The last six weeks have been insane from a work point of view, culminating in a couple of weeks where I worked... hard. I got a lot done! I’ve been working on some of the latter material for my PhD, and recently I’ve been having a few “holy crap, this actually works!” moments. I like those moments. :-). (If you’re interested, we’re writing a paper for USENIX, so it may or may not be in there).

Its getting into winter over there. (I guess I can’t say here - we’re about an hour out from Sydney at the moment). THe North West doesn’t really stop raining. At least a little bit every day. People get seasonal depression, and they have one of the highest suicide rates in the world! Not-so-good. On the up-side, it snows. Mount Hood (which I’ve talked about before) has a few resorts perched on the side.

Timberline is the lodge, which sits at about 6000ft, and boasts the longest ski season of any resort in North America. Thanks to some nifty work on the part of the groomers. who push masses of snow into a big gully during the winter, and then pull it out during the summer, you can usually ski the entire year around.

Its a couple of hours drive from where I lived, and I made it up there a couple of times for some great skiing. Everyone there complained how incomplete the snow was. As far as I could tell, with most of the mountain open, and thigh-deep powder in places, it was great!

One cool experience was seeing the opening of a new chairlift. I was one of the first 20 skiers to catch the Jeff Flood express, and scored some free cider in the process. Nice!

I also met some cool people over the last few weeks. We tried out a couple of nice places to eat in Portland (they have the grand concept of a “happy hour” for food here, which means you end up with pretty decent $2 burgers, dips, etc). We headed out on the town.

While I’ve been working lots of the weekends, there’s been a few boozy nights in there, which has been great.

In all, the American experience has been great. I’ve experienced the culture, both good and bad. I’ve got an understanding for some of their behaviours, even if not an agreeance.