confessions

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paschal83 — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 23:10:24 +0000

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paschal83 — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 22:59:07 +0000

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Penny wise …pound foolish

paschal83 — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 03:30:13 +0000

Yep..you heard me right..penny wise pound foolish……It ‘s actually a quote that has been around for while …I have no idea who came up with it, but i see it played out in my life on a daily basis..It is basically the inclination to worry a lot about the little things that don’t really matter , which then takes your attention off of the big fish…..get my drift.

Classic example–I got a car last spring and at the time my goal was to get the cheapest possible thing on four wheels that could move from point A to B…How modest I was ..I did find what I then considered to be a good deal - a ’98 Nissan for $2k. It had a lot of baggage though…seems like the previous owner gave Neil Armstrong and the Apollo boys a run for their money, …dude almost made it to the moon because the mileage on the car was 200, 000 miles (321,868.6 km) [center to center earth - moon distance: 384, 403km]…But my point is that since I got this car, I’ve spent at least $1k on maintenance, and the potential of spending even more just presented itself (…gosh those nasty oil / transmission leaks)..

If I had coughed out a little extra money back then and got a better car , I might just be singing a different tune right now…I guess when you find yourself under tight budget constraints, some of the decision you make seem logical until they come back later to haunt you

Stand up comedy

paschal83 — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 02:45:07 +0000

Hey guys, I know I haven’t really been blogging a lot these days…totally apologise to my fans (……you wish). Anyways I have been watching some stand up comedy stuff on youtube and such and though I’d share my top picks..I watched a lot of Dave Chapelle stuff from back in the day…he wasn’t too bad but by no means great. So here’s the list

1. Pablo Francisco (i totally love his previewman parody)

2. Russell Peters (has a lot of indian humor, but he rocks )
3. Chris Rock

To explore : George Gomez, and all the other comedy folks out there who consider themselves good

Amazing Grace

paschal83 — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 05:40:26 +0000

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ’d!

Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promis’d good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call’d me here below,
Will be forever mine.

John Newton, Olney Hymns (London: W. Oliver, 1779)

Curve Ball

paschal83 — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 06:15:08 +0000

One constant thing you’ll notice is that life is full of suprises,..some of them good and others bad. Yeah, sometimes life throws you a curve ball and you stop to ask yourself, Why me? What have I done wrong? But hey, MLK said; what you do in moments of adversity and turmoil determines your true character. Sometimes it might be too hard to bear, and you may not have a shoulder to cry on. Other times you try to pretend nothing is wrong and lock things up inside so tight that your muscles hurt. But there comes a time when you have to let go and you realize that you cannot change the past, but you can live in the present and future in a way to reflect your losses but also champion the fact that there can be a better tommorrow.

New Year Resolution

paschal83 — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 08:03:44 +0000

I have come to the realization that the year is almost gone and at this point most people start to compound lists upon lists of things they would like to achieve in the comming year. How about I make a bunch of new year resolutions?, cliche..Chances are most people will stick to the master plan for a month or two then drop off eventually..Little wonder why Golds Gym and all those fitness places make tons of money from people who had hoped to stay in shape all year.

Okay, I admit it , I’m guilty too..I remember in my youth days my folks would make us write a list of very specific goals we wanted to achieve the next year, I remember always starting my list with “I want to come first in my class next term (finish at the top of my class at the end of the term)”. Boy, have I grown out of those days.

I really wouldn’t say that I have seen everything life has to offer, but from the little of this life that I experienced and seen, I know that very specific goals and needs won’t do it anymore. So for the next year I want to live my life in a such a way that I’ll show my creator that I really appreciate the priviledge he has given me to remain on this planet. I want to experience joy and also spread and share this joy with friends and family. I want to labour each day like there was no tommorrow, and appreciate each passing day like it was my last. Call me selfish, but I would like to be really successful, so I would strive to reinvent myself in the professional sense and otherwise and surround myself with people that can help me acheive those dreams.

At the end of the year I would like to look back and say; Papa thank you for everything with the greatest conviction in my heart, and most importantly I just don’t want to live through this life, I want to really live…

Unsung Hero

paschal83 — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 23:47:26 +0000

So I was at the local freebird’s burrito joint chewing down on my 10 inch lenght , 6 inch diameter monster burrito. I was really hungry that day and I wanted to get maximum utility out of my $6.50..Chowing down on that monster just made my day. So as I was tasking my mandibles to their capacity, I overheard the guy next to me talking to the student manager of freebirds about operations research and increasing efficiency by utilizing infinite probability distribution. This guy sitting next to me looked just like a classic hippy (slurred speech, southern accent , dirty and shabby beard)…oh yeah the classic hippy….but I heard these big words emanating from his mouth, so I listened further and he was still trying to explain how freebirds management could use the results of gaussian approximation to effectively model demand and supply through that branch…I was like oh my God …this is no fluke . this guy is for real….so I took it upon myself to engage this guy in a conversation. I casually asked him if he knew anything about the Poincare conjecture , this problem was setup by Poincare in the early 1900′s and it had puzzled mathematicians for decades. I remember it was solved in 2003 by a Russian math guru. I still recall this because my calculus professor at the time walked into class looking so excited because the conjecture had been solved..Anyways , my newly found friend started explaining the basics of the conjecture and proudly claimed that he had solved it working independently in 2005 using only 95 equations…I didn’t know whether to be suprised or awe-struck or amazed …I was like this guy must be a genius…He kept throwing around big words like mathematical simplices, curvilinear interpolation, newton approximation…After talking for a while he explained that he retired in the 80′s and just had math as a hobby right now and funny enough, his background was in chemistry. He also explained bernoulli’s equation and some other random concepts. Some of them I had heard off while the rest I hadn’t…In all I ended up spending about 35 minutes with this dude…He is obviously good at his stuff, maybe he just lost it somewhere along the way…The whole encounter was just like from a movie script …kind of reminds me of the movie Good Will Hunting….pheww..

immortal beloved pt.2

paschal83 — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 07:04:38 +0000

I got a messge from my “belle”, so obviously I must have left a positive impresson;
They say first impressions last the longest;
I am so excited, but maybe for the wrong reasons;
Could it be that we share a lot in common;
Or is fate playing tricks on me;
I sincerely hope not, cos I couldn’t bear it;

Project for a month

paschal83 — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 02:58:46 +0000

I think i work better if i have a project spread over a reasonable amount of time. I want to start more short term projects with very realizable result in just a month.I have had these wild ideas about starting my own company but it’s like i’ve had a problem comming up with a killer plan or some idea that would be sustainable for a while at least. Is it that I lack the entreprenual zeal and prowess required to execute or I just need to find someone who has the skills I lack so we can make a perfect team? So I hope for November I can come up with a project which can realizable in month..Some of the ideas i have juggling around are

1. Start hatching ideas for an embedded design for my senior project
2. Do a crash course in C programming and relearn all the things I’m supposed to know to get ready for the long stretch of job interviews in the spring
3. Do a linux crash course
4. Start work on a Tic Tac Toe game to be implemeted in C or C++(I’ll have to learn it first), and hook it up with a custom touch panel display via an FPGA board…
5. Learn how to solve a rubik’s cube and then Implement solver in software

…still brainstorming……..

I hope to come up with something solid in the next couple of days….hopefully something i can still do with classes and all