Sunday, July 31, 2005
Cirque du Soleil
Tonight Rachel and I went to see Cirque du Soleil's Varekai show. This was in celebration of our one year anniversary of being together ^_^ I have always wanted to see a Cirque du Soleil show and now we've seen one together! The show was magnificent and fascinating. It was a mix of acrobats, musicians, and comedic performers, all dressed in the finest costumes of their fantasial world. There were many animal-creatures wandering around, odd people making mischief and being part of the story, and a romance. It is a unique circus, with no animals, but with such human athletic and artistic genius. There is live music accompaniment(watched a bagpipe player clown walk past us). If you have appreciation of surreal fantasy art in the form of acrobatics, dance, and theatrics, you must go see this show.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Fatburger
Tonight Matt and I went to Fatburger which is a burger joint from CA. I had been craving a Fatburger for a long time ever since I had one at ASU with Toschi last year. So Matt and I took a drive 25 miles northwest to the town of Rockaway. It was a pretty good town with somewhat historic-looking houses but a generally good atmosphere(as much as you could feel one at 10PM.
So why is Fatburger different from other fast food places? Well, the burgers take longer to cook, so I guess it's not quite as fast as fast can be. Secondly they serve your food to you and the servers are always looking to do things for you, like get you more ketchup for your skinny fries. Yes, skinny fries, as opposed to fat fries, which they also have. Matt and I both got a double Fatburger with cheese and pickle, along with skinny fries and a medium(32 oz.) drink. At less than $20 for the whole thing, it's more expensive than a fast food restaurant, but less so than a more conventional restaurant. Fatburger also claims to use really lean beef which is different, and I appreciate that. Supposedly the 'fat' in their name refers to the size of the burger itself and not how you'll look after eating one of their tasty burgers. They also have many signs all around the restaurant making jokes deriding two main groups: conventional fast food restaurants and vegetarians.
Anyway, it's a fun place and I recommend it to anyone who likes burgers but wants better quality :-)
So why is Fatburger different from other fast food places? Well, the burgers take longer to cook, so I guess it's not quite as fast as fast can be. Secondly they serve your food to you and the servers are always looking to do things for you, like get you more ketchup for your skinny fries. Yes, skinny fries, as opposed to fat fries, which they also have. Matt and I both got a double Fatburger with cheese and pickle, along with skinny fries and a medium(32 oz.) drink. At less than $20 for the whole thing, it's more expensive than a fast food restaurant, but less so than a more conventional restaurant. Fatburger also claims to use really lean beef which is different, and I appreciate that. Supposedly the 'fat' in their name refers to the size of the burger itself and not how you'll look after eating one of their tasty burgers. They also have many signs all around the restaurant making jokes deriding two main groups: conventional fast food restaurants and vegetarians.
Anyway, it's a fun place and I recommend it to anyone who likes burgers but wants better quality :-)
Saturday, July 16, 2005
New York Trip
Went to NYC with Rachel and Matt and Si(Matt's friend) today. Unfortunately we didn't get to see a Shakespeare play, but oh well. We went to the Natural History Museum. Saw the dinosaurs :-) We went through Central Park and enjoyed that.
We spent a lot of time in the Metropolitan Art Museum as it's one quite excellent museum to visit, and Rachel had never been there before. We saw a movie showing in an auditorium at the museum called Mrs. Brown, which is about Queen Victoria and her personal and trusted servant John Brown who was highly disliked by most of the gentry. But he was an example of a good friend to the queen. Rachel and I loved most the modern art section where we saw some Matisse and Pollack and Close, among many others.
Afterwards we made our way down to Chinatown where my two faithful Chinese companions found us a good Chinese restaurant where we ate sweet and sour vegetable soup, jellyfish, orange chicken, fried rice, asparagus, and sesame chicken to go. Then we came home, filled with hurting feet and good memories.
I was dismayed that I actually know where I'm going now in NYC, as I don't think I should have such familiarity with that city for some reason...probably it's because I realize that if I hadn't gone on the thorough(and over-tiring!) walking self-tour of NYC with my Korean roommate a few months ago, I wouldn't have ever taken such a trip myself, and therefore wouldn't be so thoroughly versed in walking city blocks and knowing how to traverse uptown and how to get a good view of the Statue of Liberty without paying anything. Oh well, no regrets ^_^
We spent a lot of time in the Metropolitan Art Museum as it's one quite excellent museum to visit, and Rachel had never been there before. We saw a movie showing in an auditorium at the museum called Mrs. Brown, which is about Queen Victoria and her personal and trusted servant John Brown who was highly disliked by most of the gentry. But he was an example of a good friend to the queen. Rachel and I loved most the modern art section where we saw some Matisse and Pollack and Close, among many others.
Afterwards we made our way down to Chinatown where my two faithful Chinese companions found us a good Chinese restaurant where we ate sweet and sour vegetable soup, jellyfish, orange chicken, fried rice, asparagus, and sesame chicken to go. Then we came home, filled with hurting feet and good memories.
I was dismayed that I actually know where I'm going now in NYC, as I don't think I should have such familiarity with that city for some reason...probably it's because I realize that if I hadn't gone on the thorough(and over-tiring!) walking self-tour of NYC with my Korean roommate a few months ago, I wouldn't have ever taken such a trip myself, and therefore wouldn't be so thoroughly versed in walking city blocks and knowing how to traverse uptown and how to get a good view of the Statue of Liberty without paying anything. Oh well, no regrets ^_^
Thursday, July 14, 2005
This Weekend Rachel's Coming!
I'm excited to have Rachel visit me in New Jersey this weekend for the first time :-) She's going to have lunch with me at work, and then we'll see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory after I get off of work.
On Saturday we're gonna go to NYC and see a Shakespeare play (don't know which one yet). We also plan on going to Central Park and the Metropolitan Art Museum :-) I'm very excited to show Rachel those places. She's a super awesome girl and I love her very much. I know how to show a girl a good time and she's the lucky girl this weekend!
On Saturday we're gonna go to NYC and see a Shakespeare play (don't know which one yet). We also plan on going to Central Park and the Metropolitan Art Museum :-) I'm very excited to show Rachel those places. She's a super awesome girl and I love her very much. I know how to show a girl a good time and she's the lucky girl this weekend!
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Work at AT&T
My time at AT&T so far has been enjoyable. I have a program that has been running continuously for a few days, collecting data from news websites like CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and ABC News. What it does basically is downloads a list of RSS(Really Simple Syndication) feeds from these news sources, and stores them in a database. The program then downloads the articles linked from each RSS feed.
An RSS feed is a technology that allows you to receive an updated listing of recent posts to some data source, be it CNN or your favorite blog that provides RSS support.
I'm working on building various training models over the data collected by my script. The training is for capitalization of words. When the researchers at AT&T receive text that is created by an ASR(Automatic Speech Recognition) program, the text has no capitalization or punctuation. And with Closed Captioned text, capitalization and punctuation are often done sloppily. So the object of this is to automatically make the text look nice and normal. :-)
An RSS feed is a technology that allows you to receive an updated listing of recent posts to some data source, be it CNN or your favorite blog that provides RSS support.
I'm working on building various training models over the data collected by my script. The training is for capitalization of words. When the researchers at AT&T receive text that is created by an ASR(Automatic Speech Recognition) program, the text has no capitalization or punctuation. And with Closed Captioned text, capitalization and punctuation are often done sloppily. So the object of this is to automatically make the text look nice and normal. :-)
Friday, June 10, 2005
My mind is weird
I've concluded that I have poor ability at empathy. In particular, some people cannot handle how I act when I have to depend on them. I treat someone the way I would expect to be treated in a similar situation, and many times not how they want to be treated. And this is not good for many people. How I act when I have to depend on someone is to politely use their resources and attention, basically leaning very heavily on that person. Also, my borrow/lend policy is that one shouldn't expect to get something back. Now, if I borrow something, I of course always give it back. But I'm very loose in general with things. In fact, most things I lend out don't get back to me. And you know what? I forget about them, unless they're very important. But with things like books, CDs, etc., I forget I lent them, and if I remember that I lent it I tend not to care that I don't have it. I just buy another if I really want it. I've gone through at least 4 copies of Ender's Game :-P. Likewise, if someone needs me in some other way, as in transportation or lodging or whatnot, they're going to get everything I've got, and I won't expect much in return except friendship and politeness, etc... Financially, if I buy something for a friend, then I assume that in the end, everything will come out even, and I don't keep track of how much people owe me except that they do owe me something and a rough estimate of the amount. I tend to like people who have a similar policy and I don't care if I pay someone back more than they lent me.
Living with Matt is cool because he's this way. We switch off with paying for things, and we don't scrutinize the amounts at all. If either of us needs a favor of the other, we gladly do it with very little complaining :-P
I have needed to rely on people more than others have had to rely on me in recent years, given my various situations, and sometimes people have gotten angry with me because of how I depend on people. I wish people could depend on me more in the future, with me having to depend on people less. I pray to God for this, and I think in the future I will try to not rely on certain types of people as much, if I can help it.
Living with Matt is cool because he's this way. We switch off with paying for things, and we don't scrutinize the amounts at all. If either of us needs a favor of the other, we gladly do it with very little complaining :-P
I have needed to rely on people more than others have had to rely on me in recent years, given my various situations, and sometimes people have gotten angry with me because of how I depend on people. I wish people could depend on me more in the future, with me having to depend on people less. I pray to God for this, and I think in the future I will try to not rely on certain types of people as much, if I can help it.
Monday, June 06, 2005
The Roadtrip
So the road trip ended, my roommate went back to Champaign, and I'm in New Jersey sitting in my AT&T office with nothing to do :-)
I think the highlights of the trip were going to Cheers in Boston, going to the Public Garden in Boston, going to the Botanic Gardens in DC, and going to the Orioles baseball game.
The trip was very good, and Wookkyun got to see many of our country's finest places, and was repeatedly awed at the landscapes, skyscrapers, museums, etc...
It was extremely stressful for me though. We had to walk for many hours to get to all the sites he wanted to visit, so the end of the trip was a relief for me and I got to slack off at my uncle's house, and hang out with my friends, family, and especially my lovely Rachel :-)
I've rented a place with Matt in Newark, NJ. The neighborhood is not good, and the apartment isn't very good either, but it's cheap, the landlords are very nice and generous, and I get to be with my friend, which I haven't been able to do a lot the last few years since we've been in different states.
The AT&T complex here is beautiful and so is the surrounding area, full of trees and nice houses and shopping centers. It's the sort of place I like to be, in general. It makes me feel comfortable. I grew up in a place like this, and definitely not in a place like downtown Newark. I went out to lunch with the people I'll be working with, and 2/3 are left-handed! Four of us sitting around the table at K.O.B.E. Japanese restaurant and I notice 3/4 of us are using our left hands. Weird.
I also got a nice tour of the facility, which is primarily devoted to research. The security is very tight here and this place is definitely the real thing in terms of research. Top of the line systems running massive computations. Server rooms kept at cold temperatures, all combination locked. You have to have an ID to be in the building, and I'll be getting my badge in a few days supposedly. There's a gym, shops, a bank, and a nice courtyard for when I won't feel like an ant under a magnifying glass when I'm outside.
I'll be working on something dealing with automatic text capitalization here, for their closed captioning system. I don't know much else though. The people I work with research real-time analysis and feedback from broadcasts, in video imaging and speech recognition.
Rachel and I can visit each other more now, too :-) And since she's going to be starting grad school at University of Cincinnati, we can see each other more during the school year too! Still 3 1/2 hours' drive away, but that's not too bad, compared to 12 hours.
Well, doesn't my life sound interesting right now?
I think the highlights of the trip were going to Cheers in Boston, going to the Public Garden in Boston, going to the Botanic Gardens in DC, and going to the Orioles baseball game.
The trip was very good, and Wookkyun got to see many of our country's finest places, and was repeatedly awed at the landscapes, skyscrapers, museums, etc...
It was extremely stressful for me though. We had to walk for many hours to get to all the sites he wanted to visit, so the end of the trip was a relief for me and I got to slack off at my uncle's house, and hang out with my friends, family, and especially my lovely Rachel :-)
I've rented a place with Matt in Newark, NJ. The neighborhood is not good, and the apartment isn't very good either, but it's cheap, the landlords are very nice and generous, and I get to be with my friend, which I haven't been able to do a lot the last few years since we've been in different states.
The AT&T complex here is beautiful and so is the surrounding area, full of trees and nice houses and shopping centers. It's the sort of place I like to be, in general. It makes me feel comfortable. I grew up in a place like this, and definitely not in a place like downtown Newark. I went out to lunch with the people I'll be working with, and 2/3 are left-handed! Four of us sitting around the table at K.O.B.E. Japanese restaurant and I notice 3/4 of us are using our left hands. Weird.
I also got a nice tour of the facility, which is primarily devoted to research. The security is very tight here and this place is definitely the real thing in terms of research. Top of the line systems running massive computations. Server rooms kept at cold temperatures, all combination locked. You have to have an ID to be in the building, and I'll be getting my badge in a few days supposedly. There's a gym, shops, a bank, and a nice courtyard for when I won't feel like an ant under a magnifying glass when I'm outside.
I'll be working on something dealing with automatic text capitalization here, for their closed captioning system. I don't know much else though. The people I work with research real-time analysis and feedback from broadcasts, in video imaging and speech recognition.
Rachel and I can visit each other more now, too :-) And since she's going to be starting grad school at University of Cincinnati, we can see each other more during the school year too! Still 3 1/2 hours' drive away, but that's not too bad, compared to 12 hours.
Well, doesn't my life sound interesting right now?
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