Blog: Entries Tagged With 'college'

Course grades for the Fall quarter are out. My grades are:

Database Design: B+
Ethics in Engineering: A
Morphology: A-

These are probably the best grades I've gotten in any quarter, since I tried the hardest this quarter. I'm not really thrilled about the B+, but it was a pretty challenging course, and graded on a strict curve.

Anyway, it's great to be done once and for all!

After 4 years and a quarter of sleepless nights, crazy projects, dozing off in class, and cramming... I am at last done with college!

I finished my last final today and I am stoked! But it's a bittersweet finale. I'll definitely miss UCLA for its culture, awesome professors, and friends that I've made (but luckily 95% of them are on Facebook).

The one thing I regret is not being more serious about classes in my first couple years. That came back to bite me not only GPA-wise, but also experientially. Not to say I didn't try hard, but I could've gotten more out of my education if I had thought of school as more than just busywork homework assignments and irrelevant memorization that would just be forgotten after the end of the course.

I can't change the past, but I hope to learn from it so that I have a better attitude for the future. At any rate, it feels great to finally be done.

Yesterday I informed Applied Signal Technology that I was accepting the Software Engineer position. I will start working on January 21, 2008.

From what I've seen thus far, I think I will enjoy working at AST and with the people there. The salary and signing bonus they offered and the benefits they provide are also competitive. And they even have a gym on-site. ;)

Well, this is going to be a big transition for me. But it's just another stage of life that everybody has to go through. I'm looking forward to what the future holds!

I just stumbled upon a logic game that's really fun, and it seems like it can be made infinitely challenging. It's (loosely) kind of like Sudoku, but may very well hold its own against the more popular game.

The game is nonograms, and the Flash game that introduced me to them is called Armor Picross 2. I'm sure there are tons of nonogram-based games out there, but this is the first one I found, and the music is soothing. :)

Anyway, back to schoolwork! Two papers and two finals remaining until I am done at UCLA!

This past Thursday I had a job interview for a Software Engineer position with Applied Signal Technology, a signals processing company headquartered in Sunnyvale. I flew up Wednesday night, got a rental car, and stayed overnight in a hotel, all paid for by the company.

Three engineers met with me successively during the interview and asked me a mix of questions ranging from database design to algorithms to the product design process. I then met with a senior technical recruiter to wrap things up.

All in all, I felt pretty confident during the interview; in fact, I had so much fun meeting and talking with people that it began to seem more like a friendly conversation than a daunting test of my knowledge. Apparently they liked me just as much, because three hours after the interview was over, the company called me and offered me the job.

The scariest part of the whole trip, however, was not the interview process but driving the rental car. I was given a sweet 2006 Chevrolet Impala LT, which has more engine power and electronic controls than any car I've yet to drive. Which is not saying much, considering that I drive mostly a 1996 Toyota Previa or a 1992 Mazda 626. Wednesday night, still getting used to the feel of the rental car as I drove through the airport and onto the freeway toward the hotel, I constantly felt like I was going to crash into something. Man, those 20 minutes were some of the scariest I've ever had. Any anxiety concerning the interview didn't even come close. ;)

Anyway, I'm still weighing my options, so I don't know if I will accept the offer. But if I do end up moving up north, one thing is for certain. It's going to be cold!

Thanksgiving is two days from now, but today I was wishing all my coworkers a Happy Thanksgiving Break, forgetting that I would see them tomorrow. I guess the fact that class was canceled for this afternoon and tomorrow morning is making me think it's Thanksgiving Break already. Almost, but not quite!

I'm looking forward to a nice four days off. And of course catching up on all the schoolwork/reading I'm behind in. :)

Some 140 companies appeared at the tech career fair at UCLA today. I did some research on several beforehand, and I got to talk to about a dozen of them at the fair. I had anticipated talking to a lot more, and I had brought 60 copies of my resume, but well.. time does fly.

Nonetheless I think my time spent was insightful and went pretty well. I also met four reps from different companies who knew people I knew, which was pretty rad. Hopefully I'll score some interviews!

I don't have class or work on Thursdays, and Fridays I have only two discussion classes, so I get a nice break at the end of the week. Today I finished rolling my and Aaron's many pennies, which amounted to 800, and took them to the bank. Then I blew that $8 on snack food at the Trader Joe's next door.

I'm really a sucker for Trader Joe's. They've got a pretty compelling marketing angle. It's like, "This food costs more than equivalent snack foods, and it's probably just as bad for me, but that's ok because it's all natural."

Finally. I've had a very long, but awesome, break. I got to go to Las Vegas and Europe, made new contacts at church and work and strengthened interpersonal relationships, finished reading a bunch of books I've always meant to get around to, seen growth in spiritual maturity, and deepened my relationship with Silly Goose. It's been a beneficial few months, but now it's time to finish my last quarter of school before getting a full-time job in the real world. Yikes!

Today is the official start of classes, but I don't have classes on Thursdays, and on Fridays I have only two, both of which are discussions. And both of which have been canceled since lectures haven't started yet. So I really don't go back until next week. Here's to making good use of my last days of... freedom. :)

Lately I've been helping to replace the computers in each Anderson classroom with newer ones. Most of the classrooms consist of a few rows of cushioned swivel chairs around a central podium with a computer in it. The podiums themselves have a button to raise or lower their height depending on the professor's preference. There is a monitor beneath the glass top of the podium for the professor to look at. A pull-out touchscreen device controls everything from the digital projector overhead, the retractable projector screen at the front of the room, and input from an optional laptop connection. There is a regular mouse on top of the podium, as well as a bluetooth-enabled gyro-mouse that can be operated by waving it around in the air. Not to mention a slick sound system tucked nicely behind the paneling of the walls.

Unfortunately, as nice as the podiums are, they weren't built to be technician-friendly. The only access is in the back of the podium (facing away from where the students sit), and reaching all the way in there to unplug/plug in cables isn't easy when you've got large controller devices and a hundred wires stuffed back there in a mess of spaghetti.

Anyway, it was cool to be doing something new for a change. The complexity of those classrooms amazes me. Compare that to the classrooms we have in the engineering/science buildings that consist of pretty much a chalkboard and chairs. And the chairs don't swivel.

All the free time I have at school before work forces me to be away from my computer (in other words productive), and consequently I'm finding myself reading a lot. I've already finished "Should I Get Married?" by M. Blaine Smith and "Prayer: The Cry for the Kingdom" by Stanley J. Grenz.

I just started "Sinners in the Hands of a Good God" by our very own Pastor David Clotfelter, and hopefully I'll get that done in a few days. I wish my textbook list for next quarter's courses would be published so that I can get a head start on all those.

Heh. If I had know that being on top of things could be so fun, I might not have procrastinated as much as I did in college.

My going to the gym only once a week isn't very beneficial, and I can't always rely on Priscilla to get me into the YMCA as a guest. So since I come down to UCLA every weekday in summer to work, and I have a lot of time between when the bus gets here and when my shifts start, it seemed good to sign up for a summer membership to the Wooden Center on campus.

Since I'm not enrolled in classes right now, I had to pay a nominal fee. It was $35 for the membership and $10 for renting a locker so I can properly stow my stuff. Not a bad price at all considering it's for my health and I'll be using the gym almost every day. Time to pump up these guns.. oh yeahhhh!

I'm back working at UCLA Anderson doing tech support for the summer, and yesterday was my first day. I'm working four hours a day, Monday through Friday, with my shifts starting in the afternoon. But I'm commuting by bus and the latest bus in the morning leaves at 9:30, and I need to take that one because the next one to Westwood comes 7 hours later. So I'm really leaving for work around 9:30am and getting back around 7:30pm.

After getting home today and eating dinner, I had to run to the gas station and supermarket to pick up some things. Then it was time to do some chores and administrative stuff. Finally I got only about an hour free time before it was time to get ready for bed.

It's only been two days of this routine and I'm already tired of it. How's it going to be down the line when I'm working a real, demanding job and have to support myself and maybe a family? How do people find time for leisure? I seriously don't know how people do it.

I woke up at 6:30 a.m. today which is three hours earlier than usual. None of my family was awake at that time. But it wasn't my idea at all- the reason I got up so early was.... my neighbor's oven.

Her kitchen oven was malfunctioning and wouldn't shut off and was getting hot. None of her family was home, so she rushed over to our place and frantically rang our doorbell and started shouting outside. And my room is closest to the front door.. so I was the one to wake up.

But when I got to her house, the oven had already stopped cooking itself, perhaps as a safety mechanism. But the control panel kept making this beeping sound that would persistently resume shortly after we tried to turn it off. Even power-cycling the unit by flipping the kitchen circuit breakers didn't fix it. So in the end my best advice was to leave the circuit breakers off while she tried to dig up the oven manual or contact the manufacturer for help.

When I got back I couldn't fall back asleep, so I started cleaning my room. I've been going through my old schoolwork/notes and realized something big: contrary to what I've believed, I actually do remember a lot of what I learned in school. Not intricate details, but the general knowledge is still there. Some things I don't specifically remember learning, I now use as if they've always been a part of me. I guess going to school really was important, after all. Shocker.

I also dug up my old College Board reports. I remember getting a 1510 out of 1600 on my SAT I, but I had no idea that before that I was just one percentile point away from being a National Merit Scholar. It's really funny how things like the SAT and AP tests mattered so much back then. I guess they're useful in the sense that they allow learning to be objectively measured, but there was just too much hype. Now, what really matters is the knowledge you've taken with you and how far you choose to go with it. That says way more than just some numbers.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I drive myself down to the Chatsworth Blvd. Park & Ride at St. Stephen's Lutheran Church, and then hop on the Commuter Express to go to work at UCLA. Today I did something that I've been fearing ever since I started my commuting regimen: I missed the bus.

I left home a couple minutes late, and as commuters know, a couple minutes can make all the difference. To make things worse, I had to park in a different parking lot than the one I've been using, because last time I got yelled at for unknowingly using the lot that's reserved for weekday staff. Unfortunately the smaller staff lot is never 1/4 full, and the much larger main lot was completely full. For such a small church, I wonder if it even gets that full on Sundays.

So by the time I had finished hunting around for a place to park, the bus had dutifully come and gone. It looked like I would have to take the dreaded 405 to work.

But as I continued down Chatsworth, I found out that there was no onramp on Chatsworth to get onto the 405, and I instead ended up hitting Sepulveda. Though I just as much dislike Sepulveda, I decided to take it all the way to work. The first 20 or so minutes went as expected: congestion, people driving way too slowly, and reckless hotheads cutting me off because I'm going too slow because of the people in front of me.

But after about Ventura Blvd., the traffic began to dissipate. By the time I got to Sepulveda's winding mountain pass, people were racing almost faster than the traffic on the freeway. Lots of twists and turns. Not many stoplights. It was almost kind of fun. By the time I got to UCLA, I had gotten there 10 minutes faster than if I had taken the bus.

So my little misadventure turned out alright. I know what I'm going to be taking next time I need to go that way during rush hour.

My prayers go out to the victims and others impacted by the Virginia Tech Massacre. May they find comfort and hope in these tough times.

It's important to never take life for granted. This could very easily have happened at any other campus, like here in California, at UCLA. The victims could have been my friends or even me. One minute you're going through what seems like another routine day, and suddenly it's all over.

I've been so tired lately. It's not even 2am yet and I can barely keep my eyes open. At school it was just the opposite- this would be the time when I would feel most awake.

I guess being at home around people who actually sleep at normal times (well, except my brother) is rubbing off on me. That and the fact that I've been sleep-deprived from having to wake up early to take the bus to work.

Wow, I've been neglecting this blog a little. I don't think I've gone more than a week this year without posting something, let alone two and a half. I guess I'm just enjoying vacation too much. ;)

I've taken spring quarter off, for reasons that I won't go into here but friends are well-aware of. Suffice it to say that I've been using my time pretty productively, uh.. for the most part. I'm back at home, and having time off to read, relax, do programming, and enjoy the company of others is quite nice.

I'm still working at my tech support job because I promised them I would stay till the end of spring, but I had them compact my hours into two days so that I don't need to commute as much. And I take the bus, so I don't have to deal with the hellish 405 rush hour traffic. Whatever guy came up with the idea for carpool lanes is a genius.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday I was with Priscilla and her parents in fabulous Las Vegas. The night we arrived, we walked down one side of The Strip and back up the other side. We were staying at the Circus Circus hotel at the north end and walked all the way to the Excalibur at the south end - nearly the entire four miles of The Strip. I never knew Las Vegas was so... dirty. I was surprised to see so much of the sidewalks under construction, and we couldn't walk five feet without seeing ads for hookers on trucks and in things that resembled newspaper dispensers (interestingly I never saw a dispenser for actual newspapers), and call girl cards strewn about the ground like confetti at a festival, and shady-looking people, who would never in their life pass for call girls, trying to hand them out. We ended up getting back to our hotel at 4 in the morning. Yeah, walking The Strip and taking pictures of all the flashy buildings was fun, but I wouldn't want to do it again, at least not the whole length of it...

So the next day, being a little tired, we stuck to the hotel. We checked out the mini-circus area where they had some pretty cool shows every half hour, the two most notable ones being where one guy was using just one hand to balance upside-down on top of another guy's head, and some chick being twirled from a tall pole like a tetherball, held by only her hair. That didn't look quite fun, but she seemed to enjoy it enough.

Finally, somewhere in there Priscilla and I decided to hit the casino. Since we have no game whatsoever and are cheap, we avoided the tables and played $2 in slot machines. And lost it all. Then we put $2 in DDR at the arcade. And lost there too.

So that was Vegas. It was fun seeing her parents' neurotic side in taking a billion pictures of everything that blinks, and I had a good time. I don't know if I would want to go back, but if I did, I'd better find out beforehand where all the good shows and hangouts are. And maybe learn how to gamble.

Ok, I guess blogging after a hiatus isn't so hard after all, once you finally get around to starting. Just look at how much I wrote. If you did manage to read through it all, I give it up to you. Give yourself a pat on the back.

A while ago I came across this site advocating Shutdown Day (which happens tomorrow), a social experiment for people to see if they can go computer-less for an entire day. With Spring Break starting tomorrow, I think it'll be good for me to attempt this as a way to start off my vacation on the right foot. I waste way too much time on the computer/Internet, and I don't think there's been a day when I haven't been on the computer except during camping trips and retreats.

Finals have gone ok. Today's CS final was worse than I thought it would be - 2 extremely easy questions, 2 extremely hard questions. I guess I could've studied more. I was doing above average in that class, but overconfidence does have a tendency to kill.

Well, I'd better get packed to go home. For the most part, it's been a fun quarter.

EE 103, Numerical Computing, was the only class that I wasn't sure if I would pass or not. I was lost throughout the entire quarter, and I completely BS'd the final despite studying nonstop from morning till night the two days prior. Somehow I managed to pass, and with a C+ too. I don't know how I pulled that off. I really don't. Somebody must love me.

School's going alright. Tomorrow will wrap up the last week before finals. My hardest final is on Monday, so all my efforts are going into that class. I'm doing well in my other classes, but I have another final and a project due on Tuesday.

I caught a cold sometime last week which evolved from a mere sore throat to congestion, headache, coughing, a slight fever, and eventually very severe asthma-like lung inflammation that resulted in wheezing and shortness of breath from even just walking to the bathroom. For the first time in several years, I found myself using my inhaler more than once in a day. It helped, but not well, because what I had wasn't exactly asthma.

Fortunately, thank God, that bad part lasted only a couple days. I'm not entirely well, but it's only mild sinus problems now.

These past couple weeks I've found myself forced to evaluate the direction of my life. I can't just keep being content to let the current carry me along. Pretty soon I'll be graduating, and going into the workplace, and possibly supporting a family (gasp, me and kids?). I can't keep being apathetic, and I have to be wiser about the decisions I make, for they won't affect just me. I need to be proactive about improving myself, but most importantly I need to be relying on Christ who gives me each day to live.

The title for my post comes from a comment my Linguistics professor made to me after class today. He told me that he was glad that I stuck it out through the course. This was because I had bombed a couple assignments in the beginning of the course, by skipping problems, when everybody else was acing them. I hadn't gone in for help when he made himself available, and that made him really angry and he actually told me that I should drop the class. But I told him I would change, and I studied harder, and made sure to get help when I needed it. I eventually made up completely for my grades by doing extra credit problems on the later assignments. That class is the only one I can already say for sure that I will get an A in.

Life is like that, too. You'll fall, sooner or later. But when you do, don't wallow in your misery, get up! Learn from your mistakes, and use every experience to make yourself better. Stick it out, and do nothing less than your best. In the end, I want to be able to say that I didn't waste my life, but that I made each day count.

I haven't gotten my blood pressure measured in a couple years, but I assumed I was doing ok because of my strict dietary regimen. But my mom measured my blood pressure today, and it came out high. She said it wasn't good at all for my age. I hope I'm not developing hypertension (chronic high blood pressure) like my dad. Both sides of my family are ripe with history of cardiovascular problems, so heredity is not on my side.

But heredity is never all that's to blame. Though I'm ok with my diet, I'm terrible with exercising and sleeping. It's time for some serious changes. I'm going to work out more and squeeze in some cardio. And I'll have to be more disciplined about going to bed. No more of this 2-3 a.m. business.

And if you thought I was a health-freak with food before, you're gonna find me even harder to deal with now (sorry Pris). But now I have a legit reason to be so picky. ;p I guess that means I can't even have unhealthy snacks.. even when I'm hungry. And I get hungry a lot. :(

I'm leaving in a couple hours for the 4-day Resolved conference in Long Beach. I'm pretty excited- I know the conference will be a lot of fun. I really hope that I get a lot out of it, and not fall asleep during every session like I did last year. =(

I also hope that I'll have some time to do homework and study. I have two midterms next week, woohoo.

I was feeling pretty crappy last week. I couldn't stay awake in class, concentrate on my studies, or understand the material. I skipped a class, didn't turn in a couple assignments, a even received a pretty vocal email from a professor for completing only half of my homework. I guess in a way I was getting depressed.

Priscilla changed that. Tuesday night I emailed her saying I wouldn't be going to Sojourners because I was feeling really down and having a tough week. On Wednesday I came back from class and was surprised to find her waiting in front of my door. She's pretty good at getting people to help with her surprises (in this case, my roommate) without spilling the beans to me (except that time with the passport ;p). So we hung out and she studied with me to make sure that I didn't squander any more time. She even brought me energy snacks and vitamin water! After her visit I've been feeling a lot better and, after a good night's rest, was actually able to sit through classes without dozing off.

I was too busy to go home for the weekend, so yesterday she came down to UCLA again (not unannounced) and we studied and did our Spiritual Disciplines study that we had to postpone (oops). Today I've been doing schoolwork all day. This weekend has been the most productive I've had in quite a while, and I feel like I'm getting back on track. Things will be ok.

I'm really thankful to God for giving me such a caring friend and spiritual partner. I guess even I can be emotional sometimes, and it's nice to have a shoulder to lean on and somebody who can help me get back on my feet. I hope I'll be able to do the same for her. Thanks, Silly Goose. :)

I got a ride out to Sojourners with Shirley again. Priscilla gave her testimony, and her friend Justin and his girlfriend Jacky came. They're really cool people. I hope they come back again; Priscilla can bribe them with music.

Today we had a Survivor/Fear Factor themed social arranged by our unofficial activities coordinator Aaron. Man, he's got some crazy fun ideas in that head of his. I can see why he's in charge of socials.

I was supposed to stay up to do homework, but I'm really out of it today, so I'm just going to sleep. I've been falling asleep in class every day this week. I'm going through somewhat of an emotional and physical rut. Hopefully sleeping early for once will help turn that around. Oh and catching up on homework over the weekend.

I recently found out that Shirley, Steve's fiancee, works and lives close to UCLA, so I arranged with her to get a ride to Sojourners tonight. It was great conversing with her in the car, and finally being able to attend Sojourners during the school year. I just might keep coming back with her every week. And it's a win-win situation: my being in the car allows her to use the carpool lane and beat rush-hour traffic!

So I got back to school around 10:30 and started the EE 103 homework that I've been putting off (for semi-valid reasons), but I was soon distracted by phone calls from Priscilla and then Chi! Which wasn't a bad thing. My social life has really taken off in the past few months, but I don't want it to interfere (too much) with school. Not that I don't enjoy talking and hanging out with people. But it's important to find the right balance.

Understanding how students like to procrastinate and start getting busy towards the end of the quarter, my Computational Linguistics professor assigned the hardest assignments for the beginning of the course. His rationale is that after these couple assignments are done with, it'll be smoother sailing as far as his class is concerned, which I think is a good idea.

We're doing programming in OCaml, and fortunately I've used it before in my Programming Languages class. The first assignment ended up taking me 2 hours to do. A lot of it was just copying and pasting and modifying a couple lines of code. I think I just might enjoy this class. Seriously though, I've always had a thing for natural language processing and the like. I hope I get a lot out of this class.

On the other hand, I was up till 3:30 last night doing my homework for Algorithms and now I'm super-tired and couldn't stay awake in class. I guess that's my punishment for spending the whole three-day weekend hanging out with people.

A bunch of us met up at China Star to kick off Chi's going away party. From there we headed to a nearby convalescent home where most of us split up into groups of two to go talk to residents. Crescentia, Ezekiel, and I stayed in the dining room and played piano and sang for the few (sleeping) residents in there. I guess it's a good thing nobody was listening because I messed up playing quite a bit. A few keys on the piano also didn't work at all...

After that we headed down to Priscilla's house to chillax and drink very sugary strawberry smoothies(?) We ended the long day at the food court at the mall where I had spaghetti with some pretty gross-looking meatballs. Aaron brought me and Christina back to UCLA. This weekend has been pretty exhausting. I'm struggling to type all this because I'm pretty out of it right now.

I also fried my phone charger. It's very dry in the Valley, so I'm getting shocked from touching everything from car doors to my dad's laptop. When I was trying to detach the charger plug from my phone, a spark from my finger contacted the plug, travelled up the wire and caused a huge spark to blow out of the charger base and instantly kill the thing. At least there's a large supply of new ones on eBay. For now, I have to use my car charger coupled with my dad's car-wall converter.

Yesterday I went with Priscilla and her parents to the YMCA. I gotta hand it to them- they're pretty good at dedicating time to exercise almost every day. I really need to go to the gym more. My arms are really sore after working out.

Today Priscilla and I joined Steve and Shirley for lunch at Thai BBQ. They're going to be mentoring us in our relationship. Priscilla and I also had our first discussion for our study of "Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life."

Tomorrow a bunch of people are getting together for Chi's goodbye party. Aaron planned all of it.

Somehow I need to find time to get done all the homework and studying that I've been putting off...

The plan today was for Priscilla to pick me up from school and the two of us head down to Chinese Bible Church, where her uncle Donald is the senior pastor. I had checked directions on Mapquest and knew we needed to go south on the 405 freeway and take the Santa Monica Blvd exit.

So there we were, cruising down the 405, and somehow both of us failed to spot the right exit. What we did spot was a junction sign that said Santa Monica, which we followed and found ourselves suddenly on the 10 freeway. We quickly got off and tried to get back to the 405 but couldn't find any on-ramp, so we ended up going south on Sepulveda Blvd which I knew intersected with Santa Monica Blvd. But since we were already unknowingly south of our destination, and I have a good sense of direction but a bad sense of distance (and no familiarity with the area), we just kept going... and going.

So faithfully following Sepulveda's curvature, we passed through Mar Vista and Culver City, Westchester and the famous LAX, and El Segundo. By this time we were half an hour late for church and were pretty sure that we had missed our destination, so we turned on a street trying to get back to the 405, and instead found ourselves at the end of the road at a place known as... the beach. Apparently the sight of the waves rolling onto the sandy shore was too captivating, and we realized that if we did manage to find our way to church, the church service would be almost over, so we decided to stay.

So the moral of the story is: a GPS unit is really useful to have in a car. And also that God (with his sense of humor and all) works in mysterious but wonderful ways. I don't think it was an accident that both of us missed the turnoff and that we ended up 20 miles off course at a beautiful beach with beautiful weather. I had my Purpose Driven Life book, so we finished our study right there and had a good time of spiritual discussion. I think we got more out of our discussion than we would've if we had made it to church.

So that wonderful winter vacation is finally over. It's been great hanging out with people almost every day, crashing (Christian) parties, strengthening relationships with friends and family, and growing in spiritual wisdom. Aside from having to wake up early once more, I'm (mostly) excited about starting a new school quarter. Still, I wish vacation had been longer, since for once I didn't spend all of it loafing around. I even managed to study for my next classes, albeit only two chapters when my goal was two books. We'll see how that goes.

Here's to a new year!

Intended as an act of "intellectual philanthropy," MIT will provide free access to course material including notes, video and audio lectures, and homework assignments for all 1,800 of its courses by the end of the year. The online program, called OpenCourseWare, requires no registration and is available to anybody with internet access and a desire to learn.

News article here.

The new year is quickly approaching (2 hours and 4 minutes remaining at the time I'm writing this). 2006 has truly been a great year. Here are some of the highlights of my year:

• Got a job at school that has helped in my study of computers
• Got my first A+ in college
• Grown closer to God and to friends
• Finally got a girlfriend, who cares about me as much as I her
• Saw a good friend come to faith in Christ
• Moved and redesigned my personal site

May 2007 bring another year of blessing and joy to us all!

Another quarter has drawn to a close. I soon shall be going home, basking in a much-needed euphoria called winter break. I'm now just finishing up my shift at work, bored out of my mind since there's nobody around. This whole week this place has been a ghost town, with students being too busy with studying to come in asking for computer help.

But it's all good. I finished my CS final this morning with an hour to spare, and I think I did pretty well. Hopefully this will supplement my abominably low project scores. We shall see.

These past two days I did something that I haven't done for as long as I can remember: all work and no play. I've been working on my CS project every minute of my available time. No games. No aimless browsing the web. And tonight I finished it, two days ahead of schedule.

I was about to start studying for my Thursday final when I got a call from Priscilla. Long story short, we're officially in a relationship.

... Um. People at church already knew we were dating. I didn't want to ruin the surprise until we were going steady. But somebody had to let the cat out of the bag early!

So ok, yeah. Nobody has to guess now. Priscilla and I are now girlfriend and boyfriend. Respectively. Ahem.

And now I'm blogging instead of studying for my final. Grr, look what you made me do, Priscilla!

:)

Describes my reaction to seeing UCLA take the win in football over USC for the first time in 7 years. After last year's abysmal game, and with our record this year, I thought I'd never see us beat USC in my years as a student.

Incredible. Truly incredible. Go Bruins!!

I love my job as a helpdesk technician. Some of the people who bring their laptops in have funny questions. One guy brought in a laptop where the battery would not charge. Turns out he just never had the computer plugged into an outlet.

This past (Halloween) Tuesday Priscilla kidnapped me and Christina from UCLA to go to CCAC for our annual [International] Fun Factory carnival. Even though I had a midterm to study for and got back to school very late, it was great helping out. Fun Factory is a great way for our church to reach out to the local community.

Priscilla and I were working at the monkey hula-hoop toss booth, and we were scheduled from 6-8 but apparently only Deborah signed up after us, so Priscilla ended up staying overtime while I walked around like a lazy guy and watched the magic show going on. Thanks Priscilla, you're a very fun friend! ;)

Today was interesting.

I've been in a mental, physical, and spiritual rut since school started. I've been excruciatingly busy, sleep-deprived, and since last week just out of it. I've also been going home every weekend, and customarily not studying well there, a great ingredient to add to the mix.

Today started pretty lousily. My brother and I were to drive to church separately from my parents, who had to leave early. Before she left, my mom woke us up, but we fell right back asleep. We would've missed church (or been very late) if it weren't for her calling 15 minutes before the starting time to ask us to bring something that she had forgotten. Needless to say, I was pretty tired, and I ended up nodding off during half of the sermon.

Adult sunday school went better. We are doing a seminar on spiritual warfare, and the topic was the breastplate of righteousness from the Armor of God section of Ephesians 8. The breastplate back in the day was also called the heart protector because of its obvious function.

In the same way metaphorically, God's breastplate is the strength we gain from his Word to protect our hearts from the snare of guilt that the devil brings. This is a big issue for me, as I always struggle with guilt from wrongdoings, as well as for not living the Christ-centered life I think I should be. I sometimes feel that God can't forgive and accept me because I am so wretched in his eyes. But my group leader said this kind of thinking is a slap to God's face. It is denying that his grace is sufficient to cover even our biggest sins.

In the afternoon I met with my discussion group to go over the first three chapters of the book we are studying - The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. Unfortunately, due to unforseen constraints, the group has dwindled down to just me and Priscilla. But we had a good conversation, and from Chapter 3 I realized that my life is driven mostly by guilt.

I arrived home exhausted and couldn't help taking a nap. I awoke right before dinner, still fatigued, and feeling (overdue) illness creeping over me. I realized that, despite being behind in school, I had not done any work over the weekend, and now it'd be even harder because I was getting sick. I felt miserable.

But afterwards, as my mom was driving me back to school, I had a moment of clarity when everything I had heard that day sunk in and clicked. God really did know every detail of our lives, before we were ever created. I can stop worrying about how things will turn out because whatever it is I am going through, he has allowed it. My life is in the hands of someone who is vastly more powerful and wise than I will ever be. And he has accepted and chosen me. There is nothing that can separate me from his love.

After I realized this, I confessed my biggest struggle to my roommate and asked him to help keep me accountable. I will no longer allow guilt for things done in the past to interfere with how I live in the present. I thanked God for what he has done for me, and I asked him to give me a renewed sense of purpose. I still don't know his will for me, but going through life, going through school and doing my daily grind, have a new meaning.

Whatever we do, we should do it for his glory. It's not about me. It's all about God.

So classes started last Thursday, and I've been swamped with work ever since. 100 pages of reading for Linguistics, 50 for Psychology, and requisite but not required readings for my two Computer Science classes. I'm learning to appreciate school more and I've managed to avoid slacking off and falling asleep in class, but it's very, very tiring. Not to mention I'm getting less sleep than is ideal and have had to put personal and club-related projects on hold because I simply don't have time.

Every day I have a solid block of work and class from morning till afternoon. I have to get sack lunches and eat on my way between buildings. Wednesdays are my worst days because I have a full 7 hour day.

As far as classes go, Linguistics and Psychology are actually pretty interesting. My Compilers class is unique in that it incorporates what I've learned in my previous 3 years of CS classes. It sounds fun, but I haven't yet seen the projects that are supposed to be killer.

And finally, my Circuits lab is.. well how should I put it, the TA doesn't seem to have it together. Today he gave two quizzes randomly in the middle of a lecture. And he was speaking over a PowerPoint presentation made by some professor from a different university. He was reading almost word for word and, when asked questions about it, would mumble something unintelligible. I don't know if he really understood the slides himself.

I bought a used Verizon phone off eBay and activated it as a replacement for my damaged phone. So I will be answering my phone again.. to the extent that I regularly do, at least. ;)

Moving into the dorms was a breeze. I arrived on the last day when most people had already moved in, so I didn't have to fight anyone getting stuff from the van up to my room.

At first it looked like all my stuff wouldn't fit comfortably, but being the engineer that I am, I was compelled to rearrange all the furniture to achieve maximum space efficiency. So this year I get to have my server next to my desk instead of hidden behind my fridge.

I also got a new 19" monitor, so I'm running a dual display setup. Being able to watch a movie fullscreen while doing work on the other is sweet.

A couple weeks ago Tom Shen from church hooked my resume up with the company he works at- Digital Insight, a leading banking software provider. I'm going back to school in fall, so I could only work for summer, and there weren't any summer positions available. But the HR manager contacted me when one finally opened up, and I went in for an interview.

Both the HR manager and the interviewers seemed impressed by my resume and interview performance. Nonetheless I got passed up because, according to them, they were looking for somebody who could ideally work longer than summer. Go figure.

No matter. The position didn't seem too engaging - doing basic hardware work such as wiping hard drives and doing base Linux installations on machines, and the occasional office work like lifting boxes. Plus, I would've had to drive 1 hour in each direction to their facility in Westlake Village.

And it leaves me free to pursue other, more interesting venues. For example, yesterday I and another guy, Fred, were appointed the System/Web Administrators for ESUC, an engineering society at UCLA that runs a network of computers and a central web server.

ESUC hasn't had a sysadmin for a year, so their site was a tad disheveled. Fred and I spent 6 hours hacking CMS modules on the server to get ourselves in with admin privileges, and filtering out the hundreds of spam messages that had accumulated on the message board. The site looks better than a pile of fish already.

Ever since it was bought by AOL, Winamp's stability has gone under. I've downloaded a handful of versions that incorporated fixes for "critical security bugs" only to have them crash when I simply tried to play something.

On a more positive note, all my grades for the Spring quarter have been released. In my Automata Theory class that I feared I would fail, I got a C. In my AI class, an A-. And in my Circuit Design lab, the first A+ I've gotten in college. I am elated.

So finals are finally over. I think I aced one of them, did decently on another, and uh.. well let's not talk about the third. So I guess that more or less balances out...

I finished up the week at work. The fact that people don't come in for help too often is nice during the year when you need time to do homework or study. But since finals were over, it was tremendously soporific. Like class.

Lastly, Raymond seems annoyed that my blog has seemingly turned into an advertisement page with all the links I've been posting lately. Sorry Raymond, I guess you're right. This one's for you: User-contributed UPC Database.

I just spent another whole day programming for fun when I was supposed to be studying. I'm sooooo addicted.

Today was the first day I got up before 9 this quarter. It was also the first day of this quarter that I had breakfast. Granted, there are very few things in life that could actually motivate me to pull this off. This one happened to be my new job.

As of today, I'm working as a helpdesk technician at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. We support mainly grad students who use laptops. People having issues bring their laptops in and we troubleshoot.

It's a pretty laid-back job since people aren't coming in all the time, so I'll get to do homework when I'm just sitting around. And getting paid over $100 a week isn't too shabby either.

I've been programming almost non-stop today and yesterday, but it's been for fun, not for homework. I haven't even started my two homework assignments that are due tomorrow. I didn't even go to class today.

What's wrong with me?

I found this connection speed tester through Theresa's blog.

dslreports.com speed test result on 2006-04-20 02:38:29 EST:
45478 / 15509
Your download speed : 45478 kbps or 5684.7 KB/sec.
Your upload speed : 15509 kbps or 1938.6 KB/sec.

Spring Break is over already? :(

Finals start in three days, and I haven't started studying. How typical.

Happy Chinese New Year! Woof woof.

Sorry for the paucity of updates. Two weeks ago I killed my laptop messing around with the internal hardware. Due to the holiday season, it was hard to find a repair shop, and the one I settled on took a while to determine that the motherboard was burnt out. I found out it would cost $500 for me to get a new board, so I decided to build a desktop instead.

Fortunately we already had most of the parts at home and I went to Fry's to get the remaining parts for $400. Here's what my new system looks like for the interested:

2 GHz AMD Athlon64 3200+
512 MB DDR RAM (I want to upgrade to 1 GB)
80 GB Western Digital HDD, 7200 RPM
256 MB GeForce 6600 LE (PCI Express)

I worked at Toys 'R Us for 3 weeks doing mostly cashiering. It was pretty boring (and tiring) standing around the whole day. The week before Christmas was insane, and they had me working 10 hours a day for 5 days. But at least I now have a job to put down on my resume, and I made $500, which I unfortunately used most of building that computer.

Man, these entries keep accumulating on the front page because I'm too lazy to archive them since I was planning to revamp my site. I can't believe it's already been half a year since I decided to do that. I was planning to get it done this winter but the sudden lack of a computer made it difficult. Hopefully I'll find some time in between the stuff I have to do at school.

Speaking of which, classes are extremely soporific.

Woot, crazy computer science midterm tomorrow! It's going to be 767861230981 times harder than the first midterm. Speaking of crazy... I made a variant of the well-known (and annoying?) Britney Spears song "Crazy":

I'm going craaaaaaaazy, I just can't sleep
I gotta study, I'm in too deep
Whoa-oh-oh craaaaaaaazy, and it feels like crap
Baby, engineering makes your life like that.

I know, I'm a dork.

3 midterms. 1 lab report and 1 project. Quite a lot to have done for next week. It's slowly coming along, but since I lack discipline it's a real struggle to stay on track.

Thank God for tonight's Daylight Saving's "Fall Back." Funny how I get some extra time during the busiest weekend this quarter. Coincidence? At any rate, I'd better make the most of it.

I love my Raymooo! He saved my butt on my Java assignment and spent a couple hours helping me debug. If it wasn't for him, I would've turned in my assignment late and with errors again.

Raymooo is the Java master! Hooray!

Whew, school is demanding. The workload isn't heavy, but it's difficult. Take my CS 131 homework, for example. We're learning a language called OCaml, and the code we have to write is like 30 lines long. It's not a lot, but you really have to know what you're doing. No time to fall behind.

Speaking of that homework, it's due in 3 hours.

And it's not helping that the song currently playing in my media player is "Bang On the Drum All Day."

I got to go to the Getty Center today with Priscilla. It was only my second time there, and last time I went there for a project for my Art History class and hence didn't get much free time to look around. We actually covered most, if not all, of the Getty today. We went through the North, East, South, and West Pavillions, the garden, and the Rembrandt exposition. I've never seen a Rembrandt work, let alone 16 of them.

Afterward we decided to rent the horror movie she'd been wanting to show me for a while: What Lies Beneath. It was already night, and we turned off the lights and turned up the volume to the max to heighten the effect. Sorry to say though, it wasn't that scary. I can't believe Priscilla was so frightened (and it being her second time watching it) that she had to close her eyes during some scenes. Then again, I'm afraid of heights, even when I believe fully that the high structures I'm on were designed by competant and sound-minded engineers. As I say, fear is always irrational. ;)

CS 118: B-
CS 188: B
Math 61: B
Phy Sci 5: A

Those are much better than the grades I've gotten in quarters past. After all, I got a C in most of the CS classes I've taken. I really did put more effort and commitment into my classes this quarter. But I know I could've done better, and I'm excited about the soon-to-come fall quarter, in which I will push myself even harder. For now though, summer is here, and it is good. ;)

Yesterday, after getting home with our van fully-laden with my dorm possessions, I realized that I had forgotten one important step in the move-out process: to turn in my room key and sign out. Since I didn't want to incur a $120 charge, I had to drive back to school. What a way to start summer vacation, eh? =)

On another note, all the stuff I brought home is heaped carelessly on my floor, next to many other boxes, one of which was from LAST year's move-out. The fact that I can't even get across my room without stepping like a guy trying to cross a river over randomly-interspersed rocks, has prompted me to start tidying up. I guarantee that my room will be the neatest in the house. I just wiped 7 years of dust from one of my cabinets!

My RA confiscated my laptop! Well actually, I let him borrow it because his computer broke and he needed to type 3 reports. I just got it back this morning, hence the lack of blog updates lately. Lots has happened so here's a quick overview:

Finals: CS 188 was mostly coding so I think I did pretty well. CS 118 I didn't read the textbook completely so I didn't know how to answer a few questions. Math 61 I did ok except in the topic of recurrence relations, from which he gave us the most questions. And Phy Sci 5 was decent.

I also turned 20. I can't believe my teenage years are gone. I'm getting so old! Soon I shall learn the meaning of tax forms, home equity, and the difference between HMOs and PPOs. Can't wait.

I'm going home in less than half an hour. I don't know if I'll be able to update my blog from home since it doesn't let me FTP in from outside UCLA. Unless I can get through by using another server as a middle-man, there will be no updates on this site for the whole summer. In that case, I might update on my alternate site. Also my Tagboard is back up- many thanks to Theresa for hosting it! I'll be on that every day.

Alright, time to start packing. Anson signing off for now.

Update: I'm at home now and figured out how to FTP in. All I had to do was change one setting in my FTP program from active to passive transfer mode. To think, all those vacation periods when I wasn't able to update my blog from home because of that... Anyway, I'm glad I found out now instead of in the middle of summer. So it looks like I won't be shutting up anytime soon. ;)

Saturday: CS 188, CS 111
Tuesday: Math 61
Wednesday: Phy Sci 5

Looks like I have my 2 hardest finals back to back tomorrow, and my easiest final last. At least that means I'll be able to get my CS finals over with and not have to worry about them again... until I get my grades. :S

Our network has been pretty sluggish in the past few days. Today I visited our Resnet page to find it hacked with a not-so-friendly message "Red Eye: Education [bleep]" (censorship mine) and a couple IRC links. This group seems to have a pretty long track-record.

I'm still trying to find out whether our network has been compromised. It's still running sluggishly.

Oh, busy day. I awoke suddenly around 7:45 in the morning and, being groggy and blurry-eyed, I thought the clock read 1:45 (pm). I exclaimed, "Oh crap! I missed my classes!" as I cursed myself for staying up late to do my math assignment when it caused me to oversleep and miss my chance to turn it in. I ended up falling back asleep until the alarm clock sounded at 9, upon which I realized the truth. Then there was NO way I was missing class..

Tonight I headed down to the track to once again challenge my running stamina. I ended up doing 6 laps (1.5 miles) without slowing down, which is double what I pulled off last time. This running is showing great results, one of which is a decrease in the frequency of being late to class!

What do you do if you thought a particular homework assignment was due tomorrow, and you logged online to get the assignment so that you could start working on it, only to find out that it's actually due 45 minutes from now? To make things more interesting, assume you hadn't read any of the 100-page chapter from which the problems come from.

Would you quickly glance through the sections you think are relevant, putting together incomplete pieces of the puzzle with interpolations of your own logic, scribble through the problems and dash across campus to turn in the paper in the drop box, not one minute late?

Well, I did. And boy, what fun.

I haven't done any significant running since high school, but I'm trying to pick it up again. This past Saturday I found I could run only 1 lap on the track (quarter mile) before getting tired, so I ran and walked alternately for a total of 6 laps.

Tonight I went again and ran 3 laps consecutively, then walked 2, then ran 1, walked 1, ran 1 as fast as I could and took 1 more for cooldown. Now if that isn't major improvement, I don't know what is. ;p

This afternoon I had my first in-person interview down at Symantec in Santa Monica. Prior to it, I told myself to stop worrying whether or not I would get the position, but to go into the interview giving my all and using it as a learning experience.

The interview was broken into four parts. I think I did relatively fine in the first two, but in the latter two where I had to write some code and talk about myself, I made some mistakes. Altogether I didn't come across as a strong candidate, and that's something I'll have to work on and learn by doing.

I'm definitely glad for the extra bit of experience I've acquired today. I'm not too dishearted because I didn't expect much from the start. I gave it my all, and that's what's important. The only thing that sucks is that I have a callus on each ankle from those AWFUL dress shoes. =)

Oh, and Happy Friday the 13th!

Today I got a ride to a church called Lighthouse Community Church with some AACF'ers: David, Martin, and Dennis. The church is a little small, but they have a great pastor and great people. I think they have a lot of potential to grow and expand.

In the afternoon I watched What Dreams May Come, starring Robin Williams and Annabella Sciorra. That movie was just... weird. Borrowing elements from Hinduism/Buddhism, Christianity, and Greek mythology, it interwove them with its own fabrications into a synthetic, Hollywood-packaged idea of the afterlife that barely held its ground. In other words, it wasn't that great.

The Math midterm wasn't so bad. In fact, I think I may have aced it. =)

I'm also aiming to get in shape. I went to the gym and lifted weights for an hour and did the bicycle thing for half an hour. I can't lift much right now (I could barely bench-press the bar alone..) but it's a start. I'm definitely going to go more often now. Oh, and I don't remember if I've said this before, but I also eat salad now. ;)

I really am getting back into my schoolboy, achievement-oriented mentality from which I've been too long absent. I just finished my math assignment that's due Friday. What's even better, I read ahead in the book to figure out how to do the last section. ;)

I just uploaded my resume to the UCLA Career Center database. I uploaded it as an MS Word document, and when I tried reading it online it opened as a PDF file. Call me a newbie, but I never knew there were programs that converted MS Word to PDF.

<searches Yahoo and finds 29 million results for ".doc to .pdf">

Yeah.. I'm a newbie.

I'm trying to avoid selling my textbooks back to the UCLA store because they hardly pay me anything. So I posted an ad online for my math book, selling it for $55, and within a day I had 2 buyers. I contacted the first guy and set up a time where we could meet, and turned down the second guy.

Today I met up with him and sold the book. When I got back I found a third buyer had contact me.. If I had known this book was so popular, I probably would've charged more. ;)

I updated my schedule and incorporated colors into all my schedules (past and present) so that they're easier to read.

I'm also doing better in school. I did all my homework last night and slept at the earliest time I've slept in weeks: 1am. Today I bought my Computer Science textbook from a student (cheaper than from the textbook store) and I plan to read up on that. I think I'll be alright this quarter. =)

I always seem to do much better on midterms than on finals. This finals week was all downhill for me. I had Electrical Engineering and Math on Monday. EE went pretty well- I got 75/100 when the mean was 65 (take that you EE majors!). Math I didn't do so hot- I didn't know how to do a couple problems.

Then came Computer Science on Wednesday where I didn't know how to do any of the problems but I kinda winged it. Finally there was Art History today, where I knew only 1 of the slide ID's and thus WASN'T able to wing it.

Seems like once you get a credit card, new offers just pour right in. My mom stopped by UCLA on her way back from work last night to drop off my jacket, and she brought 5 pieces of mail that had come for me. Four of those were credit card offers, and one was my monthly credit card bill. o.O

BOL has been giving me trouble again. For about two weeks now, I haven't been able to get in using my FTP program. Kenny gave me a workaround that involves SSH'ing into his server and FTP'ing from there, so here I am back again, posting my melange of rambling. Sorry for the half month of silence.

For the first time this quarter, I understood EVERYTHING that was said in my Electrical Engineering class. The teacher presented the topics with clarity and related the formulas to the concepts well. Everything made sense, and everything tied together. Too bad it was a substitute teacher.

Last night, as I was frantically cramming for my CS midterm, I felt so lost (as I have been for quite a while in that class) and was about to drop the class. I didn't though, and today when I took the midterm it was, well, not what I expected at all. There were three problems, all of which came with hints. I think I did them right for the most part. They weren't hard at all, and I was the second to leave the room. Hope I didn't get stuff seriously wrong and over-simplify what should've been complicated work. <knocks on wood>

But I think I've been doing alright on my midterms. Last week I got 95% on my math midterm, and this week my EE midterm was challenging but not as hard as I thought; I probably scored around the median. And this weekened I will study profusely for my upcoming Art History midterm.

I think I'm going to be alright this quarter.

There was a water outage throughout the dorm area in the afternoon, and I thought some construction crew had broken a pipe again. When we were at dinner the water was restored, and with my mouth burning from all the spicy food, I could not help but visit the soda machine multiple times to fill my glass with water.

Only after dinner did I find out that the water outage was not localized to UCLA, but it affected a large area around here. On the Internet, I read that there had been some leak at a DWP reservoir and there was an advisory to boil tap water before drinking it, because there might be harmful levels of bacteria and other organisms in the water. And that's when my stomach starting hurting.

Seems like the start of every quarter brings a false fire alarm. At 3:30 a.m. the fire alarm in Sproul went off (and as usual there was no hint of fire), and everybody had to exit the building. Fortunately the alarm was shut off pretty quickly and we all went back to sleep.. or party, or whatever people had been doing.

Then at 7, it went off again. Again everybody filed groggily out of the building, but fortunately the alarm was shut off pretty quickly again. They didn't tell us what caused it- nobody ever seems to know. This is probably a new record- I don't know if we've ever had two false alarms on the same night. I went back to sleep pretty pissed off.

And then it went off a third time at 10.....

I was ranked 8th from the bottom in my Electrical Engineering class. I failed both quizzes and got a bit below the mean on the midterm. And on the final.... I didn't know how to do a SINGLE problem so I bs'd all of them. Somehow they fell for it and gave me 20 points total out of 70, which was way below the mean but 20 more points than I had expected. But I expected to get an F in that class, and I should have. But I checked my grade today, and somehow I ended up with a C!!! Either everybody did bad, or the teacher felt sorry for me (implausible). What a Christmas present! Thank you God!!

I did much worse than I expected in Math and Physics Lab: both C's (the curve was harse). In Computer Science I failed the final even worse than I failed the second midterm, but my perfect project scores and extra credit (and possibly sympathy for me being the only sophomore in the class) boosted me to a B-.

In summary, three C's and a B-. Not what I had hoped for at the start of the quarter, but probably better than I deserved. I always get fired up before school starts, and then lose that fire as the quarter progresses. Somehow I need to find a way to keep myself motivated and on track. In other words, I need to blow up my computer. =(

There's no place like home.

Today is a great day, in two ways! First, I found out that my partner and I got 100% on our Computer Science Project 2. Second, I just submitted our Project 3 online. Two days ago we had no code at all and were completely lost on how to do it. But then my partner found some helpful webpages, and we took it step-by-step from there until... booya! A completed, fully-functional project. Though it was kinda scary 3 minutes before the project was due at 6:00 (and the submission period ends EXACTLY at 6) scrambling to move all the files into a folder and trying to figure out how to zip them in Linux. That was too close for comfort.

Will I EVER see UCLA beat USC in football in my college years here?

Friday, Saturday, and today were computer hell, with an uplifting heavenly ending that made it all worth it. On Friday, I decided that going down to the Linux lab everytime I wanted to work on my computer project was too inconvenient, so I set out to install Linux on my own computer. The brand of Linux we use in the lab is Fedora, so I went to the Fedora website and began downloading the four 650 megabyte install files for Fedora Core 3. File 1 turned out to be corrupt because the data transfer screwed up somewhere, but I thought I'd try File 2. File 2 was ok, but File 3 after was corrupt. I tried downloading File 1 again, but the transfer messed up again. I tried File 4, and it was good. So back to File 1. Corrupt. I left Files 1 and 3 downloading overnight. File 3 finished and was corrupt, and File 1 halted halfway.

Then I remember that we are supposed to use Fedora Core 2, not Fedora Core 3. I had to find a mirror site that hosted Core 2. I had to search for a while, because most either didn't let me connect or were too slow. This time I used GetRight to manage the downloads; I wasn't taking any more chances with faulty transfers. The internet DID cut out every half an hour or so, but thankfully everything worked (GetRight rocks!), and I got all four Fedora Core 2 install files. By then it was Saturday.

So Saturday I mainly made backups of all important files in Windows. I don't have a DVD burner, so I burned to CD-RW's, which unfortunately hold only 650 megabytes and have a max write speed of 4x. This took nine CD-RW's altogether (my fault for having 4 gigs of music), each at a veeeeery slow burn rate. After this, I burned the four Fedora files to CD-R's, which thankfully can burn up to 24x on my machine.

Now came the intricate part. I had to decrease the size of my Windows partition and create a new partition to put Linux on. First I defragged a couple times to move all the data to the beginning of the partition. Then I searched on the net for a while and found this great program that lets you manually adjust where partitions begin and end. Unfortunately, my Windows partition used a filesystem that was not supported. I downloaded a later version of that program, same problem. I tried using the partition resize tool available on the Fedora CD, but it too did not support my filesystem. A search on download.com yielded a program that could do everything you could ever do to a partition, and more. But it didn't work for Windows XP. Finally, perhaps as a God-send, I found a nifty program that did the trick. It worked beautifully, and Windows suddenly found itself robbed of 9 gigs.

At last I could install Fedora. This process was remarkably easy, and the installation took only 15 minutes. I'm glad it did, because I would've found the nearest bridge and jumped off had I had any more difficulties. Most of the configuration was stuff like choosing language, setting the time, and picking what programs to install. The hardest thing I had to do was specify how big each of Fedora's sub-partitions should be- not hard at all. In no time I was flying through Fedora on ecstatic wings, singing along happily to a music CD playing in the CD drive, rejoicing that my quest was over and that everything worked splendidly.

And then my harddrive died.

...........Just kidding about that last part.

Since I'm the webmaster for our floor, I'm making a floor site. Today I programmed a tagboard and set it up on Kenny's server. I will be adapting the tagboard's code for use on my blog site, so sit tight!

The night before the Electrical Engineering midterm, I was completely lost. My friend Ashwin invited me to study with him, and he helped me understand the important concepts in a couple hours. I ended up getting a 46/100 on my Electrical Engineering midterm, which isn't bad considering that I would've done a lot worse without Ashwin's help. Also, the class average was 52. So I guess I'm not totally screwed. I'm going to go over the EE homework every week with Ashwin and another friend Herman so that I'll understand the material. Hopefully by the time of the final, I'll do superbly!

Tonight was our annual All Hill Halloween, where inner-city kids get to come to the UCLA dorms to trick-or-treat! A lot of us bought candy to distribute to the kids, and all the floors in all the residence halls decorated by putting up props in the halls and covering the lights with colored plastic wrap. Our floor's theme was an insane asylum. We had spiderwebs and spiders on the walls, a flasher and eerie sounds playing in the laundry room behind a curtain, people donning their Chem Lab labcoats and/or nurse caps, and a guy walking around with fake blood all over his face. =)

It was so fun scaring the kids. =) One guy in a horrific mask jumped out at them from the bathroom, and some neighbors of mine rapped their door on its deadbolt repeatedly and screamed as they walked by. Sophonias let me borrow his labcoat and I dressed up as another crazy doctor. Haha, such fun.

I got 100% on my math midterm! That exam was so easy. The average score was 17.3 out of 20.

I got 79% on my CS midterm. I got almost everything right except for one problem, the problem that was worth the most points. That one problem totally screwed me over.

And in Electrical Engineering... I got 2/20 on a quiz that's worth 10% of my overall grade. I hate that class! I'm trying, but I just don't get stuff. Physics and calculus have never been my thing. =(

I talked with Priscilla on the phone about a myriad of things, and one of the things she asked made me really think. Her question to me was, "What is your favorite color?" I think she was trying to tell me that you can be friends with somebody for a really long time, but you still might not know them well. There are so many things I don't know about my friends, from the seemingly trivial details like their favorite color to the big things, like their goals for life. I know that my friends are smart, they can sing like Mariah Carey, they program better than I do, they collect insane amounts of drama, and they enjoy breeding E. coli colonies in petri dishes. But how well do I know them as people?

I think it's overdue that I start getting to know who my friends really are, not just what they are. During dinner, I asked Sophonias about his goals for life and for college- what's his post-college roadmap look like, and what he hopes to get out of college besides an education.

My CS T.A. seems very apathetic. He chose to not have discussion the first day. He did not bother to give many details on the project he assigned us, nor did he discuss what program we could use to write our code. He essenially said "make me a Linux shell program with such and such features." Only when questioned about specific program specifications does he address them- and it seems like he makes up an answer on the spot. He replied to a question I emailed to him, telling me that this one type of input was legal, and the next day somebody asked him the same thing in class and he said it was not legal.

Today he failed to show up for discussion without even notifying us. Since I brought my laptop in hopes of getting some work and feedback done in class, I did not mind waiting and working (with half-hearted hope that he would show up) while all of the other students gradually filed out of the room. I stayed for over half an hour until I got tired of working, and left knowing that our T.A. doesn't give a hoot about us.

Last Wednesday after physics lab, I was working with the experiment data in the SEAS computer lab. I forgot to take my disk out of the machine when I was done, and I didn't notice it was missing until last night, when I needed the data for my writeup. By the time I realized, it was already past the computer lab's closing time. So I woke up early this morning and bolted down to the computer lab, with an ounce of hope that the disk would still be in the machine after a week. And..... it was!!

I had a few free hours before physics lab today and was able to finish up the writeup. Whew. I learned 2 things today. Well, I wouldn't say learned; more like was reminded of:
1. If you're using a disk in a public computer, don't forget about it! That's obvious.
2. Don't procrastinate. Easier said than done..

This morning I caught a ride to Grace Community Church (my second time) with 4 new people: Patrick, Jane, Adrianna, and Jay. I really enjoyed the Crossroads college ministry they have following the main sermon. It's like the format we have back at CCAC- two services, with smaller "sunday school" classes during the second. But with more people. MANY more people.

One of our neighbors came by tonight and brought some food she had taken home from Panda Express where she works. She gave me a whole box of fruits, which is especially great because Covel dining hall didn't have bananas during lunch OR dinner, and I don't take apples unless I can eat them on the walk back from class. So yeah, I was able to get my daily antioxidents after all. (Or perhaps I should stop being so lazy to eat apples)

I played tennis this morning with a friend from my floor, Sou. He's pretty good, and I'm pretty bad. Enough said. =p But I had fun... even though there's now a growing blister on my thumb... lol.

A floor neighbor told me about iTunes, an MP3 organizer and music purchase service by Apple. The nice thing about iTunes is that you can share music across a LAN for others to hear. And in my hall, there are at least a few people sharing at any given time... meaning a decent selection of music to listen to.

But the best thing is that there's another program called myTunes Redux, written by an independent person, that emulates iTunes. It actually lets you download that music from others across the LAN. I'm in music heaven!

Tonight was our third fire alarm at Sproul. Fortunately it happened before midnight, and lasted less than half an hour. I didn't find out what the cause was this time, but I'm guessing another "malfunction" Lol.

In all three of my Computer Science courses last year, we did not use a computer (unless it was our own laptop) in either the lectures or the discussions. That to me is a lousy way to learn. The best way to learn programming is to actually program.

Anyway, this year our discussion class is called a "lab," and the professor said that we would be programming in there. Imagine my disappointment when I walked into the room and found it to be a regular classroom, with no computers! Maybe we'll be using the real lab later... we'd better!

We had yet another false fire alarm, this one at 4 in the morning today. Again it seems to have been caused by a "malfunction," again only affecting Sproul Hall. x.X

At 3 in the morning, we were rudely awakened by the screeching of the fire alarm. Our RA burst into our room and told us we had to evacuate. I got dressed unhurriedly and we walked casually out of the building to the large group of people that was already outside. Yes, it was another false alarm, which we are all too used to.

After waiting outside for half an hour, it was announced that the alarm was triggered by a "malfunction." And it's only been 2 days since I've been here. Humph.

Move-in was very expediated. Sproul has a turnaround where you can park temporarily, so we were able to unload right in front of Sproul Hall. There were a lot of Welcome Week helpers helping with unloading and rolling bins. And there were TONS of available bins. =)

After our floor had dinner together, we had a few games in our lounge so everybody could get to know each other. One of the games was Mafia, and I was one of the four mafia members (my first time ever). And we actually won. The first time I've seen the mafia win too.

Sophonias came to drop off some stuff and left soon after. He'll be back tomorrow, dunno how long though. Maybe he'll go home again. Thanks for leaving me all alone, buddy. =p

We went to a small Korean cell phone store called Power Comm and, after much deliberation, decided to get the Verizon 2 phone 600 minute local calling plan for $60 that was advertised in the ad. I finally have my own cell phone!

We also went to dinner at Carrows to celebrate my mom's taking her nursing exam. She felt pretty good about the test, and we'll find out her results shortly.

Whew.. I can't believe I'm going back to UCLA tomorrow. What a long vacation it has been. And unfortunately... for the most part, unproductive. Heck, I never even unpacked most of my belongings when I came home in June. I guess that can be a plus, since it's saving on the time that I'll spend packing (yeah, I haven't started doing that either).... But I won't let laziness get a hold of me this quarter. It's time for me to work more seriously and make sure I get good grades. That's one thing I'm going to commit to.

I got my gradecard from Pierce in the mail. I did indeed bomb that last exam, getting slightly above half right, but somehow due to the curving my exam grade was a B. Meaning that everybody did horrible. Heh.

Of course my final grade remains an A because the lowest exam score is dropped, and I've already gotten 2 A+'s and an A.

Free at last, free at last: summer school is finally over!!!

My experimental "study" strategy of reading only the chapter summaries and bold words in the chapters didn't work so well. The test was insanely hard because I wasn't familiar with the bulk of the material. I should've also (at least) skimmed each paragraph in the chapters. Most likely I failed this exam. But the teacher throws out your lowest exam score, and I've already gotten three A's, so my grade has already been established. I bought a gradecard (more or less a postcard that you give to your teacher to mail to you with your final exam score and your course grade) and gave it to him. Soon I shall know just how ineffective this study method was. ;)

On another note, it was a really good class. Learning anthropology really opened up my mind to other cultures and helped me to understand why they do the things they do, and even why WE do the things we do. It's made me much less ethnocentric and has helped me understand what it means to be human. Good stuff.. I recommend Cultural Anthropology to anybody who's got some G.E.'s to burn.

I hate smoking. I hate smokers. Smoking kills. And it's filthy.

There's this cute girl who sits 2 chairs away from me in my Anthro class. But when I walk by her she smells like crap... or rather, like ash. So ultimately her odor overrides her cuteness, making her, well, bleh. Smoking's such a big turnoff. I can't understand how people think it makes them look cool, or the disregard they have for the health of themselves and others around them.

Once again I got the highest score in the class on my Anthro test (actually 3 other people got the same score). Now I have two A+'s and one A, which gives me an A+ average. The teacher drops our lowest test grade, so my next one needs not count. Too bad the Pierce final grade doesn't distinguish between pluses and minuses, so my grade will show up as simply 'A.' Ehh.. I guess it's all good.

I'm going to take the last exam just for fun. I'm testing out a new strategy: from now on I won't read the entire chapters; instead, I'll read the chapter summaries and glance at key words and phrases within the chapter. I want to see if I can still pull off a decent grade while reducing the amount of boredom I'm exposed to.

Yesterday's Anthro test was harder and longer than last week's. I had to make educated guesses on a lot of questions, but surprisingly I got fewer questions wrong on this test than on last week's! I also got the highest score in the class, which set my score as the A+ standard. =)

My Anthro book is educationally entertaining. Here's an excerpt from the chapter about marriage:

The Kwoma of New Guinea practice a trial marriage followed by a ceremony that makes the couple husband and wife. The girl lives for a while in the boy's home. When the boy's mother is satisfied with the match and knows that her son is too, she waits for a day when he is away from the house. Until that time, the girl has been cooking only for herself, and the boy's food has been prepared by his womenfolk. Now the mother has the girl prepare his meal. The young man returns and begins to eat his soup. When the first bowl is nearly finished, his mother tells him that his betrothed cooked the meal, and his eating it means that he is now married. At this news, the boy customarily rushes out of the house, spits out the soup, and shouts, "Faugh! It tastes bad! It is cooked terribly!" A ceremony then makes the marriage official.

I got an A on my first Anthro test, barely. One point lower and I would've gotten an A-.The teacher's scoring system rewards 13 points for an A+, 12 for an A, 11 for an A- and so on, so I got lucky.

Just signed up for classes for this fall quarter! Each student is given two "passes," which are time periods during which we can sign up. To make things more fair, you can sign up for only 10 units during the first pass. Usually classes are 4 units, so I sign up for only 2 classes the first pass.

But this time, I'm taking a Physics Lab class, which is only 2 units. Combined with two 4 unit classes, I was able to sign up for 3 classes this pass. =)

I love my Anthro class. The teacher gives us a break in the middle of the 2 1/2 hours of class, and we usually break for more than the 15 minutes that he designates. He also lets us out of class a few minutes early. Furthermore, a third of the time he's not really lecturing on the material, but telling stories that are related to it. Still, it's a fun class, and the material is pretty interesting.

This evening I took my brother and the three (other) Wong kids to see Spiderman 2. The movie was pretty good, though I got bored through all the dialogue and was almost ready to fall asleep. I expected more action! But as Crescentia told me online, I missed out on a lot of the emotional aspects, like Peter going through his inner struggle and finding himself. I guess she's right. (But hey, I AM a guy, so what do you expect =0 ) I also could've appreciated the movie a lot more had I seen the first one. ;)

My first day of Cultural Anthropology at Pierce College was today. All-in-all everything is reminiscent of high school, and not quite in a good way. The classroom is high scool style: everything from the posters to blackboard to chairs and desks. The teacher seems better suited as a high school teacher than a college professor. And the textbook is high school level, if not below. There will be four equally weighted tests, all multiple choice (such a luxury we rarely get in college). Additionally, we have the option of dropping our lowest test grade. There are no written assignments or projects. I should be happy.... and I am. ;)

I also didn't take my housekey with me because I expected my dad to be home when I got back. To my chagrin, he wasn't! Fortunately my pastor, with whom we exchanged housekeys (so that we can take care of their house when they go on vacation, and vice-versa), was home and let me borrow his key to our house. =)

I guess I didn't do as badly this quarter as I thought I would. Even though I failed the final, I still got a C- in Math (because of curving). I got a C in Computer Science and a B- in Internet Programming. Ok, I know those aren't the best grades. At least I didn't fail anything. x.X I'll make sure I do a lot better next year.

I also wrote a Perl chat script. You can play around with it here while it is still on my PIC server. I lose my PIC account on June 30.

Ok I guess it was my fault that my laptop got taken away, since I was playing like the whole day. Well I've been managing my time better and sleeping early, so my mom gave my laptop back.

With my laptop back in my possession, I took the opportunity to write a Perl counter, which can be seen at the bottom of the main blog page. Earlier I added some Javascript rollover messages that appear when you place the mouse over the nav links. Again, this addition is only on the main page (for now, at least).

This afternoon I drove down to Pierce College to pay my summer school fees and get my parking permit. Since the regular parking lots are for permit holders, I had to park kinda far from the administrative buildings, and walk the long way there under the hot sun. It also took me a while to find the Business Office, the building to which I was supposed to go.

The guy who helped me didn't seem very eager to do his job, and after giving me my parking permit and payment receipt, he didn't tell me about the photo ID I was supposed to get. I found out from a pamphlet I was carrying, after I had trudged back to my car on another heat trek. Fortunately I was able to drive up closer and go back to the Business Office. I found the guy but he directed me to another building where the ID photos were being taken..

Aaah, so much running around today.. I think my arms are now sunburnt. =0

My mother, perhaps in one of her all-too-common moods, took away my laptop (for the duration of the whole summer, she says) because she thinks I spend too much time playing games. It is my parents' laptop in the sense that they paid for it, but she could have at least given me a warning or talked it over. But instead, nothing.

All my files and programs are on that thing. How am I going to do my summer programming work now? How I long to be in my college dorm again. At least there I had some freedom. Needless to say, I'm more than a little pissed off.

Oh and if you haven't guessed, I'm typing this on the family desktop computer, which sucks and has nothing on it.

As expected, my final for Internet Programming was more or less easy. I got a few minor things mixed up, but overall I knew how to write the programs they gave us.

Packing went ok too. My dad arrived after noon and we spent like two and a half hours getting everything packed and moving it to the car. And now.. at long last, finally, after a year of anguish, pain, nauseating food, and countless sleepless nights... I AM FINALLY HOME!! <chants with glee the Dorothy click-your-shoes line: "There's no place.....">

Sophonias' last final was today. He started packing after he got back, and his family came to pick him up shortly after. Now I'll be all alone for two days. Why did the easiest final have to be on the last day?? Like we'd need that much time to study for Internet programming.

I failed my math final for sure. I didn't know how to do half the problems, so I left them more or less blank. That combined with other low scores does not bode well. Looks like I'll have to repeat the class.. =(

I've been extremely busy so I haven't blogged for a while. Sorry to those I made worried about my foot. My mom told me that it probably was just a hurt tendon, and it seems she was right. The pain in my foot slowly diminished during the week and I found myself better able to walk each day.

Well today was the last day of classes. I am SO relieved. Now it's just final exams, and then I'm out of here! It's been a fun year overall, though this quarter especially found me lagging academically. Hopefully I can make up for my performance by doing well on the upcoming finals.. like the Computer Science one (gulp) tomorrow.

Finally home again! Hello good food, hello reliable Internet, I've missed you guys. ;) Church retreat is tomorrow; it's going to be a blast.

Lol, this site is so infringing.. Yahoooooooo

My brother and an adult church friend John came by UCLA and brought care packages for a few people. I was at lunch when they came to my door, but I think I missed them by only a few minutes! They just left the package at my door. Man.. it's so cool, it's got all these different snacks in it. Even some my brother knows I don't eat, but hah I'll just bring it back home cuz he likes them. ;) But yeah, I'm really touched by their kindness.

I haven't been blogging much this month. That's because nothing noteworthy is happening. ;) My life is consumed by lackadaisical studying and homework (or blatant inattention thereto). Math midterm this Friday. Sigh.

Aaron, a fifth year student at UCLA, took me to the Mosaic morning service. The location of this service has been changed from the auditorium at Beverly Hills High School to the L.A. Entertainment Center. This is sorta better to me because the worship at the Beverly location was more Southern gospel-type, whereas that at the L.A. Entertainment Center is more contemporary. I can sing much less off-key to the latter.

I also had my first real taco today. After church some of us went to this hole-in-the-wall taco place. My taco was pretty good, though. And the place got an 'A' sanitation rating.

During dinner my friend Derrick and I found Nan, our floor Program Assistant, and ate with her and her friend. After dinner Nan invited me to go ice-skating with her and her fellowship! How could I possibly refuse?

I'm improving each time I skate. Tonight I improved my speed skating forwards, and I'm almost able to skate backwards semi-decently. Can't wait till whenever I go ice-skating again. =) If anybody wants to go, give me a holler.

Internet connectivity from the dorms has been stagnant. Most of the time it is VERY slow... even slower than dial-up!! The cause appears to be the many viruses/trojans/whatnots that have compromised computers on the network. Each day I receive several random emails that have been marked as infected. Those emails were probably sent, with the headers spoofed, by infected machines on campus.

Whatever.. I want my Internet working normally again... NOW!

Last night I had my CS program written up, but it was behaving strangely. I went to sleep dumfounded, but with the resolve that I would fix the error the following day. Well today I spent several hours unsuccessfully staring at my C++ code trying to find the error. I then showed the code to Kenny and he helped me figure out the oh-so-stupid mistake that was crashing my program. I fixed the bug and submitted the program 30 minutes before the deadline. If it weren't for Kenny, I'd probably have turned it in a couple hours later.

Van Nuys High participates in this program called MESA (a math and science activities program) that spans many high schools and is supported by the Cal State Universities. Well today was MESA Day, a day when winners from the preliminary competitions from each participant high school come together and compete in a bunch of different events.

Anyway MESA Day was held at UCLA this year, and a bunch of kids came from Van Nuys, most of whom I knew. Raymond phoned at 8 in the morning telling me and Sophonias to come down to visit them, but we were too tired so we went back to sleep (after telling him we'd come later). Then around 9, David called and we told him the same thing. But we couldn't fall back asleep so we just decided to go down there.

We spent like an hour walking around looking for everybody because they were all doing some math test and wouldn't pick up their phones. We finally found them and hung out and took some of them on a tour of north campus. But man... was I tired. ;)

Aaah!! Today I was doing the laundry, and I put my clothes into the washer but forgot to add detergent. Only after they were done did the fact occur to me. But at that point my allotted washer time was over, so I couldn't re-wash them... <pulls hair out>

Yesterday evening, I went into the bathroom and saw the toilet stall at the end with its door closed and a pair of legs sticking out. "Hmm..." I thought, "somebody must have had a little too much to drink and is letting it all out."

A couple hours later when I went back in, the legs were still protruding out of the stall. "Ok.. maybe the guy had A LOT to drink..." I said to myself.

Again a couple hours later I went back in to take a shower, and the guy's legs were still visible in the same stall, only this time I could hear snoring.....

Moral of the story? If you'd like to sleep in a toilet, alcohol is the way to go.

I just realized that I'm learning 4 computer programming languages at once! Assembly programming in my Computer Science class, PERL in my Internet Publishing class, and ASP.NET and C# for the internship website project. I won't be surprised if I start mixing everything up. Sometimes I wish there was just one language that does everything....

Online housing signups were today. Each person had been randomly given a signup time, and mine preceded Sophonias' so it was my job to signup for the room. I overslept and was late to signup, but I was still able to secure a room in Sproul Hall (the hall we wanted) even though we had anticipated (and had been told) that all Sproul rooms would be gone even before the start of my signup time, due to its popularity. Whew. Lesson learned: use the 'snooze' button, not the 'off' button.

My EE 1 class was getting hard, and one of the prerequisites was Math 32B, which I am taking now. I was really lost in that class, and the workload from all my classes seemed really heavy. So, I decided to drop EE 1. I'll still attend that class this quarter, so that when I take it next year I'll actually have some idea what's going on.

Last week Jermaine gave Allen, another person from AACF, my info and he emailed me asking if I wanted to come to the nighttime Mosaic service. So today I went with him and Cindy, whom I had met the first week at AACF, to the LA Entertainment Center in beautiful downtown where the service was held. The first thing I noticed there were the many multi-colored strobe lights whizzing around the room. The facility is normally used as a club!

But the songs were contemporary and those I've been accustomed to, and the message was great (and the pastor is the same guy who speaks regularly at the morning service in Beverly Hills). Altogether, everything seemed traditional and paralled my home church. They just started a cool six week series called "When God Walked Among Us" and I think I'll go back with Allen for at least five more weeks. =)

Jermaine from AACF took me to a church called Mosaic, which met in the auditorium of Beverly Hills High School. Man, that place was nice. The school campus puts Van Nuys High's to shame. Well, the majority of school campuses anywhere puts Van Nuys to shame. =(

Anyway, the sermon was pretty good, and the people there seemed really energetic, as evinced during the singing. The choir sang upbeat and gospel-style songs that I haven't heard before; moreover they sounded pretty professional, hence I didn't want to join in and ruin the songs, so I just listened. =0

I went to Grace on Campus tonight with Sophonias, Debbi, and Julie. The meeting started a little late and the speaker talked a little longer than usual, but the message was pretty good. He had a lot of funny analogies as well.

My mom took the bus in the morning and brought back my fixed laptop. Thanks mom!

Dell replaced the fan and the processor, and now the computer runs without a hitch once again. =)

Turns out I did get a D+ in physics... with low scores. But my teacher was generous enough to offer to let me retake the midterms (again- he gave a retake to the class) in about a week. Hopefully I'll have enough time to study and ace them... I need to.

Urg... I have 3 horribly hard classes and 1 horribly easy class. I also paid $115 for a 1 inch thick Electrical Engineering book from the UCLA bookstore. I thought that was ridiculous, until I saw it for $122 at Barnes and Noble online. Geez.. the book should be lined with gold and diamonds for that price. >.<

myUCLA, our online portal for everything UCLA, lists my physics course grade as a D+. It also shows N/A for my homework scores and both midterm scores, and shows a note that Schema 1 (whatever that is... I'm guessing some sort of grading formula) is more beneficial to me. I emailed the teacher and I'm going to talk to him tomorrow. I sincerely hope he's going to tell me the info just hasn't been entered in yet. D+.........

I was in the middle of making a song on my computer when it suddenly shut off on me again. The song-making program I use doesn't allow projects to be saved, so all I have is an incomplete MP3 rendering of my work. Grr.. I'm really gonna have to get this machine fixed.

Turns out I got a B+ grade in my Calculus class. Stupid midterm scores. But I guess my grade could have been worse, if I hadn't done so well on my final.

Priscilla's reply to my last blog entry was that she didn't think the movie emphasized enough of the spiritual torture Christ endured for us. Now that I think about it (I didn't think about it until now), I agree. Christ's spiritual torture far outweighed his physical.. after all he did utter the famous words "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" which weren't paid much significance in the movie.

The physics final was horrible- the problems were similar to the ones we've done in homework, but different enough to preclude us from knowing how to do them. The teacher was giving hints and explaining the problems DURING the exam. That's how little everybody understood them.

At least I'm finally home! Ah, good food once again. I went bike riding with my bro and Daniel. It was quite fun, and it made me realize how out of shape I am. ;)

<GASP> I got a 70/75 on my math final, rank 9/109 in the class. This hopefully will make up for the 26/60 and 27/60 I scored on the two midterms.

The amazing thing was the night before the final, I was doing a practice math final and I couldn't do a single problem or understand the TA's solutions. I was LOST. Throughout the entire course I was LOST. Wow.. miracles do happen. Thank you Lord.

Hope I don't suddenly find out that they mixed up my paper with somebody else's.

Mathematicians' main goal is to make my life miserable. Not only was the calculus final brain-wracking, but it was during brunch time, so I was hungry the rest of the day. =(

Took my Computer Science final today. At first I was completely lost, but it all came together in the end and I think I did very well. I'll be mad if I don't get a 100%. Or close to it.

Took my History final today. It was manageable, since they gave us a list of potential questions to study, and all the questions on the final were taken off that list, word for word. But I ran out of time at the end, so I kinda had to write whatever..

For maybe an hour today, UCLA had its own geyser. Somebody burst a fire hydrant along the street, and it was spewing water two stories high. A bunch of students were gathered across the street watching the spectacle. A couple people even asked me to take a picture for them with them standing in front of the geyser.

Oh, and today was the last day of classes. The quarter is almost over; only finals stand in my way now. <shudders>

I can't believe it's the last week of school already!! It seems like only yesterday that the quarter began.. rather, that I first placed my foot into the new, wonderous land of UCLA.

Yesterday I realized that men are seriously discriminated against in one signficant area: Public Restrooms. During math class my nose was running, so I had to run out of class looking for a restroom (I had no tissues on me). I searched the entire first floor of the building and found only a women's restroom. Ok, then I went to the second floor and found only a women's restroom. Then I saw a sign that read "Men's Restroom - 3rd floor." I found the men's restroom up on the third floor next to, guess what, a women's restroom.

After my computer class, I needed to wash my hands, but the only restroom on that side of the building was a women's restroom. I didn't feel like walking to the other side of the building because it was a little out of the way, so I went to the Student Union, where there is a men's and women's restroom. Lo and behold, one of them was closed for cleaning. Can you guess which one?

Maybe the people who constructed the buildings forgot to put in men's restrooms. It was never an issue to them, because they had their portable outhouses outside. Or perhaps the school had a small restroom budget and could only put in a limited amount of public restrooms. And they predicted that since men are on average larger than women, their bladders are similarly larger, thus allowing men to go longer periods without the need for a restroom. Or maybe they just assumed that we men (the barbarians that we are) would all use the trees. If you ask me, I think it's the third one.

Class scheduling for next quarter was painful; my classes are either in the early morning or in the late afternoon. However, I did find one class that fits into the (empty) middle- an Internet Programming. Although it fulfills no requirements, it still gives me 5 credits (all my other classes gave 4) and it seems like a very worthwhile class.

The only problem is this class is generally not for Engineering majors; accordingly I have not satisfied a prerequisite non-Engineering programming class. But it's all good- I emailed the teacher and she's giving me a PTE (Permission to Enroll) number so that I can override the prerequisite requirement.

Hoo hoo, I got to gamble tonight! There was a special (and free) event for residents- Casino Night at Covel Commons. The third floor of Covel was loaded with decorations, many Blackjack, Poker, Craps, and Roulette tables, free food, and prizes! Each resident was given an initial "$200" which could be exchanged for chips to play the games. Sophonias didn't want to play, but I dragged him to Covel so that he could get me an extra $200. :)

I spent the entire time at a Blackjack table, my chip balance fluctuating, but ultimately I lost it all. I never got above my initial $400, but I saw people making bets of hundreds of dollars each time (and winning). Guess I'm not cut out to be a gambler. =p

The rain was coming down pretty hard during dinnertime. I ran from Hedrick to Rieber's dining hall and got pretty wet. I could've just eaten at Hedrick, but Rieber was serving New England clam chowder bowls, and there was no way I could miss that. =p

I went to Venice-Santa Monica Free Methodist Church again. Andy's car was full, so I rode with the other driver, Tina. Also riding in the car was a guy named Kevin (a second-year I think I've talked with before at AACF), a girl named Tiffany (also a second-year), and a freshman Elaine whom I found out lives in Hedrick.

Both cars were packed full, and just one more person going to Venice might have resulted in somebody sitting in the trunk, which Tina claims some guy did in Andy's car before. ;)

We had a fire alarm this morning around 10:45. All of Hedrick Hall, Rieber Hall, and the Saxon Suites were evacuated for about an hour. The fire marshall and a police car came, and the road by Rieber was blocked off. We later learned that there was a gas leak at the new construction site by Rieber. Fortunately, I went to lunch at that time, so I didn't have to sit around waiting idly.

I've been having some asthma problems lately (after a year of not having asthma), so my mom graciously made a batch of Chinese herbal asthma medicine (it's supposed to be able to cure the asthma, and it seems to work.. hence the year of not having asthma). She also went to Costco and bought me a large mini-fridge so that I could store containers of the medicine at UCLA. My dad also went to Walmart and bought new clothes for me, some of my old clothes having holes in them. My brother also lent me his cool sweatshirt, since he has two.

Looks like I'm all set. I love my family. :)

I'm home for the President's Day holiday! I went to my friend's Hindu temple tonight for a report I have to do in my History of Religion class. Needless to say, the experience there was very different, and the fact that I can't understand the Hindi language made it really hard to understand anything. Nonetheless, it was a useful experience and definitely helped me to understand the Hindu religion a bit more.

I haven't written in a while. I got sick over the weekend and couldn't go to church or study well. Still, I think I did relatively ok on my History midterm yesterday. I can't say the same about my Math midterm today- though most of the problems were straightforward, a couple weren't that intuitive. We haven't had problems similar to those, so it was difficult to know how to approach them.

My answering 5/10 questions correctly on a trivia quiz got me drafted into a Hedrick Hall event- College Bowl. There were 3 others from my floor on my team and it was us, 3 North, against 3 South during the first elimination round. We got slaughtered 140 to 80.. but it was a lot of fun. The match took place in the 3 South lounge, so thankfully not a lot of 3 Northers were there to watch us get creamed. ;-)

I wasn't able to go to AACF this week, so I couldn't sign up for a ride to check out a new church. But Denise was more than happy to take me to NewSong. =)

The sermon there was pretty good. The neat thing was that the sermon was on a passage, Luke 16:1-15, that I had just read last night but didn't really understand. Coincidence? If so, then a lot of "coincidences" have been happening recently.

Hung out with Debbi and her roommate Julie for dinner. Julie is also a Van Nuys High grad.. can't believe I've never met her, or at least heard of her, until now.

That new email worm going around, MyDoom, seems pretty widespread. Just yesterday my UCLA webmail intercepted 3 infected messages to my inbox; today it intercepted 4!

I've decided to go church hopping for a while to check out what all the different churchs have to offer. Andy from AACF took me to Venice-Santa Monica Free Methodist Church today. Two others were in his car: Jane, a senior, and Philip, a junior. I really enjoyed the service- the music was traditional but lively (gotta have them drums), and the pastor's message was really pertinent, and he managed to keep it entertaining at the same time. It's really a lot like church back home, only about 1/3 the size of the congregation. And mostly Japanese people, instead of Chinese. ;)

Had dinner with people on my floor again. Usually Sophonias and I run into them, but this time we came to the dining hall first. Two girls, Nuvia and "Heli" sat at our table. They live like almost across from us on the other side of the bathroom. Can't believe I never met them before.

My Computer Science teacher sent out an email, probably to the entire class:

Subject: To those for whom it's relevant

Gong Xi Fa Cai, Gung Hei Fat Choy, Chu'c Mu+`ng Na(m Mo+'i, etc.!
--David

P.S. Sorry, we will not be handing out red envelopes with the Project 1 scores inside (or anything else inside, either, so don't get your hope$ up!).

My family (brother, parents, uncle, and grandfather) came down to visit me! We had lunch at Mr. Noodle, a Chinese restaurant in Westwood. For a Chinese restaurant, it was pretty good. ;) Heh actually I really liked it. They even gave me a "plain" dish the way I like it, no MSG, salt, or anything!

Believe it or not, it was also my first time in Westwood. Let me tell you, the traffic is horrible. People constantly crossing the street, cars suddenly jutting in your way, narrow streets and barely any room for obstacles in the residential district (including short driveways so people park with the car's rear sticking into the street). I'm glad I wasn't driving. ;D

On the first day of class, my Physics teacher (I think he's Chinese) could not communicate very well. Every other word he said was "um" and it took him so long to spit out a sentence that by the time he was done saying it, you'd forgotten what he was talking about. Well he's getting better now, and saying "um" less often (maybe he was just extremely nervous the first day? I think he's new to UCLA..). Anyway, he seems to be alright now. =)

My Religion discussion class puts meaning into the word "discussion." This is the first discussion class I've had in which the students talk more than the T.A. It's a great environment too- people from various religious backgrounds, convoking in a friendly and casual, yet analytically scholarly, atmosphere to discuss religion.

Moved back into UCLA, unpacked everything, saw a few floormates, and spent $260 at the UCLA bookstore on books for my History of Religion class and Physics class. Whew! They didn't have any used textbooks for those classes, so I had to buy new ones. :(

I am holding off on books for Comp Sci and Math in hopes that the books I ordered online will get here soon. If not, I'll simply buy the needed book from the UCLA store and return it once the book arrives in the mail.

My brother had to go to UCLA for a medical checkup, so I went down to my dorm to check in and unpack some stuff. I saw a few people, but not many. The majority will probably move in tomorrow, because the first meal to be served will be tomorrow night...

I also ordered the wrong edition of my Comp Sci textbook from Amazon.com, and since the order apparently went into the shipping phase "immediately" they wouldn't let me cancel it. Argh! >.<

My Chemistry final was mailed back to me. I got 84. Well, the test wasn't out of 100, it was out of 200... But for some weird or miraculous reason I still managed to get a B- in that class. Which means I am done with it forever. =0

On a better note, my Comp Sci course grade was an A.

This concludes the academic quarter of Fall '03!

Woot, home now.

I went to my Comp Sci teacher's office, and he said that since everybody did bad on the final, they'd probably add 20 points to each score, meaning that I'd have a 92 instead of 72. LOL. Talk about leniency. Well I'm happy. =)

Course grade in Math 31B: A-. I can't believe I got a 74/100 on my Comp Sci final. Though everybody did pretty bad.

Looks like I got three more points on my math final. When I went to pick it up, the teacher said that the person who graded one problem took off too many points. Score! =p

My chem final was a different story... At least finals are all done now. I can be happy, for the time being that is.

My math final seemed pretty easy as well. The scores were posted the same day; I got 47/60. Kinda low. :'(

I haven't written here for a while because I've been studying assiduously, sort of, for finals. My CS final today was, I thought, extremely easy. They even gave us so many hints along the way, like on one problem they wrote "Read this program carefully," and one a specific line of the program they wrote "Read carefully!"

On Friday I submitted my math midterm to the professor, complaining that one grader took off FOUR points just because I had a sign wrong (I wrote minus instead of plus). Today I got the midterm from his office and found that he had given me an additional 3 points! That brings my score to 54/60. Ah, I like him. He's a fair teacher.

On the flipside, I also got back my chem midterm and found I had gotten 44. Only this was out of 100. <whistles> Well, more motivation to ace the final now...

Last night, we had another scheduled power outage, only this one was on time, at midnight. I had half-forgotten about it, so I had to brush my teeth with only the one emergency hall light barely shining in. I guess it could be worse though. We could be living in caves.

I was working all day yesterday on making an instrumental song with this program called Fruity Loops. The end product was, for a newbie like me, at least tolerable.

Yes, I pulled the customary all-nighter to do my math homework. =(

I went online to check my posted math midterm score and was extremely disappointed (and shocked) to see, in cold numbers that seemed to be jeering at me, 51/60 - 85%. That gives me a math midterm average of B- or C+. I can't imagine why I would have gotten so many points taken off. Guess math really isn't my best subject.

The math midterm was scary in the begining. It was all integration, 6 problems, 90 minutes. A couple of the problems really freaked me out because I couldn't find a method to integrate. But I finally figured them out, as time was running low.

While I was taking the test several ideas just popped into my head, like to use integration by parts or a half-angle identity, and the formula for arclength. After the test, I consulted the book for the formulas I used and found them to be correct.

In the end, I think I did pretty well on this test, as I was able to every problem (and double-check them) and all my formulas seemed to be right.

Once again we had 50 minutes for the chemistry midterm. I didn't know how to do one part of the last problem, which was worth more than any other problem. I have a feeling I didn't do so hot.

In the afternoon I went to a review session of the chem study group I'm supposedly in, and I even taught for an hour on the VSEPR theory. Afterwards, as joyful music reverberated through the dining hall, I reflected on how helpful the review session had been. After dinner, I went to yet another one, this one put on by one of our chem T.A.'s. It was likewise helpful, and after some more reading back in my dorm, I feel (almost) confident about this midterm. Can't say the same about math, though, because I haven't studied for it yet. =/

Raymond: What are you up to?

Me: Studying for my Monday and Tuesday midterms, sigh.

Raymond: What? Midterms again already?

Me: That was my first reaction too.

I fell asleep during every class today (what would you expect for me pulling an all-nighter?), and I was just relieved to get back to my dorm afterwards. I feel so behind on everything. I desperately need sleep, but I also have two midterms next week (Monday and Tuesday- veeery nice) that I have to really study for, and also a computer project due Tuesday night.

I will just be GLAD after Tuesday is over, that is, until finals week creeps up on me.

Gee wiz. Since I eschewed calculus for chemistry during the week, I had to pull an all-nighter to get my calculus homework done. It took several hours do finish two assignments. The problems are relatively straightforward, there's just a lot of convoluted algebraic work.

See? This is why I hate math.

"Yesterday's forcast predicted a 30% chance of rain today," Sophonias stated in the morning.

"Posh," quoth Anson, "t'is not a cloud in the sky!"

Two hours later after Anson's chemistry lecture: it's pouring harder than he's seen in months and he's all drenched.

Our computer science midterms were returned in class today. The maximum score possible was 110, but the test was worth 100 (hence 10 points extra credit). I got a.... 99. Heh.

I was a little late and I missed my ride to NewSong (or rather I think he was there but he didn't know what I looked like), but fortunately Denise came by to pick up the stragglers: me and another girl. Problem was her car was full, so we had to squeeze five people in the back. I guess it couldn't been worse, if Sophonias had decided to go too, but he said he needed to stay and do his English report.

After years of serene operation, my primary Hotmail address received its first piece of spam mail. The address was purposely so obscure that no spammer could have guessed it; however, either it was leaked to a spammer through one of the various chain letters that people include my address in (cough cough), or the spammers are trying ALL possible combinations of words. Needless to say, I will be seeing exponential growth in the volume of spam in the days to come. (Aaaargh)

Sophonias and I watched The 6th Day on my laptop. What else can I say? It was good.

Debbi was talking to me online and told me she was sick, so I went to DeNeve to visit her. We had a good time just hanging out and talking in her room. And man, was it nice in there... they even have carpeting on the STAIRS. They even have their own bathroom in each room! Now I wonder why she declined my offer to switch rooms.

The computer science midterm was a piece of cake. I'll be mad at myself if I don't get an 'A'. Then again, that's what I said about my math midterm....

I just realized I'm supposed to have a computer science midterm tomorrow..

My math teacher explained the scoring to me and showed me why I got so many points off. So my grade stands, but I'll try to use this as a reminder to study extra for the next math test.

My dad picked me up and we went to church where he was helping with our International Fun Factory, the alternative-to-Halloween carnival we put on every year. I ran into a lot of old friends. Then I drove the car back home by myself, in the raining darkness. What made it worse was that I had half forgotten how to drive.

My mom was pretty happy to see me, and she had scrumptious food made just for me. After dinner she got started on alternating my new suit, while I finally got to use my new laptop. =) I spent most of the night migrating files onto it from my other two computers.

The math midterms were returned to us during discussion class. What messed me up was that I made small algebraic errors. Still, the main part on which I did poorly was where I got 1/10 points because I messed up a step in the beginning, but all subsequent steps were methodologically correct. I think I should have gotten more points than I was given, so I'll try to get my test re-scored and cross my fingers.

The math midterm scores were posted online. I found out I got an unexpected 46/60, which is not much better than the 41/60 class average. Wait a minute.. I thought I said this test seemed easy. Something is amiss.

Thank God the fire around Porter Ranch seems to be under control!! I took my math midterm today; all the problems seemed extremely easy.

A guy named Felix took me to Grace Community Church today. Also riding with him were a guy named William and coincidentally, my Comp Sci discussion T.A. Tim Ma. The church congregation was HUGE. People told me that there are usually around 3000 people, per service. And there are two services!!

After the main service, we branched off to a college students/young adults fellowship during which the pastor began one of several messages in his series about marital relationships. He reminded us of the eternal perspective we are supposed to hold, and how marriage plays into that. Really great stuff.

I spent the whole day just writing and debugging my Comp Sci project. Well, 5% writing and 95% debugging. Sad thing is, that is about normal for a computer programmer. Creating beautiful code only to find that it just refuses to work. Oh, the agony.

I got my chem midterm back after the lecture today. My score was 87/100, which is supposed to be good compared to the 66/100 class average. I would've liked a higher score, like.. 100/100. =)

For dinner, Sophonias and I ate at Covel Commons for the first time. The food there was literally exceptional, much more exquisite and more lovingly prepared than at anywhere else I've been to. Afterwards, we went to the Grace on Campus meeting. We were half an hour late, so we missed what people said was a hilarious skit. We had a time of singing worship songs (and the drummer was crazily good) and a message. We both really enjoyed it! Grace is more schedule friendly than AACF, which starts at 6:30 on Wednesdays, leaving me no time to eat dinner after my Comp Sci lecture ends at 6. But in every other respect, the two fellowships are almost identical.

My grandfather (on my mom's side), brother, and parents all came to visit this morning, since my brother had a medical checkup at the UCLA medical center. My dad and I finally picked out a Dell Inspiron 5100 online that we thought was good. Although it wasn't the best priced we've ever seen for the specs it had, the price was decent and the cheapest we've seen recently. We got it from the Small Business section of the Dell website, because prices there tend to be cheaper than in the Home and Home Office section. Of course, we had to provide a fake business name... =0

My chemistry midterm is done! The questions were relatively easy; the only thing that messed me up was that I didn't know how much time was allocated (50 minutes), so when the professor suddenly called 10 minutes remaining, I was still on the third of four problems, taking my time and double checking everything. I frantically rushed through the test, not writing down numbers on my test packet but plugging them into my calculator, and only writing down formulas. Hopefully I won't be docked too much if they decide I didn't show enough work. Sigh. We'll see.

At 10 o'clock last night, I was up waiting to watch all the lights go off per the schedule blackout. They did not. So I went to the lounge to see who was there, and I found a group of people in my chem class working some book problems, so I joined them. A bit before 12, I decided to go to sleep. As I was getting into bed, in my mind declaiming the power outage that never was, the lights suddenly went out.

Denise took me to church again; Sophonias didn't go because he had gone home to avoid the power outage. The sermon was really good, it was about the story of the woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears; what made it really interesting was that the pastor put every detail into historical context to show the story's significance.

UCLA strongly warns against downloading copyrighted media, e.g. MP3's. While they personally do not monitor internet packets, they say that if they receive a notification from an outside agency that a user is downloading copyrighted media, they (UCLA) will turn over that individual's information. So what do you do if you are a college student who left his music at home and is bored to tears? You download the MP3's anyway! Well, that would be one way, but a safer alternative is MIDI files, which are third party sequenced (i.e. immitations) and 100% legal. A decent site I found today is MIDI Farm. While MIDI files pale in comparison to MP3's, they're obviously better than nothing. Hopefully I'll go home soon and get my real music.

Well, there's going to be a power blackout in Hedrick (who knows why) from 10pm tonight till 5am tomorrow. That would be 10 minutes from now, so goodnight folks.

After my afternoon math discussion class today, I walked back to my dorm and did some math homework, then took a nap. When I woke up, I reminded myself that I had a computer project that I needed to finish and submit online by 9:00 pm. But I decided to keep working on math, being the kind of person who doesn't like to stop working on something until it's all done.

Around 6 o'clock, I decided that I really needed to get to my computer project. So I got to work on it, but at the end I had a somewhat serious problem I couldn't get rid of, so I jumped on AIM and talked to Kenny and he helped me sort it out. But I still needed to type out the report. By then it was past seven and I still hadn't eaten, so Sophonias and I hustled down to the Hedrick dining hall and swiped our cards to get in.

Only then did we realize that Hedrick was having a Japanese theme dinner, and that the place was consequently packed with three times as many people as there were chairs. The lines to get any sort of food whatsoever were unbearably long, and the 9 o'clock deadline was rapidly encroaching, so I stayed in the shortest line and got a bowl of Udon noodle soup, and then I went to the only thing that had no line, the dessert bar. I grabbed a few cookies and cornbread and found an empty seat and ate my meager dinner. Needless to say, it was a pretty sorry dinner. By then it was 8 o'clock, and I needed to hurry back and finish my project, so I grabbed 8 pieces of fruit (you're only supposed to take one fruit out of the building) and ran back to my room.

Then while my stomach was in agony, I hurriedly typed up the report, which consisted of recorded input and output to my program and some comments about any problems I encountered. At the bottom of the hour, I noticed that my program wasn't displaying significant figures exactly the way it was supposed to, so I frantically looked over my code and put in a few lines. Then the new code didn't work properly, so I had to change it a bit, and some more again after that. It was 8:55 when the code finally worked properly, so I quicky stuck all the project's files into a zip file and submitted it at 8:59, with one minute to spare. The moral of the story: don't procrastinate, and um, Udon soup is pretty unfilling, too.

This morning Sophonias and I bumped into Kelly at breakfast. Her classmate Leon found us and joined us too. Breakfast was (naturally) pretty short, so unfortunately we didn't get to talk too much. But we coincidentally bumped into Leon again at dinner and talked a bit more.

Sophonias and I went down to the Hedrick dining hall to eat, but there was a huge line outside (some sort of delay), so we decided to go to Rieber. On the way, we bumped into Richard and his friend Sandy who were going to eat at DeNeve, so we decided to join them instead. The dining hall, if you could even call it that, seemed more like a mall. I mean, it was HUGE. Everything was pretty clean, and they even had some booths you could sit in, like at sit-down restaurants. The overall quality beats that of the Hedrick and Rieber dining halls. Naturally. That's one of the many perks of paying more for housing..

A girl from AACF named Denise drove Sophonias and me to NewSong today. We also met Jennifer, whom Denise was also taking to NewSong. I thought the music and the sermon were once again pretty good. The sermon was about Rahab, and the six points of a strong faith. At the end we found out that the first letters of the six points spelled "R-A-H-A-B-S" as the speaker noted, "We should all be Rahabs."

A girl named Ling who lives on our floor found us during brunch and dinner, and the three of us had fun just chatting over our food. Turns out she's from Singapore, and she speaks Mandarin. Though she claims her Mandarin isn't the best, it makes mine (which is pretty sorry anyway) seem like a dog trying to speak Latin. Wao da zhong wen bu tai hao.

Cat found us again at dinner, and her roommate Kelly was with her. We had a nice time just chatting. We found out Cat is crazy when she started making a detailed happy face with scraps of food on her plate. Crazy in a cool, funny way. :)

This morning I woke up to an annoying buzzing alarm. I thought it was just somebody's alarm clock going off (and them being too tired to go turn it off) in a nearby room, so I went back to sleep after a while. Maybe half an hour later, our R.A. Leo burst into my room and woke me up, saying we had to evacuate the building. It was then that I realized what that annoying buzzing really was. As I went downstairs, I saw a firetruck parked outside the building. The alarm stopped ringing, and I didn't see any fire or even smoke, but they still made us walk to the nearby parking lot. Soon after that they dismissed us, allowing us to go back upstairs. I wasn't too happy about losing sleep over what seemed like nothing, and I was falling asleep through all my classes.

After my Comp Sci lecture in Franz Hall ended at 6, I walked across campus and up the hill and found the gathering place for Asian American Christian Fellowship (AACF) at the Sproul Hall turnaround. Then we all walked down the hill to the AACF meeting room in.. wouldn't you know it, Franz Hall. They had a time of songs, a skit, a message, and then more songs. Having missed dinner, I was extremely hungry, but I had an awesome time. Afterwards, I stopped at Puzzle's where I found out that people who missed dinner at the residence halls may still grab a late bite.

This afternoon I went to the SEASnet Help Desk in Boelter Hall this afternoon to pick up my username and password for the SEASnet computer network, which allows me to use the computers in the several computer labs interspersed throughout Boelter. I went to another room in Boelter, where I picked up a full 6 CD Microsoft Visual Studio .net Professional pack. Since I'm enrolled in a programming class that uses that compiler, I get it for freeee.

Oh, and I also discovered that I had been spelling Rieber incorrectly as 'Reiber', so I had to fix all my blog entries. Finally.... Arnold won. But we all already knew he would.

I needed to use the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET compiler for one of my Comp Sci projects, and I didn't have it installed on my laptop, so I went up to the 6th floor lounge of Hedrick where all the computers are (it kinda stinks, since all we have on our floor is couches). I apparently didn't have a Resnet password to access the computer, so I walked down to the SEASnet Help Desk all the way in Boelter Hall, but they didn't know much about it so they referred me to STC (Student Technology Center) back at the top of the hill, but they didn't know much about it either. So STC referred me to the Office of Residential Life, and the guy there didn't know about it either, and he referred me to the computer lab in Covel Commons, which turned out to be the right place. So I read through a bunch of legal agreements and got a Resnet password associated with my University ID number so that I could use any of the Resnet computers. I was finally all set. So in the evening I returned to the 6th floor of Hedrick and logged into one of the computers, only to find that the Resnet computers didn't have Visual Studio .NET installed on them in the first place.

I guess I'll have to make do with my Borland Turbo C++ Compiler for now.

Looks like I've found a church to go to. I emailed Roy from CCAC about churches in the area, and he referred me to a guy named Andy from AACF, and he referred me to Emily also from AAFC, and she drove me and two girls, Alison and Genevieve, to a church called NewSong LA in Culver City. NewSong LA is actually a new branch-off of NewSong Irvine, so they don't have their own facility but lease a big room in The Veterans Memorial Building senior center. The worship was different (a bunch of people singing in different keys- I think it was similar to the "gospel" music genre) but it was cool, and the sermon (it was about the story of Mary and Martha when Jesus came to their house) was a great reminder of what our perspective as Christians should be.

I also met two other girls from AACF at NewSong: Wendy and Connie. After church Emily, Alison, Genevieve, and I went to Best Buy for a while, and I played on an electronic keyboard and discovered that I forgot how to play Canon. Funny thing is that I just played it from start to finish with no problems three days ago in the Rieber lounge.

I had brunch at Rieber with Alison and Genevieve, and Connie joined us mid-brunch. Then one of their other friends showed up to join us right when we were finished eating. Needless to say, it was a fun day. Sophonias didn't go because he had to do his English homework, but he agreed to go next week (and if he doesn't, I'm gonna drag him the whole way). Wow, that's the most I've ever written for a blog entry. Ok... goodnight.

I had left my laptop on with AIM running since Friday afternoon. I was planning to leave it on continuously and set a record for online time, but after a day and a half my laptop began to act wierd and laggy, so I had to restart it. :(

I added an Academic Schedule page that lists all my classes and teachers. I still can't think of a good name to replace "Anson's Blog"......

This afternoon I worked out for an hour in the Rieber exercise room. I felt sooo buff. Unexpectedly tonight, Hedrick served New England Clam Chowder (I was wondering if they'd ever) as well as several other new and quite delicious items. I found myself repeatedly asking, "Am I in Rieber?"

October is here! Classes seemed to drag on and on today. In the afternoon I went to check out a Bible study put on by a campus club called Christian Students, and in the evening I attended one of their series of welcome dinners. I had a long discussion with two graduate students of the club about their view of Jesus Christ as a life-giving spirit. I came back to Hedrick fatigued from such a loooong day, so all I did was play online games. Bleh.

Today was my first lecture for Computer Science 31. My Comp Sci lecture and discussion classes are twice as long as my other lecture and discussion classes- a whole hour longer. But at least it's a class under my willfully selected major, so I'm not complaining too much.

I stayed after a little to discuss artificial intelligence with Professor Shinnerl, who hinted that he prefers to be called by his first name, Joe.

A girl named Kat found us at brunch and introduced herself. She actually lives on our floor- Hedrick 3 North. Really cool. After we talked a bit, she went to the Rieber lounge to play the piano.

Sophonias showed me Intouch Ministries, a website that provides streaming video sermons by Dr. Charles Stanley. This is great because we haven't yet found a church to go to. Today's sermon was on inner peace, and it was a good reminder that true peace can come only from God.

The weekends combine breakfast and lunch into a single brunch. Hedrick doesn't open up on the weekends until Sunday night, so Sophonias and I ate at Rieber. The food there rules (Sophonias disagrees- he champions Hedrick); in fact, the Kung Pao chicken dish at Rieber was better than at any Chinese restaurant I've been to. And the chef who cooked it wasn't even Chinese..

LAUSD deleted my email account when they finally discovered I wasn't a student any longer. Oh well. At least I didn't have anything too important in there.

On the academic side, my Chem teacher gave us 50 pages of reading to do, and my Calc teacher is from Russia (or a related country) and has a really obscure accent. Hopefully I'll get used to it quickly, as I got used to Iusmen's accent back in AP Calc. On the other hand, Iusmen didn't stutter.

This morning I had breakfast in Rieber. I'm getting tired of the continental breakfast served in Hedrick. Nothing but carbs, carbs, and carbs. I talked with a sophomore named Jason, who gave me an ominous warning of bell curve grading, aka savage competition.

In the afternoon I went to my first class- the Math 31B Discussion, taught by a T.A. named Kareem. Right at the start, he dove into "review" differentiation I had long since forgotten how to do. And even worse, almost everybody seemed to be following it, except me! But I guess a lot of students were lost, because sighs of relief resonated when several students asked Kareem to explain a few concepts. Well, I'm catching on. Just need some serious textbook review. Did I mention I hate math?

Sophonias and I went to the welcome luncheon of the Engineering Society of UCLA (affectionately dubbed ESUC, pronounced "E-Suck"). I was seated at a table with fellow freshman computer science students. I have to admit that the speeches and video that were presented were quite, umm, banal. But at least I got a free lunch. ;-) Well, I'm still going to join ESUC, because the services they provide will be useful, such as: 150 sheets of printing per quarter (more than the average student would probably need). And the join fee is only 5 bucks.

Networks rock! Sophonias and I both installed the StarCraft demo on our computers and we can play against each other via the UCLA network. Today Lac's friend Rishi came over and we talked until he had to leave. Later he came back with Lac, and the four of us played a couple card games: Hearts, Spoons, and Crazy Eights. Rishi and I played StarCraft against each other. Later, Sophonias' friend John came over, and I played StarCraft with him as well. So far I've been undefeated. ;-)

After church, my mom and I went to the 99 cent store and bought coathangers and a lot of bottled water. We picked up Sophonias at his house and drove back to UCLA. Hedrick Hall's dining facility opened up, so we had dinner there. That evening, Sophonias and I visited a friend from school, Lac, and went to see "The Matrix Reloaded" which was playing in Royce Hall across campus. This was the second time I've seen the movie, and I still have no idea what the people in it are talking about.

I'm getting tired of these ZoneAlarm firewall alerts. Every few seconds, an alert window pops up, telling me that a ping to my computer has been intercepted. When I look in the alert viewer, it says the ping originated from the UCLA server. Great, so my computer isn't connecting well with the server. This all started after I cleared out what I thought was a junk cache folder for ZoneAlarm; it turned out to also hold files for all my ZoneAlarm settings. Wups.

My mom drove to UCLA to take me home for the weekend.

Well, it's been a long day. My mom drove me to UCLA in the morning since I was too tired to keep my eyes open. The move-in process was extremely efficient and smooth! From a loading up a truck in the parking lot to renting out a rolling mailbin at Hedrick Hall, many move-in assistants helped us to move my belongings seamlessly from the car up to my floor, Hedrick 3 North. As my mom was about to leave to go back home, Sophonias and his dad showed up, and my mom told Sophonias to make sure I sleep early. We also met our floor R.A. Leo, and our P.A. Nan.

Sophonias and I spent the day organizing our room. He still needed to get a network cable and textbooks, so we went down to the Ackerman Student Union. There I stumbled across something I had not seen for ages: a pair of original Sony Walkman headphones, for $5.56! My old pair having disappeared mysteriously some time ago, and my other pair at home, I could only buy the headphones. We had lunch at Rieber Hall, since the dining facility in Hedrick was closed for construction.

Leo and Nan planned to take the floor to Westwood for the evening, but they changed it to dinner at Rieber Hall instead. Aside from the main courses, lunch and dinner's menus were the same. Even then, the main courses were similar: both Chinese.

Today I had my last meal with my family. My mom asked me if I would like anything special, but I said leftovers would be fine. Still, it was one of the best meals I've ever had.

Mixed feelings bounced through my head as I rummaged through my belongings, packing everything I'd need. "I'm going to college!" I thought. "But I'll be leaving home, missing everything I've known for 18 years." ... "But it'll be a great experience." ... "I'll be on my own." ... "That's bad." ... "That's good."

I know I'll be missing my family, my friends, but at the same time I'm ecstatic. It'll be a new life, a new experience. But that's what we do when we try anything new. College is, after all, just one of the many stepping stones on our journey. Onward bound!

I rode the metro to UCLA in the morning and picked up my books for Chem and Comp Sci. While waiting for the afternoon bus to come, I read about C++ pointers and munched on a brownie energy bar that was my breakfast supplement. And enjoyed it. Surprisingly.