nondeterministic . net

The technical instructors have arrived. I cannot believe how far MEET has come since two years ago.

And I wish I didn’t still have a thesis to finish this week.

I wanted to finish out the series (1, 2, 3) with a photo of folks in the lab… but sadly that was not to be.

So instead, you get the slightly edited output of a utwho command, showing seven first- and second-year students hard at work.

And a photo of an ant who’s trying a little too hard to impress the queen.

Use the machines: check!

Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.10      Generic January 2005
  __  __ _____ _____ _______
 |  \/  |  ___|___  |__   __|
 | \  / | |__   __| |  | |
 | |\/| |  __| |__  |  | | *Welcome to the MEET Sun Ray Lab*
 | |  | | |___ ___| |  | |
 |_|  |_|_____|_____|  |_|

maxg@solarize:~$ uptime
  7:37pm  up 8 day(s),  8:43,  8 users,  load average: 0.65, 0.60, 0.54
maxg@solarize:~$ utwho 
  2 Payflex.500c28a500130100             mark    
  4 Payflex.500c289500130100             itay    
  7 Payflex.500c289200130100             mohammad
 10 Payflex.500c28a300130100             manal   
 12 Payflex.500c289300130100             wissam  
 13 Payflex.500c289000130100             lior    
 14 Payflex.500c28a000130100             leemor  

Set up the machines: check.

Get the machines: check.

Lisa ("nothing can be bad about a day that starts with theater") reminded me of the one ostensibly interesting note from my increasingly less recent weekend trip to Boston.

I was chatting with the grad student who kindly hosted me for the visit (and whom I had never previously met) when the subject of theater came up. In particular, my history with the craft.

And quite suddenly, he realized that he had seen me before, in 2002, when he had attended a theater production in Kresge rehearsal room A from which he could only recall one line: "she is spherical, like a globe!"

Wonderful.

And to answer your (Lisa’s) question: considering it poured today in Haifa for a short time, I have no idea what the weather will be like in a few weeks.

• Took a walk along the Rhine and found a synagogue destroyed on Kristallnacht.

• Visited Beethoven-Haus Bonn.

• Went to the Arithmeum museum of mechanical calculating machines.

• Took a 30-minute bus ride from Bonn to Köln.

• Took a 20-minute flight from Köln to Frankfurt.

• Watched The Man somewhere over the Balkans, which is not the easiest movie to “edit for content.”

• Et cetera & so forth.

An interesting keynote this morning. Perhaps this is old news to the VI-<3 folks, but see Section IV on the 11th page (numbered 177) of this paper by Thompson et al.

And the problem with energized, engaging speakers is that their presentations seem to the listener to go by so much faster than soporific, unintelligible speakers.

And the problem with the latter is that there are so many of them.

And note that I didn’t say “interesting” or “uninteresting.” The ‘interestingness’ of a talk’s content is orthogonal to how well it’s presented.

That was fun, and I think it went well. So:

Don’t forget to experience the fury of… Modular Generic Verification of LTL Properties for Aspects.

I have a few points from my previous trip still to post… but now it’s time for AOSD.06, and to get ready for my FOAL talk on Modular Generic Verification of LTL Properties for Aspects at 11am tomorrow.