I thought if I had most of the difficult questions in my ESD.72 Engineering Risk & Benefit Analysis (ERBA) homework done, I would have more free time that night. I was wrong. I drafted the homework solutions on scratch papers and they weren't in a presentable format. So I literally have to spend a lot of time cleaning and rewriting the solutions onto a more presentable form. I started working on the homework at 1am after slacking off at the Z-center, talking to my mother,and adding "Steal These Buttons" on my blog. I thought I would finish the problem set by 2pm. Well, I didn't go to bed till 5am again, thanks to the ball-busting task of expanding an 8th order factorized polynomial equation problem, which I ended spendinga lot of time on. For those of you who have not attempted this before, it is both stupid and senselessly time-consuming. In any case, I overslept and went to the ERBA class late. Worse, I didn't actually get to finish expanding the ridiculously long polynomial equation till 1 hour after class. The TA was a little stern and expressed dissatisfaction when I submitted my homework even an hour late. He warned that he will penalize any late submission in the future. Yikes!

Nonetheless, I find todays ERBA lecture interesting. The professor talked about Bayesian probability and how it can be applied to help make important decision, in particular the choice of doors in an execution room to open so that you wont get electrocuted. Unlike my classmate Yoav, I do find ERBA interesting. In fact, I have found it interesting enough that I signed up for the 12-unit full version of ERBA instead of the 9-unt abridged version of the same class that the SDM students are required to take. Let me finish this blog and get an early shut-eye tonight. Yawn...

2/9/2005 2:31:15 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [17]

School

I think System Optimization is now my favorite class this semester. The professor in this class, David Simchi-Levi promotes active discussions during his lectures. The material also relates very well to the nature of my professional work, which is operations management and decision support. Regretfully, I didn't pay too much attention in his class today since I only got less than 3 hours of sleep last night. I didn't get to sleep till 5am last night as I tried to finish the assignment for this class, which was due at the end of the class. I made some irreversible revisions to the model that I needed to optimize, consequently screwing my entire model. Anyway, thanks to Uday who gracefully helped me to rectify the problem, I was able to complete the homework by the end of the lecture.

Yahoo! I actually got the homework for Engineering Risk & Benefit Analysis (ERBA) done before 4pm today. With the free time that I got, which doesn't come often these days, I went to the Zesiger center to workout. Since coming to MIT, I have lost count of the number times I came here to work out. This is a beautiful fitness facility, which I thought was 10 times better than the health gym that I was with before coming to MIT. I did some running, lifting, and stretching at the Z tonight. My ankle is doing much better now than a month ago and I slowly ramping up my running to prepare for some races in spring and summer. In my desire todo a triathlon this summer, I just joined the MIT triathlon yesterday to participate in their training programs. Right now, I handling my studies, work, sports, and social activities quite well but I don't how long I can hold up. We'll see, stay tuned...

2/8/2005 2:07:38 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [17]

School

My good buddy, Brian Squibb decided to quit his high-paying job in San Francisco and started traveling around the world. He just emailed me the link to his travel blog. Let's see what misadventures he can find.

Not to be outdone by Brian, I started my own travel blog. The only problem is that I am currently stuck in Cambridge, Massachusetts attending school. I need to start filling that blog soon. Yes, I know I have to get a better picture than the one that is currently on my travel blog.

2/8/2005 2:06:53 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [12]

Blog

First of all, it's official the New England Patriots is officially a dynasty for winning 3 superbowls in 4 years. Go Pats! But then again, isnt it a little premature to call the team a dynasty now? Don't get me wrong, the Patriots is a team to beat and they have proven with its impeccable record. However, shouldn't dynasty be used in a historical context?

Anyway, other than seeing the Patriots win, I thought the Superbowl last night was the worst Superbowl that I have ever watched. First of all, the half-time show was the lamest I have ever seen. I have always held high esteem for Paul McCartney, but I think we need more extravagance in the half-time show. I will tell you why Janet Jacksons show last year was the best Superbowl half-time show of all time. No, it wasnt her bare breast, but rather if you think about people are still talking about the half-time show a year later. From a marketing point of view, thats success. Speaking of marketing, the Superbowl commercials were the worst I have ever seen. With the exception of the Budweiser: "Salute to soldiers", Budweiser: "Designated Driver featuring Cedric", Tabasco sauce, and Toyota Primus commercials, the other commercials didnt really leave an impression on me. Honorary mention for the worst commercial I have seen goes to the Frito Lay commercial featuring M.C. Hammer. It's simply awful.

2/7/2005 2:05:55 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [12]

Rants

I would like to start off today with a quote that goes like this:

That until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned;
That until there are no longer first-class and second class citizens of any nation;
That until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes;
That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race;
That until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained...

Do you know where I got the quote from? If you guessed Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia’s speech to the United Nation in 1963, you are correct. However, if you guessed Bob Marley you are also correct as the words were popularized in a song called War by him. Bob Marley would have been 60 today; I would like to dedicate this blog to honor a great musician whose music I have come to love. To find out more about the music, life, and convictions of Bob Marley, I did a search in Wikipedia and found this "must-read" article about Bob Marley. Here are some interesting facts I have found about Bob Marley:

• Bob Marley and I share the same birthday - Feb 6th.
• Bob Marley was a devoted Rastafarian. His actions and lyrics about Rastafarianism have been intentional to bring the religion to world attention. For instance, the association with Haile Selassie was no coincidence. Rastafarianism takes its name from Ras (Prince or Duke) Tafari Makonnen, Haile Selassie's name until he was crowned emperor of Ethiopia in 1930. The faith predicted that a new king with the power of God would rise out of Africa. There are many Rasta terms that are used regularly in Bob Marley’s songs, including Babylon that refers to the white patriarchy that has been oppressing the black race for centuries through economic and physical slavery; I and I is a complex term that referes to the oneness of Jah (God) and every human; Zion refers to either Ethiopia or the whole continent of Africa. Read here for more information on Rastafarianism
• If you haven't noticed, the colors of Rastafarianism is the same as the colors of the flag of Ethiopia
• Finally, Redemption Song is my favorite Bob Marley song, but I have never fully understand the meaning of the song until I searched the Internet for more information. Do you know that Redemption Song was the last track on Bob Marley's final album, Uprising. It was also the last song performed at Marley's final concert. Redemption Song has a spiritual message and is devoid of any Reggae tone (in fact, the only Bob Marley song that is not reggae). The spiritual theme of the song was probably the result of his struggle with cancer. When Bob writing this song in 1979, he was already in a lot of pain from the cancer he was diagnosed earlier. Redemption Song is about his struggle with cancer and his dealing with his mortality. In the song, he urges people that true freedom is only attained by freeing themselves from their self-imposed mental shackles, as clearly shown in this line of the song - "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery". As a metaphor, this song decries racism and celebrates freedom from oppression.

Source: Wikipedia

2/6/2005 1:57:08 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [14]

Music

Thanks go out to the following people who reminded me that I am a year older now: Blanche, Brian, Bruce, Eimear, Fanny, Hanri, Karine, Matt, Mike, Milt, and Wacek.

I got a good treat from the crowd at Bombay Club and later Redline at Harvard Square, Cambridge last night.

So my thoughts on getting 1 year older? I have really tried not to think about my age since my 30th birthday. To me, it's just another day, REALLY. Man of my age should be living the suburbs, taking junior to the minor, mowing the lawn, and taking that 8 hour road trip with the family to visit the in-laws. Nope, I think mentally I am still going 25 - yeah I have going 25 for almost a decade now. I am slowly realizing that I am not really 25 despite my mental state and behavior. Well, I don't run as fast as I did when I was 25. It certainly hurts a lot more now than it did 9 years ago. So slow down and stop breaking my body.

2/6/2005 1:24:30 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [10]

Social

I can't believe that I was doing homework on a Friday night. The good news is, I am done with the assignment for System Optimization. It took me 3 hours to formulate a system model that I need to optimize but once the model is established, the rest of the assignment became quite easy to do.

I plan on completing the assignment for Engineering Risk & Benefit Analysis (ERBA) by today so that I can go for my birthday party that Eimear had organized tonight. Alright time to hit the books now.

2/5/2005 1:23:30 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [13]

School

As a SDM student, I take classes at MIT Sloan School of Business and MIT School of Engineering. This is a generalization from my observation of the classes that I have attended so far at MIT, but I see a pattern emerging here. I have found that there is a difference in presentation, discussion style, and most of personality between students at MIT Sloan and students at the rest of the MIT campus. Let's start off with attire. Sloan students definitely got the polished look. Most students at Sloan are dressed up. Students at the rest of MIT belong are part of the blue jeans culture. Even the professors are different, professors at Sloan typically wear suit and tie, non-Sloan professors on the other hand are causally dressed sometimes even scruffy. At Sloan, students usually draw from their experience when participating in class discussion. At the rest of MIT, sutdents who are usually younger, are more precise and curious in their discussion. Last but not least, since almost all management classes are structured as class discussions, there are a lot of interaction among students and the teaching staff in the class. At non-Sloan classes, I have found that there are much fewer opportunities for ineraction. This is a CRUDE OBSERVATION since I have only been at MIT for a month.

2/3/2005 1:23:01 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [14]

School

Marvin Minsky is one of the pioneers in Artificial Intelligence and the co-founder of MIT AI Lab. Before coming to MIT, I had read his book titled "The Society of Mind", which explains some highly speculative theories on how minds (artificial or natural) might work in plain simple English that non-technical readers can understand. So when I saw that the "The Society of Mind" class by Marvin Minsky is being offered in spring, I registered for it and attended the first meeting of the class today. So what are my first impression of the class? Well, for starters, Professor Minsky looks a lot older than how he looks on the picture that is posted on his home page. The first part of the lecture was about some new theories from his new book titled "The Emotion Machine". The second part of the lecture was class discussion on the topics found in "The Society of Mind" book. Now that I have started taking classes in the engineering side of MIT, I have a noticeable difference in the presentation, discussion style, and personality between Sloan (and some extent ESD) students and the rest students at MIT. This observation is still highly speculative. Any comments from anyone about this? I am going to cut tonight's blogging activity short since I still have a case study to read. Later...

2/2/2005 11:14:31 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [15]

School

I miss the Category feature in my previous blog software. Since I am new to Blogger, can someone tell how I can associate each blog entry with a category? Instead of reading the material for a class tomorrow, I started hacking with cybersam.org to correct the problem that I had the night before. I am just too compulsive to let the problem rest. On the bright side, I added new code to associate icons with categories. Nonetheless, I still question the wisdom of this decision since I will probably wind up using blogger anyway.

On the bright side, I went out for some beer with Chris, Dave, Matt, and Spiros after "Product Development" class. As usual, drinking helped to induce creativity, we came out with a few ideas that we may actually use as individual product design proposal for this class. Time for shut-eyes. I am getting tired.

2/1/2005 10:44:43 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [16]

Blog

So they decided to publish my tsunami experience at MIT after only being there for a month. Check this out News @ MIT Sloan The printed copy will be available to all students next week. In reality, it is really not that dramatic as it sounds, but it always does after applying a set of "adjectives" to the story. I have to give credits to the writer who did a splendid job in conveying my thoughts into words. This is best line from the passage, which I reflect how I feel from the tragedy and I quote:

Although he describes himself as "agnostic," Chow says the experience has left him feeling more spiritual. "I should cherish my life, and cherish life around me. It brings a different perspective to life, and that perspective actually brings a different set of values to me."

With this, I am going to bring closure to this tsunami thing. It would be great if you can contribute something to help the less fortunate, domestic or international, tsunami or non-tsunami related, big or small. More importantly whatever you do, cherish your life and the life around you. Tsunami aside, I really had a great time traveling to Thailand with Camille and Brian. And thanks again to those who inquired about my well-being when the disaster struck.

2/1/2005 10:23:01 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [10]

Personal

I have not blogged for a while on my personal website www.cybersam.org since its blogging software (BlogX) isn't adequate for editing and publishing. I got tired of it after a while. But so much have happened since I last blogged in April 2004 and I really want to do start doing a "Dear diary" moment again (Yikes). I got my act together today and tried installing/configuring the new version of the blogging software that I use, which by the way has been renamed to dasBlog. But I gave up after 5 fruitless hours of fiddling around with .NET and IIS (Inherent Insecurity Server). Now that I am back in graduate school full time and still working part time, I can't afford to waste time mucking around with senseless software issues. So I signed up with blogger just to get me started with blogging again. We'll see what happens.

1/31/2005 1:56:02 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [15]

Blog