Almost done...

Everything came together today in regards to our project, we had several successful tests with both UNI and the university in St. Petersburg, with only one brief internet glitch to slow us down. Lunch was the usual T&C salad, followed by some chicken soup and then a pork medallion, fries, and kidney beans. Very tasty, with that spicy mustard.

After lunch, Chuck experimented with adding some additional audio capabilities to our setup, at the request of the MISA staff. We weren't able to do it, as we didn't bring the right cables with us, but explained to them what they'd need to buy in order to accomplish it, if they so chose. I spent most of the afternoon surfing the web, as we're really done with the project now. Tomorrow we'll help the MISA staff document the setup, if they need any more details, though I think they've gotten most of it. Then we'll do a final test at 4:00 p.m. (7:00 a.m. Iowa time) in which we'll introduce the professor teaching the class from the U.S. to her proctor here in Russia for the first time.

After that, Pitr has promised us a party, I'm not sure what that entails yet, but I'm guessing that means I won't be online tomorrow night.

Dinner tonight was a salad of so many things I don't know what it was, to tell the truth. Mostly vegetables, I think, but we didn't pay too much attention. This was followed by something similar to the Khinkali, a sort of pasta stuffed with sausage. They were good, especially with some sour cream on them and a red sauce that was sort of a cross between taco sauce and sweet and sour sauce. Very filling though.

After dinner, Chuck and Alexey went on a walk, and I crashed for a nap. Just when I think I'm adjusted to the time difference, I keel over like a narcoleptic. I'm going to be absolutely worthless at work when I return to the states if it takes me a week to adjust back the other way.

They came back after an hour, and we went you-know-where to do you-know-what. :)

Success

We ate the usual breakfast, with the new addition of a sort of hot cereal, which we think was made from barley or hominy, and tasted fine, though I think it would have been great with some honey. We then crossed the courtyard over to MISA, and were pleasantly surprised with the arrival of the new TV and VCR for the classroom. The projector hasn't arrived yet, but that doesn't really matter, we really needed the TV to rule out our NTSC-to-PAL converter as a source of trouble. The TV is a really nice one, a big Sony Wega Trinitron, and we were extremely glad to see a normal video image appear on it, as it means all the gear we lugged from America is working properly. The internet connection is back up too, the MISA staff worked late last night, and eventually tracked down a bad patch cable somewhere in the network, so everything looks ready for our next testing window at 4:00 this afternoon (7:00 a.m. Iowa time).

First Drink

I had Alexey get me some vodka, Russian-style. I told him I wanted like the natives, and had him select and order one for me. Wow, the others who've been here weren't kidding when they said Russian vodka is good, it makes the American stuff taste like kerosene in comparison. I had a shot of it, with a cucumber to bite afterwards (yes, more cucumbers, though these were pickled or marinated or somesuch). I've got to say, it's quite good, though I'm not a big drinker. Apparently, the brand was Russian Standard Platinum, which Alexey says is quite good, and I'm inclined to agree. No, I will not bring you home a bottle, so don't even ask. I've already filled my quota. :)

A not-so brief disclaimer

I got some blow-back from work (where I've apparently gained many new readers) about some of these posts, so let me make this brief disclaimer: Any similarities or differences I highlight between Russia and the US are just that, differences. I don't mean to imply that one is better than the other, nor to be insulting. I'm just trying to report things as I see them, since most people won't be lucky enough to come here, though I think you all should, it's amazing. I obviously realize that I carry with me a certain point of view, and that our culture is no doubt strange to many others. I think that's pretty obvious when dealing with international travel, but I'm covering my ass here.

Regarding the food, I'm a picky eater, though my wife is pickier. :) I'd have a hard time eating meals that someone selected for me in the States without turning my nose up at things at least twice a day, so much of my culinary displeasure is specific to me, and is a direct result of not actually getting to order my food, even though we're eating in places with menus. That said, my family raises beef and pork, and if I get some bad meat, I'm going to say so, the same as I would about any American place I ate.

And, any frustrations I have with the educational institutions I'm working with need to be put in the context of the funding for these schools. They are not well-funded, and while we say that about our schools in the States on an almost-daily basis, we have no clue what a real lack of funding means when put in the context of these schools. That the staff, faculty, and students persist in spite of these difficulties is a testament to their ability and desire to learn, and it should be commended.

To be fair to my employers, we're just getting into weblogs now, and they're going to need to get comfortable with their employees being able to spout off about their individual points of view without it affecting the "official" stance of the University. Many businesses and institutions have had this same challenge, and many more will in the future. My personal credibility as a blogger prevents me from whitewashing everything, but I aspire to be fair, and to make my biases known, while at the same time being respectful to the institutions that are hosting me, to the University (and the taxpayers) who paid for this trip, to the work I'm supposed to accomplish on it, and the good-will ambassador that I need to be.

Lastly, I rely upon you, the reader, to "fact-check my ass". I can't see the whole country, nor even the whole city, so if I say something stupid, or insulting, or incorrect, or ignorant, you can call me on it, just use the comments button below, that's what it's there for.

Now, since I'm at a bar, it's time to have some vodka, and await the challenges that tomorrow brings.

Back at Friday's

They didn't have the network up by 5, so we headed out. Pitr said that the Moscow State folks were coming to troubleshoot the problem, which may be confined only to our subnet now, we didn't get a clear statement, but in any case, we were done for the day. We went back to our rooms, where I promptly fell asleep, waking up just in time for dinner at the on-campus bar. The salad was strips of beef and ham, which was good, but I think they put in some mushrooms just to spite me. I ate around them. The next course was a spiced pork fillet, kidney beans, and french fries. What a great meal, the best we've had. I really like the Russian mustard too, I spread it all over my pork, it's good 'n spicy. I washed it all down with an orange Fanta, and the three of us headed out to face the night.

Alexey got directions to Gorky Park, which turned out to be only a couple blocks from MISA, so we walked down there. Most of the amusement park was shut down, but we walked around the whole thing for a while. Alexey won a doll in a shooting gallery, he's a crack shot, he missed one out of 30 shots, by my count.

Gorky Park was sort of surreal, in all. Being in a deserted amusement park at night is odd, through in the Russian twist, and it gets downright weird. We eventually made our way over to the Moscow river, which was absolutely beautiful at night. I remarked to Chuck that I'd love to load some color film back in my 35mm, dig up a tripod, and do some time-exposures on the river. The lit-up bridges and the Church of Christ the Savior looked amazing at night on the water.

One of the Russian Space Shuttles is parked nearby, and we talked for a bit about our space programs, and how obsolete the US shuttle fleet is, and how well the Russian Soyuz capsules have worked for servicing the ISS. Their shuttle looks a lot like ours, though I'm not sure of the size difference, as i wasn't able to get this close to the Enterprise when I saw it at the Air & Space Museum in March.

We walked back, as I found myself wishing I hadn't drank that Fanta at dinner, I really had to go, and everything in the park was closed. We made it back okay, I read some more Larry Niven, and then headed over to TGI Friday's, where you find me now.

More frustrations...

We're back in the classroom today, awaiting the arrival of the projector and TV, so we can complete our mission. Breakfast started off with the usual tomatoes and cucumbers, which none of us even touched. Even Alexey is sick of it, that's all there is to it. We then had some of the meat-pancakes that I didn't like the first time around, though Chuck ate them this time. I had some of the excellent bread and cheese, and was pleasantly surprised to find that they'd given us butter for the bread today, even though we've never asked for it there. Most Russians don't put butter on bread, so Americans usually need to request it special. The bread here is very good, but it just gets a bit dry without the butter, though the breakfast-bread was quite good with just cheese. I had the usual tasty strawberry yogurt. I washed out a couple of t-shirts this morning in my sink, as the jeans and polo shirt that I washed yesterday had dried. I'm starting to get a little better at doing laundry by hand, but we're going to see if we can locate they mythical washing machine that I've been told exists somewhere in the building by past visitors from UNI.

I realized that I had to visit the bathroom about an hour after we arrived here in the main building, and didn't want to walk back to our dorm. I decided to take a look at the bathroom on the floor below us, in the hopes that it was better than the one above us, before I gave up and walked back to my room. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was much nicer than the one on the fifth floor, with completely different fixtures. I'm not saying I'd want to eat off the floor or anything, but using a urinal was just fine, and I might be persuaded to use the toilet in a pinch. The door didn't close, so I felt a bit exposed urinating in semi-public, but when in Rome...

That is one thing that we noticed on the street, the chicken place (which I think translates to Rothic's) near our dorm has the women's bathroom at just above street level, with a giant picture window installed at waist height. Now, there's nothing immodest about it, there are stalls within the bathroom, but it was a bit odd the first day when we were walking down the sidewalk, glanced to the right, and found ourselves staring into the women's restroom.

As long as this discussion has gone into the proverbial toilet already, I'm going to comment a bit on Russian plumbing. I haven't seen all that many examples, so some of this may be specific to this school, but the toilets are definitely different. The toilet in my room (I actually have two half-baths, one room/closet has a sink and shower, one room/closet has a sink and toilet. I think that my room may normally be shared by two students, with two bedrooms, rather than the bedroom/living room combo that I have) is located about 5 inches back from the wall in front of it. It's claustrophobic to say the least. You can wedge back in there to sit on it, but if you're tubby like me, you find your nose about three inches from the wall in front of you. This also prevents you from reading the newspaper on the can.

The water level in Russian toilets is much lower, there's probably not more than 2-3 cups of water in the bowl, which has a different shape from the typical American crapper. There's a slope running from the back of the bowl to the front, so anything you deposit at the rear slips down that dry porcelain to the front, leaving behind some tracks. To flush, you lift upwards on a knob that's mounted on top of the toilet tank in the center. This releases water at the top of the bowl, which rushes down the slope and manages to clear the bowl about one in five tries, but that's probably just the unit in my room.

I was warned about Russian toilet paper, but I don't think it's any worse than "institutional" toilet paper in the U.S. I tried it, and it was usable. Sure, it's not squeezably soft, but I doubt you could use it as sand paper. It is, however, a brown paper color, sort of like paper grocery sacks in the US, which makes sense, there's no practical reason to bleach toilet paper, when you think about it. The one thing to beware is that many public toilets have no toilet paper, or you must pay for it, or you might have to pay to even use the toilet. I found that Charmin makes portable toilet paper rolls (I got mine at Wal-Mart in the US) so i brought some with me that I just carry in one of my coat pockets. I haven't had to use them yet, other than for the bloody nose I had yesterday.

One more toilet-related tidbit: The urinals at TGI Friday's have ice cubes in them. Well, actually ice cylinders with holes in them, anyhow, you know what I mean. There's ice in there, which is kind of cool (it gives you something to aim for) I'm not sure why it's done. Maybe this is a TGI Friday's thing? I've never been in one back in the States.

My shower is interesting as well, it has one of those hand-held shower heads, which would be unremarkable, except there's no wear to hang it, so you have to hold it in your hand the whole time. This makes shampooing and lathering somewhat difficult. To compound the problem, they don't use water-saving showerheads here, which gives you tremendous water pressure. This feels great when you're in the shower, but has the side-effect of turning the shower head into a cartoon fire hose when you release it. I've worked around this by learning to grasp the shower head with my toes and hold it near the floor of the tub while I shampoo my hair. It's somewhat difficult, as I can't see worth a damn without my glasses on, but it gets the job done.

Especially fun were my second and third attempts with the shower. The light bulb blew when I turned on the light on my second morning, and I spent the rest of the weekend showering in the dark, until I could get the bulb replaced. This actually wasn't that bad, as I'm severely nearsighted, and I'm used to fumbling around blind in the shower.

But enough about plumbing. The MISA network went down about a half-hour before we were supposed to eat lunch, apparently they've lost their internet connection which runs through Moscow State. They didn't have an estimate of when it would return to service, so we went to lunch at the on-campus bar.

They spruced up the usual cucumber and tomato salad by adding in some green peppers today. I half-heartedly ate the cucumbers, and some of the tomatoes. Alexey didn't even touch his salad, he said he's reached his yearly limit for cucumbers. The next course was soup, which Chuck thought was chicken, but turned out to be fish. He got some lovely fish bones in his mouthful, and I had some bits with the skin still attached in mine. We decided to just pick out the potatoes after that, and Alexey helpfully asked the cook/waitress to please not subject us to any more seafood for the rest of the week. The main course was pretty good, french fries, kidney beans, and chicken. It was dark meat, but pretty tasty after adding a bit of salt. I have to say, the chicken I've had here is far better than the beef, though the pork was quite good yesterday.

I don't want to sound like Russian cooking is all crap, or anything. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a picky eater, it's just compounded by me not being allowed to select what I'm getting to eat, nor even know what's coming until the waitress appears with each course. I'd have a hard time being served random American food for a week without complaining, though at least usually I'd be told what it was. The first minute of each course is spent with Alexey, Chuck, and I speculating about what it is we're about to eat.

After returning from lunch, Yuri informed us that the network still wasn't up. Since we were scheduled to start a video conference test with UNI in under two hours, we grew a bit nervous. I played some Civilization III on my PowerBook while Alexey played some Half Life on a PC in the room there. At 3:30, I departed for Friday's, so that I could tell the U.S. that we weren't going to be able to test as scheduled, as the network has been down now for four hours.

And that's where this post finds me, sitting in Friday's, waiting for the MISiS/MISA network to come back online. Oh, and the equipment still hasn't arrived...

Another wallpaper

Okay, since I offered up a Mac-friendly wallpaper before, here's a Windows-friendly wallpaper of the Church of Christ the Savior. The wallpapers actually look great on either OS, but Windows boxes tend to put their icons on the left side, and Macs on the right, so having the focal point of the picture behind the icons is decidedly less pleasing.

Project Day 2

As Alexey said, today started with "Same time, same place, same salad" as we convened for breakfast around 9:00. After the ususal cucumbers and tomatoes, we had some different pastry/donut things, which I think were strawberry, they were tasty. Followed by the usual yogurt, bread, and cheese, and then we were served some omelets. I dislike eggs with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, so there was no way I was even touching the omelet, so I excused myself and went back to my room. I was hoping to avoid eggs, as I expressed to several co-workers before I left, and was relieved to find that they were rarely served. Guess I got unlucky. :) Around 10, we made our way to the main building of the institute, where we discovered the elevator with the broken LCD was now listed as being out of order. We got in the other elevator in that lobby, and headed for the 7th floor to find Pitr, who had the keys to the classroom we're working on. He wasn't in his office, so we waited around for about 20 minutes, and were walking to the elevator to leave when he appeared in it.

We joined him, and then found out that this too is another elevator that doesn't serve the fourth floor. I realized later in the day that some of the elevators are marked in the lobby, to designate which floors they do serve, but not all of them, and they aren't marked on the other floors, so if you're moving between floors, you're on your own. I mentioned to one of the students helping us that this was confusing, and he agreed, saying that most students gave up and used the stairs. This may be a clever ploy on the part of the administration to keep the elevators for themselves, I surmised, and I filed it away for later use at UNI. I could use a private elevator...

So, after hiking down from the fifth floor, we started back to work on our project. As Chuck began systematically cleaning up the hurried initial setup we did yesterday, I got to work configuring my AirPort Express. I brought it with me from the US for exactly this situation. The network we have the video conferencing unit connected to will only allow two machines on it at once, so I just removed my laptop, and configure the AirPort express to act as a NAT/DHCP device, which let Chuck and I use the network with both of our laptops all day long, wirelessly. It worked great, and the AE is even rated for 240V Russian power, perfect for traveling.

Chuck got everything organized, and connected, and we initiated a test call to St. Petersburg, to the unit that was installed there in January. It worked, but we were still having a video issue on our end. We had it narrowed down to either our NTSC-to-PAL converter, or the PAL TV we were connected to. We didn't have another converter, and the new TV for the permanent installation isn't arriving until tomorrow (at the earliest), so we asked the Russians if they could dig up another TV for us to test with, rather than the old unit we were given.

At first, they said no. This was a bit frustrating, as you'd think there'd be more than one TV in a school of this size, so we explained the situation, and that if it turned out we had a bad NTSC-PAL converter, we needed to know now, so that the St. Petersburg-bound delegation coming from UNI on Friday could bring one with them from the states. They then agreed to help us, and set off in search of another TV.

We were glad, and did some more testing. I dialed into our video bridge at UNI, since no one is at work around 4:00 a.m., and just looped our own video back to us to see if we had any connection issues. I also started running some, uh, "throughput tests" with my laptop on the network, retrieving last week's episode of Survivor, and The Daily Show from the night of the debates. I figured the TV networks were going to have a helluva time coming after me since I was originating from a Russian IP address.

Eventually Pitr returned with some Pepsi, or, as the bottles read here, NENCN, with the last N backwards. He also brought us some Russian chocolate bars, which were good. They're milk chocolate, but aerated, full of air bubbles, so even though the piece you break off is big, it's not solid chocolate, so it's very light on the tongue. Chuck and I loaded up on caffeine and sugar as we waited for a TV to arrive.

Somewhere around this time, I developed a spontaneous nosebleed while using my laptop, and realized I had also managed to bleed a bit on my nice white Apple-logoed Polo shirt. As I attempted to hold my nose shut, I convinced Chuck to dig around in my coat for the toilet paper (that all Russian visitors should carry) so that I could stem the flow of blood. I think my nose was just dried out from the air in the Institute, and being exposed to this much smoke certainly isn't helping matters. After the bleeding stopped, I got Yuri to show me the way to the bathroom. The one on our floor was locked, apparently because it doesn't work, so he led me up a floor to the worst bathroom I have seen in my life. Yuri said "Sorry, it's really dirty" before I went in. Let me say this: I'd rather use any gas station toilet in the states than this room, it's that bad. Fortunately, I just wanted to wash the blood off my hands, so I used the sink (which only dispensed ice-cold water, much like the bathrooms in Sabin hall at UNI) to wash the blood off my hands, and then speculated that anything my blood was carrying could only clean up that bathroom, but my white blood cells were sure to die a quick death.

I quickly retreated from the bathroom, and promised myself that I'd not return under any circumstances requiring me to expose my sensitive areas to those conditions.

After a while, Yuri and Andrei came back with a 19" TV, and we were excited to test again. We got the TV connected to our units, via the Composite (RCA) jack, and turned it on. Then, we discovered that this TV is one of those type that requires the remote to switch to the AV jack from the RF antenna connection, and, you guessed it, the Russians had long since lost the remote. Okay, some frustration, and we tried all the buttons on the thing, and tuning all through the channel range, but no luck, no way to activate the AV jacks. I hate TV manufacturers that do this, they take an important button, like the one that selects inputs, and put it only on the remote. Worse yet, most of the universal remotes don't emulate that button either, so if you lose it, or it gets broken, you're screwed. There ought to be a law...

We explained the situation, and the Russians had already taken our previous test machine (which had flaky off-color blurry video, but had at least let us see) away to an undisclosed location, so they set off again to find yet another TV.

We decided to go to lunch at this point, and headed to the bar/restaurant that we're supposed to eat at on campus. To our surprise, we didn't get cucumber/tomato salad again we got a salad consisting of red and green bell peppers and some animal, which Chuck thinks may have been fish, and I thought may have been crab, but since there was no flavor to it, we ate it none-the-less, as the salad was fairly tasty.

Next came a soup, some clear broth filled with mushrooms (yuck), green olives (yum), black olives (yuck), paper-thin slices of what appeared to be hot dogs, a big glob of some white fatty substance, and some limp onions and other assorted produce. There was some other type of meat in the thing too, but I'm not sure what it was either. The entree turned out to be fish (which I really dislike) some kidney beans, and some potatoes with herbs. I gave the fish a pass, but ate all the beans and most of my potatoes before excusing myself to go change and wash my bloody shirt before the cook/waitress woman could glare at me for not eating her breaded fish patty.

I managed to get the blood all out, and also made quite a mess of my shower room, as I have literally no experience in laundering things by hand. I threw on an Iowa State t-shirt, and headed back to the classroom to meet Chuck and Alexey.

Eventually, Yuri and Andrei returned, looking quite haggard, with another 19" TV, complete with remote. I almost didn't have the heart to tell them what I realized as they walked through the door. This TV had the remote control, but didn't have any RCA jacks, and we certainly didn't have an RF converter.

Andrei looked somewhat crestfallen at this point, so we asked for our original little TV back, and he hauled this third TV out, and set off in search of our original unit. Around this time, Yuri appeared, with a Samsung projector unit, which had both S-Video and Composite jacks on it, much to our joy. He handed it to me, and Chuck and I began to hook it up, and I asked him where the power cable was. He said it'd be coming "in two minutes", I looked at the projector, and it took a proprietary connector that we didn't have.

After 15 minutes went by, I looked at the unit again, and realized it looked just like the one mounted to the ceiling of the room that we'd given our presentation in. I asked if it was, in fact, from that room, and was told that yes it was. I was surprised they'd gone to the trouble of climbing up and removing the projector, they were working quite hard to be helpful, so I asked where the power cable was. I was told that the power cable was installed inside the ceiling when the projector was mounted, and that it couldn't be removed, so they were trying to find another one.

After another 15 minutes, Yuri returned with a 2-prong cable, and began attempting to jam this square peg into a round hole, with absolutely no success. Chuck and I really didn't didn't want to see them fry a $3,000 projector for our sake, so we put a stop to this effort just as Yuri began casting about for a knife to hack on the cable with. I'll say this for them, these guys were resourceful.

Yuri and Andrei disappeared again, only to reappear a half hour later with big grins, carrying a computer monitor. I could see there were extra jacks on the back, but as I got closer, I recognized BNC connectors. Yup, this monitor did component video, but not composite video, as well as the standard VGA. They accepted this setback too, and left in search of another TV.

As this was going on, we had an audio-only conference with Rick, who'd come to work early back at UNI. He could see us too, we just couldn't see him until we at least got back the little TV with the flaky video. Around 3:00, our original TV returned, and Chuck discovered that he could stabilize the video with some creative wiggling of the cables, so we were pretty sure that it wasn't our PAL converter that's at fault, but rather the jack on the back of the TV.

We went back to our rooms to rest a bit before dinner, which was back at the same bar-like place on campus. Tonight's salad was cheese, tomatoes, and a meat which Chuck thinks was chicken in a mayonnaise-like sauce. After the salad came the main course, which was french fries, kidney beans, and a pork filet. The pork was quite good, especially with the spicy mustard Alexey introduced me to. There's something "off" about the french fries, though I haven't figured out what it is yet, maybe they way they're fried? A different oil? They're quite good though, no complaints. This was definitely the best meal we've had at this bar.

After dinner, Alexey headed off into the city, and Chuck and I retired to our rooms, where I did some reading of my Larry Niven book, before we agreed to meet at 8 to head over to Friday's, where I'm posting this entry now.

Now that you're caught up, I'm going to go see what's happening in the rest of the world...

Wallpaper

I uploaded a fine piece of original computer wallpaper. I shot it last night, then applied Ye Olde Sepia Tones in iPhoto. Probably works best for a Mac, but if you drag your icons to the right side on a Windows box, it'd look okay then too. :)

Project Day 1

This morning, after a restless night, I hit the snooze button on my cell phone/alarm clock a few times, before getting out of bed. (I completely forgot to get a travel alarm clock, but the cell phone I'm using has one built in.) I showered and headed down to the dining room for breakfast. I was the first to arrive, and picked at yet another plate of cucumbers and tomatoes, snacked on another waffle-donut, and ate some bread and cheese. Alexey and Chuck sauntered in shortly, and we were presented with a plate of something white and doughy with little bits of meat in it. They looked like of like swirled star shaped pasta, sort of like ravioli. Chuck and I eyed the dish suspiciously, and Alexey wouldn't tell us what it was, he just kept telling us to try it. I'd like to say that we did, but we didn't. We're wimps.

So far, I've learned that in Russia that meat is usually bad, so any weird looking dish with meat in it is probably not going to be good, but I've only been here a couple of days. I've speculated that this may be due to lean years in the past with low-quality beef, that had to be cooked excessively to be safe. [Update: Al correctly identified the mystery food as Khinkali, which looks tasty from the ingredients, I should have tried it]

I gulped down my strawberry yogurt, and never did get a beverage, since the cook kept trying to foist coffee on me before Alexey arrived. Have you ever tried to pantomime orange juice? I don't think it's possible, so the woman kept trying to give me coffee and tea over and over, until I finally convinced her to just wait until Alexey arrived, since I hadn't brought my phrasebook to breakfast with me. Unfortunately, she never came back, which is part of the reason I didn't attempt the white meat-ravioli thing, I had nothing to wash it down with if it was horrible. Yes, I am a cuisine wimp.

I managed to get the first Presidential debate downloaded last night, and was attempting to play it for Alexey and Chuck this morning over breakfast, but a grumpy older guy apparently didn't like us, and cranked up the game show he was watching on the TV to an absolutely ridiculous volume, putting an end to our fun. It was pretty clear he didn't like what we were doing. :)

After breakfast, we wandered over to the "Main Building" of the Institute, and poor Alexey promptly got chastised by Olga, the administrator in charge of us here. Apparently we weren't supposed to go there by ourselves, but rather wait in the dorms for someone to come get us. Oops, none of us caught on to that, but we got there none-the-less.

So, we arrived, and got to meet some of the IT staff from the Institute, and then Chuck & I had to give our presentations. Chuck gave his on new Internet software, internet usage and trends. I gave mine on Weblogs and RSS. I'm not sure who our audience was, they watched politely, and asked no questions. The head IT guy asked several though, and they were good insightful questions, not just polite ones since no one else was asking.

Olga Salenko did a great job translating for us, I have to remember to give her one of my gifts from America before I leave as a thank-you.

We then went down to a bar/restaurant that's sort of on-campus. There we had cucumbers and tomatoes (yes, again) followed by some chicken soup, which was okay, though I don't like soup. Then we had some of the toughest meat-thing I've ever eaten, along with french fries, which were pretty edible, though Russian ketchup tastes different, sweeter than American, though just fine. The meat, I'm not sure if it was beef or lamb, tasted okay, but I literally spilled the kidney beans twice while trying to cut it, and I had no steak-knife. My piece was okay, as far as unidentified meat goes, but Chuck's was mostly gristle.

After lunch, we went back to the dormitory and changed into jeans to start work on the video conferencing project. We lugged the 69-pound white case across the court yard into the main building, along with our laptops, and secondary case o' cables. We took turns carrying the heavy case (henceforth referred to as the Luggage, with a nod to Terry Pratchett), got into the elevator, and then got promptly lost. The elevators in the Institute are amusing, because they have weight sensors, and they shriek loudly when overloaded, so people get on, then get off when the machine gripes at them. I should also mention that the average Russian elevator is the size of a non-walk-in closet, so you're up close and personal with your fellow riders.

We got in a brand new elevator, but the LCD panel wasn't working, so we kept getting off on the wrong floors, and couldn't find our room. We wanted to be on the ninth floor, but we wound up on the third floor, wandered around, cussing out whoever numbered these rooms, only to find out later we were on the third floor, after toting the Luggage the length of the entire floor looking for room numbers that didn't exist.

We got in the elevator and tried again, hoping to reach the proper floor. After two more incorrect guesses (they aren't marked near the elevator), and a lot more elevator buzzing, we found the room number we were supposed to go to, only to learn that our final destination actually was the fourth floor, the ninth floor just held the office of the IT staff. A young guy named Yuri grabbed the Luggage from me, and we got in another elevator, which, I-shit-you-not, doesn't even stop on the fourth floor, so we had to get out on the fifth floor, and walk down a flight of stairs to reach the fourth floor. There's a button for the fourth floor in the elevator, it just won't go there. Also, Yuri is strong as an ox, I've got at least 60 pounds on him, and he carried that case like it only weighed 20 pounds.

We finally reached the classroom we were here to wire, walked in, and I immediately realized that it was nothing like the CAD renderings we were e-mailed. Chuck and Alexey were an elevator car behind, so the IT people explained to me that the "repair-men" hadn't actually gotten to modifying the room yet, and since classes were being taught in there this semester, it wouldn't be ready until January. I slowly realized that the project, as we'd planned it, just ceased to exist. Chuck and I were anticipating setting up a video-classroom, and until that minute, we'd been led to believe that's what we were doing. No one ever mentioned that the classroom wasn't ready for us, and it would have been nice to find that out, oh, say, before we traveled to the other side of the planet with the Luggage.

Chuck and Alexey arrived, as I was letting this all sink in, and I quickly filled them in on these surprising new developments. We muttered some cuss words under our breath, then tried to figure out what to do. It turns out that the equipment the Russians are providing, a projector, TV, and VCR aren't going to arrive until Wednesday at the earliest. This was bad news, without at least a TV or Projector, we can't get any video out of the Polycom unit we came here to hook up. When we told our hosts, they did come back with a grungy computer and a PAL TV. That at least gave us something to shoot for, so we busted open the Luggage, and got to work. The computer was familiar to me, it had the same case as the old Soyo box I built for my grandparents, though I'm not very good in Russian Windows 2000 yet...

We got the Polycom hooked up to the TV, and then tried to get the Polycom connected to the network. There was only one network cable to the room, and we needed to hard-code the IP address for this network segment. One problem, the Polycom had a password set on that configuration page that Chuck and I didn't know, and I needed to reach someone in America to learn it. I tried to get our hosts to hook up my PowerBook to the network, as it was around 7:30 a.m. Central time in the US, and I could track some people down now. They were working on getting their computer online instead, and kept ignoring me, as I grew increasingly impatient. Their computer didn't have the software I needed to instant-message with the US, nor was I going to be entering my e-mail user name and password into a strange Russian computer. After a while, and a few phone calls back to their NOC, they got the Windows 2000 box online, and I then copied their IP address onto my laptop, and plugged it into the network instead. I tracked down Rick, the guy with the password, and got the Polycom configured. I was a bit belligerent here, since I work with networks all day long, and knew what I wanted to do. Being fatigued doesn't help keep me calm either...

We next attempted to connect back to the US, which is difficult to coordinate with only one network connection, as I had to alert UNI that I was going to test, then unplug the laptop, plug in the Polycom unit, and attempt to make it work while incommunicado with them. After a half hour of this, we got our hosts to cough up a network switch, so I could get both machines online at once, where I immediately realized that I couldn't ping the Polycom, so it wasn't really on the network, and this is where our problem was. I did some more swapping, and eventually discovered that they'd given us a bad network cable, so I used one I'd brought with me, which worked fine.

Chuck fixed an annoying video glitch which was plaguing our connection to the TV, and we got some conferences going with UNI. The speed was good, and everything worked pretty well, but we're getting some random network disconnects of both my laptop and the video unit, at the same time.

We ran out of time in the day to work on it anymore, so called it quits, and headed back to the on-campus bar thing to eat. This time we got a salad of mushrooms and caesar dressing, followed by chicken and mushrooms in a white sauce, with some rice. One of the cook/waitresses asked me if there was something wrong with my food, because I wasn't eating much. I explained (via Alexey) that there was nothing wrong, I just don't like mushrooms, at all. (Yes, I'm picky). I ate all the chicken and rice though.

After dinner, we rested briefly in our rooms, then headed here to TGI Friday's for the nightly internet ritual. Now to drown my sorrows in a chocolate milk shake, and prepare for tomorrows hurdles...