Graduated!!!

Woo-hoo, I am a BYU graduate.  Doesn’t feel much different, but I am really excited to be in graduate school.  I am also really excited to be back in the FLSR.  On Sunday I went back to there for the first time just for church.  Apparently the tardiness problem is still in full effect, but I am still really excited to be back there.

On Sunday I also saw Tangled for the first time.  I really like that movie.  I have got to find a girl like the one in Tangled, she absolutely rocked.  She knew what she want, and besides a little waffling at the beginning went and took it.  Besides she kicked peoples butts with a fry pan, and that was just awesome :)

Also on Sunday we played a game where it tested your survival knowledge, and I am happy to announce that years of reading fantasy and playing video games I was the one that best new how to survive in worst case scenarios.  Guess it shows you that playing video games has some use ;)

 

Monday to Wednesday I finished taking care of my finals.  None of them were really terrible, though I did very poorly on my math final’s multiple choice section.  I really do hope I get an A in that class.  If I can get all As this semester then I will graduate cum laude, which would be just awesome.

 

Thursday was the start of the various graduation activities.  I had commencement on Thursday.  I was able to sit with my cousin which made it more bearable.  Elder Scott did give a good commencement talk.

Afterwards my Grandma took all of us graduates out to dinner.  There are six of us total graduating, me, my mom, my sister, my cousins Ryan and Jason, and Jason’s wife Alysha.  It was fun all going to dinner with Grandma.  After dinner there was a little dancing, and I even danced a little with my grandma, it was a great night.

 

Friday I had to wake up really early for commencement, it started at 8:00AM.  It felt like I sat forever, but it was nice that my family could come and see me.  After that we had refreshments, and then I got to run a friend to SLC.  I then had to hurry back to the Marriot so that I could walk again with my mom in the Humanities convocation.  I barely made it back in time, I was lucky to find parking and everything.

In the end I did make it back in time, and got to sit through another convocation!  Oh joy is me!  At least it was nice for my mom to walk with me.  After that was done we took some pictures, and then we went in again for Alysha’s convocation.  The speaker at this convocation was probably the best of the bunch.

After the 7 total hours of convocation, I finally went home.  While there I got to play with my little first cousin once removed Jackson.  He is so cute, and it was fun playing him.  After that me and Ryan played some Portal 2, one of the best games to come out recently!

 

Well, being graduated, I did the only one sensible thing, I moved!  I spent all afternoon Saturday moving my stuff in the FLSR.  Crystal, the hall advisor let me check in early, and so I was able to get all my stuff in the house.  It did rain during the middle, and my stuff did get wet, but other than that things were fine.  I still need to unpack though, since I only moved my stuff in.

After moving I went home and attended a graduation party my uncle was throwing for all of our graduates.  He had the house decorated in BYU blue and and white.  We had great food and all the family came over.  I enjoyed all of the time that we could spend together.  I sure am happy that I can stay with my family for my masters degree.  It really is great.

 

And that was my week.  A great week that culminated in graduation.  It was wonderful.  So wonderful I think that I will do it two more times! ;)

Let the good times keep rolling

Things have continued to be good around here.  I was a little saddened when I saw pictures of how beautiful Hangzhou was.  I sure wish that I had the money to fly there when this semester was over and visit Drew and Cassi.  That would be the perfect end to this semester, but sigh… that probably won’t happen.

Monday and Tuesday were just normal days.  Productive, which was really good.  On Wednesday I finally finished passing off my CS 340 course work.  I am so grateful to be done with that class.  It was like taking remedial math, or something that I have been doing for years, which in this case I had :) 

On Wednesday night we had my last period of Chin 495.  We had it at the teachers house, and he made beef noodle soup for us.  It wasn’t quite as good as it is in China, but oh my goodness it was the best Chinese food I have had since coming back home.  I really do miss Chinese food, even the so-so food that classifies Nanjing.  I should find out how to get an internship in Taibei, Shanghai, or Beijing were I love the food…

 

After that Chinese high I had a really huge Chinese low.  I took the Writing Proficiency Test (WPT) on Thursday morning, and it absolutely killed me.  I just could not remember how to write enough characters to do a good job.  The worse part was that for the next several days I would remember suddenly how to write a character I had forgotten on the test.  It is most stressful because during my time in China I got rather good at writing Chinese Pros, but now I look like and idiot, all because I don’t know how to write the characters by hand, it is so frustrating!!!

Thursday night I went on a man date with my cousin, and we went to see “Unknown”.  Don’t make the same mistake!  For the first hour plus I was on my edge of my seat, and then in the last 30 minutes the directors manage to ruin the whole movie by turning it into a Jason Bourne want to be.  It was so frustrating!

 

On Friday me and my cousin went crazy with cooking.  For lunch we made ourselves some Asian barbequed chicken with grilled asparagus.  Just a little light something.  Dinner was the real treat.  We made buttermilk pancakes and syrup from scratch.  To go with that we made orange juice, hash browns and sausage, topped off with a side of fruit.  It was just heavenly.  And then we made a German chocolate cake for my uncles birthday that night.  Oh, it was great just to be domestic.  I love all of it, including the cleaning afterwards!

 

Saturday was the wonderful conclusion to my week.  In the morning I went to the temple with my cousin.  We then checked out the 24 hour fitness where he is a member.  I think I will join so that I can work out with over the summer.  I can get a 2 year membership for 300 dollars at Costco, which is a pretty good price for a membership.  And unlike BYU it would mean I could use the swimming pool at times that match my schedule.

At night we watched 剑雨(Reign of Assassins).  It is a great movie and we loved it.  The subtitles were a little fast, but we got used to it (well, I just listened to the Mandarin), and then we had a killer time.

 

Well, that was my great week.  Hopefully graduation week goes as smoothly.  It probably won’t, but I can always hope.

A productive week

So, I didn’t mention it last time, but one of my favorite things about conference Sunday, was the DDR tournament my family did afterwards.  Okay, maybe calling it a tournament is a little much, but it was fun to watch my family play DDR together.  It was really awesome.

 

As for this week, I have been crazy busy.  I was actually able to stay focused at work.  As any of my friends now, that is tantamount to the parting of the Red Sea.  It was really what I needed though.  On Monday I finished my write-up for the IEEE publication.  I came home and then also re-boxed all my Wii stuff, sold off a bunch of my video games to Amazon (great idea for Lars to keep the price of buying video games cheap in the long run), and eliminated another large garbage bag of stuff.  It was great!

On Tuesday I finished up my last major school project.  It is good to have this semester wrapping itself up so nicely.  At night I watched Midway to Heaven.  It is one of the best terrible movies I have seen recently :)  What I mean by that is that while from an artistic standpoint it is a terrible movie, but still it was fun to watch.  And besides, my cousins were extras in it!

Wednesday and Thursday I decided to refresh my javascript, so I decided to read a book on it, and I ordered a new book about something called MooTools as well.  We are hopping to rewrite the browser part of our lab projects so that they are actually understandable.  As it is now we look at what has been written and we just rub our heads in confusion.

On Friday I had a wonderful session at the temple.  There were so many missionaries there it was crazy.  They were scrambling left and right to find people that spoke and could help out with the appropriate languages as well.  There was Tongan, Samoan, French, Spanish, Italian, and several other languages all there.  And the session behind me had even more.  It was just so awesome to see missionaries that came from across the world!

 

On Saturday I took 6 hours of HSK testing.  In the morning I took the level 6 test.  I think I probably got a near perfect score on the listening section.  The reading section was a little harder, but still not bad.  And then I met the writing section, and proceeded to get my teeth kicked in.  My handwritten Chinese is just terrible. 

Later that day I took the level 5 test, and I must say in comparison to the level 6 test it is just a joke.  So for all of my classmates that might have not passed level 6, don’t worry you would pass level 5 in your sleep.  Heck, I am kinda scared to see all of you and see how great your Chinese has gotten, and how far behind mine has fallen… 

Later that night I went out with the boys from the FLSR to the cannon center.  Apparently I said plenty of things to make the little freshman stare.  It was fun.  After that I came home for a birthday party for my cousin-in-law.  All in all a really good day.

 

Well, that was my week.  I got a lot done, and that more than anything made it great.  I just need to keep this up for the rest of my life and things will be great! ;)

Mediocrity

I love conference weekend.  It is such a great opportunity to learn.  I will talk about that a little more later.

 

On Sunday we had a hymn and testimony meeting that was really good.  Everyone had the opportunity to go up and tell their favorite song, bear testimony of a principle it taught and then we should sing a verse from it.  It really was great.  I love these types of sacrament meetings!

On Tuesday I got a pair of video cards to replace my current card.  They are not really that much better than the current card but they will allow me to run all three of my monitors at once.  It should be really fun to enjoy the games like that.  Best of all the upgrade is only costing me 60 dollars.  Still a lot on my student budget, but within my range.

On Friday I finished the epic project that was packing my stuff.  Once a year I take all of my stuff out of where I keep it and spread it over the floor.  I then take the time to evaluate what I have, and either throw re-pack it, throw it away, or send it off to DI.  This year I am happy that I was able to throw out 3 large trash sacks of stuff, and send 2 large boxes off to DI.  I still have an incredible amount of stuff, but it is getting closer to the stuff that I actually should keep long term.  This next year is crazy, because except for a a small box and a half of mission stuff all my stuff will be in one house.  I haven’t done this since the I was a Junior in school.

 

Saturday and Sunday were of course conference.  I had a really good time at all of the sessions.  Saturday night after general conference our family all ate ice cream sundaes together, and then proceeded to watch skits from the onion.  It was really a lot of fun.

The next day I was surprised to see snow covering our yard, but I guess that is just life in Utah.  The apocalypse is upon us, and spring will never come…  Well, maybe that is over the top, but at times it sure feels that way.

Later that day I headed over to my sisters for dinner and several birthday parties, mine included.  It isn’t my birthday yet, but since my brother won’t be there for mine, we did a mini birthday party with it.  It was fun, and my sister did make a really good carrot cake.

So overall it was a pretty good week.  And, oh yea, I forgot, I am helping write my first paper.  We are submitting it to the IEEE for publication.  It may not get into that particular publication, but nonetheless it is great to start helping with publishing in our lab.

 

As for my thoughts on conference, there were two that really stuck out.  The first was the importance of covenants.  Several times is what stated that the power of the marriage covenant was enough to conquer problems in a marriage.  To me that is really such an amazing concept.

The second idea that hit me was that we live beyond our privilege, and a large part of that is because we are mediocre at being obedient.  At by we, I mean me :)  A lot of time it is like I am a B+ student.  I am not failing at being righteous, I am above average, and heck I am doing well, but I am not an A student.  And why not, because I am unwilling to follow all of the commandments as well as I should.

On the Sabbath, I go to church, I don’t shop, and I try to read my scriptures a little more.  But do I really not partake of weekly activities?  I may not do homework, but I do sometimes play video games.  While neither of these may seem bad, they are both activities of the week, and not really appropriate for Sunday, and yet I still partake of them.

Another example is the media I watch.  I am not entrapped in pornography, I don’t watch rated R movies, and I don’t listen to music that is full of sweating.  Yet still I watch PG-13 movies that endorse life styles that are inappropriate.  I watch shows that have sweating.

As you can see, these things are not hideous sins, but they are not living up to my full responsibilities.  Because I do not live up to those full responsibilities I also keep myself from receiving all the blessings that I could receive.

I spend so much time trying to justify why I shouldn’t do these things, instead of just doing better.  I think we all have things like this, where we are doing well, but we are not fully obedient.  We find ourselves happy to live not perfectly obedient, but somewhat obedient.  And at the same time we are living not quite up to our potential.

With conference I have made goals to try and fix some of these areas.  I hope that all of us can make goals to do a little better.  And that is why I love conference.  It gives us the chance to move our lives forward in very positive ways.