Life, the Universe and Everything » ditl

Workshop is over

wnagele — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 17:43:06 +0000

Sorry that i didn’t find any time to write while we were at the workshop, but i can tell you that we had a great time. Jeff who also attended the workshop however has done some writings about this time – maybe you want to see his ramblings.

Flight to San Diego & Excursion in La Jolla
DatCat Workshop in San Diego
Extraworkshop Activities
San Diego – Vacation Time
San Diego to NC

First california impressions

wnagele — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:30:22 +0000

We started our first day by getting a coffee at our near by deli store. Our luggage was already brought to the reception in the night and so we had one thing less to worry about. After we grabbed our morning starter we headed over in the direction we thought the university campus should be. After a short walk we came to the first buildings of UCSD campus and the first impression was amazing – compared to austrian universities that campus looked just beautiful. We also found the library which looked kind of like a borg cube from star trek.

After we’ve reached the other side of the campus we thought about heading to the beach. We crossed down a street to some kind of gliderpoint. The first thing which came in my mind when i saw it was the old pc game named summer games. The view from up the cliff was great and sun was giving us about 25 degree celsius. There was a small path leading down to the beach which we surely followed to find out that this is a nudist beach. So we headed down the beach for a while and found out that the water will still take some time to get appropriate temperature. At least felt temperature on right teeth was cold.

When coming back from the beach somewhere at La Jolla farms we wanted to head right over to downtown La Jolla. We’ve not fully lost our orientation but we didn’t exactly know how far it would be. So we just started walking … and walking … and walking … after about 2 hours we were pissed of the long distance. So we considered taking a taxi, but wait – where is our sidewalk? Hmm strange we thought – till we found out we’re on some kind of freeway. Dude! Good for us, there was a traffic jam on it and an empty taxi stuck in it. So we just jumped on it to find out that both was illegal – walking on a street without sidewalk and jumping on a taxi while it’s not inside a parking lot. He dropped us at downtown La Jolla at a restaurant which he considered to have good meals. So we headed there and took our first meal in the states. Meal was not that good but also not too bad i guess. Nearby the restaurant there were some kind of cliffs inside a cove. On this cliffs there were hundrets of pelicans and they all used it as a toilet. Therefor the rocks had a little white color touch and well the smell was disgusting. I choose to take a little break and lie down in a nearby park while Teemu choose to head down the cove a bit.

As Teemu had no shorts with him (weather report?) we had to look for some clothing stores and so we went up to Prospect which is the main street in downtown La Jolla. There we grabbed sunglasses (well, ok – i grabbed two of them) and found some khakis and sneakers for Teemu.

Shopping makes thirsty and so we headed for an irish pub named Bull and Bear straight on Prospect which offered us a fine range of cold beer.

In the evening we went to Pacific Beach which is a part of San Diego like La Jolla as the girl in the sunglass shop gave us the tip. I personally didn’t like that college party town that much. So we finished our first night at about 1am and headed back to our hotel.

Arrived at Radisson La Jolla, San Diego, California

wnagele — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 05:22:31 +0000

Uff, you know sleeping in economy class is always kind of an adventure – but having 2 drunk males (i guess they were belgians, Teemu thinks dansk) behind you who try to figure out the deeper background of Casino Royale. Well, it just *sucks*.

The flight itself was seemingless. We catched both connections and that even though we had very tough transfer times (1 hour in Paris – which means a mission impossible for Paris CDG). The fear of Teemu regarding Air France however came to be true. It’s amazing how flying changed in the last few years. On one hand you have cheaper prices for inner european connections now. But you also have increased prices (you know – security …) on long distance (especially the United States). However although the prices raised the service on board and also at the airports decreased dramatically (maybe it’s just my subjective opinion). At the airport in Vienna i was very astounded about the incompetence and rudeness the woman at the checkin desk had. I was just asking about the connection in Los Angeles to United and she just came up with “i don’t care about that”. At least they brought us to LA on time.

But for sure the flights couldn’t be without any problems at all. When we arrived at LAX we were astouned that the immigration and luggage pickup were working fast (about 20 minutes). So we headed over to the terminal our flight with United should depart from. A nice woman at the checkin desk (Air France someone) made a fast and competent checkin and even explained us the way to the gate (Air France huh?). So we headed over to our gate took a coffee at Starbucks and grabbed our first US Dollars from a nearby ATM. The boarding was done in some minutes and so we jumped on our plane to San Diego which was a Brasilia EMB-120 (according to the onboard brochure). I’ve been on such kind of “airtaxi” my first time it only had place for about 10 people and was really nice to fly with. The flight to San Diego took just 35 minutes and so we arrived there on time at about 7pm. I’ve already been a little bit tired then. So we waited for our bagges … and waited … and waited … and waited. While i … waited … Teemu went out to call our hotel for the pickup shuttle. After waiting for a while i headed over to the United desk and guess what? United lost our bagges from LA to San Diego. But the girl at the information desk was really nice and beyond helping us with our lost luggage she gave us some tips for San Diegos nightlife. A little later we arrived at La Jolla (speak: La Hoya) which is about 20 minutes ride from San Diego airport.

Now we’re going to grab our first american burger here and then fall asleep. It’s about 10pm here.

Heading to San Diego

wnagele — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 07:36:44 +0000

I’m writing this from Vienna airport.

We’re currently sitting in the boarding area waiting to get on our plane to Paris. I’ve had a party with some friends yesterday and made the night through. Therefore i have already my 3rd mocca inside. I hope to catch at least some hours of sleep on our way to LA. *tired*

Flights booked – ready to rumble

wnagele — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 12:35:21 +0000

Today we’ve finally booked our flights to San Diego. I’ve booked my flight via Chicago earlier this morning and when Teemu found the time to give me his missing details (birthdate, etc.) the flight was booked out. Isn’t it kinda fascinating that Murphy can get his fingers off – at least one time? Whatever, we’ve had to change to some Delta and United flights which are operated by Air France. As Teemu already had bad experiences with them on long distance flights we’re heading forward to that. However we didn’t have any other choice because the refund limitations of NSF (Fly America Act) force us to book american airlines (even if they are operated by an european airline then ).

The currently planned flight schedule is as follows:

Vienna VIE (10.03.2007 10:10 ) – Paris CDG (10.03.2007 12:15)
Paris CDG (10.03.2007 13:15) – Los Angeles LAX (10.03.2007 15:50)
Los Angeles LAX (10.03.2007 17:55) – San Diego SAN (10.03.2007 18:43)

Los Angeles (17.03.2007 16:30) – Paris CDG (18.03.2007 11:05)
Paris CDG (18.03.2007 12:40) – Vienna VIE (18.03.2007 14:40)

We’ve choosen to take this chance to do a little holiday down in california and therefore will stay the days after the workshop in Los Angeles.

Teemu joining DCC1

wnagele — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 22:17:30 +0000

Great news (at least for me), Teemu who is also operating ORSN node B is joining the workshop in San Diego too. I’m glad i don’t have to take the long flight alone – flights tend to be kinda boring.

Attending DCC1 in San Diego

wnagele — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 20:14:17 +0000

First things first.

In January 2007 CAIDA was one of the institutes behind the Day in the life of the internet. This project was one of the first steps in trying to gather more research data for the future development of internet technologies. I as an operator of ORSN node B have provided them with PCAP data of this node.

Now CAIDA came up with the idea to make a workshop for future contribution of data. They have already invested a lot of time in the DatCat database therefore. The focus of this workshop is to get data providers and researchers together to find a way to provide enough metadata to make the data useful for researchers while still keeping it that simple so data providers will use it. Workshop attendees are also being introduced in DatCat and it’s background.

I’m looking forward to join this workshop in March …

Workshop Homepage