minutia press.

My gap in posts is due to my trip this week to a DARPA PI meeting. DARPA is the Defense Advanced Reserach Projects Agency (Research is their middle name), and we did not meet about an irrational number close to 22/7. PI stands for Principal Investigator, and since I'm one of those, I was one of about 40 in attendance. We get together about 3 times a year to talk about our progress and our plans. It's a great group of people, but a tough meeting in that there is little free time. We meet during the day in technical sessions, and then there are tutorials or demos at night.

I'll mention the following for those of you in need of ideas for holiday gifts. At a meeting last year, my student Frank Hunleth gave a demo on "Event Channels 'R Us" where you could specify what features you like in an Event Channel, Frank would push a button, and zing, out would come the Event Channel of your dreams.

The meeting was in Austin Texas and for those of you who haven't visited Austin, you really should. It's one of Texas's best towns. It's a huge campus town, but also the state capital, so there are lots of things to look at. But even better is 6th Street with its abundance of live music. It's about 3 long blocks of club after club, with each one featuring a live band of some form. And of course there are tattoo shops throughout in case you have the urge to become art.

I only got to see all of 6th Street last night, when I left the meeting after the demos section at about 8:30 PM. Too tired to do much else, I wandered up and down listening to some music and then headed back to my room to crash.

The meeting left me feeling very positive about my work and the work of my colleagues, but also with a lot to do. Know any good graduate students?

I saw "DARPA PI" and actually thought about Magnum, PI instead of 3.141592...well, you get the idea.

I certainly haven't seen Tom Selleck doing anything else lately, so he very well may have found academia to be a great career moove.

Although, I'm probably letting on way too much by even admitting that I remember that awful show. Or by admitting that I owned a pair of Mr. T sneakers.

They just don't make shows like Magnum PI anymore. Maybe they should make Summa cum Laude PI?