Last Saturday was the last night game that will be played in the old Memorial Stadium. After this season, the stadium will be renovated for earthquake safety and to create a new and competitive student athlete center. Next season the Bears will play at AT&T park in San Francisco, home of the World Champion Giants before returning to a renovated Memorial Stadium in 2012.

Unfortunately for us, our last night game was against number 1 Oregon. Though we didn't win, we came really close, losing 13 - 15, which was a spectacular game for Cal's defense. I used the opportunity to take a couple pictures with my new camera.

Sunset at Memorial Stadium

This coming Saturday is the 113th Big Game at Cal. Cal has held the Axe for 2 years straight, and 7 out of the last 8 years. So far, for every Big Game I've gone to and every Big Game that Dean has been at Stanfurd during, Cal has won. The one year I didn't attend (I was in India) and Dean wasn't attending Stanfurd, Cal lost (2007). In other words, Cal is about to upset #8 Stanfurd.

Last Memorial Stadium Night Game

As far as my pictures I took with my camera, I have been extremely impressed with the Nikon D7000's very high dynamic range. All the pictures here are untouched JPEGs, straight from the camera (Aperture can't yet process the D7000's RAW images - plus I ...

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After 4 years at Cal, I've finally gotten to graduation. This past Wednesday, May 10th, was the Class of 2006 Commencement at the Greek Theater. It is supposed to be all majors attending, but in reality few people do attend. I was one of them. The commencement for the CS major is this coming Sunday, the 21st, so I'll post pictures of that after sometime.

One thing that did suck about our graduation though is that our speaker, Fabian Nunez, didn't show up. First of all, I wasn't too excited to hear from a California State Assembly speaker. I mean other schools get good speakers (Stanfurd with Steve Jobs, William and Mary with Jon Stewart). And since Cal is the best public university in the world, one would think that we could be able to pull someone worth listening to. Instead, we get this Fabian Nunez, who then doesn't even show up!. There were a handful of people outside the Greek Theater picketing, thus creating a "picket line" that Nunez couldn't cross. That is ridiculous and he just lost a vote for life. So we had our master of ceremonies give another speech instead. Thanks Fabian Nunez for making the commencement memorable for life, but not in a good way.

Updated:

I graduated! My CS graduation happened yesterday and it was a good end to 4 years.

My roommate Joe and I have been itching to do the Fentons challenge again since they have new t-shirts. We were finally able to find the coupons in the Daily Cal, and we decided tonight was the night. We gathered up a couple other people and took the challenge. Basically, we have to eat a very large sundae consisting of 3 really big scoops of ice cream, carmel, chocolate, whipped cream, strawberries, almonds and a cherry. All on top of a whole banana. It's big. And you have to eat it all in 20 minutes. That may sound easy, but... those 20 minutes go fast, and the room in your stomach goes even faster.

Needless to say, Joe devoured his, and I barely made it in time, coming close to bringing it back up. But we did it and we got our t-shirts to prove it, and the pictures.

Living in Berkeley, I hear all kinds of things about how to steal stuff, or permanently borrow. One of the things I've heard is how to break a bike's U-Lock. One should use a car jack to pry the jack apart, breaking it, and setting free the bike inside.

Well, to say the least, I was skeptical. So first I arranged to have a Sawzall at my place. In my opinion, a Sawzall was holy. It could cut through anything; except a piece of hardened steel. I learned this 2 brand new blades later, as I found that the U-Lock didn't even have scratches on it. I was simply removing the rubber coating.

Well, I'm not about to give up at that, so I subsequently brought out my car jack, and began to pry apart the lock. The going was tough for a while, but the labor became easier and easier. However, I was unsure if the U-Lock was moving any more, so I loosened it up. Well, as you can see from the picture, the U-Lock ate my car jack, designed to hold up a sedan, and spit it back out, while grasping onto the item the lock is protecting.

Lesson learned: never try to get through a U-Lock, unless it is a Kryptonite Evolution.

I made it. Finals are over, it is now summer time, and I'm feeling very good about it all. I keep getting a feeling that I need to be studying or doing something, and then I remember, oh yes, no I don't. Which, I might add, is a very tight after-feeling.

But to celebrate my finishing finals (and my roommate doing the same), we both went out to a bar tonight, and I had loads of fun. I haven't been out in a while, and it was great to just hang out with people, and to have some beers with friends. It also marks the end of my Junior year. But my last year is going to be even better, I mean, it has to be, it's my last year right?

Anyways, I leave in just a couple hours for a week trip to New York, where I plan to teach them "Easterners" a thing or two about the California lifestyle. Notably, the fact that sandals can be worn any time, place, occasion, or even weather. So I plan to wear a lot of sandals. I'm hoping to take loads of pictures. This way, the Google and Yahoo web crawlers can see something new when the look at it (as if anybody else does...). To anybody reading this, have a good summer! And if your on the quarter system (which sucks for you), good luck on finals!

Well, my 3rd year as a Cal student is about to end. I'm in the middle of finals, 1 down, with three to go, and I'm getting antsy for summer.

To study for the finals, I worked for about 45 minutes the other day trying to get an applescript to work correctly in Adium, my AIM client. The goal was to be able to pass the applescript call, in Adium, arguments, and get a live countdown til some time. However, I was having a real hard time figuring this out. I eventually gave up, and hard coded the dates into the shell script. Which isn't as cool and versatile as I had originally planned. In fact, it wasn't any cooler than the one I had before, just that it worked better. Now I can specify any date, not just one that is in the current month. My current away message has been of the sorts: "4 days 11 hours 22 minutes left until summer", the time my last final ends. So, if anybody does read this, and is also talks to me on AIM, know this: if I have my away message up, I'm probably there. I sign off when I leave (usually). And, if I'm idle, that also means I'm probably there. With Adium, you can set your own custom idle, and you can still talk to people maintaining your idle and awayness. Adium is really cool and I'd actually like to try to get into some of the development. They're pro mac, develop an app I frequently use and enjoy, and would give me valuable experience in Cocoa, and a large project. But thats probably a while away. Anyways, time to begin studying again.