TurboTiger

Secret blog not so secret

2010-07-09T17:42:00.000-07:00

Ooops, looks like my "secret" blog was not so secret afterall. I guess I should find a better psuedonym, or not link myself to my friends. Ah well, what's done is done, nothing to hide here.

I'm alive and living well

2010-05-11T22:59:00.000-07:00

[Knock, knock] Anybody home?
Wow, it's been so long! I haven't seen you in gawd, forever. How have you been? Me? I'm starting to kick ass now. No sign of cancer. Yep, not even a peep. Gained some weight unfortunately. Yep, that's from sitting on my butt all day and not doing anything. But I have an excuse for that. Yah, it's been my neck. See, a few months after all my treatments were over, I decided to take a nice long walk to celebrate my ability to take nice long walks. Then my legs started to vibrate and get all numb. Yah, I know, right after I started feeling better. So it kept vibrating for a few days, so I go in to the doctor to see what's up. He gets me to take a MRI of my lower back and sends me off to neurology. Neurologist says nothing looks unusual, and orders me a MRI of my upper back and neck, as well a spinal tap, in case there's some cancer in the nervous system. I did not like that last possibility.

Have ever seen a spinal tap? No? Well basically they take this needle. It's so large that when the doctor pulled it out, the guy in the next room feinted. Then they stick it not so gently into your spinal cord to extract spinal fluid. Not so fun. You know what else isn't so fun, the head exploding can't stop it headache I got afterwards. Yah, apparently I had a CFL leak, where the spinal cord fluid leaks out the hole from the spinal tap. It gives you a excruciating, head is going to explode and no amount of excedrin or coffee will help, type of pain. And lying down in bed helps alot, enough where it's barely tolerable. That basically means I couldn't sit or stand up for more than 5 seconds without hitting the floor in pain. Yep, I was pretty much bedridden for 2 days before I went into the ER for a blood patch. What's a blood patch you ask? Why that's where they take some of your blood, and inject it right into the spot they did the spinal tap, that way your own blood can coagulate and stop the leak.

After all of that the doctor tells me the MRI shows that I have a herniated disc in my neck, pushing against my spinal cord. That's what was causing all the issues with my legs, which I also started to feel in my hands. He then tells me not to do anything strenuous. No lifting heavy weights, no running, no jumping, no snowboarding, no racing, pretty much no anything that puts any type of stress on my neck or shoulders. My Physical Therapist told me to go to the gym and do some very light weights with the lat bar and row machine, along with a couple of neck exercises.

So basically I've been sitting on my butt doing almost nothing active. I did that for about 8 months, and basically replaced active things with video games and work. Wouldn't you know it, after 8 months, I develop tennis elbow. Doctor said stop using my right arm and let it rest.

Finally my necks is feeling good. Not quite enough to run, but enough to start lifting weights. Tennis elbow is feeling better now too, so I'm starting to slowly hit the weights with light to medium weights. I'm hitting the elliptical or walking more now as well. Trying to lose the 10 lbs I gained, and get myself back into some sort of shape.

Oh look at the time, I gotta go. I'll talk to you later, ok?

I just don’t have time

2008-10-09T22:16:00.001-07:00

Brrrrriiinnngg

[Me] Hello?

[TTB] Hey, it's me. I haven't heard from you in a long time.

[me] Oh hey, yah, sorry about that. I've been kinda busy lately.

[TTB] So busy you never even write anymore? We used to communicate so often!

[me] Yah, well that's when I had more spare time. And energy too. The chemo left me pretty much energyless for a good portion of it. I mean I couldn't even look at the computer screen for more than 15 minutes without getting a headache and nauseas.

[TTB] Yah, I know, I know, you told me that. But I see you online a lot nowadays. But you just ignore me. I don't hear a word from you.

[me] Yah, well I gotta work ya know. I'm still suffering from chemo brain, and my memory, geez my memory , it's toast. I remember less and less of my life nowadays. And I still can't multitask very well, so I need to keep focused on only one thing at a time. Plus I still don't have all of my energy, so after working all day, I'm pretty tired. Especially since I have this cold thing for 3 weeks that hasn't gone away yet. That makes me even worse cuz I don't sleep well, especially when I have a hard time breathing and I'm coughing up a lung.

[TTB] But we used to communicate so often. You told me everything that goes on in your life. I live for that! Now I'm lonely without you!

[me] Well ya know, I just don't have the energy or desire anymore. Ya know, you were never a major part of my life. Just a part time thing, ya know. Something I do on my spare time. And ya know, I'm just not that into it right now.

[TTB] (cries)

[me] Hey, don't cry. Look my radiation treatments are almost over. Less than a week left. After I start recovering, maybe I'll have some more time. Who knows, maybe even my desire will be back as strong as ever. I can't guarantee anything though.

[TTB] (sniff) Really? You might come back?

[me] Yah, maybe. Like I said, no promises or anything, but I'll definitely say hi every once in a while, at the very least.

[TurboTiger's Blog] (sniff, sniff) Ok, I'll just wait around till I hear from you again.

[me] Alright, I gotta go, I'll talk to you later. (click)

Light at the end of the tunnel

2008-09-10T21:50:00.000-07:00

What's that? That bright light. I see a light at the end of this dark tunnel. Could it finally be over soon? Yes, I think it is!

I've finished my last chemo treatment! My doctor just told me the other day. Yay! No more nausea, headaches, etc. Now I have to go get radiation treatment, whose side effects are alot more milder than chemo. Unfortunately it'll still sap my energy, cause internal sunburns, and cause my esophogus to feel like I'm swallowing a baseball.

I even got a tattoo out of it. Four of them actually. As Phoebe from Friends would call them, they're love dots. :P
Yep, I have four little dots on my chest and shoulders now. What are these tattoos for you might ask? They're there to align the lasers on my body for the radiation treatment, which is basically like taking a x-ray, except longer. The only sucky thing about the procedure is the fact that I get a hannibal lecter style full face mask strapped to my entire face to keep my head from moving about. Not very pleasant, and a bit claustrophobic. The doc said I'd be doing radiation therapy once a day every day for about 5 weeks or so. I find that info out next week when they determine the schedule.

I'm thinking maybe I can get some real tattoos to cover up the love dots after everything is over. I mean I don't have any real tattoos yet. But then again, the needle kinda hurted.

On a side note, Betty and I went to Reno's Rib cookoff a couple of weeks ago, and chowed down majorly on some of the best ribs around. We met up a couple of friends and ate till we could eat no more. It was lots of fun, but tiring. We then met up some other friends at Silver Legacy and at the Grand Sierra Hotel & Resort. I even taught a friend how to gamble at blackjack, and won $30 myself while playing. Yay! Since I don't really gamble that much or that much high stakes, I was quite happy with it.

I'm alive, literally

2008-07-19T03:29:00.000-07:00

Wow, has it really been 3 months since my last blog post?

Ever since my last blog post about me finding out that I have cancer, I've lost the will to blog. Concerned about other things, life, and living life. I've even stopped reading my favorite blogs from other people, and decided to concentrate on my own life. I've decided to be selfish and think about me and mostly me for a change. I figure I deserve it right about now.

Okay, update on my own life. After talking with my main oncologist, considering my good health, and young age, and the fact that the cancer is in stage 1 (it hasn't spread to any other part of my body), the doctor gives me about a 80% chance of full recovery. Considering that this is a big deal, I decided to get a second opinion from another kaiser doctor, and he also agreed with my initial doctor, and gave me a 80-90% success rate. That was a huge relief. But it's not all good news. I have to go through chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Surgery isn't an option, due to the type of cancer, lymphoma, since it's classified more as a liquid tumor not a solid tumor. Plus it would be very difficult since it's in the middle of my chest around the lungs and heart.

But it's not all good news, since chemo is gonna have some serious, life threatening side effects, along with some that may be permanent. Not only does the chemo drugs attack and kill the cancer cells, it also attacks and kills alot of other cells that I don't want killed. Like my bone marrow which produce the white and red blood cells. Which suppresses my immune system down to nothing. Which makes me susceptible to all sorts of nasty stuff out there, and if I do catch something, it's potentially bad. I mean real bad, really really bad, as in no more blogging for me, ever. Oh, and the lack of red blood cells will make me anemic, which basically means I have no energy. Oh, and it also affects my sperm, and might make me permanently sterile. The hair loss ain't so bad for me. I'll just sport the b-ball look.

Oh, and did I mention that after everything, there's a 30% chance that it might come back in 5 years, which means I'll have to do the chemo all over again, at a possibly stronger dosage?

The chemo schedule from my main oncologist was scheduled for 6 rounds, three weeks between each round, for a total of 24 weeks, then radiation therapy afterwards. That would put me out of commission for most of this year. There was the possibility that I won't be able to work during most of my chemo time, and I would need to go on disability. I needed some time to put my affairs in order, as well as find and consult another doctor for a second opinion, so I delayed my treatment until I was ready. I took advantage of this time to refinance the house while I still have my full pay, and took some of my little guys to the sperm bank for safe keeping. Lemme tell you, it's not as fun as you think, nor is it cheap, since my medical coverage didn't cover it.

Betty and I also took one last trip into mexico with some of her friends. I'll have to write up about that one seperately as I had a good time there.

Fast forward to now. My parents are staying with me most of the time to keep an eye on me and help me out around the house. Betty's also pretty much living here now as well. I'm on disability from work, and work part time from home. I can't go into the office, and need to stay away from places with alot of people I don't know. Again, if I catch something from someone that's sick, it's very serious for me. Anybody that visits me at home needs to be sure they're not sick. I need to be very germ phobic, and that also includes food that I eat. I can't eat anything raw. I've basically turned into bubble boy.

I've finished my 4th round of chemo now. More than half way through. They give me the chemo drugs through a IV at the hospital. It takes about 8 hours to get it all into me. They also give me a whole bunch of really expensive and anti nausea pills. It's supposed to be really strong stuff that came out a few years ago and works well. The type of chemo I'm getting (R-CHOP) is supposed to be pretty intense with the nausea, and boy, do I feel it. The anti nausea drugs do work though, since I haven't vomited once so far. The first couple of rounds wasn't so bad with the nausea, but i'm really feeling it now. Couple that with the tiredness that hits you like a sledgehammer, and I basically can't do anything for about a week. Can't play video games cause that induces nausea. Looking at the computer screen causes me to get a headache, which induces nausea. Watching too much TV gives me a headache, which induces nausea. Walking around the house makes me tired. The nausea makes me not want to eat much. I'm pretty much a mess for about a week after the chemo treatment. During my second week, I feel better. I'm able to do some work at home. The nausea goes away completely. My appetite is back. I can go out for a walk and get some exercise, go to the store and do some errands. I have to keep it simple, and not overdue it since my energy level still isn't there. And I have to be extra careful since my second week is my nadir period, the time when my immune system is at it's lowest and I'm the most susceptible to catching something. By the third week, most of my energy is back, I can do almost everything I want to do, and then before you know it, it's time for my next chemo appointment again.

Today is the 8th day from my last chemo treatment. It's taking me longer to recover from the nausea and other ill effects. And it gets worse from what I hear the more treatments I go through. Today is the first day that I'm able to look at the computer screen for extended periods at a time. I actually can't sleep right now for some reason, which is why I'm writing this blog. I really should try to get some sleep, but I thought I'd update you on my condition.

The day I almost died

2008-03-28T23:00:00.000-07:00

I’ve backdated this blog a bit to more accurately reflect the timeline.

Friday 3/28 was the day for my first appointment with the oncologist (Cancer specialist) at Kaiser. I’ve been trying to find out information in easily digestable terms about B Cell Lymphoma, but getting info is still difficult. There’s a few subtypes of B Cell Lymphoma, and it’s also a subtype of Non Hodgkins Lymphoma (NHL).

My sister Vicky wanted to come with me to visit the doctor and to ask some questions of her own. My sisters have been great, they’ve been talking to people and doing some googling more about the cancer, giving me some great links and info to digest. But there’s a lot to digest, and with my current state of anxiety and mood, I’m not assimilating the information as fast as I usually do. Armed with some good questions to ask, I think I’m somewhat prepared to bombard the oncologist with a flurry of questions. Vicky has her own list of questions she wanted to ask. My parents have finally digested the seriousness of my condition after talking with Vicky. They now want to come with me to see the oncologist as well. I’m sure they won’t understand much of what the doctor has to say, but they want to be there anyway. They know they won’t really understand much as well, so they decide to bring a tape recorder with them to record the conversation. Betty also wants to really be there, so she takes some time off of work.

We arrive at the oncologist en force. The initial staff member was concerned with my large posse and had asked that some of them wait outside in the waiting room because the room was too small and can’t handle the extra people. I suggested that my parents wait outside, and that I would ask the doctor if they could come in and listen in. A few anxious minutes later, the oncologist comes in, and she says my parents can come in and listen. So six of us cozily squeezed into the small exam room, my mom takes out the mp3 recorder I bought her for Christmas last year, and asks the doctor if it’s ok to record the conversation.

The oncologist confirms it’s B cell lymphoma, but we don’t know what stage it’s in yet. I need further tests which includes a bone marrow biopsy, a PET Scan, and a MUGA scan. Treatment options will depend on what stage I’m in, but will most likely include CHOP chemo therapy, Rituxan, and radiation therapy. I also can’t surgically remove the tumor because the cancer is ‘liquid” even though there’s a mass in my chest. It just happened to settle in that area. We talk more about the chemo treatment. 6 – 8 cycles of treatment, each cycle is 21 days. That means I get a chemo injection once every 21 days. Chemo is administered via IV drip, and takes somewhere around 4-6 hours, so most of the day. I get the anti nausea drugs along with the rituxan, so they’re not skimping on the good stuff. I ask how the chemo is going to affect me and how badly. The doctor said it really depends on the person, but typically most people feel like crap for 2 weeks after the chemo, feel better by the third week, then the injection starts all over again. The doctor also said that most people can tolerate the first or second injection ok, but it really affects them afterwards. I ask if I am able to still work, and the doctor says I might be able to, and if I am able to it’ll be under reduced work load. But there will be times where I am not going to be able to work at all. I will need rest during those times. The doc also mentioned that recurrence for my type of cancer is 20-40% over the next 3 years (yikes, that seems high) and if it does, I’ll have to go through the chemo all over again. I may have to switch to a different type depending how well it responds, and or do a stem cell transplant. There’s also another 20-40% chance of permanent sterility depending on how aggressive the chemo is going to be. The doc suggested I use a sperm bank and freeze some of the guys away for a rainy day. Unfortunately Kaiser doesn’t cover that, so I’d have to pay out of my own pocket, and it’s not cheap either. We ask about getting a second opinion, and the doctor is all for that. Unfortunately Kaiser doesn’t cover a second opinion outside of kaiser’s network, so if I get one at UCSF, it’ll be out of my own pocket. But I need to get my lab tests done first because they’ll need it before I get the second opinion. My sister asks the question how the cancer treatment is coordinated at Kaiser, apparently at UCSF, there’s a team that determines the course of action for a patient. At Kaiser, everything goes through the oncologist, and gets coordinated by the oncologist. So getting a second opinion is strongly suggested.

We now start going over some of my symptoms, and I tell the doctor about my heavy itching and scratching constantly, occasional heaviness in the chest, the pressure I feel in my throat, and the now worsening cough. The doctor was somewhat concerned, and wanted to put me on prednisone, a strong steroid, immediately. But the prednisone would screw up the bone marrow biopsy results, so the doctor wanted to do the bone marrow biopsy right now.

I had originally assumed that this appointment would just be a initial visit, and would last just a couple of hours at most. I had planned on going back to work, and start prepping for my big 48 hour downtime project that’s set to happen Friday night at 7pm. I’ve been working on this project for 6 months now, and had to schedule a downtime with the entire company for this weekend. I start going on about my work, and saw that it was still pretty early in the day. I figure I could do the biopsy, get a few hours of rest, work through the effects of the drug, work for a couple more hours until I reach a point where I can let it sit and process overnight and continue on in the morning. So I agree to do the bone marrow biopsy right there and then.

Bone marrow biopsies are not fun. They describe the procedure to me as sticking a big needle in my bone to draw out the bone marrow. I read they may do both sides of the bone marrow, so I ask if they’re going to do both sides, and they said no, they normally don’t do bilateral bone marrow biopsies anymore. Whew, at least it won’t hurt twice as bad.

This is what really happens during a bone marrow biopsy. First they load you up with what I believe was admar, a tranquilizer. Then they give me demeral, a narcotic, then they shoot the affected area with lidocaine to numb things up. Having been shot with lidocaine before, I can tell you each and everytime they use the needle, it hurts. They have you lie on your stomach, and use very big needles, and “drill” into your bone with the big needles far enough to reach the bone marrow. Now needles are not drills, so the drilling motion is more like twist and jack hammer the needle into the bone so it’ll go far enough to extract the bone marrow in the middle. The lidocaine works pretty good when I comes to numbing the flesh, but you can’t really numb the bone, so when they started jackhammering the needle into the bone, it hurts like a mutherfucker. They told me to breate deeply, it won’t hurt as bad. I do my Lamaze type breathing exercises, which do help a bit, but I can still hear the doctor and nurses grunting away as they jackhammer this giant needle, which I’m glad I never got to see, into my tailbone. They eventually get in far enough and draw out some bone marrow fluid. They then tell me they’re going to get a piece of the bone for biopsy as well. Hey, I don’t remember them mentioning this part, or reading this on the web. They then proceeded to jackhammer even harder into my bone, trying to chip a piece of it off. As the doctor was jackhammering she mentioned between deep breaths, how hard my bones were, and that it was a good thing. Maybe not quite such a good thing at that moment in time, as she was really putting a lot of effort into chipping off a piece of the bone. Eventually with a sigh of relief, the doctor said that she got a good sample, then proceeds to start the bone marrow on the other side. By this time I was too groggy to realize that the doctor had initially said they’d only do one side. Back for another round for furious jack hammering and drilling on the other side of the tailbone to get the bone marrow. After the doctor worked up quite a sweat, they decide they’re not going for another bone sample on the other side, and I was quite relieved that it was finally all over.

As I was extremely groggy from all the medication, they sat me upright in a chair, and brought Betty in. Vicky and my parents were outside in the waiting room, probably eating lunch by now, and betty was conversing with me for what I think was a few minutes, but betty said it was about 30 minutes. I then was getting thirsty and asked Betty if she could get me some water. As soon as she stepped out the door, I suddenly started feeling really light headed. I thought to myself “Uh-oh, this isn’t good, I should do someth…..” and I passed out. Betty came back to the room, saw that my eyes had rolled up in the back of my head, and my head was limp on my neck. She freaked out, called the nurse over. All the nurses and doctors freak out. They grabbed the crash cart, the one with the paddles and stuff, and set it outside the room. Apparently the Demerol had made my blood pressure crash, so when they tried to take a blood pressure reading from my arm, I had none. All the blood had pooled into my body. They kept calling my name and and trying to wake me up, but I was unresponsive. They got me flat on my back and kept trying to get me to respond. I remember starting to come to, and noticed there were like 5 nurses and or doctors around me. One person was continually calling my name, one was putting a IV in my arm, I think one of them was hitting my chest because I had a small bruise like thing on my chest, I’m not sure what the other people were doing. They said I may be metabolizing the narcotic too slowly, and started to give me something to counteract the narcotic. Betty asked if this has ever happened before, and one of the nurses said this never happens. Then whaddya know, immediately after me someone else with the exact same procedure had the exact same thing happen to them. Later on the nurse says I can’t believe it, this never happens and then suddenly two in one day! Vicky comes back and find out I've been given 50mg of demerol. She calls her friends at UCSF and they say that they gave me a lot of demerol. That's probably why my blood pressure crashed like that.

I’m still groggy from the narcotic, and they give me some more of the anti-narcotic stuff. I’m slowly trying to fight the grogginess, but it isn’t until almost 4:30pm when they decide I’m fit to leave the hospital. I spent the entire day at the hospital, so prepping for my big downtime wasn’t going to happen. I head back home and spend an hour or two napping on the couch until it was time to start the downtime. I’m still pretty tired, and now I’m in some pain. But I work for a few hours, enough to start the initial processing part where I can let it sit and do it’s thing while I go and sleep.

I have cancer

2008-03-20T03:30:00.000-07:00

Let me start this off with the big statement. Yes, I have cancer. More specifically I have been diagnosed with B-cell Lymphoma, commonly known as “Non Hodgkins Disease”. Now while you’re googling that up in another window, I’ll tell my story.

Back in October of 2007, I went on a family vacation to Washington DC. Our first ever family trip. I came back from DC with a rather large swollen bug bite on my left wrist. This bug bite also became quite itchy as you can imagine. But ever since I came back with the bug bite, I started itching in other places other than my wrist. Eventually I started itching almost everywhere. It was getting pretty bad, as I’d scratch through the skin in some places. This went on for about a month or two before I finally gave in and went to the doctor. Doctor simply said I had Excema and told me not to scratch and gave me some steroid cream. He said if I didn’t scratch, my skin will grow back in about a month. Yah, simpler said than done.

A couple of weeks later, around Christmas time, I got a bad flu. I was sick for about a week, and I didn’t see the doctor until I got worse at the end of the first week. Getting off the couch, to the fridge, and back to the couch would totally wind me, finally convinced me to see the doctor. Plus my upcoming trip and cruise with no access to a doctor pretty much said see the doctor now or suffer big time on the cruise. The nurse took a look at me with pity, took a look around, and said I was sick with the flu. She had the doctor prescribe me some inhalers, Q-var and Albuterol, for the asthma like symptoms. I took my dosage, and was feeling better, and got better, except for that cough that would linger on.

Two months later, I’m still coughing. I’m not showing any more flu symptoms, I feel totally fine. But that damn cough is still lingering. But now it just suddenly got a bit worse. I’m just coughing, nothing is coughing out. Ok, enough is enough, time to go back to the doctor. This time, I see my primary physician (I’m with Kaiser) and he goes over me, and says I probably have back to back flus. Not uncommon this year, with the flu vaccine only being effective for about 40% of the flus. Everyone’s getting sick, and it’s probably just lingering from two maybe three different flus. But he ponders for a second and says “But you’ve been sick for a while. I’m going to order you a xray just to be sure”. He also prescribes me some more Q-var and sends me over to radiology for the x-ray. I go get my x-ray done, and said the doctor will know in a couple of days. Oh, I forgot to mention that I’m still itching like mad, decide that I needed to see a dermatologist, and had just came from the dermatologist earlier that day. The dermatologist had also said I had excema gave me more info on it, prescribed me some even stronger steroid cream, some strong antihistamine, similar to benadryl, and told me to take Claritin during the day, and the antihistimines at night to help control my itching. My primary doctor (he had originally prescribed me the first batch of cream) commented that the dermatologist had just prescribed me a different cream when looking at my file on the computer.

The next day, the doctor called me up and told me he says a lump that might be in the lung. Yikes! A lump?! That’s not good!

The doctor says he wants to take a better look at it, so he orders me a CT scan (CAT Scan) They call back and schedule me for an appointment about a week later. Trying not to fear the worse, I think to myself ‘Well no wonder I’m coughing, there’s a freaking lump in my lung”.

I go in for my CT scan, I get to wear one of those funky three armed hospital gowns, sit on a moving table, and get injected with iodine, which makes you all warm inside, but also makes you want to pee. I then go through this big ring with sensors, laser positioning, and spinning things. This only takes a few minutes, and I’m done.

The next day, the doctor calls. Boy I’m hearing a lot from the doctor lately. He says I definitely have a rather large lump. He starts to rattle off a list of things it might be, none of which I got or understood. He then tells me that I need a biopsy and puts in a order for one. My heart sunk a little lower, and now I’m getting a bit more concerned. But at this point it could be anything. But I’m still keeping positive thinking it’s just a lump and probably not cancer.

A few more days pass by (or was it almost a week?) before I go in for my biopsy. This one I needed someone to drive me to the hospital, so I let my parents in on my medical condition. Only a few people knew what was going on, including Betty, my gf. Oh, did I mention we’ve been dating for quite a few months now? Well that’s another blog entry for later. I’ve been updating my oldest sister, Carrie on my medical condition. I haven’t been telling my parents because I didn’t want to worry them. Especially since nobody knows what’s going on yet. But this time I needed them to drive me back from the hospital, so I updated them on what’s going on. I’m not sure they understood 100% because of the lack of reaction I got. I didn’t want to worry them further, or scream “I might have cancer! Sound worried!” If they were in a bit of blissful state of ignorance, I thought it best to leave them there until there was a need to shake them out of it. My second oldest sister, Vicky, had just gone to Asia for vacation when the whole ordeal happened, so she doesn’t have the slightest idea what’s going on. Vicky’s due back home in a couple of days, so I figure I’ll break the news when she gets home. Hopefully I’ll have some good news by then.

I meet the doctor doing the biopsy, and that’s when I learned that the lump wasn’t in my lung like I had thought, but in my chest. He showed me the CT scan I took. He had to point out the lump versus all the other organs including the heart and lungs and stuff. It looked pretty large on the computer monitor, so I asked him how big it was. He measured it on the computer program, came out to be about 100mm x 90mm, or 10cm x 9cm. Yikes! That’s huge, I kept exclaiming. He said it’s not really that big. Since the lump is in my chest and he can’t directly see the lump, he could either do the biopsy with needles and see where he’s going with ultrasound, which was faster, or he could do it with needles and stop every couple of minutes and use the CT scanner, which was slower. He decided it looks easy enough to use ultrasound. He asked if I was nervous, I said “yes!” and he gave me “something to relax”. I have nothing against taking drugs, the more the better. And I haven’t had any bad reactions to any drugs yet. So I’m laying flat on my back, the doc has a ultrasound on my chest, some huge needles waiting. He shoots me up with lidocaine so I don’t feel anything. If I’m not supposed to feel anything, then why does the needle with the lidocaine hurt so much? He then tells me the lump is close to the lung, and when he tells me not to breathe, don’t breathe. Don’t take any big breaths, inhale deeply or anything like that during the entire procedure, or it might cause the needle to move, shift, and possibly poke my lung causing my lung to deflate. After seeing my eyes nearly pop from my head when he said that, he added that he could inflate my lung, but he’d rather not do that. I agreed with that sentiment, and took normal breathes. While I didn’t get to see what was going on with the needles since it was on my chest, and I would have to bend my head forward to see what was going on, I could see his hands working the needles in. I think he used a big needle as a tube, used the ultrasound to guide it to the lump, then used the smaller ones for the sample. He was supposed to get 5 samples, but ended up getting 6 because he said one of them didn’t quite come out right. When he said ok, don’t breathe, I held my breathe, remembering not to inhale, and felt quite a bit of pain when he used sharp repeated jabbing motions. I guess the lidocaine didn’t quite numb everything up because that hurt quite a bit. And that was just the first sample. Eventually he got all the samples he needed, and it was over. They put a band aid over the spot where the needle went, let me rest for a few minutes and said I could go. I inquired when I’ll know of the results, and the doctor told me probably about a week. A week? Damn that seems like a long time.

The next afternoon the doctor calls me again. Whenever the doctor calls you directly, it’s usually not good news. Usually the assistant calls you up telling you everything came out normal, or they just send you a letter in the mail telling you things are normal. But I’m hearing from the doctor quite a bit lately. He says the initial lab results are in, and it’s not final yet, but it looks like I have Hodgkins Disease. WTF is Hodgkins Disease I ask him? I instantly start googling Hodgkins Disease, with the doctor on the phone. He tells me I can look it up on the internet, but I’m already clicking on the first link. First link comes up and says “Cancer of the lymph nodes”. First thing I say while hunched standing over the keyboard is “It’s cancer? Of the lymph nodes?” The doctor then replies back “Yeah, it’s cancer.” My butt suddenly drops, luckily my chair was right beneath me. I’m flabbergasted. I need to know more info about Hodgkins Disease. The doc then proceeds to tell me the success rate is very high, and that I’m young and healthy. He then says that it’s not the final diagnosis yet. But he orders me another cat scan, blood tests, and orders me a visit with the oncology department. He figures I’ll get the final lab results before my appointment with oncology, and they’ll take it from there. I’m still trying to wrap my head around this Hodgkins Disease, so I’m googling like mad and reading everything I can. 90-95% success rate in the early stages, so that’s very promising. But 70% success rate in the advanced stage doesn’t look so great. Chemo and radiation therapy however doesn’t sound so good either. Some of the symptoms, include, ah-ha! Itchy skin! No wonder I’ve been scratching. Now it starts to hit me, “I have cancer”. Morbid thoughts start coming into my head. What if scenarios play through my mind. What if I don’t make it? Oh man, I need to tell people. Betty’s not online, probably in a meeting. I don’t wanna tell my parents yet. Not ready right now to talk to them, I need more info and to explain it to them. I give my oldest sister Carrie a call, and give her the bad news. She, like me, instantly googled Hodgkins Disease. It starts to sink in for her too, emotions start emanating from her voice. It wasn’t that long ago, earlier last year, we had concerns that our parents time was finite, which was one of the main reasons we had our family trip. Now I realize that my own time may be finite.

Betty’s back online, so I call her up and break the news to her. Her voice cracks under the weight of the news. She also immediately googles Hodgkins Disease.

I slowly start telling some of my other friends. A few of them even knew somebody with Hodgkins Disease, and they made it through just fine. Encouraging words, but still worrisome. There’s still a lot of questions I needed answered. How aggressive is it? Has it spread to any other part of my lymph nodes? What treaments? How will they affect me? What about work?

I go in for my second CAT scan, this time I drink 3 bottles of barium dye before I go in, and they inject me with more iodine. The 3 bottles of barium doesn’t quite agree with my stomache, and it’s like I’m lactose intolerant. Large amounts of gas is escaping my body the very loud way, and even more gas is building up pressure in my intestines. It all goes away after about a day, but it made for quite an uncomfortable day.

The doctor calls me back about a week after his last call. Final lab results are in. He says I have B cell lymphoma, or commonly called Non Hodgkins Disease. Oh great, all this time I’ve been doing research on Hodgkins, I’ve seen the reference to Non Hodgkins but didn’t read up on it. Now I’m googling up b cell lymphoma, and getting tons of medical references, but nothing for the layman. The doc then tells me it’s more aggressive than Hodgkins Disease, and treatment will also be more aggressive. I ask him what the success rate is, and he says slightly lower. But I have a good chance being young and healthy. Oh great, slightly lower, just how much lower is slightly lower? Googling non hodgkins gives me better results, but there’s many subtypes, as well as a couple of b cell lymphoma subtypes. But none of the websites are giving me any success rate percentages. All I have to go on is slightly lower.

I'm baaaack!

2008-01-09T16:57:00.000-08:00

Wow, my last blog was back in October!

Work got super busy, I didn't even have time to read my favorite blogs nor update my own. Personal life got super busy, video games, hanging out with friends, working on my DSM, and trying to spend time with B. Oh, B & I have become official, though she thought we were official way before we had talked about it.

B has also found an excuse to user her vacation time with me now. So we've been on a few trips already. We've gone to vegas for a few days, she's gone to vegas again by herself, and to vietnam again without me. Which is fine since I don't have as much vacation days as she does, nor quite the $$$ to do everything I want to do. But that hasn't stopped her, as we've booked more trips together burning even more of my vacation days and pocket money.

Though we did just come back from a absolutely great cruise to the caribbeans on board the Princess Caribbean cruise. After reading about Cindy's many cruises, I was quite disappointed to see that I did not get a towel bunny in my room. :( But the rest of the cruise was absolutely great. The food was so good in the dining room. Actually let me back this up a little bit to before the cruise.

About a week and a half before the cruise,I got a bad cold. My sinuses were completely clogged, I felt like crap, etc. This went on for a week. Two days before christmas, My condition worsened as my lung started to hurt when I coughed or breathed hard, and I would get winded getting up off the couch to the fridge and back. Now when we booked our cruise to the caribbeans, leaving from Ft. Lauderdale, we didn't book our flights to / from there yet. B had an idea to stay in chicago for an extra two days since our layover was at chicago, and stay in ft. lauderdale and extra day as well, and then booked the flights without consulting me. I'm all for extending my vacation especially since I'll be using my 2 for 1 PTO time at work, but staying in chicago in the middle of winter did not appeal to me at all. Needless to say when I got even more sick 4 days before I leave for chicago in the middle of winter, I was even less thrilled. For 3 days, I was really sick, and only started to get better the day we leave for chicago. To top it off, Chicago was getting a massive snow storm, and it was about 10 degrees below freezing the day we arrive. In fact we were lucky to make it to chicago at all, as I heard they canceled 300 flights in chicago o'hare airport the day we arrived. Luckily we were going through midway, a much smaller airport, and they had alot less cancellations and delays.

The day we arrived in chicago, it was snowing pretty good, temperatures were below freezing. I had brought some winter clothes, my fleece pullover, a big wool jacket, boots, but that still was not enough for the bitter cold that embraced us. On top of that I was still pretty sick, cold kept finding multiple paths to freeze me to the bone, and we had alot of walking to do outside. We took a cab a few times when the destination was far, away from the train station, but even getting to and from the train station a few blocks away left me cold and very irritable. We stayed at a fairly small boutique type hotel in downtown chicago called the Burnham. It reminded me alot of the boutique hotels in San Francisco. Luckily the heater was working very well, and the beds were amazingly comfy. So comfy in fact that we fell asleep in bed by accident our first night in chicago instead of going out to see the city and night life. Ok, so maybe it wasn't quite by accident, I wanted to take a nap in bed, and dragged B with me under the covers. We both fell asleep for hours until about 3am when I noticed that all the lights are still on, B is asleep next to me, my contacts are still in my eyes, I'm still wearing street clothes, and we didn't even eat dinner yet. I said screw it, I'm still sleepy, took out my contacts, turned the lights out, took off my street clothes, and slid back under the sheets to sleep till morning.

The day we leave for Ft. Lauderdale, the sky clears up and it stops snowing. We have a early morning flight, and we were hoping it wouldn't get cancelled or delayed too much, as we have a 4 hour leeway planned before the boat leaves without us. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, we have a very early flight out of chicago at around 6am. That was actually beneficial to us as it would minimize delays getting out of chicago, but that meant we had to wake up really really early to catch the flight. The flight was only delayed about 40 minutes due to deicing of the plane, and general sluggishness that the cold created with the ground crew. We made it to warm and sunny ft. lauderdale, grabbed a taxi and headed to the cruise ship. Luckily my sister was a veteran of the cruise ship, and gave me tons of pointers and hints, and told me once on board, they will start serving at the buffets. By the time we boarded the cruise ship, it was 2pm, and we were starving, so we headed straight to the buffet.

More about the cruise later.

Washington DC Day 1

2007-10-10T01:05:00.000-07:00

Our plane to Washington DC was on Jet Blue out of Oakland. This is my first time i ever went on Jet Blue, and had heard they had spacious coach seats. So my sister Vicky and my parents set off to Oakland together. We had planned on meeting my oldest sister Carrie at the airport. I actually have not flown since they enacted the new liquid rule, so I wasn't used to not carrying any liquid or gel or anything on my carry ons. In fact, I totally forgot about the bottle of water I was carrying and gave to my sister right before going through the security check. I was wondering why it took her so long to get through security, until she had told me the bag I gave to her to carry contained a bottle of water. Ooops.

On board Jet Blue, I found that the legroom was quite spacious for my 6 foot tall frame. My legs weren't smashed up against the seat in front of me like they sometimes are. I was also the odd man out, which meant i didn't have to sit next to my parents or sister, and I was in solitary heaven. Well as solitary as you can get in a completely full flight. I did remember to bring my ear plugs, and ended up sleeping a good portion on the plane. What I wasn't used to was the lack of any type of meals on board the plane. No meals were being served, not even for purchase. I didn't know about this, and didn't bring any food with me. They did have unlimited amounts of snacks, but there was only so much cookies and peanuts I can eat.

We finally landed at the Dulles airport, and proceed to the rental car location. During the short trip, I noticed that my mom needed to stop to use the bathroom what seemed like every other minute. This theme would continue throughout our entire trip, in fact me and my sister would joke about this every once in a while. I guess that's what happens when you get older, your bladder shrivels up into the size of a thimble.

At the rental car location, Carrie and I were debating whether or not we should rent the GPS for the $10 a day extra they were asking for. Eventually we caved in, thinking we'll probably kick ourselves if we got lost / made wrong turns if we didn't get it. And boy, am I glad we got it. The freeways around the DC area are confusing as hell. Even with the GPS we still took wrong exits. Thank god we didn't take the wrong exit that put us on a toll road. The GPS was a life saver, although i think sometimes it took us the long way around. It also had a tendency to want to drive into the pentagon parking lot! On our way to the hotel, I was getting really hungry, and wanted to stop off for some food. I got real lucky and spotted a vietnamese deli that served vietnamese sandwiches on the way! Score! It was pretty cheap, and some of the sandwiches were real good, except for the chicken, which was kinda bland. Amazingly enough it was the first time my parents had vietnamese sandwiches, even though all of my sisters, my sister's kids eat them all the time. I know my parents doesn't like to stray outside their comfortable chinese food, except for the american food, but never eating vietnamese sandwiches? I had to introduce them to new food, even if I had to force it upon them, which we basically did by stopping off at the vietnamese deli. This is a theme that I would continue to set throughout the vacation as well. My parents liked some of the sandwiches, and after expressing that with enough enthusiasm that convinced me that they would never purchase vietnamese sandwiches on their own, we head off to our hotel.

Our hotel was the Ritz Carlton at the Pentagon City in Virginia. It was across the river from downtown DC, right next to a metro train station, and connected to a really nice mall. It was also about the same price as other hotels in the area, so we decided what the hell, we might as well stay there if it's gonna be the same price, and see what the Ritz is all about. The hotel looked pretty nice, if a bit small, rooms were average size, not exactly spacious, but the service there was excellent. And the mall attached to it was pretty cool. It had a lot of stores, and a decent food court as well. We got in pretty late, so we called it a night so we cold start our sight seeing the next morning.

Washington DC, day 0

2007-09-13T16:39:00.000-07:00

Our flight to Washington DC is scheduled to leave from the Oakland Airport. With the bay bridge closed during labor day weekend, and the fact that everyone is leaving on the same flight, we wanted to all carpool over to the airport together. My parent's first idea was that we'd all carpool to my sister's house in San Ramon, a good 40 minute drive east of the airport. My sister and parents live in San Francisco, which would be about 1 hour and 15 mins away from my oldest sister's. They wanted to sleep over at my sister's house on friday night, and head to the airport saturday morning. One problem with that is my sister's house has only 2 couches (1 sofa and 2 loveseat) and hardwood floors. Two people would have to sleep on the ground, and it's not going to be my parents. I decided to veto that idea, but offered my parents and my younger sister they can sleep over at my place since I have a spare bedroom with bed, and a really comfortable sofa. My plan was to go to tahoe with B on thursday and come back late friday, so I left my keys with my parents to they can get in anytime they wanted.

I come back late friday night (around 1am), find my parents asleep. I also found out my mom washed all my dishes in the sink, took my loaf of bread and put it in the freezer, took some of my leftovers inside tupperware that was sitting in the fridge, and put that in the freezer, including a tupperware containing rice that I was going to throw out. I go upstairs to my room and notice that my mom had put two of my suits in my closet into a plastic garment bag. I remember the conversation a couple of weeks ago with my mom. She said she had a plastic garment bag she wanted to give me. I told her I didn't want it, that I already had one. She then started to go on about how it would protect my suit from dust sitting in my closet for long periods. I then rebutted that I use my suits almost weekly ever since pageant activities started and it doesn't sit in my closet long enough to gather dust. Now I see this garment bag that she got from JC Penny because it was written on it, hanging in my closet with two of my suits in there. Why? Why must she do that? This is what I get for leaving my parents alone in my house unsupervised.

Unexpected treasure

2007-09-13T16:24:00.000-07:00

I noticed my guest bathtub was draining real slowly. I was gonna call the plumber to get it unclogged but decided that I'd try to do it myself. Harbor Freight, land of cheap tools (and sometimes too cheap) was also having a sale on the cheapie but powerful impact wrench. I decided to head down there since I missed the last sale they had on the air impact wrench, and noticed they had a plumbing snake on sale as well. The housing was made out of plastic and looked fairly cheap, but it was on sale for $14. I decided to give it a shot, since a plumber would probably charge me close to $100 to unclog the drain. I also bought the impact wrench I wanted which was perfect since I needed to change my brake pads.

I used my impact wrench to take the nuts off the wheels (It's really nice having a impact wrench to do that) and only had enough time to replace the front brakes.

Afterwards, I decided to to try to tackle the drain in the second bathroom. As soon as I unscrewed the drain stopper, I saw a huge amount of hair and some plastic pieces. I was able to pull most of it with just my fingers, and then used the snake to pick up the rest more easily. When it was all pulled out, I had a pile of hair the size of a large rat. Yuck! I also noticed all of the hair is long and blonde, which points straight at my ex-roommate. Although I'm not sure where the two small plastic pieces came from.

Beyonce and Ribs

2007-09-12T00:07:00.000-07:00

One of the pageant girls (Julie) invited us up to Tahoe to a Beyonce concert and to party with her before she goes back to China for 2 years. B and I are the only one that went up to see the Beyonce concert. Even Julie, who planned the whole thing couldn't make the concert as she got a beer/liquor promo gig that same night that she couldn't get out of. This was the thursday of Labor Day weekend. During the same weekend in Reno was ribfest. Ribfest is where they invite the top BBQ rib makers to compete for best ribs, best sauce, etc. They also sell literally a ton of ribs to the people all weekend long. Beyonce and ribs it is!

We head up to tahoe on thursday day, and saw the Beyonce concert. This was actually my first concert where I wanted to see the artist. I've been to some other concerts where I wasn't into the artist or knew their songs. So this was a blast for me. Beyonce is an amazing performer. Unfortunately our seats were quite far back, so actually seeing beyonce was a bit difficult. 3/4 through the show, we move up closer to the front and got a better view. One of the cool things about her concert was that her band was all girls. Guess she has some girl power going on in the band. One bad thing was that any of the old songs from Destiny's Child that she sang, she only sang about 30 seconds worth. Not sure if that's because she wanted to promote her own songs on her new album, or didn't have full rights to it.

B and I stayed in Tahoe that night, and headed out to Ribfest in Reno the next morning. I've never been so full from really good ribs. I pretty much ate nothing but rib samplers that I shared with B for $6 for 3 ribs. I do have to say that my favorite ribs was definitely butch's (It's the sauce) followed closely by famous dave's (It's the rub). After lunch, we fell into a food coma in our car, and was napping until the security guard came by and verbally warned us that we couldn't sleep in the parking lot. We walked around some more until we were hungry enough for dinner, grabbed some more ribs, corn on the cob, kettle corn, and fried veggies. Feeling extremely stuffed, we head back home because my flight to Washington DC was early next morning, while B had her flight to vegas the next day.

Pageant Photos

2007-09-11T23:48:00.001-07:00

Here's some pics of various pageant events that I have lying around.
You can click on the pics to see the larger sizes.

Going back in time, Kwik-E-Mart

2007-09-11T23:21:00.000-07:00

I was organizing a few of my pictures in picasa and noticed I didn't blog about some of them. So I'm going to go back in time and blogging about it.

Back at the end of July, I was having dinner with B for her birthday. We had dinner at Xanh's in Mountain View, and it was absolutely fabulous in food. It was a modern vietnamese place very similar to the famous Slanted Door in San Francisco, but they give you larger portions. Since we were in mountain view I wanted to visit the 7-11 turned Kwik-E-Mart. Here's some pics that we took in the Kwik-E-Mart

Wow it's been a long time

2007-08-27T11:18:00.000-07:00

I know it's been about a month since my last blog entry. Things have been really busy lately. Busy at work, busy on the weekends, and busy in my personal life.

My planned trip with the whole family, including brother in law, niece and nephew to hawaii was canceled due to family indecisiveness. We then decided to go ahead and plan a vacation to Washington DC around labor day weekend. (That's where I am now as I'm writing this)

Pageant week came and went. It was a long week, very little sleep, but really fun and entertaining. I've made a lot of friends during pageant week, both guys and girls. The pageant production itself looked absolutely great. Even my parents and sister came and watched the production. And the winner is.... well I'll let you find out for yourselves by visiting http://www.missasianamerica.com/

After the pagaent a bunch of girls and guys went out to go clubbing a few times, having a blast. We've been keeping in touch, getting together for some crazy times and having fun. Even the out of town girls, we've been keeping in touch via facebook. I happen to be doing some traveling for vacation and work, and plan on meeting a few of them while I'm there. In fact, I'm meeting up with one of the girls while I'm out here in Virginia (Near washington DC)

I bet some of you are wondering what's going on in my love life. I guess you can say B and I are now dating, although we're kinda keeping it on the down low. Ok more like B is keeping it on the down low while I'm openly blogging about it. I guess it's one of those things about B, she's very guarded about her personal life.

I'm currently in Virginia (next to washington DC). My family split ways today, my parents off to Philadelphia and atlantic city, while my two sisters head back home. Myself, I'm staying over the weekend and hanging out with one of the girls from the pagaent. More about my Washington DC trip later.

Bonds

2007-07-31T23:31:00.000-07:00

No, it's not the kind you tie people up with, nor is the kind where you invest money into, I'm talking about bonding with people. The girls, the staff, the other escorts. I was really starting to look forward to spending time with everybody. Especially my regular who I give a ride to for almost every event. I'm having lots of fun hanging out with some of the other guys who I had met before I started the pagaent.

Since my boss has been on vacation for almost a month, I played hookey from work and went go-karting with the guys that I knew previously. I've been karting at this indoor kart place called gokartracer quite a number of times, so I'm fairly fast on the course. One of the guys has been there a couple of times, and the other has never tried it before. I had to school them on the ways of track, but they learn fast. Next week one of the guys convinced his GF to go gokarting too. Her first session was quite frustrating to her due to some of the other guys on the track that kept bumping her and telling the track marshals that she wasn't pulling over, but by the time we did our 2nd & 3rd session, she was really getting the hang of it and was going much faster. The rest of the guys also were getting alot faster. During my 2nd & 3rd session, I got assigned a really slow kart, so slow that I amazingly didn't finish first in my 3rd session, mostly due to one of the other guys that wouldn't yield to the passing flag after I had lapped him. Now that my boss is back from vacation tomorrow, I won't be taking those extended lunches, but I'll still have enough time to get in a couple of sessions during my normal lunch break.

Next week is pagaent week, so I'll be real busy the entire week. I hear that the girls won't be getting much sleep, nor will I.

Dinner after Lemons

2007-07-30T23:54:00.000-07:00

We left the Lemons race early, so I decided to call up B to see if she wanted to hang out. We eventually met up, I took her back to my place and tried out a pork tenderloin recipe she had gotten recently. It was actually a pretty good recipe, except we needed to marinate the meat alot longer in the soy sauce and sake based marinade. The marinade wasn't that strong, and we only marinaded it for about an hour so it didn't penetrate very far through the meat. We watched the dvd Happy Feet that she just bought earlier in the day as we waited for food to cook. It was a nice night. There isn't much more going on than being friends right now, though there's definitely interest on both sides. That's how I want things to move right now, slow. Let's just see how long I can keep things slow until basic needs start taking over.

24 hours of Lemons

2007-07-30T23:41:00.001-07:00

I'm way behind on my blogs, so I'll start off with the 24 hours of lemons. Drinking heavily the night before for my birthday, I totally forgot that I had said I'd meet my friend at 8am the next morning to go spectate at the 24 hours of lemons over in Tracy, CA. So I got a call at 8am from my friend who exclaimed "What? You're still asleep!". I convinced him to come pick me up, so I got up got ready, drank some more water to try to shake the hangover off. I started feeling alot better, and grabbed a small cooler for some drinks because it was going to be hot, hot, hot in Tracy.

I got to the race around noon, and was amazed at the craziness going on. 80 cars on the track at the same time meant that there was barely any gaps between all the cars running around the track. There were a couple of hilarious cars racing out there, one had a paper mache statue of the pope riding on top of the rear hatch, a hearst, the mitsubishi (a mitsubishi mirage covered in fake fur) and a bunch of others.

The track was alot faster than we though it would be. It looks like the cars were hitting around 75mph in the back stretch. No facilities for gas, so you need to haul it yourself. There were quite a few tire punctures, a couple of car fires, and alot of dents. It looks like it'll be a fun event when we run it in october. Hopefully it won't be as hot as it was today. It was really scorching out there in the July heat.

Friday the 13th

2007-07-15T01:41:00.000-07:00

"Today's friday the 13th!", my friend IM's me.
"Huh? It is? Already? Darn, I didn't even notice that today", I reply back.

As I unpack one of the big Dell boxes that has a server in it, a freaking spider literally jumps out at me from the box. So I do what any strong manly man does, I screamed like a little girl then stomped on it. After scraping the bottom of my shoe against another box, I think to myself I would suck if I encountered an alien species that looked different. I'd probably scream like a little girl again, then grab my shotgun and blast it till it stopped moving.

Office Stalkers

2007-07-11T15:42:00.000-07:00

I used to have a previous office stalker, a girl who has a crush on me, but she recently left the company. It was very obvious as well, so obvious that my coworkers would joke around whenever her name would pop up. Actually office stalker is a strong word, since she's too shy / busy to come over to my cube to talk to me. I would see her in the hallway or break room and chit chat every so often.

How did I know she had a crush on me? She let it all out one night during my coworker's going away party. After a few drinks, she admitted it to one of my coworker's wife. Unfortunately they were also trying to hook us up together despite my protests, so I felt a bit awkward as I didn't want to hurt her feelings. But I think she got the hint that night.

Recently at my birthday, one of my friends asked me if so-and-so (really, I forgot his name) talked to me at work. I remember saying that I don't know anybody by that name at work, but my friend told me they met him through another friend and he also works at the same company I do. He also knows who I am, and knows I go to the company gym often. This information started creeping me out, since I really can't think of anybody I know with that name, nor has anybody came up and introduced themselves to me recently. And the fact that he knows I go to the gym kinda creeps me out a bit.

Whoever you are, please introduce yourself to me so I can stop imagining that you're some creepy guy.

Though he might have introduced himself to me before, and I forgot, since I'm horrible at remembering people's names.

Birthday Celebration!

2007-07-09T21:58:00.000-07:00

Saturday we celebrated my birthday! I made reservations at Cafe Mum's in San Francisco. All you can eat japanese shabu shabu, is always good, but all you can drink beer and sake sealed the deal. Afterwards, I made plans to go to medjool, a bar / restaraunt in the mission that also has a outdoor sky lounge on the roof for those who couldn't make dinner. We had a blast at cafe mum's, beer and sake bombs were done not only by us, but with people that were sitting at the table next to us. A couple of people never had shabu shabu before, so I had to show them how to do it.

1. Take the vegetables (Mushrooms, lettuce, spinach) and noodles and throw it in the pot.

2. Bring pot to a slow boil

3. Pick up thinly sliced ribeye with chopsticks and place in pot.

4. Use your chopstick-fu to defend your meat from rogue meat thieving chopsticks.

5. Retrieve meat from pot and dip in one of two sauces provided. A ponzo type sauce, or a peanut type sauce (sauce and meat on the left)

6. Eat meat and then take a cup full of sake and hold over cup of beer

7. Scream "I say sake, you say bomb! Sake! Bomb! Sake! Bomb!" then drop cup of sake in cup of beer and down your sake bomb.

8. Stare at amazement that you just downed a whole cup of beer and sake at once.

9. Convince your friends that doing sake bombs are fun.

We made it look so fun, the people from the table next to us wanted to have as much fun as we did..

So they decided to join us for a toast.

Afterwards, we stumbled(Ok, really it was just me) out to the car and headed to medjool in the mission. I did a shot of kamakazi which put me from being very buzzed to drunk. Then somebody bought me a AMF (Adios Mother Fucker) which put me from drunk to very drunk. At that point it was time to go home since I had crossed the threshold from being drunk to feeling a bit sick. I made it home without puking, drank lots of water, and went to bed.

Special thanks to Dani and Ryan who made it all the way from San Jose to join me, and for driving us to medjool and back!

Next thing I knew my phone rings at 8am.
Groggily I answer "Hello?"
Other person on the end of the phone in voice of disbelief, "What? You're still asleep? You're supposed to be at my house by now! I'm coming to pick you up now!"

Ugh, I forgot that I was going to the 24 hours of Lemons to observe with my friend Allen. Of all the days I scheduled things. I drag myself outta bed, drink some more water hoping it'll quell the storm in my stomache and head for the shower.

24 hours of Lemons coming up next.

My Birthday

2007-07-02T20:34:00.000-07:00

So my birthday came and went yesterday. I'm now 33 years old, single, living alone. Alone, the key word is. How did my day go? B left me a text message wishing me a happy birthday. But she's busy with a wedding all weekend long, so no time to stop by or meet up with me. My friend Danny's in LA this weekend. One of my sister calls me up to wish me a happy birthday. I haven't heard anything from my other sister nor my parents. Which is odd, since my parents usually call me up and wish me a happy birthday. I called up my ex to see if she wanted to go to lunch, but she was busy too, and already had plans to do something. How funny, as I am writing this, my parents just called me up to wish me a happy belated birthday. Most of the day went to doing nothing. I purchased a nice air compressor from sears on friday, and went to harbor freight to pick up some cheap air tools on saturday. Spent a little bit of time hooking up the new air tools to test if they work. Did a few errands. Got a call from my friend Martha wishing me a happy birthday later on at night.

The only day of the year where it's all about me, me, me, me. It literally was just me. It sucks when there isn't anybody around to lavish all their attention to you. Almost as bad as being alone on valentine's day. Actually worse, cause now you're older.

I really shouldn't be complaining, I have a few good friends who care about me, a family that does too. I make good money, have my own place. But this is my first year living alone without a girlfriend. So far I've been through one thanksgiving, one christmas, one new year's, one valentine's, and now one birthday living alone. I guess I've now made it through all the major holidays and annual events. Christmas and thanksgiving isn't too bad since I usually spend time with family, but man, new year's, valentine's and my birthday really sucks without anyone.

But I really shouldn't be complaining, I'm planning on celebrating my birthday this saturday so that most of the people I know can make it.

My ears are burning

2007-06-25T13:50:00.001-07:00

Or at least my spider sense tells me when somebody's talking about me. Ok so it's not exactly like my ears actually gets hot, or I have a rash. It's more like I know when somebody's talking about me. Nothing ESP like such as when somebody in another part of the city talks about me. No, it's more like when somebody talks about me in the same room, either in a different language, whispering, or talking to somebody else on the phone. Sometimes you can catch parts of what they're saying if they're whispering, or half of the conversation if they're on the phone.

So how do I do it? It's pretty easy actually, most people tend to look at that person when they start talking about them. The smarter ones won't look at you when they know you're looking at them. But if you're not looking at them, have your head turned away, or focusing on something else, such as a object or another conversation, they'll have a tendency to look at you and talk about you.

Of course if you're not actively deploying your "I'm not paying attention to you" cloaking shields, it's not easy to eavesdrop their conversation, especially if you're wrapped up in another conversation. You'll only get to catch a couple of words, if any. I have a tendency to take those couple of words, and attempt to reconstruct their conversation about me in my head. Take for instance yesterday during another one of the pagaent events, I was walking by and my spider sense was tingling, and I heard what might have been the word "Thai" from two of the girls that was looking at me. I know they don't think I'm Thai, so I think in my head what other word might sound like Thai, and Tall sounds kinda like Thai, which means they were commenting on how Tall I was.

Ok, I know what you're thinking, that's quite a bit of a stretch, but I get these things, and I really think that I'm really close. Even harder are the half of a phone conversation. Yesterday as I was giving one of the girls a ride home, she was on the phone on a conference call with some of her sorority sisters. As a couple of people came online in the conference call, a bit of chit chat goes on until everyone else gets on, like most people do when they know the people they're talking with. As I was driving, I notice her take a quick glance at me and says "Uh... We'll talk about that later." Ding Ding goes my spider senses, and I know that subject was about me, but she didn't want to say anything in front me. Yah I know what you're thinking. She's talking about her meeting, she's not really talking about you. But I'm telling you, my spidey senses were tingling there.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I could also be conceited and think I'm the center of attention and everyone's talking about me.

Open Door Part 2

2007-06-25T13:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, so apparently the part of my brain that actually writes these blogs left out a couple of things from my previous blog entry. So a few weeks before Will, B, and I went out to dinner, I had talked to B via IM & phone to try to go out to dinner. First attempt, I called her up and she was busy that weekend. Tried to reschedule for next week, and I was busy. Next attempt she called me up and asked me to dinner, but I was busy. Next time both our schedules were free, and we went to dinner and ended up talking for hours.

Next time I saw B was when B, Will, and I was at dinner together. I had just told Will that I went out to dinner with B a week or two ago, hence the probing by Will, the life stories, the philosophical questions and answers with more background information that I could process that we all participated in.

This sat, I invited B over to dinner at my house. I haven't cooked anything good for a long time, and she got excited when I told her about my method for cooking my vermont maple pork chops. I still needed to clean the house up since I haven't quite fully recovered from my last couple of BBQ's, as well as do my laundry, so I wasn't going anywhere that day. She came by and brought some really good focaccia bread from a small bakery in North Beach. We talked, looked up a new cell phone that she wanted, while the pork chops sat in it's brine. She gave me a hand cooking the pork chops, glazed carrots, and blanched asparagus that I had planned. The pork chops came our pretty good again, and she was thoroughly impressed. It's always good to have at least one or two really good dishes that you can make to impress the ladies. Afterwards, I got her to play a few rounds of Wii tennis. She said that she doesn't like video games, but after a few rounds of tennis, I had to pull her off of the Wii so we could go out and get some chinese desserts in San Mateo.

So yah, she likes me, changed her tune recently. I've still got a open door, but I'm not rushing through, taking things slow and friendly right now.

Open door

2007-06-19T17:29:00.000-07:00

Oh, I forgot to mention, I went out to dinner with B (a girl who I met on my tahoe trip) about a month ago. We talked for a few hours over dinner, and we continue to talk to each other over IM & on the phone. B's a sweet gal, and we have a few things in common. Funny thing is, on our car ride from Tahoe, I mentioned if she had anything planned over the summer, and she went on this big thing on how she's not ready on a relationship, she needs to concentrate on work, her works takes her to who knows where every few months, etc. Funny thing is I asked that question as a segway to talk about my 24 Hours of Lemons car race I'm planning on running. She thought I was asking her out over the summer or something. I didn't want to embarrass her by mentioning that all I asked if she had anything interesting like a vacation or something planned over the summer. I decided to play it off and tell her she's way over analyzing things right now.

A couple of weeks ago, I went out to dinner with B and my friend Will (Whom I had recently told I went out to dinner with B), and all throughout dinner, Will grilled B on everything from "What do you look for in a man", to hypothetical questions "Who would you rather go out with, someone with looks, or someone with money". Ya know, all the ones that'll make you sweat. B now changed her tune, saying she's ready for other things in her life besides work. She also had said that she's old fashioned and wants the guy to make the first move (ask her out).

That was just a small sampling over many subjects, with alot of information, more than I really wanted to know.

I've got an open door, but I'm hesitating. Not sure why right now.

First in Poker!

2007-06-19T17:18:00.000-07:00

Whoo-hoo, Friday was a good night for me. I won my first poker tournament! I won a couple of really good hands in the beginning and was big stack for most of the early part of the tournament. Then lost most of it in some big losses, and was almost out of the game. I staged a late game rally, going all in 3 hands in a row and winning all 3. That put me in a better position, enough for me to see what I can get on the flop, and it seemed like I could make something out of whatever hands I was dealt. I came out eventually in 1st place, took the $128 prize money along with $15 in bounty. It feels good to win!

Andretti Winery in Napa

2007-06-18T14:06:00.000-07:00

Saturday, I dropped off my car at the dealership to get my gear oil changed and my vortex generators fixed, since it was loose on one corner. Unfortunately they said it would take all day when I thought it would only take about an hour. So I started calling up people to see if they could hang out and pick me up. Most of the people were busy, but my sister said she was going up to Andretti Winery up in Napa to pick up her wine that she has there because of her wine club membership. That sounded like fun so I told her to pick me up and we'll head down there. So we head to Napa, and since she's a member, she gets free wine tasting for her and a guest. Whoo-hoo! I try out a few wines, but end up really liking the port, so I pick up a bottle. I also heard that Mario Andretti himself will be there on Friday for an open house. I'm seriously considering taking off early friday and heading up there. Tickets are only $20 each, and i get to meet Mario himself! Andretti that is, not the video game character! :)

Sweating at home

2007-06-14T22:18:00.000-07:00

It got warm today, actually it got hot. When I finally got home, it was 80 deg inside the house, and a bit less than 80 outside. I go turn on the A/C, and go about my business. A couple of hours later, I notice it's still hot outside, but my indoor / outdoor temperature gauge said it got colder outside. I start to notice that the a/c is barely putting out cool air. Great, now my less than a year old central a/c that I installed last year doesn't work. And I only used it about 4 times since I got it. And here I am blogging about this while nekkid.

Tenga anyone?

2007-06-13T20:47:00.000-07:00

I found this link via Danny Choo's blog
Tenga anyone?

Looks like a shampoo or perfume bottle they sell in japan, but inside, well, I'll let you read it for yourself.

Those wacky japanese!

Why I'm not a pet lover

2007-06-04T19:15:00.000-07:00

My friend W was flying back from singapore on saturday, and my friend Danny was supposed to pick her up at the airport but couldn't, so he asked me and my other friend T if one of us could pick her up. I said I'd pick her up, and T mentioned that she was glad W was back from her two week trip from singapore because T was sick of taking care of her 4 little dogs. I had thought she was just exaggerating like alot of people do, after all taking care of someone else's dogs isn't such a simple task, especially the hyperactive little white fluffy cottonballs that W has. Now I'm not a pet person, never owned a pet besides goldfish before. I've only taken care of my ex's sister's dog for about a week once. That dog was a really mild mannered dog (she was old) and was probably easier to take care of by far than my friend W's dog, and I almost gagged when I had to go walk the dog and pick up dog poop with a plastic bag. OMG, that stuff smells when it's fresh!

When I met T at W's house, I was not prepared for the carnage that 4 little dogs can inflict in a 24 hour period! T and Danny were tag teaming to clean and feed the dogs twice a day for the two weeks W was gone. So today marked only 24 hours of chaos that went on inside the house. When I got there, I could not believe the amount of poop and pee that 4 little dogs can make. And one of them started tearing up one of their stuffed toy, so white fluff was strewn about everywhere. There were a couple of pads that the dogs used to go on, but that didn't stop them from going in other spots, or just missing the edge of that pad so there's a little pool of surprise when T went to pick up a pad. Luckily she warned me not to take off my shoes when I walked on the hardwood floors. Just another reminder of why I don't have pets, and why I have trouble keeping plants alive.

I rock!

2007-06-04T18:45:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, my friend Danny picked up a copy of Guitar Hero 2 for the xbox 360, and said I need to come over and try it. Within 5 minutes of playing on it, I knew I needed to get one. And that weekend, I picked one up at Best Buy. I had a 10% off coupon that I had to go argue with the store manager into letting me use since the coupon said it was good on video games, but the computer system rung it up as not a game. And they also gave me a $10 Gift Card as well! Sweet! And I've been hooked on it ever since.! Alot of the songs I've never heard of before, but believe me, I know them by heart now. I've completed all the songs on easy and medium modes, gotten 5 stars on all the song on easy, and working my way on getting 5 stars on medium. I even managed to pass the first 2 sets of songs on hard mode, and boy let me tell you hard mode is really hard! Not only do you have to use the 5th fret, but everything comes at you faster, with more notes. I don't know how the people that can play a real guitar does this stuff!

I've even gotten other people hooked on it. My old coworker that I'm currently tuning his car for, came by so I could help tune his car. I showed him the guitar hero, and several hours later, I had to peel him away from the guitar so we could tune his car like he originally came down to do. I just heard from him that he just bought a xbox 360 just so he could play guitar hero! Haha! Now I feel like a crack dealer!

My neighbor also came by one day to hang out, and he also got addicted to guitar hero. Last weekend, he, his wife, and baby came by to hang out, and got them both addicted to guitar hero and the Wii! Hahaha, no my secret plan to form a video game based rock band is coming to fruition! (Insert evil laugh here)

I now think about going home after work and skipping my workout to play guitar hero!

How to lose at poker

2007-05-30T17:49:00.001-07:00

So a few weeks ago, I had another painful stomach ache, and feinted again when I got up to the bathroom. Ever since then, my stomache has been acting up lately, hurting whenever I eat food. Mostly stuff that's not particular healthy for me. So lately I've been trying to eat stuff that's easy on the tummy, including soup, vegetables, and staying away from anything fried, or contains grease. I've been taking pepto bismol, and switced to tums, which I think means I'm just producing alot of acid or something. For a few days last week or two, almost anything I ate would cause me intense pain.

My coworker's roommate, Dub, who I also play video games online with, sets up these poker tournaments every 2 weeks at his house. While I'm not particularly good at poker, I have played a bit off and on over the last couple of years with friends. The buy in was pretty cheap, less than $30, and with a very limited amount of re-buy's 1 or 2 re-buy's per game, means you can't lose very much money. They do their own house rules, which makes it really fun. If you take out somebody (they go all in and losse), you get a $5 bounty in cash. At each game, somebody is randomly marked as double bounty, so the person who takes out the double bounty gets $10 in cash. Each person also gets a "Show me chip", which basically means anybody can use their chip on somebody after the hand has been won, and force them to show their cards to everyone. This makes it so you can see if the other person was bluffing or not, which makes learning everybody's style alot faster. The first tournament I went to involved 20 people and two tables. That night, I ended up playing from 7:00 to almost midnight, and I ended up taking out 4 people, and took fourth place, which is where they started the payout. Not bad for my first time at a poker tournament with seasoned pros! I think I took home close to $90 that night! It was tons of fun, while getting to know some new people. Almost half of the players were girls, which surprised me. I was ecstatic that I made the pay out, and had alot of fun and wanted in on the regular weekly emails for poker. But for me, I'm still learning, so I had to concentrate alot on my cards and everyone else, so it was very tiring at the end. I was barely able to keep my concentration or even keep track of what colors represented what denomination. Luckily everyone there is totally honest and helped me out, while giving me a good amount of ribbing.

Two weeks later, I got in on the second tournament, and also did very well, taking out almost half the table, but ended up losing to a Royal Flush (If you're gonna lose a hand, a Royal Flush is the hand to lose it on) and came out third, just making the payout round. Again I made out with almost $70 that night, and left the place totally drained, not able to add 2 and 2 together.

Two weeks after that, I get in on my third tournament, but this is the day when my stomach is really acting up all week. Part of the buy in also goes towards food, which is pizza. Boy that was a mistake, after eating only two slices, my stomach was hurting so bad, I couldn't think, make any judgements, or anything. I screwed up a few times where I could've have taken a couple of people out, but folded instead. To end the game early, I went All In about 5 times with cards that might work. Each time I went all in, I would make the river (Win with the last card). Everyone at the table could not believe I was so lucky and made the river every time, and would start swearing if they were on the opposite end of that. But I was in no mood for celebration as my stomach was now more like a knife cutting through my midsection. I inquired about some sort of tums, pepto bismol or something to help ease the pain. Like a bad hand, they hand nothing. I had stuff at home, but home is about 5-10 minutes away by car, an eternity considering that if you're not at your seat playing when they're ready to play, you automatically get your hands folded for you. I wanted to win, but I wanted it to be over too. Eventually my luck would not last, and my all in strategy would eventually fail me, taking 4th place, no pay out, and one bounty. Of course, my pains were near mortal at that point, so quickly said goodbye, jumped in my car, headed home, and consumed whatever was left of my pepto bismol. That helped alot, enough for me to go to the store and grab another bottle of pepto bismol and some tums to get me through the rest of the night.

Slammed

2007-04-27T14:06:00.000-07:00

For the past 2 weeks, my coworker has been on vacation. I've been slammed with a huge amount of workload, projects, and most of all, projects that don't go according to plan. Mostly upgrades of existing software platforms. So I've been extremely busy at work, which is the time I usually post my blogs, or at least when I start my blogs. My coworker came back on monday, the first week where I got to breathe. But I'm now stuck on yet another upgrade project that is not going smoothly. Worse yet, this one has a hard deadline, so I need to get it working and planned. I've even been going on days, even a week without reading my usual list of blogs, or just skimming over it in between server reboots. Alot has been going on in my life, some I probably won't want to talk about in my own blog.

Ok, break time is over, time to get back to work.

Tahoe weekend, part 2

2007-04-11T22:45:00.000-07:00

Poor Wenda, she setup the entire ski trip and couldn’t go. Although I haven’t met her, I do feel for her. I don’t know the exact details, but apparently she had something on her ass cheek that somehow got infected. She had to go to the doctor where they gave her a shot of novacaine by a lancer (fancy name for a xacto knife) and dug in ½” to take out whatever was in there. Poor girl said it hurt so bad even with the shot, that her legs were shaking, got teary eyed, and broke out in hives. Then they stuffed the newly formed hole with so much gauze, she felt a teddy bear in a stuffing machine. She had to go back again later on for them to take out even more stuff. She had to lay on her stomach like beefcake Cartman all day, and probably for a few more days.

As B and I drove up to tahoe, I find out that B knows Will through, (surprise, surprise) the pageants. Usually if my friend Will knows a girl, there’s a good chance it’s because it’s through the pageants. And I find out that B knows my ex-gf through the pageants. That’s why she looked kinda familiar. I saw her picture on friendster through my ex-gf! She also knew my ex-gf through my ex’s association with Drink Club, a event promotions organization where they throw asian parties at various clubs in SF. That’s because B was dating one of the DJ’s that they and Element (another asian party promotion organization) use. B also knows Erin, one of the guys that works at Element and Natalie his gf at the time, and Natalie’s best friend, Martha. Ok, are you guys with me so far? If not, better start diagramming now. So I know my friend Andy from working at Whole Earth Access in SF a long time ago. I know Will from my days working at Computown. One night, Will and a bunch of people went clubbing, and I invited Andy along. Little did I know that Andy and Will went to high school together and knew each other already. That night, Andy met one of Will’s friend’s Julie, and turned into a relationship that lasted a couple of years. Some of Julie’s best friends was Martha and Natalie. After they broke up, Martha and Natalie stayed friends with Andy (hey, he’s such a good guy) and I got to know Martha and Natalie after a while and became really good friends. In fact, Andy, Martha, Natalie and I used to go clubbing together almost every weekend for a year. And during one of these clubbing nights, is when I met Karen. So I go out on a couple of dates with Karen, and I meet up with Andy and Will for Martha’s birthday. I was telling Andy about Karen when I find out Will knows Karen from the pageants. Later on Andy started doing the pageant escorting, and B was still helping out with pageants, and that’s how B knows Andy. Are we thoroughly confused yet? I think I’ll stop with the friend association because I’ll confuse even myself soon.

So as B and I talk in the car, she keeps raving about the good food places in Sacramento. Huh? Sacramento? Well I guess? And she was raving about this one place that has really great salmon salad called Urban Jack’s. I was intrigued because she made it sound really good. So as we drove back down from Tahoe, we decided that we’re gonna stop in Sacramento and I’ll see if the salmon salad was all that. Wow, let me tell you that was some good salmon salad. Freshly tossed salad with Salmon with some sort of sweet delicious glaze and grapefruit and some sort of vinagarette. I never knew Sacramento had such good food! And it wasn’t very expensive either. I’m definitely not dismissing B’s food advice any time soon. My drive to and back from Tahoe was a whole lot shorter because B and I chatted almost the entire way.

Tahoe weekend update part 1

2007-04-05T22:01:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm finally getting around to my tahoe weekend. My friend Will invited me up to tahoe, though I don't know any of the people heading up. Most of the peeps are heading up friday night, hitting the slopes on both saturday and sunday, and coming back on monday. I can't do two days of boarding, nor take the time off on monday, so my plan was to go up on friday and head back on sunday. Will said that he had a friend B that might want to carpool up with me. So we had a IM conference and we both confirmed that we didn't want to ski on sunday, and we both could leave on friday.

So I meet B for the first time on Friday (Hmm, she looks a bit familiar, but I've never met her before), and we head off to tahoe in my evo with my snowboard and her skis in the back seat. We chat it up quite a bit on the drive up, making the drive alot shorter, although we left late, so we didn't arrive till around midnight. We met the rest of the group, a couple Tony and Liana, Alex, and Liz. Unfortunately Wenda who set the whole trip up couldn't make it because she had a hole in her butt (more on that later).

We talk a bit, hang out, and we made our sleeping arrangements. I got to bunk up with Will in the bear room, it's a bear themed room with a giant bed that's so high, you need a step stool to get up in, or in my case I just jump onto the bed. Unfortunately Will snores, so my nights sleep wasn't so restful.

We hit the Sierra At Tahoe the next morning. The snow was the consistency of frozen lemonade, all slushy and very sticky. It was so sticky that it felt like I was dragging an anchor behind me. It was so sticky that I could go down the black diamonds almost straight without going too fast. So sticky that my legs were getting sore and tired because I had to lean back to keep from falling forward because the board was slowing down, but I wasn't. But the weather was really nice, It was really hot, and all I wore was a t-shirt and my ski jacket.

By the end of the day we were so tired we all started wiping out because we were all too tired. I ate it a couple of times pretty good, and ended up sliding down my back and doing a endo so I can get the board pointing downhill to stop sliding. At the end of the day, we happend to have stopped on a run, and a bunch of guys decided to slide down the hill on their bellies like penguins. That looked pretty fun, if it wasn't for the fact that they were soaked at the end.

Ok, part 2 tomorrow, as I'm pretty tired right now. I've been waking up early and staying late at work this week. And it gets complicated, I may need to draw a diagram.

Tahoe this weekend

2007-03-28T00:58:00.000-07:00

Time to bust out my snowboard this weekend. It's a weekend up in tahoe in a rented cabin. Luckily one of the girls is coming back on sunday as well, so I won't have to drive all the way up and back myself. Oh crap, that reminds me I need to check to see if my snowboard will fit in the back seat of the car. They seem like a bunch of fun peeps, from my exchange of emails regarding the cabin, so it sounds like it'll be fun.

My oldest sister called me up today, and scolded me for not writing back to my niece. Apparently I'm at least two letters behind, and her project is due sometime next month. Time to get on my ass and get it done, as well as my taxes. I'm still procrastinating on that. My sis reminded me that we haven't gotten together with my other sister and done anything with just the three of us for, I think literally 10 years. We really should do things together to remind us that we're actually related. Sometimes we forget about things like that. I also reminded her that we still haven't made any plans for our "Family Vacation" that's coming up in July. We're supposed to go to hawaii, but we'll take any vacation destination that has a deal.

Weekend full of cars

2007-03-28T00:30:00.000-07:00

Saturday was the Norcal Evo / 350z meet at Lemans Karting in Fremont. about 100 cars showed up to hang out, look at cars, compete in the gokarting competition, and drool over the models. I decided to go compete in the gokart competition. Unfortunately I arrived a little wait, didn't make it in time to get a practice lap, and I never saw the track before in my life. I had to rely on my past autocross skills where you always see a new track, and you plan your line by walking and looking at the course. I was able to make it to the final round, but was no match for the veterans of the track who were lapping it more than half a second faster than I was. I managed 7th place in the finals, despite being black flagged on the semi final round and coming in almost dead last. Here's some sample pics of what you guys missed out.

Right after the meet, my friend had a birthday party also in Fremont for their 2 year old daughter, Lily. I met up with all my old friends I've known for a long time. This is my circle of friends that are ALL either getting married, married, or married with kids. This also includes my first girlfriend who was there with her husband. The guys got together and mentioned that all the girls just went to vegas recently, and that we should too. Oh boy, here goes another money draining vegas trip.

H, one of my female friends, and her gang of sisters tried to hook me up with somebody's godmother's daughter. The only requirement of them trying to hook me up was that she was single. Not really trying to learn what I like or would even prefer. Ah well, can't blame them for trying, even if it wasn't thought out at all. I really need somebody more ABC and outgoing, rather than the typical shy not born here asian. That's just my type.

Sunday was dyno day at EIP in San Jose. Unfortunately my car was overboosting on the dyno causing some knock and power loss. I didn't make the 260hp I did on the GST dyno. I was quite disappointed, but I did receive my MAP sensor and just got it installed so I can now log boost. My new hobby is figuring out how to get the ECU to control boost and do it smoothly on my own. I almost have the boost setting and curve to where I want it.

Vasovagal Reaction

2007-03-23T00:27:00.000-07:00

From the wikipedia entry Vasovagal syncope

Vasovagal syncope is the most common cause of fainting. There are a number of different syncope syndromes which all fall under the umbrella of vasovagal syncope. The common element among these conditions is the central mechanism leading to loss of consciousness. The differences among them are in the factors which trigger this mechanism.

Typical triggers for vasovagal syncope include:

* prolonged standing or upright sitting
* stress
* any painful or unpleasant stimuli, such as
o giving blood
o watching someone else give blood
* prolonged exposure to heat
* sudden onset of extreme emotions
* hunger
* consumption of marijuana
* consumption of alcohol
* nausea or vomiting
* urination ('micturition syncope') or defecation
* swallowing ('deglutition syncope')
* sexual arousal
* abdominal straining or 'bearing down' (as in defecation)

People with trypanophobia ("injection phobia") may suffer from vasovagal syncope from the sight, feeling, or even thought of a needle.
People with vasovagal syncope typically have recurrent episodes, usually when exposed to a specific trigger. The initial episode often occurs when the person is a teenager, then recurs in clusters throughout his or her life. Prior to losing consciousness, the individual frequently experiences a prodrome of symptoms such as lightheadedness, nausea, sweating, ringing in the ears, and visual disturbances. These last for at least a few seconds before consciousness is lost, which typically happens when the person is sitting up or standing. When they pass out, they fall down; and when in this position, effective blood flow to the brain is immediately restored, allowing the person to wake up.

So why am I quoting the wikipedia? A few weeks ago, when I was really sick after vegas, I had some food poisoning (Ok, maybe I gave it to myself by eating some cheese that may have been in the fridge for too long). In the middle of the night I had a horrible stomach ache, and headed to the bathroom. But I feinted along the way. I think I landed in the closet at first because I saw some marks on the door from what I think part of me hit, then somehow made it to the bathroom tile. I think I came to about a minute later. Did my business in the bathroom then felt alot better. It's not the first time this happened from a bad stomach ache, but I thought I really should get it checked out by a doctor. Especially since I now live alone, and there was nobody around when I feinted.

So I decided to see a doctor about this. I went to Kaiser (I'm on the kaiser plan right now) and the doctor, which was a female asian doctor around my age, (I wonder if she's single) said I had a vasovagal reaction, which is very common feinting episode. Such as in all those stories where girls feint or when people feint at the sight of blood (great, she just said I feinted like a girl). After feeling a bit embarassed, all thoughts of trying to figure out a way to see if she's single stopped. In fact, I really haven't told anybody about this recent episode yet except for my ex-gf, I wasn't even going to blog about it. The doctor said it's not really a big deal, and said if I feel it coming on, I should try to sit or lay down so I don't hurt myself on the way down.

Gym buddy

2007-03-21T00:09:00.000-07:00

Saw my new gym buddy at the gym yesterday and today. Now my workouts take even longer because I end up talking to him when I should be lifting weights. But at least it's not as boring. I need to get him on my IM so we can IM each other so we can sync up our gym schedules. I convinced him to start running outside when the weather is nice, so we'll start hopefully on thursday.

I worked out yesterday on chest alot. I'm still not at my tip top condition, I had to ratchet all the weights down, and couldn't lift my max like I normally do. Today I'm sore from the workout yesterday, and will probably be even more sore tomorrow. Geez, I hate starting from square one, where I'm sore after every workout for a couple of days. This marks my second regularly scheduled workout, so hopefully by my third workout, I'll stop being sore. I weighed myself on the scale today, 178lbs with towel. Down from my peak of 185. That would be pretty good if it wasn't for the fact that I'm sure some of that weight was some muscle mass along with the fat. But at least my waist looks better now. My love handles are starting to melt away, and I'm getting the lines in my abs back. I've been watching what I eat, trying to eat as much protein as I can, and not eating too much. I also just ran out of my whey protein today, so I went online and ordered a 5lb container of whey protein from amazon, french vanilla flavor. It seems to be helping when I take it, I seem to be adding more muscle mass with it than without.

My friend is renting a cabin up in tahoe in two weeks, so I'm planning on going snowboarding with a bunch of people, most I've probably never met before, so this should be fun. Hopefully there'll be some girls going so it won't be a total sausage fest.

Another good friend of mine's asked me to participate in the Miss Asian American pageant as a escort, escorting all the contestants around and stuff. He's been doing it for the last few years, and I've declined the previous years because I didn't want to give up my weekends for months, so I could spend more time with my GF. Well since I don't have that problem anymore, I'll be doing it this time around.
As my friend said "You're going to be meeting 23-24 year old girls, is that going to be a problem for you?"
Me - "Uhm, let me think about that for a second." (Dramatic pause in classic thinking pose) "Nope, not a problem."

They can't keep their hands off my wii

2007-03-20T10:22:00.001-07:00

Frantically cleaned up the living room floor area in preparation for my car friends to hold a meeting / bbq. We're talking about entering the 24hoursoflemons race in tracy. We found a miata with right front damage that somebody is going to give to us for free, and we've decided to enter the race in oct. We're going to get the miata towed to one of our group's house where he has space to store and work on it. We figured some of the cost to fix up the miata, add a roll cage plus other parts and spares would cost us around $350 each member (nine total). Drivers will require an extra $100 for entry fee plus their own helmet and fire suit. I figure it's going to cost me about $600 to enter the race! Eeek, time to start saving.

But before everyone showed up, they all got hooked on playing with the wii and wii sports. I had force "the kids" off the wii so we can have our meeting. Heh, people really love my wii when they come over.

One of the guys brought his HID flashlight. Holy crap that thing is bright. We shined it outside, and we light up my neighbor's living room who is down the driveway, across the street, behind a house, behind the forest, up the hill. He then pointed it at my ceiling in my living room with all the lights on, and it was like a night and day difference. It's like the sun came into my living room.

Great weather

2007-03-16T14:00:00.000-07:00

Wow, we've been having some great weather lately. Of course I haven't been taking advantage of it, since I didn't go running or even to the gym yesterday. Instead I went home and found my neighbor tearing apart his rear brakes on his audi, and asking for my help in getting the rear brake caliper piston back in. I gave him a hand, apparently he didn't know he had to turn the piston in order to get it back in the caliper. Luckily I came by, otherwise he would have been stuck and would have had to tow it to a garage to get repaired.

But today I'm heading outside for a run after work, then spend some quality time with the weights. I was sore for a good 4 days after my workout monday. The weather is absolutely perfect outside. Unfortunately my gym buddy doesn't work out on fridays, ah well I'll catch him next time.

This weekend, I'm gathering up my car friends and having a meeting / bbq / party at my place this saturday. Time to make use of the grill. It'll also kick my ass into gear to get my place cleaned / tidied up enough to have guests over. Then it's tax gathering sunday. Then off to tahoe the next weekend. Hopefully there's still some snow left up there.

I am finally not sick!

2007-03-15T01:10:00.000-07:00

2 weeks after my vegas trip, I'm finally feeling great. No more coughing, though now my allergies has kicked in since we started having this really nice warm weather. I even went for a long hike / run out in the back trails behind my house. Went to work out on monday for the first time in two weeks, and I'm still sore all over from that.

2 weekends ago, I went to go get my car tuned. One of my old friends I've known for the past 5 years has now started ecu tuning evo's as a profession. I decided to head up to the shop GST and get my car tuned on the dyno, while asking him a million questions on how to tune the ecu. Net result is a gain of 30 hp and 30 lb/ft of torque for 260whp and 260lb/ft torque. That translate to somewhere around 310-320 hp to the flywheel (the numbers manufacturers quote on the brochures) I'm confident enough that I can start tuning my own car now, but still learning. In fact, that's my new hobby, learning everything I can about the stock ecu and ecu tuning. The car is wicked fast right now, and I'm enjoying it every day.

My ex-gf from taiwan (not the recent ex) decided she wanted to visit some friends in CA, and asked if she could stay in my spare bedroom. So she's scheduled her visit sometime next month, and it looks like she'll be visiting me for 2 weeks, with a week in between while she heads to LA to visit more friends. Oh, and she does read my blog.

Good lord, I bought about 5 boxes of girl scout cookies, and read the label. I just ate about 900 calories worth of cookies in one sitting. But it was really good! Looks like I need to start hitting the gym again. And since DST is now active, I can run outside after work again. It's been really nice outside lately, so it's good weather to start running. I also found out one of the guys I see in the gym at work actually works for my company. All this time I thought he worked for one of the other companies that share our building and gym. I think I've convinced him to work out together, so I think I've got a work out buddy.

I am alive, barely.

2007-03-07T21:29:00.000-08:00

Ok, this cold has been kicking my ass all over town. That coupled with major work and nighttime downtimes, even when I took time off work, I ended up working from home a good portion of the time. I haven't even been keeping up with my favorite blog reading! Yah, it's been that bad.

But I'm finally on the return path of being better. Hopefully by this weekend I'll be able to start going to the gym again. I haven't worked out for almost 2 weeks now. I'm going to be so sore when I do get back to the gym.

Did I mention how much I hate the new Daylight Savings Time that went into effect this year? Argh, I hate you bush, for signing that. That was the majority of my work the last couple of weeks, was DST patching, planning, testing, researching, and then dealing with the fallout of stuff not working correctly after patching. Hopefully by tomorrow night, the last patch will be in place and I can finally take it off my plate, while a SOX (Sarbanes Oxley) critical and sensitive application gets upgraded. That means tons of paperwork and procedures which slows down my work. I also have to make absolutely sure I cross my t's and dot my i's and hope the sox rules don't change after I finish it.

I just got ran over by a truck with vegas plates

2007-02-26T13:09:00.000-08:00

Or at least I feel like I did. I got back from my vegas trip sunday afternoon for my coworker's bachelor party. Oh man, did we do alot of damage that weekend. I met up with a couple of friends and their kids in vegas for dinner on friday. It was good seeing them again.

The other group in my party went to dinner at Emeril's. A couple of them ordered this 10 course meal where each serving was tiny, and had a story attached to it. The waiter would lean down, and explain what was on the plate and how it was cooked. One of my coworkers, who's real chatty by nature, had quite a few drinks, and was completely on all weekend. Through out dinner, he'd say "BAM!" (Emeril) and then later "Monorail!" (Simpsons) when we were on the tram. That pretty much continued the entire weekend.

I played craps and blackjack, and pretty much lost my shirt that night.I think I spent about $300 that night and lost it all by the end. The next day the bachelor arrived, I lost my shirt again when we played poker at the poker area with each other. We then ate at the steak house in Luxor, and ran up a bill higher than some people's mortgage. They ordered a couple of really expensive wines, and our group was 11 people. Still that's some ridiculous amount of money.

The rest of the night I can't really talk about, but I already reached the maximum amount of my atm withdrawl limit, and had to borrow more money from my coworkers.

I came home with a hangover, slept early, and woke up this morning like I got ran over by a dump truck, with vegas plates imprinted on my forehead.

One of my coworkers didn't make it in to work today. The rest of the group speculated he forgot to wipe the glitter off his face when he went home, and his wife is now disposing of the bloody rags.

You always think you're right

2007-02-22T17:23:00.000-08:00

"You always think you're right!"
This isn't the first time I've heard this from my then gf's at the time. And it's usually at the end of the relationship when we're breaking up, when all the things that piss you off usually comes out and surfaces in a violent explosion that disregards feelings. I've heard this from all my girlfriends (there were only three), which makes you think if you really did do that. So thinking back, I would probably say that was true, with good reason. While I don't ever claim to know everything, I'm not exactly stupid either. And if there's a subject that I'm no familiar with, or meet somebody who really knows what they're talking about, I'll intently listen. And when I am wrong about something, I'll freely admit it without hesitation. But when I'm right, I'm usually right. This has caused friction between my ex's in the past, and they say I'm condescending because of it. But my experience has taught me to trust myself. When I'm persuaded with no reasoning or proof against my original thoughts, I'm almost always sorry I didn't listen to myself initially.

Why am I pondering over this subject? Well the favor I did for my friend, picking up a $750 PS3 gaming system because she didn't have time to get one during v-day, the favor that I initially had thought was a bad idea, had gone awry. Apparently her bf had received a ps3 as a present from somebody else the day after, and she wanted to return it. And of course they already opened the box and used it. I find out later that target won't accept the ps3 for return after it's already been opened. At least not without a 15% restocking fee, if they even accept it at all.

Now I know I kinda wanted one, but I wasn't willing to pay the $750 for the system, game controller, and game. I was going to wait a year or so when the price comes down and better games came out for it. However I did figure if I did get stuck with the system, that it wouldn't be a total loss. Though, I shouldn't be stuck with it, since my friend had already taken ownership of the unit, but it can come back to me way too easily.

Thinking that I'm right is such a double edged sword. But I don't think there's anything wrong with that as long as I can still accept input.

V-day Sucks!

2007-02-18T15:28:00.000-08:00

Yah, Vday sucks. Again I'm alone on vday. So what did I do on vday? Went to Target to buy a PS3. No it wasn't for me, it was for my desperate pleading friend to give to her BF because she didn't get a chance to buy one. I told her she better pay me back ASAP as it ended up being almost $770 after the console, tax, a game, and extra controller. Now I remember why I never bought one.

Go Team Gold Watch!

2007-02-18T15:22:00.000-08:00

Forgot the funniest photo of the night last weekend. My parents bought me, my two sisters and my brother in law all matching super shiny gawdy gold watches. We all agreed to the next time we're all together, we're wearing and showing off our new bling.

Also some pics of my parents playing with the Wii with my niece.

Vegas Baby! (hopefully)

2007-02-14T01:14:00.000-08:00

Next weekend I'll be off to Vegas for my coworker's bachelor party. We'll be there causing havoc, breaking hearts, indulging in an excess of booze, gambling, and strippers! We're staying at the excalibur because that's the cheapest hotel room on the main strip, which unfortunately isn't very cheap that weekend. We all have our own rooms because, well, frankly we don't know each other that well, or maybe we do know each other well enough to know to get our own rooms. I booked my flight on us airways, but the website was having major issues when I booked it. Web pages would constantly error out. I finally made it to select my flights and seats, entered my credit card in, hit the final submit button, and then I got a web page timeout! Nooo! There were only 3 seats left on the same flight that a couple of my coworkers had already booked. 5 minutes after desperately trying to get back in the website, I get a email telling me my ticket has been booked succesfully. It had a ticket # seat number and everything. I look down at the purchase price and it said $0.00!
Uhoh, what the heck just happened? The next day I call up the airlines and asked to see if everything was ok with my ticket. I even told them the website was acting all funky and the amount I got charged was $0.00, but the ticket person said everything looked fine, then thanked me and to have a nice day. While I'm all for getting something for free, I'm really afraid that I'll show up at the gate, and they'll say that my ticket is no good, and the flight is full and if wanted to go to vegas, I would have to pay full price. So I'm crossing my fingers and hope everything goes ok with the ticket.

*update* I just checked my credit card activity, and they did indeed charge my credit card correctly. Looks like no free plane ride for me.

Dinner was a hit

2007-02-13T23:56:00.000-08:00

I decided to go Iron Chef on my family and decided to make Maple Pork Chops, Glazed Carrots, Roasted veggies covered in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and Mashed Potatoes. The night before, I made a costco run and grabbed two large packages of pork chops because I didn't think one 16 count package was enough, so I ended up with 32 pork chops total for 5 adults and two kids. Yah, looking back at it now, one package was plenty. The pork chops was going to be my centerpiece of the meal, and they usually come out really good! So the sat morning, I prep the brine for the pork chops and brine them for about 5 hours. I also grab some zucchini, squash, broccoli, corn, and a shallot for the roasted veggies. Potatoes for mashed potatoes, and carrots for the glazed carrots. I've made the pork chops once before, but everything else I put on the menu I was going to try for the first time by myself. I decided I couldn't handle everything myself, and I haven't even decided on a salad yet, so I took up my brother in law's offer to help, and asked him to bring the salad and give me a hand in the kitchen on some of the other items.

My dad calls me on saturday and tells me I don't have to cook, and that they're bringing food over to cook at my place. What the !@#!@!!! No way, I already bought food, planned everything, and they did not say anything about this before! But they say they already bought the food and cooked some of it, and insists on bringing it. Fine, bring it, but we'll probably not eat any of it because I already have more than enough. Plus the fact that my parents can't cook very well. It wasn't until I got older that I really realized how bad my parents cooking was. I think it really hit me when I had my first girlfriend, and would spend alot of time at her parents house eating dinner with them. Their meals were always really good compared to my parents, full of flavor. I'd go back to my parents for dinner and notice the big differences in their culinary skills. To the point where I'd rather cook instead of them cooking for me.

Anyway, the kitchen was really busy with me, my brother in law, both my parents, and even my oldest sister, who was supposed to be relaxing since it's her birthday. We were all vying for counter space, knives, utensils, stove top and oven. Luckily my kitchen is huge and there's enough room for all five of us and not feel cramped.

Pork chops came out moist, tender, and full of flavor. Brining does absolute wonders for pork chops and should be required by food law. The maple sauce was really good and had a bit of a kick from the chili powder. Glazed carrots also came out really good. The roasted vegetables could have spent a few more minutes in the oven to get the veggies a bit softer, but still was really good. Mashed potatoes came out good too. It was a bad day to be on a diet. My parents brought some ribs that they already had cooked, and some beef (I think it was a tenderloin) that they broiled. I put my thermometer in it so I could monitor the internal temperature while it cooked. I'm horrible and guessing if it's cooked or not without my trusty thermometer, and these things were really thick, so it's even harder. My mom however kept insisting it was done and I had to almost slap her hands away when the temps barely registered 100 deg F. When the temp alarm went off at 135 deg F, it was a perfect medium rare. Unfortunately it didn't brown due to the fact they didn't put any oil on it. It was also pretty bland. We didn't even try to cook or serve their ribs as there was too much food as it was.

My 2nd oldest sister brought a coffee crunch cake from japan town, and that was by far the best coffee type cake I've ever had. The shop she got it from was famous for that cake, and I can see why.

After dinner was over, my niece was brought her wii controller over, she played wii tennis with my parents. My parents, who never play video games, got pretty into the tennis. My dad would swing the wiimote about 10 seconds too late, while my mom would rapidly swing the 5 seconds before the ball would arrive, and continue to swing the wiimote 5 seconds after the ball gone past because the ball was nowhere near her. My niece would be watching my parents and laughing so hard that the ocassional time they returned the ball back, she'd totally miss it which ensured that even more laughter would ensue. In between fits of hysteria, she'd say "But I was watching them!" then pointed the wiimote at my parents, which at that point I doubled over with laughter.

I was volunteered

2007-02-07T10:28:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure how it happened, but when I was talking with my parents and sister on the phone, I was volunteered to host a dinner this saturday at my house for Chinese, err, Lunar New Year's, or as my ex used to say "It's Lunar New Year's! The Chinese does not have exclusivity on this holiday!" So apparently I'm also cooking dinner for everyone too.
Panic mode has started to set in. I'm not sure what to make. I made an emergency Ikea run a couple of days ago in order to get some more plates. The house is still a mess. My paperwork and mail is still all over the place. Thankfully I scrubbed the toilets clean. It's funny how motivated you get when your ex comes over, looks at the toilet, and exclaims "Don't bring a girl over, she'll run screaming when she takes one look at your toilet!"

I'm thinking of making some maple glazed brined pork chops for saturday's dinner. I made that one time and it turned out really well, but don't know what else to make with it.

If I were you, I'd be crying

2007-02-07T09:50:00.000-08:00

My conversation with my friend L

L - "What'd you do this weekend?"

Me - "Didn't do much on friday, stayed home, watched tv, played some video games. On Sat, my old roommate had a birthday thing at a club / venue called slide in SF, right next to Ruby Sky. I was going to meet up with them at the club after dinner, but the organizers were being a real dick and not letting people in that's not on the guest list, or not with a girl. Since I was by myself, they didn't let me in. Grrrr, I hate that place. My roommate and her date didn't have any cell reception inside, so I couldn't get a hold of them. I tried calling them for a while, but couldn't get a hold of anybody, so I decided to go home since I was so pissed at slide. I was actually in my car driving a couple of blocks away when they called me. We were going to head to another club, so swung back around, parked, and waited for them outside ruby sky, where I bumped into my coworker. We chit chatted a bit, he suggested we head to crash when my old roomie showed up. We walk to the end of the block and then she realized that she lost her ATM card. Back in the club they go, while I converse more with my coworker. Eventually they come out empty handed, and we head down to crash. By the time we got there, it was about 1:20am, and crash was still charging $20 cover. There was no way we were going to pay $20 for 30 minutes, and left disappointed. Walking back, my ex roomie got emotional from all the stuff that went on, including the fact that nobody else that was supposed to come showed up, or got turned away and left. After trying to comfort her, we decided to try to go to cityscape on top of the hilton for a couple of drinks, but never made it up since they had already closed up for last call. By then it was too late, so we just went back to my ex roomie's bf's house to chill for a bit before I headed home. Sunday was spent cleaning the place up some more and watching the rest of my netflix dvd's."

L - "Are you crying?"

Me - "huh?"

L - "If I was you, I'd be crying. It's so sad, you're alone all weekend, and you try to go out on saturday but you ended up doing nothing, and again you're alone sunday doing nothing."

Me - "?!@#!!. Why are you my friend again? Yah, it's so bad, I should just end it all now. #$@$! Seriously, why are we friends?"

So the next day, I see my coworker at work, and he tells me somebody got stabbed at Ruby Skye later that night.
We were just talking how we don't go to certain clubs because they're too ghetto, and I didn't want to get shot or stabbed. And how I don't really go clubbing much anymore because of that, but mostly because most of my friends are married and or with kids.

I am being watched...

2007-02-01T15:52:00.000-08:00

I had a interesting phone call last week. A deputy from Alameda County called up my cell phone and told me that somebody had used a stolen credit card / identity theft and ordered some stuff through Sears and had my address as the shipping address. He had talked to a few of my neighbors and asked them some questions. I of course didn't know anything about this, nor have I seen any packages by my front door. But then again I always go through my garage so I wouldn't notice any packages at the front door for days or weeks on end, unless I was expecting some. It seems a bit creepy that someone was using my address. I doubt my neighbors think I steal stuff for a living, but then again I don't talk to one of my neighbors very regularly.

I am a heroin addict

2007-01-31T20:52:00.000-08:00

As you know, I have a crack addiction, but I used to have a even more dangerous and expensive heroin habit. This one didn't start until later in life, during my more experimental college years. This one sucked almost all my money, my time, and almost ended a relationship. Yes this addiction was bad.

This addiction my friends, is racing. But not racing on foot, racing in real cars. And it's back in all it's withdrawal shaking glory. I know I never really kicked the habit, but thought I had it under control. I thought I could appease my addiction by going go kart racing, which is alot easier on the budget and time. I thought the looming threat of voiding my warranty on my evo would keep me away from modding it severely. But all of that changed when I got a taste last saturday.

GST motorsports had a dyno day for the norcal evo group, where you put your car on a dyno to see how much hp you have. Alot of modified cars showed up to see who had the most hp. I knew my car was almost bone stock save a 3" catback, but since they still had room when I showed up, and a old friend was running the dyno, I decided to get it dyno'd. For $40, you get 3 runs on the dyno with a wideband sensor showing you your air fuel ratio. $40 later, I show a healthy 230whp and whopping 252 ft/lb torque on average. I talk a bit with my old friend who now gets paid to tune cars. He can now control the boost using the stock ecu boost control, and the dealer won't see it unless they're really really looking for it. But it wasn't until the owner of GST gave me a 3" exhaust gasket for free, the only missing piece of my exhaust, and the sole reason I never put on the rest of the 3" exhaust, that the addiction really started to kick in.

Yes, I am going to be modding the evo soon. But that's not where the real addiction comes in. I also am planning on entering the 24 Hours of LeMons with a bunch of my old DSM car friends. This wheel to wheel race series more resembles a demolition derby which takes place over 2 days. Your car entry cannot cost more than $500, so it's a very affordable race, unlike the real 24 hours of LeMans. We're planning on finding a $500 junker, probably a salvaged turbo awd eclipse, and attempting to make it last the whole race without overheating and dieing. I signed up to help build the car and drive the race. Our team needs to consist of 5 drivers, minimum. I'm pretty excited about the prospect of this, though I've never raced real cars wheel to wheel before.

Now back in the day, almost 10 years ago now, I was really big into racing, going out to race almost every weekend for 2 years. It got increasingly more and more expensive the faster and faster I went. It also put a strain on my GF at the time, she was always complaining that I cared more about my car than her. Complaining that I'm spending all my money and most of my time on my car. The latter I must admit was true, and was scared to calculate the amount of money I spent in one year on my car. Now I'm seriously thinking about racing more this year.

Uh oh, I think I hear the heroin calling my name. Gotta go...

Dyno chart at the end.

Ground Turkey and Potatoe dish

2007-01-23T23:01:00.000-08:00

I received this recipe from my brother in law (sister's husband), and decided to try and make it. His version of the recipe is below.

Potatoes

Ground turkey meat

Peas

Sauce:

2TB ketchup

1/12 TB hoisin sauce

1 TB oyster sauce

1/2 TB soy sauce

1 teaspoon sesame oil

2 TB sugar (or to taste)

(add / substitute tamarind concentrate and reduce sugar if out of hoisin sauce)

Cook the potatoes first and put to the side, then cook the meat and peas together. When the meat and peas are done add back the potatoes and then add the sauce.

In the middle of cooking, I found out I ran out of hoisin sauce and sesame oil, so I went on a mad scramble around the kitchen looking for a substitute and found some tamarind concentrate. I added some and wow, it gave it a good kick. It turned out really really good. It's very sweet, so I suggest reducing the amount of sugar in the sauce to your taste. It's supposed to be alot saucier too, but I used too much ground turkey meat and potatoes. I can't wait until my rice finishes cooking so I can try it out.

My writing is good?

2007-01-21T21:48:00.000-08:00

My sister calls me up asking me if I'd help my neice out on her homework project. Apparently she needs to ask someone some questions and have somebody write back to her. My sister reads my blog to keep up with what I'm up to, so she thought of me. She thought my writing was pretty good, while I on the other hand don't really think it's that great since I write off the top of my head as if I spoke. Thank god for spell check though.

The questions I need to respond back to my neice are:

Did you know what your goals, dreams, and aspirations as a young person during your school years? If so, what were they? Did they come true? Is your life how you want it to be? What would you have done to change it?

Some very interesting questions, if a bit awkwardly written, but then again, she's only 13 (or so).

Something I thought I'd share with everybody. I knew what I like to do very early on, fiddling and working with computers. Fascinated by how things work, especially computers. Now I work on / with computers all day long as a Windows Engineer.

I also knew a long time ago, that owning my own house would be one of my major goals in life. Renting sucks. And now, that's another goal that I've already accomplished.

One of my goals when I was a kid was staying alive till next week, which wasn't always easy. I would get into alot of trouble when I was a kid, and probably don't have very many of my nine lives left.

Slacking off has it's karma

2007-01-16T01:17:00.000-08:00

It was around 40 deg F on sunday afternoon. Extremely cold here, even in winter, but my car was dirty. The rims was caked with brake dust, and the car hasn't been washed in a long time. But it was the last day of my weekend, otherwise it gets dark when I get off work on the weekdays. So I decide I'll freeze my fingers off and go wash the car. I go look for the bucket and sponge, and can't find it anywhere. Crap, did my ex take the wash bucket and sponge? I mean I know it belonged to her in the first place, but she lives in an apartment now! Crap! I think she did.

So off to target I go today, and pickup a bucket and notice they now started carrying microfiber wash mitts and microfiber chenile sponges from vroom. Cool! I picked up a microfiber chenile sponge on one side, and soft microfiber on the other. It's really soft on both sides. I really want to wash my car now. I especially like the packaging and dog in the window logo. Bigger pics at the end of the blog. Is it sick that I really wanna go wash my car now?

While I was at target, I returned the automatic shower cleaner with busted tray, and saw they are completly out of the shower cleaner kits. But they did have a rain check, so I picked up a rain check. Hopefully they'll have it in stock again soon.

I finally went to the gym for the 2nd time since my vacation break. I was completely out of energy and could barely bench 20 lbs below my normal weights. What the heck is going on? Last time I attributed it to being lazy and not going to the gym for almost 3 weeks. But I had time to recover now. I barely did any more weights, and didn't do my full sets. I decided to call it quits early as I had to go to target afterwards. I go weigh myself, and WTF?! Ok, I know what you're thinking, I just gained a couple more pounds, but it's the complete opposite. I lost 5 lbs doing nothing on my vacation! This is not good considering I'm trying to bulk up a little bit more. I wonder if I'm on the verge of being sick, that's why my energy has been a bit low.

Ya I know some of the girls would be absolutely jealous if they could lose weight by doing absolutely nothing all day long, but for me, that's not good!

And I somehow just picked up another client for my consulting side job. Dammit, slacking off all of december has now caught up to me. Both my main work and my main consulting client is getting busier. That means even less time for me to work out. And my place is still a mess because I keep reading everyone elses's blog and write my own! Ok, it's more because I was lazy over the weekend, but still!

The one where someone almost died in front of my house

2007-01-14T23:18:00.000-08:00

On Friday night, after spending a few hours at my friend's house with his brand spanking new just unpacked out of the box PS3 I come home to my normally sleep little town and my sleepy dead end road to my townhouse complex at around 2:00am. To my surprise there was a bustle of activity in the form of flashing red and blue lights as 2 cop cars and a firetruck was blocking the entire road right in front of my complex. Then I noticed there was a car in the entrance to the driveway of my complex flipped over on it's side. I see a few of my neighbors on their porch and inquire what happened. Apparently the woman driving the car had fell asleep hit a truck that belonged the said neighbor's husband, and flipped over on it's side. She wasn't hurt, and I don't think she was drunk, as the officer administered a sobriety check as I was talking to my neighbor. That was the most excitement I've seen in my city with the exception of the norovirus outbreak that occurred at the elderly care complex down the street from my complex

Upon advice of my ex, (yes, I still talk to her, and saw her last weekend) and with the help of her $5 off coupon, I went down to target and picked up a Scrubbing Bubbles automatic cleaner kit. Target had it on sale, along with the refills (and coupon for $1 off 2 refills). Unfortunately I'm unable to give a first hand review as the plastic free shower caddy that comes with it came broken. I'll have to return it to target and hope they have some left in stock (I took the last one). It sounds a bit gimmicky, but after my ex saw it first hand at our friend's apartment, where he never cleans the shower, it does actually work. One good thing is it comes with another set of coupons inside the kit.

Saturday night was my friend L's birthday. She went to club Whisper in SF for her birthday party, so I went knowing full well that she'll try to hook me up with her single friends. Sorry guys, no hookups that night. We ended the night early as the partying casuality hit early and her bf and another guy went down for the count. The aftermath is why I don't like to drink that much anymore.

Extremely dangerous, do not get close!

2007-01-12T19:47:00.000-08:00

While browsing the Compusa / Goodguys, I happened to stumble upon this very exotic, extremely dangerous creature, who's sharp fangs needed to be restrained from pouncing on innocent bystanders as they gawk at the latest plasma screens.

Playing with a camera phone gets you into trouble

2007-01-11T23:48:00.000-08:00

Yes, I did get my SE w810i phone that i had talked about previously. I didn't get the Motorola H700 bluetooth headset thrown, unfortunately. I guess they'll say yes to anything over the phone and then pretend they didn't hear or understand what you said. But it was free after rebate, but I had to pay $70 AR to get the headset. Ah well, I wanted one anyway. Unfortunately, I also ordered a motorola H300 bluetooth headset from compusa for $0 after $30 rebate almost a month ago. My order was backordered for a while, and the rebate expiration was coming up shortly, so I was going to cancel my order the next day. Next morning, I get a email saying the order was delayed for another 10 days, so I sent them a email to cancel the order. A few minutes after I sent the cancellation email, I get a new email saying my headset is now being shipped to me. What the hell! That can't be coincidence! Now they reply back telling me they can't stop the order, and I would have to refuse shipment of the package if I want to return it without additional shipping fees. Of course there's no way that'll happen because it'll get automatically accepted at the loading dock at work. Looks like I'll have another set unless I can return it in the store. One of the major differences of the H300 is that it uses a AAA battery instead of a rechargeable one. If I ever really need some more juice, I can get the second bluetooth and steal a battery from a remote control.

So after I get my new phone, I immediately start playing with it, and man it's a cool phone. So many things and gadgets you can do with it. The coolest feature of them all is a applet where you hold the phone next to the speaker, or turn the music up in your car, and it'll listen and analyze the song that's playing. It'll then tell you the artist and song title of what's playing! It's amazingly accurate and even gets some of the more esoteric songs out there. We tried it with every song we can think of, from modern pop, oldie timie songs from the 70's, jazz, chinese songs, latino songs in spanish. The only thing it didn't get was remixes and some weird album that my friend had lieing around. It supposedly won't do classical music either. This also reminded me of another program that does the same thing for id tagging mp3 files, it'll read, analyze, identify and tag all the fields of the mp3 for you. I don't know the name of the file, but I will make sure to remind myself to email my friend for it.

I was also taking some pictures with the 2mp cameraphone at various places, testing it out. My friend needed to do some grocery shopping a Whole Foods in Mountain View, so I tagged along with him, and used my camera phone to take some test shots. As I was snapping a pic of the beers, a employee came along and told me that they don't allow pictures in the store and to put away the camera. He said this with a look in his face as if he was going to rip the camera from my hands and stomp on it until the pictures came bleeding out of the camera phone. Pictures of my paparazzi reenactment below.

Oh, speaking of which, I heard a lawyer ad on the radio recently that said something along the lines of "If you have been publicly stripped searched in Oakland, contact so and so's lawyer office". I seriously did not think the cops had the ability to do a public strip search on you. I thought they had to at least do it in private. Can you imagine a cop telling you to remove all your clothes outside when it's 20 degrees out? What's next, public cavity searching?

New Cell Phone

2007-01-08T22:08:00.000-08:00

I've been obsessing over getting a new cell phone for the past month. I finally got fed up with my corporate sprint plan. I'd get only 1 bar when I'm near a window at my house, I'd drop calls regularly, especially if I started walking towards the interior of the house. Even when I was at a window, I'd lose what people would be saying every other sentence. At work, I would only get a signal by the window and as soon as I walked towards the center, I'd lose the signal.

I knew my phone would now start with the network. I've used tmobile with the blackberry, and hated the reception overall. Sprint PCS reception was just as bad in certain key places, namely home. Verizon coverage is excellent almost everywhere, while AT&T's network, now Cingular had very good coverage everywhere, and most importantly works at my house.

So I started the process of what criteria interests me, and what are the trade offs of some of the other choices. After living with a blackberry for quite a few years and hating it as a phone, I swore off on any of the blackberries, and any phone approaching the heft and bulk. In fact since I don't really want corporate blackberry like emails, any blackberries are off my list. They're just not versatile enough for me, they lack cameras, mp3 playback, videos, etc. Treos and Windows Phones were off my list as they were just as bulky, though they added the mp3, video playback, and had a camera phone. Also the camera phones did not take very good pictures. I had briefly considered the Motorola Q and Samsung Blackjack, but those are still a bit too big to hold in your hand and talk comfortably. So I decided to ditch the qwerty keyboard entirely and focus on more of a phone. I decided to look at the latest and greatest and work my way down. I instantly fell in love with the Sony K800i Cybershot. Yes, a cybershot branded phone, which means it has a 3.2 MP camera, a bright flash, and takes excellent photos, rivaling a dedicated camera. 3g network support,video, mp3, bluetooth, the works. Everything you can ask for in a candy bar style form factor that comfortably fits in your hand. The catch is that none of the US networks picked up that phone and therefore doesn't offer any discounts. The only way you can get the phone is if it's unlocked and costs $400. That's really steep. In fact all the high end phones weren't carried by any of the US carriers. After browsing the web a bit more, I found the Sony Ericsson W810i phone. It's a walkman branded phone, but has a very good 2 MP camera with a bright flash. Pictures are supposed to be close to a real camera. It'll do MP3's (obviously if it's called a walkman) and video, bluetooth, almost everything I wanted in a very small candy bar for factor that easily fits in your hand while talking. Not as good of a camera as the K800i, but easily better than all the other camera phones out there. Plus it was supposed to be picked up by Cingular, which means a discount. Unfortunately I didn't see it on cingular's website as a phone they listed, nor on amazon or wirefly. I went out to the local mall and found one store didn't carry it while another listed it at $200 with 2yr activation. Not exactly cheap. So I decide to wait.

A couple of weeks later, I go back and look around some more to see if there were any other phones from other carriers, and found that amazon, cingular itself, and wirefly all were now offering the w810i. Another week or two, and now amazon has the phone for $-50 after rebate, wirefly had it for free, and cingular had it for $75 after rebate. Ooh, now's the time to buy. But Amazon can't port your numbers over to the cingular network. Some weird amazon-cingular thing. I've heard a lot of bad things about wirefly regarding their rebates, so that's out of the question, and cingular at $75 is a premium over the other places. After much searching, I find out that there's pretty much only 2 places on the internet that sell phones with service. Inphonic/Wirefly, and Amazon. Everybody else is really Inphonic/Wirefly. So I decide my best bet would be to go to one of the independent asian cell phone stores, and see if I can work a deal there. I've been out of the loop of cell phone stores, so I don't know where any of the independent ones are. Apparently there's no true "independent" ones that sell all the services, they're all co-branded or authorized to sell only one or two carriers. Only the major retailers (best buy, circuit city, etc) has more than 2 carriers, but none of them carry the w810i. I head to Milpitas to Mccarthy Ranch to check out some other stores, and decide to look for a independent asian cingular store. Found it and found they carry the w810i, with the price of Free after rebate! I would have purchased it right there had it not been for the fact that I needed to know my company's tax ID # before I am able to port my number. So I'm heading back tomorrow because they're out of stock today. I'll see if I can wrangle a free bluetooth headset out of them as well, since amazon has it for $50 less.

Sloth like vacation

2007-01-08T21:58:00.000-08:00

Ok, I've been bad on my vacation. I didn't do anything, didn't clean up the house, didn't do any house related projects, didn't do any car related projects, didn't do much of anything really.

I did manage to get out for NYE, and hung out with a couple of friends and their friends. We had dinner at a brewery called 21st amendment in San Francisco near the ball park. Their brined pork chops which I ordered was probably the best thing on their menu. And being brined, was juicy, not overcooked, and very flavorful. Then headed to a private event at a restaraunt near DNA lounge where we rung in the new year. Didn't drink too much, so I headed home and avoided the cops and any drunk drivers (thankfully I didn't see any).

However I did manage to get up real early and went with my sister and her two kids to go to Tahoe. The weather was clear, but extremely cold. Temperatures in the morning was in the 20's. Glad I bundled up, but in the afternoon, things got a bit warmer, until you got stuck on the chairlift with the winds blowing at you. Lines were extremely long at Alpine Meadows, so we didn't get very many runs in. I definitely need to go snowboarding more often.

Christmas is over!

2006-12-27T00:49:00.000-08:00

Ok, christmas is finally over. No more gift buying or receiving. No more family obligations, etc. My family celebrated christmas at my sister's along with her husband's massive family. I remember hanging with my sister's husband's neice and nephews back when they were in their early teens or earlier. They're all grown up now, ranging from around 22 to 27. It's kinda strange to hear them talk about their clubbing experiences, drinking, puking, etc. It just made me feel OLD! And of course, I had to play older brother, and tell them about my recent loss of a friend from a drunk driver. That made me feel even older at that point. Then I realized that the girls that I'd be picking up at clubs and stuff are gonna be the same age as them, maybe younger. Woah!

More of the couch fiasco

2006-12-21T23:27:00.000-08:00

And that's the gouge in the wall the delivery guys made when bringing in the couch. I just noticed it a few minutes ago. Crap, now I gotta go call them up and complain about this, then get somebody out here to fix it. And it's gonna take two people to fix it, one to do the drywall, and one to paint. I just wish the delivery guys took more care not to gouge up the wall. I moved the old couch in without any problems and gouging, and the movers my ex hired did no damage taking an equivalent sized couch out.

Why oh why is just getting a couch becoming such a hassle? And my carpet is not red or brown as in the picture. I think it's from the white balance of the camera. It's closer to the shade of the wall.

Couches are here, almost

2006-12-21T16:57:00.000-08:00

My couches arrived today, except that the loveseat (which also reclines) has a rip in the upholstery. So I refused delivery on that piece and took the couch. As you can see it reclines too. I can finally stop sitting on the floor watching tv or playing games. After trying out the couch, one bad thing I didn't notice before is the cushions are a bit shallow. Trying to slouch in the couch without reclining is a tad uncomfortable as my legs aren't support very much. Reclining on the couch is alot more comfortable however. And sleeping sideways is a bit too cramped for my tastes. But then again, I won't be the one sleeping on the couch, my guests will be. They only have one more loveseat in the whole bay area, so after a few phone calls with the sales guy and warehouse manager, I need to wait until the delivery truck returns back to the warehouse before they can reserve the one loveseat sitting at the warehouse in Santa Clara. I'm just hoping nobody else purchases the loveseat until then, otherwise I'm gonna have to get a whole new set again.

It's all about the Wii

2006-12-20T21:50:00.000-08:00

My sister was looking for a Wii for a couple of weeks, ever since my niece wanted a Wii, and only a Wii for christmas. She was ever so shocked that I lined up at 2am at ToysRUs for a Wii and called me crazy. Well apparently my sister's family has caught the Wii fever and is now Wii crazy. Desperate to find a Wii for christmas, my sister's husband went to stand in line at 1:45am at target. Target was not releasing the amount of Wii's they'd get in. So apparently standing in line at 1:45am got him in position #22. When they opened, they said they only had 12 Wii's in stock. Then the mad scramble to find someone else who had a Wii in stock, but everywhere else already had a line that exceeded their supply.

She's been after my Wii ever since she found out I bought one. She's resorted to pleading, guilt tripping by using my niece. But I'm not caving in. No sireeeee. For a while, I was considering giving it to them for christmas, but the memories of standing out in line in the cold for 7 hours quickly snapped me out of my daze. You can pry the wii out of my cold dead hands. However I will bring it over to their house for christmas dinner so I can torment my niece.

The Setup pt. 2

2006-12-19T13:53:00.000-08:00

Ok, after insistence of Cindy, I'm writing up pt. 2. Been busy with work, and way too busy with my crack to keep up my writing.

After the chorus, we head to her house for the after party. One thing my coworker is famous for is throwing theme parties. I mean she totally gets waaaay into the theme. She's very into a certain tvstarship and explore new worlds. And not just the original, but all iterations of the show. And she's into a certain novel with a kid, his magic wand, and magic school. Those parties are the most elaborate of them all. So obviously her little after party wasn't exactly a small event. Unfortunately that also meant she was running around all night setting out party stuff, putting things in the oven, etc. In fact, this happened all night, and she didn't rest for more than 30 seconds at a time. Not enough time to really mingle or even talk with my coworker for more than a few seconds. So after everything we went through, it turned out to be a bust, not because it didn't work out, but because there was no time. So we eventually went home at around midnight. Plan A was a failure.

**edited some stuff that didn't get deleted for some reason**

The Setup pt. 1

2006-12-11T18:28:00.000-08:00

Here's the background, quite a few of my coworkers think that these two other coworkers would be a good match for each other. I'm closer to the male coworker as he works in my dept. For the last 2 months, my fellow partners in crime, one of which sits next to the female coworker in question, have been trying to scheme or setup some sort of social gathering where they both can "Hook up". But plans fall through, or something happens. But last weekend, our female target was participating in a choral concert. We thought it was a perfect time and place to do the setup, because right afterwards, there was a party at female target's place. We decided to do the setup, and all of us in on it agreed we all should go in support of the hookup. Now choruses are not my thing, and especially when I had to pay $30 to attend. I didn't think it was going to happen, and didn't buy my tickets until the day before after finding out that everybody actually bought tickets and was going to go!

So the day of the concert comes, and I am thinking I'm going to be aurally assaulted and my patience tested to the limit. One of my other coworkers says he's going to bring a flask, but depending on how long the concert lasts, there might not be enough to share. I agree but I don't have a flask, though I do remember another coworker who isn't attending does keep a flask with him, and ask to borrow his secret flask stash, still full of single malt scotch. Normally I don't really like scotch, but I was pretty desperate, so I borrowed his flask for the night, and promised I'd pay him back somehow.

We decide that we should head to El Torritto (a place that's down the street from us) for happy hour and have a couple of drinks and appetizers before heading down. So we promptly got ourselves liquored up and headed down to the concert. When I got to the concert, I realized that I'll be inside a church and a bit of catholic guilt came over me for taking out my flask and drinking it inside the house of god. Therefore we decide we should take a quick gulp before the concert starts, so picture 3 guys standing outside the doors of a church taking a couple of swigs out of a couple of shiny metal flasks.

Now the concert was beautifully sung, and music performed by the San Jose orchestra was equally as beautiful. The songbook was only 6 short pages long, and we were hopeful to a speedy torture. Did you know that choruses sing along at a speed that would make glaciers seem like olympic sprinters? To top it off, the first half was like I was trapped in a old disney cartoon and I can't get out!

Intermission finally occurred in what seemed like a years time, but my clock said it was only an hour later, and I made a beeline to the bathrooms which was outside. My fellow instigators saw me take off, and thought I was making a break for the car, and was preparing to tackle me on the grass. I had to reassure them I was only heading to the bathroom with no intention of escaping. We then huddled together outside in the rain and took a couple of more swigs to make the punishment a bit more bearable. This time we were a bit more buzzed and decided to sit behind our group, which was almost in the very back row. At this point, we were in ADD mode and started to poke, make faces, and joke with our fellow group members while making as little noise as possible. We were doing a pretty good job at it until I saw my fellow cohort reach inside his jacket for his flask. Again my catholic instincts took over and promptly swatted his hand with my program guide, which inside a church, made a sound similar in decibels as thunder. In horror to what I had just did, I did the only thing I could think of, and hide my program guide and look like I didn't just hear a loud booming sound. My flask wielding cohort on the other hand froze in complete shock, either because I swatted him, or he was stunned by the sonic boom that just hit his hand, and had his face and hand frozen in time as he was reaching for his flask. A couple of my other partners in crime turned around and started laughing so hard they almost fell out of their chairs.

After the event was over, we congratulated our performing choral coworker on how great the concert was, and then proceeded to her house for the real reason we came, the party.

Pt. 2 coming shortly.

This is my crack

2006-12-07T10:49:00.000-08:00

Hi, my name is James, and I am addicted to crack. I've always been addicted to crack ever since I was a baby. Yes, I was born a crack baby. Throughout my life, I have been feeding my regular crack habit. I would do anything to satisfy my crack habit. I'd steal, lie, hang out with the bad crowds, get into alot of trouble. Eventually as I got older, I would work to pay for my crack habit. My crack habit wasn't always bad. But sometimes I would go on a bender that would lasts weeks. But nowadays my crack habit has gone more sophisticated and more expensive. I still maintain a good job and can usually function as a good member of society, but lately my crack habit has been getting the better of me. All I can do at work nowadays is think about my next hit of crack. My place is a mess at home. I was able to get a couple loads of laundry done last night in between hits of crack, but that's about all I was able to do. I even left the milk out for a few hours last night by accident because I was too busy with the crack to remember. I haven't been getting enough sleep the past week because I've been too busy with the crack to sleep. Yes, I am addicted to crack.

The crack that I am speaking of isn't really crack cocaine. Nope, never touched the stuff. Matter of fact, I've never touched any of the recreational drugs. Nope, my crack is gaming. I've been playing with my Wii and Xbox 360 every single waking moment of my life that I'm not at work. Before that I was playing Battlefield 2142 with my friends on the PC. But my 2142 addiction wasn't quite as bad as my current crack addiction. Though my current crack addiction is nowhere near as bad as when I was playing a MMORPG game (Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game). That lasted about a year when I was into and playing Asheron's Call. Now that was some bad crack. Thank god my credit card expired, which stopped me from playing long enough not to go back. Those MMORPG's consumed all of my time and life, and I told myself I'll never go back to something like that again. One of my coworkers is now into World of Warcraft, the addicts current choice of crack, and has threatened to get me a free copy. I just said "No way in hell!". I can't imagine what would happen to myself if I ever did. That stuff looks way too fun in a bad bad way.

My crack habits always seem to pick up right after a break up, and my current habit is no exception. Maybe it's because I have all this free time, so I look for something to fill it with. As I write this blog entry, my eyes are a blurry from lack of sleep. Dammit, I need some sleep!

Regret

2006-12-06T11:00:00.000-08:00

I hate regrets. I hate thinking I just did something wrong. I also hate to think I overpaid for something. Take my couches for instance. I thought I got a decent deal at levitz. I paid more than I wanted to, but I think I got some good couches. Now I was looking online at another furniture shop in milpitas, and saw what looked like some good couches, for a few hundred dollars cheaper. Crap, now I'm thinking I should have bought it there, and they probably have it in stock and can get it to me sooner than the 21st. I was looking at this set of couches.
They're running a 20% off sale which would have made the reclining loveseat and reclining couch $1300 before tax & shipping. The thing that's keeping me sane is that I haven't sat on the couch in milpitas, so I don't know how comfy it is. Might turn out to be not comfortable at all, and I made the right decision to begin with.

I also bought a xbox 360 controller from buy.com with a $20 off $50 purchase and thought I was getting a good deal. After I submitted my order I checked amazon.com and it was cheaper by about $7 even after all the discounts from buy.com. Unfortunately I couldn't cancel the order from the buy.com website, I had to do everything form the google checkout site, which isn't quite the same. I hope it gets canceled before it ships because I ordered the controller from amazon already.

Gaming heaven or uncontrollable spending?

2006-12-05T11:11:00.000-08:00

After just buying the Wii, I found out that Microcenter has a $100 rebate on the xbox 360. I just couldn't pass that up, broke down, and bought one, along with Rainbow Six Las Vegas. Ugh, I just bought a Wii too! I spent close to $1,000 this weekend on games! Looks like I already spent my bonus check this year. I am now buying the rest of my 360 accessories online at buy.com since there's a $20 google checkout discount.

Looks like I'm eating ramen for the rest of the month.

My Wii hurts

2006-12-04T00:41:00.000-08:00

After standing in line at Toys R Us in sunnyvale since 2am, I finally got my Wii. Let me tell you, it's not too pleasant standing when the weather is almost freezing. Me, my friend Danny, and friend Wendy all stood in line for the Wii. We were number 14,15,16 in place. There were people standing in line since toys r us closed at 10pm. I bundled up as much as I could. 2 pairs of sweat pants, tshirt, fleece, big ski jacket, fleece beanie, my big ski jacket and hood, and snowboard gloves. I even brought a folding beach chair, while danny brought his blanket that we all huddled under, shivering. It all paid off when they gave us tickets at 9am. They only had 40 in stock, so all the people that showed up later were out of luck. I purchased a Wii console, extra wiimote, and the Zelda game. Wow, the wiimote really works, the included sports game was really fun. This really is going to change how I play video games. The only bad thing is the graphics aren't much better than the game cube / PS2. But everything is definitely more fun with the fact that you have to hold the wiimote like a tennis racket and smack the ball. You can even put some top or underspin to the ball. I definitely think the Wii is going to have a big market to itself. Games are going to be totally different and throughly enjoyable for the Wii. After playing with the Wii for most of the day, my Wii arm is starting to hurt.

Wii'ing in the cold

2006-12-03T01:45:00.000-08:00

Yes, I'm crazy, I don't know why I'm doing it, but It's a few degrees above freezing outside, and I'm about to head to toys r us to stand in line to buy a wii. My friend danny called me up and wanted to know if I was gonna go stand in line with him at 2am to go buy a Wii.
I don't know why I'm doing it, but I'm gonna go do it.

Hopefully I'll have a Wii by tomorrow morning.

Winter is here, almost.

2006-12-02T22:20:00.000-08:00

Winter is finally here, almost. It's sure cold outside, somewhere near freezing at nights, but still not enough snow in tahoe to go boarding. There hasn't been a big enough storm to dump some snow up in the mountains to make it pleasureable to board. Most of the resorts are open, but have a few pathetic slopes open. Hopefully there'll be enough by the time I take my 2 week vacation around christmas. I plan on going up boarding more often since there isn't much to do nowadays. The question is, can I find people to go with that often?

My mom called me the other day wanting to give me a portable space heater, but I informed her that I don't need it since I have a fireplace in the living room, and I turn the central heater on. She about flipped out saying how expensive it would be to use the central heater, and how much cheaper it would be if I used the portable space heater. My memories of living at my parents place in San Francisco during the winter involve me freezing my butt off standing in front of the space heater, which was doing a pitifully poor job of heating anything up that's not 6 inches in front of it. My parents wouldn't turn on the central furnace, and gave me varying reasons like "there's stuff in front of the heater vents, it'll catch fire", or "It'll cost too much to turn it on". Never the same reason twice. Now I have to admit the furnace dated back to sometime just after man invented fire, so it was probably very inefficient, but seriously, I was freezing my butt off! Now that I have my own place, the heater is set to a comfortable temperature, with the programmable timer set to turn down when I'm not around. Also since it's a townhouse, two of the four walls are not outward facing, so there's alot of insulation from the outside. It doesn't take very long for the whole house to heat up, and it doesn't cool down for a long time. My PG&E bill doesn't go up very much in the winter months, so the money I spend per month is well worth staying warm and not freezing my ass off.

Oh, I finally bought a set of couches today. I was almost set on buying a set of couches at Jennifer Convertibles. It was a microfiber loveseat that reclines and a regular microfiber sofa for $700 before tax & delivery. But when I sat in it, my butt just did not feel happy in it. It wasn't quite plush enough, and the quality just didn't seem there. But for $700 for the set, the price was cheap. I went shopping around other places, and ended up at levitz, and found a set of microfiber reclining sofa and reclining loveseat. While they were more expensive, my butt felt very happy and at home on the sofa. It was nice and plush and the quality felt much better. It was nearly double the price, but I figure I'll be keeping the couches for a long time and it'll be money well spent. The set came out to be $1,399 after discounts, so tax and delivery came out to be about $1600. The only bad thing is it's not in stock locally, so it has to come from sacramento, which puts the delivery time two weeks away. I won't have my couches until Dec. 21st. Ugh, more sitting on the floor. Looks like I won't be having guests over for a while.

Here's a photo of the couch, it's even called the Mr. Comfort collection, in a lovely shade of mushroom. (I didn't have a choice of color, since that's all they had)

Moving on out

2006-11-30T19:53:00.000-08:00

I haven't been blogging for a while, since work was starting to pick up for me. But then again, not much has been going on in my life. I went out with my friend A and his gf R for their friend's birthday at the Matrix Club in SF the other weekend. I didn't know anybody else there but somehow I accidentally had a chick buy me a drink at the bar. The story behind it is a bit more lame than it sounds, but for some reason I thought it was open bar, and didn't notice she paid for my drink while I was talking about effen pomegranate martinis that she was ordering. After she invited me to sit down with her group, I was talking to my friend and realized that it wasn't open bar, and she had paid for my drink. I felt bad for tacking my drink onto her order, so I sat down with her group, and bought them a round of drinks. They were heading out to a dance club, and invited me to join them, but I was with my friends and had to decline. Now I know what you're thinking, she's picking up on me, but i noticed a big fat ring on her wedding ring finger, and I think that the guy sitting next to her is her husband. I didn't get a chance to ask, and either she was really friendly, or she was trying to set me up with her friend next to her. Either way, I couldn't join them, and I'm not really into older caucasian women either, though they were a nice friendly bunch.

The ex tells me she got an apartment in SF and is moving in during thanksgiving weekend, and she's reposessing all her stuff, including my roommate. Just in time to have my family over to my place for thanksgiving dinner before all the kitchenware and couches go back to their original owner. I did get to try out the turkey fryer my parents bought me. A huge pot and a heavy duty propane burner. I downloaded Alton Brown's Good Eats episode on turkey frying, and found out that I needed 4 gallons of oil for the turkey! I just came from a costco buying spree purchasing their stainless steel pot & pan set, some kitchenware items, 2 gallons of canola oil, and a set of Kitchenaid silicone kitchen utensil set, just like the set my ex took back. Now I need to go back and buy 2 more gallons of oil. I brine the turkey the night before, fire up the turkey fryer, and watch in amazement at the amount of heat and sound that thing puts out. At full throttle, the burner sounds like a jet plane! Unfortunately I think I cooked the turkey too long as it came out kinda dry, even after brining it. Next time I'll have to take it out 5 minutes earlier.

A couple days later, the movers came and took all of her stuff. She didn't even show up but had my roommate coordinate everything. Guess it was too hard for her to show up or something. Now the house seems eerily empty and quiet. Although I'm used to being at home alone, it's a bit different when you know nobody is going to back ever again. Guess I'll need to get used to it, although I now realize that this is the first time I've ever lived alone, without parents, family, gf, roommate, or anybody.

I've got most of the stuff replaced, except for the couches. I seem to be having a hard time deciding what to get, especially since I'm trying to keep my budget low, especially now that I don't have my roommate's and my ex's rent money to pay off the steep mortgage payments I incurred. But I think I've decided on a microfiber couch and a loveseat. It'd be even better if one of them was a recliner and the other a sofabed, all for under $1,000. Not sure if that'll ever happen, but I'm looking.

So far I've been killing time by cleaning the house, playing video games, and reading other people's blogs. Yah, I know, boring, but that's my life right now. Too many of my friends are married with kids. I need to start hanging out with more single people more often.

Night out

2006-11-15T09:43:00.000-08:00

Went out last weekend for my friend's birthday, and hit up a club at night. First time I've been to a club in a long time, especially after breaking up with the ex. I thought it would be good to get out and meet some new people. But my friend started talking a bit about the ex, and I got way depressed and couldn't get out of my slump the whole night. I didn't really feel like talking too much and just kept being a total bore the whole night. Not my best night in terms of socialness. I really gotta get outta this slump, as it seems to get worse with more time. Dammit, I really miss her.

In more less depressing news, this coming weekend is my friend's wedding. Which happens to be at the same time as my cousin's wedding. Which happens to be the same night my friend and his GF are going out to a club. Can you say scheduling conflict? Now I can probably make it to the club to see my friend after the wedding, but I'm pretty screwed with both weddings. I've decided I'm going to my friend's wedding since I responded to him first.

Team Building, Distractions

2006-11-07T18:08:00.000-08:00

On Thursday, our company had our first department outing at City Beach in Fremont. That place is pretty cool, there were tons of rock climbing walls, pool, ping pong, virtual bowling, darts, basket ball, volley ball courts, and a full bar. I think I ended up doing almost everything there. Near the end we had our team building sessions.

On Friday, I went out with my friend and his GF whom I haven't met before. In order to protect the innocent, I will not name names. My first impression when I saw her was, "Holy crap those are huge boobs!" In fact, I think they were the largest pair I've ever seen in real life that didn't belong to a stripper or porn star. Yah, they were something in the order of magnitude of a F cup. I had to constantly remind myself to keep looking at her from the neck up, otherwise I'd be caught staring and talking directly to her boobs as if they were a microphone. Now I've dated a girl who had pretty large boobs for an asian girl, a C cup bordering D cup, and I've caught my friends (guys and girls) staring and talking directly at her boobs all night long. Especially when she was wearing her low cut tops and showing off what she got. But I've never been so distracted before in my life.

I know my friend reads my blog ocassionally, so if your GF is reading this, and I know you'll show it to her, I apologize if you caught me staring. I tried my best, and actually thought I pulled it off successfully.

Never good enough

2006-11-01T10:45:00.000-08:00

My parents came by on sunday to have dinner with me. My mom always has something to say about something, and it's always negative. I took them to Joy Luck Place in downtown San Mateo, I thought it was pretty decent, dishes were a bit smaller than what I'm used to. Throughout the whole dinner I hear my mom commenting on stuff in chinese. My chinese isn't that good, so I didn't catch all of it, but I know there was alot of complaining involved. After the meal was over, I asked my mom what she thought, and immediately started to talk it down, saying how this dish was too sweet, and this dish was too oily, and Mr. Fong's in Foster City was better. While I thought Mr. Fong's wasn't bad, and oil-free, I also thought it was pretty bland. I'll take oily and flavorful over bland and oil-free.

Even when I bought my new house, I see my mom scrutinizing every detail. Eventually she complained that there are too many lights in the house and my electric bill will be expensive. And then proceeds to start counting all the light bulbs in the house. Gaahh!!!!
I do admit I do have alot of light bulbs in the house. But I do have recessed lighting in all the rooms except the 2nd bedroom. My kitchen has 7 recessed lights, each light has 2 fluorescent bulbs, along with under counter fluorescent lights, while the open living / dining room has 4 incandescent spotlight bulbs on each side, for a total of 8. Now I know that's alot more lights than what my parents are used to, one bulb for each room, it's also a helluva lot brighter than their house, and the kitchen is completely fluorescent, so they don't use as much energy.

My parents drive me crazy!!!!

Pumpkin Heads

2006-10-28T15:40:00.000-07:00

My roomie, her friend, and I decided to carve some pumpkins recently. I haven't carved a pumpkin since I was a little kid. I don't know why I haven't carved one in such a long time, it was pretty fun, and my pumpkin came out with a sly grin and a scar. I don't know what I'm going to be donig on halloween night. Probably nothing, since my life is now so boring without a gf, considering almost all my friends don't have time to hang out cuz they're married with kids, getting married, or just plain too busy. Damn, I need to find some new friends to hang out with.
Here are some more pics of our pumpkin carving.

Red Egg Party

2006-10-24T11:33:00.000-07:00

My old friends T&L just spit out their second kid, a baby boy named Bruce. So I went over L's parent's house for their red egg party. I haven't seen those guys and everybody else for almost a year. First thing the girls said when they saw me was "Did you get bigger? Taller? Why are you so big?". My reply "Did you shrink? I don't remember you being so short!". I guess all those trips to the gym is starting to pay off. Then they found out that I'm single again. Their first response was "Aww, I'm sorry", then their second response was "Let me set you up!". They then proceeded to take pictures of me. Grreeat...

Spent most of the day and night playing poker with the guys. It was good to see them again, since I hardly see them since almost all of my friends are married with kids nowadays.

But why do people insist on trying to hook you up?

What's on my tivo

2006-10-18T23:01:00.000-07:00

I've been watching Battlestar Galactica on the scifi channel ever since the first episode, and is now my defacto show that I must watch. Nip/tuck on FX is my other favorite that I can't miss. But the new hit that I just got hooked on is Heroes. If you like comic books, you'll love the show. Even if you don't, it has enough mystery and unique things to really draw you in. I also have the staples, Good Eats to inspire me to cook, Mythbusters to inspire me to blow things up.

I love watching mythbusters, especially that my coworker has this major crush on Carrie Byron. I know I'm going to go to hell for this, but I tease the same coworker by telling him that Carrie used to work for the same company that my ex, Karen, now works with. That part is true, but last time we told him that we were going to have lunch with Carrie for a meet and greet, and you can literally see him cringe, wanting to be there to meet her. If there ever was a stalker stalking Carrie, It wouldn't surprise me if it turned out to be my coworker. He's said many times that he'd leave his wife for her. Although he always says he's kidding, deep down inside, I think he would just to spend an hour with her. Yes, I know, I'm mean.

Oktoberfest in San Francisco

2006-10-16T11:47:00.000-07:00

I went to Oktoberfest at Fort Mason Center in SF last weekend, and it was crazy! 2,000 drunk people all in one building drinking beer. I was in line getting tokens for beer (ya, you gotta pay to get in and then pay again to get beer), and this couple was making out behind me. Then the guy said in his loudest drunk voice "I wanna fuck you! I wanna fuck you tonight! Let's go and fuck!". Oh man, come on guys, at least get a room! Or a video camera! It was loud, crowded, gotta fight your way up to get a beer. There was only 3 kinds of beer. I actually think the montery beer festival was better than this. And worse of all I got fairly drunk at the end and had to go get some pizza with M&D, and I was still messed up afterwards. I ended up taking a nap in the car for about an hour and a half before I went home.

Jam Update.
ML finished the jam earlier last week, and I tried it out on some toast on sat morning. That was some good grape jam! I haven't tried the apple one she made yet. It looks more like fruit compote than jam, but it should be just as yummy. Oh, and ML finished her intern in SF and is currently taking a break in LA before she heads back to NY to finish up school.

Maturity level

2006-10-13T15:29:00.000-07:00

People mature with age, right? You would think that there would be steady progression of maturity, attitude, intelligence, experience that coincides with age. I look back at myself and see some of the changes I've went through since I turned 18.

Jealousy has gone from an average level to an absolute low, near zero (you can't completely eliminate jealousy).Patience already a high level has reached near nobel prize level. While tolerance for things I do not like seemed to drop down from average to a below average level. Understanding of the opposite sex has improved from nonexistant to nada. Fashion sense has gone up from low to lukewarm. Thank god for the fact that I don't mind being a girl's Ken doll, otherwise I'd be stuck to what my momma dressed me as. Appreciation for food has gone way up, to the point where I can actually understand and talk about how food is made. That has coincided with my cooking ability, which is in direct proportion to the amount of food channel I watch. Appropriateness, whether it’s what to say, or what to wear, has gone up as well.

Now I know people mature at a different rate, and sometimes not at all, but you look and wonder why they haven’t. Case in point, I know of a guy that’s now 30, that every time I see him, he’s wearing the same pair of swim trunks. I mean every time. And it’s swim trunks, not shorts! Yes I can tell the difference, and I do notice that they’re the same pair. Now I do have a friend who for quite a number of years in his early twenties, always wore shorts, no matter the temperature outside. It could be in the middle of winter, in San Francisco, at night, foggy, with the winds blowing a cold 40 deg, and I’m in my thick jacket, still freezing, and he’d be out with shorts. Eventually he grew out of that phase, and started to wear normal pants, jeans, etc. and left the shorts to the hot sunny days. And yes, he grew out of that phase before he hit 30. I’m not sure exactly why, maybe it was because he had a real full time job, or because he had gotten married.

Another case in point, I have another friend in her mid twenties, who is jealous of her boyfriend’s female friend. She doesn’t like the new friend because of some petty thing, whether it was an accidental brush, or something the new friend had said that left her out, I’m not sure, but nothing to be jealous or hate the person because. Now I know jealousy is something that a lot of people don’t ever improve upon, but stuff like this I haven’t really seen since high school.

Of course there are the opposites, people who have a lot more maturity than their age suggests. I have been recently introduced to someone who just recently turned 23. She seems to have her head on straight, knows where she’s going in life, and is doing something about it. She speaks about things in a calm but enthusiastic manner. I just get a sense of maturity I haven’t seen in someone who’s so young.

Age might be just a number, but maturity can never be measured by age.

My first Chinese-y purchase

2006-10-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

Yup, my first chinese-y purchase is a new wok. I think I was talked into getting the bamboo brush thing though, since I don't ever remember my parents using it. I even bought a big ol japanese stainless steel meat cleaver for the "bigger" jobs around the house. Ya know, things like cutting through bone, frozen packages of vegetables, and the ocassional would be burglar. Or I could start my own HK gang with a few of these.

I picked these items up at a store in chinatown with Danny and ML. Danny wanted to buy some cleavers and had heard this place had a good selection and was pretty cheap. I always wanted a wok, and decided it would be a good idea to pick one up at the same place. Plus it's good insurance just in case Karen decided to reclaim her cookware, at least I'd have something to cook in. But things were against us since something was going on in northbeach, and they blocked off access to most of the roads, including the garage, and setup tables in the streets. There was also a big exotic car show going on in the park. Traffic and parking was a nightmare. I ended up dropping the guys off and parking at the playground, but not before I started smelling my clutch from stop and go traffic on the steep hills around chinatown.

Our plan after lunch was to hit Napa Valley since ML has never been. We head up a bit late to napa and hit Whitehall Winery where I bought 2 bottles of their belmuscato, ML did the same, and Danny purchased a $80 bottle of wine. We hit V. Sattui did some more wine tasting, and I purchased my favorite Madeira. We then went to Domaine Chandon after tasting was over, and danny picked up a bottle of their sparkling red. We had dinner nearby at a pretty good restaraunt, though we weren't able to get into Bouchon next to French Laundry.

On our way back home, we spotted these grape vines growing on the side of the road and decide that it would be a good idea to try to snag a couple of bunches of grapes. Little did we know that the grapes were quite attached to the vine and we couldn't remove it with our bare hands. We needed a knife but none of us carried pocket knives. Then it hit me, we have the meat cleavers sitting in the trunk, so I grab one, and we hurriedly cut a few bunches from the grape vine, and then booked outta there before anyone spots us. Speeding on the way home, we all agree we should never come to napa valley without our meat cleavers in tow.

Later I found out that Danny upon arriving home, grabbed all the stuff from the car and accidentally dropped his $80 bottle of wine all on the sidewalk, shattering it in a million pieces and watching as $80 of good wine suddenly pool on the sidewalk. Maybe that was karma for stealing the grapes. Hopefully the jam that ML said she'd make is gonna make up for it.

Weekend Update

2006-10-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

So D tells me we're going drinking on thurs, but he ended up being too busy on thurs, so I invite him out to Dave & Buster's in Milpitas to meet up with my friends Danny & Dave. I end up drinking quite heavily and end up crashing at D's place. It turns out that D lives about 5 mins away from Dave, so after he drops me off at my car at Dave's, I wake up Dave's family and harass them into going to breakfast with me. Denny’s breakfast was pretty horrible (Man, how did I ever think that place was good?).

Sat was fleet week and I wanted to watch the Blue Angels and air show race, but end up taking a nap at home till about 2pm, when my sister calls. I head up to SF and we go down to the presidio, park and just make it in time to see the blue angels. Danny gives me a call and he wants to meet up, so he leaves his car at BART, and we decide to meet up in SF. My sis heads back home and I meet up with Danny and head to chinatown to look at some meat cleavers. Unfortunately the knife shop was closed so Danny calls up his old time friend, ML. We end up getting egg tarts (Dun Tat) at the best place in all of the bay area, Golden Gate Bakery in chinatown. There's always a line out the door, and today was no exception. It took us about 20 minutes to get our dun tats. Man that stuff is good, it’s like little flaky treats from heaven. We eat them right on the street and immediately burn our mouths on the hot, straight from the oven, dun tats. Any normal person would stop eating them after burning your mouth, but the lure of the dun tat threw any rational thought out the window.

We eventually make it to a restaurant called The Globe, and had dinner at the bar. Jay called and said he’ll meet us there with a friend. When we arrived at The Globe, I noticed the exposed brick wall, the cool architectural style, and the hostess with the enormous breasts and cleavage. I knew Jay would be talking about her and her breasts all night long the moment he walked in here, and Jay being Jay, did not disappoint. He was talking about her breasts as a separate entity all night long. He didn’t even try to be subtle with other women around, as subtlety just isn’t in his vocabulary. Gotta love Jay for being himself.

Single and ready to mingle

2006-10-06T13:30:00.000-07:00

Last week after the BBQ, I met up with Karen and had our first real talk after we broke up. Short story is, she was brutally honest with me, which was exactly what I needed, and we are not getting back to gether again. So I am now officially single and ready to mingle.

BBQ At DW & DR's

2006-10-05T22:16:00.000-07:00

On Sat, DW & DR moved into a nice house with a hot tub and pool 5 mins away from me. They decided to do a pool party while the indian summer lasts. They cranked up the heat in the pool till it almost hit 90 deg, while the hot tub was even hotter. But even better than the pool was the real full sized pinball machine hooked up in the garage. I admitedly am a pinball fan, and Medival Madness is my favorite pinball machine of all time.

I remember my first time playing the game. It was in one of the last pure arcades left in Emeryville. A new pinball game complete with castles and drawbridge caught my eye. It was blinking, glowing, taunting me, literally. I responded back by rolling two quarters into the slot, and pushing the start button. My eyes widened as I looked at all the ramps, bumpers, and specials. I took down the trolls that had popped up with ease, won my first joust tournament, lowered the draw bridge, and used my silvery ball as a battering ram to take down the gate. I yelled in victory as I destroyed my first castle, and dared not blink as I hit the multiball and streaks of silver flew across the pinball table. When my last ball went down the drain, I cursed the lord's name, but I knew that this pinball game, was the ultimate in pinball games.

At the party, I played the pinball game so long, I had blisters on my fingers, and my forearms were sore from repeated flipper mashing. Needless to say, I will be over at DW's & DR's place alot more nowadays.If it wasn't for the fact that they have 3 cats and a dog, all of which I am quite allergic to, I'd be there every day.

Night at Knuckles, part 2

2006-10-03T14:44:00.000-07:00

After Jay and I get our photo and autograph from Bridget, we grab some food at Knuckle's. Nothing exciting, typical bar type food, and a couple of beers. We chitchat a bit, take a look around knuckle's. We spot the two pool tables and shuffleboard and start playing pool. Eventually a trio of women show up. There was an older mexican woman in her late 40's, early 50's (Crazy Mexican Lady) and two blondes that were mother & daughter. CML (Crazy Mexican Lady) sees Jay's huge brick of a phone (Pocket PC PDA / Phone w/ extended battery), and starts commenting on his phone with Jay, and then proceeds to read off Jay's full name that was displayed on his phone. Jay, with his cougar sense tingling, immediately jumps and grabs his phone before any more discernable information could be memorized. Introductions were made, and Jay immediately used the "Are you two sisters?" line on the mom and daughter. We learn that they're mother and daughter, with the mom hitting 50 this year (she looked really good for 50) and the daughter who was 28. I could immediately see Jay eye the younger daughter, after all she was blonde, slim build, and quite frankly pretty hot. I ended up catching myself staring at her ass as she bent over to play pool quite a few times that night. We switch over to playing shuffleboard while chatting a bit with the trio. A group of brits came in and wanted to use the shuffleboard, and took over the table that the trio were using. We gave up the shuffleboard and switched back to pool while sharing the table of drinks with the trio. We end up chatting a bit more and learn that they were here for the Giants / Dodgers game. The mother & CML were from LA, while the daughter is a schoolteacher in Gilroy. CML then starts telling these funny but equally wrong racial jokes covering the spectrum. Mother and daughter has a self confessed open relationship, which is why they’re able to hang out at a bar together like this. During this time Jay tries to maneuver himself more with the daughter, but kept getting hit on by the mother and CML. Mostly CML though was hitting on Jay, while I was chatting it up with all three. The group of brits suddenly triple in size and now wants one of the pool tables. We decide that we all should play pool together, and to celebrate another round of drinks was involved, and then eventually shots of Patron (CML’s idea). I find it extremely amusing to see Jay fend off the advances of CML and then get cockblocked by the mother, while trying to maneuver in closer to the daughter. That left time for me to chat it up a bit more with the daughter. We eventually finish up the game of pool with me sinking the last two balls with great authority. I celebrate by whoo-hooing loudly while pumping my fist in the air. The daughter then proceeds to show me how it’s supposed to be celebrated by jumping on me and riding me like a pogo stick while I shout and pump my fist up in the air. Jay at this point becomes extremely jealous because he wishes he was the pogo stick, and not me.

We close up the bar, and proceed to walk them back to their hotel. Jay and I now need a place to sober up and we spot the IHOP down the street from the hotel, and we head over there to eat. Ten minutes later, in walks the trio and we all get a table together. I sit in between the daughter and CML, while Jay is again cockblocked by the mother. Throughout the entire time, we start hassling our waiter, a 50+ year old black guy, and keep telling him to bring out his flask he keeps in the back. Our waiter plays off on us and is real cool about it, cracking jokes here and there. CML then decides to attempt to flash our waiter to see if he would forget about our bill, and does a half flash. Our waiter nearly has a heart attack, starts stuttering like mad, brings his hands up like he was going to grab them, then realizes he’s at work and would get fired, stutters some more then says something along the lines of “Wha, wha, what am I gonna do with those? Muh, my hands are big but not that big!” Hilarity ensues throughout the table, and we all get sore jaws from laughing so hard. We say goodbye to the trio once again at the hotel room, but not before I get the email and number of the daughter.

As we walk back to our cars, Jay proceeds to go off about how hot the daughter is and won’t stop about how this 28 yr old sexy school teacher was riding me like a pony. This is the first time Jay and I have ever hung out like this, and I have to say it was fun.

Girls next door part deaux

2006-10-03T00:57:00.000-07:00

Friday, headed down to Knuckles in San Francisco to meet and greet Bridget from Girl's Next Door. I called my friend Jay to see if he wanted to hang out with me and meet Bridget too. He said "I'm on my way!" without hesitation. Good old Jay, you can always tempt him by good looking women, his kryptonite. I grabbed a pint of Fat Tire (mmm, I love Fat Tire) and grabbed a table near the corner. Shortly later in walks this blonde in a playboy top. I didn't even recognize it was Bridget until people started taking pictures with her. Her entourage needed a place to setup. And they decided that my table would be the perfect spot. So they asked me if I minded if they took some of the table, andI negotiated a autographed picture for giving up my table. I got a signed autograph, and a picture with Bridget, as you can see here. Jay eventually showed up and also got a picture and signed autograph as well. Although Bridget was only a year older than me, close up, she looked alot older, like if she was about 40. I guess some girls just don't age well. Though she must have one hell of a makeup artist for TV.

Here's a picture of Jay with Bridget. Notice the fat ass grin on his face. He's really enjoying this. Then again, so was I!

Girls next door in SF

2006-09-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

On friday, Bridget from girls next door is doing a appearance in SF. I am totally into reality shows, and Girls Next Door is one of my guilty pleasures that I watch and tivo regularly. I believe she's going a promo for Captain Morgan, and I've got the inside track on that! I'm pretty excited to meet her in person, but I'm not sure what I'm going to say.

Did your boobs get bigger for season 2?
Does anybody have sex with Hef besides Holly?
Do you get paid to be a girlfriend?
Are you going to be a girlfriend for the next 15-20 years?

Anybody else watch the show? What questions would you ask if you had the opportunity?

Where did the sun go?

2006-09-27T10:11:00.000-07:00

The fog looms off in the distance, but you hope it doesn't come your way. After living with the fog for a long time, you've just gotten used to the sun. The sun is warm, happy, and bright. You can see your path ahead of you for miles. You love the sun. But the fog, which was off in the distance, has come and enveloped you. Everything that was once bright is now dark. Your path ahead is obscured. You can only see what’s directly in front of you. You shiver from the coldness of it. You try to remember what the sun felt like, but it only leaves you longing for it more. You finally accept that the fog is here to stay, and there isn't anything you can do about it.

Karen came by last night to pick up some more stuff. The closet is now looking bare, the bathroom isn't strewn with makeup and hair care products, and suddenly the bedroom seems even emptier without a desk lamp.

Oh Deer!

2006-09-27T10:01:00.000-07:00

Last night a on my way home, two cars had stopped in the middle of the road, blocking both lanes. Thinking to myself "What the hell is going on?", I also stopped behind them. Both people got out of their cars and went up in the front of their cars. "Did they have an accident? But they're not even that close to each other." Then suddenly a deer that was in front of the cars stood up on it's feet and took a few steps, then collapsed on the side of the road. As it collapsed, I could see it's eyeballs, dripping red from blood, and completely white, had popped out of it's socket and was dangling out of it's head.
Ewwww, gross!
I really need to remind myself to keep an eye out for deer, as they wander the streets in my neighborhood at night. I don't want to hit a deer a second time.

RIP John Peckham - Update

2006-09-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

A fellow member of the Bay Area DSM club (Diamond Star Motors (Mitsubishi Eclipse, Eagle Talon, Plymouth Laser)) and fellow car enthusiast John Peckham, was killed by a suspected drunk or high on drugs driver last week. He's fondly rememberd on our DSM list as a nice guy, who had flames painted on his Eclipse. John was riding his bicycle in a pack of other bicyclist along Old Page Mill Road in Palo Alto when he was struck by a car. The car then crashed down an embankment a short time later, and the driver was arrested.

John will be remembered. Our BAD (Bay Area DSM) group is currently planning a memorial cruise in his honor.

To those who are reading this, please don't drink & drive, or get high and drive. This is not the first time a friend of mine has died from the consequences of a drunk driver.

Mercy news article here
--------------------------
Update 9-22-06

I just read a newspaper article stating that witnesses say Chevelle Bailey (the driver) cracked open a 24-ounce can of beer and drak it all moments after the accident. Police say the initial breathalyzer test of the drunk driver was a .08 and a .09, and was allegedly high on methamphetamine.

Outsourcing

2006-09-21T14:16:00.000-07:00

My company just decided to axe our IT Development department and replace them with an indian outsourcing company to save money. Luckily my department was not affected, but I wonder when or if the director decides to do the same thing to my department. There are many reasons I can think of why they wouldn't do that, but then again, reducing the cost of your department is a pretty big draw. Luckily the outsourcing company we use is not very strong with server and infrastucture, and they stick with mostly Oracle and applications development.
The draw of cheap labor must be very convincing.
At least they didn't have to train their replacement, as was the case for a friend of mine. She was going to be fired in a few months, and to be replaced by an indian on a h1b because they were cheaper. Then her next task was to train the person replacing her. Talk about awkward!

How are your parents today?

2006-09-21T00:34:00.000-07:00

I was talking to my friend yesterday, and my parent's health came into the conversation. You see my dad is getting pretty old, and his health is starting to decline a bit. He's lost alot of weight because he hasn't been eating much, he had dizzy spells, and his mental faculties are starting to decline. The doctors don't see anything wrong after a bunch of tests. Well my friend told me to get a second opinion on my dad's problems, then proceeds to tell me a story of her aunt.

Her aunt had a toothache for a really long time. She ignored it and didn't go see a dentist until it finally hurt too much to do nothing about it. The dentist did their work, but her teeth still hurt for a while afterwards. It turns out she had gum cancer. All 3 kids had really good jobs, but 2 out of 3 hand to quit their jobs so they could take care of their mother in rotation. That pretty much scared me enough to call my dad and see how's he doing, and if there's any progress on his medical diagnosis.

Unfortuantely there was no alcohol to numb some of the pain, since I was driving. I guess that'll have to wait until friday, when I can hang out.

Breaking up is hard to do

2006-09-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

It's a sad day when you break up, and that's exactly what happened between me and Karen. It was a 3 year relationship that I never wanted to see ending. I'm going to go out and talk somebody's ear off, hopefully over a couple of drinks.

Working out, high protein diet

2006-09-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

I've been hitting the gym more often, but I've been slacking off recently. I've also started to try to eat better, along with a emphasis on eating more protein. I've read that if I want to gain muscle mass (which I do) I need to eat my weight in protein grams. For me that's 190 grams of protein! I'm not sure if I can consume that much protein a day, not to mention every day. Even my whey protein shake only contains a bit less than 30 grams of protein. Then there's the fact that your body cannot digest all the protein at once, so you have to space it out. Chicken breast, which is high in protein, contains about 35-40 grams of protein, while thigh meat (which I prefer) only contains about 20-25 grams of protein. That's alot of food to eat in one day!

I know I don't eat anywhere near my 190 grams of protein a day, but when I do eat more protein and take my whey protein shake, I am noticing I'm building up more muscle mass, though my weight has not declined. In fact I gained about a pound, and am now at 187-188 lbs.

I'm still unsure how to lose my small spare tire, but I figure if I keep my ideal workout schedule, all that stuff will get used up when my body starts craving the calories.

School fundraising ripoffs

2006-09-13T10:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday seemed like "Let's get the whole family to call James day". About 25% of the time it's a family tech support call asking how to do something with the computer. Today was a bit of everything, computer tech support here, family stuff vacation stuff there, when are you coming gonna invite us for dinner, etc. But this time my niece hit me up to buy some magazines for her school. Now I remember this back in my day, if you sell enough stuff, you get a really cheap prize. I think if you sold a couple of hundred dollars worth of stuff, you get a cheap $5 prize. That's like a 2% commission! What a ripoff for the kid selling a ton of magazines! Yah, yah, I know the money is going to the school, but still, that's a horrible commission rate. But I'm still ordering my magazines anyway, I can never say no to my little niece. My last subscription to Sport Compact Car ran out a long time ago, and it was nice bathroom reading material anyway.

Apple updates

2006-09-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

The new ipods are here! Larger hard drive, a drop in price, brighter screen, more battery life. Not enough though to make me wish I had the newer model, as I just bought my 60gb Ipod video a couple of months ago. I've been getting good use out of my Ipod during workouts, and I also use it as a external hard drive to copy movies to / from home. It works really well as a external hard drive, and since it doesn't need a a/c plug, I don't have to go searching around for a plug all the time. It's great when my monitor also has a usb port on it's side. The only bad thing is it's a tad slow because of the speed of the hard drive.

Itunes itself has also been updated, and now it can download cover art for my mp3 files! That is a nice feature. My old way was using a great program called tag & rename, which adds id tags to mp3 files via filename, and can go onto amazon to download more tags, and the cover art. But it's quite involved as you have to make sure you have the entire album and such. If you have the artist and album name in the mp3, Itunes can download and append the cover art. I did it for my 5 gb worth of mp3's. It missed a few but got alot.
I also figured out how to enable itunes sharing of my music so my roomie can now connect to my itunes library and stream it across the netwok on her computer. I don't know if she can copy it to her ipod or not though, I'll have to try it out when we're available.

Do you talk in your sleep?

2006-09-11T10:49:00.000-07:00

Do you talk in your sleep? I know I do. Some of my friends have experienced me talking in my sleep as well, though I never remember what it was I was talking about. It provides never ending amusement when they bring up this subject, although they also can't remember what it was I was talking about. Karen is the only person who messes with me when I start talking in my sleep. She actually asked me some questions while I was talking in my sleep, and I responded back! Then she proceeded to make fun of me the next morning.

Well last night, Karen started talking in her sleep, and now it's payback time!
Karen "There's no more red stripe bottles left"
Me "Is there anything else left?"
Karen "No, there aren't any more bottles left"

After that, she woke up and asked why I was up so late, then promptly fell back asleep again. Dammit, I wanted to see if I could get her to say something more embarassing.

So do you talk in your sleep, and do you remember what you say? Do you respond back to people talking to you?

Beer Festival in Monterey, Hooray Beer!

2006-09-10T22:14:00.000-07:00

Where else can you get drunk in public in the middle of the afternoon? Why at the Monterey Beer Festival of course! Since Karen and Angie were working the event, promoting Red Stripe, Danny and I tagged along. I was suprised how small the festival was, and the lack of companies of beer. I thought it would be a big event, the size of say the gilroy garlic festival, but it was suprisingly small. But the idea was pretty cool, you pay an admission fee, and you get a cup and all the beer you can drink until they run out. Volunteers were supposed to be manning the taps in our area, but there weren't enough, so Danny and I pitched in and started pouring beer. Man, people are really happy when you pour them free beer. I started drinking early and got fairly buzzed by around 2 pm. The girls were totally loving the beads that red stripe was giving out. Eventually I started manning the red hook taps, and had alot of people love the red hook summer ale, who's name I can't remember anymore, even though I was yelling it all day long. The tap was pretty cool, it was made to look like a garden hose with a garden sprayer attached to it. People kept grabbing it and squeezing it to see if beer would come out, sadly it did not. We pigged out on BBQ oysters (Yummy!) Maui Onion Rings (Yummy!) and Terriyaki Chicken skewers (way too salty). The red stripe sold out fast because the girls were promoting the hell out of it, and hoping to go home early when they were all gone, but we decided to help out the guys and stayed till all the beer was gone, which happened at around 4pm. The drive back was looong, and it didn't help that my head was pounding from all the beers I drank.

I always thought the red stripe commercials were kinda stupid, but people loved to shout Hooray Beer! I guess marketing really does work.