That was quite something

Eric | December 19, 2007

IMG_0897 My December 16th/17th:

  • wondering for half of the day why British Airways does not cancel my flight
  • having a crazy cab ride to the airport, through 30cm of snow
  • arriving at a time where my flight had a supposed “15 minutes” delay
  • seeing almost all other flights cancelled
  • seeing dozens of luggage containers stuck in the snow
  • seeing luggage trucks stuck in snow
  • seeing my flight delayed for 1:15h
  • boarding the plane
  • waiting for another 4h (!!!) for two de-icing sessions (first engines for 3h, then wings for 1h right before lift-off)
    • listening to “reassuring” words of the pilot: “This gotta be the craziest snow storm since the beginning of aviation! Erm… but the Canadians know how to deal with this. I trust them!”
  • having a crazy lift-off
  • being glad to have survived the lift-off
  • dinner, funny movie, 2 1/2 of sleep
  • de-boarding plane in London
  • receiving a ticket for a connecting flight that is supposed to leave 20 minutes ago!
    • remembering the words “the luggage is already on that plane”
  • boarding plane literally in the last second
  • arriving in Duesseldorf and finding my luggage missing
  • being glad to finally be picked up by my girlfriend

My December 18th:

  • being glad to get my luggage delivered

So all in all, thanks British Airways for getting me out of there still on the same day, thanks for playing safe, even if it took time, thanks for getting me the fastest connecting flight in my personal history and thanks for delivering my luggage already on the next day!

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Blizzard, Flight, Snow storm

Protected: Das war ein langer Tag…

Eric | December 19, 2007

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More snow…

Eric | December 16, 2007

radar Ok, sometimes I can understand that the Canadians do not care so much about global warming… Just look at that radar image! Right in the middle used to be Montreal. Right now there’s just the largest snow cloud ever. The last Blizzard two weeks ago was serious, but if you compare to the image from then you will see that this time it’s even worse. Usually I really love the snow, but this time I had my flight to Germany scheduled for today. Well that’s going to be interesting…

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Toronto 1 – Montreal 4 !!!

Eric | December 15, 2007

imageYeah, Montreal Canadiens bet the Toronto Maple Leafs in a glamorous 1:4 ! Was there ever any doubt about who would win? 😉

Go Habs Go!

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Baird regrets 'watered down' climate deal

Eric | December 15, 2007

imageCan you believe this guy? First, Baird fights like a crazy man trying to get any concrete reduction targets out of the agreements and now he regrets that this ‘watered down’ climate deal!? Hello??? Can you please start acting like a responsible person and not fool the entire world like that? Hopefully you remember when the first hurricane wipes out your house…

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Protected: Ich habe fertig (fuer 2007)

Eric | December 12, 2007

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Montreal

Proposal slides online

Eric | December 12, 2007

image Hey, I just passed my Ph.D. proposal exam today! I decided to upload my slides, because apparently people enjoyed them a lot. You can get them from here.

Presentation Zen has a long list of good tips of how to design beautiful slides.

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Bug finding

COMP 621 Optimizing Compilers

Eric | December 11, 2007

image Next term, I will be a TA for COMP 621 Optimizing Compilers. In my opinion, it’s a really interesting course. It’s certainly the most relevant course if you are interested in the kind of research I do. So yeah, sign up and see you there 🙂

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That's why I would always opt for a German car

Eric | December 11, 2007

Archive picture Heise lets us know about a funny event that happened on December 4th during a crash test that the German automobile club ADAC conducted on a new BMW. When the testers smashed the car against a wall, apparently they had not taken into account that the car was equipped with BMW’s eCall System. The car automatically detected the crash, called "home" to BMW and let them know the exact position of the crash via its GPS data. Rescue was on the way at once, although I guess that people were quite surprised that all that was found worth rescuing was a set of crash test dummies 🙂

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Second Sunday in Advent

Eric | December 9, 2007

IMG_0889 (Small) The picture on the right shows a funny "advent wreath" that my girlfriend from Germany sent me. Isn’t that the cutest thing ever? 😉

I got an equally cute pocket-sized advent calendar too, similar to that one here. Thank you, Caroline!

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