Nothing on my end. I noticed I haven’t posted since June of ‘07. A fairly ancient amount of time in blog standard I bet.
I’ve been busy with school and work and other fun life stuff. But as a student and professional to go along with it, I have made great strides in trying to achieve my goal which was to be a better programmer and be a better professional at work.
With those in mind, it is safe to say that I’m past the noob status in developing software and I’ve taken the task and responsibility to train the hell out of all my co-workers at work.
I guess some of the things I’m posting now does not make sense since I have had no back drop of my story. I hope to give one soon. It’s time to head to that database class. As terse and dry as the topic is, I’m excited to learn all these new ways to create and query a database. In just one chapter, I have eclipsed almost everyone at work. Odd… Now it’s time to take on the task to clean up all the mess.
First of all, Happy Father’s Day to all the dad’s around the world! Well… first of all, I had a busy first quarter of the year with school and all. I’m kind of disappointed I didn’t get an A. I got B out of it, but I blame my lackadaisical attitude at the end of year. Some how, getting sick around the time finals unmotivated me. I was averaging A’s with all of my programs, aced the midterm, and the homework and quizzes were a B at least.
I guess that bombing that final that was worth 32% of the grade dropped my grade.
I haven’t really given a background of myself. I am an Electrical Engineer graduate (2001) from U of I at Chicago. I am going back for a second bachelor’s because that first degree hasn’t landed me a job that went along with it. I’ll keep my current job anonymous, but I’ll say that it’s not close to what I know. I decided to go back for a second bachelor’s as a way to change my career. I’m crossing my fingers that I can fuse the two bachelors together with an ideal job. But who’s fooling who, right? Getting that ideal job you just have to have some luck. I’ve learned to just persevere and not give up. I’ve been doing it all my life, why stop now?
Anyway, I am back for my second bachelor’s in Computer Science. So far, the challenges does not seem as difficult as my time in Electrical Engineering. I think this time around, I have more focus than before. Also, the math is a bit more simple this time around. I am not even worried about programming. I just want to know more about the poetry of algorithms and getting that mind set.
Ok, enough of my background. I’ve been out of the UNIX world as well. I’ve been dabbing with C# and ASP.Net. I figure I learn the up and coming language now before I graduate in a couple of years. My next step is to solidify my knowledge in C++. I still feel I’m a beginner in that language, but my goal is to get to that intermediate stage by the end of the summer.
The best about this whole journey so far is that I’m having fun. I can’t ask for anything better than this. This will be my salvation to get out of the hole that I’m at. I guess in the meantime… I’ll keep myself and whomever else is paying attention up to date with my progress.
The presentation was about the Game A.I. for the two games that have developed for the new consoles (minus the Wii), Def Jam: Icon and Fight Night 3. Unfortunately, I was not writing notes, but I’ll work with my memory as best as I can. I basically attended to see what the industry was like. I am currently a Computer Science student trying to find which direction into the software industry I shall pursue.
The presentation, given by Tony Zale of EA, was mostly about the process behind the interaction of the user and the in game computer or drone. He gave the basics of the layout of processes that goes into what a programming developer needs to consider to put things together. But the primary focus, of course, was about the A.I.
They do most of their development, if not all, on PC’s using the Windows OS, and, as you would expect, a very high end PC with all the bells and whistles. A lot of the testing is not done with a console emualtor but on the actual physical consoles. I really thought that was a nice thing about the job, seeing the console before it even hits the market… I do wonder though how much of seeing they did during the production of the games. They said they worked on those games for a year and a half and the PS3 and XBox360 were released at the time of making. I just wonder what types of testing they had to do to make sure it was running correctly. I should’ve asked, but that question just came to mind. The programming environment was written in C++ and if I heard correctly they were using Visual Studio. So for you inspiring game programmers, that’s one of the key notes I tried to distinctly remember.
To finish this off, the other facets of what EA was looking for in terms of what their job candidates is that one must know C++ and Object Oriented Design. A lot of math, but he emphasized more on trigonometry, vectors, and physics (more mechanical physics).
The highlight reel Tyrus Thomas was ridiculously peppy this evening. Scoring a team high 23 pts, he was energizing the crowd with his spectacular dunks. I was very excited when the Bulls drafted him the 4th overall pick of the 2006 draft, and I am STILL excited that he’s been getting more minutes.
This was the 8th straight win for the Bulls against the Celtics. Their last lost to the Celtics was around June, 2005.
Now to a bogus story during the game. Well, not exactly the game itself, but the crowd in attendance near our seats, rather, sitting on our seats prior to the game. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind rowdy people cheering for the team, but screaming school pride that had nothing to do with the game is just rudely annoying. To make it worse, one of the fellas begins to throw a tirade over been asked to move his arm in front of my buddy because he was blocking his view of the game. He just starts bitching throughout the whole game and mocking our “cheap” season ticket seats. Mind you they are, but who gives a crap? He even proceeds to call I believe his peers, nice ladies, “whores” because they were talking to my buddy. Very classy. But no big deal, we had fun anyway. Go BULLS!
April 23rd for Heroes and April 5 for The Office to be exact. I hate this time of year, if it wasn’t bad enough to have a long winter break of these shows, now they clip the extra time I’ll have available when spring break arrives during the last week of this month.
If you have not seen the Heroes episode #18, Parasite, they leave you with a cliffhanger and I just don’t know what to do with myself now. Probably read, “No! Not that!”. I have a lot of programming books to read, I guess this is just good timing, NOT. Here’s to finding something constructive to do.
My current favorite shows:
24
Heroes
BattleStar Galactica
The Office
Scrubs
To be quite honest, I never had this much favorite shows at one time for a loooooong time. We are talking about when Seinfeld used to air new shows. I just watched a recorded copy of 24 and Heroes from Monday, March 6, ‘07. WOW is all I have to say. It just keeps getting better. I just hope they don’t end these shows abruptly. Here’s to looking forward next week’s shows.
I have to credit one of my co-workers (JD) on this concoction. We have a hot chocolate and french vanilla dispenser at work and he came up with a nice mix of both that keeps me awake for the graveyard shift.
Anyway, here’s my home mix of the combination. I bought a box of hot chocolate packets (Swiss, Nestle, etc, choice is yours) and Krafts General Foods International French Vanilla Cafe (as pictured above).
1. Boil water
2. Place hot cocoa packet in mug
3. Table spoonful of the French Vanilla Cafe
4. Pour in the hot water 3/4 up.
5. Fill the rest with milk (I use skim, you can substitute to whatever you like)
6. Stir and enjoy.
I want to note that I’m not really big in drinking coffee. And what I mean about that is that I’m not a coffee junkie. I don’t drink a cup let alone two or three everyday. I probably can say that if I drink a cup of coffee once a day every week is a stretch. I probably drink once or twice a week. Ever since my first stint at college studying for a Psychology exam, I drank too much coffee at one time and the reaction was something I never went through before. Besides, caffeine has a weird affect on me. It makes me more drowsy. That’s why when I tried Red Bull, Monster, etc, it did not do anything for me other than numb my tongue. Like I usually say, “Oh well…”
The turnout was terrible! I am pretty sure there are not just a million people in the city of Chicago, but a couple million more. I saw the tally of the votes counted for the incumbent mayor Daley and the opposing candidates. Pretty pathetic.
As an immigrant and now citizen that came to the US over 20 years ago, I find this pretty pathetic. This is pathetic because of the history I learned from school about the lives lost and sacrificed for the right to vote. We take too many things here for granted, yours truly as well.
… for my ward here in the city of Chicago. I wish I had more time to research the candidates, but then again, I wish I managed my time trying to research the candidates. I spent majority of the time looking over the primary candidates for my ward’s websites. The only problem is that 3/4 of them seemed like your regular sleeze balls. And the one that wasn’t, well, I didn’t agree about how he modularized his plans. I could not agree with his solutions. It was as if it wasn’t fully thought out. Maybe if he keeps trying and works on delivery and handling of the wards issues, he may have a chance next time.
In the meantime, I chose the one person that may care about this area and puts the best interest for the neighborhood. I hopefully made the right decision and only time will tell. But the main point is that I went out and voted. I think everyong in this country should make it their duty to do so and be ready when ‘08 comes. Let’s not make the same mistake twice.
