Exam <esc>:wq (aka s/stress/party/g)

No posts for some time due to a stressful week. So I am just enjoying a fine bottle of Californian wine and going to tell you what happened during the last week.

Wednesday
Exam day! Had the first major exam (three lectures in Distributed Systems, namely Computer Networks 1+2 and Distributed Application Systems, 30mins oral exam, roughly 10mins each) and I'm really satisfied. Scored a 1.7, which should be a B+ converted to the American scale. The problem with these kind of exams is, that you can't afford long cogitation intervals or delayed answers at all, because the exam is simply too short. However, the funny part of the exam was, that I was asked a question (Why TCP is a fair protocol?), which I didn't understand exactly before the exam, but in a bright moment (which even occur to me once in a while ;) something in my mind switched and suddenly it was absolutely clear! ;)

Straightly went to Arlt afterwards to reward me for all the learning stress and bought a dual USB2.0/Firewire 160GB external harddisk. Went to Woody to talk about the exam and tested the new harddisk with a Linux 2.6.9 kernel and it ran surprisingly well without any problems at all directly from the beginning. We copied 5GB in approximately 3mins over an USB cable, which averages in 16MB/s. Nice performance! So I can take all of my data with me to America. However, I am still playing with the idea to buy a new notebook.

Celebrated the exam a little at Mash in the evening together with Alex and Etze. The waitress this evening was an absolute disaster, not visually but competently. She was very unfriendly and each round had to be ordered at least twice additionally resulting in getting the wrong drink! However, she was also unable to sum up prices, so we paid a lot less than actually expected! ;)

Thursday
Had another dentist appointment. The final provisional solution wasn't ready yet, so she just pulled the twines. Have to go there again on Monday, April 4th. Went to the fitness center afterwards and to Ludwigsburg and Marbach in the evening to play pool together with Ingo and Marc.

Friday
Don't remember doing anything beside watching TV. Went to Ebersberg near Munich in the evening to visit Konse and Key. Ferris MC made me drive aggressively resulting in a speed boost, so I managed the distance in less than two hours!

Saturday
Went snowboarding in Reit im Winkl together with Konse and Key. It was so warm and the snow was so wet that this was actually surfing! ;) Unfortunately took no photographs this time. Played the board game Anno 1503 in the evening, Konse won! Daylight savings time warp happened at 2am! ;)

Sunday
Too lazy, too tired and too bad snow to go snowboarding this day again! Instead, all we did was eating and playing Anno 1503 again, Konse won again! Damn it! Key showed me how to make Hefezopf, tried this myself on Monday, see forthcoming post. Went bowling in the evening and ate pizza in my car, great mistake! The car still smells like tuna pizza! Went home to Altbach afterwards and met Jasi and Hartmut at Juleps.

More to come soon, stay blogged!

Caffeine Flash (aka Mindgames)

It's nearly 1:30 am and as every night I am so adrenalized from all the coffee, black tea, coke, chocolate, sweets and extra sugar I needed over the day "to keep my brain spin" (as Sven Väth used to say), that I absolutely can't calm down and get some sleep at the moment. Don't know what to write else, I guess I will futilely (or is it spelled futily?) surf the web a little...

Tooth Fairy Action

Another week is gone, two days left until the exam, I'm quite confident at the moment though. Nothing special happened last week beside learning, except for the visit at the dentist. As mentioned earlier, one of my front teeth, which kept me stressing for years, had to be pulled.

My dentist called me last Monday morning telling me that a patient had cancelled his appointment, thus offering me to pull my tooth already this day instead of Wednesday. I agreed and was at the practice at 11 am. The most painful part were the injections. Since the tooth was ignited and I am kind of pain sensitive, I got triple dose to feel absolutely nothing. She pulled the tooth, but unfortunately couldn't insert the implant, because the tooth was too ignited. So she sutured the wound and pasted a provisionary solution only, which will be in place till Thursday this week, when I will get the ultimate provisionary for the time in America. The implant will then be inserted, when I will be back in Germany after the internship has ended.

I took my old tooth and it looks really disgusting. It's still full of blood. If you really want (and can stand it ;), you can view it here. Seems that I already start rotting! ;)

Short Roundup

Just a quick roundup of what comes to mind to keep you up-to-date: Been extremely busy lately learning for my major exam in Distributed Systems, 10 days left. Finally hopefully understood CORBA (thanks Woody!), have to play with it after the exam. Maybe I will additionally take Object-Oriented Distribution Infrastructures afterwards. Was in Munich last night at Konse's birthday party together with Alex, Stumppi and Anja, thus missed the party of the month: Eric Prydz's "Call on me"-party at M1. Guess everyone else was there! Damn it! Was at the fitness center on friday for the third time, burned 700 (!) calories. However, had a Deizisau-Kebap for lunch! Very tasty! Christoph booked our flight yesterday, departure will be on April 27th, so I will still be in Germany on my birthday. Finally went to another dentist. She also said, that my front tooth, which kept me stressing for years, has to be pulled. So it will be replaced with an implant on Wednesday. It's funny, that the dentist will paste my old tooth (after pulling it) as provisionary solution for some days! ;)

Speeding Fine Theory

It seems that speeding fines are usually sent by the district office on Saturdays similarly like employers tend to dismiss their employees on Fridays. Maybe they think it's easier to recover this way. I at least experienced the delivery on Saturdays the last two times in series.

After getting caught by a speed camera some time ago (mentioned here), I used to check the mailbox regularly on weekdays before my mom comes home from work. The theory was, that she wouldn't find out that I got caught again this way. I would simply pay the fine, get the points and that's it. No stress at all! Yeah, this was the theory...

However, after already starting to hope, that they maybe can't identify the license plate on the photo, the damn fine was delivered last Saturday morning, when I was sleeping, exactly when my parents set out for their Saturday's skiing trip. Hurray theory! ;)

Workout Delusion

Hehe, you probably won't believe me, but I signed up for a two-month membership at Fitness Gallery Esslingen last Thursday. Yeah, keep on laughing, Robert! ;) Most people say, this place simply sucks, however they were the only ones offering me an affordable two-month contract. So I had no choice. I signed up mainly because I can't do any activities outside at the moment, since it's so damn cold this year (last year I was already biking in January). Additionally, Hartmut and me are planning a bike tour to Ludwigshafen to visit Jasi in April, which I as likely as not won't make untrained.

So I went there on Friday for the first time. The atmosphere was really cool and the people were all friendly. Since I had absolutely no idea what to do (I will meet Sanja, my personal trainer on Wednesday next week), all I did was riding the ergometer. I radically burned 500 calories, while watching TV and listening to Afrob. After this I was really hungry and went straight to Subway! ;) I will go there again tomorrow...

PS. As you might already have discovered, there has been a real-time terror-alert display at the end of the sidebar for some hours. Panic now! ;)

Good News Everybody

Today, I received a letter from TravelWorks informing me that a responsible officer of CIEE Boston has allowed my DS-2019 application, which is the most important prerequisite to get a J-1 visa. The document will be sent to me within the next two weeks, so everything should work fine, since I will have to present it at the U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt at March, 30th 2005. I will also have to book a flight within the next two weeks.

Hit Me Baby

As you might have discovered (if you have Java-Script enabled), there has been a hit-counter at the end of the sidebar for some days now. Some time ago, I was looking for a free text-counter, but didn't find any and since I didn't want a graphical counter I wrote my own PHP-based one.

The invocation is quite funny: since I didn't figure out a way to execute remote PHP scripts non-interactively from within a HTML page in the browser (is there any?), the browser now thinks it downloads an external Java-Script file, which it wants to execute. This is why a Java-Script enabled browser is required to invoke the counter. But instead of downloading a static Java-Script file, the actual counter.php script is remotely executed, which dynamically creates the requested Java-Script. The created Java-Script consists only of a lousy document.write($content); line, while the $content is computed by the counter.php script. Got it? ;)

The text-counter has some nice features:

• The counter is per-site/per-referer based, so you have a different counter for each of your HTML files.
• The output is completely configurable via key=value pairs, which you append to the counter's URL.
• The counter supports multiple users with their own counter file.

If you are interested, you can download the counter here. Note that there is absolutely no form of authentication at the moment, which means everybody can link to and use the counter. Maybe I will add some domain-based reg-exps in the future to restrict access.