Bloggin'......

It's true!

Hardee’s serves up 1,420-calorie burger

Fast-food giant skips diet craze, concocts fat-filled sandwich

For those that didn't believe me, this is the 1,400 calorie burger! Find the story here.

Back to the usual ways

I'm in such a happy mood, now that I've gotten my computer back. It's actually been two months since my computer broke. Actually, all of my computers had broken. I had an old IBM Thinkpad that was my backup computer and it, too, had died, due to a failed harddrive. That forced to do the easiest and quickest thing at the time; buy a new drive and reinstall the OS and software, becasue I could not do anything else at the time, work or play! I was probably most upset and aggravated over the time I had lost trying to fix my computers.

Troubleshooting my PC was more troublesome, because it had a deeper, intermittent problem. Those are the worst, since I could not predict what it was that made my computer crash. It would crash not just using a particular program, a particular piece of hardware, or a combination of the two, either. Regular diagnostics could not tell me what the problems were, until it crashed, which would lose all the information in the process, anyway. Utterly useless! It was some time before I tracked it down to faulty memory, which luckily I had a lifetime warranty for.

Fast forward through two months of me working everyday, traveling, and generally being out, I finally returned the bad piece of memory and received the replacement part from the manufacturer the day before Thanksgiving. I tediously had to reassembled the computer after having taken it completly apart to troubleshoot the problem in the first place. I reinstalled a fresh copy of the WindowsXP OS, and.... Viola! I can continue my life once again!

Some people have a hard time seeing how attached I could be to my computer, but for the past couple of years, it has been my sole connection to the world when I travel, pay bills, and shop. Well, there's email and instant messaging, too, of course, but those things are pretty standard!

I discovered a neat trick in my computer setup, there's an option if you click and drag a window, it can make the window transparent, so you can see what's under it. Neat!

Celebrating the Holidays in San Francisco

Shopping in Union Square in San Francisco

Dining at the Thirstybear Brewing Company

After dinner stroll along the Embarcadero

Dessert at the Equinox

Christmas displays at the Hyatt Hotel at Embarcadero Center

Last night Jennifer, Diana, and I went out to dinner in the city, and as well as Ansen, who was in town for the holidays. We had lots of fun since we only got to see Ansen on special occaisions, either when we go visit him in LA or he comes to visit us in the Bay Area.

Though, much of the night was spent reliving our college years, Jennifer had never heard most of the stories, so it was almost all new to her. She was a bit in awe, the lengths we used to go to to have a good time, especially in LA. We had forgotten who started the rivarly, but we had stories about Ansen hiding in the trash chute to scare me, the surprise birthday party I planned for Ansen, with water balloons and all, and how Diana couldn't throw a water balloon properly, my surprise birthday party where they *tried* to get me drunk, another surprise birthday party where Ansen rigged my bathroom with exploding whip cream, my gosh, I think Diana was laughing so hard, she had stomach cramps afterwards!

We got to the city a little earlier since Diana and Jen wanted to do some shopping at Union Square before dinner. Dinner was at the Thirstybear Brewing Company, something which I had been wanting to do for a long time. We had a huge variety of Spanish Tapas along with a pitcher of sangria. We were so stuffed, we needed a long walk to help clear some of the food, in which we walked all the way down to the piers along the Embarcadero. We sat along the piers, watching over the San Francisco Bay and the Bay Bridge for some time, before deciding it was time for desert at the Equinox atop the Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco. There we sat until the wee hours of the night. Ok, well, up to 1AM, anyway....

Our last words spoken that night, "the car is not that far, only about 5 blocks...." In truth, not really. =P

Winterizing

It's definitely that time of the year again when I need to get ready for the changing of the seasons. I pulled the skiis and snowboards out of their summer storage and cleaned them for the time honored tradition of waxing them before hitting the slopes of Lake Tahoe. Hopefully, the weather will be better this year, and blast a couple of snow storms during the week, while tapering off on the weekends for a perfect drive into the mountains. Cheers!

New Bike, again

As quicky as I had bult up my new bike, which was a red 1997 Specialized M2 Stumpjumper, it is gone. I rode it once, and it was amazingly fast, or even too fast in some extremes, and a friend of mine approached me about buying it. It was hard to let it go, but in the end the bike didn't fit me as well as I had hoped. So, in my workshop, my bike stand is once again empty.

Much to the dismay of my sister, who also really liked that red bike! So, I'm going to build another bike and this is what i'll start out with. I believe it is a 2002 Specialized Rockhopper A1 in satin blue. Not sure, what I'm going to do with it, yet, but it is pretty much a complete bike by itself. For the record, the cost of this bike is also the same value of just the bike FRAME of my last bike. *gurgle* =P

Thanksgiving

Oh by the way, Happy Thanksgiving! I've been spending the past few days trying to explain to some of my colleagues and counterparts in Asia what Thanksgiving means to us here in the United States and why we get TWO days of public holiday off from work. Happy Thanksgiving, indeed! =)

Anniversary and New Camera

Today is the one year anniversary of my PhotoBlog of sorts, and what better way to celebrate than to have a little camera comparison test. I bought a new Kyocera S5R after loads of people in my office discovered an unbeatable deal for a 5 megapixel camera at Fry's. I promptly picked one up as well and charged up the batery just in time for my trip to the museum over the weekend.

Suffice it to say, the S50 still has enough quality to stay ahead of a lot of the new technology in newer cameras, today. Though I found the S5R had excellent shutter speed, acceptible optics, and almost no start up time, the camera lagged with a poor auto white balance sensor and an LCD display so washed out, it was useless. However, for the few shots that did come out, it was an an amazing camera for the price. The S50 is still my standard camera, but the performance, size, and weight of these newer cameras are going to be harder to beat in the coming future.

The following are a few various pictures from the past week wqith the S5R

San Francisco MOMA

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It was my first time to the museum, but I had been wanting to go for the longest time. There was a lot of artwork on display, but at the same time, I also felt there's wasn't enough. What really struck me was the museum's photgraphy collection. I understand the museum rotates its collection, especially by photographic techniques, but much of what was on display were from deep southern states, like Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi. They represented life from the late 1800's to the mid 1950's, but what was odd to me was the collection didn't feel like it represented many parts of Americana, as it related to the events in history or even to each other. It's certainly only my opinion, of course, but I really felt the photographs were a mishmash of collections, only a few pictures at a time.

Anyways, I had a great time, though not enough time to thoroughly view all of the exhibits. I made an extra effort to view the special Roy Lichtenstein and Glamour exhibits at the museum. The Lichtenstein exhibit was an exhibit of his work as it influenced popular art by reflect popular culture in the 1960's. The Glamour exhibit was a collection of contemporary fashion, architecture, and design.

Out on the Street

I went to dinner tonight at Evvia Estiatorio in Palo Alto, billed as the "best Greek restaurant in Palo Alto California" by Google. Maybe it's Google's proximity to Palo Alto, but I have to agree the food was pretty good. I, too, would print it was the "best greek restuarant", if it would get a better seat! I had a seared groupa, which only afterwards, I thought about how surprised I was over how well prepared it was. It was seared fresh and not dry on the inside, so the meat was still nice and steamy inside, and crisp on the outside. Usually, in my experience in big groups like ours for dinner, food has a tendency to either sit and be cold by the time the waiter serves it, or if the chef keeps it warm until they serve it, the food dries out. This dish was perfect.

The only oddity was the pickled olives. For a Greek-Mediterranean dish, the fish had a decidedly cool taste, so you can only imagine how confusing the dish was with the salty olives.

Housewarming at Eric and Ivy's

The story behind my connection to Eric and Ivy is a strange one. Now-a-days, I'm just one of many friends, but in the beginning, I was the guy who helped them buy a TV and shipped it to them when they lived in Michigan! The story goes on, because when the TV arrived, it had a gaping hole in the side, as if a fork lift had skewered it. Hard to believe a brand new TV could come that way. So to get my money back, or their money actually, they had to ship it back, first. For the next month or two, we tracked the TV, as it moved from Michigan all the way back to the Sony warehouse in Tennessee.

Fast forward to November 2004, they bought a new house and are six months from getting married. Interestingly enough, Eric is a fellow Bruin, and actually a neighbor on the same floor in my old apartment building back in college, but I didn't get to know him until after college. Even more twisted, Ivy is my friend Jen's roommate from college. How small of a world is that!?!?

We all got tegether for their housewarming Saturday night, and these are some of the pictures from the night. At one point, we were playing poker around the coffee table, when Jen dropped a chip behind the sofa. Mike made her feel bad enough to get under the sofa to get the chip back, so what do I do? I grabbed her foot and pulled her under the coffee table. Poor Jen..... hehehe (evil grin) =P