It turns out that I’m still alive. The blog was broken for a while, which was truly the only reason behind its stagnation. Thanks to Eddie’s help, adam.oliner.net is reborn, and ready to serve up some tasty blog victuals.
Let’s see, what did you miss?
I went backpacking on the black sands of California’s Lost Coast. I gave a conference talk in Rhodes, Greece and waded barefoot through the clear waters of a Mediterranean beach beneath the shadow of a white-painted town and castle-crowned hill. I spent a memorable week in Oxford, England with Yong-Hwa: we celebrated May Day in the rain while a boys choir serenaded from a clock tower, saw the Queen, went to the English National Opera for La Belle Helène (looking posh), punted on the Thames while drinking fine Burgundy and champagne and watching the sunset, ate fish and chips in a British pub, took walking tours of London, feasted in the dining hall from Harry Potter, ate cake from a sword, and noshed on assorted goodies from a French market.
I spent the summer in Albuquerque, New Mexico at Sandia National Labs studying supercomputers and surrounded by surreal devices like the massive Z-machine, perpetual fighter jet traffic, and enough nuclear weapons to wipe the planet clean of life. My host, Jon, and I wrote a paper on our results. I hiked all over the state: climbed New Mexico’s highest peak, had a terrifying encounter with a tarantula hawk, saw ancient petroglyphs inscribed on stones, wandered (hopelessly lost) through a blistering hot desert, and once awoke deep in the wilderness to find an elk drinking from the stream near my tent.
I flew to Cairns, Australia for another conference talk. I went snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef and ate emu, crocodile, and kangaroo. I went to NYC to watch my friend Goose get married and subsequently drunk. My uncle underwent open-heart surgery and recovered like a champ.
I moved into a two-bedroom house in Mountain View, California that I share with a woman named Teresa and her adorable border collie puppy, Mollie. I learned that my office was Sergey Brin’s old office. I started learning Japanese. I got a paper rejected. Jon and I are trying our luck again elsewhere, which I hope will give me the opportunity to present the work in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Oh, and it’s my birthday. A quarter century; twenty five years of not dying, in a row.
The Writings and About pages have been updated, as has my resumé. The Gallery is borked.
It was a long and inevitable hiatus. It’s good to be back.
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