Not knowing any English, my parents blithely signed the papers that made the house ours.  Apparently, among those papers, was the FCCA deed restriction.  The repercussions are only starting to appear, for there exists the compliance inspector with no life.  Thus far, he has written about these issues:

• The electrical breakers box is the wrong color: The house is that way when we bought it.
• White rocks on landscape bed near the front door: The house is also that way when we bought it.  However, because we watered and did other maintenance tasks, the rocks eventually became hidden in the dirt and discolored.  We bought some more rocks to fix that.  I’ll scan the complaint letter later.
• Patches of missing grass: Perfectly legit, but it takes time to fix, though!

Let me ask a question: Do I have to ask for approval to plant a flower in the front yard?  Oh, the horror of living in such an uptight community like this… the horror of living in a world where rules exist to generate revenue.  Rest assured that I will not be living here again when I get my degree.

Although I have managed to get an A in two classes, including the grueling EE 316, I still feel bad because I gained those two As at the cost of obtaining Cs in EE 411 and M 427K. As it stands now, I am just bearing down hard on myself. Trying to figure out what went wrong gives me the notion that I am merely making excuses. Nevertheless, I think I took a lot out of this semester, and can definitely use these lessons I have learned and teach them to the FIG next year:

• Going from 13 to the maximum allowed by your department (17 in College of Engineering) is not a good idea!
• EE 312: There is a reason why you can’t just go off and implement a feature just because you think it’s cool. You have requirements to stick by, and adding features is like adding more bugs. Bugs cost more money to fix in the long run.
• EE 411: Using imagination (imaginary numbers) makes calculations easier. Power grids transmit power in three phases, hence the three lines on the power lines.
• GOV 310L: Government makes slow progress because collective action is difficult and people need time to think things over (even if it means that the bill is read twice). A party’s interest also plays a significant role (think of a senator filibustering and reading off a cookbook just to eat up time). The media portrays many negative images of government because it is an unofficial form of checks and balances — it is the “fourth branch” of government.
• EE 316: You can go as fast as your little gates will propagate, so passing the class with an A means that you are not a slacker.
• M 427K: Be prepared to be flipped upside-down. Instead of the hand-holding examples and a few “now-you-try-it” problems one is used to, the book I got was a lot of theory and more proofs for us to validate.

Update: Whew! I got a B in Government!

What a coincidence!  Today is Cinco de Mayo, and it’s the last day of class!  Lots of things happened today:

• Fajita Fest by the IEEE — that went well!  I ate for free because I am an IEEE member.
• I passed R2 (the last unit) of EE 316 (Digital Logic Design — the self-paced monster).
• New/Old dinner for Whitis Court.  I ate for free also!

I see today as my last day of freedom before next weekend.  When I wake up next morning, it’s going to be lots and lots of reviewing and brushing up the dust that so quickly accumulated throughout this semester.

Before I start, I am pleased to say that I am going into the EE 316 final with an A-. Today, there are three things I would like to talk to you about. Some of you may have had a conversation with me about a few of these topics, but here it is for my records:

1. As I was surfing digg.com yesterday, I came across this video. Basically, someone gets caught shoplifting. It so happens that she is the 10,000th shoplifter. Instead of calling the cops, the store staff bust out the flowers, cake, and champagne; and congratulate her, presumably for the purpose of humiliating her right there. This video made me wonder what happened to the days of creative punishment and vigilance. For example, this kind of humiliation exploits the fact that we humans are egocentric and care about our own images in the eyes of other people. In theory, I believe that this could solve the problem of prison crowding. But of course, there are some laws that prevent that from happening. What a disappointment!

2. I’m quite sure that most of you have seen these TV shows where these cops are trying to shoot/chase/whatever someone down. In certain instances, several cops get shot in the process. Of course, the good guys win, but why do they call the people they apprehend “suspects?” All the “suspects’” acts are caught on tape — there is no doubt that they did something bad. Where can we draw this line between common sense and political correctness?

3. I would like to believe that engineering profession consists of those who innovate and earnestly want to make the world a better place to live in. Some innovations will cost us upfront in the form of the need for adaptation and a little bit of money. Ultimately, the payoff for those who adapt and embrace is great. We humans are blessed with the ability to adapt, yet some squander that gift by actively clinging on the old and attempting to quash the new by using the law and their current resources. Take, for example, FM radio. Compared to AM radio, it was technologically superior. Yet, RCA somehow convinced the FCC to assign it a band where it cannot thrive as well. As a result, the inventor committed suicide (reference: Wikipedia). So my question is: How much does bigotry cost us? Can we even place a price tag on it?

Give these things some thought…

Looks like UT has given the freshmen their housing contracts and opened the floodgates to roommate requests.  Here’s an email hot off the press:

— Start message —

hey, this is **** ***, and i will be a freshman at UT this coming Fall. i moved from China 5 years ago to Houston, Texas. i know i will need lots of time to study since english is my second language. i dont listen to music while studying most of the time. however, sometimes i do, but it wont be loud at all. i am a very neat person. surely, i will bring my desktop, and i may buy a laptop. during the fall, i wont bring my car, but i will after christmas. i am currently classify under liberal arts college, undecided. i am looking forward to transfer to business school. but still not sure what major i like the most.
i hope to get a roommate who is good at academic and knows lots of hott white girls!!! ahahhaha

JUST LET ME KNOW IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN BEING MY ROOMMATE!!

THANK YOU

— End message —

I replied that I’m already taken, and suggested that he joins a FIG.  It seems that he’s in the same position I was in (or maybe still in).  Nevertheless, I find it interesting that one of his concerns are to find “hott white girls.”

If this were on fark.com, the tagline would be something like this: In a desparate attempt to save disk space, girl puts her photos into a Word document, then tries to save to CD.  Hilarity ensues.

Today, a friend IM’d me asking for help with tech support.  What started out as an innocent question about how to mount the UT WebSpace via WebDAV turned into a nightmare.  Here’s some snippets for your entertainment (Items in italics are my comments):

Friend: how do u save something on ut webspace?
Friend: does it have to be saved to your computer first?
Me: Yes
Me: http://www.utexas.edu/its/webspace/winwebdav.html
Friend: is there any way it can be saved without saving it to your comp first
Me: Not that I know of
Friend: can i burn a word file to a disk?
Me: Sure, although it would be a waste of one disk  (I was assuming that she was burning a regular Word document to a CD)
Friend: it’s a large file. i don’t want to waste my comp space
Friend: its full of a bunch of pictures
Me: Why are the pictures in a Word file?!
Friend: cause i didn’t want to save each individual one and waste space
Me: *dramatic camera angle* NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Friend: whats wrongwit that?
Friend: ??
Me: What kind of pics are these?
Me: Photos?
Friend: yes
Me: Well… come time to print them out, you’re not only going to have to do more, but the quality is going to be reduced
Friend: oh i don’t need to print them
Friend: these are just for fun to look at
Me: Ah…
Me: On my computer, I would have multiple copies of one picture if I have modified them
Friend: wowza that would really be a waste of space on my computer
Me: *goes to images folder
Me: Let me see…  My UT pics folder alone contains 1 GB of pictures in 488 pictures, some of which are revised copies of the original
Friend: every time i try to save this word doc to the “CD Drive (D:)” it says “Incorrect function.”
Friend: then i click OK and another pop up comes up saying: “You do not have access to the folder ‘D:\’. See your administrator for access to this folder.
Friend: WAHT THE HECK!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!    (At this point, I had to grab my pillow, put my face to it, and scream)
Me: You have to save it to hard drive and then burn it to a CD
Me: You can’t directly save to CD
Friend: WHY?
Friend: What can I save directly to instead of a CD?
Me: CD is fundamentally read-only
Friend: I don’t want to waste my space
Friend: and don’t tell me I wont be wasting space bc this is a HUGE file