Books in 2011

Just like I did last year for books in 2010, here's a list of books that I read in 2011.

1. The Electrical Field - Kerri Sakamoto

2. Hugh Laycock: Legacy - Compiled by various cousins

3. How to do Everything - Red Green

4. Gideon's Sword - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

5. Odd Thomas - Dean Koontz

6. Forever Odd - Dean Koontz

7. Brother Odd - Dean Koontz

8. Odd Hours - Dean Koontz

9. Behold the Fire - Steven D. Salinger

10. Jennie - Douglas Preston

11. Along Came a Spider - James Patterson

12. Kiss the Girls - James Patterson

13. Don Quixote: Part 1 - Miguel de Cervantes

14. Velocity - Dean Koontz

15. Cold Vengeance - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

16. A Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin

For anyone who may be wondering, I would say that my favorite books on this list are Hugh Laycock: Legacy, Odd Thomas, Cold Vengeance, and A Game of Thrones. It's hard to limit it to just those 4, though, because I really liked a lot of these books. I can definitely say, however, that my least favorite were The Electrical Field and Behold the Fire. The former was boring, the latter was pointless, and both were full of characters I just didn't care about.

Vancouver

Wow, so, this post was supposed to go up a long time ago. I decided that I needed to do a better job keeping up with my blog and realized I had started this post and never finished it. Pretty much it's just pictures of my trip to Vancouver, B.C. last June. I went up there to present a paper at the 2011 ASME Turbo Expo. An updated version of the paper I presented at this conference is now being published in the ASME Journal of Turbomachinery.

This is the hotel that Dr. Fletcher and I stayed at while in Vancouver

These are a couple of churches that I could see from my hotel window. I thought that they looked kind of neat.

These are some boats in Coal Harbor. The building across the water, with the sloped roof, is the Vancouver Convention Center. This is where the Turbo Expo took place.

These are the walls inside the Vancouver Convention Center. I thought it was pretty neat how they made the walls look like piles of lumber.

The Olympic Torch. It doesn't look like it's lit, but it is. You could see the ripples in the air caused by the heat of the flames.

I thought this was pretty funny. The Stanley Cup Finals (Vancouver vs. Boston) were also going on while I was in Vancouver, but the Canucks were playing in Boston that week. This is a statue of Lord Stanley in Stanley Park that somebody has had some fun with. There is also a sign at the bottom of the statue that says something to the effect of "Canucks, bring my cup home." Well, they didn't.

Stanley Park was beautiful, by the way.

These sea planes were constantly taking of and landing in Coal Harbor. The outer walls of the convention center was made up of huge windows, so people were constantly stopping and watching the planes land and take off.

The session that I gave my presentation in ended just on time to catch Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Dr. Fletcher and I joined the group of people watching the game on the outdoor screen at Canada Place. We stayed there for the first period then walked up to our hotel and finished the game there.

This is my badge from the conference. I only wore the "Speaker" ribbon while I was there because I thought I would have looked pretty silly with all 4 ribbons hanging underneath.