A Month to Go

A month to go before I leave Carnegie Mellon. I realize that it is going to be damn hectic month to a level that I am worrying about it every 5 minutes. I am writing everything down here so that I myself can be reminded and clear view on the mess.

• My Linux mini is demanding an open-source contribution at the end of the semester on top of weekly homework and a software license analysis.
• The Human Computer Interaction project that I've been working on since Spring 2006 is coming to an end. I need to leave an impact on the web site and document on every little detail. In my point of view, the development have been very messy mainly because I'm using PHP which has a limit on the number of lines of code. In other words, it's not a good platform/language for a large web application project. I should have taught myself Java Servlets earlier on.
  
• Packing up. 4 years in the same room have helped accumulate a house of personal possessions most of which need to sold, discarded or be given away. For the rest, I'll throw them into boxes and figure out a way to ship them to New York.
• TWO Economics Projects. Professor have been delaying the progress of the class up to a point that we have 2 projects in a month. None of the instruction for the projects have been released yet.
  
• Finalize a place to stay for the next 1 year in New York.
• H-1B work visa blues. If I don't get it this year, there's a change I'll be spending 3 months in mid 2008 either working in an overseas office, taking an unpaid leave during that period or leave the country for good.
• Parents visit. I have not figure out a travel plan for them who have not visited this country before. Uncle Edmund and family from Houston might be coming for graduation. So is my dad's cousin from Maryland.

I must accommodate all above into my currently very dormant final-semester lifestyle of watching YouTube day and night.

Photos from Miami:
http://picasaweb.google.com/winstoncyl/2007031020070318SpringBreakMiami (most photos here)
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbasah/ (I was lazy to take photos)

Orange Juice

Yesterday, I had my first orange juice in one month. That glass reminds me of the 20-hour plane ride from Singapore to New York as well as other flights where the stewardess served me orange juice. I am not sure why the primary drinks they serve is orange juice but I took them out of dehydration anyway.

I have been working for a professor in the Human Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) and two graduate students on a event web site. Current worked after a major revision of the previous design by a new bunch of graduate students is at

http://maguro.hcii.cs.cmu.edu/whisper/test_site

It's still work under construction but organization between me and the other grad student are getting smoother. HCII here at CMU is a branch of Computer Science with more prettier girls than the core CS itself. Undergraduate majors who pursue this field also include people from psychology (probable hot psychiatrists).

If finance fails me in the next few years, I must jumped into a startup bandwagon. I already have friends with very great ideas, determination and attitude for such risky endeavors.

-Crispin