Sean's Blog

After my alone time on Saturday, which included the events of my previous post and then some LotRO, we had the opening dinner/get-together at the UNB Student Union.  For entertainment at the gathering, there was a local group of young Irish dancers who performed for us.  This was the one point where I broke a rule of ResNet: always have your camera.  As a result, I have no pictures of the event. Following the get-together, there was yet another trip downtown, this time with a larger group of ResNetters.  I came back to campus early with Chris, and it appears I missed the run in some of the ResNetters had with a bacholrette party.  There’s always some crazy story that comes from ResNet though.

With the coming of Sunday, it meant that I would actually have to go to a session or two, which is fine, since that’s why I’m here.  Prior to the sessions was the keynote, given by Stephen Downes, which was good at the beginning, but got a bit “meh” towards the end, as I’ve heard about Web 2.0 enough, and I don’t think we needed some of the explanations he was giving.  The interesting thing about his presentation was that he had a a form on his site where you could post a comment, and another page that would then refresh to the next comment every 10 seconds.  I’ll proudly say that I was the first to type in the URL and get the first comment in.  There were a number of amusing items posted, including someone typing out a Rickroll.

Today was the presentation that Jim and I had worked on called “Pros and Cons of Computer Requirements (or lack thereof)”, which was really more of a panel discussion that involved the audience, as we didn’t quite have enough content for a full presentation, which is fine.  We said our piece in about 20 minutes, and then had a discussion for the next 30 minutes or so.  Needless to say, I was glad to have it done.

This afternoon, Jim, Chris, and I went walking on some trails downtown, including a walking bridge that used to be a railroad.  I took some pictures of the trip, and I swear I’ll put them up on flickr sometime, just not now.  After walking the 6-point-something-almost-7 miles, I’m glad to have my shoes off an have had a shower.  Now to lay down and either play something on the DS Lite or take a nap for a bit until it’s time to decide on something for dinner, which will once again be something local downtown, as we’re on our own for food tonight.

Just to recap, my father passed away on Thursday, June 21, the day before I left for the ResNet conference in San Diego, CA. There were flight delays in O’Hare, so I had to get routed a different way, which delayed my travel time by another 3 or 4 hours. On the second day of the conference, I started to get sick with the common cold, and that really prevented me from doing much of anything exciting while I was there.

Fast forward to Wednesday, June 27, the day I was supposed to head back to Toledo so that I could head to Wickliffe for my father’s services. I learned from this experience to never go through O’Hare or fly on American Airlines. Ever. The flight from San Diego to O’Hare got delayed and then canceled, which resulted in a mad dash to get a ticket on a different flight. About an hour later, I had a ticket to Salt Lake City and then to Cleveland through Delta; at 6:15 the next morning, and I’d get to Cleveland at about 4:00 PM. Needless to say, I was going to miss the first viewing for my father. Once I called my wife to let her know what was going on, and I found out my father’s mother passed away.

Well, you know what they say:

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At least that was the end of dealing with everything major. We dropped Ryan off at the airport on Tuesday evening, and got back to Bowling Green at about 8 PM. The next day was July 4, so it was nice to spend the night in my own bed and to sleep in, especially after getting up early most days I was in Wickliffe. Thankfully I already had July 5 and 6 scheduled off for vacation, because there would be no way I would be able to function if I had to be at work. Now I’m catching up on the multiple things I need taken care of after being away from home for almost 2 weeks.

I have some stuff to post, such as a flickr set form the RCC office move, but that’ll probably go up in a couple days.

I’m at UCSD for the 2007 ResNet Symposium. Right now I’m sitting in a session about social networks, mainly Facebook, and may have some items to post about it and other sessions as the conference goes on.

On a sadder note, I found out over the noon hour on Thursday that my father had passed away moments before hand. As a result, I’ll be heading back to Wickliffe the day after I get back from the conference.

So it goes.