03:03 a.m. Thursday, May 23, 2002

I'm building a new webpage. It's far from finished, but if you want to see the work in progress, surf over to http://www.qiguang.net. Okay, it's bedtime for me. *yawn*

01:41 p.m. Monday, May 6, 2002

Well, hi again :)

I guess I sort of left this blog a long time ago when school started getting busy and all that. Anyways, right now I'm trying to study for my physiology final (which is tomorrow) and I just had to vent about this very poorly written physiology textbook. It's the one by Guyton and Hall, and apparently the authors didn't pay attention during highschool physics class because they draw electric field lines from the negative end to the positive end. Hello?!?! Anyways, that's just one thing. The whole book itself is way too long winded. Simple concepts which could be explained in one or two sentences are instead used to fill up pages of text; not only that, but the same concepts are repeated over and over again throughout different sections of the book! I guess the authors like to hear themselves talk or something... :p And then there's the annoying sections like the section where they go on and on about something they call "Einthoven's Law" which is nothing more than simple KVL from basic circuit theory. Stuff like that is just plain annoying, because it feels like you're wasting your time reading a long-winded, substance-lacking text. They should rename the book from "textbook of medical physiology" to "physiology for dummies." Here's an excerpt from the book:

"If the net potential of lead I is positive, it is plotted in a positive direction along the lead I axis. Conversely, if this potential is negative, it is plotted in the negative direction."

09:10 a.m. Saturday, January 19, 2002

I haven't been updating recently because I've been working on my new computer, which I just finished building last night/this morning. It's working (yay!) and I'm typing at it at this moment. :) For those of you who are computer geeks, feel free to continue reading; for those of you with normal lives, sorry, the rest of this update will probably be pretty boring. ^^;;

Well, it's an AMD XP1900+ machine on an Asus mobo with the VIA KT266A chipset. The Asus mobo came with an extra Prmoise RAID controller, so even though I don't plan to use RAID, I can always use it to add more IDE devices. :) My HS/F is a Thermalright SK-6 with a Sanyo fan, and of course I used Arctic Silver for the CPU/HS interface. I am very happy with the Lian Li PC 67 case that I got; it's so easy to take apart and work with, the sliding mobo tray is very convenient, the thumbscrews were very nice to my fingers and the all Aluminum case is helping my mobo run at 24 degrees C. :) The Asus mobo came with onboard sound, but I was also able to get a SoundBlaster Live 5.1 card from newegg.com for about , which is a GREAT steal. My CDRW is a Plextor 24/10/40, which runs fine. Oh ya, my HD... I love this, it's a WD 100 GB drive, 7200 RPM and with an 8 MB Buffer! Woohoo! Hmm... for vidcard, I got the ATI Radeon 8500 AIW with 64 MB DDR. Oh, which brings me to my RAM... two 512 DDR PC2100 DIMMS for a total of 1 Gig! Yay! :D As for power supply, I got the Enermax 461 Watt supply because I plan on adding a lot more devices in the future (remember the Promise RAID controller? :)) The Enermax comes with a manually variable fan, which is pretty cool. (haha, pun ;)) And lastly, I got a NEC MultiSync 18 inch LCD monitor. All this took me about half a day to put together, including installation of Win2k and other software. But deciding which components to buy and finding them online took a couple weeks. One more thing before I end here-- I want to thank Troy for helping me realize that I had mistakenly plugged my CD-ROM drive into the Promise RAID controller and not the primary IDE controller; somehow I misread the mobo markings. Thanks Troy! :)

12:24 a.m. Friday, January 11, 2002

Not much has happened in the last couple days. I helped set up my dad's computer in the office at home, watched TV and did some work. I also went over to Jeff's place for a little bit and played some Final Fantasy X on his Playstation2; I want one. ;) Oh yeah, I did make some "Bha Zhang," a type of Taiwanese rice with meat, egg and other stuff cooked together inside several special leaves that are folded into a triangular ball-- it's kinda hard to explain unless you've seen it in person. Anyways, that was fun. :) I leave for Case tomorrow morning; I need to pick classes and register for them when I get there.

My friend, Justin, has a discussion site on the internet. Please visit it if you have time: http://justin.cerastes.org

10:24 p.m. Tuesday, January 8, 2002

I got back from NY last night. I didn't have much time to update this blog while I was in NY/NJ (largely due to the 100+ page problem set I was working on over vacation... ugh), so here's a quick wrap-up of the past two weeks.

I arrived at Newark airport on Dec. 27 and was very much please by the new airtrain they have running between the airport terminals and the NJ transit NE Corridor line. I stayed with Ted, Jon and Andrew in their apartment in Newport most of the time. I also took the train down to Princeton and stayed there for a couple days. Justin came to visit while I was in Newport, and it was really cool seeing him again. I got to see "A Beautiful Mind" in NYC with Jon and Eileen. One time Ted and I were eating at Seoul Garden in K-Town, and at the same time Eileen and Peter were eating in Chinatown-- racial identity crisis, anyone? :) (Ted and I are both Chinese, and Eileen and Peter are both Korean) Heheh, I thought that was pretty funny. For New Years Eve, John Yi and Sally Kim came up to Newport-- I actually wrote an update about that in my blog (see Jan. 3rd entry). The night before I left, Ted and I ate at this nice Japanese place in Newport. I had a glass of pretty good plum wine (which is one of the few wines I actually enjoy drinking), and the fish was really good.

Down in Princeton, despite all the work I had to do (I actually had to pull one allnighter to get the pset done in time -_-), I did get a chance to see a few people. I saw Will, Eugene, Calvin and Benji because I was staying at their place (thanks guys!), and Karen, Sarah and Linda who live next door. I actually spent a good amount of time talking with Karen... Karen, I think you should choose working for the CIA over Microsoft. :) I also got to see Jamie, Joyce and Emily, Amy, Jean-Paul, Neal, Mike, Matt, Tim, Rachel, Frank, Mark and David. But most of the time, I was actually in the computer lab working on my problem set. Argh... I didn't get a chance to see some people who I really wanted to see because of it. :( Sigh... I wish I had more time to actually be on vacation instead of doing work. Well, it was fun nonetheless.

I was able to eat lunch with Darren at Terriyaki Boy on Friday and we had a really good talk, catching up and sharing about life and all that. I also got to see Joy and Evan at church, as well as Pat, Kevin, Franki, Christine, Abigail and even little Sam. :) It's too bad Ken Chan wasn't there... I really wanted to talk with him and see how he's doing. On Saturday, Ted, Jane, Eugene, Karen and I went to Sunny Garden for a really good dinner. I also got to see Eileen again in Princeton the day before I left for home.

My flight back home was on the evening of the 7th, and by the morning of the 7th I still had some stuff I needed to print out for my pset, so I took the train back down to Princeton, luggage and all, and snuck into Firestone to write a couple more pages of code and print out some more stuff. I was finally able to fedex my pset out at 3:30 PM (I think the final pset was about 120 pages long), after which I ran back to catch the train for the airport. Thanks, Rachel, for helping me out last minute. :)

At the airport security check-in I was pulled aside and my bag was searched. They went through everything, even my snoopy pencil bag. And then, when they were looking in one of the pockets of my bag, much to my surprise, they found a small pocket knife that I had forgotten was in the bag-- I don't think I had taken that pocket knife out in over a year. Anyways, I graciously offered the security guy to keep my pocket knife, after which he asked me to take of my shoes so he could check for explosives. After that, I was finally allowed to pass through. My flight was delayed for about an hour, but eventually I got home.

When I got home last night I was pretty tired. Today I did my laundry, set up my dad's computer for him, dropped off some clothes at the dry cleaner's and watched TV. I miss NY and Princeton already; But I'm really glad I had the chance to go back and see a lot of my friends.

02:10 p.m. Saturday, January 5, 2002

It's really nice being back in nj/ny again. I really do prefer the East coast to the Midwest. Maybe it's because most of my friends are out here. Right now I'm working on a problem set that is due on the 7th, so hopefully I can finish it today and fedex it out by late afternoon. It feels weird to be doing work at Princeton again, since I've already graduated. Haha... I guess this place will always be associated with work and study. ^_^

One thing that has hit me since I left Princeton is just how rich Princeton is. In one of their new buildings they have three classrooms with laptops (IBM Thinkpads) at EACH desk! That's 32 laptops per classroom, times three classrooms; that makes 96 laptops, plus 3 laser printers, plus 3 dedicated print servers and a Microsoft optical wheel mouse for every laptop, all in one hallway. Oh yeah, there's also three more computer labs in the same hallway, two of them with 50 Sun workstations with flat panel displays and one of them with 30 Win2k machines. And then there's also a ,000 LCD projector in every classroom; even the chairs are amazingly comfortable! All this stuff within one 300 feet hallway... you'd never find this at Case Western or any other normal university. Sheesh... spoiled kids. heheh :)

01:56 a.m. Thursday, January 3, 2002

Happy new year! :D ~2.0.0.2~

So, what did you do for Christmas/New Years? I didn't do much. I spent Christmas with my family, then New Years with some friends in New York. I'm still in nj right now staying with my old roommate in newport. John Yi and Sally Kim came up on New Years eve night and we walked along the waterfront (which is actually just 20 steps away from our apartment) and took pictures. Then we came back and talked and watched the ball drop on tv. That was about it. I've been back down to Princeton mainly to work on some problem sets that are due on January 7. I'm starting to get really tired of riding on the trains all day... ah well. I'll be here in ny/nj for a couple more days, then I'll be back in Ohio and gradschool and all that.