Reconnection

04-28-2005

08:02am Atlanta airport again. Stayed the night at a Holiday Inn hotel and had a breakfast menu - all for free. We didn't go downtown last night because Christoph's uncle had warned us about lots of black gangs being there and we didn't feel like being shot during the first night in America. So instead we bought a sixpack of Miller beer and some chocolate cookies at a food market plus went to Arbys, because Christoph wanted to buy some sandwiches. Watched The Tonight Show with Jay Leno while enjoying dinner and falling asleep.

I am feeling like an ultra criminal right now after all the security checks at the airports. Constantly had to pull off my shoes and unpack my notebook. It even got special explosive treatment. We reconnected directly to Sacramento instead of San Francisco so Christoph's uncle can pick up us there conveniently instead of having to drive all the way down to San Francisco. The plane will take off in one and a half hours. We are heading for a Starbucks cappucino...

Later: Arrived in Sacramento. Chris's uncle picked us up at the airport and took us home. Registered at Sevis and went out for tasty Chinese food for lunch. They have gigantic portions here. Took Chicken Teriyaki. Applied for a social security number afterwards. We probably did this too soon because the immigrant computer database hasn't been synchronized over night and so we weren't in their computers yet. So this will probably take up to 6-8 weeks. Maybe we can speed this up a little.

Departure Odyssey

04-27-2005

12:30pm Christoph and me are sitting in the plane right now - still on the ground. After already being on the airfield a few minutes ago we had to abort the departure due to electrical/electronical problems. The captain who is on his retirement flight today explained this via "the displays are blinking like a christmas tree". Some time later he continued: "To make this all even more exciting and if you are wondering why firemen are gathering around the plane right now, a little bit of fuel is leaking out of the right wing." This is no joke! So we're just waiting here of what's going on. Maybe we will have to leave the plane...

02:30pm We're back in the lounge of the airport. We had to leave the plane and got 15 Euros vouchers each for McDonalds, BurgerKing or the Mövenpick restaurant. We went to Mövenpick of course and ate tagliatelle with cream sauce plus pollack filet for lunch. Really tasty. Departure is scheduled for 4pm.

08:15pm Writing this while being in the air. We finally made it. We took off a little bit after 4pm. There's absolutely no space in here. We already got lunch number two. Pasta again. Much worse than at Mövenpick. Also slept and read a bit. Absolutely don't know what to do now. Christoph is busy learning for the driving license test. Most of the captain's family is on board today and I just signed his scrab book. Whoops, turbulences. Have to buckle on. What else? We'll definitely miss our follow-on flight from Atlanta to San Francisco and will probably have to stay at a hotel in Atlanta tonight. Maybe we can visit Atlanta downtown a little. Heard there's a large hardrock cafe and the largest hotel in the world. So we'll see...

The Last Supper

I am just enjoying my last german beer (Prinzregent Luitpold) and going to tell you what happened today. It's my 26th birthday today and didn't celebrate much, because I was mainly busy with packing my baggage. Mostly got cash presents plus some flowers and a bottle of wine from my parents. Jule came over for coffee and cake and gave me some cool perfume. Got a hair cut afterwards and bought some chocolate for the first weeks in America (Ritter-Sport, Kinderriegel and Nutella, mhiam! ;). Stumppi visited me later and picked up his digicam bag he lost at Californication. Had officially original german Maultaschen for supper and just finished my last german beer. Bud Light here I come! Departure will be tomorrow at 11:55am. Hope to post updates more frequently after being back on earth! ;) See you all in seven months...

International Student Id

Additionally managed to get an international student identity card today. It cost 10 bucks and will hopefully enable me to get lots of discounts! ;)

Self-made Bread

Listened to Phantom Planet's California high volumed over and over again this afternoon while making bread myself. Simply followed my brothers' instructions et voilà. It's really tasty, see photos below. However, didn't bake a gun into the bread like someone (I embarrassingly forgot) suggested at Californication. So being able to make my own bread and having credit card and cell phone enable me to practically survive nearly world-wide I guess! ;)

Californication

Our 24 hours say goodbye party from Saturday 4pm to Sunday 4pm including preparation, cleanup and two little hours of sleep. If you are reading this, chances are that you've been there, so I don't need to tell you. Thanks for being there, hope you all had fun. I definitely had! Unfortunately still have no webspace to upload the photos. Just realized that it's getting serious when I had to say goodbye to my brother. Hope I can visit you in Brasil! I will miss you all!

Close Windows

As in "Open Minds, Open Source, Open Future, Close Windows". My Windows installation just died after installing the latest IDE acceleration drivers and refuses to boot anymore. Just when I finished configuring easy web and mail access for my mom to contact me during the internship. Damn it! The README states: "Users who are unsure as to whether they should install the patch can be assured that if they do install the patch, even if it is not necessary, it will cause no harm to their system. The patch will detect your systems configuration and install only when necessary." Yeah! Whatever!

Maybe that's the event I've unconsciously been waiting for to ultimately kick Windows and completely switch over to Linux. Especially after my positive Linux FireWire experience with the latest 2.6.11.7 kernel yesterday. Tried to access my external harddisk from my notebook via a PCMCIA Cardbus controller. So I modprobed ieee1394 for basic FireWire support, ohci1394 to support the controller and sbp2 to get access to the external harddisk. That's it! Now you can mount the external harddisk as SCSI device as usual.

Snowboarding in Damüls

Just for the sake of completeness, last Thursday I was snowboarding in Damüls together with my boss Manfred and coworker Tilo. Nothing special happened beside having fun, except that it rained nearly all day implying that the snow was so damn wet that this felt once again like surfing. Seems that the winter is finally over. Did some nice jumps but unfortunately took no photographs. Surprisingly got a sunburn although I didn't see the sun all day! ;)

Consulate Trip, Visa Approved

Totally forgot to tell you that I received my long-awaited DS-2019 via mail some time ago. It's a single sheet of paper with one lousy signature. It's not even printed on golden paper, although it has cost me more than 800 bucks, okay insurance for the time being in America included.

However, everything went as expected and I could keep my appointment at the consulate last Wednesday. So accompanied by Christoph we headed towards Frankfurt. The consulate has been guarded by a tank and two cops on each corner. I had to put down all my stuff and even had to take off my belt before successfully passing the metal detector. They haven't found the Anthrax though. Joke! ;) Oh, it's ringing...

Inside the consulate we had to wait in the lounge and then had to queue up at two counters. At the first counter we had to present our documents and at the second counter we were interviewed. I guess their most important concern was that we will not return to Germany after the internship. But since we will have to finish our studies after the internship, this was absolutely no problem. Our visas have been approved and surprisingly sent via mail already two days later on Friday. All in all, the trip to the consulate was a lot easier than initially expected.

Self-made Hefezopf

On Monday I followed Key's instructions and tried to make Hefezopf myself, here's the result. Although I had a bit too little yeast and took too much flour it got surprisingly well for the first time. Maybe I will get it to become a bit more fluffily the next time.