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Buddy's Old Ramblings
March 17, 2019: DEMO-1 WAS A HUGE SUCCESS! I went down for my longest trip away yet (5.5 days) to help support the Demo-1 mission. We successfully launched, docked, undocked, and landed all within 8 days! It was super exciting being down there, and even got to spend some time in mission control helping out with things. I've been working on it for almost my entire 4 years at SpaceX, and it was great to see everyone's hard work pay off and the vehicle execute so smoothly!
Back in January we went over to Toronto for a family visit (sorry to all the friends we didn't get a chance to see). It was fun, and with just a short cold spell to give that taste of winter.
In other news Ryan has started taekwando classes with a preschool friend. I love living vicariously through him! :P
December 26, 2018: Merry (Belated) Christmas!
Happy Boxing Day!
Had a fun holiday with the family -- kids are old enough now to get excited and leave out cookies for Santa (yum!). Spent some time with the in-laws, and we are headed up to Canada in the new year. We got our first cut tree this year (the last two years we tried the "live tree in a pot" thing, but they don't seem to quite make it to the year after), and I'm unexpectedly excited about it. Especially now that I also got a wifi plug and can ask Alexa to turn the Christmas tree lights on and off for me.
Preemptively wishing everyone a Happy New Year!
November 3, 2018: Had a couple fun birthdays recently! Ryan had a very busy popcorn/carnival themed birthday party (complete with carnival games and prizes)... and Charlene had a confetti themed party!
In not as great news, both Ryan and I visited the ER rooms last month! I dislocated my shoulder while climbing in LA (an interesting time comparing the shoulder resetting experience to what I'd learned in my WFR course). Then the week after Ryan fell down the stairs ("I was having fun until the end") and broke his clavicle. We were sling buddies for a bit, but now he's already all done with it -- tomorrow will be a sling-free day!
Busy with work as usual, heading back to Houston next week for more NASA testing!
August 2, 2018: Snow day!! The internet at work is down, so I can't do my (copious amounts of) work! Wheeee...
Sorry about the infrequent posts... but still doing better than I did last year! Let's see, we went back to Canada and were actually there over Canada Day (something I have missed for many many years)! We also had a little slightly-early party for Marshall's second birthday. It was great to see everyone who braved the heatwave to come hang out. The trip itself was a big success with lots of museums, so many drawings, family time, and even no puking on the plane rides!
Work's been super busy as we get ready to launch Crew Dragon. It's also exciting, but I do hope it ramps down shortly. :P On that note I went out to Houston for some testing with NASA and got to see the Neutral Buoyancy Lab -- it's a massive pool that contains replica of the International Space Station for astronauts to train on. Very cool!The fam has also been accompanying me on a few work trips to LA. Legoland is a huge hit, as are the beach & aquarium. Last time we even went strawberry picking at a Hello Kitty themed farm.
May 17, 2018: Happy Birthday to me!!
January 6, 2018: Whoops, looks like I missed all of 2017! :P
Obviously lots of things have happened, but for which this margin is too small to contain... some highlights are:
- Ryan turned 3, started preschool, is potty-trained
- Marshall turned 1, can walk, babbles a lot
- bought a new-to-us Honda CR-V
Still finalizing this year's new year resolutions, but did pretty well on last year's:
- ✅ Read 6 books
- ✅ Donate XXXX dollars to worthy causes
- ✅ Climb 2x/month
- ❌ Get an Adroit Tools customer
August 1, 2016:
WOW! What a crazy four weeks of being a "fourmily" ("four" + "family")! Had a quickly scheduled c-section, and good thing too -- he came out as a giant 9 lbs 7 oz!! Here's to Marshall Xavier Betts-Ng! We've already had lots of fun adventures (and not-fun adventures like getting sick)... and all too soon I'm back at work tomorrow...
July 3, 2016: Today's the day! Well, today's supposed to be the day! It's yet-to-be-named Baby #2's due date! That being said, I think he'll be a bit late.. time to enjoy being a family of three for a little bit longer, especially now that I'm off work already! Yay.
Found a bird stuck in the patio stairs yesterday, and luckily a birder friend was over visiting and was able to safely rescue the little woodpecker. Happy coincidences!
Hope everyone had a great Canada Day and/or is prepping for a great July 4th (depending on where you live)!
May 14, 2016: It's been one week since we moved into our new house!! The whole process was uber-stressful, but we made it and are slowly unpacking enough stuff that we can do normal things without having to dig through boxes all the time... Didn't really help that I had to go down to LA for work 2 days after we moved in, but Char made it through!
Other than that, we've been to a couple baby showers -- one of which was ours!! That's right, we've having another boy! This was also the impetus for moving to a house, more room for the kiddos and we wanted to get moved in before Number Two (not his real name).
Went with the whole family down to the last Planet Granite climbing comp. Super fun to get out and climb again.
In work news, we landed two more rockets on autonomous drone ships! That makes 3 total (one by land, two by sea), with hopefully lots more to come.
February 25, 2016:
Q. Why couldn't the lightning rod go play with his friends?
A. Because he was grounded!
Yeah, I made that up all on my own!!
February 17, 2016: Happy Birthday Jasper!!
Also to catch up on other missed events since my last post: Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Happy Lunar New Year! Happy Valentine's Day!
What else is new? As a parent I'll just talk about my kid:
- got a new car set (with 2 cupholders -- this brings my car's total up to 12!)
- cut Ryan's hair (only missed a few spots)
- he's running around a lot now
- he made his first snow angel
- did great at his first dentist appointment
- landed a rocket
- went to Oahu -- super fun, even though I was sick for almost all of it (and couldn't dive)
- went to Ontario -- only hung out with family, but it was great to see them
- had a fun & relaxing Valentine's Day
December 3, 2015: HOLY NO UPDATES!!!! Needless to say, lots has happened:
- Ryan turned 1 and we had a fantabulous camping themed party (with homemade tents and everything)
- Char had a fun birthday
- My mom came to visit
- Ryan puked all over me and the backseat of the car
Maybe I'll even sneak in a few more updates before the end of the year (no promises though...)
May 14, 2015:
"Happiness is the first derivative of success"An interesting comment that came up the other day. I think there's something to that... in order to avoid that trap, be sure to remember all that you already have every day!
Ryan's 8-months old now and continues to be super cute, even when making disgusted faces when he eats food he doesn't like (e.g. green beans).
Had a couple fancy brunches for Easter and Mother's Day... Ryan and I took Char out for her very first Mother's Day dinner! Finally went to the Conservatory of Flowers and really liked it! Climbed in another PG Climbing Comp and did better than I expected for not having climbed much recently, fun as always! Did a 5k walk against Brain Tumours, then got free comics for Free Comic Book Day. Saw Andy Weir talk about his book... Finally applied for TSA PreCheck now that I'm flying regularly, should get it any day now! Throw in random lunches/dinners with friends and that about sums up my last month!
OH! I did, just this week, achieve one of my New Year's Resolutions:
April 2, 2015: Yes, only a single month since my last update! How much could have happened in that short amount of time?? Well, I finished my full-time babysitting job, started my new job making rockets, went to LA twice for training (I'm here now), got sick, had dinner with a few friends, had a friend give me a private boat tour of the marina (I even got to steer the boat!), and finally started reading a great book that a friend gave me!
In other news, Ryan continues to get bigger and bigger! He's about 40th-percentile now (which is good cause he was super low before), he can sit unaided for short amounts of time, can stand for a bit if you hold his hands, and continues to be amazeballs cute (in my unbiased opinion).
Hope everyone's having a good time and didn't get fooled by too many fake internet stories yesterday...
March 2, 2015: So far I've been totally enjoying my time away from work and being Mr Mom! It's tiring, but not nearly as stressful as being at work... and the fact that Ryan is super cute doesn't hurt either. We spend most days eating, pooping (mostly him), going on walks, tummy time, even playing piano!
Last week my best man (also named Ryan) came to visit, which was super awesome! We relaxed, hiked, went to Alcatraz, fixed random things around the house (ok, that was mostly him), and ate at the same restaurants we took him to last time he visited.
Only one more week off before I start my new job -- where does the time go??
February 14, 2015: ♥ Happy Valentine's Day! ♥
So far it's only 15 minutes into V-Day and I'm about to go to bed, but wanted to send this out before I got distracted!
It's been a crazy 5 weeks or so since my last update... the major points being that I quit my job, am taking off the month of February to be a stay-at-home dad, and then starting a new job in March! So far the first week of full-time Ryan duty has been super fun! We've gone on hikes, played piano, done tummy time, he's puked on me a bunch...
It's also been fun because Marc is off this week and we've hung out a couple times. Just like the old days!
January 5, 2015: Happy Belated Holidays!
Happy Belated New Years!
Was planning on doing a New Year's post, but there were some issues with my web page... but it's back now! Let me know if you notice it not working in the future...
Spent the holidays in California this year, looks like Baby Boulder will have to wait until sometime in 2015 to visit Canada. Here's a quick recap of 2014:
- visited the last of seven continents (Antarctica)
- saw the Eiffel Tower (among other Parisian sights)
- had some family members get sick
- had some family members get better
- feeling like I grew a lot at work
- at the top of my climbing game (5.12a & V6)
- had a baby! Ryan Boulder has been an amazing/exhausting experience
- [physical] do 25 chin-ups
- [professional] start a side business
- [personal] be nicer in general (gotta keep up my Canadian roots)
November 9, 2014:
Sorry for the lack of updates but it turns out having a kid makes you quite busy! Anyhow, lots of going ons:
- Took 2 weeks of initial paternity leave, most of which is a blur of crying, sleeping, and dirty diapers
- Mom & Nic came to visit me (Ryan actually) which was fun. Did a bunch of outings with them!
- Work has been busy with bugs and meeting external partners. Working on a fun project now though, and learning the JavaFX UI framework to boot
- Halloween was pretty low key, but took Ryan out to pose with some pumpkins (in his pumpkin costume)
- Ryan can track us with his eyes, and just recently started doing "social smiles" -- so fun!
- Got my first onsight of a 5.12a at the gym! :D
September 19, 2014:
HE'S HERE! I'd like to formally introduce baby Ryan Boulder Betts-Ng!! He arrived a bit earlier than expected, but that's ok -- now we have more time to hang out together! After spending 4 days in the hospital we finally headed home a couple days ago and have been figuring out this "parenting" thing since...
August 18, 2014: Finally got around to practicing my aid climbing which I learned last year. Found a nice crack under an overpass near my house and have been out there a couple times so far. Already feel much better on it!
Got to see the legendary Yo-Yo Ma play at the Greek theatre last week. So good, and he's pretty funny too!
In other news, just working a bunch and preparing for the baby (only 6 more weeks!!). Also trying to finish up my OUYA-exclusive "Battle Sudoku" game in my limited spare time.
August 5, 2014: Finally put up some new pictures! This time it's from our trip to Paris. Paris was super fun -- we went with a few friends and booked a cool AirBnB place with a rooftop terrace that gave a 360 view over the city. We got 6-day museum passes and made good use of them. Also ate a ton of delicious food (who knew French butter could be so good??). Those eager and observant readers will have already clicked on that link and noticed what the title of the album is. (go look now if you haven't already)
That's right -- we're expecting! Baby's due at the end of next month and we just had a super fun baby shower this past weekend!! Thanks to everyone who helped organize it. Not only did this baby shower include beer, archery, and throwing knives, but tons of good food, presents, friends, and fun games.
Unexpectedly Ryan also came down for it! He managed to find a super good deal on a flight and came to visit. We made the most of his time here by avoiding sleep and doing lots of fun things -- being tourists in SF, buying all kinds of horchata, rock climbing in Yosemite, and playing OUYA.
June 21, 2014: Big news! After reading, and being inspired by, Fixing My Gaze, I started some weekly vision therapy sessions to see if I could also gain binocular vision... after 12 weeks I had my first instance of 3d-ness! For a few seconds I was able to "fuse" the circles on a variable tranaglyph and see the 2 circles in glorious 3d.
June 7, 2014: Sorry for the extreme lack of updates! I was trying to motivate myself to finish up my Antarctica write-up by not posting anything until that was done. Looks like that backfired! :P
Anyhow, I've since done a very quick ending to that write-up (still want to edit/publish my polar plunge video though), and am now back to updating! Hooray!
Needless to say, much has happened since February 1st, but I'll just mention a few things that spring to mind:
- achieved my New Years resolution: climbed 5.12a and V6! Feeling strong!
- Sha Sha had a baby shower with the best cake ever
- went to Portland for a week
February 1, 2014: Happy (belated) Chinese New Year!
Also -- we made it!! We've gone (and come back) from Antarctica! Crossed the Antarctic Circle and everything. So many penguins, seals, and whales. Also saw The Most Amazing Sunset Ever. Seriously. I'm still working on my write up, but you can peruse our "best of" photos while I finish that. If there's not enough penguin photos in there for you, let me know -- we have a few thousand more!
Since getting back (and getting my bag delivered (yes, they always lose my luggage)) we've both been sick (penguin-flu?), so spent the last few days at home in bed drinking soup and not doing much at all. Need to get better so I can go back to work on Monday.
January 1, 2014: Happy New Year!!
Back safe and sound from Kauai. It was a blast! We did lots of stuff: stand-up paddleboarding (I suck), surfing (I'm ok), hiking the Na Pali Coast (went further than last time), relaxing, eating, touring the Kauai Coffee plantation, hiking Waimea Canyon, shopping (got a sweet koa wood ring), and playing with Char's 2.5-year-old niece.
Got home from Hawaii around 11pm on December 31, so the prelude to NYE was unpacking, then watching the countdown on TV. We're crazy like that!
Today was good and relaxing though. Slept in, found a free DIY calendar letterpress workshop, ate waffles at our favourite waffle place, bought/read some comics, hiked around Joaquin Miller Park (our first time there -- nice park with lots of trails), ate sushi, watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi movie, and updated our Around The World blog (close to being done now). A great start to the new year!
December 22, 2013: I suck at updating! But if it's any condolence, I've been *thinking* about updating a lot. :P
Been on a couple trips since my last update:
- Kentucky -- to go climbing w/ Ryan et al. Good times as per usual! Cold though...
- Phoenix -- to visit Char's college friends. Was a lot of fun, pics are here
- Hawaii -- (soon) we're going to be there between Christmas and New Years
Other than that, we've been preparing for the holidays and hanging out with friends. Also reading a cool book right now, Maiden Voyage. It's about a young girl sailing around the world solo. Totally getting me psyched to sail around the world! :)
September 11, 2013: Had our two year wedding anniversary yesterday -- man time flies!! We exchanged presents and went out for dinner at Haven -- pretty tasty food, the apps/sides were great though our main was just ok. Interesting drinks & desserts though!
Went to a Fun concert this past weekend, which was (uhhh) fun!
The Friday before we went to the free LADEE Launch Party at the NASA Ames Research Center. They had various nerdy booths, food trucks, and a giant screen which we all watched the launch on. Nerd heaven!
September 2, 2013: Oh man, another month has already gone by with no updates... I really did _think_ about updating though... so I'm pretty sure that counts.
Had a weekend in Carmel with the in-laws which was pretty fun, followed by another Dinner for Eight with my climbing friends. Had a week back home in Toronto, which was relatively fun considering the unfortunate circumstances which brought me there (a funeral). While there I learned the new nerdy depths that my friends are getting into (that's you Laurene!)...
Nightlife @ Cal Academy, BBQ at Babs', watching the just-ok Elysium movie, skeet shooting (awesome fun, and it turns out that all my video game playing has made me a good shot), cheap video games at Nickel City arcade, too long at IKEA, farewell part for Nick, field work with Char, biking, Shakespeare in the Park, reading, and working on my personal OUYA game. Phew -- now you're all caught up!
The skeet shooting was super fun, we went with a coworker and his wife and did the Experience Package. Not only do they have the typical clays that fly through the air ("birds"), they also have ones that roll along the ground ("rabbits"). Now to find the time to go back again!
August 4, 2013: Last weekend was awesome! Went over to Yosemite and took the Big Wall class! The first day was practiced aid climbing, jumaring, hooking, and pendulums. The second day we did aiding overhanging bolt ladders, anchors, and hauling. Even got to try out a portaledge! You can find some of my pictures here. Lydia rubbed off on me and I picked up a few hooks to play with. Now to pick up some webbing and etriers for them... Stayed in a nice AirBnB place too (though it was a bit far away)... so far I'm pretty impressed with AirBnB!
This current week included working-from-home for 2 days (once due to car troubles), lunch with some out-of-town friends, hiking to the Tourist Club for some birthday beers (not my birthday), watching Char's sister play in her field hockey league's finals, biking, and working on my personal OUYA game!
After weeks of talking about it, finally met up with Rahul and watched World War Z -- a good zombie movie!
July 14, 2013: Lots to catch up on! A couple weeks ago we went to a special wedding, not only was it the marriage of a couple of our good friends, but we both had important roles in the wedding: I was the officiant and Char was the matron of honour! The wedding was a great success and everyone had a blast (the yummy donuts and fun photobooth helped!). For anyone interested, here's my speech.
The weekend after was the July 4th long weekend. Went to a BBQ at Robin's house, and headed out to Tuolumne the next day. Met up with some friends and climbed the West Ride of Mt Conness. By the book's estimates it should have been a roughly 13-hour day... in actuality it was a 25-hour day! Of course the descent would've taken less time had it been light out... I put up some pictures of the trip. Long and very tiring day, but still enjoyable now that I've had a week to forget the awfulness of the whole thing. :) After getting back to camp at 5am, I got up at 7am the next day and drove the 6-hours back home to meet Char's visiting family, so tired!
Went and saw Despicable Me 2 with Char the other day and enjoyed it... sometime soon we'll probably go see Monsters University as well.
This weekend included a Bastille Day block party, a bead show, cooking breakfast and cleaning. I need some relaxation to make up for the weekend before!
June 29, 2013: The OUYA launch was a great success! Sold out pretty quick in some places and we already have 200 games in the store. For only $99, why not get one? (note: I may be a bit biased)
Today's also a special day -- it's Mike & Babs' wedding! Char is the matron of honour and I'm the officiant, fun times indeed!
In other news, saw the new Superman movie.. some cool parts, but just ok overall.
June 20, 2013: We made it! Got back last week and had a few days to unpack/relax/adjust before going back to work on Monday....
We haven't yet finished the last few days, but if you haven't already, read our blog: http://bettsng.blogspot.com
In other news, my new console is having its retail launch next week! Look for the OUYA in stores next Tuesday!
May 17, 2013: Happy Birthday to me!
Happy Birthday to me!
Happy Biiiirthday dear meeee,
Happy Birthday to me!
I'm in Iceland for my birthday this year, how cool is that??!
March 26, 2013: Buddy can't come to the website right now, he's away on a grand world tour. For his updates, please see here: http://bettsng.blogspot.com.
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March 16, 2013: Wow! Over 3 months with no updates -- I suck! Let's see:
- Went home Chrismas, then to Tahoe
- Portland with friends for New Years
- Seattle for visiting friends (and playing board games)
- Sha Sha and Amanda's awesome wedding
- Hitting stressful major milestones at work
- Planning for our big trip
December 14, 2012: Ahhhh another satisfyingly productive work week... :)
And it's almost time to go home and see the family! Yay Christmas time!
December 2, 2012: Holy no updates Batman! Let's see.. things at OUYA are going well. Learning a ton and feeling quite productive lately... and still super excited and eager to do extra work just because it's fun. :) (in fact I'm doing work _right now_ at 1am in the morning).
What am I doing up at 1am you ask? Well, we went to the opera tonight with Nicole (and Chris) and saw Tosca -- pretty fun, but not "best evar". Now we're at the airport for a weekend trip to St Louis! Unfortunately our plane got delayed, but that just gives me more time to do work. :P I don't really know anything about St Louis except that it has an arch, and I just learned that it has good bbq... we'll see!
Update: it's now a couple days later and we didn't end up going to St Louis after all! :( We got on our delayed flight, sat on the tarmac for three hours and then got off. Instead of rebooking we got a refund, BART'ed home at 5am, slept for a few hours and then headed out to the field to take water samples. Oh well, we'll go another time! The field was crazy though -- water was 20 feet higher than normal... after a long drive up there we couldn't even get into the water! Ended up bailing some samples from a bridge. Impressive to see!
With our new found time, we did some work, got some stuff to make a little shelf for our tv, went to see the movie Lincoln with friends, did some more work, and will probably go to the Bizzarre Bazaar later.
October 16, 2012: Sorry for such a brief update last time... here's a little bit longer of an update.
Congrats to Charlene -- Oops, I mean DR Charlene! :) Had a nice celebratory picnic last weekend (Off the Grid: Presidio). We also had a similar picnic there the weekend before as her birthday celebration (that weekend we got to watch the Blue Angels too). Tasty fun was had by all.
The new job is busy. Learning lots of new things... after getting only a small grip on Ruby on Rails, I'm already moving onto Android development. Wheeeee. For those wondering, I'm now working at OUYA -- a new video game console company!
A couple weeks ago we went out for another field sampling trip. Another fun, yet tiring, weekend out in the sun! Later that week we hung out with the cool kids at the Christina Perri and Jason Mraz concert... We're so cool! Oh and there was also a couple parties for Charlene's 10-year reunion! I hope Waterloo has one next year...
October 9, 2012: HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHARLENE!!!
Sorry for the no updates, LOTS of going ons. I don't have much time to write, but the big two are:
- road-trip for Dave's wedding: Ensenada, Mexico for his wedding, then LegoLand for my 1-year anniversary (man that went fast!)
- I quit Trion 1.5 weeks ago and have already started my new job last week (defying my own suggestion of taking time off between jobs)
August 29, 2012: Added a new page to my site's code section: RTF to HTML. A little script I whipped up at work to help someone convert an Excel cell of formatted text into HTML. Only supports the basic styles, but good enough! The web was surprisingly lacking in this code so hopefully other people will find it useful as well.
August 26, 2012: Holy long time with no updates! And just when I thought I was getting back to a semi-regular cadence...
A few highlights of the past month are:
- getting my greencard in the mail!
- going wine tasting with work friends
- celebrating Char's dad's birthday multiple times
- going kayaking & mountain biking in Tahoe
- forgetting that my bike was on my car's roof rack and driving into a covered garage :| (everything's fine luckily)
- finally attending my first Super Happy Dev House
- trying out kneeboarding for the first time (thanks Mike!)
- going to see Warhorse with friends
- getting mildly addicted to Downton Abbey
July 26, 2012: Had my green card interview yesterday and ...
This past weekend we headed up to the Eureka area to do fieldwork (along with some professors and undergrads). A couple long days of holding nets, collecting algae, kayaking (in our sweet new inflatable kayak) and touring a new conservation area. Very fun (and tiring)!
The weekend before we (finally) used our wedding present from Nicola -- a hot air balloon ride!! It was super fun. Pics can be found here. The next day we headed down to Carmel and did a dive at the Copper Roof House site -- not the best dive for us, but nice to get wet again anyhow.
July 7, 2012:
Having a fun 'relaxing' weekend so far! Friday night we met up with some friends and went to see the Oakland Art Murmur -- basically a bunch of galleries and food trucks. Fun times (though there's a lot of art I just don't 'get')!Today we met Marc early in the morning and saw The Amazing Spiderman. Totally enjoyable! Better than the other Spiderman movies? Debatable, but totally worth seeing.
After that we rushed over to meet Char's relatives for dim sum (we were late, but luckily everyone else was on Filipino time so we were still the first ones there). We ate at Yank Sing and it was pretty darn good! Except when ordering duck they charge by the slice which is totally weird. After lunch we lead the relatives over to Blue Bottle Coffee for some yummy pick-me-ups.
Next-up was a quick stop at Bamboo Reef where I used my birthday present (of a gift card) to get me my very own wetsuit (a 6.5mm Aqualung)!
Then we went back to Oakland to Revere Glass where we took the 4-hour Glass Blowing Level 2 (and see my pic of the fancy marble, small paperweight, bottle stopper and 3 bottles I made). Fun fun fun!
And now to see how much we can cram into tomorrow! ;)
July 1, 2012: Happy Canada Day!!
In a nice surpise, last week the supreme court upheld the Affordable Care Act! Finally some good political news...
Put up my Canada pictures (still need to put up the ones from Char's camera though).
June 24, 2012: For the first time in a decade or so, I was in Canada for both my mom's birthday and for Father's Day! We went back there just to visit (since we didn't go back for Christmas) and it was great fun! So much nicer to do touristy things in the summer. A couple of the highlights were going to Niagara Falls (and on the Maid of the Mist) and finally doing some outdoor climbing in Ontario with Ryan (we went to a place called Nemo). Other activities included a historic walk around Kingston, the Kingston Pump House Steam Museum, visiting the Dong's, watching some people who don't know how to canoe try to canoe on a windy day, going to the Distillery District in TO, Casa Loma, and Tim Horton's.
Went hiking yesterday for Mike Attig's birthday at Wunderlich county park. A nice place and we found 3 geocaches along the way! After that there was time for some boba at Fantasia before heading out to dinner at Joy Luck Palace.
June 5, 2012: Charlene kindly weighed my bivy sack today -- came out to 709.9 grams or 25 ounces or 1.56 pounds. Not too shabby! Definitely on par with the commercial bivy sacks (and I think mine's bigger too). Still have to field test it sometime...
June 3, 2012: Sorry the the slow updates... let's see if I can do better! Birthday was good -- met up with a few friends at Le P'tit Laurent for dinner. Got an awesome gift certificate for Bamboo Reef so I can get my very own wetsuit!
That Saturday we went up to the north bay, picked up some fresh cheese and oysters, went for a nice hike by the beach and then finished that off by a picnic consisting of (you guessed it) cheese and hand-shucked oysters. In case that wasn't enough food, we then proceeded over to Marica's for dinner and chocolate souffle.
Sunday was taken up by the Maker Faire and a solar eclipse. Managed to stop myself from buying lots of stuff at the faire, though that doesn't mean we didn't pick up lots of free swag. :) Lots of 3d printers and Arduino-clones this year. AWESOME! The solar eclipse was pretty sweet -- thanks to our solar viewing glasses that Char got from a friend. Even managed to get some half-decent pictures of it.
Kathie & Steve hosted the next Dinner for Eight and it was delicious. The kids and chickens provided much entertainment in between stuffing our faces with freshly grilled foodstuffs. Next up was more hiking at Huddart Park, followed by a lot of eating. Nom nom.
That Sunday (May 27th) was the Golden Gate Bridge's 75th Anniversary party! We BARTed into the city and biked over to enjoy the celebrations. After checking out the booths we continued on across the bridge and into Sausalito. Once there we ate ice cream and checked out the shops. Caught the ferry back to SF and then the BART back to Oakland. Fun fun!
Monday was a day off, so we went over to Sha's house for a BBQ. Nom nom (again)!
Most of my workweek was spent in meetings with some of our foreign partners and it culminated in a nice dinner out at Mistral with them (and Char who came down for it).
This weekend we were inspired to once again bike across the Golden Gate bridge. The strong headwind made it a harder ride than last time, but still fun! We were originally hoping to head up to Mt Shasta but hail and severe weather alerts changed that plan... hopefully soon I'll get to take Char up there!
May 17, 2012: Happy Birthday to me!!
After starting it and having it sit around for a year, I finally finished my homemade bivy sack! Final weight and photos coming eventually...
Been making good use of Char's new bike lately. The other weekend we used our bikes and BART to get to SF to see Balloonacy - a room filled with lit-up balloons. Very fun! After that we met up with Marc and friends at Zeitgeist for some chilly hanging out.
This past Tuesday was Char's graduation! Very awesome to see her up on stage in full regalia!
April 26, 2012: Biking has been super fun! So far we've been going about once a week and going further each time... now I just need to get around to biking to work again sometime.
Went down to LA for Charlene's second cousin's first birthday! While down there we went to Disneyland and, for my first time, California Adventure. While there we both found our favourite new ride (I also enjoyed the Tower of Terror). On the way home we stopped at Harris' Ranch for dinner (a fine way to end our giving-up-meat-for-lent).
Speaking of meat, that week we started something Marc and I are calling "Steak Month" -- where each week we try a different steakhouse. So far we've been to: Boboquivari's, Hillstone and L'ardoise. Next week is the final week and we're currently voting on where to end off...
That Saturday we went skiing at Kirkwood and enjoyed a bunch of fresh powder. It was so nice we went into some black-diamond bowls we hadn't tried before! Super fun. Then I wiped out and tweaked my knee on the bunny slope. Go figure. :P
The day after I went to my first baby shower! Charlene and I knitted up some booties and hat for the soon-to-be-baby (finished minutes before entering the house).
This past weekend biked down to Berkeley and watched Nicole play field hockey (my first field hockey game -- so many firsts!). Next we biked to a coffee shop and did some work (on week 5, of 6, for my crypto course). Topped off the day with some errands and dinner at Marica.
March 31, 2012: Happy World Backup Day! Very appropriate that my NAS just arrived and I'm going to set it up. How exciting!!
In other news, Charlene got a sweet bike today... hoping the weather will clear up and we can go riding tomorrow.
March 29, 2012: I've been wanting to update for weeks now, but too busy! Let's see here..
Went diving at Pt Lobos! Used Nitrox to try out my new certification.. also had my GoPro on and took some video (but then never edited it into something awesome like I'd planned on).
Then Dinner for Eight, kids' birthday parties, Banff Film Festival, SF Ocean Film Festival, skiing, Game of Thrones on DVD, 3-year (dating) anniversay with a fancy dinner at Manresa), beta'ing RIFT in Korea, taxes, learning Fair Isle knitting...
A normal, busy, month. :)
March 2, 2012: Pictures from the caving/skiing trip are up! Also picked up my EAN40 dive card this morning -- yay I'm certified!
Yesterday was RIFT's birthday and we had a fun celebration at work. :)
March 1, 2012: White Rabbit!
Lots of going-ons like usual... Korea was a blast! Of course we were there for work, but also got to explore a bit in the evenings and on the Saturday before our flight home. Most of this "exploring" was "eating". Pretty sure we all came home with extra weight in our bellies... Charlene was happy though as we did make it out to the Ugly Doll store! Also went to a tea house, a few bars (makgeolli anyone??), palace (from afar), Korean BBQ, coffee shops, subway, PC cafe, taiyaki. Fun!
After getting back, took a nitrox class with the regular diving crew... hoping to try it out this Saturday at Point Lobos!
Was also out sick for a few days, plane rides will do that to you I suppose.
Accompanied Char to Stitches (a knitting convention). She got lots of goodies and I picked up a pattern (and wool) for a turtle animal... hope it works out -- I need to learn a few new stitches for it (wrap & turn?).
This past weekend we'd planned a fun adventure with our friends: Moaning Cavnerns adventure trip! Started off with a 165' rappel, followed by a couple hours of squeezing ourselves through tiny tunnels in the rock. Was much more hard-core than I expected and everyone had a blast! We spent the night in a hotel and had a fancy dinner. The next day we headed over to Kirkwood for a day of skiing. Super fun weekend!
So a busy couple weeks, but totally fun and worth it!
February 12, 2012: Busy last couple days!
Bought a bunch of scuba gear at a going-out-of-business sale.
Went to BAGI and made glass hearts with Charlene.
Hosted a Hawaiian themed dinner party.
And now I'm in the airport waiting for my flight to Korea! Going there for a week on business. Looking forward to some amazing food!
January 31, 2012: Fun weekend! Went wine tasting in Healdsburg for a friend's birthday. We hit up: Seghesio, Field Stone, Hanna and maybe one more? Anyhow, we ended up having coupons and got free tastings at them all! Came home with 5 bottles as well, so our bar is now nice and full...
Sunday we got up early and went to Kirkwood again. Brought my GoPro video camera and just finished editing some of the clips into a short movie (inspired by Ryan's videos)... I'll upload it soon.
Anyhow, it's early and I should get going. Woke up early today to surprise Charlene with a waffle breakfast and now it's time to get her up before I'm late for work (what are the odds of her reading this from her iPhone in bed?)!
Put up the video I made!
January 18, 2012: Had some interesting things to update on, but it's not coming to me at the moment... however I have added some new content for you all: my JMT write-up and new pictures of us making marshmallows!
Let's see, last weekend we went to a coworker's wedding and Odin's first birthday (at the CuriOdyssey museum -- which was very cool). Oh I was also sick (even took off 1.5 days of work), so between those events it was mostly laying in bed resting...
The weekend before I finally fixed up my bike and went for a nice ride over the Dumbarton bridge. On the other side I met up with Charlene and we signed up to be bone marrow donors. Then it was back home to change before dinner and Tchaikovsky with Suzy & Peder. I enjoy classical music, but they always try to through in some contemporary work which I have trouble fully appreciating.. apparently the rest of the audience "got it" though and gave it a standing ovation...
In good news, there's finally a storm a-brewing in Tahoe! Should finally have some snow there soon and we can put this season pass to actual use...
January 1, 2012: Happy New Year! And belated Mele Kalikimaka (that's Hawaiian for Merry Christmas)!
This was my first year not going home for Christmas and also my first time visiting Hawaii! Went with Charlene's family to Kauai and did lots of outdoorsy stuff there (I'll try to do a write-up and pics for that soon)... I'll just leave you with: it was a blast! Like usual it wasn't a 'relaxing' vacation, but rather a 'do stuff' vacation. Took the red-eye flight home and immediately started cleaning and preparing for the New Year's & birthday party we were hosting... the fun never stops! The party (which included a SF scavenger hunt) and New Years went well.
So far 2012 has been going well! A tiny bit of sleeping in, followed by waffles & eggs for everyone (the party guests spent the night and we managed to use all 7 of our ThermaRests!) and now it's Craft Day. The ladies are making tank tops and I'm making... well I can't say, it's going to be a gift for my mom!
Hope 2012 is an awesome year for everyone!!!
December 15, 2011: Had a really good weekend! It was pretty relaxing (for us at least)... slept in on Saturday, made some shortbread cookies and then headed off to a couple parties that night. Sunday we drove up to Kirkwood to pick up Char's season pass (yay for cheap student passes) and then headed off to explore Black Chasm. It was awesome! It's very quiet there during the winter season so we ended up getting a private tour and the cavern itself was way more impressive than we'd expected. Looking forward to checking out the other caverns in the upcoming months!
Today was also the last day at our current building at work. Packed up all our stuff and we'll start work at the new building on Monday... exciting times indeed.
November 23, 2011: Lately on my commute to work I've seen pelicans flying over me as I take the bridge across the bay. I find them exotic (even though after looking them up on Wikipedia I see that they live almost everywhere) and seeing them fly over me makes me feel connected to nature (despite my 35 mile drive to work which is totally increasing my carbon footprint). Anyhow, it makes me happy to see them!
November 11, 2011: Happy 11/11/11! Pretty fun date!
In other news, finally moved (almost) all my stuff over to Berkeley. Now we're doing lots of unpacking and rearranging... making progress but still lots left!
Busy with work... had another lucrative Vegas trip (the craps table loves us!) and was productive work-wise. It's kind of different in my lead role, still having to get used to not coding most days. :( Hoping to fit in some more in the near future though...
October 26, 2011: Busy weekends still! Went to SF Fall Fest and gorged ourselves on food and wine... also went to Absinthe where we discovered Spanish Coffee! Yum! The next weekend we went to Patrick's place for a birthday dinner and decided to make our own. They turned out surprisingly well (and we didn't burn down the house)!
This past weekend I finally rented a truck and moved (most of) my stuff to Berkeley! Thanks for the moving help Marc & Erik! Now Charlene and I are steadily unpacking and organizing.. so much stuff...
Sunday we headed down to Monterey for a boat dive! It was fun, saw big jellyfish, rock fish, and nudibranchs among other things. Check out my pics!
October 15, 2011: Phew what a crazy couple of months! Crazy-awesome, but also crazy-busy! Let's see... got married! That was a big one. The day went splendidly and I/we couldn't be happier. A huge thanks to everyone that helped and to everyone that was able to make it! :)
Went on a business trip to Vegas a few weeks ago. It was both productive and fun. It was also lucrative (at least when I was at the craps table, less so at the blackjack table).
Headed out into the field with Char a couple times to help with her research. Playing in the river is fun and a nice change of pace from my regular job.
While Ryan was down, took him and Luana out for some multipitch fun at Lover's Leap. Headed up Haystack and had a blast. Really need to get climbing outdoors more! Was a bit spotty on my indoor climbing recently too, but got up early twice this week and went before work. Hopefully that trend will continue...
I'll try to update more frequently now that the wedding craziness has died down (though I still need to finish moving, then unpacking, doing thank-you cards, etc..).
September 10, 2011: Today's the day!!!
August 21, 2011: Was out 'in the field' with Charlene this past weekend! It was a good way to end off my time away from work: outdoors and extending the boundaries of science! Even managed to not get washed away (but it was close at times)...
After that it was back to work. Had thousands of emails to go through (or just delete), luckily most were automated emails so didn't miss too much in those ones... and just many hundreds of others to actually look at.
Now it's into final wedding tasks mode... that and brunch with friends! Went out for dim sum with a bunch of folks today. Fun and yummy.
August 10, 2011: As usual there have been lots of going-ons since my last update... left for, and came back from, the John Muir Trail -- but that's a story I'll update later. Suffice it to say that it was an amazing 12 days! :)
In other news, exactly one month from now I'LL BE MARRIED. zomg!
And in more exciting news for you, my readers, I finally finished my write-up from the Europe trip! Check it out!
July 19, 2011: OH MAN! So busy lately...
- still working on that Europe trip write-up (and pictures)
- lots of wedding planning (and yet there's more to do!)
- some preparing/packing for the upcoming JMT trip
- did a practice hike with Steve to Mt Langley. Pictures are here
- doing more management-y stuff at work. A totally different set of challenges than just coding...
- had the engagement party that Charlene's parent's hosted
- had a bachelor party with my friends and then met up with Charlene's bachelorette party at night
June 20, 2011: I'm back! Been back for a week actually -- sorry for not updating sooner! And I still need to do a write-up for the trip. Long story short: it was fun! Lots of old castles & churches.. took tons of pictures.. picked up a tiny bit of German.. drank a bunch of beer (cheaper than pop!)..
Since coming back, catching up on emails, went to Charlene's cousin's wedding, watched X-Men: First Class.
May 29, 2011: Finally put up the Skyline-to-the-Sea pictures... next I'll have to put up the Kentucky ones....
But not yet, I'm off to central Europe in a few hours!!
May 23, 2011: Totally continuing my barely once-a-month updates.... but (like usual) I've been busy! Here's the highlights:
Did a Marriage Prep course. It was actually way better than I expected (go low expectations) and found some interesting points and a couple topics for us to discuss.
Whiskey Party! This time done as a blind experiement. All the bottles were covered and you tasted and wrote down your thoughts. Then at the end the bottles (and their prices) were revealed.
Started watching the Game of Thrones tv show. Good stuff! Makes me think I should re-read the books to figure out all the details. I'm also a few episodes behind already though. :(
Then it's off to Monterey with Charlene and Darko (we missed you Erik!) for 2 SCUBA classes: Dry Suit and Stress & Rescue. Both were pretty good and we got to use the dry suits for the entire weekend. Educational, fun and tiring. We finished the weekend off with some yummy burgers in Santa Cruz.
Took a long weekend after that so we could hike Skyline-to-the-Sea. It was my third time doing this trail and the most out-of-shape I've been while doing it. :P Despite the rain, hail and hard-deadline to catch my flight, we finished!
Immediately afterwards I jumped on a plane to Austin, Texas -- my 2nd business trip! It was very productive and the guys there took me out for my birthday. Fun fun.
This past weekend wedding errands, hiking, a house warming, an End of the World party and the Maker Faire.
Now I'm ready for a nap!!
April 25, 2011: Busy busy busy (as usual)...
- Rift Launch Party nice celebration of all our hard work, even had a fancy Rift cake!
- Whistler lots of fun! Did a bunch of tree skiing and enjoyed the minimal fresh powder while trying not to be too jealous of Tahoe which got over 5 feet of snow while we were gone
- Dinner for Eight we hosted again and made crispy Chinese noodles
- Wilderness First Aid renewed our first aid in preparation of our rescue diver course (and for the JMT hike)
- Climbing in Kentucky just got back from a long weekend in Kentucky with Ryan and other Canadians. It thunderstormed the entire time, but luckily there's lots of overhanging crags which are climable while it's raining. Photos coming soon...
March 14, 2011: Happy Pi day!
Work has been going well... fixing bugs making customers happy (hopefully)..
Been climbing and skiing more lately which is nice. Just clawed my way up a 12a tonight! Had some amazing powder in Tahoe the other weekend as well. Fun fun. And this weekend we're off to Whistler!
I thought I had more to write, but I don't remember and now it's time for dinner.
March 1, 2011: HAPPY RIFT DAY! :D
February 12, 2011: Finally put up photos from Christmas and New Years!
Took a long time 'cause I've been pretty busy at work... the countdown until we launch is on!! Also was sick last week. :(
January 31, 2011: Wow end of January already! Since my last update I went skiing two more times! Sierra at Tahoe and Homewood -- getting some use out of my new skis!
Also been busy at work... doing the 6-days a week thing again, but at least our customers seem happy so far! Counting down the days until our release date...
January 18, 2011: Phew a busy weekend! First off I forgot that we don't get MLK off (we get President's Day off instead) so I had to use up a vacation day since I'd already made plans for the "long weekend." But it was fun! Went a little something like:
Get up early on Saturday and drive up to Diamond Peak for a day of skiing (real cheap too since we bought the Tahoe Card). Apres ski we went to Bite for some "american tapas" (yum).
Sunday we went to not just one, but two, farmer's markets. Then it was off to Carmel for the day with Charlene's parents. I also snuck in some coding at a cafe there (doing a side project for one of Charlene's classes). Finally got to eat at La Bicyclette which was good, though I'd recommend staying with the main entrees and not the pizza.
Monday, my "day off", started off early so we could catch the second half of the Mus�e d�Orsay exhibit at the de Young museum. It was good, though I think I liked the first half better (impressionism vs neo-impressionism, though pointillism/divisionism is dope). Lunch and shopping were next, then off to The Aquarium of the Bay! A quick stop at REI was next and then had to run off to meet Sha for dinner a the tasty, and fun, Woodhouse Fish Company.
I'm tired just recounting the events! Now back to work...
January 11, 2011: Yay today's 1/11/11! It'll be even more exciting this November though...
January 10, 2011: Happy (much belated) Holidays!
Went back to Canada for the holidays -- brought Charlene too! We spent a busy 6 days running around between Toronto, Kingston and Ottawa seeing friends and family. Fun fun. It was a little warm for my taste, but Charlene was quite alright with that. We flew back to California on New Years Eve and immediately drove up to Napa to meet her friends and celebrate with them (after a bit of wine tasting of course). Pictures will be forthcoming.
I also have some engaging news: we got engaged! Yup. Craziness. :)
In work related news, things have been going really well! Just finished our 5th beta event and have been getting (mostly) good reviews... and in the past couple days I've managed to track down a fix a couple quite tricky bugs -- very satisfying. :)
Oh yeah, and that getting engaged thing is pretty sweet too!
December 26, 2010: Wow another month with almost no updates -- maybe I'll make a New Years Resolution to be better! :)
Merry (belated) Christmas! Happy Boxing Day! Santa was good this year -- and I'll have more presents to open in Kingston. Woohoo!
November 3, 2010: Put up new pictures!
October 30, 2010:
Happy (Early) Halloween!It's been a busy month, let's see if I can remember what happened...
- Got my advanced open water SCUBA certification! The night dive was super awesome, saw squid, nudibranchs, brittlestars, crabs, etc
- Multiple fun events for Char's birthday: geocache-style surprises, glass fusing, dinners and more!
- Camping in Portola Redwoods -- my first time there, quite scenic
- various other birthday parties
- Helping with fieldwork up near Eureka -- a nice change from my usual desk job
- Getting my first "dukedom" on Yelp
- Reel Rock Film Tour (and not winning the push-up contest there)
October 1, 2010: Put up my pics from ice climbing North Couloir! Man ice climbing is way harder than I remember it being... have to hit the gym again!
This weekend I'm off to Monterey to do an Advanced Open Water SCUBA course! Very exciting!
Went to the SF Opera last night and saw The Marriage of Figaro. It was a pretty hilarious opera and we got super cheap day-of student tickets! Sweetness. Afterward we had a late night dinner at Tommy's Joynt (a place I used to drive by every day but had never gone to). Cheap and tasty!
September 15, 2010: Hiked Half Dome this past weekend -- pictures are here! Was a little worried about the distance (~16 miles) but it ended up being pretty ok! Sure I'm still a little sore today, but it's a good "you finally worked out" kinda sore. :)
August 31, 2010: Holy crap -- our fans are awesome! We've had Rift podcasts for a while now, but today was the first time I saw the Rift web comics! Hilarious (some of them)!
In other news, went backpacking this weekend in Point Reyes. It was super fun, great weather, my foot survived, yummy food and great company! We hiked 5.5 miles from Palomarin to Wildcat camp and back. Also got to see the awesome Alamere falls. My pictures are here.
August 27, 2010: Had a fun, busy last weekend! Friday night was another Dinner for Eight -- this time it was at Dave's house and we had super tasty meats, corn on the cob, salad then pies + homemade ice cream! After that we drove down to Monterey to join up with the first-year-grads camping trip. Saturday was spent on an info hike with the caretaker there, then followed up with a longer hike with just the students. Returned to a yummy dinner of ribs, a nap, and then some late night dance partying. Sunday we left them and drove over to Monterey where we did some diving! (my first diving in Monterey that wasn't at Breakwater) It was super fun -- did Lover's Point (#2) and Coral Street. A little surgey at Coral but nothing we couldn't handle. I even took my waterproof camera (since we didn't go super deep). Pictures are here, while ones with the animals labeled are on Facebook here.
This week has been ok: busy at work, up late playing Rift, watching Scott Pilgrim
August 7, 2010: Oh man! How time flies...
Put up some Lover's Leap (and Dave & Buster's) photos!
Since last time I:
- SF AIDS walk
- went to the De Young for the first time
- Shinteki Scramble
- went to Canada, where I:
- hung out with various friends
- went to Center Island for the first time
- saw Rock of Ages
- went to the Exploratorium: After Dark
- saw the movies Inception and Despicable Me
July 7, 2010: Had a good long weekend! Happy belated Canada Day and Happy belated 4th of July!
BBQ, multi-pitch climbing @ Lover's Leap, bocce ball, sushi (x2), Dave and Buster's, Avatar: The Last Airbender (boo)... busy long weekend, now it's time to sleep!
Except for tonight, which will involve swing dancing (first time in a long time)!
June 29, 2010: Only took forever, but here's my pictures from the Red River Gorge climbing trip!
In other exciting news, was in DC a couple weekends ago for Charlene's friend's wedding. It was a great trip! My first time in the DC area and we did lots of touristy stuff:
- Luray Caverns was super awesome! It blows my mind how old these things are..
- Steph's wedding -- really fun!
- hiking Stony Man and a portion of the AT
- waterfront by Georgetown
- Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, war memorials (very touching with the Father's Day cards..)
- Air and Space museum, Natural History museum
- Old Post Office
- view of the White House
June 13, 2010: From my friend's facebook status:
What do I like best about blaming BP? I can do it and feel morally superior and then immediately go back to driving my car, buying things with more packaging than product, and funneling my paycheck into whichever companies cut corners enough to bring their prices down to levels I consider acceptable.Heh, so true!
June 9, 2010: Went to Yosemite again this past weekend! Did some short hike (a self-guided tour from the village, to the meadow, to Serenity Bridge and back to the valley), saw Ron Kauk talk and show a video, did some easy rock climbing... fun as usual!
I should really buy a new camera soon, then I can take (and put up) awesome pictures once again...
May 28, 2010: Wow another birthday come and gone! Still in the "early 30's" though. ;)
Events since my last update include:
- vegan cupcake party
- geocaching
- Iron Man 2
- a nice outdoor wedding
- How to Train Your Dragon (in 3D)
- wine tasting
- Maker Faire
- outdoor climbing/bouldering at Ring Mountain
As for the long weekend coming up, not too sure yet. Guess I'll fly this one by the seat of my pants...
May 4, 2010: Was in Yosemite this past weekend! Camping, hiking and relaxing. Weather called for it to be around freezing at night, but really nice weather during the day.
Had something else to say here, but now I forget what it was. I'm off to see Conan O'Brien tomorrow night... Hope everyone else is having fun these days as well!!
PS - Only 13 more days until my birthday!
April 27, 2010: First off, check out this new game: Rift: Planes of Telara! Looks awesome right?? Well it's my game!! :) We also launched our new company website (where you find our two other games as well).
Went trapezing for the first time this weekend! It was fun! The scariest part was climbing up the ladder, but the actual swinging around was good... still have another coupon for it so I'll definitely be going back sometime.
Had another PG climbing comp on Friday... man those routes are hard! Fun though. Also hang-dogged up a fun 12a last night and going climbing again tonight!
Saturday was beach-time with some friends. Hadn't been down to Santa Cruz in a while and it was fun to hang out there. The sushi dinner afterwards wasn't a bad way to top it off either. :)
This upcoming weekend will be camping in Yosemite, however they just put out a severe weather alert for storms and snow! Geez, it's supposed to be warm now!!!
April 19, 2010: zomg I suck at updating! Umm.. been busy... went camping/climbing again this past weekend. This time just to nearby Mount Diablo. Hadn't camped there before and it's been years since I've even climbed there, fun to get back on Amazing Face!
Saw the Kick-Ass movie on Sunday. It was pretty good too! Actually, getting to the movie was an adventure. We were going to meet up with my friend for the 2pm showing (just in time to get matinee prices), but first we went to a farmer's market for breakfast. After standing in some long lines we enjoyed a tamal, crepe and some yummy Blue Bottle coffee we set off towards the theater. This trip involves going across the San Mateo bridge which usually takes about 10 minutes... but that day there was an accident and all lanes were closed! People were getting out of their cars and walking around... kinda felt like I was in some movie! Eventually got to the theater and exchanged our tickets for a later showing which conveniently gave us time for some taiyaki!
April 14, 2010: Had a blast in Kentucky!! Climbing at the Red River Gorge was awesome! I'll put up pictures shortly... good friends, good climbing, good pizza -- who could ask for more!
April 6, 2010: Drove east last weekend to try and climb Crescent Moon Couloir, but due to a poor avalanche advisory ended up skiing great conditions at Kirkwood! Not a horrible consolation prize...
Hope everyone had a fun Easter... mine involved brunch, a petting zoo, Easter egg hunts and a bit of climbing. :)
March 29, 2010: Today's my 1-year anniversary of my broken ankle! YAY for being able to walk again... I'll endeavor not to take mobility for granted again!
This past weekend was fun and productive:
- went to work for a bit and fixed a bunch of bugs
- did 5 more geocaches in Half Moon Bay
- did my taxes (woohoo refund!)
- booked a flight to go climbing at Red River Gorge
March 23, 2010: Yeah so I am failing my goal of updating more in March.. but there's still time for me to turn it around!!
Put up pictures (finally) from the New York trip, so go check them out.
This past weekend I went skiing again!! This time at Dodge Ridge and it was great!! Long-sleeved t-shirt weather, pretty nice snow, felt great in the skis. Even got back into the terrain park a bit (videos forthcoming!). Even managed to stay awake and drive there and back (despite my accidentally decaf coffee in the morning).
Saw Dear Lemon Lima last week as part of the asian film festival -- GO SEE IT! It was like Juno but sweeter.
For Pi Day I made 3 pies: pumpkin, pumpkin with chocolate chips and strawberry-rhubarb. Yum!
St Patrick's Day involved a scrumptious dinner with a couple friends. We had corned beef, cabbage, shepard's pie and Guinness. An authentic celebration!
Also failed to write about the snowshoe trip to Dewey Point! Yup, same trip as last year except this year we did it as a day trip. Went up with Charlene and we semi-randomly ran into Justin and friends there and trekked with them. The views were awesome as before though the last 2 miles (of 7) kicked my ankle's butt (ankles have butts?). Oh well it was better after a couple days and totally worth it!
Other random highlights include:
- Banff Film Festival
- Sha's birthday
- watching North Face
- Dinner for Eight (belguim style)
- finishing Super Mario Bros Wii
March 4, 2010: Wow missed the entire month of February! Here's some highlights:
- chili party
- SF Ocean Film Festival
- winning things at a Super Bowl party
- board games
- visiting with out-of-town-friends
- geocaching
- Olympics (yay Canada!)
- trip to New York (pictures up any time now)
- climbing competition (super busy again)
- skiing at Tahoe Donner (and I could do it!)
- sick (but okay 'cause I watched some old TMNT cartoons)
- watched the "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" foreign film
In fact here's a March event already! Went to the gymnastics gym with Charlene yesternight. It was fun! Tried some stuff on the bars: kip, front hip circle, back hip circle... pretty much failed at all of them, but it was fun nonetheless! Also practiced handstands!
January 29, 2010: Results from the climbing comp are up! They only scored me 1350 even though I had 1958.. wassup with that??! If they're scored it correctly I would've totally done much better in my category. Too bad that category is, once again, "women's beginner". :|
Been climbing a couple more times since then.. feels so good to be climbing regularly again!! Very happy! Other than that, went for a short hike (my first since the ankle breakage), Char and I made our own zip-up chalk bags (which work well), made a yoga mat holder for my roommate..
Tonight I'm to a friend's art show and then off to see another friend's band play -- living it up in the big city!
January 22, 2010: Went to see a high altitude & medicine lecture at Stanford the other night. Pretty fun. Mostly stuff I already knew but with a few new tidbits of info, good review too!
Did a bunch of sewing last night too! Think I got the basics of sewing machines down.. I'll post a photo of what I made later.
January 19, 2010: I've been up to stuff.. totally intended to update this.. now what have I been doing?? :|
Went climbing twice last week and once so far this week. Nice to see a bunch of climbing friends again.. and feel like I'm not quite the weak baby I was (although that's probably all in my head since I haven't been that often yet). Anyhow hit-up PG Sunnyvale last night and crawled up a few 10's.
Went to see Avenue Q on the weekend -- quite funny! Also ran into a friend there... before the musical had lunch with a couple friends at a nice little italian place (which claimed to have "world famous" bread; it was pretty good).
Saturday night a friend (waaaaay out in Livermore) had a party, so made the commute out there (and it was worth the effort). Had a chance to play more Super Mario Bros Wii (super crazy with 4 players) and to refresh my Rock Band skillz.
In a blast from the past played some Lazer Tag this weekend too! Surprisingly fun (especially when my team finally won a game)..
In TV news I've started: Corner Gas Season 2 (for Charlene), Invader Zim (also for Charlene), Heroes Season 3 (for me and Erik), True Blod Season 1 (for me and Erik) and about to start Mad Men Season 2. SO MUCH TV SO LITTLE TIME!
January 9, 2010: So after reading this article I decided to do a little Pi programming myself... turns out my web server won't let me compile using gcc so they forced me to do it in PHP and really bog down their servers! Haha. So here you go, pi to 150 decimal places (up to 2000)...
Watched the DOA movie the other night.. gosh it was bad.. but in an enjoyable way. :P
Didn't do too much this week (aside from working).. been fighting off a cold and both Charlene and Erik are sick.. though I didn't manage to make it out for drinks with work folks the other night. It was my first time to Sofitel all year! But yeah, it's been a while since we'd gone there.. while expensive you can't beat the location..
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 P�tisserie 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 Brantford Charity Casino where Lucki Vicki (as we should start calling her) did quite well at the slots!
On another note, it's now 2003. Guess what that is? A PRIME NUMBER! w00t!
I'm currently couting down the days (4) until my last term of school starts. What intellectual wonders will I learn about this term?
PS - I added some new links on my Links page.
PPS - Lots of new pictures are up!
December 31, 2002: Well, another year has come and gone. And what has changed? Well, I'm on a secrect web cams page. That and my New Years plans fell through 'cause I didn't call to buy tickets until yesterday.. d'oh!
So have a Happy New Years all! Be sure to make some good resolutions and to not drink and drive!
December 28, 2002: I'm back from the Christmas holidays.. had a good time! Travelled through 3 cities and saw tons of people, but it's good to be back home. Especially since I have a new web camera! Check out this lovely pic:
Web camera pictures always make people look so dorky (and in this case -- bald)!
Later!
December 25, 2002: MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
December 20, 2002: w00t! Got openMosix working. Well, on one node anyhow. :/ Don't have time to set up my laptop with Linux and openMosix right now, so that'll have to wait until after I get back from Christmas visiting. Guess I'll have to live with my 1 node cluster for now!
For any Kingston folks reading this -- I'll be there in a few days, get ready or I'll castigate the lot of ya!
Happy Holidays all!
PS - I've put up the pictures from going out last Tuesday after our Network Flow Theory exam.. check'em out! There's also some Christmas-sy ones for your enjoyment..
December 19, 2002: Done! I've been done for two whole days now! Quite exciting.. my last exam went.. alright. But it's done! Yeah, so what have I been doing with myself for the past two days you ask? Nothing! Actually I did almost all of my Christmas shopping yesterday, do you know what that means? That's right! Vicki did lend me her new car! It was a sweet ride! But I digress. So I managed to get almost all of my shopping done. Just need one more thing for Vicki and that's it!
I'm hoping to find the time today to install openMosix and perhaps chpox. Then I'll finally have my much sought-after, much talked-about, cluster (of computers)! Exciting times indeed.
Say, I think everyone should link their sites to The Village Timekeeper. It's my dad's site for his antique and clock repair shop. More links == higher placement on search engines! :D
Speaking of businesses, good luck to Complex Games in the new year!
Ok, enough shameless plugs.. Yup, during my procrastination of studying Marc and I ported his graphics project, Dysc, to Windows.. now all can revel in it's time-wasting-ness! Well, once he puts the code/binaries up anyhow.. I'll be sure to keep you all updated!
Ok, got to go shopping now. L8r!
December 14, 2002: Hope everyone had a great Friday the 13th yesterday! Mine was alright.. had my databases exam (the most boringest class ever!), which went pretty well. Except after spending 20 minutes doing a problem (that admittedly didn't make much sense), the prof stands up and says "Oh, please fix the following typos on that questions".. ack! So I decide to go back and redo the question after finishing the rest of the exam, luckily five minutes later the prof, once again, stands up and says "If you've already done the question with the typos you can just leave it and we'll mark that". Whew! Otherwise I would've run out of time.. First thing I did after leaving the exam? Straight to the Used Book Store to sell my once-used database text book.
Other than that.. nothing too exciting. Going to see the new Star Trek: Nemisis movie tonight! Speaking of movies, we rented the first Lord of the Rings movie for Vicki, so that she'll be up-to-date for watching the second one next week!
Finally went rock climbing yesterday after a much too long absence. It was good to go, but I feel like I've lost much of my endurance.. time to start hitting the gym again! Hoping to get Vicki out to Sportsworld for some rock climbing sometime too.. :>
Time to get studying! Go Network Flow Theory!
December 9, 2002: Three down, two to go! That's right, graphics is now over. The exam went well so all is good.
In other exciting news I swizzled $6 out of the university by doing a psych experiment, take that UW! In a fit of not-studying, I also updated my self-organising maps page with informaion on how they work.
Congrats to Vicki on her new job! :)
December 7, 2002: It seems like some people were having trouble viewing my new applets.. turns out that if my code was compiled for Java VM's version 1.2, so if you have an older one (most likely 1.1), they wouldn't work. Anyhow, I've recompiled my code to be 1.1 compliant, so go check them out! But first you may want to clear your browser cache to make sure the applets get re-loaded (under MS Internet Explorer: under the Tools menu select Internet Options then in the Temporary Internet Files box select Delete Files.., and do this while you not on the applet page). Let me know if there's anymore problems with the applets..
And now back to preparing to study (which I've been doing all morning)..
December 6, 2002: So this is what you're probably thinking: he's had his demo already, he's done graphics, why is Buddy up so early?? I don't know. I've pretty much been up since 2:30am just 'cause I couldn't get back to sleep! How annoying! Anyhow, being the productive guy I am I thought I'd take this oppourtunity to learn how to write Java applets! I'd already decided that I wanted to make some in order to make my web site more interesting (and because I want to make a self-organising map applet like this one). That other applet I just mentioned was written by Rob Saunders, who BTW has a really interesting PhD thesis on "Curious Design Agents and Artificial Creativity". Just thought I'd mention that.. anyhow! Go check out my amazing first applet! I've even included the code for those so inclined.
Later!
PS - I think my demo went well, though I guess we'll find out on Monday!
PPS - LOOK! I spent most of the day and made another cool applet! This time it's that self-organising map applet I was talking about before.. I'm so proud!
December 4, 2002: Whew! I'm practically done graphics now! I handed in my code and documentation today. Tomorrow I'll be demo'ing it for my prof and then there's an exam on Monday, but the bulk of it is now done. I'm so tired I only managed to put up one new image for you all to enjoy. Although, on a goo dnote, I finally got non-self-intersection working! :)
Ok, off to enjoy my free time..
November 28, 2002: I'm already done two of my five classes this term! Woo! Today we finished off our public speaking class with some more impromptu speeches, quite entertaining! It was kind of too bad that that class is over as it was a really fun bunch of people and a cool class atmosphere. Also wrote my "Physics of How Things Work" exam today.. pretty easy stuff. How come all my fun courses are done and now I'm left with the not fun stuff? (graphics is fun, but I don't want to write the exam).
November 26, 2002: Got a cool pic of me from Sana'a today! Props to Simon for taking it (and being the artist too!). Hmm.. perhaps I'll use it as my new charicature pic.. hmm.. indeed.. well there we go, just changed it! Sweetness.. now if only Aaron would make me that other picture he said he would..
Needless to say I'm in the graphics lab now.. slaving away! Actually just came back from Mel's and it took forever there! Geez.. almost two hours for dinner (breakfast?). Anyhow, back to work..
November 25, 2002: Just thought I'd inform you all of this cool site Cherith told me about: Engrish.com.. quite funny!
Here's a picture of me from this year's frosh week. I'll add it to my site once Sana'a gets me a high-res version of it.. on another note, Sana'a's not the only person I know with an apostrophe in their name after all! How could I have overlook good ol' Craig D'amelio! Sorry Craig.. perhaps one day I'll update my Links page to include you too..
Are you enjoying my multitude of links today? Perhaps it's somewhat of a bouleversement from my normal style, but oh well! Glad I looked at the "Word of the Day" yesterday for it's word I've never heard of before..
Ok, I realy must go do databases now.. I've been procrastinating all weekend.. well I was doing productive work, but still.. it has to be done sometime..
PS - Just for Scott I've put up a newer movie of my cloth animation! And now I'm late for class.. d'oh!
November 24, 2002: Guess what? That's right! There's more graphics project images for your viewing enjoyment! Spent a fun-filled weekend on the computer. Yesterday was in the lab while today was at home. I like some variety! Yesterday I worked on getting the cloth to not intersect itself.. this proved more difficult than I had surmised, and it is currently on hold. I have an idea on how I might improve my current system, but I don't feel that lucky.. today, however was grrrreeaaat! After a slow start I got surface subdivision working! And in just one day! So go look at the pics! I still have to integrate this work with the current cloth simulation, but I had to leave something for me to do tomorrow!
Yup, I was hoping to go see my friend sing at a concert today, but unfortunately, I was home working while she was singing.. :(
And now, off to bed!
November 21, 2002: Look at my new graphics pictures! Yeah, less than two weeks to go! Exciting times indeed.. still have to add volumetric shadows, surface subdivision and non-self-intersection.. not to mention a host of other small-ish features! Oh well, I love it!
On another note, I bought me some more RAM yesterday.. now I gots the big 384MB in my system.. so much better with no swapping (at least under Linux, I haven't booted into Windows yet)!
Finally got my last midterm back today.. I did alright, though not great. Oh well, I'm arguying for some more marks with a TA currently, just waiting for his next response via email. Oh, speaking of school, looks like tuition went up another 12% for next term. Stupid me was expecting my next term to be relatively cheap since I'm only taking 4 courses (instead of the usual 5), but now it's hardly any cheaper than what I'm paying this term. At least that'll be the last time they do that to me! Although I have been thinking about grad school lately..
November 17, 2002: Code code code.. BLAMMO! That's what happened to me today.. I was merrily coding along when all of a sudden the power went out! And just as I was about to find out if my bug fix worked! Argh.. that's what I get for forgetting that the power company was going to shut off the power! Anyhow, I'm pretty sure I didn't lose anything as I had just saved and compiled and was just starting to run my program.. Let's assume it worked. Then I got collision detection with planes and spheres working for my cloth simulation!
November 16, 2002: Made it onto Flipcode again! Gotta get something besides ray-tracing going on though (that's what I had up there before). Yeah, maybe if I get my cloth stuff looking good I'll post that sometime.. we'll see. Speaking of cloth, that's was this weekend is all about! Work work work work.. well after I go shopping with Vicki for a bit.. and then there's this swing dancing thing I want to go to tonight.. hmm.. well I'm sure I'll get some work done anyhow.
Dinner last night was really nice.. I had some tiger shrimp wrapped in bacon, with cauliflower and some weird type of potato thingy (looked kinda like corn bread, but wasn't). We also had a nice German white wine, it was a 2, so a little sweeter than what I usually get, but pretty good! (heh, do I sound like I know what I'm talking about? 'Cause I don't really!)
Alrighty, time to get shoppi.. uhh.. I mean, get to work!
November 15, 2002: Ok, I know there was stuff that I wanted to write about, but now I'm drawing a blank, too excited about the new pictures of my graphics project I put up I guess! :> There's also a movie if you have the time to download the 1.7MB file..
Went to the Bomber on Wednesday.. all I have to say is that Kirk is a bad influence on me! Had a good time.. a bunch of people I knew there.
Hmm.. aside from doing lots of graphics this weekend I have to come up with an entertaining speech topic for my Public Speaking class on Tuesday.. hmm..
Going to the fancy King Street Trio tonight with Vicki.. I've heard lots of good things about this not-so-cheap restaurant, so tonight we'll see how true they are! Actually tonight should be pretty cool as they have a live jazz band there on Friday and Saturday night! Ok, that's all for now...
November 12, 2002: Happy 4 years to Vicki and I today!
Just a quick note to say, I've updated the Books section under Fun Math Stuff, as I finished reading "Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality". It was a very interesting read.. was getting slightly mixed up with all the names and theories by the end of the book, but I definately feel like I have a much better genearl idea of the field of quantum physics. Should help for my Quantum Information Processing course next term!
Also added a new math joke.. this one was supplied by my mom!
Hmm.. got more OSAP yesteday! Woo hoo! Also, got my 3rd databases assignment back today.. not bad, 38/40! Don't think my assignment I just handed in today will be quite that good, but I can always hope! Did an impromptu entertaining speech this morning on "Why the 80's were sooo cool". It went well despite my lack of knowledge about that decade (props to Christine for some ideas). Ooh! Got my work report back as well (what a busy day!) -- got the "acceptable".. Now I'm gonna graduate with a co-op degree for sure! Well, unless I fail 5 courses in the next two terms.. unlikely. Now I'm off to talk to my graphic's TA's about my final project.
Adieu!
November 11, 2002: Happy Rememberance Day.. is that an appropriate thing to say? I think so.. we should be happy for what we have and for what others have given us (ie: freedom)!
The weekend was good. Had lots of yummy food and saw family, friends and relatives.. good times! I'll be posting some pictures of the weekend any time now (they're uploading as I type!). Friday night we (mom, Vicki, Ryan, Laurene and I) went out for some Chinese food, then on Saturday I went over to Mike's house for some board games. We played a rousing game of Get Out. BTW, it looks like the movie industry is wising up faster than the music industry and is offering an online movie site.. it's called MovieLink but it's rather dumb and only serves US customers right now. Anyone know how to spoof my IP address or otherwise fool their GeoFilter?
On the way back to Waterloo, I stopped by Marc's house and picked up his extra 256MB stick of RAM for my computer.. once I got home I eagerly installed it and waited for my computer to boot into three times the RAM it had previously.. unfortunately it thinks that the new stick is a measely 32MB.. well after much fiddling and looking at my motherboard specs and an email to Marc later, it turns out that my motherboard only handles PC100 RAM while the stick Marc gave me is PC133.. d'oh! Then I had the great idea of just changing the BIOS settings to make my bus run at 133MHz instead of 100MHz (which is expressly mentioned as a thing not to do in the manual).. then my computer wouldn't boot at all! Double d'oh! As I was about to go short-circuit my CMOS to reset the settings I decided to try booting again.. luckily it worked.. though then I got the "CPU unusable" error message.. clearly this was a lie as it was the CPU that displayed that message on my screen.. :/ Anyhow, some more BIOS twewaking got my computer working again.. . Moral: don't do what the manual says not to do.
Well, the pictures are pretty much done uploading now, so go check them out!
November 8, 2002: Finally done midterms for another term! And with a good 3 weeks between yesterday and my first final.. :/ Anyhow, I think Network Flow Theory went alright.. it was a little long, but I managed to write something down for every question.. pretty sure the answers made some sense too!!
There's a nice picture of one of my friends from university for ya.. it was her birthday. That's all the explanation you get for that one. Check out all the other places you kind find a link to this picture! Man, I only wish I was that popular!
Oh yeah, my persuasive speech went well yesterday morning.. I finished writing it a 3:30am and then presented it at 11:30am after a solid 4.5 hours sleep. Good times.. actually it went quite well, my topic was "You should not buy copy-protected music CDs".
Due to midterms and that speech, I've been getting behind on my sleep this week.. fixed all that today though! Slept for a good 11.5 hours.. ahh precious sleep!
Tonight I'm off to visit my mom.. a slightly belated Thanksgiving dinner with her, Vicki and some fmaily friends.. oh yeah, some relatives will be there too.. :>
So one of my friends put up an old picture of me on his web site and one of his fellow livejournal readers was like "Hey that's Buddy, I know him!".. turns out I know her too! Small world!
Alas, my ultimate ruler -- time (aka the clock) -- tells me that I must now be attending class. Ciao!
November 6, 2002: Blah blah blah.. so as usual I should be studying.. but come on! I only have 40 minutes until my next class and that's not nearly enough time to get set-up and do any real studying! That's why I'm in the lab looking up cloth dynamics stuff for my graphics project. Not entirely sure what I'm going to do it on, but I'm leaning towards cloth simulation mixed with surface subdivision. Then I can make an animation that's like the end of "The Man Show". ;P
Let's see here, sold some pizza today (to support MGC (Math Grad Committee), going to play some volleyball tonight (Campus Rec league).. and study study study! Ooh, speaking of studying, I had my databases midterm yesterday.. it went alright, though there wasn't really enough time as I just barely finished. Of course I had to go back and re-do 4 of the questions because I mis-interpreted it.. oh well, I got it all done. I think my Network Flow Theory midterm tomorrow will go decently enough.. just need to memorize the algorithms some more and ditto for the major proofs.. I'm pretty sure I understand all the material, which is good.
Going to visit the 'rent this weekend (as if I just said "'rent" :( ).. that and going to a dentist appointment. Good times. Though I'll probably be hooking up with some of my UW friends who are there for work terms..
Yup, off to check out those web sites now..
PS - I now realize how much I like private computer labs (ie: Real-time and Graphics).. this "common" lab is busy and smells like B.O. YUCK!
November 4, 2002: Guess what?? New pictures of my raytracer! They look pretty darn sweet if you ask me! I'm even considering putting the final scene on Flipcode.. anyone remember my last mention on Flipcode? I think this looks much better!
Other than this I'm pretty bored.. should be studying though.. yeah, I'm gonna go do that..
November 3, 2002: The week coming up will be quite busy so I've been really hard at work this weekend.. first the bad news: next week I have a Network Flow Theory midterm, a Databases midterm, a persuasive speech to give and a graphics assignment due! Argh! Now for the good news: I've spent about 20 hours so far this weekend working on my raytracer (the aforementioned graphics assignment).. go look at some of the new pictures! I'll be posting more (and better) pictures as I work on it until Wednesday when it's due..
Tonight we're having our weekly house dinner. Today's menu consists of glazed ham, Anna's famous mashed-potatoes, and some zucchinni.. topped off with some homemade apple pie! mmm.. smells delicious!
October 25, 2002: Good day, my avid readers! Another week has come and gone.. here's the latest haps in my life:
-wrote my graphics midterm.. did alright, though I'd like to do better on the final
-started my raytracer for graphics.. finally got some stuff displaying! So not fun working and working and not having anything to show for it (I was setting up the infra-structure (ie: nice OO'ed math libraries, etc))
-MathSoc meetings.. we picked the new Orientation Directors.. had an HLM committee meeting
-went to the Bomber on Wednesday
-attended a talk about grad school at SFU
-probably going to a talk in 30 minutes by the same guy about Volume Rendering
-played pool with Ben
I think that's the fun stuff anyhow, and I hope my ramblings today weren't too tendentious for ya!
October 17, 2002: Just taking the day off school.. darm flu caught up with me yesterday during my public speaking class (about 10 in the morning).. really sucked to as yesterday was an extremely busy day -- databases assignment due at 4pm, science midterm at 7pm, graphics assignment due at 8:30 this morning. Luckily I got my graphics asignment done before my midterm so I didn't have to stay late at school to finish it up. Hopefully this day of rest will get me fixed up to full health again.
For all those geeks out there, I forgot to mention what locker I got at school: the "locker not found" locker! (ie: 404). Get it? 404, like the web pages!
Yup, since I had the day off I also put up my pictures from Thanksgiving. Don't mind the numerous pictures of Vicki's new car, she got a little carried away after she washed it... it's also quite amazing what a little Photoshopping can do for a picutre.. check out the before and after pictures! Too bad I'm too lazy to fix all my pictures.. hmm.. maybe I'll write a script to do it for me sometime. If anyone wants any of these pictures for printing or anything, I have higher resolution ones that I can send to you, just email me and specify which picture(s) you'd like.
On some good news, just got an email back from my c&o prof, he said I could hand in my assignment (that's due today in class) on Monday.. what a nice guy! I almost feel like I'm in arts! :>
Peace Out!
PS - I've added a new section to the Fun Math Stuff page.. it's a list of math books that I've read (or am planning to read soon). Of course I only put the good books on this list.. not that I've read a bad math book yet! Oh, for you non-mathies out there, not to fear, these aren't boring textbooks, they are well-written books that are for anyone with an interest in math.
October 16, 2002: Thanksgiving was a blast. Went over to Vicki's parent's house for Thanksgiving. The traffic was even worse than expected, not only was the 401 packed in and around Toronto, but it was packed as soon as we got on it in Kitchener! Crazy.. On Friday night we left our house at 7pm and didn't there until 1-something am.. oh well, had a good time. Her nieces and nephews were really cute (I'll have some pictures up soon-ish).
Also, spent 6 1/2 hours in the lab yesterday and finished off my puppet assignment for my graphics class (well, except for the manual).. check out the pictures! I'll be putting up new pictures of my project/assignments when I get them done.. assignments 1 and 2 weren't too special so I didn't put any pictures of those up, but if I get really bored sometimes, perhaps I will.
Other than that, not much else is new.. had my grad photos on Friday, they went well. Had some pictures in the ol' cap 'n gown, some in a casual sweater, some with just a shirt and normal tie, and some with just a shirt and my '98 pink tie! :> I should be getting the proofs from that in a few weeks..
Later!
PS - I transferred my digital pictures from this weekend over to my computer this morning, so I'll be posting those up real soon too (though I'm quite swamped with school work for the next couple of days)..
October 7, 2002: Welcome to bbsg.ca! Yes, I've finally made the move.. please let me know of any broken links or pages that refer to GeoCities (aside from my guestbook).
Additionally, I've put up pictures from this year's Froshweek!
Now it's time for me to get to school and help out with some MGC stuff.. l8r!
PS - Alright, I'm back.. done putting up signs to remind people about the graduating class photo today (if you go to UW, go to the front steps of MC at 5pm!). Now I'm just going to talk a bit before my public speaking class. Speaking of which, today I'm an evaluator.. I wonder who I'm going to evaluate? We'll soon see..
So yeah, I'm pretty excited about the new server (my friend sold me some space on his server) -- it's faster and has no ads! Woo hoo! :>
Lets see, aside from that not too much is new.. I'm thinking about going rock climbing again, though I'll be sure to take it easy.. blah blah blah.. jeez, thought I had more to say, but I guess not. So on that note, I'll go to class.
October 6, 2002: Hey, check it out -- I'm actually on a "real" committee! I've been quite a joiner this year and am on: Computer Science Advisory Committee (see previous link), Honourary Lifetime Membership Committe, Math Grad Committee and I said I'd help out with the Math Charity Ball as well.. that's okay though since I have so much free time this term (relative to my previous terms).. I have so much free time I don't know what to do with it all! Well actually I do! I've been playing with my new Linux box (Red Hat 7.3) and even playing some PS2. :> Ooh! I never mentioned that Vicki bought me the director's cut of "Army of Darkness" so of course I went out and finished off the set with The Evil Dead series.. watched them all this past weekend ! Good stuff..
But alas, it is about that time that I should be getting to school, meeting an old friend for lunch now (he finally came to his senses and came to UW)!
October 4, 2002: Hmm.. it looks like I never told you all about my painful experience last week.. I was rock climbing over at Sportsworld and I subluxated (kinda like a small dislocation) my shoulder a number of times (that was my first mistake for continuing to climb after the first time). Anyhow, the next day is was uber-sore so on the advice of my friends I went to see the doctor. She gave me the typical "ice, rest and aspirin", but also recommended that I go see the psyiotherapist.. so I finally had my appointment this morning, turns out I hurt my infraspinateous muscle, and now it's a little inflamed. Got some exercises to do (for the REST OF MY LIFE) which should help strengthen the muscles and help prevent re-occurance, however now that it's been stretched (the ligaments and stuff, not the muscle) there's nothing to really fix the problem, short of surgery. Oh well..
Okie, I was going to write more, but I have to meet a friend for lunch.
Later!
October 1, 2002: Nope, still haven't moved the site over.. I know, I know -- you're thinking "What a slacker!" But I've been busy! Doing .. uhhh.. stuff.. finally installed Red Hat 7.3 on my new hard drive and am currently setting it up and stuff (recompiling the kernel as we speak (how exciting!)). Once that is done I'll be able to work on my graphics assignments from the comfort of my own home.. speaking of which I've got one due on Friday and I've been spending all my time playing with Linux.. :/
Today I picked out my classes for next term though! It's sweet! First off, I'm only taking 4 classes as I took an online course while I was on my previous co-op term.. and, get this, I only have classes on Tuesday and Thursday! Ahh.. 4 day weekends are gggrrrrrreeeeeeeaaaatt! No really they are; I had 4 day weekends 2 terms ago as well. :> Yeah, so here's what I have in store for me next term:
- CS 498 - Advanced Topics in Computer Science: Introduction to Quantum Information Processing -- I don't really know what to expect, but it sounds quite interesting!
- CS 454 - Distributed Systems -- been looking forward to this one.. hope I'm not disappointed
- SPCOM 225 - Interviewing -- this is a practical class (ie: no tests) from what I gather.. should be rather like my Public Speaking course this term, which is fine by me!
- ECON 102 - Macroeconomics -- With the best prof ever! Liked Microeconomics with him, so this should be interesting as well
- CS 456 - Computer Networks -- quite similar to Distributed for the first while I hear
- C&O 487 -- Applied Cryptography -- I think the name says it all
- You have to pay full price to audit a course (it used to be only 1/2 price, but they upped it two terms ago). I can't imagine why you'd need/want to pay full price to audit a course.. that's rediculous! It's not like you're adding extra work for the prof or TA's since you're not making them mark anything.. jeez, and I thought university was about learning, not about raking in as much cash as possible..
- The Math faculty doesn't recognize audited courses. Apparently they see it as an easy way of padding a transcript. Meh, kinda see their point, although the transcript does say "AUDIT" instead of giving a mark for the course, so it should be pretty self-evident to anyone looking at the transcript that the person didn't really take the full course..
But I will try to move the site over soon.. perhaps this weekend after my graphics assignment is due..
September 27, 2002: My word! It's been much longer than I wanted since my last update.. anyhow this one will surely disappoint you in some ways, and elate you in others!
First, the bad news: tihs is going to be a short update.
Next, the good news: this is a short update because I'm preparing my site to move over to bbsg.ca! Soon.. very soon!
September 18, 2002: Why hello there! How are you doing today? Do you ever feel that going to class is bootless? Today was like that..
Yup, so I thought I had something to post about, but if I did I can no longer rembmer it. Anyone want to buy a 64MB compact flash card? Let me know if you do! Stupid eBay.. winning too many stupid auctions.. :P
Finished my work report yesterday! My last one forever (assuming I pass)! Woo hoo.. yup, so they have already started posting grad jobs for people to look at and apply to. Never too early I guess.. But get this! In order to view the jobs you have to register (since grad jobs require special authorization to view), that's fine. But, you have to type in all your information (name, student id, address, email, etc) and then a person manually goes through all the registration requests and authorizes people individually. Why?!? What is the point of that? A stupid shell script could easily check if you're in 4th year, extract all the extra information by just your student id, and give you the authorization. So since the school refuses to make use of the technology we have at hand, the expected turn-around time for the authorization is 48 hours. Oh that reminds me of more unuse technology we have here., but I won't bore you with the details..
Check out this article on SSE optimization techniques.. it's featured on CFXWeb and Flipcode. But that's not the coolest thing -- it's written by Cort (a fellow intern from EA)! Cool stuff!
One more thing.. ready today's Penny Arcade. It is a nice satire on advertising in video games. The commentary on the comic is a worthwhile read as well (I didn't even know about the Starburst song!).
Had a nice chat with Chris Liscio today.. turns out he's engaged! Congratulations!
September 15, 2002: Ahh.. procrastination! Writing a work report is soo boring.. for those of you not going to UW and not sure what a work report is, just think of the old phrase "ignorance is bliss". It definately applies here.. :>
But on a good note I did win a house game of Coke Monopoly last night! Did I say win? Perhaps I meant crushed all opposition. Despite their teaming up on me I ended up with about $15,000.. all the $500's and most of the $100's by the end of the game.. the game did hold some good surprises though, people were making comebacks from having one measly dollar bill. As usual the Bottles (aka Railroads) were a big (and consistant) money maker.
Anyhow, I've been thinking, and I think I would like to end up at some littoral city when I settle down. You can thank Dictionary.com's Word of the Day for that beauty of a word.
Hmm.. what else can I talk about? Well I wrote the longest email I've ever written on Friday.. 12k of stream-of-conciousness ramblings.. that's what happens when I'm bored and sitting in the computer labs at school!
Ok, well I guess I really should get back to working on that report. Later!
PS - I finally bought my own domain name the other day.. (Are you reading this Scott?!?!?) it's bbsg.ca! I'll be moving my site over there in the coming few weeks..
September 14, 2002: Added a few math jokes!
September 9, 2002: I'm back! And more coherent this time! Frosh week is now over and I've spent most of the past day sleeping every chance I get (and even sometimes when I'm not planning on it)! It was a good time, better than I thought it would be (if you recall, I didn't really want to do Frosh week this year, but did so since my friend was organizing it).. anyhow I may even do Frosh week again next year, but that'll depend who's running it and what I'm up to..
Let's see, now that that's over with I have lots to do:
- finish packing
- write my work report (which I'm current procrastinating)
- more unpacking
- set-up my PDA and digital camera on my new computer
- shave off my mohawk (probably later tonight when Vicki get's home)
- buy the rest of my books for school
- call my old landlord to get my key deposit back
Had my first class today, and let me tell you -- Network Flow Theory is not the most exciting way to start off a new term. Even though this was the first class I already saw at least 4 people asleep in it. Proud to say I wasn't one of them. :>
Yup, my sister's now settled nicely into her new home in China! Can't remember if I mentioned this already, but she's teaching ESL there for the next 6 months.. pretty crazy! She seems to be having a good time though, perhaps I'll give her a call tonight with my brand-new phone card!
And with that note I will go get some food, and then start my work report.. no really!
PS - Added some more links..
PPS - I heard some funny new math jokes while I was staying at Tie Guard, but the not-sleeping thing has caused me to forget them. Please email some new jokes!
September 7, 2002: Well well well.. looks like I'm now at 24 hours without sleep! Sweet.. wasn't really planning on doing Tie Gaurd again, but my team won the Scunt (and thus the honour of gaurding the tie!)! First time winning Scunt so that's cool, in fact it wasn't so bad since we were up 'til almost 4am cleaning up after Desert (Pub Night) anyhow.. sorry for this probably not making much sense to non-UW people (why aren't you at UW again??) but oh well.
Ok, well off I go again, hopefully my next post will be more coherent!
September 5, 2002: Currently I'm at 22 hours without sleep (and with lots of yelling)! Getting tired sitting quietly in this chair, was going to do an update on how my Frosn Week (and my wonderful Frosh) is going, but I seem to be kinda falling asleep in my chair -- time to get up and do something! Ahh well, I can sleep after tonight's event at 3am.. :/
August 31, 2002: Well that was a lot longer break than I anticipated.. here's a uber-quick catch-up since I'm not really in the mood for a long update:
- got home alright
- said "bye" to my sister who's now in China getting ready to teach her first ESL class
- went camping in Temagami for a week (we lucked out and beat the weather forcast -- only one night of rain when it called for 4)
- moved into my new house
- unpacked all week
Cheers!
August 12, 2002: Ok, well I'm disconnecting my internet now (busy packing and all), so I'm not too sure when I'll be doing an update.. probably not too long, but just in case, I thought I'd let you know what's up.
Later!
August 11, 2002: I've been having some fun last days here! Thursday night wasn't too interesting I guess, dismantled and packed my bike up, then went back to work to finish off my code documentation, then stayed at work afterwards and beat "Bust A Move".. ahh, that's some video game genius right there!
Friday night was pretty good too! It was Pedro's last day at work, so we took him out to this nearby restaurant/bar (all expensed of course)! Good times.. after that a select few of us continued the night up in the city.
Yesterday I was able to check off another item on my "Things to see and do in San Francisco" list -- that's right, we went to Alcatraz! It was quite cool (both literally and figuratively).. the cells were amazing small, especially when you consider that they spent 18 hours a day in them (if they were allowed the privilage of working, if not, they spent 23 hours a day there!).. crazy. For anyone that goes, I'd highly recommend the audio tour, very informative and even quite interesting!
Next we all went over the The Stinking Rose (never mind the background music on the page). As usual, a wonderful garlic experience.. in fact one that is still with me today!
After that I went to see Austin Powers in Goldmember. I thought it was super funny! Despite the critic's average rating of only C+, and some not-the-greatest reviews from friends, I thouroughly enjoyed it! Funny funny stuff.. perhaps I was just in the right mood to enjoy it, but whatever..
August 8, 2002: Well it's now August 8th (but really it's the 7th since it's 2am).. anyhow just got back from my last swing dancing in the area. :< Had a great time though! Danced with the regulars, and even Persephone (the teacher) again.. afterwards we took some pictures and went out for gelato.. mmmm.. green tea and dark cherry! On the way home stopped by and showed Denise and Karen around EA (since I had gone to their work that morning to see their work). Anywho, now it's late and I haven't done any packing today like I had planned. poop. Looks like I'll have more to do tomorrow night!
Also getting excited to go camping when I get back! I'm also hoping to fit in time to go see Scooter in the Rocky Horror Picture Show (well, to hear Scoots play bass for it anyhow).
Yesterday had another kinda "going away" thingy with my rock climbing group.. went climbing at the Planet Granite gym and then came back to my place and we all hung out in the hot tub for a couple hours. Good times..
Tired. Must sleep...
August 5, 2002: Whoo hoo! Yosemite was a blast! We had some trouble locating the routes described in the Toulumne Meadows book but I did get around to leading a 5.8 on Lembert Dome.. after a really long run-out I didn't feel like performing a 5.10a roof move so I shakily down-climbed to the last bolt and that was that.. Sunday we were climbing by the Royal Arches in Yosemite Valley.. quite amazing scenery! We're climbing with the gigantic Half Dome in the background! There we lead up a 5.10b! I couldn't find the route on the 'net, but I'll put the name up when I figure out what it was.. while we were there we also looked around at El Capitan, Half Dome and Bridalveil Falls.. so good! We're tentatively planning on doing Half Dome next year (Snake Dike route?).
Now I'm sore and have to get back to work..
PS - The route we lead by Royal Arches was called "Greasy but Groovy" and it's actually at 5.10d! Yup, I've also come up with a cool name for whenever I make a first ascent and get to name a route.. :>
July 31, 2002: Well, not much new since last update.. but I keep checking all my friends' web pages and the updates are infrequent enough that I get bored so I thought I'd update mine to keep you all intriqued! My one friend I could reliably count on to update her page daily (sometimes even more frequently) is currently on hiatus..
Anyhow, I'll just take this time to mention that I'm going to Yosemite.. looking forward to that! Unforunately I was feeling kinda sick the last couple of days, but took it easy last night (instead of going rock climbing).. played an hour of multiplayer Halo, then ate some dinner (finally felt good enough to eat!) and then watched my favourite movie of all time: TMNT (I think that was around my 80th time watching it).. I always watch it when I'm sick and it makes me all better. :> Then after sleeping for 11 hours or so I feel much much better!
I've also managed to mooch a CD with all the SIGGRAPH papers on it off one of my friends that went to SIGGRAPH this year.. it's some very interesting reading and is giving me TONS of ideas for graphics projects for my graphics class next term.
But now I've got to go do some work.. but I'd love some distractions so email me and tell me all about your life.. math jokes are also appreciated!
July 28, 2002: Went rock climbing again today.. back to Boyscout Rocks at Mount Diablo again. Finally did "Amazing Face" today, such a nice climb! Very cool.. on a related note: going climbing in Yosemite next weekend! Should be fan-fricking-tastic!
Work's been going well.. we had an intern presentation day on Friday, all the interns put together little billboard-esque things and we showed them all off in the cafeteria and the whole company came to see them. Sounds kinda dumb, but was actually pretty cool.. of course the Bond interns had the coolest presentation! Bond music in the background, a playable demo (thanks to me :> ), computers showing off other cool stuff, and a nice big presentation on the whiteboard as well. Of course, we did blow a fuse, but once that was fixed all was good again.
Anyhow, I must be off to pick up someone at the airport. Later!
July 20, 2002: So the Pinnacles trip was a blast! We all hung out around a piddly little fire until the wee hours of the night last night.. then it was up bright and not-so-early this morning to go climbing! Did my first lead route! Sport lead up some easy route (I'd say it was a 5.7 or 5.8-).. pretty cool stuff! A big head-game when you're leading..
Anyhow I'm tired and hungry so off I go!
PS - I think I found the route I lead: "Perfect Way to End the Day" (http://www.rockclimbing.com/routes/listSection.php?SectionID=3872) Don't know if I'd rate it a 5.9, but hey, that makes me feel good!
July 19, 2002: Alright, turns out I lied and I'm not gonna put up a story about the mountain climbing.. all I'll say is that the glissading (the second definition!) down 3000 feet is frickin' amazing! :>
Yup, going rock climbing down at Pinnacles National Monument again this weekend, so I won't be back until Sunday if you want to give me a call and chat (heh, like any of you call me, let alone email me!).. say, is anyone there? Anyone read this stuff??
Ok, well I'm outta here..
July 15, 2002: Dang! Sorry for not updating my site for so long.. my how time flies!
Guess what I did this weekend? Climbed a mountain! That's right.. me and two other fellows went and climbed Mount Shasta! That's 14,162 feet of mountain! I have lots of cool pics (brought my digital camera along) and a good story, but I'm really beat now so I'll update the site tomorrow.. sorry to keep you all in suspense but I'm sure you can survive another day!
PS - Alright, I'm a sucker and am staying up late to put up the pics of my trip! But you'll have to wait until later for the story to go along with them...
PPS - Thanks to Vijay for brightening all the images in Photoshop for me!
July 3, 2002: Happy Belated Canada Day! Must admit not much happened down here in way of celebration, but tomorrow's Independence Day, so I'll just pretend all the fireworks are for Canada. :>
Had a good weekend, here's the haps: one of the other interns here at EA had a party on Saturday, which was good times, after which a bunch of us hit the town and painted it red (especially Sushi Rock and the CalTrain). Sunday we (a bunch of the interns again) went surfing (see the pics)! Very cool (I've now been surfing in California!). The water wasn't bad, though we did have wet suits on, and the waves were pretty good for most of the time, but near the end as the tide came it they got really rough and too hard to surf in (for us at least). Had a good time, and my sunburn is much better by now..
And how's the rock climbing coming along you ask? Well the 5.11- I climbed the other day has been upgraded to a 5.11+. :> Yup, went climbing last night and was sticking to mainly 5.11's now.. though there's still this one 5.10 which befuddles me (I swear it's not a 5.10!).
On a final note, I added a fun new link to my Fun Math page (warning: may be a little geeky)!
June 25, 2002: Woo hoo! Climbed my first 5.11- today! :>
June 24, 2002: Wow, 11 days since my last update already.. well here's the deets:
- went hiking at Muir Woods. That was a good time, we kinda got off the nice asphalt path and started on this long uphill hike, but turned around once we realized that wasn't where we wanted to go
- had another Lindy Hop lesson.. good times.. actually met some other interns from IBM there, gonna get a whole big bay area intern group going!
- went to Paramount's Great America on Saturday.. pretty much the same as Paramount's Canada's Wonderland (and Paramount's King's Island, and pretty much all Paramount parks I gather).. it was good times, though kinda long lines at the cool rides. Still haven't gone on Drop Zone yet..
- went to some house party Saturday night. Didn't know the people hosting the party, but knew someone who knew someone who knew the hosts. Anyhow, it was a pretty big party, the eVite maxed out at 200 people. Got there and it was mainly an asian/indian mix. Weird being the minority.. anyhow, it was alright, but nothing special
- went rock climbing at Summit Rock (there's many more routes than listed on that page). It was pretty good times.. instead of going with the usual group we go with (they went climbing the day before but I was at Great America), we just used Andrea's rope and set up our own routes.. good times. Nice to not have to rely on other people.
June 13, 2002: I've been listening to this ska band, the "Aquabats", lately.. pretty good stuff! Also picked up a "Reel Big Fish" cd a while ago too (just mentioned that as that's what I'm listening to now). Tomorrow's moving day at work, the new building is open and the movers are gonna be busy moving all our stuff, so that means: no work tomorrow! :> Not too sure what I'm going to do yet, perhaps go to the beach?? Maybe finally go see Star Wars.. we'll see.
Went rock climging up in the city on Tuesdsay at Mission Cliffs. Was supposed to meet up with 2 other folk there, but one cancelled (and called me) and the other cancelled and called me, but after I had already left.. oh well, just hooked up with this other guy looking for a belay partner. It's a pretty nice gym. But not worth the long drive I be thinking..
Had my Lindy Hop lesson on Wednesday.. was pretty good fun, even learnt a new East Coast move! I find learning Lindy is kinda hard.. I think I know what I'm doing, but I feel like the follows I've danced with have no idea, there are some people who already know some Lindy, but I just didn't get a chance to dance with them last week.. next time though. Taught Anita the Tandem Charleston and we boogied on the dance floor..
Time for me to go rock climbing!
June 8, 2002: Hey there y'all.. (that's my american). So did some excellent rock climbing today.. went to a new place near Castle Rock and it was fabulous! Lots of nice routes, not busy, excellent views.. it's about an hour's drive away, but well worth it. Scenic drive as well. Yup. Also bought some new rock climbing shoes last night.. went to REI and spent lots more money than I expected, but that's okay, the shoes are an excellent fit. I got some Boreal Ace shoes (which replace my old Boreal Ace shoes), unfortunately I got totally ripped off as climbing shoes in the states are about twice as much as they are in Canada.. gosh darn it all to heck and back. I would've got someone to send my some from Canada, but I needed the shoes ASAP as my old ones had quickly growing holes in the soles.
Went out to O'Riley's irish pub in the city last night.. a couple of Pat's friends are down and we took them out (as it was one of their's 21st birthday). Good times..
Now I'm hanging out at Ashley's house (another intern at EA). Played some Super Monkey Ball, which is pretty fun. Non-complicated games are da bomb.
Blah, okily dokily, I'm outtie.
PS - Did you know "gitch" is Canadian?
June 2, 2002: Went rock climbing at Cragmont. Did a fabulous ascent of "Farewell to Arms" (though I've climbed all these routes before), and got up "Wipeout", though we didn't follow the exact route as described. Then we went out for some yummy Indian & Pakistan food at a little restaraunt in San Fran.
Was kinda tired today, went to a party with my roommate Pat last night. One of the other guys on Golf had a big party at his place in the Presidio. Good times.. didn't get home until 4:30am and had to get up at 6:45 to pick up Andrea for rock climbing this morning.. ahh, such is life.
Ooh! Picked up a PS2 on Friday night.. just bought one game for now (since EA's giving me a bunch for free), Jak & Daxter. Pretty fun stuff. Pat picked up a GameCube and Resident Evil, haven't played that yet, but it sure looks perdy. Also on Friday night went to see "Undercover Brother" with some guys from work. It was pretty funny, though you'd have to be in a silly mood.
I'm tired now. zzzzzz...
May 25, 2002: So I'm back. From where you ask? E3!! That's right, I went to the Electronic Entertainment Expo! Sweet stuff.. took off around 6am Thursday with some guys from work and got back Friday night.. the expo was pretty wicked, overstimulating perhaps, constantly being bombarded with noise, lights, people.. pretty cool seeing all the soon-to-be-released games -- especially the Nintendo booth: Mario Sunshine, the new Zelda, Metroid Prime, all very cool. It was pretty sad all the attention the booth babes were attracting, though some of them were worth a second look. ;> Didn't quite get the amount of swag that I anticipated, but got a shirt and a game so good enough.. had a good time out of the expo too, we went out for a nice diner at the family restaurant Hooters and then went out to paint the town red. Good times, had a nice room in the Mariott too.
Today was the first WatPub. Went for a picnic in Golden Gate Park and tossed around some frisbees and footballs. Oddly enough, the ball tossing quickly degenerated into an immature game of "try to hit the person in the middle of the circle, then switch places with them". Actually was kinda fun, ahh to be a kid again. Next we went to the Metreon and saw "Space Station 3D". Pretty good stuff, the 3D stuff actually looked more 3D than I thought it would. Coolio.
Yup, so that's all for now. Ooh, except for the car -- picked up Pat's car and been driving around a bit. Standard's are fun to drive!
May 22, 2002: Woo hoo! I just got insurance on Pat's car.. now all I need is a ride to go pick it up (which one of the other interns nicely said he'd do tonight)! Good times are here again.. it looks something like this, but I don't think mine's a GTi.
May 21, 2002: QUICK!! There's no time to waste -- go check out my new pics! They're of my week back at Waterloo (and briefly in Toronto) for my birthday! The first one that I've spent with Vicki in fact! Had a good time, saw some friends I haven't seen in some time, partied with everyone and hung out with Vicki lots. Oh, and saw my family too. :>
Anyhow, now it's back to the old grind.. at least until Thursday and Friday when I'm at E3! :> That oughta be a good time. Going down with the other engineers from work and cramming 8 of us into 2 hotel rooms..
Yeah, bored, going to watchi tv now. Later!
May 10, 2002: Where does the time go? Hadn't realized it'd been so long since I had last updated my web site. Anyhow here's the scoop: The roommate's cool.. kinda ditched him the day after he got here (went rock climbing at Craigmont, of which my first route sucked arse, but got steadily better until I sent the 4 routes I way trying. Took him rock-climbing at Planet Granite with Andrea and I on Wednesday..
Work's been going alright. Things were shaping up, then we had a content review meeting today where I had to demo the stuff I've been working on, started off okay, but then some of the data was out-of-date and made my code not work right (hence looking like my stuff didn't work, when really it was just the old data). Hmm, less than ideal, but oh well, I'm outta here for a week.
So the other interns have showed up at EA now.. most of them anyhow, there's still more on the way. Had our first intern lunch, and one of the founders of EA was there! Very cool, it was interesting to see his much broader view of the industry.
Anyhow I'm outta this country in a few measely hours! Catch ya on the flip side!
May 4, 2002: So today's the day -- the new roommate arrives any time now.. so it's been a pretty exciting week. Had another celebration at work, so on Tuesday we all went out to see "The Scorpion King" (which was crappy), then out for lunch, followed by a tour of the Anchor Steam brewery and then off to another baseball game (no luxury box, but decent seats)! I like my job! Hmm.. work also bought us lunch on Thursday since one of the guys is leaving to go down to LA. Wednesday night had a little get together after work to celebrate the visit of a fellow engineer (who's now in Australia). Oh, and then we took the guy who's leaving out again last night.
Blarg, never got my plane tickets. It's so weird how the one important thing I'm expecting is the only thing to get lost in the mail.. anywho I'm gonna have to get up to SF to the Travel Cuts there to get them re-issued. Conveniently they're only open 9-5 on weekdays.. :/
Still haven't gotten the car keys for that car.. I emailed the guy and he forgot to mail them, so apparently they're in the mail now. Hopefully they won't get lost.
Ooh, those two dudes biking across Canada are doing well, already in Kamloops. Looking at their pictures brings back tons of memories!
Ok, well I'm off to get fat and watch tv. L8r!
April 27, 2002: I've got the place to myself now! Yeah, Guilluame departed for his long drive home, hope it's a safe drive!
So far I haven't done anything too exciting.. spent the morning cleaning and vacuuming.. well, that and surfing the net.. :> Now I'm watching Termors while surfing the net.. was thinking of going to the grocery store later and then perhaps to work. ANd of course, going rock climbing tomorrow.. :> Andrea and I are going Sunday when it's not too busy so that we can tackle some cracks without having too many witnesses of our incompentence..
Oh, Jeff & Ian (some friends I met in good ol' cs452) started their bike trip across Canada! Good luck! I'm pretty excited for them.. this is a trip I think anyone who has thought about it should do.
Dang, I'm hungry.. time for lunch!
April 21, 2002: Had yet another exciting weekend! :)
Thursday night I went to Planet Granite like usual and finally bought my monthly pass so now I can go all I want. In fact the new gym in Belmont just opened up on Saturday so now there's a nice, new, close place to play!
Friday night consisted of a fun boat cruise with my EA team through SF Bay (check out the pictures). It was quite nice.. they served a delicious dinner and then we gambled away our fake money for the rest of the night.
Saturday and Sunday I was down at Pinnacles National Monument doing some rock climbing! Went down only knowing Andrea (the girl I go to Planet Granite with), but met lots of other cool climbers down there.. apparently they go climbing quite often, so hopefully I'll get some more trips in with them while I'm down here. Oh, check out the cool pictures I got!
Later!
April 18, 2002: I forgot to mention, while in Hollywood we took this free IQ/personality test thingy.. I got 149 on the IQ test! Whoo hoo! But I wouldn't put too much faith in the test as the personality side of it was crap and in your debreifing they used the test to identify "problem areas" in your personality and then attempted to sell you books to help you work on those problems.. check out IQTest.com for a somewhat better one..
April 17, 2002: So I'm alive. We survived the road trip! Here's what happened:
Left Friday morning and drove down the scenic Highway 1.. very cool, windy road along the coast. Stopped at a beach to enjoy the view and had lunch at a little restaurant on a hill over-looking the ocean. Enjoyed the convertable on the way down, had the top down most of the day.. Eventually got to LA and drove down Sunset Blvd through Beverly Hills and Hollywood.. ended up in a Best Western in Chinatown.
Saturday we subwayed over to Hollywood, did the walk of fame and checked out Man's Chinese Theatre. Took some photos of the big (but far away) Hollywood sign.. then it was off to Venice beach for some more relaxing.. it was kinda overcast, but that didn't stop us! After the required beach time it was off to San Diego where we drove around for a couple hours enjoying the town and trying to find a hotel (there was some karate competition going on that booked up a lot of hotels).
The world famous San Diego Zoo took up a good part of Sunday.. it was a pretty big zoo, lots of cool animals, though they had a lot of meerkats and birds.. next it was off to Tijuana for the night! Had zero trouble crossing the border, just walk through this revolving door (literally!).. tried to walk to downtown Tijuana but realized we had no idea where we were going so took one of the many taxis that eagerly vied for our business (we left our car across the border as it's not a good idea to bring it to Tijuana). Once in downtown it was startling to see the difference between the US and Mexico. Everyone on the street is trying to get your attention and sell you something.. anything for money. After checking into our 370 peso hotel we went cruising the strip.. tons of bars (and strip clubs).. seems like a crazy party town, would've been even crazier if we had been there on a Friday or Saturday! Anyhow, checked out a few places, and eventually got a self-proclaimed tour guide to show us "the good bars". After visiting a few more fine establishments our guide decided it was time for his fee, too bad for him all we had was $4. Seeing how this obviously wasn't enough for his hospitality he proceeded to up his fee by asking for my watch. Heh.. after a few minutes he realized he wasn't getting anything and left..
Monday was left Tijuana after breakfast and was going to spend the day on some San Diego beaches, however it was raining so we went back to LA to check out the weather there.. and low and behold it was actually a beautiful sunny day! Spent a few hours on Santa Monica beach (looks just like the movies -- probably 'cause that's where the movies are made!). Played in the big ocean waves.. sun-tanned (or burned in Kirk's case :> ).. Took off at 4 and just squeaked by without hitting the evil rush hour traffic in LA.
Was great fun overall and cool to finally do a real road trip! Anyhow, you can check out my pictures here, though I'll be moving them over to this site soon.. the first few pictures are from the hike I did with Anita, Jane and Guillaume last weekend at Stinson Beach..
April 12, 2002: Good morning! It's 3:20am! What am I doing up at this crazy hour you ask? Well I'm off for my trip to LA tomorrow morning (in about 5 hours) and I have this english assignment due.. it was originally due last Tuesday, but the prof gave everyone an extension until the 15th. So all is good, I can procrastinate a little longer.. not due until Tuesday after I get back from LA I be thinking.. well, tonight as I'm about to go to bed I think "hmmm.. the 15th.. that's Monday, not Tuesday. Drat!" So in case that didn't make any sense, I thought it was due Tuesday, but it's due Monday, but I don't get back until Monday, so I'm staying up late to get it done before I leave. Blarg, it's done.
So today was a good day though! To celebrate the shipping of the XBox and GameCube versions of 007: Agent Under Fire the people responsible for the ports (which includes me) spent the day in a luxury box at Pacific Bell Park watching the Giants vs the Dodgers, eating and drinking to our hearts content! :> The game didn't last very long though, just under 3 hours (Giants lost, 3 to 4). Since none of us wanted to go back to work, we took a circuitous route to this pool hall and hung out there for awhile. Had a good time.. got hussled out of $22 but that's okay. :>
Anyhow, I'm tired and gonna go to bed, I'll give update when I get back from my road trip!
April 5, 2002: Had a good night rock climbing yesterday, got up my best route yet -- a 5.10b! Tried it again later that night but it didn't work out so well, I guess once a night is good enough! Maybe it was my new harness! That's right, I also bought a harness, I got a Black Diamond Rave harness. It has fixed leg loops, but they fit pretty well so I figured that was okay. Seems pretty nice! I was going to wait until I got back to Ontario to get a harness and some other stuff at good ol' MEC, but I'm going on a climbing trip on the 20th to Pinnacles! Exciting times.. to top it all off it looks like Kirk and I are going on a road trip next weekend; we're thinking LA, San Diego and finally Tijuana (that's in Mexico!)! This weekend got a little trip to Stinson Beach with Jane, Anita and Guillaume. I'll be sure to let you all know how it turns out..
April 2, 2002: Went rock climbing at Planet Granite again last night. Had a good time. Went with Andrea and her friend Kal, and met up with this guy Mike at the gym. Also ran into some guys I met there last time, Rob, Warren and Steve. Anyhow, Rob's thinking of taking scuba diving lessons next month and I, being interested in that myself, might join him. Garg.. soo hard to save money when there's so much to do! I'll just do lots of stuff now and do nothing at all in the summer I guess. :> Well I can tell myself that anyhow..
April 1, 2002: e^(pi*i)=0
April Fools! (we all know e^(pi*i)=1) Sorry for that April Fool's joke, but I'm not feeling very funny today. Here's a somewhat better one.. watch out! It too is somewhat geeky.
Now that that's all over with.. here's the tale of my skydiving trip: Got up early on Saturday, drove to San Jose, picked up Aman and Kirk, drove to Monterey Bay, filled out many forms, sat around, watched a video about releasing the company of any and all liability, got harnessed up, sat around. We were scheduled to be on the next plane up and they delayed further flights due to high wind speeds. Then there was too much fog (apparently a common occurance near the ocean). After waiting around for another hour or two we took a rain-check and left. Got up early on Sunday and we all headed down again. This time they stopped flying due to fog (yet again), but right after we got to go! For anyone I just confused -- we got to go skydiving! So it was pretty cool flying up and seeing the buildings become little specks on the ground. We went up to 11000 feet and then jumped! Actually we (the instructor and I) sat next to the door and rolled out of the plane. That was the coolest part! Once out of the plane we did a little flip thing and then free-falled for about 30-40 seconds.. The opening of the parachute wasn't that bad, a little jerk but not bad. After a few cool spins around we landed (with remarkable precision) with a fairly soft landing. Overall I thought it was good fun, but I didn't get the "I want my mommy" adrenaline rush I was expecting. If/when I do it again I'd definately do the AFF Level 1 (jump by yourself but after intensive ground training and with 2 instructors watching/helping you). I think I felt too safe with the instructor but would still be terrified jumping solo (terrified in a good way).
Also on the weekend I hooked up with my friend Ian who was down in California for an interview with nVidia. We met up Saturday night through some luck (since I had written down the wrong hotel room number) and went up to San Fran to show him around. A good time was had by all.
Anyhow, back to work..
March 24, 2002: Alright, busy weekend!>
Saturday Guillaume and I went to the GDC in San Jose. Woke up early (for a weekend) to get through the registration and to see the first lecture that day, "Building a Thrid-Generation Online Persistant World" (or some such title). It was fairly interesting.. nothing too mind-blowing, but some good points were made. Next we toured around the expo floor for a while, then Guillaume decided to go home. I stayed and was planning on getting a ride home with good ol' Jane who was working at the EA booth (which meant I had another 3 hours to kill as she wasn't leaving until 4pm). Got tons o' free stuff.. a copy of Softimage XSI (which is free anyhow, but the cd I ordered online hasn't come yet), a full copy of the old version of DevTrack (bug tracking software), some MMORPG SDK, a cd with demos and info about Havok's physics engine (I mentioned to the guy at the booth that I was looking into writing a physics engine, I meant for my personal stuff, but he assumed I meant for EA so I got the royal treatment).. people sure treat you right when they see you're from EA. :> Also tried to get into a conference on getting venture capital for start-ups, but the tight security in the place wouldn't let me in (as I had the semi-cheap Expo pass ($195 value), and you needed a better pass to go to the interesting lectures). Then it turned out that Guillaume left his lights on so he was also wondering around until Jane got off work to boost his car. Oh, there was also a cool contest put on by nVidia -- they had a bunch of contests, each one included 8 artists and they had 20 minutes to draw/sketch/etc a picture using pastels/markers/charcoal/etc. The only requirement was that the picture include the nVidia logo (not necessarily as a prominent feature). Very cool to see the artists do their thing. There were also a few "booth babes" around, but nothing too special. Anyhow, after the GDC shut down we had a convoluted conversation with the attendant at the parking lot to get Jane in without having to pay the $7.. so then we tried boosting the car, but the booster cables were on backwards which, most definately, didn't help the situation. Anyhow, the car is still there and we got a ride home with Jane. Tomorrow they're going back and Jane's going to use her AAA card to see what they can do. Let's hope it's not too expensive!
Sunday (today) I went snowboarding at Kirkwood! The conditions were perfect! Little-to-no wind, temperature around 0 degrees C, few other people, freshly groomed snow (still nice and soft to fall on) as well as nice of fluffy powder just off the beaten track. My snowboarding skills from last year came back within a run or two and even improved some! On the way up this truck two cars in front of us starting fish-tailing, then hit the solid snow bank and spun a 720 (and also knocked it's bumper off). We stopped but everyone was okay.
Ok, that about sums up this weekend. Almost! Saturday night I finally got a phone call from Darcy (of the bike trip fame). She's doing well (as are Elaine and Tracy). It was nice to hear from her though, hopefully I'll make it up to the Vancouver area while I'm on the west coast and see everyone up there.
Lates!
March 21, 2002: Who would've thunk it, but there's actually a new link in the Fun Math Page!
March 20, 2002: For years and years I've always thought it'd be cool to go skydiving.. made casual plans with people many times (very casual, ie: "hey you want to go skydiving?" "yeah, we should do that.."), even researched companies a few times.. but now it's for real! Got a date set and everything.. here's the deets: Saturday, March 30th at 11:30am with Skydive Monterey Bay! This is be a tandem jump (cheaper, quicker, safer(?)). It is also the first WatPub of the term for the California region, but we'll have to wait and see if anyone besides Kirk and myself sign up to do it.
Aside from that, nothing too exciting going on..
March 17, 2002: Bored bored bored. Today was a boring day. Woke up, read for a while, started programming a 3DS model loader (for use in both DFA and my raytracer) -- didn't work. Put that aside, watched a movie on tv (don't know what it was called), had already watched Vertical Limit while programming.. sat around watched a James Bond movie on tv. Got really bored from sitting around, walked to the grocery store, bought more than expected, walked home. Watched tv, ate dinner, processed the new pictures, now I'm gonna go read for a bit before I go to sleep.
However, yesteday was fun -- got up early to meet this guy Rob at the Hillsdale Mall at 7:45 (about a 15 minute bike ride). Hooked up with him and some other folk and went rock climbing over at Castle Rock. There were only three of us there for most of the day but had a good time.. even managed to scramble my way up a 5.10a (my best yet!) Anyhow, Rob's planning on getting a group of people to go out regularly so hopefully that'll work out and I can get some regular climbing buddies.. he's also thinking of doing a 3 or 4 day trip down to Joshua Tree National Park which would be fantastic.
Anyhow, the hour of bed does draw near..
March 13, 2002: So I'm outraged! I was sitting here watching tv and saw this car ad (I think it was Ford) that went "I AM... Californian" -- What a rip off!! grr...
March 12, 2002: Oh you lucky people you! There's a new page up for your viewing enjoyment! Ok, so there's not much to do there, but funny huh?
Righto, since I just wrote a big long entry yesterday, and nothing's happened since, I'll just go now.
PS - I've slightly updated my links page, but unless you're uber-bored it's not really worth checking out..
March 11, 2002: Had a busy weekend! Went swing dancing on Friday night, however it wasn't all that great as it was this group that does a different dance every week and thus most of the people weren't very good at swing dancing.. also they played a bunch of other types of music that I didn't know how to dance to (ie: waltz, cha-cha, etc). Not that I'm against other dances, but just wasn't what I was looking for.
Saturday was another fun filled adventure.. with my roommate away I took his car and met up with another Waterloo'er in San Jose (the guy who also biked across Canada) and from there we carried on to Santa Cruz and Davenport. Hung out for a few hours by this beach.. wandered down a little canyon, walked down the beach, saw someone skinny dipping, met some people watching whales (and they let us use their binoculars to look too!). Then we went into Santa Cruz proper and wandered around town for a bit before seeing the move "The Time Machine" which was pretty good. Thought some of the story line was a little.. contrived isn't the right word.. unbelievable? something like that.
Sunday had an early start, 3:48am to be exact! Went skiing the guys from work.. well one less guy actually since he just never showed up. Oh well.. there was a bunch of freshy (fresh snow) on the mountain and it was great for the most part. The powder was a little heavy in places, but staying up nearer the top of the mountain helped solve that. Quite windy and overcast which kept a lot of people off the hill. In fact it was really quite empty (especially the night skiing)! Poor visibility in the morning, but getting a little better in the afternoon.
Now I'm a little tired and sore.. sore from skiing, tired from not going to bed.. only get a few hours of sleep before the ski trip, then got home exhausted at 11pm.. was going to just check my email and go to bed (I'm such a geek!), but then got working on my ray tracer for a hour.. speaking of the ray tracer, it now loads models (some crappy Sense8 model, but I'm thinking of writing a simple 3DS loader) and even does normal interpolation for each polygon! No new pics yet, but I'll probably put some up tonight if I have time.. Update: The new pics are up!
March 8, 2002: Moved my raytracing page to it's own section now! While this was a good idea (as it was getting buried amongst my pictures) I lost my stats tracking for it (which was bumped up nice and high (around 450+ hits at last check) by my link on Flipcode last week or so). Oh well.. on the plus side CSG works now! Go check it out if you're at all interested in raytracing!
For all of you who don't care about raytracing, mmm.. nothing much is new. Well remember last post I said my jaw was hurting? Well my right tonsil was also inflamed (though at the time I didn't know it was my tonsil) so I went to the medical clinic across the street and got looked at (though what a pain it was to figure out my insurance stuff, so much easier in Canada!). The doctor diagnosed me as having TMJ or temporomandibular joint diseases/disorders. Sounds bad, but "the majority of TMJ patients experience temporary discomfort and gradually get better with or without treatment." Okily dokily.. no worries then!
Also my roommate's flying out to visit his sister today so I get the place to myself this weekend! Actually planning on going skiing with the guys from work again, but only for a one day trip this time (much cheaper). Cool, I'll keep y'all updated..
March 7, 2002: So Vicki's gone now and it's back to work! Actually last night I did some more work on my raytracer and (almost) added CSG support!
Haven't been up to too much lately. Feel like I'm kinda getting sick and my jaw's been hurting lately.. work's been feast or famine lately as well.. super busy one day, totally bored the next. Should be busy again on Monday though.
Sorry for the short update.. I was planning on a long ramble but I don't really feel like it now.
March 2, 2002: Today we went to the zoo and the beach!.
February 26, 2002: Check this out!!
February 25, 2002: Yup, so Vicki's in town for the week and today we went capering through San Fran! Good stuff.. anyhow, off to eat diner.
February 18, 2002: I took my camera out on the weekend and took some pictures of work. No, I didn't just go to work to hang out -- I had to go do some school work there.. anyhow I tried to take a landscape picture of my cube (like the one of my bedroom), but it didn't turn out nearly as well.. oh well, not a big deal.
Nothing much else is new.. Vicki's coming down on the weekend! :>
I'm hungry.. babble babble babble.. go check out the new screenshots of the game Dungeon being made by Complex Games. Speaking of making video games, I've been doing a little work on DFA (the 3D tank game me and my friends are making).. not too much, but more than the other guys! grrr.. ok, enough meaningless drivel..
I lied, one more thing -- here's a word of the day:
haver (HAY-vuhr) verb intr. To vacillate. [Of uncertain origin.] In Scotland and Northern England, it means to talk nonsense. "British lag behind again in race to fill IMF vacuum. While we haver, the French are backing an Italian." William Keegan, Observer (London), Mar 5, 2000.
February 17, 2002:
What is YOUR Highschool label?
February 11, 2002: I've been meaning to write this up for quite some time now, so here goes: one day while taking a shower I was reading the back of my shampoo bottle.. the usual product endorsement stuff was there:
"keeps your hair shiny and managable" (I made that up, but you get the idea), but then it went on to say (and this is a direct quote),
"for less than more expensive brands"Now isn't that a dumb thing to say? I mean that's like saying "I'm taller than all people shorter than me". I know what it's trying to say, but I think they should have come up with a more logical way of saying it!
Whew, feel better after that little rant. :> So my weekend was pretty good, went out to a birthday party at a little club called Storyville in San Fran. It was a pretty good place, it was a private party in the back room and even had a couple of live bands playing! Didn't mingle much, but had a good time. Even got in a little swing dancing! Speaking of which it seems like one of the HR girls here would be into swing dancing.. and as you all know SF's all about swing dancing! Just gotta learn Lindy to fit in here, but that's alright as that was one of my plans for this work term!
Also, it looks like I'm gonna be the WatPub co-ordinator again.. not my ideal role, but if it gets me out and doing stuff.. this other Waterloo student working down in San Jose also biked across Canada last summer -- should be interesting to swap stories!
5:30pm already! Time to go home!
PS:
I am a hip critter. I showed up fasionably late with Super Mario World and have started launching your own career since then. In maybe 10-15 years, my popularity will rival Mario's. Not that I'm competing with him. He's my bud. I'm good at getting and keeping friends, and they value me for that. After all, who else would carry them on their back through ice, fire, and rain? Sometimes I think I'm taken for granted, but I know that my friends have my back. Of course they do. Who would screw over Yoshi?
What Super Mario Bros character are you?February 9, 2002: Can you tell I'm bored by the frequency of my page updates?? Anyhow, I've been scanning the net and have added not 7, not 8, not 9, but 10 new math jokes!
February 8, 2002: Wow, it's only been 3 days since I last updated my page.. feels like longer. Anywho, all you lucky dogs out there are in for a treat -- I've released my ray tracing code! Check it out and let me know what y'all think!
February 5, 2002: So for all those who don't know, I bought a digital camera last week! It's a Nikkon Coolpix 775 and it's pretty swell! Check out some of the pictures I've been taking!
Last weekend I also went skiing at Squaw Valley (near Lake Tahoe). It was a good time, the conditions weren't spectacular, but it was definately nice to get out.
Lates!
January 29, 2002: Just to break my streak -- no new pictures this update.. sorry to anyone I dissappointed!
So just thought I'd give an update on what I'm doing at work. It looks like I'll get to do what I want to: work on the AI for the new Bond game! Right now everyone else is quite busy finishing the X-Box and Gamecube versions so I'm just messing around with the current code base and learning how it's set-up. Quite fun to be coding again!
Hey, don't forget to email me with interesting stuff! It gets a little boring with no friends.. :<
Ok, enough whining.. take care!
January 24, 2002: Added more pictures again! This time they're in the Froshweek 2001 page! Tell all your frosh friends to check it out!
January 22, 2002: More raytracing pictures!! Also, go check this out if you feel like cracking a simple code to win a scholarship at the University of Lethbridge (in Alberta).. I give any of my CS friends 20 minutes to figure out the code. :>
January 15, 2002: Just a quick note: I added the first picture from my raytracer!
January 14, 2002: Check out my new Christmas pics (of course unless you're in my immediate family, you probably won't care).
So it turns out that I did go up to San Fran yesterday. It was pretty swell, spend about 5 hours walking around. And there's still more to see!! Actually I was taking my time, but that's okay as I do have 8 months to see it all. Checked out Chinatown, Telegraph Hill, the Financial District, some mall, Grace Cathedral, Nob Hill and even saw Alcatraz and the Golden Gate bridge from afar. Next time I'm there I think I'll go take a boat over to Alcatraz and give it a closer inspection. While in Chinatown I bought these egg-tarts of which I'm quite fond. So after carrying them around all day I brought them home and had one -- ooh I was excited! Too bad they suck! :< Yeah, these ones weren't very good, though I've had about 4 now and there not so bad, so I guess I'm getting used to them (or I just ate the bad one first).
So just to prove once again that the world is a small place, I ran into someone I know on the train ride back from SF! Good ol' Paul from UW. It was pretty weird, but apparently he's down in Cupertino working at Apple.. poor guy. Well I should get back to work, so take 'er easy!
PS - I just got a new monitor at work and it's a widescreen! I'm currently running at 1920x1200 (32bpp) and I love it! :>
PPS - Got an email with rave reviews about my web site! We're #1!! We're #1!!
January 12, 2002: I made it! The flight was alright.. I had a middle seat :< Though the movie was slightly better than I expected it to be (Hardball with Keanu Reeves).
So after arriving at the airport and went to pick-up my baggage. Waiting.. waiting.. waiting.. got my suitcase.. waiting.. got my backpack. Off to pick up my bike. Looking.. looking.. go to the other special baggage claim place.. looking.. ask the lady.. looking.. lady gets around to helping me.. calls the baggage handler guy.. he says it was put on another plane as it was connection baggage.. :< he runs off and save the bike before it's loaded.. :> Don't you love a happy ending? Well it's not over yet! Talk to the info booth about the cheapest way to get me and my stuff to Foster City.. advised to take Super Shuttle.. go find Super Shuttle.. talk to Super Shuttle guy.. he talks to Super Shuttle driver guy.. waiting.. waiting.. driver dude says he'll give me a deal.. I say OK.. driving.. driving.. in Foster city.. driving.. u-turn.. driving.. u-turn.. driving.. u-turn.. driver dude admits he's lost and looks at the map.. driving.. driving.. u-turn.. driving.. u-turn.. consults map again.. driving.. backs up.. driving.. looks at map.. finds road.. driving.. looking for address.. driving.. backing up.. looking.. driving.. looking.. looking.. drops me off at the side of the road because he couldn't find the address and "had other passengers in the van, but it must be over there
So that was my exciting first impression of California. But I like it here.. it's January and I can ride around on my bike without a coat (and sometimes shorts)! What a nice place.. there's bike trails right outside my house that go for 20 miles or so along the bay. Today in my explorations I found the CalTrain station so maybe tomorrow (or next week?) I can take the train up to SF and wander around there.. we'll see what happens.
Well, perhaps you can tell by the length of my update that I don't have a lot to do around here.. I bought a bargain 6-pack of computer games at Circuit City this morning because it had Scrabble and Chessmaster 5000 (and some other el-crapo games) but stupid thing.. Scrabble installs and runs, but likes to run way off the top-left of my screen so I can only see the bottom-right quarter of the screen (and it's not in a movable window).. Chessmaster installs fine, but then refuses to run on an NT based system.. the package said it was for Windows 95 & 98, but I figured that it would run on Win2k as well.. :/ So that sucks.. I also brought a copy of Chessmaster 6000 with me, but that installs fine, but when I try to run it stops at the "Player Login" window waiting for me to type something in, BUT THE WINDOW ISN'T THERE!! Gargghh.. so yesterday I go Descent 3 from the games library here at work and of course that didn't work either because it requires a 3d-accelerated video card. Darn my crappy luck!
Anyhow, enough complaining (and typing).. I'm going to play some video games here and then go buy some sushi across the road. That'll put me in a better mood! Hey, maybe I'll even put up some new pictures! Yeah.. maybe..
January 3, 2002: Well, I'm off. New Years was pretty good, had some people over, nothing too crazy. Then we watched 3 hours of Bonzai -- it was pretty funny for the first hour or two, but some things do get old. Yeah, actually whatever TV station we were watching kinda sucked (I think it was Fox).. there was no New Year's countdown, no Auld Lang Syne (sp?), just overall poor quality of a New Year's show. Oh well..
Yup, so I'm off to San Fran tomorrow morning. I'll be in the airport by 6am -- yeech.
Ciao!
December 28, 2001: Had a great Christmas, thanks for asking! Hope you all did too! Among other things I got a pool cue and it's great -- I've crushed a few people with it already (in pool that is)!
Spent some time with Vicki's family, ate some good meals there. Then it was off to Toronto for a few days in which I ate like a pig. Now I'm in Kingston and still managing to pile in the food. Good thing I only have one more city to visit; otherwise I'll need to get some bigger pants (or at least loosen my belt).
Anyhow, I finally got around to adding a math joke submitted by Scoots McGranty so go check it out! Yup, this is just a short 'n sweet update, so that's all.
December 21, 2001: So guess what I did yesterday? I saw one of the best movies I've seen in a long time -- Lord of the Rings! Yes, although I had heard good reviews, I still expected it to be in the not-so-good to the halfway-decent range, however I was blown away! It was incredible! GO SEE IT RIGHT NOW! There was one casting decision I disagree with but it was still super good.
Ok, enough raving I'll go now.
December 16, 2001: Oh my Lord! Another update!! :>
Yup, it's only been 4 months, but I finally put up some pictures of Frosh week! I've also starting working on a new project (instead of studying) -- it's a raytracer! They're not so hard.. at least not for the extreme basics that I'm working on now. When I get something impressive I'll put up some screenshots or something.. though seeing how quick I was with the Frosh week pictures, I wouldn't hold your breath.
Oh look, in another bout of procrastination I've gone and done some more Christmas shopping.. AND I've joined the crowd of crappy homepages and added a guestbook. Go and say something memorable!
December 15, 2001: Instead of doing anything useful, I've spent the last hour cleaning up my unix account at school and making this addition to my site. Hopefully there'll be many more sections to it as I write down some of my many ideas!
School's almost over, I have one more exam (Graph Theory) on Wednesday so I should start studying soon. It snowed yesterday and it finally looks Christmassy outside! Now I just have to go buy some presents..
December 5, 2001: Alright, updates galore! Check out the new math joke and the new cs452 pictures (cs452 is my Real-time Operating Systems course in which we spent 30+ hours/week working on for two months).
Yeah, so that new joke is pretty funny, though non-mathies don't seem to think so. And back to that real-time course.. good stuff, but thankfully it's all over (except for the exam). Our demo went alright.. stuff that we had working before didn't work though. I guess that's what happens when you quickly try to hack on more features the day before. Luckily we realized that we were killing the code the night before, so while everyone else stayed up all night furiously hacking their code we were able to have a solid nights sleep.
Now I should be studying for my AI exam that's at 9am tomorrow, but instead I've been looking at people's websites and updating my own. Oh well, this is definately more interesting than learning about Bayesian Networks (well, it's a close call).
Anyhow, things are starting to come together for my move down to SF.. here's the place we've put an application into, it's called Lantern Cove and looks pretty nice in my opinion.. Kinda expensive but that's to be expected there.
Ok back to studying (actually I'm gonna go home now and say hi to Vicki since I never get to see her anymore 'cause of too much school work).
November 9, 2001: First off: I've updated my bike_trip page with some new data! Go check it out!
Lately I've been having an issue with the co-op department here at UW. It seems that they are not too sensitive to the needs of students even though we pay their entire salary! (Co-op is not funded by the government so all co-op related expenses are paid for by the students in co-op). Anyhow, to make a long story short: jobs are really bad this year due to the poor economy, and when I managed to find my own job (ie: not through the interviews set-up by the co-op department) I thought they'd be thrilled to let me take it and free up one more job for someone else. I thought wrong. After sending emails to various people in the department explaining my situation and simply asking for a reason why I wasn't allowed to take this external job I got no reply. Eventually I was forced to set up a meeting with the Program Administrator since he never replied to my email. He explained that I wasn't allowed to take this job I was offered, so I said "fine, I'm dropping out of co-op". This caused me to get a lecture about the responsibilities of being in co-op and the advantages of co-op, etc. Anyhow, the way it works is my case had to go up to the Math Standings and Promotions Committee to decide on what my fate would be. He presented his side and recommended that I be kicked out of co-op (for accepting an external job without telling them that I was looking) and I presented my side about how no one answered my emails, and how not letting me accept the job contradicted the goals of the co-op department, etc. Anyhow, just got word back from their response yesterday: they sided with me! So I'm still in co-op and am allowed to take this job! :> Ha ha.. stupid co-op.
As for the job, I'm going to Redwood City, California!! (just 25mi south of San Francisco). Yup, the job is with EA again, I just transferred down to their California division. I'm not sure what exactly I'll be doing when I get there, but I'll be working on the new James Bond game! Coolio!
Ok, this was a fun update, but as usual, I must get back to working on my Real-Time project.
Ciao!
October 23, 2001: Well it's almost been a month since my last post! Wow.. time sure flies when you're in the lab all month! I actually have a bunch of stuff I want to update my web page with, but I haven't got my network at home working yet and all my stuff is on my home computer.. blah blah, I've only been here almost 2 months now.. give me a break.
Yeah, so real-time is going well.. really enjoying it, though the paying rent when I just live in the lab seems kinda dumb. Yeah, I'm kinda neglecting the rest of my classes, though I'm still pulling off decent marks in them and in fact I think I just aced my second Psych 101 test this evening. We'll see how the Graph Theory one goes tomorrow.
Oh yeah, I dropped out of co-op the other day! Good times. I had arranged a job with someone (this will be my news for the next paragraph) but the company had not replied to me until after the drop-out-of-interviews deadline. So, co-op being the counter-productive (not to mention stupid and non-student-friendly) people they are forced me to drop out of co-op in order to take this job. Of course it totally violates their purpose: to help students gain work experience.. it does this in a variety of manners. Of course when I emailed three seperate people a long (and polite) email explaining how forcing me to drop out contradicts their very being, and after receiving no reply I was forced to go set up a meeting with the program administrator and talk with him. After a fruitless conversation I began the process of dropping out (which takes an astounding month to do I might add). Anyhow, enough bitching about them, they're not worth my time anymore.
So about the job! It's with EA down in California! I'll be working in Redwood Shores (about 25mi south of SF). The only not-so-good thing is that they want me to go for 8 months.. I was hoping for a 4 month placement but they weren't too into that.. poop. Yeah, but Vicki's gonna come visit me so that's good!
Anyhow, as usual I'm in the real-time lab here, so I'm gonna get going and do a little bit of work before I head home.
Later!
September 25, 2001: Just handed in the first real-time assignment this morning. I think it went pretty well.. even though I had finished the code last Thursday I procrastinated doing my documentation so was still here until 2:30am this morning. And being the good little boy I am I still went to my 8:30 class.
It looks like I'll be working with Age for both real-time and AI.. hope we don't get too sick of each other. Speaking of sick, I'm already tired of checking the co-op job postings everyday! Nothing too eye-catching has come up yet, but I'm trying to work a deal with EA to get transferred down to California.. we'll see how that goes.
I've been really busy lately.. school, parties, St. John Ambulance.. actually there's been some excitement on the St. John's front.. the last few duties I've done have been pretty active and I've finally got some real experience now.
Yup, still haven't taken my nice bike out of the box I shipped it home in.. although I have started working out again, and just started swimming and rock climbing (bouldering for now) again too! Maybe all that will keep me in shape!
September 11, 2001: Let's see here.. I've been done my bike trip for just under a month now (we actually biked into St. John's, NFLD exactly one month ago today!), but you can read about that here.
Once again I was a frosh leader for the Faculty of Math here at UW. And once again I had an amazing time! My frosh group, Somerset, was great! They were so enthusiastic and cheered like crazy! It was also cool because there were over 10 Tango's (my frosh group from last year) participating in this year's frosh week. Look for pictures to be up soon..
Today is the first day of classes for me! Classes actually started yesterday, but since I don't have any classes Monday's or Friday's (and only a night class on Wednesday's) they start today. I love my schedule, it's soo nice! This year I'm taking AI (I've already read the first 3 chapters and class hasn't even started yet..), Real-time OS (I'm pysched for this one too), Graph Theory, Pysch 101 and Econ 101.
OH! I've also added some more jokes as well as some more math jokes! Go check them out.. and don't forget to email me any good ones that you know!
Later!
May 7, 2001: Today's my last day in Waterloo.. if you're interested in my bike trip (and who isn't?) my updates will be on my bike trip page and not here in my ramblings.. updates will be infrequent, but very interesting to check back often! Have a good summer y'all, I know I wil!
April 14, 2001: So in keeping up with my almost monthly updates here's another one!
Life is decent. Busy though. Wrote three of my five exams so far, my nice easy arts course (phil 145 - Critical Thinking) was tonight and was SO easy.. ahh good thing I'm taking 2 first year arts courses next term, it'll really help my average! :> Speaking of next term, we've already pre-registered, except this year it's called "course scheduling week". Anyhow I'm taking Real-time Operating Systems (arguable the hardest cs class), Artificial Intelligence, Graph Theory, Psychology 101 and Economics 101.. a nice balance!
So I'm pretty pysched about real-time.. I hope it lives up to my expectations! I really enjoyed OS this term, though I'm kinda disappointed with the marking of the last assignment (implementing filesystems). While many groups couldn't get anything to work (ie: you can't even run a program) they still ended up with marks like 60% and 72% from design/testing documents. Now that's all and well, however my group had everything working on our tests, they said they found some bugs, but none-the-less it was feature complete. Our documents were the usual last-minute rush, but were still pretty good. Anyhow, we ended up with an 81%, and while I realize that's a good mark, I don't think it was what we deserved relative to the performance of the rest of the class. Anyhow, I'll stop my bitching now. Before I leave the topic of OS though, I set a new personal record for time in the lab! If you don't already think I'm a geek you can skip this next sentence if you want to keep your current image of me. I spent 22 hours straight (minus dinner and breakfast) in the lab working on OS!
I've got my bike now! It's a Specialized Sirrus Sport with Shimano Deore components! Pretty sweet I tell ya! So much better than my old bike. Anyhow, Joel and I took a trip down to MEC in Toronto last week and bought tons of stuff for the trip.. panniers, pot set, stove, clothes, etc. Hopefully I'll get some returns out of MEC this year since I spent all that money! As I kinda expected I still haven't been doing as much riding as I would have liked to have done by now. Although on my last ride I found that I was less out-of-shape than I thought I was. After exams I'll be hanging out here for 5 days so hopefully I'll get lots of riding in then. Today I installed my bike computer so now I can tell you exactly how far I ride every day (if it's not too embarassing).. ooh, exciting!
In my free time I've been working on implementing the A-star pathfinding algorithm, as well as a modified version that is super-optimized for maps that contain large areas of uniform cost. I think I'll call it A-Bud-star! Nah, maybe not. When I get it working better, and more importantly, if I get the time before I fly out I'll try to write up a quick paper on it and post it to the site, but don't hold your breath.
Yup, so as if you're still reading this after all that blabbing I just did! Well here's your reward!
Mar 4, 2001: Well, it's been a cRaZy 2 months since my last rambling.. I've been bogged down with school work actually. :<
This term I've been trying to keep up with my swing dancing, but I always seem to miss every second lesson, then afer trying to lerarn two weeks worth of moves in one week I end up forgetting them all! Oh well.. I've also been spending a LOT of time in the computer labs at school, my two CS classes (Operating Systems (CS 354) and Algorithms (CS 341)) have been taking up more time than expected. However I did end up getting the best mark in my whole class on the OS midterm! :>
I've also got a house for next year. I'm living with another couple, Sarah and Rod (and me and Vicki). We're actually living in the house right between Sarah's old house and Vicki's old house! Weird..
Ummm.. took a bike maintenance course yesterday.. five hours of intense learning.. but it'll be worth it when I don't get stranded out in the middle of nowhere on my cross-Canada bike trip this summer! Speaking of which I'm planning on buying my bike in the next couple of weeks (as last year's stuff is on sale now).
In the bad news department, EA Australia isn't hiring any co-ops in the forseeable future, so that plan is shot. Oh well, I'll think of something else cool to do!
Anyhow, my OS beckons me to keep working on it (it's due tomorrow). Later!
Jan 6, 2001: HAPPY NEW YEAR! Yeah, so I was a little late on that one but oh well.. I had a good holday this year, even though it was only 13 days long thanks to my postponed exam. Check out my picutres from Christmas in Toronto!
School seems decent this year, although some of my profs seem to suck more than usual (is that possible?). Ooh! For Christmas I got a Handspring Visor Deluxe! It's crazy cool! I've already gone through a set of batteries (which last 2 months under "normal" use), but it's great.. I've started putting all my appointments/to do lists/phone numbers on it and it's already helping me keep track of the things I have to do! I haven't hooked it up to my computer yet (to get my full list of phone numbers) since I still have to upgrade to Windows98 to use the USB cradle, but I have the Win98 CD so soon I'll get around to that.
Other than that, I've started (again) a strict workout schedule so that I'll be in shape for my cross-Canada bike trip this summer.. that and DFA is slowly coming along, we had our first meeting the other day which went pretty well.. we've decided to get all formal and do code reviews and technical design documents. Hopefully this will help to reduce development time and look great on a resume!
There's also a new math joke! Made up by my dad!
Dec 14, 2000: Lately we've been having little Scrabble(tm) contests in my house.. (shut up, it's a good way to procrastinate studying!) Anyhow, I just got 99 points with one word! :> It was with "folkies" (+50 for using all 7 letters), which was on a triple word score, and matched up to make "waives" (with the "s"). Just thought I'd let the world know about my accomplishment!
On a more scholastic note, I had my cs370 (Numerical Computation) exam yesterday, which went much better than expected! I also had my stats230 (Probability) exam this morning, which went ok. It'll go even better if they bell it.. :>
And now I'm doing more work on DFA.. writing some input handling/translation routines (translating keys to in-game commands, etc).
Dec 12, 2000: Today is the day of my first exam this term! Well it's supposed to be anyhow.. there was a large snow storm last night and now the school is closed. At first I was like "whoopie"! But then I realized that this means the exam was postponed until Dec 22.. two days after I was supposed to be home relaxing.. if any of my exams were going to be postponed I was hoping for my cs370 (Numerical Computation) exam tomorrow to be postponed. Oh well.. the prudent thing to do with this extra day would be to study, however I've been itching to do some more programming on DFA (the video game my friends and I are making), as it's finally starting to get work done on it! Besides from that, I've just been studying a LOT. I usually don't study overly much, but this term I had exams scheduled for Dec 12, 13, 14, 16, 20. With my hard ones on the 12, 13, 14.. so I've been in the library stuyding for 6-8 hours a day since last Tuesday! Anyhow, that proved to have it's drawbacks.. as I studied for the one that was supposed to be today (c&o 350) early last week, and have promptly forgot most of it already.. :/
The other day I recieved my copy of NBA Live 2001 for the Playstaion in the mail! I didn't work on this game directly (I worked on the PC and PS2 versions), but it's good to have a game that I _almost_ made! I can't wait to get the real thing!
I'm outta here.. (but I've been really bored lately studying, so I'll be back soon!)
Nov 5, 2000: Well... how time flies! Midterms are now over (finally).. and I did good in all but one of my classes.. a record low in fact! I've decided to try and stay on top of the material for the rest of the term, but we'll see how that goes. Asides from that course though I lucked out on a few questions here and there and managed to do alright. Althought after one of the others we thought we all failed and went on a $150 binge that ended up with me and some friends walking home from the 'rippers at 3am 'cause we had no money for a taxi.. ahh good times!
It's also my 2 year anniversary in a week! Whoo hoo! I have yet to buy a present, but I went shopping today and have some ideas.. I can't put them up here though 'cause Vicki might read this before next week.. ahh, it's not like anyone goes to this page!
Ok, well I'm outta here..
Oct 22, 2000: Today was a new experience: I went paint-balling! After wanting to go for quite sometime I finally got around to it.. it was good times. A little on the expensive side so I won't be doing it all the time, however the bruises make the experience last all that much longer. Definately something worth trying.
On the other side of things.. midterms are up this week, I have three and then one next week (whoo hoo, only 4 midterms!). Marks this year have been a little less than ideal, but they are picking up (in some of my courses anyhow, still have a few that suck).
The game that I'm making with some friends at university has FINALLY kinda got started! Go check it out: http://dfa.sourceforge.net
Anyhow I'm sore and tired and should be studying so I'm outta here...
Oct 2, 2000: Yup, well I'm back into the swing of things. Literally! I joined the UW Swing Club! It's good to be dancing again..
Classes are alright so far.. I'm handling the work load ok. Since I've been here I transferred from SJA Division 304 to Division 89 (the KW Region) and have done a few duties with them.. it seems pretty good, they let me drive the ambulance!
MathSoc is, as usual, on my agenda. Last meeting we OKed the budget.. there's been funner times fer sure!
The kegger last weekend with my frosh group went alright.. didn't quite finish it all, so I may stop by and help Steve finish it tonight. Ryan, from Kingston, also came down last weekend.. it was good to see him again!
Oh! My friend Alistair came down two weeks ago because he had something to ask me; I'm now the best man at his wedding! The wedding isn't scheduled until May 5, 2001, but that's good as it'll give me time to think of something to say for my speech!
Sept 11, 2000: zzz... ughh.. just waking up! Frosh week was the usual ball of fun and as usual many sleepless nights were involved. My Frosh were great and I had an great time! :>
Classes started today. I only fell asleep in 2 (of 4) today! :> Off to a good start! Anyhow, I know people in all my classes so I know who to get help from.. the party scene seems decent here too! I was a little worried about that since this is the opposite stream than I'm used to, but no worries.. already I have 3 keggers lined up for the next two weeks (and I was invited to one this past weekend)!
Sept 1, 2000: Well.. it has finally come down to my last day here at EA.. seems like just yesterday I fly out here.. *sniff* Anyhow I've updated my pictures page with some pics from an EA basketball game. Enjoy!
Aug 30, 2000: In another unprecedented update (3 in 10 days!) I've started to add another page! This one is for jokes. Yeah, there's not much there now, but the possibilites are endless now that I've expanded past math jokes!
Aug 29, 2000: Nothing much to say. Three days, 6 hours, 54 minutes until I fly home.. but who's counting? :>
You may have noticed my new picture (on my About Me page).. it was made by a nice artist at EA. He's a cool guy, but you have to watch out or he'll use his kickboxing on ya!
Aug 20, 2000: Yeah baby yeah! A new picture is up! Go check it out.. I also just had a look at the teams for Frosh Week this year.. I'm on team Tango with some other coolios like Ken and Nory! Less than two weeks now until I fly back home and seeing the Frosh Week stuff has got me really excited to blow this pop stand.. Righto, well I should get going and start my work report. Take 'er easy!
Aug 16, 2000: Ouch! Ok, so maybe I should update my page more often! What can I say? Well.. a bunch has happened since May.
1) Vicki came down to visit again! :> It was good to see her.. we went out to the beach, up Grouse Mountain, watched a whole bunch of movies, and just enjoyed each other's company.
2) Took Joel (my roommate) out for his 21st birthday.. stayed at the bar for 6 hours.. walked home for 3.. all in all a good night I'd say!
3) Worked.. and worked some more..
4) Been doing some more St. John Ambulance Brigade stuff.. I worked at 2 of the Symphony of Fire fireworks competitions -- they were the best fireworks I've seen! Much better than the Montreal Symphony of Fire! I also worked at the Abbotsford Internation Air Show last weekend.. fun times.. nothing too serious, the most I had was a few sprained ankles and heat exhaustion. But that's a good thing I suppose..
5) Started doing some more planning with my Waterloo friends for our "3D Tank Game". We opened a site on SourceForge called "Death From Above". Right now I'm allocated to doing the AI and scripting stuff so I've been investigating different scripting languages and looking into a lot of general game design docs..
6) There's finally NEW MATH JOKES!!! So, only 17 more days until I fly back to Ontario! It went FAST! Wow.. seems like just last week I was walking through the slushy snow from the hotel on my first day of work.. ahh.. memories!
May 25, 2000: Ok, so as you can probably tell, after my initial fun of creating my page I've slacked off and done nothing too it for a few months. What can I say? I actually started moving it all over to use tables instead of frames, and I'm almost done, but I haven't put it up yet. When I get some free time I'll do it (don't hold your breath!). It's such a pain to get Netscape and IE displaying the tables the same.. grrr.. oh well.
My sister was down visiting me for last week. That was good times. Whenever I get around to updating my page I'll scan in some of the pictures I took while she was down and put them up here. Anyhow, I'm at work now and should probably get back to that.. Cheers!
Mar. 21, 2000: Well I finally found the scanner at work so check out all my new pictures! They are from when Vicki came down to vist..
Life is going well. Stuff at work is coming together, though I still have dependencies on people that aren't getting filled anytime soon!! grrr..
I've also decided to join the St. John Ambulance Brigade, so I have to go get me some uniform-type clothes. That sucks 'cause I lost my black shoes in the move here, so now I gotta get more.. there's some more cash down the drain!
I'm also going to take a week off and fly back to Ontario at the end of April! While I'm there a bunch of my university friends' and I are going camping in Algonquin Park! Sweet stuff, I haven't been on a real (sorry Claire) camping trip for years!