December 24th, 2006

Well Merry Christmas everybody! If you are like me, you haven’t done any Christmas shopping whatsoever and it’s 15 minutes until Santa is supposed to come down the chimney (assuming he visits every house simultaneously). My plan is to jump him on his way down and get me some free Christmas gifts. I just hope Rudolf hasn’t gotten any improvements to that blinking red nose. I’d hate to be a causality of a laser nosed reindeer.

On another note, I joined posted my first YouTube video a few days ago. It’s entitled “Quest for a Grade.” I was really worried about my grade in my Senior level Electronics I course. Since it looked like I might get a B after 8 semesters of a 4.0 at UCF, my friend Johann suggested I film the whole thing so he could see my reaction if I got a B. I thought it was a good idea so that’s exactly what I did. Check it out, initial reviews include

  • suspenseful…
  • oh god this is so horrible to watch
  • props on the suspense
  • you created a heart felt expression
  • i was very impressed, and amused

So watch it!

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December 16, 2006

Today wasn’t too bad as things go. I was expecting to be in much worse condition after having 5 teeth pulled (4 wisdom and one molar that couldn’t be uprighted). I hurt a little bit, but the pain meds kept that under control. The worst part was the food. I had yogurt for breakfast along with some scrambled eggs that I basically swallowed. I had pudding and another yogurt for lunch. Supper consisted of a smoothie and some ice cream. So much sugar! Arg! I just want a burger or something cheesy. In an effort to satisfy my hunger for something non-sweet, I had some chicken broth. I am going to be so glad when I can eat real food again.

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December 15, 2006

Yesterday night I completed all my graduate apps (all four of them, CMU, UCF, Berkeley, and of course MIT just for grins). In another hour, I’m going to be having my teeth pulled, sounds fun, huh? I have to have 4 wisdom teeth out, plus an “uprighting,” where they use a mini crow-bar to pry a tooth that’s grown in sideways to the upright position. Sounds like fun, off I go…

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December 12, 2006

I traveled home today to begin the processes of getting my wisdom teeth extracted. I had a consultation today at 1:30 PM and basically the doc said it wasn’t going to be fun. They want to extract all four wisdom teeth and then try a special procedure called an “upright” to try to bend my sideways 12 year old molar into an upright position. There is a pretty good chance it will crack and they will have to remove that guy too. So in another words, I am going to be having a lot of fun after my Friday appointment with him. He says they now have drugs where you are groggy, but awake and responsive, but you don’t remember anything afterwards. I’m not sure if I should be happy or frightened about that. I think I’m a bit of both. I’m happy I don’t have to remember that, but the fact that they have drugs that make you completely forget what happened is sorta weird. Hmm…actually, now that I think about it, isn’t that exactly what copious amounts of alcohol does to you? Never mind, we’ve had this drug for a while now.

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December 10th, 2006

Now that I’m done with finals, it’s time to hit up the graduate school applications. I’m applying to MIT, CMU, UC Berkeley, and my undergraduate school UCF. I’m about halfway done with that; I mainly just have to write my essays. Of course, that is definitely the hardest part. On another note, my new website backend is now live. As mentioned earlier, I’m using txt2tags as the backend for the site. It is a bit slow (I try to think of it compiling my website ;), but it’s ability to convert (err compile) standard text into a bunch of different formats such as HTML, Latex, etc, is nice. One of the problems now-a-days seems to be the fact that data formats go obsolete so quickly. You know anybody who can open a MS Word from 12 years ago? Nope, me neither. In two decades, when I want to go look at my content, who is going to be able to read my PDFs or Word 2003 documents? Of course, that begs the question why anybody in 20 years would want to look at something I wrote now, but let’s not consider that right now. The point I’m trying to come to is the fact that text is probably going to be standard a lot longer than any other format. Hence, the ability to use a simple markup language and then convert it to any other format you want. I may even write my thesis in it 😉

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December 6th, 2006

I’m halfway through with finals. My stats final was take-home (?) with “collaboration encouraged” (?!?) – oh well, at least it was easy. Electronics I was a really bear, probably the worst final I’ve ever taken. It was 14 pages long (according to the prof, I was too worried to actually finish the thing that I didn’t stop and count). I studied for about 24+ hours in the 48 hours leading up to the exam, so I was pretty much set with my double-sided four formula sheets in size 6 font. The exam was still really difficult, although several problems were very similar to homework problems. Some of it was multiple choice, but hard multiple choice, meaning stuff we were supposed to somehow get through ESP or something. The good thing is I did finish it, except the bonus problem, which had two circuits with about a dozen transistors in them each. One was a half adder, I think. I do feel pretty good about the exam, although I’m not sure if I’ll get a 98% on the final after the curve. That’s what I need to get an A in the class….eeep!

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