Be glad you weren’t there.
For Bruins who sat at home or in their dorms watching the fateful game against the Stanford Tree…the loss wasn’t nearly as painful as watching it from several yards away.
For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, the Bruins took on Stanford “we still don’t know what our mascot is or what our stadium is called” University’s football team on Saturday, 10/27. What ensued was a bloodbath, with blue and gold spilling onto the field instead of red. The Stanford offense simply blew by our defense, bringing back memories of the Bruin defense from the past few years. I don’t think I saw any of the Bruin defense sack the quarterback…or even get anywhere close to him. And when the Bruins had the ball…uh…wait, we had the ball? Needless to say, our time of possession amounted to less than half of the game. Very few completions, lots of incompletes, and believe it or not, several interceptions, which Stanford took absolute advantage of, taking off with the ball. DeShaun Foster, our main man, did not play at his best, rushing straight into the melee at times for some unknown reason. At one point in the game, we were within three points of matching Stanford, and it looked like we could take over the lead. But no, a Hail Mary pass into the end zone gave Stanford the ball, and they ended up with a touchdown. Final score: 38-28, Stanford.
Be glad you weren’t there.
I was fearing this test more than my calc one. We covered three and a half chapters of solid chem, including quantum mechanics and wave interference. There was a lot the professor could have thrown at us on the test. I studied for about two days straight, completing all the homework assignments over the course of those days. Note: I did this on purpose, not unintentionally. I did not slack on my homework…I did all the Mastering Chem assignments, etc. I waited to do the book homework right before the test as a good review.
When I got the test in my hand, I was actually surprised at how easy it was. The test was way simpler than I expected. That doesn’t mean I aced it…it was just way less than what I expected. I think most midterms are like that. My roommate said the same thing about his test. Hmmm….I smell a conspiracy.
Author’s Note: This is a guest article by Mark Chen.
Well, what an incredible day…evening…two days? It’s currently 4:20 AM , and we have finally given up on hall decorations for the day/night/morning. Really, I’m surprised and shocked at the amount of non-work D2 has put in…especially compared to D8. Hopefully people will finish their sections tomorrow (ahemxmenahem) and in time for the judging.
All-Hill Halloween, for those unfamiliar with the event, is an event that is held each year by the Office of Residential Life (ORL), where children from the “ghetto” portions of LA are bussed out to the dorms to trick-or-treat since their own neighborhoods aren’t safe. I think it’s a great idea, and the decorating bring the floor together…or, it’s supposed to. Too bad this always happens around Week 4, the week that everyone has midterms on!
And as a side note, Hi, I’m Mark, Mike’s neighbor from down the hall. I will post to Mike’s weblog at various intervals, but will post more frequently to my own site, Dykstra 232 East. Come by and visit sometime!
This was my first midterm at UCLA, and while it was hard, I was surprised at its level of difficulty. Simply, I was expecting more. We were allotted an hour and a half for the test and I burned through the first five questions in twenty minutes. The rest of the time I spent working on the last problem, which wasn’t that hard, just tricky. I’m not sure if I got it right but I got an answer that seems reasonable, so I’m sure I’ll get partial credit. The nice thing about midterms at UCLA is that you have plenty of time.
With many pre-season basketball magazines and sources listing UCLA as a Top 10 team, the outlook on the Bruins’ 2001- 2002 season is bright. Returning starters Jason Kapono, Dan Gadzuric, and Matt Barnes should turn out be a force to be reckoned with. Also returning for their Senior seasons are guards Ray Young and Billy Knight and forward Rico Hines. UCLA’s freshman class is one of the most talented in the nation, consisting of Redondo High product Dijon Thompson, Mater Dei’s Cedric Bozeman, and Washington Prep start Andre Patterson. The only dark spot on the Bruin’s National Championship hopes is the loss of All-American Candidate and leader Earl Watson, who was key in the Bruin success of last year.
Head coach Steve Lavin, in his sixth year at UCLA, has prooved that his Bruin teams can play with the likes of North Carolina, Maryland, and Duke (as well they should), and UCLA plays its best basketball during the post-season. This is, of course, true if the Bruins can stay healthy and out of trouble, for in his tenure at UCLA, several players have been injured (Hines, Gadzuric, etc) and many have had conflicts in personality and off the court problems.
This year’s success hinges on many aspects of the team. First of all, someone, preferably Gadzuric or Kapono must step up and fill the leadership position left by Watson. This is key. UCLA teams have historically suffereed greatly without a leader (ie. Baron Davis’ and Tyus Edney’s departure left holes in the UCLA teams of the past). The Bruins must also play more consistently. Last year, Lavin’s teams seem to fluctuate between red-hot and ice-cold, as one game they would destroy teams by thirty, and the next almost meet disaster at the hands of lowly UC Santa Barbara. Gadzuric needs to continue to be a physical force in the paint (as he became toward the end of last year) and Kapono to continue honing his skills in passing, dribbling, and footwork. If all goes well, the UCLA Bruins should find themselves in the thick of a National Championship game, but if not… well, we shall see.
All right! I managed to finially get my fridge this weekend, a nice 2.5 cubic foot one. Ahh, how lovely it is to have a fridge. And to top it off, my parents were nice enough to buy me a 13″ Toshiba TV as well. Nice.
In the last couple of years, the Golden Bears, always the underdogs when it comes to football, managed to upset the mighty Bruins. Our undefeated team, lead by Deshawn Foster and Cory Paus, managed to buck the trend. The game started out close. Cal managed to drive down the field early, breaking away on what looked like a 40-yard run. However our defense managed to hold them and they only got a field goal.
We countered with a quick touchdown. Cal followed suit, and took the lead back, 10-7. It looked like we had a real game on our hands for once at the Rose Bowl. The last home game, against Washington, was a blow out from the start. Cal seemed to be willing to put up a fight.
However, that was the last touchdown they scored for a long time. We managed to drive up and down the field until we reached a massive 56-points, the largest I have seen at the Rose Bowl recently. It was great.
The Cal stands started to file out by the start of the fourth quarter. I went to talk to one of my friends in the Cal band, and she was still there, surprisingly. The band was having fun even though their Golden Bear was getting trounced. It was a great day for a game.
This weekend was Parents weekend, and the Chancellor put on a free dinner outside Gate F, complete with pasta and dessert. Mmm….tiramisu. It was a great time.
And to top it off, we trounced Cal. Always a good thing.
Game recap
Our mighty Bruins faced a formidable foe on Saturday, the Washington Huskies, decked out in their fearsome purple pants. The game wasn’t even close from the start. We scored three consecutive touchdowns in the first quarter, blowing the game wide open. It was a truly great game. The band was into it the whole time, and completely dead after the game. Heisman potential #26 broke away for a 92-yd touchdown that was a sight to behold. We gave up a few easy touchdowns to Washington, two in fact, but they failed to convert on one of the extra points. In the end, we won 35-13, a solid margin. By now we should be ranked #6, most likely in all of the polls.
Keep an eye out for the BCS poll, which comes out sometime this week. You should see us at #6.
Bomb threat
In what appeared to be a fight at the Rose Bowl was actually a bomb threat. A man from Santa Monica claimed that he was going to blow up the Rose Bowl. In fact, he didn’t even have anyting on him, and two students hauled him into the authorities. Nothing big, but still scary.
Just go into Westwood, usually down Westwood Blvd. and you’ll see people handing out blue or yellow flyers. Be sure to take one. They are your pass into getting into press or advance screenings of movies. I went to one last night…K-Pax…it was really fun.
I had seen Spy Game a few months prior to this screening and I actually liked this one better because I didn’t have to write a survey. The other nice thing is that once you go to one, it’s really easy to get access to other movies. Most of the time they hand out sheets at the theater.
I found out a couple of days ago that you can actually see what’s being served in the cafeterias daily. The site is dining.ucla.edu. You should definitely check it out….Nathan’s Hot Dogs can get a little nasty after a while.
I recently received an e-mail to my inbox that I thought was informational:
Dear Resident,
As you may be aware, during the first week of school we have experienced a significant increase in competition for bandwidth supporting your Internet connection. Anticipating the increased demand, over the summer we completed an upgrade of the residential network. While we are still fine-tuning the network, our primary issue is related to MP3 traffic and its impact on available bandwidth. As you may be aware while we have not blocked MP3 traffic, we currently use a ‘traffic shaper’ to prioritize traffic being routed to the Internet. At the present time MP3 traffic is given the lowest priority below HTTP and FTP traffic. Campus traffic for academic purposes is not “shaped”. In addition, over the past two weeks we have had an extraordinary number of virus infected computers on the network. These machines have generated an enormous amount ofnon-productive network traffic. As of today we believe we have identified amajority of the infected machines and provided the necessary patches (to client machines) which will provide additional bandwidth. As of this evening we are increasing the (pre-defined) amount of bandwidth to help alleviate some of the congestion. The campus is also in the process of implementing a second backbone connection to Internet2, which will further increase the performance of the network. It is expected that byJanuary the connection to Internet2 will be completed. In the interim we will be closely monitoring the capacity of the network and the utilization of the available bandwidth making adjustments as necessary.
Thank you.
Mike Schilling
Directory of Technology
UCLA
Business and Financial Services
This is the second day I’ve been woken up by the work starting at 6:00AM. I’m getting really tired of it. The worst thing is that De Neve isn’t scheduled to fully open until January, which means construction will probably continue until then. Hopefully not. Note to self — buy earplugs.
I had my GE 60A History (1960-74) class today at Bunche Hall, and I really enjoyed it. We opened with the “traditional” UCLA practice of listening to the Star-Spangled Banner. The professor fired up the DVD player and on came Jimi Hendrix and his gut-wrenching version of the Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock. Right away I knew this was the class for me. The workload doesn’t seem excessively heavy (100 pages a week) and I know I’ll like the video clips they show in class.
It will be fun. Chemistry and Calculus are tomorrow.
I found out from Jeremy Schwartz, the social God of Dykstra, that the reason the network is unbearably slow right now is because of a virus that infiltrated the UCLA Internet servers. The virus struck on Sunday and destroyed many of the hubs that manage the ethernet. I’m not sure when the network will be back to normal operations but it will be a while. Some of the students that had their computers on when the virus struck got infected, including a student on the 8th floor of Dykstra (the only reported incidence I heard). The virus will completely destroy your computer if you don’t detect it.
For those of you not hip to the UCLA party scene, this Sunday was the biggest party of the year, being the last weekend before school starts. I checked out the houses and was amazed at how long the lines were. Everywhere I went there were lines of at least 100 people waiting to get. I tried standing in line for one of the houses right off of campus and saw some interesting things.
While standing in line I looked inside the house and saw a group of people seated around a table. Of course they had a monstrous bong in front of them and smoked right in plain view of the police from their window. I was amazed that they weren’t arrested, honestly. Later on a guy tried to cut through the lawn to get inside and one of the frat boys knocked him down. The guy tried to retaliate, threw a punch, and ended up getting arrested by campus police. It was hilarious. He was covered in dirt, drunk as hell, and pissed off.
The place was a total mess. Beer cans were everywhere, as well as cigarette ash. I can see why the weekend gets such a reputation. It was interested but truly overwhelming. I had a good time though. If you have a story about Black Sunday, be sure to post it here.
The name says it all. I was skeptical when I first arrived because I did a bandwidth test off of CNet and got only 137kbps. However when I downloaded a TAR file off of EFNet, I managed to get 160KB/s! That’s around 1mbit/s! I think I’ll be fine at school. Believe the hype: the network is fast, as long as there isn’t a hog on it.
Well I finally arrived at good old 241 Dykstra Hall today. Yesterday we loaded up the van, hit the road for about 8 hours (since we stopped so much) and finally made it to the Holiday Inn at 11:30. This morning we got ready, went over to school without eating breakfast and got me situated in my dorm.
I was lucky enough to get a double and it’s plenty of space for me. I brought my computer, stereo, and 80GB hard drive. I’m easily set for the year. My roommate, Quinn, moves in on Sunday. My textbooks were ready and waiting at the UCLA Buy-back store. I highly recommend getting your books online and having them set for pick-up. The process was really simple.
Right now I have six speakers in my room and a subwoofer. Plenty of power. I bought a microphone which I’m not totally happy with, but it was only $10. I can deal.
I saw one of my friends at Orientation, Nick, as well as Courtney. It’s still weird being at school. It doesn’t feel like home. I feel like I’m in a hotel.
That will change of course.
Like a typical guy, I haven’t packed yet and I’m leaving on Friday. Maybe I’ll get everything together by Thursday night…probably not. Anyway, I’m driving down in a rented mini-van and should arrive someone Friday night. I’ll get my books on Saturday and be completely moved in by Sunday.
I turned on the television this morning only to see on ABC News that terrorists had hijacked four 757s and crashed them into various locations. Two hit the World Trade Center, which is now in pieces. Video footage was captured of the plane striking the second tower, which happened at about 9:03 AM ET. It is estimated that 50,000 employees can be in the two towers combined at peak hours.
Also, according to ABC News, an estimated 70,000 people visit the tours daily. They are unsure of the number of casualties, but they are high. At the time I wrote this article, I was watching a young freelance cameraman on ABC that captured footage of the wreckage. Only the lobby of the South tower remains.
The Pentagon was hit by one plane which damaged about a 300 x 200 foot area of the building. However, fire continued to blaze and burned even more of the building. The NSC and FBI were mostly out of the building and mostly military and navy men were hit in the crash. The president is in Louisiana, wait, Nebraska… Nobody knows where he really is. However he isn’t in the White House.
A fourth plane landed in a field outside Pittsburgh. It was said that its destination was Camp David.
Seeing the footage is simply amazing. If you haven’t heard anything about this story, be sure to check Google. I was amazed that San Francisco closed as many buildings as they did. Every public school in San Francisco was shut down and all government offices were closed as well.
Here in Marin nothing was really shut down, including the schools.
Sadly, it is my cousin’s 17th birthday today, now a day that will live in infamy.
The press is already calling this attack the worst America has seen since Pearl Harbor. Osama Bin Laden is the man thought to be behind the attack also Iraqi and Iranian government could be responsible as well. Minutes after the attack Israeli military aid was sent to the U.S.
All airports have been closed nationally and the entire New York area is pretty much shut down.
Today is unbelievable. Most of my local churches are holding prayer services for the victims.
Also, the Red Cross has set up a national hotline for blood donation. Visit Yahoo! for more info.
I’m having serious thoughts about not putting up a radio station. I fear that it will use too much bandwidth, be a hassle to set up, and eventually attract only a few listeners. I think it’s not worth the trouble, frankly. Currently I am unsure about UCLA’s Internet policy and I really don’t want to abuse the system. More about this later.