Project Tucson

Kingpin

2009-04-04T15:10:00.005-06:00

Well by now you maybe realized that I'm not a poet, but I try my best. Last week I organized a barbecue combined with the first Tucson international bowling championship. Unfortunately we were only eight people, and planed was twenty, but ok, the ones who came, were satisfied. After the evening I thought about my profession, and realized that I could open a catering company. The meals at the barbecue were phenomenal:), or at least nobody was hungry after dinner.

The bowling competition was real fun, I enjoyed it very much. We also had prices for the first three places of the competition. We searched for them almost an hour long at toys'r'us. Well and we only looked at the shelves till age +6, so you can imagine what kind of presents we had. But maybe the best is if I show you. The third place made one of my room mates, Steve, he is a mechanical engineer student, really kind, silent, but he has always a good joke in mind and is not afraid to tell the joke. He is a real mechanical engineer. One of his Christmas presents was a compressor, he likes to build things, even out of lego. He has a lego clock on the wall, and it is almost precise:

The cap is my favorite, that is his price. I wanted to win it, but as the host of the competition a wasn't allowed to win any of the prices:):

But I stole it for a few minutes, and on my head it looks even better:):

The second price went to Robert one good friend of my other roommate. Robert is a cool guy. He studied one semester in Germany, so he is the only one who shakes my hand when we greet each other, the only one who knows how good German beer tastes, and the only one, who knows Asterix and Obelix. I was shocked, when I said told my roommates a joke out of one comic, and they looked at my as at an alien. Hmmmmm, I was sad, but the next evening I downloaded the best Asterix movie and they had to watch it:). Robert:

Roberts price was a magic pen, he earned it, he bowled like a champion really, and the pen fits to him, because he likes arts. And he got a Rubic cube too, the most intellectual price at this competition:

The winner was my other roommate, Kevin. How lucky, now I introduced all of my roommates, and one of the best friends. So Kevin is a programmer, like my brother, and he is also nervous when he isn't able to connect to a network, like my brother. He es really smart, and kind, and it is fun to hang around with him. He won the competition, he bowled in a club, when he was younger. But he earned it, and the price is:

Nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's for now, good night!

P.S. we wasn't able to finish our game, because at 12am the bowling place closed, but exactly at 12 am. I just through my ball on the lane, and a guy switched off the lights, stopped the machines, and that was it. I was shocked again. That is freedom in America:).

P.P.S. the discovery for today, the star fruit, and this is really its name, can you believe this?:

P.P.P.S. Do you know the movie king pin, because this is an other classical:

Good night!

Conference the new favourite hobby

2009-03-23T01:28:00.009-06:00

This weekend we went to a conference in San Diego. And as I didn't need to present anything, I had the time to look around in the city a little bit. Ok, in the morning I went to the conference, I can't sleep, so I had nothing to do, the breakfast was for free, and I listened to a few presentations. The second day I heard one about the Atlantis project, the scholarship I came with. It is interesting to hear, that (fortunately) there are other universities in the word, who really care about the future of engineering, and try to improve their education, and help to improve the knowledge of the students, by running scholarships like mine.

The rest of the day was sightseeing, or no, not really. We went surfing. Wow we were the cool guys like on TV, or at least we had the clothes and the equipment for that:

but surfing is really hard I have to admit, so I have to go back and practice. The water has such a huge power, it is unbelievable ("...habár felül a gálya salul a viznek árja, azért a viz az úr..."), now I understand. What I don'tunderstand how people are able to work in such an environment:

I'm not sure I would be able to sit in the office all day, I think I would rathersell surf board on the beach. The city was a pinhead more European likethan the other ones, I even saw a tram, I think the only one in the US:).

The cliffs at the ocean were really beautiful, unfortunately we didn't had the time to go to the zoo (the biggest in the word), but I realized, that here it is not certainly necessary to go to a zoo to see animals, like see lions:

The just had a rest on the shore, and you can see enough monkeys on the road too, the most people still can't drive, sorry but this is the truth.

The next day we went to an aircraft carrier. It was huge. They made a museum out of it. This ship is a little town, there was a post office, a police station, with prison, a dentist, a hospital, and everything you need to keep a town alive, I saw a lot of interesting things, like fighter jets:

the deck was big, but still there is very few place to land a jet on it, in my next life I will try it for sure, but maybe even in this one, my teeth are healthy:). And guess what I even met one of the admirals:

The real navy base was on the other side of the base, sealed of curse, I'm surprised that I was able to make a photo:

and no laser killed me form one of the satellites. So this journey was fun, I'm glad that I saw so much things again, tomorrow work, so that's for now, good night!

Little joys of the day

2009-03-23T01:22:00.001-06:00

My every days are almost the same, ok under palm trees, so I don't cry, but it is nothing special, except I see something unusual, or exciting. Fortunately this happens lots of times. For example last week. I always thought, that I have to go to Tibet to see a Kabbalah, but no, I had to come to Tucson:

Ok it wasn't made out of butter, and they didn't put it in the sun to show the transiency of life. It was made of sand, and it looked amazing, so I was really happy that I needed to buy a dvd, and the shop was next to the little buddha, who made the Kabbalah, or the little buttha who made the Kabbalah was next to the shop where I bought the dvd (Boy: Do not try to bend the spoon; that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth. Neo: What truth? Boy: There is no spoon.). OK, end of the story.

Delicious dishes

2009-03-23T01:17:00.004-06:00

As I read an other blog the other day I got really hungry because I saw a photo from a Hungarian dessert, some sort of bakery with lots of cheese on the top. The spit flew immediately out of my mouth and almost effected a flood in the room. So I decided to bake this on my own, to satisfy my needs and to ensure that nobody drowns because of the new font in my mouth.

I downloaded a few recipes, but I wasn't to satisfied with that, so I phoned my mother in Hungary (yeah the need is a big power, not only when you don't have any place to sleep, and you need to find one), she gave me her recipe, and believe me this is good stuff. Her bakery is an ethalon. I want her to become a confectioner, but I can't convince her, maybe because she knows that I would eat all the stuff of the customers:). But I'm fading away, back to my project. I bought everything what was needed. And again I was strong and I didn't buy chocolate, sometimes I'm so proud of me:). Ok I mixed everything together, as the paste wasn't as fluffy as it should be , but after I saw the first piece:

I calmed down, and after I tested it:

there was no stop. I made about 100:

because this is a good number, and I hoped that it would be enough for the
evening, it wasn't. So the next time I have to make at least double:).

Supersonic electronic

2009-03-23T00:54:00.003-06:00

For the geeks again, I finally found somebody to polish my end mill, so I tried my setup, all the software and hardware, and I made my first measurements. The reflection of the laser is almost ok, and I hear the geeks again, what is the connection between supersonic and the laser, nothing, but:

We need to improve a lot of things, but now we now in which direction, and I'm really excited what is coming next, if I get the Nobel price I let you know :). For now, this is the measurement, and I need to make dozens of it:

I hate computers

2009-03-23T00:52:00.001-06:00

Hy, I know I haven't written for weeks, but this has a reason. My 1500$ computer broke, and the support guys needed over a week to check what is wrong, and suggest what, yes vista was the fault, so I had to reinstall everything, but first I tried xp, it didn't work, so I had to put vista on my computer again. Now I already made my backup saves it seems, it doesn't matter how new your computer is, you have to have a backup. I see the geeks nodding their heads now. I hate computers I have to admit, and the absurdity is, that I touch almost all the day computers and technical devices, rather then girls, something is wrong in this word. OK, but enough from computer, a lot of interesting things happened the last few weeks.

Sleeping positions

2009-03-08T22:50:00.004-06:00

Yeah, the title seems exciting, I know. But boys, it is not as you think. If you have problems with sleeping positions, and don't know how to lay down in a relaxing way, ask a cat, or at least look at it, because they are good at laying down in dozens of poises. We have a cat, he is kind of cute, and fortunately not a tiger, or only in the morning, when he is hungry, then he always makes noises, and jumps on you up and down, so you get awake, and feed him. I introduce you Huppels, and a few of his basic poises:

Did you know, that cats are attracted to those people in a room for example, who pay less attention towards them? Try it out if you can. I didn't pay attention to him in the first week I got here and he almost always slept in my room. Once I fall asleep, but he was outside, and somehow he got into my room, and slept on my bed next to me. During the night as I turned on my side he just fell from the bed, and I only heard a big tat on the floor, that was him, ooo, but nothing serious happened to him. Sometimes it is good to have a cat in your room. First if it is a girl from the university, but even if it is an animal. As I maybe already mentioned I saw one day a black widow in my bedroom, so I trained the cat, if he sees one again, to eat it immediately, or at least I told him to do this, I'm nor really sure if this is training enough, but I think I have a storng enough carma, so he understood.

Oh and one day I saw a colibry on the way to the department, I never saw a bumblebee what had the size of a bird:

That's it for now. Good night!

Food from an other Universe

2009-03-06T23:01:00.004-07:00

So let's speak about the food, because this is sure an important thing, at least for the most people in Hungary. For me it is mostly an other mandatory proceeding, to ensure that you stay alive, but though there are a lot of funny things. All of the food is almost different from Europe. Other sizes, other brands other tastes. The most strange is that in almost everything you have corn, and sugar in it. Corn because the US raises a lot of corn, and if you can't export all of it, you have to put it somewhere. The sugar, well I don't know how it comes, but it is strange, even in bread, they put sugar in. I have to find a European bakery.

But the fruit is amazing. All of the fruits look perfect, they are huge, have a good color, don't have any failures:

The sizes are strange sometimes, today I ate the best strawberries in my life. The tangerine tree what I saw in the morning, was funny. First I thought there are some kind of berries on the tree. But there were tangerines, but it didn't tasted even near as good as the strawberries.

Today I found a kind of cafeteria at the university. I was surprised, because after the first two weeks I gave it up. I saw a lot of mc donalds, burger kings, tacco bells, wendy's, denny's diners, subways, jack in the boxes, and the other hundred of places where you can buy burgers:).

Yesterday I made hungarian omlettes for my roommates, and they were surprised, because they didn't know a real omlette. The US omlette is crumbled eggs basicly, so I thought I have to show them the real deal. I hope they liked it.

That was it for today. Good night!

For geeks ONLY

2009-03-03T21:44:00.005-07:00

I told you I will show you my workplace, and try to introduce my work. Well the laboratory here is much better equipped than in Budapest. The major field of the group is micro and nano electronics. So you have some sensitive measurements. You need sometimes something to isolate the vibrations of the environment form the measurement setup. And the first day when I got in the lab I saw that:

Well I told you, this is stuff only for geeks. But I know that their eyes are shining now. A 35 cm thick granite table on pneumatic springs, with a control what automatically pumps air in to the spring if you want to change the horizontal orientation of the table. I was quite speechless.

And the PhD student laughed, and told me, when he arrived here, the table was completely empty, because it was installed that week, so for a few days he had breakfast on the table, so the table is not only for vibration isolation, you can use it as an ordinary table too :).

My theses work is about measuring the vibrations of an end mill. The measurement method will be optical. We will use a laser, and the reflected beam will be collected on a psd a position sensitive diode:

These are the laser and the diode mounted on the machine. And the tricky is, as the geeks already recognized probably, that it is not a milling machine, but a cutting machine. I try to model the milling process on a cutting machine, instead of the work peace we will fix the milling bit, and instead of the knife we will fix the work piece. A matlab code will read the data out of the psd, so we can measure the displacement of the bit. I hope we can try it this week:).

Oh and how do you recognize a real mechanical engineer? He always want to take everything in to its pieces. And how do you recognize a real skilled workman. He is able to assemble what the mechanical engineers take in to pieces :).

If somebody in Budapest sees this, and wants to come to Tucson, these are some of the things, he or she will see for sure.

That was it for today. Good night!

The Past

2009-03-01T15:37:00.022-07:00

Well maybe I start from the beginnings. I came to Tucson to make my final theses work. And now I've been here for a couple of weeks, so I have a lot of stories by now. I came from Switzerland, I was there for Vacation. Do you know what the basic differences between Switzerland and Arizona are, well there are a lot, like Arizona is seven times bigger then Switzerland, or that in Switzerland people speak French and here not, but these are not as important, as that Switzerland has chocolate, and here I have to search really hard to find neat chocolate, and the second one is this :):

The difference was 30 degrees in Celsius, of course, oh yeah, the temperature differences weren't as a big shock as the units what people use here. Fahrenheit, pound, inch, but the inch is going to be an other story.

The difference was 30 degrees in Celsius, of course, oh yeah, the temperature differences weren't as a big shock as the units what people use here. Fahrenheit, pound, inch, but the inch is going to be an other story.

The city is completely different from European cities. You have to imagine in Tucson there live maybe 500 thousand people on the are of Budapest, so if you didn't figure it out by now the inhabitant number is the quarter of that of Budapest. Everything is huge here, the streets, the cars, the shopping malls, the people, everything.

So after 20 hours of traveling I finally arrived at the airport. one of my roommates was waiting for me, and brought me to my new housing. It is an ordinary Tucson house not far from the university, I live here with two roommates, Kevin and Steve, really nice guys, I will show you them later.

At the first day when I went to the university, the first I recognized, that the drivers were even more polite than in Germany, and believe me, that is not so easy, so when I go back to Budapest, I now by now, that in the first week I have to be really careful not to get hit, I think the first taxi will hit me at the airport, but we will see.

In the first week a lot of paperwork had to be done, by now I am a member of a huge system called University of Arizona with 35 thousand students. I even have my catcard now, see?

his is US version of our TIRIS card from Budapest. And I'm proud of it, because I had to wait 3 weeks for it. The staff at the gym wanted to throw me out of the building twice because I hadn't a cat card, but that is going to be an other story. Oh, and why catcard? Because the mascot of the university is a wildcat named Wilbur, and this is not the end of the story, look at wikipedia, he even has a wife:).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Arizona#Mascot

The area of the university is huge, they even have a football stadium, it is bigger than all of the stadiums in Budapest.

My theses work is about measurements of vibrations on a milling machine. The department has a well equipped lab. The first I noticed was a granite table, it wasn't difficult to see, because it is enormous, huge, gigantic. I will show you the table one day, sure the civils won't get excited, but for the geeks it will be fun, I see their faces, they will look at it like at a photo in playboy:).

I think this the price of the table is more than the salary of my parents in one Year. During my theses work I have to create an optical setup, what what is able to measure the vibrations of a milling bit, I will show you the setup one day.

The city itself is big, the area at least, but it is something like a small town. There are some shopping malls, and some entertainment possibilities, but correlated to American conditions it is small. There are a lot of houses, they are quite similar, like this:

Oh and there are only few flowers, but there are dozens of cactus kinds, like these:

and I made this photos in one garden, about 3 square meters. Oh ok, and back to work a little bit. I had to draw a plate, for the laser, and I had to let it made in the machine shop of the department. I put all of the sizes in mm, that's how I have learned it at the university for Years, and when I showed my drawing to my victim, Dale (he had to make the plate), he looked at me like I would be an alien:), inches, bounds, feet, and so on, this scaling thing, I don't know, I think this is going to be one of the most difficult things to get used to.

Have I already showed you, where I live. So this is my room:

It is small, but, it is ok. I try to show you the house with a video, I try to make it like in MTV cribs (as you already realized I hope I'm in world MTV). Sorry for the quality, it is a low budget production:

So that's it, these where my first impressions in the last three or four weeks so far.

And now, what happened on the weekends. Ok I had a few parties, but I didn't make photos. I have to do some, because I saw a lot of funny people.You can feel, that they don't care, and that they have no fears, or doubts, and this attitude affects on me too:).

So at the firs weekend, hiking in the mountains, near Tucson. Hm I thought after Switzerland, no more mountains in the next few month, but there you go:

The desert, not like in Africa probably but still. It was an amazing view for me. My teacher thought that I can't sand the tempo, but the reason I was so slow, because I was hypnotized of the view. And how does it look like during the sunset?

Sure for the people who live here, this isn't nearly as interesting as for me. Like when they come to Budapest and sit on the tram line 49:

they would say, "...wow what a retro style..." and they couldn't handle to stamp the ticket inside the tram, because it is mechanic, and not automatic and no descriptions :). And they would laugh all the time. But for me a journey whit this tram, well... you can imagine, try to sit on this seats every day for half an hour:). So hiking was fun.

The last weekend we went skying, I have never tried it. But I snowboarded, because this is cool, and not for seniors haaa. We were eight people from the department. I enjoyed it really much. Josh (one of the guys) and his girlfriend made lunch and we played taboo in the evening, it was really calm. But during the day, no jokes. The first day was really painful. I am quite stubborn. So I couldn't understand, why it doesn't work with snowboarding immediately, I'm the cool guy, so...?! But still it was fun. And on the second day, really no jokes any more. I caught the feeling, and the black diamond was mine. The cool guys:

So I hope I found an other sport to practice every Year. Now my parents can worry even in the winter time how I gonna hurt myself:), well to be a parent should be a full time job, not just a question of the seasons, don't you mean? And there we are, the fearless eight:

First I was skeptic, because I didn't see to much snow, during the journey,but after I saw this:

I was completely relaxed:). So the weekend was fun too.

And this weekend I went to Los Angeles. I asked a girl at the swimming pool if she would say that I'm an American, or if it is obvious that I'm from Europe. She said that she would say I'm from California. So I had to check this by myself. Actually we went to buy a car, but we made a little sightseeing tour too. First of all. The city is more than 100 km-s long (I don't know hoe many miles, don't ask, count it out), I was speechless a little bit. From the motel we had to drive almost an hour to get to the ocean. But lets start from the beginning. We slept in a motel, again, like in the films, next to the highway, a gas station, and two burger diners in front of it, half Mexican half Portuguese, half Spanish cleaning staff:

I learned a few things this weekend. One If you drop something in a burger king don't pick it p, or don't make your bed when leaving the motel, because then you steal the work of somebody and he or she is going to be angry:). When we arrived at the motel, we wanted to see the ocean, so one hour drive. And I wouldn't believe it if I wouldn't have seen it with my eyes. Traffic jam at two pm. on a five lane speedway, pfff. Oh and most of the people are completely incapable to drive. No rules no behavior. The cars came form left, from right, from everywhere, so if you want to drive here, be careful. You have to warn people with signs for everything:

When we arrived at the ocean, it was dark but though the view, or the sound was amazing, you don't see the ocean, but you see the coast:

nice:). We only missed Pamela Anderson. The next day we went to take look at the car. Well an m3 BMW, it was a really fun car, but the air conditioning didn't work, and that is not ok in Tucson. So at the and unfortunately we came home without a present. But before we started our journey home, we went to Santa Monica Boulevard, and again MTV was greeting, Like in Beverly Hills cop:)

The walk of fame was not a big deal, I couldn't find Britney Spears, ooo, neither Chuck Norris. And the end of the street was really crappy, but I found here:

I have to see her movie, or listen her songs, I'm curious if I find her. And we saw the ocean again. And during the day It was even more amazing than during the night. On the Santa Monica pear there was a huge crowd. And I saw the sunset. Call me sentimental, but it was beautiful. And there aren't a lot of Hungarian who could say that: ".. oh oh yes, today I saw the sunset at Santa Monica pear...". So I was glad to see these things. unfortunately we couldn't buy the car, but maybe the next time, and then maybe we go to the east coast, but this is going to be an other adventure.

So for now that's it. I try to post regularly, so you can see a little bit from what I see, and you can read a few of my thoughts, about my experiences, I hope you enjoy, if not, look at this and try again:)

Abstract

2009-02-23T22:57:00.003-07:00

I post this blog in English maybe because I know that most of my friends will be able to translate my writings and if not they will easily find someone who translates everything, and I want that not only my friends at home should be able to read this, but everyone, and if I would write this in Hungarian, well I don't want to hurt anybodies feelings, but if you are not Hungarian, translation would be quite difficult:).

With this blog I want to show a little bit from what I see what I experience in the "new world", I hope you like it.

I apologize myself for the grammatical failures I will make, I hope when my English teachers from high school read my comments, then they won't get to angry, I promise I will get better with the time, I make an intensive course in English, I practice it every day for the next five month :)

So soon I start this, but now I go to bed because I'm tired I swam today at the swimming pool a lot, there are palm trees at the swimming pool, you don't believe me? watch this:

good night!

2009-02-23T20:47:00.000-07:00

this is the beginning