Found a restaurant called Olive Branch in the Bonaventure. We got a gyro, hummus, chicken, rice, salad, and sprite for $18. Then I hung out in the room looking through the schedule and watching a tv show called Burn Notice on USA. It was interesting. Before bed I put everything that looked interesting to me in my phone’s calendar. Ready to go!
Category Archives: Journal
Day 0
Got to the Bonaventure around 1:00. They let us check in despite our check-in time being 3:00. Hung out in the room and acted pervy towards William for a while. AX registration started at 3:00, but we got there around 3:30. The line was huge and in the sun. Apparently the computers were down. Ethan said something got unplugged. We played Contact (verbal game, not DS) the whole time. So much fun!
Got badges by 5:30 or so and then had to wait in line for AMV tickets until 7:30. We had to pick up William’s ticket for him because he was too good for us! (He met friends for dinner.) The guy in front of me asked the three girls from the AniMaid Cafe for hugs. He actually wants to pay $25 to have dinner and play games with girls dressed as maids. Food better be good.
Papers and Presentations
Papers and Presentations sounds like the evil twin of Dungeons & Dragons. Anyways, I’m making an effort to post more.
I had a six page paper on video game consoles due Tuesday night that as of Tuesday night, I hadn’t really started. Usually the teacher is fine with assignments getting submitted anytime before he or the TA goes to look at them, and the TA wasn’t going to look at them until Wednesday morning. I stayed up all night writing a paper about the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii. It was fairly interesting actually. I had forty-something sources, but they were all web sites. I talked with Corey and Casey over Facebook about how we were all working on our papers. After finishing at around 6:00, I got to start my next assignment.
In my Classics class, each person has to do one “criticism forum.” For this assignment, I had to read a paper about how spectacle in ancient Greek novels represented political commentary about the Roman empire. I read the article and then wrote a few hundred words on it. It wasn’t anywhere near as stressful as the other paper.
I slept around 7:30 and woke up around 1:00. In Classics that day I had to talk about my post for a few minutes. That’s not really graded though; the assignment is the writing. We just talk about it in class as well. I talked for about thirty seconds before the professor started talking and let me stop. I think she could tell I was nervous. Actually, I wasn’t so much nervous as I was simply as a loss for what to talk about.
Today I had to present that video game paper. It was just a three to four minute presentation. I was kind of nervous. I know this instructor marks down for each “um” or “uh” stammered, for going over time, and for the normal not presenting ideas clearly. I got a perfect score! I was pretty surprised.
After class we went to Kaisen! I ate thirteen plates worth of food. I’m very full.
World
I’m bored in class again! I’m taking two other classes that I didn’t talk about last time – Game Development and an AI project course. Both ofthese classes are project courses, and both worry me.
In my AI project course, I’m working with gem, the Kubos, and Ethan. We’re creating AI algorithms to play the game of Battleships. I feel like we’re pretty behind. We’ve yet to combine code at all. I’ve been working on the actual algorthms, but until I get the file reader/writer and main game loop, I can’t really test my algorithms.
Game Development is worrying me too. Here at UCI I’m working with gem, Ethan, and a person I met in class named Tony. They’re all programmers. In addition, we’re working woth a group of artists from the Paguna College of Art and Design. Our planning has gone great. We know what we want to make. Art design is coming along well. I’ve been impressed with the concept art Ive seen so far, but we haven’t finalzed by designs yet. We’re meeting this Saturday for the first one to really discuss things.
We’re just getting started on the prgramming for it though. It’s due in about five weeks, which is not very far from now. By that time it needs to be playable, but we don’t really need it to be complete. It should have one level, a small selection of enemies, etc. After the class ends, I’d like to continue working on it. I know most of the artists feel the same way; I don’t know about the other prgrammers though.
Hello
Class is pretty boring, so maybe this would be a good time to actually update the blog with something personal. This is so much more boring than gaming posts I think. I feel like this stuff doesn’t really matter. Plus, people are either close enough to me that they don’t need to read it or distant enough that they don’t need to know. Of course, this is only read by William, who probably already knows, and James, who probably doesn’t care.
My position at MeridianLink ends soon (in three and a half weeks)! I started on May 13, 2008, so I’ll have been there for a year this time next week. I worked on my resume a bunch and went to the career fair a few weeks ago. I haven’t found much though. I was nervous before the career fair, but it was really nothing. A lot of the companies were pretty disappointing. We looked them all up ahead of time. Some of the companies that had software development positions opened didn’t know anything about those positions at the career fair. They were there only looking for particular positions even though their companies’ web sites listed multiple positions. There were also quite a few places that didn’t accept resumes and didn’t have much information. They simply told me to read their job listings on their site and apply there. If that’s the case, why come? There were also some places that I thought would have positions but that only had positions tangentially related. Of the remaining places, a good portion of them were only on the East Coast. Some were places that I didn’t really care about, but the NSA, CIA, IRS were interesting and all based on the East Coast. The NSA or CIA would be tempting, but I’m probably not qualified for something so competitive. I gave my resume out a lot though!
The most exciting company there was ArenaNet, the creator of Guild Wars. They weren’t listed in the documentation that was given out ahead of time, so seeing ArenaNet was a surprise. They also had no signs, banners, or anything. Just one table with a paper taped to it with their name (to specify to the companies where to set up), and one woman. I wanted to put off seeing them until the end because I was nervous and wanted the experience of talking to other companies. Near the end I saw the ArenaNet representative get up and begin to leave. I rushed over to talk to her, and she was more than happy to sit back down and talk a little. I think they were primarily looking for web development, which I’ve done at MeridianLink! I also expressed my interest in game development, and she took my resume.
I received an email from ArenaNet recently asking for code samples. They want a few thousand lines of my best work. I’m not sure what to give as a sample though. I feel like most of the Java work I’ve done at UCI is small and more of an excercise than anything important. I haven’t done too much programming in years besides my AI class last quarter and my classes this quarter. Off the top of my head, the only classes I took in the last two years that had a lot of programming were AI and signals classes using MATLAB programming. I don’t think MATLAB would be the best language to show, and I didn’t do very well in those classes anyways. My AI project from last quarter didn’t work well either. Regardless, Java isn’t even my strongest language anymore, and that’s what the majority of my UCI programming has been. My strongest is now C#, and all of my C# code is owned by MeridianLink. I’ll have to use what I learned at MeridianLink to code something up from scratch. ArenaNet said it doesn’t have to compile and run; it just needs to show my skill.
My Classics class is the first Classics class I’ve taken that I didn’t enjoy. It’s also the first Classics class I’ve taken that was a Comparative Literature class colisted as Classics. I think the professor is a Comparative Literature professor and part of the Classics department too. It’s interesting to be reading Ancient Greek novels, but I don’t really enjoy the class very much.
Senior Design is alright. The class is alright, but sometimes the lectures feel lengthy. The class does meet twice a week from 7:00 PM to 8:50 PM, so that’s probably a contributing factor. The teacher randomly calls on people though, which makes me nervous.
Okay that’s all. Now I’m at home and not so bored, so this post doesn’t get to be finished. Be glad I’m posting what I am.
Hi William
Today while working on Senior Design, we found that four or so wires broke the leads off their LEDs. We have more LEDs on the way, but it means we’ll have to take apart our screen to fix it >_>
We had Outback for dinner tonight. The bread was super tasty, and I asked for at least four or five loaves. I had seared ahi tuna to start, a 20 oz. rare steak, a sweet potato with butter and brown sugar, and a baked potato with sour cream, chives, bacon, and cheese. It was delicious!
William Likes to Read About Friends
I haven’t really posted anything personal in a while. I don’t feel like the specifics of my everyday life is of any value to read.
Yesterday was my birthday. My mom stopped by earlier this week to wish me a happy birthday. She put $100 in my account for me. gem gave me the record tokidoki watch that I’ve been wanting. It’s really awesome! In the morning we stopped by Disneyland so I could buy an annual pass. Disney gives free passes on your birthday, and I used that free pass to upgrade to the annual pass. Then we rushed to our meeting with professor Ihler before going to lunch at McDonald’s. Almost everybody in the restaurant was eating the fish fillet sandwiches. The beefy Double Cheeseburgers hit the spot for me! Catholics! Crazy! I even had a fudge sundae! It was good but not as good as the sundae I had at Downtown Disney earlier this week!
After lunch I headed off to work. I did some general overhead crap and turned in some old cases. Then I got to work on my project for David. He asked me to write a console application for him. He’ll use the tool to help him in his work. I tried to finish it before the SDE (Software Development Engineer) status meeting but didn’t make it. After the meeting David went home early, and I finished the project. Right now it only compares lists of strings though. I need to update it to be generic. I had some trouble with one part though. I got it to work, but I’m not sure I understand. It had to do with passing a function to another function and delegate functions.
After work I went out to dinner with gem, Antonio, Duncan, Collin, Andy, Jon, and Gabby at Gina’s Pizza. It was fun, but service was kind of bad.
At different points throughout the day I talked to Mom, Pete, and James on the phone and Dad on the Internet.
Back at the house we had some cake, and then we played some Street Fighter IV. It was fun, but I’m pretty shitty!
Later gem beat World of Goo! Impressive!
All in all, it was a really good day!
There’s a lot of stuff coming up in school. I have AI homework due Monday, a Classics take home midterm due Tuesday, an AI quiz on Tuesday, a signals project due Thursday, AI homework due the next Monday, a Classics project due that Tuesday, a signals project due that Thursday, my senior design project due that Thursday, and finals the week after. I’m pretty worried about all of it.
Lastly, I’m looking forward to writing a post on box/manual/cartridge art in the near future.
That is all!
Handwriting
We were just discussing handwriting in my tragedy class. The students, at least those who spoke, agreed with the professor that handwriting was declining in general. The professor wasn’t angry; He said his handwriting was very bad as well. They said that handwriting wasn’t needed anymore because of computers and that nobody uses cursive anymore. I disagreed but didn’t say anything. Then the professor surprised me by mentioning that I have really great handwriting that looks like a school teacher’s. Three or four people around me looked at my notebook and were surprised and impressed.
It was weird! I didn’t realize having good handwriting or using cursive was that out of the ordinary.
Tokidoki 360
Today at Happy Six’s grand opening, Simone Legno, the artist behind
tokidoki, autographed my Xbox 360! He also drew Adios, my favorite
tokidoki character! I bet I’m the only person with a tokidoki
personalized 360! A photographer working for Happy Six took my picture
with the 360, and a lot of other guests were impressed and excited
about it, including men and women, young and my age.
William got a penguin drawn on his tablet PC. gem got a Godzilla
(which Simone was surprised she knew about because it’s new) on her
sushi themed tokidoki skateboard, and Gabby got a picture on her sushi
skateboard too!
October 11th Weekend
I really should have written about everything that happened the weekend of October 11, but I’ve been pretty busy and lazy.
I saw The Cab, Plain White T’s, Dashboard Confessional, and Panic at the Disco. Then I took the train to San Diego and went to Sea World and the San Diego Zoo!
It was a really awesome weekend.
On Friday the 10th I went to the Rock Band Live Tour with gem, Gabby, and Jon. Gabby surprised Jon with the tickets for his birthday, which is coming up. Jon wanted to drive, and we ended up being late for our reservation at a particular pizza place that gemma heard was good. He really wanted food so was driving around trying to get to a good place, but we were pressed for time. Gabby kept saying things like “I think we should eat in *that* direction” in an attempt to steer us towards the convention center where the concert was. At this time, Jon still didn’t know about the concert. I thought we should just tell him, but Gabby really didn’t want him to know. Eventually we stopped at Versaille’s, which is a delicious place. Jon was on the phone outside so Gabby ordered everyone flan really quickly. When Jon entered, Gabby claimed that we were so hungry that we ordered already. She told him she ordered him chicken, and he was annoyed. Then the flan came, they sang, and Gabby presented him what she thought were the tickets with a card. She ended up giving him the wrong thing which sort of blew the surprise in her mind, but I think it was still find. Then Jon was quite angry to find out that there actually was no chicken.
Soon after we arrived the convention center and waited for the concert to start. It was pretty fun. I hadn’t heard of The Cab, but they were entertaining. Between each band’s set, audience members who tried out beforehand earned the right to play Rock Band 2 on stage. It was pretty dumb. I guess I’m okay with them doing it while the other bands set up, but Rock Band isn’t the same as listening to real music. Also, they didn’t turn on the mode that prevents failing. The lead singer for a band that I forget (a professional group but not one playing this night) who was apparently “the best at Rock Band” failed a song because he didn’t seem to know what to do during the parts in which you tap the microphone.
The Plain White T’s were pretty good fun too, with some nice background lights and such. It was annoying that everyone freaked out when they played “Hey There Delilah.” I realize it’s their most well known song, but it doesn’t really lend itself to a big concert. Everyone in the band just stood there while one guy got to play a song. Anyways, after that Dashboard played. I don’t usually like Dashboard. They’re very… poppy and acoustic. However, they actually did a great job. I’m sure this has a lot to do with the fact their instruments were electric though. They also played videos in the background that went great with the songs. It was fun! They also covered a Weezer song, mentioning that they toured with them before. Lastly Panic played. They were fun, but they weren’t as good as their recorded music. That’s interesting because I love Nightwish and their live music was superb. I think it might be due to the amount of post-production work that goes into Panic’s albums that you of course don’t get during the live show. The show ended with Panic covering the Isley Brothers’ “Shout.” It was a really awesome way to close I think!
After the show we stopped at Carl’s Jr. for dinner. It was probably around midnight at this point. Coincidentally, I think Jackie Lemus was there. We weren’t sure if it was her, and she left pretty quickly without talking to us.
Saturday morning, October 11, we took the Amtrak to San Diego! It was my first time on a train, and the ride was a lot of fun! I had a tasty hot dog on the way. After we got there, we left our baggage at the hotel (it was too early to check in) and took the light rail system and bus to Sea World. Wow, it was a lot of fun! We saw all sorts of animals. I wish there was more to talk about here, but frankly a list of animals isn’t entertaining to read. Trust me though, I had a blast. I think the pilot whales might have been my favorite!
That night we had a relaxing evening in the hotel to prepare for the zoo the next day, the 12th! I love the San Diego Zoo! I think we saw everything that we wanted. We even “zot zot zot”ed at the anteater, but he didn’t seem to care. I guess he didn’t have any anteater pride. The hippos were less stupid this time than last time I went to the zoo 🙁 I really enjoyed seeing all the cute animals though such as the koalas, pandas, and bears! It was so much fun! At the end of the day we took a taxi back to the hotel, walked to the Amtrak station, and watched “Pushing Daisies” on an iPod during the train ride. It was a wonderful weekend!