one thing that sucks about my fragile mental state is that i can't tell how i'll be in the future, i.e. in 3 months time, next year, etc. i mean, a few months ago, i had no idea that my tourette's would be so well-controlled like it is now. yeah, i'm going through a nice phase right now (*knocks on wood*). i still tic, but i go through periods of anywhere from a few minutes to like half an hour without ticcing. it's nice. :)
but the thing is, who knows how long this will last. i went through this "nice" phase a few years ago, and it all fell apart (my theory is that it was when work got stressful). i don't know when i'll get panic attacks again, and when the tics will get worse, and even when i'll get suicidal again. !! my brain is completely unreliable and unpredictable, and the only thing i can do is try to relax when i can and enjoy life while it is still good. and that last part is something that i don't do enough of: appreciate my mental health. for those of you who don't have such mental disorders like i do, be FUCKING THANKFUL that your brain is healthy. believe me, you don't want to ever go through some of the shit that i've gone through.
so my boss has headed off to sweden for a few weeks. the last time he went, i wound up coasting at work a bit too much. this time, i need to be more proactive in seeking out more work to do. i gotta get some verification done on this block that i've inherited. but still, i think the stress level drops when he's gone, so i'm sort of looking forward to it. i also stopped by his cube before he left and asked him about taking a week off at the end of july so i can go back to taiwan for a little (nuclear) family reunion. he said ok, so i'll probably do it. i'm just not looking forward to the flight(s). ouchie!
so a while back when i went to southland taste, i noticed that one of the waitresses there was previously employed at joy luck place (the small one). our theory was that she was a mean woman (she never smiles, and is very curt), and got fired from JLP, and found another job at southland. but now that southland is closed for renovations, she was working at JLP today when we went there for lunch. hm. i wonder what's going on there. she was back to her usual borderline-rude self today, too. *ponder*
so it looks like i'll be following _so you think you can dance_ this season. i've seen the first two episodes, so now i feel compelled to see the show through. i thought the very first girl (the choreographer) last night was very cute. that hok guy was really cool (well, i like b-boy dancing in general), and that white dude who did the robotic stuff was just simply amazing. i am usually not impressed with dancing at all (especially jazz and lyrical stuff, which i just don't get), but when i see something totally cool, i really dig it. i am on the extremes, i guess.
i think i have hemorrhoids. i was feeling around my ass last night in the shower, and i have this painful lump at the base of my sphincter. it hurts! it's slightly better today (i've only had one dump so far), so i'm hoping it'll go away naturally. if not, i'll have to go to safeway and get some preparation h or something. does that stuff work quickly? in the meantime, i'll *try* to avoid spicy foods. (i love spice too much.)
ok. that's enough for today. i'm so glad tomorrow's friday. *cheer*
man, my asshole is sore. i think i injured it with all those dumps i took after spicy food. like i said, i took five last monday, and three this past sunday, and that's on top of the regular one or two dumps i take daily. it's protruding! maybe i have hemorrhoids or something. wiping really hurts these past few days, and i've been blotting with the toilet paper rather wiping hard like i normally do. let's hope that i heal up soon.
so a new hire came by to introduce himself to our team today. for a brief while, we were talking video jargon with him, and he actually got visibly excited. man, i have never gotten excited about work. good for him. it's nice to have passion in what you do; i've never found that sort of passion before, and i sort of envy him for that. my job is just a job, a means to make money to sustain my living. it'd be nice to love what i do, but hey, i can't have everything, right?
so a friend of mine is in a pickle. one of his best friends is a girl, and she dropped a bomb on him, saying that she is in love with him. what do you do in that case, when you don't love her back? it's a tough situation, unrequited love, especially when it's with one of your best friends. if i were in love with a good friend of mine, i'd think twice about expressing my feelings, for fear of ruining our friendship. but then again, it'd be torture, not being able to acting on how i feel. yeah, it's a really bad predicament. i went through that with k1 back in freshman year of college, but luckily for me, we both felt the same way. it was a very painful and twisted courtship for both of us, and it took one night of drunkenness (mostly on my part, although she kissed me first) for us to finally hook up. thank god for alcohol! :)
i miss certain female friends of mine. there are three in particular that miss (M, k3, and C), and our friendships used to be stronger. that makes me sad, seeing us drift apart like that. for example, i haven't talked to k3 in about 6 years, after the new york fiasco. i wonder how she's doing. i got a short e-mail from her exactly a year ago, where she promised to send me an update, but she never did. we used to be pretty close, and i admit that i was in love with her for a while. sigh. the timing and placement was just never right for us. the best chance for us was in college, but i don't think she was ready for a relationship back then. and then we both graduated, and i was with k2, etc., etc. it just never worked out, i guess. i shake my fist angrily at fate for not giving us a chance.
i sort of want a tattoo. i want the chinese character of my last name on my left shoulder. i was also thinking about getting a bar code on my wrist or something. (wouldn't it be neat if the bar code actually rang through as a real item at the supermarket?) but the thing is, i am a total wuss as far as pain goes. so that means that i will probably never get a tattoo, unless they put me under or something. does it hurt afterwards?
i wonder how silly athletes with tattoos will look when they're old and withered away. especially the ones with them all over their bodies (like allen iverson or something). can you imagine seeing an old grandpa with a ton of ink on his skin? i guess they can remove them when they get old.
ok, it's 6pm. time to get this entry posted.
i did some good work today. we have this new (or rather, bringing back an old) feature to implement, so i put it in, wrote a test, and verified that it worked. all in one afternoon. *pats himself on the back* yay! so that's the reason why i'm starting this blog entry late. it feels good to be productive.
i did it again. i keep ordering the same dishes at restaurants wherever i go, and i get sick of the stuff. these dishes include ground pork rice, chow kueh teow, dumplings, and now yuk ke jang (sp?). i need more variety in my dining life!
i've overdose on many foods before, and it's usually followed by some sort of nasty bodily function. for example, once i drank almost half a gallon of milk in one sitting, and i spent the rest of the night sitting on the shitter with diarrhea. or that time i ate half a tub of gummy bears and threw up gelatinous chunks in many primary colors. stuff like that.
yesterday, after dinner, we went back to alan's house, and i had to take a dump. i really don't like shitting in other people's houses, because i feel like it's rude to do something so nasty in somebody else's place. but i had to go (my stomach was hurting), so i did the deed. after i was done, i looked back, and it turned out to be the "black sludge" kind of dump. i was really worried that it would leave skidmarks all over his toilet, but luckily, it went down clean. *phew* it was a bubbly dump, too, and alan was just outside the door playing with his dog rylie; i hope he didn't hear all the sounds my ass was making.
1, 14, 23, 25, 36. that's the number of blooms that the flowery plant outside my door has created. in total, that's 99 flowers! and there's still more to come, too. looking at it, there's no way you could tell that this medium-sized shrub would produce over 100 flowers. pretty amazing stuff. i force myself to count the number of blooms every time i step outside and have a smoke. and i count over and over again to make sure. it's really annoying, OCD is. and what's worse is when i miscount, and then my brain goes all wonky and stuff. sigh. compulsions suck.
i'm up to 160 pounds now. (i was previously 152 a few months ago.) i attribute it to eating out for dinner on the weekdays more often. it's not alarming or anything, since i was on the lighter side of 6 foot zero, but i am noticing a slight poodge in my midsection. i think i'll start being concerned if i hit 165. i have noticed that i'm not dropping as much weight overnight when i have my usual light dinners. hm. maybe my metabolism has slowed down for some reason. remember my weight loss bet of a few years ago where i had to give up naked pictures of myself? that was so frustrating; i wouldn't lose weight even when i skipped meals and stuff. i wonder if that girl j still has those prints of my nekkid self. (i made prints so they would be less easily distributed than jpg's.)
man, there's no american idol to watch tonight or tomorrow night. what to do? with these late sunsets, i feel like i should get out there and do stuff. too bad i hate running; it's good weather out there for a nice jog or something. if byron were still in town, i'd ask him to go out for some tennis.
ok, time is nigh for my 5pm smoke. au revoir!
friday night, i hung out with paul, leeya and grace. i stopped by paul's house to find it flooded with flowers of all kinds. (they were testing out altar pieces and centerpieces for the wedding.) for dinner, we went to this vietnamese restaurant in milpitas. originally, this was going to be the site of their rehearsal dinner, but it turns out they weren't willing to seat 40 people. the food was pretty good, as i don't often have vietnamese food that isn't pho or rice plates.
saturday, i got a call to go into work. after spending an hour and a half at the office, nelson, john and i went to lunch. we all had dumplings at southland taste. this was my FOURTH time going there in a week, and my third time having dumplings there. i have to admit, i was getting a little sick of dumplings, and it's ok, because they're closing for a week due to renovations, so i can't go there for a while even if i want to. afterwards, we went back to john's place and watched _army of darkness_, this campy, cheesy movie. the girl in there was sort of familiar and attractive, and i realized that it's because she reminded me of sean young.
for dinner, we met up with mikeC and st. john's, and three out of four of us got the beg for mercy burger. it was too spicy for john and nelson, who had to pull out all the peppers. poor nelson. his nose and forehead started sweating profusely, and nelson started getting a runny nose. haha. after dinner, we met up with paul/leeya and mike/christi at tapioca express and chilled out for a bit before going home.
sunday, the four of us went hiking at portola redwoods state park. we stopped by erik's deli to get sandwiches. don't get the pastrami reuben; it's no good. before we went for the actual hike, i took three dumps in two hours, no doubt due to the spicy burger that i had the night before. it hurt! the hike itself wasn't too bad. the last time i went there, we had to cross the stream in our bare feet, but this time, the water level was low, so we just did it in our shoes on the rocks, so it was ok. i was stressing about it the whole time.
we got back around 7pm, and headed off to andy's bbq (nelson's suggestion) for some meat-tastic food. i got the baby back ribs and the spicy sausage (i never learn, do i?). i also got some maker's mark whiskey, which was sort of nasty. it was only later that i spied some jameson and bushmills underneath the cabinet, so the next time i go there, i'll order that instead. drat.
sunday was sort of a waste. i called up paul, and he was supposed to call me when he was ready for lunch, but he forgot. :( so i wound up getting the sampler trio from jack in the box. it was pretty good (after all, it's all deep-fried food), but the chicken nuggets weren't spicy at all. damn, i like spicy food, huh? i took a two hour nap after that, and putzed around the house for a bit. for dinner, i went to alan's house, and we went to milpitas and ate at ay chung. the food wasn't very good, and we totally should have went elsewhere. after dinner, alan went on a quest to find take-out potstickers, but alas, they were nowhere to be found. i got some pearl milk tea from sweetheart, and i went home after that. sigh. i wish i did more on sunday.
man, the men's urinals smell horrible today. no doubt it's because they served asparagus today during the free company lunch. stinky pee galore! even the urinal cakes that they installed didn't help. i just went to take a leak, and after i stepped up, i noticed this stench emanating from below. i only had one stalk of the stuff, so my own piss didn't smell, but dude, the guy before me must have had a lot of asparagus.
so it's friday, and already people are leaving work. my IM buddy lists are looking bare. i'm looking forward to having three days off, although i think i'll have to check into the office sometime during the weekend. this synthesis shit that i have to do takes a lot of time, and it's still not done yet. one of the project managers is breathing down my neck, and since i've taken over some of the blocks, i have had to redo stuff due to not knowing certain nuances in some of the synthesis steps. glarg!
is phone sex a turn-on? i've never done it before, but i remember leafing through porn magazines and finding all sorts of phone sex ads in the back. and one of my favorite books of all time is _vox_, and the entire thing is a phone sex conversation. (as much as that might sound lame, it's actually a really cool book.) but what do you talk about? do you just say, "i want to touch you here, lick you there, and fuck you silly?" hm. not convinced. although, i admit that i can get myself off by reading about sex scenes, which i was surprised to find out about myself. go penthouse forums!
one of the cool things about working on HDTV chips is that we get a lot of cool video equipment in here. in the cubicle across from me, we've got a PS3 hooked up to a 1080p television. i was just playing a round of ridge racer (putting out native 1080i), and the graphics are pretty fucking awesome.
do normal people have to trim their nose hairs? does nose hair just keep growing and growing? mine seem to do that. yesterday, i noticed two of them that protruded well beyond my nostrils, so i proceeded to pluck them. man, it hurt like a mofo. i got tears coming out of my eyes! the weird thing is, though, that only my left nostril seems to have long ones; i can't remember ever having to pluck long nose hairs out of my right nostril. weird, huh?
i'm inching close to getting my 2005 tax year audit resolved. i got this weird $730 distribution from a place i never heard from, so today i called them up, and it turns out it was from texas instruments, the place where i interned for back when i was a college student. i never got the check or a tax form, so i wonder who the hell took my money. but anyways, they're resolving it, and after that, the audit defense guy should have all the info he needs to finish my amended tax return. i just hope i don't have to pay that $5K that the IRS demands. man, i am really happy that i got this audit defense service. i will keep getting it from now on.
i dreamt this morning that i was this black dude, trying to court a girl. my gift to her? a bunch of red plastic cups and a box of tea. yes, very random. what i don't remember is how i knew that i was black instead of my usual asian self; i don't recall looking at myself in a mirror or anything like that. hm. anyways, lately, i've been waking up early and feeling refreshed, but i stay in bed because i simply don't want to get up yet. and what would i do if i got up earlier? go to work? ha!
my dump today was about twice as thick than normal. it's still really thin, though, compared to the logs that i used to lay out. i have soft turds, too. usually, with the powerful flushing mechanisms that we have at work, my shit leaves a lot of skidmarks at the bottom of the toilet when the water drags the stuff through the pipes. oh, how i long for the satisfying feeling of thick dumps! the only consolation is that i know i will never clog up the pipes with these little squigglies that i am putting out these days.
ok. time to check on my synthesis job. have a GREAT and STUPENDOUS long weekend folks!
another season gone by... and another OCD displayed...
i hate how i force myself to memorize this shit.
audition cities:
minneapolis, seattle, memphis, nyc, birmingham, la, san antonio
semis:
amy, nicole, paul, rudy
leslie, alaina, nick, aj
antonella, sabrina, sundance, jared
finals:
brandon (diana ross)
stephanie (peter noone, lulu)
chris sligh (gwen stefani)
gina (tony bennett)
haley (jlo)
sanjaya (martina mcbride)
phil/chris richardson (inspirational/bon jovi)
lakisha (barry gibb)
melinda (3 choices)
blake (finale)
jordin (winner)
hey people. gotta make this quick. i was stuck in this informal meeting for a while; we got a customer asking for this old, antiquated feature on our chip, and it looks like a pain in the ass. not that it's difficult, but we used to have the feature, and now we have to dig it out, understand it, and make sure we know how to implement it. ugh.
so yeah, american idol is over. i was actually happy for the winner. but by far, the coolest thing ever was blake and doug e. fresh's beatboxing. neat-o libido! but for the most part, it was a pretty painful two hours. i kept on looking at the clock, hoping that more time was passing. and now, i'm debating on whether i should watch _so you think you can dance_ tonight. you know me, once i start a show, i have to finish it. hm. *ponder*
so to the winner of the 69 points, thank you for responding! i smoke marlboro lights. i used to smoke dunhill and marlboro reds, but those are just too strong now; i bet if i smoked one of those, they'd make me dizzy. other brands i've smoke before include dunhill superior milds, parliaments, sobranies (ooh, black russians), lucky strikes, camels, and djarum cloves. yum, cloves, except that they can make your lungs bleed.
i played two 3-on-3 basketball games today. i lost both games. the reason why i said "i" instead of "we" is because i'm pretty sure i'm the weakest link. after my team lost the first game, i volunteered to switch over to the winning team. and then, my team lost again. hm. i mean, i managed to make a few shots, but my defense is just horrible. sigh. i'm just too lazy, i suppose. and i have like a 4-inch vertical. ha!
so i got a pretty bad haircut yesterday. the top is all uneven; i look like i got a haircut from a weedwacker instead of a lawnmower. ick. i hope in a week and a half's time (i.e., by paul and leeya's wedding), it'll even out.
ok, that's it for today. i'm headed off early today.
i'm starting to like southland taste more and more. before, i would only get the ground pork rice (with no sour greens), and that got really old, as i got it like over a dozen times straight. but now, i've discovered that i like their beef noodle soup (as i got it on monday night). and today, i went there again with C, and i discovered that they have leek and pork dumplings! it's not on the menu, but i saw that they sell frozen ones, so i asked the waitress if they served them to dine-in customers. she said yes, and you get 12 of them for $4.95. that's pretty reasonable, and even though the leek flavor wasn't very strong, the dumplings were very juicy and good. and now i have leek burps. nice!
today's been pretty slow. my synthesis job crashed overnight, so i had to restart it on a different machine. luckily, that one went through, so i'm one step closer to finishing my stuff. after that, i gotta get started on some verification that i'm badly behind on. the code is frozen already, so hopefully this new UART stuff works, otherwise we'll be in some deep shit.
i'm getting a haircut today in preparation for paul and leeya's wedding in a week and a half. i hope it looks ok. with supercuts, the variance is pretty high, because i get a different person to cut it each time. poor paul. he's stressed out, he told me. he wants to go get a massage to release some tension; maybe i'll make an appointment for the both of us this weekend at this new place near my office. they charge about $40 for an hour, which is pretty reasonable considering i pay the same amount for half the time at the place i go to regularly.
yesterday, i hit an all-time weekday low as far as smokes. i only had 8. i've pretty much eliminated my pre-lunch cigarette, so that takes me down to 9 a day. i also skipped one in the afternoon due to a long meeting, so that made it 8 total for the day. i was pleased. there was a time a few years ago when i made more an an effort to quit (or rather, "cut back" is more the correct term), and every week, i'd eliminate one a day. i got down to 5 a day (morning, lunch, afternoon, dinner, night), and after that, it just got too hard to cut further, so i gave up.
so finally, american idol 6 ends tonight. it's going to be a boring two hours, i think, although i'm looking forward to seeing sanjaya and chris sligh again. i really don't care all that much who wins. i like blake much more, but i think jordin is going to take the crown; she's hands down the much better singer. have you ever seen a beatboxer live? i saw one a few years ago (at the hyphen magazine launch in the city), and it was pretty cool, all the stuff he could do. i think it'd be a really awesome skill to have. "he's got fluid!" (69 bonus points if you know where that's from)
i get a little weirded out (just a little) sometimes when i check my referral logs and see that people found this blog when searching for my name. who *are* these people? are they stalking me? how many lurkers do i have? hehe. i wonder if i'll ever know. me, i never lurk. (that's true.) of the couple dozen blogs that i read, i have made contact with every single one of the authors. for me, it's more interesting that way; i like to keep up with the lives of people i know, rather than random people i don't know.
ok, that's it for today. gonna go get my haircut in about half an hour or so. let's hope they don't fuck it up!
so i have been subjected to all sorts of body odor. there have been normal (yet strong) regular BO, some armpits that smell stinky, some people that smell like musty vaginas, some people that smell like indian curry, etc. but today, i was in the elevator, and this other dude smelled like PIZZA. it was very weird. i mean, it was in the morning, so i doubt this guy had eaten anything (i.e. pizza), so i found it very strange. i wonder why he had that smell on him. maybe he went to a domino's or round table last night and wore the same clothes the next day? *ponder*
my last two meals have been beef noodle soup. last night, i met up with some folks at southland taste. instead of getting my usual ground pork rice (with no sour vegetables), i broke out of my mold and got the BNS. and today, C and i went to A&J (yup, cupertino village again), and i got that dish again, but this time with some beef tendon thrown in as well. the thing is, i have grown sick of rice, and noodles have replaced my carb intake. i just don't like the taste of rice (or rather, the lack of taste) anymore.
so tonight's the big night for american idol! the thing i'm least looking forward to is the unveiling of the cheesy new song that they write for the finalists. you know, like kelly clarkson's "a moment like this" and all the other crap songs throughout the seasons. oops. i shouldn't say that. that kelly clarkson song was actually jay and margaret's first dance song at their wedding.
so i actually took a record *5* dumps yesterday. i think it was the burrito i had at chavez on sunday night that wrecked me. maybe it was a minor case of food poisoning? i'm not sure. the good news is that my sphincter is all healed up today; i took one small dump today, and it didn't hurt to wipe. *phew*
so i read today that there's this new birth control pill that supposedly eliminates periods altogether. that must be nice. imagine that... no more tampons, maxi-pads, bleeding, PMS, chunky phase (ah, who could ever forget chunky phase), no nothing! the problem, though, with this pill is that a lot of women in the trial phase had to stop because they had a lot of random bleeding and spotting, so i guess it doesn't work for everyone. oh well. but still, for those women that it works on, it must be nice to not have to deal with all that stuff ever again.
one of the nuances of periods that i will never forget is how fast toilet paper gets used up while the girl is on the rag. and how fast my little bathroom garbage bin fills up with those tampons wrapped in the toilet paper. i would go through a half a roll of tp a day! hehe. and of course, sex during the period. man, does it smell rank down there. i try not to give head while the girl's bleeding, but if it's right after a nice long soapy-crotched shower, it's actually feasible. but not during chunky phase!
speaking of that, at southland taste last night, i noticed on the menu that they serve something called "uteri." is that what i think it is?
ok, i'm spent. i already had my 5pm smoke, so i think it's time to go home now.
something is wrong. i've taken FOUR dumps today (in six hours), and my asshole is in major, burning pain. the first two happened this morning while i was sleeping. i was rudely woken up with massive stomach pains, and i had to drag myself out of bed twice with crackly diarrhea. and even by the second dump, wiping hurt a lot. by my fourth dump early this afternoon, i noticed some small red pieces floating around in the bowl. i don't know what's wrong with me. yowch!
i've been busy today. i've been a synthesizing maniac. i was assigned not only my old blocks (three of them) but the entire DPU block, which has a ton of stuff inside it. man. i hate synthesis. it's not really hard work, and once it works, it's fairly push-button, but i'm a paranoid kind of guy, and i babysit my jobs fretfully, looking out for anything that goes wrong. it's a very uneasy task for me. and on top of that, i've got other things to do, too.
so like i said, i took a long nap after my dim sum outing yesterday. i was sleeping on my left side on the futon in the living room, and when i sat straight up, a big chunk of dark ear wax fell out of my right ear. it was soft, like playdough. i rolled it around in my fingers, and it was sort of neat, very malleable. i sniffed at it (because the earwax in my right ear usually has a very distinct scent, unlike the stuff from my left ear), but this stuff didn't have any odor. and then i threw it away. fun fun!
i've gained about 5 pounds in the last two weeks. i attribute it to eating out more, especially on weekdays. i usually eat two solid meals on the weekends, but on weekdays, i have small dinners at night. but lately, i've been meeting up with the bowling gang more often at night, so that means more food intake. so my gut is getting just slightly bigger. i'm not really worried about it, since i think 152 (my old weight) or so is on the lighter side for someone of my height, but i just don't want to get fat again. i know, i shouldn't worry too much about my weight, but man, i just don't want to get to 200 again.
is there a chinese custom where you can't celebrate for 3 months after a parent passes away? i think i heard about that from one of my friends a few years ago. his father passed away, so he abstained from alcohol for that amount of time. i clearly remember because we went speed dating together, and he told me he could finally have a drink with me at the bar before the event started.
i got three comment spams today. they're from users with random names like "woeifux," promoting bogus nonexistent websites like "www.xiaidu.dfqu.com." i don't understand this. i can understand if the spammers are trying to advertise real sites and get more traffic to them, but what's the point of garbage? it baffles me.
so i guess it's been a week, so i will talk about the ending of _how i met your mother_. i was really sad ted and robin broke up. i mean, i know their future plans didn't work out, but they were good together in the present. it takes a lot of strength to break up even though things are good right now. i don't know if i would have the guts to do that. i mean, ideally, i would like to know a girl's future plans up front so i could decide if i wanted to date her in the first place, but a lot of the time, you don't have all of that information in the beginning. so what if things are going great, but you find a deal breaker? do you have the strength to break up because of that? it's tough, especially if you love that person already. sigh. heartbreaking stuff, man.
ok. time for a smoke. hopefully, no more dumps for me today. my sphincter needs a break!
friday night, i met up with paul, and we grabbed some dinner at sushimaru. instead of eating sushi, i had the katsu don. bad mistake. it was pretty awful, and gombei's stuff kicks sushimaru's all over the place. paul got some mixed sashimi, and for the price, it wasn't worth it. i am not impressed by sushimaru, as far as the non-sushi goes.
afterwards, we went to mikeC's place. he and john went fishing for the day, and they came back with five trout. they de-scaled, de-gutted it, etc., and i was impressed by their handiwork as they prepared the fish for eating. as i watched them work, paul played some videogames on the xbox 360 (project gotham racing), and then we just went home.
saturday, nelson and i grabbed some pho, and then we went to the mountain view arts and wine festival. the usual wares were displayed, and that was the boring part, but i went mainly to see my friend rainbow dance with her troupe. their group, decadance, did all sorts of stuff, and it was pretty interesting to see. afterwards, we went back to nelson's place, where i requested to see an episode of _space ghost_, which was pretty out there and random. then nelson showed me a piece from _kentucky fried movie_ called "a fistful of yen."
we drove over to paul's place and checked out the centerpieces for their wedding. they're big! the guys arrived from fishing (again), and then we headed over to corner place for some tasty korean food. i got the yuk ge jang again, but this time extra spicy, and with ramen noodles. yum. we went back, played some wii, and then i went home to catch the last half an hour of sportscenter.
sunday, we had dim sum at dynasty. i ate a ton. i was debating whether or not to get the turnip cake when it came out at the very end, and in the end, i decided to get it because i hadn't had it in such a long time. i wound up eating half of the stuff, and when i got home, i had major food coma and slept for another three hours. yeah, i wasted my day. i watched two interesting tv programs, the THS on simon cowell, and a PBS documentary on the 18 mighty mountain warriors, this asian american comedy group based in SF (that i saw a few years ago).
for dinner, paul, mikeC and i grabbed some mexican food at chavez, this supermarket on fair oaks. i decided to go with carnitas this time, and i was disappointed that it was the soft meat instead of the fried variety. still, the burrito was decent, but next time, i think i'll stick with the al pastor as the meat. and after dinner, i got really sleepy (i took my medication before dinner), so i just went home and conked out (yes, despite my 3-hour nap).
*yawn* i met up with alan today for lunch, and for whatever reason, the tuna melt bagel that i got really put me to sleep. i had trouble walking after i got back to the office, and i almost passed out on the crapper when i took my post-lunch dump.
have you ever fallen out of love while in a relationship? i have, and it really sucks (for the other person). i don't know why it happens; maybe the other person just gets old, and the relationship loses its freshness. it's actually a really worrisome thing for me, because i think i tend to lose interest in every girl after a while. yeah, i get bored easily. it makes me think twice about something like marriage, i.e. spending a whole *lifetime* with a single person. can i do that? i'm not sure.
so for whatever reason, i find the character of jan on _the office_ kind of attractive. i'm not sure what it is. she sort of reminds me of the actress sela ward, like, kind of an older, warm, sexually experienced (just my conjecture) woman. anyways, both _the office_ and _scrubs_ sort of ended on an ambiguous note, leaving me wondering what is going to happen next after the final scene. they weren't total cliffhangers, but they just ended on a curious note. pretty good episodes, i thought. i shall be eagerly waiting for the next seasons to start in the fall.
so maxim magazine named its top 100 sexiest women of 2007. jessica alba is #2, and i totally agree that she should be up there. she is really hot, and it's because of her hotness that i suffered through _honey_ when it was on tv a few weeks ago. but guess who's #1. ... lindsay lohan?! #@%!@#$ what the fuck? that is just a ridiculous pick. i mean, she's ok, i do like redheads (although i think she dyes her hair all sorts of colors now), but naming her the *sexiest* woman of them all? that's just plain 100% smelly stinky bullshit. i don't know what kind of drug the maxim people are smoking.
so i've gotten good at working the fax machine (although there's not much to learn, haha). the tax audit defense guy called me up today, and i have to send over all these forms (W-2, 1040, schedules A and D, etc.) over to him. he's basically going to recreate my entire tax return and resolve everything for me. i haven't gotten all the necessary files yet, so i'll finish everything by this upcoming monday. i've got a hard deadline in mid-june before the IRS charges me extra penalties and interest. silly government. but then, i'm the fucking dumbass for forgetting to declare my ESPP sales.
i had a really stressful dream this morning. i dreamt that i had to finish a project, which involved making a battleship, writing some speech recognition code (i worked for the speech recognition department at texas instruments for 3 summers), and whipping up some report. the dream was so realistic that when i woke up, i was shaking, and i had to tell myself over and over again that it wasn't true. i had to remind myself that i was a chip designer and worked for my company, and i wasn't some battleship maker, etc.
ok, i've spent long enough on this entry. gonna call it quits and put a capper on this week. have a good one!
so this IRS audit thing is really troublesome. part of me just wants to say "fuck it" and pay the $5K, but that's a lot of money (duh). i did get this audit defense service (i'm paranoid by nature, it's probably part of my OCD), so i got off my ass and started using it today. i had to fax all of the paperwork to them (i needed help on how to use a fax machine, ha!), and hopefully they can resolve the issue without me talking to the IRS myself. after all, that's what they're for, right?
so in anticipation for sunday's dim sum outing, i scouted out a different place today for lunch. J, C and i went to pan tao, this place diagonally across from cupertino village. it was decent food (we got leek dumplings!), but the overall ambiance wasn't too nice. it was sort of dark and dingy, and the whole place just felt sort of old. and to top it off, they didn't have good hot sauce! instead, they just had a cannister of hot oil with crushed red peppers, so i didn't try it. so maybe we'll just wind up going to dynasty (our usual place) instead.
i was totally shocked at last night's _american idol_ results. they booted off the best singer! i have no idea what the hell happened. but i have to admit, even though she's definitely the most talented one of all the contestants, she doesn't really have star quality. but then again, none of them have real star quality this season. i think the finale will be a complete snoozefest.
so may is halfway done, and the tv shows are winding down. _how i met your mother_ is already over, and tonight's the finales of my two thursday shows. i have sort of mixed feelings about it; on one hand, i'm sad that i won't have good tv to look forward to, but one the other hand, i'm happy that i won't be a slave to the tv schedule. but what will i do with this free time? it's summer, it's light out, so maybe i should get out more. we shall see.
man, the suns almost beat the spurs without stoudemire last night. they came up just 3 points (one bruce bowen 3-point shot) short. damn. now i'm worried. like i said, every team i root for has lost their series. if the spurs win, i'll pretty much lose all interest in the nba playoffs. drat. down with the spurs! people think i should support the spurs because they're from texas (i mean, i did root for the mavs and the rockets). but that's not true. i don't like the spurs because i think they're a boring team, and i think they've won too much. i do like manu ginobili, but that's it.
last night, i met up with nelson and mikeC at pizza chicago for dinner. they had this new pizza flavor, called "the sun times." among over things, it had pesto, pineapple, red onions and a ton of basil. i didn't like it; it was like eating a salad on pizza crust. luckily, only half of our pizza was that, and the other half was our tried and true "great chicago fire." the GCF flavor is wonderful. we should remember to go there on a monday, where they give a 25% discount on the entire tab. now that's a good deal!
ok, i've got a meeting in 3 minutes. gonna sneak out for a quick cig before it starts. ciao!
i've realized that i can only eat around 40% of what i used to. like, today, we went to e-noodle for lunch, and after my 12 dumplings, i was stuffed. i used to be able to eat 30! and similarly, as far as sushi goes, last time i went, i had only 3 plates. back in my heyday, i used to wolf down 8 plates at miyake. yeah, my stomach has totally shrunk. it's ok, though, because i'm not fat and over 200 pounds and stuff, and i don't have a huge gut and a double chin and stuff, but still, i feel like less of a man. and i used to be famous for being able to eat a lot, but i guess i'll just have to give that up.
so sorry, warriors fan, but your season has ended. i admit that i was rooting for you guys, despite the fact that you beat my mavericks in round one. i think you blew your wad in that round, and you just ran out of gas against the jazz. in last night's game, the jazz gave the warriors all sorts of opportunities to win, with all their turnovers and missed free throws, but golden state just didn't take over. oh well. it seems like every team i root for loses (mavs, rockets, and now warriors), so maybe i am the jinx. *shrug* and now the only team i'm rooting for is the suns, but with tonight's suspension of stoudemire and diaw, it's going to be hard for them to beat the spurs. fuck robert horry!
so was this past monday night's _how i met your mother_ the season finale? it made me sad. i guess i don't want to put up any spoilers, but yeah, i was a bit heartbroken after watching it. but man, cobie smulders is really hot. i dig her a lot. not only does she have a really nice face, but i like her dark hair. and the funny thing is, if she had different-colored hair, i think i wouldn't like her as much. like, in her "robin sparkles" video, her hair is a completely different shade, and i found her unattractive. (but then again, it could have been her 80's outfit, too, hehe.)
i have to admit that i've been lazy. i haven't played basketball in two weeks. i was supposed to play today (there's no open play tomorrow, so they moved it today), but my faulty reasoning was that not enough people would know about it, so i skipped it. sigh. i've got to get more exercise. but i hate playing halfcourt! i get a better workout in fullcourt. and plus, it's more fun anyway. ok, i have to promise myself that i'll play both days next week, even if that means i have to eat lunch by myself those two days. that's the bummer about basketball days; i don't get to eat with the guys, and i wind up just fixing a nasty sandwich at the company cafeteria.
oh, i forgot to mention that at greg's dinner thing this past monday, they had a black bag of doritos, and the flavor was "X-13D." apparently, it's an experimental flavor, and we all agreed that it tasted like a mcdonald's cheeseburger with mustard and pickle. amazing! i checked the ingredients list, and indeed, "beef" was on there. (i guess these chips aren't for vegetarians then?) i couldn't stop eating them, and i think it was because of the novelty of the flavor. i don't normally like doritos, but man, these were pretty addictive.
man, i'm still burping up my dumplings from lunch. it's almost like a leek burp!
ok, i've completely run out of steam here. off for my 5pm cig.
so last night, i got two letters from the IRS; one was thick, and one was thin. i immediately felt my heart sink. i didn't even bother to go home, as i tore into the thick envelope in my car. basically, there's good news and horrible news. the good news is that my amendment was accepted, and i'll be getting back $4,700 of overpaid taxes from this year. and HORRIBLE news is that they did an audit of my 2005 taxes and found that i owe over $5,000. WHAT THE FUCK. :( :( :( so basically karma came back and put a boot up my sphincter. sigh.
just two more weeks, and _american idol_ is over. i can't wait. this season has been really un-compelling, and i am more than ready to wash my hands of it. yuck. i am looking forward to having tuesday and wednesday nights free, although i'm not sure what i'm going to do with that time.
my bladder has been really random lately. yesterday, i must have peed like nine times. today? just once. weird, huh? i've been drinking the same amount of liquid (i'm very compulsive and have a set routine for my liquid intake), so i'm not sure what's going on.
i suggested popeye's for lunch today. i really like the gravy they use on their mashed potatoes. oh, and their spicy fried chicken skin is very good. but i think i'm done with that place. today was my second time ever going there, and it's enough. i'm not that much of a fan of fried chicken in general, and their country fried steak is only so-so. and it was a fast lunch, too; we left around 12:15, and got back before 1pm.
i saw some pictures of leeya last night in makeup. (she's getting married in a few weeks, and i guess she had a trial run in full makeup and hair.) i've known this for a long time now, but i'm not a fan of heavy makeup. a little bit of the stuff can go a long way (if necessary), but i'm much more of an advocate of the natural look. and that applies to hair as well. i guess i'm a simple guy when it comes to women's looks. (but then again, i do like well-shaped eyebrows.)
on the flip side, though, i historically seem to have a predilection for high-maintenance women. like, women that have a very good sense of style (read: expensive clothes) and girl that know how to dress. of course, that came with such unwanted traits as high expectations when it came to gifts (i had been told once that i gave crappy gifts) and other things (one ex casually mentioned that she would be "happy" with a 2-carat engagement ring, which almost caused me to crash the car due to shock). what can i say, you take the good with the bad, huh?
but you know, i think (i *think*) i've gotten past that now. maybe. my last big crush (k4) definitely had some (ok, a lot, *ahem* masa's?) of that high maintenance quality in her, but lately, i don't think i really care anymore. i just get confused sometimes when women or people feel like they're entitled to such grand things in life. where does that sense of entitlement come from? just because they're hot? i don't get it. i mean, i'm one of the lowest maintenance people you'll ever meet. all a girl has to do to make me happy is give me a kiss and a can of dr pepper.
speaking of dr pepper, i'm going to search the company for a can. i think they're out on the first and third floors. and then off for a smoke!
just to clear things up from my last commenter, i am not a big drinker. this past weekend was unusual (in that i had hard alcohol all three nights). i normally have at most one whiskey a week, if that. so i am not a binge drinker, if you're worried. :) but yes, i am a smoker, and i do realize that i definitely need to quit someday soon.
so i broke out of my mold at the cheap korean place today for lunch. i have always gotten the $5.99 #3 (spicy grilled pork), but this time i ordered the yuk ge jang (no idea how to spell it right), which is this spicy soup with shredded beef, egg, and noodles. it also has lots of green onions in it, but i asked for it without. and that made it very good. the soup was spicy, and i really enjoyed my lunch today. *smacks his lips*
my mom says she regrets making her food flavorful when my brother and i were growing up. it's made us very demanding as far as taste goes. but man, i can't imagine enjoying bland food. it would be so boring! give me spice any day. the problem is, though, that i wonder if i'm a candidate for stomach cancer or general GI problems in the future. my dad is an even bigger spice guy than i am (he carries around this jar of peppers wherever he goes), and he's been suffering from stomach issues.
i didn't take a dump all of yesterday. in fact, it slipped my mind until today. i'm usually very regular, like my two morning smokes usually induce a dump, but today, they did nothing for me. i just took one about an hour ago, so i'm behind schedule. i hope this doesn't throw me off, because i like being regular (after all, i have OCD). and fyi, my dump today was just slightly larger than usual.
talking to strippers is weird. i mean, when they're on stage or giving you a lap dance, they act all sexy and stuff, but afterwards, when they're collecting their dollar bills from the stage or putting on their clothes, and they talk to you, they're like normal people! it always shocks me a little bit. to me, strippers are meant to be looked at and appreciated from a distance (sort of like mini-goddesses), and when that barrier is broken, it just feels very strange. like, one time a few years ago, i saw a stripper perform, and later, i saw her outside in street clothes having a cigarette, and that, too, was odd. yup.
i know i've said this before, but getting a lap dance from two women is a complete waste of money. they just keep bumping into each other. a man's open lap only has enough space for one woman. it's sort of like getting a blowjob from two girls. it just doesn't work! one schlong, one mouth. that's it. what does the other girl do? hold it in place? hrmph.
today's been a slow day at work. there's still a lot of buzzing around with our new chip, and i'm supposed to help out with some of the PQ (picture quality) stuff, but we're waiting for an open station to free up, and so far, they're all occupied. oh well. it's not my fault.
i'm enjoying wearing my buttondowns in this weather. i haven't worn these shirts in years, it seems. but i did realize that with these warmer temperatures, jacket season is pretty much over, and i went through another winter without busting out my cool jackets. i have a lot of nice ones, and i haven't worn them in years. sigh. wasted money on wasted clothes.
ok, almost 5pm. time for another smoke. ciao!
i had alcohol all three days of the weekend.
friday night, it was mikeC's birthday dinner. there were lots of people at his house, as grace cooked dinner for everyone. i brought over a bottle of bushmills irish whiskey, and i had three glasses on an empty stomach. after eating, i went out for a smoke, and i wound up puking in the bushes outside. i puked once again when i got home, and this time it was the cheesecake the came up. (i had a fourth whiskey after eating dessert.) the birthday boy also puked, but he had a low tolerance to begin with.
six of the guys got about 2-3 hours of sleep before they left at 4am to go deep sea fishing. there was no way in hell that i was going to do that, so i got my 10 hours of sleep before getting up at noon. i called around, but no one was available for lunch, so i got some taco bell and watched some baseball. the game put me to sleep, so i slept another 2-3 hours in the living room. it was a really boring afternoon.
then, it was time for paul's bachelor party. we went to birk's restaurant in santa clara. i was not impressed. i got the 8 oz. filet mignon, it was not tasty at all. i got a jameson on the rocks, and then we headed to downtown sunnyvale and got shots. i had a patron anejo shot and then another shot of grey goose, and felt fine (luckily), and paul (who had a long island iced tea at birk's) doubled our shots. he felt fine, but then again, he had a lot to eat at dinner, and he's also a big guy to begin with. so we gave up trying to get him drunk. then, we hit the kkc for some "gentlemenly" activities. i think he had a good time.
sunday, john, nelson and i had lunch at king noodle for a light lunch. nelson went on the fishing trip, and he got majorly seasick, so he was puking his guts out. at birk's, he just got a bowl of clam chowder and a caesar salad, so he wanted something light to eat, so we picked noodles.
afterwards, we went fishing in campbell. well, nelson and i didn't fish, so we just sat there at enjoyed the weather and watching. i admit, it was sort of boring, and i smoked three cigarettes during the few hours that we were out there. nobody caught anything, either. there were a decent number of people out there, and i think only two people caught fish.
after that, we went to katie bloom's (an irish pub) for dinner and watched the warriors/jazz game. i had a jameson on the rocks once again, but just one. the warriors lost, so now they're in a 3-1 hole and will most likely lose the series. oh well. i was rooting for golden state (despite the fact that they knocked out my mavericks), and who cares about the jazz anyway? it seems that every team i root for is losing: the mavs, rockets, warriors, suns. maybe i'm cursed, haha.
anyways, that was it for my weekend. good times.
man, i am definitely ready for the weekend. it was a stressful week, with the chip debug and all. i'm not sure if they'll need me to work over the weekend, but if i do get called in, i'll be a little miffed, to say the least. i need my rest!
so i had a farewell lunch for A, whose last day at the company is today. we skipped the free lunch today (it was thai food) at the office and met up with oh and viet at giovanni's for some tasty pizza. i'm sad A is leaving, but it was just time for him to go; he has been with the company (in all three incarnations) for ten years, from the initial startup phase all the way til now, and he's going to a place he's excited about, so i just wish him the best. farewell!
so tonight is mikeC's birthday celebration, and tomorrow is paul's bachelor party day. the guys are waking up at an ungodly hour (like 4am) to go fishing in the pacific ocean, so naturally (since i don't fish, and i can't wake up that early), i'm not going to that. but i'm joining them for dinner (at birk's in santa clara) and the "activities" at night. i still don't know what we're doing after dinner, so i'm sort of curious as to what's going to happen. i'll just remember to bring lots of cash.
so apparently, jeopardy is having a college tournament. i was surfing channels last night and found it by accident, and the three finalists are from UCLA, notre dame, and stanford. it's a two-day finale, and tonight's the second day. i hope the stanford guy wins, of course. he was the only person to get the final jeopardy question right, and he trails the ucla guy by only a few thousand bucks. the winner, btw, gets $100K.
so now that the weather is warmer, i've stopped wearing my beloved puma jackets. (when it was even colder, i wore zip-up sweatshirts, and then switched to puma jackets as it warmed up.) today, i'm wearing a t-shirt and an open button-down shirt. the button-down i'm wearing now is one of my favorites, by banana republic. BR used to make such good stuff, but now it's all preppy and overpriced. ick. by the way, what color is periwinkle? nevermind. i just looked it up. fyi, it's "a light purplish blue." the internet is awesome. :)
i think i sprained my right middle finger. i am an avid knuckle popper, and it hurts when i try to pop that finger. ouchie! i'm not sure how it happened. maybe i was a bit overzealous in popping it, and i bent it a bit too far. did you know that i once sprained my own ankle? i was trying to pop it with my bare hands, and i twisted it so far that i let out a huge crack, and the next day, it was swollen, and i couldn't walk. it was really stupid, i know. the worst thing was, it happened at the end of the school year, and i had to move my stuff into storage. what ended up happening is that my friends had to move my shit for me. i feel bad about that.
hm. i'm ticcing a bit more today. i think it's the result of the cumulative stress that i've been going through this week at work. it's amazing how sensitive i am to stress. i'm like a live ticcing barometer to the stuff. hopefully i can rest up this weekend and go back to a calmer state by next week.
anyways, despite the stress, we (as a team) got a lot done this week, ever since the chip came back on sunday. we solved a lot of problems, and even though there are still some issues remaining, we've made good progress in the chip bringup. let's hope this bears fruit, and we can win some good customers. until then, have a STUPENDOUS weekend folks!
*phew* so after a lot of sweat and panic and speculation, we finally figured out what was wrong with the MCE in the chip. it didn't take long; i give massive props to M for his idea of stepping through the boot cycle and seeing where the register write/read failed. with the software debugger, it was easy to see where things went wrong, and WHAM-O! it was a glaring misprogramming that was the culprit. it turns out that they ported over some old code with a hard number programmed instead of a symbolic field name, and that put the MCE into a diagnostic memory test mode. *eureka* so now the block works hunky dory, and we're getting massive props for getting things back on track. i am giddy. successfully debugging something is a great way to get a rush. :)
i'm glad we got this out of the way because that means i don't have to come in during the weekend. when i got to work today, there were tons of e-mails in my inbox. our team was in "crisis" mode, and we were asked to work 7-day weeks. chip bringup time is always a stressful period, and it's even more stressful for us because we have demos to show to our customers.
so yeah, i went to the dentist today. it hurt more than usual. at one point, the cleaning lady even had to stop because i was in so much pain and had to gather my wits. even now, my teeth and gums are totally sore. she used a lot of the hook, but what hurt the most was when the water pick hit my gums. ouchie! i tasted quite a bit of my own blood during the process, too. man, i fucking hate going to the dentist.
i had a very vivid dream last night that one of my ex's was cheating on her husband with me. it was actually kind of exciting, being in an illicit love affair, sneaking around and hoping to not get caught. but then, somehow the plot turned into a situation where one of my friends had to get his left ringer finger get cut off. it was really gross and disturbing, and the shock of the moment woke me up. the image of the finger being cut off stayed in my brain for a long time, and it took me a long time to shake it out of my head before falling asleep again.
i actually know where i got the bit of the finger cutting from my memory banks. it's from this old tv series with chow yun-fat way back when he was very young, called _shanghai triad_ or something like that. in that show, there's a part where he gets to escape this mob boss, and in exchange, he has to give up his left pinky finger to the guy who lets him escape.
i am glad that _american idol_ is close to ending. this season has been pretty boring, the talent isn't as good, and i have been kind of cross that it takes up two nights of my week. and what's worse the results shows are an hour long, and they could easily make them half an hour; the rest is fluff. oh well. two more weeks, and i can wash my hands of this series.
does spunk sting when it gets in your eyes? i was watching this miko lee clip yesterday, and at the end of it, she gets this huge wad of spooge shot in her eye. she didn't complain, but i've heard from a friend that it really hurts. hm. does anyone know?
ok. today's been a good day. a lot was accomplished, i feels like. but then again, but solution was the simple change from a "4" in the code to an "8". so easy, yet to huge. funny how such a small thing makes such a huge difference.
man. so mongolian bbq used to be $7.95. when i went there a few weeks ago, it went up to $8.99. today, we went again, and it shot up again, this time to $9.99! that's a lot for a bowl of the stuff. i suppose i could stuff myself silly (it's all you can eat), but even one large bowl is enough to fill me up. like today, i got a little more noodles than i usually get, and i was barely able to finish my one bowl. i don't think it's worth it anymore, so i'm only going to go there if i absolutely crave it.
so the other night at greg and john's place, we caught their dog tachi molesting himself. i don't know if he was licking his balls or his schlong, but it was a pretty interesting sight nonetheless. he had his head buried in his crotch, and his backside was doing a violent humping motion as well. ha! sometimes i wish i could autofellate myself; that would be kinda fun, don't you think? actually, i have dreams where i can give myself a blowjob, but the thing is, it never feels good. maybe it's like tickling yourself, i.e. the sensation is lost unless someone else is doing it to you.
so sitemeter changed its visual stats pages from a line graph to a bright yellow bar chart. i don't like it. it's ugly and loud. ick. what was wrong with the way it was? hrmph.
i am worried about my sphincter muscle. without having a thick dump in months now, i'm scared that it's not getting exercised. what happens if i do get a thick dump someday down the road? is it going to tear and hurt and bleed? *shiver* maybe i should be doing kegel exercises or something.
dude, chip bringup is damn frustrating sometimes. like i said yesterday, there is just so little visibility into the silicon. next time i code up something, i'm going to try to add some debug features. i've been lucky that none of my blocks so far in my career have had bugs, but man, problems are hard to debug.
i've got a dentist appointment tomorrow morning. ugh. i hate going there. i'm afraid when they use those metal hooks to scrape off the tartar from my teeth. it fucking hurts! and i always feel guilty when they ask if i floss, and i sheepishly tell them no. i just hope i don't have cavities. that feeling when the drill hits the nerve makes me cringe into a little ball.
ok, time to wrap this up and check on the debugging process.
i don't like the weather. it's hot out there, and heat is my PMS. i get cranky and shit. last night, it was about 80 degrees (at 11pm) in my bedroom, and i fell asleep without any blankets whatsoever; that's weird because i usually need the feel of at least one layer of blankets to fall asleep. i'm not looking forward to summer, because it's going to be a toasty season, i can tell.
so bocce ball was ok; it was good to hang out with jack and alan. jeremy couldn't make it because his young daughter broke her leg. :( yeah, it was shocking news, and i hope she's ok. apparently, she was just playing, and she tripped over a ball, and wham-o! she got a fracture in her leg. i thought little kids were pretty resilient, but apparently not in this case.
the fremont city beach is pretty nice. the food wasn't all that great, but i was surprised that they had jameson. of course, i got one, but it cost me $7.50! damn, that's an expensive whiskey, and they didn't give me much, either. afterwards, i headed over to greg and john's place, and watched the second half of the warriors/jazz game. it was a close game, and i give the warriors credit for their guts at the end (they tried to win it instead of going for the tie), but the winning 3-point try was off the mark. let's hope they can win the next game and steal home court advantage. (yes, i am rooting for GS in this series.)
so at the taiko concert, they invited an a capella group to sing after the intermission (as well as on a collaborative piece). one of the girls was really hot! she was asian, tall, and had a nice face. and then, i realized that she was a college student, and most likely more than ten years younger than me. so i felt a little bit weird about that. i brought it up during the reception, and it turns out i wasn't the only one that noticed her, though, so there! :) haha
so i'm having to take second dumps right after lunch. and these dumps are all mostly liquid. it's weird. i'm not sure why i have them. after i come back from lunch, during my post-meal cigarette, i get this weird sour feeling in my ass. it feels like a fart, but i can tell there's something brewing in my butt. hm. the only thing i drink between my morning dump and this one is two vitasoy's and some water. *ponder* by the way, for lunch today, we went to pasta? in mountain view. that place sucks. it's expensive for what you get. i mean, i don't cook, but even i can boil up some pasta and throw in some meat sauce for less than the $13 (that includes tax and tip) that i paid for my meal today.
the office is buzzing with activity. since the chip came back on sunday, we've been working very hard in bringing it up. it's been pretty exciting, albeit frustrating as well. the thing with hardware is that you can't tell what's going on inside. it's not like software, where you can just put it in some debugger and probe the variables and stuff.
i just found out that another one of my coworkers smokes. she came down with a cigarette in her hand, and i was shocked. she just started a short while back, so that's why i never saw her smoke before. she said that she only has like 3-4 a day, so i was glad. smoking is a nasty habit, and i need to quit someday soon. i still feel bad that i taught one of my ex's how to smoke, but luckily, she has a kid now, so i'm pretty sure she has quit.
ok, that's it for today. time to do some more chip debug.
hey peeps. man, i'm pooped. been working all day. i didn't do anything brainful, but i was helping out one of my coworkers for some test bringups. plus, the chip came back over the weekend, and there's this weird (but serious) problem in the lab. we're scrambling and sort of panicking about this issue. i hope we can figure out what's wrong.
i'm also starving. i went with M to tofu house, and instead of my usual spicy pork, i got the kimchee tofu soup instead. that stuff was good (albeit temperature hot), but it didn't fill me up at all.
tonight's a "guy's night out" with my three stanford buddies. we're doing bocce ball. i've done it once before (at campo di bocce in los gatos), and it wasn't very exciting. however, it'll be great to see the guys again. we all live in the bay area, but we don't do a good job of getting together. i wish we saw each other more, that's for sure. so i'm highly looking forward to it.
i got to wear a cool tie yesterday. like i said, it was beige, navy blue, and white. i saw it on a mannequin at macy's men's at stanford shopping center, and i immediately knew that i had to have it. if my memory is right, i think that i couldn't find it in the store, so i had them take it off the mannequin. since it's sort of a muted tie, i've never worn it to a wedding (where i usually wear a more colorful tie), and plus, i don't wear suits that often anyway, so the funeral turned out to be the perfect opportunity to bust it out. i got a compliment on it from cheryl, too. :)
this morning, i had a dream where a girl was changing her clothes in the same room. she made me turn my back towards the wall, and i tried to sneak a peak by looking at the reflective surface of my watch. i think i caught a distorted view of her boobs, haha. i woke up soon after that, to my dismay; i think if the dream had continued further, i would have seen more.
so my theory on the massive number of hits i got last month is that it was because of kate beckinsale's new movie, _vacancy_. we'll see if that theory holds when her next movie comes out. it's a huge drastic change!
so nelson's brother is coming to live with him this week for a while. i wonder how much that'll change his eating habits, i.e. if i'll be able to eat with him. nelson is my default lunch partner on saturdays. we have this routine where i call him around noon or so, give him half an hour to shower, i drive to his place to find him still in the shower, and we go eat afterwards. so now, either he'll be busy with his brother all the time, or the three of us will hang out. i'm guessing it will probably be the former.
ok. i'm going to cut this short. i gotta go home and set the vcr (to tape _how i met your mother_) before heading over to alan's place. bocce ball awaits.
friday, i took paul and mikeC to gombei. i recommended the gombei chicken dish to them, while i got the chicken katsu don. it was a late dinner, so i was pretty hungry, and i ate most of my big bowl (even most of the rice, which i rarely eat these days). it was a very satisfying meal. and since i took my medication before meeting up with them, i was very sleepy afterwards, so i just went home and went to bed.
friday, nelson, mikeC and i went to taqueria la bamba for some cinco de mayo food. i bumped into olivia, one of k2's good friends, while i was there. talk about a blast from the past. she was definitely surprised to see me, and i didn't know if she would recognize me, especially with the new glasses and hair. we chatted for a while, and it took a while before we finally landed on the subject of k2 herself. hehe.
afterwards, the three of us went to REI, which is, in fact, my FAVORITE store (i say that with all the sarcasm i can muster). we stayed there for way too long, but the guys bought stuff. nelson got a bear cannister and a green plaid shirt, which he had been looking for for a long time now.
oh, while we were waiting for mikeC to arrive for lunch, i tinkered with the electric piano that nelson bought from jamie. sad to say, but i had forgotten how to play anything. i tried in vain to muster up the chopin revolution etude the i used to be able to play from memory. sigh. but nelson had the sheet music to pachelbel's canon in D, so i sight-read it with only a little bit of difficulty. it was fun playing the piano again, and i definitely miss it. maybe i'll get one myself.
after REI, i went home and watched some sports before heading out to gombei again, this time with taiko folk. i got the chicken katsu curry this time (not hungry enough to get the gombei chicken which i had planned to get), and then it was off for the stanford taiko spring concert! the show was pretty good, and afterwards, we mingled at the food-laden reception in braun rehearsal hall. i met some of the current members for the first time, and it was fun talking to them. they're so young! i also tried "sponge drops" for the first time. they're like twinkies, if i had to compare them to an easily-recognizable kind of food.
sunday was all about the funeral. i got up at 10am, got dressed in my navy suit (white shirt, brown/navy/white tie), and carpooled with paul and leeya. the ceremony itself didn't involve much speaking. there was a lot of kowtowing, and then some buddhist monks came and chanted for well over half an hour while the family alternated between kneeling and standing the whole time. then, we each got a stick of incense and kowtowed and stuff. then, it was time for the burial, and we got carnations and kowtowed again.
afterwards, the family treated us to a dinner at a nearby restaurant. we got candy and $1.50 (the tradition is to spend on sweets, as it was a sour day) after the ceremony, so i bought a bottle of dr pepper. i didn't eat much because it was only like 5pm or so, but they did serve duck, and i happily ate all the duck skin and fat. (i'm starving as i type this.) it was good to see my friend handling himself ok, but at the same time, it was bittersweet, of course, because of his loss.
after that, paul, leeya and i went over to the great mall to get a dress for the flower girl in their upcoming wedding. while the girls were doing that, paul and i took the girl's little brother to dave and buster to play. he's a cute kid. we did skee ball, video games, etc. after that, i went home, and i enjoyed having an early evening to myself to decompress.
all in all, it was a full weekend. the weather was a bit hot, though, especially on sunday, standing out there in the sun with a dark suit on.
ok, warriors fans, you can gloat all you want. i gotta hand it to you. that third quarter was an awful showing by my mavs, who were outscored by 21 points. ick. and nowitzki had a horrendous night, going 2-13 for only 8 points. if he gets the MVP award for the regular season, it'll be practically worthless. :(
yeah, i'm pretty sad, but then again, it doesn't hurt as much as my cowboys losing to the seattle seahawks back in january. even though the mavericks' loss was a historical first and perhaps one of the greatest upsets in sports history, i care more about the dallas cowboys than the mavs. *shrug* but still, of course, it stings. people were coming up to me last night and today with their condolences, but they were all warriors fans, so deep down, they were grinning ear to ear. i put up my best front, but i did congratulate them sincerely. the warriors played well, and they beat dallas fair and square.
so, on to other things!
i have a tummyache. not sure why. i met up with nelson for lunch today, and we had thai food (i got the pad see ew). nothing weird about that. i just took my second dump of the day, but my stomach is still bothering me. not sure what's going on here. i hope it's nothing serious.
i had a really scary dream last night. this dude stole my baseball cap, so i chased him down and took it back. but then, he pulled out a rifle, so i ran away in a zigzag pattern, trying to make it hard for him to hit me. but then, it turned out that the weapon he had was a microwave beam gun, and he got me! i felt this buzzing searing pain all over my body, and then i woke up, shaking. it was an awful dream.
so i'm on call for work on sunday. i've never had to work on weekends at this current company, so it all might change this weekend. i've got my friend's mom's funeral to go to that day, so after the ceremony, i'm supposed to call in and see if they need me. if i do come in, it'll be the second time my boss will see me in a suit. coincidentally, the last time he saw me wear a suit was also because of a funeral.
do you think a guy and a girl be best (platonic) friends? i'm not sure they can. this sort of goes back to the whole _when harry met sally_ discussion, but in the end, i think that one of the two will eventually be interested in the other, and the whole thing will get messed up. either that, or they'll end up hooking up and getting together. and the latter case is very cool, ideal, in fact. the two people in a couple should naturally be best friends, in my opinion, but keeping it platonic is very hard to do. for me, i've been interested in practically every girl that i've gotten close to; i mean, the reason why i seek them out in the first place is because i'm attracted to them in some way, you know?
so last night was paul's surprise 30th birthday party. but we ruined the surprise! when he got home (we heard the garage door open), we turned off all the lights, and we were waiting for him to come up the stairs so we could pelt him with balloons. but then, one of the balloons popped, and ann let out a little yelp. paul was like, "what the..." and BAM! he figured it out. man, so close... :)
ok, i'm ahead of schedule with this blog post. off to smoke. fyi, now that my mavs are done, i'm rooting for the rockets and the suns.
man, today's basketball outing was a poor showing. only four people showed up, so we wound up playing two games of 2-on-2 to 11 points. i hate 2-on-2 because it's so tiring! we lost the first game 6-11 and won the second one 11-8. i was huffing and puffing afterwards, so i guess i got a good workout. my favorite is still 4-on-4 full court. i like that better than 5-on-5 because there's more space to move around and get open for jumpshots. (even though i'm taller than most other players, i don't play the post or bang around inside; too afraid of injury.)
the big emasculating moment on the court happened when my jumpshot got blocked by a guy who was like 5 inches shorter than me. how embarrassing! :)
so for whatever reason, my hits suddenly went down by more than 50% yesterday and today. i'm not sure why. i don't really care how many hits i get, since most of them are junk (not regular readers), but i was just wondering why it happened. oh well.
i forgot to mention my carpet fuzz dump a while back. but yeah, it made this crackling noise when it came out of my ass, and when i looked back, it looked exactly like brown carpet fuzz! it had a lot of texture to it. man, my butt really does come up with some interesting turds of late. i wonder if i'll ever have a normal tubular shit ever again. i don't even remember how it feels, to have a regular, run-of-the-mill dump.
so our chip is coming back on saturday night/sunday morning. what's sort of amazing is that we actually sent a guy over to taiwan to pick up the chips and bring them back. isn't that a pain in the ass? i mean, why couldn't we just wait and have them mailed to us? i'd hate to be that guy, sent on an errand like that, to endure two 10+ hour plane rides back to back simply to save us a few days. poor guy.
so nbc's shows are at weird times tonight. like, _the office_ and _scrubs_ start at 8:36 and 9:19, respectively. i mean, do tivo's and other such systems handle those sorts of odd times? or do they only have granularities of 30 minutes? *ponder*
did any of you do your taxes by mail? how long did it take for your refund to come back? i'm getting worried, because it's been weeks since i sent out my amendment, and my check hasn't come in yet. i want that money back, dammit! and the last thing i want to do is call them up and go through all that red tape to find out what the hell happened to my money. arrgh.
*yawn* ok. it's been a slow day. gonna go home early and run some errands.
oh, and one more thing... GO MAVS!
so i think i overhyped myself on those honey dijon kettle chips. i opened a bag up yesterday, and they just didn't taste as good as i remembered. maybe i'm used to the "krinkle cut" variety that the salt/pepper and buffalo bleu varieties come in. i think those have more flavor because they've got more surface area. hm. *ponder*
so i don't own a black suit. i was thinking of wearing a navy suit to my friend's mom's funeral, and when i told my friend C that over lunch, he freaked out. he said that we're only supposed to wear black. so what to do? after lunch, i did a google search of "funeral attire etiquette," and the results i found said that it's actually ok to not wear black, and dark colors are acceptable. so what do you guys think? is it ok to wear navy? if i'm supposed to wear only black, then i have a black shirt and black pants to wear, but no tie or jacket. is that ok?
man, i am really bored today. i can tell because i'm smoking more. i am trying to cut down my cigarette consumption by one per day (making it 9/day instead of 10), but it was too tough to do today. i had a carefully planned regimen of 10/day that i kept for a long time now, and the one smoke that i cut out was the noon cigarette right before lunch, and i was actually doing a good job on it. but in the afternoon today, with nothing to do, i just got too ancy, so i had two of them in the 3 o'clock hour. whoops. well, i'll try again tomorrow.
so my mavs' season almost ended yesterday. it was a crazy game. we were up by 21 points in the first half, and then we blew that lead and were down by 9 with 3 minutes to go. at that point, i conceded the loss, but then, the mavs scored the final 15 points of the game. just crazy! now the big, huge, monumental task will be to win game 6 in oakland tomorrow night. i am frightfully nervous. stressing out. shitting bricks.
i think i'm going to stop buying cd's blind (or rather, deaf). my last cd purchases were new releases by new order, andy bell, pet shop boys, and saint etienne. all of them are no good. i think from now on, i'm at least going to listen to the clips on itunes or amazon. it's a waste of money to buy the cd's, listen to them once, and to never touch them again, which is what's going to happen to those cd's that i just listed. ick.
a lunch (pho nam), i bumped into johnnyC, a stanford guy who was one year behind me. we were just acquaintances, so i was surprised he recognized me (with my different hair and glasses) and remembered the first syllable of my name (he only knew "dar" and not the "dy"). hehe. i looked him up on the stanford alumni site, and apparently, he married his stanford girlfriend and has two sons now. my one memory of him in college was that he was totally shocked that i was going out with k1. (he went to the same high school as her.) he referred to her as a "goddess," and i guess he didn't think that a mere mortal like me could land a woman of her caliber. ha!
i was looking at pictures of a friend of mine, and i decided that she looks better with short hair. it's not a surprise, though, because i've always preferred shorter hair on girls. it's just cuter and sexier, imho. sassy! however, i haven't decided whether every girl can pull off the short hair look. but for those that do, hot damn! add to that a pair of good glasses and some stack heeled penny loafers, and let me at them! :) (yes, i have a lot of fetishes)
hey people. so this sunday, i will most likely be attending the third funeral in my life. the first one was for my grandmother (mom's side). the second one was for alan's father. and this one will be for my friend's mom. the first two were very sad, and i have no doubt that this one will be sad as well. what makes all three of these out of the ordinary is that they were for lives that were cut short prematurely. sigh.
i got an epiphany just now during my smoking break. i am working on debugging this soft coring feature that i added for our revB chip, and during my cigarette, i realized that addition operations take precedence over shift operations. ah, C code! so i was all excited to finish my smoke, and i ran upstairs to tell my partner in crime, the C model guy. *eureka*
[update: the test passed! I AM THE MAN! :)]
for lunch, C and i went to corner place, the korean restaurant that paul took us to friday night. i ordered the spicy shredded beef soup (i'm not even going to attempt to spell out the korean name of it), and it was laden with long green onions. i don't mind them normally, but this one just had too much of the stuff. i wound up leaving a lot of the stuff untouched, so i think i'm going to be hungry when dinnertime rolls in. next time, i'm going to ask for less onions, and i'm going to ask them to put in the ramen (an available option).
i had a dream last night about k3. i haven't heard from her in a really long time (almost a year), and i miss her. but anyways, in the dream, i wanted to give her a little bottle of chopped cucumbers (random, i know). i was in a medical school, and there were all these displays of med students, and i tried to find her name among all the cardboard posters. but, all the info they had on her was dated, so i was stressing out because i couldn't find where to send the bottle. i think this dream reflects upon the fact that her birthday is coming up in a few weeks, and i want to send her a gift but don't have her contact information.
i went to safeway yesterday, and i was excited to find that they had honey dijon kettle chips in stock again. i love that shit. i picked up two bags immediately, and i can't wait to open one tonight. (i'm still working on finishing the bag of salt & pepper kettle chips that i got. they're ok, but not as good as the honey dijon ones.) normally, i'm not a potato chips kind of guy, but kettle chips in general are very good. i also like the buffalo bleu ones, too.
so the chip that we finished last month is coming back this sunday. the project lead wants to be in the office all day sunday. ick. i just told my boss that i'll be at the funeral sunday, so he wants me to call in afterwards to check if they need me. i might have to come into work in my suit. coincidentally, if i do, that'll be the second time my boss will see me in a suit, and the last time, it was also for a funeral.
ok. time for a smoke, and then i'm off.