PSP Pic

My precious..

2 3-letter Acronyms

Long time no update.

Yesterday 2 things took place:

PSP

Yes, my Playstation Portable that I imported from Japan arrived along with Ridge Racers and Lumines. Impressions? It's a pretty impressive piece of hardware. PS2-quality graphics and an amazing 16:9 LCD screen. If developers get behind the machine (which it looks like they are), we should be in for some fun.

GRE

Yesterday I also had to take my GRE. After 2 days of studying, I felt pretty good going in. I came out with a 540 on my verbal and a 700 on my quantitative...works for me. They're both quite a bit above the average (72nd percentile). While they aren't amazing, together with my recommendations I think I'll get into the HCI program @ CMU.

Fall 2004 Grades

Finally got all my grades for the Fall semester..

4 A's
2 B's
1 P (Pass/Fail course)

Final QPA: 3.63

Diplomacy

I spent the entire day playing Diplomacy with some friends. After 6 hours and the game not being close to over, we called it quits.

Endgame looked as follows:
Russia - Annihilated
Germany - Annihilated (took last stand in Berlin ala Hitler)
Austria-Hungary - Destroyed and surrendered to the Italian army
England - Held the country and gained Norway
France - Held france and took the German empire
Turkey - Aided by the dying Russia, took Russia and Austria-Hungary
Italy - Held Italy and took Tunasia

It was my first time playing and I was England. I allied with France the whole time and we pretty much controlled Eastern Europe. Very fun, but very time consuming. Things would have gotten interesting in the next few hours as alliances broke and back-stabbing begun. Unfortunately, people not done with finals yet needed to go study.

Tylenol 3

Dear Tylenol 3 with Codeine,

I love you so much.

Love,
Jonathan

P.S. Wisdom Teeth -- fuck off.

Alive

No, I'm not dead.

It's finals week, etc. Also, not much to write about lately.

The only thing to mention is that I made a kick-ass chicken enchilada casserole last Sunday that was probably the best thing I've ever cooked myself.

Why No One Goes to the library

I've gone to the Carnegie Library two times in 4 years.

The first time was fine, albeit a tad boring. This was about two years ago.

Tonight was the second time I went to the library. I needed a book our library on campus did not have. I checked the library's online catalog -- they had 4 copies, all available for checkout. I checked the hours of the library. Open 'til 8 -- awesome. I walk to the library, up the steps to the entrance, only to find a sign: "The Library is Closed Today for Staff Development Day." This happens, what, maybe once per year.

So now I have no book, my feet are sore from walking, and I'm hungry.

Fuck you, Library -- fuck you.

Video Death

The nVidia 6800 Ultra DDL in my powermac died last night.

Looks like a large chunk of the video ram just died for no apparent reason. It's at the apple store for a few days for them to verify it's bad, at which point I'll get a replacement. Up and running on my 9600xt now.

Glad it happened under warranty....or there would be $500 worth of crying to do right now.

Grad School

Candidates so far are:

Human-Computer Interaction
Carnegie Mellon University
Georgia Tech.
University of Michigan

Philosophy
Carnegie Mellon University
Stanford

I need to think of some "back-up" schools, though...I'm not that conceited. I am pretty confident about getting into the HCI program @ Carnegie Mellon, though.