Welcome to my World, where money is the minute hand beating away indefinitely, police shoot the ignorant, and the ultimate sin is underachieving.

• 27Sep 06

  Been busy

  Been busy.
  
  Going through Conroe motherboards. We'll see when the dust settles. Currently on the 300$ P5W64WS Pro board... it should kick ass.
  
  Busy with school. More calculus (so boring), and Computer Engineering. I like CE, but it really makes me think. We're studying logic gates and arranging them in order to make logic circuits, it's hard. Busy with weightlifting in the mornings. I keep losing weight... i'm down to 206. Slowly getting stronger... i pulled off a benchpress at 260 lbs the other day, made me happy. Not nearly enough though. I won't be posting as much anyway.
  • Posted Sep 27, 2006 4:05 pm PT
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• 17Apr 06

  This is Interesting

  My last journal entry is some of my best from my elitist prime. 
  
  Funny how now it's been about 1 year.  I'm not a senior in high school now, i'm a freshmen in college.  And my opinions have all changed. 
  
  At college there really aren't too many stupid, dangerous people.  Even the drug users are some of the smartest.  A lot of my previous opinions were fairly unfounded.  But my viewpoints have changed.  I certainly don't hate the drug users anymore.  In a society like we have, marijuana should be the least of our worries.  Legalize it, take the power from the criminals, and put a fat tax on it, get some money going back into the system rather than through a chain of criminal hands that leads back to south america or somethin. 
  
  Alcohol, i really can't make a huge argument about because it's been with humans for thousands of years.  Use it, but don't abuse it.  It shouldn't be about "getting drunk," it should be able spending quality time with your friends and new friends, and if some alchol gets your buddied talking more and creates a more fun atmosphere, then power to you.  So long as it's not the center of the party right. 
  
  Now more about what i wrote earlier.  I'm still kinda elitist, i don't mourn the passing of everybody, and i strongly believe in natural selection and weeding out the weak.  But i don't put so much stock in academics anymore.  So what if people don't do well at it... eventually most people fall into place and find something to do.  School just isn't structured to work well for everyone.  I'm really, especially disappointed with the academics of college life.  I have found UC Berkeley to be a computer hardware wasteland, where i'm pretty much an outcast.  Hell, i was anticipating making an overclocking club, i can only find about 3 people out of SO many people i've talked to who understand what i'm talking about. 
  
  I placed so much stock in high school.  For years i told myself i was right.  Do well in high school, go to a good college, do nothing but work, and then get a good job.  Only, it isn't so simple.  I worked my ass off in high school, and my "reward" was to come here, to UC Berkeley, with one of the top ranked Computer Engineering programs in the world.  But what have i found out... no one here has a passion for computer hardware, i have found no "hands on," stuff.  It seems that everything here is reduced to cryptic theoretical stuff... needless to say, not what i was expecting!  I had told myself for years to put up with the BS of high school, and i'd get set free in college to a place where everyone understood me, where i could make an OC club, borrow dry ice from the Chemistry department and conduct experiments, learn soldering and create boards.  O
  
  Oh i dreamed of so much, but hell no, nothing has come to pass.  The other people in my major are in it for the money.  They are pretty much:  "I'm smart so i'm taking this stuff so i can get a good job and get rich.  I don't care so much about the stuff, i just took the hardest, highest paying major possible because i'm the smartest guy from my town."  lol... not quite what i wanted!  All the guys are into software too.  And i hate software, hate it with a passion.  I just wanted a straight up Electrical Engineering major... EECS at UC Berkeley is Electrical Engineering and Computer Science stuck into a super major.  When i first told people i was in EECS, they told me i was crazy.  I thought they were dumb - surely i was smart enough to handle it.  Nope...
  
  My college grades have sucked, i have to admit.  I have pretty much stopped trying.  Everything i have come to believe in popped like a big balloon.  College wasn't an agency of open thought, it's a conveyor belt where you get rushed through theoretical classes that attempt to teach you how to think, and only teach you one way, and that way is long, arduous, and has more Greek symbols than i'd care to know. 
  
  Needless to say, my whole philosophies on life have changed.  No more is it about trying 100% in high school and working through college to become an automatron.  It's about finding something you  like, a real passion, and following it and only it.  I have been so pissed off because i know exactly what i want to do with my life, and it seems like this college isn't getting me any closer to it... everything we've done so far is highly hands off, theoretical BS.  In Calculus II they had the guts to tell us that "The only reason you're learning this math is so that you understand how a calculator works."  Oh well i feel just great knowing that some great mathematicians labored away inventing calculators so that i WOULDN'T have to do this crap, and here i am doing it anyway because these old guys think it'll build character or something.
  
  Truth is i know just what i want to do.  I guess this school was a bad choice for me, but i think college doesn't fit many people either.  I know one of my friends at my college was going to go into Mechanical Engineering - that was his passion!  He decided not to though, because it was too hard.  Can you believe this, the system is so hard that it's keeping people away from their goals.  I can't agree with that at all. 
  
  I have to admit, at Berkeley, the teachers aren't great... the teaching system isn't great.  In fact i haven't learned much... and i can't say the teachers are on a much higher level than high school teachers.  In fact, my high school Calc teacher kicks the crap out of all the teachers here.  He spoke in UN-ACCENTED english, in a way i could easily grasp and understand.  Only now do i miss him, only now do i miss high school.  HS wasn't so full of crap, the teachers weren't so bad, they were all nice, chill people.  College teachers are just geniuses in their tiny little respective fields, all with big accents, these guys are basically imported straight out of Eastern Europe to teach here.  And the Graduate Student Instructors (TAs) are graduate students - they have their own crap to do!  I have had GSIs that didn't care one bit about the students . 
  
  So, i'm very disilluioned.  My last blog has me putting all my stock in academics and a hard work mentality.  Look where it has gotten me, into a crappy institution that's all about theory.  Now, i am tired of it.  I didn't realize colleges were so fulla crap.  They don't really teach any better than high school, they just make stuff harder.  Take Physics and Calculus for instance.  In high school it was explained well to me, i understood all of it, i got nothing but As.  Here... the work isn't even that much harder.  It's barely more difficult.  Yet, it isn't explaiend at all.  My professors go on long chalk-scrawling rants deriving equations and putting them together.  Seeing the evolution of an equation is interesting (not) but doesn't help me do the homework at all.  I've really struggled with the homework and tests - this stuff just doesn't sink into my head.  I hear a teacher rambling with some thick Eastern European accent, they write pretty fast.  And get this, when they write something they stand in front of it while they explain it, and then move off to the side and start writing more very fast.  So i have to figure out what the previous thing was when they explain the new thing.  See what i mean?  They can't take a second to slow down... they don't do easy example problems.  Everything is like "You guys made it to Berkeley, you're smart, figure it out."  I'm like.... i am not paying 24,000 dollars a year for this!  WTF mate...
  
  So now, ive got a different approach to life.  Enjoy yourself in high school,  do lots of cool and interesting things, figure out what you like.  Go to a community college and get a keener sense for that passion of yours.  Work your way up once you know what you want, and you're good at it.  With the money saved by going to a community college, you should ultimately tend to do graduate school, and really specialize, once you know what you want and you're past all the (EXCEEDINGLY PAINFUL) undergraduate BS.    Guys that are 14-17, take it slow, figure it out, and with colleges work your way up.  The whole American mentality of setting straight off to College with no idea of what you want is so flawed, and that's why people end up coming out of college jobless because they can't find a job they want.  You have to do a job you enjoy to succeed.  If you are in a field of work because it pays well, or because it was the easy thing to do, you probably won't enjoy it! 
  
  So that's what i had to say.  I don't mind partying now, whereas before i would /slay the "hedonistic" people.  Can't believe i used that word.  Life is too short to worry about crap.  Too short to spend time in college doing BS classes like me.  I'd rather be outside doing stuff than locked away in this tiny dorm room i share with 2 people. 
  
  I plan on transferring to another UC (University of California) where i can do a straight up EE major.  It shoudl be much easier than at this school, and more hands on.  I want to get a Bachelors in EE, and with money saved from NOT going to UCB, afford graduate training in Thermal Engineering or something.  Ultimately, it would please me if i could design computer cooling solutions.  I dont know if that would work out in the end, but anything in that direction would make me a happy man. 
  
  Hope some readers learn from my mistakes. 
  
  
  • Posted Apr 17, 2006 11:01 pm PT
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• 11Feb 05

  Having a Relatively Good Week

  Refer to my "What a good day thread." It's been good. Went to Pebble Beach, probably one of the nicest places around, to watch the Pro-Am. I am a minor connoisseur of houses i think, i was eyeing the mansions. Some of them must be worth around 15 million. At least that big one i got a shot of was.
  
  What else happened, got the highest grade on the last Calculus test out of over 60 students.
  
  And I got my brother's PC working. Working quite well too, a 77$ processor basically functioning as a 198$ processor. Thank you OCing skillz.
  
  Also, some good golfing after school has made me particularly happy. 2 over par for 9 holes is a pretty good score for me, especially since my home course is no easy course at all. Birdied 1/3 of the holes... booya.
  
  
  Only one element was able to detract from my lofty feelings... a bunch of students that graduated from my high school, and some who didn't graduate (already know where this is going?) died in a car accident. No, i'm not sad for them, and that's exactly the problem. The whole community is getting all whiny about the deaths... well let me elaborate on the way they died. 4-5 kids, all of them under 21, all but one of them was completely wasted. The only that wasnt drunk is a 17 year old girl without a license - she was the driver. She did, get this, a U-TURN in the freeway, into oncoming traffic and got hit, and all of them died. I said i simply had little sympathy for people who are that stupid. Of course, i always feel bad for the loss of human life for no purpose... but i also get mad when i see my classmates, leading their damned hedonistic lives, drinking and driving, endangering the lives of themselves and others because of their own stupidity, and taking these huge chances thinking nothing bad will ever happen of it. Then, when the percentages and statistics finally manifest themselves in reality, it hits them like a brick wall. They hear about these stupid kids and get all emotional about it. I'm over it already, i already identified the kids as under achieving, hedonistic, and incapable of making the right decisions. They made a decision that risked the lives of themselves and others and they got what was coming to them. Some people call it a tragedy; I call it natural selection. Am i a monster? No, i'm a realist. You do stupid things, people get hurt. Lesson learned, do not get plastered and then have an unlicensed individual drive and make a U turn into oncoming traffic on the freeway.
  
  Now, i will continue to rant about this. I'm in charge of playing music at lunch at my school; we setup some speakers in teh quad and i blare some sweet music. So Wednesday i picked out some particularly good music on my MP3 player, including ACDC - Highway to Hell, a damn fine song. Well the Student Government Director comes up and he's like "Is the music you picked representative of the people that died?"
  I answer
  "No, we just picked out some good music, we could play music in honor of them on friday, how about that?"
  "Well, i dont know, turn this music down. Hmm, Highway to Hell, that song doesn't work. No, that is totally inappropriate for you to play this song after what happened. Fade it out now."
  
  So, with great resignation and anger, i faded out a great song. Rules of DJing: don't stop a song that's already in motion!! And i was so pissed off; he actually had the friggin nerves to dig so deep into the song, to think that playing Highway to Hell implicates that these students that died are now on a highway to hell. The thought had never crossed my mind, i wanted to play good music, and was basically accused of being extraordinarily rude and stupid. Well f0ck, i didn't let that crap enter into my mind. I'm trying to live my life and have fun, not spend every second in mourning. People die every second, and when people we know die, we make this big deal out of it (what is it Stalin said, "the death of a few is a tragedy, the death of many is a statistic" something like that).... and one of the people doing the DJing with me was crying over it (women, so crazily emotional) because i was not so sensitive to the situation. All this goddamn pressure on me.
  
  People make bad mistakes and they die, don't dwell on it, don't cry, don't b1tch, moan, complain, don't bring your school down, don't make people feel bad about it. Learn from mistakes. Don't drink and drive. Yet people at my school are the same dumbass seniors who have been graduating for decades; they never f0cking learn. They will continue to do stupid things and cry about it.
  
  The truth is, rewards and consequences are the way that life works. Good choices lead to rewards; bad choices to consequences. These consequences shouldn't frighten people into crying. They are real consequences taht everybod should have considered earlier, before the terrible choices were made. It's all natural selection. I'm such an elitist person here. I think we should have random drug testing in my school. Simply because i don't want to hang out with all the under achieving people. Not that all smokers are dumb, i know some that are very good people. And some that are just dangerous and insane. At any rate, a line needs to be drawn somewhere, and they add nothing to my educational experience, i want them to be thrown out to a different school. You guys know that i took 3 years of Spanish and never got a B on a test, yet learned close to nothing??? Why? The classes moved slow as mollasses; we constantly needed to provide fo rthe needs of the slow, lazy, and stupid. Well i'm tired of waiting for them. Please deport them to other schools where you can take them off the leash and let them kill themselves or whatever it is they do with glass bottles, needles, pills, and steering wheels. I want to achieve so that i may have the knowledge to contribute something long lasting to society.
  
  That's the goal of life my friends. Basically, to be a good person, maintain high moral values, encourage growth of the mind, body, and soul, and of the goodness of humanity. And, also, everyone must find a niche in society, and do whatever they do best for society. And, with their income, they must care for themselves, others, and spend enough free time to fully understand themselves. Life is about reaching perfection. We live in a society, we need to perfect it .
  
  I hope i'm not the only one that feels this way.
  
  End rant.
  
  • Posted Feb 11, 2005 7:21 am PT
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