Missed Sasha

Sasha was playing at Ruby Skye last night (Fri night). I'd been looking forward to it the whole week, but at the last minute, I came down with a fever on Thursday evening. Although I was more or less well by Friday evening, I felt it was more prudent to stay home recuperate. Still, it really sucked to have to give that a miss. I went to R.S. when Digweed played there a month or two ago, and it was great. Sasha would have been an equally fantastic experience I'm sure. Oh well, there's always next time.

Bee Good is Great!

I've been using Bee Good from Bath & Body Works for the last two months, and it is a great product. It's a facial scrub with a honey base and jojoba beads. When you get it, you'll notice that the jojoba "floats" on top of the honey. You have to stick your finger in there, stir the mixture around to get a good honey/jojoba mix, and then you scrub it onto your face. The jojoba beads do a great job at exfoiliating your face, and the honey makes it feel nice, soft and smooth. Definitely worth the twentyish dollars it costs.

RUC and roll

RUC aka Rational User Conference will be held at Mandalay Bay, Vegas this year. Pat and Joe are presenting. I wish I could be there. I wish I could present something. I've got all this knowledge inside me, and my only outlet is to contribute at CMCrossroads. Not that there's anything wrong with contributing there, but I wish I could be out there, delivering that knowledge personally instead of through electronic medium.

OK, part of it is also the pride factor. I think I can't stand to think, even for a second, that my knowledge factor is any less than Joe's. In fact, I know that I know more than he does. Pat's a different story. The guy is damned smart, no question about that. But that's the way the dice falls. He's team lead in EBay, and I'm a contractor in IBM. EBay sends him and Pat, and IBM... well, like I said, I'm just a contractor.

Happy Birthday Cristine!

Cristine celebrated her birthday today. The celebration consisted of a simple dinner at Buca Di Beppo at the Pruneyard. There were 7 of us - Cristine, Bruce, Ally, Jane, Nancy, Thien and myself. Unfortunately, Rachel had class to attend and she wasn't willing to skip class. She said something about not being smart enough to skip classes - whatever! We order a few typical Buca-sized (read as HUGE) dishes (chicken cacciatore, macaroni rosa, frutti di mari), some appetizers (calamari, garlic bread), and topped it all off with a generous bowl of tiramisu.

There must have been something in the tiramisu. Maybe the rum was extra potent. Or maybe it was something in the air, but the whole atmosphere was crazy cool. Cristine even got a little wild...


We did the whole picture-taking thing, did the gift thing. Bruce and I didn't have a present for Cristine, but really, she really didn't need a present when she had us!


After we had split for the night. Cristine wanted to go for ride, and since she's the birthday girl, Bruce Cristine and I went for a ride along 280, up to Sandhill Road and back. Finally got home a little past 11pm.

Overall, I had a great time and I hope Cristine did too. Happy birthday Cristine!

Fourteen

I'm such a pig...

5.30pm : I get home, cook a quick meal (noodles, prawns, broccolli, soup, egg) and headed to my futon for my usual 30-45 minute nap.
6.45pm : I set my alarm for 7.30pm and start my nap. Zzzzzz....
7.30pm : My alarm dutifully rings. I shut it off, and went back straight to bed, err futon, that is.
8.30pm : I wake up, look at my watch, and decide, ah screw it... I drag my feet to my bedroom, change, and go straight back to sleep. I sleep like a log until...
9.00am : Oh look, morning has come! Damn, I need to go to work... Time to (finally) wake up. :(

A grand whopping total of FOURTEEN (count'em!) hours of sleep. Simply AWESOME!

Vive la Evil Dead!

I have just managed to get my hands on the Evil Dead trilogy. Now I can live through Ash's entire story starting from the cabin, all the way back to his romp through medievel England.

And guess what? I just read that Sam Raimi (of Spiderman fame) wants to do an Evil Dead 4 with Bruce Campbell and the other actors from the original series. How cool is that!

For good measure, here's what I consider to be THE defining moment of the Evil Dead series, where Ash whips up his custom attached-to-the-stump-of-my-wrist chainsaw and his butt-kicking Boomstick (aka sawed off 12-guage double barreled Remington).

Football and a doll

Cakes, that is... Mum made two more cakes.
This is the err... official Manchester United football cake. Don't ask me. I'm not a Man U fan, and as far as I know, neither is Mum. I smell Alwyn's handiwork in this...

According to the official literature (aka the email from my Dad), most of the doll and garden can be eaten (including the gown). The only inedible parts are the top half of the doll's body and her hair.

Gutter ball

It wasn't an auspicious start.

My first ball sliced three pins (4,7,8) and my second ball headed straight for the gutter. At the end of the first game, I narrowly scraped past 100 (120-ish?). My ball was going left and right... Anywhere but straight. I couldn't aim to save my life. I couldn't convert spares. Basically, I sucked.

My second game saw me play a lot more consistently. I had several strikes and made a few spares. I ended that game with 156.

I really need to go buy a new bowling ball to replace the one that broke so many years ago, back when I was living at Doxey Court (when was that? 1998?). I think it was a 12 pound Columbia 300. It was grey I believe.

When I lived in Singapore, Dad, Mum, Jo and I used to go bowling almost every weekend at Hougang bowl. We had our own ball and shoes. When I came here to the States for college, I even brought my ball.

Well, I've been trying to lead a more active lifestyle, so maybe bowling would be a nice fit? Yeah, it will be nice to buy a ball and pick up bowling again.

SHA-1 encryption broken... xbox next?

I read on Bruce Schneier's blog that SHA-1 encryption has been, for the most part, broken by a research team from China.

What does it mean for the xbox? For starters, it's generated some hot news on the xbox-scene.com forums because there is now a real distinct possibility that Project B hack-thy-xbox project may come to fruition (see section 1.2). If that comes true, then it may become possible to hack xbox games directly such that any xbox can play unsigned xbox games.

This will be especially interesting because Microsoft is now developing the next Xbox (codenamed Xbox 360 or something like that). Will MS dump SHA-1 encryption of their games and move to some other kind of encryption (SHA-2? RSA?)?

Alex Fong

I've just started listening to this new guy on the Hong Kong music scene Alex Fong. Now, the word new is very relative. His first album was released in mid 2003.

The short version of the story is that he's an ex-Olympic swimmer for Hong Kong, and something of a hearththrob for the girlies out there. He's cut a couple of albums, among which are "Never Walk Alone" and "True".

Both albums contain a few good songs. I like Ho Ho Luen Ngoi (cantonese, literally translated as Love Properly or maybe Nicely Love) from the Never Walk Alone album and Ho Sum Ho Bo (cantonese, translated as Good Heart Good Reward) from the True album.

As a side note, there are two versions of both Ho Sum Ho Bo and Ho Ho Luen Ngoi - one where he sings solo, and the other is a duet with Stephy Tang. Pretty interesting huh?

Raining cats and dogs

When we say that is raining cats and dogs, we mean that it is raining very heavily. Mother of all rains, kinda thing. But where did this saying come from? The jury is still out on this one, but here are a couple of my favorite theories:

In Norse religion, the cat symbolized rain, and the dog wind.

On the other hand, another theory puts forth that when it rains, it makes pet lovers feel sad, so if it must rain, let it rain cats and dogs, as a benediction from the heavens.

I want to beat someone up

I'm in a weird violent mood today. I woke up this morning feeling a need, a deep-seated primal urge, to beat something up. I just want to tear into something wild and crazy, rip it apart with my hands, and feast in the gore. Well, not really. I just want to HIT something HARD many many times.

So I did just that. Before I left for work, I pounded the crap out of my punching bag for a few minutes before getting dressed for work. That's the good thing about punching bags - they don't hit back and they don't complain when you hit them.

Now, I'm at work, and I'm still feeling edgy. Punching bag, I'm coming home for ya!

Spiceychild, where are ya?

I'm looking for you! Hit me up. Your hotmail address is dead. Wassup with that? If anyone knows her (Carolynn Y) please let her know I'm looking for her.

Club One, on the other hand...

... had very professional membership sales people. The guy I talked to patiently explained to me their membership rates, told me about possible discounts and what services my money gets for me. Sure, it's probably more pricey than 24 Hour Fitness, but just the thought of better service, not to mention the newer facilities, means that I'm currently leaning towards a Club One membership at the Santana Row branch. Oh, and did I mention that it's only a mile from my place...?

24 Hour Fitness membership services suck!

I called 24 Hour Fitness (Parkmoor, San Jose) to inquire about a new membership. The phone conversation went something like this...

Me: Hi, do you guys have membership discounts for IBM employees?

Him: Yes we do. You need to come in and give us your badge number before I can give you a quote based on the agreement we have

Me: OK, I'll give you my badge number now.

Him: You mean like over the phone?

Me: Yeah... (yes, genius, "now" means "here and now, over the phone"... geez)

Him: No I can't do this over the phone. You need to come in.

Me: Why can't you do it over the phone? My badge number is going to be the same whether I tell you over the phone or in person you know.

Him: Cos once I give you a quote, you'll have no incentive to come in.

Me: Alright, forget it then.

Him: *click*

First, this totally stinks of pressure sales. Think car dealerships. Second, he hung up on me. That's just flat out rude. Guess what? I'm not joining 24 Hour Fitness...

Bruce on Spiderman

Bruce Campbell, better known as Ash from the Evil Dead series, said about his role on Spiderman 2:
"I played the 'Snooty Usher,' another pivotal role where I deny Tobey Maguire access to see Kirsten Dunst in her first big play. Where the Green Goblin failed, Snooty Usher prevailed! That's right, my character defeated Spider-Man."
This quote is shamelessly ripped from bruce-campbell.com

And by the way, this dude is so cool in Army of Darkness!

I <heart> GMail!

I've been using gmail for almost 8 months now, and I LOVE IT! It's fast. It's slick. I'm not so sure about the whole labelling thing. I've got my labels working like folders, sort of, but I wish I could have nested folders so I could do something like /Family/Sis and /Family/Dad etc instead of creating labels like FAM_Sis and FAM_Dad. And I wish the search function could find root words or substrings so that I could do a search for "dog" and get "doggie" and "dogs" and "dogma" etc.

Saber

Saber is the only cat to have added me on friendster. I'm sure that deserves some kind of honorable mention.

Saber currently lives with Clara. I'm not sure, but I think Clara claims Saber as a dependent. Or maybe she's just thought about it. Either way, Saber lives a sheltered life under Clara's roof. I think he's a little lonely. I think Clara doesn't spend enough time with him. Poor dude.

Rich Dad Poor Dad... or is it?

I'm in a little of a quandry. When I sat down at my keyboard earlier this evening, I had only intended to write about a Robert Kiyosaki seminar that was happening next month in San Jose, which I wanted to attend. I wanted to put a link up to Kiyosaki's website, so I did a quick google search and came up with this rather interesting piece. I encourage you to read through it. It's long, but it is well backed up by research and definitely worth the time.

So anyway, now I'm lost.

On one hand, after reading Kiyosaki's books, I've found myself paying more attention to where I invest money, and how I think about investment. For that matter, my invest profits skyrocketed once I began becoming more attentive to my investments. On the other hand, the webpage pointed out so many loopholes in Kiyosaki's book that I'm beginning to wonder how much of his advice I can trust.

Right now, I believe that the main strength of Kiyosaki's seminar will be inspiration and ideas and all sorts of intagible little goodies rather than hard solid money earning techniques. As such I'm probably still going to attend the seminar, but only trusting what I feel to be true. You know, use my own common sense and knowledge as my guide. Oh, and research. Lots of it.

Super ergonomic pillow

This is the ultimate super ergonomic pillow, straight from Japan! Comes in your choice of red or black. Muchas gracias to Roz for this one.

Cellphone viruses, just like on a desktop PC

Reuters had a story today about cellphone viruses. Basically, the idea is that using a bluetooth or wireless internet connection, an attacker could send bad code to you, resulting in a virus infection.

I think basic security measures should be more than sufficient, at this point, to take care of things. Disable bluetooth/wi-fi until you need it. Don't automatically accept connections from remote devices. Be sure you know who is connecting to you and vice versa.

For now, simple security measures will suffice. A few years down the road, we'll start seeing more apps that rely on a steady internet connection, much like what we're seeing now on desktops. When that happens, well, I'm sure we'll get to install cutting edge anti-virus programs on our cellphones.

Just like on a desktop PC.

Art on Cakes

Mum has been taking baking class and learning to do cake decorations lately. She's produced three cakes that she's shown me. The one pictured here is one of her latest ones. In her own words:

The basket for the flowers is a real cake covered with icing and flowers. Only the handle of the basket is not edible.

I'm guessing that the ribbon isn't edible either, but I've been known to be wrong.

Me, I think it's an awesome hobby. You make it, you play with it, then you eat it. Yum yum! It doesn't get any better than that.

Living vicariously

"I live vicariously through you"
I first heard that phrase when Ula said that to Henry in 50 First Dates. I had understood the phrase, but I never understood it until tonight.

Charlie was sitting opposite Matt and me. He looked at us, and said "I really envy you guys". Matt and I looked at each other, then at him.
"Why?"
"Cos you guys have earrings"

Something small and so insignificant, but I doubt he'll ever get a piercing of his own. Living vicariously indeed.

The Beginnings of WILT

Announcing WILT aka What I Learned Today
This will be my repository of knowledge, my fountain of wisdom, that I attempt to update on a (nearly) daily basis. Stay tuned for more stuff that makes sense.

Another death, another anniversary

Cairo, Clara's cat died one year ago today. Clara misses her deeply, so deeply that she cries. Having had pets that I've loved and lost, I feel for her. My heart goes out to both the grieving mother and beloved daughter.