ramblings of a madman

here are the pictures from thesquare happy hour as promised:







nick and i celebrate winning the ipod shuffle. loving it!

took this and got this:

You are a XPIG--Expressive Practical Intellectual Giver. This makes you a Catch.

You are a magazine-cover, matinee idol dreamboat. Parents love you and want to set you up with their kids. However, first dates are tough because it takes time for your qualities to come out.

You are generous and kind. You think first and act later. You are cool in a conflict, but your practical side means if your partner throws out emotional appeals ("why can't we do what I want for a change?") they will grate on your nerves, even when the conflict is resolved.

You're a romantic. You enjoy the thrill of the hunt, and you don't just fall into bed with anyone. You pay close attention to your significant other's needs, and this makes you an excellent lover and partner. The problem is that your friends and lovers may find it so easy to express things to *you* that they lose sight of whether you feel as comfortable with *them*! This doesn't necessarily make you feel under-appreciated -- you're too well-adjusted and self-aware for that -- but you may feel restless. Thus you seek adventure in your life outside the relationship to prove and actualize yourself.

Of all the types, you would make the best parent.

You are coiffed.

Didja see "Big Fish"? 'Cause you're like Ewan MacGregor in "Big Fish."

Of the 184381 people who have taken this quiz, 9.3 % are this type.

if you haven't heard, hot97 aired a "tsunami song" that heinously poked fun at the tragedy and contained racial slurs against asians. here's a site that has an update on the situation, a link to the original song including a heated argument between the morning djs, link to jin's response, and a petition that's helped get miss jones and her morning crew suspended, hopefully for good. multiple sponsors have already pulled off their advertisements.

philip johnson died on tuesday at the age of 98. he was a man i consider synonymous with the architecture of new york city skyscrapers and was best known for his work on the at&t building (which to my delight when started working was in full view of my office). i remember in all my architecture classes he was mentioned in almost any reference to modernism and almost every building with glass went back to his glass house. was there not any piece of architecture that he didn't put an opinion to?

also, what was up with those kooky owlish glasses? we will never know.

so thesquare had a happy hour event at light tonight and they were holding a free raffle for attendees. best part was they were raffling off an ipod shuffle. so i filled out a survey and a ticket and mingled around till they held the raffle.

nick joined me at the event and when they were looking for volunteers to draw the raffle tickets, i volunteered nick before he could say anything. as always, nick was a good sport and went along. i told nick that he would draw my name -- and if he did i'd owe him a few rounds of drinks (over the course of many events of course, not in a single night). and so nick and another volunteer went up to draw the winners. there were 3 t-shirt winners and one ipod shuffle winner...

first, the other volunteer picked the first entry -- someone else...

next, she picked another entry -- someone else... still had a chance to win the ipod.

nick was up now. he picked the last t-shirt winner. some other guy.

i still had a chance. i told nick to dig deep. he reached in, opened up the folded paper and he announced, after a gasp --

MY NAME!

i won the ipod shuffle! nick had the BEST look on his face, such a face of incredulity that said everything. we did the buddy shake (pics coming up later) and i was so amazed that my positive mental energy came to something good! people thought it was rigged because no one was standing on the raised level other than thesquare people, nick, the other volunteer, me and my other friend. and all people saw was the guy standing closest to the draw bag was the one who won! ahh does this mean luck is turning my way? i'd like to think so. even the guy who worked for thesquare was like "i can't believe this!"

thanks nick, we'll remember this. ;-)

so two weekends ago, dr. martin luther king jr. weekend, bryant and i went west to visit our college suitemate andy. we tried to get nick to go, but nick's taking risd classes. and so without the n, the barn became bar, arb, rab, bra -- and thus it was just the bra.

i flew a direct flight straight from jfk to smf (sacramento) on jetblue. unfortunately, due to a huge storm that spanned from canada down to our good old confederate states, all the flights were delayed. after a two-hour flight delay, a diverted flight to oakland, a refueling and finally another take off, i made to it my final destination 13 hours later. bryant on the other hand wasn't as fortunate and he missed his connecting flight from sf to sac, so he had a 24-hour journey which included a free nights stay at a airport motel.

the weather in sacramento was COLD. when we touched down i expected it to be moderate, but because the area was sooo dry, the cold weather hit me instantly. nyc had a high of 61 on that thursday, which was warmer than sacramento. to our misfortune, the entire weekend was cloudy and sunny skies didn't greet us till the day we had to leave.

so i'd have to say that a guest aerobed is the best item for someone with frequent visitors to have (check out deals at fatwallet on this). unfortunately andy only had one, so i got to live out my fantasies and sleep with andy for alternating nights. but wow the aerobed was hard and supportive of my back -- definitely an a+. i had a restful night and woke up at 7am in the morning to skip off to join andy for his cardiology course at ucdavis.

an 8am-noon class... last time i did that was... well never? brown had three hour classes, but 4 hours? i couldn't even imagine sitting through that class -- especially since i couldn't even sit through it. did you know that angina sounds like vagina? it thought it was pronounced an-gEE-na. huff-puff... ran out of that class in 30 min and went to explore the campus.

first thing i noticed was that the campus was HUGE. the med school was way far away from the center of campus -- about a 20 min walk. everyone was riding on bikes and to cross a busy street full of bikers i had to wait a good one min before i could finally frogger my way through the mass. the campus was like... 50% asian and there were so major honeys. too bad i'm not in school anymore. sigh. i walked around to the library, the art galleries (which all didn't open till noon so i was screwed), and the comp sci department (which i stumbled upon by chance). at the comp sci department, i asked about the masters programs, and immediately concluded that their comp sci program majorly paled in comparison to brown's and walked out disinterested. i made my way over to the student center, the bookstore (bought a shirt of course), and sat in the cafeteria doing the aggie (their newspaper and their mascot) crossword puzzle, checking out the girls there of course.

bryant finally arrived and we picked him up at the aeroport. andy took us to all-you-can-eat sushi at a place called fuji and for $10 we had all the sushi boat and soft-shell crab we could possibly want. it was sooo good and worth the wait. 30 plates and 2 fried bananas later we were off to take a nap.

so that night we ventured into san fran and went to an asian party which had a cover of $10 but free before 10:30pm. of course, we make it to the door at 10:30pm on the dot and the girls in front of us are allowed to go in for free, but they try to screw us and make us pay $10. after my beautifully crafted persuasion, bryant and i made it through for free and andy had to pay the cover. best line of the night -- bryant: "look i'm from virginia. i came all the way from dc for this!" i'd have to say that this asian party was better than certain parties in nyc. random note: i had actually walked into this gallery/bar three months ago when i went to san fran with my dragonboat team (jp morgan chase! bank one) so it was funny going back there. ironically there was the jpmc office just two buildings away and i didn't notice it the first time there.

driving home -- andy made a booboo and luckily we weren't caught. woke up while dozing in his car (which is a toyota supra '93 so my head was resting against the ceiling) when andy swerved to avoid some guy who missed us in his blind spot and banged my head on the ceiling -- ouch, i was out cold for the rest of the night.

next morning we went to sactown to visit the govinator's home. sactown is SO boring. there's absolutely nothing to do there and its a sad excuse for a city. we went on the tour of the capital building and were joined by people in their 50s and kids under 12. fun stuff. learned that california was instated into the united states september 9th, 1850. also that the ledgers use leather to write on because its easier to write on that then a wood grain surface. less bumpy! other than night, we went over to old sactown. walked around and got lots of free samples of candy. reminded me a lot of disney world with the "old western" theme. never going back to sac again... cept that night.

we went to sactown to go bar hopping. crowd was wayyy older that night. one thing that we learned -- you snooze you lose. it was freezing again that night so the turnout was very sparse. also it was very much of a sausage fest. and why did some guy say "it's all about child psychology" man to andy. one thing i found is that lots of guys like to talk to andy when he's just standing around and they're next to him. i guess he's just a really approachable guy. and one guy said he looked like the guy on american pie! what the heck... speaking of whom, just saw harold and kumar the other day and why can't that scene between maria and harold happen to me!

got back to davis and had food at ihop (miss the ihop in nyc). then next day just played pool which bryant showing off some trick shots and watched the pats beat the colts senseless. hopped on a flight out that night red-eye and got home safe.

lots of good things happened that weekend that i can't really express. but having all had serious relationships back in grad center and young o, we never really had the chance to talk about girls and just about guy things in general. sounds kind of sad, but i guess long term relationships can really demasculinate you and make you lose touch with your guy talk and guy friends. so, lesson is -- don't let that happen and let your fellow man know what's going on witchu! also, great feeling about the weekend was when andy said the weekend felt like a weekend at college. yeah... those were fun days.

back to the work world.

so norm sent me a link to a cnn article about a puzzle that if unraveled will reveal real treasures hidden in public places. there are twelve hidden gems (or are they 18-kt gold pieces?) shaped like the creatures in the story. i love puzzles and this one sounds like it'd be a ton of fun to do. maybe it'll lead to some "national treasure" type adventure. anyone up for this?

update: it's a book here. this guy's sold 200k copies which means its grossed 4-8 mil for the publishing company. sick. i wonder if its just a ploy and none of this treasure exists! what's stopping some random person who notices something like it sitting somewhere public and picking it up and not going through the process of cracking the puzzle?

postal service has a new music video of their song we will become silhouettes featuring jenny lewis!

hill valley presevation society does covers of random theme and video game songs from the 80s. highlights include: 3-2-1 contact, thundercats, fraggle rock. i'm on an 80s kick today.

ok, so my friend brian posted about a website called yahooligans which contains streaming video of old tv shows, namely the super mario bros super show! my sister and i used to watch this show religiously -- i forced her to record it because it aired before i came home, then when i came home from lextended day we watched it together every night. so she netted watching the show twice each day! oh the horror! now rewatching this show now: legend of zelda, live actors playing mario and luigi. i can see how entertaining it was when i was 8 years old (it came out in 1989), but now... now its SUPER entertaining!

hooked on da brothers and der friendz!

this pic started freaking me out everytime i went to my blog... so my shaven.jpg pic is no more either. so now this post simply acts as a marker to remind me of when i went back to me old self.