Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Kurt's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Monday, July 5th, 2004
10:01 pm	Stuff Well, I went to Fort Bragg with my parents over the weekend for the 4th. Good times were had. We saw the fireworks on the 3rd, b/c that's when Fort Bragg has fireworks. It was crazy mad nutso. Practically everyone there was setting off their own fireworks. We were on a bluff overlooking a beach where many people had bonfires (~40 different fires), and all people were setting off fireworks from there. This included some seriously large motor-style fireworks. They were approaching the size of the real fireworks. In fact, they ran a parallel, competing display during the actual show. I was extremely impressed that the Fort Bragg fire district prevented the town from burning to the ground. Saturday we canoed up a river. I'll not bore you with details, suffice to say it was neat. Sunday we rode the Skunk Train up through the redwoods. Its a very old (for this area) train line that runs 20 miles to nowhere. Really cool views of the trees and creeks. I spent almost the entire time in the outdoor car. Afterwords we drove back. I was actually pretty depressed coming back. I've kinda realized that the second half of my summer is going to be largely consumed by studying for my preliminary exams. Fun stuff. I also have a variety of nasty chores to handle (dentist, fix newly broken windshield, get wisdom teeth out, do Jury Duty, get new tires...). This does not look good for homestarrunner, as homestarrunner would say. On top of all that I'd like to travel a bit yet, particularly to Wisconsin with my parents, but I'm not sure that's all gonna work out. At any rate lab stuff is going well, and I'm in a good mood, so I can't complain. In other news, Isn't it time we sat down and watched an email as a family? I thought so (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 30th, 2004
11:20 pm	1 in 4 people are sick... [[rant warning]] ... as long as you define your illness broadly enough. Statistics like that are ridiculous. The NYT had a headline tonight "1 in 6 Iraq Veterans Is Found to Suffer Stress-Related Disorder". 1) I would bet 1 in 6 civilians have a stress-related disorder. 2) THESE PEOPLE JUST FOUGHT A WAR: THAT THEY ARE STRESSED SHOULD NOT BE SURPRISING. After someone survives a year plus of being under constant threat of death, and multiple extensions of that tour of duty, I'd say 1 in 6 is low if anything. As a society if we decide that we are going to send people to kill other people we can hardly be surprised if they are getting their limbs blown off and returning under mental duress. In the course of the exo work, I saw a presentation from one of the surgeons at Walter Reed hospital, where the amputees go, and it was disturbing. I could go on, but I think its best to leave it here. Sorry if that was depressing... Current Mood: annoyed (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 29th, 2004
10:50 pm	Hi Well, its been a while well, its been two months yeah I've been busy. When I last posted I had just taken my second 233 midterm. I failed (2 sigma below the mean) the first exam, and thought I had just bombed that one. I actually got an A, which made the week of studying worth it. It was cool seeing Mike, and I did take that Saturday off - I went to SF and played frisbee. And then spent all Sunday working. Everything after that is a bblluurr. I worked like hell until I finished my last exam on May 21. It is probably one of the two hardest ends of semesters I've ever had. I spent all day Saturday the 22nd going from graduation party to BBQ etc. It was fun. Since then I've been working in lab 40+ hrs a week. On top of that I've gone on three camping trips, and I've taken a bit of time off. I haven't been updating mostly due to a lack of sleep, and spending too much time on computers at work. I'll try to get back in the habit. Lab is in flux right now as we try to solidify plans for the next 6-12 months. I'm not exactly sure how my masters is going to fit into all that. I need to start studying for prelims, which are the exams that cover my undergrad work. I take them at the end of summer, and they are pretty hard. I really don't want to study for them. Anyway, I really need to sleep some - this getting up for 9am arrival at lab blows. I'll write something more interesting later. I hope. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 22nd, 2004
6:52 pm	March 25 I just looked. That's the last time I updated. I actually ended up going snowboarding with my new gear that friday and saturday the 26th and 27th. That was a good trip. I had lots of fun, though I did get a minor sprain to my left hand. But since then I have not taken a day off. Literally. In fact, at best, I've only taken off time to go to the occasional BBQ and a few parties. Ugh. I just got done failing an exam. I studied straight from Saturday until Today (Thrusday), and I had done some studying before hand. When I say all day, the last time I ate lunch or dinner at home was a FULL WEEK AGO. And I pretty much failed the exam. Yeah. I hate that class. I'd rather go to the dentist. We stopped by the local pizza place afterword for a beer and some pizza. Now that that's worn off, I'mn'a drive up to Napa to go see Mike, which should be a welcome change. Overall I can't really complain, I like the lab, and I've met lots of cool people out here. I just find some of the classes impossible. If I can just make it through the next month I should be in good shape for a while. I'm especially looking forward to the summer. I'll actually have my weekends off. What a concept. Anyway, I'll take Saturday off, and get some rest. I'm feeling very relieved just to get the exam done. Foof.... for a coupla days, I don't have a ton to do! Huah! Current Mood: energetic (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 25th, 2004
12:14 am	Long time, no see Hrm... since I last posted... Life is really busy, and I should be sleeping, but yea, screw that. My lab's stuff got posted to slashdot.... and Fark... and Associated Press... and a bajillion web sites... and yeah. Kinda cool... We actually ended up going to LA for the second week in March for DARPATech 2004, to show off the Exo (this had been planned for some time). It was quite a trip. Let me start with the weekend fo the 6-7th. I did lots of HW, since I had stuff due the next week, and I knew that I would have to turn it in early (and I wanted to be ahead when I went to LA). Sunday night I went with some people to a bonfire on Ocean beach in SF, which is cool. It's just a really wide beach that you can build a bonfire on... and people brought lots of beer and stuff, and a good time was had. Monday I desparately tried to finish my HW, becasue Monday night I went to a METALLICA concert. Godsmack opened. It rocked. It was just general admission, so I was able to get about 10 feet from the stage - I could see their finger position on their guitars. The only bad part was the occasional mosh pit forming, but I didn't get too many bruises. I'm not even gonna start about the people I went with. Crazy. So Tuesday I actually managed to finish my HW after I was up till 1:30AM packing. We left from lab about 5:30pm, a half an hour behind the other car of students (the prof and a staff guy were already down there). I was with Zoss and Justin, a coupla good friends of mine, in Justin's big, blue, rusty, van. After a few hours we stopped for gas 100 miles out of the Bay Area. As we started to drive back to the highway from the gas station, we heard this noise like tin cans being dragged under the car. It turned out that Justin's transmission was shit out of luck. Or, as we much later discovered, transmission fluid. Details, details. Since it was 8pm on a Tuesday, and the nearest city, Los Banos, CA, was 12 miles away, we weren't getting it fixed that night. So we got the other car to come back and get us. We ditched Justin's car in the gas station and got a ride with the other car. By the time we leave Los Banos, it is 9-10pm and we have six people in a Toyota Matrix. A Matrix fits five. I spent four hours, ~250 miles, with three other guys in the back seat. It seriously sucked. The only good thing was that, for entertainment purposes, we had 1 ipod, 1 laptop, 5 cell phones, and 3 GPSs. We, dammit, knew where we were. We got into LA about 2am and rented a second car from LAX (we'd've done this sooner, but Los Banos doesn't have many car rental places open past, oh, 5pm). After sleeping ~3 hours we got up to go to DARPATech. It was pretty cool. The conference was in the Hilton in Anihiem. The conference hall wasn't too big, but had cool stuff. MEMS, Nanotech, Collapsing planes, VR, mobile robotics, and RAM jets to name a few things. Lots of cool freebies, like mints, Ethernet cable, laser pointers, pens, cd cases, cd openers, to name a few things. The sessions were pretty boring and non-technical, but we went to some. They were mostly geared toward generating proposals. We checked into our motel that afternoon (we'd crashed at Saummya's house the night before), and checked out the pool. A good dinner was had back at the conference. By this time our professor had left in a huff over the setup of our both (not under our control), for good reasons (not worth explaing). We went to find a bar that night at Downtown Disney, (right next to the conference center) but didn't find much. We ended up at an adjacent mexican resturaunt. Not much to be said, but that the waitress was hot. Thursday was the last day of the conference. As we were getting ready in the motel we were flipping channels and found our project. Video of Zoss walking (the stuff on the site) was playing on Good morning America or something. It was a picker-uper. We went to the session about our division of DARPA, and they showed some old video, which was cool. Some of the speakers were better than others. That evening was the main banquet, which was damm good food. They also had this commedian (http://technicallyfunny.com/) Don McMillan come on - he was pretty funny. By the time we walked back I was getting pretty sick with a cold. That night my friends went out to the bars, but I couldn't go. I hear I missed a good 3-woman 80s cover band. Damm. Friday we were on our own, so we went to Rodando Beach. It was empty, but fun. We played in the waves, and pretended as if we could play volleyball. That night we went and ate dinner in Santa Monica. Afterward, again, a few people were going to bars, and I was still feeling crappy and opted to go back to Saymmya's with half the group. We took a senic drive back over a hill where you could see the lights of LA. It was pretty cool. When we got up at 10am on Thursday, it became evident that Zoss and Justin hadn't returned. We got a call about 11am. We had all known that the DARPA grand challenge race had been starting in the desert east of LA at 6am, but didn't want to get up at 4 to go. Appearently Zoss and Justin just didn't sleep. They went from the bars to a friend's appartment and got directions to Barstow to the race. They said it was pretty cool, and I'd've like to've gone, but I imagine I'd've been pretty messed up with my cold if I hadn't slept. They met us early afternoon at Venice beach. I liked Venice beach alot... I think it reminded me of Berkeley with all the hippies. We got to see the famous muscle beach... it was STEAMIN' hot. Like Mike. Then we drove through Hollywood and Bel Air. No, since you're about to ask, the fresh prince was not in. We checked. Really. That night Saummya's parents cooked for us... it was really good food (authentic Indian). Sunday we drove back to the bay area, which was punctuated by only a stop at Carl Jrs. Within a half hour of getting home I left to go do homework with some people. Yuk. That whole next week was pretty dull. This brings me to spring break, this week. But it actually has been pretty low-key. I bought a snowboard (mega end of season discount), went to a BBQ, and did some work. I've been into lab a bit, but not much... things have actually not been so great there this last week, so its good to be away. I think this weekend we'll go up to Tahoe to go boarding, if the snow hasn't all melted. Yeah, in case you're wondering, its basically summer here. It's sunny and 70 every day. So that's what I've been up to the last few weeks. Classes are being really crazy, but that's boring, so I'm not gonna go into detail. I think things are going to be really hectic from now 'till the end of classes in mid-may. And, in case it's not clear already, I really need to go to bed, so I'mn'a do that now. Lates. Current Mood: crazy (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2004
7:27 pm	Exo Link FINALLY! My lab has been OKed to post pictures of our project online. You can see what I work on now! go to http://www.me.berkeley.edu/hel/bleex.htm (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 19th, 2004
11:31 pm	Country You're Texas! You aren't really much of your own person, but everyone around you wishes you'd go away, so you might as well be independent.  You're sort of loud-mouthed and abrasive, but you do have a fair amount of power.  You like big trucks, big cattle, and big oil rigs.  And sometimes you really smell.  But it's not all bad, you're big enough to have some soft spots somewhere in all that redneck madness. Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid I'd also to suggest this game: http://www.smalltime.com/dictator.html it goes through a series of yes/no questions to get the sitcom character or dictator you are thinking of. It figured out I was thinking of Mr. Humphries from a 1970s british sitcom, which I thought was pretty impressive. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 16th, 2004
9:39 pm	Stuff I went snowboarding again today. It was raining at the base of the mountian, and, by midday snowing hard up on the mountain proper. Lots of lifts were closed due to the high winds. It was crazy. About half our group bailed after lunch and went back to the cars via a shuttle the resort (Hevenly) runs. The other four of us (myself included) decided to take some more runs and then head back by cutting back across the mountain via some more runs. Yeah. So we were wet by this time, and each successive trip down the mountain got us VERY wetter. Pretty quickly we were soaked through. As long as we kept moving we'd get warm enough to survive the next ride up. Our 'waterproof' clothing acted as wetsuits. But it was worth it. We were practically the only ones on the mountain. You could look up and down the lift and see no one else on any of the other seats. And every trail was coated with fresh powder. And MAN, it is intense going full speed into a violent blast of snow. I can't really describe it. It was like a movie or something... snow blowing really hard at you... you had to put your hand out to sheild your face. It was cool. In other news, I have loads of homework and an exam in my really hard class a week from Tuesday. I don't really feel like typing about that. Also, San Francisco started recognizing Gay Marriges this weekend. The mayor though it'd be a nice Valentines day gesture. It's pretty clearly against state law, but the state law is probably in violation of the state constitution, which garuntees equal rights for everyone. I think it's similar to what happend in Massachusetts. It makes me proud to be from the bay area... I hope the marriges are recognized by the state, it's long overdue. I think that's all for now... I need to get some sleep. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 11th, 2004
11:04 pm	Berkeley Some of you have visited Berkeley, others have only seen pictures and heard stories. It's hard to come up with one story that really describes what it is to live in Berkeley. The following is the best I've seen. I'm walking out of Cody's books on Telegraph. It's Saturday, so the street merchents are on the sidewalk selling everything from Ceramic pipes(not for tobacco), to T-shirts, to paintings. I head the distant beat of drums, which isn't too unusual in this area, and think nothing of it as I walk to my car. As I round the corner I see about twenty people, most a few years younger than me. They are all dressed in white robes with red and blue sashes. They all have hats that kinda look like white turbans with large, artificial, brigtly primary colored carnations covering their tops. Most of them have drums and something like cymbals, which they are beating in rythem. One person is accompanying on a flute. They are walking two-by-two down the sidewalk, headed towards campus, with no banner, signs, or leaflets. They don't really seem embarresed or anything, and seem to consider this a normal event (maybe it is. I'm not on telelgraph all that often). Everyone on the sidewalk just kinda gets out of the way and lets them pass. I really have no idea where they were going, or who they were. But it might give some idea of what it's like to live in Berkeley... (Comment on this)
10:38 pm	Bimp I was talking with a friend last night and he wanted to ask me (over IM) what the height of my speedbump was. This made sense because the problem we'd been working on involved a curve that looked speedbump-ish. The conversation went like this (edited for clarity): D: what's the maximum height of your speedbumb? D: bimp D: bump gogles: LOL gogles: ha ha ha D: sorry D: i can't stop laughing gogles: WTF is a "bimp"? D: wow. i'm crying a little D: I DON'T KNOW!!!!! D: what's a speedbumb for that matter> So, yeah, that kinda set the tone for the evening. About five minutes later, I had an interesting phone conversation that went like this: me: hello? him: [something in a foreign language, definately Asian] me: uh... I think you have the wrong number him: me: what number are you trying to reach? him: [slowly, in thick accent, give the number for my landline] me: that's this number, but I dont' think you have the right number him: [something like, who are you?] me: I'm Kurt (I wouldn't normally give my name to someone random over the phone, but he seemed genuinely confuesed) him: are you Chinese? (my turn to be confused. Does Kurt sound Chinese?) me: Umm... no. Neither is my roomate (for some reason I thought this might make things clearer) him: [incomprehensible, either asking for someone named Bueno A, or telling me he is calling from Buenos Aires] me: wow, that's a long ways away (it only occured to me later that he could be asking for someone named Bueno) him: [something about a professor, and seems to ask if I want to buy plane tickets] (no kidding. I was getting really confused. I've never been to Buenos Aires, but it's the middle of the semester, and I'm busy) me: uh... good luck trying to reach whoever you're calling. him: [continues to talk] me: [hang up phone] I didn't get much work done last night. I'm not sure that's even the strangeest thing that's happend to me recently. I'm just going to write another post to describe that. I can't do it justice crammed in here. Tonight I got invited to a poker night, and worked feverishly for 45 minutes to finish my work. Then the poker night got canceled, hence I have time to update LJ. If this would happen more often, I'd get my work done faster. Anyone want to play poker? Bimp. Current Mood: bemused (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, February 6th, 2004
8:12 pm	Welll... Sometimes things go better than others. It was a pretty mixed bag of a week. Monday was largely spent out at the field station again, setting up for the demo, and working on homework on Monday night. Dan and I discovered that the problem set for ME233 (Adv Controls) was REALLY hard, but we had time yet to work (it was due Thurs). OOh.. but in betwix the two, I went out for dinner with the professor, some staff, and our project director (the guy we demoed for last fall). That was cool... he's a pretty neat guy, and it was nice to get to talk with him informally after hearing so much about him. I got up early Tuesday. I work on the exo's power source, and I need to put in a fresh back-up battery before demos (it keeps electonrics up if our power goes down, though it doesn't really do much), so I get there before just about any of the other students. Then we had our guests come... some really important people in DARPA, the organization funding our work. We were really nervous, particularly the professor. I don't think it was the best demo we've had, and we had some hardware glitches, but the exo is really impressive, and they liked it. Wendesday was another demo... for some less critical (though still important) people. We were much more relaxed, and it was pretty smooth. It was a good way to end this round of demoing. The rest of the day was fine... until I started feeling really sick. Yeah, me too. I was pretty damm sick Wednesday night. Did I mention that I had a hard homework due Thursday? I beleive I did. One might say that Wednesday was one of the most miserable nights in recent memory. Not to mention, that Dan, the guy I always work with, has larengitis and could barely speak. We made quite a pair. But I got all the work done, and Thursday and today have largely been a haze, though I'm not feeling too sick. I've been taking this stuff called Zicam... its supposed to shorten the lenght and decrease the severity of colds. I'm not sure if its working, or if I'm just lucky so far (I fended off another cold while taking it just before the last snowboarding trip). I think this weekend will be pretty laid back... its my dad's birthday tomorrow, and then I'll do a bit of work on Sunday. I have less due this week, and no demos . In a month I go down to Anahiem (LA) for the DARPA tech conference. Should be cool. Other then that... I'm gonna be working on getting less sick. Current Mood: content (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 1st, 2004
11:56 pm	I'm not dead (said in the tone of Monty Python) So... well... its been a while. I've pretty much been in constant motion for some weeks now. I've had two weeks of classes, and I'll be taking two classes, advanced control systems II and nonlinear control systems. Yes, they are at least as hard as they sound, if not harder. They will undoubtably kick my ass. But they will also constitute the bulk of my theoretical background, so I get to do more fun stuff next year. I went to one class while I was shoppin' around where the prof started going over the linear algebra we needed for the class. And when I say linear algebra I mean LINEAR ALGEBRA in a major sort of a way. The level of the stuff was better suited for Matt than me. I think I'll wait on that class until I have some more background. When I'm not in class, I'm working in the lab. We have another HUGE demo on Tuesday, and everything's going really well, but it means I've been out at the field station setting up. That ate most of Friday night and Saturday afternoon. But its cool... I have most of the comptuer/sensor stuff I've been working on together, so I'll show that off. And the project is working great, so I'm hopeful. When I'm not in class or at the lab, I'm snowboarding. I've been up three times in January, including a two-day trip. I'm good enough to hold my own on intermediate slopes without falling down. Next I'mn'a start working on some jumps and perhaps start doing some black diamonds. I'm to a point that I can keep up with my friends from lab, which is really cool. I need to get some gear though... anybody have a board they'll sell cheap? When I'm not doing the aforementioned, I'm probably doing something else... like watching the superbowl and drinking beer with friends this afternoon. That was good fun... it was a good game. I liked the ad for Shards O'Glass Freeze Pops. It was hilarious... they have a website http://www.shardsoglass.com/ And occasionally I sleep, eat, or update livejournal. Maybe I can manage the latter a bit more, as I've been rather negligent. Before I go, I decided to do one of the "where I've been things" y'all posted before, so here it is: Current Mood: energetic (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 14th, 2004
10:14 pm	Speed First of the digital kind. I have installed in my computer an 8x DVD burner. That means I can copy 4.7 gigs of data to a DVD in less than 15 minutes. This is a big deal when one has tons of data to back up... for various reasons (that one has tons of data, that is). So I'm real happy about that... it installed with no problems or anything. 8x is so new that I was barely able to get DVDs to burn on. The other kind of speed was on snow. I've gotten better at snowboarding, and I can actually go down slopes with some skill, and not fall down too often. I'm looking forward to going again this weekend, I'm startin' to see why people like it. It's been pretty quite 'round 'ere. My roomates been gone since last tuesday and gets back tomorrow, so I've had the apartment to myself. I've mostly been cleaning and organizing and repairing (our shower is now functional again) before the semester starts. I wanted to be well organized, since I won't have any hope in a few weeks. Lab's been cool... its really quite since all the undergrads are still on break, but classes start Tuesday, so that'll change. I don't know what I'm gonna be taking this sesmter, but I'll go to some classes and figure it out by this time next week. I've also got a cell now; I'll email the number to b2@... rather than posting it here. If you aren't on the b2 list and want it, email me or IM me, or some such thing. Until next time... Current Mood: content (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 1st, 2004
10:28 pm	Break So I thought I'd post what I've been up to recently. This time I even read my previous post so that I'd stop repeating what I've said. After I got home, a good 20 minute drive, I mostly slept and did christmas shoppin' until Christmas proper. I got good stuff... a new stero (my old one died), LOTR Two Towers, extended, A 10 CD set of topo maps for all california. It was a good Christmas, complete with a walk through the nearest construction site. It's kinda one of my family's things... go and observe the building of the newest subdivision in the city every few weeks. It's actually pretty cool to see them take shape. And when the houses are just framed and nothing else, you can just go walking through and figure out what the floorplan is (assuming its Sunday or something and no one's working). Since then I've mostly just been doing stuff with my parents. I got together with Kevin a week or so ago. That was pretty cool... 'cept that his parents live on the other side of the bay area... its 75 miles from my parent's place to his place. So I did alota driving to go down there and show him around Berkeley and some cool stores and go back there and come back up. But it was worth it to catch up. And his mom cooked a good dinner and we had fun. I'll leave it to Kevin to describe Berkeley and my apartment... I'm sure he can do better than I. I saw LOTR ROTK a few days ago, finally. It was damm good. I'm sure I'mn'a see it at least once more in the course of things. As with each of the three the effects were seemless, and the acting excellent. I'll start working in lab again on Monday, which shouldn't be too bad since I don't have classes for two weeks. It'll be relaxing to be around lab without the stress of class and stuff. I'm hoping that the spring semester will be a little easier than the fall, which was sorta' rough. I spoz' it depends on the classes I end up taking. I'll keep ya'll posted (and keep seein' if I can break some records for apostrophe ' useage). I'll be back in Berkeley in a coupla days, and I'm liable to post again then. Wood-davers away! Current Mood: refurbished (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 21st, 2003
11:04 pm	It's all over now.... ..baby blue. Foof... so I think its been a week since I updated. I studied pretty much all the last weekend preparing for my wednesday exam in controls. I just spent a few hours and monday evening studing for my Dynamics exam, which was tuesday at 8 am. The rest of monday was spent in lab. We had a photographer taking pictures of the exo, and my professor decided that the photographer needed some suggestions on how to do his job. Not that the photographer was very good (and probably needed some suggestions), but you can kinda guess that it was a bad afternoon. My dynamics exam was a mess. I wasn't really well prepared, and I was tired (it was friggin 8am!), so I made alot of mistakes early on. Fortunately, we had 3 hours and didn't need that much time, so I did ok. I did fine in the class, so my exam couldn't have been that bad. And after a long lunch... it was back to studying. I joined some friends, and worked old exams for eight hours before I biked home, with a bit of a detour for stress relief. My controls exam was at 12:30 pm the next day. It was hard. It was three hours of really, really, hard. Two of the questions related to material that we hadn't even seen in this class, we were supposed to figure out the next stuff. They posted last year's final here if you're curious http://me.berkeley.edu/ME232/pdf/final_02.pdf After three hours, everyone just turned in what they had. One of my smarter friends asked if we got credit for putting our name on it. But all's well... I did pretty good in the class, so I musta' done soemthing right. After the exam, I went and got a beer with some friends, and we tried to catch LOTR, but it was sold out. The rest of the night's kinda hazy for one reason or another... Thursday and Friday were spent despartely trying to get some test hardware ordered (I had wanted to get it ordered a week earlier). I finally did, about 4pm on Friday. My professor intially balked at the cost, but I knew exactly what all of it was for (I spent the whole last two weeks figuring it all out), so he said he'd order it. Saturday I went on another blitzkrieg snowboarding trip. It was pretty decent, especially since there was much more snow, so I was able to actaully go down a bunch of slopes. I'm getting a little better, but I donno how long I'm going to keep this up. I really pushed myself too far; by the end my muscles were so tired I couldn't really control the board, and I was falling... frequently. The last hour or so sucked alot. I got beat up pretty bad, just in terms of being bruised. But I have some time to recover, so it should be ok. Today was just Christmas shopping, nothing big going on. I'm sore as all heck. Tomorrow I'll probably head home through the holidays. Its an excruciating 20 minute drive :P It's so wierd being this close to home. I haven't really adjusted. I'll be meeting up with Kevin at some point... if anyone else is going to be in the bay area lemee know. Later. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 17th, 2003
11:24 pm	the aftermath Well, I've survived one semester of grad school. My exam was, well... words really fail me. I think 'hard' might hafta do, though that's not really sufficiently descriptive of being utterly reamed by an exam. But I don't think that anyone found it doable, so I don't feel too bad (one of the bright guys in the class asked the professor on the way out if we got credit for putting our name on the exam). My last few days have been such a flurry of stuying that its hard to know what to make of it. I'm actually pretty tired as a result. My friends and I in the class wanted to go see LOTR, but there were no tickets left. We had to settle for a beer. I've enjoyed a slow night, but I have to go into lab tomorrow. But that shouldn't be too bad: it'll actually be pretty relaxing work. And then I've a coupla weeks off from lab and a coupla weeks after that before classes start again. I think I'm'na need it. But all in all, I really can't complain. WOOOHOO! BREAK! Current Mood: finished/accomplished (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 14th, 2003
10:31 am	Finals I'm in the middle of studying for finals. I'm writing in a short break before Dan comes over and we go on campus to study. I've been pretty stressed, but I'm looking forward to finishing exams on Wednesday. Most of this last week I was trying to get some test sytems together in lab so that I wouldn't have much to do this next week. I have one exam on Tuesday, which is the easier of the two, and one on Wednesday, which is harder. Unfortunately the exams here are three hours, so it's gonna be alot of work. I'll probably won't post until Wednesday night at the earliest now. Current Mood: stressed (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, December 8th, 2003
9:10 pm	Momentus Events Approach Three things approach, all on December 17th. 1) I finish my first semester by taking an incredibly difficult three hour exam 2) Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King comes out 3) It is the 100th anniversary of the first flight by the Wright Brothers A coincidence? I think not. Maybe I'll buy a lotto ticket too, you never know. I'm working to finish up my last problem set tonight, and then I'mn'a start stuyding for exams tomorrow (I have one next tuesday and wednesday). Things are pretty clam, I was just doin' homework all weekend. I had a busy day in lab today, but I got lots done. I'm working on specing out a farily fancy computerized test system to characterize the performance of a hydraulic system we're using. Its difficult because I have to learn all about the data acquisition boards and sensors like thermocouples and stuff. But I'm learning alot, so that's good. I am kinda upset that I'll have to spend all weekend studying. My friends in lab are going up to snow country again, but I can't go. Oh well, I'll live... to snowboard again another day. That's 'bout it for now. If anyone has any suggestions about what I should do to commeorate the thrid momentous event (I'm taking the exam and seeing the movie), I'm open to suggestions. Current Mood: finals-ish (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 4th, 2003
8:50 pm	Life in general Well, its been a while since I posted. Things are goin' well. I'm kinda torn just now. My parents are going down to Monterray for the weekend (a really beatify city a coupla hours south of the bay area along the coast), and I could tag alog. But it would perclude doing anything else all weekend (including stuff with friends, and homework that needs doing). So I'm thinkin' no, but it tain't an easy decision. Other than that its been a pretty normal week. Its been raining, which is a nice change, except when I had to bike home in it tonight. I'm finishing up my classes: my last class of the semester is tomorrow at 9am. I should be done with all the homework by Monday too. Then I've got a bit over a week to study for two exams on the 16th and 17th. Then I'm free! Oof... and I could use a bit of a rest from stress. Last Sunday I went with my friends to see Bad Santa. That is one messed up movie. It's funny, but man, Billy Bob cusses like a sailor. He he... would you like some sandwitches? Well that's 'bout it. Later. Current Mood: avoiding work (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 29th, 2003
11:45 pm	hey When I put down "restless" I didn't want a frownie face. I'm not upset, I'm actually in a pretty good mood. Stupid connotations. :P (Comment on this)