Category Archives: Travel

Yellowstone National Park

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We took a road trip recently to Yellowstone National Park.  Pretty good drive from Seattle, about 715 miles each way. We drove the MINI, out on its first road trip. Really amazing scenery on the way over, starting at Puget Sound, through the Cascade mountains, the desert of central Washington, and into the Rocky Mountains.

The way there was pretty uneventful. We stopped in a few times for gas, and had lunch in Spokane, WA (at Arby’s). I handled several work related phone calls, working on some last minute stuff for the Google+ launch.

We stayed in the Big Sky Resort, in Big Sky, MT. It turns out that if you want to stay in the national park, you have to book about a year in advance. Good to know for next time. We met up with Cortny Helmick‘s parents in Big Sky, that had just arrived that day form the midwest.

We spent the next day actually driving around Yellowstone. One should really spend more than a day there, but you can see a lot in the day. Highlights included a viewing of an eruption of Old Faithful and a visit to the Grand Prismatic Spring. Pictures:

Some thoughts about Yellowstone:

  • Old Faithful is simply amazing. You see steam rising out of the earth for a while, then a little bit of water bubbling up, and then within seconds water is shooting over a 100 feet into the air!
  • Bubbling mud! Didn’t even know this existed, but Yellowstone is home to some bubbling mud. Kind of unsettling standing on ground that is that thermally active.
  • The grand prismatic spring is really cool. At first it looks like the steam is causing a rainbow to form, but when you look closer it isn’t quite a complete spectrum. The colors come from colored bacteria that grow in a rainbow colored order – amazing. And on a sunny day, the colors reflect up through the steam (captured in my pictures).
  • The mammoth hot spring is neat, but kind of out of the way.
  • Animals – we saw lots of bison, a few elk, and a beaver (that was unexpected and cool). Didn’t see any bears or moose, but we also stuck close to the road.

After a day in the park, we spend 2 days driving back. We stopped for a night in the historic Davenport Hotel in Spokane, WA. The guest list and history of this hotel are both fascinating and impressive.

Last day of the trip, we drove from Spokane to Seattle, using the northern route. And WOW, amazing driving through Washington. We have a huge diversity of landscapes, and it is well worth the drive.  A quick stop for lunch at the Munchen Haus in Leavenworth, WA, and back home in Seattle.

SIGCSE 2010 Report

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So, a few weeks ago, I went to SIGCSE 2010.  You already heard about my travel issues getting there.  On the way, I made it to Minneapolis.  From Minneapolis, we made it to Madison, where we circled, and eventually to Detroit.  This was not my destination, Milwaukee.  I spent the night on the floor of the Detroit airport.  This marks the 3rd time that I’ve had an airport sleepover.  The others were Chicago, and Manchester, UK (where I paid for a hotel room since I had almost 24 hours to spend there).

Instead of arriving on Wednesday night, I arrived on Thursday morning.  This caused me to miss the first keynote speaker, but after a nap, I still made it to lunch.  On Thursday we had the first timer’s lunch.  I was attending as an “old-timer.”  All of the committee members did this, and we shared our wisdom with the first timers.

After that, I mostly just attended sessions. Thursday evening, I went out and had drinks with some of my colleagues from Miami. Friday, more sessions, and a Yoga class at Yama Yoga in Milwaukee.  Saturday morning, I lost my wallet. Luck for me, I lost it in the conference center, it was immediately found by security, and the conference chair has known me for 13 years (I got it back quickly).

I stayed late Saturday night for the committee handoff dinner, and then headed back to Seattle on Sunday morning. I arrived at the Milwaukee airport at like 4:25am, 5 minute before the security lines even opened. My flight to Minneapolis was quick, and then from Minneapolis to Seattle, our plane was upgraded to an A330 (quite a bigger plane). The best part about this, free on-demand movies! By Sunday afternoon, I was home and then practicing Yoga at Shakti.

So – conference summary. There was an increased presence of parallel computing papers and sessions. This was a welcome development. As someone who interviews a lot of candidates, I don’t see enough people with good parallel / multi-threaded programming skills. When I (hopefully some day soon) make it back to academics, I will consider some of the parallel first approaches to programming.

Mostly, I enjoyed being in the conference environment again. This was the first major conference that I’ve been to since OOPSLA 2007 (Montreal). I will be back at SIGCSE 2011 (I am the conference Webmaster again). Our Web site is up and running already, visit us at http://www.sigcse.org/sigcse2011/.

All of my pictures from SIGCSE 2010 are on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39245109@N05/sets/72157623597468116/

The Downsides of Travel

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I left Seattle 16 hours ago, but I’m still not in Milwaukee.  My first flight arrived on time, I enjoyed my first visit to Minneapolis.  Second flight took off on time, but then we started circling.  We spent about 45 minutes circling above madison Wisconsin, only to find out that we can’t land in Milwaukee.  It was too foggy there, and the transponder on the ground was, well, broken.  So they fired up the engines, and we headed to Detroit.   We landed in Detroit around 11:30pm (EST at this point).   Luckily, they are going to turn the plan around at 8:30 am and try again for Milwaukee. With the time difference, we should get there just after 8:30am.

Now, I just have to see if the shuttle agency honors my reservation and payment from last night.  And, more importantly, see if my luggage arrives.  I was forced to check my luggage at the last minute due to the overhead bins being full.  I just want to put this out there for the airlines: I would give up the privilege of carrying on a bag, if you let me check it for free.  Just saying.

And now to McDonald’s.  Delta gave out meal vouchers, good for $7 towards breakfast at the airport.  McDonald’s was the first to open this morning, so I went there. I ordered a meal that should have been about $5.  After getting my food, and looking at the receipt, I saw that they had upsized my meal to get it as close to $7 as possible.  They made my meal a large and added an extra hash brown.  I don’t know if they do this to everyone, but one or all, it is unethical.  Sorry McDonald’s, I’ll be calling your corporate office and Delta’s corporate office when I get a chance.  This behavior is not truthful and is not ethical.  If it is a one time thing, great, now you know it happened.  It it is systematic, then I hope you will address it.

Ok – back to setting in the airport.

SIGCSE 2010

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For the last 15 or so months, I’ve been the Webmaster for SIGCSE 2010 (http://www.sigcse.org/sigcse2010).  SIGCSE stands for the Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education.  Most of my publications are in the computer science education area, so I’m excited to be able to go.  I’ve never actually had a publication at SIGCSE, but have had 2 conference papers at ITICSE 2007 (associated conference) and have had a publication in the SIGCSE bulletin.

Since I do hope to shift my career back to academics at some point, I’m also going to be on the look out for CS departments that are hiring. Maybe there is a need for someone with my background :)

Being the Webmaster for a conference is a lot of work. Requests for updates come from a lot of different people, and there is just a lot of information to collect, parse, format, and post (all at the right times). Apparently I enjoyed doing it, because I am performing the same role next year.  I’ve already go the 2011 site up and running, http://www.sigcse.org/sigcse2011.

I’ve got a full Yoga schedule tonight, but I’ll be flying out tomorrow and enjoying the west of the week at the symposium! I’ve even found a Yoga class to check out when I’m in Milwaukee.

Disneyland Pictures

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We had a wonderful time in Disneyland last weekend.   The parks are very manageable (compared to the size of Disney World).   So, it was nice to be able to do everything we wanted to do in just two days (including riding a lot of rides twice: space mountain, big thunder mountain, the matterhorn, haunted mansion, and buzz lightyear).

The lines were ok.  Saturday early evening was a little crazy, but other than that it was ok.   We saw the Fireworks both nights (9:25, but the park was open until midnight).   And then Sunday morning, the park wasn’t supposed to open until 10am, but it was open early…  So we went in and knocked out a few rides early.

Also, on Saturday, we had 6 free Fastpasses (Disney’s system that lets you head to the front of the line).   This helped a lot!   We were able to avoid a lot of line waiting.

Fun time! great weather.   All pictures are here -> http://picasaweb.google.com/mike.helmick/Disneyland#

Birthday Weekend!

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Not my brithday… Cortny’s birthday is coming up (Sunday)!  Happy Birthday!

We’ve got a very exciting and fun filled birthday weekend planned…. Disneyland!   We’ll be spending 2 short days in California with Mickey and the gang.

That’s all for now – I’m sure we’ll have more to say after we actually go.

Alaska Cruise, Victoria, B.C. (Day 7)

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Canada, eh?

So all non-US-flagged ships have to stop in Canada when transporting passengers from the US to the US.   Therefore, we made a port call in Victoria, B.C., Canada.    This was actually the third time we have visited Victoria (in the last year for that matter).  We went once with my parents and once when I attended a conference there.    Originally, we were planning on staying on the ship and enjoying it while other people were ashore.   Well, it turns out that this was totally unnecessary.   The ship NEVER felt crowded, Celebrity does a really good job on this front.   And it was a beautiful day in Victoria, so we had to walk around a bit.  (All pictures from Day 7)

We started the day with a galley tour (we were very lucky to get this tour, it is not often given).   I’ll have pictures of this in my next post.   After lunch we both had massages (that we scheduled the first night).   I had the 4 hands massage (2 massage therapists).   Since they are working at the same time, for the same length as a regular massage, you get double the massage!  Totally awesome.  Since it was a port day, our massage treatments were discounted.   It makes a lot of sense to save your spa treatments for the port days.

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Alaska Cruise, At Sea (Day 6)

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Ok, so Day six was a lot of fun, but it doesn’t have a lot of pictures to go with it.  We left Juneau around 6pm the day before, and day 6 was spent cruising in the open water.   It was a long way from from Juneau to Victoria, we didn’t really hit the Canadian inside passage until day 7.  (All day 6 pictures - http://picasaweb.google.com/mike.helmick/AlaskaCruise2009InsidePassageDay6)

There was some beautiful scenery along the coast, but mostly we just enjoyed the ship.   Day 6 was the day that we made reservations for our 2010 trip to the Galapagos, and also the day that we took our photo tour of the ship (a future blog post).

In the afternoon, I participated in the ship’s version of The Weakest Link.  I did pretty good, making it to the finals, but I lost (got second, whatever).

This day was also our second formal night.  It was fun to get all dressed up, since it is something we don’t do very often.  So not much to say, but we had fun.

One more day left to write about, and then I’ll have to find something else to say.

Alaska Cruise, Juneau (Day 5)

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Short delay between posts, but here we go.   After our at sea visit to Hubbard Glacier, we docked the next morning in Juneau, Alaska.   Alaska’s capital city is a pretty small town, only 30,000 residents.   Our highlight here was visiting the Sled Dog Musher’s Camp.  As usual, if you just want to jump to the pictures, they are all just below this sentence, or viewable on picasaweb.

The skyline of Juneau is quite similar to the skyline of Ketchikan.   Old west looking storefronts that cater to tourists.   Lots of jewelry stores again, so we just bypassed those again.

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Cortny in front of Sarah's house.

Our sled dog excursion was about 2 hours after we docked, so we did our walking around the town first.  Shortly after debarking in Juneau, we saw a sign for the state capital and the governor’s house, so we decided to head up there.    To prove it, here is Cortny in front of the Alaska governor’s mansion.  Of course, nobody was home.

On the way back to the pier (to catch our excursion) we went by a Subway.  You know Subway, the home of the 5, 5 dollar, 5 dollar footlong.   Well in Alaska, that would be a 7 dollar footlong.   Now, I’m not surprised that subs cost 40% more in Alaska (everything has to arrive in Juneau on a weekly barge), but the advertising is funny.   They still have the same picture, a guy holding out is hand with 5 fingers extended… and a 7 in the middle.    Well, being form the lower 48, thought it was funny.

After arriving back at the pier, we met up with our excursion group (2 other people).   We took a short ride to the musher’s camp.   It was a nice little bus ride, very scenic.

Immediately on arrival, we boarded the wheeled cart and were pulled through the woods for about 10 minutes by a team of 16 dogs.   The cart weighted 500 pounds and was holding 6 people.   These dogs are strong and use these summer tours as their training for winder sled dog races.

Rather than blabbing on about it – I will say that it was awesome!   The dogs are amazing, and it was cool to see a real training camp, and not some commercial tourist trap (they didn’t even have a gift shop).   I put together this view to show how cool it was!