So the first half of this post will be somewhat of a journal post. Though I tend to shy from posting diary-esque content, this will be the exception. Perhaps I just need to put what's in my mind out into text. When there's just so much you're trying to mentally digest, it's best to just have it all laid out in front of your eyes. If you, the reader, are not interested, you can skip to the second heading in this post where the content is more in line with normal "from the nfinite" posts.
And there it is, the resolution to the source of so much anxiety since the beginning of this year. I'm relieved that it's a good one, as many of the plans swirling in my head hinged upon this letter. But where does this lead me now? Of course into more studies for another year (or possibly two) of studies. And as the hinge is now in place, I must fixate on building the larger door that goes with it. Before this point, I made excuses for planning the door because I didn't have the hinges; but now I need to carefully plan the next few years of my life. That certainly does sound ominous doesn't it?
There are things I want to do, and there are things I've told myself I should do. I should get an MBA while I'm still in school - while I still have the mindset and malleability to study. If not, once I enter the workforce, there may be no going back to school. Now is the time to do it - now is the time to fight procrastination. If I want to do this, I need to take the GMAT, write some essays, and get three letters of recommendation... Looking at the dual MBA program offered by my university, that's 39 hours - 18 classes. In the worst case scenario, my Computer Engineering Major requirements are 30 hours - 10 classes. I find it amusing that I just might be spending more time doing stuff outside my main area of interest during my graduate studies. But that can't really be helped now can it... Just gotta hit it headfirst and hope my head is hard enough...
And then there are the things I want to do. I want to do the LBAT-Japan program - Language for Business and Technology. This takes place next summer and requires that there are at least 10 participants. I truly hope this follows through since I delayed my undergraduate degree just for this purpose. If everything goes well, I can tack on a Japanese minor to my undergraduate diploma. Truly, we are just pimping out our degrees. I suppose it's a sign of growth and ambition too...
Another goal I had wanted to achieve during my undergraduate studies was to participate in a work abroad assignment in Japan. We have a great program here at Tech, previously sponsored by JETRO, but has now grown on its own. I was hoping to have a dip in that type of experience. After all, opportunities like this might not be so easy to come by in the future. So, it's now been delayed to be a graduate school goal... Though there are some extra snags that have appeared. As most abroad assignments are scheduled for at least 6 months, it would cut one Fall/Spring semester from graduate studies. While not exactly frowned upon by the ECE graduate department, it's not exactly encouraged to cut out one of these important semesters as summer semesters have fewer courses available. I have to get permission from some important person to be able to pursue this path. We'll see how that unfolds next year...
So I'm probably just making things sound more dramatic than they are. We're all guilty of doing such things on occasion. I have 2 or 3 months to organize this stuff, so maybe it isn't so bad. But it certainly is a lot to consider all at once. I just hope that everything will go smoothly. If it doesn't, I'll just have to deal with it when the time comes... *sigh I'm so used to my slow pace in life... でも忙しくなりますね。。。
THE GOOD STUFF STARTS HERE
Alright! ENOUGH OF THE WORRIES AND THE BORING. I talked about getting a Zune HD in my previous post, and it got here a couple days after that post as I'd been hoping! It's quite sexy, slim, and light.
I'm not going to say the Zune HD is the greatest. (Even though I am usually partial to the devices I own) It has many flaws. I should probably outline those first so as to end on a good note. I have two main disappointments with this device. First off is wireless connectivity. One feature missing is WPA/WPA2 Enterprise support is missing. In addition, many browser-based login internet services do not work. Big problems with many university wi-fi services. Luckily, a relatively long forum thread has developed since release date with the culmination of acknowledgment by the Zune development team. Hopefully this means a firmware update will be coming in the near future.
The second disappointment was the weak excuse for an "Apps" section. With the success of the Apple's App Store, I was hoping MS would realize it's quite the lucrative business model. Unfortunately, all we got were a few games and two apps. What's worse is that it seems to be just the previous Zune XNA development API with support for the accelerometer and touch screen. I'm not exactly sure how App/Game code is loaded and run on the Zunes, but it seems they didn't change anything from the old Zunes. Maybe that's OK for forward compatibility, but it does not take advantage of the more powerful hardware available in the Zune HD.
The main reason I'm disappointed in this is because I won't get to play with the Tegra platform just yet. There's an amazing amount of computing resources available on this device. Dedicated GPU, dedicated image processor, dedicated video processor... I want to play with those. But no, XNA development is still locked to mainly drawing 2D sprites. Absolutely no evidence of being able to use the power available. There's the promise of a proper app store once the windows mobile team does whatever. I don't care much for the details, I want an SDK that gives me access to the good stuff.
So my two main gripes will probably be resolved in the future. The latter probably much later though. When it does come out, I'll probably play around in it some. You may see a really cheesy scrolling shooter come out of it. ... and not much more.
Alright on to the goodies of the Zune HD. I'll try to make it short because I feel this post has gotten quite long. The OLED screen is beautiful. The contrast on this thing is straight up delightful to look at. The menus are pretty as well, it has a fun typography video-ish feel to it. I very much enjoy it.
Sound quality is great as people say. And hey, that's what matters right? This is first and foremost a media player. The audio better be good. The picture viewer is very responsive with pictures looking much better than they did on the old Zunes. (On the old ones, they doubled the native resolution of the display so as to have better image quality when zoomed in, but the scaled down and zoomed out view looked very aliased and ugly). I only wish there was a rotate image ability in this newer picture viewer. A feature I thought would be inherently intuitive, but apparently not. You can tilt the Zune, but it remains in one orientation no matter the orientation of the Zune.
Ok rushing on to the next subject (since I feel this post is becoming quite long). I was pouring some cereal the other day and was like... WTF HAPPENED TO LUCKY
Seriously, what happened to his nose? It turned into a snout. I didn't know leprechauns had snouts instead of noses. If you don't remember what Lucky looked like, I guess you can google him up. But for those of you who do, doesn't that look... awkward? Or is it just me... This redesign of Lucky disappoints me =(.
I hope you have no disappointments like this in your future. Until next time, I hope you enjoyed this quite long post... and weren't bored out of your mind.
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