Good Ole Boring

So I finally took the plunge and purchase a Lenovo laptop. I think I'll enjoy using it. I have been thinking about it for several weeks, but when it comes down to it I just wanted something reliable to replace my Dell. I compared Apple, Dell, HP, and Lenovo. Dell and HP are okay. So it actually was a decision between Apple and Lenovo. After talking to several people at church my decision was made. I think I made the right choice. Apple is still such a luxury item I think and the limited softwares totally pushed me towards the Lenovo. My only concern now is Vista but oh well, let's give it a try.

The story continues. Delilah would go to the gym and the song would play on the loud speakers. Half of her wanted to admit that the song is about her and let the whole world know about it. The other part of her was so sick of hearing the song and regret ever meeting the guy.

Kinda romantic, though if only they actually end up together because he wrote a song for her. I really like the song and the story behind it. Haha.

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What's in a weekend?

Oh and I also uploaded some "albums" (flickr calls them sets). Team Kenya photos on Flickr:

 

Team Kenya will be doing a presentation this Fri. at 7pm at Foothill covenant. Click on this link to view the invitation. I will be talking about our poor housing visits along with Helen. Hopefully you guys will be able to make it. Map it.

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Headlines Chinese Style

I saw this in the journal and quickly used wikipedia to learn a bit more about this thing called "chinglish". Apparently there are plenty of these "lost in translation" signs which the Chinese government are irritated enough to do something about (translation, the 2008 Olympic). These signs if anything, are entertaining, albeit in a nonsensical-esoteric sort of way.

Jay Leno's would love these for his "Headlines."

This one cracks me up. More below:

[disclaimer: you may find these offensive, and the author does not subscribe to these humors, except on randomn days. If you see other funny signs like these, it would be fabulous for you to share them.]

I'll show you mine if you show me yours

New Year's resolutions list, that is. Mine involves exercising more. I know, boring. But a couple of 4 day weekends—I'm already missing those "it's like Friday, but Wednesday" work mode—revolving around food = surplus weight.

Beyond making this list, I switched my mobile service providers and got a new phone (my Christmas present.) The old provider Cingular didn't make the cut, giving me one bar consistently when I'm at home, as well as many other places (see: driving on the 101). I decided to go with Verizon and the clamshell LG VX8300 phone. So far so good.

My new phone lets me listen to music, takes great photos, is Bluetooth enabled—I got one of those sci-fi looking Bluetooth headsets, too—gets email and ESPN scores. Everything you ever needed to survive in the "real" world. The user interface feels pretty intuitive, although I still need to muck around with it a bit more. Best feature of this new phone? Saving on some serious money—20% off my monthly bill—thanks to a corporate discount.

Back to the list. How's your resolutions list coming? If it has more than just exercising, congratulations you are already more diligent than me. Care to share?

New Year's was watching a Friends marathon, playing True colors, and drinking almond flavored champagne at Sandy's. It was great!

Happy New Year!

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Berean

One of the things we talked about yesterday at Corner Place after church was that "Berean is the 'Starbucks of Christian bookstores'."

Why not go to smaller places like Lion and the Lamb, Gospel Books, or go online to Amazon?

What do you think?

I had a Berean gift card given to me by Scott last year at our Christmas gift exchange and I wanted get a book. And seeing that Scott was there with me during lunch, and who also was interested in going there, it made much sense to go.

So we drove to Berean. On the way there we chatted about the upcoming Chris Tomlin concert, about a friend who recently accepted Christ (congrats chanlung!), about Knot2Us, GrX, and Sunday's sermon.

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The Worst Thing About a Bruised Eye...

...is that I can't go swimming nor jogging.

The best thing about it is that I get to work from home today using the "I have a bruised eye, and I need ibuprofen and rest" excuse. Man I'm such a Oscar wiener...

Image source: KQED

And of course the official Tintin site.

Who's got a Tintin collection? Come on admit it, he's kinda cool!

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Some Thoughts On Recent NY Trip

As a service to these "footballers", what do you say of us performing a "washing of the feet" for these players in the upcoming World Cup in Beijing—Fifa World Cup Feet Washing Service. As Sandy would point out to my niece Lauren, "uncle goofy."

Okay...moving on: as wonderful as New York was, it is good to be back here. I can't imagine ME finding much spirituality with all the rampant materialism in New York. Wide indeed is the gate—a very enticing gate—of New York City.

Not to say that spirituality doesn't exist there. While we were there, Sandy was able to "by chance" hook up with some of her old church friends (5th Home?) from Cali who had decided to move to New York. It's too bad I didn't meet up with them and talk to them, in retrospect, to see how living in NY has work on their perspectives of things.

Some churches in midtown New York are wonderful old type churches that are surrounded by modern business type buildings. It felt out of place, like an afterthought. Of course that was not the case as these newer buildings were build around these churches.

I miss our church here, even if it is mobile.

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Butterfly From Beijing

So the guy who I share my cube with just returned from his three weeks vacation in China. Truth be told he was there for a wedding reception, although the couple have been married here in the states for quite some time. He brought back these assorted souvenirs from Beijing to pass out to us. I happened to pick the largest of these—a chinese knot double fish. In Chinese culture fish symbolizes fortune and prosperity.

Moments later, another co-worker next door drops by with a proposal. He thinks I got the wrong knot and I really should have gotten a "more appropriate knot." As far as he is concerned he wants to make a deal with me, knowing full well my courtship history. I made a quick glance at his gift and thought the double fish were more decorative.

He goes on to tell me the backstory, upon which I recognized it was a famous Tsui Hark film. Oh yeah! Oh yeah! Of course in the end that's what I did, I traded "up" for a butterfly-double-swan knot, signifying a happy loving relationship. Woo Hoo! Thanks Lei!

Related to this topic, I recently tasted Sands pastry takeouts on Castro in Mountain View—Hong Kong Bakery. Their egg tart is pretty good this side of SF Chinatown (read Golden Gate Bakery). Yummy! Thanks Sands!

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Enterprise Chinese Food

The Panda Express officially opened at the office. Well sort of. This entire week my company is training customers who use our enterprise software. This happens at least once a quarter. For someone like me who is budget conscious this is a blessing. Nevermind that the office is much quieter and security around here has beefen up, the thing I most enjoy is the FREE lunch (read leftovers).

Today it was chinese food á la Panda Express. Nice and cold.

Yesterday it was sandwiches from "the Bay Area's best"—Le Boulanger.

Coincidentally I know of someone who resides in a condo *ahem*castle*ahem* above Le Boulanger in Cupertino. In fact there is a petition to make residents there be more aware of "the danger of Condo-tino". You can read about the hilarious entry here, here, and here. The condo-tino effect goes well with the white flight effect and if the trend continues condo-tino will be inhabited by mostly well-to-do asians. Sandy can probably relate to the reverse of the "let my people go" line.

Back to FREE lunch, who knows what tomorrow's lunch will be? But IF the people at work catches on to this I may have to hurry to the "lunch" line to avoid the stampede. Although I did get the last pot sticker today.

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Thanks for The Advice, Doc

"You have to establish boundaries, let her know that some things are not prohibited."

"You can't be too submissive. And you Marissa cannot be too aggressive, either."

"You have to allow her to speak because that is the only way she can express herself."

You'll never know where you get relationship advice these days. You get what you can, wherever you can. Even if those advice blurs between human and pets, and comes from a dog therapist/trainer. That's right, all of the above advice are indeed for the shy Fidos out there, or in this case my co-worker's dog Molly. The one where the dog therapist is talking to Marissa, that is advice for their human owners.

Relationships ARE Hard. Amen.

A few months ago we had a gathering to watch Dr. James Dobson's video about relationship.

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I Saw An Angel

I saw an angel, of that I am sure.

On fruits, of this I am sure.
Conversing over a sautee dish somewhere in Channing Way
"We are more like peer to peer," she said.
I can see from her face reflected on Laura's face.
Shaped by friendships of times past
Rooted in love which does not detract.
"You will always be her discipler," I said.
Of that I am sure
Because your love is pure.

Happy third hun!

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Your Couple of Days Are Up

So I decided to change my website's hosting plan a few days ago. As a result you've probably been seeing some strange error messages in the last couple of days. While nothing has change from the design point of view, the backend performance will be better what with Dreamhosts' many features. (Thanks away for the recommendation. If anyone is thinking about making the switch to them let me know and I can show you how.)

Part of the delay was just figuring out the different configuration files, database changes, shell commands, etc. I'm sure away had an easier time migrating to them but I had a frustrating time getting it to work. And now it's finally up and running again. Yay!

Check it out and let me know if there is anything strange on the site. Is it faster or slower? Bleh...

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Eden Interrupted

So the cops rushed out of their police cars, about seven of them. One guy pulled his standard issued maglite™, proceeded to locate the suspect's house. He then led the charge with the rest of the officers following behind him, in a single file line. Somewhere in the middle was another officer with his canine dog in tow. Something was definitely happening.

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Chasing After Comments

Sometimes rather than thinking of something to write I like to just rummage around the various blog sites to see what everyone else is writing. Sometimes I like to leave comments on these sites. An idea occurred to me—and folks bare in mind I haven't really thought through these things—someone could write a way to aggregate the "most recent comments" that we leave after reading wuboy, drewboy, kat15812, jeeyoungi, clieu, jimmyjam206, laurenine , mdw, and someone I really really like site.

Think of bread crumbs trail in Hansel and Gretel. A comment here, a comment there, some more at blahblahblah...there ought to be a way to sweep up all those crumbs into a "container"—most recent comments by so-and-so. A blogs comment thread if you will.

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Butter Art

So at the end of our GRX's vision week during the dinner part some of us got to have a bit of fun, made some stuff out of our leftover, mostly these butter balls that came with the appetizers.

Guys and girls from Immersion, Race, Knot2Us, Stand, Glue, and Crosstraining got to participate. Here are the group breakdowns: Table 1 (ours: Shelly, Alin, Jimmy, Lauren, Sandy, myself) vs. Table 2. (Christine, Alex, Grace, Victoria)

Butter Art Images (compliments of L-Dawg)

         
(Clicking on each thumbnails will open up a larger image in a new window.)

In the end it was just a little bit of fun after a long and sometimes "over the head" theological discussions—oh and I am not endorsing that you play with your food.

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High Brow Blogging OR.....NOT

I'm desperate for content. I remembered back in days where they touted "content is king".

Looking at my stats recently my reader-ship has been flagging. Well it comes and goes in cycles but the general trend (yes I did minored in Economics) looks downward. What to do?

Behind every man stands his woman. So I approached Sands and we traded some ideas. These are really rather randomn of sort...

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Can You Hear Me Now?

So we were leaving Pho Hoa after lunch last Sunday Lauren driving, Jimmy in the passenger seat, Sands, Ray, and myself in the back. I forgot who made the first comment (Ray?) but here's how it went down...

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Away from My Blog Right Now

Just a quick post to let everyone know that I will be away from my blog during the next few days. I am looking forward to celebrating Thanksgiving with my girlfriend á la Meet The Lees. I am also looking forward to enjoying quality time with my dad, brothers and sister and all the nephews and nieces—this time with Sandy.

To all my TAS friends and GRXers whose families are too far to celebrate tomorrow night you guys will be all right. You know who you are. Knowing your propensity for sports you guys will probably end up watching lots of footballs anyways.

Have a good Thanksgiving everyone!

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World's Shortest Personality Test

You are nurturing, kind, and lucky.
Like mother nature, you want to help everyone.
You are good at keeping secrets and tend to be secretive.

A seeker of harmony, you are a natural peacemaker. You are good natured and people enjoy your company.
You put people at ease and make them feel at home with you.


Editor's note: "Nurturing"..."mother nature"? What's that about?
What do you think? What's your World's Shortest Personality Test profile? Are they accurate? Please share...

GrX Hoops Draft Night

Tomorrow night is GRX Comp League Draft Night. Now where is my stat sheet of all the players I scouted. Oh how I compare thee: the last time I did something like this, we had about 12 people in a room drafting...for Fantasy Football. We ordered pizza and by the end of the night I was exhausted.

This time there will be five of us (Mark, Euge, Nick, Wils, and myself) while Chris will teleconference (via his cellphone loudspeaker..haha) during the draft. The draft order is as follows: Wilson, myself, Chris, Mark, Eugene, Nick. The first two rounds are to draft in order 1-6 and will serpentine in rounds 3-9. Bare in mind Nick's team won the Spring league and Eugene's team came in third place. I hope my draft will be somewhat successful GOSH!!! I am pretty excited though. Are you NOT excited?!?

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Note to SF Athletic Director

When I was in college, I used to walk to my classes down what was appropriately called "Bruin Walk." Mass and mass of students throughtout the day would file through this path on the way to their respective classes.

On the way down Bruin Walk from Dysktra Hall (a dorm) you would pass the tennis court, the Cosby Track & Field, the gym, the Athletic Director's building — among various other buildings, notably Ackerman Hall. I remembered wondering as I strolled by what is the Athletic Director Building. The building is non-descript with dark windows. However once inside you have entered a mini Hall of Fame building, what with all the John Wooden quotes as well as quotes of pass fabled-athletes.

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The Dish

No that's not some girl. The Dish is a 3.7 mile loop west of Stanford. You get there (Junipero Serra Blvd & Stanford Ave) and the first thing you see is the haystack arts and then the hill. After you "run" up that hill you get nice views of the Bay. Other nice loops: UCLA outerloop; Shoreline loop; Lake Merced loop; Golden Gate loop (12th & Anza through the buffalo field pass the windwill out to Pacific Hwy back); Marina Green up Fort Mason to Ferry Building loop back; Monkey Bar in Marina Green through Chrissy field touch Hopper's Hand at Fort Point loop back. I have to say though that first hill at The Dish beats them all.

Summer Feastings

Maybe I'm getting older but I can't digest food as well anymore. Went to Castro with Derek last night for Mongolian bbq. For the next two hours that food just sat in my stomache. Afterward we stopped at Books Inc. and I browsed through a couple of books, even read a couple chapters of Better Off. The whole time I had to walk around the bookstore — passing the psychology, religion, children's book, non-fiction, fiction, sci-fi, the magazine racks, and then back to psychology. I was doing my old loops...around the bookstore.

Week 1: I am paying for    ~ 3.5    Big Macs (576 cal/serving)

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The Dude

Steve Buscemi is awesome. He's ugly cosmetically challenged which gives all of us hope we can one day be actors...including me. But of course he can act and I can't. So nevermind.

Last night I watched on Comedy Central one of my favorite Coen Bros. film — Big Lebowski. Walter, the Dude, Jesus (pronounced Hayseus),...and of course Steve Buscemi's character Donny where he's the typical third wheel relegated to jumping into mid conversations. Hilarious!

Fargo by far is my favorite Steve Buscemi film. (also from the Coen Bros.)

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Family Origin

I just had a meeting with my project manager to go over the next "lite" version of our software and its redesign. The meetings lasted about 2 hours. For the first hour we talked about his vacation in Greece...so beautiful with islands like Tinos, Santorini, Napflo (I happen to know cause I jotted them down on my notepads during our meeting). He also went through like four folders worth of pitures taken on each of those islands. It was a really great meeting.

He also started telling stories of these islands and where his great great grandmother is from, and how his great great grandfather came to the island of Tinos from Venetia. There was a church on the island that traced his family back to 350 years or so...and there's a tree this ancestral grandfather planted that now sits in the "main" streets of Tinos.

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Raise The Roof

I have been quite busy lately both at work and at thinking about redesigning the backstage blogging site (see below). After several attempts at originality both in design and CSS code I have decided to put the re-design idea on the backburner. Work, church, and community service as well as interest in doing all things outdoor has taken up most of my time.

A (Very) Brief History of (My) Time

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iPod, Planet Granite, and Do The Shuffle

SELECT * FROM backstage ORDER BY randomness

» Some guy was wearing an iPod while playing in our weekly pickup game of basketball during lunch time today. He says,

Oh you don't have one of these? It's what everyone's wearing on the court these days.

» I have decided to take a hold of rock climbing and joined Planet Granite in Santa Clara. I have yet to take my "belay test" but I'm confident I will do okay. (Double back, double figure eight knot, double fisherman's knot, "on belay-belay on", climber's on-climbing", etc.) I'm having tons of fun with it, climbing a 5.8 yesterday. Thanks Allan for introducing me to this.

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The Lucas Effect

I was just thinking about George Lucas and browsed over to the USC page to check out if they made a big deal of him being an alumni of USC Film School.

When we were at 'SC, George donated a huge amount of money and so they named our editing building after him and his then wife Marcia (Marcia and George Lucas Editing Building). The editing building was in the main Production quad and consisted of rooms with old splicing tables for film and Media 100 editing consoles.

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SG fun night

Last night was my first fun night with my s.g. We gathered and hand made our dinner (which in most cases is provided by one person). Dinner in this case is a concoction of sushi and "spam musubi".

Afterward for entertainment we watched "National Treasure" and made cards for Mothers Day.

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