Fixing a hole where the rain gets in...
I probably should have updated since a lot of things have happened between now and the last entry post. But I'm relatively lax about all this because no one reads my journal anyways. (After glancing at my strangely structured journal from last time, I'm getting an inkling as to why.) More or less, this journal really is for me because I have tendency to forget stuff. The best way to describe my brain is like a crappy stack library that accidentally overrides information for no apparent reason. I blame it on the PandEx (Panda Express).
Game Demo
Despite the fact that our final report was very politically correct with words like: ' we all worked very hard, the only problem was that we didn't work very well together' . The truth of the matter was that not everyone worked all that hard -and there were problems that could have been fixed- but people were petulant little bitches. Yes, there were definite issues. Moreover, 'we didn't work very well together' is putting it lightly, there were obvious indications that we would have loved to murder each other in cold blood in those final hours after 3 days of not sleeping. Yes, it was THAT bad.
3 hours of not sleeping does strange things to you, you start hallucinating about squiggly lines, you think morning is late noon, and midnight should actually be lunch time. Your temper grows shorter as each tiny bit of energy is siphoned out for work. Talking is bad... rambling is fine, because no one really pays attention to you and it's cathartic, but actual conversation really breaks down at some point and you just have to keep repeating whatever you just said. It's like being stuck in a room with a bunch of people that have had their morning coffee withheld from them for longer than is acceptable.
In the end, we sadly succumbed to planting 'audience testers' for our game because collision detection didn't work and sometimes after you killed an enemy (if the enemies were too close together), it cause the other enemies to undergo their death animation => so there was definitely something wrong with instancing with animated models. In addition, after an enemy was killed, they regenerated too quickly.
Luckily, out of all the games, ours was the one that was the least like the others in gameplay and timing (more difficult to compare), ours was WoW-esque... slower, and much more showy, visually. The only advantage we had was that our presenter/game theme was humorous and our game didn't cause nausea.
Jay's Graduation
As horrible and boring as all graduations, I had no expectations of quality. Thankfully the speeches were short, so the worst part of the ceremony was short. Went to Bucca's afterwards with mike's family since his mom wanted to be there... I guess... my mom thought it was a bit awkward though, or maybe she was embarrassed... because we didn't go to mike's brother's high school graduation... so... yeah...
SupperHappyDevHouse
Fun time. Mike had his missile launcher and he setup a search engine sniffer (so whatever you searched for on google, yahoo, flickr, showed up on the projector). DJ was there... Lots of people were there.... approx. 116.... thanks to the article in the San Jose Mercury News. The original guy who started the Original Home Brew Computer Club (which helped start Apple), was there. The reporter who wrote the sjm article was there again and she found 6 more interesting articles from it. There was lightning talks this time... didn't really watch them though, it was cooold outside.
For some strange reason everyone found the drama prairie dog video exceptionally funny.
Italy vacation
It was fun and not fun at the same time. One of the biggest reasons why we didn't have as much fun was because of how much it cost and the low quality of our tour. This was all due to how low the U.S. dollar was compared to Euro. (approx 1.5 conversion). So our hotels were kind of crappy/old with mildew in a lot of them, even some of the towels were dirty... gross. It was difficult to find lunch because my dad dislikes Italian food, therefore he was unwilling to spend any money to eat good Italian food. As a result we always had really crappy dry paninis or caprese salads (Which he disliked even more and he was thus convinced that all Italian food was crappy and he kept complaining about it the whole damn trip). The only special things we really got to eat in Italy was... cookies and deserts. And this really aggravated me to no end (and was the cause for a lot of mini-tantrums on my part) because we just mostly had bad Chinese food during our trip (because it was included in our tour package).
*sigh* I didn't go to Italy to have bad Chinese food. I went to Italy expecting to eat Italian food.
We hardly got any nice souvenirs (only some nice glass stuff in Venice and a cute doggie statue in Milan) because it was all very expensive. We didn't visit any museums (*groans* especially in Florence!) because our tour package was kind of pathetic.
And to make it all worse, there was a very rich family that went with the tour group... they were so rich that they bought a 900 euro LV purse for their spoiled 12 year old daughter in Milan... and here we were asking my father how much we could spend for lunch so he wouldn't be foaming at the mouth for the rest of the day. Even ONE meal of Milan's famous risotto would have been ideal, we never even managed to spend more than 40 a day (as a family) on any of our lunches. It was uncomfortable, it made me feel really poor even though both of my parents work high paying engineering jobs... 12 euro yesterday, 20 euro today, 18 euro tomorrow...
The good part of this trip was that, I got to see a lot of nice art pieces that I've only heard about or seen in photos in art classes or on picture books. Things like the Duomo in Milan, St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, etc. In addition, I figured out where I would and would not be returning to the next time I went to Italy.... like Pisa, which was really nothing special and was really ruined by the excess number of vendors, tourists, and pickpockets (Yes I was pickpocket-ed in Pisa, luckily I had nothing of value in my purse so nothing was stolen). Naples, which was full of thieves and garbage everywhere (because the mob was in control of the garbage collection in the area). Verona was really nothing special or memorable, even Juliet's balcony was small and unimpressive. Perugia: not much to see, except for a church or something.
Venice I will definitely be going back to because it's very pretty, somewhat tourist friendly, and they really have some of the most amazingly pretty glass. Pompeii/Sorrento/Capri Island: though most of the south Italy isn't worth seeing, this particular section, south of Naples, has a beautiful view and not too many tourists. Rome: because it seemed so interesting and we never even managed to go into the Sistine chapel, which made me very sad. Florence: just for that museum I missed and to see some of the other pieces of Michelangeo and Raphael scattered throughout the city.
Overall, I was a bit disappointed, especially since we paid SO much money for this trip. I suppose our last trip to Europe spoiled us because we really had a very good time on the last trip: good food, good hotels, good experience overall, and it cost less than this trip to Italy too. I think I will revisit Italy again, but not when the Euro is so much bigger. Pounds is even worse, much higher than Euro.
So my advice: Don't go to Europe right now.
Movies
Ocean's 13 - fun non-serious movie, good movie to go watch with friends for a lighthearted evening.
Ratatouille - Very good movie. Very well written story, as usual and much to my satisfaction. I love how Pixar will put the story above everything else. Not much of an opinion because it's superb.
Harry Potter: OotP - I liked this movie, I really did. The director did as good of a job as the PoA movie. It was well delivered without any of the cobwebs that the book itself had. I'm amused that they dressed Gary Oldman like a pimp with the long fur coat and the striped suit. I had one or two nitpicks: 1. wished Snape's worst memory was only a flash of a memory and not really a scene. 2. kind of confused about Luna's message at the end, which wasn't really the same message they had at the end of OotP.
Game Demo
Despite the fact that our final report was very politically correct with words like: ' we all worked very hard, the only problem was that we didn't work very well together' . The truth of the matter was that not everyone worked all that hard -and there were problems that could have been fixed- but people were petulant little bitches. Yes, there were definite issues. Moreover, 'we didn't work very well together' is putting it lightly, there were obvious indications that we would have loved to murder each other in cold blood in those final hours after 3 days of not sleeping. Yes, it was THAT bad.
3 hours of not sleeping does strange things to you, you start hallucinating about squiggly lines, you think morning is late noon, and midnight should actually be lunch time. Your temper grows shorter as each tiny bit of energy is siphoned out for work. Talking is bad... rambling is fine, because no one really pays attention to you and it's cathartic, but actual conversation really breaks down at some point and you just have to keep repeating whatever you just said. It's like being stuck in a room with a bunch of people that have had their morning coffee withheld from them for longer than is acceptable.
In the end, we sadly succumbed to planting 'audience testers' for our game because collision detection didn't work and sometimes after you killed an enemy (if the enemies were too close together), it cause the other enemies to undergo their death animation => so there was definitely something wrong with instancing with animated models. In addition, after an enemy was killed, they regenerated too quickly.
Luckily, out of all the games, ours was the one that was the least like the others in gameplay and timing (more difficult to compare), ours was WoW-esque... slower, and much more showy, visually. The only advantage we had was that our presenter/game theme was humorous and our game didn't cause nausea.
Jay's Graduation
As horrible and boring as all graduations, I had no expectations of quality. Thankfully the speeches were short, so the worst part of the ceremony was short. Went to Bucca's afterwards with mike's family since his mom wanted to be there... I guess... my mom thought it was a bit awkward though, or maybe she was embarrassed... because we didn't go to mike's brother's high school graduation... so... yeah...
SupperHappyDevHouse
Fun time. Mike had his missile launcher and he setup a search engine sniffer (so whatever you searched for on google, yahoo, flickr, showed up on the projector). DJ was there... Lots of people were there.... approx. 116.... thanks to the article in the San Jose Mercury News. The original guy who started the Original Home Brew Computer Club (which helped start Apple), was there. The reporter who wrote the sjm article was there again and she found 6 more interesting articles from it. There was lightning talks this time... didn't really watch them though, it was cooold outside.
For some strange reason everyone found the drama prairie dog video exceptionally funny.
Italy vacation
It was fun and not fun at the same time. One of the biggest reasons why we didn't have as much fun was because of how much it cost and the low quality of our tour. This was all due to how low the U.S. dollar was compared to Euro. (approx 1.5 conversion). So our hotels were kind of crappy/old with mildew in a lot of them, even some of the towels were dirty... gross. It was difficult to find lunch because my dad dislikes Italian food, therefore he was unwilling to spend any money to eat good Italian food. As a result we always had really crappy dry paninis or caprese salads (Which he disliked even more and he was thus convinced that all Italian food was crappy and he kept complaining about it the whole damn trip). The only special things we really got to eat in Italy was... cookies and deserts. And this really aggravated me to no end (and was the cause for a lot of mini-tantrums on my part) because we just mostly had bad Chinese food during our trip (because it was included in our tour package).
*sigh* I didn't go to Italy to have bad Chinese food. I went to Italy expecting to eat Italian food.
We hardly got any nice souvenirs (only some nice glass stuff in Venice and a cute doggie statue in Milan) because it was all very expensive. We didn't visit any museums (*groans* especially in Florence!) because our tour package was kind of pathetic.
And to make it all worse, there was a very rich family that went with the tour group... they were so rich that they bought a 900 euro LV purse for their spoiled 12 year old daughter in Milan... and here we were asking my father how much we could spend for lunch so he wouldn't be foaming at the mouth for the rest of the day. Even ONE meal of Milan's famous risotto would have been ideal, we never even managed to spend more than 40 a day (as a family) on any of our lunches. It was uncomfortable, it made me feel really poor even though both of my parents work high paying engineering jobs... 12 euro yesterday, 20 euro today, 18 euro tomorrow...
The good part of this trip was that, I got to see a lot of nice art pieces that I've only heard about or seen in photos in art classes or on picture books. Things like the Duomo in Milan, St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, etc. In addition, I figured out where I would and would not be returning to the next time I went to Italy.... like Pisa, which was really nothing special and was really ruined by the excess number of vendors, tourists, and pickpockets (Yes I was pickpocket-ed in Pisa, luckily I had nothing of value in my purse so nothing was stolen). Naples, which was full of thieves and garbage everywhere (because the mob was in control of the garbage collection in the area). Verona was really nothing special or memorable, even Juliet's balcony was small and unimpressive. Perugia: not much to see, except for a church or something.
Venice I will definitely be going back to because it's very pretty, somewhat tourist friendly, and they really have some of the most amazingly pretty glass. Pompeii/Sorrento/Capri Island: though most of the south Italy isn't worth seeing, this particular section, south of Naples, has a beautiful view and not too many tourists. Rome: because it seemed so interesting and we never even managed to go into the Sistine chapel, which made me very sad. Florence: just for that museum I missed and to see some of the other pieces of Michelangeo and Raphael scattered throughout the city.
Overall, I was a bit disappointed, especially since we paid SO much money for this trip. I suppose our last trip to Europe spoiled us because we really had a very good time on the last trip: good food, good hotels, good experience overall, and it cost less than this trip to Italy too. I think I will revisit Italy again, but not when the Euro is so much bigger. Pounds is even worse, much higher than Euro.
So my advice: Don't go to Europe right now.
Movies
Ocean's 13 - fun non-serious movie, good movie to go watch with friends for a lighthearted evening.
Ratatouille - Very good movie. Very well written story, as usual and much to my satisfaction. I love how Pixar will put the story above everything else. Not much of an opinion because it's superb.
Harry Potter: OotP - I liked this movie, I really did. The director did as good of a job as the PoA movie. It was well delivered without any of the cobwebs that the book itself had. I'm amused that they dressed Gary Oldman like a pimp with the long fur coat and the striped suit. I had one or two nitpicks: 1. wished Snape's worst memory was only a flash of a memory and not really a scene. 2. kind of confused about Luna's message at the end, which wasn't really the same message they had at the end of OotP.