Online Journal

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Friday, March 31, 2006--I finally stopped playing Kingdom Hearts 2. Not because I was bored of it, but because one of the bosses was severely kicking my ass, and I didn't feel like taking the time to level up. So anyways, I'm currently stuck on

*KH2*Xigbar. He's easy at first. I just jump and attack him with my mad air combos. But then, when he has about 2 or so bars of life left, he uses this attack where he shoots some bright blue bullets at me, which come at me from all sides. Next thing I know, one of them hits me, and then the rest of the hits me, and I can't use Aerial Recovery, since they hit me so fast, and I can't heal, since apparently, my feet need to be on the floor to heal. So then I die. Cheap.

Maybe I just need my Dodge Roll back.*KH2*

Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 3) Total: 7

And now, the daily "Good Night!"

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Thursday, March 30, 2006--Today, I played more KH2. Beyond that, I don't remember.


Apparently, Winnie reads my Journal. Hi Winnie!

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 3) Total: 4

Good Night, yo!

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Wednesday, March 29, 2006--Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I woke up this morning and got Kingdom Hearts 2 at about 11am, and I've been playing that basically all day. I was going to post some stuff in spoiler text about how the game is going for me, but I've been playing for so long that all the days are blurring together, so I'll just say that I've been playing a lot of Kingdom Hearts 2.


Also, KH2 is better than KH1, but not as good as KH:CoM.

Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 4) Total: 6

Knight Night!

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Tuesday, March 28, 2006--Apparently, when they said Kingdom Hearts 2 was going to be released today, they actually meant that it'd be available in stores tomorrow. Grr... Dwayne is bored for another day.

Anyways, dentist appointment today. Then, my mom and I had lunch at this Korean BBQ buffet, or something. Then, we went to Best Buy to buy Kingdom Hearts 2 only to find that it won't be in stores until tomorrow. Lame.

Then, Justin, Mark, and Ryan showed up at my place to hang out. First, we played MTG 2v2s with the decks I had built with leftover Kamigawa cards. It was amusing. Ryan used the white deck to finish us off with Charge Across the Araba. Yeah, if only you had seen my face when I realized what they were up to (which happened about 5 seconds before Ryan actually cast it). I was like oh, shit! Yeah, that was an awesome finisher. Apparently, I under-estimated the strength of the White deck with Charge Across the Araba and the Blue deck with its swarm of flying soratami. In fact, I don't think the blue deck has a single non-flyer in there.

Then, we played Soul Calibur 3.

After that, I'm tired.

Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 5) Total: 8

Good Night, I say!

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Monday, March 27, 2006--[blank entry]


Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 2) Total: 4

Hmm... Good Night!

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Sunday, March 26, 2006--Today's very non-descript. It was just mostly me doing stuff online and playing Maple.

Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 1) Total: 7

"Good Night!"
--Dwayne Jeng

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Saturday, March 25, 2006--Today, I woke up and I was at home. Because I'm on Spring Break. And also because I came home for the weekend (and the week, and the weekend after that), but that's because I'm on Spring Break.

Anyways, I worked on Dark Fiends. It's been confirmed, I will post Chapter 62 on, oh, April 2nd. And I'm still prolly gonna have time to post Chapter 63 at the end of April.

After that, I went to Kellie's place, where we first played Bomberman on my laptop (because I have an emulated ROM from some Japanese Super Famicom Bomberman game), then we played MapleStory (I moved my laptop into her room so we had a pseudo-LAN party or something), and then my connection to Maple started crapping out, so then we played We [heart] Katamari.

Upon packing my mouse or some shit like that, I accidentally dropped it a few times, but there seems to be no major damage. [Addendum 3/26/2006: Actually, it seems the left mouse button is stuck or something, 'cause if I want to click, I have to click hard. How annoying. I guess I'll switch back to my mechanical ball mouse for the time being.]

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 3) Total: 4

Good Riddance--I mean, Good Night!

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Friday, March 24, 2006--A few formalities for me to clear up before Spring Break officially begins... CS164 Discussion... EE192 Lab Checkoff (it was easy)...

Then, I went home. But before I could, I had to overcome the elevator. The sensor was broken or something, so it could only go up. I live on the 4th floor, but by the time I realized what was going on, it had taken me up to the 7th floor. Then, I had to manually carry all my heavy luggage down the stairs. It sucked.

On the bright side, gravity was helping me.

Then, I went home. I played Breath of Fire for a few hours. It plays a lot like the NES FFs, except with better graphics.

Other than that, I think I'll go work on Dark Fiends now.

Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 6) Total: 8

Good Night, my dove!

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Thursday, March 23, 2006--The CS186 Mudterm was easy.

CS164 Lecture... EE192 Lecture (which was rescheduled because Quan is out of town and therefore had to do discussion on Tuesday)...


And my Spring Break unofficially begins now! Even though it actually begins tomorrow. Everything tomorrow is just filler. (Getting my robot car checked off.)

Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 4) Total: 10

Good Night!

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Wednesday, March 22, 2006--Lunch with Abhi and Chris... EE192 Discussion... CS186 Discussion...

Reviewing for CS186 Mudterm tomorrow... I've missed half the lectures, so I started reading the lecture notes.

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 6) Total: 7

Good Night, folks!

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Tuesday, March 21, 2006--CS186 Lecture... I was able to wake up in time to get there... CS164 Lecture... EE192 Lecture was rescheduled to Thursday because Quan will be out of town on Thursday and therefore needs to reschedule discussion to Tuesday.

I like how upcoming Spring Break means I don't have much work, since most of my deadlines are pushed over the Break.

Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 4) Total: 8

TBP Officer Meeting... something about PTS Ice Cream being just outside the door.

Anyways, Good Night!

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Monday, March 20, 2006--This pointless line is here because I think all of my entries should contain the br tag!

This is my day in list form, yo!

1. Dark Fiends
2. EE192 Lab to make some minor adjustments to the car and video tape the servo for measurements
3. Homework
4. Dice roll of the Day: (5, 6) Total: 11
5. Good Night!

^Ugly blank space^

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Sunday, March 19, 2006--I can't remember what I did today. I think it involved catching up with the e-mail and forum posts and weblogs I had missed thanks to my CS164 project involvement as well as planning for the next Dark Fiends chapter. One word of warning, I might not be able to get a Dark Fiends chapter this month, but I'll try.

Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 4) Total: 10

Short entry.

Good Night, my dears!

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Saturday, March 18, 2006--Today mostly consisted of testing my CS164 project and finishing up stuff that I had forgotten and fixing bugs. It took me until about 10pm at night, but thanks to slip hours, I was still able to get it turned in for full credit. (Well, maybe not full credit, but I won't be penalized for credit for being late.)

Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 4) Total: 7

Gooed Night!

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Friday, March 17, 2006--Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Anyways, I made it to lab just in time to see Wayne and Slava tweak the car. Slava insisted we make the car go faster, since it was too slow. I had set it to 75, but Slava managed to get us to push it up to 120, at which it was semi-stable. But for the purposes of the checkoff, I bumped it back down to 90. Speaking of checkoffs, we got the check+ pretty easily.

Rick's team, however, managed to get their car running the track at race speeds. And this is before implementing a fancy control law. (Maybe this means that simpler is better?) They were doing so well, Professor Fearing appeared to be impressed and Quan challenged them to a race (which was later cancelled, because Quan's car had suffered wear and tear or something and the motor was crapping out).

Anyways, I came back to my room and continued working on my CS164 homework.

Evan: Hey Dwayne, is it okay if we watch the [Cal vs NC State NCAA March Madness Round 1] game in your room?
me: Go ahead!
Evan: Don't you have a project due at midnight?
me: Well, I don't expect to be done by midnight, so I'm not worried.

Cal lost. In the last 2 minutes. It sucked. Also, I had Domino's Pizza for dinner. Mmm... Domino's...

Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 2) Total: 5

Guud Nyght!

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Thursday, March 16, 2006--I was up so late last night, I didn't wake up in time for CS186 Lecture, but I did go to CS164 Lecture. I don't remember what it was about, though. I think we were finishing operational semantics and starting optimization, which apparently should be called make-it-better-ize.

Back to the EE192 lab, where we found out that once again, our Maxim chip fried. Or something like that. I dunno. Anyways, we recalibrated our magnetic sensors and wrote a slightly more complex control law. I dunno if it was worth it, but our car now appears to be stable and symmetric, which should be good.

Later, we were able to get a spare Maxim chip, and since we mounted the speed sensor (which is actually a second motor), I was able to write the software to get speed control working. So now, our car can roll along the track at constant speed. It's beautiful. You really should see it. No really, you should!

Unfortunately, today, I broke a record, or something. For the first time ever, I was in lab at midnight. It sucked. Then, I promptly left. Because it was midnight. It sucked.

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 6) Total: 7

Long Night!

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Wednesday, March 15, 2006--Wow, I haven't updated in a while, huh? I think it's prolly because of my CS164 project, which is due Friday, and I haven't started on it yet.


Anyways, after going to EE192 Discussion, I went to the Cal Student Store and bought myself a Berkeley mug (for the purposes of drinking that OJ that I have). Anyways, the mug had a label on it that said, warning, this product contains lead and may cause cancer blah blah blah. I've been drinking out of mugs like that since I was a kid, and I'm still fine. I highly doubt they've made mugs more dangerous, so I should be fine. Besides, it's probably one of those things where they're required by law to put the warning there, even though there's not enough shit in there to actually hurt you. Unless you eat the mug or something stupid like that.

After that, I began a long day of doing my CS164 project... and I didn't finish.

Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 6) Total: 12

Good Night! Don't let the slivers bite!

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Pi Day, March 14, 2006--Happy Pi Day!

3.1415926... I don't know any more digits.

It's the first Pi Day in the last 5 years that I haven't had pie. That makes me sad. I like pie.

CS186 Lecture... CS164 Lecture... (they fixed the overhead projector, yay!) ... EE192 Lecture... (Critical Damping is good!)...

Then, I went to EE192 Lab, where Slava, Wayne, and I did some experiments with using a motor as a speed sensor. It seems to have worked.

But I really should get started on my CS164 project. I guess I'll forgo Wednesday's Lab session in order to get some work on my project.

Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 5) Total: 10

Pi Night!

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Monday, March 13, 2006--I think it's time to start trying to shift my sleep schedule back to normal. How did it go out of normal in the first case? I don't remember.

Well, today, I was inspired to make some new features for my Demons Engine Architecture 3. Isn't it funny how every time I think I'm done, I think of some new features to add? See, this is why I take a short break every time I think I'm done with the Engine instead of just jumping in to writing the actual game. It's better to have a nice solid Engine working before trying to build on top of it.

I also played some Diablo 2.

Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 5) Total: 7

And that's about it. Good Night!

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Sunday, March 12, 2006--I woke up just in time to go to breakfast with the 6th floor gang, including April, Evan, Dara, and Tim, and Eric joined us halfway through. Actually, by "waking up just in time", I actually mean that I woke up late, 'cause otherwise, I tend to eat early.


Anyhow, I spent most of my day testing my project partner's code for the CS186 project, and like I said, it was more or less a perfect implementation. I spent the rest of the day doing the performance analysis.

Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 1) Total: 5

Also, Winnie joined my forums. Go Winnie!

This entry doesn't have much of an ending. I mean, Good Night!

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Saturday, March 11, 2006--Well, I figured it was time to start working on the CS186 project, so I did. So yeah, I read through the whole thing and found it pretty simple. My project partner, however, had already started without me and just about finished the entire coding section. I suppose it's only fair, since I did all of the coding without him. But yeah, this shows that I completely underestimated my project partner. Granted, he had a little but of trouble understanding the project, and he had to go to office hours to get it cleared up, but when he sets out to get something done, he gets it done, and I don't have to clean up after him.

Of course, for the next project (eCommerce site in PHP and SQL), I could probably do most of the code, since, well this site is written in PHP and SQL.

While my project partner is finishing up the last bits of the CS186 project code (I'm waiting for him to finish so that I can begin the performance analysis), Kellie informs me that Little Vivian has logged onto Maple, so I go online. I find Little Vivian sitting on a bench in Perion, so I stand in front of her and say

me: Hi.
Little Vivian: Holy shit! *gets up, turns around, and sits back down facing away from me*

That's Little Vivian for you, just like in real life!

Also, since Little Vivian was about 10 levels below us, Kellie and I decide to take her to the Ant Tunnels so that she can leech some good exp off of us. For some reason, Little Vivian felt bad about leeching exp off of us, so she quit our party and joined another one, because she wouldn't feel bad abot leeching off complete strangers.

me: There's something wrong with that girl.
Kellie: You only noticed just now?

Then, while I was helping her get quest items, Little Vivian insisted on paying me back... by giving me every last meso (Maple currency--think of it as a Maple peso... yeah, it's both Canadian and Mexican, but developed by the Koreans... go figure), all 30k of it. What a strange little girl.

Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 5) Total: 11

Ahh... Good Night!

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Friday, March 10, 2006--Sorry for not having updated in a while. I forget what I was doing to get myself so distracted.


So yeah, anyways, I skipped CS164 Discussion because I found that I couldn't wake up on time. Instead, after lunch, I went directly to EE192 Lab, where we got our robot car checked off.

Again, I found the charged battery bin empty, so we were forced to use a poorly charged battery for our test run. Unfortunately, because the battery was poorly charged, the car had a little bit of trouble moving. It ended up making the figure 8 run very, very slowly. We still passed the checkpoint, but I was somewhat annoyed at how the other people in the class don't seem to take batteries seriously. Seriously.

After that, even though I probably should have started the CS186 project, I Mapled instead.

Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 3) Total: 5

Gooooooooood Night!

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Thursday, March 9, 2006--I woke up too late to get to CS186 Lecture, so I ate lunch instead.


CS164 Lecture...

Then, I went to EE192 Lab and mounted my car's track sensors. Then, I had my car run the figure 8 track. It was amusing. Mission complete! (for this week)

Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 2) Total: 6

Afterwards, I played Maple with Kellie and some of Little Vivian's friends and just missed seeing Little Vivian come online. Oh, well.

Good good Night night!

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Wednesday, March 8, 2006--me: Hey, Quan.
Quan (EE192 TA): Hey, Dwayne. How are you?
me: I'm just heading to discussion.
Quan: Discussion? Isn't that at 2?
me: No, it's at 1.
Quan: Oh, crap! I have to prepare!


Anyways, so after EE192 Discussion, I skipped CS186 Discussion (since I didn't do anything for the CS186 project, I decided to skip Discussion because I wouldn't get any donuts anyway).

So I stayed in lab to work on my sensor circuit. We got one sensor to work perfectly fine. However, when we constructed the second sensor, it didn't work (or so it seemed). I spent all the way until 11pm at night trying to fix it. In the end, I changed pretty much nothing. (Although I did add some capacitors to filter out the noise on the offset.) However, despite changing nothing, it suddenly worked at the end. Weird.

Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 4) Total: 7

Yay, Slivers!

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Tuesday, March 7, 2006--CS186 Lecture... CS164 Lecture... EE192 Lecture...

EE192 Lab... My Analog to Digital converter for my CPU (for use with the track sensor) is working simply perfectly. However, the hardware needs a little bit of work.

TBP Officer meeting... Reading the minutes over Grace's shoulder as she's typing them up... heh, reminds me of back when I read the minutes over Karen's shoulder.

Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 6) Total: 10

I really should be doing more work. Naw, I'd rather just sleep this Good Night!

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Monday, March 6, 2006--Holy Kupo! Little Vivian posted on the forums! If Little Vivian can do it, so can you! Join my forums and post!

Anyways, today, I ate Japanese food at a restaurant in Cupertino Village (the plaza--Cupertino isn't actually a village; it's a city). Then, I returned to Berkeley.

Then, I did my CS164 project design, my CS164 Homework, and was about to start on my CS186 homework when I decided to slack off and play Maple instead.

20-sided Dice Roll of the Day: 3

It's 20-sided because I usually get my dice rolls from AIM's chatrooms, but AIM's chatrooms are down this (Good) Night!

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Sunday, March 5, 2006 - Addendum--So today, I was digging through my old high school stuff, and I found the old overheards from Journalism, so I was like, all right, a lot of these are crappy, so I'm gonna pull out the funny ones ("He's not in the game, but his pants are.") and the iconic ones ("Mark Twain is going to shoot you!") and post them on the Quote board.

Also, I found the old iFlurtz compatibility test results, the one that said I was compatible with Vivian Chu. So I bring this up with Lei.

Lei: Did you tell Viv?
Me: No. Wouldn't that just creep her out?
Lei: Can I tell Viv? It's so amusing.
Me: Would it creep her out less if you told her?
Me: And it's only amusing because I didn't pay any attention to her at all back in high school.
Lei: No, it's amusing regardless.
Me: Fine, you can tell her, but tell me how she reacts, if she reacts at all.
Lei: She reacted with >< and then "Oh, I remember now."

Silly Lei... Silly Viv Chu...

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Sunday, March 5, 2006--I wonder just how many people read my web journal? It certainly couldn't be more than single-digits. Hey, post in the forums! Let's see if we can get a count.


Anyways, here's what I did in the afternoon:

• I helped Franklin study for Calc BC
• I worked a bit on CS164 homework
• I played a bit of Maple
• I updated my website

Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 3) Total: 9

Ahh... the Night be Good!

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Saturday, March 4, 2006--I started my day with lunch. That's right. You heard me. Lunch. Dim Sum. At Loon Wah.

After lunch, I pulled out my old Limp Bizkit CDs (Significant Other and Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water; Three Dollar Bills Y'all wasn't that great, and I haven't heard Results May Vary) and ripped them into MP3s for my laptop and MP3 player. (Hey, Limp Bizkit is pro-MP3 sharing, so I shouldn't have any problems.) I remember liking this music back when I was in, what, high school? (Lemme search the bjournal.) For some reason, the music doesn't seem to be quite as good as I remember. I dunno. Maybe I've just been to drawn in by The Black Mages. Or maybe it's because MP3 has lower quality than CD. Well, at least I have some stuff to put on my MP3 player. I put every MP3 I have onto my MP3 player, and it's still not full yet.

Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 3) Total: 9

Then, I spent the rest of the night playing Maple, even though there were intermittent internet problems. (I suspect the Ethernet is being overloaded with Franklin's Skype and my Mapling. Who knows?)

Maple Night!

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Friday, March 3, 2006--I meant to wake up earlier today so I could make CS164 Discussion, but I failed. I dunno why. I got 9 hours of sleep, but I had trouble waking up. Maybe I'm suffering from a bad case of senioritis. When I finally arrived, I was half an hour late to CS164 Discussion. Fortunately, there was still half an hour to go.

After chilling with the TBPeople, who were holding the Bent Polishing event, I went to

EE192 Lab... Now, I'm already a little on the edge since we missed last week's checkoff and almost missed the checkoff the week before that. Also, keep in mind that our robot car (and probably all robot cars in general) drain the battery really fast. I think in the last two days we went through 2-3 batteries. So when I finally arrive at lab, to my dismay, I find that the charged battery bin is empty and the discharged battery bin is also empty. None of the other guys in EE192 have been charging their batteries or even returning the discharged ones to the bins! In fact, given that Vivian and Gary's car died midway during their checkoff, it seems that some people don't realize the implications of not keeping a freshly charged battery on hand. Anyways, at that point, I went from being on the edge to outright pissed. Someone's car rolled into my foot while I was collecting and charging the batteries (yes, I ended up charging all the batteries that day), so I kicked it, and it flipped over.

After that, we had the cleanest checkoff we had all year. Not only did we pass this checkoff with flying colors, we made up last week's checkoff as well. So now, I'm in a good mood.

Also, on my way to the courtyard (where we would be testing our cars), I ran into Nadia, who was doing EE126 homework with some guys she knows.

Nadia: Hey, guys, this is Dwayne. He's, like, a genius.
me: No I'm not.
Nadia: Can you help us with EE126?
me: Lemme see that. *looks at homework* I have no idea how to do any of these.
Nadia: You're kidding.
me: I never took EE126. In fact, when I went to go see if I could get out of it and take EE121, I told Gastpar that I knew it when in fact I didn't.

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 4) Total: 5

After that, I went home, where I played Maple for the rest of the day.

...Good Night!

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Thursday, March 2, 2006--Good Morning!

Well, I finally woke up in time to get to CS186 Lecture, but they were covering stuff from the lecture slides that I've already read. Hehe, oops!

CS164 Lecture...

Lunch at GBC...

Then, I went back to EE192 Lab, where I did a few more tests on my robot car, and everything went absolutely fantastically. I was out of lab in about 10 minutes.

Tau Beta Pi General Meeting #1... We played this game where you have a bunch of crumpled pieces of paper in the middle of the circle, and everyone takes turns doing them. If anyone laughs (at any time) that person is eliminated. So...

Mike Toulouse: It says "mimic Mike Chen".
Mike Chen: Wait wait, what?
Mike T: "mimic Mike Chen"
me: No, you're suppose to say "wait wait, what?"
Mike C: Did you write that one?
Mike T: Did you write that one?
me: *bursts into laughter*

And that was how I was eliminated from the game.

Also, former President "Princess" Diana Nguyen made a guest appearance.

After some Thai food (Was it Thai food? It tasted quite Chinese.) we had Game Night. Cory brought Battle of the Sexes, so we were going to play that. (Background info: It's a game of guys vs girls, and it basically tests your knowledge about stuff that the opposite sex would know.)

Frances: I don't know much about girl stuff. My nickname is "Fran the man".
me: James, can you confirm that?
James: How should I know? That's not my nickname for her.
Vikram: Hey, everybody! James calls his girlfriend "Fran the man"!

It was amusing, until we finished the game, after which we realized that not that many people brought games. Oh, well.

Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 3) Total: 8

Now, if you'll excuse me... Good Night!

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Wednesday, March 1, 2006--Again, I started out my day with lunch at Xroads with Abhi and Chris. Also, it's Ash Wednesday today, and I saw some people with ash on their foreheads, but not that many. Oh, well.


EE192 Discussion... safety demonstration etc etc.

CS186 Discussion... SQL Queries... woohoo! My SQL skills have no vastly improved! I dunno what to do with my new SQL skills, though. Most of the SQL stuff I use is relatively simple.

Then, I went back to EE192 lab. Apparently, one of the traces had exploded yesterday, so Slava got that fixed. However, the car still failed to start. We guessed that it was the MOSFET that was busted, so Slava tested that, and lo and behold, the MOSFET was busted. How odd it is that we exploded two things in our circuit. Hehe... oops...

Anyways, we fixed that, and everything seemed to be working. So I programmed the car to run some donuts, and those donuts were delicious. When that succeeded, I programmed the car to run figure 8's. After some snafu's with the car swerving too early or too late (most of the time ramming into VivChong's chair), we finally figured out the right timing and starting position to get it to run nice, elegant figure 8's.

We also did some drop tests, and everything seems relatively stable (so long as we make sure everything is secure before making the drop). Hopefully, everything will work on Friday. Tomorrow, I'm gonna do a few sanity check tests to make sure nothing randomly broke overnight.

Anyways, after a long hard day of work, I went back to my dorm and slacked off for the rest of the night.

Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 6) Total: 9

Good Night! Don't let the exploding robot cars bite!

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