Table Of Contents
Well, we got a paper accepted at SCAM, Mohammad has an Iranian passport, and Jens couldn’t take time out of his semester to travel, so it was up to me to travel to Flagstaff. I could have done without that travel, but I believe in this work, and I do believe that presenting work in person has more impact than not, so here we were.
- Mohammad Mahdi Abdollahpour, Jens Dietrich, and Patrick Lam. SCAM 2024: Enhancing Security through Modularization: A Counterfactual Analysis of Vulnerability Propagation and Detection Precision. [bib, slides pdf, google slides]
SCAM has been running for a few decades and is colocated with ICSME. SCAM is pretty small (we can call it “cozy”). ICSME is a bit bigger but not that big either. I do have an ICSME NIER paper from 2020 but had never been to either of these conferences. Still, SCAM is close enough to areas that I publish in that I ran into a couple of people that I knew, plus of course also people who I didn’t know. It felt like the ratio of students to faculty included more faculty than, for instance, at SPLASH. Plus there were two guys from raincode labs who were sharing industrial perspectives all week.
To Flagstaff, October 5
Although I’m aiming to increase my Air Canada lifetime miles count, this flight didn’t make sense to fly with Air Canada, even for me. I do take the Australian detour (Sydney or Brisbane) when the Auckland to Vancouver flight is not seasonally operating, but detours via Australia and then Canada to get to the southern US are a bit much, even for me.
Instead, I flew to Phoenix via Auckland and Los Angeles. First, up to Auckland leaving around mid-day, then a 12h flight leaving at 4pm local time and arriving at 8am local time (time travel thanks to the International Date Line). Finally, after 5 hours in LA, a short United flight to Phoenix and then a 2 hour Flixbus ride from PHX to Flagstaff.
I definitely had an ample baggage allowance on my flight to Phoenix but didn’t need it: I went carry-on only for this trip, even with 2 judogis for the NZ Nationals immediately after. However, since I was at WLG anyway, I verified my baggage allowance for the flight to Canada which was coming up in 11 days. The people at the check-in desk couldn’t see my reservation that far in the future, but the ticketing desk could, and they confirmed that I should be able to check 3 pieces. I’ve also been curious about how flexible the outbound segment connecting to an international flight, but I haven’t checked. Conversely, a Air NZ domestic return segment can be moved up if space is available.
In Auckland, there was an intense rain shower/thunderstorm. Fortunately, it was over by the time my flight was due to leave.
In flight to Los Angeles
I’d purchased a premium economy ticket for AKL-LAX and then put in a bid upgrade for about NZ$500, which worked, getting me a Business Premier seat on that segment. People on the Internet kind of complain about Business Premier not being as good as other airlines’ international business products. This is more or less accurate. Compared to Air Canada: the seat is a bit weird (“reverse herringbone”, and requiring help to make into a bed). The food quantity is reasonable (AC too much) but the flavour isn’t quite as good as on AC. The wine is better. So I’d say that Air NZ economy service is better than Air Canada, but business not quite as good. I can’t really say about premium economy. First world problems for sure.
Anyway, I managed to get some sleep on the plane, but it arrives at 4am local time for someone from NZ, and I often go to bed around midnight. Not the best for sleep, despite comfort. I think schedule is at least as important as seat in terms of getting sleep.
I left LAX on foot with only a little bit of sketchiness, looking for pharmacies. I found two pharmacies but zero that had walk-in COVID vaccines. I did find a Mexican food truck, Niko’s Red Tacos, with an excellent quesadilla and soup. That was a lot of food. The owner was busy chatting with customers for a while in Spanish. Turns out that it’s not that hard for me to understand conversational Spanish, though I haven’t really tried to speak.
Onwards to Flagstaff
Back to LAX and over to the right terminal. I waited at the United Club, which had a (non-smoking) outdoor terrace. It’s nice to be outside, but being outside at an airport means that there is jet fuel nearby, as well as loud planes.
Then on to the relatively short (90 minute), though advertising-infested, United flight to PHX. Renting a car from LAX would have gotten me to Flagstaff in less time than the connection, but then I’d have to drive a car 6 hours, which I like to avoid. Though it would also have allowed me to stop for probably a nicer walk at Sedona than what I could do in Flagstaff.
Anyway, the Flixbus from PHX to Flagstaff is good, cheap (US$28), and not too busy, as long as the timing works. It did, for me, on the outbound, and left me at the Flagstaff train station, a 15 minute walk away from my hotel after sunset. The 30 minute delay for LAX-PHX didn’t interfere with my bus connection.
The Super 8 in Flagstaff was quite good. Sometimes Super 8s feel a bit cheap (or is that Motel 6? too many numbers), but this one was OK, and the staff was keen to learn about how to do new things when I said I wanted to guarantee the stay on my (CAD) card and pay on my Wise card.
Overall, no travel issues. It’s just far: still about 27 hours door-to-door, even without crossing the continent. To be fair, flying just from Auckland to LA, for instance, or even Vancouver, is much quicker. I usually use the rule that each connection adds about 4 hours.
Flagstaff and Mount Elden, Oct 6
I had one free day in Flagstaff, no car, and climbing shoes (but no rope). Still somewhat weighed down by the 2 judogis, but OK once I left everything in the room.
Car rentals (from both Phoenix and Flagstaff) were more expensive than I wanted to pay. At least there are a number of hikes accessible from Flagstaff. For no really good reason I chose the Mount Elden lookout walk.
But first, life maintenance. Maybe I’ve said this before, but it seems that people get COVID when travelling or from their kids. With all the travel coming up, I really thought it was a good idea to get the booster. It does protect somewhat vs transmission for a short time. So I walked to a Walgreen’s, waited for the pharmacy to open at 10 on a Sunday, and paid up for the vaccine. There was also another person getting the COVID + flu vaccine, plus an unhappy woman who the staff de-escalated.
After that, I managed to get to the market. Google Maps says they close at noon, but actually they close at 1pm on October Sundays, yay. I had a garlic shrimp bowl, and also wrote a thread on Mastodon about the market, inspired by George Penney’s market day in Aotearoa posts.
- Couple comes by, with the guy carrying a melon, eats, and leaves (still carrying the melon).
- Small human (4yo girl?) intently barrel rolls down the grassy slope and then back up again. Repeats several times.
- Woman has paint kit out and is painting scenes from the market. Man is taking pictures of painting woman on his cell phone.
- Little girl being carried around sees a puppy and tells “Puppy! Puppy! Puppy” repeatedly. Late-breaking news:
- Subsequent date arranged for bowling.
Then, finally, I had the afternoon to do the hike. Flagstaff is at 7000’ elevation, so not too hot, and hence not required to start at 4am, but I didn’t have a headlamp, so beating sunset was still a bit of an issue.
The Mount Elden lookout walk is a half-day walk with 2000’ of elevation gain. You walk through the forest to the fire lookout tower. It is possible to see a couple of birds, as well as Flagstaff from above, including the occasional long freight train. I think I like Aotearoa’s native forest more. It’s more green, rather than being dry scrub and conifers.
It’s a reasonably popular walk, I suppose with locals mostly, and dog walkers.
Not far from the trailhead I saw a bunch of firemen milling about. At that point I’d spent some time taking pictures of birds, sunset was getting a bit close, and so I had started walking faster. One guy said “maybe you want to go that way” (points to some rocks a bit off the trail) “but don’t hurt yourself”. I replied “but you can rescue me right?” and he said “no, we’re busy at the moment”. Yes, there was someone being rescued. Presumably they were organizing a litter to carry the person out.
I got to the trailhead, called an Uber, didn’t succeed, and took the bus back to town, which took about an hour. I then had a banh mi from a very White People brewpub (it was acceptable, but came with fries‽) and did two dry runs of my talk.
Conference, Oct 7-8
Good, though small, conference. Thanks as always to the organizers, particularly ICSME General Co-Chair Igor Steinmacher and SCAM Program Committee Co-Chairs Coen de Roover and Valentina Lenarduzzi. Service makes these things happen and is usually underappreciated. Anyway, it was nice to talk to people about research and other things. The venue, at the NAU High Country Conference Centre, was also amenable to talking to people. I find it interesting how the physical layout affects which conversations you can have. Also, there were some people who I’ll probably be able to ask for letters when I go up for promotion in a few years, so that’s useful.
Mohammad did a great job with the slides and I presented them.
I appreciated Benoit Baudry’s SCAM keynote, and chatted with him throughout the conference—he is new to the Université de Montréal, previously of KTH in Sweden. About his computational art course:
“You can write code for banks and missiles, or you can write code for art.”
Phoenix, Oct 9
I had thought I would do things around Phoenix and booked a shuttle for 7:30AM, since the Flixbus definitely wasn’t compatible with my flight. Actually that was kind of a mistake: it was 41C in Phoenix and central Phoenix is… not bustling. Google said there was an Amtrak shuttle to Phoenix at 8:30, but no one else did.
Groome Transportation sure sends lots of emails. You’re a shuttle company. I don’t actually want a relationship beyond “I show up, you drive me.”
It would be too early to check in my bag, so I arranged to leave it at a Bounce storage place in downtown Phoenix. After a couple of false starts on the LRT, I managed to get there, but Bounce luggage person had stepped out for a bit, so I had a weird “everything croissant” nearby (do not recommend) and lots of water in preparation for the heat. Paying for Phoenix (and Flagstaff) transit was easy, though, at least if you had a smartphone.
I was thinking of doing two things in Phoenix: going to a (nice air-conditioned) climbing gym, and going to the Nina Mason Pullman Rio Salado Audubon Center to see birds. As I said, downtown Phoenix is not a happening place, and the closest gym is a $20 Uber ride (or an hour of bus) away. So, birds it was. The bird sanctuary was a much shorter bus ride from downtown, although some guy wanted to get on the bus between stops or something, and there was a bit of a kerfuffle until some other guy (not on the bus) talked him out of it. Phoenix is kind of dysfunctional I guess.
There were a bunch of things going on at the Audubon Center, including a trip with a bunch of schoolkids, a tour for people who were going to run an event, and of course, birds. The best picture I got was another Anna’s hummingbird photo. There was also a verdin (briefly), a gnatcatcher, lots of grackles, a house finch, a Eurasian collared-dove, an inca dove, and a white-crowned sparrow. Lots of birds that I hadn’t seen before. Also, the 55-210 lens is good because it gets some zoom and also doesn’t weigh 1kg. I’d say that, coupled with the a6600 body, it gets better pictures than the Panasonic DZ-82 superzoom, but has less reach.
After I couldn’t take the heat anymore, I went back to the airport. No misses on transit on that trip at least.
Airportland: Back to NZ, Oct 9–11
Time to get back to Rotorua for the NZ nationals, via 24 hours in airportland again. Except for the last segment, this reversed my itinerary to get to Phoenix. Especially with lounge access, I’m pretty good at coping with airportland. It is significantly worse without status.
Arriving at PHX, I saw some cardiac alert & response service dogs. I checked my bag at this point so that I wouldn’t have to lug it around PHX and LAX; I’d get it back again at AKL for biosecurity. I went to the United Club at PHX, which had almost no free seating. I ate my sliders and meatballs standing. There was also an ice cream machine, kind of like K-cups but for ice cream.
I had another few hours at LAX, so I managed to talk to my grad students on the “outdoor balcony” at the Star Alliance lounge, and snacked. On the banh mi theme, they had some banh mi wraps, which I did not sample. LAX really does look like a mall.
On the long segment, I had a window seat, there was a Dutch architecture student spending some months in NZ, and one of the last guys to get onto a plane was a Samoan guy returning to NZ. Sigh, no empty middle seat. He did talk about the Mangere market, which I have previously visited.
I’m going to stop this report here with my uneventful arrival into Auckland, where I met up with MP.