Goal 42: Disney Conference

This post consists of two parts, one is mostly talk, the other is mostly pictures.

The HENAAC Conference basically represents my success as a NMT student. I've had success elsewhere, doing other things, but it seems to me that if I'm actively attending NMT, the HENAAC Conference will prove I'm doing things right. The 2009 conference was in Long Beach, CA, and as President of ASME, I managed to fund and send twelve students, including myself. This was the first time our club had attended a conference in recent history, and three members came back with awards, including my own record-breaking 1st place in the College Bowl.

This year the conference was held on the other side of the country, at Walt Disney World. I planned on going purely for this fact, and received a travel grant to go for applying early. A few months after I received my travel grant I was made aware of the Technical Poster Competition. No real risk involved in submitting an abstract, I decided to modify an old conference abstract, and submit it with the intention of future work. About a month later I heard back from the judges when they let me know they were going to fully fund my trip to Florida because I was a finalist in the competition.

Fast forward through a month of me planning on doing the experiments, but failing to find time until taking the week before off, and hiring two freshman helpers to do all the testing the weekend before the conference. That weekend was likely the worst weekend of my life, and was spent trouble shooting fluid models, fixing experimental setups, and trying to extract meaningful data out of what seemed to be random noise. Long, stressful nights spent on this project were not planned, especially not the Tuesday night (I flew to Florida on Thursday morning) when I was up until 6:00am (Wednesday morning), only to lose eight hours of work from an Adobe Illustrator crash! Luckily I was able to redo the poster quickly, and have it printed by 3:00pm, Wednesday afternoon. This is what it looked like:

Now, I wasn't especially happy with it because I knew I could do better, but I kinda ran out of time. I made it mostly by the judges rubric, so I felt good about the way I made it, but then I also didn't like it because I thought I could have put many more pictures. At any rate, once it was printed, I didn't look at it again until the day of the competition.

Goal 42: Present My Work at a Conference

I arrived in Orlando and met Austin Silva before heading to our hotel rooms at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort, it is October 7th.

The first thing I did was lose my registration information, and lock my room key in my room. That was alright though, because the SECOND thing I did was go to WALT DISNEY WORLD!

We lucked out enough to be at Walt Disney World during Epcot's Food and Wine Festival. I had plenty of Main Gate Passes, so I called up my old friend Rachel Edsey, whom I worked with at Epcot and had recently moved back to Florida, and we made a night of the night. We started in Mexico with margaritas.

Then we ate:

• Pot Stickers in China (excellent sauce)
• Pierogi in Poland (tasty combination)
• Pulled pork lettuce wraps in South Korea (delicious. really delcious.)
• Mussels and waffles in Belgium (small mussels, but we got a free order for getting a shell without an edible inside)
• Beef Rendang in Singapore (very good, but made excellent by the SINGAPORE SLING drink, made with fancy and extremely smooth gin)
• Baclava in Greece (this was free because of my charm)
• and escargot in France (pictured and scrumptious)

Did I mention we got to go see Sugar Ray in concert at the American Gardens Theater? Well that couldn't have been much better. Mark McGrath rocked it like he was still in his 20's, and at this point the Singapore Sling made the entire experience pretty surreal.

After watching Illuminations: Reflections of Earth, we made our way over to Downtown Disney, where Rachel caught us up on the newest Disney rage: Vinylmation.

The next day Austin and I took part in a few HENAAC seminars...then...we kinda went to the Animal Kingdom for lunch... We went straight from the conference, so we were dressed to impress. When I called Rachel, she wanted to meet us, but she had just finished with an interview, and didn't want to pay to park. We told her that by being dressed up she would only fit in, and then Austin and I decided we'd hike out to the toll booths to meet her. When we finally arrived at the booths in our ties, the cast members were confused to see us out there, and didn't really know what to do, so they just told us to stand on the side of the highway... then we got picked up and it was time for AK!

We got fast passes for Dinosaur, ate some dino-pulled-pork, and went single rider at Expedition Everest. When I was placed in a seat, the guy I was sitting next to was by himself also, and Austin just happened to be a row in front of me. I requested that him and Austin switch, and he agreed. You can see him in the picture as the one that thinks he's a zombie.

After all the fun for lunch, I had to go make my poster presentation. This signifies the completion of the aforementioned goal.

The rest of the day was seminar and another trip to Downtown Disney. At this time, Austin and I had mostly reconnected with the others from our school, and we went to bed ready for the morning.

The next day was the final day of the conference, October 9th. My phone alarm didn't go off, so we ended up sleeping in way later than expected. Nonetheless, we were able to book it through the career fair and make it to WDW by 1pm. It was a marathon of Disney in which we started at the Animal Kingdom, made a guest appearance at Hollywood Studios, toured the world at Epcot, and ended the magic at Magic Kingdom.

At Animal Kingdom, we went on the best safari I've ever been on. The animals were out like crazy, and we saw rare black rhinos, giraffes, new additions, and tons of field beasts.

At Hollywood Studios, we were thoughtfully stuck in....

The Twilight Zone

At Hollywood Studios I began my amazing streak of acquiring free things. It started when I asked for an orange at a turkey leg dealer. She said they didn't have any fruit, so when I pointed out the fruits on the counter behind her, she informed me those were supposed to be gone. She got me one, and then asked me to "blahblah fera turkey leg."

Me: What?

Her: Gobble for a Turkey Leg?

Me: Oh! Uh... gobble gobble gobble.

Her: Louder.

Me. Gobble Gobble Gobble!

Her: Use your arms! (like a chicken dance)

Me (using arms): GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE!

>BAM<

=Free Turkey Leg and Orange for our group=

Then we rode the boat to Epcot. Just before this picture, I found out that I won 3rd place in the poster competition! (I missed the awards ceremony because I was enjoying the magic)

Epcot was awesome. By this time I switched pins with Alex Plonczak (far right), so now I had a "Just Engaged" pin that had Alex and Erika's (Middle) name's written on it. I wanted it because I knew I could use it much better than they could. So at every kiosk I was sure to inform cast members of how I was recently engaged, and I got lots of extra attention because of it!

Then we rode Spaceship Earth... Welcome to the future.

Epcot ended in the fireworks that bring it all back for me.

We had just enough time to make it over to Magic Kingdom before their fireworks show. We met up with the last person from our school, Nic Schafer.

I realized before entering that I lost my ID. I got this ice cream to cheer me up. You can't tell from this picture, but it worked.

Space Mountain had a huge line, so we walked to the other attractions. It was already 10:00pm, so it was no surprise that Splash Mountain had a 5 minute wait time. Being one of the biggest attractions in the World, we decided to take a walk on the wild side and just go for it.

Immediately after getting in line it was apparent we may have made a mistake.

"You may get soaked!"

...What were we thinking?

For the next fifteen or so minutes, the six of us screamed at the top of our lungs, put our hands as high up in the air as we could, and caused as much of a ruckus as a crazy bunch of college students going to a kid's theme park.

After the insanity that was Splash Mountain, we couldn't get the song out of our heads, and we couldn't stop recalling the laughing place, so we couldn't help but skip to a tune: "Skippity-doo-da, Skippity-day..." across the park. Whilst skipping, a challenge appears!

The Electrical Parade was in our way, so we had to re-route! On our new route we ended up skipping through the cafeteria in Tomorrowland, still singing. The people in the back of our skip line informed everyone that we were applauded by the time we made it out of the diner!

Making it back to Space Mountain, it was much fast than we remembered.

We ended with a picture in from of the castle, and went back to Coronado Springs. Four parks in one day is something I have never done, and was not easy, but was the time of my life.

At the end of the night we all headed to the pool and spa for a little while before headed to our rooms. Austin and I quickly packed and indulged in an all-nighter while we waited for the 5am bus departure times.

My weekend of unimaginable luck wasn't over yet, though. At the airport, I volunteered to change flights and received $483.00 in Southwest vouchers. My new flight was with Austin all the way home, and I ended up making it home before my original travel plans would have gotten me there. This was, absolutely, the best way I could have ended the prior weeks of hell. I doubt I will ever forget this trip to the Disney Conference.