QuickBlog (On life and toilets)

I'm just about to get on my way to Em's now, so I'll be very brief. I just want to perpetuate a couple of thoughts upon which I will extend later.

1. We're all lifemates. Worldmates. (I wonder if I'm coining the term right now)
2. Toilet pipes should be wider than our intestines.

That's it. Cya in a bit.

*****

All right, I'm back. More than 24 hours later...

So about #1...

You know how, when kids are kids and go to school and play and learn and do school-stuff, you have a group of classmates? Classmates are those others who share the class with you. You know your classmates, you make friends with some of them, some you do not like, etc... And then you grow up and leave school, and you're no longer in class. But you still have people all around you, and the same patterns arise. You know some of them, you make some friends, some people you don't like, etc...

I know I'm just comparing social groups of a different magnitude, so it's logical that patterns are similar. However, if you look at classmates, it's easy for them to identify themselves as a group. They share something, the circumstance of having been assigned to that particular class. You live with them for a long time, and you get to know them somewhat closely, and etc... This pattern is not exactly replicated when you leave the classroom and go into the larger world context. There are so many more people in the world than there were in your class - how can you identify yourself as part of such a large group? It may be desirable, but it's just not... plausible. Even in a class, there are times when you feel alienated from the rest of the class, how can it not happen in a full-blown world?

But wouldn't it be nice? I mean, we all share a world. An enormous ball full of life, full of beauty, full of people... aren't we all here? We all share it, we're in the same context. Being that as it is, shouldn't we all try to help each other live on/survive/be happy? I mean, that's sort of what society already does for us. I don't ever need to grow my own food or carry my own water - I give out my services in return for a little part of every other person's services. Economics, you know. But I just think... sometimes people focus so much on themselves that they forget what the broad perspective of it all is. That we all share this life, this world, this amazing context. We're all worldmates. So we should all help each other out while we're around! Yup, worldmates! That's the spirit.

So about #2 (Si vous plait do not read if you are easily disgusted and do not want to be disgusted):

My toilet got clogged a couple of days ago. After many failed plunger plunges and many hours of olfactory uneasiness, it is now unclogged and clean. But looking at the little toilet hole through which water and waste are flushed away, I got to thinking about the little journey of a piece of feces, all the way since its conception inside the intestine, down through the lower digestive tract, out of the body, into the toilet, and *FLUSH* through the toilet pipe. I am assuming that a piece of feces' girth is pretty much determined by the cross-section area of the intestine. So if the toilet pipe's cross-section area is considerably smaller than the intestine's, it could get stuck.

I know the real scenario takes into account other variables, including the piece's rigidity, the pipe's inner wall's friction coefficient, the pipe's downward incline, and the amount and rate of water flow used to flush the toilet. Nevertheless, the toilet pipe's aperture remains an important factor to be considered.

I imagine toilet pipe sizes must be fairly standard. I wonder if people actually got to measure and perform statistical calculations on a varied and well-distributed assortment of fecal pieces before determining an appropriate toilet pipe standard size. Would've measuring the actual intestines been helpful on determining an appropriate toilet pipe size? I don't think so... being organic tissue and everything, I'd guess their elastic coefficient would very much disrupt any static measurements upon them.

So those were my two thoughts, full blog version. Nothing urgent, just wanted to finish them off.
And now for my actual events, I'll post another blog entry. This I do for the sake of contextual hygiene, just to isolate my thoughts (especially thought #2) from particular social and worldly events.

The Malaysian Magician's Money

So I woke up at 5AM this morning because my brother kicked me in his sleep. Being the hard-working (*coughs* net-holic) person I am, I turned on my computer and began to submit expense reports from the last WS deployment, check on JIRA issues, check my job email, check my other emails, send some pics to a friend, wonder about about one of the picures, image-google it to try to find it on the net, become distracted with the picture of a hot girl, click on it, find a Malaysian's magician blog on Friendster (http://davidlaimag.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog/2007/07/some_of_the_bet.html), read one of his entries from last year talking about courtship, like it, wonder what his latest entries were, read them, and decide to comment on one entry about money.

My comment turned out longer than expected, but I liked it because it turned out almost as a blog entry. So then I decided to post my comment on my own blog, just for kicks.

So here is David's (the Malaysian magician's) blog entry:

http://davidlai.tv/2008/08/27/money-is-almost-everything/

MONEY is almost EVERYTHING

I believe at my age , money is `almost’ everything . Those who say it isn’t are living in a world of denial . If you had’t notice I said ` I believe ‘ , you don’t have to agree .

The old saying goes , ` Love is all you need ‘ . I say it’s bullshit . Without money , do you realise how many arguments takes place in a relatiosnhip due to the lack of monetery funds ? A LOT ! I also resent the statement of ` GOD IS ALL YOU NEED ‘ . I’ve been to the Phillipines a couple of times . In the Phillipines , 95 % of the population are Roman Catholics ….unfortunately , the poverty & crime rate there is one of the highest in the world …What happened ? Same goes for Brazil . They all pray , I have no doubt on that , yet …… I never said I din’t believe there was a GOD . Don’t quote me .

Earning money does have it’s price . Yes , what a way to put it . Earning money has it’s `price’ .

I haven’t been updating this poor old blog for quite some time now . Not because I’m lazy . I promise I’m not and I don’t plan to be . It’s not because I don ‘t have anything exiting to write on .. because I do ! Lots and lots of things to write and rant about ! It’s just that I’m so busy finding new ways to earn money . Hopefully , lots and lots of it . I guess it all depends on how much you want it .

I said money is `almost’ everything , so whats your drive ?

Make sure it’s the right one …

And my comment was:

Hey David! Nice blog!! Nice profession, too! I like the way you write: clear, direct, and honest.

Anyway, I thought I'd add my own from-the-other-side-of-the-world (I'm originally from Guatemala, now live in Texas) opinion to the money discussion going on here.

Stating the obvious... Of course money matters! We use it all the time! We use it to eat, we use it to drink, we use it to dress, we use it to get shelter, we use it... A LOT! People spend 40 hours a week, many times much more than that, working, serving, spending their time for someone else, losing the majority of their daylight hours, losing a big portion of their LIFETIME to get MONEY. Many people stress over it, plan around it, live and die around it, revolve their whole lives and priorities around the "irreplaceable" chore of "getting money". So yes, it matters.

And by the current society's system, it figures. It's the way we've changed into. Did we always need money? No. People did survive without it for quite a while. So why do we need it now? Because for us, it's the only way we KNOW how to live.

Would you be willing to grow/hunt your own food? Find your own drink? Build your own house? Make your own clothes? Manufacture your own car? Dig up and refine your own fuel? You would? Oh well then, you could probably live without money.

I bet you 10 bucks + RM50 (what the heck is that currency? Oh, Ringgit Malaysia, thank you Google) you would answer no to most of these questions. I would too. We're useless for most of the above tasks, so getting people to DO all that stuff for us is the only way we know how to live. And the way we MEASURE how much are we helping out one another to live is money. Hence the need for money.

So what about the "Love is all you need", "God is all you need" sayings? Depends. Like you say... what's your drive? What do you "need"? Do you "need" to eat? Do you "need" to survive? Do you "need" to not-live-in-crime-and-poverty? Oh well then, you probably also need money too.

So now suppose you have TONS of money. I mean TONS. I mean riding-a-different-private-jet-for-every-day-of-the-week rich. Do you "need" something else? Love? God? That's not really for me or anyone else to tell you. As the question says: Do YOU need something else?

This is where discussion and arguing always end up inconclusive - we can't TELL people what they need! As you said: "what's your drive?". I think yours is pretty good.

Cheers!

Ugh... my comment is longer than his entry! Symptom of a blogger #27...
I like when I can just copy-paste stuff to put on my blog. OK, I'm done. So again...

Cheers!

Post-Pittsburgh

My head is down, my eyes are shut,
I need to wake up early but
my mind is on, my fingers itch,
I want to tell what happened which
made me the person I'm today
and altered me in such a way
to want to tell this to the world:
My Life - if but for me, untold.

So the "Holy Pittsburgh" entry ended when Tuesday did. Tuesday September the 2nd. Enough remarkable events happened that day to deserve the main focus of another blog entry.

Wednesday September the 3rd, I woke up at 8AM and turned off the alarm, which made me stay in bed until 9AM. At that time, I realized this was my last day in Pittsburgh, so I hurried. Took a shower, put on clothes, got my camera, and ran to the Heinz Chapel, of whose interior I had taken no pictures of. So I fast-walked/ran to the Chapel, about 2 blocks away from the hotel, and stepped in quickly. I took pictures of the windows, main altar in the front, and the ceiling. Once I thought it was late enough, I made use of already being inside the chapel and thanked him for everything that was happening to me during these days, and for the sight of that beautiful beautiful chapel. And then I fast-walked/ran out of the Chapel back to the hotel, got a call from Luis saying he'd be there in 10 minutes, ran to my room, brushed my teeth, packed what little was left to pack, brought my suitcase and backpack downstairs, bought a to-go yogurt in the hotel's breakfast area, saw Luis enter the lobby looking for me, checked out of the hotel, and fast-walked/ran to Luis' car.

He drove me to the SCS building as the other days, and I went to room 5409 to listen to yet another IC conference whose topic I cannot recall right now. At 10:30AM I went back to Luis' office, but he told me was in a conference and told me to wait in the Lounge beside his office. So I did, and decided to check into my afternoon flight back to Austin. After calling AA twice and going through their very friendly voice-recognizing interface, I found out that my flight had actually been CANCELLED. Why was it cancelled? Because I did not take the Austin - Pittsburgh leg of the flight, and didn't call AA to notify them of my absence. And now I couldn't even take the back flight. Unreasonable, right? Of course I was not happy to hear this, but the lady on the other side of the phone had a nice voice and managed to convince me that it was the company's policy and that there was nothing she could do about it. I took the least-effort, pretty-costly approach: I bought another one-way ticket myself. "$200, oh well, at least I won't miss another day at the office", I thought. I had been away long enough, people were asking for me already... I didn't want to stretch or risk anything. I don't know why, but I tried to make funny, flirty conversation with the girl at the other end of the line. I sort of managed to, but of course it would serve me no purpose. Other than conversational experience, that is. All I got from her was that she was situated in Dallas at that time.

Maybe about 10 seconds after I managed to clear my flight back to Austin for that afternoon, Luis came into the room and told me I should go talk to Manuel Blum again. I HEARTILY agreed, and so we walked to Manuel's office and I shyly entered and greeted him again. Oh, we talked. We talked and we talked and we talked. And I was so happy about being able to talk to him. I'd read one of his poems - his ideology was very sound, very natural, very similar to mine. He'd won a Turing award - so he was one of the world's most recognized computer scientists. A true master in the CS field, before me, talking to me, listening to me, exchanging ideas with me. It produced in me quite a proud sense of excitement.

We talked about a complexity problem his son told him and that he had been working on. We talked about it, we discussed it on the board, and we didn't reach any concrete solutions, but I think we enjoyed it. I most positively did. Then we went on to talk about my family a little bit. Then we talked about Machine Learning. And then he showed me some of the work a japanese CMU professor (Takeo something) had been doing with face recognition algorithms. It was pretty good - it recognized almost every face looking forward, sometimes excepting people with glasses. I became excited and began to tell him what I thought could be done with Machine Learning. What the current approaches are like, how are they oriented towards specific applications instead of the general machine learning problem, etc... I enjoyed it very much. A little later, Susan (Luis' secretary) brought me a cheese pizza Luis had sent me for me to have lunch (that was so nice of him!), and Manuel seemed to want to go to lunch by himself, but he decided to take me with him, so we went to lunch. I kept on telling him how I thought Machine Learning should be implemented in the ideal way, and how we could realistically start with small steps to make a machine truly learn - logically, relationally, epistemically (I call it epistemologically)... to really KNOW, UNDERSTAND, in a way. As I talked, he ate, so when he finished his pizza, I was left with a whole pizza to eat while he waited, drinking his soda. I hurried to finish my own pizza, and then we went back to his office. On the way back, I told him I liked his poem about "skunk must stink, man must think", and how I had put it on my blog, and how I hoped that didn't violate any copyright laws. Then he went into the bathroom and said goodbye, so I replied in kind. Happy day - it was really exciting to talk to him.

Oh, and at the place we had lunch, I saw this (notice where the exit leads to):


After that, I just went to Luis' office, then went again to 5409 to listen to a couple more conferences, listened to two half-conferences, went back to Luis' office, and then he told me my limo (yeah, limo) was already around, so he walked me out to it. He asked me if I was going to apply and I said "YESSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (but in Spanish). We talked a little about the details of the application, and then I entered the limo and left. The limo driver was a nice man. Interesting, too... we talked on the way to the airport, and he told me how CMU had offered him a full scholarship to study there. He said he refused because he was in love, and he went to get married in El Paso, Texas. He was a knowledgeable and seemingly-righteous man, not the average stereotypical taxi driver. He told me about how specific currents in the USA caused several hurricane patterns to form, how he had learned a little Spanish while near Mexico, and how in France, human excrement is used as fertilizer. He also told me that he liked English food a LOT more than French food, despite their respective reputations.

So he took me to the Pittsburgh airport, and while waiting in front of the gate to go back to Austin, a black guy with an afro asked me what I was doing in Pittsburgh, and I told him about CMU and everything. I told him what the history of Pittsburgh was (from what Luis had told me), and how there were lots of nice buildings, and he told me how he was on vacation with a friend who lived there. I told him how Guatemala and Belize were excellent places to go on vacation in case he wanted to go on another one. He then told me he's a one-man IT support company-guy who lives in London, originally from Nigeria, and how he was looking to expand his company without actually doing so much more work. IT Support, it got me thinking... how to automatize IT Support? Make it more efficient? Anyway, he gave me his business card, I gave him mine, and then my plane left for Dallas and his for Chicago. I got back to Austin, Marcos picked me up at the airport, I got back to the apartment, and, just like tonight, stayed up quite a few hours chatting on the net. I found DD, who I asked about contacting Dorval. DD mistook this question for an intention on my part of contacting him immediately, so Dorval added me as his GTalk contact and we started chatting. Not that I didn't want to talk to him, but I still wasn't ready to ask him what I needed. I didn't have the exact details yet. But I talked to him and told him, and asked him to hold it off a little until I knew exactly what I wanted him to say about me. He agreed, and heartily offered his help on whatever way he could. I was very happy to hear from him. After that, I did go to bed.

And these last few days have been pretty good. I didn't do much coding back in Austin this last Thursday and Friday, but Emily called me on Friday afternoon and we talked about our trips!! She told me about Burning Man, I told her about Pittsburgh! She told me about Utah, I told her about Chicago! Completely different experiences, hers quite a bit more exotic, but we both enjoyed it very much. I was also very happy when she invited me to eat at an Indian restaurant called Clay Pit on saturday with her boyfriend and her boyfriend's sister. It was a REALLY good restaurant, and very cost-effective, too! Only $8 for the buffet... not a great variety of foods, but awesome taste.

Also, Oscar got to Austin on Friday and we went to hang out in downtown on Friday night. We entered a couple of bars/discos, had a couple of drinks, talked about girls, talked about Reddwerks, and then went back home. I'll be seeing him again on Wednesday, I guess.

And just yesterday on Sunday morning, I flew to Little Rock and rode a Chevy Impala driven by Marco to Memphis, TN and Southaven, MS. Kind of a long ride, not too bad. We checked in at the hotel, spent a couple of hours in our rooms resting, ate dinner at Fazoli's, drove to the facility, met with Austin, Marco did backups, SQL statements, DB restores and system upgrades on our software, and I tried to do the RF installation. I had quite a few problems with it. I had 16 devices to upgrade, and it took me about... 3 hours to figure out how to upgrade ONE. I even emailed Cam in desperation - the process was supposed to be simple and bump-free, but my Symbol (Motorola) DLLs were different from the ones in the previous RF version, so it just wasn't working. DLL hell, they call it. Well, I finally managed to figure out what the heck was going on, and made it work. Now I know how to make it work, and it seems to work pretty much fine. I upgraded 2 other devices in less than 5 minutes, and now I have 13 more devices to upgrade tomorrow... shouldn't take much more than 20 minutes.

And now it's 2:30AM and I'm still blogging. Shame on me? I don't know... But it seems prudent to go to sleep now.

Blog on a plane

Random blog entry. I'm sitting on seat 13F on an AA flight from Dallas to Austin. I've never published a blog entry from a plane before - thought I'd make a first. It's 8:44PM and the plane leaves at 8:50PM. To my right is a window through which I see the night sky and an AA plane. To my left is a lady reading "Critical" by Robin Cook. That's all. Bye.

Holy Pittsburgh!

It's not every day you get pleasant surprises. But yesterday I got quite a few. August 31st 2008, the day I first came to Pittsburgh.

I don't have much time to blog before Luis gets here, so I'll be brief. Hmmm, no, you know what... it's hard to describe so many little things in a brief manner. I have like 14 minutes before Luis gets here, so I'd better pack up, brush my teeth, try to shave, and go down to the lobby. Finish you laterz...

OK here's the deal: I've now spent 2 days and a half in Pittsburgh, and I would not be surprised, if I decided to write all of it in complete detail, that I came up with a small book. It's been QUITE a ride, and I'm LOVING it.

My last entry left off as I waited for Luis von Ahn to pick me up at the Pittsburgh International Airport. At that time, I was thinking whether to call him yet or not. You see, he got me a ticket from Austin through Dallas that would arrive at Pittsburgh at 6:00, but instead of using that ticket, I bought a ticket from Chicago, since that's where I planned to be the day before my trip to Pittsburgh, and arrived at the airport at 2:00 instead of 6:00, so my plan was to wait 4 hours in the airport and just pretend that I had arrived with the Dallas flight (so as to not make him think I rejected his ticket or anything). But then when I looked at my cellphone and saw 5:10PM, I decided "what the heck, I'll just tell him the truth", and called to tell him I had just arrived. I would then tell him that I really got a flight from Chicago, and maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But then as I walked around the airport, I saw the passengers coming from the Dallas flight all waiting for their baggage. I wondered "how can this be?". And I checked my cellphone - and then I realized "I'M ON A DIFFERENT TIME ZONE NOW!!", so it actually was 6:10PM instead of 5:10PM, so I had involuntarily called him at the exact time I should've! When he came to pick me up, I already had my baggage with me, of course, but no baggage from the Dallas flight had yet fallen on the conveyor - everyone was still waiting around it. I thought it was funny that Luis didn't realize that it didn't make sense for me to have my baggage if no baggage from Dallas was yet on the conveyor, but of course, he wasn't thinking about that at all.

You know what? Photoblog! Yes, that's what I need! A JPEG is worth 2^10 words, so that saves me quite a lot of typing! OK, next slide please:

So when I saw him I politely greeted him, and he did likewise. We talked a little about the airlines charging extra money for food and baggage on the way out of the airport, where the topic turned into the weather in Pittsburgh being hot, but not as hot as in Austin, TX. He had kind of forgotten where his car was, but when we got to it, I saw the following:

Nice one, huh? Even I could tell this was a really nice car.

So then we went to eat at Pizzaiolo's, of which I do not have a picture of. We ate pizza and we talked about research topics at the CS Ph.D. program at CMU, and then he explained what his purpose of inviting over to CMU was: get me admitted into the CMU CS Ph.D. program. My mind and heart leapt with joy at the sound of this metaphorical, beautiful music. To be honest, I sort of knew he had an intention of the sort - it was the most obvious reason for him inviting me over to Pittsburgh for a couple of days. But I also didn't expect it to be so direct, as in "yeah, I want you to get admitted into the program", especially coming from a professor. I was like WOOOOOOOOOOW. HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY!!! Surprise and happiness came onto my face and I thanked him, and then the topic changed to his own current research. But now I was sure - I had a direct support, a very much recognized member of CMU CS faculty honestly encouraging my admittance into the program. If I were a girl I would've cried.

Then we finished eating, and he took me to the Holiday Inn hotel in which I would be staying for these 3 nights (and in whose room 310's bed I now lay face down). There was a particular part of the scenery which I simply MUST describe. Have you heard of Fort Pitt? Well, we crossed that tunnel during the nighttime it was a LONG tunnel. I had never been inside such a long tunnel before. It is a hole punched directly into the mountain - it took about a minute at average driving speed to emerge at the other side. When we did, we emerged at one of the bridges over one of the rivers that cross through Pittsburgh. And then I was blessed with a STUPENDOUS view of downtown Pittsburgh during the nighttime. It is truly impressive. If you EVER visit Pittsburgh, be sure to take that route during the nighttime. Your surprise and awe levels will increase at least three-fold. (Sorry, no pictures. I do have a Youtube link, tho: http://mx.youtube.com/watch?v=aTGYTjxrPX4)

And then we drove to the University of Pittsburgh (not CMU), where the hotel was located. As we entered, Luis told me this university was known as a "urban university", where commerces and university buildings were intermixed in the streets. I didn't really understand what that meant until I later walked out and saw a bar, a seven-eleven store, and a clothing store just across from the main university library. But so we reached my hotel, he waited for me to check in, and the lady from the counter told us that the hotel had been recently upgraded, and that the logo behind the counter was a new one - only about 20 Holiday Inn hotels in the whole world displayed that logo:

I thought that was interesting. By that time it was about 9:30PM, and since I had forgotten my camera batteries back in Austin, I decided to go outside, buy some batteries, and explore the surroundings a little.

Just one block away from my hotel was a very great University-of-Pittsburgh plaza. I was kind of lost, just walking around, and when I entered the plaza, I found myself next to a church-like building with a neat classical architecture style (see Disney castle below):

The side door had a sign that said that the church (or Heinz Memorial Chapel, as it said on the sign (http://www.heinzchapel.pitt.edu/) ) closed at 5PM, so I was pretty sure it was closed. I went around the building, admiring all its niceties, and then I reached the front door. Just for kicks, I tried pushing it to see if it opened. It did. Uncertain about whether I was allowed to go inside, I let it close and slowly walked away. It wasn't 10 seconds before a talkative man with a moustache came out of the front door, invited me inside, and offered to tour me around. He turned the lights and WOW! it was the most beautiful church I remembered ever seeing. I don't too much about church decorations, so I can't describe it too well, but the columns, all made of stone in classical style, looked gray-smooth and perfect. The windows were narrow but gigantically tall, and there was also an organ. He started to show me how he could push and pull knobs out of the organ to make certain pipes active, and so, to change the sound ever so slightly to create different effects. I think he was just showing off when he played the Toccata y Fugue with all the organ pipes turned on, but when we were exiting the chapel, a lot of students were standing in the front, saying they were walking around the church and had gotten scared when the dark, empty-looking church began to emit a classic scary, dracula-like tune at full volume. The man also invited THEM into the church, and gave them the whole tour again. I stayed with them and learned that the organ had 4,272 pipes all hidden inside the chapel, and heard him play a couple more songs on the organ. Unfortunately, I had not bought any batteries for my camera at that time, so I did not take any pictures of the chapel's insides. I hope to still have a chance to capture some inside chapel images in the morning (if I wake up early enough).

After the second tour I left, asked the students where could I get some batteries, and they guided me up to the Seven Eleven on Forbes Avenue. So I got the batteries and started taking some pictures:

Statue situated on one of the many university's plazas.

Afterwards, I went on to explore a building that was directly in front of the chapel, about 200m away:

42 stories tall, the Cathedral of Learning is the tallest university tower in the USA, topped worldwide only by a certain tower in St. Petersburg or something

Inside, it was AMAZING. It would just take too much to describe it. Let's just say I felt I was in a Harry Potter story, inside Hogwarts:

The Cathedral of Learning's architecture was amazingly astounding. Excepting the Heinz Memorial Chapel, I had never admired a building's architecture so much.

That night I came back to the hotel, wrote the first two paragraphs of this blog entry, and went to sleep.

Monday, September 1st, 2008:

I amazingly wake up before my 9AM alarm clock sounds. I take a nice warm shower, I take the elevator downstairs, I buy a Yogurt parfait and a hot chocolate at the hotel restaurant, I get called by Luis to be ready when he arrives, I wait for him, I get another call from him, I go outside, I enter his car, and then we drive to the CMU SCS building. The first thing he said about the building was that it was "the UGLIEST building". I looked at it and, yes, it did look very non-ornamental. Its style would more appropriately befit a nuclear bunker. But anyway, we went up through a service-kind-looking flight of stairs, reached his office, and since it was Labor Day and there were very few other people there, we were mostly free to do whatever we wanted to. His office had several peculiar objects, of which I'd like to show a couple:



And there was also this blue, SFX equipped plastic light saber.

We had lunch with one of Luis's Ph.D. students, Severin from Switzerland, and we talked about some of the research he's been doing with GWAP. The rest of the afternoon, until 3:30PM, I just wrote several emails, did some usual web-browsing, etc. Oh, and I also helped Luis create his next assignment for his class, "Science of the Web". Then at 5:30PM we had a BBQ! at one of the faculty member's house, so we left to get ready. We bought dog food, beer, lemons, and soda for the BBQ, picked up a meat thermometer at Luis's place, and then drove to the BBQ.

The BBQ was SO AWESOME!!!!! It's too bad I don't have any pictures of it except for this one:

which doesn't show anything interesting. But I met A LOT of professors. And their girlfriends/wives, too! They were all REALLY nice, some of them very funny, and all of them very talkative. One thing that amazed me a LOT was that I actively participated in a significant part of the conversation! It was because I really felt an opinion about what they were talking. Sometimes they talked about politics and I just kinda listened, but then they talked about statistics, college education, Reddwerks, research projects, food, or funny anecdotes, I could TRULY RELATE!! It was SUCH a good feeling! And we ate this DELICIOUS, DELICIOUS cheesecake and Chocolate Cream Pie. But OMG, I had NEVER tried such a juicy, delicious cheesecake. It's apparently homemade by one of the professors, but he's not giving out the recipe. The point is, it was DELICIOUS.

So the BBQ was a complete success, and then I came back to the hotel and went to sleep. Woke up next morning, bought scrambled eggs and orange juice at the breakfast area, brushed my teeth, was picked up by Luis and Laura in their 1-week-old Honda Civic Hybrid, reached the first IC (Immigration Course) conference of the day (they're like brief abstracts of what each professor is currently doing as their own research, to help the students decide which project would they most like to collaborate in). I sat down and began listening to a professor talk about Software Research, of which most things made sense, although it seemed pretty much like a management course. While I was listening to this conference, Manuel Blum (who had arrived and sat down just next to me) said he would like to speak with me in his office at 2:30PM, just after Ryan's (another professor) IC conference. This was another moment at which both my mind and my heart leapt with joy and excitement. I think my face and voice were pretty successful in accepting his offer through a proper, happy, and positive response. (If all my excitement at that time had been transmitted out unfiltered, I would've caused quite a racket in the classroom.

So then I listened to Anupam's conference, where I learned about http://www.wordle.net, and about how the maximum number of points in N dimensions where all pairs of points have an "approximate" distance of 1 between them increases exponentially with N. And also, that for any problem on N dimensions, this problem can be APPROXIMATED to a calculable factor by reducing the number of dimensions to logN/eps^2, where eps is the factor of "approximation" to which we want the solution to approximate to. He proved this by using some kind of matrix random boolean mapper. I didn't quite understand EVERYTHING, but it was cool.

Then a guy talked about something I don't remember too well. Then another guy talked about some research project he's working on sponsored by DARPA to help military forces on real-time operations and let them be guided by personal assistants instead of communication manually, as with radio.

Then lunchtime came, and Luis, Venkat Guruswami, Anupam, and me went to eat Indian food at one of CMU's "trucks":


I did see some "unusual" stuff on CMU's central plaza area:

Afterwards I went on to some other IC conferences. One of them was about speeding up computer systems through better queuing strategies, and the other was about P and NP-complete problems. It was partly interesting, but not particularly exciting.

Then I walked with Manuel Blum to his office. Oh, we talked a lot. About my family, about my english, about my research interests, about last year's automated-car competition which CMU won, about how MIT's system possessed only two cameras, so its image processing algorithms should be very good too. Then I was telling him about my research interests, and Luis showed up. I showed up at his "Science of the Web" class, he talked about some graph theorems, he showed me as being the "target" everyone in the class is looking for in Facebook (in front of the whole class), and then there was another IC conference - a robotics one. I will only say the name of the project: "Claytronics". I'd like to explain it, but it'd take longer than I want to spend on it, so I won't. It is a very exciting thing to think about and create, but it does seem like a pretty far away idea. Anyway, after the conference we went on and visited Intel:

It was really cool! Afterwards, I got lost, two asian girls helped me get unlost, I went to Luis's office and had nothing else to do, so I went out to the CMU central plaza and started to take a bunch of pictures:

Then we left the office, picked up Ben at his dorm (Ben is the tech lead on Luis's Captcha project), and went to eat at whole foods. The food was really good. We then dropped off Ben at his place and Luis dropped me off at my hotel. I then decided to get some more batteries for my camera because my first pair was already running out. I went out on a picture tour around University of Pittsburgh tonight. See for yourself:

And that brings me back here, laying on my bed with my laptop, writing a larger-than-average blog entry to tell about my experiences and photographs in Pittsburgh, and dropping my eyelids at 4:14AM. I better go to sleep now. All images aren't up yet, but what the heck, it's not being published yet.
And now all images are finally up! Almost a month later, this entry is being published!