Jason Ling’s blog

 A month ago I bought a Giant Boulder SE, a decent mountain bike, used off of Craigslist for about a buck fifty. I was quite happy with the price, the same bike would've cost me a little over $350 new. The Giant was my first non-Walmart bike and it simply blew my old junker away.

I started riding regularly, starting small with occasional trips to the local Publix for groceries (about 4 miles round trip) and eventually progressing to a multi-stop course where I'd first travel to UF's SWRC (5.6miles) then to Ward's (another 5.6 miles) and finally back home (5 miles) for a total of about 16 miles. On top of this I'd usually do a light work out and after three weeks I was ready to do something much more challenging...So I called up Adam and asked if I could tag along for a Hawthorne trail ride. The Hawthorne trail itself is 15 miles in length and stretches from the Southeatern most part of Gainesville to the Southwestern tip of Hawthorne. A round trip from the trail head would be around 32 miles. Lucky for me I live on the Northwestern tip of Gainesville and it is an easy 10-11mile commute from my place to the trail head, so for me it would end up being a 50 mile bike ride (or a half-century bike ride).

Well we suited up Sunday and it turned out to be the PERFECT day for a bike ride. Clear skies and crisp cool weather. It rained the night before so all along the trail we saw fresh pools of water that really showed off the hidden beauty of Florida. We rode and rode and rode and saw the strangest things along the way. By the time we arrived in Hawthorne I was pretty pooped (at this point I've ridden around 25 miles). On the way back I refused to stop even once and pushed myself to my limits, sure I was probably averaging 6mph by the end..but I finished. And at the end we did a quick stop at a side trail to reward ourselves with a beautiful view of Paynes Prairie. We finished off the ride with a delicious pizza lunch at Big Lou's in Downtown Gainesville.

I slept very very very well that night.

More to come in the way of maps and pictures...

Sucks. I was spoiled by the restriction free goodness of Creative's Muvo series. The Muvo series functioned as a very simple flashdrive with MP3 functionality added on. The UI was very simple (and lacking) but it worked.

To transfer files onto the drive you
1.) copy and paste the files onto the flashdrive

That's it.

E260R on the other hand has required about 3 hours of searching and downloading to even GET IT TO FREAKING OPERATE correctly.

SanDisk in their infinite wisdom outsourced the firmware development to Real. As many of you know, Real media player sucks crap. Their firmware sucks crap and their iTunes wanna-be software sucks crap.
This will be the last time I ever buy an MP3 product from Sandisk again, I'm going back to Creative (where they DONT force feed you DRM crap).

Actually I'm going to try to get Linux running on the DS Lite, then try to get it to play videos.

Then I will try to get it to play streaming videos.

If this works it might be possible to use the DS as a mobile media player.

i.e you're at school and you can stream video feeds from your apartment to your DS.

Wow what a spectacular year for the Florida Gators. I have to say in the few short years I've been at UF I've gone from being anti-football to a moderate Gator fan, it's just impossible not  to get caught up in the energy.

Urban Meyer has totally turned around the Gators, Saturday was the first time we contended for the SEC title since 2000. 1996 was the last time we played at the BCS national championship game, this is exciting!

The girls and I were seriously considering getting tickets and flying to Arizona but the game is scheduled for 8:00pm on the first day of school. This would mean we wouldn't get back until late Tuesday or early Wednesday, effectively destroying our first week of school. Still it was really tempting - afterall we haven't played in nationals for a decade.

...Buuut school should come first, and so instead of spending a ludicirous amount of money and risking our academic well-being we're probably just going to have a lavish game-day experience. I'm thinking decorations, renting a projector (and screen), and a massive cook-out a few hours before! Hell I might even skip classes that day regardless.

But yeah, exciting times! Go Gators.

My life has gotten a lot more complicated.
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God I fuck around a lot. Woke up, watched Zorro with Laura and then cleaned the condo for about an hour and a half. Sat around doing nothing but putzing around on the computer for about an hour..and now about to hang up some shit in Laura's room.

Even Phuong is busting her ass in grad-school. Man everyone's working so hard and it's freaking me the hell out!

The weekend was pretty damn fun though. As soon as I got out of class on Friday the girls, Laura and I went to grab something to eat at Mia-sushi. The usual hilarity ensued and I swear the restaraunt owners wanted to kick us out.
Laura had to stop by Sports authority and we eventually got back to my condo with 2 movies, 2 huge garbage bags filled with bread and bagels, 2 large shopping bags filled with pasteries. Yeah and it was all free. yeay MAPS for free food.

So we ate again..yes..that's pretty much all we do - and watched a movie.
Yesterday we went through furious cleaning mode and I spent most of the day grumpy, an unavoidable consequence of caffeine withdrawl. At night we went rock climbing and that was a shit-load of fun. I enjoy it a hell lot more now than I used to, is it because the girls were there? I'd almost want to go weekly, or bi-weekly. It is afterall, only $10 on Saturday evenings/days.

Today was much much less eventful - the plan is to study, lay out by the pool right before dusk and maybe clean more.

Aw hell, I'm going to miss Phuong, Melinda and Lyn like crazy when they all leave. So friggin sad. On the bright side, maybe it'll force me to make new friends. But damn, Lyn will be gone in a matter of months, Phuong and Melinda will be gone in under 9 months. I think Laura is a bit freaked out by it too, things will be so different - a bit lonely. Life will have to go on.

And on that note..

-Jason

Small fish in a big bowl. I'm constantly going back and forth between dropping down to 6 CR of core classes and taking 3 CR of independent study/supervised research and just roughing it through and killing my breadth sequences in my first year.

Problem is - I have no idea how tough it'll be. I'm stretching out my stay in Gainesville to span 2 years for a grad degree (30 CR means that I could get out in 1.5 years if I did 9/9/3/9), so more than likely the minimum I'd leave with is a master's degree and a tiny bit of a PhD.

Stay a total of 5 years and I'd have a PhD under a leading research lab..only problem is, I don't really want a PhD. What I do want is a great job with tons of flexibility and a generous tolerance towards a personal life. The work ethic of America almost sickens me, the competition I see, both being envied and being envious - it all drives me mad. I hate it - but it's the harsh reality and the only way I'll ever survive it is if I rise above it all. Refuse to compete and instead concentrate on doing a stand-up job.
Stay focused (ironic since I'm fucking off by writing this post).

And uh...stay focused.

Problem with me is that I'm not exactly a genius, I'm a pretty slow study and it takes me a while to fully digest advanced concepts. For example, VLSI design = WTFH? I know nothing about solid states or process engineering, but I'm taking this class.

So yeah..I'm going to see the advisor again early tomorrow and see if I should drop down to 6 CR or not.

First week of grad school had a few suprises. I'm taking VLSI and tech, Foundations of digital signal processing and computer architecture. Out of the three VLSI is by far the most interesting, - possibly because it's being taught by a native English speaker. So the guy manages to give the class a lot of energy.

First week of research was pretty laid back - it honestly felt like the calm before the storm. I just think students in general tend to exaggerate the truth and that the hours I'll be keeping won't be brutal. They'll be tough but not brutal (I'm done with the brutal hours, been keeping them for the past 7 months and that's enough for me.).

Things are going great with Laura and I - not much is different now that we are living together. My room is painted, her room is painted, we're going to finally clean up the condo today, paint a wall in the living room and I'm going to keep finalizing my plans to tile the patio.

Which reminds me..my financial situation needs a good dose of restraint. My credit card bills are frequently above the 1k mark, which is completely unreasonable. They seriously need to be 400 or less every month, otherwise there will be no way I can survive much longer.

So here I am, new to Vox and so far so good.

..maybe good enough to trash my old LJ account in favor of this one.

Well first day of classes are going decently, the lab isn't as intimidating  (and depressing) as I feared. The guys are pretty friendly - and funny. Strangely enough I'm taking a lot of classes with them - in particular around 5 of them are taking VLSI.

Safety in numbers.

Got my computer setup and Dr. George hooked me up with a brand spanking new 19" LCD monitor, I mean holy-f'in jesus.. Talk about uber funding.
The rig I have right now is already better than what I had at Honeywell. The environment is completely different,  much more relaxed by several orders of magnitude. At Honeywell it got pretty intense and they can run a pretty tight ship over there - also my contact with co-workers my age was scarce.

seems like Aero and defense is where older folks work (not that I'm a spring chicken anymore).

So..in celebration of the plethora of features Vox gives you..I shall now post a picture - because, you know, LJ is cheap and doesn't offer free photo hosting.

What was (or is) your favorite subject in school?

Computational Neuroscience