End of Quarter Updates

Another month.

Finals week was rough. I panicked on the EE231 final, which meant spending 40 minutes to an hour just flipping pages, looking for a question that I could completely answer. It was not until an hour and a half into the 3-hour long final before I forced myself to calm down and methodically attack the problems. I ended up running out of time, and on a simple part of a problem no less. Nevertheless, God heard by plea for mercy and humbled me, showing me again that God keeps me where He wants me, no matter how badly I do.

On the EE376A final, I also ran out of time. The problems were much more difficult than the practice exams and the midterm. I felt like I studied all that I could for that class, and could not have conceivably done any better. My final grade was disappointing, but when I’m limited by my own intellect, what can I do?

In any case, I finally finished my M.S., and am taking a little bit of time off before my prospective Ph. D. candidacy in September. (In other words, I still can’t find a job. =P) Also finished is my roommate (virtually) of 5.5 years (we lived across the hall from each other freshman year). I’m kind of sad to be “breaking up” with him (hahaha; don’t worry, I’m straight =P), but he’ll be in Southern California working at “Boing”, so he won’t be that far. I’m hoping though that we will run a business together sometime in the near future.

It’s been a good five years, and seeing how we won’t be seeing one another for a while, we spent more quality time together last week than we have all quarter. Last Saturday, we biked 15 miles. He accompanied me to buy a new bike seat, get my tux fitted (another best friend’s wedding is coming up soon!), and then we biked to uncharted territory in the northern (and southern) parts of Palo Alto and Mountain View.

Last Sunday, we played squash, and then went out for dinner. We biked to downtown Palo Alto and roamed around for about twenty minutes, and finally decided to eat at “Pizza My Heart” with a mutual friend. (I ate as much as their portions combined!) It was fun just to hang out and be relaxed (with no exams or assignments to think about).

We went to the Stanford Theater thereafter and watched “North by Northwest” by Alfred Hitchcock. Its entertainment value surpassed many of the more modern movies I’ve seen, and I was pleasantly surprised.

In other news, I spent about two days updating the FiCS website. I used my experience from the Tsinghua blog and the Table Tennis website and applied it to create a web-based administration tool for handling announcements. It’s quite nifty, but besides the officers and myself, nobody really gets to see it.