Silico-Paleontology: The Minnebar 16 talk that wasn’t

I was all scheduled to give a talk at tomorrow’s Minnebar 16 entitled “Silico-Paleontology: Using graph databases to analyze evolved programs”. Than, last night, my left knee cap decided to slide off to places it didn’t belong, and I ended up in the ER where I received a very stylish knee brace/immobilizer. I’m fine, and will be hopefully be back to normal in a week, but for now the idea of driving the 3ish hours each way to the Cities, the walking and standing and walking, etc., etc., isn’t really an option. So I’ll be missing a meetup with Morris folks tonight and one of my favorite tech events tomorrow.

Even more annoying, I’d finally gotten around to scheduling a talk, and now that’s not happening either. I’ve thought pretty seriously about giving some sort of talk since I attended my first Minnebar in 2013, but the timing has always gotten in the way. Usually these things are in April, when the semester/school year is getting quite chaotic, and the best of intentions run up against the realities of the job, and the talk always losing.

This year, though, Minnebar is in the first week of June! So there was really no reason not to submit a talk, and I did. Several people had expressed interest on the website, and I was really looking forward to sharing some of the research work I’ve done with UMN Morris students over the years, meeting some new folks, etc., etc., etc.

My knee, however, had other thoughts.

And so when I would planning to be arriving in the Cities and checking into a hotel, I’m sitting here with my leg propped up babbling on the Internet. Sighz.

If there’s time maybe I’ll write up a short version of the talk here, and if folks would be interested in more we can go from there.

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Thanks, Tom

There have been few times in my life when I have felt more free, more myself than when reading to and performing with our son.

Reading to him helped me rediscover my love of performing, and of story.

Singing with him helped me rediscover my love of song, and music as a thing made.

In those moments we were deeply together, sharing experience richly, across the three decades that persistently endeavor to separate us.

In those moments I was me, not any of the formal presentations of myself. And that freedom drew us together, hand in hand. Two people, ageless, sharing a love of tune and tale and, more often than not, a certain level of silliness.

When he finds himself mired in those tough questions of how to repay the things our parents did for us, I hope he remembers this.

And knows we’re all good.

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