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.