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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.
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#
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.
We had a pretty full weekend. Yesterday we went to The Puyallup Fair (thefair.com). It seems like it is the state fair (at least for 4H), with dozens of rides, and dozens of dozens of food booths.
The real highlight of our weekend:
Mt. St. Helens from Johnston Ridge
We’ve been talking about it for a while, and finally set aside the day (possibly one of the last good days of the year for it). We drove south on I-5, making the 3 1/2 trip to Mt. St. Helens. There are many observation points along the way, but the highlight is the Johnston Ridge Observatory.
The site is just amazing. In the picture above, we are about 5 miles from the peak of St. Helens. You can clearly see the crater left from the 1980 eruption. The volcanic memorial site is way bigger than I had expected. There seems to be mile upon mile of hiking trails, even down into the valley. Had we been properly prepared, we would have ventured on a little further.
I highly recommend the trip. Just an amazing site. Beautiful scenery on the way, and you get to witness the true power of the earth.
Speaking of which (another recommendation coming). Last night we watched “Galapagos” from the BBC. Wow. The documentary itself was beautifully shot (we watched the Blu-ray version). The subject mater, just amazing. I feel privileged just to have reservations to visit the Galapagos next year. To see the origin of “The Origin of Species” and to witness first hand how evolution has played out through adaptation, will be a once in a lifetime experience. I clearly have lots of studying to do before we go.
Yesterday we took another little road trip. We drove out east (about 40 minutes) to Snoqualmie. The highlight of the trip was the waterfall.
The falls are 268 ft high. It is quite a drop. They falls aren’t very wide (although we hear they are fuller at different times of the year). Probably most impressively, the water seems to just hit the surface below and just scatter all over the place. This creates a lot of mist, which was supplemented by rain yesterday.
There is a nice observation area at the top of the falls. Then there is a 1/2 mile trail that goes down to the river. The trail is pretty steep, but it was a fun walk. At the bottom, there is another observation platform. And then…. you have to walk 1/2 mile uphill gaining 268 feet of elevation. It was a fun hike both ways, but the rain was really pouring down on the way back up.
We got into the car and headed back towards the town of Snoqualmie. On the way we passed a cool old train, and thought – hey, can we ride that? It turns out that you can. So we went to the Northwest Railway Museum, bought tickets, and rode the train to North Bend and back. The train also goes to the top of the falls, great view.
The train ride was followed up by a very yummy (and a little spendy) dinner at Woodman Lodge in Snoqualmie. It is actually a really nice restaurant, and we’ll keep it in mind for a place that we can take future guests.
This post may get lengthy, and will contain a bunch of pictures. That is the way it goes, when you are giving a photo tour. Click continue reading to see the tour. I also wanted to get this out earlier, but it is better late than never.
Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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.
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.
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!
I scanned the daily newsletter, “Celebrity Today”, from our cruise. Each night, they publish a newsletter for the next day that contains all kinds of fun information. Anyways – here they are. I will try and get back to describing the trip and sharing pictures tomorrow.
Download the PDF (15mb-ish)
