Another year, another VSS wrapped up under the belt. And, yet again, there are stories aplenty. No O'Douls was purchased this year, though not for lack of trying. The John Ringling statue did not receive a new hat, but he is the proud new owner of a conference nametag, should he want to learn more about visual science in 2007. As this is nearly a week after I got back, I may forget some of our tale, but rest assured, I remember the more memorable moments.
Our adventures began far too early on a Thursday morning. 5 of our lab members, several members of the Crawford lab, and the newly annointed "British Ubergeek", were all enroute to Sarasota by 6:30am, to ensure some solid beach time before the conference began. British Ubergeek, who is writing a book about
Sir George Cayley, was ridiculously exuberant, as we had a layover in Charlotte. Why you might ask? Because there is a model replica of the Wright Brothers first plane suspended in one of the gate areas:
Ironically, British Ubergeek had stumbled upon this model in the Charlotte airport a few years before, had taken some photos, and was set to include them in his book. However, an unfortunate computer crash and a lack of backups resulted in the loss of said photos. But as fate should have it, he was able to replace the photo of the Wright brothers' replica that was lost. Look for it in a Sir George Cayley biography coming soon near you.
We were in Sarasota by 1:00 in the afternoon, which meant that we were able to spend almost 24 hours in and around the beach. We were in a new hotel this year, which looked like this:
Although I am not a beach person (and even less so when I can't play volleyball), I did manage to sit out for a few hours and get the most retarded burn ever (yes, I was responsible this year and decided to use sunscreen, and no I did not think to apply it evenly along my back and arms). Thank God my poster was the next day, so I got to look stupid for that.
A nice feature of the conference this year was that the Poster Hall was wireless. So I got to check my email. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way why one should NOT... I repeat NOT... set up an automatic response to emails while you are away: House of Blues apparently employs *special* people as system admins. For every email they receive, they send a "do Not Respond" email. Which of course elicits an automatic response. Which elicits a Do Not Respond email. Which... well you get the picture. Sufficed to say, I had 360 emails a mere 40 hours after I left the lab, 350 of which were from House of Blues. Every 6 minutes. Never again.
The next day saw most of us in front of our posters. As per normal, most were *done* on the first day, which was swee-eet. My poster went great, and once again I spent nearly 4 hours (instead of the allocated 1 hour) walking people through. I don't know why I enjoy it so much, but I do. I figure I'll go with it. UberGeek lost some form of virginity at his apparently: when I went to gather him up to go drinkin', his advisor grabbed me by the shoulders, looked deep in my eyes, and said "You are going to have to take him out for a beer or five". At which point I learned that one person had given him a bit of a fisting (although to be fair, the guy is known to be an ass under most circumstances). Something to do with the MofSS. And if I have to hear more about it, like I did here:
Or here:
And especially here:
then I may vomit (and Biritsh UberGeek will concur, I am sure). I can promise that I will never use it in my experiments after listening to a million diatribes... so maybe some good came of UberGeek's experience after all. At least he was happy after beer, ice cream, and a little word from God:
Bless his heart.
As we were finished, the rest of the week saw us much more relaxed and in many of the situations we have been in before. We had our lab dinner at Phillipe Creek, which serves the best oysters in town. It is also the place where the majority of VSS patrons go each night, so we ran in to a gaggle of visionarys there. This, of course, included the UberGeeks, whom I am quite convinced simply followed me there because they missed me for the 4 hours I was gone. And so that British UberGeek could drink good Tequila. I'm also pretty sure they went to take this photo:
Those boys are all class, all the time I tell you. Exemplified by our trip to Hooters, of course:
We also made our yearly trek to Cha Cha Coconuts for the Blackened Mahi Mahi and our bucket o' beer:
And an imitation of the MIB by the UberGeeks:
When we weren't out for dinner or at the conference, we spent our evenings on the patio of Coquina on the Beach (where the Ubergeeks were staying, along with Cory and Grigori), hanging out, drinking, berating other vision scientists, yada yada, nada nada. As this is what one would call a 'social' location (i.e. at the entrance of the hotel, and a location where all other patrons must walk in order to get to their rooms), I have already booked myself in there for next year. Gonna be sweet. Casa des UberGeek invites good times alright:
SO good, in fact, that the last night of the conference, we drank too much wine, and were UNABLE to make it to Club Vision, much to our (and UberGeeks's advisor's) chagrin. You will even note that I am wearing my glow-in-the-dark tshirt in anticipation. Pants. I also had a couple of videos of this evening that I thought would be entertaining, but turns out are far too embarrassing to reveal to the rest of the world. A la the whole iPod experience of 2005.
And that's about it. That's how we spent the conference. The only other entertaining moment was on the way home, again in the Charlotte airport. UberGeek flew home with us, and as I felt that I had not spent enough time with him through the week (note the sarcasm and the fact that he is in nearly in every picture), I spent all the time I could with him. Which of course meant beer (we had a 3.5 hour lay-over). At the bar. And as we were at the bar, talking, laughing, singing off key (as we do), a man siddles up to us, places a business card on the bar, and says out of the corner of his mouth "There has been far too much flashing going on over here". First thought for me: look down at what I'm wearing (which was a tshirt... not much flashing going on there). The man then walked back to the other end of the bar, sat down with his wife, picked up his camera, and pointed at it and then us. Turns out, he had spent a bunch of time taking photos of us. His business card contained his URL and his email for us to get the photos. We haven't emailed him yet, but perhaps we will.
For you see, I don't have enough photos of UberGeek.
