My Holiday Season '06 (part 1)

Holiday Season '06 Items

A) Disneyland (Dec. 29, 2006)

Hooray!! It was my first time to be there, and hopefully not the last. I guess one whole day is not enough to try everything in there though. It might take a whole week. I hope to see Mickey and co. close up next time.

B) Ate Issa's stay

My cousin, Ate Issa, stayed with us from the last days of December until January 1, and then she went back to Atlanta. She's the reason why I was able to go to Disneyland - I just tagged along with her and her friends.

Hey Ate, hope you enjoyed your stay with us. Come back anytime =)

C) Reading: Modern Systems Analysis and Design by Hoffer, George, and Valacich

This is a 700-page textbook I bought that I was planning to read just for self-study. I started reading the first three chapters last September-October. But then, schoolwork took much of my time (or at least the part that I allot for academic/learning stuff) that I decided to discontinue my reading until Christmas Break.

Before the holidays, my plan was to finish the whole book by the first week of January. Come New Year '07, I was only able to read 3 chapters more, upping my finished chapters to a grand total of 6. I've got 14 chapters more, although I could probably skip some of those and focus and the more important ones. Maybe I shouldn't push myself to hard on self-study. Besides, I don't think one term in UCLA Extension can cover the whole book. So I don't feel bad about not finishing it by December '06.

D) Reading: How To Solve It by G. Polya

"How To Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method" is a classic book about problem solving and heuristics by the eminent mathematician George Polya (1887-1985). I was also planning to finish this before New Year but I could only get as far as halfway through the book. I didn't want to rush my reading and fail to understand what the book is saying (This also applies to my reading on Modern Systems Analysis and Design).

I also learned that my math is so rusty that I've forgotten most of my geometry and calculus, and some of basic algebra. It took me a while before recalling what parellelpiped means. Upon my readings, terms like tetahedron, octahedron, frustum, proof by induction, center of gravity of an object, and others sounded foreign to me. Some of them still do, but I've tried to re-learn the others. I just realized that my last mathematics class was two and a half years ago. Terrible...

My mind is rusty.

E) Oracle, Visual Basic, J2EE

I know it sounds ambitious now, but I also wanted to learn these technologies, particularly Oracle. I felt like I could create a system that utilizes all three technologies (Oracle for database, Visual Basic for interface, and J2EE as application server). In fact, I already have some crude system specfications but I guess I won't start this project until I can do some thorough planning. The system I have in mind is an extension of the Order-Entry Database Design Project that I was part of in my Relational Database Management class.

F) NBA Live '07

Despite being an NBA Live afficionado (eversince NBA Live '03), I haven't played a single Live '07 game several months after its release. I have the game, though. One reason I don't want to start yet is that I've gone a long way in my own Dynasty in Live '06 - 5 seasons as of this writing. Another is that I don't want to play '07 yet until the updated roster patch, with accurate player ratings, is released.

G) Reformatting my PC

Before installing the items in (D) and (E), I want to reformat my PC first to get rid of unnecessary programs and give it a fresh start. The PC has never undergone a single reformattting ever since we bought it last May.

Had I been able to buy an external hard drive before, I would have reformatted my PC in no time. But since I haven't, backing up my files to DVDs, one by one, sounds so boring I probably won't be doing it in the next week or two.