http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/ en Copyright 2008 Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:01:50 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 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. http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/11/oh_hi.html http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/11/oh_hi.html Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:01:50 -0500 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. http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/10/oh_hi_winter_is_here.html http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/10/oh_hi_winter_is_here.html Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:21:06 -0500 ECS.]]> http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/10/actual_work.html http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/10/actual_work.html Fri, 17 Oct 2008 03:43:48 -0500 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. http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/10/wat.html http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/10/wat.html Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:30:10 -0500 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! http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/10/back_to_school.html http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/10/back_to_school.html Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:53:43 -0500 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. http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/09/its_the_end_of_an.html http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/09/its_the_end_of_an.html Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:47:52 -0500 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. http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/08/yes.html http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/08/yes.html Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:57:23 -0500 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! http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/08/omgwtfbbq.html http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/08/omgwtfbbq.html Fri, 22 Aug 2008 04:29:50 -0500 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. http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/08/a_choice.html http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/08/a_choice.html Sat, 16 Aug 2008 01:02:00 -0500 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!]]> http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/08/photos.html http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/08/photos.html Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:25:10 -0500 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. http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/08/im_a_professional_now.html http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/08/im_a_professional_now.html Sat, 09 Aug 2008 02:59:04 -0500 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.]]> http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/03/order.html http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/03/order.html Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:39:04 -0500 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.]]> http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/01/new_apartment.html http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/01/new_apartment.html Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:01:49 -0500 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. http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/01/internship.html http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2008/01/internship.html Sat, 19 Jan 2008 02:29:01 -0500 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 http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2007/11/black_friday.html http://blogs.targetx.com/osu/Terence/2007/11/black_friday.html Sun, 25 Nov 2007 01:48:15 -0500