Dougy Mak's Blog

Taking baby steps towards my goal! I just took my first step and completed the first milestone, taking action.

Recently, my one of my tenants has been hogging the internet bandwidth, so I slapped on a p2p filter the tenants MAC address and viola! my internet is fast again!

Not in school, but in everything else. School’s not making me happy, it isn’t bringing me self satisfaction and I don’t feel like I am working for anything. I just feel like a drone, a drone waiting to be free on the day I graduate, the day I set off and sail towards the sunset to start my new adventure.. Maybe I’ll take less classes, and get a job. Maybe I’ll stop wasting my money, and save. Maybe I’ll save up more, and buy my own car. Maybe I’ll continue to save up, so I have a house to put my car in. Maybe I should try a little harder in life…

I’m laying here on my bed at my girl friend’s house at 2:14 am on a Sunday and I have Physics in 6 hours. I just finished watching Pirates of the Sillicone Valley, and reading tons of articles about Steve Jobs and startup related things. I realized it is very hard to come up with an idea that would forever change the world, but when looking back on it, it’s just so obvious and leaves me wondering why didn’t I come up with that idea. Apple created many products, and forever changed the world. It continued to push industries and it was because of them that competitors developed products that you love.  Facebook changed the way we socialize. YouTube forever changed the way we consume video media. When you think about it… IT IS SO OBVIOUS! WHY DID I NOT THINK OF THIS?  I still remember downloading videos back then and watching videos like numa numa and that was how videos were shared before then came YouTube. I consider myself pretty tech savvy, and that is my Achilles heel. When you know how to do everything that you need to, you get accustomed to it and do not really think about redefining how it works to improve it. So now I am sitting here trying to come up with an idea to change the world, and I keep arriving at the same questions: Why would someone even use this? There is already a way to do this, you do it X way. If I redefined this to do it with X way, then that could work, but how much better is this? Do people just stumble on to these ideas? They probably are experiencing the problem and decided to build X to help improve their lives…. And I continue to sit here… putting myself in the future trying to experience what technology would be like and asking myself “why didn’t I think of that?”

I always get these moments of inspiration at the most oddest hours. Usually during 1-5AM, if I am awake. I want to act on it and start programming or do something, but I know I would be dead tired next day when I am in class. It’s not like I listen in class anyways, but I want to complete my degree just so I can say I have a degree in Computer Science and also to satisfy my parents wants. I always feel like I am trying to juggle my passions with school and I always end up fucking up both. I want to just cut one of them (school) and focus on the other, but I don’t have the balls to… What should I do?  Persevere for 3 more semesters…

Trying to control it by “just not playing” is not enough for me. It is too tempting for me, because it is just 1 click away! I want to continue to have fun yet I feel like I am wasting my life and it affects other areas of my life. I cannot stop gaming, I always come back to it. It is like a drug to me, and it only has 2 extreme choices. I am addicted to the feeling of winning, losing, striving, improving, dominating and game vanities. I can only control it if i remove it from my life entirely, but I cannot find an alternative activity to compensate these feelings.

Today, the professor was reiterating how our assignment was due in the middle of finals. I openly told him we have other finals and we have other things to do too. The professor replied and said, “Would you rather have it due earlier?” I told him that is not what I am suggesting, and I was just saying this because his homeworks take a lot of time especially when his notes are not exactly helpful to the point where I do not have to do hours and hours of Googling suggest to finish an assignment. Some of my peers do not even complete their homework because of this! And the part-time professor wonders why some people do not complete their homework. I justed wanted him to consider being in our shoes. But, it does not bother me that he responded this way, it was as expected, but some student goes ahead and say “Welcome to college”. For fuck sakes, I am trying to improve our experience and this guy wants to be a douche. What? Are you saying, in college, we have to always bend over to the professors demands? I am saying, it does not have to be that way and it can be better. Education is a two way street, afterall.

My friend and I went to a mobile app meeting today featuring a mobile app developer as a guest speaker. I’m tired, so to the point: he introduced us to Corona SDK.

After transferring to a 4 year college from a City College, wow, what a drastic change. Pace is so different, but more importantly, the Computer Science department cares about its students. I just felt so welcomed during the transfer orientation. When I met our CS advisor, I never would have expected her o hand me a sheet of paper with the classes I need to take. She also showed us the shortest and quickest roads for us to graduate by telling us what classes can be double counted and various other little things. There’s also a mentor program here where we have to meet with a CS mentor 4-5 times a semester to discuss our progress in our classes and to provide support and help for us for whatever what need help with. Coming from a place where I had to plan all my classes myself and where the Computer Science department was nothing more than a place where professors took their breaks, this was a huge change. They practically held my hand and gave me everything that I could want; they really exceeded my expectations. Loving SJSU so far.

I had the worst headache in my life yesterday night. I came home with my throbbing head pain and thought about taking a Tylenol, but I didn’t think I wouldn’t need it since it is usually gone by my wakening. I went to sleep hoping it will slowly dissolve away, but it just ruined my whole night of sleep. Tossing and turning, and constantly waking, I felt such pain as if I was going to drop dead. I still feel minor pain and minor strain and tension around my neck. Horrible headache. Pops a Tylenol. While I doubt it was caused by our dinner at Chevys, the food there was displeasing. I haven’t ate there for 5 years or so, and it was a great opportunity to bring my girl friend since she had never ate there before. Anyways, after my meal, I felt like crap. Normally, I wouldn’t get this “crap” feeling after a extensive large meal especially when it’s fresh and healthy. Feeling like crap after a meal is my body’s way of telling me this food is crap. Going to Chevys served as a reminder for why I never went back in the past years and a reminder to me for why I choose local joints over chains any day.