So I got a brand-new 32 inch Toshiba flat-screen TV for just $260 (for the Europeans, that’s about 190 EUR) instead of $340 … I think it’s an amazing deal. The way to get it without a line is to drive to a small shop in a small town which still has one or two Black Friday deals. In this case, it was a very small Radio Shack in Savoy, IL. Worked great!

The TV even has two HDMI and one VGA input. Actually, I’m not really using it as TV anyway, just as a very large (and cheap) monitor .

The movement is interesting and the Seattle one is especially noteworthy since the weather is really bad.

Well, well … very strange. Btw., the conference was absolutely great! Well, it was a bit too small (crowded) and the Party in the Space Needle was rather disastrous (reminded me a bit of the SC08 Texas thing without food). It was the opposite though this time — there was a lot of excellent food and drinks, but there was simply no space to stand. And getting up the needle was a 1-hour effort, well, Jim and I found a secret shortcut . Here is the proof:

SC11 is over now! And we even had a 1.5 hours break before SC12 started for the committee . It was a great show, bigger, better everything. ~5k people in the technical program and ~12k total.

PS: I know that Mount Rainier and the Space Needle can not fit on a picture like this … it’s called artistic freedom!

Original Source

We did two day-hikes that were not trivial. Unfortunately, I had my knee injured before but it was ok. On the first day, we climbed mount SI, acutally, we climbed from the bottom to the *very* top (the rock thing on the top!!). This was quite a hike. Approximately 4000 feet height difference and three hours walking (one way). The last climb was up a massive rock wall, it was very dangerous (adrenaline!) but also very impressive and nice. We beat the mountain!

The second day hike was to a large waterfall and a lake at the top of a mountain at Lake Serene. It was just stunningly beautiful even though I got a bit wet in the waterfall, and slipping was somewhat dangerous too .

Here is the GPS tracking of our Lake Serene hike (my new phone rocks!):

Here are some pictures:

Well, I was very surprised! The hotel was just amazing and the landscape even more. I would have never believed that such large cacti exist! I mean – wow! And they’re hundreds of years old. The pool was also amazing, during the day it was full of “tourists” and at night, many computer scientists accumulated around (and in) it . It was really nice!

The conference was amazingly well organized. Actually, this was one of the best (if not *the* best) conference I visited since a long time! Congratulations Dave!

Here are some pictures:

The other nice things was that it was effectively light until 12am. It’s really weird when you step out of a bar at 11pm and it’s like noon …. well, one weird thing was that all the natives seem to be drunk after 10pm for some reason. As I said, a strange place!

The conference was amazing! It seemed to me as if I knew every other person. And the IPDPS 25th anniversary show and Moose and Awards sessions were just great (with the right people around ).

This year, I was chairing the HIPS workshop there which also went extremely well! We had 58 attendees during the (excellent) keynote of John Mellor-Crummey!

Unfortunately, I had barely time to visit the wildlife, but we made a small trip. Here are some pictures to get an impression of Alaska (it’s basically like the Alps, nothing too special).

Interestingly, it wasn’t all that cold, around 12-15 degree Celsius. A fun fact is that Monday was colder in Champaign (10 degree Celsius) than in Alaska (14 degree Celsius) .

Yes, I have been there! Eklutna lake, near Anchorage!

Mountains …

More mountains …

View on the city (small, isn’t it?)

Even more mountains …

(Thanks to Jens and Thomas for the pictures, I forgot my camera …!)

My flight was in the afternoon of the last day and nobody else was around that afternoon . Well, so I decided to take the local commuter train to Mexico ($2.50 each way ). It’s pretty cool, one usually doesn’t walk across international borders like this. The funny thing was that nobody cared when I walked into Mexico (the officer was sleeping), however, the controls to get back in the US were extremely strict so that there was a line of at least 1000 people and I would have missed my plane if I wouldn’t have walked to the front of the line (which worked surprisingly well).

Here are some pictures:

Apparently, the parking Lot and Mexico are the same direction

Glad that I didn’t come by car, seems like there are more serious controls.

The famous US-Mexican border, well, not too spectacular.

Walking through those prison-bar things is actually fun, and they twist rather fast if you want .

The border stone, not sure why it says something about water commission there??

The only Mexican guard (the immigration officer was sleeping on his chair a bit further but they didn’t want me to take pictures. Too bad. Btw., this guy had a G3 *lol*.

Very very inviting … really. I read that many people are robbed in this area.

But they had a gigantic flag! Viva la Mexico!

Well, time to go home (there was really not much to see actually — but the food was just *awesome*. I love *real* Mexican food now! Cilantro is not that bad if it’s used in the right combination.). Those signs were actually very helpful for dumb tourists like me.

Taco Bell has a branch in Mexico. If they know?

Probably Tijuana’s main sight, well, kinda sad but it’s humongous and the steel rods make funny noises in the wind.

Again, good that I didn’t go by car, the line into the US was hideous and sneaking to the front seems harder by car .

All-in-all an experience that I didn’t want to miss. I didn’t have much time though, but I guess Tijuana is not that touristy in general .

Generally, I really enjoyed SC this year, I have had so many meetings that I was barely able to check the show-floor for goodies. New Orleans was also great (well, my hotel was, let’s say “suboptimal”, but it was very cheap). I’m looking forward to next year!