The Retina Fellow’s Forum took place in the Windy City this year in the midst of January. The snow and chill assured that all 85 of us graduating fellows remained a captive audience as we sat through 2 days of back-to-back didactic sessions, industry-sponsored endorsements, free instrument/lens giveaways, career guidance, and an epic bowl-off at 10-Pin Lounge. The mix of sushi and nasty bowling balls was a strange combination, but I came away a lucky winner of Insight’s shameless “Great CA$H Giveaway.” This visit to Chicago also gave me a chance to finally try out Rick Bayliss’ Frontera Grill, although the tacos, taquitos, and enchiladas, while good, did not live up to the hype. With the cash winnings, as well as several other recent, more merit-based awards, I decided to expand my disk space real estate, with a pair of 3TB WD Red’s and a Samsung 840 EVO SSD, as part of my grand scheme for better data storage, sharing, and backup. I also got my hands on a lightly-used Traktor Kontrol S4 MIDI controller, which I bought for a fraction of the MSRP after months of bargain hunting on Ebay. With the help of a nifty online course from Udemy, my new toy has allowed me to take my first plunge into music mixing and the world of DJ’ing. Sadly, my financial luck streak has also been offset by a number of tech misfortunes, with my laptop LCD panel pooping out, the SATA port of my Red drive snapping off, and even my trusty 18-55mm Nikkor lens failing all within a few weeks. To ward off the bad mojo, I took my parents out to a nice dinner at Poole’s Diner to kick start their 2 week visit to spend my birthday and Chinese New Year with me.