the cereal king

It’s been a long time since I last posted; the last part of term was an absolute beast. Far too many design projects, not enough time. Anyways, it’s over, and I’m in India for family-related stuff during finals week. But that’s for another post…

I bought myself a couple of goodies in the weeks before I left. Getting (essentially) a new computer convinced me that I should probably also invest in a new LCD monitor, partly so I wouldn’t have to haul the old CRT to the new apartment. Like Riad, I went and got myself a new widescreen Dell LCD, but “only” a 20-inch 1680×1050 2007WFP, unlike Riad’s 24-inch beast. I managed to get a pretty damn good deal on it courtesy of the FatWallet forums, and it looks absolutely gorgeous with anything I throw at it. I haven’t really noticed any issues with it while gaming, even with a game like Counter-Strike: Source. It’s also nice to have a widescreen monitor as more and more games now support widescreen resolutions.

In something of an impulse buy, I got myself an XBox 360 on the last day of term. The whole gang had watched the E3 press conferences the previous week, and based on what was revealed at the show, it seemed like the two consoles worth purchasing in the near future would be the XBox 360 (Gears of War!) and the Wii. Sony didn’t do itself any favors with its ridiculous launch price and lack of appealing games for the American market, regardless of the fact that it might easily have the most powerful console hardware. Anyways, Electronics Boutique just happened to have some XBox 360’s in stock when Julian, Yoder, and I visited, and I decided to purchase one along with a copy of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. After getting bilked on an extra wireless controller and controller battery packs, we headed home and proceeded to play a ridiculous amount of six-player Halo 2 using the “broken” main lounge TV and “system link” with Julian’s XBox. GRAW has a ridiculously addictive single-player mode as well, and while the cooperative mode leaves several features to be desired, it’s still incredibly fun. Especially with XBox Live.

Speaking of which, does anybody else have a “gamertag” on XBox Live? My friends list looks kind of lonely.

Anyways, I should post before the power goes out here again. That would make for the fifth blackout in the past two hours. More updates later.

I was browsing LucasArts’ store because I was bored, and found this. Too bad it’s so expensive…

Check out the Yoda baseball jersey while you’re at it…

Haven’t managed to post since I got back from spring break. There isn’t much new to talk about. Classes haven’t been terribly fun recently. 6.331 (crazy circuit design class) keeps piling on assignments, while 6.334 (power electronics) is just plain boring. Combine that with a complete lack of motivation to do work, and stuff isn’t all that pleasant…

My desktop managed to break last night. Blame the capacitor plague. I was planning on upgrading it in the near future, but those plans have been suddenly accelerated. Not having built a new computer in years means that I’ve had to spend far too much time performing research and learning about the latest and greatest in computer components. Thankfully, Muth has a motherboard that seems to be perfect for me, and although he had problems with it under Linux, hopefully with a little bit of hackery I can get it up and running. The video card, power supply, RAM, and processor are costing far too much money though…

Doing all this research has confirmed one thing for me: how woefully inadequate most computer hardware review sites out there are right now. I couldn’t find a single one with a comprehensive guide with comparisons of the various components (motherboard chipsets, video card chipsets, processors, etc.) available on the market right now. Instead, what generally tends to be available is a collection of reviews for individual products or series of chipsets. The comparisons for each of these reviews tend to be against a small, seemingly arbitrary subset of components from the current and previous generations. Review methodology also tends to be scattered. For example, video card reviews tend to just spit out average frame-rates at various resolutions and settings instead of something more useful, like a comparison of maximum playable resolutions with various quality settings. Some sites seem to be getting better at these types of comparisons, but most of them have the same old crap. And none of them have any sort of information about stability with various combinations of components. Anyways, the end result of this problem is either spending far too much time researching and compiling information, or just asking people for their opinions. Which also tends to degenerate into something along the lines of, “[ATI, nVidia, AMD, Intel, VIA, SiS, Asus] [cards, processors, chipsets, motherboards] are always [broken, slow, unstable, unsupported]!” Not terribly helpful.

I suppose not everything’s been bad. I managed to turn 21 last week, but even that had its interesting experience due to my stupidity. Oh well, it’s over now. With Sam (the female one) and Michelle also turning 21 in the past week, we headed up to Piccola Venezia on Friday night, and then went to Redline (which had lots of bhangra). Good times.

And on a completely unrelated note, I just had an extremely sketchy encounter with a “lock-out” as nightwatch. This place just gets weirder and weirder…

Somehow forgot to write about this last week after I got in. As I was flying out last Saturday, I realized that whoever runs Logan’s wireless network had managed to remove the page that previously allowed you to get free wireless access. Since Massport is deadset against allowing airlines to provide free wireless access, we’ll just have to figure out another way, now won’t we?

Had a blast today (yesterday now, I suppose) hanging out with May, Sherv, Woz, and Riad. The crew, sans Riad, picked me up at my place in the early afternoon, and after a bit of uncertainty, we headed off to a party hosted by a couple of Phi Sig alums in Mountain View, where we met up with good old Repak. Deep frying was apparently the central theme of this party, as we prepared and consumed everything from deep-fried turkey to deep-fried twinkies (incredibly tasty). Riad and I managed to school Sherv and Woz in Beirut (with an incredible last-second double shot). Because of a ridiculous slot-machine party game/exhibition, I had to perform a kegstand (I guess my performance was mediocre, but nobody in the damn audience actually counted). The entire party was full of MIT people, which made for an experience of its own (where else would you find a rigorous discussion of probability?). Good old-fashioned fun while meeting a bunch of new people.

After hanging out at May’s apartment for a bit, I got a ride back home, while everybody else headed up to Sherv’s place for some hijinks. Hopefully we’ll all be able to hit up San Francisco tomorrow. Especially now that the Hippo’s back in town…

We got back from our journey up north late on Friday night. Despite the somewhat harried, last-minute nature of the trip, it wound up being incredible. In the span of four days, we managed to go through Portland, Victoria, Vancouver (briefly), and Seattle, along with many of the surrounding areas. Victoria, where we spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday, was easily the best part of the trip. Located on Vancouver Island just off the coast from the rest of British Columbia, it’s only accessible by ferry from northwestern Washington or Vancouver. Getting off the ferry in Victoria felt like stepping into another world: the city is incredibly proud of its British heritage, and it’s reflected in the strong “old world” atmosphere. We spent most of our time in Victoria just walking around the city and taking it all in, sort of like we did in Avalon (on Catalina Island) last year. An incredibly refreshing experience overall.

While on Vancouver Island, we also managed to go to the Butchart Gardens, which are located just north of Victoria. This gave me my first real opportunity to play around with macro photography, and the results were surprisingly good. My general-purpose zoom lens made focusing a bit of a pain, so I may have to invest in an actual macro lens for my Digital Rebel when I get a little bit more money. Still, it was amazingly easy to get good photographs (I suppose that’s generally the case with flowers). I’ll try to put the photos up some time soon.

With the amount of time we spent in Victoria, we sort of had to breeze through Vancouver and Seattle, but we did manage to spend some more time exploring Portland while winding our way back home. Heading through the Cascades on the way back provided for another incredible experience. I had planned on taking some pictures of Mount Shasta, but my plans were thwarted by the massive snowstorm (yes, it does snow in California) that managed to move in just as we were passing through. The blizzard conditions made driving tricky, but combined with the surrounding forest and mountains, it made for some incredible sights. Yet another reason to move up there…

Family didn’t wind up going on the cruise. Long story, which involves multiple crazy relatives. Ask me about it some time in person. Anyways, my parents, my brother, and I are driving up to Vancouver instead while checking out the greater Pacific Northwest. It’s about a 1000 mile trek each way. Managed to log 750 miles today and get to Portland, where we’re crashing tonight. Also managed to get some crappy wireless internet access at the hotel we’re staying at, and I figured I might as well post.

Easily the best part of today’s journey was the drive through the Cascades. The entire area is densely wooded forest sitting on top of some incredibly tall mountains. The tallest peaks were completely covered in snow, and watching Mount Shasta (14,000+ feet tall) suddenly rise out of the clouds as we turned a corner was breathtaking. I didn’t manage to get any pictures, but hopefully I can get some on the way back. You people back east who’ve never seen real mountains are missing out. Anyways, when I retire, I’m making it a point to move up to the good old State of Jefferson. (Petarman, you with me?)

The title of the post comes from the fact that I kept seeing signs for “The Dalles” as we got closer to Portland. The hardcore Oregon Trail fans will understand…

It’s good. Just a few thoughts:

• The beginning and ending credits are set to a Bollywood song. Granted, it’s fairly catchy. But still, what the hell?
• One of the characters in the movie shares the same first name as my brother. Probably the first and only time that will ever happen in a Hollywood movie. It was almost as funny as the continuous references to “Gotham” being destroyed in Batman Begins.
• The trailers make this movie seem like a super-serious thriller. At least for the first 1.5 hours, it’s not. It’s a typical Spike Lee “joint”, with incredibly absurd humor interspersed with plot development. Make sure you catch the ridiculous PSP game. Too bad they don’t actually sell it…
• Why isn’t Clive Owen the next James Bond? If it’s true that he turned down the role, then it’s a damn shame.
• I don’t think I realized just how good a director Spike Lee is until I saw this movie. The way he exposes the whole heist is spot-on, and he manages to maintain suspense all the way to the end of the movie. It does lose a bit of steam towards the end, but not much.

Yeah, go watch it.

…announcements for employees on the airport loudspeaker are in Spanish. And only in Spanish.

Yeah, I’m back at home in Cupertino, a day later than I would have liked. Not much exciting on the flight over, although flying JetBlue for the first time was pleasant. Especially with the unlimited snacks. Didn’t really do much other than watch Batman Begins on my laptop.

Am I the only person who always runs into someone they know when they fly back home? This time, I sat next to someone who went to my high school and who’s now a freshman at Harvard. Fun times talking about good old Monta Vista High. This marks the third or fourth straight flight home where I’ve run into someone like this.

Off to Vancouver on Monday. Really should work on a severely overdue 6.331 design project before then though. I also have some other interesting stuff that I wanted to post soon, if I can get around to it. Off to see Inside Man now. Can’t wait ’til everybody and their mom shows up in the Bay Area next weekend. It’ll be a real party, biatches…

6.334 had a test yesterday. There was no time limit and the professor interrupted the test after an hour for an ice cream break. Two of the three problems were either out of the textbook or from the review packet. Ridiculous.

Yes, you, intrepid reader, should care…