Snow Ninjas...

A little belated but here's a pic from the Colorado trip. The rest of the pictures can be found under "Out and About" in my Every Day Gallery courtesy of Vu.


The story behind the vests are Vu decided it would be cool if we all had "uniforms." So he headed down to Home Depot and bought us all reflective work vests. We got stares and comments from them all weekend, which was probably his intent as well. It definitely made finding each other on the slopes super easy. Safety first right? All in all, it was a great trip. Flip cup champion ships. Pots and pans jam session. Three days of boarding at three different resorts. MTV Cribs style cabin with heated floors. Mexican fiesta. Being doped up on ibuprofen about 90% of the time. Can't wait till the next adventure. Mad props to DJ Vu for putting the whole thing together.

Juggling...

Life, for me at least, is this constant struggle to keep a bunch of different things in the air. The moment I take my focus off one thing and switch to another, something drops. I start messing around with twitter and I don't update this blog as much. I spend too much time reading and watching current events/politics and my personal reading drops off. I try to cook more for myself and my work outs dip. Some are able to strike the balance very easily, while others have to struggle with it, continually tweaking until some sort of equilibrium is found. I definitely fall into the latter category. I'll strive to do better.

Twitter...

So I'm trying out Twitter. First impression, seems some-what cool. No idea of I'll actually stick with it but if anyone cares check it out or follow me at their own risk.

Two For One...

I love 2fer coupons at Soup Plantation. Great way to end the work week.

News Overload...

Someone once compared laws to sausage, as in seeing how either is made ruins the appetite for the end product. I've come to the sad realization that staying up to date on everything that is going on can be just plain depressing and frustrating. So for the time being I'm going to try reducing my intake of current events, especially politics. I'll still ready certain stories on google news but probably won't follow my news shows and political blogs as consistently. Doing so is having the unintended consequence of making me even more disillusioned and jaded. I think some time unplugged from that reality might do me some good. Here's to some much needed blissful ignorance.

Wedding Bells...

Congrats to Jiyon and Alan for finally tying the knot! The wedding was like a reunion from my old clubbing days and was a blast. Unfortunately it was on a Sunday which means I had to make sure I was sober enough to go to work the next day. More pics and recap to come.

Travel Plans...

Well I finally stopped dragging my feet and bought my ticket to Switzerland. I actually saved $15 by waiting which was strange, not that I'm complaining. I got my vacation request signed off as well so it looks like between March 25th and April 13th I shall be making my first foray to Europe. w00t! Dang it's going to cost a pretty penny but I haven't been anywhere really far away since S. America and the travel bug has been getting pretty persistent. I'll try to update the site while I'm there and there will definitely be a ton of new pics in the gallery once I get back. Anyway, this Monday was rough and I think it's time to head home.

Repair Relief...

So I drove my brother's Integra to work today and boy does it suck driving a lowered car, at least in comparison to my Jeep. The reason, you may be wondering, I am driving my brother's car is because he is currently up at Mammoth boarding. The problem that arose last week was my car's heater has been broken for some time now. I've just endured it because frankly I was too lazy to take it to the dealership to get it fixed (again). It doesn't get all that cold in SD so it's not that big of a hassle. However taking a car into the mountains without a working heater is probably not the smartest idea.

So after getting a ride from a friend at work to dealership on Tuesday, I dropped off the car and anxiously awaited the results of the inspection. The call I eventually got completely floored me. Apparently some resister had died and that in turn had cause all sorts of mechanical damage to the electrical system that controls the heater. The price tag to fix these problems? $1400! I was speechless. I expected two maybe three hundred. But $1400 is no laughing matter.

This story, fortunately, has a happy ending. A long time ago (2003 to be exact) my mom had purchased an extended high-tech warranty on this car. So in the end, my total cost out of pocket for all the repairs was $25. I'm not kidding. From $1400 to $25. The original plan had cost $1335. So from this job alone, it's already paid for itself. So I guess the lesson here is that sometimes having a little insurance actually pays off.

Words of Wisdom...

Beware the peddlers of certainty, or was Mark Twain once said:

The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

Filler Arcs...

Most anime are created after a successful run (both long and short) in the manga world, that is, Japanese comics. Most run for a season or two (13-26 episodes), then end, typically well before the manga which is usually on going and can run for years. Some series however buck this trend and run for what seems like forever. A famous example of this was Dragon Ball Z which has premiated the mainstream enough over in the west that at least some people out there know what I'm talking about.

The only problem with this is, manga chapters are released at a rate of 1 chapter a week with breaks usually only for things like Golden Week or the main writer taking a quick vacay. Anime, released at a rate of 1 episode a week, covers more than a single chapter typically. Eventually the anime starts to catch up with the manga, or to put it another way, the show starts running out of story. To combat this, most long running anime, do what is known as a filler arc, or an alternate storyline that exists outside the timeline of the manga but doesn't adversely affect it. The thing is, filler arcs universally suck.

They have to keep making episodes of anime but they can't have any real plot because they can't do something that will affect the actual story taking place in the manga, which is considered the official universe if you will. Well two of my long running animes have recently started their filler arcs and after an episode or two, the trend continues. They officially suck. Oh well. Luckily I have a large backlog of movies to go through. Next up: Slumdog Millionaire. Let's hope it's not all hype.

Weekend Recap...

Lots to report but since I missed my deadline last week (though I thankfully received an extension) I haven't had time to really blog about it. First up, Jorge turned 31 on Sunday and we spent Saturday doing the bar crawl in his hood, North Park.

The first stop was a cool microbrew bar called Toronado. Right as I came in I realized that I didn't recognize a single beer in the display fridge behind the bar. The sheer variety of them was a little bit intimidating. But with some friendly bartender help we were all able to select a brew that best matched our preferences. Well all except Jiyon who requested a beer that was "low in calories but high in alcohol content." According to the bartender, such a thing doesn't exist. LOL.

Next up was a small bar/club called The Office. It was basically pitch black in there with some where soap opera playing on the flat screen behind the bar. But it had two big things working in its favor. Dirt cheap drinks and really good old school hip hop. There was also this eerie and slightly distrubing life size cut out of Barack Obama in the corner. Not sure what to make of that.

The final stop of our bar crawl was a club who's escapes me at the moment. By then I was fairly inebriated, though not as much as Jorge or Kyle (who actually freestyled his way into the club). After a few beers and songs, we headed back to Jorge's for some late night Mexican. The drive home was longer than I remembered. It was times like that one that make me miss living in downtown.

On Sunday, Chinese New Years, we all met back up at Van Hoa's for some post-drinking pho. Good company and good food. Can't really ask for more. Even got a bun boa to go. Spent the rest of Sunday recouping. Though later on, Jon came by to burn some CDs and let me know that he had given Steve his 30 day notice to move out, but more on that later. I should probably get back to work.

The Grind...

Work is killing me. Deadline tomorrow. Not even close. The weekend might be forfeit at this point. Sigh.

T-minus One...

Tomorrow we bid farewell to our 43rd president and welcome our first African-American president. Personally it'll be my 5th president. I was too young to remember Carter, but I do remember vividly Ronald Reagan being the president when I was young, naive and thought it was the biggest job in existence, maybe it still is.

I grew up in Southern Calfironia, and my parents were Reagan Republicans. Thus by proximity and inheritance, so was I. San Diego, to this day, is still fairly conservative. Shedding those political ideas probably came easier than shedding my Catholic ones, but both were a result of self-reflection about what I actually believed, and not what I was told to growing up.

These days I'm more center-left than anything else, with some right leaning tendencies. I don't really get people who are all left or all right. No one can be entirely liberal or conservative. People are usually a spectrum of ideas, not the margins. If they are, they probably didn't take enough time to think about their positions. Not sure what the point of this post was, I just kinda rambled on. Oh well. Inauguration Day tomorrow. Stay tuned for change... I hope.

Modern Convenience...

I got a care package from Amazon today with some new toys, among them the one below. How did I ever live without you?


And before you ask, yes I'm that lazy.

Dead of Winter...

I think I have weather envy. I was over on the blog of one my favorite authors, and he was posting about how dreadfully code it is in the UK currently. It's sometimes easy to forget that at this moment, we're in the dead of winter. But I look outside and see a cloudless and sunny blue sky. Cliched for southern California no doubt, but true. I drove to pick up some sushi for lunch earlier and noted the 75 degrees temperature. And over the last few weeks, I've complained about the bitter cold streak we've had, but in truth it only got down to around 40 degrees. A warm winter day in some parts but uncharacteristically cold for San Diego.

The truth is I often think it would be nice to have real seasons. To worry about the winter snow falls and spring showers. To have to open a chest of winter clothes full of wool jackets and leather gloves. To have to shovel snow off the drive way or worry about getting snowed in. Or maybe it's just one of things you wish for but don't really want, just for a change in the monotony of a never ending, painfully unvarying cycle of weather most would be thankful for. If we did get those things, I'd probably be writing wistfully about how nice constant temperate weather would be.

Bringing Order to Chaos...

I've never been the biggest fan of iTunes. It just doesn't seem to work very smoothly on PCs. I hear that this isn't the case on Macs but I remain skeptical. Maybe it's just a bad port, who knows. But the hard truth is my mp3 collection has reached a point of critical mass that makes it almost unmanageable. I've tried sorting them by genre, alphabetically and more recently just by year, but using directories and XP's file system has never been the most efficient solution. So yesterday Tom was showing me some of iTunes filter options and afterwards, I decided to undertake a project to import a large portion of my mp3 library into iTunes to see if it would actually make things better.


But the task is both tedious and time-consuming. It is a three step process of renaming the files, retagging them, then importing them into iTunes hoping that iTunes' database can find the album in order to properly display the artwork in coverflow. There are quite a few areas that can cause snags along the way. I went ahead and processed 8 gigs of my more recent mp3s and already I can see the advantage of using iTunes with its Genius feature in order to automatically generate random playlists. Plus by using my iPhone's Remote app, I would be able to control my entire mp3 library from my phone.

So far so good, but I just moved over the majority of my Alternative/Rock mp3s to my new dedicated mp3 hard drive, nearly 40 gigs worth of music. This is by far the largest genre of music I have, and by that token the biggest hurdle I have to overcome in order to finish this project. I've already decided to give up on trying to organize my gigs of classical music or the gigs of singles I have from the late 90s and early 2000s. The design of iTunes facilitates the albumization (I just made that word up) of music, which is odd considering buying songs individually on iTunes was one of its early strengths. Hopefully when I'm done, listening to music will be an even more enjoyable experience.

Locked In, Almost...

I wish this weather would make up its mind. I just get my central heat fixed and wouldn't you know it, the cold snaps and we are back to 70 degree plus weather once again. The flux in temperature is playing havoc with my immune system. So basically I've been sick on and off for the last week or so, and when I'm sick my sleep schedule gets thrown completely out of whack. So I woke up late today but as it turns out just in time to avoid something pretty inconvenient.

I got ready just like any morning, grabbed my bag, and headed out the door. But as I approached the parking lot something struck me as odd. My car appeared to be the only one in the parking lot except for a massive truck, similar to the ones that haul gasoline but shorter. When I got closer, I realized what the truck carried the liquid asphalt they use to repave parking lots. Somehow I had missed all the no parking signs yesterday warning tenants that management had chosen today to repave the entire parking lot. My heart seized for a second as I realized that my car might be locked in by a sea of slow drying dark asphalt, a prison of my own inattention.

Luckily there was one narrow path around the truck and out of the parking lot. A few minutes later and I would have been completely locked in. I was quickly able to flag down the construction workers, get them to momentarily stop, and maneuver my car to freedom. As I left the parking lot I could see where all the other cars had gone. They lined the sidewalks of the street just outside the parking lot all the way down to the next complex and beyond. I gave a sigh of relief realizing that all I would be today was late to work, and not stranded at home with no viable transportation. Sometimes it pays to be lucky.

The Day After...

As a deadline or, as we call it at work, a code cut off approaches pressure builds and stress levels rise. Especially if the milestone corresponds with a major contractual obligation, such as the one we had yesterday. Afterward, the sudden release is like the exhalation after a swimmer breaks the surface of the water.

Days of frantically scurrying around are replaced by hours of lax boredom waiting for the next list of problems to solve which my manager says will be released tonight. Sadly I won't be at work tomorrow (9/80 for the win!), so that pile of work will have to keep till next week. And that in a nutshell is work for me these days. No more, no less.

Desktop Resign...

My attempt at redesigning my desktop a little bit in order to increase my efficiency. I tried to make it as clutter free as possible and moved the icons which are normally on the top left to the bottom left so they wouldn't always get the way of my media players. I also added custom icons and Windows gadgets (similar to Vista without the need to install Vista). A couple of things that aren't visible from a screen shot are a virtual desktop environment similar to Linux and a program to cycle my background image every five minutes (I get bored of looking at the same thing all the time). I reduced the size of the image since most people don't run at 1920x1200.

Ninja Invasion!

As promised, I got my resizing scripts working, so here are the pics, the best costumes of New Year's Ninjas and Geishas Birthday Party!

Fat Sumo!

Bear Ninja?

White Ninja

Ninja Turtle!

For more pictures go to A Glimpse Inside Gallery->Other Events->2008.12.31 Ninjas and Geishas!

Almost forgot the birthday boy, DJ Vu. Happy 30th buddy.

Upgrades...

Normally I build a new PC every two years or so, just to keep up with technology and what not. But with times being what they are (economically) and no real need for upgrading the speed of my PC, I decided to just go with a few minor upgrades. So yesterday I received in the mail a new Samsung 750 MB hard drive and a i-Rocks 12-in-1 USB 2.0 card reader.

I got the new hard drive because a lot of the new content available now is in HD, which makes it four times as large as before. And I got the card reader because 1) I broke the front USB ports on my computer case a while back and reaching behind the case to plug in my jump drive and iPhone is a pain and 2) so I can finally get pictures off my camera. That means as soon as I fix my PHP scripts that automatically resize my photos for my image galleries, AGO should have new pictures again. Yay :)

The hard drive was OEM, which stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer. It basically means barebones. All I got was the hard drive in a plastic case, no cables, no manual, not even a box. I pulled out my case, slid open the cover, pulled out my hard drive bay, and attached my new drive. I booted it up and nothing. BIOS recognized it but Windows didn't. Doh! I forgot I needed to partition and format the drive first. So I pop in my Windows CD, set my BIOS to boot off CD, and commenced to format the drive. After that it was smooth sailing. Luckily I knew what I was doing.

But during the course of the installation, I got to thinking, how is a lay person, that is someone who is totally computer illiterate suppose to know to do all that? In this age of Plug-and-play, I forget sometimes that certain tasks still require a moderate degree of computer knowledge. I tend to think of computers are fairly simple puzzles. Problems are easily fixed if you know what you're looking for. But what if you have no clue? They must seem like indecipherable black boxes. Things work or they don't, but they have no idea why. Of course, I face the same kind of challenge when staring at an automobile. We all have our blind spots I suppose.

Late Start...

Getting a late start to the day today. I think I am sick. Curses. I avoided it as long as I could throughout this uncharacteristically cold snap we're having here in Southern California, but I guess it has finally caught me. When I am sick, I sleep in, which means I started this day very late and that sadly means it's going to be one long ass day with my deadline looming tomorrow.

I was brought up in a home where if you weren't dying, you just manned up and pushed through it. In fact, I remember clearly that I didn't miss a day of school for anything. Both my parents worked so staying home wasn't really an option. I do recall one incident however that the school called my mom and told her I was too sick to stay at school.

So with that philosophy in mind, I will probably be staying late today to make sure all my tasks get done before the cutoff tomorrow.

2009...

Well today was the first day in a long while where I was forced to use my alarm clock, and believe me, it got snoozed at least a couple of times. Mondays are generally rough, but Mondays starting off the new year? Especially so. But it was a good and eventful break. I had a good New Years Eve, pictures coming as soon as I get my new memory card reader from Newegg. The Chargers won yesterday, continuing to defy expectations (yay!). The Lakers have the best record in the NBA (w00t!). I got through the book I've been working on and started the tenth and last book in Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series. And I got caught up on most of the shows in the queue except for True Blood and Dexter. Lots going on and planned for 2009, but alas I got a meeting in 5, so I shall continue this in a few. Happy New Years to all!

Change in the Couch...

I use to be religiously anal with my mail. Everything was opened, sorted and answered in a prompt and timely manner. Over the years, as my finances became increasingly paperless and my mail directly became more meaningless, it just started building up. It got so bad, I would pick up mail, throw it in a pile and it would remain unopened for months. Not the best way and more than one important piece of correspondence was misplaced. I couldn't just throw it all away, because I'm paranoid about identity theft and the amount of personal information in mail is staggering. So it just accumulated in piles in boxes, unopened and unread.

Well yesterday, I'd had enough and went out and bought a heavy duty shredder from Costco. I spent the next 3 hours opening and shredding mail. The shredder got so hot, it shutdown automatically and I had to wait 20 minutes for it to become cool enough to be used again. During the course of said shredding, I found two strange envelopes from my employer. They looked like the pay stubs I normally get informing me how much was directly deposited into my account that pay period but slightly different.

Upon opening them, I found two uncashed pay checks from December 2006. Thinking back, I remembered how during that month we switched over to a new time system, and direct deposit was disabled for two pay checks. They had laid there in those mail piles for TWO YEARS. I don't live pay check to pay check, and somehow had misplaced and forgotten them. Now they probably aren't valid anymore, even though there is no expiration date on them, but my company still owes me that money. I'll go talk to payroll on Friday and get them reissued. But basically I just found a few thousand dollars in my couch. What a crazy Tuesday...

A Clean Slate...

So in keeping with my whole get everything done before the end of the year which I've neglected for the entire year, I wiped my computer's OS last night. At first I tried to load Vista, but after seeing how full of fail it was (it couldn't or wouldn't detect my main storage hard drive) I deleted it (and two hours of work) and just reloaded XP.

Normally I like to reload my OS every 6 months or so (it's been over 1 1/2 years), clearing out any unnecessary programs, and more importantly any hidden spyware, adware and viruses that may have accumulated in its memory. For those who don't know, that's why your computer slows down over time. It becomes overburdened with junk in its memory. You could say, it's a digital version of emotional baggage.

The best solution, in my opinion, is simply nuke the entire system and start over. I keep my OS on a separate drive so the solution is fairly painless for me. An hour or two of reloading all my essential drivers and programs and I'm back in business, though it helps to be computer literate to deal with any unforeseen technical problems. If only we could deal with our own baggage as easily. Having problems getting over a traumatic event? Just format that brain and reload. Wouldn't that be nice?

Holiday Hibernation...

One of the hardest things I've always found was the transition back from the holidays. Much like the adjustment of coming back from a great and distant vacation, the mind has problems adjusting. We get use to going to bed late and waking up whenever our bodies tell us it's time. Our brains are no longer in work mode, thinking about work things. It's just time to eat good food and do as little as possible. Or is that just me?

This year, instead of the normal week off between Christmas and New Years, I decided to divide up my work holiday break into two four-day weekends with a three-day work week squeezed between them. I did this for several reasons: to help ease the adjustment back into a regular schedule, because we have a deadline Tuesday next week which I need to make some serious progress on, and if I work during the "shut down" I can use those days later on during the year, like say during an extended trip to Europe or snowboarding in Colorado. w00t!

But coming into work with no one here, while nice for it's lack of distraction, is not very motivating I must admit. Oh well...

X-Mas Dinner...

Sometimes words are unnecessary :) Mmmmm... Hope you guys had some good food and quality time with the loved ones.

Merry Christmas...

Hopefully everyone is spending Christmas surrounded by friends and family. Here's hoping everything you wished for is waiting beneath the tree tomorrow morning. Merry Christmas all!

Social Phases...

There have been times in my life where all I wanted as to be surrounded by people, with no greater joy than getting to know someone new, and others where the thought of having to endure the inane small talk of strangers just makes me cringe in apprehension. In high school it was the latter, then it college the former. For the last couple of years, it's been decidedly the latter.

It's probably a reaction backlash from my trip to South America, like so many things these past two years, where I spent literally everyday having to meet and get to know strangers, only to eventually leave them. I think I've been suffering from social fatigue, but maybe, just maybe I'm better now.

I went to Steve's Gay Sweater Christmas party last night and for the first time in a while, being in a large social situation didn't feel taxing or annoying. I'm not the type of person spends a lot of time looking backwards. I've just never seen much value in it. Yes you want to reflective but dwelling in the past has never worked out well for anyone.

But if I had to choose between the two phases in my life I seem to be cycling through, I'd go with the social rather than the anti-social. Being anti-social might be the easier path, and there are times where it's fine to be so, but ultimately we are social creatures and those times in my life have always been the happier, more fulfilling ones.

In addition, the best times in my life were also accompanied by large dose of the writing bug which has returned full force recently. So I hope it's a portent of things to come. New year, new phase, the ink dries and pages continue to turn.

From the Kitchen...

I've always wanted to make a mustard potato salad, don't ask me why, I just like mustard ok? So last night I boiled up some golden potatoes and made some from a recipe off of foodtv.com, of which there are surprisingly few I might add. The recipe actually called for two different types of mustard, dijon and grainy mustard, and it turned out ok except I'm still trying to decide if I like the amount of vinegar it called for. I should have taken a picture but side dishes by themselves don't lend themselves to photos the way entrees do. Oh well, maybe next time. Been trying to stick to my make something new every week and I've found it's a lot easier if I don't shoot for the moon every week like how I started a few months ago. It's about baby steps.

Facelift...

With a renewed commitment to publish my sometimes revealing, though usually inane, thoughts once again, I decided giving the site a much needed visual update would help commensurate the effort. I've also figured out how to update blogger from my iPhone, so as of now, my short lived LiveJournal page shall be coming to a quick and sudden end, much like its beginning. While LJ is a much more social blogging community, Blogger offers something it simply can't match: access from work. Unfortunately LJ is blocked by WebSense.

The Price of Procrastination...

Every year I tell myself I won't wait till the last minute to do my Christmas shopping. That this year, it'll be different. I'll make my lists and do all my shopping online so I can avoid the crowds and lines at the malls, but it never turns out that way. It's always, oh I'll do it next weekend, and then the next weekend after that until the entirely too predictable event occurs: it's the weekend before Christmas. So this past weekend I was forced finally from necessity to brave the malls with all their overly large decorations, brass band CDs playing carols over the loud speakers, and throngs of other fellow procrastinators frantically dashing from store to store.

But after two days of some pretty hardcore shopping (for a guy mind you), I managed to make a considerable dent into my list. I got stuff my sister, her hubby, my brother, most of my friends, and my niece. I have a few others, but I think my sister has got me covered on the majority of them. I even managed to get a few nice things for myself, which always helps ease the pain (and cost) of spreading Christmas cheer. One good thing about procrastinating till the last minute is 50% off all holiday decorations, which means I got enough lights for my little condo for just eight measly bucks. Kinda scary, but the lights have chemicals on them that are known carcinogens. They were probably made in China. Happy holidays.

An Earlier Age...

Earlier this week, I remembered back to my band days of high school and today I discovered, to my infinite happiness, that gmail now allows you to log onto AIM which of course reminded me of my early days of employment with lazy days of furiously clicking keys as I chatted my days away.

While I probably don't have as much free time at work as I did as a lowly software quality intern, a few minutes here and there to converse with my distant friends will be a nice occasional distraction. Before they blocked it from work, AIM was the primary way I kept in contact with people. Hopefully with it's subsequent return, I'll be able to as they say, KIT, better than before.

So here's to AIM, helping people waste time at work since 1997. Happy chatting.

Flashback...

Our brains can be such a wonder at times. On Monday, I drove home in the early hours of the evening during a brief respite of the downpour which has engulfed San Diego this week. As I cracked my window slightly, letting a current of frigid air, scrubbed cleaned by hours of rain, into the car cabin, I caught the scent of exhaust of the two city buses in the lane ahead of me. The memory the smell triggered hit me almost like a physical force, throwing me back in time over a decade, to a time I spent most of my weekends traveling in a caravan of such buses from school to school all over Southern California.

I could vividly recall the sound of large diesel engines idling and the cacophony of hundreds of voices, some urgent, some casually preparing for the coming performance. My skin itched from the stiff pressed polyester of the uniform and prickled where exposed to the brisk autumn night air. In the distance, the muted staccato notes of a drumline could be heard warming up. And through everything, that smell. The smell of exhaust and fuel of dozens of internal combustion engines mingling in the air.

And as fast as it came, it left, fading like a person walking into a thick fog who's hard edges were quickly diffusing into the white background. I hadn't thought about that time in years but for that brief second, it might as well have been yesterday.