Yolio!

Yo! Yo! Ok yo-yos are fun!!! That reminds me, I bought a yo-yo for like 50 bucks some time ago and I only played with it for a few times. I need to bust it out again and get my money worth it!

I have decided today’s entry shall be a fun one instead of the sad, gloomy, no-future, depressing, no life entry like last night…hehe. Also…that reminds me that I need to recharge the battery to my Marui PSG-1 Airsoft Replica sniper gun.

Today while I was at work, my friend Omar called me up and asked me if I had brought my sniper gun. I was a bit surprised to why he asked me if I had my sniper gun with me. He told me that there is a woodpecker right outside of his house on the electricity pole that he wants me to get rid of…anyways…I hope he was kidding! Because those animal right people will be all over us if we try that…I think he just want to see it, even though I remember clearly that I showed it to him once already at my house a long time ago.

Well…click below to see more...

continue...

Well…it’s been quite a long time since I last shot it. I have forgotten all the directions to get it working again. Luckily, I kept all the equipment and charger in one place and now my memory is starting to come back to me. Damn, I don’t know if the battery is still rechargeable after all these time…if not, I have to shell out some cash to get a new rechargeable battery for it.

I will post some cool pictures of it whenever I can borrow a camera from work.

I went over to visit Pete (one of my bosses) at his place today and we went out for lunch at the local Deli place in RC. It was pretty good only that I ordered a BBQ Sandwich and it wasn’t too healthy for me personally. Also I got to see Pete’s baby daughter again (the last time I saw her…she was still a tiny baby), she grew quite a bit now, and she’s almost 2 years old. She’s a cutey, but too bad I cannot understand a word she’s saying…yes I’m not supposed to understand baby talk…I know…I know…Actually I don’t know.

Later on the day, after work, I stop by the civic center in Montclair and played some racquetball with Omar, Angelic, Matt and (Re)becca for a good hour and a half. It was fun. I think I worked off my incredibly huge BBQ sandwich I had for lunch. By the way, Angelic just got a new red F150 XLT truck after selling her classic '68 Mustang. The truck was huge and spacious. I was telling her that now that almost all of my friends have trucks, I will never need to get a truck for myself!!!

Why oh why Conan O’Brien is is on rerun right after the Olympics, Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel weren’t. Oh well…it doesn’t matter…he’s still funny. Ok, I’m supposed to be out partying tonight and having a blast…..errrr…instead of watching TV….and…umm….fixing my sniping gun….ok maybe tomorrow night I shall party hardy!

And because of Darren’s comment, I have to try to get in some vocab words tonight before I go to sleep…it’s going to take forever!

Here is another set for the day:
tranquil - I listen to some Jazz music and relax under the glowing moon, it is quite a tranquil night.
grandiloquent - Many students in the classroom dislike the professor due to his grandiloquent tone of speech every time he lectures.
expiate - Joe tried to expiate the situations by buying his fiancé gifts.
prodigal - She’s a gold digger and a prodigal spending all her husband savings.
latent - I always know that my friend had a latent ability for coding. (hehe…you know who you are)
incense - Her flippant remark has incense him to leave her for good.

Alright that’s enough for tonight…time to get some sleep…only had about 5.5347364 hours of sleep last night. But before that I got to go try out my rifle and hope that it will work the same as it did 2 years ago. And also I have to fill up my humidier again before I go night night...I don't know how good it works but it's currently acting as my second fan in my room and is keeping me cool at night...so that's good.

It's Over

Yes...the Olympic is over after two weeks. Too bad...it was great while it lasted. It was what kept me occupied through some slow dreadful nights in the past 2 weeks besides UT2004. UT2004 was what kept me occupied until everyone is asleep, then the Olympic was there! =] Well...starting tomorrow night I can go back to watching the regularly scheduled Conan O’Brien Late Night and Jay Leno. Man...I watch too much TV late at night...maybe I should get some sleep early tonight.

Wow...I cannot remember the last Olympic whatsoever, I know that it was held in Sydney, but I have no recollection of what I was doing around that time. All I know is that that period of time was a better part of my life than now. If I remember correctly, that was in the summer of the year 2000, and that means it was the starting of my first year at ULV after I have transferred out of UCI.

Anyhow.....click on the link right below this to read more.

Yes...the Olympic is over after two weeks. Too bad...it was great while it lasted. It was what kept me occupied through some slow dreadful nights in the past 2 weeks besides UT2004. UT2004 was what kept me occupied until everyone is asleep, then the Olympic was there! =] Well...starting tomorrow night I can go back to watching the regularly scheduled Conan O’Brien Late Night and Jay Leno. Man...I watch too much TV late at night...maybe I should get some sleep early tonight.

Wow...I cannot remember the last Olympic whatsoever, I know that it was held in Sydney, but I have no recollection of what I was doing around that time. All I know is that that period of time was a better part of my life than now. If I remember correctly, that was in the summer of the year 2000, and that means it was the starting of my first year at ULV after I have transferred out of UCI.

Anyhow, the closing ceremony tonight at the birthplace of the Olympic Games was spectacular--especially the Chinese part welcoming everyone to Beijing. I really can't wait until the next Olympic to start. Wow, that will be in FOUR years. Time will fly by quickly as always.

I really wonder what will happen to my life and this crazy world by the year of 2008. Hopefully everything and everybody will be better, and maybe I will be content and happy once again by that time.

Moreover, I stopped by Fry's Electronics earlier today to buy a compact flash card for the digital cameras (even though I don't have a camera yet, but I do plan to buy one soon enough...in the meantime, I will probably have to borrow one from work). Man oh man, I'll tell you something...you know when you are f***ed up in the head if you get all emotional and sad standing in line at a store...and that's what happened to me, I got all nostalgic about old times again because of where I was and the city I was in......*sigh...anyways...whatever...

For anyone who cares, the compact flash card is a 512MB one so hopefully I can take some good amount of pictures to post on my super duper muper gallery soon when I go out again.

Maybe in four years, I will find some time off and be able to afford to take a trip to Beijing to see the Olympic Games in person, and if my cousin is still in Vietnam by that time, then he is more than welcome to come and meet me in Beijing...or maybe I'll go and visit Vietnam first, then we both can go to Beijing after that...that would be incredibly sweet…but then again, by that time I will probably be in debt seriously from the graduate school…oh well, it doesn’t hurt to dream big once in a while.

Ordinary Night?...The Night I Got Lucky...That Sounds Better

It was an interesting night tonight, I went down to Lakewood with my friends to visit Omar’s friend’s wife’s family get-together (like I wrote about last Saturday). Luckily, the girls didn’t have time to find us guys some knight costumes and therefore we didn’t have to gallop around the “barn dance” the whole night in our knight costume, although that would be hilarious.

Fortunately, we didn’t have to reenact the infamous scenes from Monty Python in front of a bunch of people we don’t know due to the bet we lost a week ago. The house where we were at were pretty nice, the backyard was also very nicely decorated in a wester/hawaii theme or soemthing like that....Anyhow, after the BBQ and nachos, I got dragged into the dancing floor where I made some efforts to actually dance (haven’t danced since high school and that’s like a decade ago…or so it feels like). I actually got to learn how to line dance…sort of…the very novice level one…up until the girls were doing some intermediate/advance stuff and had me completely lost. I also got to wear a blue cowboy hat for some period of the night!!! Yay....hahahah...not exactly that exciting.....(Click on the bottom link to see more)

After dancing to almost all genre of music (I tried…ok?), my friends and I headed to the dining room where we started playing Texas Holdem. Omar, as always, was prepared with his poker felts, poker chips and some nice professional playing cards and was ready to play at any given time. So the buy-in was 10 dollars, I had to borrow some money because I only had 3 bucks in my wallet. Omar let me borrow 2 and I let Angelic put in 5 dollars to play the same hand with me. I’m usually not good at gambling and that’s why I usually DON’T gamble because I know I would probably lose all my money.

But tonight is a different night, I was losing quite a bit at the beginning but I folded on some right hands and got out of some nasty battles between my two other friends. There were four people in the beginning, and slowly, Omar, who usually is the hustler when it comes to Texas Holdem, was eliminated quite early. Well…to make the story short, I stuck it out ‘til the very end by not betting or risking a lot. It was down to just me and Joe, at the time, I was pretty happy to have come in second and if I were to lose, I would have gotten my buy-in money back and would’ve given Omar and Angelic back their money, hehe.

For some miraculous reasons and due to the fact that Joe was half drunk, I ended up winning his high stack of chips in about under 5 rounds…well we were getting pretty tired and so we were going all-in on almost every round. Anyway, I actually won for once playing Texas Holdem (Pete, you would be proud of me)…this probably won’t ever happen again…maybe it wills…who knows…

Furthermore, the night didn’t stop there, we got back to Omar’s house around midnight. The full moon was beautiful acting as the porch light in the back of Omar’s yard, while we were discussing about life general and why this society and our ways of life suck.

Anyhow, during our conversation, we suddenly saw this huge shape walking in the shadow behind the corner of the house. Guess what? It was one of the freaky raccoons that Omar was trying to rid of for the past weeks. It was pretty big for a raccoon. As it was coming toward our direction, we all jumped in Omar’s car right next to us and locked the doors behind us.

Yes it was pretty damn pathetic the three of us afraid of one freaking raccoon. As we sat in the car waiting for it to go away, Omar kept saying that how if he were to get bitten by the raccoon, we should not make him take the rabies shot unless he were going to die. I was laughing sooo hard as the car’s windows were getting all fogged up. After a few minutes, we decided to proceed outside of the car and check to see if the monstrous raccoon was still around. It was a little after 1 AM in the morning so we then decided to dispersed right after realizing that the raccoon has gone away.

Moreover, that was the end of my night, about 25 days left of my summer. And for those of you that are wondering what were my last few hands that led me to be the winner tonight, go ahead and read on.

The only hands that I remember were the last three hands. The third to last, I had a full house so that was a win given. Then I played safe and folded on the second to last hand. And on my very last hand, I had a 2 and a 3 of different suits (pretty crappy hand in my opinion). Joe had a 6, I think, and a high ace kicker. He went all in and I also did the same but only had to match his chips because at that point, I had more chips than he does. And guess what...down came the flop and there was a 4, 5 and a 6. So my straight beats out his pair of 6 with ace kicker and won me about 10 bucks after the splits! Yahoo!

Citius | Altius | Fortius

Even though the title is in Latin, this entry has not a lot to do with the Olympic. Yes, Faster, Higher, and Stronger I shall be! Well that’s what it means in English. Anyway, it’s an Olympic motto that I have just learned about watching TV today. Pretty interesting eh? Moreover, is it me or is the Olympic every four years adds more and more events within each sport.

Anyhow, I'm going to try to start learning and relearning some new and old vocabulary words before school starts in a month or whatever left of my unpredictable summer vacation. I have figured in order to learn these words well, I have to try to come up with some sentences for them. So if you see any mistakes, and I’m sure there are plenty. Let me know.

Here is my first set for the day:
emaciate - During this flu season, Joe was emaciated due to his sickness and lost some weights.
doctrinaire - Only a doctrinaire person would cantankerously follow a principal without any regard to its practicality. (Hard one, couldn’t think of anything else)
stark - There are stark similarities between the Siamese twins. (hehe…I’m the master of the obvious!)
implacable - Both partners in the relationship remained implacable after a long fight.
cajole - I have successfully cajoled Joe Blob to go back to school with the promise that he will find a better job when he graduates.
ascetic - If you don’t play UT2004, you are being an ascetic person and denying one of life’s pleasures! (ok ok this isn’t the best example for the word, but I like it! Usually this word is used for labeling a religious person who is self-discipline and self-denial)
inertia - Joe’s inertia to new video games is incredible due to his dedication to the 8-bit generation of video games (ok it’s a stupid example, but it’s 4 AM in the morning, don’t expect much!)
pedant - There were many pendants, who thinks they know everything, today in the lecturing hall as the professor was asking questions about the reading the night before.

Ok I think that’s enough for tonight. Wow that took a while…well I was watching the Olympic at the same time too. =]

I think I know what I will do with the Penguin Origami Kit that I bought from San Francisco. But I can’t post anything up here probably not until next week when I can borrow a camera from work. I guess we will just have to wait and see then….

An Almost But Never Will Be Done Project

After two months of work on and off. I have finally almost reached the end of another website project at work. Click on the above picture if you want to see the site up live.

From the very beginning of designing the layout to the end, it has been the biggest project I have done thus far. The website will act as a portal for all of the Instructional Technology functions at the university. With the help of Cedric organizing the HTML, I have integrated into this massive website the forum for tutorials and community building within the university, workshop calendar that staff, students, faculty members can sign up online, and the pictures gallery that will be utilized by many faculty members.

For the up to date weather, I have used the free service from wx.com, and with the help of David's knowledge of PHP, we have created an automated project progress tracker that will show what project our department is working on and how far we have completed on each project.

This website marked the first completed website we have done in the office that is 100% in width (which means that when the browser is decreased or increased in size, the website will automatically form and fit accordingly).

It is also the first website I have designed for the university that has Flash animations included within the HTML (if you are using a non-flash browser, then you won't see it).

The website is nearly done, but my guess is that it will never be 100% complete, there will always be additional features, etc. to be added. So any feedbacks will be greatly appreciated.

By the way, I actually want to go see a movie for once. Those that know me personally would be surprised by this fact. =]
"HERO"
It seems to be real good.

Invasion Part II

Finally, we beat our old record of wave 8. Tonight we have ventured above and beyond to wave 15 out of 16. But unfortunately we were annihilated before reaching the last wave. We had more people than what the screenshot shows, but they left to sleep before the game ended.

Anyhow, my friend up north, Devin left for the east coast today. I wish I could take a trip to the east coast for a while too before school starts again for me. After school starts, I would probably be stuck here forever after that...maybe not! I will change that! Nevertheless, have a safe trip dude.

You can also visit his newly blog that I helped him create. I still need to help him with the graphic side of things whenever I find some time off of UT2004 or work. Trust me on this, he is one crazy mofo that writes more nonsensical jumbles of a weblog than even ME!!! Here is the link http://devinma.com and PLEASE don't take anything on his blog half or even a quarter serious. =]

Onto the next story, my coworker, David transfered school recently and now he's going to Biola instead of ULV (don't even ask me why), and today is his first day at Biola. So good luck with that David! and your 18-unit semester, I'm going to have to tell Cedric not to count on you coming in to work any time soon. Well what am I talking about, when school starts for me again, I will probably can't come in to work as often anymore either.

Anyway, I added a bunch of screenshots in my gallery of the games last night. All latest screenshots are made possible by the help of David who was pressing F9 (to take screenshots) constantly while shooting in Unreal Tournament 2004.

PHUSON.COM IS ALIVE!!!!

Muahahahahhaha...evil laugh again...need to stop that. Anyhow try it on your browser I tell you...try it! If it doesnt't work then maybe my domain name hasn't registered yet through your internet provider.

www.phuson.com to come back to here
gallery.phuson.com to go the gallery

Pictures of the surrounding area where I work

Here is the link to one of my supervisors' blog.

http://arkworld.com/weblogs

Pete recently took a walk outside the building where we work and took pictures of the places next to the university (some that I have never seen before). The pictures came out pretty good. Check it out.

Pictures Galore

Ok since I spent a lot of time getting the gallery scripts and scanning/uploading my random pictures. It's time for you to actually take a look at IT!!!

Click here and my magic carpet will give you a wonderful ride to the GALLERY.

In the future, or approximately 24 hours, you can get to my gallery by this shorter link.

http://gallery.phuson.com

I uploaded most of the pictures that I took on my San Francisco Trip and Berkeley Trip to see my brother. Now I only have to wait for my brother to send me my last disposable camera so I can get it developed and uploaded to my marvelous gallery.

Sad news: My brother's hard drive crashed again, and now this time it sounds like it's physically corrupted. He lost all his stuff and data....ummm...maybe he will find the time now to send me that disposable camera...ummm...maybe not....because he's probably spending all his time shopping for a new hard drive.

Anyway, it probably forced him to finally venture outside of his apartment for the very first time in a long time for anything else besides classes and his student worker job.

PHUSON.COM is my new domain name

Since SON08.COM is getting reestablished, I have decided to buy a new domain name, and it's PHUSON.COM. So bookmark it or remember it until SON08.COM comes back live again. Even then, you can still use PHUSON.COM to get here. PHUSON.COM will go live in approximately 24 hours from now!!!

Click on the picture above to get a larger size of it!!!

Here is a picture my coworker, David C. sent me tonight. He modified the picture I took from my trip to Sacramento at the state Capitol. I thought it was hilarious.

Damn, I learned a hard lesson today. Never to put on Bengay on your shoulders right after you have just taken a long hot shower. It burns like heck!!!

I was watching the Olympic tonight again, and was watching the Men's 1500m Heat in the Decathlon. On one of the laps they had to jump over a hurdle into a pond of water and then keep on running. I don't know if this is something old that has always been there, because I have never seen anything like that before...well...maybe because I have never watched the Olympic so intensively (not by choice...of course) before either.

Nevertheless, it was wierd to see a bunch of guys jumping over this long hurdle into a shallow pond of water on a track & field stadium. They look like those equestrian horse competition thingie.

FRAGGING!!!

Here is my license to frag (kill) from Unreal Tournament 2004. Just another random screenshots to add to my random collection.

Tonight, my friend, Devin, up in Sacramento sent me this of his conversation with one of my other friends, David (the first person I spoke to when I attended UCI 5 years ago, after my first and only year there, I haven't spoken to him since then until we met again at one of my roommates, Mark's wedding).

(UCIStriker -> Devin)
(Yutaka46 -> David)

Yutaka46: no...just recently got promoted to be a PB
UCIStriker: PB?
Yutaka46: i still have long way to go to become a manager
UCIStriker: perverted bastard?
Yutaka46: personal banker I....

I was laughing pretty hard after reading this. OK..if you are not laughing at this very moment then maybe you are just too...ummm...nevermind, maybe it's just because you don't know who David is...ummm...yeah.

I still haven't had a chance to upload the rest of the San Francisco pictures yet...I want to wait a bit maybe until my stupid domain name is up again.

I'm thinking of just buying a totally different one. If you have any cool suggestions, comment away!!! Anything that is easy to remember and interpret that has the word SON in there is fine. E.g. SONISCRAZY.COM, etc...

Moreover, Omar (old high school friend) called me around 6:00 PM telling me that he overmade spaghetti and that if I want some, I should come over right away before it gets cold. So I quickly finished some Flash redirecting script at work and sped over there, I was pretty damn hungry from not eating anything since the night before. We watched some crazy documentaries on the History Channel about Spies, and now that made me want to become a SPY!!!! Ummm...maybe not really. But I do think they're pretty damn cool...yeah...until they get caught and tortured...OK maybe I'll stick with being a student for now.

Then we headed out to meet Angelic (another old high school friend) at the civic center to play some racquetball. It's Omar's and my first time actually playing racquetball, and might I say, we did pretty well for being first time. It was so funny at the fact that Angelic (who plays regularly) got pecked by the ball a couple of times in her stomach and protected goggles. OK, now that I read this, it's not that funny at all since I have no pictures to back it up...damn another day without a digital camera!!!

Alright...hehe...enough of the incoherent rambling for the night, time to go night night.

I'm a Dad!!!

Ok maybe not, but that sure did get your attention, didn't it?!

Anyways, here is a picture of Devin's little nephew while I was up in Sacramento. He's only 18 month old and a very clever little boy. Everyone said he looks like a Shaolin Monk, and that, I concur. He certainly likes to clean and sweep with broom sticks around the yard and in the house, therefore, he's perfect for the Shaolin Temple training. All he needs is a grey robe and some dots on his forehead and he's in (if you've ever watched old chinese Shaolin movies, you'd know what I'm talking about).

Well, today, Son, the smartest person alive striked again. I wanted to switch my domain name registrator. Because the old one wasn't giving what I wanted. So I went in and blindly canceled my domain name redirecting service (Doh! I just realized that somehow this sounds so much similar to my real life experience in the past month).

Anyhow, I figure that it almost expired already, so I might as well end it early and try to re-register it through a different host. Well thanks to my ingeniosity, I'm not sure when my domain name redirecting service will be up live again because of some "grace" period crap. So, if you just barely read this a few days after the post means that it's up again and everything is OK.

Furthermore, I finally stopped by Walmart today to pick up my developed pictures. Spent 13 dollars on developing money and then about an hour or two of scanning those pictures into digital format. Now, I have half of them uploaded to my newly gallery. Most of the Sacramento pictures are up. However, the San Francisco ones will be uploaded ASAP.

Also, my brother up in Berkeley still has one of my disposable cameras with him, the one I forgot to bring back. So whenever he does find the time to get away from his computer games and mail me that camera, I will post more random pictures of San Francisco and UC Berkeley.

Note to self: buy a damn digital camera soon.

You know what?!!! I absolutely HATE disposable cameras! Because I knew I had more pictures than what they gave back to me!!! But I guess the stupid disposable cameras killed a few of my pictures and therefore they can't be developed. Oh well, no more disposable camera from now on.

Well for now, enjoy my gallery of my Sacramento Trip

Invasion!!!

Tonight marked the night that I have gone the farthest on the Invasion RPG mode in Unreal Tournament 2004. OK...you're right, it's no big deal. Anyways, here is a screenshot of the moment. Wave 12 out of 16. We have gotten to the wave with the winged demons that shoot homing rockets. Trust me on this, they're practically impossible to dodge.

Today, I was supposed to pick up my pictures from Walmart, but I was running a little late to my old high school friend's place for the weekly Saturday get together...so I will probably pick it up sometime tomorrow. Dang, today is the day that I wish I had a digital camera. Apparently, the guys' team lost last Saturday, so we, guys had to dress up in costumes today. My guy friends had on some of the funniest costumes on ever.

Luckily, Matt's girlfriend took a few pictures with her regular camera. So whenever I get those pictures from her. I will put it up on my gallery. By the way, I didn't really dress up at all. Well...because I was away last weekend so I wasn't really here to "lose" to the girls. Moreover, tonight, we played Taboo and lost again, this time it was a dare to dress up as knights and horses like on Monty Python and we had to gallop around at a family get together of my friend's friend's wife's family's house. Wow that sounds ridiculous! It's going to be great to make a fool out of myself in front of 50+ people. It's not like I don't do that daily anyways.

So now not only do I have to get a laptop soon, I also need to get a digital camera. Bah!

Old Stuff

I was going through my old files from 5-6 years ago on my computer. It's pretty interesting to see how much have changed and not changed. Read a few of the old AIM conversations, it was a pretty interesting time of my life to say the least.

Here is a very old picture of Thanh (left/my first year roommate at UCI) and me (right) standing right outside of our room in Aldor-Middle Earth-UCI. (Fall 1999).

Quote of the summer

In order to move ahead, you've got to take a step back.

I heard this from watching the Olympics tonight from one of the commentators. Somehow it makes sense to me, but if you ask me to explain. I would probably can't do it thoroughly.

Anyways, I'm going to try to implement a photo gallery for this website in the next few days, check back then to see some random pictures I have taken.

Heartburn

I keep getting bad heartburn lately, don't know why. I'm not really stressed either. Plus, I'm not staying up that late lately... (Maybe too much UT2004 with my coworkers...hehe)

Listening to my old collection of chinese music lately has made me pretty nostalgic about old times (not that I understand a single word in these songs). Somehow, it doesn't make me sad, but instead it's a happy sad kind of way. It's complicated to explain such feeling.

Man, school is coming up real soon. Time for me to start shopping for my first laptop ( Pete : my own laptop, ok? yeah yeah, I know I still have to return the work laptop back)

The laptop has to have a good video card for me to play games...errr...I mean do homework.....yeah....but it also have to be affordable because I'm so broke at the moment. I know what you would say, "Good luck, Son!" And you know what, &@*#&(*#???!?

Ummm....I would agree with you...but that's part of the fun is to find such deals. Damn I need to go to bed now. I started talking to myself again.

Random Daily Tip: Yahoo Messenger is kind of fun utilizing Macromedia Flash for almost all of its interactive features. It does take up quite a bit of resources on your computer though, more than AOL Instant Messenger, I presume.

Fall Quarter Grad Courses at UCI

Here is my tentative schedule for this coming Fall Quarter at UCI for graduate school. Just in case anyone cares... =]

I&C Sci 200 SEM IN RESEARCH IN ICS-----F 01:00-02:50
I&C Sci 205 HUMAN-CMPTR INTERACTN----M W 04:00-05:20
I&C Sci 260 FUND ALGORITHMS-------------T T 03:30-04:50
I&C Sci 270A INTRO ARTIFICIAL INTEL-----T T 11:00-12:20

I'm going to be having classes every weekday of the week. Going to be another tough 2 years to come. Hopefully I will get some cool professors.

So I sat down and actually calculated things out. If I'm going to USC for graduate school, it would have cost me about 10 thousand dollars more and that's 10 grands I don't have. Furthermore, USC won't give me any grants either. and UCI did give me a grant, so that's cool.

Well, I hope I have chosen the right school to go for my Master.

One month exactly left of my so called summer vacation.

Pictures are being developed

I just got back from Walmart to get my disposable cameras developed. Too bad they won't developed it straight to CD but instead I have to get it developed to a single set first before it can be transfered to CD for like 3 dollars extra each roll.

So I figured that I will just scan the ones I want later when I get those single sets back, possibly Saturday at the earliest. Until then, enjoy my pictureless blog.

Ummm

I would rather remember than forget.

Anyways, I think I should go get my pictures developed/transfered onto a CD tomorrow at Walmart.

I'm Back in SoCal after a bumpy flight

I almost arrived late to the International Sacramento Airport this morning. The worst part is that I was "randomly" selected to have a secondary screening done. I didn't find out 'til I was at the ticket check-in. Given that I bought the ticket the night before, so there is no way they can notify me in time.

I was the very last passenger to board the flight and some represenative from Aloha Airlines actually came by the screening area to scold me for being late =]. I did tell him that noone notify me about being selected for screening, so I had no idea.

Well the flight wasn't supposed to take off 'til 6:05 AM, and I was aboard by 6:00AM, so I don't know why they were complaining. I guess it's just funny that when I left Burbank, I was there 3 hours earlier than the flight, and on the way back, I almost miss the flight.

Anyways, as I was aboarding the flight and was putting my carry-ons on the overhead storage, I heard my name being called, I could not believe it for a few second. I looked over the general direction where the sound came from and saw my friend Kyle from my Calculus III class. I was totally surprised to see him there on the same flight going back to Burbank. He was sitting a few rows behind my assigned seat so I ended up...click on the link below to continue reading this.

I almost arrived late to the International Sacramento Airport this morning. The worst part is that I was "randomly" selected to have a secondary screening done. I didn't find out 'til I was at the ticket check-in. Given that I bought the ticket the night before, so there is no way they can notify me in time.

I was the very last passenger to board the flight and some represenative from Aloha Airlines actually came by the screening area to scold me for being late =]. I did tell him that noone notify me about being selected for screening, so I had no idea.

Well the flight wasn't supposed to take off 'til 6:05 AM, and I was aboard by 6:00AM, so I don't know why they were complaining. I guess it's just funny that when I left Burbank, I was there 3 hours earlier than the flight, and on the way back, I almost miss the flight.

Anyways, as I was aboarding the flight and was putting my carry-ons on the overhead storage, I heard my name being called, I could not believe it for a few second. I looked over the general direction where the sound came from and saw my friend Kyle from my Calculus III class. I was totally surprised to see him there on the same flight going back to Burbank. He was sitting a few rows behind my assigned seat so I ended up just moving back there since the flight was half full anyways.

Apparently Kyle was visiting some of his old friends up in Chico before heading to USC for college. Later on during the flight, I realized that we were sitting in row 13, which isn't a very good idea, but it was too late to change seats then, so what the heck, if it's my time to go, then so be it... This time around, I took a few pictures of the take-off and landing from Sacromento and Burbank. I will post that up here later when I get them developed (sorry...I'm too poor to afford a digital camera).

Later on the day, Kyle also helped me buy a 30GB Creative JukeBox MP3 player from BestBuy with his employee discount. I planned to put some of my old MP3's that I used to listen to 5 years ago. These songs will help me remember the good times I had back in those days.

Until now, as I'm writing this, I'm still shocked that we were on the same flight at the same time on the same day going back to Burbank. What is the chance of that ever happen?

Pictures

Once I get all my disposable cameras developed, I will post some pictures of my trip.

Happy B-Day to my Brother

Visited my brother in Berkeley and took him out for dinner for his birthday. I also got him a ATI 9800SE video card that should last him for a while with his gaming and map-making.

Before coming to Berkeley, My friend Devin took me to San Francisco, the Chinatown there, and pier 39. I bought myself a sweater while I was there, because it was extremely windy and cold up there in the Bay area (I think if I keep buying random stuff and taking random pictures of random things, I will get my mind off of sad things easier).

While at the Chinatown in San Francisco, I bought a Penguins Origami Kit with the thought of giving it to a particular someone, but I realized that I can no longer do that, so the kit is just going to have to sit there until I find a better use for it. I also bought a bunch of postcards with the same thought in mind, but now they are useless too. I might as well just scan those postcards and post it on here.

I think I spent a little too much money on Keychains alone. I spent approximately 40 bucks on them. I plan to give them to people that have been there for me through my tough time during the past few weeks.

Take-off

The take-off from Burbank/Bob Hope airport was very nice. The view was beautiful since the departure time was at night. I wish I had a camera to capture some of ground shots while the airplane was taking off. But I don't think a normal camera can capture all the speckles of lights and the horizon at night.

I know this is probably isn't new to some of you, but for me it is. I haven't been on an airplane for at least 8 years. So it was amazing and a bit scary at the same time.

Out and about

I'm going to be far away from Southern California for a while to clear my mind off a few things.

I will be back soon enough. Leave a message here or on my AIM screen name on the right.

Departure: One-way ticket out of Burbank Airport 8/10 (Aloha Airlines)