No More Classes

Hello. I apologize for the long period without any blog updates. Today I just took the final exam for my last class towards my Masters Degree. So there is no Graduation ceremony in March, so until Commencement on June 16th I don't know what my status is. Do I have a Master's Degree yet or do I have to wait until I get that piece of paper from the school? I'm guessing I have fulfilled the requirements for the degree, but until the school officially recognizes me as a graduate I do not have the degree. So I guess I should have a lot more free time now. I hope that means I can keep updating my blog. A lot of events have occurred recently so look for a few entries soon.

TV Shows I'm Watching

Well, this is my last quarter of school. Everyone has been asking me what I'm going to do with my newfound free time. I really don't know right now but on my list of priorities is getting back into shape. Besides that I am starting to get into a couple of TV shows. Over the next couple of days I'll try to write down some thoughts about the ones I'm watching. First is:

The Office
At first I thought this show was just going to be a spin off of the movie Office Space. In the first season this seemed to be the case; there was a diversity day, and a sexual harassment episode, but not much to get excited about. Now in its second season the writers have started to develop the personalities of the wacky characters on the show and they are creating some great laughs.

What makes this show great is it doesn't force the humor. Everything about the show is implied. The camera work is done to make you think that the show is a reality TV show, though it has never been established that this is the case. Also there is no laugh track to tell you when you are supposed to laugh, the show lets it happen naturally.

Steve Carrell also makes a great performance every show. His Michael Scott character is such an inept manager that it is almost painful (funny painful). The rest of the cast does a great job as well. Though the stereotypes are over the top, they do speak some truth to apart of everyone in the workplace. There is your over-achiever, weird guy, rule-follower, pal, and guy-who-doesn't-care. If you have ever worked in a corporate environment, you will enjoy how the show pokes fun at life in The Office.

Hoodwinked Review

I'm pretty tired so I am not going to write too much about Hoodwinked, but I am going to say that I was disappointed with it. I did like how they started with what appeared to be the normal Riding Hood story with attitude, then warped it so that every "suspect's" story was so skewed from the normal fairy tale we heard as children. However, though the idea was very interesting, it still failed to present anything unique. For example, trying to surprise the movie watcher by making an old grandmother an adrenaline junky just seems so cliche.

What really killed me though was the animation. On the movie's website the makers of the movie claim that with the power of modern computers they were able to avoid going to a big name studio and do the animation themselves. This clearly is not the case. When there was a lot of action, especially with more than one character moving at once (ie. the dancing scenes) the animation really slows now and becomes jerky. This really pulls you out of the movie and back into the theater, and you never stay involved with the movie. Also, in a lot of the close ups it is possible to see how simplistic the character models were. It makes them look almost thrown together. This is the antithesis of the effort put into the character in computer-animated movies like Toy Story or Monster, Inc.

Overall I really wouldn't recommend seeing this movie. The idea is cute and so much more could have been done with it. I'm just so disappointed that the movie makers tried to skimp on the movie funding. It really shows and keeps you from enjoying what could have been a funny comedy.

School is Taking Over My Life Again

Looking back on this weekend, I hardly did anything but schoolwork. I did go see the movie Hoodwinked (review at a later time), I helped a friend move apartments, and I had a couple small Chinese New Years celebrations with my friends and my sister's family. My social life always suffers when I'm in school. I can't wait for this quarter to end.

On a more positive note, I think my course load this quarter is light enough so that I can get back into working out. I have gone at least twice a week so far, and I hope to work up to 3-4 times a week. I also hope to get back into swimming regularly once the weather warms up.

Homework Friday

Today I was off from work, but I had to create my presentation on the Advances and Challenges of Wireless networks for my class and Santa Clara University, ELEN 443. To make things worse, I'm in the process of transferring the the DSL account from my name to my roommate, so basically we have no DSL till Febrary. Aargh! So now I'm in the SCU Engineering computer lab.

One interesting I've found in the process of researching my report is the development of Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) wireless transmission. The picture here is a Linksys MIMO router. With the added antennas and some extra processing algorithms, MIMO provides faster speeds and greater range than normal 802.11g routers, but it's still backwards compatible. Too bad it's still very expensive or I might try using it in my apartment.

While looking for pictures displaying the benefits of mobile wireless networks, I found some hilarious pictures. They are posted below. Any comments?

Magazine Subscriptions

On the front page of SlickDeals I saw a pretty good deal for magazine subscriptions. I guess MagsForLess is a good site to find cheap deals. So now at the cost of $8 I have a sugscription to Maxim, Stuff, Motor Trend, Car & Driver, and Road & Track magazines.

Biggest HSX Adjust

For those of you who know what the Hollywood Stock Exhange is, I have been playing for just over a year now, and I just had my biggest portfolio adjust of my career. Yea! After reading some of the HSX strategy guides I decided to try out the strategy of playing every movie opening for the weekend. This weekend I happen to guess correctly (with some help from LiverLvr). THe dark side to today is that I know he made the same plays, thus I am no where near to catching him. I guess there is always next week.

Superbowl Party Suggestions

In a couple weeks (February 5th) the Superbowl is going to by played. Last year my friends had the best Superbowl potluck/party. They want some help from me this year. I can't think of any fun games/activities besides a Supoerbowl Pool (which they already had last year). Has anyone out there got any suggestions?

New Reading Material

My friend, Will, told me this was a good read. At first I thought this was a joke, but after seeing that there were 244 reader reviews on Amazon for this book, and they all seem to endorse The Game (average rating a 4.5 out of 5), I'm going to check it out. Look for a review in a couple weeks.

Late Night Humor

My roommate, Kevin, is still recovering from the flu. The other night it sounded like he coughed up one of his lungs. To cheer him up a little bit I passed him this link that has been circulating through our work email. Give credit to Jay Leno and the Late Show writers for coming up with such a funny skit. What would you do to get pictures from a Free Photo Booth?

Happy 21

Happy Birthday, Jenny! Jenny's 21st birthday was last Saturday. We took her out to dinner at Giovanni's by UC Berkeley and then had her drink for the rest of the night. She was a good sport about it, however I was surprised how little she drank. That poor little Korean girl just can't hold her liquor. Nonetheless I think she still enjoyed herself.

Welcome Back, LiverLvr

My friend, LiverLvr, has been sick for a little bit. He's just about recovered now. Yea! Welcome back man. Sorry I'm just welcoming you back to work.

Friday the 13th - Heavenly?

On Friday the 13th my friend, Arlo, and I went to Heavenly Resorts at Tahoe to snow board for the day. We really packed in the day because we woke up early, made the 4-hour drive from the Bay Area to Tahoe, stayed all day, then drove 4 hours back home. Luckily Arlo's parents were nice enough to offer to drive for us.

The ski slopes at Heavenly were ok. Overall I felt that they weren't groomed as well as the runs at Northstar. Also, the people there always seemed to be cutting me off or running into each other. Add the fact that I was getting used to the board I just bought for myself (it is too large for me thanks to the recommendation of the salespeople at Tricity (no wonder they are going out of business)), and I was pretty disappointed with the snowboarding for the day. The only thing that impressed me at Heavenly was their terrain park. But I am not at that level yet so I probably won't go back to that resort for awhile.

Things were looking pretty bleak for the day when Arlo's parents picked us up later that afternoon. I was cold and my body was feeling pretty sore from falling all day so I really wanted to go home. However, since we were in the area Arlo's father wanted to spend some money at Harrah's Casino. Luckily, his favorite game, Craps, is also my game of choice. Somehow we ended up at a lucky table and walked away big winners an hour later.

Germ Warfare

I thought I was recovered from the flu already, but I'm not out of the woods yet. My roommate is now recovering from an session of the flu that he caught this weekend. I hope I don't get sick again. It's such a conflict of interest to see him suffering with a fever, nausea, headache, and body aches on the couch. I really want to hang out with him and help pass the time, but at the same time I don't want to get too close cause I don't want to catch the flu again. I can't wait for this flu season to be over.

Snow Boarding

I had a blast this weekend! I have to give a special thanks to my buddy Bing who planned it all. The people who all drove up from the Bay Area together: Bing; his college buddy, Gar; Gar's girlfriend, Linda; Linda's friend, Jen; Jen's friend, Yang; and me. We drove up to Tahoe in a rented SUV on Friday and went straight to the North Star resort. Bing and I rented snowboards and then we all hit the slopes. That day there were not that many people out in the snow so it was a great opportunity to really push my limits and not worry about getting run over if I fell. I really felt like I improved my snowboarding skills.

The SUV crew that drove up together from the Bay Area

Saturday a couple of Linda and Jen's friends, Rosalie and Jenny, met us on the slopes. It was Rosalie's first day snowboarding, but she was adventurous enough to ride up with us to the top of the mountain and carve all the way down to the lodge. Well, Rosalie did more of the falling leaf instead of carving, and she had her share of falls, but I still give her a lot of credit for attempting anything but more than the bunny slopes on her first day.

Jenny and Rosalie who joined us on Saturday

After the weekend of snowboarding we treated ourselves to the buffet at the El Dorado hotel in Reno. It had a really good spread of food; we walked out of there totally stuffed. Next was the carnival games at Circus Circus. We all played the games and won stuffed animals for the girls, but the highlight of the night was Bing covering his eyes and throwing a bullseye with a dart to win a huge stuffed cheetah.

Yum, Soft Serve

At first I was skeptical about going on a weekend trip in a group of eight people where I had only previously met one person, but surprisingly everyone got along really well. I was also surprised at how much I improved at snowboarding. I'm really excited to continue doing it and hopefully I will be able to pull off tricks soon.

Rose Bowl Bust

Overall 2006 has gotten off to a pretty good start. However, there was one large hiccup towards a perfect New Year. But first I'll back off just a bit. I started off by recovering from the flu (I quarantined myself in my apartment for a couple days) then I flew on Southwest Airlines to Los Angeles, where I stayed a couple of days with some friends from USC, Audrey and Damien. They were great hosts and we had a lot of fun just hanging out.

The day before the Rose Bowl, I went to the USC campus and bought two sweaters from the bookstore. It's always nice to have some stylish threads that show school spirit. From campus I crashed with my bud, Hugh. The next day we went to a sports bar in Santa Monica to watch the game. Unfortunately, the defense for USC could not stop Vince Young and the Texas Longhorns beat my USC Trojans 41-38. It really sucked. My team that I supported through the sucky years was on the verge on completing a 3-year, record-breaking journey, only to fall apart in the championship game.

Anyway, with the game being out of the way, my dare was finally complete and I cut my hair. Here are the before and after pictures.