adam.oliner.net

As one of the more senior and more vocal interns at T.J. Watson, I was asked to be one of several students to help run a panel discussion. I was one of three students who sat up with the panel and asked questions of our respective panelists. I worked with Fran Allen, who was a pioneer in the field of compilers, and the first female IBM Fellow. She was an incredibly sweet and intelligent woman; it was a real pleasure to work with her. The panel was moderated by Bill Pulleyblank, who is heading the BlueGene Project, and is my boss’s boss’s boss. Also on the panel were Bob Dennard, inventor of the DRAM, and Bernie Meyerson, who worked with SiGe and scaling concerns. As if that wasn’t enough name-dropping for you, the session was attended not only by all the interns, but also by a number of IBM emeriti, and by Paul Horn, IBM’s Research VP.

After the session, I talked briefly with Benoit Mandelbrot, of fractal fame. As I asked him about his most recent work on finance, I became aware of a movie camera in the peripheral of my vision. As I attempted to ignore it, the fuzzy head of a microphone boom was lowered into the empty space above our heads. “I hate being videotaped while I’m eating,” Mandelbrot mumbled. This same camera crew later coerced me into chatting with Paul Horn, also on video. Turns out they’re filming some kind of recruiting movie. I gotta say: there was something completely surreal about that whole day.

Then, last weekend, I went down to Philly with Anna. We visited Colin and Heather first, and saw I, Robot, which I enjoyed a great deal. The next night we stayed at Ashley’s (right) with her bf Chris; dinner at Gullifty’s, drinks at her place. Sunday night was dinner with Alice and her dad in Chinatown in downtown Philly. Afterwards, I sat on her apartment floor and talked about intellectual property with her dad. It was great seeing everyone, and how much better their apartments are compared to mine. This is the fourth weekend in a row that I’ve been away from home: VT, VT, DC, Philly. This weekend, I plan to stay home. Or go to NYC. But that’s basically home, right?

I am going to end with an open letter:

Dear Person Who Dented My Car,

When you opened your car door, and heard that thud, did you stop to check if you had caused any damage? Did you stop and look at the pristine, scratch free car you had just defiled? Did you stop to consider whether the owner could afford to pay for the repair work? Did you search your morals, consult your ethics, to determine if you should take responsibility for what you had done?

I’m guessing that the answers are no, no, no, and no. I, therefore, consider your life to be forfeit. You are a stain on humanity, and if I ever learn your identity, I will wipe you out. I will break you, defile you, destroy you. And I won’t stop to wonder if you deserve to live. The answer is no.

Dreaming of Ten-Fold Retribution,

Adam

This entry was posted on Friday, July 30th, 2004 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.