Still as water

2004-10-19T09:04:00.000-07:00

I'm still alive! And I have a new blog... This should be the last post of this blog... It's sad to see it dying, but it was time to move on! To move downstream.

2004-10-12T14:26:00.000-07:00

The last post is approaching really fast. In the early morning tomorrow the movers will be here to take all my stuff. And this includes this computer... Sometime later in the day (I think it will be later, because so far I didn't get any calls from them), another company will be passing by to take my new car. Then I won't have much... A week worth of clothes, some books and paperwork with information about what to do when I get to Seattle and so on.

Actually I found out that I won't have a car all the time. It is estimated that it will take 12 days for my car to arrive in Seattle and I will have a rental car only for 7 of those. But I guess it won't be a problem. I'll try to schedule my week to compensate for all that.

Talking about scheduling, one of the most difficult things I have to do until tomorrow morning is to build my list of apartments and houses to visit once I get there. With the list, I will look at the map and define an optimal schedule for visiting the places and start calling around to see if my optimal schedule is compatible with the renter's schedule. It is going to be very hectic and requiring lots of planning and organized execution. But it should be doable!

Besides that, I guess that there isn't much to tell... I was very nervous this morning and early afternoon, but right now I'm just busy and getting things done. One of the things that is getting done right now is laundry! So off I go to get my clothes from the dryer.

Oh, yes, I forgot one small detail: the car transportation company asked me to give them the car with less than 1/4 of the tank of gas. Uhm... When I bought the car yesterday they gave a full tank! How can I use 3/4 of a tank if I don't really have free time? I'll leave my car on for the evening and sleep inside it, I guess... :-)

And they also asked me to wash the car. They gave me a washed car but yesterday it was raining... Now my car is all dusty! So I'll have to find some time until tomorrow to wash it. Hopefully the car people will pass by the end of the afternoon and the packing people would leave in the morning, giving me time to do all this (well, it's not that I'll have much else to do anyway).

2004-10-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm still alive, although I haven't been posting lately. It's just been pretty hard for me to sit down and do anything. On Saturday I went car hunting and narrowed down my search to two cars: a Toyota Solara and Honda Accord. However, I couldn't really decide on Saturday, because I didn't know if I could change my mind about moving cars (I first told to the relocation company that I wasn't going to move with any cars).

The reason why I was looking for cars here and not in Seattle is that I thought that the most I could get done here the better. Less things to run after when I get there.

On Monday I got the confirmation that I could still change my mind about moving cars, so I went back to the car dealer and made a deal (after staying there for a LONG time): I am an owner of a 2005 Honda Accord EXL. Leather seats, sunroof, XM satelite radio, 6 CD changer, 2-doors, 4 cylinder... It is a pretty nice car (at least I think so, although my parents wanted to convince me not to buy a 2-door car).

So there went Monday. I also boxed everything that I had in my office and lab and moved half home (the trunk of my new car could only fit 3 boxes, 2 bags and a small box; I still have 3 boxes to go). For you to have an idea how hectic Monday was, we only had time to have lunch at around 4 pm! Dinner at around 11:15 pm...

This morning I finished backing up everything from my ex-laptop and my home computer (the one I'm using right now) and I'm almost ready to go. The only thing left is to send some letters to the car place. They want proof that I will be able to pay them.

Anyway, it's time to go for lunch now... And then run around to get everything done.

2004-10-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling suddenly a little less nervous today. My morning was devoted to organizing my day, defining who I had to call, who I had to email, where I had to pass, and so on. I officially don't have even half a car right now (if I don't go and steal Stacy's car - she has two, anyway)! The amazing part of this all is that I did get almost everything that I had to do today done. Now I'm back to my office and I'll try to finish some things and start the backup process. After this process is done, I have to go and clean all my things from the office computer, remove my usernames, leave it as if I didn't pass by here. I also have to pass by the library and drop the few books I borrowed... It's kind of a sad process to leave...

This also means that I have to start the process of closing my blog. Closing is the easy part. What will be difficult is to find a name for whatever is coming next. I've learned this time and I won't choose anything related to the place I'm staying, so that I won't have to close it again when I move on. Maybe I'll learn with Safiry and reserve a website like "idonthaveanickname.com". :-)

And for the link of the day: Cooking for Engineers. A (sometimes) very interesting website made by a guy that likes to analyze the food and recipes. What I actually liked about it is the way he presents the recipe, as a table. Nice idea, but I'm not completely sure it would work all the time.

2004-10-07T23:20:00.000-07:00

I could write many things, but I guess I won't really. I'm just too nervous to think straight these days. I'm lost on what time it is, what I have to do next, what I forgot to do then. Lots of things to take care of... Just too many things! As the days pass and I keep getting things done, I find out more things that I have to do. Unfortunately my brain kind of gives be the wrong feedback: when I have too many things to do I tend to become introspective and end up not doing anything. I always think I'm forgetting something and just can't find what it is.

Life is hard...

2004-10-07T12:15:00.000-07:00

Oh, I forgot to say that I've got my housing confirmation. I'm going to stay in a place that the invoice says it costs $120/night! But it's in downtown Seattle, with a great view (especially because it looks like I'll be on the 23rd floor - hey, I was on the 24th for my interview!), with a person to clean my apartment every Friday, fully furnished, with all bills paid... Although it's only a 1 bedroom place, it's not that expensive if you come to think of it. At least for Seattle!

2004-10-07T12:06:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry, but I have to post this:

U.S. gets election advice from outsiders. It is actually a very interestin articles about some problems with the US electoral system that people don't really realize. First of them is that who counts the votes are affiliated with a certain party. Then they go to the e-voting and touch screen systems that don't print any paper confirmation. Without this kind of confirmation, if there is any doubt about the result, it may be impossible to check!

They have a good point there, but it goes back to my "paperless world plan". People are still too worried with the fact that computers are unreliable. They are a big black box and nobody really understands what is going on. You always have to add a paper redundancy to give assurance to the people that you won't loose the information.

It's the same thing as when I was talking about transforming the place I used to do internship at in Brazil. I put forth the idea, but the secretaries and financial analysis department said that they couldn't do that, because they needed the papers to make sure they weren't going to loose the data! That's why you can add any amount of redundancy and backup you want on a computer system!

Oh, well, society has to change before we get anywhere with my "master plan". I'm patient.

2004-10-06T12:14:00.000-07:00

Just some interesting facts (because I just can't work today... Too many small bureaucratic complications that I have to deal with):

Here is a comparison of average temperatures and rainfall between Stillwater and Seattle (from weather.com:

The interesting thing is the rain pattern that is almost inverted. Here it rains during the summer and there during the winter. One important thing that this graph does not show is that they have much more rainy days there than here. When it rains here it's a lot of rain in one day, while there it doesn't rain as hard, but it rains for longer.

And here are the weather facts (most of them you can see in the figure above, though):

Stillwater:
* The average warmest month is July.
* The highest recorded temperature was 115°F in 1936.
* The average coolest month is January.
* The lowest recorded temperature was -18°F in 1996.
* The maximum average precipitation occurs in May.

Seattle:
* July is the average warmest month.
* The highest recorded temperature was 96°F in 1991.
* On average, the coolest month is January.
* The lowest recorded temperature was 11°F in 1989.
* The maximum average precipitation occurs in November.

2004-10-06T00:04:00.000-07:00

Another day is gone and now I'm getting to the last steps towards my move. It is set that I'll be moving on Thursday, and all my stuff are going in the van for moving on Wednesday. This means that this weekend I'll spend organizing and listing what I'm taking, what is going to storage until I find an apartment, and what is going to my temporary house. I have to start moving my things out of the office too, and bringing them home.

There are lots of bureaucratic things I have to solve too! I have to transfer my car to my roommate, car insurance, maybe pass by the apartment office and tell them that I'm leaving, close by savings account (I can't close my checking account yet, because I'm getting paid for this month by the end of it - I'll have to send a letter asking to close my account later)... I have also to find officers for the Brandeis/Hillel Club, so that I get my reimbursement for buying the Sukkah. I have to send the information about being the Jewish representative for the Interfaith Council to the only person that is left that could do it (although I'm sure he will do a terrible job).

Oh, and I have to talk about my great party, right? The one I have been working to get people to go, I have called a lot of people to confirm that they were going to go... Well, how many people there were? 3.5 (one arrived 30 minutes late and left 15 minutes after it)! These are the things that always made me depressed about being the president of the club. You work a lot, get everything ready and then people just think that it's too much work for them to move to the library lawn and have a free dinner (very good food, by the way). It's just plain sad.

Finally, I have to talk a little about the US vice president debate. I haven't watched it! But I went after some information about it and I found three interesting blogs on CNN: Carlson (the Republican), Bengala (the Democrat) and Klein (the person having fun with the debate, and not with politics). The interesting thing is that, except from some small things in common, it really looks like they are talking about completely different debates! Each catches a different detail. I'm probably being biased here, but I think that Carlson was the one that is the most forcefully biased, seeing errors where there were none, and agreeing with points that just didn't make sense at all (from Dick Cheney, of course). But my conclusion, after not watching the debate, is that nothing really was gained from it. Both made lots of silly mistakes, and didn't quite answer any of the most interesting questions. Oh, well, debates are always like that, aren't they?

2004-10-04T17:04:00.000-07:00

Two things before I go back home to finish building my shopping list for the party tomorrow:

1) Have you heard R.E.M.'s new album, Around the Sun? Well, I have on Myspace and I wasn't too impressed with it so far. I know that sometimes R.E.M. albums require you to listen to them more than once to enjoy it, but it was a little repetitive in my opinion.

2) They are on tour again! And will be passing by Seattle on November 19 and 20! It's good to move to a city that is bigger and more important! Tickets cost from $40-$75. And you can also buy parking online for $8!

Oh, by the way, just for one person to which this information might make some sense, do you know who is playing there on the following day (November 21)? Check it out! Hehehe...

2004-10-04T14:27:00.000-07:00

I posted and forgot what I really wanted to write about... On the email that the birthday person sent me, she had the following message in the bottom:

"I'm a beloved daughter ,because Jesus gave me salvation !!!"

Ignoring the misplacements of commas and additions of spaces where they shouldn't be added, the strongly Christian message, and going only to the content of the phrase, does it make sense to you? I don't know if my ability to understand English is bad (the email actually had the same message in Portuguese too, but that's a minor detail), but the line of thought of this phrase just didn't make sense to me.

What is the relationship between being a beloved daughter and being saved? I would understand if you consider Jesus your "father" (in the spiritual sense) and say that because you are beloved, you got salvation from your "father". But this phrase is the other way around. You are beloved because you are saved, as if people can't love you if you are not saved. And if you are saved, your parents have to love you?

As I said, it must be just my inability to interpret the message... Can anybody help me?

2004-10-04T14:13:00.000-07:00

Why things just don't simplify, instead of getting more and more complicated each day? Sorry for not posting yesterday. Life was just a little strange, trying to work at home because I didn't have my lab key... My roommate had a big meeting in the living room during the whole afternoon (he actually asked me if it was ok with me, but didn't specify that 10 people were going to be involved. He said: "I have to work on the props for J-Night in the living room. Is there any problem with you?" Well, him working on things, cutting paper, is not a problem with me, but 10 people was a problem with me! Especially because I was having lunch when all these people started showing up...).

Anyway, I'm really not angry at him about that, I'm just angry at myself for not asking for details about this "work". I learned, though! And I was even able to work some and almost get a good part of my research headache done with. Today I have started phase II.

But the thing that complicated my life most this week is that a friend was going to have her birthday party on Friday, but suddenly today she changed it for Wednesday! Problem: I had already organized a dinner with my friends in the lab for Wednesday! I can't cancel it right now... What will happen is that I'll have to go to the dinner with the lab people and then go to this friend's house for dessert. Providing that I'll have a car for that, because I remember my roommate has lots of other plans for his Wednesday. But I can always ask for a ride... It shouldn't be a problem.

Now I'll go back to work, and back to waiting for the relocation people to call me. If I don't get any message from them until around 7 pm, I'll have to send an email to the recruiter and ask what is going on, if everything is still alright. It would be really nice if I knew when I am going to move as soon as possible!

Just for an useful thing, check bugmenot.com. It is a nice website that provides you with logins and passwords for websites that require free registration to access their content. The idea behind it is that you can access it without giving your email to the company, decreasing your chance of getting spam. If you are already registered to some websites, you can give to bugmenot.com your username and password for other people to use it. Clever!

2004-10-02T12:22:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it is fun to read some very biased news, but on the opposite side that mainstream US media is. One good example of a source for these kinds of news is Reason. They have interesting articles such as Miami Vices: Lessons from the presidential debate that points out that there are some "strange" republicans that still think that Bush won the debate, although all 3 polls show that for the public that watched it thought he didn't. The interesting conclusion of the article is that if you really want to know who should win the debate, you should watch it on mute and just analyze the reactions. This reminds me that I've read an article on BBC with the analysis of the body language of the debate done by a body language specialist (sorry, I couldn't find the link). What is a body language specialist? How does a person specialize on this?

Oh, well, not that these debates are going to change anything. Unfortunately Bush will remain in power and people will give him 4 more years to fix the trouble that happened during the last 3 1/2 years. I actually don't think that he can do much wrong, besides invading Iran, North Korea, and whoever else he wants to, in order to keep the military people busy, and give jobs to people (military ones - but, hey, it's easy and people feel good about themselves because they are "defending their country"). The US economy always go up and down. The problem is just too big for any government to be able to really control it.

Oh, well, back to my reality here, I woke up early this morning to go and look for my lab key that fell on the library lawn yesterday. After about 30 minutes looking around, I just gave up and went to the office to work on what I could there. Now I'm back home finishing preparing lunch (I know it's almost 3:30 pm, but I just was having fun in the office, what can I do?). Then the rest of the day I'll work here at home, hoping that my roommate will stay away from home the whole day today.

By the way, it was COLD this morning. Something like 43F (6C), feels like 36F (2C)!

2004-10-01T11:56:00.000-07:00

My visa is finally out! Now the only thing I'm waiting for for me to start packing is talking with the people that take care of the move to know what day this will happen. But it will, and on the 18th of this month I will be starting my first day at my new job at Amazon.com. Pretty scary and exciting thought.

But to add an interesting view to this all, here comes an article that suddenly related a lot with what I think about the world and my life: The Tomorrow That Never Was. I do think that the author could have done a whole book about the subject, but it did make me think about many things... How quickly the whole society is loosing its naiveness about what is coming up.

2004-09-30T09:03:00.000-07:00

Finally you see somebody taking a step in the right direction (although it's not really a final step, but it's a start): Russia backs Kyoto climate treaty. Who is left? Mr. generator of 25% of all greenhouse gases, the US, that was in the treaty until 3 years ago Mr. "this is not good for the economy right now" George W. decided to pull out of the treaty. I've talked to some people (including my father) that think that this alone is reason enough to want him out of the government.

The other day I was listening to an interview with someone from the US government about the Kyoto Protocol, and his theory (and that wasn't the reason why, three years ago Mr. Bush said the US was out of it) is that it doesn't make sense because developing worlds don't have any restriction in the amount of emissions they have to reach. He actually had only one country in mind: China.

I agree that it is necessary to limit a hyper-growing country like China, but this shouldn't be a reason why you don't want to reduce the limits yourself. As it has been said at the end of the meeting at Kyoto in 1997 is that this alone wouldn't be sufficient, but just a first step on the right direction. If you never take a first step, you will never get anywhere.

2004-09-29T18:55:00.000-07:00

The political Michel is back. Now with two interesting articles I was reading this morning (why did I post it only now? Well, it has been a pretty busy day...):

Catastrophic Success. This talks about how Bush is able to give the impression that he is always right... He changes the reason behind it and keeps saying that that's what he was planning anyway!

Now for a list of Bush's Top Ten Flip-Flops that, in a way, talk about the same thing that the previous article was talking about.

The summary of this is not that Bush is incopetent and he can't keep his ideas right, it's that things change, circumstances change, and you adapt to it. Some adapt by blindly following the same policy independent on the reason for it, others adapt the policy to the new reality. It's natural, not a flaw.

Ok, I'm done with my political discussion today and now I'm going to talk a little bit about the sukkah that we've just built here. I had a great time! It was easy to build, lots of people showed up (we had a total of about 7 Jewish, or Jewish-wannabe) by it throughout the 3 hours we were there. I was touched... The last event I'm organizing and it looks like it's pretty much a success so far. But I won't say anything until Tuesday that is the great day of the party.

Alright, I guess it's time to go... Maybe I should prepare something to eat now. I'm not sure what, though... But I'll figure it out in due time.

2004-09-29T06:42:00.000-07:00

Just to finish my news posting for now, here is an interesting report about some initial initiatives to start using RFIDs on people: Barcelona clubbers get chipped. Well, I need to again remind people that they are NOT inserting the RFID on your hands or forehead. This is not the beginning of the end (maybe for your finances it could be, though)! It's just a pretty cool idea, in my opinion. The only bad thing about it is that there doesn't seem to be any standard yet, so if more places decide to use the same idea, you soon will have an arm full of little chips, and that's not really feasible. We'll have to wait and see.

2004-09-29T06:31:00.000-07:00

I'm running away from a state where they claim there are active tornados to a state that claims they have active volcanos. I guess when you don't have these things you have to worry about terrorists. Or maybe old ladies with guns. Worry is the bringer of TV watchers that brings money to the economy.

2004-09-28T17:22:00.000-07:00

This is just to show that people can suddenly go crazy everywhere in the world:Argentines die in school shooting. Just a shy guy... Finds a gun in his father's belongings and decide that he could use it to get some attention and feel like he is powerful. I feel for his parents that right now must be trying to think what they did wrong with the kid's education... I'm sorry to say, but they are guilty. Maybe they are not the only ones to blame, but first it looks like they had a gun at home and were careless enough to let their son get it. Second, he must be lacking something to decide that he needed attention and power to go and shoot people!

Oh, well... A tragedy that shouldn't have happened! But I guess it's just too difficult to prevent it without using the US public school method of installing metal detectors at the entrance.

2004-09-27T17:26:00.000-07:00

Politics time again:

See if you can understand these two articles:

Bush Holds Clear Lead Over Kerry, Poll Shows: Americans perceive president as best able to deal with Iraq situation, war on terrorism.

Powell Says Iraqi Security Situation Worsening: Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday said anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world had increased and the insurgency in Iraq was worsening, but...

Now why do they think that Bush is better to deal with the Iraq situation, while things are only getting worse? Is it the idea of: "you've put us in this mess, now take us out!"? Or is it just that people don't see that the world has become a more dangerous place since all these invasions? Terrorist groups are not being dismantled, they are being fueled!

Alright, enough politics.

2004-09-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

Still no definition about my visa. I sent an email to the contact I have for this visa issues and the only things he said is that my visa is pending in the queue. That, according to him, is a good thing.

While I wait, I get to scavange some of the things from my dead hard disk (it lived for about 30 minutes this morning and I was able to get something like 80% of what was inside before it died again. Most of the important things are now stored "safely" on another computer. I'll try to get the remaining 20% later and then start burning everything on CDs. Cheap and reasonably reliable backup media.

Also I got to read this "not absurdly interesting article": Are smaller chocolate bars a good idea? Well, it's not really an article, it's more like a discussion forum, but it is interesting to see how people don't really have a single opinion about it, as it would be expected. I agree that part of it is the old wrong idea of transfering the blame for obesity to the food industry, while the obese person is who is actually to blame for it (most of the times, except from some rare medical conditions). But I also think that there are things that could be blamed on the food industry: how much cheaper it is to eat unhealthy food compared to healthy food.

And Stacy and I were talking the other day about how much restaurants are to blame for it too. It's not really the portion size (that is pretty huge), but the actual balance in the dishes that are the problem. Because you get such huge steaks (that is actually the expensive part of the dish) you end up not even trying the vegetables that are given to you on the side (and that are usually pretty awful - nobody eats them, so they don't really care to put good quality vegetables with nice seasoning). Kraft, Coca Cola or Nestle won't solve that problem.

2004-09-27T07:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday has gone by and I just didn't post a thing. What a bad blogger I'm becoming.

But not much happened yesterday. I worked, then worked, then worked, had chat with my parents and then went to a Brandeis/Hillel Club party that the current vice-president was organizing. Who showed up? The same old people (except for one person tha wasn't even invited, but that's another long story). Am I worried about it? Sure, but not too much.

Why wouldn't I be worried too much? Because I was against this meeting the first place. This week Sukkot is coming up and I need people to help with building and decorating the Sukkah on Wednesday, taking it down on Friday, putting it back up on Sunday, having a party on Tuesday and taking it down on the other Wednesday. Lots of things coming up and I didn't want to hear people complaining that they just couldn't go because there are too many things going on. I really wanted to focus the attention more to the Sukkah stuff than to a "apples with honey" party.

Anyway, I got some pictures, we had a nice time chatting and then I went back home to go back to work. I chatted with Miss Model for a while and that's it. Not very exciting...

Just to end with something light, here is an interesting article about the relationship between Google and the Chinese government: Google Bows to Chinese Censorship. What I found interesting is that they always try to go back to Google's famous "Do no evil" idea. But what is "doing evil"? If Google builds a very good search engine, wouldn't it be considered "evil" by the other search engine companies? If their ranking method shows the most well-connected websites, isn't this evil to the newcomers?

2004-09-25T19:51:00.000-07:00

Back from Yom Kippur and I can't say I have that much to talk about. It was a nice service, I did my job at reading the Haftarah twice (there are two readings in Yom Kippur, one of them being the longest, the whole book of Jonah - it's not THAT big, though), and playing the Shofar. Actually it was the most difficult fast that I've ever done, even thought I didn't fast. I had breakfast in the morning to take my antibiotics, and I did drink water throughout the day, because the decongestant makes me just terribly dry, but when I got to the dinner, after my 5th bite or so I started feeling sick... Very sick, breaking a cold sweat thinking "I'm not going to throw up here!". I didn't. I just stopped eating, while seeing everybody going for their third or fourth servings. I think my nose infection is causing a sinus infection. Playing the Shofar was one of the most interesting experiences. It went alright, but not too long into the note, my head felt like exploding so I had to stop.

Anyway, enough about Yom Kippur. Actually it's one of my favorite Jewish holidays! It is actually pretty good to go out and think: hey, time to start anew. I had a long discussion with myself about all the bad things I did during the year (sad part is that most of them were the same as last year - mainly related to not working as hard as I was supposed to, being too angry at my roommate and girlfriend stuff -- what kind of hit me is that in one of the prayers it says something like this "atonement is only reached when you learn not to sin any more"). It were tough 10 days, but now I can leave that behind and focus on being better. Just this feeling of "relief" from all the burden that I was putting on myself for 10 days makes it a really nice holiday.

Just to finalize the post, I'll put two unrelated stories that I was reading around:

Homeland Security's Info: Miles from Nowhere. This is a story about a singer, Cat Stevens, now known as Yusaf Islam, being on the "no fly" list for the CIA without anybody really understanding why. What amazed me is not the intelligence problem, it's the following:

"... the Homeland Security Department put his name on a "no fly" list, which banned him from getting on any U.S.-bound flight. (He was allowed to board his flight to Washington by mistake.)"

His flight was diverted when getting to DC and he landed in Bangor, Maine. Shouldn't this make you feel much more confortable with the fact that there was a mistake and they let him in the plane? What if he was a real terrorist. Once he is in the plane, even though he wouldn't be able to crash the plane to the White House, he could still crash it! What kind of "tight" security have they put in airports? This only continues to show that all these measures are just for the show. There is no such thing as "Homeland Security", because, as I mentioned in the past, it's just impossible to do it! The only real way for you to know if somebody is planning on doing any terrorist act is to read everybody's mind all the time!

This last one is just something very bizarre I found while scanning my daily newspapers: In the Bible Belt, Acceptance Is Hard-Won. This is about a kid that is gay in the Bible Belt (the way too religious states in the US). I opened the article just to see from which state the kid was from and what did I find out? Oklahoma! It's a very long article, and it continues! It tells some interesting facts about this great state:

"... The greater Tulsa phone book has 13 pages of church listings; there are 133 churches alone that begin with the word "First." One Tulsa church that bills itself as a "hardcore, in-your-face ministry" constructs an elaborate haunted house each Halloween where live actors depict various sins. Last year's spook house featured a gay male pedophile.

"Tulsa has world-class opera and Starbucks, and a religious conservatism that rules public life. It wasn't until 1993 that a social agency, Youth Services of Tulsa, noted a higher suicide rate for gay youths and quietly began providing counseling to gay teenagers."

And as one person was quoting me the other day:

"And then, on the third day, God created the shotgun, to help him battle the dinosaurs and kill homosexuals."

This is from a movie that the person couldn't remember the name, but it depicted a redneck religious kid after his Sunday school. BTW, just for the people that don't know what a "redneck" is, here is a part from Wikipedia's definition:

"The original meaning of redneck is not what it is today. Used either as a pejorative or as a matter of pride, the term redneck refers to the stereotypical southern U.S., rural, lower-class Caucasian. The stereotypical redneck has a beer belly, deeply conservative Dixiecrat political views, lives in a trailer, drives a pickup truck with a Rebel flag decal and gun rack in the rear window, wears baseball caps atop a mullet, and enjoys hunting, professional wrestling, NASCAR, monster truck rallies and car engine repair."

And this wasn't going to be a long post... Then I decided to quote all this... It's my happy mood, I guess.

2004-09-23T12:35:00.000-07:00

I'm going to regret writing this, but sometimes I wished I was capable of murder... But I'm not, for some people's luck.

Remember my plan of working peacefully at home? Well, about 15 minutes ago my roommate left with the car without leaving any note or asking me anything and came back with a guy and now they are having a meeting in his bedroom (about ISO Olympics stuff - rember that my roommate also is a reasearcher and gets money to do research, right?). If I wasn't doing laundry right now (I got to the conclusion that I don't have enough dress socks for all high holiday and choir concert tonigh) I would be putting on my clothes for the choir concert and heading to the office. At least it's cooler there.

I'm sorry... I just couldn't let this pass without posting about it. Take this as a negative example of how you shouldn't live. Ok, let me put myself on his place: he is the president of ISO and things at ISO have to get done, because this makes him show up in the newspaper a lot and makes him known by a lot of people. He has to show to people that he is "powerful" that he has a car, when a good amount of international student don't, that if he, a graduate student, can take the afternoon off to work on ISO things, anybody else can too. He is trying to set an example...

But what is the cost of it? Fights with a roommate that he forgets about 15 minutes after? No cost at all... Discussions with an advisor that he thinks doesn't know anything? No cost at all either... Postponing graduation date when he still has no idea what he wants to do after it? No cost at all either! So, for him there is no reason to change! He is following the optimal costless path for himself! No wonder all this keeps happening...

Then back to me: what can I do? Talking to him doesn't really help, because I've done this too many times and it just doesn't cause anything. Moving out also is not an option right now. We still "share" a car, and I'm still hoping (but not too hopeful any more) that I'm going to move out in 25 days. I can't isolate myself, because if I go to the office, he is there, if I stay at home, he comes here too. No other place I have a computer to work.

Solution then? Maybe hitting my head against a wall until I just forget all my worries... Maybe I should start that right now. My nose is bleeding, so why not other things too?

Sometimes I wished he read my blog... And sometimes I wished I only had this problem to deal with.

2004-09-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

Finally I went to the doctor today after suffering through my nose bleeding for more than a week. His diagnostic: I have an infection in my nose. Treatment: antibiotic. Side-effect: it is going to be the first time since I was bar-mitzva'd that I won't be able to fast in Yom Kippur (that starts tomorrow morning). I have to take the antibiotic with food and water. And I'm also taking a decongestant that requires for me to increase my water intake. Oh, well... Health first, that's how it is in Judaism.

Besides that, just bureaucracy today. I've finally sent the first draft of my final paper to my advisor and now I can concentrate on getting my research done (at least until he returns the draft to me). And, of course, my problems adapt to my solutions. I found out that working at home is much better than working in the office lately, because I need the silence and in the office people keep going in and out, and talking on the phone. On my second day working at home most of the time, my roommate decided to work at home too. And his work involves talking on the phone all the time! There goes my peace. There is only one thing that helps me to keep moving is the number 25... 25 days left.

Although today the person that I talked to when dealing with my bureaucratic situation wasn't very positive about me getting a visa... Actually she told me a whole different story. And, according to her story, most probably I won't be able to get my visa for some time still. There are 30k people on the list before me! Let's wait and see.

2004-09-22T20:57:00.000-07:00

Work... Work... Work... That was the day today. But I actually worked a good part of the day at home and this was nice! It's good to be in a place with less people interrupting me!

I had to go to school eventually, though, because I had my last choir rehearsal. It was alright, getting ready for the concert tomorrow night. The only interesting thing happened when the conductor was trying to say that we don't have to wear our tuxedos tomorrow. He said that we can go on our "Sunday best" look. Everybody nodded, I was confused! Uhm... Does it mean that I should go on shorts and T-shirt? ;-)

I actually tried to later talk with the conductor to make fun of the fact that he said something "religion-specific", but he was too busy. Then I tried to talk with the assistant, but he didn't get it. I think he doesn't quite know I'm not Christian. He is a little "out there" actually. I shouldn't say that, but you know how some artists can be some times, right? Enjoy methods to keep them away from reality that keep their synapses from working very well.

Anyway, not much else to talk about, so I'll post a very interesting article by someone that has some pretty valid points: Business Networking Systems, Dead Already? The author, John C. Dvorak (an important guy, actually) claims that in real life these "networking systems" such as LinkedIn and Orkut (actually he uses only both in his story) are just bogus. I kind of agree with him in many ways, but I did find some friends online that I would never be able to find otherwise. Not that I actually sent them any messages yet, but I now can, and so can they, so that keeps me happy.

The whole idea of meeting people that share similar tastes and are friends of friends is a pretty interesting one. But I can say that it can barely be done in current systems. You can't correlate people! For example, I was looking for old friends of mine by checking if they were in the social network of common friends that I had already found. Tedious work, especially when you are dealing with people with 300+ people in their network! But if I could filter my friend's network to show only his friends that graduated in the same school we went, maybe I would have more luck faster! Or I could look at the group of people that graduated from my school and filter to get the people that are friends with at least one of my friends!

Then what? I've got their contact information. Something I could have gotten from my school's website. But I also have a little bit of information about their lives. Where they are living, sometimes where they are working and if they are married already. But is it really the reason why these systems exist?

It's not really! These networking systems were created for networking. For establishing connections to people that you don't really know. Will they ever work to do that? I doubt it! First, network visualization tools have to be added. And state-of-the-art technology in this area is just terrible! Some give some pretty nice looking plots that are meaningless, others give you meaningful plots, but that are so simplified that end up containing only trivial things. (I could add many citations in here, but I won't bore people with that - if you want more information, send me an email, ok?).

Then you have to ask yourself: if you are looking for someone with similar ideas, why would you restrict yourself to friends of friends? So that they won't be bogus? Well, I'm not sure that that's true. See my friend with 300+ "friends". Can I really trust that none of his friend are bogus? I have people on my network that I have to admit that I really don't remember them. I have even one that I'm sure I've never met before. But my education didn't allow me to reject a new "friend".

Alright, so what is the bottom line of this whole story? Networking systems are good for finding old friend, but they are as useful for establishing new links as a basic newsgroup or chat room. If you want to meet people that you want to make sure they exist, get out of your home!

2004-09-21T22:03:00.000-07:00

I asked what else could go wrong with computers, right? Well, I found out! That computer that got the blue screen stopped recognizing USB memories. I have no clue why, but it just doesn't work any more!

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about this. I'm here to say that sometimes the idea that I have 26 days for my preliminary moving date (and, actually, for the death of this blog) is very scary. But sometimes I just think it's too much. I wish I can call the recruiter at Amazon and accept his initial offer of moving in two weeks.

Why, you may be asking the screen... And I don't really need to answer, because all my readers must know already. If you guessed it's because of my roommate you guessed it right! I got to the conclusion that I have studied too much, I have worked too hard, to really have to deal with people that are stupid enough not to want to learn. There is nothing I can do to change that! So I just wished I didn't have to worry about it any more. I wished he had to go out for a day and that I'd pack this day and when he is back he will find a half-empty house.

But this just won't happen. According to Jewish tradition, this is the time I should be apologizing for people for things I have done wrong. I thought maybe I should go and apologize to him for the hard time I gave him from time to time. But if an apology doesn't really change anything, because "foi mal"s don't really mean a thing, why should I? Why should I say I'm sorry for something I'm not really sorry for? And why would I do that if there won't be any change on his part (as there is never any lasting change on his part when I have my great fights with him - yes, today he left with the car again without leaving me a note)?

Oh, don't really see this as a complaint. It is actually an inner discussion of what I should do about all this. My conclusion of all this was that I just will keep myself busy and let the 26 days go by. They do go by fast!

Finally, two things:

The BBC has just started the continuation of the radio show of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy! Wonderful show! From Thursday they will be letting you listen to it online! Make sure you check the game too!

Everybody knows Flash, right? Well, it looks like it's becoming the way of doing web typography too, according to this article. Very interesting what a "simple" program for doing animations can become.

2004-09-21T08:48:00.000-07:00

Today I'm really getting to the conclusion that maybe I should stay away from computers for some time... First it was the HD of my office computer (that appears to be dead - I don't really want to think how much I have lost with it), now one lab computer running XP suddenly gave me a great blue screen for no reason at all! What next?

Besides that I don't have much else to write about. I had a very long and interesting talk last night with a good friend of mine that is living in LA right now. He just became an American citizen (and, theoretically he had to renounce his Brazilian citizenship in the process). And he was worried about his future, about what he really wants with his life. But most of the time we just talked about life and the past. Good conversation.

This morning, on my way to work, I made a long analysis of what would be life about if we lived forever, or at least for a long time. There is no retirement plan that would be able to cope with all these retired people, so we would have to work longer. However, most people retire simply because it is just tiring to work on similar things for a long time, not because they can't work any more.

Well, I'm not going through my whole 15 minute analysis on this topic, because it's probably flawed, but I just wanted to drop here this seed for thought. The bottom line is that I think our view of work would have to change. We won't need to squeeze out work of a person for as long as possible, because you know they are there only for some years. I'm thinking of something in the lines of working 3 days a week and enjoying life for 4 days. Or maybe 6 months of work and 6 months of vacations... It's not productive? Well, productivity sometimes should not be your final goal.

2004-09-21T06:04:00.000-07:00

Look what Nature did for us: a special about science and policy for this year's US presidential elections! I don't really have to say that they, in general, have the same conclusion I have: Bush is bad, but it doesn't mean that Kerry is better.

2004-09-20T16:49:00.000-07:00

Today I got an email from a friend (actually yesterday, but I only read it today). She was replying an email I sent her to wish her a happy new year and such. Nothing really strange about it, right? Well, she asked me two questions that startled me a little:

"Do you want to move to Washington?
"Is that what you have been trained to do?"

I guess the answer for the first question is that I don't have anything really specific against moving to Washington. Mountains, not too cold, not too sunny, good culture...

The second question is the tricky one. Was I actually trained for anything in particular? Was I trained to move to Washington? Was I trained to work at Amazon.com? I guess I can't say I was trained for anything really. Professor tend to claim that I was trained to solve problems, and specialized in problems related to computer stuff. But was I really trained for that? Training means repeating something over and over for when you actually have to perform the same task it becomes easy. But can you train "problem solving"? You don't really repeat a problem over and over again, because you don't see in real life the problems you see in the classroom.

Well, a little background about her would make it easier to understand why she chose those words in the question. She is a veterinarian working at a Zoo in Texas. In vet school she was trained to deal with some animals and some diseases. She had to treat animals over and over again until she knew exactly what to look for and how to do things. Yes, of course every case is a little different from each other, but it's not a whole new problem. There is a limit in "training" in which you start to just see cases that look pretty much "standard", with some outliers.

Back to my case, there are no "standard cases", unless you are working on something very specific and getting bored. The problem space is so big that you can't even define outliers. Some problems may look very similar, but because of some small details they may need completely different procedures to get to a solution. The inverse happens too. Some problems may look very different, but may require similar procedures to solve them.

Then you get to a transcendental question: "How can you actually define a 'problem space'?" This is a pretty fun question if you think about it. How can you compare the calculation of heat dissipation on a computer processor with the determination of the optimal layout for the transistors and blocks in the processor? How to compare apples to giraffes? Or to galaxies?

Once we can do that, then I would be able to be trained and answer that seemingly simple question!

2004-09-20T12:58:00.000-07:00

Excuse me, but I have to post this... One of the most bizarre computer additions I've ever seen: PowerMate byt Griffin Technology. Imagine an USB knob... That's all it is. A knob that connects to the USB and you can use it for whatever you want, volume control, scrolling, and such. It even glows!

2004-09-20T07:45:00.000-07:00

What do I have to post here? Well, my office computer is still dead, I am still happy and very nervous about what is coming up in the next weeks (theoretically I have only 4 weeks left!), Stacy kept me away from work on Sunday, this week I have to finish studying the Haftarah, have a choir concert on Thursday, choir dress rehearsal on Wednesday, I missed the last two rehearsals because of various things...

Just not to finish this boring message with simply boring details of a boring and confused life, I'll post a little bit of "geeky" stuff:

Viruses aimed at Microsoft Windows are up 400% this last year. Isn't this crazy? 5,000 new viruses aimed at exploiting Windows' faults. The fun part is the last paragraph, actually: " Symantec also said it expects more viruses and worms in the future to be written to attack systems that run on the Linux operating system and hand-held devices as they become more widely used."

Firefox 1.0PR (prerelease) is out, and C|Net is reviewing it (although it's a pretty short review with almost anything written. That's the browser I'm using right now, by the way.

2004-09-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

Hey, another 1,005th post! :-)

But this won't be a good one. My day was going alright until two events that have just happened (actually one of the events happened before, but I just realized what happened now): my Brandeis/Hillel Club meeting was cancelled. This is going to give me so many headaches... Imagine, I heard him telling me today that he wanted to postpone this meeting for next Saturday. Just a short reminder: this is a Jewish club, he, being the future president, will be THE Jewish student representative on campus. And next Saturday is Yom Kippur! Deemed as pretty much the most important holiday in the Jewish calendar (well, although theoretically it's Shabbat, the only one that is among the 10 commandments). Oh, and I also had to hear from him that "he knew these people that, like him, wouldn't go to the synagogue or fast to study for exams". It is just sad to hear. Judaism for him is "I love Israel" (he is Israeli) and that's it. The complete opposite from my view of the religion. Yes, Israel is an important symbol, but the religion can survive without it, but not vice-versa.

And why did he cancel it? Because he invited around 8 people. I said that I was going to be there, he also got a reply from 3 girls, two saying the they won't be able to be there and the other said that she was going to try to pass by. He didn't get any answer from the other 4 people and he assumed that they just wouldn't show up, so he didn't want to have a meeting for only 3 people. First, his assumption is dangerous... Second, I think that 3 people is one more than what we usually have and it's enough reason to do it! 50% increase in membership?

It made me sad... And I don't have enough time to actually try to solve the problem myself, so I'll let it be and hope that someone with catch up with it. I even got one more contact yesterday in the Synagogue of a graduate student in theater (well, I don't have how to contact her, but I gave her father my card with my email address). Who knows if she will be interested in making things work!

But if this wasn't enough for my brain to stop thinking about research, my office computer stopped working. This morning, when I got to the office, I looked at the screen and it was showing a simple message: "operating system not found". I found it strange, but I just rebooted the system. Windows came up without a problem, so I didn't worry about it. Later in the morning, I was working showing how to do something to someone and then my computer beeped. I looked at it and it was displaying the same message! I didn't want to spend time on that then so I just left it for later.

Later was just after I got out of the phone with the vice-president. What happened, as far as I can tell, is that my HD is dying! There are many things that can cause that problem, a dying HD is the worst of them, because there are some VERY important things in that HD that are not anywhere else! I have to save this information: 50% of my research, all my digital paper collection, all my classwork, all my Brandeis Club emails... There are just a ton of important things in that HD! Just because my year had started very well...

2004-09-18T14:02:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I find interesting articles about cities in the US. Look at this one: Most overpriced places in 2004. It's a very complicated analysis, but anyway...

2004-09-18T09:37:00.000-07:00

This is the fourth post that Blogger is saying that it's my 1,005th... Maybe I should really count the number of posts I had to make sure I reached the 1,000th post, as I claimed before.

Anyway, sorry for the lack of blogging lately. It was Jewish New Year, and I was pretty busy with all the things related to it. But it's been a pretty good new year so far, I can't complain. I got some emails from people that I thought have forgotten me, or that appeared from nowhere. I also had a wonderful time at services in Ponca City and then in Tulsa.

I have talked about the services in Ponca City already, so it's time to talk about Tulsa yesterday. First I got there and met some people that I haven't seen for almost one year. They were glad to see me, but when I told them that most probably it will be the last time I'll have time to participate on the services there, they told me to drop the job in Seattle and said that they would find me a job in Tulsa. They didn't have any luck initially asking the people around there if any of them needed an Electrical Engineering Ph.D. so they kind of dropped the subject.

After services I went to a luncheon for "young adults". It was in a very nice house from one guy from the community. The age range was in the late 20s to mid 30s, with lots of very well-educated people (most of them weren't actually born in Oklahoma), or should I say, very well-educated couples with their kids. I guess there were only two people there that didn't take a "couple", a guy that works at American Airlines and I. And all the couples either had at least a child around, or the wife was pragnant. But this didn't keep me from having great conversations about many different things.

Then I passed by Stacy's work (and you can get more information about it on her blog), bought a gift to give to a friend that invited me (and Stacy, if she didn't have to work today), besides some other people for lunch today. Then I drove back to Stillwater because my roommate wanted the car to go out on a date. When I got there he ended up not leaving with the car, but it was alright. I went to my room, did some cleaning, some research, email writing, then dinner, a long conversation with Stacy (that even finished with my cell phone bateries) and then I went to bed to wake up early this morning and come to my office to work.

Right now I'm actually very late on my research plans, because I had to finish one paper that was almost finished... When I reread it, I decided that it wasn't good enough, so I decided to start all over again! Lots of work!

2004-09-16T23:34:00.000-07:00

Some days are just hard to let go. Today is one of them (or should I say that yesterday was one of them, but then it wouldn't make much sense, as it's gone already). It started with an interesting Rosh Hashanah service, in which I did my debut as a Haftorah reader (oh, and I did a TERRIBLE job reading Hebrew...) and as Shofar blower (this one went alright, until the TEKIAH G'DOLAH that went VERY WELL... I blew that shofar for almost a whole minute! And I stopped not because I ran out of air, but because I thought it was a little too long already. I think I hyperventilated before and it helped a lot).

The only other disappointment for the day is that I'm going to Tulsa alone for Friday services. I really didn't want this to happen, especially because I have already paid for 2 people for it, but it's how life goes. One more girl I scared away! ;-)

Today was also probably my last Interfaith Council meeting that I will attend here. Now I have to find a new Jewish representative to take my place in the council. Not an easy choice, because there are very few options! But I'll try. But it was a sad departure. I learned a lot in my year there. Especially this meeting! A preacher showed up trying to ask for an endorsment from the Interfaith Council for him to distribute flyers about what he thought was the solution to attain world peace.

It was actually a nice flyer, but you could see that it was written by a Christian. Why do I say that? Well, it's hard to explain, but after you live by people from different religions, you start to learn what their "concerns" are, what their way of looking at the world is. And his message looked at the world from a Christian point of view. It's not wrong, it's just a message that won't relate to all religions. That's why I voted against it being endorsed by the IFC and it wasn't (I wasn't alone with this opinion - it's a democracy).

Finally, the day ended with a door being closed. I won't say it was bad, but it wasn't great either. It was just something that makes me a little sad to see happening. Sometimes you feel like your life should be centered in opening doors, but you forget that doors are closed in the process. Some a more painful to close, others you don't even see them closing. This was the painful one. A painful reality that continues to haunt me since Germany (that was almost 10 years ago!).

2004-09-16T14:43:00.000-07:00

I think this story can be classified as part of my 10 days of introspection before Yom Kippur: Can Amazon Go Beyond Google? An interesting story that a friend of mine sent to me about Amazon.com's new "service" A9, a web search engine. I don't want to quote the ideas from the Business Week article, but just just bring to attention one important difference between Google and A9: Google has thousands of developers, while A9 has only a couple of 2-pizza teams (maybe a couple dozen people). I don't think it's reasonable to clash against Google directly, but I really liked the fact that my searches are stored in the server, so I can redo a search that I did in the office here at home.

Oh, and FYI, I'm not working anywhere near this project (at least I don't think I am).

2004-09-15T10:12:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's easier not to know: PCWorld.com - Microsoft Warns of Critical JPEG Flaw. I went through Microsoft's security bulletin and it's just confusing. Lots of programs are affected, but it all depends on the service pack you have installed.

2004-09-15T05:29:00.000-07:00

Another day is gone. A day without getting much accomplished, because I had to teach the two classes.

The classes went alright. The first one I had sort of a hard time to keep eye contact with everybody because it was a short and wide classroom. Very strange. But it went fine! The second class didn't go very well, though. I got 0 interaction with the class. I would ask them questions and nobody would say a thing. I didn't know if they were understanding everything, or not even listening! Bad experience!

But it's gone! I should be happy and ready for long days of work for the rest of the week, right? Well, not really, though! Today I'm going for lunch with my advisor. If he still wants to follow his initial plan, I should be going to Tulsa for lunch, that means a 4-hour lunch! In the evening it's Rosh Hashana, so I'll be going to the synagogue in Ponca City and staying there until late.

Tomorrow it's Ponca City time again in the morning. I should be coming back at around 1:30, but then there is another ceremony to participate at around 4pm... Another day almost gone! But it's not all! At 7:30 I have an Interfaith Council meeting!

Friday is even worse! I'm going to Tulsa for services and after services there is a luncheon for young adults that I had lots of fun participating last year. This means that I'll probably be back in Stillwater only around 5pm! Work? When?

Just to finish, I'll tell you some very strange thing that I've received in the mail yesterday. If you remember from aeons ago, I receive almost every year a letter from the Republican party for me to be the "Stillwater Representative" at the big fund raising dinners that they organize. Very expensive to be there! Anyway, yesterday I got a letter that said, in the envelope outside: "Photo Enclosed". I opened the envelope and it was from the Democratic National Committee! I flipped through the papers to get to the photo and what do I see? A photo of Bush and Cheney!

I was puzzled! I get a letter from the Democratic Committee and they send me a photo of the opposition? How come? I had to read the letter... And it said something in the lines of: "The enclosed photo shows the face of the US in the future if you don't help us change it". Very strange marketing, I should say!

2004-09-14T14:49:00.000-07:00

I don't know if I should be worried about this or just laugh about it: Rabbi says would hold Kabbalah ritual calling for PM's death. (BTW: PM is Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon)

2004-09-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

It's been some time I've been looking for this poll... I knew it existed, but I just didn't know where: Yahoo! News - World Wants Bush Out of the White House: Poll.

What always scares me is that some people can be mistaken, but it just doesn't make sense for 30 out of 35 countries to think this way and be wrong about it. I mentioned some time ago that it puzzles me that the places where I consider to have the best "culture" and "education" in the US are also where the most anti-Bush.

And I don't care if he was "lazy" when in the national guard, or if he was a good soldier. Something that a person did on the 70s doesn't really prove anything about this person's ability or inability to do things right now. People change after some time. Life was completely different back then than it is right now.

Let's give an example: I have a friend (actually a friend of a friend) whose father was very wealthy. In school he didn't do anything besides pestering people and to think that he owned everything. His father, after some time, had some problems with his business and didn't quite loose everything, but he couldn't buy everything he pleased any more. But this friend of mine was pretty smart and was able to turn all this around, build his own business with some of his savings and now has even more potential than his father.

If you knew him from school time, you wouldn't give him anything. He was lazy, too confident about his own abilities, always hiding behind his father's fortune. But now he has proven that he is much more than that. If he was running for president, I would vote on him! And, see, his school time was in the 80s and early 90s. Now, mid 00s, he has changed already.

Anyway... I should be working, not blogging.

2004-09-12T21:47:00.000-07:00

I shouldn't do this, because it is a little against the rules of making people feel confortable about what they post online, but check this out. I was just clicking random links and suddenly I found a blog of a girl that goes to Oklahoma State University. I'm not posting a link to her blog, because of anonymity, but I'll quote what she wrote as her interests, something that kind of made me sad:

Interests: making-out, incubus (x400), art history, strawberry jello, italy, spain, rome, boondock saints, captain morgan, adam levine, metrosexuals, faux hawks, what not to wear, kappa delta, oklahoma state university, fresh cut grass, burberry cologne, shoes,big gaudy jewlery, claude monet, fear and loathing in las vegas, johnny depp, super target, pokemon snap, jude law, crab cakes, pretty pearls, cole slaw, meeting new people, date parties, party pix, floating the river, PIRATES, very sexy cologne, bagels and cream cheese, cool people.

Observations: she is a sorority girl, likes to get drunk, go out on dates, wear big jewelry... A girl, of course, enjoying "what not to wear", metrosexuals, shoes... Very "typical", with a couple of interesting perks that don't quite fit in my profiling mind: "Claude Monet", "art history"... It even seems like she has something but it's in a deep layer hidden by all the "standardization" that was imposed on her. Or maybe these two are just there to look like she has some "non-TV knowledge".

Oh, well, as I said, I shouldn't have posted it, but I'm trying to keep my brain awake.

2004-09-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday and I'm in the lab working. There are lots of things that I still have to get done today, but it's actually going pretty smooth so far. Of course a day has only 24 hours and I've spent a good part of this time in Tulsa (it's always hard to leave that city early in the morning, especially on Sundays), but I have almost finished the work I was supposed to have finished yesterday before leaving to Tulsa. Yes, I'm a day late, but I haven't lost hope that I will be able to catch up and finish until the end of the week what I told my advisor I was going to finish by Friday. It is going to be a busy week with all the High Holidays coming on Wednesday evening, Thursday morning and Friday morning, but I'll be working.

I've also been looking at apartments online on Apartments.com and Rent.com (there are actually a good amount of websites with apartment listings, ApartmentGuide.com, 101 Apartments, Rentals.com, just to cite a few), but it's very difficult to actually know how an apartment looks like on the computer. More than that, many of the potentially more interesting ones don't have any real information about how the floor plan looks like.

But decision is even harder than this. I'm not sure if I should just think of this as a temporary home and go for a 1 bedroom apartment, or if I should think that I may be staying there a little longer and go for a 2 bedroom apartment, so that I can receive visitors and have a small office. More than that, I can, for example, look for a house to rent... It can be close to downtown, that means more expensive; or it can be a little bit far away, but requiring longer commutes around, maybe even more driving (they have good public transportation there, but I've only investigated the communities around downtown when I was there)... Now I really understand how difficult it is to find an apartment! Real-life is so scary!

2004-09-10T21:41:00.000-07:00

I just came back from bowling with a bunch of friends. Now they are on their way to somebody's house to continue having fun for the night, and I'm back home to work. I'm not in the lab right now because "Orange Peel" is going on and, although the windows are supposed to be sound-proof, the concert is taking place just across the street. And there is no parking available! Actually, even my parking spot here by my apartment is being used by somebody else!

Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that some people from the OSU Basketball team was there bowling. Celebrities... Very tall ones! Just going around and showing that they can do whatever they want. Interrupting games, asking people if they had weed, and things like that. Way depressing... It's so sad to see what I call "society divergence".

2004-09-10T16:07:00.000-07:00

I would like to use this 1,000th post to say that blogging is good, but there are limits to when blogging helps and when it stops helping and creates social distress. Blogging helps when it serves for two main purposes: giving relief to your day by throwing out to the people that is around in the world and ended up getting to read your blog your daily struggles and good experiences. It also is useful when you are relaying and, sometimes, analyzing news that you consider interesting.

Blogs stop helping, though, when they put another person, or company, into undesired attention. For example, if I start complaining about my advisor (that really surprised me today, by the way, saying that I shouldn't at all worry about his things, because he has to deal with them. I should only worry about the choices I make.) personally and he read my blog, he would really feel bad especially about what people that know both sides would be thinking.

Writing things that are not interesting to anybody but to the writer is really ok. It may make some people turn away from your blog quickly, but it does not cause frustration or conflict. Being depressive and writing down death wishes is bad for the reader, because it may make him/her depressed by not being able to help, but it is still an undirected disconfort.

There are rules in society... There should be rules in blogging.

Anyway, on a sadder note, I just found out today something I feared: I have to return my laptop before I leave for the next person that will work on the newsletter to use it. I now have to figure out how to transfer everything to my home computer... My Linux server!

2004-09-10T11:29:00.000-07:00

Uhm... Technology Review: Is That a Hard Drive in Your Pocket?

It is actually an interesting article, but I'm not sure I think that the future vision that the author (Eric Hellweg - he knows the bright way :-P). His whole point of view is around cell phone companies increasing their data transmission and making lots of money with it. It is a good point of view, but as I'm not a phone company, I don't really see it in this perspective.

It would be great if one day we will have a small black box that does everything for us: PDA, cellphone, MP3 player with lots of memory, portable disk, photo and video camera, and on its free time it does the dishes and washes your clothes! :-) However, I don't see this ever happening, simply because it would mean that people are sattisfied with something. It is going to be always more expensive than a single MP3 player, for example, right? Once these "convergence" companies release their new "all-in-one", MP3 companies would have MP3 players that have a lot of other better features, cameras will have also more quality, and all for lower price, if you think individually.

So, if I'm going to buy a better camera, why would I spend my money buying a phone with a camera, if I can buy a phone without a camera for cheaper?

What is "my" view of the future, then? Something that possibly includes "Hard Disk cellphones", actually: wireless modularity. Let's say that you have a big hard disk on something you carry every day: a cell phone is a good example, but it can be a belt, or even underwear. You can get your camera, or anybody's camera, and just take pictures and store them in your HD. You get your MP3 player of preference (or even your friend's MP3 player) and listen to the songs in your personal memory compartment. You get to a computer, and it accesses the same memory compartment to synchronize the calendar, pictures, and anything else! All being as transparent as possible.

How far are we from this? Well, I'm thinking something like 15 years. But I'm not a professional predictor... Just a hopeful user.

2004-09-10T08:18:00.000-07:00

I was reading that Sao Paulo had its dryest day in years yesterday. Something like 14% humidity! Something is really wrong with the weather!

Not much else to say... Just another busy day. Sent out the visa paperwork, finally left my car to change tires (I think I had 2 flat tires... Those that take a while to really go flat) and check the shocks. When I was trying to sell my friend's car, I realized how much noise my car makes when going through small cracks in the pavement (something very common around here). However, I got a call from the people in the shop where I left the car and their inspection revealed no problems with my shocks. They told me that maybe the problem was related to the tires.

I also confirmed buying the sukkah, send something like 8 emails and even got to work a little on my research! Soon I'll go to choir. I'm really considering dropping it! I think I need the time to work on my stuff. I will also try to talk with the voice instructor and cancel my voice lessons. With High Holidays coming up next week, time is really an issue until the 18th.

The interesting thing is that no news really interest me too much lately. But I'll drop something that could interest some people: Beware of Bots Bearing Messages. I wanted to test it, but I don't have AIM (Actually I do, but I don't remember my password and I don't have time to dig it up right now)... If anybody does test it, let me know if it is as good as they advertise.

2004-09-09T19:13:00.000-07:00

It's interesting how easily life becomes simple. Not simple to live, but simple to characterize. With one word I can explain what is going on with me right now: chaos! (I actually like this word)

But it's interesting that if I put my mind to get things done, they get done! I got all the paperwork for requesting the visa change, I received all the forms that I have to sign to start my job, I talked with my advisor and he will have a meeting with me tomorrow to discuss "contingency plans" about who will take care of the things I do here. He didn't seem angry with me for accepting it and leaving him before the end of the semester. Very interesting how sometimes people can act in unexpected ways.

I have also got almost everything ready for my club stuff. I got the Library Lawn booked for Sukkot, ordered a Sukkah (I was waiting for the confirmation that the we were going to be able to use the lawn before spending almost $400), got one more person to go to Ponca City for the High Holidays... It has actually been interesting the amount of Jewish people that are popping up this semester. 3 freshmen (all girls) and one person that is coming to Stillwater often for business and just sent me an email.

Oh, and I even finished preparing my lecture for next week. Small detail that I just received an email from my advisor saying that I forgot to attach it to the email I sent him... Oops... Early morning I'll send it again. Maybe I'll even have some time to go through it one more time to make sure I'm happy with it.

That's it! The only sad news for the day is that it looks like Mr. Bush is going for another round of 4 years... Maybe now that I will be working for a Fortune 500 company I should be happy about it.

2004-09-08T12:32:00.000-07:00

I just got back from my "tough" meeting with my advisor. It was a tough meeting, but not at all for the reason I was expecting... His point of view is that I wouldn't be really doing research any more, and that I can be pretty good at research. If I leave the research area, I end up never being able to come back, because I don't have publications any more.

He has a good point... He has many good points... Decisions are tough, and get tougher and tougher as time goes by. Should I believe that there are better options out there?

2004-09-08T07:56:00.000-07:00

I have still to finish my Seattle story before getting to the long and chaotic day of yesterday...

So, there I was on Saturday, after waking up pretty early in the morning, mainly because of jet lag. I stalled a little in the bedroom, read the morning newspaper (that they left in front of my door) and then went for a walk. I had scheduled with my father's friend to go for a ride around Seattle at 10am, so I had lots of time (about an hour and a half, considering getting back to the hotel with still lots of time to spare). All stores were closed still, so I just had fun being around, having breakfast, taking some pictures.

At 10:15 my father's friend arrived. He took me around for a ride on the residential areas of Seattle so that I have an idea of what to look for if I got the job and decided to move to Seattle. It was a very pleasant ride, getting to know some pretty interesting houses and apartments.

Real-state is very expensive in Seattle, so most houses are pretty small, even houses that cost more than 2 million dollars are pretty small (compared to equivalent-priced homes here in Oklahoma, or even in Sao Paulo).

We had lunch together with his older son and then went back to the hotel. He was going to watch a football game in the evening and invited me if I wanted to join him and his younger son. I declined... I thougt that going around Seattle was more useful than actually watching a high school football game.

Nothing new happened after that. I walked around, got inside some stores, but didn't buy basically anything, only a cookbook that Stacy asked for. I had dinner in a very nice restaurant (again pretty expensive) and went back to the hotel. I had to wake up pretty early next morning to catch my flight.

I did so, got to the airport, flew back to Oklahoma with two minor observations: 1) Security in the airport in Seattle is very "streamlined". You move very fast and people just shove you around making you move faster. 2) On my flight from Seattle to Minneapolis, a 3-hour flight, I had the great luck of getting the middle seat. On my right (by the window) sat a 250-300 lb girl. Although she did try to squeeze herself, when she fell asleep she got pretty "roomy". On my left (by the corridor) sat an older gentleman that thougth that he had the right to just read his "Reader's Digest" using as much space as he could. The result: it was pretty painful! 3-hours of being squeezed!

Got back to Tulsa, waited a while there, because a friend was coming back to Tulsa too and we decided to wait to pick her up and take to Stillwater. At around 11:30pm we were in Stillwater (Stacy, this girl and I).

Monday was Labor Day, but I went to work anyway (it's THE DAY to work, isn't it?). Lots of things to do, and a meeting with my advisor at 4pm. Things went fine, I just got a lot of things to do from him. I even skipped lunch, but that's a whole other story that I'm not using my time to tell.

Tuesday, yesterday, I went to work again. During lunch (this time I went to lunch), Stacy (yes, she was still around) decided that she wanted to organize a get-together in the evening. I called some people, while at work, and she went to do the shopping for it. At around 7pm I went back home and Stacy asked me to buy some last things that she had eiter forgotten, or just found out that I dind't have in my apartment. There I went to Wal-Mart.

Just after I got there, my phone rang. My first thought was: "It's Stacy asking me to buy something else for her..." But when I got the phone the number listed was "Call 1", meaning "no number". This happens when I get a call from Brazil, for example. I suddenly remembered that I had chat with my parents at 8pm so I thought it was them saying that they will be late or something like that. When I got the phone it was Amazon!

Not to get to many details about it, in a nutshell I got the job. He said it was actually an easy decision. But he only wanted to confirm some of the things from my application and he was going to call me back today (Wednesday) to give me the official offer (with $$$ and benefits). They still kept the idea that they want me to start ASAP, meaning when I can get my visa changed. This probably will take a month to a month and a half...

So here I am trying to talk with my advisor about it (and some other stuff), but he isn't in his office, or isn't answering the phone. I also have to talk with my voice teacher and the choir conductor to know what to do.

Changes... They are always so complicated! This really seems like a great opportunity for me to go to "industry work", but lately I have been thinking if that's really what I want to do. I do enjoy research, I enjoy trying to find something that doesn't necessarily have a $$$ gain attached to it. Oh, well, let's see where this will take me. It's actually a better way to help a larger group of people!

2004-09-06T08:47:00.000-07:00

I'm back! Yes, I know I was back since last night, but I just didn't have time to blog. The only thing I did was to check some of my e-mails looking for additions to the list of things to do today. Of course I had some! But they are almost all done already. Now it's time for the more complicated things - some of them I planned to do on the planes or when I was free, but it just didn't work.

Well, time to talk a little about my trip, then. For those who don't know what happened, I was called for a job interview at Amazon.com. They flew me to Seattle, WA on Thursday evening and my interviews were scheduled to start at 12 p.m. on Friday. I got to the city, got a cab to the hotel. When I got to the hotel I had a very pleasant surprise. The W Hotel is a very fancy, modern-looking-and-feeling hotel. Not a huge place at all, just tall with 26 floors (25, actually, because there is no 13th floor). I was on the 24th floor (22rd)! My room was very big, almost the size of my whole apartment here in Stillwater.

I'm not going through all the interesting things in the hotel room, because most of them only make sense to me (a person that has lived in Stillwater, OK for more than 3.5 years). The only thing I actually didn't like about the hotel is that I had no clue what I could use and what I would get charged extra. Extra in these hotels are a good amount of money! But it was fun, anyway. I didn't stay that long in the hotel room to actually feel like using any of the things that could end up being an extra charge on my credit card. Oh, just for you to have an idea, a room at that hotel costs around $200 a night.

Friday came. I tried to sleep as much as I could, but at 8 a.m. I was already out of my room. I looked at my simplified map that I've received at the hotel (with a gift from Amazon - a T-Shirt that I'm actually wearing today) and decided that the place of the interview was within walking distance from the hotel, so I decided to walk there. After walking for around 30 minutes, I got to the conclusion that the simplified map that I had was very strange and didn't really show the region of the interview very well: I just couldn't find the building.

I went back to the hotel and got my more detailed map that I bought on my last trip to Seattle. In this map I found where the problem in the simplified map was and set off for to find the place of the interview again. It was around 10am. This time I got around the right place, but I had in my mind the wrong street number. I walked around and around until around 10:45 when I decided to look at the number of the building. I was in the wrong street! But just after that I found the place! I had around 30 minutes to wait until the pre-interview (filling out paperwork). I went inside an Asian market (acutally much more Japanese than really "Asian") and was delighted with the quality of their fresh fruits, vegetables and seafood. I even found some very bizarre things, like geoduck (that I just learned it should be pronounced something like "gooey-duck"). Very scary thing, I might say. And expensive too! $12.99 a pound!

Alright... Now for the interviews. I don't know how many details I can really say, because I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement before starting. I will only say one thing: out of the 6 or 7 interviews I had (I lost count in the middle of the way), only one didn't go very well. Actually it went pretty awful. The problem is that this one was the interview with my "possible future boss". And it was the only interview specifically geared towards the problem they have. Thus, my conclusion is that if they were trying to hire a person that already had the answer for their problem, most probably I'll be back to looking for a job. If they were just looking for someone that could solve problems, I still have a reasonably good chance. I'll know on Wednesday.

Friday evening, after all the interview, I went back to the hotel, called a thousand of people that wanted to know how it went (3, actually) and rested a little. Then I went for dinner at a very expensive restaurant, Etta's (one of the restaurants by one of Seattle's most famous chefs, Tom Douglas). It was a really nice dinner, and I even got to meet a woman that has a company that teaches English and American Culture to internationals that have been hired by high-tech companies. Actually she only works for Microsoft right now. She gave me her card so that if I get the job I can contact her to get contact information for some Brazilians in Seattle.

Talking about Brazilians in Seattle, that same evening, on my way to the restaurant, suddenly I saw a large group of people in a plaza, or something like that. When getting closer to find out what was going on, I saw that in one side of these people, there were some people carrying something that the upper tip (the only thing I could see above people's heads) looked like a bow (for throwing arrows). I had a sudden flash of recognition: "Capoeira"!!!! And I was right! I was a Brazilian group of people that practice "Capoeira" all around the US and Canada. Just a strange coincidence.

Ok, this post is long enough! I should concentrate more on my work here and continue with Saturday some other time.

2004-09-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

Actually there is one thing that made me happy today: I finally got around to send an email to the people that requested contact with a Jewish representative and many others. I did this in the morning. The interesting thing is that I got an answer back from one of the people saying that she was never raised with any religion, but now she thinks that she believes, but isn't sure on what. So she wanted more information about the Jewish religion.

I wrote a pretty short essay on what I think are the main points about the Jewish religion, including how difficult it is for you to convert. And I really had fun writing it and learning as I was writing. Going around and converting people is against the rules in Judaism. But I've learned that one of the best ways to test how much you know your own religion is to try to explain it to a person that wants to listen. I'm sure I wouldn't be able to write half of what I wrote three years ago.

But, of course, when I mentioned this to the club advisor he came up with a much better answer from a very well-taught story (source):

A certain non-Jewish "wise-guy" came to scoff at the Torah, first to the home of Shammai, then to the home of Hillel. He said, "Teach me the Torah while I am standing on one foot." Shammai, sensing his true intention, had him thrown out forthwith. (From this story, probably mostly, Shammai has received the bad "rep" of being a short-tempered, person who "did not suffer fools" lightly. However, this is certainly not the case, since it is Shammai himself who teaches "Receive everyone with a smiling face.")

When the individual came to the home of Hillel with the same request, Hillel responded. "No problem! The main idea of the Torah is 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Everything else is commentary. Now, if you're really interested, go and study the commentary." So impressed with Hillel's response, according to Jewish Tradition, was the visitor, that he took Hillel up on his instructions, began to study the Torah seriously, and became a Jew.

-----

Yes, you can always learn more... Oh, if you don't know, by the time of the Mishnah, a long time ago, around the 3rd Century C.E., the studies of Jewish law was divided into houses, centers of learning with a major Rabbi. Two of the most important of these Rabbis were Hillel and Shammai. All these stories were written down in the Mishnah or later in the Talmud (two books that contained written laws of Judaism - The Talmud contains more comentaries and stories about the laws, and there are many versions of this text, written by different Rabbis in different places)

2004-09-01T22:24:00.000-07:00

I think Blogger can't count. When I tried to post the previous post, it was saying that I have 990 posts. Now, after I've posted once, it is saying that I have 992 posts! So I don't know anything any more. Probably it's just my day that just shouldn't have existed. I don't even want to start, because it may affect other people's view of the world.

The only thing I can say is that finally the interview pressure got to me. Finally I'm feeling really nervous of what is coming on Friday. Actually, not only on Friday, but packing, getting all the things that I need to do before traveling done... It's all a process that is failure-bound!

I'll finish with an interesting and disturbing story I heard today. One of the people that made to the first club meeting is the wife of one of the new faculty. They used to live in upstate New York, by the border with Canada. It's really COLD there, but this is not the point. The interesting thing about their experience is that they received Canadian TV and American TV in their homes. Needless to say, they followed the news with the Canadian TV. She proved that it is just ridiculous the amount of editing that is done in the American news broadcasts. According to her, one of the most edited things that there is are Mr. W. Bush speeches. If heard in full, they don't make any sense... But after cutting and editing done by the TV stations in the US, suddenly the speech gets a whole new meaning.

The only really shocking thing that she had with the Canadian TV is that they showed footage from the twin towers at 9/11 without any cutting. You could see people jumping down and hear them screaming. While in the US TV they were showing it with 1 minute delay, cutting out the shocking scenes of people jumping, and cutting out the sound so that you couln't hear the screams.

It is good to see when people really see that something wrong is going on. They plant the seed. Sometimes seeds don't germinate. But what matters is that sometimes they do!

2004-09-01T12:21:00.000-07:00

I'm already 9 posts from my post no. 1000! Wow... Posts fly, even when I don't post anything for a whole day.

I didn't have anything to really talk about yesterday. I almost sold my friend's car, but my friend changed his mind and didn't want to sell the car for that low any more. But today I found out that I don't have to sell it until Friday! He was confused, and confused me. The expiration date is 9/3/2008. Less stress for me! And I also feel a little bit less stressed with the fact that I've changed the headlights that were out on his car. $8! What an enormous investment for decreasing my stress level.

Today I also had my first voice lesson. It was fun, but I found out that I don't know how to characterize my voice. The only word I was able to come out with is "boring"... I actually liked it, though. Now I'll have each of my lessons taped so that I can listen to them over an over again and make fun of myself in the future (if I'll actually have a tape player in the future).

Finally I'm right now waiting to know what my advisor wanted to talk to me about. Hopefully it's not anything too complicated. He still isn't back from lunch and I'm starting to feel hungry and want to go to lunch myself. I'm blogging to try and divert my attention from my stomach. :-)

That's it. Tonight is the great first club meeting. Hopefully I'll find a new and happy next president.

2004-08-30T21:05:00.000-07:00

This week started and because of the interview on Friday, I kind of forgot the other thousands of things I have to do... First, and foremost, I have do deal with the car my friend wants to sell. So far there are not buyers and there is a small problem: his signature is only valid until Friday. After that I have no idea how he will be able to sell it.

A possible solution: I can buy the car from him, for something like US$1 and then I try to sell it and "donate" the money to him. Tax-wise it is tricky, though, because he is not a recognized philantropic entity, so the donation wouldn't be tax-deductable. Anyway, I'll still have three days to sell it... Time for me to get away from my fears and start calling the people that called me.

Next thing is my first Brandeis/Hillel Club meeting this Wednesday. I have to come up with some ideas of things to do for the semester, and also get ready to get a little depressed when I see who will show up to our meeting. Although there are some new Jewish people on campus, freshmen are just hard to deal with.

Other things are papers, simulations, preparations for the trip (such as doing laundry), and working on my research (that I'm taking also as some kind of preparation for the trip). Let's see how it turns out.

Just to get away from "personal" things, I'll talk about something I heard someone saying today. First, this person is a Republican, i.e., will vote for Bush this upcoming elections (it's not Stacy this time). Having made that clear, this person was discussing with me how being "anti-Bush" is like a religion right now. According to him/her, these "anti-Bush" people keep repeating the same things over and over again, as if they were reciting from a bible of some sort. They close themselves to other ideas, especially from other "religions", and tend to flock.

Well, I have to agree with him/her in certain ways. But I just don't see why the "pro-Bush" people are not seen the same way. Maybe it's the idea of "closing themselves to other ideas, especially other religions" kind of thing. :-)

2004-08-29T15:20:00.000-07:00

Back to the stress of Stillwater. People surely know what I mean by now, so I won't even talk about it. Now I have a chat with my parents and probably I'll go to the office finish some work to get ready for my meeting tomorrow afternoon.

Besides that, the only thing I can talk about is my weekend at Tulsa. Well, it wasn't really a weekend. I arrived there on Saturday evening and left in the middle of the afternoon. Stacy was (and still is) sick and I, as a nice boyfriend that I can be once every century, went there to make sure she was taking care of herself. She heard me telling her a lot of things she shouldn't do, shouldn't eat and things like that. Actually, she didn't quite follow the things I told her, but she survived so far (at least she was alive when I left Tulsa). She even ate quite a bit... 1 1/2 lb of crab legs!

Anyway, not much more to talk about. My advisor sent me a paper to review and it's starting to give me headaches... Not too badly written to reject because of the English, but enough to make it difficult to understand. It is also not a topic I fully know about - distributed automata systems - but there are some interesting properties about it that I'm enjoying learning. Alright, back to my wait.

2004-08-27T15:50:00.000-07:00

I finally got my travel confirmation for my job interview in Seattle. With it I received a lot of paperwork! Expense reports, websites of interest... Suddenly I submerged into the bureaucratic world of "real-life" and it is not that exciting.

But I'm good to go. I've already gave my itinerary to my advisor so that he knows when I'll be around to ask me to do things (although I've been the person "pestering" him lately... Today I had to give him one more paper to read and some other things he asked me to do and he wasn't in his office until almost 2pm... When I can't find him and he hasn't told me anything about classes or meetings, I just keep trying to call him every 30 minutes (approximately - I missed a couple of them because I was doing something else). From 9am to 2pm there are a few of those!

Anyway, not much else to talk about. I've been working today. Finished an important part of my research, but I'm still far from finishing it all. My perspective is to finish everything in about two weeks, depending on the schedule for my classes. So, I guess it's time to go back to it. It's not sundown yet, so I can still work.

2004-08-26T09:04:00.000-07:00

Another day and a half are gone and nothing much happened. The only strange thing that I have to report is that I had a very bizarre phone conversation with my advisor yesterday that kept me thinking. Then I had a meeting with him today that just made everything seem even more strange. But let's get to the story:

In the morning yesterday I decided that, because my advisor knew I was going through the selection process, I should call him to tell that I was selected to go for the last interview in Seattle, and that I wasn't going to be there for a day (and probably an afternoon too). He acted as if he had no clue what I was talking about! Job? Where? Who? I was confused... He was so excited about all of it last week, why did he suddenly forget everything?

Today I had another meeting with him to talk about the newsletter. After the talk he asked again about the job "thing" and I retold him the whole story. He suddenly became very negative about it, asking me to really think if that's what I want... The industry is not a very nice place, you will end up getting stuck there, and things like that. In other words, he wants be to continue my academic carreer and become a professor like him.

It is a tough decision that I have ahead. It is even tougher because, as I said before, it's too early. I have no idea what else there is out there. Everything in this world is relative (except the speed of light ;-)), but when you don't have a reference it is difficult to rate something.

Anyway, that's all I had to say. Not let me finish the newsletter and send it out.

2004-08-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

There are still some smart people in this world. The person that wrote "Kill Microsoft Word" (John C. Dvorak) is one of them. Only people that actually use this nightmare really know what you are up against.

Sure, it is great for making short things that don't look that great, but are done (I actually learned that if I do the simple thing as using Illustrator to make flyers, things look much nicer). But when you start to do things that are just a bit more complicated, such as embedding figures and tables, you are in for lots of fun! And, as I always mention, my biggest worries about it is that since the first version that let you embed figures and such, the "predictability" of the behavior of these elements hasn't changed at all. It is as if Microsoft doesn't really care about it.

I mentioned all this in my LaTeX post not too long ago, I know. The problem is that if not Microsoft Word, what? LaTeX can be a solution for scientific papers, but for everyday use? I have to play a little bit more with OpenOffice to rate it, but the little I played around I got some small conflicts with it. For example, captions for figures... There is no option to put "Figure" automatically, only Illustration, Drawing, Table and Text. Sure you can manually write "Figure" but... As I said, I haven't actually used it to rate it.

Alright, just had my tough talk with my roommate and I'm sure he already forgot it. I don't really know why I do this, because I'm the only one that feels bad in the end.

2004-08-24T18:41:00.000-07:00

And the phone call came finally. One barrier of expectation fell and now lots of others appear. I don't have a final schedule of my trip to Seattle yet, but it seems like it is going to happen by the end of next week, leaving from here on Thursday evening and coming back during the weekend (I was asked if I want to stay a little longer to enjoy Seattle and I said "sure...").

I really don't know what to think, to tell you the truth. I am in between being very excited with this great carreer opportunity, and very scared of making this decision. I'm still not 100% sure that I do want to stay in the US, to tell you the truth. There are many forces trying to take me away from here. Inner forces. But I'm trying not to think too much about it before I have a final job offer.

There is also my research, and my work for the newsletter, and the WCCI conference. Now teaching is becoming strange too. I guess the time I'll be in the airplane coming back will be the time that I'll be thinking of what to tell my advisor if everything goes well with the interviews. Actually I'll probably won't even know the result of the interview until a while later...

Anyway, time to get back to work here. My research is calling and saying: you will miss a whole evening, day and weekend of work next week. Compensate now! Compensate now!

2004-08-23T16:27:00.000-07:00

Hey, now there is a computer worm that is able to make you visible to other people: Meet the Peeping Tom worm. I feel so bad that my webcam is installed on my home computer and I use Linux... Such a waste of lines of code for me!

2004-08-23T12:34:00.000-07:00

The classes are back, so it's time for me to complain: NO MORE FLIP-FLOPS! ESPECIALLY WHEN WEARING JEANS!!!. Ok, I have complained enough for the day. Actually for the semester! I will never get used to it, but I have to learn to stop looking at people's feet.

Besides that, the day was pretty uneventful. As I had suspected, I was sent back to the other choir, where I feel like I can sing. And there are more people singing there than I thought, from looking at the list of people that passed the audition during the weekend. But I had the first rehearsal experience and the most difficult thing of the semester will be to sing side-by-side with the committee member that gave me the most trouble on my qualifying. Imagine if in the last concert of the semester (scheduled probably before my final defense) the choir conductor announces that I will be leaving... He surely will be thinking: "Hwahwahwa... Only if I let him leave..."

Tonight I have the first Interfaith Council meeting of the semester (or academic year). Let's see what will happen with this one.

(BTW: the wait is still killing me...)

2004-08-22T21:59:00.000-07:00

I shouldn't be writing this, but I am going to. I have to warn people of something that is very bad, but it is actually a little too common.

I got back home from Tulsa, after a long day of doing many different things, and my roommate was inside his room talking to someone. The door was closed, so I couldn't see who it was. But there was a purse in the living room that showed that he was talking to a girl, closed doors, in his bedroom. Interesting... Until I heard what he was talking about. If you know my roommate you must know that he really can't talk very soft. He actually has this terrible thing of starting to talk really loud when he gets excited. So it's not that I was with my ears to the wall trying to listen, I turned on music to try not to listen to it.

But what he was doing was talking about all his previous relationships. All his girlfriends and the girls that wanted to start a relationship with him, but he didn't want to start one with them. I haven't heard of any story of "failure", though, of relationships he wanted to start, but wasn't able to. But maybe he went through this too and it was when the music was loud enough to drawn out his story.

Anyway, why would you lock yourself inside a room with a girl and discuss your past relationships? Some men (and some women too) think that this shows that you have experience, that this person won't be getting someone that was rejected by everybody else. But this doesn't work that way. It sometimes brings details about your personality, about your pickiness, that makes people run away from a relationship with you. It gives them the idea that you are desperate, and you need a friend to confide all this to. Believe me, it's not that nice to be boyfriend/girlfriend and best friend at the same time. Especially at the beginning of a relationship. It's too much to handle!

Having said all my teachings about relationship, teachings from a person that haven't had many relationships in his life, I'll go to rest. Too many things to do in the morning.

2004-08-21T15:01:00.000-07:00

I'm relaxing here after all my morning "oral exams" (the ITA and the choir audition). Both went well, actually. I know I passed the ITA, but I have no idea about choir yet. It all depends on how bad the other potential singers are! :-) But they even thought that I should think of taking voice lessons (something I was planning on doing a long time ago, but never got around to scheduling time for that).

However, the only thing I kept thinking while going through all this is: I may be getting ready for a lot of things and suddenly having to drop everything to go away. It's kind of a sad thought. A lot of energy was put into all this... But I know I have already posted about it, so I'll stop whining and going back to my relaxation.

One good thing about this is that I finally finished Stephen Baxter's Evolution. It is actually a very interesting book. So interesting that some ideas that the book mentions I end up talking about during informal conversations with friends. When this happens it shows that the book actually added something to your knowledge.

Just for a short summary of the book: Stephen Baxter tells his theory of the evolution of humankind focusing on some highly unlikely events that helped shaping the way we are right now, and splitting off from ordinary monkeys. There are some things that are a little far-fetched, especially when he starts to get closer in time. The story ends in the far future, with the death of the last descendant of human beings. But also mentions that some bacteria will outlive the end of the Earth and may start new life in other planets one day. But not human life, but life.

Now I'm back to deciding which book to read. Too many options, not too much time, as always.

2004-08-20T16:34:00.000-07:00

No phone calls today. I think I got just "spoiled" by the quick answer on Wednesday. Rethinking the whole matter, the person that interviewed me has to sit down with the group director and discuss if I was fit for the position so far. If so, they have to go and figure out a day where people are available for me to have the interviews. This can take a lot of time by itself. Then they contact the recruiter and ask them to call me and schedule everything.

It is also possible that they need to wait until all phone interviews are done to decide. It can take a while then... I'll just wait patiently. But now I'm going to Ponca City to try and clear my mind from all this and get ready for my exams tomorrow.

2004-08-20T10:46:00.000-07:00

Time to talk a little about today's interview. It actually went well. I can't say that I've answered all questions perfectly, but there was only one question that I really didn't know what to say. It ended really quick, actually. In around 30 minutes he was done and then he let me ask about Amazon. I didn't know what to ask, so our conversation ended not long after that, maybe 5 minutes of talking random things.

As mentioned before, it was very technical. Specific questions about algorithms, data structures, C/C++, Java and SQL. Now the interviewer will have a meeting with the group director (the guy with whom I talked on Wednesday) and they will decide if I should go ahead to the next step: a day with around 6 interviews with a number of different people there at Amazon. I asked how long does this process usually take and he said it depends on the person. For him the whole process took around 4 months, but in between interviews he had 2 weeks. I had 2 days! If it will take 1/7 of the time for me (I know things don't scale like this, though), it means that in about a week and a half I should know the result of the whole process. S.C.A.R.Y.!

But now it's time to leave this behind and move on my exams tomorrow! At least the newsletter is gone!

2004-08-20T08:13:00.000-07:00

Some people are starting to take the concepts of on-demand and extremely adaptable manufacturing to use, according to this Technology Review article. The company is called eMachineShop.com and has a very interesting concept. People have to have in mind that prices will always be higher than mass-quantity production methods (as long as someone doesn't come up with a cheap molecular construction unit that can be used for all applications, mass-produced or not), so this is not for everybody. But, if you want a part that just doesn't exist, for example if you are a rich artist trying to make a sculpture that has parts with weird shapes, this is probably your life saver!

Yes, I'm trying to keep my mind busy with other things...

2004-08-19T22:50:00.001-07:00

I had a very long debate with myself whether or not I should post today. I actually concluded that I shouldn't, but I'm doing it anyway.

Today was a tough day, very tough day indeed. It wasn't something that could have been called a bad day, but it just was not good either. It actually was like last Saturday, but different. I was nervous (I still am), but instead of the feeling of being a loser, I have a feeling of just not being able to handle all the things that I have ahead of me.

In the next two days I have three big things (well, one is not really big, though...): the 2nd interview, the ITA exam (to which I need to prepare), and a choir audition (to which I need to prepare too). Besides all this, my first priority right now has to be the newsletter that should go out for final revisions tomorrow. I also have 3 papers to finish...

I was so nervous today that even my parents weren't able to talk to me for more than 30 minutes. One of the things that happens when I'm nervous is that I start to contradict everything that is said, or just answer with questions and things like that. It's a very interesting defense mechanism: do not tell anything about yourself or else people would realize that you are very nervous, very weak.

For you to have an idea, I almost didn't talk to Stacy either. She felt a little worried about it and called me again not too long ago. I was working on the newsletter, incorporating last minute adjustments given by my advisor. And I really wasn't happy to receive a phone call! My education kept me from doing things that I would later regret. I'll give my friends a tip: don't call me or chat with me when I'm going through these days. You may not like what you hear/read (that's a reason I really didn't want to post today).

Alright. Enough for the day. Let me go to sleep and get ready for the next big one.

2004-08-18T15:51:00.000-07:00

Well, for those who were anxious to hear the result of my first phone interview (probably not many people though, but I'm going to write about it anyway), it went alright. I was cought a litle by surprise about the things that were asked in the interview, probably because I'm used to interviews being done by H.R. people. But it actually went very well. According to what the manager was telling me, this first interview usually cuts out 50% of the people. But I passed! And now I have another interview on Friday that is going to be even tougher! Hey, but it's a battle gone. It's a 3-interview process, 2 phone interviews and 1 on-site interview. So, if I pass the one on Friday, I'll be going to Seattle for my final interview.

Their process for hiring is pretty quick. They are starting a whole new project and it looks like they need people right now to work on it. And that poses a completely new situation. My Ph.D. won't be done that quickly... They understand that, and that's something I'll have to worry only after the third interview (if I make it all the way there), so let me leave worries for later.

It was a good interview, nevertheless. I learned a lot about how challenging the things at Amazon are. I had some idea of what he was telling about, but I've never had a real grasp of what are the scalability issues related to all these problems. It is pretty amazing the job they do! Now they want to continue all this work and make things that are even more exciting. One of the things that amazed me really is that some of the things they want to do, some of the visions they have, are things that I'm trying to say on my research. The match was pretty cool! It was really the first time that I've heard someone agreeing with me on the points I make on my research.

One step at a time... One step at a time...

2004-08-18T08:38:00.000-07:00

Folowing Safiry's post, I went through the kind of long test to determine my political compass and I got similar results to what she got: I'm in the left-Libertarian quadrant, by Ghandi. My coordinates are:

Economic Left/Right: -2.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.85

It is an interesting test, overall. The results weren't unexpected at all, but some questions were very tricky. Some my answer would be "it depends", like when it asked if religion and morality are closely linked. What do you define as morality, first? Second is that there are some religions that I could consider immoral, like some that still do human sacrifices for their gods to give them a good crop. But most have so much diversity within the religion that it would be wrong to blame the religion for any immoral act that any of the followers might do.

Anyway, back to work here. I think I finished modifying one of my papers and it should be ready to go back to my advisor this afternoon. In a way, it is going to be a very long and busy day today. I'm starting to regret the idea of staying at home in the morning not to need to hurry back just before the interview time.

2004-08-17T10:06:00.000-07:00

Link time: Let them sing it for you. It is a pretty interesting project made by someone that has too much free time. But actually not too much, because there are still too many words that it doesn't have in the dictionary, but it proves that artists right now have to be good programmers too.

2004-08-16T17:08:00.000-07:00

Life is bizarre sometimes. I really don't want to be over-excited about this, because it is a real longshot, but today I got my first job interview phone call. And it was not from an unknown company, it was from Amazon.com. Big databases, a wonderful place to develop the ideas that I have worked on my research. The H.R. person called and just wanted to schedule a phone meeting with the software development manager for Wednesday 12 p.m.

Amazon.com is headquartered in Seattle, a place that is on my list of top 10 cities I would live if I was going to stay in the US. I don't know if the job is to the headquarters, but, according to my research, their software development in the US is in Washington state (Seattle or Tacoma). Well, let's see... I do think it is a little too early for anything, because I won't be able to graduate before December, but even if it doesn't work out, it will be worth for the experience of a job interview through the phone in the US.

2004-08-16T13:46:00.000-07:00

Go figure... Now it worked, after I published something, all the copies of the ones I've clicked "publish" got published. I had to clean each of them manually, but now things look ok. Of course, just after I've sent an email to the support service at Blogger.

2004-08-16T13:12:00.000-07:00

It looks like blogger did something really weird with their system and it stopped working on Firefox. As I use Firefox on all computers, I just hasn't been able to post since last post. I even prepared a couple of long posts, but it just doesn't post. I click "post" and it just gives me back the same page.

Anyway, I just want to say that I'm alive, working, and working. Yesterday was a pretty bizarre day, though. Actually evening. After getting back from Tulsa and having to work, I arrived at a dirty house. Instead of going to work, I decided to clean and that's what I did for about one hour. Then I went to work. Oh, see if you can follow this line of thought:

Base knowledge needed: I share a single car with my roommate.

Story: Just after I got home, my roommate asked me if I was going to the office. I told him I had to do some things right at that moment, but then I was going to the office. Then he informed me that I was going to meet him at the office.

So far so good, right? He was going to the office at that moment and I was going to the same place later. When I got out of my bedroom to start cleaning (that's the "some thing" that I was going to do), he had left with the car. Uhm... If we were both going to the same place, what made him more worthy to have access to the car?

Anyway, later I found out the reason. He wasn't really in the office! He had gone out on a date. When I arrived at the office he wasn't there. I worked for about 2 hours and then had to go back home for my biweekly chat with my parents. Just after I got home, he arrived home with a girl! And they started watching a movie in the living room!

I finished the chat with my parents and the next thing on my plan was to have dinner. I had dinner ready for me in the fridge but the fridge is in the kitchen that is connected to the living room... I just couldn't interrupt a "date" this way. I decided to go out then, back to the office (walking, because he had the car, right?) and looking for a place to eat on the way.

Mind you that it was Sunday, 10:30 p.m., Stillwater... Pretty much everything was closed, or almost closing! I walked for about 30 minutes until I got to Subway that closed at 12. Ate there and got back to the office to work, where I stayed until 2 a.m., a time I found safe to go back home.

And people still find strange why I'm not best friends with my roommate.

Oh, well, not much else to talk about right now. I have to get back to work, finish getting ready for a meeting I have with my advisor. Then I have an exam later tonight, a $75 exam! To finish off my great day, I'll be watching wedding and honeymoon pictures and movies at a friend's place. Depending when this will be over, I'll be coming back to work.

2004-08-16T00:22:00.002-07:00

Blogger has something against me... Since Satuday I haven't been able to post and it's very bizarre. I write everything, click post and it doesn't leave the page! And I wrote a pretty long post on Saturday!

Anyway, Sunday was a strange day, but I've survived it. I'll try to write more about it in the morning. Now I need to go to sleep. I just wanted to test if I can post. If you are reading this, the answer is yes...

2004-08-14T08:46:00.001-07:00

After writing all these papers I got to the following conclusion: Word is one of the most devious programs around, especially to write reports that have figures and tables. Every time you make a modification you have to go through everything again and make sure that your breaks are in the right position, the figues didn't float around and the tables didn't end up between two pages. If things moved you have to then fight with the unexpected behavior of figure moving in word. It's potentially chaotic. More than this, what makes me sad about it is that I haven't seen any improvements in the last few version of Word, meaning that Microsoft doesn't even care much about it.

But then you go to the other end of the spectrum: LaTeX. Most people have no idea what it is, so I'll write a short introduction. LaTeX is a document preparation system, i.e. it's not a word processor, it is focused on modifying the text into a nice looking document. For this what you have to do is write a text file telling LaTeX what is what (title, section names, subsections, etc.) and then it just builds everything to make it look nice. No tables between pages, no figures floating in weird places (usually always placed either at the beginning or at the end of a page), no pages with only the title of a section in the bottom and no text, and so on.

However, there are two problems with LaTeX, both related to its non WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get): it takes some time for you to learn all the correct ways you have to tag your text to tell LaTeX what is what. And depending on the style of your document, the ways may change! The other problem is that the final document does not look like the original one. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to review and find errors on a text file. But when you do a revision in the "transformed document", first you have to print it out (and you know I'm really against paper), because you can't make corrections on what you are looking at, as it is not a "text file"; second, once you correct things, it takes some time you find where this thing that you corrected is in the text file.

My conclusion is that we still need better programs. Most probably something in between what word does and LaTeX. Actually there are trials for that, like LyX, but it uses a personal version of LaTeX that is not usually compatible with the styles of the documents you have to write. It is still buggy and not very powerful yet.

Anyway, just a geeky review for people, better than my personal life.

2004-08-13T18:15:00.000-07:00

A paper writing week is over! Finally! In a way I can say it was pretty productive. The final result of it: one paper sent to a journal, one paper sent to my advisor for analysis, and one paper sent to a co-worker for analysis. 3 papers in a week! The only detail that makes me a little depressed about it is that I was supposed to have finished two of them last weekend, when I got sick of the tetanus shot (well, at least that's my theory - my arm is finally starting to stop hurting! And the nurse told me that it could hurt for 3 days at most... hahaha).

Not much else to talk about. I had a dinner invitation today that changed to a lunch invitation. We had a good time eating at El Chico and talking random things about life. Later the random things changed a little and I've seen how naturally people tend to make themselves look better (I'm not getting into details about this. I have talked about him too much in the past already).

Now I'm back home. Safiry said she left home at 8 a.m. and got back home at 8 p.m. yesterday... Well, today I got to the office at 8 a.m. and left at 8 p.m. Coincidence, huh? I love those coincidences. Makes the world seem much smaller!

And now for a link that I've received from a friend and found very funny: Supermodel Personals. Another example of someone with too much time in her hands.

2004-08-12T21:14:00.000-07:00

Just one more thing, it is amazing the amount of "personal networking" sites out there. The first one I was invited to was probably the first one ever, Friendster. Then came Orkut, and it was the one that grew the most. Not too long ago, I received an invitation to join LinkedIn, that is a business networking solution, in which you can theoretically look for jobs in a better way. Well, it doesn't help that my friends are all in Brazil, but I'll try to expand it eventually one day.

Finally, this week I received an invitation to another one, Multiply. And there are many more out there! Tickle has one, Hi5... For business networking you have also Ryze.. Well, you can see a list on many web sites of what is available, like HowToWeb, but the whole question is "which is the best?"

My opinion? The ones your friends are! If your friends aren't in any, well... Maybe you should just give them a call then! If you want to find a specific friend, I would start creating profiles and searching. If you can't find this person, I'm sure someone will find you eventually!

That's it! I was going to get away from the computer, but I ended up trying to help Stacy with her class for tomorrow, or today, actually. Or maybe I ended up just making her nervous with my pickiness... Well, I'm assistant editor of a newsletter, it comes natural for me to be picky! Even so there are some mistakes that escape me!

2004-08-12T20:56:00.000-07:00

I don't have much to say, so I guess I won't say much! My day has been pretty busy working on many different things, but I think most of the most important things I had to do are done! One more paper ready for review (first by my advisor, though).

I did receive bad news today, actually... My second NSF proposal was rejected! Well, at least this one I didn't work as hard as the last one. But it's sad to be rejected, but good at the same time! This way I still have many options of what to do with my life after I graduate! If this proposal was accepted, I would be tempted to continue in school just to work on it. It was going to be an interesting project! A collaborative system for complex network analysis. Tomorrow I should find out why we were rejected.

Oh, today I disappointed Stacy. She had invited me for dinner tonight and I told her that I was going to think about it, depending on the amount of work I had to do today. But she understood that I was going to go. When she found out that I wasn't, she wasn't very happy about it. But well, she is sick again. And pretty busy! Preparing classes, asking me recipes for desserts, forgetting the fact that I rarely cook desserts! I'm not a sweets kind of person. I like to play around with main dishes and that's pretty much it.

Guess it's time for me to try and sleep a little. Early? Well, I'm not really going to sleep right now. I still have a full stomach, but I'll get away from the computer and read a book for a change.

2004-08-11T21:58:00.000-07:00

This is a company with a very powerful piece of software: VMware is Virtual Infrastructure. Of course that people without knowledge of the way computers interact, they cannot really understand what this can bring, but it is really amazing. Maybe I should ask if they are looking for a new PhD to work on their algorithms and new data capabilities...

2004-08-11T13:55:00.000-07:00

Abandoned, that's the feeling for today. I came to the office this morning and until now, 4 p.m. nobody else showed up. Not even my advisor is on campus today!

I know that my roommate and another office mate have gone to Dallas on a trip organized by the International Student Organization (i.e., my roommate). Middle of the week, very strange time for a 2-day trip, but it was scheduled. Maybe my advisor thought that everybody was going on this trip (well, he got to know about it only yesterday and wasn't very happy about it at all! For two main reasons: at least two people in his lab were leaving for a trip without telling him and one of these people had already traveled almost two months in this Summer. And all these travels were not discussed with our advisor, he was just informed of them! Tip here: when you have a boss that pays you money, do schedule things only when he/she is ok with it. It is one of the most basic rules of employment.

Anyway, but the lab is not only made of these two people! There are three other students, one guy that just graduated but hasn't left his cubicle yet, and an advisor. Nobody, except me, is here! Kind of depressing! But I'm getting some stuff done. I just stopped about 30 minutes ago when I got a very strange message from my McAfee firewall saying that it blocked the access of a file that most probably meant that I had a trojan or a worm in my system! This just doesn't make sense. I don't open attachments that I'm not expecting, I have a firewall, I always keep my windows up-to-date, I keep my anti-virus up-to-date too, no shared directories without password... And I also don't download programs from strange websites, don't use Internet Explorer... I'll keep checking and then I'll finish my second paper of the week! The great week of finishing papers! After this one I have only 3 to go...

2004-08-11T07:06:00.000-07:00

NOOOOOOOO! When stamps started loosing their nice classic "stamp" look and becoming just sticker I really feared for stamp collectors in the future. But now it looks like stamp collecting of U.S. stamps is dead: Wired News: An Original Way to Go Postal. I'm not saying it is not a good idea with the general public in mind. I just feel like there are some things that are better left unchanged...

2004-08-10T18:43:00.000-07:00

Do I smell a new movie coming? I'm sure some movie writers read this. At least nothing is mentioned about South America... Such a boring place!

Actually this continues to prove my point that people should just stop talking about "threats". You just can't live in a world without threat. And if you shouldn't talk about threat, you really shouldn't care about this piece of news (that made to the headlines of CNN.com today - I really decided that I'm not reading CNN any more). Who cares about a person that may have killed his pragnant wife and that also have been lying to his lover for some time (I think that this is the case... I only read the headlines)? Do they want to set an example?

2004-08-09T17:33:00.000-07:00

Today I woke up feeling better, finally. No more fever, no more red eye, just still a little weak. I decided to go for a slow-pace day and just work the things I had to work for a meeting with my advisor tomorrow afternoon. After the basics were done, I got back home and later a friend is coming over for me to look at his computer. He went to Israel and when he got back everything went wrong with him: the air company lost his luggage, his car started having problems, and his computer died. It's a great thing to remember, isn't it?

Anyway, I don't have much else to say. The news are only talking about the "great" XP SP2. I tried to install it this morning on my office computer and got the message that I didn't have enough disk space for it. By the way, I had 550 MB free! I have the bare minimum software on that machine, so I guess I'll have to live without SP2!

2004-08-08T18:45:00.000-07:00

HAHAHAH! Very interesting product: Wired News: Bad Date? Use Your Cell Excuse. I think I'll change my cell phone provider! :-)

2004-08-08T18:28:00.000-07:00

If I don't have anything constructive to post, I shouldn't post anything, right? Well, just for people to know: I'm alive, I can still see with my left eye, I had a low fever the whole day today (right now I'm wearing a sweater and it is far from cold here at home), didn't work at all (just because I had a list of 20-something things to do this weekend), but was able to feel good enough to have a long chat with my parents and family for father's day today. I've been much worse!

2004-08-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

Now again another example of how terrible headlines can be: CNN.com - Sheriff: 4 charged in Florida killings over Xbox - Aug 8, 2004. What is the first thing that come to your mind? Well, that they have lost a game and got angry, or somebody mocked their ability to play, or something like this.

It turns out someone stole the XBox and some clothes from someone else and the person that had lost his belongings believed that he knew who were the criminals and decided to do justice with his own hands (and 3 other friends). And it made to the headlines of CNN! More important than the story of the co-joint twins (yes, the one that had their brains separated and they were hoping they didn't suffer brain damage), or about the reading of a new radiation belt around Saturn... Fundamentally wrong!

2004-08-07T17:05:00.000-07:00

I'm good at spotting terrorists lately. This time it's Reuters: Bush Warns Americans They Are 'Still Not Safe'. I could have blamed this one on Bush, but he is not responsible for the terrible headline chosen by Reuters. In his speech he just said that he is working on trying to keep America safe. Anyway, it's terror time! People are really ready for a big terrorist event to disrupt elections. I'm still walking to the office, working, planning trips around (I really have to plan my trip to Milwaukee soon), applying for jobs... If I meteor hits Earth tomorrow, well... I did what I could, in other words: nothing.

Besides this, I can't say I have much else to talk about. My day today was cleaning, laundry, and working. I'm not being very efficient, though, mainly because I'm feeling kind of strange. I'm not sure it's my eye, or my aching arm (pretty powerful tetanus shot!) or my long list of things to do. I know that I have to go back to work.

2004-08-06T18:38:00.000-07:00

Time for some news analysis.

First a little bit of terrorism news (in other words, news that are clearly supported by terrorist groups). This one comes from CNN: Slowdown in 'chatter' worries officials. They are worried because the number of messages intercepted between terrorist groups have decreased. Another decrease like this was observed before 9/11, according to the article. I'm sorry but this really doesn't say anything besides trying to terrorize people. "oh, something big is coming..." So? Should I stay at home?

Then comes good news, actually being bad news: Job growth continues to decline. This helps to continue proving that there is no real good thing about the Bush government, so why re-elect him? I have always to write my disclaimer here: I'm never claiming that Kerry or any other candidate will do a better job, I'm just continuing to show my discontent, my worries about the Bush government. Politics is not an easy thing. The only thing that you can see is what people tried and didn't work, or how much it worked. What hasn't been tried, or has been tried but in a completely different context (that can mean even a different month), is just impossible to predict. But if something isn't working and you keep saying it is, there is something fundamentally wrong with you, huh?

Anyway, this reminded me of last night. Stacy and I went to a bar with some other friends. When we were there suddenly a VERY drunk guy sat in front of me. It was his 21st birthday and he was just following the silly American rule of drinking until you don't have any more neurons when you are 21. Anyway, in the middle of the strange conversation he started talking about how much he admired Bush and that he was sad that Bush wasn't going to get reelected. Well, somehow somebody said (I'm not mentioning who) that I wasn't really sad about it, because I didn't like Bush. Then he got a little nervous about it and started saying that his 17 year old cousin died for what he believed. First he said that this cousin died in 9/11, then in Iraq... Anyway, things were heating up and I just didn't know what to say any more. So we left and let the guy steaming with his other friends. Maybe he was the one that put the spider on my bed! :-)

And now for the last news of the day: This comes from a headline at Wired: Twins Successfully Separated » Doctors tease apart conjoined twins' brains and wait to see whether the twins suffered any brain damage. Uhm... They were separated at the brain, and they even said in the article that their brains were anatomically connected and were "talking to each other". So how can you do it without "brain damage"??? Duh?

2004-08-06T14:46:00.000-07:00

A confusing day... Lots of small things to do, lots of time lost trying to do all the small things. But something pretty bizarre happened with me this morning. But I'll tell you my dream last night before going ot the big story.

Last night I had a very strange dream where Stacy decided that we needed to go on a boat trip to have a good time. I said it was alright, but I wasn't really happy about it. So we went to this boat trip and in the middle of the trip the boat starts sinking! We jump and swim and get stranded in a really small (think of a circle of around 10 meters of diameter with some sparse vegetation in the middle) deserted island in the middle of the ocean. It wasn't really open ocean, it was close to a coast, but far enough for you to be scared to try and swim there.

Being close to the coast, not long after we got to the island a boat passed by. We waved asking for help and the people in the boat (3 guys) stopped and took us in. So far so good! We started heading back to the beach this boat starts sinking too! Another boat lost but this time we were able to make it to the shore.

The next day Stacy still wanted to go on a boat trip and found a trip that was specialized on improving relationships. We went there and there was a huge line to get in. While we waited in the line, we met again one of the guys that "saved" us from the island. I started to get pushed away by the crowd that was trying to get in the boad and ended up loosing Stacy and the guy. More than that, I entered a boat that soon I discovered was the wrong one! Lots of people were there, including some people I knew, but nobody really wanted to talk to me!

I din't know what to do! The boat was already moving and in the direction of a big tunnel. Just before it got to the tunnel it started sinking! Everybody starts jumping out, but I jump to the wrong side into the water just where the boat is going. Behind me I can only see a wall of stone. I try to clim it when the boat sinks in front of me and starts pulling me down with it. And that's when I woke up.

Very strange dream, but I still remember it clearly (something very untypical for me).

In the middle of all this sleeping, I woke up clearly feeling that something really quick and small was crawling on my face. Instinctively I tried to slap it and went back to sleep. In the morning I woke up and my eye was a little hurt. It seemed like I had a sty but Stacy warned me that my eye was pretty red. I suddenly remembered the crawling thing in the middle of the night and looked for bite marks. Not long after I started looking I found them: I had been bitten by a spider in my left eye (actually in the top of my bottom eyelid)!!! What a day!

In the morning, because I had to take a friend to the airport, I couldn't go to the doctor to know what to do with such spider bite. After I went back I went there and got a tetanus shot and some medication for eye infection. Now I have to put it on until it gets better. If it doesn't get 100% until Monday I have to go back to the doctor. Oh, joy!

Anyway, besides all that I found out why I didn't receive any emails since Monday: they migrated my email account to another account without any warning! Lesson about being an IT person: WARN your users about any modification at least a week before! It will spare some headaches later. I received MANY emails that require me to do some work. There goes my weekend! Right now I'm just not feeling that great. I think it's a psychological effect of the spider bite, though. I don't really think there is anything physical in me. But a psychological effect is all I need not to be able to work very effectively.

2004-08-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

Wandering around the web sometimes you find some very interesting piece of news. One of these is the one quoted by Benjamin Volokh at his always entertaining Volokh Conspiracy: Internet Addiction is a big problem for Finland's armed forces. It's not something that surprises me greatly, but it does shock a little. There should be some limits to people "virtualization"...

2004-08-05T06:33:00.000-07:00

Quick "nerdy" link: What if Doom 3 were open source? It's more like begging for ID to release its new game (that was actually released to the public on Tuesday) for free around. Powerful request, huh? I do have to agree that, if correctly made, open-source software is nice for programmers, because they can try to reuse and modify the code and make what they want to make with it. But, in a business perspective, it can be scary. Not that there are no companies that are making money and producing open-source programs, but these companies produce big programs such as databases or operating systems. The industry requires someone behind the program, so they pay to make sure that the software company will be there for any questions they could have. But a gamer?

Anyway, I can say I am really impressed with the graphics for Doom 3. You can check them yourself at http://www.doom3.com.

There are a couple of other things to talk about, but right now I'm trying to get my life going this morning. Again a day full of small things to do.

2004-08-04T17:53:00.000-07:00

Every day I get more to the conclusion that soon Orkut will have to change radically or will die. First it is getting slower and slower. Then there are the very bizarre communities that are created every day, like "A tal da Pizza" for people that like the restaurant that has this name!

Another impressive thing is something I talked about before: The absurd difference between a common American Orkutean and a Brazilian one. It's sometimes amazing to see how many people have more than 200 friends registered! I have done a quick analysis of the difference by going to Brazilian forums and English-speaking forums and really the average of the number of friends of Americans is around 50, while Brazilians is around 200-250. It is a conceptual difference... But their user interface is not meant to deal with people with lots of friends. As I said, they need revolution!

2004-08-04T09:57:00.000-07:00

Bureacracy... That's the word of the morning. I decided that today I was going to try to solve almost all my problems. See that I've used the term "almost", because there are always problems that cannot be solved in a single day, right?

Anyway, just for you to have an idea, I had to officially become a doctoral candidate (for this I had to go to three different people, in three different buildings, sometimes to a person more than once), I had to figure out why I couldn't enroll, I had to deposit a check, pay my car insurence and send a couple of letters. Just to keep the sequence of doing things that are not directly related to my research, I've sent my resume to two more companies in response to their job offer ads.

The only complaint I have is that I should have chosen a cooler day to do all this. I've lost a couple of liters of sweat in the process... And it's just terrible to meet people you know around and be dripping sweat, but what can I do? To sweat is natural (at least to most people).

Alright, now it's time to go back to my real life: research. Too many papers to write here!

2004-08-03T06:47:00.000-07:00

Just because I've spent some time in the near past not posting very often, I'm in this post kick... Now comes an interesting piece of news: Roadside bomb kills 3 militants in Gaza. I'm not posting this to "celebrate" the lost lives, because I really don't think that there is anything to celebrate when a person dies (maybe when this person is suffering for many years, but it is a case-by-case basis - I just found out that on Saturday someone from my extended family passed away, for example... She was suffering a lot in these last months but I wouldn't celebrate it). What I want to point out is the fact that it was cought by camera because they were filming the people placing the roadside bomb! What a coverage, huh?

2004-08-02T21:57:00.000-07:00

Hey, this is message 950! A pretty short one just to tell that I've found my umbrella! It was hidden inside my car (it is a small umbrella).

Not to be a completely useless post, here are some links:

About Lycos being bought by a South Korean company. My research webpage and all the figures of this blog are hosted on Tripod, a Lycos website... Hopefully everything will continue the way it was. But the most impressive thing is the complicated relationship between companies. Lycos being bought by Terra that is part of Telefonica and Lycos also owns the Wired news website... Everything so inter-related that it is just confusing.

Now look at this building - absurd architecture, amazing too! To be built in Beijing, China. Imagine that they said that there are parts of the construction that can only be made after dark to ensure that the temperature of both sides will be the same. Very cool!

2004-08-02T21:28:00.000-07:00

Today I was really inspired. I finally re-understood the paper I'm writing and got back to it. I also got some work done on another paper I'm writing, but ended up just deciding to go for the simulation proof and not the analytical proof. Finally I decided to go again search for job offers and found another interesting one, this one in California (no need to remind me of how expensive it is to live there). I rewrote my whole resume for this one and sent it. Now I'll wait and see what will happen. The only thing that kept me a little sad about job search is that most of the really interesting ones require American citizenship. I guess they will have to live without me!

The only really negative thing of my day is that I'm almost giving up on my search for my shaver pouch. I have no idea how it could disappear but it did. With it went the recharger cable and... guess: it ran out of battery today! I don't know what to do tomorrow without a shaver! I can order a new recharger cable from the manufacturer but it will take a good week to arrive. If you know my beard you know what will happen to it in a week without shaving.

I have two other options: buy a normal shaver and have fun cutting myself until the recharger cable arrives (it will happen - I've only shaved twice with a normal shaver in my life and I've cut myself once (very stupid cut, by the way)), or I can be a rich guy and buy another electric shaver. The thing is that I used to have another shaver before coming here and I can't find it. I remember that once my father's shaver broke and it may be that I gave him mine when I went to Brazil a long time ago... Anyway, I just can't find my old shaver anywhere. It is the second big thing I loose, but the most expensive so far. The first one was my umbrella.

Oh, well, I'll figure something out... Tonight! I'll give searching another try! The last place I saw it was at Stacy's a long time ago... But it didn't look like it was there when I searched last weekend. Loosing semi-expensive things is not fun at all!

2004-08-02T13:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I still get impressed with how deep I get in some of my ideas. Today I was leaving the restroom and started thinking: oh, if we had cheap nanotechnology, could you make self-cleaning bathrooms? The first design that came to my mind is of micro cleaning cells where you would have a cleaning product dispenser and a drain. Sounds simple enough and that's where my thought should have stopped. But I continued:

In order to make sure that people won't slip and fall, it would be necessary to schedule the cleaning cycles in such a way that there is always a good amount of dry surface in every person's step. Then I tried to calculate the area that is on the floor on each of my steps and thought of a 4 cycle pattern in which half of the floor would be dry, 1/4 being cleaned and 1/4 drying. Then you start to calculate the time it takes for the drain and the outside air to dry the micro-area and the size of each of the micro-areas, as well as the distribution in order to ensure that at least 1/2 of the step will be inside a dry area.

There had to be sensors too to determine when it was going to dry, because this varied with the amount of dirt on the floor and the local humidity. From time to time it would also be necessary to clean the bigger dirt that cannot be drained from the micro-drains. In other words, the system is getting more and more complicated.

Maybe the easiest way is to have a robot that cleans the floor when there is nobody around. It washes and dries the floor, even possibly isolating a small area that is being cleaned...

Oh, well, this could go on forever! That's why sometimes I wished I could turn my brain off.

2004-08-01T12:55:00.000-07:00

I'm back from my evening in Tulsa. I can say I had a good time, even with some small details that happened: first I got to Tulsa and Stacy was nowhere to be found! I called her home phone number many times, her cellphone many times too and nothing. I got to her place and her car was there, but she wasn't. I started to get really worried and decided that I was going to try to find her parents to see if they knew where she was, but only after 5:30-6 p.m. Hopefully she called before that telling me that she had gone to a meeting with a friend, that's why her car wasn't there and she wasn't answering her phone. You have no idea how many different theories went through my mind in the hour that I've spent in her apartment wondering what happened.

Then later my sinus attacked me. Really bad attack! If you ever had sinusitis you know that the worst thing about it is that there is nothing you can do. Sitting down makes it hurt, laying down is much worse. Because of the headache you don't feel like looking at anything (TV, books) and listening to anything. So the only thing you can do is walk really slowly around the house and wait for it to pass. While I was walking, Stacy was making a "pseudo-peach-cobbler" also known as a peach pie (don't blame her, her grandmother is the one that decided to name this pie a cobbler). It turned out fine, I just think that it could have been improved (but Stacy didn't like the fact that I didn't think it was perfect).

Now I'm back to the office, starting to work on the "great" newsletter. Oh, how much I waited anxiously for this day... Back to what gives me money.

2004-07-30T21:21:00.000-07:00

Very strange that my last post was posted many times. Blogger was acting a little funny this morning and I think I just didn't understand what it was doing. But now the problem is fixed!

Anyway, time to talk a little about my qualifying exam, now that I'm a little rested (I got home after the exam, had my lunch/dinner and went to bed). It went alright. I can't say it went perfectly, flawlessly, but I did pass with some good remarks. I did get slammed with some tough questions that I can't say I answered with really definite answers (one of the professors kept telling me that graph-structured databases are not really graph-structured databases). It was a 2-hour process that just didn't really go longer because one of the committee memebers had to get the bus back to Tulsa. My presentation went really well, only taking around 30-35 minutes of this time.

What next? More work, I guess. Lots of things that my committee members asked me to think about. Not necessarily implement all this, but they gave me some suggestions of how to improve my algorithms. I'll think them over and see what I can do about them, implement the changes and go for my final defense sometime. On Monday I'll see if my advisor was able to convince the committee members that I can graduate by December or if I will have to wait the 6 months that are mandated by the Graduate College between the qualifying exam and the final graduation. Let's see...

And, now, just to relax a little, strange news from Brazil (sorry, in Portuguese): Pesquisa revela o mapa da felicidade (research reveals the map of happiness). It's about a research that took place in the state of Sao Paulo about how happy people are. It found out that single men are the happiest (I don't know why this doesn't really surprise me)! Especially single men that make good money! In summary, no real interesting findings there, but it's a research.