Author Archives: Alan V

Thoughts

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So there’s been a lot of random things on my mind lately.

Right now, I’m pissed off at US Airways. I did their online check-in (which, BTW, is way too complicated for being check-in) and went to print my boarding passes. Hm… something screwed up with their page and I can only print my boarding pass from Denver to Pittsburgh. Oh well, not big deal, let’s try that again.
…
Oh, so I can’t check-in again because “a member of your party has already checked-in; please check-in and recieve boarding passes at the airport.” Um, what? Okay, getting past the stupidity of that, then there must be a “reprint boarding pass option.”
…
Nope. Well, damn.
Why can’t all airlines be like Southwest?

Also been thinking a lot about college and how it changes people. I dunno… I remember when I was sitting here a little less than 2 years ago, excited as hell (but nervous as hell) to be heading off to college. I remember arriving there and feeling invinsible… like I could do anything. It was a brand new start for me (just like when I moved here from CO), and I felt confident… like I could leave behind who I was in high school and become who or what I always wanted to be.
And, of course, you can’t really do that. You can only change who you are gradually. It’s unreasonable to expect yourself to be able to suddenly become the opposite of what you were.
At the same time, it’s also unreasonable to expect nothing to change. It’s a different environment. You’re with different people. If you were well-known by everyone… well… you’re not anymore. If you were the loner who sat in the corner by himself, you won’t have much of an opportunity to do that at Orientation.
So I guess a big part of heading to college for me was finding the right balance of the two, and I have to say I think things worked out pretty well. I’m not nearly as bold or outgoing as I envisioned myself being. At the same time, I’m not the same shy-but-popular-in-a-geeky-way kid I was in high school. And I think I’m really happy with that. I mean, yes, there are still things about me I’d change, but I can work on those. I don’t expect things to suddenly change overnight the way I did before.
Meh.
Anyone else have similar experiences?

It’s also amazed me how much I’ve learned in the past 2 years. I mean, I got back and was able to talk to my dad about a lot of the work he’s doing (he’s an engineer at Intel; not sure what area). I actually know more than him now in some areas (CS areas though, obviously). Some of the stuff I’m learning was stuff he did in graduate work.
I wrote up a page of major programming projects (on my CMU page) yesterday, and a lot of the stuff is actually quite impressive. I mean, how many freshmen get to write a photomosaic program, solve the Kevin Bacon problem (ick), write various compression algorithms, and write a (primitive but functional) AI? What about design a processor from scratch using nothing but NAND gates? And who could forget the auto-cannibal maker?
Even stuff that I’ve done this year… malloc, the caching web proxy, buffer bomb, and the Sudoku-solver… when you think about it, those are non-trivial problems. The fact that they’re giving them to us as sophomores says something as to the quality of education here. I mean, hell, the fact that OS is a sophomore/junior level course says something.

A lot of people told me, as I was deciding on my undergrad university, that it’s grad school that really matters. Undergrad is insignificant and where you go isn’t important. You know what? I disagree completely. I think that, at least for me, undergrad is the most important. I mean, really, all grad schools are the same. You’re going to be researching stuff you’re interested in. Sure, having more resources at your disposal might be helpful, but really, is that going to make or break your thesis?
Undergrad, on the other hand, is where you learn all the skills necessary for your (eventual) career. For me especially, since I plan to go into the workforce immediately after I get my BS, it’s even more important. Plus coming from a good undergrad school undoubtedly has some effect on what grad schools you’re accepted to (if you’re into that kind of thing).
So yeah. All of you who said I should go to UofA because undergrad doesn’t matter–you were wrong :-P
Curious what other people think as to this as well.

Oh yes, I promised pictar.

Using up printing quota FTW!

This is a new title

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My desk area r teh photo-y! :-D
Actually, I’ve been meaning to replace most of the photos on the wall. They’re mostly from freshman and sophomore years of high school. My wall above my BED, on the other hand, is happy. I guess that’ll be tomorrow’s picture.

Um… yeah. So I head back to Pittsburgh in 2 days (this Saturday). Strangely, I’m not as excited about heading back as I was at the beginning of summer… probably because I actually am starting to feel comfortable here, and because I havn’t spent as much time with friends here as I would have liked. Meh.
Poo to all of you too, for not having time for me :-P
…
Only half kidding.

Worked a bit on constructing Student Wars decks today. Got a Programming deck, Athletic deck, and KGB deck done. I’ll build more so people have more options when it comes to introductory decks (since building a Student Wars deck, like any other TCG, is not trivial). So yeah, I’m putting all this work in, so people please play? I’ll sit down with you and teach you everything. Seriously.

For those of you who’ve asked, I’ll be working at the PSLC this summer (which basically means I’ll be on campus at the LTI). They produce and market tutoring software for kids. I’m working on the algebra tutor project. I’m going to be rewriting the backend of said system: the parser that takes the word problems the instructor enters and outputs the solution algebraic equations. The existing parser is written in lisp and is relatively accurate. Our goal is to improve the accuracy (so instructors don’t have to go in and fix the parser’s mistakes, which is extremely time consuming) and to rewrite it in Java. In doing so, we hope to gain an understanding of how children learn to parse word problems and get solutions. Should be lots of fun.
…
I just hope they didn’t misplace their faith in me… as in I hope I’m smart enough to do this. Meh.
Sounds like an incredibly difficult problem.

Gone to GameWorks for the past 2 days and played DDR. It’s really weird that they don’t have an ITG machine there, given how they’re supposedly incredibly state-of-the-art. At least I’m getting exercise.

What else, what else… there’s so much I want out of life, and I feel like such a bum sitting here in front of my computer all day not getting any of it. What have I contributed to the world? Nothing. Makes me feel insignificant. Meh.
Whatever. I don’t want to be big and important anyway. Famous people are scary. I just want to be content with who I am and what I have.
And I think, at this moment, I can be, so yay.
Life is good.

Dette er en titel

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Yeah, so I was going to make a nice, long, thoughtful post. And then I realized I didn’t really have anything to say.

Meh.

Instead I will leave you with this preview of Student Wars: Booooth

Liek omgz pr0n!
…
Actually, it’s a very cute picture.

Esto es un título

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Apologies to people for the spoilers in yesterday’s post. I hope they didn’t ruin anything for you… I mean, they weren’t really too blatant, I don’t think. Meh.
You should see X3 though, if you havn’t already.

As promised:

Um… this has to be a new record. I have made 111 of the 126 cards in Student Wars: Booooth in the past 3 days. I expect to be finished with the expansion tonight. This means both Hijinks and Booooth will be uploaded this weekend for your downloading pleasure. If I have time, I’ll also create some theme decks so people have an easier time playing (all you have to do is download the cards, assemble the decks per the provided card lists, print, and play).

I’m also especially proud of this expansion because it really brings out the differences in the various concentrations (Programming, Artist, etc). It also adds 106 characters (8 dual) to the pool, which means it should now be a lot easier to build decks themed around a specific concentration. My one regret is the name… I should have named it something like “Activities” or something, because there’s a lot more in the set than just Booth (cluster raving and graduation, for example). Oh well.

Things for future expansions: More attach events (Addition attribute, specifically). More GPA dealing with the rarer traits. More uses for the “study” line of traits. More rules. More faction-themed or faction-friendly cards.

Given that I also finished most of Hijinks, I’ve made around 150-175 cards over this break (in addition to creating the entire Booooth card list). Not bad at all. Whee.

People please play? You can read the rules for now. They’re a bit confusing though… I may post a “walkthrough game” for you to read and/or play so you can better understand how the game works. I’m proud of it. Whee.

Not much else. Went to lunch with Nui today at Crazy Buffet. Lots of yummy sushi and dim sum and random chinese dishes. And green tea ice cream. Mmm, mmm.

Det är en titel

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I’m running out of languages for post titles. Meh.

It occurs to me that I never posted this:

I’ll post rlambert with rasterbated pfriedma tomorrow.

Um… saw X3 today. It was fairly good. People die. Meh. But then person undies, so it’s okay. I guess. Overall it was very well done, but I dunno…

59/126 cards in Booooth are now done. Not bad for only 2 days’ worth of work. If I keep going at this rate, I can get it done before I get back to CMU and have it uploaded this weekend (along with Hijinks). I’ll work more tonight and hopefully get at least 75 done.

WordPress’ archiving style (going by month only, no way to access a list of all entry titles/dates) is driving me kinda crazy. I should see if there’s a plugin to do individual archive indexes or something.

Back to PA in 6 days. Yay.