7 is the number

just installed windows 7 today on my desktop which has been dead for quite some time. first round of checks show that this piece of software is indeed faster than any of its predecessors. my words betray my usual cynicism towards microsoft, but this truly is a great step “forward” for operating systems.

having tried both snow leopard and windows 7, i like both. snow leopard has yet to dysfunction, and so is windows 7. both are marvelous, both are worth the $$.

cmu recently has been chaotic. course work has been very disappointing. but i figured that as long as i am learning the material, knowing them by heart, who cares if a bunch of egotistic nerds decided to put together a ridiculous way to demonstrate their ego… alas, i shall say no more.

i’m loving the fact that pittsburgh is warmer on the streets, and yet my room is still icy cold. somehow i don’t think this is right.

cmu there and back

got back to cmu near the end of august, already had one of those weeks where i got less than 20 hrs of sleep in 7 days. go figure.

teaching a new class 98-127, Game Design in Processing. 22 enrolled students so far, should be cool.

meeting with jim today, talked about his new class, and future of scs and java.

robotic hw, ai hw, prob hw, 213 hw came out, 300 hw, hopefully i can get some help.

god i miss summer.

by all means, please

this is going be a pretty random entry. i have a massive headache, sitting at work. i have to write the testlink scripts soon. finish the cgi scripts, then i’m free for the rest of this summer.

guild wars is so addictive, i played until 1 or 2 am yesterday, or should i say this morning.

kevin got drunk and decided to go ahead and call a lunch party together. let’s just say it’s going to be interesting. sometimes i wonder….

this headache, is killing me, little by little, i need some coffee…

feeling the pressure

2 weeks before school starts. starting to feel the pressure rush to my head again. trying hard to maintain my goal for the summer, exercise, study, make money.

got guild wars yesterday from target, guilty pleasure.

honestly, i should be working. joyce is going to alaska. i feel like summer flew by, before i realized it, everything was already settling down, and life once again put me on the dreaded trendmill. repetition restrict my creativity, inner desires so much. i can’t help but to feel a little rebellious. if i remember correctly, i have followed countless many other humans in the path to become an adult. kindergarden, elementary, middle, high, then college. going to school, coming home, eat, sleep, do homework, date girls. what a typical life.

i want to be different, escape from this mind prison, to be extraordinary, what if i can use my mind fully, possibilities are limitless.

people are different, but our lives vary within a certain range of standard deviation. i want to be the 0.0000001% that’s all the way spread out to the edge of all human life style distribution. that, would be an awsome life.

i’ll make it happen.

humming to myself

record my day as it goes along

• dug up an old song named 暖风, pronounced “ne wang phone”, decided to sing this for the karaokee contest.
• grace told me i should get discovered, i seriously doubt it.
• vu’s birthday yesterday, all of us went to golden corral, man the food was good.
• plate of medium rare steak / corn / fried chicken / pie / ice cream / more friend chicken. i got so full.

google voice is the new flow. i was lucky to be invited to test it out. results were astonishing. got a new number now, which filters phone calls, sends and receives unlimited sms, as well as record and transcribes phone calls/voicemails.

apple iphone’s black market prices went through the roof. people selling as high as $1189, one word with a few dots, retarded….

come to think of it, i missed one bullet point

• i kind of want to get an iphone, old ipod and old phone broke back to back in one month.

ping pong later today, and i need to go back and study floating point calculations.

i can’t seem to get along with these fobby asians, either i lost all my socializing abilities, or i just need to stop trying because something is wrong with these kids. we’ll see…

i respect my parents, a lot. i wish one day they wouldn’t have to work so hard, when i do well enough to single handedly support my whole family. that day seems far away, but i try. i’m going towards that direction one little step at a time. i really look down on the other posers blinging with their parent’s money. maybe it’s easy for those $$ to come by, to and from their parents, but i see nothing worth showing either way.

money seems like the byproduct of life. we produce it, and then waste it. that seems to be the trend with me this summer..

elapsed

rewatched benjamin button last night with mom. either my taste in movies has changed drastically, or the movie was simply really interesting. one of the most memorable lines from it was

“it’s a funny thing about coming home, looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. you’ll realize what’s changed is you.”

so true.

• need to work on chest today, have to admit, doing 100 lbs bench on dumbbells feels good.
• might swim later, might not, need to make up my mind on these kind of things. the pool is indoor and very nice. no idea how much calories i burned in there this summer.
• ping pong with supervisor later in the day. i can smash any ball with any spin with full force and anger, just slam it on the table, and there’s no return…. sounds so cocky, but it’s generally true. i like the sport, ye asked me when i was little, “why do you play ping pong? is it because you are good at it?” i answered no, it’s the sport that every chinese guy should know how to play. how silly…
• sent anind his long awaited phone app yesterday, he needs to get off my back…
• more later.

workout email j2me

decided to do a little work today in the morning, saw an email from Anind, asking for the earlier working version of the gps app. looked through my pc but can’t find it. have to come up with something, hopefully by tomorrow noon.

ordered a new screen for the n95, should be coming soon.

got too stressed at 1pm, decided to go out and run/swim. called up kevin, found out they are in the neighborhood. headed out. went to the pool, swam non-stop for 45 min.

workplace was empty today because of the power outage last friday, or yesterday. played ping pong for 1 hour. made ice coffee, good tasting coffee..

got a call from yifei last night about the house and cable internet, hopefully it’ll be good. kind of looking forward to living in that house. summer will be over in 20 days for me. i miss school.

theme of the day is: “absolute certainty”. i can’t really be absolutely certain about anything. perception and point of view is scary. universe of relativity. thinking that 0 and 1 can never be exact. and 0.99999999… will eventually become 1. the idea of two needles flying through space and hitting each other head on. mind blowing…

Summer is coming to an end

my intellectual brain is lacking it’s usual capacity these days. programming languages seem nevertheless interesting, and yet exhausting.
just discovered a new blog by an old acquaintance, read half of it in half an hour. decided it was probably not the most productive thing to do and came here.

finished the AragoBEE yesterday, sort of like a java STAF service. felt really accomplished and ended up sleeping for 2 hours today at work.

really don’t want to be conformed to anything, restriction is the one thing I hate.

wrote Anind an email not long ago, quitting on the gps project. development was reaching a stallment stage, plus my funding from the organization ran its course, the phone I got from Anind also fell off the back of my car the other day. so with a combination of lack of interest, confusion, and dicouragement from Anind, I sent him an email…

called Joyce today, told her about my perception of time. i was sitting on the couch, watching tv, and mom came and talked to me, i felt slightly annoyed, because at the time i was focused on the tv in front of me. time lapsed, and suddenly i realized that that time passed by, whoosh, just like that. fourty years from now, if i look back at the time when i sat on the couch watching tv, and mom standing next to me, how would i feel about it then? material things lost can be regained.

just got a call from yingying, talked about her life, trip to china, haven’t seen her in a while, felt kind of warm knowing friends from the past still think of me as a close friend. decided to go to six flags, this time i need to ride the super man.

need to get daniel to the swimming pool, with his girlfriend. i haven’t even met her once, knowing that carlos already met her twice if not thrice. i need to catch up.

i know that soon, i will be looking back at this moment, me sitting at the kitchen table, typing this long and random blog, and yet tomorrow maybe the day after i will come back. doing something useful for once, recording my life, so that at the lowest and darkest moments in time, i still have this old beacon of light, reminding me of my original projectile path.

Is this worth it?

I’ve been doing alot of thinking. Sometimes, though, one may need to stop in his tracks and rethink certain prospects in his life.

The golden question then boils down to this: Is this worth it?

What do we live for? Constantly seeking comfort or reassurance from elsewhere, or perhaps just money. Do we live our lives for ourselves, or for other people? Do we spend our lives drowning slowly in our own pathetic bubble, or do we reach out, and do something about our surroundings, about earth, about humanity. These are the questions I keep asking myself.

Imagining when I am lying in my death bed, at the age of 99. The one thing that I won’t be able to live with is having unfinished goals, unfinished things that I could’ve done, but didn’t. Impacts that I could’ve made, shoud’ve made, but didn’t. I mean, sure, it is easier to live our own lives, get an allowrance and bask in retirement. But that wouldn’t be exactly living a meaningful life then is it.

So I have a few goals that I would like to put to the test of time, and watch as they unfold themselves. But sometimes I can’t help but wonder, if I’m making a terrible mistake, or if I’m simply too dumb to see the obvious facts playing against my conscience. I used to say, I don’t care, if this is what I want, I’m going for it, because I want to live with no regrets. But now, I’m paused in tracks, thinking and thinking, and the more I think about it, the lesser clear I see the reason for it. Clearly, it was a fool’s dream, a fool’s passion.

Yes, I blab quite a lot. But it just so happens that sometimes I slowly deviate from the important goals I set for myself, so ignore my reiterations. I repeat and repeat after myself, so that I can stay on track. So that I will only pause in track, but not go off track.  Today, my goal is a little blurred, I don’t quite see what exactly is it I’m hoping to achieve. I feel like a blind man walking with no cane and a flash light. I have all the useless help I can ever want, and yet the key factors are either missing or drifting away. Today, I don’t really want to say anything, today I choose to endure, today I’m putting it in writing.

Course

“No course is ever lost, if there is but one fool left to fight for it.”

Stay on track Kun.