Okay, since I offered up a Mac-friendly wallpaper before, here's a Windows-friendly wallpaper of the Church of Christ the Savior. The wallpapers actually look great on either OS, but Windows boxes tend to put their icons on the left side, and Macs on the right, so having the focal point of the picture behind the icons is decidedly less pleasing.
As Alexey said, today started with "Same time, same place, same salad" as we convened for breakfast around 9:00. After the ususal cucumbers and tomatoes, we had some different pastry/donut things, which I think were strawberry, they were tasty. Followed by the usual yogurt, bread, and cheese, and then we were served some omelets. I dislike eggs with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, so there was no way I was even touching the omelet, so I excused myself and went back to my room. I was hoping to avoid eggs, as I expressed to several co-workers before I left, and was relieved to find that they were rarely served. Guess I got unlucky. :) Around 10, we made our way to the main building of the institute, where we discovered the elevator with the broken LCD was now listed as being out of order. We got in the other elevator in that lobby, and headed for the 7th floor to find Pitr, who had the keys to the classroom we're working on. He wasn't in his office, so we waited around for about 20 minutes, and were walking to the elevator to leave when he appeared in it.
We joined him, and then found out that this too is another elevator that doesn't serve the fourth floor. I realized later in the day that some of the elevators are marked in the lobby, to designate which floors they do serve, but not all of them, and they aren't marked on the other floors, so if you're moving between floors, you're on your own. I mentioned to one of the students helping us that this was confusing, and he agreed, saying that most students gave up and used the stairs. This may be a clever ploy on the part of the administration to keep the elevators for themselves, I surmised, and I filed it away for later use at UNI. I could use a private elevator...
So, after hiking down from the fifth floor, we started back to work on our project. As Chuck began systematically cleaning up the hurried initial setup we did yesterday, I got to work configuring my AirPort Express. I brought it with me from the US for exactly this situation. The network we have the video conferencing unit connected to will only allow two machines on it at once, so I just removed my laptop, and configure the AirPort express to act as a NAT/DHCP device, which let Chuck and I use the network with both of our laptops all day long, wirelessly. It worked great, and the AE is even rated for 240V Russian power, perfect for traveling.
Chuck got everything organized, and connected, and we initiated a test call to St. Petersburg, to the unit that was installed there in January. It worked, but we were still having a video issue on our end. We had it narrowed down to either our NTSC-to-PAL converter, or the PAL TV we were connected to. We didn't have another converter, and the new TV for the permanent installation isn't arriving until tomorrow (at the earliest), so we asked the Russians if they could dig up another TV for us to test with, rather than the old unit we were given.
At first, they said no. This was a bit frustrating, as you'd think there'd be more than one TV in a school of this size, so we explained the situation, and that if it turned out we had a bad NTSC-PAL converter, we needed to know now, so that the St. Petersburg-bound delegation coming from UNI on Friday could bring one with them from the states. They then agreed to help us, and set off in search of another TV.
We were glad, and did some more testing. I dialed into our video bridge at UNI, since no one is at work around 4:00 a.m., and just looped our own video back to us to see if we had any connection issues. I also started running some, uh, "throughput tests" with my laptop on the network, retrieving last week's episode of Survivor, and The Daily Show from the night of the debates. I figured the TV networks were going to have a helluva time coming after me since I was originating from a Russian IP address.
Eventually Pitr returned with some Pepsi, or, as the bottles read here, NENCN, with the last N backwards. He also brought us some Russian chocolate bars, which were good. They're milk chocolate, but aerated, full of air bubbles, so even though the piece you break off is big, it's not solid chocolate, so it's very light on the tongue. Chuck and I loaded up on caffeine and sugar as we waited for a TV to arrive.
Somewhere around this time, I developed a spontaneous nosebleed while using my laptop, and realized I had also managed to bleed a bit on my nice white Apple-logoed Polo shirt. As I attempted to hold my nose shut, I convinced Chuck to dig around in my coat for the toilet paper (that all Russian visitors should carry) so that I could stem the flow of blood. I think my nose was just dried out from the air in the Institute, and being exposed to this much smoke certainly isn't helping matters. After the bleeding stopped, I got Yuri to show me the way to the bathroom. The one on our floor was locked, apparently because it doesn't work, so he led me up a floor to the worst bathroom I have seen in my life. Yuri said "Sorry, it's really dirty" before I went in. Let me say this: I'd rather use any gas station toilet in the states than this room, it's that bad. Fortunately, I just wanted to wash the blood off my hands, so I used the sink (which only dispensed ice-cold water, much like the bathrooms in Sabin hall at UNI) to wash the blood off my hands, and then speculated that anything my blood was carrying could only clean up that bathroom, but my white blood cells were sure to die a quick death.
I quickly retreated from the bathroom, and promised myself that I'd not return under any circumstances requiring me to expose my sensitive areas to those conditions.
After a while, Yuri and Andrei came back with a 19" TV, and we were excited to test again. We got the TV connected to our units, via the Composite (RCA) jack, and turned it on. Then, we discovered that this TV is one of those type that requires the remote to switch to the AV jack from the RF antenna connection, and, you guessed it, the Russians had long since lost the remote. Okay, some frustration, and we tried all the buttons on the thing, and tuning all through the channel range, but no luck, no way to activate the AV jacks. I hate TV manufacturers that do this, they take an important button, like the one that selects inputs, and put it only on the remote. Worse yet, most of the universal remotes don't emulate that button either, so if you lose it, or it gets broken, you're screwed. There ought to be a law...
We explained the situation, and the Russians had already taken our previous test machine (which had flaky off-color blurry video, but had at least let us see) away to an undisclosed location, so they set off again to find yet another TV.
We decided to go to lunch at this point, and headed to the bar/restaurant that we're supposed to eat at on campus. To our surprise, we didn't get cucumber/tomato salad again we got a salad consisting of red and green bell peppers and some animal, which Chuck thinks may have been fish, and I thought may have been crab, but since there was no flavor to it, we ate it none-the-less, as the salad was fairly tasty.
Next came a soup, some clear broth filled with mushrooms (yuck), green olives (yum), black olives (yuck), paper-thin slices of what appeared to be hot dogs, a big glob of some white fatty substance, and some limp onions and other assorted produce. There was some other type of meat in the thing too, but I'm not sure what it was either. The entree turned out to be fish (which I really dislike) some kidney beans, and some potatoes with herbs. I gave the fish a pass, but ate all the beans and most of my potatoes before excusing myself to go change and wash my bloody shirt before the cook/waitress woman could glare at me for not eating her breaded fish patty.
I managed to get the blood all out, and also made quite a mess of my shower room, as I have literally no experience in laundering things by hand. I threw on an Iowa State t-shirt, and headed back to the classroom to meet Chuck and Alexey.
Eventually, Yuri and Andrei returned, looking quite haggard, with another 19" TV, complete with remote. I almost didn't have the heart to tell them what I realized as they walked through the door. This TV had the remote control, but didn't have any RCA jacks, and we certainly didn't have an RF converter.
Andrei looked somewhat crestfallen at this point, so we asked for our original little TV back, and he hauled this third TV out, and set off in search of our original unit. Around this time, Yuri appeared, with a Samsung projector unit, which had both S-Video and Composite jacks on it, much to our joy. He handed it to me, and Chuck and I began to hook it up, and I asked him where the power cable was. He said it'd be coming "in two minutes", I looked at the projector, and it took a proprietary connector that we didn't have.
After 15 minutes went by, I looked at the unit again, and realized it looked just like the one mounted to the ceiling of the room that we'd given our presentation in. I asked if it was, in fact, from that room, and was told that yes it was. I was surprised they'd gone to the trouble of climbing up and removing the projector, they were working quite hard to be helpful, so I asked where the power cable was. I was told that the power cable was installed inside the ceiling when the projector was mounted, and that it couldn't be removed, so they were trying to find another one.
After another 15 minutes, Yuri returned with a 2-prong cable, and began attempting to jam this square peg into a round hole, with absolutely no success. Chuck and I really didn't didn't want to see them fry a $3,000 projector for our sake, so we put a stop to this effort just as Yuri began casting about for a knife to hack on the cable with. I'll say this for them, these guys were resourceful.
Yuri and Andrei disappeared again, only to reappear a half hour later with big grins, carrying a computer monitor. I could see there were extra jacks on the back, but as I got closer, I recognized BNC connectors. Yup, this monitor did component video, but not composite video, as well as the standard VGA. They accepted this setback too, and left in search of another TV.
As this was going on, we had an audio-only conference with Rick, who'd come to work early back at UNI. He could see us too, we just couldn't see him until we at least got back the little TV with the flaky video. Around 3:00, our original TV returned, and Chuck discovered that he could stabilize the video with some creative wiggling of the cables, so we were pretty sure that it wasn't our PAL converter that's at fault, but rather the jack on the back of the TV.
We went back to our rooms to rest a bit before dinner, which was back at the same bar-like place on campus. Tonight's salad was cheese, tomatoes, and a meat which Chuck thinks was chicken in a mayonnaise-like sauce. After the salad came the main course, which was french fries, kidney beans, and a pork filet. The pork was quite good, especially with the spicy mustard Alexey introduced me to. There's something "off" about the french fries, though I haven't figured out what it is yet, maybe they way they're fried? A different oil? They're quite good though, no complaints. This was definitely the best meal we've had at this bar.
After dinner, Alexey headed off into the city, and Chuck and I retired to our rooms, where I did some reading of my Larry Niven book, before we agreed to meet at 8 to head over to Friday's, where I'm posting this entry now.
Now that you're caught up, I'm going to go see what's happening in the rest of the world...
I uploaded a fine piece of original computer wallpaper. I shot it last night, then applied Ye Olde Sepia Tones in iPhoto. Probably works best for a Mac, but if you drag your icons to the right side on a Windows box, it'd look okay then too. :)
This morning, after a restless night, I hit the snooze button on my cell phone/alarm clock a few times, before getting out of bed. (I completely forgot to get a travel alarm clock, but the cell phone I'm using has one built in.) I showered and headed down to the dining room for breakfast. I was the first to arrive, and picked at yet another plate of cucumbers and tomatoes, snacked on another waffle-donut, and ate some bread and cheese. Alexey and Chuck sauntered in shortly, and we were presented with a plate of something white and doughy with little bits of meat in it. They looked like of like swirled star shaped pasta, sort of like ravioli. Chuck and I eyed the dish suspiciously, and Alexey wouldn't tell us what it was, he just kept telling us to try it. I'd like to say that we did, but we didn't. We're wimps.
So far, I've learned that in Russia that meat is usually bad, so any weird looking dish with meat in it is probably not going to be good, but I've only been here a couple of days. I've speculated that this may be due to lean years in the past with low-quality beef, that had to be cooked excessively to be safe. [Update: Al correctly identified the mystery food as Khinkali, which looks tasty from the ingredients, I should have tried it]
I gulped down my strawberry yogurt, and never did get a beverage, since the cook kept trying to foist coffee on me before Alexey arrived. Have you ever tried to pantomime orange juice? I don't think it's possible, so the woman kept trying to give me coffee and tea over and over, until I finally convinced her to just wait until Alexey arrived, since I hadn't brought my phrasebook to breakfast with me. Unfortunately, she never came back, which is part of the reason I didn't attempt the white meat-ravioli thing, I had nothing to wash it down with if it was horrible. Yes, I am a cuisine wimp.
I managed to get the first Presidential debate downloaded last night, and was attempting to play it for Alexey and Chuck this morning over breakfast, but a grumpy older guy apparently didn't like us, and cranked up the game show he was watching on the TV to an absolutely ridiculous volume, putting an end to our fun. It was pretty clear he didn't like what we were doing. :)
After breakfast, we wandered over to the "Main Building" of the Institute, and poor Alexey promptly got chastised by Olga, the administrator in charge of us here. Apparently we weren't supposed to go there by ourselves, but rather wait in the dorms for someone to come get us. Oops, none of us caught on to that, but we got there none-the-less.
So, we arrived, and got to meet some of the IT staff from the Institute, and then Chuck & I had to give our presentations. Chuck gave his on new Internet software, internet usage and trends. I gave mine on Weblogs and RSS. I'm not sure who our audience was, they watched politely, and asked no questions. The head IT guy asked several though, and they were good insightful questions, not just polite ones since no one else was asking.
Olga Salenko did a great job translating for us, I have to remember to give her one of my gifts from America before I leave as a thank-you.
We then went down to a bar/restaurant that's sort of on-campus. There we had cucumbers and tomatoes (yes, again) followed by some chicken soup, which was okay, though I don't like soup. Then we had some of the toughest meat-thing I've ever eaten, along with french fries, which were pretty edible, though Russian ketchup tastes different, sweeter than American, though just fine. The meat, I'm not sure if it was beef or lamb, tasted okay, but I literally spilled the kidney beans twice while trying to cut it, and I had no steak-knife. My piece was okay, as far as unidentified meat goes, but Chuck's was mostly gristle.
After lunch, we went back to the dormitory and changed into jeans to start work on the video conferencing project. We lugged the 69-pound white case across the court yard into the main building, along with our laptops, and secondary case o' cables. We took turns carrying the heavy case (henceforth referred to as the Luggage, with a nod to Terry Pratchett), got into the elevator, and then got promptly lost. The elevators in the Institute are amusing, because they have weight sensors, and they shriek loudly when overloaded, so people get on, then get off when the machine gripes at them. I should also mention that the average Russian elevator is the size of a non-walk-in closet, so you're up close and personal with your fellow riders.
We got in a brand new elevator, but the LCD panel wasn't working, so we kept getting off on the wrong floors, and couldn't find our room. We wanted to be on the ninth floor, but we wound up on the third floor, wandered around, cussing out whoever numbered these rooms, only to find out later we were on the third floor, after toting the Luggage the length of the entire floor looking for room numbers that didn't exist.
We got in the elevator and tried again, hoping to reach the proper floor. After two more incorrect guesses (they aren't marked near the elevator), and a lot more elevator buzzing, we found the room number we were supposed to go to, only to learn that our final destination actually was the fourth floor, the ninth floor just held the office of the IT staff. A young guy named Yuri grabbed the Luggage from me, and we got in another elevator, which, I-shit-you-not, doesn't even stop on the fourth floor, so we had to get out on the fifth floor, and walk down a flight of stairs to reach the fourth floor. There's a button for the fourth floor in the elevator, it just won't go there. Also, Yuri is strong as an ox, I've got at least 60 pounds on him, and he carried that case like it only weighed 20 pounds.
We finally reached the classroom we were here to wire, walked in, and I immediately realized that it was nothing like the CAD renderings we were e-mailed. Chuck and Alexey were an elevator car behind, so the IT people explained to me that the "repair-men" hadn't actually gotten to modifying the room yet, and since classes were being taught in there this semester, it wouldn't be ready until January. I slowly realized that the project, as we'd planned it, just ceased to exist. Chuck and I were anticipating setting up a video-classroom, and until that minute, we'd been led to believe that's what we were doing. No one ever mentioned that the classroom wasn't ready for us, and it would have been nice to find that out, oh, say, before we traveled to the other side of the planet with the Luggage.
Chuck and Alexey arrived, as I was letting this all sink in, and I quickly filled them in on these surprising new developments. We muttered some cuss words under our breath, then tried to figure out what to do. It turns out that the equipment the Russians are providing, a projector, TV, and VCR aren't going to arrive until Wednesday at the earliest. This was bad news, without at least a TV or Projector, we can't get any video out of the Polycom unit we came here to hook up. When we told our hosts, they did come back with a grungy computer and a PAL TV. That at least gave us something to shoot for, so we busted open the Luggage, and got to work. The computer was familiar to me, it had the same case as the old Soyo box I built for my grandparents, though I'm not very good in Russian Windows 2000 yet...
We got the Polycom hooked up to the TV, and then tried to get the Polycom connected to the network. There was only one network cable to the room, and we needed to hard-code the IP address for this network segment. One problem, the Polycom had a password set on that configuration page that Chuck and I didn't know, and I needed to reach someone in America to learn it. I tried to get our hosts to hook up my PowerBook to the network, as it was around 7:30 a.m. Central time in the US, and I could track some people down now. They were working on getting their computer online instead, and kept ignoring me, as I grew increasingly impatient. Their computer didn't have the software I needed to instant-message with the US, nor was I going to be entering my e-mail user name and password into a strange Russian computer. After a while, and a few phone calls back to their NOC, they got the Windows 2000 box online, and I then copied their IP address onto my laptop, and plugged it into the network instead. I tracked down Rick, the guy with the password, and got the Polycom configured. I was a bit belligerent here, since I work with networks all day long, and knew what I wanted to do. Being fatigued doesn't help keep me calm either...
We next attempted to connect back to the US, which is difficult to coordinate with only one network connection, as I had to alert UNI that I was going to test, then unplug the laptop, plug in the Polycom unit, and attempt to make it work while incommunicado with them. After a half hour of this, we got our hosts to cough up a network switch, so I could get both machines online at once, where I immediately realized that I couldn't ping the Polycom, so it wasn't really on the network, and this is where our problem was. I did some more swapping, and eventually discovered that they'd given us a bad network cable, so I used one I'd brought with me, which worked fine.
Chuck fixed an annoying video glitch which was plaguing our connection to the TV, and we got some conferences going with UNI. The speed was good, and everything worked pretty well, but we're getting some random network disconnects of both my laptop and the video unit, at the same time.
We ran out of time in the day to work on it anymore, so called it quits, and headed back to the on-campus bar thing to eat. This time we got a salad of mushrooms and caesar dressing, followed by chicken and mushrooms in a white sauce, with some rice. One of the cook/waitresses asked me if there was something wrong with my food, because I wasn't eating much. I explained (via Alexey) that there was nothing wrong, I just don't like mushrooms, at all. (Yes, I'm picky). I ate all the chicken and rice though.
After dinner, we rested briefly in our rooms, then headed here to TGI Friday's for the nightly internet ritual. Now to drown my sorrows in a chocolate milk shake, and prepare for tomorrows hurdles...
Today started with me oversleeping, and arriving for breakfast 20 minutes late. I slept like a baby, and think I'm mostly adjusted to the time change now. I joined Chuck and Alexey for more tomatoes and cucumbers, followed by strawberry yogurt (yum) and then meat-stuffed pancakes, which I did not enjoy. I snarfed down a couple pieces of bread and cheese, and another waffle-donut, then scuttled off for a shave before we had to leave.
We traveled by van to Sergei Posad, a monastery which is about 100km outside of Moscow. It was very pretty, and I snapped a lot of pictures. It's apparently a very holy site to the Russians and many of them were in prayer there. We had a Russian guide, who gave us a tour, which was translated by two new companions from MISiS. I felt somewhat conspicuous, as we were obviously being given the VIP treatment, and were taken into a locked building and into other areas that "normal" visitors and worshippers were not allowed into. there were various services going on as we were there, and I felt a bit awkward standing around gawking at the people. I took a lot of pictures of the buildings though, which I'll get uploaded some day.
After our tour, we crossed the street to eat at what Alexey described as a "fake Russian" restaurant. Probably the same way that TGI Friday's here is a "fake" American restaurant. The meal started with some bread that was quite good, more cucumber and tomato salad, followed by some soup that didn't translate, but I gathered was like borscht, it was red, and full of cabbages, onions, etc. That was pretty tasty, but I'm not big on soups. Next came "pot of meat" which was a little ceramic pot of beef bits and potatoes. This was served extremely hot, I had to wait about 5 minutes for it to cool before I could eat it. Having it in a ceramic pot doesn't speed the cooling process. I'm starting to understand why none of the Russians that we had in the US ever ordered beef. It's not cooked particularly well here, (at least so far) and the beef in the pot was very fatty and full of gristle. It was definitely "chewy". The flavor was good, it reminded me of curry. I ate the potatoes, and the leaner pieces of meat. Alexey said the meat wasn't prepared right (though I did not complain), and since he has two sisters who are Russian chefs, he should know. Dessert was some tasty ice cream, and some German white chocolate.
After our return to Moscow, during which Chuck and I talked with one of our translators, who is a Graduate student in the foreign language department. It turns out she's completing her thesis, which is studying American terms related to automobiles. We made her day be explaining what a bedliner is, as she hadn't been able to find a definition anywhere, and was under the impression that it was a type of truck, not an accessory for one. I also gave her a few more bits of slang, such as "tranny" for transmission, and talked about a classic car being "cherry". I also speculated about the origins of the latter term, in regards to the vulgar manner in which it is also used, she was very happy, and took down our e-mail addresses, so that she can ask us questions in the future. [Update: Dan Black sent me an awesome list of car-related slang, which I'll pass on to her. This may depress her though, as she thought she was close to finishing her thesis, she may have to start over with this many new words!]
Traffic was a lot slower on the way back into Moscow, but we made it back. After a brief rest, Alexey, Chuck, and I headed towards Red Square on foot. The MISiS website says that the Institute is only a 10 minute walk from Red Square. You'd be hard-pressed to run to Red Square in 15 minutes, forget walking it in 10. We hoofed it down there, and took the obligatory pictures near St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square. Much of the square was closed off due to security concerns, including Lenin's tomb. We ate underground, in a posh shopping mall that is about 4 stories deep. We had some excellent Sbarro pizza, washed down by a tall Pepsi, and started the walk home, stopping by the Christ The Savior Church, version 2.0. Apparently, version 1.0 was demolished in the Soviet era to build a swimming pool for Khruschev, but the new version was rebuilt in the 1990s from the original plans.
We hiked the rest of the way back to the Institute, and relaxed for a bit before heading over to TGI Friday's for our daily dose of high-speed internet. Tomorrow morning we give our presentations, I guess that means I should finish mine now...
