#highschool Graduation Ceremonies 17 May 1998

I remember people asking why we were not having the Hopkins High School graduations at Northrup Auditorium. They claimed that Northrup was under remodelling. Suzy said that they were painting the basement. Either way, it was irrelevant. The day we graduate, 11 June. Is when Adam Engelhart and the rest of Eden Prairie High School have their graduation ceremonies at the Northrup. Just another reason why I hate our school.

Read full post
#highschool UMTYMP Graduation 16 May 1998

Wednesday we had our UMTYMP graduation. Present were Molly, Tom Borchert, Adam Engelhart, Suzy Reichel, Laureen Ojalvo, Eve Xin, and others. Doug Shaw gave an astounding speech. Suzy also gave a speech which was good. Raj (my brother) and I did not like the food at all. Other people said the food was alright, but I think maybe my brother and I have higher standards for food.

Anyway, I got a lot of help for my fourth CSci assignment in Recitation. Recitation was boring so I emailed Katie (ed: Romportl - 5/24/06) for the last two minutes. There’s a link, you can email her too (ed: there is no link, it was removed in a belated attempt to thwart spam - 5/24/06). I’m going to start using her as my personal wailing wall. Except I won’t cry. I’ll just babble about how I don’t want to be in my classroom at the moment.

When I got home, Molly and I started working on invitations for our graduation. Hopefully we’ll send them out today or on Monday.

Yesterday, Molly and I went to Minnehaha Falls and rain fell on us (which she enjoys more than I) and then hail fell on us (which neither of us enjoy at all). We ran back to a mini-shelter and then to the car and headed to someplace safe, Arby’s. Molly has sided with me and really likes the Roast Chicken and Pesto Panini Grill sandwich. We then left for the play at Hopkins (Pirates of Penzance). I got to talk to the crew and even where a shirt of a crew-member (because mine was sopping wet). Molly returned to the light, and I found Mike Jorgenson and we sat down and then were joined by Adam and a surprise appearance by Jason Waye. The play was very good.

We (Molly and I) went home, were tired, started printing labels for the invites. Then we realized they didn’t print what we wanted (well I realized that, Molly was asleep on the couch). Molly left home, and I went to sleep.

Today I worked on my C++ project a little. It’s not too bad at all. Tomorrow my dad comes back from India during Simpsons/X-files… I hope his plane gets delayed so I don’t miss any of the show.

Read full post
#computers Longterm 16 May 1998

I was reading the current issue of Boot magazine. It had an interview with an Ogawa-san from Sony. Boot asked him about integrating the MiniDisc with the VAIO computers. He said that the possibility of using the MiniDisc as a storage medium is available (but he didn't make it seem likely).

I came up with an idea. If a company wants to make their replacement for the floppy the medium it has to do two things:

  1. Store over 100 megs of data.
  2. Be backwards compatible somehow with old floppy drives.
You may be thinking, yeah didn't Imation try that? Yes, they did. The backwards compatability shouldn't be a restriction to the design of the new device. All you need to do is stick a slot and have two different readers. One reading old floppies, one reading new disks. The other problem Imation had was marketing. Everyone has this problem, Iomega is probably the only company that is doing this marginally well. The best way to market these devices is to mass produce a large quantity of them and give them away to major PC manufacturers and sell them for a very low price to smaller OEMs. They can make the money back later by selling disks and backup software, etc.

This of course is a longterm solution. American companies do not use long term solutions. Japanese companies do.

My brother was telling me about a hybrid vehicle from Toyota. Toyota sells these vehicles in Japan for half the price that it costs them to make these vehicles.

Why?

Why would you buy a hybrid vehicle if it costs a lot more than an "equal" gasoline car? By doing this, people will buy the vehicles. Common people who don't by the latest eco-friendly machines. When you have a large customer base, you can mass produce more vehicles. Thus cutting costs. You can also build other models of hybrid cars which would let you do part-sharing between models, which lowers the cost of building these vehicles much more. In a decade or two, you will now have a population that drives ecologically sound vehicles and you will be selling these vehicles for profit. I think however, Toyota was doing this primarily to help "save the earth."

Read full post
#food Calendars 12 May 1998

Well, I surprised myself again. The Calendar algorithm was very very simple to figure out. It pretty much uses the same type of logic as anybody would if they were to make an HTML calendar by hand. So, I wrote this thing, now I have to do something else... yes, I need to write an interface that lets you add/modify/remove events (do you know how annoying it is to write something like that... oh well).

It'll be nice when the whole web site is finished. I take it nobody has been able to find it's location. It's fairly easy. Tom probably has the best chance of finding out where it is located.

I'll post a time line for the entire site's completion, so you people can have a good idea about what I am doing and when I'm doing it. I'd give it a good month or two... although I'd like it done at the end of the month.

Mike Jorgenson has been in town, Molly and I had lunch with him at UNOs. UNOs makes great Pizza. I tried eating a slice of the leftovers and I was full... I have another half slice to go. Then I remember, you can never eat more than two slices of UNO pizza.

Yishan should be back sometime tonight. I won't eat at UNOs with him, because I can't eat there more than once a month or once every two months.

Read full post
#computers RJ-11 10 May 1998

Here's something I found about RJ-11 plugs.

Read full post
#highschool Day after Prom 10 May 1998

Prom... well despite it costing a couple hundred dollars, it was worth it. It's just a nice occasion. Here's how mine and Molly's went.

At around 8-8:30 I woke up and took a shower and everything and Jesse had arrived. Jesse and I ate breakfast (Eggos) and then Katie arrived. Jesse and I didn't feel like waiting for Molly so we went to Gingiss to pick up our hideously expensive Tuxedos (which I can hopefully return tomorrow...) then we went to Glenrose Floral in Hopkins to pick up our hideously expensive floral "accoutrements."

Read full post