Memo to the President Elect, ISSCC, San Clemente, Jon Lovitz

A few weeks ago I went to ISSCC. It's the first real conference I've attended and was really interesting. It was basically 3 hours of lecture in the morning and 3 hours of lecture in the afternoon. And one day another 2 hours of lecture at night. But it was great to see what other people are working on and interesting to see some of the problems they've had. I mostly went to a combo of low speed analog and RF presentations. But I did catch intel's talk on their new high-k process - they do some really amazing stuff in order to build transistors with gate oxides a few atoms thick. The conference felt a bit like school since it was like going to lectures and I also saw 4 professors I took classes from there.

I got to see some of San Francisco, but I was at the conference most of the time. It was fun getting to eat at a whole variety of restaurants and not need to drive everywhere. This is probably true of the center of any major city, but, especially just as the sun started to set, it felt like I was inside when I was walking around outside. I think it's mostly the tall buildings lining narrow streets, but seemed like a stronger feeling than I've had in other big cities (except parts of Tokyo had a similar feeling).

Some how I forgot to bring a book on the trip up to ISSCC so at the airport I bought Memo to the President Elect by Madeleine Albright. I think the main message of the book is moderation and be reasonable. The secondary message is Bush sucks. The book is structured as a letter to the next president advising him on what to do. It almost entirely concentrates on foreign policy. It doesn't go into too much detail, but gives a good over view of America's relationship with other countries. It also gives a vague but reasonable path to minimizing issues in the middle east, including Iraq. For some reason I expected her to be more anti-military, but while she pushes mostly for diplomacy she makes it clear that the US should not entirely rule out the use of force (although she's very against the war in Iraq and does not want the US to go to war in Iran). The book is a bit boring because it is so moderate, but I guess good foreign policy is to keep things from getting exciting.

San Clemente made it on the nyt daily email! The article is about how the coastal commission stopped the toll road. I was a bit surprised because the nyt was a bit harsh on the coastal commission when I think it is great that there is a governmental group who is really looking out for nature.

Last weekend I went to the Irvine Improv with Evan to see Jon Lovitz. It was really funny. He was a bit different from his normal TV character, and made a lot of use of not being censored so it was not what I expected, but still really good.