Remember how in StarTrek, whenever the Enterprise hits a magnetic-storm or is in combat and the captain says “hard to port!” it cuts to a hallway scene and the people are being bounced around the corridor? Did you notice how Kirk and Piccard don’t often take the time to inform the crew. “Attention crew. There is a Klingon Mark V equivalent photon torpedo approaching the engineering deck on the starboard side. We are about to turn hard to port in response to evade this impending impact. If you would be so kind as holding onto something I would be much obliged. Also, those on the engineering deck may want to consider evacuating or putting on a space suit. Thank you for your time.” Such a dialogue might be more suitable for more classical english literature.

Or say an airplane is flying in dense fog and all of a sudden the pilot sees a mountain in front. The captain does not take the time to turn on the fasten-seatbelt sign. “Attention passengers, this is the captain speaking. Please forgive me for interrupting the inflight entertainment which I am sure you are enjoying as much as myself. I am turning on the…” BOOM! Of course he wouldn’t give a long monologue. He turns the plane as fast as he can to avoid the danger. The passengers, and especially the crew, will get tossed around, but the alternative is death. No mention of returning the tray tables to their uprtight position.

Sometimes large and drastic course corrections are necessary for safety. This will naturally be disruptive to a fair number of the crew and passengers. If we are navigating a particularly large storm, the bumpiness will last a while, but the pilot/captain is relying on more than his own wisdom to navigating the storm in the best possible course to produce the least amount of distress. The pilot is not out for a joy ride or putting the plane through its paces.

Ever notice how grumpy some passengers can get when there is a little turbulence, let alone a major storm? Maybe we need more Mark V photon torpedos for life perspective. Make it so.

The fun talks were more on the geeky side, like how to build a device to monitor the environment. It would be fun tostick a box on my parent’s dock to monitor Cayuga Lake’s water temperature, or better yet to make a small radio telescope and record the data.

In-between the very geeky things was a lot of rather boring stuff, so boring that I wonder what my role is in the programming world. Sure I can build large web-database applications that meet the needs of international health care research. Sure I can add little widgets to display pretty charts. Is this what I want to do? It was often more fun reading the ModRef magazine I brought. It does not help that a lot of people in the programming community think an open bar is the most exciting part of a convention. I really do not want to smell the partially digested alcohol on your breath. It is not pleasant.