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I’m Still Alive!

I think the time gap between this post and the last post is the longest such gap this blog has ever seen.

Many things have occurred since the last post, and most of them have been keeping me very busy. Here’s some of the important stuff:

I moved back into the dorms. This will be the first year where I haven’t lived in Bowles Hall and where I’ve had a roommate. While I have nothing against my current living conditions, I still wish I was able to return to Bowles Hall — I really miss the atmosphere and short walk to classes. As an aside, I was recently quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle about the changes in policy regarding my former dormitory.

My third year at UC Berkeley started, and I’m as busy as ever. I’m taking five upper-division courses, and they leave me with very little free time. I’m feeling a lot of pressure to become more efficient with my time. We’ll see how that goes…

Along with my friends Ryan and Dima, I’m currently trying to bring back the Berkeley GNU/Linux Users Group. This week, we held a speech by Richard M. Stallman, who turned out to be pretty interesting. Pictures are posted here.

I’m acting as a co-teacher/teaching assistant for CS 198: System Administration for the Web. It’s an interesting and educational experience to teach people. I’m having fun, and I think it’s a great way to develop my skills at presenting information.

I’ve also had some computer problems, and, as I type this post, I’m attempting to recover data from a broken backup. The one lesson that I’ll never forget from this experience is to always test my backups before going ahead with a possibly destructive task. Though nothing vital was lost, the information I did lose was of considerable value.

2005 09 25 Berkeley
Bowles Hall
Linux
Personal
Student Life Comments (2) Permalink

Lost

Katherine and I broke up about 3 weeks ago, her doing. As of today, she has a new boyfriend. I know I don’t usually post very personal things to this blog, but I do think this is profound enough to merit an exception.

Truthfully, I still want to be with Katherine, and I hope I can win her back. The odds are against me, my friends tell me to move-on, and I can’t help but feel that this is in some way related to the way I treated my high school girlfriend Emily. I feel bitter and angry, for a variety of reasons, but I remain hopeful.

To those who read this blog, you’ve probably sensed that I believe in a higher power, or a fundamental law. I find this law in the Bible. I do consider myself a Catholic, but I rarely mention it here. The reason I do bring it up today, though, is that, with my understandly mixed and confused emotions, I’ve felt drawn to read the Bible for something entirely different from the law — inspiration. I feel lost, and I find guidance in the Bible.

2005 08 02 Personal
Relationships
Student Life Comments (4) Permalink

Links for 2005-07-24

Airline Meals.net
the largest site about airline catering and nothing but that…
(tags: food)

2005 07 25 Links Comments (2) Permalink

Fall 2005 Classes

Here are the classes I will be taking during Fall 2005:

Chemical Engineering 141 - Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics
Chemistry 104A - Advanced Inorganic Chemistry
Materials Science and Engineering 120 - Materials Production
Materials Science and Engineering 102 - Bonding, Crystallography, and Crystal Defects
Environmental Science and Policy Management 167 - Environmental Health and Development

Five classes and 15 units.

UPDATE: I almost forgot — I’ve posted my daily class schedule here.

2005 07 24 Berkeley Comments (0) Permalink

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Well, 24 hours after I received my copy of J. K. Rowling’s latest novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I’ve finished reading the book.

Rowling’s style of writing has definitely matured (or she has found a better set of editors). At first, I was surprised by the size of the novel — the length of the previous books in the series seemed to growing at an alarming rate. I feared that the latest book would be longer than my Quantum Chemistry textbook. Surprisingly, and thankfully, this installment is nearly 200 pages shorter than its predecessor.

The story seems more carefully planned. There are fewer sudden interruptions in the text by action sequences, and character and plot development play a more central role in this novel. Unfortunately, Rowling felt the need to replace most of the normal interaction between Harry, Ron, and Hermione with extended dialogues (well, more like monologues) between Harry and Professor Dumbledore. I quickly grew weary of these contrived exchanges.

All in all, though, this book is nearly my favorite in the series.

BEWARE! Spoilers follow below:

Continue reading ›

2005 07 17 Literature Comments (2) Permalink

New Gallery and Pictures of Europe

I’ve upgraded my photo gallery to Gallery 2.0 Beta 3 and changed the URL of my photo gallery to http://stephen.evilcoder.com/gallery2/ to preserve the old version’s image links. I considered switching to Coppermine instead of upgrading Gallery, but I found Coppermine to be too resource intensive.

In addition to the version upgrade, I’ve posted up the pictures I took during my visit to France, Germany, and Italy this summer. I’ve selected some of the best photos and posted them to my Flickr photostream as a set here. I haven’t gotten around to labeling all the pictures, so if you recognize something, please leave a comment with a suggested label.

2005 07 14 Photography Comments (0) Permalink

T-MobileWeb’s Hidden Cost

T-Mobile offers unlimited Internet access for compatible cell phones through their $5.99 a month T-MobileWeb package. The service allows you to check your email, chat on popular instant messaging networks, and download games and applications.

The email access is very useful. When I’m on campus without my laptop, I use my cell phone to check my personal and academic inboxes for new messages, and I can respond to important messages.

On the other hand, the ability to download games and applications is very disappointing. So far, every decent game I’ve found requires an additional fee of at least $5. You’d think that paying $5.99 a month would entitle you to download a game or two for free. Furthermore, there are no applications currently available to download.

I don’t think I’ll be paying for T-MobileWeb anymore.

UPDATE: I should note that the aforementioned games and applications were found by browsing T-MobileWeb’s main menu. You may use T-MobileWeb to open regular URLs and download J2ME applications, depending upon your phone. A nice selection of J2ME midlets can be found here.

2005 07 13 Rants
Tech Comments (3) Permalink

Links for 2005-07-04

See under any cap (like for Pepsi iTunes) without opening it!
(tags: cool howto)

The Ridiculously Thorough Guide to Making Your Own Pizza
(tags: food howto)

2005 07 05 Links Comments (0) Permalink

I Miss Katherine



Me. WHee., originally uploaded by kloh.

The title says it all.

It’s hard having a girlfriend who’s living in a distant time zone. While communicating over the Internet is possible, it’s not the same as talking over the phone or in person. Ironically, Katherine will be returning to California just as I depart for my 14-day whirlwind tour of France, Italy, and Germany. Once there, I’ll be totally out of contact.

For the first time ever, I can’t wait until school starts.

2005 06 10 Personal Comments (4) Permalink

New Shoes

I just ordered the following K-Swiss cross-training sneakers from shoebuy.com:

I’ve been wearing K-Swiss shoes for about 3 years, and I find them pretty comfy. My current pair have lasted me for over a year, and I only decided to a get a new pair because I’ll be doing quite a bit of walking during my trip to Europe.

shoebuy.com offers free UPS Ground shipping and a 10% discount when you register for their site on your first order, and if you look around, you’ll find a variety of coupons you can use to make your purchase even sweeter. They’re rated well on ResellerRatings.com, and they’re affiliated with Amazon.com.

I’ll post more information when the shoes arrive.

2005 06 06 Cool
Personal Comments (5) Permalink