Online Journal

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Tuesday, February 28, 2006--I meant to wake up early to go to CS186 Lecture today, but instead I woke up late and went to lunch.

I skipped half of CS164 Lecture so that I could deliver my San Jose City College transcript to my Student Affairs Advisor so I could get credit for Math 53 so I could graduate. It finished fast, so I caught the rest of the lecture where we were discussing lubs and M(C, f)'s.

EE192 Lecture... after a quiz, we went to the lab to work on our robot car. So we finally have the car assembled and all of the boards mounted on the car, thanks to Slava's fancy work at the machine shop. So I figure, we might as well get some work done, so let's test the car on the ground. So I program the car to drive some donuts on the lab floor. Unfortunately, there's a bug in the CPU that sometimes makes the motor go fast when I want it to go slow, or vice versa. Also, I totally underestimated the size of the donut it would make, so the thing swerves around, rams into Wayne's foot (more than once, if I recall), bounces off, rolls under the desk, and slams into the wall, where it just sits there, spinning it's wheels. Wayne turns off the motor, but the damn thing keeps spinning! So then, he just pulls the battery. Since then, the thing stopped working, and for about an hour, we couldn't figure out why.

After I left for the TBP Meeting, apparently, Wayne and Slava discovered that one of the traces (a wire printed onto the board) had exploded. Now, we need to get that replaced.

Tomorrow's gonna be a long day...

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 4) Total: 5

Good Night, my dears...

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Monday, February 27, 2006--So I started out my day with lunch at Xroads with Abhi and Chris.

Then, I worked on some stuff for TBP, played some Maple, and attempted to start my CS homework.

All in all, an unmemorable day.

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 5) Total: 6

So... umm... yeah... Good Night!

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Sunday, February 26, 2006 - Addendum--Frumpy Wizards!

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Sunday, February 26, 2006--

Tau Beta Pi Big Social #1 - Pancake Breakfast & Team Scrabble

Wow, that was a looooong title.

Anyways, pancakes are good. Lei showed up, as promised. We did the silent get in line ordered by birthday thing again.

Mike C: Wow, you guys lined up a lot faster than I expected.
Me: Maybe we have a smarter semester.

Then, there was a fiasco where we thought Frances got killed. (In Officer Assassin, I mean. No one died in real life.)

Paul: This is what the Resurrect button is for.

Next, we started playing the Team Scrabble. While Mike was explaining the rules, I was thinking how this was the most organized Big Social I've ever attended. And then, after we started playing, everything immediately descended into chaos.

Also, in order to choose turn order, we had representative candidates from each of the four teams name their group members, and whomever could name the most would pick turn order. However, we had a 3-way tie, so we resorted to having candidates name a sect of officers standing in a row by the wall. That led to this famous Mike C quote: "Dude, half of these officers are cute girls. You should really know their names."

Also, one of the rules (like in regular scrabble) was that at the end of the game, any letters you have in your hand count against your point total. However, the Blue Team (which contains Lei) (or rather, RHen of the Blue Team) discovered on the rule sheet that, in addition, if you have no pieces leftover, they gain points equal to everyone else's leftover pieces. So their strategy was to get a small number of pieces, then find a way to use them all. And they did.

So, yeah. At the end of the last round, they were in last place. However, after all the leftover piece deductions (and bonus), Blue Team ended up in first place, and thus, won the giant, golden, chocolate chip pancake.

At the very end of the event, I stuck my name tag on Winnie's arm. In response, she stuck her name tag on my back. It reminded me of the October 21, 2004 incident.

Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 2) Total: 4

Anyways, I spent the rest of the day playing Maple or otherwise chilling. I heard that Susan got caught in the elevator. Poor girl. I hope she's feeling better now.

Anyways, 'tis getting late, so I will speak Good Night.

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Saturday, February 25, 2006--What can I say? Maple is a very good way to waste my time.


I did manage to get Dark Fiends Chapter 61 posted, though.

Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 5) Total: 8

Oh well, Good Night!

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Friday, February 24, 2006--Happy Birthday Sarah C!

Wow, she's only 19 years old. She's young.


Anyways, TBP Bagels & Donuts... I stopped by in the morning to get a donut before heading off to

CS164 Discussion, where we had a long discussion about the answers to the mudterm (guess what score I got?) and about the notation used for the upcoming material.

Then, I went back to Donuts & Bagels, where we promptly ran out of donuts and bagels. Also, Lei showed up to drop off her candidate packet. She is officially a Tau Beta Pi Candidate now.

EE192 Lab... the 7-pin on our power board exploded just before the checkoff, and when we finally had it running again, we had a CPU crash in the middle of running, possibly I accidentally switched two wires (although if the powerboard was working like it should, it shouldn't matter). Oh well. We can still get this checkoff next week for half credit. Just lemme re-rewrite the software to make the connectors more manageable. Yeah, I made some funky connectors.

Also, during the frantic moment of fixing stuff, I was stripping a connector cable, and somehow, pieces of wire got stuck in my finger. I was like, hmm, there seem to be wires stuck in my finger. *pulls out wires* Oh, crap! I'm bleeding!

Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 3) Total: 5

Then, I went back to my dorm and played Maple all (Good) Night.

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Thursday, February 23, 2006--So last night, I dreamt that I was holding Tracy's hand. And then later, my backpack went missing. So I was like, "Fuck, where's my backpack?" Then, I was like, "Oh, wait, this is just a dream." So then, I woke up. But it was 6am, so I went back to sleep.

Anyways, today, I opted to skip CS186 Lecture because I had a

CS164 Mudterm... It was easy.

After chillaxing in the HKN Soda office for about an hour (Stephanie "SSL" Leung brought in a prospective student from New Jersey), I went to

EE192 Lab... First of all, I tried to get the LED display to work, but, like yesterday, I failed miserably. But then, I did some debugging (ie, randomly pulling out wires to try to make stuff work) and somehow, I managed to get something to light up. That when I noticed that the power wire had gone down from 5 V to about 4 V. It was then that I realized that the problem wasn't the software--that was flawless. It was that the LED display drew so much power that the CPU couldn't power it. So, I had to pull up the power supply and power the LED externally. After I did that, the LED display worked like a charm. I didn't have to equip it to get it's bonuses, just have it with me.

Other amusements: "Why is this NAND gate pulling the input up to 3 V?" "Wait, that's not a NAND gate, that's an op-amp."

So, yeah. After a long, long, long day's worth of work, our car is finally working. Kinda... the pieces are working. We just have to package them together and take them for a drive. Fortunately, that's not until next week.

Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 2) Total: 7

Other than that, Good Night!

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Wednesday, February 22, 2006--I woke up late. I had to wait for the Cleaning People to clear out before I could shower. And then 4 people went and took all 4 showers. D'oh!

EE192 Discussion... since neither wayne nor Slava had shown up by the time discussion started, I had to start taking notes. Another group just took photos of the whiteboard.

CS186 Discussion... we went over the mudterm, then cleared out early.

Then, I went back to EE192 Lab, where I tried to get the LED display to work... but I failed miserably. Damn it!

Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 2) Total: 5

"Good Night!"

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Tuesday, February 21, 2006--I had to force myself to wake up today. Why? Because I had a CS186 Mudterm at 11am. It was easy, though.

CS164 Lecture... EE192 Lecture... working on the LED Display in EE192 Lab...

TBP Officer Meeting... we probably had the lowest turnout ever. The new officers actually sent e-mails to Paul telling him they wouldn't be able to come on account of mudterms and review sessions. Obedient new officers. Hehe...

Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 5) Total: 8

Good Night! Good Night indeed!

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Monday, February 20, 2006--Happy President's Day!

w00t! 3-day weekend!

Except I don't have class on Monday anyway, so for me, it's always a 3-day weekend.


Anyways, I finished my CS164 homework (it was easy) and started reviewing for CS186 Mudterm tomorrow.

Dice Roll of the day: (1, 2) Total: 3

Now I have to finish reviewing my CS186. Good Night!

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Sunday, February 19, 2006--More MapleStory.

Why are MMORPG quests always so lame? I mean, it's mostly just "Collect X items" or "Kill Y monsters". Diablo 2 quests were so much more interesting. Granted, there are those who might argue that Diablo 2 quests are exactly the same: "Kill 1 Diablo", "Collect 1 Khalim's Will", "Collect 1 Deckard Cain", "Collect 1 Mephisto's Soulstone and 1 Hellforge Hammer and bring them to the Hellforge". The execution, however, is much much better. First of all, the quest items are guaranteed to be in a specific location, so they're easy to find (with the possible exception of the Golden Bird). Also, all the enemies you have to kill are bosses, so you don't have to depend on spawn rate to be able to kill the monsters you need (except for Den of Evil, but that one's easy). As a result, none of the quests ever get boring.

Anyways, I spent the rest of the night catching up on e-mail and other stuff that I didn't do.

Dice Roll of the day: (6, 2) Total: 8

*yawn* Good Night!

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Saturday, February 18, 2006--More MapleStory.

You know what we should do? Me and Kellie and Abhishek and Little Vivian should all play together and form a party in MapleStory. That would be amusing.

Dice Roll of the day: (1, 2) Total: 3

I wish that tonight will be a Good Night!

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Friday, February 17, 2006--I woke up late, so I skipped CS164 Discussion...

After lunch, I went to EE192 Lab for the checkoff. We had a perfect circuit, but a last minute battery failure almost cost us the checkoff. Also, apparently, Slava wants to solder the Power Board himself. 'Cause you know, Wayne and I suck at soldering.

Also, apparently, I've started playing MapleStory. Kellie and Abhishek somehow got me into it. It's not a bad game, if you ignore the fact that after about 15 levels or so, it starts to get really, really, really slow.

Dice Roll of the day: (4, 1) Total: 5

*stabs* Good Night!

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Thursday, February 16, 2006--Because I spent so much time working on my CS164 parser last night (which I submitted later today), I went to sleep late. As a result, I woke up late and missed CS186 Lecture.


CS164 Lecture...

After lunch at GBC, I went to the EE192 Lab, where Slava and Wayne were already fixing up the motor circuit. There were some errors, as there bound to be when working with hardware. So, I pulled out the software and changed the motor frequency to 440 Hz.

Also, today, the candidate semester Spring 2006 for Tau Beta Pi begins. Lei is eligible (as are a slew of other freshies that I don't know), so I'm making Lei join TBP. Hurray!

Also, we played this game where everyone was sitting in chairs except for one person, and he would say "I have never X", and everyone who has done X would have to get up and find a new seat.

Quotes of the meeting (all by the former bowling pin holder James):

• "TBP is bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S! *Fenelia runs away*"
• "I have never kissed Paul."
• "I have never held Mike Chen's hand." (Alex H: Damn it!)

Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 1) Total: 6

Kwee hee hee! Good Night!

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Wednesday, February 15, 2006--Just for fun, in the morning, I created the Moogles group on Facebook, and by the time I got back in the afternoon, it had exploded to 42 members. That's more than the Dear Friends: Final Fantasy Fans group (but less than the I wasted my life playing Final Fantasy group). Granted, 40% of the people were my friends.


EE192 Discussion... CS186 Discussion...

Then, I worked in EE192 lab to build the new and improved motor drive circuit. It involved soldering fat wires. I think I inhaled too much solder fumes, though. Ugh...

Apparently, Mishra plays Maple Story now. o_O Isn't that the game that Kellie and Little Vivian were playing? And Little Vivian was saying how she didn't have enough mana even though she couldn't deplete it in less than a minute no matter how hard she tried?

And now, to finish my CS164 Parser.

Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 6) Total: 12

Good Night to all, and to all a Good Night!

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Tuesday, February 14, 2006--Happy Valentine's Day to my Princess!

CS186 Lecture... CS164 Lecture... EE192 Lecture...

Then, I went to EE192 Lab, where we finished up our power board. Also, the group right next to us were fighting with each other very loudly because the girl thought that the guy wasn't doing enough work. It's kind of funny. Usually, in the class project groups that I'm in, I do too much work. That and, I'm (usually) capable of doing the project myself, so I don't complain. From each based on his ability...

Dinner at GBC and TBP meeting...

Now, to work on my CS164 project.

Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 2) Total: 4

Good Night, my Princess!

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Monday, February 13, 2006--Today, I went back to Berkeley.

(Hmm... did I charm that new girl? Probably not.)

Most of the day was just working on CS186 and CS164 stuffs.

Later, I went fencing, where I spent half my energy during the sprints and the other half of my energy fencing Christina. Then, I spent the rest of my energy during the private lesson with Abdul.

Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 5) Total: 8

G'nite!

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Sunday, February 12, 2006--Today, for no real reason, I decided to continue on with my 2nd playthrough of FFTactics. Man, I haven't played this game for over 2 years, but I still remember exactly where I left off, what my party was, and what kind of tactics my party was built for. For the previous FFTactics entry, see March 27, 2004.

*T*Battle 18: Golgorand Execution Site. Gafgarion is suppose to be the major threat of this battle, but I just walked up to him and broke his sword, thereby making him totally helpless. From there, it was an easy battle.

Battle 19: Lionel Gate. This is the battle where Ramza and Gafgarion fight one on one, once and for all. Again, I just broke his sword, and he was totally helpless.

Battle 20: The Queklain battle. In my first try, he put everyone to sleep with a single spell, and I was helpless. What sucked was that Queklain didn't even attempt to do any damage. He just kept hitting me with more and more status effects. So I resetted. Second time around, I spaced out my guys better and killed Queklain rather easily.

And thus ends Chapter 2.

Battle 21: Chapter 3 begins with the Goland Coal City battle, in which we get Olan who periodically casts Galaxy Stop on all enemies. It's a good thing, too, since those thieves kept Charming my guys, and I built those guys to be powerhouses. If Olan hadn't cast Galaxy Stop, I would have been dead for sure.

Battle 22: Lesalia Gate. This is the first Zalmo battle. Zalmo is lame. You shouldn't make a White Mage a boss.

Battle 23: Orbonne Monastery, 2nd basement. There were Dragoons in this battle. I killed them. Whoopie!

Battle 24: Orbonne Monastery, 3rd basement. This is the Izlude battle. Izlude is essentially a Dragoon with a long, long, long range jump. I beat him without problems, though.

Battle 25: Orbonne Monastery, 1st basement. This is the second Wiegraf battle. I don't like Chapter 3's Wiegraf. He's such a sellout. I liked him back when he was a commoner fighting for his survival back in Chapter 1. That was the awesome Wiegraf. Oh, yeah, I beat him easily.

Battle 26: Grog Hill. We ran into some deserters who decided to try to capture Ramza as a heretic. I think this was meant to be filler battle, but the writers decided that monster battles were too cliche. I beat them without incident.

Battle 27: Yardow Fort City. This is the battle where we first get Rafa and we have to fight Malak. It, too, was easy.

Battle 28: Yuguo Woods. Monster battle against ghosts and ghost-like humans. Easy battle.

Battle 29: Riovanes Gate. Malak and his guards. They were easy. I like how the Archers on top of the gate would be charging up to attack, and I'd just walk up to them and break their bows.

Next up is the hardest battle in the game...

Battle 30: The legendary Velius battle. I'm not sure if my Ramza is stronger or weaker this time around, because I wasn't able to kill of Wiegraf in one hit. And when I did beat Wiegraf, Velius wiped the floor with me. Multiple times. Quite easily. I'm trying to remember how I beat him last time. I remember there being Dragoons. And throwing Hammers. (Axes might actually be stronger, but the strong axe is expensive.) Anyways, I still have an ace up my sleeve. That is, Ginger, my mage, already has all the pre-reqs for becoming a Calculator. I could simply train up her Math Skill and I'll have FFTactic's cheapest weapon at my disposal. And if that fails, I could simply level up. (My Ramza is at level 25, and everyone else is at level 20ish.)*T*

So.. yeah. For those of you who didn't read the spoilertext, I'm stuck on the Velius battle. Again. Toughest battle in the game.

Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 3) Total: 8

Gooed Night!

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Saturday, February 11, 2006--Today, I mostly played Chrono Trigger. Mmm... Chrono Trigger... Princess Nadia...


Later, I will go work on Demons Engine Architecture 3.

Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 6) Total: 11

Good Night! Don't let the--Zzzz...

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Friday, February 10, 2006--Anyways, to further explain what I was talking about yesterday, I started my Ray Tracer back in CS184 as part of a project for that class. (see April 9, 2005 to April 14, 2005) At first, I didn't think much of it, but when I started rendering images faster and of a much higher quality than most of my classmates (only 1 guy managed to beat me in terms of sheer awesomeness, but that was mainly because he implemented transparency and refraction).

The problem with that Ray Tracer, however, was that it outputted its images in ASCII PPM format, which was an ugly behemoth that had three problems: 1) no one had ever heard of it, 2) no program supported it, and 3) it was even less space efficient than a BMP.

At first, I tried using libPNG to output my images in PNG format, but libPNG + Windows = disaster, so I gave up on that.

Fast forward to yesterday, when for some reason, I decided I should try to make libPNG work again. Well, I still failed, despite staying up for 3 hours trying to get it to work. Eventually, I tried going to sleep and forgetting about it, but it just kept bothering me. The greateset piece of software I had ever written was flawed with that accursed PPM file format. So I got back up and tried again. This time, however, I decided to forget PNGs and other people's software libraries in general (excluding Prof O'Brien's smMatrix, smRotation, and smVector libraries, which are simply awesome--and used in my Ray Tracer), so I decided to go with something simpler: the BMP.

So I looked up the file format for a BMP and find out that it's relatively simple (although not as simple as you would think), so I wrote my own library to read and write 24-bit BMPs, then integrated it into my Ray Tracer. Now, the thing works like a beauty. Instead of outputting those crappy PPMs, it outputs BMPs.

Now, the renders of my Ray Tracer have been posted before, but that was on the instructional machines and have long since been deleted. Now, feast your eyes on pure glory:
One of my favorites
I wanted to demonstrate texture mapping (with a picture of me!)
Demonstrating ellipsoids and intersecting objects (and a neat little mirror trick)
Disco Gumby! (everything in this image is silver; the colors are a trick of light and shadow)
A reinterpretation of a scene from an earlier assignment
Aww, how sweet!

If you want to try out the Ray Tracer, you can find the binaries here. As of this writing, there's no documentation (or even an index page, for that matter), so I'll explain what everything is.

• trace-renders.zip contains the full-sized, full-quality versions of the 6 images I showed you above. Also, they're huge. They make nice wallpapers, though.
• trace.zip contains all of the stuff you need to get started with ray tracing. It contains the executable, a text file explaining the input format, the 6 input files I used to generate these pictures, and all the objects and textures you need to generate those pictures
• traceEXE.zip this one contains only the EXE. I dunno why anyone would want to download the ray tracer without any starter input, but sure, have fun! (NOTE: If you downloaded trace.zip, you do NOT need to download this file)

Keep in mind that the Ray Tracer only works in Windows.

Anyways, by the time I went to bed last night, it was 6am in the morning. So I skipped CS164 Discussion, because I knew I'd be unable to wake up in time. I ended up barely waking up at noon, and I trudged into EE192 lab for this week's checkoff.

Then, I went home. I figured, I own the PSX version of Chrono Trigger now, and it's a good game, so I should play it. So I did.

Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 5) Total: 7

Ray Trace the Night!

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Thursday, February 9, 2006 - Addendum--At long last, the Ray Tracer, my greatest piece of software, is finally complete!

More details to come tomorrow, when I'm not so sleepy.

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Thursday, February 9, 2006--Sometimes, I grow weary of writing in this thing day after day after day. Then, I remember that when that happens, I just write less.


I skip CS186 Lecture, but go to CS164 Lecture... just to fall asleep and miss the last 15-30 minutes of the lecture. Oops!

Then, I come back and do stuff before heading off to TBP Member Game Night. First, we played Apples to Apples. Then, we played Cranium, where my team was dead last for most of the game, but then made a sudden comeback and won at the last second. Also, the mischievous Historians (Fran and Patty) decided to go take pictures of people eating, then pictures of people's asses.

Fran: Dwayne. Drink.
Me: ...okay... *slowly picks up orange juice and starts drinking*
Fran: *takes a picture of me drinking orange juice*

Me: *stands up to observe the game of Cranium more closely; suddenly gets a strange realization; turns around*
Fran: *stands behind me with a camera*
Me: Did you just... never mind...

Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 1) Total: 6

Also present at game night were Karen and Angela.

Anyways, Good Night!

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Wednesday, February 8, 2006--The symptoms of this sickness have shifted. I'm coughing now. That's a good sign, because it means, for all intents and purposes, that I'm healthy now.


So on my way back from lunch...
Lei: Dwayne, we didn't bump into each other at Crossroads today!
Me: Yeah. That's because I got up late.
Lei: I'm going to lunch right now!
Me: Oh. Maybe I should have woken up even later, then.

After lunch, I visit the HKN Office.
Me: Hey Trace, are you going to discussion?
Tracy: Soon.
Me: (Wow, even in real life, she only uses one word responses.)

EE192 Discussion...

I ditched CS186 Discussion so I could do more work on my car. Now we have some nifty shit.

Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 1) Total: 4

Sweet Dreams!

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Tuesday, February 7, 2006--I felt a bit better today. I'm still probably sick, but the symptoms have shifted so that I'm not so tired and I actually feel like doing shit.

I skipped CS186 and CS164 Lectures...

EE192 Lecture... We had a quiz on motors. It was stupidly easy.

Afterwards, I went to EE192 lab and worked on the PWM code. Everything worked today for some reason. Maybe it was that computer. Who knows? Maybe it was just because I'm not supposed to declare a variable named pwmCounter.

You know what I need?

Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 1) Total: 7

"nite nitee"

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Monday, February 6, 2006--Day 2 of being sick. It sucked. I slept most of the day.

Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 1) Total: 6

Good Night and Farewell!

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Sunday, February 5, 2006--I think I caught a cold or something. Ugh! Being sick sucks.


So I stayed in my room and worked on Dark Fiends. Then, I didn't do much else.

Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 2) Total: 8

Thank Heaven I have no classes tomorrow.

Good Knight!

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Saturday, February 4, 2006--Come to think of it, today was kind of lame.

Today, when I went to breakfast, I ran into Lei and her floormates.

Lei: Why are you people so abusive? Stop abusing me!

Later, I went online, played Diablo 2, and otherwise slacked off. I think later tonight, I'll work on Dark Fiends.

Also, apparently, AIM has disallowed the use of equal signs in people's profiles. Silly AIM.

Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 5) Total: 7

Well then, I guess that means Good Night.

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Friday, February 3, 2006--I'll cut right to the chase. There will be no beating around the bush today.

Donuts & Bagels with TBP... I discover that Lei got into her research thingie. Congratulations, Lei!
CS164 Discussion...
EE192 Something Or Other...

And now, our feature presentation...

Guildpact Season begins!

So I went to the inaugural Guildpact booster draft and opted to play in a (sanctioned) Triple Guildpact booster draft. Also, I received a promotional Gruul Guildmage.

Anyways, as the draft started, I decided to go into Orzhov, because (why not?) they were the strength of my deck in the Guildpact Prerelease. However, I soon became cut off, but I decided to try to force it. (Perhaps not the wisest of ideas. *shrig*)

However, in my second pack, I opened a Niv-Mizzet.

Me: Hmm... do I satisfy my inner Spike and draft the good card? Or do I satisfy my inner Timmy and draft the Niv-Mizzet?
Elizabeth (the girl who was sitting to my right who had been playing MTG for the last 10 years and had an Unlimited Mox Sapphire (value: $500)): Ooh, I want that!
Me: Ah, fuck Spike. He's a NALF, anyway. I'm taking the Niv-Mizzet.

Then, Josh (the card shark who sat to my left) passed me a Tibor and Lumia.

Me: Well, what the heck, I guess I'm switching colors.

So I then started drafting Izzet, but I quickly found that blue was a little lacking as far as creatures go. So what did I end up doing instead? I drafted Red-Black with a splash of Blue. Yep. You heard me. Red-Black is back, baby!

Or maybe it was just a fluke. Who knows? The deck didn't do so well. (More on that later.) Anyways, here is my final decklist:
6xMountain
6xSwamp
4xIsland
Izzet Boilerworks
2xTin Street Hooligan
Scorched Rusalka
2xPyromatics
Bloodscale Prowler
Ogre Savant
Plaged Rusalka
3xMourning Thrull
3xDouse in Gloom
Necromancer's Magemark
Restless Bones
3xPosionbelly Ogre
Repeal
Wee Dragonauts
Tibor and Lumia
Niv-Mizzet

Other interesting cards in my pool: Fencer's Magemark (w00t! Fencing!), Train of Thought (I lost it), 3 Petahydroxes, Ink-Treader Nephilim, a fourth Poisonbelly Ogre, and Orzhova, the Church of Deals. Funny story about Orzhova. I put it in my deck not realizing that it was useless without white mana. I didn't realize my mistake until I actually played it and didn't realize it was essentially worse than a basic land. So I swapped it for an Island.

Game 1: vs George. In the first game, I was color-screwed. After some extensive shuffling, I beat his ass in the second game. However, in the third game, he got out a Skeletal Vampire on me, and I was unable to kill off the bats. Needless to say, I lost. Record: 0-1

Game 2: vs Loren. I lost to a Gruul onslaught. This guy's deck was crazy sick. He had not one, not two, not three, not four, but five Scab-Clan Maulers. Now, that's scary. Record: 0-2

Game 3: Ralph gave me a bye, so I went home. Record: 1-2

Well, at least I didn't get dead last. Dead last goes to the player who dropped before I went home.

I also bought a Guildpact fat pack. To re-iterate what the fat pack contains:

• Two card boxes
• The Guildpact player's guide
• A Pro Player card (I got Julien Nuijten, the 15-year-old kid who won Worlds 2004)
• Dividers for my card boxes
• Guildpact life counter (I lost my Ravnica life counter )= )
• A fuckload of Ravnica land (it could be useful)
• 6 Guildpact boosters
• And most importantly, the Guildpact novel

Interesting cards in my fat pack: Stitch in Time (it's like a weak version of Time Warp), Burning-Tree Shaman, Teysa, the red-blue dual land (booya!), Ghostway (wts?), and Orzhov Pontiff.

w00t! In just one day, I already got half of the Guildpact legends!

Anyways, that seems to be all.

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 4) Total: 5

I can't make a "Good Night" awesome enough for today, so I won't even try.

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Thursday, February 2, 2006--Happy Hedgehog Day!


CS186 Lecture... I didn't miss much.
CS164 Lecture... There was an amusing puzzle at half-time.
Lunch at the GBC...
Then, I started on my CS164 Homework and got as far as I could given the knowledge I have seen up to this point. Then, I was about to start on CS186 Homework when it was time to go to dinner.

Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 6) Total: 10

Later today: Fencing!

That's all, so I'll say Good Night!

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Wednesday, February 1, 2006--So I started off my day with lunch with Abhi and Chris. Because that's how we start off our days on days that I'm free for lunch.

Also, apparently, on Wednesdays, when I eat lunch, I have a tendency to run into Lei. Good old little Lei.


EE192 Discussion... not memorable...
CS186 Discussion... also not memorable...
CS164 Homework... it's coming along pretty well. I have it generally working. Now there's just the issue of getting it to work in weird corner cases. Mmm... corner cases...

Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 6) Total: 12

*gasp* It's the dice roll of the devil!

It's still pretty early, but I'm going to say "Good Night!" anyway!

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