Heavenly

I bought a season pass to Heavenly yesterday. I got the $299 pass that also gives you five free days at Vail resort in Colorado. Also recently, I bought a plane ticket to Denver Colorado on January 11. So I got a couple of things taken care of for after this semester is over. I'm going to visit Tiffany in Colorado Jan 11-19 and snowboard at Vail for free for five days, thanks to my Heavenly season pass. Also, next semester I'll be doing a lot of snowboarding at Heavenly because one of my friends from Stebbins has a cabin near to the resort. So I'm set up on that front. Now just a few million more things to go.

Relatives

Well, we almost made it through a holiday with my relatives without getting into a discussion about one particular aunt who has a habit of being very argumentative in combination with a distorted sense of reality. When you're talking to her, you have to be very careful that you don't get upset and say something you don't mean to. I was involved in a discussion with her about the Free Speech Movement and I did slip up at one point, but I quickly regained control, and after that I was fine. Comments later on by various parties caused great consternation with various other parties, but suffice it to say that once again things got a little "tussled up" yesterday. Of course, if she ever reads this I'll be in trouble. Hopefully that won't happen.

Mmm, food.

As always, so much good food on Thanksgiving. Tucker was sitting on my lap a second ago as I was typing this, but he just decided to jump down onto the floor and go check other stuff out. Now, since we always host Thanksgiving, we get to back in turkey and mashed potatoes leftovers for weeks. Oh yeah baby.

Meanwhile, I just saw X-Men 2, which was a really good movie. The first one was good and the second was even better. It's very unusual for a sequel to be better than the original, but I think it's the case here.

Tomorrow I'm going to hang out with a few friends of mine from high school. It should be pretty cool. Don't know yet what we're going to do, but I haven't seen them in awhile.

Putting Myself to Work

I helped my Mom and my sister wash the windows of our house today. They were pretty darn dirty, and my Mom really appreciated that getting done. So that was good to do. I haven't gotten much work done so far though. I'll try to do something tonight, but it's kinda hard...

Home for Thanksgiving

I came home this evening, taking BART to Fremont where my parents and Tucker picked me up and drove me home to San Jose. It's nice to be home, and I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving this year. It should be fun, especially with the house pretty much in its finished state. Tucker, that little devil, is barking up a storm in the kitchen right now. I've already got a couple of movies of him. I don't know if I'll be able to post them while I'm at home, but once I get back in Berkeley I'll try to post them.

What a Waste of Space

Today is one of those days where when I sit in front of my computer I have absolutely no creative thoughts. Nonetheless, here I am, typing meaningless drivel anyway. Just so I don't miss a day.

Been A Long Time

Two full days without a post. Hmm. Well, a lot has happened since the last post. Mainly, I drove down to Stanford to watch Cal win the 106th Big Game by a score of 28-16. It was an interesting game because there were two Cal teams that showed up for the game. In the first half we got to witness the bad Cal team, the one that had four fumbles in the first quarter alone and that was lucky to be down only 10-0 at the half. In the second half, however, the good Cal football team decided it would show up. And from there it was a relatively easy win.

After that, I went with Tiffany and Jessica (a friend of ours from Stebbins) to a friend of a friend's birthday party at Treasure Island. Now, you'd think that a party at Treasure Island would be automatically awesome, but it turns out we were going to an old Navy base that has fairly cheap (and uniform) housing units. The party turned out all right though, mostly because we played this fun Norwegian party game involving elements of Telephone, Charades, and the classic murder-mystery.

Then, the three of us went to another party that an ex-Stebbinite was having in her apartment. It basically amounted to a Stebbins re-union, so it was fun. The best part about that party, however, was my outstanding hair-do. I was wearing a Cal hat for most of the day, so my hair got compressed in weird ways, giving me a very disheveled look. I got a whole lot of comments about just what exactly I was doing that could lead to a hair-do like the one you see below. It was cool.

Tired

The General GRE went fine. I got almost exactly the same score as on the practice tests I took, which is all I was hoping for: 620 verbal, 780 math. The essays went fine too, I think.

Meanwhile, it's been a long day. I'm going to go to bed.

The General GRE

Tomorrow I take the general GRE. It will be nice to get one more step out of the way. There's not much else to say as far as that goes.

Meanwhile, I'm really looking forward to meeting the new puppy, whose name has been chosen to be Tucker. I think Tucker is a good name, especially because he apparently likes to tuck his head into people a lot.

Lastly, I believe I have a cold. I drank about 50 oz of water today and I had an orange today and yesterday, so hopefully that will help to beat it into submission. I think I got the cold when I played racquetball with a guy who was sick last week during PE.

Fist of Salad

Tiffany and I made a salad, spaghetti and frenchbread dinner tonight. We put the salad into a big bowl on the dining room table for both of us to eat. Since we haven't got any salad forks or anything fancy like that, we just used our hands to grab the salad and put it on our plates. Now, as it happens, I wasn't particularly careful with doing that, so bits and pieces of the salad got stuck to my knuckles. Tiffany then commented on what an attractive look it was with salad on my knuckles, prompting me to consider other possible benefits of having salad on ones knuckles. The main thing that occurred to me was the idea of a superhero (or supervillain, perhaps) with the name "Salad Puncher." Now, I enjoyed this name quite a bit, but then I thought of a better name: "Fist of Salad." Oh yeah, that's right. Another possibility could be the oh-so-deadly "Salad Fist." I'd be intimidated by anyone with that name.

Karma

Earlier today I received a significant amount of help from a friend of mine with regard to the use of CVS, a system installed on my UNIX machines that allows several users to edit the same piece of code (in this case, my research paper). I had been having a lot of trouble with the basics of using it, but this guy I know from my early online days helped me to straighten things out.

Later today I received an opportunity to help someone else out, in this case Andy Morrison, of Flagstaff REU fame. I helped him put a picture of him cooking some cream of wheat in the top part of his weblog. It's a bit rough now, but hopefully he can play around with it and set it up the way he wants it.

Everybody wins.

Swimming in Grad Schools

I've decided which grad schools I'm going to apply to. I probably won't get into the first two. I'd be happy at numbers 3-8, and number 9 is more of a backup school.

1) Harvard
2) Caltech
3) University of Washington
4) University of Arizona
5) UC Santa Cruz
6) University of Hawaii
7) University of Colorado
8) University of Chicago
9) UC Davis

Also, I took a practice general GRE today. The comforting aspect of it was that I really did feel that studying doesn't help at all for it. Which gives me time to do other things. Fo those interested, my percentile on the verbal and math sections was 83 and 91, respectively. I understand that 91 percentile is actually quite low for physics majors. I guess most folks of that ilk miss no math questions. Well, that almost certainly ain't gonna happen for me.

Rain on a Football Day

Today Cal hosts the University of Washington in our last football game at home. I am planning on going, but what is interesting is that in my 4.5 years of Cal football games, I never remember once going to a game with rainy weather. And yet, today it is raining. I wonder what this means.

Three Months

That's the latest estimate for how long it will take for my paper to be published. At least, that is according to Chao-Lin Kuo, the guy who I have been working with for most of the project. I guess there are a thousand little details that have to be taken care of before it is ready for submission to a journal, and it just takes time to iron those out. Meanwhile, I have to cook something up by December 6th that will be acceptable enough to get me my $500 stipend for being a Berkeley Physics Undergraduate Research Scholar.

Tomorrow I take the last midterm of my undergraduate career. Oh boy.

Crud

I thought of an idea for an April Fools day post that really appealed to me. Unfortunately, April 1st is a long way off and I'll probably forget the idea in about two hours. Oh well, such is the way of things.

Crunch time is approaching for all the things I've been working on this semester. In particular, December 6 is the final deadline for submission of my research paper. I think I can make it, but there are a number of hurdles that I need to clear first.

Hmm

Today was supposed to be a holiday, but I spent most of it working on my research paper and studying for my 110B midterm on Friday. How exciting.

Ouch

My nose hurts today. Touching any part of the bottom of my nose is painful, which makes the use of kleenex following a sneeze an ordeal of pain and torture.

Also, I watched The Matrix: Revolutions Saturday night. I thought it was a pretty good movie, although there were definitely parts where the script was lacking. I thought the special effects went a long ways towards making that up though.

Whoa

The second major hurdle is complete. Just a few more to go before I can finally relax... The exam went all right. No disasters, and that's about all I was hoping for. However, I was only able to sleep for about three and a half hours the night before. I went to bed around 11pm, but couldn't fall asleep till 3am and had to wake up at 6:45am. So I'm a little tired today, but other than that things are going well. Below is a picture of the newest addition to our family, although he doesn't have a name yet. Oh yeah, I'm thinking of going to see the Matrix: Revolutions tonight, if I can convince Tiffany to go see a movie. :)

Almost There

14 hours from now I will be liberated from GRE hell. Below is an image that succinctly sums up my feelings of this entire week. This particular picture was taken Tuesday night before the last IM softball game of the season. I was tired.

I was surprised (and elated!) to learn that my family just got a new golden retriever. I was afraid they would wait for too long to get a new one (or might not even at all), but I guess that is not the case. I'm sure he will bring a lot of happiness to our house. I'll post a picture of him too, as soon as I get one.

Ah, Trent

So just a few minutes ago Trent Dupois, a friend of mine from the REU program at Flagstaff a couple of summers ago, ask me over instant messenger if I remember that practice physics GRE test that Steve Tegler [REU coordinator] gave us. I say I do. Then he asks me if I ever had solutions to that exam, to which I respond, 'Yes, didn't you?'. Then I ask him if he's even started studying for the exam, which is on Saturday (I've spent all my waking moments this week studying for the damn thing). Naturally, good old Trent says not really. Not really! So I ended up taking a picture of the answer sheet with my camera and posting it on a web page that he could access. So less than 48 hours before the actual test, Trent begins to study. Ah, Trent, some things never change.

Softball Over

The astronomy department IM softball team's season came to an inglorious end yesterday, as we lost 24-9 to the only undefeated team in our leaue. We actually played a decent game against them, and I didn't feel too badly about the loss. There were two highlights about the game that I'd like to mention. First, that the best play of the game (for me) came during a pickle play where the opposing team's runner was caught between second and third. The situation was a runner on second with two outs and a grounder to the third that our third baseman bobbled and so didn't have enough time to throw the guy out at first. However, he noticed that the runner on second was cheating too far towards third, so he alertly threw the ball to our shortstop, who was covering second base at the time. The baserunner knew he couldn't make it back to second in time, so he took off for third. During all of this, I (playing left field) anticipated a pickle happening, so I ran for third to cover that end of the pickle and ended up receiving the ball from the shortstop and applying the tag for the final out of the inning. It was a good feeling, because people were saying, 'what the hell was the left-fielder doing at third base?' Well it's all about being aware of what's going on.

The second highlight was that I came up with two outs in the last inning and hit a hard line drive to keep the inning going. It wasn't like that made the difference between losing and winning (we did lose 24-9 after all), but it was still nice not to make the last out of the season for the team.

There was something else too, but I can't remember it now.

Ugh

I'm in the process of preparing for the physics GRE this week. This test is on Saturday, and I'm essentially spending all my time on it, with a few hours here and there for the homework set due this week in 110B.

Meanwhile, Sweetie, our cat, had to be put to sleep yesterday. She couldn't get up and walk around at all, and she could barely manage a whisper of a meow in the days leading up to yesterday, so it was time. She did live a long life though, so there is at least some consolation in that.

It's been a tough semester.

Submission

I submitted my application for the NSF graduate fellowship today. To help put things in the proper perspective as I clicked the submit button, I listened to Monty Python.

Halloween

I just got back from the Castro district of San Francisco, where a bunch of people get together in costumes to walk around and look at each other, and occasionally take pictures. Apparently the event has become so popular that it was sponsored by Live 105, a music station in the bay area that plays a lot of new alternative rock. Anyway, I went dressed up like a marine, with the same costume that I've used the past four Halloweens. I might like Halloween more if I had a better costume, but I just don't have the time to think up a good one. I guess this counts as my fun time for the weekend. I'll spend the rest of my time completing my essays, working on my research paper, and studying for the physics GRE, which is on November 8.