December 21st, 2004 yoshers
Whew, part 1 of a busy December is done. Here is a recap of the fun filled weekend.
Friday, 12/17: Shareena and I picked up my dad from the airport at 6:30pm, had some KFC (grease sure sinks in when you don’t usually have any) and proceeded to drive the 3+ hours down to Atascadero.
Saturday, 12/18: Met up with Jansen and his family and had brunch. Coming in from Simi, Jason attempted to call us for directions but no one answered except for Shareena and fortunately we were able to steer him to the restaurant. Jason, Shareena and I spent most of the afternoon shopping for the bachelor party and side party for the girls (where they played Cranium) and we also played Bang!, a pretty interesting and simple card game that depicts the Old West.
Otherwise, the rest of the afternoon was relatively straightforward as we did a rehearsal wedding and had dinner with many people from Jansen and Rebecca’s family. Lots of good food and a slide show of various pictures of Jansen and Rebecca were shown including some old Boy Scout pictures that I barely remember (of which I am sure many are also hiding at my Dad’s place in Florida).
When at last Jason and I got Jansen out of the dinner and back to the motel to start our bachelor party – tournament style Texas Hold-em, there were in fact many that came later. However, it was a good chance to show some people how to play and in general it was a lot of fun despite the fact that I was dealing most of the night (first to facilitate quicker game, later due to the fact that I played a total of 4 hands, 3 of which were Jason’s when he was low in chips already). Although we didn’t quite end before midnight (as the groom requested), it was pretty close and everyone was back in their rooms by 12:30am, so I think we did our jobs pretty well as groomsmen.
Sunday, 12/19: As for the wedding, I think everything went pretty well. The highlights, I must say, were the first and last dances performed by the bride and the groom (they are both very good dancers) as well as the fun (though I didn’t participate much as I was organizing and loading the presents…hehe) with decorating the car for their drive off into marriage-hood.
There will be many pictures from my digital camera after I consult with the bride and groom (after they get back from their honeymoon in Hawaii). I certainly would not want to display any photos before they had a chance to take a look at it. Also, I am in charge of devleoping and putting on CDs the photos from the disposable cameras that were provided at the wedding, so it would be best if all that were taken care of at the same time.
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December 1st, 2004 yoshers
No, not my wedding…
Anyways, Thanksgiving was quite fun as Shareena and I headed over to her parents’ house to eat lots of food: Turkey and stuffing with spicy gravy for Thanksgiving lunch and leftovers for a bit, then chicken curry! Yum!
Thanks to Olivia for helping out with eating all the food and accompanying Shareena to go shopping. I must say that Black Friday 2004 was pretty pathetic on the electronics/computers front, so I didn’t do any shopping other than stopping by Fry’s to look around.
The side benefit was that I can play some more Tales of Symphonia! Somehow after many hours of play, I am still stick in Disk 1…I guess I am just really slow.
Upcoming big event will be the wedding of one of my best friend, Jansen on December 19th. I have been tapped to be one of the groomsmen and thus, I shall be learning to be one in the next two weeks. All of which reminds me that I still need to get sized for my tux and reserve a room for the weekend!
So much for the lazy life…
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October 11th, 2004 yoshers
Since Cal football lost to USC even though they were the dominant team, there is really not much to talk about in the sports realm (especially since the Dodgers also lost to the Cardinals).
However, I missed the anti-climax of the Cal-USC game as I was at the Northern California Renaissance Faire on Saturday with Shareena, Amber and Chris and it was quite a fun day. Though the start was not quite ideal as we attempted to purchase advance tickets for $2.50 less per person via the online website (which uses Paypal) and we followed the MapQuest directions to nowheresville, the rest of the day was filled with interesting comments, interesting costumes and interesting shows.
As most of you know, I am not really someone who normally enjoys these oddly out of placed events and certainly, when I think about it, it is really weird that people want to re-enact old times, but with the benefit of modern technology. I guess it is really about the spirit and having a good time.
So a good time we doth had, especially from the performances by Sound and Fury: Fakespeare Players, who are a vaudeville troupe of actors that presents loosely based Shakespeare works in a very funny and ribald manner. They are definitely something to be experienced and not explained, but with performances like this, audience participation is definitely the way to go.
So alas, missing the football game was not so bad given that I had a good time and Cal lost anyways. The moral of the story is…football is fun, but not when your team loses a game that they should have won; go do something else instead.
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October 1st, 2004 yoshers
So I have been talking a lot about my work lately and yes, obviously things at work have been exciting and challenging and so far so good. Today, I gave a quick overview of new things to come at our staff meeting and from all accounts, it was well received. I must admit, as I have taken on more and more responsibilities, it has reach a point where being organized actually takes effort and prioritizing tasks and projects will be required starting very soon (if not already…somewhere in my head). Nevertheless, this really is a good direction to be headed…as opposed to being completely bored at work.
Otherwise, there have not been much to write home about. I took last weekend off to drive down to Los Angeles to visit my Grandmother. Even though I can tell by my semi-weekly calls to see how she is doing that her health is deteriorating, it was still a bit sad to see that she does not have the strength to stand up or even to play Mah-jong (which she enjoyed quite a lot in my previous visits). I am not sure what I can really do as it is difficult to carry a conversation with my Grandmother due to her problems hearing and I am generally not good with casual chit-chat. So I will continue with my phone calls and to travel down to Los Angeles whenever I get a chance.
Lastly, I would like to take this time to thank Shareena for all that you have done for me. Your attempts at dressing me up and coerce me to look nice will rub off more and more…you just need some patience, dear. And yes, I am boring sometimes with just wanting to stay at home and watch TV and play video games, but I do try to get you to not go shopping all the time. Hiking in Tilden and at Point Reyes is fun, is it not?
Well, dear (zero? one?) reader(s). Now that my site is more dynamic, feel free to comment and hopefully, with an easier method to post new content, I will be updating this site with more thoughts and happenings in the future.
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March 26th, 2004 yoshers
Microsoft is not all bad. My 2 year old mouse Wireless Intellimouse Explorer broke and I found out via Fatwallet and Anandtech that I can call up Microsoft’s Supplemental Parts department and request a replacement! Lo and behold, a few days after I faxed in the request, Microsoft has sent me a new version of the Wireless Intellimouse Explorer! I hope people do not abuse this and for those of you that have a broken keyboard or mouse from Microsoft, give this a shot.
The United States Postal Service forwarding system is very erratic. I was back in Berkeley over spring break and found that Shareena and I had quite a lot of mail at our house in Berkeley. At least none of my stuff was very important (and I don’t think Shareena got anything important other than her bank statements), but it would be nice if things got forwarded properly. I know it is difficult to keep up with all that mail, but consistency would be nice.
Fixing a door is hard. The laundry door at the Berkeley house blew off during the last rain/wind storm. It was already not really fitting in the door frame as the door was slowly deforming and coming apart while the door frame (which I noticed when I tried to put in the new door) was not really done up to par. So my reward for trying to put the door in were 1) finding out the door is too small and the frame was not done properly in the first place, not to mention the hinges do not quite line up. 2) leaving the new door un-closed as there is too much space for a closing mechanism to be useful. So a temporary solution is in place (rocks to hold close the door as it doesn’t quite close on its own) and more fun when I get back in June.
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March 9th, 2004 yoshers
Well, I had been staying nicely away from Fatwallet most of my time in Chicago. Alas, it was not to last, but there were some tremendous deals last couple of weeks that I could not pass up.
First, it was a $25 Dual Format DVD writer (which does 8x DVD+R, 4x DVD-R, and 40X CD-R writing) at Office Max. This was a slight price mistake that happened on a Sunday. At the end of that current week (Monday-Sunday), the price should have been $149.99 with a $50 mail-in rebate = $100. However, the register rung it up with next week’s price of $149.99 – $80 instant rebate = $69.99. So basically I got it for $69.99 out the door + $50 rebate = $19.99 plus tax. Not bad at all =). Too bad DVD media is still just below $1 per disc…quite expensive.
The second deal was just a normal deal, not quite as scorching as the DVD writer. Office Depot had a stick of Kingston 512MB PC2700 RAM for $99.72 – $20 coupon – $50 mail-in rebates = $30 plus tax, which is a good price for 256MB of RAM. Although I didn’t really need more RAM on my computer (already have 2×256MB = 512MB on only a 1GHz Athlon…yes, I should upgrade), I thought I would add it to my computer (it only has 2 slots) and add the remainder to Shareena’s mom’s new computer (price mistake from Dell via Fatwallet) that is a Pentium 4, but with only 128MB of RAM. It just seems so wrong to me even though the computer won’t be used very heavily.
So those are my misadventures recently…I think I have successfully convinced myself that I do not need a new computer…yet, but if the right deal comes along…
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February 26th, 2004 yoshers
Fun with Old Infrastructure
It looks like I need to amend the first line of my February advisory…the city also has to keep the gas main from cracking, especially those that run below the street in front of your house/apartment. Unfortunately, this happened on February 20th and it was quite a fun night. If you want more information about the leak, visit the University of Chicago’s newspaper article.
As for me, I had noticed some commotion and fire engine noise in front of our apartment at around 3pm. I also noticed that traffic was being diverted from the street, so I figured something was going on in or around that section of the street. However, I didn’t stand around and watch as I figure they didn’t need more spectators and that if it affects me, I will know about it without being right there. So I went back up to the apartment.
At around 5pm, Shareena walks into the apartment and tells me that we have to evacuate. In fact, they were not going to allow her to come up to the apartment since they had already evacuated the place. For some reason, I was not notified of this and had remained in the apartment. Soon thereafter, we put our cats into their travel pet carriers and went downstairs to the lobby. Here we waited awhile with others waiting for some definitive word on the progress of the work being done on the gas line. After awhile, I decided to head over to Noodles, Etc. to get some dinner so we wouldn’t starve ourselves all night. When I returned, we got more information about how they are not expecting to complete the task until midnight, so we headed over to Shareena’s supervisor’s house a block down the street to spend the night with them.
So all in all, it was really more of an inconvenience than anything else. Of course, carrying Atticus for a block was not an easy task. Hopefully, the other infrastructure around our apartment decides to stay in tack for a few months longer (things around here do look quite old and the cracked gas line was around 50 years old itself) and we won’t have to do something similar when Shareena has an essay or her thesis due. Hey, at least I have my laptop…but carrying her books around would be a killer.
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February 3rd, 2004 yoshers
I have actually done a lot of shopping using various “Hot Deals” sites for quite some time now. Ever since I was working at Administrative Computing at UC Berkeley, I have frequented these hot deals sites whenever I was looking (and eventually becoming a daily habit) for something that I needed. Not to advertise or anything, but fatwallet.com is a pretty good place to start if you are interested in finding cheap stuff online.
I am not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I consider myself pretty good fiscally, so I do not worry about it much. However, there are some people that post messages saying how they have maxed their credit cards and cannot get on the latest hot deal. I just hope their max is like $200 or something.
Since my arrival to Chicago in September, I have had the luxury of searching these hot deals site more than usual (as I have done and still am jobless). I have been fortunate to buy a 160 GB hard drive for $30 (coupon stacking mistake), get a barebones computer (no monitor, no speakers) for Shareena’s mom for about $250 (the pentium 4, 2.4 GHz chip is retailing for about $180 by itself…), and just scored a black Game Boy Advance SP plus a free game for $79.99.
So, all in all, I would say that I haven’t spent any money that I wouldn’t spend otherwise…OK, I probably don’t need the Game Boy Advance, but Shareena always wants to play Tetris when we fly, so it was worth it just for that. Also, the new Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicle plays better using the Game Boy…so some ulterior motives as well. But anyways, try it out sometimes…apparently 2004 Corvettes are selling for $10,000 less than MSRP. I am sure someone out there is itching to buy one.
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December 4th, 2003 yoshers
Oh, it is that sometimes dreaded, but still wonderful time of the year – Christmas! For most people, you can get a sense of what they want and with few exceptions (like people not coordinating and giving the same present to one person), Christmas shopping is a relatively simple and easy chore.
But shopping for me is like shopping for your father, I already have most everything I need and for those stuff that I desire (I use this term very loosely because while I may want a big screen TV, I can really do without one!), they are usually way overpriced for anyone’s budget.
Despite my own advisory column item #2, I will not be posting my list on my website (at list not in a public area for all to read). In fact, I am still trying to figure out what I want for Christmas. Yes, it is hard even for me to buy myself stuff (Fatwallet, notwithstanding).
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November 12th, 2003 yoshers
As I have lots of time living in Chicago without a job, I have been doing my best to accumulate more episodes of Quantum Leap and Star Trek Enterprise. (Yes, they both have Scott Bakula as a lead, but I think that is more of a coincidence than anything…I mean he is talented, but he did act in Major League III.) Frankly, I am waiting for the Quantum Leap series to come out on DVD as rumor has it that it will happen soon. However, it seems like everything Quantum Leap just gets delayed and delayed (there is also a two year rumor of a follow up mini-series of it on SciFi channel…). Of course, they do not even show Quantum Leap on SciFi regularly anymore, but if you look at the lineup, I can think of a few shows that it could replace.
Star Trek Enterprise is a bit less interesting, but I guess I am a semi-trekkie having watch and like Star Trek The Next Generation as I grew up. Since then, Deep Space 9 (was OK) and Voyage (Ugh…) helped Star Trek on its downward slide. I cannot say that I am hooked, but I tried to catch an episode when I have the chance, which is more than I can say for any of the other shows on TV.
More on Quantum Leap:
http://www.finifter.com/quantum-leap/
More on Enterprise:
http://www.treknation.com/
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