Hanging in there

Alllllriiiight.... seems like all I've done this semester is being sick and missing on a whole lot of living and studying. My exam was all done and forgotten a week ago, and just as I thought I'd relax over the weekend and start on my research project and make good progress before I head home, I was struck with one of the worst flu in my personal health history and was bedridden for 3 days, sleeping and in pain. Thank goodness it wasn't the scary swine flu... Still, I feel almost robbed of time and it sure does annoy me, the fact that I don't seem to have gained/achieved much after all that time and effort I put in... well, it certainly is not something I can bargain but sometimes it makes me want to scream at someone, just not sure to whom. Hmmm that's perhaps why I've become more and more cynical and cranky lately..? :P Anyways, a good news is that I'm "almost normal" (quoting my doctor here) in terms of my thyroiditis, and I've gained some weight back and I actually can feel it! I don't feel physically hollow anymore!! So hopefully I'll feel myself again next semester.

So, after all that drama, I'm pulling 2 near-all-nighters grading exams. Feels better to be doing some work, however boring and unrewarding it is, rather than being slumped over my bed or sofa with fuzzy brain. I'm just keep telling myself that I'll sleep on the plane, and I'll be home in no time. I wonder how much of work I'm bringing home I can manage to finish...

9 days and counting!

Exams are over, although I have this 20% project that I'm supposed to do instead of one of the midterm I "canceled"... may be the professor thought I was lying, seeing how he assigned me 2-hour presentation instead of 1-hour exam... =_= workload-wise, I think I just ended up tripling the work. Annoying, but what can I do...
I'm gonna finish that thing before I head home! at least that is my plan for now :p
CAN'T WAITTT!!!

More on the mad thyroid

I wen to the local (meaning 20min bus ride) endocrinology specialist yesterday to hear more about the radioactive tests I've done last week. Once I got there, they did some routine thing where they weigh me, measure my blood pressure etc, and after nearly 3 weeks of non-stop eating of heaps of sometimes fatty and junky food, I didn't gain even a single pound, and am still just below 102 pounds (I had eaten a whole footlong sub before I got there though). Wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not, and after filling in some forms and waiting for 5 mins, I went in to talk with the specialist. He went straight into the test results, and it turns out I have thyroiditis, which is not a clinical disease that I have to take medicine for the rest of my life, but an inflammation of thyroids. There are some more serious ones like Hashimoto's thyroiditis, but the doctor said my case wasn't as severe as it could be. And not loosing any more weight is definitely a good sign. Good news indeed, because this means that my thyroid problem is not going to last forever. But a downside of that is that I don't get to go under any treatment program, but the best thing to do is to ride it out. This was a little disappointing because lately I found myself unable to do much other than being in a constant state of tiredness + muscle pain + irritated + foggy brain + unbelievably forgetful + unmotivated to do the pile of work I have to do. I guess the doctor is right for not putting me on any thyroid hormone controlling medicine (he said it will make things worse at the start anyways), and he said I should eat well and rest, like I didn't know already. I guess the nature of this thing being nothing more than my body "overworking" and making me feel like I ran a complete marathon the day before every single day, it is not something to worry too much about. Good, I don't ever want to make this a big deal, but sometimes it is rather annoying that everyone says "you just need to take it easy" or "you should sleep/eat more". I'm doing all of that already but still feeling spent. All I can tell myself is that only few more weeks and I'll be home resting in the sun, then it will alllll be better.

Some thoughts on job interviews + radioactive me!

So... I think I had an OK interview, but in the end it wasn't a good news I was hoping for. I'm disappointed a little, but meh I'll find a job eventually. Still, this experience made me realize how much of an art the whole interviewing thing is. I've talked to 2 different people from the same company prior to going there for an on-site interview, first with a fresher who worked there for about a year or two, then with the hiring manager. First guy was sorta know-it-all person who pfft-ed at me for taking SCJP, and told me he was preparing for it but has not yet taken it. I told him I took SCJP as a general proof that I know Java. Not even 2 seconds after I finished that sentence, he started firing me all these java question, which I answered all except for one. He then pointedly said "that was one of the SCJP exam question!" what the.. if you know that much, why don't you sit that exam already.... He prolly thought I was too book-nerdy for an interview, and I wasn't invited to even the phone interview then. I talked to the second person, the hiring manager, about 2 months after that incident, when they came back for another job fair on campus. I handed him my CV, talked for about 10 mins, about my working experience and my specialization at graduate school. What happens then? He skipped me the phone interview and I jumped on the plane to their on-site interview. I didn't get an offer in the end, but the whole thing just clearly shows that there is no set metric or guideline for interviews, just depends on who you talk to... I mean I don't think I got that smart in that 2-month time... Also, all these recommendation about how to appear interested and prepared and smart by repeating some phrases like "I believe I will make a great contribution to your company blahhhh" are, in my opinion, really just bs. Interviewer is a person, I am a person, and both are looking for a match. Would I ever talk like I just jumped out of a textbook? How is that ever representative of an individual? I don't know, I just don't understanding why an interview should be a "show" according to all these "interview tips" that I found on the internet.

And on a completely separate note, about my radioactivity... I went to the local hospital to do some more testing on my hyperthyroidism for which I took a radioactive iodine tablet, waited 24 hours, and measured how much of it was absorbed into my system. And then I was injected with some other form of possibly radioactive material, waited 15 minutes and took the radioactivity picture of some sort... I'll have to wait until next week to find out what that all means though. Being tired all the time is getting really tired. I actually canceled one of the final exam because I just couldn't sit down and read 12 papers, understand them, and regurgitate what was on there. It was my fault that I didn't read them on time but seeing how I had this condition for almost 2 months now, I don't think I will be able to read them even if I had time. It feels like that nothing seems to be recording in my brain almost, I feel a little dumb too @_@. Arrgghh few more weeks and I'll be home for a summer Christmas.

Darn it...

Riiggghhht.... the weight loss had a reason behind it.. I went to student health center last week to at least check why I was so darn tired and had joint/muscle pains at tender age of 20something. The doctor scheduled an appointment for blood test saying it doesn't look like just an exhaustion, he also quick survey-tested me for depression :p but I scored round-about normal for that too. Went back to give them my blood (nurse was uber cranky, she literally stabbed me with a needle!!), and I got an email yesterday for the result. I HAVE HYPERTHYROIDISM?!?! Treatable, so I'm not worried too much but some side-effects are not so pretty. I guess I've been experiencing most of them like extreme fatigue and muscle pains to the point where I found difficult to walk long distances, palpitation, unable to concentrate, weight loss, sleeplessness and haven't yet experienced this but eye-bulging is another common side effect (am I too shallow if this worries me the most?).
I knew I was eating not-too-out-of-ordinarily, not like this is my first semester anyways. I am going back to talk to the doctor today, hopefully I'll get more information on what is good for me and what is not. Is there any food I should avoid (internet says I should avoid iodine-containing food and I should also eat a lot more to keep the weight - I'm having cheesecake for this).
I thought I was healthy and in a pretty good shape even though I haven't been to the gym forever. Oh well. I guess this is the nature's way of telling me stop obsessing about a lot of stuff.

2 months into semester, progress so far

2 months into the semester, 6 pounds lighter, now I am 101 pounds. No, not been on a diet of any sort but lost that much by pure tiredness, lack of sleep, stress and overwhelming workload. Still did very bad in one midterm exam and the other one I'm waiting for the result.
I thought losing weight and getting thinner was OK but definitely not this way. I didn't skip meals but mostly had to replace them with quick-to-prepare bagels/oatmeals/sandwich with nothing but ham in it etc. I could have bought nice meals every time, but I'm a poor graduate student so not gonna happen... as a result, I felt so out of myself these days and I had low-blood-pressure-attack this morning and it was not pleasant at all. But now that I have a little bit more time and have less exam-related stress, I cooked me a nice meal (black pepper beef! sauce was ready-made though) for dinner tonight and it was sooooo niiiiceee.... I am going to get back to a weight that I feel healthy in.

And still absolutely no research done whatsoever. I've been told repeatedly that master's thesis is more like a project report so I have nothing to worry about, but I'm not worried if I can finish it or not. I'm worried it will end up like a project report rather than a proper research. What is the point in doing that otherwise? I'll start bugging my professor again soon...

What else... oh yeah job hunting. I have a couple of friends in NZ who have successfully found a job in the states, one in Mountain View (Google! OMG!!) and one in NY. Hearing that I am pumped to find me a job too, and what do you know, we had a job fair in Siebel Center today with Microsoft, Intel, Lockheed Martin, NSA, Cerner, Salesforce etc. So I went along, handed my resume to couple of places that interested me (couldn't even get close to MS though, too many students lining up) and got one positive feedback that they will contact me for a phone interview soon. I still dread the interview process and feel I always come out short, but experience-wise, it is better to have many not-so-good interviews than hoping to nail one and only one interview with Google (yeah I still do want to work at Google :P).

Better get back to C# coding or my project group mates will hate me :(

so unbelievably tired

5-hour sleep for the past 2 weeks... courses, catching up, homeworks, project, research, TA work, grading, TA supervisor who thinks I have too much time on me that when the posting the homework grades was posponed by half a day, he thinks me and the other grader is lazy. Err.. grading 3 questions for 100+ students, on top of everything I have to do, took me 3 nights until 2 am!! Plus, if the course only has one grader when there supposed to be 2, why is it automatically my job to take over? Erm don't I already do TAing for the course?? what is the other TA doing??? I know being responsible and whatever, but in the end, I am doing 2 person's job and you think it is easy?????? GGGGAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 20-hour a week? yeah riiigghht..

And some professors don't understand why grad students prefer RAship over TAship... are you kidding me??? TA's job is about double triple of what RA has to do (eg. RA has to deal with a professor. TA has to deal with 180+ students!!), AND the research of my own (my thesis!!!) on top of that. RA's get to do their research and work on their thesis along with the professor's. What's more is that this is a research institute. If you are a grad student and don't do much research, you feel like an idiot (e.g. Yay my paper got accepted to this top notch conference!! hmm but what have you been doing? - well, no one I know actually is that mean to point it out, but I feel like that sometimes. can't help it.) Plus getting good grades is important because that's what the TAship assignment is based on (with its tuition waiver). OMG who do I have to punch to make those up there in management/admin office realize this TA workload is just all very wrong, unfair and contradictory on its own!!!!!!! Sure I'm thankful for tuition waiver, but at times this is just unbearable. I felt like I was just spontaneously burst into tears DURING a lecture because of the tiredness, lack of sleep, stressing out about the midterm tomorrow (I had only 2 days to study because of the grading.. THANKS A LOT!!) and the physical muscle and joint pains.. I haven't had time to do anything else, no hanging out with friends, no cooking nice meals...

I don't want to be this negative and realize that I am indeed lucky to be here, but sometimes just rambling it helps.. just few more months.... I wish sleeping wasn't a necessity.

...

I've been uber busy lately with moving and studying and TAing and planning winter getaway plus general semester-related hecticness. All these were stressful load of "stuff" piling on top of me, but I realized how some of these worries and stresses I have are so petty. I got a sad news from my mom about a high school friend of mine (my mom knows her parents) that kinda slapped me on the back of my head..
I remember this friend as bit of a bully actually, not a really mean scary type but one who made few of my other friends' high school lives a little bit more memorable... We were quite close for the first year of high school but it grew into more like "oh yeah I know her from high school" kind of friendship after that. I probably have seen her couple of times after we graduated from high school and just said "omg hiii!" and talk for 5 mins then just be on my way to whatever it was I was going/doing at the time. Not because I hated her or anything, we were just a distant friends I guess. The sad news I got was that she passed away. She took her own life. I have no idea how I'm supposed to comprehend this kind of news. I wasn't close to her and it's been more than 5 years since I last saw her.. Still, I feel so sad that she made such a decision, especially at our age when we probably haven't even had half of what life can offer, and sad that she was unwell which pushed her to make the decision she did. My heart sinks every time I think of her family.
I dare not feel guilty and think 'what if I reached out to her' or anything, not my place. But I feel that any small gesture of care from even the most distant friend could probably helped, though to what extent, I'm not sure... I just hope that she is well now, found her peace and is happier.

I still feel that I shouldn't be blogging about this. This just is not the type of thing where anyone should lightly talk about. It is someone, a person, that is no longer here. It is all of her family that is faced with unimaginable pain. I don't want to sound as if I'm saying "this has been a life-changing third-party experience".. just not the place.

I actually had this post as a draft for couple of days now, but I decided to post it with a justification: I feel that this way, she is remembered a little bit more.

Semester started...

FA09 has officially started and a week has been gone by already... I was back in town from Las Vegas on Wednesday Morning so maybe that is perhaps why the week seemed so short.
Had a blast in LV + Grand Canyon, definitely places that one should see at least once... What I saw of Grand Canyon must be a tiny tiny fraction of the whole thing, so I'm up for few more trips to Grand Canyon..

I felt I needed to write out my random thoughts and plans etc and have a clear list of things for my own sake.. my head seems to be in the holiday mode still, and I already have quite a lot of work on my plate.
- I'll first need to decide which course to drop, since TA+2 courses is kind of a standard for me and another course will be the extra feather that broke an elephant's back..
- Then there is the looming half marathon which I don't think I'm ready for, physically more than mentally :p don't know what to do about that at the mo, since I really want to participate but having the semester started and all, I'm finding harder to work out... wow a classic excuse I must say - during the break I was too lazy to work out (oh well that plus 8 hours a day working schedule didn't really help...) and during the semester I'm too busy to work out... dang it... I'll see what happens I guess...
- The weather can no longer be categorized as summer anymore... it is around 23C and for me I had spent 5 days in 40C heat (and before I left it was around 30C in town) that 23C is now cool and sometimes cold... Looming winter is just too scary for me and I bought a 600-fill down snowboard jacket in preparation for it.

The time I saw 290 million tuples in a relation

I thought 50thousand rows in a relation was huge when I was working back home. This was a real-production site-live data. And then I saw a relation with 290 MILLION rows. WITH NO INDEX on the search column other than the pk column. OMG. Searching a simple where none-pk=yyy literally took 30 minutes, on good days. And the thing I wanted to do with this humongous relation was to choose deterministically randomized subsets (that is, same order of randomized rows every time).
The following is the progression of the query:

1. select .... from XXX where .... order by rand(seed) limit x, y;
This took waaaaaaaay too long for my purposes, which is no wonder because the whole order by rand() on the entire tuple is too expensive when anything for 290 million tuples is just too slow already.

2. select ... from XXX where ... and id in (select id from XXX order by rand()) limit x, y;
Now, this looked like a good solution for about half an hour. The speed of query was definitely faster by order of 100, but the problem was that limit x,y could not be inside the subquery (mysql limitation, nothing syntactical)... meaning the result of subquery was shuffled and randomly ordered, but it included ALL ids. So, going id in (shuffled and randomly ordered ALL id) limit x,y ended up returning y number of tuples in sequential id order, because id being the primary key, it had index built on it.

3. select ... from XXX where ... and id in (select (select id from XXX order by rand() limit x, y) as shuffledID);
This looked like a good solution, again for about half an hour. While this was in fact shuffling and limiting the result of subquery, and therefore what gets selected for the outer query was non-sequential y number of tuples, IT WAS SLOW.. similar performance as the initial try, which is no wonder as nested anything is usually a headache if you do it more than once :p

4. select id,.... from XXX where .... order by password(id) limit x, y;
This was me thinking outside the box. Password function in mysql uses hashing to generate "random" string (hexadecimal if I am not wrong) and that made me think, there are more ways to randomize! Initially I thought the performance wasn't going to cut it but out of 4 options, it was actually the best in terms of query time and randomizedness and I went with this one.

This, with memcache, index on search columns and not having that 290million tuple relation (splitted it up in the end.. denormalization for the sake of performance is not really recommended, but it was done in a way that does not require joins for queries, so I am happy with it.. just couldn't do a darn thing with that huge a table) made things better... ahhh fun small challenge this was :)

darn.. I almost forgot I had a blog

I guess I sorta knew I'll eventually fade off from blogging.. and here I am one-per-month blogging.. Anyways, summer break is nearly over, with only a week to go before I go to Vegas and then come back to already-started Fall09. It was a good break, didn't think 3 month will ever be over but here I am :p.

So. Worked for 2 months, writing python web crawlers, working on Linux more than I ever have before, doing db back-end stuff etc.. So I learned a new language at least :)
Hanging out with friends without constant worry/stress about having to finish an MP or reading list or whatever the heck I did during the semester was so very very nice too. Some down points were the fact that sometimes the whole "outing" made me miss my old friends even more, with whom I can go to a pub and drink and goof around/talk about real stuff, whereas some people I got to know here mainly hang out to drink... Another thing is that I am sorta at the older end of age spectrum... I used to think that wouldn't be a problem, but with Korean friends, it is kinda different :S hard to explain, it's a cultural thing.

I'm kinda pumped to go back to what I only can describe as study-war. This year will be more hectic since I have decided on my thesis topic and will have to produce a decent thesis draft at least. Good (bad?) news is that I HAVE to do one more semester here, because I wasted couple of course slots trying out data mining... oh well, I'm open to getting the most of what I can from UIUC. Good news is that I secured TA position for the year (year? semester?), meaning my tuition is wavered... and this time it is not introductory java course, where I had to grade 200+ exam papers overnight, teaching classes for 4 hours a week and answer emails etc. I will be TAing for a database course that I took last semester. Sweet..
So.. new semester? bring it on!

First time for everything I guess

1. Programming in Python - fun.
2. Look at 16 different shopping sites for work - actually is not as good as it sounds because I'm not shopping... what a torture...
3. Work 8 hours a day and still feel like I haven't done what you are supposed to do - I really need to catch up on my research :(
4. Drive on the highway
5. Eat artichoke... almost choked on it... not sure if you are supposed to really eat it or just chew it and spit it out.. done both btw.
6. Eat pasta with pecan nuts in it. Why? Why nuts in pasta??
7. Experience severe thunderstorm, in the middle of the road in an old car driving while the siren is going off.
8. Feel uber crappy for no real reason except for the sticky hot humid sweaty weather.

The art of procrastination

I am literally doing NOTHING these days... having my mom visiting for two weeks was just the best, and I wouldn't have done anything anyways while she was here. But now that she has left, I should really get my acts together and do something about my research, scwcd, driver's license and stuff. All half-started projects so far - which gives the illusion of me doing something while not accomplishing anything at all :P.
Luckily I'm a step away from finding a summer job with one of Illinois Venture company, though having to work on something I don't quite find intriguing isn't going to be too much fun. But I'll just shut up and work and earn money... plus, I get to work with Python which will definitely help me learn the language compared to me going at it alone with no motivation.
@_@ can'y believe 1/3 of the holiay is already gone... why does time fly faster when I'd like things to be slow mo?

A year gone already!

It seriously feels like I've started studying only few months ago, but I've successfully finished a whole year of grad school at UIUC already! It is so true as you get older, your age is the speed at which the time flies past... well, I'm not saying I'm old, but compared to when I was in high school, the time sure does fly pretty fast nowadays.
So far, school-wise, I think I've been doing OK, except for not doing much research and still not having any idea for my thesis. Life-wise, having lotta fun with friends, but unfortunately some of them are leaving soon having graduated and all :p
Now that it is the glorious 3 month long holiday, I'll have plenty time to first find a job :D and do some other stuff I wanted to do - like getting a license here, get scwcd, a big west-bound trip with friends (no europe trip this year T_T), research, play with Ruby, read books etc...
Ahhhhh no MPs, TAing, projects and exams... hurraah~

Wear your heart on your facebook statement

Blogging, facebook-ing and twittering seem like a daily-must-do as much as eating a meal for so many people now, including myself.. mostly just for facebook, since I don't really blog that often, and just thinking about twittering makes me tired... why does one need to say so much about so little things so many times a day to so little audience? Do you really want to know what I am up to every second of the day? Cuz I don't!

Anyways, I'm setting the scene here to talk about something that a friend said, which I thought was kinda representative of how our current "Internet generation" behaves (ooh sounds deep~).
So this friend of mine, he is a regular facebook junky who updates the status more times than necessary (well, I'm guilty of that too), and one day, his status asked if anyone knows about a particular scholarship program. I kinda knew someone who got that scholarship, so when I met him the same day, I told him about it. Why? cuz he asked! But the first thing he said was "what? How did you know I was looking for some information on that? I've only posted it on the facebook!" DUH that's where I saw it, that's how "broadcasting" works... another time, his status said he was feeling kinda down and beat. So the next time I met him, I asked if he was feeling better. And this time he was kinda freaking out and asked me why am I not leaving a message/comment on his status like everyone else but ask him directly about things like that, and said it was as if I was stalking him or something... err what? come again?
So, why did I not leave a comment? Ohh I don't know, because reading text off the screen is less personal than talking face to face? Or is it that I live in the same town and I don't have to communicate with him through the Internet, and I usually bump into him at least once a week...? So now, being friendly is stalking? Has the humankind lost the concept of face to face communication with all the technology already?

Where do people draw the line with these new ways of broadcasting? If it is something that uncomfortable to talk about between friends, why would one put it on the facebook status for absolutely everyone to see? Is it because the facebook now has become the primary (and only) means of communication, while talking face to face is just soooo 2007? I'm absolutely NOT against sharing things though the facebook status, it is fun, but just know that if you put it up there, I'll see it and how I respond is not up to you or up to facebook...

I guess the thing that weirded me out the most is how some people can be so open and forward when they are talking to many and unspecified persons and still feel awkward about talking to a specific individual. Guess these broadcasting mechanisms are bringing out the inner exhibitionist in everyone?

Obligatory "I had Google interview" posting

Yup, two phone interviews over 4 days and I can rest now that they are over.. oh wait, I have final exams next week T_T..
Nothing really different from what you can find when you google "google interview", except for questions I guess. But the questions were not super hard, just made you think and as usual, I can't think cleverly under such stress. But at least I don't feel like I crashed and burned, and so I'll be happy at that. Would be uber nice beyond all possible imagination to get the internship (and this is Chicago position which I like perhaps more than the mountain view position, just because I love Chicago city), but if not, oh well, I should be grateful to have Google show its interest in me just looking at my resume.

Of 30+ resumes I've sent out, this was the one and only interview I had... stupid economic situation and stupid uber smart phDs and some undergraduates... :P

Spring Break all over now...

Feels like it has been only a couple of days, but it is now the last weekday of the spring break. Had good time in Chicago with my cousin last weekend, and after that, although I came to school every day and studied (well, tried to), it was great to have no classes, no TA-ing, no deadline for a week, and just hanging out with friends... (half being dragged to karaoke wasn't really my idea of hanging out, but it was fun nonetheless :D)
And come next week, I have 3 deadlines, an exam grading which undoubtedly will last until the wee hours in the morning, and my own exam in couple of weeks, followed by more deadlines and final exams... But then again, this semester so far at least has been easier than last semester, and went by faster too.. already a year gone, and just a year left until I finish the degree @_@.. oh darn I have to worry about my thesis now..

Oh, the intern thing doesn't seem to be working out, got a hopeful email from Google (even just for an interview), but nothing happened so far... better poke them or something. I'm dreading interview processes tho.

5 straight hours of marking fueled by pizza and chocolate + exams coming up

Ohh just a typical grad student life I guess... feels a little bit bad I chomped down that much pizza and chocolate what with my training for Chicago half marathon already on halt for the exams.. (but no I'm not counting calories). I ran around 4 miles every other day until last week and now I miss working out! Hmm but I don't hate TA'ing and studying as much as I did last semester so that's good :p And also this semester I have bit of time to do other things like volunteering for WCS fundraising thingi.. should be fun. Oh and I am dying to play foosball in the grad lounge @_@! who knew wooden sticks playing football was so fun!! All after the exam.. having 2 things to study for the exams on the same day just epic sucks. Maybe I'm not as good a multitasker as I thought..?

Rubying around

I have been wanting to learn either Ruby or Python or Perl for sometime, but could not decide on which one to start off with. Each of them sounded very useful and I am hoping to learn and become fluent with at least two of them before I graduate. And then I was sold when a friend told me "Ruby makes you write code that is as pretty as its name" :D I just thought that was a really a nice description.

So when my TA professor asked if anyone could write a small bash or Ruby script for automating some file checking process (actually a cheater-detector) I didn't hesitate to volunteer although I have never really wrote any useful script with either bash (I've seen some during one of the courses I think) or Ruby before. I told him I would like to dig around, and now I am writing Ruby. So far I've been learning from examples, and I don't think I qualify to comment anything on Ruby yet, but given that I started poking around for less than 4 hours and have some working script on my lap(top), I'm liking it a lot :)

One beginner's block I've faced - I was writing a class and methods in my script, so it didn't occur to me that I had to have methods declared before the line where I call it from. But then it's a script.. I don't compile it to run it.. so I had a DUHHH~STUPID! moment after about 10 minutes trying to understand why interpreter said there was no such method when it was there in the same class. This made me realize that whenever I'm learning a new language extensively, I feel that sometimes I'm "trapped" in the Java way of thinking and that can be a block.. but breaking that mind-block is so refreshing!

Preparing for the summer

No, it is still bitterly cold here and summer seems so far far away (but weather forecast shows a positive 2-digit temperature next week so it is not all bad).
I was talking to my office mate today about wanting to find an internship for the summer and it turns out that it is basically now or too late. The problem is that if I don't get an internship, I'll have to secure a TA job for the summer semester, which I was told is very hard to come by because of the number of courses that are available. And the economic situation now means it is harder to find an internship too. Someone from Google came for a seminar last week and actually said so :S.. Man do I hate being an international student...

So, my grand plan is to submit my CV to virtually everywhere, here, UK, Australia, NZ even :p otherwise I'll have stay here without any income for 3 months, probably living off my savings, in which case traveling anywhere near Europe this summer is simply impossible (because I still have to pay rent! unless I sublease it.. hmm). Curses! :(
At least, if I get something in Australia or NZ, it would be a good excuse to go home for 3 months hehehe... I don't quite hate that idea. Finding an internship in UK will just be uber nice though :D
Oh well, I'll see how it goes - all this brings back the memory of job hunting... and the fact that I'll have to go through this again when I graduate. Oh the horror.

Sometimes I can't help it

Sometimes I feel so tired and can't-be-bothered so much that all I wanna do is sleep away the day and hope I'll feel better tomorrow. Even when I have tonnes of things to do. Exams are already looming in a month's time (2 on the same day! DAAAMMNNNN) with a number of assignments/projects/work in between and I am slowly stressing out... I get stressed too easy when I'm studying me thinks :( I blame stupid cold never-ending winter here. Snow is ok still, but not when it melts and soaks the hem of my jeans and covers my floor with muddy footprints. Yuck.

icanhascheezburger.com

SP09 Prologue

It is a week into SP09 semester, and so far, so good.
Few things that happened in the past week:
1. I now have a thesis adviser! finally! I have been talking with this professor since last semester, and I made it final by putting her name and her signature on a piece of paper and handing it to the academic office. I am still working on the topic, but at least I have an area of interest I am researching under. And since I am planning to do 5 semesters here, I still have a bit of time - would be great to publish a conference paper or two though.
2. The course I am TA'ing for seems to have been affected by the budget cut... Last semester we had 6 TA's for 200 students, now we have 4 for the similar number of students. And 2 of the TAs are new to this course. OMG. So my teaching hours have been doubled, and surely my office hours will be doubled as well. And the exam markings will undoubtedly last even longer. OMG!!! The 12-hour horror!!
3. Got a new office assigned - I was in this humongous 11-persons office before, and I never liked studying in there because it was so noisy. During the winter break while I was in NY, a pipe that goes above my desk got burst and the whole office was flooded. So, after floating around with no office for 3 weeks (over the break so no biggie), I got a new office and this time it is a compact 4-persons office and I love it! It is still on the first floor where there is no service room for coffee or printers though. I have met those who share the office and they seem all very... quiet :D (so far just been saying hello and bye stuff).
4. Got a new camera! YAY!! My Canon Ixus i has been acting weird with its battery for a while and one day while I was in NY, it died after taking 5 pictures when I recharged it over night. It kinda still works time to time, like if I switch it on and off several times.. So, given my plans to visit Chicago again during the spring break and possibly overseas during summer, I thought I'll buy one and play with it a bit... clearly, they are paying me too much here :D.
Now, I'm a happy point-and-shooter and I think I took some good pictures with my itsy bitsy Ixus i. Plus I don't like carrying around a chunky dslr camera when I don't know how to use all the functionalities. I was eying the Canon G9, but I figured that for that much of money, I could easily buy a lower end dslr camera which will no doubt take much better pictures. So, I braved and bought Canon Rebel XSi (EOS 450D) with all the intention of learning every single feature it provides. So far, the wide angle and zoom I can get with my kit lens (well, compared to Ixus i) have blown me away.

Despite all these things happening and assignments and homeworks slowly mounting, I feel like I can do with a week more of holidays :p It's the post-holiday laziness I guess, and when things really start next week I'll whip myself into shape..

Data security, privacy, regulatory compliance, auditing, searching.....

I've been researching a little bit about these general areas, because that is where I want to head for my thesis. So this will be a chance for me to clearly write down the road map of what I have gathered so far.

In the past decade, data security requirements in IT field has been toughened by scores of regulations, such as SOX, HIPAA and FISMA and tonnes more - all US regulations, for example SOX applies to all publicly listed companies operating in US. But requirements are generally similar for regulations in other countries. These regulations apply to different industries and enforce different rules, and are almost always technology-free, meaning there are no specific technology implications in implementing any of them. I would divide the underlying implementational aspects into 3 main areas:
1. Tamper-proof data retention (WORM, insider attacks, privacy)
2. Auditable trail of data (COW, versioning, sanitized audit logs)
3. Searchability of data across versions (robust indexing)
There are a lot of studies already done and being done on these areas, like Write-Once-Read-Many data stores (many of them tape-based, optical media are used also but says it costs more), Ext3COW (a result of a research from Johns Hopkins uni), jump indexing etc etc (there are simply too many of them for me to have read all, yet...). My general focus is the "insider tampering" and auditing, but I'll have to talk to my almost-adviser..

So, thats the overall, simplified picture of my research to date. I am looking into Ext3COW at the moment, hoping to understand its implementation better - which means I have to know more about Linux (its file systems and linux programming in general). This scares me and at the same time, makes me eager because I have been envying those uber geeky people who talk in C/C++ in the land of Unix/Linux (I googled "C/C++ for java programmer" and someone says I don't wanna go there). I know it will be hard but it is a chance for me to really get into it I suppose. I have been reading Unix books and stuff also, but unfortunately even the simplest OS concepts seems to be out of my grasp. So I am going to audit (that's what people call it here.. basically I'm going to attend the class without enrolling - well I can't because I'm a graduate student) one of undergraduate architecture/systems course that covers the basics. Come to think of it, I did take CS210 Computer Systems paper back home, but we spent 1/3 of the course learning T-code - I think thats what it was called, try google but you won't find what it is. From what I remember, it is a compression algorithm developed by the lecturer who taught the paper... So, anyways, if nothing, I'd have been exposed to Linux at least.

So.. big hopes and dreams for my coming semester - it will be tough with 2 of my own courses + 1 seminar course + researching + auditing a class + 20hr/week TA-ing but I am excited. Hopefully I'll find a nice internship for the summer break too. Fingers crossed ;)

2009!

Whoa, it is already 2009! I was thinking about writing something grand like "a year in retrospect and another in prospect" but there are so many disjoint things happened in the past year, I will end up just babbling on and on and on.. so just a quick summary.
1. I made perhaps the biggest choice of my life (so far) last year. Overall, I feel that I made a right decision.
2. I realized I have some awesome friends. I guess it is that "you don't appreciate something till its gone" thing.
3. I have uccessfully finished a semester at UIUC. Got an A for this weird course where everytime I thought I did ok I got crushed and when I thought I actually screwed up a test/assignment I aced it. And A- for a course I really enjoyed. I feel happy because I have had several "omg what am I doing here" or "I feel dumb as a stump" moments over the past semester (and no doubt will have a handful of them in the coming semester) :p.
4. Learned a whole lot about myself. Will skip the gory details.
and etc etc...

As for the new year's resolution, I am not making a specific list on purpose because I don't want to be stressed out about it :D. Maybe I'm being lenient on myself but my rationale is that if I'm going to do something, then I'll do it whether I have it in a list or not. So I'll just say that I have a mental list of things I want to do during this year...