carlos-m.net

I met Madonna last night! I walked into a café then proceeded to pay an exorbitant sum for a double espresso and a mocha. I carried the drinks to a table and then I noticed Madonna was sitting at the table next to me. I approached her and asked her if she was really Madonna and she said that she was not. But I knew it was her. So I took out a pad of paper and a pen and asked her for her autograph. She asked me my name and then proceeded to write a letter to me. Unfortunately, I woke up before I had a chance to read it.

The weirdest thing happened last night. I woke up at about 02:30 and I thought it was time to get up for work. So I gathered my things and groggily walked to the bathroom. My recollection of the event is a bit hazy, but for some reason, I walked back to my room, at which point, I noticed that it was quite early. I decided to go back to sleep.

A funny thing happened at work last week. I left for an afternoon meeting and when I cam back, my desk phone was missing. I found this quite odd. However, I did not mind too much because it just meant that I would not be able to receive any complaints for some time. But then, the next day, before my phone was replaced, I went to lunch. But then when I got back, my chair was meeting. Tim commented that perhaps they were hinting to me that they didn’t want me working there. The chair missing was of course a bit of an inconvenience. I had to borrow a chair that did not roll, swivel or have adjustable arms.

I am now finally an official employee of Northern Trust. I got a newID/access card. It’s green as opposed to the red ones that consultants/contractors wear. Unfortunately, the new card does not complement my Bata shoes as well as the red one.

On an unrelated note, Zsh rocks. It’s everything one could want in a shell. Check it out. Also, I am currently experimenting with bayesian spam filtering with ifile. Things look good so far.

Finally the stress-filled semester has come to an end. After moving my stuff out of my apartment back to my home in Pittsburgh, I flew to Germany for vacation. I spent a week touring various cities in the Bayern region as well as Innsbruck and Salzburg in Austria. It was a very pleasant trip.

As usual there were no billiards parlours to be found anywhere in the area we stayed. This time, however, I did see an advirtisement for an establishment called the Lyons Pub, which boasted pool tables as well as proximity to our hotel. Naturally we had to investigate this venue. The advirtisement said it was located on 20 Rossenheimer Str. From our hotel, we took the subway two stops down to 50 Rossenheimer Str. From there, we walked along the street as the numbers descended. Eventually we reached number 14. Thinking we had missed it, we backtracked less than a block and found ourselves at number 30. This was quite odd, so we inquired at several establishments and none of them had heard of this place nor knew how to find number 20. I was not pleased.

Aside from that, however, Germany and Austria were very nice. After my trip there, I flew directly to Chicago to begin my summer internship at Northern Trust. This time, I have a cubicle next to a window. How cool is that? I also got a Sparc this time.

Miscellaneous stuff: The Hours is a good book and The Hours is a good movie. Never put sugar in espresso. “Schmuck” is Deutsch for jewelry. X-Men 2 was much better than the first one and is definitely worth seeing. The Matrix Reloaded is worth seeing for the fight scenes and special effects alone. I defer my opinion on the film until after having seen the final installment. About Schmidt was dissapointing (imho). I know you’re all desperately waiting for the Tuscany photos to be uploaded, but at the moment I do not have access to my negatives nor to a scanner, so I probably won’t have any photos uploaded until September. Sorry. Finally, for all you code-monkeys out there who have seen The Matrix Reloaded, check out my reverse-engineering of agent smith.

The following is an excerpt from an article on the use of quantum computing which I found in the online edition of The Economist:

“The trick is to find a way to describe, in a manner useful to computer scientists, the unitary transformations that underlie a program. Dr Bettelli has managed to do it using object-oriented programming—long a buzzword among software developers.”

Any programmer knows that object-oriented programming is nothing new. It has been around and in widespread use for quite some time. But what struck me about the quote was not a lack of knowledge of the computing industry. What struck me was that the author seemed to go out of his way to use the word buzzword. This led me to the conclusion that in addition to terms such as information lifecycle management, action item and bioinformatics, the word buzzword has become in itself a buzzword.

After a delayed, then delayed some more then cancelled flight, we finally made it to Toscana, Italia a day and a half later than planned. Once we arrived, however, the experience proved to be quite enjoyable. The area has such a rich history and has produced such beautiful art. The only downside was that because tourism accounts for around 80 percent of the economy and the local universities cater to some 4,000 foreign (American) students, it did not completely seem like a foreign locale. In Florence, almost everyone spoke English and most the people we ran into were either tourists or students spending a leisurely semester with other Americans studying only a few things that were not really related to their prescribed course of study. All in all, however, it was a pleasurable experience. Photos documenting the even will be posted eventually.

Now I’m back home in Baltimore and it’s time to get back into the groove of studying, doing homework, writing essays and logging late hours in the ACM office to work on programming projects. Of course, now that I’m home I can once again shoot pool on a somewhat regular basis… something I was deprived of in Italy.

Synchronicity
all papers, projects, midterms
one week, then spring break.

In other news, I competed at a Soo Bahk Do tournament last weekend and won first place in the forms competition. Also this week, I was promoted to 2nd gup. As for the synchronicity mentioned above, I am priveleged to have a midterm today and a midterm on Wednesday plus a paper due on Wednesday and a project due on Friday. After that, it’s off to Italy for a week.

Anxiety plagued
longing to make my shots curve
at last, I massé

Hable con Ella was an excellent film. Some argue that it is Almodóvar’s best film so far. As of yet, I have only seen the film once, so I neither agree nor disagree — but I entertain the possibility. It was probably the best movie I’ve seen recently, and that is saying quite a bit since I am comparing it to Y Tu Mamá También, El Crimen del Padre Amaro, Heavenly Creatures, Huit Femmes and Alice et Martin. Naturally, I also highly recommend any of the aforementioned films. I didn’t quite get all of Huit Femmes when I saw it because, there were no subtitles, but I still enjoyed it. And the score was great.

In unrelated news, I finally gave a name to my not so new pool cue — Siofra.

Procail is working
and with nmh no less
my life is complete.