[Daniel] Reflection | Projections 2004

We left early Friday morning (5:30am) after both getting only 4 hours of sleep. We picked up Tony & Dan Rutz and headed down. Moriah was very kind and decided she was willing to drive us all down. I spent most of the trip trying to prepare myself for the interviews.



We got down to Urbana-Champaign at 11:45am. We went in and spent the next hour and a half interviewing with various companies. I interviewed with PayPal, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, Business Logic, Microsoft and Volition as well as one or two others. It was cool getting to smooze with some big name companies and find out more about them as well as pass my resume.



After that, we found a really neat health food store/cafe which I'm sure Moriah is dying to tell everyone about. After having some delicious food and chilling, we checked into our hotel. It was not the greatest hotel but it was improvement over the dive we stayed in last year. We then headed off to get food and see the first presentation. Chris Horvath of Tweak Films gave a presentation of creating realistic simulations for movies. His company worked on effects for Lord Of The Rings and The Day After Tomorrow. He had a great sense of humor and really gave a great presentation.



After that, we headed back to the hotel and swam with everyone who went for an hour and then chilled back in the room. We got only slightly more sleep that night (5 hours).



Saturday started very well. The first speaker, Guy Kawasaki, is a former Apple fellow and a venture capitalist. Aside from giving the best Powerpoint presentation I have ever seen, he did a great presentation and quickly garnered my respect. The talks after that were much more technical and not quite as interesting but I still learned quite a bit. The final talk was the best as we got to see two gentlemen from the gaming industry. I was excited because I have long admired the Levelord's work (Duke Nukem 3D, Heavy Metal FAKK 2, Star Trek: Elite Force, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero) so it was cool getting to hear that. I also received a CS:CZ card that the Levelord had signed. Not as cool as the signed copy of Sin Dan got but still very cool. Afterward, we all went out for pizza at a local restaurant called Papa Del's. It was good but still not as good as Rosati's in Wausau. Then we went back to the hotel and Tony, Moriah and I had fun swimming for an hour and a half while poor Dan slept in the hotel room because he felt like crap.



Sunday, by contrast, was not so good. We all woke up late, had a not-so-great breakfast and then walked in late on the first speaker of the morning. He spoke about AI and neural networks, which basically involves simulating the brain through code. The conceited bastard is basically trying to make it so people are "immortal" - before death, feed everything in their brain into his "creativity machine" and your knowledge will live on. He works for the military constantly and obviously gives no thought as to the ethical or moral issues his product creates. Then we decided to leave. We had only been in that talk for one hour and came out to a barren parking lot. The fact that there were hundreds of open spaces didn't stop some IDIOT from leaving a ton of white paint on Moriah's bumper!!! They sideswiped her car and didn't leave a note or anything. Moriah was very pissed as was I. So, in a huff, we left and drove back. The ride back was fine, aside from the stunning lack of a Dairy Queen between Rochester and Fond du Lac.



All in all, it was a lot of fun and I'm glad we went. It's kinda sad that we won't ever go again but it was a great last hurrah. For those interested, I'm working on shoving as many pictures up as I can over our slow dialup. You can see them in our Gallery.