mountolivet

Since I seem to be in the mood of tackling health issues :D, here is another one:

This article says why whole wheat bread may not be so good for you. Basically it causes a spike in sugar levels. (and seems to do so even more than white bread...) The best option from this point of view is sourdough bread.

I realize it's only one study, but it amazes me how many of the newly created health foods are in fact not so healthy and even dangerous.

I've also read that the amounts of fiber recommended are too high (people used to peel their apples... they still do in some countries like Italy or Japan). However, I have to do more research on the topic before commenting further.

This must be the best thing I've heard in a while. A few students(won't give names) in the HCI course are thinking of reporting their professor to the dean of math, because the poor professor didn't want to give an extension to their project... :| The price of democracy?
(Although I'm quite sure they won't follow through, but it still striked me as an extraordinarily crazy idea)

This is a very readable essay on the status of P vs NP written by Fortnow (2009).
Today I realized there are exactly 2 months and 2 weeks until my flight home. I should start doing some actual work if I want to get a paper draft by then. The problem is ... finding a problem to work on. I have too many random ideas (not to mention the various issues unrelated to research). Need some discipline.
I meant to see more people when coming here, but that will have to wait. Sorry if I said I will visit you and didn't (or if I didn't say anything at all).

I went to Toronto to visit people. It was good. This evening I bought two dictionaries (French and German) and two french novels (written in French) (Malraux and a random author). I managed to read a number of pages from the random author on the bus.
A funny moment: One of the people I met, K, asks me: Have you met Iulia Popescu? She's a common acquaintance.
Me: No, I don't know her.
K: Me neither.

I am back to Waterloo. This (likely) means I will post more often than during summer (that's probably not going to be hard).
This weekend I'm going to Toronto to visit people I haven't seen in ages.
The last weeks were hectic. Finishing the work project, traveling to Puerto Rico for a few days, then to Washington and Boston. Overall, I went out much more. It's hard not to, given how social the environment at Google is.

Yesterday afternoon I arrived in Waterloo with 2 suitcases and no place to live. I left them at Turnkey Desk and started house hunting. I found a place by the evening. It's uptown, right next to the bus stops and a grocery store (Value Mart). I dropped by the uptown mall at 6:30 pm and realized all the stores were closed... But that's a detail. I really miss my friends during the summer. They left far away and I don't know when I'll see them again :((. And don't tell me 'such is life'. One day I'm going to settle in one place.

Diving into work will hopefully fix this. And sorry to start right away with a super-emo posting.

Commenting out random portions of your code and forgetting you did so is a perfect way to imagine various bugs due to race conditions.

Announcement emails regarding an issue usually start with the warning: "If you are not involved with this issue, you can stop reading now".
Here comes an email discussing reduction of time wasted in meetings:
"If too many meetings have already reduced your brain to pulp and you now have the attention span of a chipmunk on espresso, you can stop reading now."

It's been a while since my last post. I'm usually tired in the evening. But I've been alive this whole while. I also did my best to "get a life", and actually succeeded.

Today was an awesome day. I brought cake and ate it with my team and other interns. My three Polish friends came to my desk and sang happy birthday in Polish. It was one of those rare moments that you remember years after years, that seems surreal at the moment it is happening, and even more so as time passes by.

Yesterday night I went to a party at Sidetracks (Queens) with a Romanian gang. For the reference, this is the first time I ever went to a club (the website says it's a bar, but people dance there and that's what I mean).

It was really awesome.

I met a Spanish diplomat who had lived in Romania and spoke the language fluently. Apparently it's hard to learn :(. I guess  it's because of the grammar, which hasn't changed much (If you think Latin grammar is hard, then yes it is).

Otherwise the vocabulary is close to Italian and other Neo-Latin languages, with some Slavic, Turkish, and German influences, in that chronological order. In the 19th century we massively imported from French.
Thus, sometimes, I may not know how to place English adverbs in a sentence depending on their place/time quality, but will understand less common words.

Having said that, it happened more than once to sit on the train trying to understand a conversation, to only realize they are speaking Spanish!

Today I've been feeling drowsy the entire day, despite not having consumed any alcohol (!) I think I lost the ability of pulling all nighters...

Today after lunch we went for a walk to see the suspended park that opened in Chelsea. A smaller, modern version of the Gardens of Semiramis. There used to be a subway line in that place and they left some tracks for design. Trees, benches, grass and various shiny herbs typical for rail tracks kind of climate. The only missing part would have been a waterfall with water pouring down the street.