blog.zgraggen.name  All-day insanity or I have a blog too!

People were glad to have me back in Switzerland… Which I conclude from the welcome gifts I received I especially liked the balloon with the 20min! But I shall not name him here in the blog

Two interesting things from my flight back to Switzerland:
In the Washington Dulles airport I saw a man in a wheelchair with a Challenged Athletes t-shirt on. I was curious about it, and asked him few question about the sport and how the training is going. As it turns out it was Oz Sanchez which is one of the top handcycle and also triathlon athletes. He won a gold and bronze medal at the Paralympics in Beijin (Peking) 2008.

The other interesting thing is the book I read on my journey: “The curious incident of the dog in the night-time” by Mark Haddon. It is an easy read from an unusual perspective. The book is written as if the main character Christopher Boone, who has the Asperger’s Syndrome, had written this book. He looks at the world with different eyes than we do which makes it a very interesting read. In fact it is so interesting that I finished the whole book in the flight home, ignoring G.I. Joe which was shown as part of the in flight entertainment program.

What an awesome coincidence. Today, at my Birthday, they opened a Dunkin’ Donuts in my neighborhood. They must have known how much I love sweet stuff. The logical consequence was that I went there this morning and got a dozen donuts.

Sugar high! Jihaa

Today, is a good day to be a CMU student!
I was one of the lucky 1200 people who got a ticket for the Keynote from Bill Gates for the opening for the Gates Center for Computer Science and the Hillman Center for Future-Generation Technologies at Carnegie Mellon University.

Even though I didn’t do anything for this center, besides going to the opening ceremony, I still feel good about it.
Especially, walking through the new building made me feel happy. Maybe this is also because these two building are really cool.

People who are interested in the talk of Bill Gates should watch the following video: Bill Gates Keynote.
I was amused how Bill Gates answered some of the difficult questions.
Here is another video which was presented during the ceremony: School of Computer Science Milestones

It’s over a week ago when my summer semester ended. To celebrate this, two friends (Jonathan, Michael) and I went to Cedar Point.

This time I have to agree with the American motto: bigger = better. Some of the rides at Cedar Point are mind blowing! The Europa-Park in Rust seems like a children play ground compared with Cedar Point. (The last statement is just to annoy all the Swiss people who haven’t been on any real roller coaster )

Here are my personal top 3 rides:

1. Millennium Force: fast, long and smooth.
2. Top Thrill Dragster: 0-120 mph in 4 sec says everything
3. Maverick: fast, long and nervous

Interesting about these rides is that they were all manufactured in Switzerland by Intamin AG. I’m wondering why we don’t have such rides in Switzerland…

A hint for all people who go to cedar point: Riding the Mean Streak in front hurts as much as in the back. We proved that in an empirical experiment.

This two day trip was almost perfect except of 3 small things:

• - I didn’t win a stuffed animal
• - We couldn’t go for a swim in the hotel pool, because a kid abused the pool as a restroom.
• - I/We couldn’t eat at White Castle since Google lied to us…

But a really bad thing by Cedar Point can be seen in the following picture… Guess what it is!

btw: More pictures will follow… sooner or later

This morning I witnessed a car chase: 1 old black car followed by 3 cops (one on a motorcycle). They were racing up Forbs Avenue where as the black old car drove like crazy… That is all the excitement you need at 7:30 in the morning.

Over the last weekend we moved into our new apartment. Since we didn’t have everything set up yet, we had to be creative to eat our first dinner at the new place

Btw: This is the last week of the summer semester, and then I will have two whole weeks of holidays. Jihaa!

I like energy drinks!
Red Bull is still one of my all time favorite. But when I arrived in USA, I discovered that the energy drink offer in America is much more diverse then in Switzerland. So I was trying many different energy drinks over the course of the last year (well 10 months to be exact).
Besides that I like energy drinks, it also helps to keep up with the demanding workload of the Carnegie Mellon University.

Here is my newest acquisition. I ordered it from ThinkGeek.

Doesn’t it look cool… I’m looking forward to try them

Tip for all the energy drinks junkies! Check out this page http://www.edjunkie.com/

Today, I happened to be at the graduation of Robert Rodriguez (Imdb) at the University of Texas at Austin. He left the University 20 years ago for his career in the movie industry. A year ago he finally returned to finish his degree, which he now received. He also gave the commencement speak which was the best one I ever heard so far.

Hook’em Horns!

My girlfriend and I opened the grilling season for this year.
We grilled three different kind of meats and a pineapple.
And we drunk Virgil’s Rootbeer, which is suposed to be the “best” Rootbeer.

Peace out!

Finally, it is getting warmer in Pittsburgh.

It is about time that I write something about the winter in Pittsburgh.
This is especially for all the Swiss friends who were complaining about the cold winter in Switzerland, and that I must have a very nice time over here!

For the most time the temperature during the Pittsburgh winter is below 0 degree Celsius. Sometimes it was below -10 degree Celsius for weeks.
The coldest day this winter was -22 degree Celsius. At this day, my girlfriend and I enjoyed a bath in the Jacuzzi which stands outside of her apartment building. The interesting part about this is that my hair got wet and not before long my hair was frozen. I can tell you that is a really awkward feeling

Normally, I do not have a problem when it is cold, but because of the bad isolation the temperature in my apartment went several times below 10 degree Celsius. With the additional heating I have the average temperature in my room was around 14 degrees Celsius, but to save money (I’m a student after all) I did not use this heating all day and night. Fortunately, I have a girlfriend who was kind enough to give my asylum several times a week.