This is an overview of my cross country trip. I saved every gas receipt and logged every mile. I also hope that it can be useful to anyone making a cross crountry trip like my. In essence, it took five days to travel cross country driving about 10 to 11 hours a day. [more]
This is my last report from our cross country tip, from San Jose, California to Raleigh, North Carolina. We spend the day around Raleigh before I head out. [more]
My sister and I, through our tour of the deep South, end up in Clinton Library in Little Rock. This was a great day! [more]
In day three of our cross country trip of the United States, my sister and I hit Texas, Oklahoma, and make it all the way to Arkansas. [more]
During day two of our cross country tour of United States, my sister and I find ourselves in Arizona. We visit the Grand Canyon and Hopiland. [more]
My sister will be working in Raleigh, North Carolina over the summer and she wants to take her car which for the past few years has been parked here in San Jose, California. From the Bay Area there are two routes to the East Coast, Interstate 80 and Interstate 40. On Google Maps it is just about 30 steps to Raleigh but all you need to know is that once after Barstow, California all you have to do is take Interstate 40 all the way to the East Coast. It's that simple. [more]
The first-ever Bay Area Maker Faire was held in the San Mateo County Expo this weekend. The Maker Faire brought together avid the Do It Yourself community of hackers and inventors and I was there! [more]
I went to Washington, D.C. in search of the cherry blossoms but instead I found a Ben's famous chili hot dog. This is that story. [more]
I traveled to Nochistlan, Zacatecas, Mexico to attend my cousin's wedding. This is my first trip back to Nochistlan after two years. Traveling to Nochistlan is always an odyssey of self discovery. [more]
Google has been nothing less than a sucess story since it's startup days. But recently Google came up short of analysts' estimates and their stock price fell as much as 15% in some markets, lossing over $10+ billions. Have we seen the the peak from the Internet darling? Google is mired with privacy concerns, Chinese censorship, and legal battles. [more]
A very busy week in google news from the introduction of GMail's delete button to Alberto Gonzalez using federal subpeonas to get Google to share what you search for when you think you are all alone. [more]
Do you know your way to San Jose? Hundreds of engineering and science students and professionals do as they made their way to San Jose, California, this weekend for the Mexican American Engineers and Scientists' (MAES) 31st Annual International Symposium and Career Fair. The theme for this year's symposium was "Excellence in Engineering and Science." The symposium industry host was Lockheed Martin and our academic host was San Jose State University (SJSU). As a proud San Jose native, grateful SJSU-SOLES alumnus, and professional techie I volunteered my time for the symposium as part of the presentation committee and the whatever-needed-to-be-done committee. [more]
I recently read remarks made by Justice Carlos Moreno of the California Supreme Count at the International Association of Trial Lawyers. I just want to highlight here some of his remarks. Justice Moreno being a judge for the California Supreme Court could send me for death row for copyright infringement, so I plea the fifth, the fourteenth, the tenth, (which is the amendment that allows a man to have multiple wives?), and the zeroth! What follows are fragments of judicial insight from Justice Moreno's speech: [more]
Jury duty is torture. By the time a jury is called to the courtroom they are ready to convict. Today I was summoned to do my duty. I waited from 10am until nearly 2pm before they assigned my jury panel to a judge. By the time the assigned us I was ready to put the alleged in the chair. The jury had no snacks, no fresh air, and just bored out of the minds. How can a Chicano get a fair trial when the jury is kept in such conditions? The county needs to hook up the jury waiting room with some freaking cable, a foosball machine, and some freaking cappuccino makers. Here is a picth I have for NBC. Law and Order: Jury Duty. [more]
Politics is a family business. Since the times of Charlemagne, young princes where groomed to inherit the crown. In the United States we have eliminated nobility but have still keep the essence of regal nepotism. We all know that President George H. W. Bush, the 41st president, is the father of President George W. Bush, the 43rd president. But this was not the first father and son to both hold the presidency. President John Adams, the second president, was the father of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president. [more]
In building a .NET web application, the Repeater Control comes in really handy when building a table from a ResultSet or DataCollection. The Repeater Control has five templates, which can contain HTML code. In this short essay I will talk code reuse and not code repeat with the .NET Repeater control and go over the HeaderTemplate, the ItemTemplate, and the AlternatingItemTemplate to show how you can reduce the amount of redundant HTML. [more]
Having gone through the interview process a few times as a recent grad I wanted to write down some general hints and tips about the interview process. Aside from your skill set, I feel that employers are looking for the same thing that you are looking when you go clubbing, to meet someone whom you have chemistry with. You might hear interviewing manager call this chemistry the "right fit." So fit right in and take a look at my experience through the interview process. [more]
There is a great article on Wired magazine published on the April 2005 issue. The article is entitled La Vida Robot and it is about four high school students from the wrong side of the west side of Phoenix, AZ. The four students are Mexican, undocumented, immigrants, and extremely smart. The four students and two faculty members from Carl Hayden Community High School formed an engineering team and entered into the third annual Marine Advanced Technology Remotely Operated Vehicle Competition sponsored by NASA and the U.S. Navy. The students, Lorenzo, Cristian, Oscar, and Luis, designed and developed a robot that was to go through a specially designed underwater obstacle course. These four students with their faculty advisors decided to enter the college level Explorer class instead of the beginner Ranger class not because they expected to win but because they expected to lose. They figured that it was better to lose at the advance level than to lose at the beginner level. [more]
I recently attended the SHPE 2005 Region 1 Regional Student Leadership conference at Cal Maritime. I attended a very helpful workshop on interview skills given by Marina Gonzalez of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. I definitely thought the workshop was helpful maybe because I am actually looking for a job. I think it is vital to know the interview process, not only if you are the one doing the hiring, but especially if you are looking to be hired. So if you ever get a chance to attend a workshop on the hiring process and interviewing skills take it. If you don't get the chance to attend such a workshop read on for a few tips. [more]
I went on a field trip to NASA Ames Research Center yesterday. I haven't been there since I was in elementary school, and I am as excited about being there now as I was then. The fieldtrip was organized by the Society of Latino Engineers and Scientists at San Jose State University (SOLES-SJSU). About ten of us SOLES members got a tour of the wind tunnels at NASA Ames. NASA Ames contains several wind tunnels; some are used to test models of vehicles such as jet fighters, helicopters, and even the space shuttle. These models are tested at varying wind speeds. Some of the tunnels here at NASA Ames are used to test high wind speeds of over mach 1 while others wind tunnels focus on sub-mach wind speeds. NASA Ames claims to have the largest wind tunnel in the world. [more]
Over 500 middle and high school students eagerly attended Saturday school at San Jose State University for the fourth annual Science Extravaganza. But the Science Extravaganza is not some kind of academic punishment it is an academic encouragement. The Science Extravaganza is intended to be a hands-on one-day event which is put together by the Bay Area Professional Chapter of the Society of Mexican-American Engineers and Scientists (MAES), the Society of Latino Engineers and Scientists (SOLES) at San Jose State University (SJSU) and the kind donations from many technology related companies. [more]
Certain places have certain names, sometimes named after the pioneers that settled the area, often named and renamed and yet named again. For example, in Latin America, the towns and villages are named, or better yet prefixed with the name, of a saint, a conquistador, or that of a town in Spain. For example, in Castile La Macha, Spain there is a city by the name of Guadalajara and also in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. Since we brought up Mexico, let me mention where the word Mexico comes from. [more]
Marx's Communist Manifesto is often read in college. I haven't read the Communist Manifesto myself but last semester I read, studied, and discussed the views of Marx in three different courses. We covered Marx in Anthroplogy 160, Bussiness Ethics 186, and Philosophy 12. From my limited knowledge here are what I understand about Marx and his manifesto. [more]
As part of my anthropology class this last semester, we had three geography quizzes. The last quiz involved the entire continent of African. The first two quizzes dealt with Latin American and Asia, including the Middle East. In studying for these quizzes I made a few observations on the names of certain countries. For example in Africa there are two countries whose names remind me of things I enjoy. The country of Togo reminds me of Togos, a fast food sandwich franchise, and the country of Djibouti reminds me of JLo's booty. Djibouti is pronounce similar to 'yo booty.' [more]
Today President George W. Bush, 43, is sworn in for to second term in as President. The President's father, George H. W. Bush, is himself was a former president. The President's brother, Jeb Bush, is the current the Governor of Florida. The President's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a U.S. Senator from Connecticut. The Bush family is an American political Dynasty. The dynasties of ancient China lasted at most three hundred years. The United States is only a little over two hundred years and the Bush dynasty has had an influence in the political arena all the way back to about a hundred years. It is also speculated that the current President will not be the last Bush to hold the office of the President of the United States. [more]
I took Anthropology 160 as general elective course in the fall of 2004 to satisfy a required section for my graduation. The course helped me tie down feelings I have had and some facts I have come to know about the human condition and civilization. Here I am going do jot down the notes that I used for the final in the hopes that they may be useful to others. [more]
As new and interesting technologies arise Microsoft tries to immediately imitate it and somehow bundle it in its Windows OS. Microsoft now has 'tailgated' on the success of JavaScript. JavaScript has been the scripting language of choice for the client side web development since its early development at Netscape. When Netscape and Internet Explorer where battling out the Browser War, the JavaScript implementation used in each browser diverged. [more]
I've been playing with Flash for some time now. This Flash demo is of a simple banner that I was going to use for this site. I think the next step is to programmatically change the text of the banner using ActionScript. [more]
Below is a simple animation of a break dancer. The animation just rotates through static images. The images of the break dancer are from a font whose name I can't recall. [more]
I don't know what my name is anymore. My identity tag has evolved over the years in different directions. [more]