On April first I started teaching the course "Introduction to Software Performance Optimization" for third-year SCS students. For the introductory lecture I decided not to use slides and a projector, and just printed out a short lecture outline for myself. In class I asked the students whether it was more convenient for them with a projector or without one. We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches, but decided to hold the lectures with slides. For the next class I brought a laptop, a projector, and an extension cord. And in room 314i there are no outlets. And there are no outlets in the hallway next to the classroom either.
Now I remember that various amusing situations happen to me. I’ll give a few examples. In the winter of 2008, some friends and I went to the Carpathians to ski. I bragged to everyone about how compactly I had packed everything into one little backpack, while the others were traveling with big bags. When we got there, it turned out I had forgotten to put my ski suit in my compact little backpack. On the very first run down the mountain, after several falls, my jeans were very badly torn. I arranged to buy used ski pants from the owner of the little house where we were staying. The pants turned out to be one size smaller than I needed. By the end of the trip they had torn too.
Before the trip to the mountains I ordered two new plastic cards: one for my salary, the other — Master Card — for paying in online stores. I opened the envelopes with the secret PIN codes and thought: “Oh! What nice PIN codes, so easy to remember”! Then I crumpled up the envelopes and threw them away. After returning from the Carpathians, I couldn’t even roughly remember which digits were in the combinations. The interval between ordering and reordering the two cards was only two weeks.