Den Wald vor lauter Bäumen nicht sehen …

A common German phrase reads: “not to see the wood for the trees”. I guess it is also know to non-German speakers? I just found this very trivial and easy Matlab command line, which makes my equivalent lines look very stupid and complicated:

a= [1; 4; 6; 8; 12]; k=9;

[min_difference, array_position] = min(abs(a – k))

These treasures make my day!

SEK – EURO dilemma

I have to pay back an interest free study loan to the German state, and finally have the money together in SEK, however seing how the Swedish Krona has performed over the last month tells me to wait some more time before paying it back?

25 % loss in worth over just few month, that would be 1000 EURO more to pay for some 5000 EURO I have to pay? Normally I really don’t spend attention, but these graphs (taken from here) tell me to pay more attention. I hope it goes back to its former state, otherwise I am screwed.

The little torturer

Waking up middle of the night is nothing strange for us since our little one has been around us. However since few month he enforces his will on us without patience. It happened often that I woke up due to strong kicks by him or by slaps in the face. Upon opening my eyes I just saw his little finger coming towards my eye. Then another bash with his bottle and the words “Mich mich”, which he uses to say “Milch” (milk). From that point on I have approximately 10 seconds to stand up, wash his bottle, fill it up, heat it up and give it to him. Usually it takes 1-2 minutes, which he accompanies with crying, sometimes so hard that he stops breathings and becomes blue.

The same procedure repeats itself 2-3 times each night. Thats the normal, i.e. good, part. Towards the morning, around 4-6 am, I sometimes open my eyes with my or my wifes’ socks pressed onto my face. A even more disgusting procedure is, when he sits with his full diapers on my faces. These once are usually filled up until their maximum load, due to our lazyness to change them during the night. Its a blessing that he sleeps some hours, so why bothering and changing his diapers. Well as soon as he sits on my face I regret not having changed him.

You probably can’t imagine how smelly, warm and soft his butt is, well this picture might help you imagine how it could feel like on your face:

Lying doctors & parents

To make a long story short. Parent(s) P want their (male) child C to be circumcised and went to a clinic to get some information about the procedure and how to plan it. The professional doctor D, who makes his living just with foreskins, told P, obviously I am a subset of P, that the circumcision should only be performed shortly after the birth of C or again after C weights more than 15kg so that the anesthetics do no harm to C. D repeated to P, that the 15kg limit is indeed very important and that C had to wait a half year or so. Also P was told to get some information send home one month before the circumcision in order to be prepared for the day. P agreed and went home. So far nothing strange.

One month later, C still around its 10-11 kg, D called and told P that there is a gap in their time schedule and that C could be treated next week. No information was or will be send home, 4-5 out of 15kg is suddenly a small difference, well its just 30%. Thats what doctors have as their error-bars, while engineers aim for few percentages. P said no and referred to the 15kg limit, which D did not want to except for a no, so P waited one day and told D that C got sick. 2 weeks later, again a call, D with the same story, and P answered in the same way, but D insisted this time that the 15kg were not really important and that an info-letter will be sent to that it arrives few days before the treatment. P was hence again forced to tell D that C was sick. The same story repeated itself just last week, C is still 11-12 kg, and is recalling how careful and repeatetly he asked for the treatment before the 15 kg, when P had time. But now neither the 15kg have arrived, nor does/do P has/have time. P is currently rethinking the clinic, because if D lies about the 15 limit, then why should I trust his word at all, maybe he isn’t a doctor, but just a butcher, because then 2-4 kg more or less shouldn’t matter?

EXCEL or how Microshit makes money

I hate Microsoft and EXCEL. WORD and POWERPOINT on the otherhand are better than a pen and a paper. EXCEL however is the most useless application I have in my entire life used and unfortunately still have to use, because I can’t always have Matlab or Mathematica installed on every computer I have or use. Things which take  minutes take 2 hours on EXCEL, because EXCEL has the habit to use 32000 rows instead of 3, although 31997 of them are empty. But why keep them as they are, why not taking it into account and saving it. Of course it looks better to  have a 32 MB EXCEL file instead of a 4kb ASCII file, although the content is the same. And adding labels is the most natural thing in EXCEL; do you know someone using EXCEL 2008? Ask him how he adds x or y labels to his plots. I mean the part before the 1 hour waiting procedure that allows one to enter a letter. I have sent a bunch of emails to Microsoft over the years via the error message send stuff, which seems to be as useful as all their other sh**.

I started around 19:30 to check import 5 ASCII files into EXCEL and to just plot them, no computation, no adding no subtraction, just plotting. It is 22 now and I am just at th edge to take a valium pill or to through out my computer. I just had to releave my chest: I hate you EXCEL, how can you sleep at night BILL? HOW? All your money and the charity is for nothing! Make something useful instead!

Stupid side effects

It seems that I am a quite (un)lucky guy. Below find an excerpt of the side effects list of some pills I tried out this week. RED is what I had, BLUE is what I wanted to experience and the underlined stuff is what I did not want to experience. Reading the latter one made me laugh, I don’t know why. How do they know that. I mean if people die, due to “sudden unexplainable deadth”, how does one know if it was related to the pills or not. And it means it must have happened? And if so, how can these pills be given out? And above all what makes people (not me) take them?

Vanliga biverkningar (förekommer hos fler än 1 av 100 och färre än 1 av 10 användare)
Okontrollerbara ryckningar eller tvära rörelser, huvudvärk, trötthet, illamående, kräkningar, matsmältningsbesvär, förstoppning, ökad salivproduktion, berusningskänsla, sömnsvårigheter, rastlöshet, oroskänsla, sömnighet, skakningar och suddigt seende.

Mindre vanliga biverkningar (förekommer hos fler än 1 av 1000 och färre än 1 av 100 användare)
Vissa människor kan känna yrsel, särskilt då de reser sig från liggande eller sittande ställning, eller uppleva en snabbare hjärtfrekvens (puls).
Vissa personer kan känna sig deprimerade.
Andra sällan rapporterade biverkningar:
Förändringar i antalet av vissa blodceller; oregelbunden puls, plötslig oförklarlig död, hjärtattack; allergiska reaktioner (t.ex. svullnad i mun, tunga, ansikte och hals, klåda, utslag);högt blodsocker, uppkomst eller försämring av diabetes, ketoacidos (ketoner i blod och urin) eller koma, låg natriumhalt i blodet; viktökning, viktminskning, anorexi; oro, agitation, ångestkänsla; självmordstankar, självmordsförsök och självmord; talförändringar, krampanfall; en kombination av feber, muskelstelhet, snabbare andhämtning, svettningar, minskad medvetenhet och plötsliga förändringar av blodtryck och hjärtfrekvens; svimning, högt blodtryck, tilltäppning av ett blodkärl genom en blodpropp som bildats på annat ställe i kroppen; spasm i musklerna runt struphuvudet, oavsiktlig inandning av mat med risk för lunginflammation, svårigheter att svälja, inflammation i bukspottkörteln, inflammation i levern, gulfärgning av hud och ögonvitor, rapporter om onormala levervärden, buk- och magbesvär, diarré; hudutslag och ljuskänslighet, onormal hårförlust eller förtunning, stark svettning; stelhet eller kramper, muskelsmärta, svaghet; ofrivillig urinavgång, svårighet att urinera; ihållande och/eller smärtsam erektion, störningar i kroppens temperaturreglering (t.ex. feber), bröstsmärtorsamt svullnad av händer, vrister eller fötter.