I never made it to the consulate in Seattle in time to vote, unfortunately. I hope the right ones win. Anyways, DR decided to open their online live-tv to non-danish computers for today only, so I am currently sitting in my office at Duke watching the online coverage of the election, yay :)
We ordered some new machines the other day, four Dell XPS 720, two of those are in Denmark and the other two are currently in my office – look at these babies:
There’s an election in Denmark in November and I am kinda bummed that I won’t be there to vote. This document at the website for the Danish embassy in Washington says that I can go to a Danish consulate or embassy and vote by mail, the deadline for doing this is November 6. According to this list, the closest official danish mission is in Atlanta, Georgia or Charleston South Carolina, but that’s still quite a drive and I won’t have time to go there before November 6. On the other hand, there’s a Danish consulate in Seattle, and I am flying to seattle on November 6. It’s a long flight, but due to the time diffence I am going to be arriving in the late afternoon (about 3pm) and the Danish consulate closes at 4pm – which means that if I don’t get delayed in flight and get a very fast cab from the airport, I might just make it.
Lars and Henrik arrived 7 days ago have been visiting Duke the past week. Lars went home yesterday and Henrik is staying a week more. Yesterday Henrik and I went to Jiffy-Lube in Durham and I had my car inspected (it passed!) and got an oil change. I am now pretty much done with all the talks related to the car, the only thing left is to send the old New Jersey plates back and to send my insurance company a copy of my registration.
I have a couple of lang-haul flights in the upcoming months (Seattle and Israel) and is currently seriously looking into noise canceling headphones. I tried a pair from Bose at an Apple Store in Raleigh two days ago and they were amazingly effective, they would make for a great companion on flight and on the train when I get back home. Unfortunately the technology is quite pricey with the top-of-the-range Bose headphones leading the field at around 300 dollars. I am also considering getting one of the new 8 gig iPod nanos (yes I know, I said I would never get one of those, leave me alone!) to go with the head phones. The iPod is actually considerably _cheaper_ than the headphones.
If anyone has any headphone recommendations, please put them in the comments to this post. I have read this positive New York Times review of different types of headphones, the technology looks pretty mature.
Today I went to two different North Caroline DMV office locations. I started out at one of the offices that grants drivers licenses. I had a short wait, a little interview followed by a written test and ending up with a actual driving test. Everything went fine and I left with a fine new North Carolina drivers license. Armed with that license, I went to the vehicle registration and title office where I successfully transferred the New Jersey title in the sellers name to a North Carolina title in my name. I left with a new registration and a new license plate (only one, NC does not require cars to have license plates in front).
*insert drum solo*
And here is a picture of the house I am staying in.
I am staying there with two other Duke cs grad students, I have a room on the first floor with windows facing away from the camera in this photo. I am very happy about my living arrangements, the room is big and we have a nice living room and a good kitchen.
I am currently sitting in my room here in Durham waiting for Ubuntu Gutsy Tribe 5 to install on my brand new Sony VAIO SZ650. It is an very nice ultra-portable with Santa Rosa and other fancy things (like an carbon-fiber casing!). The keyboard is a bit strange, so I reserve the right to make more typos than usual.
Anyways, the ubuntu installation cd doubles as a live cd – so I can actually sit online on the wireless network and blog while the system is installing in the background (beat that Microsoft!).
Now for some news for the non-geeks reading this site (I think that would pretty much only be members of my family, correct me if I’m wrong).
I arrived in Durham Wednesday evening after a rather long drive from Chatham, New Jersey. The traffic was heavy most of the way, but never completely congested. On the way I passed a few miles from the national mall in Washington D.C. and I was able to see (again) the Washington Monument and the Capitol from the highway, yay.
Wow, the installation has completed. Let me reboot and continue this post after that.
Okay, back. Anyways, I am staying in a town house in Durham that I share with two other Duke students, the house is really nice and my room is several times larger than the tiny thing I had in New Jersey.
I am more or less settled now, I will use next week to hopefully get a North Carolina drivers license and get my car titled here. I could write a lot of other stuff here, but I feel more like playing with my laptop now, see ya :)
I am currently sitting with Maritza on some steps at the main campus of Columbia University on upper Manhatten, right between the law library and the general library. This place is beautiful, it is 8pm and it is slowly getting dark but I am still sitting here in my shorts and a t-shirt. I am supposed to do a detailed review of a paper by friday, so I should really get back to that, just wanted to send out a ping – I am still alive :)
I arrived on friday and spent the rest of the day trying to stay awake with Ash, my australian friend from AT&T. I spent four hours saturday morning trying to get a temporary registration for my car at the New Jersey DMV, which I finally got (hint: It is much easier if you have a US drivers license). Ash and I then went in to New York and met up with Maritza and Haakon in Central Park. We ended up going to a few bars near Columbia and I spend the night on a huuge air matress in Maritzas Columbia apartment.
The next day we went to a Yankees game agains Tamba bay, we had bleacher seats and sat in the sun for a few hours before we agreed that the Yankees were too far behind to win. Ash, Maritza and I then cooked a big meal, complete with deserts and appetizers. We went to bed early and did a tour of the UN head quarters after a very late breakfast at 12pm.
Well, I should really be doing that review, see ya :)
I am currently sitting in the beautiful and relatively quiet Halifax airport waiting for my plane. I am situated right in front of the gate, I have free wireless internet access, a bounty bar, a coke zero and some episodes of a tv series on my computer as well as an electrical plug so I don’t run out of battery. Who needs fancy airport lounges anyways :)
(I reserve the right to get grumpy in 10 hours where I am supposed to be waiting three hours in Hearthrow for a connecting flight to Copenhagen, and then in 16 hours where I am supposed to wait for a connecting flight to Aarhus, and then in 18 hours where I am in the airport bus to Aarhus and then in 18½ hours where I am trying to find a bus or cab to take me to the dorms.)
Today was my last day at AT&T Research. Tomorrow I am flying to Halifax in Canada for a conference, I am currently scrambling to finish the slides for my presentation on Wednesday. I am looking forward to attending WADS and exploring what I can of Halifax during my four short days there. I fly back to Denmark immediately after the conference ends and will be back in Aarhus saturday – just in time for the MADALGO summer school which I will be attending (at least partially, I will need to go to Copenhagen that week as well).
I am procrastinating, I really need to finish these slides – it would also be nice to actually run through the talk at least once as well. I have to get up really early tomorrow, getting to La Guardia airport from New Jersey is not the easiest thing in the world.
Mette complained that I am bad at updating this blog, and I tend to agree :|. To make her, and all the rest of my countless readers, happy I am now doing yet another post while I am waiting for the guy across for me to finish what he is doing so we can go to lunch. Yes, Mike, I am waiting for YOU!
Anyways, we went to see Les Miserables on Saturday. The production was awesome and I enjoyed it very much, this also increases my total Broadway musical count to 3 over the last two months, not too shabby :). Other than that I haven’t done much interesting in the last week, we have gone to see quite a few movies at a local cinema. We have seen Simpsons, Bourne Ultimatum and the new Die Hard movie. The Bourne movie were a bit disappointing, but I would recommend the other two strongly. And when you go see the simpsons movie, be sure to stay through the credits :)
I read Mikkels rant and that motivated me to actually write something new on this blog thingie. The big news this week is that I am have a car. Yup, I have batman-black ’99 Toyota Corolla with a milage of 66k miles, not too bad :). The previous owner left his Garmin GPS navigation device for me to keep, so I have a toy to go with the car as well.
Having a car completely changes the way I live around here, we can now go to see a movie whenever we want to. We can easily get groceries when we need them, and we do not have to walk 45 minutes to get to the laundry place, yay.
Tonight I am going to a party in New Brunswick, we will probably spend the night in one of the dorms at Rutgers University, which is more or less right next door to the place we are going to. We will then probably go to New York Cite with some other interns on saturday and maybe get tickets to a Broadway show, we’ll see.
Now, Mikkel – it is your turn to blog again! (Or have Martin do it, it is about time he contributed :) )