Stanley Chen

Yearly Update

2009-04-21T11:29:41Z

Hm, it's been awhile since my last post. What's happened since then? Let's see... I bought and moved into the townhouse, my sister got married, 8PAST finished up our new songs before breaking up, I joined a new band called Drunken Hu, I took my first real vacation in well over a year with a trip to Taiwan.... nothing too big.

So why the post? Pimping my band's upcoming shows, of course:

Thu, April 23 @ Red Devil Lounge, SF
Doors at 8, we go on at [EDIT: Later time] 10:30pm. $10 at the door.

Mon, April 27th @ Rockit Room, no cover charge

Wed, April 29 @ Elbo Room, $6

I actually played my first show already with Drunken Hu, on April 7th, the day after I got back from Taiwan. I was exhausted and suffering from a cold, but I played the hell out of the show before sleepwalking through the rest of the night. I was lucky I managed to drive home safely afterwards.

In leiu of anything meaningful

2008-06-17T09:16:29Z

127

As a 1930s husband, I am
Very Superior

Take the test!

My score looks like it's off the charts. What does that even mean?

On the Road Again...

2008-04-20T09:10:52Z

Well, at least, on the stage again. After 8 long months, we've finally got a drummer... Kinson is back, at least for this show on Wednesday at Red Devil Lounge in SF this week. We're all a bit rusty, but hopefully we'll get the kinks worked out in time.

The future of the band is fairly uncertain at this point, and we're not going to be booking many shows, so come see us when you've got the chance. We're playing first, so come early.

Oh, and I've cancelled the offer on the Sunnyvale house, and opted for a Mountain View townhome instead.

Lately, I've been using Twitter to post short stuff about random thoughts and life, since it takes much less time to bang out a thought in 140 characters. A bit more cryptic, perhaps, but more frequent. I'm not abandoning LJ, I'm just trying to figure out what I'm doing with it.

Four Weeks Later

2008-03-28T06:31:20Z

So the first weekend after getting my wisdom teeth pulled was pretty painless. Vicodin = happy. After the first couple days though, they starting hurting like a bitch (leading me to whine like a bitch), and the vicodin wasn't nearly as effective any more. It reminded me of what it was like after getting braces for the first time... except that it hurt regardless of whether I was chewing, so for the most part, I ate as normal. Thankfully, after the first week, the pain subsided, and I was just left with the gaping holes that had to be flushed out periodically. Anybody need some spare vicodin?

Main thing bothering me nowadays is the a sort of tooth freeze sensation when I drink cold water. Feels like a toothache, and I'm wondering if I should get that checked out, or if it's something that will just go away.

Oh, and in other news, I made an offer on a small single family home in Sunnyvale. It's a short sale and I bid low, so the offer is basically in limbo waiting for the bank to get through its backlog of short sales. Might be retracting the offer depending on how long it takes, how much the market drops in the meantime, and whether I find something better. The thought of using up all my play money kinda scares me though. More room for toys begets less money for toys.

Age of Wisdom

2008-03-01T23:00:49Z

Yesterday, I had my remaining 3 wisdom teeth pulled. I hadn't been experiencing any problems, but at my last dental appointment, the dentist finally decided it was about time. At the consultation with the specialist, she remarked, "What took you so long?" Only one was impacted, but we decided to just get rid of the rest anyway.

I opted for general anesthetic so I didn't have to experience the procedure at all. I seem to be recovering pretty quickly, and I've been popping vicodin every time I start to feel the pain. There's practically no swelling, and the bleeding seems to be gone 24 hours later. I was afraid I'd be limited to yogurt, applesauce, and the like, but I've been eating porridge, pickled cucumbers, dried shredded pork, baked tofu, soft veggies, bread, and eggs over easy without much trouble at all.

All of which makes for a pretty boring LJ entry. I'm glad.

But then, I'm guessing the two hellish surgeries I had for my broken arm two years ago really raised my bar for what qualifies as a painful surgery.

99% Alive

2008-02-27T08:34:41Z

I was already bummed I missed out on Jonathon Coulton's concert on Friday... after seeing this, now I'm really bummed.

I've had a constant headache since the flu went away. Not bad enough to incapacitate, just enough to annoy. And just when I think it's not there anymore, there it is.

Oh, and as for the Tahoe trip over President's Day weekend, it was fun. No spectacular injuries, but I spent a not insignificant percentage of time going down the slopes on my ass. The highlight was probably when I went up the slopes on my ass...

I took a towline, which is like a chair lift, without the chair. You have a rope with a disc at the end to hold on to, and it drags you up the mountain. Well, about 2/3 of the way up, I zoned out for a bit and the edge of my snowboard caught, and down I went. I managed to hold on to the towline for about a full minute, flopping around, getting dragged on my ass, trying in vain to get my back on my board. I knew if I let go, the rope would retract, so there would be no way of continuing up without going back down to the beginning and starting over. Finally, my arms wore out and I let go, and decided to walk the rest of the way up. Sadly, Paul and Jeff were too far ahead to notice or take a video. It would definitely have been YouTube-worthy.

I also took one full day of the trip to stay in and play Super Smash Bros Brawl story mode in hard mode, unlocking most of the characters. Sadly, somebody will probably have to do that again when it comes out stateside, unless the Japanese saved game is compatible with the American.

Googleland

2008-02-13T07:34:00Z

Last week Monday, Google held its west coast trip, wherein all employees (in the west coast offices) had the choice of going to Disneyland or camping. Despite having been to Disney World a mere 2 months prior, I went with Disneyland. The logistics of this trip were astounding. Everybody in Mountain View was flown out of one of SFO, SJC, or OAK, to one of LAX, BUR, or ONT on Monday, and back on Wednesday. There were shuttles leading from the MV campus to each airport, and shuttles to take us from the destination airports to each of the 12 hotels around Disneyland that Googlers occupied. For Googlers that hated flying, there was also the option of taking a bus all the way, and of course you could arrange your own transportation.

Unfortunately for most of us, Monday was a terrible day for flying, as Chicago got shut down entirely, and nearly all flights were delayed as a result. The plane that I was assigned to, OAK-BUR, was the lucky one of the day... it got cancelled entirely. A few of us Googlers were looking right at the flight info when we saw it flash an ominous, red "Cancelled". It took a few moments for it to register. Since all flights were booked for the day, we were put on a much later flight (which was itself delayed), and were told to attempt to fly standby for the earlier ones. After waiting around for a few hours and seeing how hopeless it was to do standby, I thought to try switching to a flight to LAX. There were rumors that that some had switched, and that some were denied. Sadly, the folks I was waiting with decided to give up and take a cab home just when I was going to ask about LAX. I did manage to find one other Googler I'd just met that day and he came along to give it a shot as well. The trick was to go to the counter for the LAX flight and ask them, rather than the Burbank counter, who were up to their necks in unhappy folks on a huge standby list and weren't accomadating in any way. The two of us got put on the very next flight, leaving in less than 20 minutes. When we got on, we observed quite a few empty seats. So sad for the folks that gave up, as the trip was definitely worth it.

Google @ Disneyland

On Tuesday, from park opening until 7pm, the park was open to the public, so there was the usual mix of tourists and kids, but dotted with folks sporting Google gear, and the occasional work badge. After 7, though, the real fun began. Non-googlers were kicked out, the lines became nearly non-existent, and the food was now free. DJs and various bands were set up throughout the park. The rides were now full of Googlers all free to whoop it up as much as we wanted. At this point, we managed to go on every single ride in Fantasyland, one after another, with zero wait. Mr Toad's Wild Ride is still my favorite.

At a designated time, they asked everybody to gather on Main St for a group picture, which was apparently taken by helicopter. This was probably the biggest gathering of Googlers in one location, ever. Many people attempted to take pictures of the resulting mass, myself included. I didn't take that many pictures on this trip, letting my roommates Wanli and Devesh take care of them.

Then, the fireworks show began. This was easiest the coolest fireworks show I've ever seen, even beating out the one I saw 2 months ago at Epcot Center, with all its lasers, water, and fire. Without a big body of water to work with, they were limited to lasers and fire, but it was enough. They played a medley of tunes and sounds over the loudspeakers, each built around one of the Disneyland rides, with fireworks to match. My favorites were the flare-like fireworks timed with the sound of cannons from Pirates of the Carribean, and the green lasers and random explosions surrounding us from all sides, set to a Star Wars soundtrack.

What should have been the best part was the open bars they set up throughout California Adventure. Sadly, I'd been plagued with sleepiness most of the day (probably due to my roommates insisting we wake up at 7am to get to the park before it opened), which was developing into a headache. I'd taken a nap on a random couch in the halls of the Grand Californian in Downtown Disney (and got asked by a random employee whether I was with Google, before he let me be) so I felt better towards the evening, but I decided to go easy on the alcohol. Funny enough, after the Long Island, my headache seemed to go away.

Given the number of Googlers there, it was pretty unlikely to bump into any particular person. But on the last ride of the night, our 3rd time on Tower of Terror that day, I happened to find my two former teammates in line, right behind us. One of them had transferred to Santa Monica a few months ago, and I didn't even recognize him at first due to a hair style change. They had only just bumped into each other as well, and now we were all together again for the first time since our team had split. In a trip filled with awesome, this was probably the coolest part of the trip for me.

Sadly for me, I started feeling the first inkling of a sore throat on this trip. At first I thought it was due to all the screaming and yelling (from Disneyland, from the super bowl, and from the Foo Fighters concert on Saturday...) but after I got back, it only got worse and worse, until I was hit with a full on flu over the weekend. I've now skipped two days of work, but should be good enough to head back in tomorrow. At least, I need to be good enough to go on that Tahoe trip this upcoming weekend...

Lost in a Week

2008-01-30T05:34:51Z

After procuring the 3rd season of Lost last Sunday (thanks mangobuns...), I managed to plow through all 23 episodes in a week. This is why I normally avoid TV.

I'm both house-hunting and apartment-hunting. Need more room for toys.

That snow fun

2008-01-14T09:58:56Z

I'm pleased to report a breakthrough in my never-ending quest to discover new and innovative ways to injure myself while snowboarding. Yesterday, while on the backside slopes of Northstar, I performed a high-speed faceplant with my gloved hand in front of my face. The impact of the ground on the side edge of my wristguard against my goggles jammed it into my face, scraping off some skin and leaving a nasty red scrape below my left eye. My goggles now sport a crack where my wristguard had hit. After that, I made sure to perform all faceplants with my hands well out of the way of my face.

My helmet probably saved me twice this time around. First, I hit a low hanging branch, which bounced loudly off my helmet. Second, I fell over onto my back at high speeds as I approached a flat, icy stretch, smacking the back of my head hard enough to leave me dazed for the next 5-10 minutes. If I hadn't had the helmet, I'd probably have had a concussion. Hm, even as I think about the fall, I can feel a faint, ghostly throbbing at the back of my head. Well, nothing serious, as tell as far I can.

In other fun on this trip, we had cars get stuck three times (by three different drivers) in a nearly identical manner on the driveway of our cabin, pointing up the slope, with the back of the car against a snowbank. Thankfully, the winter I spent in Ithaca building experience in getting my car unstuck from parallel parking spaces paid off, as I extricated the car all three times. (Though I had a bit of pushing help the latter two times, which saved some time) I also had the opportunity to pull off the following maneuver three times: From a flat spot on the driveway, I'd build speed before rounding a 90-degree turn to climb an icy incline, and then pull into a one car-width garage space without slowing down. The first time, with a minivan, it took over a dozen tries, as I first worked out how to slide through the turn and pointed in the right direction, and then how much power I'd need to make it up the incline, while the other guys broke up the ice between attempts to make it easier. The second time, with a sedan into the other garage space, and the third time, with the original minivan again, only needed about 3 tries each. With the minivan, I kept forgetting to fold the mirrors in, and both times, I smacked the right mirror against the wall on the way in. Hey, it's a rental.

And in case you're having a tough time imagining this, Wayne took some videos of the maneuver, as well as various pics of the trip.

At any rate, the cabin was awesome, and the slopes were pretty nice after all the snow dumped the previous week, including some fresh snow on Saturday morning. While Friday was nice and empty, Saturday was pretty much at max capacity, as the lots were completely filled, and one of our cars almost didn't get in after making a detour to a nearby rental shop. They circled the lots for a half hour before they lucked out when a car left early.

With this season looking so much better than last year, we might be doing a President's Day weekend trip as well. Oh, and while Google has cancelled this year's company ski trip, our team has requested that we go to Tahoe for our team offsite, so I'll likely be hitting the slopes at least twice more before the season is over. Yayz.

Vacations

2008-01-11T08:58:55Z

2007 Orlando

Before Christmas, I went to Orlando for a week with my sister and her friend Vicki to do the usual Disney World thing, hitting all 4 parks in 3 days, as well as a day for Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. We also watched Tony 'n Tina's Wedding, Cirque Du Soleil, and Blue Man Group. Also, I did the Richard Petty Rookie Driving Experience, where you drive a real Nascar stock car around a track. I rented a Mustang convertible as our ride, which ended up being all sorts of fun, between the cold, rainy weather and the lack of trunk space for all the merch we ended up buying. My sister was still recovering from some surgery, so we made as much of use of her temporary disability placard and park wheelchair access as we could. On the way home, we managed to miss our flight and ended up being forced to spend a night in Dallas, where we made the best of it and met up with our 2nd cousin for a buffalo wing dinner. Sadly, pictures are pretty spotty.

From Christmas to New Year's, I went to Seattle, Vancouver, and Whistler with the usual gang, who took a metric ass-ton of pictures. Visited Pike Place Market twice (It's pretty boring on Christmas Day when nothing but the Chinese bakery is open), went up the Space Needle, and missed out on Experience Music Project (anybody interested in going with me in some hypothetical future trip to Seattle?). In Vancouver, we ate lots of Chinese food and went to Stanley Park on a dreary, rainy day; I hope to rent a bicycle and ride around on the next hypothetical trip. Whistler itself was awesome. Three days of boarding, and one day of snowmanbearpig/snowkitty/igloo making. We were able to fit 5 people in this igloo; next time, we know to leave air vents. Fresh air never tasted so good. Toilets were the bane of our trip, with both toilets in our hotel suite in Vancouver breaking, and the toilets in our Whistler cabin backing up.

Tomorrow/today, I'm off to Tahoe for the 2nd time this season. It is a good year to board.

A Few Seconds Later

2007-10-31T03:29:40Z

(Times are estimates, I have no idea how long it actually was)

[0:00] What the ?!
[0:01] It's an earthquake!
[0:02] It's getting kinda big... is this the big one?
[0:02] (Ecafracs pushes away from the desk to get away from the shelf, just in case)
[0:04] No, probably not, just a medium one.
[0:08] (Ecafracs walks over to the door, to chat up coworkers)
[0:12] [Nervous laughter and joking]
[0:20] Damn... still shaking.
[0:30] Ok... you can stop any time now...
[0:45] This is getting ridiculous...
[1:00] Ok, seems to be over, back to work!

Riding, Rain, and Reunion

2007-10-10T09:09:25Z

Man, I chose a lousy day to ride my motorcycle. The weather seemed fine when I left for work, but by midafternoon, it was getting muggy and dark clouds loomed in the distance. I didn't think to check again before I left the office around midnight, and found it pouring.

I'd never planned on riding in the rain when I got the motorcycle, so of course I never got rain gear. If that wasn't bad enough, my motorcycle boots are freaking ventilated, so they eagarly welcomed in the rain. By the time I got home, my socks were squishy sopping wet.

It certainly brought back memories of high school, and having to ride my bike to and from class in the rain. Blech.

Speaking of which, the dreaded 10-year high school reunion was last Saturday. And it wasn't at all dreadful. I actually had a lot more fun than I expected, from the reunion, held at Gordon Biersh, to the after-party, to the after-after-party, to the streets, to a Pita Pit stop, and finally driving clanhanna's drunk ass home. Ok, that last part wasn't that much fun. However, it was almost worth it due to the opportunity to watch in amazement as he managed to follow me to my car, bumbling across several streets in downtown San Jose with his eyes closed. Good times.

My primary observation from the reunion: all the Asians look about the same. Them white folk, on the other hand, are starting to look old. Poor things.

More TV Time

2007-09-27T09:11:32Z

Man, do I suck at interviews. I'm not too fond of talking to begin with, and even less fond of talking about myself, and particularly not fond of doing it in front of a camera. And knowing it's going to be broadcast on TV sure doesn't make it any easier.

So tonight, 8PAST went to the offices of ABS-CBN, where we were filmed playing two of our new songs acoustically, and featured in a bunch of short interview segments to be used in between music videos on their Myx music video channel. It's available on DirecTV in the states, and is one of the top music channel in the Philippines. I don't know when our segments are going to air, (along with our music video) but whenever we get our DVD copy, parts of it will inevitably end up on YouTube.

Personally, I'm dreading watching myself. Nate, on the other hand, was awesome. He may have a future as a VJ.

A Day in the Life

2007-09-25T09:55:12Z

I'd always suspected I was spending an inordinate amount of time on e-mail at work, but I didn't really know how bad it was. Over the weekend, I found the perfect tool to find out, an iGoogle gadget called Activity Tracker. It lets you specify several activities and punch in and punch out of those activities, logging the time you spent punched in.

And now you can find out what it is I do at work, or at least, what I did today:

E-mail: 3 hrs
Yep, three hours of e-mail. And I still have a crapload of unread messages for the day, though it's mostly the unimportant/time killing stuff, like the politics mailing list and project mailing lists completely unrelated to my work. Well, this number might be a bit inflated since mail was running rather slowly today, and I was syncing my clients (read: updating my local copies of the code with the latest submitted changes) and compiling code in between reading e-mail. This also includes time spent IMing with coworkers (work related, of course).

Dev: 3 mins
And that's right, I spent only 3 minutes doing anything resembling coding. To be fair, I hadn't planned on coding today, and only spent a bit of time cleaning up a conflict from syncing my client.

Issue: 56 mins
About an hour spent looking into and dealing with a production issue. Not bad.

Planning: 2 hrs, 11 mins
I might want to break this out a bit more in the future, since this included time fiddling with my todo list and writing my weekly snippets (log of what I did last week, and what I intend to do this week), as well as time spent planning and writing a design doc for a new feature. I'll probably create a new activity called "design".

Away: 2 hrs, 12 mins
A big chunk was time spent at (and going to/from) the gym, the rest is time spent grabbing meals (I was antisocial and ate at my desk for both lunch and dinner today) and snacks, and going to the can.

Meeting: 55 mins (est)
I forgot to log the time spent in the meeting, since it was one of the earlier things I did today, but this is my guess for how long it took.

Other: 3 hrs, 57 mins
It's performance review season, and peer reviews were due today, so that's what I spent a good chunk of today doing. Definitely not typical.

Not Work: 2 mins
I almost don't believe it myself. Only 2 minutes at my desk spent doing something other than work. Basically, somebody IMed a link, and I followed. I actually did have a few IM messages go by today, but I only spent seconds at a time responding between doing other things. And well, so I probably spent the total of a few minutes at some point or another zoning out when I was punched in as doing something else, or didn't punch in at all. Well, can't catch it all.

And yes, that adds up to over 13 hours. I hope that averages out over the week to look not so insane, but I suspect it won't.

And in other work news, I was in the gym last Friday, just getting warmed up on the treadmill, when a small film crew came in and, I think, interviewed the girl on the machine in front of me. When I ruminated aloud whether I was going to wind up in the background of the shot, the Googler escorting the crew grinned and told me that it was for some French news station. After wrapping up the interview, the cameraguy looked over to me, gestured torwards the Google shirt I was wearing, and asked "Shoot? Shirt?" I obliged, and spent an awkward minute or two unsure whether I should look at him, or into the camera, or down at the TV in front of me, or up at the TV on the wall, or off into space somewhere. I ended up doing them all at some point. So yeah, somewhere on French TV, I may or may not be or have been in an establishing shot of a Googler puffing away on a treadmill, trying to pretend the camera wasn't there.

And in other work randomness, this game made its rounds last Friday killing hundreds, if not thousands, of Googler productivity hours. I played a few rounds, and then saved the passcode so that I could continue later. Last night, after solving the last puzzle, (and inadverdantly forgetting to pick up my laundry before they locked up the laundry room) I decided to see how fast I could clear all 33 stages again, while minimizing the number of moves and mistakes. End result: 2329 moves, one hour and 15 minutes, 12 failed attempts. Randy's comment: "Class A entertainment for that laptop of yours". Yes, yes it was.

A Mystery

2007-09-11T06:31:34Z

Why was this van parked outside our rehearsal studio on Saturday? It's a mystery.

Who painted the kitten?

2007-08-28T08:03:19Z

Avenue Q was pretty much everything I expected it to be. Afterwards, I got myself the Avenue Q book and the piano score.

The book has been leaving orange fur everywhere, and the piano score isn't doing me much good as I don't have a piano or keyboard at my disposal in my apartment. And since I decided to pass on buying the CD, the best I can do is read the score and imagine the music in my head, at least until my Amazon.com order arrives.

And in other news, my hair is now streaked with golden brown.

T1H2 HO

2007-08-23T07:32:06Z

I've been getting quite comfortable riding my motorcycle; I took to the highway faster than I thought I would. I still remember how scary it was going at 65 mph the first time I tried it, how much the wind pushed me back, how turning my head even slightly would cause the wind to push it even further, and how much longer it seemed to take to get from Cupertino to Mountain View. Well, that's all in the past now, as going on the highway is a mere breeze. In fact, it's starting to irk me that my bike strains when it gets in the vicinity of 75mph.

Of course, with all this getting comfy, I knew I was past due for an "oh shit" moment, and today I finally experienced my first one. It was just a trifle, but enough for a quick scare. As I pulled off 101 south onto Rengstorff, I hit the rear brake just a bit too hard and locked my rear tire, skidding and wobbling for a bit until I regained control, thankfully just before the actual turn. It was a fairly classic rear wheel skid, and a good learning moment.

Last weekend, I met up with my old housemate/landlord from when I lived in Sunnyvale prior to grad school. I had told him that I'd gotten into riding, since he was a rider as well. Sadly, he sold his bike last summer, as he'd gotten married and the family instinct had kicked in. However, he still had a motorcycle battery charger he would give me. As we were standing in his garage, I remarked on the license plates mounted on the back wall, noting the last one in particular, "T1H2 HO". It used to be mounted on the wall in a half bath in his townhouse, and for the nearly two years that I'd lived there, I'd never figured out what it meant. Considering I was quite fond of the old game show "Bumper Stumpers", I was quite annoyed with myself. Now, over 4 years later, I finally know.

Must've been a sign.

GravityPods and the Pit of Doom

2007-08-01T08:06:38Z

This is the latest productivity killer to be making the rounds at Google. Don't follow that link unless you want to slaughter a few perfectly innocent hours trying to navigate 50 levels of orbital gravity.

Everybody tells us the show last night was great, and yet we still find it hard to believe. Onstage, the sound was garbage, as we had no instruments in our monitors, so none of could really hear what was going on.

This was the first time I got to watch All Ages play, and they were pretty crazy. Tom the bassist jumped on one of the monitors, which fell out from under him, causing both to tumble off the stage. Tom flipped over head first onto his back and kept right on playing. At a recent show, he apparently ended up buck naked on stage; this time he had the courtesy to leave his boxers on. Hotness defined: Koko the drummer pounding the crap out of her drums.

During our setup time, Jon came backstage with a slightly twisted leg, and warned me about a pit on the stage, where one of his legs had fallen through. Not more than minute later, I had brought my bass head and cabinet on stage and was setting the bass head on some speakers at the front of the stage when *FOOMP* my leg went through the same damn pit. It was dark, and it didn't look like there was any gap between the speakers and the stage, but there it was, and down I went. Jon never actually mentioned where that pit was, so yeah. I think they finally fixed the gap after I went down. Apparently, I was the third person that night to fall in.

After our show, I was exhausted and dehydrated, and obviously wasn't thinking too clearly as I put my bass back in its band and set it down on the ground, forgetting to remove my wireless unit first. About a minute later, I remembered, checked up on it, and sure enough, I had broken my wireless unit yet again. And this time, the warranty's expired. Maybe it is about time I got one of those body packs, which aren't nearly as fragile. Le sigh.

Lesson of the day: Jon is a dizzy and slightly belligerent drunk.

First and Last

2007-07-26T09:00:26Z

After a hiatus, 8PAST is performing once again! The next two shows will be our new drummer Jon's first full shows... as well as his last. He accepted a job in Indiana, where he grew up, and so he'll be moving back and leaving us drummerless. In the meantime, we're recording his drum tracks for an EP release, which we will be working on for the next few months. We'll also be looking for a new drummer, and will have to get that person up to speed, so these will probably be the only shows we'll be doing for quite some time.

We're playing either 2nd or 3rd at Fat City, and last at Uptown Club. The other bands at Uptown Club also include a Googler each. Should be interesting.

The Phantom Hotness

2007-07-26T08:37:07Z

As longtime readers of my LJ know, I have no fear of spicy foods. Well, when my Indian coworker remarked to me at dinner about how incredibly spicy the salsa he'd picked up for his burrito was, I thought, eh, it couldn't be that bad. And so, with his permission, I spooned a healthy dollop and stuck it in my mouth. It was soothingly cool for a split second, just before bursting into a spicy flame. (Figuratively, of course) Yep, I acknowledged, it had some kick to it. I had gotten Mexican food myself, and so the lingering spiciness in my mouth went well with my pork, rice, and black beans. By the time I was finishing up my orange caprese salad, I'd pretty much forgotten about it.

Until, that is, I bit into one of the figs. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a fiery explosion (again, figuratively) enveloped my mouth. Since it was completely unexpected, I recoiled and cringed, wondering what in the flaming hell I had just bitten into. I dutifully swallowed what was in my mouth, only to find my mouth burning up even more. I hadn't gotten myself a drink, so I just stuffed my mouth with more salad, which temporarily soothed the burning... until my mouth was empty and the fire resumed. It was like one of those trick candles that light up again and again each time you blow them out. It's one thing to eat spicy food, but it's quite another to have spicy nothingness that doesn't go away.

I finally got some cold lemonade, which didn't help any more than the food. As I held the lemonade in my mouth, everything was fine, but as soon as I swallowed the fire resumed. My coworker could only laugh at my predicament as we parted ways. I picked up a Google It's It on the way out, hoping it would quell the flames. Amazingly, after the ice cream sandwich had come and gone, my mouth still tingled with spiciness, but thankfully, by this time, it was merely a controlled flame, and gradually burned down to the last few embers.

I'm still not exactly sure what it was. My best guess is that something in the salad triggered some sort of chemical reaction with lingering oils from the salsa I had eaten earlier, as the burning seemed to emanate from where the salsa had been in contact with my mouth.

Well, at least I've learned my lesson...

No, wait, never mind. I haven't learned a damn thing.

Among the unwashed masses

2007-07-11T08:11:03Z

[Update 7/26: Pics are up. Most of mine are actually from Universal Studios, and I didn't even take the most of those myself.]

Another year, another AX.

For the first time I ever, I actually paid money to get in, and got treated to the full attendee experience of waiting for over an hour in the pre-reg line just to get my badge. People go through this year after year and still go back? Some of my friends were lucky and had their badges mailed to them shortly before the con, but I was not among them.

I also paid money for floor seats for SKIN, the newly formed jrock supergroup, only to find out they were giving away free tickets for the seats in the stands. And despite paying and getting an assigned seat and arriving just when the concert was supposed to start, I still had to wait in line in the blistering sun for two hours with the freeloaders. My guess is that soundcheck went way overtime, and so they didn't start letting people in until well after the show was supposed to start, and getting everybody in line through security check simply takes a long ass time. The lemonade vendors made some easy money from that line.

After all that, the concert itself was merely ok. The band certainly gave their all, working the crowd into a frenzy and putting on an impressively energetic performance. Sadly, the music itself did very little for me. They used a lot of pre-recorded loop tracks, and the live instruments mostly got lost in the muddle. None of the songs really stuck to me. The only cool part was when Yoshiki and Gackt each sat down at their own grand piano at opposite sides of the stage, followed by Miyavi taking the shamisen, and Sugizo breaking out his violin. For their last song, they did an extended jam, introducing each band member in turn. Any potential excitement I had in hearing a Yoshiki drum solo were extinguished when he performed his solo to a prerecorded loop, which drowned out most of his playing. They ended the song with a ridiculously long audience participation session, consisting mainly of:

Gackt: "We are!"
Audience: "SKIN!"
Gackt: "We are!"
Audience: "SKIN!"
Gackt: "We are!"
Audience: "SKIN!"

... for about 5 or 10 minutes. Well, even if I can't remember their songs, at least I'll never forget the name. They ended the concert with the grand American tradition of trashing all their instruments.

The rest of the con went by pretty fast for me, and mostly consisted of watching movies and prowling the exhibit hall. My haul this year: an Obey art book and several VooDoo Babies.

On khimera's recommendation, I watched Death Note and its sequel, both damn good movies. (I highly suggest not reading the spoilers.) I think I actually shed a tear at one point, just before a big WTF twist turned the whole movie upside-down. Consider that my recommendation.

I only found out after I got back that I missed out on free tickets to see Transformers on opening day, courtesy of Google. Thankfully, that didn't bother me at all, since I was able to watch it a day before the release at AX's pre-screening. Moreover, the experience probably wouldn't have been the same without the AX crowd cheering at every bit of fan service. Overall, it's a good, entertaining movie though I'm disappointed that most of the Transformers themselves were pretty much indistinguishable in robot form, having departed so severely from their original incarnations.

Despite not working the con anymore, I still didn't manage to get much sleep. I had hoped that the combined snores of Randy and Jeff would somehow phase cancel each other out, but alas, it was not to be. Randy has officially lost the mantle of nocturnal decibelic supremacy, as Jeff greatly overpowered with his nuanced rendition of a wild boar being seduced and then choked to death. Several times over. Granted, Jeff tried to be as considerate as he possibly could be, short of sleeping on the balcony, so I have to give him props for that.

As is now the norm for these trips, I enjoyed a wide variety of fare, including okonomiyaki, Mediterranean, Korean BBQ, (non-BBQ) Brazilian, and Jewish. Despite the periodic fasting and binging, I only gained four pounds, to my personal trainer's chagrin.

Oh, and contrary to Kuo's recounting, we did not "pump her full of soju", Amy partook at her own discretion. I will admit to spinning her around in circles after said imbibation, which may or may not have contributed to the later incident in the bathroom. That's about all I have to say about that, aside from being glad to know how easy it is to break into a hotel bathroom.

The day after the con, after all the uncool kids had already left, several of us went to Universal Studios, which I hadn't managed to do on my last trip a mere month ago. Going back to these parks as an adult never quite lives up to the childhood memories, but it was a good time nevertheless. Sadly, I think a lot of the "magic of the movies" has been worn thin by all the "behind the scenes" DVD bonus materials I've watched.

That night, after wandering around downtown Pasadena on foot with a GPS, only to be saved by a Google SMS query, we watched Live Free or Die Hard, which, in my opinion, topped Transformers for action, spectacle, and sheer entertainment value, while also matching it for geek factor. It lost out in the babe department though.

Paul, Olive, and I had a leisurely drive up on the Fourth of July. It was a fairly lowkey night, watching the fireworks in Cupertino before gathering at Paul's. On the way home, I rode the highway for the first time on my bike, and discovered just how scary 65 mph can be without the cage, and only two wheels.

Funny how my posts about AX are always completely lacking in anime.

Googol

2007-06-26T09:35:33Z

This last weekend, I spent about 36 hours straight at work... solving puzzles for fun. Several Googlers ran a puzzle hunt game called Googol, and 21 teams of up to 12 players each (consisting mostly but not exclusively of Googlers) took part. There were 38 regular puzzles, then 8 final puzzles, along with another 15 mini puzzles as part of the meta game, all leading to the final puzzle.

With only about 3 of us actually staying awake for the entire duration of the puzzle, from Saturday morning until Sunday afternoon, and a couple people having to drop out due to other commitments on Sunday, our team placed 6th. The 5 teams ahead of us finished all the puzzles, while we had finished all the regular puzzles but only 5 of 8 final puzzles, and all 12 mini puzzles that we'd managed to unlock at that point, making us the best of the mere mortals.

My personal favorite puzzle was called Player. The only thing you got were instructions to play a specific pinball game located on campus. After playing for awhile, you realized that they had reprogrammed the LCD screen for the pinball game to embed clues within certain screens when you reached different parts of the game, saying stuff like: C is 1, 10 is M, and so on. You had to hit quite a wide variety of different bonuses and game states in order to piece together enough of the 20 letters to realize what the message was: CDBEHINDMAMECABINET

After picking up the CD from behind the nearby MAME cabinet and listening to it, you would find 42 tracks, filled with video game music from all the different generations, from Atari to Game Cube, interspersed with a few blank tracks. The next step is pretty obvious: figure out what all the games are. As you might expect, I was the most qualified person on the team to handle this task, though I did get a lot of help with coverage on the ones I didn't recognize. I recognized pretty much all the different Mario games within a few seconds. We also had a couple games, complete with the game sound effects, that sounded oh so familiar, but couldn't quite place. Sadly, we had to resort to an optional side task of going to certain meetings room spread all across the a huge swath of buildings of the Google campus to find lists of possible games for particular numbers, provided for those teams that had absolutely no clue.

Of course, after you had the list of video game names, you still had to figure out what to do with it. The track lengths were all pretty random, so they seemed like an obvious way to index into the names. I never did do that, but apparently, it would decode a message saying that you should ignore the track lengths, as it was a misdirect.

The key to solving this puzzle was noticing that the CD was labelled "Generation X", with a cursor, or "index finger" pointed at the X. Hence, the real key was to determine which generation system each game was from (NES was 3rd generation, Genesis/SNES was 4th, PS2/Xbox/GC was 6th, etc) and using THAT to index into the title. Thus, if the game was Super Mario World, the appropriate index would be 4, and the corresponding letter should thus be "e". Repeat for all the tracks, and you ended up with the final clue: "some galactic defender you are space cadet". I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what the final, one-word answer is.

Another personal favorite, because it also involved music, was called "Composer". You got a picture of Dave Brubeck, and the hint:

multiple minutes of...
Distinctive Beats
3 4 4 5 5 7 9 11 11

And 9 mp3s tracks.
The first track was Take 5, by Dave Brubeck. They were all jazz pieces, and one included an extended intro of the artist explaining how the song was in 11/8 time, and how hard it was to solo in 11/8. The task was pretty obvious now... identify the meter for each song. The hint made it obvious to look for a song in 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 11. All that time I've spent following along the odd time signatures in Dream Theater was about to pay off...

After getting that, and noticing that the track lengths were all exactly one, two, or four minutes long, and given the original clue of "multiple minutes", we multiplied the meter by the time for each song. All the answers were less than 26, so it was obvious that they were referring to the appropriate letter of the alphabet. Hence, we got the clue THEPINPVC, which had to be properly read as: The P in PVC. Is the answer obvious enough now? I'm proud to say that we were the first team to solve this puzzle.

Of course, most of the puzzles didn't have to with music, those were just obviously my favorites. The first one I worked on was called "Business Traveler", and was fun despite being highly annoying: You got 62 pictures of highly zoomed in bits of airport signs, each with a number. With a bit of Googling, you would find this page containing a complete list of airport signs. The clue referred to there supposedly being 50, but that there seemed to be 12 extra, which made it obvious that this was the right page. Matching up these tiny, tiny zoomed up pieces with the originals took me and a few other people at least an hour, since many of the zoomed up portions were framed in particularly evil, deviously diffcult ways. The only way to get all the matches was to look at the zoomed in version of each sign to find the tiny detail that matched. Anyhow, using the original numbers specified for each image on the name of the sign got you a message to look at only the pieces that matched black backgrounds, and then index backwards. Only that would reveal the final answer: which happened to be the French name of a French painting: "Le Bonheur de Vivre"

Another early puzzle included 18 "chapters" of creative writing, each in a distinctive writing style that matched a particular famous author. You had to identify the author, and also notice that it would share a first/last name with a character referred to in the text itself. One of the few contributions I made to solving this one was confirming that Charlie and Bill were indeed members of the Rolling Stones, in a passage that also referred to Ron, Snape, Lyppstongue, and referred to pulling out an axe, and trashing a dorm room. Yes, it's JK Rowling/Rolling Stones.

A later puzzle involved a file that had been zipped, bzipped, and gzipped something like 50 times over, with several passwords in the intermediate stages. One of our guys banged his head on this one for many hours, and had to nap on it before he finally unwound the whole thing.

Other puzzles involved odd mazes, identifying old Google doodles by description, watching a looping 1-second snippet of several movies, participating in an odd but humerous midnight quiz show with all the other teams, following clues around the Google campus, and, most fun of all, playing the Trogdor game.

Aside from the usual skills in decoding your typical encodings and interpreting morse code, semaphore, and the like, solving cryptic crosswords, sudoku, and logic puzzles, the breadth of random trivia needed was pretty ridiculous. I'd never participated in puzzle hunts before, but I'm pretty hooked now, despite needing 13 hours of sleep to recover from this one. Anybody out there interested in joining me should I participate in another one in the future?

Ticket to Ride

2007-06-18T07:05:39Z

After 12 long years of wanting one, I finally got it. My first motorcycle.

I'd signed up for the MSF a couple months ago, and after a few delays, including a bomb threat at Mission College and then a missing ride instructor, I passed the course.

It wasn't until yesterday that I finally went to DMV and got my M1 license. Then, in the same day, I bought my bike, a silver 2004 Suzuki Savage LS650, and riding gear. I nearly dropped it right in front of the dealer when I forgot to put the kickstand down before attempting to dismount, a classic n00b mistake. Thankfully, I was able to pull it back up from its precarious lean before it touched ground.

Kent helped me ride the bike home since I was too chicken to do it myself. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I'd rather not get myself killed before I'm good and ready.

10-Day Memorial Weekend

2007-06-07T10:13:01Z

I decided it'd been too long since I'd taken a vacation, so I took last week off for a trip down to SoCal, first San Diego, then LA. I only had the vaguest outline of a plan, basically making it up as I went along, constrained only by friends' schedules and my ability to stay awake. Much driving was done on not much sleep.

No trip of mine is complete without at least one headache, and blessed was I with no less than three headaches in one week. Nevertheless, I still managed to cover Sea World, Disney's California Adventure, downtown LA, the Santa Monica Pier, the Getty Museum, and Hollywood Blvd; go shopping at South Coast Plaza, the LA Fashion District and Japatown, Third Street Promenade, Westwood Village, Robertson Blvd, and Beverly Center; watch Pirates 3 on opening weekend and a crapload of movies on DVD, including God of War, The Prestige, Night at the Museum, My Sassy Girl, and Napolean Dynamite. I also managed to catch the musical Wicked and drive the scenic Mulholland Dr. And of course, I ate a ridiculous amount of good food. Rare was the day I ended not feeling completely stuffed.

It was interesting to be able to drop in on a bunch of friends and family one by one, seeing where everybody was with their lives. Pretty much everybody had something going on, be it troubled relationships, stress from work, from finals, or just plain too many commitments. There was a recent tragic death in the family, an ailing father, a pending surgery, a disastrously untrained housepet, and a newborn baby. Each person's life is its own minidrama, and it was quite an experience to dip into each one in turn.

I ended my trip on Monday with a circuitous drive up Route 1, Route 9, and Skyline Blvd, culminating in Page Mill Rd. This is the third time I've driven up Route 1, and I've yet to make the trip in the same way twice. This time it was 443 miles, 8 hours and 23 minutes of driving, starting with the crowded LA lunch traffic and ending in a thick, eerie fog in the Santa Cruz mountains. The detour between Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo was unintentional; once I got on though, I decided I'd stick with Route 1 all the way.

Even though I brought my camera with me on this trip, I neglected to take any pictures until I was returning home. I suppose I didn't feel the need to capture the moments I was already sharing with others, but wanted to capture the bit I experienced alone. Perhaps someday, somebody would want to join me?

Change of Guard

2007-05-11T10:01:13Z

So tonight was Kinson's last show with 8PAST. So sad.

I didn't even really have a chance to savor his last moments on stage, because I was too preoccupied with my playing. I snapped my E-string at the very beginning of the second song, Better Days. After hobbling my way through the song sans a string, I switched to my backup Ibanez bass, only then realizing just how different and foreign it feels. Between that and having basically no monitors on stage, I spent the rest of the show concentrating on my playing, and forgot to turn around and actually watch Kinson play his last song. And before I really realized it, it was over.

Our new drummer, Jon, came on to play the last song, our newest song, Breathe. Considering he's only had one real rehearsal so far, he did quite well. We certainly have a lot to look forward to, seeing what Jon will bring to the band.

Oh, and now, we've finally got our token white guy. Until now, this was the only band I've played in that didn't have one. Diversity for the win.