Sort Of

I'm almost there. I'm practically there. I can be there whenever I want to. I still haven't sent in most of my college applications yet.

I would bet that I'm in the 90% percentile not submitting college applications early. I really wish that I did, since I could have enjoyed my winter break a lot more, but what's done is done. I'm expecting to submit every single application (excluding my Canadian colleges), and just be done with it all. Of course I still have to submit my SAT score reports, but I'll cross that bridge on January 8th since that's when my scores are coming out.

Even though I should work on homework after finishing applications, that's a job saved for the last weekend.

What does a blind man dream?

Does he see what we see? If so, how would he see what we see?

I saw this question on the internet, and I couldn't help but wonder what the answer could possibly be. This is all of course, on the premise that the man was born blind.

These kind of questions always get me in a philosophical state of mind. For the question mentioned above, there is a definite answer since many blind people have been questioned about it, but even silly questions get the best of me: What happens when Pinocchio says his nose will grow?

I'm pretty sure that I'll always be in interested in this kind of stuff. My only hope is that I'll be able to get over them easily since there are no real answers to the large majority of these questions.

Xerces

There's been one song that I've been obsessed with for about a month now. The song is from an album that I downloaded over a year ago, and at that time, I hated it. I listened to it again and since my taste in music has changed over the year(s), I really really really like some of the songs. The one in particular that I'm talking about is Xerces by Deftones.



It calms me down so much whenever I listen to it. I don't know enough about music to say what genre it would be, but it has a metal-ish sound to it while sometimes being very smooth and mellow. I'm hoping that for all the songs I hate right now but have on my computer, I'll eventually fall in love with as well.

P.S. I haven't finished much of my college applications

College

Like everyone else in senior year who's been procrastinating, it's crunch-time. There's not much time left for me especially, since I have an internal deadline from my high school.
My goal right now is to get accepted into a decent college. I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to get into a couple of schools with some confidence, but for the rest of my schools, I really have no idea about or I'm pretty sure I won't get into them.
To make matters worse, I can't seem to find good ideas to write my supplements on, and I keep getting sidetracked by other things in my life when I find time to get them done.
I sincerely hope that by the time I write my next blog, I'll have finished at least half of my college applications.

Or maybe not. Depends on how my life goes.

The Cold

It always surprises me how much I like cold weather when it's hot outside. It surprises me even more that the opposite holds true as well. And whenever it becomes cold after a long spree of being in the scorching sun, I start wishing it was hot again. I guess I'm a hypocrite but what can I say. I forget the past easily but I try not to. When there's nothing to remind me of the past, my memories slip by me like a cold breeze.

It's pretty cold out right now. I have the window open but in ten minutes I'll most likely be shivering. Thirty minutes after that, I'll open the window again because it'll get too stuffy and the cycle goes on.

I'm starting to shiver now. I'd still say the cold is better than the heat.

SATs

I didnt get above 2200. I said that if i can't get over 2200, if i can't get over 2100, then i'm screwed for my goals. I got over 2100 so i'm not totally screwed, but it still doesnt feel every good that i couldn't get above my goal. The real problem is that i might not be able to take it again. I know that i can get over 2200 if i study just a little more, but i completely forgot that my school doesn't proctor the SAT in december, so i signed up too late and everywhere within a 2 hour drive of my house is full.

Just needed to get this off my chest. Such an asian worry.

Working Out

I worked out my entire summer break with almost no breaks in my routine. The only time i had to go off of my routine was when i went to my grandpa's house, where no gym was available for me to go work out at. I gained about 2-3kg but was still frustrated that i didnt gain any more in over two months. Once summer break ended, i chose to stop working out since my schedule would become pretty packed and the gym i went to had a pretty long commute. Over the course of a couple of months, i lost the 2-3kg i had gained.

Of course i was frustrated again. I was frustrated before that i had only gained 2-3kg, but losing the precious 2-3kg that i had gained so quickly was surprising to say the least. At this point, i gave up on trying to make any gains until i had a 3+ week break in school, which i could use to go work out. Luckily, the school gym became open for use in the mornings which i decided to take advantage of. I go with a few other people who live near me and although i have to get up over an hour earlier than i would normally have to, i feel it's worth it since i dont have to go on feeling down. Whether or not ill be able to make any gains is something i dont know for sure yet, but its worth a try since experience gained will help me not make the same mistakes again. Ill probably post back on this in a month or two. Its somewhat likely that i could stop by then if i get too backed up on school work and college applications.

Screen

It's broken. I've watched it religiously for over a year now, and it's finally broken. My macbook screen.

I'm still not sure what happened. I have my suspicions but I have no way to be sure of what exactly happened to my screen. Well, to reword that better, I can tell what happened to the screen since there's puncture mark on my macbook cover that lines up with my macbook, but I can't remember when this could have happened.

Up until the morning before I left, the screen was fine. Fine in the sense that it was as good as a macbook screen could be. But once I woke my macbook up from its hibernation, I was pleasantly surprised by a white mark that webs out to the rest of the screen.

My thoughts regarding this are still incoherent. I'm in a sort of denial about this, since fixing it would be great but at the same time, would take a few days and cost quite a bit more than $200. As of now, I'm planning to keep my broken screen until the start of winter break, since I most likely won't need my macbook as much as I need it now. I'm sure I'll change my mind a few times before I actually fix it though. Who knows, maybe I'll never get around to getting my screen fixed.

Looking at it right now is pissing me off.

Overclocking ATI

If anyone has read more than two of my blog posts, he/she knows that i just write about random stuff. Im interested in random things so i can't help it. For this particular blog post, if you aren't interested or know anything about graphics cards, you'll be completely lost.

In my desktop as of now, i have mid end set-up. Actually, when i built my computer a year ago, it was mid/high end, so it could be considered on the lower mid end. Regardless, my computer has a E8400 graphics card overclocked to 4.0GHz (not 4.2 since the summer temperature) a slightly overclocked HD4850. It's hard for me to remember the clocks on my 4850 since it's been months since i've even opened gpu-z up. I do remember the overclocking process though.

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2009/04/29/overclocking-the-ati-radeon-hd-4770/

This blog stood out to me because it is about overclocking the HD4770, which is similar to my 4850. I didn't have much luck with overclocking my own graphics card so it's always nice to get some happiness vicariously.

This person had relative success with overclocking. I'm not sure of the temperatures his card reached but i just know that regardless of it, he reached almost identical performance as a stock 4850. He got his memory and gpu slightly further than i did, which is where i should've gone to. During the winter, i'll probably re-overclock my 4850 for kicks just to see where i can get it to (again).

Dung Beetles

http://torch.cs.dal.ca/~riordan/sa2007/SA3/dungbeetle.jpg

Dung beetles eat crap. They eat what other animals throw away and have no care for. Animals can't eat their own feces, which is obvious since they excrete what they can't use. Dung beetles take this useless excrement, and use it as their sustenance.


Imagine eating your dog's feces. It's probably a not so pleasant idea considering the universal idea of how bad feces are. We are all probably genetic predisposed to disliking feces, since our own feces are poisonous to us. Yet another animal feeds and lives off of a material that we look at with disgust. It rolls these balls of crap up and ends up eating them.

People are constantly fascinated by these bugs as well. Just as I am doing now, people can't get enough of dung beetles since they are so opposite of us. It is strange to think that something we put down our mouths and out our anuses go back into another mouth. It's actually gross. But as well all know from the popularity of 2girls1cup (don't search since its inappropriate), it is also something that people are interested in.

Failure

I can't think of many notable things I've done in my life. In fact, as of right now, I can't think of a single thing. It makes me wonder what other people have done to feel accomplished. If anything, my life is nothing more than a failure.

I wish I had a right to whine about this. I haven't given a full effort at anything I've done, and I've never been dedicated to a certain cause. Knowing fully well how difficult something is, I give a half-assed attempt at it. I set myself up for failure, but at the same time, hold hope for success. It's a vicious cycle that leaves me with no trophies.

My only hope is that I do something I can be proud of. Right now, I can't think of anything that I can do that I would personally consider a success in life. Considering how I still have decades of my life left, I'm sure I'll do something eventually.

I'm such a failure tha









One more on the list

Improving Tennis

Practically everyone that has talked to me knows that I like to play tennis. I started because my best friend played, but my interest has grown into something much greater. I'm definitely not the best player you have or will ever see, nor will I ever become an amazing player. But regardless, I'll continue playing tennis until the day I become crippled and can't.

Improving my tennis game has always been a major concern of mine. When I first started, I took lessons with a well known pro (AKA a coach), and I improved quickly. After a few months of taking lessons, I decided to just play with my friends to improve, and this did not fare well. Of course I did play with my friends while I took lessons, but playing with my friends exclusively did not go hand in hand with becoming a better player. For many months, I stayed at a plateau mostly because I couldn't improve at a linear rate, or at all. It killed me after playing when I realized I was the same as before. I studied pros, and did whatever else I could, but either way, I didn't realize at this time that my plateau was due to a lack of instruction.

Skipping a year or so, I sat down and studied the actual mechanics of the tennis stroke, as well as strategy instead of just looking at the aesthetics of a stroke. I emulated as much as I could, and I exploded off of my plateau and took my game to the next level.

Changing my general strategy (or in my case, actually employing a strategy), was key in improving. My past playing style was to smash the ball, and hope it would go in. In the gaming world, this would be called the 'spray and pray.' I now try to just keep balls in, although I never dink anything over the net since that would be taken advantage of by a player of my level. I try to control my pace well, and also try to control topspin so I can flatten out balls when necessary or brush up on the ball as if my life depended on it.

My serve still sucks though.

Procrastination

Procrastination is something that everyone has done at one point in their life. It eats away at your soul for every second you are aware of it, but until you finish, a weight is on your chest and crushes you to death. The reason you do it is unknown to you and repeatedly baffles you, yet, you are unable to control yourself. When you look back on it, you laugh and pretend it was in the past, but tomorrow, it will happen again. 

At this very moment in time, I am procrastinating as if my life depended on it. Nothing is on my mind other than doing my work, but for some strange reason, I am unable to start on any of it. Being the prophet I am, I am predicting that I will be unable to do any of my work until sunday, the day before school will undoubtedly come back into session. To a certain extent, this problem is habitual and uncontrollable, but anything can be controlled and put to bay. For this reason, slow but surely, this habit can and will be reduced to nothing. 

Through my years of perfecting this art, it has dawned on me that whining about procrastinating is a very common thing. Whining about such a thing is somewhat of a paradox in itself and in addition to this, I am fully aware of this, which makes myself even more pitiful. This is an uncommon problem in which awareness is useless. Without taking direct action, the cure for procrastination can never be found for myself and I believe that this may take many long and grueling years. For the time being, I will continue to procrastinate and whine about procrastinating. I am a dime in a dozen among students, and am not ashamed to be so. 

Thinking About the Unanswerable

As far back as I can remember, I recall thinking about life and the meaning of it all. Throughout my entire youth, I wasted countless hours pondering about living and what comes after death. It took many years of refuting my own ideas, but at the ripe age of 12, I came to the realization that as a human, I will never have the answers to the reasons of my existence or proof to my existence in any shape or form. 

Today, many of my friends try to gain a grasp on the meaning of life, but fail to do so with any conviction. This is due to the lack of evidence for any theories on the subject, and the requirement of faith in order to have any sort of conviction. For this reason, I sometimes wish that I had never thought about any of this. It is much simpler and easier to live life when you know that there is a reason to do so. Somewhat recently, however, I overcame this folly in my semi-realistic thinking by having little doubt in my own existence. 

Pessimism is a good quality to have, unless it is the only quality you have. 

Fin.