I've thought of some key things I'm looking for in a grad school:
So that's where I stand now. I already have some idea of where I will apply, but I will use these criteria to focus on some other schools that I might have otherwise overlooked.
I started reading Ender's Game last night. It's been awhile since I've had a book that I just don't want to put down, but Ender's Game qualifies. I'm about halfway through the book, so I'll probably have it done in the next couple of days.
Softball ended up going pretty well. A few people showed up that I wasn't expecting, and we managed to get 15 people, which was enough for a nice game. Also, I didn't lose that much money by renting the field.
A lot of people are on vacation at work, which makes it a little bit easier to procrastinate and thus harder to get things done. But I persevere, nonetheless.
Looks like we'll only have 12 people for softball today, which is rather dissapointing. Maybe some people will miraculously show up. I doubt it though.
1) The stir fry turned out well. We threw in red and green bell peppers, zucchini, onions, and garlic with some olive oil and soy sauce and it tasted real good. The rice didn't turn out so well (didn't cook evenly) but when mixed with the vegetables it was good. The next time around I think we need to add broccoli and chicken to the mix.
2) I opened up my old digital camera and looked inside it at work today. I was trying to see if there was anything easy that I might be able to repair, like a loose connection somewhere or something. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything, so I guess it's a dead duck.
3) Tonight I took my first night time shots with my new camera. They showed much promise. The only problem is that I was trying to hold the camera myself, so the pictures turned out a bit blurry, since the exposure was for an extended time and it's not really possible to hold it steady for more than a fraction of a second. Tomorrow night or Thursday night I might try to use a tripod that is sitting around at work and see how it turns out. If it's really nice I may end up purchasing one for myself.
Last night I drove Tiffany's manual transmission car around Berkeley parking lots for about half an hour. It was the second (third, perhaps?) time that I had driven a stick shift car, but I was doing a much better job this time around. I guess it helps to have experience driving an automatic car. Hopefully, I will get more opportunities and become comfortable driving a stick shift vehicle.
Work is going fine. It looks like I have done enough stuff that I will be able to publish my results, when I have them. So that's good. Meanwhile, studying for the GRE continues to drag. The actual "doing" of problems is hard because most of the problems that I find in textbooks require the use of a calculator, while the GRE prohibits the use of a calculator. But I've still got to do more than I'm doing.
Going to make stir fry tonight. We'll see how it turns out.
I came home this weekend to San Jose. Tiffany is visiting a friend in Santa Cruz this weekend, so she dropped me off Friday night. Then yesterday we had friends of the family over for dinner. It was very nice to hang out with them and all that stuff.
I've also been experimenting with my new camera, the Olympus C-4000. I really like the camera a lot. It takes very high resolution pictures, has many adjustable features, is extremely fast, captures movies, and overall is simply a great camera. I'm looking forward in particular to doing some night-time shots of the bay area. The camera has a "noise-reduction" feature that takes an image with the shutter closed to remove noise due to "dark current" arising from long exposure times (the kind you use for low light pictures). It should be really good.
I really have been meaning to study my lower division physics textbooks, but it simply hasn't happened. I think just reading them is not good enough, because I know them already at that level. I need to go through actual problems to really benefit from studying, but it's been a little difficult to work up the motivation to do such a thing.
I had a thought regarding my plans for the spring semester of 2004 while driving home from a birthday party of a friend with Tiffany tonight. First, I mentioned that I was originally thinking of travelling around Europe, since I had never done it and it seemed like a good idea. But then, while talking to her, I realized that I had also never really travelled around the US. Sure, I've been to a few places here and there (flying only, to visit friends), but I've never gone on a road trip out of the state to see other places in the US. It occurred to me that I've got friends in the Northwest (Andy!), Midwest (Tiffany's family), East (Matt and Eric), and the South (Trent), so why not give a round trip tour of the US a shot? Over the course of two weeks I could go from the bay area to seattle to colorado to minnesota to maine to new jersey to texas to nevada to southern california and then back to the bay area. It could be a really fun trip. And also, there wouldn't be the language problem that would plague me in Europe. That could perhaps be the most important lesson that I learned in Norway; that not knowing the language can be a real problem when trying to enjoy yourself in a foreign country. Even (as is the case in Norway) when most of the population speaks English, you still feel uncomfortable, or not quite accepted, when you speak not in the native tongue of the country. Maybe if I was fluent in another language I would feel less bad about not speaking the language of the country I was in, but I can barely understand basic spanish, and that's it.
So, I have suddenly started leaning towards a trip across the US. The only thing is, I can't imagine it taking longer than three weeks, unless there were extended stays along the way. But even then, it still would not consume all the available time I will have in the spring of 2004. But then again, perhaps a little extra time before I go to grad school is not such a bad thing...
So, as it stands of now, exploring the US appeals to me more than exploring Europe. We'll see how that evolves in time.
Well, softball started out better than I hoped, with a total of 14 people showing up (I had been expecting 10-12). However, it turned bad when one of the more enthusiastic players was hit near his right eye by a flyball that he was trying to make a running catch on. It was bad enough that he had to be taken to the hospital to stop the bleeding. After he and a couple of other people were gone (one to drive, another to navigate), we weren't in the mood to continue the game, so it came to an abrupt end. I just hope that he's ok.
This will be one of those strange posts where I don't really make sense, or I'm unable to get across my point. But I still need to try. I was just thinking that if you're faced with a decision between two choices and they both seem about even, the tie-breaker should go to the choice that is more exciting, less conservative, etc. This is because, as they say, you only go around once. That's all I really have to say for today.
Well, that I'm a little apprehensive about the number of people we'll have for softball tomorrow. It could well be less than 16, which would not be nearly as fun.
I went out to Fenton's Creamery, a place that serves ice cream sundaes and other treats, with Tiffany tonight. I had a lot of ice cream, because they serve it in big portions and it turned out that Tiffany couldn't handle most of what she got. I tried my best, but I couldn't take both my serving and hers too. I think, however, that I had enough to get myself drunk on ice cream, because I sure felt a little funny after eating all that ice cream. It was good, but I may well have had too much.
It was a really nice weekend at home with Tiffany. I didn't do too much on Saturday other than relax. Sunday, I helped set up and install my Dad's new 32" flat screen (not flat TV, like plasma or whatever) TV as well as my sister's five piece speaker and subwoofer system. I also mowed the lawn and cleaned my shoes up.
I gathered up all the graduation congratulation cards that I received, so now I have to send out thank you cards to those people that sent me a card.
This week I think I will go over my physics 7 series textbooks. They cover almost all of the topics necessary for the GRE physics test and should provide a solid, broad review.
I'm spending the weekend at home in San Jose. Tiffany came with me, and so far we've had a pretty good time. We spend most of the day trying to set up the new TV that my Dad bought as well as my sister's 5 piece speaker system. There are a few hiccups with the sound setup, but the TV looks real nice.
So I made all that hoopla about having the last game of poker with my friends from Stebbins. Well, all of that was true, but I found a new game with friends from the physics department at Berkeley, including a few people from the lab I work in. For most of them, the game we played (Texas Hold'em) was a new thing, which translates into a very good thing for me. I'm not sure how often this is gonna repeat, but everyone seemed to have a good time so it might become a regular thing.
I plan to go home this weekend, and I believe Tiffany is going with me, although I'll have to double check tomorrow.
Also, softball went fairly well. It wasn't quite as good as last week though, because we had only 17 players. Still a lot of fun.
Well, today has been a slow day at work. I haven't been getting much done, and neither has anyone else. Currently, a spirited debate regarding the potential recall elections for the position of governor of California is taking up most of the people in the lab's attention.
Softball in four hours, thirty three minutes. Looks like we'll have about 18 people, so it should be a good game.
The last night of poker with my friends from Stebbins was a good one for me. I cashed in for $20.50, after buying in for only $5. Also, Matt and Sang showed up for a little while. In fact, we had everyone from the usual crowd. Jeremy is going to be leaving in a couple of days, so that's gonna be it for poker with those guys. I really had a fun time playing with them, and I'm going to miss the usual weekly poker night. That's the way it goes, I guess. In the future, perhaps, we might get together again for another poker night, but it won't be the same.
I played tennis with Tiffany yesterday. It was fun, although it was really hot because we played in the middle of the day. Apparently, I got my neck sunburned. I wonder what happened to my sunscreen.
I currently have no plans for the rest of the week (except for softball on Wednesday, of course).
The past few days I guess I haven't been quite as motivated to make posts on my website. Gonna have to get myself going.
I called some camera stores, including the 800 number for Olympus, the manufacturer of the camera, and it appears the repair price is $100-$150, which is by far more than I'm interested in paying. So I'm heavily leaning towards the C-4000. I may buy it sometime next week.
Yesterday I went to Zachary's pizza for Matt and Sang's going away dinner. They make really good pizza, so that was nice. After that we went to Fenton's creamery, a good ice cream place. I got a sundae with hot chocolate fudge on vanilla ice cream. It was really good. It may also be the last time I see either Matt or Sang in a long time. At least we can play spades on yahoo.
I'm getting really bored with the "social life" of Davis. Everybody stays in their rooms all the time, and there's nothing to do. Today was particularly boring. I worked a little but couldn't really get much done, studied some, and that's about it. Tomorrow my schedule should be about the same with one notable exception: Tiffany got back from Europe today. So we'll be able to do something tomorrow, presuming she has the energy to wake up.
Softball went off very well yesterday. We had 21 people, which was more than I was expecting. We played for two hours and my team won the game on the last at bat with two out in the bottom of the ninth inning. We rallied for three runs that inning to erase a two run deficit. Pretty exciting game.
Poker went fine, I ended up right where I started, although I had to fight back a bit just to get even. And it turns out that it wasn't the last game of poker with my friends. It seems that will be next week, the day before Jeremy leaves town for good.
Work today was especially frustrating because our internet connection was down and I really didn't get much done. Also, I'm beginning to wonder how much more there is I can do with the project I've been working on. I have made progress, but it seems like the professor and post-doc I've been working with are not entirely sure where to proceed from here, and of course I don't have any idea myself. So, this week has been somewhat unproductive for me as far as work goes.
Tomorrow I'm going to Matt and Sang's going away dinner at Zachary's pizza. It should be a really good time.
I've posted pictures from my trip to Norway. They can be found at my picture gallery: http://bussmann.bigwhoop.org/gallery/norway.
I was at work for 9 hours today, from 10am to 7pm. However, it was really only equivalent to 8 hours of work because I spent a lot of time checking out my fantasy baseball teams. You might wonder just how much time one can spend doing such a thing, but the answer is in fact quite a lot, particularly when one is trying to work out trades. But anyway, today at work was much better than yesterday. I'm still a little fuzzy on what I have to do and if it's even possible, but it's getting better.
I have now backed up over half of my CD music collection in mp3 format on my hard drive. I am enjoying the capability of listening to anything I own at any time.
Tomorrow is softball. The past couple of weeks have seen a diminishing crowd, but I think that trend will be reversed this week. My goal is to have 16-20 people for the game.
After that will be (potentially) the last night of poker with my friends from Berkeley. The main issue is that Jeremy, the man with the poker chips, is going to be leaving town to go back to southern California. Also, people are leaving the area. Matt Pendleton is moving [permanently] to Maine with his wife Sang in a week or so. Josh is going back to southern California in August, and other people won't be around after summer is over. It's a sad thing.
As I mentioned in my tale of my trip to Norway, I broke my digital camera and now it does not turn on. I was hoping to use it for another year or two, but it appears that I will not be able to do that. I went to a camera shop earlier today (Ritz) to see how much it would cost to have a look at it and see what could be done. But apparently this costs $100 plus whatever money is used for parts. I think that is too much money, because the camera itself is not really worth that much money anymore. So I think I will get a new camera pretty soon. The one I am thinking about right now is the Olympus C-4000, since that uses the same memory type as my 128MB card. I can get it for about $300, which is a pretty good deal. But I would like to try at least one more camera shop before giving up on my old camera altogether.
In other news, I would be working right now except that all the computers in the lab I work in are having difficulties accessing the internet. It's strange; I can log in to the machines from the ugastro lab (where I am now), but when I am there I cannot access the internet through a web browser or ssh out of the lab. Very strange. Hopefully someone will be there who knows more about how that stuff works when I go back there to get lunch.
I have got through about 50 of the 200 pictures I took from my trip to Norway. I'll try to do 100 or so tonight, and then post them tomorrow or something.
I have returned from my extended journey to Norway. I actually got back yesterday, but was too tired to do anything but go to sleep. It was a great trip and I'm really glad I went. The fjords have a lot of natural beauty with forests and huge jagged mountains rising out of smooth clear waters everywhere. Culturally, Norway has adopted much of the United States tastes as far as things like food and music go, but by the end of my trip I was ready to be back in a country where the native language was english. A detailed account of what I did is in the extended entry.
Now that I've complained about people doing stupid things, I may as well mention two of my own. They announced boarding for seats 37-47, and I got up, thinking I had seat 38E (when in fact I had 32E). However, right as I got up to the boarding area, they called 27-37, so me with my seat 32E was just fine. I still felt somewhat guilty though. The other stupid thing was that I sat myself down in the wrong row. What I thought was row 32 was in fact row 33, and I again succeeded in making an ass of myself.
It was bloody hot in Berkeley today. I think summer finally started the day I leave the country. All the flight attendents speak French, or hard to understand English. We'll see how this goes.
The flight from SFO to Paris went as well as could be hoped, I guess. I got 0 hours of sleep. They showed a couple of crappy chick flicks (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and that one about a crappy honeymoon ruining a new marriage). The first one was significantly better than the second one, which says more about how bad the second was rather than how good the first one was.
I am about 3/4 of the way through my five hour layover in Paris. Yes, this trip has kind of sucked so far. I managed to doze sitting in a chair for an hour or two before getting Pizza Hut pizza. My flight to Oslo leaves at 7:05pm.
Also, I smell and look like a pig, because I haven't showered/shaved in about 24 hours. In addition, I just got a bloody nose to cap it all off.
I'm not sure what we'll be doing tomorrow, but it should be good. Unfortunately, Tiffany has no internet access from her dorm room, so email access will be sketchy until I'm back in the homeland.
After that we were going to visit the university's computer center to check email and stuff, but they closed an hour before we got there. As soon as we got there, though, it started to rain like it had never rained before. So we both got totally soaked walking the 20 minutes back to Tiffany's dorm room.
Dinner (salad, pasta, bread) came after we took our showers to clean up and dry off. Then we played Risk, the game of world domination, with a couple of Tiffany's friends. The day was a good one, even if I cut up my foot and got soaked by rain.
We ended up going to the city of Kongsburg which was about 60km away from Oslo. There was a decent mountain there with a nice river running around it. We studied the trail map for a few minutes before deciding on an 8km trail that seemed nice. It took us about a minute to get completely off the trail. I guess our attempt was to stay with the river, but after toiling off the trail for half an hour, we doubled back and came to a real trail which we followed back in the direction of the base of the trails. There, Tiffany and our two friends went for a swim in the river. Having the experience in the lake that I did yesterday and figuring that a river can only be colder than a lake, I decided not to go in for a swim. I think it was a good move.
Tiffany is going for a run right now, then we're going to get food for an extended trip to the Fjords tomorrow and the next day. After that, we might finally eat dinner.
There isn't a whole lot to say about the trip, other than it took a long time, we stopped once to eat lunch, and another time to eat dinner. I took a dump in the woods after lunch.
Dinner was especially nice, because we got this personal grill thing and had our own little barbecue on the coast with a beautiful view and awesome weather. A couple of burgers, potato chips, and some beer. It was nice.
After dinner we drove to Sogndal, a little town with a hostel that we stayed at. The hostel was nice, but had more space than we needed, and the cost for the night's stay showed it. We went for a walk around town, but everything was closed so it was, well, boring.
Tiffany and I met up in an hour or so and decided to hike right up to the glacier. Oh, it was a fateful decision. I had running shoes on, and the trail was reallly just rocks and slippery slopes with water running in various places. So of course I slipped at one point and started sliding out of control. After not too long I stopped myself and thought everything was ok. However, the next time I tried to turn my camera on, nothing happened. It appears I hit it somehow when I fell and broke the thing. It really put me in a bad mood, which was really unfortunate, because the glacier was majestic and beautiful.
We spent some more time at the glacier, and then drove seven or eight hours straight with a bathroom break or two. we made it back in time to hang out with Tiffany's friends and eat a really god pasta dinner made by Christopher, one of Tiffany's friends. Naturally, there were some beers involved as well. About 1am or so it was time for bed, planning on waking up at 5am and driving to the airport to get there by 6am for my 7:05am departure. Yes, it is stupid to give oneself only an hour bubble for international flights. Worry not, I will learn my lesson.
I arrived at 6:40, exactly 25 minutes before my flight was scheduled to take off. We were a little slow getting out of the dorm room, we took a wrong turn, and the airport turned out to be much farther than we thought it was. But anyway, I got there and was panicking a little bit because it was so close to departure time. However, I found the line for my flight with Air France and thought I was going to be ok. But while I was in line they stopped boarding. I was told to go to the Air France window on the other side of the airport, but no one was there so I hurried back to the place where the Air France ticked line had been. There someone else told me to talk to the airport service agent. Finally I got help, as he tried calling Air France to see if I could board the plane late, (by now it's about 6:50am), but they say no. So he tells me to go back to the Air France window and wait for someone to show up. So I waited for awhile and someone finally came. Then I got the bad news that I could not transfer my ticket at all, and after a lot of searching, I could either get a flight to Paris at 3:45pm and stay overnight before heading to SFO, or wait till July 5 in Oslo and get the same flight plan that I should have had today. I chose to stay in Oslo, since I don't know anyone in France nor come even close to speakign French.
Now, however, I have no way of contacting Tiffany, so I must find my way back to her dorm room and hope she is there. This is definitely an adventure. Too bad it's a miserable one.
Anyway, after I arrived at Tiffany's dorm room, I waited until someone left the door to the building open long enough so I could sneak in. Then I got into her room and watched American Beauty, since for some reason I wasn't too tired. When that finished I finally laid down to get some rest, but Tiffany returned shortly thereafter. so were both apologetic, but eventualy we had to stop worrying about it and just look at it as an extended vacation. However, we had both woken up really early and were very tired. So all we did was laundry and clean her room.
For dinner we went to a picnic with Tiffany's friends. They were nice and king to offer us dinner. Of course there was some teasing but it was all fine. And so that brought an end to one of the longest days I've had in awhile.
We cooked our own dinner tonight, just some pasta and sauce plus salad. It was fine. Sometimes it's nice to make food yourself and eat it. Ok, that sounds really stupid. Nevermind. After dinner we watched Requiem for a Dream, a movie about drug addiction and the bad things that can hapen to you. It was very hard to watch and I don't have much interest in seeing again, although it was not a bad movie.
For dinner we met up with Tiffany's friends and ate nachos (Chrisotpher again cooked). They were really good nachos, complete with meat, beans, cheese, salsa, and jalapenos. We had guacamole too, but it was definitely not the best guacamole I've ever had. It was not fresh at all and tasted like it. Oh well, it was still good. There was also beer and wine.
Since this was the night before my flight out of Norway and I wanted to avoid another fiasco like on the 2nd, I decided that I would wake up at 4am to be ready for the taxi that would take me to the airport express train which would obviously take me to the airport in plenty of time for my flight at 7:05am. However, it was already 2am by the time I was all packed and ready to go, so I decided to just stay up all night and sleep in the airports/on the plane. So I passed the time till 4am playing Hearts on Tiffany's computer. Then at 4:30am I caught the taxi and said goodbye to Tiffany.
Anyway, I got in the taxi and discovered the driver was a real talkative guy. In fact, he mentioned that people in the USA were nice when they talked to you, and then behind your back they would stab you whben you weren't looking. So of course I agreed, because that's what you do with a psycho, right? Well, psycho might be a bit of an exaggeration, but he also said Oslo was a horrible city, and even dropped the f-bomb when describing it. So that was an interesting ride. It was cost about twice what I was expecting to pay. And then I couldn't get a student airport express train ticket, so I paid double what I should have there too (no service windows open till too late). Norway is expensive.
I arrived at the airport in plenty of time thankfully, so I felt good about that. However, I started to feel the effects of no sleep last night begining about 5:00am Norway time, and that feeling has persisted until now. It will be nice to get real sleep. I did manage to sleep a little on the flight from Oslo to Paris. The main prblem was that I was seated next to this couple that bickered in (maybe) Norwegian for the entire flight. This caused the female component of the couple to sob at frequent intervals making sleep more difficult. But I still got some sleep. Then I slogged through a 3 hour layover in the ugly Charles De Gaulle airport and got on my flight to SFO.
That flight was fine except for the movies. They showed some Disney movie which I actually managed to sleep through most of, and this awful awful girl teen power movie (What A Girl Wants) that made me want to puke watching it. Still, I did watch it because I had nothing else to do and it passed the time. Anyway, I got through that, passed through customs, picked up my luggage, and now I'm on BART heading home. I'm tired.