We've had problems with humidity in the house. The walls (including the ones that I fixed and painted after we put in the new floor) have paint flaking off them. Not just the paint either, the plaster under the paint as well.. just leaving the bare concrete. Additionally, it's all throughout the house....

One day the cats kept forcing themselves into the guest bedroom. Eventually I stuck Duke in there and closed the door. I figured he'd start whining to get out in 5 or so minutes... 20 minutes later he's still in there, not making a peep. "Strange"...

When I lived in Richmond, I would walk down the street each day. In a certain location there was written in spray-paint, "This too shall pass". This always struck me as profoundly deep. Whether the graffiti was talking of the moment, the sidewalk, the feeling, the city, or even humanity, it was still...

Ah yes, I was crooning about how I had just turned in my thesis, last we spoke. Well, things have been moving along steadily - my examiners have been selected. We had a potential date of January 14th for the defense, but that fell through so now it's looking like it will be after Easter (late March)....

Allow me to tell a story about a naive man wanting to buy a computer. This certain soul, that shall remain nameless, realized that a computer that would cost the equivalent of $1800 USD here in Chile could be bought for $1000 USD...

I'm sure you all are curious what I have been up to these past few months. The biggest news is that I've finally turned...

So it's been a month since my last entry. Que pena. What has happened over the last month? Last we spoke Duke had just arrived. In the intervening month he has grown quite a bit, and him and Hobbes are now friends and playmates. We often catch them cuddling up together during the cold days and nights,...

Update - The doctor says the kitten is...

Yes. I am still here. Just neglecting my communication obligations with the larger world these days. We've been busy trying to adjust to the rhythm of life at the new house. We spent a couple days without hot water when our propane tank ran out of fuel -- not a happy experience. And then last Sunday...

We've been in the house now for just over a week. The internet was hooked up on last Wednesday (only one day later then promised, record time!). It seems to be available almost always and the speed is steady but slow (about half of what I'm paying for). So far, life is good here. The only two hiccups...

I'm listening to Ani DiFranco and Utah Phillips - The Past Didn't Go Anywhere right now, and that brought to mind something I've been meaning...

As you can guess, Santander Santiago has utterly failed to come through, yet again. The escritura was put into the conservador yesterday. 2 days short of a month after signing it. The old owners of the house will be paid sometime...

Today we received the notice for our first mortgage payment. So we know the bank is fast about some things. However, they're not fast about other things. We are still waiting for them to release the payment to the old owners of the house. Reminder -- we signed...

Things with the house are really moving along... at glacial pace. We signed the contract to buy the house on December 28th. We're waiting for the bank to put the title in escrow, after which the former owners have 15 days to move out....

• Cat and Girl
• XKCD
• Opus
• User...
  
  
• 12/22/2006 - The term is finished
  

  Finally, our term finished today. All the grades are in, the students can relax and so can we.

  We still have not signed the paperwork for the house yet. We read over the escritura (contract) today, but found many things wrong. Mainly that the amounts were all wrong -- so now we need to get...
  
  

• 11/11/2006 - More on the house
  

  Here's the details of the house:

  Three bedrooms, two baths. A main room and dining room. Two smaller living rooms (probably will be used for office/reading rooms). A large kitchen, utility/storage room, and a small bath/bedroom for service staff (i.e. maid, etc). An outbuilding for external...
  
  

• 11/10/2006 - Now, really. News.
  

  What's my big news? I know you've been waiting for it. I'm not going to spill it quite yet: first a little story.

  We're renting the house we are in now. It's a nice house, we like it. It was for sale - however, we were not interested in buying it. Why? Because there is a rather large crack...
  
  

• 10/25/2006 - News, news, and more news...
  

  Which I'll tell you in a bit.. first let me introduce the newest member of our family, 8 weeks old and weighing in at just over a ball of fluff...

  Here's Hobbes!

  Please save your "awww"s until after viewing all the photos..

  
  
  
• 8/16/2006 - Vacation
  

  The school term ended July 28th. University was closed for a week, and there were/are no teaching duties for two weeks. Classes start again on the 21st of August. However due to a mix-up of the grading system some of my students have failed when they should have passed. So now I have to scramble and...
  
  

• 7/31/2006 - DPChallenge
  

  A couple of photos I took for DPC Challenge. The challenge was "Zen Photography" and the description was to "Make an image that whispers serenity, simplicity, harmony. Make an image as silent as can be."

  Unfortunately due to internet problems (damn you Telefonica!) I was unable to submit them....
  
  

• 7/13/2006 - Pictures
  Took a trip up the mountain today since it was clear and sunny, so now you get pictures of the Jeep and the surrounding area!
  
  
• 7/12/2006 - A comedy of errors: Part 32 and 1/3.
  

  First, let me offer groveling apologies for my lack of entries. Busy, sick, etc. Second, let me offer up this story to make up for it:

  Yesterday started out innocently enough. Vero and I drove to work in Curico (yes, finally bought a car, 1996 Jeep Cherokee). Nothing remarkable happened during...
  
  

• 6/1/2006 - Winter is here..
  

  It's been cold recently, and since we can only heat our house with the wood stove, I've been spending lots of time bundled in clothes and blankets. It's not bad when Veronica is here, since I feel justified in lighting the fire. But when it's only me and the cats, I shy away from it. Seems silly to...
  
  

• 5/14/2006 - Bureaucracy
  

  My latest encounter with Chilean bureaucracy started a week ago Thursday. I had to go register with the police, then take the resulting paperwork to get my national ID card.

  In preparation, I looked up where the police office was on the net. I met Veronica at school and we headed into town...
  
  

• 5/14/2006 - And now for something completely different...
  

  Politics... Everybody has an opinion, even if it's none at all.

  I'm not usually political, and certainly usually don't get all political in my blog. But I watched something over the weekend that made me feel... joyous. After seeing this I feel I can now call myself American again without...
  
  

• 5/2/2006 - Where'd April go?
  

  Someone must have snuck off with it in the night!

  I meant to write on Friday, but was so busy and tired that I didn't have the chance. I figured - Yah, every Friday I'll write a blog entry. I didn't realize I had already missed a week!

  Teaching is going well. I'm very impressed with...
  
  

• 4/19/2006 - *sigh*
  So much work, so little time.
  
  Our trip to Santiago was successful in that I managed to procure my temporary residency visa, so I now can stay until next April. We didn't manage to purchase a car though. The Jeep Cherokee we went to look at was nice. It was advertised as a 1997 for 4 million...
  
  
• 4/4/2006 - And they left me alive... barely.
  In the end, I had to fight them off with my teeth. But I survived - to go through the ordeal again this Friday.
  
  Actually, it wasn't that bad. I can at least communicate in some fashion with the students. My Inteligencia Artificial class reads English quite well, and if I get stuck...
  
  
• 3/24/2006 - Jealousy
  Jealousy is not a good thing.
  
  At the moment Vero's jealous of me because I have an office (she doesn't), I have an email account at the university (she doesn't), and I got my picture and a little article in the University of Talca weekly newspaper. And I'm just part-time.
  
  Recall...
  
  
• 3/24/2006 - Wow. What a week.
  I can hear you all out there saying "Where's Matt? I wonder how his orientation went?". Well, the answer is that it went swimmingly. I went up early Monday morning and received my office and the names of two people I should contact about my courses. I'm teaching "Inteligencia Artifical" and "Lenguajes...
  
  
• 3/17/2006 - String Trimmers
  Okay. Color me annoyed. Today I trek out to Sodimac to get chlorine tablets and a spool of string for the string trimmer. I get home and take a nice nap, then head out to do the trim. Not more than 10 minutes later, I'm back in here writing this.
  Why, you ask? Because my string is all gone. On...
  
  
• 3/15/2006 - How to destory a lawn, in two easy steps.
  A) Don't mow for a month.
  B) Cut really, really short with a push mower
  
  So. After much convincing I dragged Vero to Sodimac to purchase a lawn mower. I bought a manual push-lawn mower, thinking it's "cheap" so we can afford it. What I didn't realize is that those things are not...
  
  
• 3/12/2006 - Those weird people that live at the end of the block
  Veronica tells me that everybody knows everybody in small town Chilean society. As such, things like how a person is dressed or what they did last week are talked about obsessively.
  
  This probably means we're the talk of the neighborhood. Why?
  A) We have no curtains. Instead we're using...
  
  
• 3/9/2006 - Great News!
  Yes, welcome to the new, improved "My Life", now with Comments (TM). After a bit of late night coding, lots of coffee, and a bit of prompting from a friend, comments have appeared. I've resisted coding them up until now because of the headaches that come with them (Do I really want my Grandma reading...
  
  
• 3/7/2006 - Interviews, Pools, and expanding waistlines.
  Friday morning - I spend lots of time lazing about, "mentally preparing" for my upcoming ordea...errr..interview. The plan is to wear my blue suit, but to put it on at the last possible minute, due to the "cat factor" (those of you with cats will know what I'm talking about). The white shirt I'll be...
  
  
• 3/2/2006 - Finally!
  We have internet! I'm sitting and writing this at my own computer. I'm much happier now. And internet deprived no longer, so much catching up to do now! Unfortunately our phone service ended abruptly this morning.
  
  In my brief tenure as pool boy, I have noticed that pools collect things. Dirt,...
  
  
• 3/1/2006 - Phone. No internet.
  So Telefonica shows up last night to install the phone line. That's good news. Still no internet. I'm hoping (against reason) that they will show up tonight to install the internet.
  
  I took a swim in the pool yesterday. I'm still alive and my skin hasn't turned purple or anything, so I guess I...
  
  
• 2/28/2006 - and still no internet
  I hate this. Stuck in a dodgy internet cafe with non-working keyboards. Telefonica sucks. After jumping through hoops to get a new service ordered, we were told by the sales-lady that the engineers had rejected the order. Why? Because they couldn't find the address. Even though they have been there before...
  
  
• 2/21/2006 - I hate moving
  Moving internationally is kind of like christmas. It's hard to explain why if you haven't done it before though. You pack up all your stuff into small boxes, then put those small boxes into big boxes. You put the big boxes on a ship and then send them off to sea. A couple months later you get to open...
  
  
• 2/12/2006 - Moving
  And once again, we're moving. At somepoint this week (most likely Wednesday) we will make the journey to Talca and our new domicile. Both Veronica and I are very excited to have our own place, but exhausted from having to move yet again.
  
  Getting Internet and Phone installed was a chore. Evidently...
  
  
• 1/30/2006 - Finished building stuff, Finally!
  So today I finally put the last coat of polyurethane on the furniture. The desks were done a while ago, but we made a few other pieces of furniture out of the scraps. One is a monitor stand for my LCD screens, the other is a printer stand.
  
  In other news. Veronica has signed the contract for...
  
  
• 1/18/2006 - Sanding, Sanding, and more Sanding!
  As some of you may (or may not) know, I'm in the process of building desks for myself and Veronica, with the help of her Dad. It's not only cheaper than buying the pre-made desks, we get to make them exactly the way we want (a plus in my book!). But.. it's a lot of work. We've been working on them almost...
  
  
• 1/12/2006 - We have a house!
  Yesterday, Veronica and I travelled down to Talca to see if we could secure a house. We had initially planned on going last week, but various issues conspired to make this impossible. The estate agent had sent us pictures of a nice house, with a pool, and we wanted to see that. However, when we talked...
  
  
• 12/29/2005 - And yet more pictures
  This should be the last batch, though I seem to constantly find more that I like and I haven't posted. Over 4000 pictures with my camera so far. Not bad for the two years I've owned it.
  
  
• 12/29/2005 - Picture catchup..
  A bunch of pictures I haven't managed to post previously: These are from the trip I took to Prague to meet up with Mike & Vicki. Veronica was supposed to come on this trip as well, but last minute issues forced her to stay at home.
  
  
• 12/28/2005 - Christmas has come and gone...
  and we're still at Vero's parent's house. But there's good news! Veronica has decided to take the job at the University of Talca. The academic year starts there in March, so we're going to try to move to Talca by the beginning of February. This will give...
  
  
• 12/19/2005 - Happenings!
  Letsee.. So now we're in Santiago, living with Veronica's parents. looking for jobs. Veronica has had quite a good offer from the University of Talca. We're seriously considering it at the moment - it's good money. The problem is that Talca is about 3 hours south of Santiago. It would mean we're out...
  
  
• 12/11/2005 - Pictures
  Just pictures from the honeymoon..
  
  
• 11/26/2005 - Catching up!
  

  Lots of news to catch you all up on.

  Letsee... where to start? First, I'm married now. Veronica and I got married on August 22nd in Brighton. It was a small wedding at the Registry office. After that we had a party at Harrington Rd. Much fun was had by all.

  After that it was packing...
  
  

• 12/21/2004 - Kristen and Kevin
  Way back in July my cousin Kristen and her husband Kevin came to London for a visit. Me and Veronica met up there (since London is so close) and had lunch in Hyde Park. We then walked to the Natural History and Science Museum to have a look around. It was a good time and fun was had by all (Except maybe...
  
  
• 12/21/2004 - A few changes
  Hi again. I've been negelecting my diary for too long, so I decided to do something about it. So, there's now a subtle color shift and some changes to how things look. But more importantly, Next and Previous in the gallery sections work properly and there is a Next and Previous option to move through...
  
  
• 7/12/2004 - Summer Tips
  Yup. Still here. Been busy recently. Have tons of pictures to post from Prague and most recently from Dublin. Will post soon.
  
  
• 4/28/2004 - Norway and back!
  So, headed up to Norway over the past weekend for a ski trip with Lars, Brain, Tommy, Anna and Andy. Left here the morning of the 21st (at 3am), met with Andy at Stansted airport, flew out at 8:35 and arrived in Stockholm at 1pm. Hung around Stockholm, doing a bit of walking and sightseeing, then started...
  
  
• 3/24/2004 - Whoops
  My Diary sorta went on holiday there for a while. All should be better now. Upgraded the server and it affected the code that drives this site.
  A few bits of news to pass along. I submitted a paper to the Artificial Life 9 conference in Boston. It was accepted for oral presentation! I have to make...
  
  
• 3/8/2004 - Feeling Blue
  Haven't written for a while so I thought I'd say hi. Veronica flew back yesterday to Chile for a month, so I'm taking a day off to relax and catch up on all the stuff I should have been doing before she left. Also waiting for her to call and say she got in safely.
  
  Life in general is going well,...
  
  
• 1/18/2004 - Crazy weeks...
  What a crazy week. Busy busy all the time, working on my laptop - which crashed, other peoples machines, my schoolwork, my teaching, and my social life. Me time? what's that?
  
  My holiday was great, seeing family and friends was great. My little brother is getting married, my grandparents are...
  
  
• 1/1/2004 - Home for christmas
  Spent christmas with my grandparents and parents. More later. For now, pictures.
  
  
• 11/22/2003 - And another month down.
  Hi there.
  
  Highlights of this month: Teaching, Grading, Pictures, and being broke.
  I've been teaching Computer Systems Architecture seminars since the beginning of october. It has been a blast and has given me lots of good experience interacting with students. Until now.. Now it's grading...
  
  
• 10/20/2003 - Two months have passed...
  ...and things are finally starting to come together, from my social life to my work life and at all points in between.
  
  School has been great. I've been making good progress with my experiments and have managed to bring one of my supervisors around to my way of thinking from his initial reluctance....
  
  
• 8/19/2003 - Heh
  I've been being responsible and stuff, since it's near my 30th birthday. Working, schooling, etc. It's actually been nice. Taking some time off the picture obsession and just doing the stuff I should be doing. It's been good!
  
  Letsee: News in my life. I went to a workshop for school last week,...
  
  
• 7/14/2003 - I'm not getting caught up very well.
  So I'm going to stop. I'm just going to continue from here:
  
  Letsee.. Been working alot recently. Almost too much. It's hard. Pictures are going well. School is coming along very nicely! This weekend we had a BBQ and I invited a couple people from my lab around. Everyone had a nice time and...
  
  
• 7/6/2003 - grovelling
  I am still alive. More to come soon. For now, notice the new gallery section of the site. Soon, all my pictures will be catagorized and you will be able to browse them at your leisure. More good stuff will follow!
  
  
• 6/9/2003 - And more pictures..
  Here are all my accumlated pictures from the past month or so.
  
  Included in here are a trip to London to meet a fabulous bunch of photographers, a bunch of outtakes and entries from various challenges on DPChallenge, and a few of another couple of photographers that came to visit me here in...
  
  
• 6/2/2003 - Still here
  Working on pictures and school. Not much else. It's crazy. I need to shut off the net for a bit and concentrate on schoolwork, then work work in that order. Which means no pics for a while. So I get them out of my system now:
  
  
• 5/22/2003 - and again.
  The news of the day is our ceiling fell in... again. While people were in it, cooking. I wasn't there when the main chunk came down, but there was a secondary chunk that fell and ruined my dinner.
  
  
• 5/21/2003 - and the next trip installment....
  Sunday: Woke up around 6am when Anna joined us on the train. Snoozed for a couple hours then woke up for good. We arrived around 11am and Cristoph, Lars, and Anna went off to snowboard. Tommy and I relaxed, napped, then went for a walk up to Norway and back. I took my camera along and got some pretty...
  
  
• 5/21/2003 - Wow.. I took a lot of pictures
  I've been sitting here editing pictures for about 3 hours now and I'm not even half done. So I think the best way to get them all up is to do them in chunks, and describe what I did within the chunks of time captured in the pictures!
  
  Friday - Left Brighton at 3am, slept on the bus to the Stanstead...
  
  
• 5/17/2003 - Back
  Hey all.. Back from my Ski trip.. more tomorrow. For now here's a couple teaser pics.
  
  
• 5/8/2003 - Time for another entry!
  As you can probably tell, my diary has started to degenerate in a place where I just share picture ideas rather than a place to tell you all about what's happening in my life. So.. I'm putting a stop to that now. Soon I'm going to start adding new features to the site and new ways of interacting with...
  
  
• 4/22/2003 - Mmmm.. Simpsons.
  This weekend was the 300th (302nd) episode of the Simspons here in England. They celebrated by having an "awards show" and playing the 4 winning episodes each night, from Friday until Sunday..... On Sunday they showed two extra episodes, the very first one and the 300th (302nd) episode.
  
  Long...
  
  
• 4/19/2003 - Devil's Dyke
  Thursday Martin, Lars, and I decided to take a trip up to Devil's Dyke. By bike. There are a couple things you should know about Devil's Dyke. It's about 200 meters above where we live. Once again.. we did this by bike. The trip there was 5 kilometers and the average speed on the way there was around...
  
  
• 4/17/2003 - New Camera!
  So.. at 3:00pm yesterday my new camera arrived. I wasn't here of course. I had waited until around 2:15 for it to arrive then headed off to work. Typical. So far I really like it, but there's so much to learn about it. Lots of controls and stuff to play with. But.. here's one of my first decent shots...
  
  
• 4/16/2003 - Update of the week
  Sun, sun, and more sun.
  
  It's been nice all week here. Consequently not much work has been done by me. I got a bunch of books out of the library on Ecology stuff yesterday which will be quite nice to read in the garden! I like having a garden. It's nice.
  
  Went through my old pics...
  
  
• 4/10/2003 - More pics..
  Still haven't gotten my new camera yet. Waiting desperately for it. There was a delivery van parked outside the house for about a half hour this morning. I think they were trying to tease me. It's cruel, really really cruel.
  
  
• 4/4/2003 - More Pics
  Just another picture entry ;)
  
  
• 4/1/2003 - The pier..
  So the West Pier isn't having much luck these days. The cool part of it burnt down. :(
  
  
• 3/29/2003 - Ahhh!
  Finally figured out what my uploading problem was.. something to do with my service provider. I know have a workaround and can upload pictures again, albiet slowly.
  
  My life is starting to regain balance again. I have a goal for school and I'm getting myself motivated to reach that goal! Even...
  
  
• 3/21/2003 - Working now.
  Just wanted to share this pic. Maybe not. Uploading problems :(
  
  
• 3/18/2003 - Another two weeks down
  So my life has taken a strange turn recently. I've developed a keen interest in photography... well, perhaps "keen" isn't the right word - "obsessive" might be! I've started taking my camera everywhere I go now. All I think about is how a picture will turn out, how it will look. This is not good.
  And...
  
  
• 3/5/2003 - More pictures
  Went for a walk with flatmates and friends saturday and took lots of pictures. Some of them are even good, too!
  
  
• 2/27/2003 - Less Stressed now
  I'm feeling much more relaxed now. My presentation is done. It was a week ago that I did it, and I feel it went okay. There were things I didn't talk about that I wanted to and things that I talked about that I didn't want to, so... All in all I'd give it a 6.5 out of 10. I did get some interesting feedback...
  
  
• 2/3/2003 - World Traveller
  I hear all of you asking "Where has Matt been?" Well here's the answer: In Holland! I went to visit my friend Judith and had a great time! We spent two days in Amsterdam, doing the tourist stuff. I convinced her to take a canal tour (which she initially rejected as "too touristy") and walked around...
  
  
• 1/17/2003 - Back in Brighton
  I'm back in Brighton now, and have been for the last week and a half. I've been working hard trying to get my studies really under way, and feel like I'm making good progress. So I volunteered to give an presentation of my work thus far to one of the larger reading groups here. I think I was perhaps...
  
  
• 1/5/2003 - Okay - real entry this time
  Soo.. I'm now up in Binghamton, NY (my home town). On Christmas Day they got a foot of snow (1/3 meter) - I was in Florida then and was pretty bummed that I missed it. I shouldn't have been - we got 18 inches (1/2 meter) yesterday. I went skiing today - yay! I was looking forward to taking a nice hot...
  
  
• 1/2/2003 - Weather, weather, and more...
  It's been a wild couple weeks - from sun and warm weather to tornados to ice storms. All I need now is a good snowfall (maybe tonight?) and I'll have experienced all that the States has to offer! This is going to be a short entry, with just a few teaser pics - we don't have any power at the house (result...
  
  
• 12/16/2002 - In Richmond
  So I'm in Richmond now, staying at my friend Terry's house (male Terry). The journey was exciting - got to ride on a bus, a plane, and a Jeep (in that order). Stayed up the night before leaving, got on the bus at 4am GMT (11pm EST) - travelled two hours to Heathrow on said bus, waited around in Heathrow...
  
  
• 12/12/2002 - Going home in two days...
  so I decided to clear off the memory in my camera!
  
  
• 12/6/2002 - RMS, School, and other assorted sundries.
  The highlight of my week was going to see Richard Stallman talk about the dangers of software patents. The talk was held at the London School of Economics in London (who would have guessed?). It was quite good and I enjoyed hearing him talk, though I think he tended to overgeneralize the dangers and...
  
  
• 11/24/2002 - I'm going home! Yay!
  Booked my tickets last week. I'm going home! I'm flying into Washington DC and spending a week in Richmond. Then I'll be whisked away to Florida (okay - so I'll probably have to drive most of the way there) with my parents to spend Christmas with them and my grandparents. Then it's back to Binghamton...
  
  
• 11/7/2002 - And another week fades into the past.
  Yes, I'm feeling much better this week (Big thanks to Erika, Mike, and everyone else that helped cheer me up!).
  
  It's been an uneventful week - Guy Fawkes night was on Tuesday (big holiday over here). Last year I went to Lewes with three lovely ladies to watch the parades and bonfires, this...
  
  
• 10/29/2002 - Ugghh...
  Today was one of those days.
  Nothing I did seemed to fit and I just felt totally disconnected. I've been plagued with odd dreams the past few nights and I think they are a contributing factor to this feeling. The weather today was gray and overcast to match my mood and I couldn't stop thinking about...
  
  
• 10/23/2002 - What a week..
  Had the finals for the Barclay's Capital Programming competition this weekend. That was definitely an experience. They put us up at the 4 Seasons at Canary Wharf in London - a five star hotel (very very posh) - last Friday night and then the competition was on Saturday morning. It lasted 4 1/2 hours...
  
  
• 10/12/2002 - My first real entry
  Okay.. so what have I been up to for the past 5 months?
  
  That's darn good question. Most of my summer was spent fighting with Yoko and working on my Dissertation. I finished up the dissertation on September 2nd and handed it in, so it's out of my hands now. It came out quite well, in...
  
  
• 10/11/2002 - Yes.. I am still alive.
  So this is the official launch of my new diary system. Me and some other folks will be testing it, putting it through its paces, and improving it when needed. If you notice anything wierd while surfing, please let me know at the webdiary@mbardeen.net. Soon I'll...