Blog posts
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Top 6 photos from first family photo shoot
Below are my top 6 photos I cherry picked from our first family photo shoot that took place a couple weeks ago. As some of you my already know, my daughter Elliott was born recently, on October 3rd (2019). And shortly after, my wife had arranged for a professional photographer — Stephanie BC — to…
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Almost half way through M.S. in Computer Science
I’m almost half way through the OMSCS (online masters in computer science), last week marking the end Spring 2020, my third term in the program. And although I’m looking forward to taking compilers next semester, my mind often wanders into the distant future , my mind fast forwarding to the time in which I’ll be…
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Masters in CS paying off
Taking computer science courses are already paying off in my career. Nothing too significant (yet) but I am witnessing small wins. For example, this past summer I suffered through HPCA (high performance computing architecture), a course historically only offered in the longer semesters (e.g. fall, spring). In the course, I learned a lot of theory:…
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Next up: Compilers (theory and practice) and reflecting on fatherhood
For next semester, Spring 2020, I enrolled in what I expect to be one of the most difficult (yet rewarding) courses: compilers – theory and practice. I’m stoked and at the same time, feeling very nervous. I’m stoked for several reasons. First, according to the previous semester’s syllabus, I’ll be learning a ton of theory:…
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Information Security – Project 4
This afternoon, I started on project 4 for introduction to information security (IIS). This goal for this project is to have us students learn more about web security and consists of three objectives, manufacturing three web attacks: cross site scripting, cross site forgery and structure query language (SQL) injection attack. And although I’m very familiar…
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My wolf pack
At work, I’m subscribed to an e-mail distribution group called “dogs@amazon.com”, a list dedicated to anyone interested in dogs. And today, I read an e-mail that broke my heart. A fellow Amazonian just had their second child and they are now giving away their 3 year old Labrador because they can no longer give it…
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Week 1 of master’s in computer science
January 7th, 2019 marks the first day of my computer science master’s program through University of Georgia Tech. The week leading up to the first day was somewhat stressful since I was mid flight (returning to Seattle from London), my plane hovering over the massive blue sea, while I frantically typed away on my keyboard…
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History of i,j,k variables ?
Any time you read code (in production or from a textbook), you’ll often see the control variable, when employing for loops, being declared with the variables i,j,k. And for most of my programming career, I’ve never really questioned why we specifically choose those three letters. Why not m (a great letter), or c or d or…
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No exercise (or tennis) this week
I’ve been limping around for the past week, pulling a muscle in my left thigh. No fault other than my own, though. One evening last week, Jess and I hit the gym together, exercising at the Northgate 24 hour fitness (which is apparently one of the more popular 24 hour fitnesses in Seattle, due to…
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Linear algebra – exam 1
Earlier this morning, before starting the work week, I took my first linear algebra exam at the nearby Northgate Testing center. The proctored exam covered the first four modules in the course, topics including: Gaussian elimination (row echelon) Gaussian Jordan elimination (row reduced echelon) Adding, subtracting, multiplying matrices Calculating the inverse of matrices (using identity…
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Assembly RA (return address)
About a year has passed since I took computer organization and I’m a bit disappointed of how much of the material faded from my memory. I only realized this while reading about Exception Control Flow (ECF) in the book Computer Systems: A programmer’s perspective, when the authors mentioned: As with a procedure call, the processor pushes a…
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Tennis serve in slow motion
Last week, with just my iPhone and a camera tripod, I recorded myself hitting tennis balls launched by the ball machine and recording myself smacking a few serves. The idea of recording myself was inspired from several articles that I had read from tennisplayer.net. To elaborate, I wanted to objectively analyze my tennis strokes —…
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3Blue1Brown – Linear Algebra videos
Right out the gate, I want to express my gratitude for the 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel for publishing a wonderful video series titled Essentials of Linear Algebra. After watching, and rewatching, the first four beautifully animated videos, I can say that I’ve developed a much better understanding, much more intuitive, of what I’m been learning in my linear algebra…
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Flexing C muscles
I’ve been sharpening my C programming skills because I’m now working on a team (i.e. EC2 Networking) within Amazon Web Services that requires skills in lower level software development. And I must say, I’m truly rusty. A noob. On top of that, my only experience with C in the past has been fairly superficial, me…
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Linear algebra check in
I signed up for linear algebra online course through the University of North Iowa, where I’ll be taking my second university level math course, the first being discrete mathematics. I enrolled in this course because it’s a fundamental course that’s typically required of all aspiring computer science students. Moreover, linear algebra is essential (from what…
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Admitted into Georgia Tech Master’s in Computer Science
On Tuesday, I received an e-mail notification from Georgia Tech, informing me that after 5:00 PM EST, I would be able to check the status of my OMSCS (Online Masters of Science in Computer Science) application, whether I was accepted or rejected. So during dinner, with Jess sitting next to me in the cozy booth…
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Friday night arguments
My wife’s parents told us that when they first moved in together, they noticed that when they argued with one another, the arguments normally took place on Friday evenings. And when they became aware of this pattern, the two of them agreed to shelve any important discussions for the next day. And surprisingly, this worked…
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Libraries are love
Earlier this evening, I neatly stacked my unbounded 200 page textbook onto the document feeder of a waist high scanner, converting a college Linear Algebra book from physical form into a 40 megabyte colored PDF — all within 3 minutes. And best of all: it was free! That’s right, I didn’t pay a single penny,…
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“I’m not going to raise my kids the way my parents raised me”
We’ve all heard people, including me, say “I’m raising my kids differently” or “I’m never going to raise my kids the way my parents raised me”. I hear that all the time. But, have you ever heard someone say “I’m going to raise my kids just like my parents raised me”. I doubt it. I’ve…
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My first singing (and guitar) recital
This past Saturday, I sang and accompanied myself on the guitar, my first time singing in front of a crowd of about 20 people. I played my arrangement of one of my favorite songs: No Regrets by Mike Love. Leading up to the actual performance, so many nerves and anxiety ran through my body. What…
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Friday donut ritual
Today is donut day! Actually, every Friday is donut day. I started a weekly ritual about six months ago. Every Friday, my entire team (apart from one or two people) rides the elevator from the 13th floor down to the lobby, and then we proceed to take a brisk 2 minute walk Mighty O: Seattle-based…
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Why I love Seattle
I consider Seattle my new home. Perhaps it’s the lack of pretension. Folks around here tend to pragmatically dress themselves: sneakers, blue jeans, puffy Patagonia down jacket. This is unlike how people dress themselves in southern California, where I lived for over 25 years, where the overall vibe is to dress to impress. I admit, I…
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The beauty of dynamic programming
I just discovered dynamic programming and damn, I’m blown away by the concept. The other day, hile working through a homework assignment, I compared the run times between two python functions that I wrote, one function written recursively and the other written in a dynamic programming fashion. Starting with the recursive solution, I arrived at…
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Disabling remote loading of images (in e-mails)
On both my laptop and iPhone, I’ve configured my e-mail clients to disable a setting called “Load Remote Images.” Although there are a number of benefits in doing so, like reducing network traffic (i.e. bandwidth), my main motivation is this: preventing senders from tracking my e-mail behavior, preventing them from identifying whether or not I’ve…