Yesterday was “scare tactics” day I think. Staff and graduating student had a good time telling us how hard our program was going to be. The guy from Psychological Services offered us 12 free counseling sessions, acting like we would all break down and need them eventually :D.

Well, I guess that a warning can sometimes be a very good thing. Anyway, the good thing is that 17 students graduated full-time last year, so it is at least possible. :)

Today was much better, in that respect. First up was a campus tour by Julian and Andy. They showed us where we would have our classes and where to find other facilities. You pay a lot of money to study at CMU, but they spare no costs on facilities and services. There’s even a free shuttle service that drives you home when you’ve been “working on your project through the night”.

We had a good lunch at a place called Mad Mex (hey, they even had healthy food!), and then I was up for my advisory appointment with Bonnie John!!!

Now, you probably don’t understand my use of three exclamation marks in the last sentence. Bonnie John is my advisor, and she’s also my idol. She’s awesome. I wrote a 100-paged report on her work. She plays Dance Dance Revolution. Need I say more?

(The) Bonnie John had found my report (it’s about CogTool, a cognitive modeling tool for user-interface design) via Google. It was actually enlisted above her original project for a while. She read it, and liked it. She actually made everyone in the department read it! Of course, it was a pleasant surprise and a big honor for me to hear this. She couldn’t wait for me to see the new version of CogTool and criticize it. I told her that Mark and Steven are currently doing another study on CogTool, and she promised me she’d help them with source code and everything.

Totally happy (almost euphoric), I went to see some presentations given by current PhD-students. One was on “Control and the Smart Home”, and it explained how flexible scheduling devices could help double-income parents keep track of the activities of themselves and their children. The other was on “A Storytelling Robot: Modeling and Evaluation of Human-like Gaze”, where they taught a storytelling ASIMO-robot how to gaze like a human-being, and used this to evaluate the effect of gaze attention on task performance and likeability.

After that, I plugged in my iPod and went home. Oh that’s right; I bought a 30-gig video-iPod. I really like the device because the design is so perfect. For instance, the device pauses automatically when you (purposefully) unplug your earpieces.

My first week here is finally over. Time went by quickly, but at the same time I feel like I’ve been here already for a long time now. So many things happened. New faces, new places, new impressions, new food, new friends, new situations…

In the last couple of days I’ve learned more about myself, other people and the world than I’ve ever learned in my entire life.

And just that is already worth all the effort.

Wow, you skip writing your weblog for two days, and people start asking what’s going on… I like that! :D

We didn’t stay late last night at Ruth’s party. It was a really good party (cookies, tapas, and excellent DIY-mojito’s), but Gabriel wanted to go home early because of his birthday. I actually got him a present: since he likes hard-rock and metal and that kind of stuff, I figured I could give him a CD by my brother’s band (Forced Memories).

Today I did pretty much nothing. I started reading Norman’s “Design of Everyday Things”, but it’s not so enlightening if you’ve already had Human Factors, Perception and User Interfaces. Furthermore, I think the book should be updated, since many of the examples are outdated: I’m more interested in the design failures in PDAs than those in slide projectors. I mean, there are still a lot of design failures, but their nature has changed as much as the products themselves!

Anyway… Ajay and I planned to wash our clothes today, but the card-system for the laundromat at Ajay’s place was out of order. We went to Walmart with Gabriel, and I helped the guys with buying and setting up their furniture.

You see? It’s boring, right? So just wait until Tuesday for the department’s orientation program. I’m a proponent of going out every “orientation-night”, and I’m sure there are some other guys and gals here who’d agree on that one…