I volunteered to wait for a next flight. Hoping to get reimbursement to make up for the extra $80 (2 pieces of luggage * $15 + $50 over weight fee ) I had to pay for my luggage. They gave me a free flight coupon. I don't like that word "coupon". Instead of leaving at 9:30 am, I left for Washington DC at 12. Eventually got to Atlanta around 4, I believe. When I got there, I couldn't find my checked in luggage. After about 1 hour later, I figured out where the baggage service place was.
After I reported my missing luggage, I got a cab to the sublease I rented (over the internet). I called the landlord to let him know I was coming. But he didn't answer. But I had nowhere to go, so I left anywas. I gave the taxi driver a google maps print-out of how to get to the place from the airport WITH THE INSTRUCTIONS SIDE UP. Unfortunately, I only had $15 cash on me, and I had to either pay with a credit card- which I didn't have- or get more cash. I decided to stop at an ATM machine somewhere along the way.
But even after giving the taxi driver the google maps sheet, he couldn't figure out how to get to the place. I kept wondering: was the driver illiterate? Should I perhaps read to him the instructions? The problem was, we were wandering around for about 30 minutes already and according to maps.google.com, my future home was actually only about 15 minutes away.
It turns out he only saw the map, didn't notice to instructions on the other side. I suppose I expect too much out of people.
So I got to my sublease. Got charged $25.
The landlord wasn't there.
Luckily one of my future room mates was in the hallway.
She said "Can I help you?"
I said "Yeah, I'm living here."
She replied "Uh...you are? There aren't any rooms available."
I was in shock. I paid a $100 security deposit already. I told the landlord multiple times I was flying over May 25th.
Then I was angry. I shouldn't get angry. Being angry is bad.
Anyways, so I waited around the house and got sucked by a bunch of mosquitos while the other tenants of the house tried to call the landlord. Meanwhile, I was trying to call all the people I knew who lived in Atlanta. Luckily, Jeff was able to contact his parents. They were willing to let me chill at their place while I looked for a new home. Eventually the landlord's cousin came to try and help me out. The landlord still wasn't there.
He dropped me off at the train station.
I went to Jeff's parents house.
May 26th 2009 Good thing #1: Jeff's parents showed me a yahoo group called gtcfa which had a bunch of sublease postings. I found a cheap place ($260/month), and moved in. Good thing #2: Delta airlines delivered my luggage. I have my roller blades now Hyesoon introduced Elba and I to everyone else in the HPArch (High Performance(?) Architecture Group). I'll be working on something related to power dissipation. Elba's working on something related to compiler predication. There are 4 grad students: Jaekyu, Nagesh, Sunpyo, Minjang. I was given two papers to read: 1. HotLeackage: A Temperature-Aware Model of Subthreshold and Gate Leakage for Architects 2. Wattch: A Framework for Architectural-Level Power Analysis and Optimizations I felt a little overwhelmed. There was so much EE stuff. Back in my intro to modern physics class, I had a lot of trouble figuring voltages and currents. I guess imagining little electrons running around was too hard for me. I got a little worried. Then we had lunch at this great pizza place. Later on, I got a basic computer architecture book to read. Read about processors and cash. At first it was hard reading the textbook. I kept falling asleep. But I refused to leave until I had a basic understanding of everything. Check out the "Learning" subsection to read more about the technical stuff. Didn't leave till around 8:30. Went home. Couldn't sleep. There was a party next door.
May 28 2009 I am going to "implement a pipeline". I wasn't too sure what I was doing until I scanned this site: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cpp/generic_pipeline_cpp.aspx. So, there are two ways a computer could execute instructions. 1. sequentially 2. parallel-ly (?) Gonna go read.
May 29 2009 I don't think I like seminars. I felt like I was in class again. Maybe it was the florescent lighting. I kept nodding off. I have to develop a strategy to stay awake- not just for seminar purposes but for future studying and classes also. One would think after 14 years of schooling I'd already have a technique. I decided that this is going to be a casual blog. The goal of this site is to record my thoughts, experiences, as well as actual technical skills learned. Therefore, some parts may seem too personal and not related to DREU- but it's not. Because this whole experience exists only because of DREU. So I'm beginning to miss home and williams. I never realized how comfortable and protected I was. Here it's so lonely. I go to work, go back. I guess I have to freedom to visit whoever I want. Except after 9 pm, I'm always too scared of going outside. This is a big city. There are so many scraggly people on the streets. I don't like the way they look at me. I don't like feeling scared. I'm gonna go out there and deal with everything. Anyways. The seminar was kind of interesting. Rich Vuduc talked about why he researched and what he researched. Talked about developping computing power to shoulder other research such as... this. (my example, not Mr. Vuduc's) I started getting really lost when he whipped out formulas. Started talking about "flops", which were floating point instructions. He was basically trying to illustrate methods of implementing parallel programming through the example of trying to solve a simple matrix multiplication. Except, the amount of "parallelism" is limited by the amount of cache. I really don't like formulas. song of the day.
May 31, 2009 What the heck is a CUPS printer? or a CUPS Daemon? ugh. I don't even know what daemon is. oh. ok. I can't print. And what's the difference between lpr & lp? Who knew printing could eat up so much time. Oh, well. I guess I go do other things rather than try to figure out- this shouldn't be that difficult. brb. i'm gonna figure out how to print that stupid source code. NOW. oh. I feel dejected. lp test.txt -FAILED lpr -P omasum -FAILED lpr -P omasum-duplex -FAILED enscript -P omasum -FAILED enscript -P omasum-dupex -FAILED The printer looks fine. What about CUPS do I not understand? OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH THIS IS EXCITING. When I type "lpq -P omasum" (+/- duplex), it lists all my failed print jobs! YESH> i'm getting the commands right. apparently the printer is "not ready". ? why is it not ready? the printer itself says "ready". hmmm. there's someone else's file waiting to be printed in the queue. I wanted to try and kill that job. but i couldn't. now what? ooooook. now i give up. I had a good chat with my host parents yesterday. I feel more like a family with them. They're pretty cool. Suddenly I don't feel so alone anymore! i feel inspired to work. song of the day: :) back