To sum up this trip in one word: disturbing. On one hand, we have the fact that UCSD (which should really be called "UCLJ") is so much nicer than Berkeley in terms of cleanliness, atmosphere, and hell, there's parking there! On another hand, there were those insane things presented at toorcon which goes to show that nothing, abso-fsckin-lutely nothing is safe in terms of web servers and the like these days. I think it was bind who wrote a buffer-overflow script in C which ultimately generated a root shell in about 5 minutes. Then there was the whole drive to and from San Diego (which took only seven hours one way, which is much less than the 10 hr average that people from there tend to report. Quite an eye-opening experience it was.
Ok, so first things first: the UCSD Campus. Located in La Jolla (which is more or less the "modern" part of San Diego, in stark contrast to the ghettoness of downtown itself), the campus is pretty damn big; in fact, comparable to Davis in terms of sheer end-to-end size. Parking was ample, there were curbs which were clean around campus with no meters, and no signs restricting time limits or requiring permits. This, and the lack of hills made it obvious that it was no Berkeley.
About the only thing that came remotely close to resembling anything Berkeley-ish was this funky looking thing here. Is this a triton (the ucsd mascot)? Hell, whatever it is, it's better than a gay-looking tree. And even still, the fact that there's a green, flat, wide patch of grass around it immediately discounts any possible relation to Berkeley.
So here we have the robot-looking thing called the Library. This also serves as their pseudo-Campanile, as the hourly chimes (pre-recorded. ha!) come from the top of this building. This is perhaps the only area where Berkeley has UCSD beat: our tower and bells are real! But damn, that library has 8 floors. and they don't card you to get in or strip-search you on your way out. That's a good thing. Berkeley's library could stand to learn a thing or two from them.
Yeah, so here are the views from the 8th floor. So sad they wouldn't let us on to the roof.
So There was this awesome fountain thingie leading to the quad area in front of the Price Center (where Toorcon was held). It is very artistically done, as there are layers of water falling on top of each other (as seen below). And unlike Strawberry creek, it's clean water.
This would be the Price Center. It serves as the UCSD bookstore, houses a ton of conference rooms, and the lower level is a food court. And unlike Berkeley, where the GBC (and housing/dining services) has a monopoly over everything, this is an actual food court, complete with (among others) a Subway, Wendy's, and Round Table. No kidding! There's also a game room, and all that stuff. I guess this is comparable to Berkeley's ASUC, except much bigger and nicer and cleaner. Or not, since there's another ASUC-type store elsewhere on campus. Damn, this puts Berkeley to shame.
So back to the hotel. We stayed at the Marriott, a posh little place down the street from the campus. Lots of free stuff (hehehe) and even the Disney channel was free!. Above is a view of the ground from outside the balcony of the room that Kenshin and I shared. And on that note, I have to say that sharing a room with Kenshin was extremely disturbing, to say the least. I'll leave it at that, unless you want more details...then just ask.
And this was the empty restaurant (The Garden Palace or something to that extent) that was on the ground floor of the hotel. It's scary when the entire menu of stuff is at least 4 digits for each price listed.
And other things: we managed to drive down there in 7 hours, despite hitting LA around rush hour. Impressive, eh? And on the way back (for numerous reasons, including the whole reduced traffic one, we left at 1:15 am) it took another seven hours. Of course, we should have been able to make it back in 5 or 6, but around Fresno (after 3.5 hours of driving), Kenshin gets pulled over for having sped by a highway patrolman (to be honest, this guy sounded like a hick!) at 120 mph. not too smart...and at 5am, neither Kenshin nor I were fully awake (hell, I was asleep until the car pulled over). Then we followed the speed limit the rest of the way.
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