out of town 09/27 - 10/08

So I will not be able to go to the Rock and the small groups, but I can still go to the Rock by the power of imagination.

DotA

Yes, as everybody knows, I play DotA!! The most exciting game without a monthly subscription fee. Yes, between the time period of preparing for interviews, defense, long-distance communication with my wife, such such problems, when I get an hour I will play DotA.

DotA is a gaming that you fight your opponent by killing and fight against your teammates by trash talking. If you play you will know what i am saying. The most noobish player on a team is usually the victim of teammates trash talking. Oh man, I can't describe it in words, those moments are hilarious. When I get involved, I might become angry at the moment, but afterwards I will just laugh when thinking about it.

Yeah, this is one moment two teammates begin to hate me because I creep (kill neutral monsters for experience and gold) too much instead of helping them. Then I finally decide to join them for a gank (gang kill). Then during a gank, my net was laggy, I was still creeping when my teammates get killed right in front of me. Huge hatred builds up among my teammates and also I have to defend myself then trash talks start... $%$$#%@^%**#$. But it is amusing now, ^_^

moving out

creepy, my landlord found out that i have rent one bedroom to others. so what's the problem? The problem is, in the rent handbook page 123 line 23 written in a fine print such such, meaning i am not supposed to do this.
I was asked to go to a court, state what is happening, and then fined 70 dollars/month.

too much, my roommates decided to move out, and they did. So i got a chance to drive a huge UHaul truck and helped them move out.

Will i still live there? the problem is, i don't know how long i am gonna live there. My advisor offered me a job here, but being a postdoc won't get me anywhere close to san fransisco. life is confusing right now. Will my advisor hate me if i get a job somewhere else without notifying him? No, no, no, tian, you should think what is your most needed right now and go for it. If I can not help yourself, how can I help others? or do I want to?

Talking to people is the most important skill, i realized, not write some who-knows-what codes. It's the human communication makes the society working and money circulating, not some damn-ass computer codes I have spent five years on. seriously. I talk to everybody in our department now, secretary, professors, janitors. Tian, if you grasp the art of talking, you will become the man!

The most confused renter, that is me, because I don't know how long i am gonna live here.

sally's

As a tradition of our lab, we go to sally's for a drink after someone get a degree. So we did yesterday after Ryan's Ph. D. defense. Yes, my defense will be on next Tuesday. Farewell, my student life! The five years that I have spent in graduate school in U of M contain a lot of highlights, some of them are "wet".

1. During my TA exam, ie, I taught a class and let the graders to see if I am able to do it well. I was teaching physics, something like Newton's law. So I pulled out a rubber-band and prepared to do a little experiment in front of the whole class and graders. However, instead of saying "rubber-band", I said "rubber". RUBBER, "Here is a rubber" "you pull it and it expands" something like that. There was one grader starting laughing, and another one has terrified expression on her face.

2. Faith. Bible gave me moral value and standards which now I treasure a lot. When I was in China, what I pursue was personal satisfaction and success. I did what I can until being punished for doing wrong. Life would have been dangerous if I kept that way of doing.


sry, I can't focus on the topic. And now that I am married, I should not have life freedom any more. Next Tuesday, my Ph. D. final defense. Next Friday, Texas Fort Worth interview, Next Saturday, meet my wife.

5 reasons why my blog sucks

1. quite obviously, i don't update it often
2. the content is boring and deep, at least try to appear deep
3. yeah, the content. too much whining about my own life
4. why not update?
5. it just sucks

However, i think over again and get 6 reasons why i should keep this blog

1. it records many truth moments about my personal life. even though we all can not handle truth
2. it keeps record about how immature i used to be.
3. so.., when i made improvement in writing or living style, it will show from this blog
4. it shows my existence in blogsphere
5. it recorded my struggling sometimes. not beautiful moment but a treasure.
6. so people who read it might sympathsize with me

so, I will keep blogging.

love, pain and hate

long-term love, turns into a habit;
long-term pain, turns into a scar;
long-term hate, turns into a burden.

some updates

I remembered that someone asked me "why you Chinese couple get married and then separate?" Ok, I don't know the answer, but now it's my turn, as Ying will go to California for school for 4 months. Don't feel terrible for me, I am fine (no you should not be fine, I know I know). I know it is bad thing to say, but marriage sometimes is stressful. So I can have more freedom and be more concentrated on my own stuff.

Well, besides that, there are some good news. I will defend my Ph.D. in this September, after that I will work as a research associate in this university. I am still waiting for a response from NASA to work there, that might takes a few months. Then next month I will have another interview.

Bar or church?

my chinese blog

protian.yo2.net

My parents read this blog. It's a wordpress blog!

ah another website

I registered a domain name for myself, http://protian.net. I thought about other names, like tianwan.net, wantian.net, tian.com, etc. But they are either used or not meaningful. Then I found "protian" which means professional tian. You are welcome to check out my site, but it doesn't have anything except for the default theme.

I paid 10 bucks for this, with the hope that it could give me more freedom such as adding my own scripts to it. But to my disappointment, it only accepts HTML formats. I have a website at my own machine at home, which can be reached by my IP address, which changes everytime when I reboot my machine.. so it's meaningless, until I find a way to alias the domain name to the IP address.

The impulse that I feel to put up a website originates from pulling a resume on it. Then I discovered some cool stuff with which I can set up my own blog site: www.zope.org, www.plone.org, they are deep.

good weather

ah, today it reaches 83F, and I took a walk with my wife. It has been three months since our marriage and two months after she arrived in United States. Life is not too bad since then, but I can not say that everything was positive. But don't get me wrong, life is basically enjoyable. I am still looking for a job or maybe just an internship kind. Ying goes to English classes provided by Stadium villiage church. She was excited about that at first then it becomes more and more like just killing time. I will spend more time with her, yeah I am her husband and the only relative in this whole country.

There is a bad news, the company eventually pulled off my interview because this year's work visa has already expired for foreigners. But I am still confident, and Ying and I are not too pessimistic about this situation. Maybe I will postpone my graduation or just find an internship first.

I miss the people in Chinese language group and church groups, but now I am a family guy.