ibneko | Entries tagged with life

NaNoWriMo status: Words written today: 3,345. Total: 7,745. I'm 3,921 short of where I should have been by the most recent midnight. 5588 words short of where I should be tomorrow. According to Dropbox's revision log, I've been writing for about 5 hours. Sigh. Maybe another 5 hours tomorrow (err, today - it's 2 AM?!), then more time friday.

I wish I had an app that tracks when my writing app has the current focus, so I can see just how much time I've spent writing. Even cooler would be if it could grab my word per minute average. Right now, it looks like it's approximately 600-900 words per hour (so about 10-15 words per minute, which is slightly below the 19 wpm listed for composition on Wikipedia).

At this rate, I should need another 6-9 hours to get caught up with where I should be tomorrow. Obviously that won't happen all at once tomorrow, so... yeah, another 5-6 hours after work tomorrow once I get into the flow. Then all day friday, hopefully, if I don't slack off. That's a danger.

(I get friday off, since it was my birthday this past tuesday, and the job comes with a your-birthday = personal holiday policy, so I opted to take friday off instead of taking tuesday off.)

Also, got Halo. Thankfully resisting the urge to play more. I've got self-control, right?
Also picked up a 3 TB external hard drive to act as a separate local backup (for now) of my other externals. I have BackBlaze (highly recommended cloud backup), but I generally don't back up everything there, since it takes ages to transfer all the data, and some stuff I don't care _that_ much about (like downloaded anime series that are just sort of sitting around, a bad habit from hotline server days, when you needed stuff to trade...).

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."

You know how sometimes people on your friends list post about stuff going on in their lives, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute! Since when were they working THERE? Since when were they dating THAT PERSON? Since when?" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you should already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.

Please copy the topics below, erase my answers and put yours in their place, and then post it in your journal! [Ed.: only if you want to.] Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration. One-word answers seldom help anyone out.

( Who I am today and whatnot... )

Current Mood: accomplished

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.

---

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. :(

The weather's getting cold again. I've started to hide (happily and comfortably) under my thick blankets and piles of pillows.

I don't get much done after work. I need to rectify that. But for now, blankets + kindle = joy.

(Note to self: check the windows to see about patching up some of the cracks.)

And they throw some awesome stuff away.

Today, I managed to snag:
-One DVD player
-Two Laptops (both really old, but perfect to run servers / try linux on)
-One Samsung PDA with an extra battery and an extra battery charger.
-A few assorted AC/DC plugs
-6? plates, some with chips off the edges. 2 bowls, and one larger glass bowl.
-A cookbook
-A haircut kit
-One old and ugly looking DSL modem.
-One metal lamp. Needs a lampshade.
-One working bike that needs to be tuned up a bit. The brakes need replacing, but otherwise it looks decently functional.

There was also a Dell desktop that was being thrown out, as well as yet another laptop, but those were so heavy (that laptop was reeeaaaallly old), I decided not to lug it home.

Man, I wonder if UIUC kids throw away as much stuff. Although, I get the feeling I might have been looking in the graduate / professor housing area, since there were a lot of strollers and such in front of houses. Which might explain the older-looking stuff they throw away, instead of typical dorm stuff. I think trash gets emptied on mondays, unfortunately, so unless I feel like making yet another trip... meh. I think I made over 5 roundtrips to the Stanford campus, and at about 2.5-3 miles one way, plus wandering through the various parking lots to peer awkwardly around dumpsters... that's 30 miles? Meep.

I almost wonder if I should rent a zipcar for an hour. Then I could snag larger things like smaller mattresses (saw at least two), the desktop, and other things...

...I'm hungry.

Current Mood: accomplished

I have almost everything you'd expect to see at a crazy college party, all acquired after I graduated college.

I've had a giant disco ball (not even sure it's safe to hang - it's pretty damn heavy with real mirrors). And I have a fog machine with juice (acquired a while back at a garage sale). And now I have a decent mini spotlight with exchangeable color lens from Spencers that I got from Goodwill for $4. I have a few chains of bamboo tiki lights (Amazon found for free) along with a chain of white christmas lights also picked up for free. And I have a 720p HD projector, a Wii, and a XBOX360.

Hm. I guess I'm missing a strobe light. And alcohol. And those crazy partying friends that I don't make. And maybe a larger place.

Current Mood: sleepy

Before the movie, we went to Brian's (the Jew-panese) condo to pick out paint colors. I want to own my own condo. Although knowing me, I wouldn't actually decorate it any. <= Lazy.

Up Was Good.

The first bit made me cry. I'm silly and sentimental like that. As did some other part of it - I don't remember which.

Yay, talking doggie! Hehehehe. I wonder how hard it would be to breed that intelligence and then perfect the mind-to-voice technology.

Also, we need a Mythbuster episode to figure out how many balloons would be necessary to lift a small house. We need to know.

Somehow, the adventure was over quicker than I expected. I'm not sure if this was good or bad, but I suppose it's probably good that it didn't get dragged out at all.

After the movie, I met up with family and visiting relatives and we went to the Melting Pot. That was good too - first time to a fondue place for everyone except for me. Expensive, but I think they enjoyed it. And I learned that pouring flaming brandy onto chocolate looks amazingly awesome.

On an unrelated note, I have an annoying headache. And took Tylenol for the first time in a long while. Usually I just ignore it (typically, it indicates either tiredness or dehydration for me), but this one's been there since the movie, and with it being there on-and-off for the past... 4-5ish hours... I got sick of it. Hopefully it's not something else. Like food poisoning or something.

1x: http://pics.livejournal.com/ibneko/pic/0006250h/g54
5x?: http://pics.livejournal.com/ibneko/pic/000611gx/g54
10x: http://pics.livejournal.com/ibneko/pic/00063hbz/g54
10x + digital zoom: http://pics.livejournal.com/ibneko/pic/0006480c/g54

Paris pictures with taggable humans have been posted to facebook. You have to be a friend to view, since they're taggable humans. ;D

All other pictures are slowly being posted to my livejournal scrapbook account.

I need a MacOS X client for Dreamwidth. :\

---

Despite it being absurdly hot outside (91ºF), I biked over to Mountain View and was surprised to find the last 15 minutes of a craft fair type thing. So I got sidetracked for a while until they closed, at which point I wandered off to find the closer 99 Ranch for groceries (baby Bak Choi, Enoki mushrooms, and non-fried instant noodles) and dinner ($6.99 self-serve stuff). Still have noodles and a large slab of pretty-good chicken left over. Probably dinner tomorrow.

I've been working this weekend, installing updated versions of PHP and MySQL on our new servers, until I realized that the database servers were 32-bit servers with 16 GB of RAM. WTF. While Linux can make use more than 4 GB of RAM by using Physical Address Extension (PAE), each process is, AFAIK, limited to accessing 4 GB max. And that really doesn't work for a MySQL server, since we only get one MySQL process. =.= So an email has been sent to my manager dude and hopefully we'll get 64-bit servers soon.

So far, no other impossibly annoying things involved in the installation of PHP and MySQL though. MySQL's still as easy as it was to install, and PHP is nicer on these Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) servers, since I can just yum install most of the missing *-devel packages~

What else... ah, saw Push this weekend. It was... meh. Not even worth buying the DVD for, I think. Getting caught up on Fringe and the few anime series I've been following...

Mosquitos in my apartment need to die. Rawr.

Current Mood: bouncy

Star Trek Movie really was good. The 95% on Rotten Tomatoes doesn't lie. Well, at least it was good for a non-trekie. Although part of me wonders how well messing with the past followed canon... although I suppose it it really messed things up, it wouldn't be so universally approved of and liked.

Also, I was surprised. It had managed to sell out at the IMAX theater I went to, so I ended up being lame and buying the 10:30 PM showing and running into the 7:10 showing that I originally planned for. The theater was so full, I was left sitting in the first row, left-most side, so my view was a bit limited by my range of vision. Sad.

To do:
-Pick health benefits and paperwork stupidness for work, since it's open enrollment again. They need to fix my last name too.
-Clean my room. It's messy.
-Sort, then post the pictures taken in Paris. There's nearly 1 GB / 200+ pictures per day... while it'll be fun, it'll pretty quickly get tedious. There's movies too, which will be trickier. Those might go onto facebook, or youtube first, then facebook? Paris pictures that don't have people in it will go onto LJ. If there's people, it'll be on LJ and on Facebook.
-Buy food. I do have enough food, but I should get some greens.
-Figure out plan for visiting girlfriend next weekend. It's memorial day weekend, so ticket prices are unhappy. And there'll be a portion of the weekend where people will be up in Chicago, so housing will be interesting.
-Watch some Push, Taken, Fast and Furious 4, The Pink Panther, and get caught up on Fringe
-Get caught up on anime... o.O
-Deal with any remaining quests in Fable II. Maybe kill off my family in there, go completely evil, or buy the few downloadable things. Although I'm not sure it'll be worth it. Pondering selling it for whatever I can get...?

Current Mood: happy

Back from my whirlwind tour of a vacation with two of my best friends from high school. That was fun.

Eh, will post more later, including pictures. If I don't, someone poke me.

So it's been a while.

I'm alive.

Attended the Japan Cherry Blossom Festival in San Francisco. That was pretty nifty. I wish I had a group of people to hang out with though. Like, people my age. :\ Although then I wouldn't have been able to move around at my own pace (which is relatively fast).

Found another 99 Ranch (LARGE asian grocery store) in Mountain View. That's better than going to Cupertino, even though Cupertino has other awesome chinese stores all in one small cluster. Also discovered that I can caltrain to Mountain View at 8:30ish in the morning, bike about 3 miles, then caltrain back to Palo Alto before 10, just in time for work. I was quite pleased.

Mailed taxes. Flew to UIUC to see the girlfriend and attend the J-net Matsuri (festival). That was good. Saw other J-net Alumni. It's depressing, the number of people left on campus to give me reason to return will decrease this year.

Work is good. Could be happier with more developers / engineers.

I've started using Twitter. Other people are using it too. Some are exasperated by it. :D

I have carrots. And ice cream. Munching carrots right now.

There was a nasty really-hot-day tuesday. It was 91ºF. Much better now, but I learned that my AC works, but not amazingly.

I think I'm almost done with Fable. I need to tackle an RPG next, I think. Anyone have any suggestions for Wii or XBOX360?

I still need to:
a) do taxes
b) get a CA drivers license (was supposed to do so within 10 days of becoming a "resident"*. Except the nearest one is at least 30 minutes away, by train + walking. And I don't have a car. So driving = once every three or four months with a Zipcar.)

*one of the definitions of a resident is apparently becoming employed here full time. That was a few months ago.

Anime... taxes... anime.... taxes...

You know, I don't post much to my livejournal anymore. I was looking to see if I recorded my turbotax hack of downloading multiple free states, but I can't find it. And noticed that I used to post once daily, instead of the current... 1-3 a week at most. I wonder if I should rectify that or move towards twitter (equally useless, since I check it even less than I post to livejournal), although there's been a recent influx of friends there, goddess knows why.

I'm ibneko there, by the way. You'd think I'd move onto another nickname, now that I'm no longer in IB. And have had my diploma in a corner collecting dust for over 4 years.

...anime. Toradora is much more interesting than taxes. Plus, turbotax is still updating something or other.

http://pics.livejournal.com/ibneko/gallery/0001rsb8

So I decided to see how big of an image I could throw. There's the result.

It's about 8 feet wide. That means it's the equivalent of a good 110+ inch TV. There is a Canada Dry can set against the wall, on the lower-left corner of the image. When I took this picture, my computer wasn't set up correctly at the time, so actual coverage area is probably wider by a foot.

The problem with this setup? If I really want to use it, I'll need to either arrange a more comfortable chair next to the microwave... or.... I dunno. Also, my DVI to HDMI cable is short. And the positioning of the projector (and lack of nearby table space) makes picking a permanent laptop placement position difficult.

I'm going to pick up Halo 3 tomorrow and see how/if image quality changes when I plug in the XBox (using Component Video, I guess? I don't think it comes with the HDMI plug... I might have to invest in the adaptor/cable?).

Saturday:
Biked around in the mornings to assorted garage sales - picked up a fog machine with fog juice for $10.

Then later in the day, I biked to Goodwill, then Walmart / Target / Daiso, then kept going, passing Mountain View and then reaching a Lucky's supermarket on 715 El Camino at which point I thought I reached Sunnyvale (and somehow missed Hankook - the plan was to see how long it would take to bike to my local asian supermarket (like, it can match Safeway in size).)

Looking at google maps though, I was only about halfway between Mountain View and Sunnyvale. :( And said asian supermarket was a good distance away (Lawrence Caltrain station is the closest)

Total: over 16 miles.

Sunday:
Biked to the local Costco and ate samples for a late lunch. :) Yay for getting in without a membership pass. About 4.4 miles one way, 9 miles total.

Also, prices at Costco are higher than Safeway sales. WTF?

On the way back, I hit Safeway on Middlefield and picked up 88¢/lb grapes (w00t!), one avocado (67¢/each), a lime, and a lemon. (The latter two are supposed to be for the water container I'll eventually acquire.)

"Type: Package
Status: Exception
See description below
Shipped To: PALO ALTO, CA, US
Shipped/Billed On: 01/26/2009
Service: GROUND
Special Instructions: SIGNATURE REQUIRED
Weight: 18.90 Lbs"
...
"JACKSONVILLE,
FL, US 01/29/2009 1:00 P.M. ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS"

Noooooo, stupid adverse weather conditions... T.T

I want my projector noooow~

although just to get stuff...

There's an odd sense of deja vu...

I think it's the smells... something barely identifiable is bringing me back to a few years ago, just as college started. There's that slight touch of loneliness, a feel of uncertainty in the future ahead. But it'll all fade away in the morning sun, like fog, and I won't remember it anymore.

Just so I have a record of where I am, what's going on, etc.

I've graduated. Somehow. With an BS in EE from UIUC.

I'm still manhandling Warbook, although as part of Social Gaming Network, I've gone from random dude who files timesheets for money to temp who hasn't gotten paid yet, and now hopefully to guy who's getting paid full time to work in a lovely location with nifty people on awesome things.

Social Gaming Network made iGolf too, by the way. Runs on the iPhone, does golf-y things. Not something I entirely understand, as am not major fan of smacking small balls with a large iron club just to see if I can put balls in holes. But that's just me. And it's doing well - 2nd on the list of free iPhone apps in just under a few days.

Most of my time.. eh, make that all of my time at work goes into the interesting system of Fluff friends, led by two very enthusiastic developers, one being Mike Sego. It's all in PHP, which... going back to, from Ruby, is like going from Java to C. But it's decently fun. And their userbase is ten-times ours, although... I don't interact with said userbase as much. :\ The warbook userbase is... well, was... more active, at least in the forums. But there's some really creative fluff users out there.

I'm currently looking for my own apartment here (ugh, expensive - we're looking at a price tag of $900-1000 for 2 mi distance studio/1 bedroom locations. $1200 for anything closer, in the rare case that there is something closer), but I'll have a more permanent address soon.

I still have a girlfriend, in Illinois. Visitation hours are around 58-60 hours, in one large chunk, monthly, thus far. Plane tickets aren't kind to the wallet. Le sigh. Still, 8 trips per year, maybe. Runs up to a very good Apple Desktop, but offers probably more concentrated happiness in a short period of time. Ah well, will save money elsewhere. Like cheaper food devouring (Mmmm, McDonalds, Subway, and Quiznos. Or cheap salad bars at Round Table Pizzas... aiming for under $5 for a meal, anyhow...).

Not progressing much in terms of security - I've got two security books by my bed, but they haven't been read, and I've already renewed them once. There's just so much to do.....

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IBNeko's Journal-Nyo~!

Entries tagged with life

NaNoWriMo 2012 Status

Move, part 2

Bah, stupid rain...

Today went pretty well...

Whee, a meme, a meme!

Yay, probably have a new apartment!

Mmmm, blankets.

Yay, Stanford students are moving out..

You know...

Up!

I love my Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5

Star Trek Movie / To Do list

Back from Paris

Mmm. Life record~

Irritating paperwork

Re: Projector awesomeness.

Whee, crazy exercise.

noooooooooooo.....

home in md again

Life status update