boston - week 4 and 5

i didn't take time to post last week, so i'm sure i'm leaving out stuff. the things that come to mind now are:

• went to Improv Boston. 4 groups. most were decent, 1 was amazing
• took my camera to repair shop :( out of commission for 3 weeks
• ordered canon 100mm f/2.8 USM lens! along w/ some other accessories :)
• got vaccinations for my trip to indonesia
• had an RA steal my mail package
  

oh, and one morning at 7:30, all the interns and i were walkin to the bus stop, as usual. as i crossed the crosswalk, i looked up and saw a guy walkin diagonally towards me. we were abt to collide and neither of us wanted to budge. so, naturally, he brought his elbow up to body check my shoulder as he said, 'get the [freckles] out of my way!' lol, it was pretty funny. who does that, especially at 7:30 in the morning? too much hatred.

as for the package stealing, i ordered a gift for sheley. i came home, saw the slip in my box signifying that i have a package. we interns were in a rush to go see the improv show, so i figured i'd get it when i come home. yet, at 11:30pm, the slip had magically disappeared from my box. nobody has access to my box, other than the RA behind the desk, as the boxes are open from the back, and the RAs are the ones who put the slips in. i asked the girl RA on duty--let's call her ms. jerkface--how that's possible. i saw my name on the list of ppl who had packages awaiting them, too. yet, my package was nowhere behind the RA desk. gone. she refused to even look through all of the packages for me and told me to come back tomorrow. how nice of her. 2 hrs of convos and investigation later, management and i confirmed that nobody had been accidentally handed my package, and that mrs. jerkface was the only person on duty during the span of time from when i first saw the slip and from when the slip was gone. clearly, she stole it, but they refuse to accuse her of such. i feel sorry for her, though. that's pretty low. management might reimburse me, though. yay.

boston - week 2

this past week has been fun-filled w/ so many events that i can't even recall them all. well, the ones that stick out at least are:

• going to see blue man group
• 4th of july fireworks on the charles bridge (and the pre-show on the 3rd)
• u.s.s. constitution parade
  
• my birthday

blue man group was pretty sweet, and the venue was much smaller than i expected. definitely worth the $25 we paid, but definitely not worth the retail price tag of $60.

3rd of july pre-show was marked w/ a huge downpour right before the show started, which cause huge lines as the ~200k people crammed into the grassy venue area once the rained stopped. the boston pops orchestra performed, along w/ the rascal flatts (country). a few people clapped for the flatts, but i believe they were clapping moreso from being happy that the flatts were done. it really amazed me that the theme included baseball so much, which definitely made me feel right at home here. i'm falling in love w/ boston. on the 4th, we saw the fireworks from the bridge. best show i've ever seen--the works went in tune w/ the orchestra. very nice :)

for my birthday, we went to one of the supposed top 18 seafood places in the nation. it only seats ~15 people. somehow, we managed to gather ~9 people to go... mostly intern friends and a few homeless people. good food, and not too expensive. afterwards, we walked by fenway and played pool. pretty much the best pool place i've ever been to. well, it rivals mr. cues II in chamblee tucker, ga. mr. cues is more for pros, though. anyway, it was all good. apparently ryan likes to use the [bleep] stick in pool, though... just incase anyone wants to know.

oh, and here's a map of pretty much all the significant places i've been to so far:

View Larger Map

boston - week 1

my 1st week in boston has been amazing. in fact, i couldn't have written a better script. within minutes of arriving in my MIT resident hall, ryan, brian, and i met up, which is the 1st time Team TacoBell has re-united since our internship 2 yrs ago in dc. mayhem was guaranteed to take place. well, we mostly just had ryan show us all around boston and cambridge since he's been livin here for a year. highlights from that 1st weekend when i arrived include:

• brian running through a public fountain
• brian being asked by a park ranger lady to put on a shirt, after which he jokingly ran at her
• brian's insane convo w/ ghandi
• ryan's friend, sushi. enough said

okay, i realize most of memories are inside stories and way too much to type, so i'll stop. basically, it was great. also, work at the lab is pretty amazing, too. right now, i'm researchin 2d pattern matching. i'm trying to find and implement the fastest possible way to determine if 1 image is found within another. i really hope i can do good work, and the environment isn't nearly as rigid as "taco bell's." this weekend was pretty great, too.

just within the one week i've been here, i've been to about 10 places, including some good japanese, chinese, and american eateries. i really appreciate boston's walkable-ness and how much it has to offer. i aim to visit more art-related places soon. i've met some pretty cool friends here, and my room overlooks the charles river and charles bridge. so, i live right at the brink of cambridge and boston. it doesn't get much better than that :) oh, and i'm making a google maps map of all the significant places i visit. i'll post it sometime.

if you could visit for 12 weeks any city in the states, which would it be and why?

it's summer time!

okay, trivial post:

this spring quarter has been very stress-free, as i was only taking 1 undergrad class, 1 grad class, and was a TA for 1 class. plus, the ugrad class was only comprised of 2 tests, and the grad class was only comprised of 2 projects. nothing else too significant. however, just to be cruel, both ugrad tests were pretty much on the same exact day that the grad projects were due. so, my entire quarter basically only had 2 real days.

so, the past few days have been crazy. the to-do list follows:
-wed @ 8-11am = cs181 final worth 60% of my grade
-thurs @ 3pm = cs263 project and 8-page technical report worth 40% of my grade
-friday @ 2pm = cs33 deadline for my grading all the projects
-friday @ midnight = cs201 little seminar summaries due
-need to pack my entire room (for my flying to atl, boston, indo) and cause i'm sub-letting my room this summer.

oh, to make it more interesting, apparently i booked my flight home to ATL to be at thursday at 9am--way before i was done with everything. wednesday, i awoke on 5 hrs of sleep, at 6 am, for my 8am final. soon as it was over, i picked up leslie, headed to my place, and we worked on the project and started writing the paper. after 16 consecutive hrs of work, we finished at 4am. came home, packed, and slept from 5:30am - 6:15am... a whopping 45 minutes, for a friend was driving me to the airport at 630am. needless to say, i slept on the plane rides :) yet, i was fortunate enough to wake up to some pretty scenery:




let the summer begin :)
boston, baby! it was all a dream.

huntington beach and climbing things

this past weekend was pretty amazing.

kenny, one of my good friends from high school in atlanta, was out here in cali, so we met up this saturday in long beach. we then drove to huntington beach and newport beach with his 9 sisters (+/- 5) and 1 cousin. we toasted hotdogs, smores, and of course corn. then, ~6 more friends of his cousin met us on the beach, and we all played football until the sun set. within the last 6 years, i've always lived within 5 miles of either the atlantic of pacific ocean. but this confirmed for me that wherever i choose to live once when i'm done with school, i want it to be near an ocean.

sunday, i joined ucla's outdoor adventure group to go rock climbing. i had only rock climbed twice before, both of which were indoors. so, apparently outdoor rocks are not the same as indoor ones. the rocks aren't made of hard plastic w/ semi-conveniently-located handle grips strategically placed throughout. the event lasted around 8 hrs and was an amazing time.



it's good to know our lives were in good hands.

Simpang Asia + NLP Proj 2

out of all the foreign food restaurants i've eaten at in LA, somehow i've never had food from the indonesian restaurant Simpang Asia. so, sometime last week, i gave it a try. i ordered:

• Nasi Warteg (entree): Turmeric fried chicken, jackfruit curry, telor ceplok balado, fried noodle, tasty tofu tempeh, tiny salted fish, steamed rice; all wrapped in banana leaf. Est. September 2005.

• Roti Bakar (dessert): Indo sweet grilled cheese bread. Delicious w/ condensed milk and chocolate topping.

overall, it was pretty good stuff! halfway through, though, my tongue realized that something wasn't right and asked me what the heck i was doing to it. it felt like i had eaten 3 bags of hot fries simultaneously. nevertheless, it was a really cool place and the dessert was seriously one of the best desserts i've ever had. the only immediate thing that comes to mind that was better is google's catered strawberry/chocolate/waffer/pudding/cracker things. my mouth is watering now, so i should stop talking about it.

for my NLP class, we get to choose anything we want for project 2. leslie and i decided to create a system that (1) automatically classifies stories as being adult stories (i.e. regular text for adults, not x-rated stuff) or children stories; (2) converts adult stories to children stories. we have 1.5 weeks left, so it'll be fun. i did #1, already. now it's time for the fun parts.

FIT vs UCLA (part 3)

3 years ago at FIT, i took the course titled formal languages and automata theory (FLAT). for my master's at UCLA, we have to take a certain # of ugrad classes. i liked FLAT, so i decided to retake it. to show how UCLA's tests generally differ from FIT's, i took a picture of both exams. see original-sized images. in FIT's defense, FIT only gave 75 minutes instead of UCLA's 110.

also, when i was a freshmen at FIT, our endowment was $10 mill. they claim to have $30 mill now. today, in the Daily Bruin, one of the articles mentioned that the UCLA business school received a $10 million grant from someone. that's enough money to almost BUY florida tech, but here, it's just an article in our daily newspaper and some scholarship and departmental plans.