Nighttime view...after dinner, we went up to the exclusive Club Lounge on the 31st floor (we were on the 27th floor) and brought back complimentary fruits and cakes. At around 10, Emily and I headed off to the clubs to meet up with Margaret and her friend. Chris and Lori stayed behind because Lori didn't feel too well and had to rest. At first we were going to go to Loft 11/Paradise Lounge but there was a problem with the guestlists. In any case, we went to a bar/club called Holy Cow which turned out to be pretty cool. Got me a Belvedere Vodka Martini and that was it for me. Towards the end, Margaret and her friend got on top of this raised platform thing. Emily later joined them and at one point, I was up there too. So much fun being up there because you don't have to worry about people bumping into you or spilling their drinks on you. There was one guy who put his drink next to another platform and of course, 10 seconds later, the drink was kicked off. The guy had this really confused look on his face like "What happened?" lol People who are drunk are so funny. His buddy had to lead him away. After I took Emily home, I went back to the hotel and just went to sleep. Best sleep I've had in a while...
So, I'll be in Miami from April 6th (Leaving at 7AM) to April 17th (Coming back at 11:19AM). And then I'm leaving for Peru on April 18th (10:24AM) and getting back in SF on May 1st (Coming back at 11:46AM). During the Peru portion, updates will very likely not happen at all unless we stay at a hostel with internet access that I can hijack. Maybe they'll have wireless. In preparation for sleeping in the airport at Lima, I even found a site!
I've been pretty bad about updates this week unfortunately due to a current project taking up quite a bit of my free time. Luckily, I still jot down things that happen so that when I do post, I can still write about it all. First things first, pics from Sunday and then random thoughts. This month is so full with pictures I may actually have to archive some of the early stuff before the month ends.
For instance, it's been raining quite a bit in California this last week, not a constant downpour or anything but enough that it changes what you wear and everything. As I was walking back to the bus terminal, I passed a construction site (as I happen to do pretty much every day now). They had taken up the sidewalk so they had one of those protected wooden sidewalks built into the street. The top was mainly wooden planks so when it rained, it'd leak through there. Quite a lot of last week, I went "commando" so to speak and went about umbrella-less. So as I was walking underneath the planks, trying to figure out the best way to get from one end to the other without getting seriously wet, I got to thinking. Should I walk under a spot that had just released a droplet or should I avoid those areas altogether because it was leaky at all? The logic behind walking underneath a spot that had just leaked, is because it takes a sec for the water to gather enough to seap through the crack during which I could easily pass beneath the hanging droplet. The problem with seaking a path where there was no leakage is frought with danger because perhaps that path just seems to be leak-free because it's the moment JUST BEFORE the droplet will fall. In the end, I just gave up, and walked in a zig zag pattern. It seemed to work the best, I must have confused the droplets. hahahahahah jk
What is it about women/girls carrying shopping bags around to carry their everyday items? I know this because some people on my bus and on other buses emerge carrying Banana Republic/Coach/Macy's/Nordstrom shopping bags in the morning containing what obviously is not things that they just bought? Some of them have some kinda wrinkled bags (poor people, they must have not shopped in a while) and some seem to like putting their lunches and everything else they can cram into them. They're being used like a handbag almost. My hypothesis is that the women feel better during noontime if they walk around Market St. carrying a namebrand or department store bag. This way they can pretend that they have just left the store after having bought something that required a bag. I'm thinking that I just ask the Apple store to give me a huge bag so I can go around everyday pretending that I've just bought another laptop. The plastic tote bag that I got with the Shuffle just didn't cut it even if it did have the Apple logo on it. Perhaps I could also lug around a huge TV box and just grin and say "Just got it!" when people give me weird looks (you know that they're just jealous). hahahahaha
I've had instances where some days you just see a lot of kids having fun with their parents. It's happened to me several times where you get a lot of what I would scientifically call "AWWWWWW" moments happen one after another. Like when I saw this one dad walking in SF with his two kids (boy and girl...both around 4-6). The kids were dressed in Gap Kids style which is so cool. Anyways, they were happily hopping/jumping/walking/chattering away when the dad approached the crosswalk. As he did so, he said one word "Hands!", which he said in a warm way and not in a authoritarian way. Then the kids automatically walked up to their dad and each of them grasped a hand and waited for the light. That was such an "AWWWWWW" moment. hehehe another one was today when on the bus, I saw a dad read "Dr. Seuss's Hop On Pop" to his daughter. That was pretty "AWWWWWW".
So I've had the shuffle for almost a week now. I'm still getting used to not knowing exactly what the next song is (although in non-shuffle mode, I can kinda guess since it's based on the order the shuffle was loaded...something I found out not through manuals but just looking at the iTunes playlist and comparing it with what I was listening) Still the convenience and weight/size of the whole thing has become integrated into my life. And now when I see another person with white headphones, I feel a sense of comraderie instead of wistful thinking. hehehe...on a similar subject. Ever wanted to save iTunes music videos? Read this on how to. It involves backing up a shadow copy of the temp file that iTunes creates when you dl a music video. If you don't want to read the site and you know how to make shadow backup copies, the location of the temp file is C:\Documents and Settings\[Your User Name]\Local Settings\Temp\. Look for a *.tmp file (ie IDH1FD.tmp) that is around 40 MB. Make a shadow copy of it somewhere else and then rename the extension from tmp to mov. Pretty darn sweet. One thing that the site forgot to mention was that XP Home does not contain a copy of ntbackup. You'll need to get the executable from someone who has XP Pro. It can be found in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 as NTBACKUP.EXE (1109KB). Very nifty.
A small announcement...I've really moved forward with the food database development...the other sideproject is a little sidetracked now (due to a problem with handling cookies) but if you'd like to take a look at my Price Extractor Tool, here it is. A little background info...I was inspired to write this tool because Emily was eyeing this neat BR jacket that was online. So I tried to help her out so that she didn't have to go online and refresh the page every 10 min or so waiting for a sale hahahaha. Basically what you do is, type in the address of the page of the product you want to get. The tool pulls out all the prices on the page. It then refreshes every 30 min. What I wanted to add was price alerts so that it would email you when a specified price was hit. Right now, that part hasn't been implemented. Still though, after the food database, I'll probably revisit this and get the cookie handling part up. The neat idea is that you would be able to implement price alerts for ANY WEBSITE. Unfortunately, that also means that you have to keep the tool open. In any case, I ran into problems with the BR site because it displays different content when it detects that the browser doesn't support cookies. Many other sites don't have this problem though. The URL I automatically populated is using Froogle which works great. The cookie problem is an issue because the php code just pulls the data stream without doing any cookie stuff. Maybe there is a header or something that I can chage to fool the BR site...there's also small other bugs because the tool searches for price listings in the source code and not what is displayed on the screen. Therefore, it also picks up prices hardcoded in links so it lists them twice. Not sure how to fix that one.
So on Friday, I went down to San Jose to learn some Salsa dancing with Emily. We didn't really get far since I think we were all pretty hungry. That and Emily has no confidence in me. hahahaha...we'll see if I do better this coming Friday. So afterwards, we headed off to Maggiano's at Santana Row.
I'm going to start titling my posts now. Word to your mother. Which reminds me, when Fred was rapping along to "Ice Ice Baby", the MTV they put on for it showed pictures of fetuses interspersed with pictures of ice. Very disturbing.
I watched a movie called "Boksuneun Naui Geot". It's a Korean film by the same guy who did "Old Boy". "Old Boy" won the 2004 Cannes Grand Prize of Jury. This was the festival where "Fahrenheit 9/11" won the Palme d'Or. "Boksuneun Naui Geot" actually came first and supposedly is a part of the director's "Revenge" series, the final movie coming out something this year I believe. Pretty gruesome stuff (I got up from my seat a ton of times cause I couldn't believe what I was seeing but the emotional impact of the movie is definitely very interesting. You get torn in many different ways and in the end, you're still wondering who the good guy/bad guy is. This director did "JSA" which I liked a lot too.
Shuffle and Sport Case...yes, I broke down and got an 1GB Ipod Shuffle. I was holding out for the Sony offering but decided that it was ok to not have a screen. You can't define the feeling you get when you want to hear a particular song and the shuffle randomly chooses it for you to listen to. Hahahahahaha...it's like you've just won the lottery or something. The sport case will come in handy in Peru I think. Got it at the SF store. "Luckily" I did not leave with a laptop in my hands. Whew...that store is dangerous to the wallet. In a way, it's not as dangerous though as a store with the Sony 55" Grand Wega in it because I already have a laptop and I currently watch TV on a 20-something inch set. It's horrible for my eyes...hahahahahahhaha. Yes my logic is quite crafty.
So I went down to Union City and met up with Chris and Lori for dinner on Sunday. I saw a guy stick his hands in the back of his pants while pacing around. I wondered why he did that. In any case, I only had Calamari and a soup all thanks to Shanghai Dumpling...hehe...afterwards, we went to see Robots which was pretty good. Then I went and met up with Emily at her local Q-Cup. Ended up having 2 Passion Fruit Milk Teas!!! Good thing tea doesn't affect me at all. Emily had spent the afternoon with her friend who made this Lithuanian? cake and also potato salad. Emily gave me her take-home portion which was prety good. Hmmm, we're trying to plan this next Saturday's night out for clubbing.
Afterwards, we stopped by this roadside stand and got fries. hmmmmmmmm
Later that day, after I rested, I went to VH Noodle with Eric/Fred/Allan. Good stuff...I also got this REALLY GOOD passion fruit smoothie. Later I finished watching Ong Bak with LC and even had some late night steak. I made the mushrooms. hmmm...I haven't had good mushrooms in a while.
The Final Fantasy Concert is at the bottom of this post...prevail and ye shall be rewarded!!!
Emily came over in the afternoon on Sunday to do some studying. I'm kinda frustrated at why it takes me so long to answer these logic questions. I'll get them right but only after a long time of hmmming and hawing. It's really annoying. It was really nice having someone to study with though...lot better than suffering alone. Hahhahaha jk..."someone" was making fun of me for spending so much time on a question though...aargh...I'm studying this book which bills itself as having the hardest logic questions so I think I deserve a break. :-P
Afterwards, we went to Golden Gate park and walked around. Saw the renovated Conservatory (although closed) and saw what will be the new De Young building. The rollerskaters were there as usual. A marine layer was coming in (we could see it when we were on the Bay Bridge) so the sky overhead was totally overcast.
So we went to Naia (I still like calling it Mondo Gelato) for gelatos. Got a mango and a hazelnut chocolate thing with rice crispies in it. Loved the mango but the rice crispies were definitely not crispy.
We were making lasagna that night so we went to Andronicos and Safeway for the ingredients. Emily's mom had gotten the lasagna shell so we had that already. I had pulled up a seafood lasagna recipe from Food Network so we went off of that. At Andronico's, we got Monterey Jack cheese, spinach, carrots, green beans (carefully picked out by Emily), crushed tomato sauce, milk, and cream (we used half and half). At Safeway, we got cooked/peeled shrimp and rainbow trout.
Ughhhh...this year was a smog check year so I had a whole service thing done to the car. A lot of it was long overdue so oh well. Had the smog check, plus an oil change, plus a transmission fluid flush/refill, plus a coolant fluid flush/refill. I had no idea that there are different kinds of coolant. I thought it was a one type thing...the repair guy said that I have to use Toyata "Red" with my car which shocked the hell out of me cause I've been using Green coolant for like forever. Turns out that I don't HAVE to use Toyota "Red", just anything with ethyl-glycol in it which the one that I had been using did. However, the mix between green and red was causing the coolant to have this sick brown color. Supposedly, I can't buy Toyota "Red" from Kragen or anyplace like that so I'm going to have to go to the dealer from now on which is really stupid.
Last time I went to VH Noodle, Lih-Chern ordered an orange juice cause they have this interesting machine that makes it, the Zumex Z-100. Last last time, Eric said that we should order one just to see the machine and how it works. Basically, the orange rolls between 2 cylinders which crushes it, squeezing juice down the middle of the device into a receptacle below...I think a wedge between the two cylinders splits the peel in two..and these funky rollerballs take the peel and dispose of it away from the orange juice chute (I'm going to have to work on my describing skills if I'm ever going to be a good patent attorney...argh)...anyways it took like 6-8 oranges for LC's small glass...weird...but if you think about it, there really isn't that much juice in an orange.
I'm cleaning up in GT4...the German Touring Race gets you a car worth 800,000 something credits which means upgrades are pocket change. I B-Spec'ed it while cleaning my room. Took in millions. hahahhaha
So now on to the Final Fantasy concert. On Monday, Emily and I, Clarence, Jasmine and Keith, Eric and Fred, went to see the SF performance of Final Fantasy music. For SF, it was held at the Masonic Center. Some of you may know that there have been now only 3 FF concerts in the United States...first being in LA at the new Disney Concert Hall, second was in Chicago, and now in SF. Anyways, it was well worth it and a lot of fun to hear and watch. Being the bearer of all the tickets, I was especially nervous about getting there on time, esp after Jasmine called me and said that 3 of the parking lots nearby were full...but we made it. Beforehand Emily endured the experience that is the Tenderloin Carl's Jr. There wasn't much time to get anything else...hmm forgot, note to self, Emily likes Passion Fruit just like me, hehehe we got Boba before hand. :-P
Ok so Cathy wanted a list of the songs that they played. Here they are.
| Songlist | ||
| 1. Liberi Fatali | FF VIII | |
| 2. Zanarkand | FF X | |
| 3. Terra's Theme | FF VI | |
| 4. Theme Of Love | FF IV | |
| 5. Dear Friends | FF V | |
| 6. Vamo' Alla Flamenco | FF IX | |
| 7. Love Grows | FF VIII | |
Intermission | ||
| 8. Aeris' Theme | FF VII | |
| 9. Not Alone | FF IX | |
| 10. Ronfaure | FF XI | |
| 11. Final Fantasy I-III Medley | ||
| 12. New Melody | FF VII Advent Children | |
| 13. Final Fantasy Theme | ||
Encore - One Winged Angel | FF VII |
And yes...One Winged Angel was awesome.
Anyways, so I'm going to try to put together a compilation video and post it. I ended up taking 749MB worth of pics/movies of the event.
Since Cathy requested it....hahahah jk I just never got around to actually posting this up...
Friday night, I went down to Saratoga and met up with Emily for a "Dinner and a Movie" (ever see the show on TBS?). Anyways, we went to this restaurant called "Willow Street" Review where we got a Shrimp and Peppers Pizza and a Tomato/Basil Pasta. First time I had Vegetarian Pasta. EVER. hehehehe...I think it'd shock people if Emily turned me into a vegetarian. Actually I wanted to try it out just to see how it was. Turns out it was ok...a little on the bland side. The pizza had this little green peppers in it (looked just like the ones you see floating in the little side cups at Vietnamese Pho places) that were pretty intimidating. Turns out that it was just fine though...spicy still but not too bad. After weeks and weeks of trying to see it, we FINALLY saw the Aviator. lol...Emily is coming over today so we can study together :-)
It's been raining off and on in the Bay Area. One of the weekdays I went to El Pollo Loco with Lih-Chern and got totally rained on. El Pollo Loco has this spicy avocado sauce that's pretty good. For some reason, I just haven't been interested in carrying an umbrella with me. I guess it's never rained so hard that it was totally necessary.
Had lunch with Margaret at the Ferry Building to talk about the Peru trip...we're almost to the point of setting down definite dates. Due to an upcoming shift in responsibilities at work (I'm going to be doing more long-term planning/admin/budgetary stuff...going to hire another person to help with the web programming), I've had to cut down the trip to only 2 weeks. It should still be an awesome trip. Anyways, at the Ferry Building, I went to one of the places inside and had this awesome sandwich with skirt meat and mushrooms. VERRRRRY GOOD. The au jus made the bread especially tender and the mushrooms weren't limp. If ever they have that as a special again, I'd recommend getting it.
Went to VH Noodle with Lih-Chern a few nights ago. It's funny how Eric and Fred refer to me as the "food database". They run SQL searches by me like "select * from food_database_aka_andy where price_avg < 10 and cuisine != 'korean' and location = 'east_bay'" and rating >= 3 and visits_by_eric = 0 and visits_by_fred = 0 . I've been somewhat successful with the records I've returned. VH Noodle being one of them. Great China was another hit. So was Legendary Palace. Pretty soon I'm going to run out of new records though. In which case, it'd be time to do another new food tour. lol Anyways, VH Noodle has these pictures on the wall which show what stuff you can order. The pictures are pretty true to what you actually get. They even have 2 plasma flat panels with a rotating flash ad. Pretty impressive but they could have done better with the framerate. "Do UUUUUUUUUU Noodle?" is their catch-phrase I guess. Never knew that Noodle was a verb. "Let's go noodling" you might say.
So they have these jars that are on a plastic clear case mounted on the wall. I went over to take a look and they were "Sah-Cha" sauces....except spicy. Sah-Cha is this very asian bbq sauce that is made from crushed dried shrimp and a bunch of other things. Very good with Hot Pot. Anyways, as I walked back to the table, the waiter runs over with a jar of the stuff. Apparently they sell it for people to take home. Bottled right in Richmond it says. We both tried it in our noodle soups and omigosh, it transformed it to something completely different. The flavors were changed...very very good. Spicy, I reached for a napkin many more times than when I had the noodle soup au naturale.
Margaret got me to come to her "practice Chinese" group on Wednesday at the Albatross. We talked about stuff and even played Chinese Taboo. I learned some chinese but primarily I realized that I didn't know the chinese word for bartender. After I got back home, I looked it up and its "Jioh Bao" or "Alcohol Protect".
Hmmm...our side of the table were more demanding I think. Here we have Katsu Curry, Nabeyaki Udon, and Regular Gyoza. We learn from our mistakes (last time we got Vegetable Gyoza which was absolutely dreadful...Margaret!!!). Allen really liked his salmon pieces (3 orders at a time...6 pieces)...so much so that the waitress at one point said "My boss told me to tell you that she hopes that this is the last one..." lol Allan ended up ordering it again anyways. Totally cracked us up cause we were sure that at one point, the owner was going to bring the little girl (owner's daughter?) who's always there over and say something like "I'm trying to put my kid through college, please stop eating." lol Either that or 10 years later, we're going to go and she's going to be there and say "I couldn't go to college because of you all." Seriously though, we have NO idea how the place operates or makes a profit. At first, the idea that it could be a mafia fence or tax shelter came up but if the owner says stuff like that, it makes it seem less so. Still, the idea that the mafia was going to pay Allen a visit and whack him off with huge pieces of salmon "How you like the salmon now?!!!!" was incredibly funny. Ahhhhhhh....good times...good times.
Since everyone had already watched Constantine while I was in San Antonio (even Emily!!! sigh), I ended up watching it on my laptop. That and "Phantom of the Opera" as well. Constantine was pretty good and Phantom was really good too. I caught myself singing along to Phantom, never realized that I actually knew some of the lyrics. I love the opening scene in Phantom. I watched Phantom in Los Angeles and got the CD soon afterwards, so I guess this means that I'm a fan.
I got onto a pretty full bus the other day. Not that many seats so either I had to ask a woman to move her bag off a seat so I can sit down or sit next to an obese man. I sat next to the obese man and was uncomfortable the whole way to work...next time I should sit on her stupid bag and be like.....Ooops....
So apparently my laptop had a Google hijack going on...I didn't even notice that I was getting weird search results until Fred told me...I have no idea how I got it but Microsoft Antispyware did nothing against it (didn't even detect it). Ad-aware found stuff but the problem didn't go away. It went away after I used Webroot's Spy Sweeper so I heartily recommend that program. I've used it at work too with great results. Cathy, are you reading this? Try it out!!!
So on Sunday, I did some chores before eating at VH Noodle. Afterwards, I met up with Emily and went to a few sporting good stores. The first one was Tricity in Fremont which is incredibly large. It's so large, that there's this sign on the front door that says "No Picture Taking Allowed"...or something like that. I was mainly looking at the backpack gear and snowboard helmets but browsed around as well. We then went to Mel's Cotton Sporting Goods and then Sportmart. Started raining at Sportmart so Emily put a plastic bag over her head. This guy outside the store said that I should pull it down and tie it. Hehehheehe...
After looking at all these skiis and snowboards, one thing became clear....snowboards have wayyyyy cooler designs than skiis. It's not just about the surface area because it really seems like ski manufacturers do not care much about it.
After I got back home, I noticed that one of the "Cartel" badge/sticker is a missing from my snowboard binding....sigh, wonder if its replaceable. oh well...
Hehehehe, don't want to forget about the incident with the TriCity parking lot...sorry no details there. hahahahah
There's this girl on the morning bus that is unnaturally perky in the morning...I sometimes wonder if she's just had her morning triple-shot espresso and it's the aftereffect. In any case, she's always chattering away and I always can't sleep/rest on the bus because of it. Sometimes I can get cranky in the morning...course it's not her fault or anything but compared to everyone else (either sleeping/looking outside/reading), she is a huge chatterbox. Could talk your ear right off if she had the inclination to.
I went to try and see Paul Rusesabagina's lecture at the Oakland Museum yesterday but when I got there (30 min early), the line was already a city block long. Waited to see if I could get in but no luck. I wasn't even close. Oh well...I would have been much more disappointed if I had gotten to the door and was turned away. Someone has to be first in the reject line. Glad it wasn't me! :-P
