Graduation and Gustation

This morning, once I finished playing with my Treo 650 from bed, I got up and went to the Duke Computer Science graduation ceremonies. Fewer and fewer people are majoring in computer science. This means two things. There are few students that get up to shake hands with my dad and a few other faculty. There is more time for relatives to jump up and take photos of each student. In fact, they even had one of the university photographers there to take a shot of each graduate and faculty. Of course, he's a ham radio operator, so that's very cool.

The food served following the ceremony was excellent this year. For the past several years, it's been done by Fares's catering company, so it's usually quite good. He runs the cafeteria closest to the computer science department, where I used to eat lunch every day. I ate very well my last couple of years at Duke. This year, instead of sandwiches, they had mostly salads. They had a taragon chicken salad that was just wonderful as well as a rice and garbonzo bean salad. The chicken salad had just a few grapes and strawberries in it. The strawberries and chicken were a neat combination. While my parents and I ate, we talked to other faculty, including RD, whom I hadn't gotten to talk to in an age and a half.

My Treo 650 exhibited some strange behavior today. The blinky green light turned solid orange. It's likely that this was because of Verichat. From what I could tell from googling, it's because I received a message while I was in another application on my phone. The only way to get rid of the orange is through a soft reset. Fortunately, I upgraded to a newer version of Verichat and that included a soft reset as part of the install. It never hurts to be efficient. I don't know if this orange bug is included in the new version I installed, but as bugs go, it isn't so bad. I still think it's the coolest thing I've seen lately.

This evening, I met JJ and JA for dinner at Vinny's. I think they liked it, which was great. I had yet another serving of eggplant parmesan. JJ raised the question of who Churton was, since the restaurant is in the Churton Grove Center shopping center and the main street in Hillsborough is Churton Street. Well, William Churton was the surveyor who laid out Hillsborough in1754, but here is more than you have ever wanted to know about him. Afterwards we went to the Coffee Cafe and I finally tried out their coffee, a decaf cafe mocha with skim, my usual. I also couldn't resist getting a chocolate Bavarian strudel to take home. We also shared a lemon cookie, which was quite good and delicately tart. Finally, we tried Altoids gum, since none of us had before. It was just as strong at the beginning, but quickly became mild, unlike the original tablets if you don't chew them up. Nice.