Monday, February 17, 2003 at 01:37 a.m.
LAST ENTRY

Hahaha, gotcha. No, I'm just moving the entire infrastructure of this thing to my own server running MovableType -- a fully customizable and much more flexible way to maintain this thing. You'll like it better than this, I promise.

See the new... trisweblog. You can also get to it by going to http://blog.trisweb.com from now on.

So, without further ado, I leave this site as it is. It has been good, and I will make the archives available on the new site, no worries. Until next time... ::

Sunday, February 16, 2003 at 07:34 p.m.
300th Episode

The Simpsons! 300th episode! An hour and a half of Simpsons! Yeah!

Yeah, so that's what I'm doing tonight. And tomorrow morning at 9 we go to the Exploratorium. So I have to go to bed relatively early. No big deal. I finished my english homework today, so all I have to do tomorrow is Math. Yay.

And that's about all. Yep. Okay, time for the 2nd episode. Commercials don't give you much time for typing... hehe. 300 episodes!! Yeah! Go bears... ::

Saturday, February 15, 2003 at 01:02 a.m.
The hour after V day...

Yeah, here I am again. How did I spend my Valentine's day (or as we who were downstairs at dinner tonight like to call it - Singles Awareness Day... catch the acronym...)?

Well, I learned PHP. PHP is a server-side scripting language for doing just about anything. It makes parsing forms really easy, and making the form data do stuff and go places is easy, and working with SQL databases is easy, etc. Fun stuff. So I made a guestbook program entirely from scratch. I think I'll put it on my web site.

So, this means I can finally start doing some real comp-comm projects. Almost all of them use PHP in some way. The entire members-only section is based off it. So that should bring yet more fun.

Okay, I'm done for the night. If I stay up any longer then I'll just be wasting time. Plus there's no one in the house to talk to. Everyone's out "having a romatic night" if you know what I mean. Well, Goodnight. ::

Friday, February 14, 2003 at 01:17 p.m.
My Valentines Day entry...

I made it another year. Valentines day is no landmark for life, but for love, I can use it to mark a year. Ehh. Whatever, right? No big deal, just a day... a holiday made by Hallmark (some damn smart people if that's true) and more a sad marketing stunt than any true symbol for love. In that case, the yearly opposite of this day might very well be the best day for love. I'll keep that in mind.

In any case, it is a reason to celebrate the lack of love. Why? Because it's better than... not celebrating anything... yeah. So there's comedy movies (with strictly zero romantic comedies) and lots of bachelors in the basement hangin out tonight. Yay.

But I still think about it. How can I not? I do every day. :-) It's a good thing. So here are some good lyrics for all you who have a valid reason to celebrate this day: Mary Chapin Carpenter - "10,000 Miles." I've listened to it maybe 10,000 times in the last 4 days... it's really a pretty good song. And it's produced by Mark Isham, whose soundtracks have been stuck in my head for days... so yeah. Here ya go.

10,000 Miles

Fare thee well
My own true love
Farewell for a while
I’m going away
But I’ll be back
Though I go 10,000 miles.

10,000 miles
My own true love
10,000 miles or more
The rocks may melt
And the seas may burn
If I should not return

Oh don’t you see
That lonesome dove
Sitting on an ivy tree
She’s weeping for
Her own true love
As I shall weep for mine

Oh come ye back
My own true love
And stay a while with me
If I had a friend
All on this earth
You’ve been a friend to me

Isn't that nice? It's better as a song, I think, as with most lyrics. But the lyrics are nice too.

Hmm... anything else? I've updated trisweb.com. I transferred all the poetry, and added one I wrote yesterday. It's worth reading, I think. I've almost got the whole page ready for the switch, but a lot of the comp and links and pictures and fun and music pages... maybe they'll be finished after midterms.

Oh, yeah, school... it's fine. CS is pretty easy. Our next project uses object-oriented programming, which is some cool stuff. I use it a lot in JavaScript, but it's also really good for game programming and anything where you have anything that can be defined or "instantiated" as an object. Cool stuff. And the rest of my classes are good... yeah.... Okay I'm done here. Bye. ::

Wednesday, February 12, 2003 at 02:50 p.m.
10 minutes till class... how much can I write?

It's been a while, and I'm kinda bored... just watching my CS lecture online and listening to the Fly Away Home soundtrack.

Funny story about that, actually. I downloaded a few tracks from the October Sky soundtrack (by Mark Isham, great music) but one of them didn't seem to fit. The funny thing is that it was my favorite one. It was called "Takeoff" and I supposed it happened sometime during the rocket trials in the movie. But it sounded like it would fit in the movie "Fly Away Home" to me... so I searched for that soundtrack, and no one has it. Not even Amazon.com has it on record. I did find one track from the movie by Mary Chapin Carpenter, "10,000 Miles," which is also very good, but no other tracks...

Then just now I listened to "10,000 Miles" all the way through, and when I was about halfway through, I found a file called "Takeoff" from Fly Away Home. Then I went to the Amazon.com page for October Sky, and there was no song called "Takeoff." And then right as that was happening, I heard the big powerful theme from "Takeoff" in "10,000 Miles" and bang! Everything came together. Very trivial, but what a powerful epiphany! It was cool. So now I have a track from Fly Away Home, which I had been looking for all along, because a track I thought was from October Sky reminded me of Fly Away Home... Damn... I must have a good tonal memory ;-). Okay, off to math. ::

Sunday, February 9, 2003 at 12:37 a.m.
First wireless, and now from Linux!

Yay! I finally got Linux working! Kinda... it works in the sense that... it works, but it's still, unfortunately, not very useful for anything other than tinkering. Maybe once I can buy Redhat 9 (which is supposed to be the first of the User-friendly "usable" Linux distrobutions) I can get more work done. But the main thing here is that I got the network working. That is very cool. How did I do this? Well, I got a new network card. Well, a new used network card. For . It's an Intel EtherPro... so it works great both in Windows (the network isn't very laggy anymore) and in Linux.

So... just got back from Clarinet bonding... that was fun. We watched Lilo and Stitch, which wasn't bad. And the music was good -- Alan Silvestri (Contact, Forrest Gump, Cast Away) composed it. I like his music. I also like the music from October Sky, whoever did that. Good movie, too.

My CS project is due tomorrow... because it's after midnight I guess I have to say that. I have a little less than 36 hours to turn it in. No problem. And I have to finish my math homework before 60 hours from now. No problem either. We're working on fairly easy stuff now -- Approximate integration and improper integrals (finding the area from 2 to infinite, for instance). So, I'll be all good with all that. Just have to study lots tomorrow. That's how Sundays are, I guess.

So, all in all, I suppose I've been doing pretty well. Oooh! I wonder if trisweb.com has propagated! Lemme check... ... yay!!! It has! Oh, propagated means that the domain name link to the DNS server hosting it has reached every other DNS ("Domain Name Server") in the world. So go to http://www.trisweb.com!!! If you do, you'll see a sneak preview of my newly redesigned "triswebpage 3.14." I went through 3.0 and 3.01, and 3.02 and junk until I finally found one I liked... and it happened to be version 3.14... yeah... I'm totally lying... the Pi symbol just looks cool... and I'm a geek...

So that's it. I'm going back to Windows until I find some use for this OS... but first I'll install SSH and gnu-emacs... they're useful and free... laters. ::

Wednesday, February 5, 2003 at 07:27 p.m.
triwebpage 3.14

Yes, it's pi, I know... what can I say? I'm a geek. ;-) I'm also a graphic designer, and it's a darn good looking symbol, if you know what I mean. No, not that, you dirty minded person... geez...

But aside from that, I do have a new version of my web site coming out, with an entirely new look and structure, as well as a very nice flash intro, and some new sections (reviews, like some of the ones I've been writing here lately; and a pictures section. And it looks really good. ;-) It's going to be another couple of weeks though. I have the design almost done (still working on some of the menus in the flash navbar) but I still have to import and write the rest of the content. That shouldn't take too long, though.

Oh, and don't worry -- I'm still keeping up with my studies ;-). Later. Simpsons is on. ::

Tuesday, February 4, 2003 at 03:41 p.m.
Another beautiful day!

Third in a row! The weather's on a roll!

What a nice day indeed. The only bad part was the math quiz, 'cause I didn't finish one of the problems... so I'm looking at a 25/30 or so... but that's not bad, so it's really okay. :-)

And there's a Chinese new year's dinner tonight! I love Nancy's feasts... especially Chinese... she makes good Chinese food. I'm calling Nathan as we speak, as I have invited him over already. :-).

Okay, off to play some clarinet downstairs. I'm still getting used to the new mouthpiece a little. :-) ::

Tuesday, February 4, 2003 at 12:50 a.m.
Look ma! No wires! ... Transmitting on RadioKoala, 2.452 GHz

Eddie got a Wi-Fi access point today. Actually, I helped him order it, and decide witch one to get, etc; and it came today. So now it's all set up, in our room for now, because his is on the non-central third floor. We pretty well cover the entire house as it is, but we need to move it to a more horizontally central room. Preferably room 7. We'll see.

Classes are going well. CS is just fine, and English is a joke... Math is the only real challenge so far. But CS promises to get harder. I hope I can get an A in that class. I need it. I'm going for it. And math, too, unfortunately. I think I'll be getting a B in that though, hopefully not any lower (eek). It's okay so far. Lots of good homework to do, and I'm doing [almost] all of it without any reason except to learn the material. And hey, it works! Who woulda thought? Oh, and Wind Ensemble is a lot of fun, despite the fact that I need to practice more. The new mouthpiece is working wonderfully still.

It was incredibly clear at sunset tonight. You could see all the way across the bay to the sillouhetted bridge with all the little car lights making a white line at road level. And all as clear as if you were right there, no haze at all. Oh, and then there was the moon. It was a crescent, almost a sliver, and just a little ways off the horizon (maybe within 20 degrees). It was a beautiful scene looking down the center of the campus at that. :-)

Well, it's 1:00 now, so I'm going to bed. An hour or a half earlier every day until it's before 1:00 every day. My only problem: I wake up so late and get so much sleep that I find myself completely awake at 1 AM. So I'm waking up at 9:00 tomorrow morning, just to get less than 10 hours of lazy sleep. So, goodnight. :-) ::

Sunday, February 2, 2003 at 11:49 p.m.
On Adaptation [Movie Review]

Okay, I just watched the movie "Adaptation," and here's my take on it...

The movie begins with Stanley Kaufmann on the set of the filming of one of his movies. This Kaufmann is very real -- in the reality of the movie, that is... he is actually played by Nicholas Cage -- and he is in the process of writing another screenplay, an Adaptation of a book called The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean. At that point, we actually see Susan, and follow her process of writing the book three years ago.

Then it gets weird. But profoundly weird; weird in a very good way. The storylines intersect -- not just because Kaufmann is adapting Susan's book, but also because Kaufmann becomes a part of the ongoing story of the Orchid Thief. And all throughout this, Charlie Kauffman can't write the screenplay. The story has no substance whatsoever, "it's about flowers," he keeps telling himself; "I want to show people how wonderful flowers are."
"Are they?
"--I don't know... I think so--"
But, it's not about flowers.

The movie is full of profound lines, little things said in the middle of some scene that make you think, or lines straight out of Susan's novel (which is real) which seem somehow perfectly placed in the scene of Kaufmann's life, of the story, which is exactly that.

There are so many levels to this. The human mind perhaps can only comprehend four or five levels of depth, but I am convinced that there are an infinite number. It's like when you hold two mirrors facing each other, and place your eye carefully in the middle; you see infinite reflections of yourself. This movie is in the process of writing itself as you're watching it. Crazy things happen. Normal things happen. Profoundly magical things happen. Birth, death, love, hatred, alligators -- it's all there, it's all life. It's a crazy twisted two-mirrors-facing-each-other mental thrill. It really forces you to think, it requires you be intelligent, and it's damn good. ***** [five of five stars] ::

Sunday, February 2, 2003 at 12:34 a.m.
Whoops.

Maybe it wasn't such a beautiful day after all. The Space Shuttle Colombia, with 7 crewmembers, exploded over Texas this morning. I didn't find out until Nathan told me on the BART train. Just goes to show how small a role mass media plays in my life here... I don't watch TV, I don't listen to the news... I read the paper a lot, but that's about it. I only find out about things through the internet and word of mouth.

But man, that really sucks, that accident. Debris for hundreds of miles around, I read, and weird stuff with the shuttle launch, something falling off of it or something. This is as big as the Challenger explosion. The only difference is that the media doesn't have video of this, so it's less hyped.

How sad. I would pray for the souls of these men, but I'm not religious.

I will pray anyway; the thought of it is necessary for things like this. God bless them, and their families. Goodnight. ::

Saturday, February 1, 2003 at 03:01 p.m.
It's a beautiful day in Berkeley!

Man, what a beautiful day it is. The sky is clear, the air is fresh, you can see all the way across the bay... it's just perfect. I think I'll go for a walk somewhere.

I had planned on getting up relatively early (8-ish) because I went to sleep at about 12:10... but somehow I ended up sleeping in 'till 10:30... oh well. Must have been all the sleep I lost during the week. But I feel great with all that sleep. And I'm going to the city with Nathan tonight, that should be a lot of fun. We're meeting Jarys in Union square and going to Sony Metreon to see a movie and stuff. :-).

And right now I'm going to finish my CS homework, so I don't have to worry about it tomorrow, when I will be doing math homework ;-). So... that's about it.

Song of the day: Telepopmusik - Breathe
Quote of the day: "The secret to eating a sausage is to not look at it. If you concentrate on a sausage, you won't want to eat it anymore, believe me." -Me. ;-) ::

Thursday, January 30, 2003 at 11:24 p.m.
Stupid crash....

My computer crashed. I don't know why or how, but it did. I think it may have something to do with the soundcard drivers. Anyway... I'll try to remember all of what I wrote for the last fifteen minutes.

Ahh yes... I got my new mouthpiece today. A Vandoren B40 13-series. And I like it. I like it a lot. It's advertized as having a hard-reed sound while using softer reeds (as I prefer). And they don't lie! I get a very rich sound, full of overtones and depth, just like I would if I used a hard reed on any other mouthpiece, like my old B45. But I hate hard reeds. [Note: at this point, I go off on a huge explanation of the misconceptions clarinettists have about reed strength, and a general rant on hard reeds. But I lost it. And I don't want to type it again. Maybe later.]

In other news, I'm going to the city to see a movie with Jarys on Saturday. Yay! Friends. And I'm trying to see if Nathan can come, but haven't called him yet. I'll talk to him tomorrow. So, a little adventure there.

I wrote a good poem today. Haven't typed it up yet, but I will soon, so look for it on my web site. It will be titled "Options."

And now, a breakthrough in the field of spam filtering! Some genius made a program that uses statistical word counts to filter spam. It's an idea that's been floating around for a while, called "Bayesian Filtering." Well, this program actually goes one step further, and starts out with no statistics whatsoever. You train it for about two weeks to a month of general use (the process may be expedited if you get a truckfull of spam every day) and it learns what is spam and what isn't. After enough training, it apparently works extremely well, with close to a 99% success rate, with no false positives. Sounds very cool, but I unfortunately don't have an email account to test it with, since I don't get spam at my UClink email address. What a pity... or, not... but you should try it (Dad, who complains to me about spam all the time)! It sounds very promising. And, the best part about it: it's entirely open-source and free to use. Get it at Sourceforge.net.

Well, that's all for now. I think I'll go do something fun, I've been productive for long enough today. ;-) Goodnight. ::

Wednesday, January 29, 2003 at 12:13 a.m.
Mondays are nice.

But that was yesterday. Today I'm getting to thinking that I might need glasses. I have a headache right now, so don't be surprised if I don't type much. My vision is sharp still, but my head starts to hurt when I read too much, and in bright light sometimes. Maybe it's just today, I don't know. But I think I'll go to the school of optometry eye clinic (which gives free eye exams, yay) and see what they have to say.

SBC (formerly "SBC Pacific Bell," if you haven't seen the commercials) has announced that they believe they own a patent on using a navigational frame in a web site. They have already identified 30 major "patent infringers" and sent them bills for amounts ranging from 0 to .7 Million to "license" their use. Honestly now, guys -- Al Gore invented the WHOLE internet, and he's not charging a penny in licensing fees! Oh, and the company that "invented the hyperlink" would like 0 from everyone who has ever made a web page... ever... per year... yeah.

I'm on the cal band computer committee (comp-comm) now. We have many projects, most of whice involve me learning PHP scripting and SQL. So that's something I'll be looking into soon, in addition to my current growing knowledge of the structure and interpretation of computer programs, from CS 61a -- "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs." Programming is fun. I hope I make the major... but that's to worry about once I apply. I hope I get A's... (knock on wood... wood with paper on it... on which I am solving math problems).

Argh. I need sleep. This headache isn't making it very appealing to keep my eyes open. Goodnight. ::

Saturday, January 25, 2003 at 12:58 a.m.
First week: Check.

Yep. It's done. I went to every single class this first week. And it wasn't too bad, overall. Actually, pretty good. I'll talk about that later.

Right now I'm kinda tired. Just watched a weird time-based Star Trek Voyager episode... pretty good, actually. Star Trek ain't half bad if you ask me.

So... what else? ... nothing... goodnight. ::

Friday, January 24, 2003 at 10:24 a.m.
A Day of logic and numbers...

CS Lab, followed by CS lecture, followed by Math lecture. Not too bad... at least there's not something like English in the middle to get me all confused... ;-)

I broke my mouthpiece the other day in wind ensemble. That looked pretty bad, believe me -- I dropped my clarinet (yes... the good one...) and I picked it up, and it all seemed fine. But when we started playing... hmm... that's not right..... I took a quick look at the mouthpiece, and there was a small wedge taken out of the left side. Just a little crack, and now it's totally useless. Fortunately, I had another mouthpiece. But I don't like it as much at the B-45... so sometime in the near future, I'll be needing to order a new one ;-).

Well, off to a hearty breakfast and class. Laters. ::

Wednesday, January 22, 2003 at 09:32 p.m.
Homework begins already...

I already finished my English... math is in progress, and decently difficult. At least, it was through the first two problems, and then it all came back to me. Well, actually, it's an entirely new concept... Integration by parts. Apparently this entire math class is about methods of integration. Sounds fine, I guess... I always liked integrals.

Well, my CS professor looks good (and the class looks interesting and fun); my math professor is Russian again (his name is Nicolai Resheketin, I think) but his accent isn't bad, and he seems pretty good; and I got into wind ensemble. Though I am 3rd chair from last... 3rd clarinet. Seems I always start out somewhere on the end and work my way up. I hope to. The music is difficult sightreading, but not necessarily difficult once practiced. So it looks good as well.

So, all is well, then. :-) Back to math... ::

Wednesday, January 22, 2003 at 12:12 a.m.
Travesty

Ladies and gentlemen, "Kangaroo Jack" -- a.k.a. "I put the money in the jacket... and the jacket on the kangaroo... and now he's hoppin' away...!" has topped the box office charts today. Proof that the American public really can be brainwashed by repetitive advertising. So sad...

That is all. ::

Tuesday, January 21, 2003 at 10:52 p.m.
The long day is over...

And at the end, I died. From chocolate death. But it was good. I just couldn't stop eating it; and then, all of the sudden, I realized that I had eaten too much, but alas, it was too late. Thus is the irony of chocolate death.

Well, anyway, the first day went relatively well. My math discussion section looks to be invaluable... and by "invaluable" I mean "a complete waste of an hour and a half every tuesday and thursday." The GSI looks like he's knowledgable, but get this: he didn't say a word for the first ten minutes of class. He just wrote things on the board. And when he finally addressed us, I found my worst fears were true. He is the opposite of my last math GSI: 1: He doesn't speak english very well, nor understand it, nor does he speak very much. But he's not russian, he's Chinese. 2: He is not fun. It seems like he goes home and does math in his spare time. 3. Homework is not graded, yet he will collect it anyway. 4. Quizzes will be every thursday, in class, for 15 minutes only, and will be a full 25% of the course grade.

So, the outlook in Math today was poor. But my friend/housemate Heather is in my section, and that's cool.

English, on the other hand, looks not only interesting, but fun and exciting as well. It is entirely reading and analyzing poetry, with two 5-page papers and a final making up the entire grade in equal parts. It looks easy, I like the subject, the professor looks cool, the class is relatively small (only about 50), and there are a lot of cute girls in it. We have minimal reading -- just a few (about 5) poems each week -- and very few other assignments. These include writing a formed poem (A Sonnet, for example), reciting a poem from memory, and that's it. And he said that the final is "fairly straightforward" as long as you go to class! So it looks like it'll be a lot of fun.

Aside from class, I spoke with Eddie just now about his new laptop, which he is quite excited about. It has built in Wi-Fi, just like mine. I showed him the MiniPCI slot with the antenna connectors and stuff. Very cool. So, now he's thinking about getting a wireless access point for himself, and since he'll be living in this house for the next semester, he wants to give access to the whole house -- which is basically just us two.

So, all in all, good first day of classes. Oddly enough, it rained last night, and is supposed to shower tomorrow, so the air is nice and clean. :-) That's about it. Night. ::

Tuesday, January 21, 2003 at 12:13 p.m.
Off I go...

to Math discussion. Hopefully the GSI just says "go home!" because we haven't had lecture yet. That'd be cool. And then I have until 2... my English lecture, which I am looking forward to. :-) Later ::

Monday, January 20, 2003 at 10:42 p.m.
So, school starts tomorrow...

Or, "Classes" start tomorrow, as we say at the university. ;-). I don't know quite what to expect from all my classes this semester. After all, it is only my second here. I have all my books, all my pens and accessories, etc. etc. And I am mentally ready, I think.

What's weird is that I know that sometime very soon -- in a few months, yes; but when it comes, it will seem not too long a time -- it will all be over, and the time will seem like nothing. As insignificant as a simple memory. Yet, what will be a memory then is the next few months now. I just have to bite the bullet; just work hard, get the A, be satisfied with my work... just do it (for lack of a better non-commercialized phrase). So, I will make my memory of the next few months something worth relaxing to.

In other news, the house is once again alive with people; I am glad to see them once again, just as they are glad to see me. Such a wonderful group this is :-). I watched the first half of the Fellowship of the Ring tonight. 'Tis good sometimes just to watch movies with friends.

Well, my first class is at... 12:30! So I think I'll get up and have a nice breakfast around 9. We'll see how that turns out. I can't remember the future yet ;-). Goodnight. ::

Monday, January 20, 2003 at 03:48 p.m.
Spring Cleaning

I've been doing a lot of work around the... room... lately. I spent almost all day yesterday cleaning it up, and I do believe that it was one of the most satisfying room cleanings I've ever done. Just now I replaced the big flourescent bulbs (there are 2 of them) in the ceiling light that lights the back half of our room. It has been dead the entire first semester. I thought it was broken. Nope. The bulb was just dead. So now our room is very well-lit, clean, orderly, cool looking, and good smelling. That's right folks -- the mold smell left over from break is gone! It must have been the carpets... and piles of crap... and trash... and the fridge... and the couch. But I abolished it. Ha.

Well, I think I'll clean the windows. Kinda looks like the last time they were cleaned was when the walls were painted wacko colors, and the ceiling panted gradient yellow-to-red-to-black-to-blue, diagonally from the far corner opposite to the door. Which reminds me... we should paint the room white... except for the ceiling... it would look cool if we left it. :-) ::

Sunday, January 19, 2003 at 10:18 p.m.
So let's start now...

What I really should have said in my first journal entry today (the really long one, two entries back) is this:

I really love my dad for many reasons; some very shallow -- like how he provides for me, pays for college, pays for my house, pays for my food -- some very deep -- like all the time we spend together, just enjoying each other's company -- and some seemingly trivial -- like how he keeps going, acting as if nothing is wrong, even though he has a stomach ache and sore muscles; or how he must hunt down every little rattle or squeak in the car before we start driving. Thanks for everything, dad.

And this, of course, makes me think of my mom; because she was not with me this weekend. I love her equally, and I am always sorry that I am not spending time with her when I'm spending time with my father. I love you, mom, for letting dad take me away from you; for knowing that I'll be fine, and letting me be away from home without worrying too much. There are some things that dad can't do, and some things that dad does too much or too often. That's why you are always there, always; I love you.

I could say something about my brother, but he wouldn't want it publicised. ;-)

Well, that's much better. I'll work on more like this. :-) ::

Sunday, January 19, 2003 at 10:13 p.m.
Good journals

have a lot of thought put into them. Mine, on the other hand, has a lot of meticulous events put into it. I fill it with events from one day... things I want to remember, but not things that will be valuable to me, or anyone else, in the future. I would like to make this more of an emotional and thoughtful output for myself... I would like to put ideas here, instead of just repeating stuff from memory. I am thoughtful sometimes, but not enough, and I would like to be more often, if not always. So let that be a new years' resolution. I can make them all through January, right? Sure, why not? So there you go. Just a thought. ;-) ::

Sunday, January 19, 2003 at 07:14 p.m.
Two days; lots of stuff.

The drive went reasonably well, except my dad had some kind of allergic reaction to In 'n Out, which caused his body to get rid of everything fast, not to mention make his stomach uneasy for the next few days. But we got to my grandparents' house just fine, and then to Berkeley the next morning for my audition. The audition went decently well... aside from the sightreading... I played the Mozart Adagio, and good thing, too, because he then had a reference at least for what I was capable of with a prepared piece. He offered me lessons, actually, to bring my sightreading up to the level of my playing ability, and I expressed my interest. So generally, it went well. I find out Wednesday.

After that, we went and bought my books. Only two, yet 0. Very illogical and dumb. But what are you going to do? Can't do anything about it, I guess... oh well. We went to the library after that, and I showed my dad the stacks. He was impressed. They were empty. What a contrast from finals week...

After dinner, at the Firestone Alehouse, we went to Emeryville for a movie, and got off one exit too late, in the Oakland ghetto. Pretty spooky, but we found our way eventually. The Emeryville AMC is the biggest theater I've ever seen, with a huge lobby and ticket counter (and digital self-serve ticket thingies) and great theaters (with stadium seating). We saw "Chicago." It was interesting, and not too bad at all. It was adapted from the musical, and they did a pretty good job of it.

My dad stayed in the faculty club, which is basically a hotel on campus. Very cool. And not expensive at all. I, on the other hand, stayed at TH, and locked myself out of my room at midnight and a half. I went downstairs for a while and had a glass of water, and thought of how stupid it was that I went to the bathroom without my key, but then I went to room 12 to see if anyone was awake... I got Jason's magic key and magically unlocked my room. It was 1:30. I went to sleep.

My phone woke me up at 9 AM. It was my dad, of course, and this was when I had asked him to call me. We went to Mt. Tamalpias (pr. Tam-ul-pie-ass) and drove 90 % of the way up the mountain, and hiked the rest of the quarter mile to the top. It was a spectacular view, even if it wasn't such a spectacular hike. With all the time we had left (it was about 12:30) we went to Point Reyes, with the intention of seeing the lighthouse. Unfortunately, the lighthouse was only accessible by bus -- lazy Park Service chartered bus -- but, lacking much foresight, we bought tickets, and boarded the second bus after waiting in line for a half hour. The trip took 15 minutes, but the lighthouse was cool. We took lots of great pictures, and learned a great deal about the geography of Point Reyes (the only exposed part of the Pacific Plate). We got back to the bus stop around 4:30, and again did not fit on the first bus. But then it got cold, and the fog rolled in, and it was windy, and there was no bus. Apparently, the rangers were having complications with the bus drivers -- mainly, their problem was that they were lazy and ignorant, and didn't care about the freezing children waithing for them in the freezing cold weather and freezing wind... But eventually, a bus came at 5:15, and we were back in the parking lot by 5:30. And man, we were the first ones out of there.

We had planned on eating in the city, so we went up Hwy. 1 to the 101 and stopped at Golden Gate park. We got some wonderful long-exposure pictures of the bridge, and then finally went over it.

The city was crowded. There was not a parking spot in the entire city within 8 blocks of a decent restaurant. So, after an hour of wandering, we decided to go to the chineese place in Albany -- Kirin. Good restaurant -- horrible service, but great food. They were closed. Angrily closed. Rudely closed. So we decided to go to the Firestone Alehouse again. We knew they were open, and that they were good. So, after unexpectedly nearly getting lost in Berkeley (we couldn't find Gilman... turns out it goes E-W for a while, but then goes N-S... weird), we finally found it, and sat down, and ate.

So, it was a tiring couple of days. But it was worth it, I guess ;-). Today, I woke up at noon (like I said, a tiring couple of days) and took a shower and had breakfast, and cleaned my room for the rest of the day while Matt cleared out his stuff. It was satisfying. And now, the room is downright nice. Ahhhhh. There's no one here but me again, and oddly enough, the entire house feels kinda empty too. The Ski trip #2 gets home tonight though, maybe that'll liven thing up a bit. And Nancy starts cooking... that'll bring people back.

Well, anyway, that was a long one, yet again. I think I'll play some games... I missed good 3D. ;-). ::

Thursday, January 16, 2003 at 05:05 p.m.
One thing I will not miss:

56k. 'Nuff said.

Thursday, January 16, 2003 at 04:55 p.m.
Well, off I go!

After two and a half weeks at home, I finally get to go back to Berkeley! It wasn't soooo bad... just kinda... different... yeah. They made me do work. Lots of work. But I lived through it, and now I get to go back to being lazy and happy; except in school, of course, which will occupy most of my time this next semester.

I had no time to practice for my audition. I know scales... lots of them... all the majors, actually, and a few minors... and I can play the Mozart adagio well, I guess. And I might talk him into letting me play some jazz for him. It is a wind ensemble -- not a symphony -- after all. I should be fine. And after that, what could be better than a night in the city with my dad? Not much, actually :-).

I still have four days until classes start... my schedule is good in some ways, and very bad in others. Like, my first class on monday isn't until 2 PM, but I have class until 4 PM Friday. It'll be okay I guess. As long as I can keep my GPA up and get into the CS major, that is. I have to start thinking of alternate majors in case I don't make it ("finally concede defeat" as they say in the handbook). The "Physical Sciences" major looks good... general, but good. And there's always astrophysics if I want to take 3 more semesters of physics before I apply... or English, maybe... or something... I don't quite know yet. I'll focus on CS. If my technical GPA's above 3.3 or something, then it's almost guaranteed anyway. That shouldn't be too hard. An A in CS3 mighta been nice... stupid midterm....

Off to a long drive. Will write more later. :-) ::

Thursday, January 16, 2003 at 12:11 a.m.
Thought I should say something...

Home is boring. Nah, not really. Just kinda. I'm leaving tomorrow; considering that, I thought I ought to post something, since I haven't in a while... so here you go. I'm still alive. I'll say something more interesting once I get some sleep. Goodnight. ::

Friday, January 10, 2003 at 12:14 a.m.
One more thing....

This is almost so I don't forget it... but something I'm annoyed with right now is the freaking noise level coming out of my laptop line out! It's totally interference (a constant whine, every move of the hard drive, every move of the mouse, and every bit processed; you can hear it all loud and clear) when I don't have anything playing to drown it out. And when the music is soft, you can still hear it! Blech! But check this out. The "Echo Indigo" -- a PC-card soundcard to combat this very problem. The only problem: . I guess I'll live. But I would like to get one before our next DJ performance... which will be months from now, at the spring formal.

Anyway, just ranting. I'm no audiophile, but I hate blatantly bad sound output... yuck. I'm listening to it right now. I think I'll listen to some music before I go to bed so it's not the last thing I hear. ;-) Goodnight. ::

Thursday, January 9, 2003 at 11:19 p.m.
Been bored lately... (and archiving...)

I miss college a little, I think. Here I just have to do boring work all day, rather than hard academic work combined with a whole lot of fun. And I miss the fast internet... though I never thought I'd call 768k SDSL "fast." Compared to a 56k modem -- or this approximately dual-ISDN speed (120k) random wireless internet connection -- that is fast. And it's not bad, really. I had a hard time convincing the board to upgrade it, too. They were worried that people will just get their huge downloads faster and keep clogging it up. But at about 500k, the bottleneck begins to become the source server, and not your own connection. It also increases the total size of the pipe, so even if five people are downloading at maximum speed, you can still browse the internet decently.

I have many things to do here. Unfortunately, I wouldn't exactly call any of them "fun." First, I must finish the structure of my mom's web site so my dad can work with her and fill it with content... then I have to work on my dad's intranet company manuals (he's making an online version, and the company technically has 'hired' me for the project... so I guess I'll do it... if he ever sends me the outline that is). And I have to finish cleaning up the glass-gravel, which I have now shoveled into a pile in the center of the dirt area I made in the process of doing so.

But I do like being home -- really, I do. It's good to see everyone, and to sleep in a comfortable bed in a comfortable place with people you love, and a dog. I missed the dogs at school. Charlie is around a lot, but he's shy and unfriendly, unfortunately. So it's nice to be around good dogs again. Ones that sleep in your room and jump on your bed in the morning... well, Poppy's a little old for that now, but she used to... oh how things change in such a not-so-long while.

There, I archived. It was up to 45k, I had to. It took a full ten seconds to load on my 56k modem... can't stand for that... so there you go.

I slept in till 11 this morning, and I'd rather not next morning. I don't really need 11 hours of sleep, though it is good every once in a while, I guess. So I'll go with that. Goodnight all :-) ::


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