i'm yao, and i saved christmas.

yes, my family's IBM-compatible computer was having problems of late. constant hard drive churning and periodic crashes rendered the PC almost all but useless. however, unlike janie porche, i decided not to go out and buy and apple computer. instead, i decided to format the hard drive.

at first, i looked up directions on formatting hard disks as i knew that the process could get a bit hairy. but then i remembered that real men don't need directions! so i threw caution to the wind, along with the directions, and proceeded with the formatting.

formatting the hard drive only took several minutes. then, installing windows took about half an hour of mindless clicking. however, after answering several thousand senseless windows questions and booting up windows for the first time post-formatting, i was flabbergasted to be greeted with a VGA (640x480) display comprised of a mere 16 colors! alas... i had neglected to install device drivers for the video card. so i opened up the computer case to figure out what video card was installed and downloaded the appropriate drivers.

after getting a nice 32 bit color, 1024x768 display, i wanted to relax to some music. after playing a few songs, i quickly realized that the sound card needed drivers as well! the same process had to be endured with the physical inspection of the card and downloading of drivers.

so i did spend christmas downloading drivers, but it was a worthwhile experience.

a night on the town

last night, my cousin bruce came into town and wanted to go out. so we gathered up my roommates, gayle and marie, and walked over to the bars. i didn't think anyone would still be in ann arbor this late past finals. sure enough, the first place we went to wouldn't let us in because they were closing early due to the holidays. the next place had some people on the dance floor. unfortunately, those few people were employees of establishment. luckily, the third place we went to was actually hopping and we finally got to go in.

i had a lot of fun that night and here are some of the things i/we got to do:
1. talk about thai fighting with drunken guy from the street
2. protect our "bitches" from aforementioned drunken guy
3. hang out with EECS grad students (yea!)
4. met a guy who was somehow able to contract chlamydia from a dog
5. met one of the many guys in love with my roommate
6. saw bruce "win" the grand prize in the bar night drawing (drawing one's own ticket in a raffle should always be suspect)
7. finally found someone from michigan to meet up with during new year's in pasadena. and a hot girl no less!

the evening was capped off back at home on the couch with some black label and some sex and the city (season 4, episode 13: where ya been, who've you seen, whaddya know?). overall, a pretty good night i should say.

soup

today i went to 'le dog' for lunch today. it is basically a cardboard box that sells hot dogs and soup. le dog is kind of a weird place. they are situated in what might as well be a cardboard box and operates as a food stand. they are only open for lunch on weekdays and the lobster bisque is available only on thursdays and fridays.

i haven't had any of the hot dogs yet. instead, i had the lobster bisque today. wow. the only thing i can compare it to is the stuff the soup nazi makes. you can't eat this soup standing up, your knees buckle. if you're ever in ann arbor on a thursday or friday during lunch time, le dog is the place to go for some lobster bisque.

that reminds me of the blind melon song: soup. perhaps person "H" should listen to it. it's on the woodstock '94 cd.

letters...

i got a christmas card from my old boss today! i normally don't get any mail at all other than bills and junk mail. so that was nice. i used to get mail regularly from this one girl. but she stopped because i never replied to several of her letters, or she didn't know that i moved. one or the other. maybe that's why i don't get any real mail. now that i come to think of it, i owe some people emails too. i'll get working on them someday... probably the attitude that got me into this correspondence debt.

party at 511

clay threw a party at our house last night. he went all out. several hundred dollars worth of alcohol plus a bunch of college kids equals craziness... i would estimate that he bought 10~15 bottles of assorted liqueurs, the associated mixing ingredients (juices, sodas, ice, tonic water...), and a keg of the "expensive" beer, which was some sort of ale that none of the girls liked. clay also made two concoctions only known as "blue" and "purple". "blue" hit me hard while "purple" knocked me out. i woke up from my bed an hour later to find my roommates completely wasted and ordering a pizza that we had to stay up and wait 40 minutes for. nothing quite like papa john's after some purple and blue.

also, livejournal no longer requires invite codes to become a member. so join, and then you won't have to post 'anonymous' comments and force me to guess who said what.

bagels and sushi

i had a meeting with two other students and a professor today, but the professor was a no-show. so we went over to the lurie building and hung out at the faculty lounge. quite nice. if your school has one, i would highly recommend lounging there sometime. their was a nice chess set which we made use of as well as various periodicals and large leather chairs. an hour after our scheduled meeting we received an email from the professor saying that he was unable to attend.

we started walking to the parking lot when we passed by a baked goods stands. not sure why they were there, but they were selling bagels for 25 cents. i thought "what a deal!" and bought two for dinner. so after that, we continued walking down the corridor towards peirpont commons when we realized that we were walking towards the wrong parking lot. but just as we were turning around, we noticed that there was free sushi down the hall!

so, lesson of the day: even if you start walking the wrong way, before you turn around, make sure that there isn't any free sushi down the hall.

BC$

wow. what a turn of events. first, notre dame loses, giving LSU an edge over USC. also, their loss meant that michigan took the "highest all time winning percentage" title from the domers. then oklahoma loses to kansas state--badly. it was an ugly affair. this means that there are 3 teams with one loss vying for two spots in the national championship game.

my best guess is that the human rankings this sunday will turn out to be 1. USC 2. LSU 3. oklahoma 4. michigan. USC and LSU could be flip-flopped but there is no doubt in my mind that oklahoma is quite deserving of a #3 ranking. one might think that there should be no controversy as to which two teams would be playing in the national championship. unfortunately we have this thing called the BCS. with these crazy computers, the BCS will most likely choose oklahoma and another team (most likely LSU) as the top two teams, possibly denying the #1 team in the country (as rated by humans).

personally, i really hope this turns out to be the case. i have been hoping for a rosebowl with USC for the past few years now. and my hatred towards the BCS would become even more justified with this possible bumbling. i'm just glad cal beat USC back at the beginning of the season. it's a good thing i was rooting for cal!

the bisquick challenge (aka yao's first paper)

abstract:
this document uses empirical evidence to compare two leading biscuit mix brands, bisquick and jiffy. the intricacies of each type of biscuit mix is discussed as well as the implications of the results. areas for further research will also be explored.

method:
the oven was first pre-heated to the biscuit temperature specified by both baking mixes, 450 degrees fahrenheit. two biscuits of each brand of mix were made using 2% milk. an olive oil spray was applied to the bottom to ensure a non-stick surface for baking. the biscuits were shaped using a measuring cup and placed in a single baking dish. however, the amount of milk added to the bisquick mix was more than necessary and made the dough too sticky to be properly shaped by the measuring cup. baking time for the four biscuits was determined by the brownness of the biscuit tops.

testing:
the two types of biscuits were tested under several different conditions. the first test consisted of using the biscuit to sop up marinara sauce. the second test was a simple taste test without any type of additives. the final test was a taste test with a butter substitute. between each sample for each test, two to four ounces of water was consumed to clean the palate.

results:
in the spaghetti test, the jiffy biscuits were slightly more prone to crumbling. bisquick was slightly less so. however, this might be attributable to the added milk in the bisquick biscuit. the normal taste test revealed that bisquick had a slightly more complex flavor compared to jiffy's unassuming taste. the bisquick also had a slightly fuller and more moist texture, but that could also be a result of the extra milk in the mix. the final test with butter substitute resulted in a deadlock as the butter substitute overpowered any differences that could be discerned between the two types of biscuits. even after discounting possible advantages gained from the extra milk, bisquick obtained slightly better or equal results to jiffy in each test conducted.

possible areas for further research:
in future research, interesting results would probably be found from documenting the relationship between the ratio of mix to milk and whether more milk really means better texture and liquid absorption. different liquid bases (water vs. milk) can be also tested for tastiness and texture. finally, a blind experiment where the taster is unaware of the brand of each biscuit would go a long way for further verifying the results found here.

references:
1. the back of the bisquick box
2. the side of the jiffy box

bad milk

i was eating cereal tonight when i came across an unexpected surprise. the cereal kind of tasted like yogurt. at first, it was not an unpleasant sensation. i like to try new and interesting flavors. but after a few more mouthfuls of sour-tasting chocolate covered sugar bombs, it was apparent that something had gone awry. despite still having 24 hours left before the "sell by" date on the milk carton, my milk had gone bad. after thinking back to the lessons learned from the movie friday , i finished the rest of my cereal whilst trying to avoid as much milk as possible. now my stomach hurts and i feel rather rotten.

so, lesson of the day: if your milk tastes like yogurt, don't drink it.