陳培勇的世界: July 2005

Friday, July 29, 2005

God needs glasses

I'm coming home today. First it happened to Nick and now to my sister, Lorraine. What the hell God? What the fuck are you doing?!?! I'm right here. Are you blind???

Thursday, July 28, 2005

"Within that world of my own"

I just realized I used the word "prick" in my previous post. That means my blog has now been blocked by many substandard Net Nanny programs as being obscene of offensive.

Round 1 of summer midterms are over and I must say it again. Midterm equals middle of term as I understand it. You can only have one middle. So why do all my classes have 2 midterms? Anyway, as always, I will post the results up as soon as I get my grades in next week. If you don't hear from me, of course, I am too ashamed to post anything and you can assume the worst.

Tony just asked me to buy some trash bags next time I go shopping. A whole slew of things popped in my head. Why doesn't he buy it? He goes out all the time. Oh, he's probably thinking he buys the toilet paper so he's already contributed and I should buy something now. But same with toilet paper, I throw my own trash out. One look at the trashcan and the cupboard it's kept in was almost enough to make me barf. I never want to open it or smell it again. So I have been content with a small bag in my room for my own needs. What if I had refused him? What would he have said? Would he be petty and start taking toilet paper in and out of the restroom? Should I be petty like that too? That's not a good way to live. But I'm never going to use this trash. One of my neighbors say they just bring toilet paper in and out themselves. So it works over there. And finally, I concluded, it's not worth the hassle. I should just buy it. I just went shopping anyway. Next time I go out in two weeks, I will probably forget.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

54 Days

That's how long you have to wait between durations. Also, you can't take aspirin within the last two days. And if you've been in Europe within the past 3 years, it can't be for more than 3 months and they have to log it. Imagine my interviewer listening to me list off; UK, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Spain, Czech Republic. Still, everything came out fine. The initial prick was more painful than when I had an IV put in. I had some breathing problems initially but it was from fear. I calmed down after seeing so many girls around me do it without squirming like I was. But other than keeping my eyes off that red tube, it went fine. I'll be back in two months.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Opportunity knocking on my window

You don't know how much you love something until it goes away. Similarly, you don't know how bad your family is, until you watch Jerry Springer. I'd give anything right now to have a loud honk from a car go off 3-4 times a day 20 feet from my room than to have a window-shaking knock from my neighbor's friend go off 3-4 times a day 2 feet away.

I don't know what a "Ham" is but, apparently, my "clean" sense of humor is opposite to Eric's.

Crap, I don't know how to fix the HTML so I just deleted something you've never seen.

The 3 Variable Funny Test written by jason_bateman on Ok Cupid

Monday, July 25, 2005

Things that make you go hmmm

I came to my mailbox the other day and tried to open it but couldn't. Odd. So I swaggered my way to the front office to ask, "What gives?" A polite lady looks up my account, scribbles a trio of numbers on my mail card and walks me to my box. She proceeds to open it with the new numbers and "Tada", it opens. She hands me back my mail card with a new combination on it. Inside my box, I find a little note saying my combination will be changed and I will have trouble opening my mailbox. Gee, thanks for the heads up.

Friday, July 22, 2005

News and Comments

More bombings in London and Egypt are in the news. I continue to wonder what the terrorists are thinking. It just makes me more and more mad. And I am more and more inclined to vote for some extreme retalitory measure. Of course not everyone thinks like me. Spain agreed to terrorist demands showing that the Western world would bow down to these types of acts. I heard on CNN that Spain is also enacting laws that make it more equal for Muslims to live there. I forgot exactly what was said but it's supposed to show that people of all religions can live together in harmony. Pretty noble idea huh?

Saw on the news that it's a record heatwave throughout the whole of the United States. Now, that's a first for me. I've lived here over 20 years and I've never seen the entire country in red. Usually it's either the west coast or east coast. At the very least New England would be cool. But no, all red. It got up to 128 degrees in Bakersfield. I didn't know it could get that hot on planet Earth. It's a heatwave in Europe too. Spain is going through it's worst drought in history. Looks like California stole all her water. Nice hazy smog hovered over LA today of course. My chemistry professor commented on smog and the weather, how heatwaves like this will happen more often as time goes on. Kinda sucks how I am learning about all this formation of ozone and smog stuff. Now I understand how these things happen and how we're pretty much screwed as a race unless some magical form of fuel that can be made cheaply is discovered.

And now a quick 180 to news that is less heavy. J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books is now worth an estimated $1 billion US. She is now considered the richest woman in the UK. Self-made at that. Just 10 years ago she worked in a tiny apartment in Edinburgh worrying about how to pay rent. The 4th Harry Potter Movie: "Goblet of Fire" will be the most expensive movie to make to date. It's also the start of when Rowling made these books super fat. The 1st 3 books were the standard 1" thickness. The latest 3 books are around 800 pages. So there was much speculation on how long the movie will be. At first, the studios were going to break the movie into two parts. Then they decided to condense as much as possible into 2 and a half hours. The fans booed. Rumors have the movie at 4 hours long and an intermission in between. My guess is a movie approaching 3 hours long. The 4th book is my favorite so far not counting the 6th, I didn't finish reading it yet. It has Harry trying to go after a Chinese girl. Whom by the way is played by an unknown 18-year-old from an upper middle class family with no acting history. Already Katie Leung has a website and has shown up on Japanese and Asian magazines with paparazzi photos of her in school uniform going to school. Yes, I, like the rest of the world is immersed in Harry Potter mania. I can't wait to see Harry kick butt with magic. This book also starts where Harry gets better at dark arts magic than Hermione.

I am also hooked on "Battlestar Gallactica" currently in its second season on Scifi Channel. It's not the standard scifi series with high tech gadgets in a clean sterilized future. It has a mystical quality to it a la Dune. Religion, faith, and hope play as much a part in this series as piloting skills in a dogfight or programming prowess to crack the code. The gods created man. Man destroys the gods. Man creates the Ceylons. The Ceylons destroys man. And now the 47,000 remaining survivors has to find the gods again to save them. Throw in a hot blond and a cute Asian chick and you've got yourself a series for John.

I decided to dig out the pocket pc pda my brother gave me. And guess what I found out? It has voice recording functions. I just wasted $30 on an mp3 player/voice recorder from Amazon. $30 could've bought me some good food and I could totally use some good food. Oh well, I use that little mp3 player a lot to walk to class and back so it isn't a total waste. It's way more convenient to record lectures anyway. And the NES emulator on the pda does a good Double Dragon 2.

Listening to Ivy - The Edge of the Ocean. Download from Amazon.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Meal Number 4 required

I currently rotate 3 types of meals.

1.
Dried Pasta: $1.00
Jar of spaghetti sauce: $1.75
Corned beef hash: $2.00
Spaghetti total = $4.75

2.
Pot of rice: $0.50
Whole Soy Sauce chicken: $5.00
Chicken w/ rice total: $5.50

3.
Pot of rice: $0.50
3 TV dinners: $3.00
TV dinner w/ rice total: $3.50

These meals last me a day and a half. (3 portions, eat twice a day) With drinks, I am under $4 a day. I try to buy a bag of salad every once in a while. Vietnamese sandwiches have to be fresh. Remember laziness only allows me to go buy food a little more than once a week. And yup, when I am still hungry, that $0.10 packet or ramen is there.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Love and hate

I love how good I feel right now after having a good hinbernation. I just finished my Chem and Math midterms. I did satisfactory on my Chem midterm and my math midterm will probably echo the same. Not an ace like my usual work but oh well.

I hate how I'm gonna feel bad again this Sunday when I have my Physics and Religion midterm on Monday.

I love how I put a can of beef hash into my spaghetti sauce and it tastes just like ground meat sauce. Much better than spam, cocktail weiners, or pho meat. I've finally found a meal I can make that I can store for weeks. Vegetarian spaghetti is quite bland.

I hate how it's getting a hotter now. It got up to 117 in Las Vegas last night.

But I love how here in LA it's still relatively cool. Is it just this city? It's about 10 degrees higher all around LA. Pasadena: 98 degrees. Burbank: 97 degrees. Riverside: 101 degrees. Los Angeles: 87 degrees. It's like how San Francisco is always cooler than the rest of the Bay Area. Whatever it is, it's quite nice especially since the AC repairman came. It's been so cold in my room that I have to wear a jacket and pants. But Ying-Ying rears her ugly prediction. I've been getting headaches since the AC has been on and my face is dry like sand paper.

I hate how the MTV2 dog logo takes up a quarter of the screen and it's not transparent so it covers up subtitles on "The Andy Milonakis Show."

I love how Tony finally bowed down to "internal pressures" and went out to buy toilet paper after being without for 3 days. There were 10+ rolls in the closet when I arrived 1 month ago. Josh is rarely here. I do #2 every other day. You must be emptying out your bowels 5 times a day or something to use a roll every 3 days. I liked how he looked at me with the eyes that said, "Shit, why do I have to buy it again? We both use the bathroom and I bought 12 rolls last time." At least that's what I thought his eyes meant.

I hate how my dial-up disconnects every 5 hours or so. DSL COME TO ME!!!!

I love how my recitation/chem lab professor couldn't figure out the answer to his quiz so he gave everyone a perfect 10. He claims the two ways to calculate the answer as outlined in the book gives different answers. When in actuality, it doesn't. They come out the same to a couple decimal points. I'd point out to him his error, but then what would else would we do with the time? Sit around for an hour? That's right. That's exactly what we do for an EXTRAhour of REQUIRED Chem103 class that was scheduled for more practice on chemistry calculations with a professor who.... well you complete the sentence.

Friday, July 15, 2005

Crunching numbers

To pass time waiting in line or walking to the car, etc, I often calculate numbers in my head. Here's some of the things I work on.

1. Aligners:

I have 3 lower and 2.5 upper aligners left in my straight teeth regiment
Each aligner has to be worn at least 2 weeks and the top and bottom are to be worn concurrently. I'm trying to stagger the changes of top and bottom at different times to minimize pain. In 6 weeks means I will be done with the bottom around Sept 1st just in time for my final orthodontist appointment. Now you may think, just wear the top ones every 3 weeks. But then I'll be changing top and bottoms together in the 4th week.

2. Oil Change interval:

Oil changes should be done every 7500 miles. I know what your dealer or local jiffy lube says, but if I changed oil for a living I'd tell you 3000 miles too. The manual says 7500 and I'm sticking to it. So it's 350 miles to San Jose. 700 miles roundtrip. That means I can make around 10 trips up and down. 4 quarters and 4 days off in each quarter means 8 trips. Plus a little drive around miles. And I should be doing a yearly oil change.

3. Money

$18,000 left. Averaging $1500 a month. 24 months of school left. Doesn't look like I have enough money. I'm gonna need to work one of my summers. I'm also trying to work it down to $1100 a month spending. Meaning I budgeted myself $4 bucks for food a day. An amount Eric says is somewhat impossible.

4. The average distance between the sun and earth

I am a nerd afterall. It takes about 8 minutes for the light to reach earth. If the speed of light is 2.997 x 10^8 meters per second.... Of course I want this in miles so I have to convert about 0.6 km = 1 mile. Of course I can look this up in books, but its more fun this way. Then of course we all know that earth's orbit is not a circle. It's elliptical. In fact we're closer to the sun during winter than in summer, weird huh? So then we need to calculate the length of seasons because we the earth travels faster closer to the sun than farther away....

5. Best bitrate to use when converting all my family guy to fit on one dvd

I need to put 28 episodes onto 4.37 gbs so that I don't have to keep swapping dvds and just have all 28 play randomly. That and all 4 of my disks are skipping badly because I watch them so much. I'm thinking 160 mb per ep is pretty good or can I do better. What if I get the season 3 disks? Do I put all those onto one dvd or decrese bitrate so I can fit all 3 seasons onto 1 dvd?

Listening to Bonnie Mckee - Somebody

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Room for more

I don't have to make up happy stuff today, isn't that radical?

1. Tagumi or however you spell her name was our math class liason for today. The class was discussing a proposal to present to the professor before class. And she became the voice of reason as she eloquently squeaked out, "Can you postpone the midterm until next week." He amazingly granted our wish and the class sighed a heavy relief. I'd like to kiss her, I'm so happy.

2. Tony my silent giant housemate refused to give up on the AC. He tweaked the settings to a triumphant blizzard. "No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater... than central air." Life is good.

3. I walked by a cute Asian chick today and she stopped to ask me to open a bag of candy for her. "Never fear little miss, I will help bring you to your sugary goodness." She thinks I'm strong. It's a good feeling

I love how Nam is always on time.

Fatuitous morbid infatuations

Remember to always look on the bright side. Here we go, the bright side of not getting DSL installed in my dorm room is that I may be kicked out come September. So that means I won't have to pay $200 for the cancelation fees. See, I know how to smile. I paid the application fee for Fall quarter today, but it's still 11 days late.

It's 2AM in the morning while I do my chem lab. I'm just trying to find an excuse to not do it. The same two girls who call me the day before the labs are due called me today but I slept instead. I must have really good answers for them because this is like the 10th lab we've done together and they always ask me questions about it when I haven't even started on it. That sentence was confusing, but whatever.

After last year's Atlantic Hurricane season, I've been infatuated by what goes on out there. I tracked Hurricane Ivan and Jeanne. I saw someone write on the plywood covering their windows, "Don't be a Menace, Dennis." And I watched Tropical Depression 5 mature into Emily. I know Emily so it seems weird to have her start a wrath on some unknown islands. She's unlikely to make it to the States, thank God. The 15th storm of the season is Lee. Another little girl I know. I wonder what inventive plywood wood signs Floridians will come up with for that name.

I love how when Kim calls she always starts a conversation. I'm almost always ready for a conversation because I'm rarely doing anything. And she doesn't start the lame old, "How are you doing?" or "How's work/school/depression/etc?" I swear, the next person that asks me how's school, I'm going to ignore them. See, the proper way to do it is to talk about yourself first. Then I comment. Then you see what questions you can ask from my comment. And it goes from there. Why do you think it's so hard to get anything out of Jack? Because he doesn't have comments so when you ask him questions, it's like asking me, "How's school." It's fine, it's always fine. I tried saying awful or terrible for awhile because the conversation ends at fine. But then I got tired of the standard response. "awww why, what's wrong?" Predictability makes for dry communication. The world needs more phone calls from Kim where you become so engrossed in talk that you forget the purpose of the call in the first place.

Saturday, July 09, 2005

Apocalypse When?

Life is settling quite nicely here in sunny the past couple of weeks. Conversations are going a lot more smoothly with my housemates. Tony has finally decided I exist and we greet each other a few times. Josh is still rarely here. He invited me to go to a party last night but I declined. I'm not sure I would fit in with his crowd. The guy I helped out with tape finally got his DSL up and running. I'm too far away by 6 feet to take advantage of it. We went out to Garden to get some steak. I got a warning on my car for backing into a parking spot. Good thing Kevin asked me out to eat or I would have never went to my car. Crazy London Underground terrorist attacks. It always hits close to home when the things like this happen at a place I was at just a couple years ago. I was there in the morning rushing to the airport on the busy Underground Subways. Crazy landlady never sent me my deposit as I knew already she wouldn't. She called and said come pick it up. I really hate seeing her. I thought I didn't have to see her anymore. The plan was she would give the place a once over and write me a check and I'd be on my merry way. But no, she gave me a lousy excuse and said she would check it later and send me the deposit. I even left my phone number and address to send. She calls 3 weeks later to say the deposit is ready, come and get it. WHY MUST SHE SEE ME? SEND THE DAMM CHECK!!!! I really don't want to see her write me a puny check for $40 and have to keep a calm face when she should be giving me back more like $300. I just want the whole thing over with. Ying Ying keeps having computer problems and I don't know why she asks me for help. I'm too far away to help with anything. Hurricane Dennis is coming, that's number 4 already. There's just been too many natural disasters this past year. Going backwards: we got record rains this winter. Tsunami. Mt St Helens steam and back to the 4 major hurricanes in a month to hit Florida. I'm just getting paranoid from that movie that has just slipped my mind. The day after Yesterday or something like that. Two midterms at the end of next week. I am ready for Chem, but behind in math again. I might be kicked out of the dorm in couple of months. Seems, you have to sign a new license agreement twice a year. One for Summer and one for Fall-Spring terms. Well, I just moved in and didn't know and the Fall-Spring term was due last week. Thanks for telling me. This school remains wholly impersonal in the way things have to be done. My RA says the people are busy doing upkeep over on the Phase II buildings so they don't have time to do any work orders over here. It may take them a couple of months before they come over here and fix the AC. Yeah that makes sense, fix up rooms that have no one living in them. Besides, they came on the same day to fix my garbage disposal. Too busy huh? Looks like no AC for me, but since the weather is weird, LA has been fairly cool since I've been here with the exception of Nam's weekend here.

Oh and I just saw something on TV I felt a little ashamed of. I saw the movie where there is this expert sharpshooter who is the number one sniper in WWII. I was just thinking, I saw this movie with Kim at the theatres a while back. Why? Because Jack and Nam were watching some cartoon. I forgot exactly how it was but the three of us guys were going to watch a movie. I got outvoted on what to watch and then Kim showed up and said she wanted to watch this other movie instead. I said, "Sure, what the hell, I don't know what this movie is about but a 2 hour movie is better than a 90 minute cartoon." Heheh, quantity over quality... Anyway, I chose a girl over the guys. Bad bad... I have no excuse. I can say though, I made a good choice. That movie was really good. And it's not like we talk during the movie anyway. All 4 of us went out to eat afterwards... I think. So it's not that big a deal. Sorta, whatever...

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

A New Leaf

I'm gonna try something different from now on. See if you can spot it. Well, I'll try anyway, I don't know how long I can keep it up. I don't even know if I can through this post. But we'll see.

Came home on Wednesday night to spend July 4th weekend in the comforts of home. Andrew was in a new sick funk. Additional baby teeth are coming out. I took him to the doctor and he cried and cried as the doctor examined his mouth. The nurse seemed surprised that he was saying mama. I don't know, is it strange to have a baby with teeth and talking at 11 months? 'Cause he's been doing that since 8 months so it's nothing new.

Watched War of the World with the gang over the weekend as well. Initially, I hesitated but Nam said "Everyone will be there." That means I see everyone all at once without going out multiple times. That's some efficency. The movie wasn't bad. There were two many discrepancies with the story but Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning's acting was superb along with some of the greatest computer special effects I have ever seen. I don't know what it is, maybe it's a new haircut or maybe it's happiness but Kim looked good that night. Nam wore a pink tie and I thought it looked kinda odd. I had a small chuckle with myself when he told Ky that no one else said anything about the tie except him. Hehe, damm Ky. I was a little disappointed that Deepak had left so fast after the movie. I didn't even have a chance to say anything to him. He's one of a few number of people I still want to keep in touch with. Maybe next time I'm in town then.

I love how when you go out with Ying Ying, she doesn't talk on the phone with someone else. When she gets a phone call, she quickly tells the person she is busy and hangs up. I just think it's common courtesy that your attention remains with the person you are with. But it's amazing how few people realize that. I've gone out with so many people who actively engage in conversations with someone else with me sitting there doing nothing staring at nothing. It's not just the cell phone though. It's the whole attitude. When I'm with someone, my full attention goes to them. It's just rude otherwise. So it's very comfortable being with someone who treats me the same way I treat them.

陳培勇的世界