twenty-five seconds of silence

burstiness

so my boss came in and talked to me. he said that i need to be less "bursty" at work, i.e. i need to stop doing nothing for a long time, and then "bursting out" code. better, he says, to be doing small amounts of work the entire time i'm in the office.

hm. it seems there are more eyes on me in the office than i'm aware of. i feel like big brother is watching me!

on one hand, i'm glad he's looking out for me. but i am by nature bursty, and it's hard to change that aspect of my working method. it's just the way i operate!

afternoon ramblings

so my brother was rejected by stanford. i'm sort of bummed, sort of pissed. but then again, i feel bad for my parents if they have to foot his tuition at stanford... that's a lot of dineros!

so in the end, i think he'll come out to california. either berkeley, ucla, or davis. not sure what he's thinking, though. i think he has a lot of online friends in LA, which may sway his decision. but i think my dad's pushing hard for berkeley. sigh.

i had beef again today. pepperoni on the giovanni's pizza. *fingers crossed*

i have a terrible case of writer's block, both in terms of blogging and coding. when i try to do either, my brain just goes bonkers and starts racing, but blankly. i wonder what's up with my head.

anybody know where to get a good massage in the south bay? and i'm not talking about "happy endings" either. i'm talking about a really good, therapeutic deep tissue massage. i am in bad need of one. i usually go to this chinese acupuncture place, but the woman is booked up through next week.

damn, though. it would have been nice to have my bro at stanford. i would have visited him frequently, and he'd have a place to do his laundry for free, etc. and what is UP with my parents (read: dad) forcing him to apply for chemical engineering? ick!

but i did get some coding done today. so i feel good about that. *flex* it was hard, though, getting started... i didn't get around to beginning until well after lunch. like i said, i have writer's block.

ok, i need to write an e-mail to my parents telling them to be rational and stuff regarding my brother's college decision.

morning report

not a good night of tv last night. first, the stanford women lost by 2 points to tennessee, which was a bummer. i really don't know what the team is going to do next year without nicole powell. and second, john stevens did a CRAPPY job at singing "my girl." it was bad enough to get him voted off tonight.

to compensate for getting up an hour earlier to go to work, i've been sleeping earlier. so much for getting less sleep, eh? although, i have to say, i have been savoring sleep much more. it's the one time when i don't tic for an extended period of time. it's nice. and peaceful.

other than that, not much to report today. i am tempted to get a massage, now that both sides of my neck/shoulders hurt.

oh, and i hit 185.0 flat this morning. i weigh myself naked in the mornings, but i'm always a bit apprehensive because the scale is in alan's bathroom, and i'm afraid that somebody will be there when i saunter over in the buff. hehe.

so march is almost over. i strongly hope that once this month is gone, i'll start to get better. i know, it's a silly thought, but i'm just getting a bit desperate.

tuesday randoms

the only interesting thing i read last night was that a beaver can chew through a 6-inch diameter tree in 15 minutes. now that's some strong fucking teeth!

anyways, very little going on in my head today. i've spent most of it contemplating now to do this stupid egress thing i have to code.

my nose hurts. i hope it's not broken. damn me and my big honker! for a while there, i was excreting these nasty dark red bloody boogers.

i hit 185 yesterday.

i think i'm going to go home early today, get some magazine reading done, and watch the stanford women's game. they're playing #1 seeded tennessee, a regular ncaa women's powerhouse, so best of luck to the cardinal women!

i think i've officially burned out of my job. the biggest problem with that is the fact that i still have some difficult shit to do.

i am worried about my appetite. i'm just not hungry these days, especially after exercising (like today). so far, i've had a cup of ramen, a coke, and a peanut butter cup. i wonder if my diet is exacerbating my tourette's. hey, it's a possibility!

anyways, i RESOLVE to do a shitload of coding tomorrow. mind over matter, eh?

so long! hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

i hate my job

is it bad that i'm hoping for a nervous breakdown so i can get out of work? :/

i realized today that in every single file of code that i generate, i have the number 69 in there. ha! you see, i separate my code with these comment bars, i.e.

/****...****/

and the number of asterisks i put in there is always 69. neat-o!

thank goodness for the emacs ctl-u function. hehe.

calgone take me away!

anybody want to trade places with me?

anyways, tonight, _24_ resumes. which doesn't really mean anything to me, because i don't watch the show. but my roommates do, so i wonder what i'll be doing from 9-10pm. i will, however, occupy the tv from 8-9 because of _american idol_. go john stevens!

i am in a procrastinating mood today. and it's bad. i keep on indulging myself with sunflower seeds and cigarettes. i gotta do some work! *pukes*

the more i think about it, the more i think i'll want to be on a management track. that way, i don't have to do anything. i think i'm tired of coding. i've been doing this for what, 7 years now? it's time to move onto something else. i just wonder what that "something else" is.

i wanna be a sportscenter anchor. last night, they had the winner play for his salary. basically, they gave him a base salary of $70K, and for every answer tha the got right, he got an extra $5K. he got five questions right, giving him the ripe respectable paycheck of $95K a year. damn! i'd like to be in his shoes!

vanity

during the last "throwaway" game of basketball, i ran nose-first into a guy on my team. smashed my nose into his head.

so after i fell down and gathered my thoughts, the first thing that came to mind was, "AM I HORRIBLY DISFIGURED??!!"

i felt this liquid coming out of my nose, and without hesitation, i stuck my finger in there. it was all bloody and shit.

sigh.

cialis and boner drugs

hehe. i wonder what it feels like to have a boner for FOUR hours, like they warn you about in the cialis ads. what if you have sex and shoot your wad? do you still remain hard? what a problem!

are there drugs out there (illegal ones) that make you unreasonably horny? one of my ex's got frisky when she was drunk, and she's like grab me in compromising places in public. but, we rarely did anything about her sexually spunkiness... because she'd wind up passing out eventually. ha!

but, yeah, i guess it's true that alcohol (among other things) can lower your inhibitions. the only one-night stand that i had when was i was completely blitzed, and i just led this girl into my room and got it on. i'm not proud of it, though, because i had to face her the next morning, when we decided to keep it under wraps and never do it again. stupid stupid me.

more randoms

mondays seem to be my nail-biting days. i guess i'm just used to relaxing all weekend long, and the sudden infusion of work stress causes me to "trim" my fingernails orally.

ever since i've been waking up "early" (that's a relative term, i know), i've been waking up frequently at night to roll over and check the time. i guess i like to know how much more sleep i can get, although the actual waking up sort of defeats the purpose, huh?

i've been having a lot of boogers lately. i wonder what's up with my nose. it's generating salty gooey waste on hyperdrive!

i actually refrained from a cool purchase while i was at fry's yesterday. i spied this pair of sony (i buy everything sony) headphones that were white with ORANGE REFLECTORS! neat! i picked them up, gazed at them lovingly, and put them back. yep. i exercised self-control!

i saw a girl over the weekend with firm, delectable breasts.

i'm still in disbelief that vh1 picked beyonce as the #1 top hottie. then again, i don't have a replacement person in mind. hm. who would your pick be?

what's funny about the show is that they interviewed various people about their opinions on the so-called "hotties," and one woman who kept on appearing was jenna jameson. i guess when you want to talk about sex, you go to a porn star for some well-respected thoughts? is that the thinking? porn star = believable, certifiable sex guru?

i am itching to play some golf.

hm. not much happening today.

attitude

if i were on _the apprentice_, i'd get fired right away.

now, can you guess the reason?

well, if you said "well, 'cuz he can't handle stress," you'd get partial credit. but i think the better answer is, "'cuz he has such a fucking negative attitude about things." ha!

i've noticed that things have changed since i started working back in '97. back then, i treated everything with a "can do" attitude. nowadays, i think about a problem, and since i am more experienced with design, i can usually easily illuminate what the hard parts are. and that makes me not want to do the task given to me.

lame, huh?

and the added problem is, i'm like the boy who cried wolf. i've complained numerous times about something being a pain in the ass to code, but for some reason, it's never turned out that bad, so i finish it quickly and then announce that i'm done. so now, when i'm faced with something truly hard, my complaints aren't taken seriously. *RAAR*

monday randoms

hm. it's hard to share stuff when there's nothing to share, you know what i mean?

in any case, my latest cam pic shows my new ben sherman t-shirt! it's soft. and it was very expensive as far as t-shirts go. they're a little tight around the shoulders, but i don't mind. i do like the black/white juxtaposition, though. it's trendy stuff!

anyways, yes, i did some shopping yesterday. picked up a blue marlin t-shirt in addition to this ben sherman one. *shrug* shopping is blah for me these days because i know i shouldn't be doing it, i.e. i don't let myself get that "satisfied" feeling while doing it.

man. another monday. i am dreading meeting with my coworker to discuss the next (egress) block i'll be coding up. ick.

jay and peter were talking about vacations yesterday while hanging out at banana republic. they were discussing ecuador vs. belize vs. costa rica. and i have no interest in any of those places. i'm a city person! i like exploring first-world civilization, so i would say... paris vs. tokyo vs. london or something like that instead.

i get in these weird funks where i miss japan. but i always have to remind myself that i was sometimes terribly bored/lonely while i was there. but there's just something about that place that is... wondrous. places like shibuya, bursting at the seams with people and huge buildings and shops. exciting!

ok, i guess it's time to do some work. off to meet with my coworker!

hanging out

so let's see.. friday night, we had togo's near the movie theater. i got this 1/2 sandwich + cup of soup deal for $5, and it was not nearly enough food for me. damn, togo's 1/2 sandwiches are tiny!

we watched _taking lives_, which i thought was pretty bad. except for the brief glimpse of angelina jolie's boobs. but the movie was predictable and not special at all.

saturday, i woke up at 1. i watched part of the uconn vs alabama game, but got depressed because that's where stanford should have wound up in elite eight. so i called up mike, and we visited the brand new qcup in san jose.

this qcup is situated in a small food court, and that bright spot of the afternoon wasn't the tea (which was rather watered down) but the "german" garlic bread at the neighboring sogo bakery. shit, that was good stuff! and only $1.25!

we talked for a bit, and i headed back to watch ok state barely defeat st. joseph's. good game.

then, i headed off to paul's place to have mike's birthday dinner. it was good hanging out with the bowling crowd again, as i haven't seen them in months. we mainly just watched tv. and one of the shows was vh1's top 100 hotties, and the top 5 were:

5. johnny depp
4. britney spears
3. ashton kucher
2. angelina jolie
1. beyonce

hm. i'm not sure i agree with those picks, but hey...

sunday, peter woke me up at 11 with a phone call. we grabbed lunch at queen house, and then, i was peter's chauffeur as he got a haircut, bought a usb flash drive at fry's, went to the mall, and stopped by the med school computer lab as he did some work.

i went home, watched the stanford women narrowly beat vanderbilt (suminski's 3-pointer with 0.3 seconds on the clock!), and had some of alan's lo ba for dinner. and of course... _alias_.

weekend plans, friends with ex's

it's friday!

so, in the light of how busy i was this week at work, i failed to make any weekend plans. and the worst thing is, tomorrow, my roommates will be up in tahoe, so... hm. not sure what i'm going to do this weekend.

but then again, doing nothing (and being bored in the process) is the only way i can recharge my batteries. it's like i need a complete reset of my life in order to recover from all the stress i've been enduring. *shrug*

i sort of wonder what it's like to be friends with my ex's. i am not on good terms with any of them. but maybe it's better this way, that i have a clean separation? i mean, if i became good friends with my ex's, would i ever be tempted to get back to together with them? perhaps.

i mean, i'd like to think that there is something redeeming about all of them, and that's why i fell in love with them in the first place, right? and those qualities might probably still be there. hm.

oh well. but i have no test subjects, so i guess i'll just let this thought pass.

and besides, for those of you who are involved in relationships, you must find that not having ex's hanging around probably makes the current significant other feel better, right? best not to ruffle their feathers, i suppose.

i had an ex once, and i told her that even though we were broken up, i still wanted to shower with her. she said i was crazy. haha.

soaping up boobs is fun!

the royal penis is clean!

mandarin lunch

i'm drinking coke today because there is no dr pepper in the fridge. *RAAR*

today was the once-every-few-months mandarin lunch. that is, all the mandarin-speaking employees (there are only 5 now at our company) get together and go out and have lunch and speak the native tongue.

i was very quiet. and i didn't understand everything that the others were saying.

we were joined by an ex-employee, and it's sort of cool how simply switching the spoken language can make someone much more gregarious. i enjoyed watching his animated facial expressions as mandarin flowed from his mouth.

anyways, more later. i've got some easy coding tasks to do for the afternoon.

lack of bonding

i think i've forgotten how to socialize. i mean, last night, it was just me and alan at home; we got burritos, ate them, and after that... nothing really happened: i watched _the apprentice_ while he played starcraft.

i was hoping we'd talk more, but maybe... since we've known each other for over 10 years and nowadays see each other every day, we have nothing else to say? hm.

i think i've gotten really boring. and that really bothers me. of course, i am stressed to all hell lately, but even if i weren't, and my tourette's didn't rule me, i might be the same boring self. *RAAR*

so what *do* you talk about once everything's been said? i'm not just talking about my roommate, but i'm talking about relationships as well. i don't think i'll ever forget this one time when k1 and i ate lunch at kimball dining hall without saying a single word to each other. man, that is depressing shit!

so back to my question, i think the key is to create new memories. unfortunately, this might be a hard thing to do, given that during the week, we spend most of our time working. and if you have a job like me, you'll agree that very few stories can be crafted about a life spent in a cubicle.

thursday randoms

i was complaining (yet again) to alan and ting last night that my life for the past two weeks (and the coming few weeks, i figure) consists of nothing but work, tv and sleep.

and they were like, "what's new?"

is life *this* dreadful? i mean, as you wonderfulpup readers can tell, i just haven't been blogging well lately. and i've realized through the years that my blogging power is directly proportional to my mental well-being. sigh.

on the bright side, tomorrow's friday!

i just added another item to my wishlist. damn. so many things i want! did i tell you the last year, i made THIRTY-EIGHT purchases to amazon.com? no wonder i couldn't save up any money!

no, i'm not a camwhore, in the sense that i'm pleading for you people to buy me shit. my wishlist is just a reminder of things i would like to get someday... maybe for my birthday, i'll just pop all of those items (or half, anyway) in my shopping cart and buy them for myself.

this morning, i heard this song on wild 94.9 for the first time... it goes, "that's right... that's riiiiiigggght... party people, get on the floor." and i was like, "woah! k2 used to sing that!" you see, i thought she made it up! ha!

i miss boobs.

what's funny, though, is that movie boobs are all kinds of goodness. yet, porn boobs are just "meh." does the availability of a vagina discount the value of boobs? one wonders.

free porn?

with all the porn on the internet, there is suprising low quality when it comes to downloading it for free. go figure. my favorite piece is a 975MB mpeg of akira watase. she's cute! and she gives ramalama handjobs!

a lot of japanese porn, though, is highly violent and misogynistic. one of the most common words uttered by the girl is "itai" which means "pain." :(

but this akira watase clip that i have, though, is pretty cool. in some parts, the "doer" people keep asking each other, "kimochi ii?" which means "does it feel good?" now that's good news! :)

phase one complete

so this is part of my notebook at work. you can see the familiar things an EE hardware design knows: state diagrams (yeah, i tend to design simple state machines instead of complex ones), and waveforms. it's crazy shit, man.

my poor electric shaver is on its last legs. a whole-day charge only results in about three shaves worth of power. i hate having to go buy a new one of these so-called "necessities"... seems like an unexciting expenditure of money to me.

so the good news is that i'm done coding the ingress side of the block. feels good. the bad news, though (and it's pretty bad) is that it's untested, highly buggy, and the testbench is going to be damn hard to write. *RAAR* I WILL NOT BE THE BOTTLENECK!

i just haven't been scoring much in basketball. (and plus, today, i was very ticcy while playing.) i guess people know that i can be a streaky shooter, so they collapse on me very quickly once i get the ball. oh well. at least i made one good jumpshot today.

anyways, my mom is really worried about me. and i can't blame her; she's seen me in the midst of a full-blown tourette's/stress breakdown, which made her cry horribly in the parking lot when i saw her a few years back. i guess being a parent means worrying a lot about your kid's health. sorry, mom.

i've been half-heartedly telling people and i am unwilling to do my job for the next assignment (the egress side of the block). i am just burnt out, not having fun, and dammit, someone should listen to me!

but yeah, i feel a *little* bit of relief now that half of the coding is done.

thursday morning

god damn designing pipelines that have to stall! i hate this shit. it confuses me.

so i got up at 7:45 this morning. it fucking hurt. i drove to the tire store, dropped off my car, and walked about a mile to mcdonald's where i had breakfast and read the paper for a while before i walked back, to behold my car with with brand new spanking tires.

i think the tire noise on the road is a bit loud though. oh well.

so goodbye matt rogers from _american idol_! i didn't think he'd go (i thought camile would be booted off), and even though i don't like matt much, i thought he had a good voice, especially for opera. but i guess the show isn't out to find opera stars, huh?

man. ten more weeks of this shit, though? they should boot off more than one contestant a week.

peter came by yesterday. i felt bad that all we did was watching _the OC_ while he read magazines. i think we should have taped the show so we would actually talk to him.

the problem with getting up so early is that i smoke much more. i'm pretty much averaging a cig an hour at work because i need the de-stressing power of nicotine pretty often. so the end result is that the longer i'm at work (i.e., the earlier i get there), the more i smoke. it's terrible.

ok, off to prep for basketball. i hope i play well!

rice, laziness, food

i've been craving rice lately. and, as usual, i'm always craving pizza.

it's funny, because with the small amounts that i eat, you'd think that i'd be hungry for just about anything. but in fact, it seems that since food is so scarce and precious to my body now, i only want premium taste things in my system. ha!

the problem, though, is that you can't get rice stuff (aside from yoshinoya's) at a drive-thru. and i'm not talking about jack in the box teriyaki bowls nor taco bell bowls either. i'm all about chinese rice plates.

and yes, drive-thru's are important to me. i'm so fucking lazy that i won't get out of my car just to pick up food (although i did do it last night).

once, i drove an extra ten minutes (each way!) to the redwood city taco bell (instead of the palo alto taco bell) from stanford just because they had a drive-thru. now THAT's lazy, ha!

stupid worries

i think it's getting clear that i'm getting stupider as i get older.

which makes me wonder... if you concede that smart people worry more (because they're thinking all the time about shit), then does that mean that i'll worry less as i age?

i mean, if i just sit there by myself, i can come up with a whole slew of things to worry about... money matters, being single, terrorism, mad cow, etc.

and frankly, i'm kind of tired of it. life stresses me out, and hell, i've gotten to the point before (two march's ago) where i just couldn't deal and wanted out of life!

so this "getting stupid" thing is a sort of a good and bad thing. on one hand, work (like the stuff i have to do now) is toughter, but on the other hand, i de-stress about other silly things that i worry about.

of course, you could argue that i can get stupid, become unable to do any hard work, AND still worry about stupid shit (provided that my previous assumption was completely wrong), and then... i'm totally screwed.

work update

i think now i feel what the other engineers are going through. i.e. working non-stop. (except, of course, when i blog for you wonderpup readers)

and i gotta tell you, it really sucks.

free time! free time is such a precious thing. nowadays (meaning, this past week), i really value it, because what little free time i have, i spend trying to relax as much as possible so i don't go bonkers.

so yeah. even though it's wednesday, i'm totally looking forward to the weekend. that is, of course, if i don't have to go into the office on saturday or sunday. just to let you know, my work is going to be one of the bottlenecks to our final goal of code completion.

stubborn

i have realized that in some ways, idologically speaking (in the engineering world), i have a very closed mind.

my coworker has attempted to explain to me multiple times how he envisions i do this particular block. yet, since the idea is new to me, i can't (for the life of me) wrap my head around it. i just don't understand.

and what's worse, i came up with a way (thought slightly flawed, but hackable) to solve the problem. and now i've latched on to it, holding onto it for dear life, and it just makes me even more deaf to my coworker's ideas.

damn my intransigence!

hour by hour

man, so yesterday, i got to work at 10. today, it was 9. and tomorrow, i'll have to be at the tire shop by 8. what the fuck is this? my body is totally confused!

and hurting, too. i get morning sickness if i don't sleep enough, and apparently, 9 hours isn't enough. nothing like drinking water in the morning and puking it back up. it sure tastes different coming out.

although, last night, i didn't sleep too well. i kept on dreaming about _american idol_. btw, i do love john stevens's voice. and jasmine trias had sort of a letdown performance. but i have no idea who's going to be kicked off tonight.

i hate dreams sometimes. i mean, i *love* sleep, and for the most part, dreams are interesting, but some of them won't let you go. it's like, you'll wake up, tell yourself "oh, it was just a dream," but when you fall back asleep, it grips you again in its own alternate reality. and when these episodes are full of anxiety, that's bad news.

i have a feeling tonight's _OC_ will be bad, i.e. forgettable. who cares about a paris hilton cameo?

i hate feeling weak and stupid. *RAAR*

brain blip

erasers are amazing. they *erase*! they take all of your thought and your actions, and undo them. pretty remarkable, if you ask me.

i forget who it was, but one painter made a piece of art by simply buying another guy's work and erasing it. how about that!

tuesday randoms

i wonder if there are jobs out there where they go, "if you're not having any bit of fun doing what you're doing, then we'll assign you another task." that would be awesome. but maybe i'm dreaming. yeah, most likely, i'm dreaming.

anyways, i'm curious how my sleeping pattern will change (if at all) after this week at work. alan says after a week, i'll get adjusted and stuff. hm. will this affect my ability to sleep into the pm on weekends? the suspense!

i think i should start eating normally again. weak nourishment plus loads of stress equals a breakdown waiting to happen.

is anybody getting interesting spam out there? the two most common types of spam i get are 1) penis/sexual performance drugs and 2) online pharmacy offers. and occasionally, the nigeria scam. but where are the porn spam ads? i want to see!

i know, i know. i shouldn't be asking for more spam.

i like it when eric sends me unprompted picture messages. from the looks of his latest one, he's shaved his head! it looks good dude!

honestly, aside from work and sleep, i haven't been doing much lately. i don't think i've ever been this busy before, and i have to tell you, IT FUCKING SUCKS. no time to think about girls, even! now *that's* saying something!

i will tell you this, though... i now appreciate my free time much more. it's funny how we take things for granted.

yellow

as far as gross factor goes, shit beats urine hands down. i mean, i've smelled my own piss before, and it's not that bad. but in _jackass: the movie_, ehren makes a yellow snowcone (i.e. a snowcone soaked with his own urine), and he tries to eat it. he winds up puking all over the place.

hm. is a yellow snowcone that gross? would i puke if i ate it? i guess i'll just have to see someday.

so the receive side of my monster block #1 is coded. but that's not really saying much, because that's the far easier side of the block. i'm sitting here, trying to thinking of how to architect transmit side, and my mind is just racing, panicking. man!

so when it rains, it pours. the CTO asked everyone today to get to work this week between 8:30 and 9am. what the hell? doesn't he know that i need my beauty/sanity sleep? ridiculous!

anyways, i think my pc muscles are getting weak. when i take a leak standing up (i.e. at a urinal), i always wind up dribbling some stuff out onto my boxers. no matter how much i shake or squeeze or hop up and down, there's *invariably* something left! what a problem!

which is why i thought of the yellow snowcone today.

maybe i should do kegel exercises. *clenches*

woe is me

my first boss (back at TL) once said that it's good to hire new college grads because "they don't know what's impossible." i.e. they can do stuff that more experienced people can't. i know this is a slight stretch, but it rings true for me.

the problem with me these days is that i've done enough design to know what's hard and what's easy. and when i run into something that's hard, i start getting afraid. it's sort of like what happened with me and skiing... the fear just consumed me to the point of paralysis.

and that's where i am with this coding. i'm working on the hardest block i've been assigned here at GF, and it's killing me. i just sit at my cube and stare at my monitor.

the last time this happened, i was at V, and i was so afraid of coding that i forced myself on a wednesday to pull an all-nighter. the weekend before, i went out and bought a $300 yellow and black north face sleeping bag. and i took it with me to work on that fateful wednesday, coded until 4am, and crashed.

i sure hope i don't have to do that again.

burning sensation

i left the house twice yesterday. the second time was to get dinner. and the first was to stop at safeway and get some icy hot.

are you guys familiar with icy hot? it's this gel or waxy stuff that you put on your body, and it just burns. it's allegedly supposed to roast away the soreness in your muscles if you are achy and stuff. and being sort of achy all the time, i thought this would be a good thing to have.

my roommates smelled the stuff on me when we were watching _alias_, and alan mentioned two places to never apply icy hot: 1) your balls. and 2) your armpits.

hm. perhaps he has experienced both of them? and said experience was traumatizing? hehe.

anyways, back when i was a kid, we used to have tiger balm, which was a similar kind of substance. and there was yet another similar ointment called "white lotus" or something like that.

well, i had read somewhere that applying tiger balm to one's penis would produce a fantastic sensation. so i took the white lotus and spread it on my shaft. and it FUCKING BURNED. and looking back, it was even more painful than when i got a blowjob from a girl who had just eaten indian curry!

anyways, i had to hop in the shower and stay there for half an hour while the balm worked itself off of my schlong. but boy howdy! it was one of the most painful half hours that i've ever had.

coding jitters

i should be more stressed out than i actually am. is that bad?

yoshinoya's just ain't yoshinoya's without their beef stringies. i got their chicken & vegetables today, and the whole thing just left me wanting more. damn those stupid prions!

back to talking about work... i'm usually pretty good about breaking up complicated tasks into much smaller, easily-solvable ones. i think that's my "gift" so to speak. but the problem is, some problems are just gargantuan, and modularization isn't very apparent. and that's where i'm stuck today. and it really sucks.

so the thing is, most tasks don't scare me. but, once in a while (like today), i am face to face with something that does frighten the bejeezus out of me. the last time this happened, i went out and bought a sleeping bag because i knew i'd be coding all night long. shit, i hope history doesn't repeat itself.

it sucks to live in fear. work should NEVER do that to somebody.

one monkey, a million years

when it think about it, i find it mind-boggling that we can put together "arbitrary" letters and numbers and random punctuation together and create something amazing. something like a brilliant novel, a beautiful poem, or, in my case, a chip that actually performs a useful (and hellafucking complicated) function.

now, i'm at the beginning of putting such letters, numbers, etc. together, and i find it rather daunting. why? because i don't know how to even begin to assemble these things together!

blog #100

i have liz phair's "extraordinary" stuck in my head. why? because it's the theme song for espn's presentation of the ncaa women's basketball tournament.

what's sort of silly is that the next line in the lyrics (which they obvious don't feature) is:

average everyday sane psycho

ha!

so work is going to get very busy for the next few weeks. against my wishes, i got assigned this crazy packet mode transfer block. it'll be a doozy, and i just shudder when i think of how complicated it's going to be. sigh. i SO need a vacation from all this coding!

so yeah, the college basketball season is over for me. i'm gonna miss talking about it with my friends, and hanging out at spoons (thought their food is mediocre) with yuji and company. all the hype and excitement? gone.

getting to work at 10pm today was pretty painful. i wish i could tell my superiors that i *need* the extra sleep because i have a "medical" condition, but i don't think it would fly.

mondays do suck, don't they? i have very little to look forward to on mondays, except sleeping during the night. there's nothing on tv, even, when i get home, and i spend my nights reading my magazine, which is such a fucking chore sometimes.

i have to admit that i've been feeling down lately. not nervous breakdown-down, but i've noticed several times during the past few days that i've been very listless and sort of morbid at times when i've been by myself. the good news is, though, that i know i've been through this before, and that i'll most likely get out of it just fine. eventually. but right now, things just aren't very fun.

choking cardinal

so friday night, we had korea house (i got spicy bbq pork) and headed off to the movie theater to watch _spartan_ on my recommendation. hey! i thought david mamet made good movies (_wag the dog_, _the spanish prisoner_), but... man, this one was pretty bad.

saturday, i woke up at 1:55pm, and headed over to watch the debacle of 2004: of course, you guessed it, stanford, #1 team in the nation, losing to #8 seed alabama after leading by 13 with 7 minutes go to. what a choke/meltdown!

i wish i could come up with a good reason why we lost, but it was just a terrible performance in the end. we fouled way too much, we couldn't score, etc. *sigh*

afterwards, howie, yuji and i went to shoot some hoops ourselves to get some aggression out, and that was fun. we played various games, like horse, around the world, free throw contest, 3-pointer contest, free throw streak.

apparently, alan had a plan to break me and my beef avoidance, so he got some fred's steak. and what did i do? I ATE IT! yep. i had beef. but just this once. we invited betty over to help us tackle the 4 pounds of meat, along with the huge salad she brought.

sunday was moping day. i watched basketball from the moment i woke up to about 7pm. the fact that the overall #1 seed (kentucky) lost as well made me feel a *bit* better. i had two arby's chicken sandwiches for dinner, watched _alias_, and that was it. a good day of doing nothing.

how are my tics doing? they're still there, but they hurt slightly less. so maybe i'm on the road to recovery? hm. i wouldn't bet on it.

peace, bro

i think the reason why i like being at home so much is because it's peaceful.

i'm big on peace.

and i haven't felt it in a while.

two years ago this month, i went through a crazy panic attack. i was jittery all night, and when i tried to go to sleep, i felt electric; i literally flopped around in my bed like a fish, screaming, too!

and after about an hour of feeling like i was going to explode, i suddenly felt a clearing, sort of like running frantically through a dark jaggedy forest and suddenly coming across a peaceful lush, green meadow with the sun blazing overhead. it was a beautiful thing to behold.

and that's what i'm missing right now. i feel no peace. and dammit, i want some!

warning

yeah, i'm still here. just been busy with shit. i got admonished for coming into work so late, so i guess i'm going to have to start getting here before 10am. which is NO EASY TASK!

i feel bad for my boss. he must get a lot of shit for not managing me well, you know, "dardy the rogue employee."

anyways, i had a good lunch at thai basil in sunnyvale, and after that, i got hit with multiple assignments at work. i guess the stress ain't over yet! i'll be hitting the coding full blast starting next week.

aside from that, nothing much going on. i'm sort of anxious to start my whole "grand weekend of nothingness," but i'm also worried that it's not going to help my stress level any, and i'll be just as ticcy after it's all over.

ok. sorry, though, for the lack of blogging. shit, i haven't even had time to check my daily blog reading list!

pre-dinner

sorry for the dearth of blogging. i've been gone most of the afternoon, so when i got back, i had to start busting on some residual codework to be done ASAP.

so do you guys remember the birthdays and anniversaries of your ex's? i mean, from the pressure of making those days special, shouldn't those dates be firmly imprinted into your brain? hehe.

personally, i don't think i'll ever forget 12/7 or 9/10 or 2/19-2/20 or 1/8.

cool! i'm meeting ben for dinner tonight. i haven't seen that guy in ages, it'll be good to hang out with him, and over good giovanni's pizza no less! (though, gotta remember: no pepperoni)

my right arm feels like it's about to separate at the shoulders. damn, my muscles ache and twinge from the tics. ouch!

hungry. lunch consisted of some appetizers from the irish pub where i watched the game. pizza will do just the trick.

down to 186.2 now.

i'm still looking for my big news of 2004. last year, i had the chow yun-fat photo shoot, the weight loss contest/naked picture exchange, the courtship of BR girl, the big east coast tour, all before the first half of 2003.

GIVE ME SOME JUICE!

thursday randoms

so yeah. we won. it was a little scary when they came within 6 points of us. but then we went on like 20-0 run or something in the course of the next 10 minutes.

bring on alabama!

as of this morning, i had taken 3 dumps in 8 hours. my sphincter was getting very raw, and wiping was a pain in the ass, literally!

anyways, i'm looking forward to the weekend, even though i have no plans. well, i do have a plan, but that involves nothing. nothing except watching the tournament.

this is the first time in 3 years that i haven't been off from work during the beginning of the ncaa tournament. two years ago, i was all suicidal and shit, so i took off a week of work. and last year, i was on my east coast tour (boston, dc, nyc), and i have fond memories of watching the basketball games naked in stef's apartment. and with pizza!

i wonder how much of my aggregate stress is tied to how well the stanford men do. so in a sense, i sort of want march madness over with. just give us the championship so i can chill out! hehe.

so now at the apartment, we get _fhm_ *and* _maxim_. i dunno. fhm seems to be a direct knockoff of maxim, and the women aren't as famous or attractive. but it makes for curious bathroom reading, that's for sure. alan loves a magazine deal when he sees one!

not warm enough

i have been using three blankets when i sleep. and apparently, i need the top (and thickest) one. two is not enough.

so i don't know about you, but when my stomach is exposed (or cold) when i sleep, i wind up getting diarrhea. yep.

so at 3am last night, i felt this bubbling feeling in my stomach. sort of like this impending doom. so i immediately sprang out of bed and hopped on the toilet. and i wound up sitting there for 20 minutes, alternating burning diarrhea and fizzy farts. pop fizz. *splooot* pop pop fizz.

man!

so i went back to bed, but not before putting on a pair of boxers. so for the first time in years, i slept part of the night non-naked. sigh.

and yes, as i realized, i still need that third layer of blankets.

it's a shame

that the one they kicked off last night (on _american idol_) was leah labelle. i found her rather attractive, when she had straight hair! and, as ting said, "she has a nice body."

of course, she didn't sing very well, but still... now the sole eye candy of the show is gone.

overdosing

eating a lot of junk today. first was a cup o'noodles, followed by a grape jelly sandwich, a small box of cinnamon toast crunch, one peanut butter cup, and now a snickers kudos bar. damn these useless calories!

i'm sort of excited about my new tires. supposedly, they're quieter than the michelin ones. fancy that! a smoother, quieter ride!

a little less conversation, a little more action please
all this aggravation ain't satisfactioning me

here's a short (maybe incomplete) list of food that i've overdosed on:

1) prunes. ate a bag and spent the rest of the day on the shitter with diarrhea.
2) milk. i drank about a half gallon during dinner and once again, diarrhea.
3) gummy bears. ate half a 3-pound tub and puked in colors of the rainbow.
4) winter melon candy. ate a small tub and puked again
5) garlic. ate a clove raw, and it burned a hole in my stomach all night.

as you can notice, most of the results involve excrement from some orifice or another. and the motto, as expected, is: MODERATION IS KEY.

i guess i should add:
6) haldol (an antipsychotic med). i started hearing things and kept falling down.

yeah. drugs are amazingly powerful things. all i had was like 4mg!

complaining and stress

hm. i've got 90 posts (not including this one) and 96 comments. i'm trying to keep a 1:1 ratio, so that means i've got a lot more posts to write! don't think i'm going to make up for it today, though. :)

i know what eric means about complainy, whiny people getting really annoying. i am one of those whiners. or at least, i have been in the past, and i certainly have the potential to be one in the future.

the thing is, not only is whining annoying, it causes more stress. and being a blatant walking ticcing barometer of stress, i can tell you with 100% certainty that stress is bad for you. seriously, it'll *kill* you eventually, moreso than a bad diet or not exercising enough.

i'm not sure if i can help being who i am, though... my grandmother on my mom's side, along with my mom, are just nervous jittery people. they exude this unmistakable unanxiety when you see them. and i, too, follow in their footsteps, but in a majory amplified way.

sometimes i wonder if i'd be better off getting a frontal lobotomy. of course, i say this facetiously, but i do appreciate the fact that if i just stopped worrying about shit, then i'd be much happier. and little things like an ice cream cone or a chirping bird would make smile.

randoms

so today's task (verifying the learningProcessor changes) and tomorrow's task (verifying the MPLS ECO) are both done now. but i'm not telling anyone, and i'm just going to chill for the rest of the day.

no tennis today. sorry byron! last week, i was extra ticcy during our tennis outing, (like, i'd tic during the middle of a rally, imagine that!) and it was really uncomfortable, not to mention it made my tennis game suck more than it usually does. so tonight, i'm just going to do nothing.

i sound pretty weak and pathetic, huh? well, just thank your fucking lucky stars that you don't have TS. it sucks, yes it does.

i'm planning (that's the operative word) on getting to work early tomorrow so i can take off 2-4pm to watch the stanford game. go cardinal! *cheer*

it was amusing hanging out with four cal guys last saturday night. one of them gave me a friendly "fuck you" gesture when i told him went to his rival high school. and then he proceeded to give me shit about my college. but, funny thing is, once i told him i rooted for cal as well (unless, they were, of course, playing stanford), he gave me a sign of approval. go figure.

they sure take their rivalry seriously, that's for sure.

ok, more later.

round and round

so after an hour of doing research on tirerack.com, i bought my tires. bridgestone turanza-V's.

so can anybody tell me why michelin's are so expensive? at first, i was going to just buy the stock tires that came with my car, but they turned out to be $139 a pop! hm. and they were rated far less favorably than the bridgestone's. double hm.

anyways, i have to be at the tire installation place at the ripe hour of 8am next thursday morning. damn. i might as well get them installed and then go back to sleep. sheeiit!

so that's one less source of stress for me. i've been worrying that my tires would pop while driving. *knocks on wood* and with these new ones, i'll be all set! *huzzah* it's all about minimizing stress for me these days.

wednesday blah

so. i finished my learningProcessor modifications and finished testing it out by noon today. huzzah. (it's a muted huzzah because i still feel the stress aftershocks.)

anyways, i'm glad that's over with. something about the block still bothers me, though; i have a place where i know if i change one word, i will introduce a bug, but i can't get the simulation to fail! *RAAR* shit like that hits deep.

the massage yesterday turned out to be a bust. they were extraordinarily busy, and i wound up getting a massage from someone other than my regular masseuse. it just didn't feel right, and afterwards, i got a headache! ugh. what a waste of $40.

i dropped to 186.8 today. granted, i only had a pear for lunch yesterday, and a small dinner afterwards. but now, i'm starting to wonder if my bad diet is contributing to my tics, i.e. a "bodily" sort of stress. hm. *ponder*

i need a vacation.

so _american idol_ last night was sort of tedious. i still think that john stevens's voice is very cool, despite sort of not meshing with the "soul" theme of last night. jasmine trias has got a great voice for a 17-year-old.

um, yeah. two hours in front of a tv watching people single is a bit hard to take. it reminded me of the a capella concerts that we used to go to back in school... i mean, the singing is nice and all, but two hours of it? it gets a bit tedious.

i guess yesterday was an all-time blogging low for me. only two posts! yeah, i was stressed, and after getting admonished by the VP himself (through my boss), i was just hesitant to pop up a windows browser and blog. and i was totally stressed over my learningProcessor changes too.

coding and testing hell

hey people. it's been a tough day at work. i thought i had my coding done, but i realized (in advance) this nasty back-to-back data return problem that would totally screw me over. so i've still got some code changes to do. *RAAR*

the good news is, i've got my massage appointment in half an hour. i'm totally looking forward to lying on my face (when else can you do that without the hole-in-the-head pillow?) and getting the knots in my shoulder pounded out. it'll hurt, but it'll do me some good.

anyways, i had another shart today. (i.e. when you fart, but you get shit.) i think my sphincter is all messed up, like it can't tell the difference between solid, liquid and gas anymore.

i've been so busy that all i had for lunch was a measly pear. well, maybe i'll treat myself to some good dinner (as i am very hungry even now), but i can't quite tell what i'm craving. at least, it's not taco bell (although that might be a *good* thing :).

ok, not much more to report here. this must be a blogging low for me.

gagtied

sorry guys. not much posting going on today. i've got a lot of work to do (a self-imposed deadline tomorrow), and i even have to leave early today because i finally caved in and got myself a massage appointment. my right shoulder area is KILLING me.

AND. i'm going to try to stay away from my web browser. once again, my boss told me that the VP noticed that i spend too much time on IE and too little time doing work. *blush* and that is BAD.

remember the "boss" screen in some versions of tetris? you know, you'd be playing, and when the boss comes, you punch a button and a fake spreadsheet pops up? i need one of those!

i'm a little anxious to get to my massage, though. i know it's going to hurt, but i'm hoping it does a lot to alleviate the pain. and after that... a 2-hour _american idol_!

peter came by yesterday to grab dinner with me. it was nice seeing him, because, well, i don't see him enough! we grabbed mexican food at baja fresh. despite being a chain, i dig their ultimo burrito and salsa roja.

missing

i miss my google hits. all 200 of them. sure, i'd get sick of seeing "cameltoe" pop up so many times, but still, i liked the idea that the aggregate of my verbiage counted for some socially (and pervertedly) relevant search phrases. :)

has anyone out there been to masa's before? is the food worth the $100+ price tag? how is it, say, compared to charles nob hill or gary danko?

not much random thoughts milling about my head today.

although, there's a question i want to ask an ex of mine. one time, after a romp, post-coitus, she immediately asked about a friend of mine. i mean, it was IMMEDIATE, so soon after the orgasms that i was suspicious that she was thinking about *him* rather than me during the sex. hm. *peer*

it's amazing how you can deduce what a person is thinking about by following his train of thought. for example, one time, a parent was trying to keep a secret from the family of an impending family vacation, and during the conversation, she randomly started talking about cruises. a-ha! in the end, the family member admitted that the "secret" vacation was indeed a cruise.

stuff like that. although, more subtle.

i miss valmik.

and i also miss the cheesy garlic bread lumps at red lobster. there used to be one in palo alto, but they closed it down. *RAAR* and their crab alfredo fettucini was good, too. heart attack city!

and most of, i miss feeling normal. i.e. being with tourette's. i haven't had my tics be this bad in two and a half years. for a while there, i started thinking of myself as a "reformed" touretter! but no, it all came crashing down on me again. *sigh*

monday randoms

yesterday was a test of my willpower. especially considering that i went to club monaco for the first time in a long time. like i said, i only came away with a belt; which is good, because i was eyeing a sweatshirt and a few (expensive) buttondowns. yay for me! yay for restraint!

in the end, the guilt got to me. i just couldn't justify buying the shirts, however pretty they were. i guess they weren't pretty enough! or maybe i've just moved on from club monaco to ben sherman. hm. how frustrating, having a style that's constantly changing!

i need to slim down some more, though. i'm hovering in the upper 180's. oh, and by the way, i had greasy mongolian bbq today again. (just one bowl, though). i did see one guy at another table DRINKING the grease residue at the bottom of his bowl. ICK.

it's getting light around 7am these days. i'm sort of hoping that daylight savings will kick in (or out?) really soon, so it'll get light at 8am instead. i invariably wake up at the slightest hint of light, and that's sort of a nuisance. and the bonus is... once we spring forward, it'll stay light out well into the night! i love that.

funny thing today... two people asked me why i hadn't updated my weekend blurb yet. i had no idea people noticed my posting habits! and besides, my weekends are pretty boring usually, no?

spark

i am human and i need to be loved
just like everybody else does

how easy is it to force affection? like, you meet somebody who is good on paper, so you try to like them?

i find it difficult.

but then again, there are plenty of arranged marriages in this world, right? and i'd like to think that those end up with at least a smidgeon of love, instead of two people "resigning" themselves to being together. so in those cases, the affection is sort of coerced, isn't it? and it ain't bad!

sorry, just batting around some ideas in my head, and they may not be coherent. i guess i'm sort of a first-impression kind of guy... very rarely have i ever liked someone after they fail to make a good impact on me upon first sight. and the ability of growing to like someone is something that i'm not sure i have within.

maybe i'm just a "sparky" kind of guy...

coding woes

the problem with creating a highly optimized piece of code (which i ALWAYS do, hehe) is that it's hard to make modifications to it to accomodate for new features.

for example, i have this request engine that fetches data from the RAM which does what is needed to very quickly. now, the problem is, they want me to be able to fetch a similar descriptor from an alternate, internal cache as well. what the fuck, man. that's non-trivial!

sigh.

i don't mind making new designs. that's always a fun challenge. but it's making modifications to existing (and verified) code that's a pain in the ass.

march madness begins

so do you think this is a complete JINX? stanford being named espn (and cnnsi)'s pick for the eventual national champion?

i mean, it's flattering, but...

*KNOCKS ON WOOD REPEATEDLY*

i'll be "taking off" parts of this week to watch the tournament. on thursday, i'm most likely going to meet up with the yujster to watch our first round game.

and more importantly... i'm taking off the entire weekend. not making any real social plans. i'm going to rest my ticcy neck and just watch basketball the whole weekend long.

hehehe.

part of it is out of necessity. my tics have gotten to bad that i'm nearing a nervous breakdown phase. :( and there is nothing i can do to get out of that except stay home for an entire weekend. and what better weekend than the first found of the NCAA tournament?

pulling me back

so guess what? after a month of radio silence on my part, i sent k4 an e-mail a few weeks back, not really expecting any response.

well, she e-mailed back today.

not sure what this portends, but now i'm starting to remember how attractive she was.

DAMN IT!

:/

chill, very chill

let's see here... friday night, i took off work early and headed up to millbrae to have dinner with mallory. we went to our usual pho place, but no beef for me! instead, i had a pork rice place. then i went home and caught the 2nd half of the stanford/oregon game.

saturday started out sort of frustratingly. i hung out with alan and jay and company for only 20 minutes at the rancho clarke's burger before i had to leave for spoon's to catch the stanford/washington game with yuji. but i had to jet after only fifteen minutes (i WOLFED down my mozarella sticks) to go home.

why? because at 4pm, byron picked me up, and we headed up to berkeley to try zachary's with three other cal people. i was surrounded by golden bears! i got a little bit of shit for going to their detested rival school, but it was in good fun. i'm glad. i was prepared for a lot worse.

zachary's was good. it didn't blow me away, though, but the spinach/mushroom pizza was pretty decent, better than the zachary's special, which didn't have enough flavor.

afterwards, i went home and just chilled out. i caught a 1998 episode of _iron chef_ which pitted ron siegel (of masa's and charles nob hill fame) against french iron chef sekai. ron won! i was so proud of him, being a san francisco chef and all. and one of his dishes was just like an amuse bouche that i had at charles nob hill: a soup in an eggshell on a bed of sea salt.

sunday, i caught the end of the maryland/duke ACC championship game (down down duke! boo!) in which maryland forced overtime and won. then i met up with cindy at queen house in castro. we chatted for and hour, and i went back home to catched the bracketology special on espn.

alan, ting and i went to valley fair to shop a bit (i bought an orange/silver fabric belt from club monaco), and then we met up with jay and margaret at cascal for some tapas. my food sucked, though, and it wasn't cheap, either. don't know if i'd go back.

and, of course, we watched _alias_.

and that was it!

skipping the now

stop the world
stop the world
i'm getting off

i'd like to rip-van-winkle through my life and find out how it is in a few months, or a few years.

yes, i know that's cheating. and i'd probably lose out on the satisfaction of going through the process. yes, i know it's all about the process, not the result. blah blah blah. i'm just tired of life right now!

but i think it wouldn't matter to me that much if i just pressed the hyperspace button and zoom forward in time a bit. i mean, when you find out about the final score in a sports game, do you ever want to rewatch the game? i didn't think so! if i just fast forwarded my life, i'd just be so happy with the results that i wouldn't care about how i got there.

so there. pttttb.

tictalk and hope

sorry for all this tictalk. i just mentally feel like shit these days. which is a shame, because life is good, work is going well, and the weather is beautiful.

don't take your mental health for granted! it's funny because i only know of a small handful of people whose brains are afflicted, and with all the news of mental health disorders out there, you'd think that it would be a more visible problem. but yeah. for those of you with healthy brains, you are fucking LUCKY BASTARDS.

i really should listen to more music, though. music is uplifting, among other things.

oh yeah. i might be having dinner with mallory tonight, although it will most definitely conflict with the stanford vs. oregon game at 6pm tonight. do i need to mention that i had yet another anxiety dream about basketball last night? this is becoming a regular occurence!

oh, and btw, i had a dream about an ex too. it was a weird case where real life (i.e. meeting up with another femme) collided with the dream life (i.e. the ex being upset about it). kooky!

when you say it's gonna happen now
what exactly do you mean?
see i've already waited to long
and all my hope is gone

hope is important. without it, i would just sulk and whine forever. i might not even be here, and i'm not being dramatic. so in light of that, i have things to look forward to, to get my excited.

for example, i am excited to get mr. puma jacket back. i've been wearing my paul frank sweatshirt too much, and while i lost that monkey-headed piece of clothing, i just miss the orange accents of mr. puma jacket. it's one trendy piece of apparel!

invalid

i really should cancel all my weekend plans. i mean, that's the best thing i can do for myself, because the tics are RULING me. i am hesitant to say that i am in a nervous breakdown phase, but the truth is that i probably am.

the last time this happened was two march's ago. that was a completely different episode, though; that was the big depression that i somehow fell into, where i got all morbid and suicidal and stuff. i remember that i was march because i took a week off, and i just stayed home and watched the ncaa men's tournament the whole time.

this one, however, is different. it's just a regular tourette's breakdown, and as always, it's coupled with massive pain in my shoulders and neck.

so the way it goes is this: the pain causes anxiety over the next tic. so i suppress tics, but that can only last so long. and the next tic is more explosive, and results in more pain. go to step 1. over and over again.

but, i am still trying to be social this weekend, even though the best thing for me is to stay in bed for 48 hours. i've got a zachary's expedition with byron on saturday night, and i've got brunch plans with a certain femme on sunday afternoon.

i don't want to miss either, but still, i don't know how effective i'll be socially when this nagging affliction. *RAAR*

tenzaru

i had a little taste of japan today. i haven't had cold zaru soba in the states until today, and it was good! it came with the dipping sauce, slices of green onion, and wasabi. after finish the noodles, i was smelling the sauce cup over and over, and it just reminded me of being in japan. ah. fond memories.

btw, we went to saizo (fair oaks and el camino), which was a "japanese tapas" place that didn't really serve tapas. go figure.

i have writer's block.

fursday randoms

man, not much to blog about these days. i guess i'm in a writing slump of some sort.

i just got back from the bathroom. i felt something bubbling inside, and i was afraid it was more blood, so i dashed off to the toilet. nothing but farts this time. pop pop pop! hiss!

tics aside, this has been a decent week. in fact, aside from that main (and very serious) complaint, i have nothing to, um, complain about. yep.

so what do you think will be the top "viewer's choice" episode from _friends_? i just hope it's to do with ross and rachel and not monica. i rather detest monica; she's bossy, anal, loud, ultra-competitive, and utterly unlovable. *pukes*

i wonder what the guys are doing today. i hear there's a ski trip brewing for this weekend, so it's highly likely that i won't be able to see them.

i miss jay. i don't know what's up to... i guess being a busy surgeon and a dutiful/devoted husband.

i am not looking forward to disappearing when i have a wife. except, of course, when i am getting some nookie. :)

i really want a house. i wonder when i'll finally be able to afford one. more art! more interior decoration! more designer furniture!

i miss playing music. one of the first thing i would buy for my house would be a piano, since a taiko is sort of out of the question (not the noise, but having no one to play with).

anybody out there have experience with getting deep tissue massages? i'm not sure if my acupuncture place is the right place to go for that kind of stuff.

blood (apple fritter)

hm. something is wrong with my GI tract. just had some bloody diarrhea. like BRIGHT red discharge. maybe it was all the mongolian bbq spices i had yesterday? shit, i hope it's not an ulcer...

i have stained underwear. :( i feel like a girl that just got her period.

do you guys like apple fritters? i love that stuff. the only problem i have with them is that they're usually so LOADED with sugar that it gives me a really bad headache. i remember i used to go to tresidder and order one, and halfway through tackling it, i'd be wrecked with a pounding head.

so is it cold water or hot water that completely sets a bloodstain? i have a feeling it's hot water. am i right?

the first time i came across a girl's period firsthand, i was fingering her, and when i pulled my index finger out, it was covered in blood. i must have made a shocked face, because the girl was like, "uh, is everything all right?" and i just put an end to the bedroom play right then and there.

ha!

but yeah, i haven't had to deal with periods in a long time. the blood, the mess (especially during the chunky phase), the smell, the toilet-paper-swaddled tampons filling up my bathroom trashcan, it's been cool.

how soon is now?

so i maintained my streak of watching at least a part of every televised stanford basketball game by hitting the irish pub and watching the second half after playing basketball myself. onto the second round of the pac-10 tournament!

i am the son and the heir
of a shyness that is criminally vulgar

so i'm looking for a copy of love spit love's "how soon is now." if you ever watched the wb tv series _charmed_, it's the theme song. (btw, the lead singer of lsl was the singer of the psychedelic furs back in the 80's.) it's a cool, edgy version.

of course, i love the original by the smiths. k1 was the one who introduced me to the band, and i was immediately mesmerized by johnny marr's guitar work on the song. and so of course, the song reminds me of her.

let's see... jon peter lewis made it through to the top 12 of _american idol_! i was totally surprised that he got 22% of america's votes, and apparently, he was too, as evidenced by him falling down on the stage after hearing the results. i like the way he dances! hehe.

man. i need to get out of this ticcy hell. if i could just...

i am the son and the heir
of nothing in particular

fashion statements

so i lost my beautiful puma jacket a while back.

but today, i got a call from mike. it turns out he is in possession of the jacket! basically, i left at carol's friend's place.

and they were like, "who wears puma?" "WHO WEARS ORANGE??!!" and ah! my name came up.

so i am happy now. *huzzah*

sometimes it's good to be known for your fashion tendencies. :)

nubiles compendium

so, lost in the archives are my list of nubiles, parts 1-3. and in light of my lack of content today, i'm going to publish the whole list:

(added 10/4/2002)
1. natalie portman
2. diane lane
3. jennifer westfeldt
4. alyson hannigan
5. gina gershon
6. kate beckinsale
7. gwyneth paltrow
8. christa miller
9. debra messing
10. maura tierney

(added 3/3/2003)
11. selma blair
12. eliza dushku
13. kelly hu
14. bridget moynahan
15. carey lowell

(added 10/4/2003)
16. famke janssen
17. keira knightley
18. paz vega
19. chyler leigh
20. parker posey

what i left out were the women's ages, and as i noted earlier, the average age of these women is relatively old (i.e. older than i am, older than some "usual suspect" girls like britney or mandy, you know, the teenybopper nubiles.) i dunno. i guess i'm attracted to older women. =P

parker posey is cool!

dilly dallies

man, i'd love to win the lottery. our company just pooled together $22 for today's jackpot, which stands at a (paltry) $10 million. dammit! i put in my dollar because the hr girl told me it was $30 million! gipped, i say, gipped!

anyways...

the internet has been very quiet today. no e-mails, and very few IM requests. (sorry to those of you who i was brief with on IM, though... i was being bombarded with shit to do!)

so today is also my weekly wednesday tennis outing with byron. i'm not quite sure what being stressed out will do to my tennis game, or whether playing at all will be beneficial to my mental well-being. but exercise is good, right? i certainly hope so.

AND. there's no _OC_ for the next three weeks! *RAAR* i guess _american idol_ is filling up (partially) the 9pm timeslot, so at least i'll have something to watch tonight. not sure who i'm rooting for, though... except, of course, JOHN STEVENS!

i'm debating whether to skip basketball tomorrow and go watch the stanford vs. washington state game in the pac-10 tournament. i have watched every single televised stanford game this season, and yes, you know it's coming, but... i am *very* obsessive about streaks and not breaking them. ah, a conflict of interest!

*yawn* what a boring day.

nookie vs. blogging

i have elvis vs. jxl's "a little less conversation" running through my head constantly. jon peter (contestant #1) on _american idol_ sang it last night, and i really dug his performance. i didn't vote last night, though...

well, i just got out of this food coma from TWO BOWLS of mongolian bbq.

/two hours later/

ok, i'm back. sorry. i got stuck in a meeting, and then i had to really do some serious work before i allowed myself to blog.

so what is going on? people, i want updates of your lives! tell me a story or something, i'm all ears!

i still believe everyone should have a blog.

anyways, last night, carol and i were walking back to my car after dinner, and we ran into van. (he's the first person ever to recognize me off the street because of my blog.)

so we were talking to him briefly, and he mentioned something about how he hasn't written in a long time because he has someone to talk to every day. now, i'm assuming that means he has a significant other, so i was happy for him.

but anyways, that goes to show my theory that for many people, getting nookie equates to not blogging. like, blogging is somehow a catharsis of sexual energy unrealized, dramatically speaking. and celibacy (and/or singlehood) results in more blogging power.

of course, this doesn't qualify for everyone, but i've seen it enough to formally make it a "theory." hehe.

stress and anxiety

not feeling good today.

first of all, i ate beef yesterday. carol dropped by last night, and we got pizza. yep. pizza with PEPPERONI. i'm not entirely sure why i balked on my beef ban, but then again, the pepperoni tasted so GOOD. sigh. and now i have a 5-year wait to see if the prions will make me go mad. *crosses fingers*

and second, i had another anxiety dream about stanford basketball. i dreamt that the bracket came out, and (assuming we would win each round), we would have to face gonzaga, kansas, and some other really good teams just to get to the final four. ick.

and the tics, those blasted fucking tics, are ruling me. and it really sucks. :(

it seems that march and september are bad months for me for some odd reason.

worst comes to worst, i may have to bail on all my social activities this weekend and just stay at home. i hope it doesn't come down to that.

where are the writers?

i miss proactive writers. meaning, i miss people who just write spontaneously, out of the blue, unprompted. it seems these days that people are so wrapped up in their own "business" that the only e-mails i get are responses to ones i've sent out myself.

well, PHOOEY ON THAT!

is it bad that i want to see _hellboy_ simply because selma blair is in it? ah... selma... and with psychic glowing-blue-hand powers, too! i know where you can put your hand, selma... give me a RAMALAMA-HANDJOB!

so there you have it. i've successfully used "ramalama" in a sentence. heehee.

more randoms

yes, the weather's been nice, but i don't like it. 80 is just too hot for me. give me 65 or 70 with a breeze any day. coming back from basketball today with a semi-wet tank top was just uncomfortable.

i just licked my forearm. it's salty! ick.

i joined tennis camp on year way back in summer after 9th grade. it was during the blazing texas summer (august or so), when the temperature was 100 outside and 115 on the courts. i could come home with salt crystals on my skin. man, that was EXTREME shit! the first day, i passed out after coming home, and after that, i would drink around two gallons of water throughout the course of the 5-hour camp afternoons (noon to 5pm).

i need to avoid the mall. i keep finding shit there that i like but don't need but inevitably end up buying because somehow i equate it with a carpe diem experience.

i wonder, if i could perform autofellatio, would i spend an inordinate amount of time in my room giving myself head? they say that a decent percentage of guys can do it, too! (no doubt because of their large members or some freakishly bendy flexibility)

people ask me where my next vacation is going to be. god knows i *need* a break from work and from life, but the thing is, if i had a choice, most times i'd just choose to spend my free time at home. home is my sanctuary. *shrug* yes, i am a homebody.

i'm not sure i am a fan of tongue studs in girls. why? i have a fear that if she is giving me head, the stud will force its way into my meatus. OUCH. *shiver* don't fuck with the meatus, man.

sunday night, we spotted a woman with a tattoo on the back of her neck. it was two chinese characters, which meant "feng shui." ???!!! why would you want a tattoo of that? what DOES it mean? i wonder if she knew what she was getting; somehow it's like me getting a tattoo of hebrew characters on my shoulder that says "kosher."

tuesday randoms

i think i figured out why my tics are so bad in the morning. it's most likely due to the fact that i take my meds after i wake up, so it takes a while for them to kick in. *eureka*

i had another anxiety dream about basketball last night. the way this is going, i had better hope that march madness comes and goes QUICKLY. otherwise, i might just go nuts. how pathetic is that, worrying about something i'm not even personally involved in?

yes, i am a stressed out guy. i have lots of gray hair. i think my first one was in early high school? yep. i even have three gray eyelashes! hehe.

so tonight carol is driving down to visit. we're going to grab some thai food and watch _american idol_. it's a 1.5 hour episode, the wild card round. i'm not sure if i'm excited about it, because my two favorite singers (the pink-haired girl and john stevens) are already in. *shrug* but i am looking forward to carol's company.

shit. it's only tuesday.

hopefully i'll get my mongolian bbq fix tomorrow. and despite two regular meals yesterday (plus an ice cream sandwich!) i dropped 1.2 pounds. odd how weight inexplicably fluctuates in counterintuitive ways like that.

basketball was humdrum today. the only interesting moment was when the really BIG dude took off his shirt, and he was asked to put it back on. ha! i'm glad he did, though, because i wouldn't want to body up against a big sweaty dude like him. (cue image from _along came polly_)

i sort of miss playing piano. and the question i have is... when i play, will i tic in the middle of a piece?

frig and plug

so apparently, i do get search engine hits coming through if the people go through the google cache, because that code still has my sitemeter stuff in it.

so! without further ado:

"masturbation during sex"

i'm not sure this is a guy topic, meaning that i don't think guys are prone to wanking themselves off when they have a perfectly good vagina sitting there to play with.

but women! they have two spots of stimulation (at least), so while the guy is humping in and out, he or she can frig the clitoris, causing double pleasure! i've seen this many times.

what i've heard before is that sometimes, when the girl is a little sexually frigid, the double action is a little "distracting" (those were her words), so the dude actually has to stop while she frigs, and when it's almost time for her to come, he'll start again. *shrug* not so fun for the guy, but hey, whatever it takes to get her off, you know?

hard to get

so cindy is IM'ing me about playing hard to get. like, not calling back so quickly, not being available all the time...

so i gotta ask: does that stuff work? i mean, if you leave a person hanging and soaking with anticipation, does it cause more desire when the meeting finally happens?

hm.

i try not to play games. but i do understand that it's really unflattering to look desperate. but on the flip side, i've always held the belief that if two people want to be with each other, then these so-called "waiting games" are usually thrown out the window. at least that's how it was for me in the past. maybe it's different now? *ponder*

what i've been up to

damn. in chip design, it's sometimes relatively easy to design something given "proper" inputs. it's the crazy error cases that fuck you up.

i had a meeting today going over my arbitration/aggregation module. and so far, in my testing, it works. but they came up with some junk (i.e. garbage in) cases that i know would break my module, so now i have 1) more code changes and 2) more testing. *RAAR*

food and weight

wow. i'm still burping up the garlicky jun pad poo i had for lunch. and now, as 6 o'clock rolls near, the question is: what to eat for dinner?

i'm back up to 191.0 as of this morning (naked weight, with only glasses to help me see the scale's numbers). depressing to think that sometime last week, i was 187.6. *RAAR*

but don't worry... i'm not going to be anorexic or bulimic any time soon!

i never understood anorexia. being hungry is just so... uncomfortable! like, today, because i got up earlier than usual, by 10:30am or so i was famished. and the hunger was just really really fucking painful!

now, bulimia, i can understand. i joke that i used to be bulimic, but it had more to do with stress (i.e. puking was a stress reliever) than a weight or body image thing. but yeah, i can understand how people can gorge on food and then feel guilty and having to purge it. at least they're eating, you know? NOT eating at all is what i can't get.

i crave pizza.

bereft of words

so hm. i somehow got assigned this feature addition in our new chip by default. which means i'll have to muck with someone else's code, someone who's already left the company. *pukes heavily*

*RAAR*

anyways, not much going on today. i'm sort of treading lightly over the apparently-high stress level, hoping that i don't explode (or implode) in any way. i'm a fragile being, you know?

i got a copy of iLife '04 from a friend, which i hope i will be able to install on my iMac. i am in bad need of an update to iPhoto 4, because even though i only have 2000+ photos on my computer, the application is painfully slow. like PAINFULLY. this new app supposedly handles tens of thousands of photos with ease, so it'll be good to have.

i've been craving mongolian bbq ever since that last visit there two weeks ago. there's something about super-hot (both in temperature and in spiciness) food that keeps me wanting more. and it's greasy too! and no beef! *yum*

so if william hung releases a cd (he is apparently in negotiations for a record deal), would you buy it? i sure as hell wouldn't.

mike asked me last week if i would like to have william's type of fame, i.e. the kind where everybody's basically laughing at you. i said sure, because hell, it's more interesting than being an engineer, which he is and i am as well. and it's not like he did anything bad (like murder someone, hence an INfamous nature), and some people actually find him adorable in a stereotyped asian geek sort of way!

ok, i am running out of things to say. will try again later.

alias and marriages

_alias_ last night saddened me. not to mention that it was a shit episode, where nothing happened, and they repeated the same 20 minutes over again, albeit from a different person's perspective.

but what saddened me was vaughn's sham marriage. basically, vaughn is back to being in love with sydney, and his wife is fucking sark. but the two of them still act like they love each other, which is just a complete farce.

i mean, yes, this example is an extreme case (i.e. the wife, lauren, is actually a double agent working for the evil covenant), but still, loveless marriages just make me feel a bit ill. *sigh*

monday randoms

well, will you look at that! rice bowl journals finally quoted me! hah! i thought i had some quotable material a long time ago... but perhaps it wasn't g-rated for the general masses. :)

anyways, thanks for the exposure!

i just woke up from my food coma. lots of starches in my jun pad poo, i guess. two other coworkers took my lead and ordered it as well, and they liked it. *phew* i will not be blamed for ordering a bad dish!

i woke up pretty early (by my standards): 8:50am. i had to take my car in for its 56,250 mile inspection. the next one is (the 60,000 mile tuneup) is going to be a doozy. at least the dealership will give me a rental car for the day.

so from the cam pic, you can see that i am wearing my orange sweater today. it's brighter than the picture shows, and i'm not sure it was the right choice, seeing as the weather today is rather warm. i think i'm going to go back to wearing t-shirts from now on out.

wow, the winter passed us by in a heartbeat. i never even got a chance to wear my fabulous winter jackets! (i'm talking about my black mid-length dkny coat and my long olive overcoat.) oh well. maybe next year.

so i never learned the correct massage parlor etiquette for asking for rub & tugs. i mean, if you walk into a place, how do you know they give "happy endings?" how do you bring it up and ask that you'd like one, provided it wasn't too expensive? anybody have experience in this?

cuatro

	so my personal connection to the band funk u is the fact that i know one of their singers/dancers, rainbow. i've known her since 1994, so that makes it ten years! anyways, the other dancer used to be a cheerleader for the seattle supersonics, but rainbow danced better, imho. anyways, watching her bounce around on stage in 2-3 inch heeled boots just made me tired.
	there were lots of ducks at shoreline park. and lots of people, too... the parking lot was jam packed with cars, and we were lucky to find an empty spot. what i noticed, though, was that among the dozens of ducks, there was only one male. could it be that these quacking species exhibit some sort of HAREM society? *ponder*
	i didn't think it was windy enough yesterday to fly a kite, but apparently it was. i had a g.i.joe kite when i was a kid, but i was never able to get it off the ground. and before my parents let me have that one, i tried making my own by tying string to a plastic bag, you know, the ones you get at a supermarket to put your zucchinis in. that didn't work, either. poor me.
	i love the look of corrugated steel. (at least, i *think* that's the term.) the alternating thin diamonds just make me happy. anyways, i found this slab of steel on the floor at a local safeway. i was waiting for a friend of mine to finish reading this _glamour_ article about "20 things about sex a woman should know about a guy." how edifying and interesting at the same time!

chilling out

so let's see... friday night, i took peter along with me to my friend's birthday party. it was at some jazz club near fillmore & geary. and the band funk u was playing, and i think peter really enjoyed that. plus, he tried jameson whiskey for the first time and dug that as well.

saturday, a group of 7 of us watched stanford lose to washington, thus ruining our perfect regular season in ourlast game. *RAAR* i was so depressed that i went home afterwards and slept for 3 hours in the living room. :(

alan and ting came back that night, and we had a boy's trip to mcdonald's to grab some food. and i think that was it for the night. mind you, i woke up at 1:30pm, so that meant that i didn't do much that day.

sunday was equally lazy. it was beautiful outside (no clouds, around 75 degrees), so we hung out at shoreline park. while my roommates read, i placed calls to emi, my mom, and jeremy. and then we did some errands, had dinner with peter at hanamaru, and watched _alias_.

so the aim was all about de-stressing. tics are still there, but slightly better. maybe i need more weekends like this, but without the basketball stress. i had another anxiety dream about stanford bball last night. ick.

cancer sticks

i was so tempted to smoke at my place this week, while alan and ting were gone. i even have a stanford ashtray!

i love smoking indoors. but i don't know why. i guess it just feels like... "home" is the best word i can come up with, although that's not exactly the right one. it's like, you're comfortable lounging around at home, and sometimes a cigarette feels like just the thing to have. and you don't have to go outside, and instead enjoy the smoke relaxing at your own place.

my favorite cigarette moment was when i was in japan back in 2001. i got a hotel room all to myself, and when it came time to retire, i stripped down naked, and had a cigarette in bed. ah, sheer bliss.

supreme clarity

wednesday night, i had a moment of supreme clarity. i was talking to carol on the phone, and i was talking about this girl that i semi-fancied, and all of a sudden...

...i forgot why i liked her.

have you ever experienced that? like, suddenly, all these feelings and emotions just VANISH. and you're left there, thinking, "what happened? what did i see in her?"

what's worse, i've these moments before while i was going out with someone. although, it's been so long that i've forgotten when (in the day) they usually happen. but it's like i suddenly stop loving them for a while. and sometimes it lasts for days or weeks.

scary.

it makes me wonder if any affection of mine that i might have for a girl is *sustainable*. and if it's not, then that's VERY BAD NEWS.

friday randoms

aside from the tic problem, this week has been really good. and it's sort of weird that i say that, because you'd think in my TS-negatively-influenced mind, i wouldn't be able to objectively tell if a week was good or not.

so alan and ting come back tomorrow (don't know when, though), so i'll have roommates again. i'm not partiicularly excited either way; it's just that i proved to myself this week that if i lived alone, i'd be fine.

so my early packet drop testing is good... i can't test it fully (it's nearly impossible to exactly model an early termination of a packet and a restart later on), so part of it is just "proving the concept" that it works. woot!

man, my shoulder fucking hurts. i'm tempted to get a massage, but 1) it wouldn't help *that* much and 2) i'd rather save my $40.

and to clarify, i didn't mind being "interviewed" yesterday by S. it actually felt fun, like i was a celebrity or something. :) it just sometimes scares me, because i am paranoid of divulging too much to the masses.

so i bought a pepperoni pizza by red baron or something, and it's sitting in my freezer. i checked the ingredients, and the pepperoni has beef in it. what to do? i also have a beef (from canadian cows, no les!) lasagna in the freezer, and i am thinking i'll toss them both. *sigh* what a waste!

my mom called me an hour ago. she gets really worried when i tell her i am stressed and that my TS is bothering me. i can't blame her, though; she saw me in my nervous breakdown state about 6 years ago. i was at the point where i couldn't work, eat, or be normal. she broke down crying in the parking lot. poor mom.

anyways, i just hope things get better for me soon. i think after stanford plays its final regular season game tomorrow, i'll have a load off my shoulders (literally).

ok, more later.

careful on the blog

it was interesting meeting S last night at the pub. i know him superficially in real life, but he is better known to me as a guy who checks my blog several times a day.

he asked me a few questions, like "is your roommate alan the alan XXX from stanford?" and "who is k3?" and "so is k4 out of the picture now?"

it was funny. i sort of felt like i was being interviewed. it just goes to show that as much as i reveal my life on this blog, i don't divulge everything. i learned a while back never to use last names in my blog, because i don't always write the most flattering statements about them. some people (like eric and adam) can use last names, but i can't. i would probably get sued or something. i've already lost friends with what i've written.

but of course, it was my fault to begin with. so what can i say? i've been stupid and brash in my writing and sharing.

if i could go back, and could start the blog over, i would use a pseudonym. it sort of freaks me out that anybody who googles "dardy" will come here. ick. i mean, it's sort of cool that i am tied to this blog directly, but still, it has caused problems in the past.

regression

i am bad need of a "mental reset." doing this usually involves me sequestering myself at home for an entire weekend, not seeing anyone or doing anything. my brain is so weird right now that i am on the verge of going home and taking a nap.

yeah, the tics are bad. i can tell because i spend most of my time in the cube sitting there, with one hand on my head to keep me from ticcing. *RAAR*

the problem is, i have some stuff to do this weekend. i have a birthday party tonight up in the city, for one. the worst thing is, when my tics control me, i am not very social at all, which begs the question as to why i'm voluntarily entering myself in a social situation in the first place. hm.

second, i've got the stanford game tomorrow afternoon with yuji. we're probably going to watch it at spoons, and hopefully it won't be as stressful as last night's game was. i swear, this unbeaten streak is causing me a lot of anxiety. which is sort of sad, i mean, why should i let some random team's wellbeing affect my own? *RAAR*

i am smoking so much now. when my TS is bad, smoking is the one and only thing i can do to calm me down for short intervals at a time. (the other thing i can do is sleep, but i can't very well be taking naps everywhere, can i?)

anyways...

i am just afraid. afraid of having another nervous breakdown. if things keep spiralling down like they have been, it might be inevitable. *knock on wood*

thursday night recap

man. every time i think about the game last night, i laugh to myself out loud. *phew*

so yeah, i met up with yuji and S at the irish pub on castro last night to watch the game. yuj was decked out in a stanford jacket and josh childress's #1 jersey, and i wore my stanford hoops long-sleeve t.

the game was brutal. watching the last minute and being 99% sure that we were going to lose was just... painful. i was ticcing, fidgety, and completely overwrought with anxiety.

and then... we won. lottich's corkscrew desperation three-pointer went in with a beautiful swish. i didn't believe it would go in when he hoisted it up, so i was ready to get up and storm out of the pub. but then, the place erupted, and it took about two seconds for me to realize what happened. and then, i jumped up and screamed and pumped my fists in the air.

man!

anyways, in other news, i went home and had a few celebratory phone calls to some friends (peter and kara). and then, i checked out the tape of nbc's thursday lineup that i had the vcr record. apparently, they're doing a "top 5 episodes" of _friends_, and last night's episode was (i think) chandler's proposal to monica. ick. i hate monica. i hope the top episode is the one where ross and rachel first get together. rachel was beautiful back then.

and i also watched the boardroom sequence of _the apprentice_. omarosa is finally gone! there's something about her that totally makes me want to wretch. i think it's her ego and the way she talks down to everybody. *shrug*

63-61, 26-0 BABY!

down 5, with 20 seconds to go.

grunfeld makes a 4-point play.

5-second violation.

no timeouts left.

LOTTI! LOTTI!

WHAT AN ASS-RIPPING, SPLEEN-CHURNING MOTHE