Brian Parks


Bike, car, and other things

17 Oct 2009

I managed to find a free moment to write more, so I’ll try to remember everything important that’s happened sinec the last time. Realize that I’ll fail, but at least I’ll get some of it.

I got a bike, like I mentioned below. It’s a TREK 7.2FX 17.5”. Pictures when I get around to it.

The big event this past week was that my car officially died. A friend and I went out to dinner Wednesday night (the power was out at my apartment, so I couldn’t cook) and when I went to start my car to get home, it wouldn’t start and knocked like crazy. There was also a coolant leak coming from behind the crank case. The friend and I stayed up until 2:30 in the morning, trying unsuccessfully to track down the problem.

The next morning (6AM; I got 3 hours of sleep), I called AAA and got the car towed to a garage. I then returned home and slept for four or so hours. When the garage called about the car, the status was that it was pretty much toast. I could put a new engine in it if I wanted it to run again, but a new engine would have been more expensive than the car was worth. In the end, I decided that it was better to junk the car. I’ve yet to follow through with that (it’s still sitting in the lot of the garage), but I’ll get around to it when I get a chance.

On the research front, things are going smoothly. I’m on track to submit a paper to CVPR 2010 (deadline is mid-November), though I’m hitting a few obstacles in the tests I’m running (dependencies on other people’s code. We’ll see how it turns out, and, if it gets in, I’ll post the paper here.

I suppose, since I’ve been here for two months (exactly), I can give a two-month report card: