1st year graduate school...

Check! :D

Just a few hours ago, I took and solved my final 15-826 Multimedia Databases and Data Mining exam, which marks the end of my spring semester 2010. The end of my academic year... I'm no longer a 1st year grad student!! :O I'm a... 1.5'st year grad student? Hmmm, "Summer student" sounds pretty good, actually. Summer student it is! And soon I shall enter the portal to the solid title of: "2ND YEAR GRAD STUDENT". Cool.

These last few weeks have been bustling with activity and changes for me. To list a few:

• End of courses, final projects, final exams.
• I passed my Speaking Skills requirement this semester! Man, at the time I was just too insanely busy to write about it, but it was fairly crazy. See all the way at the bottom of the entry for a more detailed recount.
• I bought a mountain bike for $60! (It was originally $50 but the guy was really nice and repaired some of it for me because he was cool). Now I'm using it all the time - it's great!! The optimal mode of transportation for Pittsburgh! (in the non-snowy time)
• I am now a Coke Loader for the coke machine in GHC 6th floor! Last night I did my first coke machine refill by myself. I like the activity - it's productive and pleasantly distracting.
• I went to get my car brakes checked because it was making some squeaking noises, like metal friction, when I hit the brake pedal. Pep Boys says they're ok, though - they said something about the front brakes being at 10 and the rear brakes being at 6, and the minimum being 2, so I was fine. That was reassurance enough for me... and the revision was free, too :P.
• I'm training for a Triathlon with Lucia! The registration cost $100, but at least it's making me train consistently and with a regular routine. We're doing bicycle, weights, abs, running, and swimming. Today we do swimming (and maybe running)! Swimming is AWESOME :D.
• I've been looking for apartments all over the place! My current lease ends in June 15th, and since it's the time for summer sublets, I've been looking around for good opportunities to rent a good place for a good price. I think I have contacted no less than 15 different people, in between Craigslist and people in the CMU mailing list, and visited at least 5 different places so far. A house in a corner that we lost a bidding war for, an old Victorian house pretty close to Giant Eagle, a nice quiet home all the way up in the mountain (Bryn Mawr Road), a very nice girl who's subletting her place near the CVS on Forbes along with her bed, and a girl who was offering a room in a house REALLY close to campus that I eventually lost my chance on because I exasperated her with my calling her on the phone and my emailing. I didn't really call her that much but, oh well. I'm aiming for as cheap and as close to campus as possible. My last find was a $250 place really near campus - just as near as that other girl's who I exasperated. If it's a nice house, I'm certainly getting it. If not, I might stick to the nice girl's room, though a bit farther away (1 mile). I should have made a decision and sealed a deal by tomorrow, I think. I hope. I already told my landlady I'm moving out on June.
• I'm signing up to go Skydiving! There's an Explorers Club here in CMU, and they offer group activities and discounts on a lot of activities, including kayaking, climbing, skiing, and SKYDIVING!!!! I want the activities and I want the discounts, so I'm joining. I have the form ready and everything, but I'm still not sure who to give it to.
• I got a new credit card! And it has a $2000 limit! No, I didn't get it because I need more money. No, I didn't get it because it'd improve my credit. (This last one is a nice side effect, though). I got it because it's a SOUTHWEST credit card which, when first used to purchase anything, gives me THIRTY-TWO RAPID REWARDS CREDITS!! That's enough for two free roundtrip flights!! (Those are their advertising lines, by the way). So yeah, I'm getting two free flights!!! I made my first purchase with the card yesterday, but the Credits haven't appeared in my Southwest account yet... I hope they get included soon!
• I helped Pedro buy a car!! Yeeeah!!! He didn't have a car, he saw a nice bargain: a well-kept 1984 Porsche for $2,500. Not too bad, right? He didn't have any money at the time, so I lent him some. And now he has a car! And a PORSCHE! :P I personally don't care much for car brands, but he likes it, so that's cool.
• I bought a blender for $20! It's still in the bag that the lady gave it to me in, and I'm not sure how or when am I going to use it, but it seems like a good blender: (http://www.amazon.com/Wolfgang-Puck-Handheld-Immersion-Blender/dp/B000FEGEOW). My mom has told me to make fruit shakes, so I'll try that one of these days. I do want to explore culinary possibilities beyond rice and pasta.
• Speaking of food, I now eat in my office most of the time. I've been buying cans of Campbell's mushroom soup and Giant Eagle-brand bread, and now a can of soup and two buns of bread are my basic meal. :) Quite a bit more efficient (though Min says it can be unhealthy. I've heard that before...).

Hmmm, I think that about covers these past few months. On the good things, at least. :)

Hey, it's time to go swimming!!! Oh JOY!! :D

Bye!

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Updates:

I got my grades for the semester! Here's a copy-paste:

Core Requirements

DB	15-826	Multimedia Databases and Data Mining	S10	A
SM	10-702	Statistical Machine Learning	S10	A
IS	10-705	Intermediate Statistics	F09	A
ML	10-701	Machine Learning	F09	A

Not bad, huh? :P

Also, my Speaking Skills story referenced from above:

I signed up for my SS on April 29th, my advisor found out about it, and told me I should start giving dry runs up to 3 weeks beforehand. I said "OK", but I thought it was way too much time in advance, so I let time slide by. About 2 weeks beforehand, I had chosen a topic. About 1 week in advance, I had the slides halfway done. 2 nights beforehand, I didn't sleep so I could polish up my slides as much as possible for the dry run I scheduled with my advisor and her research group.

After I finished talking, I got HAMMERED. The talk lasted 30 minutes, but the criticisms on my talk lasted 2 hours. Good criticisms, don't get me wrong, but it was really embarrassing - and all my body wanted to do was fall asleep! I was instructed to change the slides and the whole structure of my presentation for the following day. When I finally got out of the meeting, Leila called me to help her finish up the project report for Databases. That took over an hour to do. Right when I was going to work on the slides, Sid from the other project called me for a meeting we had that day that I had forgotten about, and I spent about an hour and a half working out GWT interface design on that project.

Only then, at 4:30, did I step into Robin's (the paper I was presenting's first author) office to have him help me fix my slides. We spent about 2 hours discussing what to fix, where to put slides in, which slides to remove, and what points to focus on. He was great, and then I went back to my office and started working head-on on fixing the slides. I finished them up by about 1AM, and only then did I start practicing my actual speech. Every practice round took about half an hour, so it was only until about 4AM that I felt decently prepared and decided to go back to my apartment to get some sleep. I went to sleep at about 6AM (after discussing the presentation with Min), slept about 3 hours, came to campus, practiced a couple more times in an empty room with a projector, and then it was already time and got to my real presentation room. I presented, and I passed :D. The effort was worth it, but MAN, it was a lot of effort! A presentation has rarely ever taken that much effort off me. But now I passed. :)

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