In other news

I'm flying back to Pittsburgh from San Diego today. I've been in San Diego since Monday night, for Design Automation Conference (http://www.dac.com/), the most important conference in my research area.

I didn't have a presentation in the conference per se, but my advisor set up a number of meetings with people in industry that he knows so I could pitch my research to them. The idea was to try to get feedback, and possibly resources (data, money, etc.). Despite many of the conference sessions not being very interesting, it was a pretty productive week.

Each day for lunch a grad student colleague of mine, Alex, and our advisor Professor Thomas, went out for lunch in the Gaslamp Quarter in downtown San Diego. The mexican food was great, and I ate as much fish as I could. Hopefully I won't return with mercury poisoning.

While there I had a chance to go out with Sarina's good friend from UCSD, Karina. We had sushi in Mission Beach and walked on the beach for a while.

It was a lovely evening, and we stayed on the beach until sunset. I've never lived near the ocean. There have always been rivers or lakes nearby, but they don't hold the attraction for me that the ocean does. The draw was particular last night.

I also heard this week that I'll be presenting my work at a conference in Austria this October (http://www.codes-isss.com). I'm very excited about that, since it'll be my first conference presentation and is also a significant milestone on my path to preparing my dissertation proposal. We're also hoping that Sarina and Micah will be able to come along. It's hard to pass up an opportunity to go to Austria.