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Here's a shot of some fritz-kola, which I just finished enjoying. Good business.

Man, I'll be leaving Berlin this Monday. It's been fun, and I've even gotten some work done, which is really good because I have this deadline coming up in December... Anyway, what have we learned?

- I learned that autotuner has finally made it to Germany.
- Most German beer is very similar. That being said, Schultheiss was my favorite, and since you can't find it everywhere, Jever will do as well.
- Berlin is fun.
- Donner is delicious. But I already knew that.
- The "Wallpaper*" series of guide books is kind of pretentious and lacks good maps, but being able to fit the book in my pocket makes up for any shortcomings.

This week I went to an English bookstore called St. George's and got a few books for the way home. One, "Goodbye to Berlin," I have almost finished. It's pretty good. It was the basis (indirectly) for the musical Cabaret. The other one, "Berlin Alexanderplatz" I haven't started yet.

Just finished reading, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. This is a good book, and I highly recommend you read it. It basically tells the story of Enron. It seems funny to think about Enron now, since the scandal was such a big deal at the time. Given the current collapse of some of America's larges financial companies, it seems a little quaint in a way. But it definitely serves as a lesson about the dangers of following the crowd in a bull market.

Enron's biggest problem was basically that they didn't have a lot of cash. They were constantly making "deals" that they would immediately book as profit, using mark-to-market accounting, but then those deals often wouldn't pay any actual money for years. They spent tons of money on losing ventures, but were terrified of listing any debt on their balance sheet, so they created all kind of shady, Special Purpose Entities; nominally independent investment partnerships that would take on Enron's debt, with a wink & handshake agreement that they would never lose money. When it became obvious how much debt Enron really had (something like $40 billion) and how little cash was coming in the door, everyone ran for the exits.

I did come away with new new-found respect for short-sellers. Far from the vultures they are often presented as, short-sellers do a valuable job of uncovering the hidden realities buried in quarterly reports. These are often the realities that a stock's "cheerleaders" are entirely unmotivated to find. In this case, it was the short-sellers who started asking the tough questions.

 I just recently finished reading the second of two history books that I received over Christmas. The first, American Lion, was about Andrew Jackson. The second, Team of Rivals, described Lincoln and his cabinet. Both were told through extensive use of primary sources, mainly personal correspondence. Both were long, but e the end very good, and this comes from someone who doesn't read much history.

Lincoln is especially fun to read about since, as you may have noticed, he is sort of a super hero/mythological character in American society. It's hard to know how much of this praise is warranted. Team of Rivals, gave me a great impression of Lincoln, but what seemed to be an honest one. He was definitely a politician, but an excellent one in that he succeeded uniting very different groups within the Republican party. He was the kind of guy that everyone liked once they met, but was often made fun of. It was especially funny to hear him referred to as the "prarrie lawyer," since at the time being from Illinois not exactly a mark a sophistication.

Okay, in short I would highly recommend both books if you have a fair amount of time on your hands!
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nbeckman/books.html

Two new books! I'm afraid these may be the last for a while, as summer comes to a tragic close.

• The Yiddish Policemen's Union: Loved it! Would recommend it to just about anyone!


• Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: Eh... It was okay, and definitely funny in parts, but I would only seriously recommend it to the most capital of the Generation X-ers.

But now! I'm in New Orleans, for the holiday weekend. It has now gotten to the point where I really don't know anyone who is still here. Or at least I don't have their numbers or can't think of their names when I feel like going out, so my time in New Orleans is actually quite mellow. I spend a lot of time with my parents, which frankly I really enjoy. We go out to eat. We go to art exhibits (Fernando Botero at the New Orleans Museum of Art! Go see it! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Botero). I work a little at CC's. I go to church. I go grocery shopping. Very mellow.

Tonight we went to Big Al's, a new seafood place, and I stuffed my face with boiled shrimp. I used to be very lukewarm on boiled (as opposed to fried) shrimp, but it's making a huge comeback.

I'm also reading big-time, and these long weekends are great for that. Last weekend it was "No Country for Old Men," and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" This weekend it's "Moneyball" and "The Right Stuff." Summer is the best.

In my recent boredom I have finished two pretty good books, Dreaming in Code, a non-fiction book about an open-source software project, and I Love You, Beth Cooper, a teen/graduation comedy. I put up some quasi-reviews on my books page.

Strangely, I haven't posted in a while. This is mainly strange because I have tons of things going on right now, each one of which might make an excellent blog-o-story. I am currently sitting in an apartment in Vienna, where I have traveled to meet Brianne. Vienna is amazing. Details and pictures, as always to follow. I have a new program, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and I am using it to make my pictures (hopefully) much rad-er. I am also now extremely interested in a.) The Hapsburgs b.) Kaiser Franz Joseph c.) World War I and d.) Currywurst.

I also had a paper accepted to a major conference, and that makes me super jazzed. The conference is called OOPSLA, The Conference on Object Oriented Programming Languages, Systems, and Applications. It will be in Nashville this fall. It was on my research work, but was done jointly with Kevin and Jonathan. I don't really have a copy up on the web yet, but I will put one up soon. Seriously. It was called, Verifying Correct Usage of Atomic Blocks with Typestate.

I've also finished reading a great book called A Nervous Splenor: Vienna 1888-1889. It's all about two amazing years in the history of Vienna,  culminating in the suicide of Rudolph, the crown prince. It's history, but reads more like a novel.

Um, more to come... It's dinner time.

This weekend is going pretty well so far!

This morning I finished Baudolino, which I have been reading for the Patrick Gage-organized book club. Good book! I recommend that you check it out, even if the subject doesn't intrigue you (as it didn't intrigue me). Quasi review located here.

Last night I went to see Randal Munroe of XKCD fame talk at the CMU gym. I was pleasantly surprised. While there was a fair amount of fanboy-ism from the audience (example questions include, "who would win a fight, a raptor or a zombie?" and "who would win a fight, a minotaur with a crossbow or some other garbage I can't remember"), but I got the impression that Randal himself was actually a pretty well-adjusted guy. He was neither a super-nerd, nor a power-mad leader of the nerds type, which I appreciate.

Tonight I am going to see Broken Social Scene with Brianne and others. What up?!

I finally finished reading "The Grapes of Wrath." It took a little longer than I would have liked because my reading time was rudely stolen by this project I was working on. I had never read it before. Maybe that tells you something about the quality of my high school, but I doubt it. Anyway, I loved it, but man is that ending sad...

Finished reading "One Night @ The Call Center" and "The Hotel New Hampshire!" See more here.

I applied to be a student volunteer at OOPSLA! It's in Montreal, and I desperately want to go, see the sweet programming languages research and also practice my French! Wish me luck!


We're finally going to Hampi this weekend! We've had some set-backs (our original trip was canceled to to some last minute shenanigans) but I expect a fun weekend of site-seeing. We leave tomorrow and get back Monday morning, just in time for work. Hopefully this train car will be as nice as the last one, and hopefully I'll be able to get some sleeps...

Early this past week I finished reading "The Wind Up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami, a book that Rand recommended. I've posted a review of sorts where I always post these things.

I am currently reading the book, "And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails." As it turns out, the history of rum and the new world are intimately tied, and each one reveals a lot about the other.

Because of my newfound interest, a rum-tasting party is in the works. You've been warned.