2pac - changes

my cali license finally arrived in the mail. so, after 5 months of being in cali, i've slowly acquired a california bank account, driver's license, bills, residency, college enrollment, job, and car. yay, i am finally an official california resident.

man, i just realized how much i've changed since i was 16 (not just physically).

below is my license picture from 2000 when i was 16 (the 2005 exam date was not an exam; it was merely license renewal, and they keep the same picture). laugh it up:

ucla classes

okay, due to popular demand (aka brian), i will mention (1) my ucla classes and (2) the student body:

(1) i am taking 4 courses:

• CS246 (web information management):

we learn about the most novel and monumental ideas of the web by reading the academic papers that started everything. for example, we read some by the the creators of google the 1st week. each week we are assigned 3-4 papers to read and write reviews on them. we get to pick any cool project we want to do. past projects have produced papers that were later read in the course. it's like a recycling program.

• CS118 (fundamentals of networking):

the internet was invented at ucla back in ~1970. so, they are pretty good at networking. this is just a course i have to take to fulfill my breadth requirement for my master's.

• CS495 (teaching assistant seminar):

at florida tech, this course wasn't even a course; it was a 3-day-long session of what not to do in the classroom. here, it's amazingly thorough. we meet 2 hrs 2 times a week and really learn about all the minute subtleties that go into teaching well. we each have to do a simulating teaching lesson to the class, and they even video record current TA's and critique them...

• CS201 (computer science seminar):

we hear (2) 2 hour lectures a week from smart ppl. last week, we heard a great talk from douglas comer (he has been a prominent member of founding the internet and its direction for the last 40 yrs).

(2) the student body seems clearly divided:

• undergrads:

everyone is white or asian and is from cali. about 70% of all undergrads are really pretty white girls.

• grad students:

everyone is from taiwan or is named chris tanner.

i love the dmv so much

i need to get my cali driver's license ASAP (actually last week) so that i can claim to be a cali resident for tuition purposes next yr. last week, i went to the DMV, hoping to freestyle the writing test and luckily pass. i get there, wait in line, then am told that i need to bring my birth certificate (not listed on their website.) i drive back, wait in line, then am told that my birth certificate isn't real. i need my REAL one. i told them this is my REAL one. i spoke w/ manager. i explained that my past job w/ the government accepted this document as my REAL birth certificate--along w/ every school ive ever attended--possibly because it lists my birth info, has doctors' signatures, and has a golden sticker that reads 'birth certificate.' manager said i need a different one.

week later, my parents mail me a different one (hopefully the DMV will deem good enough). wait in line, they accept it. whew. i wish i had studied for the written test, but not really. a guy walks out, explaining to his friends that he missed 4 (you must get 33/36 for renewals) but they let him slide and gave it a license anyway. weird. that guy gets leniency but i don't. i take the test. as i wait in a huge line to get it graded, i see a med student in front of me as he's still in his gown. the grader only graded the 1st page, and said, 'man, u missed 9 out of 18 already! u didn't study at all did u!?' great. well, i luckily got a 34/36 and was excited, thinking maybe i won't have to pay the extra $15,000 non-residency fee next year. as i wait for my license, i was told:
lady: "thank you, please bring this with you when you come back"
chris: "come back?"
lady: "our computers just went down. we can't issue any licenses today. please come back some other day w/ these documents..."

as partying gifts, they gave me my forms to take home, along w/ my dmv test. so, if anyone wants culver city's DMV test #6b answers... jk. no cheating.

man, i love the dmv so so much.

trader joe's

my internship ended last week. below are uneventful pics from the 3-month long pool tournament. (my team lost to the winning team in the semi-finals. 28 teams total.)

(most of the teams)

today, i fell in love w/ trader joe's. it surely makes me feel like a californian everytime i walk into that strange, strange, hippie place. their prices are amazing. notably, the 'extra long spaghetti pasta' is longer than my legs and is 2 lbs worth

1st day of grad school - GO BRUINS!

preface:

• ucla has 28k ugrads, 11k grads (50% female)
• florida tech has 2k ugrads, 2k grads (25% who are technically female)

i took the free bus to school, just like in grade school. the girl who sat next to me went to mit for ugrad and coincidentally had heard of florida tech! turns out, 2 of the 4 of us FIT'ers here are in her program and she had met them. weird.

walking around campus was crazy. it was gigantic, and i've never seen as many model-looking ppl in my entire life. the sheer volume was crazy. just imagine: tons of college kids sprinkled all on nice green grass in front of old architectural buildings; a real football stadium; and tons of clubs and organizations doing shameless plugs within a condensed walkway.

i get to my first class--web information management--early, yet i barely got the last remaining seat. the course has a 25-person limit, and the old-school (literally) looking classroom had 30 seats. however, 50 people showed up. so, the 20 extra people just stood against the walls. having no idea what to expect, i start to glance around and realize i am pretty much the only white kid in the entire class. nearly everyone was from taiwan and had glasses. we each had to introduce ourselves and say what school we came from. almost everyone was from a world-renowned school (national taiwan university, india institute of technology) or a california school (berkeley, caltech, stanford, ucsb, us irvine). it was at this time that i realized i was at square one all over again.

we will be reading and reviewing ~4 of the most impacting, novel web-related academic papers per week, and our first week's worth includes one by the google creators. we will eventually create a project and write our own paper. the professor mentioned that once the course is over, many students spend some extra time and actually get their papers published. pretty impressive since the work started as just a class project. more impressive, he told us that some of the papers we will be reading are from former students in this exact class. wow. he casually mentioned that if we need access to a repository of saved web pages, he can give us access to one that ucla gathered. it includes 70 million web pages and is 600 gb. wow.

i had TA seminar (teaches you how to teach and you have to teach the class eventually.) it was very good. i later had cs 201 seminar which just welcomed us to the CS program and was followed w/ a reception. there was free wine, food, and desserts. very good. i met my adviser, who is now the vice chair of the entire cs department. during my introduction:
adviser: chris what?
chris: tanner. t-a-n-n-e-r
adviser: ah yea, you worked at google this summer, right?

wow. apparently his former phd student mentioned me once. he has a very good memory. we talked about my past research work and my current research interests. it was very good. i met many cool ppl, and i am definitely glad i chose ucla. i feel like a true bruin now.

ucla orientation with magnolia coincidences

on a serious note (sorry), starting ucla soon has caused me to recall the past. specifically, i remembered being the typical industrious, overachiever in grade school. i would aim to turn in all assignments first, and i enjoyed memorizing pointless trivia. i felt like an outlier and wondered why everyone else was so slack. in high school, this faded; i became somewhat apathetic towards obtaining great marks, and having fun w/ my friends took higher precedence. in college, i returned to my original roots and re-founded my fascination with learning. throughout this time, i've been fortunate enough to have some amazing internships that surrounded me w/ crazy, smart (and sometimes dynamic) ppl. yet, my undergrad college was still a repeat of the past in that i was surrounded w/ tons of slackers, and that the coursework wasn't renowned. well, after 18 yrs of starting formal education (man, kindergarten was really that long ago), i'm finally entering a rigorous academic environment for which i've longed. watch it be too hard for me, and i start whinning. ha.


anyway, as orientation started, only about 100 of the 1,400 registered new grad students had filed in yet. i immediately spotted a fellow Florida Tech student! what is she doing way out here? we talked, and she started to mention 2 other Florida Tech'ers who got accepted! as she said this, they walked in through the doors. so, oddly, 4 of us out of the ~100 people were from a random, small florida school w/ 2,000 undergrads.

oh, at ucla, parking's a [bleep]. so, i'll be taking the free bus to school each day. i'll occasionally eat a school lunch and probably carry a bland-colored tray. it's like i've regressed to grade school all over again. lol. in fact, i assert that grad school is actually just grade school minus the e.

cheapskate and old people

lately i've felt like a cheapskate by getting some really good deals:

• laser printer (samsung) = $30 (retail = $270)
  
• video card (128mb geforce) = $27 (retail = $35?)
  
• skecher shoes (new) = $35 shipped (retail = $64)
  
• car insurance for 1 year in LA! = $496 (others quoted at $1k)
  

last week in ralph's grocery store, as i entered the checkout line, i witnessed a crazy old white lady fueding w/ an african-american entertainer of some sorts. she claimed to be scared for her life and kept requesting to see the manager, despite the fact that the guy was on the phone and not paying her any attention. he was doing business calls and talked about doing photoshoots up in hollywood. next time i entered the grocery store's checkout, i looked around and saw the same exact crazy woman entering the checkout line w/ me again. (i think she lives there.)

i went to long beach to see brian this weekend, and our adventures included going to an irish pub. we witnessed an 80 yr old man (i'm not exaggerating) in a full suit dancing with the best looking girls in the bar! no joke. we were later explained by various females that he's a pervert who highly frequents the place... he attempts to kiss the girls at the end of each dance and often clings on and attaches himself as he is eye-level with certain female-specific attributes. :-/ pretty pathetic but at least funny to watch.