Cool rental ;)

I love National. The people in the Bloomington location already know me well and treat me well. They gave me a free upgrade to a Mustang last week :). So I had this cool car to go to Lafayette ;). It is a great car besides the automatic transmission. It made me mad because it made the powerful machine feel really really sluggish by switching in the wrong moment. And it was great to find those wrong moments – pulling out to pass and the stupid transmission switches up :-(. I don’t like automatic cars …

I had pretty bad luck with the airport rental … they gave me Chrysler 300 (this is a freaking tank!) with a broken gas gauge (never showed full). And they wanted to charge me for gas in Indy so that I had to discuss with them … oh man. But it finally worked :).

The small thing next to it is my car … oh man … but the 300 was fun in GTA IV (undistructible).

AT&T fun…

<meta content="OpenOffice.org 2.2 (Linux)" name="GENERATOR" /><meta content="20080525;17480600" name="CREATED" /><meta content="16010101;0" name="CHANGED" /> </p> <style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> </style> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in">AT&T sucks, that’s all that I can say now. Not only that their name servers are kind of broken (resolving is very unreliable and takes forever sometimes), but their customer service is really bad. So I wanted to perform a simple task … change the name of the account holder, i.e., my roommate moved out and I wanted to “take over” phone and internet. I called them on a Friday … 30 minutes and two people on the phone later, I thought everything would be fine. I thought. They told me weird stories that there needs to be an internet downtime of a week in order to change it, but we figured something out that this would not happen (don’t cancel the old account before the new one is “ready”). Should be a standard procedure. My internet connection vanished the following Tuesday *DARN* idiots. Ok, I called them again and they told me that I quit service. Great, I didn’t! I asked them to re-establish it as fast as possible. But hah! I realized that there was no name change at all (the account was still on Matthews name) – but I did not care, I wanted internet back. They told me that they could not post a new order because the old one (the disconnect) was still not finished. WTF! Why does it *FIRST* disconnect me and then processes the order for several days preventing a re-connection *ARGH*. I called them every day and finally, on Thursday, they could post a new order that should be executed by the following Tue (wow, they need 6 days to fix a freaking account). The whole thing was just a matter of giving me a new password. Ok, I waited …. spent the weekend in the lab :-/. Tue evening came and the net was not back … of course … idiots. So I called again. They told me that I need to go to some webpage and that I need Internet Explorer for that. I tried Firefox on Linux and failed because they used some stupid (wrong) JavaScript for the “Next” button on this terrible webpage. Oh man, and the people on the phone were way to stupid to deal with this situation. So I gave up (after 45 minutes) and asked my roommate to borrow his laptop. We logged in and – voila – the button worked. This terrible webpage *FORCED* us to install some Yahoo toolbar stuff thingie. Oh man, AT&T forces you to install stuff you don’t need in order to get IP access. Idiots! It finally worked …. never ever AT&T again.</p> </div> <footer class="entry-footer clearfix"> <div class="entry-meta entry-meta-bottom"><span class="entry-more"><a href="http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/2008/05/13/att-fun/" title="AT&T fun…"><i class="icon-hand-right"></i> Read More</span></a></div> </footer> </article> <article id="post-104" class="post-104 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-uncategorized"> <header class="entry-header"> <p class="post-date-2"><span class="month">May</span><span class="day">6</span><span class="year">2008</span></p><h2 class="entry-title"><a href="http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/2008/05/06/more-soup/" title="Permalink to More soup :)" rel="bookmark">More soup :)</a></h2><span class="entry-meta"><span class="by-author"><a class="url fn n" href="http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/author/htor/" title="View all posts by htor" rel="author"><span class="meta-prep"><i class="icon-user meta-icon"> </i></span> htor</a></span><span class="entry-category"><span class="meta-prep"><i class="icon-folder-open meta-icon"> </i></span><a href="http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/category/uncategorized/">Uncategorized</a></span></span> </header> <div class="entry-content clearfix"> <p>Yeah, I cooked more seaweed soup … it’s awesome. Try: broccoli, tuna, carrots, lettuce, seaweed, pepper and soy sauce and you’ll get:</p> <p><img src="/blog/pics/may08/soup.jpg" /></p> </div> <footer class="entry-footer clearfix"> <div class="entry-meta entry-meta-bottom"><span class="entry-more"><a href="http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/2008/05/06/more-soup/" title="More soup :)"><i class="icon-hand-right"></i> Read More</span></a></div> </footer> </article> <article id="post-103" class="post-103 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-travel"> <header class="entry-header"> <p class="post-date-2"><span class="month">May</span><span class="day">3</span><span class="year">2008</span></p><h2 class="entry-title"><a href="http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/2008/05/03/chicago-downtown-impressions/" title="Permalink to Chicago downtown – impressions" rel="bookmark">Chicago downtown – impressions</a></h2><span class="entry-meta"><span class="by-author"><a class="url fn n" href="http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/author/htor/" title="View all posts by htor" rel="author"><span class="meta-prep"><i class="icon-user meta-icon"> </i></span> htor</a></span><span class="entry-category"><span class="meta-prep"><i class="icon-folder-open meta-icon"> </i></span><a href="http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/category/travel/">Travel</a></span></span> </header> <div class="entry-content clearfix"> <p>Some Pictures:</p> <p><img src="/blog/pics/may08/chicago1.jpg" /></p> <p>incredibly affordable parking downtown 😉</p> <p><img src="/blog/pics/may08/chicago2.jpg" /></p> <p>Nice view</p> <p><img src="/blog/pics/may08/chicago3.jpg" /><br /> <img src="/blog/pics/may08/chicago4.jpg" /></p> <p>The building where we met (23rd floor, Microsoft)</p> <p><img src="/blog/pics/may08/chicago5.jpg" /></p> <p>The Hancock tower.  The building in the left of it is the building behind our hotel. Our hotel is much much smaller … even though it had 15 stories :). See next pictures.<br /> <img src="/blog/pics/may08/chicago6.jpg" /></p> <p>We lived in the Westin hotel … ohohoh, man, this looks freaking small next to the tower.</p> <p><img src="/blog/pics/may08/chicago7.jpg" /></p> <p>A church … kind of ridiculous between those skyscrapers.</p> </div> <footer class="entry-footer clearfix"> <div class="entry-meta entry-meta-bottom"><span class="entry-more"><a href="http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/2008/05/03/chicago-downtown-impressions/" title="Chicago downtown – impressions"><i class="icon-hand-right"></i> Read More</span></a></div> </footer> </article> <article id="post-102" class="post-102 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-mpi category-travel"> <header class="entry-header"> <p class="post-date-2"><span class="month">May</span><span class="day">2</span><span class="year">2008</span></p><h2 class="entry-title"><a href="http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/2008/05/02/mpi-forum-no-3/" title="Permalink to MPI Forum No. 3" rel="bookmark">MPI Forum No. 3</a></h2><span class="entry-meta"><span class="by-author"><a class="url fn n" href="http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/author/htor/" title="View all posts by htor" rel="author"><span class="meta-prep"><i class="icon-user meta-icon"> </i></span> htor</a></span><span class="entry-category"><span class="meta-prep"><i class="icon-folder-open meta-icon"> </i></span><a href="http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/category/mpi/">MPI</a> • <a href="http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/category/travel/">Travel</a></span></span> </header> <div class="entry-content clearfix"> <p>Just came back from the third MPI Forum in Chicago. We finished MPI-2.1 (I guess) … mostly. I think we’ll just have to vote on it at the next meeting :). It’s good that this is finished and we have a nice single document mandating the newest MPI standard. We’ve also been able to fix many bugs (see the ML). This meeting was at the Microsoft location in Chicago … in the 23rd floor of a skyscraper downtown. Pretty neat … nearly. One day, I decided to take the stairs (to not get fat in America) to find the door on the 23rd floor locked, after 7 minutes and 552 stairs. Great … actually, all doors but the lobby were locked :-(. So I walked down again *hmpf*. I complained and was told that this is a security feature – how weird, the lobby exit is right next to the elevators, i.e., one can just exit at the lobby and use the elevator to get to any floor – security, huh? I guess this is typical American security, like everyone has to take his shoes off at the airport.</p> <p><img src="/blog/pics/apr08/microsoft_small.jpg" /></p> <p>What’s wrong in this picture? Me or the Microsoft logo?</p> </div> <footer class="entry-footer clearfix"> <div class="entry-meta entry-meta-bottom"><span class="entry-more"><a href="http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/2008/05/02/mpi-forum-no-3/" title="MPI Forum No. 3"><i class="icon-hand-right"></i> Read More</span></a></div> </footer> </article> </div> <aside id="sidebar_full" class="large-2 columns widget-area blog-widgets" role="complementary"> <ul class="xoxo"> <li id="recent-posts-3" class="widget-container widget_recent_entries"> <h4 class="widget-title">Recent Posts</h4> <ul> <li> <a href="http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/2020/02/16/how-att-charged-me-7-50-per-second-450minute-and-says-its-completely-normal/">How AT&T charged me up to $7.50 per second ($450/minute) and says it’s completely normal</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/blog/index.php/2019/10/16/spcls-papers-at-sc19/">SPCL’s papers at SC19</a> </li> <li> <a 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