this cold weather is so sad – I’ve been staying in bed hours after I should be up and working just because i don’t want to face the cold. at least it’ll all be over in a few more days. also, my attention span is < 1 hour so it’s impossible for me to study anthing -.-

light at the end of the tunnel – looking forward to TBPsouthbay and/or TBPnorth

I’m kind of curious who actually reads these blurbs. Most of my old friends have drifted away and almost all of my new friends don’t know about this.

1. geometry wars is extremely addicting
2. i want another monitor with component input -.-
3. karaoke is really fun
4. my schedule for next semester is so screwed
5. i have too many personal projects to be able to focus on one for any meaningful length of time
6. someone said that i was not a typical eecs major (he wouldn’t have guessed I was an eecs major had he not known beforehand) – awww, i try so hard to give off the eecs vibe too just kidding, it’s nice to know i’m somewhat normal.
7. i want a couch in my room so i can play video games and watch movies on my monitor without having to sit in my chair
8. i haven’t sat back and stared at clouds for a long time
9. i wish i was an expert in a specific domain of computing – i’m kind of dabbling in everything and i’m a decent all-around person, but it’s kind of depressing knowing there isn’t an area that i really understand and can innovate/research new tangents
10. crushcrushcrush :]

self.beginNewExperience()
self.goto(new Party(TBP))
self.dance()
self.endNewExperience()
self.playGame(new RedAlert3())
self.sleep(8)

So many thoughts bouncing around my head right now. I’m not sure how to reconcile them all.

crap crap crap. I feel like I’m falling behind in all my classes and dragging down my teammates with me. I have like 2 or 3 projects/midterms every single week and it’s really starting to tax me. i’m not used to falling behind and it’s making me really sad…

wow, i’m really racking up these out-of-character experiences this semester. we went on a midnight (about 12:30am – 1:30) run/walk last night around berkeley northside/through campus. it was so spontaneous (we were going to play tag, but we didn’t have enough people), but i definitely do not regret it. i think we’re slightly crazy, but i really wanted to run, and it seemed like a fun thing to do. there are a surprising number of people still up and around at that time of day, especially biking/walking through campus. i wonder if it’s people who just stay in the labs for way too long, or if they’re just passing through after visiting a friend on the other side of campus. i really want to do it again though and then i stayed up until 4:30 cause i didn’t feel very (mentally) tired after running. strangest of all, my left bicep is sore now…instead of my legs. w. t. f.

I went ice skating on Friday and it reminded me so much of snow and skiing and snowboarding. I can’t wait for a tahoe winter retreat where there’ll be more than one or two friends to have fun with. I feel like unless you’re snowboarding competitvely, it’s much more fun with more people. But of course, I’ve never done it before so it’ll be a fun new experience, like so many of the other things I’ve done over the last few weeks.

I also ate lunch with Mike for the first time at Berkeley. Somewhat messed up, given that he’s my roommate, but we lead fairly different lives from day to day and we only talk once in a while. I should really try to maintain relationships with different people, but at least I know that other TBP people have the same problem with drifting friends that I do. Am I trying to justify my actions and choices and taking the easy way out? Or would it have happened anyway due to different circumstances? I wonder if I’ll ever really know for sure.

I think I’m addicted to TBP. Maybe it’s the new-ness of it all, maybe it’s the fact that I’ve been to a TBP event for the past 6/7 days, or maybe it’s that everyone I talked to last year has moved far away from me. It feels slightly weird when I talk to lhs people now – I never thought that’d be possible. But here I am, spending all of my free time with 40+ mostly newfound friends. I spent about 9 hours in our little lounge in bechtel today, doing some work on the TBP website, and also just chatting to people about random stuff. I wonder what state it’ll put me in later on in the semester, but for now, it’s a really nice feeling. I think part of it might be that we all make time to go out to these events, whereas I only meet up with other people if I have time or if we meet by chance. In any case, I feel like I’m drifting away at an ever-increasing rate that may never be closed again. The fact that I’m taking classes at an accelerated rate also means that I’m seeing TBP/HKN people a lot more than people I already know. I don’t know what to doooooooo. I want to find some sort of balance, but it’s looking more and more that the balance point is a state where I see TBP almost exclusively during my free time. And I really don’t know the consequences of that.

We also had a 80-message spamfest over email yesterday in the span of about an hour. It was ridiculously entertaining, and then we moved to an aim chat (omg) for another 5 hours before we all went to sleep. I love these people

When I run out of old music, I like to go back to old stuff I haven’t listened to in a while. And every once in a while, something really strikes me and resonates with my current mood – whether it be happiness, depression, steady uninterrupted coding sessions…whatever. There’s something really blissful about blocking out the world and just listening to music for hours on end, and it’s a little sad that I won’t be able to do it as often once I’m at berkeley unless I want to be a social recluse.

In every circle of friends there’s a whore
The one who flirts and does a little more
But who’s to say this a social scene anyway?

It’s really normal to listen to 2-3 hours of non-stop music at work, since a lot of it is just coding or debugging where you don’t really need other people’s help. Obviously, we are working in teams, but for far less of the time than you’d think. I think it’s during these sessions that I kind of just forget about my worries, forget about difficulties, set-backs, and disappointments in life. I just sink myself in the beautiful aura of flowing bits and symbols, typing away incessantly.

And everybody wants to explore the new girl
Caught up in her own hard liquor world
But liquor doesn’t exist in my world
But liquor doesn’t exist in my world

But even when I’m lost deep inside my own world, there’s other distractions that seem to come from nowhere and jolt me out of my trance. Fire drills, jackhammers across the street, train whistles, boss walking by, coworkers drinking (the smell of alcohol SUCKS ASS), and other fun events shock me out of my bliss. Sometimes it’s nice, because it lets me know I’m still grounded in reality, no matter how much I want to escape, but sometimes it’s an annoyance, and sometimes it’s more.

Now just look at that social clique
Do you really wanna be a part of it?

I visited my Bothell 2nd grade elementary school – Kokanee Elementary School. It brings back so many memories – so many refreshing memories which oddly enough, mirror my current situation. There’s this trail that goes around the school, and we used to run it for PE. At the crest of the hill we run to, there were a bunch a pigs that came out and chased you – but since the pigs have a slight locate and intercept time, they wound up running headlong into the slow kids. And boy was it funny since the pigs smelled like crap but the fast people would be long gone by the time it struck. Unfortunately, there’s no more pigs – but the trail is still there. I ran half of it or so in jeans, and I felt so carefree. My parents didn’t feel like climbing the hill, so I went exploring by myself and it was so damn refreshing. Childhood memories flooding back and I felt so…alive.

And if you lie you don’t deserve to have friends
If you lie you don’t deserve to have them
If you lie you don’t deserve to have friends

I used to hang out in the library during recess cause I didn’t want to get my shoes dirty from the muddy grass (it rains a lot) and I remember helping the librarian sort the books (dewey decimal system, bitches!). Of all the books I read, I remember reading Wayside School. There’s something about Seattle and reading. Except now I’m reading a multitude of Star Wars books. And there’s also something about Seattle and being away from friends (I was only in Kokanee for < 9 months, before moving on to California).

You are a sell out
But you couldn’t even do that right

At least I’m almost back in California, back where all my friends are, yet back to an uncertain social future. It’s really weird, cycling between the different subsets of my life. I think I’ll probably get sucked up in TBP a lot next semester, and hopefully I’ll have a lot of fun while I’m at it, but at the same time, trying to get my coding skills better and better. Well, I guess I can always retreat into my apartment and it’ll be a lot easier blocking out the world since there’s almost nobody to distract me. But somehow, I don’t think I’m like that anymore. I wonder if I’ve matured during the last 12 weeks here. My parents/grandma says I really have, and I guess being with my coworkers really helped the process along. But at the same time, I feel like I’m being immature in dealing with people. We’ll see how it goes.

If you lie.

- – Cute is What We Aim For – Newport Living

i wonder if i’ll ever be able to get a grasp on the stock market. the problem lies in the fact that the stock market gives me such an easy path to instant gratification at the expense of long term gains – the exact opposite of what I try to live by. If i had held on to my amazon stocks instead selling it the first time it made a gain, i would have an $200 extra right now. I wonder if it’s something that I should even be worrying about, given the volatility of the stock market anyway. I’m bound to lose or gain hundreds or thousands of dollars at a time sooner or later.

I’ve found myself buying more and more on an impulse. Everything from music to games to books. I guess that’s what having easy access to spare money does to you. Maybe i should keep more of my money in my hard-to-access savings account to stop myself from frivolous spending. Or perhaps I should just indulge myself as a reward for finishing my first job? But realistically, every bit that I can save now multiples into thousands later on in 50 years, so I guess i better reign in my spending since i’ll be running out of income in 4 days

“so this is how it ends, with thunderous applause”

when the republic turned into the empire, the reader could see it from miles away. certain senators cautioned against incremental stetps towards an empire, but they were ignored. everything is rationalized in some form or other, and each time, something more is lost. when anakin falls to the dark side, it’s tragic to see his fall. you pity him and what he’s become. when you know the whole story, you can see how deftly palpatine manipulated the jedi to destroying themselves – building them up as soldiers of war, then at the brink of victory, murdering them with former allies in a gut-wrenching betrayal.

now replace star wars with real life.

my faith and naive beliefs are shattered; i am at a loss for words. where the hell do i fit into all this? am i a horrified spectator, or an unwitting accomplice? is there anything I could have done to stop this?

but in the end, even darth vader redeems himself. i can only hope the metaphor continues.

i wonder what the toasters think.