Story Archive - December 2005

Another King's Game! (12/31/2006)

Just as he is sharing all your adventures, other's are sharing his. - Childlike Empress (Neverending Story)

It's become an annual tradition to go to a Sacramento King's Game around the holidays with my brother and my father. My father always had dibs on a decent number of games from a set of season tickets growing up, so I have been to quite a few games over the course of my life. I was with them in the original Arco Arena. I was with them when they moved to the new Arco Arena, with the larger seating section, in which they are playing their new games right now. (that was a particularly obscured allusion that earns you 2,000 cool points for catching).

Since we used to go to many games a season, and now go only to one, my father has continually challenged himself to get the best tickets available. He'll call on favors from old friends and maybe even people from the shady underside of the world. This time around we got tickets right near where the Maloof brothers normally sit. The Maloof's weren't there tonight, instead it was Donnie Wahlberg, Boston native, in his green Adidas Cap rooting for the Celtics.

If only we had brought the binoculars we could have seen the moles on the players. I don't go for the game. I go for the King Dog and Nachos and all the glorious heart clogging joy of it.

Year's End (12/28/2005)

I like to reminisce with people I don't know. - Steven Wright

It's the second year I've done this. When does it become a tradition?

January: I moved from San Leandro to Palo Alto into a new apartment with a long time friend. This was a great decision, and I am still reaping the benefits of having constant gatherings with many friends who were unwilling to drive all the way to the east bay on a school night.

February: With my pedometer I got for Christmas, I did my best to stay active talking longs walks and rides in the new beautiful area. I'm more active than ever, even if my pedometer claims I am sedentary.

March: March 16th I saw "Defending the Caveman" with GG. We were just friends at the time and it was the first time I pulled a "maybe more" move. As we were walking afterward she bumped against me, I put my arm around here shoulder, she acted quite surprised by it, so I backstepped thinking, "crap, that was too forward."

April: I saw Puffy perform and that made it two J-Pop concerts in two months, a rate I was unable to keep. I got nudged by a car while on my skates. April 20th, GG admits she thinks I'm cute too and I steal the first kiss.

May: I went to my six-year college reunion (okay, I crashed the five year) and took my first water ski of the year.

June: My father got married and I danced the evening away. Anime Expo 2005 occurred and it is the first time in a couple years that I was not forced to leave early for a wedding. We had a larger crowd than ever and fill two rooms.

July: I finished off my vacation spending spree (wedding, AX, Clearlake) and had a big party at work. My father keeps the Clearlake traditions alive by amputating a finger in boat rigging. This is the month I can officially declare my first midlife crisis to be over. It's a glorious month.

August: I got deadly sick after a trip to Chicago from midwestern germs. We gave foster care to a cat for a few months that slept more than my roommate.

September: Labor Day weekend is a party at Buck's Lake near Quincy. The family does Karaoke every night and it is a blast. The girl I have been dating for four months becomes my girlfriend. I have a night of drunken debauchery with coworkers which involves getting kicked out of a cab and falling over in an alley.

October: I attend my 10-year high school reunion and it is tragically lame. I took an entire week to celebrate my birthday that involved three gatherings at Round Table. It is very different from a year ago when I let my birhtday slip buy without any fanfare.

November: Thanksgiving was awesome seeing a set of the extended family I haven't seen in two years. It's been rarer since we stopped having annual "Family Day." I needed the time off too.

December: I moved yet again, but this time into a three bedroom adding Ross into the mix. The Christmas holidays were quick and lovely to see everyone. The presents were very modest, and I like that the best.

Setting up TiVo (12/27/2005)

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. - Groucho Marx

It's amazing the things that I made sure to pack very safely in the move that I haven't been able to find. Worse yet are the few items that had been missing for a year in some box, I found when re-packing, and then lost again in the move. I finally found the remote controls and that means it is time to setup my poor man's TiVo, my VCR.

So what is on my VCR program? Damn it's good entertainment:

Last Tanks Fuel Economy: 43.6 mi/g

Steps Taken Today: 9,246 (and that includes 30m on the elliptical!)

Merry Chistmas (12/26/2005)

Our scars have the power to remind us that our past is real. - Hanibal Lector (Red Dragon)

I think it has been one of the quieter and more reflective Christmas holidays I've had in a while. I didn't do mad driving between the bay and the valley. I drove up with my grandparents on Saturday morning and then returned home on Monday.

I had a very good long talk with my grandparent's during the drive while Beethoven was playing over the radio. "Do you like Beethoven?" I asked. My grandfather responded "well, your grandmother enjoys it and I'm deaf, so it should work very well for us."

As we were fiddling with my grandmother's wheelchair trying to cram it into the back of my car my grandfather commented, "it's good that you get to deal with elderly people falling apart. There are a lot of life lessons involved here." My grandfather hikes more miles each week than I do all year.

I got "Where the Wild Things Are," fresh fruit, socks, Mad Libs and all sorts of assorted goodies in the first half of my holiday. The food was great, the dessert superb, and the company second to none. It was followed by a quiet afternoon where I caught up on some reading alone.

Christmas night I went to midnight service at the church. I can't remember when I started going to midnight service, but in my memory, there's only been one Christmas in a long while that I have missed it. The family clan this year was small with only my brother and father attending. At one point my father learned over, "I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, but the lights behind the stained glass remind me of your grandfather. When he passed away your grandmother asked for people to give donations to that lighting system instead of sending flowers." I know that I will remember that each time I go to the church in the future.

I slept in late Sunday morning and headed to the gathering for the other half of the family. It was less crowded then in previous years, but still crowded and with the rain pouring down outside, everyone was crammed on the inside. At one point I ducked out back for air and discovered one of my cousins sitting alone. She and I both prefer a small quiet group to bustle of the inside and took a while gossiping about the our own lives and family politics. I love family gossip.

For a long time after university I lived alone, and now I'm living with others. For a long time after university she lived with others and now she is living alone. There are good and bad with each situation. Her boy is doing well. My girl is doing well. She's getting a masters. I'm feeling under-educated.

At 7pm the text message came in, "We're partying in Sactown Beeeeoooccccchhhh!" With that I kissed the family goodbye, jumped in the car and went out with my childhood friends who are only in town once or twice a year. It took a while to find a place for dinner (Hooters closed at 8pm (I have some objections to Hooters anyway (I normally make lame LISP jokes at this point))), but we found a random Chinese restaurant. Then we played board games until 6am.

I got home at 4pm on Monday and the roommates are still gone. I wrote. I wrote a lot today in the personal offline journal about all the things running through my head.

The New Digs (12/23/2005)

Amidst all the clutter, beyond all the obstacles, aside from all the static, are the goals set. Put your head down, do the best job possible, let the flak pass, and work towards those goals. - Donald Rumsfeld

I was out in San Francisco on Monday morning and had a bit of a nostalgia attack from my years working in the city. After I left the building I had a meeting in, I was greeted by the sound of a fiddle and discovered a fiddler on the street. It was something I don't see in the business park I work in now. I passed by him and drop some money in and then went to grab sushi at Kamakura, one of my favorite downtown fast sushi spots.

I have gotten the apartment fairly clean. Both of the new roommates are on vacation visiting their loved one, but I'm still working. The living room area is gorgeous. The only thing missing is a nice giant plasma TV. I've done a good job keeping my room much more spartan this time around. I got rid of one of the two desks that was in it, and I removed the bookshelf. So now it's just bed, nightstand, dresser and writing desk. That is just about right!

Of the other two roommates, Adam has crammed everything into his room. There are around fifteen banker-size boxes jammed into his closet, but the room itself looks very clean and inviting. Ross' room is an explosion of boxes and clothes that has spilled into the storage area under the stairs and into the garage. It was all in the living room the day before he left, but he pulled an all-nighter and cleaned up ninety percent of the boxes as well as made cookies for his parents.

You're Kidding Me! (12/20/2005)

They believe they've won the fight, they believe I'm gone-not quite! Nothing ever works out neatly-bullies don't give up competely. One departs, the next appears, and we shall meet again, my dears! Though I go, I won't go far... I'll be back. - Brundibar (Brundibar)

Maybe you recall way back in April of 2004 my ramblings about Palm Sudden USB Death Syndrome (SUDS). There was this SUDS entry. I was naming each of my m505 versions alphabetically. I started with Alex, then Betty, then Charlie and finally Debra. Debra had even died of SUDS, but I used holistic healing to fix her. Well, twenty months later, she died again. Poor Debra. I was thinking of calling support and seeing if they would ship me a m515 or some other new slick Palm, but I doubt it. Debra is healing up holistically right now.

The healing method that I will now catalogue here, lest I ever need it again, is as follows:

  1. Press and hold the power button while hitting reset.
  2. Keep holding power until a few seconds after the Palm logo appears.
  3. When you are prompted to "Erase all data?" hit the up button.
  4. Turn on the backlight.
  5. Open the memo pad and write shortcut-.1 thus causing the plam to crash and freeze

I need a new gadget. Like a Treo. Yet I also want to ROKR phone. All these problems.

My Boy was Just Like Me (12/19/2005)

The son has always felt like he was a footnote in one of the stories the father tells. - Danny DeVito

My roommates were making pasta over the weekend and one of them found a jar of pasta sauce in the pantry that had moved with me from my old place. One roommate opened it up and the seal broke letting him know no one yet had opened the jar. He was about to pour into the noodles when he noticed that it smelled a bit funny. So he examined the jar and found it, "Best used by Feb 2002." Daddy is proud of me for following in his footsteps.

The Giving Season (12/18/2005)

This one, this one right here. This was my dream, my wish. And it didn't come true. So I'm taking it back. I'm taking them all back. - Mouth (Goonies)

This past Saturday was fantastic. I slept in bed until around noon (much needed, I assure you) followed by heading down to see the girl and her cousin and her cousin's boytoy. We grab Dim Sum in a restaurant in the heart of an asian shopping center and played a fun game of "count the white guy." They could all see one cracker I couldn't: me. It was the best Dim Sum experience I think I've had. I've never been a huge fan of Dim Sum. There's no particular item that I crave. I've never spent a week thinking, "I could really use some pork buns!" While that opinion is going to change, I wasn't frightened by a single thing and even found a few pieces that I would want to have the next time I go.

After that we headed out for volunteer work and it was cool. I don't have a lot of friends that go around doing deeds and I am almost always a sport for it. While I like to plop money down to organizations all the time, I haven't done a volunteer activity for a while. The last two I did both involved helping to restore native wildlife in various reserves around the area. That's fun, but lacks something of a human element. This one involved helping to sort presents for needful people. I think the term was "gift sorting elves."

Tons of people volunteer to give a gift and that person receives a little tag what Santa has decided the child wants for the holidays. The secret is they actually send out two tags for each child, because they only have about a 40% response rate which means there's about a 16% chance that any child doesn't get a gift. Sad! So you go through your line of thirty kids and find all the ones that have duplicate gifts and all the ones missing gifts. For the ones missing gifts, you go "shopping" through all the duplicate gifts to fill the order to the best you can. Going down the list and checking it twice was a ton of fun for the child in me (like the WWF Wrestling Action Figures) and for the nit-picker in me (check boxes on a list!).

The News Sickens Me (12/15/2005)

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? - Albert Camus

The morning routine is simple. I wake up, run downstairs and grab a coffee, and then run back up to my bathroom. I turn on news radio, take my pills and take a shower. Once out of the shower I run out the door to work and floss on the way.

One morning this week, the news on the radio did a segment about an execution that occurred in California the night before. You know the one. The person executed had been nominated for a nobel peace prize. There was a montage of witnesses reporting on the final moments as the execution was carried out and it made me ill. I switched the radio to music before the nausea became too much. That's now the third time in my life where a news event that has no direct impact on me has caused me to feel physically ill. I recognized the symptoms soon enough to distract myself before I lost it. It's happened.

Move Complete (12/12/2005)

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. - Robert Louis Stevenson

The big news is that I did, in fact, successfully complete my move this weekend.

Saturday I was up early at 9am and over to the leasing office to sign some papers and pick up the keys and then the task of moving started. The last time I moved I was 100% in boxes and ready to go. This time I was definitely closer to 60% in boxes and ready to go and that fact showed. I wasn't done by the time everyone gave up at around six or seven o'clock that day and the new apartment was a mes of boxes. Sometime around 2pm I heard Jeff ask, "Why does this seem so much harder than the last time." It was. It was my fault too. It hurt a little inside.

We went to Arby's for dinner on Saturday and then went home to sleep in preparation for Sunday. Sunday there was no help, so Adam and I moved the last remaining items in my car. Well, the BBQ I wheeled down the street to the new place. It was loud.

A Prius is not built to move large things. I made a trip to Goodwill (about 2 miles away) to cast off an old bookshelf. As I was getting ready to turn into the parking lot, with my right blinker on, some bike riders were heading down the street so I slowed to let them cross the entrance and avoid killing them. The car behind me decides it is going to cut past me into the lot and cut over a little to stop him. He honks loudly. Then a Porsche driver illegally cuts around me on the other side passing over the double yellow line in the middle and honks as he flies by. These people were apparently incapable of waiting the additional 45 seconds and were not willing to be kind to a drive with a giant bookcase hanging out the back of his car turning into the Goodwill lot.

We have no cable and no network. There are no available wireless around us so we have no ability to get onto any of the internets. I guess that will give us very little to distract us from unpacking.

We better get it cleaned up before New Years. We're having a party. You're invited. Except the invite in the next week, or drop me a line if one never shows up.

Last Tanks Fuel Economy: 41.7 mi/g

Everwood Addict (12/08/2005)

For a couple of hours out of the whole year we are the people that we always hoped we would be. - Frank Cross (Scrooged)

It's Thursday night and my roommate is off to see Narnia in the middle of the night. I'm a bit jealous, but after this week of work, running off late on a school night could have killed me. Instead, I curled up on the couch at home and watched the last twenty-minutes of Scrooged. That movie always renews my faith in man.

Then I watched an all new episode of Everwood. Don't tell anyone, but I am an addict of teen dramas. OMG! Can you believe what Hannah did at the end of the episode! I didn't see it coming. Wow! And what's up with Ephram and Amy? Are they going to get back together? They must, right? Andy and Nina?!? Wow! Wow! That episode was great.

Moving AGAIN! (12/06/2005)

Once the herd starts moving in one direction, it's very hard to turn it, even slightly. - Dan Rather

I'm moving again. I know it's a shock to a lot of people because I've only had around two weeks notice, and I've been slammed by working during that time, so getting around to actually telling people that I would not be where I was in very short order has not occurred quite as quickly as I would have liked.

And to answer the first question that everyone seems to ask when I mention this little tidbit, no I'm not moving in with a girl. I'm moving in with a boy! Well, another one.

When I moved into my current pad around a year ago with one of my long-time friends, it had a dramatically good affect on my life and was one of the key factors in ending my midlife crisis. The place has become a gathering point for many random friends on Tuesdays, Wednesday and weekends.

So when one of the friends who is over most nights said, "we should move into one of the three bedroom town houses" it sounded pretty good. There are a lot of good benefits for me such as (1) a new bigger master bedroom and (2) bed will no longer be ten feet from where awake people like to party separated by only a silly little door.

So if you free this weekend and I haven't invited you to the "abuse your friends" moving party, drop me a line and we will make it happen!

Geed Code Update (12/05/2005)

I noticed that my geek code has become deprecated. Let me update it...

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GM/CS/E/MC d--(+) s:- a- C++++(++)$ U++(++++)$ P+++$ L+(--) !E W+++$
N+ o? K+ w++ O+(+++) M++ V+ PS++@ PE-@ Y+ PGP++ t+ 5++ X R tv b++ DI++
D++ G e++ h- r++ y?>
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Holiday Party (12/02/2005)

The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year's Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you're married to. - P. J. O'Rourke

I haven't taken a date to a corporate holiday party in six years? Is that right? (Jordan frantically does mental math) Yes! Seriously, time flies.

My current company's holiday party was on Thursday, October 1st, and I felt a tad guilty inviting Gumdrop since I know that her Thursday nights are her busy ones at work. So, she had to make the horrible sacrifice of not working fourteen hours on the 1st to come to a holiday party.

At the previous year's holiday party I had been at the company for a whole three weeks. At an All-Hands meeting the morning of last years party one of our key sales people had said what a difference I made with a customer on my second week there. It caused roughly EVERYONE at the party offer to have a toast, shot or other beverage with me and it made the party very hard. This year, I had been at the company almost a year to the day, but the toasts were thankfully limited. Working at a company full of young, upwardly-mobile and primarily male employees makes for dangerous times.

I was home by 1am, but for reasons still uncertain to me, I logged on and chatted with the coworkers on the other side of the world. I event sent two mails to customers. I woke up at 9:59am with seconds to spare before my conference call with other customers only to realize I had no phone. I had chivalrously loaned it out the night before. There's no land line at my home, my roommate was gone and the office is half-an-hour away. Well, I guess customers can live if one person flakes on them from time to time.

I made in by 12:30pm for a long day of work.