Skamania lodge is situated in the Columbia river gorge, which you’ll remember from previous exploits. Andrew and I were there to attend the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP) which is the premier operating systems conference. My room had a view, and waking up in the king-sized bed with a view of the sunrise reflecting between the mountains and the river was... quite pleasant. SOSP is always held somewhere nice, and its always well attended. Computer scientists are fickle. :-).

I met a lot of great people, including a few of my academic heroes. I got some new aspirations (the Mark Weiser award looks worth whatever effort it requires), talked to a lot of people, and generally got more excited about operating systems.

The conference is bigger than the ones I’ve been to previously, and I think its 400 participants is about right for something like this: its got critical mass. The papers themselves were a little disappointing because most of them weren’t really _that_ OS related, being more about systems in general. Building stuff. Good stuff. That works. Fast.

The energy papers were good, but not stellar. I want one of my papers in that conference.