So it's the end of day 3 in Chicago. I didn't write anything yesterday because in order to use the internet I have to come down from the 11th floor to the 2nd floor and then walk across the bridge to the conference center, because the hotel does not provide in-room internet. So when we got back from dinner at about 11:30 (I'll explain) I was tired and didn't want to make the laptop walk of bitterness.

So, here's the synopsis of day 2:

I got up bright and early on Monday to get down to my workshop session on time. Luckily for me the morning session focused on Game Theory work which is more interesting to me than some of the stuff the workshop was covering on Sunday. So I enjoyed those talks. Then we had the first coffee break and I set up my poster for the poster session. The poster session started out kind of slow, but eventually people drifted to the posters they were interested in and I had a good discussion with 4 or 5 people about my work. I was happy to find that no one brought up any issues with the work that I hadn't already considered and dealt with, so I was able to clearly and helpfully answer their questions.

One person did mention an application of the work that I hadn't thought of at all. Using the audio query system as an identification system in aural diagnostics. So you could train the system using information about things like car problems, or heart murmurs, or anything having distinct audio signals, then take input and return a suggested result. Could be interesting. So I was glad to discuss my work and also to not have someone totally lambaste me about it.

After the poster session it was time for lunch. Dan, Dave, and I headed out because Rob had to work the registration desk for his volunteer hours. We found a little sandwich shop not too far away that was pretty good. We also determined a safest route to get from the hotel to Michigan Ave which is a main drag kind of area (without going through the seedier south-end section of Michigan as you approach where the hotel is). We also decided it would be kind of fun to put together a little Google Maps like path planner for "Safest Walking Path" that uses things like crime rates, property values, and property vacancies to determine what a safe walking path might be.

After lunch we came back for some more sessions, including Dave's presentation. Rob had presented his work at the same time as my poster session so I didn't get to see his.

Once the sessions wrapped up for the day it was time to head out for some dinner. Dan was set on getting Ethiopian which required going way up town to the other side of the city. So we took the free shuttle into downtown and hopped on the subway. We took the red line up to Thorndale and found the Ethiopian Diamond we were looking for. It is very traditional Ethiopian cuisine which is served around a woven table-thingy (which lacks any appreciable leg room). Food is served communal style and you eat with your hands by picking up the food with pieces of the injera (an item kind of similar in consistency to crepes, but thicker, and the taste is completely different, somewhat bitter.... not very good by itself). It was definitely interesting food. I don't think I'd eat it very often given the choice, but it was unique.

Then we stopped at a grocery store on the way back to the subway to buy some breakfast foods to eat so we could avoid paying $6 for yogurt. As has become our nightly tradition we stopped at the Marble Slab Creamery for ice-cream. Monday happened to be $0.99 scoop day, so we couldn't pass up. The banana was pretty good. Using our newly decided upon "Safest Route" we walked back to the hotel without worrying that we might get cut.

Day 3:
Tuesday started out with some quality sleeping in. We weren't too interested in the main talk going on first thing in the morning so we didn't head down to the conference center until 10:20 for the talk by the head of the Carnegie Mellon Darpa Urban Challenge team (they won). Their work was really interesting and cool stuff.

During that talk I got a voicemail from Mangia requesting that some changes get made to the website ASAP, so I got those done during the next session on Integrated Intelligence. The changes only took me about 15 minutes to get done, however it took about an hour to upload the changes to the server due to the internet being dial-up-speed slow, probably has something to do with the hundreds of people trying to use it at once.

For lunch we decided to ask a bellhop rather than the concierge about where to eat locally since the concierges kept telling us not to go anywhere around here (conveniently the hotel itself has 3 or 4 restaurants in it). He sent us up to a grill 4 blocks into Chinatown called Baba's. The most interesting part of this restaurant was that the entire employee space from register across the grill to the pickup was separated with what looked to be bullet-proof glass (about 1.5 inches thick of a composite material). Which suggests that the area probably isn't so great once the sun goes down. However, the food was actually really good. I had a very good double-cheeseburger with an Orange Lemonade.

After lunch I attended a panel discussion about teaching CS and AI and ways to do it and what can be done to help bolster enrollment rates.

After the sessions wrapped up we went up to Navy Pier on the free shuttle. The pier isn't terribly exciting, but worth walking up and down. As we were heading back inland from the end of the pier I was able to get some amazing sunset shots of the city. Sadly I don't have my USB cable for my camera here, so we'll have to wait until I get back to show those pictures.

We took the free Navy Pier trolley up to Michigan Avenue from the pier and walked up the Magnificent Mile to Water Tower Plaza. From there we wandered around looking for Thai food for dinner. After two unsuccessful hits from Google text message searching Rob tried calling Google 411 while I called Megan to ask for further help. Megan and Google 411 both ended up with the Star of Siam as the recommended closest option, and it happened to still be open. So we headed back to there which turned out to be about 2 blocks from where we had gotten off the Navy Pier Trolley. The food was quite good though so it was worth it.

We realized that the city in The Matrix was based partly off of Chicago (as is Gotham City in Batman), because there was the roads of Wabash and Lake where there is an exit from the Matrix in the first movie. We decided we needed to find the intersection and take our pictures for the super nerdy movie location shot.

After dinner we hopped in a cab and headed back to the Marble Slab Creamery for some more ice-cream. This time we remembered to ask about the College Student discount (10% off, sweet). I had banana again because the choices were getting slim, and had it in a waffle cone with chocolate sprinkles mixed in. We ate our ice-cream as we used our "Safest Route" to get back to the hotel again.

Now it's after midnight and I need to go to sleep because I'm tired.

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