Gül

First: Note to non-Turkish friends:
There is nothing wrong with Turkey (except what was already wrong). The new president will not behave much different than the previous ones. Turkey will continue developing, as always. Everyone in Turkey wants a better country, and works for that. Do not listen to outsider comments who do not know the country’s dynamics. Ask a Turkish person if you would like more information on the issue.

Second: Note to Turkish friends (thus in Turkish):
Kimsenin kimseye laf etme hakkı yoktur. Kimsenin, özellikle kendini müslüman sayan kimsenin, “Gül müslümandır, Sezer değildir” gibi saçma cümleler ile şirk koşup kendini haşa Allah yerine koymaya hakkı yoktur. Kimsenin laiklik elden gitti diye yaygara koparmasına gerek yoktur. Kimsenin sokakta mini etekle gezen kıza laf atma, başörtüsüyle gezene gerici gözüyle bakma hakkı yoktur. Kimsenin kadınla erkeği ayırma hakkı da yoktur aslında. İşimiz gücümüz yokmuş gibi 6 aydır yerimizde sayıyoruz. Lütfen herkes adam gibi kendi işine baksın, ben dahil!

BEWARE of amtrak and enterprise

Very well known transportation services, the amtrak train service and the enterprise rental car service, have tried to cheat us. So, be really aware when using them. The incidents are below:

Amtrak: One amtrak agent told something, while the other told the opposite later, denying my right to get back my refund for a ticket cancellation. After waiting for 1 hour 15 minutes on the customer service line, I somewhat managed. But they are not to be trusted.

Enterprise: If they ask you to upgrade your car level, never do that. This means, they don’t have that low level car at hand, and they’ll have to upgrade anyways. They are just trying to get some more money for that.

Don’t think large companies are nice!

lens.com and justlenses.com DO NOT BUY

DO NOT BUY from lens.com or justlenses.com
They try to make every effort for the customer to suffer. Their shipment is extremely SLOW, their sales support is very POOR.
So, NEVER ever SHOP from those two web sites (don’t even click):
lens.com or justlenses.com

More new technology

Today’s topic is the new Adobe Acrobat Reader (it’s name might have changed, but everyone knows what i mean, the pdf reader). Now, it really reads.
Yes, you select some part of the text, and then tell the program to read it out loud for you. It can easily read numbers, percentages, ratios, etc. All this is in just your very basic pdf reader, nothing more…
Note: Don’t download the adobe photoshop album starter edition, which they try to make you download with the reader. I hate when they try to trick you doing such things. Such a big company like Adobe should not be doing those tricks.

Californication

I really liked California. The weather, first. Second, the places around, or more accurately, the variety and the number of places nearby. Regarding my internship, I liked the fact that I can take my weekends off. Do you guys (poor grad students like me) ever know how it feels? Now I do.
But very little time remains. I’ll soon be back to Providence, a part of the Heaven