Author Archives: TheUser

Christmas

I’m supposed to make a post at the end of the year, right? Seems like that’s what everyone’s doing.
It’s been a good year.
Anyways, break’s been good so far. I’ve stayed in Irvine. I went to my mom’s in Orange though on the 23rd. I bought my stepdad Cinderella Man, and we watched it that night. It was pretty good.
We spent Christmas Eve at my Aunt’s house in Redondo. The kids are so cute. I gave out marinated cheese that I made for most of my family. I gave the kids a Sonic compilation for GameCube though. I think they liked it. gem came over that day so she got to meet my family. That was fun. I gave my grandfather a UCI t-shirt.
Christmas day was spent at my mom’s house. She made turkey, and it was really delicious. I gave my mom some candles and my dad a twinkie holder, some twinkies, and a UCI mug.
I got money, some assorted snacks, and a really cool shirt. I was happy.
At the end of the day, my stepdad surprised us with extra gifts. He gave me extra money, he gave my stepbrother a Crate amp, and he gave my brother a PSP with 1 GB stick, SOCOM, and Terminator 2. James loves it!
gemma also gave my mom a really nice shadow box she made for her. My mom gave her a bracelet and a cookbook. I gave gem an iTrip and a pillow, and she gave me a headset.
I came back home on the 26th. It was good to be back at my place, which does bring up a slightly different subject. Why does everyone rush away from their schools to go back to their parents? They claim they’re going home, but they spend most of their time at their apartment/house out here, so they’re really leaving home. I’m thinking it’s because people aren’t able to make new friends. They go “home” to see their friends, but um… I don’t really talk to people from high school very often. It’s not that I don’t like them, but how can they be my friends? They’re no where near me. And what can I have in common when we goto different schools?
Anyways, I’ve just been hanging out with gemma, playing games on my TX, watching movies, etc. I finally got around to watching Child’s Play. It’s a piece of shit.
And tonight, party at Chris’s. Good times!

Break

Things have been good so far. Right before finals week, I found that my roommates had used all the dishes we own. They finally did the dishes half way through the week only to use them all again that night. I left and didn’t come back for about five days. When I got back, Will was leaving. All the dirty dishes they made, including all the pots and pans with stuff caked on, were still there. He told me that both sides of the sink were clogged so they couldn’t do the dishes. That, and there was a tiny leak under the sink. I put in a work-order, and they came and got the sink working again. I need to do the dishes tonight.
I got a fever on Friday that last until Tuesday. I was still kind of sick after that but am feeling better by today. Besides spending a lot of time with gem of course, I spent a lot hanging out with Tony. That was fun, but he went back to LA. I’ve also seen Andy and Vince a couple times. It’s nice to be seeing more of Vince.
I’ve been watching Candidate for Goddess, playing GunBound and Neverwinter Nights, and watching tv. Today I saw King Kong with my mom, Pete, and James. It was a pretty good movie. And that’s break so far!

Kalah

Back mid-quarter, we had to create the AI for a Kalah playing program. Jacobson then had them play against each other and ranked the results on the course website. Here’s how he did it, copied from his document.

Each player’s score is the sum, across all games played, of beans in the player’s pot at each game’s end. The higher your score, the better you did.
Each (non-disqualified) player played two games, one as top player and one as bottom player, against every other (non-disqualified) player. Players were disqualified for taking longer than 5 seconds to make a move, making an illegal move, throwing unchecked exceptions at run-time or compile-time errors. We did not disqualify a player whose program wrote to the screen, though technically we could have done so.

And here’s the results ordered by high score rather than player, and with the half or so disqualified scores removed, with mine bolded (and gem right under me). I didn’t care about the formatting, but notice our positions when ranked by score 🙂
Player Score Record as Bottom Record as Top
———————————————————————–
5700 2197 20- 1- 0 18- 3- 0
xxxx 2191 20- 1- 0 19- 2- 0
xxxx 2187 20- 1- 0 19- 2- 0
xxxx 2184 20- 1- 0 18- 3- 0
xxxx 1935 15- 6- 0 18- 3- 0
xxxx 1920 15- 6- 0 15- 6- 0
xxxx 1752 13- 8- 0 11- 9- 1
xxxx 1682 12- 9- 0 14- 7- 0
xxxx 1575 10- 10- 1 13- 8- 0
xxxx 1369 10- 11- 0 7- 12- 2
xxxx 1342 9- 11- 1 7- 14- 0
xxxx 1304 7- 14- 0 7- 14- 0
xxxx 1300 12- 8- 1 4- 17- 0
xxxx 1271 11- 10- 0 1- 19- 1
xxxx 1210 11- 10- 0 3- 17- 1
xxxx 1194 9- 12- 0 2- 19- 0
xxxx 1180 10- 11- 0 5- 16- 0
xxxx 1167 3- 17- 1 7- 13- 1
xxxx 1152 7- 14- 0 5- 16- 0
xxxx 1148 8- 12- 1 4- 17- 0
xxxx 1061 11- 9- 1 1- 20- 0
xxxx 943 4- 17- 0 1- 20- 0
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED
xxxx 0 DISQUALIFIED

42

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted a real entry. The night before Thanksgiving I partied at Jon’s. Everyone was pretty fucked up the next morning. I was the only person who didn’t throw up. After getting a couple hours of sleep, I went to my aunt’s house for Thanksgiving. It was fun, and I spent the weekend doing basically nothing. Saturday night, I went to see the Estrada Brothers with gem, Jon, and Gabby for my music class. We got lost and they didn’t hold our reservations when we were a half hour late, so we sat outside before getting bored of it and leaving.
Then we had 10th week. The first few days were uneventful. Wednesday night, I spent the whole night working on my concert report. We didn’t really start studying for the music final until Thursday morning right before the test. It went okay. Afterwards we worked on our last CSE 23 project. Neither gem nor I finished. She was really close though. She ended up getting half credit, and I got a little less. We didn’t study at all for our Classics final on Friday, but we both did okay.
The weekend before finals week, gem and I spent it at my mom’s. We really didn’t get much studying done. Monday came, and it felt like the 23 final killed me. The 31L final went okay. For the next couple days I helped gem in 31 and worked on the 31L final project. I didn’t get it done, but we ended up getting a lot of points anyways.
Then we started getting our scores back. As it turns out, they could tell we didn’t hear shit at the concert, and the three of us each got an F. There went 10% of each of our grades. But oh well. I ended up getting a B- in music, A- in classics, A- in 23, and an A in 31L. I lost my 4.0 in the School of Engineering, but I’m only down to 3.948, which isn’t so bad. Maybe due to the lack of precision I can get that back to 4.000, heh.

Hosting

I finally got around to getting hosting for WebPageless. Stupid Cox has to block everything. There might still be errors in some places from the migration, but everything seems to be working. If anyone notices anything wrong, let me know please.

Will on Partying

“I definitely love how this house totally turned out to be the party house. It’s like we party every night.”
He said that last night, heh.
Patrick and I don’t love it as much…

Weekend

What a fun weekend!
First on Thursday I spent like the whole night at Antonio’s. We watched tv, he ordered pizza, and we just hung out. It was really great to hang out with him again. I hope he’s around more often in the future!
Friday night gemma, Lauren, Matt, Allison, and Rebecca went to the Spectrum to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. We had dinner at CPK and then off to the movie! It was a really fun movie I think. I think some of the scenes could have been more powerful, but oh well. Lauren and her bf wore costumes that she made – Gryffindor robes with scarves, ties, etc. They looked really great. We got home around one and everyone went to sleep except me, gem, and Allison. We considered going to Andy’s party but decided against it. gem couldn’t drive home afterwards and there was partying at my place so we couldn’t crash there. We decided just to hang out at her place. But first we had to drive to Del Taco. After getting back we drank, ate Del Taco, and watched Next all night. Great stuff!
Saturday we worked on some homework and ate food. Allison, gemma, and I decided we wanted to get some Flipz. After heading to Ralph’s we got distracted by brownie mix and ended up making some instead. And Allison made really tasty chicken and potatoes for us. It was great. That night, the three of us decided to go to Nickel Nickel to play! They had so many cool games. I like the ones that you can’t play at home – DDR, a sword game where you actually had to swing something, a drumming game, a piano game… blah so much fun. And the free games are cool too. But by far, the drumming game was my favorite. I have to go play that again some time. After we were done we went home, drank, had jello shots, and watched movies. Yay.
On Sunday we did more homework, ate some rice, and then went to see Goblet of Fire again. The first time we saw it on a digital projector, which was nice, but this time we went to the IMAX with Jon and Gabby. The IMAX makes it like a billion times better. We got really good seats too – the first row after that first section. Gabby kept getting scared though. I can’t believe how easily she scares, lol.
Tonight I’m just playing Super Nintendo. I don’t have any homework due this week, but there’s a lot coming up. Next Thursday the CSE project is due and a concert report. It’s also the day of our music final. Then Friday is our last Classics test. The following Monday is CSE31L and CSE23 finals. Then Wednesday is gem’s 31 final as well as the due date of our final project for 31L. Ah! But Thursday is tasty dinner at my aunt’s house.
Right now Will threw a bit of a party as usual so they’re playing beer pong. It wouldn’t be bad but Patrick goes to sleep a lot earlier than me. He’s a light sleeper so I can’t even be in the room while he’s asleep unless I’m asleep. I can’t blame him, but it sucks when there’s partying here because I don’t really have anywhere to go. I just have to put up with them being stupid, loud, and eating all of our food. This happens most nights. But they’re entertaining I s’pose. Okay bye!