With Trent and Mandy

Mom, Dad and Gina came!

Jana, Jami, Joy and Joe!

Corban and Trent

Lauren and Chris

On Friday we went on a tour at Siemens. We started at some of their corporate offices, hearing from some of their IP legal counsel. Then we went to a lab to see where the cool stuff happens. It was a bit like Wonka’s Factory except the Oompa Loompas were German engineers. Also, their canteen has nothing on the EPO’s. Avoid the white dessert. Next field trip: Augsburg for a conference.

School started on Monday, and classes have been interesting. They’re certainly not anything like regular law school classes. There, you would expect an intense period of being called on and analyzing cases. These are mostly lecture, with some discussion with the class. I don’t mind the change of pace, but it does make the 90 minutes seem really long. For the first two weeks I’m in two classes: Technical Protection of Author’s Rights and International Patent Law. All classes are held at a building that’s part of the Max Planck and the Munich IP Law Center. It’s just near Odeonplatz, not far from Marienplatz – the main center of town.

I had to pay my rent at the start of the month. I had sent them a deposit before, and just wired them the money. Because I’m actually here I thought paying it would be a little easier. Nope. There is no personal checking system in Germany. My options for paying rent were an international wire or cash. Cash is hard because it would take 10 days at the ATM because of the daily limits. So what do people use instead of checks? Debit cards? Credit cards? Nope. There are cards with electronic chips in them that can be charged up, and used at vending machines and all kinds of places. For bigger stuff, they just do direct bank transfers (kind of like ACHs). Credit cards aren’t too big either. The Euro Mastercard seems popular, but it’s sometimes hard to find a place that accepts Visa or American Express.  

Here are a couple videos. They’re really short.

I would have recorded more, but I felt like if it was longer I’d have to give him money.

I was trying to take a picture of this German mullet. My camera was still in video mode from taking the video of the organ grinder, so instead I caught Joni checking this guy out.

I got tired of constantly checking for new grades. I wrote some software that does the job for me. It worked well enough that I thought I’d share it. So I created a little website where GW students can sign up and have my system automatically check for them. When new grades arrive, they can receive notification via email or SMS. It’s pretty sweet.

The biggest drawback is that in order for my system to check grades for them, they have to hand over their sacred login credentials. Yikes. I think that’s going to be a problem. So my next version will allow people to download the software itself and put their login info into that so it never leaves their hands.

In the meantime, it’s been more than a month since we started finals. We’re still waiting on a couple grades – I’m looking in your direction, Civ Pro II and Property.