This morning was like Christmas
05.02.06


By Kawigi
TopCoder Member

Well, this morning was like Christmas for a kid with ADD. I woke up an hour or so before my alarm went off and finally got up about 20 minutes later and just turned off my alarm so it wouldn't bother my wife. How could I keep sleeping? Why wasn't my plane ready to leave yet? Well, that's probably a good thing, since I'm not at the Seattle-Tacoma airport yet. I was leaving in a few short hours to the onsite finals of the TopCoder Open!

Now, have I ever been onsite? Well kind of, but not for TopCoder. I attended the ACM ICPC World Finals in 2004, shortly after I first registered on TopCoder. But at the time, I didn't know who anyone was - I met reid and Ryan (who made fun of the size of a Tablet PC I got from my school every time he saw me), but I had no idea that I'd care later. Now I'm right here, with the same people I've been competing with in the arena, chatting with after matches, and goofing off with in the forums.

When I got to the airport, I punched in my confirmation number at the checkin desk, and it found my reservation. I was told to go to gate A1 (that's easy enough to remember), and I didn't notice anything abnormal until I'd been waiting at that gate for about an hour. Someone sat down near me and was talking to someone on their cell phone and saying how there was still more than an hour before the flight boards. I looked at my phone, and the time was 12:55 PM - within about 2 minutes of the departure time I'd written down. Then I looked at my ticket. My ticket definitely said "Las Vegas", and definitely had my name on it. But it didn't leave until 2:40, and it was on a different airline. Well, my laptop was already plugged in and I was just leaving the Stone Age in Civilization 3. Looks like I might make it to the industrial age by the time I board.

Finally it was time to get on the plane. I thought I saw someone who looked like aubergineanode walk by before I got up. I managed to get myself moved from a middle seat to a window seat earlier, so I sat down in my proud window seat and waited for awhile, playing a couple rounds of TextTwist on my PDA before they told us to put away our electronics. It was looking like I might have my row to myself on a moderately crowded plane, but right before we took off, an impossibly large woman got in the aisle seat next to me (strictly speaking, the aisle seat isn't next to me, but she still basically was). Well, time to take off.

After finishing my refreshments, I decided to whip out my laptop. Some planes these days have little screens that show you exactly where you are on a map. This one didn't. But it's all just software. I pulled my USB GPS locator out of my backpack and suction-cupped it to the window next to me. That's what I love about window seats :-) I started up my mapping software and I found my location a bit faster than usual - I was flying over southern Oregon. The roadblock next to me was falling asleep, so I really didn't have anything in particular to do or anyone to talk to. Well, time to continue that game of Civ3 (occasionally peeking at the map between turns). My laptop kept changing its mind about whether the plane was going 50 miles per hour or 370 miles per hour. I tend to think it was correct in the latter case.

With about 40 minutes left in the flight, I looked at the map on my computer, and it was apparent that we'd start our descent soon. I didn't have to look at anything for it to be obvious that I really needed to pee. Unfortunately, I was less than tempted to wake up sleeping beauty in the aisle seat to ask if I could get past. Maybe that wasn't the best decision, but since I didn't end up peeing my pants, it wasn't necessarily the worst. I still wonder how many Joules would have been expended between the two of us just so I could go to the bathroom and get back in later.

Getting off the plane, what should be the first thing I see in Las Vegas but slot machines? Yeah, not my favorite thing about Nevada, but it's definitely a thing about Nevada (and it's the reason it's such a big vacation spot for so many people). It reminded me of a time years ago when I had a layover in Las Vegas and the flight attendants said it was good luck to buckle your seat belt across your seat behind you. Sure, I'd have done it if they'd just asked. But if you have a 40-something-year-old Chinese woman telling you it's good luck, and you just arrived in Las Vegas - you guessed it. Everyone did it without question. I should try playing that card while I'm here ;-)

/*Skips some of the mundane stuff to more mundane stuff*/

When I got my luggage, I had to interpret my instructions to get transportation to my hotel. I found the shuttle service, and I was the first person on my shuttle. Once on the shuttle, I thought I saw aubergineanode out the window again. I figured the shuttle was going to wait around until there were a few more people, so I decided to take out the old Lappy and start writing up a program to use to write blog entries in. Maybe I should have just started writing, but this is about software, man! A couple with a heavy accent got on, and then aubergineanode (ha! I knew it was him!) and another couple. Then we were unloaded LIFO, although the real reason I was the last to be dropped off was probably just that the hotel I needed to check into was slightly further from the airport. We don't get to stay at the Aladdin, we just get to walk back and forth to it every day from Bally's hotel :-)



After checking in, I walked over to the Aladdin to try and find everyone. I'm not quite sure who it was who saw me wandering and came out to help me find my way to where everyone was hanging out, but he had one of those conference ID thingies around his neck with IBM printed on the front of it, and I immediately recognized that this person had competed in the International Collegiate Programming Contest. Sounds like my kind of guy. When I came in, I saw reid, SnapDragon and a few other people talking about something that was probably beyond my mortal understanding. The first person to introduce himself was BjarkeDahlEbert , but I didn't understand for a moment when he told me.

In a few short minutes, they opened the doors to a room with what I can only assume is a physical implementation of the TopCoder arena. Nearby were booths set up by the sponsors, some hors d'œurves, and the familiar faces of the TopCoder staff. I started finding people who I recognized and saying hi and introducing myself to them. SnapDragon, reid, Eryx, Rustyoldman, dplass, JongMan, natori, antimatter and tomek are just a handful of the people I stopped to introduce myself to, to varying reactions. I also couldn't forget to greet TheFaxman, mike, ntrefz, mbnd96, ivern, mess, jmpld40, gt494, OlexiyO and everyone else I recognized from behind the scenes at TopCoder, as well as the other bloggers. Funny story - I said hi to mike, or maybe asked him a question, and then someone else (I think it was dplass), asked him if he recognized who I was, which he didn't. Then he said something like "at least you don't recognize me, either." Considering I've met him before, I actually did know who he was without him telling me. Gotta be awkward :-p Well, we'll wish him better luck next time.

A few of the staff got up and made announcements and welcome speeches and whatnot (hmmm, mostly announcements), which were probably the point of this get-together. It's funny that they talk for 20 minutes but they schedule 2 hours for it, but it's probably a good idea. Eventually dplass, omgrace, davidyang and I headed back for our hotel, where I figured I'd be able to get charged an arm and a leg for a dependable internet connection and finish writing this. It was fun talking to Grace and David on the way back, they had the basic idea of what was going on, but they had loads of questions about the specifics of what was going to be happening in the next few days. DP Lass and I, of course, have never physically attended or competed in a TopCoder final, but I'd have to admit I'm geeky enough to have...

1. Watched from the arena online during a tournament final 2. Read the rules way too much 3. Partially implemented a Java Applet to allow people to pick tournament winners, like in NCAA Basketball pools (hmmm, maybe I should finish that for the next TCCC)

...so needless to say we still knew the answers to their questions :-)

And David - I swear that's the last DP Lass joke.