How’s my Semester Break so-far?

Thank god that I have good grades last semester, that semester was somehow hard in the sense that we have to cram everything. Well at least I passed everything.

Well currently, I’m preparing for GearUp: Cagayan de Oro next week, that will be the first time I will be talking about Microsoft Unified Communications (Windows Vista + Microsoft Office System + Microsoft Exchange + Microsoft Office Communications Server) to IT Professionals. I’m excited since Microsoft Unified Communications technology is really cool! I can have voice messages delivered to my Outlook Inbox, or I can all in and have Outlook Voice Access read to me my schedule, e-mail and etc.

I will be in Cagayan de Oro together with my colleagues in PHIWUG from November 6-8 (which means I may not be able to attend the first day of classes(or should I attend Basic Economics at least, straight from the airport))

Death Threat

Earlier this afternoon, I received a call from someone telling me that I’ll be killed tonight. I noticed TV noise in the background of the conversation, the person on the other side was repeatedly telling me that "Mamamatay ka na mamayang alas dose ng gabi" (You will die at twelve midnight).

Sigh, what have I done to receive this kind of threat? What kind of killing me are they planning? Don’t they realize that I’m currently too busy to die unnaturally. Think about the many things that I want to do and I have to do. This is not good.

The End Near but yet so Far

I can’t wait to remove this subject from my facebook profile. Semester Ends Saturday at around 1 PM, I’m so excited and at the same time nervous.

I have to study the following for the final exam:

CHAPTER 3 Statistical Description of Data

3.2 Statistical Description: Measures of Central Tendency

3.3 Statistical Description: Measures of Dispersion

3.4 Additional Dispersion Topics

3.5 Descriptive Statistics from Grouped Data

3.6 Statistical Measures of Association

CHAPTER 7 Continuous Probability Distributions

7.2 The Normal Distribution

7.3 The Standard Normal Distribution

7.4 The Normal Approximation to the Binomial Distribution

7.5 The Exponential Distribution

CHAPTER 8 Sampling Distributions

8.2 A Preview of Sampling Distributions

8.3 The Sampling Distribution of the Mean

8.4 The Sampling Distribution of the Proportion

8.5 Sampling Distributions When the Population Is Finite

8.6 Computer Simulation of Sampling Distributions

CHAPTER 9 Estimation from Sample Data

9.2 Point Estimates

9.3 A Preview of Interval Estimates

9.4 Confidence Interval Estimates for the Mean: a Known

9.5 Confidence Interval Estimates for the Mean: 6 Unknown

9.6 Confidence Interval Estimates for the Population Proportion

9.7 Sample Size Determination

9.8 When the Population Is Finite

CHAPTER 10 Hypothesis Tests Involving a Sample Mean or Proportion

10.2 Hypothesis Testing: Basic Procedures

10.3 Testing a Mean, Population Standard Deviation Known

10.4 Confidence Intervals and Hypothesis Testing

10.5 Testing a Mean, Population Standard Deviation Unknown

10.6 Testing a Proportion

10.7 The Power of a Hypothesis Test

Amazed on how Burger King transforms itself to get customers

I am eating lunch here at BK and I am amazed on how BK is transforming itself to win the hearts of its customers. The firs thing i noticed that they are giving away free Internet access to all its customers. Then they also show movies on their plasma tvs.

Will they succeed?

Yahoo Groups must die

I am currently reviewing for my statistics exam on Saturday. Then I got this e-mail from our class yahoo group.

"The stat exam tomorrow is intended for 1.5 hours.  If you so wish, however, you may start as early as 12:30 but you will not be allowed to leave the room until everyone has started answering the exam."

I started panicking, I don’t know what to do, I want to cry. Until I panicked to my classmate and explained to me that it was sent earlier, week earlier and this e-mail was delayed. I stopped panicking when I start to get a sense of date. The e-mail was dated October 2 2007.

Talk about delayed e-mail messages. If my heart was a little bit weaker, I’m dead right now.

Screenshot that indicates that the actual e-mail was recieved at 10:36PM and was sent last Wed 10/3/2007 at 9:56AM.

Mood: Grr…

The Most Reflective Moment of the Semester

This moment made me promise to myself that I will never ever cram again for the rest of my life.

We’ve been working on Project Spotlight for several weeks, but there are still several modules that needs to be done in order to be able to present it for Saturday last week. It was weeks that included an overnight at my classmate’s house at Antipolo, Rizal, late stays in School and etc.

After my theology class last Friday, we decided to stay at my classmate’s dorm to work on the project but I think we are informed that we can stay until 9 or something. We worked on the project module by module, code by code, stick of fries, etc [We thank Mc Donald’s for Delivering our food] but 9 came and we can’t work anymore. I was thinking at that time, "What if we weren’t be able to present anything tomorrow?", "What if I fail 8 units?", "What will happen to us?".

The day before that, we even planned to stay at Starbucks in Pearl Drive and move to Mc Donald’s El Pueblo (which is 24 hours) if starbucks closes at 1AM just to work on our project. Then we actually planned to just take a bath in the school shower. We actually have everything (long sleeves, leather shoes, slacks) that day. But the idea is so bizarre that we are already risking ourselves, what if Starbucks or McDonalds gets robbed during the night, our notebook computers might be taken away and the end result would be that we’ll never ever be able to present anything the following day or worse we might get killed or kidnapped.

Since we need a bigger workspace (and I need my desktop for UI stuff, I can’t design well in my notebook computer) and a network where we can exchange files and update on the fly, I went home with the rest of the group. My classmate drove everyone of us to my home. We arrived here at my house at around 10:30 PM, we immediately connected everything to the wireless network and start working. Non-stop coding and design (they also did non stop diagramming and typing) at four in the morning basic feature is complete except for authentication, we did everything to get it out on time.

At Six, we ate breakfast and hurriedly went to school. Take note, we brought the printer along with us. Imagine entering the school carrying a printer, we even joked to the upperclassmen that we intend to sell printing services.

The Presentation

It’s the moment of truth. Actually we’re scared, our project might create a random error so we are very careful in clicking during the demonstration. But to our relief the presentation ended with good remarks and suggestions from our dear teachers.

We didn’t expect to reach this stage, so after that we ate at Marina and celebrated. (one of those restaurants that specializes in seafood and cuisines from ilo-ilo) After that we watched our blockmates present. They have these uber cool projects such as the ordering system, and the web-based payroll system. Personally I liked the payroll system for the simple and professional UI which is really suitable for a payroll system. (Although because of lack of sleep, I just blacked out during their presentation, tulog)

Lesson Learned

NO MORE CRAMMING

I want to thank my ever productive groupmates for a job well done. You are the best group that I’ve ever worked with, but please no more cramming next semester.

Project Spotlight

1. Ma. Katrina Junio
2. Samuel Edric Solis
3. Jose Emmanuel Lopez
4. Andrew Chiong
5. Jay Alfred Inting
6. Matthew Chua
7. Chester Coronel

Each of us had 12-15 hours of sleep the following day.

Trader Playing Free Cell during Trading Hours

The picture is dark, but you’ll see.

This was taken at the Philippine Stock Exchange.