Christmas 2009 - Part 2

On Christmas eve at Apex there is always a celebration in the evening.

While waiting for the main event Natalie was climbing partway up the ski run and then sliding down it on her butt. I tried it but apparently my ass is not as slippery.

The event involves skiers going down the mountain single file in many S shapes carrying torches. They then stop in two lines at the bottom of the hill and light up the area...

...for Santa Claus who arrives via ski runner groomer machine thing. He then sits by the Christmas tree and gives out gifts to good girls and boys.

There's also a giant bonfire that they lit with a blowtorch and some free hot chocolate.

The next morning was Christmas morning and we woke up extra early because Natalie, Ben and I were going skiing again.

We opened presents before hitting the slopes again.
Emily and mom did some tubing down the hill in the afternoon.

Farley and dad joined us in the afternoon for a half day of skiing. We had skied most of the runs on the mountain but I wasn't bored of it. It was great to figure out what the best runs were by trial and error.


That evening we went in the hot tub a bunch more times and played some more family games. The next day we packed up and drove off to Kelowna. We got to my aunt's house but only my grandpa was there so we went out to do some grocery shopping and a few other chores. It was boxing day so any parking lot in front of a store was jam packed. We parked in front of a Save-On foods and went to the food court of a nearby mall for lunch while mom went in to get groceries. When we returned we found out the grocery store was actually closed for the day.

Back at my aunt's, she gave us directions to a place we were going to house sit. It was a pretty nice place with some bunnies in the backyard that the girls got to feed. We had dinner at my aunt's and then watched a movie before returning to the house for the night.

The next day my aunt and grandpa came over and we went for a walk in a nearby park.

One of the trees in the park must have been attacked by some very festive squirrels or some of the birds that forgot to fly south because it was all decorated.

My brothers and sisters were walking on the ice of a pond and looking at all the fish swimming underneath. After the walk my family went to the new pool in town for a swim. They had a circular channel with a pretty strong current, a wave pool, three water slides and a wave simulator where you could practice surfing of boogie boarding.

The next day my family went up to Big White for some skiing but not before dropping me off at the Greyhound for my trip home. I came back to town a couple days early to play a lot of board games with my friends. We had a 24 hour board game marathon!

Christmas 2009

I spent this Christmas at Apex ski resort near Penticton with 7/8s of my immediate family (Rebecca couldn't make it because she had to work). We did the same thing 3 years ago and it was lots of fun. Since we had a seat free in the jam packed van we were also driving my grandpa to my aunts for Christmas.

We picked him up at the Tsawwassen ferry first. His boat was kind of late. We were playing a game we call Travel bingo where you have to see things from the car. We lost a cube a long time ago and so my dad had made one to replace it but it was just made of paper. Unfortunately when I got out of the van at the ferry that paper block must have blown away in the wind. Oh well, an easier game for me.

Next we drove non-stop to Abbotsford where we got some cheap gas. Then it was on towards Penticton. When I got bored of the travel game I did a couple hours of work on my laptop for the hospital.

We arrived in Penticton around 4pm and checked into this motel on the shore of Okanagan lake. My parents went out to do some grocery shopping, get dinner, and drop my grandpa off with my aunt while Natalie, Emily, Ben and I played some RoboRally. It's a new game I just bought the day before that involves programming robots using cards like "Move 3", "Rotate Left" and "U-Turn". You try and reach flags on the board while pushing and shooting other people's robots. It was lots of fun and we ended up playing 4 times during the trip.

Then the parents returned and Dad had pizza! We devoured it pretty quickly with Natalie somehow eating 6 pieces. The next morning we packed everything back in the van and drove up to Apex.

It turned out we couldn't check into our condo until 4pm, so we rented some skates and went over to the ice loop through the forest.

I suck at skating but if you're skating (and not playing hockey),
this loop is much better than a boring rectangular rink. They even had a Zamboni that went around it.

Finally we got to check into our condo and the place was pretty awesome. They had upgraded us although it mostly gave us things we didn't need like an extra living room and kitchen downstairs. It was on three floors and since I slept on the bottom floor and the living room we used was at the top there was a lot of stair climbing.

It also had a hot tub on the porch with a view of the mountain. The hot tub was crazy steamy I guess because of the cold mountain air and low ceiling of the porch. Sometime it was not easy to see the person sitting across from you because of the steam. At the same time we couldn't turn it to any temperature other than 100.

The next morning we woke up early and all 7 of us strapped on our skis and took to the slopes. It was a decent weather day and the mountain was pretty empty. There weren't really any lines for the chair lifts.
I always seem to be surprised by the great views from the top of ski hills. I also hate how I can't seem to capture the distance you can see with my camera. I mean the mountain is no Whistler but you can still see for miles.

The mountain is pretty small as ski hills go, with just 2 chairlifts and a t-bar but I still had a blast and not having to drive up to the mountain in the morning was great.

We got a group shot at the top of the hill but we were looking right into the sun so that's the reason for my expression. I should have left my goggles on.

I'll post sometime later about the second half of the trip.

Faces

Well I should post about my Christmas vacation but I've taken forever to organize my photos because I've started using iPhoto's face recognition and I've been busy tagging people. It's hilarious how wrong it can be in guessing names to faces and what it thinks is a face.

Anyways, I just got back today on the Greyhound from Kelowna. There's no damn stop in Surrey so I had to take the local bus from Langley.

I left with my family on Tuesday, Dec 22nd and we made it to Penticton where we stayed the night in a motel and dropped off my grandpa for my aunt to pick up and drive to her place in Kelowna. The next morning we went up to Apex for our skiing adventure.

After spending christmas at Apex we traveled to Kelowna where we house sat for some people on vacation. Their house had a mysteriously similar layout to our old house in Dawson. They also had some bunnies in the backyard that my sister took care of. We had boxing day dinner with my grandpa and my aunt at her place. It was all lots of fun. I'll go into more detail later sometime.

New Orleans

So now that I'm done my class I actually have time to write another one of these. This is really late, but here it goes.

I was supposed to arrive in New Orleans Friday night, but due to missing my connection I slept in the Houston airport and got into New Orleans around 11am. None of my coworkers were at the bed and breakfast so I left my stuff there and walked through the streets of the French Quarter and then along the water to downtown where the conference was.

The walk along the Mississippi river was great and we did it many times over the next few days. The bridge in the distance is where we had to walk to.

I met up with my coworkers at our booth at the conference. We were demonstrating two software programs, one of which I created and our tactile belt. It's a belt that the anesthesiologist wears during the operation. It vibrates in four places depending on which medical parameter has changed and has four different patterns of vibration depending on the direction and magnitude of the change.

Here's me on the poster pretending to be a doctor.

The exhibit room was mostly full of commercial exhibits and looked like a mini-city. There was lots of give aways including ice cream, fresh baked cookies, and smoothies.

A Canal street, where the street car runs along the middle.

One day we took the ferry across the river where it was pretty dead.
It looked like a lot of people had not come back after the hurricane.

There was one front yard over there that had a banana tree growing in the front.

I had my birthday while we were there and that night we went to the Acme Oyster House. While waiting in line, a couple guys went and got Big Ass Beers for everyone from Bourbon street. Unfortunately by the time we got back they were ready to seat us, and we couldn't take the beer in. It being my birthday I downed my beer, but most people drank about half and then threw the rest away.

Later that night we went to a bar where there was a couple piano players. One had a MacBook while the other was using an iPod Touch to go through the songs. Ah, technology.

Bourbon street during the day. Well, you can't see much here, but it's really too explicit to show.

A monument to the hurricane Katrina victims.

This street car ran along the river.

On the last night there we got to see some Jazz music. This band had nine instruments.

New Orleans was a much better place to visit than Atlantic City. I had a smaller role at the conference and most of the exhibits were well out of my area of expertise but it was still useful to be there and connect with people interested in our work. Some folks at the national US level want to work with my software to build knowledge rules.

My next trip starts soon as I travel with my family to Apex for skiing at christmas.

VisWeek Conference

I was in Atlantic City to attend VisWeek 2009 which is three conferences in one: VAST (Visual Analytics, Science and Technology), InfoVis and Vis. I was presenting for my research group at VAST and I was also volunteering at VisWeek so that registration and hotel were much cheaper.

I arrived on Sunday morning and missed volunteer training Saturday night so I had to get caught up on Sunday morning but it was pretty quick. There wasn't much you needed to know to do the job. Sunday I had two tasks: registration and then the poster area.

This is the poster area which was in front of the registration desk. At registration we had a lot of people come by looking for free home depot coupons. We had to point them down the hall. They were pretty easy to pick out from the conference goers. At one point a lady came up and asked for "scotch" with some European accent. I had seen her name tag as a member of the conference but the other guy had not. He tried to tell her this wasn't part of the casino, but I cut in and asked "Do you mean scotch tape?" and luckily she did.

On Monday morning VAST started and I had to give a one minute fast forward preview presentation along with everyone else presenting. I was so nervous I froze up halfway through, but I had a cue card and the ten sentences ingrained in my head so I got through it. Unfortunately I don't think we got the laugh we wanted. This is the room where I presented. The sessions of VAST were pretty interesting but the topics varied quite a bit. I think there was more useful talks for me at InfoVis. The part of our software that I am working on is the InfoVis part so it makes sense.

On Tuesday morning I had to present and I was still quite nervous but I sat up in front of everyone well the guy before me presented so I think I became less nervous by the time I had to speak. I was told I did a great job presenting and during the rest of the week a few people came up to me and wanted to know more about our work. Andrew, another student from our lab took this shot of me while I presented.

After my presentation and a few after, I went out to lunch with my two supervisors for my masters and the keynote speaker for the following day for InfoVis and Vis. He's also the author of one of the text books used in my class. Apparently he has been in the Antarctic tracking whales. They stick tags on them with suction cups to track their movements for about a day before the tag falls off.

On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning I did a lot of volunteering but was able to catch some InfoVis talks in between or sometimes while volunteering, since there was one volunteer in each room. I got to meet some other student volunteers from around the US and other parts of the world and I got to talk to some people whose papers I'd read. I went out for dinner with another one of the professors from my school, a couple students from my lab and a guy who worked on some software I'd used called Tableau. It was good to be able to talk to him about some new things in the software that I had read a paper on that were related to our project. He also gave me a geeky Tableau t-shirt that says "Party with your data".

On Wednesday night was the reception dinner. It was the Vis conferences 20th anniversary so there was lots of jokes made that you had to have been around a long time to get. There was also a fashion show involving some of the other volunteers strutting across stage wearing previous versions of the conference shirt.

On Thursday night there was the student volunteer party. One of the guys in charge of the conference had this large room as part of his hotel suite and we had it for the evening. We were also given lots of alcohol, pizza and wings. Some fun mingling and chatting ensued and I met people from all over.

All in all the conference was an excellent experience and one I'd like to repeat. It happens every year in October, but if I finish my masters in the planned amount of time then I will be done by the next conference. This means it'd be super expensive to go since the student registration price is cheaper and plus you have to be a student to volunteer. However if something comes up in January like an internship I may not finish by then. We'll see. We have plenty of papers we could write about our software.

Atlantic City

I arrived in Atlantic City at 2am on Sunday October 11th after a long day of travel that mostly involved waiting.

Here is the view from my hotel room in the morning.

Here's the tower I was staying in. It's pretty old but I have no complaints about the room. Then again, I wasn't in the room very much. Sunday morning and early afternoon was the only time during the trip that I had to explore Atlantic City while it was nice and sunny.

My hotel was on Park Place and a block in front of it, where Park Place meets the Boardwalk there was supposed to be a Monopoly monument, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Instead there was this Korean war memorial.

I went down to the beach as I'd never seen the Atlantic Ocean before. Unless you really like gambling I think this city must be more enjoyable in the summer when I know I would be swimming in the ocean every day.

The beach goes on for miles.

Between the beach and the boardwalk there are some sand dunes that I suppose are there to protect everything from flooding but they hide a view of the beach from the boardwalk and vice versa.

There's a mall that extends over the ocean called The Pier Shops at Caesars where Caesars is one of the big casinos. The casinos own a very large portion of anything located near the boardwalk. Anyways, at the far end of this mall is a water show called simply "The Show". The mall opens up on all three floors to allow people to look down on it.

It plays every hour on the hour and lasts for about 10 minutes. It consists of jets of water shooting up from this fountain where the lights change colour. It all goes to music including the jets changing height to look like waves and water falling from the ceiling.

Another casino along the boardwalk is Bally's which contains a wild west section. These buildings along the boardwalk are all fake. That is there is no way to get to the balconies above and if you enter at ground level you end up inside a huge lobby.

The lobby has these fake hills and cacti in the center of it. They like their big fake stuff in Atlantic City. The ceiling is painted and lit up to resemble a sky and another day when I passed through here it looked quite different. My roommate seemed to think that they must paint it with several layers of special paint and then just change the lighting, with the different layers each only responding to one type of light.

A block away from the boardwalk they again had fake hills but at least at this point there are some real trees and the building fronts are just painted on.

Another casino, Tropicana has this whole mall area done up to look like
you are walking outside through a street in some European village.

It's complete with giant statues. This is when we were looking for a pub or bar that wasn't completely devoid of life. It was a Wednesday night in October so it was tough.

Atlantic City also likes to go big. Behind these fake western buildings are huge towering hotels where the first couple floors are full of slot machines and table games.

Casino after casino line the boardwalk, all super huge. They all have pretty sweet views of the ocean too, if you happen to be on that side of the building.

I also got a chance to go to the White House submarine shop at one point. It was a really busy place around noon. I would have had to wait in a big line if I wanted a table. I had to take it and run back to my volunteering though. This place has had lots of famous people through it. There were photos on the wall of different people eating there including Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Grant, Ellen, and many more. They also claims to have invented the term submarine sandwich back in the 40's.

Buildings aren't the only big thing in Atlantic City. The food portions are also huge. I made the mistake of getting a whole sub and it turned out to be about a foot and a half. Carrying this thing back to the conference was like carrying a mini-light saber. It was quite good though, even if I ate it over a couple hours.