MPI Forum meeting in Chicago

I just came back form the MPI Forum meeting. It’s kind of cool … I would have never thought that I would ever drive with my own car to an MPI Forum meeting in Chicago – I just did! The meeting was pretty interesting even though most of the discussions were focuses on bugfixing the existing versions. Some of those discussions were extremely boring, for example to talk about 15 minutes about the meaning of “it” in a particular sentence, or the similarly long definition of a straw straw vote (a vote that did not mean anything) :). But many of those could be solved by taking the discussions offline to the interested subgroup.

I’m (as expected) in the collectives subgroup (as the “deputy” of the group chairman) and the Generalized Request subgroup (I’m not sure if this subgroup will live long because the solution to the problem is kind of trivial). I hope to see a Mini-MPI subgroup soon. It’s interesting to see how careful changes ar applied to this standard and I do really like the process so far. I hope it stays like this.

It is a pleasant 4.5 hrs drive from Bloomington to Chicago (took much longer on the way back because we were stuck in traffic for about an hour in Chicago). I realized two funny things about the US traffic system:

1) there are freeway exits on the left (an no pre-warning signs!!) – man, this is dangerous

2) there is a toll-road towards Chicago – the toll is 15 cents (really!). We paid with a $20 bill (nobody had coins) and the “cashier” was really angry that she had to walk to the office to get change for us *grin*. 15 cents … man.