California

My job sent me to California again. This is the second time I've been sent out on business, and the second time it has been to Pasadena. And guess what? Next week, I'm going back for another meeting. Three business trips, three times to Pasadena... At least the weather this time was much better; the last time I went it rained the whole time. This was much more like how I would expect southern California to feel.

I went for the 38th annual DPS meeting. I sat behind a table, talking to the occasional passers by, but mostly took advantage of the fact that a bunch of other people from the PDS, not just the SBN, who work elsewhere in the country were there, and I got a bunch of good ideas for my search engine.

Thursday night I went out with my boss, Bill Knopf, the head of the PDS, and a few other coworkers. We went to pick up Bill's friend, Rob, who has a recording studio on Los Angeles, and while we were at his house Stevie Wonder came by to pick up a hard drive (Rob handles Stevie's music hardware.) Stevie Wonder was suprisengly interested in astronomy, and we were all trying to figure out in our heads the math for the distance, speed and time of a few space probes. After Stevie left we got a tour of the recording studio, which was in this guys house, and it was impressive. I didn't bother counting how many computers, keyboards, sequencers, mixers, etc. he had there, but there were a few rooms full of the stuff. After the tour, the executive vice president of Sony came by to pick something up, and we talked with him for a while about the computer animation software they're using, particularly the "fur algorithm" used in open season. Unfortunately he didn't reveal any trade secrets I could go sell to their competitors. After he left the rest of us went to dinner, a good restaurant but an anticlimax from the rest of the night, and talked mostly about music... turns out basicaly everybody I work with either plays some instrument, conducts, or in some way does music-stuff in their free time. Go figure.

Friday afternoon before my flight I went to visit Allison, a childhood friend (her parents and my parents are friends, and we used to all go to the outer banks every summer when we were kids.) She's going to law school at UCLA. We got lunch, caught up for a while, then I had to go catch my flight.

I got sick at some point on this trip, and flying with a cold did a number on my ears. I'm just getting over it now, so I'm not looking forward to next weeks trip.

Glossary:
DPS: Division for Planetary Sciences, a part of the AAS
AAS: American Astronomical Society
PDS: Planetary Data System, a division of NASA
SBN: Small Bodies Node, a part of the PDS
ME: trying to sound important