We changed venues this year, as in a different building, but still U of MN. We were in Rapson Hall, the architecture building, named for Ralph Rapson who built the original Guthrie Theater.
Here it is. It's also famous in our household for being the place where my wife and I met. The guy between us skipped class all quarter and, unlike any other class I had, it had assigned seating. So I gave my wife a ride home to Coon Rapids on my way to Monticello now and then and we eventually got married. There are some sexed up rabbits and a break up over a picnic table in the middle there, but that's water next to the picnic table (and under the bridge - literally - it was right down the river).
I caught Next Generation Web Applications with React by Eric Brandes. He said it wouldn't be his most polished presentation, but it was very good. Acceptance Test Driven Development by Benoy John, which violated my rule I always violate about stick to tech and not softer business presentations. I was disappointed for me, because it covered ground I already knew and I contributed more than I learned. But the presentation was well done and I get hold of his Powerpoint I'll share it with my business with a note that security testing belongs in more than one quadrant. Angular, TypeScript, and Project Katana by Justin Wendtlandt was the one that went over my head at times. There's always one of those. But there were plenty of little bits to pick out of it, including some things that clarified proof of concept work my team was engaged in at work.
I walked past Folwell Hall on my way to Rapson. It hasn't changed. It's where I took Finnish lessons as an undergraduate and one partial Latin reading class before I realized I was going to stay in the US with my wife rather than head off to Wales or England to study graduate Tudor/Stuart history.
I've always liked the horses with their shields on the roof. They look sort of like backward, fat turtles holding onto their shells from afar, until you stare at them for a while and they resolve.
I skipped the 2-3:00 class period because I always skip one period. It's sort of a pick me up. I spent half of it looking for a geocache by this giant monument to Bender the Robot from Futurama. But there were so many muggles checking out campus that I couldn't find more than 20 seconds to shove my hand up a drain or behind a display before someone walked by I was worried would assume I was up to nefarious purposes. Boss said we could avoid the muggles by dressing in black and sneaking around at night. There were two other folks caching as well. I watched them try to poke around despite the muggles as well. Figures at a tech conference you'd get a few.
It's somewhere here. Do you see it?
If not, try this link that's 20 times larger. Perhaps you'll see what I missed.
I finished up with another business-y presentation on Doing Open Source the Right Way by Charles Oliver Nutter. Again, not much that was new and the class went close enough to the final drawing and goodbyes that I didn't get to ask about how you manage to protect your open source code base when different countries have different rules about whether you can even give up your intellectual ownership of code. E.g. in India, according to an IP Prof from St. Thomas, you can't sign over attribution. It remains with you whether you like it or not. I have no idea what that means for Open Source code, but I have a sneaky suspicion there's a legal loophole there that would allow someone from India to get their hands on a lot of code beyond the small bits they wrote unless the bits could be discretely isolated (whew...changesets).
I've taken up parking pretty far from campus because I prefer free parking to $10. On a positive note I walk past the coffee shop and lots of good places to eat. I had breakfast at Tony's, although based on the crowd at the counter-only space at Al's in Dinkytown, that's where I should have gone, wait or no wait. Annie's is still there. My wife and I used to go there on dates. I like the addition of the Kitty Cat Club downstairs. Gives the building a lot of character.
On the way back to my car, I stopped at 1-2-3 Sushi to have a bowl of Pork Tonkatsu Ramen. Ming and I had passed the place when were at the U for Miss Information with the Girls in Tech group and Glitch (excellent movie about the portrayal of women in the media, by the way). It wasn't as good as the bowel of Ramen I had at Moto-i and it didn't come with a hand-drawn kitty on my receipt. They used more store-type ramen and pork had a sauce that I didn't like with the ramen. I strongly suggest if given the choice you go to Moto-i.
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