Lynne and I flew to Washington D.C. to meet up with Dave and Chris Gedye, and attend the awards banquet for the Computerworld Smithsonian Awards (warning: their web site is weird) which honors projects that advance Information Technology. SETI@home was nominated for the award in the Science category; our entry is here.

We stayed with Maurice and Leslie Balick, near Annapolis (Maurice, Dave and I climbed Telescope Peak in 1993). The day before the shindig, Lynne and I drove into D.C., visiting the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum

and various public buildings, including our nation's capitol.

The next day we returned to D.C. with Leslie and the Gedyes (that's Dave below right).
We visited the National Gallery, walking briskly past the Monets and Picassos in search of the cafe.

Then we put on our formal duds and went to the banquet in the National Building Museum. Each table was equipped with arts-and-crafts supplies; Lynne made the FLOPs banner and an ET-phone-home thing. They gave me a medal and a plastic trophy-thing

(NOTE: Lynne edited this picture with Photoshop to remove redeye, reflective spittle, and Ferenge-tooth).

The fifty finalists were herded onstage for a round of applause (that's me at left). One of the finalists was Paul Kaiser, a year behind me at Wesleyan.

Unfortunately, SETI@home did not win; we were edged out by a project that used AutoCAD to design a one-man submarine.

Later that night Lynne and I drove all over town in search of fast food. We dropped in at the Lincoln Memorial, where I quickly memorized the text of the Gettysburg Address.

Lynne claims I look a bit like Old Abe. Waddya think?