Here are some notes on my trip to Boston, 26-28 July 2002, converted from my postings in alt.kids-talk and with comments added from the resulting discussion. The group will probably be putting up a shared Web site with everybody's comments and photos and stuff; when that happens, it will be linked here. My photos will also be put up after I get them developed and scanned.
Monday
This is my report of the meeting in Boston. It occurs to me that next time we do this we ought to have a name for the event - both for this particular event, and this kind of event. In talk.bizarre they have T.BOBs, and individual T.BOBs get names like BAST.BOB and FROST.BOB. Anyway, the report is in roughly chronological order, and mostly an expansion of what's in my notes. I decided that I probably didn't want to just directly transcribe my notebook onto the public Net, although if lots of people really want me to do that I might go ahead and do it. I took lots of pictures, but they aren't developed let alone scanned yet. Dave is talking about having some kind of big combined site with everyone's reports and pictures and stuff, so keep an eye out for that. Whatever I contribute will also go on, or linked from, my own Web site, so keep an eye out there too.
All prices have been translated to approximate Canadian dollars assuming a 1.6 exchange rate.
Thursday and earlier
The event wasn't at a good time for me, because it was scheduled for right after my CS 354 students had to hand in their final versions of Assignment 3. I had to schedule "demo" sessions for all of them in the week before the event, and I still have to finish marking the assignments and submit those back. The school can't officially require me to work on the weekend, but if I hadn't been out of the country I'd surely have been using the time to mark assignments.
I started to type here the complete history of my demo scheduling adventure then decided it wouldn't really be interesting, so I'll just say that it was a journey into the depths of tentacled cosmic horror and let you use your imagination. One glint of light in the eye of the giant squid-god was that I managed to reschedule the demo that I had at 12:30pm on Friday to more like 4:23pm on Thursday, because I don't think U.S. Customs would have appreciated my holding the demo in their security-check area at the Toronto airport, which was where I was at that point in time.
Friday
My plane was scheduled to leave Toronto at 1:15pm, but when it landed in Toronto on the previous flight, the pilot complained that one of the lights in the floor track lighting system was burned out, and that's a safety system so Heaven forbid that they should take off with any known bugs in it, so they had to replace the light bulb, so they had to order the part and wait, and then while they were waiting for the part, there was a lightning strike somewhere within seven furlongs of the airport and so they had to go on "Red Alert" until fifteen minutes after the last reported lightning strike within seven furlongs and so even though they had the light bulb and the maintenance crew ready to change it, the maintenance crew was not allowed to get out of its truck to walk up the staircase into the aircraft to change the light bulb, and so anyway the Red Alert finally ended and they changed the lightbulb and loaded us. I think it was about 45 minutes late.
I arrived in Boston and got on a taxi and the driver was quite bitter when he found out where I wanted to go, because apparently the hotel is Right Next Door to the airport, and there's a free shuttle which I didn't know about, and the cabbies have to wait in line a long time in order to be allowed to pick up passengers at the airport and on and on. He didn't start complaining until it appeared to be too late for me to say, "Oh, okay, I'll take the shuttle", so it wasn't clear that there was anything I could do about it. But I tipped him an extra $1.60 by way of apology even though it wasn't my problem.
I checked in to the very expensive Hyatt Harbourside Hotel and noted the legally-required sign on the inside of my room's door advising me of the insanely high maximum rate for that room: $880 per night. But fortunately I'd already prepaid at the merely very high rate of $256 per night, so it only took a few minutes for my heart to start beating again. (I don't know what kind of extra special service you get for $880 per night, but I figure just one prostitute is not enough.) [Comments from the occupants of both other rooms: "Whoa, what kind of room were you in, ours only had a maximum rate of just under $600?" Well, the sign in mine actually said $550, but I translated it to Canadian currency, as I said at the top of this report I was going to do.]
The desk clerk had told me what rooms the other pilgrims were in (I guess that's one of the extra services you get even at $256/night) so once I figured out that all the telephones for the 6th floor are on the 76th floor for dialling purposes, I had little trouble getting in touch with the rest of the cabal.
I walked into the room and immediately recognized most people. I made the mistake of addressing Debbie as Debora, it just slipped out because that was what was on the header of the last email I remember seeing from her, and immediately I kicked myself because I was wearing a tie, too. It's lucky she dared to talk to me at all.
Impressions of the people I hadn't met before: Well, everyone looked like themselves, as expected. All the women were cute, and one can hope that so were the men, even Jason, for those who like men. Debbie looks just like Yong-Mi from talk.bizarre, but I don't know Yong-Mi well enough to judge whether they are in fact the same person or merely twins separated at birth. Jason doesn't look exactly like Zack MacDonald, and that worthy doesn't have the hat, but they are functionally interchangeable.
Anyway, we spent a few hours eating doughnuts and salmiakki. The doughnuts had suffered somewhat from transportation and storage. I had a Krispy Kreme filled with cream or something else. It turns out that Canadians can eat salmiakki, but Americans can't; which is interesting and unexpected when you consider that such a chemical foodstuff ought to be well-suited to the American palate. I figure that some time in the 18th Century a couple of Finnish chemistry students dipped a little too heavily into the vodka and sat a little too long in a sauna somewhere, then played out a scene much like this one:
"Oy, we got a proyect due tomorrow! I yust remembered!"
"Oy, we sure have got. What shall we do?"
"Okay, I'll set up the Bunsen burner, you go get some chemicals."
"What kind chemicals you want?"
"Like I care? Yust grab some bottles of white powder. Something cheap, I don't want to get in trouble with the lab techs."
"Here's a bunch of ammonium salts. I think the other group were making fertilizers, you want we should do something like that?"
"No, the prof would know we'd copied the idea. Here, let's yust try heating this stuff up."(both Finns gasp and choke in the resulting cloud of gas)
"Whoa, Sal! I am thinking we are poisoning ourselves so that our descendants will suffer from horribly crippling allergies!"
"No doubt, Miakki! But I have yust got a great idea! We'll combine ammonium chloride with black licorice, mold it into blobs shaped like fish, and tell the prof we've invented a new kind of candy! It's a sure A plus."
"Ah, wonderful! What shall we call it?"
"We'll name it after ourselves, of course."
Next we went to the Cheesecake Factory, Debbie leading the way and Chris attempting to follow her. That proved amusing because Debbie is a Boston-style driver whereas Chris has, in Dee's evocative metaphor, the state of Texas up his ass. I was feeling slightly queasy from the doughnuts and/or the salmiakki, or the car ride come to think of it, but I managed an appetizer and a fruit drink (~$25). I didn't have a slice of cheesecake because I don't even like cheesecake much at the best of times, but those who had some agreed that it was superior. Jason got carded, ha ha.
Then we wandered the mall. I went into some store roughly equivalent to Future Shop and saw actual CD-R Audio discs (you know, the ones that can be used in CD-R Audio recorders that nobody has because CD-R Data recorders do everything they do and more on much cheaper and easier to find CD-R Data discs). Dave was looking for blank MD media but it wasn't cheap enough to be worth buying what with the exchange and all. We also looked at insanely expensive HDTV receivers, many of which were being used to display regular television programming stretched into the HDTV aspect ratio so that it looked like crap for the cheap sum of $19200.
We went to Borders and I bought the latest Asprin "Myth" book and a Janis Ian CD, both of which were items I'd looked for in Canada and not been able to find; I wouldn't buy anything I could get in Canada, because of the exchange. Dave went to the manga section and started pulling books off the shelf, reading the author/illustrator/translater/etc. credits, and saying, "Oh, cool, I know him... I know him... I know her...". I looked in the "young adult" section for books by the USA's greatest living writer in the genre and was upset not to find any; a similarly-sized bookstore in Canada would be pretty much guaranteed to have at least one or two books by Pinkwater. In the mall we discovered a poster with an important environmental message: "Remember, kids, not wasting energy reduces air pollution!"
Then we went to an arcade and we got to watch Dave and Sara play Dance Dance Revolution. Dee and Debbie talked me into a round of basket-shooting and I whupped their asses, then they wandered off to kill things. Jason tried to buy beer and got carded, ha ha. Chris stuck his head into a large helmet-like machine and lived through a pale and rather tinny facsimile of what it's like to be in a machine gun nest with soldiers throwing grenades at you. I don't know what, if anything, Mika did.
After the arcade, we discovered that Mika had to eat, but also couldn't eat anything because he's allergic to everything, and the market was closed moments before we got there, so we had to find another market, and eventually we found one and bought food and drink. Some people bought stuff to eat for breakfast the next morning, and I later had reason to wish I was one of them, but more on that later. A debate ensued because Mika also had a headache, but he's allergic to all painkillers except paracetamol, and paracetamol is Tylenol on this side of the pond and he's allergic to Tylenol even though that's the same thing as paracetamol which he's not allergic to. (Presumably he's allergic to some filler or such thing in the pills other than the active ingredient.) I said the pharmacist ought to be able to sort this out, but they don't have an actual pharmacist on duty at midnight, and everyone else decided collectively that a doctoral student in theoretical computer science could substitute for a medical doctor, and they insisted that I go into the pharmacy with Mika and help him find pills to take. He settled on the store's generic brand of acetaminophen, about which I said that A. it's the same thing as paracetamol, but B. so is Tylenol and you said Tylenol is a no-no so I'm not happy about this. It did have a note on the label saying that it was a good choice for people allergic to other painkillers, but the same could be probably said about anything. "Hey, if those other pills will kill you, then you probably shouldn't take them!" That's a health tip, all right. He never ended up actually taking the pills anyway because his headache went away by itself, so we never got to find out whether they would have killed him. Dee and I argued about how to spell "acetaminophen"; she turned out to be right, and it went straight to her head. [Comment from Dee: it wasn't really an argument, just a discussion. Okay, fine.]
Saturday
I got up and met Dave (most other people were still sleeping) and we spent a long time standing in the hall in front of the hotel restaurant, looking at the blowfish. They had a tank of tropical fish out there featuring a blowfish who was, I must admit, very cute indeed. It looked sort of like Yoda, minus the ears. However, I eventually became impatient, when I realised that we were not in fact waiting for anyone else to arrive or anything in particular to happen, we were just standing there hungry and watching the blowfish, and I kind of scrootched Dave into the restaurant so we could read the prices on the menu and have a heart attack each. Eight dollars for a bowl of cereal! Six dollars for a glass of orange juice from concentrate! Fifteen dollars for a plate of corned beef hash! Dave said that at those prices we ought to get blow jobs with breakfast, but instead what we got was Dee, who showed up to tell Dave that she wasn't at that moment dancing naked in their shared room. Since we could see that she was present in the restaurant, non-dancing, and fully clothed except for pants, I don't know why she thought any words were necessary, but she told us nevertheless. After imparting the vital but obvious information, she vanished again, and we were left alone to savour our hash. At fifteen dollars a plate, we were determined to come as close as practicable to getting our money's worth.
Eventually the others pried themselves out of bed and/or arrived at the hotel, and we hung out for a while debating what to do. There was some discussion among the contingent that overlapped with talk.bizarre of a trip on the trane (tm) to the squa (tm) to seek out Chevyn, but that plan didn't come to fruition. Instead, we all piled into cars and went to Quincy Market for lunch. (Chicken pot pie and large iced tea: $12) We sat eating in a sort of open outdoor area near a homeless-looking man who was whining "Magic show? Magic show?" through a small portable PA system. It wasn't clear whether he was requesting a magic show, or offering one, but when the crowd got a little thicker he started performing, so that cleared that up. I wasn't listening closely, and the crowd prevented me from getting a view of what was going on; it sounded like the magic show was all about stem cells and the physiological effects of tobacco smoke. Over on the other side there was another magician, with a Cockney accent, doing a more ordinary show.
Dave got bubble tea, and Dee tried it, but it was genuine Tokyo style genuine Taiwanese style bubble tea, i.e. unsweetened, and she reacted as one might expect. Chris showed up with a more standard flavour (deep chemical green) but too late by then. Also during this time Mika&Sara's friends with the names I don't know how to spell were there; I don't remember whether they had been with us at the hotel and came along (I don't think so because there wouldn't have been room in the cars) or met up with us while we were eating at the market. [Mika comments: He had actually stayed at the hotel, waiting for these two, and then came with them in a third car to catch up with us.]
Anyway, after lunch the distaff side of the collective wanted to go shopping at the Gap, and I don't remember where Dave and Mika went, but the rest of us went off and looked through a nearby magic shop (somewhat disappointing by comparison with Tony's Trick and Joke Shop in Victoria) and then found a pub and Jason and I had a pint and didn't get carded (ha!) and Chris had a coffee and we had perhaps a more frank debate of the child pornography laws than was really wise for scruffy-looking Canadians to have in a public place in the USA, then after a bit of random searching and some cell phone calls we eventually gathered the group together again and took the T to the science museum.
We got on what we thought was the right train, but it was one of the ones that actually stopped at that station instead of going All The Way (tm) and the driver/conductor person freaked out and yelled "LAST STOP! GET OFF THE TRAIN!! LAST STOP!!! GET OFF, GET OFF!!!!" at us while waving his arms violently. He didn't seem so much angry as frightened, as if the fact of people getting on instead of off at the last stop, was a fact his brain simply couldn't deal with. So we got off and took the next train.
At the science museum. I was really a bit disappointed with the science museum; it was a lot like other science museums I've been to, and like too many of those, it had a lot of hands-on exhibits that didn't work. The story was that the Boston Computer Museum folded up for lack of funding and its collection went to the science museum, and that's what the geeks were there for. But when I went to the section of the museum that I thought was supposed to house the former Computer Museum stuff, I found that actually it was a forgettable display of edutainment software running on modern PCs donated by corporate donors. Then the group scattered like oxgall on water, and I got into looking at the worn and broken-down non-computer exhibits, and by the time I met people who told me where the Computer Museum stuff actually was, that section of the museum had already closed so I didn't get to go look. I'm told that it wasn't that great anyway because the transfer of artifacts to this museum had only just happened and they hadn't set up much of the stuff yet. I missed the chance to flirt with the geek chick, which is what I'm told Dave was doing, but the coefficient of chiquosity in our own group was high enough to take most of the sting out of that.
Other exhibits worth noting: the section on math, which didn't have a whole lot of real content but they did an admirable job of trying to make some pretty abstruse concepts sound interesting; the exhibit on Drugz; the very carefully non-controversial "women's health" section; and the plasma discharge things (without safety warnings, I was impressed) and hand-operated Van de Graaf generator in the electricity section. My favourite exhibit was the virtual fish tank, which is something I read about when MIT cooked it up a few years ago. It would be even cooler if there had been even more user controllability of the fishies, but I see why there wasn't. It's hard to design a set of knobs for an a-life system such that they're easy for humans to twiddle and all possible settings produce reasonable behaviour; and the problem becomes harder, and quickly impossible, as things start to go in the direction of Turing completeness. The blowfish at the hotel retains the cuteness title.
We went looking for dinner down a street full of Italian restaurants with Mika in the lead. Everyone assumed that he knew where he was going, so we didn't complain even though he led us quite a distance down the street past many pleasant-looking places. It turned out that he only had the general idea "well, we don't want one that's right at the front because that'll be excessively touristy". We settled on one called, IIRC, "Ristorante Euno". It had a lot of atmosphere, for values of atmosphere equal to "the waiter unfolds your napkin and places it on your lap for you". I tripped him by unfolding my own napkin onto my own lap. I wasn't honestly sure whether waiting to have it done for me was the right thing to do, or if we were supposed to do it ourselves and the waiter only did it for the others while laughing up his sleeve at the silly non-Italian persons who didn't know that they were supposed to put the napkins on their laps. My seafood ravioli with scallops in lobster reduction tipped the scales at $45 with tax and tip and coffee afterwards, but to be honest, I didn't think that was such a ripoff as some of the other meals we had. I thought it was a pretty darn good meal in a very nice restaurant, and the bread with olive oil and fresh parmesan and chili flakes was worth a buck or two also.
The group drifted off in different directions after dinner. I ended up back at the hotel with Mika, Sara, Dee, and Dave. We hung out on the hotel patio by the water for a while.
[Comments from Sara: no, we lost Debbie before the science museum (she went to the hotel to sleep) and we lost Jason just before dinner (he went to Fenway Park to attempt to see a game there before they possibly tear it down). Furthermore, Chris was at the hotel patio. But he left when we went indoors.]
Took photos of each other in various compromising positions, and drafted a passing elderly couple to help with group shots. Dee demonstrated some of her dance moves. She tried to dip me but found my "oh no don't let the crazy woman push me off balance" reflex too difficult to overcome. Then the hotel tried to lock us out, so we hastily adjourned to Sara&Mika's room, and we chatted and wrote in each others' diaries for a long time. Except for the lack of strong alcoholic beverages, it was just like any talk.bizarre hotel party. Dave greased up Dee until she begged him to move to New York and become her personal masseur. We talked a lot about the three who weren't present (Jason, Debbie, and Chris); religion; what it's like to meet people you only know through the Net; what kind of people we each are and whether there are any other people like us in the world (general consensus, in the case of myself: "No."); and so on. [Comment from Sara: Not true, she does know some people like me. Sort of.]
Sunday
The party actually lasted until about 2:30 on Sunday, but I'm counting it as part of Saturday. Sunday properly began when I woke up at 9:00 or so. Dave and I had previously agreed that we couldn't afford to eat in the hotel restaurant again, but I had sort of thought that that meant, it being morning and all, that we'd have breakfast somewhere else. Actually, what happened was that we congregated and talked about going somewhere for breakfast. By the time we actually did anything about it it was past lunch time, and Mika was in one of his "I'm too sleepy to do anything" states so we left him there at the hotel. [Comment from Sara: actually, he was sick with sore throat, fever, and nausea.] Something I spotted from the car on the way to lunch, that kind of freaked me out: a billboard advertising antiretroviral drugs. There were a lot more of them on the subway, too.
The drive to lunch was even more random and humorous than previous drives, especially because of the need to find a parking place. I was riding with Chris and Dave and I think Jason as well, I don't really remember, [Comment from Sara: no, he was in Debbie's car] and by the time we found a place to park we were hopelessly separated from the other car. We found a Starbucks and drank coffee and waited for the others to find us, and then we went to lunch at a diner that was making some effort towards Jewishness, but had way too much pork on the menu to be at all authentic in that direction.
During the meal, down at my end of the table, Chris and Sara and Dave and I carefully mapped out the boundaries of flirtation. (Capsule summary: the wall is a lot higher on our side than on hers.) Down at the other end of the table, Dee and Debbie were doing some sort of comedy routine. I had an after-Thanksgiving sandwich, $13 and pretty good. I noticed on my way in that they advertised ice cream sodas and I made a mental note to be sure and try one after my meal, but I forgot, and nobody else was going for dessert-type stuff, and it would probably have been like $8 anyway. Next time.
Debbie left to go to work or to sleep or whatever, and I realised that I'd missed my chance to kiss her (not that my shyness would actually have allowed that anyway, but hey); Chris and Jason left for K-W shortly after that; and the rest of us went back to the hotel to hang out some more. We sat down in the lobby, myself and Dave and Mika and Sara and their two Finnish friends, [Sara comment: "and Dee"] and as usual, Talked about Stuff. I handed out business cards and Sara wanted me to do a Tarot reading but I hadn't any cards and so I did a reading with a stack of picture postcards of Boston, and considering the circumstances, that went off really well.
Dave and I left on the shuttle bus to the airport, to catch the same plane back to Toronto. We made it through security pretty quickly, and sat waiting in the departure lounge for our flight. The gate that was supposed to be ours seemed to be in use for an Aer Lingus flight to Shannon, and although I would probably have enjoyed going there, it seemed unlikely that the nice Irish girls behind the counter would have let me onto the plane. I asked Dave where Shannon was and he told me it was in County Cork and I realised that really, there was no point in my asking at all, because even if he told me where County Cork was, for instance by what other places it's near to or far from, I know so little Irish geography that I wouldn't get any meaningful information from anything less than a complete map of Ireland.
It turned out that our flight was delayed just because the airport was really busy. We waited, going through Dave's pictures on his laptop computer, and we had a pint in the departure lounge bar. All the bottles in the bar had special nozzles with metal rings on them, and every time the bartender poured a drink he'd slap some kind of ring-like device over the nozzle and pour through that; it appeared to simultaneously measure the liquid and record some kind of inventory information. We speculated about the technical details of how it might work until the bartender get interested and started explaining his view of it; then another customer put in his 3.2 cents.
The plane finally did take off, and we arrived in Toronto uneventfully. Got on the airport bus to K-W and were soon home in the land of affordable foodstuffs. I think I left my hat on the airport bus, because I'm pretty sure I had it all the way back to Toronto, and I didn't have it Monday morning. No big deal; that hat cost about at much as a bowl of cereal.
Sunday night I dreamed about riding the T.
The Quotes File (revised and expanded)
"I took you home. I never took you out."
- Debbie
"What an obnoxious robot!"
- Dave
"Not wasting energy reduces air pollution!"
- Sign in the mall
"We like the killing!"
- Debbie & Dee
"I'm a wuss, I'm such a wuss."
- Chris
"PLEASE DO NO RAPE THE BAR"
- Sign posted beside the DDR machine
"Dee was expecting July weather, which is why she didn't bring pants."
- Dave
"Ooh, she'll give me 'a bite of her cheesecake'!"
- Matt (re: Debbie)
"You suck the cock of big mooses!"
- Dee
"LAST STOP. GET OFF THE TRAIN! LAST STOP!! GET OFF, GET OFF!!!"
- The T driver
"This is the best day of my life."
- Debbie
"Years later, I realised what I had really grabbed."
- Dee
"Dave: tip-tappin' away on the Laptop of Life."
- Dee
"Whiskey!"
- A woman we met on the hotel patio, name unknown
"He's like, 'Oh my God, it's Dee!'"
- Dee (re: Matt)
"My God, that guy looks just like a condom full of walnuts."
- Dave
"Mount me, you Warrior Geek!"
- Dee
"I've eaten a candle when I was a kid... I don't remember if I swallowed
it or not."
- Mika
"That's not something you're allowed to do!"
- Sara
"It's kind of lame to play games on the cell phone."
- Mika
Dave: "It's like 85 letters long!"
Dee: "And this is a short Finnish word!"
"Oh, Dave, this is wonderful, it doesn't even hurt!"
- Dee
"There's also this eww de salmiakki that's been permeating my nostrils."
- Dee
"Okay, quote someone else now."
- Dee
"Oh, okay, I'll sit next to the hot married chick."
- Chris
"You are the Diet Pepsi of evil."
- Jason
"I was expecting to be creamin' in my shorts over the Tim Horton's
doughnut, the way Chris went on."
- Dee
Photos
 | More or less the first thing I saw on entering the hotel room. |
 | Debbie, Sara, Dee, Dave |
 | Dave, a random Finn, Mika |
 | The same random Finn again, Sara, Chris |
 | Rare shot of Mika actually eating |
 | Dee looks for her contact lens |
 | The view that Mika and Sara paid extra for |
 | Debbie smugly explains the basic facts of Boston driving to Chris |
 | Chris displays some sort of card or something |
 | Group shot; I think Jason took this one, because his hat isn't visible |
 | The stress begins to take its toll on Chris; Dave is much more mellow |
 | Sara *really* likes cheesecake |
 | Mika is not so sure |
 | Chris needs it explained to him again |
 | The glamour photo |
 | Dance Dance Revolution |
 | More Dance Dance Revolution |
 | An important safety (?) message |
 | Mika contemplates his next campaign |
 | Do you have any idea how hard it is to get the exposure right on photos like this one? |
 | Look, it's the MC! |
 | Dee samples the bubble tea... |
 | Spit or swallow? |
 | Three Finns in a row |
 | Okay, we're geeks |
 | Fortunately, Dee and I were there to escort each other |
 | Tip-tappin' away on the Laptop of Life |
 | Jason's hat |
 | Jason's hat, shirt, and pop can |
 | Chris |
 | Dave |
 | Matt finally discovers how to get a picture of Jason's actual *face*: drape a woman over him! |
 | Mount me, you Warrior Geek! |
 | Oh, we can park here, it's only No Parking on the second Wednesday of each month |
 | Debbie |
 | At the diner |
 | The climax of the comedy routine I missed |
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