USA Bern Embassy Sucks

I am so pissed off right now, I needed to write something.   I applied for a USA VISA on Wednesday last week.  This embassy does not have an online VISA status checking system.  In stead, if you want to pick up your VISA, they give you a slip that you have to bring on the day they tell you to come.  They announce the day just after the VISA interview.

For me, they told that my VISA will be ready on Friday (the second day after my interview).  I was so happy that I will get the VISA and went there on Friday.

It was a hot day and from Zurich, Bern round trip costs 40 francs.  When I went there, they told me that sometimes there is a problem with the system and the VISA is not printed.  They told me to go back and promised that they will give me a call on Monday to tell me when I can pick up the VISA.  They did not even say that they are sorry.  As if its taken for granted that there can be mistakes.

Naturally, on Monday they did not give me a call, even Tuesday they did not.  I at last called them in the morning on Wednesday when they told me that I have to call between 2 to 4 pm.  When I gave them a call at 2, they told that my VISA is printed today.  They also asked me why I am in a hurry to collect the VISA.  That is NONE of their freaking business, but I told them that I have to get another VISA.  Anyway, they told me that I have to come today at 4pm to collect it.  I asked them if I can go at 4.30, they told that 4pm is the time I have to come!  Even though, they started giving out the passports at 4.10 on the day I went.  As if they run on perfect time!

Now they told me to collect the VISA at 3pm tomorrow.  I told them OK.  After 5 minutes, an email arrived asking me to collect it at 2pm!  They are not even sure when they want to distribute it.  I am so pissed off with the embassy, sorry for the negative post!

European guys say Happy New Year in Bengali

I made the dudes from my lab say "subho nobo borsho" which means "Happy new year in Bengali"  They did a pretty good job.

Installing ggplot2 in Ubuntu 12.04 (64 bit)

This version of Ubuntu installs an Older version of R (2.x), thus making the installation of ggplot2 infeasible.  Because ggplot2 requires >3.x version of R.

To upgrade the installed R to a higher version do, the following:

1. sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
   This will open up your sources.list file in gedit, where you can add the following line.
2. deb http://cran.cnr.berkeley.edu/bin/linux/ubuntu/ version/
   Replace version/ with whatever version of Ubuntu you are using (eg, precise/, oneric/, and so on). If you're getting a "Malformed line error", check to see if you have a space between /ubuntu/ and version/.
3. Fetch the secure APT key with gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-key E084DAB9
4. Feed it to apt-key with gpg -a --export E084DAB9 | sudo apt-key add -
5. Update your sources and upgrade your installation with sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade.

This will install a higher version of R.  So you can go inside R and perform a install.packages("ggplot2").

Hope it helps someone.