Day Zero Project Results

Well, I've finally reached the 1001th day (end of the Day Zero Project), so let's see how I did.

Notable Completes:

• Get a perfect score on at least one exam. (Lab Practical Midterm)
• Get 20 notifications on Facebook since the lack check. (Completed 2009, but there's been revisions on what's been considered a notification these days, previously each app request, comment, tag, etc. were considered as one separate notification, now it's group. Ex. instead of 10 people tags in a photo being ten notifications of someone being tagged, it will show one saying someone tagged 10 of your friends in a photo.
• Get into the Circle K club
• Computer Stuff and Gaming: Build a more powerful computer (05X, which actually has 4x the power of my 2008 computer)
• Play and beat Final Fantasy VII (Completed 8/13/11)
• Record a speedrun demo for a game (Dig N Rig, which wasn't widely viewed)
• Finish a game in the Fallout series (Fallout 3, 5/22/11)
• Play Starcraft II. (game purchased on 4/23/10, although I didn't actually play any multiplayer games yet. And its still undergoing a lot of balance changes)
• Play a MMORPG for a month (Vindictus, Maplestory, abandoned when I was unable to find any of friends who was playing them... that were near my level, which is 26)
• Get 1st place in a racing arcade game (and that was at Zaps Zone)
• Win at least 2,000 tickets in one session. (at Boomer's)
• Purchase a stylus. (Completed 12/25/09, received as a gift)
• Watch a full season of 24 (Completed 2/5/10, Season 1)
• Watch 50 movies [32/50]
• Take at least 50 panorama shots.
• Visit 9 Fry’s locations in California. (9 was considered all known locations in California at the time of goal writeup, but apparently there are a lot more than that)
• Ride a real roller coaster. (Big Thunder Railroad)
• Have a status report liked by at least five people [best: 18]
• Don't listen to music for one day.
• Get a better friendship with someone back in high school who currently doesn't see me as a close friend (as of 2009). (Amalee Elayyan)
• Attend at least one dance or party.
• Enclose a message to the future about what it looks like now. (Completed 11/3/09)
• Navigate the corn maze in the dark.

Not Completed... but possible

• Get at least 40k in Tetris Ultra-Tetris Friends (Looks I didn't master T-Spin mastery yet), Of course I still bypassed my friends in the game by a wide margin (at least before the introduction of #ngannu, which reduced the top score difference quite a bit, she's 2nd in all my leaderboards there btw)
• Play DDR at least once in the arcade and finish the game.
• Create a 3d model from a 2d figure
• Try out all the flavors of ice cream at ColdStone [2/20]. (Yes, I still have a gift card remaining, but I can only use it on one other person)
• Go hiking somewhere with someone else. (This will be covered in a Jun 16 writeup.)
• Find and hammer in all 50 state quarters (Missing Alaska state quarter)

Halfway There

• Get together and talk with my close friends back in high school at least once,. (I actually forgot all the people who I considered close friends at the time I wrote the goal so I'm basing it off the friend list on FB)
  • Ahtif - UOP
  • Khuyen - two occassions, the most recent being at Mongolian BBQ
  • Viren and Bubba, Cassandra Sysouvanh - while watching a movie and hangout on July 10, 2010
  • Angelle - Mongolian BBQ
  • Ahbid - Precision Cuts
  • Julie Lin - Family visit
  • Rose Blackford - UOP
  • Joanne Simien - Delta College (August 2010)
  • Christina Pheng (Mongolian BBQ, but...)
  • Rakeeb (not completed)
• Watch at least one season of an anime show (Hetalia, 15 of 51 episodes completed)
• Read and finish a book that's not on the computer.
• Run 5 miles in one session (closest: 5K walk/run)

Goals in Limbo

• Complete the campaign for Starcraft (MCPE Campaign, which uses MCHS Students*, in the same way that Seltaire uses Hetalia characters for Americana Dawn). Only twenty levels were completed total in the campaign. The filesize for the first part is rather large (73MB) so I'll release if I receive enough interest.
• Map out the world map for multiplayer for Dungeon Siege (a hard drive crash destroyed my only working copy, but in short, it's actually quite large and if you attempt to piece the world tiles continuously like in Paint you would end up with many overlaps)
• Sketchup my college campus

Those that were an epic Fail:

• Get A’s in all classes this semester (The most GPA I've gotten out of all semesters are 3.78 with one B and the rest A's)
• Communications: Send a total of 10,000 IM messages. (around 1,400, but it didn't count FB chat, which accumulated over at least 1,500 more, but still not enough)
• Respond in the same language when sent a message that isn't in English (No one actually did that)
• Complete all four games in the Halo Series (0 of 4, but I didn't buy any games in that area either)
• Get a driver's license and enough money to buy a car (there were problems negotiating with my parents in order to get this, however the second case is reasonable given the high price of college)
• Visit the gym twice a week for three months (seriously, I don't want to know how others would react if I went in with anything other than shorts
• Enclose a message addressing #91 after reading it and after completing at least 90% of the goals.

Bob Hope Theater, Steamboat Bill

Explored place of the week: Bob Hope Theater. Normally I don't have preference for silent movies, but this one was different.

Highlight: Steamboat Bill Jr. (in the handout there it was simply listed as Steamboat Bill). It wasn't just the film, it was the music - the fact that a Robert Morton organ had a lot more sounds than what I've expected, and the fact that the music (not the same as the link above) was interpreted for the entire length of the movie (which was around 70 minutes of continuous playing) more than amazed me.

At first I thought this movie was based off of Steamboat Willie. However it was the other way around.

Capital Division (Perler Bead Version)

Or at least part of it, as it's still under construction.

This is my attempt to build the Capital Division logo from Perler beads. Shortly after getting a 11,000 bead pack (for $10), I started planning this in Perler and building this after acquiring some pegboards.

I did run into a problem though. Either I need a lot more beads than this (maybe a few thousand, which would cost me around $20) or I need to size it down from a 150x150 grid. I've heard suggestions saying to shrink it down to a more manageable size, but I would be losing too many details. What will it be?

I've also been asked where I would place this when it's done... let's worry about this later.

UPDATE: This perler bead project was finished on June 18 and can be found here.

Interest History: I first heard about these beads through Sac State Circle K (more specifically from Alex Ung as he was showcasing models that were completed and used for fundraising). I found potential interest in them after looking at bead sprites and the possibility of creating the Capital Division logo from them, although he claimed that it would be hard to build one as there were too many details that couldn't be included in a small model.

[Image on FB / Comments]

Solitaire Blitz Swag Bag

Got notified about this because I was mentioned in a post regarding the Solitaire Blitz swag bag. It has the following:

• Worm hat (on a hook, same as in the game)
• Electric Eel energy drink
• An 'actual' deck of Solitaire Blitz cards (I wonder if there are two full decks in that one)
• 250k silver coins, to... um... beat me (probably since I got a perfect game once)

And yes, I personally like the card decks. Don't know if they have them available with the same card backs as in the game though, that would be nice and I would definitely get one of those if they sold it.

Supermoon

The Supermoon that occurred today was claimed to be extremely large. Checked at around midnight - although it didn't look as large as I expected, it's still extremely bright.

Graduation Day

Four long years - and it's finally here: Graduation Day.

More specifically, Commencement, but why not, given that many people posted that they graduated. Anyways I've completed all of my units for my BS, but I've still a co-op to go before I obtain my master's degree. (On a related note, for those who were wondering, my original FB post about this is here. It has the most likes out of all of my image / status posts to date, at 19.)

Graduation in relation to MCHS: I know at least one student from class of '08 (my class), the class of '09 and '10 from my high school also graduating this year.

Location: Alex Spanos Center. This was taken seconds before coming out to the crowd. And I heard in my head this music playing (not graduation music).

RJ Barry Memorial

I've received an email in my inbox saying that a UOP student, Robert "RJ" Barry, was killed last night via an accident.

I don't know him at all (the first time I've heard about his name was the slideshow presentation going on during the Senior Banquet which happened last Saturday), he's still important. Why? He was part of my graduating class of 2012 (in the same engineering school) and was set to graduate this coming Saturday.

Because of this, I'll remember him when someone talks about my grad class.