Divide by Null - undefined

So, I haven't made a post in a long time... basically since last summer. So I'll go ahead and summarize the year in short near-twitter-like sentences.

Marching band, fun and tiring. Fall, school starts, amazing, easy schedule. Meet new people. Australia, amazing trip. CS111 projects suck. First true all-nighter. Grades below my own standards. Winter break. Winter quarter. Start work. Fun in Irvine. Ding 80 - raid time. I suck at volleyball. I suck at tennis. I suck at waking up for 8:00 classes. Shower catastrophe. Interesting combinations at Urth Caffe. Easy quarter, but commuting hurts. Spring break. Spring Quarter. MCDB is fun. Tagiku is amazing. Still working, still doing nothing. Morning exercises weekly (or less). Camping! (Highlight was table slam). Kelton. Graduation. Sad. Amazing new computer! Full time work, and actually productive now. Learning soccer. Tennis, and I still suck. San Diego camping! (Highlight was ice cream). Learning tennis. Work gets insane. Sacramento. Home.

And that brings us back to now.

You see, I neglect this thing because I only want quality work to appear here. I also have high standards for myself, so nothing makes it past my initial filters. This is the exception to that rule. I mean, sure it's a personal blog and I could go the "u hata's dun no nething n im guna keep on bloggin w/e i want" and considering I have a readership of near 0, no one would really care... but I have standards for myself.

Anyway, I've been having thoughts on what I could do to improve this. Book/movie reviews (possible during this summer, but I foresee my interactions with those mediums dropping once school starts). Commentary on current events (which would force me to be a bit more attentive to the goings on of the world, but I generally don't like saying my opinion anyway). I'm getting a camera, so I could turn this into a photo blog possibly.

I think the other part is that (in real life) I end up talking mostly about either niche or otherwise trivial things in a completely uncollected manner. I guess I could talk about how Hidden Power works in Pokemon with respect to IVs and EVs, but you'd get better info elsewhere. Likewise, I'd go to twitter if I wanted to let the world know that I saw a praying mantis at the tennis court. As for the part about uncollected thoughts... just reread this blog and see how chaotic my train of thought is.

Well, that's enough nonsense for now. While writing this, I have come up with a few topics to dwell over. I'd say 25% will actually get written and then half will be dropped because of my QA work. We'll see how this blogging thing works out.

So, it's the summer after the first year of college. My plans were to do basically the same thing as last year: hang out with friends; watch movies; eat Wings 'n Things followed by frisbee, Guitar Hero, Risk, and potentially legos; get addicted to an MMORPG, road trips to random places, seeing all the old friends, and just relaxing.

But that didn't happen; I got an internship. Would I rather have passed it up? Nah, I really enjoy it. It's a fun, new experience for me. In addition, it seems that it's good for me. Not just because it's something to put on my resume. Not just because I can come back after I've finished school and get a full job. Rather, I found out something: I really like college.

I like being able to pick out your own schedule as opposed to being stuck to an 8-hour day. I like walking everywhere I go instead of driving though LA rush hour traffic. I like learning things that may not have any practical application instead of always doing things for some practical application. I like the whole atmosphere surrounding it. All of a sudden, 5-year plan doesn't sound so bad. And grad school? I'd always been thinking about it, but now I'd go for PhD over Masters.

My cousin told me to enjoy college, because after that, I'd be thrown into the real world. I always knew she was true, but I didn't fully understand it until this internship. So now, I want to enjoy my education (and all the vacation time that comes with it).

I can't wait for school to start again, but until then, I'm just gonna doing my learning at work.

I really don't want to do these readings. I should get it done by friday, or really before Thursday at 11:00.

I don't want to do them so much, that I finished my programming assignment we got assigned today and is due in a week.

I'm really tempted to do my math homework too which will end up being due in a week plus a day.

I also downloaded a program to keep me from procrastinating too much by setting up my to-do, due dates, mini-goals... and all it really did was give me an excuse to avoid reading more.

At least with this form of procrastination, I still get work done... too bad it's not the higher priority stuff.

And hey, it also gave me something to blog about... gotta look at the bright side!

So this marks week two for UCLA, but I've really been here for three weeks, so it's my fourth week of living here. I've made new friends and experienced new things. It's quite exciting.

I'm not so sure what to say here; I don't want it to be a boring recount of what I've been going through.

Life in college... I'll try to sum up how it's been for me in a few phrases of a few words each: good roommates, many boring classes, skipped a (useless) discussion today, one class with great lectures, previously mentioned class requires lots of reading, band is pretty fun, trombones are crazy, made new friends, sooo many people here, lots of solicitors the first week, pretty good food (yum brownie goo), should really be doing reading right now, too much walking, too many hills, too many stairs, getting lazy, having fun.

I dunno, just some random thoughts to sum up everything.

Oh yeah, I got my Macbook Pro and it's quite amazing. I'm keeping the windows laptop too though. I got Synergy running, though, so I only need one mouse for both computers. It's more or less dual screen with different operating systems.

I feel like I should say more about my classes. In general, they're boring. Either the subject or the professor. The one that is exciting, at least the lecture, is the one that requires a lot of reading. Still, the first lecture (which happened to be my first class of the quarter), kept me interested, made me think; he's an lively, interesting professor talking about a topic he's passionate about too. So, if you ever need to satisfy a GE req. here at UCLA, take HIST 9E (Southeast Asian Crossroads) with Professor Woods.

On that note, I should get reading some of that stuff, or at least study for the map test in two days. Agh, buy your own scantrons? Anyway, I'll try not to abandon this thing as much anymore.

So it's late now, and I'm tired, so why am I not asleep? I can't stop thinking about the future.

College is really close for me, and it will be a huge jump in a different direction. I'm excited for this new experience. I'm thinking about what I'll do, how I'll react, where I'll go, who I'll meet...

But there's one problem: That doesn't happen for another five months. That's a rather long time. I haven't even started AP exams yet. I just started spring break! What am I doing instead of relaxing for two weeks? Getting myself excited over something that I have to wait a few months for.

It's a good idea to plan ahead to make sure the future is good, but I'm not just planning ahead right now. I haven't even accepted admission yet and I'm already thinking about what sort of dorm I want to stay in. This has happened before: I plan way too far ahead, in a game, for example, and I end up stopping short, getting diverted from the original plan, or otherwise changing my mind. Either way I waste time with planning the way I do.

So what happens when I get close or past where I planned? I continue the process, planning ahead another time interval to make sure I succeed again. I never really enjoy the present as I should, never stopping to relax, or think about what I currently have (without thinking about what I could have...)

Don't focus too much on the future. Make sure to enjoy the present. After all, you never live in the future, and you always live right now.