Old Journal Entries

• 06/28/00
  Ok, now my left side is really sore, tried to play bball yesterday and was just horrid. First the ankle started to hurt, then the knee, of course my elbow nerve still isn't healed and my shoulder is kinda sore too. It'll be lots of ice this week for sure.

  On the toy side, I was craving McDonalds, so I went for a quarter pounder with cheese for lunch, and what do I see? teenie beanie babies, even better they let me buy one of each, both of the new teenies, and the legends in the blister pack. Unfortunately some of them were already sold out but I ended up with 8/11 of the legends, and 14/17 of the beanies. Not too bad for one visit, usually you have to buy lots of happy meals. Went back for dinner so I could snag a set for my sister too.

  Want a bit of wierdness? try watching the Iron Chef NY Challenge while eating McDonalds, very surreal. I'm going to have to make sure I save this tape for Rod I think he'll get a kick out of it.

  Tommorow I have a meeting with mortgage guy, I'm thinking about pre-qual'ing and then taking a look around to see what kind of townhouses are available. I still have to make an appointment with a tax guy to see what really makes sense. At least I managed to pay off the bulk of my credit cards this week, now all I have is just few (small) scattered amounts to clean up, this may be the most debt free I've been since I started working, which means its probably time to buy something big ;)

  Site update, I added some other humor pages, you can find them here or on the main page.

• 06/25/00
  Long, tiring weekend, been a busy time, Friday Miyo got in late and we went to catch dinner at Man Bo Duck in Mountain View. Saturday it was volleyball with Miyo, Miki, Jack & Max (4 matches over 5 hours in the sun). Then it was back to Miki & Jack's for a quick soak in the spa followed by an excellent bbq (even if the rice button wasn't pressed ;) We stayed up till 1:30 just catching up.

  Sunday it was dim sum at Ton Kiang (over on Geary & 23rd) with some of Miyo's Asian American Journalist friends. Unfortunately there were a few communication snafus and only 2 of them actually showed up. On the small world alert front, it happened again ... Miyo's friend Kerwin (Sports Editor at the Cronicle) brought a friend, Sei (pronounced "Say") who happens to be friends with SteveRod, one of the many Steves that work at NetApp. In fact she knew alot of them, I guess she's part of that party (hiking ;) crowd via SteveRod. Just another data point that our company is getting to be pretty big. Lunch was fun, it's a shame that Sei had to go to work (2 hrs late cuz of lunch, oops) she seems like she'd be a lot of fun. After lunch we went off to see the Metreon and Pac Bell park, the park was actually open so we managed to take a look around inside. Its very small, has that quaint hometown feel, and they have games and slides for the kids to keep them occupied.

  That evening it was Teatro Zinzanni with Candice, Cheryl and Kent. Its hard to describe, most of the people there were either members of the "glitzy beautiful people" or "old money" crowd. It was really entertaining, well worth the price of admission. We got to sit right by the stage and there were desserts flying right by my head during one of the sections. The trapeeze couple were amazing, and the skits/costumes were hilarious. Its very interactive and all of the performers serve and visit the tables, definitely not for the shy.

• 06/23/00
  I guess when you publish a secret on the web it's not really secret anymore, now is it? ;)

  Go ahead, put your guesses in my guestbook.

• 06/21/00
  Well that took longer than I thought, and here's the recap why ...

  Last Friday I got my yearly review, I guess I did ok, since I managed a 6% raise and 100% of my bonus pool. Even better is that since my company has been doing so well, the multiplier for the bonus was 1.1. Bad news (sorta) is that with the 401K & ESPP deductions (not to mention taxes) I got only about 35% of the bonus as take home pay. So of course I immediately ordered my new powerbook (G3/400) and Airport basestation (for wireless access). It showed up late monday night and I've been tinkering with it since. I'm actually doing this update from my powerbook directly on my linux box's filesystem (the wonders of linux ;).

  I also made sure to secure my wireless link, since, when I turned my powerbook on, it also detected another airport basestation around and I even managed to link to it and use someone else's (slow) internet connection for a bit -- I may have to wander around and check with my neighbors to let them know about securing their link. Anyway on to my weekend recap.

  Thursday night it was up to the airport to pick up Daryl, we were supposed to meet Karen in the city and watch her play some pick-up ball, but we late so we ended up just catching dinner with her and her friends at Max's.

  Friday Daryl was hanging in the city, and work was moving the main engineering servers to the new building so I stuck around to help, the best part was the fiber troubleshooting (which I hadn't done before) and (because the building is still under construction) the missing door -- so we built a door out of boxes, taped it up, and decorated. I managed to get pictures, but they had replaced the door by Monday. Didn't make it home till 1:30am.

  Saturday was hectic, we played vball at the Stanford Oval with Miki & Jack, Karen & Sam, a bunch of Miki's friends, even Brown showed up. That was pretty fun, but my arm/elbow stinger was still hurting, couldn't snap out any hand sets without pain, luckily it still seems to be getting better. On the small world note, there is a rather cute setter that used to play against Candice & Caroline's women's team, near the end of the day she showed up to play, I guess Miki knows her, unfortunately I had to jet to make my evening dinner plans so I didn't get to meet her, but I did mention it to Miki so maybe next time.

  On the way up to the city, we heard "odd" noises whenever the front of the car compressed, almost like something was dragging, by the time we got into the city to check it was happening at stop lights too. When I went to look, it appears that the plastic oil pan cover had slipped a screw or something and dropped down lower than it should, I wore through some of it, so I pushed it back up and its better, but I'll probably need to have it replaced/repaired at my next service (which was due about 500 miles ago ;)

  Dinner was at Gordon's House of Fine Eats, in SF, with Kay, Amy & Ken Sakamoto (yes, yet another Ken). It was great catching up with them we chatted forever (and almost forgot to order). The food was pretty darn good, I had a pork osso bucco, and a lobster bisque, the bisque was a bit salty, but the pork was excellent, and the desserts? mmm!!! fresh donuts (all kinds) and sorbet *yum*.

  Since we were having such interesting conversations, we continued it at the Quiet Storm Resturant/Club, topics were varied, lots of dating fodder info (you just *had* to be there) but the best was how much in fear they are of my web journal, as if I have enough time (or room) to write down other peoples every little secret, then again, maybe I did, but just didn't publish it ... yet ;)

  Funny thing about secrets, since people have a habit of only really believing what they want to anyway, if they don't know you too well they either believe it all, or think it's all a crock, and if the things you tell them are (to them) out of character they really can't know if you've told them a real secret or not. It makes for very entertaining conversations. It was an entertaining blur, it probably didn't help that I was still wired from playing volleyball, and late night adrenaline, good thing though since I was driving home at 3:30am.

  Sunday was finally a restful day, just kicked back, when Daryl got back from the city we went to see Shaft (pretty darn entertaining) and dinner before dropping him off at the airport.

  Most of this week was busy working, but I did manage to play bball on Tuesday, I can tell the arm is better because I could finally make a two hand chest pass, though it didn't have quite the snap it should have, it didn't have anywhere near the sharp pain it had a few weeks ago. I even managed to make time to see Titan AE (good animation, but a faceless evil)

  Oh and another bit of strangeness entered my life, I was trying to find someone to go to Teatro Zinzanni with Kent, Cheryl & I. I thought I found someone fun to go, though I don't get to see her much cuz she's pretty busy it would have been a good time to catch up, but oddly I got a phone call and had the "friends" discussion, before she informed me that she couldn't go anyway, wierd, guess she must have had some bad experiences in the past. But, since Candice will be in town this weekend (and I think she broke up again ??!!) she said she'd go, that'll be really fun, especially if she comes and plays vball with us that weekend too while Miyo's in town.

  I'm liking the new powerbook (and the wireless connection !!) but using a different editor is going to take a bit of getting used to.

• 06/20/00
  whoops, have plenty to update, but have to finish my finding my financial records for my meeting tomorrow, update will probably be wed.

• 06/14/00
  107 degrees !!!! poor kittys are pooped, its an oven and its a low of 75 at night ugh.

  Got my raise and bonus today, going to have to go order my powerbook now.

• 06/12/00
  I'm very worn out from this past weekend, sunburned and exhausted, managed to watch the AVP (and BVA) play over the weekend, always fun, very sunny, very hot. Had a great seat for the finals, but needed to buy a new, black, floppy hat to watch and keep the sun off. (2nd row, chairs across from the players benches, look for me ;)

  Managed to find time to have lunch with Nancy (King's Hawaiian Bakery mmmmmmm) but didn't get to spend much more time with her as she had another "out of town guest" to take care of ;).

  Also got to see Lori, both at dinner, and at her tourny (she and Eric won another grass rev-coed tourny, big surprise), and this time I have pictures, but they'll have to wait till I get the film developed.

  Work news: the move was this past weekend, and while everything appeared to arrive, there was no power in my new office for most of the day. Still arranging furniture, managed to get about half of my boxes unpacked, and got my computer working to check all of my email. I should have everything redecorated in a week or so, and will probably take some pictures this time.

• 06/07/00
  Tried to play some bball last night, that stinger in my left arm isn't much better as I couldn't make any 2 handed passes without pain and/or part of my hand going numb. Doesn't help that my right elbow is still sore too. I've been icing it regularly and it has been getting better but its not ready for full time play yet.

  I also had a minor scare, tried to withdraw some money from an ATM only to be told that I was "Over my daily limit" odd since I hadn't used my card in 3 days. Then it wouldn't even let me check my balance ("You are not authorized for that transaction"). I was worried that someone had stolen my card/code so I called customer support. After some time on hold and being transferred twice, somehow my account had been "reset" with really low access limits, they didn't know why but they reset it to the proper limits and voila I was poor no more.

  Work news: we're on the verge of moving to our new building, and in fact everything will happen while I'm watching the AVP this weekend in Hermosa. The new building isn't quite done yet, and a I really feel sorry for those who moved there last week.

  Tech news: still need to clean up my old mac IIsi so I can use the drive cases for expansion on my linux server (9Gb drives)

• 06/05/00
  Boy am I stuffed, last night I was at Caroline & Rod's for an Aloha Sunday (and LA/Portland game 7) it was awesome as always, in fact, this time I took my camera, and I created a separate page just for the dinners they throw. If you don't believe my descriptions from before, just go check out the Aloha Sunday page.

• 06/03/00
  Spent most of the day at the street fair, strange, down here there is no beer garden, the whole fair is open for drinks purchased on the premises. Mostly beer & wine though, you could do a quite a bit of tasting as different wineries sponsored each booth. In 3 hours we probably did about 6 cases worth of wine, pretty hop'in.

  That night it was Shanghai Noon (again!) with Bar, as she altered plans to hang out with her friends in South SF. I chowed down on popcorn (and Icees !!) since I hadn't eaten all day ugh.

• 06/02/00
  Finally got my pics back from Denver, and put most of them up on the either the Mixed Nuts Photo Gallery or my NAGVA 2000 Championships page.

  This weekend looks to be busy playing, next week will be busy setting up for our office move -- went to help another lab move tonight, and it went very poorly, our new building doesn't look ready even though there are going to be about 100 people in there on monday, it's also very cramped feeling since everything is offices (more like cells) instead of cubes. The decor is very odd, there are almost no parallel lines in any of the common areas, and lots of overhanging art-deco like designs, more than a few have commented on claustophobia, and with out being able to peer over the cubes its much easier to get lost.

  I have 2 pillers outside of my office, and a 'stepped' ceiling inside, lots of decorating potential, now all I have to do is see if I can mount a hammock somewhere, at the very least I can put an animal hammock in the corner and release the stuffed guys from their boxes.

• 06/01/00
  Long days for a short week, elbows are still sore, think I'll be laying off of sports for a while. So instead it's back to movie mania neither one of my movie buds (Yvonne & Shannon) have been available, but I still managed to go see Shanghai Noon (pretty fun) and Small Time Crooks tonight (very typically Woody Allen paced).

  Good news though, Karen got an offer from The Gap, and it sounds like she'll be moving out here in a month or two. Its unclear if I'll be having a houseguest though since she'll be working in the city.

  Speaking of which, I got the most interesting email from the Princess when I got back from Denver. I guess she read her bio entry, and proceeded to forward the reference to some of her friends. Strangely ;) they didn't quite agree with my opinions, odd though that on the one hand the Princess appeared to enjoy the entry, however since her friends objected, she did too (it was both praised and villified in the same email)-- at least she thought she should have editing rights. I offered to post a disclaimer (and I still might) but she declined, and continued to propose a case where (in her world) she spends all of her time living for everyone else, we'll just have to see about that.

  I decided that I have to start starving myself now, since I've been invited up to Aloha Sunday with Caroline & Rod, yum, I can feel the pounds already.

Who are these people?

Old Journal Entries