Abflug nach Deutschland

(that is, departure to Germany for those of you who don't know German)

Yes, I'm flying again, this today my itinerary is SFO-IAH-AMS-FRA (that's San Francisco, Houston, Amsterdam, Frankfurt), and then a train to Saarbruecken. The plan is to fly to Germany for a conference and visit my brother on the way. I'm going to be there for 10 days. I'm all packed (well, except my laptop) and in an hour I'll be boarding the shuttle to the airport to start my journey.

In order to qualify for platinum I need about 3000 more miles. If I do not get any other trip funded this year, I'm considering doing a mileage run to West Palm Beach or to Boston. In the case of Boston, I might want to stay there for up to a week. Honolulu is also an option, although more expensive and with less miles.

Yahoo! Games

On Monday I spent my evening playing board games at Yahoo! If you are thinking I spent my time staring at a computer screen, then you are wrong. I drove to Yahoo's campus in Sunnyvale (about 16 minutes from my house) and joined a meeting of South Bay Boardgamers, a group that meets every Monday on Yahoo!'s campus to play board games.

Today I played Vegas Showdown and Clippers. The former has (surprisingly enough) nothing to do with gambling (but a lot to do with bidding), and the latter features ships of different colors that do not belong to any of the players. Both games were interesting and full of strategy (Clippers more so).

This is the second time I attend such a meeting (last time it was Silicon Valley Boardgamers). In both times I've learned new games I've never seen before. I'm enjoying myself very much here.

Licensed!

Today I got a license. Not for software, but a driver's license. As of today, I am a fully licensed driver in the state of California. As I have mentioned earlier, I had to pass both a written and a driven exam. Today I passed the driven exam and immediately got a temporary license.

My plastic license will be mailed in 10 days, and then I will be just like any American with a Social Security Number, credit and debit card, and a driver's license. I can't vote and don't have a US passport, but then again, most Americans don't vote or have a passport either.

I see dead people

Today was a Saturday, and in the US most things are still open on Saturday, so I decided to go to the Tech museum in San Jose, which was recommended to me by several people at Stanford.

The Tech by itself is an average science museum, not too impressive. However, now at The Tech there is a temporary exhibition called Body Worlds 2. This special exhibition shows real bodies of dead people who were preserved using a special technique called plastination. The exhibiion shows full bodies and body parts and demonstrates the structure and function of various organs in the human body.

The most stunning part of this exhibition were various diseased organs, such as kidneys with tumors, smokers' lungs, and aortas with fatty residue. I have less enjoyed the bodies places in various poses, as I do not think these poses serve a real scientific purpose, but only have artistic merit.

After completing the body exhibition, I returned to the main museum and toured the permanent exhibitions. The exhibitions were quite standard science museum exhibitions, though I liked the fact that many exhibitions allowed you to view stuff online after your visit. For example, here is me caught red-handed by a thermal camera (click to enlarge):

Update: Here are some glowing bacteria I have made:

New gallery and pictures from Mexico

I am experimenting with some photo gallery software. I have just installed Gallery on my hosted server and uploaded my pictures from Mexico including pictures taken by the other travellers on the trip to the pyramids.

You can visit the gallery site at http://gallery.8LN.org/. I will probably upload more photos later.

You can also try an experimental map showing where some pictures were taken using GPS coordinates.

Errand day

After returning from Mexico, I had a lot of things to take care of. I got lots of mail in my office: A new miniSD card and a new SIM for my iPAQ, an American Express credit card, a and VISA debit card. I also had to print a paper I have to review and read a backlog of Hebrew e-mails I couldn't read on my iPAQ (I still have a backlog of blog posts to read).

After taking care of all that in Stanford and eating lunch, I headed for the Social Security office in Redwood City. After I few wrong turns I have finally arrived and had to wait in line for about an hour, so I read the paper I have brought with me. When my turn finally arrived, I submitted the form and was told I'd get a social security card that's valid for employment in six weeks, however the number will remain the same.

Two blocks from there is a California DMV office, where I applied for a driver's license and passed the written exam (with only one mistake). I was issued a temporary license on the spot and scheduled a driven test for two weeks later.

After finishing these errands, I returned to Stanford and joined another event of the Stanford Jewish community, held in the Sukkah. There I met another new post-doc (only a week here) that knew me from FishEye. I told him some useful information about getting a car and a driver's license and we exchanged e-mails.

The event ended at 9pm, and it was just time to go see House on FOX. It seems that the TV method of seeing shows has the major disadvantage of having commercial breaks interleaved with the show, however you can see shows only 3 hours late (we're on the west coast) and before they arrive on file sharing.

Today I came to the office early as I forgot the charger of my iPAQ and my battery has run out. I'm still waiting for the extended battery I ordered to arrive. No special plans for today, though I do plan to begin doing actual research.

P.S. check out the posts from Mexico, as I have added links and pictures.

Some facts about Meixco

Mexico is a federal state, and its capital is located in a special federal district.

They are somewhat short on names: The country, the capital, and one of the states all share the same name: Mexico.

The Mexicans call their capital "Ciudad de Mexico" which translates to English as "Mexico City".

Many companies here are called something-mex: The phone company Telmex, the bank Banamex and the gas station Pemex.

They use the $ sign to designate Pesos (worth about 10 cents) and sometimes the prices still look reasonable even in US dollars.

They use the letter E to designate Parking.

Mexico's major international airport in Mexico City is inside the city limits.

And finally, when they say San Francisco here, they refer to the saint, not the city, unless you're flying there, like I am.