Ok, from the top:

Moving. Moving was insane-hell. I got up at about 6 am the day of the move to finish packing. It felt like I was done. I would discover later that I was not. Anyway, at 9 I called a cab so I could go pick up the U-Haul. Cab takes me there, ok, we pull up...and I notice that there are no trucks at the place. Not a good sign. I go in and discover that they have MOVED MY RESERVATION without CONTACTING ME! This is frustrating, but I figure, you know, something always goes wrong. This just gets it out of the way, right? The girl there was more annoyed than me, because apparently the head office had moved the reservation and assured her that I had been contacted. Of course, it was moved to a place in the southeast (I live in the northwest). So I have to take another much more expensive taxi across the city to get my U-Haul. Which is there. It's an automatic and the gear "meter" doesn't work, so I have to count gears to tell when it is in drive, but it runs.

So I get home, and discover that I've lost my cellphone. The phone with all my phone numbers programmed in. The phone that AC's mom is going to call me on to tell me when she gets possession of the house, so I can get the keys and drop off all our stuff. That phone. I left it in the taxi. I call the taxi office, they find my phone, and I can come pick it up. tommorrow. TOMMORROW! Why is this second thing going wrong? Something already went wrong. This is not supposed to happen.

Right, so I unpack boxes until I find the sheet of phone numbers which I carefully programmed into the cellphone so I could put away the sheet. I call the people who are supposed to help me move. They cannot come. They can come later, like 2 or something, but not right now. I'm supposed to be out by noon. It's true, I did not verify that they would be able to come early. It's technically my fault. But this is the third thing that has gone wrong - why three things? Why am I being punished? Fuck you, Murphy!

Anyway, I talk one of them into coming for a big to help me move the heavy stuff I can't do myself. Then I start loading the truck. He shows up, we finish packing, etc. Ok. Good. Done loading. It's past noon, but my landlord has not showed up or called demanding the keys, so whatever. The place is still a disaster, I haven't cleaned anything, and there is easily two car-loads of stuff left that I forgot to pack. But I'm out, technically.

Time to move in. The U-Haul has to be back by 5pm. Which was not a big deal when 'back' meant a 5 minute drive from the new place. But now I have to drive across the city, on a Tuesday, by 5pm. So really I need to leave at 4pm. It's 1pm. And the truck is full. And I have no one to help me.

Luckily, unloading does not involve 3 flights of stairs (Oh, I didn't mention the stairs?), so it's reasonable to use the hand trolly. I manage to find someone to help me do the heavy stuff that the trolly can't. I get the truck back on time (just barely - 4:57pm) and take another taxi back to the old place. Because I have to clean it. Of course, the traffic is insane, so the taxi driver is thrilled that we have to go through downtown into Kensington. Anyway by the time I get home it's 6. Time to clean! Which takes until 2 am, including a few trips to the new place to move all the stuff I forgot to put into the truck. By 2 am I can barely stand, but hey I'm DONE. DONE MOVING. AND I ONLY SPENT 60 DOLLARS ON TAXIS! AND LOST A CELLPHONE! AND DID MOST OF THE MOVING AND ALL OF THE CLEANING BY MYSELF! I was a bit loony at that point. Maybe it was the cleaning fumes...

Anway, that was moving. I submitted a paper the day before the move, but I don't even want to talk about that. It's good, I think, and I will be annoyed if it does not get in. Not that being annoyed will help at all. But I could have been doing other things, besides working on that paper. Fun things.

Oh, and my UIST paper got rejected. Hurray for rejection! Slammed, in fact. Worst rejection I've had so far. Oh well. It was a long shot anyway, and we didn't spend that much time on it. But still. REJECTION ANGST! Oh the angst! The regret! All the obvious things we could have done to improve the paper. All the extra crap we put in that no one cared about. That were obvious once we went and looked at it a month later. Argh. Argh argh argh. This is my life...

I have two stories. One is about AC. She is in Montreal doing a course for May/June. The place she has is a little shady. Her faucet does not turn off. And I don't mean it drips. I mean a steady stream of water. Just can't stop it, no matter how hard you turn the pipes. But it's the cold water, and cold water is free in Montreal (Actually it's free in most of Canada, except Alberta. weird, no?). So the landlord doesn't really care. Her toilet also runs after you flush it. But not just a little run. You don't just hear it running. It's like it's paused mid-flush, where the water is gushing into the hole - the water just keeps gushing. This is no ordinary running toilet. In fact, the way AC describes it is that it "just keeps flushing". Remember that. So the landlord calls the plumber about this one. AC described it to me afterwards:

Quebecois plumbers. Always taking everything literally...

Second story: I'm at Safeway, paying with my debit card. I punch in the wrong PIN, which I do frequently because I use two different debit cards regularly, and they have different PINs. I have a habit of saying muttering "Shit" under my breath when I do this. Anyway, so I mutter "Shit". And before I've even finished the 't' the cashier says "Not in here, it attracts flies". Now, first of all, the cashier is this kindly-looking older guy. Second, I was not really paying attention to him. So I'm suprised by the fact that he says something to me, and my brain does not connect what he said to the fact that I just muttered "shit" under my breath. So, from my point of view, this friendly cashier dude has just said something completely and utterly bizarre. I'm so confused by the whole situation that I kind of just end up looking at him with what I imagine was a very perplexed expression on my face. Then he gets embarassed, and apologizes to me. "Sorry about that". Which is almost more bizarre, but then I make the connection - I said "shit", he said "not in here, it attracts flies". Shit! Flies! EUREKA!

Now I'm not sure if it was supposed to be a joke, or it just popped, out of his mouth, but I thought it was hilarious. I'm trying to refrain from completely bursting out laughing, mostly because I can see that the guy is embarassed. But how do I salvage this situation? There are other customers. I can't explain. It's all to utterly bizarre. So I mumble an apology, something about being "totally out of it". Lame. Soooo lame. But that's what I come up with. Then I leave.

And there you have it. Safeway cashier man, you probably think I was stoned. But I swear I wasn't, I'm just not so quick on the up-take. Oh well...

(I have more stories, since I'm currently in Boston and just spent a week in Montreal, but I'm tired so you have to wait. I'm sure you're on the edge of your seat. Hah. right....)

Where were we? Right. I was in Montreal last week. It was (pardon my english) FUCKING HOT. Like 30 degrees celsius and 40 percent humidity. Now, I'm from Alberta. It gets hot there. Sometimes even 40 degrees. But it is not humid. It's about as not-humid as you can get without being a desert. What this means is, when you go into the shade, IT IS COOLER! AT NIGHT IT COOLS DOWN! This does not happen when you have 40 percent humidity. It stays hot in the shade. It stays hot EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME. EVENT AT NIGHT. Unless you have air conditioning, you are hot. The only other option is to sit in front of a high-speed fan at all times.

So the weather in Montreal was hell, which kind of put a damper on my visit. I love Montreal, but I hate being hot and sweaty. Visiting AC was awesome, of course. But she was at school a lot, so I just wandered around trying to find places that were air conditioned and had free wireless internet. (Thank you McGill library...)

Anyway, that was Montreal. Then I flew to Boston for Shape Modeling International 2005, where I have my first conference paper. And my first conference talk. And that was a debacle. No. That's not true. It was not too bad. I was editing my slides up to about 20 minutes before my session started. I was also up until 2 am the last two nights, trying to make videos and adding material, all which had to be cut to fit in my time limit. But the talk itself went OK. I was pretty shaky at the beginning, but I calmed down. I totally forgot my script for my demo, but that was only a minute or so, and I just kind of fudged it. It went OK until the questions.

(If you have never been to a research conference, they way it works is you are usually given 15-20 minutes to talk about your paper, and then the audience gets 5 minutes to grill you.)

Anyway, when it got to the questions, it was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. Silence. That 'tweet-tweet' noise they play in movies. Not a single question. The session chair, of course, has to be prepared for this, so she lobs a total softball question at me. The answer is "Yes", but I'm supposed to talk for a minute or two, and hopefully in that time someone else comes up with something to ask. So I do my obligatory spiel, but still nothing. So I sit down.

This is not always a bad thing. It could mean that my presentation was very clear, everyone understood, and they just didn't have anything to ask. It could also mean that everyone thought it was boring/stupid/a waste of time, and just wanted me to shut up. I choose not to believe that was the case. I suppose it could also mean that the people who did have questions were shy or thought they might sound stupid (this is generally what happens to me when I have a question - you have to ask it in front of 50-100 people who mostly are smarter than you, so it's kind of intimidating). But it sucks to be standing up there. It's not like I was the only one it happened to, it happened to the person right after me as well. And I did understand her talk, and had a question but did not ask. So I don't know. I am over-analyzing. But hey, it's 1 AM and what else do I have to do?

Anyway, because I had to work on it last night, I missed the party night. Conferences usually have a banquent one night, and it was last night. After the banquet people usually head out to the pubs/bars/etc. I did not go, because I had to work on my paper. Bummer. So we went out tonight. And oh man.

We went to "Jack Ivory's Rock-And-Roll Piano Sing-A-Long Bar". I kid you not. This is a place I would not have believed existed, let alone somewhere I would ever wander into by accident. We were down by Fenway park (I MIGHT GO TO A RED SOX GAME TOMMORROW! BLIZZAM!). We ended up on this street that was all clubs, the sort of place you need nice shoes to get into. I don't have nice shoes. The other nerds I was with didn't have nice shoes (except one, who was way more stylin' than the rest of us. Standing beside him I look like a total slob) . But at the end of the street we found Jack Ivory's Rock-And-Roll Piano Sing-A-Long Bar. There was no cover, so we just went in. Into a bizarro-world....

Ok, so this is the scene. There is a half-empty bar. In the middle of the bar is a stage. On the stage are two pianos. Two sweaty middle-aged guys are playing the pianos and singing. Like the cheesy lounge singers you see in movies. But in real life. And there are two of them. They make witty comments. They banter. They invite up audience members. They take requests, and they know EVERY SONG EVER WRITTEN. I swear. 80's rock songs I had never heard of, these guys would just transition into from AC/DC. Oh, and there is a disco ball AS BIG AS A TRUCK TIRE hanging over the stage. AND EVERYONE IS SINGING ALONG.

I think the French guys in our group were even more confused than I was.

Anyway, our group got some drinks at sat down as far from the stage as possible. We were quiet. We did not participate. At first I found the whole thing so surreal I had to just sit there and watch. But once we had some liquor in us, we started to loosen up. We clapped along a bit. Then one guy, he wants to dance. He gets the girl that is with us to dance with him (6 dudes and one girl. She is very brave. And she schooled us all on particle systems). Anyway she wants some of us to come dance too. So I went. But I was PUT TO SHAME. The guy who wanted to dance BUSTS A MOVE. He is such a bad-ass dancer that other girls are flocking to him. You would not believe. Anyway this totally got us into it - we were even SINGING. Even ME (thanks, two-gin-and-tonics). We're all about 'Uptown Girl' and 'Blister in the Sun'. And I have to admit, it was a good time. So, if you're ever in Boston after a Red Sox game, and you're with a crowd that will be able to get into it, you might wander over to Jack Ivory's Rock-And-Roll Piano Sing-A-Long Bar. (The gin-and-tonics are shit though. Plastic cup! WTF?!?! )

Oh, and congratulations to Patrick, who got hired as a professor today. That's why we went to Jack Ivory's, to celebrate. But there might have been some communication difficulties, because when we got to Jack Ivory's he bought drinks for us. Maybe that's how they do it in France...

Anyway, now that my talk is finished, I have time to program! No. No. Sleep. Not program. Sleep. God help me....

RED SOX RED SOX RED SOX RED SOX RED SOX! (hopefully there are scalpers...)

Well, I'm back in Calgary. I spent all day yesterday flying, first from Boston to Montreal, then Montreal to Calgary. AC came out and met me at the Montreal airport (I had a 3-hour stopover), so that was awesome. But the flight from Montreal to Calgary was not awesome. Not awesome at all.

There was this lady with her two kids who had three seats in three different aisles. All middle seats. So she just decides that she's going to take over a row. The row right behind me. Naturally, the people who paid for those seats show up and are very pissed off, particularly after the lady offers them her other middle-seats. (It is very hard work in a middle seat, and both these people had laptops and briefcases...). This lady is going on about how it's the airline's fault for not giving her seats beside her children. Maybe she should have checked the tickets. Anyway, her kids are clearly little hellions - while the arguing is going on, she is also yelling at them every thirty seconds - so the stewards don't want to have to deal with them separated. They find the displaced people some suitable aisle / window seats, and everyone is happy.

Except me. Because for the next FOUR HOURS those little !*#%!#%#ers are screaming, fighting, and kicking the back of my seat every thirty seconds. The mother gives them the obligatory 'shush now' or 'calm down', but clearly they are not interested in listening. The stewards are throwing free shit at them left and right to try and shut them up. But it did not work. Really there was nothing to be done, short of locking them in one of the bathrooms (which I considered suggesting, but decided against, lest I be accused of AIR RAGE). They were little kids too, like 3 or 4 years old, and I didn't have it in me to turn around and scream at them myself. So I just sat there and watched 'Million Dollar Baby', which I did not like (although I can't say I was in a mood to like any movie I saw).

Flying into Calgary was interesting. The sky was clear, so I could see the river all the way in. Looks pretty crazy from up there - it's mud-brown and there are all sorts of flooded areas.

We did not get to see the Red Sox play. There were scalpers. They had lots of tickets. They just wanted too much goddamn money for them. The cheapest ones we found were 50 bucks (that's US 50 bucks), which I would have paid but we didn't buy them at the time. That turned out to be a mistake, because they were by far the cheapest tickets we came across. Most of the scalpers (who seemed very organized) wanted at least 80-150 dollars per ticket. Apparently this is the last home-game series of the season or something, so people were willing to pay that much. We sat at a pub across from Fenway and watched the game on TV. It was a pretty good game. Then I went home.

So, I have spent the last week trying to write a paper for Graphite. That's another conference. In New Zealand. The deadline is Friday. I'd say my paper is maybe half done. It looks a bit grim. The results are ok, but I have to make some images and that is proving to be a challenge. So. Frustration.

And after I'm done this one, I just have more work. Work work work! Argh. I found out on Tuesday that the paper I sent to the Eurographics workshop on sketch based modeling got accepted. Hurray. This is good news. However, the camera-ready copy is due July 11th, which means after I submit this paper, I have to work on that one. Joy. And I get to go to another conference, this one in Dublin. Ireland. Normally, super-exciting. But it means I will be gone for 1) our move to Montreal and 2) our first anniversary. Not spectacular timing. Oh well. What can you do...

So, this week I work on one paper. Next week I work on another (and try to make some cash working for a friend). Then I drive to vancouver to pick up AC. And then I get some semblance of a holiday for a few days. Then I go to SIGGRAPH.

WHEN DOES IT END?

Never. that's when.

In other news, Calgary has been infested with mosquitos. It happend sometime today. I don't really know when. I went into the lab at around 10 am, and there was no problem. I came out of the lab at 7 (yes, 7) and there are roving clouds of mosquitos. WTF? I guess it's because of the rain or something. But man. They are everywhere. And I have this uncontrollable urge to swat at them. This is not so bad until you realize that to anyone standing more than a few feet away from me, I am just a crazy person swatting at imaginary creatures. Just a wacko swinging away. Aaaaahh, summer.

Does anyone want to go to the pub? Right now?

Just shy of 30 days since the last update. I have been meaning to do this for a while now, but it seems like something always comes up. And my net connection at home is still not working. I have basically given up on it. Maybe I should cancel it so I can stop paying for it...

Lots of stuff has happened. None of it is interesting. At least it feels that way right now. I submitted the Graphite paper. I think it's pretty good, but we'll see what the reviewers have to say about it. I think we've more-or-less covered all the bases, so hopefully we don't get any reviews saying "you should use XYZ instead". But, I can see them not seeing the point of what we are trying to do. I had a hard time seeing the point myself, at some points. Luckily my supervisor was there to push me along (Although I suspect that, more than anything else, his motive for doing so was that he wanted to go to New Zealand for the rock climbing). Anyway, I'll know at the end of August...

I took a good bit of July off. I drove to Victoria to pick up AC (she was doing a yoga training course). That's a pretty crazy drive by yourself in a car with no CD player and spotty radio reception. Emphasis on crazy. If you happened to be heading that way a few weeks ago and passed some guy in a white echo who was clearly talking to himself, well then, Hey! hope you had a fun drive too!

We stayed for a few days in Victoria at the Ocean Island Backpackers Hostel. It's a really nice hostel, I think I would pick it over most hotels I've stayed in. The rates weren't too bad for a private room ( no private bathroom, but they were only shared between two rooms, not like a huge gym bathroom or anything ). We hung out with AC's old roommate, she took is to an awesome restaurant but I can't remember the name. Oh well. And we watched two seasons of "Freaks and Geeks" at her house. Largely because she thinks that I am Bill, the uber-nerd on the show. Good times.

I also got a speeding ticket on the way to the ferry. I missed the 80->50 transition sign. I think it was behind a semi. The roads out there are all curvy so you can totally miss signs if there is a semi beside you. I was tempted to argue with the cop, but...well...who are we kidding - I'm a pussy. So I pulled the "be friendy and apologetic" routine instead. I paid the ticket yesterday.

Then on to Vancouver. AC worked at the Folk Festival as the head chef again. I did not volunteer this year. We stayed in the Jericho Beach Hostel, which I'm not even going to link to because I wouldn't wish that place on anyone. Sure, it was clean, and the rooms were nice, and so on. But you have to get "buzzed in" at the front door. I'm not keen on this. Not keen at all. It was just so oppressive. Part of the problem is that I tend to forget things, so I need to make lots of trips out to the car. But to do this, I had to wait and get buzzed back in by the scowly guy who scowls at you through the metal grill. Hey, scowly guy, why don't you go fuck yourself? Hey? That would give you something to scowl about, wouldn't it?

Sorry.

Since the hostel did not have internet, I was bored and hardly stayed there. I went to the Vancouver Aquarium one day, which was pretty cool. I tried to take pictures but most of the them are shit. Maybe I'll put them on Picasa or something. Apparently one of the belugas died the day after I was there. So maybe I have some pictures of a dead beluga. Creepy. Other than that, I mostly hung out at AC's uncle's house in Port Moody, which is like 20 minutes outside of downtown vancouver. I almost ran into a parked car, too. It seems there are a bunch of (crazy people) / (fucking morons) in Vancouver who are willing to just park in one of the lanes of major rush-hour roads. So you've got a curvy two lane road where traffic is going 80 that suddenly has some people parked (illegally) in one of the lanes. I was behind a big truck so I couldn't see the parked car, and I just about switched lanes right into it. That was fun.

I head to LA on Sunday for SIGGRAPH. I did a practice run of my talk today to the group in the lab. Reactions were generally good, some people even asked to see a demo afterwards. This makes me a little bit more confident that I won't make a total ass out of myself. But only just a little bit. It looks like the SIGGRAPH schedule is basically insane, it goes from Monday to Thursday and is completely packed every day. So that will be fun. And it seems like there are all sorts of industry-sponsored parties that happen. So I'll have somewhere to drown my sorrows after my talk. Good times! Watch out for regular SIGGRAPH updates.

(HAHA. just joking.)

Oh, and one morning I found a piece of soggy pizza on my car:

(It was soggy because of the rain)

So I'm at SIGGRAPH. Well, actually I'm at my hotel, in the lobby. There is no internet in my room (they were "out" of "internet rooms". feh). Free lobby-wireless is the consolation prize. My flight didn't get in until 6pm, so I actually missed everything at SIGGRAPH today, including the Fast-Forward session (that's where all the paper authors get 1 minute to convince you to come to their talk. 98 papers == an hour and a half of madness. Usually very entertaining. And I missed it. argh).

The flight was fun. I got stuck in "Row 1". That might sound like a nice place to be. It does mean more legroom. It also means no "under-the-seat-in-front-of-you" spot for your rather expensive laptop. Instead your rather expensive laptop must go into the overhead bin, where angry businessmen will push it around while they try to fit in their massive suit-bag that they really should have checked. And at one point, if you're lucky, you can watch while it teeters on the edge of the overhead compartment, ready to plummet at the slightest breeze. Oh, and in Row 1 you don't actually have your own overhead compartment, so your laptop is three rows back and there is no way you can just jump up and grab it, as it teeters. My heart literally jumped out of my throat and did a few laps around my shoulders, until an astute stewardess came over and shoved my laptop-containing backpack further into the overheard compartment. Thank you, stewardess / laptop-guardian-angel. Thank you.

Anyway other than that, the trip to LA was uneventful. The rockies look pretty cool from the air. I was on the side of the plane that didn't have much of a view of California coming in. I saw a lot of ocean. Not super-exciting. Maybe I'll get lucky on the way back. But probably it will be cloudy.

That's about it, today. I got to my hotel. I checked in. I walked to the convention centre, which was just letting out from the fast-forward session. Eventually I ran into people I knew, and we went for dinner at....er....La Cucina? Anyway I had "Pollo Checca", which is chicken in some sort of red sauce that tastes like awesome. That is really the only way I can describe it. And only ten bucks! How can you go wrong? The Tiramasu was also very good.

Oh, and F riday night AC and I went to a Purple Jesus Party. We also did some packing, cleaned up the house, and picked up some moving boxes, and that's pretty much it. Maybe I'll have more tommorrow....

......

You didn't really think I was going to leave it at that, did you? Come on. PURPLE JESUS PARTY. We didn't actually know what it was about. AC and I went to the Kilkenny to visit a friend of mine from university who was visiting from Montreal, one Monsieur Mikrotron. I believe he may have featured in previous entries. Anyway, we got there at about 11:30, shortly after which all of his friends went home. So it's just us and him, and he says "Want to come to a Purple Jesus Party?".

Now, I was intrigued. He would not explain the Purple Jesus premise. I was not in a party mood, and almost bailed, but then it turned out he was too drunk to drive his mom's Explorer, so he needed one of us to drive him anyway. I drove, AC followed. It was midnight. We weren't going to stay long.

It turns out that the premise of a Purple Jesus Party is similar to something often done in highschool. Everyone brings at two-six of their favourite hard liquor. They are all mixed in a garbage can. And then a large amount of grape Kool-Aid, sugar, and Sprite. I don't know where the Jesus comes in. But it's definitely purple.

Anyway, by the time we got there things were winding down. There was still a lot of Purple Jesus left, but the party attendees were clearly defeated, as evidenced by the man curled up around the Purple Jesus tub, wearing a plastic Samurai sword and otherwise clearly passed-out. I did sample the Purple Jesus. It's flavor alternated between sips, either delicious grape Kool-Aid or obscenely nasty tasting-like-hairspray-smells concoction. My consumption was limited.

We stayed until about 2:30, chatting with Mikrotron and other party late-arrivals who were still coherent. Ate some nasty chicken-flavored potato chips. I "sampled" some more Purple Jesus. That is the Purple Jesus story.

Well, so far I haven't actually seen much of SIGGRAPH. Sunday night at dinner I had a cappucino. At an Italian restaurant. At 10pm. Normally coffee this late doesn't really affect me, but I haven't been drinking much coffee lately. So I couldn't sleep. At all. Nothing. Nada. I may have sort of zoned-out from 3-4, but it didn't count as sleep. At 4 I got hungry. Crazy hungry. I lay in bed until about 6, and then I gave up and went down for internet and breakfast.

So, lacking sleep, I was basically a zombie. I tried to attend a SIGGRAPH course on manifolds. Now, the course was taught by Cindy Grimm and Denis Zorin, and I've been trying to really understand Cindy's paper on parameterization with manifolds on-and-off for the last month or so. That's exactly what this course was about. So I really wanted to stay awake. And I could not. Within 15 minutes I had the noddies, when my head hit my chest I would snap up and mentally kick my own ass for dozing off again. So I gave up on the course half-way through and went back to my hotel to sleep. That meant I missed the George Lucas keynote, but I'm told it was mind-numbing anyway, so no big deal.

I went back in the afternoon for a paper session which was kind of dissapointing. There was one paper I really wanted to see, but the presentation was terrible. Downer. After that I talked to my supervisor for a while, and then we went for dinner with famous graphics people. That was pretty cool. Until dessert. When my supervisor said "you should practice your talk". Now, I was all for that. I'd been meaning to corner him and force him to listen to it after dinner. That's what I thought he meant, so I said "sure". Then he said "....Well?". Because he meant practice it now. At the table. With all the famous graphics people. Then I fainted.

Not really. I didn't faint. Just a bit of internal panic. One might think that it was more nerve-wracking to present to the crowd of people at the actual talk today. No way. There the individual people in the crowd are kind of anonymous. Yes, a sea of people is intimidating. But not nearly as intimidating as just a few people sitting across a dinner table from you while you sort of lean over your laptop to change the slide, especially when you know these people could probably give your talk better than you can even though they've never seen it before. So. That was fun. They gave me a lot of good feedback that was very, very helpful. But I suspect it was not my best showing. I think (hope) it was clear to everyone that it was not an ideal talk-practice venue. Still. Damn.

Anyway so that was my night, I went home, called AC, and worked on my slides until about 1:30. Then I got up at 6 and practiced for a while, went over to the convention centre to upload my slides, and went for breakfast. The LA smog was thick and humid. Overall disgusting, I'd have to say. Then we headed over for a paper session, but snuck out half-way through so my supervisor could go over my slides again (I made a bunch of changes based on the dinner-feedback, and they had to be approved). Then I made a mad dash down to the speaker prep room to upload the changes. (There are always last-minute changes. It's a mathematical certainty).

The Session I was speaking in started at 10:30. I was not the first speaker (thank god). So I watched the first talk, then got up there and loaded my slides. The screen was black. No slides. I give the technician guy the "HELP ME NOW PLEASE I AM PRESENTING AT SIGGRAPH FOR THE FIRST TIME AND MY SLIDES ARE NOT APPEARING WHAT DO I DO OH GOD I AM HOSED" look. He comes up and looks at the projector. It is off. It is broken. The projector has broken in the last 3 minutes, since the previous guy finished his talk. So the technician whips out the backup projector. It also does not turn on. THE BACKUP PROJECTOR IS NOT WORKING. SWEAR WORDS! Meanwhile I'm standing up there and I kind of find the whole thing funny. I was really nervious at first, but the delay totally calmed me down. The session chair didn't really know what to do either, he walked over to me and said "So how was your flight?". Anyway shortly after this the technician realized that someone had kicked out the other end of the projector extension cord, so he plugged it back in and I was ready to go.

The talk went pretty well from there, much better than my SMI talk (from my point of view, anyway). I was totally calm. Good times. I had some questions this time, although they were totally softball (the answer to all of them was "yes", but I elaborated). And some people actually wanted to talk to me afterwards! Even better, they were all artists! From my point-of-view this is success. See, the thing I'm presenting here, this sketch-based modeling software, the underlying technical stuff is not really fashionable in computer graphics. Implicit surfaces are definitely not something that a lot of people are working on, particularly this BlobTree thing I'm always talking about. So there is not a lot of technical interest from people. My system has a pretty good "cool" factor, so graphics people generally think it is neat, but there are not a lot of people who want to get into the technical nitty-gritty. But I'm trying to make something that's actually usable by artists. It doesn't really matter if graphics people are interested, because graphics people wouldn't really use it anyway. But artists were interested. So that's awesome.

I more or less skipped the afternoon sessions, I wandered around for a bit but nothing else exciting happened. Caught a few other sketches at the end of the day. Then I killed two hours until the electronic theater started. It's sort of a showcase of the best CG animation from this year. It was pretty cool. Then I went for dinner again at the same place as the day before - Wokano on Figueroa, right beside the Figueroa hotel. They have this awesome "something" orange chicken. I had some yesterday, but we were sharing plates and I did not get my fill. So I went back for more. Then I was stuffed, so I went back to my hotel, and now here I am in the lobby updating my website instead of sleeping. But that's ok, I need to digest a bit. Anyway, so that's day 2 and 3.

So SIGGRAPH ended a few days ago. Days 3 and 4 are kind of a blur. I went to lots of paper sessions. They were interesting. The fluid simulation papers got me all hot-and-bothered. Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration. But it was cool. I'm totally a fluid simulation cheerleader. Oh yea. Marker-And-Cell baybee! ph33r the particle-level-set method!

(Normally I would backspace that, for your benefit. But today, I will not.)

Anyway, that's about all I remember from the end of SIGGRAPH. Fluid simulation papers, and Igarashi's cool animation thing. I talked to some people about manifolds. Enlightening, but I'm not sure I understand it all yet. Had some sushi. Wandered around a lot. Not much else to say, really. It was kind of dull.

Oh, and I won a raffle. See, there was this raffle for these two awesome electric guitars. My supervisor wanted one of them, so he insisted I put my name in the raffle. And then I got an e-mail from him the next day saying "YOU WON". But he didn't know what I had won. So I go over there, and I did not win either of the guitars. No. Instead, I won some software. Cakewalk Something-or-Other Studio. It's for recording yourself when you play your guitar or whatever, I think. They are sending it to me in the mail. But what a letdown! YOU WON! YOU WON some software you will never, ever, ever use, in a million years. Great. No guitar, but here's some shiny discs you can use as coasters instead.

(I could probably sell it on eBay. Maybe. My supervisor was pretty excited about it, he says it's great software. Maybe he'll buy it off me...)

Anyway, that was SIGGRAPH. I have to say it did not live up to the hype. Yes, the papers there are probably some of the best work published in computer graphics. But you can download the papers off the internet. The talks were, like all research talks, a mixed bag. Some of them were great, others were hopelessly confusing. But the thing that was missing the most, I thought, was the social aspect. When you go to a smaller conference, you meet more people. I think this is probably because when you go to a smaller conference, you're often the only person from your lab there. So you have to find people to hang out with (or just stay in your room and program). SIGGRAPH is so big that it seems like everyone is there as part of some group (there were like 22 people from the UBC graphics group attending! Only about 10 from Calgary). And when you're there with a group, guess what - you mostly hang out with your group! It's just too big. Even if you do meet new people (I was introduced to many), there is a good chance you will not run into them again before the conference ends. This does not happen if the conference only has 100 attendees and a single track. On the other hand, you rarely get to meet industry people outside of SIGGRAPH...

(Of course, I still want to go again next year....)

The flight back was uneventful. I went almost straight from the airport to the university. AC had already left for her yoga camp, and will not be back until the 20th. So I'm bored but also insanely busy. We are going back to Montreal in September. Movers are picking up our stuff on the 15th-ish (I should be packing). I have a lot of unfinished business at the university that needs to get finished.

And, the goverment is not pleased with my tax return.

Yes. goverment. taxes. bad. They aren't auditing me yet, just "reviewing my claims". And they are all totally legit. I didn't do anything wrong. But it's still scary. And you can hardly read my name on the credit card receipt that the movers gave us last summer. But I won't be there to say "look, see, you can just barely make out "YAN SCHMI", and the digits and expiry date all match". Hopefully they are understanding...

That's about it for "my life story" type stuff. If you are bored, I recommend you check out the Internet Anagram Server. You type in some words and it generates a bunch of anagrams. By "a bunch", I mean several thousand. Most of them are junk. But if you go to the advanced search, you can tell it to only return 2-word anagrams, which are usually the best ones. Here is what I got from typing in my name:

RANCID MYTHS
STARCHY MIND
MISC HYDRANT
DAMN CHRISTY
MYTHIC NARDS

The ';' key on my keyboard has become super-sensitive. Every time I even rest a finger on it (not press - just rest), it spits out a ';'. It is driving me insane. I may snap at any time and this update will degenerate into a series of random characters as I smash my fist down on my keyboard. Let's hope that doesn't happen...

The house is almost packed. Almost. It's that last little bit that kills me. In the last two days I have half-packed about four boxes. This is not progress. Before that, I packed about 20 boxes in 3 days. Then nothing. Instead I will wait until the movers say they are on their way, and then pack like mad for the next 12 hours. I can't wait....

To kill time, I'm surfing crap on the internet. Tonight I discovered that Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia) has a list of events for each day of the year. So I looked up my birthday. Guess who else was born on September 8th? Confucious! That's right. That bad-ass Chinese Philosopher was born on September 8, 479 BC. Someone in China has been keeping good records, I guess. Other good ones included King Richard I the Lionheart (of England), Mersenne (of primes), Pink (of music), Brooke Burke (of Playboy) , and Jonathan Taylor Thomas (of....DREAMY!!! ).

It was also the first day a V2 rocket hit London, the day Japan surrendered, the day the first episode of Star Trek aired, and the day 3M started selling scotch tape! Scotch Tape! I wasn't lucky enough to get post-its, but I'll take scotch tape and star trek.

Weird. Most of the "famous" people on born on AC's birthday are artists, poets, actors, etc. I've got a bunch of politicians, some scientists, and an airplane hijacker. I wonder if any correlations with birth date would turn up if someone did a statistical analysis of the occupations of the people in those lists...

Anyway that has been my excitement for the day. For the week, maybe. I'm trying to get up to speed on the state-of-the-art in surface parameterization, but I suspect there are very few people out there (and even fewer who care about parameterization. BADA-BING!). So I will put a stop to this right now...

So the moving company "misplaced" our booking/reservation/whatever. Or something like that. Essentially, they fucked up. The truck that our stuff was supposed to be on passed through Calgary a few days ago. The driver did not call. The truck did not stop. No loading of our 43 boxes and assorted furniture took place. In short, a disaster. A debacle, even.

I would probably be raging about this right now if I wasn't so pessimistic. I almost expected something like this to happen. Whenever I move, it does not go well. When I first moved to Montreal, it took two weeks for my boxes to finally arrive. When I moved a few months ago, U-Haul "transferred" my reservation without telling me. Now the moving company forgot to pick up our stuff. This is just how it goes for me. I'm sure when AC is in Montreal the moving truck will show up exactly on time, nothing will be missing or damaged, and the movers will bring her cookies. I will be in Dublin presenting a paper at a workshop. Perhaps the projector will break right as I'm about to start, like it did at SIGGRAPH.

Anyway, that has been my morning. On the phone with the moving company offices in Montreal and Vancouver, who seem to have some communication issues. Yesterday I spent a lot of time wandering around this empty house wondering what to do with myself. I had a hang-over and no motivation to work.

The hang-over was from Saturday night, when H&H took me out for my "Going-Away Party Spectacular". The e-mail announcing this event contained the following image.;

Now, I think you'll have to agree that based on this image alone, it was clear that this was going to be a rockin event. There were supposed to be several other attendees at this party spectacular. However, (inevitably), plans were changed. DOMO went camping instead. Ulmo went to Lethbride because his sister was having a garage sale (WTF??). And Ian|Matt was nowhere to be found. As the only single one left in the Medicine Hat crew, I can only assume he was scoring, and hence his absence is forgiven. DOMO and Ulmo? That's an off-line matter...

That left me at Schanks with H&H. Which perhaps was for the best. I think 3 is a good number of people for wandering around MacLeod Trail at 2 in the morning. But we'll get to that. First there was Schanks. Harvey picked me up. Yes, he got a bit lost, but he made it in the end. In terms of the "ability to find my goddamn house" rankings, Harvey definitely places higher than the moving company.

Then to Schanks. Hoetz had only been waiting in the parking lot for about 20 minutes. Not too excessive. We got a table and ordered some drinks. There was discussion, etc. Then I noticed I was hungry, so I ordered something with a name like "Jack Grilled Sourdough Burger". The description was great - mouth-watering, even. However, when the waitress placed the plate in front of me, I was confused. Because what was sitting there was an over-done hamburger with a little bit of barbeque sauce dribbled on it, placed between two pieces of thin garlic toast. I was...let's say...less than impressed. On the other hand, I was hungry and kinda buzzed, so any food was good food. Or at least edible food. The "burger", if you can call it that, paled in comparison to the plain kettle chips that accompanied it. Those were some tasty kettle chips...

After the pitchers stopped being drained so quickly, we paid the tab (Actually H&H paid the tab - MAD PROPS!) and moved on to "Big Buck Hunt". Now, if you aren't familiar, Big Buck Hunt is a video game where you pick up an orange plastic shotgun replica and try to shoot "bucks" without hitting any "does". This game is everywhere, so you've probably seen it. It's not, shall we say, the most intellectually stimulating video game out there. Actually I think placing "intellectual" and "Big Buck Hunt" in the same sentence is some sort of grammatical error. However, after a reasonable number of pitchers, it's a great way to waste some loonies. We were shamed by Harvey, who had two "triple-bucks" in a row. He is clearly a bad-ass "Big Buck Hunter".

Post-hunt, food was called for. However, it was now past one in the morning. The kitchen was closed. Schanks no longer met our needs. We set out for establishments that could meet our provisionary needs. McDonalds was closed, and Ranchmans looked like it was probably not going to make us any nachos either. Then, behold, A&W!

We had stumbled across the promised land, a 24-hour A&W !! However, there was a catch - only the drive-thru is 24-hours. We were on foot. If you have not been in this situation recently, you may not be aware that most fine dining establishments have a policy of not serving customers who are on foot via their "drive-thru" windows. This is clearly an outrageous act of discrimination against the automotively-challenged in our society. However, beyond an act of late-night protest, we were powerless to cause any instituitional change. Our only hope was to fool the drive-thru attendant by pretending to be a car, hoping that one we got up to the window and were discovered, the food would already be prepared and we could make a case for servicing us to avoid waste.

At least, I think that's what the plan was. To be honest, I was not keen on standing in the drive-thru line. There are cars driving there, for crying out loud! I've worked late-night drive-thru - some of those car-bound customers are of dubious moral character and/or sobriety, and it would not have surprised me if they ran us down in the street (or drive-thru, as it were). In any event, Harvey waited for a break in the stream of cars, and then he went for it. But, as I had suspected, he did not weigh enough to trip the weight sensor. He beckoned us to join him. Pleaded, in fact. I have to say, there is nothing so heart-wrenching as a grown man trying to wave his two friends over, like one would a puppy or a small child, to stand with him in the A&W drive-thru lineup. We could not resist. However, even our combined mass did not activate the weight sensor. It was an exercise in futility.

However, all hope was not lost. Adjacent to the A&W was the Kings Head Pub. In our fervor for A&W we had not noticed that this place was still very open, with people streaming in and out. Perhaps food could be found! With a friendly wave to the doorman (no cover!), we entered the establishment and, to our surprise, discovered a punk-rock cover band still playing. Already things were looking up. The beer girl had a few bottles of Canadian left, and a man was passing out free cake! It was like a dream...

We watched a few songs, and I have to say, the band was pretty good. They mostly did slightly out-of-date Top-20 covers that everyone more or less recognizes, but threw in some punk rock songs that kept it interesting (for me, at least). However, I did notice some odd things about this crowd. There were a good number of kids who were at least trying to look punk-rock - spiked mohawks and alternative jewelry were plentiful. There were also a sizable contingent of older couples in traditional Calgary garb, cowboy-hats and all. It was when we noticed these people were two-steppping to the punk rock songs that I started to examine the crowd more closely. It was an interesting mix. I noticed that the middle-aged woman standing beside me was sort of splitting the difference between cowgirl and aging punk rock groupie. Now, I had not encountered this combination before, and I found it oddly fascinating. Unfortunately I think she noticed me checking out her costume because she started to sort of dance in my general direction. This was slightly alarming, so I faced the other way and started talking to Hoetz, hoping the situation would resolve itself (which it seems to have done). Then the wedding party walked in.

Yes, the scene was a punk rock-ish show with cow-people two-stepping between the half-heartedly moshing punk rockers, and a wedding party. First some groomsmen, followed by what could only have been the bride. Bizzare? I thought so.

Anway, the band then took a break, and the free cake had not satiated our hunger. So we moved on to the 7-11. Here we discovered that we were not the only ones seeking provisions. A variety of other disreputable-looking characters were roaming the snack aisles. This was no place to loiter, we got in, grabbed our respective snacks, and got out. Harvey was the boldest of our trio, going straight for the pre-made sandwich rack while Hoetz and I played it safe with hermetically sealed food-like products. He claimed that the sandwich was "delicious", although I find this claim dubious. His judgement was likely clouded by his inexplicable lust for sandwiches of all kinds - after some interrogation he admitted to us that it was his third sandwich of the day. While one can make the argument that someone who consumes that many sandwiches must be a conisseur, I have witnessed his sandwich creation first-hand. Perhaps he is qualified to judge sandwiches that contain chicken, cheese, and mayonnaise.

Food consumed, we made an executive decision to "go home". All that was left was to find a suitable number of taxis - in this case two, since Hoetz was going in the wrong direction. I supposed we could have called, but my preference is to hail, so we began our walk down MacLeod Trail. We walked a long way. It must have been half-an-hour before we got the second taxi (Hoetz took the first one, because he only had a t-shirt and it was cold).

The night definitely lived up to it's "Party Spectacular" moniker and logo, largely due to H&H's efforts. They even paid for everything! Now if I can just get them out to Montreal...