Jan122007
I’ve been in Paris last weekend and I’ve even managed to make photos (even if I don’t like to too much, but I had several requests). Anyway, look at the photos and enjoy!
And I have proof – the gas is freaking expensive in Europe! It’s about $6.30 per gallon … (with 1.289 EUR/l even slightly more expensive than in Germany – but I have to add that I made a pretty good deal at the gas station near Bruyeres-le-chatel this morning – only 1.169 EUR/l)
Jan82007
Yeah! I’ve been able to run today. It was pretty much impossible to run in the last days because the house where I live is only connected to a highway (no lights and too dangerous). But I’ve found the CEA running group! This is great, the institute has its own running group that meets every day at noon. We (approx. 15 frenchmen and me) ran for 1:10 hours ;). It’s also really nice to have a shower directly next to the office! That made my day.
Jan42007
Bonjour :). Yes, I arrived in France – it took me about 9 hours to drive from Chemnitz to Bruyeres-le-chatel. The weather is really bad. Anyway, I’m living with a french family (B&B). I think this was a good idea, I was invited to dinner with them yesterday. My first day in the CEA was pretty interesting. The facility is like a fortress :). I was lucky and the director of the computing services gave me a tour of their supercomputer “Tera 10”, currently number 7 in the Top500 computers world-wide :o). I suppose I should not write more to the public. We’ll see what happens in the next days!
Salut!
Jan22007
A company tried to send a packet via TNT (originating near Los Angeles). The first shock for us was that TNT was not able to verify the address of our university! I guess that we’re, with more than 10000 students and 5000 employees, the biggest institution in Chemnitz :). But ok, they’ve been able to resolve this issues (probably), and sent the packet at Dec 4th. Oh, I nearly forgot to mention that this is an Express packet.
The tracking log showed that the packet arrived at Dec 7th at Cologne Airport. It stayed there (in the customs) until Dec 21st when it was forwarded to Dresden (it nearly made it). Reviewing the tracking log today unvieled that the packet was sent back to the originator *argh*. We complained via the web formular and TNT called us immediately. It turned out that the customs office did not know what the contents of the package are :-(. And the packet is on it’s way back to the US.
Why don’t they send it to us and require us to open it in front of a customs officer? That’s the usual procedure if the content is unclear. Ohohoh …
We’ll see – I sent a parcel to the US today via DHL. I’m wondering when/if it reaches its destination :-).
Dec302006
THAT remembers me of my biggest laugh this year – Sen. Ted Stevens (chair of the committee — which oversees regulation of the internet):
” They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material.”
His speech on youtube 😉 is so much fun too.
Dec292006
BBC News collected this funny overview of news in 2006.
I like #43, #48 while #58 is scary ;). Oh, and #64 could be interesting for Canadians, I heard about several incidents with bears.
Dec282006
We found this bottle of “Hohnsteiner Trinkbranntwein” in an old cupboard behind tons of old computer stuff at our chair. The findings at this university are really interesting. This stuff was produced in the former GDR and is therewith at least 15 years old. But we think that it’s much much older – at least 20 years. It was obviously presented to one of our predecessing assistants (the price had been removed); I’m wondering who passed an exam “eventually” ;-). Anyway, we used it (aehem tried to) to prepare ourselfes for a clubbing night :). This stuff tastes like a mixture between gasoline and medicine – awful. We mixed it with cola (yes, this unhealthy fructose poison) and it worked fine. Our good old GDR stuff is still working – kind of.
PS: the stuff is gone now – I killed the remainder and another bottle of Vodka with some russian friends yesterday, and we realized that it tastes so much better when it’s cooled 🙂
Dec272006
Especially in Germany! I just realized that some nice little laws have been passed without much involvement of the public. I had to read it in a swiss blog where the author was worried about his “Germanic neighbors”. Let’s see – a central shared database (shared between police, toll, military police, BND (our secret service) and many more agencies) has been ratified by CDU/SPD at December 1st. It’s interesting, that this file seems to ignore the separation between all those agencies that is stated in our constitution. Who said to respect the constitution – just ignore it and see what happens.
The contents of this file are also pretty interesting. It’s actually called “anti-terror-file” (of course) and contains all necessary information about all citizens to prevent terrorism (of course), as e.g., (see wikipedia for details):
Pretty interesting – huh? It scares me that somebody tries to collect all this data about me – and it is even more scary that they do this officially (and force e.g., travel agencies to provide this information)!
A second interesting, and pretty much Orwell-like news, is that our nice minister of the interior plans to introduce “virtual home raids“. This means that the police should be allowed to break into home PCs and steal data. Interesting enough, this is only an addition to another law that has been passed which actually allows a federal agency (Bundesverfassungsschutz) to access data in harddrives on virtually every PC (including home systems) without notifying the owner. Somebody sued against this law, we’ll see how it goes.
I’m actually currently more worried about the databases then about terrorism in Germany (do you remember the last “terrorist activity” here?).
Dec262006
Somebody had a similar experience with tech-conference giveaway t-shirts. Most of the shirts I got were simply twice as big as I am. But there seems hope (I got a pretty nice Intel shirt). See Kathy’s post.
And Kathy has some more interesting thoughts in her blog. Especially the “mirror neurons” post is really nice! Now you know why I lough even if I talk about very verysad things – it’s just my way of life :).
Dec202006
When I first saw one of those key-less entry pads, I wondered how secure they are :). Now I know – no security at all. It’s like the really stupid IR-controlled keylock I had at my Renault Clio that could be opened by every “universal remote control”. But I’ve only seen those key-less pads in the US yet.