RSSParty Crashing
March 28, 2004 By Jesse Doerr @ 4:59 pm
I guess I can say that spring break is officially done for me now. According to my school it was done two weeks ago, but a 40 hour work week just didn’t feel like much of a break. To make up for it I jumped on a plane this last week and flew down to San Antonio. What a nice town. I mean I came in at 11 pm and it was still 83 out. I really need to find somewhere warm to go for grad school.
The flights down were fairly uneventful. (If you discount the miss-printed tickets, lost luggage, and a strip search due to a packet of syrup in my pocket.) We got in and out of Cedar Rapids quickly and the bags that made it were waiting for us by the time we got to the baggage carousel.
Waking up the next morning and going to the conference wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t that much of a burden when the couple hundred dollars of free stake, Italian, and Mexican food that I ate in the next couple days is considered. All of our presentations went well. A few people even managed to wander over to the second building where two of our three presentations were stuck.
Despite my best efforts, I didn’t once end up in jail or get free money this entire trip. The town was hopping with a variety of events and conferences. I had an interesting time when I poked my head into the Oil Industry’s conference for a couple minuets. The PR department of Petrobras is something to be admired. I’ve never knew before that I could look at graphs demonstrating the complete destruction of our Oceans and think “Wow, good for them for dumping less oil this year than last.” But I did get a nice new air freshener, so I guess that makes up for all that.
As I had hoped, I was able to see the Alamo. I am still unclear whether there is a body of water that bears the same name, but the one I found is a building complex with not too tall walls. From my vague notion of US history (and previews from [http://www.thealamofilm.com/ the movie] that came out last night) I am under the impression that this building was attacked at some time or other. I can only think that it would have made less history and worked better as a fort if the walls had been built higher. Perhaps even high enough so I wouldn’t be able to walk up to them, grasp the top, and climb over. But then again, what do I know about this kind of thing?
Something I do have more experience with now is crashing world premiere parties. (Or trying to at least) Enticed by the sight of a cow leading the procession of celebrities and dignitaries down the yellow carpet, I tried my damndest to find some way to get onto the other side of the crowds and into the party. Celebrities don’t really excite me much (though I did get a couple pictures off) I was more interested in the piles of food and buckets of drink. But it was all in vain, pleas of forgetting my card inside got me no closer to getting across the barricade than improvising my own pass out of a key chain, shoe lace, and hotel phone directory. (It looked the same from the back, it just didn’t quite pass muster when you looked at the side where the pass was supposed to be.) So instead of watching the fireworks surrounded by celebrities, munching on free food, I found myself on a street corner ooh-ing and aaah-ing with a biker gang. Maybe I got the better deal in the end after all.