What a pain. I have spent the last two days trying to make an image gallery script work on the masters web server. But to no avail. Unfortunately, I don\’t have the unix sysadmin experience, so I am not sure how to troubleshoot anything. My extent of sysadmin experience only extends to novice use of vi (which I dislike) and hitting rm * -rf (because I am addicted to power trips). I don\’t understand why it\’s so difficult to install on this server when I have always had a flawless experience on my 99.9% uptime guaranteed $50/year web servers.

Happy Chinese New Year! Today, my house held a Chinese New Year potluck. Compared to previous parties we held, this probably could be my favorite. Mostly, because I love food. Of course just like my farewell party, because I was so busy arranging things and appeasing Alex\’s need of PUI, I didn\’t get to eat that much myself. But it\’s ok! I have always loved the fact that food can make anyone happy. Just for a second.

There was a moment in high school that I was incredibly upset about something. All my friends attempted to cheer me up with sayings of this and that. Suddenly my sister walked over with a plate of fries. She noticed my despair and offered me a fry. And suddenly the world was brighter again.

I fattened up my photo album again. Earlier in the day, I practiced my four word Chinese New Year sayings to one of my friends originally from Hong Kong. In surprise, he demanded, \”Are you talking in Chinese that deliberately bad?\”

Embarrassed, I could only respond, \”No…uh…that\’s how I normally speak.\”

Apparently, I am still such a banana. Yellow on the outside and white on the inside. I mean I am a Twinkie. Because I am also too disgustingly sweet (sometimes) and very bad for your health.

Grrrrr…I hate long days that don\’t stop until 2 am. Okay, in between I did inject an hour of Matrix Revolutions (I discovered the On-demand on our tv) and an hour of messing with almond jello.

How did I end up being so morose in the previous entry. I forgot what brought that on, except that I must have had one of those whyamialoneinmyroomaloneohwaititisbecauseihavealotofworkduetomorrow moment.

Today, I put the kitchen sponge in bleach to disinfect it. I am proud that I did it. One cleaning job down. Ten hundred more to go.

Anyway, I am proud of my little sister. She already got two interviews for optometry school. One in PA! Although that particular school is in Philly, 5 hours from here. Good job, lady! And good luck!

A few weeks ago, over dinner, some people were talking about games they played as a child. They talked about tag. Red rover. And suddenly the mention of those threw me back into my childhood…where I was the loner, the outcast, the one picked last.

As they talked and relived their nostalgia, I felt those small wounds surface. Even though I can laugh about it now, I just remember always being the part nobody wanted to be. There was a time when I played jump rope in kindergarten. I hated jump rope because we had to line up and I just wasn\’t coordinated enough to jump between the ropes. Fortunately as my turn approached, one of the boys \”accidentally\” threw a rock at my head and the next thing I knew, I was in the nurse\’s office. I also remember that monster game, a pseudo-tag game in the jungle gym. I was always the monster, because I wasn\’t fast enough. I remember playing tag where I was always It, because I was too slow. And my sister at one point felt sorry for me and slowed down to let me tag her. (Of course, she tagged me right after she paused the requisite 10 seconds.) My dad videotaped this and the irony was that I was still laughing throughout. But then ultimately, isn\’t that what childhood is all about? Despite the fact that I couldn\’t skip, I couldn\’t throw the ball right, I couldn\’t run fast enough…despite all of that, I smiled and laughed…and had fun.

Quite often, I look back on my childhood…always a bit sorrowful about how I felt rejected in school. One person told me that I need to come to terms with this, I need to not mourn it, but accept it. But all this makes who I am today.

GSA ski trip today! I got up at 6:45 am to catch the 7:30 am bus rides to Seven Springs resort.

I skiied today (because snowboarding was $15 more)…and was pleasantly impressed at how much I improved. Ever since I was 5 or 6, my parents took my sister and me up to Tahoe once a year to ski or snowboard. Everytime I went, I just couldn\’t handle the lesson. I just naturally have bad form for almost every single sport. And all this accumulated to frustration. So I never really knew how to ski until several years ago when I got over the you-cannot-teach-me-anything-if-i-cannot-learn-how-to-do-it-myself phase.

So basically, I am at the level of someone who has skiied two days. :) I am so sore! I was able to do a blue square falling only once. But not only that, I also skiied into a course and started turning between the blue/red flags until a lady yelled at me. Doh, how could I have known there was a competition going on! No major wipeouts unless you count the times that I fell intentionally because I was about to go into a black diamond zone.

Next up: master the snowboard. I anticipate approximately 10 years.

Big indecision. Today, I discovered that CMU won\’t partially support me to attend CHI, the HCI academic conference, because I am a part-time student. They will only reimburse me partially for next year.

So while I have met all these great people, I won\’t be able to spend a whole week with them in our own personal hci adventure.

Or I could always pay my own way. In reality, I spend over $600 in a month. And surely, not going on a trip to Japan last summer saved me over $1000. And I am less afraid of spending that much on my electronic fascination. So why is the price making me balk? Mostly, I just can\’t justify it to myself. Firstly, it\’s almost slightly embarrassing to attend a conference, not being supported by the school…especially since I didn\’t publish a paper or am not presenting a talk. Rather I am going for interest (I have always wanted to see what others have done in HCI), the experience…and most of all, to spend this valuable time with people I may not even see in 12 months.

Despite all my rants about disliking people or being annoyed by people, it\’s people that make my day. Starting as an awkward shy child, I never really trusted anyone. I felt like people would tease me, attack me, ridicule me, and reject me. I started shedding that belief as an undergraduate at Berkeley. And yet, even then, I kept my distance. And when I came to Pittsburgh, I was given a chance to fully leave that belief. I found my trust and loyalty in people. So maybe the upcoming year would have the very same experience. Yet isn\’t the first time always the one you remember the best?

This morning, I got tired of being sick and scheduled an appointment with the Student Health Services. The moment I arrived at the clinic, I felt suddenly better. The placebo effect most certainly. The doctor told me that I didn\’t have a bacterial infection as I had suspected but just a bad virus that was going around campus. She gave me a bag of medications, which surprised me because I never got such bags during appointments. In it, she had given me a bottle of cough syrup, several tablets of ibprofren, bottle of generic sudafed, and a small handful of cough drops. She led me to the front counter…where my entire appointment was only $16. Only sixteen dollars?! And this was before any insurance stuff came into play. I wonder though if my tuition came into supporting the health services and lowered the cost of such fees.

So CHI (a conference for human computer interaction community) is coming up. It\’s taking place in Portland, Oregon. CMU usually sends all the masters students to CHI, paid for of course. I am wondering if I go…whether I should stop by the bay area (to see people and to see my parents) before heading up to Oregon or whether to go straight to Oregon from Pittsburgh. To me, is it really worth it to stop by the bay area…it would be about $91 more than if I flew to portland directly.

During winter break, I found that I really enjoyed being in my room in Lafayette. It\’s much bigger than the room I have in Pittsburgh. And it just had that feeling of comfort. Namely, my bed in Lafayette \”sinks\” unlike the firm-type mattress I have here. Plus, I have a full-length mirrors on my closet doors. Not a great place to do work though.

So just a thought, is it bad etiquette to answer your cell during a meeting (whisper into it that you\’re in a meeting) or answer ims when you\’re projecting your computer to the screen?

I have always wondered because I noticed this behavior recently. Do people my age have that many responsibilities to be always in touch with people? Just in case of emergency?

I asked why once and he said that it was because these people that contact him may not know he is busy. Ok, so can\’t they assume he\’s busy when they see an away msg or get the voicemail? Maybe this is why there is research being done on location-based instant messaging. This allows for passive communication, more like a pinging that doesn\’t require effort from one side. One person can determine where the other is located. Or better yet, why not have one of those ambient displays where you can tell that someone is alive because HEY YOUR RING IS GLOWING IN BLUE…

Ok, maybe that didn\’t make sense. But I took a nyquil 2 hours ago and I am drooping over my laptop, nodding my head downwards, ooooooh pretty colors….

OMGLOLROFLBBQ, I am going to sleep before MIDNIGHT. :D