So, quite a lot has gone on since I last wrote. I've had two more awesome trips to Moab, started a "class," went to Vegas, and successfully addicted some friends to a new game.
So, first, the Moab trips. Trip one was this years Raft for the Cure. Way better than Race for the Cure. I don't think I can emphasize enough how much more fun it is to go rafting than to go running. Especially when you fill the boat you're on with some good friends. Wudan, Sukie, the boy, of course Guildylocks, and some of her friends from work all came down for this trip. If I didn't talk about this trip last year, which I probably didn't, I should have. It's just a lot of fun. The lunch bbq was definitely great. Just an all around awesome party.
So great, in fact, that we had to come back the next weekend for Moab! part deux!! This time around, it was everyone from the first trip, minus the work friends, plus Striker. Since we were camping, and there was talk of rain coming down in the middle of our 4th of July festivities, we splurged for a cabin, big enough for a couple bunk beds and not much else, but just fine for sleeping in. If you're wondering what goes on in Moab for the 4th of July, it's not much, at least not from the town itself. Luckily, we had tons and tons of great food, arches to hike around, fireworks to watch, beans to play (the aforementioned new addiction), and squirrels to sort through the trailmix and take everything but the raisins. We call him Marty.
Now, this whole "class" thing. Some of you are probably thinking, didn't you graduate already? The answer is, technically, no. Technically. Due to a lack of employment for the summer, I pushed my graduation back to August, so that I could continue doing my research while looking for some post-college employment. Unfortunately, they neglected to inform me that I needed to take 3 credits throughout the summer in order to be considered a student by the student employment office. Luckily, when they terminated me, I had a couple of days to scramble into a class before the add deadline passed, and have since been re-hired.
My class is actually really fun. I'm taking a Capstone Project class, so basically, we have a group of 4 of us, and we are using all we've learned in college to do something cool. That something cool is make a racing game that can be played in 3d (with glasses), and multiplayer for up to 32 players. So far it's going well. We just realized we have just a few weeks to get it finished up, but I'm pretty sure we'll get something pretty nice out of it.
My Vegas trip was for another conference. This one wasn't as interesting to me as the last conference I went to, but I was presenting my research at this one, and not as just a poster this time, but a 20 minute presentation. It went pretty well, and I even knew the answers to all of the questions people asked at the end. The funniest things about the trip were what the two professors going with me were focused on. One of them only really seemed to care about whether the hotel we stayed at had free wireless internet and a decent breakfast. The other was all about eating at the best buffet. We stayed at a hotel with a good breakfast, but their internet was down the entire time we were there. We ate some really good food. One night, we went to the Bellagio for dinner. The buffet ran about $29 each, so I'm glad the university paid and not me. It had really fancy food, from elk roundeye steak, to swordfish and sushi. Really good. Oh, and really good carrot cake. I was expecting we'd find some place significantly cheaper the next night for dinner. Instead, we went to a steak house in New York New York where they wet age and dry age their steaks for 12 days each. I think it was called Gallagher's. Anyway, the restaurant was way fancy, and the steaks we got were $45 each. And then sides are ordered on top of that cost. The steaks were also around three inches thick, and I would think were over half a pound each, maybe close to 3/4 lb. or a little bigger. Anyway, really good food, but definitely expensive. I just checked the online listing, and they say average price per person is $70-$80, so apparently we were really cheap.
Other than that stuff, I've been looking for jobs recently, and have a few promising leads, one of which is right around here. I'll keep everyone posted on how that goes.
