Friday, June 29, 2007

Spending some time with Leland

Earlier this week I was able to attend our annual NLM training conference at Leland Stanford Jr. University aka Stanford.

Its not always the easiest conference to pay attention during because the topics presented are so broad and specialized as to sometimes be almost unintelligible unless its something very similar to what you are working on. Thank heavens for the USA Today puzzle page.

I know I haven't been blogging much lately, but I guess I've just had a lot on my mind, but not anything coherent enough to blog about. Anyway, here's some pictures from the trip:

Hoover Tower
The Hoover Tower, named for Hebert Hoover, one of the esteemed alumni of Stanford. Apparently he was a Geology major. I made a crack about him getting elected because he was "so down to earth", and offered to let the tour guide use it, but for some reason she declined.

Memorial Court
Memorial Court, leading to the Main Quad and Memorial Church

Passageway
Classic university look

The Burghers of Calais
There are a lot of casts of Rodin sculptures at Stanford. These are the Burghers of Calais, but apparently "Burgher" isn't pronounced the same as "Burger".

Memorial Church
Inside the Memorial Church, which was really quite impressive.

From the Hoover Tower
Looking down from Hoover Tower, you can see the Main Quad and the front of the Memorial Church pretty good here.

My poster
I was asked to give a poster presentation. The conference organizers set up tables with display devices on top of them, but there were a lot of problems. First, the boards they had to mount the posters on didn't seem to fit right for the posters, so that some of the posters had to span from one board to another. Then the wind picked up and tipped nearly all of these boards over. I was glad that I hadn't pinned my poster to both boards or it probably would have been torn in half. Instead it just tore free of the pins and blew a few feet away. Anyway, in the end they moved us to a different spot, put the boards on the ground and had us stand by them in the hot sun for an hour. Thank heavens for a nearby tree that provided some shade to lurk in while people looked at my poster.

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