kaiser Rudolph had a shiny...um...codpiece.

After that, I toured the Tyrolean Folk Art Museum, which had implements of daily rural Tyrolean life going back a few centuries. Back to the 15th century, most stuff was made of soft wood, so it hadn't survived. The oldest pieces were pine chests -- lots of them. It was interesting to see how all the practical tools of daily life got decorated in such elaborate fashion. It was surprisingly big, and somehow peaceful to walk around among all the wood, reading on the occasional English captions.

From there, I went over to the Stadtturm (City Tower), which the brochure described as a "short climb up 148 steps." They were selling T-shirts saying, "I survived 148 steps." I always like climbing towers when I visit cities, and at 100 feet, this wasn't particularly tall. The view was nice, though not stunning. The main beauty of the view in Innsbruck is the Alps, and climbing the tower didn't really bring me any closer to them.



Then I went back to my hotel for a while to take a nap before heading out for an early dinner at the Ottoburg. The Ottoburg is one of the oldest buildings in Innsbruck, and the restaurant has won awards for its Tyrolean cooking. I had the Brazilian steak. (Hey, there's only so much breaded meat I can take.) That was pretty good, but the apple strudel was fantastic. I think I had located where the real talents of the Austrian chefs lie.

I was feeling a little bit lonely at dinner. I had dinner by myself of Monday (at the Stiftskeller), but that was a needed break from all of the conference interactions from people I kinda know (or kinda don't). Now, I was on my own for the next few days, and though I'm not averse to eating alone, I felt a little bit melancholy.

After that, I headed to the Ferdidandeum (on Thursdays the museums in town are open late). It contained paintings from the 15^th to the 18^th century, and, like the Folk Museum, had occasional English to put things into context. Also, the German captions seemed more substantial here than in the Hofburg. What it ended up being, though, was a set of mildly interesting pictures about the usual subjects (religion, landscapes & portraits of rich people) by Tyrolean artists I hadn't heard of.

That was OK, though, since my main goal was to tire myself out and go to bed early so I could get up early for skiing. The technique did not work at first (of course -- not only was I used to it being 6 hours earlier, but I had selpt past 8 and then taken a nap that day), so it was back and forth between attempts at sleep and CNN viewing. Finally, after midnight, my efforts paid off and I drifted into a sound sleep.

Mystic Crystals

I'm coping with a goofy German keyboard. The header almost came out "Mzstic Crzstals".

Innsbruck has been enjoyable (enjozable). I really am amazed at looking one way, and seeming the Alps right in front of me, and then turning around and seeing them in the other direction. Also, Innsbruck is a nice, old town with walkable streets and old buildings.

Today was the afternoon we had off from the conference for the excursion. The excursion was ostensibly to "Swarovski Crystal World," but the iron rule of any sort of bus tour is that you can never spend too much time in anz one place. It upsets the bus driver or something. So our first stop was the village of Hall. Hall was home to the old Mint. As the brochure says:

Competent personnel offers help and advice to guests and shares their pleasure when they create a durable souvenir of their visit to Hall in the form of a medal they can coin themselves by means of a powerful blow against the coinage die or an energetic jerk of the screw press.

Anzwaz...The Mint was apparently founded by Maximillian's uncle, Sigmund. The innovation due to it was to coin big silver coins rather than small gold ones; the innovation soon spread across Europe. This was good for Sigmund, since there's a silver mine nearby. The minting continued until Napolean invaded. Then, when the Bavarians "liberated" Tyrolia, they also helped themselves to the coin presses. Then we walked around Hall and looked at a couple of old churches.

Then it was of to the Crystal Worlds. Apparently Swarovski moved here from Bohemia 106 years ago because he had a great idea for making crystal, but was afraid somebody in Bohemia would steal it. Since this area was bereft of people who knew crystal, it seemed like a good place to start a crystal business. (That's my understanding, anyway.)

6 years ago, to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the business, Swarovski commissioned a trippy techno "experience" (the type of thing Brian Eno would be involved in -- yep, he was involved in this.) Basically, you walk through about 6 different rooms filled with lights, crystal, and music, and are encouraged to ponder the meaning of it all. And they laughed at EuroDisney.

After those rooms (we were given over an hour; they took about 15 minutes), we were deposited in the gift shop. This seemed a familiar scam -- except for the fact that the gift shop was way cooler than anything else in the museum. Bunches of tiny crystals carved into parrots, dice and other wacky shapes. Really, really expensive chandeliers that you wonder who would actually buy.

It was nice to get out of Innsbruck. The mountains are really beautiful, and it snowed a couple of weeks ago. They say the snow will melt in a couple of days, but it's pretty while it lasts.

To Innsbruck

I got to the airport almost 2 hours early. At the ticket counter, they were still unable to give me a seat assignment, but they assured me I could get one at the gate. I waited in line for a few minutes at the gate, and then heard an announcement that we should just sit down and they'd call us with our seat assignment. I was advised not to play along, so I went up to the counter with my best confused-guy look. They took my ticket and gave me a seat assignment. I suspect they wanted people to sit down so they could dole out the superior seats to Premier fliers.

I ended up with a somewhat mediocre seat -- I lacked the extra legroom of Economy Plus, but I was on the aisle, and I did have a bit more room due to the wall in front of me. (Aside: do I spend far too much time writing about he plane flights and not enough about the destinations?) Unfortunately, the wall in front of me belong to the lavatory, which meant enduring some amount of people hanging out in my personal space while waiting for a free toilet. My personal space was doing fine, too, with two adjacent empty seats, until a flight attendant placed a couple in those seats after takeoff. Between that and a difficulty digesting all the salmon (I think it's a bit excessive to offer salmon as a main dish and then provide it also as a side dish. Hello? United? I have half a mind to pack my own meal next time.) I attempted to catch some shut-eye, but was woken up by a flight attendant who stepped on a water container that had fallen in the aisle and splattered my legs with water. Later, while I was attempting to sleep through breakfast, he was pouring water for the person next to me and spilled it on my arm. Anyway, I was not a happy camper arriving in Frankfurt.

But I began to feel a little better once I got off the plane, and it was time to wander around looking for my flight to Innsbruck. I found the gate number and headed in that direction, but I soon came upon passport control. I wasn't sure if I should go through German passport control when my final destination was Austria, so I walked over to the United counter. They sent me to the Lufthansa counter. Sometimes I feel silly for not knowing where I'm supposed to be. Lately I've been getting over that by looking at how confused everyone else seems to be. Here that was demonstrated by all the people trying to get to the counter via the clearly marked Exit/Ausgang line. The Lufthansa people issued me a boarding pass and let me know that I did, in fact, need to go through passport control.

The guy there glanced at my passport, mumbled "OK" and let me through. As a result, I didn't get my passport stamped in either Germany or Austria. This is the first time that's happened to me on a trip abroad. (Besides Canada, which doesn't really count.) :-(

I got on the prop plane to Innsbruck. I slept through most of that, which was fine given all the clouds obscuring the scenery. I was awakened briefly by the splash of coffee on my arm.

I collected my luggage, which showed up suprisingly quickly, and realized I had no idea how to get to my hotel. On the assumption that it wasn't 2 blocks away, I took a cab. I think this is the first time I've gotten a woman as a taxi driver. Huh. She dropped me off a block away from the Goldener Adler, as much of the old city was closed off for a marathon.

It was only 10 AM, so my hotel room wasn't ready, but the receptionist talked me into an Innsbruck Card, which allowed one-price access to all of Innsbruck's attractions for the next 24 hours. It seemed like a good way of keeping to the always-a-good-idea but never-really-feasible "stay up all day" method of fighting jetlag.

My first stop was the Maximilianeum, a museum devoted to the Emperor Maximillian. Max was the Hapsburg who really started to consolidate the Austrian Empire. He used strategic marriages to gain territory across Europe. Unfortunately, in his last visit to Innsbruck, he was chased out because his credit was no longer welcome.

At first I was impressed by the Maximilianeum's audio technology. They gave me headphones, set them to "English," and whenever I was near an exhibit, I'd hear the appropriate flavor text. So, while I sat through the 20-minute introductory movie in English, others were listening in their own languages. It seemed to be superior to a similar system at the Tate Modern in London, in that I didn't even have to punch in a code for each exhibit. Unfortunately, the scheme fell apart in the (tiny) museum itself. The headphones worked by a very very short range radio broadcast, which caused a great deal of moving around one's head and body trying to pick up a signal. It got even more awkward when someone else was trying to do the same thing. Fortunately, the exhibits were more or less a rehash of the film, so I wasn't missing much.

Next it was off to the Hofburg, which was some sort of palace for Hapsburgs over the years. It was nicely furnished, but the (German) captions on the displays really didn't give much context. After this, I made my way carefully around the old city (avoiding the marathoners), only to discover that the 3 other things in the area that the Innsbruck card got me into weren't open on Sunday afternoons. Further, the trolley that would take me to other parts of Innsbruck ran right through the marathon course, so I wasn't going to be able to take that. So it was back to the hotel to check in, ride a somewhat disconcerting elevator to my room (there are no set of interior doors on it, so you really see the floors go by), and take the inevitable nap.

After that I went to the Congress Innsbruck to register for the conference and enjoy the opening reception. I ran into a guy I've known since we were 12-year-olds taking summer math classes, and we went with 4 others for a late dinner. I had some gnocchi, and after much calculating, we were able to settle the bill. Despite all this, I managed to sleep last night from 11 pm to 7 am and haven't fallen asleep in any of this morning's talks.

Sunday & Monday in New Orleans

Greetings from Austria. Let me tell you about...New Orleans. I'll finish this off (I wrote it on the plane) so I can later get on with telling you about Innsbruck.

Sunday began with a Jazz Brunch at a hotel in downtown New Orleans. It was the type of fancy-schmancy all-the-caviar-and-shrimp-you-can-eat-my-humble-apologies-sir-that-I-put-onions-in-your-omelet-let-me-make-you-another-one buffet that everyone should be able to indulge in every once in a while. The jazz was cool, and the view of New Orleans and the Mississippi from the 11th floor was impressive.

From there, it was a street car ride (neat!) to Jackson Square. The statue of Andy Jackson had been built by the locals prior to the Civil War and then carved with the words "The Union must and shall be preserved" by a Northern general during the occupation of the city. (You tell 'em!)

We attended a special Girl Scout Mass at St. Lous Cathedral. Normally not on my "to do" list for New Orleans, this event featured the older 2 of our hosts' 3 adorable daughters. My mind swam with trite observations. Gee, Catholics really seem to like ritual. Uhh. But nice cathedral, and congrats to the Girl Scouts on earning their Catholicism patch.

Afterwards, it was off to Cafe du Monde, for the famed beignets. Despite somewhat indifferent service, our beignets arrived, and I accompanied mine by some hot chocolate. Mmm. Fried dough goodness. Afterwards, when the 9-year-old was asked by her mother whether she needed to "powder her nose," she pointed out her sugar-covered clothing and said, "But I've already powdered by dress." Aww, how cute.

Monday morning we went off to the Aquarium of the Americas. Despite warnings that it would not live up to the National Aquarium in Baltimore, I was impressed. If you shaved off the dolphin and sea lion exhibits from the National Aquarium, I think you'd get somnething fairly comparable to the A of the A.

After that, it was a tasty lunch at the Napolean House, followed by a final walk along the river before saying farewell to the Big Easy. An hour-and-a-half drive back to Baton Rouge allowed us to return the rental car ("You might want to check the air in the tires.") and head back to DC.

Saturday Night in New Orleans

After we returned from the Jazz Fest and cleaned up some, it was time to call a cab and head down to the French Quarter. And wait. And wait. And call again to check on the cab, to be told they'd call it again. And wait. And call back to ask how long it would be for the cab to get there. And be told, "Look, it's Jazz Fest, we're busy," and be hung up upon. And realize the cab was never actually going to show up. This is why I hate "calling a cab". (But have little problem with "hailing a cab".) I'd much rather take public transportation than have to depend on one of those undependable companies to show up. Just so the search engines can hear me, that's United Cabs of New Orleans. We called for a taxi, one didn't show up. Draw your own conclusions.

So I drove the rental car (still no flats) into town. It wasn't that hard to find parking, although driving constrained me from enjoying too much of the New Orleans spirit. By this time, we were starved, so we followed our guidebook to Cafe Maspero. It was a nice, inexpensive way to experience New Orleans cuisine. I had jambalaya washed down with some beer, and then we were off on our walking tour of the French Quarter.

It's clear that the walking tour in the guidebook was never really meant to be done at 11 or so at night, but we pressed ahead. The Spanish architecture was really neat, but after a while we grew tired and wandered over to Bourbon Street. Wow. I don't know what I expected, but what I got was "World's Biggest Frat Party." Uh, pass. So we stopped in a voodoo shop, then wandered home, leaving the post-midnight revelry to those more dedicated than us.

Jazz Fest

Saturday morning (the car still sans flats), we got up and headed to Jazz Fest. We parked at City Park, 5-10 minutes from where we were staying, and took the shuttle in. Apparently parking near the Fest is pretty atrocious, so this was a good idea. When we got to the fairgrounds, it was time to head for the most important destination -- the food. Our food tally:

• Fried Gator Po Boy
  
• Crab Stuffed Shrimp
  
• Gator Sausage Po Boy
  
• Crawfish Bread
  
• Mango Ice
  
• Fruit Salad
  
• Fried Green Tomatoes
  
• Crawfish Remoulade
  

Oh, yeah, there was music too. We listened to the Soul Rebels Brass Band, who had a unique rendition of Wham!'s "Careless Whisper". We caught a bit of Los Hombres Calientes, but were really too far away to hear them very well. Then we wandered over to hear the tail end of "Süroit of Canada w/ Hadley Castille" -- Cajun music. Later, we heard some torch songs (Little Jimmy Scott) and some folk music, before ending with the Wallflowers.



OK, I know it's somewhat cheesy (although not as cheesy as the crawfish bread -- mmm, mmm) to go to Jazz Fest and really only be familiar with the Wallflowers. (For those of you who aren't, it's an alt-rockish band fronted by Jakob Dylan (pictured above) -- yes, Bob's son.) But you know, that's what I know, and now I have a little bit more exposure to other types of music.

From Baton Rouge to New Orleans

Greetings from New Orleans, where we arrived yesterday for Jazz Fest. Which, of course, meant we flew in to Baton Rouge. It's pretty expensive to stay in New Orleans during Jazz Fest -- almost as much as Mardi Gras. But fortunately, we're staying gratis. Unfortunately, it's also not cheap to fly into New Orleans this weekend either, so we had to go with Baton Rouge. Also, unfortunately, we were priced out of my preferred airline, so we ended up on Delta. That wasn't so bad...the miles will transfer, but it did mean sitting in the back row. On the plus side, this is the first "1-stop" flight I can remember being on where they didn't announce a plane change.

After navigating the under-construction Baton Rogue airport, I got the car (Oldsmobile Alero -- thank you Avis Preferred) and it was off to enjoy the great state of Louisiana. We were hungry, so we looked in the guidebook for places to eat in downtown Baton Rouge. Unfortunately, the Avis map had us taking exit 1C off I-110 to get to downtown, and as far as we could tell, that exit didn't exist. So we were on I-10 and looking for places to eat near LSU.

Unfortunately, the maps we had didn't help us locate the place the book recommended near LSU, so after driving around and around the LSU camps (I had forgotten how poorly college students drive -- maybe it's just college students in the South -- they also don't make great pedestrians), we headed to our original destination downtown.



That would be Poor Boy Lloyd's, where we had (what else?) po' boys. I had a catfish po' boy, which I believe duplicated my only other meal in Louisiana -- when Ben & I drove across the country in '93. The food was great, and the very friendly and vaguely inefficient service reminded me I was back in the South.

Driving to New Orleans provided the sort of lush scenery you don't get in the Mid-Atlantic, along with a general feeling of swampiness. A couple of miles out of Baton Rogue, the car started beeping at me and I noticed a "low tire pressure" light on. Uh-oh. The car wasn't pulling to either side, but it wouldn't if I had a flat on a rear tire. So we went to the next exit and pulled into a gas station to check the tires.

There was no gauge either at the gas station or in the car, but the tires looked and felt full of air. Close enough. Hey, it's a rental car; I'll go out this morning and see if there are any flats.

We arrived at our hosts' at around 3:30 in the afternoon, chatted with them for a while, and then I was ready for a nap. After the nap, it was time for dinner, which featured crawfish. I don't think I've ever learned how to eat crawfish, but if you know how to eat crabs...well, I guess it doesn't entirely help, except for the general experience of breaking open your food to eat it. I did not get into the full Louisiana spirit of sucking the crawfish head, but hey, one step at a time.



After that, I was a bit too tired to head out and do anything -- getting up at 5:30 after a long week will do that to me, so it was off to bed to conserve my energy for today's trip to Jazz Fest.

Baseball

I went to see the Orioles lose to the Indians last night. It was cold and pretty empty -- though there were 2-3 times more people than there were at the last Twins game I was at. Despite my recommendations, we ended up with upper box seats -- the seats themselves had a good view from the first row of the upper deck, along the 3rd base line. But go to a night game in April in Baltimore, and it's significantly colder than it is at ground level -- which is pretty cold to start with.

This is the first Orioles game I've ever been to, I believe, where Cal Ripken wasn't playing. I assumed he was hurt; it turned out he was benched.

Plane Truth

The headline on this CNN.com story is "Near-miss preceded plane collision, Pentagon official says."

Further elaborating, "A Chinese fighter passed as close as 3 feet to a slow-moving U.S. spy plane before the two craft collided, sending the Chinese jet into the sea and the U.S. plane to an emergency landing in China, a senior Pentagon official said Tuesday." Well, duh. It also passed as close as 2 feet, then 1 feet...and then you had the collision.

This is what we mathematicians call the "Intermediate Value Theorem".

(Yes, I know if you read the bottom part, it explains that the "near-miss" refers to an approach prior to the one involving the collision, but you shouldn't have to read that far into the story to figure out what's going on. And don't get me started on whether a "near-miss" is the same thing as a "near-collision.")

Brush with Greatness/Brush with Stupidity

Last Saturday night, five of us went to a taping for an HBO comedy special, thanks to a friend in the business. I was really confused about what was going on, but we showed up, milled around for a while munching on free food until they called out for "guests of the production company." Woo hoo, that was us. We must be in the front row. In fact, we were (though they later moved us back a little bit). Still wasn't sure what was going on -- there was a sign on stage saying "Welcome [Something] High Class of 1981". Huh.

Fortunately, we ran into the parents of aforementioned friend, who clued us in. This was going to be a series of sketches by a number of different comedy troupes. Most of them I hadn't heard of, although I had heard of the Groundlings. Many of the sketches were less than inspiring, but some -- such as Australia's Umbilical Brothers -- were downright entertaining. Hopefully the less entertaining ones will end up on the cutting room floor.



But then it was time for the final sketch with The Kids in the Hall. Out wanders Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald. Not to take anything away from Kevin McDonald, but I found Dave Foley 20 times funnier than anyone else in the room. He was joking around before and after the sketches in a genuinely funny manner that few people have.

After some forced laughter for the laugh track, we were on our way. We decided to head to Fado for a drink. As we rounded the corner of the building the taping was in, I heard Martin say, "It's Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald of Kids in the Hall!" Sure enough, there they were. I don't know what came over me, but I started to do my best "Teenage Girls See the Beatles" shrieking. I figured a) I would never see these guys again and b) I was far enough away to be non-threatening. Everybody was somewhat amused/vaguely embarassed.

So we wandered over to Fado, which was fairly packed with people watching the Maryland/Duke basketball game/debacle. Fortunately, there were seats available as long as we were OK with not being able to see the TV. In fact, there were two tables tucked into the corner. So we claimed one, sat down and ordered our drinks. A couple minutes later, who sits down at the table next to us than -- the Kids in the Hall. So I did see them again, and I was not nearly far enough away to avoid feeling pretty darn awkward.

You can also read another take on the evening's events that's slightly less Jon-centric.

Muvico

Went to Arundel Mills last night for the first time. It's this huge "outlet" mall at Rtes. 295 and 100 in Maryland. I got a good deal on a ski jacket at Sun & Ski Sports -- all their ski stuff was on end-of-season clearance. They had a treadmill-like thing that you could "ski" on, but I declined their offer of 15 minutes for $7. Somehow, it just didn't seem the same.

Then we went to Chevy's for dinner. The fact that they didn't have a table ready was annoying until we went into the bar and discovered that they had trivia. I ended up playing a pretty decent game of Spotlight, and getting to #1 on the bar's high scores at the game. Then again, after only being in for 3 questions (out of 15) of the previous game (Triviaoke), I was #9. So it's not a trivia hot spot.



By then it was almost time for the movie. We went to see it at the Muvico Egyptian 24. First of all, Muvico is a pretty silly name for a movie theater chain. It's a Florida company that builds these mega-stadium theaters. Ever since I've started going to theaters with stadium seating, I've gotten to be a bit of a snob about them and am willing to drive further to see movies there as opposed to anywhere else. Somehow I became under the mistaken impression that O, Brother Where Art Thou? was playing there. When we went to buy tickets, we were disabused of that notion. So, we got tickets for Down to Earth, a movie starring Sam Neill about the Apollo moon landings and the attempt to get an Australian satellite dish to help televise it.

At this point, you may be saying, "Jon, don't you mean The Dish? Isn't Down to Earth that lame Chris Rock remake of Heaven Can Wait?" Well, smarty-pants, you're a step ahead of me, as we discovered when the opening credits started to roll. Oops. Not wanting to subject ourselves to what we were fairly sure was going to be a not-so-thrilling movie, we slunk out.



And changed theaters to Chocolat, which was just starting. Thank goodness. All in all an enjoyable movie about a woman who opens a chocolate store in a small village in France in 1960 and upsets the town's existing social order. I guess the one thing that bothered me about the film is that it seemed to be proselytizing the transformative power of chocolate -- which is really silly, if you stop and think too long. (So don't.) The movie grasps for profoundness, but in the end is really just...sweet. Which is fine with me.

Why I Don't Watch Baseball Much Anymore

"There's no sense in rooting for a total loser, so let's cross the Twins right off the list. If you already are a Twins fan, well, that's your cross to bear, and you can't expect the rest of us to join your lonely crusade."
--Hugo Lindgren, "The Free-Agent Fan", Slate.

Greenville, South Carolina

I just got back from a weekend at the SERMON conference in Greenville, South Carolina. (SERMON = SouthEastern Regional Meeting On Numbers) This is my 8th straight SERMON; I'd have to rate it 3rd in terms of location behind the two in Charleston.

I wasn't expecting to enjoy the town that much. I had been in Columbia, South Carolina the previous weekend, and didn't expect Greenville to be an improvement. (Columbia ranks #5 in terms of SERMON locations -- it hosted in '98.) For some reason, I flew in Friday morning, even though the first talk wasn't until 4. I hopped into my rental car (a Mitsubishi Galant -- this Avis Preferred thing is paying off) and drove off in search of adventure.

In truth, I expected to end up at the mall watching a movie to kill a couple of hours. But as I drove around, I followed the signs to the art museum. Well, I thought, this might be mildly amusing. What are they going to have here, that I can't see much better back home in DC? Well, as it turns out, 24 watercolors by Andrew Wyeth. This was a much more impressive museum than I expected. I also enjoyed the Casselli exhibit. Other than that, they mostly had Southern works, mostly realist. I also looked at an exhibit by Nancy Grossman. "Grossman is best known for her sensual and often brutal wooden sculptures of heads, wrapped in black leather skins and adorned with spikes, guns, zippers, and masks." Uh huh.

Then I drove downtown for lunch. It has a really nice downtown. Main Street is lined with a lot of nice restaurants and vaguely interesting shops (perhaps more interesting to those who shop more than I do). Later that evening someone described it as what Athens (GA) would be like if inhabited by adults. I check into my hotel, the Hyatt Greenville and relaxed for an hour before heading out to Furman.

Things I learned about Furman this weekend:

• Their sports teams are the "Paladins". To a D&D fan like myself, this was pretty cool. I tried to go to the bookstore on Saturday to find some nerdwear, but it was closed.
• One of their cheers is "FU once, FU twice, FU three times, FU all the time!"
• They provide rides to get students safely around campus, to local drugstores and other places. They chose to label the flyer giving the times for this as "Escort Services Schedule". If it hadn't been for my respect for public safety, I would have taken it.

The conference was nice. The talks weren't as interesting as they were last weekend, but it was good to see friends from grad school (as well as various profs).

Sunday, after the conference was over, I broke out my skates for the first time this year and skated around the Furman campus for a while. I was a bit unsteady. I'm not sure about the transference of any physical skills from skiing, but I think mentally the skiing has helped -- I know better how to identify areas for improvement, take appropriate risks -- and of course, I re-learned the fact that when I'm not paying attention, I end up on my butt.

A good weekend, but I'm looking forward to being home for the next month.

More Travel

I've also updated my travel page with maps showing where I've been in North America and Europe.

The maps come from the CIA World Factbook, so I know they're in the public domain. I used an editor to add blue dots where I've been. As with the travel page, the maps are a work in progress.

Stats

I found out that my web hosting company provides me with stats on things such as which pages of mine are getting the most hits. Teddy's page is getting more than twice the hits as mine! I hope he doesn't let it go to his head. So I cleaned up the page, updated Teddy's age, and shrunk the file size on some of the pictures so it'll load faster.

The most popular back issue of this weblog is Viewer Mail, presumably because it contains the phrase "Lisa Bangert", which gets searched for a lot from the UK. Hmm, I guess this issue will now soar in popularity.

It's gratifying to see that my math pages are getting a number of hits.

Korea Pics

I now have 20 pictures from my trip to Korea on-line here. Enjoy.

Travel

I've started a travel page. It still needs a lot of work, but right now it contains a list of most of the trips I've taken in the past 8 years. Boy -- I get around. I think I may be missing a trip to Wisconsin in there somewhere. I'm linking to write-ups of recent trips -- maybe this will inspire me to go back and write about trips of yore.

Goldener Adler

I just got my hotel information for my May trip to Innsbruck. I'll be staying at the Goldener Adler hotel. I was impressed that the place I stayed in Korea had hosted Clinton and Gorbachev. The Goldener Adler has hosted Mozart and Goethe. Advantage, Austria.

March Madness Update

I'm tied for 2nd in Ben's pool, one point behind Ben (hmm). I'm in the 97th percentile overall on Yahoo!, which is pretty darn good. My main concerns in the next round are the fact that I've picked Wake Forest and North Carolina to advance, and they're both already out. Darn that ACC. Fortunately, all my Final Four teams are still alive.

Free Tacos for Everybody

This is hilarious.

"Taco Bell is offering a free taco to everyone in the United States if the core of the Mir space station hits a floating Taco Bell target placed in the South Pacific."

March Madness

Well, so far so good. Take a look at my brackets. I got 11 of 16 right last night, but more importantly, the only second "winner" to go down was Ohio State. And I picked them to lose to Duke. That puts me in a 4-way tie for 3rd (out of 13) in Ben's pick set.

Afton Alps

Last night I went skiing at Afton Alps. It was an interesting experience, different from other ski places I had been to, and a great deal of fun.

I drove less than an hour east of the Twin Cities to Afton Alps, which is right on the Minnesota-Wisconsin border. The first thing that was "different" was that instead of parking and buying a lift ticket at a ticket window, I bought it at a kiosk as I drove in -- like I was entering a park. I drove around until I found a rental shop -- as it turned out I drove right by the nearest rental shop, a mistake that I would come to regret.

I went into the "Meadows" rental shop and marveled at the fact that I was the only one in there. I leisurely picked out a spot to fill out my rental form. When I was done, I looked up and noticed that about 50 middle schools students (completely unsupervised) had entered the shop, pushing, yelling and giggling like middle school students do. I quickly moved towards the front of the line with my completed rental form, but about ten kids (savvier than I) were already there, filling out their forms while waiting in line. (To be sure, it made no sense for me to do the same when I thought myself the only one in the shop. Eventually I made it to the front and went over the counter to get my boots.

I told the guy I wore size 11, and he handed me some boots which I tried on. Well, I tried to try on. My feet wouldn't even fit in the boot. Maybe he was so overwhelmed he automatically grabbed boys' 11 shoes; I don't know. So it was back into the boot line to get boots from a woman who apparently was more careful selecting boots. Then I picked out my skis -- 170s again. Upon reflection, I think I may have gotten type II skis. Oh, well. Then ended up working. I then picked up my poles and waited in line to check out. And waited and waited.

The middle school students were taking a lot of time getting out of there. I was reminded of what the world looked like through middle school eyes. "Snowboarding is better than skiing. Skiing sucks. I've never been downhill skiing a day in my life." Fortunately, that was met by a perceptive, "Then how do you know you wouldn't like skiing?" which stunned the other party into silence and, one can hope, a bit of reflection.

When I was 3 or 4 munchkins from the front, a rental shop employee took pity on me and pulled me out of the teeming masses of prepubescence to check me out. Escape! It was 5:00, and I was hitting the ski slopes.

If you look at Afton Alps' trail map, you'll see it's fairly large -- at least compared to the other places I'd been. That meant that I had to figure out how to get from where I was to other parts of the hill. I started out in the lower left in the Meadows area and skied "Susie's Meadow", "Daisy's Meadow" and "Maggie's Meadow". My confusion was amplified by the fact that "Mary's Meadow" has been replaced by a half-pipe -- a fact not reflected on the ski maps. After a few of these runs, I was ready to head somewhere else -- but how?

I overheard a father asking his kids if they wanted to ski on another part of the mountain. I listened closely to hear how they were planning to ski there. Nope -- Dad was bringing the car around. Well, that wouldn't do. I tried again; this time I skied on the other side of the half-pipe and picked up "Mickey's Meadow" -- a blue slope. Gasp. Well, I made it down by skiing fairly slowly. The worst part of it was the ice patches that had developed in the middle.

I was away from the area I started in, and a few more trips down I tried skiing over to the next lift. That brought me "Polly's Powder" and "Ruthie's Meadow" -- more green (beginner) slopes, if the names didn't give that away. Eventually I made it to "Paula's Pass" (or was that "Patti's Pass") -- a blue, which I took down to the other base lodge. I was running into trouble because I didn't have much cash in my pockets and the food courts didn't take charge cards. I'd have to head back to the Meadows to my locker -- but not before skiing down "Christina's Trail" and "Nancy's Nursery" (again, more greens). The big lift to "Lisa's Lane" went over an interesting variety of terrain. Apparently during the summer they have golf there; it was somewhat disconcerting to see a ball washer sticking out of the snow.

After a little refreshment, I headed back out and tried out most of the same slopes again. Still, I hadn't made it to the "Highlands" area, and I wanted to try more blue (intermediate) slopes before I was done. I cut across to "Renee's Ridge" and then was on "Dawn's Highlands". Uh-oh. It was late (almost 9), I was getting tired, the slopes were icing up, it was dark and this was a steeper pitch than I was used to. So I skied very slowly down to a lift at the bottom. Thankfully I made it without getting clocked by one of the skiers and boarders whizzing down "Bernadine's Highlands".

Then the question was...what would I do when I got to the top? The trail map was confusing. (At one point, I was looking at it, and a member of the ski patrol came over to give me directions. "What are you looking for?" "What's that slope there?" "Hmm; I don't know. Let me see your map.") I decided I would definitely head back to the Meadows by going left. I did so and got to the top of what I later figured out was "Britta's Run". The slope was fairly dark, the chair lift there wasn't running, and there wasn't another person around. But heck, there was no "trail closed" sign, so it was down the hill. I eventually found my way back to the top of "Renee's Ridge" and by keeping left of that made it back to the Meadows. Whew.

It was definitely exciting. I skied almost all of the green trails there and worked a handful of blues into my day. I worked on controlling my speed and started getting better at completing my turns. I definitely improved at being able to come to a stop on an incline. The size and variety of terrain whet my appetite. I'd like to go to one of the bigger ski areas. But it's getting late in the season, and my travel plans lean towards South Carolina, so we'll see...

Some of these are disturbing...

I'm #5 on Yahoo! for "Egyptian Rat Screw".

...and #6 on Google for "rat screw".

I'm #3 on Google for "dali autumnal cannibalism".

I'm #34 on Yahoo! for "dungeon women".

I'm #7 on Yahoo! for "convention freaks".

I'm #10 on Yahoo! for "sling bikinis".

I'm #34 on Yahoo! for "NUDISM MISS".

Disturbing Search Requests

This article at the Village Voice points to a site called Disturbing Search Requests.

So I'm not the only one who gets people looking for Katie Couric Soles (though what's disturbing about this is the same search turns up someone with a Katie Couric obsession and a foot fetish) or Cthulu pictures (which helpfully makes me realize I've misspelled Cthulhu).

Buck Hill

I went skiing at Buck Hill last night with my co-worker F. (Digression. I decided to start using initials -- following West Coast Girl -- to represent recurring co-workers. F was represented in earlier entries as the vegetarian who ended up renting the Rover Seventy-Five in England.)

It's getting a bit warm for decent conditions to ski in Maryland in March, so using this trip to Minnesota for some late-season skiing seemed like a good idea. Buck Hill was maybe a 15 minute drive around for us, which also made things easier than making a 2-hour trip to go skiing back home. The facilities were definitely on a smaller scale -- you bought your lift ticket and paid for your rental in the ski shop. Unfortunately, there was no good place to change outside of the men's room -- meaning there was no good place to change.

F. had never really been skiing before, so the first thing we did was head over to the beginner hill. (If you look at the trail map, that's "New Beginner Area".) We used the rope tow -- a new experience for me -- to go partway up the hill so he could practice. He was about as awkward as I remember being my first time out, and he had a harder time standing up. After skiing down the NBA a few times, I left him to practice before his lesson and went to the "Gawn Double Chair".

Buck Hill is in the middle of the suburbs (apparently the suburbs grew up around it), which led to a few interesting things. For one, I could use my cell phone on the lifts -- which I did just for the dorky "guess where I'm calling from" thing. That was a little bit tricky, as the chair lifts didn't have restraining bars. But, I survived. Also, on my way up one time I heard sirens in the distance. When I got to the top, there was a trail of smoke blowing above the ski area, and I could see a house on fire. Too bad for the people involved, but it was otherwise kind of neat.

I then skiied down J.T.'s Half-Pipe (not sure if I was supposed to do that), Jabar, and Teacher's Pet. After getting practice there, and seeing that F was into his lesson, I decided it was time to hit the blue slopes. I headed to the Quad Chair, and rode to the top. This seemed to commit me, as the trail map they posted at the bottom seemed to imply that I couldn't get down via a green slope.

Unfortunately, once I had gotten to the top, there were no clear signs. The clearest sign was the one that said "Easiest Way Down", so I followed that rather than risking ending up on the black diamonds (although the starting gate they had on Milk Run tipped me off). This led me down Meadows, on the other side of the hill. That was slightly annoying, as the Miner Double Chair on that side of the mountain wasn't running. The next time down, I was sure to finish with sufficient momentum to carry me most of the way to the Quad Chair.

After a few runs down Meadows, I went back to check on F's lesson. He was really lucky -- he was the only one who had signed up for the lesson, so he got an individual lesson at the group lesson price. Speaking of prices, this place was pretty inexpensive. It was only $35 for a lift ticket and a rental, and my dinner (which I had about then) consisted of a brat, chips and a bottled water for $5. They were going down Teacher's Pet and the NBA, so I skiied in that area for a while. When they were done, I went over to see how F was doing. He was having a lot of fun, but was still a little intimidated by the chair lift and Teacher's Pet. So he said he'd ski in the NBA for a while. So I decided to head over to Pet's Peeve, a blue trail.

It didn't end up being that bad at all. I skiied across rather than down it, and never quite lost my balance. On the other hand, I now see why people complain about the 300' vertical drop at Buck Hill. On the greens, I didn't really mind, since that leads to slower skiing. Also, many of the greens I'm used to don't go to the top of the slope anyway. But going down Pet's Peeve was very, very quick. I decided to end on that note, and we went back to the hotel.

All in all, I enjoyed Buck Hill. It was slightly less "modern" than the Pennsylvania resorts I've been to, but not in any way I can really complain about. It wasn't crowded at all, and the slopes, while shorter, were pretty nice. The price was cheap, the people were stereotypially Midwestern friendly, and the price and location were right. The magazine First Tracks Online has an interesting article about Buck Hill.

Jensen's Supper Club

Greetings from Minnesota. I had (thankfully) an uneventful trip. A highlight was getting to use my Avis Preferred membership. No going through the rental counter; just walked out to the parking garage, saw my name on an electronic bulletin board, went to the space number indicated, and drove to the exit where I showed ID to the guard. I was on my way.

I checked into my usual hotel, relaxed for a little bit and headed out to dinner. Our "team dinner" was at Jensen's Supper Club. The last time I went there, I came away disappointed. Maybe my expectations were too high; maybe I just shouldn't have ordered the fish. This time, my expectations were pretty low, and I ordered the prime rib. (The fish was the "house speciality", but the prime rib is the "house favorite" -- or was it the other way around?) It was very enjoyable, and dessert was Booker's Bourbon. I've started ordering small batch bourbon as dessert; it's been fairly enjoyable. So far I've had Knob Creek, Sam Houston and now Booker's. I'm not sure which is my favorite -- they've all been fairly good.

Anyway, this morning, I wasn't overly thrilled with my decision last night to have the bourbon, but I've recovered fine while sitting through the morning meetings.

See Jon Ski

I've posted pictures from ski trips past here.

Time Shock

Well, I tried to wander around before the lectures yesterday, but the falling snow put the kibosh on that idea. If I'm similarly stymied this morning, at least I have the bus tour this afternoon.

I did wander out later during the morning coffee break -- partially to look around and partially to get away from all the smoke. The smoke in my room has lessened somewhat, which means that much of it was probably due to the previous inhabitant. But the section of the hotel with the conference contains a lot of people, and thus a lot of smokers. It always shocks me to see someone lighting up at a random place indoors. I want to say, "Hey you can't do that," but of course they can; it's only my American sensibility (and that's even a sensibility limited to parts of the country).

Speaking of the part of the hotel with the conference, an adjacent room featured a metal detector and a bunch of cops hanging around outside. The next time I walked past it, I put my glasses on and saw a sign with the Korean flag, another flag and the words "Welcome Reception." Then it was off to the Flags of the World web site to identify the other flag as the Mongolian flag. I did a news search, and sure enough, President Bagabandi of Mongolia was due to visit Cheju. Cool.

Last Friday, George warned me about the effect of the time difference. He said he had stayed up on the entire flight to Kuala Lumpur last year, and then he had gone to sleep right afer arriving -- the standard suggestion for dealing with jetlag. He said everything was fine until about 8 PM the next day, when he was overcome with sleep, only to wake right up at all hours of the night.

I, by contrast, napped some on the flight over. But I sayed up most of Korean "Monday" and went to bed around 10 PM. I woke up at about 6:30 and felt pretty good. I went down and had an overpriced breakfast at the "Cozy Cafe", checked my e-mail and went to the morning talks. I was feeling pretty good; maybe I was better able to handle this time difference than George. Wrong. After lunch, I was dead. During an endless series of 25 minute talks, my modus operandi was: listen to the first 5 minutes of the talk, decide the speaker didn't have anything interesting to say that couldn't be gleaned from the proceedings, nap for 20 minutes, wake up, clap, repeat. I went to my room and took a nap before the reception, wandered around there for a while, checked my e-mail (yeah, I'm obsessive) and went back to sleep.

I did, however, beat George in the sleeping through the night department. There are some areas you just shouldn't try to compete with me -- probable primality testing and sleeping are the two that come to mind. I made it through the next day (Wednesday) pretty well, though I decided to get to bed by about 9...for some reason sleeping 9-6, which corresponds to sleeping 7 AM to 4 PM Eastern Time, seemed like a good compromise. Well, at least it gets me up and using the computers before everyone else.

Smells Like Greensboro

I'm trying not to be jaded. Really. I recognize how lucky I amm to be able to jet around the world. In the past twelve months, I've been to Belgium, England, California (3 times), Minnesota (twice), Arizona (twice), Michigan (twice) and Illinois. But here I am in Korea and the biggest culture shock I'm having is from how much everyone smokes. My hotel room reeks just as much as ones I've had in Greensboro, North Carolina and in Winnipeg.

Landing in Seoul went smoothly. Immigration and customs, I'm sure, will be more of a hassle in the US on the way back. I looked around for a while and found the shuttle bus to the domestic terminal. It's funny how my experience traveling was more important than the language/culture barrier when figuring out where to go.

Everything went so smoothly, in fact, that I managed to get on an earlier flight to Cheju. For whatever reason, I was in economy class on this leg. No matter; it was only an hour to Cheju, an island off the southern coast of Korea. Once there, I pretty easily found the No. 600 bus to Chungun, the resort area where my hotel is located. Looking out the window, I could see the streets of Cheju City...lots of neon, Korean characters everywhere, but other than that not clearly so much different than English cities. After a bumpy hour crossing the island, I arrived at the Cheju Shilla hotel.

It had taken me until I got to Korea to find my hotel in my guidebook, so I had had some trepidation about the quality. I needn't have worried. When I finally did find it, it was labeled "super-deluxe". Pictures of world leaders who stayed here -- Clinton, Gorbachev (in his pre-Pizza Hut, Soviet leader days) -- adorned the walls. Actually, you could say that it was more of a culture shock staying in a fancy-schmancy hotel than the fact I was in Korea.

After checking into my room, I headed for a conference tutorial session that was already in progress (it hadn't been on the initial program, so I hadn't planned to arrive in time for it). After a few minutes on braid groups, I was feeling pretty groggy, as well as concerned that my house might be in ashes half a world away. So I ducked out and headed for the hotel's Internet center. The price was 5000 won for 30 minutes of service. That seemed like a fair price to check on the continued existence of my home, but there didn't seem to be anyone to pay. Oh, well, an ever fairer price! The alarm appeared to be eminently false, so I dashed off a few quick, "look, I'm in Korea" e-mails and headed off to bed.

It's somewhat easy to forget where I am when I'm in the hotel, especially during the talks. Fortunately, one look out the window reminds me. To the north is the snow-capped peak of an extinct volcano. To the south is the sea with a fleet of what appear to be fishing boats anchored just off shore. I'm up pretty early -- it's already Wednesday here -- and the sun is about to rise, so I'm going to try to get in a couple of hours of wandering around by the beach before the first talk.

Classes of Service

Because of the length of the flight to Korea, my employer sprung for a business class ticket for me. This expenditure seemed fairly extravagant.

This judgement did not pervent me from resolving to enjoy the hell out of the experience. With almost 48 hours in transit and less than 90 on the ground in Cheju (yeah, I'm a nut), flying was going to be a significant portion of this trip.

Perhaps due to the lack of business class on the Dulles to San Francisco leg, I ended up in first class. Woo hoo. Of course, I had gotten about 3 hours of sleep the night before, so I was not awake to enjoy most of the flight. Still, I slept in a really comfy chair instead of the cramped chair I would otherwise be subject to. And the meal service was comparable to being in a restaurant instead of...I don't know; the guest of a bad cook who doesn't like you. As I was warned by a colleage who has more experience with United, they offered teh meal service in order of number of frequent flier miles, which meant when they got to me, I was pretty hungry, and they were out of the fruit.

I arrived in San Francisco and hustled to Gate 102 for my flight to Seoul. I turned on my cell phone only to receive a message from the alarm company saying that a fire alarm had gone off at my house. Oh, crap. I called them back, and all they could tell me was that they had called the fire department and hadn't heard back. Nice. I asked them to check into things and call me back. I made a few frantic calls to get someone out to the house to look into things. ADT then called back to let me know that the fire department hadn't seen any signs of a fire, and had thus not broken into the house. I felt a little better, but ultimately I had to get on the plane without knowing the fate of my worldly goods.

The San Francisco to Seoul segment had me in business class. I'm not quite sure if international business class is inferior to domestic first class. The flight attendants may be a tad less obsequious. The chair, on the other hand, is quite amazing. (Go ahead, click on that link to see it.) It comes with 7 pages of instructions. The most notable feature is the leg rest, which comes out of the chair in La-Z-Boy-like fashion. There's also an individual video screen, which I had permanently tuned to the map channel. As I was writing a draft of this entry, we crossed the International Date Line and entered Russian airspace. (Is this such a great idea?)

I was somewhat bothered to be in the front row -- it's the dreaded lack of a seat in front of you for storage purposes -- until I discovered the seat next to me was empty. Wow. A place to pile all my junk!

So after a bit of napping, I resolved to stay wawake and try to adjust myself to Korean time. Let's see, if it's 10:45 AM there, that means it's...8:45 PM yesterday back home. Weird.

Computations on Catalan's Conjecture

I'm giving a talk next month at the AMS 2001 Spring Southeastern Section Meeting. It's now posted on the schedule. If you click through and can read PDF files, you can see the abstract. Note that the bound should be 3x10⁸.

San Diego

Hi. I'm just back from San Diego, where Blogger didn't work, so I'm bringing this to you all at once.

When I got into my hotel room (after hitting Rubio's at the airport to supplement the barely digestible airplane food), the thermostat was set at 50^o. You might think they were trying to conserve energy by having the heat set that low when nobody was in the room. But, no...the air conditioning was set that low. It was freezing! (Though try as it might, the air conditioner only managed to get things down to around 55^o.) No wonder they're having power problems.


On Monday night, we went to a Moroccan restaurant. I've been to restaurants corresponding to many countries, but never Morocco. We sat in low chairs along a low table. Before the first course, they brought out a cistern and poured water over our hands to clean them. This was necessary since the first few courses involved neither utensils nor individual portions (OK, they served the soup in individual bowls.) The "salad" consisted of baba ganoush and other such things that we scooped up between bread and thumb. Then we had the appetizer, which was a chicken-filled pastry (sprinkled with powdered sugar!), a main course of lamb and chicken, followed by a dessert of baklava and some mint tea. As a colleague remarked, it was more interesting as theater than food.


Tuesday night, we went out for Japanese food. I had the mixed sushi. The wasabe helped clear my sinuses, and I somehow accidentally ordered sake. I don't think I've had sake before; it wasn't bad. And though I'm no sushi expert, I enjoyed it.

Wednesday morning, I agreed to meet someone to go inline skating. We selected a must-skate location and followed the directions to Mission Bay. When we got there, the wind was blowing the sand across the parking lot, and it was tempting to turn back. We decided to press on, but my skating partner had forgotten the key to his skate bag. Well, I had the good feeling of wanting to skate without the exertion of having done so. The next morning when we met to skate, there was ice on the car, and that was enough to make me throw in the towel. What happened to sunny Southern California?

The flight back was fairly annoying. It was delayed out of San Diego because of "weather" in Chicago. Apparently, rain is quite a problem for them. Sigh. They couldn't tell me exactly when we would leave, and they couldn't tell me whether I'd be able to make my connection in Chicago. When I got to Chicago, it was half-an-hour after my connection was supposed to leave. "Fortunately" my second flight was delayed by two hours, which stretched to 3 hours, and I finally got to BWI at 3 in the morning. Sigh. Hopefully Sunday's flight to Korea will go better...

Ski x3

OK, I've really caught the skiing bug now. With two weeks of travels coming up, I wasn't going to be able to hit the slopes again any time soon. So I took Friday off work and headed to Ski Roundtop. There were a number of good things about this trip -- we almost had the slopes to ourselves, there was a variety of beginner slopes and...well, those were the two main things. On the down side, the reason that we had the slopes to ourselves was because the conditions were so bad...

Yes, I've advanced as a skiier to the point where I get to start complaining about the conditions. Slush during the day, which turned to ice after the sun went down. I felt like I wasn't getting any better as a skiier, but if I looked at it, my technique was getting better -- I just wasn't able to control myself as well on the ice.

One of the more amusing moments during the day was when my skiing companion and I got to the bottom of the lift and started talking. She completely forgot where we were and was quite startled when the chair came along a few seconds later! As someone who is easily distracted myself, I can't poke too much fun. But a little.

I also wasn't too thrilled with the layout of Roundtop. We had to do a lot of trudging around at the bottom of the slopes to get to where we needed to be. There was no ski check (that I saw). And the instruction was OK, but not so hot. I think I'd rate the 3 locations I've been to as Liberty, then Whitetail, then Roundtop. Don't get me wrong -- I'd go back to any of them again. But I don't think I'd take vacation time to do so again unless the conditions were better. And now I can cope with not skiing for the next couple of weeks. Back to San Diego!

Skiing, again

I had a theory. Since the Super Bowl would be on the following Sunday, not many people would be on the slopes. We could go skiing during the day, and I could tape the game. Avoiding any contamination, I would head home and watch the game on tape.

How did the theory work out? Pretty well, I think. I'm not really clear on how crowded ski resorts generally are, but Ski Liberty didn't seem too bad. Especially by the evening, when even the guys whose job it was to make sure people took turns getting in line had slipped away. But that was OK, since the line was short enough that there weren't enough people to have to take turns.

I started out the day by taking my second lesson. I was in level 2, which was for those of us who were "not very confident turning". Since level 1 was for first-time skiiers, I figured I had to be set for level 2. So we took the lift to the top of the mountain, where the instructors had us demonstrate our turning to separate us by ability level. Hello! I thought we had already established that we weren't good at turning. But I established it some more, so I ended up in the worst 3 instead of the better 6.

Which was fine. 'Cause I got more individual instruction. Oh, yeah, and I really was worse than most of the people. I realized that my previous lesson had taught how to turn but not when, why or how much to turn. And then the 3 people in the class could all ride up on the same quad lift chair with our instructor and chat. Oh, yeah, and then the other 2 in the class weren't as good as me, so I felt good by comparison.

But I learned how to turn enough that my instructor pronounced me ready for a level 3 lesson next time. So it was time to head for Sneaky Pete (here's a guide to the trails.) After a few runs down that, the hardest part was getting off the lift, and it was on to Dipsy Doodle.

I don't know about you, but I don't think a trail called Dipsy Doodle should have a 90^o turn on the steepest part of the trail. I basically stumbled down that, but it was cool doing one run from the top of the mountain. I'd like another lesson under my belt before trying that part again, though. But at the bottom, and on another Sneaky Pete run, I was just flying down the mountain, zipping around. It was a heck of a lot of fun. The "First Class Area" bunny slopes were pretty darn easy by that point, but it was fun to go back and do them without having to slow down as much as I did at the beginning of the day.

Oh, and the Super Bowl? I'm glad I was able to fast forward through all the parts between plays. I hid my eyes from the TV playing at the resort, and was surprised by the outcome...well, as surprised as everyone who had seen the Ravens dominate the whole thing.