My team lost in FLAM Bowl, 16-7. It was a fun game though, with 16 people covering a span of almost 10 years of classes from Bellarmine, my high school. The game was actually closer than the score would indicate because the final play of the game was an interception returned for a touchdown by the opposing team. I was expecting to play a mud-entrenched game because that's the way it always is when you play football around Christmas time, but this year we got to play on an astro-turf field that was totally dry. All in all, it was cool. Now I'm about to head over to hang out with the same friend for New Years. Should be good...
Plans to play golf today were rained out by the weather. However, this did provide time to watch the Jackson Browne DVD that my Dad got me for Christmas. It was a great concert that the entire family watched. I liked all the songs I knew, and there were plenty that I didn't recognize but still liked. I'm glad I own it too, because I will definitely be watching it again in the future.
I hung out with my friends from high school for the first time since being back for winter break. It was fun, although I'm a little zonked out on playing XBOX for awhile, seeing as that's all we did for about 5 hours.
I also had time today to re-upload my gallery pictures. Since our server move the links on the right have not been correct, so now that the images are uploaded I just have to update the links. I know this is such a pressing concern due to all the email that I have received from my legion of fans crying out that they cannot access the images that should be available. On a related note, this post marks the 10th consecutive comment-less entry. Yes, I have finally driven away any remnants of people who might have once been interested in the slightest of ways in my website. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
It's that time. Or rather, almost that time. Tomorrow I'm going to play golf with my Dad (weather permitting), and then on Tuesday I'm going to get together with my friends from Theatre Tech in high school for FLAM BOWL 2003. Now, FLAM stands for Floydist Liberation Army of Militants (naturally) and basically this is just an excuse for all of us to get together and play football for a few hours. The best part about the game is that it's a bunch of Techies playing football, so there's no pressure, at all. Oh yeah, the name came from this plastic pink flamingo named Floyd that was found in the theatre sometime before I entered high school.
I hit the ball pretty well at the driving range, so maybe I'll have a good day on the course tomorrow. Only one way to find out.
Me and my family went to the Piambos for dinner and dessert tonight. As always it was a fun event, hanging out with Bob and Julie, Jackie and Shelly, and Danny. But this year was extra special because we brought Tucker with us and he got to meet Sammy, their dog. The two of them were playing together the entire night. And Sammy is two years older than Tucker (and nearly four times as heavy!) so by the time we got back to San Jose (the Piambos live in Redwood City) Tucker was just about ready to drop dead.
I got to help out Danny with a telescope that he received as a Christmas present this year. I helped him set it up and then we looked at the Orion Nebula, a couple of stars, and then finally Saturn at the end of the night. It was really fun and both Bob and Julie were happy that I helped Danny set it up and use it. It was easy for me though because it was fun and I enjoyed doing it.
I just finished watching Cal beat Virginia Tech 52-49 just now. The interesting thing about this game, that you can pretty much tell from the score, is that for most of the time it was like watching a game with 12 offensive players against 10 defensive players. On almost every pass play there was a receiver with no defender within five yards of him, and it was just a matter of the quarterback finding him. This went for both teams, but it just happened that Cal stopped Virginia Tech just enough to come out on top.
Meanwhile, my personal statements are completed for all but two schools, so I'm really close to being finished with grad school applications. I plan on finishing it tomorrow.
We (me and my family) just got back from Christmas Eve at my aunt Ginny's (used to be my grandma Kay's, but she died this year). Several relatives were on hand as always and it was a fun night. Tucker got to spend the entire night inside the house and was a big hit with everyone, as per usual. I think my whole family did a great job on gifts this year, particularly by me and my sister because we made a nice collage of Charlie and Sweetie who died this year for our Mom. Also, my sister took a very nice picture of my Dad putting his arm around Charlie on our front porch and gave that in a frame to my Dad for Christmas. All in all things went well.
My Christmas shopping is done. Wrapping is almost complete as well. I even baked some cinnamon sugar cookies. I'm looking forward to post-Christmas time though, when I can get started on my grad school applications again and hang out with my friends for a few days before the AAS conference.
Working on Christmas gifts today, mostly. Also, I got to go out to the driving range with my Dad. Playing once a month doesn't do much for my game though. For some reason I feel quite restless right now.
I watched 8 Mile last night. You know, the story of what a wonderful person Eminem is. Well, the movie does sort of depict life in an economically deficient town, except for the fact that everyone has absolutely perfect white teeth. And clean clothes. Yeah... So you watch the movie and you can't help but root for Eminem to succeed. Throughout the movie, people do bad things to him, and sometimes he responds with violence, but it's always at least somewhat justified. And he never does anything irresponsible. We never get to see him smoke pot or drink alcohol. Compared to everyone else in the film, he's a perfect angel. Unfortunately, reality doesn't support that interpretation of him. A quick check on his biography reveals a home life in turmoil that must, at least in part, be his fault.
Meanwhile, I've finished my application to UCSC grad school. That's three down.
I finished my application to the University of Chicago today. That leaves 7 out of 9 grad school applications to be finished.
I found a couple of interesting videos on fileplanet.com just now. The first one is an 11 minute video of someone beating Super Mario Brothers 3, in 11 minutes. It's pretty incredible, as the player knows exactly what is going to happen at all times. He never dies, and by the time it's over he easily has gotten 99 extra lives. I swear, sometimes it seems like you're watching the matrix when he becomes fire-mario.
The second video is of someone beating Super Mario World in about 14 minutes. It's cool too, though not quite as impressive as the SMB3 video. Although it does have nice sound track in the background.
I played both these games quite a bit when I was a kid, so it was fun to see some old school action come up.
We've been having a number of great sunsets lately in Berkeley. Thankfully, I've had the pleasure of viewing them from the lab in LeConte Hall, where I've been working on my poster for the AAS conference in January. However, my poster is pretty much done at this point.
Tonight, I'm going out to dinner with some friends of mine who were also astrophysics majors. These are people I had two classes with my sophomore year and two classes my senior year, plus other classes sprinkled in mostly randomly. They're all nice people and this will be the last time that I see most of them, so I'm looking forward to it quite a bit.
So I just found out I got a 69 percentile on the physics GRE, which is about 10 percentile points better than I had hoped for optimistically, based on my practice tests. I guess all that studying actually did pay off. YEAH!
I went snowboarding for the first time this season yesterday. I was rusty, but overall it was fun. My best runs came at the end of the day when I went by myself for the last hour that we (Tiffany, me, and one of Tiffany's friends named Marrick). For most of the day it's nice to go with people, but if the people you're going with aren't the same type of skier/snowboarder you are, you need some time on your own, so you don't have to worry about anyone else and can just focus on going down the mountain.
Today, I have been extremely unproductive. So now I think I'm going to try and upload some of my pictures to my gallery.
I've spent most of today working on my personal statement, the essay that all grad schools want describing why I will be a successful grad student. I'm about 2/3 done with it, so I should be in good position to finish it tomorrow.
My final went fine yesterday. It was great to be done, I must say. Last night Tiffany and I went to Fenton's Creamery to get sundaes (good!) and then we went bowling on the complete opposite side of town, giving our stomachs a chance to rest before the incredible physical exercise also known as bowling. I bowled a 149. Er, if you combined both of my games I bowled a 149. Yeah, that's a 78 followed by a 71. I have no natural talent for bowling and the fact that I go a couple of times a year does nothing to help. Plus they don't make 10 pound bowling balls with finger holes large enough for my fingers. It was still fun though.
Tomorrow I take my last final as an undergraduate. I have had a really good time at Berkeley, and for that I am thankful. I know that a lot of my friends from high school ended up disliking/hating their college, so I think I chose well back in the spring of '99. Seems like it was just yesterday that I was a freshman walking into Bowles Hall (my dorm that year) for the first time. And yet so much has happened since then too. Ah, the state of being sentimental. I really am looking forward to being done though.
I can't quite focus on next semester, even after my final, unfortunately. Aside from the nine grad school applications I'll be filling out (trying to finish them before Christmas will be my goal), I also have to prepare a poster based on the research I've done so I can present it at the AAS conference in January. But those are the last two things before I can finally relax.
This isn't related to anything that has happened to me recently, but I just thought about it while staring at the empty box for my journal entries. I have never liked being the third wheel. For example, during the daily tea and cookies with the physics department, I will often hang out with a two friends of mine who happen to have been good friends during high school. Now, it often happens that they begin to discuss some extremely funny (to them) events from their high school days. During these periods, I have absolutely nothing to say. Not a thing. So I just kind of stare around the room, seeing what else is going on and hoping for other people to walk in so I can join a conversation where I can make meaningful contributions to the discussion at hand. Unfortunately, this rarely happens.
This sort of thing also happens when one is hanging out with a friend, and then a friend of your friend (whom you do not know yourself) shows up and joins the group. Then you immediately become second-rate trash that nobody in their right mind would pay attention to. There follows, typically, a nice lengthy period of time during which you have nothing to do except marvel at how unimportant you have become. This stuff also irritates me.
I just got back from my first ever experience with the opera. One of my friends from astrophysics, Garrick Trapp, was conducting for the opera, so I attended the event to see him in action. It was fun, mostly because whenever I got bored I just watched Garrick fling his arms around as conductors are wont to do. The best part came just after it was over, when I got a chance to tell Garrick that it was the greatest opera I had ever witnessed! EVER! When there's no other competition, you always finish first.
I don't know what's happening with my website. I don't think it has updated the past few entries I've made. I'm not too motivated to figure out what's going wrong right now either.
Castro had its special dinner last night. The theme was Asian food and attire. I have no such attire, however, so I just went as myself. It was fun and I had a lot to drink.
Today is study day, however.
I'm having a hard time getting motivated to study for the physics 110B final on Wednesday, Dec 10. That's it.
I should also mention that, as of today, I am off tempura. In particular, I think it will be a long time before I eat shrimp tempura from a restaurant again. I had a bad experience with it at the beginning of this semester and then today it was pretty much the same thing (although I didn't eat nearly as much, so it wasn't as bad). So that's a little bit sad, because I used to really like tempura. But if it's not done right it just makes me sick.
So I went to a bar tonight with Tiffany and a friend of hers named Rachel. It turned out we were the only three white people in the bar, which made things interesting. Although some might call the bar a "dive bar", I thought the people there were very friendly and I had a good time. The only slight issue was when a drunk guy kept mumbling things at us when the music stopped. But everyone else was just ignoring him, so I think it was no big deal. Anyway, they had good music (I got to select a couple of nice Bill Withers songs) and it wasn't too loud so we could carry on a good conversation for the whole night. All in all it was a good time.
Deadline for AAS abstract submission is today. Deadline for submission of paper is one day from tomorrow. Reference forms need to be taken care of very soon. Apparently references generally like you to waive your right to access what they write about you in their letter. That's totally fine by me, but I just wish people would make it clear that that's what everyone does. Otherwise miscommunications like the one today wouldn't happen. I suppose I'm not making much sense. But I feel pretty jumbled up right now, so that's an accurate depiction of what's going on with me right now.
Apparently the server is being moved by the guy who started this whole bigwhoop thing. So I don't know whether anyone can see my website for the next few days or what, but supposedly all my posts will be recorded.