:o Other people have so much drama that my problems are miniscule in comparison... it is rather ridiculous. I feel like I'm peering around from the eye of the hurricane. Serious marital problems vs "hmmm what should I eat for tonight?" or "damn I haven't gotten a free skyy vodka poster" (which I finally got yesterday).

Oh well, I always have work drama. Still want more $$$...  ¶ 6:50 PM 0 comments

  flava flavvvvv "This is what I feel, I don't feel ya feeling me like that... ya feel me?"

Is that dude eloquent or what? And how come all the girls on that show are BUTT-UGLY.  ¶ 10:56 PM 0 comments

  :| My weekend got off to a bad start when after having a few drinks with co-workers I left my credit card at the bar. Placed a block on it and was able to retrieve it the next day. However it appeared that the nice waitress charged $3 extra to my card. I'll definitely call up and let them know, though it could have been a lot worse. We went to the Tilted Kilt, which is a Hooter's type restaurant. Nothing really spectacular. The Drunken Clams which were "her favorite" were a bit bland.

Drove to Footlocker to check out the Nike Air Max 360. My R4's are wearing pretty thin. I do have another pair in the closet, but the promise of foamless midsole is intriguing. I poked at the air cushioning system and tried it on. Didn't exactly feel like I was running on air but the cushioning was very soft. I'll probably pick up a pair in the future.



My picks for the weekend were Denver and Seattle, with Seattle taking the super bowl. I was way off on the Denver game, should have realized Pittsburgh's D would be too much. Seattle was picked because I rode Shaun Alexander all the way to the fantasy league title. I'll stick with Seattle for the big game, but the two teams look very well matched.

Grocery shopping for the week:

- 4 packs of parmesan goldfish crackers
- 2 packs of chocolate chip granola bars (25% less sugar!)
- 2 packs smores granola bars (25% less sugar!)
- 2 big packs of Special K bars
- 2 packs of apple crisp breakfast bars
- 3 packs of cinnamon toast crunch bars
- 2 packs of honey nut cherrio bars
- 4 packs of gum, assorted
- 2 SOBE's (orange cream and orange mango)

It's fun rationing out the food, I think I'm good through April. :)

Roger Federer is crazy good, flipped to his match on the TV, and spent the next hour watching him demolish some Russian dude. I'm not a tennis fan by any stretch of the imagination but I respect talent. (ok so I respect Kournakova-talent as well...)

Unlike most people, I have the problem of having too many minutes. 7,653 rollover minutes to be exact. These don't carryover after a period of 12 months however, which means I have to find resourceful ways to burn them.

- 2 hour support calls
- hour long conference calls
- leaving the phone on overnight after dialing POP-CORN  ¶ 7:02 PM 0 comments

  TV shows Lost came back with a vengence, two strong back-to-back episodes. I was impressed how they tied Eko's story in with a plot point from last season. Jack's backstory was overshadowed by the appearance of the Others, though it did show that he has history with amazingly hot brunettes with green eyes.

I've watched the first four episodes of 24. After four seasons, I know the formula and storytelling tricks they pull, but it's engrossing nonetheless. Especially when they kill off some preeminent characters in the first 15 minutes. The show is fairly techno-savvy as well, although the programmers never make mistakes and debug code in seconds (i.e. on CSI where they get DNA results in 10 minutes). I also noticed that humanscale chairs are everywhere at CTU, the government must have a lot of $$$ to budget thousand-dollar chairs. If only they put Arrested Development after this show or something, instead of saddling it in the worst possible spots (opposite MNF and the olympics).

I always scoff at those recap episodes, Lost has them every two weeks it seems. Their sole goal being to capture the short attention span of non-viewers and suck them in. It never works. However, I caught the Grey's Anatomy recap episode and kinda got sucked into the characters...  ¶ 10:14 AM 0 comments

  fancy language If someone uses "facetious" in another sentence ... I've heard that one so often.

Must be the word of the day.  ¶ 1:24 PM 0 comments

  "you like saying gore-tex..." Recently started looking at high-performance outdoor clothing. Mostly spurred by how damn cold I was getting at the top of the ski-lift in Tahoe. I had been looking at Burton jackets for the past couple years, but decided to go for a mid-layer fleece with a lightweight shell on top of that. I had a co-worker in Boston who wore a thin fleece jacket, yet never complained about the windchill. Turns out that his jacket featured gore-tex windstopper membrane, which blocks the wind. Not like my fake gore-tex jacket from Taiwan that soaks up water like a sponge. Gore-Tex products are fairly expensive, due to the fact that they've captured the mindshare for breathable, waterproof outerwear. They advertise themselves as "the best in the world" and the competing laminates are not well known. Plus the product was featured in Seinfeld.

After some research, I got a Mountain Hardwear Windstopper Tech Jacket off Ebay for ~$100. Supposedly the best fleece in the world. I could definitely use it in the City. Hopefully these things will last for a long time to justify the price point. Mountain Hardwear makes solid products with cool designs, and they aren't as mainstream as The North Face. I tend to skew towards the lesser known, well-designed brands anyways. Went to an outdoor store in Redwood City to test the fit, then found one on Ebay. I'm liking the Aiguille hard shell (extremely light) as well as the Alchemy soft-shell. Also looked at base-layer clothing, the 100% Merino Icebreaker shirts were very nice. I don't know about paying $35-70 for a base-layer though, I need a heavy discount. I need to get a cashier/store/bum job at REI, buy what I need with the employee discount, then quit.

It's 4am and I should be getting back to sleep but 24 episode 3 is almost finished downloading! Decisions...

EDIT: did the smart thing and went to sleep. Sneaking a peek at work tho, Jack Bauer uses a treo! woot-woot  ¶ 3:52 AM 0 comments

  jarhead Kinda want to see this movie, the trailer plays nonstop on channel 2 at the hotel (the 'spend some $ on movies u recluse' channel).

Funny thing is I always switch to the channel right before Jamie Fox gives his "I thank God for everyday he gives me in the corps, oorah" line. Damn abbreviated hotel trailers.

Waking up at 2am, working out, then blogging was not really ideal. Work is going to be hard tomorrow. The working out part was good though. Too many expensed business lunches this week. Everyone orders salad, but it's a damn big salad. Salmon salad, Buffalo chicken Salad. The oreo mudslide cheesecake really killed me on Monday. I've been avoiding sushi a bit (read about mercury content in fish) but will go back to it for a couple days.  ¶ 3:40 AM 0 comments

  interests What I still like

- basketball
- visual effects
- software
- movies
- music
- gadgets
- internet
- computer hardware
- working out
- $$$
- o+

new stuff would be

- working out more
- snowboarding
- computer architecture
- networking
- clothes

... dunno  ¶ 11:34 PM 0 comments

  weekend After reading about how dangerous king crab fishing is, I'm going to order a bunch for dinner! Woot-woot!

Yesterday I went hiking with a co-worker. It was a fairly challenging going up the mountain, I almost slipped several times. Damn these worn-out nike shox. Great to get out though. Afterwards I went to his house in Phoenix. He's got a nice home in a quiet neighborhood, with his wife, newborn, and golden retriever. Very picturesque. Bought a bunch of steaks, a cut of salmon (which I was tempted to eat raw but prolly would have killed me), fat tires, cheesecake. Safeway steaks aren't half bad. Grilled 'em, watched the game, chatted. It was a good day.  ¶ 5:00 PM 0 comments

  Bizarro So I fly into Phoenix, show up at work on Tuesday. Everything seems out of whack because it's a short week. I'm there for around 10 minutes before the PM hits me with the bomb. One of the key members of our team (an independent contractor) is missing. has been MIA for 6 days and counting now. No one knows where he is, no one can contact him. Shocking because up until his "departure" he had been one of the most optimistic and hard-working of us all. This is the 2nd member of the Dell project team who has left on awkward terms. The first one was rejected by the customer after his application for a temporary ID badge brought to light a prior felony conviction.

Basically I look good if I show up and don't commit any felonies. :)

The worst part is that I had left my sandisk titanium USB flash drive at the conference room before leaving for winter vacation. One of the last IM's this guy sent me went something like this "you left your USB drive here, I will have it waiting for you when you return..."

My flash drive is now MIA! :( (yes I know this is very "George Constanza"-like behavior but I love that flash drive with the big blue light!)

edit: Due to a lack of personnel, the PMs had me and my buddy sit in on a job interview. They wanted us to ask some technical questions to candidates who probably knew 10x more than we did. One of the candidates happened to be someone who had worked with the "missing guy" on this previous project. A project that this "guy" had constantly mentioned as an example where he did exemplary work. It turns out he had disappeared in the middle of that project as well! At first we were worried that he was lying in a ditch somewhere or in a hospital, but this seems to indicate - "flake." (Imma track him down and find my USB drive ...)  ¶ 6:39 PM 0 comments

  Loot Belated post, for Christmas I got:

- a book by ESPN's Bill Simmon's.
- best buy giftcard that is in the mail (allegedly)
- norelco razor (cuz i shave so much ya know)
- socks and gap GC
- nautica wallet
- pimp JCrew sweater (thanks cuz)

I also went on a three day ski trip, it was fun. Except for my left pinkie toe killing me throughout. The weather was awesome on day two at Northstar, best boarding conditions ever. Then at Squaw Valley it rained like a mofo created extremely slushy conditions. My gear did not hold up well at all, I'm going to buy some new gear.

- snowboarding pants that fit
- mountain hardwear fleece
- shell jacket  ¶ 11:10 AM 0 comments