06/6/2006
Oh it's been so so long since I've come here. So many things have happen during the past few months. Nothing major, just everyday life.
Funny story: one day Nathan finished his meal, and I went to clean up the table. Strangely his little bowl was no where to be found. I thought he's taken it somewhere. I looked all over the place, under the table, sofa, even beds. I looked for a good 15 minutes at least. Then, it hit me: the day before I taught Nathan to clean up and told him to throw stuff into the garbage bin. Apparently, he thought the bowl was garbage after he's done eating =D
After sleeping on an air mattress for a year, we've finally bought a new bed! Now our backs no longer hurt when we wake up. Yay.
Oh, school's over for the year. Did well. Even got an A for the game project class! I thought the professor was going to give me a B again this semester. The new school year is coming up in couple months. Until then, I'm going to relax for a while hehe. Next year is going to be tough.
02/15/2006
It's been a while since the last entry. I haven't had much time to do anything else but school work. Had my programming midterm today; did well on almost everything except one question. The problem has some very simple definitions, just an array of double (double array[5];), a pointer to the array (double *a=array;), and then another pointer to another element in array (double *b=a+2;) We were supposed to identify expressions that would generate compile errors. Things like b - 3 + a, or a + b - 5 or a += a - b or b - 2 - a, things of this nature. Actually a really simple question ... except at the time I couldn't see why the expressions would generate compile errors ... see if you know on top of your head =P
I actually learned something useful in this programming class. Something that I don't think any class has ever taught me. It's not something that people do often, but it's something I should know regardless. It's the topic of complex declaration in C/C++. Just recently I saw some code in a game programming book. I knew what the code was doing, but I couldn't figure out how it was doing it because the author used some very complex declaration syntax that I've never seen anyone used before. So just this Monday during class, the professor gave us a lecture on complex declaration. It was so interesting to me that I wonder why I was never taught this (although I can see why no one ever really does anything with it) ... So anyways after class I went home and started up the compiler and started playing with it ... it's so much fun! Go figure out what this one means hehe "int *(*(*(*foo(int (*(*)(int (*)(char**)))[5]))[10])(void))[5]". And yes, it does mean something!
So, school is going well. Still spending a lot of time working on the game project. Technically we're done with all the coding; we have all the components needed to make a game. Think we'll spend the next month or so trying to make the game fun, which seems to be harder than the technical stuff.
Just an hour ago, I finally decided to call DIT about my master application. I knew they had a decision, but I was kind of afraid of what it would be. But like Michelle said, sooner or later I'll know one way or another so might as well be sooner hehe. So anyways, I called, and it's good news. Ah, what a relief.
For the first time in 7 years, I filed our tax return this year. For one thing, I didn't really want to pay anyone to file our tax return since we didn't make much money at all. And, I thought our tax return would be really easy to do given that umm we didn't make much money this year at all heh. I've always felt that filing tax return is complicated as hell, but after doing it it's actually very easy to do. The instruction booklet is actually pretty good. I'll probably start doing our taxes from now on hehe.
I received a really strange letter today from UCDavis. Apparently, I currently have a IRA account at Davis, and I have 640.16 dollars in it! *LOL* I've had couple jobs at Davis, but I didn't think I actually put any money into an IRA account. And, apparently, my account is about to be closed because(, and I quote,) "In accordance with University of California Defined Contribution Plan (DC Plan) provisions, inactive plan participants with account balances of less than $2000 as of July 1, 2005 must close their accounts. A check is supposed to be mailed to me. Hmm ... wonder what that means. Well I don't mind getting money ... wonder if I need to pay tax on that.
Well that's about all I can think of right now. So, until next time =)
News
01/13/2006
We've lost a 128MB memory stick months ago. We knew it was lost because Nathan played with it. We've been looking all over for it, but we couldn't figure out where Nathan would put it so it's never been found. We have pretty much given up on ever finding the stick, and Michelle was about to buy one off eBay.
Today, we found our memory stick by accident, and I laughed so hard. As the picture suggests, we found it in the computer. Now ever since we got this computer, we have never used the bottom DVD drive. Today I decided to pay the bottom DVD drive some attention before it decides to quit on us, and at the same time let the top one rest a little. As you might've guessed, the tray wouldn't come out. I was stumped for a while and opened the cover by hand and voila! Nathan somehow inserted the memory stick vertically between the tray and the cover! Things that kids do. Aren't they cute.
Now that the Vonage phone is working, we've disconnected our phone line and DSL line. On Monday, our old phone number will no longer work.
01/12/2006
It's only the first week of school and I am already swarmed wtih homework. I'm a seriously stressed out. Michelle and I are having problem sleeping lately. I blame my homework. On the other hand, maybe Nathan's snoring loudly right beside us has something to do with it ... hmm ... time to put him in his own room.
The Vonage phone adapter and router arrived today. Took me 1 minute to set it up. Unplug the existing router and plug in the router Vonage shipped me. I just love pnp stuff. After getting it to work, I proceeded to read the manual. Apparently there's a CD I was supposed to run BEFORE connecting the router to the computer. Not sure what the software is supposed to do. Not gonna run it now since things are working correctly.
Played around with the phone a little bit. It's silly but it's like a new toy for me. The voicemail feature is so cool. I sent myself voicemail so that I could read about them in my email and listened to them on my computer! So fun hehe. Gonna play around with it some more tomorrow.
New episode of Smallville today. The theme seems a little repetitive. I suppose all shows end up that way. One of the scenes was pretty funny though that I actually laughed lol. The one where Clark discussed his fear of hurting Lana if they "get close".
Michelle and I watched The Skeleton Key today. It isn't great, but it's not bad either. We actually enjoyed it. We had to keep guessing what that lady was up to and why the husband was trying to get away. The ending is kind of sad. We watched The 40 Year Old Virgin also. It's a comedy, but it's also a love story ... I really don't like movies like this. It's just too silly. I love movies that make people ... well ok me ... cry. My favorite movie yet is Meet Joe Black. Never seems to get tired of watching it. Hmm speaking of which, I'm gonna go pop it into the dvd drive.
01/10/2006
The spring semester started yesterday. Was so busy since most of my classes are on Monday and Wednesday. Usual stuff on the first day, talk about grading, this and that. I kinda hate DIT grading since A is 93+ or something. 90 - 93 is a A-. I got 92 on the programming class and it's a A- ... which totally sucks. To my surprise though, I got an A for the art history class! This is the class I studied the hardest for; guess studying paid off hehe. I did get a B for the game project class though. I expected that too since that class is pretty tough in terms of exams. Reading 3 different books and be tested on was no small feat. Not that the material is tough, the professor just likes to give tricky -- what he called think-outside-the-box -- questions. His point was that programmers have to constantly think outside-the-box in order to combine a relatively small instruction set to do crazy thing.
For those of you who'd like to think about stuff like this, here's one of the questions I remember. I remember this because I got it wrong. "Given a balance scale, how many weights does it take to measure an object between 1 and 40lbs inclusive? What are the values of these weights?" Unless you've seen this before, it's actually quite tricky. There are 2 right answers to this. And, the first answer has nothing to do with weights at all ...
DIT still hasn't gotten my GRE scores so I called ETS and they told me that somehow they didn't send it to DIT ... in the spirit of South Park - WHAT THE FUDGE! They're sending it now, but that delays my application for another week or two. Damn ETS.
So I've been thinking if I get into the Master program, what should my thesis be. Graphics is obviously an area most students would be focusing their research on. I recently read a thesis on a shadow algorithm a student developed. Good stuff. The thesis is 80 pages long and hard as hell to understand. I doubt I can do as well as he did. I don't think graphics is what I like to do. I've always loved thinking about software architecture. Perhaps parallel programming and its relevance to real time simulation would be a good research topics. AI also seems like something I'd like to do. Most AI problems have yet to be solved so there's a lot of stuff to do there.
Michelle didn't have to work yesterday. It was nice that she got an extra day off. We ate dinner and watched a movie together. As usual, I went back to my computer after the movie to work on the project. An hour or so later I checked on the wife and son. Michelle fell asleep on the couch and as usual Nathan fell asleep on mom on the couch. Michelle didn't seem so comfortable. Nathan, on the other hand, seemed very comfortable with mom underneath him. So, I took Nathan and let Michelle sleep. Then, I fell asleep on the couch with Nathan in my arms. 2 hours later, like 12am or so, all 3 of us woke up and watched movies again ... Not that we didn't want to sleep, but we couldn't. The morale of this story? Never sleep at night unless you're really going to bed because when you really want to go to bed, you can't ...
01/07/2006
It was 1 a.m. in the morning on Saturday. Nathan and I just finished watching an episode of X-Files. I decided to check on the project status before going to bed, and just as I thought things were broken because someone checked in code before fully tested it ... happens way too often than I like ... hope one day these guys would realize if they did that in real life they'd all get fired. So anyways, instead of going to bed, I spent half an hour fixing bugs ... grrr.
Meanwhile, Michelle decided to watch Wedding Crashers while I worked on the game. I joined her a bit later, and half way in the movie we (well ok mostly I but she wanted to see it too) decided to give World of Warcraft the boardgame a try. And man, by the time I had the board setup it was 3 a.m, and we were watching the Wedding Crashers a second time. The game was a bit complicated for Michelle's taste, and she was saying, "Why can't we play Go Fish instead?" And I was like, "This isn't that complicated."
So anyways we played a few turns and here's how they went:
- Michelle: moved her alliance rogue and warlock from Brill to Balnir Farmstead.
- Eric: moved his horde hunter and shaman from South Shore to Chillwind Point.
- Michelle: her rogue and warlock together killed an independent monster.
- Michelle: moved her rogue to Ruins of Andorhal where her quest was located.
- Eric: moved his hunter and shaman to Fenris Isle.
- Michelle: decided to do the quest with her rogue so that the rogue would get all the benefit of completing the quest. We soon found out that a level 1 rogue is not capable of killing a Scarlet Crusader alone. I suppose I should've known better hehe. Upon the rogue being defeated, she was done, done, and done.
Now if you play WoW and read this carefully, you'd notice that I messed up setting up the board. The alliance should've started in South Shore ... and for a moment I actually wondered why the alliance would be up north when most of their starting quests were near South Shore hehe.
-EC
01/06/2006
Mom bought Nathan a horsie today from Safeway. It was on sale for 10 bucks. It's a pretty nice toy. It's mechanical and neighs like a real horse. Best of all, it came with batteries inside! So anyways, when mom brought the toy home, Nathan was freaked out. He was like "why's mom and dad giving me this thing that makes funny noise?" Being the loving father that I am, I told mom to return it since Nathan seemed genuinely afraid of it. To be honest, I was genuinely afraid of it too. The horse sound is really creepy ... kinda like what you hear when the horses are freaked out during that stable scene in The Exorcism of Emily Rose ... and I am not kidding.
So anyways, Nathan seems to love it now. We have this picture to prove it. We're going to keep the horsie ... even though I don't really like toys that talk be it human or animal ... I've seen too many horror movies in which toys talk back!
-EC
01/05/2006 - another day has gone by ...
Well another day has gone by. Can't wait for school to start again. I used to yearn for a day off when I was working full time. Now back to school where long vacation is relatively common, it feels like such a waste of time to actually have a day off. Nothing to do but sit at home.
So today I went to Safeway to pick up something. It's the Safeway where I've worked part time for a few months. I saw J whom I worked for during my employment. So anyways, we talked a little bit and he told me he'll be leaving the Redmond store and work at another Store closer to his home. Not only that, it's also a promotion to management position. So cool. It got me thinking. May be I can be a manager or something at a department store or whatever.
Once a while I think about life as a programmer, and I think programmers get gypped. Yeah programmers get paid a lot on the surface, but the work hours is just insane. It's like working 2 jobs. Anybody working 2 jobs could make a lot of money too. Not only that, there's no need to worry about falling behind schedule, dealing with crazy bugs, and all the stress that comes with a programming job.
So I've heard that game programmers supposedly get paid less than business app. programmers. A harder job but less pay ... that makes no sense to me whatsoever. Here I am wanting to become a game programmer. Well, I know I'll probably love doing it, but a man's got to think about the money. We'll see ... if game programming doesn't work out, I'll just go back to the business world. Hmm I can go get a PHD and teach at a university hehe.
-EC
01/04/2006
School is still out. Next semester starts next Monday. Haven't done much over the break. Worked on the game project a little bit. Cooked up a server so people can chat and host their games. It's not super complicated. It works pretty well though considering I only spent 2 days coding it up. Since comcast gives me space for a homepage, I thought I'd get a simple one up mainly for my family back in CA to see. Probably gonna post some photos here.
I'm in the process of applying for grad. school now. I'm really hoping that the school will accept me. Being the confident person that I am (and Michelle constantly reminds me that I'm over confident - which is so not true), I'm betting that they'll accept me. In any case, I'm reading many many many many books to catch up on things that I should know but have forgotten. Things like Linear Algebra, basic computer graphics, algorithm design and analysis, calculus, differential equation ... well basically math math and more math. Just look at all those books on my dinning table! Oh, Game Coding is a pretty good book.
-EC
1/3/2006 - cable modem and vonage
Michelle and I are finally fed up with our phone bill ... $30.00 per month and we can't call anywhere without being charged. Even calling my friend here in Redmond is a toll call. After months of being ripped off by the phone company, we have decided to drop our DSL line and switch to cable and give Vonage a try. Hey, 25 bucks a month and call anywhere in the US sounds like a good deal to me. Although, the cable line is a little bit more expensive than the DSL line ... anyways we'll see if it's money well spent. So far, I'm loving the cable line hehe. Download speed is on average 2 - 3 times faster.
-EC