Called the Ramada Newark again today and this time, I got our contact. I gave her my reservation info and she'll take care of the group rate. I hope that's it for the reservation problem and I also hope that the other N-1 attendees have an easier time making their room reservations.
A few days ago, I wrote a script to scan the 10 Million Photos group and generate stats on the top posters to the group. I ran it, posted the rankings to the group, and fell asleep because it was approaching 4am by that time. It was only yesterday when I returned to the group to see if there were any comments. Nice to see that it was well received! And that's even despite the obvious flaw that people posting to the group while the script is running will skew the numbers.
I also haven't been checking back at Askville for a couple of days. When I took a look, it was a nice surprise to see that I've gotten some experience points in topics like "database", "eye", "golf", and "amazon". I also received a few answers to a question that I posted about the Adobe Lightroom beta.
I got a letter today saying that Numeric is resigning from the mutual funds business. (PDF file) It means I have about a month to find a new home for my Roth IRA. On the one hand, it's a great opportunity to move the IRA over to a brokerage, which will bring a lot more investment choices. On the other hand, there are so many to choose from! (Except for Izone, which doesn't do IRAs.) Hmm. Anyway, I'm sorry to see Numeric quit. Other than their extreme tax inefficiency (which didn't bother me because I was only using them for my IRA), they were actually a pretty good quant shop.