Part I (3:30-ish am)
As is my habit, I have woken up too early.
Years and years ago (at least 15 years ago now, maybe more), I was staying with a friend of mine in Washington D.C., and this friend, the type who would be late for his own funeral, got me to the airport late. I managed to check my bag, but I missed the flight. So I had to hang around Washington National Airport for 10 hours, waiting for another flight back home to Iowa, just because I (or really, my friend) couldn’t manage to get to the airport a little early.
Anyway, the result this morning is I’ve got about 10 or 20 minutes to kill, waiting for the 4:15 am cab to get me to the airport just shy of 2 hours for my 6:18 am flight. This is far too early.
In any event, I’ve heard that internet connectivity at and around the Moscone Center is kind of spotty and/or “not free,” but my plan/hope is to write a bit about the CCCCs as they happen. And for me, that includes things like this: waiting around, “unofficial” and yet “conference related” tourist adventures, etc. Expect a few pictures later on.
It’s somewhat popular nowadays to be cynical about the CCCCs, to suggest it’s just become composition and rhetoric’s own mini- (yet huge) version of the MLA. Personally, I disagree with this. I always find speakers at the CCCCs that I find interesting (though sometimes I have to look a bit), I have lots of friends and colleagues I see once or twice a year and/or who I meet for the first time at the CCCCs, and, for the most part, people attending the CCCCs are in a much better mood than people attending MLA. As they should be: the CCCCs is not a “job meat market” disguised as a conference, the CCCCs is not held during the Christmas holiday, and comp/rhet people are generally, well, “happy,” for lack of a better word.
Anyway, I just wish the cab would get here. More later.
Part II
Long story short: had a long flight, but all went well. I ran into Michael Day at the Oakland Airport, which made it easy to get downtown. Found my way to the hotel, found my way to the Moscone center, registered and such, and now getting ready for dinner and such.
The real conference activities start tomorrow. In the meantime, here are some amateurish pictures.
Here’s the room I’m sharing with Bill and Steve. Tiny, and just a bunch of beds, but a good deal.
Hey, where’s that cable car going? We’re staying on Powell, one of the spots where they turn the cable cars around.
This is a sort of weird sculpture on the walk to the Moscone Center. I don’t know if you can tell with this picture, but he has a lot of fingers on the extended hand, multiple hands, multiple feet, etc. Strange but funny.
Interestingly enough, there is another conference going on at the Moscone conference, something that appears to be about gambling. Maybe we can get these people together….
Mecca– er, I mean, a store I certainly intend to visit on this trip. Seriously, this is certainly the biggest Apple store I’ve ever seen….
A gaggle of Purdue grads looking at something– everyone but Jeff, that is….
Oh, one more thing I found amusing: the Blogger spell checker suggests “cuckoo” to replace “CCCCs.”