ibneko

Total San Franc hills climbed on foot today: 5+. Whee! Also Ow. Legs aren't sore yet, which is nice. Found awesome concrete slides, but they required climbing 4+ hills from the 22nd street Caltrain station. Also found the wave organ with Sharon W. (concrete pipes designed to have an organ effect when the waves crash against it. Significantly less awesome than slides, but then again, easier to get to).

Then there was pie. And then all you can eat pizza, which was pretty awesome. Alan has impressive eating skills.

I took some pictures. Again, will upload eventually. I think I'm going to go soak in a tub. I feel... well exercised. My odometer currently says 47 mi, I think it was at 27-30 after my Mountain View loop around Shoreline. I probably did cover about 15+ miles. Maybe I'll map it later...

Also found out from a friendly pair of people that while you're probably not supposed to, you can walk along the muni lines to get to Dolores Park.

I think I'm going to like Dance in the Vampire Bund. Just watched the second episode and it looks promising. Granted, there's... rather unnecessary nudity, but mmm, I like fairy tales.

Other anime this season:
-Ookami Kakushi. Interesting. Annoying main male character's love interest is annoying. Redundancy intentional. She is that annoying. I'm just watching long enough to see the actual mystery (it's horror genre, I believe?) develop, and then I'll probably drop the series. Opening song is quite good (although it's by the people that brought us some of the .hack songs).
-Baka to Test to Shokanju. Some retarded thing about class rivalries. Meh.
-Omamori Himari. Eh, harem anime. Feh. Probably potential fail. Might just watch for the cat.
-Sora no Woto. Looks good. I like the animation and art. Music's also pretty good. Will probably continue to watch.


Played D&D for the first time today. It was interesting. I'm much more interested in the mechanics and less interested in the role play. And unfortunately, we're doing more role-play orientedness. Kinda reminds me of collaborative story-telling and pick-your-own-adventure, but the options you can pick from aren't exactly obvious.

Now to decide if I want to get 100%. Kinda hard when you're playing alone... Some of the levels are kinda difficult.

So here's what I'm using:
iPhone OS 3.1.2
XCode 3.1.4
Instructions from http://gumballtech.com/2009/12/13/on-device-testing-wout-paying-99/
and AppSync 3.1 on the Jailbroken iPhone.

Whoo. Test, test, 1, 2, 3!

Did another 4 trips over 5 hours with a local zipcar. Now my new apartment is a maze of boxes, trash bags, and paper bags with handles (trash bags mostly because I was too lazy and didn't bother finding real boxes that might have made my life easier.

Probably looked like a crazy bag lady (err, boy) at points, when I was hauling multiple bags up to my new apartment.

Almost done now. There's just the backup bikes at the old apartment, and probably a few knick knacks I've forgotten. And there's trash I need to take out. So I'll be making a few more trips back there.

There's also some sort of bright, shiny tower closer to Menlo Park that I keep seeing from the Palo Alto Caltrain station. Probably a (really, really tall) christmas tree, but it's worth checking out.

Man, next step: sort, clean, and organize the new apartment. I also need a couch now that I actually have a living room-type place...

So I went to UIUC this weekend to watch the J-net fashion show and hang out with friends there. Friends == quite good fun, although people are wandering off, sadly. Show was good - pretty much what was expected, although the skit could have flowed a tad bit better. But the Union ABC rooms have proper lighting rows now! So they can adjust the lights and position them to be more awesome and actually properly cover the stage. Probably with more lights too. *glee* Alas, I won't be back much more often to help out and make it look awesome.

Also, the freshmen are getting smaller. Or I'm getting older and bigger. Gawds, I hope it's not the latter.

Used United Premier status (I've somehow managed to fly over 25K miles this year. Probably due to the trip to Taiwan) to board planes as zone 1. Unsuccessfully tried to standby for an earlier flight. Got to and from Chicago with the help of Denise and her boyfriend, John.

And due to my own incompetence, I completely forgot about my return time and ended up getting a flight that landed 15 minutes after the last caltrain left. So, having done a test run from Palo Alto to Millbrae (the sourthern-most point for the BART (subway) on this side of the bay), taking about 18 miles, 2-3 hours, I decided it was quite doable. With this in mind, I brought my bike via caltrain to Millbrae and left it at the caltrain station.

Unfortunately, I completely failed to factor in the possibility of weather. 'cause, you know, we don't usually get weather here. It's just sun. Nice sun. Sometimes a confused cloud or two. And in the rare occasions, it rains. Very rare.

So I landed. And cursed at the drippy skies. Deciding I still didn't want to pay the stupid cab fare, nor did I want to bother friends up in SF, or call up my senpai down in Mountain View, I decided to tough it out, be a guy, etc. Swinging by the local Walgreens, I picked up a poncho and got started.

Am home now. Everything below the knees was wet. And my face and glasses. But otherwise, not too bad. Just uncomfortable.

And this time it only took me 2 hours and 15 minutes. 18 miles in the rain. Whee.

(Hmmm, looks like my downstairs neighbor has moved out. Don't see their wifi access point anymore. Poo. Borrowing one named "Metaverse", but I guess this means I really need to complete my move to the new apartment which has internet, but doesn't have a bed or other slightly less important stuff...)

...armed with an iPhone 3GS (Woohoo! Internet everywhere for a month! Note to self, pay dad.), I was able to work remotely pretty effectively for a day.

Free Wifi on Virgin America, for the flight from IAD 7 AM to SFO 10 AM. Coded. Got work done. Happy.
Bart + Caltrain to Palo Alto. Recharged iPhone at Millbrae, and answered emails! Woo!

Went to the eye doctor. My right eye is slightly worse in terms of nearsightedness stuff, and my left eye is slightly worse in terms of stigmatism. Shall have new glasses in a week. They'll be smaller and more rectangular than my current pair. Hopefully not a fail. I don't really have much of an opinion, since I usually can't see them... XD Except I picked the larger round frames for my current glasses in increase my field of vision. We'll see if there's a difference...

Then caught the Caltrain again, down to San Antonio, two stops away. Picked up the keys to my new apartment, got onto GoogleWiFi (also free, provided to the city of Mountain View). Worked remotely that way, while waiting for Comcast to come by and plug stuff in.

Now, home. Kinda cold, contemplating turning on the heating unit... My brookstone egg thingie says it's 62.4ºF. Hrm. ^^;;

Also, I have no food at home. But I'm going to UIUC this weekend. And I don't want to buy food just to have to move it to the new place. This is a pain.

Moving is also a pain too. My facebook status is currently: "Man, I need a portal gun. So I can open the blue one in my old apartment, the orange in my new apartment, and just throw everything through the magical glowing hole in the wall."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZiBiJDLbmY

Props to the kid. Although I wonder if he thought it up himself...?

I should be signing a lease this afternoon. And I'll have a 1 bedroom / 1 bathroom, instead of a studio, which means I'll have a sleeping area that's separate from my living area, so I can invite people over! And I get a balcony. Plus, I'll be paying about $75 less per month. The only downside: Work is probably 15-25 minutes away by bike, slightly more than my current apartment.

But I'm still within a mile of a caltrain station (San Antonio) and now I'm closer to Safeway and Walmart and Sears and a whole set of shops in the area. Plus, I'll be closer to Mountain view, so biking there isn't as much of a pain.

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Also, I managed to replace my caged bearings with loose bearings for my front axle. Thus far, it seems to have been an improvement. But I had to install 12 bearings, instead of the 9 or 11 that I was told I was going to have to use. (Should have been 9, I think... I read it should be number of bearings in cage(7) + 2). Need to find time to talk to the bike shop guys. :(