Frank's World

Friday, December 23, 2005

About that Trip To Victoria

Now that I am home and thus free for the holidays here is my long in coming entry about the trip to Victoria. Since my laptop harddrive with all the pictures on it failed last weekend I don't have any photos for you to browse though :(

On a fateful Thursday evening the day after my birthday I started reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone. My parent had just gotten me the book and I thought it would do a good job of taking my mind for the trip to Victoria the next morning. As it turned out I had trouble falling asleep at a decent hour being all nervous about my interview the next day ... so i read about 200 pages of Harry Potter that night and finally caught maybe 3 hours of sleep.

The next morning I set out bright and early at 6am to make it to the ferry. On the way I stole a tabloid from the lady next to me and started doing the Sudoku on it. Then spend about 10 minutes talking to her how the puzzles in the tabloid are too easy. On the ferry ride to Victoria I did the unthinkable, instead of continuing the read of Harry Potter I looked though a couple of presentations and papers from the ATLAS I had downloaded from the UVic site.

So after that and a short nap on the ferry I bused and taxied it over to UVic. Here I joined my potential supervisor Michel Lefebvre first for lunch and then a pleasant interview. He told me a bit about ATLAS, I told him a bit about my masters and why I thought working on ATLAS would be the coolest thing ever (well how ofter do you get to look for super-symmetry, the origin of mass, and extra dimensions?). In fact working at a huge physics lab looking for extra dimensions made me think of Halflife, but let's put that aside for now.

Next I met up with some of the grad student working on ATLAS, half of which were just getting back from a quantum midterm and hence on the way to the pub. I could not argue with going to the pub so I had a grand time getting to know some of the grad students, having beer, and enjoying the very nice student pub at UVic (kicks the crap out of the Pit anyway). From there on I went on a cruise to Victoria Downtown and it's many brew pubs with two grad students Kristin (i hope i got the spelling right) a girl doing theory at UVic and Ian a guy who used to work on ATLAS.

We ended up at Swans, a brewery pub and hotel where they had put me up for the night. A very nice place, the Oatmeal Stout there was quite good actually. And the rooms are prime.

The next morning I had breakfast and a beer at Spinnaker's. Following Michel's recommendation I tried their Extra Bitter, which was indeed one of the best beers I have ever had. After that I strolled over to the bus stop and was off back to Vancouver, feeling very happy about Striking a deal that will made Scott (my current supervisor) happy as well. I'll start my PhD at UVic in May, given that I finish my masters over the next 4 months :)

Home for Christmas

After catching a nice red-eye from Vancouver, with a stop over in Montreal (it should go without saying that I nearly missed my connecting flight) I arrived a little tired but happy in Halifax. The plane touched down at 10:08 am and guess what, by 10:37 my dad already had some chores for me! Ahhh, home sweet home :D

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Something to Keep You Going

I am planning to write a entry about my trip to Victoria, as for now let me just tell you that I have a PhD open for me there starting May 2006. On other news, check out hits crazy mario speed run!

Friday, November 25, 2005

Going to Victoria

Rise and shine everybody! We're going to Victoria today. Never been there, they tell me it's nice.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Crazy Cristmas Lights

I usually don't get too worked up about a christmas front lawn decorations, but this display is way cool!

Do any of you guys know the song they are playing along with that video?

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Slashdot | Darwin Evolving Into A Tricky Exhibit

What is happening to the US? Hearing about this kind of thing once might just be a odd concidence ... but this is not the first time. As TripMaster Monkey (862126) * posted under the article here is something semi-recent fomr The Register:

Growing numbers of Americans support the idea of teaching creationism in schools, and in a recent CBS News poll, 51 per cent of respondents said they rejected the idea of evolution

So once we are done with that part of the curriculum we'll cover Exodus 22:18 and it's implications to internatinal politics. I think Harry is gonna be in trouble.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

A New Plan

Talking about Timmies and conquering the world found me fingering myself on physics yesterday (hehe). And thus it came to be that I realized my plan was out of order:

fbergh@physics ~> finger fbergh

Login name: fbergh (messages off) In real life: Frank Berghaus
Directory: /home2/fbergh Shell: /bin/tcsh
On since Nov 22 08:56:15 on pts/46 from moonbase-1.physics.ubc.ca
No unread mail
Plan:
FICK DICH INS KNIE (that was for fingering me!)

Now may I introduce you to my plan for world domination. I shall use the huge amount of money i am making as a grad student to assemble a weapon as menacing as the little spit-ball-throwers people constructed in high school. This weapon must look about as threatening as a Kill-O-Zap bastard ray gun so that I can convince the local military to join my cause. Then I will slowly and surely take over north America starting from the north, possibly skipping the south and moving right along to Latin America where may stop in favor of zipping on a cold drink at the beach.
Before I start though i need some coffee, where is the closest Timmies??!

"Circumcisions. Today's special: Half off."
->Mel Brooks in Men in Tights

Since there is a new Timmies on campus I don't know any longer how to counter my plan to conquer the world ... any suggestions?