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Buddy's Old Ramblings
January 7, 2010: EARTHQUAKE!
Sorry about the lack of updates... trip home was fun! Especially enjoyed the -23C weather (no I really did!), though I didn't complain too much when I flew back to Cali where the weather was 60F warmer! No pics this year (my camera's broken) but here's what I did:
- Scott's birthday party (once again at The Brass)
- went to Ottawa and saw my relatives (a little unimpressed when the cousins were surprised that "old people" use the term "pwned" as well :/ )
- saw the Body Worlds exhibit.. like most of it, but found the posed plastinated bodies somewhat distateful
- saw the King Tut exhibit.. liked this one!
- visited Marc and spent a night in Welland. Finally played Link's Crossbow Training which I enjoyed
- New Years with most of my univeristy friends (warning: old picture)
- flew back home (luckily with my laptop (or they wouldn't let me bring my carry-on) and with an extra pat-down before the gate)
January 1, 2010: Happy New Year/Decade!!!
December 25, 2009: Merry Christmas!
Made it back to the homeland safe and sound (as did my luggage)! Presents were opened, food was savoured, good company was enjoyed...
December 17, 2009: Learnt about garden path sentences the other day... pretty cool. Especially since I was reading my friend's PhD thesis on compilers and it was cool that humans have to backtrack when parsing too.. we're like big computers!!
December 16, 2009: Went to the Trion holiday party last Friday. It was fun! Good turn out, raffle (which I won some iTunes gift cards), pool tables (brought my cue), drinks and lots of friends!
Then it was off to my friend's going away party (he's off to New Zealand for a year -- jealous!). Didn't stay long, but fun while I was there. Also went to a friend's pot-luck, for which we made custard in chocolate cups. Turns out that hot custard + chocolate cups = melty mess. Luckily enough of them survived for the party.
My non-partying time this weekend was spent helping Charlene make a science contraption. This was also quite fun.. never mixed cement before! It's so cheap, I'm amazed that they can cover their transportation costs..
Since my friend is moving away I bought his old TV and now I'm the proud owner of a 40" LCD! So nice! :)
New Iron Man 2 trailer today!
December 7, 2009: Learned the longest word in the English language the other day: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis! However it turns out to be under dispute. Oh well...
Also went to my friend's annual Decadence Party (bring/wear whatever you consider to be decadent) which was fun. Dressed up in my fedora and drank dessert wine. Yum yum.
Put up my photos from the Philippines trip (sorry there's a lot, I got copies from everyone else's cameras too) (the write-up is here).
Last week I helped out for a baking contest and this is what happened (we made the chocolates and the cheesecake) -- totally won! w00t.
This past weekend also included: buying too many on-sale DVDs at the nearby Blockbuster's closing sale, hanging out with friends, Resident Evil 5, brunch...
December 3, 2009: Went to the International Gem and Jewelry Show... picked up a couple new rings!
Other than that not too much.. climbing.. making desserts for a bake-off. Got some cool new baking stuff: chocolate molds, food colour spray (to be combined with a yet-to-be-made stencil).. fun fun!
Also picked up Muse's new album.. good stuff!
November 27, 2009: Happy Belated American Thanksgiving!
Took the day off to, among other things, do a write-up about my trip to the Philippines (photos still forthcoming).
November 25, 2009: Here are a couple pics of the Sculpey models we made:
Went to Eugene's 30th birthday dinner last night... man my friends are old!! ;)
And now it's time for a long weekend (thank-you American Thanksgiving)... enjoy! (and yes, I'll try to get those Philippines pics up too)
November 23, 2009: Had a good weekend... when I wasn't taking care of Charlene it involved (in no particular order):
-housewarming/birthday-party in SF
-playing Resident Evil 5 (and totally enjoying it!!)
-making little Sculpey animals
-watching Iron Man (after I bought it for the second time at a Blockbuster sale)
-brunch
-climbing and dinner with Marc
Yup fun all around.
November 20, 2009: The trip was awesome!! Totally gained like 10lbs with all the eating, but it was a blast! Will try to write up a blurb about it soon for my adventures section... Other than that it's been working, looking after sick Charlene and watching 30 Rock.
November 8, 2009: After about 24 hours of travelling we made it to Puerto Princessa on the island of Palawan. Already had two huge meals (not to mention a few smaller ones on the planes)... If this keeps up I'm gonna explode!!
November 3, 2009: Halloween was quite fun! Went to a mash-up party where people had to combine two people/things for their costume.. I was the Big Bad Voodoo Wolf Daddy and Charlene was Little Red Riding Robin Hood. Some other good ones were Sponge Bob Marley, Popeye the Sailor Moon, Run DMC3P0, Sherlok Holmes-star Runner.. and many more! Very impressed with the costumes people came up with. Also the DJ was playing mash-ups all night -- how appropriate! :)
Was feeling sick Thursday night so took Friday off and spent about 36 hours in bed... gotta rest up and be well for my upcoming trip to the Philippines! Anyhow the bed rest was awesome and I was also able to catch up on a bunch of shows (Scrubs and Heroes).
Next week at this time I'll be diving!!! :D
October 29, 2009: Finally hooked up my 1.5TB drive last night and it was just as satisfying as I'd expected to see the many many digits of capacity it has!! (theoretically 1,649,267,441,664 bytes) That's almost 100,000 times bigger than my first hard drive!! Ahhhh nerdy pleasure..
Put up a few more sets of pictures last night too: Enjoy!
October 27, 2009: Went to see American Idiot with some friends on Sunday. I quite liked it! Some of the songs even make more sense to me now. :)
After that we hit up the games store (got Woolly Bully and Small World. Then it was off to the comic book store to continue NerdFest '09. Once everyone else departed, Charlene and I went to Cioccolata di Vino for some fancy hot chocolate where we tried out Woolly Bully... not too shabby (even though I lost).
This weekend also contained Eric and Rina's California wedding reception. Fun times were had by all.
Also had another of my "Dinner for Eight" meals... this time it was BBQ meat! There was also a hot tub, but we left before that got going to meet up with some other friends at Absinthe. Didn't realize there was so many different types of absinthe..
Went climbing again last night (this time in Belmont) and managed to scramble up a couple 11a's. Getting better! Still so so weak though...
October 21, 2009: Oi vey, so busy! Got up early yesterday for physio and in my sleep-deprived-auto-pilot drove to work. Didn't realize I was going the wrong way until I got there and was like "wow I'm in early today!" D'oh! Still made to to physio on time though so not a huge loss.
Saw Zombieland the other day, quite funny. Also quite gory. Much more so than I expected.
This past weekend consisted of, yet again, lots of driving. Drove up to, and back from, Eureka on Saturday in the name of Science. Went to Monterey Bay Aquarium on Sunday. After that we went tidepooling! It was awesome!! Touching anemones, finding urchins, hermit crabs galore... fun fun!
Monday I played, and won, my first game of Balloon Cup.
And now back to my busy busy busy busy day at work...
October 13, 2009: Had a busy weekend... well really it started on Thursday and was a menagerie of events whose only commonality was the celebration of another trip around the sun for Charlene. Dinners, drinks, Ingrid Michaelson concert, Japantown, whiskey, brunch, climbing.. you name it!
In climbing news I did a 10c! Also flailed around on a 10b for a while, but eventually got up it hang-dog style... was thinking of going again tonight, but think I'll take the night off and rest up the ol' ankle.
Just picked up Rodrigo Y Gabriela newest CD (well technically I got the mp3's). Pretty sweet.. and for the low low price of $3 (a $5 special at Amazon and I had 2 $1-off promotions).
Guess what else?? I'm the new "gameplay lead" at work! w00t!
October 6, 2009: Finally put up pictures from Florence's Wedding!
And the California Academy of Science!
October 5, 2009: zomg! Went climbing for the first time in 6 months, 7 days and 1 hour (roughly). Took it easy and am still quite protective of using my foot (still have much strength to gain back), but being back on the plastic rock was still awesome!
This weekend also contained: a birthday party lasting until 5am, trip to the comic book store, games purchased from Games of Berkeley, skittle-infused vodka party, working, dinners, brunch, naps, picking up friends from the airport, 30 Rock...
October 1, 2009: White Rabbit!
What a busy weekend! Friday night was the Reel Rock Film Festival. It was fun as always, though not quite as inspiring as previously (it didn't make me want to get out on the rock.. too much stuff I don't relate to I guess: highball bouldering, free soloing, etc). Got a bunch of free stuff too!
Immediately after that Charlene and I headed out on the long drive up to Portland! After a couple naps we got there around 1pm and had lunch at Broder. Fancy swedish hash, danish pancakes and Stumptown coffee are a great way to refuel after a long drive! Pix Pâtisserie was next (a recommendation from a friend!) and then it was off to see Domi and Larry (and Marisa and Joe and Nick). Once we all met-up we checked out a couple scenic parks and went for dinner at the Screen Door. So much good food! The after dinner event was a trip to the huge Powell's Books. Taking up an entire city block this book store has everything! The largest climbing section I've seen! Picked up a chocolatier book and a classic copy of Advanced Rockcraft. Sleep precluded any further activities that night, so off we went..
Sunday started off with brunch. The same people as before but with the addition of my old friend Marty and his wife. Simpatica was the place and the food ended up being similar to the day before: hash and pancakes. Totally different styles but still awesome tastes! Good to catch up with Marty too! On the way back we saw that Next Adventure was having a big sale so we had to stop and check it out (also because Portland doesn't have sale tax it's a great place to buy things). Thought about getting a kayak but saw none of interest. Instead we got matching backpacks! Next up was a trip to the more specialized Powell's Technical Books (a different building that has only, as you may guess, technical books). We geeked out here for a while (almost picked up another quantum computing book, but will instead look for it at the library) then decided to have dinner before starting the drive home. The Farm Cafe was our dinner choice and it proved to be as tasty as everywhere else we'd eaten. Portland sure does have lots of good food!
The drive home was fairly uneventful. Only stopped for gas and made it back in 9.25 hours (at the early time of 3:45am). I took a little poll before I left to see if people thought it was worth it (a 20-hour drive for ~30 hours there)... the poll trended towards "no" but I'm super glad I went. Totally worth it in my book!
Last night went up to SF to see South Pacific. I did pit orchestra for this play while in high school so it was quite fun to reminisce while watching it. Fun fun!
September 25, 2009: Stupid car. Brought it in for an oil change, tire rotation and to get a windshield chip fixed (which just happened on Wednesday night). The first two got done but the third turned into a crack which is now "unrepairable". WTF?!?
Well I'm off for a potentially awesome, potentially crazy, roadtrip to Portland tonight (after the Reel Rock film festival of course)... wish me luck!
September 24, 2009: My dinner went really well last Friday! Fourteen people was a squeeze in my apartment but everyone had fun. Wii, food, drinks, good conversation! Also lucky that all the pork chops just barely fit in my oven too! w00t
Dim sum started off Saturday.. followed by many Big Bang Theory episodes and a nap. That night was Opera in the Ballpark. A fun event where they simulcast the opera on the jumbotron while you sit in the field and enjoy it! The picnic dinner we had beforehand was tasty too (tacos)!
Sunday I totally increased my nerd score by a ton... went to my first ever Ren Faire! It was actually pretty fun -- good food, weapons, mead. A good day! Even ran into Marc and friends there which was even funner. Pictures are here so go enjoy!
The season premiere of HIMYM was on Monday... what a fun show! Also got a new board game: Dominion It's pretty fun... and it'll be even funner when I play it the correct way next time. Heh.
Finally caved to Rahul and went to see a Rodrigo y Gabriela concert. It was super awesome! The youtube videos definitely don't do them justice! Thrash-metal inspired flaminco.. who would've thunk? But yeah, good times! My foot was killing me by the end of it, but worth the pain. :)
Tomorrow's the Reel Rock film tour -- it was good last year except for the venue.. and this year it's at a good venue, so yay! After that gonna be crazy and drive up to Portland for the weekend! Basically only going to get a day there but it'll be a fun roadtrip (hopefully) and get to see a bunch of friends...
Catch ya on the flipside!
September 18, 2009: Another wedding last weekend -- congratulations Florence and Eric! The wedding was fun and it was good to catch up with some people I hadn't seen in a while..
Went to Cal Academy on Sunday. Finally saw the rainforest (which includes a bunch of butterflies) and went to the standard (and better) planetarium show. Fun times over all. That was topped off with dinner at Marnee Thai!
Tuesday night I snuck out early to go watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off at LucasArts with my roommate. Then it was off to a Triva Night in Berkeley.. slowest announcer evar. Did a few rounds and then home for sleep.
Tonight I'm hosting a dinner for a bunch of friends (we do this thing where once a month a different person hosts dinner, so you end up with many yummy foods and only have to make it once), so gotta go home and finish cleaning and cooking...
September 10, 2009: Photos are up!
Suzy and Peder's wedding
Kayaking (and various other activities)
Marc's 30th BirthdaySeptember 8, 2009: Fun long weekend!
Sat: lunch w/ friends at Cafe Boronne -- a little expensive, but I like this place. Especially for just sitting and reading with a fancy drink... mini-golf was up next (which I won!) followed by some arcading at Malibu Grand Prix. Next up was some board gaming, then finally off to a friend's birthday bbq. Good times!
Sun:Kayaking in a nearby reservoir (also found out the the company we rented from does mountaineering courses and they might be up for hiring part-time guides!! Totally gonna email them and see if I work for them when I'm better). Then off to a very scenic wedding in Santa Cruz!
Mon:Brunch, traffic school :( and filipino food for dinner!
Pictures will be up when I feel like it.... Also in good news I sat down this weekend to pay this stack of bills from my insurance.. only to find out that they were cheques! A happy surprise. :)
September 2, 2009: Found a new diner near my place the other night: Jack's Prime Pretty good place! Kinda gourmet diner. They also overcooked my burger, but I'll forgive them as we got there near closing time...
It appears that I never mentioned my accomplishing of one of my life-long dreams! Ever since I saw an add for it way back in Compute! magazine, I've always wanted a terabyte of space.... the other day I got an external 1.5TB drive from CostCo for a mere $120!! zomg. Now I can die happy (even though I have yet to hook it up) :)
August 28, 2009: Wowzers.. another long lapse in updates! So sorry!!
Went to Montreal for a friend's wedding -- very fun! Spent a couple extra days in Montreal, then off to Ottawa for visiting family, then off to Kingston for more family and friends. With some sight-seeing sprinkled in throughout. I miss Tim Horton's already!!
Also attended another wedding a Stanford. Quite a pretty church, but they really work it to fit in as many weddings as possible at that place! It was fun 'cause I knew the people who were getting married there after the wedding I attended too.
Saw District 9 the other day. Good, but super intense!!
Other recent activities include: more camping in Mendocino, a Trion company picnic, good-bye dinner for Karen (she's moving), watching more Heroes, dinner with various other friends, and....
August 12, 2009: Leaving on a jet plane.....
July 28, 2009: Whoa. Movie buying spree. I cashed in my tupperware-of-coins that was sitting on my desk a while ago and got a $160 Amazon gift card... today my coworker reminded me that Dollhouse came out on DVD today, so I bought it! And while I was perusing, I also picked up Big Bang Theory (season 2), 30 Rock (season 3) and How I Met Your Mother (season 4). Hee hee.
At the bachelor party we ate dinner at Espetus, a fancy Brazillian BBQ place. So good! 17 different types of meat (including meat wrapped in bacon)... the salad bar is awesome too (but it's a trick, save yourself for the meat). While there we also tried out cachaca (both straight and in a caipirinha). I'd highly recommend this place! Although our bill came out so high we took photos of it. :P Just be careful when ordering shots that they're $10 each!
July 27, 2009: Many going ons as usual. Been meaning to write numerous updates, but keep doing work (or Facebook instead)...
- Saw the The Hurt Locker, which was quite good!
- Saw the No Doubt concert at Shoreline (which I hadn't been to before so that was cool to finally see!). Concert was awesome too!
- Got a sweet new hoodie from Marc as a belated birthday present. It garnered many compliments today at work.
- Put up the aquarium pictures
- Watched the first episode of Heroes -- good so far!
- Organized a bachelor party for my soon-to-be-married friend Eric. Was starting to get a little stressed over it, but it worked out well in the end.
- My friend's mom is in town and she whipped up a tasty homemade dinner for a bunch of us. Mmmmm... Also got to check out his swanky new patio furniture!
- Went camping last weekend! Up by Eureka.. drove through the Avenue of the Giants which was pretty cool (and educational). Fun times camping amidst the redwoods!
- Down to a single crutch for walking these days... working my way towards none. Very exciting to be able to carry a drink while walking again.
July 15, 2009: Went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium this weekend... the seahorse exhibit was neat and, as always, the jellyfish were very cool. Learned about a bunch of different marine animals. Pictures forthcoming...
More physio... can now ride a stationary bike! Hopefully I'll actually do this and get into better shape soon!
Just got it today, but so far this new Outlook plug-in is pretty sweet! Got it just for a better search but am totally digging its other features too.
PS - Put up some pictures! 4th of July and walking cast!
July 10, 2009: Had my first physio appointment on Wednesday... it went ok, not as hurty as I'd imagined which was nice. Horrible range-of-motion though. THey gave me a bunch of exercises to do a few times a day. Been good at doing them so far and seeing some improvement already, though still a ton to go. In other good news, last night I figured out that I can (somewhat) walk again! I can use my crutches just for balance and can take half-steps (bad foot forward then bringing my good foot forward to be next to it)! Seems simple, but I was quite happy about this! Still not able to take full-steps forwards (the rocking forward onto the toes of my bad foot is the hard part) but getting there! Woohoo!!
July 6, 2009: Hope everyone had a good long weekend! Mine was fun.. my roommate, who works at LucusArts, took me to Skywalker Ranch for their annual 4th of July party. Fun times indeed! (pictures forthcoming)
The Lucas party was actually on Friday and the rest of the weekend was pretty low-key. Watched some movies (Underworld 2, The Proposal, some episodes of Scrubs, Talladega Nights), read, saw fireworks from afar, napping, shopping.. also went to a farmers market and got some fresh fruit. Yum!
The new walking cast is alright. Still on crutches. Can "stand" on my foot (as long as the weight is on my heel), but not so good at the "walking" yet. The super-limited range-of-motion makes walking not very good yet. Starting physio on Wednesday so we'll see what they have to say about all this. (pictures forthcoming as well)
June 30, 2009: Lots of excitement today:
Donated away my old Nissan 240sx -- I'll miss you car you served me well!
Getting my cast off tomorrow!!
Tomorrow's Canada Day (or Dominion Day for those of you pre-1982 people)! We'll see if I go partying depending on how my leg's doing..
Saw the new Transformers movie... it mostly entertained me. No need to rush out to see it though.
Also saw Moon. It felt like a good short story that was stretched into a full length movie. Next I want to see The Hurt Locker!
Stopped by Indian Rock on Sunday. It was cool to finally see it, but annoying that I couldn't climb it. Or go up to the top... I'll be doing both soon though!
Been getiting movie tickets at CostCo lately, much cheaper than buying at the theatre! And there's no expiration date or anything, go buy some now!
In addition to the movies, also went to a couple birthday parties over the weekend -- everyone's getting older!
Anyhow I should probably get back to work, hope everyone had a good June and that July will be even better...
June 22, 2009: Sorry (again) for the lack of updates! Got my new iPhone.. so fast and sleek and fun. Too bad it wasn't able to import my contact list (or more specifically, too bad my Blackberry software kept crashing and was thus unable to export my contact list). Looks like I'll be copying phone numbers over by hand (sooo 1980's). A good time to prune down the ol' phonebook anyhow!
Watched Death Race on a friend's recommendation last night (well, his recommendation was "better than it looks"). It exceeded my low expectations. :)
Other weekend activities included a couple BBQs, a tiny bit of house cleaning and some reading.
Did I mention my new iPhone 3GS?? So exciting!
Went to see Spamalot on Tuesday. We had balcony seats, but since they're not handicapped accessible we got moved into these sweet orchestra seats instead. w00t! The musical itself was quite good too. Haven't watched any Monty Python in a while and yup, it's still funny!
June 21, 2009: w00t writing this from my new iPhone! Yay!!!
June 5, 2009: Man I've been slacking on my updates... maybe I'm actually working at work these days.. :P
Speaking of that, we've been getting good coverage at E3:
- E3: Could Heroes of Telara's new social gaming replace Warcraft?
- Heroes of Telara Unveiled at E3
- First look at "Heroes of Telara"
What else have I been up to? Movies! Watched Rachel Getting Married (a bit slow), Transporter 3 (quite bad) and Role Models (good). Also bought some previously viewed ones (but haven't watched them yet): Bill and The Bank Job (go Jason Statham!)...
Had a belated birthday party last weekend (thanks for hosting Eugene!).. thanks to everyone who came and thanks to everyone who contributed to my gift it's muchly appreciated! Fun times were had!!
Going for dinner with friends tonight and then to Santa Cruz tomorrow for some wine tasting!
May 27, 2009: Birthday was a lot of fun -- and in fact it's still going on! My actual birthday weekend consisted of running around to various parties: a formal party (where I climbed a tree -- suit, cast and all), a party at Marc's house, a vegan cupcake party, a bbq and then my own birthday dinner! We went to New Eritrea, which was my first Ethiopian experience. It was alright and the honey-wine was yummers. I also managed to fit in some time to relax and read in the park too! Fun fun. And now I'm old.
Since I enjoy my birthday so much though I decided to spread it out longer. Had dinner with my climbing friends Tuesday night at B Street and Vine, tasty bruschetta and wine as usual! To top it off I'm having a party (the others were just "dinners") this Saturday. YAY!
In other news I managed to go camping this weekend! Just car camping, but camping nonetheless! Stayed with different people, both of whom happened to be in the Tahoe area. The second night camped with Kathie, Steve and their cute baby Izzie! (pictures coming whenever I fix my desktop computer)
Sorry for my slow blogging I'll try to do better in the future. What can I say.. I'm old now! ;)
May 15, 2009: Oh man 8 days has gone by already?? Let's see...
Star Trek was awesome!! Then ate the rest of the day: crepes, gelato, margaritas, fondue... Mmmmmmm. Worked a bit on Saturday then it was off to a BBQ (including some Pictionary and Cranium -- yup, still only good at DataHead and WordWorm). Used up my 20% off REI coupon Sunday (the last day to do so!). Was gong to buy some climbing gear, but figured that'd just be teasing myself. Instead I got a climbing video: Hard Grit. For some reason I'd assumed it was new, but instead was 12 years old. Oh well, decent, but not Best Evar. Also found some new trendy-looking restaurants in Foster City! Who knew!?? Thanks to Yelp for helping me find new places to eat.
Only 2 days left of my 20's. ZOMG!!
May 7, 2009: Well it's been just over 5 weeks since I broke my foot. Get a new cast next Wednesday. For those of you in the area: start thinking of awesome new things to draw on it!
Had dinner with Marc last night at a place called Range. It was super tasty and I'd definately recommend it -- especially the chocolate souffle for dessert! Nice to hang out with him and chat.
In other exciting news I'm going to see Star Trek tomorrow morning! A big thanks to Trion for taking us out! (also look for our booth at E3 -- see the press release on our site)
May 4, 2009: Happy May! Almost my birthday, gotta update my wishlist! ;)
Dinner with Karen, drinks, sleeping in, BBQ dinner, tv, buying floor-mats for my car, watching Wolverine (and being one of the few to like it), making/eating homemade pizza's at Marc's house, playing (and gold-star'ing) Rock Band. That was basically my weekend.
Oh, I also (finally) went to Nightlife at the Cal Academy. 'twas fun! I borrowed a wheelchair from the museum and got me and my friends into the planetarium disabled-vip-style! Unfortunately the show wasn't so hot... Nightlife itself was pretty fun though! Gotta go back and do it again, didn't actually see too much while I was there. After that a bunch of EA folks headed out to Yancy's for another drink. Fun fun.
Being (somewhat) mobile again is awesome! However I still need to remind myself to take it easy now and again -- not 100% yet! Does make you appreciate the ease of everything with a fully working body though. So many activities involve walking/standing! But no worries, I'm not complaining, just informing you able-bodied folks to be thankful for such things as being able to park blocks away from your destination and "just walk there." :D
April 25, 2009: Let's see.. what have I been up to? Since being more mobile I've:
- started off with some lunches/dinners with friends
- went wine tasting in Santa Cruz
- went to Eugene's party (and had much cast signing)
- nipped into work for a big meeting
- started going back to work
- generic hanging out with friends
Tonight is a friend's birthday party and then potentially going to see Anvil: The Story of Anvil.
April 22, 2009: Back at work today! Oh the fun never stops... been meaning to update my site. You'd think with all my laying on the couch that would've been the thing I'd be most likely to do.. but somehow it wasn't. I blame the drugs. Better update coming soon (hopefully).
Just put up more ankle photos!!
March 30, 2009: Pretty sure lots of exciting things have been going on (hiking in Point Reyes, skiing at Dodge Ridge again, etc) but I'm going to skip over those and hit up the newest one: my broken ankle (don't click on the either of the first two pics if you're squeamish with injuries). I'll edit this post later to add more details.
March 16, 2009: Fun weekend! Let's see... left work early to meet friends for dinner before going to see the Banff Mountain Film Festival. The films were great, as usual, though less adrenaline-inducing than previous years.
Saturday was a Miracle Fruit party that masqueraded as a birthday party. I've been wanting to try this for a while now so was pretty excited to finally try them. Of course my expectations had been blown way out of proportion.. so instead of lemons creating heretofore unimagined tastes, it did what they claim to do: make sour things taste sweet (eg: make pure lemon juice taste like lemonade). Other notable things were: sour cream, salt & vinegar chips, lemons...
After that it was off to Marc's house for another birthday party.. this one was more of a straight-up party. Good times indeed.
Stayed over at Marc's place as I had other city plans on Sunday. Lunch at a curry place with friends, then off to see The Watchmen. The movie itself was, like the miracle fruit, overhyped in my opinion. Maybe I'd have liked it better if I had read the comic first... however I do like the reserved seating at the Kabuki theatre! We bought our tickets before lunch and didn't have to rush back to get good seats -- we already knew we had them!
Been reading The Jungle (by Yossi Ghinsberg, not the Upton Sinclair one). Not too far into it, but liking it so far! I like it how it mentions places in Peru and I'm like "I know that", "I've been there", etc. Also found some time while up in the city to sit down and read in a random park. Niiiiiiiiice.
March 13, 2009: Happy Early Pi Day! I know actual Pi Day is tomorrow, but I celebrated early. Otherwise who would eat my pies? It was a great success and the pies were devoured in a matter of minutes.. mmmmmm.
And tonight's the Banff Mountain Film Festival! Fun day indeed!
March 10, 2009: Gotta go to bed, but here's the photos from my showshoeing trip! We snowshoed from Badger Pass to Dewey Point (about 7.6mi round-trip) and camped out at Dewey Point. It was awesome! Even met some other campers who were kind enough to let us party with them for a bit. :) Some of my favourite photos are:
March 5, 2009: Mmmm... just had some strawberries dipped in sugar for dessert. Reminds me of being a little kid!
March 3, 2009: Snowboarding pictures are up! Took me way too long to figure out why my thumbnail generation script wasn't working... but at least it's fixed now! (had to specify the full path to 'convert', wonder why I didn't need to do that on my old server?)
Forgot to mention that I finally got a chance to try Millenium last week! It's an up-scale vegan restaurant that I've been meaning to try for a while now, and it didn't disappoint! Yummy, fancy and healthy...
March 2, 2009: Snowboarding this weekend was great fun! Not too busy, pretty decent weather (at least on Saturday, Sunday was chillier but had fresh snow). Watched Sneakers.. I'd forgotten how good a movie it is! We all made it home safely.. unfortunately our boards didn't. :( Due to a faulty roof rack they're now scattered somewhere on the freeway.... Pictures will be forthcoming.
Picked up Prodigy's new album at Amazon's MP3 downloader site.. on sale for a mere $1.99 (and DRM free!). Coolio.
Gave blood this morning for the first time in quite a while... met up with my friend who was there donating platelets and we finished up around the same time so we were able to chat over some juice and cookies. Just like elementary school!
Got my copy of Retro Game Challenge today too.. now to find some time to actually play it...
February 24, 2009: Not only is it Free Pancake day (aka Fat Tuesday), it's also Blair's birthday -- Happy Birthday!
It's been rainy here the past couple weeks. While some people find that dreary and unlikable, it also means that there's new snow for boarding! Most likely going up this weekend with some friends!!
BAMRU is having another recruitment phase now.. thinking more about joining this year..
Watched the second episode of Dollhouse last night. Definately an improvement over the first episode. Hopefully this upward trend will continue.
February 19, 2009: Just added a new math joke! (thanks Ari)
Over the weekend I made some espresso cupcakes with a milk chocolate ganache and while chocolate frosting.. yum yum! Pictures are here. Feel free to commission some for your next party!
What else is new? Probably lots because I haven't updated in forever.. still climbing fairly often; flashed an 11c on the weekend. Want to go up to Tahoe again soon as it's been snowing a ton up there..
February 13, 2009: I just got this in an email:
Please let me know if you have any questions about this or if you do not receive this emailWTF?!?!?
In other news I'm going up to SF to see Robyn Harris perform. She boulders at the gym I go to...
February 4, 2009: Some fun things going on lately:
Dinner with my uncle! Haven't seen him in ~13 years or so... crazy! He's probably reading this so I'll just say it was GREAT FUN!
Got a Roomba! Unfortunately it had to charge for a long time so I haven't actually got to see it in action, but hopefully tonight!
Edited my first Wikipedia entry: go and learn about Thomas Harriot. Now you'll also see that he independently discovered Girard's Theorem.
Yup, the excitement here never ends!
January 31, 2009: Been seeing a few movies lately...
- Valkyrie: a pretty good movie! A little slow, but good.
- Underworld: Rise of the Lycans: Not so good. Didn't meet my low expectations, however my friends weren't as down on it as I was.
- Milk: quite a good show! Not a super happy-feeling movie, but definately worth a watch.
In other very exciting news, I climbed a 5.12a the other day! Yup, I think that's about the 3rd one I've done. :)
January 25, 2009: Happy Chinese New Year (or "'s Eve", depending on your time zone)!
January 20, 2009: Holy no update Batman! Let's see... since getting back I've gone skiing/snowboarding not just once, but twice!
Once with some climbing friends where we went to Dodge Ridge. We were very nicely hosted by Jenny's parents and thus had tastey home-cooked meals/desserts after skiing/boarding. The first day I boarded and it was pretty good -- tore it up on the intermediate runs with Charlene. Kinda made me think of home as we went down the icy runs in the morning... the next day I decided to mix it up and ski -- so nice! Was a blast to hit-up the black diamonds again and not have to totally concentrate on not falling down. Even got in a few jumps (and a box) in the terrain park! First time skiing two days in a row (at least within recent memory) and was surprisingly not too sore afterwards!
Last weekend was the annual Stanford ski trip (wtih which I tag along, as do a bunch of other people). We stayed in an amazing house and went skiing at Sierra this year. The snow conditions were about the same as the weekend before, but my rental boots sucked. Oh well, after some fiddling with the boots/bindings they became sufficiently workable. While we were up there for 3 days we only skied for one day. The rest of the time was spent hot-tubbing, gaming (both card, board and video), watching various tv/movies in the house's awesome theatre room and generic relaxing. Good times as usual!
And today, I'm very happy about Obama's inauguration!
And now for some entertainment: Super Useless Super Powers (thx to Marc for the link!)
January 7, 2009: Been reading a bunch lately!
After some initial trouble getting into Anathem (too many made-up words), I heartily enjoyed it and plowed through the 900-paged tome over the holidays. Though I must admit that the idea of having to carry it in my backpack again might have been a motivator as well..
Next up was one of my Christmas gifts: In Defense of Food. It was an interesting take on the food/health relationship and even inspired me to make a trip out to the farmer's market!
Digging through my to-read pile I came up with The Alchemist next. Currently only 1/3 through it, but my initial impression is: an easy read with a good moral lesson, though a little too in-your-face with the metaphors... we'll see how it ends up!
January 4, 2009: Made it back to Cali safe and sound (albeit delayed)! Here's my pictures from the holidays:
Christmas
New Years
Now I need to go and start unpacking/laundering/etc... and to install the new 4GB of memory I bought (for cheap) at Fry's yesterday!!
Also (finally) added a write-up on my Costa Rica trip!
December 30, 2008: Hope everyone's vacation (if they're on one) is going well! The weather in Toronto is finally getting somewhat cold. Yay! One nice thing about being back in Canada is the (relatively) cheap ice wine. Mmmmm....
Happy Early New Years everyone!
December 25, 2008: MERRY CHRISTMAS!
December 24, 2008: Made it to Ontario! Despite the scheduled storm I only had a one-hour delay in Vegas. Luckily Marc, Eugene and Deb were on the same flight so I had people to hang out with. Eugene even let me win a game of Scrabble! ;)
While there is some snow here it's suddenly decided to warm up and start raining, creating huge puddles everywhere. Not overly awesome when I only have low-rise shoes to wear. Oh well, c'est la vie!
Happy Holidays everyone!!!
December 17, 2008: Since it's been rainy here and not good for pictures, I just found some on the internets:
Yup.. that's pretty much what my car looks like..
December 15, 2008: You might have noticed that I've started a trend of buying stuff lately... clothes at the Mountain Hardware sale, a MacBook, an iPod Touch.. well today was no exception! Picked up my brand new Honda Fit!!! Very exciting! Pictures will be up once we have a nice sunny day for me to take photos (quite rainy today).
Aside from that, had a big milestone at work which helped to keep me busy. Between that and bouldering and learning iPhone app programming and reading and watching TV and partying (4 parties this weekend!) I haven't had much time to update my site. Sorry!
Bought my plane ticket home for the holidays. I'll be in Ontario from the 24th until the 2nd. Contact me if you're up for something!
December 7, 2008: Writing this from my new iPod Touch! w00t!!
December 6, 2008: Wheee... worked my first weekend in a while. Can't really complain, at least it was productive!
Still enjoying the MacBook -- learning all about Quartz now..
Just a quick note, gotta go get ready for the EA Christmas party!
December 3, 2008:
See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die
November 30, 2008: Put up pictures from the recent Yosemite trip: check 'em out
Also went and test drove a Fit today. It was about what I expected.. probably will still get it though...
November 29, 2008: Wow, what an exciting past week or two! Unfortunately my site was in transition, so I'll have to catch up on it all now...
- moved my site over to the new web host
- went to see Royal Robbins (and Ed Drummond) speak about his early ascents in Yosemite
- had a day-trip to Yosemite and climbed Munginella as well as the first pitch of Royal Arches
- had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with friends (made a chocolate cherry raspberry custard pie)
- went hiking up in San Pedro park
- my car crossed the 200,000 mile mark! (video forthcoming)
- bought a shiny new MacBook!! (writing this on it now)
- going to test drive a potential new car some day on this long weekend
November 27, 2008: This was updated with my awesome new web form! No more having to ssh in to update my ramblings!!
Oh yeah, Happy American Thanksgiving too!!
November 25, 2008: The site should be fully working now! Definately let me know if you find something that isn't... I'll be switching over buddy.bbsg.ca to point here shortly.
November 19, 2008: Working on getting the site set-up on my new web host.. be patient..
November 12, 2008: I'm back!! Costa Rica was fun, and while I haven't written up a blurb about the trip yet, you can amuse yourself with my pictures in the mean time. I'm now a big fan of hot springs!!
Haven't been doing too much since I got back: laundry, watching Extras (finished season 1).. went bouldering yesterday and there was a coach there in the room. He gave me a few simple tips that made a big difference! Made me think I should find a coach somewhere... also heard good things about this book (which you'll note I added to my wishlist).
November 3, 2008: Other things I've done this weekend:
Went to the REI Used Gear sale and got some good deals: this bag (somewhat used) for only $45, a compression sack and a small headlamp!
Watched a few episodes of Extras, pretty funny so far!
Packed for my trip to Costa Rica!! Leaving tonight and I'll be back on Sunday, don't miss me too much!!
November 2, 2008: Hope everyone had a fun Halloween and that their November is off to a great start! Here's some pictures of costumes at Trion...
Went and checked out the California Academy of Science the other weekend, jolly good fun! Though it sure was busy. Good thing I got a season pass so that I can go back and actually get tickets to the planetarium!
October 24, 2008: I've got good news and bad news today.
First the bad: Alpinist (the best mountaineering magazine) has shut down. Very sad..
Now the good: Nicola won a vegan bake-off! Mmm.. vanially cardamom cupcakes with ginger "cream cheese" frosting and candied pistachios!
Tonight I'm off to the new Planet Granite for their End of Summer party! Wheeee... also just fixed 2 memory leaks! What a day!!
October 20, 2008: What have I been up to for the past week? Drove up to Berkeley on Thursday with Sha to watch the overly-crowded Reel Rock Tour. The parts I could see around the people in front of me's heads was pretty awesome!
Saturday was busy, got up a bit early and headed off to the HMB Pumpkin Festival, which was pretty fun (and tasty) as usual. After that I met up with Eric, had dinner, and then proceeded up to a friend's party in SF. The party was fun and ended up with us Rock Band'ing until 2:30am.
Sunday was more relaxed... finished off season 2 of Weeds, walked The Dish, read at Cafe Baronne, dinner with Blairik and topped it off with some HIMYM watching.
October 13, 2008: I have two nation-specific messages today:
- Canada: Happy Thanksgiving!
- USA: Happy Columbus Day!
In other news, Marc just bought a car! Prety sweet! Now to find a car for myself...
Went to see the movie Blindess last week. Don't let the 7.1/10 rating on IMDB fool you.. instead I'll refer you, loyal reader, to this more accurate review (if you're too lazy to click on that link, the tag-line for the review is "Is it in bad taste to say 'don't see it'?"). Yeah... wouldn't recommend it. I hear the book's good though!
October 7, 2008: For those of you too lazy to follow my last link, it was to my finishing time for the San Jose Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon this past weekend -- a time of 1:56:41!! Finally got my sub-2-hour race in. :) Had a pace of 8:54 min/mile...
Sunday night, after a short nap, I went up to SF to see a co-worker play at Hotel Utah. It was a good show! And a good excuse to have a beer with some friends!
October 5, 2008: w00t!
October 4, 2008: Watched the vice-presidential debate on Thursday with some friends. The commentator mentioned that this was probably one of the most highly watched vp-debates and I concur, definately my first one. While I'd like to say I was interested in the topics, I mostly watched it to see Palin make some embarassing comments. And by not doing so she did quite well! Met the low expectations anyhow.
Last night I went up to SF and bouldered at the new Planet Granite. Pretty sweet!! Can't wait to try some of their non-bouldering routes too! After that I headed off to Marc's house and played some Agricola. A little complicated (even in the easy version), but quite fun! Not really complicated, but a lot of things to keep in mind... It's also ranked #1 on BoardGameGeek.com!
I forgot to mention the Rancid and Aquabats concert I went to last weekend! It was super rad!! (did you catch the Aquabats references?) A fun part was when the Aquabats got some young kids up on stage and then threw them into the crowd so they could crowd surf. Hilarious! And, of course, Rancid was pretty awesome as well. We were up in the assigned seating area (no wonder the tickets were so cheap), so we missed out on the moshing, but had fun nonetheless. I must be getting old, 'cause it was nice to have a seat instead of having to stand the entire time. :P
It's official: I'm going to Costa Rica! Bought my ticket yesterday! (for reals this time.. I thought I bought one last weekend through the TACA website, but due to some weirdness it got cancelled on me...)
September 30, 2008: Last day of September! Ooooohhhh.....
Let's see.. what happened last week... went out for our sometimes-semi-regular Wednesday night drinks with work folks... Thursday was supposed to be climbing, but I didn't go (too tired this week for some reason). Friday was a work party.. at which I may have imbibed one or two drinks. Saturday invovled some Spore playing. Sunday mostly consisted of not-running and watching Weeds Season 2...
What a brief update! And now I'm off for sushi (possibly followed by some climbing)... take care my faithful readers!
September 23, 2008: w00t monies for Trion!
Heart Walk went fine.. relatively uneventful. For a good cause though!
Went to Marianne and Josh's Wedding on Saturday. It was fun despite some initial planning problems.. it was great to see friends from out of town (as well as some in-town friends)! My photos are here...
Sunday consisted of more hanging out with Marc, Mike, Vicki, Josh and Marianne. Many games were played, both electronic (Rock Band 2!!) andd board, and some delicious ice wine was imbibed. Fun fun!
Also have a highschool friend in town for the week.. always fun to see old friends again!
September 17, 2008: I'm doing the Heart Walk tomorrow, please support the cause!
September 16, 2008: Had a pretty good weekend! Friday night fell for the now-classic "we'll just go out for one drink" plan and ended up having, let's just say, a few more than that. Tried out a new bar though, which proved to be fun!
Saturday, after lunching with some friends we went and watched Burn After Reading. It was enjoyable, though less comedic than I was expecting. Not sure if I agree with the 8.1/10 score it's getting IMDB...
That night went to a friend's Moon Festival Party (yes, we had moon cakes). Good to see some people I haven't seen in a while, in addition to some tasty food!
Sunday I dragged myself out of bed early and went for a 8-mile run at Sawyer Camp Trail (which a friend suggested). It went quite well! With the nice chill air, and new scenery to interest me, I managed a 8:52 pace! For the upcoming half-marathon I need to keep a 9:09 pace (or better) to meet my goal of sub-2-hours. Assuming I managed a couple more long runs over the next few weekends, things are looking good! That afternoon I met up with some climber folks and did more rescue skills practice..
Last night I flashed a V4 at the gym and tonight I'm off for some badminton.. it's good to be active!!
September 12, 2008: Got my dose of culture this week by going to see the SFO perform Beethoven's 9th! They also played Knussen's 3rd Symphony, but it was a little to contemporary for us.. luckily Beethoven was awesome and a great way to end off the night!
Other activities this week included climbing (flashed an 11b and forcing myself to do mid-to-upper 11s again), reading, downloading Dexter Season 2, watching Terminator...
September 7, 2008: Another relaxing weekend... drinks with some work folks Friday night.. Saturday consisted of some bouldering, biking, reading, dinner with Blairik and hanging out with Marc. Today was brunch, more hanging out with Marc and then a beach party! Fun fun.
Finished reading An Android's Dream which was pretty fun. Consistent with Scalzi's other books IMHO. For a second I was worried about what to read next, but a quick look behind me and I see my large stack of books to read. Running out of books is never a problem in my life!
September 1, 2008: Had a pretty relaxing long weekend.. saw Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express, both of which were pretty funny but not amazing. In addition I played a (relative) ton of piano -- and unfortunately my middle-C key is making a little clicking noise whenver it's pressed, read a bunch (started and
Hope you all had fun too!
August 31, 2008: Darn you incompleteness theorem! Haha..
August 30, 2008: Went out for Marc's Birthday the other night.. he's definately older, and hopefully wiser!
Managed to rouse myself for a run today (gotta keep in some semblance of shape for my next half in October). Eked out 3 miles at a sub-9 pace which I'm pretty happy with. Was having trouble finding my (slightly faster than normal) pace outdoors, but after some more time on the treadmill I think I've got it down... A 9-minute pace will get me just under my 2-hour goal.
OMG! Just noticed that if you google for Trion we're the first hit!! Take that Air Purification & Humidifcation Systems!! (who's been beating us on google listings since we started).
August 24, 2008: Made it back safe and sound from Lassen! Hiked up Lassen Peak Trail, meandered over to a nearby lake for a swim and then continued on to Bumpass Hell to see the boiling mud pits. Fun fun! Topped off the night with some good food and wine and we were soon enough fast asleep.
Before heading home we stopped and checked out Subway Cave, which is a lava tube and, IMHO, highlight of the trip! Very cool!
August 21, 2008: OMG I am sooo tired today... I even had a 20 minute nap this evening! But alas, now I must go pack for my trip to Mt Lassen this weekend.
Pictures from my most recent trip are up: Wedding and Canmore.
Good night y'all!
August 18, 2008: Made it back safe and sound! Pictures will be up shortly...
August 13, 2008: Off to Canada, back in a few days!
August 12, 2008: Finally got around to looking up the big explosion in Toronto.. craziness! You can find a full article here (though kinda odd that the best article I found was on the BBC site and not on CBC).
August 11, 2008: More fun times this weekend! Had a couple friends over Friday night and played Wii and board games... and, of course, watched Dr. Horrible again...
Saturday I went to my first gay wedding with Babs! It took place at a lovely place in Capitola overlooking the beach. Very pretty and the speeches were actually all quite interesting to boot!
Sunday started off with a bit of running -- trying to speed up my time for the
next half-marathon in October.. maybe this time I'll actually break 2-hours!
Then it was off to a CostCo run with Marc and Chris. Finally ended the day off
with some... August 3, 2008:
Survived another half-marathon.. not my best time, but I'm relatively happy
with the results (2:11:35 which works out to 10:03 min/mile).
Congrats to Sha and Emily who rocked their previous times!In other news went (very briefly) to a (belated) house-warming party Saturday night! Great to see some old friends and Congrats to Mary and Dan!!
July 29, 2008: Bye bye Scrabulous.
July 28, 2008: This weekend was pretty good... relaxing yet not devoid of activities.
Had dinner and drinks with friends on Friday, then continued the drinks with Marc late into the night. Saturday I taught another rope skills course for a couple friends, then attempted to make a raspberry tart for a friend's housewarming but failed. The party itself was a good time though! Sunday consisted of sleeping, a nice long bike ride and attempt #2 at the raspberry tart. This time I got the custard to turn out fine, but when I went to top it with the raspberries they were moldy! Tonight I'll buy more berries and finish it off (hopefully).
July 22, 2008: Managed to hang-dog my way up another 12a last night!
July 20, 2008: Had a go a taking my car radio out to fix the alleged loose-wire I've got. AFter taking out some random screws it didn't come out. :| After some internetting on how to take out a radio I gave up. However I did manage to get the 2 CDs that were stuck inside my car out, so it wasn't a total loss!
Also went to see Batman on Friday; it was great! A little gruesome at times perhaps, but good!
Know what else is good? My new obsession: Dr. Horrible! I've only watched it 3 times so far (though there's still more time this weekend!).
This morning I joined Team EA and did the AIDS Walk. It was a bit chilly this morning, but the walk ended up being pretty good. Thanks to my supporters!
Almost forgot to mention what I did last night! Finally went to a beach bonfire party! It was a friend's birthday so a bunch of us found ourselves on Ocean Beach huddling around a fire to keep warm... can finally check that one off my list of to-dos.
July 18, 2008: Climbing was good last night! Did a couple 11c's. :D
Played badminton this Monday, 'twas fun again. Even went and bought a racket... now I guess I'm commited to playing at least another 9 times (to make the purchase worth it).
Also played some Lego Indiana Jones, fun fun!
July 15, 2008: Got back from YACTTLL! (Yet Anohter Climbing Trip To Lover's Leap) Went and did Corrugation Corner with Mike, Surrealistic Pillar with Mike and Steve, and finally Deception. It was a great trip! Did some classic routes, got sketched out a bit, got to rescue some peeps.. fun fun!
July 8, 2008: Had a good (busy) weekend! Running, BBQ, climbing, lots of reading, Rock Banding...
Started, and finished, American Shaolin! Now I want to go to China to study kungfu... went and ran with Sha 8.2 (long) miles.. hung out at Court & Shelby's (and friends) on the 4th...
Erik finally guilted me into playing badminton last night.. and it totally surpassed my low expectations! Now I'm going again next week!
July 1, 2008: Happy Canada Day!
June 27, 2008: Pictures are up from the Cathedral Peak trip.
June 20, 2008: I'm such a slacker lately at updating my blog.. well, not terrible, but I'll try to be better..
Despite being unimpressed with the trailers I went to see Kung Fu Panda with Jess last weekend. It was really good! Go see it! Right now!!!
This weekend I'm going with my rock climbing friends to Cathedral Peak. Should be a good time (a long drive, but a good time)!
June 14, 2008: Was another sCaRy Friday the 13th yesterday. Luckily nothing bad happened (to me at least).
This morning Sha and I ran ~5.5 miles in preparation for the SF half-marathon we signed up for. Oi vey! Way outta shape! Luckily there's (relatively) lots of time before the marathon to start running again...
Put up the pictures from Andria's wedding! Cognratulations again!!
June 9, 2008: What a trip! twenty-odd hours after leaving TO I'm still making my way back home... my flight from TO was delayed a couple times, which then made me miss my connection to SF. Luckily the airline put me up in a motel for the night and booked me for the 8am flight the next morning. However, I figured that since I was already going to miss work I might as well stay a little and see the nearby Mall of America; only took an hour on the phone to get that rescheduled. Unfortunately the lady could only get me on a flight that arrived in SF at 11pm. :( After looking at the mall this morning I made my way to the airport and the nice lady there managed to get me on an earlier, and direct, flight! And now it's time for me to board the plane (whee to having sH on my phone!).
June 5, 2008: Had a(nother) good climbing night on Monday, though I was tired I managed to fall up a 5.11c...
And in (yet another) moment of insanity, I joined Sha and Emily and signed up for the SF Half Marathon. Now to get back into running shape.
Anyhow, I'm off to catch my flight to Canada now. Cya!
June 2, 2008: Spent too much time playing Boom Blox and now my arm is sore. Such is life... had to play the last few levels with my left hand!
Other weekend activities included lots of reading, meeting work folks up in SF at Toronado and then over to Mad Dog in the Fog, dinner with a bunch of friends, going to Target, hanging out with Marc, climbing...
I'm heading back to Kingston this weekend for my friend's wedding! Yup, still gotta finalize some plans to meet up with other friends... and buy a wedding present.. it'll be fun times though!
May 28, 2008: Had a good long weekend! Went to a B&B with Jess on Saturday night. Whilst there we to Mezza Luna where we found that they have the best creme brulee ever. It was sooo good! Definately have to go back to there to see if it was a fluke or if then can consistently make the World's Best Creme Brulee.
It was also a movie-ful weekend; saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (good, but don't expect it to be as awesome as you think you remember those childhood films of yore), The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (also good, luckily I missed all the "obvious" bible references) and also finally saw No Country For Old Men (alright, but wouldn't have won any Oscars if it was up to me).
Then went climbing with Jess on Monday. Good times!
May 21, 2008: Put up pictures from the Lover's Leap trip!
May 19, 2008: Another birthday come and gone. But the memories will last forever! :) [Editor's note (4/20/09):I actually forgot what I did for my birthday and had to look it up on my ramblings. :P] Was up at Lover's Leap with Jess and the rock climbing gang. Kathie, Mike and I headed up East Crack the first day. It was a pretty good route and I (unintentionally) created the Buddy Variation on pitch 3. I'll have to add it to the guide book! After getting back to camp and downing some beverages, Mike and I headed back up the trail to meet the rest of the group at the top of Knapsack Crack. That night consisted of scrumptious food, a few drinks and lots of smores.
Day two Mike and I waited in line and climbed Bear's Reach before packing up and heading back home. All-in-all a fun trip! Pictures forthcoming...
May 15, 2008: Last Sunday could easily be dubbed Most Productive Day This Year. Started the day off with brunch in the city with a friend who moved back to the area. Once back home I proceeded to:
- Wash 3 loads of laundry
- Fold 5 loads of laundry (I was behind)
- Clean my bathroom (tub is sparkley now)
- Put up a clock I got for Christmas
- VPN into work and get a new feature done
- Finish reading a book and a magazine
- Unpack one more box of stuff
It's getting hot down here.. today was over 100F (37C)! Going climbing this weekend, exciting!
May 8, 2008: Watched Man of the Year last night with Jess (well, I watched it while she slept). It wasn't great, but had some obvious political commentary in it.
Also saw Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay the other day. Nothing special. Kinda funny since I went in with low expectations. :P
May 4, 2008: So far this weekend's turning out pretty good! Semi-randomly bought a Wii yesterday; they're usually out so I casually asked the guy at Target if they had any and he said yes! I figured I might as well get one while I can, so I walked out of the store with that, an extra controller and Mario Kart. Fun fun!
Also met up with Sha at Planet Granite for some morning climbing. 'Twas good, had a go at their cracks and generally enjoyed the different routes!
Today slept in a bit, had breakfast with Jess at Noah's Bagels then rode my bike down to her place (while she drove my car). Yay for exercise!
Off to see Iron Man!
May 2, 2008: Forgot to mention that I went to a farmer's market last weekend and picked up some yummy fresh-squeezed orange juice. Very tasty!
In other news.. ummm.. I know _something_ happened... been catching up on this season of Battlestar Galactica... climbing a bunch....
May 1, 2008: Happy May Day!
My website has been reduced to seasonal well wishes. :(
April 21, 2008: Happy Earth Day!
I also added some of Justin's photos to the Consumnes trip and the Red Rocks trip sections.
April 20, 2008: Well, survived another climbing trip! This time to Consumnes River Gorge. Drove up Friday night and stayed at the scenic Sly Park Campground (after using some nearby 2x4's to get over the one-way-severe-tire-damage-spikes). The next day we headed over for some climbing. Set-up a few ropes and did Dinkum Crack (5.9), The Pod (5.7), Test Piece (5.8), either/both of Dreamer (5.10c) and Last Tango (5.10c), and some other 5.8-ish route... It was a nice place with an easy approach! I guess we came at the right time: not too busy and not too hot!
Pictures are here.
April 14, 2008: Upgraded Google Maps on my phone this morning and got this cool new feature! (actually my old phone could do the same thing to find nearby movie theatrs, but much less cool without the map part)
I also forgot to mention the fun blast from the past this weekend: You Don't Know Jack! Found Jess' old CDs and installed the game. Still fun! :)
And here's your British lesson for the day:
nip v.intr. Chiefly British. To move quickly; dart.
April 13, 2008: Almost Tax Day! Hope you (like me) already filed your taxes!!
My week back at work was fine (not that my vacation last weekend was really long enough for me to forget about it!).. busy but nothing out of the ordinary.
Friday night Jess and I whipped up a tasy (and healthy) vegetable frittata! It took a bit longer than the book said, but was really good (IMHO)! And since it made enough to feed six, I've been eating leftovers all weekend. Mmmm...
On Saturday we wandered around San Mateo for a bit and went to B Street & Vine for lunch -- they have some excellent bruschettas! After that we drove down to Shoreline Park where we rented a paddle/pedal-boat and pedaled around the lake. I was pretty excited as I'd really enjoyed paddle-boats when I was kid.. and they are still fun!! Photos can be found here. To top off the eventful day we met up with some friends at a local bar.
All-in-all a good start to the weekend!
April 8, 2008: Survived our trip! :) We hit up Tunnel Vision (a 5-star, 6-pitch 5.7 R route) the first day. Despite warnings of crowds, we saw no one else on Angel Food Wall that Friday! It was a fun route though finding the trail back to the car in the dark proved to be non-trivial.
The next day we played around at a place called Panty Wall. Did a bunch of single-pitch, sport routes and Justin and Mike TRed an 11d. Meanwhile Will and I made friends with a couple other climbers and partook in their beverages...
Sunday we were planning on getting in a few hours of climbing, but instead succumbed to the lure of the sleep and the hot tub. All-in-all a great trip! Pictures are here.
April 3, 2008: Put up pictures from the ball finally!
Had a super busy last weekend, but don't have time right now to type about it. You'll have to try and figure out what happened from the pictures and I'll write about it later. Why don't I have time you ask? Because I'm about to fly out to Vegas for some climbing at Red Rocks!! Wish me luck!
March 28, 2008: Man I'm a slacker on updating my page lately! Hmm...
Been to a ball (my pictures soon to follow), which was fun. Hadn't been swing dancing in forever so good to dust off the ol' dance shoes too.
Aside from that, more rock climbing, reading (finally finished my current math book), finished a couple DS games, working out again and watching a bit of TV. Oh and working! Still enjoying work.. doing lots of new and interesting things (amidst the old and boring of course)...
Congratulations to Jess' brother on becoming a dad! Hopefully I'll be over to see the little guy this weekend!
March 21, 2008: At home sick today. Booo.
However it has given me a chance to relax... and finish my taxes... and catch up on my reading..
My uncle's also in town on vacation, so going for dinner with them tonight!
Also going to a
March 16, 2008: Sorry for my lacksidasial updating... went up to the city for Sha's birthday last night. It was a pot luck so Jess and I made a bunch of cheesecakes: chocolate-chip (with cherries on top), pumpkin, coconut and lime. Pictures are here. Good times. The party was fun too! Good to see some folks I haven't seen in a while.. and even played a little Rock Band.
March 14, 2008: Happy Pi Day!!
March 5, 2008: As the start of my roommate and I's Oscar-nominee-watching-spree, we watched Michael Clayton last night. It was a good movie, but overall the pacing was a little slow IMHO. My mom's sending me No Country for Old Men and Juno, so we'll see how those stack up...
March 3, 2008: Forgot to mention that I went to a UW Alumni Event at the nearby Hiller Aviation Museum. It was pretty good. The speaker gave a good talk, yet the mingling was meh. Haven't been feeling too mingle-y lately. I used to be good at that stuff.. oh well!
March 2, 2008: Shaping up to be a fine March so far! Went for a nice bike ride, picked up Professor Layton for the DS, and met up with friends for dinner, drinks and games last night.
In other exciting news, I distinctly remember reading in a dream I had last night! In fact, I dreamed I was dreaming, and in that inner-dream I was reading. Perhaps you can only read in when (dream-level mod 2) == 0?
Went to see National Treasure: Book of Secrets on Friday night. It was about what I expected: predictable, yet moderately entertaining. Bet'cha there's going to be a third one...
Hope everyone else's March is going well!
February 29, 2008: Happy Leap Day!
February 27, 2008: Got my new passport in the mail today! w00t! Now I'm free to leave this country again!!
In other news, climbing was good this evening. Just did some low/mid 11's -- good times.
At work I spent the last couple days optimizing some code. Now I knew the code was kinda bad to start with and expected a 10-50x speed improvement. Well! After rewriting most of it and doing some tests, turns out I actually got a 1000x improvement! Hot damn!
February 25, 2008: Watched the Oscars this weekend. It was about what I expected: a moderate distraction between cooking dinner, reading and getting a massage. I had hardly seen any of the nominated movies this year so wasn't overly interested in the results. Looks like I should go watch Juno and No Country For Old Men though!
Did a little research at the library on cars this weekend (reading the Consumer Reports magazines). What to get.... with odd timing my car starting making new non-good-sounding noises on the way home. Luckily they've since disappeared after some burnt-plastic smell. I realize this would probably concern most people, but in my eyes, the problem is now gone! :P And unfortunately this isn't really anything new with my car..
Got together with some friends for dinner, drinks and board games Friday night. Much fun was had, but unfortunately my stomach wasn't too happy (and stayed that way all weekend in fact).
February 21, 2008: Happy Birthday Nic!
Went to watch some of the SAP Tennis Open last night. It was my first watching of professional tennis in person and it was pretty entertaining. Luckily I also had Rahul there to explain the finer points of the game as well.
Just finished watching Sicko... man, makes me want to get outta here as fast as possible and go back to Canada... one day....
February 18, 2008: My how fast the weeks go... Valentine's Day was nice, we went out for dinner (it was busy), but will do something more exciting at a later date (Delayed Valentine's if you will).
Been working on my Facebook app a bit, probably done enough for now... though I still need to look into their "terms of use" for taking people's money. :) Then maybe adding some "pay-only" features... we'll see.
Climbing's alright, did the 5.12a again and actually did worse than my first time on it. Probably wasn't concentrating enough since I'd already done it before... hopefully get a chance to give it a few more goes before they re-do the routes. In other climbing news, watched King Lines with Sha this weekend. Awesome locations, sick moves, all you could want from a climbing video!
February 11, 2008: Had a good weekend -- went skiing in Tahoe with a couple friends. Stayed at a friend's cabin and then went to Sugar Bowl the next day. Pretty nice place, not too busy and decent hills. Hot weather again too!
Went running this morning and then climbing tonight. Been feeling rotund lately, so gotta get on that!
February 7, 2008: Happy New Year!
February 4, 2008: Awesome!! Did my first 5.12a at the gym tonight! Wheeeee!!!
February 1, 2008: White Rabbit!
Finally put up my Christmas photos. Enjoy!
January 31, 2008: Whoops, almost forgot to pay rent! Heh heh..
In semi-related news, I used one of the new envelope-less ATMs last night to deposit a cheque. Very impresseive! It took the cheque, automagically read the amount it was for and everything! Pretty slick...
January 27, 2008: Went and hung out with Marc yesterday. That encounter involved a Costco run, much Scrubs watching and some obligatory Rock Band-ing. Fun fun.
I also did a short write-up about my Peru trip (the slideshow I made is also available there). Enjoy!
Jess and I spent the afternoon crafting. I made a (maple) Tree(-ling) and she made a Lonely Dollop.. (from this book)
January 24, 2008: Watch out world! I've signed up as a Facebook developer and got their sample app working. Now to continue on, write a super popular Facebook app and go broke from the hosting/bandwidth costs. :| I guess a popular app pretty much _has_ to include advertising (or another revenue source). I have a few ideas for non-annoying ways of doing it...
Got up early today (Jess had to go to work) and went to the gym! First time all year!! Felt pretty good to go running again!
January 22, 2008: Finally got around to posting the great dane pictures from the hostel:
January 21, 2008: Was in Tahoe this weekend for the annual ski/snowboard trip. It was fun as usual and we had amazing weather while on the mountain! Additionally I feel like I've become a much better boarder than last year (and without a whit of practice to boot)! Other highlights include hot-tubbing (apparently drinking & hot-tubbing shouldn't mix), the awkward turtle, Rock Band and San Juan.
Pictures are
January 14, 2008: Had a random weekend:
- Drinking with work folks on Friday
- Made some chicken parmesan and baked yams with Jess on Saturday
- Played my christmas present with Marc, Erik and Jess
- Went for a decent bike ride -- was getting antsy about not exercising
- Bought a couple books
- Through some combination of Draino and plunging, I got the drain in my tub working again. No longer do my showers turn into baths!
January 7, 2008: Oh I forgot to mention! The printer is actually pretty cool (now that it's working and I stopped being dumb about the cool photo paper I bought). Printed out a bunch of 4x6's and am quite happy with them. :)
January 6, 2008: Mostly recovered and unpacked from the holidays. In fact, I've even unpacked stuff from when I moved in! Putting pictures up (which is in turn allowing me access to the boxes which the pictures were stacked on top of), giving the house a good cleaning (which I'm wont to do when roommates lesave me alone in a house).
Also went to visit Marc in his place up in the city. Pretty sweet house! We played some Rock Band and Halo 3 and went for dinner at a nearby chinese restaurant.
Friday night, went out with Jess, Courtland and Shelby for dinner and drinks. Last night I went up to the city and had dinner with Sha, Flo and May-Ling at an Afghan place that would've been super close to my old house. Why didn't anyone tell me about it last year?? Oh well... live and learn!
January 1, 2008: Happy New Year!
1st? 2nd? Depends which time-zone I'm in right now... either way, after the long ordeal of getting home I'm off to bed!
December 20, 2007: For those of you wondering about my new printer: it ended up being a boo, yay, boo, boo, boo, yay. So in the end it works.. though I'm not holding my breath on how long that lasts...
In other news -- I'm flying back to Ontario tomorrow! Wheeee....
December 12, 2007: Heh, reading Sha's site and realized that I forgot to mention that I went to an Ozomatli concert a week or two ago. Good times!
In other random news, when I bought my new camera it came with a free printer! Yay! Except the store was out of stock, so the warehouse had to ship it to me. Boo. It arrived pretty quickly though. Yay! So I was all excited and set it up. But it didn't work. Boo. So I called technical support and they said it was broken (duh) and would send me a new one. Yay! So it arrived today... perhaps later tonight I'll know if this story ends with s a "yay" or "boo".
December 9, 2007: Feeling sick the last couple days, but made it out to a friend's Decadence Party last night (where you wear and bring whatever you consider to be decadent). Jess and I went in our PJs (being sick and all) and she made some Krispy Kreme bread pudding, yummy! Pictures are up here.
Today I went for brunch with a bunch of folks for a friend's birthday, then it was off to buy a Christmas present (and thus inaugurating my shopping for this year). And now it's back home for some R&R!
December 5, 2007: I updated my wishlist a bit yesterday. Actually I didn't add any new items, but rather fixed it after some guy in Arizona on September 14th thought it'd be funny to check off all the items on the list. That's right -- I'm watching you!!! Anyhow, I've had to go the unfortunate step of adding a security question to my wishlist page. I imagine that everyone who's using it will know the answer.. but.. umm... email me if you don't I guess.
Going to a slideshow night on Friday as a bunch of my friends have been travelling lately. In fact I'm working on my slideshow right now! Don't have MS Office installed at home, so I downloaded OpenOffice yesternight and am trying out their presentation package. So far it's pretty easy to use!
Work was pretty good today... although I was firefighting random bugs all day (some were mine, some were other folks') I did manage to finish up a first-pass on this large task I've been working on for weeks now. Quite happy to get that (mostly) working and checked in!
December 3, 2007: w00t -- did my first V5 today at the climbing gym!
Sorry for the lack of updates... been busy moving houses and working a bunch... I'll try to be better!
November 23, 2007: Hope all my american friends had a great Thanksgiving! Mine was good.
Kind of nice have a short week of work to ease me back into the routine after my trip. Though I may be going in tomorrow for a bit... don't despair though, it's all because I believe in the company I work for and want to see it succeed!
Today was packing, errands and watching Enchanted. Despite having to wait in line with about 50 kids, the movie was pretty good.
November 18, 2007: I'm back from Peru! It was awesome!!! A trip report will be forthcoming...
PS - Pictures are up!!
November 4, 2007: Busy packing for Peru, but I've finally put up the last few set of pictures!
October 31, 2007: Happy Halloween! I'm still figuring out my costume, but I've got a couple ideas going...
Getting ready for Peru! My sandals broke unexpectedly 2 days ago, so last night I headed off to REI to find some new ones. Nothing I really liked, but since I need some I picked some that were comfy, yet kinda funny looking. Looking back in my Ramblings it seems that I bought my last pair in only March. What a piece of crap!
Went and cleaned my room at my new place last night (with help from Jess). I now deem it livable. Well... as soon as I move my stuff there anyhow.
October 29, 2007: Trip to Canada went well. Wedding was awesome. Work's busy. Peru trip is approaching rapidly. Will update (with photos) later.
October 24, 2007: I've been busy lately. Much work to do and I've been slow at getting it done. Maybe I'm getting old?
Anyhow my trip to Peru is confirmed! Flight booked and everything! Oddly enough, two other folks I know will be Peru at the same time... small world!
I'm also headed back to the homeland this weekend for a friend's wedding.
It was Jess' birthday last weekend. We had a couple dinners for her (family then friends), but spent most of the weekend playing our DSes (I got her a Crimson DS).
October 16, 2007: Exciting news! The climbing competition results are up! I got bumped up to the Intermediate category.. and then tied for second place! w00t! Umm... the astute reader may also have noticed that I also placed second in the female category.. long story.. but uhh.. it's a mistake. :P
After the comp, went over to Mike's house for a wine tasting party.. tasted a bunch and gave my input (he's trying to pick wines for his wedding). Good times! Met a bunch of other climbers there too.
Sunday, Jess and I went to the Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival. Mmmm... pumpkin.
October 13, 2007: Couple exciting things going on!
Yesterday I went to EA where they had the the top two junior national ping pong players come by for a show (Ariel Hsing and Lily Zhang). Pretty cool to see them play! Made us get even more excited about playing at work...
Also my Inca Trail trek got confirmed! w00t! Now to book the hotel and flight!
And finally, I'm going to do a bouldering competition today!
October 9, 2007: Finally my complacency about eating food off the floor has been vindicated!
October 8, 2007: Please read the appropriate line:
- Canadian: Happy Thanksgiving!
- American: Happy Columbus Day!
This weekend included such events as: Fleet Week, Blue Angels (kinda like the Canadian Snowbirds), bike riding, rock climbing (where I re-hurt my shoulder), reading, HIMYM...
And now it's back to work (and, of course, ping pong!).
September 28, 2007: Forgot to mention that Jess and I went to see the Yosemite exhibition at the Stanford museum last weekend. It was a bit smaller than expected, but pretty nice overall.
In other exciting news, the Canadian dollar was (briefly) worth more than the US dollar this week! While it's kinda cool in theory (and for people in Canada), it's not really that cool for me...
September 25, 2007: What did I do last night you ask? Well, after rock climbing and watching a couple more episodes of HIMYM, Marc and I headed down to the nearby EB on the hopes that, even without pre-ordering, we'd be able to pick up a copy of Halo 3. The place was much quieter than we expected, with a mere ~35 people standing in line at midnight. Got our copy within 10 minutes and went back home to play. Only played for an hour or so 'cause I'm old and need my sleep, but it was pretty fun. And a whole new level of nerdiness for me. :P
September 23, 2007: This weekend it turning out pretty good so far. Friday night Jess and I met up with Blairik (which is their "couple name") for dinner in PA. After which we strolled to the nearby bookstore and I, at least, proceeded to buy books as I am wont to do. Picked up Dreaming In Code and In Praise of Slowness. The first book just sounded intriguing (and so far it's living up to that), and the second book my sister is currently reading. Previously I'd read another book about the pace of society and rather enjoyed it, so hopefully this one will be similarly interesting!
Saturday involved some errands, HIMYM, reading a game of Scrabble, dinner with Marctha (another couple name) and then a few games of RoboRally. I deem it Best RoboRally Night Evar. Usually I get sorely trounced in the game, but last night I won 3 games in a row. :)
So far today has consisted of more reading, phone talking, online-ing and preparations to go do laundry. So off I go to launder!
September 19, 2007: Finally beat Bloxorz! Now maybe I can get more work done. :)
Aside from climbing, been taking care of Jess this week as she's got the flu. However I guess I've been making good progress through my large book I'm currently reading, so there's always a bright side to things!
September 14, 2007: You can partially blame Bloxorz for my lack of updates.
Had a good bike-ride last weekend. Went down to Palo Alto, then Jess and I went for a bike ride as well! Good times...
Aside from that, been climbing a bit again. Still gotta get a new rope though.
September 8, 2007: Buddy: You know when you switch what eye you're using and you can see something you couldn't see before?
Jess: Yeah
Pretty cool to have someone else that actually knows what I'm talking about! :P
And now I'm off for a 40-odd-mile bike ride, cheerio!
September 5, 2007: How was everyone's long weekend? Mine was fantastic! Friday night and all day Saturday I had some quality Me Time. Used this time to catch up on some household chores that I've been behind on (which I dislike), reading, programming, watching movies, cooking, baking, sleeping. Awesome! Made some jalapeno spaghetti sauce which was yummy and a chocolate cherry custard pie for a party I attended on Sunday. On the programming side of things I worked on my latest personal project, but spent most of this weekend learning QT so that I could give it a nice UI, quite happy with QT so far!
Sunday I went to Jess' for a bit, then we headed out a the aforementioned party.
Monday I hung out with Marc, which mostly meant playing Gears of War, which we beat that night.
All in all a great weekend!
September 1, 2007: White Rabbit!
Had a great day: reading, baking, programming, cooking, relaxing! Hope yours was as good as mine!
August 31, 2007: Another month comes to a close...
Sorry about my lack of updates, still being busy these days, nothing too fun though I'm afraid..
However I did see Claire Da... err.. I mean Stardust a couple days ago. Pretty good with many funny moments! A friend likened it to The Princess Bride which I thought was pretty apt.
Aside from that and work, just been playing online Scrabble and occasionally rock climbing...
PS - Check out this video on image resizing!
August 21, 2007: Sorry for my absence dear readers! Just been busy with stuff the last couple weeks.
Went to a co-worker's cottage this past weekend. Went hiking, read a bit, played Scrabble, chopped down some trees, split some logs... quite relaxing!
Also went to another friends' going-away dinner. All my Canadian brethren are going back home it seems!
Work's going ok. Re-did the input system so that it's much more usable now. Pretty happy with how it turned out. I'm sure you all care so much anyhow. :P
August 9, 2007: The Dongs are in town visiting San Francisco, so we met up for dinner last night. So nice to see them again!
Rafting pictures are up!
August 7, 2007: Went whitewater rafting this weekend for a friend's bachelor party this weekend (pictures forthcoming). We had the craziest bus driver (which is a whole story in itself) as well! Anyhow, suffice it to say that a good time was had by all.
Picked up a 2GB microSD card for my new phone, so now I can load it up with music and videos. :)
July 31, 2007: Alright now, getting a little better with my phone, especially with updating my web page with it! The first update was super painful, but much better now... battery life seems pretty good too. It _did_ crash on me this morning, but lets just pretend that that was a singular fluke.
Also picked up Guitar Hero: Encore on the way home last night. So far not super impressed, though I'm not a huge 80's fan to start with. Hopefully the final few songs will justify the purchase, though I'm not holding out too much hope.
July 30, 2007: The race results are up!! I ran it in 2:03:03 (just over my goal of a sub-2-hour time). Came in 1419/4924 overall and 249/503 for my age-group.
July 29, 2007: w00t! I'm writing this via midpSSH on my new phone!
July 28, 2007: A momentous day! For the first time in four years... I got a new phone! It's a Blackberry Curve! Only had it for a few hours, but seems pretty cool so far... the lady at the store was surprised at how old my previous phone was. Heh.
In other news I'm running a half marathon tomorrow! Gotta get up real early (4am!) so I'm off to bed now. G'night!
July 24, 2007: Went to Tuolumne this weekend. Had to abort our attempt on Matthes Crest as after almost getting to the base after the long uphill approach due to a sprained ankle in the group. The next day we did Hermaphrodite Flake.
Today I got a phone call saying someone's been using my credit card! D'oh! Luckily they caught it quickly; the first invalid purchases started last night. Not sure where they got my number from, though I had been using that card more than I used to. Thanks to the anti-fraud division for catching it and Bugger Off to the people using my card!!
July 19, 2007: Sorry for the lack of updating. No good excuse. Just busy I guess.
Went to Yosemite this past weekend for some hiking with Scott and Gemma. It was good times. Not only did we hike, but went on a 2-hour mule (or maybe a hinny) ride to Mirror Lake. That was interesting! It was also nice as we went to Glacier Point and Sentinel Dome; places I hadn't seen before! Pictures are uploading now...
Going back to Yosemite (well Tuolumne) tomorrow to climb Matthes Crest with some friends. Looks awesome and I'm pretty excited for it!
Normally at work I barely surf the web anymore (too busy doing actual work!)... but the past few days I've been distracted by 2 things: Scrabble on Facebook and OGame. Combined these two things are seriously impacting my work!!
PS - Pictures are up!! If you look real close in this one (full size), you can see someone slacklining between Lost Arrow Spire and the top of Yosemite Falls!
July 9, 2007: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=14591
July 5, 2007: Happy Belated Independence Day my Amaerican friends!
My mid-week day off was pretty nice. Played a lot of sudoku (finishing off the games in Brain Age on the DS), went to a BBQ at Scott & Gemma's (before they move home), then back to SF to watch the fireworks. At times like that it's pretty nice to live there and not have to deal with the horrendous traffic afterwards!
Didn't mention it earlier, but went to a Mac store the other day to check out the iPone. It was cool. Cool enough for me to buy one? Not really. It was thinnger than I expected, which was nice though. And they had them activated so you could actually make (and receive) phone calls on them...
Oh, also went climbing with Jess yesterday! We went to the Sunnyvale PG for a change of pace. Did a very fun "wide and reachy" 5.10c/d (vs the usual "long and reachy")!
July 1, 2007: Happy Canada Day!
Yesterday I was in a coffee shop wearing a Canada shirt and a random guy was like "Happy Early Canada Day". It was nice. Thus, if any of my friends still in Canada see an American on July 4th, wish 'em a Happy Independence Day!
Friday night was good! Went out drinking with folks from work. And the best part? Work paid for it! Sweet!
Saturday was a friend's birthday party, which was fun and included much awesomely bbq'ed food.
Today, Jess and I went for some massages at the Nob Hill Spa. They were super, and the place was pretty darn sweet! They had a really cool (seemingly) "waveless pool". Hard to describe, but very cool. After our massages we lounged around there for a while and enjoyed the comfy robes. Next up was a healthy lunch at Ghirardelli Square (I had a banana split!). Following that we drove down to Menlo Park and met up with some friends (and their kids) at the pool. Thus much swimming was enjoyed. To top the day off I had a home-cooked dinner with a couple friends and watched some tv. Super!
June 26, 2007: Waking up at 5am + new espresso maker at work + 50mg of caffeine per shot = Mostly Awake Buddy
June 23, 2007:
June 19, 2007: I'm sure I did lots of fun things this weekend, but that's not why I'm writing today. Actually, not too sure what I'm going to write about.
Started reading a book on topology; something I've wanted to learn about for a while now... Whee!
Bought some new pants (which I just ripped on the ping pong table).
June 13, 2007: Nothing much new, Do Nothing Day was quite the success. Biked into work again yesterday; nowhere near my sub-two-hour goal, perhaps I was tired... took the CalTrain home. Conductor guy got all uppity about me "riding" my bike on the platform (when I was just rolling it with a foot on the pedal). Anyhow, he really harshed my buzz for public transportation.
Had a visitor in at work today to play ping pong. Had some really good games. Ping pong is fun.
But in a different note: Plants recognize siblings??
June 10, 2007: Today is my official Do Nothing Day. So far things are going according to plan!
However I did manage to put up some pictures of Jess' cats and Jason and Sara's wedding.
Whoa, gotta go before I ruin my plan for the day!
June 8, 2007: Happy Birthday Dad!
Pretty sure I did stuff this week.. but what was it? D'oh.
Oh yeah! Went to a friend's toga birthday party! Pictures coming soon...
Then went to a friend's wedding! Pictures also coming soon...
Well moving on, I also just got an altimeter watch. Unfortunately it has poor reviews, but I was all caught up in eBay bidding and bid on it before checking the reviews (be sure you don't do that as well)! When it arrived the battery was dead, but I just got it replaced and it seems to be working fine for now. Whee!
May 30, 2007: Man, long weekends rock! Went to see Pirates 3 Friday night. It was... long. Not the best of the three, but alright. Could've been shorter though.
On Saturday Jess and I met up with Blairik (aka Blair and Erik) for lunch at The Creamery followed by some climbing at Summit Rock. Only there for a few hours, but we all climbed some 5.8 and 5.9. Unfortunately I brought my crappy guidebook so I don't know the names of the climbs. Erik also managed a tricky rappel!
Sunday we, once again, met up with Blairik, but this time went to Muir Beach where we met up with Shamanda & Co. for some hiking and cold-beaching. It was fun! Even ran into some folks we knew there randomly!
Monday was my relaxing day: sleep in, read, played my birthday video game, made some brie & raspberry phyllo tarts, then headed to Erik's (again!) for a Memorial Day BBQ. Fun times were had by all.
May 25, 2007: In another bout of recent updating, in a recent conversation I learned that there really is a "the time at the beep is..." phone number! And that number is: POP-CORN (767-2676) Wow. All this time I thought was just another part of Hollywood fiction..
PS - In a late-breaking update, it turns out that POP-???? works for any for numbers! The conspiracy deepens...
May 24, 2007: Rode my bike to work again today. Continued the trend of decreasing my travel time, today was 2:06, so close to my sub-two-hours goal. Next time I'll probably be there. According some calorie calculator I burned ~1500 calories this morning! Another day of that and I can say "bye bye" to a pound of fat!
May 23, 2007: I've seen/experienced/etc 17 of the 52 nominees for the "Seven Wonders of Canada". w00t.
May 21, 2007: Oh man, totally forgot to give the Bike-To-Work-Day update! It went pretty well. 50km in 2:20 (about 40 minutes faster than my previous time!). Getting it under 2 hours shouldn't be too hard once I nail the route some more. This time I actually stayed on the route which made it not only faster, but much more enjoyable due to the less traffic. In addition, since it was bike to work day, some bike store I rode by handed me a free bag o' stuff which I snagged while riding past. At another point I passed a table of free food, but I just rode on by as it was swamped by other bikers at the time... thinking I'll try to bike to work on a weekly basis. For some reason I've been planning out an exercise schedule to get myself into top shape... perhaps for my mountaineering plans? Well I just pushed those back from July to November, so we'll see if my motivation lasts that long.
May 20, 2007: For my birthday some friends and I headed over to the relatively new Red Lobster (which happens to be somewhere I like to go)! Good food and conversation was had by all. Thanks to everyone who came, it was good fun!
The next day Jess had reserved me for a surprise, which turned out to be a tasty meal at a fancy restaurant. Including some carpaccio which I've wanted to try. Mmmmmm...
Saturday I helped out with a friend's puzzle-game-thing by belaying teams at a local climbing gym. It was pretty fun. I've been wanting to check out that gym for a while now, so I can check that off my list too!
That evening it was off to Scott & Gemma's party. Congratulations you two!
Sunday was a little more relaxing... slept in, then went to see Shrek the Third. The theatre was full of kids, but thankfully they were relatively quiet through the movie. THe movie itself was pretty good. Though definately the lowest out of the three of them. That's to be expected I supose... Now to see Pirate's 3 next week! Lots of good movies coming up in the next few months actually!
Now I'm at home, doing laundry, buying things on Amazon and researching big-wall/mountaineering courses. :)
May 17, 2007: Happy Birthday to Me
Happy Birthday to Me
Happy Biiirthday to Meeeeee
Happy Birthday to Me
May 15, 2007: A week has passed already? Wow.
Last Friday a contingent from Waterloo came down to my work and interviewed me on video! Apparently I'll be part of their "this is what you can do with a math degree" recruitment video. Hope they make me look good! It was also done with a green screen, so I'm kind of interested to see what they put behind me.
Immediately after the interview I took off with Jess and Marc for a weekend of hiking and relaxing in Yosemite. We hiked around the valley floor and up to the Vernal Falls overlook. After which we headed back for a short nap, followed by dinner, games and dessert. Very chill. Pictures are here.
Sunday night I nipped down to the penninsula to watch some Beauty and the Geek with a couple friends (one of whom gave me an ice axe he had laying around!).
Did you know Red Lobster doesn't take reservations? How dumb is that??
May 8, 2007: Had an okay time at climbing last night. Got there kinda early and bouldered with some more talented folks than I, which was actually quite nice! Tried some harder stuff and got some tips. Rocked the bouldering (for me anyhow) flashing a V4 even! Then it was onto some top-roping with Jess and George which went rather poorly for me. Ah well, you win some you lose some.
May 6, 2007: Went for my first bike ride of the year yesterday! Printed out a map on biking from San Francisco dwon to the South Bay and rode down to Jess' house! Partly for exercise and partly to see how long it would take to bike to work on Bike to Work Day (which is also another special day: May 17th)! Took a little longer than expected, but I think now that I have the directions kinda down and won't have to stop at every turn to check my map it should go much faster. A nice 71km (44mi) ride. :)
After that Jess drove us back to the city where we met up with a bunch of friends for dinner and then drinks afterwards. Good times.
Sunday has been lazier so far, did all my laundry, played some Guitar Hero 2, and now I'm off to wander around the Haight with Marc and Martha.
May 3, 2007: Don't you hate it when you're getting changed in the gym in the morning and you r pants break? Yeah, my button fell off this morning! Luckily I had an extra pair of pants in the car!!
Despite that the gym went well today (for once!), did two miles at an 8:30/min/mile pace! Nothing record breaking, but better than the leisurely pace I've been doing lately. Remember the good ol' days of 7:22?
Did a monster check-in at work today. A whole week's worth of changes. Felt good to get it in. Go me!
May 1, 2007: Hope everyone's having a great May so far!! (all 19 hours of it so far)
Once again I headed up to Mt Shasta this past weekend. This time it was to climb the standard Avalanche Gulch route with a coworker. The weather was fantastic and we made good time on the ascent, reaching the summit exactly at the planned time (thus ensuring we had nice soft snow to descend in). Pictures are up here.
In other news Marc and I have beat God of War 2. If you liked the first one, you'll like the second one! Especially since it's pretty much exactly the same as the first one! Geesh, what have the developers been up to since the first one?? Probably rolling money or something...
PS - Got my rss feed up and going again! Let me know if there are any issues with it...
April 25, 2007: While updating my wishlist today I noticed that it no longer worked! Uh oh. So I've just fixed it, as well as adding a few new things. Stupid "magic quotes" in PHP!
April 23, 2007: What have I been up to? Working, climbing, reading. Finished reading Born on a Blue Day, which is a life story of a high-functioning autistic savant with Asperger's syndrome. Talks about not only his life but the way he thinks and sees the world. Pretty interesting, if not especially well written. At times it made me think I had autistic tendencies, but I've been assured that I'm not.
Originally was going rock climbing this weekend, but that got pushed-back due to poor weather. Instead I went to the re-opening of F&A's. Bought some new shoes (finally). Started reading my book on high-altitude. Slept for 12 hours. Played God of War 2. Hung out with Marc. All-in-all it was very relaxing!
In sad news I was just emailed by a friend about my (lack of) RSS-feed for my site. I hadn't even realized that it got lost when my site went down! D'oh. I'll see what I can do about getting it up and running again this week...
April 16, 2007: YABW!! (Yet Another Busy Weekend)
Saturday I helped a friend move (she moved all of ~300m, but it was as much work as if it was 30km!), after which she treated us to dinner and drinks. After that I met up with Jess and we promptly went down to San Jose, where we went to see her dad play a gig at the new wine & dessert bar `The Perfect Finish`. The music was good and so was the port! Mmmmm....
Sunday I held a little rope skillz course for my friends. Such exciting things as:
- Tying prussiks
- Ascending/descending a rope
- Rappelling past a knot
Following that, Sha and I went to our friend Dave's kid's 2nd birthday party. Fun and food ensued.
I even had more plans!! I then went and met up with a friend who was in town for the weekend. We had dim sum. And it was good. Found out about these steamed egg custard buns last week, haven't ever had them before, but they are amazing!! So of course this place had them as well. Not as good as the dim sum place in Foster City, but still tasty.
April 13, 2007: Hope nothing bad happened to anyone this Friday the 13th! My day was quite good! Got a bunch of things done at work, including finding a bug in our physics engine (whee, new code to poke around in!). Also been kicking butt in ping pong at work the past couple days! After work I stopped by a cafe, listened to the live band there while reading my book and sipping on a mocha. Now I'm at home and about to kick it old style with Marc around this wild town we live in.
Yesternight was a games night with Josh and Marianee which was fun as usual. :)
April 9, 2007: Mount Shasta pictures are up!
Montara B&B pictures are up!
April 7, 2007: Just got back from climbing Mount Shasta! The summit bid was aborted due to a storm rolling in early this morning, but the trip out was still exciting! Despite going solo, I met up with 2 other folks and camped with them last night. This morning we tried waiting out the storm, then finally descended during a lull in the crazy weather. Pretty fun despite the low visibility! The storm had a bit of everything: wind, snow, rain, hail, thunder and lighting! Anyhow, we all made it back safe and sound. Pictures forthcoming...
April 2, 2007: Jess and I had our belated Valentine's Day this weekend. Went to a nice little B&B in Montara! Overall it was quite nice, the room was large and had a pretty stained-glass window in it; breakfast was a simple continental thing. During the day we hung out on beaches and in nearby Half Moon Bay. Jess even got a manicure and pedicure! Meanwhile I passed the time with more Puzzle Quest.
Sunday, after getting back, I got my car washed (so pretty and shiny!) and watched Saved and a couple episodes of Avatar with Erik and Leigh.
March 31, 2007: Puzzle Quest is strangely addicting!! Played for 5+ hours yesterday!
March 29, 2007: Forgot to mention Sha's birthday party !
March 28, 2007: Well I hadn't mentioned it earlier, but I had a business trip earlier this week! My first one!! Went to Austin, Texas for just a couple days (Sunday night through Tuesday night). Didn't get any time to tour the city or do any site seeing, but had fun nonetheless. Cockroaches sure are big in Texas!
Just got back from watching TMNT with Rahul, Marc and Martha tonight. Much better than expected (though I purposely kept my expectations low). Pretty much liked everything except for Splinter. If you like the turtles you should go see it!
Seems like most people at work got a copy of Puzzle Quest today. Pretty fun stuff! I have to go level my character a bit before bed now so that I'll be competative at work tomorrow. :P
March 23, 2007: Another weekend, another adventure!
Piled into a couple cars Friday night and a bunch of us headed off towards Yosemite. Once there we met up with some others and relatively quickly went to bed.
The next day we lazily got up, had breakfast and made our way over to our climbs: Nutcracker (5.8 *****, 5 pitches) and After Six (5.7 ****, 6 pitches)
Didn't get started until pretty late (say 1-ish). Kathie and I on After Six and Mike, George and Steve on Nutcracker. As I led up the first pitch my thoughts were "Dang this is hard for a 5.6/5.7" Even took a nice whipper and was saved by my amazing #3 Camalot (which also saved me when we were at Lover's Leap). After Kathie met me at the belay station she then informed me that some key flakes had been pulled of the route a couple years ago, thus making it much harder. :|
The rest of the pitches weren't too bad. Except for the "Buddy and Kathie variation" we took on pitch 6. Clearly the 5.5 or 5.8 variations weren't spicy enough, so we inadvertently created a new 5.10-ish route. With a poorly protected crux move followed by an unprotectable traverse it's got enough spice for anyone. I think we decided to name it "Don't Do This Kids".
Getting from the top to the descent route also entailed much scrambling. Everything from class 3, to class 4, to easy class 5, to not-as-easy class 5, then some downclimbing of said not-as-easy class 5. Whee. But we finally made to to the indistinct descent trail.
Meanwhile things were going slowly with the other group and dusk was fast approaching. They were definately going to top out in the dark so Kathie and I started back up the trail to help guide them down. But then an injury occurred! Now they must rap off as climbing up wasn't going to happen.
This story is getting too long (or my patience is too short), so here's the rest in fast forward (apologies): called YoSaR, they approved of our plan, the folks on the wall rappelled down in the dark, everyone was safe. Ropes got stuck while pulling them down from the last rappel point (luckily it was the last one!). Went back to camp, ate leftovers, had a beer, went to bed. Got up the next morning, packed up camp, went back to climb the route and collect the gear they rappelled from. Folks were already on the route. Went up and freed the ropes. Rapped back down. Hung out, at lunch. Got the gear back from the people who kindly cleaned it for us. Did the Lower Yosemite Falls hike. Went home.
Quite the epic! Pictures are here.
March 15, 2007: Check out some pictures that Sha took while bouldering a little while ago.
Going to the Banff Mountain Film Festival tonight! Should be sweet..
March 14, 2007: Happy Pi Day!
PS - All missing photos are now back up. Website should be back to normal, let me know if you find anything that's not working correctly.
March 11, 2007: Fun weekend! Had a milestone week at work so a bunch of us had a celebration drink at Sofitel Friday night. Afterwhich Jess and I nipped out for dinner and another drink at Nola's.
Got up early on Saturday for the free CPR course (which attentive readers will remember me mentioning in my previous post). The course went well, we both passed with flying colours and even got out an hour early! Whee. Thanks to the Red Cross for providing such a great service!
After that we spent a few hours shopping. First stop was REI where I spent my refund (and then some) on a new Link Cam, the Half Full t-shirt, Evolv Bandit rock shoes, and some new sandals! A very productive day! All that work then required us to chill out and play video games for the rest of the afternoon. At least until it was time for dinner and then back home for some fancy cakes and tv movies.
Went rock climbing with Sha today. The new shoes were ok, smaller than my previous ones. We'll see how they work out once I get more used to them. Later that afternoon we went to see 300. It was merely ok, not fantastic (as I was hoping). There were definately some "odd" scenes in it, and we laughed at some (apparently) not-funny scenes, but the action was pretty good. Especially if you like alternating between fast-forward and slow-motion. :P
Got all that stuff done this weekend, yet not the one thing I'd planned: my taxes. C'est la vie. Maybe later this week...
March 9, 2007: Website is still not fully functional. Slowly getting there.
In other news: climbing is good, did a V4! Taking a free CPR course tomorrow with Jess. Had a friend stay with me for GDC, good to see him again.
February 28, 2007: Due to a horrible server hardware malfunction the website has been down for 12+ days. Not only that, but all data was lost. Luckily I backed it up last October. Not ideal, but better than nothing. Most things should be back up by tomorrow, and I'll be re-uploading photos since October. Unfortunately I've lost a nerdy new coding page I had created. :( My mailing lists will also take more time before they come back online. Let this be a lesson to everyone: back-up early, back-up often.
October 2, 2006: Some more talk about this weekend's climbing trip:
- Props to my new BD Camalot #3, which was a joy to use
- Everyone did great:
- Mike for his first trad-leads
- Jess for toughing it out at the roof crux
- Marc for climbing the last pitch via headlamp
- Kathie for kick-butt meals
- Steve for his headlmap foresight
- The large hexes came in handy too (despite what I said earlier)
- On the last trip we found that my walkie talkies survive ~15-foot falls, this time we tested them from a much higher distance. While we didn't actually see the results, I think it's safe to say they don't survive 250-foot falls.
October 1, 2006: Just got back from Lover's Leap! Good climbing, good friends... the pictures are already up!
Last week met up with Jess and some swing dancing friends and went to a Cherry Poppin' Daddies concert! Less swing music than I'd imagined, but a good show nonetheless!
September 24, 2006: Went to see my friend's band (The Devolvers) the other night with Marc and Jess (so cool living in the city eh??!). The show was pretty fun and we got free buttons! :) Also picked up their CD (split it with Marc). Apparently there was another good band on afterwards, but Jess and I had already taken off. Oh well...
In exciting news: I got a new computer!! Many thanks to Dan for building it for me! It's a nice Core 2 Due system with 2GB of RAM and a nice widescreen LCD monitor! Even has a very quiet case (you can hardly hear it!), sweetness. So I thought I'd test it out by playing WoW last night... ended up playing until 6:30am!!
Today (after getting up at 1pm) I did a ton of laundry at the local laundromat and played some Monster Hunter Freedom (had to dust-off my PSP to do so). A friend at work was raving about it, so I borrowed a copy off a friend to check out. It's ok... not very far into it, we'll see if it gets better. :P
After that I went to a birthday dinner with Jess. It was fun and I got to see some kids that I haven't seen for a while. So nice when kids are happy to see you!
If you're bored (and nerdy) try this hacking challenge. After looking in the Digg.com forum for the answer to level 3 I got stuck at level 6 (the missing flash.php one).
Anyhow, I'm off to bed now. Ta ta.
September 21, 2006: Tired... too many late nights... too much WoW? Never!
Good news for those of you that prefer me with short hair (and not-as-good-news for those that liked my longer hair), I just shaved my head! Kinda hard to finish up the back by yourself, but I think it looks okay (at least what I can see)!
Still enjoying the new job. Plenty of new and interesting challenges to work on. We're starting to get past the major framework stuff now and are entering actual Game Territory. Oops, I may have said too much already!
September 16, 2006: So yeah.. currently downloading all my new pictures off my camera! Meanwhile I start typing about all the recent going-ons.
Flew back to the ol' T-dot with Marc for a friend's wedding over Labour Day weekend. My mom picked me up at the airport and kindly shuttled me over to the hotel, where I was meeting up with my wedding accomplice (nice to see you again!). Of course one of the first things we did was go to Tim Horton's to satisfy my addiction. Whilst there she taught me a cool way to not spill your coffee in the car (there's a video too (once I get it up on the site))! Anyhow, the wedding the next day was a traditional East Indian one, which was a totally new experience for me. Very cool though! I also really like the fancy clothes everyone had. Pictures can be found here (I really like this one).
The next day, met up with Mike, Vicki, Marc and Cherith for our (semi) annual camping trip! This year we headed off to Grundy Lake Provincial Park. On the way there we had a series of moments that made me glad to be back in Canada: eating poutine, having a Tim Horton's coffee and then everyone singing along to If I Had A Million Dollars in the car... awesome! The camping trip itself was pretty relaxed and consisted of lots of game-playing, reading, cooking and some canoeing to boot. Fun fun fun. Pictures of this can be found here (if you look carefully there's a picture with two moons in it!).
I also (finally) put up pictures from my climbing trip to Pinnacles here.
September 12, 2006: Sorry for the lack of updates! Been back in Toronto for a wedding, then camping, then moving into my new place in San Francisco. Stay tuned!
August 28, 2006: Wow, another busy week! Started my new job! It's pretty fun so far... doing some smaller tasks to get used to the code-base and such, but fun so far! Great to be near EA again 'cause I can hang with those folks as well! The best of both worlds!
Last week Jess and I had dinner with a friend who was down for business. Went to a vegetarian place in San Mateo and had a ton of deep-fried appetizers (who said vegetarian food had to be healthy?!). Mmmmm.... good to see friends from back home!
The rest of the week was ok, had my car in the shop a couple of times (yes, twice in 2 days!), went rock climbing, then drove down to Pinnacles National Monument Friday night. Eventually other people showed up and all was well. Got up kinda early the next morning and headed into the park for a day of climbing. Started off at Tourist Trap where we did the infamous Rat Race (5.7) and Thrill Hammer (5.8+). After that we headed off to Discovery Wall where we sat around for forever. Haha, actually we eventually set up a few ropes. Did a mixture of Swallow Crack (5.6) and Jorgie's Crack (5.10a), and we had another rope set-up on Between a Rock and a Hard Place (5.11a). Then it was back to the campsite for some yummy chicken with a huge variety of spices (salt, pepper and garlic)! Mmmmmmm... the heat actually melted our chocolate for the Smore's, but in fact it turned out much better to have pre-melted chocolate! Awesome!
The next day we split into two groups, with some folks going to Monterey, and others going back for more climbing. After a few more climbs we went over to Monterey to meet up with the others for dinner. Then it was just the long drive home (and dropping folks off)... a tiring, but fun, weekend! Pictures to come..
PS - Nerdy comic!
August 19, 2006: Had fun with my week off between jobs! Ran some errands and generally hung out for the first day and a half. At that point I (semi) spontaneously to go hiking! So packed up and left a couple hours later. Drove for forever and finally got to sleep in my tent at 3:30am. Woke up around 6:45am and started getting ready for the hike up White Mountain Peak (my 3rd Californian 14'er!). The hike went well... met some interesting folks along the way and got up after a mere 3 hours and 6 minutes! Had lunch and talked to the other guys a bit, then headed back down (in 2 hours 54 minutes). The hike wasn't too bad, but I sure was tired when I got back down! More sleep would definately have been a Good Thing. I've even put up pictures already!
I also (finally) put up the pictures from my day hike of the Skyline-to-the-Sea trail.
August 15, 2006: Going campin'! Back on Friday...
August 12, 2006: Moving... packing... whee...
PS - Marc says "Get back to packing slacker!"
August 9, 2006: Found a place to live! Yup, we've got a place in Cow Hollow. The only problem is the lease for the new place starts on Sept. 1, while our current lease ends this Monday. Uh oh. Gotta find a storage locker (already got a friend's place to crash at) and move out this weekend!
Next week is a week off for me! Why? 'Cause I quit EA! Going to a new video game startup! How exciting... the real Silicon Valley Startup experience!
This past weekend was pretty good as well... let's see.. tried to go bowling, but no one else wanted to. :( Saw Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby which was quite funny! Also saw Fun with Dick and Jane which I also enjoyed! Umm... went and checked out the Sunnyvale Planet Granite with Jess. Nice place! Didn't get a chance to try out their new crack wall, but got in a few fun climbs. So nice to have new terrain to explore!
August 8, 2006: Smelling like vinaigrette all day isn't as fun as it sounds, so heed my advice and don't spill salad dressing all over yourself! At least it was funny...
August 3, 2006: Felt an earthquake yesterday! It was of magnitude 4.4 and was the first one that I actually felt! :)
August 2, 2006: Picture this: me on my computer at home, a movie running in the background, a glass of merlot on the desk next to my keyboard. A lazy day of doing nothing? Hardly! This is me working at home! It's great!! No commute, no one to bother me (yet having others accessible via IM) AND I get lots of work done. Ahhh, what a life!
After WAH yesterday (had to bring my poor car into the shop, which cost a pretty penny as usual) went out for dinner with Jess, Marc and Sha. Which was cool since I haven't seen Sha in approximately 8 years!
August 1, 2006: What a tiring weekend! Do you remember last year when I had a few days off and hiked the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail? Well this weekend I went and did the whole thing in one day! Got on the trail at 6:20am and was happy to finish the 35 mile (~56 km) trip 9 hours and 50 minutes later. :)
Afterwards I met up with Jess and we went to a friend's place for a pot-luck and to watch a movie which they projected onto a neighbour's house. We watched Austin Powers and were entertained by a dressed-up Austin look alike! We left somewhat early as I was pretty tired, but unfortunately had car troubles on the way home and ended up staying up late despite the leaving early.
I think I could get into this long distance hiking thing! Anyone want to join me for a long hike somewhere?
July 26, 2006: Bored at work? Try this flash game.
July 25, 2006: Another crazy week. I'll tell you about this weekend (since I can actually remember it still).
Friday Jess and I went down to Santana Row for dinner and general meandering. Sure are a lot of dressed up people there. Also realized I haven't been to a dance club in ages, none of my friends down here are into that kinda stuff... oh well. Maybe I'm just getting old!
Saturday I got up (relatively) early and biked with Florence up to Tiburon again. Weather was really nice, although a little too hot in the city. We beat our previous time and kept up a solid pace. So then we treated ourselves to some gelato... mmmmmm.
After getting back to our hot hot house (outside temperature was 42.7C (or 109F as they say down here))... hmm... something happened? Guess I don't remember this weekend as good as I thought! Hmmm.... and then we went to the pool. How nice and relaxing (and cool)!
Sunday I totally know what I did! Marc, Jess and I went up to the city to look at some houses (clock's ticking). We saw a few places, hung out in Golden Gate Park (where Marc taught Jess to juggle and I started reading JPod), met up with Florence and Babs for lunch at Burma SuperStar which was quite nice. Then we wandered around what I suppose was Inner Richmond and I bought some yummies at a Chinese bakery (egg tarts and sticky rice (seperate items)). A couple more houses later and we headed back home.
I liked just 'hanging out' in the park. It was fun. I need more unstructured play time!
Last night was climbing night. Lucky for you all I took my camera along!!!
PS - Thanks to Marc's brilliant memory I can now share with you my wonderful Saturday night: went out for a friend's birthday dinner. We totally overpacked a large table with people and much food was consumed. Happy Birthday DeWeeb!
July 18, 2006: Went to see An Inconvenient Truth last night with a friend from work. I found it to be both interesting and educational! Made me want to save energy (and thus, the world)!
After walking back to my car I found another inconvenient truth: my battery was dead. Luckily there was a super nice security guard on duty who, since he couldn't leave his post, let me drive his car over to mine and use his jumper cables to get it going again. Thanks! So nice to meet nice people like that. Made me want to be nice to more people.
Now off to save energy and be nicer to people!
July 17, 2006: My my, how fast time passes since my last update! Let's see...
Bought a new digital camera! It's the Olympus 720 SW, which got mixed reviews online, but take a look at some pictures at let me know what you thinkg... (specifically the full-size versions can be a little grainy)
As you might have noticed, those pictures I just mentioned were from the SF AIDS Walk that Jess and I did with Team EA again this year. It was pretty good as usual.
Two weekends ago we went up to Stern Grove for Marianne's birthday. We saw the San Francisco Orchestra play and enjoyed a nice picnic lunch. Mmmmmm....
Aside from that, Jess and I beat Psychonauts. It was a fun game, I'd highly recommend it!
I'm sure lots of other interesting things have happened, but since it's been so long I've forgotten them already. C'est la vie. But check this out before you go!
July 5, 2006: Happy Canada Day!
Happy July 4th!
Happy Generic Long Weekend!
It started off on a low note as Jess and I were planning on having a weekend away, but due to trying to book anything on the Friday before the July 4th weekend we decided to stay home instead. But this, in fact, worked out splendidly as I hadn't quite realized how much I've been needing a weekend at home to laze around and do nothing!
My 'nothing' consisted of playing video games (mainly Psychonauts with Jess), baking a Key Lime Tart, sleeping and a little bit of shopping. I also met up with a friend in the city and we biked over the Golden Gate bridge to Tiburon, had a nice lunch there and then took the ferry back. It's amazing how small the weather systems are around here: totally foggy in the city, but as soon as you cross the bridge it's nice and sunny! The scenery was also very nice up in the north bay, I'll totally have to go biking up there again sometime.
Monday, Jess and I met up with a couple friends at Castle Rock State Park for some rock climbing. We started off climbing under the observation deck by the waterfall (and we had quite an audience at times). Messed around on a couple 5.8's and a 5.10a before some other folks came by and we moved sites to give them some room. We went over to the other side of the falls and set-up two ropes so that we could climb a few different routes (a 5.6, 5.10 and a couple 5.11's). It was somewhat interesting as we had to rappel down and then climb back up. Unfortunately when we got down there and had a better look at the rock it turns out that we were one set of anchors too far over! Thus our climbs were more like 5.7, 5.11d and 5.12a! Luckily the 5.7 was there so we could climb out! Messed around on the 11d and I wanted to try the 12a but I somehow tweaked my left index finger and decided not too (it still hurts even today). After our full day of climbing, we drove over to Big Basin State Park and camped there. We had a yummy dinner and some quality conversations. Followed by a good sleep, some oatmeal for breakfast and then we packed up and headed home.
That gave us just enough time for more Psychonauts before we headed up to the city to watch the fireworks! Even though fireworks have been around for hundreds of years it's nice to see that they're still working on the technology for them! This year I was pleasantly surprised to see a 3d-cube firework! In addition to the relatively new smiley-faces and 'Saturn' (a sphere with a ring around it) ones. Good work Mr. Firework-Research-Guy! Afterwards we stopped in a nearby bar for a drink with a couple friends. Oh, also ran into some people we knew at the restaurant we had dinner at -- we're so popular! :)
And today I beat my friend in a game of chess! w00t! Although I didn't manage to read any more of my chess strategy book this weekend, I definately can feel myself becoming better at the game! It's a pretty cool feeling actually. I'm able to see more strategy and how the pieces work together and such. It really is a deep game! Though I've been kinda neglecting my Scrabble studying so I just played a game online and won! Brought my (semi-new) rating up to 858! The game started off slow as I was getting crappy letters and made a dumb mistake (duh, 'il' isn't a word!) but then some careful rack management got me a bingo ('winterS' for 71) and I pulled ahead. Good day for gaming!
PS - Pictures are now up: biking and climbing!
June 29, 2006: Got to see a sneak preview of Superman Returns on Tuesday! We're making the game so we got free (and early) tickets! It was alright. I actually think I liked it a little more until I started talking to people about it, then after they pointed out these flaws I liked it less. I'm so easily influenced! But even before then, it was just okay, nothing special.
Helped a friend out last night by doing some extreme programming with Marc while being videotaped and recorded. We got the solution in about ~5 hours and we (apparently) were very thorough with our testing (thanks to Marc, I wanted to leave!). Overall it was pretty fun.
Tonight was a UW alumni event, but I missed it 'cause I am staying late at work (gotta get stuff done -- especially since I left early yesterday). However I think things are working pretty well, so I may nip out to a bar with some of my co-workers now. :)
June 27, 2006: Went to dinner with some friends on Friday at a Malaysian place, good fun (and food)!
Saturday, Erik and I headed off for some climbing at Cragmont. While not my favourite place to go, it was shady and cool on what was an otherwise hot and sunny day. Got in a few routes (including the classic Farewell to Arms (5.10a***) as well as some rappelling... That night hung out with Marc for a bit over some movies and games.
Sunday started off with a 3-year-old's birhtday party (which was pretty entertaining actually) and then we progressed to an older crowd at a video/board-game party in the city. Played some Guitar Hero, Burnout 3 and then it was off for some Class Struggle, RoboRally and Brisk. Fun fun.
Went climbing on Monday and managed to hang-dog my way up a (possible) 5.12! If so, that'll be my first one! I also took the lead test and passed (thanks for the belay Steve)! w00t.
June 20, 2006: Another week, another trip to Yosemite! This time I went with my harem.. errrr.. friends and hiked the ever-magnificent Half Dome! The adventures also included sunburns, an early morning ranger talking to our neighbour about his "vee-hic-el", a bear (the closest Amanda and I have ever been to a bear!), a "4.8", meeting random friends on the trail and a cool glass of Yosemite Falls Pale Ale. Pictures are here (got some really nice panoramas too! Thanks AutoStitch)!
Had a relaxing evening last night hot-tubbing with Marc, Scott and Gemma, then watched Mad Max.
In some good news for my eager viewers, I spent some time last night and got image caching working for my site (even though I use dynamic PHP to serve my photos)! This is especially good news for those unfortunate folks on dial-up, now you can much more quickly view my photo pages!
I'm doing the AIDS Walk again this year, so I encourage you to sponsor me. And if you're an EA employee don't forget the donation matching!
June 13, 2006: The trip to Yosemite was good times! Met a bunch of folks from SummitPost.org (my new online hangout), helped haul gear, had some wine, ate lots, jugged some lines, hauled some bags, did some free climbing and made the "Buddy Variation" for the first pitch of The Prow! Pictures are here. Unfortunately I didn't get any of us actually hauling any gear. Oh well.
This weekend I'm off to Yosemite again!! This time to hike Half Dome with some friends. We're renting a van and all driving up together Friday (whoo no work!). We'll be staying at Curry Village which will (mostly) complete my tour of different lodging options in the valley (I stayed at Camp 4 when I climbed Half Dome and was at Housekeeping last weekend)!
June 8, 2006: I've been getting slightly annoyed at some of the web-logs I read at their infrequent updates lately when I realized that I haven't updated my own lately! D'oh!
Vegas was a good time! Good times indeed. All I can really say is that I'm up $5 overall (though at times I was up $90 and down $60). You know how the motto goes: "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."
I'm off to Yosemite this weekend to help someone haul some gear to the start of a climb or two. In return they're going to teach me (and another couple) how to aid climb! Very excited to learn...
There: I've updated. Now update your website! Please.
May 31, 2006: I found a little something that maps out the places you've been in the world. Kinda neat, so much more to go see and do!
create your own visited country map
Went for a nice little bike ride last night. Feel like I'm getting fat, gotta do something about it!
Then (finally) finished The Fabric of the Cosmos; found the last couple chapters quite intriguing: braneworlds, the shapes of hidden dimensions, means of testing out crazy theories. Fun stuff!
May 30, 2006: Man, I can't believe it's almost June already! Time sure flies...
Anyhow the long weekend just passed and I spent it, not alone in Shasta as I'd originally envisioned, but surrounded byt thousands in Disneyland. I think my favourite ride was Buzz Lightyear's (you get to shoot things as you ride!), the Fantasmic show was pretty awesome too (there was a lake of fire!!). Jess and I spent about 15 hours at the park and it was good times. The driving to/from wasn't bad either; we stopped at a cool little store (Casa de Fruta) both times! Pictures coming soon.
PS - Pictures are now up! I like the multi-level mosaic they had (row 2 (and first pic of row 3) in my pictures).
May 23, 2006: Had a good birthday, thanks to everyone who wished me a good one! I went to a little house concert with Jess which was quite enjoyable. While there I randomly met up with a couple folks from Waterloo; small world! There was also a little dinner thingy on Saturday which was fun, good times were had by all.
In other news, I finally got my rock climbing shoes back (they were off getting re-soled) and they're sweet! Although now I have one less excuse for falling off the walls...
May 16, 2006: Not only did I just go to Yosemite and climb Half Dome, last weekend, but I managed to squeeze in a ton of other stuff (tiring myself out while doing so)!
To amuse myself during the solitary drive to/from the park I borrowed a coworker's audio book of Angels & Demons. It was pretty good listening to the book. I was afraid that I'd get bored, stop listening and then get totally lost (in the book, not in the driving), but it went well. Just like being a little kid again and having someone read to you! But instead of a 5 minute story you have 19 hours of CDs. :| From the driving I got through about 5 hours of story. When I arrived home Marc had found his copy of the book so I picked up there where I'd left off in the audio book. Spent most free moments of the weekened reading the book and finished it by Sunday night. Good times!
I got back home on Friday around 2-ish, cleaned up, took a bath (and read) then met up with my visiting friends for dinner and some more board games (this time we played Bohnanza which is a little weird at first and Bang! - A Fistful of Cards, which we altered the rules on to make more fun).
Saturday I got up kinda early and headed out to the Stanford Indian Powwow which was entertaining (and had great roasted corn on the cob). A few errands and more reading took up that afternoon. Then there was the good-bye dinner for my visiting friends at a nice Italian restaurant in South San Francisco. I believe the evening was topped off with a bit of Samaurai Champloo watching with Marc.
Sunday (my day of rest) consisted of almost going on a hike, but instead lounging in, and around, the pool. Nice!
PS - If you have a bit of free time, watch this video. The first minute and a half might be a little slow, but the next section is so totally worth it!
May 14, 2006: Success! Made it up and down Snake Dike! We started hiking around 8am, and though neither of us had watches I think it took about 4 hours for us to get to the base of the climb. 4 hours of uphill hiking I might add. Had a little trouble finding the "climber's trail" that leads to the base of the climb from the main trail, but after a few false starts we found it, then it was some more uphill to the climb.
As we were approaching the climb we could see another party already a couple pitches into it, however we never actually ran into them as they had a good head start. Erik took the first lead and we swung leads after that (in other words "took turns leading"). We followed the route we had gotten from SuperTopo but changed up which belays we used a little (sometimes using the standard ones, sometimes using the farther ones since we were using a 60m rope). The long runouts didn't really bother either of us as the climbing was so easy, and all too soon we were at the top of the climb. Of course the top of the climb didn't mean the top of Half Dome. We still had 1000' of class 3 slab climbing until that goal.
At the top we took some pictures and ate lunch. Erik had made me a peanut butter and jam sandwich for lunch, and unfortunately I don't like peanut butter. However I was so hungry that it was the best darn peanut butter sandwich I've ever had! After that we went hand-over-hand down the downed cables. I was amazed at how steep it was and that there weren't more stories of tourist hikers falilng off it. Although I suppose it would be much easier with the posts up, the wood planks down and a pair of gloves. After that we ran into some folks still on their way up and they informed us that it was 4:15pm. With 9 miles of hiking still to go we wasted little time chatting. Hard to believe that they were still on their way up though! 400' of cable climbing plus the hike back from wherever they started from? They weren't even the last hikers we passed on our way down! No wonder you hear about people lost in the dark so often! After much plodding and knees that were starting to get sore, we made it back to the car at 7:40pm; approximately 11.5 hours after leaving. Not too bad in my opinion! ~16 miles of hiking with ~4800' of elevation gain (and loss) with 8 pitches of rock climbing thrown in there. All-in-all, a good day! (and we even made it back in time to pick up some King Cobra).
May 9, 2006: Climbing Thursday was good times, getting back into 11's finally! Also met some guy who I've talked to online at the gym, maybe we'll go climbing sometime!
This past weekend we hung out with Mike and Vicki who are down for a visit! We wandered around Japantown and Chinatown, had dinner at The Stinking Rose and then back to Marianne's place for many games of Bang!. The next day it was off to Mount Diablo where we did some geocaching! We found 5 caches, which brings my total up to 7, and is also the third country I've gone geocaching in. w00t! After that we headed back to Marianne's place for a BBQ (my how charcoal technology has advanced!) and a long, but fun, game of RoboRally.
In other sad news, I haven't gotten my rock climbing shoes back from the resoling guy yet! Grrr... I'm supposed to go to Yosemite tomorrow night! What to do without my shoes... the current plan is to head over to Yosemite for a couple days, then come back here and head up to Mount Shasta for the weekend. Though I haven't heard back from the Shasta fellow yet either. WTF??
PS - Shasta got cancelled and Planet Granite said they'd lend me shoes for my trip...
May 4, 2006: Forgot to talk about our fun dinner the other day! Mary, Dan, Marc, Scott, Gemma and I went out to Benihana for a little dinner/cooking-show. It was fun and the food was tasty. Just watch out for the valets, they'll try to park your car for you! ;)
May 3, 2006: Ha ha, listen to this song (it's called Code Monkey).
In other exciting news I'm getting my newly re-soled rock climbing shoes back tonight! Sweet, I've trashed my back-up pair so now they need re-soling too.
April 30, 2006: Did everyone have a good weekend? Mine was okay. Friday night I went to a little wine and cheese event my friend was having.
Saturday was National Rebuilding Day, so I joined about 100 other EA folks as we fixed up a local low-income housing apartment. My jobs included installing a new sprinkler system, moving lots of bark chips around and helping to build a shed. It was a lot of fun, makes me remember how much I like doing construction-y type things. Afterwards they had a BBQ at a local park which was good time (even with the high number of caterpillars there). That night Mary came over and we hung out. Hanging out consisted of: hot tubbing with Scott & Gemma, watching Corner Gas (which is apparently funny to americans as well), and various other nunchuck shenanigans.
Today I slept in (so good), split a pound of bacon with Marc, took my bike to get fixed at REI, went to Best Buy to look at a new digital camera. Then I proceeded to do a bit of work from home while watching Harold and Kumar (which I just noticed that there's going to be a sequel). Unfortunately after doing some work and checking my work email it turned out that I had to go in for a bit. Oh well, got my work done though.
April 27, 2006: New things with Buddy include: new running shoes (Mizuno Evolutions!), baked some banana bread (mmm), finished one of my current books, been rock climbing, almost got my bike fixed, watching Corner Gas and Battlestar Galactica and took my car for it's annual washing. :)
April 21, 2006: Had a good time climbing last night. Polished off a V3 and messed around on a couple V3+ with Erik and others. Aside from that not too much is new... went to see Thank You for Smoking last weekend which was quite funny! Been enjoying the sunshine this week, though it's forecasting rain again this weekend.
Been thinking a lot lately about what my next adventure should be... sailing along the coast in a catamaran? hiking the Appalachian Tail? hike across Greenland? Hmmm.....
April 16, 2006: Happy Easter! Had a fun weekend filled with a suprising amount of time in the East Bay. Anyhow, much Guitar Hero was played and disappointingly few chicken waffles were eaten.
In other news I (finally) unpacked the last box in my room! I'll relish in the extra 256 square inches of floor space...
April 13, 2006: I've been slacking on my website lately. But I did get my taxes done!
March 28, 2006: Had another good weekend! Worked on my project du jour, went for a hike, went for dinner with Rahul, Babs and Jess, then Jess and I went out for a drink where we ran into a few friends.
The next day consisted of dim sum, riding Marc's motorcycle, going to the library (whee!), more work on my project, watching some Corner Gas (good ol' Canadian comedy!!), and a little bit of reading and then off to bed.
Phew. What a busy weekend!
PS - Ok, I don't remember who it was, but someone complained about the way my pictures are displayed on my site. Something about it not having a next/previous link and having to go back to the index to see other ones. Well no longer! Now when viewing an individual image you'll note there's next and previous links, as well as a link back to the index. Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions on this new format. Oh, and to whoever it was that complained: thanks for wasting my evening by making me work on that stuff!!
PPS - I guess I was also inspired by Marc's fancy photo gallery, which you should go check out if you want to see his Kilimanjaro pictures!!
March 25, 2006: It's easy to tell when I don't have enough work to do at work: I start my own crazy projects at home!
So I was up late last night and all day today working on my latest project: a facial feature tracking program! The coolest part is that it actully works! Still lots left to do, better recovery of losing features (when you move to fast for it), and I want to be able to infer head orientation in 3D (so that you can use it to control a camera in-game for example).Man, after using VS.NET (with Visual Assist installed) at work and then coming home to work on my slow computer with VC6.0 sure makes me realize how much MS has actually improved it's IDE!
But for now, I have to go and leave the house for a bit (going for a hike!).
March 24, 2006: Went to the CMU ETC GDC party last night (which was the Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center's Game Developer's Conference party). There were way more people there that I knew than I expected, so it was a good time seeing people again! The open bar didn't hurt either. :)
Some folks came over on Wednesday night and much Guitar Hero was played. Whee..
I thought I had more interesting things to write about, but I guess I was wrong. Either that or I've already forgotten them.
March 20, 2006: St. Patty's day was ok, despite the fact that the bar I went to didn't have green beer. Went climbing with Marc Saturday morning to help offset the fact that I didn't make it out the previous Thursday (had dinner with a visiting friend instead). Got a move farther in my current project (a V4-) and found another fun route to work on as well! That night I went to a couple parties (I'm so popular) -- both of which were good times and at which I saw a bunch of people I hadn't seen for a while.
Sunday consisted of enjoying the beautiful sun. Hung out outside with Jess for a bit, reading and doing Sudoku. Then it was off to abduct Sha Sha for her annual surprise birthday party! We went to Chuck-E-Cheese this year and who knew that partying like a 6-year-old could still be fun??
After the festivities, Marc, Rahul and I went to see the movie V for Vendetta. I enjoyed it and it made me wish that I was more contemplative as I think it could generate some good discussion on politcs (not to mention current events), but since I'm not, all I could say was "pretty fireworks". :P
March 17, 2006: Happy Saint Patrick's Day!!
March 14, 2006: Happy Pi Day!
It's been an eventful week! Especially with me trying not to type too much outside of work (and trying to sit/type correctly while I'm at work).. Things I've done:
- Had lunch with a friend who works nearby
- Went climbing, found a nice bouldering project
- Beat said bouldering project when trying to show people how hard it is
- Got the tour of Emeryville
- Went shopping at the Great Mall
- Ate breakfast with Mary & Dan
- Drove Marc to various airports
- Went to a friend's going-away lunch
- Got into work at 2:30pm
March 7, 2006: Lately I've been studying scrabble words with the help of WordLexica a pretty cool program! Thanks to it I've learned a ton of J,Q,X,Z words!
In other news, Erik and I took a crack climbing course last night. While I learned some stuff I also realized that I need tons of practice at it! Now that I've got my tape-gloves I'll be good to go!
My forearms/wrists have been hurtning a bunch lately.. which is kinda weird because I haven't been working too much lately. Perhaps my new desk is less ergonomic than my previous one. I've even turned on RSIGuard's AutoClick feature which is taking some getting used to. Remember to stretch and take breaks all my computery friends!!
March 2, 2006: Happy March! I'm sure all of you, like me, are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Pi Day! Oh the good times we had back in school serving pie at 1:59pm...
In other news I've started playing online Scrabble again! Unfortunately they deleted my account after a mere 10 months of inactivity! Oh well, now I get a fresh start! In addition to regular games, I've been playing a few 6-minute games with a friend which I find quite fun.
February 23, 2006: No I haven't died, don't worry! Just a little busy.. work's moved me to a different studio so now I have a ~45 minute commute (each way). I thought I'd hate it, but so far it's not so bad. Except for the having less time to goof off at night..
Went to a going away party for a friend Sunday night which was pretty fun (as usual)! One thing that I thought was really cool was that we had a chocolate tasting! They had a bunch of different types of chocolate that we cut up and tasted one after another. Amazing how "dark chocolate" can taste so different from one country to the next! I think I'll try having a chocolate tasting sometime... perhaps after my fabled house warming party actually takes place!
In other news I've been climbing again! Thought I'd be a weak baby after so many weeks away, but I find I'm flashing V3's in the bouldering room now! Sweet! There's also a gym right by my new work which I want to try (and apparently a lot of peole here climb!), so we'll see when I get around to that.
February 16, 2006: What would you do when you wake up at 4:30am? I chose the following: read for a little bit, try to go back to sleep, accept my inevitable awakeness and go bake a pumpkin cheesecake, read some quantum mechanics paper and play video games. Mmmmmm.... Jet lag never tasted so good!
PS - My write-up of the Tanzania trip is finished! Go check it out!
February 12, 2006: After roughly 38 hours of travelling I'm back at home now. Whee. Details to follow...
PS - Tanzania pictures are up!!
PPS - Put together some panorama photos: view from Maundi Crater, view from Horombo Hut, Ngorogoro Crater (used the amazing Autostitch program to make these)
January 26, 2006: Off to Tanzania tomorrow! Hopefully I'll be able to update my site a couple times while I'm down there.. but if not, have a good two weeks!
January 22, 2006: Nothing too much happened this week. I was sick. Took off a couple mornings to try to get better. Skipped climbing. Miss it. Started getting ready for Kili. We fly out Friday morning!! Crazy.
Went to Butterfly up in the city for the Dine About Town event. Thanks for organizing it Babs!
Watched some Battlestar Galactica last night (finally!). Good stuff.
Put up a copy of Sha's ski trip pictures (also modified my picture viewing php code to sort the directory, but I'm sure no one cares).
January 17, 2006: Went up to Tahoe this weekend. Drove up on Friday. Snowboarded on Saturday in an alternating mix of blizzarding snow and calm sunshine. However it was a good day, we took it easy with many breaks to chat and sing. Once back at the house we had a wonderful turducken dinner (thanks Five Roll)! Then it was off to the hot tub (of which I nipped out of to make a quick snow angel). To top the night off we watched Shaun of the Dead. Sunday we took it easy: went walking around some nearby woods, played in a meadow, went ice skating, walked around Lake Tahoe and watched Zoolander. Monday was a long drive back... My pictures are here (more to come later!).
Started getting sick on the drive back.. was sick yesterday.. and now I'm taking the morning off work (stupid meeting this afternoon I need to go to).
January 10, 2006: I'm pretty sure I had some fun activites to write about... but what were they?? Climbing last Thursday... Cleaning the house on Friday as Mira arrived that night. Saturday we were gonna go climbing, but instead lazed around the house. Then we met up with Sha and her friend for dinner and a movie. After that Mira and I headed back to drink some wine in front of the fire..
Sunday I gave her the tour of EA before grabbing some lunch with Jess and Marc. After dropping Marc off at work we all headed up to the city to check out the SF Museum of Modern Art. It was neat, however there were some odd/creepy pieces in one of the exhibitions. While there we also got to see the hotel where Mira's staying -- quite trendy!
After that we wandered around for a bit and ended up having dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. As usual they served a ton of food and I ended up giving my leftovers to a homeless guy on the way home. That night Eugene was over and we had a game of Scrabble in which I did pretty well.. really should get back into that sometime..
Climbing last night was pretty fun, although I flailed around on some 11s like a fish out of water. But I know I can get back to where I was with more practice!!
Tonight I have no plans. Well I was going to go to HMV and use my gift card, but apparently they're only in Canada. D'oh!! Guess I'll go home, read and watch more Scrubs: Season 2! Also cracked a nice bottle of dessert wine on the weekend which I have yet to finish.... perhaps a nip in the hot tub?? Oooh, sounds like a good night!
January 4, 2006: Went to REI last night to pick up some Christmas presents that were shipped there. Part of this gaggle of gifts was the Masters of Stone III rock climbing video. Watched it last night with Marc and it was super sweet! Saw a guy do a 1-finger chin-up -- using his pinky!! Dang, I gots to work towards that!
In other news I've been working out every day I've been at work this entire year! (ha ha) Stairmaster last night and running this morning.
January 3, 2006: Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!!
My trip back to Canada was fun-filled as usual! Here are some of the highlights:
- My luggage got lost (again). Thankfully it arrived on Christmas so people were able to get their presents!
- Had a bunch of Tim Hortons (incidently there's no stores within 1000 miles of my current house.. yet back in Kingston there's 10 within 5km of my old house)
- Went geocaching for the first time! It is cooler than it sounds after all! (Thanks for taking me Mike!)
- Saw a bunch of old friends (both from high-school (hi Lesley!) and university)
- Freezing rain in Ottawa (it's nice to experience some real weather again)
December 22, 2005: Climbing on Monday followed by the obligatory Heidi's Pies trip. Felt good.
Wednesday was the Wooten watching. The show was amazing! Victor Wooten was awesome and Dennis Chambers (the drummer) was stellar. The guitarist and the saxaphone weren't half bad either. :P We also had the best seats in the house! Fer realz..
After that we had a comical/convoluted Krispy Kreme run followed by some repeated drive-bys of the 92 exit. The night was then topped off with many hours of Guitar Hero (another 3am night..). Only 2 more songs before I've beaten expert mode!
I'm off to Canada tomorrow, so anyone in Cali I'll see next year! And to those of you in Canada -- email me and we'll hook up!
PS - Just got my Handspring Visor (old Palm Pilot clone) working and sync'ed... nice to have so much stuff at my fingertips again!
PPS - Here's a funny video!! Double True!!
December 19, 2005: Went to a little bbq at a friend's house on Thursday. Friday night consisted of a going-away dinner for a friend and then we all headed over to a karaoke place. Not being much of a singer I was hesitant, but this place gave each group their own private room (whereas other places I've karaoked is just one mike for everyone). Much better!! Sining badly in front of strangers I don't like... but killing my friends' eardrums? No problem!
Saturday I lazed around at home, baked a couple chocolate cream pies, played video games, read Harry Potter and then went to a friend's pot-luck birthday/holiday party. Good times and good food were had by all!
Had some tentative hiking plans on Sunday, but copious amounts of rain put an end to that. Instead I went Christmas shopping with Marc, Sha and Babs. While they all bought stuff, my shopping list didn't get any shorter (nay, it got longer!!). Now I have to go shopping again this week!
After that debacle I excitedly finished off volume 4 of Harry Potter (ooh, you evil Voldemort!). Then I went with Eugene and Marc to Yoshi's jazz club in Oakland. Unfortunately we drove there for naught as they were sold out. However did salvage that trip by buying some Victor Wooten tickets for this Wednesday and buying various bottles of things at the BevMo across the street (Chai Tea and Green Tea liqours!).
Drove back to the South Bay after that and went to see The Chronicles of Narnia, which was good. Thought the CG was super! Very nice work there. Once we all got back to our place we stayed up playing Guitar Hero until the wee hours of the morning.
December 14, 2005: From a co-worker:
Ten Project Haiku
by Rick Brenner
Ten separate haiku contemplating the lives of projects and of the people who work on them.
I
Our project was late,
so we added more people.
The problem got worse.
II
When requirements changed,
the schedule did not--were we
headed for trouble?
III
We were doing fine,
'til they reduced the budget.
Now we're overspent.
IV
We think about risks.
We have contingency plans.
Oops...but not for that.
V
I gave estimates.
They cut all of them in half.
Next time I'll pad them.
VI
We can't get it right
and still come in on schedule.
Why can't we do both?
VII
We hired consultants
who told us how to fix things.
They don't understand.
VIII
There is no more time,
but the work is unfinished.
Take more time from Test.
IX
The module failed Test,
so first we changed all the Tests.
Now the requirements.
X
If a project fails
but we keep working on it,
Has it really failed?
December 12, 2005:
Busy week. Last Wednesday was the Bond Ship Party. It was at the Ralston Hall. Everyone started with $500,000 Bond Bucks which they used at various gambling tables. At the end of the night there was an auction that you could spend your Bond Bucks on. The top prize was a PSP which went for $6,000,000!! Other prizes included alcohol, signed photos of Bond folks, games, movie tickets, etc... very fun party!Went climbing on Thursday and had a good night! Taped up my (still sore) finger and was doing 5.11's again! w00t!
Friday was the company holiday party, but I didn't go! Instead Marc, Sha Sha, May-Ling and I went to the Not So Silent Night concert where we saw Autolux, Coheed & Cambria, Hot Hot Heat, Death Cab for Cutie and The White Stripes! Despite standing for many many hours it was fun. Even jumped into the mosh pit for a little.
Saturday consisted of some Christmas shopping, dinner with Marc at BJ's Brewhouse, and then off to a friend's house for a fun board game night! Scattergories, Pictionary, Taboo, Sake Bombs...
The next day we got up and went for a hike with Erik. Where did we go? I don't remember. Some park in Pacifica. Google tells me it was San Pedro Valley County Park. To get to the summit you also enter McNee Ranch State Park. I didn't bring my camera but Erik did. Perhaps I'll put up his photos if he gives them to me.
After that we hit up a random place in Burlingame for some lunch, checked out Network Video for a bit and then Marc and I headed home to meet up with Cort who's in town for the weekend. Marc and him played some video games while I read/napped. Then we headed out to the usual so that Cort could have a rematch with the horseradish. He won this time, bringing the score up to 1-1.
After that we joined Scott and Gemma for a dip in the hot tub and then topped the night off by finishing off the second season of Initial D. Actually, I then stayed up a couple more hours and polished off Volume 3 of Harry Potter. Picked up the next book this morning and it's big (about twice the size of the first book). But I'm sure I'll get through it! I also picked up Kiss or Kill: Confessions of a Serial Climber this weekend, hopefully it'll be a good read!
December 9, 2005: Weird. My project, for all intents and purposes, got cancelled yesterday. At an "informal meeting" of all things. I almost didn't even go to the meeting! And now they want me to pick my next project. By the end of today! Holy no time Batman.
December 6, 2005: After ~59 days of procrastinating I got my car smog-checked (they give you 60 days in which to do this). In preparation I took it in for an oil change yesterday where they found a host of little problems (busted lights, cracked hose, etc) which made me a little nervous about the upcoming "test". I tried consoling myself with the fact that my car did awesome last time I got her smog-checked (way below the maximum allowed emissions), but these little problems were getting me down. However as the clock ticked ever-nearer to the deadline i took her in for the big test. She passed with flying colours again! Good ol' 240sx!! Well done.
December 4, 2005: Had dinner with a friend at a nice little Thai place on Friday, then met up with some friends at a local bar where we ended up gambling with dice. Fun fun!
Yesterday I went up to the city to see my friend in Decadance. Good times. After that I went to G.A.M.E. for a few hours (it's like a poor-man's E3). Next I was off to accompany a friend to a birthday party, which turned out to be pretty fun. Then topped off the evening with a showing of Aeon Flux (which was entertaining, if not amazing).
Today I proved my hipness once again by reading at a coffee shop. Also tried to get my car oil-changed and smog-checked, but to no avail as all such places seem to be closed on Sundays. Came home and cleaned up my camping gear and finished off the first Harry Potter book. Shortly I'll be watching Battlestar Galactica with some friends.
December 1, 2005: I'm hip
Went to a coffee shop last night after work and read my book there. Felt very "hip". Was going to listen to my iPod Nano in case there was any doubt of my "hipness", but they had music playing already. And the book I was reading -- trendy Harry Potter (albeit the 7 year old first book).
November 29, 2005: Happy Belated Thanksgiving to all my US friends. While everyone else was off eating ginourmous amounts of food I headed off with my friend to climb Mount Whitney! At 14,494' it's the highest point in the lower 48 states. I had previously climbed this a couple years ago, but this time it'd be different as it's now a winter ascent (vs the lovely summer ascent I had last time).
Picked up Shawn from the airport Wednesday night (after nipping up to the city to rent some snowshoes (as per the park rangers) and to buy a down jacket). Thursday we started driving... and continued driving for about 7.5 hours until we got to Lone Pine, CA where we spent the night at the luxurious Mt Whitney Motel.
Got up at the crack of dawn Friday and went over to the ranger station to get our permits -- but to our shock they were out of self-issue permits!! Uh-oh. We then went and had a McBreakfest while contemplating this obstacle. With some warm grease in our bellies we headed back to the ranger station. This time there was someone there and was able to get us permits. Phew. We then drove the 13 miles to the trailhead and started our adventure!
The hike was pretty straightforward. Briefly met a couple other people on the trail; only one of whom actually made fun of our snowshoes to our face. Despite the fact that it looked like we wouldn't need them, we decided that we would use them at camp since we had carried them in. Darn rangers! As we approached our campsite for the night we passed people turning back claiming it was too windy to stay there. Bah! We continued on.
To our chagrin, it was too windy to stay at the campsite so we turned around and camped a mile back at around 11,000'. This was the highest that I've ever camped! The night before we'd slept at 3,000' in Lone Pine, thus we'd gained a significant 8,000' and boy could I feel it! Even my resting pulse rate was feeling pretty fast... We set up camp, anchored the tent with big rocks (it was still quite windy here) and boiled water for what seemed like hours. Eventually went into the tent and attempted to sleep (though it was hard since it felt like the tent was going to break with all the wind).
Got up early and the weather looked good so we got up and started getting ready for the summit attempt. The hike up wasn't too bad... windy and cold but overall quite okay. Made it to the summit around lunch time! It was very windy and cold and we almost forgot to take a picture of ourselves before heading back down!
The way down we became dehydrated (apparently we didn't learn our lesson sufficiently on Mt. Rainier) and we were both feeling the effects of the altitude. Made it back to camp shortly after dark where we began packing for the hike out. About this time Shawn's headlamp decided it had had enough and stopped working. Taking turns with the one remaining light we finished packing. The hike out was interesting with one person leading in front with the light and the other person following like a moth to a flame. Except the moth had to walk with a pack on... and try to not trip over rocks... did I mention the moth was quite dehydrated?
Anyhow, we eventually made it back to the car, but not until half-past-midnight. Having no chance of making his 7am flight home we headed back to Lone Pine for beverages and another night at the Mt Whitney Motel.
Now with a full day to drive back we decided to take the route through Yosemite instead of going back the way we came. Drove north to Bishop and had lunch there. Shortly after heading north again we saw a sign that informed us that our planned highway was closed! D'oh. So we turned around and drove an hour back to Lone Pine and then headed back the way we came. So much for spontaneity!
Being the last day of the Thanksgiving weekend traffic was busy all the way home. Though we did make a stop along the way for dinner at Harris Ranch. Mmmm...
I've put up the pictures from the trip here. Enjoy!
Now I'm back at work... but still quite tired. In other news I got Guitar Hero (thanks Sha!) -- played a little this morning and am excited to try out the multiplayer aspect of it tonight!
PS - Here's a quote from another 007:FRWL review: "the games camera is solid" (just ignore the bad punctuation). :D
November 21, 2005: Added some more rock climbing pictures thanks to Marianne!
Started packing for my Mount Whitney climbing trip! Still need to find some snowshoes...
November 20, 2005: My computer seems to die a little more each time I turn it on. :( Today's development: although it correctly recognizes my GeForce video card with 128MB of memroy it seems to think that I can only run in 640x480 or 800x600 with 16 colours. :( Methinks it's just about time for a new computer...
Went rock climbing with Marc, Eric and Marianne yesterday! We headed back to Summit Rock -- go check out the pictures (though I can't really comment on how good the pictures are since I'm viewing them in 16 colours).
Not to brag or nothing, but this weekend was a balmy 21 degrees! And last weekend I went swimming in an outdoor pool. Hope it didn't snow too much in Toronto!
November 17, 2005: Ha ha -- funny cartoons.
What have I been up to? Did some climbing Monday (and going again tonight). My finger is still kinda sore so I'm trying to take it easy and work on my technique.. hard not to climb hard though!
Work's going pretty good. I'm prototyping a bunch of player mechanics for the new game... everyone else gets to play games though. :(
Went to a karaoke place last night... it was pretty good (though I didn't sing).
Currently house/dog-sitting for a friend. Whee!
We got sneak-preview tickets to the new Harry Potter movie at work, but I'm not going. Haven't seen any movies or read any of the books, so I didn't think this would be the one to start with. One day I'll read them though!
November 13, 2005: Dang it all... forgot about a party I was supposed to go to Friday night. Oh well.. instead I went over to a friend's place and played video games. :)
Saturday I got up early and ran the Home Run 2005 10k. It's been a few weeks since I've done any running, and quite a while since I've done a race, but I'm ok with my time. Started out too fast and then had to take it easy for a bit to recover... ended up with a time fo 1.00:57 for the 6.2 miles (for a time of 9:48 minutes/miles). Good enough.
After that it was a movie and video games at a friend's place.
In my free time today I've updated my private interface to my wishlist so that I can easily add/remove items with a handy web-interface -- go PHP. I also made the wishlist it's own menu item (on the left) since no one could find it before (as it was hidden within the "About Me" section).
November 10, 2005: It's been a busy 6 days! Here goes:
Went to Mary's house on Saturday to play board games with some folks. Ended playing games until 3am!
Played some sports on Sunday! These included ultimate frisbee, football and volleyball... being active is fun!
Monday I went with Marc to see Stephen Hawking give a presentation on The Origin of the Universe. I hate to say it, but I got really sleepy during it.. his talk was fairly interesting (and surprisingly funny), but I've been conditioned to fall asleep during lectures.
The next morning I had my driver's license road test! I passed! Now I have a Californian car and motorcycle license!!
That night I went with Sha to see U2!! The show was pretty awesome! Good times were had by all!
Last night Marc and I wandered around Palo Alto and Mountain View with a friend who's in town... took her to the Cheesecake Factory and some random bar.
Additionally, an old high-school friend is currently down visiting so I'll be hanging out with him this week as well...
Work's going alright... starting to do real work again. Looks like I'll be in charge of all things player related as well as cameras in the next game -- which should be cool. And my lead has also agreed to let me dabble in some engine code. Sweet! Currently I'm prototyping some ideas the designers have... it's really fun to prototype things, however it can be hard to find a good line between hacking something together really quickly and doing it in a decent manner so that you won't need to rewrite it all later.
November 5, 2005: Went on a little hike today with Marc and Erik.. then off The Creamery for some nourishment. Afterwards Marc and I went to REI where he bought some hiking boots and I got some SmartWool socks. I was supposed to go to a little Bond party, but I'm too lazy to drive up to the city. :|
Yesterday there was a Bond party at work and they had the game out for everyone to play and martinis (poured through a big block of ice!). Good times.
For those bored people, here are a couple quizzes to pass the time:
The Your Type of Girl Test
How's Your Gaydar?
The Nerd? Geek? Or Dork? Test (and all this time I thought I was a geek -- turns out I'm a "Modern, Cool Nerd (65% Nerd, 56% Geek, 26% Dork)")
The T, A and C Test
November 4, 2005: Dang. Injured my finger last night attempting a 5.12-. :( The ring-finger on my left hand made a loud popping noise (like cracking your knuckle, but much louder) and then proceeded to hurt. Today I can hardly put any pressure on it. I fear that I may have injured my flexor digitorum profundus. I'm gonna take next week off from climbing and hopefully it'll be feeling better after that...
Been playing some Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks lately. Not too fond of the game (despite the ravings of my friends). Can't believe it got a higher rating from IGN than Bond did. :( The game is soo buggy!! Oh well....
Work's been pretty non-involved this week. Just filling out performance reviews for myself and a bunch of my peers (so much work!)... other than that I've been teaching myself Cg.
November 1, 2005: White Rabbit!
Well, my game should be in stores tomorrow and already the reviews are starting to appear. Here's some snippets from them:
- a solid piece of videogame entertainment
- way cool jetpack
- The Jetpack looks and plays with ease
- Most folks will enjoy the jetpack
- Bond is dealt a variety of weapons and gadgets to use, including a few nifty ones like the Q-copter
- the play itself is tight
- Better than meh
Last night I went up to Death Guild for Halloween... it was pretty cool... saw a performance by the Living Dead Girlz.. then we went back to Mary's place for a bit (mmmm, roasted pumpkin seeds!) before heading home.
October 28, 2005: Last day of my vacation from work.. *sigh* Guess it had to end sometime!
Went rock climbing last night and was pretty pleased. Waltzed up a couple 5.11a's, so I tried a 5.11a/b and made it up after some hard work and a few rests. Not having enough, I then tried a 5.11b/c which kicked my butt (though I did manage to ungracefully hang dog my way up). But overall I'm feeling good, can totally feel myself getting stronger!
Aside from that, I haven't done too much this past week. Playing video games and watching movies with Marc. Between us we also bought 8 new movies yesterday (some sale at Hollywood Video). We also got a media rack for our place, so no more piles of movies on the table and floor! Whee.
Put up a new joke thanks to my sister.
October 23, 2005: Been busy the past week! Went biking and rock climbing last Monday. Tuesday had a going away lunch for fellow Canadian Tony and dinner with Karen (in which I got my camping gear back). Wednesday/Thursday/Friday I hiked the Skyline-to-the-Sea trail. It was pretty cool. Seemed like I was the only person doing the hike during this time (which was nice). The hike itself was fairly easy the the trail was well maintained and easy to follow. Not a super introspective trip as I had imagined it might have been, but it was still good to get out on my own. I've already put up some pictures from the trip!
At the end of my hike, I was to meet Jess at Waddell beach at 3pm. I got there a couple hours early, but luckily there was a surfing competition going on so that helped pass the time! Once she picked me up, we headed into Pescadaro and got some freshly baked artichoke bread and then wandered around Saratoga a bit. Fun fun.
Saturday consisted primarily of X-Men Legens 2: Rise of Apocalypse -- which we finally beat (ahead of Rahul I might add!). Good times were had by all. After that we headed out to watch A History of Violence. A good, but not-happy-feeling movie. Some people think the main character was a bad-guy-trying-to-be-good, whereas I'm more of the good-guy-forced-to-be-bad opinion. Maybe I just haven't thought about it enough (story of my life).
Today I got up after a lengthy 3-hours sleep and drove myself to Monterey for my annual scuba dive! The water conditions were pretty poor, but it was still good to get out and dive a bit. When I got back from that (including a little pull-over-nap on the way home) I took Marc for a driving lesson (of which he did pretty good)!
October 18, 2005: Stopped into work yesterday to check my email and drop off the Lost DVDs I finished and got an email saying "You're on vacation for 2 weeks starting today." While I do like the time off, I don't like the way it was thrust upon me with little warning. After my request to delay it until February got denied I decided to make the most of my impromptu vacation.
Found a cheap flight to Portland, however my friend there is booked solid with work. C'est la vie. However tomorrow I'm hoping to go on a 3-day solo hiking trip! Gonna do the Skyline-to-the-Sea trail! It'll be my first real solo trip and I'm pretty excited for it! Oddly enough one of the things that prompted me to do this is the book "Between a Rock and Hard Place"; however I intend to come back from my trip with all the limbs I started with.
October 17, 2005: Just put up some new Mount Rainier pictures I just got in the mail from Shawn (thanks!).
October 16, 2005: Got pulled over the other night! Oddly enough after talking about how I never get pulled over. :| My left headlight died and the same night that I noticed it I got pulled over because of it. Foster City is a very small place, but we have a very active police department. That night I passed about 4 different cop cars in the 3 miles between the freeway and my house. Anyhow, I would have gotten a fix-it ticket for my headlight, but when the cop noticed my out-of-country license he inquired about how long I've been down here. My answer of "2 years" seemed to take him aback and he responds with "you know that you're supposed to get your California license 10 days after moving here?". Calmly I reply "oh, so short?". :P
Luckily I had Friday off so it transmogrified from another lazy-do-nothing day into a very productive one! Read the California Driver Handbook in the morning (tried to read it the night before but it put me to sleep), dropped my car off to get an oil change and the headlight fixed. Went to the DMV amply supplied with things to amuse me for my possibly-all-afternoon wait. However, in what was a fantastic stroke of luck, I got possible the world's quickest service at the DMV! After getting my appointment number I started filling out my driver's license application form, but the appointment numbers were going by so fast I was actually worried that I wouldn't have my form filled out in time! Signed up for both my driver's license as well as my motorcycle license. After completing my form I actually had about 4 minutes to skim through the motorcycle handbook. When my number came up I approached the wicket and handed in my form. Not worried about the written tests so much as the vision test. What if I failed and had to go get glasses?
After some preliminary questions we got down to business: "Please read the line B3" (they have a chart set-up behind the counter). "With both eyes?" I think -- this'll be easy! Nonchalantly I rattle off the 5-or-so letters. We then move on to other mundane matters. "Dang -- that was easy!" I exclaim to myself! Then she steps closer to the counter, a plastic card in hand and says "Now I'll cover one eye." Gah! Now I'm worried... She covers my right eye first (which is my good eye) and asks me to read a line. Many things go through my mind: "Is it okay if I squint?", "How good is my guessing?", "Did my memorize that line already?", "What if I happened to drop $20?" I decide to go ahead with the squinting plan and it works splendidly. Disaster averted! She then switches and covers my left eye, but I'm no longer concerned; I know I've passed!
After that she refers me to the testing window and I go into that line. Here they take my picture, thumbprint and electronically record my signature then send me off to fill out two multiple-choice tests (one for the car and one for the motorcycle). Let's see, I can get 6 out of 36 wrong for the car and 4 out of 15 (or so) for the motorcycle one. The car one has a couple questions that I need to think about, but even if those were wrong I'd still pass. The motorcycle test proves pretty straightforward (however those 4 minutes of skimming through the handbook really came in handy!). Back to the window I go. She starts marking the motorcycle test and lo and behold -- I've forgotten to fill out the back of the test!! I've missed 5 more questions. Nicely she lets me take my test back and finish it. On my return visit to get them marked she smiles and joking asks if I had the book open as I got only 1 or 2 wrong on the motorcycle test and perfect on the car one. Sweet! With that out of the way I book my driving test (yes, I need to do a road test) for a couple weeks later (the first available appointment). In-and-out in a mere 1 hour 20 minutes!
Had lunch with a couple friends, picked up my car, headed into work for a bit (mainly to pick up the next couple DVDs of Lost from my friend) then back home. After some time relaxing at home I picked up another friend and a bunch of us went out for dinner. My friend stayed over that night as I was driving her to the airport early the next morning. Got up for an hour or so real early and did that, then back to bed for a couple hours before running The Dish with a couple other folks. Next up was lunch and then I went to CostCo with Marc where we proceeded to buy lots of various items (including some gelato!). Once home again I proceeded to watch a bunch of my newly acquired Lost episodes while Marc headed into work. Once he got back we spent the night playing video games and eating pizza.
Supposedly a friend is in town this weekend so just waiting for him to call.. aside from that I've watched a couple more Lost episodes today. I may be addicted. :P
Can you tell how bored I am by my rambling???
October 12, 2005: Went climbing at Summit Rock today. Lead a classic 5.8, taught my friend about rappelling and then we top-roped Double Cracks (5.9). I also practiced with my trad gear when I did the Double Cracks route -- whee! A good time out overall. I also took some pictures.
In other news, I'm borrowing my friend's dvd of Lost, if I remember I'll let y'all know what I think of it.
October 11, 2005: Go Canada: Vancouver was named 'world's best city' with Toronto and Calgary also in the top 10! No American cities made th list.
October 7, 2005: What have I been up to? I dunno. There was a little Foster City Oktoberfest thingy... got another big beer stein (like last year). Went dancing barefoot on the portable dance floor there. Got blisters on the bottom of my feet from dancing barefoot on the portable dance floor. Went to the auditions for Decadance, made the callbacks, decided not to join (too much commitment). Probably regret that one later. Hopefully not. Mostly done at work. Some people are "on call". Not me. Saw Serenity on opening night. Lots of nerdy people in line. Knew some of them. Bored now. Gonna go.
September 27, 2005: I've found what I want for Christmas this year: new monitors Please Santa -- I'll be really good!!
Went climbing last night. Got my butt kicked by a 5.11a, oh well. Did some good tens though! Also saw Jess' swing dancing friends there. Told them how to do the Frankie and they got it right away. Grrrr...
Then we went for lots of pie. Mmmmm.
September 25, 2005: Check out my mohawk! Thanks to Sha for spiking it for me!
Took a 2 hour break Friday evening to go see Corpse Bride, which was pretty cool! But then was at work until 5am! Crazy... but we stopped working at around 1:30am so I'm not sure if that really counts.
Got up 3 hours later to go run The Dish, had my hair spiked, then it was off to work. Met up with Jess for dinner and headed off to a party at night.
Sunday I went into work in the morning, then Jess and I went to an arials class! It was pretty cool, got a bunch of stuff to practice now! After that I participated in a trial-run of a scavenger hunt thing. Pretty cool, some very creative solutions were required to figure out the problems!
September 23, 2005: Take that EA! Ha.
Went climbing again last night -- was a good night! Climbed a 5.11 for the first time in a long while! Pretty happy about that. There are also just a bunch of fun climbs at the gym right now. Sweet!
Got in late today... ironically I was woken up by Sha texting me to say she woke up late. But no time for real work this morning -- there's a free bbq for lunch!!
September 22, 2005: Nano nano nano!!!
September 20, 2005: Went climbing yesterday evening. It was pretty good. Met some people that Jess met the other week at Swing Camp -- small world! Tomorrow we're going swing dancing and they said they'd be there too.
Got off work early today (~8:30) so I headed over to Whole Foods, picked up various items to replenish my too-long-unused kitchen, cooked up some pork chops, rice and applesauce then ate dinner while watching some Invader Zim. Fun fun.. now for some reading before bed!
September 18, 2005: Could it have been my favourite childhood game? Nerdy fun for the entire family!
Went climbing the other night -- good times. Saw The Constant Gardener yesterday (good, but a not-happy movie). Hung out with Jess and the cute dog she was dog-sitting. And now it's back to work like usual.
September 15, 2005: There's nothing quite as sweet as having internet at home.
PS - Late breaking news!!!! I JUST BOUGHT AN iPod Nano!!!!!!!!!! Huzzah!
September 11, 2005: So I've been able to shift into higher gears without using my clutch for a while now... but on the way to work today I got shifting down to lower gears. Whee! Now I can really ruin my poor transmission!
September 9, 2005: Whee -- 43 hours of work in 3 days!
September 6, 2005: Happy Labour Day! Here's what I did with my 1-day weekend:
-went for an early-ish run at The Dish
-ate some food from a Chinese bakery
-took Marc's friend to the airport
-baked a Chocolate-Cherry-Custard pie
-went to a BBQ
-played frisbee and volleyball and said BBQ
-watched American Psycho
All-in-all a good day off!
Most of the rest of the weekend was working. Though I'm sure I did something else as well.
Today I signed up to go help out the Katrina victims in New Orleans. Put my availability as "after September" so we'll see if they call. Would be a very eye-opening experience to be sure! You can sign up here if you're also interested (they require local support in addition to assistance there).
September 3, 2005: Hope everyone's having fun on their long weekend. :(
But yeah, things are good. Went to see Wicked the other day -- very good! The show was quite funny and the main actress was awesome! The background it adds to the characters in The Wizard of Oz is also quite enlightening. After seeing that with some friends we headed out to Heidi's for some late-night pie.
Went to see The 40 Year Old Virgin as well. It was pretty funny. Hee hee.
Now I'm at work (as per usual), though it should be mostly over in a couple weeks... Good luck to Mira and Shawn on their trip to Kilimanjaro -- I'm jealous!
August 30, 2005: Free Opera registration codes today only! It's their 10-year online anniversary party! Sweet sweet Opera.
August 28, 2005: Whee, 11pm on a Sunday and where am I? At work! Actually got a fair bit of stuff done today, so that's good. In other news, I bought Marc a birthday present (Happy Birthday!), went to Tony's awesome party (last night), went to Jason's house-warming party, picked up a couple Trango cams (sizes 3 and 5) for a mere $20/each (normally they are ~$50/each! Sweet... now to find the time to go use them.
It's also my last night dog/house-sitting! I was planning on getting off work earlier and hanging out with Enzo all night (kinda feel bad for not being there) but that clearly didn't work out so well. With that said, I'm off to go see him (and watch some high-def tv while I'm at it!).
And in case anyone cares: I've update my wishlist page for no reason...
PS - I lied before when I said I was going home. It's now 1am and I'm actually going home.
PPS - Also forgot to mention that I got a car wash! It was an inside and out cleaning and I even got it waxed! So sweet!!
August 27, 2005: Looking after a friend's dog this weekend, so I'm also staying over at her house. Pretty cool, it's like a mini vacation! Except a vacation where I'm at work all the time. :| Looking after the dog's been fun -- he gets so excited when I come home and he just loves going on walks! Even picking up his doo doo isn't so bad.
Last night they had to shut down the power to the Bond area so that forced us to leave work at 10pm. With the night still being young and all, I headed over to Planet Granite with a friend for an hour of bouldering. Much more of a work out than regular climbing! Usually I feel fine after climbing, but today my shoulders are a little sore -- awesome! Really should boulder more and work up my strength!
Aside from working, I've got a couple of parties to attend later today. Then tomorrow seems like it'll involve some running and then lots more work...
August 21, 2005: Went climbing on Friday. Taught, yet another, n00b how to climb; but it's always good to have more people to climb with! Doing more 5.10s.. trying to work back up to 5.11s. Soon I think! Been going twice a week for a couple weeks now and that ought to help out a lot.
Saturday involved three seperate children's birthday parties! One at the beach (with a cool sand castle artist), one with a Hawaiian theme and one traditional Chinese banquet. Very cool all-around.
Sunday is working. Then off to a friends' for some Settlers.
August 19, 2005: Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines! Hahahaha.
Just a note to any developers (or artists) out there: check your friggin' work before you check it in!!! Crickey.
August 16, 2005: Only took me 8 months and 11 days, but I finally fixed my desktop computer! Marc nicely bought me a power supply the other week and I installed it this evening. Sweet!
August 15, 2005: Had a fun weekend! Friday night I watched Harold and Kumar with Jess. Saturday consisted of shopping (CostCo and Target), a bit of hanging out at home and then I was off to a concert with the Black Eyed Peas and Dave Matthews Band. Went with Rahul and some of his friends. After that we hit up a bar for a few hours. Good times.
Sunday I watched The Aviator, went to work and then went to Yoshi's with Jess, Sha, Marc, etc. The food was alright, but the jazz was really good! We saw the Terry Blanchard Sextet -- very cool.
Now it's the start of a new week and the game is completely messed up. Way to mess up the game Mr. Checkin-Without-Testing-Anything!
August 12, 2005: Went climbing on Tuesday. Went dancing on Wednedsay; new place, was really good. Thursday was chilling at the BBC. Friday is working. :( But I did get a couple good movies to watch this weekend: The Aviator and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.
Want to go home...
August 8, 2005: Climbing on Thursday night. Good times. Brought a new guy from work. Had some good climbs. It's all new routes (since I haven't been in ages). Sweet.
Worked on Friday. Nipped out with Rahul and saw a pretty funny movie. Went back to work until 2am. Does that count as going out on a Friday night?
Ran Saturday morning. Fed Enzo a ton of treats. He likes me now. Went to work. Dinner with Jess. Settlers with a bunch of other Canadians (and Jess). Jess won the same turn I was about to.
Slept in on Sunday. Worked. Dinner with Jess' family friends. Watched another pretty funny movie.
And that was the past week in just a few words.
August 3, 2005: Had another crazy busy weekend! Thursday night I did a little packing and then gave that up and watched The Hulk with Scott and Marc. It was about as bad as I expected.
Friday night consisted of for-real packing.
Saturday morning I got up early for my motorcycle course! This time we were driving around a parking lot! Went over such things as: bike controls, power walking, riding straight, turning, shifting gears, braking. Good times. After that I went for lunch and came home and packed some more. Then I headed out with Jess for some messy cheesecake! After that we met up with Sha and went to a Climbing for a Cure presentation about Rob Chang's recent summiting of Everest. It was really interesting and I even won a raffle! Got some prayer flags and a Kata scarf! There was also a silent auction in which I won/bought a 3-picture set (about Apa Sherpa -- the world record holder for the most Everest summits)! Think I'm gonna email Rob and see if I can get in on one of his expeditions!!
Sunday morning was more motorcycling. Did figure-8's, quick braking, more turning and shifting, changing lanes. We even had a driving test at the end of it; everyone passed! w00t. Now I can go get my license! After the course I went to possibly the worst place to rent a truck from, almost didn't get a truck even though I had made a reservation and had called to confirm two days before. Drove home and moved heavy things all day. After that we spent many hours cleaning up the old house and then filled up the truck with garbage and recycling. Crazy! Got into the new place around 1am and promptly went to bed.
I've been slowly unpacking since then (though last night wasn't too productive as Marc and I ended up just chatting over some wine). Good news is that we have some wireless networks to use!
July 30, 2005: Got some more Hearst Castle pictures from May Ling! Thanks!
July 29, 2005: More Mount Rainier pictures thanks to one of the other climbers!!
Also picked up the keys to my new place this morning, trying to confirm my U-Haul reservation (since they never called me like this were supposed to) but so far I've been on hold for 20 minutes. >:|
July 26, 2005: Wow! What a busy week! Wednesday night I flew up to Seattle, got picked up by Mira and hung out with her and her boy that night. The next day I bussed into Seattle proper and saw such fantastic things as the Space Needle, the Experience Music Project, and both of them together!! The Space Needle was pretty cool actually, they were giving tours around the top of it; pointing out various points of interest from each compass direction. Didn't actually go in the EMP, but the building looked cool from the outside! Had some beignets, and invited to a bar by a girl (whee!), then took the (very short) monorail back to central downtown. Checked out Pike Place Market pretty quickly, then walked over to REI and bought me some Grivel G-12 New-Matic Crampons (with Antibott) -- sweet! It was then back to Pike Market where I bought some yummy raspberries and then read my book in a park until my bus arrived to take me back to Kirkland. I then proceeded to meet Sean (the other guy going climbing) and we drove off towards Ashford (where the guiding company is).
The next day was the climbing school. Got split into smaller groups and took off into the park. Here we learned such things as: walking on snow (no crampons), walking on snow with crampons, self-arrests (in the 4 positions), movement while roped-up, the rest-step and pressure breathing. Most of it was review for me, but I hadn't heard of pressure breathing before! Handy. The weather was raining and cloudy, but oh well. It was sunny for the rest of the trip, so if it had to rain one day, this was the best one!
Saturday we got up, briefly met our climbing group and were off on the road. Starting hiking out of the Paradise parking lot around 10am and arrived at Camp Muir around 2:30pm. Not too shabby! The guides also did a great job of pacing the group... we were getting passed by people at the beginning of the day, but we were passing them again at the end as they were trying to move too quickly. Ate dinner around 4:30pm (mmmm, Spicy Thai Chicken) and went to bed at 6pm!
Got up at 11pm that night, ate breakfast (instant oatmeal), packed a little and we were off hiking at 12:30am. Hiked through Ingraham Flats and Disappointment Cleaver (where we left a couple of our too-tired crew), then continued on past High Break up to the summit at 14,411'! Felt tired and somewhat nauseous, but it was an amazing view! The sunrise we had on the way up was spectacular! Wandered back down and got to Camp Muir around 11am. Ate, drank, packed and left again around 12:30 and got back to the parking lot around 2:30pm-ish; so very tired. Got back to camp, got our "achievement certificates", showered, ate dinner, and went to bed around 7:30pm -- sooo tired!
Drove back to Seattle the next day and wandered around some more with Mira (who kindly "got sick" that afternoon)! Fun fun.. then it was time to go to the airport and fly home (a scant few hours before my other friend arrived in town, so I guess I'll see Dave another day). Jess picked me up, we went out for dinner and then I headed home. A great trip! Check out my pictures here! You can check out the route here.
Last night was the classroom portion of the motorcycle class I'm taking with Sha. It was, how do you say, ridiculous. And we found out that we're both nerds. And we're going to get beat up on the weekend. Oh well.
July 18, 2005: Man, another week with no updates! Crazy how fast time flies! Let's see here... don't think I did any too interesting this week. Worked a bunch. We're supposed to be alpha today; let's see how it goes!
Thursday night my dad came to stay with me! Gave him a little tour of the house and then took him out for dinner. It was pretty nie!
Saturday I went for a run along the Steven's Creek Trail and had lunch with Sha Sha, Babs and Florence afterwards. Worked for most of the afternoon and then went to Macaroni Grill with Jess.
Sunday was the SF AIDS Walk! Went up with Jess as part of Team EA! The walk itself was pretty nice (although they couldn't find our fund-raising prizes, but I'm sure Julie will figure that out soon)! Met some more EA folks, which was nice.
Coming up this week, I'm flying out to Seattle to climb Mount Rainier! Unfortunately my friend I was planning on doing it with had to withdraw, but there'll be the rest of the group to meet! Spent last night packing for it, looks like I have most everything I need. Getting excited!!
July 12, 2005: Had a good/busy weekend!! Saturday I got up early and went running with my AGs; decent 7-miler... After which I went over to Sha's where we watched the 2004 National Scrabble Championships! Very cool, I even got a few plays before they made them! When that was over I headed to work for what I thought was "just a few hours". In actuality it was more like 7. :( Once at home after that ordeal, I played some Scrabble with Jess (who got her first bingo!). Then Marc and I finally beat God of War (which was super cool, and the costumes we unlocked are neato). Sometime during our gaming Cort stopped by and slept on our couch.
The next day included: eating dim sum (Jess' inaugural experience!), buying new pants (yay!), playing some more unlocks in God of War, and baking. Jess and I made 4 mini-cheesecakes (we each made 2 flavours). I made pumpkin and raspberry-chocolate while Jess created a lime and a Kahlua. Mmmm.. This left me with extra pumpkin so I whipped up 2 pumpkin pies as well.
This week has been pretty hectic as we've got a big demo on Thursday: I was here until 2am last night! Also finished off Eats, Shoots & Leaves this morning -- a good read, hopefully I'll now be able to punctuate my sentences more correctly (and expressively).
July 9, 2005: Saw a couple movies this week! Thursday I hung out with Karen and we went to see (after walking all over San Mateo to find a restaurant) War of the Worlds. I was kind of looking forward to this movie and was quite disappointed. Perhaps it was due to the fact that we picked at problems in almost every scene. Or perhaps it was due to the fact that there were problems in almost every scene! Don't expect too much if you go see it.
Last night I headed out to see Fantastic Four. This was what I expected it to be -- a mediocre action flick. I did enjoy how one guy we saw it with described the experience as: "We're paying to see a movie where a hot girl turns invisible." Ha!
Other than that, not too much. Work work (I'm here right now). We're going alpha next week and then I'm off to climb Mt. Rainier! Getting excited!!
July 4, 2005: Happy Independence Day American Neighbours.
Over the long weekend I went on a little road trip with Jess, Sha Sha and May Ling. We headed down south to Hearst Castle and spent a night in San Simeon. The castle was quite splendid! Be sure to check out my photos from the trip!
Yesterday, Marc, Jess and I went rock climbing at Boyscout Rocks. This was Marc's first time climbing outdoors, so we started off with some technically easier (although somewhat awkward) routes, the 5.6 crack, then some face variations (5.7-5.10) on the Middle Tier. After that we headed down to the Lower Tier, where we met some nice folks who let us use their rope to top-rope Amazing Face (5.10a). I'd also set up a TR on Diagonal Crack (5.10d), but we never got around to using it (though the folks whose rope we were borrowing had a go of it). All-in-all it was a good day, fun climbing, decent rappelling and good friends!
And now to figure out what I'm going to do for Independence Day... perhaps I'll act like an American and go shopping!
July 1, 2005: Happy 138th Birthday Canada!!
June 29, 2005: Had a good weekend! It was Jess and I's one year (dang that was fast!), so we went over to Half Moon Bay for the weekend. Good times! Ate good food the entire time and was completely stuffed.
Monday night, Marc and I went rock climbing (now that my EMT class is over).
Tuesday I worked late, and then played some late-night ping pong with Rahul.
Today I had dinner with Jess and some of her family's friends.
June 24, 2005: Switched over to my new machine at work today. Dang is it ever sweet! 3.25GB, dual 3.4GHz, 232GB HD, Gigabit Ethernet. Comiles code faster than Cookie Monster eats fruit!
June 22, 2005: Wrote (and passed) my EMT final tonight! That's right -- I'm now an EMT! Got any hurts for me to look at!?!? (that's the technical term for those that were wondering :P)
June 19, 2005: Pretty sure a bunch has happened since my last update because I remember thinking "I should update my web page about this". Let's see how much I can remember:
Monday I went to my EMT class. Not just a normal class however! We went to the San Jose Fire Department Training Grounds! There we learned about various extrication techniques; things like cribbing, window smashing and door-ripping-off. Probably not the technical names there, but that's what we got to do! Very fun.
For those of you that don't know, EA is making a Batman video game. Because of that we also got sneak-peak tickets to the new movie! Got to see it on Tuesday night (it didn't open until Wednesday)! It was actually quite good -- go see it!
Monday night (after class), Tuesday (after the movie) and Wednesday night (after class) involved working late. :|
Wednesday class was the first night of our practical exams! There are four tests: traction splint (either Hare or Sager), emergency childbirth, helmet removal, and the KED. I was lucky and managed to get all my testing done that night, so now I don't need to go on Monday (it's just more testing)! I also did well on my tests and passed them all. Whee! Now it's just a written test next Wednesday and I'll be done the course! Will still have to write another test if I want to be nationally certified though.
Thursday Jess came over and we watched Meet the Fockers. I'd already seen it, and perhaps I wasn't in the right mood, but it was better the first time.
Friday night Marc and I talked about going climbing, but ended up going out for dinner and then home to play Brute Force.
Saturday I got up early, went for a run at "The Dish" with Sha Sha and friends. I had a harder time with it than the previous time, but it felt good to get out there again! (According to some page on the internet it's a 3.3-mile loop) After that Sha and I watched Hero, which was good. I'd seen a presentation by the VFX supervisor for it at work, so I was very cognizant of the aspects she'd mentioned (ie: the use of colour). Lunch was up next and then some wandering around Mountain View.
After heading home, played some more Brute Force then headed out for bowling with Marc and friends. Did alright there (won the first game), then off to Coldstone and finally back to a house for some video gaming. Good times.
Was kinda hoping for some rock climbing today, but alas, got up too late for a good full day of it. Jess and I were maybe going to go scope out a place for some climbing (so we can find it easily next time) though. Such a nice day today! Gotta do something outdoors!
June 12, 2005: Have had a productive day so far! Woke up early (for me, at 8am) for no reason. Finished reading (finally!) No Logo, which I'd highly recommend to anyone! Yesterday I also finished off Climb High, which is yet-another first-hand account of the 1996 Everest Disaster. It's about the 5th book I've read on that particular topic and quite enjoy seeing different people's perspectives on it.
Next I tried calling some folks from back home, but no one answered. Instead I finished the last couple Invader ZIM episodes, quite hilarious. After that it was time for some breakfast, slight house-cleaning, folding laundry, shower, and now I'm at work... work work work. Things today are (finally) coming together! w00t. Maybe next weekend I can go outdoor rock climbing again!
June 11, 2005: Nothing too exciting this past week... lots of work. And EMT class I suppose. Only another 2 weeks of class until I'm done! Better start studying for my practicals...
Was supposed to have a ride-along with the San Mateo ambulances today, but they never got back to me (or my instructor), so I didn't end up going. Sucks, but I didn't really _need_ to go as I got enough patient contacts at the hospital. And also kinda good as I got to spend the day at work (woo hoo). :|
Went running this morning with my AG's... good times. Then we went back and saw Sha's new place -- nice! Next up was a raman lunch, home for a shower, then off to work. Work's going.. okay.
Forgot to mention that Jess and I went and checked out the Foster City Art & Wine festival last weekend. It was ok, carnival rides, kettle corn, carnival games (which we lost)... nice to wander around and enjoy the warm (and very windy that day) weather!
Tried to go see Mr. & Mrs. Smith last night (opening night), but it was sold out by the time we got there. Instead we ended up watching Sideways which I'd borrowed from the library at work. It was ok. More drama-y and less comedy-y than I expected.
June 7, 2005: Had my first EMT clinical on Saturday! It was at Peninsula Hospital in the Emergency Room! Was a little worried because fellow classmates had had boring times there, but I had a blast! Got in my required 5 patient contacts, and one of them was super interesting and involved! Next week I'll be riding along with the San Mateo ambulances!
Sunday was spent lunching with Jess and her family up in the city.. we then proceeded to wander around Haight Street a bit before going back to my place where Jess watched The Incredibles while I worked from home (go Remote Desktop!).
Lots of work to do this week with another milestone on Monday.
June 3, 2005: Interesting link of the day.
PS - Put up new pictures: rock climbing at Mount Tamalpais (see Marc, I really did use the hexes!) and Memorial Day BBQ. Enjoy!
June 2, 2005: Mount Tamalpais was fun! The weather was super (though we did have to drive through some fog, which had me worried about being fogged-out again), and there was no one else climbing! Sweet!
Also went to REI to pick up some on-sale trekking poles, but alas, they were all out. However I did meet up with a friend of mine working there who hooked me up with some clearance rock climbing items (which he then bought for me, thus getting another 10% off!).
Monday we had our Memorial Day BBQ! It was a rousing success. The few photos I took will probably make it up shortly... as will some Mount Tamalpais pics.
Interesting random link of the day.
PS - Forgot to mention, at work yesterday I got to see a presentation about the visual effects in Hero. Haven't seen the movie yet, but the presentation and effects were pretty sweet!
May 29, 2005: Went running at Steven's Creek again yesterday, went with just Sha so we sped it up a bit more than usual. Then we met up with Cheryl and had some dim sum (she also knows the owner so we didn't have to wait in line!). I tried to go to REI to buy some on-sale trekking poles, but no to avail -- they were sold out. However I did meet a friend who was working there and he showed me a bunch of clearance rock climbing stuff! Picked out what I wanted and he bought it for me at the end of his shift, with an extra 10% off! Sweet.
Speaking of rock climbing -- I'm going today! Whee! Outdoor climbing at last! Jess and I are about to head up to Mount Tamalpais, hope it works out this time!
Also, put up some pictures from Bay-to-Breakers, my birthday and E3.
May 23, 2005: Whee! Finally played some more online Scrabble today! Won 2 games (one by default and the other for real), so I'm happy to declare my losing streak over!
Here's what's happened lately:
Got some presents for my birthday: books, food, movie, t-shirt.. one of the movies was Scrabylon which I was quite excited to see. I found the content interesting (as expected), but the camera work and editing were less than spectacular. I'd definately suggest Word Wars instead.
Flew out to LA Thursday morning (thanks for the drive Jess!)... flight there was pretty uneventful. Once there we went to pick up a rental car. Unfortunately Budget was all out, so we walked over to National which had available cars. Soon we were driving off in our silver Honda Accent. Got to the convention centre and started exploring the show. Met up with a friend and hung out with him for the rest of the day. Met up with some other folks after the show for dinner and drinks which turned out to be a super fun time! Whee.. ended up crashing at their hotel room (since we hadn't booked one in advance (all the rooms were already booked by all these forward-planning folks)).
The next day we had breakfast and returned to the show. More wandering around and free stuff. Actually got a cool t-shirt celebrating Pac-Man's 25th birthday and a free copy of Tekken 5! Once we'd had enough of this we left and drove over to Hollywood (taking the scenic route since I couldn't quite remember where it was). Saw the walk-of-fame, the chinese theatre, etc. Next up we drove up to Burbank to meet up with some friends for sushi. Mmmm. Back to our friend's place to watch Lemony Snicket which was enjoyable (we also played some Psychonauts which is very funny!). After the movie everyone left.. including us. Unfortunately we didn't have a hotel for this night either. Drove to the nearby Travelodge but it was full. Thus we stayed in the cheap Hotel Honda Accent. Not so bad.
Got up early (with the sun) and headed off to see an early showing of Star Wars: Episode III. Surprisingly the theatre was almost full! Don't people have better things to do at 9am on a Saturday?!? Anyhow the movie was better than the first one (I haven't seen the second). After the movie we hooked up with our friends again for some dim sum. This took a little longer than expected, but we still managed to nip on out to Venice beach for a little while. Then we had to head back to drop off the car and catch our flight.
All-in-all, a good trip! The next day I went with Jess to her friend's graduation at Berkeley... listening to the speeches made me want to go back to school again... Masters??!?! We'll see. Then we came back to my place and hung out in my back yard reading in the sun. That night we went to CreoLa for dinner and Jess finally had some begnets! Came home and played some Scrabble in front of a fire... sweet!
Pictures from the LA trip and Bay-to-Breakers are on their way...
May 22, 2005: Survived E3! But describing it will take longer than the 20 seconds I have right now, so I'll leave you with this account of it before I write up my own (and on that note, I added a few more words to my New Orleans account.. yes, I'm still working on that one).
May 18, 2005: Well I had a good birthday! Thanks to everyone that made it so good!
Came into work to find my cube had been attacked by a streamer-bomb! Sweet! Next I was treated to a sushi lunch... later that evening I went out for dinner at Sundance Steakhouse. They were out of prime rib, so we got complementary soups and a free dessert for our birthdays (it was Cheryl's the day before).
Over the last two days I've been spending my time working on the Python Challenge. But since I don't know python, I'm doing it in other languages! Did the first 3 puzzles in standard C, and the 4th in shell scripting. Not immediately obvious to me what the 5th puzzle is asking me to do though... I assume it's some python-esque thing. D'oh!
May 17, 2005: Happy Birthday to me
Happy Birthday to me
Happy Birthday dear me-e
Happy Birthday to me
May 15, 2005: Well... another exciting work-filled week! This weekend was pretty swell though! Left work early (8-ish) on Friday night, came home, and stayed up until 3am working on a new real-time raytracer that I've been wanting to write for a while now! (as if I don't spend enough time in front of a computer!)
Saturday morning was awesome... just spent some time reading out on my back porch in the sun. So nice to have time away from work! Next Jess came over along with my early birthday present -- a homemade strawberry-rhubarb pie! Mmmm... delish! After that we played Scrabble and I got super lucky -- two bingos in a row ("lamenTS" and "cartoned")!! Did I mention they were in a row??! Next up Sha and May-Ling dropped by and we all took the Caltrain up to the city. Spent the night at Sha's cousin's place so that we could get up early for....
Bay to Breakers! Ran that this morning with about 55000+ other people! Officially I came in 6075 with a time of 1:21:46... but it took me 5:56 just to get to the starting line! The Hayes Street Hill wasn't nearly as bad as I'd heard (try doing the hill by the Cliffhouse!), and there were some quite interesting costumes out there (including a bunch of naked old men)... Felt really good for the race, was a little worried as I haven't been running too much lately, but I ran it today with only a 2-minute walk break in the middle (for a goo) and had an average pace of 10:05 minutes/mile. All-in-all it was a good time!
The rest of today consisted of Heidi's Pies, napping, reading, The Simpsons, dinner... general relaxing.
May 8, 2005: Happy Mother's Day!
Saw Kung Fu Hustle last night with Jess and Sha. It was super funny! Go see it if you haven't already!
May 4, 2005: It's Wednesday night and I've already worked over 40 hours this week. :(
Saw Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy on Saturday... it was pretty funny. And even people who haven't read the books enjoyed it! After that we had a few indecisive wanderings around San Mateo before we headed over to Cafe Boroni (sp?).
Tonight we had a nice Bond engineering dinner at Izzy's steakhouse. Pretty good stuff! Be sure to ask for the non-menu-listed Cowboy Rib-eye... 22oz of goodness.
Went to Swing Central last night... they had a live band as well as a lindy contest. Good times! I was also dancing better than the last couple times I went, which was nice. Getting worried that I was losing my ability!
April 30, 2005: Forgot to mention that I went for dim sum earlier in the week... it was good, though the service was horridly slow.
Rock climbing this past Thursday was a blast. Did some fun climbs..
Friday was a going-away party for a guy at work.. it was fun. Went to a couple bars in Burlingame then headed back to Pat's place to sleep on the couch.. err.. watch some British comedies I mean.
Today I got woken up too early by a wrong number... then I cabbed back to Burlingame to get my car (which was still there thankfully!). Next I headed down to Jess' for breakfast/lunch then we hung out with her friend for a while. After which we played a game of Scrabble. Pretty intense... Jess was beating me for a while, but I just barely managed to scrape my way to a 7 point victory (338 to 331). Nice!
And tonight it's off to see The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy! Let's hope it's good (or at least not too bad)!
April 27, 2005: Had a good weekend! Let's recap!
Thursday I went climbing with Jess and Marc. It was good times, though I was feeling kinda weak...
Friday I went climbing again with Eric (a guy from work). It was much better and I did a very cool 5.11 that was all stemming and naturals.. also re-did the Long/Reachy Moves 5.10d that I did earlier. Whee. Also ran into some other folks from work. Then came home and watched Shark Hunter, which was not quite as bad as I'd anticipated... until the ending that is.
Saturday I went for a 7-mile run with Babs, May Ling and Kevin. Then we headed out to a raman place for lunch. After that I went home, then out to CostCo with the roomies. A quick $70 later and I emerge with some drinks, sliced peaches and Pac Man Vs.. Then we headed home and played some Life Line. It's a PS2 game where you control the character by telling her what to do (via a microphone). Cool idea, but not too great in practice.. though it is funny to watch some one say "Look at table" and the player responds with "Ok, I'll leave the room" and then proceed to run away. Very funny indeed. After that we all headed over to Mary's swank new house for her housewarming party! Good times -- especially with all the fancy mimosas I was drinking!
Sunday started off with some coconut, chocolate pancakes that Jess and I whipped up -- always a good start to the day! Then we proceeded to play almost 6 hours of Jungle Beat with Marc.. only interspersed with some vacuuming on my part. After that the 4 of us (the previously mentioned folks + Scott) went out to (surprise surprise) Blank Angus for dinner. I actually sent my food back! I asked twice for no croutons in my salad and then it came with some.. fine, I picked them out. Next I ordered my steak rare and it came totally medium-well. Grrr.. so I sent it back and left a less-than-standard tip! Take that! Then we came home and watched Best in Show, which wasn't quite as good as I was expecting (too much hype perhaps?).
And this week has been a lot of work so far.. gotta get stuff ready for E3 you know!
April 20, 2005: Happy 4/20 Day all my hungry friends!
Sorry for the lack of updates this week.. been kinda busy at work. Let's see if I can recall what I've been up to for the past week. Lost more games of Scrabble; currently on a 6 (or 7) game losing streak. :( Went for a nice half-marathon run with Sha and May-Ling Saturday morning, which we promptly followed up with lunch at Heidi's Pies. After that I played some God of War. Pretty entertaining (and creatively violent) game! After that I went over to Jess' and we watched Kill Bill 2. The next day we went down to San Jose and saw the San Jose Museum of Art (how cultural!). It was pretty cool actually, I quite enjoyed some of the exhibits and made a donation on my way out the door (as there's no enterance fee). Next we headed back to my house where we met up with Mira and her beau. Off to Black Angus for dinner and then they ran off to catch their plane while I ran home to watch the Simpsons. The past few days have included school and lots of work (a few couple late nights already and it's only Wednesday!).
But yeah, things are good overall. And Marc wants me to say something cool about him: "something cool about him."
And don't forget to check out my wishlist as my birthday's less than a month away now!
April 13, 2005: Finally beat Resident Evil 4 last night... unlocked a couple new game modes and some new weapons -- pretty cool!
Aside from that, nothing too interesting. Stayed late at work the past couple nights.... still haven't finished my taxes... have a test in my EMT class tonight...
April 9, 2005: Ahhh, another beautiful sunny Saturday... and what did I do today you ask? Well, I went out for breakfast with Jess and her mom, then I mailed my panniers to my friend who's going to be biking across Canada this summer (yay!), and then... I went to work. Oh well, I got a bunch of stuff done since no one else was there to bother me!
Last night I had a game of Scrabble with Jess and her mom, and I got a super bingo! Well, it _could_ have been super, but oh well. I played the work "enForceD" (pretty lucky to have both blanks!) on H15 -- the first e was already there, otherwise I could've had a nine-time-word-score!
And now for a house bbq! Good thing too, 'cause my internet connection sucks with 4 people playing WoW on it! >:|
April 7, 2005: Did something kinda unusual today: went to the coronoer's office! Yup, me and a couple folks from my EMT class went to go see an autopsy this morning. Unfortunately they had a homicide this morning and I guess we're not allowed to watch those ones. Though we did get a very informative presentation and tour of the facilities (including walking around their big freezer room where they keep the bodies). Fun for weirdos like us.
Aside from that I've been sick since the weekend. I even took Monday off work! But feeling mostly better now. Though I do have a lump in my throat. It's just an inflamed lymph node, but people at work think I should go to a doctor. Bah I say. BAH!
My online Scrabble rating was up to 691 (still trying to break the 700 mark), and thought I might get there last night, but lost a game and it went down to 681. Oh well... the game itself was very fun (and close: I lost 312-301) anyhow.
April 3, 2005: Forgot to mention that I went to see Sin City on Friday (opening day!) with Marc, Sha, Babs and Charlene... it was pretty sweet! I haven't read the comics it's based off, but apparently it looks pretty similar! The visual style was quite unique and very cool.
Last night I went to a party with Jess, which was pretty sweet... we even strung lights out across the street, had a pinata and then danced in the middle of the street! Cool.
Unfortunately we left early cause I was feeling like crap. And today's not a heck of a lot better. My neck is swollen. Uh-oh. I'm sure I'll get better soon.
April 2, 2005: My neck hurts.
I put up pictures from the snowboarding trip the other week.
Off I go to go running (ha! And you thought I was still a slacker!).
March 31, 2005: Ooh, look at me! I'm updating my web log again! So speedy....
Since the last update I've been swing dancing and have played a bunch of Neo Contra with Marc. Whee.
In other exciting news (my life is full of it!!), I've started memorizing the Three Letter Word List for Scrabble. Originally I was going to learn the Two-To-Make-Three Word List first but then thought it was too hard having to remember seperate front and back hooks for each two-letter word. Thus I just skipped ahead to learn all the threes! I'm already up to AHA!
Probably going climbing again tonight... maybe I'll try that fun Long, Reachy Moves route again. Actually I hear there's a second "How Hard Am I?" route! I'll give that a go as well.
March 29, 2005: Ok ok, I've been horrible at updating my site lately!! But on some good news -- I wrote half of my New Orleans report this past weekend!! Give me another month and it should be done. :|
So.. since my last update: I passed all my practical EMT exams with flying colours! Afer the last set of practicals, a few of us headed out for dinner and drinks to celebrate. Small world too! The girlfriend of one of my classmates knows my cube-neighbour at work! I have this week off school and then my next (and last) course starts next Monday.
Thursday I assume I went rock climbing (can't remember that far back!). That weekend was Sha'a birthday! Being the sneaky devil that I am, I coerced her into having dinner with me. But lo! Little did she know that I was just setting her up for a surprise birthday party! Originally we were going to go for a run in the morning with Babs et al., but that was cancelled due to rain. Thus we went over to Babs' house and watched The Incredibles. After that we headed up to the city for dinner, but first I had to make a quick stop to pick something up at this bowling alley.. but who should we find there, but all her friends! A good time ensued. After the bowling (of which I did crappy) we headed over to Peter's house for food and fun.
Monday and Wednesday were filled with my EMT practicals... Thursday, Jess and I went climbing. I had a great night!! They had put up some really fun new climbs! I even did a 5.10d "Long/Reachy Moves" one... didn't see the long/reachy moves part until I was already tied in, and gave it a try anyhow, but it was super good fun!
Saturday, Sha, Marc and I went snowboarding at Heavenly. It was super nice weather and I ended up boarding in my t-shirt all day! Which was a ton of fun... until I got my entire head sunburned. That'll learn me!
Sunday was spent sleeping, watching Miss Congeniality 2 with Jess and her dad, changing my window wipers (sooo good now!) and going to bed at 9:30pm.
Last night Jess, Marc, Sha, Babs and I watched Titan AE (which was better than DareDevil).
PS - Finally played more online Scrabble too! Got a bingo I couldn't play (called a "no go") (it was GUSSIES), though I did get to play TATTIER!
March 16, 2005: Tonight's my written final for my EMT 304 course! Next week will be the practical exams! Wish me luck!! (Still one more course after this until I'm a full EMT though)
Put up pictures from my trip to the zoo the other week!
March 14, 2005: I know, I know! I've been horrible at updating lately... the fact that I need to write about my New Orleans trip is the cause of this! It's going to be a long report, and I just haven't felt like devoting the required amount of time to that yet... my apologies.
In other news: My EMT finals are this week and next week! I feel pretty good for them though! After this class, I have one more, then I'll be done! Speaking of which, I need to sign up for the next class real soon...
Finally got a GPS for my car! It plugs into my laptop and I can use it to give me step-by-step directions on how to get vritually anywhere! Fun fun fun... I used it (needlessly, as I already knew where I was going) this past weeked!
Got together with Sha, Babs and May-Ling and went for a nice ~7 mile run along the Stevens Creek Trail. After that we headed out for some dim sum... mmmmmm!
The rest of my weekend was spent working, hanging out with Jess and playing video games (the new Resident Evil 4 is really fun!). Good times!
PS - Happy Pi Day everyone!! (March 14 ~= 3.14)
March 7, 2005: Two things:
1) The iPod Shuffle is really small! Neat, though I'd still prefer a mini.
2) This site is hilarious! Check out what it can do!
March 6, 2005: Ok, New Orleans was awesome!! Except it's getting late and any writing about that trip requires a good amount of time to describe it all. For now you'll have to be satisfied with just my marathon log. Actually the pictures are up, so go look at those and try to guess what I actually did while I was there!
This past week has been pretty good as well! Flew back into town Tuesday night. Wednesday was my EMT class. Thursday was a trip to Costco and then some rock climbing with Jess. There was a fun new route in the corner by the fire escape that instead of having a difficulty rating was labelled "How hard am I?". Figured I'd give it a go, and it turned out to be fun and challenging! I think it's probably about a 5.11 or so. I asked the guy at the front desk on the way out, but he wasn't familiar with that climb.
Friday night we (Marc) had a going away party for Cort as he's soon leaving for a new job in the City of Angels (heh, I wrote Angles at first, which would be cool as well). Best of luck to him there!
On Saturday, Jess, Karen and I went out for lunch at a new Malaysian restaurant in San Mateo. It was pretty yummy, and it was good to catch up with Karen again. After that, Jess and I took a brief walk along the Bay Trail. Next, we picked up Marc (and the chocolate cheesecake we baked that morning) and went to Bab's house warming party. Her house was quite nice, and so were the people there! And despite my worrying, the cheesecake was awesome too!
Sunday (today), Jess and I picked up her family friends' 5-year-old daughter and took her to the SF Zoo. A good time was had by all, and pictures will be forthcoming. The long day of walking tuckered the little girl out and she slept the entire way home (at which we got invited to stay for a tasty dinner!). In other news, I finally figured out how the seat-belts in my backseat work! I'd oft heard people sitting back there express confusion upon trying to use them, yet had never actually had a good look at them until today when I needed to buckle the child up. Only took a few minutes of her dad and I messing around with it to put it all together.
And now it's off to bed while watching The Manchurian Candidate.
February 23, 2005: Happy Belated Birthday Nicola!
Happy Birthday Vicki!
Well I'm off to New Orleans tomorrow for my marathon on Sunday!! Exciting.. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures and let you all know how it turned out when I get back!!
PS - I also put up some random February pictures! They're mainly from the party last weekend, and hanging out with Jess' friend (and her boyfriend) on Sunday... enjoy!
PPS - In other news, Marc and I went to REI the other day, where he bought a climbing harness & shoes, and I got some more biners! Excited to go climbing now... however I won't get to for at least a week... oh well, they say anticipation is better than the actual event anyhow!
February 20, 2005: Friday night I went to see Constantine, which was enjoyed by all! Saturday I went up to the city with Sha for our last marathon training run! Pretty exciting! A mere 8 miles, which went swimmingly!
Then I came home, had a nap while kinda watching Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Next I played (and won) some Scrabble, then it was off to a party. Whee! (there'll be pictures up later)
On the way home I picked up Jess, and today we're gonna head up to the city to have lunch with one of her friends. Well, off I go!
PS - Whee! A new Scrabble rating high of 684!!
February 18, 2005: Ever feel like you've had too much to drink at lunch and now your work is impaired? I sure do... :|
But oh well, had a good lunch with some friends I haven't seen in a while.. so that was good! Work's also coming along... been working a bit of overtime, but enjoying what I'm working on!
Went climbing last night with Marc, Eugene and Jess. Had a blast! Kinda started off too hard (no warm-up 5.11) and got really tired, but had fun anyhow... got in a bunch of 5.10's and another 11 or two.. even did the first couple (easy) moves of a 5.12. But my hands/arms are sore today!
February 15, 2005: Put up some new pictures using my awesome new PHP picture gallery stuff!! Just when you thought I couldn't get any more amazing...
February 14, 2005: Happy Valentines Day!
February 13, 2005: Thursday was supposed to be a surprise birthday party for a friend, but that didn't work out, so Jess and I went rock climbing... Jess' friend Hannah came along as well to watch (she's also an EMT). Friday was pretty good... while I had big plans for doing a lot at work, they didn't materialized. Oh well, that's what next week's for! That night was spent relaxing at home with the roomies (plus Cort). Saturday I had a nice 8-mile training run -- officially in the "taper" now! Marathon's in 2 weeks today! Whee!!! That night Jess came over and made me some scrumptious dessert for Valentine's Day! Mmmm... Sunday we got up early with intentions to go rock climbing at Mount Tamalpais (and to finally use my hexes!), but to no avail. The weather called for rain, but we persisted anyhow with the hope that they would be wrong. It was looking pretty good, until we got up to the mountain, where the fog quickly closed in and reduced visibility to near zero... so even if we had found the place we were looking for, the climbing would have been poor. Oh well. We ended up doing a little hike and then came home and watched Vertical Limit... after some dinner/lunch outting, Sha came over and we all watched Underworld. Now the Simpsons has just finished and it's time to play more Need For Speed. Later.
February 9, 2005: Happy Chinese New Years everyone!
In order to celebrate (not really though), I bought myself a sphygnomamoter (aka blood-pressure cuff) and stethoscope! Whee... now to practice taking everyone's blood-pressure!
February 6, 2005: Let's see what I've been up to this week..
Monday: EMT class. I think this was our AED lab.
Tuesday: Dinner with a friend from UW who was in town on business.
Wednesday: EMT class. Vital signs & detailed exam class.
Thursday: Worked late.
Friday: Worked late.
Saturday: Ran 20-miles! Watched iRobot. Went to Jess' for dinner.
Mingled in with those activities, and this morning, I've been playing more online Scrabble! I'm currently at a personal best rating of 658, and my goal is to get over 700 soon (today??).
PS - I just wrote my own dynamic image gallery thingy! You can check it out here! It auto-generates mid-sized and thumbnails images, thus making it much easier for me to upload photos! Whee, I'm a nerd.
January 31, 2005: Sorry :(
January 27, 2005: Work work work... that's what this week's been all about. Got a milestone tomorrow and trying to get stuff done; though sometimes it seems like the world is collaborating against me -- simple tasks take days instead of hours due to simple, yet hard-to-determine, problems which could be in any link of the tool-chain. But alas, it's coming together.
EMT class on the other hand has been good fun! Haven't really done much new yet (though we did talk about determination of death the other day, which included some new things for me). So far we've done adult/child/infant CPR and BLS, and we just had our AED lab last night. I guess I learned some "medicolegal" stuff as well... the other people in my class seem quite fun as well!
Haven't been swing dancing the past couple weeks -- too much work. Haven't been doing my maintenace runs either -- ironically, too much chiropractor visits! Oh well, my longer runs have been going pretty well... another 10-miles this weekend.
Oh, and I found something that I found offensive. Don't watch it if you dislike stupid, uber-opinionated, out-spoken people on international television.
January 20, 2005: Yay for climbing. Even a bad climbing night is still a good time!
Also just put up two sets of new pictures, so go check them out!
January 18, 2005: Well, I had a good time in Tahoe! But first -- the rest of Christmas vacation:
After getting back to TO, I just took it easy.. hung out with the family, went to MEC, played Scrabble.. almost bought some hexes (climbing gear) while at MEC since no one else had bought me any, but they were all out. :'(
Anyhow, I flew back to Cali that Sunday, got picked up by Jess at the airport and continued home to make a big mess of my room (aka "unpacking"). It was off to work the next day... just a few hundred emails to go through, not the thousands I had feared.
The next day there was a tsunami money-raising event at swing, so there was a live band. They were Jelly Roll whom I've seen before and enjoyed once again...
Wednesday I had my first EMT class!! We just reviewed CPR stuff, but looks like it's going to be a good time! For those of you not in the know, I signed up for a 6-month EMT class... not that I'm in it for a career change, but merely an interest thing. That and I want to do search-and-rescue eventually, so this will be a good thing to have then!
Thursday we (Marc, Jess and Eugene) went climbing as per usual. Marc and I also signed up for memberships! Whee... now we can go as much as we want!
Friday I left work early so that I could head up to Tahoe! Went up with Sha and a bunch of her friends.. we went boarding on Saturday. I was kinda rough at the beginning, but by the end of the day I was where I was at (if not ahead a tiny bit) the last time I went (which was 2 years ago)! That night we had some turducken which was alright.. we then proceeded to play video games and just hang out. I was pretty tired so I went to bed early.. then got up a few hours later and re-joined the party! Sunday entailed much sleeping and more hanging out... watched Napolean Dynamite again, beat Feel the Magic (with Sha's help) and played Trivial Pursuit 09's Edition (of which I actually knew some answers!).
Monday we got up early and drove back to the Bay Area... then Sha and I went for a little run. A 14-mile run!! Yup, it was great, I feel much better about the upcoming marathon now! Then it was off to pick up some borrowed EMT textbooks off Jess at work. And finally I watched The Chronicles of Riddick with Marc before passing out in bed.
Ooh, it's late. I gotta run...
PS - Yeah, I forgot to mention something. On Wednesday night we also exchanged house presents (with the roommates). It was great! I got awesome things like: a sushi kit, a jazz piano book, a DVD and ..... a set of hexes! Whee!!! Man, that wishlist thing worked out surperbly!!!
January 14, 2005: Going boarding in Tahoe for the long weekend... will update about the rest of Christmas vacation afterwards!
January 6, 2005: Just in case you all were wondering, I'm getting back into my Scrabble game! Before I left Toronto a few days ago, my mom and I were doing the puzzles in my book for finding bingoes (7 or 8 letter words), pretty fun having other people to do it with! Anyhow, apparently that work paid off as I got three nice bingoes in my games tonight: origamiS (65 points), toothier (63 points) and lionesS (66 points). Sweet!
So yeah, the past few days I've been back in Kingston. Visiting the dad, Scott (again), Paul, Andria (Happy Birthday!) and almost Melinda and Les... on the bus ride down I started talking to the fellow in line behind me (as he had a Queens Math shirt on).. talk talk talk. Then we get on the not-busy bus, and since I was tired, I was quite looking forward to napping on the way there, unfortunately our conversation was still in its midst, so we sat together. But it was pretty interesting anyhow, we had a lot in common (including knowing people the other person knows -- such a small world!). Also ran into him at Stooley's where I had lunch with Scott and Paul.
And I'm going back to the T-dot tomorrow, hopefully the freezing rain we had today will be all cleared up by then and there won't be any slow-downs on the highway...
January 2, 2005: Happy New Years! Did everyone remember to make some New Year Resolutions? I have! It was already something I had decided to do last year, but I figured this way I'd get more credit for it -- kinda like adding things you've already done to a to-do list so that you can cross them off right-away! :P
So far my Ontario trip has been a lot of fun! Flew in on the 24th.. turns out my sister had gotten in a car accident on the way to the airport! No worries though, everyone is fine (except the car of course)..
Boxing Day was also Go-to-Christmas Day. Much thanks to Scott for my early Christmas present, it helped pass the time splendidly! Was only there for two nights, but had fun and saw lots of friends again (including my Californian roommate Scott).
Came back to the T-dot to see my uncle's family, then it was off to Waterloo in my rented Jeep Liberty. Saw Vicki's apartment (nice) and went out with her and her co-workers that night. Up bright and early the next morning, she went to work and I went to Timmies for a couple hours of reading my new book (which I have since finished -- it was a really good read (quite engaging)).
Next stop: Marc's house. Took the scenic (aka "long") route to his house, but that's alright. Once there we proceeded to play numerous board games with his family -- including Scrabble! Sweet! Off to The Keg for a scrumptious dinner, and ended off the night with the not-so-good King Arthur movie.
The next morning we drove back to TO to drop off the rental car, quick stop at my house, then off to Mike's house for his New Year's party. The party started off quite segregated (university friends, high school friends and sister's friends), but we eventually started m ixing (coincidentally as the alcohol was consumed!). Stayed up to 4am doing various things: Texas Hold'em Poker, puzzles, Briscola, etc. Fun fun fun!
Hope everyone's had a good year so far!
December 25, 2004: Merry Christmas all! Hope Santa was good to everyone!
My flight home was fairly smooth.. a couple hour delay in Vegas (if I had known about it, I totally could have gone out to the strip), but aside from that no problems. Got about 2 hours sleep... whee.
December 23, 2004: First off: Apologies to my avid marathon readers for my tardy updates (despite promises to update in these ramblings). Turns out I'm bad enough at updating one blog, let alone two... but I'll see what I can do!
Today's the day! Flying off home for the holidays... except I hear it's hecka snowy there! Some people even got the day off work! Looking forward to my 3.5 hours in Vegas as well! I hear there's a casino in the airport... speaking of Vegas, also found out that there's some really good climbing right there!
Happy Holidays everyone!
December 19, 2004: Well, Sha's party was a success. Good times (and food) were had by all... wow, it's already 1:36pm! And what have I been up to this fine Sunday you ask? Well, instead of telling you, I'll do you one better and show you! Yup, made my dad's website live. Whee! Aside from that I've done a bunch of reading and taught Marc part of another piano song (thus doubling his repertoire!)...
Off I go to get clean, eat and possibly do some Christmas shopping...
December 18, 2004: Look an update! Whee.
What have I been up to? Hmm.... Tuesday was Swing Central's Christmas party! They had a live band (Steve Lucky) and 6 performances! Very cool! Due to a double-booking, they have to move it at the last minute to the Fox Theatre in Redwood City. It was a pretty nice place, but not quite ideal for swing dancing (sloped non-hardwood floor), but provided a great stage for the performances!
Thursday and Friday I went to see my chiropractor (for my knee). I suppose I'll put more info on that in my marathon training log.
Today I've been cleaning up the house, driving some poor-planning roommate to the airport, visiting Jess at work, talking to a Krishna monk and surfing the web. In a hour or so we'll be heading off to Sha Sha's for her house warming party! I made a chocolate-chip pumpkin pie and Marc made some chocolate-chip cookies... mmmmmm!
This morning I finished Doctor on Everest (which was good) and found out that there's another book on the same incident.. now to find it so I can read 6 books on i!
Well I should go vaccuum now... but go check out the Guerrilla News Network for some interesting clips (I like "Faith in Exile").
December 12, 2004: Finally put up the pictures of my choclate torte I made for Jessica's Thanksgiving dinner! Mmmm...
Friday night was our company Christmas party... this year it was at The Westin St. Francis. It was a pretty nice affair overall. I didn't think it was as nice as last year though -- the multiple rooms made it hard to re-find your group once you split up; or perhaps that just because our entire group kept wandering.. they gave us all some chips for gambling when we arrived, but I never did.. oh well. I was too busy eating all the free food! The appetizers and entrees were alright, but the desserts were where it was at!
Saturday I didn't feel so good (and not from drinking either!), so I took it easy. Watched From Russia with Love (purely research for work!).. it was alright. Not as good as I remembered.. Then I went shopping (unsuccessfully) in San Mateo. Finally, topped the day off by going to see Ocean's Twelve with Jess and Marc. It was a pretty good movie, but confusing with all the intrique and overlayed plans.
December 6, 2004: I'm addicted to Internet Scrabble!!! (and I should be in bed -- it's 2:30am!)
December 5, 2004: Man! Keep me away from your computers!!! Wednesday I come into work and log-in to my computer like usual. It hangs. Stupid Windoze I figure and reboot without a second thought. Oh look, it reboots during the boot-up process, how nice. So I turn to the old standby -- Safe Mode. Only to be let down again as it enjoys rebooting itself as well. With IT on it's way I leave for an extended lunch with Jess. Come back to check on my computer and the hard drive is fried... so off I go to see Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (with Jess). It was a good movie! Yup, quite good in fact, ignore what those critics say! After that I had some dinner at Jess' and then went into work to start getting my fresh computer set-up (it takes a couple hours to get all the data I need). After that I came home and decided to play some Scrabble, turn on my computer and... nothing. Nada. Not even a blinking light or some annoying beeps. I think my power supply is gone kaput. But anyhow, that's how I killed two computers in one day.
Since then I've gotten a promotion at work! Yup, just call me Mr. SEII now. :)
We had an "exotic beers" party last night! It was quite fun.. lots of cool beers, and a bunch of team Halo 2 (8 players, 2 XBoxes)! Awesome! Sorry for the short ramblings (I wrote the computer part on Friday), but it's time for the Simpsons now!
November 30, 2004: What a great day! I qualified for Aeroplan Prestige membership! :) Take that you mere Aeroplan members! I don't know what extra benefits this entitles me to, but I'm sure they're extravagant and luxurious! WOW! I just found out what I get -- priority waitlisting and priority standby!! Woo.
In other news, I _finally_ think I'm done porting over this camera system now. I thought I was done previously, but no, it keeps coming back to haunt me like.. a haunting ghost. But now it's done Done DONE!
Speaking of done: I finished learning all 96 of the two-letter words... then this morning I learnt the Q without U words (just need to remember that a variation of the plural of "qindar" is "qindarkas"). Go Scrabble!
And now I'm off to swing dancing...
November 29, 2004: Had a great rest of the Thanksgiving weekend! Dinner at Jess' was a blast... met a bunch of their family friends, played (and won) some Scrabble and various other board games. Dinner was awesome! The chocolate torte I made was quite "sophisticated" accordning to some.. (pictures forthcoming)
Yesterday we had our own Thanksgiving dinner at our house. Odd isn't it? The three Canadians putting on a dinner for our American friends? Anyhow, it went swimmingly, between the three of us (Ash was out of town), we made a yummy turkey, stuffing, whipped potatoes, asparagus, gravy, yorkshire pudding, gyozas, cranberry sauce, banana bread, pumpkin pie, a marble cheesecake and Sha brought some green-bean cassarole! Mmmmmm....
Also watched Zoolander (funny!) and The Punisher (much better than expected!) this weekend.
And now it's back to work after my grand 5 days off!
PS - Mike, we've found you out!
PPS - Don't forget about my marathon training log!
November 26, 2004: Happy Thanksgiving my American friends! Went over to a friends' place yesterday for a turkey dinner.. mmmm... and going to Jess' place tomorrow for another! Gotta make another pie for that today... and we may have a house dinner on Sunday.. better make 2 pies. :P
I've spent most of the last few days working on my dad's new website (it's his non-surprise Christmas present). Feel free to take a look and give me comments (but not that it looks remarkably like _my_ new site please).. PHP is AWESOME! Thanks again to Cort for convincing me to switch over to it!
Swing lessons on Tuesdays have been going well.. learinng complex moves that I should be practicing. Also learning how to spin and turn -- kinda hard to do right! It's also hard to remember all the moves we've been learning.. I guess I should use them more in the social dance so I get used to them. But I don't feel too bad 'cause I get most people are forgetting the moves. Oh well, as long as I get at least one new move out of each lesson I'll be happy.
November 21, 2004: Phew! Finally put up the new site! Bye-bye frames -- hello tables and PHP! All the links in the menu (to your left) should be working just fine, and most of the links in my ramblings should be good as well (I fixed all my entries up to a year ago anyhow)...
I know everyone's been wondering what to get me for Christmas! Well wonder no longer good readers! Behold my online wishlist! Sit not in amazement at what my awesome coding skills combined with the power of PHP can accomplish; but go forth and buy gifts for me! Simply check off the present(s) that you intend to get for me and click the submit button. And have no fear of me sneakily checking the list myself to see what others have gotten me -- my iron-will and love-of-surprise will see to that! Also I have a variety of scripts which allow me to update the list without seeing what has been checked off already.
Had a good weekend so far! Friday night Jess and I watched Chicago, which I thought was pretty good! Saturday we made some yummy french toast with a banana-coconut topping (who needs recipes!), and then watched Chocolat. After that, Jess, Marc and I met up with Eugene at Planet Granite for a few hours of rock climbing. I'm so addicted right now... just finished reading How to Climb: Big Walls and am still plowing through the bunch of catalogs I picked up from the climbing comp last weekend. Oh yeah, so tried out a couple of the routes from the competition, not too bad. I've been climbing pretty well lately, quite comfortable on 5.10-'s, enjoying 5.10's and challenged on 5.10+'s.. even attempted a 5.11- that had the warning "long, reachy moves required". After a lot of struggling I only made it half way, but good enough to win the 3 beers Marc said he'd give me if I made it that far!
After that, we all headed out to Pasta Pomodoro, which was surprisingly good and cheap! Especially since I got my dinner and dessert for free (due to a loooong wait for my food to arrive). Then back home to play a little Half Life 2.
Today's been quite productive so far (it's only 12:30!):
- Made my new PHP-enabled web-site live
- Made my new wishlist live
- Cleaned the bathroom, swept the kitchen and front foyer
- Updated my resume
- Read a little
November 18, 2004: Whee! Won a hoodie from Santa Cruz Skateboards today! Good times.
November 14, 2004: Forgot to thank Jess last time for giving me my much needed haircut!
Had a(nother) good weekend.. Friday night consisted of playing Halo 2 with Marc.. stayed up to 3:30am! Which made my 6-mile run Saturday morning less than fun; but hey, it's only 6 miles! (who thought I'd ever say that?!?) Actually, the run really sucked because my knee started hurting (it was sore since my 5km race last weekend). Has been hurting since, so I've been taking it easy and taking some ibuprofen. Really hoping it gets back to normal soon!
After the run on Saturday, Jess and I went over to Planet Granite to watch some of the rock climbing competition they had going on. Didn't stay for all of it, but looked like there were some good climbers there! Were also a lot of kids out competing.. wish I'd been on a rock climbing team when I was a kid!
That night Marc and I stayed up until 4am playing Halo 2, but beat the sucker! Overall it was a decent game. Pretty similar to Halo 1, though the dual-wielding's pretty cool and the energy sword is awesome.. however the game is lacking some serious polish: texture-popping all over the place, poor LODs, interpenetrating geometry..
Due to that, and the bad knee, I slept in late today, watched Resident Evil (which wasn't as bad as I'd heard), and tried to install the GeForce4 that Marc gave me. Everything seemed to be going well and I even thought "wow, that was surprisingly easy", and then it all turned to custard. Well not totally, only when I try to do some 3D graphics. :'( Tried the latest drivers, old drivers, different video modes... I'll give it another go later 'cause I'm off to bed now.
November 11, 2004: Happy Rememberance Day (or whatever the appropriate wishing is for today).
Got two things done today that I've been putting off for a long time:
- Mailed in my application for a British Passport! Hopefully I'll be receiving one in 4-6 weeks!
- Watched Bowling for Columbine -- good movie. Perhaps somewhat one sided, but okay since I'm in agreement with the movie. Found the idea of "americans being ruled by fear" interesting... nothing too novel perhaps, but kinda new to me.
I'm sure everyone even remotely involved with the gaming industry has seen this. No further comment on that.
Yup... writing a new targeting system at work. Good times. Interesting designing it to be powerful while still being very generic... whee, it's like learning at work! :)
November 9, 2004: Just did a little more work on the new site. Let me know what you think! Not all pictures and stuff will load, but you should be able to get the basic idea... Thanks to Marc and The Gimp for the new picture of me (only available on the new site)!
November 7, 2004: Just finished a 5km race this morning! Check out my marathon log for more info on how that went.
Went to see The Incredibles on Friday -- really enjoyed it! Even though we had to sit in the 2nd row! That's how good it is! Oh, and for anyone wondering -- there's nothing after the credits end.
Then marathon training yesterday morning.... then baked a Linzertorte (note: not the recipe I used) and brought it over to Karen's pot-luck birthday party. Mmmmmmm....
Raced this morning, and going rock climbing with Marc this afternoon. Sweet!
November 3, 2004: WTF?!? How can people be sooo dumb/ignorant/blind?!?! And as if that wasn't bad enough, 11 states banned gay marriages. Oi! Looks like it's time to move home to Canada...
November 1, 2004: Happy Belated Halloween Everyone! This year a bunch of us headed up to the city for Halloween in the Castro II. Well it's much tamer these days than it used to be... especially 'cause we spent a fair bit of our time there in a crowded bar. Oh well... we did get to see many interesting costumes, as well as some themed groups. Unfortunately I somehow managed to go from fine to lost-my-voice-sick within a two-hour span. :| Check out all the Halloween pictures here.
The trip to Napa the night before was a lot of fun as well! Though it took us about three hours to drive there due to horrific traffic... we did, however, get there in time to catch some of the Simpsons Halloween Marathon. :D The next day we went for breakfast at the high recommended Gillwood's Cafe (my food was okay, but Jess' was quite good) then wandered around Napa for a little while. Some interesting little shops there: vintage clothing, bookstores, antique stores, chocolate factory... then we spontaneously headed off to go see Old Faithful (just to show our ignorance, we had no idea that it was even in the area!)... it was pretty cool -- check out the pictures (and a movie even!) here!
And now, to go to bed early and try to get over my newest sickness. :( Although I can't be totally sad, 'cause my new book finally arrived!!
October 30, 2004: Let's see here.... went to D&B on Monday night.. took a "creative" route there which took a looong time, but finally made it. Good times were had by all, and Marc bought us all some finger traps!
Tuesday Jess and I wandered around the Stanford Shopping Center (odd, but I was in the mood to go to a mall!). Then we made dinner and I played some Top Spin...
Wednesday we spent babysitting a couple kids... pretty fun times at the park. Then I met up with some work friends for some poker action (Texas Hold'em, 3-5-7 and Carribbean Stud). Lady Luck was with me and I made off with $70!!
Thursday I went for my first ever solo hike in Castle Rock. Nice! Finally used the hiking book Jess bought me ages ago as well...
Friday I went early trick-or-treating with Jess friend's kid (soo cute!). I also "accidently" made 3 pumpkin pies... long story.
And now I'm off for a weekend in Napa Valley! How exciting!
October 25, 2004: Oh, I forgot to say: check out my pictures from the Pinnacles trip!
Today was the start of my week off as well! Whee! Spent the day cleaning up from the camping trip and then Jess came over and we hung out for a while. Going to Dave & Buster's tonight with Ash and his dad...
October 24, 2004: Had a good week this week! Went over to Jess' for a birthday dinner on Wednesday and had some yummy food and dessert. Thursday my friend Lisa (from the Yam course) came down and hung out with me. The next morning, Lisa, Jess and I set off for Pinnacles National Monument. Got there nice and early, booked a loverly campsite and headed off into the park for some climbing! Despite being advised not to, we started off at Tourist Trap. Warmed-up by leading a 5.8+ (5.9 by rc.com) ("Thrill Hammer"), then continued up to the second pitch of it, which was a nice 5.6 that we all could enjoy. Jess rocked it!!! :) After that was finished, we moved over for a 5.7 crack (though it seemed a little harder -- especially after I ripped out the nice foothold at the beginning!). Next up was "Rat Race", a super fun 5.7 crack that come complete with a 5-foot roof! We then wandered over to Discovery Wall, but missed the climbs we were searching for.. found ourselves doing "Limp at Last" (5.9) at the end of the day.
Went back to the campground for a lovely dinner of bread and pie (yay for last minute planning (and forgetting to buy gas for the stove)).. had some wine and headed off to bed. The next day we went back to Discovery Wall and did "The Ordeal" (5.8) -- which was great fun! Also got in a bunch of rapelling..
After that we packed up and headed over to Carmel for some toursity fun (not to mention a good lunch!), and then headed home in the rain. Came back, went to see I Heart Huckabees, which is an excellent existential comedy. Go see it! Came home where Lisa and I finished our 6-month long Scrabble game (which had the happy ending of 303 to 305 (for me!)). But all good things must come to and end and Lisa went home this morning. Had a great time though!
And now I'm at Jess' house again for another birthday dinner.. and am being quite anti-social and updating my site while other people are chatting.. gotta run!
October 20, 2004: Happy Birthday Jess!!
October 19, 2004: Feeling mostly better today. :D YAY!!
Watched the movie Chasing Amy last night and went to bed early... it was pretty good. I had seen it a long time ago, but was really sleepy or something during it so I didn't quite follow. But now I've seen it for real. All I need is Mallrats to complete my collection, although Scott mentioned some other movie by Kevin Smith that he thinks may be in the series.. hmm.. can't remember the name of it, but I'll have to look into it.
Off to swing dancing tonight. Whee! Second-last lesson (IIRC)! The intermediate class has been going pretty well for me so far... they're also starting up a beginner/intermediate class to help bridge the gap that currently exists between the beginner and intermediate classes. I think that'll really be good for a lot of people!
Profound thought of the day: Compiling 5 versions of a project can take a LONG time.
October 18, 2004: Sorry for the lack of updates... check out my marathon progress. Also been (and am) sick.. went to the Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival this weeknd.. saw Shaun of the Dead.. had a board game night at our place on Saturday.. went to a fancy-shmancy dinner with my doctor friend Lisa (for a doctor conference).. been slowly converting my web-page over to use PHP..
October 8, 2004: Thanks to all the people who have donated towards my marathon so far!
October 3, 2004: Week 3 of my marathon training!
Also bought a computer desk thing. No... not for my computer! Rather as a TV stand for the TV in my room. Whee! Now I have tons of desk space to clutter up again!
All good things must come to an end... in this case it's my week off. Back to work tomorrow.. oh well, it'll be good to move onto my new project anyhow!
Went to REI the other day and bought tons of cool stuff... the best thing though? I finally got an ice axe!!! Sooo cool! While there I also picked up the Touching the Void DVD -- watched it today with Marc, while it was good times I'd have to say the book was better.
Got some good advice on training for climbing mountains (did I mention that I signed up to climb Mount Rainier?):
People always focus on the physical conditioning, but you need to prepare mentally as well. On Rainier, you suffer. Part of mountain climbing is putting up with discomfort. You.re going to be hungry, you're going to be thirsty, you're going to be hot, really hot, and you're going to be cold. The feeling of being hungover is exactly how you feel at altitude. For high-altitude climbing, the best way to prepare for the headaches is to drink heavily..Off to do some training! ;)
September 30, 2004: Are you ready?? First relase of BFA is available!!!!!
September 26, 2004: Quick update:
-had some time off
-coded lots (a "coding binge" if you will)
-went bowling and had an AMAZING game! A new record of 217!! It went something like this: strike, strike, spare, spare, spare, spare, strike, strike, strike (note the Turkey), spare. Awesome!
-watched some movies: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Empire Records, You Got Served
-Jess and I's 3-month anniversay
Yup, sorry for the crappy update. Will try to do better in the future. And keep your eyes open for a release of BFA soon!
September 20, 2004: Don't think anything too exciting happened last week since my post... but had another good weekend!
Went to see the Beastie Boys concert on Friday. Everyone else bailed so it was just me and Sha, but that's okay. The concert was really good, and we both got awesome t-shirts! After the concert I came back to work for a little while. :|
Saturday morning was the first day of our marathon training!! I'm not running nearly as fast as I was at the beginning of the summer (now running 9:30 minute miles vs my 7:30 earlier), but oh well -- I've only been running again for a week now, so I'm sure I'll improve again. But anyhow, my pace group seems really nice! Plus it's a nice small group which is good.
I had planned to not to into work at all on Satruday, but since I didn't quite finish up the stuff I was doing Friday night, I came in for an hour to check-in my code. Well, as usual, I underestimated how long I'd be at work, so my one hour turned into either. :'( Very sad day. Anyhow, then Jess and Luke came over and we played some games. I actually went to sleep really early 'causes I was beat.
Sunday involved waking up early to play more Burnout 3, and then off for rock climbing again! I'm really happy to be climbing again, and quite pleased that Jess is into it as well! Whee! After climbing we went to her house for a lasagna dinner that her brother made. Next we went to The Stanford Theatre to see Arsenic and Old Lace (a classic 1944 film) -- quite funnny!
I was originally very put-out at having to work all day Saturday because I had planned on spending it along to have some Me Time(tm) (of which I've been missing out on lately), but due to the good times on Sunday it still turned out to be a great weekend. So glad that my outlook on things is determined by my last impression. :) At least in this instance...
PS - In other good news I scored 828660 in BookWorm and gained the rank of vocabulist!
September 15, 2004: Had a fantastic time at swing last night! Did my first intermediate lindy class... was a little worried about it being too hard, but did quite well! Next week they're gonna push up the tempo a bit so we'll see how that turns out, but feeling good! Also, last night was the You Got Swung contest. Very cool to watch... so much to learn!! They also had a couple DJ's battling it out, as well as a few raffles (none of which I one).. was also feeling good about my dancing again and was styling it up a bit. Fun fun!
To be like my friend I've decided to add a new page to track my marathon progress. Check it out here (or from my menu bar).
In other news, my free CDs from BMG came today.. get yours today by signing up here (only for my friends in the US though)!! Still addicted to the Black Eyed Peas... let's get retarded!!!
AND yesterday, my copy of Street Figher: Anniversary Edition arrived. Surprise surprise, it also came with the full length Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie! Gotta watch it tonight!
September 13, 2004: Had a great weekend! Didn't go into work at all! :D
So here's the low-down since my last update: Thursday - went home and played The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords. Such a good game! Fun fun multiplayer action.
Friday - had a nice run in the morning, and went to the wine tasting with Scott after work. Was pretty good. Not a big fan of most of the wines, but did find one I liked. Also the people didn't seem nearly as pretentious as I'd feared (just one fellow fit the bill). After that Jess came over and we played Burnout 3.
Saturday - got up early to bake some goodies (made chocolate-raspberry triangles out of my Ghirardelli cookbook) so that we could make it to a 2pm going-away party for a friend. Instead we were 3 hours late because we played tons of Burnout 3. Then we left the party early to play some more. Upon getting home we found Mary, Luke and Dan were there... now it became an impromptu party! Whee!
Sunday - got up, played more Burnout 3, met Sha at The Runners High to get new shoes and accessories for the marathon. Then Jess and I went to a little bistro for lunch, where I had "Baked Eggs with Prosciutto". Never heard of "baked eggs" before, but it was really quite good! Kinda a mix between an omlette and fried eggs. Next we went rock climbing!! Sooooo good to go again! I had fun and Jess really enjoyed herself as well (it was her first time at a real gym)! Hopefully she'll be hooked and I'll have a new climbing partner now.. after that we went back to her house where we ate a yummy dinner made by her mom and brother (who's going to culinary school).
I think that's about all the excitement of this past weekend... GO BURNOUT 3!!!
September 9, 2004: Ok, been a busy few days (so what else is new?):
Temporarily went insane and signed up for the National AIDS Marathon -- that's right: a marathon! 41.92 km of running (26.2 miles for my US readers). So now I'm committed to raising $4004 by the end of November.. so please help me meet this goal! You can donate online: here. I'd encourage you to be as generous as you can... :D
Also signed up for Intermediate Smooth Lindy X... before I've only done the beginner class (which bores me now)... little nervous about the intermediate class 'cause it's significantly harder, but I'm sure I'll struggle through.
Going to a wine tasting seminar with Scott. Should be fun! It's focusing on New Zealand Pinot Noirs... something I've managed to taste quite a few times while I was there earlier that year! ;)
Well, I'd write more, but it's late and I'm at work and I want to go home and play video games with my friends whom are kindly waiting for me.. peace out!
September 5, 2004: FREE iPod!! And no, it's not a scam (or so says Wired and these people)...
So yeah! Sign up and get me an iPod! I'll let you listen to it! :) Here's another site with some suggestions on which offer to sign up for (though be sure to use my referral link!)... Oh, and ignore the "yes/no" questions that come up (just click on No), there's an actual offer list presented at the end.
UPDATE: I guess the "stamps" promotion is a good one to go for.. free, and cancellable within 14 days (that and it updates the freeipods site quickly too!)
In other news -- been working a lot. LotR is coming along nicely.. ironically we have a major milestone tomorrow (Labour Day). Though I did get off early yesterday and watched Napolean Dynamite with Sha and Jess. Wasn't as good as I'd expected unfortunately...
September 1, 2004: This is funny.. funny 'cause it's true!
So yeah.. last night we had Chinese food for dinner. There was also a big bag of fortune cookies.. thus I had about 3. Lots of fortune for me! One of which was the cryptic message "Confucius say: lovers in triangle not on square". What does this mean I wonder? So I turn to the trusty Internet for the answer! Unfortunately, it just seems that this fortune cookie has been confusing people since 1999 (the earliest blog I found that mentioned it)!! Sorry, future seekers of meaning -- you'll find none here!
August 30, 2004: Had a good time in Monterey! Jess and I got there in time for a late dinner on the wharf... then up early the next morning to go diving! I got in two dives: one with a girl from Eric's class and another with Eric. Good times... the visibility was pretty crappy, but cleared up once you got farther out. Even saw some sea lions in addition to the usual starfish, fishes, anemones... After that we headed off to Cannery Row (stores and such) for lunch and shopping... We also went to the Monterey Bay Acquarium.
August 28, 2004: Happy Birthday Marc!
Yay. Went to Costco today and bought Chasing Amy... now all I need is Mallrats and my collection will be complete. Also picked up a cookbook. Mmm... good eats here I come!
Sure it's a Saturday and I'm currently at work... but where will you be tomorrow? I'll be scuba diving in Monterey! See? It all works out in the end... (or so I tell myself)
August 27, 2004: So ever have a long, tiring day of work and all you want to do when you get home is go to bed, but then you stay up playing Halo with your roommate until 5am? Well I had one of those nights last night. :)
August 25, 2004: Was talking to my friend on MSN today, and she said "You're working your life away". The sad part? I just may be...
In other news, I did more work on my prime number code... well I thought I'd redo the "meat" of it to try to get it smaller. So I started out with a slightly different approach and spent a bunch of time tweaking it here and there.. then lo-and-behold, it turned into the exact same thing as I had before... Oi! Perhaps I really do have the smallest code...
But now it's late (due to working mucho overtime) and I'm off to bed.
August 23, 2004: Almost went rock climbing on the weekend... went to work instead. :P Though I did set up my ropes in the staircase and teach Jess how to tie in and belay. Now we're all set for when we make it out to the gym sometime soon!
Also made some wicked tiramisu. Not so hard after all! And quite tasty...
August 17, 2004: Wedding pictures are up! Haven't posted about my weekend yet, but now I'm tired, so I'll do it later. Amuse yourself with the pictures until then...
PS - Alright alright... I'll update! So Saturday I went into work... work work work. Then I went over to Jess' house where she was finally indoctrinated with The Princess Bride. The next morning we made some totally amazing french toast (go check out the rest of the pictures) then headed off to the beach (yet again!)... except this time it was actually sunny!! Whee! Anyhow, we went for Delaney's 5th birthday party! Good times.. hung out on the beach, played in the ocean, ate bbq. On the way back we passed a field of sunflowers so we stopped for the photo op. :)
August 16, 2004: K, I suck. No wedding pictures up yet... but soon really!
Meanwhile...
Congratulations! You are the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra
You seem quite logical and approachable, but you're actually quite Complex, in more ways that one. |
Which Fundamental Theorem of Mathematics Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
So there.
August 13, 2004: Sorry to leave you all hanging there on my last post -- the picture survived! :%gt; In fact everything did, though the maple sugar candies I bought Jess were hurting...
I've been pretty busy this week -- got transferred onto The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age. I'll be helping them finish up in time for Christmast... however I'll try to get last week's wedding pictures up soon!
Finally brought my car into the shop today! They're gonna call me later and give me the damage estimate, but it'll be nice have new oil (I missed my last oil change and it's time for another) and the brakes fixed..
And remember to be careful today -- it's Friday the 13th!
August 11, 2004:
14:18: Luggage delivery guy just called -- he's on his way...
14:55: Got my luggage! :) Now to see if my glass picture survived...
August 10, 2004: Busy busy busy... work work work... well at least I didn't have to unpack after my trip! Why's that you ask? Well the airline was nice enough to lose my luggage for me! Thus saving me the hassle of unpacking and doing laundry. Awesome! When I didn't see my luggage on the conveyor belt, I felt a pang of dispiritedness as I realized this was nothing new, and I, almost routinely, walked over to the baggage desk. Well, they must have sensed my lack of excitement over my lost-luggage dilemma as they then threw in a twist! Of course it wasn't until yesterday (when I had expected my luggage to be Fed-Ex'ed to me) that I became aware of this new adventure! Since my luggage hadn't arrived yesterday as-per-usual, I called the 1-800 number of the back of my claim ticket to get the low-down on my luggage. After being pleasantly impressed/amused by their voice-recognition telephone software, my mood was somewhat darkened as it informed me, in a pleasing-pre-recorded voice, that they still had no record of my bags -- but that I should call back in a few hours. Which I did. I was then informed that they had come up with no further information, but had a "priority trace" on it. Well let me put my fears to rest then! That "priority trace" will, no doubt, solve this mystery posthaste...
And for those of you I may have confused earlier -- No, I'm not getting engaged. What I should have said was "Nicole and I pretended we were engaged and went engagement ring shopping".
August 4, 2004: Man, I update my web page more often while I'm away than when I'm at home!
Had some good times in Toronto -- hung out with lots of friends.. the Hot & Spicy Festival turned out well.. ended up having some ostrich meat for dinner! Good stuff! The next day Nicole came down and we hung out in Timmie's (can you believe the cop didn't know where the nearest one was??!), and then went shopping for engagement rings.. FYI, there's some good deals going on! After that, met up with Vicki and went for dinner -- oddly enough, at the same restaurant we had dinner at the last time we were in Toronto together. Good to see her again and catch up..
Spent today bussing from TO to K-town.. good times. Bringing my violin back to San Fran with me! Better go get some ear plugs roomies!! har har Also watched Punch Drunk Love (finally!).. it was alright, though not as great as I was expecting..
Here's some jokes to entertain you while I'm gone. (keep reading, they get funnier!)
August 2, 2004: Happy August all!
Posting good ol' Canada on crappy ol' dial-up. Uck.. But the trip has been going well so far! Well, my connecting flight from Chicago was cancelled, so I had some extra time to wander around O'Hare.. but I did pick-up (and already finish reading) a good book: Brining Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions.
After arriving in the T-dot, I hung out with the fam', then some family friends came over, we went for a sushi dinner and then wandered around for a while.. nice to catch up with my oldest friend again!
Yesterday was a relaxing day spent eating brunch with some family, then wandering around a nice park.. throw in some reading in the sun, a game of Scrabble, some dinner, a failed attempt to watch a move and that's the rest of that day!
Today I'm about to set off to meet some friends at the Hot & Spicy Food Festival: The Island Soul Edition.. sounds yummy!
July 30, 2004: Phew.. just a quick note -- worked on BFA last night, finally got the tank AI "turn to look at" stuff working! Stupid projecting vectors onto a plane!
Well off to work.. then to Canada!
July 29, 2004: Put up more pictures from the SF AIDS Walk!
Tonight I got together with a bunch of ex-interns for a cool dinner. Nice to see everyone again! Also got to try out some Peruvian food...
And as of tomorrow I'll be flying out to Canada for a week... off to Sarah and Rod's wedding! Anyone in TO, K-Town or Ottawa email me hopefully we can hook up!
July 27, 2004: Had a fantastic weekend in Half Moon Bay! Got to Jess' house early Saturday morning and we took a scenic drive through La Honda to get to Half Moon Bay... once there we headed off to a very scenic beach. There was ~1km walk from the parking lot to the beach, so it was pretty quiet there (people are soo lazy!). Saw a seal. Also took some time on our way back to clean up tons of little candy bar wrappers that some people had unconsiderately littered across the beach. Stuff like that really annoys me!
Anyhow, after that we headed into town and checked-in to Zaballa House. We stayed in Room 4 -- quite nice! After droppng our stuff off we explored the town some, and then went to Cetrella for dinner. It's a pretty fancy restaurant, and even had a live jazz band when we went! Very cool. I had the braised duck and Jess had the penne -- both very good!
The next day we kicked around town for a little longer, checked out some neat furniture shops and antique shops even! Then headed back to her place, went for sushi, looked around Palo Alto, went to see Roman Holiday (Audrey Hepburn's first movie!) at the Stanford Theatre, then capped the night off by watching The Simpsons at her place...
Anyhow, I gotta run to go learn more balboa now!
July 24, 2004: Put up some pictures from the SF AIDS Walk the other week (thanks for the pics Sha!).. I like this one!!
Went to the Reel Big Fish convert on Thursday! It was super fun... only caught a couple of the many opening bands but they were pretty good. One of the bands' songs even included a little 4-way drum-off. Very cool! And, of course, the Fish themselves were awesome!
As for this weekend... off to Half Moon Bay (yet again) with Jess. Should be good times!
July 20, 2004: Man, have I ever been lazy on the updates! Let's hope I can remember what has happened...
Drove Ash to the airport on Thursday so he could fly to Puerto Rico (which, incidently, is not part of the USA). Coincidently this was at the same time that Gemma was arriving, so I picked her up as well (good planning guys!). Then it was off for my (semi) weekly Scrabble match; in which I was leading both games, but due to other people's good end games I came third both times. Oh well, good games nonetheless!
Friday I went with Sha to see Saved -- which was actually quite funny! And cheap! We saw it at the Cinema Saver 10 in Milpitas for the low low price of $3.50!
The next day, Scott, Gemma, Jess and I went for a scrumptious lunch at The Cheesecake Factory. After which me and the girls headed off to wander around the Menlo Park street fair. Some shopping with Gemma followed that up, and then I headed out with some swing friends for dinner and dancing up in the city! My first time at The Doghouse and I liked it! Same crowd as everywhere else, but oh well. I find that simultaneously cool and creepy.
Sunday was the AIDS Walk. Did the walk with Team EA and we (like many other teams) had special team shirts -- however ours was widely heralded as "best of show". Props to Julie for her decision to go with the tye-dye! Apres-walk, Jess came over and we went to see Shrek 2 (my second time seeing it). It's great! If you haven't yet seen it, GO NOW!
Last night Scott and I went to Whole Foods and bought some imported beers (I liked it even before seeing the great reviews) and mead (mmmmm....).
Tonight at swing we're learning balboa! Should be exciting!
And now, back to work...
July 12, 2004: Happy Birthday Nicole!
In a futile attempt to reduce my rising spam count I've changed all my email links to use "{at}" instead "@". Just an FYI.
July 11, 2004: let's see what I've been up to:
- Swing dancing on Tuesday was good. Met Jess' friend she coerced to come out.. attended both the beginner series lesson as well as the drop-in lesson. Lotsa learning going on!
- The IGDA event was a success! Ran very smoothly and the talk was quite interesting.
- Attended Jess' other friend's EMT class. Very interesting! In fact I'm thinking of taking the course myself! It's only two classes (assuming I can skip the prereqs), and is offered as night classes. Hmmm....
- Went to the symphony and saw Ravel's Bolero, Greig's Piano Concerto in A Minor and Smetana's The Modau. Very good show!
- Saturday consisted of chilling with Cherith and buying a piano bench. Whee! No more wooden chair for me! Cherith and I also went to see The Terminal which was way better that we both expected (of course we both expected it majorly suck).
- Sunday (today) has been pretty productive so far: went for a run, did some laundry, sewed my pants, installed Win2k on my laptop, watched Pi, made a cheesecake and am now off the Jess' for dinner.
PS - Oh my -- I forgot about Tony's birthday party on Saturday night! It was a good time. He's totally tricked out his car with an on-board computer system (touch screen, GPS, wireless network, etc)! So sweet! I'm totally gonna do that same thing, but without the nice wiring job he's got (gotta put my laptop to some use after all)...
July 6, 2004: Put up some pictures from Mira & Cherith & George's visit and from the 4th of July: take me to the pics
Tomorrow's the big day of our first major Silicon Valley IGDA event -- wish us luck!
July 2, 2004: Happy Belated Canada Day!!
Happy Early July 4th!!
I'm such a multi-national! Speaking of which, I'm finally making progress towards getting my British Passport... time to start drinking more tea and stop brushing my teeth! Har har...
Yesterday Cherith flew into town.. so tonight him, Marc, Mira and I are all heading up to the city for a catch-up dinner. Hanging out with old friends is always a good time!
Signed up for the San Francisco AIDS Walk. EA will kindly match any donations I receive, so please make a donation! It is a gruelling 6.2 mile walk you know! ;)
Not too much else is new. My PC at work just got upgraded to WinXP so I've spent all day re-installing apps and configuring my system to the way I like it.. got a long weekend coming up... just gotta find something to do now!
Hey, thanks to Jess for the new math joke!
June 28, 2004: House warming party was AWESOME! Thanks to everyone who came.. the BBQ'ing was a huge hit (thanks Scott), the video games worked out well (good call on the two tv's Marc) and we even got some swing dancing in near the end (thanks.. err.. swing dancing people!). So yeah, go check out the pictures!!
Nigel's birthday party on Friday night was good times as well! From what he remembers anyhow! Har har..
Sunday I got up real early to pick up Mira from the airport.. next, her, Jess and I went out to the ever-popular Heidi's Pies for breakfast. A tour of our house followed that, then it was off to the city where we saw the movie Super Size Me (very good by the way -- even motivated me to bike to work today!).
After that we dropped Mira off to nap and Jess and I wandered around downtown for a while before heading off to her friend's place. Who, I might add, is studying to be an EMT, thus I felt compelled to talk medical stuff with her. Good times...
All-in-all a great weekend!
June 25, 2004: For a fun little flash game: go here
House warming party tomorrow! Whee!!!
Happy Birthday Nigel! Mira will be here on Sunday!! :>
June 24, 2004: Ack! I've ruined my web site while trying to update my DNS/nameserver settings... well, I suppose if anyone's reading this I've fixed it by now.
PS - Luckily it's all fixed by now. Phew!
PPS - Went to Marc's place for the weekly Scrabble game tonight.. just barely won. Nice! Thanks to Marc for giving me all those points since he was hoarding the "Q".
June 21, 2004: Had a good time at Mary's party.
Did my taxes (only 2.5 months late!).
Bought a new wireless router.
Went to a BBQ with Jane, Ian and Anita.
Had Jess over for ice cream.
June 19, 2004: Mmmm.. fresh banana bread! Also whipped up a nice stir-fry last night for Jessica and I... today we headed off to Half Moon Bay (it's only 20 minutes away from my house, but I've never been there 'til now!). It was kinda overcast, but still a good time. Wandered around town and hung out on the beach... There's even pictures up already!
Bought a new (to me) monitor yesterday. My old one finally crapped out, but luckily someone at work was willing to part with a decent 17" for a mere $30... in other computery news, my cd-rom drive is still busted (turns out it wasn't the ribbon cable as I thought) and our new wireless router died -- so we're back to stealing internet from the neighbours... poop.
Tonight I'm off to Mary's birthday party (which we would never, ever forget about).. should be a good time!
June 17, 2004: Had a fun past few days! Swing dancing on Tuesday was wicked awesome... even though my lindy was feeling kinda weak, had fun dancing with the Jessicas, Karen and Tammi. Ash, Tammi and I also went out for dinner at our "regular" restaurant. Next week we're moving onto 8-count Lindy as well (we've been doing 6-count the past two weeks), so I'm excited for that!
Was "kinda hanging out" in Palo Alto last night until 4:45am or so... playing video games, eating at The Cheesecake Factory, looking through photos and just chatting. All-in-all a fun night! Props to Marc for waking me up this morning..
In other news, the house warming party is pushed back to next weekend..
June 15, 2004: Ahhh... poor Yahoo.. good effort in trying to copy Gmail though.
In other news, had a great night last night! Went out for dinner at Kingfish, wandered around San Mateo for a while, then off for some miniature golf at Malibu Grand Prix... even managed to lose 3 out of 4 golf balls. PGA here I come!
In other news, those in Cali should email me if they don't get an invite to my house warming party this weekend (I probably don't have your email address handy)..
June 11, 2004: Sorry for the lack of updates, but this past week I kept thinking "I should update my web page.. nah, nothing interesting has happened". But now that I've thought about it more, interesting things have happened... there's that bad memory again!
Last weekend I did... stuff.. stupid bad weekend.. umm... on Sunday I met up with a friend from LA who was up visiting.. that was sweet. Went over to Berkley to see some of his friends and went to the Amoeba music there, where I promptly bought Pi and Adaptation (let's hope this one is better than Cort's last recommendation!).. so that was good to see him again.
Got a call that weekend from a friend who has a job for me... should I consider it? interview for it? Hmmm.. I don't really want to move right now, but it could be interesting to see what they have to offer..
Monday I went to another friend's place and had a rousing game of Scrabble. I dominated the first game (thanks to my PIRATES bingo!), and did alright the second... the 2-letter words are helping.. I've got half of the words memorized so far, but haven't been making much progress on them lately..
Went swing dancing with Ash and Tammi this past week! It was our first lesson in the 6-week beginner Lindy Hop class. Good times! The class was way bigger than I expected, so hopefully there were a lot of drop-in's and it'll be a smaller, more intimate crowd next week. It was also a good time after the lesson as they had a live band there (Jellyroll) and The Swing Cats put on a little show!
Last night I met up with an old friend for some drinks at Toronado up in the city.. pretty cool place with a wide selection of worldly beers to explore. Nice to meet up with old friends..
Our household has also been playing a bunch of Karaoke Revolution... I'm not even quite as bad as I thought I was!! Everyone else is already pretty good at the game so I had best get practicing!
Tried to take my digital camera in to get fixed last weekend, but was informed that it just wasn't worth it. Hmmm.. but I didn't really want to spend $250+ to get the newest version of my camera with more megapixels to waste (I resize to 640x480 for my site, and hardly ever print out photos), so instead I turned to trusty ol' eBay where I searched, bid, won and received my camera all in 4 days. So handy!
Speaking of handy -- so is Amazon.com for sending people presents! Gift wrap and everything! :) But don't think that means I don't put in my personal touch by finding the perfect gift for you!
Going to see an cool movie this weekend: Word Wars. Looks like a movie form of the book Word Freak.. awesome!
Well, until my next update -- take it easy!
June 2, 2004: I'm now one of the privilidged few: buddy
Let the world rejoice!
June 1, 2004: Happy June!
Weekends are fun! So glad I don't have to work during them like the rest of my roommates (well, not yet anyhow!)!! Went back to the Haight Ashbury Music Center and picked up my piano with Cort on Sunday.. then went to Amoeba Music so Cort could spend all his money.. I also picked up the movie Dark City so I could show everyone how The Matrix ripped it off..
Monday consisted of getting up early (the first time I've set my alarm since I got back!) and driving up to Ocean Beach to meet my friend Lindsay (from the Yamnuska course). Then we took off to Mount Diablo and did a couple trad climbs: a 5.7** Chimney and another 5.7 Crack (5.7 by our guide book, 5.6-5.8 by that website). Awesome to get out and use trad gear! We also practiced a bunch of other techniques from the course (escaping the system, rappelling off a bolt, one-handed knots, etc). So much fun to chill with someone who's a climbing nerd again!
Yup... after that I headed off to my friend's place for a Memorial Day BBQ... awesome grilled corn!
May 29, 2004: Cool.. got more stuff done this weekend.. we got our internet transferred over to the new house.. moved over the rest of the crap from the old apartment.. went piano shopping and picked out the Korg SP-300, gonna go back tomorrow and get it! Whee!!! After that I toured around the trendy Haight/Ashbury region.. then settled into Beuna Vista Park for a while with my book. All in all, a pretty good day.
Also wanted to mention these funny videos Scott brought to my attention: Drink of Water and Rubber Ducky of Death. Enjoy!
May 28, 2004: First off: a one question geek test.
In other news, yesterday we had a company meeeting! Not usual so exciting, but I was one of the award winners! That's right! They singled out me, along with about 200 other people, to win this one award! Now the real problem here is that award winners get to use a special "reserved" parking spot. Looks like I'll have to start coming in early to beat out the rest of the "Bond Development and Marketing Team"!
Watched Bubba Ho-tep last night.. it was pretty good. Not fantastic, but pretty good. Cort and I figure that they came up with the premise of the movie on a bet -- a geriatric Elvis and a black JFK fighting an Egyptian soul-sucker? Sounds like a good movie to me!
Picked up a USB wireless network adapter for my computer the other day.. should be easy to install right? Well, it turns out that Win2k doesn't come with default drivers for this hardware (which is fine), and they come on a CD. Great. Except that my CD-ROM drive doesn't work. Crap. So I fire up the laptop (which runs Linux, and thus can't use the packaged drivers either, and I can't get Linux drivers 'cause I don't have access to the internet without this wireless adapater) and try to network my two computers together so that my desktop can use my laptop's CD-ROM drive. Not so easy (for me anyhow). Finally I try copying just the drivers I need onto a floppy and using that (surely I don't need the entire 90 megs that comes on the CD!)... turns out I didn't get the right files. Oi! Well I'll have another go at it sometime this weekend I suppose...
PS - w00t! Got the wireless USB network adapter working (after much trouble). Now like Scott, I too, am surfing on a random wireless network. But I've managed to go one step further and have guessed his name/password and now have access to his shared printers! Mwahahaha.. oh the possibilities. >:}
May 24, 2004: Another fairly productive weekend -- went to IKEA and bought some furniture for our rooms.. I got a nice big desk! Almost bought a loveseat/couch thing but then chickened out at the last minute.. though I may go back and pick it up after all. Also picked up a bookshelf for my room and some new sheets for my bed. And I put up some things on my walls -- my room's really starting to look nice!
Also went to REI and _finally_ used up my refund.. they were also havinga 20% off sale which helped my money stretch further! Though because of that I bought more than I was planning on.. but I got me a new rope, a helmet and a few other miscellaneous items. Now if only I could get out and go climbing!
PS - Just put up some pictures from my surprise birthday party!
May 18, 2004: Man, it's been a busy busy week! I'll try to fill you in on all the excitement without boring you with all the details:
- Flew to LA for the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Once there I got to see tons of new video games, as well as new hardware (PSP, Phantom and the DS (which I didn't see)), and got to see/meet some pretty big names in the industry... also got out and cruised Sunset Blvd one night..
- Moved into our new house!! It's awesome! I LOVE IT!! For those in the area, keep your ears open about our up-coming house-warming party!
- Scott and I ran the San Carlos Rotary Run. Check out the race results (specifically #31). w00t! Got my medal hanging up on my wall!
- Went bed/furniture/piano shopping on Sunday, though didn't end up buying anything (well, Scott and Marc got beds and I got some free pillows)
- Had my birthday yesterday! I'm now 1/3rd dead! My awesome roomies threw a surprise party for me -- which rocked! I've always wanted a surprise party! Soooo cool... AND Ash & Tammi got me slippers (which I thought someone else was gonna get me, but then they didn't)... Tight!
- Tonight I've got my 2nd Lindy Hop class
May 14, 2004: Having a good time at E3! Got lots of swag to bring back too! Cheerio!
May 12, 2004: Lindy went well.. we just covered some basic moves (stuff I already knew) but that's cool. The teachers are super nice, and the other people in the class seem fun. Tonight I'm off to LA for E3! See ya in a few days!
May 11, 2004: Let's see here... went to work Sunday for a few hours (to make up for taking Friday afternoon off), also went to Barnes & Nobles for a few hours with Scott, then watched Dead Alive with Cort.
Monday consisted of more work and then a viewing of Kill Bill Volume 2 with Marc & Sandra... turns out if you stay through the hours of credits at the end there's another scene! Oooohhh, go check it out!
Tonight's the first night of my Lindy Hop lessons... wish me luck!
May 8, 2004: Excuse any stupid grammar/spelling/etc mistakes in this post, but I've been up for about 41 hours now... well actually I've had about 2 hours sleep in the past 41 hours.
Ummm... took off Friday afternoon to go to the Genentech company party. It was super sweet! The had a bunch of musical guests (Mary J Blige, Matchbox 20, and the crazy famous Elton John), free food/drink, carnival games, batting cages, mini-putt, a rock wall (which I climbed without feet), etc... such a good time! Elton was super cool to see in real life, and can really rock a crowd! His stuff's even better when you swing dance to it! ;) Props to Karen for inviting me... After that we had some yummy salmon burgers and watched A Knight's Tale. Almost went home early, but instead stayed up all night talking... interesting times that.
Which totally didn't help my running at the San Mateo Human Race this morning -- no sleep, no breakfast, no water.. oi! But with that being said, Scott and I placed 13th and 14th respectively in the 5km run (which put us in 2nd and 3rd place, respectively, for our age group! Whee, we're getting medals for it!). Not too shabby for our first race!
After that we all went over to our new house and did the move-in inspection dealie (writing down everything wrong with the house so when we move out they can't blame us for it).. that took a while, and also made us realize how much we had overlooked when we went to check the place out the first time.. but it's still a sweet house! Only Marc has moved over there already (Ash and I need a U-Haul for our furniture), but at least our two-bedroom place isn't quite as crowded now..
Oi I'm tired. Played some Cranium tonight, and despite my tired state Luke and I started off pretty well, but then lost our momentum and didn't quite win the game.. c'est la vie.
Played some Scrabble the other day with some friends.. two of which are english majors! Came 3rd (out of 4) the first game, and then came back for a top-place finish on the second game... I still don't know all my 2 letter words (so far I know the A's, B's, D's, E's, F's, G's), but even this limited set is already helping my game!
May 3, 2004: Not working weekends rocks! Went to an IGDA planning/celebration meeting on Friday night.. Then on Saturday was going to finally go to the beach at Half Moon Bay but instead ended up hanging out at Seabright beach in Santa Cruz.. hung out with Karen and co.. even got schooled in a game of Scrabble! So I've re-started learning my two letter words in preparation for our next encounter.. (the A's are: aa ab ad ae ag ah ai al am an ar as at aw ax ay). Later that night some partying with Pat entailed..
Sunday consisted of hanging out in Palo Alto with Scott and Marc, where we had an awesome lunch at The Cheesecake Factory and then went on a nice 45km bike ride, which included a stop at the Coyote Point beach.. ahh, two beaches in one weekend! It was super good to get riding again too.. After that Karen came over and we made some chicken cordon bleu with asparagus and rice for dinner.. topped the night off with Vanilla Sky.
And now it's back to work....
April 30, 2004: Awwww yeah: Scoots got Slashdotted!!
In other news we've submitted an application in for a house (to rent). Should hear back by today...
April 27, 2004: Had a good time this past Friday night (check out my last post for what I did). Karen had too much of a good time. :O Bah, it happens to the best of us (yours truly included!).
But yeah, Karen met this guy at the symphony who she knows from church, turns out he's from Toronto and went to UW!! Small world indeed...
Nothing too much of note happened since then.. movies, video games, sleeping, eating, reading, laundry, working.. work's getting much better as I (slowly) figure out this new codebase though.
April 23, 2004: Just put up my last set of pictures from the Yamnuska course.
Going to the San Francisco Symphony tonight for some Bach goodness (Orchestral Suite No. 3 and Goldberg Variations), then probably off to Tammi's party.. a good night indeed!
April 22, 2004: GO LEAFS GO!! Yeah, beat out those nasty Senators a couple days ago.. tonight we've got their first game against the Philadelphia Flyers.. in other news Scott and I just signed up for the "The Human Race of San Mateo".. should be a good time (gotta stay in shape somehow)!
April 19, 2004: Righto, back to the old grind at work.. for those of you looking for my Yamnuska log, go here.
The course was amazing, but it's good to be back amongst my California friends.. espeically 'cause Scott and Marc have since moved down here and have started work at wonderful EA! We're also looking into getting a 4-bedroom house so we can live together (us 3 + my current roommate).
This past week has been spent re-connecting with friends, getting re-settled into work and my apartment, and miscellaneous other things (ie: reconnecting my cell phone which got cut off, ditto for my car insurance, etc).. though my to-do list is still quite long..
January 1, 2004: Happy New Year!
It's been a busy couple weeks with much travelling between Toronto, Kingston and Ottawa, but it also contained much reuniting with friends! Even a few chance encounters with people I haven't seen in many years.. I'd love to tell you all about it, but I'm kinda tired and am going to bed instead. :P
However I wanted to let y'all know that I'm flying out to Canmore, AB tomorrow for my long-awaited mountain climbing course! Whee! Packed everything up today and am getting excited for it! Not too sure how often I'll be able to access the net (hopefully every week or two at least!) but I'd love to hear from you!
December 25, 2003: Merry Christmas Everyone!
December 22, 2003: Back in Ontario! Nice. On today's agenda is going to MEC (hopefully thye won't notice my REI jacket when I go in there), meet up with some friends, and hopefully fit in a trip to Tim Hortons sometime -- can't wait to get some good coffee again!!
December 19, 2003: I just finished my last day at work for 3.5 months! Sweeeeeeet! Actually got a fair bit of work done today as well! Now it's crazy packing and shopping for tomorrow and then flying home on Sunday...
Hope to see you all soon!
December 18, 2003: Oi! My sleep schedule is sooo messed up! Remember in my last post where I said I was going home at 10pm? Yeah, well I thought I was, but instead I ended up going home at 1:30. Today I went home at 1:30 again, but stayed up until now (2:49pm) talking to Ash since I haven't seen the guy all week. :/
It's not soo bad now, but when I go home for the holidays I won't be able to get to sleep until 6am! Blah.
Went up to REI in the city today and bought me a couple set of thermal underwear. w00t. I'll be nice and toasty on my mountaineering course! :>
Anyhow, off to bed I go.
December 16, 2003: Things at work are finally winding down a bit... minor bug fixing and lots of testing to make sure that we've gotten rid of all crash bugs, and most other egregious bugs. In fact I think I'll go home early today (it's only 10pm!)!!
People are already starting to take off for the Christmas holidays, so we had a nice game of Soul Calibur 2 since we won't all be together again for a while (3 months for me)... good times.
So I'll be in Ontario between the 21st and the 2nd, so anyone who's around those parts should contact me and hopefully we can hook up!
Peace out.
December 15, 2003: Man, are my sleeping patterns ever messed up now! It's 1:42am and I should be tired since I didn't go to bed until past 6am this morning (see my last post), and then got up at stupid 10:30am. But am I? No! Well, kinda, but not that tired. Maybe laying down will help...
But yeah, here are the times I went to bed this week (starting last Friday): 5am, 3am, 1am, 12am (midnight), 4am, 4am, 1am, 3am, 6am. Dang!
So if that didn't bore you away, here's what I did today after I got up too early... went to work for a bit and researched some of the items I need to buy for my mountaineering course. Then it was off to REI to purchase them. Picked up a new jacket (the Liberty Ridge Parka), the Myo 3 headlamp, Mountain Hardwear's Ventigaiter and some other minor things... whee to buying cool new stuff! Yeah, I have to go up to the REI in San Fran though as the one near me was out of my size for some of the clothing I need.
Ok, off to try this sleeping thing one more time...
December 14, 2003: 6:08am -- Scott finally left (just dropped him off at the airport) -- time for some sleep!
December 12, 2003: Whoa, it's been a while since my last update... and I was doing so well with frequent updates too!
I blame it on Scott and his not letting me sleep (if only his mom would scold him for me!). It's been a fun week with him down. Let's re-cap shall we?
- Went out for dinner on Sunday night
- He had his interview on Monday
- Went up to the Stinking Rose on Monday night, then over to Vesuvio (my usual "take people out to" places)
- I worked all day and night on Tuesday (until 4am)
- Got up early to drive Scott to EA so he could pick up his job offer (w00t)
- Celebrated his job offer until 4am that night (go Super Tennis!)
- Dragged my butt into work Thursday and left early (for me) to go to the theatre and see a pre-release viewing of Return of the King!! That's right! EA rented out the Metreon and everyone in the studio got to go see the movie 6 days before the rest of the world!
- As if that wasn't enough, I also got a free 007: Everything or Nothing shirt at work!
Anyhow, I must be getting back to work.. take it easy!
December 7, 2003: Updated my prime number code with another 87 character version, but this time with the code refactored to use only one "for" loop!
December 6, 2003: Yeah, so to continue from yesterday's posting (which didn't get posted until today 'cause I had to leave in the middle of writing it)..
Mya was cool to see perform, she performed the song that she co-wrote just for the new James Bond game. After the meeting I worked for a short while then went for lunch. After lunch I worked a little more then went and had my free massage. Ahhh, there are some perks to working insane hours! After that it was time for a little more work and then off to some meetings to finish off my day.
After my last meeting, Karen showed up and off we went for a nice dinner at Kingfish in San Mateo, and then continued on up to the city for the EA Christmas Party at One Market Pavilion. It was a really fancy place! They even had free valet parking, which was cool and a little odd at the same time. We drove up and there were about 8 guys in white jackets hanging out by the street so they ushered us over to them, kinda swarmed around the car, opened our doors as soon as the car stopped, then we got out, handed me a piece of paper, and they drove off with my car. Makes me think that if I ever need a new car I could just buy a white jacket and hang out in front of fancy restaurants. :P So anyhow, the place itself was fancy too, had amazing amounts of fancy food (everything from prime rib to sushi to gingerbread houses to fruit parfaits), a dance floor, palm readers, a karaoke piano lounge, etc. It was nice to get away from work for a while (even though it involved hanging out with people from work), and it's always fun to dress up! At the end of the night I snuck in a few minutes on the piano and then we stole some centerpieces and quickly left the building. Good times.
After getting home I found Luke and Mary at our place (neighbours from down the hall), so we stayed up drinking and playing video games until 5am. All-in-all a great night!!
Yup, and I thought that Scott was flying in today, but apparently I'm on crack 'cause he's coming in tomorrow. Now I have more time to work today. Whee.
PS - Due to popular request I've also changed my link colours. Let me know if these are beter for you!
December 5, 2003: Got some new math jokes from this loverly article. Here's to hoping I don't need to explain them to you!
Had our annual company awards meeting this morning. It was pretty good, I didn't win anything, but my boss did. w00t! There was also a "special guest" there! It turned out to be Mya!
December 4, 2003: Just when you thought that there was no more Fun Math Stuff to be had, I just found some more (props to Reena actually!).
PS - 'tis a rare for this to happen twice in one day, but I've added yet another new link to my Fun Math Stuff page (double props to Marc!)!
December 3, 2003: Nothing like a little bit of pressure to kick my butt into gear! With less than 3 weeks until I fly away from California (ie: less than 3 weeks that I must get everything I need for my mountaineering course) I finally started getting things done! This week I've already:
-booked, and already had, my dentist appointment
-rented skis
-got my sister to buy my sleeping bag for me (to avoid duty costs if I had it shipped here)
-started fixing the fact that stupid Air New Zealand charged me for two tickets (even though I only wanted one!)
-wandered around REI looking at things I need to buy
-finished registering my car (finaly!)
Yuppers.. let's see here, EA's Christmas Party is this Friday! Whee! It's up in the city at One Market Pavilion.. I'm looking forward to it, hope it's a good time!
And then on Saturday, Scott's flying into town! It'll be good to get the heads of the international mega-corporation together again.
PS - I also put up some pictures that Denise finally sent me!
November 28, 2003: Happy American Thanksgiving! Went over to a friend's place for a big turkey diner yesterday.. good food, good friends, good times! Diiner was good, but dessert was even better! There were 6 of us there, 4 pies and 1 cheesecake. Mmm.. I ran out the night before at 10:45pm before Target closed, and bought me an electric mixer. Then it was off to the 24-hour Safeway for some ingredients, a mixing bowl, and a springform pan. Got home, turned on some tunes, and was baking away until the wee hours of the morning. I was a little worried that it didn't turn out so well, but it got rave reviews at dinner. :> Perhaps I'll fix my computer this weekend and get some pictures of the event up.
So now I'm back at work. Think I'll take tomorrow off though. Man two days off! What a long weekend!!
Alrighty, take it easy folks!
PS - Ahh.. just finished the first two games in my Scrabble(tm) tournament with decent scores of 275 and 333. Off to a good start! My two nicest words were "WAXY" on a triple letter score for 69 points and "BOATING" for not that much, but it was almost a bingo (which is using all 7 letters in one go)!
PPS - For those who are wondering about my Scrabble(tm) fixation, it's cause I just finished reading Word Freak yesterday, great book!
November 25, 2003: What did I do this past week? Hmm... worked most of it I guess. Went out to a friend's place Sunday night and played some pool. I was a little rusty at first (ok, ok, I sucked), but then it started coming back by the end of it. Then we went back and watched half of the extended Lord of the Rings DVD..
Ashley's off to Nebraska this week (for American Thanksgiving) so I've got the place to myself. Whee!
Started a little Scrabble competition with another guy at work. First one to 1200 points wins... something. Ahh, I've been dying to play Scrabble since starting to read "Word Freak".
November 16, 2003: What a great weekend! Went out to 111 Minna on Friday night with Pat and Ash.. the place is an art gallery and part-time bar, so there was lots of interesting things to look at.
Saturday involved playing video games, getting called into work to fix a bug (I was already planning on going in though), and then on to see the Maple Leafs play at San Jose. It was a great Shark-crushing game up until the 3rd period when they came back and tied it up -- we even scored short-handed! Oh well, at least we didn't lose. :< After the game we went out to some bar with a bunch of friends and just hung out for a while. Oh, and I didn't even mention our dinner! We ended up parking on some side street instead of paying the $15 parking fee at the arena.. and since we had arrived early we decided to get some dinner. The place we had in our sights was unfortunately quite over-full, so we went to this little place across the street from it. Turns out it was a mafia front. No joke! The guy at the counter totally fit the stereotypical look, and there was a private back room that had lots of mafia-esque-type people coming and going from. Very shady. Very cool.
So after all that excitement, I slept for a scant 3.5 hours and then got up and drove to Kirkwood (actually I was driven) for the opening weekend! Such a good time! Went up with Trey and it was grand. Drove through some horrendous foggy patches, but all-in-all an easy drive, and only 3 hours (much shorter than driving up to South Lake or Truckee area). Anyhow, we got there and it was a nice, warm, cloudless day with fresh snow and hardly any people! It did get totally overcast by the afternoon, but it was still good times. Except that my right boot was a little tight and now my big toenail is all black and hurty.
So yeah, I'm tired. Going to bed.
November 12, 2003: Had a great time climbing last night! Ahhh.. my hands are still pretty weak, but at least I was able to get in a few hours of some 5.10's. Got a nice tip from Cherith on how to warm up, so I'll have to give that a go next time. After that, headed out to Ausiello's just like old times (except now they have fish and chips!).
Work has been kinda slow and un-motivating this week, I was working on a stupid aiming/animation problem since Sunday and was making little-to-no progress on it (while it should've been fairly easy to fix). But I got over that hump today and have become once again motivated. Wheee!
Off to swing dancing tonight, let's hope it's busier than last week (which was absolutely dead!).
November 12th, that was a day to remember...
November 7, 2003: Man, spend a glorious 17 hours at work yesterday! Of course 5 hours of it was such things as working out, eating lunch/dinner and playing Soul Calibur 2, but that's still a 12 hour work day! And then it's home for a nap and back here again a mere 6 1/2 hours later. :/ At least I can sleep in tomorrow!
Not much else is new. Swing dancing was dead on Wednesday so I left early and read more of my new book -- Word Freak. So far a very entertaining read, thanks for the recommendation Scott! Also got the The Streets CD. I likey!
Be sure to take some time out of your busy day to email me some jokes (or just to say Hi)! Here's one from Nic:
A pirate walks into a bar. The bartender looks at him and exclaims "Oh my God, there's a steering wheel on your crotch!"
The pirate says "Arrrrrr, I know - it's driving me nuts!"
October 31, 2003: H A P P Y H A L L O W E E N ! !
Heh, it's 12:44 and I _just_ sat down at my desk. Gosh I love flex hours! :P
October 29, 2003: Hey all my friends with master's degrees: Looks like I'm smarter than you all!! (see here for the "evidence").
Updated the "Creating the Shortest Prime Number Program" with 6 newest versions (now down to a miniscule 87 characters)! Props to Joerg!
October 27, 2003: Go Canada!
October 26, 2003: An extra hour makes a huge difference! That's right, turned back the clock today and got SO MUCH done! Slept in, checked my email, cleaned my bathroom, did laundry, bought groceries, folded my laundry, ate lunch, played video games and now I'm at work and it's only 2:20! What a productive day so far!
October 24, 2003: Ouch, ooh, eck.. that's what I sound like when I get out of bed now. Started working out again this week and my body is not liking it so much. Well it'll just have to get used to it!
Work's also been picking up a bunch.. that combined with the working out has made me kinda tired lately.. well that and reading Battle Royale (similar to Lord of the Flies).. as such swing dancing on Wednesday was alright, not as swingy as usual though (due to the tiredness).
Also -- w00t to EA for splitting their stocks!
Ciao!
October 19, 2003: Had a pretty good week.. got Ash and Lisa to come swing dancing with me and a good time was had by all. Met up with the "new regulars" which was fun as usual, more eyes-closed swing dancing!
Had some dinner and gelato with Sha and company.. too bad my not staying at work all night dropped EA's stock. :P
Speaking of EA's stock, it's doing great (the other night excepted)! w00t! So in 3.5 years when all my options are vested it'll be good times..
Went to the Nuthouse again this weekend and met up with some Waterloo grads! One of them was even from Kingston! Small world indeed... they were all in ES, and had graduated before me, so I didn't know them from school, but good times nonetheless.
Had a Smash Bros Melee and Soul Calibur 2 party last night. Partied until 4am and had some good clean fun!
My original plans for today kinda fell through and ended up hanging out in San Jose.. went to a coffee shop (Marc, you reading this?? I went to THE coffee shop) and cruised about town for a bit. Now it's time for some reading and relaxation... gotta go to bed early 'cause I want to start running in the mornings again (but for real this time!).
October 14, 2003: It's 9:36pm and I want to go home and do some much needed laundry, but instead I'm at work. :/
PS - w00t! I finally made it home (11:47pm)
October 11, 2003: Alright, put up the pictures of Marc's trip. This set includes such good shots as: sea lions, Marc and his pet, Lisa, Ashley, as well as the four of us drinking out of a skull!
Spent a fun evening at Antonio's Nut House.. in my typical bar style, I met some new people and hung out with them leaving my friends to drink my share of the beer. :> Showed off my foosball and my pool-playing skills as well.
The night out was prefixed by going to see the opening night show of Kill Bill -- a good flick!
PS - Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!
PPS - Updated my prime number code with a new 91 character program!
October 9, 2003: Had a good time with Marc while he was down.. we went and did some touristy stuff up in the city, ate dinner and then went out around town.
Been playing a lot of Soul Calibur 2 lately.. too bad my memory card crapped out and Marc had to re-beat everything for me. :D Also picked up Fistful of Boomstick (boomrod?) the other day and we've been playing that a bunch. Not the most graphically appealing game, but it's pretty fun to play. Would be better if it had a map or compass or something to stop me from getting lost in every level though..
Went to see School of Rock the other night -- quite enjoyed it! Some semi-mindless humour.. good times.
Checked out an all you can eat sushi buffet yester-lunch. Was pretty good, just a shame that they didn't offer sashimi.. tried a sweet-fish-tempura thingy called a "Rolly-Pop" and was pleasantly surprised.
Okie dokie, back to workie.
PS - Another giant leap in copy-protected CDs.. let's just hope it doesn't get this bad.
October 4, 2003: October already! Man time goes fast... perhaps I'm just getting older.. perhaps both.
So let's see what I've been up to:
- Attended Sha Sha's house-warming party. Good times! People recognized my name from the comments I occaissonaly post on her site.. also got to see The Cutest Dog Ever (Enzo).
- Went for another bike ride -- starting to get in shape!
- Almost didn't go swing dancing, but decided to go. And I had a blast! Saw some old friends and met some cool new folks too.. and, pardon the pun, but am getting into the swing of things again..
- Picked up Marc from the airport. His plane was late, but that's ok because it gave me time to think about a crash bug I was trying to fix at work. After checking into the hotel and getting some eats (good ol' Heidi's Pies) I dropped him off at the hotel...
- ... and went back to work to fix that bug I was working on! My thinking time in the airport paid off and I was able to track down this elusive bug. Took me until 3am, but felt good to finally get it worked out. Also had a nice chat with my development director about all kinds of stuff.
- Hung out with the roomies, Marc and the peeps from down the hall.
September 25, 2003: Five days without an update -- how have you, my dear fan, managed to survive?? Enough about you, back to me! :P
After updating my site on Saturday, I went and helped a friend move for a few hours.. he'd already moved the small stuff so all that was left was the big heavy items. Grreeaatt.. but I got a free dinner out of it so all is good.
Went out Saturday night to F&A's which proved to be a good time! Got in a little dancing (though not too much which was fine with me), hung out with the boys (and Lisa), and met a few locals. Good times were had by all...
Sunday was spent at a local Irish Fair. It was a super hot day, but there's nothing like a properly poured Guinness to help get over that. The fair sported some mussels (which I just found out go with beer, although I didn't partake in their seafoody goodness). But the highlight of the show was the live bands they had.. awesome stuff! Makes me want to bust out my violin and start fiddling again! Too bad it's all the way over in Waterloo... we also got big foam hats to remember the event by!
Went and played some volleyball on Monday. It was fun, although I thought I was a little better than how I played.. and was I ever sore the day after! oi!
Not too much going on aside from that.. I skipped out on swing dancing this week.. played more Soul Calibur 2 (like usual). Also been doing a little more work on BFA (formerly DFA). No fancy web page for it (yet), but here are some pictures to keep those that are interested happy: main menu, tanks on landscape, overlayed options menu, shooting a cleaver, the console, profiler and debugging info (props to the great capture program SnagIt).
September 20, 2003: After much procrastination I put up pictures of my new car! It's sweet!
Went rock climbing today at Cragmont! Did Seniors and Junior as well as some other unlisted (at least on that page) routes.. the climbing was actually pretty poor for me since I haven't been in months (and not too frequently before that), but still nice to get out again. I'm sure it'll all come back after a few more climbs.
EA's a sweet place to work! Why? Because they gave us all copies of The Two Towers. :D Too bad I got there a little late and they had already run out of widescreen copies (stupid fullscreen). Ahh well, I guess beggars can't be choosers!
September 19, 2003: Here's the low down on the last few days:
-turns out one of my co-workers is from Kingston, ON! We even went to the same high school (albeit at different times).. I love it when things like this happen!
-went swing dancing at the usual place Wednesday night. Next week there's going to be a live band!
-worked some
-played some more Soul Calibur 2 -today's Word of the Day reminds me of good ol' Calvin and Hobbes
September 16, 2003: Ok, check this article out: "RDIAENG". Weird eh?
September 13, 2003: Had a good time today! Went up to San Fran and partook in the YABA 5 treasure hunt! It was pretty cool.. in fact got some new pictures up already! It was a good treasure hunt -- there were some nice mathy problems that kept me busy while the others worked on the the rest. :D
Aside from that, it's stinking HOT in my room.. cripes! So I'm gonna go play Soul Calibur 2 in the living room where's it's not sooo hot.
PS - Can you tell what's wrong with this picture?
PPS - Just checked out Paul's web log (don't really like the word "blog", though I've been known to use it) and saw a great link: these marketing guys are on crack (or they're 1337).
September 10, 2003: Finally had a weekend off and guess what I did? Went to the XGDX (a video game development conference), did laundry and played Soul Calibur 2. Well 2 out of 3 video game related things ain't bad!
The conference was pretty good. We got there late so missed a couple interesting-sounding lectures, but saw the two keynote speeches, some other lectures and attended a little party thing on Saturday night. The party was pretty cool actually -- had a chance to talk to some of the speakers and to meet more people in the industry.
Went up to the city last night for a friend's birthday. Bliss Bar seems like a pretty nice place to hang out...
Anywho, off to work. Ciao!
September 4, 2003: Dag nabbit! Apparently there was an earthquake today and I didn't even notice! Grrr... for the full info you can go here: http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Quakes/nc40146204.htm
Other than that it's been a crazy hectic day at work. In fact it's now 4:36am (on Sept. 5) and I'm still here! I'm about to go home, but darn it's late!
Hope everyone else had a good night's sleep!
September 1, 2003: Wow. September already, but this year it's better than most. Why? Because I don't have to go back to school! :P
This was a good weekend though. I went down to Monterey to take my open water dives to get my scuba certification. It was super good times! Nic came down with me and explored the town while I was diving. I did 5 dives and they all went really well. Tons of sea life to see down there -- starfish, fish (duh), large and small crabs, kelp, anenomes, and many other things that I don't know what they are. Also I had individual instruction! There were supposed to be 2 other students meeting us down there, but they didn't show up at all on Saturday. And on Sunday one of them showed up, but by then I only needed one more dive, so I lead the instructor and the other student on a dive (ie: tracked time, air and depth, and lead them on a course of my choice). Pretty cool stuff! Yup. After all the diving, the instructor, his girlfriend, Nic and I went over to Carmel and had a fancy little lunch at one of the coolio restaurants down there. Then after walking around there for a bit we drove back (we were car-pooling with them). It was a good weekend, and the instructor said he'd let me know next time he goes diving so I can go with him. ::>
I must also admit that I watched some TV while staying in the hotel down there. Man, I really enjoyed it! I don't have cable at my house and haven't watched any tv since being down here. It was just too bad that the Simpsons weren't on while I was watching.
And Happy Labour Day to everyone! Happy for most people anyhow -- I'm at work. We have a major milestone scheduled for today. How ironic is that?
I'm almost finished the book I'm currently reading, "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser. It's a superb read and I'd highly recommend it anyone!
Anyhow, I guess I should get back to work. Now I _know_ that people read my site (I read the logs), so why don't you email me?? I need some distractions from work you know!
August 29, 2003: Nicola's here to visit! Back from her year-long excursion to China. Good times. Unfortunately we're going alpha on Monday (how ironic that that's Labour Day) so I haven't been able to spend much time with her as I've been working crazy overtime.
Though I did manage to scam this weekend off to take my scuba certification dive, but haven't heard back from the instructor about some small details (like when he's picking me up), so if I don't hear back from him today I'll assume the trip's off and then I can show Nic the sights instead.
Work work work. Well, it's time to get back to work! Email me something interesting!!
August 24, 2003: Ahhh.. another crazy weekend. Finally made it out for a decent bike ride yesterday morning (the first real one since I got here!). During my ride I stopped and helped an elderly man change a flat tire -- that was my good deed for the week.. he had these high-tech rims that made it a little hard to change tires, but we got it worked out eventually.
Then after spending 5 hours at work we took off to the city for a house party. The party was alright, but eventually we made it back to Pat's place and watched epsidoes of The Office until 4:30am.. cabbed home and I was in bed by 5:30.
So that messes up my plans for today, it's 11:30 now and I still need to do laundry, go to work, clean up the house for when Nic comes down on Tuesday, get some more sleep, go up to the city for a going-away dinner for a friend, and pick up Andy from the airport. Too much stuff!
August 17, 2003: Went to LA on a spur-of-the-moment thing this weekend. Met up with Dave in LA as he's down there on business. Flew in Friday night and after some cab and hotel problems I finally made it to where he was staying. Saturday we hung out on Venice beach and saw some street performers. Sunday we went to see the world famous La Brea Tar Pits... sure is a big pit of tar! Actually the museum was pretty interesting. And in order to keep all you attentive readers interested -- here are my pics from the trip!
Thanks to Dave for having me over!
August 8, 2003: :'(
July 27, 2003: Ahh.. another not so crazy weekend! Only went to work 4 hours yesterday.. I was going to go in for a few today but that didn't work out. We went to a house warming party last night (a fellow EA employee), and had a grand old time there! Somehow I got into a purple-nurple war and it still hurts today! grrrr..
Today was spent by sleeping in, watching Army of Darkness (still want to pick up the video game), swimming (finally used our pool, and it was soooo nice and warm!), eating a steak dinner (which took a long time so we got free dessert) and by a trip to the hospital (Ash hurt his shoulder, but no fear, everything is alright).
What's planned the for upcoming week? Work and the next IGDA meeting.
July 22, 2003: w00t! Internet's working at home! (No thanks to Comcast and it's auto-installing spyware)
PS - Stayed up late tonight and put up an astounding 5 sets of new pictures! Here they all are: As usual, I have high-res versions at home if anyone wants a high-res copy of some of the pictures (just email me)
July 19, 2003: DISCLAIMER: I don't usually involve myself in these kinds of things, but I was bored so I made an exception.
Looking through Chelle's site and decided to jump in on this "Let's get to know me" thing..
THE RULES!So that's that. In other news, we picked up our tv-stand today! w00t! And going to Hayley's pool party tomorrow! double w00t!
1 -- Email me saying you want to be interviewed.
2 -- I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
3 -- You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 -- You'll include this explanation.
5 -- You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed
Here are the questions Chelle gave me:
1. you know how fss is the best school ever? in your opinion, what made it so hellatigt?
Not too down with the word "hellatigt" (unless you mean hellatight), but I'll take it to mean "da spit". Thus FSS was da spit 'cause we were all there! We had some great teachers, and some not-so-great teachers, but the thing that made it great for me was all the coolio people.
2. you're single, right? do you go to bars or whatever and try to pick up? if so, what's your line? if not, write me a poem.
Actually I'm not single (but thanks for the vote of confidence!). That being the case I still have many pick-up lines, one of which is: "Hi, I'm Buddy, but you can call me tonight!" (never used it though, would it work?).
3. some people should be steralized. agree, or disagree?
Hmm.. haven't really given it much thought.. seems kinda harsh. I would hope that the people I would want steralized wouldn't be able to procreate (due to thier own ignorance/stupidity/jerk-ish-ness/etc.. obviously that theory doesn't work though as there continue to be many Bad People out there.
July 15, 2003: Can't believe I forgot to put this up sooner, but check me out!!!
July 14, 2003: Had a great weekend! Saw three more movies: Pirates of the Caribbean (long but pretty funny), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (not so hot in my books) and Charlie's Angles 2 (not bad if you don't expect much). So I've got my movie fix for a while now...
Our house-warming party was also this weekend! Thanks to everyone who made it out, I had a blast! A little too much of a good time from what I hear, but what can you do? Though it's a pity that I forgot to take pictures (even after I made sure to recharge my camera batteries!).. oh well, we'll just have to have everyone over again sometime!
Didn't do too much on Sunday... read, rested, relaxed and played some more Ico (a very cool video game). Since I'm rambling, I'll also inform all you eager readers that I finished my latest book "A Storm of Swords" by George R.R. Martin and have since moved on to "The Life of Pi", which, while not a math book, seems like it will be interesting (and a nice switch from my regular genre of books).
Anyhow, it's time for me to go play a game...
July 11, 2003: Went to see T3 last night. It was alright, like a friend told me, it was a mix of both action and comedy. Not a blockbuster, but still a decent way to spend 1.5 hours.
What else is new? Well I'm having a house-warming party on Saturday! Anyone in the San Francisco area should stop by! Just drop me a line.. :)
Hmm.. that's about it, time to get back to work!
July 7, 2003: Whoa, what a weekend! Went white-water rafting on Friday (July 4th). It was less exhilirating than I was expecting. Not like rafting the Ottawa River in 12 man rafts and a guide, this was 2 or 4 man rafts that people paddle down the river themselves. The guy who ran the thing claimed the rapids were class 2/3 but if so it's a pretty weak class 3.
Friday night we were planning on driving over to Lone Pine to get ready for climbing Mount Whitney, but got a flat tire and had to spend a night in Bakersfield until the tire repair shop opened up. Got to see some fireworks though.
Saturday we made it to the campsite, had some yummy sish-kabobs (sp?) and relaxed a bit. Played a little "I Never.." as well...
Got up at 2am after a poor night's sleep, packed up, and drove to the start of the Mount Whitney trail Sunday morning. It took me about 8.25 hours to do the 11 mile (17.6 km) hike up, and another 7 or so to get back down. Spent a total of 17.5 hours on the mountain. Oi! There was 6306' of elevation gain on the hike, but we had camped at a mere 6000' feet (the start of the trail is at 8000'), so we had 8000' of total elevation gain -- a lot for one day! Also, the lack of sleep, and wine from the night before didn't help at all. However my new hiking boots are pretty swell! :) After a shower and some dinner we set out on the drive back home, and I got into bed at 4:30am Monday morning. Crazy!
That was my event-filled weekend, hope yours was good as well!
July 1, 2003: HAPPY C A N A D A DAY!!!
June 30, 2003: Here's a little something to help you all pass the time: The Great Canadian Places Quiz. I passed, but only just (50%)!
June 26, 2003: So our beds arrived today! Haven't seen them yet, but the delivery guy called 'cause he got lost. But we got that worked out -- thus I know my bed is here! Now to get some sheets and I'll be all good!
Last night, instead of working like usual, Ashley and I went to the San Jose IGDA chapter social at Dave and Buster's. Ashley is one of the chapter coordinators so he had to be there.. it ended up being pretty good! Met a bunch of people there, both industry veterans and industry hopefulls. In an amatuer mistake I forgot to bring business cards. Oh well, c'est la vie!
And now it's back to work...
June 24, 2003: Well it's been a busy 8 days! Lets see if I can remember all the happenings:
- Worked lots of overtime last week (getting home between 9pm and midnight)
- Went up to San Fran on Saturday night. Had a garlic-y dinner at The Stinking Rose and then went for a few drinks at Vesuvio. Also nipped into some well-known bookstore.
- Bought a bed on Sunday! Got a good deal from Mattress Discounters and it's being delivered on Thursday! It'll be a nice change from sleeping on the floor!
- Felt quite under-the-weather yesterday, but feeling much better today
- Sent out invites to our house-warming party, and subsequently sent out a "house-warming has been rescheduled" email as we got tons of no-can-do's
June 16, 2003: Woo hoo!! I've now officially graduated! Got my diploma and everything! Convocation was pretty nice.. a little long, but all-in-all I had a good time. My speech went really really well! I was hardly nervous at all, and apparently I made some alumni in the audience cry! They laughed, they cried.. :D After convocation I went to this little luncheon they had for the medal winners and valedictorian. It was a nice lunch and all, but I really would have rathered been part of the post-convocation mob in the SLC. Then I could have gotten more pictures of my friends all dressed up in their gowns.. alas, I'll have to rely on my friends giving me doubles of their pictures! *hint*
Last week, I forgot to mention, that the engineers here at work had a "Welcome Back Buddy" BBQ! It was good times.. it's nice to be back!
And now it's time I got back to work..
PS - My last box finally arrived on Friday, so now I have all my stuff with me in California.. just need to buy a bed and I'll be all set!
June 11, 2003: Alrighty.. graduation's coming up in 3 days! Going to Waterloo tomorrow.. and it looks like I'll be climbing Mount Whitney! It's the highest mountain in the lower 48 (14,495' to be exact), and will be a nice follow-up to last year's trip to Mount Shasta (14,162').
Anyhow, I was going to write a long entry here, but it looks like it's time for lunch. See all my Waterloo friends tomorrow!
June 9, 2003: Had a great in Calgary this past weekend. Was there for Vicki's brother's wedding. It was a great wedding with an absolutely amazing location -- wait until I put up some pictures, you'll be amazed!
So the items I shipped to myself finally arrived. Well, some of them anyhow. Picked up two of the three boxes this morning. I thought that since I bought nice new U-Haul boxes they'd be nice and strong. Well the boxes I picked up today were totally smushed, ripped, and all around worn out. It seriously looked like they barely made the trip! Hope my computer works!
And to continue my world travelling, I'll be going back to Waterloo this Thursday (until Sunday) for my convocation, of which, as I'm sure you all know, I'm valedictorian! Just need to put a few finishing touches on the speech and I'll be all set! Wish my luck!
Aside from that, work is going well.. got a little party going on Wednesday, should put me in top form for the flight on Thursday. :P
Anyhow I best be getting back to work (doing AI!).
June 3, 2003: Remember in my last post where I said I needed to get across the border on Thursday? Yeah, that was the original plan. Instead the nice guards at INS decided that I didn't qualify as an "engineer" since I didn't have an explicit engineering degree. After missing a couple of flights I got some more information from my lawers and tried to fly out again the next morning. Similar story, except this time it is 8am (Ontario time), so it's only 5am in San Francisco (where my lawers are). Thus after killing another 4 hours at the airport I finally got in touch with my lawers where we decided to switch my title over to the only other available catagory of "computer systems analyst". Of course the papers took a while to prepare and so I missed another flight and had to wait until the 7:55pm flight to try again. If this were to fail I'd have to wait 15 days while they applied for an H1B visa for me (instead of this crappy TN visa I'm on). Third time's a charm as they say, and quite true in this case. I actually got a nice guy this time (the first time I said "nice guards" was sarcasm), and he let me through! w00t! All-in-all I spent 27 hours in the airport...
But now I'm here and working (it's my second day here at EA) and so far I've been setting up my computer. w00t indeed.. well outside of work, I'm living at Water's Edge with a couple friends. We went to IKEA and bought some furniture.. unfortunately we have exquisite taste and most of the items we wanted to buy are out-of-stock. But we did get some nice patio chairs, side tables, stools and a bookcase. With the exception of the incredibly difficult side tables they were all easy to put together. The two side tables took longer to put together than all of the rest of the stuff!!
I'm also living with a little white kitten named Solataire.. very cute! And it looks like I'm not allergic to her!
Anyhow, I should probably get back to work..
May 26, 2003: Alrighty! I've officially graduated now! Good stuff -- especially since I need to have officially graduated by Thursday to get across the border.. :)
Today will consist of large amounts of packing.. especially since I'll be cutting my time in Waterloo a day short.. it was great seeing a lot of my friends over the past week, and for those who I didn't get a chance to see -- email me and let me know how things are going! I'll be moving to California on Thursday, but probably won't have interent access until Monday at work, and things will be kinda hectic, but never fear -- I will get back to you eventually!
And with that I'll be packing up my computer now, so TTYL!
PS - There's also a new math joke up (thanks to Louis!)
May 23, 2003: All righty.. got the computer working again.. required a little reformat of the ol' hard drive, but hey, I've been wanting to clean it out for a while anyhow -- just needed this little prod. :/
That said, I just took this little quiz that I got off Sana'a's website..
Which OS are You?
Bought my ticket to California.. I'll be flying out this Thursday (the 29th).. so if you want to hook up before I go, better act fast! Speaking of acting fast, I really have to start packing and writing my valedictorian speech! Ack, time goes by so fast!!!
Ok, I'm off to go do something else now. Cheers!
May 21, 2003: OK, just a little note: I seemed to have severely messed up my hard drive, and it looks like I'll need to re-install everything.. combine that with my upcoming move to California, and updates will be sporadic for a little while.
Cheers!
May 17, 2003: 0 more days to go! Today's my birthday! w00t!!
Had a blast in Kingston the past week! Great seeing everyone again!
Went to see Mamma Mia yesternight -- it was splendourtacular!
I'll write a better, more interesting, entry later.
May 16, 2003: 1 more day to go!
May 15, 2003: 2 more days to go!
I've been having some fun times in Kingston lately.. here's a brief re-cap:
- Had lunch with Mandy and hung out downtown
- Picked up a new math book about Kurt Godel's life for a measely $1!!
- Went out to The Brass with Scott (after a short side-trip to Paul's house)
- Spent the morning recovering playing video games and watching old movies..
- Had some sushi with Lesley and Melinda, after which we went shopping
- While at the mall had a little chat with my old boss from Mmmarvellous Mmmuffins
- Went over to the 1000 Islands Charity Casino and hardly won a thing! Next time I'm going to forgo the slots and play black-jack -- looks like much better odds!
- I'll be having lunch with a friend from high school soon, which'll be good as I haven't seen Kate for quite some time
Peace out!
May 12, 2003: 5 more days to go!
WOW! Just finished reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. What a great book! The author definately has a lot of insight into the geek psyche (most probably from being one himself), and has written a book for techies! Very well done and highly recommended! Also includes an interesting encryption algorithm that can be performed using only a deck of cards.
Let's see.. not too much going on. Tried to upgrade the memory in my dad's computer, but alas, it's too old and requires old-style memory. Looks like I'll have to use the memory I bought to upgrade my computer now. Fooey!
Also, for those in Kingston, my Handspring Visor's batteries just died.. so gimme a call or email.. meanwhile I'll be off to the mall to get new batteries so I can once again look up your phone numbers..
Cheers!
May 11, 2003: 6 more days to go!
Happy Mother's Day!
Congratulations to Dawn and Andre!
Anyone in Kingston?? Let me know! I'm here until Thursday.
Just came here from a weekend at Vicki's parent's house for Dawn and Andre's wedding. A good time! And for those who care: the pictures will be up when I get back to Waterloo (next week)..
Cheers!
May 9, 2003: 8 more days to go!
Off to Vicki's parent's house for an exciting weekend -- it's her cousin's wedding! Cool stuff.. then I'll be in Kingston for a few day seeing some friends and family before I take off for Cali.
HA HA! The game I'm working on is now playble! Kick ass!!!!
May 8, 2003: 9 more days to go!
May 7, 2003: 10 more days to go! Until what you ask? Send your guesses here!
Some good news today though: I managed to run my little 5.5km route without stopping.. yessir, it does get easier with practice! Heck, I could've even kept going! :>
On some other good news, my coding binges have payed off, and you can now move a tank around the mountain and shoot things! Incroyable!! Still much work to be done though..
Also added a new link to my Fun Math Stuff page.
May 6, 2003: 11 more days to go!
May 5, 2003: 12 more days to go!
May 2, 2003: Good morning everyone! It's a dull 6am and I'm off to bed!
Went bowling last night with my housemates.. it was a dissappointing run.. my scores were alright, but two of the three games Jen beat me right at the end.. grrr..
Aside from that, and a little run I had earlier (which I managed to do without stopping I might add!), I've spent the day coding! w00t! The game's looking sooo immensely hot now! Well, it's alright anyhow.. I'm sure I'll put up some screenshots soon. Today (meaning yesterday and this past night), I added some mountainous terrain, cool menu items (a slider for volume control!), fixed some bugs, refactored some code and just tweaked things here and there. I'm sure most of you don't even care!
Blah blah blah.. I hear the birds chirping already. That means it's time for me to go to bed. After all X2 comes out tonight and I have to stay awake for that!
G'night!
W April 30, 2003: Well well well.. it's already the last day of April. Went fast! Or perhaps that's just 'cause I spent a solid 9 hours coding! w00t! Been working hard on re-writing many of the DFA subsystems.. and loving every minute of it! Tomorrow will probably be more of the same. Although I do intend to actually leave the house tomorrow. :)
Aside from that, nothing much going on. Helped Pam move the other day so I had a little work-out then.. also went for a tiny run with Vicki yesterday. Sweet! Gotta get in shape for an adventure race that Nathan found (it's at the end of May).
Continued my California apartment shopping and called a couple places tonight. The place I want didn't answer, though the other one did and their now sending me some more information, although they also referred me to their website which has all the information I need. I'll be sure to keep you updated on any new developments..
April 27, 2003: Man, I'm loving this time off thing!! Spent the week bowling, playing video games, coding, reading, sleeping, running, climbing, eating, watching TV, emailing and hanging out with friends. GREAT STUFF!
Yesterday went out and bought a bunch of scuba gear. Now I just need to haul it all off to California with me and find an instructor to do my open water dives with! Also went to Marc's house for a pizza and beer night..
Today was spent hanging out with Vicki.. we went out walked part of the Walter Bean Trail Grand River Trail. Pretty nice trail! Busy too.
Yup.. also went running the other day and cut a sweet 5 minutes off my time! Day by day I become less maladroit.. :)
Well, The Simpsons are on now, so I'm gonna go watch that. Cheers!
April 23, 2003: It's all over! My undergraduate education is all but complete (convocation is coming up in June).. exciting times indeed.
PS - Put up some new pictures from the MGC Pub Crawl and just celebrating last night..
April 20, 2003: Happy Easter all!
So with all my time off I've been working more on my pet project.. aside from that a bunch of us went bowling last Thursday. Not my best games.. then I went to visit my mom for Friday night, coming back Saturday to study. Except since we had done so poorly at bowling the other day, we had to go back to the alley to prove that we didn't suck! Which we did.. quite nicely in fact! Afterwards we headed out for a surprise dinner party for Mira's birthday! It was good times. Went to the Rude Native for dinner, and then headed over to Plantation for some scrumptious dessert afterwards. Needless to say, not much studying happened that day.
But to make up for that lapse in studying, I've decided to spend most of today studying. As you can see it's not going so well (since I'm sitting here typing away). So hard to get motivated to study for a class I dislike, especially when it's my last university exam and as long as I pass I'll graduate! Much worse than my last high-school exam..
Yeah, so after saying that, I guess I'll go read some more chapters..
April 16, 2003: Since my exam schedule is so light this term, I've been spending the free time coding. Just under a week ago I wrote a cartoon rendering (there was a pretty picture of some cel-shaded spheres).. that was fun, but spheres are boring (no, really!). So then I wrote a 3DS model loader.. good times. That was good, but the models looked kinda drab, so I pieced together a BMP loader for textures (actually I just wrote a class that uses the "auxDIBImageLoad" function (found in glaux.h).. looking better, but getting slow to render. The past two days I spent writing a "stripifier" (which splits the model into triangle strips for speedier rendering). After some gnarly debugging of that it finally works! So just now I've incorporated the two together and can now load cool objects AND cel-shade them! Sweet ass! I'll put some pics up tomorrow (err.. later today.. since it's now 3:30am), then all of you can enjoy their beauty (because I know everyone cares!!).
Just thought I'd keep you all updated in my geeking out.
Good night!
PS - So it's now 4:33am and I'm still up! But I've been productive and have put up a new page to show off my code and current projects. This page consolidates a couple other pages as well (it removed the applets page and my old ray-tracer page from the menu bar). Now my web site is even more streamlined and easy to use (well, hopefully it is anyhow)!
PPS - If you want to just go straight to my cel-shaded renderer page, click here.
April 15, 2003: All right! Just finished my 2nd last exam EVER.. I think it went pretty well.. it was only Macroeconomics anyhow. Yup.. now it's just Distributed Systems next Tuesday and it'll all be over.
Good luck to all those writing exams!
April 10, 2003: Ahh.. I feel sorry for all my friends writing exams.. I think I'll start studying for my first one soon though.. :) In the mean time I've been spending my time wisely.. went rock climbing a couple times, and just last night I wrote a cartoon renderer! See:
Yeah, I think it's pretty neat. I just downloaded some info on some model file formats, so then I'll import some nice models and cel-shade them instead of boring old spheres.. the top-left sphere in the pictures is a regular sphere with diffuse and specular lighting.. it's just there for comparative purposes.
Later!
April 8, 2003: Ok, here's a weird thing I found on Rory's web site: Yes, weird indeed.. oh hey, Scott, if you're reading this: update your web page!!
This useless post was brought to you by apples.
PS - If you want to fight the real me.. try fighting my rapper name "Bling Bling", but for the monkey fight just use my nickname "$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$"
April 7, 2003: It's been so long since I've last said this, but: there's a new paper available! Yup, it's my term paper for my Quantum Information Processing course and is entitled "The Computer Science Side of Quantum Computation". Well I'm excited anyhow..
So handing in that paper finishes my first course of the time.. on Thursday I'll be handing in evaluations for my Interviewing course and then that one will be complete.. Macroeconomics and Distributed Systems will be finished after their exams on the 15th and 22nd respectively.
Ahhhh.. so good to be able to relax! Slept a luxurious 11.5 hours last night! But that probably had something to do with the fact that I couldn't get to sleep until 3:30am the night before.. so annoying trying to go to sleep but not getting there..
Ok, well I'll leave you now so you can go read my paper!
PS - In a nice addition to the ice storm we had over the weekend, it's now snowing. Gotta love weather in April!
April 3, 2003: Heya.. sorry for the long time since my last post! Exciting things have been going on however..
Last night I wrote (and passed) my scuba exam! The only thing left before getting my license is to do 5 dives for my open water test. The class is going to do an exciting trip up to Tobermory this summer, but due to the fact that I'll be working then I'll have to find another instructor at another time to certify me.
Speaking of which, my offer letter came from EA the other day! w00t! Nice to have some job security.. I'll be starting on June 2nd by the looks of things. If anyone has some free time this summer -- come visit!
Yesterday had more excitement to it as well -- I was accepted to be the class valedictorian! I'm pleased to have such faith put in me and will do my best to live up it!
Two days ago MGC held its Natural Log Pub Crawl.. which it turns out is in violation of a university policy.. oh well, I'm outta here!
Today I'll be attending my LAST UNDERGRADUATE UNIVERSITY CLASS!!!! w00t to that!! After that, it'll be writing one more paper (which I can then finally add to my papers section on my website), and two exams.. so close I can taste it!
Other than that, I talked EA into giving me three months off in January (as compensation for not getting this summer off).. with which I'm planning to put to good use and finally take that mountaineering course at Yamnuska!! I've only been talking about it for 8 years now!
Speaking of my last university class -- I should get going!
PS - Thanks to Marc for sending me another joke!
March 24, 2003: Had a nice relaxing weekend.. did some reading for my quantum paper, but not too much aside from that. Played some Scrabble and Boggle, went rock climbing, played video games with Marc.. in fact I went rock climbing twice on Friday! Once in the morning with Cherith and Tash, and once with Ryan in the evening.. there's pictures (and a movie with sound and all!)..
Put up some limericks on my Math Jokes page..
Guess what??!?!?!!? I know you're all sick of this, but I got my prime number program down to 97 characters!!! I've been spending too much time on this lately, so I'm gong to take a little break from it, but check it out!
March 20, 2003: Done quantum computing! Well all the assignments anyhow.. now for that 20 page paper.. ugh!
But on a better note, I got that prime number program down to a fancy 127 bytes!
int main(int c,char**v){int i,j;while(j=1,++i<=(c==2?atoi(v[1])
:99)){while(++j
|
Hmm.. what else is new? I nominated myself (with some prompting) to be valedictorian for my graduating class.. I think I'll find out next week (after giving a little presentation to the selection committee) or so who was chosen. Good luck to all candidates!
Going climbing tomorrow.. in fact I'm going twice! Crazy! Went the other day with Cherith and he showed me some good routes to work on.. Pretty confident that I'll be able to do the green and yellow route tomorrow when I'm fresh..
Spent way too much time on the that prime number program.. time for bed!
March 17, 2003: Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Over the weekend we had some wonderful 10°+ weather! I also had a pot luck, which turned out quite well.. once everyone showed up that is! Here's the pics! We had tons of yummy food.. Vicki and I made 74 pieces of sushi, while others brought such good stuff as: brownies, perogies, wine, dumplings, jello, cookies, etc!! Mmmm mmmm good!
Now to finish off my last quantum assignment ever!!
PS - I've now got my naive prime number lister down to a puny 139 characters!
March 15, 2003: Heh.. interesting article on Slashdot today.. talks about how to take over a computer using a lamp!
March 14, 2003: HAPPY PI DAY!!! Today at 1:59pm MathSoc will be serving pie in the MC (March 14, 1:59pm == 3.14159)! I better get going if I want to get some!! Mmmm.. pie..
But before I go, check this out -- it's a little tale of me writing a prime number lister, and how obfusticated and small I can get it. I'm also currently listing all the prime numbers up to 1.41 billion. Currently the text file is 192MB and that's only the primes up to 345 million! Oi! But if it compresses nicely perhaps I'll put it up on my site for people to do nothing with. :P That's what happens when I get bored..
Ok, cheerio!
March 12, 2003: Got an old picture from my frosh week (1998!):
Thanks for Marc and Natasha for passing this on to me (even if it was indirectly)!. Good times.. good oldies!
Had a busy day today.. especially considering that I didn't have any classes. Sold pizza at both Campus Day and the normal MGC sales in MC. They went rather smoothly, even if they weren't crazy busy. Finally got a chance to use (play) my FRS radios. They work pretty well, but the solid concrete walls of MC don't help the reception any.. A bid THANKS for everyone that helped out with selling pizzas today!!
Other than that I participated in a usability study for new 3d-interface devices (ie: 3d mice). Pretty interesting, although I didn't get a chance to try any truly "novel" devices.
To end off my day, I had a MathSoc meeting and scuba class afterwards. Now Vicki and I are cooking up some yummy apple dumplings.. and she's running off to the store to buy some ice cream! Mmmmmmm...
PS - For those who are interested: went climbing yesterday and red-pointed the 5th route from the comp. :D
March 10, 2003: Oi! Well my quantum midterm is over. Was it as vicious as you expected you ask? My response must be a resounding "kinda"! I know that's not quite the answer you expected but oh well.. I wrote something down for the 5 questions we had to answer (pick 5 out of a possible 7), and I'm quite confident about 2 and 2 halves of them.. thus I think it's enough to pass. And after hearing most people complain about the exam afterwards, I think I can ride the bell a bit (although it seems like only people bitching about midterms stay afterwards to talk about them). And even if it went really poorly, I figured out that if I get 0% on the midterm, and about 80% on my next assignment, then I only need just over a 50% on my project to pass the course. No sweat!
Looks like I'll be dining with some old family friends tomorrow night. It's always nice to reconnect with people!
Tomorrow and Wednesday will be busy busy days with thousands of students coming to UW for Campus Days.. and me selling pizza in the midst of it! Better get some sleep so I can co-ordinate everything!
March 9, 2003: Math Grad Ball was last night. It was great! There are many pictures up for your viewing enjoyment. Spent most of the day helping set up for it, and it was worth it for the great way everything looked and turned out. Also managed to get quite the collection of tea light holders. :)
It's been a quick five years here, and I've met many great people. Through the years I've learnt a lot, grown both personally and professionally, and had a lot of fun. Thanks to everyone for such a great time! (and let's be sure to continue the good times indefinately!)
If anyone would like a higher-res version of any of the pictures, let me know and I'll send it to you.
March 5, 2003: Well well well.. looks like I can keep up the daily posting! It's amazing what a little procrastination can get you to do! Yeah.. today the Dean came and helped us sell pizza! He was there to promote the Pink Tie Pledge. Will I pledge? Hmm.. I dunno.. if I do, Daryl will buy me a drink at the Math Grad Ball this weekend. Hmm indeed..
Ooh.. got my distributed working.. now just need to do the boring docs. That's why I'm updating my page again! Woot to procrastination! :)
Had my councelling interview in my interviewing class. It went alright, though I should've taken control of the interview a little more to steer it in the desired direction. Oh well..
Marc's going crazy and is talking to himself. Crazy I tell you!! Mentally unstable!! Clinically InSaNe!!! Turns out he was just singing along with The Avalanches. Good stuff!
Say, you know what would help me procrastinate? Email me something entertaining!
I'll be eagerly checking me email!
March 4, 2003: Ok, I don't think I can keep up these daily updates much longer.. but to tide you over I put up two new sets of pictures: some old pictures of this year's Secret Santa, and pictures from Vicki's birthday!
Enjoy, I'm off to bed.
March 3, 2003: Forgot to mention, I bought a little one-man tent on the weekend. It's a Walrus Micro Swift. Set it up in my living room last night and it seems pretty good. Surprisingly it was even big enough to fit both me and Vicki! Pretty tight, but it is a one-man tent. :D
Oh yeah, did you notice the new picture of me (too the left)? It was made by a friend of mine (Simon Lam).
Yeah, off to do more homework now.
March 2, 2003: Went to the boulder competition that Cherith put together. Was originally just planning on taking a quick look and going home to do some homework, but was quickly overcome by the desire to try the routes. There were 10 routes in all, of which I flashed 3 and finished another. The fifth route was a good challenge for me, and I think I could've finished it if I had spent more time there. Good times were had by all..
Other than that, I spent the weekend in Toronto. Moved my sister out of her house (having done it myself, I must say that moving while out of the country is definately the way to go). Got all her stuff moved pretty easily, but helped Tim move his big projection TV to his new 3rd floor apartment. Man, those things are heavy!
Last night, Vicki's company took the entire clinic out for a nice dinner at Grazie. Fortunately I was already in town for it! Yummy!
Now if only I could stop procrastinating and get to work doing my distributed assignment.
Oh yeah, Scott's got a new page up.. I like the look of it, though it seems hard to update.
February 26, 2003: Brrrr... it's a chilly -27° C (that's -16.6° F for my friends in the US). Not as bad as it sounds though.. not much wind and it's nice and sunny!
Scuba tonight! Pretty excited! Ok, I have nothing to say.. Just felt like updating my web site. :/
My quantum computing assignment got extended until Thursday (from Tuesday).. so now I still have work to do. Argh! That's ok, I got another question figured out yesterday. :<
Oh yeah! I got another email address: buddy (at) uwaterloo.ca !! Look, I even encoded it all secret like so spammers can't find me! :D So if you're bored like I am, send me some mail there!
Yup. Later!
February 24, 2003: Happy Belated Birthdays go out to my girlfriend Vicki and my sister Nicola.
This weekend was pretty enjoyable, if not productive. Vicki and I went to see her sister's new house.. pretty swell! There'll be pictures up soon..
I won a t-shirt in a Centre In The Square online contest.. good times!
For anyone who rants about the new Survivor show, but secretly wants to keep up with the going-ons, check out this site for all your updates!
In some very unfortunate news, I lost my nice watch on Thursday night.. anyone find a silver watch (along King St. I think)??
Aside from that, not much going on.. gotta do lotsa Quantum Computing today as it's due tomorrow. Hmm.. thought I had something else to write about.. I'm sure it'll come to me later in the day.
Cheers!
February 17, 2003: Midterm tomorrow? What do you mean I should be studying?!? Craziness..
Anyhow, during my procrastination I came across this page. Why's it so crazy weird you ask?? I'll tell you! These people climbed Mount Shasta the the very same day I did!! How weird is that? I'm currently reading "Touching My Father's Soul" which is about the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, and wanted to double check how high Mount Shasta was (14,162' BTW), then I started surfing other sites about Mount Shasta and started reading their story.. then they mentioned seeing a girl at the summit with a skirt on, which reminded me of the girl I saw at the summit with a skirt on. Got me thinking that a lot of skirted women like to climb Shasta.. then they mentioned looking at the mudslide that had happened near Helen Lake the night before, and that clinched it! I read the article again and noticed that they climbed it on July 14.. then I went and checked the dates on my digital photos from the trip (July 15, but I didn't download them off my camera until the day after I got home). That means I must have passed them on the mountain! I passed the girl with the skirt just as I was descending from the summit, so perhaps we were even on the summit together for a short while! Man, is that crazy or what?? I love it when freak things like that happen! So cool..
Yeah, nothing much aside from that.. I'm slowly climbing the stats ladder on my friend's site. Perhaps I'll email her some more right now! What else would I do.. study?? :P
February 14, 2003: HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!
Scuba is crazy cool! On my Wednesday night class we finally got to use all the scuba gear (tanks and all).. it was soo good! From just sitting on the bottom of the pool, to doing sumersaults, to making bubble rings, it's all cool!! Yup, pretty glad I took the course.. now to find the money that'll let me buy my own gear..
In other things, I've been routinely getting my ass-whooped on Red Hot Pawn.. I think it's 'cause I don't put enough thought into these online games.. and any strategy that I do come up with I usually forget before my next move.. nuts! But in better news, my player in Yahoo's Word Racer is moving up nicely. :D
Reading week(end) is next week! Too bad I have a midterm on Tuesday.. and a quantum assignment due the week after.. and a distributed assignment due the week after as well.. d'oh!
In other news, we find out today at 4:30pm who won the FEDs election..
February 12, 2003: Meetings meetings meetings.. yesterday I had my first meeting with the Computer Science Council. It was pretty interesting, better than I thought. I'm one of two undergraduate representatives. Today I have a bunch more meetings, two with the Math Grad Committee and one with MathSoc. So many meetings that it's almost like I'm at work.
Enough rants.
February 10, 2003: Man, some of these online quizes are quite perceptive! Apparently my high school stereotype is:
Take the What High School Stereotype Are You? quiz, by Angel.
Went to see the FASS show on Friday.. good work to everyone I know in the show! In fact, good work to everyone I don't know in the show too! While being a little lengthy, I had a blast, and for anyone going next year, I'd recommend the late Friday night show!
Okily dokily.. it's time to get some breakfast and go rock climbing!
February 5, 2003: Hola! So Vicki and I did end up going skating on the weekend. Good news! Turns out I don't suck as much as I thought I did! I can even turn using cross-cuts, sweetness! In other good news, I won a game of chess over at Red Hot Pawn, it's a pretty hot web site, if you're into chess let's go! My userid is mpbetts..
This Friday we're all going to see FASS.. I've heard it's good times, but have never made it out to see it before.
Not too much else is new.. gots another scuba lesson tonight.. have a macro-economics midterm tomorrow night.. have a volleyball game tomorrow night as well.. get the 2nd quantum assignment tomorrow (oh goody!).. I should've taken more coding courses this term.. definately not enough coding going on. Either that or should've taken an easier course load so that I could code on my own (not that my term is overly hard, but quantum does take suck up a lot of time).. speaking of which I should go do some reading..
Okily dokily, talk to y'all later!
February 1, 2003: Happy Chinese/Lunar New Year! Another exciting beginning.. this time of the year of the ram (or sheep if you prefer)! I seem to be slowing down in my updates, but I'll just blame that on my quantum homework that kept me busy for most of last week. Craziness.. though it's making more sense now, which is good. Aside from that, I've been doing good.
Had another scuba course last Wednesday. This time we got our equipment and learnt how to use the fins and snorkel. Exciting times. Also learnt that I can't swim in a straight line with my eyes closed. Oh well, just something for me to work on. Too bad everyone else in the class can swim straight. D'oh!
Oh, speaking of quantum, there's a seminar on "Towards a Quantum Programming Language" this Monday at MC 5136 at 12:30pm. Perhaps I'll go.. sounds interesting anyhow.
Went to see the New Berlin Wind Quartet at Conrad Grebel on yesterday. That was part of a master's class for the music ensemble group. It was some good music and some interesting tips on the differences between playing classical music and jazz.. explains why my jazz songs don't sound like jazz! It inspired me so much that I even went home and played some violin! Crazy! Hey Liz, are you reading this?? I finally tried out that fiddle music!
Last night Marc and Sandra came over and we had a rousing game of MixMath (the game I picked up in Kingston last weekend). Good times! Sandra, the only person with a math degree, won by a landslide. Hmm.. when we played in Kingston, Scott (with a CS degree) won. I'm noticing a pattern here..
Now Vicki and I are trying to figure out what to do today: skiing, rock climbing, skating?? So many choices.. ok, off I go to do something!
PS - So when I said "off I go to do something", it turns out I meant "off I go to write a shell script"! I just whipped up a little script to parse my ramblings and only display the five latest entries.. should speed up loading of my page since the ramblings file was getting a little large. Just scroll down to the bottom and use the link there if you want to see the older stuff. Enjoy the speediness!
January 23, 2003: Booyaka! For those of you who care, I finally unlocked everything in SSX Tricky! Trick book and everything..
In other news, I'm going to Kingston for the weekend.. do a little computer work, hang out with my Kingston friends, play some math scrabble with Scott.. :) Who could ask for more?!?
Went bowling last weekend and got my second turkey! Sweetness..
Oh yeah! Had my first Scuba diving lesson! No need to worry last term, as I passed the swimming test with flying (or rather swimming) colours! It consisted of swimming 8 lengths, swimming 2/3 of a length underwater with one breath and then treading water for 10 minutes. It seems like a really fun class.. both the instructors and the other students are fun!
Next week seems like it'll be quite busy.. I have to do two interviews next week (for my interviewing class), finish off my distributed assignment (which is already almost done) and do my impossibly hard quantum assignment. Ack! If only I knew linear algebra..
Enough rants. 'til next time!
PS - How could I forget to post about this: I submitted some code to be on Flicode's Code of the Day. It's the surface subdivision code I used in my cloth simulation.
January 17, 2003: On a somewhat funny note: BBSG is the first item on the best search engine when you search for "international mega corporation". Sweet! Now all we need is a product!
January 13, 2003: Oh yeah, another relaxing day of not being at school. :P Let's see, today I slept in, did some reading for my classes, surfed the net, played some SSX Tricky (finished off all the courses today!). Then my friend from Guelph came down and we did some bouldering at school.. it's probably too soon for any real difference, but I'm feeling a bit better already, my strength is returning! w00t!
Hmm.. word from Scott is that my new MATH GAME has arrived! Now to drive to Kingston to retrieve it.. yeah, it's a Scrabble-esque game, but you make up equations instead.. how sweet is that!?!?
Just a glimpse into my geeky self!
January 10, 2003: Here's an interesting riddle for you all:
You given two strings and a box matches and are told that each string will burn for 1 hour. However, the strings do not burn at a constant rate throughout their length.If you find the answer, tell me, or if you get stuck feel free to ask for the solution. I must admit that I didn't get the answer myself.. :/ There's more riddles to be found at www.qubit.org.
How do you measure out a period of precisely 45 minutes?
On a related note, I've been reading my Quantum Information Processing textbook, I think I'm going to like this crazy stuff! :D
Hmm.. went rock climbing yesterday. Man, I've lost sooo much strength and endurance.. embarassing! I'll have to get cracking on that..
PS - I've put a bunch of new pictures for your enjoyment.. some from New Years and others from a sushi dinner Vicki and made (still up for a sushi party Scott?). Enjoy!
January 7, 2003: Well, just had my first day of my last term! Classes seem like they'll be quite good this term.. Quantum Information Processing seems hard, but interesting.. Distributed seems ok, though the prof seems a little boring.. and Interviewing seems cool as expected..
Tomorrow's my first day doing the MGC Pizza Director thingy.. having to go to school on my day off! Oi! oh well, I already have some reading to do, so that's okay. Even got some volunteers lined up.. sweet!
Other than that not much has been going on. I was really enjoying my time off between New Years and today.. sleeping in, playing video games, working on some personal projects.. if only I were independently wealthy and could do that forever!
January 2, 2003: HAPPY NEW YEAR! Well I had a good time and hope you all did too. Although my original plans were go to go EBar with some friends in Guelph, it turns out that waiting until Dec. 30 to buy your tickets is a Bad Idea (tm). So Vicki and I ended up going out with some other friends to the Huether Hotel instead. It was pretty good, and they (eventually) put out a grand buffet for our enjoyment!
Yesterday also proved to be quite a good way for Vicki to start off the new year! We went off the