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In the last two and a half weeks, I’ve been working on a poster for a technical conference that I am going to next week. In this conference, I would be getting my 5 minutes of fame.

I spent a lot of time working on this poster because it was important. Here’s a conversation I had with my advisor a few weeks ago.

Advisor: I want you to spend the next few weeks on this poster.
Me: Okay.
Advisor: And it has to be good.  You saw John’s poster, right?
Me: Uh huh.
Advisor: It has to be better than that. (My note: that’s a pretty high standard.)
Me: What do you mean?
Advisor: This thing has to be perfect. And not just perfect, it has to look good and be different. It has to be unconventional.
We happened to be meeting in a computer lab that day for reasons I will not discuss because it is a long story.
Advisor: You see this mousepad?
He grabs an Intel mousepad that was donated by Intel. It’s a pretty mousepad.
Advisor: It has to look like this mousepad.

This morning at 11:38 am, I was at Kinko’s signing off a form confirming my order to print a 14 square foot poster. After a 5 minute walk to my office, I checked my e-mail and saw this…

SRC is very sorry to announce the cancellation of TECHCON 2008, which was scheduled for September 15 and 16 at the Renaissance Hotel in Austin. This decision is based on weather forecasts, computer models for Hurricane Ike, and advice from the SRC BoD Executive Committee. Safe travel for attendees is our primary concern; we believe weather conditions in Austin and Dallas will make it nearly impossible for conference attendees to arrive safely in time to begin the event on Monday morning. At this time we are exploring possibilities for rescheduling the event later this year and will be following up on that by the end of next week. SRC will contact registrants regarding a refund of the registration fee.

And guess what? The e-mail was sent at 11:38 am. Of all the times they could send me this e-mail, they just had to send it exactly at the time I am at Kinko’s confirming my order. If they did it one hour earlier, it wouldn’t have been printed. If they did it later, well that sucks too because the poster would have been printed by then, but they just had to send it as early as possible while being able to screw me.

Whenever you see some fool on campus running, it’s probably a freshman who is late for class. Older students don’t run because they don’t care if they are late. But anyway, I ran across campus like a freshman to get to Kinko’s to cancel my poster order.

Me: Hello. Panting because I am out of breath.
Kinko’s lady: What’s wrong?
Me: Did you start printing?
Kinko’s lady: Yeah.
Me: Doh. My conference just got cancelled.
Kinko’s lady: Uh, what do you want me to do? I can cancel it.
I look at my poster coming out of the plotter, and it’s already halfway out.
Me: Bah, I’ll just let it print. It’s okay, my department is eating the cost.

The bright side is that the conference wasn’t a more important conference like RFIC, CICC, or ISSCC. If I had the opportunity to present at ISSCC and an earthquake struck San Francisco right before the conference, I’d be so pissed.

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