• Complete a marathon
• Complete an Olympic-length Triathlon
• Get a better time on a Sprint Triathlon
• Complete Seattle To Portland bike ride in One Day
• Visit Australia and Peru
• Work out (1+ hour) at least once a week
• Get my Motorcycle certification
• Complete my Masters degree with a grade at least as high as my Bachelors degrees
• Eat slower, smaller portions
• Eat only until I’m full
• Curb over-snacking tendencies

• Be more honest with myself and others — partial success. I still too often tell people white lies or what they want to hear rather than just being honest with them. I did have some successes though, especially when I was thinking about this resolution.

• Graduate Cum Laude — success! I finished with a 3.71 GPA, high enough to be in the top 10% of the college of engineering, and warrant Cum Laude status.
• Be accepted into the UW CSE 5th-year masters program — Success! I was accepted and in turn accepted the opportunity.
• Fully heal right knee — partial success. I feel totally confident in the knee — I can land jumps on my right leg, run down hills, lift my full body weight from a squat, and so forth. However, my right leg remains weaker than my left leg, and I have considerable work to do to regain or surpass my former jumping or sprinting prowess, both important aspects of becoming an above-average ultimate player once again. During the fall draft/hat league I participating in, I was pretty disappointed with my performance.
• Participate in a triathlon — Success! I completed the Seafair Triathlon in June.
• Get a six pack — abject failure. Maneesh and I both lost this wager, and we each now owe a charity $250. Better luck next time!

With no pressing deadlines and lots of snow, the roommates and I got to hang out a lot. Among other things, we headed to Gasworks park with Theo around midnight one night for some sledding action. While we brought along some cardboard (which, it turns out, is pretty ineffective as a sled), we found a large sheet of plastic along the way. After pulling each other around a bit, we made it to gasworks and managed to all pile onto the sheet of plastic at the same time to sled down the hill. It was great fun.

A couple days later was my family’s Christmas party. My sister’s husband couldn’t make it, so I invited along one of my roommates. Every year my mom buys tickets to a local show, and this year was no different as we ended up watching Disney’s Beauty and the Beast at Issaquah’s Village Theater. The show was excellent, and afterward we returned to my parent’s house for food. However, it was beginning to snow hard at this point, so most of the other guests (my sister’s family and other close family friends) took off. The original plan was to hit up Snowflake Lane at Bellevue Square and see the Bellevue Botanical Garden D’Lights, but the snow canceled these plans so we just ended up eating some delicious cheese fondue and hanging out a bit.

I spent Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Christmas Night at my parent’s place. We lost power for about 10 hours, but fortunately we were able to spend most of that time out and about the town. First, we ate a traditional Italian Christmas Eve dinner at my cousin’s place, then we headed to Mira’s place where we had our traditional get-together with the Konzens. When we recieved word that power had returned to the house, we returned home and went to sleep. I woke up remarkably early on Christmas day despite a late bedtime; mostly I got breakfast and checked out my stocking while waiting for others to wake up. We then commenced the family tradition of chosing presents for each other. My family was very generous with me — among other things, I recieved a new digital camera (a Canon Digital Elph SD 990 IS), a safe, a pull-up bar, a photo book, and a California shopping spree with my mom. What more could a guy ask for?

On boxing day, I hung out with Scott, Theo, and Courtney because on Sunday (the 28th) the family was heading down to Eugene (from whence I sent greetings earlier) and Scott was leaving before I would return. We ended up eating at Scott’s place and then playing in the snow with a boogie board that worked remarkably well. That night, I headed back to my place in Seattle and had a wonderful night with roommates. Saturday, after a lovely morning, I got together with Scott, Theo, and Maneesh and we hung out until hitting up Kat’s holiday party, and then hanging out with Jon. Sunday, we were driving to Eugene, eating luch with the Woods along the way.

After hanging out with my sister in Eugene, we headed back on the 30th, my brother and sister-in-law took off on the 31st, and then came New Year’s Eve. Maneesh, Jon, Theo, Spencer, Bobby, and others, watched the Fireworks at the Space Needle from the Seattle Center, then headed to Eric’s place to play some Great Dalmuti. I finally got to bed around six AM. It was pretty awesome.

On new year’s day, I enjoyed a Sushi party with the Konzens, and on Saturday, I headed to the FIRST Robotics Competition Remote Kickoff Event at Interlake High School in Bellevue, where the 2009 FRC game was introduced. It is an interesting competition that changes the one of the more fundamental parts of the competition: the entire floor, which has traditionally been carpet, has been replaced by a slippery plastic, and traction can only be provided by teflon-infused wheels. Its pretty crazy, but should be fun to watch. After tossing some ideas around and prototyping them Saturday night, Sunday consisted of playing Diplomacy (my first game, in which I made numerous mistakes) at Ananths before heading to my parents’ place for a dinner party. Of course, it started snowing agian, and thus I managed to get my car stuck up in the mountains, opting instead for a ride back home with friends.

Then school started, and my car is still stuck at my parents’ because, even though the snow is gone, the ground is too wet to drive my poor little car on. Fortunately, I don’t really need a car very often, so my life is mostly not impacted. Tomorrow (or, later today, rather) is the first lab for the robotics capstone that I am TAing. It should be good!

The holidays were a great time for me. Working as a TA meant that my work was totally done by Monday the 15th of December. When I was working for Microvision, my work load would actually pick up after school ended; this was the first time I’ve been at the UW where I actually had a work break during a school break. It was enormously fun. I got to hang out with roommates, my family (my brother was in town for two weeks), play in the snow, work on my own projects, cause trouble around town with all the friends that were in town, and generally have a great time.

This isn’t to say that I did no work between quarters — as I mentioned before, I signed up to be the TA for the Robotics Capstone course. I took the robotics capstone Spring quarter of last year and enjoyed it, but this capstone is significantly different — instead of autonomous slot cars like I worked on, this capstone is about distributed robotics systems. Instructor James McLurkin, a post-doc from MIT here at the UW, built over 100 small robots that together can execute distributed algorithms in the physical world. Some of their behaviors are quite spetacular — a physical bubble sort, clustering and dispersing, leader election and following, and so on. Watching a demo of the system is a fun and exciting experience. Getting back to the point, in order to be an effective TA for the class, I  “had the opportunity” have put in a lot of work over the break with the robots. Once you get to know your way around them, the robots are pretty easy to program with simple behaviors. The quarter should be fun.

At any rate, the rest of this post will have to come later, because I now have access to the room I previously mentioned.

After waking up today I wrapped gifts, delivered my roommates to the Eastside, picked up a package from FedEx in Issaquah, ate an incredible Italian meal at my cousin’s place, munched on more good food in Kirkland while visiting with friends, and enjoyed myself throughly.

Merry Christmas!

Today, I was once again a referee, but this time at the FIRST Tech Challenge, a new competition that evolved out of the Vex Robotics competition, which I refereed for last year. Unfortunately, this time the competition did not go smoothly. There were numerous technical glitches for hours, and in the end the tournament turned into a “scrimmage” and the real competition got rescheduled for February. After leaving the competition, I went to check out the new robot control system that will be used for the 2009 FIRST Robotics competition. It is an interesting conglameration of commodity and proprietary hardware — 802.11N wireless gear, Cat 5 cables, National Instruments processor and breakout boxes, new “Jaguar” and old “Victor” motor controllers, and misundry connectors and accessories. All told, it’s a major update of the robot controller package, and should make for an interesting start to next year’s competition.

- Australia / New Zealand
- China ?
- Utah Mountain Biking (one of Scott’s ideas)
- East Coast Road Biking (ie, finishing unfinished work)
- Road trip to polish off my visited-states list

I feel pretty good about this decision because, even if I make the worse of the two decisions without knowing it, it will still end up being a pretty good decision. Both companies are well-respected places to start a career and both offer interesting engineering challenges that need to be addressed. Each job would also have its pluses and minuses, which I will have to consider carefully once i actually have the Facebook offer in front of me and I can make the most informed decision possible.

The cold ended up waking me up this morning before my alarm, so I enjoyed a luxurious shower before heading north to Burlingame to meet with the Cloudera folks. What was originally slated to be a short morning turned into an all-day affair with me using their internet to finish up and turn in my team’s Hadoop assignment (which Vince went way overboard with, in a good way — examples will be forthcoming) between interviews with three of the four company founders. I had met previously with the fourth founder (or perhaps the first founder) in Seattle.

After leaving Cloudera, I travelled north to San Francisco in pretty ugly traffic, where I met with Martin. We caught up on recent life events and ended up eating at a quirky little restaurant called “Wierd Fish,” which is really a misnomer because the food was all excellent, well-priced, and really, not that weird. After food we considered a photography trip, but ended up instead meeting up with former classmates Sierra and Justin at a local bar.

At this point, I’ve been up since 6:40 am, so I think its a good time to consider sleep.

I will post the text here once I find a good source.

Some of my favorite things about the law:

• Requires toll funds to be used in the vicinity where the tolls are collected
• Opens HOV lanes during non-peak hours

Some of my least favorite things:

• Poorly defined non-peak hours
• Forces some local jurisdictions to spend money

I-1000: I’m voting Yes. Helping competent adults makes decisions they want to make should not be illegal.

I-1029: I’m voting No. It just adds bureacracy and rules; we already have too much and too many of each.

King County Charter Amendment No. 1: Both sides of this issue have merit. Certainly an elections director needs specific, technical knowledge about running an election, but it also seems ripe for corruption to have an elections director appointed by a partisan elected official, especially in the one-party county we live in. I feel that there is a higher risk that an unqualified person will be elected than appointed, and until corruption becomes more nakedly rampant than it already is, I think that this is a risk not worth taking at this time. Perhaps, as the proponents of the amendment point out, the auditor-less King County should gain an elected auditor rather than an elected director of elections. I am voting No.

King County Charter Amendment No. 2: I think that people should be allowed to discriminate based on whatever they wish; furthermore, I think that you and I should be able to discriminate right back against them. I disagree with legislating this kind of thing, so I am voting No.

King County Charter Amendment No. 3: I’m voting No. Most people will vote yes. Baaah.

King County Charter Amendment No. 4: I’m vehemently voting No. Politicians setting up rules for who can and can not run for elected office is a perfect recipe for government that is not under the control of its people.

King County Charter Amendment No. 5: I’m voting Yes, as will most others. It seems to me that having  economic input to elected officials should help them make their poor decisions in a more informed manner, if nothing else.

King County Charter Amendment No. 6: I’m voting No. Forty-five days is a plenty long time to review the budget for how large King County should be. Instead, the county has up and exploded in scope and size, and now they are crying about not having enough time to review their mamoth budget. Here’s a novell idea: cut the budget down, return money to your constituents, and kill two birds with one stone.

King County Charter Amendment No. 7: I’m voting No. Decreasing initiative access to the ballot doesn’t help anything except entrenched politicians.

King County Charter Amendment No. 8: Again, I see both sides of this issue. More information about candidates is good, but we have become so entrenched in one-party politics in this county that party affiliation doesn’t really give us additional information. I would like to try nonpartisanship on for size, and see where it goes, so I am going to vote Yes.

President and Vice President of the United States: Not that it matter who I vote for in this state, but I have chosen to vote for Libertarians Bob Barr and Wayne Root. If my one vote would have sent McCain to the White House, then I guess maybe he shouldn’t have been so flaming liberal throughout this campaign.

United States Representitives Congressional District No. 8: I’m voting for Dave Reichert. Fiscally conservative, socially laissez-faire, and just green enough to stay elected. His opponent Darcy Burner has impressive credentials but misguided political ideas.

Governor: I’m voting for Dino Rossi. In addition to aligning more closely with my political beliefs than Gregoire, his special interest seems to be the construction lobby, which is a heck of a lot better than the SEIU or WEA, which have the current governor in their pocket. Also, I think it is worthwhile to shake up government once in a while to see what happens. Perhaps Dino is a real leader who really will fix problems like transportation and draconian health care mandates. Certainly Gregoire hasn’t accomplished anything in either regard in her four years.

Lieutenant Governor: Marcia McCraw. A mostly meaningless position, it would still be good to get some fresh ideas and perspective into the office. Think about it: what has Brad Owen done recently?

Secretary of State: I’m a little skeptical of electing a Democrat to replace moderate-as-all-get-out Republican Sam Reed, who has done a mostly competent if forgettable job if we are to ignore the gubernatorial election debacle of four years ago. His opponent, democrat Jason Osgood is untested, but has technincal skills, innovative ideas, and an independent streak, all of which I are worth exploring, so I am voting for him.

State Tresurer: I think it is worth mentioning that the outgoing state tresurer, democrat Mike Murphy, endorsed his assistant, republican Allan Martin. That should raise some eyebrows, as should the fact that his opponent, Jim McIntire, is endorsed only by party-line democrats. Allan Martin already knows what the job requires, is able to do it, and will provide some semblance of counterbalance to the state’s heavy democrat majorities elsewhere.

Attorney General: This is an easy vote for Rob McKenna, who has proven himself extraordinarily competent and fair, avoiding any of the fiascos that plagued Gregoire especially towards the end of her tenure in the office. Rob McKenna is also a leading hope for the Washington Republican Party into the future.

Commissioner of Public Lands: Republican Doug Sutherland has done a good job making the office more efficient while acting as a good steward of Washington’s public lands. He deserves re-election.

Superintendent of Public Instruction: I had the chance to meet incumbant Terry Bergeson at the FIRST Robotics Regional in March this year, where I in my role as a FIRST ambassador escorted her around the competition. While she enthusiastically cheered on the robots, it’s her policies that have failed to significantly improve Washington’s public education system. While her opponent doesn’t really get the full picture either*, Randy Dorn will bring a fresh face to bear on the issues and I think that will help get the ball moving again, for better or for worse.

Insurance Commissioner: Ever wonder why there are so many more options for car insurance than health insurance in Washington State? The insurance commissioner is a big part of the answer. There are a relatively few restrictions on what kind of car insurance plans can be offered in Washington State. The result is a large array of choices, which keeps competition for your dollars high, which keeps costs low. On the other hand, any company wishing to offer health insurance in this state has a long list of criteria they must meet. The result is fewer choices, all of which are more expensive than a more limited plan that covers less could be. The incumbant, Democrat Mike Kreidler has done nothing to improve this situation. His opponent, John Adams, has an independent insurance background and has listed opening up the health insurance market as a top priority. John Adams gets my vote.

Legislative District No. 41 –

State Senator: A traditional limited-government republican, Bob Baker is an easy choice over democrat Fred Jarrett who helped Gregoire get hundreds of millions of new taxes.

Representitive Position No. 1: Centrist republican Steve Lizow is a moderately better choice than Marcie Maxwell.

City of Bellevue Proposition No. 1 Levy for City Parks and Natural Areas: I’m voting Yes.

Sound Transit Proposition No. 1 Mass Transit Expansion: Every time I hear of Sound Transit’s newest initiative, I always think “You’re doing it wrong!” No exception here*. I’m voting No.

* The correct answers are 1) voucher schools and 2) congestion tolls on all roadways.