I don't think the bbs went well...I guess it's because of such rush preparation...but seriously, the four kings vs five kings story? Malchizedek? Difficult difficult passage... But I'm really glad to have Ed in the group. Although I have to wonder where the heck is Francis...

Multitasking? Not my type of thing.

So one of our marks for the designs course is to edit another student's first draft of the final paper. I did that last night, and the class met today to return it. I put down on the edited paper "Edited by anonymous referee" as an inside academic joke. Long and behold, the prof says, "if you have any questions about the editing, please go to the editors themselves." And one second later, the guy came back to me to ask for my name. Ah, the joy of anonymity spoiled. But that was funny, though. Sort of. (Ah, the word anonymity reminds me of the word anemone, popularized by Nemo...)

I think I'm more like Lot...and that's not good.

Shortest class ever.

Yet another rush to prepare for the bbs. Not sure if anyone will show up, though...sigh...

Sometimes I do wonder: am I really a Christian?

I always get so distressed when a person presents himself/herself as two or three or more people...

Finished the paper editing. The undergrads are not the brightest people, unfortunately (and I say this in the kindest tone). Anyway, off to the bbs...

Might as well put down my scary schedule (past, present, and future):
Last Saturday: Luke game.
Last Sunday: Marking madness.
Yesterday: Re-coup, round trip to Hamilton, prepare for supervisor meeting.
Today: Paper editing.
Tomorrow: Brothers Bible study.
Thursday: Integer programming assignment.
Friday-Sunday: Integer programming final preparation.

In the meanwhile, I got orders to write a summary of what I have read this semester, read a new paper, and prepare for the comprehensive exams. Also, I've got to implement more ideas for the designs project due the Tuesday after. Also, I've got final exams to mark starting next Thursday until who knows when. End of term = end of my life, essentially. Getting super ready to take that break to Vancouver..........

Even though I had more than that, I'll count the past week as having four "2004 sleep deprivation nights"... (Just to remind myself, that was programming on Wednesday night, writing first draft of project on Thursday night, making that Luke game on Friday night, and marking on all of Sunday night.) So Sunday night would be counted as 2004 Sleep Deprivation Night #6...(well, Sunday night is actually "no sleep night"...but it's still sleep deprivation for sure...)

Three new ideas about my Hadamard 428 project...

Make a clique-searching algorithm that will search through my current matrices (generated through the hill-climbing algorithm) and see how many mutually orthogonal rows I have right now.

Implement a new swap function that will swap the values of four elements, each from a different column group. This will depend on the "column feasibility," namely the number of +'s in each column.

Somehow modify the code so that the first three columns are fixed. This may reduce the headache somewhat...or not. (By the way, I'm thinking of the pronunciation of the word "column" as similar to the pronunciation of "volumn"... One undergrad prof pronounced it that way, and I thought it was pretty funny, and now I'm adopting it...)

3 hours, 2 cities, 2 gas stations, 1 rainstorm materialized, 132 kilometres = a sore bum. Seriously, 3 hours of driving, without leaving the car? That's like writing a final exam...except possibly worse...like, fewer movement. Anyway, that was a sort-of enjoyable trip. Good thing I didn't kill MuTao, because I almost did. Finally didn't get screwed by the gas prices...70.5 while most others are 75.8. I saved...well, only about $1.50. Oh well.

Supervisor meeting tomorrow. Still has no idea what to do. I'm supposed to do a summary of all the readings of this term. Hmm...not sure how I can do it.

To quote Gill: "Fish are not supposed to live in a box, kid. It does things to you." (Well, same thing can be said about humans, right? I mean, men are not supposed to live in a room...or an office...or a car...)

It's always great to talk to my "head TA" Aaron. He's always so personable, sympathetic to our marking pains, and just a great motivator. And funny.

Yay! Finally finished Rush Hour 40! I don't even know how that was solved...it was like, all of a sudden, the path clears itself... Well, this means..........Let's get ready to limoooooooooooooo!

To quote Crush again: "Do you have, your exit buddy?" (My answer: no...)

Pattern matching. That's all I'm doing.

Finally! Marking complete! That's a total nightmare...I don't really care what students write, quite frankly...

To quote Crush: "You got serious thrill issues, man"... (I'm applying to having stayed up too long...)

I think I have been bordering on being delusional and unconsciousness quite a few times in the past few days, including now (and without getting hit, no less) (although it would be interesting to get hit, wouldn't it?) (or maybe it's just me?). So, not a good sign... Tea actually helped in keeping me up till now since 10PM. I don't expect any sleep until about 1PM today. Sigh...

Finished Rush Hour 39 while marking. One more, and I'm opening up the new limo!

It seems that my designs program always stalls after several hundred milliion trials. The current program is stalling at 1416264 for about an hour or two now. The last program stalled at 1418504. Hmm...I have this new incremental algorithm in mind, hopefully it will help unstall the stall...

Loving the unlovable. That's what God is asking me to do right now. It's just a difficult difficult lesson.

"Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets." Oops.

As a follow up to a previous post, my life could also certainly use a bit less cynicism and swearing around me...

Finally booked the airplane tickets: going away on April 15, coming back on April 30.

Swing by the Columbia townhouses this afternoon...boy, the place looked awfully small...

Got a bit of sleep... 6 + 3 hours... still sleepy, though. Now I just need to concentrate on the marking...need to get through it tonight...just concentrate...stop thinking about the coming supervisor meeting...stop thinking about the designs project...stop thinking about the assignment due...stop thinking about people who swear at me for no reason...stop thinking about everything, except marking. Now if I can do that, then it would certainly be a miracle...anyway. I hope I don't get even more depressed...

A few verses that came to mind...

So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.

The past 48 hours have been incredibly exhausting and sort of exhiliarating, and I was probably running on adrenaline for most of that time. I think for a stat, I've been sleeping for 4 + 1 + 1 + 4 hours in that time period (the last four hours being from 4.5AM to 8.5AM. Also on a diet, apparently, though not voluntarily. Thank God that I am still alive, though pretty delusional and bordering on unconsciousness. Pretty much the whole body is hurting right now...

Lots and lots of very interesting things happened in the Luke game today. I may recount some moments here. Good thing these are a group of young people...no heart attack happened as far as I know, although it may have induced some for the future...

Tomorrow: a full day of marking, if I get the assignments... For now, SLEEP!!!

Didn't get NSERC. Oh well.

Experienced yet another sleep deprivation + hunger combo. Hopefully this is the last one this term...

I had 9 + 15 pages of stuff in the first draft of designs project handed in today. That's 9 pages of written word and 15 pages of code. Wow...I didn't know I write that much...or it's just that my code is inefficient...?

All of a sudden, we are facing 16 degree weather today. Pretty warm and nice.

I'm not a good comforter at all. I have trouble expressing my emotions.

Hmm...haven't seen the MC janitors for a while now...

Pulling yet another all-nighter...sigh...

It's funny how the integer programming final is going to split into two parts: the first half is closed book, and the second half is open book. So during the open book half, we are just going to constantly hit our forehead and say, "doh! so that's how you do it..." and forget about this half of the exam...

I have already established that my mind is pretty screwed up. I think it has gotten into another local minima recently. It does bother me greatly, and I really don't know what else I can do about it...

The talk with Furino yesterday morning was really pleasant, actually. It's always nice to have a prof who cares about something other than the academic stuff.

Rush Hour 31? Impossible... We are no experts, apparently. (Update: solved it!)

So apparently I can't run my program on the school servers: it gives me the "Cpu Limit Exceeded" message after only an hour or so... I guess I kind of expected that...after all, they are school servers...

Electricity finally came back on. Yay! So here's how it worked: Socket electricity went out at about 8PM. I went to sleep at around 9.5PM. Woke up at around 1.5AM. Started working on the programming at around 2.5PM at the TV room (where there is socket electricity...). Stopped working and finally went to sleep at around 6.5PM. Electricity came back on at around 9AM, and I woke up at around 10AM. That's a pretty interesting evening...

For those interested, the second version of my Hadamard 428 project is done this morning. Download this file and let it run for a while (like, days, if possible). You can run as many of them as you want. And if you want to restart, there's no need to change file names this time. Thanks, guys! Oh yeah, let me know of the results, of course.

On a more touchy subject, I have to say that I like physical contact. Unfortunately, I just feel like everyone's avoiding me like the plague...haha. Oh well.

Hey, my order from amazon.ca arrived today! Yay! So it arrived exactly 10 days after I ordered...nice. There's this book "Approximation Algorithms" and a 3-CD set of the Beethoven Piano Concertos.

The bbs went fine. Amazing considering that I felt so inadequetely prepared...it was done last week, and I barely had time to review. Thank the Lord for everything.

The Hadamard 428 started running. The program can now find up to 12 rows that satisfy the Hadamard-property. That's 416 more to go... For those who would like to help me with this project and have some cpu time to spare, please download this file and run the executable inside. Please let it run for as long as possible, and run only once. (If you would like to restart the program, make sure you rename the "summary.txt" file to a different name before you start.) Thanks a lot!

Yup...3AM, and I'm still programming...not integers, mind you.

Maybe there is a reason why I shouldn't be programming...I mean, people do notice quickly if I make a one-letter error in the code in programming, while they probably won't in a thesis.

I actually remembered (barely) to send out the bbs email. Need to review the material again before bbs, though...

Getting increasingly frustrated about the Hadamard 428 project...now going for a randomized search as there is essentially no point in doing an exhaustive one.

I think the Luke game might run overtime...maybe I should cut down something...

Counting down to the day of eviction...

So I have this song "Be Joyful Always" running constantly in my head, yet I am definitely far from being joyful...sigh...

Looks like I am going to have to write a huge program for an exhaustive search of Hadamard 428...

I smell a trip to London in the near future...

Welcome to my second worst nightmare: remember the equation x^2 = 107y^2 + 106z^2 that I was trying to solve? I wasted a weekend solving it...turns out I missed a tiny little thing, and the equation should have been x^2 = 107y^2 - 106z^2, which has the semi-trivial solution of (1,1,1)...sigh................. Poor Maple, who did so much work for nothing.

Finally finished the "question composition" portion of the Luke game. It should be an interesting one...hopefully not too hard...

It's going to be a long week...

Welcome to spring! And the -11 degree temperature...and the -14 windchill...woohoo!

Self reminder: send email for bbs.

I don't know why I always want myself to feel bad...even in happy situations.

One more congratulations to Keane and Ed! I am just filled with joy about what happened. It's also a huge relief. Simply amazing.

Had a large lunch and a large dinner. Lunch is self-cooked. Dinner is at Swiss Chalet. The dinner is filled with political talk, though, which seems surprising for a couple of people in the early 20s.

I just need 2 more questions for the Luke game. At this point, however, I think I couldn't even come up with the two...just drained the material too thoroughly already... Anyway, I think I got some really good questions here (and thank God for all the inspirations). Hopefully everyone will learn something at the game.

Congratulations, Keane and Ed for becoming our brothers in Christ! Thank you, Lord! Your ways are amazing and fantastic! To think back to the days when I first met Keane, he has certainly come a long way. This is an incredible journey. I praise God for everything He has done.

Today turned out to be far more interesting and important than what I would have imagined.

On a comparatively very very minor news, I did finally got Maple to check the 100000 cases...

So how about that election in Taiwan, eh? Normally I wouldn't care for anything in Taiwan, but this time, it looks like the election is going to look like the American presidential election of 2000...

Why does my telnet connection keep on disconnecting itself? It's kind of driving me crazy... I mean, I'm only asking Maple to check 100000 cases, and it simply drops connection about every 10000 cases...sigh... Be patient...

My back is back now, but the front part of my left forearm does hurt whenever I pull or push something with the left hand... Another good reason why I shouldn't perform brute force labour...

Ah, the feeling of getting left out...nothing new, I guess.

There is a good reason why I shouldn't perform brute force labour: I would hurt my back...

Is it really true that the equation I posted below has no solutions? Maple couldn't find any...hmm...interesting.

I smell the exertion of even more manual labour tomorrow...

If anyone can give me an integer solution (not all 0) to the equation x^2 = 107y^2 + 106z^2, it would be greatly appreciated. If you can prove that no such solutions exist, you might get a PhD...

So I find Friday nights to be the saddest and loneliest night of the week...sigh... (and I smell at least two typos in this sentence...)

Actually spent about two or three hours coding for designs project. Well, one word aptly describes the work done: bad. No, I'm not saying what I did was bad, but I just let the program output "Bad" whenever it checks something that is not what I want. Well, one search through the 10MB output file tells me there are no occurrences of "Good"...sigh... Oh well, at least this is kind of expected.

I should learn how to cook. At least not by trial and error.

Ah, the weekend. Have I mentioned that I don't like weekends? Yeah, I don't like weekends.

Over many many years of experience in encouraging Christians to read the Bible as part of their lives, there is one thing that I have learned: no matter how you try and encourage them, they simply won't start reading unless they have a love for the word of God. And isn't every Christian supposed to love the word of God? That's what really frustrates me sometimes... Back west, I used to lead frequent Bible games to help with that. But what eventually happened was that people only care about the games, not about the contents that they are based on. Also it eventually turned into something where only the people who are already familiar with the Bible get to play well, so the "target audience" is essentially lost. It also turns Bible reading into a trivial kind of thing, so now I try to do Bible games as less as possible. Back to the main topic: it really grieves me to see so many Christians view Bible reading as something non-essential, and it surprises me to see how little these Christians know about the word of God. I'm at a point where I simply give up trying to encourage Bible reading, as that doesn't help at all unless there's a change of heart. Maybe I shouldn't do that, but I'm just disappointed, that's all...

Trying to do 3 weeks worth of work in 1 week? Well, that sounds familiar, doesn't it?

All of a sudden, I'm faced with the task of programming in two languages...how the heck did that happen? Last time I programmed C++ was in April of 2002, and the last time I programmed Visual Basic was in February 2003... I'm getting very rusty about them, obviously...

Quite a long and enjoyable shopping trip today. And that's just one of them. Of course this means the amount of progress on school work? Nothing...

I'm starting to get a hang of the preparation for this Luke game next week. But really, trying to come up with about 100 questions from 6.5 chapters worth of material is not easy. I am already scraping the bottom of the barrel so to speak...

After integer programming class today, the five graduate students of the course had a little discussion. All of us were pretty confused by the lecture that day... Poor us graduate students.......... It was pretty funny how we all gathered for the consensus that it's just a weird lecture.

Finally finished watching Super Millionaire. The 3rd and 4th episodes are not as good because people keep dropping out. And the 5th episode was not recorded... Todd Kim from the first episode is still my favourite, though. Nice guy. The nervous guy in the 3rd episode was pretty funny as well. I would totally be like that. Apparently it's going to be back in May, so I'll be waiting for it...and hopefully it does not conflict with The Amazing Race...

The bbs was cancelled today...only three people here. Sigh... Maybe it's because I forgot to send the email... Well, it's funny how God provided this since I was totally not in the right mind to lead the bbs today. More prayers needed, definitely.

My life could definitely use a bit less screaming and whining around me...

This bbs is going to be so difficult to prepare for...every resource that I have explains the scripture from different angles, making it hard to combine them all to make a coherent thing...long day ahead.

That was a pretty nice dream...if you consider violence to be nice...

Mathematicians certainly have a sense of humour in choosing terminologies. Here's one: given a graph, the minimum number of forests whose union is the graph is called the arboricity of the graph. Why arboricity? I'll let you figure that out...it certainly isn't a word in the dictionary...but it's just sort of funny. Even funnier is the caterpillar arboricity...

Yet another long supervisor meeting start the day...I need to find a direction soon, apparently, because she's going to ask for it in the next meeting...

Four people showed up for office hour today. That's like, a record for this term. I like these kids, actually... They even played tag team on me... Class cancelled this afternoon, so things weren't so bad today, apparently. Got up to card 23 for Rush Hour. That was quite fun, actually. Thanks, MuTao!

Getting slightly stronger physically, but getting a lot weaker spiritually..........sigh...

There is this strange phenomenon that the entire family is depressed...what is going on?

I'm starting to like this monotone path problem...too bad I still like approximation algorithms as well. It's like this: I have to admit that I like a bit of both extremal combinatorics and approximation algorithms. I'm leaning toward approximation algorithms, but I'm afraid this is because of (1) I encountered hardships with extremal combinatorics and (2) I haven't seen any difficult parts of approximation algorithms. Now making a decision on an area to pursue is something that will affect me for at least three to four years, let alone the rest of the academic career...so I'm afraid to make a decision of that magnitude. More prayers are needed.

Two long phone calls tonight...

Seriously considering whether or not I should continue on with the PhD program... I have trouble handling the first semester, so why should I expect things to get easier later on? Maybe it's just that lots of other things happen this semester...I don't know.

Why do I always keep myself unhappy in spite of happy circumstances? (Here's a bad example: Right now, I feel bad about feeling happy about something happened that made another person feel sad...) (Here's a good example: I feel bad about myself and the thoughts that run through my head and many of my sinful actions, even though it was my birthday and everybody was cheering...)

I guess I won't re-iterate the overwhelmingness of the coming days...

Giving up sleep and food when tired and hungry for a friend in need? Best birthday present ever...

Boy, that was a spectacular glass break...

Weather report: icy condition, really high winds, supposedly 0 degree, but really really cold when outside... Such a contrast from the simply cloudy day and 4 degrees in Toronto in the morning...

So the original idea for a trip to Toronto began when I found a TSO concert that I'd like to go to on Saturday night. Well, it just happens that fellowship moved up to the morning, so I have the opportunity to attend. Well, unfortunately, the tickets are gone the day after I found out about it, so that plan was scrapped. But I still contact Peter to see if it's possible to stay at his place for the weekend, and he said yes, and mentioned a concert of his own church, so that's great, I'll see if the manual labour will drain too much of my energy on Saturday morning. Well, come Friday, I was pretty sure that I'm going. Reason: emotional problems. My room is essentially serving as a sort of "confinement" and I just wanted to get out. It was not a pleasant feeling, for sure. Come Saturday, however, I have other thoughts...I was basically really depressed, especially during lunch. So when I got home, I'm not sure if I can hold my emotions together and make it to Toronto. After a hard (but not long) struggle, I still went for it, and turns out it served other purposes as well (described in earlier posts). The trip there went pretty smoothly. There's sunshine, no wobbly car, and good company. Then there's shopping and dinner (a good one), and then the concert, which was pretty good, actually. The host, for some reason, likes to say the word "tonight" dramatically. The kids are so funny, and one of them is actually very good, being on pitch for a solo performance of Majesty. Back to Peter's place, both of us were tired, but Peter wanted to be the first one to say happy birthday to me on my birthday, so we talked until past midnight, and then it was lights out...(no, not that kind of lights out, the usual normal lights out...) So for today, woke up at 8, left for Peter's church at 9:30, and left Toronto at around 12. I like the church, actually. Peter introduced me to some of his friends there, and they were great people (from what I can tell anyway). Wow...meeting new people...amazing...(let's see, I'll have to remember their names...Salina, Ken and Andy...ok, got it). I like the fact that the service has a focus on prayer, and not just the "usual" prayers. I also like that the pastor focuses on God's word and explaining it to make it applicable to us. They have a good pastor there (at least sermon-wise anyway). I left after Peter received a Bible he ordered for Mary for Elaine (and it just happened to get into his hands a few minutes before I was going to leave, so that's another thing that God has planned, I believe). The trip home was a bit more bumpy. There were high winds, so the car was wobbly again. And midway through the trip, it started snowing...like, blowing snow. That wasn't exactly a good time to drive, I think... Anyway, got back home at around 1, went to church, and got back home again, before I found out some attachment to my car's handle...very creative, MuTao! So anyway, once I got home, I really needed to find some food as I was basically food-less for 22 hours already. Eventually decided on cooking something...I was tired as well, so this took some effort... And here I am, at the end of this long journey. I don't know...this birthday weekend has been a sort of rollercoaster ride. The trip to Toronto served as a "running away from my problems" type of journey, and it sort of got my minds out of it for a bit. I'm sorry to everyone who cared so much about my birthday when I really didn't show any appreciation. I was emotionally unstable, so that was not an entirely pleasant weekend. Anyway, I'm now 24, going on 25...hope for another year filled with God's grace.

Ok, that was a pretty long paragraph, so now all I need are two short paragraphs. Let me be a bit selfish here: I have to say that I didn't get anything that I wanted this birthday. MuTao, Peter and Eugene came really close, however, so thank you very much, guys! What I was looking for (which nobody figured out) was, actually, simply some emotional support, that's all.

So Alan mentioned that Eugene hit like a girl. And I have to say, I agree..........hahahaha.

22 hours, 239 kilometrs = one weird but interesting trip. More details later...

Congratulations, car, for hitting the big 9K! You hit it in Mississauga about 2km past the airport on the way back to Waterloo today. That's 39 days for this new K...boy, things are going pretty slowly, aren't they?

Off to church again...this time, without eating anything substantial for more than 19 hours...sigh...happy birthday to me...

Three Birthday Wishes...

1. MuTao's spiritual growth.

2. My spiritual growth.

3. (Well, I can't really tell you this one...)

It's a wonder how God uses us. I mean, originally I was wondering whether I should come to Toronto or not. Initially I got the impression that Thian-Peng and Sinnie wanted to tag along. Then there was a long struggle with deciding to go or not, and finally decided with the affirmitive. Then I called the Ters and they are happy, and Mary will tag along as well. Turns out what happened was that after May blew out the tire of Mary's car, Mary needed to find an alternative to get to Toronto. She had to lead an important workshop there. The only alternatives at that time for her was to rent a car (too expensive) or ask Paul to come back to Waterloo and get them there (poor Paul...). So when I decided to go to Toronto (even though it's for the selfish reason of simply getting out of town), I accidentally served God by providing transportation to people who are serving God. How wonderful God planned all this, eh? Amazing... This further re-affirms to me that my car? Is not for personal use. It's for God's use. And that's what I prayed for earlier to begin with, actually. God answers prayers.

Yeah, optical keyboard? Still not on the market...

Hey, Peter gets to say the first happy birthday to me on my birthday! Why is it so difficult to remember my birthday, anyway? I mean, it's on my icq profile...it's on PI day...and it's 9 days after Andrew's birthday..........

Blog from away...

Now I feel guilty that so many people cared about my birthday when I don't...Thanks, everbody!

Exercising brute force, getting depressed, a light lunch, getting punched, a scramble to Toronto, yet another close call to an accident at almost the same location, a light grocery shopping, an enjoyable dinner, a church concert, a long night's talk...and that's just the day before birthday!

Boy, Peter's place is so comfortable...maybe I should just stay here for a while.

I guess I didn't make a big enough impression that I don't really care about my birthday, eh? I don't know...I mean, I have so many other problems right now...so birthday? Just a minor detail...

Looks like I am really going to go to Toronto...staying in my room is just too depressing.

Thanks, Francis. You got the best line in the card.

It's a lonely lonely night...MuTao went to a party...Aaron has a party at his place...and just when I'm sort of free and ready to roam around? I got no place to go...sigh... Interesting how that always happens, eh?

Now they tell me there's space at Conrad Grebel for grad students this summer...too late...sigh...

If I got my way, I would have traveled to Las Vegas, Atlantic City or Toronto's RTH this weekend...alas, these happen only in my dreams...

Walking to school under blowing snow, -5 temperature, -13 windchill, 40km/h wind, at 6AM = horrifyingly near-death experience. All that just to hand in a midterm...

Hey, Nick actually talked to me. That's nice...

Ah, the dreaded weekend. There is going to be a lot of spontaneous actions, that's for sure...or not. It's too bad that I'm so depressed these days...

2004 sleep deprivation night #3

Well, actually, I think there have been more than three sleep deprivation nights...I may have just lost count of them all.

There are only finite number of ways that I can write on the assignment or midterm which basically says that I don't know how to solve this problem...

When there are more than two questions (out of eight) that require more than two typed pages to answer, it's when you say, "I'm glad that's a take home midterm..." I really can't imagine what the "regular" final looks like for this course..........and it is going to be a "regular" final...

12 hours and 3 questions left...

Reaching yet another low this morning...

Three more words that I'm afraid of in mathematics: random, span, calculus.

About 17 hours remain in the 63-hour take home midterm. I figured out half the questions, and typed out 3 out of 8 questions. At this rate, I will fail the midterm...

I don't know...it seems that my enthusiasm for the bbs is diminishing...sigh... Maybe this is a "famine"...

Three words I'm afraid of in mathematics: rank, dimension, epsilon.

Having four conversations at the same time (3 on icq, 1 on phone)? Incredibly difficult...

Having two people asking whether I'm coming on Saturday within the same minute? Incredibly coincidental...

The fact that I'm actually having conversations? Incredibly amazing...

Back to integer programming midterm...finally. You know, integer programming problem is NP-complete, and yet we are asked to complete an 8-question midterm in essentially 2 days? Impossible.

Spent pretty much the whole day with bbs, even though I planned to have finished earlier...sigh... Does that count as a waste of time? I don't know...

The reason why I got insane these days is because........................what? You think I'm really going to tell you? Sorry, maybe next time.

Applied for the St Paul residence. The fact that it is much closer to campus is good enough to get me interested.

Insanity.

So funny how having a car doesn't get me wherever I want whenever I want...

Wow...what a (semi) (sort of) productive morning... Cleaned up my room...went to get OHIP (that place has a serene feel to it this morning)...got my license plate renewed (although the kiosk is almost impossible to find)...got some food and filter at Costco...returned marked assignments...got money out of the bank...got a book from the library...and now sitting here alone in office hour. Phew...

Next on the agenda: have a mental breakdown.

After a long time of thinking, I came to this conclusion: I am a very selfish person, eh?

Reminder: OHIP, license plate renewal, bbs, St. Paul's at 5.5.

-12. Haven't been this cold for a while. Excellent.

Hansel's roaming around. eh?

Finally finished the marking...I used to like marking, but now it's just getting tedious. Especially when students copy each other...which showed no respect for the TAs...

Take-home midterm starts tomorrow...sigh...

More exercise to keep off the frustrations of these days...sort of fends off anger and temptation at the same time...and clears my room as a bonus.

Last night was miserable...

Semi-relieved about MuTao...but still very concerned.

Back to having nobody to talk to about my problems...sigh...

Thinking of going to a concert next Saturday night...not sure if I have energy left that day to drive to Toronto, though.

The thing about always putting down three items per post is that after a few posts a day, I start running out of things to say, and things get boring, like this sentence...

Finally put the water protection mats into the car. I bought them on October 1 of last year. Fine example of my procrastinative nature.

Just finished watching the first episode of Super Millionaire. Yeah, two weeks later, but it's ok. I like it, actually. The first contestant is just awesome. Reege is still funny. I like that the questions are not too easy. Too bad no geography questions yet... (I think the last episode may have been left out...we'll see.)

Marking tonight. Sigh...

Two Bible studies in a week is really exhausting. Cranial overload. I need to start preparing the next bbs pretty much now, as there is a take home midterm from Tuesday to Thursday...sigh... (I sigh too much, don't I?)

Lord's teaching me a lot this weekend...hope to digest it...

I don't like weekends...(so far this year anyway)

Really really sad...going to cry for a while...sigh...

Snow!

That was a looooooong night...

The subject of this person brings too much pain to me right now...sigh...

Panic, exhaustion, freaking out, living on adrenaline, sleep deprivation, best friend still missing, resisting temptations...and that's just a small portion of today...

Finally...snow and cool weather. It was 15 degrees a couple of days ago.

Things to come: (well, I don't really want to think about it)

Sigh...nobody on icq right now...looks like he is running away...double sigh...

Woohoo! Back to snowy weather tomorrow! I love my winter...

I'm learning a lot from preparing this Bible study...too bad it's hard to teach it...

I may have mentioned this before...I really don't like questions like "how are you doing?" or "how's it going?" etc. etc. etc. It's incredibly difficult to find an honest answer for those questions on the spot.

Another headline I see in the newspaper today: "Martin rethinks defence." Great, and that's because of all the people trying to attack me...

Least-prepared Bible study coming up...(well, "most clueless" would be another good phrase to describe it...)

Tonight and tomorrow: Bible study.

Sunday: Church and marking and integer programming. Hopefully MuTao doesn't run away again.

Monday: School, OHIP, license plate, begin the search for Hadamard 428, etc.

10 years ago, I landed in Vancouver and became a landed immigrant of Canada. It's been a decade, eh? Wow...

The exercise two days ago was pretty nice...sort of. It cleared up my nose, that's for sure.

Yet another sense of being overwhelmed with things to come...sigh...

The grass is showing off now...sigh...winter is over...

Spent most of the day on bbs and then wasted the rest of the evening at Aaron's...

Long long phone call near midnight...

A long long supervisor meeting started off yesterday...

A long series of sermons ended the night...now this bbs is going to be so much less exciting...

Now I feel stupid about picking this particular designs project...hopefully the search will take (appropriately) finite time...

Very very frustrated about almost everything...

This is going to be another one of those "I don't want to go through this" week...

Losing faith just when I should start the bbs on the father of faith...how ironic...

Either I really am a mime, or nobody listens to me...

Exhaustion sets in...

My lucky number for this month is apparently going to be 428.

Having strange dreams lately...there's one that deals with prostitution, and another one where I have to go to jail...

In other news, temperature went up to 8 yesterday...still snow on the ground, though, albeit thinning pretty quickly...

Also, had a huge huge headache and was feeling really weak last night. After lots and lots of sleep, though, I think I feel better now...