Work / University

Estimated semester result

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In order to have more time to study, I will take the first attempt on the big Maths exam only in March, and because I did not pass the first attempt, I will have to try again on the exam in Formale Modellierung. Also, I still did not complete all tests in Programmierpraxis.

But: I will for sure have finished the other half of my courses within less than 3 weeks’ time! Also, repeating the tests in Maths and FMod at the beginning of 2nd semester means I’m still pretty much “on schedule”.

So, until now there is not one single subject I really have to repeat … sounds great, doesn’t it?

Outdoors

Finally: Skiing!

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Thanks to Kira, I will finally make it to my first day on skis this season. She suggested to go to Semmering on Sunday, and so we will do. It will be Kira (a snowboarding beginner), me (pretty good skier), Georg (trained ski instructor) and maybe even Paul (intermediate skier as far as I know).

I’ll see how my phone copes with the weather conditions and try to take some pictures for you 🙂

Enjoying Vienna

A walk in the park …

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Georg and I did not really know what to do during the last days, so after finishing the LotR-Making of (again), we got a bit bored. And then it occured to us that we did not go to the Zoo in the last 3 months!

Well, our last visit was in the end of October, with Armi and Andre, and as we’re both proud holders of an annual ticket, we decided to go there today.

In comparison to the last week, we got up pretty early (shortly before 8) and arrived at the Zoo only some minutes past 9, so just after the gates opened. It was a bit spooky with nearly no one else there, but we did get to see some work of the caretakers we usually don’t see: cleaning-up at the Katta’s, breakfast for the Somalia Blackheaded Sheep, and so on.

Also, as always, we attended the commented feedings of the Orang Utan, the sea lions, and watched the big clean-up at the Humboldt penguins. Unfortunately, we missed the (pretty rare) commented feeding of the Arctic Wolves, though 🙁

Want some pictures? Go ahead. The quality won’t be stunning, as I took them with my phone, but should be okay 😉

CouchSurfing

It’s planned!

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Yes, I know, I’ve been lazy again in December. So let’s try to catch up a bit, right?

In August I booked a flight from Vienna to New York and back again for less than 400 Euros, and got two guys, Josef and Christian, to join me.

Unfortunately, Christian won’t be able to join us any more, as there’s been some changes in the company he’s working with, and he should definitely stay in Vienna during February.

So yesterday, Josef and I got together and started planning the trip. He came up with the idea of going to Montreal (“There’s someone who’d LOVE to host us!”), and I said “Well, when we’re already in Canada, why not continue to Toronto and go see the Niagara Falls, too?”, and he said “But what should we do in between there and Washington? … Oh, wait, Cleveland’s just around the corner.” and I said “Oh, and Pittsburgh, right there, it’s on the way too!” … so this is our current schedule:

According to google maps, it should be about 34 hours of driving. The longest part would be from Montreal to Toronto, taking about 6.5 hrs. Our day-to-day schedule is not 100 % fixed yet and we’re not sure about some stops yet (e.g. if we’ll stay overnight in Cleveland and/or Pittsburg at all), but that’s about it.

I’ll be on my couch now, checking my brand new rough guide to the USA 🙂

Work / University

Stereotypical, and not.

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The friends I found at University are just the typical IT guys you can find everywhere. We like the typical things (music, movies, books), talk about the typical things (movies, comics, computers) and usually do the typical things (not too much sports, playing strange games online).

But then again, only a week ago, I asked a girl from this group and a friend from Couchsurfing if they would like to join me at another friends’ birthday party. It was going to take place at a Karaoke Bar and I would need some assistance and people I could talk to aside from the few I’d know there. The party was scheduled to start some about 2 hours after a written exam at University, so we met at one of Vienna’s christmas markets after the exam, as we were divided into several groups taking the exam in different buildings of the UT. And all of a sudden, when I wanted to get on my way to the party with my two friends, another 4 asked if they could join because they’d just LOVE to do some Karaoke.

So we crashed a party. 5 IT students and a nursery-school teacher. We had a blast, annoyed some of the other people attending the party, and sang some songs with the birthday girl.

So, we’re totally typical IT students. But we’re not 🙂

CouchSurfing, GeoCaching

Walking and Caching

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It did not really go according to plan on Wednesday. Georg couldn’t join us, and wihtout him I did not want to try and go for the multi caches. Still, I could show the people who came along a simple traditional cache. I knew exactly where to find it, so no problem there 🙂

Thursday was a public holiday in Austria, so I decided to spend the afternoon in Baden, a town not far from Vienna. Again, some couchsurfers came along, and one of them is a fellow geocacher, so we decided to also head for some caches. We ended up looking for 3, and finding 2 of them. The third we could not find because we could not get near the coordinates, as there were christmas trees stored on the spot and there was a fence all around.

CouchSurfing

Secret Santa

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As mentioned already, the Vienna Couchsurfing Community is very active. Every year, for a couple of years now, a game of Secret Santa has been organised. This year nobody made the first step until the end of November, so I contacted some of the organisers … and got promoted to organiser of Secret Santa!

So together with Maria, I am now organiser of Secret Santa. Together with 11 others, our names were put on lots, and one of my friends from University did the drawing. The whole idea is to get in touch with the person that was drawn to receive a present from you, without him/her really noticing. Find out, what they would like to receive (price should be less than 5 Euros), and then give it to them at Christmas Dinner.

It’s really fun, especially as some people are pretty new to the community and therefor a bit harder to find out things about 😉

CouchSurfing, GeoCaching

Walk, talk, and try to find a Geocache!

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As my university schedule offers a whole day mostly off on Wednesdays (only Maths from 9 to 10 am), I decided to go for a walk every Wednesday. In order to be more motivated, I told others about it. About a thousand others, as I posted my plans to the Vienna Group.

Now every Wednesday I meet up with some others to have a walk for about one hour, and we change location every time. Like this, I have visited Schönbrunn, Wienerberg and Augarten in the last three weeks. This week, I am planning to go to Prater, and I want to add something else to the Walk and Talk-Meeting: Finding a multi stage geocache. I have already tried once to find it, together with Georg, but we started out too late and it went dark before we were finished. This time, we will start at noon already, so it should be light long enough for us to solve all the riddles.

If anybody wants to join, there is more information available on the CS Meeting Page. I’d love to see you there! If you can’t sign up because you’re not registered on Couchsurfing, just leave a comment.

GeoCaching

Owner’s duties

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If you’re the “owner” of a geocache, it means you have to take care of it. That’s the reason why usually if you want to publish a geocache far away from your set home location you will receive a message saying “Thanks for the idea, but we prefer non-holiday caches”.

Taking care means to check regularly, or at least after receiving several “Did not find”-logs, if your cache is still situated where it should be, if nothing is broken, if nothing unappropriate was put into the container, or if the logbook is full. Usually things like this will be reported in logs, anyways. Still it is good to check by yourself 😉

Of course, in case the container gets “muggled” (thrown away by non-cachers) or is too destroyed to be simply fixed, you’ll have to replace it. This already happened to several of my caches. Fortunately, my brother is always in the area, so the caches can stay online and active even when I’m not around (as most of the time).

Once this summer, when I was back home, I had a look at one of my caches, situated in the “Industrial Area” of Pflach. It’s a pretty busy cache, so the logbook was full within less then a year. That’s a long time for other areas, but for Reutte, it’s still good 😉

And here are the scans of the logbook:

There are also two funny stories about this cache: The Berlin Craftsman and The Confused Geocachers.

Work / University

Uni-busity

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Yes, I’ve been damn busy the last weeks. I’m not used to studying and doing homework anymore, and time management was never one of my strengths. Still, I seem to handle my first semester courses pretty well. I spend about 25 hours per week (!) at lectures, tutorial groups, and study groups. Doing homework and learning for exams is extra, of course. At the moment, the hardest parts are Technical Basics and Programming Theory, as they obviously are pretty theoretic courses and not that exciting to teach/learn.