Another Random Thought Entry

I like to think I have all the solutions to all my problems, but in reality I don't. Currently, I'm "fighting a war" that I think I'm going to lose, yet I still fight it. Why bother right? Well, I do it because I believe there is still hope. Because the outcome has not been determined yet. One day, the end result will appear, then I can determined if I was a successful soldier and proceed to the next gradient, or fail and just disappear.

My Secret Identity

So Batman - The Dark Knight is coming out soon and I thought I should let all of you in on a secret...



Sshhh... don't let the Joker, Riddler, Scarecrow, Catwoman... well, maybe Catwoman can know. ;)



Who else is going to see the movie? I know I'm going...

My July 4th, 2008 Weekend Recap

Thursday: Watched Wall-E.

Friday: Went to Universal Studios and lost my blue baseball cap.

Saturday: Went to Del Mar Fair again, this time with family and ate a bunch of crap that I shouldn't have. Then watched Kung Fu Panda.

Sunday: Played Tennis (it's been about ten years since the last time) in the hot sun for a couple hours, then got boba and my ass kicked in checkers twice!



Digging for gold. ;)


R.I.P.

Movie Reviews Quicky

Since I don't want to write about my July 4th weekend just yet, you all get movie reviews... the really quick version.

Hancock - 4.7/5 stars: Superhero movie with a dash of love.


The Man from Earth - 3/5 stars: I can't believe this is actually a movie. It would have been better if it was a radio play or whatever you ma-call-it. I guess the idea of a caveman surviving until now hooked me. It's somewhat interesting, but I still can't believe I sat through this "movie."


Kung Fu Panda - 4.5/5 stars: Good, laugh out loud computer animated movie. A must watch for martial arts fans young and old.


Shutter (Original Thai version) - 4.6/5 stars: The following is an obvious statement, the storyline is very similar to the American remake, however the Thai version did right everything the American remake got wrong. This version did scare me. I now can say, "I like the movie Shutter, the Thai version, that is..."


Wall-E - 3.5/5 stars - I was expecting more from this movie. Maybe it was the hype? I also didn't know it was a love story with robots.


Wanted - 3/5 stars - Ok... I was expecting waaayyyyy more from this movie. The hype really killed it. What really made it bad were the ample amount of exaggerated scenes in this movie.


Sex and the City - 4/5 stars: Yes, I watched this. I thought the beginning was really good, then the middle got dry and boring, then the end kind of picked it up again. Overall, it wasn't bad and stayed true to the TV series.


Don't Mess With the Zohan - 2.5/stars: Uh...??? Let's just say, I don't recommend this. I felt like this was a waste of time and money, at least I got to eat popcorn.


The Orphanage - 3.7/5 stars: Not really scary, more like a tense adventure, but there was one part that gave me goosebumps.


P2 - 3/5 stars: This movie was laughable at some parts...


Atonement - 3.5/5 stars: A movie that shows that life is not fair. For some reason, it felt really long and I had a hard time paying attention.


Juno - 3.8/5 stars: Hmmm... I was expecting something extraordinary, but it turned out kind of ordinary, and not in a bad way.


Ratings are based on MY enjoyment of the movie, don't like it? Too bad.

[Poll] My Desk is... Results

As you can see, most of my readers are messy people. That's fine, I picked the "tidy half of the time" choice, though I wonder what everyone else picked...

Time

It's only a matter of time...

It's Freaking Hot!

No elaborate entry today, just a quick rundown of memorable things over last weekend:

Going to Del Mar Fair again... yeah, yeah, I went last week already. I just couldn't resist when I was asked to go again. This time around, I rock climbed instead of bungee jumped. Rode some carni-rides, didn't get hustled, and went to Emerald for good food afterwards. Thanks Cindy for the invite, and both her and Van for waiting for me.

Went up to San Dimas for Leah's graduation party. There we ate good home cooked food, had a pinata, and played hot potato. The "force" was with me that day, the Darth Vader pinata went down after my first swing. Thanks to Jimmy and Beau for driving. Thanks to Leah for the invite.


Food!


Right before she walked me into the Darth Vader pinata.


Take that!!!

Tried to relearn how to swim. Man! I suck at swimming now more than I did before. But my treading is getting better. Thanks to Nam for helping me.

Today, I fell into temptations. Ok, maybe I shouldn't call it temptations, but today I subscribed to XM Radio for my car. Last week when Acura gave me a loaner for 4 days (don't ask), I realized how much I love XM Radio. When I got to work with the loaner, I thought to myself, "Wow! It was all music and I didn't have to listen to a single commercial, or jackass talk about stupid stuff I don't care about." So I went to the Acura forum I always go to and found out how people were getting XM for $77/year, that's half price! If you think of it like this $77/12 months = ~$6.50/month for quality music all the time, except when you go under bridges or through tunnels. I can do $6.50 a month, that's like one lunch less I have to eat a month. The cool thing about signing up for XM is I can listen to XM radio online through a browser. Now I have unlimited music to listen to at work, so essentially it was like killing 2 birds with one stone. Yay! Thanks Acurazine.com.

2008 Del Mar Fair

Yesterday, I went to the Del Mar Fair with Beau, Joe, Cindy, Van, and Thuan. By the time we got to the fair we were really behind schedule. Then Joe, Beau, and I got stuck in a slow line to get into the fair. So I said, "F this!" and told Joe and Beau that I'm going to check out the line that the girls got in. Their line was going a lot faster, probably by 10 times faster, so I told the guys to come over here. At the front of the entrance, I thought I lost my admission ticket during the security check. Lucky I found it. *phew*

After getting in and meeting up with the girls we decided to grab some food because everyone was hungry by then. I got a spicy polish dog with onions. I gotta say though, it was probably the most expensive and worst polish dog I ever had. Beau and Joe grabbed cheese steak sandwiches and we split fries with cheese. Thuan and Cindy got chicken kabobs, while Van got chicken strips with a bunch of fried stuff. Van and Cindy were not satisfied with their food so they got more food! Van ordered chicken with waffles and Cindy got Chow Mien. Of course most of us were volunteered to help finish the extra food.

After that we rode some carnival rides and played some carni games. We got hustled on one of the games. It was one of those dart throwing games. Cindy purchased 3 darts for $5 and distributed among the girls, I did the same for the guys. Everyone takes a turn and surprisingly everyone pops a balloon. This means now Cindy and I each get a small prize, but if we combine them, we can get 1 medium prize, except all the medium prize suck. Then the lady carni, hands me another dart saying if I pop another balloon we can select from the large prizes, and pay $5, however if I miss she doesn't charge me. So it was like a win-win situation. I was like whatever, threw the dart and missed. The carni, says, don't worry about that one, I'll cover you try again. This time I get a balloon... but the large prizes weren't the large prizes we thought, they were more like the medium plus prizes. So a couple darts later we end up with a x-large prize... the catch was those couple darts were $5 a piece! That is not what we as a group heard or understood. Whatever... now Cindy has a stuff puppy named "Hustler." Hahah... Get it?

By this time we were discussing which ride to go on next. I said, the scariest one. That somehow lead to bungee jumping, which I said I would do if it was like $20. Anyways, it was not $20, but $40, which I said I'm not sure if I wanted to pay that much to jump. I had to be wearing my "I DO ALL MY OWN STUNTS" t-shirt. Suddenly, it was like a charity event and the group was pitching in to see me jump. Thanks everyone! Cindy wanted to buy the $15 dvd. Van, Cindy, and Joe all asked if I needed someone to push me. I see how it is. My opinion on this is, if you need a pusher then you're not really doing it on your own will, and if I said I was going to do something then I'm going to do it.

While waiting to sign up, there was a girl jumper who was up there that couldn't seem to jump. She kept coming out and going back in. She must have done that like 3 times and the whole crowd at the bottom was rooting and cheering for her to jump. In the end, she didn't jump. This only made me more determined not to be like that.

The cost of the jump was $75= 40 for the jump, 10 for the t-shirt (red with the words: "SHUT UP and JUMP!"), 15 for the dvd, and 10 to bring 2 people up (Cindy and Joe wanted to go up). While waiting to go up, Cindy asked if I was nervous. I told her I wasn't really, and I asked her if she was nervous. Her response was funny, she said that she was nervous for me. I noticed that they blow up the cushion at the bottom, which wasn't there before. I was kind of disappointed because this made it easier. You lose a little bit of fear knowing that you have a cushion at the bottom. Joe said, it's better this way because if something goes wrong, at least you have a chance of hitting something soft.

The guy filming me at the bottom asked if I was going to yell all the way down? I told him, "I dunno, guess we'll have to see." This was right after the guy strapping me to the bungee cord says, "Oh shit!" and had to get another leg strap for my right leg. So as I was being lifted 130 feet up in the air, I was thinking to myself. I don't plan to back out, but what if my hands just don't let go of the rails? Hmmm... I thought the pain from backing out would hurt me mentally more than me just letting go and jumping. The guy in the lift gave me my instructions: go out, hold onto the rails, and lean forward. He's going to count down... 3, 2, 1, bungee! That's when I let go and head face first.

So the moment of truth came. I stepped out, held onto the rails, and leaned forward. 3, 2, 1, bungee! My hands let go without hesitation. I was a little surprised my body cooperated with my mind so easily. I guess my mind and body don't fear jumping 130 feet face first with a rope tied to my legs, good to know? As I was heading down face first, the first few seconds of free fall was really cool. I kept my eyes open the whole way down and thought to myself, "the ground is coming up pretty fast!" The bungee cord pulled and it was basically over. Hanging upside down was pretty disorienting. Hanging there and viewing the world upside down, I thought to myself how the jump should have been longer and how I'm glad that I went to the restroom before this.

Some people will probably asked how it felt so I'm going to cover it now. I dunno. There was no adrenaline hush before, during, or after. There was no point I felt scared. Maybe the jump should have been 300 feet instead? The jump just felt too easy. Now that I have bungee jumped, I want to do skydiving. I think that will give me the rush that I was missing during the bungee jump. After the jump was over, I tried to give everyone back their money, because really I shouldn't have accepted it in the first place. But almost no one took their money back.

We left the fair after browsing some of the exhibits to meet up at Tofu House and had dinner. I got my boring "Old Fashion" tofu soup, which I can't seem to finish anymore. Afterwards, most of us headed to Mission Valley and met up with Carlos, Angie, and Tino to watch Don't Mess With The Zohan. I don't think it was that good and won't really be recommending it.


Thanks everyone who pitched in and made this jump possible, and extra thanks to Cindy for paying for the DVD, without you I wouldn't have proof because I would be too cheap to pay $15 for a 2 and a half minute video.

PS. Happy Father's Day.

Take Me Out To The Nose Bleeds

Today's Padres vs. Dodgers game was over after the 3rd inning. Even though we sat in the "nose bleeds," I had a good time. I ate 2 hotdogs (buy 1 get 1, technically... 1 was a chili cheese dog), large fountain drink, and a large nacho. I had $10 worth of Padres bucks, so the 2 hotdogs and drink only cost me $1.25. The nachos were another story... $6.75 for mediocre chips and cold cheese! At least we won, 9-0 Padres.

After the game, I went to do some training with Beau to prepare for sparring in a couple weeks. Man! It's been a long time since I have done this. My fighting rhythm is off, my punches/kicks are weak and slow. I need to jump rope and work on stamina. Almost the whole time I was wondering how much of this I needed to do to work off the ballpark food and the 2 beers + beer brat + polish dog I had yesterday at happy hour. (hey! I was hungry.)

My co-worker, Dana, who set that up was an hour late. By then I was discussing with another co-worker how I was going to write my "Dana You Suck" email. Luckily, Dana does show up and tells us she's running on "Asian Time." Sad part about it, is it's not the first time I have heard of the phrase "Asian Time" used by late Asian people. I had a good time playing ping pong while buzzing. I actually think it's like my dancing abilities where I'm better if I'm a little drunk. Hmmm... maybe it was all a set up though. Like it was all part of Dana's plan to come late and we're all too drunk to play ping pong. (or beer pong- I still don't know how to play beer pong.)

She already has setup up another happy hour thing for next week. I think I'll pass though because I should be training, going to the gym more instead of adding unnecessary calories, and studying. She also wants to set up a badminton event. When another co-worker brought up that I play badminton competitively, she would not stop about going to play badminton. I'm already thinking, "Hmmm... I wonder how this is going to turn out?" I haven't played badminton in over a month. I hope my footwork and clearing abilities haven't diminished. I don't get to play badminton enough with my Jim, Dinah, and Nam the way it is. Oh which reminds me, I need to crash badminton with Beau next week.

This weekend I plan to have a good time at the Del Mar Fair and resolve my freaking Ubuntu 8 Linux Server personal project. I brought my linux server problem into work and showed it to one of the Software Architects. After about 30 minutes of frustration, he turned to me and said, "Google." Great! I want to at least check off this personal project on my list of open personal projects. I have basically given up on my compression personal project. *looks at Nam* I want to go back to working with microcontroller programming and my OS (which I haven't start). I still haven't worked on my "ultimate" personal project in over a year... *sigh* In between all this, I need to get in some more study time.

Oh! To go to the masquerade event at Comic Con or not...? Hmmm...?

CATS

I tried to snorkel this weekend and watched the musical, CATS. I need to take swimming lessons because ocean swimming is terrifying to me. After watching CATS, I thought Les Mes was better because it had more of a storyline.