So I should have posted these some time ago, but better late than never.
July 3rd I went to New York. My bus ride took a half hour shorter than expected so I wandered Chinatown. I was there for about two hours before I could meet Jennifer. We then went to the stores to find a gift I could give my sister. I eventually decided on a medium size plush turtle. After some bubble tea, we went to Times Square. Off to the Toys R Us store we went. After a while of looking at toys we decided to go on the indoor ferris wheel. My sister then came and met us. We departed ways and I went back with my sister to her place. The next morning we would go to Woodbury Commons and find some greatly needed clothes for me. At night we went to Hoboken to watch the Macy’s fireworks. It was quite a sight. Sunday, we went back to Chinatown where I got a sketchy 5 dollar haircut in a basement hair salon where the entrance door was locked, the back room had four tables of people playing mahjong and the lady who cut my hair could not speak english. At least it was cheap. I then went back home to Boston.
The following weekend, Camille, Caroline, Cathy, Megan and I went to Downtown Crossing for a bazaar. Booths were set up to sell cultural items from various countries. Things varied from earrings to chopsticks to toys to bowls to clothing. After we looked at the booths, we went to the frog pond and went wading with the little children. We then walked to the Galleria where Megan got another piercing. I then had dinner at Pika. It was interesting to say the least.
Sorry for the bad quality post, it’s been too long since my last post and I just need to get something up.
Things that go boom are very fun to watch, even if one of the barges they are being shot off of catches fire. Next year I need to try to watch the Boston fireworks.
It all began before school ended. It was simply a day where everyone was sitting in the lounges, the occasional good student studying for finals, when a Moose (Shankari) came to me and asked if I had a Costco membership. To her disappointment, I did not, but I did know who does. Moose’s (metaphorical) antlers shot up in joy and asked if we could go. How could I, a poor college student, deny a trip to the bargain saving Costco. Plans to go were made, and we waited in anticipation.
A few weeks pass. The date draws near. The day before, Vivian almost pulls out claiming an overload of work, but after a quick reminder of her importance to the trip, she made time in her schedule. One very last minute email around to people asking if they wanted to join, and we had our party. Morning rolled around and we all were giddy in anticipation. I printed out maps, studied the route, and went to grab the truck. I looked back and realized, oh, the back is empty. Ignoring this fact, I drove around to round up the group. With one empty seat in the front, the others had to sit in the back. With the entire group in the van, we took off in the direction of Costco. We got there shortly and embarked on our journey. I was hungry and focused on the food samples. I went to one stand, picked up a small cup of Pom, and was asked if my parent were around. ”Ummmm… I’m 19.” Realizing his mistake, he apologized and I went on my way. An hour later after shopping we reconvened near the entrance. We checked out with a slight hassle, but not much problem.
Footlong hotdogs in hand (except the vegetarian Moose, who got herself a yummy looking berry smoothie) we returned to the van. We enjoyed our meals in the back of the van and contemplated the idea of living in a van for Fall semester. At twenty dollars a day, it would be cheaper than dorm housing. As we discussed this idea, a Chinese lady came up to the back of the van and looked at us. She then asked us in Mandarin where to get one of these vans as well. We all stared at her before Cathy began to reply. The levels of asianness went like this. Moose was the least Chinese of all of us. I can’t speak or understand Mandarin. Vivian can understand Mandarin but can’t speak, but can speak Cantonese. Cathy could understand and speak. After this hilarious encounter it was decided we should return. Another bumpy van ride back and we returned to our respective residences.
Fast forward to later in the day, at 77 Mass Ave. A collection of 9 people gathered at the stairs to spend an evening together. ”How will we get there?” We point toward the white van parked down the street. Well at least it doesn’t say “Free Candy” on the side. They all pile into the back and are very skeptical of how this will work but we reassure that it is …reasonably safe. Hiding in the backseat, I reassure them that the van is technically marketed as a 15 passenger van. We take off in the direction of DoReMi, or so I think. All I am told is to go toward Cambridge St. I do and we end up at Harvard. This was not the intended direction. Yelling ensues about the sanity of the driver but I take charge, grab a map, and figure our route. We continue driving and eventually make it there, in roughly one piece.
Upon entering the shop, it was deserted of people and zombies. All we could see were the record player lined wall and LaserDisks. The owner then arrived and placed us into a room. Starting the Windows XP karaoke machine and turning on the lights, we were perplexed by the technology. The music began and the laser lights moved. After a good two hours of belching songs in a plethora of languages, including 99 Luftaloons (red balloons) (in German) we went home to relax from a night of fun.
It was 1:30 in the morning and we began to bike toward Harvard Square to satiate our desire for food. Rain had been pouring all day long, and when I looked out my window it seemed as though the rain had stopped. This was not true. Although it was not pouring, the rain decided to try to shake the last little drops of precipitation on us during our travel. We made it there in generally one piece and went inside a completely empty IHOP. We sat down, had our food, and conversed for a couple of hours before decided it was time to depart and make our way back home. The rain had still not stopped, but we needed to get home. We got on our bikes and rode toward MIT. As we rounded a corner, her front tire slipped out and she fell. What was the culprit for this? A completely flat front tire. Having sustained injury from her fall, we walked our bikes back as far as we could, but did not get very far. We came to the conclusion that it would be more worth it to tie up our bikes and take a taxi back. This was when the rain began coming down even harder. I quickly tied up the bikes and joined her under the umbrella to escape the rain and wait for a taxi to show up. It took a few minutes for one to come down the street but luckily one did and we got home.
Rain is fun in limited amounts, but when you’re two miles away from home, it can make your life miserable. Snow is much better. You already expect your life to suck, so your expectations are lower.
So after hacking away at code, tackling Internet Explorer *grumblegrumble* Vivian and I got our theme working, and working half decently. At this point, we immediately went and uploaded everything onto the hosting server and made sure that everything worked. This was overnight. When we woke up, we came upon an email that said “Are you guys around for Lindsay and I to call around 11-11:30?” We didn’t know if this was going to be good or bad. They had looked at the design before we uploaded it all but we were unsure whether they would like our last minute changes. We waited around and got our response. They loved it.
Since then, we’ve been working to change around smaller details and design aspects. They’re little things but it’s a few more than a few things. Hopefully once we get through them, we won’t have to change much later. This was definitely an experience in working with Wordpress, trying to tackle it to do what we wanted, and figure out why some things would work at times when other things wouldn’t.
Appreciate pre-made themes. Those designers had to tackle Wordpress to get them to work. In theory it should be easy, but really it’s not.
(That reminds me, I still need to make a design for my own personal page, and I’ll probably migrate my blog over there as well.)
So yesterday was my first day of my UROP. I was actually going to blog earlier but I got distracted. So on the first day, I went in to meet the other person I’m working with. We talked about what we were going to do for our work and split to meet again later. I went home and began to code. The first part went fairly quickly since I was working off existing code. I had to learn the Google Maps API and learn how to plot points and circles on the map. There are so many features in the API that it took me a while to sift through what I actually needed. By the end of the day I was able to get the map to plot my multiple points. Then I had a group meeting with the supervisor at 5:30. Problem was, he didn’t get there til 6:40. He talked for a while and I went home.
Then my next goal was to make it work with an SQL server so data could be sent there to be saved. The data needed to be able to be saved so it could be useful to us. My goal tomorrow is to add a few more features to that and to write a Java interface to connect to it. That will lead into my next project programming Java on mobile phones with bluetooth.
Sims 3 is great fun, except each family needs its own neighborhood. But other than that, it’s nice being able to walk around to other lots. One main complaint is that fast fast forward is not that much faster. Oh well. Maybe if I had a faster processor.
Working from home is nice. Just make sure not to be distracted all the time.
I wake up every morning
And I head to my PC
To read about PS3
But when I check the gaming forum
Your mistakes are all I see
A grammatical catastrophe
I would like to chat but you just can’t spell, you should learn to spell
It’s not spelled like that, you should learn to spell you should learn to spell
I’d like to make suggestions…but I can’t read what you write, and I’m trying with all my might
When I posted some corrections, I didn’t mean to start a fight, but the thread flamed on all night
Well maybe you’re dyslexic
Or maybe you’re a moron
When you’re talking games you know who to blame if you just can’t spell
At your favorite site you should spell it right you should learn to spell
This goes for Wii and 360 and PC as well
It’s all hard to read so you simply need to learn how to spell
Gotta learn to spell
I know you’re probably thinking to yourself, that it’s just words on a screen
Everybody knows what I mean
But numbers aren’t letters
And U and R are words
Well your NeoGAF message made them laugh cause you could not spell
Over at GameSpot reputation’s shot cause you just can’t spell
And they agree at Quarter to Three and GamersHell
You might try again at IGN once you learn to spell
So it’s I before E except after C
And sometimes “its” does not need an apostrophe
But you don’t even care about “they’re,” “there,” and “their”
It’s like you learned to speak from texting on your cell
When you’re talking games we know who to blame if you just can’t spell
At your favorite site you should spell it right you should learn to spell
If a dictionary’s kinda scary, what the hell?
Then you’re a fool, go back to school and learn to spell
On the internet, this is what you get, people who can’t spell [you should learn to spell]
On the gaming boards, you will be ignored if you just can’t spell [you should learn to spell]
Do only fools use grammar rules where the gamers dwell?
The written word seems so absurd when you can’t spell [you should learn to spell]
I wrote this song cause you typed it wrong and you couldn’t tell [you should learn to spell]
It’s not much fun as the only one here who can spell
So I arrived back in Boston Sunday at 10PM. I immediately went to Edgerton to check in and went to my room. Upon getting there, I also got my packages I’d ordered a week ago. Excited, I took them to my room and opened them, seeing that everything was there and in new/lightly used condition. Happy, but I needed my things. So then I proceeded to Tim’s room where all my stuff was stored and got my clothes. Without wheels this would be a difficult carry, but luckily I found myself a cart. I put my clothes in the cart and pushed it all the way to Edgerton into my room. I took a quick shower and fell asleep.
I still had more stuff in Tim’s room, so I went to pick it up. Rolling my stuff home was a bit of work, one of the wheels had broken on the suitcase. Arriving at home, I got a text from Craig asking to go out to eat, so we did at Uburger. We then came back to my place and played some Rockband. After Craig left, I began to clean up my room. My room looks so much cleaner now than it did before. Now I will be installing Windows XP because I want compatibility with things, and XP generally works with everything.
Relax, play games, and don’t sleep. That is how to enjoy summer. Maybe toss in a little bit of work. Little.
Last morning Vivian and I had a conference call with a lady from A Weekly Affair to talk about their website and its design. We are to replace their current web dev guy and do a general overhaul of their site to make it more user friendly. It looks to be an interesting job and will give Vivian and my web dev team a starting point. I’m looking forward to this because I will probably be pretty bored over the summer. Other than my UROP I don’t have much going on. Speaking of which, I still need to write my UROP proposal. I will get on that later today. Either between now and Giant Relay Day or after.
I still need ideas of what I want to do with my domain. Anyone have any ideas?
So today I reinstalled Windows 7 RC because sometimes things just work better in Windows. Mainly because I was hoping to have more native speed on some Windows only apps. So far this morning, it has not been much of a success. The Java ME application doesn’t want to work properly. It was very difficult to find a RSS feed reader I liked. Akregator is not included in KDE for Windows. I might just switch back, try Kubuntu, and run XP in a VM. But then I also have problems in linux where because I’m using a 64 bit machine certain other programs don’t work. So, my decision is to try Kubuntu 32 bit. Lose out on .8GB of my ram, but have more compatability for the loss of performance.
Computers suck. I’m tired. And oh lookey, I start doing work RIGHT NOW!
Okay, so yes, I haven’t posted in SUCH a long time. It’s just that this has been only in the back of my mind for the past few months as I’ve been working in classes and finding a place to live and finding work and studying for finals and just about everything inbetween. Since there is way too much to cover, I will just mention a few key events that have happened since I last posted. Read More
