Well, it’s been forever since my last post. School, life and laziness have combined to cause me to completely neglect my blog. No apologies, though. I’m plowing through school and hope to be finished in the next 2 or so years.

Well, the biggest change is that Annika and I are having a baby in 4 weeks. We don’t care to know if it’s a boy or a girl but so far things are going wonderfully and we are looking forward to starting our family.

In preparation for our new family, I’ve changed my name. I’m now Christopher Wilson Kuehl. So I took Annika’s last name as it’s easy to pronounce in both German and English whereas Wilson can give Germans difficulty. Also, I like to buck patriarchal traditions. And who would pass up the chance to be Chris Kuehl (pronounced “cool” slightly wrongly by English speakers).

Also, I got accepted to San Diego State University where I’ll be working towards a degree in Computer Engineering starting next Fall. I’ve really enjoyed the time at San Diego City College. Most of the professors are great and I’ve had the chance and will continue to work with a lot of great people on the AUV project.

Ok, time to stop procrastinating and get studying for my Circuit Analysis exam in the morning.

It appears that digg has been blocked by the San Diego City College District for the last couple weeks. I’ve tried accessing it from City College and Mesa College with the same result. After a minute or so I get the “The connection has timed out” page. I’ve not tried it from Miramar.

Other sites that are a lot less informative are still accessible: Youtube, MySpace, Facebook, etc.

Of course, getting around the block is trivial. Just find a free proxy site and read digg all you want. Unfortunately, digging doesn’t seem to work.

Update: digg it!

Tonight I went to see the Padres play the D-backs. They were down 8 to 0 but almost came back. The game ended 8-7. Now they are only 1 game out of first place. I went with Annika and Matthias, a friend from Berlin. It was his first baseball game but he quickly caught on. By the end of the game he had all the basics down. He goes back to Berlin on Saturday.

Even though they lost ,it was the most exciting one I’ve seen this year. We were seated behind the left-field wall.

I’ve completed 10 days of the Master Cleanse and am now going for 14 days. 21 days will be the maximum regardless of how well it’s going. I’ve been wanting to try this since working at Deep Roots in 1997. So I’ve finally done it. Yeah.

The whole process has been extremely painless. After a couple days you don’t feel hungry and because of the lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper drink I haven’t felt fatigued. I’ve only done the salt water flush a few times because I go to school in the mornings but that was also painless.

My body has been responding positively. I’ve lost about 15lbs so far. I’ve also stopped having pain in my knee that I’ve had for a while now. My eczema has mostly cleared up, as well. Maybe it’s all in the mind.

I’ll post to the blog when I’m off the cleanse.

The Lying Game from Balls of Steel

So my first semester back at school ended a week ago. I’m going to San Diego City College right now with the intention of transferring to San Diego State or UC San Diego for the last ~2 years. My intended major is Computer Engineering.

I took 21 units (12 is considered full time) so I was kept rather busy. While 21 units seems like a lot it doesn’t really give the whole picture. I had a German III class that was 5 units which didn’t really require effort. My other classes were Precalculus, Scientific Programming (Java) w/ Lab, C/C++ Programming and Honors Sociology: Social Problems From a Feminist Perspective. We don’t get our grades for a few days yet but I think I got an A in everything.

I really liked Precalc and Sci Programming. The instructors for those were really nice and helpful. I’m ready for Calculus now!

The Sociology class was LOTS of work. I probably wrote about 1000 pages for that class. The feminist aspect of the class was really interesting. Too bad the term makes so many people cringe.

The C/C++ class was absolutely horrid. It was done by the laziest professor of all time. The Sci. Programming class and the C/C++ class were both online but that’s were the similarities stop. While the Sci. Programming professor was always giving feed back and prompting participation, the C/C++ professor only showed up to post the assignments and quizzes. Once you submitted your assignment there was NEVER any feedback. Nothing is ever graded except the test which is all automated. The tests consistently had errors and when notified of the errors he wouldn’t take the effort to change the grade (at least for students to see). When another student and I went to confront him about these issues he made these excuses that it’s not realistic that he give feedback on everything. Fine, unfortunately it wasn’t realistic for him to give feedback on anything. Oh, and for the programmers out there, we didn’t even cover pointers, structs or classes!

Apart from that one bad class I’m really impressed with the level of education at City College. Many more students follow the 2-year-then-transfer path in California than in NC. The student are more serious and also a bit older than in NC. I’m meeting a lot of really cool people that are in a similar situation as myself; a mature student going back to school after experiencing a bit of life. There is also a tuition waiver program for po’ folk that I qualify for. That is saving my $400+ a semester.

Besides the classes, I also started a Computing Club on campus. We’ve got about 10 members and will probably increase that quite a bit when we participate in our first club rush in the Spring. I’m President of the club and have given a few presentations on Firefox, Linux, and Web Development. We’ve also had people give presentations on Maple/Mathematica, The GIMP and the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Project, of which I’m also a part. It’s purpose is to be a place were we each can learn from the other.

The AUV Project is apart really interesting for me. Basically, the goal is to build a robot that can navigate an obstacle course. Last year the City College team got 17th out of 21 participating schools which is pretty good for a first year. We are the only 2-year school involved. There is also a High School participating. The other schools are 4-year engineering schools: MIT, Georgia Tech, Univ. of Florida, Cornell, Duke etc. Basically, we don’t satnd much of a chance to win but it’s all about learning. I’m currently building a GUI to display the readings of the bot. I’ll talk more about that in the 3rd part of this recap.

In November I finally got a job. I’m tutoring a blind student in German 10 hours a week. It’s quite a challenge. It’s made even more challenging by the fact that my student is newly blind and therefore doesn’t know braille or how to properly use a computer. I’ll be continuing tutoring him in the next semester. With that money I barely get by. I wasn’t exactly planning to get rich by being a student, though.

I’m looking forward to next semester.Actually, I also have an intersession class that starts in 2 days and is 4 weeks long. That’s just a Speech class requirement, however, so I ain’t really looking forward to that. Next semester I’ll be taking Calculus and Analytical Geometry I w/ Lab, Digital Systems, English 205 (ugh) and possibly Machine and Assembly Language w/ Lab.

In short, I’m lovin’ being back in school. Only 7 more semesters to go!

This is part one of a three part recap of what I’ve been doing these last few months.

So Annika arrived into Charlotte (as I mentioned in the last posting), visited my family in NC and finally flew out to her new home, San Diego, where Waid and I picked her up from the Airport. I had saved up all my absentee days at school in order to be able to spend more time with Annika since this almost two weeks is the only chance we will be able to see each other till March. We didn’t really do too many things; just enjoyed each other’s company.

Annika did, however, have an interview with the German immersion school around the corner. The result is that she has a job as a kindergarten (auf Deutsch: Vorschule) teacher starting in April. She won’t be a “real” teacher until she gets her credentials. She should be able to do most of the course work for that over the summer and be working as a credentialed teacher in the Fall.

The stuff worth writing about actually happened when Annika wanted to fly to China. We bought a one-way ticket from the Air China’s US website for about $500 and shortly thereafter received, via email, the confirmation stating, “E-Ticket purchase has been confirmed by the airline. No tickets will be mailed.” Great! So, on Wednesday, November 15th, Annika got the train to LA for $29. Josh was nice enough to pick her up from the train station, let her sleep at his place and even take her to the airport just before 7am.

When Annika arrives at the airport she goes to the counter with booking number ready expecting to be given her boarding pass and go through security. Instead, she is told that she has a paper ticket and without that she will not be allowed to board. Being that the airline doing the processing is United and the flight is also a United flight, they cannot do anything with tickets purchased through Air China. She’s told that she’ll have to speak to an Air China representative. So Annika hurriedly goes to the Air China desk only to find that the don’t open till shortly before her flight leaves. After a few more desperate attempts to get on her plane, she realizes that she has no chance and waits for the Air China desk to open in hopes of getting on a plane that day.

When she finally gets to talk to Air China people they tell her she’ll have to talk to the agent she bought the tickets from. She tells them she bought it directly from the Air China US site. They tell her that she actually bought it from Expedia. It turns out that, although there is no mention of this, whenever you buy a ticket from the Air China US site you are buying it through an outside agent. So Annika get in the phone with Expedia and they confirm that the ticket was booked through them. They also confirm that she ordered a paper ticket (although it clearly states “E-ticket” in her confirmation). In fact, the ticket had been delivered by UPS on the 8th! Annika calls and asks me to go home and check that we have the tickets at home. The ticket was lying inside a UPS envelope inside our screened-in porch.

The reason we hadn’t noticed the envelope was that it was lying right where we would normally put the paper to be recycled. I remember seeing the envelope but not paying it any mind because of where it was lying and the fact that we were not expecting anything. Initially, we thought that UPS delivery person had put it where it where we found it but I have my doubts now. I talked to our delivery guy an as I had though, he mentioned that he would never go inside the gate because he new we had a dog.

So, I eventually call Annika and tell her that the ticket is there. She is first told to have it faxed. I get on my scooter and while approaching 30th and University the back tire goes flat. What great timing! So I called Waid to have him pick me up, which he was nice enough to do. Luckily there was a place with a fax machine around the corner. Once Waid had picked me up, we went to the scooter shop so that I could also print out and fax the “E-ticket” confirmation. Keep in mind this is around 6:30pm. Annika arrived at the airport around 7am.

Annika had her meeting with an Air China supervisor at 8pm. In the meantime, while wondering around LAX, Annika ran into Thomas Gottschalk of all people. He is host of “Wetten, Das?,” a German TV show and one of the most famous people in Germany. She got his autograph and told him her situation, of course.

Well, back in the real world Annika went to her meeting with the Air China people at 8am. They had received the fax but insisted she have the real tickets in hand. It would not be a problem to give her another flight to Shanghai but the original tickets had to be shown. This meant that I’d have to deliver them. Annika told them she would have the ticket and booked a flight for the next day.

At 11:30 I went to Thrifty to pick-up the Economy car I had reserved only to find there was only Mini-vans left. Ugh! So I take that and drive through the extremely dense fog. I buy a couple Monsters to keep me awake and arrive in LA at 2:50am. Josh’s place was easy to find and and I was sleeping by 3:10am. At 6:40am we awoke and quickly made our way to the airport. The traffic was surprisingly a non-issue.

So there we were, at the terminal where Annika had just spent 15 hour the previous day. We get to the counter, show the ticket and are told not surprisingly that the ticket is for the day before. Annika explains and is told that this is not “their” (United’s) ticket and they can change it. At this point we both kinda make funny noises in despair/disbelief. Annika is a used to this by now and firmly explains the situation. Someone who dealt with Annika the previous morning comes over and confirms. After the supervisor calls the “international supervisor” Annika is FINALLY cleared to leave.

I stay till Annika is safely through the security check and make my way home. Annika spent over $20 on phone calls that day and I ended spending $75 for the rental and gas. As you can see Annika’s departure was quite eventful. I hope she’s able to leave China without all this hassle.

So, I’m sitting here in San Diego waiting for a call from Annika to give confirmation that she’s safely through customs in Charlotte, NC. You see, this is the first time she’s entering the the US on here permanent residency visa. That means she has to be processed and get final approval from the Customs (Border?) agent to get her Green Card. I’m crossing my fingers that everything is going OK. When she gets this, we will both finally have the freedom to work and live in the other’s country.

She’s going to spend a couple days with my mom and brother in Burlington, NC. On Friday she arrives here in San Diego but is only going to be staying two weeks. She has an internship at the University in Hangzhou, China to teach German till about the end of February. Then she’ll be here for good.

Exciting time for Annika.

UPDATE: Everything went smashingly!

I just read a post by Philip Van Hoof discussing his decision to not travel to the US. Having read many of his other politically-oriented post, I’d say we have quite similar political views. I take issue however with this last post however; not because of the political views expressed but rather the action (or lack thereof) taken.

First a little background. I left the US in 1999 largely due to my discontent with the American system. Bill Clinton was President at the time. I lived in Berlin, Germany until very recently and also spent quite a bit off time in the Sweden. Ironically, I moved back to the US at a time when the worst President in history is in office. The system and the President have only gotten worse. So why am I back. Basically just to get my education.

Actually, what I wanted to mention was the experiences that my wife, Annika, had when she told friends she was applying for a greencard to the US. Most of her friends responded with open disapproval. They couldn’t realise why someone like Annika would want to go to a place so backwards and with such a militant regime in power. Most all of the people who responded like that had never been to the US. Those who had been to the US where much more understanding of her decision.

A nice parallel when I hear people take this line is to ask them if they’d go to Italy (this was when Belesconi was in power). Most would answer positively and many admit that they had just recently been there. When you ask these same people if they thought Belesconi was more or less as bad as Bush, they’d mostly agree. There seems to be a double standard. Also with this logic the UK should be a no-go zone as well.

Another thing is that the US has a very large progressive community. Bush does not have the support of the majority of Americans. Nor does he or his regime give even a small picture of the US. It’s the diversity in the US that I longed for when in Europe. I believe you are only doing yourself a disservice when you cut yourself off from a full understanding of the US. For all its fucked-upness, I most admit it’s a very stimulating place.

To close I’ll quote, as well as I can remember, what an Iraqi who had asylum in Sweden said to me when I apologized to him for my countries bombing of his country. He said to me, “You know, it’s not about what those in power do. It’s us the people like you and me talking now. You have nothing to apologize for.” I still felt like I needed to apologize but what he said is exactly right. We can’t let the politics, no matter how fucked up, or lines drawn in sand separate what should rightfully be united: People. Polorization plays right into the hand of the neo-cons.

That said, if you want to refuse to come into the because of the finger-printing eye-scanning mumbo jumbo, I’m all with you.

I mentioned a few posts back that RyanAir also thinks the security measures at airports are a farce. Well, it also seems like they have a sense of humor about it. The following image can be found through this link.

The caption is “NEW AIRPORT SECURITY PROCEDURES, PUT FUN BACK INT0 FLYING”

UPDATE: Just noticed this was on Boing Boing.