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Field at Chicago O'Hare. March 24, 2006. (More pictures or journal entries.)

After two weeks away, the idea that I lived in Rochester had started to feel like the remnant of a weird dream, the kind that lingers uneasily as you ponder whether or not it really happened. The flight from Seattle was quick. The flight from Chicago a bit odd. The owner of a local Rochester basketball team was on the plane and offered everybody tickets, heightening the sensation that amongst us Rochester-bound passengers—that we're all in it together.

Thursday night we stayed again at casa de squarkz and in the evening went out with Danyel, adding four more bars to our Seattle repertoire. Meeting Danyel in Seattle was a manifestation of Livejournal magic. He was my TA for Paul Hilfinger's CS61B back in... was it 1999? Somehow via our various blogs we've kept in very loose contact over the years, and when he saw my post about being in Seattle he shot me an email. Now's he's happily ensconsed as a researcher for the Seattle area's favorite Evil Megacorp. At the Chapel he slapped down a laptop computer on the bar and showed us his latest work, visualizing geographically the distribution of searches on local.live.com (MSFT's take on Google Earth/Maps). Bill Gates' House and Disneyland are hot spots. I mentioned an idea for looking at Livejournal data; he said, "Hmm, maybe I will try that on the MySpace data tomorrow."

Back, as I said, in Rochester now. Time to get caught up on some things.

Comments

[diskothiq.livejournal.com]

Oh man I totally know the guy you're talking about -- one Sunday afternoon a couple months ago I went to "The Keg" (that sports bar at the back of the German house on Gregory) to watch some football and dude was down there with some of his players and other employees, holding court for hours. Pretty much the walking embodiment of SMARM. At one point he was actually bragging about how he had supposedly talked to Bono on the phone a few days earlier, like they're old buds or something. What a douche.

We are all in it together though. Welcome back!