Python Class

I just finished the final project for an online Python class at www.coursera.org. It was really fun. The final project is a remake of the old arcade game Asteroids. I had to make some sprites for the game. Take a look:

Blogging is tough

As much as I try I cannot seem to stay consistent with my blogging. Well I am almost totally moved into my new condo. Soon after I closed escrow and got the keys I had a furious two weeks of boxing everything at my old place and transporting a few boxes every night after work. In the first week of April I had all my boxes in my new place and then I began unpacking. Needless to say I'm pretty slow at that as well. I have a lot of things I could write about but I don't have the time as I need to get some sleep. In the upcoming blog entries I hope to:
1) Show some initial pictures of my condo
2) Show post some current pictures
3) Maybe talk a little more about my home shopping experience

Signing Weekend

This was a pretty stressful weekend. On Friday I went to First American Title and signed papers for my first condominium. If all goes well then next Friday I will be the owner of a bubble of space, which for some reason qualifies as real estate. At the signing appointment there were a lot of forms to read and sign. I was very impressed by the notary who went over all the papers with me. He was very patient and waited for me to read everything before I signed any papers. Even more impressive though, was his ability to read upside down. We sat on opposite sides of a table and whenever I had a question he was able to scan the document and find the answer without taking back the form. If you were to ask me anything specific about the forms I signed I would not be able to remember, but I'm still glad I read everything because I found a couple things that puzzled me and I am glad I had my question answered there. Overall the experience was not too unpleasant. It will definitely feel worth it when I am officially a homeowner.

Game Night

This weekend Erica and I went to Tom and Amanda's apartment for a game night. We started out playing Scategories and Blogger, which are quickly becoming some of my favorite board games. BTW, Tom and Amanda are excellent at both games, and I realize I need to improve my command of the English language to stand a chance at beating them.

The highlight of the night, however, was playing Mario Party 8 on the Nintendo Wii. To be honest, it could have been any of the Mario Party series. When it come to group party gaming, Mario Party is the best. I just want to defend Mario Party 8 because it is the first MP game to be ported over to the Wii, and the reviews for it were not very good. Yes, the motion controls can feel unresponsive or inacurate at times, but it puts everyone on the same level. Anyway, the game was very close and the bonus stars put me in the lead at the very last second. I love game nights.

Picking a first home

Soon I will officially be a home owner. I know the real estate market is down right now but hopefully I will be able to stay in my new condominium until the market picks back up and it gains a lot of value. Today I will start the first of many blog entries which recap my home shopping process and maybe help other perspective home buyers with their decisions. First I'm a college-educated, single engineer in Northern California. For this reason my home needs are very simple, however I decided that I would be aggressive with my purchasing choices and hope to get a roommate to defer some of my costs. With this in mind I decided to get a two-bedroom and two-bathroom unit. Also, given the size of the apartments I had lived in before, I wanted something at least 1,000 sq. ft. to ensure that it would be comfortable for a roommate and myself. I also wanted at least two assigned parking spots (hopefully in a garage). With these requirements in mind I would be able to let a real estate agent find some properties for me.

Return of the (Green) Ring

I just received my refurbished XBox360 back from Microsoft. According to them,about 4% of XBox consoles need to be re-serviced. The company that sells the warranties on the console, SquareTrade, says it's more likely around 16%. I think it's higher. Well, it took my XBox (purchased in November 2006) just over one year to succumb to the Red Ring of Death (after a month of fighting it stopped working in the first few days of February). Well, the refurbished unit is up and working. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that I never need to ship my XBox back for repairs.

Post Trip Report - Colorado

I made my first trip to Colorado this weekend. I went with my girlfriend, Erica, to visit her friends, Mario and Jaime, in Dillon, CO. We stayed there Friday to Saturday so that we could go snowboarding at Keystone Ski Resort. The snowboarding at this resort was awesome! The runs were nice and long and well-groomed. Also, the weather wasn't too cold and it was snowing hard enough to ensure that you were always on a layer of powder.
Sunday we packed up our things and went to Mario and Jaime's house in Colorado Springs. Their house was really nice and puts my new condo to shame. Thanks to Mario and Jaime for hosting us. It was a great trip. I hope to get some pictures of the trip up later this week.

Rocky Mountain High

I still don't have that much time to write but I'm excited because I'm flying to Colorado to go snowboarding this weekend. Not quite sure which resort I'm going to... maybe Vale. I'll be staying at a friend's ski condo. I hope to have some pictures to post on Monday night.

Beginning Anew

Well, here it is: yet another attempt to restart my blog. Right now my blogging has slowed not because of lack of things to write about, but rather a shortage of time spent on blogging. Well I'm going to do my best to make regular entries now and get back into the swing of things. In the short term, I am going to be writing about the process of buying one's first home. This is a process I am experiencing right now first hand. Let me tell you, it's not a simple process. I am pretty for in the process; I am supposed to close escrow next week. However in my next couple of entries I plan to summarize the steps I have already gone through (e.g. looking at places, putting down the deposit, working out mortgage loan decisions). Until then, if any of you reading this have any tips about home ownership I would be happy to read them.

Rejuvenation

Well hello there. This is my first post in over a year. It would be really depressing to say that nothing important or exciting happened in the past year, but luckily that is not the case. In fact, I would say since my last blog entry I had one of the most exciting years of my life yet. Should this dramatic change be attributed to a lack of blogging? Let's hope not.
I would love to write all about it right now, to pour onto this webpage all the wonderful memories from the last twelve months, but to be honest I can't. I am not one of those epic story writers. If you have been reading this blog then you already know that. So, in true engineering form, I will start for now with a list of the big events that have happened, and hopefully within the next couple of days (more likely weeks) I will write a small, more detailed entry about each event. So here goes:

1. Completed my Master's Degree in Engineering Management at Santa Clara University
2. Moved to a new home
3. Bought a new car
4. Restarted my fitness routine
1. Started playing soccer again
2. Started bicycling
3. Snowboarding
5. Restarted my social life

So now I have taken the plunge. I have started my blog again. Looks like I have at least seven more posts to write in the near future. Yea!

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?