Gratitude

Not just thank you - everybody says thank you. I really appreciate it.

@PIT

Wow. Things happen.

I wanted to go to CMU. I SO wanted it. Ranked 1st in the country, leading research in machine learning, object recognition in images, web spidering, genomical computer science... I didn't even understand many of the topics completely! But it was all so exciting, so marvellous - I knew I could help this research! I'd thought about many of them before... if I could develop the idea by myself, I could surely collaborate on its actual R&D, right?

So I made it my goal to get into CMU. Stanford and UIUC were also excellent options with excellent research topics, but they were silver and bronze medals. What I really wanted was the gold. So I learned about the requirements - all the paperwork, recommendation letters, test to take, application forms to fill, money to pay, everything. The whole process. I hoarded books, organized my study scope, and studied for weeks and months to nail that GRE CS-specific test. GRE general and TOEFL I didn't really even study for, except for some last-day vocabulary-cramming for the verbal part of the GRE. The results - 800/800 math, 660/800 verbal in the GRE, 102/120 in the TOEFL, and 850/900 in the GRE CS - top 5th percentile. It felt good to get that score - "Oh man", I thought, "Now I got a chance to get in!".

But nope, rejected. No gold for me. Later, rejected by Stanford. And rejected by UIUC. No gold, no silver, no bronze for me. "Oh well... whatever", I thought. That was 20 months ago.

And now I'm sitting at the Pittsburgh International Airport, waiting to be picked up by one of CMU's most distinguished CS professors, Luis von Ahn, who shares his Guatemalan country of origin with me. And it came almost out of nowhere, just suddenly, in an oh-look-what-happened sort of way. Life's such a joker.

I'm not saying I'm already enrolling at CMU - I'm saying I'm GOING to CMU. I'm going to visit the campus, meet professors, meet my main contact on this search of mine - Luis von Ahn (thank you Luis!!!!).

The other thing on my mind right now is the intense EM radiation my laptop and my cellphone are emitting, both of them at a contact distance with my body. I'm SO worried about that. It's kind of mandatory to have my cellphone on, ready, and with me at all times, and it's nice to be connected to the internet while waiting for several hours in an airport. But I SWEAR (do you ever feel this too?): my testicles, a single foot away from my laptop, hurt. I don't know if it's only psychological or what, but they really hurt. It's that pain that sort of extends to your inner hip and core muscles, sort of a stomach-ache, but in a lower part of the body. It's not nice to know I'm severely exposing myself to testicle cancer in the long, even medium run. To be online or to develop cancer - hmmm, what to choose?

Better turn my laptop's wireless radio switch off. There we go. Now only warmth and gentle humming are transmitted to my lap. And my testicles stopped hurting - awesome. Now I don't have this strong urge to finish off my blog quickly. What I do feel, however, is hunger. I haven't eaten since breakfast and it's 3:20PM. My stomach is feeling that constant, slightly burning sensation you get when you're moderately hungry. But I think I'll let it be. I've been eating too much food lately - starting with the full average-sized, meat-including meals at the TN deployment, and then I ate those family-sized meals my mom gently coerced me to ingest, and then the outing at Panera and the BBQ party at Aunt Gladys'... yeah, too much food for one week. I'll let my stomach linger today.

And now, I'd better get on with reading the paper "Using Reinforcement Learning to Spider the Web Efficiently", by Jason Rennie and Andrew Kachites McCallum. Yay! It's not only me who unnecessarily capitalizes verbs and adverbs without any semantical or grammatical reason. This paper coming from CMU, I'd like to shove it into my former thesis "style corrector"'s sight, and tell him "SEE??? SEE???? Capitalizing words in the thesis title only to accentuate words' meanings is practiced even in a most prestigious university in the USA! So what if it's a grammatical misuse?? It's more effective!"

All right, enough blog jibber jabber. Speaking of Jabber, is that the protocol they use for GTalk? Never mind. Turning wireless radio on, saving entry as draft, turning wireless radio off for my testicles' sake, and reading the rest of the paper.

Cardinal flying

There was once a time when packing up my bags the night before a flight would make me all jittery, and the excitement of it would keep me up for several hours and make my stomach would stir and tumble. Frequent flying this year has gradually lowered this excitement, but today I feel pretty much the same. My excitement comes from me going to Chicago to visit my parents and youngest siblings again, and my jitteriness and stomach uneasiness derives from the reckless, unusually large, and even unusuallerly carnivorous dinner I ate last night.

But WHAT A MEAL! I DO declare that it was THE meal of the HIGHEST quality I remember having EVER perceived. Either on TV or on real-life or in my imagination... it was simply THE best meal I remember EVER seeing/having heard about, not to mention actually eating it.

I usually don't care too much for food quality - I keep it simple. If I'm hungry, I find something to eat. When I find something to eat it, I eat it. Simple as pie. But last night was a night of celebration. A successful and unexpectedly shorter deployment than that that was planned caused the whole team to either smile and or/state "I am very happy".

So the team asked permission to celebrate it grandiosely at a fancy downtown restaurant. Not only that - the customer company gifted us 4 tickets and top-level access to a local baseball game :). Just like that. The assumed facility manager came to us and just gave us the tickets - four tickets: for John, Gabo, Layne, and me. (Oh yes, and Layne is our company's new hire. He is expected to take on the position of a PM. We just met him yesterday morning on his second day on the job (and already onsite with a customer!). Seems like a great guy and someone who could take on the position really well).

So that evening we drove to downtown and entered the Autopark Stadium. I slept through most of the way, but I remember waking up, getting out of our H3 rental, and being inside a very dirty-looking, low-ceilinged parking lot. I think I'd seen worse, but some fallen ceiling lying around, some metal beams protruding from the ceiling, and a very abandoned, unused look made it especially remarkable.

As we walked out the stadium, we were met with scalpers trying to sell us tickets for the game. Gabo skillfully talked them off, and we went into the stadium. We went up to the second floor, got some food and drink, saw Gabo get a picture taken of him with a group of Redbirds cheerleaders by John, and went out to watch the game. It was funny to listen to the game announcer speak about the "Redbirds" team and have all of us Reddwerks people just look up wondering why had our company name had been called at the game. We cheered for the Redbirds team until we left, at which point they were losing 4-3 to the Iowa... Cubs, I think?

So then we headed out to search for the restaurant. "Texas de Brazil" was the name of the place Gabo had found on the web. It was a meat-eating place, so I decided to shed off my repulsion to meat for that night and expose my body and my soul to the cruel, controversial food that is meat.

A pregnant-looking waitress told us about how the Churrascaria served us food. We each had a little red-and-green button on the table, with the red face on top. If we decided we wanted meat, we had only to turn the button so the green side was visible, and Waiters with sticks full of meat would come by and offer us a piece/slice.

There was quite a lot of variety. I started with grilled cheese (not the sandwich kind, but actual grilled pieces of cheese) and lettuce from the salad bar, mashed potatoes, and little round pieces of bread available from our table. Then as the waiters passed by, I started eating. First Chicken breast covered in bacon. Parmesan chicken afterwards. Then another kind of chicken. Then Filet Mignon. Then some piece of some kind of lamb. And so on... I don't remember the other names. The point is - I ate meat like a very carnivorous and hungry human being.

I have to say WOW. I had never ever felt so masterfully, exquisitely food-served by complete strangers. I except of course the cases where the food-maker/server is a family member, a friend, or someone dear to me, for then the meal's value and quality is augmented in a manner unrivalable by any kind of restaurant. But yeah, the food was awesome. AWESOME. It was just totally AWESOME. Not a flaw, not a remark, not a single suggestion on improvement from my or my last night party's part. And if it had been my opinion alone, I would probably not have made such a big deal out of it. But everyone in the group expressed the same sentiment. Everyone tried, but no one mentioned another place superior, or even equivalent in quality to Texas de Brazil.

So then today I woke up, took a hot bath in the tub, almost fell asleep in it (being 4am and all), got dressed, brushed my teeth, put together the little packing details that were still missing, and lay down on the bed again. I woke up again and looked at the clock - 6:27AM. Good thing, because we were supposed to meet at 6:30 in the lobby. So I went out and sat with the others, who were already having breakfast. I then thought about breakfast, and my stomach churned. And then it churned more. And more. And it made all these squishy, stomach-like noises inside me, and I started to feel a strong stomach-ache. Of course, it was only my stomach coming back at me: "What the hell??? You don't eat meat for years on end, and then you suddenly drop me like 2 pounds of heavy, greasy, unhealthy blocks of dead chickens, cows, pigs, and sheep? I got rules, you know?? I can't just start processing pounds of meat when I'm only trained for milk and rice and stuff! FU!"

So after I decided not to have breakfast, Layne dropped me off at the airport and I checked in for my 8:30 flight to Chicago on Northwest airlines (which was weird, because my itinerary said Continental). And then I thought "hmmm, so I flew from Austin through Dallas to Arkansas on Southwest, and I'm flying from Memphis through Cleveland to Chicago on Northwest. It's my first time flying on both these airlines. Sweet - appropriate airline names for my flights for my little trip." (Please get a map to find out why if you're not familiar with these cities). The "west" suffix only makes sense if we say we're on the western hemisphere, but I don't think there are "North" or "South" airlines anyway.
But yeah, so my airline names turned out appropriate. Cardinal flying.

And now my flight to Chicago is leaving like... NOW... so I gotta run. Bye!!

Oh, it seems like the flight boarding was somewhat delayed. Now I'm sitting right beside the gate, but they've just started boarding the elite passengers and so. I think I still have time to actually post this on Blogger, turn my laptop off, and even get a Frapuccino or something at the nearby Starbucks store.

Oh, I also found now that my flight to Chicago is on Continental, not on Northwest. Only my Memphis-Cleveland flight was on Northwest, oh darn. Ruined a big part of my trip's airline cardinality. Oh well, the title's settled. So I guess this blog wasn't too much about cardinal flying or airline naming geodirectionality at all, was it? It was more about how good food can be bad to your health. Or to my health. Yeah.

OK, posting on blogger. And buying and drinking my Frapuccino and boarding the plane. Bye (2)!

Texas Roadhouse@MS

So I'm in the hotel right now and I'm using up precious sleep time to write this blog, so I'll be brief.

I'm in Mississippi right now, quite close to the state's northern border with Tennessee. I was just returning to the hotel after a moderately-long day of work, and our work group decided to stop by to eat somewhere. I voted Applebee's, all other three people in the car voted Texas Roadhouse, so we went to Texas Roadhouse. Its inside boasts a reddish hue all around, there were lots of peanut skins just lying on the ground, and there was a wooden barrel of peanuts just placed at a corner of the restaurant. So we sat down at a booth and started eating peanuts from a nicely-sized bucket on the center of the table.

One of the waitresses approached our table and welcomed us very warmly to Texas Roadhouse, gave us a long introduction to the restaurant, and asked for our orders. She was cute-looking, wore a pair of glasses, and was quite particularly friendly. My coworkers had been asking me about me "being on the market" (I just learned what that means!), so they started joking with me about hitting on our waitress. They came up with a couple of possible plans. I could tell all the details, but time is running short, so I'll be brief. I ended up handing her the bill with a credit card with a little card with my phone number and a smiley face written on it. According to a trusted source, she smiled when she saw the little card, which was good because she had also been friendly to me while she waited on us at our table, and even made some friendly conversation with me while she did.

Not much of a narrative, but enough to set a record for the log.

2008-08-25 21:30:07: [MississippiTexasRoadhouse] [INFO] Antonio.slip(Antonio.getContact(ContactMethod.PhoneNumber), cuteWaitressWithGlasses) method call successful. Awaiting response...

Night, y'all.

(1 month later: And no, the cute waitress with glasses never contacted me again. Oh well, it was fun)
(Exactly 6 months later: And nope, not yet)

Imprudent

Not prudent: http://encarta.msn.com/thesaurus_561584766/prudent.html
Imprudent: http://encarta.msn.com/thesaurus_561590899/thoughtless.html

Negligent. Foolish. Heedless. Careless. Stupid. My actions last night are thus truthfully described. Awful, awful thinking!! (Or LACK thereof).

So picture this: imagine it's saturday night (live), 9PM ,you're at your apartment, you have a hamper full of dirty clothes waiting to be laundered, you have a 10:30AM business-related flight tomorrow morning from which you plan to return a week and a half later, and you've booked a friendly SuperShuttle van to pick you up at 7AM. But you don't want to do laundry just yet - oh no, YOU want to go out clubbing tonight! And why not? It's saturday night!! (live) And you're going to dance your sweat off tonight while showing off your favorite gray shirt, and you just CAN'T go on your trip without your favorite shirt, oh no... Gotta take your shirt with you. So yeah, laundry must be done AFTER the clubbing.

So you go clubbing. You reach downtown by 11:30, find a parking space on the roof level of a 5-story building, and start hounding for a dancefloor surrounded by a loud bass beat and pretty dancing girls. Your favorite local disco-bar is sadly pounding with your non-favorite rap-style music, and your second-favorite bar Prague has a rather long line of people waiting to get in. So you reach Qua - fancier, more expensive, but with better disco/reggaeton music in the air. You step onto the dancefloor, get in touch with the music, and then you dance. You dance your DONKEY off. You step, you skip, you flail, you bend, you swing, you hump, you jump, you scream. For about an hour. Sweaty and footsore, you then walk off to a much-emptier Prague and repeat, but with a dancing pole.

You reach your high-up car in the high-up parking lot with no elevator OR stair access. You back up your car while turning the wheel and WHAM! you feel/listen a loud collision: your car hitting a very useless-looking concrete bar in the middle of the parking lot. You woefully imagine your car's bent chassis, your now-unopenable door, and the 4-digit amount it'll take to fix it. You step out, check your car, and miraculously find out that your car has not a dent in it! (Not more than it already had, anyway). You stare, you wonder, and then you notice the front left wheel sharply angled toward the concrete culprit, lightly smeared in gray, and a big rubbery-looking black smudge on the concrete bar. A smile of relief on your face is followed by a grateful laugh and a sincere thank you to the front left wheel for taking one for the team.

Then at 2:30AM you're back at your apartment. You dutifully gather all of your clothes, you add your sweat-dripping dancing attire to it, and you put it all in the washer. You wonder what to do while your clothes get washed. You eat some apple sauce, wait a bit, and then you lay on the rug to check your email.

And then suddenly your phone rings a familiar ringtone - a call! Unknown number! Who could it be? You answer: "Hello. This is an automated message from Super Shuttle. We are calling to remind you that your shuttle driver will be arriving at your stop in 10 minutes...". You look at the time on your cellphone - it's 6:50AM. The shuttle would be here at 7AM.

So picture that. What would you do? I don't what'd you do, but I'll tell you what I did. First, my body jumped to standing position in a heartbeat. Then my mind raced. "OK, I'm not ready for my trip. My bags are not packed, most of my clothes are wet in the washer, and I still need to shower."

Boy, did I hurry! Possibilities flew: "Maybe my clothes are not that wet and I can put some on." I checked, nope... very wet indeed. "OK, how about I ignore the shuttle, dry my clothes, fold them, pack my bags, and then hurriedly drive to the airport?" I did some zap arithmetic: 3.5 hours for my flight, 1 hour for the dryer to dry my clothes, 20 minutes to fold them, 30 minutes to drive to the airport, only about 1.5 hours early on the airport... hmmm... risky... and I'd already paid for the shuttle... and I didn't want to ALSO pay parking - so I passed. "OK then... I'll just take whatever's NOT wet!" I checked... only a couple of non-plain-white-cotton-t-shirts laying around, and I was going on a week-and-a-half trip. Nope, not viable. "OK so... I'll just take my wet clothes and dry them when I get to the hotel." Now that was a plan. I got two empty Walmart plastic bags, stuffed them with the nicest-looking and most-easily-available clothes I could yank out of the washer, tied them up, and threw them into my suitcase.

Then I thought "OK, I still smell". So I showered as fast and completely as I could, dried as best as I could, and then I thought "I have NO dry pants to wear!". Darn, oh well, it's a good thing I have a brother, I thought. I grabbed a pair of jeans from his closet and put them on. I looked at the time on the microwave. 6:59AM. "Oh no!", I thought. Hmmm, well... even SuperShuttle drivers are usually late. Yeah, I still have time. So, breakfast. Apple sauce! I poured half a cup of apple sauce into my cup and devoured it in what seemed like 2 seconds. And then I filled it with water so the residues wouldn't dry up and smell bad later. Brushed my teeth, found a shirt to put on, found some dry socks, found my glasses, unplugged my cellphone charger, packed my power outlet, grabbed my bags, put my shoes on, turned the lights off, walked outside, and locked the door at 7:17.

The concept of synergy crossed my mind when, 20 seconds after leaving the apartment, I saw the shuttle drive up close. My mind was still fast reeling with the moment's excitement - I wasn't sure if I was dreaming. But I'd made it. With barely any dry clothes in my bags, but I made it.

I started this entry in the airport lobby, but now I'm at the hotel, near the north border of the Mississippi state. And the hotel did have a laundry room, and I did put my clothes in the dryer, and they didn't get any mildew as I was told, and everything turned out all right.

But the point is - my decisions last night were imprudent. Reckless. Careless. Negligent. Stupid. I should've done my laundry at 9PM, finished folding clothes and packing bags at midnight, went to sleep, spent 7 full hours resting, had time for a complete and healthy breakfast, cut out my anxiety about wet clothes in my bags during the whole trip here, had a much less tired body today, and saved my car's front left wheel from a harsh bump into some senseless concrete bar on a rooftop parking lot last night.

It is to be noted, however, that I'm extracting good out of this risky experience. A moderately entertaining anecdote for a blog entry, plus a couple of lessons to be learned:

1. Be very careful when backing up your car on an unlit rooftop parking lot.
2. If you plan on going clubbing the night before an important trip, make sure your laundry and bags are ready before you do so. And don't worry about your favorite shirt getting dirty - you can still take it with you and wash it during the trip.
3. Wake up on time.
4. Practice prudence lest you don't mind risk and stress.

I will now attempt to follow rules 3 and 4 of my own impromptu advice repertoire and go to sleep now.

Attempts at expression

I want to write, but I don't know what to write about. When my blog caught the attention of a group of readers beside myself, several people advised me to block its contents to the public - my writing possibilites here are not what they used to be. Now I may have to exclude some of my intended entry thoughts from future postings. Belgian bummer :(. I mean, I don't mind people reading all kinds of stuff about myself - that affects no one but myself. But sometimes I do post out stuff about OTHER people... like what I think/feel about them, parts of their own stories, and I can see how would those people NOT like that. Sigh. I guess it's time to start filtering my blog content (until my social life again diminishes into virtual nothingness, or until I stop caring about them caring). I believe these filters will do for now:

Content type intended not to be posted in this blog's entries in the near future:

1. My sex life.
2. My sex thoughts.
3. My thoughts and feelings about people with a reasonable chance of either reading this blog or of being told about this blog's entries by another person. (Reasonable being defined as a more-or-less 10% combined with my gut feeling at that moment).
4. XHTML 1.0 Strict.
   
5. The following "vulgar words" (their intended replacements are listed alongside them) Fuck (fornication/coitus/...), Shit (excrement), and Ass (donkey). (Not that I ever used them anyway (except the first one, only in one entry). THIS is my most "vulgar" entry ever.)
   
6. MIME types.

Well, that's not too bad. I think the third restriction will block out the most content of all six.

So... I guess I should actually update my blog now.

I just read some of my last year's blog entries, published back when I used my old Live Spaces account (http://ajlsnook.spaces.live.com/default.aspx) instead of this fine Blogger site (http://www.blogger.com). I was impressed by some of them - they really do manage to convey non-trivial thougts in an easy-to-read fashion (as judged by my own certainly-biased opinion).

And now it's already 7:29PM, and I'm still sitting down in my apartment in my shorts, sweating with the room's 88F temperature as indicated by the apartment's thermostat, doing my laundry and packing my bags for tomorrow's trip still a distant thought (I was even thinking of titling this blog "Saturday Sloth" or "What a waste of weekend"). Today I:

• Danced and flirted at Karma on 8th and Colorado until 4AM.
• Played a couple of rounds of Super Smash Bros before going to sleep, still trying to beat Boss Battles in Intense Mode.
• Went to sleep at about 5AM.
• Woke up at my phone's alarm at 9AM, turned it off, and continued sleeping on the rug.
• Struggled with the thought of getting up for 3 hours.
• Managed to get up from the rug.
  
• Ate a bowl of Fiber One + Milk.
• Played another couple of rounds of Super Smash Bros, and failed to accomplish my goal again.
  
• Noticed I was sweating a lot and took a cold shower, washing off the dry sports gel I still had on my hair from last night.
• Wondered if the local gravitational field had been somehow altered, for the scale told me I weighed 5 pounds less than I did yesterday (prolly cuz of all the dancing last night).
  
• Checked my bank account online.
• Chatted a while with Khris from CR (he did one of his university admission exams today, says it was really easy, and his birthday's tomorrow).
• Read some of my blogs from Live Spaces (http://ajlsnook.spaces.live.com/default.aspx), and remembered that I had another photo site where I used to upload all my photo albums before finding out about Google Picasa Web Albums.
  
• Moved yesterday's pictures from my camera's SD card onto my portable hard drive, and uploaded them to my Picasa web albums (http://picasaweb.google.com/antoniojl/SunsetSession). That sunset was ASTOUNDINGLY beautiful. The pictures couldn't capture its greatness at all.
  
• Decided to write this blog entry.
• Put the laptop on my desk, connected my USB mouse and keyboard, and noticed that my mouse was not being recognized.
• Found a Phillips screwdriver in a drawer and disassembled my USB mouse.
• Fumbled with the cables inside the mouse a little, reconnected it to the laptop, and saw it light up red again.
• Had a hard time putting my mouse back together again.
• Felt a strange, numbing sensation in my eyes after fixing the mouse, very probably caused by looking at the strong, red LED inside the mouse for 10 minutes (I REAAAAAAAAAAALLY hope I don't go blind(er)).
  
• Ate another bowl of Fiber One + Milk.
• Washed the pot and cooked (is cooking the right term?) 4 hard-boiled eggs.
• Cracked, peeled, and ate the 4 hard-boiled eggs with salt.
• Ate another bowl of Fiber One + Milk (and put the milk plastic container in the apartment's recycling area.
  
• Changed my flight reservation tomorrow - instead of flying out at 1600, now I'll fly out at 1030.
• Saw my USB mouse fail repeatedly again, and decided to replace it for my other Ativa mouse, whose right button sometimes sticks but that has never failed me otherwise and that looks much cooler with a blue light on the top instead of red.
  
• Booked a Super Shuttle reservation to pick me up tomorrow morning at about 0700.
• Transferred $500 to my credit card from my checkings account to have credit available for my trip(s).
• Will finish this blog entry.
• Will put my clothes together to do laundry.
• Will take all the recyclable trash to the recycling bins in my apartment complex.
• Will come back and get dressed for tonight.
• Will drive to the office and print my boarding pass for tomorrow.
  
• Will drive downtown and go to Sky Lounge for several hours.
• Will drive back home.
• Will do my laundry and pack my bags.
• Will find out if I still have time to sleep some before the Super Shuttle gets here tomorrow.

I guess that's that for this entry. Oh, I'd like to post an image too. Let's see... maybe one of the sunset pictures? And one of the plant ones too...

Low-energy orbit (Unfinished and retaken)

As a being allegedly conformed by many homogeneous particles, it is not easy for me to understand how can I seem to be such a complex and singular being, separate from the rest of the physical world as if by magic or by a powerful will (aren't they the same thing?)

But just as the moon's nature (internal composition and external interactions, some would say) keeps it at a periodically far distance from our planet, so do my own inner and outer forces
...
(I was tired and sleepy when I was writing this, so this is where I left off. I'd like to continue the ideas I left unfinished at that time, just to avoid abandoning it).

so do my own inner and outer forces (a universally gigantic amount of them) push and pull CONSTANTLY to keep my body stable. And individual, and separate. I'm made of the same fundamental particles, just like the clothes around me, the chair under me, the laptop on top of my lap. And we push against each other as we touch. And yet we remain separate entities. How is that?

Chemists and physicists say they know the answer of course: molecular structures can be are far more powerful than what puny gravity and muscles can dare to ever be, so our interactions with structured matter effectively result in what we perceive: being separate entities made of a different kind of matter than other separate entities existing in our environment. But we're all made of the same stuff...

I'm sorry, I know this entry sucked sucked sucked. But I wasn't really expecting to retain the same idea and sentiment I had almost nine days ago. At that time I was walking sockless under a beautiful waning moon sky, staring at the stars over me and at the clouds breezing under them, wet after a happy swim at my apartament complex pool. That's how I thought about the moon and the entry's theme. Ohhhh, that's right!! I remember the intention of my entry now! It's called "Low-energy orbit"... yeah... what I tried to say was that everything seems to exist and behave in cycles. The Moon circles the Earth, its phases regularly come and go, the sun rises and sets, and just so the elemental particles that physicists have discovered also rotate and twirl around each other. And then I thought about the electrons rotating in orbits with different energy levels, and high energy levels made them go faster and more unstable. An electron with a high-energy level could eventually give off its energy by radiation and return to a low-energy orbit, or it could continue getting more energy until it was enough to break the atom's force on it, and the jumpy electron would spin off its orbit and be free to roam the rest of the universe without its original atom's influence upon it. Liberation, yeah.

But at the time I began to write this entry, I was feeling in a low-energy orbit. My cycles around my routine were getting slower, weaker, driven by remaining momentum instead of by my own initiative. I clearly remembered my orbit being much higher a couple of days before, but at that time it had lowered, and I was doing everything sluggishly. So you can see how it was reasonable for me to stop writing this entry midway - I kind of didn't really care too much about anything.

Yeah, the entry still sucked. But at least I said what I wanted to say. Now I'm in a different place, at a different time, on a different mindset, and I plan to make another entry out of that. Not too long, though, for I still have to read some papers. Bye!

Minority

The wish of writing has vanished. I feel too low-energy now. I feel somehow guilty for feeling negatively about myself. Haven't I said this beore? I believe I have. Anyway, I'm feeling down again. I was just thinking... what part of the population is virgin by the age of 24? I know it's not a race but... I don't think it's normal, is it? I mean, there's people who don't want to have sex until they get married, so that's cool - they're waiting. But what about a person who's NOT waiting - who's on the lookout but simply never gets anything? What's wrong with that kind of person? Well, I don't know. Actually, I kinda know - I'm just too idiotic to solve it.

I just feel sorry about myself. Such great luck, such great powers, and I just don't find a way to exploit them all. I feel like such a loser.

Which part of the population... no, you know what? What's the purpose of whining any more? I've whined quite a bit. I've analyzed my problems - not thoroughly, but thoroughness will not help in this case. I've seen love get created in less than minutes, and I take years to figure out what the trick is. Something is clearly amiss in my strategy.

You kno, I want a teacher - a female teacher, preferably, that can show me what's the proper way to treat a lady. I don't know what that really means. I've never known anything about that - I've even refused to learn it because it sounds so common, so frivolous, so "dumb". Now I yearn for it, if only to be appeased with the feeling of female company and care. I yearn for it so badly.

So why don't I go ask someone directly? Yeah, right. Excuse me, miss? Would you like to teach me how to treat ladies? I'm not good company and am not really funny, but I've been wanting a girlfriend pretty badly for some time now, and I think that the only way I'm getting one is if I somehow learn how to properly entertain ladies the way men are usually supposed to entertain ladies. You know - making them laugh, scaring them sometimes, giving them little but meaningful gifts like flowers and chocolates, smiling, looking at them to the eye while I'm talking to them... I don't really know how to do any of those. You probably won't like me at first because of this very reason, but you'll find I'm an eager and fast learner, so I'll probably be chatting you up before you know it. What do you say? Hmmm, that sounds almost OK to tell a girl. Well, maybe I will.

And if I don't do something similar, I risk real danger of staying single for years without end. I don't think I'm really scared about that - it's just really depressing to want something so much and not have it. Just natural to want some opposite-sex company for a mutual show-tell-and-use session, I think.

This darn entry ended up being just another depressing whine. What a bummer. You know, on Friday I was so close to getting intimate with a very attractive blonde girl. I have no idea - what did I do wrong? Not having kissed her? Having rubbed her waist the wrong way? She moved away - can I chase her without me looking like a loser? That's a real problem with never having had a real group of friends while in high school - NO social awareness whatsoever. Being a loner inside your own morally-confused family doesn't help either.

Maybe taking up drinking (alcohol) could help. That sure loosens up my tongue sometimes. Should I try that next weekend? Get a girl a drink, offer to spend the night with her (drinking at the bar), get tongue-loose with the self-intoxication, make her laugh several times, offer to spend the night with her (at her bed-containing place), lovingly kiss her gorgeous lips, fondle her body with lusty passion, slowly strip her of... (oops, getting too graphical)..........., and wake up right there the next morning, wrapped around her in a protective embrace, kiss her good morning and schedule the next meet-up? That sounds about right. Yeah, that's the plan for next weekend then. It's settled.

But before that, I will save this entry, close this blog, shut down my computer, and go to bed, for I should go to work tomorrow, and it's almost 2AM. And it is work which provides the money which allows for driving downtown and getting girls (and myself) drinks.

Excitement stirring

:) :) :D :D :D. That is how I feel now.

Various events are occurring, and I like ALL of them!

Current highlights:

• Luis von Ahn invited me over to CMU to visit him, to meet other professors, to listen to some inauguration lectures!!! And I'm so happy because I'll be able to MEET the university, MEET the people, LEARN what everything is REALLY about!!!! I'm so happy about that!
• Scarleth is graduating!! YES!!!! I'm really happy about her - I was able to help her by lending her the money she needed to pay off her debt FAST! And now she paid it off, and now she can simply graduate... and get a degree... get paid more... do what she wants to... I'm really happy for her :) She was a bit anguished about that.
• I invited Emily and her boyfriend Andy to dinner at Macaroni Grill last night, and it was pretty nice. We talked about some of my stuff, we talked about some of their stuff, they told me some highlights about their trips to Europe - Spain and Italy - and I was so happy to pay for the meal. I'm not sure why - maybe it's because I can afford it now, or maybe it's because I really really like Emily, but in any case, I was honestly happy to pay - no sense of frugality pinched me at any time. And besides, I was doing it of my own initiative - it's one of the few things I've done of my own initiative - I wanted to spend some time with them, so I invited them over, and I took full responsibility for it. And I enjoyed it. Nice. It was just about us eating together, and nice conversation between nice company. For some reason I don't yet precisely understand, it was a breakthrough for me.
• I've been doing EXERCISE! :D Yup, I finally decided to make my body into a stronger, healthier, attractiver, faster, harder, effectiver one, trading energy, time, and a little pain for it. I think the purchase is worth it now - I'm in the early middle of my twenties, for my sake!
  
• Sometime either before or after I go to CMU, I plan on going to Chicago to visit my family. It's going to be quite a rush, especially with already-booked tickets to CMU and the WSI Go-Live week just before it, but I trust I can make it. I can make it! I can make it!
• My remote light-controller project does what I wanted it to do now (or most of it), but no one's paid much attention to it. I didn't much like that, so now I just kinda stopped working on it. I was going to show Anup some of it before he left, but he had to leave early and he said we'll go through it tomorrow. Oh well... That's when I started to write the bulky part of this blog.
• Mosko is here in Austin!! He just came today - he rented a car and is staying here in Austin for a couple of days - he's going to Houston on Saturday to the NIN (Nine Inch Nails) concert with his friend Tico. We plan on doing a fair amount of stuff while he's here - kayaking, partying, and bar-hopping are on the list. What else could we do? And since Emily also invited me to go to a party tonight, maybe we can all get together so we can all know each other! (I mean Mosko, Tico, Emily, and me). That'd be nice. We'll see what happens.
  
• Pedro wanted to go to Guatemala today, but he didn't have the money to buy the ticket yesterday, so I bought it for him. (I haven't checked my bank accounts lately, but I"m sure they're looking leaner that they have been during this year - let's see... Scarleth $6090, Pedro $857, Bidkar $100, Henry $220, and I gave my mom $500. That adds up to $7767. Wow. That's quite a lot. Only getting back $7267, though... hmmm... that's enough money to go on my own AWESOME WORLD-ROUND TRIP!!!! Including Europe, of course :D :D :D I just have to get it back to be able to spend it, though...
• Oh, and about Jerol!! Well, we went for that hike in the Greenbelt and it was REALLY nice! We walked up to where the very very nice view of the whole greenbelt is exposed, and we just stared at it for some time... then we went all the way down to the river and watched some turtles and BABY TURTLES! eat fish food and swim around. Walking further down the trail, we found an AWESOME rock bench!!!!! We just sat down there, and talked, and talked, and talked... for hours... it was almost 1PM when we left the Greenbelt - I like her personality a lot. She is very open and honest about everything, and has this calm temperament, with which I can very easily get along with. I like her - I think the little hike created a nice, close friendship bond between us. And then yesterday I ripped six of her CDs' music into her new pink iPod that Bryan gave her. She was SO grateful and happy about it! She even invited me over to dinner! But I couldn't... I already had plans with Emily. But we said we would go next week, so that's good :) I like Jerol. Such a nice person.
  

I'll leave it at that for now. I want to leave the office so I can get READY for TONIGHT!!!!! PARTY TIME!!!!! :D :D :D

I'll keep you posted, Blog.
Evening!!

0.125 = 08/08/08 != 08-08-08 = -8

Happy 08/08/08!!!!

That's what I told several people yesterday. What a day!!!!! It was VERY singular in at least two or three ways.

It's hard to describe such turmoiling thoughts and feelings in a linear, grammatical fashion. But anyway, here goes:

I'll only describe the highlights of the day, since the description of my whole day could very well strip me of any and all sleeping time I still have available tonight.

1. I invited a coworker over to a hike to Barton Creek Greenbelt in the morning (in about 6 hours actually, so I BETTER get some sleep!!) I'm happy she's excited to go - I am too! We're becoming nice friends - I like that :) (She's also double-jointed and has these WOW-ishly long, flexible fingers!)
   
2. I finished the first part of a web UI interface for a light picker! This will only make sense to those who have somehow interacted with the Reddwerks lights, but the point is that now, to test the lights, people don't have to actually push the buttons when they're testing - now they can simply click their mouse on graphically on the screen, and BLINK, it's as if the light was pushed. I honestly can't believe no one in the company did this before - it was relatively simple. Anyway, I'm thinking of making changes and improving this interface to make it as accurate and as helpful as possible, and these incoming thoughts are so many and so strong that they're preventing me from falling asleep. Which comes into conflict with my previous highlight, since I have to get up early!!!!!
3. Luis v. A. contacted me!!! Yes, he did!!!! And he... and he... and he's invited me over to CMU to meet professors and to listen to inauguration lectures and to meet him and everything! It's REALLY COOL!!!!!!! OHHHHH IT'S SOME AWESOME NEWS!!!!!!!! It was stressing to answer his emails - I was SO EXCITED!!! I even called Pedro and told him all about it and was laughing and laughing and telling him out in the parking lot... it was SO COOL!!!! :D I'm going to be there from the 27th to the 30th, it seems. HOW COOL IS THAT??!?!?!?!?

So, what these three things together do to me is the following: conflict. I'm like... "IT'S AWESOME!! I'll go meet Luis, just after the WSI Go-Live, and maybe I'll even have time to go visit my family in Chicago, just days before Isabel leaves!!! It would be perfect!!!! Oh wait, I have to go to sleep", and I try to go to sleep, and while doing so I think "oh and if the buttons look like this, I could do this, and I could do that, and it would look really pretty, and... oh but wait! I have to get up early!", and I lay down, and I still think "and each button would have a different onclick event, but they would also need an input for picked and requested quantity, where should I put these? Should they be global or should I fit them into the cell? Oh wait, I have to fall asleep! Oh...", and so on. It was after a lot of time that I finally decided that maybe writing a blog entry while laying on the floor would be tiring enough on my eyes, mind, and arms for me to finally fall asleep. It doesn't seem to have worked so far, oh, but wait... my eyelids did just close a bit just a few moments ago. That's a good sign. Good.

So I guess I'll fall asleep now. I have to make sure to have my cellphone near my ears so that I wake up at exactly the time my alarm is set to ring at. To be woken up so suddenly that I won't have time to snooze it while resnoozing back myself. Anyway...

I'M SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND I JUST CAN'T HIDE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I DON'T WANNA LOSE CONTROL BUT I THINK I LIKE IT!!!!!!!!

NIGHT!!