Ch^H^H...Train of Thought

Ooh, I won a small raffle!

On Friday I went to the Xilinx Programmable World 2004 developer conference. Basically it's a large marketing/education thing that Xilinx and several companies put together to show off their new wares and also teach you how to use some of it for stuff that might be useful in whatever you might be working on at work. There were 4 tracks, DSP, Connectivity, Logic, and Processors, I think.

I attended the Processor talks. Some of the stuff was interesting, like the demo where they showed how much of an improvement it is to implement IDCT on hardware and access it. Some of it was less interesting, like using Linux on the FPGA to deal with 50 serial ports.

Well, at the end of the tracks, there's a raffle for people who submitted the speaker evals and I won the first one. They handed me first a breathalyzer (which apparently uses one of their chips) then a bottle of wine as my prize. Wine is kinda strange for a engineer conference I guess, but still kinda cool. The other two prizes were copies of a book written by a Xilinx employee.

It's a Geyser Peak 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon.

I think the hand speaks for itself.

So on thursday I was playing Spades with Albert, Andy, and Brian. I pick up my hand and see this:

I think the hand speaks for itself; gotta bid 'nil'. :) Besides, when do you ever get 8 out of 13 of any suit in your 13 card hand? Even better, after 5 tricks, I had only those 8 clubs so the rest of the tricks were no-brainers.

Damn.... Taiwan Gov is messed up.

So I wake up this morning and my mom's watching KTSF, that channel with the Chinese news. Anyhow, so I see some footage and there's some woman and some man throwing stuff that looks like lunch in a conference room. And so I listen to what the newscaster's saying.....

That's a meeting regarding the arms budget. And they're having a food fight. Apparently there's tension. Yeah.

Hey, Yahoo's Oddly Enough has an article about it too!

Canon S45 Repair

I fixed my digicam by buying a broken S30 off ebay and pulling the LCD out.
Some more details and pictures are posted in the projects link.

It's the TV, I swear!

Yet another of those wtf-type electronic equipment mishaps.

In Oregon, some college student's Toshiba flatscreen TV, probably through a bad capacitor or feedback loop, somehow emitted radio interference at 121.5 Mhz which happens to be the international distress signal. It got recieved by a satellite and routed to the Air Force in Virginia. I'm sure the search/rescue personnel were just as confused when they greeted him at his apartment.

Winter is coming.....

When the birds fly south, when the Chinese celebrate moon festival, when little furry animals get ready to hibernate, it's winter. Normally if there's not enough snow for snowboarding, it doesn't feel like winter for me. But in this case, winter's made itself more obvious.

Yesterday, as Brian and I were going to pick up Andy from the airport, a dead mouse was found behind my car. Since my garage is cramped enough that I have to walk around the entire car to get to the driver side, I spotted a dark grey mouse lying on it's side with blood coming out of it's head about a foot behind my G35x's back wheel.

Apparently the weather has been cold enough that it sought refuge in my garage. (I didn't notice because of my +1 skin of cold resistance :P) However, Darwin strikes again as it managed to run under the back tire of my car as I was parking, the day before.

It kinda reminds me of when I was still in elementary school and my neighbors and I were walking home from school. I saw a mosquito dive for the small amount of shade under Hugo's sister's shoe since it was really hot outside. Needless to say, flying under a shoe as it's stepping down is a bad idea.

Anyhow, yeah, so now I know I ought to make sure the garage/house door is closed so the next luckier mouse makes it no further than the garage. And that I should consider investing in some ski racks.....

Albert's Famous

One of my friends from Cal, Albert Wang, is in one of the pictures on the Berkeley E-Solicitation. (The asian guy with large grin in the graduation outfit)

So that's what the chocolate's for.....

So you know how when you're in like kindergarten and there was a rumor among the guys that girl's farts and poopies don't stink. And ever since then, you just can't remember being near a girl who didn't smell like flowers.....
I think the secret's out.

SF is big

Yesterday evening, I drove Brian to the San Jose airport. This morning (Friday Oct 9th), I drove Andy to SFO. So while Brian's out in LA visiting Cathy, and Andy's going to be out in Michigan attending a wedding and visiting some friends, I'm still here. Gotta find something to do.....

Well being up at SFO, it's a long drive back home again especially since I would intercept the morning rush hour commute if I drove down. And I considered visiting Joyce for lunch, but now that she's got a job, she wouldn't be home in Daly City on a friday. :P (Not to mention that she'll be going down to LA as well to see the Cal/USC football game.)

So I decide I'll go to SF. Every other time I've gone to SF, I've always gone with some guidance from one of my friends or passengers, etc. since I totally suck at navigating SF. With plenty of time to kill, I take what I think was 280N towards Downtown SF and end up exiting where the highway ends near SBC Park.

Now, the general idea was to go shopping in JapanTown since I haven't been there in a while and was looking for a good place to find gifts. One thing I'm looking for is a place to find Totoro stuff like the buruburu hanging off my car's rear view mirror.

The problem with going to JapanTown is that I don't really know how to get from SBC Park to JapanTown. So I decide I might as well explore a bit first and stumble upon JapanTown. Following the flow of traffic I happen to end up at Moscone Center. A sign says ChinaTown go straight. Recalling that I've been to ChinaTown before and then JapanTown, I get the impression tha they might be close to each other and I follow the traffic that way. Passing ChinaTown, I don't see any streets that remind me of JapanTown, so I just go forward.

I pass North Beach somehow and eventually end up near Fisherman's Wharf and some pier. Turning right, I follow traffic yet again, passing some interesting fountains and some heart sculptures and end up back near Moscone Center but going perpendicular from my previous route.

Continuing on straight, I decide to go find a bathroom so I stop at a hotel and walk purposely to the bathrooms so I don't look like such a mooch. And then come back out again to resume my tour of SF. Eventually traffic directs me in yet another direction and I end up on Van Ness staring at a sign pointing towards JapanTown.

Since all I really remember about the area is the Kinokuniya building, I just walk around there for a while looking at random cute stuff, music CDs, stationary, plastic car models, and stuff like that. Couldn't find any buruburus, so if I were to go buy those later, I'll have to look elsewhere.

At the bookstore there was a really demented Hansel & Gretal book that I decided to skim through..... although it didn't look at all like the original story, it did look a lot like some mutated PowerPuff Girls artwork. They didn't have any of the CDs I was interested in either, but then again it's a bookstore. The parking meter ran out before I made it to the music store though. Oh well. Did manage to buy a crepe with strawberries, whipped cream, chocolate, and ice cream. Also tried calling Jennie, an old high school friend who I haven't heard from in a while, to see if she was interested in lunch. No response.

After the meter ran out, drove around some more, and finally got onto the Bay Bridge to Berkeley where I tried to go buy tickets to the Big Game and pick up my diploma. It sucks that the tickets were sold out. But I did manage to pick up my diploma despite Sproul Hall being closed for safety reasons. (There was a large assembly outside talking about the presidential elections.) A lady who worked there helped me sneak in to pick up my diploma, so my trip to Berkeley wasn't in vain. Did run into Gene, from high school, on my way out. Said "hi," and talked for a few minutes then walked back to my car to go home and take a nap.

Aside from all that, the other thing I did today was type up stuff about my old Acura, which is now posted in the Projects link.