it's just like xanga, only better

Now you can get e-mailed when I update my blog using the yellow form on the left. As Yune pointed out, it doesn't e-mail you the instant I update--for that you need to keep clicking Refresh every few seconds. But it should coalesce a day's random rants into one notice within 24 hours. A nice happy medium for Windows users that I'm fond of is WebMon, which lets you check a bunch of pages with one click, whenever you're in a procrastinating surfing mode anyway--or you could set it to check for updates every minute if you're that obsessive I suppose... but in that case you might need help.

CS around the clock

Sigh. I got up at 8, went to CS class #1, went to work on a problem set for CS class #2, went to class #2, went to lunch (at Tressider, mind you), went to class #3, napped for 20 minutes in the Gates library, worked some more on class #2's problem set, went to office hours for class #2, then went to Monday Meeting for the CS class I'm course helping, then went to grade for class #2, then came back to work with a study group on said problem set for class #2. I think I spent 9 hours in Gates today. I feel so dirty...

Grading problem sets, let me tell you, is a singularly annoying experience mitigated only by the fact that a) I was getting paid, b) I was getting food, and c) we were joking around the whole time. Key insight: If you expect sympathy on a pset, you're not going to get it by writing pages and pages of indecipherable cursive. In fact, if you want to be appreciated as an engineer, forget cursive altogether. Please. The sooner, the better. On the flipside, just because you went to the trouble to typeset it in LaTeX (a cryptic tool used by profs to do all those equations in psets and exams in that ugly font), or printed out a stylish cover page for this 3-page opus, doesn't make you right either.

So right now, it's only fitting that I be amused by things like this: How NOT to install computer hardware

Secrets of the GRE

Amazing secrets the test makers don't want you to know about!

1. The San Jose test center is right across the street from Saratoga's Japanese shopping nexus. Yes, that's right, you can take your GRE and get a teapot, ramen, and melon soda just like I did.
   
2. You're not supposed to eat in the waiting room or the exam room... but there's no one looking when you're on your break.
   
3. The key they give you for your locker opens everyone else's too.
   
4. That annoying squeaking you hear taking the test is that one girl taking the TOEFL having a nervous twitchy foot she can't hear through her headphones.
   

Now there's an idea...

I suppose if you're really desperate, but still... ouch! Granted, I don't really know how bad Korean accents can be, but is this the only way?
A Short Cut to Better Spoken English

Unequivocally assauging my trepidation

After some fervid last-minute studying, I must say I feel much more erudite now than I did before I embarked on this capricious GRE binge of mine. It's well known that above all, ostentatious words engender the verbal section, so why do I feel like such a pedant for memorizing them? Sorry, I meant no ostentation here. My blog's just ordinarily so laconic that I thought it'd be laudable if I tried to use all the top 20 GRE words, many of which lack the propriety to ever use in all but the most garrulous of conversations, in this loquacious-sounding entry. Over the past three months or so, I've vacillated between apathy and zeal (or some might even say, zest?) for preparing for this exam, which I'm taking tomorrow... or later today. In 12 hours. Woo...

But it's all good.

The CS department only cares about my math score (what? techies don't have to write...), for which I'm soo grateful. Maybe I should write my essays about monkeys, and as Rose suggests, "big fat whores", just for fun.

The simple truth of college life: procrastination = blogging

I got back to my room 40 minutes ago with a simple goal: take a 10-minute nap, then finish the CS 221 problem set. As you've probably guessed by now, the nap became 20 minutes, and I'm still not motivated to finish the pset. Maybe blogging will get my creativity going... then again, maybe it'll lead me into a spiral of distraction for another hour until I realize that I still have a pset due in 12 hours...

It was an emotional moment today at 4:57 PM as a whole bunch of us from CS 242 appeared outside what my professor happened to call the Lockbox to turn our problem sets in. It didn't help that the way he said it I just kept thinking of Darrell Hammond and a certain SNL sketch, back from better carefree times. Times when we only joked about electing incompetent leaders with no experience. More importantly, times when SNL was actually good...

The one good thing about job searching is free stuff. Companies are hiring again, and they're willing to splurge for the pizza to boot. So I've found myself among the herds at info sessions for Microsoft, Google, and the like. The format is the same: we all cram into a Gates conference room to listen to casually clad recruiters tell us why we want to join their elite club, then we all mob him or her at the end, striving to give away our resumes and make a good impression on the recruiter in the hopes that he/she will remember our faces a month from now when our painstakingly formatted resumes have been scanned into a database.

But fall recruiting season so far has yielded: two T-shirts, two pens, a yo-yo, a mousepad, post-it notes, a light-up keychain, and...a pocket PC! I rarely win anything, but I did win a nice shiny new Toshiba PDA. Not exactly the sort of thing I'd splurge on with my limited funds (oh do I sound like a grad student already) but always nice to have. So now I can tap away in the middle of lecture, surreptitiously checking my e-mail, or check my calendar like some sort of true Valley geek.

In other mobile news, I've discovered I can log onto AIM on my cell phone. And, sadly, I am guilty of having sent a remarkably lucid message while barreling down Santa Teresa on my bike. Supposedly my icon should change to a little cell phone. But I don't really know if this whole text messaging thing is worth the trouble. But it is cool... something else I can do in those lecture halls without wireless...

Wow, people still read this... maybe I should post...

So here I am sitting at the Tressider Lair on the slowest night I've ever seen. No complaints from me. Since I was a dolt and left all my homework behind at the dorm, I figured it's worth an update.

Being back in the US is great. I can blow my nose whenever I want, walk down the street eating a candy bar and not feel like I'm committing a sin, walk down the sidewalk without getting run over by bikers (well, maybe not)...

I settled on only 11 units of real classwork. But probably 3 or maybe even 4 of them are CS221. (Units are the greatest lie ever in the engineering department.) But don't worry, I'm taking 4 units of dance to get back up to the respectable 15. On the side I'm working as a CS106 course helper, tutoring E40, and oh yes, making preparations for The Future. This means I have a GRE in two weeks I need to cram for, and career fairs to traipse through for a Plan B.

Senior year sucks. So somehow it's fitting that every Thursday there's Senior Don't-Call-It-Pub Night.

But in other news, I finally caved and got a cell phone. It's a basic crappy phone (and the subject of a big usability rant in my first CS147 project), with, alas, no camera. But what can I say, I'm still sitting here in the Lair, waving my phone around like I'm sweeping for a bomb trying to get enough signal to collect IMs I received. And, I must confess: I was texting while biking. I claim to have a good excuse though.