So... I just finished summer sessions at Berkeley. I have to admit, I did have fun this summer even though I spent most of it during summer sessions. I was a little disappointed with my final midterm score though. For once, I actually studied the material and took notes while watching the webcasts. Its a little hard to believe that I can still remember like 80% of what I studied. Although my score wasn't too bad, I'm hoping the professor will be generous enough to bump everyone up about 2%, which is all I need for an A-. All in all, Bio1B was actually a pretty fun class compared to Chem3A and other MCB/IB prereqs that I completed. Also, I was lucky enough to have one of the coolest GSIs ever. Living with Neil and Marvin was really fun. I couldn't have asked for any better roommates. I'm going to miss those "OH SHIEEEEET!!"s and those "OH SHIT OH FUCK OH SHIT OH FUCK OH SHIT! -do you need help? -no"s. Oh, and can't forget the "LIKE A BAWSSS" and "PIECE OF SHIT ASS BITCH MOTHER FUCKER !XOBILE"s. Wait, "I'm going to miss..."? What am I saying??? I'm going to be seeing them in a week and living with them for another 2 semesters. L0l3rsk8zzz.

I move in for fall semester next weekend, so I basically have a week break to chillax... but with chipmunk cheeks. Yes, I'm getting my wisdom teeth pulled out (my bottom two on Monday morning at 10 to be exact). I've heard good and bad things about the experience, but most people say it's not too bad. I guess I'll just have to find out for myself. I'll be awake during the operation and look forward to hearing the drills and watching my teeth get pulled out.  Hopefully it will heal and my cheeks subside before I start moving into the dorms. I can' wait to move in. After surviving on cookies, chips, and ramen all summer, I'm actually going to appreciate food at Crossroads.

I have a week and too many plans. Today (technically yesterday) I moved out of the apartment, and man, I had hella shit. HeLLa shit, like 8 full garbage bags just of hats and lots of other random stuff. My plan is to only bring HALF of that stuff into the dorms since there will be no room (especially since we got a triple). I played a lot of piano when I got home. I really enjoyed playing the old classical Sonatas that I used to hate playing. Now that I'm older, I'm starting to really appreciate classical music. Later that night, I treated my family to Empire Buffet to celebrate my mom's birthday. I feel like my parents and I are on really good terms now, and we fully understand each other. They are always supportive and respect my decisions. After fully supporting myself this summer, I really understand how much my parents must have struggled support themselves when immigrating to the US and raise our family. I really regret getting into fights with my brother and doing things that pissed my parents off in the past. I made life so much harder for them, while they were dedicating their lives to make our lives better. Damn, fuck me. I also regret not paying attention in Chinese school. It's really sad how I can feel a language barrier slowly building up between me and my parents. I'm slowly losing my native language while speaking Chinese mashed up with English more and more. Every time I come home, I feel more and more sad because it just brings these kinds of thoughts up. It's also more sad that there aren't many ways to express appreciation or love between us. I've never told my parents I love them. I've never hugged them...not even a handshake with my dad. Whenever I leave to go back to Berkeley, we rarely say goodbye. The only way I feel like I can really show my gratitude towards them is by doing well in school. I've noticed that our tense relationship began cooling down when they found out I got accepted into all the UC's and was got the reagents interview for Berkeley. Since then, I felt like every achievement has been making them more and more proud of me. After always telling me how well my cousins are doing academically, my dad finally has bragging rights. I really appreciate how much my parents are supporting me and my business and my education and the things they are willing to sacrifice for me. Sighhhhh
I also regret being such an asshole to my brother while we were young. I always tried to be the bigger man, and made fun of him to make myself feel superior. Now, he has anger problems, which I thought would have been under control by now, but was blatant during our few games of Empire Earth against each other after dinner. Fuck me, again. I've been such a negative influence on him, especially with gaming. He's been on academic probation countless times and my parents are always begging me to help my brother out in school. They're hoping he will at least get into a CSU next year, but his current GPA and SAT scores don't seem very promising. Plus, he doesn't show any attitude or intent of going to college. I've always wanted to actually sit down and apologize for all the things I put him through in the past, for making such a pessimistic and angry person, but I know that he won't take it seriously no matter how serious I make it... at least for now. I'll have to wait for the day when he stops taking things for granted and starts appreciating hard work, especially what my parents are going through to try to give my brother a happy and successful life. Damn, that was deep.

Anyway, business isn't going too well.  Actually, better put: business is SLOW. I'm not getting as many orders and I only have a few possible explanations. I guess everyone that wanted a hat that I was selling has one now...not enough demand? I'm also seeing more and more sellers starting to sell the same things I'm selling...fucking competition. And... HatClub just restocked on a few of my best selling styles... selling them cheaper + free shipping = owned. Fml. During the next week, I'm going to do some more research and make a few more investments in a variety of merchandise. I don't wanna get kicked out of my own game. Don't get me wrong, I'm still selling. I can still pay for books, food, and bills. I'll just have to depend on my parents for my fall tuition.

On the bright side, I've started my One Man Acapella project for Knock You Down, which is expected to be finished before the end of the week (but might be delayed if I still have chipmunk cheeks). I've completed about a third of what I plan to do (up to Kanye's part) and it sounds good so far. Hopefully I'll stick with it and finish it.

I'm hungry. I just took a bite from the string cheese that's been on my desk for a year. I feel like throwing up.

I <3 Cathy Nguyen. Can't stop watching her videos. This always brightens my day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=977As6FUTXA

I finished about 1/2 of Crysis. Neil and I finished the first chapter of Left 4 Dead together during our last day at the apartment and got to the second to the last level on the 2nd chapter on Expert. I guess we'll wait for Marvin.

Okay, gotta stop sleeping late. I got 8AMs next semester. Before 5 is a good start, right? No time to proofread. Adios

ROFL:ROFL:LOL:ROFL:ROFL
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Wtf am I doing... normal bots?? lol. At least I'm studying bio at the same time
 

A lot has happened in the past 2 weeks. I've been pretty occupied so I wasn't able to keep up with blogging.

Business: The eBay business is going great. My homemade "bookshelf" of boxes to organize my caps fell down so I had to rearrange everything. I've been getting a lot of orders and I'm glad I invested in a label printer (it saves so much time!). The only downside is that I have to carry around 20 packages every few days to the post office on Durant. I usually just put them in a trash bags, tie the bags to my backpack, and scooter to the post office. I remember one time I had to carry the bags across People's Park because I couldn't scooter since there were so many packages. As soon as I step foot on the block, a "person" got up and followed me. It was quite scary because I looked on the ground and could see his shadow literally 3 feet away from mine and I was helpless because both of my arms were being used to carry the packages... BUT luckily I crossed the block without a scratch and I guess he was afraid to follow me across the street. I was SOOO relieved. After that encounter, I decided to just struggle on my scooter and toil my way to the post office. Recently, I ran out of boxes (AGAIN, lol) and had to use the boxes for trash and holding things around the living room. I brought like 100 with me to the apt, and I was pretty surprised they were used up the past few weeks. I'm also running out of stock in many sizes for certain styles of hats. I'm tempted to make another shipment, but I still have like 300 hats left over... mostly in 3/8 and 1/2. Additionally, I've sold a REMARKABLE amount of dog tags, and just made another order. I'm producing samples for an Australia based retailer called Pridewear, specializing in selling small gifts (like dog tags) representing different countries. I made a small custom order of different country flag dog tags, selling a few to Pridewear and the rest as a market test on eBay.

NIVSTYLE... has been put on hold atm. Marvin was super busy with rhetoric so we weren't able to create a page for blogging, affiliates, and pictures but that will be up soon now that his class is over.We've been getting a lot of positive support for nivstyle from various environmental groups. We applied for a grant mainly for website upkeep and maybe future products we are considering: reusable tote bags, water bottles, draw string backpacks, a few more shirt designs, and 100% organic shirts. We should be making some changes to the site and adding/removing some products off the site during the next few weeks.

School: Bio started with unexpectedly easy material. The first week was almost all on history and theory stuff, mostly about Darwin and Mendel. I haven't been keeping up with the readings, but I still feel pretty comfortable about the material. I plan to do a few more readings tonight before I sleep. I'm also satisfied about the workload and really glad we have a cool GSI. She seems really nice and easy to talk to. However, hearing about the 85% curve for lab dismayed me and Neil. Our lab has only 10 students (2 groups of 5). An 85% curve creates such a competitive environment. On the bright side, bio labs are super easy compared to chemistry ones (which is also a bad thing because of the curve). On our most recent lab, we went on a trip to the Botanical Garden, which was pretty interesting. It made me want to buy some Venus Fly Trap seeds on eBay (but I didn't because I know they would end up like my Triops/SeaMonkey "experiments"). We have a midterm coming up next week, so I should start staying on top of the readings.

Gaming: Man...fml. Marvin and Neil were always busy doing rhetoric stuff, and whenever I had free time and didn't want to study bio, I'd CS. I wasted countless hours on ESEA and scrims that I regret. After I got bored of CS, I started playing another FPS called Crossfire (introduced to me by my brother), which was basically a CS wannabe with leveling/money system similar to other free first person shooters like Combat Arms. I played that intensely for about 3 days and then decided to quit after getting kicked from every game I played. EVERYONE thought I was a hacker in that game comparing my score to my clanless noobie account. The hitboxes for the head were a lot bigger than those in CS and recoil was so much easier to control. Every time I control a spray, noobs would think I hack and have aimbot/no recoil hacks. The sound system was similar to that in CS so footsteps made things very predictable (suprisingly, no one walked in that game). Lots of people thought I had "chams" (apparently, that's the equivalent of a wallhack). I was able to reach my brother's rank (which played for weeks to achieve) in just those few days. I ended with about a 3.2 KDR, around 45% headshot rating, and lots of knife kills . My bio midterm is coming up and I'm going to try to put gaming on pause, hopefully with success.

LIFE: Overall, life has been great. I'm really enjoying this summer. It's just really chill. I can put my contacts on in about 30 seconds now, but they are getting kinda loose (I get new ones next week at my final eye appointment). Yesterday, I took my behind the wheel. I drove around for an hour before my test and was very confident in my driving skills (I practiced every time I had the chance when I went home). When it was test time, the guy told me to drive out of the DMV and make a left on a one way street. I inched out cautiously because there was a blind spot on my right. I was looking right and noticed it was clear, but right when I turned my head to look forward, the tester looked at me and yelled "Hey man! You didn't check your blind spot!" Impulsively, I yelled back, saying that I did and that he didn't see me. He had his head turned to the right when I was looking right, so he wouldn't have known that I checked. Sighhh... how stupid is that? I couldn't argue with him because in the end, he decides if I pass or fail. Since it was a "critical driving error" I automatically failed within the first 30 seconds. I guess I have to wait a few more weeks or another month. I was really disappointed.

On the bright side, I had a great fourth of July. I woke up around 1:20pm from the loud Chinese babbling of my relatives from SF. I hung out with my cousins and played some basketball outside. We had bbq on our deck. I taught my cousins how to solve a Rubik's cube and wrote down a lot of simple algorithms on paper. I also let them borrow one of my cubes for practice. I ended up taking a nap on the couch while everyone was watching TV (I didn't realize I was so tired). The day was really chill. I'm heading back to the apartment in the afternoon. I have a lot of orders I need to ship. I was considering on applying (and almost did apply) for PayPal's Business Credit Card to start building my credit score early. Now, I'm thinking about Discover's Student credit card because it has better cash back rewards (1-5%) than my 1% on my PayPal Business Credit. I spend a lot of money in online transactions back and forth, so 5% could make a big difference. On the other hand, my dad was thinking about talking to Charles Schwab and seeing if they could issue me a credit card that's linked to my bank account to ensure that I will always be able to make my payments on time. It would act like a debit card, but instead of direct withdrawals, it would just hold my money and show as a pending transaction.  Sounds like a good idea...

A few weeks ago, I impulsively bought a black EEE PC 900A on eBay with the intention of modding it with a touchscreen to take notes in class and possibly overclocking it to run CS. When I received it, I was impressed by the weight and portablility of the small thing. Unfortunately, the battery came dead on arrival and it ran on a Linux based OS I was unfamiliar with. Since the thing only had 4Gb on a SSD, I figured a full install of XP or Vista would take up more than half of that, so I decided to take my original XP boot disk and use NLite to slim it down from 600megs to about 220, removing unnecessary programs, services, etc. After burning the boot disk, I realized that the EEE didn't have a cd drive. I didn't have an external usb one around the house so I went on some forums and ended up creating a boot disk from a usb flash drive. The install worked, and I instantly began tweaking everything. I installed Ramdisk and considered on upgrading to 2gb ram since 4gigs on a slow SSD would not be able to do much. I bought a 6 cell 6600mAh replacement battery (the original 4cell only lasts a few hours). Everything was going fine until I did a few registry tweaks and crashed the OS. I could not reboot, so I decided to start over and reformat the SSD. After another clean install, the same thing happened and I realized that something was wrong with the SSD and not windows. When I tried to create/delete a partition on the SSD, it wouldn't let me and I couldn't format it to NTFS the slow way so there must have been a bad sector or physical damage on the card. I requested a RMA from Asus support, but they were slow (as expected) and their only reply after 4 days was that there was a system failure, and they could not read my request so I would have to fill out another RMA request. Fck that, lol. I sent a message to the eBay seller, and he said he could take a look at it and either repair it or send me a new one. That was a few days ago, so now I'm just waiting on any updates. I'm expecting my touchscreen kit and battery to come in soon. I'm pretty jealous that Neil got a really good deal on a used tablet on eBay. The specs were similar to mine, but I had a better processor (the shitty Atom...I wonder how bad Neil's is). His was already had touchscreen capabilities though, and could be removed from the keyboard dock. I'm starting to regret buying that EEE pc because all the money I'm spending or planning to spend on upgrading and modding could have just been used to buy a better netbook... but it's too late. Oh well. I'm happy with the EEE's weight and appearance. The keyboard is just a little too small but it's workable.

Lastly, I put P90X on pause, due to laziness and lack of motivation. I saw this coming. I expected Marvin to work out with me but after a few workouts, he was busy with rhetoric again. We plan to do the program from the beginning starting next week... P50X? lol... I'll just do as much of it as I can before fall semester starts. I'm getting my bottom wisdom teeth pulled right after summer school.

I guess that sums up everything. I'm not going to proofread this... it's too long, lol. WELL... time to start studying bio and hopefully finish a few readings tonight before I fall asleep on the book!