gotta love loewenberg

(aside: note that it is pronounced "leuh-vehn-burg")

okay, so between monday being a holiday spent in england, and the MICS conference being wednesday through friday, i basically got no work whatsoever accomplished this week. notwithstanding, the conference was actually pretty good (well, most of it) and the free room, free food, free time, and great weather were all very much to my liking.

not quite so much to my liking was the fact that i had to present that stupid poster i spent most of the previous week making, but i survived, and very few people actually payed it enough attention to bother asking any questions anyway (in the grand scheme of things, yes, that's probably a bad outcome, but for me, whose middle name is "instant gratification," it was basically the best course of events that could ever have been hoped for).

the really cool part, though, was that somehow randomly martin roth showed up (i wrote about his visit to our lab back in december). and not only that, but he even remembered who i was. maybe it shouldn't, but for whatever reason, this still surprises and impresses me (when people i've only really known for a total of a few hours many months ago decide to retain any inkling of information about me). right, so i guess the story is that he's working as a post-doc for deutche telekom's newly created "t-labs" research division in berlin now.

anyway, so catching up with him was nice, and now that he's on this continent, we might even get to see him every now and then (i invited him to come down for the party i'm throwing for thanksgiving; we'll see if he comes or not). also, it sounds like he's going to be doing some work on sensor networks, so there's the possibility we could collaborate on a project, or even that i might get to go spend a few months in berlin at some point (not terribly likely, but an exciting possibility nonetheless).

for the most part, the presentations were good, and some of them were even applicable to the stuff that we're doing. the session on thursday afternoon, though, was not related to anything i am even remotely interested in, and after suffering through it, i've basically come to the conclusion that i need to revise my approach to conferences. up until now, i've basically been going off of an elementary school sense of conscience that basically says, "if something is happening, you should attend and pay attention out of respect to the presenter." but quite frankly, sometimes it's just a waste of my time; no two ways about it.

thursday evening, they took us all to a wine tasting and we had dinner on a boat trip around lakes murten and neuchatel, which was cool. i had wanted to see if i could get in a hike on friday afternoon before heading back to lausanne, but then i realized that since we had already checked out of our rooms, i would have to carry all my stuff with me whereever i went, which would have been rather undisputably sucky. so i didn't. but the weather was very pretty. sigh.

instead, after getting everything home, i went out in search of canned air (for cleaning out the computer) and a kapo (for the guitar). of course, since this is switzerland, i failed miserably at both. four different computer stores, and not one of them had compressed air [throws hands up in disgusted resignation]. as for the kapos, i did find some in one of the music stores, but they were like 54 francs! i should probably check online to see what the prices should be, but that just sounds like crazy talk to me, at first glance...

but i had a nice walk through the city anyway, and took some detours through the parks. as i was crossing through st. francois (basically the main square in the center of lausanne), i caught a glimpse of yannick on his bicycle up ahead of me, but he was too far for me to get his attention or catch up. i wrote him a message when i got home; maybe we'll get together at some point this weekend, or something. his birthday is next wednesday (which reminds me i need to buy wrapping paper tomorrow); i'm actually a little proud of myself for having successfully tracked down the leather case for his camera (i'm pretty sure i mentioned that when we went on that miserable hike in the rain, he was carrying this beautiful brand new camera around in a plastic shopping bag. :) needless to say, when someone makes it that easy less than a month before their birthday, it's almost criminal not to buy it for them. ;)