I barely had told you the plan for this semester and I already made some adjustments to it. I resigned for the first time a job. Being constrained by German law to some official 20 working hours/week policy, I found myself in a short dilemma, for which however, the solution seemed quite obvious. The resource conflict was between my new job with DFKI downtown and being a TA for my kids in GenCS. The data paths to follow would’ve been, I either change one contract and have both jobs or quit the one with less hours. Considering that financially the situations yield the same results, the deadlock was solved by resigning from the TA position. The idea was fairly obvious and I didn’t hesitate. I must admit I enjoyed it very much working with the kids, but nevertheless, given the whole parameter set, this is the choice that maximizes the future outcome. Besides, I would have risked in doing two jobs poorly, so it’s better to have a safety net under your feet. Just in case.
And that’s how I resigned my first job.
P.S. My GenCS position needs to be filled… If you think you nailed this course and would like some bucks in your account, you can try getting it. Cheers!
Tomorrow, 1st February, my fourth semester starts, which means that we enter the second half. It hasn’t even passed much time, but it feels like a lot, it feels dense, concentrated. I have learned a lot and I did many things. For this semester, you can already see the courses I’ll be taking on the left side pane. In addition to that, I will build and program a robot along with a very awesome bunch of people, I will be working with a Robotics institute downtown, which implies learning a new programming language and implementing some cool things and on top of that, I’m looking forward to see my kids enjoying the second part of GenCS and meeting them in my regular Sunday @16:00 tutorials. Some of the evenings when I don’t fall asleep instantaneously will be spent watching some movies with the Dragon. That’s the plan, now, who knows what the future holds in store? But the big frame is there, whatever colors end up on my paper, I’ll deal with them at the right time. Somehow things end up OK, no matter how hectic and insane a situation seems to be. That’s one lesson I’ve learned. So worry less, I turn up my sleeves and get down to business. I’m starting the show with Operating Systems, followed by Software Engineering and Electronics lab in the afternoon. This will definitely kill the cold-process. End task for you! Run school! Cheers!
There are days when I even surprise myself. It feels like I could do all things in the world at the same time, which was the case couple of days ago, when I was installing my dev-environment while cleaning my room. I almost felt like I am good at this house job. Well… about that… In the meantime this terrible cold hacked my system and now it’s giving me troubles, so apart from launching an attack with meds against it, I thought that bringing in more liquids can lead to an increased speed of recovery. I thought a bit and then concluded that nothing can happen if I put my kettle to boil with 3 mint teabags inside. Now, having seen the consequences of my actions… So, going back to kettle, when the water started boiling, instead of the button pop and some hot tea with biscuits, I obtained a fountain of water, flowing over my bags, electrical wires, and all the gadgets around the plug. I was looking mesmerized at the incredible phenomenon and couldn’t believe my eyes.
How many computer scientists do you need to make some tea? Clearly more than one!
Yesterday was the day I configured or reconfigured environments. One for the revenue, one for my personal pleasure, while a cold was silently taking over me. I began my quest with a tremendous motivation, one piece of vacuum clear, one important terminal window open. First I commanded my machine to install some dependencies, while I scrutinized the amounts of dust to be removed in my crib. Since the installation process seemed to take a while, I got the hang of the suck_dust device and started refreshing the main data structure. By the time I reached the corners, both me and my terminal window got stuck. There was a mismatch in the parameters required and the ones sent between corners and vacuum cleaner, whereas in the terminal some file got corrupted and the install was for the moment resumed. Oh man… Ok, no worries, I have this under control. Delete file, install the gem again, steady working, now the corner problem. Removed the larger piece of the sucker, get there, solved. I took a break and searched for the latest version of boost library and left my machine bring it all over and at the same time I planned a major clean-up of the carpet-disk. Got the tools, one bucket of water, one brush and commenced. File by file, piece by piece, song by song. With my fingers crossed and eyes closed, I punched in rake setup and magically I not only had a compiled robot supervision platform on my machine, but also a clean audio folder and a shiny room. These days, it pays off to be a computer scientist.
P.S. This post, as most posts on this blog, is a metaphor. You can try this at home, but don’t blame me if it doesn’t work out as described above .
Today everyone left to different destinations and aims and I found myself fairly alone in a cold, but sunny Bremen day. That would not be such a problem given the current state of the art (i.e. I have plenty of things to do), but nevertheless somehow something was missing. The day went on without much success, listening to this and that, a bit bored, without much incentive, spotting enormous quantities of dust particles in which the icy light was dispersing as silence was taking over the chain of rooms towards my right. The parameters were changed by my mum’s call. She enthusiastically recommended to find this new song she’s been listening to all morning, all day and planning to listen to it eternally until the ears bleed a “no more”. She also advised me turn the speakers as loud as possible and then it hit me one advantage of being rather alone around here. No need to worry that my loud music disturbs anyone . So… until the area becomes again populated, I shall enjoy my happy moment of solitude playing this song on repeat and repeat and repeat.
Thinking about how to celebrate my previous-post-mentioned-birthday, the Dragon had this brilliant idea of visiting famous and infamous Amsterdam. I bet your first thoughts when reading our destination is something like “Ahaa! Weeds & Red Light Ladies”, unless you know a bit of art and might think of Van Gogh or Rembrandt. Regarding your sequential questions, the answer to all those is that I’ve seen a bit of everything. Initially I though the city will be full of contrasts, but now, when the memories are in the drawers and what is left is about 300 MB of pictures, I guess Amsterdam is just a city for the feeling, for the emotions, for arts in general, for large windows and painters, for poets and for lovers.
We started the Amdam quest by paying our dues to Mr. Rembrandt. Since I had already seen most of Van Gogh’s work, I decided I’ll go for Golden Age, for something classic. The Night Watch is a definite must see. It is just impressive in its size and colors, in its contrasts between light and dark, between the rough motion and the gentle lady. However, that is not the painting that left the most emphatic impression on me. At the time when we were looking at it, I thought I liked it just because it is a proper context to feel some empathy with the story portrayed and the smiles around us underlined this idea even more. I don’t argue that there is some seed of truth in the previous statement, but at least I am not the only one thinking that Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride is indeed one of the most impressive paintings coloring love in the most delicate and elegant manner possible.
Feeling enchanted by the beauty of the paintings, we headed towards the maze of streets that lead to the heart of the capital. The atmosphere is just magical. It is like a starry starry night looking down on narrow streets and baroque architecture. Heart is probably the most suggestive word to describe the oldest and most central part of the city, as it is literally red. The very famous and infamous Red Light District fans around Oude Kerk, which is the oldest church in town. In some kind of poetic justice, the oldest business in the world intertwines with Amsterdam’s oldest sights and treasures. Red Light District is first of all a lesson of civilization. The windows either display a lady of the night or the menu of a coffee shop, but regardless of the offer, the general aroma is rather peaceful. A lot of tourists, ladies and gents, couples and singles, young or older, all alike stroll down the streets where the red light spawns from lanterns hanging on the walls.
The sentimental scent left by this city is one of art, of love, of Bohemia. Unlike other cities I visited, Amsterdam is probably not a city I would necessarily like to live in, but it is a city I would like to go have a coffee, when both me and the Dragon have time, where I can wander and clear my thoughts from the hectic pace of our very tech-embedded lives, where my artistic part can fly freely around for couple of days. For that to happen, the other days must be spent broadly harvesting cash, as the trip can get quite pricey (especially when you leave your hundred-fifty horses random). In the souvenir section we checked the plants for which Amdam is renowned and bought Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled, which is just about a central European dreamlike and surreal city matching entirely the wonderful two days spent in the canal embraced town.
Okey, so technically today is my birthday. Birthdays are cool because you are in the spotlight, or you think/hope you are. Every random, silly, senseless, meaningless “Happy Birthday” from the other side has a great importance on this side. In the beginning it’s all about the presents, then it’s all about the people who make you a present and then… I don’t know what future holds in store. Hoping I’ll make it into a nice granny, a forth of my life has passed. The usual rhetoric question, “How does it feel now?”, makes me wonder if there is actually a combination of words which portrays this time. Obviously, there is no particular sentiment triggered by the incremented year count, but taking a look at the big picture, I am pleased with what I see. My sequence of choices falls into a pretty colorful chain, which makes my eyes glisten with happiness most of the times. And the painting would not be complete just with me (nope, not going to debate about what would be the pointwithout…). Greetings and thanks go to my awesome folks, the Dragon, my cool roomate, my guys from home, my friends from the East, I’m happy for all the messages I have and will receive today which will add some extra degrees in the very cold, frozen Bremen. Cheers!
I am currently in a transition period from home modules to campus modules. With my hands smelling of sour cabbage I am typing my 100th post, which just happened to be at crossroads. Officially I am back to the northern cold town and honestly, I have been captured by a wave of enthusiasm. It’s like I were wearing a new dress, eyes glistening with happiness. The Dragon is on his way, the plants and the bears have survived the frost and I am currently recovering my patterns and routines, my processes I left resumed when I left about a month ago.
First issue to solve in the new environment is, of course, to call a remove_dust method and then sort_T_shirts. Sadly, that process is not yet fully autonomous, so I am terribly afraid I will have to do it on my own, but should that be the worst problem! Something I noticed yesterday on the way, either I was too cheerful or I was speaking too fast either Romanian or English, but people around me couldn’t help looking at me and my company. They were curious to know what we were saying there, in what code, we were different. We were a random element in a completely patternized world. And aren’t we all patterns? Some more complex and convoluted, some simpler and easier to read. Given is a loom, which will hold the warp threads under tension. Each and everyone of us will take the weft between our fingers, thus interweaving our lives. Back in the days, the weft was just a yarn made up of wool, these days it spells web embedding fonts tool, because the analogue tapestry shifted into a digital version, equally artistic, equally difficult to create, equally painful for your delicate fingers. Judging the old methods, I think I am in definite need of a larger monitor. My 15.4 inch screen might just be too small to withstand my colors.
The river in the song surely flows to the sea, but after my time between Romanian borders I am not even sure of that, here there is always a chance the sea flows into the river, and I am very serious about this one. Nevertheless, another gray rainy, snowish day fell over the western little town, hide your dogs, take your cats, throw a log on the fire and don’t go out! Ideally, lit some candles, bake some apples and boil some hot tea and start dreaming… I had to change a bit the ingredients (normal 100W bulbs, got some pizza and some coke, just to adapt to modern times), but the feeling is rather the same. Or at least I hope it is. With their ups and downs, I am sure I will miss these places. I always do, even though they don’t always deserve it. But I guess I can’t help… Maybe it is supposed to be like this, maybe not, who knows? I guess I just don’t like departures that much. Someone is always left behind watching until the other vanishes and the other can’t look back too long, because one must focus on the right straight direction. The one left behind hides its tears away and thinks, oh well, no problem, we will meet again, the departing one doesn’t have time for tears, but also thinks that time can only be fair and move fast, and yes we will meet some time soon. There is hope and if there is hope, things can only flow on the right path.
I barely had told you the plan for this semester and I already made some adjustments to it. I resigned for the first time a job. Being constrained by German law to some official 20 working hours/week policy, I found myself in a short dilemma, for which however, the solution seemed quite obvious. The resource conflict was between my new job with DFKI downtown and being a TA for my kids in GenCS. The data paths to follow would’ve been, I either change one contract and have both jobs or quit the one with less hours. Considering that financially the situations yield the same results, the deadlock was solved by resigning from the TA position. The idea was fairly obvious and I didn’t hesitate. I must admit I enjoyed it very much working with the kids, but nevertheless, given the whole parameter set, this is the choice that maximizes the future outcome. Besides, I would have risked in doing two jobs poorly, so it’s better to have a safety net under your feet. Just in case.
There are days when I even surprise myself. It feels like I could do all things in the world at the same time, which was the case couple of days ago, when I was installing my dev-environment while cleaning my room. I almost felt like I am good at this house job. Well… about that… In the meantime this terrible cold hacked my system and now it’s giving me troubles, so apart from launching an attack with meds against it, I thought that bringing in more liquids can lead to an increased speed of recovery. I thought a bit and then concluded that nothing can happen if I put my kettle to boil with 3 mint teabags inside. Now, having seen the consequences of my actions… So, going back to kettle, when the water started boiling, instead of the button pop and some hot tea with biscuits, I obtained a fountain of water, flowing over my bags, electrical wires, and all the gadgets around the plug. I was looking mesmerized at the incredible phenomenon and couldn’t believe my eyes.
.
Thinking about how to celebrate my previous-post-mentioned-birthday, the Dragon had this brilliant idea of visiting famous and infamous Amsterdam. I bet your first thoughts when reading our destination is something like “Ahaa! Weeds & Red Light Ladies”, unless you know a bit of art and might think of Van Gogh or Rembrandt. Regarding your sequential questions, the answer to all those is that I’ve seen a bit of everything. Initially I though the city will be full of contrasts, but now, when the memories are in the drawers and what is left is about 300 MB of pictures, I guess Amsterdam is just a city for the feeling, for the emotions, for arts in general, for large windows and painters, for poets and for lovers.
Okey, so technically today is my birthday. Birthdays are cool because you are in the spotlight, or you think/hope you are. Every random, silly, senseless, meaningless “Happy Birthday” from the other side has a great importance on this side. In the beginning it’s all about the presents, then it’s all about the people who make you a present and then… I don’t know what future holds in store. Hoping I’ll make it into a nice granny, a forth of my life has passed. The usual rhetoric question, “How does it feel now?”, makes me wonder if there is actually a combination of words which portrays this time. Obviously, there is no particular sentiment triggered by the incremented year count, but taking a look at the big picture, I am pleased with what I see. My sequence of choices falls into a pretty colorful chain, which makes my eyes glisten with happiness most of the times. And the painting would not be complete just with me (nope, not going to debate about what would be the point without…). Greetings and thanks go to my awesome folks, the Dragon, my cool roomate, my guys from home, my friends from the East, I’m happy for all the messages I have and will receive today which will add some extra degrees in the very cold, frozen Bremen. Cheers!
Lady Daffodil
