Fri 13 Nov 2009

There are bears in Portland!

Today was the first day of my trip to Portland, Oregon, to attend the Supercomputing 2009 Conference as part of the San Diego Supercomputer Center. My trip has started off a little rough, since the hard drive of my laptop broke during the night. Fortunately, I backed up all of my data, and my beautiful, extremely capable wife FedEx'ed the back drive to me right away, and I'll have the data tomorrow.

My flight was quiet, but the landing was a little bumpy--and I wasn't very surprised by how cold it was in the morning. After I landed, I took the MAX Light Rail to downtown, and walked to my hotel. Imagine my surprise when I was walking down the street in Portland, and I saw a bear catching a fish! I tried to be careful as I went by, because I think this was a mama bear getting food for her cubs...

This wasn't the only animal family, either! Close by were a pair of deer, and some otters!

None of the animals bothered me, so after I visited the Apple store, and then a really, really helpful place called The Mac Store, I made it onto the show floor. Lots of people were already there, working hard setting up their booths. Here's what mine looked like as I was unpacking my computers and displays:

Right now, things don't look much different. The enclosure will be built in the morning, and Warren and Susan will unpack the furniture. I unpacked one of the couches so that I could make myself a little office, and settled in to get the Linux cluster that drives the panels working.

All the simple work is done, so I'm heading back to my hotel to have dinner, and get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow will be exciting, but I really wish I could be home to see my son's soccer game, and go to the party afterward. But I know that he and his mommy will have a good time.

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