I love the project I am doing for the GUIR research. The whole idea is to mark down the locations of all wireless APs in Berkeley (at least the locations where most people hang out). So this means, I get to walk around the city with a PDA and a GPS tracker. It\’s sort of my dream come true…a pseudo-stalkerish dream. Here, I can find out all the encrypted and unencrypted wireless routers/hubs. Find out the names. Find out where I will get the best wireless access (when I finally get a laptop).

Did you ever know that there was a…BloggerCon?

I am wondering if I am making the right decision by going to graduate school right after finishing up my bachelors. Is it okay to be in debt for…5 years? Instead of working after I get my bachelors and save up money to apply for grad school?

Certainly, if I had decided to work after getting my bachelors, I would have to get a car. So that would almost equivalent to going to grad school. Yeah? Yeah.

I am getting the sinking feeling that life isn\’t going the way it\’s supposed to be. How can one be truly happy in the first place? Isn\’t happiness itself often the bliss from ignorance?

Now that I have been accepted to Carnegie Mellon, I am sort of glad that UMich is out of the picture. For the past few weeks, I was trying to convince myself that it\’s okay to be in the midwest. It\’s okay to be around thousands of religious conservatives (hey that\’s my perception of the midwest). And the winter. And that I won\’t be in a state that permits same-sex civil unions (not that it matters to me, but still).

And I would be surrounded by relatives that rarely communicate with family in California (my youngest cousin is going to attend umich as an undergraduate). Last week, I almost choked when my aunt (visiting the Bay Area) said that her youngest son could pick me up from UMich to go to Thanksgiving at her house. Thank you…but no thanks? Along with my sister, I feel like I am treated as the silent child (of the shining star of the family, my father) to be admired.

For some reason, Alecky told his family that I was going to visit UMich during their visiting days. To my amusement, his mother and brother told him (probably in a hushed voice so that my Berkeleyean mind wouldn\’t eavesdrop over 3000 miles), \”Alec, she\’s a bad influence.\”

Me a bad influence with my brand name undergraduate education? My high scores in relability and determination? My dependability? Bad influence?

I proceeded to tell Alecky to give his mother bad influence for her birthday.

I come to the realization today that one of my friends constantly uses me. A few years ago, I gravitated toward him, because of his admirable introspection and his great style of writing.

At the beginning of the semester, he would ask me to hang out late at night (11 pm?) when I was usually working on something or ready to go to sleep. Or at home. He would whine and complain if I wasn\’t in Berkeley. Then end of our short online conversation.

But now, all I see is a hypocrite. I don\’t like it when someone asks me to do a \”favor\” when we haven\’t been \”friends\” lately. That is, when I don\’t talk to someone for a long time, I expect that person to never ask me for favors. So he has asked me for tech support help several times, without asking me how my life is like. There was once when I confronted him and his reasoning was that i don\’t have an interesting life. Yeah?? Neither do I.

Instead like those stereotyped stupid boy in a teen movie, he asked me how my sex life is like. A joke??? And being that we lost that effect of a friendship, it\’s obviously none of his business. What bothers me that most is today, he asked me for directions to a city near where I was at for the weekend. I gladly gave him directions and mentioned that I would be in the city later (it was supposed to imply hey, wanna hang out?) But none of that. Just a short thanks and bye.

Thanks, I think for taking advantage of me.

I don\’t have a TV in my apartment. Sometimes I tell people that I don\’t own one. They seem so shocked.

But when I first got an apartment, I was adamantly against the thought of getting a TV. Since I already waste so much time on my computer, I don\’t see why I should get another device to help me waste more time. Furthermore, I don\’t have anything to watch on basic TV.

So I found myself at home, watching TV mindlessly. And how irritated I became when someone interrupted my TV watching (despite having seen that movie almost 3 times). That\’s not want I want. I am never going to be grounded to a weekly Thursday 8 pm watching of Friends. Nor am I going to be biased by shows that don\’t really show the truth.

Wherever I live next year, I hope that my roommates will not own a TV. At least…own a real live conversation.

In one episode of Sex and the City, Carrie is shocked and hurt when she sees her first bus advertisement pass by…with a hand-drawn penis on her picture. She puts her hand to her mouth, an exasperated shocked gasp. Her friends immediately make a joke out of it and try to comfort her.

Today (after grueling hours of removing the Beagle/Bagle worm from computers), I walked into the computing center and in the back room, I found a defaced rescomp CIB. Now this rescomp CIB (basically a poster with latest annoucements) has pictures of all the RCCs (myself included – a sucky picture too). Apparently someone (most likely a guy according to the handwriting) doodled all over our faces. One of my coworkers\’ name was crossed out and replaced with Gretel. Another was left with a mark on his forehead (the Asian Indian tradition). Another\’s description said gay instead of friendly. And even worse, my coworker\’s head was drawn to look like a penis. My own demarcation was an Asian hat with a large label VC and some unreadable writing.

Racist, sexist, lewd…but I was amused. Someone took their time to deface a poster! I thought I didn\’t look Vietnamese at all. Furthermore, I didn\’t think I looked that communist. Who knew.

Someone said blogs are ruining their life. (Props to Jason)

On the contrary, I think it allowed me to have a life. I found a way to express myself when I did not know how to express myself vocally. Most people I know in Berkeley don\’t blog (hey now, I don\’t call Xanga a blog, do you?). When I wore my I am blogging this shirt, everybody asked me what a blog was. When I was a major participant in the campus Blogging club, many thought it meant…FLOG THE LOG. No unfortunately.

Unlike some bloggers, I am not out to create hits for myself. I don\’t google for myself (mostly because I don\’t want most people I know to find me easily – yes I like to make life that hard). I like comments, but all it does is assure me that someone is reading. I do have, however, acquired a haughty approach to some blogs – I know which blogs suck, I know when to complain and create DRAMAH, but I also know how to compliment and praise. But I use blogging to keep in contact with people who live…so far far away.

Yet, one thing that the author forgot to mention is that all of us…often censor our blog. We don\’t always write what actually happened. We don\’t write the devastating, depressing parts of our lives. We don\’t write who we\’re crushing on. We don\’t write about how depressing we really are staring at a computer for 10 hours straight. Rather, we strive to find a life…so that we actually have something to talk about. Maybe I seek dramah just to have something to blog about.

It\’s the first Wednesday of the month again. Along with the monthly noon fire drill (that sounds a \”test test\” grumpy voice across campus), protestors gather in Sproul Plaza to show deathly pictures of…abortion. It\’s bothersome that these anti-abortion people come to campus just to show pictures of dead (bloody) babies, simply for the purpose of inciting fear in those who are still impartial to the issue. This time around, there were some other pro-choice protestors. But we know pictures often speak 1000 words.

So do actions, right? During a chat room incident last weekend, I felt so hurt and injustified that I decided to leave RBJ (well okay, stop posting — not sure if I will still rescind my RBJ profile yet). Not that they will notice (there are too many members that fade in and out of the boards), but the act itself speaks words for me. Why stay in something that will cause me to go only in one direction? Down? Those faithful followers, however, probably will try to lure me back, saying that they do value opinions and they want impact of individuals, but well good for them. But as always, actions always speak louder than words.

As I was walking back to my apartment today (for supposedly a quick rendevous, but instead I got to writing in my blog…agian), I suddenly realized that I was ready to get out of this town. It\’s the beginning of March and I am graduating towards the end of May. Slightly more than two months. In the last four years, I have created so-called relationships and demolished them, often all in one year. The history sort of lies invisible…a burden. Sure, I am often amused by the radical protestors (see: happy happy guy who should have more to say than a huge sign hanging on his body). I do love the high Berkeley style academia. But the people? Time to start anew.

Yesterday (because I hadn\’t been reading my work e-mails about virii too thoroughly) I received an e-mail with the subject \”Hokki\” from Berkeley\’s Hawaii Club mailing list. It looked legitimate albiet a bit fishy since the body of the message was just \”WEAH, i don\’t like plaintext\” and a password of numbers. The attached file was Letter.zip Because I was at work and on a Macintosh, I simply opened the attachment. Not once, but twice hoping that some amazing thing would happen. Nothing. :( I couldn\’t infect the Mac.

Turns out that attachment was the Beagle worm. Today, I received several more similar e-mails with the same attachments. From various campus mailing lists. At my work e-mail, I received several from residents. The worse case was when a former Rescomp employee (RCCs are supposed to be very tech geeky and are supposed to be very WARY of opening attachments) sent an infected e-mail the work mailing list. Embarassment, anyone?

What made this worm so easily spread is the way it\’s distributed. Once the user has opened up the file, entered in the password to unzip it, and run the executable…the program installs several files on the computer. One of which scans the entire hard drive looking for files that would contain e-mails. Then it creates a primitive mail server and sends out e-mails with this very attachment to all the addresses it found. But I must say, the e-mail body makes it very personable. How often do you hear a person say weah with a smilie face?

~~~

For my Industrial Design/Human Factors class, we have to create a design notebook. What we have to do is find objects in our daily life that reflect the design concepts in class. I chose the urinal for one of my ten required objects. Then I realized I didn\’t know how a urinal worked and I looked at this powerpoint presentation on how to use a urinal to help me. I never knew there was so much involved!!!

I got accepted to Carnegie Mellon MHCI program! :D The best HCI program in the world! Like my friends who are surprised at getting accepted to the top universities, I am….so surprised too. If I asked myself last year where I would think I was going, I would have just said San Jose State for a so-so CS graduate program. Ah, the contrary!

The tuition is more than $40,000 for the entire program. But it\’s the most \”wired\” campus in the US (I think). Hmmmmm!