st. louis earthquake

My first earthquake (and aftershock):

Image from ERI at SLU.

I passed my oral exam

I passed my oral exam this week. Now I need to start doing research again.

ski trip

Julie and I spent last week in Copper Mountain, CO. I will omit details of the conference I was attending and instead tell you about the vacation part of the trip (pictures). The summary is that we both went skiing for the first time and had an awesome time.

A photo album of our trip.

Day 1: Arrived at Copper Mountain Resort

We flew from St. Louis to Denver and met up with some friends at the Denver airport. From Denver we drove on I-70, passing through the Eisenhower Tunnel, in a small snow storm to our condo.  We arrived in the Center Village at the resort and started drinking lots of water to avoid dehydration.  Although I did not think so while we were on the highway, I now realize that the fresh snow was a good thing because you ski slower, crashes are less painful, and it is very pretty.

The mountain from the athletic club.

Center Village from our condo balcony.

The base of the American Eagle lift from our condo balcony.

Day 2: Took ski lessons

We woke up early and arrived at the ski school, rented skis, and signed up for lessons. Julie and I had never skied before. I highly recommend taking lessons for your first time. We took no pictures today because we did not want to break our camera with all the falls.

Day 3: Went skiing again

More skiing. We made it off of the Kokomo lift (the easiest) a few times today.

View from Kokomo lift.

Julie on skiis.

Day 4: Took a 2 hour snowmobile trip

We were both pretty sore from skiing and falling so we decided to go snowmobiling (the photo album has video). We took a two hour trip that went almost to the continental divide.

The rear view.

Julie and I at the half-way point of our trip (they should have warned us that our clothes would smell horribly of exhaust if we did not wear the ski suits they provided, yuck).

A snow angel in very deep snow.

Julie warming her hands and feet (did you know snowmobiles have hand and feet warmers?).

Day 5: Went skiing again

The fifth day was a breakthrough day for Julie, she figured out how to ski well enough that it was fun. We were both glad we did not try to snowboard because the beginning snowboarders still looked very frustrated.

“This is fun.”

The view from the Lumberjack lift.

Day 6: Heading back home.

We woke up early (there were workers with axes on the roof breaking icicles) and went for a walk before checking out and heading for our flight.

Dudes on the roof with axes.

A snowy creek that runs through the resort.

Today we adopted Princess Zelda

Today we adopted a cat (not my idea) and named her Princess Zelda (not my idea). We are all very excited.

february recap

Here is the PowerPoint-slide version of my February:

• I attended WACV/WMVC in Austin, Tx (which is a great city) to present my research on using local shape models for image segmentation. It was my first oral presentation at a conference and I was very nervous. In the end my only regret was that I forgot to tuck my shirt in (oops) and I described something as “arbitrarily funky”.
• While in Austin I hung out with my friend Sean and (if I recall correctly) beat him at pool.
• I won an award for the best Doctoral Student Seminar talk for the Fall Semester.
• I waited (and continue to wait) to hear about internships for this summer and whether or not my paper will be accepted to CVPR (one of the big conferences in Computer Vision).
• I decided I need a cell phone.

2006 recap: Landscape Challenge

During 2006 we won a native plant landscape makeover and below are a few pictures from the event.  Our home was selected for a makeover over 75 other applicants. We had a great group of volunteers help transform our yard on a Saturday in September.  I will continue posting pictures of the yard to my flickr site as the seasons change.

Before the makeover.

I’m back

I have not blogged in a year and a half because I moved to St. Louis to work on a Ph.D. and decided to take a break.  Anyhow, I should be blogging more regularly now.

wustl bound

I will be heading to St. Louis this fall to work on a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Washington University.

Stay tuned.

super mom?

My mom is making quite a scene in the knitting-blogger world.

Congrats mom.

St. Louis Science Center

This past weekend I went with my son to the St. Louis Science Center (in the Cyberville gallery) to see an exhibit I helped create several years ago. In the game three players (a supplier, a builder and an architect) work together to build a house. After the house was complete the voice of Aaron Brown congratulated us and we got to shoot off some fireworks. A kid standing behind me… waiting for a turn… actually said “Cool… mom I want to build a house too”.

It was the first time I had gotten to see the exhibit running since it was installed… a proud moment.