Monthly Archive for March, 2007

All-Nighters Suck

Published
by
Josh Kim
on March 31, 2007
in Asides
. 0 Comments

And also, the night after sucks even more… because you feel like you still have much more work left to do for that day… but you know for a fact you’ll be more productive if you sleep it off at start fresh the next morning.

What ends up happening when I pull all-nighters is that either I crash and burn, or I either crawl and make it through the 48 hour mark. However, when I do crawl through that 48 hour mark, it’s usually a caffeine-induced insanity.

I really need to stop doing this. It’s not too healthy. And I’m sure the 2 liters of Dew I keep on forcing myself to drink isn’t all too great for the workout regimen either.

Time for some fruit. Yummy strawberries.

I’m currently trying to balance work and “play”, meaning blogging and learning more Ruby. I promise to have some good content tomorrow. Worthy of the 22 feeds subscriptions that somehow magically appeared yesterday night.

Lessons From Yet Another Reformat

Published
by
Josh Kim
on March 29, 2007
in Project Ideas, Web Applications and Web Development
. 0 Comments

As I’ve discussed earlier, I love reformatting my computer… At face value, it might seem like a waste of time, but in the end, lots of lessons are learned. That, and, you get faster every single time… and you get a squeaky clean computer.

Let me just go through where my data lives, and how it made my life so much easier to get back on track after my reformat.

  • Email

    • Gmail: I think I’m going to start using Gmail as my sole email application. It seems like for some reason, this time around, SMTP doesn’t want to work in Mail.app. Also, since I’ve already gone Google for RSS feeds as well as my budgeting/documenting/spreadsheet-ing, might as well commit to… er… submit to the Google overlords.
    • I have to go and somehow find a way to match the folder structure I have on my desktop to Gmail’s labeling structure.
    • Is there a way to move all your mail from one service provider to another? Is Yahoo really going to provide unlimited storage? This really isn’t a selling point, though, since I don’t think I’m even hitting 10% of my storage space yet.
      • But, of course, through the wonders of gDisk, I’ve begun backing up my most important documents, like blog post rough drafts and such.

  • Contact Information

    • Plaxo: I love it. It’s free for us normal users… plus, there’s a little bit of the social magic built into the app: you can send “eCards” to people with their information and such.
    • I don’t use Plaxo much, but I do use the synchronization tool with Address Book, and you know how I love to think that syncing is going to be one of the many killer web apps.

  • Calendar

    • This is next… to go with Google Calendar? How about Plaxo? How about something completely new?

  • Bookmarks

    • What? Delicious? The only thing I needed to reinstall to get back into bookmarking was the bookmarking extension for Firefox and Safari.
    • I’m satisfied with delicious to even think about moving to ma.gnolia.

  • Feeds

    • Google Reader: I love it. I think I might start integrating the “Starred Items” on the blog like Alex Argo has done.

After all… they’re all bits and bytes. It’s the application that brings that information to life. With web apps, though, you get a handy method of not having to deal with keeping track of your own data: the system does it for you.

Actually, more like… the system administrators of the web applications are doing that management of data for you.

Hey, it’s less work for me! But… alas, advertising revenue for them…

Why… Hello there, Sun!

Published
by
Josh Kim
on March 27, 2007
in Asides
. 0 Comments

Blast it. It’s another all nighter. And for what?

After a rousing exercise routine (backs and shoulders), I decided to go home.

I was nearing ISR, then suddenly… I decided to poke around a bit. A “little” bit turned into “quite” a bit.

I felt like I haven’t seen these guys in weeks. Two weeks, actually, since last week was Spring Break for them, as well as the week before… well… I was busy.

The first thing I run into… what the heck… it’s a group of people trying to imitate Bae Seul Gi’s Bokko Dance. Quite random. Then I visited the Knox/Das/Liao palace in Wardall. Then stopped by the business major’s studying in Wardall lounge.

Oh, the funny thing is how two random strangers pointed out that my earbuds were Sennheiser CX-300’s. I guess it pays to be… particular about your earbuds. Indeed, I’m loving these.

Then… I ended up debugging Brian Chung’s MP for a few minutes. Man, I missed the good ol’ days when I had to get down and dirty with C in ECE 199 (now called ECE 190). I’m not lying: I actually do. It’s kinda funny, but it seems as though you think you’re not going to miss it ever… and you end up missing it quite a bit.

But all my garbage electrical engineering classes? Yes. I will always not miss them. Ever.

It seems like the ECE/CS course load at UIUC is getting weirder. I don’t know if I should say harder or easier, but I think it’s becoming more relevant. Looking at the CS coursework: I feel like I want to go back for a BA in CS… all the classes look so fun!

And… indeed… it is 4:30 AM.

I have yet to write a good entry… this is getting quite annoying…

Headaches… and Randomness…

Published
by
Josh Kim
on March 26, 2007
in Asides
. 0 Comments

Things aren’t going so well with one of my projects… I’ve completely ran into a wall, trying to learn a technology I have not know about before.

Other than that, this crazy weather is kicking me in the head. I’m intermittently bothered by coughs and headaches.

I’m tossing around the idea of shaving my head. Maybe a nice April Fool’s joke that’ll last for three months.

I’m slowly realizing how pointless these daily personal updates are. Hopefully, tonight, I’ll have something worthy of your eyes.

WIMPE. It has returned. I will no longer go during the day, but at the end of my day… I like staying until close, since that forces me to be done with exercising by a certain time, no matter what. I’ve had too many cases when my workouts have gone past the 2 hour mark… and that’s just not what I want. At least for the next month, I will go daily.

Siebel. I’m going to visit daily, as well, before I go off to WIMPE. Just a lovely place to get work done, as well as see my good ol’ friend, Derek.

Diet. Oh, that’s an interesting post I could make… people have been asking me what I eat, and since I took pictures as I was grocery shopping, I’ll be able to share that information happily.

Relient K and Shutdown Day? More like… Shutdown 1.5 Days

Published
by
Josh Kim
on March 24, 2007
in Asides and Site News
. 0 Comments

Chicago. Ah.

Inadvertantly, I kinda celebrated Shutdown Day a half day early. Supposedly, today was supposed to be a day without using the computer, at all.

For me, this happened because I was without Internet. You see, without Internet, my computer ceases to be a computer in a lot of ways. I can’t check my email, talk online, check my feeds… I need my data!

I finally drove over to Panera near Woodfield for some lovely wireless bits.

Now I probably have like 300 stories I have to wade through (Google Reader, why don’t you tell me the exact number and NOT “100+”… what, is it that CPU intensive to give me the right number?) I have about 10 emails I have to reply to (lengthy… ahhhh!). Posts upon posts to write…

Here are some post ideas I have right now, sitting at Panera.

Mae at House of Blues

  • Relient K Concert (with Sherwood and Mae) at House of Blues
    • The Actual Event: Whoo hoo! First non-classical concert ever!
    • RIAA and Music: I thought this topic through while they were playing their new songs, the ones that I didn’t know.
    • City of Chicago: How INSANE it is to drive in the city
    • 14 Year Old Girls: DAH. “Sadie Hawkins Dance! Mood Rings!” still rings in my ear…
      • I always thought Relient K was more geared towards college kids… huh.
  • Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston
    • How incredibly awesome it is
    • How amazingly the author Jessica Livingston could have easily been Josh Kim
      • She writes… the Intro. The rest of the book is basically her asking questions at the founders of each respective company covered in the book. I could have asked those questions, and typed out 450 pages. Heck, I’d probably type that sucker faster…
      • Meh, maybe she asked the right questions… we’ll see as I keep on reading
    • How much I want to write a review PER CHAPTER
  • Consulting
    • How I keep mistyping “consulting” as “consluting”… ew…
    • Things I’ve learned with the clients I’ve had in the past
    • How I want to grow it: How to create an effective portfolio
  • Blog
    • Categorizing vs Tagging: I think I’m getting it…
    • Redesign process: How to effectively design a Wordpress Theme

Yeah, insanity.

I have a feeling, April is going to be insane.

Are you guys wondering “I mean… dang, Josh Kim… how much more insane can it get”?

You’ll see.