my digitized life // john hwang

no neglect

just because it is finals week and I am lacking sleep doesn’t mean I will ignore my eJournal; so here it goes-

It’s 6:07am right now, just got back from the library. Within the past 48 hours, I have had less than six hour of sleep and 1.9 all nighters studying for exams. My first exam (CS2130) sucked really bad. The final exam (3 hour time period) was about 20% shorter than the length of our regular midterms – it was merely 10 questions in length and I turned in my test after only an hour and a half of writing. I was shocked because I thought this was going to be one of those CS exams where there are 3x as much questions as there would be on a normal midterm and thereby covering almost every topic we’ve encountered during the semester. The night before, I studied almost everything – refreshing my mind on the old stuff. About 70% of the final exam was basically the topics we covered after the 2nd (and last) midterm… and I didn’t nearly put as much focus on those later topics than I had actually studied for… I can’t believe they are making CmpE majors take CS2130 :-/

Anyways, got an exam in less then 5 hours so I’m going to get some sleep.

Posted in School | No Comments »

Saturday

A relatively relaxing day although stress and a lot of study time is coming up (especially later today after I get some sleep). Nothing interesting happened until after dinner time – we went to Gelati’s to get some Gelato’s (Thanks Pater for such a sweet treat!) – I don’t think I’ve ever had those before but they were Mmmm MMmmm good They are specialty-type of Italian ice cream. I guess they call them Gelato’s because it ice creamish but it’s also has gelatinous texture to them.

Afterwards, we went bowlin… I mean, Distraction bowling at the SC. It was good times – this is basically a game that was invented by chance and for some fair amount of laughter =P Basically, it’s bowling except you are allowed to distract your fellow bowlers in any way possible to allow them a low pin knock count. The best distractions often lead to the bowling ball rolling into the gutter; the quicker it goes into the gutter – that’s exactly how good a distraction is… In the end, out of the 6 bowlers (Paterade, Schibdiggity, J Nip Dawg, Rice Bowler, In a Tizzy Fit, and Da Jew), I won by luck with a 4 pin difference from the 2nd placer… thanks to everyone who made the distraction of ‘In a Tizzy Fit’ possible!

Anyways, going to bed now… got lots to study later today *sigh* Good luck to everyone’s studying and finals this coming week!

Untitled

I can stare at the image of you without impatience,
A perfect image that is taken into my memory,
Always stagnant and firm on maintaining the emotions
Of interesting characteristics, I am mesmerized.
Mesmerized by the smile that I’ve never acheived.

I can stare at the image of you without jealousy,
But this is a difficult task that I can barely overcome.
I don’t even know how I do it, I pull myself away
Hoping that it’ll just pass but, I am stupefied.
Stupefied that this image can have such effects.

I look into your eyes in this image with hope,
But in the end, I know there is no meaning for it.
My heart mocks me with adversity as it knows no fear,
It is so clear but yet so far away, I am too late.
I am too late to do anything but wish for oblivion.

My mind was clouded for so long that I tired recently.
Restless but still thinking, I chose to be oblivious.
I gave myself objectives to commit this choice,
My goal was to keep myself busy with responsibilities;
To distract my mind, but I’ve failed completely.

The feeling is back and clouding my mind all over again.
I realized that it will never go away, it’ll haunt me.
No matter what, I will always be mesmerized by your smile.
I will always be stupefied by the cloudiness of my mind.
It will never be too late as time can’t get in the way.
With this persistent distraction, I hope to find you.

Posted in My Life | No Comments »

Last Week: Finals Week

After passing Dead Week by quickly and more or less effectively, I am now starting to dread this weekend (today and tomorrow) since I will have to study my butt off for my three exams that I will have next week.

Friday was very interesting… especially starting Thursday. I had to study for my last Econ test so was in the library most of Thursday night. Came back around 2am and ordered some pizza with Dave and Chat. I was planning on heading back to the library to study all night but my eyes told me that I needed to sleep some… so I got 4.5 hours of sleep and woke up around 7am. Had some quick fruitful breakfast and headed back up to the library only to find that my body was really really tired and needed a shower to maybe wake it up. So went back to my room showered and studied there… Econ test was tougher then the last test, I tried to focus on all 6 chapters covered when I assumed in the back of my mind that the most important parts of this test were going to be the first 3 chapters we’ve covered… ironically, I tried to cover as much as I can of all 6 chapters but the test… about 80% of it only dealt with the first three chapters. *sigh* It sucked.

So today after my last Econ test and last DiffEqs test – went back to my room and did some work that I’ve neglected the whole past week. Seemed things were well taken care of still although we had those network problems earlier in the week. But anyways, went to play frisbee with my friends… sure enough when my day couldn’t get any worse… I was thrown a frisbee that was a bit off course so with my tendency to chase after freesbies – I did exactly that – except I neglected to look at what I was running towards until too late. I was running toward a picnic table while looking back trying to read the direction of the freesbie. Just as I turned around to check if anything was in front of me – I realized that I was headed right toward the picnic table so I tried to jump so I can step on top of the table… but nope, my right foot slipped in the slippery brick layered walkway (it was raining that morning) and so while my body was trying to stop, my right leg kept sliding toward the table and *WHAM* I smack the lower part of my right leg right smack against the bench of the picnic table. With the momentum that my right leg had with respect to the speed at which one point of my entire right leg slammed into the table bench – imagine your leg trying to bend forward and not backward and you should understand what kind of stress was placed on my knee cap. Ow- it hurt.

I’m still gimping because it feels weird to apply normal amount of pressure on my right leg anymore.

Anyways, haven’t had that much sleep in a while so I’m tired. Have a good night.

Posted in School | No Comments »

no worries

This no worries thing has got me in a very good mood every day since I’ve decided that worries are the most useless thing that exists for human life.

So anyways, I wanted to edit and continue the lengthy blog from the last entry but I decided to just post a new entry. It’s been a couple of days since the last entry and there have been some interesting stuff going on.

For example, today – there was a Georgia Tech vs UGA baseball game so it was decided that the Goldfellas should make an appearance. The game was at 7pm and around 5:45pm, we realized that we did not have any paint left. So Brad, a retired Goldfella and soon to be GT graduate, helped us get some Tempera paint at Utrecht art supply store. We didn’t know what this Tempera paint thing was but they told us that it should wash off and it was non-toxic so we just got it and it worked fine except the paint was a bit thicker then the one’s that were used for a long time (except we found out that the old paint we used to use is toxic… hehe – uhhh… oh well). The game was okay, GT lost and we’re the 4th in the nation… and UGA isn’t even ranked. There were a lot of UGA fans there – even kids that got in our faces to start something. It was good times – the fans were a bit disappointing – definitely fraction of a football stadium crowd. I was mostly disappointed with our own fellow students… they lacked emotion for the game and majority of the cheering was done by the GT Band (big thanks to them) and the Goldfellas- how weak is that?! Shame on the GT students who actually went to the game and didn’t do anything but chat with their friends while our own team needed some hardcore cheering on! Shame on those GT fans who left early too! My god, give ‘em a chance! This isn’t a football game – we weren’t losing by 40-0 or anything! We tried to get ‘em riled up but wasn’t too successful at that… *tsk tsk tsk*

Anyways, we hive-fived and low-fived a bunch of people (adults, students, kids) and scared 3-4 children who… apparently didn’t like our bright yellow hair styles. We also sang Happy Birthday to Mrs. Clough (the wife of the President of GT)… they seemed to have enjoyed our 1min entertainment- they offered us some of her birthday cake but since this was early in the game – we had to decline since we had a lot of running around to do. Today’s Goldfellas starred Jordan, Dave, Chatty, Me, and Corey (spelled out T E C H ! ).

Anyways… school is going all right I guess – one class that I’m really worried about and probably have to take it over later but I realized that this class is not a preReq for any other classes so I can take this any time I want. Oooh, I signed up for classes last week and signed up for 18 hours so far. I signed up for Combinatorics, Digital Design Lab, Circuits, French… and some other stuff – I’ll update this once I can log back into Oscar to check. Only 2 more days of classes… then next week will be finals. I have a final Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. So, my finals schedule ain’t bad at all! (*whew*)

Also, work – there’s been a whole bunch of network problems at work lately… I’m kind of getting interested in the idea of network engineering because of it. I think we had about 30min to 60min downtime today and most of the day, the pings to servers on our network were in the high hundreds and sometimes even the thousands! It’s been temporarily fixed now according to the network status announcement but hopefully, they can fix up the network so it’ll be solid and reliable. A lot of customers have been lashing out against us on our own forums and other forums around the web – I really feel dumb when those who say nothing when everything is smooth is the first one to spread the news about negative things… once that negative thing is taken care of, and everything is good, we don’t even get a compliment or anything. Oh well, I guess that’s how people are…

Summer is coming along – here’s a list of things I will miss for whatever reason: seeing my friends everyday, making dumb jokes that don’t make sense, talking to friends, snoozing for hours on end, AIMing when you are really not even 50 yards away, dining together (even tho most of the time it is a dining hall, i enjoy the company), my forgotten worries that used to cloud my mind constantly until recently, this campus that I walk half way across daily, freesbie throwing & ultimate (who da hell is going to play freesbie with me at home?), observing people here at Tech, Goldfellas, being on the lookout, pi’s and talking about em (Mmmm), walking the campus at night to think and clear up my mind, the library west commons – especially the dual monitor multimedia workstations, Sweet Iced Tea in Brittain, Korean food with our group, 2am 2-large papa john’s pepperoni pizza orders for $11.99+tax, the images of those who I wanted to know but utlimately never knew, seeing symbols of Georgia Tech everywhere I look, the geek talk, my pride at Tech, the limited- yet interesting social setting, the beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon, and most of all- I will miss the laughter and smiles of my friends here at Tech.

It is late and I’m going to bed. Have a good night

Posted in Random | No Comments »

lengthy journal entry

Summer
For no particular reason, this will be a relatively lengthy journal entry. There is exactly two weeks left before I will have everything packed up here. Exactly two weeks before the 4-hour drive back home. Exactly two weeks before I will be working at home probably full time as a remote sysadmin for a company up in PA so that I can catch up with Tech’s tuition. Two weeks before I will be able to let my guard down – to hold my dog in my arms, see him wag his tail, and to let him know that I will be back for a while – doing whatever yard work that I’ve been asked to do – to seek a peaceful equilibrium with my family – to let any and all school related books, notebooks, and bookbag down to pick up a classic novel or an action-thriller by Tom Clancy and to read them ever-so casually when I am bored or don’t want to do anything else – to recognize my beliefs and faith as I feel that I will be needing them this upcoming fall – to attempt to keep in touch with my Tech friends and hope that they will with me – to learn to not take time for granted as I have done for sooo long – to try to give every single one of my old friends from prior to life at Tech a visit and a warm smile because I’ve ignored them for sooo long and I now understand friendship without the pressure from my pride or ego – to visit the pre-college educational institution known as ‘high school’ and externally let my previous teachers know that their efforts at enlightening me have succeeded and also that I did not forget about them – to show the world that I am a changed person but also to show that I am the same ol’ me – to breath deeply without worrying – to bring out the dusty violin case that I’ve neglected for 2 years, to taut up the bow and rosin it with a couple of strokes, to fit my shoulder rest on the back of the violin, to place it on my shoulder and then my chin on the chin rest… then to tune it by listening to the A chord that I can ring up in my head, then to pick out some old pieces of music that I used to know how to play then play horribly for a while and feel embarrassed for playing so badly – to start some personal projects I wanted to start and dedicate some of my time on developing for so long but haven’t been able to due to my lazy nature – lastly, to look forward to the Fall although it will be a bit lacking from previous seasons.

I think I just listed out my goals for the summer – yea I know, why didn’t I just make a list instead of putting in a very very long run-on setence type of structure? Because this blogging thing gets me thinking; it allows me to clear things out of my head one by one so my brain will have more space for new things whether or not the new things are important or not. =P Now, if I had to type up a list then I’d have to think about the list formatting and organization etc… I just wanted to get out my thoughts – whatever that came up in my mind and in whatever order – that is how I’ve typed the last paragraph.

This Site
So, I haven’t had much time to work on this site further (this seems to be a pattern with all my personal sites =P) but I will be working on things one by one until they are completed. Right now, however, I do not like the setup of the site – or maybe I am no longer liking the design anymore (highly possible because I get bored with my own work rather quickly). BUT I will probably be keeping this site for a bit longer or at least until I’ve completed it as much as possible. I’ve already worked on the Visual section of the page but I haven’t linked it yet – it won’t be anything fancy just a collection of pictures that I have accumulated over time and in collection-form through a gallery script that is quite handy and useful. Next thing I am going to work on is my Bio… now I’ve been questioning myself why I created a ‘Bio’ section and also an ‘About Me’ section. (Yes, I question myself often)… but no, they are two totally different things. The Bio will contain information about me that will not change… information like my name, birthdate, etc – just things that are factual. The ‘About Me’ will contain information that I personally observed about myself! Things that I do – things I like to think about, etc – things that can change as times goes on.

Changing the subject – one of the reasons I wanted to make a lengthy journal entry is because I haven’t blogged in a long while so I felt that I needed to do a nice big bloggin’ update and also because I wanted to see if long blogs are any more special then small itty bitty blob blogs.

Worry
So I wanted to discuss this idea of worry… worry is so useless. Allowing yourself to worry about something is so stupid, now that I think about it. I used to worry constantly… about the most ridiculous things! I actually believe that I had obsessive-compulsive disorder and some of you might have guessed that at times – I guess I still may have it but have somehow psychologically fixed it on my own. This seems to be a reoccuring pattern in my life – that I fix my own things on my own no matter what it is… I don’t know how I do it but I do it and it seems like to me it works most of the time. I guess this is one of the reasons why I hate asking for help even though I know I need it but even then, this is a difficult point to reach, to admit that I need help and there are things that I need help with. It’s even difficult for me to admit such things but it doesn’t matter to me anymore because I’ve given up worrying about things that does not need my mind and concern over – which is decidedly EVERYTHING.

Whenever you are worrying… ask yourself this: what are you going to get accomplished by worrying? Add all the seconds you allowed yourself to be concerned or worried about anything… now, look at how many seconds of your life you have wasted by worrying about things. You’re still here aren’t you? You’re still living life! It might be a stressful life but the important thing is… you are still here; being who you are – defining your history and the future. So why worry? Is it going to help you get things done better? No, because it will clog up your mind… cloud it up so you can barely get whatever you’re worried about done if at all! It will bring pressure to your mind and body for no reason at all and it will inhibit your actions and thoughts. Is it going to help you get things done that needs to be done? Well maybe- but then if it needs to be done, why don’t you just do it instead of worrying about it?!

Worry is something that only occupies your mind – it doesn’t seem to affect the outcome of whatever you’re worrying about – once it’s over the worry is no where to be minded… *poof* That worry disappears and it’s done and over with.

Like I mentioned, I used to worry about things constantly. It was second nature to me… to the moment I woke up to second I drift off into dreamland… I seemed to have something bugging my mind – clouding it – preventing me from seeing the real and only solution. Not anymore – no worries from me. Do not worry, my friends, for clouding your mind is purely useless and negative.

Posted in Random | 1 Comment »

crazy dream/nightmare

So I had this crazy nightmare last night… I don’t know where it came about but you really never know where your thoughts from sleep come from so I’m not going to question that.

The dream involved the strangest group of people that I know/knew in my life and I don’t know how this group seemed to have been together in this nightmare.

First of all, it was set in a place sort of like Vegas – we must’ve been on a vacation or something but there were a lot of tall buildings that were furnished like hotels. So anyways, we just arrived at our hotel – seemed like 10-20 stories tall. We were unpacking and one of my friend decided to carry something light and head on up to our room. I carried some of the luggage and decided to go in after him. I saw that there was a group of people waiting for the elevator but as soon as I got sight of them, there was this shrieking noise and the ground started to vibrate like a mild earthquake! The sound was coming from outside definitely and it was getting louder by the second and also moving over my head. Then there seemed to have been a collision directly inside the elevator that everyone seemed to have been waiting for… and for what seemed like 5 seconds – I could see that there was tremendous heat coming from the elevator and surrounding that area. You know when there is a fire and when you look at the area on top of the fire, you can maybe see the air moving around? Well, it was like that except this was warning me that there was a huge explosion coming. Meanwhile, I seemed to have been in a trance mesmerized by this ‘moving air,’ people were running away from the elevator with fear-stricken expressions on their faces. I finally realized that it would not be a good idea for me to just stand there so I started running out to where the others were unpacking the car.

When I came out of the building, the environment was so foreign. The sky was light pinkish and there were trails of black smoke in almost every other directions that I looked. At that time, there was a huge explosion right behind me… from the source I was running from in the first place. The front doors of the building blew off but yet, the people around me and I were still uninjured. My dad was there and he was the only family member that I had in my dream, with a frantic look on his face – he had his hand reached out. I grabbed his hand like I used to when I was little and we ran as fast as we could away from the building that now seemed to have been damaged and on fire- billowing black smoke into the sky.

We could see numerous other tall buildings that were hit with whatever it was… and I could see that a very tall building at a distance was in the act of collapsing completely. Soon, a building near us was collapsing and we had to run away from the rumbling smoke following closely.

Posted in Time Out! | No Comments »