almost home

i'm sitting in an airport in l.a. waiting for my last flight to get back home. it's late, of course. i realized something on this trip: i'm very, very tired of traveling. i really enjoyed those couple of months of home time and i think i'm going to try and take as much of this year at home as possible. maybe get back on the travel horse again next year.

but i've had enough sitting in airport lounges, which is what i'm doing right now while catching up on email somewhat. a few minutes ago some random fellow walked up and started asking me questions about laptop power cables. i'm pretty sure i'm not wearing my "will answer your computer questions" shirt today, too. yep, i'm wearing my "i'll try being nicer if you try being smarter" shirt. one wonders how overt one needs to be before people leave you alone. ;)

as brad noted, my plasma presentation materials are up online for viewing. the l.c.a people do a really good job of that stuff. it's one of those conferences where the content quality is really high, the organization very smooth and generally good stuff happens.

as an unrelated side thought: when a fully clothed person comes to you and says, "i'm hungry" it is not a useful reply to say, "here's a shirt. problem solved!" the issue isn't that they are lacking clothes, it's that they are lacking food. addressing a serious question or concern by providing an unrelated but otherwise useful response is just not helpful. i see this odd pattern of behaviour so often in the world around me that i begin to wonder whether people are just not understanding the questions or if they are seriously happy to pretend to fix hunger by passing out clothing. personally, i expect intelligent people to do better than that.

final unrelated side thought: i picked up a book of short stories by Roald Dahl. i knew Dahl from his kids books. well, he apparently also wrote very non-kid-oriented stories. they are impressive, if rather twisted, bits of work. people who can switch genres like that are pretty impressive, imho.