heh... I'm a dumbass. Showed up at Palolo instead of Manoa. =P

So congrats to EJ who won the Lilykoi's first karaoke contest. I said I wasn't going to have any drinks, but I did. Ahh well.

Yeah, so CO probably isn't going to even bother getting on Sunday's flight to Vegas. He'll go up Monday, instead, stay for one day, then return first thing Wednesday morning. I don't think I want to go up there for only one night. I think I'll probably just stay home. Although I still want to eat at Lawry's. =(

I've been bitching and moaning about my shoulder for weeks now. So you'd think I'd do the smart thing and rest it until Saturday's tournament. But nooooooo. I committed to playing tonight in Nuuanu. I never said I was smart. =P

I hate missing out on holidays. You can tell when a holiday is coming up because the day before the parking lot is half-empty. People taking long weekends and all. Ah well.

---

My molars are touching again and the feeling is returning to my lower face. My jaw is still a little tender but chewing is once again possible!

---

Thanks to peer-to-peer file-sharing and a cool friend, I watched Wanted in the comfort of my home last night. The sound was a bit sketchy but the video was perfect. I liked the movie for the special effects, the eye candy (Angelina), and the dark atmosphere.

I didn't like the movie because the story line is almost non-existent. What was probably a great comic turned out to be just an on-par movie (saved by the cast and special effects). Only one point was just way too over the top. I won't spoil it but it was pretty darned bad.

Angelina is just as sexy, bitchy, scrawny and full of badassery as ever before. There's a few seconds, though, that she is just downright adorable. I wasn't expecting that. It's for only a few seconds when Wesley is trying to push past Fox with the gun held before him.

Remember this scene. Now watch Angelina's amused/cutesy face as he pushes by. Really. Adorable.

---

It took me awhile to finish the movie as I was constantly switching back-and-forth between the olympics as well. We pretty much knew China was going to take the gold in the men's all-around but man were there ever some EPIC falls. I felt bad for the guys from Germany, Korea, and Japan. The U.S. wasn't noticably bad, but they weren't good, in comparison, either.

---

I got a little teary when Yang Wei won his gold. I'm not even Chinese. But it almost felt like I was part of a historical moment, there. Talk about stress.

Anyway. Gotta get out of here. Hope you guys enjoy your holiday while I'm slaving away at work tomorrow. *eyeroll* ;)

So after getting "Lost in the Shadows" stuck in my head yesterday I started making a list of my favorite movie songs. It turned out being kind of long and I'm sure I missed quite a few.

I purposefully didn't include too many Adam Sandler movies because - while the soundtracks are great - they focus mostly on including old 80s music that was popular way before the movie released.

There's quite a few 80s movies in there. 80s movies had great songs. =) Recent movies have had pretty good soundtracks, too. 90s movies seemed to be relatively weak as far as soundtracks go. I also am only listing songs from movies than I've actually seen.

I didn't include the Disney movies because I'm a little bit afraid of revealing on the duets and original tracks that I like. >=)

I need to flag this as a memory and update it as more info comes in. =) Never thought I'd list a Madonna song, ever. Kenny Loggins has more songs in here than any one person. Bond movies typically have cool songs.

This actually got pretty long and ended up taking way too much time. I'm going to have to break it up by decade, maybe. And alphabetize it.

( the kind of long list in no particular order... )

More questionable content comics. =)

So how does the whole LJ friend etiquette work? Sometimes I'm tempted to just add a person to my friend list because I happen to stumble along their LJ and find it interesting. I know MySpace let's you flag favorites that you can always conveniently go back to without having to "befriend" anyone. Why not LJ?

While I'm complaining, I'd like to be able to categorize my entries. I'd particularly like to add a "What I wanted to say vs what I actually said" category. I suppose I could make do with tags.

The old phone is still sitting on my desk. It's been bricked for almost three weeks now. I suppose I'll mail it out next week. Yes, I still want an HTC Touch Diamond but, no, I'm not going to get one. I hope against all hope that T-Mobile will debut it's Android phone soon. I also hope that it isn't that ugly thing that looks basically like a Palm Centro. Otherwise I'll stick with my WinMo or Palm OS.

So CW is in town. I think we're supposed to go out tonight. The last text I got was "Reserve late Friday." then "Rest up!". I don't have a time. I don't have a place. I haven't gotten a call, yet, so I think I'm going to go home and take a nap.

... Starbucks ran out of iced coffee. =( As much as I like espresso, an iced Americano is a poor substitute.

I now know why family barbecue completely mummifies their broiled saba bento with saran wrap. I brought it back and opened it up and the smell permeated the office within a few minutes. I don't think the kim chee helped any, either.

I've been contemplating an overnight trip to Vegas to meet up with CO and his gang the second of the last Sat. in August, but we'll see when the Yams will be in town, first. Why? Well, just because I can I suppose.

I'm happy about Friday being the first of August. Rather, I'm happy any month that begins on a weekday because mysterious problems tend to happen at the beginning of the month and I'd prefer not to get called on the weekend. =P

So I'm excited about developing something at work for a change. No one has approved the work, but since no one is realistically trying to upgrade my skills I'll have to just go ahead and do it anyway. Because, really, who's going to complain that I built something useful? I'm not telling anyone until I'm finished the bulk of the design and implementation. I feel kind of like an evil mastermind scheming away in the dark, damp recesses of a lower basement.

---

This makes me laugh everytime...


Dad Owns Son With Tape Prank - Watch more free videos

I often joke that people are such bad drivers that I get into near wrecks on a daily basis. This is an exaggeration, of course, but trust me when I say it's not a very large one.

IRL, near misses happen on more of a weekly basis and I can count the number of life-threatening incidents on one hand and still have at least one finger left to flick people off.

( I literally thought I was going to die last night. )

So I've done the whole "Hello World!" in Assembly, Basic, Logo, C, Pascal, C++, Java, HTML, ASP, ASP.NET, Perl, Lisp, probably a few others, and now C#. It's a little silly, but I just have to do it. It's, like, tradition.

---

I'm lame. In more ways than one. I'm ashamed that I actually hurt my knee while warming up. It's not even the knee that normally aches; it's the "good" one. Now it's swollen, but at least there isn't any fluid building up.

I'd almost forgotten how good it is like to play with familiar people. I need practice. We all need practice. But when JC and KD set the ball it makes me look like a much better hitter than I actually am. When Nate sets his block it makes me a better digger because I know where the ball is going.

It was good to hang with KH, afterwards. Instead of forcing ourselves through two more hours of free play, we left early and went to eat kalbi. We vented to each other for like two hours. That's what I like about good friends - no matter how long it's been, you just kind of pick up where you left off and fall into the same comfortable patterns.

I keep meaning to post one of the pics he sent me, but I'm still trying to figure out how to use our office copier/FAX/network printer to scan it. I tried once and emailed myself several black and white .PDFs. =P I'm lame like that. You should see how often I get eyerolls from people I ask for help with the FAX.

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It's been about three months since I've used the XBox... I kind of want to buy a PS3 and watch the blu-ray edition of Planet Earth just for the Clouded Leopard footage. Of course, that will be just about as financially irresponsible as I've always been. I may not be able to resist Iron Man on blu-ray.

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OMG!!! this is priceless!

[edit: wow... notice that my posts are less long-winded when I'm posting on a 320x320 screen rather than at 1280x1024?]

Okay. Since it was kind of easy posting an entry on my TyTn II w/ Opera Mini, I thought I'd try it on my Treo w/ Blazer...

It's not a good experience but I suppose it works.

Been posting a lot recently. I guess that's what happens when ... uhh ... yeah.

Spent most of the day in bed watching Emperor of the Sea just because I can. Did a few things around the house in the afternoon that made me feel like a complete weakling. Not enough for me to decide that I want to start pumping iron though.

Probably going to spend tonight watching more DVDs and doing laundry. Exciting stuff. *eyeroll*

I wonder if the second season of Heroes is out yet?

So I left the office to grab a quick bite. When the elevator arrived I got inside but the other two people waiting didn't. I thought maybe I had a bad smell, or something. They said that the elevator was possessed and they were avoiding it because they got stuck in it last week.

Honestly, I could deal with being stuck in an elevator for a couple of hours. It probably would have been the best thing to happen to me today.

Anyways... it's very likely that I've made several posts along this line of thought. But I can't find any of them so maybe they're archived in one of my old web sites or my defunct MySpace/Xanga/Livejournal/Blogger blogs. Maybe it's just floating around in interweb lingo. Anyway, here's one again:

( I.T. Do's and Don'ts )

Feeling disconnected in more ways than one recently.

First off, for all those w/ my phone number: I'm still running on my backup phone. Before I gave it up I only had difficulty synch'ing. Now, however, not only is the sync bad, it's acting weird, too. If you text me, I may not receive it until I actually turn the screen on to look at it. If you really need me to get back to you on a timely basis, call me up. If I don't answer, it's probably because the device turned the phone radio off. I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Am thinking that I'll probably get a cheap, subsidized phone from T-Mobile until I go back to the TyTn II. Maybe a Shadow.

Second - the job: Been feeling, recently, that I have less of a career and more of a job. I used to feel challenged, accomplished, and valued. I'm trying hard to be more optimistic these days but I can't help but feel a bit undervalued, unappreciated, unmotivated, and stretched thin. Hopefully it'll get better because I still want to go to Hong Kong and Japan next year.

V-Ball: Sooo not feeling the vball. I don't know what it is, but I seem to have lost the intensity I once had. It's not more recreation than competition. Not good and now we have a scrimmage on Monday night.

Hmmm. Perhaps I need more vitamins. Did I take my vitamin today? I don't even remember...

Must remember to buy ginkgo biloba ...

( some other bits )

The workplace is getting pretty crowded nowadays. Even though we outsourced about half of our original [80ish] staff, there are more and more Indians roaming the hallways, occupying the desks, the bathrooms and more specifically the urinals in the men's room.

There is an apparent culture clash. Generally, the new guys don't follow what I had previously assumed was universal bathroom etiquette. My complaints aside... don't the people they're talking to on the phone while they're tinkling have any problems with it?

Anyways. I'm so done w/ work for today. I'm going to meet CO and the guys at CPK, I think. There was something else I wanted to mention, but I forgot. I'll probably post again from home if my computer decides to function for more than 5 minutes at a time.

So... I'm trying to fill out my weekly status update with stuff that I actually worked on. Even though I was really busy last week, there wasn't much of anything that started and completed so I look really unproductive on paper. Oh well.

Today was filled with a lot of unproductive meetings [both the conference room type and the hallway type]. Bleh.

I did have a scare for a few seconds when I couldn't get out of the accounting offices at the other end of the building. My proximity badge didn't open the door and for a brief moment I thought maybe I was suddenly "INVOL TERM"ed [since, well - it's happened before. just not to me.]. Turns out they restrict access at 1700 and I just so happened to already be in the secured area when all the doors locked. It's a good thing I found someone to let me out otherwise I might still be in there eating all their snacks. >=)

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( Read more... )

I was going to write a post about epic fail [at least the humorous ones that I'm willing to share].

But last night was so full of fail that I changed my direction and was just going to write about that.

I'm not sure how I got there but somehow I wound up at this site and spent quite awhile going over that.

If you like trance, or other electronica, you know how hard it is to search for music unless you have a favorite DJ to keep up with. This page is like ... the motherlode [Yes, I spelled it right].

IMHO, the best trance tracks are vocal ambient tracks remixed by progressive/psy-trance DJs. =D

Listening to "Bleeding Love" makes me sad. I shouldn't pay for music that makes me sad.

I'm beat. I'd prefer NOT to see the sunrise if I can help it. I should leave the office and go home and sleep until tomorrow. Yes, that sounds like a plan.

Thought I'd try this out and post it. =)

Put your iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc.
on shuffle

For each question, press the next button to get your answer
YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.

( the results... )

I had to laugh at the results of 6, 15, 16, 18, and 20!

... flit in and out of my consciousness. If I were 12 I'd likely be medicated. Ritalin, maybe? This being the "better life through pharmaceuticals" society, and all.

The thoughts are like dreams, though, and anything profound that might appear in vision and sound are easily forgotten yet difficult to translate to words - spoken, written, or otherwise.

It's a little disappointing to know that much of what remains is the mundane everyday happenstance.

Hey... perhaps that should be my profile description.

( just the mundane... )

I remember the days when I would get notified of system errors and then go fix it. Problem solved. That's the geekiless explanation, anyway.

Nowadays, I have to get a call. Answer it. Tell the user to submit a formal request. Wait until the request is processed. Call the user to clarify the request. Reproduce the problem. Call the vendor to lend aid. Call to remind the vendor I need aid. Submit a formal request to make sure one of the vendor staff eventually calls me. Placate user when he sends frequent status request emails. Escalate the issue so that SOMEONE will get back to me. Finally get some in-person help with troubleshooting. Put requests for server reboot and outage notices. Verify results. Close issue ticket. Submit request to review update process. Remember to include specific ticket in handwritten status update.

=P

I got some vitamins as Sam's club the other day. Because I'm pretty sure my nutrition is bad. Sure can't hurt. One bottle lasts 10 months! Felt comforted by the fact that I'm young enough that I won't outgrow the age bracket for my vitamins anytime soon (recommended for adults 35-49).

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Mother F'er!!!!!! My phone LCD just crapped out on me! I think it's a lost cause. I bought the phone from AT&T (without contract at $549) and I've already reflashed the ROMs and everything else. I think I'm boned. =(

Dammit. I think my video card is crapping out on me. For the past week, my machine has been rebooting itself after having video driver failures. Crap crap crap. If the video card is dead, I'm probably going to just buy a brand new box rather than going out and getting a single card. I'd rather not do that, either, though.

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I'm a pretty big Mountain Dew fan and of citrus-flavored sodas in general. Of all the spin offs I've only really liked Livewire, though. Pitch Black was "meh". Baja blast and Code Red I avoid like the plague. So I was pretty disappointed when I went to the store and found that not only was all of the freaking Mountain Dew sold out, but that they had released a whole slew of new weird combinations: Revolution, Voltage, and SuperNova.

I only bought it because I really wanted to drink a bunch of soda, but I have to admit that this SuperNova offshoot is growing on me - because I originally made a face at the description, "DEW With a Blast of Strawberry, Melon Flavor, and Ginseng."

I just drank two. So I guess it can't be all too bad.

[edit: dammit, I just went to the dewmocracy.com site and Hawaii's voting goes as follows: Supernova - 4%, Voltage - 49%, Revolution - 47%. Guess I'd better not get too attached to Supernova.]

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Work just called. Awesome. Grrr! Too bad I haven't learned how to write Japanese, yet, or else I'd send all of my replies in Japanese with my new Global Input Method Editor. >=)

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Firefox 3 is slick! Me likey!

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Impatiently waiting for July 15th when the beta release of Opera Mobile 9.5 comes out. It's been getting better reviews than Safari Mobile (cough*iPhone*cough) - which I can't have even if I wanted to.

If it forces me to many websites' mobile view, though, I may have to stick with Opera Mini. Even if it is proxied. *grumble*

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Need to take Kazu's suits to the cleaners so that I can return them and give him his omiyage. I'm trying to have a better turnaround time to getting gifts to people - it's been upwards of 4-5 months in recent history.

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Been playing with CO's new 3G iPhone. Nice! Still not quite the form factor I want, though. Still, my phone is too new to even consider an HTC Diamond.

I could be swayed later in the year depending on what HTC is creating for the Android platform.

Okay. I'm creating this post specifically so that I can come back to it. I don't know if will be a few months, a few years, it may possibly be never.

Anyway, I've decided that it's about time to get over my embarrassment about being an American that merely looks Japanese and move forward to actually being Japanese.

Short of immersion, which is a route I am not not planning on traveling, I see one of my major tasks as learning the Japanese language. Of course, I do not plan on mastering the language any time soon; however, I would at least, like to move up to a conversational competency.

I have found a few resources that I like already.

• Tae Kim's Japanese grammar guide will be my official starting point. I like the perspective.


• Jim Breen's WWJDIC will be my official Kanji and dictionary reference.


• The wordreference forums will be a source of aid (i.e. - etymology, vocabulary, and usage) as well as a way to browse ever-evolving content until I reach a point that I can regularly read Japanese literature for practice.

I'm going to be saving this post in my memories so I can come back to it. The goal is to eventually reach a point of proficiency where I can effectively translate this English post to Japanese.

I have a couple of things going for me:

• Being forced to go to "Japanese School" when I was very young, and having language requirements in both high school and college, I am already familiar with Hiragana, Katakana (badly in need of a review) and the basics of Kanji stroke order.


• Also the result of having a small bit of experience with the language, hopefully I won't be prone to the American accent. Occasional practice with native speakers will help with my intonation as well.

We'll see how it goes. I hope this entry doesn't go unfinished!