So the previous Monday's Smash Tournament didn't turn out as well as the previous one. Every one of us posted worse records than we did before, except for Ambrose, who went on to grab 3rd place. Duy also managed to come in second, after a couple of fairly close games in the finals against a Sheik. I think Duy won about $25 and Ambrose about $15.
Anyways, the big winner of the day ended up being Jason, who found first a $50 and then a $20 as we were walking through the University Plaza parking lot on the way to East Side Mario's. :P He ended up getting more than Duy and Ambrose put together, heh. As for me, my first two rounds were against two people who eventually placed in the top 8, so I got beaten pretty badly. I managed to win a frustrating 3rd round game on Brinstar Depths, which featured both me and my opponent falling through the stage. Afterwards, however, I lost a close match against a Link and was eliminated. Final record: 1-3, which was a lot worse than my previous showing of 4-3. Oh well, sometimes you win, sometimes you don't.
The rest of the week was mainly spent hanging out with Bao, who stayed for the entire week. More memorable activities included the usual Wednesday night badminton, drafting G9G, meeting up with Betty, and of course, buying the WoW board game. :P
Oh, of course, the warrior sucks in that version too.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Sleeping Potion
Just a while ago, I was playing X-Men Legends 2 with Duy and Jason, and we were going through Act 3. Although I was having fun using Rogue and Scarlet Witch, I was getting pretty tired after playing badminton (and not really doing much studying :P). Thus, I would end up losing my character on the screen or getting stuck, or even zoning out for a little bit here and there. The funniest thing that happen though, was when we decided to stop playing, apparently, Duy saved the game, and then 1 minute later, I went to save the game again 'cause I thought we hadn't saved it yet. :P I'm pretty sure that I realized that I did see him save it, I just had the instinct to make sure that the game was saved before we left, heh...
Turning people into boxes with probability is cool. Oh, and you know a game is easy when you need to actually use a glitch in the game which makes it HARDER in order to make the game challenging. :P (Rogue's Heal bug)
Turning people into boxes with probability is cool. Oh, and you know a game is easy when you need to actually use a glitch in the game which makes it HARDER in order to make the game challenging. :P (Rogue's Heal bug)
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Sustenance
Wow, I guess my latest attempt to revive this blog kinda died out again. Anyways, I finally found some motivation to write something on here.
Yesterday at the Welcome Back Jason draft, a disagreement arose mainly between me and a friend about exactly what constituted "cooking". He was eating some pasta that he had made and brought from home, and had heated it up in the microwave. I brought up the point of how I thought it was cool that he cooked the pasta himself, to which he replied that he didn't consider making pasta to be real cooking. "You just add heat and mix the stuff together, it doesn't take any skill at all," was basically how his argument went. Ironically, the first defintion of "cooking" given by dictionary.com is:
To prepare (food) for eating by applying heat.
So I stand by my point. :P
Now, I know that my cooking skills aren't that great, so stuff that would probably seem cool or special for me to cook probably seem pretty ordinarly to most people. I guess my friend might be used to making more exotice dishes, and thus he doesn't consider making simple pasta and meat sauce to be real cooking. I would agree that simple things such as mixing cereal and milk or preparing a sandwich probably shouldn't count as cooking, (though Tales of Symphonia would disagree :P), but I think that anything which requires the use of a stove or oven should be compmlex enough to be classified as cooking. I guess sandwiches could be considered just "food preparation" or something like that.
Under the above definition, however, Wen pointed out that simply microwaving food would also be considered as cooking. Though I think most people, myself included, would reject the idea of microwaving stuff as real cooking, technically it is. You'd be surprised at how many things can be microwaved and still taste good, even if they say on the box that they're not microwavable. :P I usually end up microwaving a lot of my meals even now. Why? I guess it's just 'cause I'm lazy...and want to have more time to do other stuff. It's not that I don't enjoy cooking or anything, I've probably just gotten into the habit of it, and while I'm at school, I haven't really been living in an environment that encourages me to explore the culinary arts. Duy doesn't really "cook" at all either. We used to cook more when Bao was here, but we only cooked once this year, and that was when we went over to Ambrose's house and had planned to cook stuff together with them. I was supposed to do some cooking with Wen and Duy during exams this term, but then it didn't happen due to time constraints, and we ended up playing more Tales instead. :P Playing through the game a second time, it's a lot more interesting when I notice the foreshadowing and other references to things in the story that they player isn't supposed to know about yet. But that's probably a topic for another entry.
So what do you guys think? Where is the line between "cooking" and just "preparing food"?
Yesterday at the Welcome Back Jason draft, a disagreement arose mainly between me and a friend about exactly what constituted "cooking". He was eating some pasta that he had made and brought from home, and had heated it up in the microwave. I brought up the point of how I thought it was cool that he cooked the pasta himself, to which he replied that he didn't consider making pasta to be real cooking. "You just add heat and mix the stuff together, it doesn't take any skill at all," was basically how his argument went. Ironically, the first defintion of "cooking" given by dictionary.com is:
To prepare (food) for eating by applying heat.
So I stand by my point. :P
Now, I know that my cooking skills aren't that great, so stuff that would probably seem cool or special for me to cook probably seem pretty ordinarly to most people. I guess my friend might be used to making more exotice dishes, and thus he doesn't consider making simple pasta and meat sauce to be real cooking. I would agree that simple things such as mixing cereal and milk or preparing a sandwich probably shouldn't count as cooking, (though Tales of Symphonia would disagree :P), but I think that anything which requires the use of a stove or oven should be compmlex enough to be classified as cooking. I guess sandwiches could be considered just "food preparation" or something like that.
Under the above definition, however, Wen pointed out that simply microwaving food would also be considered as cooking. Though I think most people, myself included, would reject the idea of microwaving stuff as real cooking, technically it is. You'd be surprised at how many things can be microwaved and still taste good, even if they say on the box that they're not microwavable. :P I usually end up microwaving a lot of my meals even now. Why? I guess it's just 'cause I'm lazy...and want to have more time to do other stuff. It's not that I don't enjoy cooking or anything, I've probably just gotten into the habit of it, and while I'm at school, I haven't really been living in an environment that encourages me to explore the culinary arts. Duy doesn't really "cook" at all either. We used to cook more when Bao was here, but we only cooked once this year, and that was when we went over to Ambrose's house and had planned to cook stuff together with them. I was supposed to do some cooking with Wen and Duy during exams this term, but then it didn't happen due to time constraints, and we ended up playing more Tales instead. :P Playing through the game a second time, it's a lot more interesting when I notice the foreshadowing and other references to things in the story that they player isn't supposed to know about yet. But that's probably a topic for another entry.
So what do you guys think? Where is the line between "cooking" and just "preparing food"?
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Deepwood Drummer and Singing Tree
I've had a bunch of stuff that I've wanted to blog about, but never got around to it. Oh well, I guess I'll write more later if I have the time and motivation. Firstly, what I wanted to do is see how my last two spins of the Divining Top went:
Got two midterms back today
1) CS 436 Distributed Computer Systems
Predicted Mark: 65% - 85%
Actual Mark: 78%
Okay, so I had a really big prediction range here. :P Well, I wasn't really sure how much I had to write for a lot of questions...and so I didn't know if I would be getting full marks for them. Also, I almost ran out of time near the end, so a lot of thigns were rushed, and I wasn't sure how much part marks I'd be getting for some of the more significant question near the end. It turns out that I ended up losing marks mainly for forgetting some details, lost about 3 marks for misterpreting an ambiguous question about TCP commmunication schemas, and 8 marks 'cause I didn't study how to calculate a checksum. All in all though, I think I got a bit better than the mark I deserved. I'm not doing that well in the course though, I tanked all of assignment 1 and most of assignment 2...and assignments are worth 25%. I should try to stop slacking and attempt to get more motivated...even if I do have "a lot of other stuff to do."
2) CS 338 Computer Applications in Business: Databases
Predicted Mark: 55% - 75%
Actual Mark: 85%!!!
Finally...I wrote this exam like... the week before reading week lol. And I finally got it back today...and man, they were really really REALLY generous on a lot of the SQL questions. After I checked the notes once I finished writing the midterm, I figured that I'd get 0 for some of my SQL queries, but I guess the prof was more accepting of pseudocode than I thought. I mainly only lost marks due to forgetting definitions, and a mark or a half on forgetting a few tiny details that I didn't feel were worth arguing about. (such as whether or not you had to explicitly include a "Street" attribute for an "Address" entity, even though the question didn't exaclty say that they had one. I think that the markers were very lenient in general though. What this means for me is that all I need to do now to pass the course is pass the final. I can ignore all the rest of the assignments because of the prof's "best of" marking scheme, which will allow me to just use the midterm and final to calculate my mark. Given my mark on the midterm then, even if I only get 50% on the final, which I have to pass, I'll end up with a 60% overall in the course. So good haha.
=====================================================================================
So anyways, enough of that Top. Time to set a Pithing Needle to it. Yesterday, I went to worship cell, and Alex Langelo was there. Apparently, he's been very into music sine he was a child, and as such, he knew a thing or two about drumming and singing that he was willing to teach us. So the first half of worship cell was him instructing us on the basics of playing the djembe and the basics of singing. It was pretty embarassing for me, 'cause I suck at singing, and I'm not a good drummer at all even though I'd already had lessons from Alex in an earlier meeting of worship cell. :P When I was younger, I had to be part of a choir in my elementry school, and a bunch of people in my class made fun of me while I was singing, saying that I had a bad voice and etc. I guess those negative thoughts have stuck with me through most of my life; even nowadays at church and etc, I find it really to just sing out to the best of my ability. I always hold back.
As we were going around practicing the first part of the chorus of "Here I Am To Worship" a lot of people were struggling to get what Alex was trying to impart on us, mostly due to the fact that the majority of us had never had any real vocal traning. When he got to me, Alex was like, "You're only using 10% of your volume, you need to give your voice more support when you sing, man." and I replied "I know, I'll try." I guess hopefully, in time, I'll get over my pyschological fear and be able to sing properly. I'm getting a bit better at djembe though...and I'm feeling bold enough to maybe try and play it for worship during next week's CCF. It would the first time that I really did worship leading at all. Though later I found out that next Friday is also going to be a Bible study, which means I'd have to be prepared for that too. It feels like it would be a lot of responsibility to have to do worship AND Bible Study leading on the same night, I have enough stress leading Bible studies as it is. :P But, well, if Betty can do it, then maybe I can too haha. I guess I better ask Chris what he thinks...
Got two midterms back today
1) CS 436 Distributed Computer Systems
Predicted Mark: 65% - 85%
Actual Mark: 78%
Okay, so I had a really big prediction range here. :P Well, I wasn't really sure how much I had to write for a lot of questions...and so I didn't know if I would be getting full marks for them. Also, I almost ran out of time near the end, so a lot of thigns were rushed, and I wasn't sure how much part marks I'd be getting for some of the more significant question near the end. It turns out that I ended up losing marks mainly for forgetting some details, lost about 3 marks for misterpreting an ambiguous question about TCP commmunication schemas, and 8 marks 'cause I didn't study how to calculate a checksum. All in all though, I think I got a bit better than the mark I deserved. I'm not doing that well in the course though, I tanked all of assignment 1 and most of assignment 2...and assignments are worth 25%. I should try to stop slacking and attempt to get more motivated...even if I do have "a lot of other stuff to do."
2) CS 338 Computer Applications in Business: Databases
Predicted Mark: 55% - 75%
Actual Mark: 85%!!!
Finally...I wrote this exam like... the week before reading week lol. And I finally got it back today...and man, they were really really REALLY generous on a lot of the SQL questions. After I checked the notes once I finished writing the midterm, I figured that I'd get 0 for some of my SQL queries, but I guess the prof was more accepting of pseudocode than I thought. I mainly only lost marks due to forgetting definitions, and a mark or a half on forgetting a few tiny details that I didn't feel were worth arguing about. (such as whether or not you had to explicitly include a "Street" attribute for an "Address" entity, even though the question didn't exaclty say that they had one. I think that the markers were very lenient in general though. What this means for me is that all I need to do now to pass the course is pass the final. I can ignore all the rest of the assignments because of the prof's "best of" marking scheme, which will allow me to just use the midterm and final to calculate my mark. Given my mark on the midterm then, even if I only get 50% on the final, which I have to pass, I'll end up with a 60% overall in the course. So good haha.
=====================================================================================
So anyways, enough of that Top. Time to set a Pithing Needle to it. Yesterday, I went to worship cell, and Alex Langelo was there. Apparently, he's been very into music sine he was a child, and as such, he knew a thing or two about drumming and singing that he was willing to teach us. So the first half of worship cell was him instructing us on the basics of playing the djembe and the basics of singing. It was pretty embarassing for me, 'cause I suck at singing, and I'm not a good drummer at all even though I'd already had lessons from Alex in an earlier meeting of worship cell. :P When I was younger, I had to be part of a choir in my elementry school, and a bunch of people in my class made fun of me while I was singing, saying that I had a bad voice and etc. I guess those negative thoughts have stuck with me through most of my life; even nowadays at church and etc, I find it really to just sing out to the best of my ability. I always hold back.
As we were going around practicing the first part of the chorus of "Here I Am To Worship" a lot of people were struggling to get what Alex was trying to impart on us, mostly due to the fact that the majority of us had never had any real vocal traning. When he got to me, Alex was like, "You're only using 10% of your volume, you need to give your voice more support when you sing, man." and I replied "I know, I'll try." I guess hopefully, in time, I'll get over my pyschological fear and be able to sing properly. I'm getting a bit better at djembe though...and I'm feeling bold enough to maybe try and play it for worship during next week's CCF. It would the first time that I really did worship leading at all. Though later I found out that next Friday is also going to be a Bible study, which means I'd have to be prepared for that too. It feels like it would be a lot of responsibility to have to do worship AND Bible Study leading on the same night, I have enough stress leading Bible studies as it is. :P But, well, if Betty can do it, then maybe I can too haha. I guess I better ask Chris what he thinks...
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Chill
Thanks Wen for helping me come up with an interesting post title to my last post. I was kind of stuck trying to think of one for a while.
Anyways, although I've had a mostly relaxed week this week, I haven't really been motivated to post much. Why? I've had some random thoughts of stuff here and there, but none that seemed really significant enough or practical enough to make into a "real" blog entry. I spent a lot of this past week just chilling out, hanging out with people at Worship Cell and Lifesong, playing through a lot of X-Men Legends 2 with Wen and Duy, and having dinners with them and Alex Chen. Most of my midterms are done, and so I have a small break before my assignments will start to pick up again. Academically speaking, I'm doing "as expected", though I probably could be trying a bit harder.
Lifesong this year was another big drama production, this time featuring Herman's testimony. It was pretty cool to hear him share about his life and how he came to be where he is today. I thought about the people I knew who had lost a parent due to cancer or some other circumstance, and realized that I knew more such people than I had realized. Thinking about it sort of put a new perspective on things; it made me appreciate my parents even more, especially since they usually ended up spoiling me so much when I was younger. There were times when they were super strict too, but in general, I had a pretty good relationship with them, and it got better as I grew older.
Has anyone ever noticed that sometimes when you greet people, no matter if you're just chilling out or passing them in the halls, they sometimes go on autopilot and not really hear/read what you say? For example:
1)
Me: So how was Lifesong for you?
Friend: Oh, it was okay, I had a midterm on Thursday, it went pretty well...
Me: (I guess he figured I'd ask him how his week was...)
2) (Over MSN)
Me: Hello sir. What's up?
Friend: Not bad thanks. What about you?
Me: (That didn't really answer my question...)
At first I thought that maybe the other person just wasn't fully mentally in the conversation at first. I figured it was a psychological thing, that they would asssume that this social interaction would start off like most other social interactions usually do. But then I thought may be it was my fault for speaking too softly. (at least in the non-MSN cases) I've had a fair number of people not hear what I say clearly in converastions, and I've had to repeat myself. Though I might be just exaggerating the number of those occurrences in my mind. Memory is easily affected by our emotions, after all. So what do you guys think? Do I speak too quietly sometimes? How often do I do it? Should I try to talker louder than I normally do to make up for it?
Anyways, although I've had a mostly relaxed week this week, I haven't really been motivated to post much. Why? I've had some random thoughts of stuff here and there, but none that seemed really significant enough or practical enough to make into a "real" blog entry. I spent a lot of this past week just chilling out, hanging out with people at Worship Cell and Lifesong, playing through a lot of X-Men Legends 2 with Wen and Duy, and having dinners with them and Alex Chen. Most of my midterms are done, and so I have a small break before my assignments will start to pick up again. Academically speaking, I'm doing "as expected", though I probably could be trying a bit harder.
Lifesong this year was another big drama production, this time featuring Herman's testimony. It was pretty cool to hear him share about his life and how he came to be where he is today. I thought about the people I knew who had lost a parent due to cancer or some other circumstance, and realized that I knew more such people than I had realized. Thinking about it sort of put a new perspective on things; it made me appreciate my parents even more, especially since they usually ended up spoiling me so much when I was younger. There were times when they were super strict too, but in general, I had a pretty good relationship with them, and it got better as I grew older.
Has anyone ever noticed that sometimes when you greet people, no matter if you're just chilling out or passing them in the halls, they sometimes go on autopilot and not really hear/read what you say? For example:
1)
Me: So how was Lifesong for you?
Friend: Oh, it was okay, I had a midterm on Thursday, it went pretty well...
Me: (I guess he figured I'd ask him how his week was...)
2) (Over MSN)
Me: Hello sir. What's up?
Friend: Not bad thanks. What about you?
Me: (That didn't really answer my question...)
At first I thought that maybe the other person just wasn't fully mentally in the conversation at first. I figured it was a psychological thing, that they would asssume that this social interaction would start off like most other social interactions usually do. But then I thought may be it was my fault for speaking too softly. (at least in the non-MSN cases) I've had a fair number of people not hear what I say clearly in converastions, and I've had to repeat myself. Though I might be just exaggerating the number of those occurrences in my mind. Memory is easily affected by our emotions, after all. So what do you guys think? Do I speak too quietly sometimes? How often do I do it? Should I try to talker louder than I normally do to make up for it?
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Sensei's Divining Top
So yesterday I finally got the results of my STAT 330 midterm back, and now I finally have the results of all 3 of the midterms that I had the joy of writing back on Feb 14. (Strangely enough, my database midterm that I wrote a week before that still seems to have not been marked yet.) It seems that my predicted marks were pretty close to their acutal counterparts this time, whereas in the past, I would have been the subject of some ridicule when my "conservative" estimates ended up being way off the mark. (My 1A calculus midterm being the most famous example)
1) CS 330 midterm, 8:30 AM
Predicted mark: ~80%
Actual mark: 78%
This midterm was expected to be fairly easy, based on what I saw in last term's midterm. It was harder than that, but still not that challenging. It was short answer, 7 questions, you choose 5 of them. One mark I lost because I was going to change an answer from "TCP and UDP" to the correct version, "TCP and IP" but wasn't 100% sure either way, and in the in I was running out of time so I just left it. Near the end of the exam, I had 10 mins left to change one of my answers and do a different question instead, and I finished with only about a minute to spare. The only complaint that I had about this midterm was the first question, which was about ER diagrams. I've been learning about those in a lot more detail in my databases course, and I'd say that the way they were taught in CS 330 wasn't that great. The prof just kind of glossed over a lot of details, and on the exam, the question wasn't worded a bit ambiguously. Another problem is that there's no real objective standard to measure which ER diagram is "better" than another. I ended up losing most of my marks on that question, but since the rest of the exam wasn't that difficult, I guess I can't complain
2) STAT 330 midterm, 11:30 AM
Predicted mark: ~60%
Actual mark: 66%
Whoa...I got actually better than I expected on this one. At first, while writing it I thought I might have a shot of getting maybe about 75%, but then I realized that a few of my answers weren't really that sound, and depending on how generous they were with part marks, I might actually end up with ~50% if they chose to be cruel. Luckily, the TA's seemed to be fair this time, and I managed to do okay. Of course, part of the reason that I did as well as I did is probably 'cause this is my second time taking the course...but shhh..the other ppl in my class don't need to know that. :P Yesterday, my prof did his usual act of being condescending and disappointed in us because the average was barely 60% and around half of the class failed. This caused a bit of an uproar, as several students spoke up to complain that the exam was too hard and there weren't enough practice problems. (This year the prof didn't even bother to put the solutions to the course notes problems in the library) In response, the prof said that you are supposed to know your calculus for this course, and that you should just "sit down and spend time to do the problems, and then you will learn this course". That prompted more complaining from some students about how most of them also have 4 other courses to deal with, to which the prof responded that if you did badly on this test (<66%) then will have big problems with the next one, and you might even fail the course. IMO, the midterm was fair, but the fact that course was taught in such a poor manner would make it hard for most people to do well on it.
3) STAT 333 midterm, 4:30 PM
Predicted mark: ~40%
Actual mark: 45%
Even though I failed this exam, I still did better than I predicted, AND the class average as well I think. (Average was like 13.5/40, according to UWACE) By the time I was writing this exam, I was kinda tired, so I ended up making 2 stupid mistakes that cost me 4+3 = a total of 7 marks. And 7 marks out of 40 is a lot. One of the 3 questions I really couldn't answer, but I guess I put in enough stuff to at least get some part marks. Duy hasn't checked his mark yet, but we calculated that he probably got around 55% only. [Edit: Finished writing this part just before we went to class, and then during class we got our midterms back, and Duy actually only got 19/40] Since the class average was so low, our marks might get belled later, which means that I'll probably end up passing, yay!
1) CS 330 midterm, 8:30 AM
Predicted mark: ~80%
Actual mark: 78%
This midterm was expected to be fairly easy, based on what I saw in last term's midterm. It was harder than that, but still not that challenging. It was short answer, 7 questions, you choose 5 of them. One mark I lost because I was going to change an answer from "TCP and UDP" to the correct version, "TCP and IP" but wasn't 100% sure either way, and in the in I was running out of time so I just left it. Near the end of the exam, I had 10 mins left to change one of my answers and do a different question instead, and I finished with only about a minute to spare. The only complaint that I had about this midterm was the first question, which was about ER diagrams. I've been learning about those in a lot more detail in my databases course, and I'd say that the way they were taught in CS 330 wasn't that great. The prof just kind of glossed over a lot of details, and on the exam, the question wasn't worded a bit ambiguously. Another problem is that there's no real objective standard to measure which ER diagram is "better" than another. I ended up losing most of my marks on that question, but since the rest of the exam wasn't that difficult, I guess I can't complain
2) STAT 330 midterm, 11:30 AM
Predicted mark: ~60%
Actual mark: 66%
Whoa...I got actually better than I expected on this one. At first, while writing it I thought I might have a shot of getting maybe about 75%, but then I realized that a few of my answers weren't really that sound, and depending on how generous they were with part marks, I might actually end up with ~50% if they chose to be cruel. Luckily, the TA's seemed to be fair this time, and I managed to do okay. Of course, part of the reason that I did as well as I did is probably 'cause this is my second time taking the course...but shhh..the other ppl in my class don't need to know that. :P Yesterday, my prof did his usual act of being condescending and disappointed in us because the average was barely 60% and around half of the class failed. This caused a bit of an uproar, as several students spoke up to complain that the exam was too hard and there weren't enough practice problems. (This year the prof didn't even bother to put the solutions to the course notes problems in the library) In response, the prof said that you are supposed to know your calculus for this course, and that you should just "sit down and spend time to do the problems, and then you will learn this course". That prompted more complaining from some students about how most of them also have 4 other courses to deal with, to which the prof responded that if you did badly on this test (<66%) then will have big problems with the next one, and you might even fail the course. IMO, the midterm was fair, but the fact that course was taught in such a poor manner would make it hard for most people to do well on it.
3) STAT 333 midterm, 4:30 PM
Predicted mark: ~40%
Actual mark: 45%
Even though I failed this exam, I still did better than I predicted, AND the class average as well I think. (Average was like 13.5/40, according to UWACE) By the time I was writing this exam, I was kinda tired, so I ended up making 2 stupid mistakes that cost me 4+3 = a total of 7 marks. And 7 marks out of 40 is a lot. One of the 3 questions I really couldn't answer, but I guess I put in enough stuff to at least get some part marks. Duy hasn't checked his mark yet, but we calculated that he probably got around 55% only. [Edit: Finished writing this part just before we went to class, and then during class we got our midterms back, and Duy actually only got 19/40] Since the class average was so low, our marks might get belled later, which means that I'll probably end up passing, yay!
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Winter Sky
This has been an interesting reading week. I've gotten to catch up on sleep, surprisnlgy. But that's probably because of the fact that I haven't been getting much work done. :P Overall, reading days were kind of disappointing; I got to see and hang out with some people, but not for enough time and some people I hardly got to see at all. Anyways, since I kind of have writer's block at the moment, but still feel like blogging something, I guess I'll resort to doing one of these random surveys, even though I haven't (technically) been tagged...
Four jobs (volunteer positions) I've had:
1. Assistant to Mr. William Pak (Jeff's dad) -this wasn't a real job, I just learned stuff about various software and got paid for it
2. Calculus Tutor -I tutored a bunch of people from church over the summer
3. Summer Day Camp Counsellor's Aide -Moo Chee! Boo Chee!
4. Office Assistant for Pastor Sharon -this was back in summer of 2004, and it was only for a coule of weeks...
Four movies I can watch (and have the potential to watch) over and over:
1. Memento
2. Black Hawk Down
3. Mulholland Drive -must figure out what it's about!
4. Matrix/Star Wars/LOTR -I think I've watched most movies from those series at least twice :P
Four places I've lived (if vacations don't count):
1. Mississauga
2. Mississauga
3. Mississauga
4. Waterloo -haha...this would've been funny had it been 4x Mississauga
Four TV Shows I love(d):
1. CSI - all 3 I guess
2. Gilmore Girls
3. Various TLC shows
4. X-Files
Four places I've vacationed:
1. Michigan
2. Florida
3. Buffalo
4. Newfoundland -I've never been outside of North America
Four of my favorite dishes:
1. Pasta
2. Chili
3. Salmon, raw or cooked
4. mild Curry with anything
Four sites I visit daily:
1. this blog
2. magicthegathering.com
3. uwangel.uwaterloo.ca -Waterloo's course website server
4. various friends' blogs -mcbc-online is still down...otherwise it would be here
Four places I would rather be right now:
1. On a vacation with friends
2. a place with a time machine
3. at a retreat
4. Ravnica -okay, just kidding
Four bloggers I'm tagging (let's see...who hardly updates? nahhh):
1. DB -well, might as well kill two birds with one stone
2. Mason
3. Brose
4. Wenage Zhanger
Four jobs (volunteer positions) I've had:
1. Assistant to Mr. William Pak (Jeff's dad) -this wasn't a real job, I just learned stuff about various software and got paid for it
2. Calculus Tutor -I tutored a bunch of people from church over the summer
3. Summer Day Camp Counsellor's Aide -Moo Chee! Boo Chee!
4. Office Assistant for Pastor Sharon -this was back in summer of 2004, and it was only for a coule of weeks...
Four movies I can watch (and have the potential to watch) over and over:
1. Memento
2. Black Hawk Down
3. Mulholland Drive -must figure out what it's about!
4. Matrix/Star Wars/LOTR -I think I've watched most movies from those series at least twice :P
Four places I've lived (if vacations don't count):
1. Mississauga
2. Mississauga
3. Mississauga
4. Waterloo -haha...this would've been funny had it been 4x Mississauga
Four TV Shows I love(d):
1. CSI - all 3 I guess
2. Gilmore Girls
3. Various TLC shows
4. X-Files
Four places I've vacationed:
1. Michigan
2. Florida
3. Buffalo
4. Newfoundland -I've never been outside of North America
Four of my favorite dishes:
1. Pasta
2. Chili
3. Salmon, raw or cooked
4. mild Curry with anything
Four sites I visit daily:
1. this blog
2. magicthegathering.com
3. uwangel.uwaterloo.ca -Waterloo's course website server
4. various friends' blogs -mcbc-online is still down...otherwise it would be here
Four places I would rather be right now:
1. On a vacation with friends
2. a place with a time machine
3. at a retreat
4. Ravnica -okay, just kidding
Four bloggers I'm tagging (let's see...who hardly updates? nahhh):
1. DB -well, might as well kill two birds with one stone
2. Mason
3. Brose
4. Wenage Zhanger
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Confound
Reading week is fun...unless you're stuck at school that is. Good news is that I finally going home today!
Well, I guess being able to hang out with Wen and Duy and play some more of X-Men Legends 2 was fun. Besides that, I've mainly been pretty lazy/tired these past few days. I dunno why, but I've been super sleepy lately, falling asleep at like 8-10 pm and then getting up at 9 am the next day, yet still not really feeling refreshed. Thus, my efforts to study, or else get other useful stuff done have been mostly hindered. I figured I wouldn't have too much work to do this Reading week, with only a quiz on Monday and an assignment on Tues to worry about, but then my STAT 330 prof goes and dumps another assignment on us yesterday. Dang it. Last year, we got 2 weeks to do each assignment. This term, the prof made his assignments about 75% as hard, but then gave us only 50% of the time to do it. Sigh, if only I had passed it the first time.
This term's prof also can't really teach that well. His English is okay, but apparently he thinks this course is "easy", something which the majority of the class and other students I know disagree with. He also doesn't have any enthusiasm at all when he lectures. Granted, the material is pretty dry, but even Cyntha Struthers (my prof for last term) managed to make a joke here and there and keep the class entertained. I even looked forward to going to her class sometimes last term. On the other hand, I usually dread having to visit this class every Tues and Thurs. My current prof seems really diassociated from his students...he's always surprised when we don't find his assignments "easy", and when he asks us "simple" questions in class that no one answers, he says stuff like "Oh my God, how can you have forgotten this?!" and gets confused about "how we passed calculus." That makes him pretty annoying. He doesn't realize that the main reason why people don't have any motivation to answer stuff in his class is 'cause the way he teaches it makes everyone soooo bored and dead. Looking down on the class doesn't really help either.
Anyways, after my like 4 hour nap yesterday night, I ended staying up talking to a bunch of ppl over msn. So I'm reading this word document that's a transcription of another msn convo...and all of a sudden, this alert window pops up in my face and says:
There are too many spelling or grammatical errors in this file to continue displaying them. To check the spelling and grammar of this docuemnt, choose Spelling and Grammar from the Tools menu.
Then I clicked OK, and then Word totally lagged up for like 2 minutes. It's like, "What the?!" Go Microsoft! :P
Well, I guess being able to hang out with Wen and Duy and play some more of X-Men Legends 2 was fun. Besides that, I've mainly been pretty lazy/tired these past few days. I dunno why, but I've been super sleepy lately, falling asleep at like 8-10 pm and then getting up at 9 am the next day, yet still not really feeling refreshed. Thus, my efforts to study, or else get other useful stuff done have been mostly hindered. I figured I wouldn't have too much work to do this Reading week, with only a quiz on Monday and an assignment on Tues to worry about, but then my STAT 330 prof goes and dumps another assignment on us yesterday. Dang it. Last year, we got 2 weeks to do each assignment. This term, the prof made his assignments about 75% as hard, but then gave us only 50% of the time to do it. Sigh, if only I had passed it the first time.
This term's prof also can't really teach that well. His English is okay, but apparently he thinks this course is "easy", something which the majority of the class and other students I know disagree with. He also doesn't have any enthusiasm at all when he lectures. Granted, the material is pretty dry, but even Cyntha Struthers (my prof for last term) managed to make a joke here and there and keep the class entertained. I even looked forward to going to her class sometimes last term. On the other hand, I usually dread having to visit this class every Tues and Thurs. My current prof seems really diassociated from his students...he's always surprised when we don't find his assignments "easy", and when he asks us "simple" questions in class that no one answers, he says stuff like "Oh my God, how can you have forgotten this?!" and gets confused about "how we passed calculus." That makes him pretty annoying. He doesn't realize that the main reason why people don't have any motivation to answer stuff in his class is 'cause the way he teaches it makes everyone soooo bored and dead. Looking down on the class doesn't really help either.
Anyways, after my like 4 hour nap yesterday night, I ended staying up talking to a bunch of ppl over msn. So I'm reading this word document that's a transcription of another msn convo...and all of a sudden, this alert window pops up in my face and says:
There are too many spelling or grammatical errors in this file to continue displaying them. To check the spelling and grammar of this docuemnt, choose Spelling and Grammar from the Tools menu.
Then I clicked OK, and then Word totally lagged up for like 2 minutes. It's like, "What the?!" Go Microsoft! :P
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Winter's Grasp
Sooo cooollld outside today! Actually, it has been like that everyday starting from the snowday on Thursday, I think. This has been a very interesting weekend: I know that I'm kinda late on writing the first entry of my new blog, but well, better late than never right? :P
So, I had many ideas on how I wanted to start off writing in this blog. I was going to define the purpose of this current incarnation and what I wanted to do with it, but I think I'll have to save that for later, when I remember it more haha. This entry will also be used to respond to Bao's lastest comment in the previous (blogger)entry.
Things I've done this week, that I've never done before:
-talked with Mormons with Alex Lam and Betty Chan
-visited "Westcourt", the unofficial CCF house of UW (and watched Finding Neverland)
-played a 10-player game of Magic with about 6 ppl I've never met
-played a Magic multiplayer "Hunt" variant
-played Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
-stayed at school the weekend before Reading Week
-been the main leader in a Bible Study (okay, I've done this once before)
Okay, so some those things weren't really that special, but they were at least all pretty new to me. I mean, I've learned about Mormon's before, I'd heard of Splinter Cell, and of course I've played Magic, but it's always cool to try new ways of doing things, especially when they help broaden your knowledge and also develop more as a person. Keeping an open mind is a good thing.
It's kinda funny how in my 3.5 years of going to CCF, I've never once been to Westcourt. I almost wasn't going to go, 'cause I found out at the last minute that there was Smash Brothers going on at some other guys' house, and a bunch of other people were going there instead. I was thinking of calling Duy and inviting him over, but I figured that he probably was in the middle of a raid or something, so I didn't.
Finally, Splinter Cell is a very...unforgiving and ninjalicious game. I guess maybe it doesn't help that I've never really played any other games like it before. It was pretty easy for me to get spotted by the enemies, and then I always felt that I had to shoot them so many times in order to kill them. I also didn't like the fact that the game just throws you into the first mission with no story background at all basically. There is a tutorial mode that you can try first, but it's pretty plain and not well-laid out in some areas. It's pretty unimaginative and doesn't really prepare you that well for the real game. The game also has annoying long save/load times, and seemingly redundant status messages. (For example, after saving your game, a message pops up and says "Your game has been saved." and then you have to confirm again.)
In the second mission of the game, you have to find and get information out of this terrorist dude named Jong. And so me and Duy figured that we'd have to just locate him and knock him out. So at the start, we see two terrorist guys talking, and one of them is on the roof, of a short, one-story building, and the other is on the same level as us. So we kill both of them, and then we find out that the guy on the roof was actually the guy we were supposed to interrogate! Whoops...they could've at least given us some way to identify him. :P We retry the level a few times, and try many other methods of capturing the target, such as knocking him out from behind, or using a flash bang on him. Every time, we got the message, "Oh my God, what were you thinking, you killed Jong!?" and we had to restart. How a flash bang kills someone, I don't know, but I thought that was pretty dumb. Anyways, we were stuck until we finally looked in the manual and found out that there was a way to interrogate bad guys in the game. :P (Perhaps something they should've also showed us in the tutorial.)
There were also many times where we'd be walking carefully against the wall, when all of a sudden we'd come under from some unknown location and die within a seconds. So "from where!?" like. Made the game pretty frustrating. So, in conclusion, although I wouldn't mind trying it more, Splinter Cell probably isn't a game we'll be playing much of. :P It's a good thing that you didn't spend that much money on it, Bao.
So, I had many ideas on how I wanted to start off writing in this blog. I was going to define the purpose of this current incarnation and what I wanted to do with it, but I think I'll have to save that for later, when I remember it more haha. This entry will also be used to respond to Bao's lastest comment in the previous (blogger)entry.
Things I've done this week, that I've never done before:
-talked with Mormons with Alex Lam and Betty Chan
-visited "Westcourt", the unofficial CCF house of UW (and watched Finding Neverland)
-played a 10-player game of Magic with about 6 ppl I've never met
-played a Magic multiplayer "Hunt" variant
-played Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
-stayed at school the weekend before Reading Week
-been the main leader in a Bible Study (okay, I've done this once before)
Okay, so some those things weren't really that special, but they were at least all pretty new to me. I mean, I've learned about Mormon's before, I'd heard of Splinter Cell, and of course I've played Magic, but it's always cool to try new ways of doing things, especially when they help broaden your knowledge and also develop more as a person. Keeping an open mind is a good thing.
It's kinda funny how in my 3.5 years of going to CCF, I've never once been to Westcourt. I almost wasn't going to go, 'cause I found out at the last minute that there was Smash Brothers going on at some other guys' house, and a bunch of other people were going there instead. I was thinking of calling Duy and inviting him over, but I figured that he probably was in the middle of a raid or something, so I didn't.
Finally, Splinter Cell is a very...unforgiving and ninjalicious game. I guess maybe it doesn't help that I've never really played any other games like it before. It was pretty easy for me to get spotted by the enemies, and then I always felt that I had to shoot them so many times in order to kill them. I also didn't like the fact that the game just throws you into the first mission with no story background at all basically. There is a tutorial mode that you can try first, but it's pretty plain and not well-laid out in some areas. It's pretty unimaginative and doesn't really prepare you that well for the real game. The game also has annoying long save/load times, and seemingly redundant status messages. (For example, after saving your game, a message pops up and says "Your game has been saved." and then you have to confirm again.)
In the second mission of the game, you have to find and get information out of this terrorist dude named Jong. And so me and Duy figured that we'd have to just locate him and knock him out. So at the start, we see two terrorist guys talking, and one of them is on the roof, of a short, one-story building, and the other is on the same level as us. So we kill both of them, and then we find out that the guy on the roof was actually the guy we were supposed to interrogate! Whoops...they could've at least given us some way to identify him. :P We retry the level a few times, and try many other methods of capturing the target, such as knocking him out from behind, or using a flash bang on him. Every time, we got the message, "Oh my God, what were you thinking, you killed Jong!?" and we had to restart. How a flash bang kills someone, I don't know, but I thought that was pretty dumb. Anyways, we were stuck until we finally looked in the manual and found out that there was a way to interrogate bad guys in the game. :P (Perhaps something they should've also showed us in the tutorial.)
There were also many times where we'd be walking carefully against the wall, when all of a sudden we'd come under from some unknown location and die within a seconds. So "from where!?" like. Made the game pretty frustrating. So, in conclusion, although I wouldn't mind trying it more, Splinter Cell probably isn't a game we'll be playing much of. :P It's a good thing that you didn't spend that much money on it, Bao.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
It has gone full circle...
And so, after some thought over a long period of time, that I've decided that I will try to start blogging again. I always thought it to be a worthwhile activity, though I always got lazy, and never really wrote much of substance usually. I had all these dreams of posting thought provoking and interesting questions and arguments, but I "never got around to it." My 'new' blog might end up like my other ones, but I'm hoping it won't go down the same road. I put 'new' in quotes because I've decided to try and go back to my old xanga site, to try and get a fresh start and perhaps leave some of the bad stuff about this blog behind. Expect to see something up there in time. :)
[Edit]: Hmmm...after thinking about it more and talking with Wen and other people, I've decided to remake my Blogger blog and use it as my main one instead. I will, however, probably end up updating both this one and my xanga at the same time, so that people who only usually check one of them will know that I've updated. :P At least now I don't have to use Haloscan anymore.
[Edit]: Hmmm...after thinking about it more and talking with Wen and other people, I've decided to remake my Blogger blog and use it as my main one instead. I will, however, probably end up updating both this one and my xanga at the same time, so that people who only usually check one of them will know that I've updated. :P At least now I don't have to use Haloscan anymore.
Friday, December 09, 2005
Oh no sir
Had my first exam yesterday morning, BIOL 130. I think I got about 90/110, giving me a final mark of about 76% in the course. I could've easily done better though, had I finished more assignments or started studying earlier, but oh well...at least I used some of that time well by reading my stat 330 notes for my next exam. I should get to studying that soon...
Dang, apparently, my chatterbox got deleted on Dec. 3rd. Though no really used it for a long time, there were probably posted that people made a long time ago, that I would've wanted to keep for old time's sake. Mostly made by people who I don't really see that often anymore, heh. I'd kept it alive many times by just posting random junk on it when it was threatened with deletion due to unuse...but this time I think I saw the email but then got distracted and forgot about it...it was also more annoying to update it since I started using Firefox.
So now a little nugget of Magic Ravnica info I never really noticed before. Have you ever wondered why this spell
is called Lightning HELIX? and not something like "Lightning Blast" (okay, that's been done before) or "Lightning Swirl" (that sounds dumb) or maybe "Lightning Spiral"?(that's a bit better sounding) Well, if you think about it, what old school cards is this card a combination of? Namely, Lightning Bolt and Healing Salve. Get it now? It's another play on words - Lightning HEAL-ix. :P It's interesting and cool how I never noticed that one before, considering how much I like puns. Also, it helps to explain how this spell can work flavourwise in Red/White when most people would've expected this card to be black; it's not actually draining life from anything, the surge of DNA-shaped lightning is reinvigorating you and at the same time burning your opponent. The Boros seem to know how to split the spell so that they only get the HP goodness part and their enemies get the fried-to-a-crisp part, heh.
Dang, apparently, my chatterbox got deleted on Dec. 3rd. Though no really used it for a long time, there were probably posted that people made a long time ago, that I would've wanted to keep for old time's sake. Mostly made by people who I don't really see that often anymore, heh. I'd kept it alive many times by just posting random junk on it when it was threatened with deletion due to unuse...but this time I think I saw the email but then got distracted and forgot about it...it was also more annoying to update it since I started using Firefox.
So now a little nugget of Magic Ravnica info I never really noticed before. Have you ever wondered why this spell
is called Lightning HELIX? and not something like "Lightning Blast" (okay, that's been done before) or "Lightning Swirl" (that sounds dumb) or maybe "Lightning Spiral"?(that's a bit better sounding) Well, if you think about it, what old school cards is this card a combination of? Namely, Lightning Bolt and Healing Salve. Get it now? It's another play on words - Lightning HEAL-ix. :P It's interesting and cool how I never noticed that one before, considering how much I like puns. Also, it helps to explain how this spell can work flavourwise in Red/White when most people would've expected this card to be black; it's not actually draining life from anything, the surge of DNA-shaped lightning is reinvigorating you and at the same time burning your opponent. The Boros seem to know how to split the spell so that they only get the HP goodness part and their enemies get the fried-to-a-crisp part, heh.
Friday, November 11, 2005
A bit late...
Well, this week it was Dimir Week on magicthegathering.com. And coincidentally, it just so happened that on Monday, I was "touched by a Moroii." If you don't get the reference, look below. Anyways, I had a pretty cool day on Monday, got to have a spontaneous dinner at East Side's with Duy, Brose, Wen, Jon Ting, and Betty. Then Wen, Brose, and Betty came over to play something we haven't played in a while, Mario Tennis. Or rather I should say, we played while Betty watched; it was Wen's first time playing, but even then, we all had forgotten how to play enough that the teams were fairly evenly matched no matter how we divided them. Then I had to go to prestudy, (which I only found out about the day before) and there we sat in a hot room, debating about semantics and free will vs. predestination. Wheee!
I had a weird week afterwards though, beasting through my stats assignment in a day in a morning (woke up at 5am the day it was due to finish it) and then procrastinating a lot of non-school stuff that I should've done. I guess I didn't have much energy left after that assignment. Somehow, my stat 330 quiz got sent to the wrong tutorial, so it didn't matter that I woke up late after my nap and didn't get there on time anyways. Then Thursday night, I went to Burger King with Duy and Wen, to use some of the cupons we got through the mail. (Finally we get some useful cupons, heh.) Then we went back to Wen's place to see Shadow of the Colossus. It is a very very unique game, not for everyone, but I can imagine myself enjoying, and I can definitely imagine David enjoying it.
Anyways, me and Annie aren't really that prepared for tonight's Bstudy...going to have to play it by ear and see how our group responds - if we'll have enough time for discussion on application methods or not. We only have one hour for the whole thing apparently, which really isn't that long. But oh well, I hope I don't really mess up.
oh...and since I have a "Birthday" Ravnica draft coming up, perhaps I should post some Ravnica info up here...so that people can be better prepared for it, and it'll be more exciting and fun, hehe.
I had a weird week afterwards though, beasting through my stats assignment in a day in a morning (woke up at 5am the day it was due to finish it) and then procrastinating a lot of non-school stuff that I should've done. I guess I didn't have much energy left after that assignment. Somehow, my stat 330 quiz got sent to the wrong tutorial, so it didn't matter that I woke up late after my nap and didn't get there on time anyways. Then Thursday night, I went to Burger King with Duy and Wen, to use some of the cupons we got through the mail. (Finally we get some useful cupons, heh.) Then we went back to Wen's place to see Shadow of the Colossus. It is a very very unique game, not for everyone, but I can imagine myself enjoying, and I can definitely imagine David enjoying it.
Anyways, me and Annie aren't really that prepared for tonight's Bstudy...going to have to play it by ear and see how our group responds - if we'll have enough time for discussion on application methods or not. We only have one hour for the whole thing apparently, which really isn't that long. But oh well, I hope I don't really mess up.
oh...and since I have a "Birthday" Ravnica draft coming up, perhaps I should post some Ravnica info up here...so that people can be better prepared for it, and it'll be more exciting and fun, hehe.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Hehe
Good times today...getting to rediscover Sunshine Express with Alex, and then hanging out with Ambrose and Wen afterwards, and discussing Magic stuff. Espeically being able to go through the most recent [i]The Play's the Thing[/i] article (on magicthegathering.com on Wednesdays) with Wen, and then have be interested enough to want to do another one. I'm kinda surprised that he actually liked them, heh. I'm looking forward to being able to discuss these kinds of things with more people.
Anyways, at first I was planning to continue my trend of using Ravnica rares for Cards of the Day, in order to send the message home to you guys that I really like Ravnica, and that I think it's a very good set - possibly the best set of all time even. But i think if you've talked to me at all recently, you'll have already gotten the message, haha. So today, I take a break from Ravnica to bring you another card with yet another double meaning embedded within. (sort of) What do you think?
(If the pic doesn't work, the card can be found at http://www.wizards.com/global/images/magic/ravnica/puppets_verdict.jpg)
Now, must sleep so that I'll be ready for quiz tomorrow, and be able to study later for midterms...........
Anyways, at first I was planning to continue my trend of using Ravnica rares for Cards of the Day, in order to send the message home to you guys that I really like Ravnica, and that I think it's a very good set - possibly the best set of all time even. But i think if you've talked to me at all recently, you'll have already gotten the message, haha. So today, I take a break from Ravnica to bring you another card with yet another double meaning embedded within. (sort of) What do you think?
(If the pic doesn't work, the card can be found at http://www.wizards.com/global/images/magic/ravnica/puppets_verdict.jpg)
Now, must sleep so that I'll be ready for quiz tomorrow, and be able to study later for midterms...........
Sunday, October 16, 2005
A whoops on a cold morning
CFC this morning was great. I really was kinda amazed...haha.
I forgot to add one more thing to my post yesterday. For those of you who like looking at pretty pictures and think that text spoilers are plain, or are just too lazy to click on the image links, may I present this for your viewing pleasure:
http://home.socal.rr.com/topdeck/RAV.html
It's a full colour image spoiler of Ravnica! So yeah...why bother getting the fat pack when you can view this online for free! (haha...j/k, fat packs are usually a really good deal...it has a lot more stuff than just the spoiler)
Anyways, time to do some beast studying...I'll update again sometime that's not soon.
Oh, right I was going try and make this Card of the Day thing and keep it up for a while. Well, okay, sure. For those of you that didn't notice, the flavour text on yesterday's card, Razia's Purification, has a double meaning. One to do with the flavour of the card, how it draws to mind images of Razia leading her Boros Legion and annhiliating all that stand in their way, and only sparing the 'chosen' people who are the followers and friends of the Boros. The other meaning has to do with the mechanic, 'cause only the chosen permanents will be spared. :P
With that being said, can you spot the double meaning in this specialized sorcery?
I forgot to add one more thing to my post yesterday. For those of you who like looking at pretty pictures and think that text spoilers are plain, or are just too lazy to click on the image links, may I present this for your viewing pleasure:
http://home.socal.rr.com/topdeck/RAV.html
It's a full colour image spoiler of Ravnica! So yeah...why bother getting the fat pack when you can view this online for free! (haha...j/k, fat packs are usually a really good deal...it has a lot more stuff than just the spoiler)
Anyways, time to do some beast studying...I'll update again sometime that's not soon.
Oh, right I was going try and make this Card of the Day thing and keep it up for a while. Well, okay, sure. For those of you that didn't notice, the flavour text on yesterday's card, Razia's Purification, has a double meaning. One to do with the flavour of the card, how it draws to mind images of Razia leading her Boros Legion and annhiliating all that stand in their way, and only sparing the 'chosen' people who are the followers and friends of the Boros. The other meaning has to do with the mechanic, 'cause only the chosen permanents will be spared. :P
With that being said, can you spot the double meaning in this specialized sorcery?
Saturday, October 15, 2005
I should've been studying today...
but somehow, I got distracted...and then I was tired due to not getting much sleep lately, and so I ended up wasting 3 hours today. :P Well, I better start reading Bio and studying for Stat 331 (or else I'll fail even more horribly) but I just wanted to post this little nugget I discovered recently. Perhaps I'll make this a recurring feature...kinda like "Card of the Day" on the official Magic site.
Anyways, take a look at this card:
It's funny; can you see why?
Little details like this, which shows that they're paying attention to how the set is presented, is what makes Ravnica stand out in my opinion.
(btw, sry if you already saw this where I posted it elsewhere and are disappointed that I didn't post anything "new")
Anyways, take a look at this card:
It's funny; can you see why?
Little details like this, which shows that they're paying attention to how the set is presented, is what makes Ravnica stand out in my opinion.
(btw, sry if you already saw this where I posted it elsewhere and are disappointed that I didn't post anything "new")
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Cool Magic related course info
Earlier today, I was reading stuff for my BIOL tutorial next week, about the origins and definitions of cell biology words. Part of the work we had to do for the next tutorial was use a list of Latin and Greek word stems, and figure out the definitions of ten complicated multi-syllable words that were related to the course. While reading through the list of definitions, I cam across this one:
Phy - to grow
which is appropriate, because it reminded me of this little guy from Ravnica:
For a cool story about Phytohydra, see Bao's blog, specifically the post entitled "Ravnica". It's funny how I usually manage to see so much Magic related stuff in my day to day activities some days. Most of the time, it's nothing much to write about, like some prof mentioning the name of a card that's also a common English word. But other times, interesting things pop up like this, or one lecture where I remember the prof used like 3 Magic card names in less than a minute or so. :P
Phy - to grow
which is appropriate, because it reminded me of this little guy from Ravnica:
For a cool story about Phytohydra, see Bao's blog, specifically the post entitled "Ravnica". It's funny how I usually manage to see so much Magic related stuff in my day to day activities some days. Most of the time, it's nothing much to write about, like some prof mentioning the name of a card that's also a common English word. But other times, interesting things pop up like this, or one lecture where I remember the prof used like 3 Magic card names in less than a minute or so. :P
Monday, September 26, 2005
Kratos is awesome - part 2
Okay, this post is just to hold the comments for the longer post below. Read ahead! ENjoy!
Kratos is awesome
It's Bao again! Yes, I graduated, but now I'm visiting Waterloo, and one of the things I'd say I'd do for sure was to update Alan's blog! So Alan is at school now, until 10:20, so I think I'll take the next hour to update the blog.
So what am I doing here, on Alan's blog? I don't know if you want me to write about what Alan did over the summer. Sure, I can give my interpretation about what he did during the summer... I can take clues from our msn conversations and say "he was volunteering" or "he went camping a few times", but that's not really it.
I can also punish alan for not writing for so long by writing bad stuff in this blog, but that's not really fair to you readers, is it? So that's not really it.
I think, mostly, I will just write different stuff, so that you don't have to look at whatever we were looking at before for the past 205 days. So first, I'll change tht title of this post to "Kratos is awesome". Now there's something we can stand to read everytime we visit this blog. Even if it's not updated, we'll still be kinda happy because we are reminded that Kratos is awesome.
Secondly, I'll do to Alan's blog what I did to both my other blogs. Hey Alan, are you reading this? If so, this change should make it easier (at least for me), for you to start blogging again. Look up. See the description of your blog? See the last period in the elipses? You can click on that now, and then you can easily create a new blog post. If you have cookies on this computer and stuff, you can have it so you don't need to put in your password again, and then you just start writing.
It's so useful. I have it on both my blogs too. I no longer have to open a new browser window to go to blogger.com and sign in and stuff. It's just one-click and you can write your post, or copy and paste it from MS-Word or however you do it.
Now that I'm done talking about the changes, it's time to go on to the blog post. So I said this post should be more interesting to read than the other one, but so far just the title is more interesting. So what gives? Well... I dunno. If you want Alan to write stuff, then... well, first I made it easier for him to write stuff, at least, it's that way for me. (as a bonus, look to see if you can find the secret links in both my blogs).
Maybe Alan also needs to be... different about his posts? See, that's why I have 2 blogs! Each blog has a different type of expectation for its readers, or something like that. I think Alan should just write something every day, maybe make it a routine thing, would be best. Either that, or something every week, make it a routine thing. Or we'll see. I think blogging is fun, lots of people think so too, so I think Alan should think so too. Let's give reasons why!
Umm... discussion is cool :) There. That's a sole reason for writing blog posts. They can be boring posts about what you did (unless you did something awesome), or you can write something you found out in Magic (that 3d magic thing was pretty nifty), or you can just put up a funny joke you found somewhere. Or you can do what Jia did and copy and paste a few parts of my message boards on, although I don't recommend that. It's such a cop-out thing.
OOOh! You can copy and paste msn conversations which were pretty funny or stupid. Those are always fun to read, aren't they? Anyway, so the point of the story is, people want you to blog more, and it doesn't really matter all too much what it is. It's like that garfield cartoon where the guy says that something is on sale, even though it isn't; and people will flock to it, even if it's twice the price as usual, but they will because "it's on sale". So, what I'm saying is, just put stuff "on sale", and people will "read" it even if it's "bad". Hehe.
This is a long post (since I still have 40 minutes to write stuff, and hey, if I only get to blog here once every 100-200 days, then I should make the most of it, right? you've been looking at the bunch of paragraphs below for the past 200 days, so now you get to look at THIS bunch of paragraphs for hopefully, less than 20 days, but possibly, up to 200 days). So this is a long post, so after all this I'll make another post up there so you don't have to scroll down all the way to read the comments.
I sure hope Alan blogs more. If this is his homepage, then blogging should be easy cuz you just click on the period there. Anyway, I still have some time, so I'll write... more!
Alan stopped playing WOW now, so he can be online more I think. I think Alan's sorta busy with school work nowadays, making sure his plan is in order so that he doesn't have to do too many extra terms, or that he won't get screwed over when he figures out those credits he did in Engineering don't count or whatever.
Alan did a lot of volunteering this summer, instead of a paying job, which is okay, always more stuff to add to your resume, right? He also went camping a few times, and he did stuff with his volunteer group at the end of his contract, like parties and bands and stuff. We played some more magic this summer, including an interesting "made-up set", that was fun. If it's interesting and short, Alan might blog about it later, or you can read it a few weeks ago on my blogs.
Let's see... Alan's friends... I'm doing okay - I'm out of school, but now I find myself too free. I don't have a job so I just sit and play games all day, or I work on my creative stuff. The other day I made this sweet flash movie, I won't solicitate it here, but wait for it on my blog in the next few weeks. So while I was in school I was wishing I was out of school, and now that I'm out of school... well, it's nice, but if I had to do something, I guess school wouldn't be that bad. Just not math.
Duy - he still plays WOW, and I think he still plays FFXI, so if you want to chat with him, MSN and AIM are hardly reliable, so I suggest you buy other instant messengers such as WOW and FFXI.
I'm not sure how Alex is doing, and I haven't talked to Diana or Vicki for a while. Jason's doing great in Japan, as you can tell from his blog. And then there's David, whom we all know about now from reading his blog, so I won't get into that much detail for now. Good luck David, keep us posted.
Loren is our new roommate, and when I say our, I mean Alan and Duy. I'm not here anymore. Technically if I was still here, Loren and I would be sleeping in the same bed ;) but alas, that's not the case. From what I gather, Loren and Duy-and-Alan don't interact much. Oh well. I said hi to her yesterday, she's a nice girl. And I know one of her friends, he came over yesterday and I hear he comes over all the time, so that's kinda cool.
It's 10:05 now, so I have about 20 minutes left. In the world of anime, Alan's seem FF7 Advent Children, which is pretty wicked. I brought over FMA and Gankutsuou, so maybe this week he can catch up on some of FMA, while I rewatch some of Gankutsuou, which I do all the time at home anyway. The art style (when not in motion) is soo beautiful, so pretty and textured. When in motion, it's... interesting, to say the least, as a lot of you already know.
in the world of videogames, I betcha Duy and Alan haven't been playing Paper Mario. Actually, they're playing a lot of X-Men Legends now, which Ambrose bought from Toys-R-Us for $15, which is a sweet deal. Anyway, there's a Paper Mario speedrun up on SDA now, so that's kinda cool. But yeah, Duy and Alan should play through Paper Mario - it's a really neat gem and it's a lot of fun (fun play, funny scenes, etc).
I got Graffiti Kingdom for PS2 and Burnout Revenge for Xbox. They both sure are fun. Graffiti Kingdom is a one-of-a-kind game, but I doubt you want to read about it here.
... darn, I didn't copy and paste the whole file into notepad, so I'm missing the last two paragraphs below. Alan signed me into blogger before he left for class, but I guess the cookie or whatever expired, cuz now I went to post and I'm back at the sign-in screen. So I'll wait for him to get back, so I can copy and paste this part back in and post it! And then I have to post that other piece too.
So as I was saying... I don't remember. I think I was just wrapping it up. I'm in 'Loo this week, I hope I get to watch CSI at Wen's house today (I looove CSI, didcha know that?) and... hopefully Alan will post a new post within a few days of reading this. Anyway, I need to check my e-mail before he gets back, so I better finish this off.
Thanks for reading. Hopefully we'll get some new content in a few days, otherwise, I'll be back in about 2-6 months. See ya!
... okay, it's 10:45, Alan's not back yet. So I can still write more stuff in this notepad, but I really don't know if I want to or need to.
oh, it's 10:49. He's back. yay, now I can finally post. Thanks for reading!
REMINDER TEXT: Do not post comments below, post them in the next entry.
So what am I doing here, on Alan's blog? I don't know if you want me to write about what Alan did over the summer. Sure, I can give my interpretation about what he did during the summer... I can take clues from our msn conversations and say "he was volunteering" or "he went camping a few times", but that's not really it.
I can also punish alan for not writing for so long by writing bad stuff in this blog, but that's not really fair to you readers, is it? So that's not really it.
I think, mostly, I will just write different stuff, so that you don't have to look at whatever we were looking at before for the past 205 days. So first, I'll change tht title of this post to "Kratos is awesome". Now there's something we can stand to read everytime we visit this blog. Even if it's not updated, we'll still be kinda happy because we are reminded that Kratos is awesome.
Secondly, I'll do to Alan's blog what I did to both my other blogs. Hey Alan, are you reading this? If so, this change should make it easier (at least for me), for you to start blogging again. Look up. See the description of your blog? See the last period in the elipses? You can click on that now, and then you can easily create a new blog post. If you have cookies on this computer and stuff, you can have it so you don't need to put in your password again, and then you just start writing.
It's so useful. I have it on both my blogs too. I no longer have to open a new browser window to go to blogger.com and sign in and stuff. It's just one-click and you can write your post, or copy and paste it from MS-Word or however you do it.
Now that I'm done talking about the changes, it's time to go on to the blog post. So I said this post should be more interesting to read than the other one, but so far just the title is more interesting. So what gives? Well... I dunno. If you want Alan to write stuff, then... well, first I made it easier for him to write stuff, at least, it's that way for me. (as a bonus, look to see if you can find the secret links in both my blogs).
Maybe Alan also needs to be... different about his posts? See, that's why I have 2 blogs! Each blog has a different type of expectation for its readers, or something like that. I think Alan should just write something every day, maybe make it a routine thing, would be best. Either that, or something every week, make it a routine thing. Or we'll see. I think blogging is fun, lots of people think so too, so I think Alan should think so too. Let's give reasons why!
Umm... discussion is cool :) There. That's a sole reason for writing blog posts. They can be boring posts about what you did (unless you did something awesome), or you can write something you found out in Magic (that 3d magic thing was pretty nifty), or you can just put up a funny joke you found somewhere. Or you can do what Jia did and copy and paste a few parts of my message boards on, although I don't recommend that. It's such a cop-out thing.
OOOh! You can copy and paste msn conversations which were pretty funny or stupid. Those are always fun to read, aren't they? Anyway, so the point of the story is, people want you to blog more, and it doesn't really matter all too much what it is. It's like that garfield cartoon where the guy says that something is on sale, even though it isn't; and people will flock to it, even if it's twice the price as usual, but they will because "it's on sale". So, what I'm saying is, just put stuff "on sale", and people will "read" it even if it's "bad". Hehe.
This is a long post (since I still have 40 minutes to write stuff, and hey, if I only get to blog here once every 100-200 days, then I should make the most of it, right? you've been looking at the bunch of paragraphs below for the past 200 days, so now you get to look at THIS bunch of paragraphs for hopefully, less than 20 days, but possibly, up to 200 days). So this is a long post, so after all this I'll make another post up there so you don't have to scroll down all the way to read the comments.
I sure hope Alan blogs more. If this is his homepage, then blogging should be easy cuz you just click on the period there. Anyway, I still have some time, so I'll write... more!
Alan stopped playing WOW now, so he can be online more I think. I think Alan's sorta busy with school work nowadays, making sure his plan is in order so that he doesn't have to do too many extra terms, or that he won't get screwed over when he figures out those credits he did in Engineering don't count or whatever.
Alan did a lot of volunteering this summer, instead of a paying job, which is okay, always more stuff to add to your resume, right? He also went camping a few times, and he did stuff with his volunteer group at the end of his contract, like parties and bands and stuff. We played some more magic this summer, including an interesting "made-up set", that was fun. If it's interesting and short, Alan might blog about it later, or you can read it a few weeks ago on my blogs.
Let's see... Alan's friends... I'm doing okay - I'm out of school, but now I find myself too free. I don't have a job so I just sit and play games all day, or I work on my creative stuff. The other day I made this sweet flash movie, I won't solicitate it here, but wait for it on my blog in the next few weeks. So while I was in school I was wishing I was out of school, and now that I'm out of school... well, it's nice, but if I had to do something, I guess school wouldn't be that bad. Just not math.
Duy - he still plays WOW, and I think he still plays FFXI, so if you want to chat with him, MSN and AIM are hardly reliable, so I suggest you buy other instant messengers such as WOW and FFXI.
I'm not sure how Alex is doing, and I haven't talked to Diana or Vicki for a while. Jason's doing great in Japan, as you can tell from his blog. And then there's David, whom we all know about now from reading his blog, so I won't get into that much detail for now. Good luck David, keep us posted.
Loren is our new roommate, and when I say our, I mean Alan and Duy. I'm not here anymore. Technically if I was still here, Loren and I would be sleeping in the same bed ;) but alas, that's not the case. From what I gather, Loren and Duy-and-Alan don't interact much. Oh well. I said hi to her yesterday, she's a nice girl. And I know one of her friends, he came over yesterday and I hear he comes over all the time, so that's kinda cool.
It's 10:05 now, so I have about 20 minutes left. In the world of anime, Alan's seem FF7 Advent Children, which is pretty wicked. I brought over FMA and Gankutsuou, so maybe this week he can catch up on some of FMA, while I rewatch some of Gankutsuou, which I do all the time at home anyway. The art style (when not in motion) is soo beautiful, so pretty and textured. When in motion, it's... interesting, to say the least, as a lot of you already know.
in the world of videogames, I betcha Duy and Alan haven't been playing Paper Mario. Actually, they're playing a lot of X-Men Legends now, which Ambrose bought from Toys-R-Us for $15, which is a sweet deal. Anyway, there's a Paper Mario speedrun up on SDA now, so that's kinda cool. But yeah, Duy and Alan should play through Paper Mario - it's a really neat gem and it's a lot of fun (fun play, funny scenes, etc).
I got Graffiti Kingdom for PS2 and Burnout Revenge for Xbox. They both sure are fun. Graffiti Kingdom is a one-of-a-kind game, but I doubt you want to read about it here.
... darn, I didn't copy and paste the whole file into notepad, so I'm missing the last two paragraphs below. Alan signed me into blogger before he left for class, but I guess the cookie or whatever expired, cuz now I went to post and I'm back at the sign-in screen. So I'll wait for him to get back, so I can copy and paste this part back in and post it! And then I have to post that other piece too.
So as I was saying... I don't remember. I think I was just wrapping it up. I'm in 'Loo this week, I hope I get to watch CSI at Wen's house today (I looove CSI, didcha know that?) and... hopefully Alan will post a new post within a few days of reading this. Anyway, I need to check my e-mail before he gets back, so I better finish this off.
Thanks for reading. Hopefully we'll get some new content in a few days, otherwise, I'll be back in about 2-6 months. See ya!
... okay, it's 10:45, Alan's not back yet. So I can still write more stuff in this notepad, but I really don't know if I want to or need to.
oh, it's 10:49. He's back. yay, now I can finally post. Thanks for reading!
REMINDER TEXT: Do not post comments below, post them in the next entry.
Friday, March 04, 2005
Bao is blogging for Alan again
Hey all, how is everyone doing? Bao here (Alan’s roommate). If you haven't noticed already, I wrote 2 of the 3 most recent blog entries, and now here's another blog entry. Alan's on the way to class now, which I'm supposed to be in, but due to some confusion and hints that Jason gave me (by kidding about not going to class), I suddenly had the urge to not go to class, so that's why I'm here. Like, I woke up, to go to class, but then Jason came in and kidded about not going, and then I just decided not to go.
So… I’m here, all alone, for the next hour or so. I should probably go see the math undergrad office, to make sure I’m graduating this term… I probably should’ve done that early in January, but I kept putting it off. And today, is no different.
So… I’m here, as Bao, writing on Alan’s blog… not sure if I should write about me, or write about Alan, or whatever else. Anyway, Alan’s okay. He’s in good condition, he’s fine, nothing’s wrong with him, although he slipped on the ice a few weeks ago. Didn’t break anything or anything like that. I haven’t slipped on the ice yet, I’m glad.
Alan got a new laptop, a couple weeks ago, maybe a month, it’s been a while. It’s a dell, not an MDG, so it’s gotta be better than the MDG, and it is. The videocard and all that is snazzy enough to handle World of Warcraft, which is what he still is doing, for many hours during the day. Might not be the average of 8 hours a day anymore, but it’s still at least 5 or 6, on average, per day. It’s like, it’s been out for 30+31+31+10, so 100 days, and he’s played at least… 27 days? Maybe 30, so it’s close.
So that’s what Duy, Jason, and Alan have been doing. Me? No, not me. I’m not a fan of MMORPGs… the going around, collecting stuff, clicking on enemies… not my thing. So I decided against buying it, or playing it… although I did play the beta. I wasn’t a fan of MMORPGs prior to WoW, and Raymond kept bugging me to join him in MMORPGs, so if I was going to try any, it would make sense to try the best of the best. So I did download the beta, and got Duy and Jason hooked onto it. Damn.
I wasn’t sure if Alan got hooked onto it, since he only tried it out for a few hours at the end of the open beta. I thought it was more of a peer pressure thing that he got involved into world of warcraft, but now he seems to be enjoying it a lot, and playing with the others a lot… A LOT… so I guess he actually does like it.
So no, I’m not playing world of warcraft. I’m spending the rest of the time talking on msn, watching stuff, etc… which is sometimes conflicting with WoW, when I try to download anime, bit torrent eats the bandwidth so the others complain. So sometimes I leave my computer on at night, downloading from 1:00 am until noon, but sometimes that doesn’t even work because the others will still be playing until 4:00 am. It’s happened a lot of times where I’ve seen Alan still awake at 4:00 am, playing WoW… or at 1:30, when we have an 8:30 class.
So the others are playing world of warcraft, 7/7, paying a monthly fee of about $15 Canadian, I think. We considered getting xbox live, but we haven’t gotten around to it yet, and I’m not sure if we’ll play a lot of online games. Anyway, while they’re paying $15 per month, I’ve found me a much more expensive hobby.
I play poker. I play poker in real life, I play poker online. Well, offline, I vary, sometimes I’m up $10-40, sometimes I’m down $10-40, or more. I have good days and bad days, but altogether I’m definitely getting better. Online, it also varies… a few weeks ago I easily made $100, then the next week it was so confusing because I kept losing money, so I lost $60 pretty easily. So I’m going back to the easy, low-cash games and steadily rising again.
So what else is new… my marks are okay, Alan’s marks I think are okay too. Recently, there was a super smash brothers melee tournament, which a bunch of us participated in. Duy got first, I did okay, Alan did okay… argh, I keep wanting to talk in Alan’s point of view, like I did several blog posts ago. Anyway… that was fun. I should say, read Duy’s blog, or my blog, or Jason’s blog, or Ambrose’s blog, for more details… well, Jason’s blog doesn’t have that many details.
Well, we did have a Betrayers of Kamigawa (Magic) draft a few weeks ago, and that was also fun. So… that’s what we’ve been doing. Magic, SSBM, WoW for most of the house, Poker for me. I’m almost graduating, but I don’t really have good plans for the future yet, better work on those. I’m only taking 3 courses right now, since I only need 2 to graduate, so I have lots of free time… instead of sleeping or playing some poker, maybe I should make stuff… like, movies and videos… or pictures, or whatever. Or practice programming or animation or anything like that…
Food… we still don’t cook! Man, we should really cook. We hear about how Ambrose cooks, and Andy cooks, and Lachlan cooks, and how they don’t like to spend money eating out, or they just don’t like eating out in general… hmmm… now that I think about it, I should put this blog update in my post. But it’s okay, share the wealth, right? Force you guys to read this absurdly long post, hahahaha… Maybe I’ll post a shortened version on my livejournal though, since I haven’t blogged in that for a while either. Anyway, so yeah, all these people are cooking, saving money, eating food that’s actually healthy, tastes better, and … not too hard to make? And cooking is a good universal skill… even though pastas are easy to make, it’ll still be a good start, to make pastas and meats again, instead of eating out, or cooking microwave dinners.
Continuing about food… we love chicken wings, or at least, I do. We could go crazy and have chicken wings 4 days a week… Morty’s, Molly Bloom’s, the place at WCRI, and then Morty’s on Thursday again… but we’re not that crazy. Although we’ve been to Morty’s twice during the past 2 weeks (on the Monday) and Molly Bloom’s on one of the Tuesdays… hehe. Chicken wings are soo good! First, it’s chicken, which is great, and then there’s sauce and batter. They’re easy to pick up, easy to eat and finish. You feel so accomplished when you eat all the meat around a bone, or clearing a chicken wing till there’s absolutely no meat yet.
So they taste good, they’re relatively cheap, and the atmosphere is pretty good. At Morty’s it might be loud, but at the table when we’re sharing chicken wings (not so much at Morty’s but more at Molly Bloom’s), it’s like a nice family dinner. We don’t have many “family” dinners, since most places it’s pretty expensive to have a family dinner, where we eat together and share stuff. I’m not talking like, Mikey’s, sitting at a table and eating, but a more together dinner… like at Chinese restaurants where we order meals for 4, or yes, Wings.
So wings are great, and we eat a lot of wings. Maybe I’m craving some now… anyway, it’s 2:46, so I can still write more, for another 40 minutes. Technically, I still write when Alan is back, but I rather post by then… I don’t really like it when people see me during the process of doing something, and I like it when he comes back, he checks his blog, and he’s like, “ummm damn, that is beastage.” Because it’s so long. However, typing on this notebook keyboard isn’t to the best of my liking.
Since September, Bao (ARGH!) I mean… me… I… I had TV installed because I wanted to watch TV. Mainly, SpikeTV just started its 7pm, 8pm, weekday CSI Las Vegas thing, where they show backtoback episodes of CSI every day. Plus a new episode of CSI Miami on Monday, CSI New York on Wednesday (which I STILL HAVE NOT SEEN) and CSI Las Vegas on Thursday, I have plenty of CSI. And since then I started watching Conan and Leno, and that’s been pretty good. I got a TV Tuner, so instead of wasting my time downstairs watching TV, I can watch TV and talk on msn or do homework at the same time. So it’s nice.
But since then, Alan and Jason and Duy don’t watch TV a lot, so basically I’m spending a lot of money just for me to watch TV. I thought Alan would enjoy watching CSI with me every day, but he hasn’t done it, so I dunno. He’s watched a few times, but not enough to make TV a worthwhile investment. Anyway, Alan approached me the other day and he said we would cancel tv, and I agreed, since it was costing way too much relative to how I was using it.
Anyway, just a couple days ago, Jason watched his first episode of CSI (any of them, in this case, Monday night Miami), and now he’s hooked. That same day I already had borrowed some DVDs from home, and we watched another 2 episodes. For the past 2 days, we’ve seen 1 or 2 episodes of CSI on those days too. So now he’s hooked, yay! So we’ll be watching a lot more CSI together. It gets Alan away from the auction house too (in WoW).
So let’s see… we covered videogames, and food, and tv, and school… as for movies, can’t say we’ve done a lot lately. Lately, the “in” thing at home is obtaining movies from other people who can get them, so while I’ve seen The Incredibles in theatres, we were able to obtain it on DVD shortly after it came out. So I’ve shown it to Alan and… Lachlan, and they enjoyed it. Jason wasn’t here at the time, so it was too bad. He should see it one day.
On the same note, I recently watched Ong-Bak, on DVD. I’m not sure if it was the same as in the theatres, with the subtitles and non-English language, but… I didn’t like it too much. This post is already pretty long, so I won’t post a review of it yet, but I didn’t like it so much. It felt a bit… contrived, that’s the word that Wen might use to describe something, hehe. Like, the big thing was that all the stunts are real, with no wires or stunt doubles… it looked like the movie was based on individual scenes, where the dude would purposely show off and show everyone “I can do this stunt without wires”.
For example, at one point he’s running through an alley way, being chased, and all along the way there will be people holding boxes or something, and there will be these obscure obstacles, like a small loop he has to “jump through without wires”, and these two vertical panes of glass with a thin vertical gap in the middle which he has to “flip through without wires”, and this frying pan and table which he has to “jump and roll over without wires”… it’s so… weird.
And every now and then he would jump and hit or kick his opponent, and then they’ll do it again in slow motion in the same angle, to emphasize that he did it “without wires”. So I felt the story wasn’t so good, the acting wasn’t great, the cast wasn’t too memorable (it wasn’t hoorrrrrible), and…. Yeah, everything felt like it was set so he can show the audience “wow, I’m cool, I don’t need to use special effects to do this stunt.” That’s what I felt.
I also saw a movie called Godsend, it wasn’t so good, and the ending wasn’t happy at all… I think it was supposed to be a happy ending, but it just left things open ended. I also saw Mean Girls, which was okay. I like Lindsay Lohan, Freaky Friday was better though.
Did we tell you about Bo-De’s? Lachlan introduced it to us, it’s a place around Weber and Parkside, where they sell discounted food in bulk. Best example, is what we bought, is a bunch of no-name fudgeo cookies, 10 pounds, 10 bucks. It’s really good, they’re good cookies, it’s a good deal, and we still have some cookies left over since middle of February. There are also chocolates, candies, and other cookies there. I recommend you drive there and buy some cookies. I would do it again soon.
These days, we usually still purchase drinks from the convenience store. They no longer have the “two 2-litre coke products for $3.00” deal, so ice tea is more expensive now, but we still manage to buy some there. I like my ice tea diluted with water, so it’s less sweet, a bit less flavourful, but still much more flavourful than water. So it’s like drinking healthier ice tea, with still enough flavour and effect. Also, on my desk at all times is a 100g Toblerone, right now dark chocolate, since it’s so good. The Dark Chocolate kind is so rich, so that 1 piece is enough to fill a craving or whatever. Such a toblerone would last me a month, so I don’t have to buy a lot to feed my chocolate craving.
I feel like some iced tea now. BRB. Or Be Right Back. Or as Alan would say, “Bee Arr Bee”.
Anyway, did I tell you about my current obsession? Well, I did on my blog, but there was no opportunity for me to do it here. Anyway, when Alan gets back, he’s probably expecting a funny entry, but it’s not so funny, it’s just long and… descriptive. It’s 3:12 now, time has passed by, and I’m not even done writing yet, but I can end it soon. Anyway, you all have been reading so far, so here’s my obsessive song, download it, get obsessed to it too.
http://www.baomon.com/board/dragostea-din-tei.mp3
Let’s see… not much time left… 10 minutes…. Umm… I bought Need for Speed Underground at the end of last term, it’s fun, but lately I haven’t played it much. It’s a bit boring, yet still fun, and I haven’t unlocked everything yet. Anyway, I just wanted to get that out of the way.
We covered most of everything… except… Anime! ANIME! Recently I had a VSA anime-a-thon, Alan attended, Jason wasn’t there that weekend though, but it was fun. Ask Alan about the anime about Bread, it’s very enjoyable. As for me, I’m so hooked on Gankutsuou, which is a retelling of the count of Monte Cristo. It’s very captivating, if you can enjoy the weird… stylish… art animation. I recommend it.
Alright, I should wrap this up now, but the biggest event lately, was reading week, or for us, the reading moment. As it was last year, David and a few others visited us during reading week, to spend time in Waterloo. David really enjoyed it last time, this time was also okay I think. So that was fun, ate out, good food, good time had by all. After that, when we went home for the rest of the few days, I had a semi-party, had all of Duy’s friends come over. That was fun; the regular smash-a-thon, some Futurama in there, Settlers of Catan, Pool, and pizza. So, it was a good reading week.
Anyway, it’s 3:17 now, class ends around 3:20, and it takes 7 minutes to walk back. Hmm… I still have a few minutes, but I’m sure you all want to stop reading now and just post lots of comments to Alan and I. Come on, I gave you 5 Microsoft word pages of stuff to read, the least you can do is… comment… about the song… hehe…
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading. Let me know if you want to do this more often, or if you don’t want me to do this again, haha.
So, tell all your friends that Alan updated. Well, maybe not. If you like my update, spread the word to all those you like and love. If you hated my update, spread the word to all those you hate. (taken from www.nedroid.com , check it out, it’s one of Duy’s friends, he draws crazy pictures and comics).
Umm… 3:19… that sounds like time to go. Anyway… how to end this… maybe I should go downstairs and
So… I’m here, all alone, for the next hour or so. I should probably go see the math undergrad office, to make sure I’m graduating this term… I probably should’ve done that early in January, but I kept putting it off. And today, is no different.
So… I’m here, as Bao, writing on Alan’s blog… not sure if I should write about me, or write about Alan, or whatever else. Anyway, Alan’s okay. He’s in good condition, he’s fine, nothing’s wrong with him, although he slipped on the ice a few weeks ago. Didn’t break anything or anything like that. I haven’t slipped on the ice yet, I’m glad.
Alan got a new laptop, a couple weeks ago, maybe a month, it’s been a while. It’s a dell, not an MDG, so it’s gotta be better than the MDG, and it is. The videocard and all that is snazzy enough to handle World of Warcraft, which is what he still is doing, for many hours during the day. Might not be the average of 8 hours a day anymore, but it’s still at least 5 or 6, on average, per day. It’s like, it’s been out for 30+31+31+10, so 100 days, and he’s played at least… 27 days? Maybe 30, so it’s close.
So that’s what Duy, Jason, and Alan have been doing. Me? No, not me. I’m not a fan of MMORPGs… the going around, collecting stuff, clicking on enemies… not my thing. So I decided against buying it, or playing it… although I did play the beta. I wasn’t a fan of MMORPGs prior to WoW, and Raymond kept bugging me to join him in MMORPGs, so if I was going to try any, it would make sense to try the best of the best. So I did download the beta, and got Duy and Jason hooked onto it. Damn.
I wasn’t sure if Alan got hooked onto it, since he only tried it out for a few hours at the end of the open beta. I thought it was more of a peer pressure thing that he got involved into world of warcraft, but now he seems to be enjoying it a lot, and playing with the others a lot… A LOT… so I guess he actually does like it.
So no, I’m not playing world of warcraft. I’m spending the rest of the time talking on msn, watching stuff, etc… which is sometimes conflicting with WoW, when I try to download anime, bit torrent eats the bandwidth so the others complain. So sometimes I leave my computer on at night, downloading from 1:00 am until noon, but sometimes that doesn’t even work because the others will still be playing until 4:00 am. It’s happened a lot of times where I’ve seen Alan still awake at 4:00 am, playing WoW… or at 1:30, when we have an 8:30 class.
So the others are playing world of warcraft, 7/7, paying a monthly fee of about $15 Canadian, I think. We considered getting xbox live, but we haven’t gotten around to it yet, and I’m not sure if we’ll play a lot of online games. Anyway, while they’re paying $15 per month, I’ve found me a much more expensive hobby.
I play poker. I play poker in real life, I play poker online. Well, offline, I vary, sometimes I’m up $10-40, sometimes I’m down $10-40, or more. I have good days and bad days, but altogether I’m definitely getting better. Online, it also varies… a few weeks ago I easily made $100, then the next week it was so confusing because I kept losing money, so I lost $60 pretty easily. So I’m going back to the easy, low-cash games and steadily rising again.
So what else is new… my marks are okay, Alan’s marks I think are okay too. Recently, there was a super smash brothers melee tournament, which a bunch of us participated in. Duy got first, I did okay, Alan did okay… argh, I keep wanting to talk in Alan’s point of view, like I did several blog posts ago. Anyway… that was fun. I should say, read Duy’s blog, or my blog, or Jason’s blog, or Ambrose’s blog, for more details… well, Jason’s blog doesn’t have that many details.
Well, we did have a Betrayers of Kamigawa (Magic) draft a few weeks ago, and that was also fun. So… that’s what we’ve been doing. Magic, SSBM, WoW for most of the house, Poker for me. I’m almost graduating, but I don’t really have good plans for the future yet, better work on those. I’m only taking 3 courses right now, since I only need 2 to graduate, so I have lots of free time… instead of sleeping or playing some poker, maybe I should make stuff… like, movies and videos… or pictures, or whatever. Or practice programming or animation or anything like that…
Food… we still don’t cook! Man, we should really cook. We hear about how Ambrose cooks, and Andy cooks, and Lachlan cooks, and how they don’t like to spend money eating out, or they just don’t like eating out in general… hmmm… now that I think about it, I should put this blog update in my post. But it’s okay, share the wealth, right? Force you guys to read this absurdly long post, hahahaha… Maybe I’ll post a shortened version on my livejournal though, since I haven’t blogged in that for a while either. Anyway, so yeah, all these people are cooking, saving money, eating food that’s actually healthy, tastes better, and … not too hard to make? And cooking is a good universal skill… even though pastas are easy to make, it’ll still be a good start, to make pastas and meats again, instead of eating out, or cooking microwave dinners.
Continuing about food… we love chicken wings, or at least, I do. We could go crazy and have chicken wings 4 days a week… Morty’s, Molly Bloom’s, the place at WCRI, and then Morty’s on Thursday again… but we’re not that crazy. Although we’ve been to Morty’s twice during the past 2 weeks (on the Monday) and Molly Bloom’s on one of the Tuesdays… hehe. Chicken wings are soo good! First, it’s chicken, which is great, and then there’s sauce and batter. They’re easy to pick up, easy to eat and finish. You feel so accomplished when you eat all the meat around a bone, or clearing a chicken wing till there’s absolutely no meat yet.
So they taste good, they’re relatively cheap, and the atmosphere is pretty good. At Morty’s it might be loud, but at the table when we’re sharing chicken wings (not so much at Morty’s but more at Molly Bloom’s), it’s like a nice family dinner. We don’t have many “family” dinners, since most places it’s pretty expensive to have a family dinner, where we eat together and share stuff. I’m not talking like, Mikey’s, sitting at a table and eating, but a more together dinner… like at Chinese restaurants where we order meals for 4, or yes, Wings.
So wings are great, and we eat a lot of wings. Maybe I’m craving some now… anyway, it’s 2:46, so I can still write more, for another 40 minutes. Technically, I still write when Alan is back, but I rather post by then… I don’t really like it when people see me during the process of doing something, and I like it when he comes back, he checks his blog, and he’s like, “ummm damn, that is beastage.” Because it’s so long. However, typing on this notebook keyboard isn’t to the best of my liking.
Since September, Bao (ARGH!) I mean… me… I… I had TV installed because I wanted to watch TV. Mainly, SpikeTV just started its 7pm, 8pm, weekday CSI Las Vegas thing, where they show backtoback episodes of CSI every day. Plus a new episode of CSI Miami on Monday, CSI New York on Wednesday (which I STILL HAVE NOT SEEN) and CSI Las Vegas on Thursday, I have plenty of CSI. And since then I started watching Conan and Leno, and that’s been pretty good. I got a TV Tuner, so instead of wasting my time downstairs watching TV, I can watch TV and talk on msn or do homework at the same time. So it’s nice.
But since then, Alan and Jason and Duy don’t watch TV a lot, so basically I’m spending a lot of money just for me to watch TV. I thought Alan would enjoy watching CSI with me every day, but he hasn’t done it, so I dunno. He’s watched a few times, but not enough to make TV a worthwhile investment. Anyway, Alan approached me the other day and he said we would cancel tv, and I agreed, since it was costing way too much relative to how I was using it.
Anyway, just a couple days ago, Jason watched his first episode of CSI (any of them, in this case, Monday night Miami), and now he’s hooked. That same day I already had borrowed some DVDs from home, and we watched another 2 episodes. For the past 2 days, we’ve seen 1 or 2 episodes of CSI on those days too. So now he’s hooked, yay! So we’ll be watching a lot more CSI together. It gets Alan away from the auction house too (in WoW).
So let’s see… we covered videogames, and food, and tv, and school… as for movies, can’t say we’ve done a lot lately. Lately, the “in” thing at home is obtaining movies from other people who can get them, so while I’ve seen The Incredibles in theatres, we were able to obtain it on DVD shortly after it came out. So I’ve shown it to Alan and… Lachlan, and they enjoyed it. Jason wasn’t here at the time, so it was too bad. He should see it one day.
On the same note, I recently watched Ong-Bak, on DVD. I’m not sure if it was the same as in the theatres, with the subtitles and non-English language, but… I didn’t like it too much. This post is already pretty long, so I won’t post a review of it yet, but I didn’t like it so much. It felt a bit… contrived, that’s the word that Wen might use to describe something, hehe. Like, the big thing was that all the stunts are real, with no wires or stunt doubles… it looked like the movie was based on individual scenes, where the dude would purposely show off and show everyone “I can do this stunt without wires”.
For example, at one point he’s running through an alley way, being chased, and all along the way there will be people holding boxes or something, and there will be these obscure obstacles, like a small loop he has to “jump through without wires”, and these two vertical panes of glass with a thin vertical gap in the middle which he has to “flip through without wires”, and this frying pan and table which he has to “jump and roll over without wires”… it’s so… weird.
And every now and then he would jump and hit or kick his opponent, and then they’ll do it again in slow motion in the same angle, to emphasize that he did it “without wires”. So I felt the story wasn’t so good, the acting wasn’t great, the cast wasn’t too memorable (it wasn’t hoorrrrrible), and…. Yeah, everything felt like it was set so he can show the audience “wow, I’m cool, I don’t need to use special effects to do this stunt.” That’s what I felt.
I also saw a movie called Godsend, it wasn’t so good, and the ending wasn’t happy at all… I think it was supposed to be a happy ending, but it just left things open ended. I also saw Mean Girls, which was okay. I like Lindsay Lohan, Freaky Friday was better though.
Did we tell you about Bo-De’s? Lachlan introduced it to us, it’s a place around Weber and Parkside, where they sell discounted food in bulk. Best example, is what we bought, is a bunch of no-name fudgeo cookies, 10 pounds, 10 bucks. It’s really good, they’re good cookies, it’s a good deal, and we still have some cookies left over since middle of February. There are also chocolates, candies, and other cookies there. I recommend you drive there and buy some cookies. I would do it again soon.
These days, we usually still purchase drinks from the convenience store. They no longer have the “two 2-litre coke products for $3.00” deal, so ice tea is more expensive now, but we still manage to buy some there. I like my ice tea diluted with water, so it’s less sweet, a bit less flavourful, but still much more flavourful than water. So it’s like drinking healthier ice tea, with still enough flavour and effect. Also, on my desk at all times is a 100g Toblerone, right now dark chocolate, since it’s so good. The Dark Chocolate kind is so rich, so that 1 piece is enough to fill a craving or whatever. Such a toblerone would last me a month, so I don’t have to buy a lot to feed my chocolate craving.
I feel like some iced tea now. BRB. Or Be Right Back. Or as Alan would say, “Bee Arr Bee”.
Anyway, did I tell you about my current obsession? Well, I did on my blog, but there was no opportunity for me to do it here. Anyway, when Alan gets back, he’s probably expecting a funny entry, but it’s not so funny, it’s just long and… descriptive. It’s 3:12 now, time has passed by, and I’m not even done writing yet, but I can end it soon. Anyway, you all have been reading so far, so here’s my obsessive song, download it, get obsessed to it too.
http://www.baomon.com/board/dragostea-din-tei.mp3
Let’s see… not much time left… 10 minutes…. Umm… I bought Need for Speed Underground at the end of last term, it’s fun, but lately I haven’t played it much. It’s a bit boring, yet still fun, and I haven’t unlocked everything yet. Anyway, I just wanted to get that out of the way.
We covered most of everything… except… Anime! ANIME! Recently I had a VSA anime-a-thon, Alan attended, Jason wasn’t there that weekend though, but it was fun. Ask Alan about the anime about Bread, it’s very enjoyable. As for me, I’m so hooked on Gankutsuou, which is a retelling of the count of Monte Cristo. It’s very captivating, if you can enjoy the weird… stylish… art animation. I recommend it.
Alright, I should wrap this up now, but the biggest event lately, was reading week, or for us, the reading moment. As it was last year, David and a few others visited us during reading week, to spend time in Waterloo. David really enjoyed it last time, this time was also okay I think. So that was fun, ate out, good food, good time had by all. After that, when we went home for the rest of the few days, I had a semi-party, had all of Duy’s friends come over. That was fun; the regular smash-a-thon, some Futurama in there, Settlers of Catan, Pool, and pizza. So, it was a good reading week.
Anyway, it’s 3:17 now, class ends around 3:20, and it takes 7 minutes to walk back. Hmm… I still have a few minutes, but I’m sure you all want to stop reading now and just post lots of comments to Alan and I. Come on, I gave you 5 Microsoft word pages of stuff to read, the least you can do is… comment… about the song… hehe…
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading. Let me know if you want to do this more often, or if you don’t want me to do this again, haha.
So, tell all your friends that Alan updated. Well, maybe not. If you like my update, spread the word to all those you like and love. If you hated my update, spread the word to all those you hate. (taken from www.nedroid.com , check it out, it’s one of Duy’s friends, he draws crazy pictures and comics).
Umm… 3:19… that sounds like time to go. Anyway… how to end this… maybe I should go downstairs and
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Oh no, it's like, mmm...damn.
So I haven't blogged in a long time. But now am I blogging again, at the request of Bao. Anyways, there's not much I have to say at the moment. School this term seems harder than last term, even though I'm still taking a lot of courses with ppl that I know. WoW is progressing slowly at the moment. Jason and Ray are already level 60, while me and Duy are stuck catching up. Currently, I'm 54 while Duy is still 51. We joined a new guild yesterday under Ray's advice; hopefully it works out. It's supposed a cooler "raiding" guild than the more casual guild we were in before.
It's finally starting to get cold around Waterloo, so that sucks. I wonder if we'll end up having another snow day one of these days. Yesterday, I heard that the math and eng reading week has been renamed to "reading moment" over here. How fitting lol. I should be coming back home this weekend...'cause Bao needs to get his projector from home for his anime-a-thon. I could stay here I guess....'cause it's kinda annoying to have to go home for no reason...but then oh well, if I don't go home this weekend, probably can't go back next weekend either...so yeah.
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