All Day Games 2009

I went to my first All Day Games last night. Even though I did not stay for all 24 (or 27?) hours of the event, it was still insane and fun. Many of the games that were played at All Day Games were new to me. Here were some highlights from my gaming experience:

• Mario Kart 64: We did 4-player match race on all tracks in Special Cup and golf-style scoring with the place you finish in to determine the overall winner. Going into Rainbow Road, I was tied for first place with 5 points (a 3rd place finish and two 1st place finishes). Still leading halfway through final lap on Rainbow Road, I lost it after getting lightning-bolted and run over, then hitting a chomp.
• Rack-O: Going into the last round, I was leading by 55 points. However, an epic topdeck from the draw pile gave the runner-up player a 3-card straight and the Rack-O, resulting in him leapfrogging me in points despite my huge lead.
• Sorry!: It was a race between me and another guy for who can get their last pawn home. We both had 3 pawns in home already and 1 pawn en route to home. After I got my last pawn into the safety zone, I kept drawing 4's so I had to back it up out of the safety zone, making it vulnerable to attacks. However, the lucky topdeck of an 11 put my last pawn straight into home first for the win.
• Guitar Hero 3 Tournament: Played Even Flow on expert difficulty. I hit 52% of the notes. Needless to say, I got knocked out after that.
• War Tournament: Somehow I managed to win 4 games of War to end as the tournament winner. The final match lasted about 10 minutes, which was really fast for a game of War. There were several instances where I came back from having only 8 cards in my pile.
• 20-man Cutthroat Darts: I was one of the last two players standing at the end. We both had sections of the dart board right next to each other, and I managed to knock myself out by hitting my own section for the event loss.
• 15-man Cutthroat Pool: Luckily, no one went for my ball until the later part of the game. After playing defense with the cue ball for a few turns due to a lack of good shots for me (3 players left in the game at that time), I sunk the other 2 players' balls one after the other for the event win.
• 16-man Shy Guy Says (Mario Party): Teams of 2 players control 1 controller each for Shy Guy Says. I was paired up with the eventual All Day Games 2009 winner. Twice I failed to press the B button in time due to poor reaction time at 3 AM, which cost us a round win twice. However, twice I got lucky when I preemptively pressed the B button when Shy Guy raised double flags and dropped the A flag.
• Super Mario Bros. High Score: The objective of this event was to obtain the highest score in 1 life or 5 minutes, whichever comes first. After learning that the easiest way to rack up points is to finish levels with lots of time remaining (50 points per second remaining on the timer), I sprinted each level and used no warps, with some close calls to death. I died in level 2-2 by hitting a squid while swimming underwater as my time was about to run out, but 99850 points edged out 2nd place to win this event.
• TI-83 Uncle Worm High Score (medium difficulty): Not having played this game since high school, I was a little rusty at first, but had the winning touch with 431 points.

Epic week

Last week was a pretty eventful week.

• We won the 2009 Mechatronics competition (first place out of 40-something teams) with our Roomba motor-driven robot. Our record for the competition was 7-0, with 2 match losses and 1 match declared a rematch after our epic comeback from what appeared to be a loss. The Roomba motors gave us unparalleled speed and torque, with some matches won in ~4 seconds. Our opponent in the final round was very similar in design (structure, algorithms), except they used the stock motors provided in lab (I think).
• Our MAE 4300 final presentation was on the same day as the Mechatronics competition, except the presentation was at 8 AM. I was up until 6 AM working on the Mechatronics robot, and intended to get up at 6:45 so I could get ready for the presentation (shower, put on a suit, etc.). Unfortunately, I somehow missed my alarm, but magically woke up at 7:35. Still mostly asleep, I walked into the bathroom about to take a shower. That's when I realized that I had a final presentation in 25 minutes. Good thing is that the professor was very impressed with our presentation, even though I was still mostly asleep.
• Wednesday night I stayed up figuring out microcontroller code for the robot, and slept for 2 hours. On Thursday I took a half hour nap in the afternoon, and slept 1.5 hours at night. This brought my 2-day sleep total to 4 hours. Friday night I slept for 16 hours, and it was awesome.
• Fluids/Heat Transfer Laboratory is over. The course consisted of 6 labs and 6 lab reports. Lab report page counts: 23, 19, 48, 43, 45, and 22.

Mandatory Monthly Update

Bullets seem to be an appropriate way to express myself:

• Lung Collapse, Part IV: Happened approximately 1.6 weeks ago. This time, it's not that bad because my right lung is only half collapsed, thanks to the previous surgeries. As a result, it only bothers me when I walk uphill carrying my backpack and when I lay down to sleep. No surgical operation planned as of now, just going to see how it plays out.
• Cornell Server Room: I got to visit the server room at Cornell the other day, and it was massive. Apparently so massive that they're having cooling issues now. It was pretty sweet inside though.
• Rubik's Cube: I haven't really cubed on a regular basis since 2 summers ago. I brought my cube into fluids lab to put into the wind tunnel, but instead we put a toy truck inside to see wake interference. My best time of 22.69 for the 3x3 Rubik's Cube has not changed in 27 months or so.
• Hughes Dining Pancake Stack: I finished the 3-pancake stack again. However, I must admit that the size of the pancakes were smaller than before.
• Where did the time go? I feel like this semester has gone by so fast, and there's still too much to do before it ends. FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU
• I need to revert back to my lifestyle last fall and reprioritize. Some things just aren't worth the time and effort right now.

First snow

Today it snowed for the first time this school year. Being mid-October, this is pretty early for first snow. If I remember correctly from the 10 years I lived in the Rochester area and the 3 years that I've been in Ithaca, it usually starts snowing in early November.

In other news, the "short stack" does not exist anymore. It is now just a generic "stack of 3 pancakes." Somehow I finished 3 pancakes yesterday. I used to have trouble finishing the 2 pancakes that the short stack consisted of.

Senior year

Why is this semester crazy-busy for everyone I know? For me, it might be because I've overcommited myself with various activities/classes/etc. I also need to take 5 classes next semester in order to graduate in May...joy.

Also, I think that some people are natural-born leaders, and I'm not one of them. That's usually been fine with me so far, but when the occassion comes to take matters into my own hands to make things happen, my attitude needs to change.

Epic story

We were sitting at a table in a bar, and Nick decides to tell a story from freshman year involving "Big Rob." Literally just as he mentioned Big Rob in his story, the real-life Big Rob walked down the stairs by our table and introduced himself in front of us. Nick's facial expression and reaction was beyond hilarious after he saw Big Rob suddenly appear out of nowhere right after he mentioned him during his story. This is like something that you wouldn't believe unless you were actually there when it happened.

Back to school thoughts

During our drive to Ithaca, we encountered several toll booths. When the toll amount required change, we would pay part of the change in pennies. We observed that female toll collectors would always count the pennies before letting us move along, whereas male toll collectors would look at the handful of pennies and let us proceed without counting them.

When buying textbooks from an online source like Amazon, it probably doesn't matter much if a seller is "just launched" or a veteran seller. If the new seller plans to continue selling from their account for years to come, then they would probably want to ensure their first few ratings are good in order to build a solid reputation as a seller. This applies only if the seller plans on selling more items in the future.

Wrapping things up

Today is my last day of work. Some statistics:

• Helpdesk tickets 3 weeks ago: 16
• Helpdesk tickets 2 weeks ago: 18
• Helpdesk tickets last week: 19
• Helpdesk tickets this week: 40

Yes, this last week was pretty busy. I'd like to thank everyone who helped me learn stuff and made me feel welcome during the summer. It means a lot to me.

Also, saying farewell is one thing that I don't like to do at all. I suppose most things in life aren't static.

Some Cool Music Videos IMO

I feel like I've been watching a lot of music videos lately. Here are some music videos that I think are pretty cool, and I've grouped them into categories. Without further ado, and in no particular order:

STORYTIME

The Smashing Pumpkins - 1979 and Perfect
These two videos are actually like one in that they portray a group of friends and what they grow up to be a few years down the road. How all the different people cross paths through a series of events reminds me of the movie Crash.

Muse - Knights of Cydonia
This video is arranged like a Western/kung fu/sci-fi/fantasy movie, complete with titles and end credits. Interesting concept.

Stabbing Westward - Shame
This video tells a story (or so it seems). There are even dialogue subtitles. The video is so full of twists and turns that it's hilarious.

Everclear - Brown Eyed Girl
Similar to the previous video in that it has subtitles to describe what's going on in the video. However, this story carries a much lighter mood, is also hilarious, and you'd probably get caught off-guard with the ending.

Massive Attack - Angel
This video is kind of surreal. I don't know what it means, and the ending makes you ponder what's going on.

COOL VISUALS

Muse - Stockholm Syndrome
This is what Muse looks like through thermal cameras.

Korn - Freak on a Leash
Some cool animation work with the projectile.

Thrice - Digital Sea
This video looks like it's shot from the perspective of a grocery store security camera. The part in the middle where the store items move is beyond awesome. Beware of seizures during the night scenes.

Royksopp - Remind Me
This one's for the enginerds out there (thanks Myra).

MOCKUMENTARY

Korn - Twisted Transistor
I guess what makes this on-the-tour mockumentary even funnier is that they got four big-name rappers to play the four actual band members in the video.

MISCELLANEOUS

Collective Soul - Listen
This video basically portrays the story of my life I think. Also, I really like the stop motion.

CONCLUDING HONORABLE MENTIONS

These guys are all on a boat (T-Pain not included, sorry), these people have secrets to tell, and this video is probably everybody's favorite by now.

Gmail Housekeeping

I just cleaned out my Gmail mailbox a bit. I went from 893 MB to 620 MB by deleting a bunch of messages that I sent with picture attachments. Usually when I send mail with large attachments, I like to keep it in my mailbox in case I need to access the attachment later, but after a while (like a few years later) I realize that I don't need them anymore, so I delete them for good. I guess in the future I could just send and delete from my Sent Mail box. Also, I guess I should look into archiving mail next so my inbox doesn't look so cluttered.

Dilemma

I was about to drive out to the store to buy some beer because I'm out of beer and I feel like having some, but then I saw our neighbor's kids (all 4 of them?) riding their kiddie bikes across the road, up and down our driveway, back across the road, up and down their own driveway...repeated indefinitely. They looked like they were having the time of their lives, so I decided to let them do their thing and not go out to buy beer. Guess I'm staying dry tonight.

Reflection

I recently figured out how to link images in Blogger to Flickr, so I have an urge to use it liberally in this post. Here I will babble about some of my favorite pictures/memories from over the past 6.5 years (an abbreviated life story, if you will).


That's my brother waiting for my slow ass to get out the door and drive us to swim practice after school. I thought this perspective was pretty cool - a silhouette in the bright doorway.


This is a picture of a window in our home in Fairport, New York. During the winter, frost develops on this one window and totally covers it, and it doesn't go away until springtime comes.


This picture shows a view of the woods behind my friend's backyard in Fairport. I took this picture by holding the camera just above the water surface - a tip from my friends. The woods were all flooded (either because it just rained heavily or it's from the melted snow), and you needed a pair of waders to walk around without getting wet.


We had some LAN parties during the early years of high school. Bawls kept us awake and tasted good at the same time...something that isn't quite true with beverages such as Red Bull.


...and here's an image from one LAN party.


We had a tradition during high school where we amassed school papers during the year and burned them at the end in the woods. On a sunny day, sunbeams that shoot through the treetops reflect off of the smoke and dust in the air from burning papers, and the resulting scenery looks pretty cool.


The morning after FHS junior prom, some friends and I went to Riki's for brunch. While waiting for our variously-filled pancakes (I think I ordered chocolate chip), one of us started building a castle out of whatever was available on the table. An intrigued senior citizen sitting at the table next to us walked up to us and proclaimed "the moment you stop playing, you grow old." That memorable quote sort of stuck with us.


The summer before moving to Minnesota, I went on a bike ride along the Erie Canal path with two friends. We decided to stop by a small cliff. The previous autumn, a bunch of us biked there and climbed to the top to find a huge open field with short grass on which we set off some "Works bombs" (household cleaner + aluminum foil + empty soda bottles = loud harmless explosion). This particular summer day, we climbed to the top to find the grass on the field grown up to our shoulders. It was a pretty cool sight.


Also from the summer before moving to Minnesota, during a camping trip in upstate New York with the usual group of Asians. This is one of my favorite sunset shots, with the reflection on Lake Ontario.


Being at the right place at the right time helps with taking interesting pictures, but being with spontaneous people also helps. Neither of us planned this (I was sitting inside a van), but I like how this picture turned out - peering through the window. This was during my last outing with the Fairport Area Swim Team (USA Sectionals in Maryland...those were the days when I could actually swim) - less than one week later I would be in Minnesota.


This is a close-up on my friend's scarf, while it was sitting on a table. I like the texture and color in this picture, and ended up using this picture as the background on the CSA membership card design for 2007-2008.


It seems like my high school friends in Minnesota enjoy playing cards during breaks (specifically a game called 500), whereas my friends in Fairport enjoy doing random fun stuff like Works bombs and blowing up mountains of school papers in the woods. Whatever, it's all good fun either way.


My favorite part of graduation parties is the food, and this is probably my favorite picture of food that I've taken.


I miss garbage plates (sooooooo good). The next time I'm in Rochester I'm definitely going to pick up some garbage plate(s).


This was taken during a flight home from Rochester the summer after high school (those are clouds down below). I like how the color turned out in this picture.


Freshman year Dragon Day/snowstorm combo. Myra has a priceless expression on her face.


I like this shot of the bird sitting on the signpost in the Badlands National Park.


This is one of my first pictures taken with the white balance set to cloudy for a warmer feel. I like the greenness here.


The Cornell Law School reading room.


This picture could have been better (like less exposure), but it's quite difficult to time a shot of lightning perfectly. I still like this one though.


Fireworks display during Maple Grove Days last summer. This was the first time that I tried taking pictures of fireworks.


This is from fall break last year. I like the flows that I got here.


This is what the Engineering Quad looks like at 2 AM. We were on the Thurston Hall rooftop testing CDGPS for CUSat until 4 AM because the Pre-Ship Review was at 8 AM the next day.

Cornell Fail

Excerpt from an email that I received today:

"Last week, we learned that a Cornell-owned computer that was stolen earlier this month contained your name and Social Security Number. Please accept our most sincere apologies for this unfortunate event."

Suboptimal Urinal Design

I began working on Monday (IT stuff like helpdesking, just like last summer). Today, I went to the restroom to take a leak in the late afternoon, and I discovered that whoever designed the urinals in the restroom could have designed it better. Usually when go to the restroom to take a leak, there are small puddles of water on the ground around the urinal. I used to think these were due to people peeing on the floor (though I'm not completely ruling out that possibility), but I saw today that the urinal itself pees all over the floor.

Here's what happened: I went to the restroom to take a leak. A dude before me just finished and hit the flush button above the urinal (perfectly normal and intuitive). He then walked away and proceeded to wash his hands (also perfectly normal and intuitive), while I kind of stood there and watched the urinal flush so I can pee in it afterwards. Now, these urinals are just like those in Cornell's first floor Upson Hall: automatic-flushing but still have the manual flush button. When you hit the flush button, it flushes, but then it flushes again after you walk away from the urinal. At work, the unintended second flush apparently causes a water overload in the urinal bowl, so water starts pouring over the edge, resulting in small puddles of water on the ground around the urinal. This is equally uninviting to wade in compared to the hypothetical case where people pee on the floor.

Now, I understand that a manual override is necessary (and probably a good idea) to automated systems. In fact, there was some discussion about this and flak sent in Airbus' direction after the recent mysterious Air France flight disappearance (apparently Airbus didn't have a manual override in the automated flight system? Or so I read). However, in my opinion, optimal design would automatically shut off the automated system when the manual override is engaged. In the case of the urinal, this would mean one flush per pee session, whether you flush the urinal yourself or let the motion sensor do it.

One last thing: having Dyson Airblades to dry hands in the restrooms would be awesome. Just my opinion.

Three Unrelated Thoughts/Stories

** Yesterday I was driving to a graduation party, and I ran over a chipmunk. I came to this conclusion as follows:

• I saw the chipmunk wander into the road as I was approaching it.
• I heard and felt a thump-thump as I drove by the chipmunk at 60 miles per hour (it was a country road in the middle of nowhere).
• I looked back via the rear view mirror and the chipmunk was not moving.

My apologies to said chipmunk.

** When I go home from school and sleep in my bed at home, I find that my feet dangle over the edge of the bed. The beds at the dorms at school are extra-long twin size, so my feet don't dangle over the edge on those. However, before going to college, I never felt that my feet dangle over the edge of my bed at home.

** Last night, I was kind of lying around in bed for 2 hours not able to fall asleep (partly because of my dangling feet I think). As a result, I started to reflect on my life story, partly because seeing friends from high school kind of reminds me of past years of my life. Now, I like to think that I have a pretty good memory (especially for things like numbers), so I remember quite a lot about my life story. Now, I am not familiar with many other peoples' life stories, but after a while of reflecting, I came to the conclusion that my life story is pretty fucked up. And to that, I laugh. What else can I do?

Summer

In an effort to keep my blog-updating frequency to at least once per month, I shall update today. However, I don't really know what to write about.

I went to a high school graduation party yesterday. It was fun to see people who I haven't seen in a long time and hangin' with them and stuff. It was also kind of cool to see everyone grow up and stuff, because this year's graduation class consists of all the people who were high school freshmen on the swim team back when I was a senior on the team, and they were all smaller than I was back then but now they're all bigger than I am (and more ripped than I am, of course).

Pandora just played Take a Picture by Filter, which made me happy.

Springtime Weather Woes

I'm not a big fan of springtime weather throughout the day. It's mainly the fact that it's usually around 30 degrees outside in the morning when I head out to class, and at midday it gets to be a comfortable 70 degrees. This usually poses a dilemma in the morning when I decide what to wear for the day. Ideally, I would wear a coat for 30-degree weather, but later in the day when it's 70 degrees outside, it's quite awkward wearing a coat or lugging one around. However, if I decide to start the day dressed for 70-degree weather, then I will probably catch a cold or something and get sick, which is also not desireable.

Last night

We were walking from West Campus to Collegetown, and behind the law school my friend and I find a small purse lying on the edge of the path. We figured someone lost it accidentally and is probably going to look for it sooner or later, so we took a look inside to see if we can get the person's name. She had her ID card in there. We then decided to be technologically savvy (and a little creepy I suppose) and look up her name online via my friend's Blackberry to see if there's a phone number we can call and get the thing returned to its righteous owner. Just as we were about to call the number, she walked by us going the other way and recognized her lost purse that we were carrying, and all was good.

Ok, this was a pretty dumb story. She was kinda cute though.

Spring Break Commences

After three weeks of exams, labs, projects, ridiculous homeworks, CUSat babysitting, trying to find a job and such, spring break is now upon us. Since I haven't updated in over a month, I'm going to try something new and do this in pictoral form.



CUSat testing at Cornell has ended, and the satellite is now at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque. Launch is currently slated for February 2010.



I finished the short stack at Hughes again yesterday morning. The pancakes were filled with bananas. However, Nicole is still a beast because she arrived 15 minutes late and still finished the short stack first. As seen in the picture, the pancakes are as big as Nicole's head.



Today was Dragon Day at Cornell, where the architects try to show that they're better than engineers. The dragon looked like a dragon this year. A major disappointment was the lack of large fires (aka burning the dragon). Apparently Cornell is trying to be more environmentally friendly or something like that.

Short Stack

I finished a short stack of pancakes at Hughes Dining for the first time this morning. You might think that 2 pancakes are nothing, but these pancakes are as big as the paper plates that they are served in, so they are huge like Snorlax. I've had the short stack at Hughes several times before, but I've never finished one before today (usually I'd make it to around 70% completion). I think a major factor in me finishing the short stack this morning was the banana filling.

CUSat - Part II

We are currently in the third week of classes. I've found that I'm busier this semester so far than I was last semester, even though I'm taking less classes. This could be because the pre-ship review for CUSat is approaching, and there is lots of work to be done in preparation for that. So, here are some more highlights of things that have happened during the past month in CUSat:

• More GPS receiver tests on the roof of Thurston Hall (and out the window of Upson 205, but that's not very exciting because it's indoors and the window has to be open during the test, which makes the room super cold)
• Ordered 1 meal per day for the team before classes started. Because I took everyone's orders everyday, I now have an idea of what everyone on the team likes/dislikes in their food, which I'm sure is something that not many other people can claim.
• Ran a hardware test in the clean room. This means wearing the clean room coat, hairnet, gloves, and electrostatic discharge wrist strap for 4 hours. After the test, I took a very satisfying leak.

CUSat Testing and Debugging

This year, I decided to cut my winter break short by going back to campus 2 weeks early and helping out with the CUSat work (I was bored at home anyway). The work has consisted mainly of testing the flight code on the simulator(s) and debugging any quirks that appear (debugging can get quite frustrating). Here are some highlights of my CUSat winter break experience during the past 5 days:

• Pouring liquid nitrogen from a metal pail into a kitchen-sized plastic funnel because we forgot to refill the supply tank in the lab on time. I wasn't the guy who actually poured the liquid nitrogen, but apparently his gloves weren't very good at insulating. Don't worry, no one froze their fingers off (but came kinda close).
• Testing the GPS receivers on the rooftop of Thurston/Kimball Hall in a single-digit wind chill. We were outside for at least 3 hours, and my toes were not very happy about being outside for that long. The GPS test failed to work correctly due to then-unresolved (and hopefully now-resolved) software bugs, but being on the roof was pretty cool.
• Patrick Conrad's visit. He really knows what he is doing, and that is a very good thing. I have had the opportunity to meet both Kris and Patrick now.
  
• 1 free meal per day (starting today). I volunteered to place the food orders.

More to come later? Possibly. We'll see how things turn out over the next 7 days. The flight software gets loaded onto the satellite next Friday.

Greetings 2009

Farewell 2008. It was nice knowing you...not. It was not the best of years, for various reasons (but it could have been worse).

Happy new year.