Things that might be decidedly odd…

Tag der Arbeit

Tomorrow is Labor Day in Germany (as well as most of the world besides the USA and Canada). Of course this means everything will be closed for the entire weekend, which means everything was pretty hectic today.

First, I got up at a decent hour today, because I had made plans to eat lunch with Ruzica et al. sometime between noon and 1. So, that was a good start. I got my deposit back on my apartment, less 40EUR for cleaning costs. It turns out, there’s not going to be anybody around to estimate the cleaning costs when I actually do move out (they’re all on vacation), so instead I just pay 40EUR regardless. While I’d like to get all of my money back, now at least I don’t have to clean my apartment at all. I intend to get my money’s worth!

Then, I went to the post office. I sent Kendra some GRE books I don’t need anymore. I sent like 7kg worth of papers and books back (39EUR just for surface shipping!) to my parents’ house as well, so I won’t have to carry them in my luggage. Oh, and my IRS refund check, which I’d been holding onto with the hope that I may be able to send it with the travel reimbursement check from U of Toronto (still haven’t gotten it yet).

I was afraid the lady at the post office was going to (rightfully) be mean to me, since my big box of papers and books wasn’t taped up and had no address afixed to it and since I couldn’t figure out how to fold the box I bought for Kendra’s books. At the USPS, I think they now make you go buy a whole roll of tape even if you just need a couple pieces. However, the lady taped up my box at not additional charge, while I filled out the customs and address form. With the other box, she exchanged my unfolded box for a pre-folded one, which was really nice. So, in the end it all worked out. Maybe die Post isn’t as evil as I remember. Or maybe it’s just the fact that since Telekom (the evil, evil phone monopoly) used to be part of die Post until fairly recently, it’s easy to assign guilt by association.

Next, I went to the bank and transfered a bunch of money out of my German account into my American account. Hopefully, the Euro will stay strong against the dollar for the next few days. The lady at the bank I think knows me as the guy who comes in all the time to do Auslandsüberweisungen. I’ll probably have to do at least one more right before I leave again too. All of this of course, makes me realize more and more than in fact I really am leaving and very soon. Just when the weather was starting to shape up too! Oh well, it’s not like the weather in California is bad or anything during the summer.

After I finally got back to work around 4pm, Jochen and I finished up taking the shots for our paper video. The equipment worked fine and now I just need to add some final text to the actual paper. Eurographics seems to be coming along with their program, but as of this writing, it’s still full of dummy text. I’m still not 100% sure if I’m going to go to SCA or not. It’s the weekend before Eurographics in the same location, so on one hand I wouldn’t have to incur any additional airfare and it is generally more related to my research than Eurographics. However, last year it ran something like $300 for a student registration, which seems steep for a 3 day conference. So, I’ll wait and see.

Hmmm….

Today was productive, but not too exciting. More progress on making final edits to the Eurographics paper (typos, messed up figures, etc.). Mabye I’ll get to the video tomorrow. My plane tickets home arrived in the mail at work today. I got this cheap ass (231EUR) non-stop one-way flight from Düsseldorf (?!?) to LAX on LTU.

eBay-Artikel 3811318790 (Endet 01.05.04 20:00:00 MESZ ) - VORBEUGEN / KOTZEN T - Shirt Blau S - XXL

eBay-Artikel 3811318790 (Endet 01.05.04 20:00:00 MESZ ) - VORBEUGEN / KOTZEN T - Shirt Blau S - XXL

That t-shirt is amusing. Man, I need to buy some wack ass German language t-shirts before I go back to the states.

Heino

Heino Job-Börse

Wir suchen fxfcr sofort oder später:

Service-Mitarbeiter (in)

* Servicekräfte in Vollzeit /Teilzeit oder auf 325 Euro Basis.
* Wir suchen keine Speisen- und Getränketräger, sondern Persönlichkeiten, denen es Freude macht, Gastgeber zu sein.
* Erfahrung im Servicebereich, Ausschank der Getränke, übernahme der Speisen,
* Selbstständiges Arbeiten, Schwerpunkt liegt beim Service im Cafe.
* Ehrliche, freundliche, dynamische u. belastbare Bewerber(innen) im Alter von 30-50 Jahren, Berufserfahrung notwendig.
* Abgeschlossene Ausbildung von Vorteil aber nicht notwendig. Einarbeitung erfolgt.
* Kleinere Reinigungsarbeiten sind selbstverständlich,
* Bankettservice, Tagungsräume, und a la carte Geschäft.
* in Teil-, oder Vollzeit

Man, this would have Kendra written all over it, if she had her maroon passport, lived out in Bad Mxfcnstereifel, liked people, and was 30-50.

This auction is truly frightening, but this one is lightly amusing (especially the photo).

If you don’t know who Heino is, you should google him now!

stuff

So, I did finally get around to editing my Eurographics paper. However, Jochen and I couldn’t figure out how to get the nifty new digital video capture card to work at all. It’s supposed to be able to capture directly from the second DVI out on the video card in my computer at work, but no dice. Unfortunately, nobody in my group has actually used the new setup, so we get to be the first as well as clueless. The computer support guy (one of the few down there who is actually competent) who actually got it all configured and installed should be able to help us, but he wasn’t here when we were having problems. So, no new video today. Hopefully tomorrow.

The Official CS Major Homepage: REAL ULTIMATE POWER

The Official CS Major Homepage: REAL ULTIMATE POWER is a very odd page. Apparently it’s a parody of some site about ninjas. It’s on the account of a lab assistant I used to work with several years ago. Weird.

laundry

Kendra says laundry is a good thing to bitch about in your blog.

Last time I tried to do laundry, some lamo left their clothes in the machine. And there’s only *one* machine for an entire building with several dozen apartments. Not only did this person leave their stuff in the machine after it was done (which for a small amount of time is excusable, since machine operates in a somewhat non-deterministic manner), this person left their clothes in there overnight! So, today I was happy, because the machine was free. Woo hoo!

Unproductive

So today has been, well, fairly unproductive. Kendra is making me blog more though, so you all get to hear about my unproductive day.

After being up all last night/this morning working on polycalc and other such nonsense, I didn’t go to be until pretty late (about 7am), which of course meant I woke up late today (about 3pm). I talked to Beth a couple times today over IM and she’s been all crazy busy with end of the semester stuff at school. Her computer has been spontaneously shutting down after extended periods of use for a while now, but it’s finally looking like she’s going to get a new computer.

All this talk of new computers of course has reawakened the idea that maybe I’ll buy a new computer. The last time I bought a laptop was around November 2000, so I can rationalize that I’m due for a new one. I never use the old one for a number of reasons. 1) It’s too slow compared to the desktop I bought in Feb 2003, both processor-wise (650MHz P3 Celeron vs. Dual Athlon 1666MHz) and 3D graphics-wise (no acceleration vs. nVidia GeForce4-Ti4200). 2) At 7.3 pounds (according to the user manual I found online), it’s too heavy to carry around. 3) The screen is tiny (13.3″ vs. 19″ CRT). The 15″ Apple Powerbooks are looking really nice and after running through my finances, I can afford one so long as I buy it in the US (the prices in Europe are obscene even correcting for taxes). And that’s ignoring any of the money I’ll make this summer working, but includes the money it’s gonna to find a place to live in Chapel Hill, co-op rent, and student loan payments.

So, perhaps I’ll order one before I leave here and it will be waiting for me when I get to my parents’ house on May 24th. My desktop isn’t going to be working when it arrives stateside anyways. The damn power supply only works on European power, so I’ll leave it here. I’ll probably take the hard drives out too and bring them with me on the plane. Who knows how long it’ll take for it to clear customs or how much in duties I’ll have to pay since the entire thing is built from parts bought in the EU.

Also I ate dinner today (fried fish… mmmm…) and am doing laundry as I write this. Laundry is interesting. There’s always one “limiting reagent” in everybody’s wardrobe. For a while mine was socks, but I bought a ton of cheap ones at C&A and now it’s shirts. This is particularly annoying because I’ve attempted to remedy the situation by buying more shirts, but everything I’ve ended up buying here requires ironing. Haven’t Germans heard of wash and wear? Then again, there always must be some limiting category of clothing, so it might as well be shirts.

PolyCalc

So, I should probably be working on my Eurographics paper since the final revision is due a week from Monday, but heck it’s the weekend. Last week I redid the images after finding out that the resolution on almost all of them was too low. The text needs work, especially in certain places, where it reads terrible.

Instead, I’m toying around with the CS61B polycalc project from Fall 2002. It seems so simple, but there are so many little details to get everything working. Truly a work of PNH himself, who always used to say “God is the details.”

For those who don’t know already, I’m gonna be the instructor for CS61B this summer. There’s less than 2 months to go and I have so much to do still. The syllabus is more or less done. Maybe polycalc will be the first project, but I don’t really know because it’s pretty tough. It took me a few days to get through it and I know what I’m doing. Granted, I had to do everything from scratch, whereas I’ll give the students the skeleton of my program, which makes things a bit easier, especially for the relative beginners that they are.

It’s all working!

OK, the domain is working, the site is up, the blog is functioning…

Now, who will actually read it?