|
Home About Me Computer Games Music Online Journal Stories Links Sign Guestbook View Guestbook E-mail me! |
First | Previous | Next | Current Friday, October 8, 2004--Free! I'm finally free! Last night, I finished my EE122 project, and now, for the first time in 2 weeks, I have a free weekend! w00t! On this day: In 2002: CS61c Discussion... CS61c Lecture... EE122 Discussion... Then, I went home... not much to say... I'm at home, slacking off... Good Night! Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 1) Total: 2 Thursday, October 7, 2004--Last night, as I'm about to start my EE105 homework and my EE122 project, all the EECS servers go down, and since I don't have a paper copy of the EE105 homework and since my EE122 code was on the servers, I had no way of doing my homework. I stayed up until 2am waiting for the servers to come back up, but no, they never did, so I just gave up and went to bed. It's not like it was anything important. So... yeah, this morning, I skip EE105 and EE122 Lecture, ironically, so I could finish the homework in those two classes. It turns out, thankfully, that EE122 project deadline has been extended by 12 hours, which is good, because that means I can go fencing tonight and still have a good 12 hours to finish it. I did go to Music 26ac, though, and we had a bluegrass band performance. Kim told me that she had forgotten that there was going to be a performance today and wouldn't have come if she had remembered. Lucky me... Ken Jennings is back on Jeopardy today, by the way, and he's still winning. Joyce brought over her new Totoro pillow and is talking to it like it's alive. How amusing... and gummy bears! Lastly and most importantly, I got offered an interview with Microsoft! w00t! Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 5) Total: 8 On this day: In 2002: *shrig* Uhh... yeah... *shrig* Good Night! Wednesday, October 6, 2004--That's funny. I was under the impression that my website had no viewers whatsoever and that I was just recording all of my thoughts for my own personal usage. But then, I just checked my site stats just today and discovered that I get an average of 5-10 hits per day. Now, I hope these aren't just sophisticated webcrawlers who manage to set off my counter 5-10 times a day, because that would just be false advertising on Geocities' part. (Is there any way to tell the difference between an actual visitor and a web crawler?) In any case, if these numbers are correct, then I have a huge audience that I need to entertain, except that I suck at entertaining my guests... I need to work on that. Give me feedback! Oh, and post in my forums! I skipped EE120 Discussion because I stayed up so late last night working on EE122 that I needed some extra sleep. CS61c Discussion... CS61c Lecture... During my break... Abhi: Should I take Math 55 or CS70? Me: It depends. Who's teaching those courses? Abhi: Uhh... "Christ" is teaching Math 55. And Clancy is teaching CS70. Me: Well, you can't go wrong with Christ. Especially if your alternative is Clancy. Abhi: Yeah, who should I go learn from: Jesus or the Devil? EE120 Lecture... Read at the Music Library, because one of our readings in the Music 26ac Reader was defective. Tau Beta Pi Candidate Meeting! w00t! Tracy came, but left early as I was serving food. I wanted a beef enchilada! Oh well... In any case, I managed to salvage Tracy's name tag (after finding it being worn by Angela, who refused to give it to me). In the process, I lost mine own, to Leonard, from which it eventually disappeared completely. Oh, and Heena was asking around what kind of challenge should she give, so I told her the one she used on me last semester--Indian Dance! It was amusing to say the least. Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 2) Total: 8 On this day: In 2002: I start saying Good Night on a regular basis! Except I've become too brain-dead to come up with amusing ones... so today, I'll bring up a classic: Good Night! Don't let the succubi bite! Tuesday, October 5, 2004--EE105 Lecture... and then we got our mudterms back. EE122 Lecture... apparently, Professor Stoica knows my name. EE105 Lab... parts of it we could do at home, so we finished early so I could go hit the HKN EECS Career fair, where I passed out a bunch of resumes. The Microsoft rep (a Cal Alumni) was impressed, especially when I told him about my VidWorks experiences. Music 26ac... Me: Aren't you hot in that sweater? Kim: No. Heh... On this day: In 2002: Giant Abomination After chilling with the leftover HKNers who were cleaning up in Bechtel, I went to the TBP meeting. Tomorrow will be the candidate meeting. Yay! Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 6) Total: 8 Good Night! Monday, October 4, 2004--EE105 Discussion... Me: Apparently, the EE122 Mudterm scores are out. Tiffany: Yeah. What did you get? Me: ...I'll tell you if you promise not to tell anyone. Tiffany: Oh, it's okay. I did really badly, too. You don't have to tell me. Naive little Tiffany... hehe... CS61c Lecture... Lunchbreak... EE120 Lecture... Music 26ac Discussion... On this day: In 2002: Anyways, Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 3) Total: 7 The DCI sent me an e-mail back, saying I was approved for the Magic Player Rewards Program until 2278. Apparently, I'm going to stay in the program for 274 years... how... wonderful... Good Night! Sunday, October 3, 2004--So, as I promised Tracy, I worked on and finished my EE120 homework so that we could compare our answers. It took me all the way until 3:30pm, because I did the Fourier Transforms by hand because I didn't realize there was a table in the book. After that, I had to do my Music 26ac reading questions... Music 26ac reminds me of Kim for some reason. On this day: In 2003: The "Are you hot?" incident #2. In 2002: "She said 'break up,' not 'break down'." Anyways, between doing EE120 and doing Music 26ac, I decided to take a break by playtesting my Nezumi deck against my Relentless deck. Nezumi won 3 out of 3. In the third game, I even managed to get all three Legends out, but in order to do so, I had to refrain from attacking the Relentless Rats or else Stabwhisker's ability would kill him off too quickly. So building the rat deck wasn't a mistake after all. Just a bit more playtesting and fine tuning... Anyways, so I was going to do my laundry tonight, and I arrive on the 2nd floor only to find that both washing machines were done and that someone had left their clothes there. After consulting with Ivan and his roommate (who lived just across the hall from the laundry room) and checking on the 6th floor (which were both still going for 20 minutes), I decided to throw the clean clothes onto the table. And just as I finish, Minjung of all people walks in. It was awkward to say the least... Man, that would suck if she thinks badly of me after that. I mean, it's not like I knew those were her clothes sitting in the machine. Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 4) Total: 10 Good Night! Notice: The September 30 entry is now available. Saturday, October 2, 2004-- On this day: In 2002: Franklin makes his first appearance in my journal. Cal MTG Club Draft Today, I went to the Cal MTG meeting, where Philip, Zech, this new guy named Albert, and I played a quick 4-player round-robin non-DCI-sanctioned booster draft. For those of you who have read me for the last 2-3 weeks, I don't have to tell you what I drafted, but I suppose I'll tell you anyways: black-red. Unfortunately, I didn't get my signature Gutwrencher Oni this time. Oh, well. However, I did get lots of removal. In the first pack, I got a Yamabushi's Flame, Befoul, Rend Flesh, and Crushing Pain. In the second pack, I got another Yamabushi's Flame and another Befoul. In my last pack, I got a pair of Glacial Rays, so with 8 removal (a new record), I built this deck and dove right into the fray: 9 Swamps 9 Mountains Sensei's Divining Top Ashen-Skin Zubera Wicked Akuba 2xNezumi Cutthroat Nezumi Ronin Rend Flesh 2xCursed Ronin 2xBefoul Battle-Mad Ronin Ember-Fist Zubera Crushing Pain 2xGlacial Ray Brutal Deceiver Pain Kami (FOIL!) 2xYamabushi's Flame 2xAkki Coalflinger Another interesting card that I drafted, but didn't play, was the black shrine. At another point, I had a choice between a Lava Spike and a foil Island. I took the foil Island. Lava Spike was just that bad! Anyways, we were playing round-robin. In my first round, I played against Zech, who had drafted blue-white. I beat him pretty quickly, but I don't remember how. I seem to remember him having mana problems during the second game, though. Record: 1-0 Albert won his match against Philip, so we decided to save our "winner's match" for last, just to make it more interesting. Thus, in my second round, I would play Philip, who had drafted green-white. The first game, he had mana issues, and thus lost. In the second round, Philip managed to use a Kusari-Gama, which I misread, to completely wipe my board clean. After that, it was me scrambling for some way of defending myself while Philip beat me to a pulp. Game three included some interesting plays, including when Philip played a Sachi and a Shisato. I Yamabushi Flamed Sachi at the end of my turn, and Philip, who had no other Snake in play, had to sacrifice Shisato to her own upkeep the next turn. Yep, Shisato is a bad card... She's evil, too. Anyways, eventually, Philip built up a massive army, thereby preventing all my attackers from breaking through except one: my Nezumi Cutthroat. So I was dealing 2 damage each turn, building up to my coup de grace--I had both Glacial Rays in my hand, and using my Divining Top, I had gotten out 3 mountains and 3 swamps. Finally, when Philip dropped to 6 life, I played my first Ray, spliced the second one onto it for 4 damage, then played the second Ray, dealing exactly 6 damage, ending the game. Record: 2-0 Albert beat Zech also, leaving him with a 2-0 record as well. So in the final round, Albert and I played for the championship. He had a black-white deck, including the dreaded Oathkeeper, and the hated Kitsune Riftwalker. Other guests included Horobi (who made the Oathkeeper useless, but turned his Indomitable Will into a kill card) and Samurai of the Pale Curtain, who could not be saved by the Oathkeeper's ability, as she removed herself from the game when she died. In any case, in both games, I lost with the Divining Top in play when the card I needed to survive was 4 cards into my library, just barely out of reach. If I had survived for just one more turn, I might have been able to turn the game around. In the end, however, Albert was victorious. Record: 2-1 Philip would go on to defeat Zech for 3rd place while I got my 1 booster pack prize. And in that booster, I got another Cursed Ronin, another Befoul, Initiate of Blood/Goka the Unjust, and Hikari. Afterwards, Albert and I played with my Sliver deck and my Nezumi deck so that I could test my Nezumi deck. We each played with each deck once, and no matter who was playing it, the Sliver deck owned the Nezumi. I suppose it's to be expected. The Sliver deck, after all, has a lot deeper of a card pool to draw from. With standard rotating out, I no longer have my Oversold Cemeteries or my Smothers. I suppose I'll have to test my Nezumi deck (post-Kamigawa Standard) against my Relentless deck (pre-Kamigawa Standard) for a true comparison of power. Good Night! Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 6) Total: 10 Friday, October 1, 2004--CS61c Lab... they're showing us some pretty arcane stuff in lab. It isn't in the book. I spent about 1 hour 15 minutes (plus, I showed up 35 minutes late), so I didn't get the early checkoff and the 1 extra credit point. CS61c Lecture... before the lecture, Prof Garcia was playing the Warcraft III cinematics on the display screen. I missed the first half of it, though... EE122 Discussion... was cancelled, so I went to the HKN lounge and hung out with Ellen until she had to go mail a letter, during which I promptly left. Lunch... After a little bit of work on my EE122 project, I went to the booster draft at Games of Berkeley. Kamigawa Season has officially begun, yo! In any case, apparently, I was drafting at the "easy" table, because (1) there were 3 kids at my table, (2) Dave was at the other table, (3) I have a low DCI ranking. In any case, I decided to draft black-red, the same archetype I played at the prerelease, mainly because of all the removal available in black-red. I started off drafting a pair of Yamabushi's Flame and a pair of Rend Fleshes, which I lated complemented in the second pack with a Befoul and a Hanabi Blast. In the third pack, I drafted a Pull Under for a total of seven removal. And it turns out that there were three of us drafting black-red that day, and there still managed to be enough good black-red cards for all of us! That just goes to prove the power of Kamigawa black-red. The guy sitting to my left was the only guy drafting blue. He managed to open The Unspeakable, and in the course of the game, managed to draft multiple copies of the Unspeakable combo. Needless to say, when there were no good black-red cards to draft (since there were three of us after all), I hate-drafted some half-decent blue cards that he might have wanted, but I missed a Hinder. I don't know if he ever summoned the Unspeakable, though. Sean: Stop killing my creatures. Me: But that's the whole point of black-red. Kill everything that moves. Ignore everything that doesn't. Dude: I suppose that's one way of putting it. My first round was against Sean. He played a mono-green snake deck, which I owned. The most amazing part was that in both games, I killed him with a Deathcurse Ogre, a self-proclaimed bad card. (You'll find out why it was in my deck later.) The first game, he forgot he about Sosuke's ability and killed the Deathcurse Ogre "on accident" when he was at 3 life. Whoops. (He actually would have lost that game either way.) In the second game, I knocked Sean down to 3 life, then Rended the Flesh of my own Ogre, again ending Sean's life. Record: 1-0 My second game was a mirror match against a kid named Matt, I believe. (He, too, had drafter black-red, and the decks were almost identical.) Our games were mostly slaughter fests included Zubera, Frostweilders, and the Brothers Yamazaki. We both had a Brothers Yamazaki, but we never both got him into play at the same time. At one point, neither of us had carefully read the text on Painwracker Oni, so I played it with no creatures out and he Rended its Spirit, only to find out that it would have naturally died the next turn. (Needless to say, I ended up replacing it.) He beat me the first game (although it was a really close one). Toward the end of the second game, he had me in a corner. I was at 7 life, and he had a Frostwielder, a Cursed Ronin, and another creature, as well as Blood Rites. Me: You can kill me without attacking. In fact, I order you to kill me without attacking. That is your challenge. Matt: Hey, I can! And he shoots me with the Frostwielder and sac's everything to the Blood Rites for exactly 7 damage total. Dude: Did you really have to do that? You could have killed him by attacking and pumping the Cursed Ronin! Me: But hey, when you have a weird victory condition, you have to use it. (Kind of like when I killed Sean by Rending the Flesh of my own Deathcurse Ogre.) Record: 1-1 My third game is againt David, who played a 4-color Shrine deck. (He had all but the green shrine.) In any case, in the first game, he got out the white shrine and gained 2 life per turn while I was dealing between 2 and 3 per turn. Soon, there was a stalemate. Eventually, he was at 14 and I was at 16, and I brought out my favorite Gutwrencher Oni (I have a foil one, too). It had been stranded in my hand for a while because I didn't want to discard my Rend Fleshes, but soon realizing that the majority of his creatures were Spirits, I decided Rend Flesh would do me little good. So out came the Oni (the good Oni), and I smashed his face. In the second game, it was played to a near stalemate. I brought him down to 2 while I was at 10, but using a Kami of Lunacy, a Kitsune Riftwalker, and a Wicked Akuba, he dealt me 8, bringing me down to 2, then used the Akuba's ability to finish me. We were on to game three with only 10 minutes left. I offered a draw because we undoubtedly had no time to finish game 3 and so that we could go home early, but David insisted, we play it through to the end, even if it was to be a draw. It would prove to be his undoing. I mulliganed twice, partially because I wanted to stall and force a draw, partially because I had a horrible hand, but it was still a relatively quick shuffle. Then, out came the Ashen-Skin Zubera, the Brothers Yamazaki, a Pain Kami (which served as an emergency removal on a 2/2 when a Masako came into play, and finally the lord of terror, the Gutwrencher Oni himself. I ended up killing him off in less than 10 minutes from 2 mulligans. It was the most amazing win ever. Needless to say, David got the good sportsmanship award. Record: 2-1 I ended up taking 3rd place overall and winning 2 booster packs--my best booster draft ever. Maybe I'm actually good at Kamigawa, like I had suspected/hoped. Maybe I'm just lucky. Or maybe I chose the the right deck to play, the uber-powerful black-red. On a supporting note, there were three players who split the black-red cards in our draft table, and we got first, second, and third. Yep, Kamigawa black-red certainly is powerful. Here is my deck: 9 Mountains 8 Swamps Lantern-Lit Graveyard 2xBattle-Mad Ronin Ember-Fist Zubera Pain Kami 2xRonin Houndmaster 2xBrutal Deceiver Brothers Yamazaki 2xYamabushi's Flame Hanabi Blast Sokenzan Bruiser 2xAshen-Skin Zubera Nezumi Ronin 2xRend Flesh Befoul Gutwrencher Oni Deathcurse Ogre Pull Under As I said before, I won two booster packs. Interesting cards include: another Yamabushi's Flame, Blood Rites (which I got killed by earlier), Through the Breach (a bad Sneak Attack), Zo-Zu the Punisher, and a foil Devouring Greed. I also bought a tournament pack, which includes the Novel, a player's guide (listing of all cards plus storyline descriptions etc etc), a 20-sided dice, a foil land, a foil common, a Tournament pack, and 3 boosters. Interesting cards I opened include: foil Rend Spirit, another Samurai of the Pale Curtain, Ghostly Prison, Sosuke, a Shell of the Last Kappa, Kodama of the South Tree, a foil Sire of the Storm, another Cursed Ronin, another Frostwielder, Blood Rites, the blue and white shrines, and Takeno (the last three cards were all in the same booster--it was a legendary pack), a foil green dragon, Kodama of the North Tree, Reweave, Ghostly Prison, Blood Rites, another Gutwrencher Oni, another Yamabushi's Flame and Befoul, another Kitsune Blademaster, Sift Through Sands, Reach Through Mists, and a Midnight Covenant. Man, that's a lot of Kamigawa cards. At the Prerelease, I got a tourney pack and 2 boosters and won 4 boosters. At the draft, I drafted 45 cards and won 2 boosters. I bought a fat pack which gave me 1 tourney pack and 3 boosters. A tourney pack is about 3 boosters, so that's a converted booster count of 20. And after tomorrow's MTG mtg, I'll be up to 23. Man, I should lay off limited for a while, huh? Maybe a month, and sell my duplicates... Anyways, I'll be off organizing my collection and making a Rat deck. Good Night! Dice Roll of the Day: 8 (from the 20-sided dice in my tourney pack) Thursday, September 30, 2004--Sorry it took so long for me to update this. The sad part is, I don't even remember why I didn't update this anymore... On This Day: In 2002: EE105 Lecture... EE122 Lecture... was cancelled so that we could study for our mudterm tonight. Lunchbreak... Music 26ac Lecture... Kim came in wearing a thick-looking sweater and the weather wasn't that cold anymore. I had the temptation to ask her "Are you hot?" (see October 3, 2003, entry), but I decided against it. EE122 Mudterm... I insisted on finishing early so that I could go to the HKN Candidate meeting... but Tracy was long gone, which made me sad, so then I just went Fencing... Anyways, now is the right time to tell you a story about the ASUC dance tickets I had won on Tuesday. So I had two of them, but I only need one of them to get to the dance, so I had decided to offer the second ticket to a cute girl. So on Wednesday, I went to Tracy, who took the ticket from my hand, looked at it, and answered "maybe" (which usually means no, btw) saying something about a curfew and 1am being a little late. Me: It's Saturday. You can afford to stay up until 1am. Tracy: And how would you know? It turned out that she would be too busy stressing over a CS162 (?) project to go to the dance. Me: All the more reason for you to come to the dance and relax yourself. Tracy: No. Dance != relax. Sleep == relax. Me: Heh, a CS-style double equal, huh? Tracy: Yes. So then, on Wednesday night, I walked into the 3rd floor lounge and saw MJ, so I offer her the ticket. Like Tracy, she promptly takes it from me and looks at it, then says something about her going home for the weekend and that she wouldn't be able to make it. So that's a no-go, too. Then, today, in Music 26ac, I offer the ticket to Kim. She doesn't even look at the damn thing and says she can't make it. Yep, that's Kim for you... rude and inconsiderate. Well, at least unlike Tracy, she doesn't use me for homework answers. And MJ is just blatantly unreceptive of me... Naw, I'm just kidding. They're all such fine ladies, all three of them. I have no complaints. Everything went as predicted. I ended giving my tickets (both of them) to Sherry down the hall (who was possibly drunk at the time) because I simply didn't care anymore. Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 1) Total: 4 Good Night! Wednesday, September 29, 2004--What the-- The Geocities front page has changed! Anyways, Happy Birthday My Website! w00t! What the... On this day: In 2002: That was amusing... EE120 Discussion... CS61c Discussion... the dude who complained the class was too easy is still coming to class, apparently. CS61c Lecture... Break... EE120 Lecture... Music Library for my Music 26ac listening assignments... Dinner... Slacked off way too much... Yay! My cred card limit increased from $700 to $1200... Gonna do homework now. Good Night! Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 4) Total: 8 Tuesday, September 28, 2004--9:30am... EE105 Mudterm... NOOO!!!!! Actually, it was easy, so it's all good. EE122 Lecture... apparently, some people haven't finished their projects yet... sucks for them! No EE105 Lab today because of the mudterm... Music 26ac... Kim: Why are you coming back out? Me: I think you can guess why. And then I ended up sitting next to her. There was a performance by the Yoshida brothers. They were like rock stars, except with traditional Japanese dress and traditional Japanese shamisen instruments (which were stringed, plucking instruments). TBP Meeting... does CS (Computer Science) count as engineering? Most Berkeley Engineers think it doesn't, but then again, our CS major outside of EECS is pretty toned down. Dinner at Xroads, during which I saw Steve, Tiffany, Eric, Allison, and Tammy, but Jen was gone, supposedly at the studio again. That girl is crazy... in a good way. At 9pm, there was a chubby bunny contest, which I won. There were four contestants. Shashoto dropped out at only 3 marshmellows. The other two dudes dropped out at 9 and 10. I won with 10 marshmellows in my mouth and an audible but unintelligibly muffled "chubby bunny!" Oh, and I won two tickets (worth $5 apiece) to the ASUC dance on Saturday. I only need one... I wonder what I should do with the other one? Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 1) Total: 2 Good Night! Tuesday, September 28, 2004 - Prologue--Just because I can't wait... Happy Birthday Sarah!! And here's this year's gift to Miss Tseng... the rare promotional art to the Serra Angel...  Monday, September 27, 2004--A Year Ago Today: Cal PWNs USC! w00t! Anyways, I skipped EE105 Discussion to finish my Music 26ac reading and questions that I madly needed to do. Fortunately, they limited the answers to 2 pages, so I just wrote short answers to fit within the two pages. CS61c Lecture... Lunch... EE120 Lecture... I borrowed Tracy's Rubik's cube and tried repeatedly to solve it using the technique Olek taught me... and I failed repeatedly. After Tracy asks me to turn in her homework for her... Me: Sorry, Trace, I accidentally dropped your homework in the wrong box. Tracy: ...I don't believe you. Me: Nah, I'm just kidding... EE105, right? Tracy: Haha! Me: Okay, I should stop joking around now. Music 26ac Discussion... After dinner, I ended up attending this Gender Equity Workshop thingie in our lounge... when the dude was asking around for everyone's name, I said, "I'm Dwayne, and I have no idea why I'm here." Fencing... Must... sleep... ! Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 6) Total: 10 Good Night! Sunday, September 26, 2004--I finally finished my EE122 project! w00t! On an unrelated note, Wizards is having an Open Call for novelists. Sounds like something I could actually do! But first, I have to study up on the story for the invasion block and get some details right. Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 6) Total: 12 Good Night! Saturday, September 25, 2004--Today, I woke up and, to uphold a promise to a one Tracy Wang, I worked on my EE120 homework. After eating lunchfast and after playing MTG with the new gang at Eudemonia, I finished it. Speaking of the gang at Eudemonia, me, Philip, Conor, Zech, Will, and Tom (who are trying to form the Cal MTG Club) showed up at Eudemonia to meet each other and to play. First, Zech and Tom played this white versus white uber-slow game while me and Will played Slivers versus non-Ravager Affinity. Then, finally, when everyone got settled down (after Will beat me, but before Tom and Zech finished), we played a 6-way FFA. Tom and Zech had to set their white versus white life-gain game aside, and they pulled out other decks to play in the FFA. Philip used a green-white deck that featured a combo of Serra Avatar and Armadillo Cloak. I used my Slivers. Will a red-blue Lightning Rift-counter deck. Conor used a blue-green deck that works by getting out fatties and putting Dragon enchantments on them from the graveyard. Zech used a Sunburst deck. And Tom used a Tooth and Nail deck. I was dealing the early game damage with my Metal Slivers, knocking Will, Conor, and Zech down to 19 for no reason in particular. Philip played a Defense of the Heart, hoping to trigger off of my collection of slivers, but unfortunately, thanks to Will's excessive burning, he never had the chance. Shortly after that, the fast game ended and the power game began. Zech tried to play a Blue Bringer, which Will countered. Tom played a Tooth and Nail and tutored out a Darksteel Colossus and a Visara. Zech played a Door to Nothingness, which he would have had the mana for the next turn. "People always ask me if I have the mana, and I always do." Later killed with a Magma Jet and a Lit Bolt. (A bad 2-for-1 and played on my own turn, but I wanted to get in there and deal some damage without having to worry about Visara--the Colossus was tapped. On Tom's turn, he Tooth and Nailed again, this time for a second Colossus and an Akroma, then had his revenge on me by attacking me with the angel and the first Colossus. It was exactly enough to killed me (because Zech had hit me earlier with a 3/3 Suntouched Myr). Finally, with Tom at three creatures (and all quite mighty, too), Philip was able to pop his Defense of the Heart for his own Colossus and a Platinum Angel. The turn goes around... on Philips turn, he plays a Serra Avatar, and he's at 20 life! Equipping it with Lightning Greaves, he attempts to kill Will with the Avatar and Zech with the Colossus, but before he declares attackers, Will burns Zech to death. Then, realizing that he can save himself, he bounces the Lightning Greaves, thus the Avatar loses haste and he survives. Within a turn or two, Philip gets an Armadillo Cloak and manages to equip it onto the Serra Avatar with the Lightning Greaves and proceeds to kill everyone while growing around 60ish life. (Although he claims he once got up to 1016 Life with the Serra Avatar before.) Needless to say, it was the most high-power MTG game that I have played in a long time. So then Zech and Tom try to finish their life gain game while Philip and I play some 1v1s. I use my Rat deck. He uses a deck with lots of zero-mana creatures, including Ornithopter, Phyrexian Walker, Kobolds of Kher Keep, and Crimson Kobolds. The premise of the deck is to use pumps like Giant Growth, Seal of Strength, Bonesplitters, Rancor, and the like to make his 0-mana creatures less weak. In any case, I manage to beat him twice because in his first game, he was mana-flooded (if the deck has more than 2 land, it counts as mana flooded), and the second game, because he lacked a reliable way to remove my Rats. Later, I beat Conor with my Rat deck... apparently, they're weak against red and black (and any other deck with removal), but strong against green, white, and any blue deck without counters. In any case, Zech and Tom finally finish when Tom decks out! Zech did nothing to force Tom to deck out. All that happened was that the game lasted for so long in an utter creature stalemate! So this guy named Merlin shows up, and he played Philip some number of games. In any case, he plays out a--get ready--Chaos Confetti, saying that he always wanted to tear it up some day. So then, later, he tears it up while I'm trying to figure out how to use Zech's camera, and throws it over to Philip's side of the board, destroying 2 Mountains, a Mogg Fanatic, and a Seal of Removal. Zech managed to get a picture of it, though. Then, after Conor, Zech, and I piece together the torn Confetti (despite me bursting into laughter and blowing away the pieces sporadically), we take a picture of that. (Incidentally, there was a stray piece of another card, as seen by the red 1-mana symbol that was randomly sitting around that we accidentally picked up with the Chaos Confetti pieces. "And you thought that was just an urban legend." Well, urban legend no more! Someone tore up a Chaos Confetti! And... that's about all I can remember about today's MTG fest. Now I gotta work on my EE122 Project. Excuse me! Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 3) Total: 8 Two unrelated notes: 1) Congratulations to Amy Hwang and Tracy Wang, both of whom made it into Tau Beta pi! 2) Sarah's birthday is coming up. What should I get her? The end! ...I mean, Good Night! Friday, September 24, 2004--CS61c Lab... toward the end of it, this dude was complaining that the labs were too short/easy... CS61c Lecture... EE122 Discussion... And so begins my long journey to finish my EE122 project... (Oh, I ended up going to fencing last night, by the way...) Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 5) Total: 10... So many ellipses... Good Night! Thursday, September 23, 2004--My legs still hurt... that and I have a lot of work to do. I think I'll skip fencing today, mainly because it isn't fun if you're legs are frickin' sore and if you're worried about schoolwork in the back of your mind. Of course, I'll still drop by to pay my dues and tell Abdul I need to reschedule... On an unrelated note, I had a dream last night in which Joyce Sakata (my next door neighbor) met Joyce Lai (my friend from the ARML). It was amusing to say the least... Joyce certainly was in character! EE105 Lecture... EE122 Lecture... Lunch... It was at this point that I realized that I had left my EE105 folder in the EECS Undergrad Lounge at 240 Cory, so I trekked back up to fetch up. I found it, but to my dismay, all my lecture notes had been stolen! That sucks because Boser doesn't put up his lecture notes online. What's most interesting is that whoever took my Lecture notes left my Lab notes... hmm... Music 26ac... sat next to Kim again, but almost fell asleep on her because #1, we sat right next to each other rather than (as I normally do it) leave one seat between us (due to a room constraint), and #2, I was so frickin' tired... Dinner... I ran into Fen at the DC, so I ended up eating with her. Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 1) Total: 5 A piece of advice that applies to anything: "It's best not to think about it..." Good Night! Wednesday, September 22, 2004--Happy Birthday to my mother! EE120 Discussion... CS61c Discussion... CS61c Lecture... Lunchbreak... EE120 Lecture... Went to the Music Library to do my listening assignment... The end... Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 2) Total: 8 Good Night... Tuesday, September 21, 2004--I woke up this morning and discovered my legs were sore and stiff. Ow! A Year Ago Today: I beat FFTactics. EE105 Lecture... EE122 Lecture... EE105 Lab... it took so long that I had to buy my lunch from the GBC and eat it during Music 26ac... Hanging out in the HKN Soda office... TBP Meeting... Upon getting back to my dorm... Joyce: Oh, you're just in time for Double Jeopardy! Me: Eh, you know I work late on Tuesdays... I spent the rest of the night doing CS homework. Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 6) Total: 10 MTG Mood Meter: Ow Good Night! Monday, Septebmer 20, 2004--The worst thing about updating late is that you forget stuff. Fortunately, that also means that anything I say is most definitely worth saying, because I have already forgotten things that aren't worth remembering. EE105 Discussion... CS61c Lecture... Lunchbreak... EE120 Lecture... Later that night, I went fencing. At one point, I was like "Man, my legs are so tired... let's keep fencing!" It was clearly a mistake, because now (Tuesday and Wednesday), my legs are so frickin' sore that it's really hard for me to climb down stairs or down steep inclines. Grr... Afterwards, we went to Ben & Jerry's for ice cream, though, so it's all good. Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 5) Total: 8 Good Night! Sunday, September 19, 2004--Sorry about the uber-late update. I've been busy as of late... In any case, today, I went to try to do my homework, only to realize I left the book at Berkeley (which was where the homework problems were). So instead, I played the piano and looked pointedly at websites that I no longer remember. Anyways, I later returned to Berkeley. Yay! I spent until roughly 2am checking EE120 answers with Tracy. Boo! Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 2) Total: 4 Good Night! Saturday, September 18, 2004--Woke up in the morning... played the piano... worked on my special project... drove parents to Chinese School to pick up my bro who had the other car... Speaking of which, Frank got his driver's license today. It was his first try, and no less at Santa Teresa, with only two points against him. (For those of you who don't know, the Santa Teresa DMW is hard as hell...) Lucky for him, he's had 3 years of me driving, so that he could learn from my mistake. Anyways, back to my story... lunch at McDonald's... ah, here's the meat of the entree: Champions of Kamigawa Prerelease today! Anyways, I showed up at about 1:30pm, and did some business (sold some of my lesser cards), and waited until 6:30pm before the 2nd Flight started. Man, I swear they started much earlier than this for Fifth Dawn. And the room they used today sucked, too. For Fifth Dawn, they had it in the Camino Room, but for Kamigawa, they had it in the Cardinal Room. (There's also a Stanford room... yes, the Prerelease was held in Palo Alto, but eh, what are you going to do about it. At least Berkeley still has Games of Berkeley and Eudemonia, and some of the best players in the world.) Anyways, the promotional card was a Ryusei, the legendary red dragon. I received one Tournament Pack and 2 Kamigawa boosters. Memorable cards include a foil Gibbering Kami, three Befouls (one of which was foil), Gutwrencher Oni (and a Blood Speaker to get it out), Akki Lavarunner/Tok-Tok, Volcano Born, 2 Reach Through Mists, a Peer Through Depths, a third Kitsune Healer, Samurai of the Pale Curtain (sweet artwork), Vassal's Duty, Budoka Gardener/Dokai, Weaver of Life, the black Myojin, and Shisato. I decided to play a red/black deck, mainly because of triple Befoul and because red and black have so much removal! Here is my deck: 9 Swamps 8 Mountains Lantern-Lit Graveyard Nezumi Cutthroat Cruel Deceiver Kami of the Waning Moon Bloodthirsty Ogre 2xNezumi Ronin Gibbering Kami Cursed Ronin Blood Speaker 3xBefoul Gutwrencher Oni Akki Rockspeaker 2xBattle-Mad Ronin Glacial Ray Brutal Deceiver Yamabushi's Flame Hanabi Blast Akki Lavarunner/Tok-Tok, Volcano Born Sokenzan Bruiser In my first round, I played this kid who went Blue-Black, I believe. The first game, I creamed him with my Gutwrencher Oni. The second game, he had my back to the corner half the time, but because he didn't know that once I declare blockers, the creature is blocked, so it saved me 8 damage (I won with 11 life, so it wouldn't have mattered anyway), but eventually I won, I think also with the Oni. In any case, he had the card Scuttling Death which was really annoying. That's the card he messed up on twice to save my life. I eventually blocked it with something else and both of our creatures died. Another time, he had a Cruel Deceiver, and I attacked into it with my Sokenzan Bruiser, hoping that he wouldn't reveal a land, and that I'd destroy his Deceiver outright. Well, I got lucky. (Or maybe not, considering most decks aren't more than 50% land.) In any case, it was a solid win. Record: 1-0 My second round was against a kid who went Green-White. I creamed him utterly, with the Oni, I believe. Not much memorable stuff in this round. Record: 2-0 At this point, I was getting nervous because I had never had such a good record going into the third round. However, I was happy because at this point, I was guaranteed a prize. (2-1-1 is the minimum to get prizes, and I could most likely draw fourth round to split prizes.) On an unrelated note, the guy sitting next to me offered to give me the last of his fries if I'd throw away his trash for him, which I did. Come to think of it, I never got dinner... I already forgot that I was hungry, but now that I think about it, I'm hungry! Anyway, my third round was against this dude named Johnathon, who also played green-white, I believe. In any case, I creamed him the first game. Second game, I got out my Blood Speaker, but I sac'ed it too fast and revealed to him the Gutwrencher Oni, and he then decided to respond to my sac by burning the Blood Speaker to death. I decided to let him have it because technically I didn't stop to give him a chance to respond. In any case, he got out a Long-Forgotten Gohei, and proceeded to beat me down with his spirits. Third game, he got out two 3/2 flying white guys, and this one 3/2 non-flying white guy. (I forget their names.) In any case, I draw the Befoul I needed, but I played it on the non-flyer (who was untapped--I wanted to attack for damage) instead of on the flyer, which I couldn't block. As a result, he had a clock on me and eventually beat me despite my strugglings. Record: 2-1 My last round was against Greg, whom I had played in the 5th Dawn prerelease, who used Vedalken Shackles on me. (We drew last time.) Greg made a deal with me that whoever won would give the loser 2 boosters, so that no matter what happened, we'd both go home with some prizes. I offered to draw outright, partly because I didn't want to risk a booster and partly because I wanted to go home (it was 10pm), but Greg wanted to play, so we played. It turned out that it was a good thing I had accepted the 4/2 split. He was playing a black-white deck, and in the first game, I creamed him, using all three of my Befouls. At one point, he played a Bushi Tenderfoot, and double-enchanted it with Indomitable Will, and managed to kill a creature of mine, flipping it to become Kenzo the Hardhearted. It was insane, and I was worried (10 damage per turn, even though he was at 2 and I was at 20). In any case, I topdecked the third Befoul and killed him, and then won. Second game, I simply brutalized him. In neither game did I get out my Oni. Oh, well. Record: 3-1 So we split the 6 boosters and I got 4 of them. Memorable cards include: two more Reach Through Mists, a second Peer Through Depths, Kitsune Blademaster (sweet artwork), a fourth Befoul, a second Blood Speaker Honden of Life's Web, a Brothers Yamazaki (it's cool because you can have two without the legend rule kicking in), a second Vassal's Duty, Kitsune Mystic/Autumn-Tail, Kitsune Sage, Isamaru, and a Hisoka, Minamo Sensei. One interesting story to tell: apparently there's a three card combo (Reach Through Mists, Peer Through Depths, and Sift Through Sands) that, when played in a single turn, allow you to summon The Unspeakable. It reminds me of using Dark Supplicant to summon the Scion of Darkness, except the Unspeakable isn't as good as the Scion, and the 3 instants are harder to pull of than sac'ing 3 random Clerics. Still, I feel like building a deck around it... maybe... After that, I finally went home and arrived some time at 11:30. *yawn* It's getting late! Good Night to you all... Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 2) Total: 7 Friday, September 17, 2004--Happy Birthday, Frank! A Year Ago Today: I meet Tracy Wang... even though I mis-remembered her name as "Chelsea" instead. I also need to add an "A Year Ago Today" to yesterday's entry. CS61c Lab... CS61c Lecture... EE122 Discussion... Then, I went home. w00t! Also, that Chrono Trigger sheet music I ordered arrived! w00t! Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 3) Total: 7 Last night, I had a dream that I was living in a dorm room with a little Asian girl named Joy O'Seiff. Apparently, her name was a combination of Joy(ce) O'(Reilly) and (Gabriel Na)ssif. How amusing... She wasn't that cute, though. Good Night! Thursday, September 16, 2004--EE105 Lecture... EE122 Lecture... Lunch... Music 26ac Lecture... with Kim... there was an African American Ewe performance, a dance-drumming thing. We got dismissed early because the Ewe dudes finished early. A Year Ago Today: I "met" Melody Hsu. In any case, Joyce wants me to watch Jeopardy for her while she's at the Architecture shop tour... she's becoming more like Jen every day. This is being typed in the middle of the show. I'll tell you if Ken Jennings is still winning some other day. (As of yesterday's airing, he's up to 46-days.) I also have fencing tonight, which I will have to tell you about later. Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 6) Total: 9 Good Night! Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - Addendum--On my way to EE120 today, I ran into Vy, one of the girls from the Cheney 7th floor last year. Apparently, she remembers me, and she actually thought I was older than her. I dunno why... Apparently, she doesn't know me too well, but then again, I don't know her very well either, outside of this commercial: Vy: (speaking of the Harry Potter Books) ...but he's part moogle, too! Me: You mean muggle. Don't confuse moogles with muggles, my dear. Vy: Ahaha... moogles are cute! Me: Yes they are. Also, Vivian Liu IMed me today... WTF?!? Wednesday, September 15, 2004--"It's best not to think about it..." EE120 Discussion... but Tracy wasn't there... CS61c Discussion... CS61c Lecture... Lunch... EE120 Lecture... apparently Tracy had some mad programming to do for this cs162 project, so she missed class. In anycase, Anantharam spent the entire lecture trying (and failing) to teach the class how to solve differential and difference equations. It was boring, since I figured it out just by looking at one slide. (I slept through most of the lecture.) Of course, I had learned differential equations before, so I had an advantage. Who says high school is useless? Went to the Music Library to listen... the African Drum Gahu is pretty cool! Dinner... Slacking... Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 4) Total: 6 Some random person with the AIM "yubiquee" is IMing me. Kellie knows who it is, but she's not divulging any information. Anyways, Good Night! Tuesday, September 14, 2004--EE105 Lecture... For some reason, I decided to sit next to Daisy today, even though Daisy and I don't exactly get along for reasons beyond the scope of this Journal entry. EE122 Lecture... EE105 Lab... it was on a circuit simulator called SPICE, invented at Berkeley. Quick lunch at the GBC... Music 26ac... I sat between Kim and Vincent (who is also a TBP officer). Anglo-American religious music... yum... Then, Vince and I went to the Foothill DC because it was more convenient than walking 15 minutes to X-roads and walking all the way back for the TBP Officer meeting. At the DC, we ran into 4 other TBP dudes and Daisy, who declined to sit with us because "there was no room at the table". Me: I think she declined because of me. Vikram: Yeah, I think it is your fault. Again, refer to the first paragraph of this entree. TBP meeting... Robert gave me a gigantic stack of old TBP president contact info and wanted me to contact them to fill out some form etc etc. Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 4) Total: 8 Ahh... Good Night! Monday, September 13, 2004--EE105 Discussion... apparently, our TA has an AIM SN... how amusing... CS61c Lecture... Lunch break... EE120 Lecture... since Tracy opted to sit somewhere that I did not want to sit, I fell asleep during lecture. Oh, and Block Dude level 7 is so frickin' annoying. I went to the Music Library to do the listening. However, while listening to the second song, the comp I was using broke down, so I hopped from one computer to another trying to find one that worked. I saw Kim while I was hopping around. Unfortunately, I still couldn't find a working comp. Then, Kim left, and I immediately moved into her vacant seat because her comp was working. Dinner... Fencing... Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 5) Total: 8 It's getting late... so, Good Night! Sunday, September 12, 2004--Today, I spent lots of time doing my homework because I had a lot of it due Monday and I had put it all off until today... hey, I like having my Fridays and Saturdays free! So... yeah, I was doing homework until dinner time... Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 5) Total: 6 Short entry! Good Knight! Saturday, September 11, 2004--How about a moment of silence for the tragic events that happened today 3 years ago... ... (This is funny because, unless you read my website aloud, my website is always silent.) ... Okay, so today, I worked on my secret project, and then I went to the football game (although not with the same group of people I wanted to go with... they decided to stay in their dorms and do homework on a Saturday! Who the fork does homework on a Saturday, anyway?). In any case, we creamed the New Mexico Aggies (what the hell is an aggy, anyway?) so badly that it was a boring game. We won 41-14 in the end. At least the final score was a palindrome! Other than that, Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 4) Total: 10 MTG Mood Meter: Eyes of the Watcher Good Night! Friday, September 10, 2004--CS61c Lab... CS61c Lecture... EE122 Discussion... So many people doing a last minute homework rush... which I turned in later. Friday! Yay! AO... secret project... Food... Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 6) Total: 11... Good Night! Thursday, September 9, 2004--H[censored]... WTF?!? Oh, shit! EE105 Lecture... EE122 Lecture... Lunch... EE120 Lecture... Dinner... Fencing... Homework... I stayed up until 2:30am doing homework... because I'm a slacker... Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 5) Total: 9 Good Night! Wednesday, September 8, 2004--EE120 Discussion... CS61c Discussion... CS61c Lecture... Lunch... EE120 Lecture... Tracy had a muffin she wanted to get rid of, so she tried to feed it to me... it kept me awake during the second half of the lecture. It was a very convoluted lecture... he spent over an hour on convolutions. (Speaking of convolutions, doesn't the world "convoluted" imply the word "convolute"? Yet, ZolaOnAol recognizes "convoluted", but not "convolute". How... strange...) Anyways, afterwards, I went to the Music Library to listen to some music. Then, I ate dinner. Now, I'm slacking off. Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 4) Total: 7 There's more I could write, but I'm getting lazy. I'll put 'em up as addendums some other day. Good Night! Tuesday, September 7, 2004--EE105 Lecture... EE122 Lecture... EE105 Lab... Late lunch at GBC... Last night, I found out Kim was in my Music 26ac Lecture, so I met up with her and was about to sit with her today, but she sat too close to the front for comfort, so I ditched her and sat somewhere else. Don't worry about Kim, though. She certainly didn't mind my ditching her. TBP Meeting... watching Karen type up the meeting minutes is amewsing... Late dinner at Xroads... Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 2) Total: 5 Good Night! Monday, September 6, 2004--Did some homework because I shouldn't slack off this whole long weekend... even though I probably did, but I did do some homework. After returning to Berkeley... well, there's really not much of this story to tell. Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 5) Total: 9 Short entree. Good Night! Sunday, September 5, 2004--It occured to me. Kim = Sarah. How amusing... I can't let that happen again. Although Ke and Mark will claim that Kim = Cindy, but those two comparisons are based on two totally different things. In any case, on the MTG Worlds 2004 Live Webcast today, I got to see Affinity LOSE, LOSE, and LOSE... and the whole thing was won by a 15-year-old kid. Wow... And... umm... that's all folks! Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 1) Total: 6 Good Night! Saturday, September 4, 2004--It finally came down to it, huh... (Final Fantasy 8) *8*Apparently, FF8 isn't quite as easy as I thought. There's something called Sorceress Adel, who can be quite a bitch (in more than one way). She kicked my ass repeatedly in combat, and for once, I need to actually think about a strategy to beat her. (Haven't had to do this since FF5, methinks.) Of course, part of the reason is that Seifer carries a stock of Auras which I can Draw off of, and Auras are very powerful because they allow me to use Limit Breaks at high HP, and Limit Breaks are very powerful. But still, the only way I can imagine myself having a chance of beating Adel is a suicide blitz. Deal enough damage to kill her before she kills me. With or without Aura, I'm dead as soon as she casts Ultima. Thankfully, I know that Quistis' Homing Laser deals a good 6k to Adel and Zell has godly powerful Limit Breaks, so if I could just get that up and running, Adel will be Adead in no time. ...but I prolly won't get a chance to try it until next week.*8* After that, I read the MTG coverage for Worlds 2004, then went to sleep at around 3am, planning to wake up at 8:30am to see the live webcast at 9am. Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 5) Total: 8 Good Night! Friday, September 3, 2004--Ahh... Friday... So I did the CS61c Lab within an hour, and therefore got the extra credit. Yay! After a short break, CS61c Lecture... The Kilo Mega Giga etc mnemonics are quite humorous, yo! EE122 Discussion was cancelled this week, so I played some more WoW while waiting for my mom to pick me up. And then when I finally got home, after playing WoW for another few hours, I finally got bored of it... solo'ing gets old, ya know? And I'm not a multiplayer player... unless you mean a different kind of player... Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 1) Total: 6 Zugzug! Good Night! Thursday, September 2, 2004--My excuse for not updating until Sunday is that I just got the World of Warcraft beta stress test today, so I was up playing it. In anycase, my day started out with an EE105 Lecture... ...which was followed by an EE122 Lecture... ...which was followed by a lunch break at the GBC... After resting up a bit in my dorm, I went to my Music 26ac Lecture... It was only after dinner that I checked my e-mail and realized that I had the WoW beta, so I set about downloading and installing it. However, it was f~~~ing huge, and I eventually went to fencing while it was still downloading. When I got back, it had finally finished, so I set about the long process of installing it. Finally, I played and went to sleep at an (uber-late) 3am. Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 6) Good Night! Wednesday, September 1, 2004--Early in the morning, I decided that the lines at Copy Central were short enough for me to grab a copy of the Music 26ac reader... so I did. 9am EE120 Discussion... Basically, we just go over sample problems, except the TA made a mistake on one. 10am CS61C Discussion... which is directly before 11am CS61C Lecture... Lunch at the GBC... 2pm EE120 Lecture... it's like a review of EE20. Afterwards, I went to the Music Library to do the listening for Music 26ac. Then, I went to grab the cards Justin ordered. Finally, after a long uphill battle, I went to a TBP Officer meeting, the majority of which did not concern me because I would not be going on the retreat for various raisons. Belated dinner at the Crossroads... Now... Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 1) Total: 4 Good Night! Tuesday, August 31, 2004--Second day of classes... 9:30am, EE105... meh... 11am, EE122... apparently, the Internet was invented on September 2, 1969, by UCLA researchers... and UC Berkeley didn't get the internet until the the 1980s, pretty late in the internet game as far as universities go. Lunch at the GBC... 3:30pm, Music 26ac... not much to say... After dinner, I spent going on the internet. However, at roughly 7ish, the fire alarm went off, so we all got to go outside to play in the... uhh... kupo... *mutters*Stupid fire alarm!*mutters* MTG Mood Meter: Raise the Alarm Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 4) Total: 5 Anyways, I'm off to be a good student now. Good Night! Monday, August 30, 2004 - Addendum-- MTG Mood Meter: Culling the Weak Yeah, I better explaing... you see, the first day of Fencing practice was today, and well over 100 beginners showed up, so while it's good to have so many fencers, it's way too overcrowded. Thus, so begins the process of having the weak drop out and keeping only the best. In any case, Abdul, our new coach, is crazy (but good). He pushes us so hard in our conditioning, that I was sweating like mad before I even began fencing. Monday, August 30, 2004--First day of class today... how depressing... At 9am, I had an EE105 Discussion, except it wasn't meeting today, so I just left. Then, at 11am, I had CS61C Lecture. From my first impression, Prof Garcia sounds like a good prof, but he talks so damn fast! Lunch at the GBC... At 2pm, I had EE120 Lecture, which was in 277 Cory, which became stupidly crowded as 150+ people tried to jam their way into a room with only 100ish seats. I sat next to Tracy, because's she's cool like that. Since there was no Music 26ac Discussion today, I had the rest of the day off, so I went back and began my reading in the lounge (for two reasons... I'll leave it up to you to guess) before dinner. After dinner, I went online, and after this, I will go fencing. Perhaps I will post up an addendum later tonight. Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 5) Total: 9 MTG Mood Meter: Metal Fatigue Good Night! Sunday, August 29, 2004--Tomorrow's the first day of class... grr... In any case, I decided not to play Gunbound today. Instead, I worked on my special project. In the evening, just before dinner, Jen, Tiffany, and Steven came and visited me. Yay! Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 1) Total: 5 MTG Mood Meter: Goblin Psychopath Good Night! Saturday, August 28, 2004--Gunbound... more Gunbound... lunch... Gunbound... dinner... not Gunbound, but surfing the internet randomly... (I've obtained the rank of stone hammer.) Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 3) Total: 9 MTG Mood Meter: Timmy, Power Gamer Good Night! Friday, August 27, 2004--Today, I got Bernard to get me into Putnam, where is apparently on the same floor as my old friend Alice Tzou. So I get myself into Putnam, and later, I meet up with Alice again (who looks the same, yet so different that I hardly recognize her). So then she, I, Bernard, and the Putnam 5th floor had lunch together, but then I ditched them and finished my lunch with Anika, Yanmin, and their friends, because I needed to catch up with Anika, Yanmin, and their friends. Anika: Oh, hey, it's [name]! Hi [name]! *waves* Dude: Maybe Anika's just waving randomly in hopes that she'll get someone's attention. Anika: I'm not that desperate. Then, I went to Caltopia and did a little Saber demonstration. Then, after a quick nap, I went to the card shops and then went to a booster draft. I drafted a deck so crappy, it's not even worth writing down. What happened was that I tried to force red at first, but then, after about 3 picks, there were no more reds coming, so I quickly went with white as my second color. Unfortunately, white stopped coming, too, and I had seen so much green going around, that about 10th pick or so, I decided to go into green... then green stopped coming around... What I did do correctly, though, was that I managed to snag two Tyrranaxes, two Ouphe Vandals, a Tel-Jilad Justice, and a pair of Tel-Jilad Wolves. In any case, it was my first 5th dawn booster draft, and my first time trying to force red, which means either one of two things--either I suck at 5th Dawn booster drafts, or I suck at drafting red. Actually, since most of my best cards were from 5th Dawn, and since my deck was mostly green, it probably does mean I suck at drafting red. Oh well. In anycase, some dude named Ryan (not to be confused with Taco Ryan) got 3 Blind Creepers, 2 Nim Helments, and 3 Grimclaw Bats. All three of those Blind Creepers came through me, and they were all consecutive. For those of you who don't know, Blind Creeper is pretty much one of the best black creatures (so damn mana-efficient) that has seen print in a long long time. I regret not hate-drafting at least one of those things. And I'm trying to figure out why Dave (the Games of Berkeley booster draft grandmaster) passed him all three, even though he was playing black. In any case, thanks to this, the Dave vs Ryan (Grandmaster vs 3 Blind Creepers) was quite interesting. Dave himself admitted that Ryan outplayed him, but he managed to win, apparently, thanks to a pair of Fleshgrafters. Another story worth telling is that in my first game against my second opponent, a lady named Amanda, got a turn 4 Green Bringer on me, and since I was mana-flooded, I promptly forfeited. Amanda: You're no fun. On my way back to my dorm, I picked up some Top Dogs... Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 6) Total: 10 MTG Mood Meter: Relentless Rats There's a story behind that. My Rat deck has 20 Relentless Rats, 6 real, 14 proxies. Today, I bought 8 more at Eudemonia, bringing the count up to 14. Then, I was passed one in the booster draft, which I prompty drafted (which probably hurt my deck, but meh), bringing my real rat count to 15. Yay! I'm so close to the finish line! Also, Ralph (the guy in charge of the booster draftering) gave everyone promotional Kitsune Healers... even though they aren't actually promotional. Anyways, this entry is too long. Good Night! Thursday, August 26, 2004 - Addendum--There's a war going on between the halls of Unit 2. I live in Griffiths, and it started a few days ago when I saw Andrew and Aneesh with the stolen Davidson banner (which was supposed to be hung on their 3rd floor balcony). The next day, I noticed that Cunningham was missing, so only Ehrman remained. Finally, tonight, I learned that we had stolen all three, and they were all hanging, one on each balcony, upside down, so I decided to take a look. However, when I went to look, I discovered that not one, but 2 parties had come to steal them back. (Later, it turns out there were three, all acting simultaneously, though perhaps not independently.) There was some commotion. I stalled the Ehrman teamed, but didn't get directly involved. An RA had to write some people up (a girl was pushed against her own knowledge... "Who was pushed?" "You were!" "Really? I was?"). Next, I saw Cunningham hanging on Cunningham. It began to fall off. Now, it's not there anymore. Whether it was taken back by us (or by somebody else) or whether it simply fell down, I don't know, but I will check. More information later! Thursday, August 26, 2004--Calapalooza today. I went there with Joyce and Guillermo (Irene was nowhere to be found), and after going to the fencing table, I completely lost track of them. However, while a-wandering around, I ran into a bunch of people, including, but not limited to: Kim, Melody, Maria, Angela, Mark, Ryan. Okay, that's not quite so many people. Then, in the afternoon, I played Gunbound for way too long. (I know this because my eyes are tired.) It was fun, though. I'm still a double wooden hammer. My GB SN is "Viltris". Dinner at X-roads... Watched TV... Later tonight, I intend to go meet the Health Workers at the "Meet Your Health Workers" event. Other than that... Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 1) Total: 4 Ahh... the end of the long journal entries... Good Night! Wednesday, August 25, 2004--After waking up at 7 and showering, I decided--since I was worried I'd might disturb my roommate--to go chill in the 3rd floor lounge, which I did. There was Jabberwocky on the chalkboard, which I had written up there out of amusement. (I had also written it up on the 4th floor mini-lounge, to which somebody had replied with a chalk-written "Huh?") At 9, I decide to go back to my room and discover, to my joy, that the internet was finally up, so I spent from 9am to 2pm--stopping only for half an hour to eat lunch--on the internet. I only stopped when I finally decided that I had spent too much time in front of my computer. So I went down to the third floor and visited around. Coming back up, I saw Joyce, and we had grapes, and she tried to buy football tickets. In the meantime, I decided to get back on my computer and play Gunbound... Hmm... Gunbound is Korean... I'll have to ask Minjung if she's heard about it. Speaking of Minjung, I asked her if she had a measuring cup we could borrow, and that apparently prompted her to come down to do her laundry. Oh, wait, I'm getting ahead of myself now. Yeah, Irene wanted to do her laundry, so we went down to the 2nd floor laundry room, and I quickly showed her the ropes. However, she was using powder-detergent, and couldn't find her measuring cup, so I went a looking. I didn't have one; Guillermo didn't have one; Joyce didn't have one; Minjung didn't have one, so I went back to Irene and dug and found the measuring cup. Unfortunately, in the process, we spilled a bit of the detergent, so I got some paper towels to clean it up. I then suggested that we wet the paper towel, because it would pick up the powder better. "Worst case scenario," I say, "we have a clean floor." I was almost right. It was actually a clean soapy floor. A clean soapy slippery floor. A clean soap slippery floor that had been caused by my careless suggestion. So at that point, Minjung arrives with her landry to launder, and I busily try to unslip the floor. Then, while waiting for the laundry to be done, I tried to figure out what was wrong with Minjung's not-working internet... but to know avail. I came to the conclusion that she was unable to connect to the network, but I didn't know whether the problem was on her end or ResComp's end. Eventually, I gave up because her frickin' computer is all in Korean. Eventually, I go back to my room, and then headed off to dinner at Crossroads. There, I ran into none other than Anika, Kim's former roommate, and Yanmin, the lefted-handed fencer. I planned to have dinner with them, but while making my rounds to get food, I run into Minjung and her friend who's name I forget. They asked me if I was here with friends, and to be honest, I told them that I was there alone, so they invited me to sit with them. Then, after dinner, Minjung, her friend, and I went to the Griffiths Main Lounge where, again I played the piano, and then we played pool. Various people came in and out of the lounge and we played several games of pool. Caesar from my floor is hella good at pool. Apparently, playing Yahoo! Pool is a good way to learn the angles and the collisions, but the only way to get good shooting technique is by playing... the sticks sucked though. Then, I came back to my room. A Year Ago Today: The first day of Freshman College classes. Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 4) Total: 10 MTG Mood Meter: Wonder Good Night! Tuesday, August 24, 2004--Woke up at 7. Showered, breakfast, brush teeth, usual morning stuff... headed out to the bookstore at 8, but apparently Ned's opens at 9. Heh, whoops! Anyways, at 9, I managed to buy my books all right. Also at 9, there was an event scheduled to take the dorm to the gym. Since I was not at the dorm, I didn't go with them, but I saw them on the other side of the street as I brought my books back to my dorm. Later, at 11:15-ish, I invite Guillermo, Joyce, and Irene to go eat lunch with us at Crossroads. It first started with me inviting Joyce... Me: Hey Joyce, you wanna come eat lunch with us at Crossroads? Joyce: Okay. Me: Cool. If you see Ivy, invite her too for me, k? Joyce: K. (I walk away... apparently, Irene comes up the stairs at that point) Hey, Irene, you wanna go eat lunch with Dwayne and Guillermo right now? Me: Oh, crap, did I just call you Ivy? Irene: It's okay. You said you would. Me: Yeah... but I didn't mean to. Slip of the tongue... Anyways, after lunch, I tell Guillermo, Joyce, and Irene to head back without me while I finish up, so they did. On my way back to the dorm, I see them on there way from the dorm to the meeting place where the RAs would be taking us grocery shopping, so I thought what the heck, since I'm here, I might as well go with them. So we all take this huge hike to a grocery store on Telegraph who's name I forgot, and we buy stuff and we come back. After some time that's taken up by a memory lapse, at 3:45, Guillermo, Joyce, and Irene head over to the Chancellor's Reception, despite my warnings that the Reception was the same as the Convocation--boring speeches and free food. During that time, I visited the 3rd floor, and I ran into Angela Nguyen, who apparently lives directly below me. That is, if I were to drill a hole in the floor of my room, I would end up in Angela's room. Cool, isn't it? Apparently, her boyfriend Eugene was here visiting. I also chilled with Lynn and Aura (mostly Aura, as Lynn went to take a shower), who had opted out of the Chancellor's reception. After taking dinner by myself, I went to the CalConnect workshop and registered for an In-Room Connection (which are godly fast). Unfortunatly, it would be a while before it started working. During that time, I went exploring and finally ended up chilling in Minjung's room and talking to her and her roommate and trying to get Minjung's Korean computer to connect to wireless all while Minjung was taping paper to a box. I must have spent a good hour and a half there... In anycase, I finally went back to my room, watched a bit of TV, and then went to bed prompty at 11 as my schedule demands me to be in a habit of doing. (Remember, this entry was written on Wednesday as well.) Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 5) Total: 9 Woot! Same roll as yesterday! Man... these are some long entries. Oh, well, Good Night! Monday, August 23, 2004--I'm trying to figure out what happened when where and why. You see, I moved back into Berkeley today, and I haven't had internet until Wednesday (it's actually Aug 25 when I'm writing this, by the way), and I've had so much fun that everything's become a jumble in my head and I'm trying to figure out what happened first, what happened next, and what happened last. Hopefully, looking at this schedule of Res Hall events will help... circa 10:30am... I finish packing and mom drives me over to Berkeley in her van, a Nissan Quest. It's pretty old, I forget which year exactly. Anyways, I already know I'm in Unit 2 Griffiths room [censored... ask Viltris online for more information], since I signed up for it last year. It's essentially the same room as I had last year--a corner Double, right next to the elevator. circa 12pm... I arrive and make myself at home. circa 1pm... I eat lunch at Crossroads. circa 1:30pm... Upon getting back into my room, I meet my roommate, a kid named Guillermo Murga. He's a cool kid. He uses a Mac, but he uses AIM. circa 3:45pm... Guillermo decides to go to the Student Convocation, even though I've warned him that all it is is a boring speech and free food afterwards. I decide to go work on my project on my computer--I had no internet and was bored since most of the people in my hall had gone to the Convocation. circa 4pm... Earlier today, I had found Lily's room (she's on the 3rd floor--the all girls' floor--as we had previously suspected) and I left her a message on her whiteboard. So she came a-walking, a-knocking upon my door. So yeah, she chilled in my room, then we went to her room where we chilled, and I met her roommates, Lynn and Aura. Then, Lily said she needed to use a computer, so I offered to take her to the Unit 2 Computing Center. Unfortunately, the damned thing was closed, so I offered to take her to the Library, where there would be internet access. On our way there, we ran into Joyce Lai (Joyce, Lily, and I all know each other from ARML) standing near the Convocation hoping to get some free food. So we chilled and chatted, and then finally I showed Lily to the Library. Upon coming out, I chilled with Joyce some more and ran into Ke, Ken E, and met Anthony Wee (I think that was him), who were here for the free food. In anycase, I opted out of the free food and went back to my dorm. It was roughly 5pm. circa 5:30pm... I went out to Crossroads for dinner, but apparently, today they don't open until 6, so I went back to my room to chill for another half hour. At 6, I make another attempt to eat dinner at Crossroads, and on my way down the stairs, I met this girl on the 3rd floor named Minjung, whom was moving a refrigerator into her room. circa 6:45pm... I return to my room and meet Joyce and Irene (who's full initials spell IVY) who live next door to me. There would be Ice Cream at 9pm that night, so we chilled first in the Main Lounge (where I played the piano for them and later played pool with them), then somewhere else I don't remember. 9pm... Ice Cream... Joyce, Irene, Guillermo, and I got lucky, as we were right in front of the table, so when the ice cream was ready, we got in and got our ice cream before the line had properly formed. It was cool. In the meantime, I ran into Lily who thanked me for being her guide. circa 9:15pm... Joyce, Irene, Guillermo, and I watch the Olympics in my room... Funny thing was, I didn't know Joyce and Irene wanted to come in, so I almost closed the door on them. It wasn't until I heard Joyce go "ack" did I realize that something was wrong. 10pm... Joyce, Irene, and Guillermo go Ice Skating. I declined, so I chilled in my room watching Friends (the last few seasons are so soap-opera-ish... it's unbearable sometimes) and using my comp until I finally went to bed at 11... Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 5) Total: 9 Good Night! Sunday, August 22, 2004--Chances are, you won't see me for a few days because I'll be moving into Berkeley and it'll be a while before my internet comes back up. In any case, I spent time running maintenance on my computer. You know, the usual: Spybot, Virus Scan, Scandisk, Defrag... my computer's still in pretty good shape, but hey, it's only been about half a year. While waiting, I also played some FF8, and when the maintenance was finally done, I did some work on my project. Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 1) Total: 4 Good Night! And in case I don't see you, Good Night, Good Night, and Good Night! Saturday, August 21, 2004--We finally came home today, but not before eating at Half-Acre gardens for lunch. After playing some FF8 for a while, we went over to Jasmine Tzeng's place for some kind of dinner party, where while the adults chatted, we kids watched Dodgeball and the Olympics, and then I went and played Texas Hold 'em with Franklin, Willy, and Jeffrey... using betting with another deck of cards. For some reason, I kept winning. I dunno why. I'm just damn lucky, I suppose. Later, there was a dispute whether the Straight was higher or a Flush was higher. Jeffrey had the Straight. I had the Flush, but I thought the Straight was higher. The parents said it was the Flush, but the kids said it was the Straight. It's kind of funny... I was either wrong, or I'd lose the round, so it was a Lose-Lose situation. Then again, I was either right, or I'd win the jackpot, so it was a Win-Win situation. It turned out eventually that the Flush was higher, so I won it all, and the game was over. Like I said, I'm a damn lucky player. Oh, and for the record, the people attending the party included but not limited to me, Franklin, Jeffrey, Connie, Jasmine, Vivian Chu, Elaine Kuo, Deanne, and various little brothers that I do not recognize. A Year Ago Today: I meet Kim Hung on the Chancellor's Lawn. Dice Roll of the Night: (4, 3) Total: 7 Good Day! Friday, August 20, 2004--Oh, and all these entries are going to be short, because I don't remember much, because I'm just like that. Today, while our parents were tasting (and buying) wine, Franklin and I went over to somewhere else and played this game called Bocce Ball, where we had to throw these heavy balls and see who could get closest to this tiny white ball. It was amusing, except Frnaklin beat me 12-1 because he's Franklin and he's good with balls. Then, we drove over to this place for lunch and Franklin ordered a 1/2 lb burger, which he only took one bite out of. I finished half my turkey sandwich, and he traded sandwiches, and he took 3 bites out of my turkey sandwich and I ate half of his burger, so it was like I ate a whole sandwich while he ate nothing. It was amusing. Then we went over to our family friend's place in Vallejo and chilled there for the night, where we watched the Truman Show. Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 3) Total: 8 Good Night! Thursday, August 19, 2004--All of the entries starting today until Sunday were written on Sunday. That's because I was away from home these last few days because the termite killing dudes had to come over to gas the house to kill the termites... I hope it worked... because termites eat wood. Anyways, my family and I went over to Napa Valley to chill. We stayed at an Inn called Comfort in that night. Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 3) Total: 4 Good Night! Wednesday, August 18, 2004--Actually, yesterday, I didn't go over 100k. However, I think this time, it will go over... but I still won't make a new archive yet, because I'm lazy like that. In anycase, the Terminators came by to prep the house for the gassing. I tutored. I played FF8 (Disc 3 now), and... umm... Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 4) Total: 6 I forgot. Good Night! |