San Francisco

Immediately after my internship, I flew to San Francisco for a short one-week vacation to chillax while I still had the chance.

Jet lag produces excellent morning photos

I made a day trip to south bay to visit Apple. I had lunch with my mentor and then went for coffee with a few others on the iOS team.

The reason I chose to go to south bay on this day is that Apple organized a small auto show at one of the campuses. I got to see a number of supercars and classics.

AC Cobra

McLaren MP4-12C air vent

Wings of freedom

Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Superleggera mirror cap

AC Cobra Coupe

Salute

McLaren MP4-12C mirror cap

McLaren MP4-12C engine

McLaren MP4-12C door opened

Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG front emblem

The most intriguing supercars were the McLaren MP4-12C and the Mercedes SLS. I may just have a thing for door mechanisms, but I gotta say, scissor doors are the coolest. I think they intrigue me because I don't have a clear picture of where the hinge mechanism is mounted -- there's no obvious flat edge on which the door pivots like in traditional doors (leftmost edge) or gullwings (topmost edge).

I'm not too versed on classic cars, but I did recognize the BMW 2002! Oh, the things I learn from playing Forza 4. There were also a bunch of Cobras and a Porsche 356 Speedster in British racing green.

Automobiles aside, staying in San Francisco, specifically SoMa (South of Market for non-natives), was quite pleasant. Compared to the Tenderloin, where I stayed for an on-site interview. The surrounding area was decently clean (I would say not as clean as the loop in Chicago) and had plenty of attractions. Namely, the Apple store was only five minutes away by foot. :) Plenty of restaurants were close by, including Chinatown. (Aside/funny story: we went to a dim sum place for lunch, and I was awed when our waiter computed our bill (including tax!) in his head. I joked that I would never be able to work there.) We also walked along the piers and went to Ghiradelli Park one afternoon.

That said, rent in San Francisco is laughably expensive, to say the least. It turns out that rent for a one bedroom corner unit in a relatively nice location is $4k/month. To put this in perspective, a two bedroom/two bathroom unit in the penthouse tower in Chicago is $3.2k/month. One would think that high rent and high income taxes would be sufficiently large deterrents.

But inexplicably, I think that I will be sucked into this vortex known as the Bay Area.

Bridge in the south!

Yippee!

This summer, I had the pleasure of attending the 2010 North American Bridge Championships in New Orleans, Louisiana. I was more than thrilled after competing at last year's Youth NABC in Washington DC with my temporary partner Brian Hamrick, so I decided to bring Sam, my now-regular partner, to play. Brian would be playing with Lenny. The four of us had learned precision in the past year, but had slightly different systems. Perhaps the biggest difference was that Brian and Lenny have used their system against real people (they go to a local club), whereas Sam and I would be test-driving our system at the NABC. Like every other eager bridge player, we made all housing arrangements in February and planned out daily activities as soon as ACBL released the game schedule. I also took the opportunity to apply for a $500 subsidy by my local bridge section for going to the NABC, which I received, and am grateful for their support.

On the mild Saturday night on which Sam and I arrived, the four of us played a one session 299er Swiss. It went pretty well. On the hand that I held a decent 15 point hand with AKQJ seventh of spades, Sam raised me to game with a spade void after I made a jump rebid. It made! We were happy that Precision is working. I can't say I was surprised that the guys wanted to dive into bridge, but I was surprised that I did not collapse or deteriorate in the middle of the session, contrary to last year.

Sunday was a day full of bridge. After losing the first round of the Morning Compact KO, we entered a two-session Bracketed Swiss. Unfortunately, on one board, the opponents called the director on us because we had a miscommunication while bidding. Later that night we signed up for the Mini Spingold 0-1500 just for fun.

Monday was another day full of bridge, but thankfully it was the last three-session day. In the morning, we handily won the Compact KO Consolation. Then at 1PM we played a session of the Mini Spingold. We did surprisingly well in the first quarter, but not as well the second quarter. We lost more in the last two quarters, but did better than the second quarter. Sam and I did well, unfortunately at the expense of our opponents (at the end of 56 boards we seemed to have destroyed our opps' marriage. oops.) I psyched on a board by accident, having miscounted the point cards, so I opened 1D with 9 points but with AQ sixth of diamonds. Sam, thinking I had a decent hand, bid 3NT after a pesky opps' overcall. Guess what? It made! :D

Taking a break from Swiss teams, we played the Gold Rush pairs event on Tuesday. Like the name suggests, this event awards Gold masterpoints! Sam and I did OK in the morning, but were ultimately hampered by our poor defense.

Wednesday was another two-session pairs game, the National 199ers. Again, due to our subpar defense, Sam and I were massacred in the morning, finishing third to last in our direction. The opponents played nearly all the contracts. However, we made our epic comeback in the afternoon. We played as many contracts as possible, and stole contracts as much as we could. Our efforts launched us into 4th place overall!

Thursday begins the Youth NABC. The morning pairs went okay, but not as well as it could have. I had the pleasure of playing a 7NT, courtesy of Sam, and it made! Apparently it was supposed to involve a double squeeze because clubs split 5-0, but as I finessed the person with the clubs, he didn't cover high enough so I got an easy 13th trick ^_^ Sam and I finished third in our direction. The swiss match in the afternoon went pretty well. We tied for second place, with first place finishing just one victory point ahead.

Friday was the National Youth Pairs, sponsored by Baron Barclay's bridge supplies. To our dismay, the cards treated us poorly; the opps had most of the contracts and our sacrifices got doubled. Simply put, we got massacred. Finishing a dismal third to last in our direction, we had no chance of qualifying for the actual event, but we did get 0.20 pity (master)points. The same thing happened to Brian and Lenny. We decided not to play in the consolation game, but went for a session in the Midnight Zip KO just for fun. It went very fast; the opps that Sam and I faced had a very convoluted system and played very quickly. We were done with three boards in approximately ten minutes and the remaining three soon after. Unfortunately, we got knocked out. Still, that doesn't change the fact that it was fun!

Also, midnight knockouts redefine a popular phrase. The phrase no longer goes ``you snooze, you lose'', but ``you lose, you snooze''. Losers get to sleep first while winners have to keep playing. Who would have known?

Saturday was our last game day and the last day of YNABC. We participated in the National Youth Swiss Teams, a two session long swiss game. We ended up doing well (finishing first in C, fourth in B, and 7th overall), but not as well as we had hoped because of unfortunately placed cards. On one of the 3NT contracts the opps played, the dummy, sitting south, had AQT fourth of hearts, east held KJ third of hearts, and west had three low ones. Oh well, at least we blitzed C. In another hand in which I had the pleasure of 3D with a 4-3 trump fit, one of the opps showed out of diamonds on the first round of drawing trumps. Oh dear, a 6-0 trump split. *sobs* At least we didn't get doubled! 3D-4 vul is pretty bad enough. On yet another board, I overcalled a 15-17 1NT with 1 point, holding 5 hearts to the jack and effectively preempted the opponents out of a slam.

On *yet* yet another board, LHO opened 1S and Sam overcalled 2H. Looking at my 23 point hand with heart support, I was so excited and immediately launched into RKC. Sam showed no keycards so we stopped at 5H, which went down. Little did I know that Sam overcalled with 3 points. Oh well.

In sum, the week was very exciting. I have to say that I was actually looking forward to playing, but didn't expect to play this much (~400 boards). Unfortunately, this came at a cost of not being able to explore the culture-filled area. At least we had plenty of seafood for dinner!

Random discoveries

• Precision works! Apparently some people haven't heard of it. Asking bids clear up everything and make slam bidding very easy and not nerve wracking.
• Takeout 1NT scares people away. 1NT direct overcall is 4-14 points with two or fewer cards in the opponent's bid suit and at least three cards in the other suits.
• Aggressive overcalls and preempts are fun! Going down four (doubled) is another story hahaha
• Playing 7NT is nervewracking when you can't count 13 (or more) top tricks. Then you breathe a sigh of relief when opps set up tricks for you.

Recap:

• Saturday
• 299er Swiss: 24 boards - 1.70MP (0.0708 MP/bd)
• Sunday
• Morning Compact KO: 24 bds - 0.00MP (0.0000 MP/bd)
• Bracketed Swiss: 49 bds - 1.78MP (0.0363 MP/bd)
• Monday
• Compact KO Consolation: 24 bds - 1.60MP (0.0667 MP/bd)
• Mini Spingold 0-1500: 56 bds - 0.00MP (0.0000 MP/bd)
• Tuesday
• Gold Rush Pairs: 48 bds - 0.89MP (0.0185 MP/bd)
• Wednesday
• National 199er Pairs: 48 bds - 4.06MP (0.0846 MP/bd)
• Thursday
• Youth NABC Pairs: 21 bds - 0.91MP (0.0433 MP/bd)
• Youth NABC Swiss: 24 bds - 1.65MP (0.0688 MP/bd)
• Friday
• Youth NABC National Pairs: 24 bds - 0.20MP (0.0083 MP/bd)
• Midnight Zip KO: 6 bds - 0.00MP (0.0000 MP/bd)
• Saturday
• Youth NABC National Swiss: 48 bds - 5.02MP (0.1046 MP/bd)

Total: 396 bds - 17.81MP (0.0450 MP/bd)

Spring Break

Monday

• Did a physics mech multiple choice practice
• Looked at CUDA parallel reduction some more

Tuesday

• Apple refreshed MacBook Pros!
• Set up WebDAV, so now I have access to all my data wherever there is internets :D

Wednesday

• Set up symlinks so all my data could be accessed from DAV share
• Helped Pavel pick the right netbook (an HP Mini 210 HD) - his current computer is a 7-year old Dell ultraportable with only ~4GB devoted to Linux (the rest of the 20GB HD is his parents' windows installation), so yeah...
• Reworked y0u.dontexist.com - put in an updating AAPL ticker :D among other things
• Fixed minesweeper (aka LOLsweeper) - there was a huge bug in the mine generator

Thursday

• Wrote a php widget to scrape Apple rumors
• Went back to NJ
• During the trip, I was looking at cars (like I always do) and I saw a portion of a Lexus LS 460 from the rear 3/4 view. It turns out to be the long wheelbase variant, and when I got a closer look at it, I noticed that it had the 18" wheels instead of the 19" ones (they're different styles; I'm not that crazy :P). I also realized that one can only get the 18" wheels if the car comes with the 4-seater package (the one with the rear seat massagers and the right hand side recliner with footrest). I have no idea how I notice these things; maybe it's from all those hours playing sudoku and analyzing Apple design? xD
• Installed XMonad and started learning the key bindings!

Friday

• Played around with XMonad and tried to get a hybrid solution with Gnome setup because I'm too lazy to launch everything from the command line. Unfortunately that was pretty unstable. I reverted to a pure XMonad solution, but that was still terrible. Now I'm thinking of wiping and installing Arch (Gentoo is too much work =P) because I think something in Ubuntu is causing it to fail.
• Thought about Trisweeper (our triangular minesweeper game for iPhone OS) a bit
• Tried to hackintosh my Intel Atom (D945GCLF2D), but that just utterly failed. I couldn't even burn a working boot-132 disk :(
• Played some games and a tournament on BBO! Sam and I got 8th out of 164 pairs :D

All days

• IM
• Lots of sudoku - So I played 27 hard games on my MacBook Pro for the first three days, and my average time is ~6m10 while my fastest time was 4m00! I am getting good at this :D
• Browsed MacRumors forums
• Watched Big Bang

MIT CPW

For the past four days or something like that, the entire universe went to MIT. Well maybe not the entire universe, but approximately one thousand MIT '14 admits. Each day was packed with events, and there certainly was lots of free food.

Thursday

• Train ride with Pavel and dad was fun ^_^ unfortunately the free wifi wasn't working, so I read a MSDN magazine instead.
• Registration went smoothly. Then I went to sign up for UROP tours, only to find out that the video game lab tour was full, so I signed up for a MechE one for the lulz.
• Lunch…what lunch? I just had two cookies and a cup of lemonade because I wanted to catch a class.
• Investments was a pretty cool class. Unfortunately I know too little management or economics to get the most out of the class, but I understood the part about using a Taylor approximation to derive an estimation formula for yield. Also, I read Engadget's coverage on iPhone 4.0.
• It was about 1500 now, so I retrieved my luggage from the storage room and haul it to Ashdown. June then led me to the suite and we talked for a while.
• Brian told me to meet him at Random for Bubblewrap at 1617, which turned out to be a huge fail because the demand for bubblewrap exceeded the supply by like hmm…over 9000? Yeah. The little room got mobbed by fifty people. Yeah.
• We walked back to main campus and bumped into Sam and Travis. Then we went behind Kresge to eat some BBQ because I was starving.
• Brian goes on a tour with Akshar and other TJ folks and I go eat ice cream at Simmons. A group of people were there already so some upperclassmen took us on a tour of the dorms. The interior was so different; the walls were curvy! I do realize it's an extravagant waste of interior volume, but the fact that it's so different just appeals to me. Then I had ice cream and played legoes with some other people. I was pretty surprised that two girls there were also having fun decapitating lego people and constructing a human rainbow with the bodies :O
• I start heading over to Random for tea and math and then see Brian and the TJ folks (who were headed to EC for BBQ), so I join them. When we got to EC, I saw Pavel, Ian, and Ben, and the TJ guys decided to go to the minorities dinner.
• Then Pavel and I went to Tea and Math and Ian went to quizbowl. I had tea while Pavel, Brian, and the other guys there did math. lol
• We went to Rockwell Cage for the opening ceremony, which turned out to be pretty epic. The Logarhythms sang ``You Belong With Me'' XDD After the assembly, we got into small groups and played icebreaker games.
• After that was the Activities Fair. There were lots of booths for every club. I watched a lot of supersized Jenga and a chess match between two BCAers to stall for time while Brian just stood at the physics booth doing integrals -_-
• We walked to Firehose for some midnight math/physics (wedge products). It seemed pretty random but understandable until the end, where the lecturer just threw random calculus applications at it ._.

Yep, that really is a crown composed of lego bodies.

Our mostly complete amusement park. The human body rainbow on the revolver was my idea :)

Evil calculus problems. Evil, I tell you. EVIL!1!!111!

Friday

• Chancellor's welcome address was neat. The four presenters were excellent speakers, and the two professors at the end surely prepared informative yet entertaining lectures. Unfortunately, there was a minimum of free food, so my breakfast just consisted of a cup of iced tea. >_<
• Having failed at finding more free food, I went to the student center to check out the women engineer's brunch. The line was unbelievably long (over 100 people), so I bought a Subway sandwich.
• Right after that, Pavel texted me about the BCA alum/senior lunch. He told me to meet at Stata, so I made my way there through the infinite corridor and stuff. I met Ian along the way and he decided to follow me. We got to Stata, floodfill the first floor. No Pavel. Ian texted him and said to meet in the Gates library. We floodfill the first floor of that. No Pavel. Then he texted us to meet at 466. We climbed the stairs to 4th floor, head to that room. No Pavel. Frustrated, Ian and I left to eat lunch and continue with CPW.
• UROP tour of the Ideation lab was pretty cool. The room was basically a junkyard filled with prototypes, posters, and a few Macs. The tour guides had us brainstorm improvements for the paper towel to show us what a typical day working in the lab would be like.
• Went back to dorm to sleep for ~3hr. 5hr is not enough sleep >_<
• Walked to Random Hall in the rain. First went to the Nerf Gun battle, but people were still setting up their hideouts constructed from cardboard. I learned how to operate a nerf gun!
• Minihunt was pretty fun. I had the the team's sole internet connection, which helped a lot. We got pretty far, until everyone got distracted by beef. BEEF. Except I didn't, because it looked unappetizing and I'm not used to eating meat for dinner (gasp).
• Brian took me to the pizza shop diagonally across from Random and I had a slice of pizza and a drink. Yay, I'm no longer starving!
• We went back for nTris and Friends, a rigged Tetris tournament. I did miserably because I treated it as normal Tetris and just used a greedy algorithm to clear lines. 
• Tangerine Tour! Under Jack Florey's NDA, all I can say is that roof and tunnel hacking is awesome. And so is sitting on roofs with a spectacular view of the city :)

Darn, I can't read. XD

Saturday

• Solar Car Shop Tour was really cool. The people discussed what it took to build a efficient, yet high-performance solar car. The project is really tempting, but I probably will forgo this opportunity.
• Took a nap again because 5hr sleep is not enough >_< (see a pattern?)
• Yugioh: The Abridged Series Marathon + Live Interview with LittleKuriboh was one of the most awesome events I went to. We watched the first twenty episodes and then had a live chat with the man himself :O Of course, Jordan asked him a bunch of questions about the creation of the show and how he gets inspiration. I asked him to sing Brooklyn Rage for us :D He told us that he's working on a parody of ``Bad Romance.'' I suppose he's not giving Lady Gaga a break, is he?
• For dinner, Brian and I went to this upscale Spanish restaurant called ``Cuchi Cuchi.'' We ordered two delicious (albeit expensive) dishes, garlic shrimp and bliny. It was also my first experience with bread and oil (still don't understand why; bread is good by itself). Maybe I should convince the rest of purchase cellophane to eat at more upscale places rather than pizza and burger places.
• Our tour at EC was pretty lol. Our tour guides were all from the same floor, so of course they weren't biased. We saw four floors of East side, skipping floor four because it was ``lame,'' apparently. One of the floors had a hackable soda machine that dispensed free soda if you knew how to use the computer program and another had a knife sticking out of the wall. Most of the floors were basically computer junkyards, which makes me feel right at home :) Then a gymnast decides to climb on the steam pipes single-handedly, which was pretty epic. I probably should have recorded it or something…
• Around midnight, some EC folks put on a fire show! The pyromaniacs were spinning fire batons, spitting fireballs, and playing with a fire yo-yo. It was so awesomely mesmerizing…
• We went to the Big Bang Theory marathon (it's a geeky comedy) at 1am. One of my friends had recommended that I watch it, and so I did. It's pretty hilarious. Sheldon has got to be the most socially awkward character XD We got through the first six episodes, but I fell asleep sometime during the middle. 

Sunday

• After sending Brian off to the shuttle, I joined Pavel, Ian, and Ben in an empty classroom for early morning breakfast. We talked about EC, MIT life, and math team. 

In other news, I finally memorized all of Gen 1 Pokémon! Now for Gen 2…I have 75 of the 100 down. Maybe I should play HeartGold or SoulSilver to refresh my memory :)

Also, while walking through Ashdown, I came across one of the ``don't lose your laptop'' posters, but this one was a bit marked up:

QFT :)

A Hiatus! [Part 2]

Sunday

Today's plan was to visit MIT campus and dorms. We parked in front of 77 Mass Ave and walked in a random direction and eventually encountered East Campus! The buildings look OK and there's a nice spot of grass in the middle to lie down and do hw or stuffs (when the weather is nice, of course). From there, I chose another direction and we found the back of Stata center! It looks just as weird as the front does. We discreetly slip through the back and my parents found a nice place to sit while I wandered around and looked at all the cool posters of DARPA Challenge and super old school LISP machines. 

Then we walked back to the car and drove to Micro Center. Apparently it's only a five minute drive from MIT (it's near Harvard) :) After visiting it, my parents took me to Random House. It's located in the worst possible location; there's a gas station right next to it and a really narrow and dirty alley in the back. >_< There is no way in hell I'm living in that. (sorry Hamster)

Now that we were finally done touring MIT (it was about 1500), my dad decided to take us to this ``really good'' Chinese restaurant for lunch. However, we didn't find decently priced parking within an hour, so we left. We ended up eating at an awesome American restaurant near our house. Swiss burgers are so delicious :D

Monday

After finally figuring out how to work the pressure-powered stapler that we borrowed from a family friend, my parents finished setting up all the chair rails. We then went to Minado for lunch, where I stuffed myself with lots of sushi @_@ We then went to Home Depot to buy tiles for our kitchen and molding for the guest bathroom. However, there wasn't enough of the tile design that we wanted at that Home Depot, so my dad dropped us off at home and went to three other stores. Then I chilled for the rest of the night.

Tuesday

We planned to leave sometime this afternoon, so the morning was just chill time. I did some evil sudokus (only 17 numbers :O) and calculus! However, the upstairs heater decided to fail as we were leaving and my mom insisted on getting it fixed before we leave, so my dad got a mechanic to diagnose the problem. After he left, it was about 1900, and my parents decided that it wasn't too late to leave, so we started packing up and departed at 2000. We got home at 2330 and I immediately began installing my SSD! Everything (installing drive and OS) took about an hour. The best thing was that IT WORKED AND MY COMPUTER IS BLAZING FAST BEYOND BELIEF :D

A Hiatus! [Part 1]

This blog post is going to detail my vacation so far! For the past [approximately] four days, I've been hanging around in my Massachusetts residence. It's a nice getaway from freezing NJ weather.

The plan was for my mom and I to take the bus from NYC after she got off from work. Luckily, we didn't have to bring too much stuff, just our backpacks and other small things. However, my dad wanted me to bring my MIT cylinder after I told him the mailman had dropped it on the porch. So now we had to bring two backpacks and a tube. Yay.

On Thursday, my mom brought me to her work place. Upon seeing the tube, my mom's colleagues were jealous. So one of them decided to go to lunch with us (probably to ask me about getting into college some more. @_@) Anyway, it was decided that we eat at a Japanese restaurant, since both her daughter (a high school frosh) and I liked sushi. We walked in a direction and spot Japanese restaurants across form each other! Our moms were unable to break the tie, but I spotted a Five Guys and just started walking in that direction and everyone followed. However, there was no sushi in the restaurant that I picked T_T Anyway, we talked more about college. I basically just told her that the key to success is pursuing a subject that you truly enjoy (and be good at it). Then my mom and I headed for the bus and left at around 1500.


We arrived at the South Station at 2000. Upon seeing my tube, my dad got a bit excited and opened it at the food court at the train station. Hungry from the bus ride, my mom and I went to the food court to grab a bite. When we got home, I decided to check the shipping status of my SSD (solid state drive for people who don't follow technology). Amazon had reported two ship dates, 12/24 and 12/31. Being a slight pessimist, I thought that it was going to come on the 31st, so I left my bricked computer at home. [Un]fortunately, it had already arrived :O So...it was good that I got my Christmas present in time, but I couldn't use it. T_T

Friday

It's Christmas day! We had nothing much planned, except for a party at a family friend's. I thought that was going to be somewhat boring since I haven't talked to her in a long time, but it turned out to be fun ^_^ I got to play Wii and tractor!! The funniest part was inadvertently convincing her five-year-old brother that their dog was ``dirty.'' (Well he asked me why I was using the bathroom, and I replied that I was going to wash my hands because the dog made them ``dirty.'' So for the rest of the night, he stayed away from the dog as far as possible.) Her family also gave me a really nice and unexpected present (Bose in-ear headphones). =]

Saturday

It's the day after Christmas! Again, we didn't have much planned for the day. Parents decided to keep furnishing the house, so we went to Lowe's to look for tiles and other stuff. On the way, I convinced them to stop at the outlet mall to see the...Apple store! (cue the eye-rolling)

On the way back, we decided to get some takeout General Tso's Chicken from the local Chinese restaurant. Their General Tso's is quite a bit different from others in that it's crispy! So the plan was for my dad and I to walk back to the house (approx. 1 mi) and my mom to drive back once the takeout was ready. Unfortunately, even with a 10 min head start, my mom passed us and got home first. Oh well, at least I got my daily dose of exercise XD

To be continued...