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I had an interview with EA today. It went pretty well; the only downside to me apparently was my GPA. If you plotted out my GPA on a graph over time it would look hilarious. At some points it doubles in value. At other points it drops a lot. It looks like a roller coaster, only one that was sheared by earthquakes and disfigured by civil war.
The main problem is that I have to get back to Hyland about a second internship by December, and EA won't have made a decision until February. Aghhh. I really love Hyland but I want to try out the game industry too.
INTERVIEW TIP: Figure out how to tie a tie before you get dressed an hour before the interview and realize you have no idea how to not accidentally hang yourself by a silk noose.
Oh hi. Winter is here! I mean, Winter is here :(
I normally like winter, but those instances usually come equipped with heat. Apparently we forgot to get our gas utility set up, so our apartment is running at a toasty 59F. Biking across campus to get to my morning (11:30) classes has never been less motivating. Getting up in the morning is the world's greatest injustice.
I'm improvising survival skills, so being a CSE major, I capitalized on the only plentiful source of heat: computers. I just got a new computer a month ago so my old one just sits in my room. I opened up the case and turned it on. I turned on Prime95, a stress tester pushes my computer to the limit, calculating big prime numbers. This equates to a hot computer, which is my primary heat source now. It's not doing so bad: by keeping my door closed, my room is a good deal warmer than the hallway. Between that, my new computer (which, unfortunately, runs pretty cool), and my laptop, I might be able to survive the winter.
Whew, this has been a tough week. I don't think I've ever had this much work to do in one week, especially this early in the quarter. I guess this means real life is approaching. I came back from an information session with Electronic Arts today. It'd be a dream come true if I manage to nab an internship with them. I felt pretty overwhelmed by their selectivity for internships, which was exacerbated by the attendance at the info session. There were about 200 more attendees than they expected. I hope now that I have actual industry work experience I can stand out a bit more.
Here's a tip for you freshmen: some of your early classes matter a lot! If you are in FEH and are doing one of the big engineering projects on your third quarter, make sure you do well. It's a good resume entry and it'll probably be one of the few relevant projects that you will have under your belt when you are looking for your first internship. Not looking for one? What? Why not? Your future depends on it, and it's easy. Just sign up for ECS.
So I was riding my bike to lunch today. My left pedal broke off last week (yay 2 week old Walmart bike). I was riding on a one-way street in the opposite direction of traffic, when suddenly my other pedal broke right off. I almost fell in front of a car, but I guess I lived. Horray.
The screws in the bike were completely stripped (or should I say, "screwed"?) so I couldn't put the pedal back in without forcing it in with a wrench. I was near Koffolt Labs, and I knew my friend Thomas would be there (he always is). I met up with him in the lab, and during the process of looking for a wrench, I mistakenly touched a big peice of aesbestos (yay chemical engineering labs). After washing my hands, I found a wrench and "fixed" my bike (read: shoved the pedal in irreparably).
So with that out of the way, I went to High Street to find food. I was planning on going to Buckeye Donuts, but as soon as I got there, the building caught on fire or something and a dozen firefighters rushed down High Street and went in. Okay, well, I can live with that. I went to Penn Station next door and got a sub, thankfully uneventfully.
I was almost back home, but when my apartment came into view instead I saw a utility truck repeatedly backing up and running into a dumpster at full speed. It did so until it pushed the dumpster across the alley.
If I don't lock myself in my room for the rest of tonight, I'll probably get mauled by a swarm of feral cats the moment I step outside.
Well, things are back to normal.
I am in a new apartment now, which is pretty nice. Well, it is nice now. When we moved in, it was a mess. There was dog crap and pee everywhere and the doors were broken. Apparently they forget we were moving in early and so didn't clean up.
But it's 2 weeks after that mess now, and things are pretty good. This new apartment actually has windows (and skylights!) and a gigantic porch, which is excellent. The only downside is that it's far down in south campus (all the engineering classes are up north), but I bought a cheap Walmart bike and it's not too far now. Choosing a cheap Walmart bike has it's downsides too. My left pedal broke off after about the 3rd day of use. Awesome. So now I'm just pedaling off of a bare rod of metal, that's sure to grind into my shoe in a few weeks.
I just built a new computer, after 6 years of using a bad one. That took about a week and a half to get working, because our internet exploded (yay Time Warner) and service calls took about half a week (and they didn't fix anything).
But here I am, and things are falling in place now. It's hard to accept that I'm a senior now. When I was a freshman, I gave meal swipes to all my senior friends. Now it is time to turn the tables. It's kind of funny how that works out. I was basically feeding my future self by swiping for seniors.
Always feed your off-campus friends, for you will be one of them much sooner than you'd think!
It's the end of an era. I just completed my most interesting summer yet. It was a summer of many firsts: I had my first internship, which was probably better and more fun than I could've expected. I got my driver's license, and finally figured out how to drive without leaving a wake of destruction and shattered bodies. I'm moving into a promising new apartment with some cool people, and I think I have my future somewhat figured out. However, I still have 1.31072 years left of college, because of miscellaneous oddities in the arcane practice of class scheduling.
I'm not too worried about getting terrible grades anymore because now I know I can get a good job regardless of my grades. I'm looking forward to this school year, and even looking forward to going to class! This enthusiasm usually doesn't last after the first week though.
Our apartment is still out of power (I'm still in Cincinnati though). I hope my roommates don't throw out my homemade barbecue sauce that I left up there.
I DID IT. I got third place in the barbecue competition somehow. There were about 15 people competing. It was really intimidating; I think was the only one under 30 there. Everyone had their fancy equipment; someone brought a stainless still carrying case with his own grilling utensils. They all knew what they were doing.
My ribs were so tender that every time I moved them on the grill they fell apart: bones fell right out of the meat and into the fire. It didn't help that my grill was uneven in heat. There were really hot areas and areas that weren't even warm. That meant I had to move my ribs around a lot, which is the last thing I wanted to do. It got so messy: there was meat everywhere, bones were all over the place, and burnt sauce covered every inch of the grill. I looked around and everyone had their beautiful ribs in one piece cleanly cooking.
My ribs ended up almost being pulled pork. I just put a bone on the plate and surrounded it with meat so that it looked like a rib. They were actually pretty good: they were waaaay too tender from my earlier preparation, so I tried hard to make the outside crispy. I brushed butter and sauce on it to get some caramelized sugar crispiness.
And then I got 3rd! I guess they were pretty good after all. I won $50, just enough to cover my time, labor, and money spent preparing them.
What crazy activities am I doing at work now? Well, I am barbecuing ribs for a barbecue competition tomorrow for work. We are provided with 5 slabs of ribs and we feed our coworkers (and judges!) The winner will get $200. I'm not sure why I signed up. I enjoy cooking but I have never really done serious barbecuing before.
I found a recipe for a nice marinade. It had a lot of acid (vinegar, lemon juice) and was therefore supposed to make it really tender. I figured, well, I'm going to marinate it for like 2 days and it's going to be really tender! But apparently there is such a thing as too tender. After I baked it a little bit, a light pass from my basting brush tears the bone right out of the meat. I can't pick up a slab without it falling apart. To top it all off, it tastes really sour.
I found this out today at 2am. The cookout is tomorrow at 4pm. I had to think of a way to fix this fast. I ran to Giant Eagle (closes at 2:30am!) and decided to sweeten things up. I replaced my other sauce with honey barbecue sauce. I am soaking it right now in melted brown sugar water. I guess I'll call it sweet and sour ribs? That wasn't my original intention. This is either going to be delicious or lethal.
I guess we'll see!
I came down from Cleveland to go home for the weekend, and I stopped by Columbus to pick up my football tickets. I'm in a bit of a dilemma. First, a confession: I have never been to an OSU football game. It's going to be my senior year next quarter, and I've only been in the Horseshoe once. These are the first set of tickets that I've purchased. I understand that this is a great sin, but that's why I've come here to confess.
Now everybody knows that tickets can be sold. For a lot of money. That was my original plan for getting these tickets, but I know I couldn't live with myself if I go through OSU without going to a single game. I've never been extremely into football, but going to a game is a unique experience that's hard to come by. The Michigan game will be very exciting as always, but: the tickets for that game can be sold for over $1000 apiece. That's a lot of money. I could buy like, 5050 and a half chicken nuggets from Wendy's. The ticket cost me $62 to get.
Now there are mindsets I can approach this with:
The first: I have the chance to easily get over $1000 without doing much work; am I going to pass up on this opportunity?
The second: I managed to get $1000 tickets for only $62. This is my chance to experience something awesome at a bargain price.
It's a tough choice, but I'm leaning towards the second. $1000 is a lot of money but I'm not in any financial crisis. I don't want to miss out on a great experience like a classic OSU vs Michigan game, but $1000 could give me a pretty good boost in some areas of my life.
Here are some photos from the previously mentioned event at my place of work, Hyland Software:
(Right Click->View Image for large pictures)
"Are you not entertained?!"
The gray platform was a bit wobbly.
Human bowling? YES.
Let me assure you that this is very safe. I mean, look. There's seatbelts and stuff.
There was only 1 strike in the 20 or so attempts. The first guy stuck out his feet and kicked down the remaining ones, although that didn't count, since that's incredibly dangerous (the ball with person inside weighed at least three hundred pounds).
These fearsome siege engines were actually more scary to the people launching them, as they would almost tear themselves apart under its own forces (that's like 25lbs of sand in that bucket), unleashing a torrent of duct tape and PVC shards.
We even got real metal medals! Our team (Peru) won second, only because our catapult fired backwards. Also, we won Best Buy gift cards.
Finally, an action shot! This is me defeating a fellow intern in an honorable duel.
Not shown in these pictures: water balloon toss (I won), electric car racing, beer, giant rib feast, Rock Band, Poker tournament, Lan party (I spawn killed our CTO a few times, I think I made him mad).
It was like a summer camp mixed with a carnival. But then you see 40 year old computer programmers hitting each other with giant sticks and you realize that software companies know how to have fun.
IN CONCLUSION: I am glad I went to the OSU Career Fair and nabbed this job!
Yesterday at work I played beer pong. Today I built a 10-foot tall catapult, jousted on a foam gladiator arena thing, had some alcoholic beverages, played some Rock Band, and played a Battlefield 2 LAN tournament. All of these events included cash prizes, of which a few I won. Also, we had a free catered rib dinner. Lastly, I am paid an hourly wage to participate in these activities.
I am Terence Lee and I work at Hyland Software. My internship ends in a month, and I am doing all that I can to stop time.
I have now organized my life. When you combine a hectic schedule with incurable laziness, you'd be as productive as someone trying to construct a witty analogy (and failing). The source of this motivation comes from an unlikely product: Microsoft Office 2007.
You might think it's just another Office suite, but 2007 is entirely different. It's shiny and has round buttons. This has a made a difference in my life (I'm not kidding). With a newfound curiosity for this program, I discovered OneNote and Outlook. OneNote has revolutionized my organizational abilities. It is a note-taking program, and I can organize my notes and materials very intuitively. I've always disliked Outlook, but I have discovered it's very excellent calendar system. I used to use Sunbird, which is probably a better program by itself, but Outlook is integrated with OneNote to provide fast task-setting abilities. I can jot down a note, stick it on my calendar and set an automated reminder alarm. Plus, it looks shiny (yes, this is legitimate motivation).
All this has unleashed the inner OCD within me. Amazing examples from my schedule: waking up before noon. Going to bed on the same day as when I woke up. Exercising. Updating this blog. Going to class. Going to class. It turns out that there's a lot of time in a day if you just plan things out (and go to bed when it's dark). I wonder how long this phase will last.
Finding a place to live for the next year is always an exciting hassle. It's annoying and time consuming, but it's ultimately fun because it's always cool finding the perfect place. I found a flat on south campus that I wish I found last year. My current apartment is okay, but it's kind of dark and dreary (not enough windows!), there's too much carpet on the bottom floor (it gives it an old and dirty kind of feel), and the bathrooms are tiny.
OSU has a good off-campus housing search engine. I found a lot of good places, but in the end I just took a walk around the campus and stopped by realty offices.
From one of those offices, I found a perfect place that's even less expensive than what I'm paying right now. It has skylights, a fireplace, cathedral ceilings, a giant porch, big kitchen with an island, big bathrooms (with a jacuzzi), and lots and lots of big windows.
I'm really excited about moving in, and it'll be exciting to come back to a home that's clean and brightly lit, and that I'll be proud to show my friends.
So I've been looking for a summer internship, and one company that really stood out was Hyland Software. I met a representative at OSU's Engineering Career Expo back in the autumn quarter. Anyways, they make an enterprise content management program called onBase. I took a programming test with them and they invited me to interview on site, in Westlake (near Cleveland).
You've probably heard about laid back software companies where employees have a lot of fun; it didn't occur to me that this was one of those places until I got there. They have slides to get down to the first floor! Like a big red spiral slide, and a fast metal one that goes into a conference room. They also have a barbershop, massage place, and diner inside the office.
The interview was pleasant; 2 days ago I heard back from them and they want me! I'm really excited because it's my first career-based job. I've always wanted to have a real job doing something I love doing; no more working at Steak n' Shake. Plus, it looks like such a fun place to work. I just have to fax some forms back now and get through the legal logistics.
I've heard about Black Friday. I have never participated in it, and neither has anyone from my family. It has such an ominous name; it sounds like what the anniversary of the Apocalypse would be called, if it fell on a Friday, and if all of existence was not subsequently quashed. However, this year I sort of needed a laptop, and Circuit City happened to have some really nice deals. They had a very decent one for $299, and a slightly better one for $399. I decided to go with my mom to nab one of these. I spent a good deal of time deciding which one I should get. The $299 one was sufficient for my needs, but for $100 more I could get better quality. I decided on the $399 one. What a joke. I actually thought I'd even get to see one of those.
Circuit City opened at 5am on that day and so we decided to get there at 4am. We thought we were going so early and thought ourselves as mavericks, rebelling against the societal expectation of being asleep at 4am. Oh, what rookies we were.
So we set up some coffee and cake, and went to bed. At 3:45 I awoke, and we grabbed the snack and left. We arrived at 4:15, expecting the line to begin forming. We were so sure we would be first. 45 minutes early? Crazy! Nope. As the store came into site we saw a hoard of people in a line, extending behind the store. Tents lined the store entrance, clamped tightly like barnacles on a bobbing hull. We could barely find a parking spot.
I followed the line, five times expecting it to end but seeing another hundred people around the corner. Finally we stood behind the store and waited. It began to snow. Fast forward 40 minutes. 200 or so people stood behind us, and finally the line started to move. When we finally got in, I ran to the computer section. It turned out they handed out vouchers for all of the cheap laptops to the first few people in line. There were 45 vouchers, 15 for each of the $299 ones, $399 ones, and a good $549 one I had overlooked. So only the first 20 people in line got them. We were about 500th in line. Everyone was crowded around the sales guy and no one knew what was going on. Somewhere along the way, my mom managed to sweet talk a guy into giving her his voucher for a $549 laptop. He had one for the $399 one, and didn't want the other. He wanted the $299 one but didn't manage to get a voucher. He waited in line since 9pm the night before, but still didn't get the $299 vouchers. I didn't know if I wanted it, but the more I looked at it the more I realized it was a really good deal. And there were only 15 of them, and the 50 people in line behind me in the computer sales line would kill me to get it.
So long story slightly-less-long, I walked out of the store with a new $549 laptop. It was an awesome deal and I'm amazed that I managed to get a voucher. The first few people in line were waiting since 5pm the night before. Only 45 out of the few thousand people there managed to get one, and somehow my mom did some crazy Asian magic and managed to nab one.
This is my first laptop, and I'm really excited. Now I have motivation to do stuff. Like study. I can... go outside. And be productive.
brb filling out a billion rebate forms.
Here are the specs if you're interested:
AMD Athlon Mobile 64 Dual Core 1.7ghz (512 cache)
2GB RAM
GeForce Go 6150
160 GB HD
15.4" Widescreen
Wireless card
Vista Home Premium
It looks nice and is shiny and is from HP
It also came with a free printer/scanner, wireless router, and Norton Internet Security
My brother invited me to eat an early Thanksgiving dinner at his house today. His roommates spent the entire day preparing the real thing: turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, candied yams, a ton of other side dishes, and a ton of homemade deserts. It was crazy. They invited a total of 30-35 people. It wasn't even physically possible to fit that many people in their house, but the event was so awesome that it didn't even care about physics. I guess in some alternate dimension, the floor collapsed and everyone died (and the meal was ruined!).
There was a lot of food. They made 3 turkeys. The first turkey fed everyone once, and the second one was for seconds. The third one wasn't even touched; I guess they'll have enough left overs to last a few weeks. There was enough pie to be its own irrational number, had each pastry represented a digit.
We watched Hot Fuzz. What a ridiculous movie. When an old lady gets jump-kicked in the face, you know some angel is up there nodding in approval, marking a tally on a celestial notepad. After the movie, the tryptophan kicked in and I groggily shambled home.
It was a great dinner, and it wasn't even the real Thanksgiving one. Things can only get better.
Regrettably I haven't written here recently, but I hope to do so more often now that my schedule is clearing up!
Yesterday I went to listen to Francis Collins speak. Mr. Collins is the head of the Human Genome Project, and he came to OSU (and COSI) to talk about faith and science. He is a Christian, and talked about how, as such an esteemed scientist, he was still able to find God without separating his scientific beliefs from his faith.
His discussion was very interesting because it presented a familiar question in an unfamiliar context: why do people resist looking at the facts? This question was interesting because it was asked at both people of faith and people who do not believe in a god. He challenged unbelievers in the audience by presenting some very compelling arguments for the existence of God. He asked why atheists form their beliefs without first examining the evidence. There were numerous arguments, all very interesting; you can find out where to read more about them at the end of this entry.
He also challenged some believers by explaining his view of theistic evolution, or as he calls it, BioLogos. This part made me ask myself: why are Christians, myself included, told to view evolution as such a heretical idea? The Bible never explicitly and exclusively supports the 'scientific' explanation presented by Creationism. And our view of it is not critical to what really matters: what becomes of us.
He told us about his talk with Richard Dawkins, the famous angry atheist, who afterwards admitted that it was possible that god could exist, but he would be so vast and incomprehensible for any of our limited human theology. Collins replied, "You got it! That's exactly what I'm talking about." He also showed us a video of his humorous interview by Stephen Colbert. "Are you going to be the only Christian in Hell?", Colbert sternly joked.
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It was cool to be able to see such esteemed people right here on campus. There are a lot of events like these and I hope to be able to take advantage of OSU's ability to get so many awesome people to talk at our university. If you want to read more about Collins idea of BioLogos, and his arguments for God, he wrote a best-selling book called The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.
This weekend I went whitewater rafting in West Virginia down the Gauley River. It was an awesome experience. I had taken 2 midterms and done 2 interviews that week and I needed a break. I joined the Ohio State Mountaineers; they had set up a trip to WV and gotten some pretty good discounts. The Gauley River is supposed to be one of the best rivers for whitewater rafting in the world. They have over 100 rapids and many class 5+ ones.
We had 10 people in our group total. Some of them went down on Friday, and the rest of us stayed here for the football game. We left right afterwards (ew, traffic). It was a 5 hour drive, and so we got there at 1:30 am. We set up a tent and slept for 4 hours (we had to wake up at 5:30!).
We stopped by a gas station to get breakfast. I bought some cereal, and realized I needed a bowl of some sort. So before we left I grabbed a pair of styrofoam cups from their coffee area. When I got in the car, a lady ran outside huffing and puffing, and yelled, "HEY, you can't take those cups without paying for them! That's 20 cents!" I didn't realize styrofoam cups were such a precious commodity in this state. I paid with a $20 bill.
The rafting was 26 miles long, and we had a lot of fun. We had an awesome guide, and a good team on our raft. I was the only one that fell out accidentally. :( The size of the rapids was ridiculous. You would be paddling water once second, and then you would be paddling air, because you would suddenly be 5 feet above the water. It was crazy. We also got to swim down some small ones and jump off a 20 foot ledge into the water.
It lasted about 8 hours, and then we drove 5 hours back. It was an exhausting weekend but the most fun one this year by far.
Well, it's that time of year again. Time to look for jobs. I've always wanted a summer internship but it's hard getting one your freshman or sophomore years. This year, as a junior, I've had more luck.
The Engineering Career Fair was pretty awesome, and it seemed like people actually listened to me now. My resume was beefed up and I signed up for the Engineering Career Services (ECS), something I should have done years ago.
I got a few interviews scheduled. Today I had an interview with Ford. I was really nervous at first, since I've never had one before and I'm not that good with people. But the people were friendly and I got comfortable fast. I think I did okay, so we'll see!
I couldn't have gotten it scheduled without signing up for ECS. You just go to one of their sessions and sign up at Hitchcock and pay them $25, and then you can make an account which lets you apply for a lot of companies really easily. Go to http://career.eng.ohio-state.edu/ for some more info.
Today, me and my 3 roommates cleaned up our apartment. It was a huge ordeal. We had already lived here for a year and never had an organized cleaning session or schedule.
It took us forever but it was worth it! Now I'm proud to have guests over. We also established a cleaning system:
Everyone switches off between 4 tasks each week. One person gets to do dishes, one person takes out the trash and cleans the kitchen, 1 person keeps the eating table area tidy, and one person keeps the living room area tidy. Also, the 2 bathrooms are cleaned by the 2 people who use it and switch off biweekly.
We even made a nice, easy to read chart. To enforce this, we decided to have a voting session on Saturday. If anyone's task was found unsatisfactory, then they would have to contribute $5 to the Food Fund jar. We give the jar's money to one of my roomate's girlfriend who uses it to cook food for us (which she loves doing).
Now the house isn't completely terrible! For those of you living off campus (or even in a dorm), make sure you set a cleaning arrangement with your roomies, because this is already so much better than last year, when the dishes piled up and junk mail was littered everywhere.
Autumn quarter is about to start!
For you incoming freshmen, here's some tips:
1) Get your workbooks early (or really late). Cop-EZ/Uniprint/whatever-they-call-it-now has really long lines the first week or so. Go there when it opens, or you'll have to prepare to wait for a while. What I do is wait till like 3 weeks into the quarter, and then get my books, since no one is there anymore. I realize this is a poor academic choice, but academics never stopped procrastination.
2) Look up food locations before classes start. Don't go from class to class and then suddenly realize you have an hour for lunch, and you don't know where to go. Bring a map with you and circle the campus eating spots. I'd recommend Marketplace, as it has the best food, but early in the quarter, especially Autumn quarter, there's a ton of people there. Give it a few weeks or else you'll be waiting for a long time. Mirror Lake Cafe is a little busy early in the quarter too, but it moves decently fast. Stick with the Commons for now. They're not as tasty, but they get the job done quick.
3) GET A REALLY GOOD LOCK FOR YOUR BIKE. Only get U-shaped locks. If you don't, I guarantee your bike will be stolen. I guarantee it. My shiny new $200 bike got stolen in the 9 days I was here as a freshman. I know people who had their bikes stolen during orientation. On some dorm buildings, if you look on the ledge thing above the main doorway, you'll see a pile of cut locks. People just go to the bike area at night, cut a lock, toss it up there on the doorway, and ride away.
Oh and study. I hear it's a good thing to do. Maybe one day I will try it myself.
Yesterday my family and I were ready to try a new experience. Because of a convenient coupon that promised a free entree, my family decided to eat dinner at P.F. Chang's. Being Asian, we were excited to see what a fancy Asian-themed American bistro had to offer.
The environment was nice, and the place was crowded; there seemed to be a lot of people enjoying the experience. However, one subtle detail escaped our attention: there were no other Asian people eating here. We would unfortunately notice this red flag only afterwards.
We ordered the following: New York Strip steak (coupon'd!), Chinese chive pancake things, chicken pan fried noodles, chicken lettuce wraps, and some other dish. The steak was all cut up and presented nicely. It was also delicious (although not very Asian). The lettuce wraps were pretty good, but thats where things stopped.
The chefs must have gotten my order mixed up with some restaurant next door. I ordered Chinese chive pancake things. They gave me a quesadilla. My mom makes awesome Chinese chive pancake things. It's like a crispy, thin doughy thing with a lot of green chives in it and then cooked in a skillet with a bit of oil. But what I got was a tortilla with a ton of SHARP CHEDDAR CHEESE and chicken in it. I checked the menu and the description unfortunately matched what I ordered. I should have read it more carefully before I ordered. When was the last time you had cheese in your Chinese food? Let alone sharp cheddar?
The pan fried noodles had a ridiculous amount of sauce on it. It was some noodles with some vegetables and chicken, but then Katrina'd by eleventy bushels of too salty brown sauce. There was nothing to taste but the sauce. The noodles were soggy instantly. The other dish we got was also wayyy too salty.
My mom said it was the worst Chinese food she has ever had. I would say it ranks pretty low for me too. It's fine for the typical Americanized Chinese restaurant, but this was a fancy restaurant. My quesadilla was tiny but was $7! Everyone else seemed to enjoy it though. But these people were all non-Asian.
I have decided that Chinese food and Americanized Chinese food are very distinct genres. While both are tasty, you cannot compare Americanized Chinese food to normal Chinese food. I know that most Americans have never had real Chinese food, and they are thus missing out on a great culinary experience. It is unimaginably better than the Americanized kind. Americanized is way too salty. Real Chinese food uses MSG instead. Say what you want about MSG, but it's basically the chemical form of deliciousness.
Umpfh, I'm so hungry now.
Oops, I haven't posted here in a while. I lost track of a lot of things after summer started, and it's already halfway gone. Things have been hectic, but not as productive as I'd hoped. Between classes, research, and working on my own personal projects, I can feel the cold, bony fingers of Time Management pry from my hands an ample fine.
Had I robotic concentration I could accomplish enough to make myself proud, but instead of robotic concentration I have shiny things and jingly toys known as the Internet. It's hard to concentrate when there's always something much more fun to do. I think I have ADD but that would just be a bad excuse to be lazy and unfocused. My goal is to accomplish the remaining 90% of work I had planned to do in the 50% time remaining for this summer.
Now I'm off to go canoing down the Mad River over this weekend. A bad start to productivity, or a fun finish to laziness?
My room is so clean! I'm back at OSU to take some summer classes. My apartment was getting pretty bad so I spent all of yesterday cleaning my room and parts of the bathroom and kitchen.
The vacuum cleaner was terrible though. I tried to clean it out, and found that it had an infinite amount of dust on the filter. The dust was so fine and plentiful that it was almost the consistency of a liquid. The vacuum also sounded like an industrial accident was imminent. Smoke billowed (dust), alarms flashed (the strange lighting on the vacuum flickered constantly), and sirens wailed (it made a high pitched screech at about 900 dB for the whole time).
But I figured it out and things are looking good. There are no clothes on the ground, things are hanging nicely on the wall, and my bookshelves are neatly arranged. I'd give it about 2 weeks before the Second Law of Thermodynamics wreaks its chaotic wrath.
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