Online Journal

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Sunday, April 30, 2006--Today was quite a boring day, thank you. I think all that I did was do a little bit of CS homework and watch a little bit of Battlestar Galactica. Also, it's the 2-year anniversary of my


Yeah, apparently, other than my Isochron Morphling deck, the Red-Green Slivers are the most powerful deck I have ever constructed.

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

Now it's time to say "Good Night!"

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Saturday, April 29, 2006--Today, I went to breakfast at Xroads, did a little bit of my CS164 Written Assignments, and gave my journal a long overdue update.

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

Good Night!

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Friday, April 28, 2006--Packet Turn-in with Tau Beta Pi...

Ryan "Cal Fencing Armourer" C's essay was amusing. Richard's essay was amusing ("Patricia is very cute."). Lei's essay was very amusing, and it felt very Lei-ish. 'Cause you know, of the way Lei writes. She's very animated, and it shows in her writing.

I spent the rest of the day half-slacking and half-catching up on homework. Because Lei told me to.

me: I think it's about time I start catching up on my homework.
me: Either that or we can play Yahoo Pool or something.
Lei: Haha, go do your homework.
me: You're the boss!

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

Good Night!

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Thursday, April 27, 2006--I dunno why, but I remember absolutely nothing from today.


The only inkling of memory I have today is that I talked to Connie (the wind?) on AIM for the first time in a long long time.

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

Connie Night!

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Wednesday, April 26, 2006--I spent most of today finishing my CS186 project, because it was due yesterday. Yeah... I'm a bad kid. I keep missing my deadlines. Fortunately, I have slip days!


After that, I went to Fenton's Ice Cream with Tau Beta Pi and ate the Banana Special (the challenge is, if you can eat that in less than 20 minutes, you win a free T-shirt). So I did. And afterwards, I was cold. Heh, do you remember when I was up in Redmond and I went to Dixie's BBQ and I tried The Man? And the guy joked, "You'll never be cold again." Well, he was wrong! But it was still cool. I mean cold. Or something.

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

Good Night!

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Tuesday, April 25, 2006--Happy Birthday, April!

The girl, not the month, although according to another entry, they're one and the same. My floormates got her a giant crossword puzzle, which takes up the whole wall. Somehow, she managed to find one clue, the answer to which was April.


I spent the rest of the night working on my CS186 Project (which was a webdev project).

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

April Night!

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Monday, April 24, 2006--After eating lunch at the Cheesecake Factory (mmm... pesto... and mmm... chocolate cheesecake...), I made my triumphant return to Berkeley just in time for EE192 Round Two.

Funny story. Last Thursday, I was telling you how our car totally doesn't work. Yesterday, my teammates came in without me, and not only did they make the car work, they also fixed the PWM Inversion bug. Today, when we ran the car, it ran the track on the first try in a 68 seconds. However, we needed less than a minute to make full credit. After calling timeout and tweaking the car ever so slightly, we returned and ran the car in 59.99 seconds. After increasing the speed, we got it in 58 seconds.

Also, apparently, there are cones set up all around the course, just off the side of the track. If you hit a cone, you get a 2 second penalty. (Although the joke is, if you manage to hit every single cone while following the track, you automatically win first place.) You know how there's the word pwnage? Well, apparently, cwnage is when you hit a cwn... I mean cone.

Poor VivChong was the only team who couldn't finish the track. Also, Tracy actually talked to me when I asked her how her car did. o_O


Wow, that was a long On This Day.

Later that night, on my way to the Liquid Nitrogen Giveaway, I ran into Lei.

Lei: You weren't at the [Tau Beta Pi] Midnight [which was actually 8pm] Hike!
me: Sorry, I forgot! (I didn't know you wanted me to hike up to the Big C with you.)

Apparently, the UC Men and Women's Chorale is having a concert on the same day as Initiation and Banquet, but I made Lei promise she would go to the Initiation and Banquet. Yeah, I'm mean, aren't I?

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

Good Night!

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Sunday, April 23, 2006--More ado about nothing.


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

Good Night!

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Saturday, April 22, 2006 - Addendum--So then, I went to Kellie's house, where we chatted, ate Ice Cream (mmm... Ice Cream...) and played We [heart] Katamari.

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

Good Night!

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Saturday, April 22, 2006--Dissension Prerelease! w00t!

Anyways, at 7am, I woke up so I could shower and make myself a sack lunch before heading off to the Prerelease at the San Jose Convention Center. (It was held in a Blue-White tent-like building. Ugh... Azorius colors...) Anyways, while waiting for the actual tournament to begin, I played a 3-player FFA with these two other guys. It started with me saying "You look like you have a control deck", so I attacked him. He had a single Island in play. A few turns later, he was down to 5 life (and one hit away from lethal damage), so he plays a Mindslaver and takes control of my next turn. On my next turn, he makes me hit the other guy, knocking him down to also 5 life. Knowing that neither of them could beat me, on the next turn of the guy with the Island (he had a lot more crap by then), he cast Brainstorm on me for 8, and then copied it with his Mirari, allowing me to draw 16 whole cards. He did it claiming that since he had lost anyway, he was just having fun. Unfortunately, despite having just drawn 16 cards, none of them contained a Heart Sliver, which would have allowed me a massive double-overrun for the win.

Anyways, onto the main event. Of course, before I even started, I had already decided that I would be running a red-black (Rakdos) deck, because Red-Black had served me well in Kamigawa. It was also the color with the most removal (having lots of removal would serve me well today). Anyways, as I was building my deck, I was glad to find out that I had plenty of removal (including 2 Seals of Fire and a Putrefy). I was originally planning on running Rakdos-Golgari (ie, Red-Black with a splash of Green) so that I could take advantage of the one Putrefy. Unfortunately, while I was going through my mana curve, I realized that I didn't have low-cost creatures, and as a result, my mana curve was very top heavy. To rectify that situation, I quickly shifted to Rakdos-Boros (White-Red-Black), and filled in my curve with Boros Swiftblade, Thundersong Trumpeter (which would eventually become the MVP of Round 3), Veteran Armorer, and Skyknight Legionnaire. Here is my deck:
6xPlains
5xMountain
5xSwamp
Rakdos Carnarium
Courier Hawk
Beacon Hawk
Veteran Armorer
Guardian of the Guildpact
Thundersong Trumpeter
Boros Swiftblade
Skyknight Legionnaire
2xSeal of Fire
Sell-Sword Brute
Ordruun Commando
Indentured Oaf
Sandstorm Eidolon
Rakdos Icksplitter
Riot Spikes
Wrecking Ball
Thoughtpicker Witch
Stinkweed Imp
Entropic Eidolon
Enemy of the Guildpact
Brainspoil
Helldozer
Gaze of the Gorgon

I was originally running Hunted Horror in there somewhere, but I decided that it wasn't worth the risk. Hunted Horror would probably better if I could manage to abuse it somehow, though. It's also interesting to note that I put a rare in my deck: Helldozer. I had to decide for a while, but then I decided that it would be best to run Helldozer since I didn't have that many good creatures anyway (which made deckbuilding much easier this time), and because he would be good at killing off non-basic lands (which happened about twice today). Helldozer was also a pretty damn efficient fattie--a 6/5 for 6 mana.

Other interesting cards in my pool included: Enigma Eidolon (common, but for some reason, I like Eidolons, probably because Eidolons are also the name of the summons in FF9), a foil Azorius Signet, Foil Mark of Eviction, Hex, Proper Burial, Elemental Resonance, and Grand Arbiter Augustin IV. The Promo card was the Avatar of Discord (nicknamed Avatar of Discard by me).

After my result at the Ravnica tournament (3-0-1 and splitting in the finals for 7 boosters each), I knew I wouldn't be happy unless I went home with 7 boosters. Knowing this, I knew I had to get into the Round 4 with a 2-0-1 record. That meant I would have to win my next 2 games.

Round 1: vs Nolan (Simic-Azorius) In game 1, he mulliganed down to 5. Naturally, I won. In game 2, I was mana-flooded. Naturally, he won. In game 3, we were running low on time, so about 2 minutes left in the game (it was anybody's game, and we weren't close to finished), I offered a draw and he accepted. Record: 0-0-1

Round 2: vs Isaiah (Rakdos + splash green) He went the deck that I rejected. In any case, in game 1, he started with a Kill-Suit Cultist (a little red 1-drop goblin who has a black, sacrificing activated ability to kill anyone he touches). I managed to wipe out all of his creatures and followed up for the win. In game 2, he was color-screwed. For the entire game, he only had Mountains, so all he could do was play his Kill-Suit Cultist. I managed to beat him without having to take out the Kill-Suit. Since the Kill-Suit has to attack every turn, I just let the damn thing hit me for 1, then counter-attacked with everything for massive damage. Needless to say, Rakdos vs Rakdos = fast game. I beat him in about 10 minutes. Record: 1-0-1

With a 1-0-1 record, that meant I had to win just 1 of my next 2 games to guarantee prizes. I wanted to win my next game, though, so that I could make a deal in ROund 4 and go home with 7 boosters. That would effectively make the next round my finals. I would have to be prepared.

Round 3: vs Andrew (Simic) Andrew played very slowly. For a while, I was a little panicked, because that meant I might not have time to beat him in Game 2 and Game 3 if he were to win Game 1, and I really didn't want another draw on my record. Fortunately, after about 20-30 minutes, it became clear that I would definitely win Game 1, so I started changing my strategy. I would slow myself down to his speed so that I could force him to run out of time in Game 2 and win this round with a single win. It's a bit of a cheap tactic, but it's fair. In any case, how did I win Game 1? With Thundersong Trumpeter and Helldozer. Effectively, the Thundersong Trumpeter negated one of his blockers (or if he had 2 blockers, it pretty much forced him to chump block with the creature I wanted dead). After loads and loads of chump blocking, the Helldozer finally made it through to kill him off. In Game 2, I started up my plan to basically stall him to death while so I could walk out with the Round 3 win. Unfortunately, he was able to get out a team of flyers--2 Assault Zeppelids (3/3 flying trample) and an enchantment that would turn into a 4/4 flyer whenever he cast a creature spell. Fortunately, Thundersong Trumpeter helped slow down his attack a bit, saving me about 4 damage each turn. When time ran out, it turned out he was just 1 turn away from killing me. Lucky me. So yeah, Thundersong Trumpeter was my star blocker-remover in game 1 and my star defender in game 2. He's definitely the MVP of the round. Record: 2-0-1

I'll re-iterate what I said for the Ravnica Prerelease. When you go into Round 4 with a 2-0-1 record, you have a really weird situation. If you draw, you'll have a 2-0-2 record and you'll win 5 boosters each (improved from 4 boosters in previous tournaments). If you play it out, winner gets 11 boosters and loser gets 3, which is a total of 14 boosters. Thus, it was definitely in my favor to play out the game, but strike a deal at the beginning of the game to split the boosters 7-7, and that was exactly what I would do.

Round 4: vs Tomy (Green-White-Blue) After making the deal and shaking on it, we decided to play one game to determine who would get the official win (since one of us needed to be listed as a winner). Unfortunately, it was over pretty quickly for me. He got a lock on me with Vedalken Dismisser (when it comes into play, put target creature on top of its owner's library) and Mark of Eviction (essentially an unsummon that can be used every turn). Basically, it meant I couldn't play (expensive) creatures, as they would not only be bounced, but they would clog up my library. Needless to say, I lost. Record: 2-1-1

Booster-wise, this was my second best tournament ever. I went home with the 7 boosters I wanted. Maybe I could have beaten Tomy if we had played games 2 and 3. Who knows? It doesn't matter now.

Anyways, interesting cards in my booster packs included: Aurora Eidolon, 2 Enigma Eidolons, Entropic Eidolon, 2 Sandstorm Eidolons, Verdant Eidolon, 2 Brain Pries ("To the Rakdos, the fun is in the shakedown. The loot is usually discarded."), 2 Macabre Waltzes (disturbing artwork), 2 Wrecking Balls (w00t, this one is common), Vigean Hydropon (5/5 for 3 mana... but it can't attack or block), 2 Seals of Doom, a foil Seal of Fire, a foil Nightcreep, Unliving Psychopath, Demonfire (Hellbent Fireball), Crime & Punishment, Bronze Bombshell, Cytoplast Root-Kin, Novijen Sages, and Cytoshape.

Anyways, this concludes my Prerelease Report and my entry for the day. You'll see my usual stuff (On This Day and Dice Roll of the Day) in an addendum.

Good Night!

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Friday, April 21, 2006--Uhh... today, I went home.

Also, I vaguely remember beating KH2. The trick was using all those Strength Boosts, AP Boosts, and Defense Boosts that I had accumulated over the course of the game. That meant I was dishing out damage like mad. Anyways, here's my thoughts in spoiler-text as quoted from Avalanche Online:

*KH2*Anyways, I beat the game last Friday. At the last save point of the game, I had racked up 30 hours and 58 minutes of playtime, and Sora was at level 50.

I know I've already written a review for this game, but I have a bit more to say.

Gameplay-wise, I know I said that Limits and Drives were fun (and yes, they still are), but if you're going up against a difficult boss, you really don't want to be using either of them. Limits use up all your MP, which you should really be saving for casting Cure on yourself, and using Drives puts you at risk of Driving into Anti-Form, which is REALLY bad when you're going up against tough bosses.

I can understand why Limits use up all your MP. I mean, they're powerful moves, but why does using a Limit have to prevent you from using Cure? Why does Cure also have to use up all your MP? With bosses capable of dishing out so much damage so fast, you'd think Cure would be easier to cast. 15 MP sounds reasonable. 30 MP still sounds fair. ALL of your MP is just ridiculous.

Also, I think KH2 really doesn't need Anti-Form. I mean, they already use up your Drive Gauge, which isn't so easy to refill. And Drive is supposed to be one of the major Gameplay additions. Putting in Anti-Form means that you're really better off without using Drive at all, and if you're not using Drive, then what's the point? The sole saving grace of Drive (aside from the fact that dual-wielding is just fun as hell) are the Growth Abilities they have, which are transferred to Sora. That said, levelling up Forms is also annoying as hell (especially Master Form), so by the end of the game, I had Level 1 High Jump from Valor Form, and that was it.

The last note regarding KH2's gameplay (this also applies to KH1): I realized just a few days ago that one of the reasons I prefer KH:CoM is because in KH1 and KH2, bosses are strong enough to kill you in 2-3 hits most of the time, which means you're always relying on your Cure magic or on the Potions that your allies carry. Battles usually come down to whether you're fast enough to hit that Cure spell before you die or whether your allies still have Potions to heal you with. Contrast this with CoM, where Cure magic is considerably weaker and bosses do considerably less damage. In CoM, survival depends not on how quickly you can pull out your Cure magics (although they really help), but rather on how skilled you are in dodging and breaking attacks (this is ESPECIALLY true in Reverse/Rebirth). Granted, there are SOME battles where learning how to dodge attacks is important (in particular, the Xigbar battle), but most battles just come down to hitting X and triangle and curing yourself when you take enough damage.

One note regarding KH2's storyline: I feel that Axel's death was totally unnecessary. (I told you there'd be spoilers.) Axel was a good character, and he was one of the few Organization members I thought were actually cool (the other one being Larxene). Storyline wise, fighting along side of Axel in the dark passage between Twilight Town and The World That Never Was was the high point of the game. Watching Axel die a few minutes later was the low point of the game.

Also, the whole Nobodies don't have a heart, therefore Nobodies have no feelings just ruins the whole thing. Axel clearly has feelings. That's why he left the Organization to try to bring back Roxas. To me, it sounds like they're just using the whole Nobodies have no feelings thing as an excuse to not have to develop the remaining members of the Organization. That's probably why the KH2 Organization members are neither as developed nor as cool as the Organization members in KH:CoM.

Despite all these flaws in KH2, I still think it was a good game. It was certainly better than the original KH, but I still don't believe it was better than KH:CoM.*KH2* Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 1) Total: 7

Good Night!

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Thursday, April 20, 2006--Today, in EE192, Quan was laying down the law--I mean, Quan was laying down the new Silver track in the courtyard. When he was done, I decided to run it, and it was hard as fuck. Fuck! Not even Quan's car could run it, and Quan is the TA. I hope we don't use this track for Round 2, 'cause right now, we can only run the black one.

Afterwards, I went to the Boat Dance. I was supposed to go with my floormates, but I ditched them when they offered me some questionable jello. So then I rode the bus with Megan "Rainbow Eyes" [last name unknown] and her fiends. When I finally arrived on the boat, I found Lei and thus decided to hang out with Lei and her fiends.

Other people I ran into on the boat: Jessica O from TBP, Sarah C from Flour, Joyce L from ARML, and, uhh... that's all I can remember.

Also, I danced with Vivian Chu. Therefore, VivChu is awesome. (We're smiling more than we should in the picture because Lei told us to smile bigger.) Later, we ran into Little Rabbit Diane Ko, but she ran away. Probably from me.

I found that although I had no trouble feeling the music, I couldn't feel the dance. *shrig* Oh well.

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

Boat Night!

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Wednesday, April 19, 2006--
On AIM...
me: happy birthday, rabbit
Little Rabbit Diane Ko: thank you

Silly Rabbit. She prolly responded before she realized it was me.


Also, I spent the rest of the day testing my CS164 project before finally turning it in. (It was due yesterday.)

After that, Vivian Pham called me to offer me some of the brownies she and some of her fiends had baked. Therefore, VivPham is awesome!

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

Good Night!

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Tuesday, April 18, 2006--I'll keep this thing short, so you don't have to read as much boring crap.

Other than class, today was the Tau Beta Pi General Meeting #3. Apparently, Lei forgot to come, and that made me sad. )= It was still awesome, though, with all the performances and the OK Go. Brandon Chen plays the piano. Then, after that, it was Poker Night. I didn't do too well, but by the same token, I didn't do too poorly. So it's all good.

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

Good Night!

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Monday, April 17, 2006--Strange. I'm writing this entry, and it's April 29th. How did I fall that far behind in updating my journal. I assume there must have been a lot of work to do and a lot of festivities to attend. Or something like that.

Anyways, I spent most of today working on my CS164 Project (PA5, the code generator).

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

Good Night!

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Sunday, April 16, 2006--Happy Easter!
Today, I tried continuing work on my CS164 Project, but again, I kept getting distracted. I recall refining my design, but I don't actually recall writing (or generating) any code. D'oh!

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

Good Ressurection!

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Saturday, April 15, 2006--So Princess Vivian invited me to (and sold a ticket to me for) the VSA Culture Show. It was amusing. Even though half of it was in Vietnamese (VSA stands for Vietnamese Student Association), there were some pretty amusing scenes and lines.

me (to Princess Vivian): I enjoyed the show.
me: I like how in the Fashion Show scene, there was this pretty girl with this pretty dress.
me: I think her name was...
me: Vivian!
Vivian: Haha, you like me dress?
me: Yes. (And that's not the only thing I like.)

After that, I tried to start work on my CS164 Project (the Code Generator), but I was seriously distracted. I managed to get a rough desigh, though.

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

*yawn* Good Night!

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Friday, April 14, 2006--I showed up half an hour late to my CS164 Discussion, only to find out that the TA was holding onto my exam. (He might have been using it as an answer key--who knows?) After half-paying attention, after the end of the discussion section, the TA said that they wanted to make a photocopy of my exam and send it into the accreditation or something as an example of good quality work. I feel flattered.

Back in EE192 Lab, I had a theory that if I tweaked the steering center offset, I might be able to get it to run over the crossings. The theory was based on the observation that every time it missed a crossing, it was turning left instead of right. Thus, I made it favor turning right. Now, the car can run the track in one direction in 57 seconds, but not the other. I'm giving up for now, because Slava is much better at tweaking the car than Wayne and me combined. We need to fix the crossings problem. If only we could fix that, our car would be able to move so fast!

So then, Princess Vivian calls me (hurray! Princess Vivian calls me!) so that we could go to dinner that night. So we went to dinner at Crossroads. Therefore, Princess Vivian is awesome.

Vivian: It's Good Friday today. Was your Friday good?
me: It was all right. (I got to spend time with you. Therefore, it's good.)

Then, I showed up to Tau Beta Pi's Smoothie/Taboo Night (which was actually Smoothie/Taboo Evening). I was an hour late. I drank lots of smoothies, chatted with Lei, and played one game of Taboo.

me: Do you wanna know why I was an hour late?
Lei: Why?
me: I was eating dinner with a girl.
Lei: Ooh!
me: I was eating dinner with Vivian.
Lei: Viv Chu?
me: No, the other one. Viv Chu wouldn't eat dinner with me anyway.
Lei: Well, yeah, she probably wouldn't eat dinner with you knowing that you like her.
me: She had lunch with me knowing that I like her.

Hmm... I wonder if either of the Vivians reads my bloop.

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

Good Friday!

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Thursday, April 13, 2006--CS186 Lecture... CS164 Lecture... Lunch at the GBC...

EE192 Lab... so I tried working on the car, but then I just got totally stumped. Apparently, our car is now the opposite of the machine it was before. Now, it totally loves steps, but crossings just confuse the hell out of it.

I was supposed to do homework, but somehow, I ended up spending 4 hours on Wikipedia for no reason at all.

I think there might also have been some Battlestar Galactica involved.

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

Good Night!

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Wednesday, April 12, 2006--I skipped EE192 Discussion because, like I said yesterday, the class is over. Then, I went to CS186 Discussion, but I didn't pay attention. I wonder why. Maybe I would have been better off not going at all.

Then, I went to EE192 Lab, where I programmed our car to record sensor values because we have to turn in a step response on Friday. In other news, we put the new servo on our car today. Our car is now running faster than it has ever run before. Unfortunately, the Courtyard Track was still wet, so we couldn't run time trials.

Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 5) Total: 9

Good Night!

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Tuesday, April 11, 2006--I had a CS164 Mudterm today, so I figured I should relax and skip CS186 Lecture this morning. Instead, I opted to go eat lunch with Abhi and I forget who else, but it was somebody. It was most definitely somebody. Or maybe it was nobody. I don't remember anymore.

The mudterm itself wasn't too bad. There were some interesting problems on there. It doesn't matter. I'm prolly gonna get an A in that class regardless.

EE192 Lecture... nothing particularly important. I think this class is pretty much over. From here on out, it's just tweaking the car to make it better.


I had some free time today. I prolly should have spent it doing homework, but instead, I slacked off for about 2 hours.

TBP Officer Meeting... which fed into TBP Advising Session in Unit 2. Mmm... Free food...

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 5) Total: 6

Princess Vivian got mad at me, but a moment later, I sent her an apology e-mail, and 2 minutes after that, it was all resolved. Yay!

Good Night, I guess.

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Monday, April 10, 2006--Race Day... Round 1!

The format was as follows: You get 5 minutes to run as many laps on the track as you want. You get one timeout (useful for stopping the clock if you're going to make some big changes to your car), and when you come back, you get whatever time you have left or 2 minutes, whichever is less. (So the optimal strategy is to go the full 3 minutes, regardless of whether you're actually running for the full 3 minutes, then call timeout to recalibrate/restrategize, then use the remaining 2 minutes to do better.) Also, if you start a run before time runs out, you're allowed to finish the run, even if time runs out during the run.

Anyways, I volunteered to go first to "get it over with". We ran for about 3 minutes and 20 seconds, and our car failed. I called timeout to go strategize with Wayne and Slava, and we decided to just slow down the car (from speed 150 to speed 115). Then, we had to wait for a while while all the other teams took a shot at running their car.

Anyways, when our turn finally came around again, we ran the car (at speed 115), and it made it in about a minute. Then, at the behest of Slava, I sped the car up to about 130ish (I didn't record the exact number), and ran the car again. This time, we made it in 57 seconds. I thought it was pretty weird. At a faster speed, we ran the car in 1 minute 10 seconds yesterday, but today, we ran it at a slower speed and got a faster time. Weird. Well, I'm happy with this result. Assuming someone didn't mess up the timer, this is the best result we've had all week. Hurray!

Rick's car (aka, the car), made it in 34 seconds, which was the best time for the whole class. Two groups failed to complete the track altogether: Tracy's group (haha, sucks for you), and Vivian & Gary's group.

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

This is out of order, but since I went to lab at 1pm to work on the car and ended up not doing much work on the car, I spent most of the time reviewing for the CS164 Mudterm tomorrow. (And by reviewing, I actually mean I made my notesheet.)

=Thus I say to you, Good Night!

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Sunday, April 9, 2006--So at noon (an hour late), I arrive in EE192 lab, an hour late, to go work on the car. Slava makes some mechanical adjustments while I implement adaptive speed control. Right away, we notice an improvement. By the end of the day (6pm, when I left to go eat dinner), we had increased the base speed from 75 to 150. Previously, on the Moore Track, we were running it in 44 seconds. Now, we can run it in 24 seconds. Since the Moore Track is half the length of the Courtyard Track, that means we can run the Courtyard Track in about 48 seconds, which means we've shaved off almost a minute in terms of time. Hurray!


After that, I went to go eat dinner at Crossroads and ran into my floormates. Later, I ran into Lei and Richard, but I was already eating with my floormates, so yeah.

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

Good Night!

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Saturday, April 8, 2006--Happy Birthday to Bernard!


Tau Beta Pi Big Social #2

Blob tag. Balloon popping game. Electric fence. Human knot. We had an unsolvable knot again, but this time, it was more unsolvable than last time. Shapes. They were a lot more strict with the shapes this semester, probably because they knew I had a good system that would solve shapes in, like, 5 minutes. Relay race. There was so much dizziness. Winnie fell down. That's funny. 9-legged race. Instead of marching to 1-2-1-2, Angela and Winnie tried "Pikachu". Failing that, they tried "Donkey". Then, on the way back, we needed to close into a circle and tie the two ends together. Since we had trouble walking, we just hopped all the way back. However, we fell down. Multiple times. I got mud on my knees. Winnie got mud on her ass. That's funny. Hmm... maybe I should stop being mean to Winnie. I wonder if she still reads this thing.

In the meantime, James was flying a kite. Then, he took it to the smokestack (which was on the other side of a swamp) to catch an updraft. The legal limit on the height of a kite was 500 feet, but we had, like, 3 spools of 200 foot thread, which we tied together and flew the kite up. It was high. Fran tried to take a picture of it, but it was just a speck. We considered tying it to a car and flying it back to Berkeley, but Fran, in a very un-Fran-like move, killed the idea on the account of danger to bystanders. We eventually decided to give it away.

Girl: *flies a 2-string kite, crash-lands into the ground*
Me: Hey, let's give the kite to her.
James: Hey, you wanna kite?

So we gave the kite to her and her friends. So then, we started packing up our stuff and re-arranging the rides back home. Half an hour later, as we were pulling out of the parking lot, we saw that the girl (who had been reeling in the kite the whole time) still wasn't done reeling in the kite. Damn, that's a long kite.

And that ends Big Social #2 Spring 2006.

After slacking off for a while and eating dinner, I got invited to go watch Ice Age 2 with some TBP officers. It was amusing. Then, after the movie, we went to Gelato Milano to get some, uhh, gelato. Which is Italian ice cream, apparently. I got two scoops of (do I even have to tell you?) chocolate. Mike got the mango and the vanilla, which were both the same color, so no one could tell the difference.

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

Good Zzz's.

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Friday, April 7, 2006--Donuts & Bagels with TBP... Mmm... Donuts...


So today was our checkoff for our EE192 car. While on Wednesday, we could run the track in 1 min 5 sec, today, we ran for 1 min 45 sec. It sucked. We have a lot of work to do.

Well, at least it's Friday, so I can slack off now.

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

Good Night!

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Thursday, April 6, 2006--Long day today... More on that in a sec.

Nothing in particularly happened in CS186 Lecture or CS164 Lecture or EE192 Lecture. But then, in the EE192 Lab, we decided to tweak the hardware of the car. Stuff breaks, and we're unable to get it back exactly the way it was. While yesterday, it was running at speed 115, today, we had to slow it down to speed 75. I wasn't happy with it, but it would be good enough for tomorrow's checkpoint. Ugh! How annoying!

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

Good Night!

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Wednesday, April 5, 2006--Happy Birthday Viv Chu!

Since I went to EE192 Discussion yesterday, I didn't go today. However, I did go to CS186 Discussion (which was useless, because we just went over the mudterm). Afterwards, I went back to EE192 Lab and implemented push buttons. Yay!

However, to get the check plus for this week, we need to run the outside track in 35 seconds or less. Right now, I can get my car to run it in 1 min 10 sec. My car needs to go at least twice as fast. D'oh!

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

Good Night?

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Tuesday, April 4, 2006--CS186 Lecture... CS164 Lecture... EE192 Discussion... (I decided to go with the Tuesday variant this week, because we had a report to turn in. Actually, I dunno why I went with the Tuesday variant, but on the bright side, it makes my Wednesday easier.) ... Cleaning up the code for my EE192 project... Late Lunch at GBC... TBP Officer meeting... Now...

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

Is it wrong for someone to simply drop a friend?

Good Night!

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Monday, April 3, 2006--Today, I went back to Berkeley. Grr... I don't want Spring Break to be over.

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

Good Darkness!

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Sunday, April 2, 2006--Crap, it's Daylight Savings today. I forgot to Spring Forward.

Also, for those of you who didn't know, yesterday's Dark Fiends was fake. The real Dark Fiends Chapter 62 is here.


Beyond that, I can't remember what I did, if I did anything at all. Maybe I just lost that many hours to Daylight Savings.

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

Good Night!

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Saturday, April 1, 2006--First thing's first, the final chapter of Dark Fiends has been posted. It's an ending worthy of such an epic. You won't be disappointed. I promise.

Anyways, about two weeks ago, I was on eBay looking at Magic: The Gathering booster packs. Now, I noticed this one booster from Beta (which is the second printing of the original MTG set) that was going for about $100, which is a really good deal, 'cause they normally cost about twice that. So I'm like, what the hell, sure, I'll buy that. Anyways, it arrived today, and when I opened it, I got a Black Lotus, which is worth like $7069 million. Fuck yeah!

But you won't ever see me using it in a deck, 'cause it's too valuable.


Then, I spent the rest of the day playing Kingdom Hearts 2, which is what I've been doing for the past four days.

*KH2*Anyways, I finally beat Xigbar, but that's old news by now. In the next scene, I found out that the guy who I thought was Riku (the black-hooded guy with Soul Eater, Riku's sword), was actually Ansem. And then DiZ took off the bandages on his face and revealed himself to be Ansem. Then, the leader of the Organization shows up and takes off his hood, also revealling himself to be Ansem. And I'm like HOLY SHIT! THAT'S A LOT OF ANSEMS! I hope I don't have to fight all three of them at once. That would be scary.*KH2*

Anyways, the last item on the agenda is the whole successor thing. I already have a post on it in the forums, so you should post your thoughts there. For those of you who are too lazy to look at the forums, I'll repeat for you:

"Since I'm graduating Berkeley in a few months and moving up to Redmond, I've decided it's time to name a successor. In essence, I need someone to take up the role of Dwayne in the SF Bay Area.

Criteria: Creativity and Imagination. Some of you might already know (see Dark Fiends), I'm an artist at heart (in music and in story-telling, just not in visuals). So my successor will need to share my creativity and imagination. Visual artists qualify under this category.

Responsiblities: Nurture the creative spirit. This is easy. Just compose more music/write more stories/draw more pictures, because creative works are awesome.

Now, who here would like to apply?"

Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 1) Total: 13

Before I go, I'll leave you with this one last AIM conversation...
me: Happy first day of you!
April: Haha, thanks.
me: I'm prolly, like, the 19th person who's said that, huh?

Anyways, now ends the Bestest Night of the year.

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