Htam::Diary

This Saturday, I went to Bible study as usual.  Afterwards, we had very good cheap Chinese food for lunch.  I forgot the name of the restaurant.  I think it has "Newport" in it or something.  Anyways, then I went to buy an IKEA BENJAMIN Stool that I found on craigslist.  I bought one at the beginning to try it out, but since then IKEA has it out of stock for some reason, so sad.  So I decided I cannot wait much further, and I borrowed one from Bing.  But I think this is not a good permanent solution, so I searched and have found one.  Yay.  The GPS navigation on my new phone is so handy!  It helped me a lot today.

This Friday, Steph and Chris came to pick me up and we drove to Alhambra.  Beryl invited high school group kids and the teachers to come for lunch and spend some time together.  We played some games, including my Bible Scattergories, Bible Guesstures, and Rummikub!  I was very "unlucky" and was unable to start playing after many many rounds.  Finally I got enough pieces to start, and I went all out, putting down all but one piece.  Man, I was so close to winning... and the next round, I helped Rachel win, so I lost.  But I was able to play my last piece immediately when it was my turn, so it was a pretty close game.

Then we drove back and sang some KR at my place, then Steph and Chris went to Friday Fest.  I decided to pass, for I have had too much social interactions for a while now.  One other thing to note: Joshua lent me his guitar today.  I doubt I would have time to practice, though.

[Photo: My pathetic hand; I just got that red 4 on the 11th draw, and finally I can "form" something, yet still without a high enough value to enter.]

This Thursday, I decided to let math be the major activity of the day.  During this break, I have worked on and off in bits and pieces each day for math.  Today, no.  I will work much longer on mathematics.  Tomorrow I will not have much time for it; and in some sense, break ends tomorrow.  Indeed, school starts Monday, and since I always have church-filled weekends, there is no real reason why I should consider break to end Sunday instead of Friday.  So today is the last day I can work hard for break.

This Wednesday, when I was trying to decide what to eat for lunch, Tammy called me and said I could come over for lunch.  A bit later, Doris called to ask for a ride to Tammy's, so that's settled.  Afterwards, ~20 people from my fellowship played volleyball between Tammy and my place.  Jennifer and Steve needed to work for a bit.  Steve suggested that I should stay for a bit and then drive him to the volleyball place.  So I read Atiyah's Commutative Algebra for an hour or two, while Steve and Jennifer worked.  Then I drove them to the park next to my place.  I decided to come out for a bit too.  Later when they were lacking one person for the third team, I decided to join in and play.  I have never really played volleyball before, so I am not sure what to do.  Of course, I know the general idea and such, so I fit right in.  I played 4 games, and we actually won twice (due to my teammates, of course).  I actually hit a few balls :-)  It was quite enjoyable, maybe I will join with them sometimes on Sundays (they play every Sunday after church).

This Tuesday, I cooked curry!  Tammy showed me some ingredients and sauce packs at 99 Ranch.  Since I am afraid of the potatoes budding, I decided to cook curry quick and not wait.  It tasted really good, except now I have way too much food.  I know it looks like what I often eat, but I used to just buy prepackaged curry, instead of cutting my own potatoes and carrots.

I was a bit bored so I counted the windows I have opened on my 12 virtual desktops.  I have 1 of each of the following: Firefox, Thunderbird, xpdf, xdvi, 2 rxvt (console) running a text clock I wrote and pork, my AIM client that I hacked.  Then I have 31 konsole (console), with them running 2 top, 1 latex.sh (my homemade latex compilation script), 21 vim, and 21 sitting in the shells in various directories, often with meaning.  One may say that 2+1+21+21 is bigger than 31.  That is true.  A konsole can have many tabs.

I posted photos to 13 past diary entries, dating back to 2008-12-08.  I suggest looking at them by clicking on the "PHOTO" category at the top navigation bar.

[Photo: Food; curry for the first time!]

This Monday, I drove to Arcadia to Wing Ning Yung's house.  Wing and Cameron Taketa came back from Hawaii for Christmas, and they invited some of us to come.  In the morning, Theodore Yu drove Stephanie Chan up from San Diego and picked up Scott Hsieh on the way.  We met at around 11 and talked for a bit.  Then we went out to eat lunch.  We were originally going to go to the seafood dim sum place next to 99 Ranch, but when we drove by, it was quite crowded, so we drove to Hop Li instead.  I have actually never been to Hop Li for dim sum--when we went with ABSK/LCF, it was usually at night, and for Ray's graduation, it was three tables banquet style.  It was really delicious, I have a different view of Hop Li now.  Oh, and I have a new perspective on Stephanie too, wow, she can order and eat!  After lunch, we went back to Wing's place, and we played a round of Bang!, and then played many rounds of Rummikub.  We teamed up three teams, and I was with Stephanie.  After a fierce battle, Stephanie and I won the first round.  Subsequently, Wing and Cameron won two rounds and then Teddy and Scott one the last round.  It was really fun.

[Photo: Group photo standing with the teams.  Each team was triumphant at least once.]

This Sunday, I went after church to Old Town Pasadena.  The closest Sprint store from UCLA and Caltech happens to be there.  So despite a normal "home zip code search" would not reveal this, I know that I go to Pasadena enough to search for stores there as well.  I asked Sprint to transfer my contacts from the old phone to the new phone.  It took a while for them to get my old phone to work with their equipment since it is so old.  But eventually they got it all transferred.  Yay, now I have contact information of so-many-people again.  Some of them I would probably never call again, why do I keep it?  Well, does not hurt too much, right?  The most frequent callers I have on speed dial anyways.  Now my phone is finally done.  Good that it got done before school started again.  I would not have time to deal with this.

This Saturday, we had Bible study as usual.  I drove myself today, no Alex still.  Afterwards, we went to lunch.  I ate a lot.  Then I went to 99 Ranch in Arcadia with Tammy.  She showed me certain things, including how to properly buy meat.  She also showed me some ingredients for making my own curry.  It was quite enjoyable shopping with her.  (Steve was napping in the car.)  I bought quite a bit of food today.  Of course, the one that makes me the happiest is the bakery buns.

[Photo: The same dish I make every other day, but this time with lean pork grounded on the spot.  I did not add enough oil to compensate.]

This Friday, I spent some time compiling a list of movies I want to watch.  I went to Steve and Tammy's for dinner, and Steve gave me more suggestions, too.  I am also asking Bing Huo for recommendations based on my preferences.  In addition, Alex may want to watch some movies with me, and possibly David Barmore too.  Furthermore, Barmore has a lot of (possibly eccentric) opinions about what kind of movies are good, too, so I have many sources of information to compile together to form a master list of the movies I want to watch.  This is quite a non-trivial task. :-D  Why do I have to approach everything so academically?  Well, I do things mathematically, and often combinatorially.  This is who I am.  Even my mathematical tendencies shine through in leisure activities that have seemingly nothing to do with math.  Finally, I came up with a rating scheme for movies.  It is quite mathematical in its description, I am afraid some people may not get even the statement of some of the categories (one of them involved open neighborhoods, which could be translated into sequences in some suitable movie-topology).  Yay math!

[Photo: I think sunsets are beautiful.]

This Thursday, I tried out the GPS navigation feature on my new phone.  I was originally going to call Sprint like the past two days, but then they are on holiday break so I decided to try to figure it out myself.  After a lot of effort, I finally figured out how it may work.  But I do not get GPS signal in my room, so I decided to go out and take a walk.  Still no signal in the immediate vicinity.  I could not take no for an answer, nor was I able to wait longer, so I drove to UCLA.  Okay, I also had some errands that take me there, but it was mostly just to test out my navigation system.  Dan and Jennifer invited a few of us over for dinner, so I was able to actually use my GPS navigation on the road.  It worked out quite well.  I am beginning to like my new phone, finally.

This Wednesday, I talked to Sprint for an hour in the morning again.  Now I have web access.  Apparently the rates are so high without a plan that basically even using Internet for a day or two would pay off the data plan.  So I bought the data pack.  It was suggested that I should switch to a plan with data included, but switching has an overhead in cost, so Sprint will call me back next month right before the billing period to set-up a no-fee switch.

For the rest of the day, I wrote a utility called hsync that mimics rsync -vprt --size-only.  Well, I did not know that option existed on rsync (so dumb), so I wrote my own.  I did all this because when syncing a ext3 filesystem with a vfat filesystem, due to the imprecise modification time on vfat, some of the files will always be re-transmitted.  This is really bad, so I am ignoring the modification time (incidentally, to ignore time we use --size-only, and not --ignore-times).  After coding all this, I then realized the proper way to sync ext3 with vfat is to use --modify-window=1, and it is actually documented on man rsync.  Way to go... not reading the man page carefully.  Not all is lost, however, since now I have a working code for basically traversing a directory recursively on a file system and performing (arbitrary) action to each file, dealing with links the way I want, and ignoring special files such as sockets, fifo, character and block devices.

This Tuesday, I have a new cell phone.  My free LG Rumor phone finally arrived.  After borrowing a separate phone and talking to Sprint for half an hour, the new phone is finally properly activated.  However, I cannot use Internet and other capabilities requiring a data plan.  This is weird, since I thought I was able to use it, but would just be charged depending on usage.  I have had enough talking to Sprint for today.  I will call them again tomorrow.

This Monday, I installed an internal hard disk drive for my Dell Dimension 3000.  This is the only desktop I owned, and was given to me when my ex-roommate David Barmore did not need it anymore (he got a new machine).  Since then, I have bought a big hard drive (500G was big back then) and switched it.  This summer I bought a ATA cable that has three connectors, so I can connect a second hard drive.  Since I got my new 1.5T external hard drive, I backed up everything that is important from both the 500G hard drive and an old 160G hard drive.  Then I installed it as a slave (using cable select).  Everything works. :-)  I tried to format the slave drive in both vfat and ext3, and am please to say that the ext3 transfer rate is not 10 times slower like when I use external drive.  This then of course gives the only viable way to have more ext3 storage.  This is nice for backing up small files and such, like my entire ring filesystem, if I wanted to.  I will leave backing up big files for the external 1.5T one that is (of course) formatted as vfat, since external ext3 is always roughly 10 times slower, for whatever reason that no one knows about.

[Photo: Food; eggs and tofu without any special sauce; packaged curry.]

This Sunday, I drove to church from Scott Hsieh's place.  Since I did not want to be late, and I know not of the route, I decided to leave a bit early.  I ended up beating Google's predicted time of 43 minutes by 5 minutes, despite driving under the speed limit.  I spent some time at church testing the audio equipment, since I had nothing to do.

Caleb spoke to the younger people today.  His burden seems to be a few points that somehow fit together very well when he shared.  One point was he answered the question we asked yesterday at Bible study (without knowing that we asked it)--how do we carry out 1 Peter 4 when it says to love one another?  His answer: prayer is the first step.  I heartily agree!  Prayer is one of the best ways that we can care about one another.  He also encouraged us to pray in Breaking of Bread early on, "before the atmosphere is conducive to prayer."  That is quite an interesting point, since he is stressing the importance of letting our understanding worship God instead of our emotions (not that the second part is unimportant), since "many young people rely on emotions too much."  I remember once brother Lance Lambert said that we need to make a "cold-hearted decision" to follow Christ.

After church, I got a haircut in Alhambra at the "7 Day Beauty Salon" that John Shen recommended, it was super cheap.  I have been meaning to get a haircut for roughly 4 weeks now.  This time I got my haircut after 92 days, instead of the usual 63.  Then I went to Caltech and played table tennis.  I beat Michael Woods and Jiaqi Guo today.  I also lost to Toan like 12-14 in the 5th game.  I guess I am still okay.  I need to get back to my old level.  And finally, I got home at night, it feels good to be home, after not being here for more than a day.

This Saturday, I went to Bible study in the morning "as usual," even though I have not had Bible study for 6 weeks now.  It feels really good to be back.  Afterwards, however, I rushed off to drive to Scott Hsieh's place in Anaheim.  There, Bing Huo and Caleb Ng are waiting.  We had a little bit of food, and then drove off to Costa Mesa to see the musical Cats.  After we parked and were walking off, I sang the first line of You Are My Sunshine, and the person directing parking traffic started singing the second line.  It was really funny.  We were slightly late and had to watch the first 6 minutes on the screen.  Michael Woods and Jiaqi Guo drove in a separate car from Tech, and they were a bit more late.  Good thing I distributed the tickets first so we did not have to wait for them.

The musical itself is really really weird.  It is not like Phantom or Les Mis.  It does not have any plot (really), and each scene is just based on some poem by T. Eliot.  Oh well, the second half was much more enjoyable, with Gus the theatre cat having some nice operatic music.  Caleb said "All's Well That End's Well?" after the second half.

Then we went to South Coast Plaza, "the Most Profitable Mall" in the US, for dinner.  Jiaqi got picked up by her friends, Michael left, and Bing drove us to drop off Caleb at Amtrak, he is going home.  Then Bing and I stayed at Scott's place for a little bit before Bing going home.  I stayed at Scott's place overnight so I need not drive at night.  I did not talk to Scott more, though, I just went straight to sleep.

This Friday, I got a new gyroscopic toy... well not really.  I got a new 1.5TB SATA hard drive.  Apparently IDE hard disk drives are on their way out, and they are quite expensive anyways... so despite module (the old desktop that David Barmore gave me) not supporting SATA, I bought a drive and also a SATA->USB enclosure.  These two combined totaled to $150 for 1.5TB, I'd say a pretty decent deal.  I will start backing things up into this drive so I can perform some radical rearranging without fear of messing things up.  As usual, I tested the transfer rates.  With formatted as vfat, the transfer rate is the normal ~80Mbs for external hard drives.  If formatted as ext3, the transfer rate drops 10-fold or so... too bad, I'll be sticking with vfat on this one, then.  Oh, and I noticed the gyroscopic effects when the drive is spinning, but I probably should not use it as an expensive toy.

[Photo: My new hard drive and enclosure.  So exciting!]

This Thursday, I drove to Pasadena to run some errands.  Specifically, the Caltech Credit Union is only open on weekdays, so I have been waiting since school started for break so I can go on a weekday.  However, alas, due to traffic conditions, it took me 1.5 hours or so to get to Pasadena.

I first went to the Toyota Dealer where I bought my vehicle, they checked my tires and reported that there were no leaks, despite the fact that I pumped my tires a month ago and the warning lights are on again.  I had to wait for 2 hours there just to get this checked?  Oh well, at least they had public computers available so I read Bible online.

Then I went to Tech, had lunch with Tim Kwa (I have not had Mongolian bowl in such a long, long time!!) and talked for a while.  Then I ran some errands including the aforementioned credit union, library, bookstore, and Ruddock.  Finally, I drove to Pavilions to buy a cake.  Today it is my mother's birthday, so I figured I would buy a cake to celebrate.  I brought the cake to Hou-En and June's place.  Hou-En had a printer to give me.  June took half of the cake and let me take the rest home (this is exactly how I planned it).  I also talked to June for quite some long time.  It is good to occasionally have the opportunity to talk like this.  However, this meant I was a bit late in going home.  Which means...

I ran into unimaginable traffic.  It was very hard to get on the 405 south after the 210, 134, and 101.  So I took 405 north, and made a U-turn on the next exit.  That was the correct detour, it saved me some time.  After being on stop and go 405 south for a while, I decided to try my probability (read: "luck") and intuition on local streets.  I was also low on gas, so I filled up first.  I ran into the Bel Air area, which is very dizzying.  But I finally managed to come out of the other end near UCLA.  I got home after 2.5 hours or so of driving.  Today, I drove for about 4 hours.  I listened to my Les Miserables 2-disc set and also Caleb Ng's Les Miserables 2-disc set (mine is the Original London Cast recording his was the Original Broadway Cast).  I also listened to roughly a third of the Phantom of the Opera sound track.  I have never driven so long in a day.  (Recall that I pretty much only drive on weekends to church, so the traffic is always good.)  I don't want to drive in traffic ever again.

This Wednesday, Housing came to fix my sink, it no longer leaks!  I also washed all my bedding today.  Then for lunch, Joshua Zahl organized a small company, consisting of us and Josh Lampkins.  Lampkins suggested Damon and Pythias, a extraordinary sandwich place within walking distance.  We had good food there, chat a bit, and then went to the Hammer Museum (belonging to UCLA) to look at the Gouge exhibit, featuring modern woodcuts.  I was especially impressed by the work of Christiane Baumgartner.  I still spend time doing math each day, and also spending lots of time on the ACF Songbook Project.

[Photo: It was precipitating in the liquid form when I visited Gouge Museum today.]

This Tuesday, one of my ex-roommates Scott Hsieh flew down from Stanford to LAX, and took the FLYAWAY bus to two blocks away from my place.  I walked over to pick him up, and then we came back to talk for a while.  After a bit, John Shen, another ex-roommate (howbeit not Scott's), drove over and we talked some more.  Then the three of us cooked dinner and ate.  John brought a cheesecake, supposedly for David Barmore, who had a birthday last week.  But Barmore's gone home already.  After dinner, John drove Scott to the Purple Metro station next to John's place, and Scott took the metro to Union Station and then took the Amtrak back home.  It was a convoluted way for Scott to get home.  Is it to save money?  Nope.  It is arranged this way so we can meet each other.  It is good to spend some time to catch up with old friends.  (Today was so "crazy" that I forgot to post to my diary--this has not happened in a very long time.)

[Photo: My sister likes to take pictures with her brother's friends.]

This Monday, my Winter break starts.  I did some combinatorics in the morning.  I also started work on the ACF Chordbook Project.  We will be adding songs to our current songbook.  Hopefully we will get it done quickly and efficiently, and also well.  Hopefully we will succeed, where many have failed.  Not because we are better, but because we have more dedicated people to help out this time.  Today prompted by certain things, I used Google to search for my name.  On the first 6 pages, the result that were actually referring to me number 7, 7, 6, 7, 7, and 3, respectively, out of 10 per page.  I suppose my name is quite unique.  Sadly my personal website is only the second hit.  But on the other hand, I did not publish my name on my website, so it is freaky that Google correctly identified it as mine.

[Photo: This is why I need to dry my hair, it looks really weird when wet.]