Posted on Tue, September 7 2010 at 7:08 pm
this morning, i started at my new company.
i got up at 8:20am, i was supposed to meet with HR at 9am to hand over all of my paperwork (W-4, I-9, direct deposit, benefits, AD&D, etc.). it took me a lot longer to fill out these forms than i had expected. i had to list my previous 3 places of employment (which required me to pull up my resume on google docs), as well as list 3 references (which i had to dig out of my cell phone’s address book).
then, i drove to the new company and did the HR stuff. immediately afterward, i was already in a meeting for some verification work that i will start on ASAP.
around 11am, i finished that meeting, and i whisked off to get my car from the shop. in case you didn’t know, my car is named “kendra.” she was fucking BEAUTIFUL when i saw her. the roof and trunk were completely repainted, the wheels were cleaned, and the interior was vacuumed. (they threw all of my crap inside into my trunk, which sort of upset me.)
after i paid the body shop, i spent a good 30 minutes transferring stuff from my rental car (the jetta) and getting rid of unwanted papers and stuff. then, when i started my car, the stereo need the security code. apparently, when they replaced the door, they had to disconnect the battery so the car’s computer wouldn’t register conductance or something on the car’s exterior. so i had to car my dealer to retrieve the code.
then, i drove to city beach. i was an honorable person, so i told them straight up that i quit my old company (which paid for our memberships) and signed up for the monthly open gym membership ($25 a month). then, i did my leg workout and spent an hour working on my shot.
i got two pastrami sandwiches from jitb for lunch. but before i even finished my first one, i was called into another meeting. i stayed in that meeting and the next one for a total of like 3 hours. we went over architecture and packet definition. luckily, since i’ve already done 4 years of designing networking blocks, i pretty knew most of what everyone was talking about, and i even had ideas of how to design and implement the stuff already. in the end, i announced, “it’s all do-able.” that impressed some people, i think.
finally, after the meetings, i had time to try to calculate my W-4 exemption number. however, to get an accurate estimate, i needed to know much mortgage interest i would be paying for this year, and i don’t really know how to figure out that out. so, i think i’ll just do a standard single-person non-mortgage exemption number, and i’ll add maybe 1 or 2. i’ll just give the US government a massive tax-free loan and get it all back next year. for 2011, i’ll adjust my exemption number to an accurate number.
my work computer setup is pretty rad. at my old company, i had the same computer since 2004. for a laptop, they gave me an *IBM* thinkpad. old shit.
here, i have a 2.4GHz laptop docked to a huge 1280×800 widescreen monitor. i am using both monitors at full resolution. sweet. i immediately installed YM, AIM, adobe AIR (for twhirl), twhirl and firefox.
the only annoying thing is that we are on windows 7 professional here. it’s insane. every time i do something, the stupid OS asks me if i want to allow it. (at my old company, we used windows XP professional, which did none of that.)
but yeah, day 1 was cool. i jumped straight into stuff, and i actually had constructive and experienced input. and the people here are pretty smart; i think we have a total of ONE new college grad (NCG’s). at my old company, a good 80% of our design/verification team was NCG’s. it’s a totally different environment, and i consider it an improvement. it’s not that i didn’t like the NCG’s, or that they weren’t smart as all hell, but prior and established experience counts for a lot.
ok. i’ve caught up on my twitter feed for the day, and i’ve updated you guys on my blog. i’m gonna see if the verification dude is here so he can show me the server/development environment. otherwise, i’m going home.
great day. i’m excited.
Tags: basketball, food, health, work
general mundane shit » No Comments
Posted on Tue, September 7 2010 at 6:55 pm
so i already talked about friday night.
saturday morning, my dad came. we had an awesome day together. because of my faster brain, it was pretty much non-stop talking.
for lunch, i took my dad to ace of sandwiches. i ordered him an atomic pastrami on a sourdough roll, and i tried the super reuben (4oz pastrami, 4oz corned beef, thousand island dressing, sauerkraut on a french roll). it was good. i also tried an arnold palmer (iced tea + lemonade) for the first time, but i was disappointed to find out it was a “light version.” my dad got a starbuck’s bottled mocha frappuccino.
then, i went to OSH to buy a new light bulb for my garage. i was thinking CFL, but i really don’t like the fact that they have mercury in them, and the whole clean-up process (as designated by the US government) is really complicated. so in the end, i spent 10X the price of a CFL and bought a $35 LED light bulb. 8 watts, 320 lumens. it’s heavy as hell. but it’ll last like forever.
then, my dad took a nap, and i caught on my e-mail and stuff.
around 4:30pm, i woke my dad up, and he went to shoreline park to hit some golf balls. i secretly snuck out to stanford campus (after watering nelson’s onion plants). when i got on campus, i didn’t realize that the stanford-sacramento state football game was going on, so i thought i was fucked. i wanted to go to the track house (which is now called the stanford athletics store), which is right next to the football stadium. but THANK GOD for my handicapped placard, so i was able to find prime parking.
the track house has some awesome suit. i bought a nike stanford basketball, a nike dri-fit golf polo for my dad, an underarmour sleeve-less dri-fit-type shirt and these really cool basketball shorts (with pockets!) for myself.
it was halftime when i got to the track house, and stanford was up 31-7. QB andrew luck had already passed for 301 yards and 3 TD’s. wow. of course, sac state isn’t quite “worthy” competition, so we’ll see how we stack up during the pac-10 regular season.
then, i drove to the stanford bookstore. i called up my mom in taiwan, and i asked her for her t-shirt size (S) and what color t-shirt she wanted (grey). so i got her one. i also got my dad a stanford golf t-shirt. and then, i bought jay’s son jaden his 2nd birthday present. all in all, i spent $230+ on stanford gear that day.
honestly, if i had gone to another college (harvard or MIT), i doubt i would have this kind of school spirit. i mean, harvard football? MIT basketball? nah. stanford combines great academics with quality athletics teams that you can tangibly cheer for. i fucking love my alma mater.
on the drive back from stanford, 101 was completely packed in both directions in mountain view (rengstorff and shoreline exits). i looked it up later, and green day and AFI were playing at shoreline amphitheater at 7pm. ah. do that many people still like green day?
i got home, and i laid out all of the stuff i had bought, and i took a picture of it. when my dad got back, i showed him everything i bought. he liked the golf shirt, but he told me that he doesn’t wear crew-neck t-shirts, only v-neck. and he doesn’t wear t-shirts in general.
for dinner, i took my dad to the menlo park gombei. he got the fried mixed seafood (calamari, shrimp and salmon), and i got the gombei chicken. i wanted my dad to try the echigo beer, but they only had the echigo stout (dark beer, ick). so i got a large bottle of asahi super-dry.
after dinner, i spent the rest of the night showing my dad videos on my iMac. i started off with the trailers for _the last airbender_, _tron legacy_, _black swan_, _machete_, _step up 3d_ and _sucker punch_. then, i showed him several LXD episodes and finished with some SYTYCD routines. regarding dance, he was like, “i’ve never seen anything like this before.” exactly. dance is the next great art form for the masses.
sunday morning, i got up at 8:30, but my dad had already left. so i did some random stuff, and then i had lunch with barden. first, we went to the stanford bookstore to return the golf t-shirt, and then we had lunch to the creamery. (chicken salad melt! health bar crunch milkshake (the i didn’t finish)!) when we got back to my place, i asked him if he wanted to watch _the lost room_, but he didn’t have time. i did show him the trailers for _black swan_ and _sucker punch_. he wasn’t interested in _machete_.
i spent the afternoon chilling out. my cousin came back from burning man, and he wanted some hot food. (he only ate cup-o-noodles with COLD water, poor guy.) so i took him to chez mayflower in milpitas square, and both of us got the scrambled egg and beef over rice. we also got a big bowl of hot and sour soup, but it wasn’t very good.
then, we went back home so my cousin could shower, and then we went to AMC vallco to meet up with tim for a 10:45pm showing of _machete_.
i did not enjoy the movie. having seen the adult version of the movie’s trailer, i knew that i would have issues with the violence. bullet violence (a la john woo’s “bullet ballets”) is fine with me, but danny trejo’s character’s main weapon is this big knife. i can’t handle severed limbs and shit like that.
the movie was definitely interesting in the issues robert rodriguez brings up: immigration and the battle between legal right and moral right. however, like i tweeted, rodriguez takes these issues and “shits then onto your face.” it’s just too much. i think people who can stomach the violence should see this movie, but i just did not enjoy it.
monday, i took my cousin to dynasty for dim sum with tim. we got there at 11:45am, but it was already packed. i got us a table, but i forgot my cell phone, so by noon, i went outside the restaurant, and i saw tim sitting there waiting. ugh. i feel naked without my cell phone.
dim sum was pure gluttony, but good. the rest of the afternoon, i caught up on computer stuff, and then i watched last week’s episode of _bachelor pad_. amazing stuff. dave completely fucked krisily over.
then, i went over to jimmy and sabrina’s to watch the current episode of _bachelor pad_. they eliminated girls off teh bat to form 4 teams of couples.
_bachlelor pad_ is fucking brilliant. it takes _survivor_’s manipulation and strategy and _the bachelor/bachelorette_’s relationships and mashed them together to form a wicked amalgamation. i don’t care if it’s the producers (i.e. mike fleiss) or the reality actors who come up with the strategies, but it’s absolutely insane and a pure joy to watch.
after the show ended, i went home and just chilled.
and that was the weekend. 3 days of fun, bliss, relaxation and good tv.
Tags: dance, family, food, friends, house, movies, music, tv, wonderment
weekend updates » No Comments
Posted on Sun, September 5 2010 at 12:00 am
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Posted on Sat, September 4 2010 at 4:06 am
it’s been a CRAZY week. and today was really, really long.
i know i’ve been totally neglecting this blog. i think twitter has replaced this blog.
but in a nutshell, three mondays ago, i resigned from my job. i had been working here since mid-2004. when i joined, i seriously thought i would stay here for the rest of my life.
but as always, “forever” isn’t really a part of life, right?
three mondays ago, i decided to take a job elsewhere. this decision happened around 10:30am. i spent the entire weekend before that monday talking to people. i talked to a shitload of people: three old managers and tech leads, people who left the new company, people who were at the new company (including the VP of HR, VP of engineer and VP of marketing). basically, on saturday, my cell phone’s battery was half drained by 1-2pm. the entire weekend was like that.
on that monday, i woke up around 9am, and i was on the phone until 10:30am. then, i went outside, stared at the sky, and came back into my house. i turned off all the lights and just sat on my couch in the (relative) dark for about 5 minutes. then, i felt this wave of peace wash over me. and i knew that i wanted to take the new job. i drove to the new company and signed the offer letter (which i had received the previous thursday).
at 2:30pm, i attended a verification meeting at my old company. it was me, my direct boss and my contractor. after the meeting finished, the contractor left, and i asked my boss if we could talk about something in private. that’s when i handed him my resignation letter. (FYI, i hand-wrote my resignation letter because i didn’t want to type it up and have someone else see it at the printer. my letter consisted of two sentences: “i officially resign from /company/. my last day will be september 3rd, 2010.”)
my boss talked to me for about an hour. then, he had to go to another meeting, but he must have told the VP because the next thing i knew, my old boss came into my cube. we talked for about an hour outside in the parking lot.
anyways, i don’t need to go into all the details. but the gist is that today was my last day.
we all know that it is standard to give two weeks notice. however, i gave *three* weeks notice because i knew i had to spend the entire 3rd week documenting my work and transferring my knowledge. through these past six years, i have become an incredibly vertical engineer: i can do code, microarchitecture, architecture, testbench building, test writing, debugging, defining the soft programming framework, and even the C-model.
there were reasons why i joined this company in 2004. there were reasons why i stayed. but now, there are reasons why i have to leave.
ok, to recap the week: the coworker from japan was flying back to tokyo on wednesday, so tuesday night, i took him to the stanford bookstore to buy some stanford gear. during the week, the bookstore closes at 8pm, and we got there at 7:55pm. after i parked, i just ran from the tresidder parking lot through white plaza to the bookstore. yes, i ran on my new ACL for the first time. it didn’t feel bad.
he bought several t-shirts for himself, his wife and his father. i bought a really cool black under armour dri-fit-type shirt with “stanford university” and the under armour logo on the chest.
then, i took the coworker to the creamery at stanford shopping center for dinner. we sat outside. i ordered a chicken salad melt for both him (side: french fries) and me (side: green salad with ranch dressing). the chicken salad melt is the creamery’s best sandwich. my friend kept on saying “oishii” (delicious) while he was eating it. he also got a chocolate cookie mint milkshake, and i got a heath bar milkshake.
at the end of the meal, i went inside to use the bathroom, and then, on the way out, i paid the whole bill. it was my way of congratulating him on getting married recently and for being a soon-to-be father (he and his wife are expecting a son).
then, we went to see _step up 3D_. during the previous friday night, after we came back from nihon whiskey lounge, i showed him a lot of dance videos. so he was really interested in _step up 3D_. i had already seen it, but i’m telling you, it was even better the second time around. just the final battle itself was worth the price of admission.
this was my friend’s first 3D movie. and that’s good because most movies don’t really gain anything by going 3D. however, jon m. chu (the director) makes use of the 3D video’s perceived depth very effectively in some scenes. so _step up 3D_ is one of the few movies that is better in 3D than 2D.
after the movie ended, both my friend and i were yelling out “SUGOI!” (fantastic) in japanese in the AMC mercado parking lot. i was so inspired and amped. i mean, i would totally see this movie a third time.
that night, my cousin D drove down from SF. his lease in SF was up a few weeks ago, so he had been staying at coworkers/friends’ houses. but now, he needs a more permanent place to stay. so i told him he could totally crash with me for a while.
before we went to bed, of course i showed D dance videos. i showed him some LXD and SYTYCD videos.
wednesday night, i had DVR’ed the USA/iran basketball game at 8pm on espn. i got home past 9pm, and D didn’t come back from work in SF until past that. he decided impulsively that he was going to burning man the next day, so he also had to buy a ton of shit: food, toilet paper, sunscreen, hat, etc. he also rented a tent.
when he got back, i had already ordered two domino’s pizzas. their website offers a $5.99 2-topping pizza as long you order two or more. so he got pepperoni/mushroom, and i got the sausage/jalepeno. i was able to finsh my pizza, but D left one slide. my college appetite is back!
oh, about the game. the fucked up thing is that espn’s US open coverage ran straight through 8pm, by the time my DV’s recording actually got to the game, there were like 40 minutes left. oh well. this year’s USA team is pretty crappy. (none of the players on the US’s 2008 gold medal-winning team are on this year’s roster.) i honestly don’t think we’ll win the tournament. greece, spain and argentina can beat us, i bet (though i have no evidence or proof).
but yeah, that domino’s pizza was damn good.
thursday, D left for burning man. i had spent the previous two workdays documenting my work full-time. all in all, i wrote seven documents. then, thursday and friday were spent going over my documentation and transferring as much knowledge as i could. i mean, i’ve been working here for six years, and i’ve done ELEVEN iterations of the display controller, so i know it like the back of my hands. i mean, it’s become second nature to me.
today (friday) was insane. i got the work and immediately had a 2-hour meeting on code coverage for my block. then, it was my farewell lunch. (i was disappointed that none of the old managers came; i’ve known them for 13 years.) after that, i rushed back to the office to finish the document that i had to present at 2pm. that meeting lasted 2 hours.
then, i had to write more documents, go through my exit interview and pack up my cubicle (packing took another 2 hours). all of my stuff in aggregate required a big mark ecko bag and three cardboard boxes. i had literally go over 100 pieces of mail (some dating as far back as 2004). half of the stuff was turn up and thrown into my garage bin.
so by the time i got out, it was past 9pm, and i hadn’t eaten yet. so i called some (now-ex)-coworkers, and three of us met at this cuban restaurant in palo alto called “la bodeguita del medio.” this place was awesome. the other two had eaten already, and we arrived like 5 minutes before their kitchen closed. so i got a spicy shrimp empanada ($10) and ropa vieja (shredded steak on top of rice with plantains on the side. and of course, i got a jameson on the rocks. my meal was incredible. (but of course, it cost me $45.)
the three of us talked for a while about what it means to not be a US citizen. one dude is from india, and other one is from turkey. i had no idea how big of a pain in the ass travelling was without a US passport. i am lucky. then, we went on to discuss the horrific nature of an american diet: fake “cheese” food (not to mention cheez-wiz, which i strangely like), more processed and un-nutritional food, unhealthy portions, etc.
after dinner, i went to the safeway to get cash, and then i finally got home.
i’m really, really tired.
this 3-day long weekend will be good for me. the new company wanted me to start this week, but i told them straight up that my brain houses a ton of knowledge that nobody else knows, so that’s why spent this whole week documenting/trnsfering.
ok. damn. it’s 4am. i promised to the whole world (via twitter) that i would go to bed no latter than 2am. is this poor time management skills?
but yup. 6 years at my old company. it was definitely bittersweet. i’ve a made a lot of friends, become very powerful and gained a lot of respect. but i know that i am doing the right thing (for me, right now). so i have no regrets.
it’ll just be weird to think that come next tuesday, i’ll be driving a totally different route to a totally new place. wish me luck.
Tags: basketball, clothes, dance, family, food, friends, movies, work
general mundane shit, notables » 1 Comment
Posted on Tue, August 31 2010 at 2:57 am
hey, two posts today!
let’s see… after lunch today, i went by myself to city beach right before they closed open play (2pm). i did three exercises:
1) 5-minute recumbent bike. i set it on “manual” to try to get steady resistance, but in this mode, it kept on getting really easy to extremely difficult. over and over again. the guy said it was just a “warm-up” mode, but it stayed this way for 3 minutes. so i quit and reprogrammed the bike to “race” mode. this one seemed to work.
2) reverse quadriceps curls. last thursday, i did 2 reps at 37.5lbs, and 7-8 reps at 25lbs, and i couldn’t go any further. so today, i did 2 sets of 10 at 25lb with each leg. that felt good.
3) reclined leg press. last week, i did 45lbs with my right (injured leg) and 115lbs with both. today, i strapped on a 45-pound weight onto the platform, so i did each leg (with toe extension for calf strengthening) at 90lbs. then after 2 sets of 10 reps with each leg, i put on another 80lbs to make it a total of 170lbs. then, i did 2 sets of 10 with both legs.
so i’ll be doing this every for a few months. it didn’t take long a long to do just those exercises, so i don’t mind it. besides, it’s going to make me a better basketball player, and that’s all i care about. i want to be a bad-ass on the court.
i got a call from my cousin D in the afternoon, and he told me that he needed a place to live for a while. (his lease in the city had run out.) so i told him that he was more than welcome to stay with me for a bit. soon after, i left work to drive up to redwood city (101 N wasn’t that bad this time) to borrow alan’s aerobed again.
then, i raced all the way in the other direction to have dinner with some of the bowling gang. katherine was in town, and she brought her second daughter, callie. i hadn’t seen her in ages, so it was good seeing her again.
we went to an upscale vietnamese restaurant (no, they don’t have pho) in downtown SJ (12th and east santa clara). it was called “vung tau.” the name was familiar to me, and later i learned that paul and leeya took me to the milpitas location years ago. apparently, this one is much better (and more expensive).
i haven’t had much upscale vietnamese food before, so paul and leeya did all the ordering. what we got was pretty damn good: these doughnut-y rice ball hemispheres, catfish in a clay pot, pork spare ribs, kong shin tsai (chinese for “empty heart vegetable”) with pork, beef wrapped around onions, and some beef dish. all of them were tasty, especially the catfish clay pot. i will definitely come back here again.
paul noticed that i was really hyper. i was trying to cut off the catfish from the spine, but i couldn’t break the skin. so i looked rather clumsy and clutzy. paul made a comment about me being out of control.
at vung tau, we bumped into grace and aimee. what a concidence.
after i got back home, i realized that i had COMPLETELY forgotten to DVR _the bachelor pad_. FUCK. i’ll have see if abc.com will post it online tomorrow.
then, my cousin D came. i let him settle in a bit, and then i sat him down in front of my computer and showed him a ton of dance videos. (do you see a trend here? yes, i do like dance. haha!) i showed him LXD’s “duet,” the skill methodz 2010 battle video (with luigi and cloud from LXD) and various SYTYCD routines, mainly the ones choreographed by tabitha and napoleon.
then, i blew up the aerobed in my empty bedroom, and now D’s sleeping. i just went out to jitb at 2am to get a pastrami sandwich and an egg roll. i swear, i have my college appetite back. since my low of 148lbs a few weeks ago, i am at a healthier 157 now.
ok. almost 3am. i really need to get to bed.
Tags: dance, family, food, friends, health
general mundane shit » No Comments
Posted on Tue, August 31 2010 at 2:38 am
friday night, i had dinner with mikeC at the prolific oven. rivermark isn’t as busy as it used to be. i got my usual chipotle chicken pasta, and i was STARVING by the time i got there, so it just tasted really good.
before heading to the rivermark, i went to fry’s and bought a new apple airport extreme (wireless router). my old airport was dying on me.
i spent *2.5 HOURS* installing it. there were two big problems: 1) i had to repeatedly switch back to the old airport to write down its settings (i.e. ISP’s DNS, DHCP stuff, etc.) and them configure them on the new airport, and 2) i tried moving the entire cable modem/wireless router setup to my living room. however, just like my old place, the cable input on the first floor is filtered, meaning it doesn’t include the data portion of the signal. so finally, i gave up, went upstairs, plugged everything in, and VOILA! damn, even with a mac, computer stuff is really hard sometimes.
saturday was a busy day. i got up, and i went to gombei bento (for the 3rd straight saturday) for lunch with barden. the taiwan vs. japan little league world series semifinal game was on. japan won 3-2 in extra innings. previously, taiwan had won its first two games 19-0 and 23-0 (mercy rule invoked after 4th inning), so i’m betting that japan had some really good pitching.
then, i was off to get a haircut. it was a very fortuitous day, because had i gone there next day or after, the place would have been closed. yup, the palo alto supercuts lost its lease, so they were going to close at 1pm on sunday. i have been going here since 1992. my first haircut at college was at the stanford shopping center (at hair international), but since then, for 18 years, i have been coming to this supercuts. so it’s the end of an era. i asked two of the people there what they will be doing, and they told me that they will work temporarily at the menlo park supercuts.
then, i went to OSH (orchard supply hardware) to buy anti-rat stuff. i got a grade 3 roll of steel wool (which, according to the back, is the perfect one for rodent protection, what a coincidence! i didn’t even read the back of the package) and a roll of duct tape. i was surprised that there was colored duct tape, so there was no hesitation when i picked up the yellow roll.
after those purchases, i rushed back home to take a shower (and get rid of all the bits of hair) and drove to alan and ting’s house. alan and ting just had a baby girl named clara, and this was my first time seeing her. she looked small for an 8+lb baby. it was really touching and endearing to see alan be so gentle and loving with his new daughter. i always figured that alan would be a good father, but i had never actually *seen* it with my own eyes. that was really cool.
i hung out at his house for a while, and then, true to my dance-evangelizing self, i showed alan and ting some LXD videos. i showed “duet,” “harry’s shoes,” and the second half of “the tale of trevor drift.” alan and ting seemed to enjoy the b-boying/breaking the most. i mean, i LOVE b-boying, and it is so cool to watch, and i (as well as jay) also look for other qualities in LXD: visual style and concepts, lighting, music, etc. i take in the entire thing as a whole and try to appreciate it on every level. (unfortunately, there is one glaring level where jon m. chu’s work suffers, and that’s in acting and dialogue.)
then, i rushed home at 6pm to meet T, a coworker at my company from our japan division. he’s been working his ASS off on our latest chip’s software, and he’s flying back to japan on wednesday. so i told him i’d take him out.
we went to nihon whisky (i spell it with an ‘e’) lounge on 14th and folsom. i had been wanting to go there FOR YEARS. i mean, at least half a decade, minimum. when we walked in, i saw that the entire far wall (from waist-high all the way up to the vaulted ceiling) was stocked with whiskey. i asked the waitress how many whiskeys NWL has, and she said, “over 400.” i was in fucking heaven. i mean, the book of whiskeys was at least 6 pages long, most of them single malt scotches. the most expensive one i saw was some scotch that was $150 for a 1.5oz pour, and $2,000+ for the entire bottle.
first, T and i started off with the suntory “yamazaki” 12-year ($13). i asked for one big ice cube in each of our drinks, which is the more “civilized” way to drink whiskey if you’re not drinking it neat (straight) or with just a little bit of water. the more ice you add, the more diluted the taste becomes.
we ordered six dishes: slices of seared kobe beef, a somen and rice tempura salad, agedashi tofu (only two pieces, not worth it), and three sushi rolls, all spicy. aside from the disappointing agedashi tofu, the food was fucking delicious, especially the sushi rolls. of course, the catch is that all of the food was ridiculously expensive. later, i got a jameson 18-year ($14), which i had never even heard of. they have a jameson “gold,” which is $16. maybe i’ll get that next time.
the bill for the two of us (after tax and tip)? $137. wowza.
but damn, NWL has a world-class whiskey selection, awesome food, good ambiance and cool music. (one song i recognized was by thunderball, this DC-based lounge/downtempo electronic outfit. i actually have that song on my iMac/iPod. i tweeted about thunderball, and the actual group sent me in a tweet hoping that i was enjoying myself. that was fucking rad.) it is now my favorite place in the bay area. i know it’ll hurt my pocketbook, but i plan on coming here often. it is such a magnificent place.
i drove us down to mountain view around 11pm, and i introduced T to tea era’s roasted barley milk tea. he really liked it. then, we went to jitb to get grilled pastrami sandwiches. he really liked those as well.
then, we stayed up until around 2am watching dance videos. i’m not sure how big the b-boy scene is in japan (i know that they have some good ones), but T was completely mesmerized. i showed him all of the ACDC vs. M&M youtube videos, and then seven episodes of LXD. after each episode of LXD, he said, “omoshiroi” (interesting).
after T left, i spent the rest of the night searching for the music that accompanied all these dance videos. it was then that i realized the massive power of the iTunes music store. i own 700+ CD’s (mostly collected in the 90′s), which is roughly a $10,000 investment. however, i decided that night that i will only buy music online from now on. no more CD’s, ever. it’s just more economical to buy music online, because i don’t have to waste money on an entire album if only a few songs are good.
one of the bands i discovered is named “lamb.” they’re a UK electronica group, and their song “angelica” is used in the LXD episode “duets.” it builds on a piano riff from claude debussy’s “clair de lune,” which is one of my all-time favorite piano pieces. (i used to be able to play it.)
sunday, i got up around noon. i decided that i need some alone time, so i spent the entire afternoon by myself at home. first, i got lunch (more pastrami sandwiches, i can’t get enough of these things). then, i wrote some e-mails. then, i rat-proofed two major entry points into my house (the vent next to the front door and the air conditioning pipe in the back yard). and then, i just chilled out.
for dinner, T drove by my house after he and two other japanese division coworkers drove back from a day trip to napa. T really likes opus one wine, but he didn’t taste any of it because one taste cost $30. i took T to the santa clara gombei. he got the oyako don, and i got the chicken teriyaki/deep-fried shrimp. T really liked the food, and that didn’t surprise me, because gombei’s stuff is really, really good. every person from japan likes gombei, which is a testament to their food.
after dinner, we rushed to AMC mercado to try to watch a 10:00pm showing of _step up 3d_. however, when i got to the ticket office, i saw that the last showing was at 9:20pm. it turns out that i looked at the wrong theater (it was the great mall one) for the showtimes. so we ended up watching _the expendables_.
_the expendables_ is really ridiculous. i mean, one of the guys has a gun so powerful that it literaly blows people’s heads off. yowza. there was one good explosion in the movie (the gas on the docks), and the finale was just insane. i think i tweeted something like, “_expendables_ is 500% testosterone. it is to violence what a 69-man gang bang is to sex.” btw, sylvester stallone directed the movie.
and that was it. fun weekend. the alone time was really good for me.
Tags: alcohol, computers, dance, food, friends, house, movies, music
weekend updates » No Comments
Posted on Sun, August 29 2010 at 7:00 am
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Posted on Sun, August 29 2010 at 7:00 am
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Posted on Sat, August 28 2010 at 4:06 am
sorry guys. i am mostly on twitter these days. whenever i get a stray thought, i just either write it using a twitter client (twhirl at work), put it on the webpage itself (when i’m at home), or text it using my antiquated cell phone. it’s much more spontaneous and real-time.
anyways, i think for the first time EVER, i am wondering if i can maintain this blog. i guess, i can, but writing almost every day (like i’ve been doing since march of 2001) is probably not going to happen anymore. but who knows. i love writing, and if i had the time, i would keep doing it. but i’ve just been so busy lately.
tuesday night, i met up with ericM, who was in town from boulder. i knew him through vienna and adam, and he’s one damn good photographer. when i saw his pictures at the turn of the millennium, i asked adam, “what does he shoot with?” and when i found out he used a sony dsc-f707, i bought one too. and this is still my primary digital camera (i have 3 sony’s).
anyways, eric was at this aikido place in redwood city, and he wasn’t answering my calls, so i just decided to drive over. eric invited three of his aikido friends to dinner with us at gombei, and adam and rae joined as well. i didn’t know what aikido was, so i asked for an explanation. it seems pretty cool. when i was a kid, i took shaolin kung-fu and tae kwon do lessons. martial arts are a very good way to get fit, explore another culture, and learn discipline and respect.
mrs. gombei informed me that japan now has a 4th brewery (echigo?) in addition to the big three: sapporo, kirin and asahi. so we got three echigo’s, and, well, it’s like any other japanese beer. light and refreshing. if i were forced to drink a beer, i’d pick a japanese one. my favorite used to be kirin ichiban, but only in japan (kirin is brewed in the US by anheuser busch).
wednesday, i had dinner with cliff. where? gombei. i can’t get tired of gombei; all in all, considering the food and the price, gombei is my favorite restaurant.
as our meal wound down, this guy from a nearby table asked us if we were both from stanford. we replied yes. he graduated from stanford back in the 80′s. he’s now a consultant for startups in emerging technologies (social networking, next-gen video), and he works in LA, but he was up here to show his son (who’s in high school) stanford.
oh, when i was at the puma store last saturday, i saw this purple/yellow track jacket. i immediately thought of two david’s that i know. this jacket was BUILT for lakers fans. and those two david’s were big lakers fanatics. so i forget which afternoon it was, but i drove to valley fair, took a picture of the jacket and sent it to them. davidS said he’d rather have a jersey (although i disagree; you can’t wear a jersey every day, but you can wear a track jacket, especially with the bay area’s variable weather). but i did buy two of them (size S and size M) for davidC. there was no way i was going to deprive him of this jacket. (he and i watched game 7 of this year’s NBA finals together. he was so happy.)
thursday, i went to work on my basketball shot again. and suddenly, i had a beam of inspiration; city beach has a gym! my PT wanted me to do machine work to strengthen my legs, so i asked the guy what kind of equipment they have. they have everything i need: a reverse leg press, a reverse hamstring curl and bikes.
so i did the reverse leg press first. the guy before me was leg pressing *295* fucking pounds. i took off six plates, and i did a 2×10 set of my repaired leg with nothing on it (45lbs). then, i slapped on 70lbs and did both legs.
then, i did the hamstring press. well, failed is more like it. i was supposed to do a 2×10 set, but i wound up doing 3 curls at 37.5lbs, and then 7 at 25lbs. yeah, my hamstrings are weak as hell. i mean, what do you need your hamstrings for anyway? taiko, tennis and basketball don’t seem to require them.
the big thing about thursday was that i revised A’s personal statement for her application into residency programs. i loaded her statement up on google docs (which, by the way, has emacs keys! AWESOME)., and i spent the next two hours editing *5* paragraphs. (well, they were sort of big paragraphs.)
i realized how awesome my teachers were. i will never forget my 7th grade grammar teacher, mrs. gorman. she fucking drilled grammar into our heads. case in point:
has have had do did does may might must could would should can will shall am be are is being was were been (helping verbs)
am be are is being was were been feel look smell taste sound appear seem remain turn grow become prove (linking verbs)
yeah, this was in 7th grade. she also had a list of all 30+ pronouns, and she got us to be able write down 50 prepositions in like 4 minutes. we would sometimes spend the entire period diagramming sentences.
and when i went over A’s personal statement, i realized that my english teachers from 7th-12th grade were so damn good. grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, diction, effective writing, etc. and that’s just english. our math and science teachers were also great.
i wrote on facebook the other day that good teachers should be paid the highest salaries of all. it is a real shame that athletes, movie stars and politicians get paid more than teachers. i would be nothing if i weren’t for the education i got.
anyways, i spent 8:40pm to 10:40pm editing A’s statement. then, i e-mailed it to her, and we spent about 50 minutes going over it.
that night, i went to bed at 5am.
then today (well, i still think of it as friday), i worked like a maniac all afternoon. it’s weird; i’ve been getting headaches quite often. then, i met up with mikeC at the prolific oven. i don’t know what was up, but their chicken chipotle pasta was damn good tonight.
oh, before going there, i went to fry’s and bought the latest apple airport extreme (wireless router). my old one is 7 years old, and it’s just dying on me. i mean, i have a terminal open all the time so i can ping www.yahoo.com to see if my internet connection is down.
i spent TWO AND A HALF HOURS getting the new airport to work. ugh. and to me, this shit wasn’t trivial. at one point, i needed to know my ISP’s DNS. ??? so i had to put the old airport back to see its settings. all in all, i must have rebooted my computer 8-10 times. and i wasted well over an hour, only to realize that my living room’s cable feed must be filtered. ARGH.
anyways, my connection is about 2X faster now that i have 802.11n over 802.11g. not bad.
so, i went on bit torrent (well, i use vuze), and i tested my speed. it said i had a 4.3Mbit/s upload limit. i don’t know what that means, but i’ll take it.
oh, so last weekend, at club monaco, they were playing this cool remix of the beloved’s “sweet harmony.” i went on iTunes to search for it, but i couldn’t find it. (i did find a cool remix of their “hello,” which i bought.) so i had to get it off bit torrent. i mean, i really have no problems paying for my music (i mean, i own like 700+ CD’s), but if it’s not available, then what are my options?
but yeah. the beloved rock. they remind of my early stanford days. and k1.
i went to jack in the box at 2am because i was getting hungry. i went to the one in mountain view (bailey park safeway). BAD MISTAKE. 2am is when the downtown castro partiers get out, so at one point, there a fucking multitude of people in the drive-thru. it took me over 30 minutes to get my food.
BUT. they have a brand new time: a pastrami grilled sandwich. i grew up on pastrami (and corned beef). my dad would buy like two pounds of it at the supermarket every week, and we’d just eat thin slices of it without any bread or condiments or anything. and jitb’s sandwich was damn good. next time, i am getting at least 2, if not 3. (they’re rather small.) and what’s really interesting is that this sandwich has a lot of pickles in it. i never thought that pickles and pastrami would go together, but then again, they put sauerkraut with pastrami, so i guess sour stuff can be paired with the deli meat. but yeah. delicious.
ok, it’s 4am. i need to sleep.
Tags: alcohol, clothes, food, friends, health, music
general mundane shit » No Comments
Posted on Tue, August 24 2010 at 7:44 pm
ok, a quick one today to cover yesterday and today. i need to go to safeway to drop off a prescription.
yesterday, we celebrated three coworkers’ birthdays; one guy’s bday was last friday, and two girls’ birthdays were on saturday.
i organized an 8-person lunch at roux louisiana kitchen at santana row. cajun food. i was mostly concernerd with the long vegetarian, but they have a pretty interesting veggie jambalaya with artichokes, spinach and other stuff.
i introduced the people to fried okra. i grew up on this stuff in dallas, and there are very few places in the bay area that serve it, so i had to get it at roux. $10. but totally worth it. most people liked it.
i ordered the pulled pork sliders. so in the last week, i’ve had pulled pork sliders at nola, BJ’s and roux. BJ’s are the best.
after lunch, i bought the two girls a cupcake at kara’s (chocolate velvet).
then, i spent the rest of the afternoon dealing with my car accident. in about 3 hours, i filed a claim with AAA, took my car to the auto body shop, got the work order filled out, and rented a car.
at hertz, i was given four options: a toyota corolla, a nissan sentra, a chrysler sebring, and a volkswagen jetta. it was a no-brainer. jetta all the way.
i have never driven a german car before, so i was very excited. the jetta 2.5 has a 5-cylinder engine (according to paul), and it’s very peppy. however, it does not corner as well as my honda. the bass on the sound system is awesome.
and after having it for a day, i’ve realized that there is a big difference between german and japanese cars. the jetta is nice, but there are a lot of little nuances that i don’t like. it took me 4 minutes to figure out how to turn on the headlights. there’s an unmarked lever that pops the hood. everything is in icons, and many of them are not intuitive. there is no tray for spare change. stuff like that. it seems like japanese cars have more thought put into them in terms of user friendliness.
at 5:30pm, i scheduled an official meeting for the three birthday coworkers. they were a bit confused. but remember my shopping spree on saturday? besides the $400 i spent on myself, i also bought all three of them birthday presents. i have never done this for coworkers before. i guess the spending was just infectious.
i got the guy a 3-dvd set of audrey hepburn’s _roman holiday_, _sabrina_ and _breakfast at tiffany’s_. the reason is because he’s going to europe, and rome is one of his destinations. as a film lover and a decent human being, i feel the obligation to have anyone going to rome see _roman holiday_. it is one of my favorite movies of all time. this is the movie that made me fall in love with audrey hepburn.
for one girl, i got her a pink puma backpack. and i got the other girl a cool t-shirt. the 2nd girl has some cute t-shirts, and there’s this new kiosk at valley fair called goodjoe.com. they have a weekly worldwide competition for a t-shirt design, and they pick a winner and make the t-shirt. they are based in the bay area, and every t-shirt sale results in a $1 donation to a charity. very cool shit.
after work, i went to jimmy and sabrina’s for _the bachelor pad_. this is a CRAZY show. i fucking love it. everyone is a master manipulator, and it’s just insane to watch them fuck with each other.
dinner at jimmy’s was sliders. yup, 4 times in one week. i guess i love sliders now.
today, i had a checkup with my ortho. my physical therapy has gotten me to a point where my injured knee (right) is now stronger than my left one. the ortho actually said that my left knee is “loose.” so i need to build up the strength in my left leg now, too.
for lunch, i went to city beach and shot hoops by myself for an hour. i’m going to do this twice a week every week until i can play again. i am going to work on my shot. i am completely redoing my mechanics: less leg, more arm/wrist. so my first few shots were total airballs. i am also going to develop a baseline jumper, which is my weakest shooting area. my right elbow shot and free throws are still pretty solid.
today was my last (12th) physical therapy appointment. i have started neuromuscular training. my leg strength needs work, but by far, my weakest point is balance. one of the exercises is standing on one leg on this rubbery inflatable frisbee thing, and staying on there for at least 30 seconds. i cannot do this. my therapist wants me to eventually be able to it with my eyes closed. right now, it’s impossible.
my therapist is awesome. she’s this 26-year-old indian woman. she is super cool, nice, knowledgeable, and a damn good therapist. her 2nd wedding anniversary is tomorrow, so i suggested she get her husband a puma or mark ecko jacket. she thanked me for the suggestion.
i’ll go back in early october for more neuromuscular training. i will definitely ask for her.
in the meantime, she said that i need to join a gym to keep maintaining/build leg strength. fuck. i HATE gyms, but i’m just going to suck it up and do it. after my neuromuscular training is done, i want to be a badass motherfucker on the court. i want to be rajon rondo and dirk nowitzki rolled up into one.
so that’s it. i SO miss basketball. but i definitely won’t play until i’m medically cleared to do so. so in the meantime, i’m just going to work on my shot.
it is damn HOT today. the jetta said it was 94 degrees at 2pm, and paul and mikeT both posted pictures of their cars saying it was over 100 degrees. ugh. luckily, at city beach, they installed a new “cool” roof, so it’s not as blazing hot in there anymore. however, after one hour of shooting, my entire chest was still wet from sweat.
ok. i’m out.
Tags: basketball, food, friends, health, tv, work
general mundane shit » No Comments
