Category: General

Not much to report, as my life as been deadly consumed by the beast that are final examinations.  I had two of them back to back on Friday.  Not a pleasant thing to do.  Oh well, at least I have a long lay off until Wednesday, my last final.

I still did manage to do somethings.  I did go out to Raleigh’s with Jacqueline and Shoshana, managed to see the last minutes of Game 5 between the Spurs and Lakers (man that was an amazing game, I mean Fisher with the game winner in .4 seconds; Go Lakers),  saw Troy on Friday night (terrible first half, but far better in the second half), and I did go to a wedding shower for David and Jessica today.  So I am having fun too.  Still, it’s time to still study for finals.  Back to the books.

So, I’m suppose to look up two “newsworthy” organic molecules.  I found one molecule that, while not newsworthy, was totally interesting.  In our Interesting Fact, ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) is a molecule that turns metals into complexes to prevent them from further reacting with other substances (like metals that are used as co-factors for enzymes).  When ingested, it also helps iron absorption in human beings.  Apparently when treating food with it, it also prevents a “metallic taste” from developing in foods.  Those foods include various canned foods and McDonald’s Big Mac sauce.  So if your Big Mac does taste a bit like metal and makes you look a bit like this , it’s probably because they didn’t add enough of this.  You can take a more in depth look at it at http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/edta/edtah.htm.

Featured Website–Molecule of the Month-A website featuring information on one molecule a month.  You can also sign up for their email newsletter.

Everyday, I see this girl with her silver Thermos.  She pulls off the lid, which serves as a cup, and pours herself a brown liquid.  There’s an unmistakable odor to it.  Yeah, it’s coffee.  She sits there in class and drinks the cup she poured.  I then think to myself, “wow, she must work really hard.”  I mean honestly, even if it’s an 8 AM class, there has to be a reason she needs the coffee to keep her awake.  She must be working tirelessly on her work, studying to who knows what hour.  She obviously needs some help to stay active, which is what the coffee hopefully provides.

I was reading this article on the new University Medalist.  The line that stood out to me was, “with careful time management that doesn’t over-allot hours for sleeping, Chow said, newcomers to UC Berkeley can do well academically and still have time for fun.”  In other words, it means long hours and working tirelessly towards your goals.

By reading what I just wrote, I may be sending a message that the end result of being that person with the Thermos of coffee who works into the night for oh so very long will make you the new University Medalist.  Maybe it will.  Maybe it won’t though.

I now think about the grad students who do all sorts of research at this university and also teach here.  They spend a lot of time in labs, sometimes even sleeping there.  Imagine the hours of sleep they must have lost in order to get to a great grad school like Berkeley.  I think about my Chem GSI, who’s actually an undergrad senior going to Michigan for med school next year.  Never got anything lower than an A- here and he plays intramural basketball.  Pretty cool, though he admits he regrets never having a girlfriend.

I mean honestly we can’t attribute one factor to be the one cause of everything.  Perhaps, it’s good time management.  Or making sure you did something you were truly interested in.  How about actually making time for fun?  Cutting back on things like relationships and other activities so that you can focus on your studies more?  Or perhaps, it’s just the simple drive to succeed.  I don’t know which one it is, but a lack of sleep probably isn’t it.  Now speaking of sleep… (Yeah I know I jumped around a bit in the conclusion, but whatever.)

Extra, Extra, Read all about–A real threat to expression?-An LA Times article how Micheal Moore twisted the truth about his new movie, and how Ted Koppel beat the Sinclair Broadcasting company.  (see these extras have absolutely nothing to do with the topic)

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My journal updates are pretty sporadic, but lately they’ve been going on this patten of being written Thursday night, but not being posted until Friday past midnight.  It doesn’t take me that long to write an entry, but I think I put more time into the ones I write over most other people.  I’d be curious to compare myself with others.  On to it then…

So last Sunday was frat elections.  I was running for vice president and it was probably the closest election of the night.  In the end, I lost it by a few votes to our current vice president.  It was kind of sad really, but if say some of the other brothers I know would had been there to vote for me, I could have won.  I bet the election was tied and then the president voted for Billy to break it.  Oh well.

On Monday, we had to be around for some alcohol awareness meeting that the fraternities do.  It was actually kind of fun, as every brother tried to make light of the situation, and there was a lot of picture taking.  Now if the guys can make some boring meeting fun, that’s brotherhood. 

Here’s a cool pic we took earlier

Stuff I should have mentioned earlier…

-So I had a call back from Science Adventures Camp for an interview for camp counselor.  However, it turns out I need a car for the job.  Blast.
-Livejournal got rid of syndication points.  Which means I can add all those Xanga accounts and such on to my friends page.  If you have no idea what I’m talking about, there are these accounts on livejournal which you can add to your friends page and read things like news, xanga sites, and comics on your lj friends page.  Problem was that everyone had a quota on the amount of feeds you could add to your page.  But the good news is they finally got rid of them.  You can check out the most popular ones at http://www.livejournal.com/syn/list.bml.  If you have a paid account you can make your own accounts for any page that has an XML feed.  Of particular interest to some of my friends:

knightangelfeed– Joey Le’s Xanga Site
calnhobbes-Calvin and Hobbes Comic Strip
choblog Margaret Cho’s Weblog

Hey koenma, remember those accounts you made last time?  I added them all to my friends list, so they’re in my info.  Nobody updates their Xanga though.
-Speaking of Xanga and Livejournal, a psychology student decided to do a study comparing both services. You can read about it here.  Interesting Facts:

• Live Journal users were more likely to identify themselves as whites while Xanga users were more likely to identify as Asians. 
• Xanga users are about two years younger (Xanga at 18.2, LJ at 20.5). 
• Xanga users posted less often but averaged almost twice as many comments per post (4.6) than LJ (2.6). 
• 70% of female Xanga users had more than 50 friends in their blogroll while only 40% of males had more than 50.

Oh like we didn’t know this?
–Facebook Faceoff-Joey Le-25 friends: Allen Lew-10.  Time to play a little catch up.  But I must say, if you look through the site, all the freshmen seem to know the most people.  I wonder why.  By the way, if you haven’t heard of it, TheFacebook is a social networking site like Friendster where you add friends, get their contact info, and such, except geared towards colleges, making it easier to find people.  It’s at a few colleges in the country, including the Ivy League, Stanford, UCLA, and some others.  Great website, but two things I’d like to see added: a homepage field and listing of other schools you went to (community colleges you transfered from and grad/professional schools).

I’d like to end here and then insert a Funny Quote or something, but I accident deleted the file that had all of them.  Darn it, and they were so good too.  Oh well.

Insert Funny Quote, Tip, or Fact that doesn’t go with the rest of the entry here

I don’t write too much on what I do in my classes or what they’re like, because well I don’t think that makes for very interesting journal entries.  However, the last few weeks, I’ve done like nothing, but work.  So sure why not write about it?

I guess I can start with my Environmental Science seminar.  Basically I had to prepare a presentation for use by the Chancellor’s Coalition of Sustainability on waste management on campus.  For my group, I focused on how paper was managed on campus and I found out quite a bit about this campus and paper in general.  For one thing, I found out that recycled paper is actually more expensive than virgin paper.  To think that I had been trained to think recycled anything was cheaper.  Also, it seems as though a multitude of people just want to stick it to everyone else.  Kind of sad, but when I interviewed people who purchased the paper on campus, I heard a bunch of complaints about bosses and bureaucracies, plus a bunch of odd “what the hell are you doing?” type looks.  Geez, I hate to think that working on the campus turns you into this.  Oh well. In spite of that, my presentation went pretty well, as everyone seemed to pity my experiences dealing with the administration on this campus.

So in Bio Lab, I’ve had numerous dissections in the last few weeks.  I’ve had to dissect an earthworm, a cockroach, a crayfish, and a rat so far this semester.  It’s kind of sad really.  My Chem GSI was telling me how when he worked for a research lab he had to kill animals for preparation of these labs.  Whether it was by putting them in a carbon dioxide chamber or drowning them in alcohol, it wasn’t fun.  If you want to see what I’ve done though, you can take a look at http://webdisk.berkeley.edu/~fine_al/bio1a/Bio%201A%20001.jpg and keep changing the last three digits.  It goes up to 163.  If you want to be specific, 003 has the worm, 116 the roach, and 132 and 133 are the poor little rat.

Finally, I’ve had a hard time deciding what to take next year now that all my lower divs are done.  Mainly, I don’t want to get stuck with a sucky professor.  So, I used two websites UCBprofessors.net and Ratemyprofessors.com, but they’re both kind of limited.  I also found out that the ASUC is making a new course review site called http://one.berkeley.edu. (By the way, they aren’t Featured Websites, because I find all of them still too limited. Check them out though, as they’re all useful in some way.) It’s suppose to also have an event finder and classified ads, and a whole lot more.  Great idea,  but wasn’t CSBA working on some of these?  You remember http://live.berkeley.edu and there next project was suppose to classifieds.berkeley.edu or something.  Coincidence?  Hardly.  Oh well, speaking of class work, I have to do some.  Laters.

Funny Quote-Lillian: “I lived in Unit 2, Cunnigham last year.  You?”
Me: “Unit 3, Ida Sproul”
Lillian: “Well nobody’s perfect.”

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Upon the request of vociferouspanda, I decided to write a little more about life itself.

-I finally saw Kill Bill, Vol. 2 last Saturday with some of my old dorm friends.  Definitely a must see, but the first one is so much better.  The characters just seemed a lot more interesting in Volume one, plus there was far too much dialog and far too linear.  The good points of the first one are still in the second one though like the awesome soundtrack and ridiculous action remain in place.  Yeah, you got to see it.
-I missed the Fraternity’s exchange with Kappa Alpha Theta sorority last Friday.  I don’t know, I don’t do well with sorority girls (or girls in general for that matter) and I certainly just didn’t think I would have fun.  Perhaps I was wrong, but it’s too late to do anything about it now.
-I was thinking of applying to join the community , but then I think to myself “do I really want my confidence destroyed by people on the internet?” I don’t know maybe I should do it, but still it’s scary.
-It’s funny how at parties how I just grab guys I meet at the parties to be my wingmen to approach women with.  It kind of works and kind of doesn’t really.
-I just revised my resume, and well, I’m not very proud of it.  I’ll post it online soon, but I’m not really sure I want to.
-If you think comics aren’t cool, read The Ultimates, Vol. 1: Super-human.  The art, the story, the concepts, the dialog are just awesome.  It’s about a small task force of superpowered individuals created by the US Government to take down the superpowered villains of today.  It may seem like an ordinary comic, but the heroes themselves are so flawed.  One is a schizophrenic hippie who claims to be a Thunder God, another is a scientist with Prozac addiction, and so much more.  You just have to check it out.
-Speaking of superheroes, I came up with a few of them in high school and wrote a few stories.  I think I’ll post up my ideas in another entry.  Look for it.
-Pool party this Saturday, May 1.  Should be fun.

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That’s what I would call this entry.  Just a bunch of short little glimpses into what’s been happening the last few days or so.

–News from home-March Madness maybe over, but another set of teams are trying to get to the “Final Four”.  One of them happens to be Lincoln High School.  They participated in the Economics Challenge and won the state championship in the David Ricardo level (that’s for people who’ve only taken one semester of econ).  So now it’s off to Phoenix to compete in the West Regional (which include one school from Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington).  Congrats to them and my sister, who was on that team.  Each team member won $150 dollars which is good money for high school kids (hell it’s good money for college kids).  Then if they win the West, they’ll go on to New York to face off against the East, Midwest, and Heartland regions for the National Championships.
They were apparently the only team to enter in the David Ricardo level at the local competition, so nobody knew what to expect from the team.  However, the state provided a different story, as the team had to grind it out for the win. It came down to just two questions.  They were tied with Ponderosa High, apparently one of the top 50 schools in the state academically. The team got the second to last question, but Pondersoa could get the last one to send it to sudden death.  When it came out though, my sister buzzed it in and with that the game.  Unbelievable.  They’re now looking forward to more intense action in Phoenix.  Good luck guys.
–What is the name of the chancellor’s dog?-The answer is Wheeler.  How do I know this?  I ran into it at Memorial Glade the other day.  I had just happen to run into David “Flipper” Singer as well  that day, and as we were talking, his dog starts trying to play with Wheeler.  The people taking care of him were these women (and not the chancellor) who were making a video to roast him.  So, they liked us enough for us to be in their video.  Wow what are the odds?
–Some ideas to throw around sooner-Earlier I was going to write a column on a set of things that I thought would cool to have.  For example, I thought Skype, a program that makes telephone calls over the Internet for free (only to other users though), for Pocket PCs would cool, because then it’d be like having a cell phone/pda combo for relatively low cost.  Turns out they came out with it a few weeks ago.  Now that I think about it more though, there aren’t too many places to use it, unless you pay the subscription fee for the wireless access.  There’s off course the library, but no way should people be using a phone in the library.  Then, I thought about trying to get CSBA to reprogram some parts of the Berkeley website like telebears and such.  Then, the ASUC took down their sites (http://live.berkeley.edu and http://finaldistance.berkeley.edu) after they got caught hacking.  So that’s out.  Geez, kill all my ideas would you.

Okay, it’s not everything, but it’s everything I have to say right now.