Ideally, if I absolutely had to do it, I’d like to try to do something that could actually run parallel with building up some of my own skills. One idea that I’ve kept in the back of my mind is setting up a shop with Cafe Press by making t-shirt designs and earning a small commission from it, and that in that way it could also help me with earning a little bit of money on the side, too.

And so I actually did it — I opened up a shop, Team Fortress 2 Fan Gear!

I’m going to aim for the next month or so 5 new items a week to post up. And also, it’ll also help build my portfolio, which is in desperate need of some more content. Eventually I’d like to branch out to more general geek and geek girl apparel and goodies, just for right now since Team Fortress 2 design ideas are the first thing that come to mind, I’ll leave the store name with the Team Fortress 2 theme.

But I certainly hope you enjoy what I’ve posted, and will be posting up! I promise they’ll be quality designs that would be actually worth paying the price!

This semester I was only enrolled in a total of 11 credits worth of classes (Embedded Systems – 4, Discrete Structures – 4, Software Engineering – 3). Since my status at the university is a non-degree graduate student, full time is set to 6 credit hours, so I was a “full time” student. But technicaly, since I was taking undergraduate courses, I was taking what normally would classify me as a “part time” undergraduate student. This was the first semester in which I had taken anything less than what my normal course load from before of 14-18 credits. Yet, despite only taking 11 credits, the classes kept me busy and on my toes. Academics still took about 30-50 hours per week (yes, I do time logs), and that I still came across those seemingly inevitable nights of studying, working on homework, labs, projects, etc.

Since my focus was strictly to satisfy my course prerequisites for the MS Computer Science program, I wasn’t involved on any on-campus clubs this semester. Previously during my undergraduate years I was deeply involved in organizations such as student government, publications, and clubs. But disconnecting myself from that to focus on academia certainly freed up more time towards doing well in my courses.

I actually ended up enjoying all of my classes, where my favorite one was Software Engineering. I particularly have this keen interest towards software requirements and analysis over design. It’s not so much that I don’t like designing products because I do — I woudn’t be an engineer if I didn’t. Just, I feel that it’s in my nature that I focus a lot on “future-proofing”, because one thing that I don’t like is having to change a design halfway (or more) through because requirements weren’t clarified. Also, I’m interested in looking into propective future software life-cycle models. Considering the history of software engineering, it’s pretty interesting at looking how life-cycle models have evolved. And as software companies are working in what seems to be a very popular object-oriented life cycle model, it’d be some food for thought as to what sort of model companies would be working on 10-15 years in the future.

Embedded Systems introduced me to lower-level programming, particularly Assembly language. I actually found myself not hating the language as it seems most people around me seem to, and I enjoyed the labs. I bought the microprocessor board the lab uses (Dragon12-Plus) as my justification to save gas money since on a typical morning it’d take me 45 – 60 minutes to get to campus. To me, the cost of the board (~$100) and the documentation ($0) was a much better expense than the text, and I’m happy that I do have a microprocessor board on me for future projects that I want to take up myself.

Discrete Structures was a class that seemed as if it took basic principles of logic and turned it over its head. I found the homework, quizzes, and exams to be not so much math problems but as puzzles instead. Boolean logic, set theory, proofs, and graph theory was the most interesting to me, but I never seemed to get combinatorics right. Even despite studying and practicing countless combinatorics problems, I was always bound to get something wrong! Even though the class is already done a part of me still wants to continue studying the topic by doing a problem a day or something around that sort. I do have a lot of respect for the instructor for this class since I perceive it as a class that would be difficult to teach without having the material get too dry for the students. Her heart is devoted to the topic, as it was also the area that she specialized for her Ph.D, and I wish I had as much passion in logic, algorithms, and the sort as her.

Taking just three classes with no other outside obligations was the perfect number. It certainly deemed itself as such come the time of final exams. Both Embedded Systems and Discrete Structures’ finals were both comprehensive. In the past, comprehensive final exams were the worst. There always seemed to be so much material to cover, and the stark realization that there was material that needed to be covered that was uncovered. However, studying for both of the classes wasn’t so painstaking as I initially thought. Reviewing the previous two exams for the classes and going through notes and homework for the later end of the classes were enough, since I had spent so much more time on preparing for the first two exams. Also, somehow by taking just three classes made it feel like there wasn’t enough material that was covered, and the structure of topics for my classes just seemed to make sense.

That all said, I did remarkably well in all of my classes, with multiple instances where I’ve scored well above the curve. However, I didn’t do quite as well as I had wanted because I had been working for a 4.0, and fatal screw ups in the combinatorics section of Exam 2 of Discrete Structures I feel inevitably will bring me to a B. So, I am expecting as my grades this semester as an A in Software Engineering and Embedded Systems, and a B in Discrete Structures bringing my semester GPA to a 3.64.

But I can’t complain. It was a good semester.

The first:

The second, with a slight revision to the borders and colors for a “paper-y” feel:

I heavily doubt I’m going to win or place since I’ve seen some amazing posters floating around the internet and also that I didn’t really submit “more than one” piece since, unfortunately, this week is my week of final exams. But, I am very happy with it!

Right now the scores between Soldiers KIA and Demomen KIA are 4,923,531 and 5,056,134 — a near 100,000 difference. Hopefully, when the war is concluded tomorrow the Demomen make a come back, and I certainly hope that my artwork adds points to the Demoman side!

The Demoman is currently losing, and even though I’ve contributed some Soldier heads to the war, drastic measures had to be taken. Propaganda artwork could count for extra points from Gabe Newell himself! And, since I’m totally and completely PRO-DEMO, I took the time to submit my entry to Team Fortress 2’s Propaganda Contest.

I actually ended up submitting two, with the later one being a revision. In my haste, I didn’t end up liking certain elements of my first and I had spotted very small blotch with my vector art.

I do like how my entry turned out, but I don’t want to post it online until after this contest is over until December 15th. In the meantime, you can assume that I submitted the following as my propaganda poster:

Go Black Scottish Cyclops Army!


… omgomg finals omgomg

This is a little bit overdue, but here’s a little piano peek at something I plan on basing a next song over.

Song Title: Charlene (piano peek)
Arranged By: Charlene Valerio
Instruments: Live! Grand Piano
Listen:
Download audio file (Charlene-piano-peek.mp3)

Right click to download: Charlene Valerio – Charlene (Piano Peek)

I am thankful that school is going, more or less, well. So far I am doing good in all of my classes. My first round of midterms went exceeding well where I scored very, very high above the class average. However, my second round of midterms have been a bit of a setback for me scoring around the average. I may have become more complacent, or perhaps it was just an incredibly busy few weeks leading up to my “hell week”, but it’s okay. I still retain A’s in my classes and I hope to keep them as I come out of the semester.

There is, however, the unfortunate news that the graduate committee at KU hasn’t formally accepted me into their MS Computer Science program yet and insists to keep me as still a “non-degree” graduate student. The initial plan was for me to take course prerequisites (which I am doing now) and with a few prereqs out of the way, change my status from “non-degree” to “degree seeking” graduate. Honestly, I’m a bit surprised that I wasn’t transferred even as a “provisional” graduate student since my background is still within an engineering discipline (aerospace) versus something completely different, such as a humanities.

In either event, the “non-degree” status puts me at a setback with even continuing taking prerequisite courses to transfer into the MSCS program financially. A huge majority of financial aid is distributed under the condition that the student is “degree seeking”, and without those magic words under my status (despite the fact that I am seeking a degree) restricts my student financial aid to a null.

However, I had put in a few applications to other schools and their Masters program and fortunately I did get admitted to a Masters program in a Electrical/Computer Engineering and another one in Software Engineering at another University. (Not going to disclose the name yet.)

I’m in the works of handling a few financial kinks to determine whether it would be financially feasible to transfer to that University as soon as the Spring semester (January 2010). If it isn’t possible, I was given the option to defer my admission to Fall 2010, which then gives me enough time to find a job to take care of a few upfront costs.

That being said, I’m back on the job hunt. Despite the economy picking up, unemployment is still in record highs and I have that betting against me. But, I’m not giving up. I’ve sent a number of job applications out the past month and will be continuing to do so until something fruitful comes up. I’m also certain that at some point, I will find a good job where I can use my income to help me pay for my graduate school.

It’s hard for me to find anything to be thankful about being on the job hunt; being unemployed and looking for a job has been such a mind numbing, stomach wrenching experience. But, I am thankful that this time I am allowing myself to extend my opportunity to branch out elsewhere.

I’m not a fan of window car mounts. At all. The first time that I tried it was with a (then) new Garmin Nuvi 760 that I had bought and what had happened day one? It fell down to the car floor and got scratched. Since then I’ve been using Garmin’s Friction Mount to keep my Nuvi on my dashboard.

Since I’ve got my Droid, I had pondering the switch to using Google Navigation and one thing that was important to me was the car mount. Motorola’s car mount for the Droid is a window mount, and the last thing that I wanted was to have the mount dropping to the floor and having my beloved Droid scratched. Initially, I was going to try to come up with a rig to use my existing Garmin friction mount, but it turns out that there’s no rigging required!

Garmin’s dashboard mount hooks up to the Nuvi through a regular old ball and socket. I thought that it would be a problem since out of the box, the window car mount for the Nuvi consists mainly of two parts — the physical mount itself and the frame that attaches the Droid to the mount.

Motorola Droid car mount parts out of the box (excluding the mounting disc)

As it turns out that the Droid car mount also uses a ball and socket design. I was unscrewed the part of the assembly that attaches to the its socket, then I attached it directly to the Droid frame.

This frame can now subsequently be attached to Garmin’s Friction Mount easily. The screw that comes with the Droid’s frame helps in securely attaching it to the assembly, just as it does with the Droid’s mount.

Thank you Google for the free navigation! Thank you Garmin for the dashboard mount!

I found this pretty amusing, at least. Clearly it redirected to nochucknorris.com since “I’m Feeling Lucky” redirects to the site with the best match. But, what a clever site design and trick. It made my day. :)

• a Discrete Structures exam
• an Embedded Systems exam
• a laboratory demonstration I need to present on modulus counter timers
• submitting design phase artifacts for my Software Engineering class, which includes the design specification and a prototype

I believe that for the most part, I have this week under control so long as I carefully manage my time correctly. But, I will post closer to the end of this week once things are done and out of the way on some more (big) updates on graduate school, job searches, and also a little thing that I happened to get my hands on today — Droid.

More updates to come later!

1. An attempt in making an In The Groove-type song. (I actually have a really cool and novel idea for this, but I’m not ready to give details just yet.)
2. A song for my grandmother for her upcoming birthday

There is also a possible third which may go towards Guild Wars’ Halloween Art Contest where I’m not sure if I’m going to create a song or send in digital art as I did during their last Wintersday contest.

I don’t feel that songwriting and arranging comes easy to me, and I often find that it takes several days, weeks, and even months for me to get the “right” snippet of music I want. In order to help me with my mental blocks, I’m trying to get into the habit of improvising when I’m on the keyboard, even if it’s just for a tiny moment in the day.

Here is one piece of improv that came to me. It’s rough and unpolished, but it sings to me like a lullaby.

Song Title: Lullaby (improvisation)
Arranged By: Charlene Valerio
Instruments: Live! Grand Piano
Listen:
Download audio file (Improv-2009-10-13.mp3)

Right click to download: Charlene Valerio – Lullaby (improvisation)