You're Asian, you must be smart, right?

Pups

2009-04-17T02:18:00.000-07:00

Though the one on the left isn't quite so small anymore.

Oddly Fallout-esque

2008-12-20T14:26:00.000-08:00

The similarity to the Fallout Mag is too bizarre to be coincidental.

你是中國狗

2008-09-28T03:26:00.001-07:00

Somewhat surprised at the camera quality

Manner up

2008-09-27T23:03:00.000-07:00

Yes on GG.

The stance on Re is as yet unknown.

Long line of cars

2008-09-19T18:20:00.001-07:00

Like a billion accidents on 880 today. Yay for non-moving traffic.
The clouds look kinda cool though.

MoPhoBloggin'

2008-09-19T17:53:00.000-07:00

Saw this beauty just outside of work. Not sure if you can see the windshield sticker and license plate frame.

Whiling away the hours

2008-05-01T16:47:00.001-07:00

I started this particular position on Dec 4th of 2006. My first week
was a busy-work week at headquarters. My boss was in the Phillipines
basically just hanging out as far as I could tell, and one of the guys
he seems to like was taking care of me and trying to keep me busy. I
spent a lot of time trying to read documentation, getting bored, and I
think I definitely fell asleep at my desk at one point - there's only
so much one can take of reading about OVIs (Octal Voltage and Current)
and TMU (Time Measurement Units). I was only to be at HQ for a week
(they put me in a nearby hotel) before I had to make the drive to
Sunny Tucson.

The drive altogether took about.., 15 hours maybe? I stopped once for
the night, and once to visit a friend in Phoenix on my way into town.
I went straight to another hotel, had a bunch of billing issues
because apparently my company expected me to front the cost of the
hotel (I think I was about $4000 in debt at this point, with no money
in my checking account and a nearly maxed credit card), but they took
my card and promised not to charge it and I promised to get the
billing situation resolved.
My first day of work in Tucson was sorta eventful. I got up early,
got to the office complex where my new workplace was supposed to be,
and had to spend about 20 minutes finding the actual office. It was
tucked off in a corner, and so after finally finding it, I swiped my
badge to unlock the door, walked in, and was greeted by the shrill
blaring of the alarm I just triggered - apparently I was the first one
there on that Monday morning.
Luckily, as I was calling the alarm company and trying to explain to
them my ridiculous situation, one of the employees finally arrived -
15 minutes after the alarm started - and turned the damn thing off.
He informed the alarm company of the situation, and no one was hurt or
arrested. A good start to a half year stint.

Other things of note relating to my job and time in Tucson :
IT would not set up my e-mail until about two months or so into the
job when my boss finally went to the IT guy and watched over his
shoulder as he set it up for me.
I didn't get a computer (I was using a broke-ass hand-me-down) until
three months or more into the job. They were apparently having
problems with the disk images, and even after 'fixing them', I still
have one of the disk image sets that doesn't quite work correctly. A
known issue the IT guy says he'll have to fix on my computer. I've
e-mailed the responsible IT guy to fix it, but he seems to prefer
spending his time perusing engadget, printing out comics and articles
and posting them on his cube wall, talking about his sweet, tricked
out truck, and chatting up anything with boobs at the workplace.
This company doesn't really have much in the way of any sort of
'training' or 'orientation'. My training involved my mentor at the
new workplace giving me one of his unfinished projects, making sure I
could handle the basics of what needed to be done, and letting me go.
I don't actually mind this that much, as I prefer to get involved as
soon as I can, but this lead to other problems down the line. No one
ever told me I had to track my time and what I've been working on, so
three months down the line, I had to fill in three months worth of
what I did for every hour of every day. This became a common theme at
work, someone telling me to do something a certain way way later than
they should have.

So, blah blah blah, in the stay in Tucson I flew back to HQ twice to
do some work. I finally left in July or so. Another 15 hour drive,
another couple of pit stops, another few tanks of gas, and a lot of
Harry Potter on tape later, I arrived at my new home.
The Tucson workplace had five people, plus me. Four engineers, one
technician. Four were married, the other was divorced. Four had
children, two of those had pregnant wives, one was childless but
that's probably because his wife looked closer to my age than his and
I guess they hadn't been married long. I think the youngest of them
was 35.
Headquarters is closer to 4000 people I think. My boss had about
fourteen people under him when I started the job in December, and I
think by the time I got back to HQ it was down to twelve. One more
would leave before the end of 2007, one was laid off a month ago, and
I know two more now who are starting to shop around a bit. In any
case, moving from a six person facility to a four thousand person
facility was a bit of a culture shock. I moved into the cube of one
of the people who left while I was gone, so all his knickknacks were
still there; I still don't use my my drawers or cabinet because it's
still full of his stuff. Not sure where the guy is now, but I'm sure
he's happier there.
The nice thing about being at HQ though, is that there are more people
my age. A new employee started in the cube next to mine when I flew
back to HQ for the second time. She's a few years older than me, but
we get along well and she's the person I go to to randomly waste time
or vent. Besides her, there are more than a few others that I'll go
to lunch with, randomly chat with, and occasionally gripe excessively
with.

Now it is May. In three days time I will have been with this company
for one year and five months, about seventy four weeks. I have
received in that time, probably thirty six paychecks (I took two weeks
off without pay), one bonus, one raise, and a couple hundred shares of
(largely worthless) stock. I've released two products, internally
referred to as the AU55 and the AU67 (Class D audio amplifiers with
analog/digital gain control, and frequency matching!). I've also
directly talked, through e-mail or phone, with ten or so companies,
I've done phone interviews with seven of those, and on-site interviews
with four of those, one within the past week.

At this point I'm pretty ready to move on.
Things on my mind regarding moving on :
- Breaking it to the boss. It's like a breakup, ugh, I just don't
want to do it.
- Projects I'm working on. I feel bad leaving in the middle of one,
but man I don't like being here.
- Coworkers! I like them. They are cool, and fun to talk to, and I'd
hate to lose contact. And I wonder if I'd have as many coworkers
around my age at the next place.
- Another job I hate. I don't want to move into another position that
I don't like and repeat this cycle. Similarly, I'd hate to jump into
a new job too soon and lose the opportunity with a better company.
After I started at this place, I got a call from a startup within a
few weeks, and turned them down. Not sure if I made the right choice
there.

So..., yeah. This is what I have done. I'm still not sure what I am
going to do.

Greet you with goodbye

2007-11-30T00:32:00.000-08:00

It being a bit past midnight, I have by this point in the night, lost my voice. It's fun sounding a bit like Louis Armstrong, but it'd be nice not to have to repeat every other sentence.

There are thirty two days left of the year 2007. Give or take some amount of hours, minutes, and seconds, but roughly, thirty one days left. Given my own birth year of 1984, that means 2008 will be the 24th year of my life. Given an average male life expectancy of 75 years, I'm getting close to one third of my expected life.

So anyway, tomorrow I fly across the Pacific Ocean for roughly eleven hours (1.4% of the rest of the year) to come to a several day stop (15.6%) in a large city on the island of Honshu.
It won't be my first time crossing this ocean, or my first time going to that city, and not even my first time making this exact flight. It is, however, my first time flying while sick, and for that I am bringing Nyquil, to make the experience, hopefully, largely unmemorable.

I've got all my stuff packed; I tried packing light this time, though between the winter clothes and enough Chanukah paraphernalia for three small synagogues, I'm still filling a fat suitcase and a duffel.
I've brought four paperbacks for entertainment : Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Lolita, The Great Gatsby and High Fidelity.
No gameboy, no DS, no laptop, though I couldn't live without my music so I've actually got two portable music devices on me.
And then the other random crap necessary on trips plus a few bags of cough drops and a box of Nyquil LiquiCaps.

So, time to rest and get going, hoorah.

Canon

2007-08-16T20:21:00.000-07:00

Five years ago today I was fresh out of high school. The university I had been accepted to was not particularly thrilled about my grades, and I was probably in the process or had just finished writing them a letter explaining to them my extenuating circumstances, my profound disappointment in myself, and why they should allow me to continue my education at their institution. At this point in time.., I think I was spending most of my time hanging out with friends before we all left for college. We all had high hopes, we were all moving on from our immature, high school lives into our complex and interesting university worlds. We were to become the face of the next generation, the undergrads of class 2006.

The things on my mind involved mostly this entirely new experience of living in the dorms, the relief of being done with the monotony of high school, and a bit of apprehension at the seeming difficulty of the next four years to come.

Three years ago I was halfway done. I was finally moving onto classes specifically relevant to my study. I had no idea what to expect from these classes of course. "Analog Electronics I", "Digital Electronics I", and "Device Physics" doesn't mean much when you've only just barely understood this idea of resistor and capacitor networks, and how to solve using Ohm's law, KVL, current loops and whatnot. I had also put a lot of Philosophy under my belt by this point, and had mostly decided that I was to double major in the two if at all possible. How I was going to manage that and still take Chinese and Japanese was debatable, and ultimately, didn't quite work out how I wanted. Nonetheless, I was an upper division student, and well on my way to graduation

I was working rather regularly at tutoring students in the area, and when I wasn't doing that, I was often occupied by my other hobbies or friends. I think I was even still in Taiwan at this point. No, Japan most likely, and on my way to Taiwan. 7 weeks or so spent in Japan. I spent maybe three nights in a genuine hotel with beds and a shower, two or so nights in smokey computer cafes, just a couple nights in my relatives' restaurant, a couple weeks with my host family, a couple weeks with my travelling companion, a couple more weeks with a friend of a friend on the internet, and finally an interesting week with a girl I met at a concert in West Gate Park.

Taiwan was a bit more tame by comparison, staying an entire three weeks with my uncle and aunt. My cousin took me around to see the colleges of my parents, and just to see the sights in general. I got to see so many relatives I hadn't seen in years, and many that I had never seen before. I only hope I can go back again in the near future.

This time last year I'd graduated and was working in Morgan Hill. I was still working on some radar system for the Royal Norwegian Air Force I think. The work was interesting, even if there wasn't much of it and it didn't challenge me much. Even so, I enjoyed the workplace and the people around me, so it wasn't bad at all.

It was a good time. I learned a lot, I lived a lot, and I thought that my career was falling into place. That I was well on my way to doing interesting things that would take advantage of my primary area of study as well as the other odd subjects I enjoyed.

The internship however wasn't going to last. So I was working my ass off to keep it as long as I could while putting out all the feelers I could to find a new one I would enjoy. I knew I could go to that other company, they'd all but offered me a job before, but I didn't like it then and nothing had changed in the past few months. So I searched and gave myself a buffer time to relax in the meantime.

In the end it wouldn't work out. I had just the one job lead, to a job I was wary about before I even graduated. I'd talked to them before, and I'd worried about it before, but when push came to shove, I needed something to do and something to pay the bills.

So, half a year ago I was in Tucson. Probably one of my lower points in the past few years. It was an entirely new experience. Tucson being an area full of one million people, yet with a distinctly small town feel. I was turning on my AC in the afternoons in February, and the Mexican food was superb.

The job was decidedly mediocre and uninspiring, my neighborhood was run-down, to say the least. I had, by this point, heard gunshots at night, and screaming in the morning was not atypical either. My coworkers were all 15 years older than me, if not more. One was divorced, the other five were married. All but one of the workers had children. And they all knew eachother for longer than I'd been in college, maybe even double that.

Quite probably, it was a more lonely experience than I've really felt in, I don't know how long. I think for a long period of time, the majority of my human interaction consisted of work, buying food from people, and maybe saying hi to someone as I walked in.

It was all to easy to slip into a cycle of keeping myself going just by shutting off my mind. The more I thought about my situation, the more helpless it felt, so I just occupied my time with whatever I could and just lived from day to day. Not that I really realized what was happening at the time, I just felt that everything was so out of my control, that I was so lost and unhappy, that I was stuck somewhere and just couldn't get out.

Well, in any case, here I am now. I'm in mostly the same job, but I'm back on the peninsula. My outlook is a bit better now, I've got things to do, and a goal to aim for. I don't like the job, but my options are to bail out or to make it better. I figure I ought to try the second before I wimp out. The worst thing that can happen is more attention from management, and in the best case, that's a very good thing.

I know for a fact now that I'm horrifically underpaid. Not that that is the biggest issue, but it's adding insult to injury given the other bad points of the job. I've talked with a few co-workers, one that had been there for seven years and one that had been there for maybe seven weeks. Both saw a lot of the same problems I did, and the older one said I was lucky to realize that as soon as I did, as he felt he'd wasted a lot of his life already. And besides that, the turnover rate within the company is already ridiculous.

So, I'm waiting until my yearly evaluation. I want to see what the bosses think of me and my progress thus far. Depending on what bonuses they give me, I might even consider staying, though in all honesty there isn't much keeping me at the company, and more money really wouldn't make up for the past 8 months of my life. In the meantime I'm doing the work I need to do, and making waves in the group I work in. Even if the work itself is boring and dull, I can at least make the work environment a little more interesting and friendly.

I'm just not entirely sure what to do with the next segment of my life. Studying abroad sounds interesting, teaching English sounds fun though not conducive to a career, I'd love to work for a hardware startup, some recommend trying to get relocated abroad within my current company, and I'm still strongly considering going back to grad school or trying for law school. I feel a bit of apprehension and excitement for the coming months.
But, for now, I hold the course. I'm putting out my feelers and seeing what kinds of opportunities are at the end of a given path. My goal is to find something worth doing. I want to work on something great, I'd like to have brilliant and interesting coworkers, and it'd be great to live somewhere interesting and different. But above all, I just want to be inspired by what I work on. I don't know if I'll be able to find that just now, but I'm hoping.

I sorta feel though, no matter what, the rest of this year is probably going to be an important time. We'll see what I can make of it.

Anatomy

2007-03-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

I just got out of the hospital.

I had an x-ray, a cat scan, and some drugs.

It was quite the adventure, I'll fill you in later. For now, I need me some sleep.

A short story

2007-03-12T12:35:00.000-07:00

A short story I read from The Elephant Vanishes, by Haruki Murakami.

I think one big reason I've been a big fan of Murakami is simply because I tend to identify with his protagonist characters. I'm not sure what that says about me exactly.

"On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning"

By Haruki Murakami

One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl.

Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert.

Maybe you have your own particular favorite type of girl - one with slim ankles, say, or big eyes, or graceful fingers, or you're drawn for no good reason to girls who take their time with every meal. I have my own preferences, of course. Sometimes in a restaurant I'll catch myself staring at the girl at the next table to mine because I like the shape of her nose.

But no one can insist that his 100% perfect girl correspond to some preconceived type. Much as I like noses, I can't recall the shape of hers - or even if she had one. All I can remember for sure is that she was no great beauty. It's weird.

"Yesterday on the street I passed the 100% girl," I tell someone.

"Yeah?" he says. "Good-looking?"

"Not really."

"Your favorite type, then?"

"I don't know. I can't seem to remember anything about her - the shape of her eyes or the size of her breasts."

"Strange."

"Yeah. Strange."

"So anyhow," he says, already bored, "what did you do? Talk to her? Follow her?"

"Nah. Just passed her on the street."

She's walking east to west, and I west to east. It's a really nice April morning.

Wish I could talk to her. Half an hour would be plenty: just ask her about herself, tell her about myself, and - what I'd really like to do - explain to her the complexities of fate that have led to our passing each other on a side street in Harajuku on a beautiful April morning in 1981. This was something sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock build when peace filled the world.

After talking, we'd have lunch somewhere, maybe see a Woody Allen movie, stop by a hotel bar for cocktails. With any kind of luck, we might end up in bed.

Potentiality knocks on the door of my heart.

Now the distance between us has narrowed to fifteen yards.

How can I approach her? What should I say?

"Good morning, miss. Do you think you could spare half an hour for a little conversation?"

Ridiculous. I'd sound like an insurance salesman.

"Pardon me, but would you happen to know if there is an all-night cleaners in the neighborhood?"

No, this is just as ridiculous. I'm not carrying any laundry, for one thing. Who's going to buy a line like that?

Maybe the simple truth would do. "Good morning. You are the 100% perfect girl for me."

No, she wouldn't believe it. Or even if she did, she might not want to talk to me. Sorry, she could say, I might be the 100% perfect girl for you, but you're not the 100% boy for me. It could happen. And if I found myself in that situation, I'd probably go to pieces. I'd never recover from the shock. I'm thirty-two, and that's what growing older is all about.

We pass in front of a flower shop. A small, warm air mass touches my skin. The asphalt is damp, and I catch the scent of roses. I can't bring myself to speak to her. She wears a white sweater, and in her right hand she holds a crisp white envelope lacking only a stamp. So: She's written somebody a letter, maybe spent the whole night writing, to judge from the sleepy look in her eyes. The envelope could contain every secret she's ever had.

I take a few more strides and turn: She's lost in the crowd.

Now, of course, I know exactly what I should have said to her. It would have been a long speech, though, far too long for me to have delivered it properly. The ideas I come up with are never very practical.

Oh, well. It would have started "Once upon a time" and ended "A sad story, don't you think?"

Once upon a time, there lived a boy and a girl. The boy was eighteen and the girl sixteen. He was not unusually handsome, and she was not especially beautiful. They were just an ordinary lonely boy and an ordinary lonely girl, like all the others. But they believed with their whole hearts that somewhere in the world there lived the 100% perfect boy and the 100% perfect girl for them. Yes, they believed in a miracle. And that miracle actually happened.

One day the two came upon each other on the corner of a street.

"This is amazing," he said. "I've been looking for you all my life. You may not believe this, but you're the 100% perfect girl for me."

"And you," she said to him, "are the 100% perfect boy for me, exactly as I'd pictured you in every detail. It's like a dream."

They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were not lonely anymore. They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other. What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It's a miracle, a cosmic miracle.

As they sat and talked, however, a tiny, tiny sliver of doubt took root in their hearts: Was it really all right for one's dreams to come true so easily?

And so, when there came a momentary lull in their conversation, the boy said to the girl, "Let's test ourselves - just once. If we really are each other's 100% perfect lovers, then sometime, somewhere, we will meet again without fail. And when that happens, and we know that we are the 100% perfect ones, we'll marry then and there. What do you think?"

"Yes," she said, "that is exactly what we should do."

And so they parted, she to the east, and he to the west.

The test they had agreed upon, however, was utterly unnecessary. They should never have undertaken it, because they really and truly were each other's 100% perfect lovers, and it was a miracle that they had ever met. But it was impossible for them to know this, young as they were. The cold, indifferent waves of fate proceeded to toss them unmercifully.

One winter, both the boy and the girl came down with the season's terrible inluenza, and after drifting for weeks between life and death they lost all memory of their earlier years. When they awoke, their heads were as empty as the young D. H. Lawrence's piggy bank.

They were two bright, determined young people, however, and through their unremitting efforts they were able to acquire once again the knowledge and feeling that qualified them to return as full-fledged members of society. Heaven be praised, they became truly upstanding citizens who knew how to transfer from one subway line to another, who were fully capable of sending a special-delivery letter at the post office. Indeed, they even experienced love again, sometimes as much as 75% or even 85% love.

Time passed with shocking swiftness, and soon the boy was thirty-two, the girl thirty.

One beautiful April morning, in search of a cup of coffee to start the day, the boy was walking from west to east, while the girl, intending to send a special-delivery letter, was walking from east to west, but along the same narrow street in the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo. They passed each other in the very center of the street. The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts. Each felt a rumbling in their chest. And they knew:

She is the 100% perfect girl for me.

He is the 100% perfect boy for me.

But the glow of their memories was far too weak, and their thoughts no longer had the clarity of fouteen years earlier. Without a word, they passed each other, disappearing into the crowd. Forever.

A sad story, don't you think?

Yes, that's it, that is what I should have said to her.

I'm Too Foggy Today

2007-03-08T17:40:00.000-08:00

For my own sake, I feel the need to write something here. I've left the field of my creative mind sit fallow for these past months, and I think I'm starting to reap some consequences of that.

I find the biggest issue with my current locale (i.e. away from all my friends, family, and familiar locations) is that I feel entirely alone.

Big surprise that.

The other issue arising from this is that I've been in school for the large majority of my life. Meeting people at school is great. It's easy to find someone in class and talk to them. You see them often, and regularly, so it's not hard to cultivate some sort of relationship from that. Even barring that, simply by virtue of two people being students on a particular campus, those two people will have something they can talk about. Even sitting in front of the library, I could probably strike up a conversation with someone else sitting nearby and have it turn into something interesting.
Out here in the real world, it's a bit harder. One large issue would be the fact that my current workplace consists of six (6!) workers, including myself. Five engineers (me being one of those), one lab technician, and one "Apps" (applications) guy that never shows up (I don't count him as one of the workers, as I've seen him just once and it wasn't during normal work hours). Of the five other workers besides myself, four are married, one is divorced, four have children, and all are at least ten years older than me.
Now, it's not that I don't like hanging out with the older people. In fact, I get along quite well with all of them at work. I am regularly chatting with two of them if I'm not doing something that requires conversation, and I'll not uncommonly have long, random, non-work related conversations with all but one of them. The issue is just that it's not quite so easy to just go to your 30+ year old friend with family and kids and just hang out. Randomly dropping by or hanging out at odd times of night just isn't really going to happen, and there's a lot of life in those ten years of existence as well, so it can be hard for me to relate to them at times.
I have actually spent some time with some of the co-workers outside of the work environment before. It's fun and all, but it'd be real nice to just have someone to hang out with.

As for meeting people outside of work, I dunno. I'm shy. People really don't believe me when I say that, but I am at times. I find it difficult to randomly go up and talk to people in the situations that I am faced with on a daily basis. I guess part of the problem is that I don't really have any hang-outs out here that I go to regularly, so there are few people I see often, or even more than once. That being the case, I could really only chat up random people that I've met just once and to me that seems a bit difficult. Yeah, I'm being a wimp, but we all have out faults. I don't want to be known as the creepy dude who randomly went up and started talking to some chick/guy who just wanted to get his god damn sandwich and get home and not be harassed by lonely old men who are trying way too hard.

The obvious suggestions to remedy the situation have been proposed to me many a time by now. Clubs, groups, church, class are the msot common I've heard I think.
Being a non-denominational kind of guy, I don't know that I would be all that comfortable in church. I'd feel like a bit of a hypocrite really, going to church with supposedly to enjoy the grace of God and such when really I was just going to meet people.
I was really stoked on the idea of attending some classes either at the university or at the community college. I had always wanted to take some more Japanese or Chinese to get my abilities up to par (or to stop them from decaying), but the issue with that is that not being a resident of the state, I'd have to pay something like thousands of clams just for a single class.
I think the price is not quite worth it for me. THOUGH, I have considered just attending classes on campus for the hell of it. I miss school, and I miss interesting lectures, what can I say?
Clubs and groups. They can be hard to find. Furthermore, finding one that I would be willing to join would be harder to find. This is the way I think I am going to go though.
Actually, I am going to go to something this week (maybe tonight?), though the primary purpose is not to meet people. I've been lazy as all hell since moving out to this town, and have not done much in the way of physical activity. I am going to remedy that and join a martial arts school so as to try and practice my old stuff and maybe learn some new stuff as well. In my own way, I'm figuring that if I can get most of my crap together, the rest will hopefully fall into place on its own.

That's a lot of hope maybe, but really, I have bigger things to worry about than feeling a bit alone at times.

At least, I think I do.

Or maybe I just think I should.

Hrmph.

!dead

2006-07-24T16:13:00.000-07:00

I'm alive, I swear.
Just lazy/neglectful/busy.

Right now I'm working and suffering through a horrible heat wave. Luckily, my office is awesomely air conditioned. Unluckily, my apartment AC blows.

There's more to say in general, but that'll come later. I should probably finish this day of work first.

My Mind Secedes

2006-05-10T14:20:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so it's been a while.

Final quarter of college, though there's still a fair bit of shit left to do. With the announcement of the Urban Grand Challenge, the team is moving to find some sponsors and decide where we went to take this project.
I also still have final papers to write that I've just started, as well as a presentation I don't want to prepare for. And of course, I still need to pass all my classes including the one that I failed the first time I took it. Uf.

I interviewed last Thursday with Maxim (not the magazine) for a test engineering position. That went well I think, though I suppose I won't really know until they call me back, which is supposed to happen today or tomorrow. Depending on if they like me, I will have to go and interview with them one more time, though it will be a full day interview rather than a half-day like last time.

I've got another interview coming up this Friday which I'm concerned about. It's just for a summer internship rather than an actual job, but the internship sounds quite interesting, and so I'd really like to have the opportunity to work with these folks. We will see.

Lion dance has wound down as we don't have many performances lined up for a while. My sifu for kung fu is supposed to be returning within the week and so we're conditioning so he doesn't yell at us for becoming soft in his absence.

I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do about my commencement ceremony. I'm not sure whether or not I really want to invite friends, as I'm about 99% sure the ceremony is going to be boring as hell. I'm also pretty sure at this point I'm going to be bringing my DS to the ceremony, as I want to be awake when my name is called. I had briefly toyed with the idea of maybe speaking at the ceremony, but alas, lack of motivation, inspiration and time have made this unfeasible.

And everything else..., well, it goes.

Angels on Wires From a Pregnant Sky

2006-04-16T13:56:00.000-07:00

I've been busy. So busy that a half month has gone by and I still feel as though I just got off break. There's been a whole flurry of old friends, homework, hanging out, headaches, new friends, food, kung fu, projects, lion dance, and miscellaneous other sorts of mischief. I'm becoming increasingly overwhelmed by the enormity of what is to happen in a mere two months, and furthermore fearful of what is to come afterwards.

I did not get the NEC position, which came as no big surprise; I am irritated that they left me hanging for a month and a half and after I called them twice or more about what was happening, they finally dropped the crap on me in an e-mail.

I feel bad as my recent busy-ness has definitely hosed the amount of time I've been spending with friends. This is largely my own fault, and makes me feel especially bad since I was doing more of the same last quarter when I retreated into the engineering building to live for a while. I hope the next weeks will see me still staying on top of my stuff, but managing to kick back a bit more often.

It is indeed Easter today, and I really had no idea until the dudes at Wells Fargo were trying to get me to take some of the chocolate eggs they'd laid out for the customers. I don't know what I am going to do, as my family doesn't tend to celebrate this sort of thing. In all likelihood, Easter is going to pass as just another day, which really doesn't bother me much at all.

Besides all of that, there's a lot I want to say but I don't quite know how to say it. I've been more than a bit tongue-tied as of late, for whatever reason.

The next week is going to be hellish I think, as I have three separate threads of my loom that are going to be peaking this Saturday; a lot of preparation for each is needed and I don't feel quite on top of any of them.
Performance anxiety is a bitch.

It's a Barnum and Bailey World

2006-03-30T23:50:00.000-08:00

So, the 23rd was technically my first day of Spring Break since my finals were over on Wed, but things never quite work out that way for me. The DARPA Grand Challenge team I'm on spent time getting some crap together on Friday for a display they had to give the next day. This involved a whole lot soldering, wiring, programming, et cetera et cetera, and basically went until 4m Sat. I don't mind too much however, as we did get a reasonable amount of crap done.

I then woke up early-ish on Sat to go tutoring, and of course the student that was scheduled didn't even show. Grah. An aunt of mine I hadn't seen in six years was visiting my grandparents at the time, so my family went over and saw her for the first time in a long while. She showed us some pics of my 22 year old cousin's wedding in Taiwan, which was just a bit weird. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be married at this point in my life; it seems like giving up a whole lot of freedom during the moments of your life at which you are most free.
I also chatted with her about her sons, my cousins, and what they were up to. Sounds like the eldest, the abovementioned and about a year older than me, is doing some work with a professor on voice recognition technology. From what she knew and what she explained to me, it sounds like he's doing a lot of work on making current systems hardware rather than software based and increasing portability and versatility. What exactly he is doing, I really don't know and my aunt wasn't really familiar enough to help me out with that. Or maybe I was just poor at understanding.
I guess my other cousin, maybe a year younger than me, had switched to mechanical engineering. My aunt hypothesized this had no small part to do with my older cousin's wife's influence, as she is also a mechanical engineer. He's young yet though and is only just finishing his sophomore year, so there wasn't all that much to say about him.

After dinner with the family and extended family, my mom decided to pay a visit to my cousin and his new daughter, since they were in the same area. Her name is Kayli, and she's really adorable. I actually got to see her the day after she was born, and it was just ridiculous.
When I first saw her, she was sleepy, small, and red. When we saw her that day, she was still sleepy, still small, but noticeably less red. Her brother, Darin, seemed to like her quite a bit, though I think he was beginning to realize that mom and dad were gonna be paying a lot of attention to her and not to him. At some point he was playing with cars by himself in the kitchen looking very sad, and I went and asked him what was wrong. His reply was that nothing was wrong, but it kinda obvious he was not happy. It's kinda funny, I wonder how my reaction was when my own little brother was born.
We stuck around for a bit and my mom held the baby for a bit until she finally woke up and wanted food. My mom mentioned that like Kayli, I was born with a head full of hair. For me however, all the hair fell out pretty quickly after I was born and I was bald for a good chunk of my young years apparently.
As an aside, I think the next cousin who is going to have kids is going to be my oldest male cousin in Japan. He got married when I went to Japan two years ago, and since him only my father's brother's oldest kid (the abovementioned) has gotten married. Which makes me wonder what the order of marriage is going to be for the next round of kids, since there are about eight of us, probably more, who are unmarried and in the range of sixteen to twenty-six. Scary thoughts.

After getting home from my cousin's, I went and played around with Sean and Ave and Sean's new copy of Tetris DS. It's fun I suppose, but it's really just Tetris. Might be more fun with more people.

The next day saw me getting up at 0400 again for snowboarding and prep and stuff. It was Diana driving me, Ave, and my brother, and Corey, Katie and a friend of Corey's left a bit before us. I bought a pair of snow pants, we got to the mountain about 0930 or so, snowboarded for hella hours, and then went home after the place closed. It was fun and all, but I think that it would have been way more fun if I wasn't so lacking on sleep. The lack of sleep was giving me problems with slower reflexes, less enthusiasm and ability to work past the exhaustion I was feeling, and all in all I just ended up falling a lot. Still, I had fun, though I didn't make runs all the way up until closing; at some point I hurt a thigh muscle something harsh, and so I ended the day a half hour early or so and waited for others to slowly finish up. We made the long drive home, I fell asleep in the car, and went home and crashed out.

On Monday, Misheru was back in town but incapacitated, so Sean, Joanna and I went over and paid her some company. We bought some grub, Sean bought some sort of Starbucks alcohol mixer thinger to experiment with, we rented The Aristocrats and had ourselves a grand old time. The new family dog, Cutter, made a total nuisance of himself. The dog is like two years old or so, eighty pounds, and still thinks he's a puppy. While we were watching the movie, he kept coming over and trying to get us to play with him, so we eventualy resorted to hiding his toys in a filing cabinet so he would leave us alone and instead sit petulantly in front of the filing cabinet waiting for the toys to come out. The movie itself was about what I expected in terms of entertainment value; there was more in the way of history, explanation and theory than I was expecting, and less of the actual telling of the joke, but the directors did a good job of it and it was thoroughly enjoyable.

Tuesday evening, Sean, Joanna and I went out to SF to see Japan Nite 2006. I went not expecting too much, but actually enjoyed myself a whole lot.
There's more to say on this, but long story short, it was an awesome concert, we got back home around three-ish, and I woke up the next morning with my left ear still mildly deaf.
Sean's got some pictures up here, though he only got pics of the first three bands. This is especially sad 'cause the last two bands were really, really good.

Wednesday was the first day of classes for the Spring quarter and because of the lack of sleep of the nights prior, I managed to miss my first class of the last first day of class of my undergraduate career.
Read it a couple times, it'll make sense eventually.
I went into my second class about forty-five minutes late (two hour class) and immediately wished I hadn't gone at all. It's a junior level course and so I'm largely familiar with all the material we're going to be going over. I think I'm going to be spending a lot of time playing my DS in that class.
Went to the bars that night and had a grand ol' time with friends. It was, not too surprisingly, really crowded out. Drivers were designated, drinks were had, random people were met, drunk munchies were sated, and eventually we all went home.

Now, this morning, when I woke up, my eye was all sorts of irritated. I half woke up, popped out my contacts and tossed them, and went back to sleep. When I woke up again later, my eye was really, really irritated. It was red, and tearing and blah blah blah. Through the day it got better, but it kinda fluctuated and now I can still feel that's not very happy. I'm mostly worried because I remember a teacher of mine in HS once ripped a piece out of his cornea or some crap when he had had contacts in for too long or something. I'm hoping this will be better by tomorrow.
Oh, and I also went to some classes : archery, bowling, robotics. Being a senior is awesome.

I'm not entirely sure what the next few days will hold, but it sounds like it should be fun. People are back for break, and we're hopefully getting together and catching up and such. What's also nice is that tomorrow is a holiday so there's no school. What's irritating about that is that if there was only gonna be two days of school this week, why did they even bother bringing us back? They should have just given us the two days off, given us a week long break, and extended the quarter two days later down the road. Oh well.

Gah

2006-03-27T15:43:00.000-08:00

My arms are sore in such a way that it makes it really painful to scratch my back and my back really itches.

It is a very horrible kind of torture.

Pies on the Carousel, Half a Slice

2006-03-23T01:42:00.000-08:00

So. Spring break, woo!

It amuses me that my Spring break is such that I will be in school again this time (Wed) next week.

I gave myself a blister from playing House of the Dead 4 too much today. It's a small blister, but that small blister represents a fair bit of shame, sigh.

Not sure what all I'm going to do during break, but hopefully I can snowboard, airsoft, take a hike, and just spend time with friends. I doubt I'll do all of that, but if I get about half of it done, I'll consider it a break well spent, especially since we have all of six days or whatever.

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to next quarter in some sense. It should be a very relaxed quarter as I really only have one class that's going to be rigorous I think. I do have two papers and big project to do, but hopefully that'll be fun rather than feel like a chore.

For now, I am going to revel in the free time that I have and go to bed tonight without setting an alarm.

Eyes, Stomachs, et cetera

2006-03-18T13:52:00.000-08:00

Went to the Vietnamese sandwich shop place to buy a sammich or two for lunch. With no cash. As it turns out, there's an eight dollar ($8) minimum charge for credit cards and a sandwich is about two to two fifty ($2-$2.50). So, I got four sandwiches.

Let's see how this goes.

It's Three o'Clock in the Morning

2006-03-17T04:33:00.000-08:00

Or maybe it's four.

Actually, it is about half past four in the morning and I am wide awake. I ended up sleeping around six this morning because we were working on getting the microcontrollers for the steering control and brake/throttle control board working as well as making sure the boards were doing alright. Woke up again at eleven to start working again, and finally finished all our crap at three fifty. Presented shortly after, and it seems like the prof was more or less satisfied. That concludes the projects I had to finish off in this past week, which included a sixteen page paper on the ethics of the US patent system, a presentation on the same, verifying the equivalence of a microprocessor and the same microprocessor with a scan-chain, a presentation on Catch 22 and the significance of cultural barriers in Catch 22, The Joy Luck Club, and The DaVinci Code.

After presenting, I got some pizza, randomly ran into Joanna, hung out with her for a bit, went to Sean's, got mauled by Rocky, went home, and fell asleep around half past eight. I woke up around midnight, and have been dicking around on the computer and playing games since. I have my first final at one thirty, and I have yet to really start studying.
I suppose I should start now.

Anyway, I saw some ducklings today! I was hoping to see them smaller and fluffier, but it seems I was too late. This bothers me primarily because I went to the arboretum last week with the primary intention of seeing the itty, bitty ducklings and saw nothing. I wonder whether I overlooked them, but I was keeping very aware of the open water at the least, so for sure there weren't any out there. I guess it could be the case that the ducklings were at that time too small, and so were still in nests and hiding from plain sight, though I know absolutely nothing about the growth of baby ducks and so have no clue when they're born, how they grow, or when they leave the nest. All the same, I'm glad I got the chance to see the little ones.
which is kinda funny in some sense, since I typically despise the ducks on campus with a vengeance. But really, the ducklings are just so itty, bitty and awkward and such that they're just too cute to dislike. Look at them!

After that was the hours upon hours of working on the project thinger. That chip there is one of a couple I burned out -_-;. It's not as though it's a huge problem or anything, but I still feel like a total newb for doing it. Luckily though, we did indeed finish everything, as stated above. Altogether, it was something like twenty hours of work spread out over a couple of days or something. Lots of pie, soda, and food was consumed, code was written, boards were soldered, and brains were fried.

The prof SEEMED pleased with the progress we had made, but he's not exactly the most congenial guy. We figure he's not going to fail us at the least, so as long as we keep up the work, we won't be having to stay behind a quarter.

As for the project, word on the street is that the next incarnation of the Challenge is going to be an urban one. DARPA has been sending out e-mails asking questions about the preferred format of the next competition and asking about what teams would like to see. Given that info, we're sorta steering our vehicle's design in that direction, though really the basic framework of the vehicle systems is going to be the same no matter the environment. The fun thing about an urban competition is that it might give us an option to explore ultrasonic sensors instead of just LiDAR, as well as try some other interesting things with the code. I dunno.

For now, I think I am going back to sleep. I've done a bit of tallying, and even with the long-ish nap I just finished I'm still way short on sleep for the past three days. Given that, and that I have a four hour block of finals, I should sleep now so that I don't crash out in the middle of testing.

Legibility Test

2006-03-16T14:52:00.000-08:00

To Hear Her Footsteps On My Walkway

2006-03-12T01:16:00.001-08:00

Not surprisingly, my two students did not show in the morning; I should've just slept in. It wasn't a total waste though as I did have a chance to shoot the breeze with a co-worker I don't see often anymore. Seems like I don't see anyone much anymore as of late.

Took a walk in the arboretum to pass the time before I had to go to a club meeting. There aren't any ducklings out there yet, but I have high hopes. Even so though, it was just relaxing being in the sun and watching the ducks paddling along slowly in the water. I did of course witness the occasional gang-abuse of a female, but that's par for the course I suppose, crazy ducks.
I also saw a gigantic black duck. I sometimes wonder about the various colors of ducks in the arboretum and what exactly it all means. I mean, I can tell the males from the female, but there are varities even within that I think. Maybe I'll come up with the effort and look into it myself sometime.

Went with club to a pick and pull to find parts for the vehicle. I'd never been, so it was a new experience for me. I spent most of the time wandering around, scavenging for various things on the list, though I did waste a large chunk of time removing a carburetor. It was a waste because after removing it, it was decided we didn't need it after all. Not that I really mind, since I wasn't doing much anyway, but it was somewhat annoying getting my hands ridiculously dirty for nothing much at all.
Also, carrying around a large ball pean hammer in a yard full of junked cars is kinda.., I dunno, tempting. Especially with all the aggression and stress lately. All the same, I limited myself to only hitting one windshield that was already broken.

Swung by Costco on the way home and grabbed some cheap food there. Yum for churros.

Then it was Karla's birthday, whee. Ate at Thai Bistro, hung around, went to Froggy's to wait until Pasta? started dancing. After Pasta? cleared crap up for dancing, we headed over there and got some cheap drinks while we waited for people to actually start dancing. After hanging around there for a bit, swung by Cantina and grooved around some more. Altogether, a good night. I'd kinda forgotten that it can be fun to dance.

Tomorrow looks not so fun, as I have tutoring, then a whole crapload of work to finish before the end of the quarter. I think I can deal with it though after the stress relief that tonight brought. Hopefully I can stay relaxed and cool until Spring break at the least.

No Sun Up In The Sky

2006-03-11T03:03:00.000-08:00

Jeebus.

I have been working non-stop on homework, projects, and presentations this week and I still have crap to do. An entire week of going pretty much from eight or so each day and not leaving campus 'til ten at the earliest. I will be so happy when this quarter is over. It will be happiness of the nature that you feel when you have been hitting yourself over the head with a hammer a long time and then stop.
Heavenly elation.

NEC has still not called back. I figured they wouldn't call today since the HR director said that if they called me back and gave me a verbal offer, I was to undergo a drug test within 48 hours. If they had called me today, they would have had to find some place in town that would give drug tests over the weekend, which might have been difficult. If they don't call me on Monday, I might just explode of anticipation and angst.

I'm almost finished reading Catch 22 and I really like it. I mean, I already knew I liked it, but I kinda forget just how much I like things sometimes. I think I'm going to try and get my hands on a copy of Closing Time next.

Played the boxing game for Xbox360 today. It was fun and kinda painful to watch actually. The controls are weird but you get sorta used to them after a game or two. Very fun game, very worth playing.

And once again, I'm exhausted. To sleep I go to prepare for the brutal weekend and subsequent half-week of lectures.

Edit! :
People who don't speak their minds bother me. Especially when it comes to dealing with people. Putting on a polite front to someone you don't care for is reasonable, but acting friendly and as though you actually care when you don't give a shit at all is just disingenuous and really irritating. More clarity and ranting on this later, maybe.

Also, it sleeted today. That was a somewhat unexpected surprise for the middle of my presentation.

And lastly, I have to tutor tomorrow morning. These two students are particularly flaky and I really don't feel like waking up early tomorrow. This puts me in a weird situation since they might show up and they might not, and I don't want to be there if they don't show and don't want to be in bed if they do show. Obviously. I wish they would just call in advance to tell me they have to cancel rather than the ten minutes before we are scheduled to meet. Oh well.

It Was Just The Season

2006-03-08T00:37:00.000-08:00

I have a cavity.
It's on the side of one of my upper left tri-molars or something like that.
It's been there for a couple of years and the doc was watching carefully to make sure it didn't get to this point. Due to my policy of flossing heavily for a period of time after seeing the dentist and then stopping altogether once it got inconvenient, the cavity has finally grown to the point where I now need a filling.
A filling.
I mean, that just seems silly. Only kids get fillings. I haven't gotten a filling since god knows how long.
My appointment is for April sometime.
Sigh.

My interview went okay I think. It went from 0900-1130. Five separate interviewers, five separate, individual interviews, thirty minutes each, one after the other. I met with the two team managers, the department manager (manager of the managers?), the "Principal Equipment Engineer", and the HR consultant. Altogether, I think all of it went well except the manager manager interview.
I got all flustered while explaining the workings of a solenoid 'cause I couldn't remember Maxwell's equation relating current and magnetic field. That just made me kinda on-edge for the rest of the interview, which made me double nervous when he gave me the stupid "What is your greatest strength and your greatest weakness?" question. I answered it in a weird sort of way, and actually, in a moment of unguarded honesty, gave an honest opinion of what one of my greatest weaknesses was. Unfortunately, the weakness I gave had little to nothing to do with the workplace or how I would fare as an employee and I think he was probably thinking something along the lines of "WTF?!" as I explained my weakness and how it helped me grow as a person.

One thing that really bothered me were the technical questions. Only one was an EE question, and it was trivial. It was a 12v battery in parallel with two 1k resistors, and then a 12v batttery in series with two 1k resistors. The question asked me the equivalent resistance for both circuits, the voltage across all resistors, and the current through all resistors.
Trivial.
And after I turned it in, the guy said he was gonna assume I got it right for now, then said that he'd had a few EE majors actually get it wrong. How a fourth year EE major could get such a basic question wrong is kinda mind-boggling.

The other tech questions were of the problem solving kind, although there was one fairly complex mech engineering one : there was a diagram of some sort and some points labelled and the first question asked about point A, "Write Bernoulli's equation for this point". I stopped at that point and kindly informed the interviewer I had no idea what Bernoulli's equation was. He then became confused and asked whether I had taken fluid dynamics before, which I had not and informed him so. So, I got to skip that whole question which was something like five parts.

But yeah, the tech question. There were no difficult EE ones. There were no questions where I could show my analog circuit skillz or digital design abilities, whereas anyone who was familiar with fluid dynamics would have had that entire question, which seemed pretty in-depth, over me. Oh well.

After the interviews, two of the engineers on the team and one of the managers that interviewed me took me out to lunch. This was cool and all, but I was dead tired and more than a bit shell-shocked after the interviews and Kevin, one of the engineers, kept asking me questions. I mean, the questions weren't out of the ordinary, "What do you like doing?", "Do you like this/that?", "What is your dream job?" (that one was kind of a 'wtf?' question), and some other stuff like how my Japanese was and such, but I was so tired I was answering just to answer them and not to continue a conversation. In retrospect, I could have been a bit more congenial, but damn was I tired. After the meal was over, I had regained enough strength to finally hold a conversation with the guys about the job and how they felt about stuff, but I don't know if that was enough to salvage that particular faux pas.
After the meal, Kevin took me on a tour of the plant which was kinda fun.

They said I would hear back in a week. I'm really nervous now. The thing is, there's a lot about this job that really appeals to me, and a lot about this job that I really, really like. I'm hoping fiercely that I get it, but once again I worry that the more I want it, the more likely I am to jinx it. And I'm just nervous in general. And stuff. Augh.

Anyway, things have been blah. Recent interesting events include seeing the Mingus Big Band. That was amazing. Good, live jazz is an amazing experience. I only wish they had had a harmonica, but it was okay 'cause the ringleader had the sweetest tenor sax I have ever heard in person. His blues solo was absolutely amazing; the instrument had an incredible sound and he was able to put so much emotion into the playing, it was all quite awesome. The other band members were also quite good, especially the vocalist. My only problem with live jazz are the excessive, twelve minute long, masturbatory solos. I mean, I like solos and all, but sometimes too much is just too much. Luckily, this was really only a problem in the first couple of songs, and things picked up real quick after that.

I also saw Grupo Corpo: a Brazilian dance group that does, uh, dance stuff. I really haven't the words or jargon to describe what exactly I witnessed, but I do know that it was a lot of fun. The pre-intermission section was largely couples dances; something somewhat in the style of traditional social dance, but with more in the way of ballet-level technical stuff thrown in. Made me wish fiercely that I had continued with dancing. Maybe some other time.
The second half was more in the way of modern dance numbers. It started off with a really good group tap piece, went on to some other stuff, and some other stuff, and then a naked dude, and then some more amazing stuff. I could try to describe them, but as I said, I haven't the jargon and I don't really know how I could do them justice.

Other things include snowboarding, which was sweet. And really.., that's about it I guess. School has been largely dominating my life as of late, and I'm eagerly awaiting the quarter's end. Senioritis has been kicking in and absolutely destroying my productivity. I think being burned out as hell doesn't help much either.
And then I seem to be particularly fixated on the past lately. Events I thought I was long over seem to come back and plague my mind at odd moments. And some things I just don't seem to be getting over at all, and end up dwelling on them for way longer than I should be.

Anyhow, life goes on; I just need to stick it out these last two weeks and then I can go crazy during the Spring break and the subsequent Spring quarter.

Walk On By

2006-03-06T20:04:00.000-08:00

I went by the apartment where I lived for kindergarten and part of first grade today. It was dirtier and dingier than I recalled, and it was now gated closed with gates that didn't close. I wandered in, scared of trespassing into this place where I no longer belonged.

The South entrance. I recalled an apartment on the left side of a building. Upon exiting the apartment, there would be a park to the right. Sean lived just below the park, and he used to have a light-bright set. I always thought his name should have been pronounced "seen". Towards the top of the park was a friend's dad who could breathe smoke from his nose. We would play Captain Planet in the park, though I'd never seen the show.
There was no more park. It was an overgrown isle of grass with a couple of grills. There was no more slide, no more pole, no more bridge; just a few pieces of concrete and a lot of wet grass.

Going more towards the top of the complex, I remembered her. My cousins lived at the top of this part of the complex and I would often go to their house after school so my mom's mom could take care of me. I was expected at a certain time to return to my own apartment so that my dad's mom could take care of me. I would make the long walk down the street and halfway I would duck to the right and into a park with a big round thing, a slide, and a little girl. Megan Garfield. Meghan? Meagan? We would play ninja turtles with her dad, and run around for what seemed like hours. Eventually one of my grandmothers would wander over, scared for their lives I'd been kidnapped or murdered. Upon seeing me running around the park, they would grab me, scold me, and tell my mother what I had done after they'd dragged me back to the apartment.

As I walked towards the top of the complex, I expected to see a small cul-de-sac to my left, with a park and a girl. I wandered all the way up to my cousin's old apartment, right next to the pool, without ever seeing that cul-de-sac the way I remembered. I wandered further up, to the old dumpster where I'd been harassed by the kids, the house of the other kid that liked playing with hot wheels and making them jump, and by the entrance where the ground was made of unevenly leveled stones such that the car shook like crazy when we drove over it. I followed this same path back down and I finally found the cul-de-sac.
It wasn't actually a cul-de-sac at all, just another part of the parking lot. It also was no longer a park, just another overgrown piece of lawn with rocks and concrete strewn about. My grandmothers would not come scold me if I stayed too long, and no longer was there a little blonde girl with her father, waiting for me to play with them.
I lingered, wondering, hoping, but no matter how I stared and no matter how I reasoned, I realized that things were the way they were and things are the way they are, and oft-times these two states are different.

I walked out the same entrance I came in, through this place where I celebrated birthdays and happy playtimes. Past the park that was no longer there, past the home that I no longer lived in, past the friends who had long forgotten and been forgotten. A man was at the gate that didn't close and he yelled at his dog. The dog had pulled the leash from his hand and he called for the dog to return. The dog pretended not to hear at first, and eventually sank low, put its tail down, and crawled back to the man. "Thank you Shiva."

Whispers

2006-03-06T01:36:00.000-08:00

"What could you do with a man who looked you squarely in the eye and said he would rather die than be killed in combat, a man who was at least as mature and intelligent as you were and who you had to pretend he was not? What could you say to him?"

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

"He says he drives home from work and sits in his driveway for 20 minutes wishing he had a different life."

"The father continued solemnly with his head lowered. 'When you talk to the man upstairs,' he said, 'I want you to tell Him something for me. Tell Him it ain't right for peopel to die when they're young. I mean it. Tell Him if they got to die at all, they got to die when they're old. I want you to tell him that. I don't think He knows it ain't right, because He's supposed to be good and it's been going on for a long, long time. Okay?'"

"He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast...and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever."

" I remember looking down on him from the attic window, crying, and thinking to myself "Never again". If caring for someone meant that they could hurt me so bad, make me feel so horrible, then I never wanted to let someone do that to me again."

"There was so much unhappiness in the world, he reflected, bowing his head dismally beneath the tragic thought, and there was nothing he could do about anybody's, least of all his own."

"If it's meant to be, you don't have to try."

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

"Did you hear about the couple that threw themselves off that bridge? They went up there with their dog. They threw the dog off the bridge first, then jumped off together. What I don't get it, why the dog? I mean, no one else could have taken care of it?"

"I just want to call her. I never wanted to call her before, but now I realize I can't call her."

"Maybe someone will treasure you the way you deserve to be treasured."

"For Chinese New Year, she gave auntie and uncle the equivalent of about $100 American each. They were so touched."
"That's kinda weird. They don't even need the money."
"But her heart was in it. Heart is everything."

"His wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of her dock....his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him."

"Struggling conformity."

"He believed in paradise, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning -
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

二月雨

2006-02-28T01:23:00.000-08:00

It's been hectic. Homework all over the place, just finished a midterm today (and I have no idea how I did), thinking constantly about the interview that is to come, and all in all being busy busy busy. Only 2.5 weeks left before finals and I'll be glad when the quarter is over. Next quarter I should have no labs whatsoever, as compared to the nine hours a week I have now.

The mood of the day is cheerful and speculative. The rains have been both nice and annoying. I like rain when I don't have to trudge through it for most of the day with a backpack full of crap.
I found out from a friend that four of her friends also applied to the NEC equipment engineering position and were not called back. This means that of six or seven people, I was the only one called back.
I also talked with my dad's really good friend and coworker's wife, who once programmed for NEC in the same facility as the one I'm being interviewed by. She says that they're really nice, have a good gym, good cafeteria, and take lots of breaks.
Also that they are allotted $150 for shoes every year. With that money, they are expected to buy shoes specifically for work. They will take those shoes, and leave them in cubbies or some crap at work. From then on, they will wear some sort of shoes to work, take off the shoes they wore to work and put on their work shoes. I find this amusing.
She also said some stuff about my chances given that they've called me on site for an interview, but I'm honestly worried about jinxing things lately 'cause I've been so optimistic. Yes, I realize I'm being irrational, but whatever; I'm not usually superstitious so I figure I'm allowed this little bit.

Beat House of the Dead 4 solo with one play, three continues. I messed up in stupid places and I need to stop going for score when I am in danger. My goal is to not lose so much life and to break a score of 300k.

There are trees in full bloom all around campus. It seems premature. I think I might take some pictures at some point, but we'll see.
And it looks as though the rain is going to continue all week. I have a feeling I am going to get tired of the rain real quick.

Premature Exuberance!?!?

2006-02-20T11:55:00.000-08:00

I just got a call back from NEC Electronics. Talked with some lady named Sonia and I am going to their facility on March 3rd for an on-site interview. (!!!) I'm to show up at the place around 0900 with ID to be let in. After that I guess they're gonna show me the place and interview me until 1130, though I don't know in what proportion this is going to happen. At that point, the official part is done, though Sonia says they like to take the interviewees out to lunch afterwards and hang out for a bit. Once again, I'm guardedly excited, nervous and confused as to what I should study in preparation.

Two weeks.
Augh.

Feh

2006-02-16T18:53:00.000-08:00

lkasdl;lja;skjtal;ksjdgoailjsglkasjgd

I've just been feeling really angry and frustrated all day. Not sure exactly why, but it's just this pervading sense of stress, rage, and impotent fury. Sometimes it gets to the point where I just kinda wish someone would pick a fight with me so I could hit things.

Actually, I guess I can identify at least three sources of stress/anger that are causing me to feel this way. Of the three that come to mind immediately, I can't do anything about one of them, the other is also largely out of my control, and the third is probably going to require me to not sleep tonight. Oh well. I'm sure I'll feel much better after a nice dinner and maybe a bit of wine.

Edit (0055) :
Wine and dinner for the win. Though I still have a paper draft due in eleven hours and I have nothing written yet. Sigh.

"And it's not made out of Rush or anything!"

2006-02-15T23:59:00.000-08:00

My new suit. Ignore the corny smile. I like it a lot actually. My first suit ^_^.

Good Thing + Good Thing = Awesome??

2006-02-15T01:11:00.000-08:00

Two of my favorite things being put together.

Opera, which is my favorite browser ever. Comes with all the features I want, it's fast, it's simple, and good on memory management until I open like 50 tabs across three windows.

And the Nintendo DS, which is just cool. My favorite handheld because the stylus and touchscreen allow for lots of random games that are fun to play. And it also has the games that are already fun like Advance Wars and Mario Kart. Then the wireless play is cool too.

And now you're telling me that soon I will have Opera for the DS? This is too awesome. I look forward to browsing with a d-pad + stylus + shoulder buttons. I think it will work out very nicely.

Post-Interview Reflections

2006-02-14T23:58:00.000-08:00

A long time ago back in senior year of HS, back when I was young and stupid (or perhaps just younger and stupider), I unilaterally declared that Tuesdays were dress-up-in-nice-clothes day. So on Tuesdays, not necessarily every Tuesday but generally every other week at least, I would put on nice clothes, which generally involved a nice shirt and slacks and once in a while maybe even a tie. It never really caught on hugely, but within the people I knew there were a few people who'd do it for the hell of it on random Tuesdays. It was a fun diversion to keep my mind off the fact I was getting five hours of sleep a night on average I guess.

Anyway, I just bought a real suit this weekend. Went into Men's Wearhouse and got fitted and everything. It's mine. Yeah. And so today was the first day I had ever worn a suit that was for me. And I had to wear it around campus and get gawked at by passerbys 'cause I had classes right after my interview. Coincidences like these are probably just coincidences, and probably aren't really significant to anyone but me, but for some reason I get a kick out of this right now.

Anyhow, the interview. The interview was alright. It was just a one on one interview in these tiny-ass rooms on some new building on campus. The guy's name was Matt and he was really laid back. He'd let conversation wander during the interview and we'd just shoot the breeze for a little bit before returning back to business.

The questions he asked were pretty typical I think. The first was something like, "What do you know about NEC?"
Naturally, the first thing that came to mind for me was the PC Engine and the TurboGrafx, which he found amusing. Then I rambled off some stuff about the merging of the subsidiary back into the parent company and some other stuff I read in the news.

Then he asked about what my favorite electives were, my favorite engineering classes, what I considered my greatest accomplishments, my goals in further education, describing what projects I'd worked on, describing what other projects I'd worked on, and some other stuff. I did my best to answer in a non-hokey way, and all in all talked a lot about how I wish I could have studied more things, how I enjoyed classes, disciplines and projects which incorporated many branches of study together, and some other stuff about heuristics to guide actions given that humans can't exhaustively research all possibilities and stuff.

Now, the really confusing thing was the technical question.
Usually in engineering interviews they ask you questions about your particular area or the area that the job deals with. For example, for an IC design sorta job, they might draw up simple differential pair with a tail current and ask you to analyze it. Or ask you to draw an op-amp circuit with gain of positive ten. Or some other crap about circuits.
So, I was expecting to get something relating to any of the sub-fields of EE since the job seemed to require knowledge in all of those areas. As it turned out, I was thinking in the right direction, I just didn't take it far enough.

He put a piece of paper down in front of me with three drawings on it. He explained that one drawing was a top view, the other was a side view, and the other was the other side view. I was to draw an isometric sketch of the object; that is to say, draw a 3d-ish model of it.
"Uh..., I'm sorry, I need to think about this."
"No problem, take your time."
"I've never dealt with anything like this before."
"That's what all the EE majors say. I wouldn't give this to an ME since this is the very basics of what they do. I give them the circuit problems."

So yeah, it took me a bunch of sketches and what felt like a bazillion minutes, but I finally nailed it. Matt actually said something like, "Yeah, right on!" when I finished my final drawing. He mentioned the dude that I talked to at the internship fair (whom Matt had also interviewed and brought to the company) had done rather poorly on that part of the interview.

After that, he asked one or two more questions about miscellaneous things, and then asked me whether I had any questions for him. I asked about Roseville and what it was like there, and he went on at length on how it was alright, but that he preferred living in Davis and commuting. That of course it wasn't going to have a huge population of 18-24 year olds (seven percent! 7%!!!), especially when compared to a university town, and some other stuff.
Roseville though. Not exactly the kind of place I pictured myself living in.

Then I asked about the job itself, and he gave me a rundown of what Chery, the dude who talked to me at the intership fair, has had to do since joining the team. Chery apparently is the only EE major on the team, and the rest of the team is Mech Es, Chem Es, physicists, and some other random crap. Since joining the team, he's been spending a lot of time learning about plasma physics, mech e stuff, chem e stuff, and basically learning about all aspects of fabrication and manufacturing.
So Matt, the interviewer, stressed that an important part of the job was to be able to understand things beyond your own field so as to really be able to comprehend the workings of the entirety of the fabrication plant and to use that knowledge to come up with good solutions to problems.
This is a good thing I think. Not only do I really like learning about a lot of different things, I actually emphasized that sort of sentiment in describing my projects and favorite classes. So, I mean, he might think that I, like, am a good fit for the job and stuff. 'Cause I am interested in exactly the kind of thing the job requires. Yeah.

After the interview, he gave me a packet with some stuff and said that they would get in contact with me in two to three weeks. I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but I think I have a reasonably good chance of being called back for a second interview. I hope. Augh.

Altogether the interview went well though. I just need to deal now with the waiting and, well, mostly the waiting. Good thing I've got plenty of crap to deal with in school and life so I don't stress about things I can't really change anyway.
Speaking of which, the nervousness never really got to me during the interview. I mean, I got kinda shaky when I saw the interview question, and at other random times when I felt like I couldn't find the words to express what I wanted to say, but all in all I was pretty cool through it. At least, I think I was.
Anyway, it's over and done and now I just sit and hope.
Uf.

Jitters

2006-02-14T02:00:00.000-08:00

Interview in about six and a half hours.
NEC Electronics.
For a job in Roseville.

At this point in time, I'm not really nervous. There's very little I can do in preparation besides making sure I look, smell, act and speak well. It seems all so far away, and yet I'm waiting for this serenity to disappear and leave me a sweaty, gibbering idiot.
Uf.

I kinda want to be worried about this interview, but it just isn't coming. It's kinda unnatural. Instead, I just keep thinking about stupid crap that hardly makes a difference in the big picture. That's just me I guess; even when my future is staring me in the face, I can't keep my mind off the largely insignificant events of the past.
I dunno.
言葉が見つけらない。

"Lately I haven't been myself at all/It's heavy on my mind."

What a flop! This is how the story ends

2006-02-12T02:20:00.000-08:00

Whoo, consecutive nights, haven't done that in a while. It's a pity no one I knew had a camera at the pimps and hos party, 'cause there was some sweet pimp-age going on.

Went suit shopping today, which went remarkably well. Men's Wearhouse is full of very helpful people. They asked what kinda job I was going in for, then made suggestions as to what kind of colors I ought to wear for the first interview, and how I ought to wear brighter colors to show off my creative side for the second interview, et cetera, et cetera. Nice people there, that want me to spend lots of money. I am going to pick up my sweet new suit on Monday, in preparation for my interview Tuesday. They gotta do some adjustments, 'cause I'm a bit weird shaped I guess.

The weather lately has been fantastic. Spring weather. Sun shining, breezes blowing, and warmth. Which has coincided remarkably well with me having recently bought a new shortboard. Speaking of which, here are some pics :

Check out those fat risers. Ground Zero had tiny risers and humongous risers; nothing in between at all. If I had gotten the tiny risers, the wheels would have been constantly biting the board and causing me to fall over. So, I figured I might as well get the humongous ones. Surprisingly, it's not that off balance, and I don't feel as though I'm going to fall over at any minute.

And here is the nice board with the crappy design. I got the cheapest board they had, but it turns out it's actually made of pretty good material; it's just cheap 'cause the design is shitty. I plan to paint over it with something eventually, but I just haven't had time. And I'm still not sure what to put on it. Maybe I can put decals of my favorite indie bands, yeah! Or a sweet Chinese character.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the board. It cost a little more than I expected it to, but the parts I got were nice and the board is super smooth. I'm very happy with it. I <3 cruising on my sweet board. My goal is eventually to ollie with it, though I think the wheels are a bit big for it. I can hope anyway. And fall. A lot.

As for life, it's been going pretty well. The quarter up 'til recently had been an absolute shithole, to the point where random people were walking around talking about how crappy the quarter was going. Now it seems like the gloom and stress is slowly lifting, the grim faces are lightening up, and the people aren't griping quite so much as they were. The weather has helped, no doubt (or did our mood change help the weather?), and I guess it also helps that most people have probably finished their first round of midterms.
For myself, I think it has something to do with all the crap I have going on. I've got a job interview with NEC on Tuesday, which is awesome. My degree check has been run and so I just need to talk to my advisor to make sure all my crap is in order to graduate next quarter.
I'm reasonably on top of all my homework, and this is probably my last truly difficult quarter of undergraduate study; next quarter I'm only required to take 10 units, so say hello to bowling and "Organizational Communication". I AM taking a graduate class for sure, but I hear it's ridiculously easy, so I'm not worrying too much. The big thing is that I should be having no lab next quarter, as compared to the nine-plus hours I have this quarter.
Anyhow, to sleep I go. Tutoring and homework to look forward to in the morning.

Will Kung-fu for Food

2006-02-10T22:06:00.000-08:00

Warm-up kick demonstration : 2 minutes
Kung fu set duration : 1.5 minutes
Cost of dinner (per person) we were treated to for free : $35

Rate of pay : Roughly $600 per hour

Seven courses (at least) including walnut shrimp, crab, lobster, peking duck, the best fucking sea bass I have ever had, and a bottle of wine. For the win.

Written Eloquence is Overrated

2006-02-09T17:20:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of crap going on lately and a lot to talk about, but words really just don't seem to be coming. Text, phone, and pretty much every form of communication besides face-to-face talking has felt very ineffective lately in general. That is to say, as of recently, it has been feeling like my written words and spoken words alone don't convey all the information I want them to. I have no idea why I feel that way, but whatever, here goes.

So, I've got an interview with NEC Electronics next Tuesday morning. I have mixed feelings about the job I'm interviewing for, but all the same, I want to do well. I'm excited, happy, nervous, worried and such about the interview, but it seems the worries tend to dominate my thinking. My resumé is weak compared to some of my engineering friends, and my GPA isn't exactly awesome either. I'm not entirely sure what kind of interview questions to expect, since the job doesn't fit nicely into one of the sub-disciplines of electrical engineering. I'm worried there are more qualified candidates, that I'm going to do poorly, that something entirely unexpected is going to happen and screw me over, that they're not gonna like me, et cetera, et cetera.

And it also seems every time I start to get kinda excited about it, I start thinking about all the bad points. I've been noticing lately that I do that a lot. I guess I'm subsconsciously trying to expect little so as not to be disappointed if things don't work out; it's a self-defence mechanism I guess. I can think of more than a few incidents wherein I've gotten really excited about good things that might happen to me only to have them not quite pan out the way I wanted them to. So..., I decide that being excited leads to bad things.
Yeah, my response doesn't really seem rational to me either, but no one ever said I had a whole lot of common sense. I should probably work on that a bit.

But anyway, the interview is coming up and I'm not really sure how to prepare. I want to say I'll review something for it over the weekend, but I really have no idea what they might ask me. Oh well.

As for the rest of today, I've got a lot of work to do. But, today is also Sean's birthday! He's 22 now. He's oooooooold. Which is a sobering thought, since I'm only six months younger than he is. And I'm supposed to be leaving college and getting a real-life job in four months. Which is.., not very far away at all. I suppose, I will have to make the most of the remaining time.

Pain in the Neck

2006-02-08T09:20:00.000-08:00

I've got half written posts littering my desktop, but lately I just can't seem to find the time nor the will to finish writing them. Maybe eventually they will be completed, or maybe they'll just fade into obscurity, though the difference is hard to tell sometimes.

Anyhow, I have managed to hurt my neck. I have no idea how bad it is, but it hurts to turn it left or right, look up or down, or really even move my arms or upper torso in a lot of ways.

So how did I do it?
Kung fu?
Lion dance?
Wrestling?
Fisticuffs?
Climbing on shit I shouldn't be climbing on?

None of the above.

I had just woken up and was sitting in bed contemplating what I should eat for breakfast and thinking about the lyrics to "Here Comes Your Man" and stretched. Hands behind the head, push shoulders backwards, and streeeeeeeeeeeee*POP* "OH SHIT MY NECK".
So yeah. I spent fifteen minutes trying to massage it out in the shower under very hot water, which was largely unsuccessful. My next plan is to eat food, and then eat copious amounts of ibuprofen or aspirin.
Honestly though, how does one hurt one's self while stretching? I hope it isn't serious, mostly because I don't think I'd be able to live down the stupidity and shame of it all.

Things That Don't Suck

2006-02-01T22:59:00.000-08:00

I saw this video sometime in December or something, but I didn't think too much of it then. For whatever reason, I saw it again a few days ago and now I find it absolutely hilarious.
We're going down tuuuuu in a luleelurah!

And of course, Dr. Thorpe. Assholes being assholes to other assholes is funny. Even funnier if you talk about indie or emo kids.

Firemelon is always hilarious. I call those guys idiots, but in reality I've done far worse; I'm just lucky enough that I don't usually end up hurting myself. The time I exploded a can of butane fuel comes to mind. Think 15-20 foot high fireball.

Pandora is pretty cool too. Like, yeah. The idea has been done before, but this is the first incarnation I've seen that does it well. The idea, if you haven't heard of this thing already, is that you can give Pandora the name of a song or artist you like, and it will create a music "station" that will have similar style to the song or artist you named. You can put multiple songs/artists to a station, and as you listen to the station, you can thumbs up/down songs that are playing and further customize the kind of stuff the station will throw to you.
I've been dicking around with it and trying out different combos of artists and songs to try and get the ideal station that will play awesome new song after awesome new song and I think I've kinda figured it out. For me, it worked best when I put in a list of songs as opposed to artists. They talk about why that's the case in the FAQ a bit, but who reads that kinda crap anyway?
It's a service worth checking out in any case, if you happen to like listening to music you haven't heard before.

And the coolest thing this week that didn't suck was an e-mail I received from NEC Electronics the other day. I talked with their booth dude for fifteen or twenty minutes or something, and apparently he liked me. The gist of the e-mail they sent me was, "Our recruiter was very impressed with your skills and would like to encourage you to officially submit your resume." I am hoping this means that they will definitely include me on the interview list, and I also hope this means that other people I spoke to that day felt the same way. It'd be nice to get a post-graduation job lined up before the Spring quarter starts.

And, I should be getting a shortboard soon. I imagine sometime later this week, when I finally find time to hit the shop. It's a chunk of change, but I think it'll be more than worth it for getting around from campus to work and for just dicking around on. I'm just wondering what design I'm going to paint onto it.

Sweet Poster

2006-01-30T23:46:00.000-08:00

This is the awesome poster I made for the "Cultural Report Presentation" I had to do on Friday for my "Interpersonal Communications Competence" class. My excuse is that, well, I don't really have much of an excuse I suppose. I did however redeem myself with the actual spoken presentation. I thought I did a pretty good job on the speaking without boring the crap out of people, though I did run out of time to say cooler stuff.
Anyway, that class is fun. Though I am worried simply because after having watched all the class give their presentations, I now realize some of them are utter idiots. This Friday we are assigned a group for essay presentations. The idea is that we each read a different essay in the reader, and then sum it up and give the most interesting tidbits to our group. Then the group asks some questions, and we're supposed to answer without sucking. My essay is "How to Give Criticism". I hope my groupmates don't suck.

ダンス・ダンス・ダンス

2006-01-29T02:20:00.000-08:00

Just got back from a concert with "We Are The Fury", "Rock Kills Kids" and Morningwood in that order.
Only heard about a song or two from the Furries, but my initial impressions were strongly colored by their clothes. That and the lead singer was kinda like an American version of Hyde, but with a crappier voice and way less cool. They didn't suck, but they weren't particularly compelling. Ave bought their CD so I might try and borrow that from him sometime, but we'll see.
Kids was, eh. Had one or two songs that were fun and dance-y, but besides that they were just mediocre. Yeah.
And Morningwood wasn't nearly as fun as they were last time. I think because the venue was a lot larger this time around, and they weren't the main show. Instead of going into the audience and handcuffing and humping a random dude, she instead went into the audience, handcuffed a random girl, and brought her on stage and made out and nearly stripped her down. And the music was fun of course, but the audience was seriously a bunch of emo kids. Even right in front of the stage, there were just a handful of people dancing. Oh well.

And Jon had his 22nd on Friday night. The theme was funny hats. Sadly enough, my hat is not in that picture because it was stolen early on and was passed around like a cheap hooker for the rest of the night.
Anyway, it was.., fun. Old friends, the largest drink selection I've ever seen in an apartment, and a lot of frustration/aggression to work out due to hideous amounts of schoolwork. So, there was rampant alcoholism, dancing, grappling (which I suck at and lost at), and fisticuffs (which was too drunk to say anyone won). The only disappointing thing is that I left early-ish and in retrospect I think I would have liked to have stayed. Next time maybe!

Also had lunch with Li and Chris, who I have not seen in god knows how long.
In any case, the past two days have been a nice change in pace, and hopefully are harbingers of better days to come. I look forward to getting a new shortboard, getting some job interviews, not having two things due everyday, more random concerts, and maybe a trip to Horsetail Falls.

You Gotta Know When to Fold 'em

2006-01-27T01:00:00.000-08:00

In an attempt to finish my silly communications project before the morning, I went on an expedition to Kinko's to make some color copies and to Safeway to get some posterboard.

So, I get to Kinko's to see their hours listed as "6am-12 everday". I see people inside however, so I try a door, but it is locked. Great.
Well, I can always see how much colored ink I have left in the printer at home. Maybe I'll have enough to print out the pictures for my visual aid. In a worst case scenario, I could probably just print out in black and white and make some attempt to color with markers or crayons. As long as I have some medium to which I can attach this crap, I should be fine.

So then I swing by Safeway to deposit some checks (ATMs don't close, booyah), and to find some posterboard. I wander down the stationery aisle expecting to find the shelf of my childhood memories with racks and racks of various sized and colored posterboard only to end up seeing shelf after shelf of notebooks, binders and paper.
How can a supermarket be super if it doesn't even carry pieces of paper larger than 8.5x11 inches? I mean, where the hell are kids gonna go to get posterboard to finish their silly science fair projects and such if they can't get it at a supermarket? Rite-aid?

Anyway, looks like I'll have to be up early tomorrow to run errands and grab the requisite material to finish this visual for my presentation. Honestly though, a non-24-hours Kinko's and a Safeway with no posterboard; oh how the world has failed me tonight.

Midway Through the Week of Pain

2006-01-25T00:11:00.000-08:00

Well, today was peachy.

Not to gripe too much, but, uh, here goes.

Ethics and the Information Age was miserable because the discussion was largely non-interesting and I decided that tea without breakfast first thing in the morning would be a good idea.
It was NOT a good idea.
I ended up grabbing some sort of nice tasting pastry between classes to absorb all the nasty acidic shit in my stomach that was making me feel bad.
Altogether, I still don't quite know how I feel about that class. First off, this whole "Philosophy class for engineers" thing is kinda weird. They try to fix problems in theories when they should just be analyzing, they fail to properly grasp the importance of a normative theory needing to be able to cover all cases, and a lot of the time they just fail to understand what the text is trying to say. The class started out promising, but now it looks like more effort than it's worth.

Communication Electronics went by pretty quick. The professor barely stops to take a breath through the one and a half hours, and my pen is moving pretty much the entire time. We turned in an assignment today (two problems) that me and a friend worked on for about five hours and still didn't finish. The nice thing is that today we finally moved into material that I'm more familiar with. All the previous stuff was filter and tuned circuit stuff I'd either forgotten or never knew, and signals and systems stuff I never learned well. We're finally gonna look at building multipliers using differential pairs it looks like, so maybe the class will stop being such an information overload.

Then, I ate at Espresso Roma with Shef, whee. They've got these grilled Pannini sandwiches that are pretty good. They seemed kinda small, but I think my perspective was a bit skewed by the being-incredibly-hungry thing. They have this turkey sandwich with jack cheese and sundried pesto sauce that was delicious. If only they gave more. And I got my sweet college of engineering sweatshirt back, booyah.

Verification of Digital Systems is a bore. Seriously. The class has been largely intuitive thus far, and I can usually predict what the prof is going to talk about next. Not to say I'm a genius or that the prof sucks or whatever; it's just that the material we've covered so far has been pretty simple and mostly just tedious rather than challenging. The first lab for that class is building yet another god damn processor, which wouldn't be so bad except that only the controller of the processor can be written in behavioral code; the rest has to be written in structural code. That is to say, when I want to add two vectors, I can't type "A<=B+C;", I have to use logic gates (AND, OR, NOR, etc.) or logic functions to build an adder and code the proper inputs and outputs to the proper nodes. Not fun.

Communications was interesting actually. In general, I kinda like lecture for that class since the prof is quite the speaker. He dispenses all sorts of interesting advice, things to think about, and random anecdotes that don't really relate and don't continue anywhere in particular. The most interesting thing he talked about was probably the idea of balance in relationships (friendships, SOs, etc.), how to cultivate and build upon a relationship, the uniqueness of a relationship between any two people, and basically a whole bunch of random shit about the nature of interactions between two people. I think some people might have written much of what he said as being intuitive, common sense, and largely empty of significant meaning, but for some reason the lecture struck some sort of chord with me. Anyway, this is probably the second most interesting class I have this quarter so far. Interesting quote of the lecture : "'So what's new with me?' you slow son of a bitch?"

After communications, I basically tutored for about..., four hours. It would have been longer except that one of my students bailed on me. I don't mind the tutoring so much since I do like my students, and I do get some recompensation for it, but four hours of tutoring after a full day of school is a bit tiring. I think I may have gotten a bit too curt with my geometry student. I mean, I'm not there to be nice to them or anything, but I think my tone of voice got a bit harsh towards the middle of our session. I guess I can't expect my students to remember every single thing I tell them throughout the course of the year, so I shouldn't get too frustrated. At the same time though, you'd think they'd retain information longer than until just after the midterm. Maybe I should teach better, sigh.

And now I'm home, preparing for the career fair tomorrow. I've got a list of companies I want to talk to first, I've got my resume fixed up to look real nice and pretty, and I'm attempting to prepare myself to be direct in trying to get what I want : mini-interviews and followup interviews.

And I finally got the Earthquake Glue album I ordered and it turns out it's not even the actual album. It's a promo album which should have the same songs, but, it's just not the same :-/. I should have read the auction a bit closer I guess.

So, as for happier things, I did get a sweet school of engineering sweatshirt. Lion dance performances are coming up. I am progressing in the broadsword set at a brisk pace. Conditioning is noticeably toning my body and a six-pack is poking its head out to play. Some more sweet CDs are coming to me in the near future. I'm probably going to pick out a new shortboard within the next five days and get back into skating again. The weekend should be adequately busy and fun, what with parties and celebrations and performances. The Japanese release date for Mother 3 has finally been announced. And as much as I appreciate an interesting, coherent story in books and movies, I really enjoy Kung Fu Hustle. It's such a ridiculous and awesome movie with things that just happen and are tied together plot-wise with style, spunk, and good intentions.

Finals Week (For the little ones) and stuff

2006-01-21T13:00:00.000-08:00

Just started tutoring again. Of course my students don't contact me when school starts for them again, but instead call me the day before they have a huge test that they need to cram for. Nothing wrong with that, but the silliness of it is kinda endearing.

Started lion dance again as well. Kristin is coming back with a vengeance, starting us up on regular conditioning and running. I have been saying that I need to bulk up a bit, so it's a good opportunity to do so, but damn if the second day after isn't painful like a bitch. And our lion got a makeover, so now it's all pretty and shiny and..., pink. Pictures will probably go up eventually.

The new quarter of kung fu also just started. There were just three new students signing up for the quarter, but it looks like a lot of the new students from last quarter are continuing as well. The big problem with the kung fu thinger is that a lot of students will sign up for a quarter or half quarter, get bored/pained, and then leave. So, it's always nice when students actually stick around and join the fold, which happens with maybe one student every other quarter. It's kinda like in the beginning of The Shawshank Redemption when they're taking bets on which new inmate is gonna break first, except we've yet to actually start betting.
I also finally ordered a sword bag to carry my broadsword around in, so I can bring it with me to practice. Carrying it around in the open, even though it was sheathed, was awkward in more than a few ways. For one, there's really no good way of holding on to it, and secondly, the library security guards always looked at me reeeeeal funny when I walked in with it.

So, my communications class.
We have to do this "cultural presentation" thing where we talk a bit about our family history, a bit about us, the subcultures we feel we belong to, the subcultures you identify with and get along with, along with subcultures you don't identify with, don't get along with, or aren't comfortable with.
I had to sit through like eleven of these on Friday, but there were two that were particularly memorable.
One guy went up there, talked a bit about his family, blah blah blah, said he considered himself very religious, hard-working, liked cars a lot, hated rap because it gave him a headache, loved country and classic rock. He said he couldn't relate to/felt uncomfortable around foreign people, people with accents, physically disabled people, mentally disabled people, he also "couldn't relate to lazy people and homeless people, though they're kinda the same thing anyway", that he'd "never seen a hard-working homeless person", and that comment shocked me so much that I really don't remember what else he said. Oh, and he was super conservative, if you couldn't already tell.
The next guy goes up, this Vietnamese dude with indie thick-rimmed glasses, dressed in the emo-kid uniform. Starts talking about his family too, and blah blah blah, and then talks about how he identifies strongly with indie kids, gamers, freaks, outcasts (because he grew up some place with "fifty percent Asians, fifty percent Latinos, and was too white to hang out with the Asian kids, and didn't know enough Spanish to hang with the Latinos"), was a strong atheist (at which point he pointed at a picture on his poster of Jesus playing soccer with kids and said he "loved this picture because it confused him so much. I mean, Jesus? Playing soccer with kids? C'mon, what does that mean?"), was more or less a vegetarian, considered himself largely socialist, felt that "capitalism promotes greed and gluttony and brought out the worst of competitive nature in humanity", and similarly felt that talking about money was very impolite. He had a huge gripe about college kids who were living on stipends from their parents and complained about being "starving college students", also hated those who actually were from lower income families and environments and spent frivolously on unnecessary things, and there was a lot more he complained about, but really, I stopped listening about halfway.

Now, the main reason this is worth mentioning is that later in the quarter we have to do a partner project presentation thinger, where you are ASSIGNED a partner from class and have to do some sort of presentation about some books or something. Also, in lecture, the professor mentioned that in this class we should expect to be taken out of our comfort zones in terms of people that we will be having to work with and deal with in the class. I'm guessing, hoping, that those two guys are gonna be paired together for the project, because that would be the most awesome presentation in the world. I think they might just collide and explode upon being assigned to the same group. Either way, this may well end up being an interesting quarter in that class.

As for other crap, school is blah. Work is piling up not-so-slowly and my labs are getting bitchy. Internship and career fair is next week, I gotta start getting ready for that. Rie, a TA and friend from Japanese class is coming to visit for a month in less than a week. Looking forward to seeing her again. My second host family sent me back a Christmas postcard sorta thing. Turns out Asami has been doing well in France, considering she only started studying French after she got there. I swear to god that girl has some sort of eidetic memory though, given how fast and how well she picks up language, so she's probably nearly fluent by this point in time. Which reminds me how poor my own Japanese is given how many characters I have to look up just to read this damn thing.

Anyway, time to get cracking on the ridiculous amount of work I have to do in the next few days. I need more three-day weekends, blah.

Forgiveness

2006-01-18T22:00:00.001-08:00

- From thirty feet away, I saw him as I stepped out into the daylight.

He walked with lingering, pained steps; his pace unsteady as though he could collapse at any moment. His face, full of despair and sorrow, as though he had held paradise itself in his hands and tossed it away. And there he walked, staggered, and looked at his hands as though there were something there, perhaps something too small to be seen from a distance. His face twisted with agony, and he looked up to the sky, hands raised as if to give his life to the fates and then fell to his knees, screaming out a silent sob and collapsing to the floor.

- I saw this from thirty feet away. The thought occured to me that I might go to him and help him. My exact decision I don't recall, but it was probably the case that my own mood was so dour that I wouldn't have been able to help his much at all.

And I walked away, and saw him, still on his knees, body flung forward across the ground; a rag doll turned lifeless by the cruel fates, or perhaps by his own hand and mistake. I know not whether I imagined it, but I recall his heaving breaths, and were I closer I probably would have heard his ragged, choking sobs. Just then, he raised his head again, face grief-stricken as before, towards a girl walking to him.

She went to him and pulled him to his feet. She looked into his pitiful eyes and did nothing but pull him close and held him. He sobbed against her shoulder, and then they were out of sight.

- I thought to myself, "What a lucky guy", to have even just one friend as good as her.

- Unconditional forgiveness. It is a blessing to have friends who will not first ask why it is I am pained, but simply sit and listen to me describe it. I've made mistakes, I made a mistake, and I'm sure I will make many more to come. But were it not for my friends to have been there for me, many times I could have worsened my plight (worse than it already is/was?), and surely would not have the clarity of mind I currently do.

A humble servant looked into the eyes of his unwilling god and begged, "Please forgive me my sins. Will you please forgive me god?"
And the little god, thrust into this role he neither desired nor understood, did not know what to do. He was no god; what did his forgiveness mean? He was in no power to give forgiveness, much as he wished he could, and so could think of nothing to say but, "Forgive you for what?" And the servant shuddered, his last words lingering in the air, "Everything." In his hesitation, the little god watched the servant, his unwanted servant, fade into the abyss with a face that yearned for more.

Or perhaps, the little god paused. He knew not what to say, much as he knew not the reason for this man before him. This self-declared servant worshipped the unwilling god for an unknown reason, wanting nothing more than to serve and to love, and to be loved by his gods in return. And the little god, or perhaps just a man thrust into a situation beyond his control, said simply, "I forgive you."

Later on, the unfortunate man would speak to a friend and relate the story. "I barely knew him, and yet my word was his law, his reality. His life passed and yet he looked as though he were asleep, dreaming of paradise."
And his friend replied, "I can not think of a better way to pass on. In the presence of your gods, loved, cherished, and forgiven for all past transgressions; free to move on to the next world without the baggage of the past."

The prodigal son took his inheritance and left. "I need to be free, I need to learn of the world on my own. I no more need your advice, your help, or you, and leave only with what I am deserved. I leave here today to prove to you that I shall never want from you again."

The prodigal son returned home. He intended to prostrate himself before the house of his father, his family, and repent. "I deserve nothing," he would cry, "I took all you let me have, I squandered your gifts, I squandered the upbringing you gave me, and not only have I brought shame upon me, I have brought shame upon this house and upon you. I deserve not to look upon you again except to proclaim my worthlessness. Let the pigs trample upon me, and allow me to live my life protecting the mud from the droppings of the cows."
As he approached the house and prepared to beg for his life, his father came up to him silently and held him close; the father held his son in his arms, and said nothing. He picked up the frail body of his second child, who had left him just a year before. Into the home he was taken, washed, bandaged, given a change of clothes and fed a full meal. Nary a word was spoken by the father, and the son lay as though lifeless, sobbing.

"It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad; for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found."

- Forgiveness.
Whether or not it's deserved, I can't be sure, but every single person craves it as much as life itself.

School Blues

2006-01-17T23:40:00.000-08:00

Not a whole lot to say.
Talked about ethical theories with a bunch of engineers for way too damn long.
Turned in a homework assignment (three problems) upon which I spent, with a classmate, about seven hours on over the weekend. I'm hoping to hell my lab partner finished the lab report, didn't suck at it, and put my name on it.
Randomly ran into Jon and had lunch with him.
Managed not to fall asleep in my Testing and Verification of Digital Systems class. A very good thing considering there were no more than eight people in class today. Finally got my senior project schedule thinger looked over and more or less approved by a teacher.
Saw a clip from "The Color of Fear", listened to the lecturer go on about fishing for topics in conversation, ego boosting in social interaction by making the other person feel worthwhile or important (calling them, complimenting them, making time to spend with them), ego busting in social situations by making them feel worthless or trivial (ignoring them, insulting them, making excuses), and how to be a good listener.
Swung by work, got students scheduled for the quarter, updated my own schedule.
Ran back by Kemper to talk with classmates, and now to get ready for a shitty, shitty lab tomorrow.

And I guess the weekend wasn't soooooo bad. I should appreciate the time spent with friends more, especially the ones I don't see often.

"昨日の僕はうそだと言うなら…

2006-01-17T22:57:00.000-08:00

"I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both."
- Søren Kierkegaard

"To thine own self be true."
- Polonius

"Though the mask of Dionysus can indeed give voice to the meek, courage to the fearful, and resolve to the weak, one must be aware of a corrupting effect which confuses meaning, garbles intent, and debases the presentation."

…僕らの明日は変われるのか？
「君と僕」は本当になれるのか？"

The Tonics, Stress, Post-School Thoughts

2006-01-17T06:06:00.000-08:00

Sunday Night

I like this song, by the way.

And I'm doing that thing where I wake up at three in the morning unable to return to sleep again.
It might even be funny if I didn't have something like six and a half hours of class to look forward to.

Sigh.

Stress I suppose. Thinking about school and the workload of this quarter is stressing me out a bit. The sheer enormity of some of the tasks I have ahead makes me hesitate before I even start working on them.

Talking to people about post-graduation and what to do once out of school is also kinda sobering. Moving away from school is going to be weird. School as a social environment is quite unique and there's no way it's going to be nearly as easy to meet people once I get into the working world. "Have heart" I suppose, I won't be the first person to have moved into the working world and dealt with this kinda crap, and I surely won't be the last. It's not impossible.

And of course the upcoming job fair has me doubting myself and my ability to look good enough on paper to land an interview, to know enough to impress them during the interview, and, uh, I guess that's it. Working on my resume (CV?) is a depressing sort of experience as well, and makes the last three years of my life look almost like I was doing little to nothing at all. Another part of the problem is that one is never quite sure of what they're looking for on the resume, and what they consider relevant or irrelevant. Last time I went to the career fair they basically ignored parts of my resume, and more than a few times while asking whether I had a particular kind of experience or had done a certain kind of project, they told me to mention that on my resume.

Anyway, I can't say the three-day weekend treated me particularly well, but at the least it gave me time to relax, not think about school too much and get caught up on crap. I also learned again the importance of good friends, being able to separate you from yourself, and patience.

So, time to shower, eat, and get ready for classes.
Here's to clarity, purpose, friends, and happiness.

Advice and Presuppositions but Mostly Aimlessness

2006-01-16T02:05:00.000-08:00

People give me a lot of advice. I think this is the case for everyone. In general though, I think this sort of advice is mostly just ignored. The few that manage to stick in the mind for more than a moment tend to be thoughtfully chewed for a week, and then ignored as more interesting things come along to think about. Sometimes, people may even think that the advice is worthwhile, and work on incorporating it into their lives, only to fail once their attention wanders or the advice fails to provide results.

That having been said, one of the most insightful things I've heard from a teacher, a communications teacher no less, was, well, it condenses into, “You should always be the one taking the initiative.” In particular, he applied it to relationships. Not necessarily between “you and your sweetie” as he liked to say, but also between friends and most anyone you might want to be friends with. You can't expect that others will take action for your sake, and so if you're bored, or feel a relationship is getting into a rut, or feel you're becoming distant from a friend, or want to get to know someone better, you ought to be the one coming up with ideas of things to do, making a phone call and catching up, or getting in contact and setting up a date or meal of sorts.

Of course this isn't something terribly new, but at the same time he said it in such a way that it made sense to me. I'd say that rarely ever is good advice expressing something entirely unknown to the listener, but simply a heuristic or approach at something coached in such a way that makes it apparent why and how one should the heuristic or approach. And of course, because such things are just heuristics, you can't universally apply them and should be aware of when it's appropriate to employ the advice.

Anyway, the point is that this teacher gave me advice which has been useful. Now that I think about it, I'm not entirely sure what the entire point of all that was, but that's been something that's been on my mind. Good advice is hard to come by, and I'm lucky I grabbed that bit from that particular teacher.

Which also sorta reminds me of something else that I've been thinking about a fair bit. As a result of a few different, unrelated things, the idea of racism and prejudices has been something that's been on my mind as of late. In particular, it's been causing me to think about my own prejudices and assumptions not necessarily about race, but about how I approach people and situations in general.

Often when I'm dealing with, say, a problematic situation, I've already made assumptions about the situation before I've even begun considering how to go about solving it. And then, in order to try and come up with a workable solution, I have to make other assumptions so that I can limit my range of choices to a few, feasible solutions to ponder at great length and make a final decision from.

Similarly, when dealing with people, we will make assumptions about their personality, their objectives, their feelings toward you, and what you think they want to hear, among other things. All of this comes together in shaping how you talk to this person, how you respond to their questions and conversation, and how you deal with them in general.

And sometimes, not uncommonly, we have problematic situations with people, where we make all of the above assumptions in our analysis and attempted solution to the problem. And.., I guess the point of all this is to say that we should all pay attention to these assumptions, as blindingly obvious or plain as day as they may seem. Often it happens that the problem lies not with the situation or the other person, but simply in what you think and believe.

You might think that something seems amiss and so you carefully analyze the events leading up to the situations. You find out things which, though previously unnoticed, suddenly support and contribute to the amiss-ness of the above something. Suddenly ulterior motives appear for otherwise innocent action, careless gestures betray hidden intent, slipped words speak of secret wants. You put these mostly unrelated bits and pieces together with crude and far-fetched reasoning to finally create a pedestal upon which you rest what you now realize is a Huge Problem. Funny that you didn't see it before, but now it's absolutely obvious that it's there and you must take action to get rid of or deal with it. Maybe you can confront the person about the problem and make them deal with it, or use an erector set to as to surreptitiously snatch the object away, or subtly leave hints so as to get someone to change their mind, or maybe just ignore the person related with the problem until the problem goes away or solves itself. Only, upon starting to take action (or inaction) against the issue, it's suddenly seen that people say shit for no reason at all sometimes, things happen entirely randomly once in a while, and the entire bloody world isn't out to make your life miserable. The waves crash in on your crappy sandcastle and you feel like an idiot for freaking out over a funny noise, a passing comment, an out of place object, a particularly lumpy rug.

Point being, people make bad assumptions all the time. And the more strongly you feel about a problem, the more likely you are to make a crappy assumption. Leave the detective work to those who do so for a living, and just ask the TA what the hell the circuit looks like, ask that one dude what his problem is, ask your girlfriend (slyly mind you) what she wants for your three month anniversary, and tell that creepy guy that he really needs to stop staring at you in class 'cause it's freaking you out.

Catch Up

2006-01-12T21:03:00.000-08:00

Things I have done :

Ate at that new Japanese place. It was alright. I was hoping it would be a good place to go for sashimi and so ordered some nigiri sake (salmon). It was alright, but bland. I guess the lesson here is to eat rolls in Davis, not fish.

Went with Jasmine to see John Edwards speak about poverty. I did not expect that he would have a southern accent. He spoke largely about poverty, the racial element of poverty, the social class stratification, the increasing difficulty of moving up in social class, inefficient medical insurance, and a few anecdotes about random stuff. Not too surprisingly, he avoided the topic of the Iraq war, even when it was brought up nearly point blank in a question after the talk. He was a good speaker altogether, and made several interesting and good points. I was glad I took the opportunity to see him speak. I'd say he did a pretty good job of not being too partisan in what he spoke about and how he spoke about it, but what do I know?

Went to a cocktail party with the strongest mixed drinks ever. I had maybe a cup of whatever foul mixed drink they had and was pretty buzzed a bit after. This resulted in me devouring a bazillion of these pesto croissant thingies one of the hostesses made as well as various other snacks such as bread, crackers, carrots and stuff. It was all fun and games until my buzz wore off. Then the drunk munchies disappeared and I felt sick from all the food I'd eaten. I then proceeded to get totally fucking sharked at scrabble by some Korean jerk. Final scores : 336 (diaspora? wtf. and two "bingo"s), 154, 128, or something like that. I hate losing.

Played "Shadow of the Colossus". This game is..., good. It's very reminiscent of "Ocarina of Time" in a lot of ways, except that Shadow is bigger, more hardcore (you get a sword, a bow, a horse, and powerful hands), and a billion times more depressing. In some sense, the main characters interaction with the world is limited to two kinds of actions : moving around, and killing things. There's not much to talk to (as far as I've seen), the only thing that moves that you can't kill is your horse, and most of the things you have to kill aren't even trying to kill you. All the same, the gameplay is great, the graphics and art are just superb, and the story makes you want to figure out what the hell is going on.

Over the break I managed to destroy my sleeping schedule something fierce. I fixed it the day before classes started, and then proceeded to fuck it up again not more than a few days later. As a result, I managed to sleep through my ONLY class on Monday, which was at noon.

That night, I made sure to get to bed at a reasonable hour so that I could get up in time for my 9am the next morning. My alarm actually died halfway through the night, but I still woke up about six minutes before it went off. I took the on-time bus to class, and got there about fifteen minutes before class even started. So people slowly showed up to class, and eventually all of us (all fourteen of us) were in the class, and he wasn't. And class had technically started about twenty minutes prior.
Someone then mentioned that previously, when this teacher taught some other class, he pulled the same crap one day because his son was running around with a Q-tip in his ear and fell or something and it, well, yeah. So we all left at thirty after figuring something similar had happened.
This would normally be nice, except that I had absolutely nothing to do until my next class. So.., a classmate and I wandered a bit looking for something to do. For lack of any better ideas, we figured bowling would be fun.., except that when we got there all the lanes were taken by a class. And the pool tables were out of commission due to the bookstore-registers-book-buying-thingers. And most of the games in the games area kinda suck. So we wandered some more and found an energy drink taste test experiment thing being held by the food health sciences something or another department. We figured we might as well, since we had nothing better to do. All there really is to say about is that I don't like most energy drinks, but apparently the one I like best is Full Throttle.

As for the teacher that didn't show, when I went to class on Thursday I walked in kinda late and saw we were taking a quiz, which kinda sucked. I also saw that the teach had many scabs on his face, a black eye, and some other random bruises. From what he remembered, he was biking, then he woke up in the hospital. According to a witness, he was biking, fell over, and fixed himself up good-like on the curb. Apparently the impact was so bad he was knocked out for about an hour and a half.
He was saying that it was particularly disturbing because no one had any idea why it happened. If he had say, hit a car, or a bump, or some such thing he would know what happened and how later to avoid it. Because they have no idea why he fell, he can't really do much to prevent it from happening again, which is a much worse situation to be in.

Went to kung fu for the first time in a long time today as well. I'm kinda out of practice, but it's nice doing physical stuff again.

As for tonight. Today has been an antsy sorta day, so we'll see how the night goes. Jon did suggest car bombs. But I do have class at noon tomorrow. Hrm.

The three-day weekend will be a nice time to relax. Schoolwork has indeed been kicking my ass already. No solid plans yet, but hopefully something fun comes along.

It's a Legitimate Tactic!

2006-01-07T03:59:00.000-08:00

So, on the bus, I was sitting behind two Asian dudes who were talking and one told an interesting story. It went something like this.

Dude 1 : Hey, did I tell you about how "Jack" almost got a ticket the other day?
Dude 2 : Nah, you didn't.
Dude 1 : So four of us were in the car going like ninety and as we're going we see this cop pull a u-ey and we're like, "oh shit". So Jack is like, "shit motherfucker", and thinks about just jetting out of there, but there are hella cars in front of us and a red light so he says "fuck it" and pulls over.
The cop comes up to the window and asks, "License and registration please", and Jack kinda looks at him blankly, and slowly starts getting the crap out of the glove compartment. The cop looks it over and asks, "So, why are you guys in such a hurry?", and all of us just kinda look at eachother blankly going, "uhhhhhh...". The cop repeats the question, and Jack, not knowing what else to say, points at "Don" and says, "He really needed to take a shit". Don is utterly shocked, and just kinda sits there, then sorta starts acting like he's got cargo he needs to dump to try and help out.
At this point, the cop asks Jack, "Excuse me sir, could you step out of the car?", and walks back towards the cruiser. Jack gets out and they're out there talking for a minute or two until Jack finally comes back empty-handed.
"Dude, what the fuck, where's your ticket?"
"..., he said it was a legitimate excuse."

Wrapping it up

2006-01-03T23:15:00.000-08:00

Alright, I suppose this is getting ridiculous. I should say something I guess.

Fall quarter is over. I could have done better, I could have done worse. I can't say I'm entirely happy with how the quarter went, but whatever. I'll hope to do better this coming quarter. Speaking of which, I have but two quarters of school left, if things go well. That's a sobering thought in many ways, but also something I'm not going to think about too much.

Winter break is also now over. It was a break of reunions, as I spent most of my time with old friends from HS. It was fun, but weird since this may be the last winter break before we all move onto real jobs and grad school and those kinds of things that sometimes don't permit returning for winter breaks. Ignoring that though, it was a good time to catch up, see what everyone's been doing, see where everyone plans to go. It seemed like almost everyone was staying in school in some form or another, with me being one of the few moving onto the working world. While this does kinda make me wonder if grad school wasn't a better choice, I still feel like I've been in school for way too long now.

One of my TAs said that if I was thinking of going into grad school at some point in my life, that I might as well just get it over with now instead; slay the evil schoolbeast in one foul swoop rather than destroy it up to its neck, then return a few years later to finish the job. More than a few people have already said that it would probably be quite difficult for me to leave an established career and go back to school. All the same, I feel the need to move away from being a student and making my frist drive at being financially independent. Or something.

And then I think about the current state of school for myself. I am taking something like six or seven classes next quarter. Two engineering, two philosophy, one computer science, one communications, and one engineering project class thinger. It is not going to be fun I think and I am worried about it. I figure though, that if things really get hairy, I can always switch the philo classes to pass/no-pass or maybe even drop a class or two. In the meantime, it seems like I am going to be spending most of every day on campus for the foreseeable future.

As for other things, I went to a Morningwood concert some time in the distant past. Sean got free tickets and so I went with him to go check it out. Apparently we were lucky the concert was not cancelled being that their drummer had some sort of nasty infection or another and was undergoing surgery in Phoenix. Altogether the concert was fun. The lead singer was..., energetic. Among other things, at one point during the concert she handcuffed herself to a random dude in the audience, jumped on him and began humping vigorously. Her father was also in the audience, having been invited to see her in concert. The music was fun, poppy, rocky stuff. Altogether the concert was entertaining, though due to the absent drummer and them having randomly found some dude to drum for them that morning, the concert was only five songs or so long. Which for some reason reminds me that I paid like eight bucks for an itty bitty cup of Guinness. That was upsetting. "My hands looked lonely" the waitress said with a smile. Well, next time she feels that way she can shove it up her bum.
As an aside, I found this link as I was googling for the Morningwood website.

I also saw Syriana at some point during the break. This was a Good Movie. I dunno about most people, but for all the talk about the Middle East and oil nowadays, I still barely know anything about the Middle East besides the fact that it indeed does have oil fields. Syriana was a movie that did a good job of taking a look at the Middle East and the people there and how we affect their lives through both political and fiscal avenues. Yes indeed that sounds like a load of hokey, psuedo-intellectual babble, but really, the movie is quite informative without being noticeably biased. Not exactly a happy movie though.

Besides all of that, things have been largely ok. 2005 was a year of learning. I learned ridiculous amounts of things relating to EE and circuits, I learned a fair bit about myself, the kind of person I am, what drives me and what bugs me, and I also learned how better to deal with the crappy times. For 2006 I look forward to moving on and meeting new people, to learning even more from school and life, and to enjoying the last couple of quarters of my undergraduate years. Furthermore, I hope to be more understanding of others, to listen more than I speak, to relax, and to be less judgemental of others. Let's hope this next one is even better than the last.

Ante-finals-week

2005-12-10T01:13:00.000-08:00

Well, let's see.

I built a Gilbert Multiplier for my Analog ICs class. The whole idea of a Gilbert multiplier is that you have a differential input signal which is amplified (made louder, bigger, etc.) by some amount determined by a DC voltage input at some other node. Basically, it's a sort of volume control system.

This was super fun and one of the coolest projects I've done yet. We were given the project just before Thanksgiving break and me and my partner pretty much completed the project the Wednesday after break was over. Since then we've been working on the add-on extra credit project which is an Automatic Gain Control system.

The idea of this system is that you once again have some signal input that is being amplified. You have another DC voltage input at some other node and the system will change the amplitude of the output signal to match the value of the DC voltage input. This is kinda how your radio can receive signals of different strengths from all over the place and yet they're still all at the same volume regardless. Another super-cool project to work on although basically we've been pounding our heads against the wall while working on it. It was indeed finished this morning though, which means we are the first students in the history of the class as taught by our current professor that have actually made a working AGC system. And we get some mega extra credit, booyah.

I've also been watching a buttload of DS9. I enjoy DS9 quite a bit, and I think I would gladly say that I enjoy watching DS9 more than I enjoy watching TNG. It's simply a matter of story and character depth.

I did indeed buy Mother 2 (Earthbound) for the GBA as well. It was expensive, but I really do like the game so it's pretty much worth it. Once Winter break comes around, I'm sure I'll go through the game at least once.

And, really, I've not much to say. I've been pretty much living at school, with all the crap I've been having to do. It'll be nice when the quarter is over, though it seems like my next two quarters are going to be at least as much and probably more work than this quarter has been. At least, I should be done in Spring, if I don't decide to stay longer to take some sweet classes that'll be around next year.

In explanation, Weaksaucery

2005-11-16T23:24:00.000-08:00

Well, a quick update. After talking with my EE academic advisor, I can for sure graduate with a BS in EE at the end of Spring quarter if I don't fail anything else. In fact, I would only have to take 13 units or so my Spring quarter if that's all I cared about. As for my Philosophy degree, I did some calculations on my own and it looks like I'm short about three classes. I can go ahead and try and toss those in with my already kinda cramped schedules or I can take them over Summer I guess. I'm going to talk with a Philo academic advisor on Friday to see what he thinks.

I was really, really hoping I'd be able to get philosophy credits by studying abroad in Japan over the Summer. I got all excited when the thought occured to me, but as it turns out Summer abroad programs are pretty rare to begin with. Similarly, abroad programs that give philosophy credits are also pretty rare, so I guess that idea goes straight into the shitter before it even gets a chance to breathe. It was such a cool idea too.

As for other crap, I dunno. Midterms, studying, homework. I may have said this before already, but I've never worked as hard as I am working this quarter. And next quarter is probably going to be even worse since it looks like I'll be having nine scheduled hours of lab. Busy busy busy.

Now, normally, I don't like posting AIM conversations and such. It just seems sorta lame. But in this case, I'm gonna do it half because of laziness, half because I have a midterm tomorrow morning, and half because it explains pretty well what happened. Hopefully SOMEone will have the perseverence to actually read through the whole thing.

Me : what up
Mark : not much
Mark : sobering up a little, preparing to do a fat slice of greek
Me : yeah
Me : just about to get started on making some E&M notes
Me : for my test
Me : sigh
Mark : yow
Mark : what'd the day hold?
Me : man
Me : alright
Me : so
Me : this guy
Me : I was supposed to tutor this dude at 1030 this morning
Me : in how to use e-mail
Me : read, delete, and sending
Me : with AOL
Mark : wow
Mark : helluva job
Me : so he was supposed to pick me up from computer tutor around then
Me : I'd not met him yet
Me : only spopke on the phone
Me : so he comes in at that time
Mark : yeah
Me : and the dude is just weird looking
Me : blonde frizzy-ish hair
Me : parted sorta
Me : long
Mark : oh, jeez
Me : so like it stuck to the sides
Me : about an inch either way I think
Me : mustache
Me : smelled a bit funny
Me : so he asks a few questions
Me : I answer
Mark : yow
Me : and then I ask if he can drop me off on campus after we're done
Me : since I've got crap to do
Mark : yeah
Me : he says, "My dear old mom picked me up and brought me here so I can drop you off wherever afterwards"
Mark : oh!
Me : this dude is like 35
Mark : what the fuck?
Me : I dunno
Me : so I get in the car
Me : his mom
Me : like 60
Me : too old to be driving really
Mark : oh shit
Me : she says while we're in the car, "I think I'll go through the U-mall instead of on russell. I don't like driving on russell"
Me : and then
Me : like
Me : she doesn't turn
Me : and keeps going
Me : and hits russel
Me : l
Mark : haha
Me : then remarks, "Wow, we're at russell. That's funny, I didn't want to go on russell and here I end up"
Mark : what the hell
Me : which brings me to think, "how the fuck can you 'accidentally' end up on russel"
Me : I mean
Me : really
Mark : you are the only one driving the car
Me : she then proceeds to pull uot in the road
Me : nearly getting hit a few times before she finally makes it
Me : I'm scared for my life
Me : I was already wondering if this dude was just gonna bring me to his house to kill him
Me : er
Me : to kill me
Me : and now I'm wondering if I'm even gonna make it there
Me : so finally, we end up at his apartment
Me : well
Me : the mom pulls into a parking spot first
Me : but it's not really a parking spot
Mark : what?
Me : it's half a handicap spot and the place where the handicpaped people disembark
Mark : oh, man
Mark : where the fat stripes are
Me : yeah
Me : so then she says she'll give him her cell phone number so he can call her when he's done
Mark : but she did successfully negotiate the parking lot eventually
Me : well, not really
Mark : whoa, he's got his own place?
Me : we just got out there
Mark : nice
Me : I figured I woudln't ask questions, that'd just be a bad idea
Mark : you disembarked
Mark : yeah
Me : they might deliberatley take longer to kill me
Me : anyhow
Mark : hahah
Me : we disembarked after some fuss about cell phones and stuff
Me : and we go to his apartment
Me : get in , and it smells like him
Me : not unsurprisingly
Me : not bad..., just..., not good
Mark : yeah
Mark : it has a smell
Me : oh yes, at some point, he mentions he's learning e-mail because, "he's going on a romance trip across Ukraine and Russia and e-mail is the only way the girls can contact [him]"
Me : so anyway
Me : get in the apartment
Me : he's got a new dell
Mark : hdsfk
Me : probably just bought it recently
Mark : he said that?
Me : yes.
Me : those words.
Mark : a romance trip
Me : yes.
Me : so
Mark : nice
Me : he's got a "spectator" newsletter
Me : SF rag I guess
Me : on the floor
Mark : yeehaw
Me : which has a half naked woman on it, and says, "So and so is a rising porn star, the reasons in this issue" or something to that meaning
Me : no other porn around the place though, so I guess he cleaned up before I came
Me : so we do the tutoring
Me : I show him how to read e-mail
Me : most of the e-mail regarding his Russian visa
Me : and the applications and fees
Me : so that he can go on a trip called something like, "A Romantic Affair" in Ukraine and Russia
Mark : delightful
Me : or something
Mark : that has to be a scam
Me : so altogether, it takes 30 minutes to show him what it's all about
Mark : nice
Me : he catches on pretty quick
Me : and the client is reaosnably easy to use
Mark : yeah, it's fucking AOL
Me : at which point he starts cracking jokes
Mark : ah oh
Me : he cracked one about bush
Me : which I don't recall
Me : then one that went like, "
Me : "Most people didn't know that Clinton didn't get along with doctors. Apparently a bunch of doctors was telling him on one of his trips that he was going to get sick from the South California smog. He said that it was okay since he didn't inhale."
Me : so I laugh
Me : politely
Me : though I'm a bit confused
Me : I figure it's a crack about the cigar and him not using it properly
Mark : no no
Mark : that's a real old one
Mark : the scandal of his first campaign was his marijuana use
Me : so then he explains about the marijuana and him not inhaling
Mark : yeah
Me : but I swear to god that was dubya
Me : and I say something to that extent
Me : but I guess I'm wrong
Mark : dubya did coke
Me : in any case, cracks some uncomfortable jokes
Me : (shows how good my memory is)
Mark : so says oliver stone
Me : and time comes for paying
Mark : ah oh
Me : so he says, "how much do I owe"
Mark : ...
Me : and I say, "well, it's usually 25 bucks an hour..."
Mark : so 12.50
Me : and I was going to continue and say that we only went for half an hour
Mark : yeah
Me : but he interrupts with, "How about I give you 50?"
Mark : whoa
Mark : what did he ask you next?
Me : at which point I'm about to object
Me : or something
Mark : yeah
Me : but then he pulls out a fat wad of bills from his pocket
Me : not even his wallet
Me : his pocket
Me : just a fat wad of bills
Mark : nice
Me : 20s on the outside
Me : so I say some stupid thing 'cause I'm absolutely dumbstruck
Mark : yeah
Me : so he fishes two 20s out of the pile
Me : and looks around for a 10
Mark : whoa
Mark : 50 indeed
Me : and says, "shoot, I don't have a 10. Here, have 60"
Mark : wha
Mark : he slung you 60?
Me : and at that point, I really don't know what else to do but accept and say, "Wow, thanks. If you have any problems, feel free to give a call"
Me : yeah
Me : for half an hour
Mark : hell yeah
Me : so a bit more talk
Me : then walk back to the car
Me : and I see the car is still in roughly the same place
Me : with the mother inside
Me : as we're walking, he mentions how a friend of his went to the phillipines
Me : and "brought back a girl who looked like she came from a James bond flick"
Mark : oh, man
Me : absolutely gorgeous and such
Me : and how another friend went on a trip to Russia
Mark : trading in women
Me : and came home with a wife who was smoking, was studying/was a doctor, and could play piano
Me : and he says he's not looking for anything like that, but something
Me : don't remember what the something was
Me : but yeah
Mark : not a doctor?
Mark : wow
Mark : people are nuts, man
Me : so then the ride back was largely uneventful
Me : except for the scary driving
Mark : that's pretty bizarre
Me : but yeah
Mark : haha
Me : I'm still kinda reeling
Me : the whole ordeal was kinda confusing
Me : and world-view changing
Mark : you think so?
Mark : people are crazy
Me : never met a guy and his mom like taht before
Me : maybe not world-view changing
Mark : though he was pretty crazy
Me : oh, he's a pharmacist apparently
Me : so, quite loaded I'm assuming
Mark : oh no
Mark : he probably jacks off in the birth control
Me : beats me
Me : but
Mark : yeah
Me : the way he talked about it
Me : made it seem like he went into it primarily for the money
Me : secondarily because he liked chem
Mark : not much chemistry in pharmacy
Me : biochem stuff
Me : :shrugs:
Mark : well
Mark : regardless
Mark : he made bank and mom drove him around
Me : yes.
Me : and tipped VERY well
Mark : you've never met a person entirely dependent on their mother?
Mark : that's a fucking hell of a tip
Me : he mentioned that I made him very happy
Mark : hell of a fucking tip
Mark : wow
Mark : well, there you go
Me : so I guess he was just very grateful
Mark : human contact
Me : if only all people were so, er, kind-hearted
Me : or something
Mark : it's a good thing to have
Mark : desperate?
Me : or I was enabling his mack-doing
Mark : haha
Me : his ability to mack on
Me : or something
Mark : that's not mack
Mark : that's slave-trade
Me : more like, find the green card
Mark : yeah
Mark : and become a pharmacist yourself
Me : pretty much
Me : so
Me : how was your own day?
Mark : not that eventful, i'll say that
Mark : i did wake up late and hung over

Some Weeks in the Life

2005-10-28T00:53:00.000-07:00

Recently?

It's been busy.
Busy as hell.
I'd kinda forgotten how busy a full eighteen units was.
Not to bitch too much, but school is swatting me around, inflicting numerous small wounds before it strikes the final blow.

Besides that, in the past weeks I've (in sorta chronological order but not really at all) :

Explained to a Japanese exchange student the meaning of the word, "dildo" (大人のオモチャ)

Set up and sorta participated in a Lion Dance show

Finished a sudoku puzzle nearly every weekday (the ones in the school paper are super easy :-X)

Beat the Hard Campaign of Advance Wars DS (DS Wars?)

Started anew, gave up, started yet again on MUDding

Found out my HDL (good cholesterol) is higher (better) than the recommended level, my LDL (bad cholesterol) is lower (better) than the recommended, and my overall cholesterol is below (better) than the recommended.
To celebrate this happy event, I've been eating craploads of eggs (<3 eggs)

Studied like crazy.

Been debating whether I ought to buy Phoenix Wright or some other DS game instead

Saw The End of Cinematics

Went to a benefit dinner emceed by my dear brother.

Started going back to kung fu on a regular basis.

Finally broke in my new shoes.

And God knows what else. Some debauchery, some brief moments of slacking, and a bunch of lab time.

How long until Thanksgiving? I could use another summer break.

Random SF trips

2005-10-16T00:04:00.000-07:00

Went to SF this weekend with Sean and Ave. It was nice. As always, the day was overcast, the wind was strong and chilly, and the air was moist. It might be that I would get tired of the weather in SF if I lived there long enough, but currently I can't think of a place with better weather.

I think I'd been to the Metreon before at some point, but hell if I can remember when that was. Altogether it was interesting to see for the first time, but I wouldn't plan any trips solely to see it again. Sean did get a nice pic of me in front of some PSP advertisement though.

Oh, also saw some kids playing with the eyetoy. I kinda wanted to give it a try, but the kids lined up to play did not let me make a fool of myself. I guess they figured if they let a Chinese person start playing the ping pong game, no one else would be able to play for the rest of the day.

As per normal, we also swung by the Sutro Baths. Really, just wandering around out there is enough to keep me occupied for a while. The rocks in the area were slippery with moisture, so we didn't do too much of wandering around besides the main ruins. I did a bit of wandering around on the rocks, getting as close to the ocean as I could while trying not to fall in.

It was awfully nice just sitting there. I've never spent much time in coastal towns or even towns that are close to coastal towns so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that I don't get to see the ocean much. In fact, I've probably seen the ocean from above more often than I've seen it from a beach perspective. That being the case, it was just nice to see the waves crashing into rocks with the sun setting in the background. The clouds were lit brightly, but not so much that you couldn't look at them without being blinded. There was a rock that I probably could have jumped to where the birds would gather, take off, and return to once in a while.

It was so nice in fact, that I decided to go down to a small cove where there was a bit of sand and a bunch more rocks to experience the coming of the tide. I stood on the rocks as the water crashed around me and pooled not quite high enough for me to become worried. Ave was playing his usual game of tag with the waves on the sandy beach.

So, as I was standing there taking in the scenery, the waves, and all that nature crap, I didn't notice that a wave larger than the others was coming in. I did notice it in time that I was able to scrabble up some rocks and receive just a mild wettening of the left side of my pants and wet socks and shoes for the rest of the day. It's a good thing I didn't actually get ripped out to sea, since I very well may have drowned considering my limited swimming ability.

After that, we got some dinner at Gordo's and started heading out of the city and back home. All in all the process took us maybe an hour.
Getting out of the city that is.
Apparently everyone decided to leave at once and the roads were moving at an ungodly slow rate. A mind-numbingly slow end to a spontaneously fun journey.

CAKE in Sacramento

2005-10-10T23:42:00.000-07:00

Teh awesome

Comfort Eagle
The Distance
Mexico
Shadow Stabbing
Frank Sinatra
Excuse Me, I Think I Have a Heartache
Comanche
The Guitar Man
No Phone
wheels
Guitar
Love You Madly
Never There
Daria

Vegas synopsis

2005-10-10T01:46:00.000-07:00

So the Vegas trip was fun. We left town around three-ish, drove six hours until we decided to eat at a Mimi's Cafe in some random place. Bakersfield maybe. After discussions of juggling, Perplex City, baby oil, and other random crap we arrived in Barstow around eleven at night. Or maybe it was closer to midnight. In any case, we dicked around for a bit until the ass of our caravan made it and went to bed only to wake up not more than four hours later.

We ended up at the DARPA Grand Challenge event a little bit after it started, and spent close to twelve hours there. I could talk about each individual thing that happened, but I've come to the conclusion that most of the world does not share the same sort of enthusiasm for engineering and design that DGC participants and I tend to. All the same, we got to talk to a few of the teams that were participating in the final event as well as those who had failed at the preliminary qualifications that took place prior. They all had a fair amount to say on how they approached the project and what design decisions they made based on their resources. As a student, I'm rarely faced with projects of this scope and so hearing others talk about what they did and why they did it helped me to learn a fair bit on the kinds of thoughts and considerations that should be taken when making decisions.

As for the competition itself, the consensus was that the course itself was sorta, well, easy. It was shorter, flatter, and less obstacled than most had expected. Most competitors had SUVs and at least two teams were sporting Hummers in preparation for an off-roading sort of expedition.

Caltech was eliminated in a funny way at the least. Apparently they went under some power lines which made the car think it was off-track. It then tried to adjust course to correct.
Over some barriers.
Almost right into some media.
So yeah, I thought it was kinda funny anyway.

Another interesting elimination was Team Ensco. About 2/3 of the way done with the track, after getting pretty close to the most difficult part of the competition, they got a flat tire. Pretty much everyone just got really confused when it happened. Apparently after doing all that work, no one bothered to buy run-flats. I can only imagine the irritation.

In the end, Stanford won the match. There was a fair bit of cheering as Stanley (the Stanford team's robot) passed up the previously leading Red Team (Carnegie Mellon). Which reminds me, Red Team actually hired a skywriter, a poor one, to write their team name above the competition. The first time, he wrote it in such a way that anyone looking up would be blinded by the sun while trying to read it. The second time, it took him so long the first letters had pretty much faded when he finished the last few.

Back in Vegas, we checked into the rooms and blah blah blah. Among other things, I played this sword game. It had a large, upright, circular sensor thing you had to keep your sword in. You then used the sword to strike enemies and parry blows on screen. It was fun, but very difficult to control and so I felt kinda helpless while playing it.

Also, we dropped by this place, Gameworks, to see the arcade. After going in and making cursory rounds to see if there were any machines worth playing, I met back up with the group.
"Hey Yann, they have Virtua Cop 3 over there."
"Are you kidding?"
"No,"
"'cause if you're lying to me, I will destroy you. I will absolutely kill you. I will rip your throat out with my bare teeth and shove things into the opening, blah blah blah"
"At this point, I wish I was joking."

I was not lied to, there was indeed a Virtua Cop 3 machine there. It was even turned on. And stuff! So I quickly grabbed one of those shitty card things, put some money on it, and proceeded to play it with Alex.

The stage select screen of the game invites you to pick either the easy, medium, or hard campaign to play. Figuring Alex had never played before, I shot at the easy campaign which was on the left side of the screen. Oddly enough, this had the effect of shooting in the direct center of the screen and selecting the normal campaign.
At that point, I began to sense bad things afoot.
Once in the actual game, it turned out the game was just broken. The guns would shoot nowhere besides the exact middle of the screen, which made it hard to kill the various enemies littered around the field. I almost broke down and wept at that point, but at the very least, there were other games in the arcade that were fun to play.

There was more than one turret type game in the arcade, but the more entertaining one was one where you had to open a door, go into the game, sit down, lock the door and put on a seatbelt before the game would start. Once inside, all you really had was a joystick that aimed and rotated the turret. The nifty thing was that when the turret rotated in the game, the actual turret sorta thing you were sitting on rotated as well. In retrospect, there was actually no reason for the turret to rotate since there was just one screen and that rotated with you, but it's that kind of unnecessary flourish to a game that makes it, fun, or something.

Ghost Squadron was also a fun sort of play. The machine I played it on was kinda crappy though and so pulling the trigger didn't always fire the gun. That made it more difficult than normal to stay alive in the face of enemies who are firing things at me.

We also did wander the strip for some time, checking out the sights, the Bellagio fountains, and the many men standing on the side of the road with stripper/whore cards flicking them to make noises in an attempt to make you interested. Also, walking around with open containers of alcohol was a new sort of experience. For one brief moment, it felt like drinking was not a sin.

Now, on the way back, we went to "John's Incredible Pizza". I wouldn't mention this except that they had some interesting pizza. In particular the pepperoni and peanut butter sticks in my mind (hahaha), as well as the fiesta pizza. The first, while it sounds gross, was quite good. I mean, I might not order an extra large one for me and my friends, but I did not regret picking up a slice or two of it. The fiesta pizza on the other hand, was something I could see myself eating regularly. I love Mexican food, I love pizza, combining the two only brings joy to the world. As one person said, "It's like biting into a bean burrito".

Anyhow, now it's back to another week of school. There are worse things, but I'm pretty sure that there's a circle of hell where the primary punishment is to make the sinners live the life of an engineering student in his senior year.

At the very least, I have a Cake concert to look forward to tonight.

Vegas blues

2005-10-07T00:46:00.000-07:00

So, things have gotten better. With the beginning of a new school year, I'm feeling more active and social and all that jazz. The summer was getting a bit in the way of lonely and boring as hell.

So, last year I went to see Nnenna Freelon with Shefali, and it was quite great. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and afterwards, when she talked about coming back the following year and doing a show called "Blueprint of a Woman", I said right there that Shef and I ought to go see it. The show is actually being held this weekend.

on a not really related note, some recruiting meeting for the Uni's DARPA Grand Challenge team the other day. I was kinda surprised by the turnout of people, and the amount of people who actually expressed interest in the project. It's questionable how many are actually going to stick around, but it's looking pretty good so far.

In any case, one of the discussions we had at the meeting was whether any of the people interested in joining the team were also interested in heading to Vegas/Barstow to check out the race. A bunch of the team members wanted to go and see the race, and maybe even talk to some of the teams, advisors, and the people from industry who are probably gonna go check it out.

Now, the problem here is is that those two events are the same weekend. It took me a bit to realize, but there was an obvious answer as to which I should go to, even considering that I'd be seeing the show gratis and would have to pay about a hundred to go to Vegas. As a graduating senior, I absolutely need to make as many contacts as I can, since I'm in dire need of a job at graduation. As much fun as it is sending out applications and doing voodoo magic to increase my chances of getting a reply, I'd much rather have someone who is interested in me personally, as opposed to my application/resume, and willing to give me a chance at their company.

So, once again, I'm denying my spirit and soul in favor of my pragmatic mind. I've kinda gotten used to it now, since I've been having to sacrifice spending more time in Chinese, Japanese, and other random classes that interested me to take all the damn EE classes that are required for graduation. I have of course debated whether EE is the right major for me several times within the last few years, and even now I wonder what could have been if I'd majored in say, physics, Chinese, Japanese, Neurobiology, Cognition, or whatever. Sometimes I really wish I'd spent more time learning literature, writing stories, and taking in culture. The funny thing is, a friend who did just that (he studied comparative literature instead of computer science) feels that he wishes he'd learned something more practical, something which related more to the world and to people than writing essays about novels and stories most people have never heard of.

Just when I thought my slew of computer problems was over, Murphy's law reared it's ugly fucking face and pissed all over me some more. So far, the story begins with replacing my brother's motherboard, which burned out, quite literally. That took a while, then we had to replace his power supply as well, and blah blah blah.

A while later, my mobo stops responding as well. The computer turns on, but doesn't beep or do much of anything. I end up replacing the motherboard and things are good. That was maybe a month ago? I dunno, my sense of the passage of time is very poor. Anyway, a week after that, I wake up to find my computer turned off. I usually leave it on overnight, and so this was sorta worrying. I turn it on again, and just as it hits the Win2k splash screen, it powers down. A bit of fiddling convinces me I have to fix the power supply, so I go and buy a new one. A nice 500watt Antec with modular cables; excessive, but I figured it'd last and I'd be needing to upgrade eventually. The extra wattage should come in handy at that point. So that brings us to a day or two ago, when I finally received and installed it, and got my computer working.

As of right now, the Master File Table on my secondary drive has been hosed or something along those lines. The computer doesn't recognize it as a formatted file system, and so I have no access to it. This is quite enough to make me hate computers even more than I already do. Moreso, this makes me hate Windows even more. In any case, I'm running EasyRecovery on it right now, and luckily I can probably salvage most of the drive.

Fucking computers.

I am going to see the doctor in approximately eight hours and twenty minutes. I have this lump in my crotch right now, maybe about the size of a pea, that has been there for a few days at the least. It hurt reasonably much when I first noticed it, and now it hurts much less so. I think it's an in-grown hair, but risking losing the boys does not seem like a reasonable alternative to going to the doctor.

The problem I have with going to the doctor is that I always feel kinda like an idiot for doing so. More likely than not this is going to be nothing important at all, and he'll send me off with a good word and I'll leave with the knowledge that he probably had better things to do with his time. Furthermore, I've had doctors examining my crotch area and the things in that area since the day of my birth. I would bet that I've had my package looked at by doctors more than most guys. Luckily, I haven't had to undergo that since junior high or so and it looks like I will be breaking that trend later today.

On a semi-related note, my recent rash of computer problems seems to run parallel to the fact that my building blocks of life have had a lot of problems in my lifetime. I'm just a lucky guy I guess.

Also semi-related, I've had this small lump on my upper back right up near my neck for a while now. A few people, non-doctors, have looked at it and most agree it's probably an in-grown hair. I think I may ask the doctor about that as well. I've been meaning to do so for quite some time, but the last time I went to see the doctor about it, it turns out my insurance ran out or something. There was some error in the database in reinstating my insurance that had expired at some point when it shouldn't have and so I had to miss my appointment and suffer just a little bit more. Hopefully this does not happen tomorrow.

Lastly, I leave later today. Probably around 4 or so, after my last class of the day. I am hoping very much that they have Virtua Cop 3 in one of the arcades. I somehow don't think this is going to come to fruition. Short of that, it'll be nice just to see the vehicles in action and talk to the people who designed them. And of course hopefully I might find some folks who happen to like me and want to give me a job when I graudate.

Here's hoping at least one of those happens anyway.

He Moves his Hands Like a Prizefighter

2005-09-30T01:07:00.000-07:00

Well.

School started today. It was..., boring. I have a good teacher for Electromagnetism at the least, but I'm not a big fan of the stuff. My Analog ICs professor isn't even back until next week, so his TA ran lecture today. Fuck if the lecture wasn't reviewing BJTs yet again. Probably the fourth or fifth class I've taken that started out with BJT review.

I'm hoping there will be someone interesting in my Linguistics 1 class tomorrow. I've told a few random people to take it with me, since I'd like to have someone I know in the class to talk to, but..., whatever. I don't think I'm actually going to get into Communications 3 either, so this (Lin 1) will probably be my only non-engineering class this quarter.
First quarter of senior year outlook : bad.

So, on to something else.

As it tends to be with the beginning of a new year, we have a bunch of new bus drivers. With the bus drivers, comes actual checking of IDs when you get on the bus on campus. So, I was in a bad spot when I was dropped off on campus with neither phone nor wallet. Luckily, I knew the driver and she wasn't checking IDs anyway, so I drew the long straw on that one.

Being that it was the 8 PM bus, there weren't a whole lot of people on the bus besides the normal fare of "I don't think enough people can hear what I'm saying on my phone" girl, "I'm cool because I've always got my headphones on" guy, and "oversized guy who sits next to you on the small-ass bus seat despite the fact that there are other seats open" guy.

There was this guy and girl that came on though. They came on talking, but apparently just met or something along those lines since they sat apart from eachother in that awkward "I want to talk to you but don't want to sit next to you because then you might think I like you even though I really do" kinda way. They were talking about the guy having been thiiis close to being a chess master back when he was younger, and other such "get to know" eachother topics. I don't feel bad that I was eavesdropping seeing as how they were seated next to me and I couldn't have ignored them even if I'd tried. They talked for a while longer about other irrelevant things, and I was getting kinda creeped out 'cause the guy kept looking at me and he looked kinda funny. Eventually he said, deliberately so that I could hear I assume, "He's got a sword".

I let him take a look at it, and he asked a few questions about it, asking whether it was Kendo and where I was learning, whether it was a "real sword" or not, things like that. I told him about the class, but it was pretty easy to see he had little interest in the subject, so I gracefully bowed out of the conversation and let him talk to his lady friend.

This was, however, shortlived as the empty space between them that they were talking through was filled by two new patrons of the bus. Truthfully, I felt kinda bad for them, since they quite obviously wanted to get to know eachother better, but was too scared to show the enthusiasm necessary to move through the people and sit next to the other for fear of, um, I'm not entirely sure. People are just scared of stuff sometimes.

I still suffer from this. Fuck if I know why. The result of some sort of under-development of my social psyche or ego or some crap probably. As much as I really don't want to become an adult, I really wish I'd just grow up sometimes.

Anyway, the guy had no backpack, but apparently carried on him a pen and a pad of paper at all times. Just before the girl got off at her stop, he gave her his number and said they ought to hang out sometime, in that ever-so-trying-to-be-casual-but-really-quite-nervous tone of voice. "Oh, thank you", said she in reply, confused, but quite pleased it seemed.

It was a nice moment altogether. I smiled when I saw it happen, and to think about it now still makes me chuckle. I suppose it was the utter lack of pretense on both their parts; the slightly awkward, hesitant, back and forth bantering. Much like two fighters, feints, dodges, you toss something out to see how they react, and draw away so as not to show yourself vulnerable.

It was a tender moment, beautiful in some ways and a reminder that people aren't always so bad. I, well, there's not much else I want to say I suppose.

...

cream filling doko ni arimasu ka?

2005-09-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

So, what's going on.

Well, the Revolution controller was revealed. It seems like the majority of folk are quite taken with the thing and are very interested in where it is going to take the state of gaming. Many have already compared the Revolution to the original NES in terms of what it is going to do to the market. Whether this will actually happen remains to be seen, but damn if that isn't a nifty little gadget. As for me, I wasn't really intending on spending $400 on a console and was wary of buying a Revolution at launch, but I think I may very well pre-order a Revolution when I get the chance now.

I also bought Advance Wars : Dual Strike. I bought it on..., Wednesday and finished the normal campaign just earlier today. At the time of beating the game, I had about 20 hours logged, so I may have a bit too much free time.

The game is fun. The campaign features more interesting stages than were found in Advance Wars : Black Hole Rising, as well as a somewhat more engaging storyline and actual characterization of the various Command Officers you use.

Other than that, there's not a whole lot of crap happening. Hopefully I will do Interesting Things this week, and I've been getting calls for tutoring lately as well, so the cash situation is looking a bit better. Yay for uninteresting posts.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2005-09-14T02:49:00.000-07:00

Just now, during an attempt to try and make my motherboard work again, it started making bad smells. So, I think it's now totally dead. Time to buy a new one I suppose.

Sigh.

Wait that's me, but anyway...

2005-09-13T20:46:00.000-07:00

There is Something Wrong with my computer. What this is exactly has not yet been determined, but after pulling shit out, putting stuff in, playing with things, and a bit of voodoo, I think the motherboard is dead. It's also possible the processor is dead, but that seems less likely. It has been a while since I've had the computer I suppose, but all the same it's weird of my motherboard to give up the ghost like this. It was working about 2 hours ago :(.

Now, assuming it really is dead, I've got limited options. I could go without a computer and just use this semi-functional laptop for a while, but..., well, I dunno, I guess I could do that if I wanted. This being senior year and all, I should probably hold off on video games if at all possible, and constraining myself to this Piece of Crap would preclude any hope of playing much of anything.

I could also take the opportunity to upgrade my computer, but I'm not seeing that happening since there are better things to spend my non-existent money on.

I had initially figured I would just buy another of the same motherboard and use that, but now I wonder whether I'd be better off with a crippled computer. I do indeed spend too much time on the computer as is, and there isn't all that much schoolwork that needs to be done on a computer besides typing up lab reports and essays and such. And if I'm forced to use this thing (I wish I had pictures of it), I might be more motivated to finally fix it and make it a REAL laptop; a PORTABLE laptop with a HINGED LID, classy.

Well, not much else going on. Going to see "The 40 Year Old Virgin" tonight. I have high hopes for the movie, since most people have said it is entertaining.

As for life, The State of Yann as of late has been confused. This whole graduating-from-college thing is creeping me out a bit and making me wonder about my fitness and how I've spent the last few years. Unsurprisingly, all this thinking eats away at the mind and slowly crushes the spirit. Long story short, I really need something to do 'cause Summer is driving me crazy.

...

Here, have a picture!

Ant Invasion II

2005-09-11T02:25:00.000-07:00

So ants had once again invaded my bathroom. Having realized that killing their scouts did little to no good with regard to stopping their assault, I busted out the poison food that had proved so effective in stopping them in other parts of the house. I grabbed it just before I was going to sleep the other day and put it down on the counter as I did my nightly routine before going to bed.

When I wake up in the mornings, I often can't see very well. I wear night and day lenses, and upon lucidity, my eyes are very dry. Thus, it takes a bit of time and usually a bit of water/solution in the eyes to see. After washing my face and just as I was brushing my teeth, a flood of black crap all over my counter brought to my attention that I left the stupid poison thing right next to my sink. They luckily left most of my crap alone, so I didn't have ants all over my toothpaste and such, but still the sheer flood of them was kinda scary. I wish I'd had a camera with which to take a picture.

Now, maybe half a day later, my sink area is entirely clear of ants. Thank goodness for poisons. Not that I particularly enjoy that I needed to utterly destroy that colony of ants, but if you force my hand in a situation where running or a peaceful solution isn't possible, then I'll do what it takes to keep my way of life.

New Beginnings

2005-09-03T20:18:00.000-07:00

I've decided I ought to take the GRE this year. More than just a few friends are studying for it right now, and I figure since everyone else is doing it, I might as well too. From what I hear it's Super-SAT, which is good news I think. I also like that I can take it on a computer, since I kinda hate writing stuff out with pencil and paper. I'm really starting to dread this coming year of school, but I suppose that'll make graduation that much sweeter. Maybe.

I've started reading Anna Karenina in some attempt to broaden my literary horizons. I'm just fifty pages into it so there isn't much to say about it yet, but I'm glad my initial worries that it would not grab my attention were wrong. I do suppose the classics are considered classics for a reason, but the slew of boring books (The Scarlet Letter, The Grapes of Wrath, Jane Eyre, among others) they made us read in HS make me a bit wary of "the classics".

Also saw "Man on Fire" the other day. It reminded me of "Leon", aka "The Professional", but with less loli. Needless to say, it was altogether fairly depressing with a generous helping of bad-ass and killing assholes. There's a reasonably large lost finger count as well. It felt overly stylized in some points, but altogether the movie was pretty good. It did a good job of making you actually care about the characters, and hate the antagonists. By the end of it, you were cheering him on as he went apeshit all over the baddies. Definitely a movie you should see.

As an ending note, I managed to catch the ending bars of "Ticket to Ride" by the Beatles today. It's always weird to hear a song you used to like a lot but haven't listened to in a while. Furthermore, it's always nice to hear a Beatles song on the radio. Which reminds me, I also watched pretty much all of "Forrest Gump" on TNT yesterday. I saw the movie when I was fairly young and so by now had forgotten most of it. I'd also forgotten just how good a movie it was, and thus sat at Sean's for the few hours it took to finish. I think I might try and find those books in the near future.

Post-quake anxiety

2005-08-26T01:07:00.000-07:00

I've just finished reading After the Quake by Haruki Murakami. On a whim, I decided to try and find The Wind-up Bird Chronicle in the library, but apparently the computer didn't tell me it was checked out. The only other book of his they had that I hadn't read yet was this slim, black, hardcover volume that had some weird splotches on the otherwise solid black cover. I checked it out that day and finished it the next.

Before I even finished reading the thin book of short stories, I knew I would have to re-read it. There was subtlety in some of the stories that my otherwise distracted mind couldn't quite tease out; meaning behind the fantastic pictures and tales that Murakami paints onto an otherwise bleak background of concrete towers, snaking locomotives and smoky night skies.

Mark joked that I might be a Japanophile the other day. Being accused of such doesn't necessarily bother me, but sometimes I do wonder that about myself. I listen to a lot of Japanese music, and one of my favorite authors as of late has been Japanese as well. I'm currently watching a Japanese drama, and I do indeed hope to go to Japan again in the near future. I am more interested in Japanese culture and Japan than the typical college student, and a goal I hope to achieve in the near future is to become fluent in Japanese.

Japanophile though? I don't think the statement is fair. I want to say something along the lines of "Obsession is a word that lazy people use to describe the dedicated", but that's probably not too fair either. I'd like to think that even talking about this implies that I've yet to fall into the abyss of blind obsession with another culture, but who really knows. In any case, a joking comment from a friend hardly warrants a wordy defence, though it still is cause to think about the kernel of truth behind the humor.

After the Quake is a collection of slightly long-ish short stories that deal with the reactions of various people to "the Great Hanshin earthquake", referred to simply as "the Kobe earthquake" within the stories. As fuzzy-minded as I was during the reading, I failed to think much about the related themes of each of the five stories and instead simply read them and allowed myself to view the world on their terms.

Some might say that that's really the whole point of reading, but yet I still find that analyzing the author's intent and thoughts through reading the story is essential to understanding what it is about the story that reaches out to you, the reader. Maybe too many English classes have destroyed my ability to simply read a book without thinking of these things.

If someone were to ask me what impression the stories left on me, I'd have to say that they made me sad, yet hopeful. Murakami stories are rife with people who've made poor choices or are in terrible situations and yet continue on. They live "lives of quiet desperation", wishing for happiness of some sort and never really being able to reach it. I suppose it's the humanity of the characters that appeals to me; I empathize with them strongly, and can imagine my own thoughts in a similar situation. Their plight is horrific, and yet life WILL go on. There would be no hope without regrets I suppose.

And so, After the Quake deals with hope, delusion, courage, God, sex and even a bit about earthquakes. As readers, we begin to read the book with thoughts about the earthquake in mind. It killed thousands and caused something around a hundred billion dollars in damage, the "costliest natural disaster to befall any one country" says the Guinness Book of World Records. However, much as with 9/11 here, there are many who say they are largely unaffected by the quake.

Each of the protagonists is asked whether they had any relatives in the Kobe area; whether the quake has personally affected them in some way and in turn each of them responds "not really". In some sense, After the Quake posits that no life can be unchanged by such a catastrophe, such a tragic loss of lives. No matter how their minds rationalize it, the protagonists are desperately trying to cope with the events of the earthquake. Murakami delves into the quiet lives of these mostly average folk and for just one moment makes you feel like people might be more human than you might give them credit for.

Bday pics, nocturnal outings, and rabbits

2005-08-19T21:50:00.000-07:00

A couple of pictures from my 21st.

From left to right, ehhh.., it doesn't really matter. Thanks goes to the poor lady whom we asked to take the pictures for us. God knows the only person capable of playing with electronics at that point was Misheru and she ain't the best with electronics.

Continuing the tradition of making weird faces and poses at the camera, this was taken just after Sophia's. We went to Dennis' immediately after this.

As for the more recent past..., Sean absolutely destroyed a rabbit going onto the onramp the other day. We didn't go take a look or anything, but considering the speed at which Sean was going, there was little to no chance of the bugger having survived it. I joke around about curbing the growth of the rabbit and duck population on campus, but actually killing a rabbit was somewhat traumatic. Reminds me of the time Diana and I encountered a lady spazzing about a rabbit she probably hit on the road and did not kill. Anyway, that was a slight damper on the meal at In n Out.

Now, Dollar Pint Night at Sudwerks just a few days ago was fun. My first time since my birthday that I've gone to a place that checked my ID! I had just four dollars, but I borrowed another dollar from Mark so I could pay the cover and get two beers. Looked like I was going to have to play DD anyhow, so anymore beer would not have been such a great idea I think. Ended up meeting a lot of random folk including a philosophy TA of mine from Spring quarter, classmates from sophomore year and such. The night ended fairly early since Paul, the guy whose car I was driving home, was feeling done just a bit around midnight. So we grabbed Mark, who lives with Paul, and walked out. Paul ended up denting the hood of his car when he punched it out of frustration. At that point I grabbed the keys and we went on our way.

The drive home was short, and we talked a bit about the fairer kind and senior year and our ever-nearing graduation. Not that any of us really WANTED to talk about it, but inevitably, conversation drifts towards that end in moments of silence. Naturally, as we were talking, my attention was on the road but at the same time not entirely on the road. One enters that mode of auto-pilot where the body takes over and directs the car to stay in the lines, away from other cars, and things like that. I suppose one might say that something equivalent to "muscle memory" is taking control of the car and our subconscious occupies itself with that while our higher order thoughts tend to more interesting things.

However, the subconscious is not so good at dealing with unexpected things, and as such when a speedy ball of white fur dashes in front of the vehicle, the brain tends to stutter, spit all over itself, and eventually the moment passes and one realizes the brain has failed to act. Thus, the second rabbit in four days was slaughtered with my being witness to its passing.

Sean has suggested that he and I start a club. I say that Avelino is gonna have to work hard if he expects to keep the trend up. I'm not sure if a bike is enough to take a rabbit out in one go.

Isolation in numbers

2005-08-10T01:02:00.000-07:00

What to say.

Well, first off, a small recap of recent events.

My finals went fine, I think. The first took maybe an hour, as well as the second. In some sense I'm kinda sad I'm done. I liked the professor and my classmates and the material was quite interesting at times. Now that I'm done, I get to go back to the math and mechanics of EE projects.

The plans for my birthday were small and relaxed: a dinner with a few friends at Sushi Nobu and a going-away potluck for a friend of mine. As it turned out, another friend of mine was in town that night and her and Sean were hitting the bars. I figured since it was my 21st, I might as well go.

It's a strange thing turning 21. It's one of the last ages that has any meaning in some sense. The next one will be 25 for renting cars, and then I can look forward to 65 for my senior discounts. A depressing thought altogether.

Anyhow, we started off in the G Street Pub where we unexpectedly ran into Ave's sister. We hung around there until Ed met up with us, at which point we went to Bernardo's. Apparently, you're not allowed to relax and have a few beers on your 21st, so I was bought a WikiWackyWoo (sp?). From there we went to Sophia's and hung around for a while until I "decided" we should leave. We then spent some time at another friend's place for yet another friend's going away party. Sadly, I crashed out pretty quickly after arriving, and so I didn't get to talk to the leaving friend too much. There's always e-mail I suppose.

The following day I tutored. I was, luckily, not too hungover since I evacuated most of the alcohol onto some plants, but it was hard to eat much of anything that day. I think threw up a little in my mouth when I tried to eat too much.

As a sidenote, I'll put up some pics from the birthday in the near future. I still need to get a photo editing program on this new Win2k install.

Now, Saturday, I went to SF. Had some dinner at "Nirvana" near Castro. The food wasn't bad, but I can't say I thought it was particularly awesome. We then went to Ann's place and hung around for a while. It was nice being around friends and such, as it always is. The party was not nearly the drunk-fest I anticipated it to be, but I think that was at least partially a result of a few people still recovering from Thursday's activities. All the same, fun was had, and eventually we went to sleep. At least, I tried going to sleep while Ave and Sean sat around saying "You shouldn't'a done that, he's just a boy" for two hours. Christ.

The next day saw everyone giving fond farewells as we slowly drifted out of Ann's apartment. Diana and I went off to go to Stern Grove Festival, at least, that's where we intended to go. We ended up getting semi-lost along the way due to a misunderstanding about 19th STREET and 19th AVENUE. Luckily our misunderstanding still put us in the right part of SF, so it only took us a phone call and fifteen minutes to get where we needed to be.

I'd never been to Stern Grove before, and was kinda in awe of it at first. It reminded me a lot of visiting Yoyogi park; a verdant sea of calm and nature surrounded by manmade sharp corners and noise. We went in, found some friends, and sat down and had ourselves a good ol' time. I ended up buying some mediocre garlic fries and a piss-poor quesadilla with salsa for way too much cash. I hope some of those proceeds go to the festival 'cause the food sure didn't deserve it.

I think I might consider people-watching a hobby of mine. Watching what other people do and how they interact with one another is an interesting way of observing humanity in general. You can learn a surprising amount of information about a person just by seeing how they carry themselves and treat others in public.
I remember once when a friend was giving me a ride to school during HS. As we pulled into the parking lot, I saw a classmate of mine holding a notebook and pencil sitting on some thing or another right next to the parking lot entrance such that he could look into the passenger side of each car as it went by. He leaned forward and looked me right in the eye and I looked him straight back as we went into the parking lot. Later I asked him what he was doing there, and he replied simply, "Eh.., it's just how I get my kicks". I still don't quite get what he was doing that day.

Anyway, as the music started, people up front got up and danced, there was an older lady in purple who danced as she sat on her bench, there were others who camped out up in the trees to watch the goings-on, families ate lunches on the picnic benches, friends gathered on picnic blankets and cracked some beers. All sorts of interesting folk came to check out the festival. There was one person who caught my eye though; a single girl wearing all white with a large-ish bag who was sitting all by herself towards the back of the arena. She reminded me of time spent in Japan on my own, wandering around parks and doing a bit of people-watching. I would walk around the city surrounded by people and an intense loneliness; all these people around me were going somewhere, had somewhere to be, friends to see, and I hardly had a place to sleep for the night. She was sitting all alone in a puffy white jacket to beat the chill; she stood out against the gray skies and the muted colors of the scene.

I recall wandering around the North side of Ikebukuro one evening. I'd semi-tailed one person through the crowd just for the hell of it and I ended up alongside a small-ish park in the city. I saw couples being together, vagrants sleeping, salarymen smoking, and slices of many walks of life in general just relaxing in the park. I sat down to take a break and the surroundings. And then, it stank. It just reeked of sweat, grime, trash, and god knows what else. I looked around and saw a young vagrant, probably around my age.
He had a twisted leg and walked with a painful looking shuffle. He looked at me for a moment before shuffling over to the smoke tray maybe a few meters away from me and awkwardly pulled out a packet with just one cigarette and a lighter.
I looked at him and thoughts ran through my mind; I felt pity for this poor soul and yet I lamented of loneliness. I would probably never have it as bad as this kid, and I felt horrid for even thinking such a thing. I fished around in my pocket for a 500yen piece and gave it to him before walking off. He said "arigatou gozaimasu" as I walked away, but I can't say I felt much better as I made the long walk to wherever I could find a bed that night.

I wanted to say hi to the girl. Some of the more enjoyable times I had in Japan were spent with Asami, a friend I might through inexplicable chance at Ikebukuro West Gate Park. I wanted to talk with her, but I can't really say I know what I wanted to talk about. I guess I wanted to empathize in some sense, to say that I knew what it was like to feel so isolated despite being surrounded by an endless sea of people. Not that saying anything along those lines would have really done more than scare the crap out of her. Proper channels would have to be cleared first, we would need to get to know eachother, spend some time together, get comfortable with eachother, and then, just maybe, it would become appropriate to discuss such a thing.

I suppose it was all quite impulsive and immature. We grow old, we learn etiquette, manners, tact, and simply blurting things out without proper introduction and proximity goes against much of that. I could say more but I guess this has gotten far too livejournal-y as is. Long story short, she pulled out a Japanese/Chinese guide (Couldn't see the front cover well enough to see if there was any hiragana/katakana) to SF and wandered off.

The rest of the night was spent watching 24, eating Zachary's Pizza (which was quite good), playing with the 3-dimensional version of those flat pieces you put together to make various shapes, watching Deep Impact, and finally going home. I now have about a month and a half before school starts, so I suppose I ought to make the most of it.

Everyone Daisukis Music!

2005-08-02T18:28:00.000-07:00

I am finishing up the second or so re-installing of Win2k to this box in the last week. The first re-install was a result of a failing hard drive. It worked fabulously up until one of the system files got corrupted. No big deal though, I just went into command prompt and replaced that file with a backup. I backed up all the files in that folder in the process to make sure things would be alright. So I start the computer back up again and it turns out I tossed the wrong file in there, so I shut down, and go back to the command prompt to replace the file with the correct one. As it turns out, Windows had decided to erase all files I had put into that folder.., so it wiped out the original files and the backup files. Needless to say, I was slightly annoyed. In any case, this should be the last time I have to do this, so after this I should be golden. If it is not the case that the situation has turned gold after this installation, then I might just get off my lazy ass and get Debian on this thing.

Which reminds me, I still need to be buying a motherboard to replace my brother's old one. We were cautious when it started smelling funny. After opening up the computer and putting a new power supply, we booted it up and figured it was dead when it started pouring oily, black smoke from one of the capacitors. That smell didn't go away for a week they say.

It is indeed finals week of the first Summer session. As it turns out, the day of both my finals is also my 21st birthday, yay for me. I think there's also a free sake promotion at a local sushi joint that day as well, so the post-finals night might be fun. We will see.

So, Sean has bought "Everyone Loves Katamari Damashii" ("Minna Daisuki Katamari Damashii"). This game is the sequel to the game called "Katamari Damashii", maybe you have heard of this. For those uninformed ones, I will give a brief explanation of the original game : you are the Prince of the Universe and your father, the King of the Universe, got hugely drunk one night and destroyed all the stars so it is your job to roll around balls of varying sizes and immense stickiness of some sort (one at a time) and gather up things on the world to turn these balls into big balls that can replace the stars.

This game was fun. The sequel is based around the same idea, but instead of rolling up humanity and their junk to turn them into stars at the bequest of your father, you are instead rolling up them and their crap at their request and sometimes turning that crap into stars.

Now, the gameplay itself is about half my love of the game called "Katamari Damashii". This is not to say the game is bad (it is in fact quite good), but instead is a tribute to my love of the soundtrack of the game. There are three songs that immediately stand out in my mind as great songs on the soundtrack of KD, and there are definitely others I enjoyed a lot.

I was lucky enough to receive the Minna Daisuki soundtrack from Sean as my birthday present. Whereas on the original KD soundtrack there were three or so songs that immediately came to mind as favorites, on the Minna Daisuki soundtrack, there are three to five songs that come to mind as songs I don't like particularly much. There isn't much to say about the other songs except that THEY HAVE INVADED MY MIND.

The MD soundtrack has a more diverse range of musical styles, including a blues-y track or two, a classical track, and the styles of music one would generally associate with the original game. The short of it is that I've been listening to the soundtrack for God knows how long and only just now have I begun to think, "maybe I should listen to something else now".

Once while I was wandering Ikebukuro (I think) with Tim towards the end of my trip in Japan, we dropped by a record store to browse. I looked to see if they had any Mr.Children or L'Arc~ec~Ciel stuff I might want, and Tim wandered around pointing out a few of the bands that he'd listened to. He pointed out a CD by the group "Sambo Master" and recommended it to me. He'd mentioned them before, that the lead guy in the group was a middle-aged violinist/violaist who one day decided to start a rock group. He picked up a guitar, put it to his shoulder and plucked it up the charts.

"So how do they sound?" I asked Tim.

"If you like Mr.Children, you will definitely dig Sambo Master" was his reply.
I picked up the CD and considered buying it, but I hadn't the cash at the time, so I told myself that I would buy it at a later date. Sadly enough my time ran out and I forgot to grab the CD and I returned to the states without my bounty. Now, nearly a year later I am reminded of this lost CD by the sudden onset of my birthday. Maybe this means something.

Anyhow, I have finals to prepare for. I'm probably just going to post this and then sit around and daydream some more more likely than not. As the time of graduation comes closer and closer, I seem less and less inclined to do work towards it. Maybe this also means something.

New haircut and a trip to San Jose

2005-07-24T01:58:00.000-07:00

I recently got a haircut. This is noteworthy only because I haven't gotten a haircut since January or whenever it was I last got a haircut. The last time I got a haircut before that was just a few days before I left for Japan.

First off, I generally dislike getting haircuts. Having to sit still for 15 minutes while some person messes around with my hair, tickling my face and such is bad enough. This is compounded with the fact that I will itch like crazy after my haircut is done because there is absolutely no way to stop the bits of hair from getting all up in my shirt and crap. And of course, I'm just lazy.

The arguably larger part of the problem between me and haircuts is that the more I have to tell my barber of what I want, the crappier my haircut will turn out. My last barber was a Korean lady who always cut my hair very well, and I never had to tell her how I wanted it. That alone made it worth a slightly higher price than some Supercuts haircut, a decent tip, and the 20 minute drive to get to her place.

I believe it was Drew Cosner who once said that one of the most defining things about a man is his haircut, and usually with haircuts you get what you pay for. This was after he had just spent a pretty penny on a nice haircut, so it's entirely possible he was just making himself feel better. All the same, nothing makes time pass slower than waiting for a bad haircut to grow out.

Anyhow, I like my new haircut. This is remarkable because this haircut is from an entirely new haircutter person who recently came into town. I walked in, sat down, told him I wanted my hair cut shorter, and voila, he did it. I suppose this guy will become my new, regular barber, and I will start getting regular haircuts once again.

And of course, the point of this whole post is that the barber who cut my hair a year ago is no longer here. I had my hair cut by her right before she closed for the weekend, and on that weekend she was in a fatal car crash. I was the last person whose hair she cut before she passed away.

She left behind two daughters, the youngest of which was 17 at the time. I'd met one of them before, but beyond the haircuts and the conversational banter, I hardly knew anything of my barber's family. I did very much like my barber, and she was quite the nice woman. I wish I could have said something to her daughters about that, but there was no bridge there and two months would have passed by the time I was back home to say anything. In that sense, I feel some sort of guilt, though I don't really know why.

Today I went to San Jose with my father and mother. Along the way we stopped in Walnut Creek to visit an old co-worker and friend of my father. We ended up staying and talking for quite a while. Most of the conversation revolved around me, their daughter (age 16 or so), and the various other children in our generation. Most of the kids of other friends were about my age and in college, or soon to graduate and enter college. Apparently most of the kids they were talking about I had at some point in my younger years met. Generally though, remembering things from before I was four is a bit hard to do, so I didn't recognize any of those kids, nor the daughter and son of my father's friend.

My mother just came back from a high school reunion in China and visiting relatives in Korea. Apparently about a hundred people attended the reunion, though I don't know what portion of the graduating class that represents. I believe my mom has had a class reunion almost every two years for the past..., six years maybe?

It seems that since the last reunion, two of her classmates had passed away. Upon hearing that news, she and her classmates decided that they would continue to have reunions every two years at the least. Closer together would be nicer, but difficult to manage.

My maternal grandfather is just now turning 80. In some sense I'm surprised he has lived this long; he had some medical problems a few years back, and he's getting more and more senile by the year. His wife passed away maybe six years ago or so, and I can't really imagine how that might feel. I really do wish I knew more about my grandparents, but the generational gap is wide enough as is, and the language gap makes it that much harder to learn much about them. I fear I'll never know much of anything regarding the history of my family.

On a final note, I should be graduating next year. My father and his friends suggest that I go immediately into grad school, though I don't see why I would do that. It seems wasteful to go and study even more about a subject I have no real life experience with. The predictability of another few years of school does offer some sense of security though, so I am attracted to the idea. However, another few years of school also seems like just the thing I don't need given that I will be finishing my 21st or so year of schooling (including preschool!) upon graduation of college.

I guess my ideal after-school situation would be to find a job in a large city somewhere in SoCal or even maybe in some other state entirely. I would also not mind working in China, though I don't know the likelihood of me finding a position there right after college. I've yet to consider the logistics of any such event, and striking out in another land entirely seems daunting in many respects; the final slash to the umbilical cord of financial support from my parents. I think my brother ought to be going to college around that time as well, and though I'm sure he'll get a full ride to some school or another, my parents have suggested that depending on how things go, I might need to help him out financially. This seems unlikely, but every contingency must be considered.

Long story short, my future is hazy, and I've hardly considered what I'm going to do after college beyond the simplistic "find a job, find a place to live, make some friends". I'll have to start dealing with my own auto insurance, my own health insurance, various doctors appointments, saving up money for the future, planning my career; the list just goes on. I once asked of an "older brother" of mine from kung fu, a guy has just finished his Ph.D in physics, whether life ever got easier. He replied simply that life never got easier, and in fact it probably just gets harder along the way. The thing is that you become better prepared for everything along the way as well, and so in some sense, the difficulty level of life was relatively constant.

I do suppose though, that I should make it a priority to find a new barber once I arrive at my next destination. I think it would be looked upon poorly to go without a haircut for six months at a new job.

Ants in the loo

2005-07-17T11:50:00.000-07:00

I blog now after victoriously vanquishing a multitude of chitinous foes donning the darkest of armor. They struggled against my righteous smiting, eventually turning tail simply trying to escape my wrath, but lo!, I prevailed and their corpses now litter the smooth, beige battlefield.

Now see, the thing is, normally I don't actually like killing things in the real world. I think this stems from some memories of me doing some pretty messed up things to some slugs, and so I hesitate to kill even spiders or other kinds of crawly things. HOWEVER, these ants have decided to keep pushing at my limits; at first there was only one or two in the bathroom a few days ago. I ignored them, figuring they would find no food and would therefore go away. As it turns out, they decided they really liked my bathroom countertop, and so invited some more of their friends over.

At this point I decided that I didn't want them getting into my room where there actually was some modicum of food, so I had to resort to killing them and letting them wash down the sink. Not surprisingly, they continued to appear, so I had to resort to more thorough measures; I cleared off the countertop and washed it all off with soap, the idea being that I could wash away the scent trails left by all the ant reconnoitering. This did not stem the steady increase of ants on a daily basis at all.

Now obviously my routine killing of all the ants is doing nothing, and I'm sure 20 more will be in my bathroom tomorrow. I'm a bit wary of spraying raid all over the place where I wash my face and brush my teeth and such, but I'm kinda wondering if I have any other options at this point. Maybe I'll try a wash with bleachier stuff, like tilex or something.

PostScript:

No more than 20 minutes after disposing of that last batch of ants, I went back into my bathroom to find a shit-ton more ants in there. WTF?!?!

Seven Hours of TV

2005-07-16T02:40:00.000-07:00

So, I woke up at 11:30 after some very, very bizarre dreams expecting that the AC repair guy would be coming along so that the house would not be so ridiculously hot. I made myself some food, watched some TV, and made myself comfortable while waiting. I ended up watching the tail end of the DS9 episode where Vash comes to DS9 along with Q and nearly destroys the station because she's toting around a prophet crystal thingy. I consumed my lunch, and continued to watch another episode involving Jadzia Dax being charged for crimes that Kurzon Dax committed, and her unwillingness to help her own defence because of a vow that Kurzon Dax made to the woman he had an affair with.

At this point it was about 1, and the guy hadn't shown up. A call or two later assured me that the guy was to be here soon, so to sit tight and wait it out. I watched some more Star Trek, this time The Next Generation, and I think the first episode was the episode where they discover two neighboring civilizations that have reached an interesting relationship; one produced a "medicine" for the other planet, and the other planet produced lots and lots of crap to pay for the "medicine" the first planet produced. The only real thing I remember about the episode was that the lady alien was fairly pleasing to the eye, but she hadn't done much in the way of significant work on the TV, so I wasn't able to find much in the way of pictures or information about her. Ultimately, I think I really only thought her outfit was cute.

The next episode of TNG was the one where Tasha Yar dies.
Long story short, it was long, and kinda uninteresting.
The episode after that was the one where they find the area of space they are currently in is having some time hiccups. This episode was kinda nifty, and once again the main point of interest for me was that the scientist's wife was not bad looking. I can't actually find any pictures of her, even though she's done a fair amount of work in mass media since her appearance on TNG. Like above, I think my fascination with her was primarily because of the clothing. Anyhoo, moving on.

I called the place again, since it was about 4 and the AC repairguy had yet to show up. The lady told me the guy had to go to the emergency room to get stitches last night, and so was slow on all his stuff today since it was his assistant doing most of the manual work. I also learned the guy's name, Juan. After talking to her, I wondered why she couldn't have told me so earlier in the day so I wasn't sitting at home rotting my brain. :sigh:

At this point, the Star Trek was over, which saddened me. I moved on to Conan O'Brian, which was a not too funny "episode" as it were. Then I watched The Simpsons episode where Homer goes to the chili-cook-off and eats some peppers and has a vision quest where he is told to find his soulmate and such. There was then some That 70's Show in which Hyde moves into the house and Red tries to hook Foreman up with a cute cashier at work who actually has a crush on Red. Then I watched Malcolm in the Middle which was the episode where Malcolm's friend grows boobs and Reese tries to hit on her, and Francis' roomies steal a totem pole, and Hal tries to learn to fly a kite.

About halfway through MitM, the repair guys finally showed up. I talked to them for a bit, and then let them do their thing. I ended up finishing the episode and moving on to another episode of hat 70's Show again, but this time it was about the girls making Rhonda look cute for Fez, and something about an old army buddy of Red's and swing parties and summat. Around then the 'rents were home, and Diana had come over, and it was about time to head out.

So, after doing all of that nothing, I ended up going to Sac and visiting my mom's friend's Hawaiian BBQ restaraunt called "L&L Hawaiian BBQ". Turns out Hawaiian BBQ is just Korean food, Japanese food, and American food all on a single menu. Not surprisingly, a lot of it was deep fried, and I felt pretty sick after eating just a portion of the meal. Blah blah blah, went home, went to Dennis', hung out, went home.

If anyone actually read all of that, I'm pretty impressed, I was boring myself just writing it. Point is, I spent most of today doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, except maybe after I left the house, but that was still debatedly boring. I do believe I will have to become much more productive in future days.

In truth I've been feeling particularly lazy due to the heat as of late, and so I've been doing jack shit besides going to classes and lazing around. I've got projects I need to start on, and I keep telling myself I'll start them soon, but no work has actually been done yet. Anyhow, here's to doing something more productive with my time in the near future. I swear that reminds me of a song lyric from 2pac or Outkast that goes something like, "Do something more constructive/productive with my time than bitch/beg" or some crap. I can't seem to find the exact lyric online, and now it's bothering the hell out of me.

And as an ending note, I still think I liked DS9 more than I liked TNG. DS9 was so much less cut and clean in terms of good and evil as compared to TNG. Then again, I might have to watch both series again if I really wanted to make a truly informed decision. I think I can hope that it will not be the case that I make such a decision in the near future.

No Travel For You

2005-07-15T02:25:00.000-07:00

My mother recently got back from a trip to Korea and China. I believe there was a class reunion of sorts in there, somewhere around Beijing I think. I kinda wish I could have gone, seeing as how I probably won't be going much of anywhere abroad this year, but school did not allow. More than anything I'm feeling more than a bit jealous of the many people who are abroad or going abroad this year. I realize I went last year and all, but, yeah. I guess if I had it my way I'd want to travel somewhere pretty much every year, but the problem with this is that it costs a fair amount of cash, which I don't currently have, and probably won't have for quite a while.

In related news, I am entirely broke right now. Maybe I should begin looking into other forms of income besides tutoring; the pay is good but the hours aren't so many. This reminds me of an article I read about people who hire poor Chinese kids and adults to monitor Lineage II bots while they bot for gold and rare items. He pays them shit as compared to what he makes, but what he pays them is still pretty good considering what they would probably do otherwise. From there I found the IGE homepage which buys up the gold from whatever and resells it to people. I don't know exactly how I feel about the fact that people have turned it into a business, but I'm not really in a position to say much about it at all I guess.

I once sold zeny and other such items on Ragnarok Online for a period of a few months. That having been said, the profit from doing that kind of thing is kinda ridiculous so this progression to hiring people to monitor the bots is not too surprising. It kinda makes me want to pick up doing so again, but.., I think I'd feel bad about it.

I'm sure people have noticed, it is quite hot lately. It's been getting to 100+ these past few days and the AC in the house is currently dead. Needless to say, it's been a miserable few days. Supposedly, some guy is coming tomorrow to fix or replace our AC depending on whether it is worth fixing, so hopefully the AC will be operational before the day gets to be too unbearable. Oh how I hate the heat. The recent days have reminded me of my trip last year. Granted the lack of humidity here allows for the possibility of going outside and not coming back in totally drenched in sweat, but all the same it's still pretty damn miserable. At the very least there were typhoons going on while I was in Japan (they seemed to follow me around), so half the time it was fairly overcast and breezy. Here, the only respite from the heat is being in a building with the air conditioning turned so cold that plants around the building are actually DYING as the excessive power usage destroys the enviroment.

Which reminds me, my brother is currently living in some new dormitories that were recently built as part of a summer camp. In a conversation we had when he called me, he told me that the building was suffering a brownout in similar heat. I laughed at him.

Speaking of typhoons and such though, here's a random memory of Japan. I think it was the same day Sean and I went to a World War II memorial. We were having some trouble finding the second train station in Shinjuku that would take us to the subway that would take us to the next station that would blah blah blah. The typhoons had been acting up the past week, and it had actually rained pretty hard just that morning, and I had no umbrella. So.., while getting frustrated with the fact that we were having trouble finding a freaking TRAIN STATION, it was becoming more sprinkly outside. Sean broke down and bought a nice umbrella that looked classy in some shop for 1300yen earlier that morning, so he was having no issue with the rain. I still needed some protection, so we ducked under an overpass for a moment to figure out where we needed to go.

As it turned out, the wall of this underpass was lined with umbrellas and price tags taped to the wall. It also had a long-ish cardboard box which contained a bum who was sleeping at the time. Being that there was a perfectly adequate umbrella sitting there with a tag of 100yen, I really wanted to buy it, but the "proprietor" was sleeping. In the end I ended up dropping off a 100yen coin on his box and walked away with the umbrella: an umbrella which once was as white as snow, but after years of abuse ended up looking mostly white. Sean and I dubbed it my hobo-umbrella, and Sean forecasted I would contract venereal diseases from it.

The umbrella ended up serving me pretty well, and I used it all the way up until I finally left Japan. I had originally intended to take it with me to Taiwan, and eventually home, but I forgot it in my uncle's restaurant. Probably for the better, since an umbrella is a kind of bulky thing to pack. All the same, I kinda miss my hobo umbrella and I wonder whether my family has held on to it. Perhaps it has been passed on and now lies underneath an overpass next to a waiting hobo for another young gaijin like myself to come and pick it up.

The pic for today is one I took in the airport while waiting to get on a plane to..., Tokyo I think. I remember that Sean was not with me while I was taking the pictures, so it must have been the first flight I took to Tokyo before the final flight to San Jose.

Unposted Crap : Part One

2005-07-14T23:51:00.000-07:00

This was originally written on February 2nd, 2005. I often write stuff and entirely forget about it; this is one of those cases. Not much to say about it.

A thingy, which I suppose can be called a stream of consciousness rant in which I will not use the backspace. Except maybe to correct simple errors, but never to change the layout of what I'm doing or to revise a sentence I have just written.

Lately I have been strongly wondering about the direction of my life. I'm obviously not the best of students, as my GPA would show. That is to say, I'm not particularly good at getting good grades. Now I'm not going to talk about whether grades truly represent learning or not, but as it is, under this current institution and its rules, I'm not doing so well in school. I can pass my classes, I definitely have classes I love, but altogether I wonder whether I'm fit to be doing what I'm currently doing.

What else might I do? I dunno, I'd like to do something more..., fun maybe. Writing has always been interesting to me, though I don't know that I have the ability to actually write well. Maybe more what I should sa yis that I don't know that I have the ability to write something that is interesting to audiences. The closest I suppose I've ever come to actually trying such a thing is in one of my blogs. Those sadly enough, never really got too much writing and so as I sit, two of them are simply wasting away in idle-ness. I'd considered possibly writing for the paper, for an online news source, but the question is, what in the hell would I write about?

I don't think I'm a particular expert in any one thing, and furthermore I don't know that I really have an interesting new viewpoint to add to the world. And supposing I had either, why in the hell would anyone want to read what I write? Obviously there are people in this world who have made quite a living through their writing. Odly enough the first names that come to mind, in order, are: the columnists of the Aggie Newspaper, Tim Rogers, and Haruki Murakami. What this means? Absolutely nothing, though it does give some insight into.., something. I'll have to get back to that one.

I decided to skip Japanese and Kung fu today. Japanese was going to be taught by a substitute, which meant we were probably only going to work on skits, which I'm not allowed to participate in by the teacher. I decided to skip KUng fu because classes are a bitch and I have 3 midterms coming up along with lots of homework due tomorrow. Instead of doing either, I planned on going to the library, and finishing all my homework. Lo and behold however, my homework is of course complicated as shit, in particular my 110a homework is a bitch. In an unexpected yet pleasant surprise, Mark ended up dropping by the library and we worked invidually on homework for a while (being that he was working on Greek and I was working on analog circuits), but ultimately after struggling a bit with all my assignments, I gave up and we ended up heading over to the MU and grabbing a burrito.

With Mark I've always talked about bizarre subjects. Conversations between me and him start off with whatever comes to mind, and drift freely between past and present, dreams and reality, straight speech and allusions. In particular we came to the joint conclusion that Karen Tam, the political comic writer for the Aggie, and Ian Watson, some conservative column writer for the Aggie, are both very, very crappy. I'm sure at least one of them is a cool person, but Karen's comics are not really very good at being political comics, and Ian's column is exactly what we don't need in a political column; narrow-minded viewpoints sticking purely to partisan viewpoints on partisan issues with some ranting about being a conservative in a liberal campus and town. I don't know exactly where this particular sentence was going either, but I suppose I'll end it with saying that even given that this is a college paper, their ability at whatever they are currently doing is far below the standard, even for a college paper. Best of luck to both of them, hopefully they get better, or find something new to do.

Anyhoo, I also realized today why I say so many words funny. I grew up in a Chinese-speaking household, that is to say, we did not speak much English, and my parents aren't exactly English literary geniuses. I also grew up reading many books, so though I have a fairly large vocabulary, and a good command of the English language, many words are simply glyphs in my head. I pronounce them however I felt they should have been pronounced when I first saw them, and to this day I still do the same. That last sentence grammatically sucked, but you get the point. so.., when I say preferable, I say prefer-uh-bull. As opposed to the supposedly correct, PRE-fur-uh-bull. He then asked me how I pronounce the adjective that is used to say that two objects are so similar that you would say tha tthey could be compared. I actually had to think about that before I understood what he meant, and then I said, "compare-uh-bull". I then corrected myself to say, "comp-uh-ruh-bull", but then after that, I figured I should instead give him the finger. In all light-heartedness of course. As much of a grammar nazi as I typically am, I've decided I'm going to mispronounce words the way that I do and continue to do so regardless of what others say. If Bush can say "nuke-you-lar", then I can say "tur-ahd".

Finally, I finished reading Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami today. As with almost all of his books, this one did not have the most cheerful of endings. It was an overall great read, and definitely of his style. What Murakami does for me is that he is able to put entirely human people into situations together, and then he watches what happens to them as they are dealt tragedies and dilemmas. (On that thought, is the plural of dilemma, dilemmas? I saw a sign today that said, "something something, TSUNAMIS", and that bothered me. OBVIOUSLY, the plural of tsunami should be simply tsunami, and similarly the plural of samurai should be samurai.) Murakami then, after watching them finally recover from whatever they have done, deals them one final tragedy that is unrecoverable, and watches as people adapt as best they can and generally try to cope with the loss of one of their number, for whatever reason.
His characters are simply typical people faced with tragic situations; situations that are quite realizable in the real world, and thus an overall story that moves me so much more than many things I might read. Norwegian Wood in particular deals with an offbeat guy who has to deal with the suicide of one his best friends just before he goes off to college. His best friend leaves behind a girlfriend, who is also a very good friend of the protagonist, though she goes sorta crazy and the book follows through how he goes through college with the situation at hand. Boring synopsis, but ultimately a very bizarre story, with a truly more non-typical last chapter or so.

That reminds me, I talked with Mark about dreams today. I have two notable recurring themes in my dreams; dreams in which I am unable to move, and dreams in which I have no pants. Related? I don't know. The former kind of dream generally involves me being in a house which is reminiscent of my first apartment in Auburn. There is a long hallway, and I am in a bathroom which opens into that hallway. Sometimes there are other people in the house, though I don't believe they are ever in the same room as me. I am sitting in the bathroom, stnading sometimes, sometimes leaning against a wall, and there is somethign coming down the hallway. Blackness is sorta around the thing, and in general the hall is black, so I really don't know what's coming at me. I do know however that I am wanting to get away from it, and so I try to leave the room only to find myself entirely unable to move. My body is entirely filled with lethargy, my muscles don't respond, as if I were too tired to actually move. In particular, one dream had me holding on as hard as I could to a towel rack to keep myself from falling over, to attempt to leave the bathroom, but in the end I fell to the floor, helpless and alone. Mark wonders that maybe this dream might be symbolizing my fear of feeling unable to accomplish anything in the real world. I really don't know what it means, and I don't intend to dwell overly much on that for whatever reason.

Apparently Mark has never gotten naked dreams, and yet I find myself having these god damn no pants dreams all the time. In one particular dream I recall, I was in the library sitting in a nice comfy chair, and all of a sudden I realize I have no pants. The entirety of the dream pretty much consisted of me esarching for pants, all the while attempting to remain cool about the fact I don't have pants so other's don't notice. Actually, I think I'm slinking around trying to hide so others don't notice, but same difference. Eventually I find pants (in the library?), and I'm about to pull them on, when someone comes upt to talk to me. And so, I try to discreetly put on pants, but I really can't for whatever reason. I'm trying to hide the fact I have no pants on, and yet the person talking to me is totally oblivious to this fact. I don't really recall what happens after that, but the dream itself is enough I think. Mark remarked after this story that my dreams seem to deal particularly with subjective reality. He talked about it a bit, but I think my mind wandered and so I missed what he said.

All in all, I guess I've just about written myself out. When I began typing this, it started out haltingly, and then as I emptied my thoughts onto the page, it came out as fast as I could type. I did have to stop myself several times from deleting lines to either remove them or to rephrase them, though I do believe almost all of this has only been subconsciously edited before it even occured to my brain to type. Who will read this, I don't know. As of this point I have no clue what I am going to do with this written text file. It has not even been saved yet, so maybe it will simply be deleted once I close without saving. This reminds me a friend who told me about her friend who would write entire letters addressed to herself or other people, and then rip them up and throw them in the trash. The act itself was more than enough for her, and thus after writing, she had no use for the product. I'm too sentimental for that I think, so I'll probably hold onto this and forget about it as soon as my head hits the pillow.

Fluff

2005-07-12T10:08:00.000-07:00

I just missed the 0920 bus which would have gotten me to class on time. I missed it because my computer's time got off by a few minutes a few days ago and I hadn't bothered to fix it until just now. What have I learned from this? If I don't shut off my computer, it's time won't go off. Therefore I will never turn this beast off again, feh.

Well, things have been going alright. I will be doing a fair amount of voltage analysis of the typical CMOS inverter over the summer for my mini-research project. After I finish with the inverter, I'll probably move on to NAND and NOR gates and investigate some assumptions the industry has been making about delay in multi-input gates. All of this involves heavy simulation using SPICE, a circuit simulation program. I know, sounds like fun, right?

As for recent events, there was a BBQ at some point on the weekend involving friends from high school; it was sad that not too many people were able to make it, but it was good to see the people who did. I think Ave has pics from that night, but who knows if or when he'll ever post them.

A few of us also went karaoke in the recent past. I have but one thing to say : I was not nearly as drunk as I should have been for that. It was fun all the same, but next time, more drink is needed I think.

Vertigo

2005-07-06T13:40:00.000-07:00

I am in the library currently, and went to use one of the computers on
the left side. I'm kinda weirded out because the floor is now all
tile, but I think it used to be carpet. This is weirding me out quite
a bit since I can't remember for sure that it was carpet before.
Furthermore, the tile doesn't look too new and looks like it has gone
through a bit of abuse, so I am even more confused. o_o;

Filler

2005-07-02T01:58:00.000-07:00

My first week of summer school is over. My first paper has been assigned, and I think I'm going to have something around five papers altogether from my two classes for the next six weeks.

My mother is now in Korea. I don't remember exactly what she's doing there but I think it has to do with a class reunion of sorts. I would've liked to go, but missing two of six weeks of Summer School doesn't generally fly so well with the University. I'm kinda jealous of everyone else I know that's either currently abroad or soon to be going abroad; I really wish I could go to Japan or Taiwan again sometime soon, but due to money and time constraints I don't think I'll be able to go until after I graduate.

Sorta random pic for the day is :

Why Sean has his hand around Avelino's waist is beyond me. Though it may look like a mega sausage-fest, I swear there were individuals of the fairer gender hanging around. In fact I do believe a girl actually took the picture.

Whee class

2005-06-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

Currently in my philo class. Turns out both classes are taught by the same teacher. The guy isn't a bad teacher, but he has this tendency to go fairly slowly as if dumbing it down. This is expected for the lower div class, but just annoying for the upper div one. At the very least, i think both classes are going to be interesting. Now if only i could get rid of the annoying guy in my philo of mind class.

File-sharing Foul-ups

2005-06-27T02:43:00.000-07:00

In an attempt to find the preview for the Hellsing OVA, I was looking around on the eDonkey servers and such for it. I found something that looked to maybe be promising, and began downloading it. Now, eD2k does this thing where it'll flag files if the people sharing them have the file under a different name than what you are downloading it as.

In this case, I was downloading "hellsing.the.movie.english.spanishsub.manga.anime.avi", but everyone else was sharing it as "[DivX ENG] Trans - Shemale - Gabrielly The Cock Princess.avi".

Good times.

The Birds

2005-06-25T01:30:00.000-07:00

It's a bit past 5am in the morning. I have come home a bit late today. I am now trying to sleep, because I am very tired. It seems, however, that the birds outside my window are all having a very involved discussion, and it only gets louder with every shrill chirp. If I could find my BBs, I would pry off my screen and shoot them all. Guh.

DS nuts

2005-06-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

Summer is ending.

I finally received the book my summer research leader guy wanted me to peruse, so I need to start looking through that. I think I'm supposed to start in the labs come July or so, so I need to hurry up and get through the first few chapters. Furthermore, my two Summer school classes start on Tuesday, which should be interesting. One's a lower div Philo class, which should be an easy A. The second is an upper div which I think I will like, though I don't know what to expect of it since it's a summer class.

This book also represents the first HK "international edition" book that I have bought. I generally like to have my books hardcover, and furthermore friends of mine have had problems ranging from entire chapters being missing to homework problems being misprinted, so I avoided these softcover editions for a while. For this book however, I figured since this one wasn't for an actual class, I might as well try the international editions for myself.

So far, I'm not too impressed. The text on the back stating, "For sale and distribution in the People's Republic of China exclusively (except Taiwan, Hong Kong SAR and Macao SAR)." is somewhat daunting. Other than that and a cover page or two, the book is supposed to be entirely the same as the hardcover edition. I suppose I will see soon enough if there are glaring misprints in this one as there were in other books.

In other, less boring news, I have bought a Nintendo DS. I originally wanted a blue one, but I wasn't able to find any place that bundled the blue with Mario DS, so I ended up getting a silver/platinum one :(. Ave, Sean and I then went to Mishka's, grabbed some drinks and hung around playing for a while. Ave had just bought Bomberman DS, so we played that for a bit, along with pictochat and some other stuff. Now, the most amusing part of Bomberman DS is that the splash screen has a little voice that says, "BOMBERMAN!", but it doesn't say bomberman the way we would.
It says, "BOM-BER-MAN".
It pronounces the silent "b", which is funny to listen to. Furthermore, it has a mode called "voice detonation". In this mode, all bombs you lay are remote bombs, and you detonate them by saying "kaboom!" or whatever. This quickly devolved into us saying fairly offensive things to get the bombs to detonate. It's a good thing we did this where there were not many people around.

All in all, I like the DS. I am looking forward to getting Kirby and the Canvas Curse, as well as Puyo Pop Fever. I spent much of my childhood playing both Kirby and Puyo Puyo games, though Puyo Puyo was known as Kirby's Avalanche when I first played it. I played it a bit in arcades while I was in Japan, but without any people to play against, it's not very fun. Mostly, I am looking forward to using the wireless multiplayer on this thing.

Yann Teaches Typing

2005-06-22T02:31:00.000-07:00

Summer has started.

I think I already said that in some previous post or another, but now I know that it's really started. It's been heating up outside, the days are getting lazier, and I'm already becoming quickly unenthused with the lack of work to be done. My boss is sending out the catalogues for the summer classes at our little tutoring place, so I won't be having any money coming in for a little while yet. I'm not particularly looking forward to starting the tutoring again, since summer tutoring for me seems to be composed primarily of teaching JHS kids how to type. Needless to say, this is boring as all hell and serves only to remind me of how much I hated it when I was learning how to type.

I remember being stuck in a room a day or two every week, looking at some asian-looking girl named Kiki telling me to put my hands on the home row, and to type stuff like, "aaa sss aaa sss asa asa sas sas". She'd then chide me on not having my hands arched correctly, and not sitting up straight, and other crap like that. This was actually fairly fun for a little while, while I was doing it mostly for fun. The problem of course with me, a third grader or so, doing it for fun was that I was constantly looking at my hands to hit the buttons. While this did indeed defeat the whole purpose of the exercise, "reason" and "discipline" aren't the first two words to pop into mind when talking about grade schoolers.

So the following year, we moved to a crappier typing program that actually measured words per minute and such, and they put cardboard over our hands. Our goal was something like 60wpm by the end of the year, though nothing was actually being graded. If I recall correctly, there were two girls in the class that ended up hitting the goal first, and I don't remember how many more reached it. I sucked at it something hardcore, and could still barely type by the end of the year.

Now, I did eventually learn how to do that crap, but I don't recall when now. I thought it was during my MUDding phase in 8th grade, but I could still type pretty decently before that. In retrospect, it was most likely during my BBSing phase when I would play Exitilus, LORD, and that one game which was a precursor to Earth 2025.., Barren Realms maybe? I recall that you and your country could save up to buy a Gooey Kablooey at the enemy, anyone remember that particular game? Anyway, many hours were spent doing that, which ended up sharpening my typing skills.

The point of this entire rant is that now I'm forcing these kids to do the same thing I hated so much when I was young. I hated doing the typing with my cardboard over my hands, and I kinda feel bad for making the kids do it as well. I have to say though, the students I had the previous year probably did a lot better than I did in terms of sticking with it. I took every possible opportunity to look under the cardboard to do the typing, even though it defeated the whole purposed of the exercise. After I bully my own students once or twice, they tend to refrain from looking at the cardboard until it looks like I've started to nod off or gone wall-eyed from boredom.

I guess I don't feel so bad about it since I do know that in this case, what I am teaching them is absolutely necessary. Even though I slacked my way through typing in grade school, when I actually started to need to type fast, I put my hands in the same position that Kiki taught me, used the correct fingers to hit all the damn keys, and very quickly went from worthless to 100+wpm between 6th to the end of 8th grade.

This reminds me: I had a family of students composed of a 5th, 7th, and 9th grader I think. I want to say the oldest was a little younger than 9th grade, but really I have no recollection. Basically, they were all quite rambunctious, and every time I worked with them, I had to struggle a bit in the beginning to keep them on task. The nice thing however, is that since they were all brothers and had a bit of a rivalry, once I got them going, they worked their little fingers off trying to get ahead of eachother. Their mother was quite enthusiastic about the whole thing since she was tired of typing their essays, and so offered to do whatever it took at home to help them get this down. Eventually they finished the class, thank yous were exchanged, bills were paid, I went back to school, etc.

Fast forward to a few months later I see the family as I am entering IHOP; the mother goes ballistic on me. She thanks me so much for having taught them how to type, gushed about how they were typing their own essays, even the youngest one, and how she was so, so thankful, and how great a teacher I was and the kids were kinda nodding and thanking me a bit. All in all, I really did appreciate it, and liked that they thought I did a good job, but it was still just a bit embarassing. In a good way though, not a bad one.

Moral of the story : tutoring is a fun thing to do. I enjoy it. It technically does pay well per hour, but one can't exactly just do 20 hours of tutoring a week. Either there aren't enough clients, or you go insane trying to deal with such a workload. I've kinda considered getting an actual job for this summer, since I'd like to save up cash for various things in the future, but I don't know that I really want to give up tutoring. It isn't a whole lot of cash, but that's not really the whole reason I'm in it to begin with. I've considered doing something else, but I don't know that there are a whole lot of typical summer-job type jobs I'd really enjoy doing. Clerking, waiting, selling could bring in more cash, but ultimately what skills I would learn would be inapplicable elsewhere, and the clients would hardly be phased if you weren't there.

What this whole thing was, I'm not entirely sure, but the lateness of the hour grows and my bed sings its siren song to me, coaxing me to sleep. Good night.

Summer, whee

2005-06-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

Not much has been going on. So far I've gotten an A, and a B-. Not too bad I think, and I think my other two classes are probably going to be a C and a B. In a worst case it'll be a D and a C, but let's not think about that too much.

Looks like first Summer session starts on the 27th or summat, and I will be taking two philo classes. In the meantime I will start looking through material I'm supposed to learn for my research thingy.

It rained yesterday, and today it is cool and overcast. I only wish it could be like this all Summer. I've been slacking on the kung fu lately due to finals, and I think I'll go back this Monday. The hard part about kung fu during the summer is when it gets to be consistently 90-100 during practice. I am a little girl and for some reason my body is not particularly good at dissipating heat. That being the case, things get very uncomfortable very quickly in hot weather.

Lastly, today's random pic is from Japan, if you can't tell. This is the "Beer corner" of some market in Ukima-Funado, which is where Tim was living at the time. There is a story behind the picture, but I think Sean has the ridiculously bad video.

I might be sleep deprived

2005-06-14T17:54:00.000-07:00

So, at approximately 1230 this morning, I was setting my alarm, dreading the final I had to wake up to, and getting ready for bed in general.

Fast forward to 0815 the same morning; I wake up, get confused, look at the time, and start cursing. Throwing on whatever clothes I can find, I pull a calculator, a pencil and an eraser out of my backpack, I grab Ave's skateboard, which he has generously lent me, and toss it in the back of my car. I get to school, park, start skateboarding to class as fast as I can, and of course nearly die on the way when I hit a bump while going too fast. I eventually get to class, smelly as hell I'm sure, and grab a test around 0830. I then realize I actually brought a pencil and a pen. Wheee.

As it turns out, I ended up finishing the final early, so losing 30 minutes wasn't all that bad. After the test while talking with friends about it, I realized I totally misread one of the questions and did the wrong thing. Damn.

As for good news, I got 10th in the class or so on the final project I was so worried about. This is the amplifier with negative feedback and blah blah blah. About half of the people who got higher than me in terms of score got an unfair advantage due to screwing the bandwidth of the amplifier and reducing the power consumption or cost of their circuit. This angers me.

Anyhow, one more final left, and let's hope it goes well. Today was the first day I've ever been late for a final. Let's hope I don't do such a thing again.

Eliot, Engineering and Expressions (idiomatic)

2005-06-13T01:23:00.000-07:00

Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate giraffe.

The circles of the stormy moon
Slide westward toward the River Plate,
Death and the Raven drift above
And Sweeney guards the horn�d gate.

Gloomy Orion and the Dog
Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas;
The person in the Spanish cape
Tries to sit on Sweeney's knees

Slips and pulls the tablecloth
Overturns a coffee cup,
Reorganized upon the floor
She yawns and draws a stocking up;

The silent man in mocha brown
Sprawls at the window sill and gapes;
The waiter brings in oranges
Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;

The silent vertebrate in brown
Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
Rachel née Rabinovitch
Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;

She and the lady in the cape
Are suspect, thought to be in league;
Therefore the man with heavy eyes
Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,

Leaves the room and reappears
Outside the window, leaning in,
Branches of wistaria
Circumscribe a golden grin;

The host with someone indistinct
Converses at the door apart,
The nightingales are singing near
The Convent of the Sacred Heart,

And sang within the bloody wood
When Agamemnon cried aloud,
And let their liquid siftings fall
To stain the stiff dishonored shroud.

- T.S. Eliot

I don't know why this, Sweeney Among The Nightingales, is one of my favorite poems, but it is. I want to say that it's one of the first poems to genuinely creep me out, but I guess The Raven did that as well to some extent. In any case, this poem does it even moreso and the subtlety with which it does it enhances the fear that much more. The first time I read it I had hardly a clue what was going on, and yet chills ran down my back. The sad thing is I've never read the entirety of The Wasteland, although I've read Catch 22 quite a few times, so maybe it balances out.

As a college student, and an Engineering/Philosophy major, I sometimes wonder if I don't read enough. Then again, Mark, a good friend and a Comparative Literature major, seems to feel that as a Comp lit major he doesn't actually "make" anything. He analyzes Greek and Latin literature in their native form, and writes essays discussing various things about them in great detail. I spend hours tweaking resistor and capacitor values to make my amplifier meet specs or sometimes I spend hours debugging code that describes how some finite state machine is supposed to work.

I guess what it boils down to is that there's never enough time to do everything you want. I've wanted to learn how to do a billion things but due to whatever reasons (primarily sloth), I don't feel like I excel in much of anything.

People always talk about how "there's always someone better" or "there's always a bigger fish", but for some reason that has always bothered me. If there's always someone better, isn't that necessarily a paradox? If you start going up the chain, eventually you're going to reach the top. I've been over the idea with myself many times, and I end up thinking that the idea is that even if someone is the most awesome chess player ever, there is always going to be something that he isn't good at.
Or something.

In any case, the final stretch of finals is rearing its ugly head and I must answer its call. (By the way, I still type out "it's" all the time when I mean a possessive it. Damn English)

I should have been a liberal arts major

2005-06-09T01:22:00.000-07:00

I don't think I've ever worked this hard in a class and yet felt like I was probably going to do poorly anyway. As it is, I worked my ass off for the labs in 180b, and I'm probably going to get a C in the class. I worked my ass off for the project in 110b, and I still feel like I have a decently good chance at not passing the course.

It's so frustrating. I've worked so fucking hard these past weeks, and the results are meaningless.

It's been a very bad quarter all in all, but talking about it more really doesn't help.

So, as for the Summer, I think that things might be okay. I'm taking two philosophy classes over the first Summer session, which means I'll be nearly done with my Philosophy major and my Engineering GEs. I WILL be doing research/bitchwork in Prof. Oklobdzija'a (I can never spell his damn name) lab. It is not paid but maybe there will be side benefits to it. Ultimately I really just want the experience anyway, so no pay is fine. I probably won't be travelling anywhere this summer, and probably not this year, but I think I'll take a long break and travel after I graduate. Then I can spend half a year abroad while applications for jobs are being circulated and such and maybe come home to some interviews. I will be continuing the DARPA Grand Challenge thing I think, though I don't know how much time I can spend on that.

Next school year I should also be working on that, and they say that it will be turned into a project class, 195ABC, which means I would get credit for a lot of crap for doing DARPA. I am probably going to do micromouse as well, because I know several people who are doing it and it sounds like a fun little competition. Not much more to say, I really need to sleep. Finals start this week, my first one is Friday. I'm just waiting for school to be out.

Gaming Nostalgia

2005-06-07T00:25:00.000-07:00

For whatever reasons I've been feeling a want to play Earthbond on the SNES. When I told this to people, they said that they had the rom if I wanted it, but if I'd simply wanted to play the rom, I would have said, "I want to play Earthbound". Ultimately it's never quite the same playing the rom versus playing the actual physical game cartridge on the actual system.

Sadly enough however, Earthbound is now hella expensive. As is Mario RPG, Super Metroid, and Chrono Trigger. I've made a sidenote in my mind to start ebaying around when I have some more free time, but I think it's still going to cost me around $100-$150 for all of them :(.

In the meantime I pulled out my SNES and have been playing some old games since: Mega Man X, Kirby's Avalanche, Secret of Evermore.

Now, anyone who played Secret of Evermore should remember that you had to search around and talk to people in order to get new spells. That being the case, there were some very rare spells that were quite hard to find; possibly the hardest to find was "sting".

I played Secret of Evermore twenty million times as a kid. I beat it god knows how many times and most importantly I made a buncha games that were supposed to be perfect. None of them ever became perfect however because there was one spell that was sorta random to find as I understood it. In this one desert in the game there were fountains strewn about in predictable patterns. In order to get this spell, "sting", you had to find this fucker at one of the fountains.
I spent HOURS of my formatives years trying to do this. In fact, the point at which the game was saved when I busted it out after a hiatus of years, was the closest save point to the desert with speed spells equipped so I could run faster and cover more ground and therefore more of the desert.

Now, tonight, it has finally happened. Maybe something like 8-10 years after the fact, I have finally found the damn spell. I have never seen the casting animation for this spell, EVER. I am about to go over and cast it right now. This, is a moment.

PostScript: The spell kinda sucks, but I already knew that. It was largely the principle of the matter.

One down, two to go

2005-06-06T14:27:00.000-07:00

Well, I finished that amplifier circuit project thingy and the numbers look like I did everything right. There's a possibility my negative feedback was unstable, but I believe that's largely impossible given the circuit I built.
Furthermore, there was this "figure of merit" thing for the projects which basically is a way of having the students compete to have the best circuit in terms of power consumption or cost. The professor expected it to be somewhere between 0 and 1, and upon calculating my own figure of merit mine turned out to be above 1.
This is good news I think.

Now I'm taking a break at the library feeling a lot less stressed than I did previously. Finishing that project leaves me with but two homework assignments and one last project to finish up. After that are my finals, and then summer. Whee summer.

I'm definitely doing the summer research thing and I'm definitely not being paid for it. I'm ok with that, but now I must find another way to get enough cash for a snowboard and a trip to Japan. Maybe I should postpone Japan for the Summer after I graduate. Actually, Japan sucks in the summer, maybe I'll postpone for the Fall/Winter after I graduate. And now that I think about it, I'll probably have more summer school things to teach than I did last year, so that should contribute well to my recreation fund.

Anyhoo, I've been up since way too early, and I slept way too late, and so I'm gonna go find one of the windowsills on the third floor and take a cat nap.

Stuff, stuff, and stuff

2005-06-05T12:45:00.000-07:00

The school year is almost done. Wednesday is the last day of lecture, meaning Friday is the first day of finals, and also the day of my first final. My last final is Wednesday the following week, after which I am going to throw all my engineering books into the bathtub, douse them in oil, and set it all on fire. That is to say, I am going to go all "Left-eye" on my engineering books.

As of right now however I'm waiting for a student to show up for pre-calc tutoring. This student is a nice enough student and I think I've been tutoring her on and off for a long while now: nearly a year and a half I think, which is kinda crazy.

One of my students is graduating this year and going to UCSD I believe, which is cool. Real interesting kid, I think he'll enjoy it down there, if that is indeed where he decides to go. Makes me realize it's been 3 years since I graduated myself, and another year or so before I must graduate again.

Another one of my students is moving to Norway. Apparently her father has gotten a job there and so the whole family needs to go back across the pond. The mother seems to dislike the idea quite a bit, and I can imagine I'd be somewhat miffed if I had to move to Taiwan during HS/JHS.

Sometimes I wonder whether I should really be tutoring at all. A lot of the tutoring I've been doing this past week has been comprehensive review for finals. Needless to say, it is often the case that the students sometimes have slight gaps in knowledge.
In some cases they aren't so much slight gaps as perhaps exit wounds caused by a 50 caliber round.

Anyhow, it always makes me wonder whether I've really been doing all that good a job in the tutoring and furthermore whether I'm not simply selling off snake oil and good vibes.

My EEC 110b prof said to us on the first day of lecture that he did not have a quiz for us the first day. I don't recall why he said it, but he mentioned that he once had a friend who was a professor at some school on the East coast. That professor tried a few times this thing where he would give students a quiz on the first day. That quiz was covering topics to be learned in the course and was meant to see how well the students knew the material they hadn't learned yet. Then, at the end of the year, the same or a similar quiz was given to see if they students had learned anything yet. That professor told MY professor, "Don't try it unless you are fairly self-assured in your teaching ability".

In some sense that's kinda how I feel, no matter what I do my students just don't retain as much information as I would like them to. Whether this is my fault, their fault, the school's fault, or nobody's fault in particular is in the air, but all the same it makes me feel kinda ineffective.

So a bit about one of the projects I'm working on. One is a project wherein I must design an amplifier circuit with negative feedback using Q2N2222 transistors and caps and resistors. It must meet certain gain, bandwidth, output swing, input impedance, output impedance and certain worst case scenarios. Basically, my circuits does all of that EXCEPT the output impedance, but when I fix the output impedance the only way that really works out well, I kill the output swing and blah blah blah blah blah. Point being, no matter what I do something always goes wrong, and I don't know why the fuck it does it. Kinda like the above. Anyhow, sleep time.

Downtime

2005-06-03T16:31:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in front of borders waiting for a student. I've got finals to study for, homework to do, and projects to finish. And yet, sitting here watching the people, kids and dogs i can almost stop stressing. There's a group of kids with a puppy and adult golden retrievers. I'm not sure if the dogs are related, but the scene is ridiculously kodak regardless. Man, school sucks.

Slacking

2005-05-31T23:00:00.000-07:00

My hair is getting to the point where even I think it's excessively long. Normally the situation would be as simple as getting a haircut, but I do hate haircuts so and the time is hard to find. Now if it were currently Autumn (Fall sounds so plebian) or Winter, I might let it grow out: the problem is that Central Valley Summers are oh-so-mild and I do believe that the ever moderate sun and heat of the season might cause a bit of annoyance while doing much of anything outdoors.

Also, for every day without a haircut, I believe I am looking more and more like a vagrant.

I am considering just grabbing some scissors and my electric razor and seeing if I can manage not to kill myself. On the other hand, given experiences I've previously had and my tendency to have accidents at absolutely horrible times, well, I think the sentence speaks volumes without the help of elaboration.

In other news Memorial Day Weekend was ridiculously productive. I finished the simulation of my processor for my EEC180B class. Now I just need to finish implementing a few commands, and then port it to hardware. I have not however even come close to finishing my Philosophy of Law essay nor my Electronic Circuits final project.

Needless to say, I'm not particularly enjoying school at this point in time and I'm fairly tired of the quarter system as well. In any case, just a year more to go and then I get to work my ass off in industry and wish for the good ol' days of college again. That or I'll be working a job in China unsuspectingly supporting the New World Regime that will be in place to economically enslave the world by 2020.

Math teacher

2005-05-27T22:51:00.000-07:00

My math teacher went off today about the gamma function in mathematics. Basically his problem is the fact that Gamma(alpha) is equal to (alpha-1) factorial. He felt that was a stupid problem that could have been easily fixed by redefining alpha within the equation, and I think he might be partially right on that.
The funny thing however is that he became quite upset about this in class. The way he was going off about it you would think that he was talking about saving the lives of children in Sudan or something. I don't think I've quite ever seen anyone get so worked up about a mathematical equation.

36 inches of awkwardness

2005-05-23T16:14:00.000-07:00

So, last week I posted about my new broadsword. It is nice, I have been playing with it. The problem now lies in the fact that I have to bring it to school on Mon and Thu since I have no way of getting home before Kung Fu and grabbing it. This isn't too much of a problem except that the blade is about 27.5 inches, and altogether the thing is around 36 inches long; way too long to just shov in my backpack. I also would find it more trouble than it would be worth currently to try and shove into a duffle bag which I would have to carry along with my backpack. All of this being the case, I now have the sword tucked down my back between my back and my backpack.

I am a ninja, hwa.

Anyway, it's weird because the sword is large, obtrusive, and makes clanky noises in it's scabbard as I walk around. I haven't been accosted by police or library staff or such yet, so maybe this will turn out alright.

In other news, Ave and I went to the MU on Friday to play some pool and such. So pretty much the first thing that happens once we get our cues and start racking is two guys who look like they actually know what they're doing come up and ask if we wanna play a game of team 9-ball. Long story short, we agree to play at some point but they want to play for cash. We tell 'em we'll play a game of team 8-ball for fun, they say "sure", and we play a game. Ave and I get ownt something fierce, and are thankful that we didn't put any money on the game.

The guys were cool though, they gave me a bit of shooting advice and told us about the upcoming tournaments and the UCD Pool Club. I don't think I'll be doing any tournaments anytime soon, but maybe I'll join the club; I have been meaning to play the game more and that would give me both a reason and a discount.

After pool me and Ave played video games. That is to say, I played video gameS, and Ave played Pump It Up. ("Dude, Ave's playing Pump It Up", "Oh god, Ave's playing pump it up? I'm so surprised.") This wouldn't be worth mentioning except that he actually gathered a small crowd of people to watch him go epileptic and press buttons faster than most people can generally manage.

Of that crowd there was a middle-aged caucasian woman who actually watched for a long while; she was there during his first song, and was still there when I came back during his final song. She stood there mouth agape, apparently awestruck by Ave; I found this amusing.

In some sense I kinda compare it to some person watching a man throw back two bottles of some hard liquor in a matter of fives of minutes. The spectator is impressed for they have no experience with this kind of thing and think of the discipline and such that it must take. I, the friend, am jaded and almost somber because I know the horrid history of alcoholism and abuse behind the feat. Next time, on behind the scenes.

Cookies and Turtles

2005-05-22T22:56:00.000-07:00

For lack of better things to do over the weekend, Ave, Ed, Diana (Who hasn't a website) and I decided to make cookies. This involved going to the store, seeing what we needed, and seeing what we needed to buy for the cookies. After some discussion about crap and the merits (or lack thereof) of using margarine versus butter, we got all the ingredients we needed for making some Chocolate Chip Cookies and some Butterscotch Chip Cookies.

Or so we thought.

Turns out we were misled as to how much butter we thought we had and so though we needed something like three or four sticks altogether, we had but one, maybe two. Fooey. So Ave and I ran to the store to grab some butter since Diana and Ed were doing most of the mixing and crap like that.

Ave jumped out of my car at the entrance while I went to park it, and so I went to meet him in the butter isle. A cursory glance revealed some cheap-ass stuff to be had; as Ave put it, "Dude, ninety nine cents for four sticks or so, sweet." So we bolted towards the registers, bought the butter, and went home to finish making the cookie dough.

We then melted the appropriate amount of butter, mixed it all in, and as was putting the remnants into the fridge, he remarked that there was no need to pay him back since he got the butter for so cheap.
"How cheap was it Ave?"
"Like, ninety nine cents, it was awesome."
"That cheap? What's the package say?"
"Uhhh.., something something vegetable shortening. Ah crap."

Of course that wasn't exactly how the conversation went, in fact I don't think there was any query at all, but whatever. Who can really be expected to remember crap like that? In any case, that account of the weekend's conversation can't be as bad as Tim's first attributing a quote (search for fable) to me in one post, and then subsequently referring to me as a girl (search for fable again) not more than a month or so later.

Anyway, Ave, in his money-saving haste, accidentally picked out margarine and we'd already put it in the cookie dough. Luckily the cookies were spared and things turned out alright.

After making the cookies we proceeded to play "TMNT : Battle Nexus", which is a game I have been mostly happy to play. The main problem with the game is that it's really freaking long, and not all that much changes as you progress in the game.
That makes it kinda boring.
Furthermore, the story starts off with some reasonable goodness (a lot it seems to be taken from the Japanese manga I once had), but then it quickly degenerates into seemingly random events and vague attempts to tie it all together.
This makes it confusing and contrived.
However, it is fun to play for a while, and it has the original arcade game, so altogether it's a game worth renting for a little while.

This ends mostly with Ed getting tired of walking over, putting bits of cookie dough on the sheets, putting it in the oven, then going back ten minutes later to repeat.

This is simply one of many such cookies.

New toys!

2005-05-19T23:52:00.000-07:00

That is my new chrome broadsword for kung fu. I was considering getting a combat steel one originally, but I figured that since it was my first sword, I was probably going to be putting it through some shit and as such I should buy a cheaper sword so that I don't ruin a nice one. It's a 27.5 inch one, and normally cost $50, but we got a 30% discount and so it only cost me $35, yay.

The handle is kinda nice, the cloth works well but I think there's too little of it. It came off while I was twirling today and I just re-wrapped it with the same cloth. If it comes off once again, I may have to get a longer piece so that I can wrap it in more than just one layer.

I have indeed already nicked the blade. I got a bit overzealous and started chopping up small branches on trees in the privacy of my own yard, and since it's not a terribly strong metal, it has a nick or two on the blade now, oh well.

In other news, I went to see Star Wars : Revenge of the Sith with Sean and Ave.

Altogether, the movie was worth seeing. We saw it at 0010 the day it opened. We left Davis around 2140, got there around 2200, and the line was quite long. Some news crew was there, and there weren't as many greasy nerds as I thought there might be. Apparently people had been waiting since noon or some crap like that, but despite the unwavering nerdiness of others, we still managed to get seats that didn't suck.

The movie itself was about what I expected, if not a bit more. I went in expecting and hoping for two hours and thirty minutes of bloodythirsty lightsabre, spaceship and other kinds of battling and Lucas delivered. The script was fantastically crappy in many places, but that was to be expected. The funny part about that was even Ewan McGregor, a generally pretty good actor, choked on some of the lines because the lines were just so bad. Altogether though, there was not much room for Anakin to ruin the movie like he did the last one. He was pretty angsty in the beginning half, but after "he gives into his douche-ness", as Sean put it, he does a pretty okay job of being pissed and vengeful.

Lucas did an overall good job with the movie though. Even with knowing what was going to happen, the parts of the movie that were intended to be suspenseful were still suspenseful; the sad parts of the movie were still sad. Jar Jar Binks made all of two appearances and I don't believe he said a single word. C-3P0 took over as comic relief and even then he only made a few brief apperances thankfully.

PostScript

There is one particularly memorable moment in Episode III that I feel I must mention. At one point while Anakin is being pissed about something and being all dark-sidey, he starts yelling at someone about Obi-Wan and how Obi-Wan had turned the person against him (Anakin). The shot then pans up to Obi-Wan standing on the ramp of a spaceship with hands akimbo and feet about a shoulder width apart.

I really wish I had a picture of this to show you, because it was quite homosexual. I don't mean homosexual the way that kids nowadays use the word "gay" and "fag" and stuff; I mean it was really homosexual.

Anyway, that is all I wanted to say.
Good fight, good night.

5 minute thing

2005-05-17T19:01:00.000-07:00

I e-mailed a professor of mine from last quarter about maybe working
with his team over the Summer as an undergraduate researcher, and he
e-mailed me back, surprisingly, with an affirmative response. I don't
know what I'll be doing, how much I'll be doing it, or even if I am
going to be paid, but I meet with a grad student tomorrow and
hopefully some of that will be cleared up.
If this is working out the way I hope it does, I should be able to
help out with one of their current projects rather than being
relegated to some crappy thing on my own. Furthermore, the money I
make from the summer will help me to buy a skateboard, a snowboard,
boots and snow gear, and maybe a ticket to Japan for sometime within
the next year.
As I said though, I have no clue what the hell is going on and as such
I am crossing my fingers and hoping that things work out well
tomorrow.

In other news, I did worse than I thought I would on my Philosophy of
Law essay, which sucks. I also did pretty poorly on my Electronic
Circuits midterm, which really, really sucks. I am now quite tired of
school, and as such am counting the weeks until class is over. The
quarter is just half over and I can't wait for it to be done.

Also, I've never been a huge fan of the Star Wars series, and yet I am
seeing it late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning depending on
how you look at it. I will be in Sac waiting in line with Sean, Ave,
and a bunch of greasy nerds with light sabres at 2200 this Wednesday.
Let's hope I get through that in one piece.

Things could be worse

2005-05-15T18:23:00.000-07:00

It's a somehow warm and overcast day today, and it's been raining on and off throughout. This past week has been a little hectic, but things seem to be getting overall better. The quarter at UCD is about halfway over, which could be good or bad. Really it's seeming pretty bad because though I have yet to two of three midterms, I have a very bad feeling about both of them. Read that one a few times, it'll make sense, I swear.

I just finished re-reading the whole of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and now I am wondering what book series to read next. I never did read the Dirk Gently series by Douglas Adams, so I might do that.
I did however just re-watch the entirety of the anime Hellsing. I always liked the series, but really never liked the ending. It seemed too cliff-hangy to me. Turns out, I never actually finished watching the series and ended on the one before the last episode. No wonder I thought it ended on a cliffhanger though some others told me just the opposite.

I think I may have found myself a research position for over the summer, though I have little to no idea what will be involved with it. It's with a previous professor of mine whom I talked to on a few occasions. Cool guy, smart, does a lot of interesting crap, so I hope I can learn a fair amount from him and his group. Like I said though, I've only talked with him about it through e-mail, so I really don't know what's going on with it or what I will be doing, or even if it will be paid. I should be talking to one of his grad students soon though, that grad student also happening to have been a TA of mine whom I got along well with, so things should turn out ok.

Beyond that, I don't really know what to say. I've been feeling quite tired lately, though maybe that's been due to stress more than anything else.

I did see Sugano Sensei, my Japanese teacher from HS, at a skit thingy on campus. I wanted to talk to her, but I had class and the skits wouldn't be ending until class was half-over. I keep meaning to visit her at school, but time is lacking and I really don't know what I'd say.

Well, the weather outside seems like it's calmed down a bit; at the very least it shouldn't be raining for a little while. That being the case, I believe I am going to step outside and take a ride around the neighborhood.

Done with midterms, whee

2005-05-10T13:44:00.000-07:00

Midterms went okay I suppose. Already got my math one back and I got a 60/70. The average was a 56/70 though, which just angers me. I was hoping to nail the midterm with a perfect, but I just couldn't figure out one question. Oh well, maybe I can still manage an A in the class.

My Digital Circuits II midterm was just lame. I'm pretty sure I did okay, but all the same it was lame.

My Electronic Circuits II midterm was the one I just finished, and I don't think anyone really felt awesome about it. I was the first one out, and that was 5 minutes before class was over. I'm just crossing fingers over that one.

The one thing I do feel pretty good about however is my Philosophy of Law essay about kidney selling. I think I'll get at least a B, though I don't think it'll be impossible that I might nab an A on it. We will see.

Anyhow, now that midterms are over, the time for slacking some more has begun. I think I'm gonna go take a nap before my next class.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

2005-05-08T22:56:00.000-07:00

The movie was good. I was entertained by the whole thing though the story was different from that of the book in some ways. This seems reasonable though since Adams has introduced different characters and change importance of characters in each incarnation of his novel/radioshow, so whatev'. One thing did bother me more than mildly though; the movie did seem a bit too involved in trying to create some romance between Arthur and Trillian. As someone who has read the series, Trillian had never been more than a passing interest for Arthur and never some sort of true love of his. As such, it just seems weird to try and force anything between them, since Arthur's actual love was demolished along with the Earth. Am I being too nerdy now? I think I'll stop.

Anyhoo, I am now re-reading the book (anthology), which is helping me out in terms of getting over a right shitty previous few weeks. There isn't too much more to say than that the books are just great. I am enjoying them quite thoroughly for somewhere between the third and umpteenth time, and still there are things I find that time has mucked up such that I don't know exactly what's going to happen in some parts.
I'm now at the portion where he first speaks with Fenny in the train station. I make note of this because I've read this chapter many a time whilst reading the novels, and for the first time this chapter has actually been noteworthy to me. Weird how experience does that to you. So, I will leave you with the lines that so made me think about things past. I would highly recommend to anyone that they should read the series, I will gladly loan it to anyone who promises they won't destroy my copy.

"Perhaps," she added, "it wouldn't have gone so well if it wasn't for her." She gave a wry smile and dropped her hair forward over her face again.

It was perfectly true.

He had to admit it was perfectly true.

Midterm Time

2005-05-06T14:06:00.000-07:00

So, it looks like I'm getting sick. We'll see how bad it gets, but currently it's reminiscent of when I came down with a 24 hour flu and had to miss a midterm last quarter. The timing on the other hand is impeccable, since I have midterms today, Monday, and Tuesday.

I've got Probability Theory today, which I'm not too worried about. The class is going much better this time around, and I feel like I understand all the material quite well.

I've got Digital Systems II on Monday, which angers and confuses me. The class itself isn't so bad; the labs are sorta fun, there isn't much homework, and the lectures are only twice a week. The last quiz however sucked ass, and so I can expect the midterm probably will as well. Also, the midterm is open book, but I currently lack a book for a reason I don't really wanna bother talking about here, and so I'm in a bad position. Hopefully I can grab one from reserves tomorrow, but it seems like the book has been either on hold or checked out for an awfully long time.

Lastly I've got Electronic Circuits II on Tuesday, which just scares me. The class is kind of a scary class about transistors and stuff and.., yeah. Dunno what to expect from that. I will probably sleep little on Monday night and study like crazy both Monday and Tuesday. We will see how it goes.

Anyhow, hopefully this cold goes away pretty soon because if I have to miss a midterm this quarter, I might just be entirely ass-fucked.

English Composition Exam

2005-05-05T00:45:00.000-07:00

So I took an Upper Divison English Composition Examination on the 23rd of April and I swear it was probably one of the most incoherent essays I've written in a while. The article was one by some freelance writer entitled something I don't really remember. Something along the lines of "Could I have some quiet please?" or some crap like that. The article was about how music had infiltrated the everyday life of people to the extent that supposing you simply wanted silence while swimming, shopping, working out, you would be subject to music anyway. He gave examples of grocery stores, gymnasiums, and some public pool or another which had music pumped into the pool through underwater speakers.

The article had a valid point and I agreed with it to some extent, though ultimately the problem was that there was no way to enforce some sort of "please quiet down" ordinance. The prompt asked, "Has the author of this article convinced of his view at all? Why or why not and to what extent? Should the freedom to play music stop at another person's ears?" Why I remember that so well is quite obvious: it's a really freaking stupid essay topic. I sat there reading it wondering why they would have me write about something so inane. They weren't asking for views on both sides and whether the law had a right to interfere, they weren't asking for some sort of careful analysis of the article and its nuances, they were asking me a question that any fucking grade schooler would know the answer to.

I don't remember actually having a homework assignment on this, but I'm sure some kid somewhere got a worksheet when his class learned about the Bill of Rights. On that worksheet is a list of activities, such as, "Writing a story", "kicking a dog", "not voting", "protesting against a war", "threatening the president", "arranging a boycott", "arranging a sit-in", "homosexual conduct", "masturbation", "reading a book about Hitler". The child would then be asked to list what actions were protected under the Bill of Rights, and maybe even a short blurb about which article it fell under. The sad thing is, most of the things I wrote above would take more thought than "listening to music a little too loud".

That being the case, I had really no clue what to write for my essay. I tried writing an outline, but my brain just stopped working after reading the topic, and in retrospect my paper was really wishy-washy and had no point. I wrote about some crap and agreeing with the author, but feeling it was unenforceable and ultimately unconstitutional and maybe I mentioned something about freedom and God knows what else. I'm not sure if it was more bullshit, doublespeak, or the verbal equivalent of plugging my ears and going, "lalalala, I can't hear what you're saying".

Anyhow, the ultimate result of all this was a paper with good grammar, spelling, varied sentence types, and okay style, but without a real point.

Turns out that's what they wanted I guess. So yeah, I passed, no more upper div English for me, but man I wish I could have my essay back. Or at least the essay prompt. Both were really bad.