One Night in Beijing 2011

I finally have time to sit down and write about ONiB… it was AWESOME this year :)  It was basically my entire life this semester, and I’m really glad it worked out, because confession: This is the first event I have ever been in charge of organizing.   I never volunteered to organize anything in ARCC before, and I only did ONiB because Jack nominated me.

It was pretty stressful, but because I followed what Jack did last year pretty closely, it really wasn’t as bad as everyone thinks it was.   I set everyone’s deadlines really early so that when things fell behind we were still okay, and I think I avoided anybody pulling all-nighters.  I did have to pick up some other people’s jobs that weren’t done on time, but luckily I had a light semester so I did not have to pull any all-nighters myself.

I’m really proud of myself, because as I said, this is the first thing I’ve ever organized, and it was such a HUGE first responsibility.  I remember during my election speech last year I was asked if I would be able to do it because I was so quiet and soft-spoken – but I’m sure everyone I yelled at this year knows I’m the opposite when I need to be!  I still remember during my Microsoft interview, they decided that I was “pretty social” so they switched my developer interviews to program manager interviews.  They asked me: If someone wasn’t doing their job, would you be able to remove them?  I couldn’t answer with a definite answer at the time, but now I know that I am definitely capable of running a group and getting things done if other people don’t.  Although I would rather be a developer than a program manager, I wish I could redo the interview now, as I’m sure they would love all the experience I had running ONiB.

Jack will try to take credit for this year’s success, what with all the extra rooms he booked and his “ONiB doc”, but to be honest, I only looked at the doc once at the beginning of fall semester :P

Here are some highlights :)

As an MC: modern-day (fobby) Chinese mom

Modern-day mom: Aiyah!  Ni zenme hui shi??? *smack*

Now as a Tang dynasty mom

Fusion scarf dance

Up high… hehe

Umbrella dance as part of fashion show!

Fashion show in my awesome contemporary qipao

Funny expressions #1: Running around giving flowers / chocolates / personalized cards to all choreographers, singers, and MCs

Funny expressions #2: Jack gave me Medium Panda!  I look like I’m crying but I wasn’t…

Everyone :)

They signed a card for me <3

Part of the ONiB decorations

They also signed it for me… aww <3  I love everyone in ONiB this year

Thunderbolt

I’ve had my Thunderbolt for a week now. Android is fine, except when it comes to a few minor irritations, such as forcing you to align all icons to their grid, and making the unlock screen unchangeable natively by the OS. I flashed Tesla Coil custom ROM in order to wipe out most of the junk. Grabbed LauncherPro for a more appealing and convenient home screen.

I also spent an unbearably long amount of time trying to find a clock widget that exactly matches the lockscreen clock widget in style and position. That way, when I unlock my phone it appears as if nothing changes except the bottom icons appear. Interestingly enough, there isn’t a pre-existing app that fits perfectly, so I was forced to customize a widget. Unfortunately, the only way I could get the time and AM/PM thing to line up is by making them separate objects. Unfortunately, when you go from a single digit hour to a double digit hour, it shifts everything out of whack. So I had to convert the time to military time which makes the AM/PM disappear. I’m thinking about actually coding up a clock widget to match it, but we’ll see about that. Maybe tomorrow…

Now onto wallpaper. I guess one payoff of my recent endeavor to convert all my movies/anime to HD is that I can capture frames from the video itself and the resolution is high enough to make a wallpaper out of it. I’ve always wanted some specific scenes/camera angles which I thought were neat. My goal is to have 0 icons on the default home screen. It will probably piss me off later on when I want easy access to applications, but for now, it looks cooler.



Ironically, I went through this same phase when I bought my new computer. I spent all this time browsing wallpaper websites and deviantart to find things to put up. Then I eventually got tired of it all and just switched my desktop background to plain black. Easy on the eyes and takes less processing power to render. Two for one.

Living on the Edge

I bought a HTC Thunderbolt because I get $150 off a phone from work and the offer was expiring soon. This is a pretty big step for me, considering I’ve been using a LG VX8300 flip phone from 2005.

And so being that I just love adb shell, I decided to root my phone the moment I booted and connected to Verizon. The process is a long series of adb commands. There is a potential to brick your phone, and if not that, mess it up into a state that would require a lot of troubleshooting to recover from. I realize now that I probably should not have started this process 5 hours before I have to drive to the airport to fly back to Pittsburgh.

Luckily for me, everything went correctly and I now have a rooted Thunderbolt. First agenda of business, removing BitBop. What the hell is BitBop? Get that shit out of my technique.

The Reason I Don’t Invest in the Stock Market

http://gizmodo.com/#!5791203/the-flip-camera-is-finally-deadyour-smartphones-got-blood-on-its-hands

When I first saw flipcams, I thought they were a great product. It allows you to shoot HD video, is small and convenient, and it pretty cheap. I was even considering purchasing one. Unbeknownst to me, Cisco decided that the product was pretty much dead and canceled it.

And this, ladies and gentleman, is why I don’t buy stocks.

Watson

IBM’s Watson came to CMU today, and they played a Jeopardy game with Watson, a team of 3 CMU students, and a team of 3 Pitt students.  When the Pitt dude was introducing their team, he said that they had 3 students here from their honors college.  Then the CMU dude introduced our people… and was like, “We like to think of all of CMU as an honors college.”  Zing!

My Chinese friend was on the CMU team and was the only non-white competitor, which I thought would be an advantage for us, but they lost the question where the answer was Chinese!  They were given two words and have to answer with the language of origin; in this case they were given “KOWTOW, CATSUP”.  To be fair though, I think both of those are from Cantonese… I was excited I knew it!

Watson completely destroyed both teams.  Sadly, we lost to Pitt :(

CMU team, Watson, Pitt team

CMU: $7463, Watson: $52199, Pitt: $12937

Japan

My tour to Japan got canceled :(  Totally understandable though… I’m just sad because I was really looking forward to it :'(

I may go to Australia and New Zealand instead, which is about $1000 more expensive but is 21 days long.  I don’t know… most likely I’ll just take a refund.  Then I can donate some of it to Japan.  I’ll just have to figure out something else to do to celebrate graduation!

Dumpsters

I was reading A Free Life by Ha Jin on the plane yesterday, and noticed that the book capitalized “Dumpster”.  I hadn’t realized before then that Dumpster is actually a brand-name-turned-word… So I tried to come up with some more on the plane ride, but all I could think of was Popsicle (only because the same book capitalized that too) and Post-It.

As Jack and I drove home from the airport, we came up with a few more, then Googled it at home and came up with a short list:

  1. Dumpster
  2. Popsicle
  3. Post-It
  4. Jeep
  5. Vaseline
  6. Kleenex
  7. Aspirin
  8. Thermos
  9. Zipper
  10. Tupperware

It’s pretty fascinating to me.  According to Wikipedia, these are genericized trademarks.  I think it’s interesting how some brands can become so popular and often used that they’ve come to stand for the item they brand.  I remember I once borrowed a three-inch-thick book from the library in elementary or middle school full of words and their origins.  I guess I’m fascinated by how words and phrases come to be… I like how Chinese characters are made up of parts that contribute both sound and/or definition.

Not to mention I used “Google” as a verb… and of course we “friend” people on Facebook.

I’ve never seen Dumpster and Popsicle capitalized in books before this one.  My theory is that the Chinese author did a lot of research on English because it wasn’t his first language… interesting that the book is about a Chinese man who wants to write poetry in English, also not his first language.

I’m tempted to capitalize these genericized trademarks from now on, but I’d probably be “corrected” by people or lose points in classwork.

What I learned in Chinese class (a rant)

We started a new chapter in Chinese today, and the topic involves love and marriage in today’s China. Apparently, my views on love and marriage are vastly different from those of the other students.  Their ideas and thoughts are pretty shallow… I’m not saying I’m not, because everyone is to some extent, but I thought this sort of thinking died out long ago.

To some extent, I can agree with people who believe you should look for a partner that has a stable job and makes a lot of money.  But their reasoning is so selfish.  I would want someone with a good job because it demonstrates that they are responsible and willing to put time and effort into something important.  However, people were saying that women want to marry a man that makes a lot of money so that the man could support them.  I can’t believe people are still saying this nowadays.  Women now can definitely support themselves.  Why do so many women argue that they want to be equal to men, yet believe the man should still support them?  I know for a fact that I can get a good job and support myself, and would never sit on my ass all day mooching off my husband; in fact I don’t even need a husband to live comfortably.

So many girls I know think the guy should pay for all their dates, yet expect the guy to treat them as an equal.  This is why I hate the “pretty girls” that take advantage of guys to get free drinks and food.  I believe both the husband and wife should contribute to supporting their lives together.  In time the type of contribution may change, for instance when they have kids and one parent stays home to watch them, but I get so angry at the stupid girls that want to marry a dude and just sit at home while he does all the work.  If I want to splurge on a vacation or something, I’m not going to use my husband’s money – I’m going to use my own, because I’m the one that wants to do it.  Once, somebody said about a friend, “She is so lucky, her boyfriend makes so much money!”  I was so pissed.  Not only were the girl and her boyfriend both the same type of engineers, so their incomes would be relatively the same, why is it “lucky” for a girl to get a rich guy?  She can support herself!  And the speaker was female too!

In class people also discussed what “romantic” things guys should do for girls.  Everything was completely materialistic.  Flowers, chocolates, nice dinner out.  I suspect these people also want an expensive engagement ring and bank-breaking all-out wedding.  None of these things have anything to do with love!  They all have to do with money and appearances!  I’m not saying I wouldn’t appreciate them, but this should not be something you demand.  I don’t want someone to buy me flowers and chocolate – that shows nothing except that you are willing to throw money away for me.  I would rather have something hand-made that showed they spent time and effort.  I’m not saying I don’t ever want to go out for a nice dinner, but I would much rather have a home-cooked meal – or even better, cook the meal together!  (Sorry my meals always involve bacon, Jack ^^;)  I don’t want some expensive engagement ring – people mostly just want them for show because they are shallow and care about appearances, and it’s not like the worth of your ring reflects in any way the strength of your love.

I love hand-made cards.  I love cute piggy photo stories.  I love random little post-it notes stuck on the door.  I love making dinner together.  I love playing video games with (or against) each other.

I love you Jack!  Can’t wait to see you again for spring break <3