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

Hey Folks!

3th place

The School of Computer Science organizes every year a race for the Computer Science students. It is called the “Pretty Good Race“. As a self-confessed sports lover I had to participate. The conditions were not the best (at least for a run) this means a sunny day with 30° Celsius. I was surprised there were lot good runners there and it resulted in a really hard competition. The first one even made a new track record.

I needed for this 5 Km 18:52. I beat the forth which has won this race already for 3 times… Maybe, better luck next time =)

Pictures
http://imageevent.com/ralf/cmu/pgr2008
More Pictures
http://picasaweb.google.com/liangyun.wang2/20080905PrettyGoodRace#

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

Thanks to David I do not have to write a lot about our travel to America. I think he has pretty much covered everything in his post!

So finally there is only one thing to mention. When we arrived at Pittsburgh Airport I noticed that one of my bags looked horrible. Everywhere were scratches and I found 2 holes in the bag (about 3×3mm). I was even more surprised when I opened the bag. Everything was upside down and unwrapped and everywhere were crumbs. Then I found a notice from the security check informing me that they inspected my luggage :-/

Finally, at the hotel I found out what caused the chaos. Last week I received a pack of “Pettit Beurre” which I just packed in the bag without thinking. You can imagine the rest! After I found out that they did not take anything away I was relieved!

After installing Windows Vista on my new Lenovo, Windows claimed the whole disk space for itself. Maybe I missed the option to adjust it during the installation process.
Anyway, Vista provides a tool to shrink a hard disk partition. Using this tool I was able to downsize the partition to 145GB but not more. After some investigation I found out, that many unmovable files (system information) where written at the end of this 145GB. With only about 20GB on a 145GB volume it was no possible to reduce it more.
Fortunately I found help on the Internet. I will not explain the whole process here again, because I think they did a pretty good job on How-To Geek. I have to add only one thing: I did not delete the c:\pagefile.sys.
On this How-To Geek site there are several programs mentioned. The one I used was PerfectDisk2008. An absolutly brilliant tool! The only down is that it is not free… but with this tool I could have downsized my partition to 21GB
Now I am working happily with an 80GB partition.

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”

Yeah, my own blog…
From now on I will write about the all-day insanity of the normal life or about some other “boring” stuff ;-).

But why did I start a blog like everybody else in the internet community?

I intend to do a master degree in America. For that I have to hand in an application at the university which includes the results of the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). Right now I am in the middle of my preparation for the TOEFL. The key point is to improve my English to get a good score. I noticed that the weakest point in my English use is the writing. The bottom line is that I have to write more. That is the reason for publishing some writings from time to time. Whether it really will improve my English is unknown but at least I hope so

If you have any corrections or suggestions for my English use do not hesitate and write a comment or contact me per e-mail. I am happy about any feedback.

I wish you a good start into the new week tomorrow.
Guido