Wednesday, May 17, 2000

This morning, I finished off the rp3 changes that I started last week, since I figured out the last remaining difficulty. Conveniently, the way I solved it uncovered the fact that I had inadvertently added a useful feature. If I manually enter a negative starting value for the "current cost of the connection" rp3 counts cost down to zero instead of up from zero, which makes it easier to monitor connections (like mine here) that are pre-paid. I documented my changes, did all the administrivia (like ChangeLog entries, spec file changes, changing the version number, and so on, and committed my changes to the archive. I certainly didn't intend to work on rp3 when I came, but it became clear to me that I should make use of the experience that I have been gaining.

It is somewhat comical but also occasionally frustrating that the ACPI team lead and I work almost completely disjoint schedules. When I'm doing relatively independent work, it works out very well, but when I'm depending on him to answer questions, latency becomes a significant factor. However, when I have empty time to fill, I need to start working on the talks I agreed to give this fall, because to my surprise all the talks have been accepted by the people responsible for accepting them. Usually, "Would you propose a talk on such-and-such a subject for me to bring back to my committee?" doesn't have such a high success rate.

Went in to town to buy our train tickets to Paris and to Cambridge. Should have done it earlier, but we weren't quite sure when we wanted to return from Paris. Found that the train we wanted to take to Paris (Friday night) was completely booked. Booked a train for Saturday morning instead. That means Kim will be less able to complain about not having time to do homework... It also turned out to be cheaper, because the half-journey on Saturday morning is cheaper because it is a weekend fare. All four tickets together cost about as much as one round-trip airline fare in the US. Not only that, at least the Paris tickets (on the Thalys/TGV) are 100% refundable if we were to cancel the trip.

Ate dinner again at El Manzah. Just as good as last time. This time we ordered the mint tea immediately. Our only mistake is that we should have ordered a pot for four people instead of for two... And the Baklava with whipped cream and cinnamon ice cream was also very good.