wet weekend

well, yesterday, we had fun in spite of the weather, even though it was really quite miserable. not the best choice for going hiking, but i really wanted to, and yannick seemed excited about it, so we went anyway. a spanish student named olivia who visiting their lab came with us as well. it was never raining hard, but we did get reasonably wet, and the lousy part was that by the time we got to the viewpoint, we were standing in the cloud, and visibility was like 15-20 meters. but like i said, it was fun to spend time with people. i had wanted to invite them back for dinner after, but as everyone was cold, wet, and tired, we just went our separate ways instead.

regardless, i was really glad we went, because we got to talk quite a bit, and filled in a lot of the getting-to-know-you details and stuff. he claimed it was because this was the first time we'd seen each other when we weren't drunk (which amused me, seeing as it's not technically true, since i seldom drink much, if anything, at markus's thursdays, but i didn't bother correcting him). so, yeah, just ordinary stuff, like two younger siblings (brother 13, sister 20), the ~5 years he lived in menlo park were around 1988-1994, before they moved back to france (lyon). he's mildly red/green colorblind, like me. his dad is some sort of protein biologist and has been working at epfl for about 10 years now, and so the rest of his family is currently relocating to lausanne. just details in the grand scheme of things, but i like learning about people. it's just fun for me, i guess.

saturday i wandered around a different area of town on my shopping trip, and found a neat little tea store where i talked to the lady for a while, tried a few, and eventually bought 50g of one (it was rather expensive, but i chalk it up to life experiences, meeting new and interesting people, and speaking to them in french). the brita filter i bought for the vodka experiment (i did write about that, didn't i? maybe i should go back and check) actually works really well for filtering the water before making tea. not sure why, since the tap water tastes fine to me unfiltered, but i guess some of the minerals react with the chemicals/extracts in the tea, and can sometimes cause it to taste funny.

i also bought another case fan for the computer, and it seems [knock on wood] to be slightly more happy now. and i don't know if i'm interpreting the output correctly, but i tried to configure lm_sensors so that i could check on the temperature in real time while the machine was running, and it says that the motherboard is running 10-15 degrees (centigrade) hotter than it should. i suspect this might be simply a calibration issue, though, since some of the voltage monitors show double or half what they should, and stuff like that.

jim, fabius, carol, and i played settlers on saturday night. i wonder if you can guess who won both games. hahahaha. (i'll give you a hint: his name starts with a "j" and he always wins everything.)

i should probably set a date for thanksgiving soon, so that i stand a chance of squeezing it onto people's calendars. maybe the sunday before the real thing this year? hrm. more news on this when it comes.