Wednesday, July 30th, 11:51 p.m.
I'm really happy about finally getting back to writing this journal :-)
Wanted to restart for a long time and especially since I'm back here in California.
As it's a weekday and I wanna get up early tomorrow, I'm just gonna mention a couple of things I wanna write about and leave the actual writing until ( hopefully :) tomorrow.
Next week I'm going for IJCAI, this year's biggest AI conference, in Acapulco,
Mexico, and will be down there for 13 days in total (including some holiday
:)
So afterwards there'll be lots to tell about this, too :-)
Adios
Friday, August 1st, 11:28 p.m.
So, is that gonna be the big writing session ? Don't know yet, I don't really feel like writing. I've started with Harry Potter IV and as its predecessors, it is very absorbing. I'm actually not reading it, but listening to the (unabridged) audiobook - that way I can do all kinds of things on the side, like tidy up, do my laundry, go bicycling, etc.
Well, anyhow, I'll just start writing some stuff and see how it goes ;-)
Before I say any more, let me give you my new address and phone number:
Frank Hutter
RIACS
m/s T35B-1, NASA Ames Research Center
Moffett Field, CA 94035
USA
My cell phone number (which does not have coverage in the building I work in)
is +1-650-669-1877.
The time change is 9 hours, so if it e.g. is midnight in Germany it is 3 p.m.
here.
But now, let's start at the very beginning of this summer, back in Germany::
The visa issue
Oh, I can remember last year's problems with obtaining a US visa. You're going through this clearance process for NASA, where you fill out about a dozen forms, a background check is performed (one of the forms mentions FBI and CIA) and more stuff like this. And then, finally having gotten clearance to enter the NASA air base, immigration won't allow you to enter the country.
Well, not much has changed this year, despite of the fact that this time it
was the US consulate in Frankfurt, and not the one in Vancouver.
I don't wanna go on complaining about things too much here, I could've known
better than to send my application per mail (which the website was advising
me to do). Plus, I'm not really in the mood for complaining anymore. But believe
me, I was not very impressed by the competence of the officials in charge.
However, after 7 calls to the information line (being charged 1.86 Euro per
minute), 4 visits to the consulate, and a week of work from home, I finally
got the visa.
From there on, everything else happened very quickly: I took the first stand-by flight I could get and flew in - not knowing where to stay yet. Due to the uncertainty arising from the visa issue I hadn't been able to commit on renting a place to stay (it's quite hard to plan if you're told "it could take 1-2 days, but it could also take 1-2 weeks or months" ...).
Having arrived here, fortunately, I only had to spend one day on looking for
a place! Didn't have much of a choice, but I think I was pretty lucky :-)
I'll post some pics of the house I'm staying at soon !
What I really want to point out is that one huge help in finding a place was
a chain named "kinko's", for they offer 24h DSL access when you bring
your own laptop. And that is for free !!! Just part of the service ! One of
the great achievements of this country - unsurpassed customer service :-)
Oh yeah, speaking of service: I just got myself a bike yesterday - and I can
bring it back without any reason to get all the money back within 90 days of
purchase! Ain't that great ? ;-)
More news to come, but right now, I'm actually just getting tired, so I'll retire and continue some other time ...
Cheers
Tuesday, August 5th, 00:19 a.m.
Yeah, great. So much for finally updating the journal. I won't have any time today as I'm going to sit in an airplane to Mexico in about 24 hours.
Acapulco is hosting this year's IJCAI conference, the world's biggest AI conference,
alternating with AAAI which I attended last year in Edmonton.
And that's just a must for me, although I have to pay for myself this year :-(
Still, I'm looking very much forward to learning lots of new & cool stuff,
meeting all the great researchers I read papers from every day etc.
Oh well, and there's a social component as well :-)
I'm gonna be back at the 19th of August and will hopefully write about my experiences soon after !
So long, wish you well !
Oh gosh, I don't know any Spanish !
Asta la vista...
Saturday, August 22nd, 22:37 a.m.
Just sitting in a coffeeshop and relaxing :-)
Mexico was fun! And stressful! Humid, too...
Basically concentrating on cool talks and an abundance of new information during
the day and partying every night. Those "CS geeks" - I was actually
not the one dragging people out to the pubs & clubs this time, rather I
was the one being dragged out!
Imagine that ...
Finally, I got around to put up the pics of Thomas's visit. On the first day, we went to San Francisco
The second day was the day to check out universities - Stanford first:
And then UC Berkeley:
That was a really great & exciting weekend ! Kind of the Northern California tour in two days ;-)
Actually, putting up those pictures I realized I've got lots more unpublished
pictures, namely from Rock
am Ring, a great Rock festival in Germany.
Well, actually only pics from the camping and partying, but not too bad ones
;-)
This festival has been soo much FUN :-))
[Added during a final touch-up on Oct. 27th, 2004]
This was actually it for entries during my summer at Ames 2003. It turned out to be really busy as I was working on a project I really wanted to finish before the end of my internship ... well, I haven't got it done in time and was actually working for almost another 3 months on it back in Darmstadt ! In retrospect, it was soo stupid to put all that work into this project ... it didn't help me whatsoever to get done with my diploma in Darmstadt and also partly caused the delay of my diploma thesis !
I should be learning from this experience and put off projects until their time has come !
Anyways, after I was done at Ames, Diana came by for 2 weeks and we had such a good time touring California :-)))