Back to Lansing again
but this time I'm here to attend NATAS, the oddly named Thermal Analysis society for North American. Yes, they actually picked a name that reads Satan in a mirror. One has to wonder how that happened.
The last time I came to Lansing I still cared about the Western martial arts and hoped to make the point from my never published book, the Constraints of Power, that a specific set of body movements drove western technique. It didn't go well - I was still roach-blogging so you can read about the experience here. However, meeting the world's most arrogant Italian, self-promoted masters including one who told me swords can kill, fantansy necromaniers, etc didn't make for a fun weekend. This time was better...
Actually, despite the travel problem - tons of us were delayed and 4 of my coworkers took 10 hours to drive over from O'Hare Airport - it was pretty good. There were a fair number of good technical talks mixed in with Marketing fluff. The poster session had some real gems. The DMA stuff was a bit depressing - very basic and very much stuff people should have known from the literature.
My personal highlight was when one of the organizers came up to me and told me my DMA book was responsible for getting him into thermal analysis. <grin> It always so cool when that happens.
The last time I came to Lansing I still cared about the Western martial arts and hoped to make the point from my never published book, the Constraints of Power, that a specific set of body movements drove western technique. It didn't go well - I was still roach-blogging so you can read about the experience here. However, meeting the world's most arrogant Italian, self-promoted masters including one who told me swords can kill, fantansy necromaniers, etc didn't make for a fun weekend. This time was better...
Actually, despite the travel problem - tons of us were delayed and 4 of my coworkers took 10 hours to drive over from O'Hare Airport - it was pretty good. There were a fair number of good technical talks mixed in with Marketing fluff. The poster session had some real gems. The DMA stuff was a bit depressing - very basic and very much stuff people should have known from the literature.
My personal highlight was when one of the organizers came up to me and told me my DMA book was responsible for getting him into thermal analysis. <grin> It always so cool when that happens.
"One has to wonder how that happened."
Um-too much really good food and booze at the first meeting? (Seen this happen at too many conferences...I am sure you did too...)
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Anna,
NATAS members are so boring the open bar never even runs out of booze. I don't think that was the case in this group.
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Always a good ego-boost when somebody (especially a random stranger, so they're just not being nice-nice) tells you that you influenced them in a positive way, isn't it?
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Nice or depressing, I can't decided. The poor guy went into thermal analysis because of me.
I'm going to Hell
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I need to introduce you to some medievalist conferences, then...that is NOT a problem at Kalamazoo, especially if there's an open bar...
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I've met some of those people back at Yale. Can I pass?
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Sure, but they might be able to give you about six plausible theories about that society name...
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I got theories, the favored one being they were all so geeky...
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