The second day of the Research Spring Strategy meeting was as interesting as the first — and probably more educational for me, since it featured talks from our Physical Sciences folks, who did a great job of making what they do comprehensible to a software person like me. I usually don’t like long, PowerPoint-heavy meetings, but this one was an exception; I came away with a new appreciation for the role that IBM Research plays in the company and what my colleagues in other parts of the division do.
That said, it was still a long day, and I had to resist the temptation to gobble sweets. I didn’t quite succeed, but I indulged far less than I did yesterday.
I’m flying home from JFK tomorrow morning at 9:15am, so I decided it would be a good idea to be close to the airport instead of on the wrong side of two bridges. But as far as I can tell, there are no decent hotels near JFK (certainly, the ones on the IBM list didn’t look impressive when I Googled them), so I’m at the Wyndham Garden LaGuardia instead. It may be just as quick to take a taxi from here directly to the terminal than to take a shuttle from a JFK hotel to Federal Circle and transfer to the AirTrain — and it’s certainly cheaper than holding on to a rental car an extra day (just in case anyone from accounting is reading this blog…).
The Wyndham is OK so far; my room is a bit too close to the Grand Central Parkway, so it’s noisy — but I’ve survived worse. And they had free copies of the New York Times in the lobby, so I had something to read during dinner. I think my plans to use the exercise room have been derailed, though; I made the mistake of checking my email right after dinner, and when I looked up, it was well after 9:30pm — I think sleep is a higher priority than exercise at this point. Morning is going to come earlier than I want.