Long time no see.

Long time no see. Well, it’s Thanksgiving Day, and a meaningful one at that. We as a human species have a lot to be thankful for. One, the earth isn’t going to blow up in 2012, so we can continue on with our lives. Second, the recession’s over. Third, technology’s making our lives better and easier. As for me, I’m thankful for so many things in life: my family, my friends, and my opportunities. My almost-A+ in calculus. My computer. The end of cross country. Anyway, life’s good, and Thanksgiving is the time to return to reality.

Bing, don’t google

Don’t use Google! Use Bing! (bing.com) It’s better, and you can break the Google search engine monopoly. Plus, there’s a cool new image every day.

ehh….

I don’t know the purpose…or direction…of life for me. What should I be doing? Why am I here? Life is weird.

stuff i’m doing

learning about HIV and ways to cure it now…might be a good starting point for a science fair project. Also learning about myopia…would help me get off glasses and also be a good idea for a science project. I’m using Evernote to keep track of all the goodies I find online. It’s a cool note-taking tool, and it’s free as well.

first day of Math Analysis summer school

Evergreen Valley High School is totally awesome! (judging from the buildings from a quad point of view). Anyway, we started our first day of Precal and Trig classes today…the teacher, Ms. Stamp, is pretty nice, Asian, a math person, and has a weird accent, but teaches ok from what I see so far. She lined us up in alpha order for our seats so I got to meet some new people from EV and other high schools. It wasn’t bad; there were about 60 people crowded into one room, but we did get the orange Precalculus with Limits textbook and began to learn some trigonometry. We are gonna have two chapter tests per week. It’s starting to feel like school again! XD

=[

I’m in the elementary school helping my former school teacher, and she is letting me use the computer. But…it won’t let me use Facebook…the web proxy won’t let me enter the site. So I was trying all the proxy blockers, but…they’re blocked, as well! ;[ Facebook will have to wait…till I get home.

no more freshman year…

I guess it’s bittersweet that there is only one more week until the end of the 2008-09 school year. It’s been a great year for me: meeting new friends at SC, learning lots of stuff both at school and elsewhere, doing many new things (FB, for instance). Biology was boring, but I learned a lot (it was an easy class btw). Drama helped me be more expressive and comfortable onstage, and it fulfilled my HS visual arts requirements. Philosophy was one of the most meaningful classes I have ever taken, because I learned how to think. Algebra II, even though boring at times, was the best math class of my life so far; the teacher is wonderful (she’s retiring :[ ) and prepared me well for Calculus next year. Spanish II immersed me in the world of español and allowed me to be able to speak with the paisanos in my PE class. English 1A was one of my most fun classes; Mr. Okano is seriously one of the funniest and most knowledgeable teachers I have ever had. For PE, we did swimming, weights, golf, tennis, badminton, and dance; it was pretty normal except for the fact that I got to run a lot, which was good. In track, I improved my mile by 33 seconds over the course of 5 months; I met lots of new people; and I improved my speed, strength, and endurance. I got a facebook, and currently I am in the process of adding friends. I watched the Orlando Magic smash the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA playoffs.

The New Deal

In light of the economic recession, I decided to blog about one thing you can do to help yourself and your own financial state. If you need fast internet, you can score AT&T’s fastest DSL (6.0 mbps down, 768 kbps up) for only $17.50 a month for 6 months. Regular price is $35, so that’s a 50% discount! Just call AT&T’s high speed internet department, tell them you are going to go to Comcast since they have similar speed internet for $20 a month, and they will give you this discount. I called last Saturday, and the lady offered me the promotion without any badgering on my part. I’m getting an eight-fold speed upgrade tomorrow for $2.50 more a month! XD

Spring Break

It’s been…two months? since the last time I posted, and yeahh…a lot has happened these past eight weeks. First off, it’s spring break and having lots of homework is tedious if not a good way to waste all the time you have off. I’ve got essays, essays, more essays, etc… and math, Spanish, biology, and philosophy to do. Talk about fun.

I have to make a liver model for biology, and that’s going to be…interesting. Foam will be the core, and I’ll cover the front with clay to shape it right. The back will be a cross-section of the liver, so I will expose the veins and bile ducts and lobules for all to see. I’m gonna start work on it on Friday.

My mile time has gone down significantly, from 5:58 to 5:32! It’s all due to track practice and the positive result of weeks of sore muscles and two-hour-long workouts of eight 400s or six 600s or a mix of distances. By the end of track season, about early May, I would like it to be down to 5:20 so I can actually compete; my last race I came in 39th out of 48. =[ I’m gonna beat pickleman and Nikhil at the EV meet on the 22nd!

In the world of technology, a lot has definitely changed since February. Windows 7 is nearing RC stage and inching closer to RTM in September; so is Windows Server 2008 R2, which I am planning to get as soon as it is released. Ubuntu 9.04 RC comes out on Thursday and releases on the 23rd; hopefully it will make me want to stay with Ubuntu instead of migrating to Fedora, whose 11th release is on May 26th. Computers are getting much cheaper; there are laptops for $500 today that would have gone for over $1200 last August, when I was shopping for one. Not to mention the $400 desktop I purchased last August; it would be closer to $250 or $300 now. It’s still performing very smoothly, better than I would have expected, and the boot time is 35 seconds while the shutdown time is about 7 seconds, much faster than many have commented about Vista. The only gripes I have are graphics performance (Geforce 8200, anyone?) and the smallish 320 GB hard drive. I have a 1 TB drive sitting around but don’t know if I can put it into the case… that’ll have to wait.

As for this summer, I already have some things planned out. I will be taking Math Analysis (don’t know where…either at OG or IH) and Chemistry and Computer Science at EVC. Also, I’ll be working on a science project to enter next year. I can’t wait for this year to be over. It’s about time.

A Thought on Presidents’ Day

Obama must be happy today.