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

Finally, I screwed in the last screw and hammer the last nail of my IKEA furniture.

Thanks to the MSE program, I am inclined to keep track of various data in my life. Therefore, I know exactly how much time I spent on each piece of furniture… Just in case I will have to buy new furniture
I guess all in all the 13 hours 27 min is not too bad for all the things I accomplished. I could even go further and analyze on what time of the day I did the most work, and at what time I was most productive… but that won’t be worth the effort

Special thanks goes to my girlfriend which helped me to choose, find (in the store), transport and haul all the furniture to my apartment!
Unfortunately, she couldn’t stay long enough to also support me during the assembling

Ps: List of all the items assembled…
1 bed, 2 dressers, 1 small dresser, 2 Book shells, 1 Bookcase, 1 office Chair, 2 small tables, 3 chars, 1 kitchen Table

As many might know, I am working in the biggest trading floor of the world. But what most people won’t know is that UBS has an interesting tradition on St. Patrick’s day. This afternoon around 4 o’clock a group of bagpipe players walked onto the balcony of the trading floor and played some music for the 1400 people

I guess everybody has its own story how or why he got started with FarmVille. I still claim that I didn’t do it out of free will, but that is another story. Today, I like to write about the ending of this story…

After investing (aka wasting?) an awful amount of time in this game. I realized that it is not worth it. Especially, since I don’t perceive playing it as fun, but still I was coming back again and again…

So why did I come back? I always had goals, like getting all the ribbons, catching up with the level of a friend and so on. But still doing so is quite painful and it needs a lot of clicking to achieve anything on FarmVille. Amy once made an observation: “You look bored when you play FarmVille”. The thing which surprises me about this game is that it is an online game but is missing several social aspects which could make it much more fun.

Admittedly, I didn’t work in the last couple of weeks and had therefore some slack time. But in the future I want to spend this time doing something else…

Amy and I decided that this Sunday is going to be our last FarmVille day!
Someone else who wants to commit to that?

In the last couple of days I was assembling the furniture which I got from IKEA. I like to share the experience of one particular day which was interesting.

In the morning my bed was delivered which I assembled right away and after that I went for a run. In the afternoon I had to realize that I was tired and not in the mood to assemble more furniture. But I also knew that with this attitude I would never get it done. So I decided to try another energy shot: “Redline Power Rush, 7 hour energy boost”. According to EdJunky it is one of the most potent energy shots. I had this shot lying around for several months by now and never found the right situation to use it. So I drunk the whole bottle and started working. After only a few minutes I started to feel the effects. Unbelievable how this stuff works! While physically still a little tired I was completely awake and I also had to urge to get things done! So I took on two MALM drawers from IKEA:

Screwing these two drawers together took me 4 hours without any breaks. (Except taking pictures).
After that I still felt restless and cleaned the apartment and assembled other things.

So if someone is tired and still needs to get a lot of physical work done. That is the way to go
But be aware, that the thinking process is not as clear anymore so it is definitely nothing for mind work. Besides one of the after effects for me is that I was only able to sleep 10 hours after I took the energy shot. I’m sure drinking such energy shots, while legal in the USA, are not too healthy. But it was worth the experience.

I guess most people have heard by now that there was an earthquake in Chile with 8.8-magnitude. Right now there are some live web cams which allow it to follow the arrival of the tsunami in Hawaii.

Some facts

Here is a webcam

Live news report

I keep this post short so that other people who are interested might be able to see this event.

I had a phase were I played many flash games and also blogged about several of them. I haven’t been playing for a while. Recently I tried out some new flash games and was amazed by some of the ideas. If you like flash games I recommend to try the following three:

Neon rider is a 2D racing game where you have to drive from point A to B. But the interesting aspect of this game is that there are different colors of lines to ride on. The player can change the color of the bike and according to this color the player will use a different path. These means that besides the driving skills there is a second thing you have to watch out for…

This is the only level
This is the only level too
These are two small flash games, which have only one level. But they include several stages for each level. The level is really simple and has a simple path to solve it. The interesting aspect is that each stage there is something different. You can’t jump, keys are inverted, invisible walls… etc.
This means in each stage you have to figure out what the trick is to beat it. Sometimes, you can guess it from the name of the stage. I like this game because it is so simple but still really interesting.

Closure has one simple underlying rule: “What you don’t see doesn’t exist”. Each level is dark and there are lights which allow you to walk through around. If you walk outside the light up area you will fall even there is supposed to be a path. The goal is to find the door in each level. To solve the level it is necessary to use the “darkness” as a mean to make your way to walls and other obstacles.
Thanks to Michael for telling me about this game.

Have fun playing… and let me know what you think of them!

While I was in Pittsburgh I learned the meaning of the “Pittsburgh Chair”. In Pittsburgh chairs are used to reserve a parking space for a car. This was heavily used in the last couple days when Pittsburgh was buried in almost 2 foot of snow. People, who dug out their car, most often reserved their spot while they were off to work or other things. The interesting part about that is that this reservation system is mostly respected by everyone and people still have their spot if they return in the evening. This tradition has even its own Wikipedia entry even though it is named parking chair.

Here is a report from a local news paper.

I uploaded some pictures with examples.

This weekend, Amy and I drove over a 1000 miles to go shopping… I’m slowly adapting to the American life style
Well, to be honest it was not only shopping:

Last week I flew to Pittsburgh to enjoy some days together with Amy and to pack up all my stuff. On Friday we drove from Pittsburgh to Stamford with a fully loaded car. It took us 7 hours to cover the 420 miles. We spend the weekend buying furniture for my apartment. The overall theme of my new apartment is once more: IKEA
Unfortunately, we had to drive twice to fit all the furniture in the car. This is especially inconvenient since it is a 40min drive each way. After two days of spending money on furniture it was time again to drive back to Pittsburgh.

I uploaded some pictures from the apartment after the shopping.

This Sunday I went for a run along the coast. Since we got about 10 inches of snow over the weekend everything was covered in white.
The thing which struck me was that in my mind model sand beaches have to be warm… warm water, good weather, and I can walk around in shorts.
What a weird feeling to run along a frozen beach which is covered in snow and ice.

I guess this happened because so far I only saw sand beaches when I went on vacation to warmer regions.
Is it only me or did other people have a similar experience. Maybe it is particular the case for Swiss people, because we are not bordering a sea so we travel to it in the summer.

Jihaa, I already moved into my apartment!
After looking at apartments for three days everything went quick. I prepared a reverse prioritized list of all the apartments I wanted to look at. On Thursday morning I had a tour on the last apartment on the list and decided that I want to lease this apartment. I signed the lease on the same day. Finding an apartment was much easier than expected. And it was even easier to start the electricity and internet service. In Pittsburgh I had difficulties as a foreigner without an SSN, here in Stamford the electricity company didn’t care about that. Getting internet service for the apartment was also much easier than I thought. In Pittsburgh it took me 7 weeks to get internet (read here) in Stamford only 1 day. The service I got from Cablevision so far is amazing. Cablecom could learn a lot from them! I called them yesterday and today (on Saturday) a guy came to my apartment and configured the modem. So, one day after I called them, I have internet in my apartment! That’s a service!

Tonight, I will spend my first night in my new apartment. Temporary I organized an air mattress as a bed and some boxes substitute a desk.

Here are some more pictures of my apartment.