Getting Packed

24 hours from now I will be in a plane travelling to Oslo, Norway. I have packed a good portion of my clothes and selected the CDs I'll be bringing with me. I brought more than I can listen to, but you've always got to give yourself choices. Now I just have to remember not to forget anything.

I am supposed to bring a couple of packs of cigarettes and a bottle of wine with me. This will be the first time I have purchased either. How fitting. With respect to cigarettes--barring some strange occurrence--it ought to be the last.

Sad News

Charlie, my family's golden retriever, has pretty bad cancer. He recently developed lumps pretty much all over his body, and my Mom took him in for X-rays. My Dad emailed me today saying that the guess is that Charlie has up to a few months to live. I thought the lumps were not good, but I never thought it was that bad. At least he still seems happy and is able to go on walks and car rides (his favorite thing!). Who knows, maybe he could keep going longer than expected. I sure hope so.

The Fall of Sauron

I finished reading the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King tonight. Finishing that book always makes me sad. I really like it, but the end has always made me depressed. Something about the finality of it, with the ring bearers leaving middle earth just gets me down. Now I need to read some Kurt Vonnegut to pick my spirits up a little. Unfortunately, I don't think I've got any of his books available to read right now, so I'll just have to do without.

The house warming party was a fun way to spend my time. The food was good and plentiful, which is always a nice combination. Also, it seems that just today we got a single burner for the makeshift kitchen at Davis. So now I can get rolling with the Pasta Roni, Rice A Roni, and perhaps even some Hamburger Helper. I don't think I'm ready for tortilla wraps though.

Blisters

I think I mentioned earlier that I might be playing golf on Sunday. Well, it turns out that's not going to happen, but I did get to go to the driving range today to hit some balls. Since this was my first time swinging the golf clubs in awhile, and since I hit a few more balls than normal, I got a nice big blister on my thumb. It was worth it though. I hit the ball well with all my clubs.

I've wasted most of today playing Civilization 3, but I've also been running a program for work in the background, so I've been productive, in an indirect sort of way. In a few minutes I'm going to help some friends do a Korean BBQ style dinner. It ought to be fun. Later tonight I think I'll start uploading my picture galleries. This website is pretty close to being exactly what I want it to be.

Tomorrow I'm going to a house-warming party at a friend of mines place. It should be good. Plus, free food. Can't go wrong there.

Reliving the Horror

This past week I've been spending part of my spare time studying quantum mechanics, in preparation for the Physics GRE I will be taking in the fall semester. I just finished reading through the fifth chapter. The course at Berkeley that teaches quantum mechanics is Physics 137AB. There are two semesters because there is so much material to be covered. Physics 137A was the first upper division physics class I took, and all I remember about it is how bad it was. The instructor was awful (nice guy, terrible teacher), I couldn't understand the book, and I wasn't prepared for the kind of work ethic necessary to succeed in the class. When I first looked at my notes I began to think that perhaps it was mainly because of that last reason that I had such a hard time with quantum mechanics. But today I finished reading chapter 5 of the textbook, and now I'm starting to go with the first two reasons. The chapter focuses on the mathematical formalisms behind QM. It is horribly dry (even more so than it normally is), and almost completely mathematical. Unfortunately, there is important material in there, but I have a difficult time finding it because of all the technical details. I suppose they're important, but ugh.

Today at work I've been running a program that is going to take about 30 hours to finish. This wouldn't be so bad, except that it tends to crash every couple of hours. So, it's going to take me about five days or so to run through it all. It does give me extra time to work on other stuff, like studying QM.

So far I have no plans for either tonight or tomorrow, but it looks like there's a good chance I'll play golf on Sunday. One of my friends at Davis just started playing golf. It should be interesting, because he's athletic, but being good at golf is more than simply being athletic. Currently, I'm hoping for something unexpected to happen tonight and tomorrow, but I would also be content to take it easy and do some more studying for the GRE.

Passport Has Arrived

My passport came in the mail today. I am happy. I also went grocery shopping and put the pictures from my digital camera that I recently printed onto nice photo paper onto the wall in my room. The last thing I need to finish setting things up is to get another light bulb for one of the lamps.

Potential Trouble

My passport was supposed to arrive yesterday, and it did not. I got all the paper work done two weeks ago, and I was informed that it would be mailed to me in two weeks. I'm not too worried yet, but this isn't a good sign.

Also, while checking my mail, I discovered that I was late on my rent payment, costing me $20. Again, not so good.

In brighter news, softball went off well yesterday. We had 17 people, plenty for a fun game. I meant to bring my camera, but forgot. I won't be playing the next couple of weeks, since I'll be in Norway. At least, that's the plan now. If I don't get my passport in time, well, that's not good.

Working on Setup

I spent yesterday after work trying to get a third column for this page to the right of the main content area. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful. Once I get it going though, I'll start setting up my picture galleries and transfering images from my old site to this one.

Also yesterday was poker, from about 9:30pm to 2:30am. We had 10 people for a good part of the night, eight people for almost all night. It was the largest game I'd ever played. I was up for awhile, but lost a couple of big pots thanks to some unlucky hands. I finished down a buck, which wasn't too bad. The only really bad thing is that I stayed up later than I wanted. We're not playing at Davis anymore, so it's hard for me to just stop playing when I'm tired or it gets too late, because it's a ways to walk back home from where we play. Nevertheless, next time we play I'm going to have to make sure I leave before 1:30am.

Graduated

The weekend of my sister's graduation from CalPoly San Luis Obispo has come and gone. Unfortunately, the big ceremony was dissapointing in that it did not live up to its billing as a "one-minute commencement"; nevertheless, it was interesting in that the commencement speaker was none other than the Wizard of Oz himself, Ozzie Smith. Evidently, he graduated in the class of '77 and has recently been given an 'honorary' doctorate in the humane arts. I'm not exactly sure what that means. Anyway, he gave a fairly good speech that reflected how intense he is. The rest of the big ceremony wasn't too exciting. Then the smaller ceremony was fun when Jeffra walked on the stage, since a bunch of her friends showed up that she wasn't expecting and made very loud noises when she walked across the stage. Of course there was good eating at a variety of restaurants throughout the weekend. I drove most of the way to SLO and about half of the way back. I must be a machine.

I got through chapter 1 of my quantum mechanics textbook in about an hour and a half. Now, there's only 12 chapters left. I don't think I can keep up at this depth, but the first chapter seemed important, detailing some of the experiments that led to the development of quantum mechanics.

I am still considering getting a cell phone. The main problem at this point is that to get one with my Mom's plan, I'd have to get it for a year, and I am tentatively planning to travel out of the country during the spring semester, so a cell phone would be useless then. I'm also thinking more and more that a car would be nice, but I think I can hang on until just before I'm ready to go to grad school.

I'm listening to The Moody Blue's Days of Future Passed. The more I listen to this album, the more I like it. That's a good thing.

Back Home

I'm back home again in San Jose today, getting ready to go down to San Luis Obispo with my family to my sister's graduation. We're spending the weekend there and I guess we'll get to see all the stuff my sister has been up to for the past five years. Should be fun.

I managed to get in about 3 and half hours of work this morning, which gives me about 36 hours of work in this week, about the same as last week. I've been trying to work full time, but the passport last week, plus spades, poker, softball and my sister's graduation this week have prevented it from happening. Still, I've gotten a lot done at work, and I'm pretty much satisfied.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to post stuff this weekend, so this could be the last post for a couple of days.

Post for Yesterday

Yesterday was the best day I've had in a long time. I made some sort of unexpected discovery in the data I've been analyzing at work; it appears to be real and completely unexplainable by either the post-doc or the professor I've been working with this summer. It's very unusual, but it may be something that we'll just have to save for later, because no one really has any ideas at this point.

After work, I had dinner with a friend of mine from astro, Eric Nielsen. Directly after that another friend of mine, Mike Toomim (who I know because he lives at Davis, the same co-op as me) came to pick both of us up and take us to the field where softball was to take place. There followed about one and a half hours of pure softball fun. I must have been grinning the whole time I was there. We had twenty people, which was the most we've had yet, so it was really like a true game. No subs and a full defense (4 outfielders, if you're keeping track). Hopefully the same thing will happen next week.

After dinner came poker. I played with the usual crowd, Jeremy, Josh, Chris, and Manuel. The bonus was that Matt Pendleton was in town, so he played with us last night too (he played softball too, which was also nice). I played from about 9:30pm to 2:30am, and finished up $4 from where I started. It was a bit of a roller coaster night, but it ended well for me.

All in all the day could not have gone better for me.

Spades

I just finished playing two games of spades with Matt Pendleton. It was another string of two great games with excellent teamwork and some timely luck. The first game was an easy victory against significantly inferior opponents. In the second game, our opponents actually had some idea of what they were doing, although they were somewhat strange.

One of them claimed to be female, throwing out an age/sex/location announcement completely unabated. She said she was 26/f/texas, meaning she is 26 years old, female, and from texas. Naturally I responded with 73/m/antarctica for myself. I was having enough of a laugh at this, but then she says back, 'where's antarctica?', and she's totally serious. So I say, 'south of new jersey'. To which she says, 'oh, i didn't know that'. Priceless. Later on, her partner said something along the lines of 'HEY P [short for partner] I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE UP TO, BUT MY BALLS COULD USE SOME SUCKING'. Or something frightening along those lines. I mean, they were just weird. And dumb.

But getting back to the game, our opponents managed to pull off a double nil (bidding nil without looking at your cards), taking a commanding lead in a game which we had previously been dominating. We aggresively tried to go for a set in a 10 bid hand, but fell one trick short, taking three bags. At that point, things looked grim, but all was not lost. On the last hand of the game, Matt bid 6, influencing me to go double nil. Making both the dnil and Matt's bid gave us victory. At the end, the psychotic male opponent claimed that we were extremely lucky to make a dnil and a 6 bid at the end. Well, all I can say to that is that it must be great to have a selective memory like that. I mean, to be able to forget about his team's double nil only a few minutes earlier must be really advantageous, right?

In softball news, I have a bunch of people telling me there's a good chance they'll make it. So we'll see how many of those people actually show up. I'm hoping for 16-20.

Work was simultaneously frustrating and rewarding. I think that's a good thing.

I didn't study any Physics 112 today. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. If all goes right tomorrow, poker will occur following the softball game and I won't get a chance to study tomorrow night either. That means I'll have to finish my notes on Thursday, which really isn't a bad thing.

Once Again

I always think of a thousand things to say in this space during the day, and then when I'm sitting in front of the computer they're all gone. So I just give a recount of what I've done.

I'm almost through with my notes for Physics 112. It's very difficult to come home after working for eight hours and then study more physics. On the other hand, I don't really have much else to do. I figure this is the time of the summer that I will have time for this sort of thing, so I better get it done now.

I also downloaded pictures to my computer that had been on my camera for some time. I'm going to look into doing all my picture gallery stuff within this website, but if I can't find a reliable way to automate it, then I'll probably pay pbase.com to do it.

It looks like golf is not going to happen tomorrow. Matt just has too many things to do, unfortunately. Perhaps later in the summer we'll be able to go. It also seems that poker will not happen tomorrow either. I talked to Jeremy (the person who has the chips) today, and he told me that he plays at a card house two or three times a week, which helps to explain why he hasn't been as interested in playing poker with the crowd of people that I normally play with. I don't really miss it too much though. Gives me more time to study for the GRE. Or take care of this website.

Back In Berkeley

So I have returned to Berkeley. I managed to get about 2/3 of the way through my physics 112 notes, which isn't too bad. My Dad and I went to the driving range today. It was the first time in quite awhile for both of us. Dad hit the ball pretty well, but I was basically all over the place, which wasn't too surprising. This Tuesday I'm hoping to play golf with Matt Pendleton, a friend of mine from Stebbins Hall, my home in Berkeley for my sophomore and junior years.

What else happened today... I drove pretty fast to the BART station, but still managed to be five seconds too late, arriving just in time to see the train depart. And then when I got back in Berkeley I discovered that I had a workshift today to clean the bathroom. I got two hours of credit for about an hour of work. Although it was bathroom work, which ought to be worth double. Anyway, I'm tired now so I think I'll head for bed.

Home For the Weekend

I came home to San Jose earlier today, taking BART to Fremont, where my Mom picked me up and drove us back to San Jose. I spent a good portion of the day reviewing my Physics 112 notes (Thermodynamics), which was useful since it's been quite awhile since I took the course (Fall 2001).

Tonight I'm going to see a movie with some of my friends from high school. It should be pretty cool, although I can't remember what movie we're going to see. Something about Irishmen I think.

Yesterday I looked into getting my picture galleries linked from this website, but the place I used to store them at, www.pbase.com, has recently changed to a fee charging policy (like every other web service...), so now I have to consider whether I want to put the effort into making my own picture gallery set up on this website, or paying pbase.com to make things easier for me.

On Track

I've finished setting up my room (posters and everything). It's good to finally be done with that. I think I'm going to go home this weekend again, for no particular reason except that there does not appear to be much happening in Berkeley this weekend. Tonight I will try to get links to picture galleries set up.

It's about time now that I start studying for the Physics GRE. This weekend I will review my notes from Physics 112, thermodynamics.

Another Good Day

I'm finally making some progress at work. Today in particular was nice. What was even better, however, was that these two post-docs from the University of Chicago came into the lab today and were impressed with the project I was working on. They said it sounded like publish-able research, which is what I'm shooting for. Also, I checked my grades and found that I got an A+ in Physics C161, which was a nice bonus.

In other news, I talked to Tiffany this morning, which was very nice. It seems she has a nifty phone card that lets her make cheap calls outside Norway, which is just fine by me because my phone card sucks for international calls.

Finally, softball went pretty well. We didn't have quite as many people as last week, but it was still good. There were 13 people this time, which meant teams had to supply the pitcher and catcher when batting. It did keep everyone involved though. Also, the game was very close. My team lost with the winning run scoring in the bottom of the last inning and no outs. I'm not sure how many innings we played (only an hour and a half this time), but the outcome was eerily similar to last week's. Next week we will have to play on another field though, because the one we have been playing on is going to be used for the rest of the summer by Cal Intramural Sports. We could sign up for a team, but the total cost would be $350 which is too much money.

Eventually, I will start posting links to picture galleries containing all the pictures I've taken with my digital camera.

Finally, Something Goes Right

I got everything taken care of at the passport office today. My passport should be mailed to me in two weeks, which ought to leave a week of breathing room. It was expensive, but what I noticed in the passport office today and yesterday is that a lot of people get rush passports, so that made me feel a little better. Also, I had a splitting headache walking down to the post office to get the passport, but walking back just now to work it was not so bad. My head still feels a little strange, but it's definitely better than earlier in the morning.

So now it's work, then softball, then finish setting up my room.

At the End of the Day

Today was a very busy day for me. I worked till about 5:30pm before getting a slice of pizza to eat for dinner and heading home. Almost immediately thereafter I left for the BART station to meet my parents in Fremont, who were kind enough to bring both my birth certificate and the plane tickets to the BART station in Fremont. So I rode on BART for 50 minutes each way (plus twenty minutes inbetween trains for a total of about two hours). I was originally hoping to play poker tonight, but those plans fell through with the need to get my birth certificate for the passport. After I got back I had to do a one hour workshift and now I'm typing this.

Tomorrow it will be more of the same. I go back to the post office, hopefully this time to actually get a passport (or at least start the process), and then to work for eight hours, and then softball for a couple of hours from 7-9pm. Somewhere in there dinner will have to occur as well. After that, I've got to organize my room and put up posters and such. Right now it's a complete mess. I guess that's it for now.

Pain

My back has been hurting me for the past couple of days. I believe it is mainly due to the fact that I have been moving my stuff recently. In particular, I set up my computer yesterday, and that involves a lot of hunching over the computer case to plug various components in. It is also probably due to the fact that my bed sucks, but my bed has sucked since I moved into my single for the spring semester so that can't be the only thing.

Work has been especially frustrating the past few days, including today. Also, getting the passport to travel to Norway has been more difficult than I imagined. I might have to travel back home to get my birth certificate to prove that I am a US citizen. I'm not sure what I'm going to do at this point, but I don't have very much time to decide, so a decision will soon be made.

Missed Yesterday

I didn't get a chance to make an entry yesterday, since I am still in the process of moving my stuff from my old room at Davis to my new room at Davis. I like my new room much more than my old stuffy coffin of a room that I used to live in. I might post a picture or two of it in the near future.

Meanwhile, I must travel to the main post office in Berkeley to inquire about getting an expedited passport from them. I tried calling, but received no answer. This is a situation where it would be nice to have a cell phone. I think it might check up again on what it would cost and such.