"it's good until, but it's still okay after..."

so i was checking my email today, and i came upon one that was sent from netops.

Your system lchiang.res.wpi.net is configured with an incorrect IP address. As a result, I've suspended your network access until this misconfiguration can be corrected. Please configure your system to use DHCP to obtain its IP address. Once this is done, let netops@wpi.edu know and we'll reactivate your connection.

Thanks,
Chuck

so let me get this straight.

from my understanding, you're telling me that my computer changed something on its own (since i clearly didn't configure or touch anything related to my network settings), so you're going to punish me by taking away my internet access in my apartment.

you want me to change the settings back, even though i don't know what was changed, and then you want me to contact you once i reconfigure my system, which i clearly didn't configure in the first place.

so basically, i don't know what i'm actually supposed to do.

why.

back in the day

do you remember... way back in middle school, when everyone used to fill out those silly surveys about themselves, because it was the coolest thing to do and all of your friends did it too?

i do.

i always posted them on my xanga, and i'd always try to answer each question with a funny response so people would get a good laugh at them.

Do You...

1. Believe in God? sure no

hah. i laughed.

4. WHAT SPORT WOULD YOU SAY YOU ARE BEST AT?
the only one i do - swimming. unless you don't think swimming is a sport. then i'll have to say chess.

way to hate swimming, punk.

17. WHAT WERE YOU DOING BEFORE YOU STARTED FILLING THIS IN?
eating dinner and picking my nose. just kidding.

there's gotta be a reason why i actually wrote this. aside from making it up.

21. DO YOU OWN ANYTHING LEATHER?
wallet, belt. maybe a whip in my closet.

sigh...

but of course, every now and then i'd take my time and fill one out pretty seriously.

let's backtrack a few years, say, 2005.

20 random facts about me!
20. i currently own the largest room in the house :)
19. i can make incredibly high pitched noises.
18. my left foot bends inwards slightly when i walk (which explains my illegal breaststroke kick)
17. i worship the Red Sox daily.
16. food = good! i absolutely LOVE to eat. which is why i stay so skinny.
15. i am lactose intolerant, but i still manage to drink a cup of milk a day and live.
14. when i get bored in class, i doodle on my desk.
13. i swim a lot. maybe too much, because my hair has been turned brown.
12. i spend way too much time doing nothing.
11. i'm still trying to solve a Rubik's Cube in under 20 seconds.
10. i think the Backstreet Boys are cool.
9. i am nocturnal. i sleep during the day.
8. i HaTe PpL wH0 lyK 2 TipE lYk ThIs
7 was being stupid. so i took it out.
6. yes, i do have a girly side. most of you have probably seen it already.
5. i have scraped the same spot on my right knee three times.
4. i hate sundays. i like mondays.
3. i have 150+ hours of community service :O
2. sparknotes is my best friend.
1. i want to go to MIT. fo realz, yo.

and let's see just how much has changed.

20. i currently own the smallest room in the house. go me.
19. i think puberty finally hit.
18. i'm pretty sure this doesn't happen anymore. my breaststroke is fine.
17. maybe not daily, but it's still up there!
16. haha! yes.
15. i stopped drinking milk for the same reason. ironic.
14. nowadays i just sleep.
13. i'd say this statement is still true...
12. agreed.
11. haven't done it yet. should work on that, hmm?
10. and who doesn't? :D
9. i'm old now, can't do that anymore.
8. who still types like that? i'd cry if i saw that today.
7. stupid.
6. well, i do like shopping...
5. and let's keep it that way.
4. i hate mondays. i like sundays.
3. i'm pretty sure i still have those 150 hours. and probably more.
2. ha. english. hahaha.
1. MIT? yeah, i'm at MIT now. yeah.

funny, isn't it? see what a few years does to you.

i guess this is the glory of keeping a diary. so you can go back and make fun of yourself later :)

vacation update - visits

so the past few days have been very exciting, if i do say so myself.

yesterday, nick catano invited me up to new hampshire for a visit. we had originally planned to do something later on in the week, but i guess some people were getting together for dinner that day so i figured it would be a good idea to just come up then. so i told him i'd be up at 11, and we'd just hang out for the day until dinner came around. cool.

after checking yahoo! maps, i found out it'd take a little over an hour to get to goffstown. simple math tells me that leaving at 10 would suffice, so i woke up at 9:30 and grabbed some food and headed out the door at 9:55. stupid me forgot that it snowed pretty heavily the night before and then froze over, so i went out to my car to find that it was covered in ice. took me a good 15 minutes to completely clear out my windshield and windows, and then another 5 to get my car out of my driveway. 15 minutes late, right there. but wait, this is where it really gets fun.

since i had neither a printer nor a GPS, i handwrote the directions on an index card and figured it'd be enough. that's what people did before a GPS was invented, right? can't be that hard. i made it all the way to new hampshire (success!) and kept driving on some turnpike for about 15 miles. for some reason my directions didn't give me exit numbers, only street names to turn on. i had written down "turn on bedford / milford", and while i was driving i saw an exit for "bedford st". naturally, i turned, and ran into a toll for $0.50. it then told me to go straight for about a mile, but i drove forward a few hundred feet only to find out that there was no such thing as 'go straight'. only left or right. unless i wanted to drive off a cliff. confused, i turned right and stopped at a local gas station and called nick for help. apparently i turned one exit early (super), and had to get back on the highway. so i backtracked to where i originally turned, and looked around frantically for an exit to get back on the turnpike. nothing. no luck. what kind of highway exit doesn't have a road that leads back on the highway? i drive around a little more only to find that there is in fact a road to the highway. in the opposite direction. seeing no other possible options, i got back on the highway going south and told myself i'd take a big u-turn. sounds logical, right? only it was slightly a struggle, because

- i had to pay another $0.50 to get back on the highway. wtf.
- the closest exit from where i got on was about 8 miles down the turnpike.
- when i finally reached the exit, i had to pay yet ANOTHER $0.50 toll to get off.
- oh, and another fifty cents out of poor lee's pocket to get back on the !@#$ing highway.

and to top it off, when i finally reached the real "bedford" exit ten minutes later, i drove up to my fifth toll booth of the day, and paid $1.00. excellent. way to go, new hampshire highways.

in summary, i paid a grand total of $3.00 to get to nick catano's house, when it should've only cost me a third as much. WHY.

after navigating around the rest of new hampshire and arriving at nick's house with two less dollars and probably a million less brain cells than i should have, we went out to lunch at the university of southern new hampshire. wait, the university of what? yeah i dunno, i never heard of it either. regardless, it was delicious, very hearty, and free. woohoo! then we drove around town and i accompanied him while he ran some errands. after all that was done, we got back to his place and bummed around for a few hours. i lost in an epic game of stratego though. at one point, nick's piece was sitting right next to my flag, and it stayed there for about 7 turns. i was ready to pee myself (but not really). and then we played monopoly and i got my revenge by beating him and two computers. ha.

at 4 we left to go pick up sam at her place, and chilled there for about half an hour while she made dinner. she just got her wisdom teeth out on monday, so it was easy to tell that she was drugged up and kinda swollen on the cheeks. poor sam. i played with her "really dumb" cat for a while, though. it kinda just sat around and stared at you, unless you stuck your hand out. at which point it will rub its head on your hand for as long as you keep it there. take your hand away and it goes back to staring at you. talk about being easily amused...

at around 4:45 we departed once again and headed for cactus jack's and met up with other fellow swimmers - kaitlyn, dan, bobby, jess, therese, and jenny. dinner was delicious! i had a steak and cheese quesadilla and some filet mignon fajitas. oh my god. we then wrapped it up with some coldstone, and i tried cake batter ice cream for the first time. ahhhhhhhhh! as jess put it - "it tastes just like birthday cake!". thank you, world, for inventing both ice cream cake and cake ice cream. genius.

i left after the meal, and although i had another but slightly smaller highway fail i managed to get home safely at 8. the rest of the night consisted of me falling asleep on my bed and waking up multiple times. tuesday, the end.

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today i woke up at around 10:45, because alana was coming up for a visit! i bummed around for a bit (because that's what i do in the mornings) until around 11:30, when alana informed me that she had "woken up late" and would get here a little later than expected. okay. so it pretty much gave me some more time to bum around, haha. she finally got to my house at 12:30, and then we set off on our little excursion around lexington. and i got to meet dori and her four little rubber ducks!

we drove into lexington center and ate lunch at bertucci's. you know, it's funny how every time i go to bertucci's it's always different. but it makes sense. whenever i eat there during summer / winter break, there are always high schoolers running the front desk and waitressing. on days like today, it's all the adults. kinda gives a different feel every time. anyway i had a pretty delicious chicken parm, but i didn't finish it so i brought it home.

after lunch we drove over to LHS, and i walked around the main building for a little bit. i think it's the first time i stepped foot in that building since i graduated... nothing's changed though. i saw mr. shorter sitting in commons 1, and it looked like he was busy grading papers. we wandered around some more and then left, because there wasn't really anything exciting there. unless you count running into alina and danica for 30 seconds "exciting". so then we went back home at sat around for a bit.

then we went bowling and it was pretty intense. turns out alana is pretty good herself, and put up some pretty good games. i barely won though... by 3 points the first time (145-142) and then by 5 (127-122) the second. i'm gonna lay it out right here - i score a bit over 100 on an average day. i don't know what happened today! i'm sure in the long run you'd completely kick my ass haha.

i guess something happened at home and we weren't gonna eat there, so we drove over to the mall to grab some quick food. we weren't really that hungry, so i thought the food court would be good for that. on the way over, i got a frantic phone call from jeff, and he vented about how he got a B in dynamics and the rest of us got As. he had a right to be upset, since i'm pretty sure jeff got the best grades on all the assignments than the rest of us. but of course, the other 'jeff greenwood' is in our class, so i guess fofana just messed up the names. must be frustrating to have another kid with the same name as yours... haha.

after a quick stop at chick-fil-a we walked around half the mall for a bit and ran by the lego store. so many legos! kinda brings back childhood memories. i wonder where all my legos are now?

then we just drove back to my place again, and it was getting pretty dark out so it was time for alana to leave. but before she departed she really wanted to clean her windshield, so we found some windex in the house and proceeded to wipe both the inside and outside of the windshield. fun fun fun. and then she left around 8, and that was the end of our little lexington adventure. i had a blast, though.

but later on in the night i had a pretty big struggle. i think i'll write about it in a separate post.

vacation: it's good for you

i've only been home for a day, but it's already been pretty fun!

classes ended on friday, but instead of going home i decided to stay the night and then leave saturday afternoon. i didn't have class, but i spent a majority of friday night working on my final exam for ME 1800. that's alright though, i ended up with an 86 and was pretty happy to just get it out of the way.

yesterday, i called my parents and told them to come pick me up at 2. i got ready and everything at about 1:45, and i brought all of my stuff downstairs and waited for them to come.

so i waited.
and waited.
and waited some more.

they didn't knock on the door until 3:15. ahhh!

haha it wasn't that big of a deal, but i just thought it was funny.
way to ditch me.

after a relatively short drive, i arrived at home at around 4:15. but about 15 minutes later, charles came to pick me up and we drove down to providence to visit michelle at RISD. it was kinda sad to only be home for 15 minutes and then leave again, but that's alright - i've got all week to spend here! so we drove for about an hour and got lost a few times on the road, even though we had a GPS. it led us off the highway, and then decided to go back on a few minutes later. pointless. and stupid.

on the way down we passed by the providence mall. i saw the huge parking garage and i swear i saw the same thing recently while on a bus. did we pass it on the way to one of our swim meets? it bothered me for a while, cause i couldn't think of when i saw it.

anyway we finally met up with michelle, and then headed to the mall like we always do! after a few rounds of clothes shopping (cause that's what we do) and some delicious johnny rockets, we settled on going to see watchmen. but not in imax, because that was already sold out. bummer. i've gotta say that it was a pretty well done movie. definitely something that i enjoyed watching, but it isn't up there on my list of favorites. but hey, it was still worth my money though. oh, and somewhere along the way we ran into eric ho. twice. and then we drove home at 10:30 but got lost again on the way back so i didn't get home until around midnight...

today i really didn't do much. kinda bummed around the house, cleaned up my room, watched a bit of tv, and then went out to dinner with the family. days like these are nice though, it's always good to just sit back and relax without having any worries.

i'm looking forward to the rest of vacation though! i'm sure there will be more eventful days in the near future :D

finals week...

so it's 2:45 in the morning, and i'm still awake. how productive!

shows just how productive i really am.

i think it's safe to say that i no longer have to go to my classes, even though we only have two days left. i took my dynamics final on tuesday, and i have a take-home exam and a lab report for my manufacturing class due on friday, which i can just submit online. which leads me to wonder why i haven't finished those yet, especially since i have so much more free time. better get cracking on those, don't want to leave them for friday night... eh.

today, while i sat on my butt, i was wondering about how our daily life cycle works and how it affects us. i've noticed that my mood usually depends on the time of day (though not entirely), and i'm almost always feeling energetic at the same time every day. i've heard that people tend to have energy highs and lows to their days, and maybe it's true, so i decided to try to break it down.

lee's daily cycle:

morning (5AM - 10AM)
i usually wake up at some point in this period. i'm almost always grumpy, since i never want to get up and have the day start. but i do it anyway, and usually you'll find me either half asleep in the weight room/pool or sitting in lecture with my eyes closed. this can be classified as one of my "low" points.

noon-ish (10AM - 1 PM)
i start to wake up a bit, and usually i'll be more active and energetic. unfortunately, i'm almost always still in class, so the only thing i notice is my ability to focus to the teacher more and take neater notes in my notebook. oh well.

afternoon (1PM - 5PM)
assuming i've just eaten food, the combination of a stuffed tummy and boring afternoon classes often leads to a food coma. i also have trouble staying awake at work, because it's always hot and the comfort of the heat always lulls me to sleep. i don't like this time of day either.

basically, up to this point, my day is still boring and uneventful. unless i've napped, and then it's just awesome.

evening (5PM - 9PM)
done with classes! done with swimming! this is usually the most exciting part of my day, when i feel accomplished. i'm usually in a really good mood, and my tendency to slack off and procrastinate is at its highest. definitely the "high" point of my day.

night (9PM - 12AM)
i start to realize that i've been screwing around a lot, and then i panic and try to get myself to do some homework. my sugar high fades a bit, but i'm still in a good enough mood to run through all the things i need to get done for the day and not complain about it. easily the most productive part of my day. tendency to slack off is still high, though.

early morning (12AM - 5AM)
whenever it gets this far, i just give up on work. everything will seem funny to me, and i'll start to laugh at just about everyone. especially if you're talking about the teletubbies. i like this time of day. yayyy!

anyway, it seems pretty accurate to me. and seeing as how it is currently early morning, i find myself easily amused by this blog. i'll just keep typing and typing and typing... it'll never end!

but i'll take a break for now.

swimming

it's hard to believe that our season is finally over.

looking back to the beginning of the year, it was hard for me to imagine the kind of success that we have all been able to experience. i expected this to just be another long year of swimming, but little did i know how much of an impact our team could make on all of us. i would like to personally thank each and everyone one of you on the team, i definitely would not have been able to make it this far without you guys. from the crappy morning practices to the team dinners and shaving parties, i would definitely say this has been the best swimming season ever.

with that said, i'd like to reflect on one incredible weekend.

friday - 200 frestyle relay, 50 freestyle, 400 medley relay
prelims went just as planned. i qualified 5th in the 50 (making my first final ever) and tied a school record in 21.35. in finals, we missed the B cut in the 200 freestyle relay by around 0.7, but shattered the school record by 2 seconds with a 1:24.81. in the 50, i got 5th again and lowered the record a tad with a 21.31. and finally, i anchored the 400 medley relay in a freaking 46.34. we got 3rd, beating out springfield. sweet.

saturday - 200 medley relay, 200 freestyle
i swam breaststroke in the morning medley relay only to get my ass kicked by both minh and rob. and then i proceeded to sprint the first 100 in my 200 freestyle, going out in a 49 and coming back dead in a 58. i was really angry at myself, but i still managed to best time with a 1:47.53 and barely make 16th. at night, i swam it smart and got 12th with a 1:45.53. yay! i also anchored our record setting 200 medley relay in a 21.12. another yay!

sunday - 100 freestyle, 400 freestyle relay
we time trialed the 200 freestyle relay to start off prelims to try to make the B cut. we swam nearly a second slower in 1:25.78, but i went just a tiny bit faster with a 21.11. shortly after, i went a 47.73 in the 100 freestyle in prelims, good enough for 14th. i wasn't too thrilled with the time, but oh well. in finals i went a little slower - 47.91, still 14th. but then i swam a 46.87 in the 400 freestyle relay to cap off the meet. made me feel a bit better about the 100 free.

overall, we came in 4th and beat wheaton by 5 points! there were some pretty amazing swims throughout the weekend, and i can easily say that everyone swam a best time in at least one of their events. congratulations to everyone for making our season so memorable, i'll definitely miss all of the fun we had this year.

and of course, since NEWMACs is done, the dessert challenge has come to an end!

yay! i can eat desserts again!