Minister of Darkness

The brothers of Darkness.

At the end of the day I met Leon who was wearing the same costumes as mine. Just found the picture he posted on his flickr. LOL!

Googleween

What a great time it was, the Googleween!

This is one of the best parties I've been to. The food was awesome (how come I talk about Google food all the time?) and the costume contest was hella fun! "Steve Pallmer" with a broken chair was one of the best. It cracked me up so bad I almost choked on the Dead Baby Punch.

What great fun I had today. Working at Google does not feel like working at all! (Just Saying, P! I'm a deligent employee!)

More to come, if I have more free time that is :)

Pumping iron without paying a dime

One of the greatest things working at Google is that there are free on-site gymnasiums. I've started working out at the small one near my office. Granted it's not fully equipped, it lacks a cable machine for instance, the machines are better than those in my formal school gym. Next week I'm gonna go check out the bigger gym in the other building.

What's even better as far as working out go, there are *FREE* (almost anything you can take away at Googleplex is free anyway) energy bars! And they are not some crappy less known brands. They are Myoplex and Builder's! There is a rack full of different flavor bars. I couldn't be happier.

As a side, on the way home after working out on 101, there was a car accident. A car caught on fire. The strangest things is the car didn't roll over, it just sat there flaming. I wonder what happened.


Monday is Googleween. Tomorrow after church some colleagues and I might go out and shop for costumes. Looks like it's gonna be lots of fun, muwahahahahahahaha!

Pay Day

Just received my first ever pay check! After tax and health insurance, it came very close to 500. The next one will be higher since I will be putting in 40 full hours. I'm gonna keep the stub as a memorable!

Woohoo!

Just got a phone call from my recruiter that made my day: they've decided to bring me on board! Yay!

I will be given an orientation next Monday and start working the following day. But there might be a slight chance I'll start as soon as next Monday. Anyway, I'm out of unemployment and will be able to work at Google headquarter! Hack yeah baby!

Job Interview coming up

Tomorrow will be my first job interview (the WTF, sorry, I meant WFG one was irrelevant. And I cancelled it anyway) for a temporary position at Google, Inc.

After the first short phone inquiry, I was asked to complete some evaluation procedure. After finishing it and sending the results back, I got a phone call saying the work I did was great and they'd like to bring me in for interviews on site.

Google HQ is located about 6 miles away. So close it takes merely 10 minutes to get there!

Boy, am I excited! Gotta prepare to make an impression for tomorrow!

Objective-C

Alright, just picked up Programming in Objective-C and hoping that I can make use of my overwhelming free time and somehow make my way into to the Dev. land of OSX. I wanted to dive right in into Cocoa so I can make some practical proggies but with no useful C knowledge under my belt, I had to pass up Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X and went for the basis.

Working under Windows, the easiest way to compile console Obj-C programs seems to be MinGW. Download the MinGW 4.1 net installer and install everything, which takes up about 360MB, then it's green light for the creation of the ever trite Hello World program.

Hope this turns out a fun ride.

First Job Interview

Just got off the phone with a lady from the World Financial Group. Its HR glanced over my resume on Monster.com and is offering me an interview next Monday.

Although my resume was aimed for software development positions, this is an interesting offer nevertheless. What I had in mind for a career path was to be a grunt involved in some kind of development, gaining experience and knowledge of its technology merits and moved on from there to a business-related field. I have ample enthusiasm for technology, especially when it comes to computer, as well as the brain to digest it. But that brain simply isn't the sharpest in this field and hence the "move on" part mentioned earlier.

But why business? Well, it goes way back to my late teenage. Somehow I developed an interest in corporations. I like to read about histories of well-known corps and how the CEOs or the management teams managed to overcome hurdles or outdo competitors. I crave to learn the characteristics and insights successful management requires. It's simplely fascinating. And I want to become one.

What God has in store for me is beyond me, yet. But I know I'm a well capable person. No matter the outcome of this job interview turns out to be (probably won't be desirable since it's the first ever and I pratically have no interviewing experiences under my belt), I am moving forward and I will get there.


edit: According to http://www.wfg-offline.com/, WFG does not seem to be a good career choice. Called them up and cancelled my supposedly "interview" the following Monday.

Anakin Skywalker is a Presbyterian?

Star War Episode III: Backstroke of the West

ROFLMAO!!!!111ONE

Sunnyvale, CA

Finally, after 6 days of driving, 2948 miles of traveling distance, we arrived at Sunnyvale, CA. We are staying at Tomomi's place, which is an amazingly beautiful apartment, for the time being. Tomorrow will be the day we start looking for housing. And after settling down, it's gonna be job-hunting time. Wish us luck!

More to update on the the trip.

Road Trip to California

Tomorrow will be the day Shiho and I embark on our journey to California. Form the info gathered from Google, MapQuest, and Yahoo, the trip will be 2,860 miles or so. If I drive 500 miles a day, we can get to San Jose in six days, which isn't too bad.

We've sent several baggages to Tomomi, Shiho's friend in San Jose, through the postal office. The fee for a 40 to 50 pounds baggage is about $40 if I recall correctly. We were both happy that we got rid of these hefty burden. Doing so would save us some gas expense too.

Both of us are packing the last bit of things we have. Then it's bed time and then road time.

Farewell, Oswego, NY. I am missing you already.

A whole new chapter

"Now I declare that the 144th Commencement adjourned" the Mace Holder said. Followed by crazy cheering taking off in the Romney Field House, my fellow Oswegonains and I started another chapter of our lives.

I am a college graduate now.



It has been two and a half years since January 2003, the time I came to the States for my college degree. So much had happened and so many people I had met. Now it's time to for us to part. There are rare occasions that I feel sentimental but this moment is one of them. I feel extremely happy that I finally made it through college but awfully sad at the same time that I am leaving all these wonderful people behind. Two and a half years wasn't an awfully long time in my twenty-nine years of life. Yet it is the time that has the most impact on me. I still remember when I first came to Oswego, I somewhat felt alone because it wasn't my home. But as time went by, the more people I met and acquainted with, the more this little town felt like home to me. Now that I look back, I feel that I could have done more. But looking back does not lead you forward. I'm writing another chapter in the book of my life and it's the future I have to look forward to.

On you go, Lichi. It's time to for you to make a splash.

Graduation

What a wonderful day it is today. For it's the commencement for Shiho and I.

The commencement for School of Business was in the morning. It was Shiho and Naomi's ceremony. Mai, Eriko and I went and shared their joy. For me, the session was quite long and I was really sleepy due to lack of sleep during the final exam week. The ceremony ended about 3 hours later. After hanging out in the reception area in Laker Hall, all of us came back to Hart. And it was time to say goodbye to Eriko for she was leaving for NYC and then home, Japan. I didn't really have the chance to know Eriko better but I wish her luck on her life.

My commencement was in the afternoon, 1:30 PM. Oh boy, talk about excitement. Lots of my friends were graduate candidates as well and it was nice to see them one last time. I felt so sad when I had to say goodbye to Chris, my roommate for two and a half years. Yes, as long as the time I had been in Oswego. He was a wonderful friend. Some part of our lifestyles weren't really compatible but he was a witty and interesting person. I learned quite a lot from him.

Chris, I love you bro. Best wishes for you.

After the ceremony, Mai, Naomi, Shiho and I went to Mary Ann and Andy's. They had an open house for all the graduates. They prepared a whole bunch of food for us. I dug Soba the most and had so much of it. We talked about lots of things and had a really great time.

What wonderful people Mary Ann and Andy are. They made Oswego feel like home for us. Praise the Lord for He had created these wonderful human beings. Shiho and I are going to stop by again before we embark on our journey to California.

Speaking of friends, last night Stella and Patty stopped by to say goodbye. It was so good that I could talk to them before they left. We also watched Harry Poter 3: The Prisoner of Azkaban together. I'm going to miss them a lot. I love you, Stella & Patty!

Took a nap after we got back. Woke up to Jenn's phone call. Erin and Jenn were at the Shad. We wanted to meet up and drink to celebrate. But right before Shiho and I were about to leave for the Shad, Erin called and said they left already. It was too suffocating crowded to really enjoy. Besides, it was raining (and still is now) so they called it off. Sigh, I really want to see them. Especially Erin, she's such and upbeat person. I felt that she brought life to our e-board when she joined. She's straight forward and brought a lot of joy for us. I had the best time in ASA last semester. It was an wonderful experience.


Damn, this is probably my longest blog so far. There is just too much to say. I can't believe I will be leaving Oswego. But well, the time has finally come.

Finally, let me proudly say that I am an Oswegonian.

Done

Finally, no more assignments for me. If I don't go to grad school, that is. Just finished the gawd dang BTree implementation. Honestly, I didn't do it. I just took what I have from Mohammadi's class two semesters ago and slightly modify it to fit this project's requirement. There, I said it. But seriously, between all the school work that I had and the uncertainty of me and Shiho's future, I was overwhelmed and intimidated. I just couldn't pull it off.

Anyway, now that I've got it to work. I can finally be at rest. Of course, for the external BTree, I'm gonna have to let it go. And I doubt that anyone in the class can pull that off, given the time we had.

When I wake up in the morning and take my last exam, Japanese, I will be official done. Wow, think about it. I will be done with college. After all these years of fooling around, I finally make it. Make it quite well might I add.

Things has changed so much after I came to the States. Broke up with T (still feel awfully sorry to her), getting a new degree, met all these awesome and/or nice and/or interesting people, experienced a total different life, and most importantly, met Shiho. I'm speechless.

I really have to thank the Lord for guiding me through all these years. Now I'm about to start off another chapter of my life. Anxious yet looking forward to it. Future, here I come.

15th ASA Annual Formal Dinner

What a wonderful night! The 15th ASA Formal Dinner was a big success. The forum was packed with guests, the dinner was great and the performances were simply awesome!

Just drove the 'cuse people back to their school. And had a little sake, plum wine, and some alcohol that I didn't know the name. Gotta take a break. More to report later.

ASA Formal Dinner

Saturday is the annual ASA Formal Dinner. I hope it turns out well since we e-board's have put in so much time and effort. We shall see real soon.

Quest Day

It's the 25th Anniversary of Qeust in OSU today. Since attending Quest presentations will earn me extra credits, I did. And it was quiet interesting. Especially the one professor Irwin, who I took CSC120 with, did. His presentation was titled America's Unluckiest Logician in which Irwin illustrated what Emil L. Post had accomplished in various studies such as mathematics, logics and how he was overshadowned by brilliant minds such as Kurt Godel and Alan Turning. I was kind of lost in all those mathematical terms mentioned in the presentation but the topic got me intrigued. It also made me wonder if I were to be in a larger college or maybe a even more academically reputable one, I would be surrounded by more brilliant students and professors. And comes with it would be a lot more interesting reserach which I'd get to see or even participate. Anyhow, graduating is right around the corner so if I want to dream about this, dream about grad school.


Talked to Gerry at noon and finished filing paperwork for OPT. Shiho and I also went to Career Service to jog down names of Taiwanese and Japanese companies in California. There were only a handfull of Taiwanese but Japanese, it's another stories. There simply too many of them that we went as far as S in alphabetical order then had to call it a day.

Time to make up my resume and start sending them out. Late? Yeah, I'm already a couple years late.

Nice day

The weather has been very nice recently, albeit still cold sometimes. But finally there is a sense of spring.

After brunch, Shiho and I decided to go o Cerousel Mall and get some clothes for the ASA Formal Dinner next Saturday. It is so great to have a car of our own. We can go to places whenever we feel like it. No need to pay big bucks to rent a car or calling friends in hope that they will lend us their cars. I picked up a pretty fashionable shirt from BR. I don't know what Shiho got. She has lots of pretty clothes already.

On our way back, we saw a truck towing an jet plane on a trailer. I don't know what kind of jet was that but it seemed seventies or eighties. In other words, old school. Quiet an interesting encounter.

Steve and Josephine invieted us over to their house for dinner. Along with Yukiko and Minako. They also invited their neighbor's kid, Chris as well. Chris is a very interesting character, talented as well. He is the kind of person that seems to be happy most of the time and everyone will enjoy his company. From what I know, he's gifted in music. He does some modeling work as well. Wow.

Steve has a new job in North Carolina so they are selling the house and moving over there again. We'll probably get together some time before Shiho and I graduate.

Compassion

While working on my assignment this afternoon, my cell rang and when I picked it up, I heard Shi-chan crying on the other side of the line. I was scared at first that something bad happened to her. Then I heard she saying "Lichi, can you come down now? A little bird died.". It turned out that when she walked back to Hart, she found the carcass of a little bird on the meadow. She borrow shovel from Front Desk but it didn't work well when it came to digging.

So we dug a little hole and buried the poor birdy. I am sure it would appreciate Shi-chan's compassion. May it rest in peace.

Photo album updated

Just updated my photo album at MSN with pictures of our trip to Puerto Rico. Grab 'em while they're hot!

Software for USB drives

A Directory Of Programs designed For USB Drives. Great if you want your programs on the go.

Back from Puerto Rico,

for 2 days. Got back at Friday night. However I am too lazy to update, for now. I'm suffering from spring break withdrawal.

More updates to come once I pull myself together.

為台灣民主辯護

為台灣民主辯護. Good read.

Simple Service Part 1

Shit, seems like I have nothing to talk about other than assignments. I need a life.

Got Simple Service Part 1 done in just a couple hours. Seems pretty straight forward to me. Didn't even have to look up RFC1945. Hopeful I can have some time to relax and study for Numerical Analysis midterm and Japanese.

One more week before my baby and I go to Puerto Rico. I can't wait! Sun shine, blue sky and sand beach, here we come!

More $

Dad, thanks a whole bunch for sending me more dough for the car. Hopefully I will get a durable one. (Crossing my fingers)

Another assignment nailed

Finally, got CSC420 a3 done. The MVC concept is easy to understand. But I am having a hard time in Java 2D drawing. I was stuck at setting the clock as well. But now I got it all figured out now. I used a little if statement to keep the clock ticking after setting the clock to a new time. As to 2D drawing, my friend helped me out on that one so I am gonna read through Sun's tutorial on that to know it better.

Alright, on to another assignment I am. Does this ever end?

Greek Peak

Went on a school trip with Shiho and others yesterday to Greek Peak, a ski resort.

It's been a while since I snowboarded last time. But surprisingly, I didn't even have to go on a test run to get my memory back. It just came right back to me. On the second run I could even do the S I had been trying to do. With each additional run I made, I was able to start doing continous S. Going down the slope at 20 or even 30 mph was pretty amazing, and scary too! Call me a chicken, ha!

After the Spring Break, Shi-chan and I might go hit the slope again. Thnk about it, beach, ocean and sunshine then slope, mountain and snow a week after. Wow, talk about having fun!

BTW, the Enchilada burrito at Taco Bell was pretty good too, heh.

Dell 2005FPW

1680 x 1050, one word. PHAT!

Academic Reward

Got a another Hart Hall Academic Reward for being on the Dean's List last semester. Except for Spring 04, I've managed to make at least Dean's List every semester. Not a great achievement but I'm happy about myself. Keep it up ChiMan!

Adblock

I just tried out this great Firefox extension called Adblock. What it does is different than Firefox (or any Mozilla decedent). It blocks advertisement IN a page. Be it images, flashes, intellitext or anything embedded in a web page. With the help of it, you can view your favorite websites ads free, if any.

I knew about this extension for some time but didn't bother to try it because I haven't got any pop-up's or pop-under's for a long time due to Firefox's excellent pop-up blocker. Once I used it I was hooked. It's really great that you can make those flashy ads go away on websites you frequently visit. You will also find out how much crap those websites put on a page, you will be shocked.

Definitely a must have if you browse the Internet.

CSC365 Assignment 1 done!

Wheeeee!!!!! My news reader is done! It took forever.

Handling the .newsrc file is much easier than I thought. Didn't have much trouble reading and writing for APIs involved are pretty straightforward. Speaking of APIs, Java API is ample. Actually, it's way too much, as far as I am concerned at this time. To achive one thing, there are many ways to do it, you just have to find the right method. This is like putting puzzle pieces together. Unless you have in mind what the result looks like, you are going to be lost. But that doesn't mean I don't like Java. It's the only language I'm familiar with, if you call that familiar.

Anyway, I can finally take a little break. But this is by no means the end. I have more programs to write. CSC420 assignment 3, the time display program and CSC320 assignment 4, calculating cubic splines. Oh boy...

iPod Shuffle 1G

My long waited iPod Shuffule 1G finally arrived yesterday. It's so small (relatively) and light, it actually lacks the quality "feel" of a regular iPod. But hack, I bought simply because I wanted a replacement USB drive.

I do have to give it credit for its lightness because working out with a shuffle is much easier than a 5 ounce iPod.

BTW, I got my replacing driver's license in the mail this afternoon. One step closer to replacing all my lost documents.

Math minor == Zannen!! Chan chan!

Gawd daaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn it! I could have got a Math minor easily but I now missed the chance.

I never thought of having a minor. Probably because the way of thinking about degrees I took with me from National Chung Cheng University. But 10 mins ago when I was talking to Shiho (I made her mad tonight, haha), she told me she has a minor in Economics. That strikes me that I might be able to get a Math minor. I had taken all these math classes that I don't really need for my degree. I took them simply because I like the math classes tought here. The teachers are simply great!

If I had known this earlier, I would use my spare time and take two more, just two more math classes! And they only need to be higher than MAT158! Gawd! I could easily do this, and get good grades too! It's such a shame that nobody, even my adivsor, told me about this.

Sigh, it's too late because I'm graduating soon. Well, at least I had fun taking those classes.

Happy Valentine's

Yesterday was Shi-chan and I's first anniversary. It had been a great year. Even though we both are not perfect and got into several serious fights, we get along very well and I think we're perfect for each other. And she looks so cute all the time! I'm pretty sure we will lead a great life together if we do form a family.

We bought the plane tickets to Puerto Rico few days ago. From the pictures it looks amazing! Clear blue ocean, white sand, palm trees...man I can't wait for spring break!

NewsReader Cont'd

Finally, I managed to get the group list, article list and the article body view to work! I also figured out how to weed out unnecessary header entries.

Now the following challenge is to provide subscription and persistent newsrc functionalities. I'm sure in a couple days I can figure this out.

CSC365 NewsReader

Arrrrrrgh! I can't figure out how to extract subject lines from a specified group! I can put the article numbers into an ArrayList with no problem. But then when I iterate through that ArrayList and issue HEAD Article# accordingly so that I can extract the subject line from server output, I get errors!

I read in server output one line at a time, from FROM to Content-Type-Encoding, assign each as a String, then instantiate an Article object encapsulating these info. There is, however, something wrong in the process that each line is off-sync with what I think it would be. Therefore, I am not getting the right info and that produces errors I'm getting.

I need a rest to clear my mind. Today's routine is legs. I hope working out can rejuvenate me and then maybe this problem can be worked out.

Microsoft's TrueType core fonts on Linux

Came across this link for M$ TrueType fonts on Linux. Not sure if this is needed for modern distro though.

First Major US Credit Card

Finally, after numerous attempts, I got my first US credit card and can start building up my credit here in the US. It's a CapitalOne "Platinum" Visa. Despite what the name suggests, it has nothing to do with a platinum card, at least in a Taiwanese finance sense. The card itself is half-transparent, I chose it. And the limit is $201.00, $401.00 3 months later if there is no defaults on my payments. I will be using it instead of my debit card from now on as long as I can pay it right off.