Pat's Random Thoughts

I'm still alive!

2010-10-15T10:38:00.000-07:00

It just occurred to me that it's been over a year since my last blog post. Time flies.

Since the last time I'd actively blogged, Raptr has grown from 0 to 30 people. I now have a beautiful 8 month old daughter. Things have definitely changed!

I've been having a lot of ideas in my head on what I'd like to blog about for the next few months. Since my life has been fully integrated into Raptr, I've learned a lot about the lifecycle of a start-up and I'd like to share a bit about what it's like to be working at a start-up and the kind of things you should expect once you join a start-up.

Stay tuned for some interesting articles!

Did you just insult my race?

2009-09-17T15:49:00.000-07:00

Had a strange conversation with the blackjack dealer while I was playing in vegas:

Dealer: Hello. How are you doing?

Me: Fine

Dealer: Are you chinese?

Me: Yeah

Dealer: Wow really? No way!

Me: Way

Dealer: You're too good looking to be chinese!

Me: ...

P90X will make you lose weight

2009-02-25T10:34:00.000-08:00

Had a conversion this morning with Ray over IM:

(9:24:43 AM) tekkaray: guess what? i'm gonna start workin out again
(9:24:43 AM) tekkaray: haha
(9:24:46 AM) gxb2: haha nice
(9:24:48 AM) gxb2: i want to do that too
(9:24:51 AM) gxb2: wanna do it together?
(9:24:57 AM) gxb2: join the 24 nearby my place

(9:25:07 AM) tekkaray: my friends and i got p90x
(9:25:10 AM) gxb2: what's that?
(9:25:11 AM) tekkaray: and i tried it this morning
(9:25:12 AM) tekkaray: and i died
(9:25:20 AM) tekkaray: infomercial wokrout dvds haha

(9:25:35 AM) tekkaray: but they got really good reviews
(10:28:19 AM) gxb2: oh i see
(10:28:23 AM) gxb2: let's watch it together
(10:33:23 AM) gxb2: with popcorn
(10:33:39 AM) tekkaray: "wow those guys are really working out hard huh?"
(10:33:45 AM) tekkaray: "yup... pass the popcorn"

1, 2, 3, 4 by Plain White T's

2009-01-15T01:12:00.000-08:00

The radio was playing the song "1, 2, 3, 4" by Plain White T's today while I was on my way driving to the Raptr off-site event with Kevin sitting by my side. The conversation went something like this:

Kevin: Man. This song is SO cheesy.

Me: I paid for this song on iTunes.

*5 seconds of awkward silence*

Kevin: I'm so sorry.

smart cat

2008-11-06T10:41:00.001-08:00

Happened this morning when I realized that my co-worker Michael had stayed overnight at the office:

Me: So I heard that you stayed overnight at the office?

Michael: Yeah. I've got a lot to do and my cat won't let me go to bed late at home. He starts making as much sound as possible by 1am to annoy me until I go to bed.

Me: Why don't you try changing the times on all your clocks at your hosue so that he won't think that it's so late?

Michael: I've tried! It didn't work!

My Raptr Card!

2008-09-03T20:24:00.001-07:00

The Challenge

2008-06-26T05:54:00.000-07:00

The Challenge:
- Post 3 things you've done in your lifetime that you don't think anybody else on your friends list has done.
- See if anybody else responds with "I've done that." If they have, you need to add another!(2.b., 2.c., etc...)
- Have your friends cut & paste this into their journal to see what unique things they've done in their life.

1. Competed professionally in Quake and represented the United States at international team tournaments
2. Ate the Filipino delicacy, Balut, once. (super gross)
3. Came out of my mother's womb

My thoughts on the American Idol Finale

2008-05-20T23:11:00.000-07:00

Now that the American Idol Finale is over and that all the voting deadline has passed, I thought I would share my thoughts on the two contestants' performances tonight.

David Archuleta had a slight advantage going into the night since he won the coin toss and chose to sing second. Historically speaking, I think the singer who sang second always won at the finale.

Cook did a good job on the first and the third song. The second song was a little too boring for a finale song. I suspect he had a tough time picking a rock song that could really play with the audience's emotions, and for that I felt sympathetic for him.

Archuleta really delivered on all three songs. There were no surprises on song choice - he chose songs with lyrics that really won over millions of teeny boppers. By the time he was done with his second song, I already knew that he would win the competition. Cook really had no chance there.

After not voting at all throughout the entire season, I thought I really needed to cast my vote on whom I think should win the whole thing. As much as I liked Archuleta's performances tonight, I voted for Cook. Just like Chris Daughty, a contestant who didn't even make it to the final three a couple seasons ago, Cook posesses the same creativity and originality throughout the season. He took risky song choices week after week, and his singing style is certainly more current than Archuleta's. Will I buy an album by Archuleta? Probably not. Will I buy an album by Cook? You bet!

Now that the season is over, I guess I'll check out So You Think You Can Dance? next week.

Why I left Google to Join a Start-up

2008-05-14T06:14:00.000-07:00

I left Google in August, 2007 to follow my dreams to co-found a new start-up with my friend Dennis Fong in online gaming named Raptr. Many of my friends thought I was crazy for leaving the #1 place to work for in America. I thought I was crazy for leaving at the time too :). But looking back nine months from now, it don't regret moving on to take the plunge to join the start-up world.

Other ex-Googlers will agree that leaving Google is not that easy. In fact, Google makes it so hard for you to leave I described my experience to my friends as breaking up with a long time girl friend who pampers me, understands me and loves me dearly.

Working at Google was different from working for any other company I'd ever worked for in the past. Instead of feeling I was working for a company, they made every effort to make me feel I was part of the company from the very first day I joined. I guess since everyone had to go through the grilling interview process, everyone was treated with respect from day one. A lot of companies at this size would have a deep organization chart - so deep that after awhile you have no clue how your work impacts the company anymore. Google management trusted its employees by sharing its vision and secrets to its employees openly. Employees at other companies may leak those info immediately, but this rarely happened during my time at Google. I had an awesome manager who really trusted in me and gave me the freedom to do what I wanted. Everyone was highly academic, and you're encouraged to continue to learn through internal and external Tech Talks all the time. It was the closest thing to going to college without going to college. It was my dream job. I remember saying to myself that wow, this place is awesome. I can see myself working here for decades!

I can also talk forever about how hard it was to walk away awesome perks like the good food, snacks, free gym, discounted massages, ski trips, crazy X-mas parties, sand volleyball court, etc, etc. But the hardest thing to walk away from was all the phenomenal Engineers whom I got to work with there. I really feel fortunate to have been surrounded by so many Engineers who are not just brilliantly smart, but are also nice, modest, and self-driven. While I was there, I had the chance to launch over 50+ products (Video, Checkout, Docs & Spreadsheets to name a few) and work with 500+ engineers. I learned all about how to design and deploy complex web infrastructure, and mostly importantly I became good friends with many people that will last for a life time.

So given all the good things I've got to say about Google, why did I decide to leave? I knew I was pretty good at what I was doing at Google, and I knew I could continue to stay happy doing working there. However, I was 28 at the time and I had never worked full time at a start-up before. Being inherently a pretty entrepreneurial person, I guess you could say that I had the itch to find out what it's really like to be at a start-up from ground up. So when my friend Dennis approached me to be part of the founding team of his new company, I knew it was an opportunity for me to apply what I'd learned from Google to take on a bigger challenge in my career. I was of course a bit worried at the beginning for leaving a bigger company and joining a risky venture, but I soon realized that if things did not work out, I knew I could always go back to the big corporation world.

It has definitely been fun working at Raptr so far. We grew the company from a team of four at the beginning to 13 in a little less than eight months. Being at a small company, I have the opportunity to not only work with a small group of bright, talented people, but I also get to wear many different hats and be exposed to the blueprint of how to start and run a company from the first day and the decision making that goes on at every single stage of a company. There are also many things that I learned from the Google culture that I am now trying to apply to a start up, but I will save the details for another post. :)

My experience at Google will stay dearly in my heart. I plan to continue to keep in close touch with all the Googlers I've come to know. Hopefully one day I'll get the opportunity with some of them again. Google is a great company and will continue to stay great for decades to come. It would be cool to one day tell my future grandchildren that "Yes. Your grandpa once worked at Google and used to play volleyball with Sergey Brin back in the day."

MacBook - Thin Enough

2008-05-11T08:46:00.000-07:00

Anita really wanted to get the Macbook Air when it first came out a few months ago. It took me some time to convince her of all the technical reasons why the Macbook is actually a much better buy than the Air (lack of ethernet port, firewire, less stable HD, no DVD drive, etc).

The debate about whether or not the Macbook is better over the Air lasted for a few weeks. After awhile, I came to realize that she didn't really care all that much about the technical specs of the computer. Rather, she wanted the Air because it was thin and cool looking. Nevertheless, being the geek that I am, I refused to go against my own believe and got her a Macbook for her birthday instead.

She turned out to really like it afterall. And to top it off, I found this video for her to convince her that the Macbook is thin enough to be cool:

Reflexology, pressure points, and orgasm

2008-05-10T09:22:00.000-07:00

Last night I threw a surprise birthday dinner for Anita at the red crane in Cupertino. What an awesome dinner. We also had a lot of interesting conversations to complement the great food. Here's one that's worth mentioning:

Me: "There's this reflexology place that just opened recently around the corner. It's only $20 for an hour! I go there all the time!"

Mariam: "Oh I want to go!"

Dennis: "No you are not supposed to go if you are pregnant. Different parts of your feet represent different parts of your body. Getting one might give you a miscarriage."

Tim: "Have you heard much about different pressure points on your body? It's like they can press on a certain part of your body, and all of a sudden your hand might freeze or something."

Pat: "Whoa really?"

Tim: "Yeah. I've heard of cases where you go there and if they press on your temple, you'll get an instant orgasm or something."

Mariam: "Oh! I'd get it all the time!"

Diem: "Hmm I don't know if it's worth it. It's like they press on your temple really quick and they just go 'here! orgasm! done!'"

office shopping at ikea != fun

2008-05-07T08:55:00.000-07:00

After being at the Plug & Play Tech Center for almost 10 months, we are finally moving to our own office space!

For those unfamiliar with the PnP Tech Center, it's a big incubation space made up of hundreds of early stage start ups. What's nice about this place is that they provide you with all the furniture and most of the network/phone capabilities, and you just need to focus on building your product.

Lately, our team has gotten bigger and louder (thanks to all the epic nerf gun battles that we have there), and we decided that we should get our own space so that we will have room to grow and that we will not disturb any other companies. What this also means is that we now have to buy all kinds of new furniture for the new office.

Dennis, Kevin and I stopped by IKEA on Monday to pick out the furniture. It started out pretty nice as the place was relatively quiet on a weekday, and we were taking our time trying out different couches, desks, etc. Midway through, fatigue sat in and we realized we were trapped by IKEA's brilliant floor plan design, forcing us to walk around and around the god-damnned building. To top it off, us three had to load up 6 big carts with heavy pieces of furniture.

We were all pretty tired near the end, and we saw from far away that they were selling hot dogs and cinnabons. We were starving, and we wanted to eat badly. But we were afraid someone would take away our cart if we just abandoned it in the aisle. So we went up to one of the guys working there:

Dennis: "Hi. How can we leave our carts here without someone taking them away from us?"

Ikea guy: "Oh yeah. Just park them over in that area to the left and I will give you a sign that says "I'm still shopping" and you can put it in your cart."

What a brilliant idea. They really have all these scenarios thought through for the customers.

It must have been my first time eating at IKEA in ages: I'd forgotten how cheap the food is there. Hot dogs were $0.50 each. Or you can get 2 hot dogs, chips, and a soft drink for $2.50. You also get a box full of 6 cinnabons for $4. We went ahead and bought 6 cinnabons and 4 hot dogs. By the time we're done eating, we still have 3 extra cinnabons sitting on the table.

Dennis: "Should we just toss it?"

Kevin: "That'd be such a waste. Let's bring them back to work."

Dennis: "But we've got 6 cart full of stuff with us. Let's just leave it on the table and see if anyone will just take it."

Me: "Wait. If they have a 'I'm still shopping sign', naturally shouldn't they also have a 'I'm still eating' sign?"

It ended up taking us four hours at IKEA to get everything that we needed. I'm so not going there again for the next few years.

My mom cracks me up sometimes

2008-05-04T09:18:00.000-07:00

Background: My parents and I are meeting up with my grandma and my relatives for dim sum today to celebrate Mother's day a week early.

[happened last night after dinner at my parents' house]

Mom: "There's still a lot of food left. Do you want to take some home?"

Me: "Hmm. No it's ok. I'm going to be getting dim sum tomorrow. I don't think I'll have a chance to eat the leftovers"

Mom: "Oh you are getting dim sum tomorrow? Me too! Which restaurant are you going to?"

kidism

2008-05-04T08:41:00.000-07:00

I gathered with my family to celebrate my little nephew Jason's 4 year old birthday. Just like all other birthday parties, my sister had bought him helium balloons.

While he was walking around the house with the balloons, he had accidentally let go of one of them, letting it float all the way up to the ceiling. Instant sad expression on his face.

Not wanting the rest of the balloons to get away from his hands, I decided to tie the balloons that he's holding on to with the little toy car that he had in his other hand.

Me: "Jason, now you can let go of the balloons and they will not fly away anymore."

Jason: "No!"

Me: "Come on, Jason. Just let go. Trust me, the balloons won't fly away!"

Jason: [holding on to the balloons with his right hand and the toy car with his left]

At this point, Jason started to look more and more distressed. Dude, just let go of the balloons! Didn't you take chemistry and physics?

So there I was, staring at a traumatized little nephew who had just lost a balloon a minute ago and is now fighting not to let go of another balloon, right?

Me: "Jason, how about I untie the car from the balloons so that your car will not float away?"

Jason: "Ok!"

Ahh... I miss being a child sometimes.

Jacqueline's and Steven's engagement photos

2008-03-25T22:41:00.000-07:00

Ever since I got the dSLR, I've been itching to take wedding/engagement shots of people. When I found out that my friend Jacqueline was getting married, it was clear that she and her fiancé would be the perfect target for my first engagement photo session experiment!

We spent a couple hours last Sunday taking some photos at her condo and in downtown San Jose. We had such a blast! They were a bit camera shy at the beginning, and I was a little bit nervous taking engagement shots for the first time. Near the end, however, we became lot more relaxed and that's when it became much easier to take good photos.

Anyways, here are some of the pictures taken over the weekend. I hope I'll have the opportunity to take more portrait shots of people in the future!

Picture from the Moon

2008-01-05T09:36:00.000-08:00

Anita and I flew over to the moon last night. It's amazing to look up the sky and see the beautiful Earth looking right back at me. I had Anita snap a quick picture of me before I ran out of breath. Here's the proof!

What's up with this 65+MPH wind...

2008-01-04T09:12:00.000-08:00

5 inches of rain in one day? Wind guesting from 65 MPH al the way up to 100MPH? In California? WTF mate.

I thought the whole reason why we have to pay so much taxes is because we are guaranteed to have nice, sunny weather, no?

Screw it. I'm moving up to Seattle!

Paris photo

2008-01-04T00:46:00.000-08:00

It was nice to finally visit Paris.

Aiya

2008-01-01T15:20:00.000-08:00

Due to my lack of activity on this site, traffic has dropped substantially in 2007.

Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture"

2007-09-22T09:44:00.000-07:00

Ahh.. I feel like I haven't blogged for awhile. How is everyone out there doing? Do you guys still read my blog? :(

I had trouble going to bed last night, and so I decided to spend two hours watching Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture." For those of you who don't know who he is, Randy is a CS professor at CMU who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a year ago. Doctor tells him that he only has a few more weeks to live.

Must be pretty crazy trying to figure out what to do with your life with only a few weeks left. Randy decided to give one last lecture to everyone. The lecture wasn't about computer science or anything technical, but rather it was about how to follow your childhood dreams.

The lecture was a little less than 2 hours long, but I found it to be one of the most inspiring and amazing videos I've watched. I feel like I've learned a lot about him after only watching this lecture. I tip my hat off to him for giving such an honest, powerful talk to others when he really didn't have to.

Here were a few cool quotes from the video:

"When you're screwing up and nobody's saying anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you."

"The brick walls are there for a reason; they let us prove how badly we want things"

You guys should watch it. It rocks.

Here's the first part of it.. You can click on the bottom link to view the rest of the clips.

Watch it here

Pretty good quote

2007-09-12T23:52:00.000-07:00

“I have noticed that in technology we’re surrounded by very smart people. IQ is virtually a commodity. However, there are those who are analysts – can ask 1 million questions, and be skeptical of everything; then there are doers, people who apply their intellect and resourcefulness to find solutions. Find those people and keep them close to you. Stay a 100 miles away from the former”.

Wedding slideshow!

2007-08-31T00:30:00.001-07:00

http://weddingphotojournal.com/s-chan-li/

Enjoy!

What to eat for dinner

2007-07-18T16:11:00.000-07:00

My wifey is abandoning me for dinner tonight. She's gonna be going to a nice sales event dinner while leaving me all alone.

Who wants to go to dinner with me? :(

I am the very model of a modern major Googler

2007-07-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

I hate posting about work stuff, but I found this pretty entertaining song on youtube today. It's a satirical work to the tune of "The Major-General's Song"

Just listen to it, it's kind of uhm.... err... it's REALLY GEEKY!

I didn't know Barry Bonds had a dog...

2007-07-10T16:00:00.001-07:00

Look at this!!

I'm pretty elite

2007-07-10T08:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you get reminded that you're really cool by the strangest thing. For example, I logged on to my gmail this morning, and I saw the following page (pay attention to the # of unread emails):

Hello from Puerto Vallarta!

2007-06-22T11:02:00.000-07:00

On my mini-moon right now... Wanted to share you guys the view from the balcony. :)

My wedding slideshow

2007-06-20T00:15:00.000-07:00

We ran into some technical difficulties while playing the slideshow at my wedding. :) So I decided to post it here for those who didn't get to watch the entire thing.

I will also be making this available on my wedding website pretty soon.

Shocking surprise

2007-06-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

During a bi-weekly team meeting today, I was surprised by the team with lots and lots of gifts for my upcoming wedding. It totally caught me off guard, and the only thing could come up from my mouth was "thank you sooooo much." They really didn't have to do this!

I really wish I could invite my entire team to the wedding. However, due to the golf club's capacity, they have a capacity limit of 230 people only. Unfortunately we have already reached that number. :(

So those of you who are coming, you should feel lucky! Make sure you get REALLY drunk at the wedding. :)

10 days left til...

2007-06-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

no more freedom!! :-(

Just kidding. :)

There's still so much left to be done though. I actually don't know if I can finish it all by then. If I don't finish them all, I guess I'm going to have to postpone the wedding...

Let the countdown begin...

2007-06-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

11 days to go! Are you guys excited too?

Car says, "Wash me please!"

2007-05-30T10:13:00.000-07:00

This is what happens if you don't wash your car often enough. The car will wash itself.

A little background about what happened here. Christelle came over to Google for dinner. As she pulled into the parking spot, I instructed her to pull up to this particular spot. After we were done with dinner, we found her car taking a shower happily

It's 3am and I'm still awake.

2007-05-06T03:01:00.000-07:00

note to self: do not drink Vietnamese iced coffee at night.

Picture speaks a thousand words

2007-05-04T11:12:00.000-07:00

Go warriors! See you guys in round 2!

300 rocks

2007-04-18T13:49:00.000-07:00

Finally went out and saw it last night at the IMAX theatre in SF. What can I say. It's probably one of the best movies I've ever seen in my life. I highly encourage those who haven't seen the movie to go see it on the IMAX screen. It's sooooooooooooooooooooo nice.

Spartan King Leonidas: [Turning towards the Spartans] Spartans! What is your profession?
Spartans: Harooh! Harooh! Harooh!
Spartan King Leonidas: See old friend, I brought more soldiers than you did.

I want to be a Spartan now!

I am too cheap to dial 411

2007-04-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

So I use 1-800-GOOG-411 instead. It's free. :)

My wedding website

2007-03-30T11:24:00.000-07:00

Woohoo. My wedding website is finally up. Go and check out Anita & Patrick's Wedding site!

I'm a dork

2007-03-16T08:47:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning thinking today was St. Patrick's day. Because of that, I naturally thought that it would be a good idea to wear this shirt to work.

Halfway through my meeting this morning, someone saw my shirt and asked, "Today is St. Patrick's day?" Another person responded "No. It's tomorrow."

Man I feel like a dork.

Recursive cats

2007-03-09T00:09:00.000-08:00

You are about to see the coolest thing you have ever seen in your life.

What happens when a cat looks at another cat on the screen, that's looking at another cat on the screen, that's looking at....

Find out what happens here!

Living in 2007

2007-03-02T12:05:00.000-08:00

YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2007 when...

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

7 Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.

8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile.
: )

12. You're reading this and nodding and laughing.

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't a #9 on this list

AND NOW YOU ARE LAUGHING at yourself.

Go on, forward this to your friends. You know you want to

I'm a YouTube Junkie

2007-02-25T11:22:00.000-08:00

The benefit of becoming a member of youtube is the ability to track the number of videos you've watched. Here's my stats:

Joined: March 15 2006

Last Login: 2 days ago

Videos Watched: 1,221

Ouch. Assuming each video averaged out to be 5 minutes, then I've watched 1221 * 5 / 60 = 101.75 hours of videos! That's an average of ~18 minutes per day wasted that I could have spent it on other things like... watching videos on Google Video!

Is it too late to change profession?

2007-02-20T11:54:00.000-08:00

Back in the day when I used to play Quake all day, my parents used to tell me I was wasting my time for nothing.

They were wrong.

Surgeons who play video games more skilled

Happy PIG year.

2007-02-16T15:51:00.000-08:00

So, I believe the Chinese new year eve is this coming Saturday. We will enter the year of the PIG when the clock strikes 12 on Sunday morning.

What does this mean? Well, this should be a good excuse to throw a New Years eve party! Who's in?

How to make minced beef over rice

2007-02-16T15:36:00.000-08:00

When I go to ghetto HK style restaurants, I always like to order my favorite 窩蛋免治牛肉飯 (minced beef over rice). I've always wanted to learn how to make it since I was a little kid, and now, thanks to the Internets, my dream has come true!

Learn how to make it here

John Legend visits Google

2007-02-15T11:50:00.000-08:00

John Legend visited us last week and gave me a small little concert. One of the Googlers named Brian Bautista asked John whether or not he could sing a duet with him for the song Ordinary People, which John gladly accepted! It was definitely the highlight of the concert. I'm a John Legend fan now.

The Best Valentine's Dinner

2007-02-15T09:54:00.000-08:00

This year's valentine's day marked the one year engagement anniversary between me and Anita. Tired of all fine dining outdoor and celebrating, I decided to do the unimaginable - Cook dinner for the very first time at home and surprise Anita!

To prepare for such a meal, I began doing my research about a week in advance. I asked my friends, went on the Internet, looked at cookbooks, and watched the food channel secretly. Soon after I realized that all of those sites and shows were filled with impossible recipes that I would have no confidence in cooking. I said to myself, should I make steak? chicken? fish? ramen? After more thought, I decided to go with chicken since it's the toughest one to go wrong. Ok, chicken it is!

But then chicken can get dry too, and most of the recipes that I found online were sorta boring. Maybe I shouldn't cook dinner after all.

Then, just at that very moment, my sister IM'd me online! I decided to ask her how I can cook chicken without messing up, and she gave me this super duper secret recipe that's guaranteed to be yummy. Sweet.

Ingredients

So off I went to the grocery store and I bought home tons of food! I took me about a total of 3 hours to finish cooking everything. I made:

southwestern corn soup
soy sauce chicken with oyster sauce that I forgot to add
ice-cream with fresh fruits and chocolates

Overall it went very well. I think Anita was impressed by my cooking given the fact that it's my very first time cooking a full meal. I think I just opened a whole can of worms though. Anita wants me to cook for her every day now! Help!

I've also documented my cooking process here. Enjoy!

will.i.am visits Google

2007-02-14T13:11:00.000-08:00

will.i.am from the black eye peas visited Google yesterday. It was sorta neat as he demonstrated how to put together music quickly on his laptop. I got to snap a quick photo of us chillin:

Crazy ski trip

2007-02-12T00:58:00.000-08:00

Headed up to Squaw Valley last Wednesday for a company ski trip with Rico and Jon. I'd thought I would be pretty jetlagged since I had just arrived from Asia less than 12 hours ago, but surprisingly I was totally awake and ready to go!

What did we do when we first arrived at Squaw? You got it! We headed straight to the bar and ordered ourselves some long islands. It's always interesting to load yourself up with alcohol during the day time. In no more than 15 minutes we got a good buzzed and were ready to head up the slope.

And then we realized it was a bad idea to drink before snowboarding. We couldn't control ourselves at all in the icey weather. :) How did we fix that? Well, we headed to a different bar and had another long islands!

By the time we were done drinking it was already 2pm. We proceeded to head down the black diamonds maybe 5-6 times and then we decided to call it a day.

After snowboarding we headed over to the resort at Squaw Creek to check in. I got room number 302 (aka HTTP redirect), and when I opened the door, I realized that I'd hit the jack pot: It was an end-unit suite with a huge living room and bedroom. I immediately said to Jon and Rico - We GOTTA have a party here tonight!

Fast forward a bit, we went downstairs for the company party, got pretty drunk, and headed back up to our room for the after party. I must have told a lot of people about the after party, because soon after the party downstairs was over, we had at least 30-40 strangers in our room partying. I had no idea who they were, and I don't think they had an idea who I was, either.

Overall I thought it was a great trip. The party downstairs was fantastic. I took some photos with my camera, and I will post them up later on tomorrow.

Time for bed. Night.

I'm [literally] on the jet plane...

2007-02-06T15:35:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting here on my flight back to the states as I type. They actually have a laptop charger on the plane, so I'll get to use the laptop for the remaining of the flight. Yay!

For those who have already heard, the reason I went back to Hong Kong was because of the passing of my grandma in Hong Kong. I decided to fly back for the funeral so that I could keep my parents company during the stressful time they would endure in Hong Kong. Leaving from work for a week is generally difficult because of busy it gets over there, but luckily my boss was extremely understanding of the situation and I was able to fly to Hong Kong without worrying about work for a short period of time.

During my trip I got the opportunity to reunite with a lot of my relatives and long lost cousins. I don't ever recall having 90% of my cousins unite together at one place all my life. As my Uncle Francis pointed out, it is actually quite sad that most Chinese families don't have regular family reunion events. It remains a question why it takes something like the death of someone in the family in order to unite everyone together in one room.

It was quite an experience seeing all my cousins again. Of worth noting, I got to see my cousin Cindy from Victoria, BC for the first time since over 12 years ago. Gee, basically she was 13 and I was 15 back when we saw each other. Prior to that I had only seen her perhaps twice, and so it was quite strange to meet up with her during our adulthood. Since our age is so close to each other, it was surprisingly effortless trying to get along with each other. And since we didn't really know anyone else in Hong Kong, we pretty much became each other's buddy during our stay. Cindy and I had many great conversations about life, food, fashion and family in general and it was very refreshing to catch up with her. It's like having a little sister that I never had to whom we could share about our issues openly without worrying about being judged. It was also great seeing my other six or seven younger cousins whom I had never really hung out with in the past. In some way I felt a natural responsibility to spend some time with each one of them, get to know them, and really provide a role-model type image to them as an older cousin. Argh I feel like an old fart.

One of the biggest sacrifices when deciding to go to Hong Kong for the funeral was the inability to watch the Super Bowl live with anyone. Fortunately I found out while in Hong Kong that Cindy was actually a psycho sports fan, and so we decided to get up at the crack of dawn to watch the game at some sports bar in Lan Kwai Fong. Oh man I don't think I'd ever waken up at 6am to go to a sports bar and drink lots and lots of beer while I watch football. That was definitely one of the highlights of my trip. Well, sort of. The game kind of sucked, and they didn't play any of the Superbowl commercials there. :-(.

Overall, I'd say I had a great trip. As opposed to spending all my money on new clothes, I ended up spending most of my money on food, drinks, and foot massages. Oh my god foot massages are SO AWESOME in Hong Kong. It only costs about $13 HKD for one hour of intense massage. I went to this foot massage place four days in a row and became a regular there. I even took Cindy there twice and I think she's addicted too! Haha.

Hmm let's see what else I did while I was there. Oh! Katie, Ada, Cindy and I went to Lan Kwai Fong on Saturday night. Cousins reunite! We went to this yummy Spanish tapas place called La Bodega and we proceeded to go to Dragon-i, Drop, and Yum la for more drinks after. It was great.

I really wish I could be there a bit longer to catch up with my other friends such as Anita's brother, sister, and some of my old classmates. Unfortunately I only had 6 days there, and I had to spend the majority of the time with my parents and my grandpa.

Hopefully I'll get to go on a real vacation soon! It's unlikely though since my wedding will be in June, and I'd need to save up some more vacation days for the honeymoon. Oh well.

Update (11 hours later): Uh. The flight is running 2 hours over its intended arrival time. Looking at the GPS imagery, it looks like the pilot has decided to fly all the way up by Alaska and then going down south past Vancouver, Seattle, and then finally to San Francisco. WTF mate?

Pictures are now up!

Hong Kong Day 2

2007-02-01T13:01:00.000-08:00

I'm still jetlagged! Got up an hour ago (4am) and I can't go back to sleep again.

Hungry!!!!

Hong Kong Day 1

2007-01-31T12:51:00.000-08:00

Ahhh I'm finally here after the sucky 14 hour red eye flight. Got here at 6:30am and didn't check in until 8:30am. Then the chick at the reception desk was very nice and gave my parents and I upgraded rooms to the hotel. Woohoo. My room actually has down comforters and pillows! I feel so privileged.

First thing my parents and I did after checking in was to go downstairs to the ghetto Chinese restaurant downstairs for some good jook and beef cheung fun. There's just something about these restaurants that makes it sooooooooooo good. Oh one more interested change here is that they've just passed a law to prohibit smoking from all restaurants, indoor buildings, and parks. Just like the law in California, but even stricter. Sorta hard to imagine such a law here since the majority of the people here smoke like chimneys.

Afterwards we met up with all of our relatives for lunch to discuss about the things that we are going to have to do. And after that I walked around a bit by myself, got a good foot massage, and met up with a long lost friend for dinner.

Was going to meet up with my long lost cousin at night but I was way too tired to go out. I passed out at 10pm, and got up at 4am this morning. :-(. I might as well stay up for another hour to wait for the google earnings to come out on CNBC.

Oh one more thing that happened tonight. The phone in my hotel room rang for 2 seconds for some reason at 4am!!! Who the HELL was that?

Off to Hong Kong I go again

2007-01-29T20:25:00.000-08:00

Cya guys in a week! Rico and Jon -- Promise me you won't watch the superbowl until next Tuesday! We will have alcohol, chips, and everything else to go with it!

I don't give a crap about latency

2007-01-11T15:48:00.000-08:00

I haven't been able to get cable modem at my condo for the past year since SBC had signed some exclusive deal with the complex where nobody in the complex could get internet service from anyone else. Luckily, the contract was voided a month ago, and Comcast began to wire in their service here. Woohoo, finally I can watch videos on youtube without having to wait!

In order to lure in new customers, the Comcast sales rep are here this afternoon at the clubhouse to take in orders.

While I was there, this nerdy looking guy (he kinda looked like Jim Carrey from dumb and dumber) asked this sales rep lady a question: "Do you have someone technical here who can answer about bandwidth and latency?" The lady turned around and said "I'm not sure, but there are definitely technicians here who can answer your questions."

Since I had done some research the night before, I went ahead and told the guy that downstream would be 6Mbps and upstream would be 386kbps, and that is much better than our current DSL (386k upstream and 386k downstream).

Then... He asked the inprobable question: "What about the latency?"

WTF dude. Latency to what? Google? Your favorite porn site? The comcast backbone? Who the HELL cares. Do you really think you will get anything more than 30ms to your backbone? What are you, a die hard counter strike player who sucks so much to the point where you need 10ms less latency to shoot some dude in the head while you're camping? All I care about is the ability to watch streaming videos online and download tv shows at lightning speed! PERIOD!

Ok I'm done ranting. I'm looking forward to welcoming the comcast technician in the next hour with a wonderful can of Coca Cola.

How to Get in the Zone When Coding

2007-01-04T13:57:00.000-08:00

In the world of programming, there is a term called being "in the zone" which is often used to describe instances where, while you're high quality writing code, you are completely oblivious to what is happening in your surrounding.

For most people, they often get themselves in the zone by being alone in their office with the door closed. Some people may listen to their favorite music, and some might choose to pull an all nighter with no interruptions whatsoever.

For me, personally, I get myself in the zone by putting a lion above my head, like so:

How do you get in the zone?

David Blaine on youtube!

2007-01-02T22:37:00.000-08:00

I really didn't want to post this here:

Another Year, Another Recap

2006-12-31T12:08:00.000-08:00

Since I had such a dismal year in 2005, I promised to accomplish more in 2006.

I didn't win the lotto again, and I didn't get to retire and play golf at the country club. Instead, I:

Got engaged in Las Vegas!
Had an awesome 27th birthday party at Miyakes with my amigos.
Threw one sucky bachelor party for my friend Will.
Attended a shitload of weddings.
Bought an X'mas tree for Christmas.
Had our very first Christmas party at our new place and made this video.
Made many videos that were posted on youtube. one of which won the contest and was displayed on Adam Sandler's official home page.
Gained 10lbs of muscles, and then lost all of them and gained 10lbs of fat instead.
Wrote a total of 114 blog entries.
Got 7737 page views to this blog, down from 9000 in 2005.
My hair was on fire during the month of November and December.

My first impression of the wii

2006-12-21T09:48:00.000-08:00

I tried out the bowling game last night on the wii, and I'd have to say it's much more realistic than playing the bowling game on my nokia phone while I'm in the bathroom.

Two thumbs up! =D

Wiiii!!!

2006-12-19T17:45:00.000-08:00

The weirdest thing happened to me today.

Wanting to get a nintendo wii, I decided to email this person on craigslist who was selling it for $380. After a couple email exchanges we decided to think of a place to meet.

Then the craziest thing happened!

She emailed me, saying (paraphrasing) "I hope you don't mind me asking this. Do you also work at Google? I remember your name from somewhere, and I just looked you up on the intranet. Do you want to meet at work instead?"

WTF mate again! What are the odds!

But then again, only geeks would camp out to get a Wii before the holidays.

When we met up for the exchange, she explained that she had gotten many higher offers from other people, but she decided to hook up a fellow Googler for the lowest price. Woo!

So I've got the system hooked up to my TV now. I must admit that it is quite addicting. Now I just need a second wiimote and nunchuck...

Mr. Bean

2006-12-18T12:56:00.000-08:00

I can't quite figure out why I can't stop laughing whenever I watch the Xmas episode of Mr. Bean.

Check it out

My christmas list

2006-12-17T22:19:00.000-08:00

Dear readers (aka strangers),

If you have trouble decciding what to buy me for Xmas this year, look no further! I have created a list of things that I want for Xmas.

In no particular order:

I know they are a bit on the high side, but I think Santa will agree that I have been good this year! I mean, I have been brushing my teeth every day before I go to bed. Uhm, yeah!

Update: I don't need the Heavenly mattress anymore. I just bought a new mattress from the w store. Hehe.

How to strike a great first impression?

2006-12-17T22:00:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time there was a gullible late bloomer named Janice. At age 22, she decided to take on the habit of drinking.

In order to prove her drinking prowess, she appeared at Sino restaurant in Santana Row for happy hour with her coworkers and friends, routinely drinking a long island, a mojito, and a shot of patron.

In less than five minutes, Janice got drunk, threw up 20 times at the venue (with and without covering her mouth with a napkin), and then passed out.

End of story.

For detailed play by play coverage, please visit this and this.

Strange conversation I had last night

2006-12-14T12:00:00.000-08:00

During happy hour at Sino last night in Santana Row, I met this girl who was sitting next to me. When she found out that I work for Google, she asked, "Oh! You work at Google?? Do you know Gloria?"

WTF mate? Does she think Google only has 10 employees or something? It's like, "Oh you are Chinese?? Do you know Bob?"

Weird guy

2006-12-12T15:39:00.001-08:00

So I looked out the window at my office, and I saw this guy jogging backwards up the hill.

What the hell?

Alive and Well

2006-11-28T18:03:00.000-08:00

I've been having an excellent vacation so far. I am about to go bankrupt though.

I must not shop anymore.

Oh, and my hair is super fobby now! ^_^

What's with this whole waiting in line thing...

2006-11-17T07:57:00.000-08:00

So, I was watching the news last night and they're saying how there's over 500 people waiting in line outside of the Sony metreon in SF for the release of playstation3. The reporter asked this one dude, who's been waiting in line for over 48 hours already, on why he's spent the last two days waiting in line for the playstation3. His immediate answer was "ebay."

So I went on to ebay and noticed that the highest winning bids are somewhere around $2000 (regular price is $600). So, this guy's gonna end up waiting for about 60 hours, and that means his hour rate there was $23.3. Poor guy.

And for me, I'm very happy with my missing gamecube.

Sup?

2006-11-15T22:21:00.000-08:00

Two days til my trip to Asia! I really ought to start packing...

Election Day

2006-11-07T21:36:00.000-08:00

Today's mid term election has gotta be one of the most important ones in recent decades. The war in Iraq, government corruption and the lack of a healthy economy have finally agitated us lazy Americans to fight back today.

I am personally quite sick of all the political commercials that have been playing over and over on TV. I am particularly annoyed by the way Phil Angelides tries to win voters over by constantly attacking our current California governor instead of telling us what he would do should he be elected. I mean, if I were running for governor, all I would just say would be something like...

I will stay the course. We have a plan for victory. I am the Decider. It's hard work. My job is to do my job. It's hard work.

Our next great generation

2006-11-07T08:50:00.000-08:00

I went to a pet store to buy some dog food for pei pei a few months ago. I gave the person at the cashier $20.02 when the total price was $14.02. Instead of giving me $6 back right away, she had to use the calculator to come up with that! First thing that came to my mind was... how did she get hired to be the cashier? And then the second thing that came to mind was... oh man, the newest generation of kids suck at math! and then I thought... it can't be it. she's probably just an outliar.

Then I read this blog today, and I conclude that they all suck at math after all.

Who uses the Google on the internets?

2006-11-03T18:05:00.000-08:00

I know this is kind of old news, but I feel the responsibility to post the video here about the kind of president who is leading our great country.

Enjoy!

I thought I was going to die

2006-11-02T18:29:00.000-08:00

About two hours ago, my desk and windows started shaking violently at the office. Then, I heard a loud trembling noise coming from above my head. I looked out the window and I saw a F-15 fighter jet pass right above me, heading towards the Milpitas direction.

For a quick second, I swear I was praying to God that it wasn't going to turn around and hit me in the face.

Luckily, that didn't happen, and I survived.

100 million sites on the web??

2006-11-01T12:52:00.000-08:00

CNN: Web reaches new milestone: 100 million sites

At first sight you might wonder how you can possibly visit all of these sites. It's actually really not that bad. Assuming you want to go to all 100 million sites and it takes you one second per site serially, it will only take you about 3.16 years to get that done.

Alternatively, assuming your hands can't type in all these sites too fast and you can't afford to sit around for 3.16 years with no sleep, you can actually write a script to do that for you. Assuming you're behind a 100mbps NIC and assuming an average response size of a webpage is 14kB, then you can probably issue ~892 wgets per second assuming the server side has 0 latency. Given that, it will really only take you ~1.29 days to do that.

Of course, that's only visiting the front page of every site. But hey, at least you'll get to go to the gusiness book of records for this.

Oh but wait, all the search engines out there have probably already done that. Pfft.

Halloween festivities

2006-11-01T09:50:00.000-08:00

I had a wonderful Halloween yesterday. No I didn't go trick or treating - And no I didn't wear a costume. I did however attend this giant party here at work where I'd seriously say >70% of the people who were there were wearing costumes. Costumes ranging from Dr. Evil to Star ship troopers (is that what you call them?) to Mark Foley to Pirates to Mr. San Francisco (this guy who's 80% naked wearing S&M outfit and showing off his BUTT!). I was suitably amused.

The highlight of my day came from a quote that my colleague had said in the morning:

When I went to breakfast this morning, it occured to me, "Only in SiliconValley would you see a gorilla carrying a laptop."

I guess I find that to be quite true. :)

Near the evening it finally dawned on me for the first time that I really should go trick or treating. I mean, I've been in the states for over 12 years and I haven't once walked around the neighborhood with a basket-full of eggs. Right at the moment as I was about to leave work and head over to Costco to buy a couple dozens of eggs, Andy called and challenged me to play in a game of ping pong over at his house. How could I resist the opportunity to kick his ass, especially since he said "Oh I'm pretty good at ping pong. I'm pretty sure I can beat you." Oh well. Maybe I will go trick or treating next year instead.

Having just sat down comfortably at his house, the door bell began to go off in an increasingly annoying pace - "DING DONG! DING DONG! DING DONG! DING DONG! DING DONG! DING DONG! DING DONG! DING DONG!" In my head I was thinking "SHUT THE F!@# UP!!!!" Andy frantically ran down to open the door and it turned out to be a few kids stopping by to trick or treat. The first thing that came out of Andy's mouth as the kids said "Trick or treat?" was "What the hell???" Haha. What a punk.

After two hours of fierce competition, Andy and I split the series at 1-1. I think I would have won both of the series had he let me use his juiced up ping pong pedal that he was using against me. But it's ok - I don't really need an edge to kick his sorry butt! :-)

The funniest coding question

2006-10-31T11:56:00.000-08:00

Found this on expert-exchange.com today:

hi all,

IntTemp = Int((255 * Rnd()) + 1)

I used above ASP.NET code. Problem is in " Rnd() "
Rnd() value is changing everytime.

What is the alternative for Rnd()? OR How will stop Rnd() value changes at everytime?

Thanks

Then someone responded with this:

change the 255 to a 0 and you'll get the same number each time.

I know someone from Wyoming?

2006-10-30T17:48:00.000-08:00

I was just looking at my visitor tracking page and noticed someone from Wyoming has been visiting my blog quite often:

host-69-146-138-100.chy-wy.client.bresnan.net

Who are you?

Ooooh... What is this hot, shiney thing?

2006-10-30T10:07:00.000-08:00

For those who see me a lot, I've been using the IBM thinkpad for work for quite awhile now. I couldn't really stand it anymore last week as it began to crash on me quite frequently. It was time for a new laptop!

Being the little wuss I am, I figured I should email my manager for approval to get a new laptop before I actually filed a ticket for it. I then spent the next 30 minutes proof reading it over and over to make sure that my request was a justifiable one (and it really was). I don't know why I was so nervous of sending out an email to ask for that, but maybe I just felt like I didn't deserve a brand new laptop? Maybe I'm just so used to using things until they became antique, like the P3-866mhz that I had had for over 10 years? Or, maybe, just maybe I was rejected in the past before at my previous employment when I asked for something that would make me a happier employer?

Whatever it was, I finally gathered up enough courage and pressed send to the email that I had drafted. In less than 30 seconds I got the response back going "Sure, I approve!" I really love my manager.

I immediately filed a ticket to request for a Macbook pro. Under the description of the ticket, I again explained the issues that I had been having with my laptop, and that I had gotten my manager's approval. The helpdesk person replied to my ticket and told me that I actually didn't even need manager's approval since I'm in Engineering. Wow! I should have asked for a replacement a long time ago then!

In just one day, the new macbook pro was delivered to me at my desk, with all the cool gadgets set up and everything. I have to admit I was a bit skeptical about this whole macbook thing since I'd never used a Mac before. But after spending the weekend with it, I am convinced that it is much much better than windoze XP. For example, it doesn't take over 5 minutes for the laptop to wake up after standby. It also connects me to wireless in less than 5 seconds every time I open up the macbook pro. It looks good, it is fast, it is REALLY hot. What more can I ask for?

Going back to this "no approval needed for a new laptop" thing. I really want to emphasize that it's simply awesome. I like the fact that the company goes out of its way to ensure that the engineers get whatever tools they need/prefer that will enable them to become more productive at work. Happy engineers -> write better code -> write better unit tests -> stay at work longer -> work at home more -> work faster -> blog more -> products ship faster. I am surprised a lot of companies out there still don't get that.

NBC's "Heroes"

2006-10-26T09:11:00.000-07:00

So I have been pretty hooked to this new TV drama on NBC called Heroes. After watching the first three episodes I couldn't help but realize the screenwriters of this drama are such geniuses. I mean, the fact that it's able to attract the mass audience by having heroes of different ethnicity and social background allow pretty much any viewer to relate to some of these characters one way or the other. For example, I can hear the dish of chips and salsa thinking "I think Pat should eat me... right now! I want to be eaten by Pat..." And then there's this other time where I would wake up in the morning and I'd have no idea where I was and what I had done during the night. But then I would see a bottle of vodka sitting right next to me on the floor. Anyway, you get the idea.

This weeks' episode revealed an extremely shocking motto: "Save the cheerleader, save the world."

So basically the rest of this entire drama will be hinged on a dumb cheerleader from Texas. FARK!!!

One Month 'Til Vacation!

2006-10-22T18:20:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to set that image as my wallpaper at my workstation at work as well as my personal desktop. Don't you feel relaxed just by looking at the picture?? Oh man. I can't wait to go!

Some goals for my vacation

I will not get near anything that remotely looks like a computer.
I will make sure to even out my tan on my face.
I will eat at least 6 meals a day.
I will play at least four rounds of golf.
I will get no less than 10 massages.
I will sleep at least 8 hours a day.

I'm Easily Impressed

2006-10-20T08:45:00.000-07:00

Sitting in the customer service lounge at the Stevens Creek Toyota Dealer as I am writing this blog, I look around and I see:

Two boxes of donuts
A soda machine
A coffee making machine (free of charge!)

Wow. They surely treat their customers quite well! Not only do they want you to eat the whole box of donuts and gain 20lbs immediately, they also top it off by offering free wireless internet access! Perfect for losers like me who go into withdrawal mode when I don't have access to the 'net.

I think I am going to start coming here every day, even when I don't need to bring my car in for a service. Hmmm... That's a thought...

Can this be real?

2006-10-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

Probably not. Google doesn't do pop up ads.

Trusty little car

2006-10-19T10:37:00.000-07:00

Today marks a very special day.

(drum roll please...)

Ladies and gentlemen, my prius has finally reached 10,000 miles! Clearly, this is a significant milestone, and I would like to use this opportunity to thank my dear fiance, Anita, for making me drive all around the Bay Area with this car. We have traveled a long way in a little over six months! I am also quite proud to say that I am doing something to help slow down global warming. In just six months, I have saved over $685 in gas. Long live hybrid cars!

My love (besides Anita)

All of this will change in the next six months however. When my prius reaches 20,000 miles, I plan on doing the complete opposite!

Porsche 911 GT2... here.. I.. come! If I win the lotto, that is.

Poor NFL player

2006-10-16T13:53:00.000-07:00

So, you know there are football games out there developed by Electronic Arts that are caleld "John Madden NFL football 200x" each year? Basically, inside the games each player is given ratings on different categories that represents how good of a player you are in the game. This NFL player, named Ethan Albright, was rated the worst player in the game.

Apparently Ethan Albright is a little bit ticked off by it, and so he wrote an open letter to John Madden and CC'd Electronics Arts. It was the most awesome letter I've ever read in my life.

No driving for the next 6.15 years

2006-10-15T21:43:00.000-07:00

I made a two furniture purchases^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H *INVESTMENTS* today. After some estimation afterwards, I realized that I need to make up for the money I spent by not driving to work for the next 6.15 years. Here's how I got this number:

round trip commute to/from work: 20 miles
cost of a gallon of regular gas: $2.7
average miles per galon on a prius: 44.5
Rough estimation on the purchase: $1941.84

$1941.84 / $2.7 * 44.5miles / 20 / 5 / 52 = 6.15 years

Dear reader: if you consider me your friend, please spare me a ride to/from work each day for the next 6.15 years.

Investment #1:

Investment #2:

The perfect Gmail picture

2006-10-12T21:25:00.000-07:00

Today for whatever reason I got really tired of looking at my gmail picture.

"I need a new Gmail picture!" I said to my cubemate at the office. "Can you find a picture of me that I can replace my current one with?"

(5 minutes later...)

"Hey! I found one! Sending it to you now."

With great anticipation, I opened up the attached picture that he sent me an email and here's what he sent me:

It feels great to find out my training sessions at the gym has finally paid off.

spam sushi rules

2006-10-11T13:01:00.000-07:00

They are having a Luau at work here today for some reason. I got to enjoy an unlimited amount of spam sushi on top of all the other good Hawaii BBQ goodies. I think I have eaten about 15 pieces of spam sushi so far, and there are still four pieces sitting right in front of me here at my desk.

I'm really full and I don't know if I can really finish them. Looking at the four pieces of spam sushi, I notice the two of them that are closer to me are screaming "don't eat me!! don't eat me!" whereas the remaining two pieces in the back row are going "eat them you mofo! stuff yourself! yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Oh great. I think I'm starting to hallucinate

Oktoberfest rules

2006-10-05T13:56:00.000-07:00

To celebrate Oktoberfest, they made german beer available here during lunch time as well as german hotdogs. I'm on my second beer right now, and I need to pee really badly.

I have been beaten

2006-10-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

I always thought I was cool for memorizing Pi up to the 20th decimal place... until I saw this article today:

TOKYO A Japanese mental health counselor recited pi to 100,000 decimal places from memory on Wednesday, setting what he claims to be a new world record.

However, I bet he has trouble memorizing girls' phone numbers.

codesearch is launched

2006-10-05T00:22:00.000-07:00

I've always wondered how many lines of "hello, world" code there are out in the world. Now I can find out via Google codesearch. Go check it out!

Before and After

2006-10-03T17:22:00.000-07:00

I came upon this old picture taken 11 years ago while I was cleaning up my computer.

Comparing that with a recently taken picture, it is safe to conclude that while my eyes have barely changed in size, my head and my upper body have increased by a factor of 5. My legs don't seem to have changed, either.

Before

After (The guy on the left)

Tight calves

2006-10-03T13:26:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was quite festive for me. For those who talk to me often, Will's wedding is this coming Saturday and I was selected to be his best man (or the first one who answered his phone call). I've known Will for like 11 years, and I think I know him very very well. At least that's what I thought.

First off, Will is NOT a party person. He does not drink, he does not go clubbing, he does not do anything. Back in the College days, he would goto sleep, wake up, drink a can of coke, sit in front of his desk, and play video games all day. He would never go to any parties even if his life depended on it.

So it came somewhat as a surprise last Thursday when I asked him, just out of courtesey, whether or not he would want a Bachelor party before the wedding. His rely was "Aren't you supposed to be organizing this?" Uh oh! Hot dog!

I quickly gathered all his friends' phone numbers and began calling them the following day in the hopes that we could pull off a last minute Bachelor party for him last Saturday. Luckily, 50% of them could make it.

We went to broadway in SF and stopped by some bars and clubs. Will actually had a great time! (pictures will be posted later). He was very buzzed after drinking about 2 oz of Corona, and during the rest of the night all he wanted to do was to drink more.

Hmmm.. Oops. I'm halfway done with this blog and I still haven't mentioned why the title of this blog is "Tight calves." Ok here goes:

Midway through the night Will decided that he wanted to eat. We all walked from one side of broadway to the other side, where China town is located. We sat down, grabbed some food, and the majority of his friends decided to go home afterwards. Will didn't want to go home yet, and so we decided to try to take a Cab back to Dennis' apartment on King street to play some pool and just chill.

Unfortunately, it was around 1:30am, which means that's when EVERYONE in SF was leaving the clubs. It was pretty impossible to get a cab.

So what did we do? We decided to start walking back to his apartment! At 1:30am in the morning! Fortunately, a miracle happened midway through our journey, and we were able to get a cab by the time we got near Market street.

We ended up staying up til 4am, and I didn't get back home until 5am. Had to wake up early the next morning to drive my parents to Oakland to hang out with Anita's parents.

To make the long story short, I woke up Monday and my legs were SO tired. So I immediately signed up for a table massage at work. When I went in for the massage, I told the massuse that my calves are really tired from walking all weekend. I told her to focus on them and she did so.

At the end of the massage, she's like, "Oh your calves ARE really tight. Particularly your left calf." I am really confused by why my left calf would be tighter than my right. I mean, it's not like I went to play basketball or anything where I would dunk off of my left leg.

So for those of you out there - Can you please explain why my left calf was tighter than my right?

Thanks.

gamecube bandit?

2006-09-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

Hello,

If you were over at my condo sometime this year and borrowed my gamecube, please return it.

No questions asked.

Thanks.

Crime scene by my house

2006-09-28T17:52:00.000-07:00

So I was driving to work yesterday morning at 9am when I saw over 10-15 cop cars parked outside of the Brocade building entrance. The entire parking lot was sealed off with the police tapes. I wonder what the hell happened there.

Later on I found out a homeless guy drowned himself in the 3 feet deep fountain while fishing for coins at night.

How do you drown yourself in a 3 feet deep fountain!!?!?!

It sucks to be sick!

2006-09-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

I had a very busy weekend. So busy that it got me sick.

I went to Kenny's wedding on Friday at Dynasty and then Wes' wedding on Saturday down at Carmel. The weddings were cool. We stayed at the Hyatt Monterey Hotel on Saturday night so we didn't have to drive home late in the night.

Wes' wedding was very cool. There were only 85 guests invited, and most of them were youngsters like me. And when you have a party with a lot of youngsters, people tend to drink more and have more fun. This one guy who was sitting at the same table probably had a little too much fun. Since I don't remember his name, I will call him "dumbass" here.

A few hours into the party, dumbass came back to the table with a HUGE glass of whisky. He looked like he was in pain drinking it. The girls who were sitting next to him asked him to just go get something else to drink. Dumbass was like "No... I feel bad!" What a dumbass. He kept drinking and drinking. He tried to get the bride and the groom to drink some of the whiskey, but of course they thought that he was an idiot. Seriously, who the hell is this guy? He came to the wedding with no date. His tie is undone. His shirt is unbuttoned. And there's a cigarette sitting between his head and his ear. And no one has ANY CLUE who he is. Is he a wedding crasher?

By the time it's time for dancing and cake eating, dumbass was passed out. His head was placed against the table. His eyes were closed, and nobody seemed to care that he's passed out.

The next morning I heard stories about how someone else at the wedding (who doesn't know dumbass at all) had to drive dumbass' car back to the hotel. While they were driving home, dumbass kept on throwing up in his own car. Dumbass also forgot which room he was staying at. Oh boy. He's going to have a good time cleaning up his own puke the next day.

Moral of the story - Don't be a dumbass!

Shot 81 in golf again, dammit!

2006-09-12T17:41:00.000-07:00

I shot 81 at Shoreline Golf Links.

And I'm not happy about it.

Talk about a back nine melt down. I still remember when I watched the way Phil Mickelson choke at the 18th hole at the US open as well as Jean van de Valle at the 18th hole at the British open I said to myself, "Oh boy. How can you possibly lose your tournament away in the final hole!? What are you smoking? You could have laid up, taken a bogey, and still won the tournament!"

Mine was way worse than theirs.

Going on the golf course with the mindset that I wanted to shoot lower than 80, I developed a game plan to achieve it by eliminating the number of putts I would have during the round. Things went on track as I shot 4 over in the front nine (40) with a birdie putted from 10 feet away. I said to myself after nine holes, "Wow, If I shot 3 over in the back nine, I will shoot 79!"

The back nine started with a par and a birdie. Now I'm thinking, Ok, even if I shoot 4 over in the next 8 holes I can still shoot 79!

Then came the 12th hole. 338 yards par 4. Slight dogleg left with water to my left side. Knowing that it's a short par 4, I decided to take out my 5 wood to just get it somewhere in the middle of the fairway. Standing over the ball my mind just started drifting around going "79! 79! 79!" I went ahead and started my backswing anyway, and at that point there's an inner voice going "don't mess up! you dumbass!" I hit the ball, it was low, left, and THUMP it went right into the water on my left side. "UH OH! HOT DOG!" I said. I managed to take a 1 stroke penalty, re-teed up with a driver and drove it 280 yards to give myself a small lob wedge onto the green. Pitched it 1 foot by the pin and 1 putted for bogey.

Great. Now I'm back to 4 over.

Parred the 13th, bogey'd 14th due to a dumb skyed drive shot because I teed up the ball too high. Went up and down on 15th and parred that as well.

3 holes to go, 5 over. If I shoot 2 over par in the last 3 holes I can still shoot 79.

This is where the meltdown began.

16th hole - 496 yards, par 5. I hit a high draw with my drive and I had 210 yards left on my second shot. At that moment I had two choices. I could either use my 5 wood and try to knock it on the green in two, or, I can take out my pitching wedge, hit it about 130 and give myself an 80 yard shot with my sand wedge. My inner demon struck again. I went to my golf bag, reached out for the 5 wood. My friend Dennis saw that and started going "Dude don't do it Pat. F*ck that shit. Just lay up dude." I responded like a crazy serial killer, "Shut up dude. Just let me play my game!" I proceeded to take out my 5 wood, duck hooked it to the left into no man's land. Yes. It went OB, and that meant a 1 stroke penalty. FACK!!! I ended up getting a 7 on that hole. MY GOD!

Two more holes to go, 7 over. I needed to birdie one of the last two holes to shoot 79.

17th hole - 137 yards par 3. There's water all the way til you hit the green. I noticed that the teebox was moved up a litte, so it was almost like a 130 yard shot to the green. I took out my 9 iron, thinking that I could get there for sure. I hit the ball REALLY HIGH, and all of a sudden the wind starting blowing really hard and knocked the ball into the water. WAAAH. Took a drop, up and down for bogey. BLAH.

So that's basically it. I made three major mistakes that dearly cost me 4 strokes in the back nine. Why am I so stupid? What can I do to get over this pleatau so that I can one day finally shoot in the 70's range?

No need to look further! Bushnell Yardage Pro Golf Pinseeker 1500 Laser Rangefinder is here! This is basically a device which allows you to point at the flag to get the exact distance between you and your target. It instills confidence in your swing since you take the guessing game out of the way. You can now just go up to the ball, check our the distance with the rangefinder, and swing away!

Of course, getting this extra advantage comes with a great cost. The device sells for $395 on amazon. Luckily, I found some dude that's selling it brand new on ebay for $358 with $19.95 shipping and no tax. It should arrive next week at my parents' house so that Anita won't know that I bought this. (I'm hoping that she's not reading this blog! And for the other readers, PLEASE DON'T TELL HER!! Keep it on the DL okay?)

Here's some of its features and specs:

Product Description
Amazon.com Product Description
Your Bushnell Pinseeker 1500 is an advanced premium laser rangefinder comprised of digital technology that allows range readings from 5 to 1,500 yards. Measuring 1.7 by 5.1 by 3.7 inches, the 10-ounce Pinseeker 1500 delivers superb and accurate range performance to +/- one yard. The Pinseeker 1500 features Selective Targeting Modes, superb optical quality, 100% waterproof construction, and Bushnell's RainGuard coating.

The Pinseeker 1500 emits invisible, eye-safe, infrared energy pulses. Its Advanced Digital microprocessor and ASIC chip (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) results in instantaneous and accurate readings every time. Sophisticated digital technology instantaneously calculates distances by measuring the time it takes for each pulse to travel from the rangefinder to the target and back.

The ranging accuracy of the Pinseeker 1500 is plus or minus one yard under most circumstances. The maximum range of the instrument depends on the reflectivity of the target. The maximum distance for most objects is 1,000 yards, while for highly reflective objects the maximum is 1,500 yards.

The Pinseeker 1500 features a powerful 7x magnification monocular for viewing your target. Optics are fully multi-coated, allowing maximum light transmission for optimum brightness, superb resolution, and contrast for a clear vivid image even in low-light conditions such as dusk or dawn. A liquid crystal display (LCD) is mounted within the optical system and, when activated, displays a reticle for targeting, yards and meters, and Mode indicators.

Laser Rangefinder Features

Standard with Automatic Scan (A)
Scan across the course while viewing a continuously updated LCD display of the distance between you and your target.

Meters/Yards (B)
You can quickly choose between these standard measuring units with a simple press of a button.

Reticle (C)
The distance to objects targeted in these crosshairs will be displayed on the Distance Readout with the press of a button.

Battery Indicator (D)
Flashes when battery power is low.

Target Quality Gauge (E)
Gauge indicating amount of energy pulses being received back from the target.

Pinseeker 1500 Targeting Modes

BullsEye
Geared for close-range use, this mode acquires the distances of small targets and game without inadvertently measuring background target distances. When more than one object is acquired, the closer of the two objects is shown on the LCD display.

Brush
Ignores the foreground, such as brush, boulders and tree branches, and provides distances on the LCD display to background objects only.

PinSeeker
Designed exclusively with the bottom of the cup in mind, this mode allows easy acquisition of the flag without inadvertently capturing background target distances. When more than one object is acquired, the closer of the two objects is shown on the LCD display.

Slope+/-
Measures slope, +/- one degree of angle, and compensated range, based upon ball trajectory and type of club used. All shown on LCD display.

Laser Rangefinder Tech Talk

A laser rangefinder is a distance-measuring instrument that uses laser technology to calculate the distance to targeted objects. Accuracy is +/- 1 yard, and the distance is displayed instantaneously on a built-in, through-the-lens Liquid Crystal Display.

How a Laser Rangefinder Works
Bushnell's Yardage Pro rangefinders use an invisible, eye-safe Class 1 Laser beam (as classified by the FDA) which is "bounced" off distant objects with the press of a button. Then, the rangefinder's high-speed digital clock measures the time it took for a laser beam to reach a target and return to the unit. Next, using advanced digital electronics, the rangefinder instantly calculates the distance within +/- 1 yard and shows the range in either yards or meters on a through-the-lens LCD Display. The entire process is so fast that less than a second elapses between the time you press the button to generate a laser beam to the time the exact range to your target is displayed.

Reflectivity of Target Types
Because rangefinders "bounce" a laser beam off the target in order to take a measurement, their range is partially determined by the reflectivity of the target. In other words, hard or "reflective" targets -- like a rock cliff or semi-truck -- can be measured at greater distances than soft surface targets, like a deer. Ranges for moderately reflective targets, like trees, fall somewhere in the middle. Most experienced hunters will use their rangefinder to frequently estimate ranges to near and distant landmarks before they actually encounter a game animal. By "pre-measuring" ranges to spots where a trophy is likely to appear, they can concentrate on making an accurate shot when the moment of truth arrives.

Product Description
Bushnell PINSEEKER 1500 Slope Edition is a premium digital golf laser rangefinder designed especially for golf, featuring a built-in slope compensator, superb optical quality and selective targeting modes.

Shiny toe nails

2006-09-11T13:19:00.000-07:00

Anita forced me to go to this pedicure place with her yesterday at Santana row named Lavande Beauty Salon. I look around when we got there and noticed that I was the only guy at the whole store! So anyway, we were greeted and seated for our 3:15pm appointment. Since it's my first real pedicure treatment, I was quite nervous.

Moments later, this Vietnamese lady came and sat down right in front of my stinky feet. Then, she told me to put both my feet into this bowl of blue water with leaves, lemons and cucumbers. It was sorta weird. Why do you want to soak your feet into a tub of water filled with wild vegetables?

Anywhoo, after a few seconds she tapped on my right leg. I looked up with the "what's up?" look. She tapped my right leg again, and this time I looked at her with the WTF look. Eventually I think she got frustrated and just grabbed my leg out of the tub of water and began cutting my nails!

To make the long story short, it was a pretty pleasant experience. She cut, filed and cleaned my nails. After that she put some kind of scrubbing material (it looked like a plate of chopped up ginger) on my legs and began exfoliating my skin. Afterwards, she put this white lotion on my legs and began massaging them. "feel good?" she asked. At that point my body was in this state of joy that all I could do was nod my head up and down.

I thought the treatment was over by the time the lotion was applied to my legs. Oh boy was I wrong! She started going "bumping? bumping?" and I was like HUH. "bumping! bumping!?" and I was sooooooooo lost. I reached out to Anita on my right trying to see if she knew what the lady wanted to do to my feet and Anita was like "Oooh! I think she is asking if you want to get your nails painted!" and I went "noooooooooooooooo!" The lady said this time "No! BUFFIING! BUFFING! clear! TRY IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and i was like OK OK FINE!!!!

She then went away and came back with this piece of object that looks kinda like a whiteboard eraser and began rubbing it back and forth against the surface of my nails. It created this really really squeeky noise that was pretty disturbing. I think at some point the noise actually made me pass out. Anyway, I opened up my eyes after it was all done and noticed that my nails were all SUPER SHINY! So shiny that it looked as if she'd put a clear coat of nail polish on them!

I am a little bit embarassed by it and so I am not wearing sandals to work today. :) Hee hee!

Will I go back for more? Hell yeah I will! I think I'm addicted to it now!

Where the hell is Pat?

2006-08-25T17:36:00.000-07:00

I've totally forgotten about blogging!

Let's see what I have been up to...

I'm planning my HK/Thailand trip with Anita. We're gonna goto HK in November and then immediately fly to Koh Samui, Thailand for like 5 days. After that we'll fly back to HK and stay for a week to eat a lot of good food. Ahhh I can't wait til November!

Other than that, you guys have got to check out this page. It's awesome.

Ahhhh... I'm melting

2006-07-24T18:24:00.000-07:00

Last weekend has gotta be the hottest weekend I have ever experienced during my 11 years that I have been here in the Bay Area. I think the highest temperature was 114F yesterday in Livermore!

A lot of my friends decided to go hang out at the malls to avoid the heat. What a silly move. They all came back and told me that the mall was SO PACKED that it was no fun at all.

I, on the other hand, decided to play 18 holes over at the Canyon Lakes Golf Course in San Ramon where the temperature was at 113F. I think my group was the only group that were out playing golf the whole day! It's so nice to play golf when there's no wait after each hole. I also got the chance to validate the scientific theory that golf balls travel farther when the temperature is hot. One of my drives went 285 yards. :)

Oh and one more thing. I look filipino now.

Ahhh.. It feels great to golf again.

2006-07-19T10:23:00.001-07:00

After taking a long break (11 months) from golf, I decided to pick up my golf clubs once again.

I kinda expected that I was going to suck shit for awhile, especially since I quit golf with a bad taste last year after losing like 5 golf balls in one around and shooting 100.

To my surprise, I scored 87, 86, 85 and 86 during the last four rounds that I played this year. Hey! My shots are actually going to where I want them to go! Holy shit! I probably could have scored even lower if my putting didn't suck. I'm averaging about three to four 3 putts per round from 5 feet away. This is so friggin sad!!

My long irons are really coming together quite well too. It's not as consistent as I want it to, and I think my score would improve if I replaced my 2 iron with a 5 wood for 200+ yard shots.

With that thought in mind, I went to the course and got fitted for the brand new Henry Griffits RDH DEEP fairway wood. This is the same brand that I have been using for my driver and my irons. It's a little bit pricey (paid $320 for it), but I have got to say this brand beats any of the other name brands out there any day since these are custom fitted. Shh! Don't tell Anita I paid that much for a golf club!

I am picking up the new club next week and I can't wait to get on the course with it. Ahh, I'm back to becoming a golf nut again.

Oh and also. I never knew what my handicap was until I entered all my scores to www.mygolfrecord.com. Based on its calculation, my handicap is 11.8. Whee! Hopefully I can become a single digit handicapper.

See you guys out on the course sometime!

I want to be a Commander too!

2006-07-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

How cool would it be to have Queen Elizabeth give you a Commander (CBE) award at Buckingham Palace?

My Uncle just got one yesterday. Congratulations, Uncle Paul!

Yes I will!

2006-07-06T14:43:00.000-07:00

Do It Again Bloopers

2006-06-19T23:37:00.000-07:00

And here are the bloopers... Woohoo I can goto bed now!