Norman Lee

This is probably a good enough place to stop. Facebook has, more or less, supplanted LiveJournal as a means of keeping in touch with people, including journal entries, and keeping in touch is the whole reason I felt compelled to start this. I don't know if anybody even still reads this who doesn't just see the same content imported into my Facebook notes, but if so, you can find me on Facebook here.

I felt like checking out IL-2, so on a whim I decided to add it to my shopping cart on Steam. When I went to purchase it, however, it told me that I already owned the game. Somehow, I must have already bought it at some point, and then never played it and thus completely forgotten that I even owned it.

I should probably stop buying so many games.

I saw a girl on the bus this morning talking on one phone while texting on another.

Kids these days.

When I recently moved into my new apartment, my parents drove up to help with the family car. And of course, they brought a lot of food with them, even though I always insist that they don't have stock my refrigerator for me. Since my grandparents live between here and home, trips back and forth are usually punctuated by a visit to their house. I didn't see my grandparents myself this time--my parents were the ones who went from socal to norcal and back, while I stayed in Berkeley--but part of the food I received was a grocery bag filled with several packs of instant ramen, which my grandmother apparently gave to my parents to give to me.

My grandmother passed away yesterday. According to my relatives who live closer to them and make more frequent visits, she sat down in a chair and dozed off, and when my grandfather went to wake her up, well--she didn't. She was 88.

It feels very weird to be writing about this right now, since my last entry from about a month ago was also about death, albeit that of an old family pet rather than a relative. I recall what I said--wondering how I'd feel about the death of a close relative--and I feel pretty rotten, like I might have jinxed it. Unfortunately, my grandmother was not a very close relative, and I am again stuck in that sort of half-mourning, where I'm not exactly suffering from grief like I think I should be, and the awkwardness of the situation probably overshadows the actual sadness. It's almost like I'm still in shock from the whole thing, except I suspect that, a week or two down the line, it's not going to suddenly hit me with full force.

I wish I could say that I had a stronger relationship with my grandparents, but when you only see them two or three times a year and usually for only a few hours at most each time, how much of a bond can you build? Especially when considering the cultural gap that exists between me, born and raised in southern California, and them, a couple from Taiwan who only came over to America when they already had five fully-grown children.

Worse still, I feel like a huge bastard because I was planning to fly back home to attend Anime Expo in a few days with high school friends, something I haven't done in years, and now I probably won't be able to, as my parents want to drive up as soon as possible, and figure out funeral arrangements, and all that jazz--and I'm just sitting here thinking about what a coincidence it is that a death in the family would occur at the one time in the one summer where I can finally start doing this yearly tradition with friends again.

It's all got me a bit dazed. I'm not really sure what's going to happen now, particularly with my grandfather, since he and my grandmother were living alone in a house. It probably won't be possible or even desirable to have him living by himself, especially after what just happened. And when I look at that half-empty (or is it half-full?) grocery bag of instant ramen in the kitchen, my mind just starts to wander again.

My sister called me earlier today to tell me that our dog, who was about 15 years old at this point, had to be put to sleep. She was understandably broken up about it, since she was the one who wanted to get a dog in the first place, back when we were still kids. I was pretty shocked too, but I feel somewhat guilty for not taking it nearly as badly as she was. In fact, reflecting upon his life--and I'm trying to say this in the gentlest way possible, with no animosity--it's almost a relief now that he's finally gone.

He was never housebroken, so we kept him in the backyard. Over the years, this amounted to a sheltered life, never interacting with us unless one of us stepped out back, and we ended up getting the occasional complaint from neighbors when he would start howling at night. When it was cold, we couldn't do much besides add some bedding to his doghouse; and when it got extremely hot, as southern California is wont to do, we couldn't really help to cool him off, at least not for long. Frankly, he lived a pretty miserable life. No matter how well my sister tried to take care of him, staying in the backyard didn't allow him much of a joyful existence.

Nevertheless, acknowledging all this, I feel that I'm being overly insensitive and should be more upset about the passing of my dog, particularly since my sister has been so affected by it. Strangely, this is the first time a living being close to me, human or animal, has died. Maybe it's morbid, but I can't help but wonder how I'll end up taking the death of a close relative. Hopefully I'll be able to show a little more emotion than for the death of a pet.

It's strange how four to six weeks can feel like an eternity as a kid, when you're waiting for that free toy after mailing in those cereal box proofs of purchase; yet now, a semester of college--longer still--can pass in an instant.

I was never able to really get into Peggle or Puzzle Quest, two casual games that seem to strike a chord even with "hardcore" gamers. However, I decided to check out Obulis on a whim, picking it up on Steam for less than half its "retail" price (a misnomer, given its solely digital distribution). For some reason, I've really been enjoying these intricate puzzles, which require both lateral thinking and precise timing. The level designs are remarkably calming, coming in themed sets featuring a translucent windmill arm passing over the screen periodically, or out-of-focus blades of grass gently swaying in the foreground. Combined with the gentle, though just slightly repetitive, background tunes, it's hard to get too frustrated with a particularly fiendish puzzle.

The swoosh of the marbles into their respective pots and the victory jingle may not be as extravagantly celebratory as Peggle's trademark fireworks and "Ode to Joy," but figuring out how to perfectly swing and throw marbles into each other so as to initiate an almost Goldbergian sequence of bounces offers immediate feedback on how my actions influence the playing field. I suppose I simply don't enjoy the random element in planning out shots two bounces ahead at most and hoping to land in the free ball bucket, or lining up a meager three-in-a-row and watching the incoming pieces give the opponent the perfect opportunity to take a significant chunk out of my life.

These past few years, I've yet to tire of the raw and soulful acoustic rendition of Gavin DeGraw's first album in the "Stripped" re-release--especially the title song "Chariot" and his cover of Sam Cooke's historic "A Change Is Gonna Come"--but I didn't particularly like his self-titled second offering of pop-country-rock. I need to find more music specifically along the lines of "Stripped," but any recommendations connected to DeGraw almost invariably lead to more pop music, of which I'm currently in no dire need to hear.

There are two things I've noticed about the temperature in the Bay Area: 1) it consistently feels about ten degrees warmer than it really is (i.e., 60 degrees here feels like 70 degrees back in socal) and 2) it's actually cooler in the shade, to the point where I can feel warm in the sun and cold when shaded.

A friend once passed this morsel of sage advice to me: all your taste buds are on your tongue, so it makes sense to hold most food with toppings "upside-down" such that its intraoral orientation maximizes the flavor experience.

At the risk of sounding too emo, my mind has been dominated as of late by strong feelings of regret regarding pretty much every aspect of my life.

In steadily falling behind in Japanese over the past year, I regret not making more use of the tutorial hours held by the teachers every day, where I could practice actual conversations--something I've done particularly little of these two and a half years that I've been studying the language (perhaps the one shortcoming of the purportedly excellent Japanese program here).

My career, too, is starting to concern me. It's becoming more apparent that I really need to find an internship or some other real-world experience before I'm thrust out of school with diploma in hand. I regret more or less ignoring all the emails I've received over the years about this or that infosession, about upcoming career fairs, or about the many other opportunities to get ready for a real job. It doesn't help that I've begun to question whether I really want to be sitting and staring at walls of code for hours every day for the rest of my life; yet I have woefully little experience to prepare myself for any other sort of future.

Reflecting on my social life has been a sobering experience as well. Ever since leaving the dorms after my first year, I've spent increasingly less time hanging out with friends. I hardly speak to the ones I made when I was still living on campus, and I realize that I recognize a good portion of the people in my classes from previous semesters, but have never made much of an effort to really talk to them and at least find a study partner or two.

I wish I had kept in touch more often with my newfound college friends after no longer living down the hall from them, or maybe attended some clubs to meet more people, or just spoken up a bit to my many and frequent classmates. All of this is perhaps somewhat ironic considering I first registered this Livejournal for the express purpose of keeping in touch with high school friends (very few of whom, by the way, are still regularly using their accounts).

As depressing as it's all been, I've been trying to keep level-headed about it. "It's just a passing phase; there are many people who are far worse off." And I'm fortunate enough to know exactly why I'm so depressed right now, or at least I think I do. I've started making headway in amending a few of the problems on my plate, so I'll hopefully be able to feel a bit better about all this soon.

Have started watching some Japanese dramas. Strange stuff. Why do they act like they're anime characters? Or is it the other way around? Maybe I can try to catch up now in terms of spoken Japanese and listening comprehension, the two areas where I feel like I've been slipping ever since about a year ago. Interesting programming nonetheless.

For the first time in my life, I already own a required textbook for one of my classes. The database class I'm taking this semester uses Programming Ruby (also known as the "Pickaxe"), a book I bought years ago when I was hoping to learn Ruby. It has unfortunately gone seldom-used, as--with all languages--the lack of some personal project to work on has left me with little reason or even ability to study Ruby practically.

It does make me feel just that bit nerdier, though, for purchasing and perusing a programming book on my own time that would turn out to also serve as a textbook.

(Using the first Harry Potter book for my English class this past summer doesn't count, since I left all my HP books at home when I came to college, and had to re-buy it.)

I recently signed up for Twitter, primarily to see what would happen with the fine folks coming from what is quickly becoming known as the "1UPocalypse." Because I can't imagine anybody is too terribly concerned with the daily ongoings of my life (whereas this tends to serve more as a personal but publicly viewable journal), I've had a hard time thinking of anything to actually do with my new Twitter account (sadly, my usual online handle of 404notfound was taken there as well) other than to just read about what these newly-unemployed journalists will be going on to do.

(As it turns out, they've already got two podcasts and a vidcast in the works, despite being jobless.)

One idea I've had floating around is to have fun with the arbitrary yet increasingly significant number of 140, the character limit for each individual "tweet": perhaps write occasional micro-stories that fill 140 characters exactly; maybe prefaced by a single asterisk so as to maximize the allotted tweet length while still denoting them as stories, and not as what I imagine might be construed as unusual and abstract chapters of my life.

Although I'm fairly confident in my grasp of the written English language, I've never fancied myself much of a literary analyst (I can't stand English classes) or storyteller. So this idea could just end with a few embarrassing attempts at being poetic. We'll see.

I think I'm getting old: I got three jackets and a pair of jeans for Christmas (in addition to a few small, non-technological gifts) and I'm entirely grateful for it. At this rate, I'll be dropping hints about crock pots and blenders come next December.

I've made a few attempts over the years to find some meaningful hobby to pour time into, outside of just playing video and computer games. The first idea I decided to try and take half-seriously was the harmonica. Being able to play an instrument is always nice, and harmonicas are pretty portable. It's easy to make some terrible sounds with a harmonica, but it's also capable of belting out some pretty astounding tunes in the right hands. However, it's impossible to practice without annoying people around me, and I was never able to get the technique of note-bending down anyway. Eventually I just gave up.

The next thing I tried to take up was lockpicking. I'm not entirely sure why I decided to try to get into it, but I bought a set of lockpicks anyway. I tried at first to practice on the lock on my dorm room door, but quickly realized that it would look highly suspect to be sitting in front of a door with a set of lockpicks when the RA could walk in at any time. I bought some cheap locks at the local hardware store, and after a while I was able to get them open pretty quickly and consistently. That's about as far as I ever got, though: to go any farther would require a source of quality locks of varying difficulties, something that I was never able to find within a reasonable price range. So I had to shelve that idea as well.

Now, as it's becoming ever more important for me to decide exactly what I want to specialize in once I (hopefully) have my EECS degree in a year and a half, I'm trying to hit two birds with one stone by looking into 3D modeling. The area of graphics is increasingly looking more appealing as I'm finding walls of code to become a pain to stumble through. There are a variety of options when it comes to modeling, but I decided to do the Geek Thing and go with the free and open-source software solution: Blender.

Armed with a copy of The Essential Blender, I can only hope that my interest doesn't peter out over break, when I plan to really dig into all this. There hopefully shouldn't be any logistical difficulties this time around, although there is the slight problem of artistic ability: I can't draw anything more complex than a stick figure to save my life, and I don't know the first thing about lighting, coloring, or the bevy of other topics that contribute to the foundation of Art in all its forms, digitally rendered or not.

Maybe I'll be able to pick it up as I go, or at least get enough down to make it look like I have potential. And if it doesn't pan out professionally, then maybe I can at least say that I have a real hobby.

The heater in my apartment doesn't seem to work.

I can see my breath indoors.

When I was still just a kid, one of the things I would do on rainy days while riding in the backseat of the family minivan was to stare at the raindrops running down the window outside. The endless repetition had something of a hypnotic effect on me, as I would watch one drop skitter across the surface, ushered along by air resistance, leaving a spindly trail of water in its wake. Whenever two drops crossed, or one drop ran into the path of some other one, the two bodies of water would get pulled together, seemingly magnetically (which, as I would learn later, was due to surface tension).

Something about the scores of droplets dancing atop the glass, constantly joining and splitting, and being flung off the edge of the window and subsequently replaced by more rain, was so calming that I would sometimes even put down my Game Boy (may it rest in peace) just to stare at the rain. It was a good time to just sit and think about nothing in particular, something I still find myself doing all too often today, even if I no longer while away the time in front of a rainy window.

I just thought about how long it's been since I last played Monopoly with, well, anybody. I can't even remember the last time or who it was with.

I got a driver's license picture that doesn't look completely embarrassing.