My sisters told me to post about this so I will. Yesterday I was flying back from visiting my family for Passover. I checked in to my flight online from my laptop, but since I couldn't connect to the printer at my aunt's house, I "printed" my boarding pass to a PDF on my flash drive and then printed it off of their computer. I don't know how, but somehow I managed to accidentally print another copy of my outbound boarding pass from Wednesday instead of the return boarding pass for yesterday. I didn't even notice this until I was waiting in line to board the plane. Yep, the lady who checked my boarding pass when I checked my bag and the one who checked it at the security checkpoint both failed to notice that it was for the wrong day and airport. At that point I decided to pretend I hadn't noticed either. The gate agent also failed to notice that the boarding pass was for the wrong flight even though she tried to scan it (unsuccessfully?) before letting me on the plane. On the plane they called my name and asked my to press my call button, but once I did, they didn't even come talk to me. Presumably they were just checking that I was on the plane (since I had checked in, but not been correctly scanned at the gate), but it could have been anyone that pressed that call button. I guess now I almost understand how those people who were supposed to be going to Miami got on our flight bound for London a few years ago (luckily we told them before the plane left the gate).

I'm back in Denver again, and after the travel disaster I had last week, I have to rave about the experience I had tonight. I'd always heard very good things about jetBlue, but I never had a chance to fly them until recently. My first jetBlue experience was back in April. It was as good as expected. Having DirectTV is really nice. On the way back, we were a little late and they couldn't get the TVs to work so they mailed everyone a $20 voucher for the inconvenience. (a make-good from an airline without me having to do anything for a problem with a service most airlines don't even have? amazing) Well tonight absolutely put me over the moon.

I have a lot of people counting on me for some work tomorrow morning at 7am. I booked a very late direct flight, 9:35pm to 11:54pm. I was very worried when at 9:05, when we should have been boarding, they announced that all westbound flights from Boston had been temporarily grounded due to weather over the midwest and they wouldn't even get another update for at least a half hour. So what does jetBlue do? Immediate change the flight plan to have us fly south (around the weather) and have us boarding less than 10 minutes late. The new route would have taken quite a bit longer by taking us well out of the way, but just like they planned, when the hold was released at 11pm we were able to turn sooner and not go as far south, while any other airline would still be sitting on the ground in Boston. We arrived only 25 minutes late. This is the most amazing above and beyond effort to get me to my destination I've ever seen from an airline. Wow.

P.S. Third cab I've taken in the last week and all of them have had their check engine light on, what gives?

My least on my apartment in Atlanta was up, and that was not somewhere I wanted to sign another one so I had to move out. Since I'm still figuring out what I'm going to do next, I'm not sure where I'm going to end up living. In the meantime, most of my stuff got put in storage and I'm heading home to Boston for a little while. Although the drive can be done in 2 days, I'm taking a week and making some stops.

Tuesday I packed up my car and left Atlanta. Well, first it didn't fit and I had to unpack the car, repack boxes, drive more stuff to storage, and then repack the car. But then, only 4 hours later than I wanted, I was on my way... until I ran out of gas. But then 1 hour later I was at it again. I spent the night with an Aunt and Uncle in Norfolk, VA.

Wednesday I drove to DC. There I saw Operation Spy at the Spy Museum. It's basically this interactive experience where you take on the role of a CIA agent in a foreign country trying to recover a stolen nuclear device. You control surveillance cameras, unscramble phone calls, sneak into a secure facility by disabling cameras and locks, search an office, crack a safe, and interrogate a suspect. It was awesome. I highly recommend it if you're in the area, but it is better if you go with a group of people you know (about 4). I saw my cousin Rachel and then had dinner with queiss, bluekirby, and kizzatz.

Thursday I drove to Philly where I had an interview. Then I went to Atlantic City to see how the fountain was doing. Now I'm in New York for the weekend.

I've procrastinated writing this for a week but I guess that is long enough. For anyone who doesn't know, I spent most of last month in London. I would have written more from there but I had webserver issuez (which should be fixed for good now), so let me summarize the trip. I was there to work on a project, it was pretty crazy, I saw a lot of London, the tube is cool, made friend with and hung out with some locals, went on a crazy road trip to Scotland and all over England, my bag got lost... Ok, maybe a little more detail than that.

( too much detail for the front page )

All of my pictures

Several times I have talked about how I enjoy meeting people in airports and on planes. I even talked my idea for a special airline class that would cater to people like me. I've been using a service that does this, but it doesn't work very well and so far has not found anyone else using the system on any of my flights. However, on my way back to Atlanta from Boston last thursday, I had the best "single serving friend" encounter to date.

I was flying from Boston to Atlanta via Philadelphia on USAir. I met Marie on the jetway waiting to get on the plane. I'd seen her sleeping under her hat in the gate area and decided to strike up a conversation by asking her where she was going. It turned out she was also going to Atlanta (where she was meeting up with a friend and driving to Savannah). When we found our rows, she was the window seat right behind mine, the two aisles already filled. I turned around and we discovered on the next flight we were in the same row, but opposite windows. Talk about coincidence. When the middle seat people arrived, they were together and since Marie and I were talking they asked if she could move up with me so they could be together. Fine with me. We talked most of that flight. We traversed the Philadelphia airport together, stopping to get "lunch", and taking the bus to the other terminal. The second plane was small, 2 and 2, and the guy on her side asked if she minded sitting on the aisle. I thought, "what the hell", and asked the guy on my side if he'd mind the window. Although traffic to the bathroom posed some interference, we completed two crosswords together across the aisle. In Atlanta we were together all the way to baggage and parted ways after our bags arrived. It was the most interesting air travel experience I think I've had, and perhaps someone I will stay in touch with.

This post is a little late but better late than never! If you are a regular reader of this space you might remember my post about NextFest last year. Well this year the event was held in New York City September 28-October 1. I went back with PlayMotion again.

It was a trying setup but a personal victory. The week before I had to manage the packing of the equipment since our main hardware and installation guy was already travelling for 5 other installations. Three others set out on Monday morning in a van with the equipment. On Monday Jeremy and I had to get the software ready. The addition of a last minute feature to allow us to run all of our stuff twice as wide (different aspect ratio) that we normally do made the task difficult and I didn't get home until about midnight and still had to do laundry and pack.

When I arrived after only one hour of sleep and met the van, our space was not nearly what we had expected or what we needed. Since there was no one there who was responsable for our previous dealings with NextFest I took charge and began sorting out the mess. It was an incredibly long day. Despite the number of requests I had, all of the show production, event center, and union staff were very helpful. I was extremely pleased that my way of dealing with them, sympathazing and thanking them profusely, worked out quite well. After two days of setup we had all the equipment working.

Quasi the robot, who I worked with a lot at the ETC, was originally invited to apply to exhibit at NextFest but was not accepted.

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Sunday (yesterday) morning Lenny and I set out on our 20 hour, 2 day adventure to drive the loaded down Enterprise rent-a-truck to the Florida State Fair in Tampa. We had no idea what adventure was in store for us with this truck.

( Incredibly long and hilarious account of the travesty that was today's travels )

So now we're here at the fair. I showered only smell slightly like diesel. We have to get up at 7 to handle things with Enterprise and set up our stuff. I'm pretty worried since we saw that the space we're supposed to be in is basically just a horse corral with very muddy ground. They are going to lay event floor but I don't know if that will be enough to keep Quasi and the Jam-o-Drums from getting muddy or dusty or ruined. I don't know that we should really be here wasting our time and ruining our equipment, but we don't have much of a choice. Hopefully things will get better in the morning.

Yeah, I know it's been a week, but I've been busy. After a fairly relaxed xmas/hannukah/break with the family, I drove down to NY. Thursday through Sunday I spent in the city, in Times Square.

PlayMotion was doing two interactive ads for AT&T on the Reuters sign there. One involved showing a camera on the sign and letting people call in and control it and take pictures, which could be retreived at a URL text messaged to your phone. The other was a magic 8ball type application where you'd call in and leave a New Years resolution, and it would appear on the sign and the "Orb of Destiny" would come back with a witty response. Coming in, we thought we were pretty much done, but as it turned out, there were a lot of little things (and a couple unexpected big ones) that still needed to be done. All day Thursday and all that night Matt and I worked, and Friday too.

( Useless details )

Saturday day, of course, was New Years eve. Jeremy, Matt, and I were locked in the Reuters control room from 2pm to 2am, alternately running our two apps for the last 10 minutes of every hour. I thought it was going to be hard to stay entertained for the other 50 mins out of every hour, but although the programs were ready to run, we had a lot of little details we wanted to improve so for a while we were running new stuff every hour which made things interesting. It was a lot of fun and we had a really great view of all the people in Time Square. Check out my pictures.

We'll be running our apps all though January as well, so if you're near Time Square, check them out.

This winter break I'll be logging lots of miles on my car. Rather than fly home, I decided to drive, for the utmost in flexibility. Good thing too. I was going to leave yesterday, but then I got a call Monday night from some folks at PlayMotion who needed help on an upcoming project, so I stayed an extra day to work on that. Now I'm posting this from my car the parking lot of the place I stopped for lunch on stollen wireless. My mom had to go to Philly for the day, so I altered my route to stop here and pick her up and do the rest of the drive together.

Next week, I'm going down to NYC for New Years Eve. PlayMotion is doing 2 different applications on the Reuters sign in Times Square (the project I was helping out with). In addition to New Years eve, they will be running parts of the day, one for the first two weeks of January, and the othe for the second two weeks. I'll be in NY from the 29th to the 2nd. If anyone is going to be around and wants to do anything, let me know. Also if you have any idea where I should park while I'm down there. I've never done Times Square for NYE before, and although it is not something I would normally want to do (contending with crowds and all), having a good reason like my job, it will be a fun adventure. If you're there and you see people using their cell phones to control a webcam displayed on the sign and take pictures, that's my code controlling the camera.

I thought this a good time to talk about some of my more peculiar ideas. One great thing about Thanksgiving flights is that I can almost always count on some other college students to chat with. And chatting brought up some interesting subjects I wanted to mention. I have been telling many people lately about my restaurant ideas. I really just wanted to include that link again. I really do think at least 1 of those is a good idea and would love to see someone do it. I like having neat little quirky ideas like that.

But the real idea I wanted to metion that this flight started making me think would really be great is a "matching class" on airplanes. I mentioned it before but I've been thinking about it more. I like chatting people people on planes. I don't know why, but while traveling is my favorite time to meet new people. I often see people in the waiting area that I'd hope would be seated next to me to talk to, but usually I just get some old lady and so I read a book. What if there were a service for people like me that put all the talkers in a section of the plane for those looking to meet others and then did seating assignments based on mutual interest like most dating and other personality matching services. They're always offering upgrades to first class and I don't really care, but I'd pay real money to sit in matching class...

...Especially if I could get matched with that cute girl on my flight who was staring at me. I saw her in the waiting area and said nothing.

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Home for Thanksgiving. This gives me a chance to write a bunch of journal posts I've been meaning to. Some of them are backdated so if you really care about me you'll need to look a little deeper than your friends page. A smaller crowd this time for dinner this time. I ran the Feaster Five again as usual. This time my Mom joined us which was fun. Although the snowing was a new twist. It was good to see Missy again. Was my mom's b-day too, and so I gave her Apples to Apples which we all played and Enjoyed. I won.

( Cheezy Sentimentality )

Got back from my second IAAPA expo. It's a big expo for the themed entertainment industry. Last year I went to the expo in Orlando with the ETC and we exhibited. This year a bunch of us went again, this time just to see what was around. PlayMotion! was exhibiting so I helped them out as well. It was in Atlanta this year, my summer home. It was kind of neat and weird to be back. I got to see my old friends, and be the one in my ETC group who knew what was going on. We talked to a lot of companies. Well, some of us did. Several of us were from the World's Fair for Kids project group, and since we were meeting with our clients while at the show, we had a production design document printed up. Besides showing it to our clients, it turned out to be a great way to start a conversation with companies and to get them to take us seriously. We talked to some big important people and did some great networking. The ETC is getting really respectable. I wish I could say I was part of all the networking. I had some issues, but I think I'll write about that seperately. While there we got to see the new GA Aquarium by talking to someone on the show floor and getting VIP passes to a special preview. It was really neat. I got lots of pictures. PlayMotion has a project in there that was good to see.

This weeking the entire Worlds Fair for Kids team had to go with Quasi to NY. The WFK had schedule for Quasi to be meeting guests and promoting the event this April in the NY Hall of Science in Queens. In addition they had scheduled for us to show Quasi on the local WB11 morning news on Friday and Fox & Friends, Fox's national morning show, on Saturday. Fox ended up cancelling however, due to hurricane Rita. It was an exciting trip, here are the highlights.

Thursday we drove down in a truck and suburban. When we got there a closed road and one way streets made it quite a puzzle to find a semi-legal way to get to our hotel (once we figured out where it was in the first place). We were staying right at 40th St and 5th Ave. After I solved that puzzle, it was 1:30am and we had to be at the news station at 4:45am so 2 hours later I was awake again.

In the morning we loaded Quasi off the truck and into the TV studio. As soon as we got in there they asked us if we could film a teaser in 5 minutes, so that was one rushed Quasi setup. Originally they had wanted to cancel when they found out that Quasi was an animatronic figure whose character is a robot and not an actual robot, but we convinced that that this was worthwhile as well, and if we show the pupeteer people wouldn't be misled. Andy taked about Quasi while Lenny operated him, and then they let the newsgirl try it out. They called us all on, but then they nevered showed up. I can't wait to see the footage. Supposedly they got a lot of calls about it.

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The summer is almost over. Where'd it all go? I didn't get as much done this summer as I had hoped. I had all these person projects I wanted to work on. My websites and self improvement stuff. I didn't run or work out. There's only 1 website project (on a list of dozens) that got done. I had all these school related projects I wanted to work on. BVW prep, panda stuff, Animateering and Dome improvements. None of it happened. I'll also miss it here. PlayMotion! has been so much fun. I'll miss working on this stuff. I'll miss being productive and busy without being as stressed and overloaded as I will be in the fall. I'll miss games night and the bonds I've made here.

Never-the-less, I'm excited to go back. I'm excited to be out of this mess and back into my house. I'm excited for ABTech, orientation, AEPi, rush, new ETC students, BVW, welding, Alex, and everything back in the burgh. I'm also really psyched for the trip that will get my back there. Just before I came down here, Carly and I had been talking and she said she wanted to come visit. She wants to see my house and my car. We planned it so that she'll fly down here. She can see PlayMotion! Then she'll keep me company as we do a road trip together back to Pittsburgh. Then she's going to hang out with me there for 2 days before flying home. I haven't seen her since the beginning of the summer because she's been on an internship in CA and I won't see here again until winter break because she's studying abroad in the Turks and Caicos.

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This weekend was one busy time. PlayMotion! was presenting our stuf at NextFest. NextFest is Wired magazine's trade show for upcoming technology. This year it was in Chicago so we packed up our office into a suburban and a u-haul trailor and drove up (well, I flew so I could stop in Boston for my Mom's retirement party). We were setup in this huge hall on Navy Pier.

Alongside us there were a bunch of other really neat technologies (and a few that seemed like they still had a ways to go). I got to see the Moller SkyCar, a flying car that I've been following the progress of since high school. There were a few other games like ours there, or ther artificial reality type games that were neat. Although they weren't supposed to be there, I saw LightSpace, the other company I almost worked for this summer. They were there with BodyMedia, a wearable bio-sensors company, because they wanted a fun system for people to play with as they demoed their sensors. The funny thing was I had been looking for some sensors to do exactly what they do and I had even thought abou them because I had a friend who had used some of their sensors before. He told me they didn't do what I wanted, but I guess that was just the ones he had, because at the show it was exactly what I wanted. GM had some hydrogen powered cars, including a Hummer. Patrick ask if it was a hydrogen guzzler, ha! So much I can't remember. I got a lot of great pictures though.

Then event went great for our company. We were always crowded.

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I'm writing this on May 21, but I've been in Atlanta for a week and a half by now. I only now have my website up again so this is my first chance to update my journal again. Since so much has happened, I'm going to break it up into several sections.

The Drive

It all started with the drive. In total it took about 12 hours. I wanted to get there at a reasonable time so that I could get set up, so I woke up early and left at 4:30am. I like driving at night when the roads are empty and you can just set the cruise control and go. But the short sleep and early start backfired. Doing the drive alone was tough and several times I felt like I would fall asleep. Other than that, the drive was good.

Housing

When I first got here I was a bit upset about my living situation. I had arranged to stay in the GA Tech AEPi house over the summer, because it would be cheap. When I moved in, I started to have second thoughts. I knew that fraternaties are messy, I lived in one for 3 years. I thought I'd be find with that but I found out that I'd gotten pretty used to not having to deal with it over the past 2 years. And someone else's mess is always more disturbing than your own.

I was going to stay here just until I found a new place which I began looking for right away. I actually had 2 options that I looked into. One option was a friend who graduated from the ETC's place. I would have had it all to myself and it was very nice, but it was expensive and not in a very nice neighborhood.

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This past week, Sunday through Tuesday, I went on a little vacation to Disney World. My Mom was going down for a business trip. Carly and Missy were going along too. They were there all week, but I just came down for the first part beause I was missing school. This was my 8th time there. It was fun to spend some time with family and enjoy the warm weather. Being with Missy meant that we did a lot of the kiddie rides, but I like those anyway.

Some highlights. On monday we were at the magic kingdom but after noon it got very crowded. Carly and I headed over to MGM to ride Aerosmith's Rockin' Rollercoaster, my favorite rollercoaster. We didn't have too long at the part but we were willing to wait in the hour and 40 min line. We were in line not two minutes when someone came up and gave up their fastpass, for right then! We were able to get in in no time and could do other things at that part. Later that night it was drawing Donalds and writing a song, When I Rule The World, with Carly at DisneyQuest.

On Tuesday, Turtle Talk with Crush was fun to do with Missy. When we went to leave at noon I throught to check the fastpass time for TestTrack since I knew we were coming back later. The time we got was 7:30-8:30, which fit in perfectly with our evening plans. My mom was hosting a function where she had arranged for us all to cut the line and ride Misssion:Space. Due to some trouble with watching Missy, I was actually able to ride it twice in a row without waiting. By the way, my mom rode on it and wanted me to mention that. Then we had dinner, Carly and I went over to TestTrack, and then headed over to MGM for Fantasmic, an excellent water,fireworks,video,live action show.

It was a good trip. It was fun being able to go around knowing all the little inside things I know know from my classes. In fact, in Entertainment Engineering, last Thursday, we had a guest speaker who was a ride and show engineer at Disney.

Any fan of The West Wing would be jealous of the day I had today. A few months ago, my mom went to a charity auction to benefit MS. One thing up for auction was a personal tour of The West Wing. Knowing what a big fan of the show I was, she bought it as a gift. This week she was going to be in LA anyway for a business conference so I flew up on Monday to join her.

First of all, the weather is beautiful. It more than makes up for the rainy conditions when I visited several weeks ago. I spent Tuesday walking on the beach and sitting by the pool. But that wasn't the exciting part of the trip.

Today we went to visit the set of The West Wing. It was Bradley Whitford that had put up the tour for auction so it was his assistant that arranged for us to come and show us around. At first we had some difficulty with the gate guards. We ended up circling around 3 times, before we were able to convice them that we actually belonged there.

It was exciting to meet several of the actors from the show. First we talked to NiCole Robinson who plays Margaret. Of course, we saw Bradley Whitford, we said hi to Allison Janney briefly, and we also were able to talk to Martin Sheen. We also saw Richard Shiff who wasn't acting but directing. Everyone was really nice. We actually got to hang out with Martin Sheen for a minute in his trailor, he signed some autographs, we took a picture with him, and then he invited us into the West Wing to watch a scene they were filming. It was quite surreal because of how similar people seemed to their characters.

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This past week I was with the ETC first year on the west coast. We visited LA and San Francisco to see some entertainment companies to learn a bit about what they do. The places I saw include Thinkwell Design, BRC, Walt Disney Imagineering R&D, IWerks, Rhythm and Hues, Pandemic Studios, Pixar, ILM, Electronic Arts, and Reactrix. A few places I didn't see include Rockstar Games, Naughty Dog, Disney VR Studio, and Jim Henson's Creature Shop.

Seeing these companies was a lot of fun. Some of them were really cool and we saw some neat stuff, most of which I'm not allowed to talk about. Seeing how cool places like Rhythm and Hues, Pixar, and ILM are makes me questions if I wouldn't want to do movies after all, like I believe I did when I was younger. On the other hand I don't think I'm well trained enough. Computer graphics hasn't exactly been my focus. I don't know DirectX really, I haven't written my own renderer, or anything. I've not graduated from baby game engines like Alice or Panda. I took Graphics I but I don't even remember that much. I like to say that I know enough to know what kind of questions they'd ask me in the interview and I know that I don't know the answers. The more I think about it, if I try to answer what my specialty is, I don't think I have one. What have I been doing for the past 4-5 year? And how am I ever going to get a job with such a mediocre skill set? So although the trip was fun, it does leave me a bit diappointed about my chances of getting a job at any top tier place in any business.

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This past week I went with 14 other people from the ETC to the IAAPA convention in Orlando. IAAPA is the international association for amusement parks and attractions. The show floor was absolutely enormous. They had everything from the tickets and tokens, prizes, arcade machines, roller coasters, 4D theaters, animatronics, consessions, and everything else you could imagine. One of the most interesting things we saw was a live lobster tank crane game. Another excellent idea was the ice-cream hotdog. Take a stick of ice-cream, wrap it in a shortcake bun, and top it with chocolate sauce or caramel and wipped cream. Yum. Also up there were the Mini Melts (a competitor of Dippin' Dots) with Pop Rocks in them.

The ETC was exibiting the Jam-O-Drum there. We had a small little booth where we showed people a little taste of what our program does. We were well received. The Jam-O-Drum was fairly unique among things there. People actually wanted to buy it and they were impressed that it was just one of the things done by the students in this program.

A big part of the show for me at least was going around trying to figure out where I'd like to work and get an internship. I didn't do all that well of being able to talk to the companies. Later in the week, I got better at it and had a few good conversations. I got some business cards that I have to follow up on.

While we were there we did more than just the show. We had dinner with several Disney Imagineers and ETC alumni. It was good talking to them even if I might not get to work there.

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This weekend the whole ETC went on a field trip. The main part of it was a "Cruise to Nowhere". It was a two day cruise with no stops, departing from and returning to Norfolk, VA. We also saw Gettysburgh, Noah at the Sight and Sound (religion) theater in Strasburg, PA, and Colonial Williamsburg.

At first I was a little upset about losing my weekend. As you can probably tell by my previous post, my first ETC all-nighter was this week. My weekends are my times to relax and catch up. It's what I look forward to that makes my weeks bearable.

The trip turned out to be a lot of fun though. The cruise was less boring that I thought it might be, and just hanging out with ETCer, chilling on the bus, and stuff was really fun. I got to play some shuffleboard. I played some blackjack and lost some money, I could have done without that.

A couple days ago I got back from a family vacation to Universal Studios, Orlando. We were there for six days, Mom, Pop, my 3 brothers, Missy, and me. We stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel, right on the Universal property. The advantage of that is that your room key allows you to cut all the lines in the 2 parks. It was really worth it. Without waiting in any lines, I can definately say there was no bad part of the trip.

Five points, refers to a little game my brothers and I had going. We'd give each other made up point any time one of us said or did something really stupid. We weren't really keeping track but quite a number of points were given out. Some of the more memorable awards were for artificial water, the distribution ride, January following September, and others.

Missy is just the cutest. She wasn't the best at all times, but she makes things fun. She really talks a lot now, and is almost a whole real person. We had a lot of fun, even jumping on the trampoline with her before we left. I'm sorry that I'm leaving and won't see her more often. I can't wait to see what she'll be like a year from now.

We spent most of our days on the trip either at one of the two Universal parks or at the pool. Most evening we were at the hotel or CityWalk. One night we went out to eat at a fondue restaurant, something I didn't think I'd like but I did (it wasn't even mostly about cheese). Another night we went to SkyVenture, the vertical wind tunnel, the sky-diving-like experience that I did with Desney and Jason last time I was in Orlando.

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