a dreamy week at home

My grandparents usually bring my little cousins to come play at my house during the holidays when they get a week off school, but I missed out on seeing them this time around... my poor grandpa was still recovering in the hospital from his recent tumor removal. Being old and lacking English doesn't bode well for being stuck in the hospital =(

No cousins, but home certainly doesn't lack comforts and good times... highlights this time around...

• movies (asian, of course)... The Myth, Arahan, Election
  
• sleeping until after noon almost everyday
  
• breakfast (@ a diner, of course) and catching up with the other Melissa
  
• walking around Red Bank and chatting in the cold cold night with Herb
  
• H & AJ trying to order me drinks... amaretto sour & fuzzy navel got past the initial taste (smoking is allowed in NJ bars... bleh)
  
• pre and post christmas shopping with my brothers
  
• being introduced to R's 2 new Pumas... one killer (literally) and one cheetah
  
• D updating me on the latest chinese pop artists (7 gigs in the process of being transferred to my mp3 and music video arsenals... Jay Chou, Wang Lee Hom,...)
  
• R teaching us a hiphop dance routine into the wee hours... I have no style, but it was tons of fun anyways
  
• anticipating R getting his PS2 to USB adapter so we could DDR to no end... of course, it wasn't delivered until right after I left  >_<
  
• getting another 1% done on my cross-stitch project from years ago
  
• my dad going gaga over 'Typing of the Dead'... a typing game based on 'House of the Dead 2'
  
• my dad going gaga over DDR
  
• yummy dinner at Crown Palace with my family
  
• spending 2 hours browsing Pearl Arts with R&D
  
• seeing V and chatting until the wee hours ^o^  ^o^  ^o^
  

i need more normal hours

When I'm on the west coast, I find that when I want to call someone, it's already too late to do so. 10 or 11pm... pacific... which isn't good when the person I want to call is on the east coast, which usually ends up being most of the time.

Now, I'm on the east coast. And yet, it's still a weird hour.

I just can't seem to ever get a 'good' time.

too cute (and cool)

Ah, the many hours of the Honda ASIMO ad staring up at me last year. It was one of the few not-too-annoying ads on the back cover of a magazine that I could use to cover up my treadmill display so I could just lose track of time and run. So... when I ran into these videos of the new generation ASIMO, I just couldn't help but watch them all. Some of the clips of it moving are just super cute! ^o^ And really cool... being able to balance itself, some nice face/voice/gesture recognition, walk up and down stairs (!), and doing handy things like carry coffee ^_~

drinking out of a firehose

I haven't heard that phrase in quite a while. My group has a new director, the chain of command being me -> manager -> sr manager -> director -> vp (I think). He's new to our program and to Sunnyvale and will be managing out of his main office in Florida. He started out today with a presentation about his background and his objectives for us... seems quite ambitious. It was interesting to hear afterwards what the old timers (~20+ years in the group) had to say about him... they've seen so many manager types come and go throughout the years.

Since I'm still on the eecs mailing list (by choice), I get updates about dear old tim on the east coast. They just added two new classes for undergrads, 6.095 Intro to Comp Sci and Programming and 6.099 Intro to EECS 1, both being piloted this coming spring. 095 is intended to help "position students so that they can compete for UROPs and excel in subjects such as 001" and the language for the problem sets is going to be Python. 099 is an "integrated introduction to electrical engineering and computer science, taught using a substantial interactive laboratory based on mobile robots. Weekly lectures and the interactive laboratory will be used to teach techniques in modeling and abstraction as applied to: computer programs, control systems, intelligent behavior, circuits and transducers."

I hate that I have mixed feelings. Of course, I applaud the department for trying to improve the curriculum and look for better ways to educate the students. In fact, both these classes probably would have been a great benefit to me had they been there when I was going through it. And that's probably where I feel the wrong... one of those "why should *they* now get a gentle introduction when I had to drink from the hose at the start?" Or maybe a "it's supposed to be like hell!" It's like when they tried new teaching methods for 001 and 004... easier classes and an easier A... but after my time. (...disregarding whether I would have been happier with an easier journey)

I don't endorse the hose method, or maybe I do just for tim. It was right for some people; in fact, it was right for many people. The tim way is the hose way, isn't it? The students who are a good match for the school are supposed to endure, adapt to learning that way, and use it grow. And the rest, well, maybe it wasn't the right school (at least academically). When I think this way, I know I'm still immature.

And I can't help but feel just a little sad that they re-assigned the number 095, which was the first rendition of the OS class when I took it, which got a new number when it was designated as a grad class in the next release.

bad bad cingular

I checked my minutes spent thus far this month (my billing cycle started on the 6th... just a few days ago)... 91 (!!!!) ROAMING minutes ?!?! That would be minutes spent on the phone last night in my apartment, which has never been a roaming area before. And it shouldn't! I'm right in the middle of high tech civilization, not in the middle of nowhere.

And I just started my switch to Verizon, too. Hmm... maybe they have secret knowledge of that.

The yearly SMP holiday party at work... the only time during the year that alcohol is served during working hours. Along with the little food goodies, there's also a raffle. Not one of the more than 10 workmates at my table won anything... but the last 3 raffle items were all won by the people sitting at the table next to ours. Guess we just picked the wrong table!

Firefly (Oct 17th to Nov 22nd)
14 episodes + 1 set of DVD specials, aired on FOX in 2002
One word... WATCH IT! (ok, that was 2)
Another 'thank you' to V... he's 2 for 2 so far ^o^ This series was a little bit of everything... action, comedy, drama. Most of the comedic lines were pretty witty (at least to me) and some bits seemed cheesy but for some reason the cheese was a 'haha' cheese rather than a 'oh no' cheese. If we must say 'favorite American tv series', well, I guess this would be it (until V's next throw ^_~). K and I are both sad there isn't another season to watch now.

Howl's Moving Castle [by Diana Wynne Jones]
After watching the movie at R's a few weeks back, I put myself on the library's request list for the book, partially in hope that some elements in the movie would be better explained. So here is another one of those 'book is entirely better than the movie'. I didn't really care for the changes Miyazaki made to the storyline and neither for his removal of most of the character development.

Angels and Demons [by Dan Brown]
Many similar elements to The Da Vinci Code. I started listening to the audio version of the book on my last trip to the desert with Stewart and Mike... except we got to only listen to half the CD's, and halfway is about where all the action starts happening (yea, lots of slow going before that). Just one of those decent 'read on a long flight' (or a long board game) kinds of books.