This is my first update from my new Dell XPS desktop. I had to open it up and install a firewire card. I was hoping I would find something like this , but all I saw was a surprisingly neat and aesthetically pleasing series of cables and other innards.
School starts in a week and a half and I am looking forward to it very much. I miss learning, though I realize I learned quite a bit about technology this summer. I suppose that is a result of sitting at a computer all day every day at work reading about computers and such (and lolcats too).
"I know this is random, but I just want to clear this up for people out there. There are these things called shark attacks, but there is no such thing as a shark attack. I have never seen a real shark attack.
I know you’re making a weird face as you’re reading this. OK people, a shark attack is not what we see on TV and what people portray it as.
We’re humans. We live on land.
Sharks live in water.
So if you’re swimming in the water and a shark bites you, that’s called trespassing. That is called trespassing. That is not a shark attack.
A shark attack is if you’re chilling at home, sitting on your couch, and a shark comes in and bites you; now that’s a shark attack. Now, if you’re chilling in the water, that is called invasion of space. So I have never heard of a shark attack.
When I see on the news where it’s like, 'There have been 10 shark attacks,' I’m like, 'Hey, for real?! They’re just running around? Sharks are walking now, huh! We live on the land, we don’t live underwater.' "
An actual update: the semester ended a few weeks ago. Once my lease at my old house was up, I stayed at the apartment of my good Russian friend Yev, while he went home (in Palo Alto, not Russia) to study for the MCAT.
I'm now in a new house with four wonderful flatmates. It's such a nice contrast to my previous house. I have all the amenities I need (including a Wendy). No more T1 internet split among 40 people (that's a basic DSL line, which can hardly accommodate 4, let alone 40). No more paying to do laundry. And since my flatmates and I are all so clean, everything is shiny and fragrant.
Also, I live next to a dog park, so I often see particularly happy-looking people walking their overjoyed dogs past my house. It seems the happiness of dogs and their owners is contagious. I can't help but smile at the middle-aged people and their fluffy, little companions.
Not all is happy though. In some rather solemn news, it seems Paris Hilton was freed from jail today. After suffering from a medical condition (my guess is the hiccups, or at worst a mild case of the sniffles), she has been "confined" to her hollywood hills mansion.
I initially didn't have much faith in the justice system when it came to social elites, but this has severely damaged the credibility of the institution. House arrest? For a billionaire? Making her live a life of luxury for forty days seems like not even a slap on the wrist. It's more of a clammy handshake. After all the dangerous, insensitive, racist, and shameful acts she has committed in her life, I was hoping for punishment a little more severe than house arrest in a mansion. If for nothing more than preserving its own dignity, the county should have maintained the previous sentence. LA County, you have failed.
This is quite possibly one of the funniest videos I have ever seen.
As an individual quite fond of birds, I am highly amused and baffled by the odd behavior this pelican exhibits. I know their meat consumption relies almost exclusively on fish, so why would it eat this unfortunate pigeon? If Trafalgar Square is still having its pigeon overpopulation problems, perhaps they should let a flock of hungry pelicans loose to clean up those pesky pigeons.
BEIJING (Reuters) - Scientists in eastern China say they have succeeded in remotely controlling the flight of pigeons with micro electrodes planted in their brains, state media reported on Tuesday.
Scientists at the Robot Engineering Technology Research Center at Shandong University of Science and Technology said their electrodes could command them to fly right or left or up or down, Xinhua news agency said.
Hey Wendy, I now know what I want for my birthday; get me a remote-control pigeon.
Edit: In addition to their common US nicknames such as "sky rats," "rats with wings," "feathered rats," or "gutter birds," Pigeons in Canada are often referred to as "flying ashtrays." That's right, flying ashtrays.
It appears the inevitable has happened. President Bush has finally accepted the existence of global warming and he is taking a strong stand on the issue. Will he propose a cap on carbon emissions? pfft, no. Will he outlaw hummers? of course not. What will the president do? Lobby the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to include in a report a variety of helpful tacticts. In his infinite wisdom, the president encourages the use of "space mirrors." That's right, space mirrors.
The president wants to use these mystical space mirrors to deflect the sun's radiation back into space so it will not warm Earth.
If he were really serious about using space and optics to combat global warming, he would insist on creating massive space magnifying glasses which would concentrate the sun's energy into powerful beams which could be used to destroy large portions of the world's cattle, which happen to be the primary producers of carbon emissions. Come on, Mr. President, be realistic here. This is a serious issue.
it's christmas tomorrow, as evidenced by the ever-maddening crowds in the shopping centers. the madness in the streets does give me more of an excuse to stay home and enjoy my family though, which is infinitely better than fighting with hummers over traffic lanes and parking spaces.
i had jury duty last week. fortunately, i didn't get called in.
much to my delight, my mom finally replaced her lemon of a mustang. she bought a porsche! i've only ridden in it once and only driven it once, but hopefully that will change during break.
now i continue the agonizing wait for my grades. finals ended over a week ago for me and i still only have two of my four grades. maybe berkeley is withholding them to give as a present tomorrow.
you'd think that after being at work for six hours and taking two finals today, i'd be exhausted or tired. but no, i'm so excited that i can't remove the ridiculously large smile from my face.
i'm done with finals! i feel so relieved. i'm so excited to go home and eat and drive my car and see faces i haven't seen in such a long time.
this will likely be my best semester, but i'm so happy that it's over. thirty two days of freedom now await me and i am thrilled.
so the semester is nearing its (un?)fortunate end. this means yet another of cal's best traditions. no, not destroying our remaining strands of self-worth and dignity with another round of finals. and no, not even playing "it's the most wonderful time of the year" and other agonizingly (and ironically) pleasant songs in the dining commons during finals.
near the end of the year at cal we create 60+ foot tall fires to keep warm.
and beat the crap out of stanford in the annual big game, then rush the field and stand around taunting stanford and chanting.
by the way, congrats to ucla for beating usc and securing cal a position as the co-champions of the pac-10 division.
now, the political and legal ramifications of open-source code and the social consequences of globalization anxiously for me to read all about them. sorry journal, but i must go again. maybe i'll talk to you in another three weeks?
last week my stats class had a midterm that was considerably harder than the first one. we received this midterm back this week.
the scores were so low that when some people got them back, they cried.
as awful as it sounds, if i were a professor i'd be secretly proud that my midterm made a handful of people cry. if many people cried, i'd feel pretty awful. but as long as a select few found it so difficult that they burst into tears, i would feel like i've done a good job and written a sufficiently challenging midterm. that's not so horrible, is it? now i know why some of those physics professors give midterms whose averages tend to be in the 30s. by the way, the average for this midterm was in the high-40s. yay berkeley!
i have not updated in three weeks now. it certainly doesn't feel like it has been that long. time seems to pass very quickly during these past couple months. midterms are officially over for the semester and, fortunately, berkeley has been kind this year. i miss math classes, though.
i'm quite excited to go home in two weeks. in fact, exactly two weeks from this minute, i should have just arrived at home or will be arriving shortly.
in case you have ever wondered what are the effects of microwaving a quarter-sized pumpkin peep, then this will satisfy your curiosity.
it grows quite large and is far more three-dimensional while in the microwave. it flattened noticeably for this picture, but it was quite the sight while in the microwave.
i'm sorry i haven't talked to you in such a long time. but i promise i'm not talking to any other journals or anything of the sort.
i suppose i don't update because nothing monumentally exciting has happened. i don't typically find daily occurences to be update-worthy. but since i haven't updated in over a month, i should probably update to clarify that i'm not dead.
soon i will be registering for next semester's classes, which makes me nervous because i realize that after next semester, i will be halfway through my undergraduate career. if it weren't for grad school, i'd be moderately nervous about the next step in my life. yay more education.
speaking of education, apparently i've somehow picked up on the dead languages. i was speaking latin and/or greek in my sleep last night. quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur. my roommate once talked in his sleep, but he told himself to be quiet.
last and best of all, i got my first midterm (stats) back yesterday. the average was a 68. i got a 95. pwned.
on saturday, our football team got annihilated in front of 107,000 tennessee fans.
on sunday night, a man got shot and proceeded to wander over to a sorority house. shortly after he was let in (somehow, the girls in the house did not notice the gunshot wound in his torso), he collapsed and died.
and this morning, 3 students were arrested after 12 in their co-op (a university-sponsored type of housing) were hospitalized for overdosing on pot brownies and pot-laced cookies. the best part was when the house manager of cloyne (the co-op) said "we do not officially condone any of their actions."
so far, this is a pretty exciting year at berkeley!
note the new england track jacket (not like the one with clam chowder), which i absolutely love.
not shown is that my room has a sink in it! it's nice for dishes and readying oneself in the morning without having to leave the room.
the new icon is from a cup of noodles. it makes me feel so guilty for eating it because there is a picture of a happy chicken on the container, but inside lies what are now some not-so-happy chickens. it's like looking at a picture of a cute puppy, and then barbecuing him and making him into sandwiches.
hello livejournal. i'm at work, but i have nothing to do, as always. i love work.
i love my new house. it's spacious, comfortable, and quite friendly. my roommate is delightful and i'm glad i get to live with him for the next year. he plays soccer too, which is a major plus.
my classes seem pretty good so far. i've now remembered how moronic many people at berkeley are; they can neither walk at a constant speed in a consistent direction nor can they show the slightest regard for those around them- and these will be the people who one day lead the world. no wonder the world has so many problems.
i try to spend my fridays working and doing psychology surveys/experiments on my lunch break so i can make some extra money. receiving $20 in the name of advancing psychology makes me happy. people who leave notes on my truck, asking me if i can help them move large objects in exchange for money also make me happy.
i have a 76 year-old professor who hates everyone and proceeds to embarass people publicly if they sleep, arrive late, or generally look stupid. in between humiliating unfortunate students, he derides everyone and everything else in the world. occasionally he talks about fascism and social science, which happens to be the class topic.
this is going to be a good year.
when i first wrote this entry, i was quite bothered by the abundance of simple sentences (as opposed to complex or compound or even compound-complex). i edited them out because a multitude of simple sentences bothers me.
if life hands you a lemon, hire an attorney and sue life, then have life buy back the lemon for the full msrp from when it was new.
today is the last day that we will own my mom's delightful, yet mischievous and finicky car. after a series of problems ranging from minor annoyances to potentially deadly, the mustang was declared a lemon. so today it's going back to its home at galpin ford, where it will sit there and look pretty and do whatever else it is that citrus fruits do.
thank you, ford motor company, for convincing my family never to buy an american car again.
RIP november 2004-august 2006
relatedly, santa clarita certainly is good at producing moronic teen drivers. two counts of vehicular manslaughter, fleeing the scene of an accident, driving with an expired license, and driving intoxicated while underage will give chelsea arcos about 13 years, 6 months in jail. you'd think someone whose father works for lapd would be more likely to be a law-abiding citizen. another intoxicated teen crashed his brand new acura rsx about a mile from where i live. poor, poor car.
unless i am hearing things, i believe someone across from my house has recently taken up chicken farming. i heard a chorus of clucking yesterday morning that sounded like it was either coming from my neighbor's house across the street, or a house behind theirs. we already have other birds in the neighborhood: peacocks, noisy crows, sparrows, bluebirds, and quails, so chickens would be a nice addition.
i have been sleeping less and less recently. for a while i was sleeping 8-9 hours per night. now i've consistently been getting about 5-6 and, much to my surprise, i have not felt the negative effects of less sleep. perhaps this could serve as a transition for when i move back up to berkeley and have to readjust my sleep schedule.
if you happen to enjoy cupcakes, do make a visit to "sprinkles" in beverly hills. i'm not sure how a baked little cylinder of bread/frosting could induce such delight and ecstasy, but it's like tasting a slice of heaven. even if you don't like cupcakes, make a point to visit "sprinkles" sometime in your life and you will be converted to the cupcake-enjoying masses.
i get to drive the infamous, front license plate-less, attention-grabbing, soon-to-be-gone, mustang gt show car today. yay!
