October Brent and Scott Thread

[katyseagull]

Are all our Californians okay and accounted for? I've been hearing terrible reports coming out of San Diego and surrounding areas. Is Blarg in San Diego? Blarg, everything ok? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[Blarg]

I was living in Chula Vista, right near San Diego, for a few months earlier this year, job related. In Orange County now.

Woke up this morning and walked out the door to go to work, and the whole sky was blanketed with smoke. Looked at my car and it was covered with ash. Left the news on all day at work today to hear fire news, CNN. For the first time, I was worried. Left work at 6:30-ish, and the moon was literally red. Amazing, like something out of a corny werewolf movie or something.

I've been lucky so far. Everything home or business related has been safe, though there were some scares. Hope things are better tomorrow. Over a million people have been displaced. Where do you stick a million people, for extended periods of time? Hotels are letting people in for discounted rates. They will be full for a long time. But hotels, even discounted, are ridiculously expensive compared to rent or ownership. It will still be very hard on people no matter what businesses do. A million people is just too much. That kind of movement recalls things like the Sudan or Ethiopia, not an industrialized country.

On a political note, this will doubtlessly be a chance for politicians ro flop or shine, much like New Orleans. Though not as severe as what happened there, perhaps, California is vastly wealthier and has many more voters and much more representation in Congress. It's politically tricky waters for people now. If someone finds a way to exploit it unfairly, they could make a killing.

[Blarg]

Got out to the car this morning, more ashes. This time enough that when I opened the car door, a bunch got sucked into the car.

Supposedly it's going to get a lot cooler, which should help some with the fires. And certainly make it more pleasant. We sure could use some rain right now to soak some of the unburnt areas and make them less flammable.

[daveT]

The southeastern sky here in LA is red. It is very hot right now, even at night, when just one week ago it was down in the forties. I can imagine what San Diego is going through. Three years ago, the sun was blocked out when the LA mountains caught fire.

And this damn fly is going to killed if it doesn't stop bothering me.

[MrWookie]

Well, I made it back to Rochester safe and sound. All things considered, made out pretty well. I had a bed to sleep in each night I was there and a shower each morning -- the same one of each, too -- so I definitely count myself blessed. It was still an awfully unfortunate time to visit San Diego.

Katy, I'm not going to have a full trip report for you, and there won't be any pics of my meals. Not only would it be rather dull, but I'm certain my colleagues would think I'm a total weirdo if I snapped a picture of whatever generic meal I was eating. I might have considered it if I had anything fancy, but for the most part, everyone was eating cheaply. I'll share a little bit from the latter part of trip, though.

Tuesday morning everyone was breathing a little easier, for two reasons: one, the wind had shifted, so there wasn't as much smoke or ash in the air, and two, the wind hand shifted, so the fire had basically made no westward progress since Monday night. We were on the brink of being evacuated with the fire less than 5 miles from our hotel, but the wind shifted and slowed just in the nick of time. Tuesday's talks were pretty uneventful, but everyone was itching to go out, eat, drink, and be merry afterwards now that we weren't in danger. Unfortunately for us, most of the businesses in Del Mar hadn't reopened. About the only places that were open were a liquor store, where a couple profs bought a really nice bottle of tequila and a bottle of Knob Creek for later, and a bar. There were about 30 of us looking for a place to eat, and the bar had a booth for 6-8 and 4 seats at the bar for all of us. I took a seat at the bar with a couple profs and one of the few other grad students at this thing. Fortunately for me, all three of these people are cool guys to hang out with, we all had overlapping scientific interests, and we all had great taste in beer. I was into my first pint of Fat Tire when someone from the part of the group that didn't get seated said they'd found a nice hotel down the way that was also open that had $30 entrees. The four of us decided that we'd rather have a $10 entree at the bar and spend the other $20 on beer. As it turns out, I ended up spending $0 on my generic but solid cheeseburger and my alternating pints of Fat Tire and Stone IPA; the profs treated us grad students. I knew I'd get reimbursed for the meal, but maybe not all the beer, so I was quite thankful. I don't think I'd had the Stone IPA before, actually, and it was excellent. The hops were very flavorful without being too bitter. I don't buy too many standard IPAs -- I generally either treat myself with an imperial IPA or I stick to something maltier for standard drinking -- but this is one I'd be tempted to pick up again. I'd give it an unofficial [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img][img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img][img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] and a half [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] rating.

I'm not exactly sure how many beers we had at the bar, maybe 6 +/- 2. Still, that clearly wasn't enough. We walked back to the hotel and broke out the liquor purchased earlier. We had hoped to soak our feet in the hot tub while continuing to get sloshed, but even though the pool had been cleaned, the hot tub was still sooty and it's pH was probably in the 8-9 range, which is getting to the point where it'll start to eat the hair off your feet and perhaps start onto dissolving your skin. Oh well. We still wanted to sit outside and enjoy the low-smoke night air, so we just took over the patio. The only mixer to be had with our tequila and bourbon was ice, and even that was too much for these imo. I already [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] KC, and the tequila was pretty awesome, even though I'm not as much of a tequila guy. We hung out for another couple hours chatting and gossiping and talking down about one prof who'd given a pretty shoddy talk earlier that day (and had been doing some pretty shoddy work leading up to it, and not nearly enough of said work, allegedly). I retreated shortly before the difficulty of making it back to my room would be too high and passed out hard.

I'd hoped to sleep in a little later on Wednesday, but my prof, who'd not been out partying with us, gave me a call at 8 am wondering where I was. [censored]. Time to chug some water, jump in the shower, and get downstairs by 8:30. My liver's in tip top shape, so I didn't have a hangover other just needing a little water. We headed over to the conference center only to discover that there was hardly anyone there yet, and no one had started working. Gee, sure glad we rushed. Oh well. Oddly, the two bottles of tequila and bourbon found their way onto the conference table, each about 1/4 full. For the most part, they were just a conversation piece, but even more strangely, the prof who'd been talked down about came in in the morning, grabbed a glass, poured himself some bourbon, and went about his business like it was the most natural thing in the world. Even the degen alkies from the night before weren't honestly thinking about actually partaking again. Weird. Anyway, Wednesday was for actually writing code, implementing some of the fixes and suggestions that came up during the talks. I had maybe 10 lines of some useful but non-critical safety checks and warning message stuff to add, but other than that, I didn't have too much to do. Or at least I thought I didn't. At the end of the day, I got roped into doing even more fortran coding at the prodding of one prof who I was out drinking with me and my prof agreeing to it. Basically, I'm going to be further simplifying the input I'd already simplified, reworking some of the infrastructure to speed it up, and adding yet another new restraint type. This needs to be done by Thanksgiving. Crap. On top of this, I'll be collaborating with this same guy, looking at some of the biological aspects and implications of some of the work he's done, since he's not as much of an expert on the biology of the system he's simulating. Oh, and then I need to get back to making some progress on the project I'd been working on before I got buried in Fortran. I'd been hoping to return to a more normal, relaxed schedule now that the coding was done, but it looks like there'll be no rest for the Wookie. Expect more late night rants in here over the next few weeks.

[tuq]

I hate typing long posts on a laptop and am not going to be back in the office for a bit so will be judging the hot chick thread later. Here is a pic of the intersection in Downtown Phoenix where I am sitting. I've been here at a Starbuck's for 1/2 hour waiting for a guy who will be along in a bit. According to ForecastFox it's currently 90 degrees, but it feels fine in the shade. Over/under on panhandlers was four, but so far I've been left alone. I probably smell worse than they do, which is a useful deterrent...

[Blarg]

Looks like The Governator is being lauded for his political prowess regarding the fire. This one was his to either win or lose big, and he seems to have made a good show of it.

[daveT]

re: "hottest female character"

It is the only time that I have had two tabs open with one dedicated to a thread that I press refresh to see what happens next.

[Blarg]

Noob. I often have over a dozen open, maybe even usually. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[katyseagull]

Great trip report MrWookie. Thanks! Would have liked some pictures though. The trick is that you have to ignore what your colleagues think and whip out that camera of yours and start snapping. Anyway, sounds like you had a very interesting time and you guys thoroughly soaked your livers.

But I'm confused. Did you have to give a presentation in front of a huge group of people?


[ QUOTE ]
W Basically, I'm going to be further simplifying the input I'd already simplified, reworking some of the infrastructure to speed it up, and adding yet another new restraint type. This needs to be done by Thanksgiving. Crap. On top of this, I'll be collaborating with this same guy, looking at some of the biological aspects and implications of some of the work he's done, since he's not as much of an expert on the biology of the system he's simulating. Oh, and then I need to get back to making some progress on the project I'd been working on before I got buried in Fortran. I'd been hoping to return to a more normal, relaxed schedule now that the coding was done, but it looks like there'll be no rest for the Wookie. Expect more late night rants in here over the next few weeks.

[/ QUOTE ]


This sounds exhausting. I sure hope you enjoy what you do. What is the project that you were working on before you got buried in the Fortran?