Discipline of the senses

How to become an early riser
How to become an early riser part II

Getting to know me. My sister sent one of those surveys around, and here are my answers(edited for general public viewing).
1. What time did you get up this morning? 8:20AM. 8:30AM. then 8:45AM. My cellular phone is my alarm and it has snooze. I left home at 8:59 and clocked in at work at 9:09. Thus, after finding the blog listed above, it's best if I just wake up at 8:20AM every morning. I can always web surf for time filler. The strategy of using one time for everyday might be better than trying the sleeptracker watch that had been popular of late.

2. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Star Wars Episode III on May 7th. 12 days before it was released to the public.

3. What is your favorite TV show? Dead Like Me(but it was Cancelled after 2 seasons). Carnivale(limbo after 2 seasons). Veronica Mars(limbo after 1 season). Deadwood(limbo after 2 seasons). Lost

4. What do you usually have for breakfast? Amy's non-dairy organic burrito. I eat them everyday for breakfast.

5. What is your middle name? Han-Kew = 'Asks permission of the heavens' I googled it and there doesn't seem to be someone else with the exact same name with a dash.

6. Favorite cuisine? Sushi

7. What foods do you dislike? Sweet addicting delectables that are raw fat and sugar. Think oreos, twinkies and fried pigskins.

8. What is your favorite chip flavor? Sweet potato

9. What is your favorite CD at the moment? Coldplay, X and Y

10. What kind of car do you drive? Dark green 1994 Infiniti J30T

11. Favorite sandwich? Grilled steak on lettuce and tomato and hot ketchup with no cheese, salt or pepper

12. What characteristic do you despise? self-deprecation

13. Favorite item of clothes? Orange sweaters; leather

14. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go? Hot island with clear water

15. What color is your bathroom? Pistachio

16. Favorite brand of clothing? Rollerblade

17. Where would you retire to? Austin

18. What was your most memorable birthday? Thomas, my college roommie threw a surprise party for me by inviting my friends from my instant messaging list.

19. Favorite sport to watch? Spurs basketball

20. Furthest place you are sending this? Texas(directly)

22. Person you expect to send it back first? My sister

23. Goal you have for yourself? Invent something amazing and revolutionary

24. When is your birthday? I'd answer but I believe there are too many internet websites that use the answer as a password revealer.

25. When is your anniversary? I thought of 25 years as my mid-life. I guess 50 would be the next.

26. Are you a morning person or a night person? Morning if you count after 2AM. Hah.

27. What is your shoe size? Don't let strangers know your shoe size. Wear cloggers instead. Well, I guess you could always answer some funny foot size number like 42 instead of your real size.

28. Pets? 1 fig leaf plant and many house spiders(though I recently 409'd many because they were rabbitting out of control). I've recently craved for a large, short haired dog.

29. Any new and exciting news you would like to share? I'm still trying to keep that stuff in my blog.

30. What did you want to be when you were little? Marine Biologist. Paleontologist. But I still don't know how to swim and fossil digging is asking to be sun burned and unwealthy.

31. What are you today? Tired of work and agitated people. Full of futo maki from a sushi compensated late lunch.

32. What is your favorite candy? Choco-Tacos

33. What is your favorite flower? Sunflowers

34. What is the date on the calendar you are looking forward to? June 25th, my friend Mandy(I was a bridesman at her wedding) and her husband stay with me for 2-3 days.

35. What is your favorite beer? Sapporo

36. The one thing in your life that you're proudest of? My dreams are the only things that make me feel different from anyone else.

They're far from true, in fact past due, but time can not tell me I've awoken.


-B.

Finding Lost

Ok, now I can give up daily tidbits in favor of more fun stuff.
Question: How would one create a force field?
Besides the purposes of war, I think it'd be great if electrical force fields were used to counter natural disasters.

Subquestion: A flood is coming towards your house and you want to use technology(not sandbags) to save it. What would you invent?
If you had a force field, you could just put it up in walls and have the water go by.
Or, you could develop a circular or egg shaped dome to helicoper drop over the house with bottom lining that when soaked, gains weight. Thus, forces of water would go around the dome cover whereas walls might go inward(though they're easier to helicoper drop). You'd have to hope the dome would fit just right and would still fit if you had close neighboring houses.

Now, if there were a hurricane, what would happen if you had a mile-wide/mile-high forcefield that blocked it. Would mother nature really have a hissy fit? What would the weather implications be then? Would it be worth saving a floridian city?


Watching: I'm on episode 10 of Lost now.

Odd Fruit

Today, at work, I worked with a person who brought in an iMac that had been shot with a bullet. The person said it was an accident and said it was a sad story, so I couldn't ask for details. But darned if it were the oddest thing you'd imagine happening to an iMac G5. It was shot from an angle so it was still lodged in between the LCD and the hard drive(which I heard was dented) but the unit otherwise turned on fine.

And in world news, don't leave your iPods where cows can eat them.

Watched movie: Constantine. I love Peter Storm and Tilda Swinson's acting in this movie. I'm highly amused by the comic relief both bring into the picture.

Blogger's Dinner

This evening, Ethan invited me to schmooze with the big boys of Mac dev. at a blogger's dinner hosted by scifihifi.com at the Thirsty Bear on Howard. The food, beer and company were all great in taste and fulfilment. John C. gave me great advice on how to get into QA spotlights by burning in some good experience with Obj. C, Perl and Applescript. It's important to make my own software and especially important to make my own automated testing software(If I could make it autonomous and self-replicating, all the better). I've also been clued in that if I want to not fully relinquish my rights to software I develop while working for the big A, I need to have my nuclear projects past infancy and teething.

V. Mars

After work, my whole goal was to finish the last 5 episodes of Veronica Mars. I amazed peeps that I could do this from 8PM-2AM. It was well worth it except that the TiVo cut off the last finale episode so I was left at the cliffhanger scene when our lovely protagonist is locked inside a burning freezer. Not a good way to end a long night's viewing. I'm a person who loves to finish things as quickly as possible. The downside is I don't like to start things unless I'm certain that I can see the finish. All the tv and movie viewing means that I can somehow make time for extracurricular pursuits such as the programming projects I wish to pursue.

Rough odds that someone reading this would have watched Veronica Mars: 1:30

Soothing Saturdays

With the day off, there was nothing to do but watch more Veronica Mars episodes. The first few episodes had Paris Hilton, which I can forgive. Compadre Anthony informed me that she(Kristen Bell) was also in our favorite show, Deadwood. Much respect bestowed. For the totally low possibility that you've seen some of the shows, you've got to love the two-three times she uses a southern drawl that makes you wonder if it was from her training in Deadwood. In episodes 8 and 11, you might even get to see Tina Majorino aka Deb from Napoleon Dynamite(or girl from Waterworld). Anthony said he's seen the whole season 1(22 hour episodes) in 4 days. I think I'm on my 3rd and may tie depending on if I do anything with regards to life tomorrow.

Fridays

Like clockwork, I skated with the posse of the midnight rollers. It was fun as usual but more entertaining because I met Barri whom I previously met in NY about 2 years ago. She was a marathon skater and we reminisced with Paul(of Brooklyn) about the people and fun we had in NYC. She mentioned that NY has the Big Apple Roll the last weekend of July and I should try to attempt to be there. Fly 1500 miles to skate about 50. Why not?

Beauty and the Geek

Today was a relaxing day off. I mainly stayed home and watched movies - Star Wars Episodes IV-VI, Veronica Mars, and a very amusing tv series called Beauty and the Geek.

If you haven't heard about Beauty and the Geek yet, it's on the UPN on Wed/Thurs and plays on the usual reality show rules of 7 couples kick off 1 couple a week until 1 remains. But as implied by the title, the contestants are not so bright but beautiful women and very bright men that could use social awakenings.

I relate with the guys in the social department but get to laugh at them just a little bit for fulfilling some of the stereotypes that we tend to associate with geeks.

I believe that working 3 years in face-to-face retail customer service has increased my comfort with talking to people, particularly beautiful women. It's by no means how they describe the NYC Soho Bars with "Single women are having their rescue fantasies fueled by the suprisingly chatty, sociable Mac daddies"(NY Post) because I'm almost all about business and efficiency. I consider that my strength and weakness. I care too much about my work to leave it at a 40-hour week. I also don't joke around as much as one should heathily do in a workplace from time to time. But the singular thought that working this job might one day help me to transfer and make quality software that is mark of the company, compels me. Matt(in Austin) asked me today if this job is working for me and I answered that I will only know if I get the transfer or bust.

Stanford's Wednesday night skates

Tonight, I skated the Stanford Wednesday night skate. The excitement was escalated because I was running late and had never been to the Stanford campus and my printer was out of ink so I had to use memory and a few jotted details to find the group. Though, I had thought they started at 7:30 when they started at 8PM. It was relaxing and I met a more people tonight than I've met total on Friday night skates. The crowd was younger and nicer. I met a cute Laura from Holland, 2 Mikes, a Scott, Alberto, Mark, and I remet Paul because I had skated with him in NY on Tuesday night skates before. The skate through campus and slightly out of campus was fun and only a bit of a workout. My thick thighs can still keep me up at the front sprint wise but I need to learn correct form going downhill. I look forward to skating with the group more often but I might make some changes to the 45 minute commute there.

The simple life

Worked and then came home and watched Intacto. Premise: What if there are some people that survive tragedies or live blessed lives because they stole and kept luck from others? Then what if, for entertainment and prosperity sake they started to compete against each other for being the luckiest? The movie was semi-believable and semi-hard to follow but appealing in its originality.

Close to the final

Today was a Amy's organic non-dairy burrito morning. It was also the second morning the car wouldn't start. I'm a half mark off empty so I think the gas might have something to do with it but I'm hesitant to skate to the nearest gas station to fetch a pail of gasoline. I have hopes the car might spontaneously fix itself.

People come to our bar and if little demons don't show their little selves hamstering out of the computer, they say that it feels like going to a mechanic and not seeing a problem. In instance, this occurred today. I said audibly but somewhat to myself, I've never gone to a mechanic with a problem that didn't happen. I wonder how often that really happens to people because if it really happens as often as people perceive, I'm sure there's a business to be had. Perhaps if no trouble is found, you could place a bet on whether it's going to happen again - almost like an anti-insurance ring. If it does happen again and you are able to prove it to the mechanic on a future visit, you get your money back and that much off the repair. If it doesn't happen again, you lose the money. I guess if you lose, you really lose because you lost time and effort too. But there could be some fun in win, lose, or bet again. Although, I'm sure there'd be a new line of business that could ensure your car would have the foresaid symptoms the next time you visit the mechanic. A 'fixed bet on a broken problem'.

--

Eh, but I should enjoy skating while it's non-foggy and non-wet. It'd save on gasoline and mile age. But, I think I need to soak my bearings in WD-40 and get another pair of wheels as my 5-wheelers have turned into 4's missing the middle wheel.

Today's mid-day snack is a fruit slushie. I love making fruit slushies as I don't really like eating fruit by itself. It has milk, organic banana, conventional orange, pineapple and organic strawberries. Why I separate them in description while I puree them might be beyond conventional sense. But, it is organic.

Which made me wonder - of course it exists.

World View

You scored as Existentialist. Existentialism emphasizes human capability. There is no greater power interfering with life and thus it is up to us to make things happen. Sometimes considered a negative and depressing world view, your optimism towards human accomplishment is immense. Mankind is condemned to be free and must accept the responsibility. Existentialist 94% Materialist 94% Cultural Creative 69% Idealist 56% Modernist 50% Postmodernist 38% Romanticist 13% Fundamentalist 6% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

Intracacies of Shu

So, by now you've guessed that I spend a lot of time with my housemate, Shu(pronounced as Sue). If I were to summarize her, I'd say she was a 'tender woman'.

Shu is originally from Guangzhou, China. She's been unemployed for 1.5 years and has relied solely on her savings during that time. That's a great accomplishment by any measure. Granted, she's saved for 6 years while she lived in Boston and she's an accountant studying for her CPA exam. But, she lives in such a way that she'll never turn down an offer to go out to eat at a restaurant and groceries must always be the highest quality.

I've lived in the same townhouse with Shu since December. She lived in an in-law and had a bad experience because the fumes from her housemate's car seeped through her door and into her room. She went to the emergency room and fell down from the wheelchair while there; injuring her right knee. Shortly after, she decided to move out and into this house in Park Merced. We've gone to numerous doctors of both western and eastern medicine and I'm not sure she's become any better today than 6 months ago. After the first month, she had a friend of a housemate come in and massage her left ankle the wrong way, spraining it. Since then, we've been to 3 chinese herbal doctors in Oakland, 1 in Chinatown, 1 in Sutter, and 1 on Noriega for her ailments. She's also been to American doctors at UCSF and the General Hospital. And somehow, she's paid for all these out of her own pocket, though hopefully she gets medicard approval for reimbursement.

The reason I refer to her as a tender woman, is because physically she's a bit well, tender. Emotionally, she's very sensitive to violence or 'evil' in the world. Philosophically, she needs to open up to the real world. Culinarily, she almost always refers to the food we eat in terms of its tenderness. As in, "this is quite tender." Or "that beef dish looks very tender". She's also quite sensitive to how the food makes her feel good or bad afterwards. She's very intelligent but I need to increase her adjective collection or else I start to refer to things in terms of their tenderness. Case in point.

Because of Shu's immobility and our need for groceries, I spend most of my days off driving her to shops and stores. Going to Chinese markets was quite amusing(except for seeing how butchers open up a turtle) but finding parking to go to 3-4 different Chinese markets was almost unbearable. One market may be good for fish, one for meat, and the one for vegetables is always different than the previous market.

Today, we went to the Embarcadero Ferry building because I bought good organic lamb there two months ago. She didn't like the freshness of the fish and we both think the meat is a bit too costly for a week's worth so we went to the wonderous Whole Foods on 4th street. Afterwards, we went to Safeway to get fish, asparagus, oranges, water, orange juice and toothpaste. She wanted to go to Noriega for Chinese vegetables, but I convinced her(and she was persuaded by overuse of her legs) that we'd be able to make do with american vegetables in the form of tomatoes and lettuce. From start to finish, our shopping took 5 hours.

Two hours and a nap later, we went to this close restauraunt on Vicente called the Riverside seafood restaurant. They had good 'bird'(tasty quail looking thing I've had 4 times but still don't know the american name), spinach with preserved egg and egg, and combo seafood in bird's nest. I always let her order because she makes good decisions, always orders a vegetable and the waiters always speak in Chinese/Mandarin.

Besides the time we spend grocery shopping and doctor visiting, we've had dinner together for all but 7 nights in the past 4 months. We keep each other company because we don't have many friends and I dedicate myself to work so much that I don't do much else than skate. But she often drives me crazy. I'm very grateful for her for cooking all the time and I try to best to clean dishes and try to make life easy for her, but whenever she's negative about her health outlook or narrow in her views of the world, I return to that mode of self-questioning that goes, "How did I get here?" "Is it time for me to make some changes?"

Shu quirks:
Words or phrases that need work, "asparagus, olive oil, clam, how do you think?"
Believes that all raw fish will cause worms under the skin.
Believes women's fate is pre-determined by the curved angle of their nails.
Must have a 'green leaf' vegetable for dinner. Must have rice with dinner.
Believes that people from North China or Taiwan are bad.
Thinks that people from SF are untrustworthy and that none compare to Boston
Thinks that Korean people are more attracted to her than Chinese people.
Can not bear violence in movies and will whimper when those scenes occur.
Would not finish movies that I liked, 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Sassy Girl, House of Flying Daggers'; only likes Gone With The Wind and A Beautiful Mind(in Boston).
Believes in good luck and bad luck.
Makes quick judgements from few experiences.

Random side-note: I'd like to introduce myself to someone by full name and add, "but you can call me blue."
Watched: Real Genius - Inspiring and yet self-reflecting, "Why didn't I go to that kind of college?"

Family of white acrylics

I got iMac #3 today. It's cleaner than its twin and after removal of its sticker, it says "usi"(formerly Business). I got a good price on it and just couldn't pass it up unless another coworker has a son or daughter that really needed it. I think I might rent very affordably it to new coworkers who don't use a Mac.

My collection(*TM) is now composed of: iMac G5 20", two iMac G4 17"s, and an iBook G3. Insane I might be, but I had this idea 2 nights ago of using my one wireless keyboard/mouse across multiple computers, and apparently there's already this new open source software with that aim:
http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/index.html

That and I need to deconstruct the window iMac G5 software to see how they sync their screensavers over Airport.

Watched: In My Father's Den - Sad story. I think it was good, but sad.

Friday night skate

Work has been a little tiring the last few days, but that's because I've been having 6 hours of sleep, waking up at 8:20AM, and working 9-10 hours/day.

After work, I skated with a small crew of about 30. It was pretty windy and 60 degrees so I can't blame people for not coming. Overall, it was the usual fun. As a group of us went downhill, I think I discovered that I can sprint faster than most but probably tire faster than the average. It might have to do with never learning to pace in running or skating. Sandra remarked that she was trying to copy my unusual skate stroke and asked if I was double pumping. I need to figure out how to do that sometime because I'm not so I'm probably being inefficient somehow.

Skate stats:
Years skated: 9 years - Chele bought me some while I visited her in New York and I learned between the upper east side and central park.
Number of still visible scars: 6
Oldest scar: 8 years old under left elbow.
Last fall: Last week while trying to skate dance.
Frequency of falls: About once every 4 months.
Most humiliating falls: Rolling over a scrunchie. Rolling into a car parking chain during finals week.
Funniest fall: I was wearing two huge foam fan hands(the kind they give you at school sports events) at Trinity University after a TAC Music event and lost balance.
Favorite skating spot: Central Park's southwest decline.
Longest skate: 28 miles from NYC upper west side to Jersey and back.

Fun fan fan

http://www.fanimation.com/products/fan_styles.html

By oceanlight

There are times that I'll be driving west on these streets and suddenly be smarked in the face that I'm in California by the sight of the ocean not 10 blocks away and yet 10's of miles in visible distance.

I often think that during lunch I could get something to go and then park by the beach and eat on the sand. Everyone I've suggested that to has said that it's freezing by the water's edge. But one of these days I'm going to do it and take a chili hot burrito with me too.

Missed Connection as the Suns dimmed

Today after work, I was walking out to the western door and saw a pretty young woman with reddish brown curly hair walking in the opposite direction. I smiled and as we passed each other, we both turned our heads so that we weren't looking at each other directly but casually looking out of the corner of our eyes to see if we were looking back. And both of us were! Up until we were 15 feet past each other, she actually did a full 180 and started to walk back to me right as I stopped looking at her and started looking at the door in front of me. And that's when she did another 180 turn and went back to walking in her original direction.

Now, I know I'm green at meeting women on New York streets or in San Francisco malls, but I got into this total self-twist about what I should have done. I mean, it's the first time a woman actually looked back at me and then I never would have believed that she would actually turn back to walk towards me(was I supposed to walk back towards her like that Meet Joe Black scene?) It just blew my mind.

So, after driving my 5 minute home trek, I changed clothes and went to the Fitness USA gym inside the mall for that serendipitous card toss in the hat that I might get a chance to see her again and throw some line like, "I saw you earlier and you caught my eye and I was wondering if I caught yours." But really, if I saw her again I'd just say, "Hello, I'm Brent and I think you're pretty. Would you have dinner with me tonight?". But I don't know myself well enough to even say that I would say that to a 100%.

But sadly, I didn't see her as I went in and didn't see her as I came out of the gym-in-the-mall. So, I hope upon that theory that if you visit a mall and you're not a tourist, you're likely to go back there at some future point in time. Also put on record that this was the first time I had actually used the gym since signing up last November.

At least the Spurs gave me positive reflection after beating the Suns for a 2-0 lead.

Watched: the last half of Elizabeth

Blank Tuesday

Watched Layercake and Deadwood finale.

Discovered that some of the characters from Deadwood were real:
http://laststagetodeadwood.nexuswebs.net/hbo.html

From Chinese Foods to Whole Foods

For the past 4-5 months, Shu has taken me on wild journey's to San Francisco's Chinese markets for groceries. These are the crowded stores in Noriega, Irving, Clement, and Chinatown that show many fruits on outside stands and have chopped chicken parts laying in the open ice inside. Whenver I go in and see those choppen chicken parts, I just think that can't be right. But somehow, these markets exist and either pass California food department inspections or are ignored and accepted as San Francisco's history. They must not be too bad because we haven't had any food poisoning yet and we shopped at them every week. ..until today.

After our Italian brunch this morning, we visited 4th street's Whole Foods and Shu loved it. We had a delicious wild salmon, asparagus and a random green chinese vegetable for dinner tonight. I hope that in the future, we could get all groceries from there instead of the 3-5 chinese markets we usually have to visit in a day to get meat, fish and vegetables. However, even after our Whole Foods venture, Shu still had me go to Noriega for 4+ kinds of green chinese vegetables.

Movies watched today: Unleashed and Suspect Zero