Almost six years ago, I joined sixdegrees.com–the first FOAF network of its kind (that i knew of). And now, there\’s Friendster, Tribe, and Orkut.

Now that Friendster has fully matured. The theory of everyone being connected by at least 6 degrees is true! Yesterday, I suddenly remembered the full names of people I used to know 5 years ago. People I met online of course. A crazy wacky girl named Elaine who eventually went to UPenn. A girl named Lauren from Puerto Rico where we had a flame war for about a week and became email buddies instead…she went to Yale. And a guy named Michael I met in the Yahoo Club BayAreaTEENS who went to UC Davis. I found all these three on Friendster (a couple of others I couldn\’t find at all–the guy who asked me \”what are your hopes and aspirations?\” and I gave a half-sarcastic answer and he got mad (we subtly flirted later), the guy from SoCal who yearned to be a philosopher and found an online gf from Oregon, the guy from Wisconsin who called me but I was too socially inept to deal with a real conversation. But with all the three I found, only five degrees of separation!!!

What this really means is that all the people I have met in life, I was most likely connected to them in 6 degrees.

JEALOUS. I want to be a PHD student, because all schools would pay for visit. Up to $650! As a masters student, the school only pays for my hotel stay but not my flight, meals or transportation from the airport (I checked the CMU phd students and they get a limo from the airport!). :(

Most people hate being flyered. I do too, but at the beginning of last semester, I had a thought. How would people react if I actually want to get the flyer? Walking through Sproul Plaza, there are thousands of clubs, protestors, etc. that want to put their grubby papers in your hands. Usually most people just try to avoid the paper or passively accept it. Last semester, I suddenly had an idea and put my hands palms-up walking through the plaza. Nobody put anything in my hands. Today, as a girl gave me some shiny thing for A.C.T.I.O.N. (I can\’t tell you what the acronym means because I never looked), I suddenly had an idea. As a result, I went up to all the people flyering and assertively placed my right hand in front of them. Some of them looked slightly taken back and passively gave me a flyer as if they wanted me to go away (the irony?) As a result of the experiment, I ended up with four A.C.T.I.O.N. flyers, one pamphlet (for some protest probably), two tutoring flyers, some club thing… Two people thanked me for taking a flyer. And as quickly as I gathered all the papers, I dumped them all in the mixed paper recycling (I don\’t dump, I recycle!), not even looking at what the flyers said.

On my way back to the apartment, I ran into a huge group of kids (around 6-7 years old) all led by approximately 7 adults. It was rather cute to see one of the kids pointing at pictures in the hated Sports Illustrated insert from the Daily Cal (most people just grab the newspaper and throw the insert on the ground). Then, I saw a few kids go up to the emergency phone, touching the buttons. Then one assertive kid went up and pressed the BIG RED BUTTON. Immediately the light on top of the emergency phone started flashing. I giggled to myself as one of the teachers admonished the kid and went over to apologize to the UCOP people on the phone. How cute!!!

I am listening to a radio show in Cantonese that interviews William Hung!!

If you go to Japan, please buy me DOMO-KUNS postcards!! kthxbi.

Today, I encountered the worst computer virus ever…in my life. After nearly a full two years of playing tech support, I sometimes want to quit. I don\’t know why I applied for a summer internship at Mann Consulting, a tech support firm…for the \”stars\”. The job is fun when I can figure out how to resolve problems. However, when it becomes frusturating and almost unsolvable, it causes me too much undue stress. Maybe it\’s because I take these problems to heart. I sympathize too easily with the residents\’ pain of not having Internet or losing their files (You\’re reading the blog of someone who cried when her hard drive was erased of 2 years…of DRAMAH.)

And this virus (hopefully the Gaobot) caused me to sit at a resident\’s computer for 2 hours…confused. I opened the registry editor to delete inserted values that caused virus programs to start up. But after approximately 30 seconds of the registry being open, it would suddenly close. If I opened it up again, it would keep closing. Safe mode, anyone? Worse yet, when I deleted a file…it would disappear (or did it?). It wouldn\’t appear in the recycle bin. Actually, the recycle bin wasn\’t really a recycle bin. I couldn\’t drag files into the bin. When I tried installing an antivirus program, it would halt the installation.

I am so definitely going to get a Mac for my next computer. It\’s not that there aren\’t enough Macs around that there aren\’t any Mac viruses around. Rather, the MacOsX is secure enough on its own. Surely, a virus writer would take the opportunity to write something that takes advantage of a system that hasn\’t been broken in before! It\’s funny how all the PC users complain about the lack of two buttons on a mouse. Bad interface!, they say. But a novice user wouldn\’t understand why a mouse has two buttons. A one button mouse is much more intuitive! Indeed, when I first used a Windows machine (my first computer was a Mac), I was shocked at a mouse having two buttons.

Iowa State rejected me. But this is like being rejected by a third tier college and being accepted to a first tier college. The irony. The funny thing is that I previously thought I would be rejected everywhere else and accepted at iastate (which would be my ultimate backup). Not that I wanted to go to IOWA anyway! The land of corn fields or something!!!!!

It\’s sad that I don\’t have a perfect score!

With my recent discovery of Soulseek, I was able to find a song that I had half-downloaded more than a year ago. For awhile, I had this partial song playing in winamp over and over again. And at the 2 minute mark, it\’ll suddenly END driving my blood into shock.

It\’s an obscure band, but it took me only two days to find a full download on soulseek (my savior, because I am still too cheap to spend money on CDs). Now I have the band\’s entire album. Heard of Halo? I almost now…feel complete.

Last week, I utilized the @cal alumni network to get an informational interview with this usability designer. I had it on my cellphone (because it was a long distance phone call) in a stuffy meeting room at the main office of where I work. By the time I had finished, the temperature of the room had risen from a 80 degrees to a boiling 87 degrees. How? Most likely by the setting sun and not me.

The problem was I didn\’t learn as much as I could have. I got an overview of how the usability field is like. That the dot-com bust happened, because of bad business models (this fact I learned during my summer internship). But as I listened, I admired the work that the alumni did. Indeed, he started at the very bottom working his way up after 10 years to senior UI engineer. And furthermore, he didn\’t apply much of the skills he acquired in college to his career. What about college not defining your career path???

I looked at the CMU Masters study plan. So incredibly exciting! The masters program itself has everything that I have always wanted to take. Course titles such as How people make things, Social issues of computing, Gizmology and Internet and Law. :D

And on this map test, I actually got a perfect score my first try (contrary to my belief that I missed one before time was up). It\’s not that hard considering I consistently meet people all over the country as well as apply to graduate schools all over the country (it wouldn\’t be good if I didn\’t know where Georgia Tech was located…)

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.