GSA day one

Well the first day of the GSA meeting has come and gone.

I missed the carbon sequestration talks, but did make it to a biogeochemistry talk on mesoproterozoic Brazil. Our booth ran a bit more roughly than I hoped when our magnet decided to misbehave back in Canberra, but we did give a few people the opportunity to run the instrument. I also caught Ron Schott's gigapan setup (didn't quite make the talk), and can say that he is as enthusiastic about it in real life as he is on his blog.

Highlights:

The leaves! We don't have fall colours in Australia, so red and yellow trees were certainly a hit.

Old friends. Some I've been dying to see, some I wan't expecting until they came around the corner.

The food and drink around town.

Lowlights:

My brain. I fought a few unnecessary battles with my computer.

Internet protocols and software. Erasing a page of ip addresses then typing them in exactly the same should not be necessary to connect to the web.

The program book. for some reason, the web page is great, easy to use organization, but the printed book is a all over the shop.

Revelation:

Parenting is great preparation for jet lag. I felt no worse today than I do after a standard night of child-induced insomnia.

Tomorrow is the designated "Hi, I used to read your blog before I found better things to do with my time" night. Tune in tomorrow to see how good an icebreaker that line is. I can tell from the recent comments that many of y'all feel the same way.