Josh Evnin

Check out my pictures from CHI…highlights to be flickr’ed soon.

Josh’s Pictures

me & a stone animal

Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.

I’m in the Portland Airport right now. PDX, for those who are interested. This is the best free wifi I’ve experienced in a long long time…go Portland airport.

The big trip is coming to an end…we’re flying from Portland to Atlanta to Indianapolis. We’ll be back by 8am…redeyes are fun, or not.

This trip has been wonderful. Portland is a great city. The folks from IU have been awesome as well. Team mPath won, but really we all did.

I’d like to take an opportunity to thank my Echoes teammates, J & S. They’ve been great…allowing me to joinup in the last minute…trusting me with important parts of their “baby”…and doing a ton of work to move the team forward. It’s been a great journey, guys, thanks for the good times.

I’m gonna bend one of the official rules of Notta Blog…I’m writing horribly this evening (the admission is the rule bending), so I’m just gonna quit.

I’ll catch you all on the flipside. Time to board a plane.

IMG_4559

Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.

I feel the need, the need to blog. It’s been itching at my soul for the last few days now…so here goes.

If you have called, emailed, or otherwise tried to contact me, I’m sorry for being out of contact. Over the next few days I’ll do my part to catch up. For now, hopefully this note will tide you over.

Birthday was fun and stressful. We had a poster presentation for the Student Design Competition. 25 teams entered the competition, 11 were invited to the conference, and 4 moved on to the next round. Unfortunately, my team did not make it to the final round. It’s all good though, because that allowed me and the others who did not move on to have some fun! Team mPath from IU did move on, and I’d like to wish them the best of luck in their final presentation, which is to take place in less than an hour.

Last night we went to the convention’s reception party, which started with a procession through the streets of Portland. Picture loud drums and a couple hundred Human-Computer Interactionists dancing behind them. That was us. Crazy. Weird. Good times. 🙂 The party was also fun, and I saw some people from my old days at UCSD. Danced on a bouncing dance floor, which was relatively scary. The wood was old and thin, so it bounced as people danced. Basically just had to bob my head, because the floor took care of the rest 😉

Tonight we’re gonna hit up the Google, Microsoft, and perhaps SAP party.

Ok, that’s the short update. Thanks for the birthday wishes. You’ll hear from me again soon.

Too much underwear!

Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.

So I’m packing for my CHI trip and I have realized that I will have to pack an inordinate amount of underwear. It’s crazy, but not completely my fault. See, while in Portland I’ll continue to run, which means that I’ll be wearing multiple pairs of underwear in the same day. Plus I have to bring extra shirts to run in, and extra socks…

Maybe I share too much with my readership…but that’s a good thing, I think. I ran 9.2 miles this morning…so I may be a bit delirious. Not to mention the fact that I got like 5 hours of sleep last night. Good warm-up I guess, it’s not like I’ll be sleeping at the conference.

BTW, I have been invited to 2 parties so far at CHI, one thrown by Google and the other Yahoo! They’re at the same time, of course. This has lead to some rather serious introspection about which company I have more allegiance to…we’ll see which way I go, if at all.

BTW2, for all those who like to keep tabs on my sister: she’s still brilliant. Acceptances at UCLA and Berkeley…ooh I am jealous! Tami is stellar. 🙂

Ok…back to packing.

IMG_4508

Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.

Remember when I wrote about the beautiful sound of all those birds tweeting? Well, those tweeters have been reminding me of the downside. 2 days in a row I’ve come to my car only to find that birds have pooed all over it. What’s up with that? Come on birds, don’t make me take back the nice things I said about you.

IMG_4507

Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.

This is me, Josh, as of yesterday afternoon. I must add that this is not how I normally look. Well, from the nose up, I have no excuses ;-), but everything below is just a mess. My cheeks are huge HuGe HUGE! I’ve been applying ice as necessary, and it helps with the swelling, but I still feel like a chubby chubby chipmunk. (It has struck me that this is, in fact, what I might look like if I were 20-30 pounds overweight…which I’ll be keeping in mind.)

Now I have to refocus my emphasis back on my schooling…this break has been longer than I was expecting. I needed to be doing so much more work…but that’s just not possible when the pain medication forced me to sleep for 6 hours in the middle of the day! This week is going to be absolute hell because of catch up…but at least it will end with a trip to Portland, Oregon for CHI 2005, which will be a blast for sure.

I think the rest of this semester will go by really fast, but when I think of all the stuff I’ll have to do before then, I cringe. There is so much on my mind I could pop, but I have to get to work, maybe I’ll update again tonight after getting my bearings straight…for now, enjoy the picture 🙂

IMG_4506

Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.

So my wisdom teeth were removed this morning. I was a bit nervous beforehand, because the oral surgeon had never met me, and he didn’t want my x-rays before I came in this morning.

In the end, the surgery only took 30 minutes or so to remove 3 teeth. Really really fast. The anesthesia stopped working about two hours after the surgery, which meant I couldn’t feel the entire bottom of my face…

After the drugs wore off, I was in pain. Today has been so weird because of this…i’ve eaten half a bowl of mashed potatoes, as well as half a bowl of chocolate pudding (the only kinda of chocolate I like). Needless to say, I’m hungry, but eating is just so painful.

I’ve also been really really tired. I slept for about 6 hours or so this afternoon, and I’m still really tired. I bet it’s the drugs. I’m on some kind of vicodin alternative, and i’m not really a big fan. “Meperidine” mildly retards the on set of pain, but it makes me tired, cranky, and even a little bit nausious.

Anyway, I’m tired…I’ll give more updates later, when I’m semi-coherent.

This was a fantastic weekend. Nothing about it was extremely extreme, but overall it was just a Zenful experience…if you know what I mean. Yesterday I wrote most of a paper and then watched 1984…which is a pretty strange movie. I’ve tried to read the book damn near a million times, but never get past page 50, the make-it-or-break-it page in most books. The movie had some gratuitous nudity scenes, which I found relatively disturbing. Showing naked women in your movie will not improve the quality of the flick, if you ask me. Maybe it was to prove a point or something about the woman expressing herself in a world that holds her and all others down…but still, she could have worn neon.

Today was a really productive day. I got a lot of stuff that I’ve been needing to do done or started or thought about. My ToDo list just sort of filled itself out and things just got done. I can’t remember the last time that happened. It seems that I’m too busy at meetings and class and doing inconsequential work to get anything substantial done. The building was empty for most of the day today, so I got a chance to get some deep thinking done.

The next few days are going to be a mess. My schedule is chock full o’ goodness tomorrow…then my wisdom teeth will be removed on Thursday. I’ll give a full report on the week later. For now it’s bedtime…