Well Christmas eve went pretty well. Kinda different since my grandma isnt here anymore , but i guess it was pretty much the same. Stock market kinda killed present giving a little. I got my brother a pair of warmup pants, and my sister a clock. We had mostly chinese restaurant food again, except for a honey baked ham, and home made lasagna. My cousin Justin came for only like 2 hours, and was on his cellphone half the time. He looked like he thought he was too cool for us, he wouldn't play playstation with janssen and all the other cousins. Punk. I used my digital camera a good deal, but i dont know if its really all that useful outside of the thanksgiving/xmas time of the year, oh well i am thinking about selling it after i sell my other 3 cameras. My brother said he wouldn't use one much so thats why i got him pants.

Didnt really get any presents personally except strangely 2 FLEECE sweatshirts and about $270. one was from the gap so i think i'm gonna exchange it, since well fleece is really hot, and i actually like it cold. I dont even wear a blanket at school. I bought some stuff after xmas on the 26th with my cousin james, luke and jason (meailins), got a pair of black pants/shorts that had those drawstrings all over for only $27 man, it was $45 marked down to $35 but it rang up at $27. And i got a blue and a orange nike longsleeved shirt. I'm wearing the pants and the orange shirt right now, orange looks cool.

Ithink i've gained like 7 pounds, i look a lot more filled out seeming. My acne was doing pretty well until oddly christmas day. Its kind stopped flaring up now though, so at least thats good. I hate acne by the way. Uh.... oh yeah me and jason saw finding forrester the other day. That was really good, but i saw some other movies too. On christmas my cousin and brother and I were real bored, so we rented love and basketball, and mission to mars, and i watched frequency on pay per view. Frequency was pretty good, Mars was so so , but love and basketball was really good, i'd say better than finding forrester. After seeing those two movies, i've seen basically every single basketball movie ever made yet again. I even saw that gay leonardo de craprio one a couple times. Man i'm a FANatic. Oddly outside of randy, matt and jason i really havent seen anyone over break. I saw ryan watanabe the other day at the mall but he was in a group of asians so i didnt go up to him.

Hmmm this is now getting to be quite a long update, but well i havent updated in a while. I finally sold that p3-600 and ca810 board i bought, unfortunately i made no money, and carter tells me he wants it a couple days after it gets sold. Geez. I've only got to sell a 12x plextor and 3-4 digital cameras and i 'm good again. Woohoo. anyways is anyone doing anything? are we ever gonna go bowling? ???

Well today i went to mongols. Yeah really. I went with jason and his friend from santa cruz nate. Then i came back and we did basically nothing and ate at alfredos. Yeah too much eating i feel fatter already. Then me matt and jason went to see unbreakable. I thought this movie was awesome. I could see why people dont seem to like it though. Most people in this country are either too stupid, or have too short an attention span to appreciate this movie. Its made by the same guy that made the sixth sense and i still havent seen that so i think i'll have to rent the dvd and watch it on my cousin's 56" TV. Unbreakable gets 2 thumbs up from me.

Well i've been in torrance for 3 days now, and well me jason and randy have run out of fun stuff to do that is cheap. That sucks. I've realized my brother will never listen to me, he still believes that the military was not lying to him that he'd be a corporal someday since he did well on his asvab test and my parents wouldn't let him join the army since they said the army is not a place to go. I guess he's just the type of person that the army can bait into going with their "sweettalk" about your asvab scores (not like i ever took them, but i'm imagining thats how it is).

I've been told that my sister is a little wacko too. She gets out of school from jh hull and goes to the library where she's supposed to wait for my cousins to pick her up. So she takes out all her crap and lays it out on her desk (one of those big desks at southeast) all neat and orderly, like everything in its place, etc. Just like my brother lays out all his stuff, like when he's going out somewhere, he lays his watch and wallet and belt and stuff out with his shoes, or when he's taking a shower he lays out his clothes and stuff. Then my cousins come right after she's done laying it out and she spends 10 minute putting it all back. That and she's all quiet like luke too. They always said i talked to much, maybe i'm an alien or something. Plus valerie has a bigass backpack with like a million books in it just like Luke. She even has one of those backpacks with wheels on it like him. Hell she's 12 now, when i was 12 i was folding laundry, vacuuming, cutting trees outside, and cooking soup and stuff for myself. Valerie ... uh yeah right. Plus i dont know if i have car insurance but i'm pretty sure i dont. Oh well fuck this, i figure i'll never drive at this rate.

Lastly i bought a couple more digital cameras. Got me a kodak dc240 (1.3 mpixel 2x zoom) for $205 but it doesnt have a memory card, or manuals, or box, or cables. Lucky i have the card and reader from the mp3 player, the camera is like new though. I also got a HP photosmart 315 2 megapixel , new in box, and that should be decent. I found out my mp3 player wasn't broken, i just had to wait more than 2 seconds for it to start bashing on the buttons. HAHA. thanks jason for taking me to galleria to return the new one i bought, to test out.

Also i saw what women want with jason. That was a good movie. It was funny, and shows how versatile mel gibson is. Also went to frys today with jason and randy. Oh yeah speaking of randy he has a 17" flat panel monitor, which is well disgusting to say the least. has dvi connector too. I talked to my dad about my laptop thing, and well he might call some guy he knows, and i could get a HP one witha 14" tft and dvd for like $700 for like a p3 600 or something. That would be pretty cool, i could even sell my current system for around that, but i figure i'll still hold out till summer since they'll probably have faster ones then. Well i guess that is all that has happened this weekend so far, hopefully i'll get to sell stuff later so i can do something at least.

Yes it is 5AM and i'm tired of studying math. I'm not exactly sure how much time I actually spent on it outside of web-browsing, but i can say that if i dont get at least an A- in math 33A i'm gonna be mad. I've spend nearly as much time working on this final as i did for 32A and I'm not even failing this class. *Hans gives self pathetic pat on back* I was just thinking remember in elementary school when we got grades for effort too. Damn we'd all be failing now. It would be all of us getting like Ds and Fs with Gaurav or some other not quite talented but overachieving indian guy with an A. Tolu would be up there too. Heh.

Oh yeah on some insane whim i bought an intel ca810 e motherboard and p3-600e boxed CPU for $155 shipped. Really good price, and for a few minutes I thought, i could rip my computer apart and put this crappier stuff in and sell my stuff. Then i realized my 3d would suck and i'd feel really bad for having spent so much more to get my current stuff and having to sell it so cheap , especially with AMD stuff being practically worthless now (1.2 ghz is $279, tell me that isn't sick...). Anyways i realized since i do nothing but web browse and wait for games that are already 2 years in the making (thus they will run on a pentium 400) like Fallout tactics, i probably dont even need to upgrade until next xmas. Probably save myself a lot of money. Anyways i'm probably gonna end up ebaying the ca810e (built in video sound and lan, perfect for old people i guess) and the 600e which will probably run at 800 if you break the pin off like terry did on ebay for like $200. Anyways i doubt anyone here cares, but if you need it for some relative or something and are willing to pick it up over winterbreak in torrance , let me know you can have it for the $155 I paid.

At least i have something to look forward to tommorrow. Gonna go to mongols with jason after my final. HEHEHEH i go like every week , i'm such an addict. So far i've got this list in my mind of things i need to get done over winter break. They are... make chinese flash cards so i dont fail next quarter (doubt this will happen), exchange my ijam mp3 player for a working one (another impulse buy , sucked that is broken) and lastly eat, so i dont weigh what i estimate to be around 157 pounds, pathetic for my frame.

Damn math 33a is getting hard. I've gone through the sample final and i seem to struggle a lot more on chapters 7,8 and 9 which are the last 3 in this book. 8 is really hard actually, the proofs that are based on the similarity formula aren't that bad but the matrix derivative things are hard. Hmm.. i'll work on this some more tommorrow.

Well today i took my chinese final. It wasn't easy. I crammed all night, but the lack of effort during the quarter really hurt me. Now i got a 71 on it according to my TA, and the average on the final was 80. I finished with an 80.33% in the class, so i'm figuring B/B-. Great oh well. At least its not a C. Also the other thing that sucked was that my ijam ij-50 came today. I bought it from yahoo auctions, and again cheapness hit me back. I think the mp3 player part is broken, the 8mb compact flash and the card reader both work. Hopefully i can get a refund. Anyways, i also called KDS since my replacement monitor has a small problem. I talked to them and they said that i can exchange it again in january when i have time and for $140 i'm just gonna upgrade to the av-195tf trinitron version of it, since that supposedly doesnt break very much. They said i could either get a vs195e or a pay $140 to go to the av195tf if i didnt want another vs19sn. So its in the comments on my account there. I made so much money selling pentiums and crap , and reselling my other digital cam, and downgrading my video card / selling my other hard drive that i can afford it i guess. It'll be a pain shipping stuff back again, but its not too bad i supposed , at least i'll have a better monitor. The guy that is sending me the CD for my crappy digital camera actually sent it so at least something good happened. ALso after the chinese final i was so tired and hungry and dead, that i went to westwood and had 2 BEEF BOWLS. MMM. then i fell asleep for 3 hours.

I used up 24 meals, so now i have 7 left for the next 3 days

Well i'm studying for chinese still. I think i'll do ok, from what i've been told. The listening and reading parts and the negating and redo a sentence parts will save my otherwise pathetic understanding of this class. I also have the 12 words we need to know, so hopefully i'll live. Also happy birthday jason (yeah yeah i'm 3 hours late, but you are in tahoe anyways). Oh yeah, and KDS makes unreliable monitors, my new "replacement" dies if i scroll up and down real fast for about a minute, and sometimes just randomly. I guess i'll RMA it again in january since i found out shipping for it is only $9.

Also some crappy stuff happended concerning my extra digital camera the polaroid pdc 640. First off i dont have the software for it so i cant download images without a smart media reader. Well i asked on anandtech if anyone could send me a copy, and amazingly some guy is burning me a copy of it for free and mailing it. I think i sold him a geforce during the summmer. Also i bought an 8mb smartmedia for it for $9. I also did a coupon thing at overstock.com and get a gamepad and a 16mb smartmedia for it for $25, but i was gonna cancel it when i found out the camera doesnt take 16mb cards, which is why i got the 8mb. Anyways, it turned out that they took too long and couldn't cancel it, so i'm stuck with an extra card and gamepad. Anyways, i'll probably ebay the card, unless jason wants it for his camera (jason do you want it?) Hopefully it gets here before break starts. Lastly i'd like to show some pictures as usual.

Notice the color variety and beauty in this piece. Its what happens when you have 40 meals left with a week of school remaining.

This is what terry calls studying.

Well here's a nice picture i took today. It was at 1600x1200, but has been shrunk down to 640x480 today. Every once in a while you see something that looks nice so here is a picture.

Well i also got my brothers camera today. The one i paid $75 + $10 shipping that is retail price $149. Anyways, they sent the wrong one, they sent the $200 version. HEHEHE. the only drawback for the one luke was getting was no removable media, and well this one has removeable smart media cards. ANyways, its exactly the same as the agfa 780C i had last year (That ugly blue camera i paid $215 at ritz camera for and returned). Except that i paid $85 for it, and it didnt come in a box, and is beige silver. Oh well good cam. My KDS monitor came today also, a refurb, but it works fine, the wierd problem on the left is different on this one, not as long of a wierd dark thing, but its more like my 17" monitor's wierd problem just waaaay to the left. Well at least it works, cant complain all monitors have problems like that. Also i had a "party" in english, we all brought food and ate, everyone said its like high school, and well yea it was, but it was still good, and that has got to be the best class i've ever had here, i actually learned and liked talking in class. Plus this one girl i know in there gave me like 15 didi reese cookies that no one ate, so tolu is eating them.

Well today kinda sucked. Got up around 1pm. I go to my computer and what do i see, the center focus gun on my monitor is dead. So the middle looks like total crap and there are horizontal lines up top and bottom. Ok great that sucks, i call KDS and get an RMA , new monitor should be here in 2 days. 4 months and the thing is broken, i guess thats what i deserve for risking it on a 19" that didnt cost $500 or more (i.e. a value monitor). Anyways, since i'm past the first 90 days i dont get free return freight like the first time (when it wasn't actually broken and i was being anal). They give me 30 days to return it so i guess i'll just take it home over the break and return it to garden grove in a car and save the $30 shipping. Anyways its not totally dead, you can still turn it on, and the non center areas focus well still... but my 10 year old refurbished 14" SVGA is still going strong, and i'm using that now, since i cant read the KDS.

So with that taken care of i pack up the 2 week old Epson camera which finally got paid for. $385 for my $30 16mb CF card and the $250 camera, so not bad. I send that out at the post office along with the broken tbird 900 i got (already got a refund for it plus $6 for my trouble) and i suppose fate says i am not to upgrade anything like my pledge to not upgrade said. So no upgrade. I also sent out 2 pentiums, and the worst thing was that it took so long in line since this old lady was so dumb she filled out 2 express mail forms twice, the guy behind me was gonna go crazy.

After that i went to my english teachers office for a workshop thing, and she said i should be an english major since i write so damn much. I got some guidance for my essay so maybe now i'll get more than a B, and apparently she liked this one, so hopefully i can get a B+ in that class instead of a B. After that it was 4pm i was starving since i hadn't eaten so i go to westwood and eat at the beef bowl place with $2.45 beefbowls that are way better than the ones the THS had (not to mention 2 times the size). I ran into steve and jennifer on the way to getting food. Anyways I carry my ELPH around in my backpack so i took a couple pics too.

Well i saw on connies page another mention of 2by2.net. I saw it on a lexus a couple weeks ago too in front of reiber, so i decided to see exactly what type of front they put up. Anyways i watched their 5 minutes flash movie. This is just sick. People are gonna lose money, and even though you may think i am a greedy ass, I make money legitimately. Without decieving them into becoming recruiters. Apparently you lose money if you dont recruit people. This is a classic pyramid scheme , the illegal type. I know you guys have heard of cutco knives, that is a pyramid scheme, your manager take a cut and you move "up" the ladder, but the lower tiers dont have to pay any money if they dont move "up". This 2by2.net is not like that, that is why this is an illegal pyramid scheme. Anyways i filled out a little form at the ftc website. Outrageous. Just outrageous. Like 400 people will make money and the other 20000 on the lower tiers will lose money. I remember being at ACA and those fools from that new boba place were there giving out coupons and then they tried to recruit people. Watch the flash movie, i still dont understand how you get money from getting people to buy stuff from online stores, because they have to be lying. Apparently you click from a person site to a ad banner to a store, and if you buy something supposedly 2by2 gets money, i dont think most of these companies would pay anything... Man i clicked on one of the people in their "circle of champions" and the #1 person was a real estate agent. OMG, of all the things i think that are the scum of the earth, its real estate agents. I remember when we were selling our house, man those agents they are like snakes. This is worse. At least agents are serving some sort of purpose, though i dont like how they try to be your friend just to take 2.5% of your sell price, and 2.5% of the price you paid on your new house , if they find it for you. I guess its like ebay. And i like ebay, but ebay doesnt try to be your friend.

For the canon i never even used the cables that came with it, or opened the plastic on the manuals. I already have a jumpshot cable and stuck my 48mb one in, never used canon's card either. Both the epson and canon pics were taken at both camera's 1600x1200 medium quality mode, thats not even fine mode. for small APS size pics like 4x6 5x7 , i think digital cams are pretty close to an APS cam now (APS is supposed to be worse than 35mm by a good bit though). I remember when the original elph came out when APS came out, my mom bought it for $300 + tax so $325. This is smaller than that, and its friggin digital. Cost after coupons and junk $365. To top it off i sold the epson for $352 shipped - $10 ebay fees (bought it for $250 shipped). I think i get off real well here, so far i think i've made money every time i've owned a digital camera for more than 2 days. Beautiful how capitalism works.

I also won an auction yesterday for yet another digital camera. A polariod fun flash 640 or something. I bid $75 for this normally $140 digital camera, but somehow i won. Anyways thats a present for someone, though i'm not sure who yet. I'm thinking my brother , but i'm not sure he'd even use it considering he never uses his mp3 player. Or my sister who would probably never use it. My little 8 year old cousins liked my epson cam, so maybe its good for them and i'll get other stuff for everyone else. The reason i got the cheap polaroid in particular is that it has an LCD screen, and for $75 its a steal, kids dont like digital cameras with no LCD. Its only a 640x480 camera but that should be plenty for them. Well i guess its time to go get dressed. If anyone wants to go down to westwood and get food with me message me (fat chance).

Connie is right Chinese is a major pain in the ass. It has got to be one of the hardest classes i've ever had. Its insane, like at first they were going at a reasonable pace, but now the amount of stuff we have to learn each day is growing exponentially. the fact that it takes me an hour and a half to do my homework is sick. I'm always so lost, and some of the crap in the work book is retarded. They wanted us to use the word "party" which is something like jing hui or something and its not even in the book as far as we've read so i had to use a dictionary again. Its so hard, i'm sure someone out there has memorized it all too... My schedule next quarter so far is econ2, math 33b, chinese2, csm51a and physics 4bl. Now chinese i've got at pass fail but i'm struggling in it and well i think that if i'm not liking it i'll just drop it next quarter either that or the lab. My schedule is horrible next quarter , but at least i didnt take ee1 because the would probably have killed me. math 33b isn't supposed to be that bad but i dont have the easy teacher so... that will suck. csm51a is supposed to be ok and econ 2 will probably be a cake walk. 4bl isn't that much time its just horrible busy work , but i guess i have to finish it, then again i didnt like physics 1b so hopefully i can figure that out. So basically most of those classes are so-so difficulty except probably econ , and chinese will probably be hard again. Damn, and what sucked was i didnt get my same TA because some people stole the last 2 spots by writing 2 peoples names when i was being good and waited. So i got 10 oclock with stuckley. Stuckley is the other white person TA , i figured i shouldn't take a chinese TA since they usually cant teach, those damn native speakers dont know what its like to learn it. And every time prof wang says, chinese is easier than english can someone smack her?