It's 2005 at last. I took a bunch of pictures of the various rituals surrounding this event (champagne, gezelligheid and the total anarchy of privately purchased fireworks). Unfortunately it's a little late for me to reliably download those from my camera, so I'll put them up later.

In the meantime: thanks a bunch to those of you who have somehow improved my 2004 experience The plan for this year? Work my ass off and pretend I mind... like always. Also: to get more sleep. Starting now. Cheers!

First post from Amsterdam, as evidenced by this shot of me and AJ (taken with my brother's Olympus). I'm packaging an application and my brother's installing stuff. This is what we do when we're on break. Scary isn't it. I took some pictures with my camera, but yah I don't have the cord with me.

No news other than that. My Second Christmas Day at home was somewhat similar to the First, except dinner was at my parents and I peeled potatos instead of baking a tart Between meals I've gotten some work done on my Winter project, about which I will have to write a proposal soon... Someone remind me before the 15th please?

Well I'm afraid that's all I have to report from Amsterdam. I'll have more tomorrow as AJ and I explore the city. Or sit behind the computers all day. Cheers.

Merry Christmas people!

As is my tradition, I have very little to say that's actually of interest to... anyone but me. Yesterday I went to my cousin's place together with Kim for her birthday, bringing some teddy bears that I picked up at the local Hamilton Monopolist before I left.

Later that night I went over to my sister's Potluck Christmas dinner, bringing with me a trusty chocolate tart. This is where I remained the rest of the evening, as you can see in Exchibit A (second picture down). Eelco took this without my knowledge (initially anyway ). We even played the Dutch version of Pass the Pigs, which was hilarious. *monotone voice*

I spent all of today in the house. I provided some minor dinner-making services and took pictures of the rainbow (top picture). It was a good 1st Christmas Day, and my first one at home in two years. More news on Christmas at Home, Day Two as the story unfolds. Cheers.

Oh is that not how the Beach Boys song goes?

Not much to report over here. I've finally gotten some work done, thanks to Charlotte Jablonksi who was kind enough to go after my computer at Colgate twice to turn it back on -- thanks a bunch!

I've actually coded a bunch today, which is fortunate. I also got a haircut the other day. Amazingly productive days considering I'm at home and still sleeping off my exam-week... erm... lack of sleep. A week ago around this time I was desperately cleaning my room, doing my laundry and packing at the same time. Great improvement *yawn*

Well, I'll do my best to be more interesting next time. Right now it's Kaleena calling time...

Being home is always a little surreal for the first couple of hours. I guess that's probably because I seriously count down the hours when I'm on the plane to Amsterdam. Then, when the count finally hits 0, I just basically sit there and do the dazed+tired thing. Usually I manage to not drool on myself, but not always. Once we get to Rotterdam I twist my neck to see the Erasmus Bridge. The general skyline looked particularly sweet this time around, with the sun just coming up behind it as we approached Rotterdam from the NW. I wonder how much has changed since the last time I went there.

Well anyhow, I'm slowly getting in the groove of things over here. I had a slight time zone malfunction this 'morning,' so I woke up at 12:50pm despite having gone to bed around 0:30 that morning. Apparently my mom woke me up at around 8am, but I don't really remember much of that... oops.

Kaleena will be travelling to Korea tomorrow, so yah: safe travels to you and bring us many pictures please

Colgate Book Exchange advertising hits Newark Airport

In my never ending quest to out-spend the Colgate Book Store on advertising, my table tents have now spread to Newark Liberty International Airport. Ok so actually I just put it there for the picture...

I'm HOOOOOOOOOOOOME This is just a quick post to stay in the groove of things. Basically, it comes down to:

- Our trips went pretty much as scheduled; Kaleena and I parted ways in Syracuse (where we had adjacent gates )

- Both our trips were rather long. People on airplanes are annoying.

So much for the common denominators. I landed at Amsterdam Airport around 7:45 this morning, local time. During my trip I experienced the following nuisances:

- Screaming kids. Not as bad as they can be during the flight, but during my (long) layover in New Jersey they seemed to be following me around for the sole purpose of making phone conversations impossible.

- People deafness/dumbness. Ok people, when they tell you to go have your I 94's taken from your passport at the information desk, this does NOT mean "Line up by the gate door that's locked and not going to open for another 30 minutes anyway." See the subtle difference?

The I94 is a small document that gets stapled to your passport when you enter the US. It's green for temporary visitors and white for visa holders. It *must* be taken out by the airline when you leave, or getting back into the US at a later date will be a royal pain (or so I've heard). The first thing I do when I get to my last stop inside the US is *make* the airline representative take it.

It's about time to get out of here; it's starting to snow constantly and it's pretty cold out. Enough for me to break out my Russian-style hat anyway.

Well, today wasn't so exciting. Kaleena took her last exam tomorrow (while I slept in). The rest of the day was pretty much all running errands. Oh, interesting story this morning: I won $50 for filling out the Source survey W00t!

Also took a little trip to the Colgate Book Store today, where book buy back is still going strong (see pictures of the lines ). Lots of disgruntled people there because, apparently, they really don't pay that much for a lot of the books they buy back...

It's time to get going. Still need to do laundry and clean my room :-/ Cheers.

I'm starting to get ready for my last final; pretty exciting stuff. After that I get to clean my room, burn all sorts of stuff on CD-R, vacuum, do my laundry and run various errands that I still need to do. Packing would be a good idea too, of course.

In the can't get enough of that department

Here's some pictures I took on my way up to my Economics exam yesterday. I should probably start finding something else to take pictures of; Taylor Lake (read: Pond) is getting a little old. Unfortunately it's the only 'scenic' place I pass by every day. Maybe I'll stop by the Quarry at some point in January ( = piece of hill with a giant chunk of rock taken out of it to build the East and West dorms back in the day). It's quite cool looking; I think people have bonfires there from time to time.

Ok so three exams is not quite as relaxing as I thought it would be. Apparently the knowledge of having 'only three' makes it harder to study (?)...

Anyway, here's a screenshot of Kaleena's Puppy Preschool project. It's a simulation of a... puppy preschool (duh...). Based on how much exposure the puppies have to the classroom, nap area, snack table and playground, their properties change. Our next project... to take over the world with puppies. OK not quite; first we have to get this in. Quite a cool little project. I wish I got to do stuff like that

Well it's officially time for me to get back to studying. I can take Econ whenever I want this week, but I'm insisting on taking it at the usual time. Why? I really don't know.

Here's my final exam week schedule:

1. Monday 12:00-14:00 - German (includes oral)
2. Tuesday 9:00-11:00 - Economics (can also take as self-scheduled...)
3. Thursday 15:00-18:00 - Computer Science 304

Note the lack of a fourth exam That's because the presentation I did for COSC 420 last Thursday.

So basically I'll be packing on Friday and leaving on Saturday at around 8:30. My flight leaves Syracuse at around 14:00, taking me to Newark in about an hour. My flight there leaves a couple of hours later and should arrive in Amsterdam around 8:15 on December 19th. Adds up to about 18 hours of travelling; not bad.

Well, my presentation didn't go so bad (see slides on the right). Now I get to do a homework and a lab for Professor Sanchis! W0o0O0t! So let's outline the situation:

• It's the last day of classes
• Two assignments.

Oh well... Guess I'll get going soon and be grateful my other professors didn't give me 2 assignments each Time to get at it... cheers! See y'all in 9.5 days

Well, we're officially back, having experienced somewhat of a downer after an otherwise awesome weekend. Needless to say we'll be trying again at some point. While Kaleena was interviewing, I was walking through DC looking for Murky Coffee. Failing that, and finding the Library of Congress still closed, I finally ended up at the cyberSTOP cafe, halfway across town near Dupont Circle. It's a nice place, although I really wish they'd make it non smoking. My clothes really stank when I came out of that place.

After Kaleena was done we grabbed some dinner (or really a late lunch for the both of us) and stopped by the White House for a picture. Ignore the truck. As you can see the architecture is a little bit different from some of the other houses. The houses in DC remind me a little bit of home, mainly because they use a lot of brick (much more than in Upstate New York anyway).

Here at Colgate, it's colder, wetter and generally less cool than in Washington. On top of that we have to do work, too!

I probably won't be able to post to this site from Washington, so everyone please have a great weekend. On the bright side, I will hopefully be taking plenty of pictures to post sometime next week.

Unfortunately my week's going to be ridiculously busy after I get back, so I can't guarantee I'll be able to post when I get back on Tuesday either. Oh well. In the meantime, here's a shot of Kaleena wearing her new multi-colored footglove. Bet you weren't expecting *that*

Good news -- Kaleena finally got her digital camera today. Guess she's all set for her trip to Korea now. The top picture is the main result so far. Joepie says 'Haai!'

Colgate Book Exchange

Thankgiving break seems like a long time ago now. I've thrown myself at a little project the last couple of days: improving the Colgate Book Exchange. Have a look at the screenshots; this is what the site looks like now. The basic concept is still the same: the site lets you keep track of a 'Books to Sell' and a 'Books to Buy' list.

I didn't just change the layout and the graphics, though. The most important new 'feature' is integration with Amazon.com. For every search result, a little Amazon icon indicates whether that book is available. The search result detail also includes the lowest offered price at Amazon. Clicking on the icon takes you straight to that book's page on Amazon.

The most obvious advantage is that if you can't get a certain book from another Colgate student, you can easily pick it up on Amazon. This makes it more useful to keep track of your 'Books to Buy' list on the site. It also forces the students who are selling books to price their books competitively. On top of that, the integration script I wrote to fetch this information from Amazon was a very cool little excercise in web services programming, and the little icons have a very important geekness factor.

By the way, note that books listed on the Colgate Book Exchange are *not* automatically cross-listed on Amazon. I figured that'd be ever so slightly 'beyond the scope' of the Book Exchange (read: although it'd be awesome, it would be way too time consuming to implement).

On that note, I have a couple more things to do. The front page needs some instructions (and some 'terms of service'). After that, I'll be bulk e-mailing and putting up posters like last semester... Oh joy.