December 29, 2006

Back east

Ok, so I took an unannounced blogging vacation. I'm now in Connecticut. A couple travel notes:

I shared an airport shuttle with a guy in an MIT baseball cap. He gave directions to the driver in the form "if the light is red, it's faster to go right; if it's green, it's faster to go left". The driver apparently didn't have gambits turned on, so this had to be abbreviated to "go right".

At a Starbucks in Ridgefield, CT I saw a disturbing piece of corporate art: a reproduction of Edward Hopper's painting Nighthawks in which the diner had been turned into a Starbucks (and the patrons were noticeably less depressed). I wish I had taken a picture of this since I can't seem to find one with a Google search.

Posted by Arcane Gazebo at December 29, 2006 11:19 AM | Tags: Life, Travel
Comments

Even fairly sharp people have a tendency to shrug it off when I give those exact same directions at the corner of Ashland and E 14th near my house. Oh wells!

Posted by: Lemming | December 29, 2006 11:33 AM

Yeah, I know if I'm driving in an unfamiliar area I don't have a lot of extra brainpower to devote to the directions I'm getting, so simpler is usually better.

Posted by: Arcane Gazebo | December 29, 2006 11:57 AM

Good point -- the people I usually give said directions to are from out of town, and a professional driver is expected to both be used to taking strange directions and know the roads at least a little bit.

Posted by: Lemming | December 29, 2006 12:33 PM

AG: Welcome back!

Your story reminds me of the comment Marc Abrahams (of AIR) made in a talk he gave at Cornell a few years back. At some point, he was talking about some contest in which they took the smartest undergraduate at MIT "chosen at random." It was amusing.

I should see who's going to the March Meeting, though I won't be attending this year. (I will be around the area -- or at least flying to the same airport before heading off -- something like the last day of the meeting for another event, but I won't be attending the conference per se.)

Posted by: Mason | December 29, 2006 4:27 PM
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