tkh’s blog

Driver’s license

Last night I noticed that I can’t drive in Japan until I renew my driver’s license. My japanese driver’s license expired in October, so I have to renew it while I stay in Japan this time. I plan to do that in January, but I want to driver a car in December, so I went to AAA to get an international driver’s license. You just need to bring two 2″x2″ photos and $10 and you’ll get the license in ten minutes. Now I can drive passenger cars and *any* motorcycles in Japan, though I can’t ride motorcycles that have engine bigger than 400cc with my Japanese license.

Amtrak

I was driving in downtown after looking for some gifts and saw an Amtrak train was at the station. This was the first time, so I parked my car near the station and walked toward the train. As there is no gate, I could reach the platform. The train was not that long, but as you can see in the pictures, the cars are bigger compared to trains in Japan. There are sleeping cars, a dining car, a sightseeing car, and several coach class cars. I think the final destination would be LA or somewhere in California.

Convocation

I attended the school of engineering convocation for my friend this morning. Surprisingly, there are two graduation celemony at UNM. I don’t know if it’s popular in the US, but there is university wide commencement and school/college divided convocation. Some students attend both, but most students attend one of those. Every Ph.D or Master is hooded by his/her advisor. Hood colors are different for degree level. Ph.Ds are deep-blue, and Masters are orange, and Bachelors wear silver gown and not hooded. Here is the picture I’ve taken after the convocation.

Dinner

I had a dinner with my fellow student from Jordan. He’s got a Ph.D this semester and will go back to Jordan at the end of January, so I really wanted to have some Middle Eastern foods with him. We went to a Jordanian restaurant just across a street from the laboratory we are working. There we’ve ordered combination plates and it was so big. We had some kind of appetizer that I don’t remember the names, falafa, and the main plate is beef kebab and chicken, and rice. It was delicious. I really regretted that I had forgot to bring my camera. Then we had several cups of arabian coffee. It is very unique to make. You put a ground arabica coffee bean and sugar in a coffee cup, and pour hot water. It’s strong, but very tasty.

We also talked about various things about Middle East and current political situations. There are too many things to write, but I’m tired, so will update later.

Lots of updates

Sometimes Apple goes crazy on releasing software updates. In two days, they released Mac OS X 10.3.2, iTunes 4.2, QuickTime 6.5, and Xcode 1.1. There are several more for specific applications. Looks like Apple engineers want to have a happy Christmas holiday, but what if the OS update introduces serious problem? Just kidding…

Chinese food

While I was working on the take home exam, I was not able to cook foods. So, I often go out to get foods. The best one was chinese foods I bought at the chinese food store. See the photo of the lunch box. It also came with the soup, and only $3.99. As I wasn’t able to eat it all at once, I had half of it for lunch and the rest for dinner. It’s very cost effective, and delicious.

Finished…

Finally I finished the final exam. It was very hard and one problem was elusive, but somehow I got a solution and just wrote it up. I think around 25% of enrolled students will pass this course. I hope to be in this group. Yes, it’s a pretty hard class. Anyway the semester is over. Now I play the computer game!

dia

I’ve been working on the take home exam for the algorithms class, and drew a diagram with dia. When I tried to export it to EPS file, it crashed. I thought it may be some gnome issue, so I installed the plane gtk version of dia and tried the same thing, but crashed. I was so frustrated. I exported the diagram to fig format so I can do the conversion in xfig. When I loaded the diagram in xfig, all the texts were converted to Courier font, and line properties can’t be edited in xfig. Now I have to draw the diagram again. Bummer!

The Idiot Son of an Asshole

Listen to the pank song called The Idiot Son of an Asshole. It was circulated in CS department’s chat list. It’s very funny and enjoyable. I’m very glad that there is virtually no Republican defending Bush anymore. I think there are so many dumb things Bush has been done so even Republican can’t defend him anymore. I feel better because I’ve seen many Americans who hate Bush.

BTW, you should put the Google bombs: miserable failure and unelectable. You don’t know what google bombs are? Just type those words in the google serach form.

Exam

Just turned in a paper for a class. Now I can concentrate on the take-home exam. It’s like torture…