The Unmistakable Cone of Ignorance

The internet has ceased to amuse me.  I consume information too fast.  Lousy internet. I need my information.  I need my data fix.  Fucking lazy internet.

Note: The internet does make baby jesus’ eyes bleed.  This is a good thing though.

Pi==3.

Sorry it had to come to that.  Now that I have your attention.

I have survived the WRC Rally leg in Trier, Germany and in addition to about 800 pictures and videos I got a really awesome farmers tan.  I also got some sweet swag.  Suburu shirt, flag, sunglasses. Gifts for people.

I got to Trier after 3 hours of sleep and a 7 hour train ride.   Crashed in my hotel room on the 15th after a nice Russian guy gave me a ride up the hill to the hotel since it turned out that after getting off the train at the small house and concrete slab which was the train station by my hotel  I then had to walk a kilometer up a hill with no sidewalks. Run on sentence, run on!  Went to Trier on Thursday to figure out whether I needed to rent a car to get to the rally or if there was transport.  There was no transport.  I needed a car.  Fucking hell.

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Mortals cower in fear for we have hijacked this poor losers blog to spread our message of fear and despair and badgers….

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Ahem now that I’m done being ‘witty’ I shall commence with rewriting the remainder of the post… Fucking Word press..

Anyways where was I?  Ah right… Fucking hell.  But lo what is it that I spy with my little eye?  Why it is the Subway where I had eaten lunch.  Now my mind knows no fear for Subway is near.  So while getting my dinner what do I hear but Americans behind me.  After thinking about it for a bit, I hit them up for a ride and my rally experience is saved.    We break Subway together and they agree to pick me up at the train station in the morning.

So I get back on the train, walk back up the hill and end up tossing and turning in my bed so I only sleep a few hours.  Arising the world is grey and the sun can barely been seen.  Great the rally is going to be fogged out… but the fog is localized to just this town, the rest of the area is clear as the train ride soon demonstrated.  So I get to Trier at 7 or 8 am ish and grab a cheese sandwich and some donuts for breakfast.  We head out to the rally stages and lo the views are amazing. Rally is damn cool. But what is this, the guide says some of the viewing areas will have food. They have sausages. Fuck. Sausage.  All I eat this day till the end of the day is a large fries at McDonalds next to the service park in Trier.  I can live with that I had a bag full of Suburu swag with me.  The ride back from the first stage to Trier was made interesting by the constant over reaching fact that the empty tank light has been on since yesterday.  We coasted about 5km with the engine off for the fuck of it at one point.  We make it back out to the afternoon stages after ‘lunch’ and it was quite awesome.   Still no food though.  Ended up getting Subway again so I could carry with me to the hotel.  Also got some peanut butter and bread so I’ll have ‘food’ for the next day.

I hate peanut butter most of the time.

Once again drag my exhausted ass down the hill to the train and then to Trier.  No time for donuts.  Eat peanut  butter bread.  We hit 3 of the 4 race areas this day.  It is hot and there is still nothing to eat but peanut butter bread till another dinner of Subway and ice cream.  At the end of this day I part ways with the kids driving me around.  They were ok but your stereotypical mechanical engineer gear heads.  They only cared about cars, pussy and money and had a year left in school.  So it was without a heavy heart that I left them but I was not particularly upset by my time with them.

Sunday I sleep in till 7am and get to town in time to see the city stage.  I had a ticket to the grandstands but it turned out that the view from the grandstands sucked.  I can live with that I got to see cars go airborne over and over again for 20 to 40 meters on Saturday.

I swear what I wrote before was better.  I just can’t bring myself to care again.  Either way other than the rally I’ve just been doing work.  Worked out an algorithm in the last couple weeks and now I need to get some pictures and write up a 6 page paper of results and explanation by the 14th to submit it to ICRA and I need to rewrite some code and rewrite my tracking stuff so we can try to submit it to CVPR and/or PAMI.  I’ll be back in the states on the 1st and I start classes again on the 6th.  Well class really.  Just the 1. So It’ll be projects, Class and studying for my GBO.

I have the rally pics organized and I’ll get them up soon but I still haven’t organized the pics from Heidleberg and Stuttgart.  Now lets all hope this post doesn’t get garbled again.

Fire is the Devil’s only friend.

I dropped my bike today on the way home from school.

They were doing some construction and they had small gravel ramps you had to travel up and down to switch around the construction.  I had too much speed  when I was coming back up the second ramp and I saw a kid that looked like he was about to come down the little ramp so I tried to brake and swerve at the same time and lost control of the bike.

I kinda wish I had  a video of the drop.  I hopped off the bike and was running with it between my legs but I had too much momentum and dropped and rolled out from the bike.  Road rash on my right calf and my hands are a bit scraped up.  I roll up to my feet and get back on the bike and see the kid just staring at me with this shocked/stunned expression.  I yell I’m good and throw a thumbs up and ride off a bit… Here comes the problem… I grab the handle bars with my left hand and almost black out.   Hop off the bike and start walking getting sicker and sicker.  Turns out I’ve royally fucked up my left thumb.  I examine it shift it a bit and feel shit slide/pop.  I think I dislocated it but I can’t think so straight.  I walked home with the bike then decided I think I might’ve broken my thumb cause it’s really killing me.

Sooo… To the hospital.  50€ to get admitted to  the ER.  2 X-rays later turns out my thumb’s not broken just sprained/bruised.  So they wrapped my hand up and gave me a letter in case shit doesn’t heal so I can see another doctor.  I’ve got to say the german medical ER was very efficient compared to my memory of my last ER run in the states for serious  injury.  Either way my day of productivity got royally fucked up.  Post pics of the hand and my leg later cause I can(Nothing special just my first case of injury like this in a long ass time.  Going to bed now.

Alright i finally got around to organizing a large amount of my pictures. Here they be in semi chronological order. If you see anything cool and want to know more.. ask.

Philadelphia
Munich Soccer Stadium – Frottmaning (at night and lit up red)
Berlin(the wall and Treptower Park mainly)
Koln
Update Bike Pics
A neat pattern of grease on my leg from the black bike.

Note: If you have flashblock for firefox click on the white line when the picture page loads.

I went to Stuttgart and Heidelberg this weekend so I have those pictures to upload from Heidelberg and the Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart. I also have some more pictures from Munich to upload sometime but I am only one lazy grad student.

I have some political rants I’d like to right but i need to draw somethings for a meeting at 11:30(in one hour)