Wandering ...

Meh its another day ending. Time seems to fly by these days. I get home, and then boom, its 11:30 p.m.

And yet now, when I should be heading home, I find myself driving around aimlessly.


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Whole Foods Coming Soon

Across Blossom Hill Road from Costco Almaden. In the complex where Hollywood Video is.

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Nordstrom Rack Coming

Coming Fall 2009 across from Q-Cup, where Linens-N-Things used to be.

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GTA San Andreas

I had finally gotten past the first big chunk of the game. Onto the seconf phase of the game! Oh, and cameo appearance by Claude, the main character from GTA 3!

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Time to start my day.

Spent most of the morning sleeping. Realized I forgot my jump drive, and had to go get another one to print out my paper. It was quite cold in the car this morning, but I got lots of needed rest.

Two classes left, and then rush home to catch the Ducks-Sharks game 6. Go Ducks to end the series tonight!

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Woot - Mini yay!

I passed 19 posts! Legitimately too, none of those "#1,2,3 ... " posts. And I still have 3-4 days left in March.  3 if you don't count today.  4 if you do.  It's still early in the day, maybe more posts today.

Taylor Swift - You Belong With Me Single Cover Art

 Her next single? Well here's a cover for it anyways.  Can't wait for the music video!

Mmm

mmm Pâte à choux

Ducks lose 3-2 in OT at HP Pavilion. And I'm stuffed.

And I had way too much to eat during the game. Had a small viewing party, and today's lunch at On The Border in Milpitas @ McCarthy Ranch was still sitting around inside I think. I definitely overloaded on carbs today, not good. Gonna bike tomorrow to Safeway to buy the paper, assuming I can drag myself out of bed early enough. 630, 645 ish? We'll see.

The Ducks comeback in the 3rd period was awesome, but in the end Patrick Marleau came through for his team. Sort of a good thing, I kind of want to see Anaheim's home crowd if we put this away on Monday. Hopefully I don't miss too much of the game as I rush home from class.

Well, guess that's it for today. More bug catching tomorrow and Monday, and I need 2-3 more bird entries.


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Join MyBrutes!

GO GO GO!

http://holysock.mybrute.com

PETA [sigh]

http://www.peta.org/feat-audrina-partridge.asp

sigh.

So pretty, yet supports .. PETA.  How disappointing.

Wong Fu Productions

I've spent the latter part of the last 3 hours browsing stuff by Wong Fu Productions. They're an Asian American movie making company, well, more like 3 Asian American guys who are just making short films. The shorts themselves are pretty rad. They each have a Twitter, WFP has a blog, and they keep a pretty regular video blog up, too.

It's sooo distracting. YouTube.

Edit: This is post number 15! Four more to tie, five to set a new posts-per-month record!

Bring David Choi To SJ!

View all San Jose events on Eventful

I'm Gettint Too Old For This $h!t

.:sigh:.

I'm getting too old. I can't even finish a full entree anymore. And it's not even like something at a restaurant, we're talking like a plate at Sarku Japan in the mall. I feel like one of the pregnant models in the signs for Motherhood Maternity.
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Today's Ramblings

Got to class. Turns out the teacher moved the test to Wednesday.  Great! More time to study.

Instead of catching sleep though, I'm sitting in the library using bandwidth to download all my links that have been piling up.  And of course, with the super fast internet available here, I start running out of hard drive space.

GARGH. No class tonight if I choose to do the assignment instead. Score.

Live blogging

The new supercuts ad marketed towards men involves a subliminal message about supporting strip clubs?!
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Casual Vs. Hardcore. What is a real fanboy/fangirl?

To talk plainly, what is it with being a real fan?  Of anything, for that matter.  It is the join a secret society that thinks, breathes, and fawns over the very obsession upon which they call themselves "fans" of.

Is there anything wrong with being a casual fan?  I certainly don't think so.

In the video game community, we've had to deal with this for quite a long time now.  There's been a long standing elitest outlook on those who aren't as hardcore as others.  In fact, Techradar posted an article about it a while ago: Link here.  It's accepted that hardcore gamers play a certain set of games - all the AAA titles at least.  Games have shortened acronyms that need no explanation - GoW (Gears of War), GRAW (Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter), WoW (World Of Warcraft).  They've played through every single title of every single big franchise.  They know the backstory to the Halo universe, or at least how to be mediocre/successful on Live!.  They have running subscriptions to gaming magazines that they read cover to cover once it comes in their mailbox.  They spend nights and days researching strategies, looking up maps, and never, ever will they cheat.  Because they're too good already.  Cheating is for ... well, everyone else.  They've got every single console and handheld, and their PC rig looks like it belongs in Paul Walker's Mitsubishi Eclipse from Fast and Furious 1.

And then there were casual gamers.  Those of us who, for whatever reason, couldn't dedicated 6-8 hours on any day to playing games.  Some of us are parents, and would be lucky to spare 30 minutes to watch Conan O'Brian, let alone get on World of Warcraft to raid for 3 hours.  We play in short bursts, and easy games that are fun and don't necessarily have to be competitive.  Wii Sports is awesome.  Anything made by Popcap, BigFish, or any of those other companies that make small, short games is great.  Also, we like simple games.  We don't have the time to sit around and read a manual or run through a tutorial that takes 30 min that has to be repeated every week because from one Friday to the next, I happened to have so much going on, I barely remembered how to play.

There's always been a big rift between the two, with the elitest hardcore looking down on the casual gamer.  I personally identify myself now as someone who straddles the line.  I've been "hardcore" and done some gaming myself, but I'm slowling to stop - er, pause, rather.  Shorter games like Bejeweled that I can take anywhere and play for 10-15 minutes are super great.  I'm liking the idea of being a casual gamer, and letting the hardcore stick their noses up at me all they want.  So I haven't played RE4, RE5, or any of the Metal Gear Solid games.  So what.

But recently this phenomenon of Casual vs. Hardcore has come into play in other areas of my life.  Goddamn.

Hockey season is finally coming into my awareness, as the playoffs are right around the corner (Ducks play the Sharks tomorrow night at HP Pavilion actually).  Living in San Jose, it's not easy liking anything besides the Sharks.  Then again, I suppose this wouldn't be easy in any town, to not like the home team.

As one of my classmates pointed out, I am not a Ducks fan, but rather a Jean-Sébastien Giguère fan.  And a Teemu Selänne fan.  And a Ryan Getzlaf fan.  And an Andy McDonald fan.  Two years ago, I wanted to get into hockey.  The playoffs were rolling around, and I chose a team to follow.  I picked the Ducks, mostly out of spite that everyone was a Sharks fan.  Lo and behold, they went all the way and won the Stanley Cup.  During the playoffs, I tried to educate myself as best I could about the sport, learning the basic positions and the different line formations for my team.  I had great trouble keeping track of the puck on the TV screen, but that was an adaptation my acquaintances said would take some getting used to (to this day, I still have a bit of trouble following the puck through traffic, especially the shots).  I bought EA's NHL 07 for PS2 AND PSP, and 2K's NFL 2K7 for PS2, and played a full season on EA's title (2k's not having a 2D paper crowd wasn't enough for me) with "my team," the Anaheim Ducks.  Of course, on normal, we went all the way and won the Stanley Cup.

Following the real life win by the Anaheim Ducks, I did my best to keep track of the team's news in the offseason.  Selanne wasn't coming back, at least not for now.  One of the Niedermayer brothers wasn't coming back either - I think it was Scott, who had now won 3 Stanley Cups. Jiggy, aka Giguère, was staying, but on the injured list.  Getzlaf was still there.

For the most part, I don't follow any teams in their respective off seasons.  I'm not that hardcore.

In 2008, we were coming back to defend our title.  We failed miserably, bowing out in the first round agains the Dallas Stars.  Both Selänne and Niedermayer came back though.

Now in 2009, the Ducks are going to the playoffs again - California Dreamin' style, as they are the #8 seed and the San Jose Sharks are the #1 seed.  We barely made it, juggling the last few playoff spots here towards the end of the season.

Am I a Ducks fan? I think so. But others would say not.

To be a real fan, once has to follow their team throughout the season.  Fair enough.  Regular season hockey, I'm sure, probably has its great moments.  But really, the playoffs - in any sport - is where are the great action is.  It's where those moments for Sports Illustrated and ESPN Magazine get their equivalent "money shots."  Not living in the area of Anaheim severely limits my viewings of the Ducks during the regular season, unless they're playing the Sharks, or NBC has decided to feature it on the weekend.  But my few tastings of regular season hockey have been rather unpleasant.  It's like playoff hockey, but ... slower ...

:-=-:

NFS: Carbon

Finally. It's done.

After days and days of frustrating restarts, near-impossible runs, I've finally beaten all the bosses in Need For Speed Carbon.  For the most part, it was a reliance on older, lower tiered cars to beat the higher teired vehicles.  Also, I still have yet to beat the final boss with a tuner car.  Since the Evo IX had the very best handling, but simply par in terms of handling and acceleration, I was very unsuccessful in keeping up with Darius, regardless of my ease of manuverability for many of the corners.  Researching the topic a bit, I took a random poster's recommendation of using the Ford GT, and after almost fully tricking it out, I was able to beat the final boss by a sliver on the canyon duel.

I'm excited to get to trying out the next NFS title aimed at street racing/ricing - NFS Undercover.

Also, I picked up a copy of Resident Evil 4 for PC, but am now realizing I'll have to use a controller to play it.  That seems so asinine.  I'm playing on a computer!  Let me use my mouse and keyboard!  I don't want to have to haul out a controller just to play a game - also more often it's easier with a mouse and keyboard.  I haven't seen any RE4 gameplay though, so maybe it is more suited towards using a joypad.  It's still frustrating though.  What if I didn't have a gamepad?  What if I left it at home and I was on vacation/at school/at a friend's house?

Bah, enough ranting.

Rediscovering The Turn Of The Millinium

Around then what we now call teeny-bopper pop was totally in, although I suppose the fact that it fit my age range helped a bit.  Like how kids these days listen to Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers whilst we listen to Boa, Bow Wow, and Flo Rida.

Anyways, browsing the internet for Myra's sophomore album (out like a bajillion years later - Princess Diaries 1 and "Miracles Happen" was so long ago), I found her on Amazon.  Of course, they recommend stuff they think I the customer will like.  It's a lot of teeny-bopper music!  And so nostalgic.  Maybe one day in the future I'll pick them all up - since it's so long ago, a lot of the cds are super cheap now - some are $0.01!

No text limit!

There's no text limit on an email. And I can title my blog posts by putting it in the Subject line.

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I can blog via text message now! I suppose this feature is only useful for ppl who don't have internet access on their phones.

[Late Night] Already ...

Time seemed to fly by so slow today.  Maybe that's the thing about being at school.  Time crawls.  For me, that was good thing, working on my bug collection and catching some ZzZz's where I could.  But the moment I got home at 10:30ish, time seems to have flown.  I've had dinner, and been browsing Facebook for what seems like 5 minutes.  It's now 1 AM.

Going to bed to get some well-needed sleep.  Damn though, from 10:30pm - now has been so unproductive and time has just flown.

Question of the Day Revisited

So, once upon a time, I asked people, "what can I do to be more well-rounded?" Of course, there was a 10 minute long background story, but basically it led to this question.  And rather than retype said story, I'll just cut straight to the chase.

Along the ways, I've gotten a variety of responses.  Read the newspaper.  Go see a play.  Stop playing WoW and pick up Halo Wars.  Go to the SF Farmer's market.  Go fishing.  Learn how to play guitar.  Become a movie connoisseur.  Learn to cook.  Go running.

Basically, lots of stuff.

How much of it have I gotten to?  Not a lot, I must say.  It's taken quite a while to find time for myself to get out and try everything.  Hopefully this weekend we'll be starting with the SF farmer's market.

And photography.  That's pretty basic and straight forward.  Now to find some black and white film.  Supposedly the world is totally different when shot in black and white.

[Late Night] Tired, But Can't Sleep. This Can't Be Good.

2:50 am - Just fired up an old external HD to find if there was anything on there.  Turns out there is.  A DVD rip of Jessica Simpson's Reality Tour.  Let's watch, shall we?

2:58 am - I forgot how cheesy the early 2000s were when it came to music.  Some of that old N*Sync stuff was so corny.  This TV Jess stuff is dumb.

3:00 am - After seeing how she is now, all ... uh ... plump, it's weird seeing her all skinny.  And there is something incredibly annoying about seeing her perform live.

3:02 am - Vietnamese music artists for Thuy Nga and others typically have to make their own costumes, buy fabric, etc.  Did they make Jessica Simpson do that on this tour?  That dress is all sorts of fugly.

3:04 am - Does she know who the audience is?  All I see are teenage girls.  Why is she shaking her butt?  ZOMG she just did the stripper drop in front of 3 sub-12-year-olds.  WTF is wrong with her.  Now she's moaning and making other inappropriate noises.  Lovely.  I now hate Jessica Simpson.  I cannot believe that L.A. filled an auditorium to see this woman.  This is too painful, must fast forward.

3:06 am - I can't believe I thought I was tired of Need For Speed Underground 2.  I could've finished like 3 more races in the time I've wasted watching this crap.  And yet I'm still watching.  Okay stopping now.

That was lame.  I cannot belive I'm posting this.

More posting!

As you can see in the Blog Archive to the right/left [depending on how the layout is now], I have 12 January posts, 19 February posts, and only 7 March posts.  I've gotta keep the post counts in the double digits.  *raises illuminant keyboard* Here's to more posts for April!

Writer's block. Sucks.

Can't figure out how to fill in the last half page for my assignment.  So I'm writing elsewhere in hopes that my writer's block will be freed.

Someone just yelled very loudly in the library.  Guess he didn't like getting the service he was getting.  Probably got escorted out.

Found that song they used in the hip-hop decathalon from Season 1 of ABDC - DJ Felli Fel - Getting Buck In Here, they only used the last bit with Lil' Jon on the show though.

Finished CoD 2.  Epic, along with watching Band of Brothers.  My favorite episodes were the 1st and 2nd ones though.

Onto Fast and Furious 1-2-3 and Need for Speed Underground 2.  I still can't believe they picked Brooke Burke as the main model for that game.  The fidelity of the game is awesome though, mostly because my laptop is OP-ed.  I wonder what NFS Most Wanted and NFS Carbon will look like.  I have the special edition of Carbon, although I'm hesitant to play it because I've practically beat the PS2 version.  And Most Wanted was mostly about running from cops, which sometimes was fun - and meant the storyline was crap.

Well, back to my papers.  Hopefully this was enough.