Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Parents Weekend

Ok, I just finished a crapload of Econ homework. I should be set for the next week or so. Math homework is a different set of problems though (no pun intended), although that’s due next Thursday, so no rush. I also just realized that it is going to be “Family Homecoming Weekend” this weekend. Oh, what fun it’s going to be! No, seriously, I really want a change of pace in my life right now, that’s why I really can’t wait until it’s Thanksgiving break in which I can take a break and step outside of this college campus and back into the swing of city life.


But I was thinking about “Parents Weekend.” I mean, how is that going to be like? My roommates and I have already cleaned up our room (pretty much) and it’s definitely presentable. I little more tidying up and we’re set for cleanest room in the dorm. I have to admit, I still need to get on vacuuming the dorm. You see, I went outside to play some Frisbee on one damp day (it wasn’t raining outside, it was just damp because it rained the day before), and I was wearing my boots. So, naturally, the little pieces of grass stuck on to the sole of the boot and I didn’t realize this as I was walking down the stairs and into my room. Until one of my roommates pointed it out, I was just haphazardly spreading little pieces of green grass all over the dorm. When I went out of our room to survey the damage I had caused, sure enough, there was a trail of twigs and grass coming from the side entrance, down the stairs, and into our room. (Sorry dorm custodians! My bad!)


But it’s not just the cleanliness of our room that bothers me. It’s the cleanliness of EVERYTHING. And by everything, I mean, cleanliness of one’s white board outside his/her room (I mean, no words like “bitch I’m working,” or some kind of variant along those lines), cleanliness of one’s diction, cleanliness of the diction of those around you, etc. To Asian parents, that is surely the mark of how you’re living. If you’re living in a clean environment with ‘upright, decent people’ then you’ve been living a great life. Sadly, this is not the case anywhere except in places like…uh…Singapore. Thus, I cannot wait to see my parents’ reaction to the environ that I live in. I’m assuming that most people will clean up before their own parents arrive, but I don’t know. When visiting Fordham University in New York City, the god-awful smell emanating from the dorm that me and my parents went into was a turn-off enough to put that college on the lower end of ‘places I would want to go to school.’


Then, there comes the necessary trips to Wal-Mart with my parents. That’s going to be one hell of a shopping spree, I can already tell. I’m going to need to buy this, buy that, and buy everything in the store that will help me either: (1) be more productive in my studies (like a chair), (2) help me clean my environment in which I live (like some Lysol or Tilex), (3) some cold weather things (like gloves or a hat), or (4) something that should ‘keep me happy’ in their minds (like more food). I do not mind any of those things, and I shall just let them buy me things and I shall be happily grinning as I think about the upcoming Econ test I will be having or the upcoming rough draft of my East Asian History paper. All in all, I’m happy, I’m content, and I’m glad my parents are visiting.

What is this? Is this...wind?

So, I'm going to be taking a cue from one of the blogs I follow online and start out all my blogs in a chronological time sequence, starting with the description of the weather. (I know, I know, Kojima is an idiot, but he still writes a nice blog.)

The rain is coming down horribly today. Torrential rainstorms and 50 MPH winds. Wow. Plus, to make it all worse, it's like 30-40 degrees outside, and that's not even taking into account the certain windchill factor that makes you swear it's 20 degrees below the actual temperature! This must be the remants of Hurricane Wilma which ravaged Florida, Mexico, and parts of the Caribbean these past few weeks. But yeah, the weather was just so goshdarn shitty that I didn't even want to get up for my 9:30 class. I wanted to get breakfast with my roommate, however, so I diligently strapped on my boots, put on my rainjacket and prepared to go out into the unknown.


This week is going to be a fun week. We will probably get back all our midterms at our class meetings. Thus far, I have received two of my midterms, both of which apparently gives me an obligatory ticket to ride a rollercoaster. I don't know what rollercoaster. How is my emotional state today? Rickety like a wooden coaster? Or squeaky and imposing like a metal one? Who knows? I certainly don't know. But yeah, I was totally disappointed with my Government midterm. I thought I had it down, and that my minor mistakes (which I knew I made) would not bring me down so much. But I got a "B" in it, and since it's 30 percent of my grade, I guess that sucks. My professor tried to get the whole classes' hopes up though, when he mentioned that these are usually the lowest grades of the semester. He better be damn sure about that. Better news came when I got my Math midterm, I got an "A" in it, but that was not surprising. Coming from AB Calc AP with DeAndre Calhoun can prepare you for even the toughest math course. (As an aside: we were learning rectangular approximation methods today. I was just laughing to myself the entire time as my professor described LRAM, MRAM, and RRAM in extreme detail. I was like, F this, I can do this in my sleep!) I should be in Calc Honors or Multivariable Calculus at the moment, except I didn't want to weigh myself down too much at the beginning of my Colby career and I determined that a little review wouldn't hurt. So, only midterm left is East Asian Studies. I believe I got an excellent grade in that, seeing as my short identifications of terms were short essays in and of themselves. Except for the last identification of "Tang Taizong." I just blanked out on the important details on him, but I managed to eke out his dates and his biographical detail. However, I didn't explain his significance to Chinese History all too much. I hope the professor will be in a good mood and just say, "Oh well, this test would be marred if I made such a grievous markdown on this last ID. I shall give him an 'A.'" Yeah, like that will happen. o_O

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Google and its effects.

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So, Google has been in the news as of late. People are beginning to realize the genius behind the two guys behind it all. Having been first exposed to Google in my 6th grade computer lab class, I have seen their roots and I have seen how one little search engine could grow and transform into a 100 billion dollar empire. If you think about it, their goal was just to 'rank' pages according to how many weblinks that particular website had. The more the weblinks, the more relevance it had in your quest for the best website that would fit your needs. Simple really, but why couldn't anyone construct a web search engine that did that earlier? Why did it have to come down to two Stanford University students to build it from scratch out of their garage. Seeing as neither of them knew simple foundation coding, it was a recipe for impending disaster. Hence, that's the whole reason behind why Google's main page is so scarce and aesthetically unappealing. Pretty interesting stuff, huh?


But coming down to it all, Google made their big bucks when they
expanded out of the search engine market. The technology industry is
wide and ranging. Like Google, one can construct a tech firm focusing
entirely on one aspect of the industry (such as search engines, web
hosting, photo hosting, etc.). In the 7 years that Google has been up
and running, they have been expanding out and trying their hands at
somewhat crazy ideas like Google Earth, Google blog, Froogle, Google
Scholar, etc. Sure, some of these have been in R for a while,
but a few of them stand-out of the crowd. Larry Page and Sergey
Brin's "Blitzkreig" tactic against the tech market was unheard of and
unabashed to the whole community. Their grasp on the industry is tight
and they have no signs of letting go. Hiring 10 employees every day
for the past year or so is impressive, and this 'spree' (as one tech journal calls it) has no signs of letting up either. From a garage in Palo Alto, CA, to a multi-million dollar Google complex in the heart of the Silicon Valley, Google certainly has come a long way in its 7 years of life. The Google campus rivals that of Lucasarts and Hewlett-Packard, both companies which have been in the business for a much longer time than Google has, Lucasarts for ~30 years and Hewlett-Packard for nearly 90. Sergey Brin and Larry Page are worth about 17 billion each and their stock keeps climbing with revenues that continue to baffle financial analysts.


People should look to Google for creative inspiration. People
should look to Google for a tight business model. People should look
to Google for the next revolution in technology. People should look to
Google to give them news and stock market updates. People should look
to Google for just about anything on the Web. I certainly will be
doing so, and I hope that more companies follow in their footsteps and
help bring up the US economy to its previous high point in the 90s.
Sergey Brin and Larry Page, I salute you.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

UPDATE: Optware Holographic Card

Holy crap, and I was just talking about this earlier. Seems like this will be such a revolution, eh? 30GB for less than a buck. This is some interesting stuff. Damn, I just bought a 250GB external HDD as well.


Investing in new technology. Good idea?

Optware HVD driveI recently read an interesting article from engadget on HVD/HVC or Holographic Versatile Disc/Card format.

The article tells people to invest in this particular company because they promise better storage than the current next-gen media of choice: Blu-ray or HDDVD. The company is looking for venture capitalists and investors to take stock in their company, especially since many big names like Fujifilm and Verbatim are already staking their own claims in HVD/HVC technology. Since they are finally taking the company States-side, we will be able to gain some profit from this. "Buy low, sell high."

However, with the advent of digital distribution, Bill Gates made a recent speech stating that Blu Ray and HDDVD are doomed anyway. This is of concern to me, especially since my parents are in the audio-visual market. How will this affect us? How will this impact our profits? How will this influence our future product lineup? Time will tell. However, I have been gearing up some business proposals that should lick the bottom of the barrel of High-quality consumer-grade entry-level consumer electronics.

Another piece of technology that I have been looking at is the Matrixview company's photo file extension. With better compression than JPEG, BMP, or GIF, it will save space on users' HDD for more important items. Plus, digital camera manufacturers will be able to implement these into cameras allowing for more room to take pics. Sony's memorystick and SD cards will be able to hold more and more files until the space becomes absolutely unlimited. A great outlook on the industry, although one must be wary with all these good ideas floating around. One never knows what may happen to these technologies, they might exit the market with the same stealthiness they used to enter the market in the first place.

Ping? Pong?

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After an exhilirating match of ping pong with my roommate, I have to wonder. Okay, I haven't played ping pong since the 2nd grade at Raymond Lee's house, and now, about 45 minutes after I picked up a Ping Pong paddle, we're going at it like a scene out of Forrest Gump. What is this? Seeing as it is "our first night, first hour, first day, and first year at Colby" how the hell do you think we will fare at the end of our senior year. Honestly, I think we can do pro.

I have to analyze ping pong from a tennis players point of view. All it is is relaxed tennis. You sway back and forth and your hands move in a mechanical fashion, hand to and from your chest, your left hand doing what it usually does each and every time the ball comes around to your side of the net. Spins, lobs, forehands, backhands...all are irrelevant. What is cool about ping pong, though, is its speed. It really gets to you after a while. Seeing professionals play it seems like they are on crack or speed. Once you get the routine down, it all becomes second action. Flick of the wrist here, tap of the paddle there, you get to know all the nuances of playing a good game of ping pong. Unlike tennis, there is no steep learning curve, and it is not as tiring as badminton or tennis. Have I found my new sport of choice? I do not want to be caught up in all the Asian stereotypes and all, but hey, come on now, what do you want me to play? Football?

Friday, October 21, 2005

Sometimes...you just wanna have fun, eh?

I really don't know anything about blogging or what I should put in a blog. Hell, I don't even know where the word 'blog' comes from. What I do know, however, is that most of the major minds in business and technology are utilizing blogs to get out their thoughts and to reach out to the general public, giving them you a mix of opinion and real fact.

What I plan to accomplish in this blog is to give you a taste of what's in my head. Give you a little window into my world, if you will. This won't be like a mySpace account or Facebook account. This site will have real info and you will enjoy reading it! Damnit!

First order of business: I finally received my 250 GB Lacie External Harddrive designed by F.A. Porsche. I also got a PCMIA Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card for my laptop. Honestly, it is SO much better than the generic soundcard that Dell stuck into my computer. I can't believe how long I have lived without it. And, yes, if you couldn't tell, I have become an extreme audiophile over the past couple of weeks here in lovely Waterville, ME. The cold must be getting to me? Well, sonny, the cold is yet to come biting at my ass. I'll tell you when this happens. Probably when I'm stuck in an igloo somewhere out there.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Ahh...today is a good day.

Well. So it begins...my first step into the wonderful world of blogging. Wish me luck!