Weekend Drove down to Walnut to kick w/ my cousins! Christine and Benny- you guys rule. Come up here and I will take care o you guys.

Avalon is pretty dope, hehe, sorry to those I called on my cell. It just that dope.  ¶ 9:20 AM 1 comments

  The new hotness

The console looks wacky but kinda grew on me. More a sleek piece of machinery than a typical video game console. Spiderman font irritates me a bit, please change that. Hopefully it's not too big. The controller, though, wtf. I wanted a change from DS2 but this doesn't look too comfortable. Sequel-itis abounds but the graphics so far look amazing. If tekken 6 is real-time I'm going to need new underwear.

The amount of connectivity is what I liked the most. 3 ethernet ports, slots for memory stick, SD card, AND compact flash. Plus support for up to seven controllers via bluetooth. Now to see what Nintendo shows ...  ¶ 11:02 PM 0 comments

  treo is out for verizon. I just had to make a note of the fact that I got a ridiculous discount on mine. Woot! My uncle got one too, when I told him how much I paid for mine he was FLABBERGASTED. As would anyone who paid north of $300 for it.

another uncle tried to get me to get him the discount but no way would I go through the trouble again.  ¶ 3:22 PM 0 comments

  Thinking about food. Can't stop thinking about this reuben sandwich I had in Boston. Mmmmmm so good.

Then again the gyros that GAP bought us in Santa Clara were amazing as well. Inside the wrap were sausage patties, basil, tomatoes, some other stuff.

Ok I need a new hobby, too much time on my hands.  ¶ 11:32 PM 0 comments

  E3 Bringing out the fanboys in droves ....

Ah the console wars. Every five years the next-generation of consoles is revealed, promising everything but the kitchen sink. I still remember getting excited over the Nintendo 64, pouring over the Spaceworld images, downloading shitty little videos over AOL (yes it was that long ago). So for the longest time I was a nintendo supporter, until I turned 4 and started playing games other than mario. I picked the ps2 over xbox mainly because of the games and controller (aesthetically both are rather ugly).

Being a extreme fanboy is really stupid, and wasting time arguing the merits of each individual system is time lost forever. When you could be doing some scintillating like working or studying or watching Blind Date. My opinion on the whole matter is that these fanboys are either (1) extraordinarily loyal (2) 15 years old or younger (3) mommy only promised them one new console for christmas (ding-ding!). They fail to comprehend this most basic principle. Competition GOOD monopoly BAD!

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Okay here where I throw out some specs like I know what I'm talking about. Blah blah blah blah 940234093 GB of bandwidth, woot! Way too many people writing about shit they don't know about (me included). Why can't John Carmack or Tim Sweeney write something that shuts everyone up.

XBOX 360: Three IBM Power PC cores running at 3.2 GHz and a custom ATI GPU. The latter of which is rather intriguing. It sports 48 unified pipelines, which means any number of pixel/vertex configuration is possible. By comparison the highest end PC cards have 16 pixel pipelines and 6 vertex pipelines. So more than double the number PLUS much more flexible. Sounds great in theory, we'll have to see how developers wrangle with it. There is some disparity between the early screens, Gears of Wars looks amazing, PD0 looks like crap. The dev kits should be better to work with this time around.

10mb embedded DRAM. Which means NO MORE JAGGIES. Which was ultimate pet-peeve for the ps2. For all the EE's power, most of the advanced stuff had to be done in software. The good news for PS3 is that Nvidia is going the GPU which means that AA should be a thing of the past on that platform as well. PS2 also had the problem of the tiny amount of VRAM which meant low-res texture maps. Hence most of the games had the same "look." This should be rectified as well.

Playstation 3: rumored to be more powerful than God.

Coolness: wireless controllers, wireless connectivity built into all machines. Online play. More support for media formats. HD, live, and AA required for all xbox games. Nintendo removing their head from their ass and using a non-proprietary format (DVD).

All this tech stuff is making my head hurt, time for a bottom line. Everything will be more clear after E3. Hopefully X360 can suck in the developers and make use of their headstart. Then Sony might actually have to innovate for once (if the ps3 controller is the same damn controller as the dualshock I'll be disappointed). Nintendo is a wild card, who knows what they have planned.  ¶ 4:04 PM 0 comments

  Dwade is sick He looks a lot like the young Jordan. The quickness, the moves, the hops, the clutch. It's very uncanny. Except that he has Shaq. More importantly he's humble and likeable, ahem Kobe? Even though you might expect him to have a little hostility since his parents misspelled his first name.

He's so good the warriors probably would have passed on him had they had the chance to pick him. :/  ¶ 9:03 AM 0 comments

  Gunn Here's the yearly high school ranking list. I forget how they come up with it, something about the number of students taking AP classes or something.

#70 ain't bad but we used to be top ten! Look at Paly though, ouch (#330).  ¶ 12:06 PM 4 comments

  mistake... I started watching 24 season 4...

ohhhh man. They have this shit down to an exact science. I am hoooooked. Everytime a baddie makes a evil glare at someone I scream "OH NO HE'S A DEAD MAN!"

Seriously, I'm going to pull an all nighter.

EDIT: My current favorite game to play is the "24 edit guessing game." Whenever they come back from commercial they split the tv into 4 panes, each showing a different scene. Then I guess which one they will cut to. At first it was just for fun, now I'm trying to be more analytical based on which plotlines haven't been fleshed out yet and what's more pertinent to the story.

More fun than watching the show itself! Lots of familiar arcs this season but enough changes to keep me guessing.

Yeah as I said, I have no life.

EDIT #2: So yeah the show can overly melodramatic at times but when shit goes down and the music cranks .... TOO GOOD. It's actually pretty savvy technology wise, they must have a software engineer advising them. An extremely GENIUS software engineer who never has made a programming error in his life. Cuz these guys whip up custom code at a moments notice and it's always incredibly optimized. How else can they regain control of nuclear power plants in a matter of seconds?

Anyways all the hi-tech gear on the show is great for the geeks. I spotted a bunch of Dell LCD's, microsoft wireless keyboards, silver HP keyboards (I want!), etc. The alienware laptop that the terrorists were using was a bit much tho. Why they would need a souped up gaming laptop is beyond me. Unless they were hooked on World of Warcraft, or better yet, Counter Strike. True story: I only started using microsoft money after seeing a guy hack into a suspected terrorist's computer to view his bank activity. Subsequently he was captured, tortured, and killed. :p

Talk about being a sucker for advertising...  ¶ 7:13 PM 1 comments

  master criminal I bought a pack of DVD+R's and promptly forgot to mail in the rebate within the given timeframe. I only realized this a month later after my brother bought the exact same ones.

When I checked newegg though, the same promotion was still going on, albeit for different purchase dates. I was able to download the new rebate form and "alter" my e-mail invoice to look like it qualified. It was a simple matter of downloading the HTML code and editing it.

Anyhoo I sent it in so I might get lucky. Or go to jail since it clearly states on the form:

Fraudulent submission or multiple requests could result in federal prosection under the U.S. Mail Fraud Statues (18 USC, section 1341 & 1342).

All this for $12. I'm stupid like that. (and stupid enough to blog about it too apparently)  ¶ 12:17 AM 0 comments

  nostalgia One of the humourous ZUG articles about Oregon Trail brought back memories ... of me playing B/W games on the macs they had in the school computer labs (PC? What's a PC?).

That thought led to the following exchange:

kofman23: remember oregon trail in junior high
kofman23: that game was the shit
skuotor: haha. and carmen sandiego
skuotor: if you shot a buffalo you were set
kofman23: mmmm buffalo
kofman23: wings

Back then software makers had it made - put windows on 30 floppy disks and who had the patience to make copies of it (me). Microsoft Word was also cool, with the "compose e-mail" button that no one made use of (What's e-mail?). Connecting to the internet through AOL was crazy shit back in the day. Back then the instant messaging client didn't let you know which of your friends was online, you had to manually check yourself. Top-tier!

When 4 MB of RAM cost $200 (ok so that really sucked). Old old school pc games like Day of the Tentacle, X-wing vs Tie Fighter, Lemonade on my friend's BBS. I still remember the first time my friends and I hooked up 4 computers to play DOOM ... "OH MY FUCKING GOD look at the RED marine!!! and the (other color which I have forgotten) marine!!! And even older school like Wolfenstein, Apple IIe ghostbusters, KARATEKA which I played on my cousin's PC when I wasn't annoying him.

*sigh* the good ol' days.  ¶ 8:35 PM 0 comments

  May EIGHT I've never really had a "great" birthday party. Although that doesn't really bother me, cuz who keeps track of these after you turn 21? There have been memorable moments for sure. Too memorable to write here! Oh the memorable moments I've had .... (racking brain)

"As for presents, no one ever knows what to get me and I can buy whatever I want myself."

Ok that's a cop-out. You guys are all lousy cheap bastards, you know I want that Canon Rebel EOS 350XT, or Dell 40" LCD. Just kidding ... I think. :)

I think the "chip-in" gift is great. More mileage than the 15 different $20 presents that I used to get. $20 was always the limit for gifts when we were little kids, $25 would be pushing it. $30 was like you were proposing or something and got the parents suspicious.

I do remember going up to Tahoe one year for someone else's birthday party. I used the word "hump" and got reprimanded by the kid's dad. Obviously I wasn't talking about a camel. Plus for some reason the gift I gave didn't come with batteries. His dad: "So when we get back be sure to get us the batteries." Me (in my head): wow what a cheap-@ss, you have a job go buy them yourself.

Anyways when I was at Berkeley my birthday would always fall on "dead week". This was the time when people frantically studied for the material missed when they'd stopped going to class two months earlier. Even worse my relatives in socal always decided to get married during mother's day which, more often than not, happened to fall on my B-day. Thus I missed out on two awesome weddings because of finals. When in reality I hadn't studied at all that day, lamenting the fact that I was missing out.

It does make me feel good to have people acknowledge my birthday. Thanks to those who did. Including ... Baskin-Robbins! Ha-ha! Thought I would be too old to get my free scoop of ice cream huh? Well they thought wrong. Mmmm gold-medal-ribbon flavor. And only I am devious (or pathetic) enough to entertain the thought of printing out three coupons and redeeming them at all three local locations. If the fat doesn't kill me first ...

In un-related bad news, all local liquor stores and quickie marts do not carry any malt or cookie 'n cream icecream in those delightful plastic cup cartons. doh!  ¶ 8:06 PM 0 comments

  Hope for Arrested? Link to Article

I am proud to say that I voted in the poll!

(of course it doesn't mean jack squat if they cancel it anyways)  ¶ 10:31 PM 0 comments

  nothing I love firefox but have been getting popups UP THE WAZOO. What gives. I like to be hip and cool but if IE7 is better I will switch back in a heartbeat.

P.S. I hate spyware. AND I hate the fact that my windows is in a degraded state. Longhorn better fix this (perhaps why they are re-coding everything in managed code)

Read this site http://www.zug.com/pranks.html. I haven't laughed this hard in years. Viagra, turnpike, credit card - it's all good.

Go Yao!

edit: Why did I type that last comment. The Rockets are getting destroyed. 28-14 free throw advantage for the Mavericks. I guess Nash vs Cuban was a better storyline. Plus Stern had to show Van Gundy who the man is. $100K for alluding to a referee conspiracy is pretty ridiculous. How does Stern come up with these numbers anyways. What if Cuban were to say something to him like ... "Your wife is a hooker. She was goooood."

"I fine you a ba-jillion million dollars!"  ¶ 6:44 PM 0 comments

  Busy... been busy working @ the GAP/GID for the past couple weeks. Will be glad to get a chance to rest up and take it easy tomorrow (going to the office). Also I need to quit following the stock market, gives me a headache!

Things I want:

24" Dell LCD Monitor (SCHWEEEEEEEET!) retail $1,199
Canon EOS Rebel XT camera: cost $999 ... DSLR baby!

Of course I won't be satisfied until I get 50% off each when I buy them. Deals deals deals.

Random NBA thoughts: boy dwyane wade is a BEAST. Slick crossover, awesome finisher. Even more shocking was seeing VC miss a couple dunks in game 4.

AI is sick too, but the Pistons are a lot to handle. And while everyone loves Reggie, Pacers are not making it to the Eastern conference finals barring some incredible fix by the NBA.  ¶ 10:21 PM 0 comments