Changes

So this has been a crazy week. Last Sunday I got an email telling me that Microsoft Research (MSR) was interested in me for an internship. On Monday I interviewed for the position, and on Wednesday I got the position. It will start on the 25th of this month. Crazy huh, in the space of three days my plans for the rest of summer and also Fall Semester have completely changed.

I am really excited about my internship. It isn’t in my specific field of research, but it will be a great opportunity to work on an amazing project while also networking with security related researchers at MSR. It will also be nice that I will be near Emily for the rest of the summer. We will still be apart when she goes to China, but it will be good to have increased time with her.

And because of that it is time to get spend happy :) It look like I am going to have to spend just northwards of 1500 dollars to get my car ready for the trip. Wow, ACs on Ford Fusions are expensive! I also got myself a treat and upgraded my hard drive in my main computer.

 

Other cool stuff in the week included me being made first author on a paper. This is the first time this has happened. I am really hopeful the paper will get published. If that happens it will significantly increase my chances of getting into a great PhD program. It has been a lot of hard work getting the paper ready, but now it certainly seems worth it.

This week also saw Emily’s and my sixth month dating anniversary. It has been a good six month. Emily made us some bacon roses to celebrate. We also went out to Tucanos, both to celebrate this and a birthday for a friend of hers. We then finished the night by watching Jane Austen. Nothing too fancy, but it was all made wonderful since I did it with Emily :)

 

And that is where things stand with me now. I’ll keep everyone up to date with details about my excursion to Washington. Emily is planning to take me to all of her favorite places, so there should be a good amount to report on. Make sure to tune in and not miss any of the details!

Holidays and Weddings

This week has been a really good week. I was able to plan a visit out to Portland and Gig Harbor to see my cousin Jason and Emily respectively. I am really looking forward to this trip, it will be a lot of fun.

On Monday Emily and I made the most of the holiday. We started by making a giant breakfast :) There were chocolate chip pancakes, hash browns, butter milk syrup, and eggs. It was delightful. After we cleaned up the kitchen we went to Orem where we played a lot of out door games. I have to admit, Emily is getting really good at Bocce ball. She came really close to beating me, even though she has hardly ever played it.

The rest of the week was also pretty fun. Emily and I attended the CS BBQ on Wednesday, which had some really good food. After that I had Ryan’s bachelor party. That was a lot of fun to go to, getting to see all of my family and wish Ryan good luck.

On Thursday I got to spend more time with family as Jason and Alysha had a little get together. Emily’s Bocce ball skills came into use as we handily won the Bocce ball tournament. It was a lot of fun, and we even got to eat smores!

And on Saturday Ryan got married. It was a really special day. It is great to see him and Sarah together, they are such a happy couple. I went to the sealing in the afternoon and then got to chill with Drew for a few hours. Emily and I finished the night by going to the reception. At the reception they had the best chicken Alfredo I have had in my entire life. It was amazing. It was also fun to wish Ryan and Sarah good luck and see them off.

Here are some pictures from that day:

 

Other than that this week was spent working on a paper for work. We got luck and the deadline was pushed back. That will really help us. As of right now we have a decent first draft. It still needs a lot of revision, but nearly all of the material that we will need is in there. I hope it is good enough to get published. I could really use some papers on my resume.

Another week with Emily :)

So this week I got Emily to play and beat a video game with me! Crazy, I know. The game was The Castle of Dr. Brain. It is one of those really old games from my childhood. It is all about solving brain teasers and other puzzles. It was a lot of fun working through the puzzles together. If you don’t know this game you certainly should download it and give it a play.

Another first this week was I am helping conduct a user study this week. We feel that a paper we are writing will be significantly strengthened with this study, and so I am doing it. It has been very instructive. I am learning about both the system and also how to conduct user studies in general. I am glad that I am having this experience now.

This weekend Emily and I also made cookies (pictures to come when I am home and can upload them.) We made thin mints, samoas, and cake balls. All so delicious. They were a lot of fun to make, though still time consuming. They turned out to be really tasty. We did struggle a little with the dipping step (forgot to add butter to the chocolate,) but other than that they turned out really well! It was a fun way to spend the evening.

On Saturday we had dinner at Café Pezan and then we went to the dollar movie night at BYU. They played A Goofy Movie. It was such a blast from the past. It was certainly a fun way to spend the evening.

 

 

And those are the adventures I am up to. Sorry that everything is so terse. I should be better at writing, but I’m just not. Sorry!

Work and other stressful things (not really a great title, you’ll see)

So let’s see, what have I been up to for the last two weeks. Well, for one I made meatballs! I know, it is silly to get excited about that, but nonetheless I am. I have never done it before, and I felt really proud of myself. No more bland pasta for me!

I did have to fix my computer this week, which was sad. Some how in moving I damaged the water cooler. I replaced it with an air cooler that is quitter, but a little bit warmer. Not much though. In fact there load temperatures are very similar. Maybe my next machine will be fully water cooled, but for now I am happy with what I have. It was huge though, and it brings the number of fans in my machine up to 6. It is crazy how cold it still is with that setup.

A scary thing that happened was that I got a letter from the IRS telling me I owed them about $5000. Unfortunately, it looks like the are partially right, I will end up owing them $2100. This all comes because Flagship gave us money as an award and not a scholarship. It seems like Flagship just likes to screw up my life. Sigh… Oh well. There goes any fun plans for the summer, and next year

Other than that, most of my time has been spent submitting two different paper and preparing a third paper. It has been busy, I haven’t even had time to really focus on my thesis. Things will quite down in a week or two when these papers are all submitted. I will have to others I will be writing at that point, but at least one will be directly related to my thesis!

Another fun event that happened was Emily and I went to Othello as presented by Utah Shakespeare in the Park. It was really well done, and I was very impressed. Anyone that is in Utah Valley should certainly take the time to see the plays done by Utah Shakespeare in the Park. They do an amazing job.

Birthday week

This was a pretty good week culminating in my birthday. The week itself was good, but nothing too crazy. One of the fun things was that I started riding my bike to school. It has been far too long since I’ve done this. It is really nice to be riding on a daily basis again.

On Friday I got to go to a bonfire, first of the summer. It was a lot of fun, roasting hotdogs, marshmallows and starbursts. Emily and I also took the time to walk around and just look at the stars. They were a little hard to see though, since the moon was so bright that night.

 

And that brings me to my birthday. It started much like any other Saturday. I went shopping, and then I did my laundry. I then got a text from Emily saying that she had made me breakfast. When I got over I saw that she had made me bacon roses! So awesome! It certainly made me smile.

As you can imagine they were very delicious. Yummy! Breakfast was eggs, chocolate chip pancakes, and buttermilk syrup. It was a very, very tasty breakfast.

After breakfast Emily gave me presents, which was stuff to do smores. That should be fun for us :) We then went to my house and caught up on some The Office and Community that we had fallen behind with. It was a lot of fun. We then headed off to dinner. We went to Szechuan garden in Sandy. When we got there no one came to seat us, so we went for a walk. And that is when we found a car with eyelashes! How crazy is that?

Anyways, after our walk we returned to the restaurant and had a good little dinner. We did end up getting too much food. Oh well, leftovers! On the way back home we stopped by my sister Crystal’s house to see my two little nephews. They are so cute :)

When we got home, Emily had invited some friends from the FLSR over, and we had some ice cream cake that Emily had made. It was very yummy and delicious. I can’t believe Emily did so much for my birthday, it was just great!

And that was my week. It was a really good time!

Back to school…

but not really. I am helping out at a Emily with a dance class, but other than that I don’t have any classes. Just working on my master’s thesis. It is nice not to have classes :)

So nothing crazy happened this week. It has mostly been prepping for the coming semester. I have a lot of good goals. I am trying to keep my Chinese and Russian up. I am also planning to do some serious workouts and dieting. I will actually be reporting on the blog how this is going. Hopefully this will be a good way to keep me going with it. My friends can flog me if I falter :)

So, sorry for the small post, but hopefully summer will have more fun times ahead.

Easter and Finals

On Sunday Emily and I went to Easter dinner at my aunts. It was really good food. We had funeral potatoes. I love funeral potatoes! It was a great way to start the week!

The week itself was focused on getting ready for finals. Luckily I didn’t have much to do, just a my thesis proposal to get ready. It all seemed to work out rather well. We had respite from this on Thursday. The entire Chinese house went to Szechuan garden. It was very yummy. I love that place. It really does seem to be the best Chinese food you can buy in Utah.

I started packing my stuff to move apartments on Saturday. It is crazy how much stuff I had. It was crazy to see how much stuff I had in the Russian house alone. It turned out to be really a good idea, as I was able to be all packed up by Tuesday.

On Wednesday I helped Emily move out. She was heading out to be in Disney World with her family. We were able to get her out just in time :)

The rest of my week turned out to still be hectic. My hard drive failed, and so I had to re-setup my entire computer. It was ridiculous, but at least I got it finished.

The only other adventure was moving out and moving in over the weekend. Luckily that turned out rather well. I got moved out and moved in rather quickly. The new ward seems nice enough, even if it is a little young.

And that is where I am today. Emily comes back on Monday, and hopefully there will be adventurous stories to tell next week.