More snow and ice

I think we have a foot of snow. I haven't measured that, but it snowed for a few hours and now everything is white and beautiful. The twigs are covered by ice that fell all night long.
Which brings about more photos to upload:

Snow!

After wishing for a foot of snow, it started snowing yesterday evening. It hasn't got to an entire foot, but we do have about half a foot already, with more snow to come in the evening and tomorrow morning.
Meanwhile, enjoy the photos:









And how can one post photos of snow without dogs playing in it?

Weekly Summary: The Dawn of a New Era?

Well, I guess the major thing that happened this week was the inauguration of president Barack Obama. Everywhere one went everyone talked about it: in the news, in the halls, in talk shows. Some claimed that the presidential oath was not conducted correctly. We saw the inauguration live, staying at home on Tuesday until the afternoon. The speech was supposed to be the most important piece of the ceremony, and it did sound very good and appealing, although I am not sure that it appealed that much to the American ears. Obama called them to leave their old ways and be responsible. He went as far as blaming them for the current economic crisis, because they didn't work hard enough. I couldn't agree more, but I suspect that the American people doesn't like to be reprimanded in such a bold way. In general they don't like to be criticized. Criticism is a big issue here, and should be handled with extreme care. On the other hand, the speech repeated parts said by president Bush in various other occasions, as we saw in Jon Stewart's show. Finally, the best thing about the inauguration was the enthusiastic crowd. To summarize here is a beautiful picture that shows the crowd, using Microsoft's amazing technology: Photosynth. Personally, I think that Obama should be a magician to keep all his promises.

The rest of the week went by quiet briefly. We had a lot of work, as always. D received an offer for internship from a company she was keen on working for in the coming summer. She is likely to accept it, but there are still uncertainties regarding the scope of her position. If they are satisfactorily cleared she'll probably work for them in the summer, which might pose a problem with the current work she has. However, the current position will lead to a coding position in the summer, and this is something that D is not looking for. I guess you can call it "good troubles".
Generally, the next year is still vague for us. I still don't know if I will teach next year or become a full time student. From the economical point of view, we certainly need the money, but on the other hand my studies are not progressing well enough. I think that the department heads are still not sure what to do with next year.

A group of pro-Israeli students and organizations launched a display at the university that supports Israel's last offensive in Gaza. The display is an answer to the previous pro-Palestinian held at the same location. I think that none of the displays went too well, and most people succeeded in ignoring the two. Those that did come were probably people that have already taken sides in this issue, and so nobody has really changed his or her opinion on the matter. Nonetheless, it was a good oportunity for us to meet a few Jewish students and maybe link us to the Jewish/Israeli community here. So far the only offer we have is from a religious group organized by a Rabbi here, and I guess we'll prefer to keep away from that group. Hopefully, there will be other beginnings. I think that we need some kind of social life.

On Friday we went to a cabaret show called: "Bringing Sexy Back". We won tickets to this show when we won a world trivia with a few of D's friends from school two months ago, and it was time to do it. Anyway, I have to say that the term sexy should be removed from the title. I think that the women actors in the cabaret were cled in more clothes than most Israeli women wear on a regular day at the office. It's so typical to the conservatism in Ohio/Kentucky to define this show as sexy (and even rated "R" for sexy and adult related jokes). I don't want to waste too many words on it: it was mostly boring and not funny. Some gags were fine, and the singers were OK, but that's it.

On the other hand, we have too many TV shows to follow right now: The 5th season of Lost premiered, Arik is still in Israeli Survivor, Fringe has returned with a few more episodes, and Heroes Season 4 should be back in February. After complaining that there's not enough TV, now we don't have time for all the TV and work.

And finally, the weather surprised us with two days of above freezing temperatures. It even got to +15 Celsius on Friday. Don't worry, it went below freezing on Saturday and snowed today. I like the snow, and -5 or even -10 are not that bad, after all. I just hope that it will not get to -20 again. And I want a foot of snow! By the way, we realized that we measure snow accumulation in American units, simply because we hadn't had the oportunity of measuring snow accumulation back home. :-)

Have a great week.

Weekly update: God bless America, and the rest of the world too

This is the end of a long weekend, the "Martin Luther King" day was celebrated today in honor of this great leader that was assassinated for having a dream. Combine this with the upcoming inauguration of the first African-American president and you have a reason for celebrating human rights and equality in the USA. Is it so indeed? I still feel that there is a large gap between the poor and the rich, where the poor are usually members of the minorities and the rich are members of the white majority, and perhaps this gap is even increasing. In one of Cincinnati's more upscale shopping malls, the Kenwood Towne Centre Mall, we saw that almost all the shoppers were white, while the people cleaning the food-court area were black. This gap, in my view, with its widening and almost unbridgable distance, is one of the biggest challenges that the American society needs to overcome. You could claim that Israel is following the same example, with increasing gaps between poor and rich. To this I can say that: you're right, it does, as mentioned before. However, it is still not as bad as it is here. And, finally, except the bad example we have with Ethiopian-born Israelis, the difference is not based on racial discrimination or the tone of the skin. Again, this might change in Israel as well.

One of the customs of a long weekend is shopping. We have decided to follow the tradition and went shopping today. Part of it was the tradition, but more importantly it was Circuit City going out of business sale. The prices were not as low as one would expect from this kind of a sale, but still, I managed to buy a good Sony Vaio laptop for less than $700 (after taxes). D couldn't find the media player she wanted to buy, but we decided to get one online. There's nothing like tradition.

The previous week was full of work and studies, but not only that. D started working for a company that her professors have found. The people in this company are certain that D and her friend will continue working for them during the internship part of their studies, which starts in the summer. There is no guarantee of that, though, and D continues to look for internship options. I handed my first assignment in the degree. As I mentioned in one of the previous updates, the professor teaching this course is K. I don't get to go to the lectures themselves because I teach at the same time. However, it is easy for me to ask the professor questions regarding the homework, and occasionally help him correct problems with the solutions manual that accompany the textbook. Therefore, it seems to be beneficial to both sides of the bargain (or as some call it "the win-win spirit").

I also had time to play a bit with Windows 7 beta on my old (very old) laptop. You can read about my initial enthusiasm, and later admission that my archaic laptop is not cut for this. As a new user of Windows Vista (installed on the laptop I purchased today) I don't think it is horrible, but it does become a pain when it requires you to authorize every single thing you do. It seems that Microsoft has decided to eliminate some of the pain in 7, and perhaps improve the performance of the operating system. My conclusion is: if you have time to play with it on a spare computer, especially if it meets the requirements, you are welcome to give it a shot. It will probably be better than Vista. Perhaps it's Vista Service Pack 2. It is definitely similar to Vista in many aspects.

This week was as cold as your mother in law. The temperatures went down to -19 Celsius on Friday morning, when we left to the university. This is subzero even in Fahrenheit's scale, in which the zero measures the freezing of a water / salt mixture. This may mean that the roads will be frozen even with the use of salt to prevent it. I think it has been below zero Celsius for more than a week now, with the occasional improvement when it snows. There isn't much snow, though, only an inch or two when it really snows. That's disappointing for me. I want some accumulation on the ground to play with the snow, build a snowman perhaps, and make a snow angel. So far all we have is a thin white coating, which doesn't thaw since it's cold, but doesn't accumulate either.

One final note regarding Gaza: I'm glad that this cycle of violence is finally over, and I do hope that Hamas has learned its lesson. I don't feel we'll be that lucky though. Only time will tell who has emerged from this conflict with the upper hand, and what will be the Israeli response to every rocket, which will undoubtedly be launched. As I have been saying in recent years, Israel should react with full power to any attack on its citizens. I think that if we had done so 3 years ago we wouldn't have to cause so much damage now. I also think that the international community has yet again showed that it doesn't mind when Jews are being killed. Luckily, we live in a conservative state in the US, where the general public supports Israel actions, but we did have a Palestinian display at the students' center at UC. As I understand, the Jewish and Israeli organizations are working to set up a pro-Israeli display to counter that one.

7 is dead

The experiment with Windows 7 has failed.
It "freezes" too many times, probably because of driver issues or incompatibility to my old hardware. I still think that Microsoft has improved Vista and that this improvement (Service Pack 2 so to speak) is now Windows 7. Enjoy it if you have a compatible hardware.

The question now is: 7 is dead, who is the next OS on my laptop?

"As cold as your mother in law"*

It's -17 degrees Celsius now in Cincinnati.
It was -17 degrees Celsius when we left the university on our way home.
It's also windy. That brings the "feels like" bar to -27 Celsius.

This is the coldest temperature I have ever experienced

Here's a screenshot of two different sources that confirm it, on a Windows 7 desktop.


* The quoted phrase is from one of D's professors.

Windows 7 Beta - day 2

After my previous post on playing with Windows 7, I have experienced some "freezes". So far I haven't been able to locate exactly where the problem is, but I suspect it is related somehow to the fact that Windows Media Player is unable to deal with my old video adapter. This is only a preliminary suspicion, and perhaps there are more or different reasons for the "freezes". When the display freezes, I cannot do anything to know and have to shut down Windows 7.
Another annoying thing that I suspect is that the system shuts down whenever it tries to put the laptop to sleep. I have canceled the automatic sleep mode and it appears to have stopped the involuntary restarts of Windows.
Well, a few hiccups are to be expected from a Beta version, especially if it's running on hardware that is not supposed to control it.

Playing with Windows 7 Beta

Those of you who know me (which, as far as I know, are all my 3 readers :-)), should know by now that I am a geek who likes to play with the newest and shiniest operating systems. No, I didn't try to run Apple's OS X on my computer, though I had thought about it in the past. I decided to come back to Microsoft, who had just released the beta version of the newest 7, available for download here.
What can I say about it so far?
First of all I would like to mention that my veteran laptop, which has been the playground for so many versions of operating systems (Windows XP SP1, SP2, SP3, Kubuntu 7.04, 7.10, 8.04, 8.10, and the KDE version of OpenSuse 11). It is almost 5 years old, and as such it has 1.5 GHZ CPU, only 750 MB of RAM, and an old ATI Radeon Mobility 9200 video adapter. The latter two specifications are much less than the minimum required to run 7. Nonetheless, the setup procedure went quite smoothly. I am happy to say that, finally, this Windows is probably the fastest, and simplest, version of Windows to install. Everything take about 20 minutes and you're done. Unfortunately, unlike Linux, the distribution does not come with extra packages like an Office suite, antivirus, and other useful packages. Still, for Windows it's pretty nice, and it's free (after all you are a Beta tester) to use until September.

After the installation has ended (it took two reboots in the installation process, plus two other reboots for updates after the installation, which is stupid, because the entire system was ready for download only a day ago) the system loaded up. The GUI looks nice and slick. Very similar to the Vista one, only with the new taskbar showing only icons and not window's names. The Aero glass could not load on my machine, because my video adapter is not capable of doing it. Still, most of the features work, and it can run Gadgets. I tried the CPU/Memory gadget and it showed a surprisingly low CPU and memory usage. Surprising, because the 750MB on my machine are less than the required 1 GB and the memory used was in the range of 50%-75%.
The system was fast to respond on this archaic machine as well. I would say that it was almost as quick as a fresh installation of Windows XP if only I could remember how a new installation of Windows XP runs on that machine.

As far as drivers are concerned I had two problems. One was solved by the automatic driver update that Windows 7 ran on the computer. The other one was with my video adapter. This card has not been supported for Vista by the manufacturer, and Microsoft added a Vista driver capable of running Aero by themselves. This driver, once installed on my computer, has caused the display to flicker without end, and I had to roll-back to a default VGA driver, which lowers the display resolution. Finally, I have decided to try my old XP driver from the package that had come with my laptop when I had purchased it, and voila, it works. So it doesn't support Aero, but it still enables me 1280x800 resolution. I think that it caused the CPU usage to rise, but I haven't had time to check that out.

In conclusion, so far the system have shown a relative stability and agility that are impressive for a beta version running on hardware that is not intended to run it. I think that Microsoft has finally come up with a good version of Vista. As always, it's Service Pack 2 that does the work.
I am not sure if I will keep it or not, and anyway the Beta expires in the summer, so a new operating system will be required, or I will dump this old laptop. However, if you have the time and the proper machine to spare (Microsoft strongly advice against using 7 on the primary machine) I suggest you give it a try.

Weekly summary: back to the grind

The first week of the winter quarter is now over. That's 10% on the status bar, if you wonder. It was a busy week, but I think the next will be much worse. However, before that I would like to update about the good news that we received during the week. On Monday we were informed that D received a scholarship for her superlative performance during the previous quarter. This is important not only from the economical point of view, and we do appreciate the money, but also from the academic point of view and its reflection on her CV. We now know that the great amount of work she had put in this quarter paid off. Congratulations! Later in the week we learned that D's professors had arranged for her and another girl in her class to work part time for a company. The professors promised the company that D and the other girl will commit 20 hours a week to the work, and this will add even more stress to D's tight schedule. Nonetheless, there are upsides to this work as well: this is a project that will probably take long to evolve, and it has already been arranged that D and the friend will spend their internships (starting in the summer quarter) with this company, and probably after they graduate the company will hire them full-time. We still don't know if we're happy with all these arrangements, as the company and the project are not fully known at the moment; however, if everything goes well it will take the load of finding internship for the summer and work afterwards off D's shoulders and that's a good development, specifically in the current economic climate.

I also learned this week that my father had undergone a medical operation and a catheter was inserted to one of his arteries. He had kept the date of the operation secret from my sister, who is pregnant, and from me and told me only after the operation was over. He is fine now, or so he claims. This is one of the reasons why I cannot trust him to be sincere about his health, and it makes me worried: what if he is hiding other medical problems?
On the other hand, my sister gave birth on Thursday to a baby girl, my first niece. My father was excited when I talked to him about it and said that she is adorable. My sister and Yuval, that's my niece's name, are relatively fine. By the way the name my sister and brother in law chose maintains their tradition to name their children with names that relate to water and start with the Hebrew letter Yod: Yam is my eldest nephew and Yarden is the younger nephew. I don't know if she plans on having another child, but in case she does, you're welcome to suggest names that keep this tradition.

And now to the "boring" stuff of our day-to-day lives. As I mentioned, this was the first week of the new quarter. I teach two classes this quarter, one of them is a class I taught in the previous quarter and one new. I also study one class, which is my first in the course of my studies here. Overall I will be very busy this quarter. Teaching a class you have taught is much easier than teaching a class for the first time. First of all, you have all the notes ready, and there is no "race" between the classes you prepare and the ones you teach. In the previous quarter I usually prepared the class only a day in advance, which is very bad, because you don't know exactly how things will unravel in the next lessons, and also it is very stressful and tight on schedule. The time needed to prepare for a class now is also much shorter, I spend only 15-30 minutes instead of the 5-6 hours I spend on preparing a lecture for the first time. Finally, and probably most importantly, in the second time you have a chance to improve your previous way of teaching. You know which parts were not understood well enough in the previous quarter and you can linger on them longer and improve the explanations. I already received a feedback from one of the students that I am explaining very well and taking the time to make everyone understand.
Unfortunately, the other course is new and I still have to prepare about 75% of the lectures. This course is also very busy, with a lot of material to cover, but I have only 8 students, and it's easier to keep a good pace. Hopefully, it will not be too fast for them.
The course I am taking is a mandatory course in Analytical Dynamics. The lecture hours coincide with my lectures in the second class, so I don't have time to go to the lectures. However, I have the book, I know the professor (:-)) and I know some of the students that take the course, so I hope everything will be fine. So far, the first assignment seems OK.

D is taking a full schedule as well. This is both the requirements of the International Students Office (the office that maintains records of international students for the Department of Homeland Security) and the requirements of her program. In the previous quarter she studied almost 7 days a week, 16 hours a day. That was before the new work she now has, and I hope she'll have time to do everything and that we will have time to enjoy ourselves. I don't expect much, just a few hours every week to go out or spend a night in catching up on TV shows. Speaking of which, the holidays in America have caused a break in the TV shows we follow (Heroes and Fringe), Lost has not started yet (premiers on January 21), and the war in Gaza causes a break in the Israeli Survivor (which we follow because we know one of the contestants), so we don't have any show that we can follow right now on Hulu or Nana.

Regarding the war in Gaza: I found one of the best things about living in Ohio: it is a right-wing American state. In the last week I was asked several times about Gaza, the reasons for the Israeli offensive and my views. I did my best to explain the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially the problem with the Hamas, and its never-ending efforts to launch attacks against Israel in the last decade or so. It is not easy to explain something, which has such a long history, to people, who may have heard a few things here and there, but have not followed the conflict as we Israelis have lived it. Still, they come from a strong belief in Israel and its right to live peacefully. Part of it I attribute to the fact that they don't know too much about anything, but another part is that the American media is much more unbiased, relative to their European counterparts. I am certainly happy that I don't have to live in a European country, specifically not in the United Kingdom. I think that this article summarizes well the problems and the solution, and it is much better than anything I can write.

Ending with a more positive note: a week or so ago I posted "The Legendary Sunjay Gupta". It seems that I am not the only one who noticed this doctor. It seems that Obama's transition team wants to appoint him to be the next surgeon general. Could it be that the transition team reads this blog? Or maybe, the opponents of this appointment do. In any case, it seems that more news will come of The Legendary Sunjay Gupta!

Quick update

This is a quick update for news that cannot wait for the weekly update: D received a scholarship for her excellent grades in the previous quarter. We're very happy for the extra money and I am very proud of her! Kudos!

Weekly Summary: On The Brink Of...

It's Sunday evening, the day before the new quarter begins. This quarter I am teaching two classes, one of them is new for me and the other one I taught in the previous quarter, and taking one class and 3 points of research. It is going to be a very busy quarter and I hope I'll have time to do everything I need to do. The problem with the quarter system, especially as it is done at UC, is that it is so intense: the lessons are given on every other day and as a lecturer I have to prepare them, check works, prepare tests and check them as well. In the previous quarter I barely had time for all that, and I had to give up on checking the students works. Now that I start my studies I will have even less time for that, and it's making me nervous. D, on the other hand, is supposed to have an easier quarter than the previous one, but only slightly easier, and I guess she'll be busy as well. We don't expect to have time for fun during the weekends.

Our flights back were long ones. The part from Tel Aviv to NYC went pretty well: we took a flight with Olympic and the flights were very good, there was room for legs (especially in the Boeing 737 from Tel Aviv to Athens), and we had a separate pair of seats for us on the flight from Athens to JFK (it was an Aerbus 340-200, which was my first time to fly in and the seats are arranged in 2-4-2 format, unlike the 3-4-3 format on Boeing-747). Even the food wasn't that bad, although D, being the vegetarian that she is, got the same three meals, which made her quite sick of Greek antipasti.
To break the sequence of 4 flights from Tel Aviv to Dayton, Ohio we decided to spend the night in NYC. It proved to be a huge success, as we managed to meet three different friends in the limited time we had in the evening after arriving in NYC. It also proved to be a good idea because we came rested and refreshed after a good night's sleep to the second part of our flight sequence, which was less successful. It started with us waiting an hour and a half for a replacement steward on the first flight from JFK to Detroit, which made us miss the second flight from Detroit to Dayton by less than 5 minutes. I was at the gate of the second flight even before the flight was scheduled to leave, only to find out that the gate was locked. We had to wait 4 more hours for the late-night flight. This could have been alright if the management of the Detroit Metorpolitan Airport had realized that the temperatures on the last day of the year in Detroit might fall well below freezing point and had warmed up the terminal. They didn't realize and didn't warm the terminal and each time the gate opens to let people board and disembark the planes the terminal temperature dropped by another degree or two. In short, it was freezing cold there. We wore every possible coat, hat and scarf we had, and still were shivering. D caught a cold, which we assume was the blame of that waiting in the terminal, and she is now sitting here being all sick and miserable. We need the legendary Sunjay Gupta to save her. Eventually we arrived in our home after midnight so we missed all the celebrations and fire-works (except the ones we saw in the car mirror as we drove away from Dayton on our way to Cincinnati). Which reminds me: happy new year everyone.
On Friday I went to show my face at the university, just so that people would know that we returned from the vacation. The university was almost desolated, except for three people I know from the department. One of them is B, who is almost finishing his Ph.D. and was awaiting news regarding a possible position when we left to Israel. He is probably the only person that I talk with at the university on a regular basis. He landed the job, and I am really happy for him.

The Legendary Sunjay Gupta

CNN’s chief medical correspondent is Dr. Sunjay Gupta. Naturally, I don’t know the guy personally, but it’s funny to see how the CNN anchor men and women treat him with adulation. In any health care related item they turn to this distinguished neurosurgeon and ask for his commentary, like sending Danny Rup with a stupid wool-hat to the first snow in Jerusalem. It’s not the first time I have seen Dr. Gupta on CNN, but today we saw him appear twice: once on a research about how running is good for health, and even does not have undesired side-effects such as joint problems, which were associated with running in the past. The other item was about the state of hospitals in Gaza, overflowing with injured people and under equipped. The anchorman asked him: “Dr. Gupta, you were in situations like this, what can you tell us…” and all I could think was: this is a doctor that has been reporting for CNN in the past 10 years (almost), and probably never saw combat casualties. The only blood he probably saw was after a well organized cut in a prestigious American hospital, under the neon lights, and air conditioned (actually, according to CNN's page this is not true and he did perform surgery on field in Iraq). What the hell does he know? It caused me to create “The Legend of Dr Sunjay Gupta, the doctor who cured every disease… except cancer”. We now consider him to be some kind of a Superhero.