- June 17, 2015 Below is an unambiguous summary of the excursion on Sunday in a non-classical context.
- June 10, 2015
- While you are in Eugene, the weather will be hot, and the river will be cool, but don't go swimming in the river. The rivers here are fed by snow pack melt in the surrounding mountains. Therefore, the water is barely above freezing. Each year, several people jump into the river to cool off, and their bodies are recovered downstream. Careful, brief wading is OK, but do not immerse yourself past your knees and do not linger in the water.
- June 9, 2015
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The procedure to do laundry in the dorm will be as follows:
- Obtain the card from me at the time you are ready to do laundry, and obtain the laundry soap from the dorm lounge, on the hearth nearest Young Hall.
- Use the card and the laundry soap in the basement laundry room.
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- Return the card to me with $1.00 for the machine and laundry soap.
- If someone also wants to use the card, give them the card and $1.00 to give to me.
- Return the laundry soap to the dorm lounge, where I will check it periodically to make sure it is available. DO NOT leave the laundry soap in the laundry room, since lots of other people have access to the basement.
- June 5, 2015
-
See the
Detailed Check-In Instructions
if you are staying in the dorms.
We are in Young, Stafford and the Global Scholars Hall;
however, your check-in instructions
will vary depending on what time you will arrive.
Points of interest on the map:
- Earl Complex - possibly where you will check in
- LLC North - possibly where you will check in
- Carson Hall - where we will be eating
- Knight Law - where the lectures are
- Deschutes Hall - where the student talks will be
- May 13, 2015
-
It is imperative that you bring an ethernet cable with you. if you fail to bring an ethernet cord, expect to have a really bad Internet connection. If you bring an ethernet cord, your Internet connection will be fine. UO is set up for UO students, of which you are not one. I cannot change this.
The lecture hall has 10 wireless access points available for UO students, 1 wireless access point available for guest accounts, and 1 wireless access point for eduroam. Since you are not a UO student, you will be sharing 24 wireless connections with 120 participants. On the other hand, every chair has an ethernet jack. So, to review: using wireless, you are unlikely to get good internet access, but with an ethernet cord, you are guaranteed to have good internet access. Wandering around campus, you should have no problem getting wireless access provided you are not with a group of 120 other non-UO students.
If you are staying in the dorms, there is an ethernet jack at every desk. There is also wireless, but the dorm buildings are substantial, so every year there are two or three OPLSSers who have to work on the bed or something because their desks are in wireless dead zones and they did not bring cables. The housing people keep working on this, so you may find that it doesn't occur this year.
- May 7, 2015
- Oregon is not a humid climate. If you are from Arizona, you may find it a bit humid, but if you are from anywhere East of the Rocky Mountains in the US, or some foreign places, you will find it very dry. This means that at night, there is a 30F or more drop in temperature. Because the school year runs from October to May, the dorms have heating, but no air conditioning. You will find that you have to manage the windows to provide cooling. Despite the fact that it is warm during the day, I usually get requests for extra blankets, which I can accommodate. The typical pattern in Oregon is to open the windows when the sun goes down, and first thing in the morning, but keep them closed in the heat of the day and when you are asleep. For safety reasons, if you are on the first floor, you should not leave your windows open when you are not in your room.
- May 6, 2015
-
Things to bring to the summer school:
- A laptop with the recommended software installed and an ethernet cable.
- Soap, shampoo and other personal grooming items.
- Typically, I tell everyone to bring allergy medication. The main agricultural product in the Willamette Valley is grass seed, so if you are allergic to grass pollen, expect to feel the effects while you are here. Some students travelling to the summerschool experience pollen allergies for the first time. You can see a complete pollen report at www.weather.com, zip code: 97403 (pay attention to the grass number). If you are used to taking Pseudofed, it is a prescription drug, so if you intend to purchase it here, either bring a prescription, or use a non-prescription alternative.
-
For Foreign Participants:
If you are not from North America, bring a power converter for your laptop.
US power outlets are not compatible with European power cords.
If you come here without a power adapter, it may take you a number of phone
calls and missed lectures to figure out where to get one,
so it is probably easier to obtain one from your local apothecary
(or whoever sells them in your country) before coming.
to operate at the lecture hall, power adapters must have
a profile that allows you to plug into an outlet like this:
- You should not bring pillows, blankets or towels
- April 16, 2015
- Smokers: Oregon cities are largely non-smoking. In Oregon, it is illegal to smoke inside a building or within 20 feet of a building entrance, or on State owned lands, such as a beach or park. The city of Eugene does not allow smoking in city-owned places, such as parks or transit facilities. The University of Oregon is a Smoke and Tobacco Free University, which includes your dorm room. This means that you will be hard pressed to find anywhere to smoke conveniently. You can stand in the middle of Agate street, and while it is not technically illegal to smoke there, it is strongly discouraged, and leaving a cigarette butt in the street is illegal. In most places in Eugene, smoking does not include ecigs, but University of Oregon policy considers them a prohibited tobacco product. Chewing tabacco is similarly prohibited by the University, but not the city or the state; however, most restaurants, bars and taverns will not allow chewing tobacco. Therefore, if you are addicted to nicotine, you should plan on bringing nicotine gum or patches, or you can purchase them here.
- April 3, 2015
-
If you have a housing package, the meals will be served at the Cafeteria.
The hours are:
- Breakfast 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM
- Lunch 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM
- Dinner 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM
- Vegetarian/Vegan/Raw Foodist
- There should be no problem finding adequate hot and cold food in the cafeteria. If you are raw foodist, you should not eat the hot food, but there is an extensive salad bar. There is also a large selection of fresh and frozen fruit.
- Halal
- In general, my Muslim friends suggest there is plenty at the cafeteria, if you stick to the vegetarian offerings. However, Ramadan runs straight through OPLSS this year. In Eugene at that time, the sun rises at 5:30AM and sets at 9:00PM, which is the entire time the cafeteria is open. Please let me know if you intend to celebrate Ramadan, and we will make arrangements.
- Kosher
-
Kosher is tricky.
This surprised me since I know many Jews in town.
Talking to my friends and the Jewish Student Union and Hillel and several Rabbis,
it seems to come down to "if you live in Eugene, you have to make compromises."
It is certainly possible to observe an American, not-very-strict, kind of kosher,
by abstaining from certain foods.
The chef will know the ingredients of all the foods,
so be sure to ask lots of questions.
By the way, the chef may not understand kosher, per se,
so be sure to ask about the ingredient list, not "is it kosher?"
Anyway, the answer to "is it kosher?" is always no,
since the cooking and serving vessels are not kosher.
- March 26, 2015
-
To travel to Eugene, you can either take a plane to Portland (pdx) and then
take a
train
or
bus
to Eugene, or you can fly directly to Eugene (eug).
Once you have your flight, let me know when you will be arriving at pdx or eug,
and I will put you into a group of other students who are also arriving at
that time. This will allow you to share a taxi, or just generally be
less likely to get lost.
I pride myself on giving good directions and getting no one lost, so help me to help you to help me.
The University has a directions site and so do I. It has driving directions and links to train, bus, etc. You can get there from the maps page. Regardless of when you arrive, I will have some way of getting your room keys to you. - March 24, 2015
- If you are covered by the Visa Waiver Program, you will need to give contact information. The best thing to do is to give the Computer Science Department as your contact. The address information is on the March 19 entry below.
- March 20, 2015
- I put the information on student talks on the schedule page You should let me know if you want to give a talk. The point is to get other participants interested in collaborating with you in the future. The point is not to scoop PLDI. A talk should consist of a short presentation of your research followed by an off-the-cuff dialog with the audience. At OPLSS, there will be about a dozen undergrads, about half a dozen professors, about two dozen industry professionals, and the rest grad students. The hall for student talks only holds about a third of the OPLSS participants, so if you want to give a talk, you should send me an abstract that describes your research and also specifically identifies why someone would be interested in your talk.
- March 19, 2015
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When you get here, the building you will be staying in is:
1333 E. 15th Avenue Eugene OR 97403However, do not send mail to that address. University mail addressed to buildings is returned as undeliverable. It must be delivered to a specific person at a specific department. So, if you must have mail sent to you while you are here, you will have to address it to me:[you] c/o Jim Allen Dept of Computer and Info Science 1202 University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403-1202If you are sending things through a courier service, such as lost luggage or FedEx, then you should give them the street addresss of the Computer Science Department:Dept of Computer and Info Science 120 Deschutes Hall 1477 E. 13th Avenue Eugene OR 97403Deschutes Hall is open 8AM-noon and 1PM-5PM Monday-Friday. The department phone number (you can use this on your visa application) is 541-346-4408.Do not use other addresses you find on the web because your mail/package will become hopelessly lost.
- March 17, 2015
- The rates page says the check-in is after 5PM, but I understand that planes arrive at random times during the day. If you need to book a flight that lands significantly before that, we can make arrangements for arrival earlier in the day. However, we cannot accomodate participants arriving earlier than June 14.
- March 16, 2015
- As stated here and in your acceptance message, the registration fee is due by May 1, but the housing and meals charges are not due until you show up in Eugene. If your accounting people prefer, you can make a single payment before May 1 to cover all of your account. The registration fee is non-refundable, so it would behoove you to not pay it until you have obtained travel documents, if there is a question about whether you can travel to Eugene. By the way, the non-refundability of the registration fee is not our idea — unless you are a student or employee of the University of Oregon, we really cannot refund your money.
- March 12, 2015
- The speakers have asked that I add a lot of software to the curriculum page. Please make sure that your laptop has all the necessary software installed before the summer school. These will be used during the hands-on sessions. If you have trouble with the installation, let me know.
- March 8, 2015 — For Foreign Participants:
-
It is never too early to work on obtaining travel papers to the US.
You may not need a visa, but you will need a passport.
Check the
Visa Waiver Program
website to see if you need a visa.
Since OPLSS gives no academic credit, the INS views it as a scientific conference.
There have been cases of people coming from visa waiver program countries who have been held up
at the border because they said "school" or "class" or "study" or "student"
and could not attend OPLSS because they did not have a student visa.
So, do not use these words because the US government has a very limited semantic for them.
Even participants from countries in the Visa Waiver Program would need a student visa to study in the US.
Therefore, be very clear that you are NOT coming to the US as a student or to study.
You are coming here on business to attend a scientific conference.
If you need a visa, please read and follow these instructions carefully.
-
Depending on your point of origin, the main thing they will want to know in your interview
is that you are not a "risk to emmigrate" to the US. The State Department says:
Evidence of your employment and/or your family ties may be sufficient to show the purpose of your trip and your intent to return to your home country. If you cannot cover all the costs for your trip, you may show evidence that another person will cover some or all costs for your trip.
Different Ambassadors have different semantics of "evidence" and different attitudes about the phrase "may be sufficient". The University of Oregon has no influence with the US State Department. It is probably advantageous to bring evidence of round trip plane tickets, although without a visa, it would be premature to purchase tickets. - In general, you need to be clear that you are looking for a B1 business visa . Do not under any circumstances say or agree that you need a student visa. If you say that you want a student visa or that you want to study at OPLSS, you will never be allowed to come to the US.
-
Notice that "study" is specifically prohibited on a B1/B2 visa.
Be careful not to tell the embassy or border officials that your are going to "study" in the US.
A B2 Tourist visa allows
enrollment in a short recreational course of study, not for credit toward a degree (for example, a two-day cooking class while on vacation)
But, do not confuse the issue because OPLSS runs for too long to qualify as short, and a short course is something you are allowed to do as long as it is not the reason you are coming to the US. OPLSS is a scientific conference. You are here to listen to leading researchers present their findings, and meet other researchers in the field. OPLSS does not constitute a course of study. - It is illegal for us to issue you an I-20 or any other SEVIS document, because you will receive no academic credit from the University of Oregon. These are only required for a student visa. If you are asked for these documents, be very clear that you want a B1 visa. You will not be able to attend OPLSS on a student visa. Although OPLSS has summer school in the title, you should tell them you will be attending a scientific conference that awards no academic credit.
- The decision to grant a visa is left up to the ambassador to your country and there is no appeal, so be prepared. Talk to other students from your country who have attended conferences in the US.
-
Depending on your point of origin, the main thing they will want to know in your interview
is that you are not a "risk to emmigrate" to the US. The State Department says:
- February 4, 2015
- I will be posting updates on registration deadlines, when you should expect to be notified, how to get here, and what to bring. If you apply (with a recommendation) before March 15, you should hear back from us by March 20. If not, please send me an email asking what happened to your application.
Γ ≡ Going to the Oregon coast on Sunday Δ ≡ not going to the Oregon coast on Sunday α ≡ eating in the cafeteria for lunch and dinner on Sunday γ ≡ swimming δ ≡ lying on the beach sipping iced tea ε ≡ hiking Γ ⇒ ¬α, ¬¬γ, ¬δ, ε Δ ⇒ ¬α, ¬γ ∨ γ, ¬δ, ε ∨ ¬ε
