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

Many have heard the joke:

What do American Beer and having sex in a canoe have in common?
Both are fucking close to water!

But the sad fact is that exactly this kind of beer is what is sold to 95% in the USA. Only 5% is from smaller independent breweries. Shocking about that is that this 95% of beer comes from three companies: Anheuser-Bush (Budweiser), Miller, Coors.
Living in Pittsburgh for 1.5 years I always drunk Yuengling and wasn’t aware what kind of “war” is going on between all this smaller breweries against the big ones, since it was so easy accessible all over the city. But this is not the case in other parts of America. Here in Stamford I have the hardest time to buy decent beer in a store. Yes, I live next to a local brewery which eases this sad fact a little…

I highly recommend this documentary movie. Watch it and tell me what you think about it.
Yes, I know many readers are living outside of the USA and might ask themselves: “Why should that bother me?”. Well how do you know there is not a similar Beer War going on in your country…?

Watch a trailer of the movie!!

Last semester our Graduate Student Assosiation (GSA) organized a lottery to for Penguins tickets. I was lucky enough to win two tickets for this event! Here are the details for the lottery.

The start of the game was amazing! After 30 seconds a huge fight started. About 7 players were beating eachother up. Finally, 5 players got a penaltiy. Unfortunately, after this insident the referees were more restrictive. No second big fight happend. Even though the Penguins lost the game, we had a blast! Pictures

After that we watched the new james bond, which is in my opinion one of the worst so far. besides the action which is kinda cool
The story is really bad!

Last Friday evening I/we took a day of to have some fun. Here is what we did:

First we visited the Phipps Conservatory. Which is an botanical garden and free for Carnegie Mellon students.

After buying food and walking back towards the University we discovered a snowboarding contest which took place in front of the Cathedral of learning. The organizers of this event used artificial snow for the contest. This was quite funny because everything around the contest was still green.
Finally, we went to see the Black Knight at the University Center. Even though, I had allready seen this movie I decided to watch it again. It was lots of fun especially because the student contributed to the atmosphere. The students where cheering, clapping and expressing other emototions actively.

The reason the Cathedral of learning is so color full on the second picture is because of the Festival of Lights in Pittsburgh

So, and now back to work… =)

At least for a long time…
I started this post over a week ago and added more and more stuff to it, because there is a lot to write about here around…

I will start with the bad news:
Verizon
I am trying get internet for about 7 weeks now. A tip for anyone who is looking for a internet connection in USA. Do not choose Verizon! NO-GO! STOP! I had so much trouble with them, and their service is really, really bad! Believe me, Cablecom seems to have the perfect service when compared with Verizon.

That’s it! Now all the good news:
Heads up on some more stuff David and I did last weekend.
Rib Festival & Baseball
his PGR experience
The 1st week er month is over
If you want some more insights what is going on at the CMU, you should check the blog from David regularly.

MSE/MSIT Wins Team Championship
This is a quote of a CMU which was sent to all CS students.

On the team championship front, the MSE/MSIT team of Guido Zgraggen, Harrison Strowd and Ryan Miller finished 3, 11 and 15 respectively to make it to the winner’s circle. They also had a lot of support on the trail with almost a third of the entrants from MSE/MSIT. Congratulations to Guido, Harrison and Ryan and the rest of the MSE/MSIT team!

Business Dinner with the eBusiness Program
David was kind enough to invite me to his business dinner in return for the MSE picnic. It was a very nice evening with good food (yes, as in Switzerland). Some pictures…
Thanks to David!

Loads of Work…
I was expecting a hard time around here, but… let me put it this way: My undergrad study at the HSR was a piece of cake compared to the CMU
And I am not the only one who is working all day… the CMU campus is as busy at the weekend as during the week with the exception of less faculties walking around.
The biggest advantage of this is, I will not get homesick. I really have no time for it =)

Anyway, I like my program and I am sure that I have made the right decision! As a result to the time management I will cut down in blogging… sorry guys!

Career
CMU has its own “Career Center” which can help by finding a job, preparing for an interview, and you can even borrow a suit there for a job interview.
At the moment I receive a lot of emails about companies who will come on campus and offer a information session. Mostly it is in combination with free pizza and drinks.

I also went to an etiquette dinner to learn how to behave at an “Job Interview Dinner”. But I did not learn much… most of the things I already knew. But for the American people most of the things were new

TOC - Technical Opportunities Conference (Job fair). I took this chance to speak to several companies (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, CIA, IBM, EA, Mitre, DrwTrading, Timken, Palantir, etc.)
Yes, you read it rite… I tried my luck and spoke to the CIA! After I told the “Agent” I have only a visa. He told me that they do not employ foreign people. =)

Extreme Energy Rush I am not sure how healthy this is… but it works Working hours

Record-Breaking Class
This is a quote of a MSE Mail which was sent to all MSE/MSIT students.

Students entering the MSE program in the fall broke a record even before setting foot on campus. The graduate software engineering professional programs received a record number of applications for the 08-09 academic year, and for the first time in history, a waiting list was established to accommodate the overflow of highly-qualified candidates.

CMU movie screening
Yesterday, I took some time off to see the “new” Indiana Jones - The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The screening was in a big auditorium with a good sound system.
Each weekend they show different selection of movies. Some of them are more recent like Wall-E. And this for just 1$ per movie =)

Have a nice one!

Once more David was way faster then I in posting the news…

Yesterday, I attended the first pre-screening in my life. The Movie was called “The Great Buck Howard” and will not be shown in the movie theater before January 2009.
For more details read David’s post: http://pratchettfan.blogspot.com/2008/08/great-buck-howard-pre-screening.html

Yesterday, I went to the movies to watch 21 (imdb, official site). The story is about a genius boy who needs money to get into the Harvard med school. To gain the required 300′000$ he joins then a group of card counters who play black jack in Las Vegas.
This movie is based on a true story. But as I see it the film makers took only the basic idea and changed every thing else

What I really liked about this film where the unexpected twists which made it enthralling to watch. And I really liked the discussion in the class room where the teacher and the genius talk metaphorical but both know that they mean each other.

I just saw “The Man from Earth” what a mind blowing film. Wau!
The production is kept very simple. Most of the movie is shoot around or in a country house. I guess about 75% of the movie takes place in the living room. So there is not much action going on, nevertheless it is very exciting. The story of the entire film is about the main actor which claimed to be a man from the Upper Palaeolithic and therefore about 16′000 years old. Most of the time the actors are just talking if this is possible or not and how they/he could prove it. Many times it gets highly philosophical.
But I will not tell more about it… watch it your self!

My final opinion: A very good movie with an absolute brilliant story. I love it!

My first Post in 2008… and it is all about things from 2007 which I should have blogged long ago To be a bit more specific: The following five topics had all their on post but were never published. (By that I mean: I didn’t finish these posts)

Score and score reports

Score
When I received the Results from my tests I was surprised. I did
very well in the TOEFL but not so good in the GRE.
The overall score in the iBT TOEFL is 110 out of 120.
And in the GRE I have 320 in the Verbal section, 710 in the Math section and 3.0 in Analytical writing.

Report of the Score
To send a TOEFL score report to a University is very easy. You have to log in on a Website and select the University and can get charged by credit card. Sounds quite easy…
But even it is the same Company ETS the score reports for the GRE are different. There is no cool web interface. No you request reports by letter/fax or phone. The fastest way
is by phone. So I tried that one. I thought there would be a person taking my order but instead it was a computer program which asks for all the codes by entering the numbers
on the phone. After each number the number was read and I had to confirm it by pressing 1. So I put the speaker on and sat in front of my telephone listening and entering numbers for about 5min.
Thanks to the newest Technologies

Ärzte concert

In December I went to the Ärzte concert and went afterwards home with mixed feeling. First the positive side. The Band did a very good show and surprised me that they even can change the instruments. Bela played guitar and Farin played the drums. (For all real Ärzte fans: that was new for me… sorry ) Of course they did not miss one chance to make Swiss jokes! In the stadium there was e very good vibe and it was a lot of fun to be there.
On the other hand there is also a downside. The average age of the audience was very low. I even wondered why the parents allow a kid in this age to stay out at a Wednesday for so long!

But anyway I did like it and would go again!

Two more movies seen

It is longer ago but I still want to mention it
If seen Ratatouille which is a sweet and entertaining movie.

The other Movie was “Lissi und der wilde Kaiser”. I did not see any advertising for this movie but when I heard that this is the new movie from Bulli I definitely wanted to see it. In my opinion it is very easy to describe the Film or better said who will like this movie: Everybody who liked “Der Schuh des Manitu” and “(T)raumschiff Periode 1″. One little thing I have to mention. It is a comic movie but you can exactly recognize the mimic from bull in the face of the comic figure.

We Will Rock You

I took one of the last possibillities to see the musical “We Will Rock You”. And I think it is worth every penny. Of course I do not have to mention that I like the Queen’s I think it is a must for all Queen fans. The story is about the future where rock music is prohibited and there is a small group who fight against the system. Besides the music they told a lot of jokes referring to. The actor showed a solid performance and the whole evening was very entertaining.

SBB for fare dodger

First I was surprised when I saw the following screen on the SBB time table. But now I am sure this must be a train for “fare dodgers”

Although it took place a few days ago I will now write some lines about Tell which I saw in the movie theatre.
I liked this movie because it is amusing and tells an absolutly new Tell story. In my opinion this movie is much better than the last Swiss movie The Ring Thing
Even though this movie cannot be compared with American movies it is worthwhile watching.
Any differing opinions?

Yesterday, I watched Am Limit in the theatre. It’s a movie about the Huber brothers attacking the best time to climb the Nose.
The Nose is a climbing route at the El Capitain which is a huge 1000m high rock face in the Yosemite National Park.
Normal climbers need three to five days to climb this rock. The record which the brothers will attack is 2:48:37.

I like three things in this movie:
- the impressive pictures
- the discussions about fear, success, jealousy and brotherhood
- the Austrian accent

Only a little bit disappointing is the end which I will no reveal yet