Nate True's Weblog: Posts tagged with airplane

I rode a robot car

Posted by natetrue 2 years ago

Sunday was the worst day I've had in a long time. Monday, by contrast, was the best day I think I will have in a while.

GM was nice enough to fly out Jesse Ferguson and me to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for their team's qualifying tests for the DARPA Grand Challenge. The flight was supposed to leave Seattle at a balmy 5:20 AM, so I camped out on the couch for the 5-ish hours of sleep I'd get before we had to leave.

I made sure to leave the lights on, and check the time frequently as I slept so that I would not wake up feeling tired. That, at least, worked.

We had figured that we wouldn't need to leave a lot of time before our flight because it was such an early one. That, as it turned out, was a big mistake. When we got to the ticketing desk to check in, we found that everyone had figured just as we had, and come at the last minute, forming a long line at the check-in desk.

The line seemed to be moving smoothly enough, so I didn't worry - I calculated a time estimate and I thought we'd be able to make the flight, but when we got to the ticket counter the guy said we were too late. He was nice enough, though, to reschedule us for a flight about two hours later.

Great, we said, now that that's gone wrong, what else could happen?

Jesse and I waited at the airport playing Plasma Pong, a fluid-dynamics version of the old-school Pong. It's pretty addictive and the time went by quickly.

Tags: airplane, boss, burning crust of flies, cmu, delay, gm, robot car, robot city, titan racing

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Nate's on a plane: A photo memoir of my recent trip to Texas

Posted by natetrue 2 years ago

I recently spent three days on a trip to Austin, Texas to go filming for The Bleeding Edge at AMD HQ over there. I went with my best buds Andru Edwards and Jesse Ferguson and spent the whole time with them.

I love these trips - leaving the drudgery and boringitude of my normal life to go to some exotic location (or in this case, some dry and flat location) on a mission of great importance.

We left Monday morning really early (I was awake at 3 am!). I played chauffeur to the airport. Walking away from our parking spot (forgetting to note where it was, oops) I saw a car with its back window shattered. There was broken glass everywhere! I'm not sure why I didn't take a picture, but it looked like it was just random vandalism. I was afraid the same would happen to my car, but I knew the chances were still slim.