Category: travel

It’s hot in the office today, which isn’t helping the fact that I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. I took a nap yesterday when Max did, and it messed up my schedule. I tried to go to bed @ 10, and just couldn’t do it. So, I went downstairs and watched Junkyard Wars until 1. What fun…

You’d think I’d be totally re-energized coming back to work after my uber-weekend. I’m not. I’m tired, and feeling stuck in a rut. I thought things would change, and maybe they are. They’re just not moving fast enough for me.

Yup, impatient me…

And on a completely unrelated note – avoid A.I. like the plague.

We made it home!! Logan airport was closed for three hours last night because of lightning. That meant we got to sit in the terminal for four hours until our little jet could leave. That also meant that I got home at about 11, and by the time I told stories and drank lots of water, it was 12:30 before I got to sleep. Needless to say, I’m a little sleepy.

BUT, it was ALL worth it. I had a great time, and I know my sister did. What a great trip… More details when I get the pictures.

It’s early, and we’re waiting to go get the kids’ pictures taken… So, here’s what happened yesterday:

1. Woke up at 6:45. Got everyone showered and dressed in time for us to be met by Eve (an ArsDigita founder) to pick us up in the van @ 8:30.
2. Went to MIT, which, once you get inside, looks a lot like the halls of the pentagon. It has old lumpy tile floors, high ceilings with exposed pipes and narrow hallways with cryptic numbering. It’s all very collegiate. We had bagels and muffins for breakfast, and then Philip showed up.
3. Philip started the “Why” seminar, which was very informative and fascinating and gave both Heather and I fantastic new ideas for sites and things.
4. Then, @ 11:30, CNN showed up to film the awards ceremony.
5. Oh yeah, the awards ceremony. The judges all decided that picking any one winner would be wrong since all the sites showed stengths in such divergent areas that picking any one site as “the site people should build” would be silly. So they split the prize money six ways and declared everyone winners, which they all are.
6. We ate lunch from the MIT student deli… yummy.
7. Back to the seminar where we learned cool geeky things that I won’t bore you with.
8. @ 5 after the seminar, Philip took us on a tour of the LCS (the Lab for Computer Science), which is the home to Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software movement, the W3C, where they come up with all the standards for web protocols, the AI Lab, where they’re trying to make human-like robots, and a cool lab where they’re making circuits out of e.coli bacteria.
9. We then went to dinner @ Legal Seafood (Philip’s favorite restaurant) where we met the guy who wrote the Apache web server (won’t mean much to you guys, but to us geeks, he’s a big star), and the Microsoft liason for research at MIT (a really nice guy, even if he does work for Bill G.). He told lots of funny stories about Microsoft and their quirky ways. I then trumped him with the AOL circus.
10. Now, we’re home… And I’m tired. I didn’t think it would be this exhausting, but they’re keeping us REALLY busy. We’re always going somewhere, being taught something, or shown something cool.
    This whole experience makes me miss school a little. I like this environment, and I think Heather does too. Everyone we’ve met, legend or not, has been very nice, open and willing to share with us what they’re working on, and answer our questions. I think my favorite person so far has been Kyle’s dad, who’s a genius and works at the Lincoln Lab, where they developed the inertial guidance system. He’s been around, taking the tours with us, and telling us how things work @ MIT, in Cambridge, and telling very interesting stories. He’s been great, and just a great old gentleman.
11. I can’t tell you how amazing this trip is. Meeting Philip Greenspun, who I’ve admired from afar for years, and is probably the biggest reason I learned Tcl and AOLserver (so I didn’t sound stupid on the phone). He’s not the mean guy I remember him as. He’s kind, funny, and brilliant. He genuinely cares about these 6 kids that won the Prize. He keeps in touch with the past winners, two of which (one winner, one finalist) are both coming to MIT to work with him.

Good morning from lovely Cambridge! We’re waiting for the van to come get us and I decided to let y’all in on a little secret. Ok, I don’t know any secrets, but I really like it here. Everyone’s been really nice, hospitible and wow, dang smart. The people from ArsDigita have been swell. It’s great to see geeks who obviously have lives and interests outside of the internet and all are warm, complex and interesting people. I get so bored sometimes always talking about the internet, and it’s nice to see that I’m not alone. I do feel a little stupid, but not so much that I’m not participating. Also, the other finalists for the prize are very cool kids. I hope they take from this weekend some important lessons. I think they will. They all seem bright and a little nervous, but they’re fun to be around.

Today is the big day… Heather will find out if she’s won. We’ll also get to go to Philip’s “Why” seminar, which should be a lot of fun. I’ll take copious notes and hopefully share something tonight or in the morning. Tomorrow is the big “How” seminar. I’ll post more later… toodles!

Here I am in Boston at the ArsDigita headquarters playing on a Sun Ray trying to rememeber all the urls in my bookmarks. The flight was fine. Boston has royally crappy traffic. I thought DC was bad, but getting out of the airport took FOREVER.

The finalists, Kyle (the ArsDigita babysitter lady), and I went to the Whitehead Lab, which is where they map the Human Genome. It was an eye-opening experience. Why, you may ask? Because I got to see geeks of a different color! I realized again that there are geeks all over, and we all wear the same clothes and are as passionate about what we do. It’s pretty cool to see that “geek” translates to other industries.

We’re waiting for the pizza… and I’m starving.

Heather‘s downstairs talking to CNN about the whole boycot thing, and well, that’s pretty freaking impressive.

Ok, off for now… Will post more when I have something to say.

So, I’m in Boston, but I’m on a Solaris machine and Blogger hates Unix and Netscape. So, this’ll have to get short because I hate losing posts. More news when I move to the Powerbook.

I’m leaving my wife… Oh, had you there for a sec, didn’t I? I’m going to Boston on Thursday with my sister, who’s going to win a biiii-iiiiig prize. And if she doesn’t, well, that’s ok. It’ll be my first trip by myself since I’ve been married, and well, I’m not sure how I feel about that. Right now, I feel fine. Right now, I feel great. Jen went to visit her parents with Max over Easter (was it last year), and I was fine. She was a semi-wreck, but for other reasons.

You’d think that I’ve been married long enough that this shouldn’t be a big deal. I hope it’s not. I hate big deals. I get enough big deals at work. I live for little deals. Taking out the trash, getting milk on the way home, deciding who to call for carryout. Those are my kinds of deals. Buying a house, conference calls with partners, money. Those are not my kinds of deals. I would like now to hand off all my big deals to other people to deal with, and I’ll just go to Boston.