Merry Christmas

So it's about 3AM on Christmas day right now, and I've finally managed to find myself in the mood to write here again. I know it's been an extremely long time since the last time I did this, but to be perfectly honest... I've just been too lazy. I don't even know where to start, but I suppose it's always best to just focus on writing - as is the main purpose of this blog: my deep personal thoughts.

IT'S WORTH IT

... every single time he's made me angry, every single time I've put up with him, and every single cent that I've spent on him - is worth it. I love Apollo, and he's so loyal and loving back to me that I believe the feeling I am currently getting back from him is second to only 1 type of happiness in the world (which is the love of a significant other, of which I'm only taking in faith right now, as I've never actually experienced that potential #1 type of love in the world). Through all of the anger, pain of cleaning up his messes, taking the time to feed/walk/play with him, and paying for everything related to him - he's worth it. He's there when I come home from school/work, happy as he can possibly be and jumping up and down to the point where he can barely contain himself and his tail is going back and forth as fast as possible, waiting to give me a good licking or to throw his toy around for him. To have him hop onto my bed, search around for an opening of my comforter/blanket, and tunnel his way next to me (either between my arm and body or inbetween my legs) and feeling his warmth next to me... to waking up with his face close to mine - I feel tears of joy, love, and happiness all at the same time.

They say that a dog is a man's best friend... well, he's certainly mine.

The Need to Ramble

I wonder how successful this will be, as I'm sitting here at work with Adam next to me, and all 10 lanes are full (encompassed by 2 birthday parties and 1 after-Sunday-church group). However, I have a ton of things floating around in my head right now that I actually attribute part of my headache to those concerns putting pressure on my temple.

So classes have begun, and I really don't want to talk about school stuff because it leads to graduation related stuff which then leads into job/carrer related stuff of which I REALLY don't want to think about. I'll ramble then: reading seems to be quite excessive from what I can remember in respect to the PHIL classes I've taken before, but I suppose even that is better than doing homework/problem sets for say, an EE filters class or even working on pre-labs and prepping for those dreaded 3 hour long labs. It just seems time consuming, I average about 10 pages per hour, so I guess 1 page per 6 minutes. So with that being said, I think I have about 45 pages between 2 books (for the 2 PHIL classes) to do today - that is to put myself ahead a bit for this upcoming week. Mondays are just too busy for me, with class that runs from 9-noon, then a bit of a break as I run home to take care of Apollo and hopefully nap for a couple of hours. Back to school by 4 for pool class, then clock in immediately after for 6 hours of work (till closing at 11PM). Of course, Billiards Club will be thrown into that period of time (from 6-?). By the time I get home at 11, I'm pretty tired and just want to sit there or go to sleep, but without a doubt I'll have PHIL reading to prepare for the following day. I seem to dedicate most of my time to PHIL when in reality I still have my 407 class to attent and pay attention to. To wrap it up, I'm doing fairly well and haven't fallen behind in any of those classes yet... in fact I think I performed pretty well on both the PHIL quiz as well as the 407 quiz.

Ambassador training had finally come and gone this previous week, so that is some weight that was sitting on my shoulders and in the back of my mind that has finally left. It went really well overall, I think it was a lot better, just as informative, a lot less formal, and most people enjoyed it a lot. Not too much to worry about that aspect of my life right now, maybe tours later on and Tony & I are signed up for the 2nd meeting, so that's at the end of this month.

Work is work, enough said. Nothing new, and I'm actually getting about 20-25 hours a week, which is quite a lot but I do need the money. Speaking of which, I really don't understand why I'm in such a hole right now. I mean, I guess I can see how the Vegas trip (about $450) is starting to catch back up to me, but I thought I had worked part of that off already this summer. But when I think about it, it's a quick $700 a month coming out of my account (650 for rent, 50 for internet). I get 325 from Will, but it's all been coming out of my share of the food... thus I haven't seen too much of it yet. So basically, if I were to give myself an income of around 400-500 a month, I'm still 200 short as far as the rent goes, and I'm still consistently paying off shit from my AMX card (Vegas trip, other day-to-day living purchases) so I suppose that's why I've been digging myself into a hole. Man, I really thought I was working everything off, making around 600 a month, taking out 400 for rent and internet, so that should leave 200 for everything else (food maybe adds up to 100 a month) so that should leave another 100 on top of that. But it's all this other shit that I gotta pay for, fucking parking permit, books (not that bad this quarter but it all adds up), Apollo's stuff (leash that broke, flea collar, bottle of shampoo)... all this stuff just keeps on coming and somehow I keep ending up in the hole. You know what I think that means? I NEED to start working that cash operation again. As much as I try to not think about it and not do it (limiting myself to like $10-20 if I even do it at all) I seem to need to do it. Money pisses me off.

Aha, but thinking of money reminds me of a $100 purchase that I had to make: registration for ASI's intramurals dodgeball team. Manager's meeting is this Monday night, and I'm totally psyched and ready to play! Too bad it won't start until week 3 (so 2 more weeks) but it will be lots of fun. Greg and I have so far recruited (as far as girls go) a friend of his, a friend of mine, and another girl that we both met in my billiards class. Hopefully we'll get more, I'm going to make an announcement this week at Ambassadors meeting and maybe more girls will want to play - Lisa said that she might be able to play some weeks if her labs aren't meeting. We'll grab guys when the time comes, that shouldn't be a problem.

Others things that are still floating around on my mind I will mention (give a bullet) but I will not go into detail on them because it will just add more stress.

- EE Fee Committee
- Senior Project
- Job Fair
- Resume
- Car's Air Intake Filter
- Saving up money for Christmas and possibly Vegas
- Apollo's itchiness
- Housing issues when 2007 rolls around

So as you can see there's a lot of stuff that I really wish I could just put off and not worry about... and some of those things I really actually can, it's just that I SHOULD be starting on them right now, but I haven't snapped out of the "summer" mode yet.

- My Fantastic Week-Long Drinking Bender -
Okay so it's not exactly as it sounds, but that's just what I call it. This first week of my last year here at Cal Poly started out as just a joke (with respect to the drinking aspect) but soon turned into a semi-commitment. Here's how it broke down:

Monday: Greg and I were at work, and apparently some of his friends came in and hung out with us during Pizza Bowl. They brought him a couple Sparks, and Greg gave one to me. It was 6.7% by content, and I got a slight buzz off of it but nothing big.

Tuesday: Dan calls me up out of no where, asking if I wanted to go to dinner with him and Kristin for Chelsea's birthday. We went to Shin's for sushi, and I was basically handed beer and sake, and had to participate in the festivities. I got quite a good buzz going (as I put it to Dan, we both felt "lag" or "low fps"). This was when I came up with, as a joke in the beginning, of getting drunk (well, more like just SOME alcohol into my body) every day of the week. It sounded funny, but I wasn't committed to the idea as of yet.

Wednesday: Work once again, except this time I had a small break between pool class and work, and I was extremely bored. I said to myself, what the heck... and so I went to 7/11 and got another alcoholic/energy drink. Drank that, felt a slight buzz, and considered that good enough to continue.

Thursday: Talks of originally heading to Cliff's for happy hour with taco bar completely fell through, when Dan was speaking out his 2nd asshole and had everyone's schedule figured out wrong. So Andrew and I were disappointed, but we eventually decided (later that night) to drink and see where it takes us. I went to Chris' where Andrew was and picked up a 22 oz of MGD on the way. After hanging out for about an hour we decided to go downtown, and we drank at Downtown Brew's. I got pretty faded, and spent the night on Chris' couch using Mike's comforter.

Friday: After the Ambassador retreat, of which I was disappointed that I wasn't able to go to Ryan's house where a good number of ambassadors and friends would be there, but at the same time I was excited because this was the night Greg and I had planned for a while. I went to this house from the retreat and dropped off my car, and we went to the store to pick up Sparks and a 12 pack of MGDs. I got pretty drunk at work, Greg was driving so he didn't as much, and we had to go pick up his girl at this house party. After that Greg dropped me off back at his house, and I passed out on his couch.

Saturday: I was pretty tired after a whole day of Ambassador related things, but I had yet to see James, Darien, and Melissa who were apparently in town. I finally got up and met them at Downtown Brew, where a bunch of people had actually came back to town to visit. Chris was in town with his g/f Grace, Huy drove back from Arizona, Phung was there, Darien had come down from Cisco, James had come down from up north, and Melissa was obviously in town but I haven't seen her since June. It was cool, and I had a couple beers but I was the driver and drove Andrew back to Mike's where we hung out for a while and then I drove him home before I walked into my door at home at about 3:30AM.

Sunday: 6 hours of work yet again, I feel like I never have fucking weekends anymore because of work. But I fucking need $$$. It's the last day of this week long adventure, but I won't even be home till 5. I'll have a beer or 2 to help me pass out tonight when I attempt to go to bed, thus completing this alcoholic quest.

Fat Fat Fatty

The first time I was told I was gaining some weight was probably the summer before last, when I was back home in Vacaville and next door at Anthony's house. His dad said something to the extent of "you've gained some weight there" at the time. I hadn't thought much of it and really, up until then I've had the image cross my mind of myself getting out of shape and fat.

To summarize it, basically it all started probably as soon as I got to college. No more track, no more PE classes - no more "regulated" or "forced" exercise. Not to mention no one else to play DDR with me (and I had lost some interest). Best case scenario I was stagnant due to the walking back and forth on campus up the hills but counter-balanced by all the junk that I was eating at school (and no Mom there to force me to eat the veggies that gets replaced by more junk food otherwise).

But then I think I took a positive step the first 2 summers in which I returned to Vacaville to work at the pool supply store. Especially the 2nd (last summer ever) that I worked there, because I remember working hard, long, 8+ hour days where I would spend my lunch break sleeping in the office or munching on Gordettos to ease my appitite. I'm pretty sure that summer I lost a good 5-10 pounds due to work.

However, once I moved into the Johnson house is where I think things started to take a turn for the worst. First, I turned 21 so the bars now added a good amount of extra alcohol to my diet. I suppose I just continued to eat junk and not balance my diet, coupled with more and more lack of exercise. It continued for about 2 years up to now, where I ate whenever I wanted to and the summe time I worked at a place that bored me to hell and didn't keep me busy (or on my feet). This summer especially, I've just eaten when I wanted to and whatever I wanted, late at night before going to bed as well. I've noticed that I've had trouble squeezing into some pants and my shirts are becoming tighter. Just as importantly, I'm completely out of shape physically and strength wise. I can't keep up at all on DDR, and just looking at myself in the mirror I look like a wreck. I can't lift weight as well as I used to, and I can't even do 20 push-ups without struggling.

I don't know how much I weigh, but I'll know tomorrow after I buy a bathroom scale. The plan is this (and I've started already):

1.) DIET: has be changed completely. I can and will only eat between the hours of 5PM and 12AM. I will try to make my own discretion at what I'm allowed to eat and what I'm not allowed. Water will be the beverage of choice, not sodas or even Gatorade. The main emphasis of this diet is to kill my appetite and cravings to eat/snack - with cutting how much is going into my body only a side note.

2.) TRAINING: the parts of my upper body that I will focus on first will be my chest and arms. Push-ups daily (as long as they're not worn out from the previous day) to build up to a regime of about 40 push-ups without getting too tired. I will also work out my biceps until I am able to lift the dumb-bell set that I have here with all the weights on it at 20 reps per set, 3 sets a day. I really want to phase in my abs into the routine but I don't know what I want to do with that... it's so disgusting to look at myself (and in the past these excercises have never produced quick results) but I need to at least get myself back into shape so that I can do sit-ups with ease and not stress myself.

3.) EXERCISE: I have always hated cardio, and will continue to hate it for the rest of my life, but I will have to do it to help lose weight and to get back into shape. I'm trying to figure out ways around it, mainly DDR (hopefully) and even jumping rope. I wonder how treadmills will feel and what kind of results, but I don't want to drag my ass to the gym.

We'll see how long I am able to keep all this up... my goal will be all the way until I go back home for Thanksgiving at least, and hopefully all the way through to Christmas.

Las Vegas 2006

Wednesday - 8/30/06

So there was something of a water management crisis at work (in fact the whole Cal Poly campus) so I ended up not even having to go to work. At about 5 o'clock the guys called to tell me that we were going to Cliff's before we took off, so I showered and packed, then headed over. We went to Cliff's (close to Pismo Beach) for happy hour which included a free taco bar and we all had a drink. Then we drove the 1/2 hour or so to Santa Maria, parked, and got on the plane. It was weird, they had us walk on the runway area a bit and get on the relatively small charter plane. We got to Vegas at about 9:45, and took a shuttle to the hotel (of which Jeff kept us entertained by his spam e-mails that he received on his phone regarding Viagra). By the time we were fully checked in at Paris and got ready to go gambling, it was about 11 to 11:30. So we walked around for a while and checked out all the tables, before finally settling down at the Pai Gow Poker tables, where a nice lady named Jeanette taught us all the rules. I had an amazing night, and the game itself progresses relatively slowly because of the high probability of pushing with the dealer, but I lost most of the small hands and won my big bet ones. Then the bonus finally hit it pretty big for me, when a new dealer settled down and I jokingly asked for 5 aces. I picked up my hand and saw that there were 3 of them, plus the Joker - 4 aces, the bonus payed 25-1. I had a $5 chip there, thus I yielded a $125 big hand. By the end of the night, Dan was up about $150 and I was up $333 exactly. We ended the night around 4 or 4:30.

Thursday - 8/31/06

We got up around 11 or so, and went downstairs to have lunch at a very good restaurant inside Paris. After that we started gambling again, and the Pai Gow tables pulled a 180 on me, and started taking ALL my winnings. I lost $200 in a couple of hours, and had to grab more cash from the hotel room. We then decided to walk the strip a little and find the Blackjack Switch game that was supposed to produce positive results and seemed fun. We finally found it at Casino Royale (I found out yesterday that that's where Andrew stayed when he was there a week ago) and Jeff, Brian, and I threw down money. But within 10 minutes, Brian had lost $50, I had lost $100, and Jeff $200... the table was wack, the dealer never busted once, hit 2 or 3 blackjacks, and there were so many low cards floating around. On one of my hands, I hit until I had SEVEN cards and had a total of: 19. It was amazing, but I still lost the fricking hand. We walked around a bit more after that, and watched Jeff win a huge craps hand. I lost the rest of my winnings at the roulette table, and we decided to walk back. We stopped off at Margaritaville and had some drinks and a snack, before finally going back to Paris again and continued gambling. The same dealers were at Pai Gow, and I should've known that was a bad sign. A couple hours later, and a couple hundred dollars were gone again. I had the last $100 that I came to Vegas with me left, and we started getting ready to go to the VooDoo Lounge, of which we received VIP passes from Som who did all of our reward card things the night before.

We took the shuttle over there, Jeff and Dan had some food, before going up 51 floors to the lounge. The passes saved us $20 each, which should've hinted that the drinks were going to be porportional to that heavy cover charge that we got away with. After a $50+ round of drinks, we were debating leaving the great view from the outside deck. We eventually left, by about 10:30 there still wasn't much people there at all. But at the shuttle area, Brian and Jeff said they were going back up, so D and I headed back to Paris and continued to play Pai Gow.


I took my time, playing the absolute minimum and sitting out like 2/3 of the hands. I did that so I could sit there and order drink after drink after drink. D eventually lost all his money, and I lost my $100 but we got drunk off our ass. Jeanette even came over a couple of times to say hello, and we got the pit-boss Rolan to take the picture for us. We headed back up to the hotel at approximately 4-4:30, and Dan dove into the mini-bar's cashews, managed to break the top off the glass jar, but it was all well before I ran to the bathroom to throw up. Brian and Jeff came back eventually by 5 or so.

Friday - 9/1/06

I felt like shit, and we sat in the room after packing up until 1 o'clock to get our full money's worth of that hotel room. I almost left my passport in that room were it not for Brian asking to see the plane itinerary. We went back to the restaurant that we dined at yesterday (and the same one that Brian and Jeff stopped off at 5 in the morning for food). I was still feeling sickly and didn't eat that much. The boys gambled a bit more, as I watched and eventually went to take out some money to buy souviners and to pay for taxi, etc. But not before I won $30 at the Pai Gow Tiles table with Jeff. We got our bags at about 3:30-4 and headed off to the airport. Jeff's plane to Alaska took off about an hour first, and after seeing him off we went around to various small shops and bought some candy and small things. I sat at the slot machines before we got on the plane, and spent about $30 with nothing spectacular coming out of it. The plane ride home was annoying, the speakers were loud as hell and they announced every fucking thing. Finally back in Santa Maria, where we proceeded to wait 15 minutes at baggage claim before finally getting in the car and coming home.

I spent pretty much what I planned to spend at Vegas, and had a great time. I want to go again...

Rock And Roll (Could Never Hip Hop Like This) Part 2



- (feat. DJ Q-bert, Grand Wizard Theodore, Jazzy Jay, Lord Finesse, Mike Shinoda, Rahzel & Chester Bennington) / Knockers (feat. Tim Meadows)
- Artist: Handsome Boy Modeling School
- Album: White People

I can't believe I'm actually posting at work, but I had to. First I was still looking up clips of the brand new Linkin Park song "QWERTY" (or maybe the nickname for now) from the Summer Sonic tour in Japan recently. I came across this clip, of which I don't think the video actually matches the actual song, because the quality of the audio is obviously too good and there's no crowd noise, and of course the words don't match Chester's lips. However, the song is badass and from what others have said, is only a part of the 7 minute 16 seconds full version of the song. Either way, I love it and hope to download the full song to hear the part where Mike sings. I have managed to find/teach myself how to:

1.) Save videos off of YouTube. HARD WAY: Clear your temporary internet files and then downloading the clip from YouTube, and copy + pasting it onto the desktop. EASY WAY: Here is the link: http://keepvid.com/

2.) Convert various video files to the desired format. This came about when I was trying to figure out the new "FLV" file format into WMV or MPEG, but I found the software that allows me to go straight from that file type (to WMV or MPEG if I wanted to) directly to MP3s. Replay Converter: http://www.replay-video.com/

I'm going to make a ringtone from the MP3 that I ripped of the above video. This song is so sick, and I can't wait for Linkin Park's new album... and go see them in concert... a couple of times.

Obsession

So I've always been a pretty big computer enthusiast as far as the aesthetics go and basically making it all look "cool". I'll have to admit that there's something about the glowing blue lights that draws me to it in a similar way that bugs/moths are drawn to flourescent lighting or something... except I don't think I'll ever die from these blue lights. Then again my wallet has always been the one to take the (big) hit as far as these lights go, and the latest addition is...

105 Key Deck Legend

So yeah, I finally gave in and dropped the money for it. I've owned I think 2 different light-up keyboards in the past, both were pretty shitty. The first one worked okay, but eventually crapped out I think. The 2nd one had incredibly horrible keys which stuck due to my holding of the shift key (among others) for SoF2 and that was the end of that. Oh that's right, I had a 3rd... of which had the shortest lifespan of all. That one was a piece of crap, had so many buttons on it I didn't know what to do with, I think I just got tired of that one or something. But anyways, this keyboard has a very original, clicky feel to it - a classical keyboard feel I suppose is the best way to put it. It definetly has the sound effects to it as well, and has a real nice "bouncy" feel to it once you strike the keys. It doesn't require a lot of pressure at all, but I'm still getting used to it after using the Viewsonic keyboard last and it had the laptop keyboard feeling and very low profile - plus the keys on that were a bit closer together so sometimes when I'm playing DoTA I can't reach the keys immediately and have to look down to hit what I want, especially the ESC key. The light is brilliant and looks absolutely great, but I haven't used any of the adjustable levels of light as of yet (it's either at max or turned off). I know that I'll be missing the extra USB ports that the Viewsonic ones offered, as well as the instant mute button, the volume up/down button, and the instant power off button. Hmm... did I make the right choice in buying this one? I think part of the reason was that my desires and wants got to the best of me. I definetly didn't "need" something like this, and I don't have THAT much money to be throwing around, but I had saved up some so I guess I just gave in and bought myself the top of the line item and can brag about it or something. Let's just hope this lives up to what it costs me. How much did it cost? Let's just say that it was above $150 and below $200. And no, I didn't forget the decimal point and that is indeed one hundred & fifty and two hundred.

I am definetly not in the mood for typing right now. It's getting late enough, and Apollo is asleep on my bed. But Will is sitting there on his computer doing shit and had just spend the last 5 minutes on the phone, and the light for the room is turned on very brightly. This is not the mood for typing, nope.

After work last night I went to Brian's and we played beer pong for a good amount of time and just hung out before we headed downtown. We took 2 cars to get there, and drank a bit in front of what some claim to be a "church" that was off of Marsh. We headed to Downtown Brew where we got drinks upstairs and just hung out. Some people went dancing downstairs, and we spend most of the night there. I recall visiting Mission at one point but it was dead so we basically went in and out. Returning to DB we stayed there till last call, before we finally left. Brian, Katie and I visited Tio Alberto's and got some food, before we made our way back to the church where everyone met back up. Steve and Val took off walking for some reason, as did Brian and Katie before Keon decided he was sober enough to drive us all home, first dropping off Alex and a side detour to Taco Bell. We managed to pick up Val and Steve on our way home, and after we were dropped off I got in my car and swung back to pick up Brian and Katie. I spent the night there, before waking up the next morning to come home to clean up and head off to work.

This summer's boring.

Eureka!

I think I've figured it out! It came to me as I was scooping out dog food for Apollo about 5 minutes ago, I guess I just thought about it enough and it clicked. So exactly did I figure out? I've figured out the follow predicament:

Why I have been single for so long? Let's see if I can't put what clicked in my head down into words. I'm pretty sure the whole root of the problem is a combination of two different aspects of my mentality towards dating... correction, not dating, but the whole process of getting a girlfriend. Lets start with the first "problem" and defective portion of my mentality that probably set me back so far that I was never able to get myself back in the game.

What is that defectiveness or bad judgement you ask? I set my goals WAY too high. Sure, any stereotypical guy probably has the innate sense of wanting to out-do his fellow man (competition) by obtaining the trophy wife/girlfriend/mate. That thought/instinct coupled with my oddly peculiar taste of nothing short of a very pretty face, skinny body brunette deemed acceptable took me out of the game probably all throughout high school and the first couple years of college. Yes we all want our "dream girl" and we see a couple of those cuties here and there, but the guys who have girlfriends at this very moment probably at one time realized and said to himself "hey, that's not gonna happen to/for me!" and moved on. I didn't come to that conclusion until only a few years ago... much to my dissappointment as the dream faded away. But we can all still dream right?

Okay, so I've gotten past problem #1 and I've realized that I kind of need to set the bar a whole notch lower and accept all those girls out there that are probably just as beautiful on the inside while still fairly pretty on the outside. The reason behind lowering the bar? Haha, the problem's been with yourself the whole time... ME! Not so much a problem as the ignorance of realizing that while as great as I may be (from what many others have told me), I'm not up to their level and don't exactly have that initial *sparkle* in my eyes to catch their attention or any specialty (i.e. being a celebrity, having a ton of cash, being a superstar athelete, etc.) to GET any of those girls.

Once again, we take a step back and go "okay, okay, okay.... I'm not that great and don't posess the characteristics to be able to snag that girl of my dreams (at least not without anything less than a miracle)." Now what? problem #2! It is too late and I've missed the boat! All others, the ones that I could've had a chance had I been barking up that tree from day #1 have been scooped up. I came to this realization around the 2nd or 3rd year of college, at which point I started "waiting out" a couple of those girls - and to this date, all to no avail.

So what do I do now? Let's take a look: I've realized what I have to offer, realized what I am capable of picking up, so where/how do I go about doing that? This is what I pose as problem #3. Sitting on the brink of graduation within this last schoolyear, I'm soon to be shipped off to the real world within the work industry. This further removes me from the prime place of obtaining a female companion that is college, of which I've wasted all 5 years. Where do I go, what do I do, how do I do it, and when do I find out if I've done it??? This problem #3 seems to be what I'm about to face (pretty soon) but for now I'm stagnant. I'm stuck, and I can't seem to do too much except wait it out and take this waiting period as a sort of punishment for being so naive in the past...

... how did I become so naive? I've missed the boat, and now I'm slowing drowning.

A Mid-Summer Night's Post

So it isn't exactly the middle of "summer", and it's not exactly night right now (more like early-early-early morning), but nevertheless I'm writing a post for one reason or another. Kara asked me the other night when we were talking why I posted so late, and I just told her that I write when the mood strikes me. I don't know why the mood strikes me at such a time during the day, when practically 99.9% of the people in this town are probably asleep. I guess that's why... the solitude of having this blinking cursor in front of me whilst sitting in this room lit only by the brightness of my computer monitor - engulfed in the darkness that wants to swallow me up, but the light and "click-clack" sounds that my keyboard makes pushes it back.

So how's this summer going? Well, whenever I run into people and they ask me "how's your summer going?" I have to give them an answer. But I think I've just come up with the most accurate answer just now, and that is: this summer has been fair. What does "fair" mean? Well, that means it's been pretty much what I've expected, with nothing out of the ordinary that makes me exclaim that it's been good nor bad, neither exciting or boring. I've worked a good amount, but that was to be expected, as I need to save up some cash as well as pay off some bills and buy myself some things. It's been pretty relaxing there, just hanging out and getting paid... even the Saturday night that I had to work along by myself wasn't the worst it's been. I can't complain about my shifts so far.

Other than that, I can probably list everything else I've done on 1 hand. I've gone to Pint Night with Derek and Julian at Downtown Brew once, and watched the World Cup there once too (at 7 AM mind you, for "kegs and eggs"). That was a blast. Then I've basically hung out at home with my dear pup, something I didn't get to do as much when school was in session. It just feels good to not have to worry about any academic obligations when I go to bed at night, but rather just what time I have to wake up to get to work by. I want to go to beach, Will's already taken Apollo once. I've gotten my car washed... finally. Wow that's one of the exciting things I've done this summer? Pathetic. Hunter, Jeff, D, and Brian are around this summer, I'll definetly be hanging out with those guys sooner or later - especially after Brian gets back into town.

I think I've figured out why the "mood" strikes me to write this late at night... it's more of just when I actually feel tired that I feel like writing, because I've noticed that right before I fall asleep (or as I attempt to fall asleep in bed), my brain kind of goes into a pre-dream mode where things and ideas still sort of make practical sense in my head. The only thing about it is, while these thoughts and ideas formulate in my head and I'm conscious of it (thus able to remember it), the next morning when I think back on those exact things, I realize how rediculous, far-stretched, or un-practical those ideas turned out to be! Thus I've come to the conclusion and have to constantly remind myself that whatever I think about while lying in bed, despite how awake or conscious I feel myself to be still, can't be put into action until the next morning after I wake up and can think with a clear, rested mind. I have yet to prove my own theory wrong (in other words, acted on a thought I had formulated before I fell asleep and have it turn out correctly or the way I intended it to). I know all this seems to jumble together, and maybe I'm in that state right now, but it makes sense to me, and I've thought about this during daytime too. So it's kind of like this: while I may be in that slightly unconscious, unrational state while I write this, it's simply a repeat of something I have formulated under stable conditions regarding such a state - therefore it is valid. Wow, isn't this fun? This really IS "subconscious" rambling, hence the title of my blog...

... b e d t i m e.

Only After 3AM is allowed...

...at least it seems that way. My sleep routine over the last few days have been pretty screwed up, I seem to be eating dinner around 7 o'clock or so, and then sleeping from sometime after that till anywhere between 10 to 11. That is why I've been up so late recently I guess.

The days continue to go by one by one, and I'm just working off each one of those things on my list that I posted a couple of days ago, item by item. I'll make it, I'm pretty sure I will.

Tomorrow should be interesting. I get to crossat least a couple of things of things off of the list, as well as... well, let's not get our hopes up as of yet - I tend to do that a whole hell of a lot. Set myself up just to fall, but one of these days it should work out, right?

The Red Umbrella



It ceases to amaze me how the billions of people in this world can go on, day after day, carrying on in the same old repetitive manner without ever noticing another individual that they may pass by. We carry on in our own lives that seems to differ only in what shirt we are wearing, how our backpacks are slung on our shoulders, and the degree of tilt in our head as we walk. And as we walk, we never seem to even take into account the existence of this other individual who, is there the whole time in their own reality and sense of existence in this world - living day after day in an identical fashion to us, yet it seems we are so far apart. But that continues, until one day in which we come into contact with each other - through an interaction, some kind of event, that triggers a chain reaction. What used to be a split screen of two different camera angles of the two individuals passing by without acknowledgement - without ever possibly knowing that they have perceived the same feelings and thoughts of things and/or people in this world that seems like a canvas for us to draw on. And those two cameras finally converge one day through that fateful event, in which they finally interact with each other and the two realities of monotonous daily routines suddenly find themselves combined. Combined so that one camera angle is needed to tell the story, the story in which will now continue to be written by those two people together.

And I wonder... will that day ever come in which I stop writing this story by myself?

Will I ever be able to turn my head in the other angle, to be able to catch and see that other person across the street or behind that door, in which I have missed my whole life? When will the event come along in which our cameras merge into one, and that other person completes "the other 1/2 of the heart"?

All I want to do is hold the red umbrella for someone...

May Update:

So I suppose I should get this month's done before we get a repeat of what happened last month. This previous weekend was an eventful one... starting with Friday. Friday afternoon I stayed on campus a bit longer to bowl with Julian, Lisa, and Ryan. Then later that night I went to help out at the Engineer's Awards Banquet... it was pretty cool, getting dressed up and seeing how nicely decorated everything was within Embassy Suites. Then after I got done at that event around 9:00, I went home and Dan met up with me to go pick up some alcohol before proceeding to Andrew's where we drank and played Behrut. Dan and I were on a team and we went 1 - 1, beating Andrew/Joe but losing to Andrew/James. Then after those games around midnight we headed over to Cash's house which was on the same street, about 4-5 blocks down. There I saw Elyse and Patrick, of which we then proceeded to take a couple of "All Ambassadors" shots. We drank some more and hung out for a while... maybe an hour, I'm not sure. I was pretty wasted by then. The last shot I took before we left sat really badly, but I managed to hold back the vomit for the rest of the night. I promptly passed out on their couch, woke up the next morning around 11 and came home.

Saturday night I had to work... pretty boring and nothing interesting happened. Sunday we were supposed to go shooting at the rifles range but the rain itself woke me up in the morning, and so that was cancelled. However, not wanting to waste a weekend in which Erik came to visit, we went and saw Mission Impossible 3. And by "went" I mean we drove all the way to Santa Maria (30 minutes each way) to go to a better theater. The movie was actually very good, much better than the first 2 in my opinion. There was plenty of action, the storyline wasn't as hard to follow (complete opposite from the 1st movie), and the overall ending to the movie was satisfactory.

So what else is coming up in the next few weeks? Well, we're sitting on Week #9 right now. Here is a list of things that I have yet to do, in some sort of order from things that will occur tomorrow and onward:

• Last EE Fee Committee Meeting of the year
• EE 406 Midterm #2
• 4 day work marathon
• a ton of lab reports to grade
• Final/Formal Lab report write-up for EE 455
• EE 425 Midterm #2
• Last Engineering Ambassadors Meeting of the year
• work with groups on SMT machine
• Engineering Ambassadors Social
• Melissa's going away party
• Jennie's graduation party
• EE 425 take home Final
• EE 406 Final
• MU 221 Final
• Leo's Graduation

It seems like a lot of things to take care of, but that's the way life is and it'll make it go by faster. I'll be crossing those things off one by one as they come along each day until it is summer....

.... until it is summer and until then, I'll be (day)dreaming about how promising today was. It's a bit of a fixation - but that's just my personality. Besides, it's never turned out the (10 millions times I've imagined it in my head) way I imagine it would happen in real life..................

...................... at least not yet. I look to change that this time.

April 2006...

... seemed non-existent here on my blog. When in fact, it was quite the opposite. So much went on, that it seemed to have enveloped itself into its own parallel universe or separate dimension altogether, thus its absence. Well, a pretty big part of it had to do with my own lagging and laziness. Quite often I have been clicking around aimlessly (but not without AIM running, haha... sorry about the pun) at other people's blogs, reading their daily entries and thinking about mine, only to put it off to the side because my mood at the time didn't quite strike me as one worth blogging. Either way, I'm doing it now - finally - so just shut up and listen (or read).

First and foremost, there is always and of course school. I'm quite sick of it, but before you know it, it is already week #7 of this Spring '06 quarter. So I guess I'll just skip by all of the introduction and how I think this class will end up turning out and just describe the damn classes already.

EE 425 (Analog Filter Design): So I take this class because I figured that being able to get all the old material (exams, homeworks, special problems) from Hasan when he took the class 1 year ago (which by the way isn't that long ago, seeing as how the class is offered only once a year) I should be set... and further set with the fact that Elijah is also taking the test. Dr. Corcoran also recommended the class, so I said what the heck... it'll go towards my electronics concentration. Well thus far, we've had 1 exam of which I got one of the lower grades out of the whole class (average was about an 80, I got a 71) but I really didn't do that bad considering it was 1 problem that basically killed me. The class itself if quite the joke, I don't pay too much attention in class when Granneman is lecturing (even while sitting in the front) but I do make an effort on the homework problems - well I kinda have to, I don't have any solutions. But then again, the homework is graded AMONG OURSELVES... Elijah and I trade papers and we've given each other perfects on the homeworks every time. I've actually managed to do okay on the homeworks, figuring stuff out. I guess I just have to keep up on it... the class isn't 1/2 bad.

EE 455 (Analog Filter Design Lab): So the lab for this course I'm partnered with of course, Elijah... which is actually pretty good because he knows his way around the labs. Usually he sets up the circuits (after helping him troubleshoot random problems such as the power not being turned on, bad chips, bad proto boards, ect) and I set up all the data acquring (Excel, plots, Microcap, etc.). We've been doing quite okay on the last few labs... and the best part is that we don't have to do any lab writeups! Granneman is going to have us do 1 (one) lab write-up at the very end, and as formal as it can be... it will be on one of the labs we have gone through. It should be cake.

EE 406 (Power Systems I): The class itself is huge, due to the fact that Taufik is teaching it and everyone jocks Taufik. He's a good lecturer, but I oftentimes find myself wandering off in class, because having his lecture notes printed out in front of you to follow along with gets boring sometimes, especially when he attemps to go over the math of the whole example to the whole class. Every week it seems like we have a quiz, which forces me to keep up with at least SOME of the material, and the 1 midterm that we've taken so far I did okay on. Class average was a 39/50 or something and I got a 40/50. It should've been better I think... but as with all good professors whom you learn a great deal from - they write hard tests to challenge you. The quizzes I haven't been doing fabulous, but the last one I did get a 100% on. We'll see where this goes.

MU 221 (Jazz Styles): For a class that I'm taking credit no credit, I've really kinda put in a lot of work. The only real lacking that I can figure out that I've been getting away with is the attendence. We've already taken the 2 midterms, I did okay on the first one and haven't gotten the 2nd one back yet. I still have to go to a concert review (probably this upcoming Saturday night) and write a stupid paper that's due this Wednesday. Seems like a lot of work, I know... but as long as I do enough work to earn me a "C" in the class I'll get credit and not affect my gpa.

IME 457 (TA for Advanced Electronic Manufacturing): So I'm taking this class to basically learn more and more about the surface mount machine (how to program it) in order to utilize it for my own senior project when the time comes. So far I've had pretty good success, learning how to load the feeders, the overall programming system, etc. Now I've just got to get some kinks out of it and start playing with the other load methods (super-strips, tray loads, etc.) and I should be golden. I've also messed with the solder-paste machine a bit, although I don't think I'll make too much use of that for my senior project because I won't ever need to mass product anything and a stencil will be too expensive for 1 project. Hopefully I can get some demos done for this to show off.

So enough about the boring school shit... I was over this quarter (academics) around week 2. I suppose that would also have to be about the same time that I took over a week off from school, haha. So due to Taiwan tradition, I'm supposed to go back to Taiwan and formally bury Dad into his family tree's temple right around the 6 month mark after his passing away. That's the main reason why I went back there, but that wasn't all. I left on April 6th, and returned on April 16th. What did I do the whole time I was back there? A number of things... I won't describe everything, but I'll try to at least list it in order... here goes: Arrived in Taiwan, went with Mom and Uncle Paul and Grandma up to see Grandpa's grave temple, then went back with Uncle Paul and my little cousin Ja-Ja to their house, went to their town's traditional night market, went to the (golf) driving ranges with Uncle Paul, went and saw Mei-Jing and Aunt to have lunch, went and had dinner with Mom and Godmom Barbara, went and did Dad's funeral procession thing, went to the biggest night market (Shi-Ling), went and got my teeth cleaned, had dinner with Mom at Ann's work and found out more about Dad's life, had dinner with Aunt Julia and Uncle and Johnson, went to dinner with Godmom Barbara and saw the night market of Dan-Shui, spent the night at Barbara's house, went to lunch with Godmom Barbara and Starbucks, played Mah-Jongg with Ander and Ann's boyfriend and friends (won), and finally went to Spring Love '06 Concert with cousin Ander, ate breakfast at a 7-11 at 4:30 in the morning, had lunch with mom's oldest sister (Aunt and Uncle), before finally having a giant fiasco at the airport - getting delayed by about 4 hours and finally making it onto the plane. Got back to America, went back to Vacaville after Will picked me up, washed Apollo free of fleas and ticks that have infested our house, then finally driving back to SLO at 1AM and getting pulled over by the cops only to realize that we've just been "speed checked".

Aside from all that, it was overall a very cool trip and experience. Only thing that sucked about it was the fact that I had tons of stuff to make up for (1 midterm and some homework and a lab) and academics were just piled on when I first returned. I don't even want to think about that right now, I'm just glad that was over.

I've been getting myself into a good amount of stuff and seem to be setting myself up for a lot of... "work" next school year. Granted that I'll be almost graduating, but I've seemed to be involved in a few other things.

1. EE Fee Committee
2. Cal Poly Billiards Club

These two new things will definetly take up a bit of time, but I guess not THAT much time, next year. The fee committee doesn't meet that often, plus I'll probably run for webmaster and just clean up the website over the summer if I get granted access. The Billiards Club might be a bit more... as I will probably end up being Vice-President and have to deal with WOW, Open House, t-shirts, assisting with the scheduling of league and tournament play, etc. All those things, on top of Engineering Ambassadors, Work, Senior Project, and the regular to extra heavy dose of classes towards my double concentration in EE and philosophy minor will be a handful.

What else... rent's gone up to $650 starting in June... the fucking bastard. I've never liked the guy from the get-go, but moving is a bitch, so we'll see what happens. All the computer things have arrived (sheesh, it has arrived for quite a while now) but I've been so lazy I haven't fucked with any of it. I might end up waiting until like the summer before I mess with it... this weekend was supposed to be some prime computer working times, but I seem to be somewhat sick with a sore-throat and I just decided to be a bum most of the weekend, so there goes that plan out the window.

Will continues to be a bum here, playing WOW 24/7 and stopping only to eat (and must watch something on TV or his computer at the same time, sometimes the latter induces the former btw) or to go running. He does nothing else. Hopefully he'll get called in to start training and work soon... Stevie said he's going to hire Will, and I also got a raise (of 22 cents each hour! let the money roll in!) I don't know what I'm going to do with him, but I need to do something as far as the academics go.

Apollo's fine... we've just had a recent outbreak in fleas/ticks for a while and hopefully that'll be over soon. He's doing just the same, hanging out all day long and playing, sleeping, eating...

Dean's List

It took me 12 quarters here at Cal Poly, but I finally did it. I managed to pull off a 3.5 GPA for the Winter 2006 quarter, making it onto the Dean's List. It was quite exciting and highly anticipated... here's how it all broke down.

ENGL 149: This was perhaps the most surprising and disappointing... then again it set me up for the big excitement. Anyways, I was expecting to get a 100% in the class from Day 1, when I heard from Brian how easy Professor Rheingans was... and how relaxed she was in class. All the quizzes we took totally held me back, being as how I fucked up most of them... worth 10% of the grade I think. Project 1: 100%, Project 2: 100%, Project 3: 70%?!?!?! Yeah, that screwed it up... all because I wanted to screw Hasan over for not doing SHIT in his part of the project. Midterm: 100%, Presentation: 100%. I wonder what I got on that final paper... oh well. Final Grade: B+

EE 409: Okay, so her class is pretty fucked up. 1 quiz, 1 attendance, 1 midterm, and 1 final = your whole damn grade. A total of 13 problems combined that accounted for all the points... talk about BS. The whole class would've been easy, but I fucked up on the first midterm (lots of details here, basically she decided to change everything up on us and not give a test similar to what we had up our sleeves, and that just fucked us up). Haha, there was the whole incident of Andrew's transmittal to Arakaki's e-mail of our copy of the old final... good thing we had that thing, because the actual final had about 2 (out of 7) of them on it verbatim. I thought I did okay on the rest of it, and hoped that she would curve the class. I guess I either screwed up more than I thought I did or she didn't curve it as much. Final Grade: B-

EE 449: This one was a no brainer, Brian/Chase/I killed those labs and lab reports (all but 1) and averaged like 96% on all the reports, plus my notebook was spectacular. Final Grade: A

EE 442: Adam's a godsend. After Adam took the lab final, he basically came out and told me exactly what I had to do step by step on the final. I went in and took it... fudged some numbers around but I got the overall idea of it. We did okay on the lab reports, I think we averaged like a 8.5/10 on them... which I think was what brought my grade down a bit. Either way, I did okay. Final Grade: A-

EE 460: This time we get to thank Andrew for hooking it up after his section took the test before mine did. I definetly got at least 1/2 of the final right, on the forming/storming/norming/performing/adjouring part... but the "iterative something" I would've fudged, had Andrew not told me about it. Then there was that gay little evaluation test which we don't even know if it played anything into our grade. Final Grade: A

EE 402: Okay, so at this piont in time, I'm sporting a 3.2 GPA with the grades already given. But for one reason or another, 402 grades were not posted on Wednesday all day. I calculated and figured out that nothing short of an A in this 4 unit class will bump me up to a 3.5 MAXIMUM. Therefore, there was no room (+/-) to spare at all. I did great on the first midterm (90, should've been 93 or more had I not forgotten units and screwed up on signs) and above average on the second (66, class average was a 55 and this should've easily been a 80 test but time came into play and I also had a couple tiny concepts wrong). Obviously almost a 100% on the homework, and I studied pretty hard for this test. My 1 sheet of notes was fantastic... I had little compartments and whatnot on it, and I fit EVERYTHING from sheet #1 and #2 onto there, rewrote EVERYTHING. The final was 11 problems, of which 7 of them I had little to no problems with. There was the Smith Chart problem where I didn't have a TI-89 calculator to convert phasors to rectangular forms for me, but I managed to figure out ONE set of conversions, and basically took the assumption for the following section to be correct (doing it with the actual Chart) and just fudged a number that yielded 2% error, heheh. Then there was the reverse Smith Chart problem, of which I just kinda screwed around a bit but ended up I think getting the general principle of it right. The antenna problem I BS'ed my way through via the notes I had on my sheet. Lastly, there was a perfect conductor problem which we had to solve for the current density (Js) which I did NOT know how to even start... so it was turned in blank. Nevertheless, Thursday morning when I expected the grades to be posted, I was finally able to put all the dreams I had (and I really did have dreams where I dreamt that I had gotten the A in that class, only to wake up and go "fuck that was a dream") into reality and scream "YESSSS!!!" when I finally saw the above picture, showing my... Final Grade: A

So there you have it folks. A 3.5 GPA for one quarter and a little "Dean's List" insertion on my transcript for Winter Quarter of 2006. When the Dean's List certificate comes in the mail, it's going up on the refridgerator.

Kara is the Awesome-est

So there's this girl I've known for like, 5+ years... and she is the awesome-est. She's sent me this really cool purple Huskies shirt from her college, and I've sent her one back of Poly. It's not fair that she's getting to go to Hawaii for spring break for FREE. If you can, go out and buy her Starbuck's at 3 in the morning because she'll make you a pretty good deal...

Well this weekend was pretty eventful. It started Thursday night, when Dan picked me up to go have dinner at a sushi place in AG with Kristen and a bunch of her friends for their birthdays this weekend. It was really nice, and we had TONS of sake to drink. The food was pretty good too, and having a Japanese chef cook food in front of you was really cool too because he was doing all these fancy moves. Then after that we came back to SLO and went downtown to Blacksheep where we had a bit more to drink, and then Dan dropped me back off at home.

I woke up the next morning to finish this stupid tech writing project at 6 in the morning. Went to class, then went to work till 4. Then I came home for a couple of hours before having to go BACK to the bowling alley for the Engineering Ambassadors social. We had a pretty good turnout of around 15+ people and we bowled a couple of games. I screwed around the first game, but when the 2nd game came around and we were in teams, I tried to bowl well, and rolled a 193. Let's see if I can't do that again Wednesday night to earn myself a shirt *knock on wood*

After bowling, Kristen called and told me to go over to her and Dan's house to hang out... I couldn't say no to the birthday girl, so I drove out to Morro Bay. We had some drinks and food, watched some Winter Olympics opening ceremonies, and proceeded to play Cranium for like 3 hours. The girls took the first round, but Dan and I took the second round. The girls love the green cards (the acting and humming ones), and Dan and I were awesome at the blue cards (drawing, making things out of clay). Yeah that's right, I can make "fireplace", "saddle", and "top hat / baseball cap / crown" in 60 seconds. We were fucking awesome. We all stayed over that night, and the next morning we went out to breakfast together. I came home that afternoon and just took a nap, as allergy season kicked into full gear and my eyes were red as hell and I had a runny nose. I stayed in that night and just cleaned up the house a bit... and unclogged the toilet, lol.

Sunday morning I went out and washed my car, and got some tree sap remover stuff... which hasn't worked completely yet because I guess it's been on there for a good while and it was also really sunny so it probably didn't work too well. I'll see if I can't get it to work later... then it was time for poker at Lambda Phi Epsilon's quarterly tournament on campus. I started out doing okay, catching a couple hands on the river at our deadly table. But what goes around comes around, as it happened to me a couple of times where I was out river-ed. What I mean by our wicked table is this: almost every hand where someone's in the lead pre-flop or after the flop, will LOSE after the other person catches a turn or river card. It was better to be behind in the hand, as they almost always made their hand. We saw pocket 2's bust Aces... only to have me pick up the same 2 Aces (both black) the immediate next hand and milk 2 people almost dry. I got down to a point, and then I decided to add on chips for another $10. Tables started dwindling, and I made a move at one point with pocket 4's pre-flop, only to have the other guy call and flip over his pocket 6's. I caught a 4 off the flop, and that was that. I stayed in till the final table, and was doing pretty well. I started the final table going strong, picked up a couple good sized pots and was almost the chip-leader at one point I think. But a couple losing pots here and there and blinds wore me down, and I was soon fighting for my tournament life... at that point it was 5th place. I picked up pocket 4's again, and went all in to have someone call with an A J off-suit. He hit his J off the flop, and no 4's showed up to save me. I took home 5th place out of about 90 people, and a 256 Mb MP3 player by Creative (Muvo). It was good fun I think, and good practice for me.

What an entertaining weekend... and it will continue. I have a midterm in 409 to study for this Wednesday, bowling tournament Wednesday night, and I have to go pick up Apollo Thursday. Will should also be getting here Sunday. Busy busy.

Kickball

4 hours worth, and boy was it fun. Rec Sports' Intramurals had a kickball tournament this Sunday, and I played on Greg's team. 9 of us all together, it started this morning at 10 or so. There were a total of 5 teams there, and we got to play each team (so we played 4 games). It was some fun stuff and we kicked butt 1/2 the time. The first game was a nail-biter, as it went into the bottom of the 5th 0-1 and we were scoreless. I should also mention, that I kicked the ball so hard in the 3rd inning, that the ball became flat (yeah I was the one responsible for the delay, what can I say, I kicked the shit out of it).... we made do with the flat ball, pumping it after each play for 1 inning, then we switched to the soccerball for the last inning. I was batting 3rd, and Nick got on base, and Louie kicked it in to score him. 1-1, and it was me up to kick. I smacked that ball directly at the first baseman (base-woman) and ran like hell becauses I knew she couldn't do shit. She bobbled the ball, and I made it across the bag safe... it didn't matter, because Louie made it home and scored the winning run.

Game 2 didn't turn out so well. We were down going into the top of the 5th, as the away team. We had to make up about 6 runs, and didn't come close... we lost that one with me getting pegged in the foot as the last out, after I tried to change directions during a fly ball that I thought they might drop, but they caught it, and hit me with it before I made it back to first base, game over.

Game 3 was a complete joke... we got into a rthym and it didn't end. We developed a new kicking order, and they just demolished them. Final score of that one was like 21-7 or something rediculous, we stopped trying after the 2nd inning, scoring like 11 that half of the inning. They were such a shitty team, and we had like 5 in-the-park home runs.

Game 4 was against what we called the "deuchers".... the guys on steroids. These guys were fucking big, and can drive the ball over our heads. However, they were beat by the same team that beat us in Game 2, because they just kept kicking it into the outfield where it was caught. We lead in the first inning, but then totally fell apart in the 2nd. They scored like 12 runs on us, we just couldn't get the outs. They kept putting the ball on the ground, or in holes where we didn't have people. We mounted a comeback in the 4th, to make the score like 17-6 or something, and we ended them in the 4th and 5th pretty quick. I made some good catches in the outfield, after they FINALLY starting kicking the ball in the air to hit homeruns, but I was there for like 5 catches. We popped a couple home runs to lead off in the 5th, our last efforts. It was to no avail, as we lost to a final score of 20-9 or something.

We ended the tournament 2-2, taking 3rd place. This was tons of fun, and I'll do it again in the future.

Poker

... was the name of the game this weekend.

Part 1:
Friday night, it was the house game at Oceanaire. Phung, Joe, James, Darien, Chris, me, Val, and Mike were the players. Brandon eventually came too. I took some big pots, and eventually my collection ended up being composed of a couple big wins against James early on, Darien about middle game, Chris early game (a couple times), a big all in win against Mike, and a couple good calls against Phung. I was reading Phung really well I think, I made a couple good calls where I was right and my hand held up, whether it was my pair being the better one or the fact that he didn't have anything and I made the gutsy call to claim the chips. Overall, after a buy-in of $10, I cashed out with $32. So I tripled my money after playing from about 10pm to 3am.

Part 2:
After playing so much the night/morning before, I had my filling of poker for a bit... but Greg did ask if I wanted to play in his chemistry frat (AXE)'s poker tournament yesterday, and I was so enthusiastic about it, and he called to ask if I was coming again. I eventually agreed, and went. $10 buy in once again, and it was much smaller than everyone had anticipated. They had I think about 13 or 14 people play overall. It was insanely painful, because there were people who didn't know what the hell they were doing and having them deal when it was their turn was hard. But, it was pretty easy to semi-bluff my way to some good pots and hold my own at the first table without taking too many hits. Actually I don't remember losing a big pot at all... anyways, by the time we condensed the table I would say I was sitting in about the middle as far as chips went. I then proceeded to first take out one of the girls, who had maybe a similar stack as mine starting at the final table. I did that in 2 separate hands. Then it came to one of the guys who had the big stacks, but after I took the girl out I had a bit more than he did. He went all in pre-flop, and I was holding KQ of hearts. I called, and he was holding KJ of spades. It was looking good, as flop came out with each of us hitting one of our suits. The turn was another heart, so I was in good shape. River was a blank, so I took the big pot and was now the big stack. My next victim was Nick, who had a pretty good stack... and he decided to put the shortest stack (Greg) on the table all in, he folded, but I called. I had K6 of diamonds, and he had like a Q5 of another suit. I hit a 6 on the turn, and he was out. It was then myself and Greg, and I took him out with my second hand playing heads up with him with a 8-2, hitting the 8 against his 3-6 or something rediculous. AXE took a fatty chunk of the winnings, saying it was a "fund raiser" and after collecting what was the cash equivalent of over $150 in cash in front of me, I walked away with a measly 1st place prize of $30. Minus the $10 buy in, I made $20 from about 6pm to 8:20pm. It was good experience I guess..... no wait, it wasn't. I was playing against shitty people most of the time, and got lucky a couple times, and beat out 14 other people. Big whoop.

Movie Critic

So I've watched quite a few movies recently, so I'll rate them and tell you why they were kinda good or if they sucked.

Fantastic 4: I heard many bad things about this movie, but in the end, I thought it was actually quite good. I'm seeing myself develop as a bigger and bigger fan of super hero movies that have been adapted from comic book series recently... or maybe I'm just a fan of Stan Lee mostly? Anyways, the movie was really good in the plot, action was great and pletiful with very good special effects, and the humor was pretty good. The negatives that I to comment about mostly has to do with the length (or lack thereof) regarding the main Dr. Doom vs. F4... and by that I mean there wasn't too much of a struggle between the 2 sides (good vs. evil) until about the last 1/6 of the movie. If they could've doubled the length that they were the good guys fighting the bad guy and made it more dramatic with a higher plateau of an ending, it would've been great. I could've done without the last bit of Invisible Girl marrying Mr. Fantastic... should've left us hanging like Spiderman did in the first movie - the bad guy is defeated, but the good guys didn't have a 100% happy ending, which shows that there are more to come. Final rating: 8/10


Into the Blue: I had no idea what the premise of this movie was going to be... maybe a modernized version of Jaws or something, but ended up being pretty dumb. There was more Paul Walker than Jessica Alba, and the co-star couple were butt ugly to look at. The story itself was cheesy, with the action portion of it being moderate at best. Treasure hunters they were... believe me, this movie was NOT a buried treasure at the video store. The story basically described a struggling wanna be treasure hunter with a hot girlfriend, and a friend shows up with a dumb bitch, accidentally discovers a crashed crack filled plane, and the friend digs bigger and bigger holes for Paul Walker to get himself and his g/f out of in an attempt to simultaneously rescue a REAL treasure. Story sucked, not enough of Jessica. Final rating: 4/10

Wedding Crashers: Definetly not something you want to see with you mom, because low and behold, there are boobies! Titties at 2 parts of the movie and a bunch of references to sexual anneuendos. Storyline got too cheesy, espcially at the end, but the premise itself of a legacy of wedding crashing is very tantilizing and interesting in itself with all of the rules (I read them all in the bonus of the DVD). Great jokes here and there, and makes you wonder if you can pull something like that off yourself (crashing weddings), but the guy-chasing-already-taken-girl simply lasted for way too much of the movie and should have focused more on crashing more weddings that they shortened at the beginning. Would serve to be a great "date" movie though I think. Final rating: 7/10

War of the Worlds: Well, we always expect Stephen Spilberg to give us great visual effects and he didn't disappoint, as everything (but the aliens) look very real in the explosion of the cities and such. Now that I think back on it, when I was watching the movie I was really pissed at Tom Cruise's son because of the way he was acting immature and how retarded teenagers can be. But that basically means that the dialogue/script and the acting was very good in making me feel those emotions due to the true representation of those types of characteristics of teenagers in real life! The story itself can be critiqued in one word: shit. We see some parts of Tom Cruise dealing with his sanity as the world comes crashing down around him and his own emotions clashing with his responsibility as a father. Emotions in the movie I would say were pretty good and acting was not bad. However, the story itself as I've said: shit. Aliens taking over, we gotta find a way to kill them before they obliterate everything. Okay, I will throw a granade into the alien vagina looking thing right before it sucks me up to kill me, it blows up and dies. Big whoop, we killed 1 out of the hundreds that are going around the globe killing people. Then, out of no where, birds are flying around one of the main alien battleships, and it starts to die?!?! What did Tom Cruise say? The birds have no metal? WTF? Now lets sit back as the army blasts it with rocket launchers, it crashes down and ONE freaking alien pops out and dies. They god home, end of movie. WHAT THE HELL?? No conclusion of what happened to the world, no CLEAR explanation of how they killed the big robot, and no idea how (if at all) they spread the word to the rest of the world as to how to go about killing the extermination robots. NO conclusions, no explanations, no academy award for anyone that helped produce this movie. Final Ratings: 4/10

2006... and some leftovers from 2005

Okay, so I'm way late in posting this shit, and there are a TON of shit I missed. So this first one will just be what I've missed talk about since last time.

The rest of the vacation... I'll try to remember as many items as I can, and just mention some things about each if I can. I had dinner with Jeana, and got to catch up with my very long time good friend from elementary school. There was Mustafa's party, of which we all had a ton of fun and was a huge high school reunion and waiting for AJ's final arrival at like 1:30 in the morning. As far as friends go, there was one other encounter, and it started off at AJ's house for a poker game... overall the people who played were myself, AJ, Jeff, Mustafa, Mike, Sean, and Riaz. From there, we headed to Stars where we proceeded to see Becky Stutte, Ashley Ramirez, Kathryn McGee, Christina Morales, Kris Goldstien, Kyle Masterson, BJ, Jarrett, Brooke Bosler, Nam, Zeke Hampton, Chris Webber, and even Amy Peterson. It was a huge reunion, I think almost as big if not bigger than Mustafa's. It was good times.

Yeah we played a lot of video games, but it was annoying because of Mom's nagging all the time and because Will had obligations to go to work and even school up until the 23rd, and Leo had school up until then as well... what a fucking retarded Solano County School District schedule huh? Our whole family went to Tracy's for dinner, which was pretty cool to see Goo Goo and Uncle there and our new baby cousin and stuff. We got some cool gift cards from Goo Goo and Uncle, and a nice 512 Mb MP3 player from Tracy/Jocylyn. Fisher's caterpillar toy was pretty funny too.... haha. As far as our house goes, there was a problem with a couple of the outlets in the garage and in trying to fix it, I busted the garage door but managed to fix it with the help of Anthony... and I got to catch up with him a bit. This year for Mom's Christmas present, I fixed the overhead flourescent lights in the kitchen which had been bugging her for a long time and paid for all the costs of the materials. I think she was pretty happy with it, so I'm glad I was able to "get" her something that she really wanted.

So we took my car down to Fremont to have Erik work on it, and he fixed a number of things: my battery is no longer moving around and giving me the biggest headache out of anything from the car... it doesn't move anymore due to the fact that he also fixed/installed a new exhaust pipe and air filter, which pushes up against the battery and holds it snug (on top of the washer he installed to tighten it). We also put in clear side lights for the turn signals.... and last but not least new tires. They are supposed to be great, and by putting them in, it in turn solved the extreme bobble-head action that my rear break light was having. The moonroof is still not locked tight shut when driving fast, my car seems to be a BIT louder, and the acceleration doesn't seem to be as fast once I hit 90+ for some reason. Oh yeah, and there IS the fucking incident of his damn neighbor BACKING INTO MY FUCKING DRIVER'S SIDE DOOR and making this huge dent. That's something else I still gotta go and fuck with... dammit.

Well other than paying for almost all of those things, Mom also got me some cologne and a much needed vacuum cleaner, and Will bought me a nice big backpack which I've discovered, can carry/hold ANYTHING and EVERYTHING. It's huge though. Also before school started once I got back here to SLO, I went to Walmart for once, and bought an iron, a blow dryer, and more clothes on top of a shitload of other things. It's been a busy year, 2006, so far, but it should be a pretty good one.