Monday with Rain, Sushi, Guitar, Bible Study, and Boba

I was about to go to sleep (1 AM! That’s early!) but J Shook is in my room. So I’ll write a Midnight Message. I need to write one anyway, especially after making my blog look bad with all my technical complaints.

This morning I woke up an hour earlier than I needed to. I wasted that hour doing something on the computer, probably messing with it since I’d broken it over the weekend. Then I went to my first class: Tennis.

We have our tennis midterm coming up on Wednesday. It’s a written exam. I’m taking the class pass/no pass, so I’m not going to study… but I might read over the handouts he gave us. I need to know all the terminology.

It started raining in the middle of tennis class, so we ended early and I came back to my room and wasted more time, I guess. I got an email from Google saying they liked my plugin (yay) but want me to make a change before they’ll consider posting it (aww). I haven’t done it yet :( I’ll do it tomorrow morning, I hope, because I really need sleep now.

I had salman and avacado sushi for lunch in my engineering academy classroom, then went to CompSci, guitar, Deans’ Dinner, and then Bible Study with Mike S. Jon didn’t go because he’s insanely busy with work.. and I should be the same.. I stil have to do my physics quiz.. but it’s incredibly hard and I’m not getting anywhere with it.. Rupesh says he’s done.. making me feel really bad and behind. I still have a few late days.. but I need to stay on top of things or I’m going to run out. I went to Boba after Bible Study.. maybe not a great decision considering the time it took. But I did have a great time, and felt genuinely happy for the first time in a long week. I had hot milk tea with boba.. much too hot for me, but it was good after I added ice (which didn’t make it cold — it was still hot).

Breakfast at commons tomorrow morning at 9 am. If I wake up early, I’m dev’ing my Google Desktop Search Plugin. I hope Google accepts it and doesn’t get too many other submissions, making mine look bad. I must work fast. Time is of the essence!

More help is available by typing NET HELPMSG 3534

Whoever writes these error messages doesn’t understand the meaning of “more”.

C:\Documents and Settings\Elliot>net start msiserver
The Windows Installer service is starting.
The Windows Installer service could not be started.

The service did not report an error.

More help is available by typing NET HELPMSG 3534.

C:\Documents and Settings\Elliot>net helpmsg 3534

The service did not report an error.

Windows Installer Service Could Not Be Accessed

“The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed. This can occur if you are running Windows in a safe mode, or if the Windows Installer is not correctly installed. Contact your support personnel for assistance.”

I read and tried lots of solutions around the web, but most of them didn’t work. This solved it for me:

Ensure the Windows Installer service is not disabled by typing “NET STOP MSISERVER” and “NET START MSISERVER” at the command line.

To reach the command line in Windows XP, go to Start -> Run -> “cmd”

Source

For future reference, some instances of msi.dll are located in:

C:\Windows\system32
C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles\i386 (probably can leave this one)
E:\I386 (this too)
E:\Windows\System32 (only if I have trouble with the Windows on drive E, which should be F…)

System Restored without System Restore

From the recovery console:

del c:\windows\system32\config\system

copy c:\windows\repair\system c:\windows\system32\config\system

That did the trick. My device drivers are mostly uninstalled, and some of my settings were reset (notably, video settings). But this was easily to fix: Windows already had all the drivers, so I just had to go through the motions of clicking through the driver reinstallation.

Now I’ve got class in 10 minutes, followed by lunch, and then three other classes. I don’t feel ready… but I have to go.

Error 983, 1609, 19, hal.dll, bootcfg, 0×24, Ntfs.sys, and chkdsk

That title summarizes my computing adventure for the weekend.

If you understand it, contact me. We should be friends, if we aren’t already.

I’ll go into more detail once I get the problem fixed. At the moment, my taskbar is dead (taskbar doesn’t show applications), the clipboard doesn’t work, and I’m afraid to reboot. But I’ll give it a try. I’m always for trying something new, as long as there’s a decent reason behind it.

Finished Reading the Da Vinci Code

The ending has a great twist. I expected there to be twist, but it wasn’t at all what I was expecting. It’s very well-written, and the ending, in my opinion, is very satisfying. It really makes you fall in love with the character of Robert Langdon, though. It’s addicting, too. The book has caused me to get addicted to reading. I then stayed up until 4am reading Memoirs of a Geisha, which is an excellent novel as well. After staying up so late, I woke up late this morning, despite setting two alarms, one for 8am and one for 9am. Church was at 11am (breakfast at 10:30am), and I missed it. Argh…

That would have been with Mike and Jon (awesome people) to Evergreen. I really wanted to go, but I slept through it. So it’s completely my fault. I’m making a few resolutions to follow today. Hopefully if I stick to these, and do nothing else, I will be productive.

  • Sleep before 2am. Sleeping at midnight is not “too early.”
  • Practice guitar.
  • Finish my physics quiz.
  • Do not read Memoirs of a Geisha.
  • Read the Purpose Driven Life.
  • Read the Bible.
  • Drink more water.

Okay, that’s the plan, and I will stick to it.

Spring 2006 Engineering Career Fair

Viterbi had their engineering career fair Thursday earlier this week. I got this neat pen-and-post-it combo that says Alcatel on it (the company it promotes). The plastic bag that it comes in (keeping it new and sealed) says:

3-In-1 Note Jotter

The 3-In-1 Note Jotter is a quick solution to the finding a pen and paper problem. Within this item, one slim case holds two ballpoint pens (one blue ink, one red).

Slide the clear cover to access a remakrable 100-sheet pad of 1 7/8″ x 9/16″ sticky notes!

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Physics 161 Lab Practical

I haven’t blogged for a week, as my dad reminded me. I blame it on sickness. I’ve been sick for a whole week now. Just thinking about it makes me want to cough.

Yesterday was Wednesday. I had my honors physics lab practical. The lab constitutes 20% of our grade, and 40% of the lab grade is based on this practical. My lab section is 8am. I set my mobile alarm for 7am and the atomic for 7:05am. The “atomic clock” has a pretty good alarm. Anyway, I got up on time, and was ready to go. I think I did reasonably well.

I finished about an hour early. I could have went back and redid the problems and experiments, but I didn’t feel that was necessary since I worked carefully. I did six measurements (“trials”) for the density problem. I hope that’s enough. My uncertaintly calculation was weird though. It was almost 400% of the actual value. I hope they don’t grade it too harshly. The lab grades are going to curved at the end, with a 10% standard devation (or something like that).

Since I finished early, I wasted the time back in my dorm room and then went to tennis. He told us about next week’s midterm (Wednesday), and then we had free play. I’m prety good at tennis, I think, but I’m not getting any better. The once-a-week tennis class is the only way that I exercise significantly, however. I’ll try going to the Lyon Center tomorrow.

I then had my Computer Science lecure, and didn’t fall asleep this time. I think my goal from now on is to never fall asleep in class ever again. I feel terrible whenever I do it. Surely professors don’t like it, I don’t like it, and I don’t learn more by doing it. So there’s no point. I’ve decided to sleep more at night and stay awake all day.

But that didn’t happen today. After my economics lecture, I wasn’t feeling tired. But when I came back to Marks Hall and started reading the news online (Google has released a Page Creator!), I suddenly got very tired. So I jumped on bed and slept for an hour. Luckily, I didn’t sleep any more than that. Still, it was too late to go to Prof. Crowley’s office hours as I had wanted to do, so I decided to dash him an email, and just do something else until my Physics lecture at 2pm.

Prof. Bickers talked about rotational motion, rotational momentum, and second moment of mass… or something like that. I still need to start on the physics quiz. They’re take-home. Our second quiz is due Tuesday. I didn’t do very well on the first one… maybe I’ll go talk with him about it. Still, the most important thing is finishing this second one. I also need to finish my computer science lab for tomorrow. One of our lab assistants (or TAs) has been sick (Runfang), but we have two. I hope she’s better tomorrow… she’s more helpful in the lab. On the other hand, there’s less pressure when she’s not there: they’re likely to be more forgiving.

The engineering date auction with SWE was today, 5pm. I went and bid on J.Lo (wifey!) $15 and $17. He was almost going to be sold for $16 until I (Michael S., actually) put a stop to it. The final price was $18, sold to some other guy (Jason S.?). The price corresponds to his age… and maybe it will correlate, too. The date is for the Viterbi ball tomorrow… which I of course am not going to. Nor do I want to. It was a fun auction though. And I got a free rose and t-shirt (“Everyone loves a Trojan Engineer”).

Earlier today was the Engineering Career Fair. The two Internet companies I spotted there were Shopzilla and Oversee.net. It might be interesting to work for them. I’m good at web stuff, and they’re real companies. But would I really learn more? They need to have a very well-designed internship program for me to benefit from it. I don’t want to join a company and not know what to do there. Unless it’s Google. Speaking of which, I can now talk to people from Google whenever I like. It’s quite nice… and they do an excellent job at what they do!

I need a new and unique name for this blog. Something like “Ted Leung on the air,” but original, of course. Any suggestions?