Confessions of a researchaholic

A friend of friend, asking for career advice, said that he/she knows only what he/she does not want to do but not what he/she wants because he/she is used to do what being told.

If you do not know what you want for yourself, nobody else is going to figure that out for you. And even if they tell you, it is for them, not you.

Our education system is focusing more on technical than the much more important life skills, such as how to interact with other people, how to live a happy life, how to manage emotions, etc., which we tend to learn in an ad-hoc way.

When trying to book my transportation for SIGGRAPH 2023 via our corporate travel site, it recommended me to take a train instead of a flight to reduce the cost and carbon footprint.
I have long been a fan of rail travel, and believe I might be able to sleep on a train recliner (which is like a business class seat on a plane) during the long journey (at least 9 to 10 hours).
However, since I have a talk at the last session on Thursday afternoon, the only Amtrak “train” available is an overnight journey with two segments for which only the first one has cabin class option.
Eventually I realized that the second segment is a bus, with rather ordinary (and uncomfortable, according to reddit) seat.

So I booked a flight instead, despite 3 times the cost and 50 times the carbon footprint.