Posted on Sat, July 31 2010 at 12:08 pm
hey, i feel like i owe you guys a rare blog entry on a weekend. i know i didn’t blog on thursday or friday. lots of stuff has happened this week.
just to recap a few points, thursday, i had lunch with W and O at choi’s. i missed choi’s.
that night, i ate dinner at the company at 7pm, but right after, jay called me. he was in palo alto for some craniosacral therapy, and he wanted to grab dinner. so i was like, “ok, i’ll just eat a little bit.” he came over just before 9pm.
jay loves dance, too, and i told him earlier to watch LXD. he watched the first episode, and as i expected, he thought it was lame. i thought so too. but then, i showed him LXD episode 3, and he was really impressed. i’m telling you, watch episode 3 (“robot lovestory”). you will NOT be disappointed.
then, we went to fu lam mum for their 9pm+ $8 chinese dinner specials. last time, we got the salt and pepper fish, cantonese chicken in clay pot, and sizzling hunan spicy bean cure. jay loved it. this time, we tried the braised fish in clay pot and eggplant with garlic sauce. jay also loved it. i’m telling you, fu lam mum rocks. $8 for a set of certain dishes after 9pm.
for whatever reason, i was up until 4am thursday night, and when i realized i had an 8:30am morning the next day, i skipped my PT exercises and decided to hit the sack pronto.
getting 4 hours of sleep really hurts. since i sleep so little every day now, the first thing i do when i sit up in bed is yell “FUCK” because it hurts so much.
anyways, i had an 8:30am conference call with our paris division, and i think things are coming into focus for the next chip. i still don’t know if i want to fly to china, which is what the project manager wants me to do.
i spent the rest of the day developing a real, rigorous and functional test for one of the IP’s that i integrated in to my block. i wrote a bunch of C programs and sed scripts to convert ascii data to binary files, etc. i forgot how much i love writing software. but the gist is, that after a few kinks and a lot of intense and focused work, i got the entire test to work. I AM THE FUCKING MAN. my company has no idea how good i am.
anyways, alan called me, and i met up with him and ting at the redwood city chevy’s. it was good seeing them again. ting is weeks away from delivering their baby girl.
why do women opt for natural birth? why would they go through all that ridiculous pain? anyways, ting wants to try it, and i’m like, “why?” yes, i’ve heard from bradley method people that the epidural can harm the baby, but i dunno. i can’t deal with severe pain, so if i were a woman, i’d definitely get the epidural.
we were at chevy’s for 2 hours. i was good to relax and chat with good friends.
after i got home, i got on my computer for the next several hours. honestly, i think i am getting addicted to the internet. there is just too much good content. i watched some louiekc comedy clips, and i explored some music from the seattle/northwest hip-hop scene. (who knows about this?). i listened to some hip-hop from two groups: blue scholars and common market. apparently, the seattle hip-hop scene is very underground, and their hip-hop is very different from the mainstream. instead of mass market rappers talking about how much money they have and how they want to have sex with a girl, a lot of seattle hip-hop outfits rap about social consciousness and stuff. it’s pretty interesting.
anyways, i finally dragged myself off the computer around 3:30am. and since i hadn’t done my physical therapy exercises for two nights straight, i forced myself to do all of my exercises despite the fact that i was so tired. so after that and my shower, i went to bed at 4:30am.
i got up at 11:30am. so that sounds late, but i only got 7 hours of sleep. still, though, 7 hours is a lot relatively speaking. remember that i used to be a guy who would get 10-11 hours of sleep a night. now, i’m getting around 5-7. it’s a really big change.
ok, i’m off to find some lunch.
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Posted on Wed, July 28 2010 at 6:13 pm
this is the first time in a HELL of a long time that i’m blogging at work. i’ve been so damn busy these past few weeks that i’ve only been able to blog at night when i get home.
right now, things have quieted down. i actually had time today to go through a ton of snailmail and pay some of my bills. (my mortgage and HOA payments are due in 4 days, for example.) i got my DMV renewal notice, and fuck, i have to get a smog check again? damn. i always get ripped off when i get a smog check. like, once, i called up a gas station in mountain view with a coupon, and they quoted me a price, but when i got there, they quoted a higher price. wtf? bastards. i think i’ve paid as much as $60+ for a smog check.
also, my dentist billed my old dental insurance company, so of course, my claim was denied. i need to call them tomorrow and tell them my new insurance provider. i swear that i told them already.
and finally, i need to pay for my ACL surgery. but the silly surgery center sent me the bill but no envelope to mail it back in. what, am i supposed to provide my own envelope?
i am still trying to find out the family of the deceased person who donated his achilles tendon to me so i can thank them. i asked if this was possible numerous times, but no one’s done anything. so i need to call the surgery center and make an official inquiry. my surgeon’s assistant said that wanting to thank the donor’s family is not uncommon, but some families choose not to accept any communication. i guess some families don’t want to be reminded of a death. it makes sense, but i am really grateful for whoever died to give me his body part to me.
once again, i went to bed after 3am last night. what is going on with me? i mean, i am getting WAY less sleep than i used to get. i mean, i used to get like 11 hours a night, but now, i’m lucky if i manage 6-7. but i feel fine. am i just fooling myself? will my body just break down one day?
PT went well yesterday. last week, my extension/flexion angles were 4 to 95, but yesterday, i was able to get to 3/125. pretty cool.
i really think my weight loss has to do with my getting off haldol. i have lost like 30 pounds since i went off western meds. now i’m wondering if my sudden weight gain when i turned 25 was really because i turned 25. because if i remember right, i started on haldol near that time, too, so maybe it was the haldol and it had nothing to do with my age.
but anyways, life is really good right now. i am a fucking stud at work. and now, things are lightening up, which is a big relief because i started to obsess about my job a bit (like dreaming about it, thinking about it in the shower, etc.).
my one main complaint right now is my TV OCD. i *REALLY* dread watching television by myself at home. like i said, this past sunday, it took 6 hours to watch 3 hours of real tv. ugh.
i got off my leg brace sunday night. however, i still walk really funny. i guess my right leg is just used to being straight after being in a brace for 2.5 weeks. when my right foot plants, my toe hits first, or at best, i land flat-footed. i need to train myself to go heel-first like i used to.
anyways, that’s it for today. hopefully i’ll be able to blog regularly now.
Tags: health, tv, work
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Posted on Tue, July 27 2010 at 12:14 am
i slept pretty late night (around 2:30am), and my alarm went off at 8am. my dad was already gone by then. but i had to get up that early because i had an 8:30am video conference call at the office with our branch in paris. ah, the problems of being an international company.
the meeting was productive, but damn i was tired.
i spent the rest of the morning hashing out 2D 60Hz details on our current chip with my boss and then working on audio codec test vector generation. the playback (verification) didn’t work, though. but i decided to work on it later.
for lunch, 5 of us went to dusita. i swear, the turkish guys like the golden chicken (or any kind of breaded deep-fried chicken in other cuisines) at dusita. i switched it up just a teeny bit and got the pad kee mow instead of my usual pad see ew. (pork, of course).
most of the lunch conversation was about _inception_. as you can probably tell, i am totally gaga over inception. i was up the previous night reading its wikipedia article, and related links from the footnotes. i just think christopher nolan is a genius.
after i got back to work, i started working on integrating a new memory controller block into my testbench. between that and two meetings, i was occupied all the way until 7pm.
i missed the beginning of _the bachelorette_ by the time i got to jimmy and sabrina’s house. i grabbed some drive-thru on the way, so that slowed me down a bit. this episode was “the men tell all,” and man, there was a lot of juicy stuff in this past season to revisit. and after those 2 hours, the next ABC show was a 20/20 episode about _the bachelor/bachelorette_ series. so of course, sabrina and i watched that too.
man, one more night of this show next monday, and i’m done with another season. should i continue watch? it’s such trash, but it’s so addictive.
ok, time to go to bed. i have a followup with my orthopedic surgeon tomorrow to check out how my ACL surgery recovery is doing.
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Posted on Tue, July 27 2010 at 12:05 am
another great weekend.
friday night, i left work at 9pm. of course, there was nobody around for dinner, so i got another six dollar burger. the night before, i ordered a guac/bacon one, but they gave me a jalepeno one. this time, i ordered the guac/bacon again, and i told them very sternly not to mess up my order. they didn’t. damn, that is one awesome burger. but of course, at 2,000+mg of sodium per pop, it’s gotta taste great, right?
i didn’t do much that night. the entire workweek had been exhausting.
saturday morning, i woke up around 10am. i did my morning routine (check my e-mail, read my twitter feed, etc.), and then i went into work for about 30-40 minutes. yes, i am working too much.
but then the rest of the day was awesome fun.
first was chloe’s (paul and leeya’s adorable daughter) 1st birthday. the event was held at a park near the rivermark. i got there, parked in a residential area, started walking, and then i spied a blue handicapped spot across the field. so i got back in my car and parked in that spot. yes, i am ALL about exploiting my handicapped placard.
slowly, people started coming, and i had a great time. i was especially excited about telling people about my _inception_ theory knowledge. some people who had seen it didn’t think that there were any other possibilities other than the face value they saw. a lot of people asked me about my ACL injury, as my leg brace was very obvious. paul cooked up a ton of food.
i stayed at the party from 11:30am to 4pm. i didn’t notice it until i saw myself naked in the mirror before my shower that night, but the back of my neck, my forearms, and my lower legs were *really* sunburnt. i mean, the back of my neck was bright red, and it really burned when i touched it. ouch. i have never used sunblock in my life, not once. i should start doing it.
there was a basketball court next at the park. when i saw it, i felt really sad and frustrated. i really wanted to just grab my basketball from my car’s trunk, but i wouldn’t have been able to shoot without being able to jump. so i was a little sad about that. i really miss playing basketball, and it kills me to know that i won’t be able to step back on the court until at least next year.
then, from that party, a lot of us went straight to the next party. this one was for geoff, who was in the states for 2 weeks in the middle of his stint with US army in iraq. it was good seeing geoff. i was really worried for him when he left, but he’s almost always indoors, so i feel better about it. i asked him a lot about his thoughts about the war in iraq and afghanistan, and what life out there was like. i mean, geoff is the only person i know who is in the armed forces.
i brought two bottles of whiskey to the party: jameson 12 year and black bush. geoff is a whiskey disciple of mine, so i made him drink quite a bit of it. he liked the jameson 12 year better than black bush, the latter which he said was sort of “peppery.” i also drank my fair share of the stuff.
i had a really good time hanging out with bowling gang that whole day. i don’t see them much that often anymore, so it was really refreshing and nostalgic. funny thing, the first party’s address’s street number was 4321, and the second party’s number was 1234. crazy, huh?
i got home before midnight, and when i sat in front of my iMac, the alcohol really hit me. i tweeted a few times, and typing (correctly) took a shitload of concentration. and then, i had to go upstairs and do my PT and take a shower. during my PT exercises, when i closed my eyes, i nearly passed out a few times. and then, when i was in the shower, i also almost passed out a few times. closing your eyes is *really* bad when you’re buzzed/drunk.
the next morning, i woke up around 10am. my dad had arrived from taiwan/narita to SFO by then, and an hour later, he rang my doorbell. i was really happy to see him. he bought me a bottle of patron silver at duty-free, and i i showed him my bottle of patron anejo. and then, i proceeded to give him a lecture about the different classes of tequila (silver/plata, reposado, anejo). then, i made him do a smell and taste test with my anejo and the silver.
for lunch, i took him to su’s mongolian bbq, but it was closed on sundays. (drat) then, i took los padres, the scenic route, to santana row. man, HANDICAPPED PARKING RULES! i introduced him to pasta pomodoro. he liked it. then, i introduced him to pinkberry. yes, his first pinkberry experience. he got a mini mango with three toppings (blueberry, blackberry, kiwi), and i got a small watermelon (their summer flavor) with mochi. i was excited about the watermelon, but honestly, it tasted nothing like the fruit. it was sort of berry-like. i was disappointed.
then, i drove us home, and my dad took a long nap due to jet lag. i spent the next 6 hours or so watching 3 hours of SYTYCD (2 hours performance, 1 hour results). yeah my TV OCD was pretty bad. also, i found out about the “surprise” decision during the results show from twitter days before. but damn, lauren gottlieb made me drool once again. i would SO do her.
for dinner, i waited until past 9pm so i could take my dad to fu lam mum and get their $8 dinner specials. and before i left, i took off my leg brace. yup, it’s been 2.5 weeks. i no longer need the leg brace anymore.
after i parked behind fu lam mum, i got out of my car and started walking. it felt WEIRD. i mean, ever since i injured my knee, i’ve been in a knee sleeve or knee brace 100% of the time while i’m outside my house. so i felt naked, unsupported. i tweeted, “is this how women feel when they don’t wear a bra?” i’d really like to know.
my dad and i totally pigged out on three dishes: salt and pepper fish (with their hot sauce), sauteed greens with garlic, and sizzling spicy hunan bean curd. it was DAMN GOOD. i fucking love fu lam mum after 9pm.
then, after i got home, i showed my dad two SYTYCD routines. then, i showed him LXD episode 3. he was amused. i wonder if he thinks i’m weird because i’m into dance. this is a new fact to him, despite the fact that i’ve been watching SYTYCD since episode 1.
he went upstairs to go to bed, but i heard him talking on the phone until at least past 1am. (it was sunday, but a monday in taiwan, so he was doing work.) i stayed at my computer and read more _inception_ theories until like 1:30am.
anyways, it was an awesome weekend.
Tags: basketball, family, food, friends, health, whiskey
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Posted on Sat, July 24 2010 at 12:45 am
i am all-consumed by work. thursday, i was all over the place at work. i think i worked from 9:30am to 10pm. yes, 10pm. and today, i was at the office from 10am to 9pm.
i don’t quite get it. am i busy because my mind is freed from the haldol, and i choose to be busy? or am i busy because i’m just involved in so many projects at once (up to 4 different chips), and this is only temporary? i don’t know.
i am starting to dream about work again. and that is NOT GOOD. it took me a long time to be able to separate work from my life. when i first started working in 1997, i would take my work with me everywhere: in showers, during drives, in my dreams. i was too involved. i worked at T for like 2 years straight without a vacation, and one november, my mind just snapped. i had a nervous breakdown. and unfortunately, my parents were visiting right at that time, and they saw how fucked up i was. i will never forget my mom seeing me and crying in my company’s parking lot.
ever since then, i’ve been able to compartmentalize my work, to sweep it under the carpet the moment i walk out of the office. however, these past few months, i’ve been losing my ability to do that. my life is entirely consumed by my job. i mean, part of it is because the current project required me to become the resident expert in a huge part of the chip, and now i have so much more knowledge. that’s why i want to ask for a promotion and a raise. i swear, my division would choke if it weren’t for me doing my thing. i am the only one who truly understands the display processor (from the high-level architecture down to the detailed code), and i can debug a hardware simulation failure or a c-model bug faster than anyone else. i have become what i was at my first company: a super-star engineer.
anyways, today, justin, an ex-coworker was in town. he left a few years ago to join a startup in vancouver, and now he’s getting his MBA in hong kong. so we organized a pho nam outing with him, me, ian, david and william. it was good hanging out. i noticed that all four of them had iPhones. it’s amazing how ubiquitous iPhones are these days. props to apple, even though they are far from perfect.
these past two nights, i’ve gotten out of work so late that i just got lazy and had a six dollar burger each night. last night, i ordered a guac/bacon one, but they gave me a jalepeno one instead. so today, i ordered the gauc/bacon again, and i told them to get the order right (which they did). damn, these burgers are good. but i know i can’t have them that often.
tonight, i had my burger, tried to watch SYTYCD on my DVR, but i was getting sleepy, so i turned the tv off. then, i fell asleep on the couch while my leg was still in an active CPM machine. yeah, i’m getting worn out. i woke up, wanted to get ready for bed, but then, A called, and wound up talking for 80 minutes. (and before you jump to any conclusions, let me just tell you that i just started talking to a girl who i’m interested in.)
i need to wear my straight leg brace for like two more days. then, it’ll be 2.5 weeks, and i won’t need it anymore. already, when i get home, i take it off, and i walk around the house without the brace.
i do find it interesting how much attention i get because of the leg brace. everybody’s always asking me what the hell happened to me, and i have to explain to them what an ACL is, where i got it from, how i hurt myself, etc. i mean, the attention is nice sometimes, but it gets a little tiring.
twitter ruins my tv watching experience, hehe. i already know what happens in SYTYCD’s results show. damn that lauren gottlieb! (no, i can’t say that… i love her too much.)
ok, that’s it for me today. i have two parties tomorrow to look forward to. i’m pretty excited.
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Posted on Wed, July 21 2010 at 11:04 pm
this will be a short one. i want to post this entry and then head upstairs and retire.
i did some nasty, nasty work today. i had to generate test patterns for the chip that just came back, but the process was very ugly. one of the engineers wrote this “README” file that explained the steps one at a time, but the problem was, her flow wasn’t perfect. there were still issues here and there, some of which took quite some time to fix.
for lunch, 4 of us went to pasta pomorodo. and what was truly AWESOME was that i drove, so i got to use my handicapped placard. so i parked right in front of the place; usually, when we got there (mathilda and el camino), the place is a zoo, and parking is really hard to find. damn, i’m gonna miss this placard after october 1st.
i spent the rest of the afternoon working on the test vectors, and then helping out the two contractors. i swear, why do we hire contractors instead of permanent employees? the latter would be cheaper, and you would also get the benefit of retained knowledge. anyways, i left the office after 9pm.
i’m tired.
i started to watch SYTYCD (jay texted me that lauren gottlieb is like SUPER hot), but now i’m sleepy, so i turned it off before the first dance.
oh, i am in BIG trouble with verizon. right now, i am FOUR HUNDRED texts over my limit of 250. yup, *650* texts total so far. and i have a week left until my next billing cycle. and guess much each of those extra texts will cost me? ten cents. yup, i will have like a $40 overage. FUCK. i just changed my plan online for unlimited verizon network messaging, plus 500 texts a month for $5 more. however, they won’t backdate the plan, so i’ll be stuck with that $40 overage. ugh.
ok, that’s it. i have a suspicion tomorrow will be very busy at work. i have e-mails that are hinting that i will be debugging a lot of stuff tomorrow. but i’m not checking e-mail tonight.
-d
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Posted on Wed, July 21 2010 at 12:21 am
this is wordpress post #200! wow, i can still remember when i went over to mikeT’s house near halloween last year to watch him install wordpress on track15.com. before that, i had been using movabletype, and i had several hundred (i think) entries on MT before i ran out of disk space, and it corrupted my database. then, i had to re-install movabletype and start over, and i wrote another huge set of entries. i think i wrote at least 2,000 MT blog entries, i am pretty sure of that. man, i do wonder when/if i will stop blogging.
my day at work was spent fighting fires. it started with a next-generation project meeting from 9:30am to 11:30, where we teleconferenced with one of the managers in our division in paris. the architect presented her slides, and we went over all of her proposals carefully. i think this architect has never done a full chip before, so she was missing a lot of details.
after lunch, i took 4 of my coworkers to gombei bento. god, i love that place. the food is good, and it is cheap. what more can you ask for? i’ve only been there three times, but i foresee many, many more visits. next time, i’m going to order the curry udon. i haven’t had good curry udon since i was living in kyoto in 1995.
then, i spent the rest of the afternoon jumping from issue to issue at work. first, i helped out the C-model contractor debug a run-time failure. then i helped an RTL testbench guy with his problems. then, i modified some files as per a discussion yesterday. then, i helped my neighbor debug his hanging CPU register transactions. then, i was pulled into a meeting about the chip that just came back and gave my thoughts on this one fatal issue. then, i went over to this one coworker and asked her to explain to me how to generate test patterns for that chip.
i mean, the entire day was just so frenetic. i mean, it was exciting, but i know i can’t keep this up. i know A LOT of stuff about our chips, and in many cases, i am the only person who knows the details of some blocks. and i can debug an issue faster than anyone else, so i am always in high demand.
anyways, today, there were two big things that came up at work.
first, i was asked to create those test patterns. it was something i really, REALLY didn’t want to do, because i consider it boring work, and i have much cooler stuff to work on. however, when push came to shove, it was decided that i was the best candidate, so i will be spending the next two days generating these test patterns.
and second, the program manager (my ex-boss and good friend) for the next-generation chip wants me to go to china with him in early august for two weeks. this is so i can teach the team in china about my knowledge of the display processor, since they’ll be the ones who will actually make the changes to the code. i really don’t want take another long flight (times two), and i told my ex-boss that i could do all the changes myself faster than if i taught other people to do it. he knows it, and everyone else in the company knows it. however, he said that it’s very important that i spread around my knowledge and expertise.
i feel pressure from him, but i do have a good valid excuse for not going, though: the physical therapy for my ACL repair won’t end until late august, and i really don’t want to not have supervision of my rehab for two entire weeks.
but yeah. maybe i’ll be in china in a few weeks.
big things are happening to A. you could view it as good or bad. (it doesn’t have anything to do with me, in case you were wondering.) it’s amazing how close she and i have become as friends. A’s going through some tough times, and i’ve been the one who she can lean on for comfort and support. i think it’s very important that everyone has a good support system. for some people, it’s their family or friends or religion or any combination. i’ve come to realize that A doesn’t have much of a support system (parachute kid, only child, etc.), so i am gladly serving as a rock she can hold onto. and no, i am not wishing she’ll want to get back together with me or anything. (i got interested in this other girl recently, but that’s a whole other story.)
anyways, i read some more theories of _inception_ tonight. the fact that christopher nolan came up with a script/movie/idea that can stir such strenuous mental activity among the masses shows how much of a genius he is. anyways, i plan on seeing _inception_ again, so i’ll be able to measure all of these theories against my second viewing.
ok, last night, i told myself i would go to bed before midnight. i wound up trying to get this code compile submission in, but it just kept on failing. so i gave up and went to bed around 2am. now, it’s 12:16am, and i really don’t have much to do tonight, so i’m going to do my PT exercises and hit the sack.
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Posted on Mon, July 19 2010 at 10:59 pm
my right leg is getting stronger. it’s amazing what a few days of immobilization will do as far as muscle atrophy. i had surgery on a wednesday, and when i unwrapped my leg for the first time on sunday night, i could tell there was a siginificant shrinkage in my right quad.
starting last week, i’ve been going to physical therapy (PT) twice a week. i’ll go for a total of 12 sessions. last tuesday, they gave me three exercises to do, then thursday, they added five more. now i have three more. it’s going to just build and build until i get my strength back. my swelling and strength and flexibility are already improving in a week. and the people there are really nice. i talked to one guy about his ideas on _inception_ today.
today, i had another meeting where i was consulted to see how the next chip would work. i think we’ve hashed out all the details. the problem is, *i* want to be the one to make the changes. i think it’ll take less than two weeks. but the chip is going to be designed by our team in china, so that means i’ll have to teach them how to do it. it’ll be faster if i do it myself, and everyone knows it, but they don’t want me to do it. *bratty pout*
the meeting ran so long that by the time i got out, nobody was available for lunch. so i went downstairs and ate by myself at the cafeteria. fortunately, the facilities guy jorge was there, so we got to catch up. he’s my buddy.
i spent the rest of the afternoon dealing with this bus issue, which i thought i fixed, but it didn’t compile tonight. after i write this entry, i need to go log on the laptop into our server and see what’s wrong.
i had PT at 5-6pm. then, i went back to work, hung out, and then went over to jimmy and sabrina’s for _the bachelorette_. sabrina ordered one large round table pizza, but she didn’t expect that jimmy’s brother would be there, too, so by the time i got there, there were only two pieces left.
i felt bad, but i asked them if there was any more food. so jimmy grilled up some shrimp. and they refused payment from me for the pizza, so i think next week i’ll order dusita takeout and bring it to their place.
_the bachelorette_ is getting intense. lots of deep feelings (relative for reality tv) are being developed. and frank did a horrible thing to ali tonight. it was painful to watch, yet so engrossing. i can’t wait for next week’s “the men tell all” episode.
so, i have a question to you people out there: at what age do you stop doing the silent treatment thing? i have always hated it when my gf gives me the silent treatment. i mean, when we are fighting, i want to talk about it and hash it out and resolve it. however, some people just don’t talk. anyways, i always figured that people would eventually grow up and mature and be able to communicate, but apparently, as i found out today, this is not the case. the silent treatment is fucking juvenile. if you do it still, do yourself a big favor and stop.
ok, gotta go log on and do some work.
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Posted on Mon, July 19 2010 at 1:57 pm
what an awesome weekend.
friday night, you all know that i took david out to aziza for dinner.
after i got back, my friend andrew left me a note about LXD (legion of extraordinary dancers), so i was up until like 3am exploring their website (www.thelxd.com). i had seen them perform on SYTYCD before, but they are much more than just a performing group. they now star in this online webisode series that will last all through summer.
saturday morning, i took david out to hobee’s for brunch. he had never been there before. after we got back, he packed his stuff up, and he moved back up to SF.
then, i look at some more LXD stuff, and around 4 or so, gwen and barden came over. i showed them some online videos (daft punk’s 2 girls and 2 hands, _tron legacy_ trailer), and then i showed them previous episodes of SYTYCD.
then, we left for the mountain view obon (japanese summer festival). the taiko group jun daiko was playing, but it took so long to find parking that we got there after they had already started performing. (fyi, i used my handicapped placard and parked at safeway across the street.)
we saw emi, shoji, steve, kara, and the rest of jun daiko, so we hung out for a while. we went in to one of the buildings to look at these rocks. there’s this art form where you find a rock created only by nature, and you make it mimic something else, like a mountain range, for example.
then, five of us went to gombei menlo park for dinner. after that, i was up until like 3am again watching LXD videos and stuff about some of the dancers in the group. most notable was travis wong. he’s a kung-fu/dance/parkour/freerunning expert. amazing guy.
sunday, i got up around 11am, and i called rae for lunch. she told me that she would call me back in about 30-45 minutes after she and adam finished washing their cars, but after two hours, i was still waiting. so i called adam, and they had already eaten. i guess there was a misunderstanding or something.
anyways, i met up with ting and alan at the redwood city century movie theaters to watch _inception_. since i hadn’t eaten yet, i stopped by pizza my heart next door and ate two slices of their “big sur” pizza. that shit is good.
_inception_ was FUCKING AMAZING. i SO loved it. it is one of the most brilliant and complex movies i have ever seen, and i TOTALLY dug that. man, that christopher nolan. first _memento_, and now this. (i didn’t really care for his two batman movies.) both _memento_ and _inception_ deal with time, reality and perception in ingenious ways.
when i got home, i talked to A for over an hour. then, i talked to david. then, i guess my lack of sleep finally caught up to me, because i passed out on my couch for an hour.
i was going to go up to bed, but wound up spending the next 2.5 hours reading _inception_ theorieis. many, this is a complicated movie. there are quite a few viable theories, and that’s what makes the movie so great.
and that’s it. yeah, i need to sleep earlier. but it was a great weekend. i was totally inspired by LXD and _inception_. entertainment rules.
Tags: food, movies
weekend updates » No Comments
Posted on Sat, July 17 2010 at 1:43 am
i’m motivated about a lot of things. i think ever since i came back from taiwan and stabilized my brain after getting off haldol and the other powerful western brain meds, i am tackling life more aggressively now.
like, i can feel it when i drive my car. the past week or so, i’ve noticed how i am driving faster, braking harder, wanting to get to point A to point B as fast as possible.
i can feel it about my job. i have been spending a lot of time at the office this week, even though i am technically supposed to be working from home as i recover from my ACL surgery. last night, i spent about 2 hours thinking about a new chip architecture and another 2 hours writing an e-mail explaining to some coworkers how to implement it. i was up until 3am. this morning, my old boss at the company called me to ask me if i was ok. he saw my 3am e-mail, and he told me to take it easy, to not burn out, and to chill out. then, my current boss e-mailed me, saying “don’t come to work until you’ve gotten some sleep.”
but the thing is, i really *want* to work. i have become this super-guru of a major part of the chip, and i like that. i like the fact that when the architecture team proposes something, they have to run it by me first to see if it’s feasible or not. i want to be an important member of our team.
and then, there’s my ACL recovery/rehab. i wasn’t quite sure what would happen once i got my ACL surgery. i mean, i am very paranoid and neurotic, and i am a big worrier. so up to the actual surgery, i was fretting about this and that.
however, after i got my new ACL, i was just so motivated to get better. luckily, for me, 1) the anesthesia didn’t give me any nausea (i have a friend who also got ACL surgery two weeks ago, and she puked FOUR times after she woke up), and 2) the vicodin didn’t affect my mental state. so those two things, especially the immunity to vicodin (well, except for my massive constipation) made me recover extremely quickly. i was alert, active, social, functional.
and now comes physical therapy. you all know that i have OCD elements in my personality, so god damnit, i am going to stick to the PT routine like a motherfucker.
anyways, i just think my attitude towards life has improved a lot.
ok, let’s see… i didn’t blog yesterday. what did i do? i do know that wednesday night, i got champagne at safeway for diana’s birthday. that’s what i didn’t want to disclose, as it was a surprise party. it was a $60 bottle of bubbly, but the safeway club card got me $20 off. veuve something.
anyways, thursday morning, i had this really long 2-hour meeting at work from 10am to noon. basically, like i said before, the architecture team had come up the specs for the next generation chip, and they wanted to run it by me to see what i thought. i looked at the block diagram of my area of expertise (display processing), and i immediately noted some issues.
for lunch, adam came over to my company. he had coupons for carl’s jr. (buy one six dollar burger, get another one for $1), so we got in my car and drove about 1/4 mile to the one down the street from my office building. we got two six dollar burgers (jalepeno for him, guaco/bacon for me) and an order of crisscut fries, all for under $9. it was adam’s first six dollar burger. i think he liked it. but, we also got the full nutrition guide, and holy shit, the gauco/bacon six dollar burger is the WORST one of the six. it has over 1,000 calories, the most fat, the most carbs, and over 2,000mg of sodium. holy shit. but damn, is it tasty.
after lunch, i brought adam into my office, and i showed him around. i showed him my cube, the PQ lab, all the modified HDTV’s lying in the aisles, etc. after adam left, i started testing out this new feature in my block, and i realized that i needed to add something in the hardware to make it work. so i fixed it, and now we can do some really cool stuff with that feature.
i had physical therapy at 5:30pm. my original therapist was unavailable for the next few sessions, so i got a new one. she was a nice woman too. she massaged my leg to get the swelling down, and i was taught 5 new exercises. her assistant helped out near the end. she tore her MCL playing softball; usually the MCL heals itself on its own, but hers didn’t, so she had to get it replaced.
after PT, i went back to the office, and i helped out the contractor a bit. then, i got the champagne from the office fridge and drove to diana’a house. basically, diana thought that a few of us were going to meet up at shimbala for stinky tofu at 8pm after she and her fiance worked out, but what really happened was that her fiance drove her back to her house, where 5 of us were waiting to surprise her.
we heard the garage door open, so we just sat by her staircase and waited for her to enter. she came up the stairs into the living room, saw us, and then we yelled, “SURPRISE!” diana had a weird delayed reaction, and then, she screamed. it was funny because she saw us before we surprised her, but she didn’t really react at all, and there was a long moment from the time we yelled “SURPRISE!” to the time she screamed.
anyways, then we had dinner. jen got fried rice, jason made mojitos for everyone (except me, because i don’t like them), and caroline cooked up a shitload of jerked caribean pork and chicken. we ate and talked for a long time. topics included jen’s horrible BMW buying experience, real estate, and google’s “mail goggles.”
i think we all eventually left around 10 or so. then, that’s when i got home, saw that work e-mail, and spent the next 4-5 hours thinking about work and composing a huge e-mail about how to do the job right in the next chip.
i think i fell asleep around 4am.
i got up at 10am today. i didn’t feel tired or anything. i checked my work e-mail, responded to a few of them, got that phone call from my old boss, and then went into the office. the first thing i did was to go straight to the cube of the architect to sent out the previous night’s e-mail, and work with her on clarifying the architecture. she eventually got a bit confused, so she asked me to leave her alone while she tried to understand what i told her.
today was the free lunch day at my company. around 12:20pm, i was like, “where is everyone?” some straggler in the hallways told me it was company lunch, so i went down and got some food. i had some saffron rice, vegetarian jambalaya, steamed vegetables, lemon chicken and some fish thing. it was ok. the best thing about my company’s free lunch day is that there’s free dr pepper. i had one can.
i spent the rest of the afternoon working leisurely. my stuff is pretty much done, so i have been helping out others. at one point, i took off my leg brace, sat on the ground, and did my PT exercises.
in the middle of one of them, two of the architects came to talk to me about what i was telling them earlier, so the three of us went into a room, and we just hashed it out. eventually, my new boss came in, and he was pretty upset, because he’s being protective of me, saying that i just had surgery, went to bed at 3am last night, and that i shouldn’t be bothered and stressed. i reassured him that i actually wanted to be in the discussion, so we just kept on hashing it out until the lead architect for the next chip was satisfied.
i spent the rest of the afternoon helping the contractor with the C-model. i swear, if i didn’t help him, he’d be fucked, and he wouldn’t be here anymore.
i helped him to a point where i thought he could be self-sufficient, so i left and went home. it was like 6:50pm. shit. i had told david to get home at 6:30 so we could drive up to aziza. traffic on 101 was a bit spotty, so i took 92 west over to 280, and then it was a breezed until we got into the sunset district. i called aziza around 7:40pm (our reservation was at 7:45) just as we were passing stonestown galleria to tell them that we were running late. we got there just before 8pm.
three different employees at aziza recognized me from last saturday. i thought that was pretty cool. do i have a memorable face or something? they gave us a side table and an extra chair so i could elevate my leg. i noticed that until late in our stay there, we were the only guy-guy table. all of the other 2-person tables were clearly dates between a guy and a girl.
anyways, i got us both the tasting menu again. (let me remind you that i was taking david out to thank him for living with me and helping me during my surgery recovery. he moves back up to SF tomorrow.) i made david order a cocktail, and he got this tequila-based drink that was described the words “plum” and “jasmine.” it was pretty heavy on the tequila.
the food was pretty much the same as last week, except that we got soup (creamy horseradish) this time, but less variety of main courses since it was just the two of us instead of nine last week. david got the lamb shank, and i got the chicken. (i originally wanted the wagyu (kobe), but “sweetbreads” was listed as a companion ingredient. fuck that.) but yeah, it was really good. the final tab (2*$62 + $10 cocktail + tax + tip) was around $167. it was my fourth $100+ 2-person meal that i paid for, and it was the second more expensive one. however, it isn’t even *half* of the most expensive 2-person meal that i’ve paid for. crazy, huh? yeah, that k4.
david is a good friend. i treat him like a little brother. after all, he is like 10 years younger than me. i’ve introduced him to whiskey, semi-fancy restaurants (le charm, house of prime rib, alexander’s, and now aziza), and i just like the fact that he is a good guy. and i’m really grateful for him that he agreed to live with me while i was recovering from my ACL reconstruction. he filled up my kodiak ice machine, got me water, got me food, etc. it’s been great having him here.
anyways, the drive back was uneventful. after we got home, i showed david some youtube videos: the daft punk of the two women, and the hitler meme about the iphone 4 antenna.
ok, it’s getting late. 1:35am. earlier, we were watching _manswers_ on spike. that show is ridiculous. i mean, it’s such trash, but a lot of the questions they answer are really interesting.
stuff like:
1) how do you increase your peeing aim by 80%? – putting a visual target in the urinal
2) what one other animal practices prostitution? – chimps, i.e. female chimps will agree to have sex in exchange for food
3) how long can you keep a severed limb before it goes bad? – 4 days, if you wrap it in a towel and keep in ice at 40 degrees
4) what animal has been employed by the US armed forces to fight terrorism? – sea lions, which can sniff out enemies in the water
5) how much has the average US boob size grown since 1993? – B-cup to C-cup, due to addition of hormones in beef, lotion, toothpaste
yeah, it’s damn fascinating.
ok, i gotta go to bed.
Tags: food, friends, health, sex, work
general mundane shit » No Comments
