Dressed up and took the trouble to attend Microsoft party this evening at Pittsburgh Deli Co. in Shadyside. I was quite nervous because I don't really attend parties and feared I would stand alone at the corner. Came in, saw no one I knew and mostly CS people from my batch. Luckily there was Amit, the CS senior, whom I befriended in networks and we talked all evening about comp and his internship with bloomberg. There was free food and beer. =) Booze in midweek.

Everyone's asking me on when would there be a poker game especially James and he's bringing the gorgeous Thai, A, to play who also happens to be good in the stock market. Hassan and Dilo (Irwan) are asking as well. Ken Yu too. The poker set might not be able to cater for us all and I think I might need to get one for myself. Probably I should start a gambling house soon. Practice my skills in organizing events. This would do for a start, right? Maybe one day I can become like Donald Trump or maybe I can open a casino on the Strip in Vegas as well as in Monte Carlo.

There are two books that I want to get now:
a) Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
b) Super System by Doyle Brunson. It's the famed book for poker strategy.

Time for a little bit of jazz and gnite.

West Wing

Struggling with time management especially in trying to get a balance between networks and the rest of the classes I am taking. Technical Opportunities Conference is this Thursday and will be looking forward for some, if lucky, interviews.

West Wing is the best ever TV show ever made. In my opinion, the actors and actresses in that show are all top notched. Past Emmy's have been grabbed by each of the main characters except for Martin Sheen, the President. Season 7 premiered Sunday evening but I only managed to watch it after downloading a copy. Season 6 left us at the Democratic National Convention when Congressman Matt Santos was nominated as the Democratic Presidentatial candidate. Running mate is good old Leo McGarry whom I think is the most respected among all the superb characters.

Throughout that episode, it seems McGarry was not in good terms with Santos. Then, Josh Lyman, who now heads Santos' campaign decided not to hire Donna Moss because of she did when she was on the other camp in the Democratic presidential race. However, the ending was quite touching when McGarry sat down with Santos and they reconciled and began coming up with strategies. It was a sight to be seen.

I think West Wing is a pro Democrat television series. FYI, the producer John Wells is a CMU alumna. Huhu..

Hellish Week

It was the fourth week and it was the buziest so far. I had a checkpoint for my IRC server and the embedded lab due on Saturday night. Unfortunately, after working for 2 straight days, we didn't make the networks checkpoint. Learnt our lesson. We procastinated too much even after being warned by the TAs since the day the project writeup went out on the web site. Iwas very much involved in the project so I didn't feel that bad. I guess I have to struggle for the extra credits.

Felt so free now. Felt like after finals just ended but we have a routing daemon due to 3 weeks.

Blew Embedded & Hurricane Rita

Damn. Screwed up my embedded systems quiz this morning. If there's no partial credits for the last question, I'll get 40% off. Fortunately, the quiz's only 5% of the overall grade. But I really felt pissed off at myself for doing such mistake. I jumped into the wrong line of code and the rest of the question went down like dominoes.

I find myself doing better in signals part of electrical engineering. Maybe its because I am more experienced with stuff based on calculus. Most Asians are good in signals instead in digital stuff. Yet, I still take the computer track where the math is more discrete and require a little bit of more IQ. I find the Americans are better at this but they don't as well asians in Calculus.

Hurricane Rita is another monster storm . Now, its heading towards Texas where my uncle Edmund and his family are staying. He e-mailed us this morning and said he'll be evacuating tomorrow. Going west to either Dallas or San Antonio. In my opinion, they should evacuate further west like to Arizona or even Las Vegas.

Both Katrina and Rita are names of people I know. One is Uncle Edmund's daughter and another is someone's mum.

Microsoft Info Session

First of all, to the kiasu Indian CS student who stepped on my specs while trying to get a SECOND pair of free shirt: FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOU

Anyway, during the info session (an info session is a recruiting event) they gave us a sneak peak of the upcoming XBOX 360. The machine is white in color as most new consoles are going to be. It can also display powerpoint slides, play music from ipod, read pictures from a digicam and display it with that nice Apple screensaver effect etc.

with Stella when we just arrived in Cologe Messe 

sexy
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the ceiling of a corridor in the vatican museum
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Back row L-R: Camillus, Felicia, Benjamin
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