I had in mind a few things to write but as my time got diminished, I never got a chance to. Let's just start with highlights.
1M. I thought I would be smart and take advantage of a sweet laptop deal they had at circuit city. But instead of circuit city, I would price match it at bestbuy. See, I have a couple of gifts that I could return at bestbuy and use the proceeds towards my new laptop. Unfortunately, price matching does not include mail-in rebates. Now I have $175 in bestbuy store credit. Being that I held a $100 bestbuy gift cards for almost a year... I didn't even use that old gift card, my friend kindly took it off my hands and paid me cash... this is the suxors.
2F. No text messages on my phone. Grrrr... I hate those things. Cingular just raised their prices to 15 cents each.
3M. Spent 2 days fixing a computer that wouldn't go on the internet to find out the USB adapter is faulty. My gosh, I went through the whole format and reinstall!
4F. $25.99 Lobster dinner. Skiing was subpar this weekend due to my poor performance. I guess it's acceptable due to my 2 year absence. Luckily misery loves company as Y-Y twisted her ankle, Kim has foot-squeezing syndrome, and Jack had... I don't know what Jack had. As I always say, "good food and good company" Can't beat that for a Christmas weekend. "Little Miss Sunshine" is surprisingly refreshing as well.
5M. 3 whole weeks in San Jose and I still have not managed to see her. With 3 days left, I'll have to say Happy New Year to her here.
6F. Finally received my Family Guy DVD's. They are my favorite gifts this year.
There's a lot of talk about the death penalty in local news. Convicts are getting cruel and unusual punishment. Some people like me are asking why we treat them so nice. Convicts get to sit around and write to their penpals all day. THAT'S RIGHT! Letters! Actual snail mail. I've got something in common with serial murderers and child molestors. I like to receive hand written letters from people living far far away. Sadly, I think I am fighting a losing battle. People just don't take the time and care to do that anymore. I got duped last month. Casual mentioning of my penpal-ing led to "Oh, I'd like to get a letter from you too!" To which I enthusiastically replied, "Will you write me too?" She nodded affirmative and I was giddy with excitement. I wrote a long letter as soon as I got back to LA. A week later I received an email sayinging, "I thought I would email you, it would take me forever to reply by hand." Grrrrrr...... My Malaysian friend has fallen silent lately as well. I guess it's time to hang up the pen and give this written thing a rest. =(
There's nothing better than an early morning ride around the bay area couped up with friends in a small car. This morning reminds me of that Alanis Morisette music video, Ironic, where they are all just sitting around laughing in the car. That's what we did this morning. Some may say we're crazy. There are starving people in the world who can't get food and we're going wake up at 5 AM to wait in line for 2 hours in 37 degree weather to buy a $250 game system? I'm not going to make excuses for our affluence. I will just say that the journey was well worth it. We're all entering that stage of life where morning jaunts like this will become distant memories as responsibilities and old age catch up to us. We need to savor our health and spontaneity My heart wasn't exactly set on getting it. I was buying it for someone else so it wasn't too disappointing to me. Went to 4 Targets and a Bestbuy. Heard a couple of reports from Binh and end up at Carrows with breakfast. Nothing beats that. Well, if we actually got a Wii, that would have been better. But just like real fishing, today has nothing to do with fish or Wii's. It's all about good company. Cheers everyone!
1a. Close the door when you pee. This is not an all male house. 1b. Pee when you have even the slightest urge. If you wait, it could be a 3 hour marathon. 2a. Wear extra clothes. Your family is too poor to turn on the heat. Brrrrr. 2b. Wear pants. Not too hard to forget. Kinda cold to walk around in your underwear 3. Hide all electronics and sunglasses when not in use. Andrew called the number 3 eight times on my phone. That's 8 minutes wasted.
Benefits of being at home
1. Someone washes your dishes. 2. TVB!!!! TVB!!!! TVB!!!! 3. Family
Wanna learn something about Y-Y? No? Then you probably shouldn't keep reading.
A little less than 2 years ago, I get a call from her asking to install a printer. I gave her the same line I give all people who dare to ask me for free tech support. "I am not your computer guy, call up Sunny or Sonny." But being the pushover that I am and being the persistent person that she is, I succumbed to the pressure. I told her to go download your printer drivers and install them.
"What is the web address?" she asks.
It's probably written on your manual and on your printer somewhere. Idiot, you have an epson printer and you are asking for the address? Ever heard of .com? The next question is what irked me.
"What model printer do I have?" she asks.
Are you kidding me? I am 350 miles away from you and you are asking me what model printer you have? How am I supposed to know that? It's written on there somewhere. Can't you look?
"I figure you know and could tell me, that way I don't have to look," she mumbles.
She was right, I did know. But I refused to tell her on grounds that, laziness like that is uncalled for. See, I am happy to help people who can't help themselves. A ride to work. Lift up a heavy object. Directions to a hard to find place. But bending over to look at the model number of your printer? No, I draw the line here. My sister countered with, "It's still a technical thing, it isn't that easy." No it is easy, you people are lazy.
Fast forward to last week and she's rounding off digital camera model numbers to me. She even pointed out my error. I don't have a S600. I have a Z60. What is the difference? I don't know but she does. Later at Hawaiian BBQ, Kim points out that Y-Y is like the digital camera junkie or guru. She knows so much about it. She knows more than me. Why does she know so much? Because she is picking out a camera for her friend. She wants to make sure she gets a good one. She even mentions something about a Zen V Plus? The heck is that? I just found out today. It's a really neat looking mp3 player that just came out.
Now think carefully like me. She's not willing to do work for herself. But!!!! She's happy to go through all the hoops for a friend. Crazy, I know. So she's the friend to have unless you happen to be a tech guy lost in Silent Hill.
*Edit 12/14/06 I've decided that if I could do it again. I would have done the exact same thing. It's not necessarily the right thing to do. But it was the thing to do. I would do it over again.
I've always tried to keep to myself. Among friends, if it's not my business, I try to stay out of it. Sure, I take sides. I'm not one of those holier-than-thou-art. I bicker as much as the next guy. Even so, I try to stay out of situations and let the responsible parties resolve their predicaments. Kim and I had another gossip session this morning. She told me there is so much drama in "the group." I don't know what the group is but I sure do love drama. See, it doesn't affect me anymore. That's why it is so intriguing. I am 350 miles away from the source. How can it possibly affect me? After years of gossiping about others starting up sh*t, it's finally my turn to create drama. I do it with reckless abandon just to watch the repercussions. However, I've begun to encroach upon harmless but mean fun to vicious malice. Actually, I probably crossed the line months ago but didn't notice it. The other day, I was woken up to my wrong-doings by someone that did not approve. Although the accusations were not entirely correct, fault still lay upon me. I was ashamed of my actions and apologized. Now it is time to reflect on my actions and decide on what is the best course to take. Do I like the road I am taking?
She's magnificent. She's gorgeous. So beautiful. Some may call her wide but I think that makes her even cuter.She's vibrant and exciting, always ready to make me smile. She put on a show for us guys tonight. We watched her do tricks with a Playstation 3 like no one else can. There's only one problem. She belongs to someone else. I wonder if she has a sister.
I don't make sense to myself sometimes. Actually, a lot of times. A goal in life for me is to be like everyone else. Go to school, get a job. Get married and have 2.5 kids with the white picket fence house, yada yada yada. But for my email I wanted to be different. I happened upon www.mail.com by accident when trying to look for a new email account a few years ago. Hotmail's 2 mb limit was severely lacking. Yahoo's 6 mb was more attractive but it got spam mail before I even started using it. (Yeah it was that long ago.) Then I found this lesser known site giving 10 mb free and 4 mb attachments in email. What a steal! It had the highest storage limit of all the free email clients out there and you could choose from among 44 unique .com endings.
I found poetic.com and was truly satisfied. Throughout the years poetic.com has served me well. People would widen their eyes when I tell them my email address. They'll say, "Ooooh, are you a poet?" "Why yes I am," I would proudly affirm. It was always a good topic for discussion. It's just too bad email addys are usually the last thing people give out in random encounters.
Mail.com didn't have financial problems like other free email companies battling Yahoo and Microsoft. They got money by inundating their email client with ads. Which I didn't mind for the priviledge of using the highest storage limit and highest per email limit address. I started getting 2 popups at login and a popup for every click. Popup blocker stopped that. It started from 1 single banner at the top of the screen to 4 more surrounding your email. All this I didn't mind. What I did mind was the server stress every morning. It's been going on for almost 3 years now. You'd think they would have upgraded their systems by now to handle the increased load of morning rush. I usually just wait it out an hour or so. But these days the stress spans almost four hours into the afternoon. Quite annoying. Then this mysterious company from out of nowhere started offering 2 gb limits on their email storage. I thought good, people will start using that and there will be less load on their systems. Also they would increase their storage limit to compete.
Sadly, I watched Yahoo increase their limit to 1 gb. Hotmail went to 250 mb. And I soldiered on with my 10. I tried hard to live by that constraint. I've deleted a few good emails from times of yore. I curse repeatedly when I can't check my email because "System Busy" flashes on my screen. I even jumped ship to that 2 gb email but gosh that email client is so user-friendly I want to kill myself. I like basic no help email. I don't know how to do things the easy way. I only like to do things the logical way. I don't like how it adds people to my address book without asking me. Yahoo's email client, however, improved immensely. Their new spam engine got rid of a lot of junk mail. I thought this may be my next home for email but yahoo annoyingly virus scans my attachments. If it finds a virus, it won't send it. And I still don't see why they can't send my excel spreadsheet because it has a macro in it.
I didn't switch because I didn't want to be like everyone else and their yahoo.com and hotmail.com. I wanted to be different and stand out. Today, my patience has finally paid off as mail.com increased storage limits to 100 mb. They also have hundreds of .com endings now. I even picked up cheerful.com for my free stuff email signups. So here's a toast to you mail.com. Thank you for all you've done for me. May our friendship continue to blossom. Now if only they would fix that server problem...
