Some good break photos

Some foods made over break

Thin crust pesto pizza


Pancakes


Rosemary and Garlic Focaccia Bread


Brussels Sprouts

Zumba, Abs, and CS classes

So I have had all of my classes by now and they are alright.

I like my literature class, we are reading Candide - Voltaire, and it is a pretty good read.
I'm trying not to use my index finger too much because it hurts from clicking.

My microeconomics class is alright too, it seems pretty simple so far.

My Architecture class is okay, I mean I'm pretty happy with any CS class that doesn't require me to code. I like diagrams and flow charts, so it's alright so far. We're learning about registers and pipelining before we get to the microprocessor stuff.

In Bob's class, which I have next, we are learning algorithms. We looked at two programs and determined how many steps it takes to run the programs, to figure out which is faster.

What else...I went to Zumba and Ab workout at the gym. Zumba is a high powered latin based aerobics class, it was pretty fun. Abs was 30 minutes after an hour of Zumba, and very hard, I am still sore today (2 days later). I will resume with yoga again on Monday, and possibly go to the gym with Noah over the weekend in Albany.

Ah yes, one more thing, Happy 2 and a half year anniversary Noah!!! :)

Schedule

Final Schedule!

Well its the first day of school and already someone committed suicide. I'm not sure yet if I knew him or not because his name hasn't been released yet. I know that he hanged himself, i believe it was outside, and they found him at 7am this morning. He was a senior... 1 more semester and he would've graduated. Its really sad.

In other news, classes are good. I like microeconomics. The teacher is a young, hot Argentinian woman and she basically said that this class will be easy. My literature class will be more reading than I'm used to but its a good teacher so its okay. I have a lot more papers than I've had before in other literature classes.

I also went to the book exchange and gave them some old books, and took out awesome new books. So I found a really cool color book about DADA art, a book about the sexual lives of Amazonian people, another copy of The Master and Margarita (I already have a copy at home but I figured I might read it while I'm in school), a nice copy of Young Krishna, Candide by Voltaire (I need it for my lit class), and Reproducing Jews. There are always interesting Jewish books there so I'll get more Jewish ones when I return a few at the end of the semester. I picked this 'reproducing Jews: A cultural account of assisted conception in Israel' because I opened it, and on the first page I saw "MANOIM". I was very excited. Apparently "Tessa Manoim" is a friend of the author, Susan Martha Kahn, and was mentioned in the Acknowledgements on the first page.

I'm going to Yoga with Cathy today after dinner.

my first post.

Bella asked me to review windows 7. I have had it installed on my laptop for over a week now, and I like it very much. It seems to work faster and more effectively than vista, while simultaneously taking less effort from the computer to simply run it. The layout is clearer, too. The best part I think is the semi-transparent task bar, though. It contains small, perfectly sized icons for programs and documents. For example, there is one icon for your internet browser. When you hover over this icon, whatever browser windows you have open will appear next to each other above the icon. You can click on any of them to open them, or close them from this view. This is the same for itunes, media player, picture viewer, documents folders, etc. There is one icon for all folders, and any open folders will show up in the same manner juxtaposed above the folder icon. In addition, any icon can be dragged from the desktop or wherever to the task bar permanently and removed with two clicks. The time and date are clearer, with the date permanently displayed below the time. The calendar is more accessible, too. Something very cool is that at the far right of the task bar is a vertical rectangle, which is the 'show desktop' button. If hovered over, the desktop is clear until the cursor is moved, and if clicked, the desktop is the only thing visible. The Start menu is fairly similar to vista, although at the bottom, the one-click is 'shut down' while the arrow leads to every option you could want between 'sleep' and 'shut down'. 7 comes with 11 basic games, but i love that one of them is Mahjong. When folders are open, the left side always shows the 'Libraries', which are documents, music, pictures, and videos, with computer and networks below those, and 'Favorites'(downloads, recently changed, public, desktop, and recent places) all listed above. Folders come with a multitude of views, as well as a preview pane which can be handy on the right side. In addition, the overflow of icons located on the right side of the task bar, by the power, volume, internet connection, and 'action center' icon, is much more accessible than before. These overflow icons, such as aim, bluetooth, anti-virus, etc show up in a box above the task bar, like normal windows, and don't immediately disappear when you move your cursor. They are visible and clickable until you click the arrow on the task bar to make them go away. With no real flaws or inherent bad usability traits, I think this is the best version of windows yet. This is really all I can think of for now. Sorry for how disjointed and poorly written this is, but it was done on the fly, and it is late and I am tired. End.

Does this sound interesting?

LIT 2183 Milan Kundera and the Art of Fiction

M . W . .

1:30 - 2:50 pm

ASP 302

ELIT

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1982) by the Czech/French writer Milan Kundera is regarded as an exemplification of the postmodern novel. This course will examine how Kundera’s idiosyncratic textual strategies explode traditional notions of character and fictional identity, and unsettle the comfortable boundaries between such oppositional categories as the fictional and factual, totalitarian and democratic, or Eastern and Western. It will discuss Kundera’s use of philosophy and history, placing his novels in the context of larger political issues, such as the question of Central Europe and the situation in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. It will also consider matters of language and translation (cinematic as well). Additional readings will include a wide spectrum of Kundera’s works (The Joke, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Immortality), as well as his writings about fiction (The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed). Each class is organized around supplemental texts by Nietzsche, Broch, Calvino, Fuentes, Rorty, Havel, Brodsky, Benjamin, and Huyssen, among others.

Improvements

It would be nice if you could lock windows at the bottom of the screen so that if you have several windows you are going between, you could keep from re-opening the same window you don't need. It'd also be nice if you could shift tabs in the bottom tab bar so you can put ones ur working with next to each other, and color code.

Its 6am

I did three important things in the past several hours.

I applied to UC Berekeley, UC Santa Cruz, and Texas A&M REU programs.

Now all I have left is the IBM application. It's just about done but I want to have it proofread first.

I hope I get into one of those four programs.

Photos

Tart

This is the first tomato, mushroom, cheese tart Noah and I made a little while ago.

Food, yum

Here is the dinner table from when I made potatoes, roasted garlic asparagus, brussels sprouts and mushrooms.

Noah and I made veal scalopine last night. It was FANTASTIC. We made a nice juicy mushroom sauce.

Grades

I finally got my grades.

CMSC	305	Design of Programming Langs	B	4.00	McGrail	Crite Sheet
CMSC	360	Intelligent Robotics/Perceptn	A	4.00	O'Hara	Crite Sheet
HEB	101	Beginning Hebrew	A	4.00	Nelson	Crite Sheet
JS	120	Jewishness Beyond Religion	B+	4.00	Kuznitz	Crite Sheet

I'm pretty happy.