.the gpb kids.

2:30am

Posted by Mike - August 30, 2007 at 08:08:25 am

That’s roughly when I went to sleep last night after assembling my new computer and playing Bioshock on it. The assembly took roughly three hours and the OS and game installation took another two hours or so.

This was probably the smoothest hardware assembly I’ve ever done. Only had one hardware problem; I forgot to change the DVD-ROM to be the slave drive. Installing Vista was alright except I had the problem of it not having default drivers for the ethernet ports again. So I had to download them on the Mac and transfer. But after all of that I got a good 30 min of gameplay in.

I’ve got to say that the Antec P180B case I got is infinitely better than the other case I had. I should have taken pictures while I was assembling everything, but I’ll just throw out some highlights.

1. The power supply is on the bottom. I always thought it was funny how the heaviest component in a PC was always placed at the top. This is way better.
2. There is space behind the motherboard to route all of the power cables so they’re not hanging over it and getting in the way.
3. The HDD slots have silicon pads for the drives to sit on so they’re quiet.
4. The fans on the front of the case that suck air in have filters over them that you can easily clean. Brilliant!
5. No crazy lights! I got over the whole clear case light-show pretty soon after I got my old case.

Maybe I’ll take a picture of what it looks like when I get back later tonight.

Anti-aging

Posted by Jules - August 29, 2007 at 02:08:25 pm

It’s kind of funny, because this week I have been told by various people- bank teller, fellow students, and even a couple of random Thailand tourists to name a few- that I look really young. As in I look like a high school or college student, and not the getting-near-26 that I am. Which is fine, really, but I’ve never garnered this much comment before. I’m either regressing at an alarming rate or I’m just having more new human social interaction than I’ve had in years. Ah, the mysteries of life.

My Shirt of The Day (it’s good to have kiwi aunt uncles with a good sense of humor):

Route

Posted by Jules - August 28, 2007 at 04:08:16 pm

My route to school is infinitely easier than Mike’s. The bus stop is only a few blocks away, and the 1 transfer I have to do is fairly painless and well timed. The bus also comes every 10 ish minutes or so, so it’s not an enormous pain if I miss one. I find it odd that the BART costs less ($1.40) to get to Downtown Berkeley than the bus ($1.75 +$0.25 Transfer) since it’s much faster; it’s a good thing Berkeley provides the Class Pass so I don’t have to pay for bus fare every day. It’s also nice that I can sit down and read my books and journals en route. If only I didn’t get woozy while reading in a vehicle. I’m gonna need to work on that.

The maze to work

Posted by Mike - August 27, 2007 at 08:08:58 am

I take casual carpool in the morning to work and everyone seems to have their own idea on what the best route is. There are no less than five popular routes to work.

They all start at the green symbol and exit off to the left. It’s horrible.

My mom has more style than me

Posted by Mike - August 26, 2007 at 05:08:47 pm

I went to see the San Francisco Symphony play in the park on Friday at my mom’s invitation. While we were sitting on the grass straining to hear the music, I noticed my mom’s shoes. I’ve known her to wear some pretty interesting shoes in the past, like rainbow ones, and ones that look like clown shoes, and leopard print ones. This time she was wearing the shoes pictured above. I couldn’t help but compare them to my own generic running shoes that I was wearing. I wonder how many other mothers out there are more stylish than their kids. She has also been known to wear cat ears to keep her hair back while she’s cooking. I guess that’s the difference between art major and plant biology major. >_>

Entertainment

Posted by Jules - August 24, 2007 at 08:08:14 pm

I’ve started watching Six Feet Under . I’ll make more comments on it when I’ve had a few more episodes under my belt.

I was talking to Mike, and we were trying to think of a list of our favorite mangas. So here are some of mine, after some consideration, in no particular order:

the categories the publishers place them in
josei: for women, adult themes
seinen: for men, adult themes
shoujo: young girlies with idealist romantic notions. Often comedic.
shounen: young boys try to show each other up

1. Kimi wa Pet (Yayoi Ogawa)- Josei || US | TokyoPop
2. Shana Oh Yoshitsune (Sawada Hirofumi)- shounen || HK | Tong Li
3. Blade of the Immortal (Hiroaki Samura)- seinen | US | Dark Horse
4. Paradise Kiss (Ai Yazawa)- shoujo | US | TokyoPop
5. Hikaru no GO (Yumi Hotta & Takeshi Obata)- shounen | US | Viz
6. 20th Century Boys (Urasawa Naoki)!!- seinen | No US Distro yet
[edit]7. How could I forget “Helter Skelter” and “River’s Edge”, by kyoko okazaki? -> she has an almost ugly art style, and focuses all about the dark side of life in a unique and refreshing manner. Her stories are not happy stories.

Of course, I’ve only finished reading 2 of these series (ParaKiss and Hikaru no go). The wonders of neverending manga. I’m almost done with Kimi wa Pet. But I’m excited that Urasawa’s 20th century boys is going to be released in the US as soon as they finish publishing Monster. He’s able to create a creepy suspense like no other mangaka I’ve read. He really is an amazing storyteller.

2:27 AM

Posted by Jules - August 20, 2007 at 01:08:53 am

So it’s 2:27 AM and I can’t seem to fall asleep. Whenever my mind is stewing over something troubling before I go to bed, I stay awake for hours. Usually, I fall asleep within minutes, and nothing can wake me. I am particularly immune to the sounds of first person shooters and video games in general- Just ask Mike. He’s lucky I have this skill, though it probably does me no good when there is an earthquake.

So here I sit, at the bottom of my bunk bed, staring at the wall. I guess it’s time for try #2.

I think I’ll sleep well tomorrow.

Sunnydale High School

Posted by Mike - August 16, 2007 at 08:08:49 am

If you recognize the name of that high school, then you must be a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. And if that’s the case, maybe you can answer address my concern.

On TV.com there’s a poll which asks the question: “In the spirit of Back to School time - which TV high school would you like to attend?” And apparently the most responses have gone to Sunnydale High School. This doesn’t make any sense to me. Do you people not realize that there are vampires and demons and things that kill you there?

I would much rather go to East High from High School Musical, where everyone is singing and dancing all the time. How cool would that be??

Haxored

Posted by Mike - August 15, 2007 at 02:08:06 pm

I read an interesting article on ZDNet today about hacking gmail from a wifi hotspot. I guess people should be a little more paranoid, me included. I don’t have a laptop, so I guess I’m marginally safer. What I think is interesting though, is that all it takes to block this exploit is changing http to https, which google could do on their end. Weird. I wonder what the problems with doing that are.

Jr High Aspirations

Posted by Jules - August 14, 2007 at 04:08:28 pm

I’m cleaning out my old room at my parent’s house, getting rid of excessive paper and making a half hearted attempt at finding my Jane Goodall signed copy of National Geography (I’ve done this every year for years. Where could it be???). I came across this packet from junior high, which appears to be a junior high portfolio of some sort, containing various reflections, reports, and artwork.

I remember making these in art class. We carved sheets of linoleum and glued them onto woodblocks to use as stamps. I made a maple leaf stamp (I like maple leaves), a frog stamp (ditto), and stamps carved with my dad’s last name (曹 - Cho) and my mom’s last name (朱 - Chu).

Map of oregon. I even drew in a little bean in the key and the map to represent where all the bean farms were. As you can see, my key was rather extensive. I’m guessing I spent way too much time on that map.

Ah yes, the infamous teen pregnancy reports everybody had to work on in junior high. I think my favorite part about that assignment was locating the proper magazine pictures to dress up my report with. In the first section, we had to write down what our aspirations were, and our parents were supposed to fill out what they aspired for me. To sum it up:

Me (my goals only go up to 22 yrs of age, apparently):

-Be a straight 4.0 student in HS.
-Volunteer as a candy striper at a hospital.
-Join the Volleyball team at Clackamas High. Failed. I think volleyball camp the summer after jr. high traumatized me.
-Get into Orchestra A.
-Get into Portland Youth Philharmonic.
-Make new friends. I became way more confident and much less shy in hs. Now I have no shame, bahahahah…
-Become more athletic. FAIL FAIL FAIL.
-Get a driver’s license.
-Take all the math and science classes that I could possibly take. Well, I guess I missed honors biology in hs. Stupid class conflicts.
-By age of 22, complete my bachelor’s degree and be working towards a masters in science engineering.
-Have my own car.

I guess I completed most of those goals, minus the athletics ones and the possible engineering aspirations. So not bad. My goals were definitely short term though. How come I don’t have any long term goals???? I guess 22 seems a long ways away when you are 13.

Mom’s aspirations: I want my child to be happy, bright, eager to learn, have a good education, and know what happens around the community and the world. I want her to talk to her parents as friends and let them know about her life, work, friends, school et cetera et cetera.

Dad’s aspirations: I want my daughter to be well educated and informed in what is going on in the world. I want her to be good at whatever musical field of medical field or whatever she does (I don’t recall ever wanting to make a career in either of those fields) But first of all, I want her to go to a good college like MIT.

So in summary, I think they wanted me to be a streetwise punk. [Out]

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