Lady Daffodil's Blog

New Home

Flavia Grosan — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:23:30 +0000

My blog has now a new home, larger, cuter, more elegant. My random thoughts can from now on be read here: http://flaviagrosan.com/

Filed under: Uncategorized

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Flavia Grosan — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:23:20 +0000

…Or impressions from Copenhagen

Today the ladies in the world celebrate their day or something equivalent. I read in an article that Russian ladies would like to get a car from their boyfriends on this particular day. In my perspective, it would be 10 fold cooler to buy your own car, say on this day, but nevertheless, in the end, the outcome is the same. You have a car . But since we are at this point of the conversation, this day was marked as “celebrated” by going with the Dragon to Copenhagen. Some things, just like good old wines, get better and better with time and our small trip is a root of this function. To some extent, going there was like traveling in the future as it managed to put things in perspective a bit. Soon we will wake up with a bachelor degree in our hands and we won’t know where to head from that point, what to do, what to expect. It doesn’t look like a choice, does it? Having this at the back of my mind, I evaluated my staying there from a more pragmatic point of view. Would it be a good choice to come back for an extended period of time to pursue graduate studies? How will this fit with different other plans?

These were all topics of conversation over a pint of dark beer, waiting for our dinner in a myriad of enchanting places in the still very cold Danish capital. If you go to Copenhagen, I’d terribly recommend Rosie McGee’s restaurant. Located in the city center, the atmosphere there on a Thursday night was magical. Our chocolate brown wooden table was surrounded by shelves of old books and somewhere in a corner, a guitarist was playing “Shine on you, crazy diamond”, among others. The next afternoon was spent walking around the center, looking at architecture, at people, trying to figure how I would fit with this environment. A bit maybe too liberal even for my taste inasmuch as people are concerned, the classic style of the city restores equilibrium. The ladies are quite elegant, the pedestrian zones have a scent of harmony and at times it reminded me of Amsterdam, but maybe slightly more dynamic than the Dutch correspondent.

We had breakfast at Tiffany’s, marked HardRock Cafe as visited in our graph, looped around the mermaid node for a while, drove over an 18km, above the water edge with a cost of 220 DKK and hours later we reached the starting point, a covered in snow Bremen, completing one of the coolest paths followed so far.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Copenhagen, pink floyd, restaurant, Tiffany, Woman's Day

Vis-a-Vis

Flavia Grosan — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:16:09 +0000

It is already March 2nd, some sun rays struggle to overcome the overwhelming shadow of the building vis-a-vis. Speaking of which, the word vis means in my mother tongue dream and that’s exactly what I’m wondering, if yesterday did happen, and if it did, was it exactly as I remember it now or just partly figment of my imagination? I mean, take all the events and put them in separate days, it’s not that impressive after all, but having them all on a Monday, on a 1st of March… My personal taste for sharp hours, for exact beginnings was more than satisfied.

Yesterday’s story started with The Dragon launching one of his take-over-the-world projects for which he was very excited about and I very happy, keeping my fingers crossed for an awesome outcome. Then about midday I got an e-mail letting me know I’ll be doing an internship with Microsoft Research. I was telling you in some other post that things start to get concrete and 1st March ended the madness. It’s good to have choices, but it’s even better to make your choice. Spot the difference? In a matter of seconds things were settled, mails sent, informing the world about what I have decided. No surprise that for the remains of the day I could not focus on such mundane things like today’s Math quiz or equivalent. Going with the Dragon to fuel up his car, we spotted on the way back the biggest moon ever. I got chills down my spine and for a fraction of second all those stories with energies, signs, magic and such made sense. Or not made sense, but they made me wonder a bit.

But what is a great day without a great ending? For the night, we decided to go out and see Shutter Island, Scorsese’s most recent movie. Now that’s the point where reality ceased to be real and your reference points start to tremble. Now that the brutal images were washed away by a good night sleep, the main ideas emerge in my mind. What that movie emphasizes is that we are a context. We mean something within a particular frame. It’s not us per se that make a difference, but what is around us. And in the end, it’s not the choices we have that say anything about us, but the choices we make. I wonder, is it better to live like a monster, or die a good man?

I wish you all a wonderful Spring!

Filed under: Stories Tagged: Microsoft Research, Scorsese, Shutter Island

Lady, Suit Up!

Flavia Grosan — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:47:25 +0000

I set the alarm for 6 a.m. I woke up, put the kettle on and looked in the mirror. Not too tired, looks like a good day for business. I took the suit out of the closet, skirt + jacket, all gray, added an orange scarf and matching lipstick , black boots and headed to the train station. One last journey for this week. Last Friday I went to see some Volkswagen autonomous driving cars, Tuesday was the one bringing the Carnegie Mellon news, on Wednesday I had fun with some industrial KUKA robots, Thursday was DFKI day and now I am writing my blog post from a hotel room in Aachen, after a day spent with Microsoft Research. And next week I’ll be going to Copenhagen. Pretty dynamic, isn’t it?

Each day I add a new amber bead in my converging set of stories, the frame is getting filled, the plans are getting concrete. And what is more, I think my time has reached quite a peak in how valuable it is and how used it is. And all is covered with a layer of sheer happiness.

Filed under: Today, Tomorrow Tagged: Carnegie Mellon University, DFKI, KUKA robot, Lexxy, Microsoft Research, roby, Volkswagen

5 Minute Break

Flavia Grosan — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:02:58 +0000

… Or more about Taking-over-the-world issue

All you need to take over the world is a computer. And maybe some batteries to keep your machine running. And please, no Windows this morning. I just killed their updates forever. Can’t install updates and restart my machine gazillion times a day when I want to take over the world, can I?

Now about my plan… The following days have been insanely hectic and sleep deprived, but now, with some hours of extra energy, with spring struggling to show up, things seem to somehow arrange themselves in a partial order that raises my levels of satisfaction. Unless the world crashes or is being conquered by the Dragon in 209 days, unless I don’t get a visa or I decide that house-keeping fits me better, I will greet you next Fall from this place . Yes Sir! I am going to the US and I’m pretty enthusiastic about it. I didn’t even have time nor the context to enjoy my small victory, but here it is. My happy moment after a bunch of mad days. My train will soon reach its destination and I have to close this now, some more crazy days are about to follow, but I look outside, the snow has melted, there is a scent of spring in the air and I just know things will turn out okey .

Filed under: Today Tagged: Carnegie Mellon University, Spring

My, My, Time Flies!

Flavia Grosan — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:55:05 +0000

No, I don’t have time. Not even to write this post. I shouldn’t. There’s a Latex design specs pending, there is one robot API waiting for my attention, a pile of yet undone homework, and trust me, I’ve been working on them since 6 a.m. I always thought about my to-do list as a stack, but it’s definitely a queue, the difference being that I could see the top of the stack, whereas the other end of the queue is somehow beyond my control. These tasks are like all those curious persons in the streets that join the larger crowds. Probably they think someone is giving something for free. Well, I’m doing my best to process all queries and not to lose track. But then you come across this cool song and the ideas start to shape up. A bit of inspiration. A bit of perspective. And at the end of the day, I am not complaining. I’ll deal internally with my worries, my thoughts, my processes and somehow things will work out. They always do, be it logical flow of events or divine intervention. I’ll be grateful to both of them eventually.

Until I put my threads to sleep for a while, I let you all enjoy a cool song about this eternal parameter that seems to model our finite existences: time.

Filed under: Music, Today, Words Tagged: Enya, process, queue, stack, thread, time

Snapshot

Flavia Grosan — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 08:32:06 +0000

Filed under: Today Tagged: bear, squirrel, Valentine's Day

How I Resigned my Job

Flavia Grosan — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:01:15 +0000

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!

Filed under: Stories Tagged: DFKI, General Computer Science, job, resign, teaching assistant

Words about Fourth Semester

Flavia Grosan — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:07:03 +0000

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!

Filed under: Tomorrow Tagged: computer science, forth semester, jacobs univeristy

Tea Failure

Flavia Grosan — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 09:47:00 +0000

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!

P.S. Kids, don’t try this at home!

Filed under: Stories, Today Tagged: computer scientist, failure, tea