lucky bamboo

That's bamboo plant #1. My entire hall makes fun of me for it cause I water it.. everyday.. to the point where it overflows. It doesn't drink all those half empty water bottles fast enough..

Soo..

I got more. They're bigger. I hope they consume more water. :P

winter project #2 (more or less done)

There are a few things Mazda 3s are notorious for.. cheap wipers, tires don't grip well, bad paint, bad carpet. My wipers are getting to the point where they don't swipe away water that well, but they still work, and are easy to replace once they break (soon). Tires are kinda.. eh, you hear skidding sounds when I make sharp turns or back up really really fast. They're no wore out enough to replace, so nothing I can do there. The carpet kinda irks me. They look ugly already and there are parts of the carpet that are already really really thin. There's absolutely nothing I can do about this so there's really no point fussing about it. Paint scratches really really easily. Didn't help that my dad got the back of my car scratched the first week I got the car.

So I figured since I had all this time to kill during winter break, I'd do some work on my car. I wanted to do a few things actually..
1) Change my low beams to HIDs. I like the road bright. I normally drive at night. The blue tint looks pretty. But mom won't let me. So I pretty much have to wait until my halogens burn out before I change them to HIDs... or just pester her some more.
2) Change my horn. My horn sounds pathetic. Bikes have more indiminating horns than my car does. So I never honk. This would be top of the list if I had a car alarm, cause the horn would sound every time I arm/disarmed. Mom thinks its a waste of money. It's such an insignificant amount of money anyways. Which brings me to....
3) Power locks. Too bad it's too expensive to install. It sure would make things a lot more convinient. Plus it's pretty much impossible to do it myself.
4) Fix my car scratches. Cheap paint means lots of scratches.
5) Install angel eyes. I don't have the balls to do this yet. The process is kinda scary. Plus, mom probably wouldn't let me.

But seeing how my mom doesn't even let me drive the car, and I do it anyways, it's kinda hard to do much.

The only thing she didn't heavly object to on that list would be the paint. Since today was a nice sunny day, I went out and bought materials.


Which is.. paint, coat, newspaper, sandpaper, sandpaper, bowl, a block of wood, and masking tape.

And I wanted to fix those scratches. Easy enough job.

Well my original plan was to spray the paint into the plastic bowl, then apply the paint on with a toothpick, then sandpaper it smooth, apply more paint, sandpaper, etc. Except..
Who knew. Car paint dissolves styrofoam... and I got this stuff all over my hands. So backup plan, follow the can instructions and spray directly onto the car..


After several cycles of spray paint, hairdryering, sandpapering, spraying more paint, drying, sandpapering... the scratch marks went visible. Then I realized, the paint didn't match. I wasn't expecting a perfect match, I wanted it to be unnoticeable from about 5 feet away. It wasn't. In fact, it was a horrible color match. The touch up paint ended up being considerably darker than my car paint. Silly little booklet thingy said it would match "close enough". So I ordered the exact color Mazda paint and didn't apply the coat. When the correct color paint comes in, I'll just sandpaper off the non-matching touch up paint, and apply the correct color paint.

I did a pretty good job too, by the time I "finished" the scratch couldn't be seen and it was flat.. it's jut that the color didn't match :(

Since it was still day out, I jsut spent the rest of the afternoon washing my car...

(update as soon as the correct color paint comes in).

[update: 12/30]
Correct (hopefully) paint shipped. Should get here on Monday, sadly. So odds are, I'll finish this project first weekend I come back.. :(

[update: 1/17]

Correct paint came. It's not spray on (thank god cause that gets so messy). I bought more sandpaper, expanding my sandpaper collection to P400, P800, and P2000. I also sawed a new block of wood to use that sandpaper with (My god dull saws are hard to use).

I love paint, it has so many warning labels on them. They're fun to read.

I sandpapered off the old non-matching paint with the P400 grade sandpaper. Then I applied on the correct color paint. Yes. This time it is an exact match... "close" match paint I think I'll just apply to the area under my bumper that gets scratched by speed bumps, dips, and evil driveways or something.

Painting white paint with a little brush reminded me of the days I used to use liquid white out. They smell the same too. After 3 uneven layers of paint, it actually started to blend in.. other than the fact that it was extremely lumpy and uneven, but that's what sandpapers for.

Picture was taken in the dark in my garage because I couldn't finish before sundown. You can't even see the scratches anymore! :D (though you can see lumps of paint in the area.. ) Will continue later tonight when the paint dries enough for me to sand down.

[update: after later tonight]

Well... the paint did dry up enough for me to sand down... which then required me to apply another layer of paint.. and wait for that to dry... which I sanded down some more... and applied a bit more paint.. and now I'm waiting for it to dry again. I swear this process sucks. Hopefully this will be the last layer of paint I need and hopefully I don't oversand and have to apply more paint. Whenever I sand, I keep hoping I'm not making the problem worse D:

[update: 1/18]

Well.. After the paint dried, I evened it out. Then I sprayed on a layer of clear coat.. then another layer.. then another layer. Sometime after the 2nd layer of clearcoat, I accidentally touched part of it, so there's a part of the paint that kinda looks like my fingerprint. Then I smoothed it out, so it pretty much looks like this.


If you look really really closely, you can kind of tell where my sandpaper scratches are.. and its not too hard to tell where I touched up paint... especially if you're looking right at it.

So then I just buffed out the scratches with some rubbing compound.. by hand.. so it's not perfect. But after I buffed out the scratches, it looks like this (and you probably can't even tell from photos).


Since I don't have a weeks time to redo everything until it's almost invisible, I'll just leave it alone for now. Its a good enough job that from about a yard away you can't tell.. and if you just glance by you wouldn't notice a thing. It just annoys me how I can see exactly where the scratch is, where there is more clear coat, where I didn't buff out the scratches well enough, where the clear coat is still pretty thin, and where I accidentally touched when the clear coat is drying.

Of course, then my mom wanted me to fix up her major scratches (from that car accident back before I got my license).. which kinda looks like this right now... lots more work ahead for me.

winter project #1 (complete)

I have 3 surround sound systems at home.. (yes, three, for two soon to be one TVs), the Bose, the Sony, and the ancient Pioneer+Infinity speakers. No one in the house likes using the Pioneer/Infinity set cause its old (we're talking 20+ years old), even though at the time of purchase, the Pioneer/Infinity set is worth more than the Sony and Bose combined. Even now its still worth about the same as the Bose or Sony.

Since it wasn't being used, I decided to take them and use them as laptop speakers. Why doesn't anyone use the Pioneer/Infinity set? Well, many reasons.

For starters, it lacks a center speaker. When my dad bought this, surround sound wasn't the in thing to have, so it wasn't necessary to have a center speaker (or have left/right speakers, because we used to wire the left/right speakers as center). So now I have the rear speakers wired up as center speakers, cause my laptop doesn't support rear speakers anyways.

Second, the subwoofer needs repair. This happens to be my winter project. I like subwoofers. They make windows shake. Why not buy a new one? The old one was very expensive. How expensive. Well, dad said everything cost about $2500 at the time. (For inflation comparison, a new Acura Integra cost about $12,500 at the time, and yes, thats how old our Integra is, it still drives better than our Mercedes, that's at least 2 years younger). The receiver was about half, the subwoofer was half of the remaining half, and the rest was divided amoung the remaining 4 speakers.

So heres what the subwoofer looks like after I had fun with a screwdriver.

Now whats broken is the driver... which looks like this..

Now if you look at this wiki picture.. you'll notice that the surround is missing.

Well, it pretty much dissolved into a wonderful black power-like substance when I opened the woofer and got all over the carpet. The job of the surround is to absorb the vibrations caused by the diaphragm thumping. Without it, the speaker pretty much makes a rattle sound after every sound.. Subwoofers are very heavy for that very reason, to keep the speaker from vibrating.

So I ordered a replacement, and since its holiday season, it won't ship until after I start school. I'll have to finish this project until the next time I come home. I'll update this post when I do finish though.

[update: 1/17]

Well, my mom let me know my parts came in the mail a few days after I got to school. This is my first weekend back since then, since it is a long weekend, and I have nothing better to do (other than physics homework, linear algebra homework, and a computer program to write) I figured, might as well finish this project... so when I'm doing something else I have a subwoofer.

Well, while reading the instructions that came with the parts, I learned that I had to take off another part of the speaker, the gasket (not shown in above picture). It just sits right on top of the outer edge of the surround and holds it down. This thing was a bitch to remove. It's glued down. So I had ot get a knife and stick it between the gasket and the frame and slice the glue. That glue was still sticky, and gooey, and it pretty much stuck onto the knife and made the knife stuck in there if you clean it off the knife. So it was pretty much an half hour process of stab, cut, remove, clean knife. After I got it off, it looked like this:


Notice how the glue and remains of the old surround is still on there. My next hour was spent scrape it off with a cement chisel. Yes. A freaking cement chisel. The flat head screwdriver wasn't sharp enough. Not to mention it took a good amount of arm strength. It made my desk look like this when I was done..

Which I just swept off my desk (with much difficulty cause it kinda stuck to my hand or the desk as I swept across) onto the carpet.. that my mom vacuumed just a few days before. Haha

Next I needed to glue on the surround. They provided a wonderful bottle of "booger glue". Here's a picture of it before I explain why I call it booger glue (cause pictures help).


Well, you can tell that the color is very similar to the color of boogers. Yup. It's semi-transparent too. But that's not all. It has the same viscosity of boogers. It's gooey, sticky, and it stretches if you touch it and pull apart. As it dries, it gets thicker and stickier and stretchier... and it's very sticky. Well, they gave me a brush to apply it with. First time I applied it to the diaphragm and stuck the surround on. Then waited for it to dry (for 24+ hours as instructed by the instructions). 24 hours later the brush head was pretty much a rubbery.. thing. It still bended around and stuff, but all the hairs were stuck to each other. I still needed to glue the outer edge of the surround to the frame. It's the exact same process, just a different location. Of course, the instructions knew in advance that the brush would become unusable, so the instructions said, use your finger to smear the glue on. What fun that was. My fingers got stuck to the surround and frame a few times. After the surround was firmly attached to the frame, and the gasket was back on.. I got to deal with this glue on my fingers. But this is what it looked like.
You can even see my crappy glue job on the diaphragm. While it dried I was attempting to wash the boogers glue off my fingers.. not fun. First off, it's kinda waterproof, especially when dried, so water didn't really help. With soap, you could kinda rub it off in small amounts... I swear it took pieces of my skin with it. After most of it came off, I reassembled the subwoofer and gave it a test run.

So it was me and my mom blasting bass-heavy asian music while tinkering with the receiver settings. That was pretty entertaining cause be blasted that music pretty loud. The low notes sound so pretty. It sounds better than my Sony subwoofer, and almost as good as my Bose (it still sounds cleaner). But, at higher volumes, we noticed that our Pioneer speakers couldn't handle high pitched notes, so we lowered the treble/bass on them so they only needed to handle mid notes.. and set them as front speakers instead of center speakers (they're supposed to be rear speakers).

Here's a picture of what my desk looks like. :D


Labled from left to right: Pioneer set as L-front, Infinity set as center, my laptop, other Infinity set as center also, Pioneer set as R-front, then my Infinity subwoofer next to my desk, and my Pioneer receiver above it.

rain

I normally like rain. It's normally fun to run around in... except that normally springtime rain.. its been a while since we had heavy wintertime rain.

Since I don't own a decent pair of shoes anymore (or flipflops, since I normally wear flipflops in the rain), I spent most of these rainy days at home.

I end up sleeping A LOT... mostly to make up for my lack of sleep during finals, and partially because rain makes me sleep quiet soundly.. and a little bit because there's no sun or roommate to wake me up. The 8-10 hours I am awake I end up using doing pretty much nothing around the house..

I set up my Christmas tree, I was actually supposed to fix Connie's computer, but both of us forget and in the back of my head I remembered I needed to do something, so I set up the tree instead. In the process of setting up the tree, I cleaned out parts of the garage to get to the tree. God knows when was the last time I set the thing up. Still did not find the box with the ornaments though... so my mom stuck a bunch of random stuffed animals and Christmas cards on there. Guess where all my bunnies ended up.

I rearranged my dad's office. He's never home anyways. Then after rearranging it, I moved my desktop in there and successfully took over his office. All his stuff is now in a pretty big pile in the corner of the room.

By moving my desktop out of my room, I effectively took my room back from my sister. So now she can mess up my dad's office while I get my room back to myself. Though its rather empty cause pretty much everything got moved into my dad's office..

I eat a lot. Normally when its the middle of the night and I'm hungry while studying or whatever, there's no food around so I just suck it up or sleep. Now there's food everywhere. I like rice. There's always rice around. I eat a lot of rice. I occasionally have 4 meals a day again in an 8 hour period, late lunch, early dinner, late dinner, and after-midnight snack.

As soon as it stops raining I'm going to wash my car.. and go running. I missing having time to run. Stupid finals.

Oh... and I realize that I skip around the house and crash into things.

winter break!

Day 1 back. Wow Walnut is boring.

Hey, wait up...you are my best friend

It was only supposed to be for a little while. He wanted to see what it was like up there in the sky. She felt a different pull. It held her in place. He understood, but it wasn’t the same for him. He lacked her gravity.

Maybe he would have asked her to come along, but they both knew she couldn’t. It wasn’t that he wanted to get away or she wanted him to go, far from that. It was just… there was something else up there with the clouds in the sky, and he had to see for himself what it was. And who was she, she asked herself, to stand in the way of a dream? Really, she was happy for him. This was what he really wanted.

He was already going when she tried to say goodbye. Only he moved so fast, and her arms were so short, and they were suddenly so far apart.

And it was only supposed to be for a little while.

-shirt.woot.com

I bought that shirt. It's a bunny chasing a balloon (obviously). I like that shirt. It reminds me of that one birthday I chased after balloons.

Third post today. That's a sign of how boring my paper is. Makes up for my past for days of.. nothing. Really going back to work now. :P

Finals.

Studying is hard...

but however hard studying is..

it's still easier than getting work done...

I swear I absolutely suck at getting stuff done..

Especially those god forsaken final term papers that end up being quite crappy...

If only everything I study was just independent pieces of information..

and exams would only test the ability to relay that information..

then I would not need to study much at all..

Professors shouldn't assign papers either...

Papers suck.



You can do it if you try
Take one step at a time
-melody. / HOPE

Some motivational song lyrics for those of you taking finals. But honestly, you really should not be reading this (nor should I be typing this) right now.

How is college different from high school? Well, less work, more study. Seeing how I'm a lazy person and dislike working, I like college. More studying isn't really an issue cause photographic memory and good logic still works. So whats wrong? I tend to sleep through lectures, cause they're wonderful places to sleep, its nice and quiet and professors have nice calming tones... in fact, its one of the quieter places on campus that isn't the library. Photographic memory doesn't work when you're sleeping, but learning by osmosis does.. which leads to the next problem. I end up not attending lectures at all. Learning by osmosis doesn't work unless you're in earshot, sadly enough.

Oh, and there's this wonderful thing call term papers. I can absorb information, and I can spit it back out in a logical form. However, ask me to create information and I fail... horribly. Plus, I'm easily distracted.. especially when I'm bored... and papers are boring. Right now I'm supposed to be writing a final paper and instead, I'm writing here. I'm being SO productive.

There's also the little devil called procrastination that I plan on killing... tomorrow.. if I have time.. maybe..

Back to work.

Good luck on finals everyone!

christmas lights

Well a few weeks ago, I was poking around on the internet and I saw some cheap LED lights. I ended up buying 20 of them. For the most part, they pretty much sat in a big pile in my desk. Then finals week comes around and I, instead of studying, decided to screw around with them. They make nice Christmas lights, no? Maybe when the batteries die, I'll take them apart and wire them together in parallel and actually make them into makeshift Christmas lights... just don't stare into them, you'll have a star shaped thing in the middle of your vision for a long long time. They're bright.

Oh, and you get a good view of my computer screen. Facebook during finals, great huh?

Court Desision

I win.

The police requested an extension. The court granted them the extension. Even after the extension, they couldn't make up a viable story to challenge my 10 page long argument (with pictures).

Nothing on record and I get my bail money back. Weeeee

Now what can I spend $519 on... hmm...

facebook disabled + new earhpones(again)

Depressing news (for me) first. I got my facebook account disabled. So if you're wondering where I disappeared off to, it's cause I was "spamming" messages to "unknown person(s)" and a high rate. It ended up being considered "misuse of facebook features" and I got my account disabled.

If messages are not supposed to be used to talk to friends I'm not too sure what they're supposed to be used for...

I'm also not sure how it was spam, every message was unique. I know everyone I message too. -.-

So until then, I'm pretty much going through facebook withdrawl. :[ I guess it's a sign that I should be working on my research paper.
Now to happier news. New headphones! KSC-75

For those of you who wonder why I keep buying earphones/headphones, it's because I already own two and a half very nice sound systems at home, so when I'm staying still, at home, in the living room, I have good sound. But now I'm on laptop, so I want the same good sound I had at home, through earphones. Besides, its cheaper to get earphones.

Bang for buck, this one wins hands down. My Sennheisers cost three times as much (retail) and these sound slightly better.

But sound quality is only better in complete silence. These are open type earphones. So they don't block sound at all. You can hear most environmental sounds around you, and they can hear your sounds too if its quiet enough, and you're playing music loud enough.

Plus, they're not exactly ideal for running.

But they produce very very good sound for their price.

school sweater

I finally got myself a UCSB sweater. I know, took me long enough right? It was pretty last minute too, bought it the day before my freshman discount expired. :P I doesn't have a surfer dude on it like the rest of them, oh well. It's also significantly longer than the rest of my sweaters, so if you thought my other sweaters were long before, this ones a good 5 inches longer. I guess its to accommodate all the tall people here.

You get a view of my extremely filled closet too :P Image is flipped so you can actually read the "Santa Barbara" on my sweater, cause the mirror flips it. So yes, its as if someone was taking a picture of me from inside the mirror. Creepy thought.

my sad ipod story

So my Cx300s broke. I liked them. I ordered another pair since its cheaper to buy a new pair than to potentially pay to get my old ones fixed (yeah, I don't know either....). I ordered my new earphones on Friday.

On Monday, when I was looking through my desk for my ipod, I discovered that they were gone. I'm pretty sure I didn't misplace them, I always stick it in the same place inside my desk. So no ipod to keep me awake in letures. :( And I have to scrap up the money to replace it.

So now I have a brand new pair of nice earphones (white too, to match my now missing ipod) all lonely without an ipod to pair with. :(

R.I.P. CX300. You will be missed.

Remember back in March when I bought a pair of Sennheisner CX300s? They broke. Lets take a moment to remember all the abuse I've put it through..

I drop them on the floor, often. The left earphone normally stays hanging around my next, and often gets flung into walls or crushed when I carry stuff. I exposed the wiring (which I fixed later) by pulling on them too hard trying to pull my iPod out of my pocket. Both earphones have been dissected (and later reassembled on the spot) because they got hit too hard by something.

I run with them I jump with them. Sometimes I sleep with them (since they're kinda sound canceling). Sometimes when I run or jump, my iPod falls out of my pocket, and it either hangs by the earphone on my ear, or the jack disconnects and my iPod falls to the ground. Oh, and sweat and other sorts of bodily fluids gets on it all the time.

Strangely enough, even though my left earphone gets more abuse (the left side is longer, and I normally only wear one), my right one died one me first. Another funny point is that it just suddenly went quiet when I was just walking around (slowly at that), not jumping, running, or playing teather iPod with it.

My warranty didn't expire yet (2 yr), but I don't have any form of proof of purchase. I'm also not sure if all the abuse I've put it though can be noticed, and if it contributes to anything. Perfect example of this is if you decide to shake your computer hard drive, and contantly power up/down your computer within a few seconds. Hard drive fails. But its considered normal failure covered by warranty, even though it was user induced. Now to just wait for a responce.

If it does get replaced, horray! I'll probably buy two more different one. One dirt cheap one for running. Another pair of headphones for dorm use. If not, I'll probably replace it with one of similar price and quality, just to try out other brands.

left handers rant on right handed people part 2

See previous post for background info.

So today, when I came to class, as usual, all the lefty desks were taken. Nothing new. Here's the infuriating part:

-Half of those people were using laptops. Since you type with both hands, it doesn't matter if the laptop is slightly to the left or to the right. Sure you can be slightly angled, but why would you want to angle yourself facing away from the professor is beyond me. If its hard to understand, just sit on the left side of the lecture hall on a lefty desk and try to write and you'll probably face the wall. Then move so some other lefty doesn't get pissed off at you.
-Of those half using laptops, half didn't even use the desk, they just placed the laptop on their lap. Smarter, at least this way they're facing the right way. Still, don't hog up a lefty desk if you're not going to write with your left hand.
-The half not using laptops that were right handed, eventually got tired of facing a wall when they wrote, so they just put their notebook on their right thigh, and wrote on that.
-There was only one guy on the lefty desks actually writing with his left hand. More power to him.

So then I glanced around, and realized the guy directly in front of me was a lefty (we were both sitting on a righty desk to the right of the lefty desk) and we kept glaring at the guy right next to us.

left handedness sucks

OK, before back in the old old days when we were in high school, it didn't matter too much if you were left handed or right handed, the desk was big enough to accommodate either hand, and you had your own desk most of the time.


Well. Lecture halls don't work that way. They're all right handed small little pop out desks that make it annoying to take notes with left hand. Not too bad, you sit on the left side of the room and sit slightly sideways. If you come to lecture SUPER early, you can fight for he handful of lefty desks ( I swear they're the first ones to fill up, and the people who fill them up use laptops.. -.-)

Now what's bugging me even more is that.. my desk in my room is a righty desk. IT SUCKS BALLS. My desk at home was symmetrical, so it had equal amounts of space on both left and right side (which is normal for big desks). But my dorm desk has much more space on the right side, and nothing on the left side (cept Daniel's dresser.. which is kinda a extension of my desk). No likey.

One of these days, we lefties (studies show that lefties are smarter but have a higher risk of brain problems) will take over the world and redesign scissors, lecture hall desks, and everything to be lefties. :D

freeline skates

Props to Spency for introducing these to me.

So 2 hours ago, the came in through UPS, nicely hidden in my bush near my front door. Learning how to skate with these is.... fun... among many things. So sounds from my backyard was pretty much a combination of, skeets (skates scrape against the ground), clunks (skates fly out from the bottom of my feet and bounce off), thunks (me crashing into the wall), poonks (me crashing into one of the poles in my yard), donks (skates run off and hit the wall), flaps (my shoe hitting the ground), pleets (me hand scraping against the wall/ground), and clinks (skates bang against each other when I pick them up for another go), of course with the "ow" and "ahhhh".

It's comming along pretty well though; I can manuver myself rather easily weaving back and forth through a line of poles... at least until my momentum expires and I just end up standing there looking stupid.

When I learn how to accelerate (if I ever learn how), I'm going to go around and scare asian moms driving their expensive cars near my house. That's when this gets really really fun (or I get myself killed).

Oh, and my right buttcheek hurts (I think I fell on it once), my left leg tightened up a few times (yay for being out of shape and leg muscles being underused T.T), my fingers are black and white (dirt and scratches) and pretty much lost all their skin (breaking falls and griping the grip tape), I'm drenched in sweat (90 degree weather playing with these in the sun), and my neck hurts (I didn't sleep well last night).

move in part 2

probably final list... still can be updated (probably for myself)

key
[x] = have, sitting in "to pack" pile
[ ] = do not have, get soon
[x] = have, not packed, not in "to pack" pile
[ ] = need to get when i arrive
strikethrough = decided not to bring
[x] (blue) = packed completely, ready to bring

-bathroom..
[x]shower basket
[x]shampoo
[x]conditioner
[x]body wash
[x]shower shoes
[x]contacts
[x]contacts solution
[x]toothbrush
[x]toothpaste
[x]gel
[x]comb
[x]razor
-bed..
[x]fitted sheets
[x]sheets
[x]pillow
[x]fat "lumpy" pillow x2
[x]mike (still needs to be washed)
[x]pillowcase
[x]comforter
-desk.. stuff...
[x]pencil
[x]eraser
[x]pencil lead
[x]highligher
[ ]pens
[x]stapler
[x]staples
[x]tape
[ ]tape dispenser
[x]graphing calculator
[x]desk lamp
[x]power surge
[x]laptop
[x]laptop lock
[x]calender
[x]scissors
[x]spiral notebooks
[x]binders
[x]filler paper
[x]coffee mug
-closet..
[x]hangers
[x]clothes
[x]running shoes
[x]flip flops
[x]laundry basket
[x]laundry detergent
-other..
[x]fridge
[x]bowl
[x]spoon
[x]fork
[x]chopsticks
[x]butter knife
[x]cellphone
[x]phone charger
[x]ipod
[x]ipod usb cable
[x]phone usb cable
[x]watch
[x]usb drive
[ ]headphones
[ ]jogging earphones
[x]kite
[x]paper towels
[ ]cleaner
[ ]umbrella
[ ]security blanket
[ ]freeline skates
packed into..
[x]luggage
[x]laptop case
[x]backpack
[ ]trashbags :P

my to buy list

Some stuff I need to get around to buying before college starts...

-A FREAKIN LAPTOP
-a basket thingy for shower stuff... maybe..
-my own bottle of body wash and shampoo/conditioner
-a big big (or a lot of) picture frame(s) that holds wallet pictures
-some sound canceling headphones
-some jogging earphones
-that stuff you put under your bed sheet to make your bed squishier
-more running shorts
-laundry detergent
-hangers (if i need them)

I'm bringing (so far)..

-sheets/blanket/pillows/etc
-my aunt's mini-fridge that she doesn't use anymore
-clothes
-toothbrush/toothpaste/a few razors/contacts and stuff
-my kite

Maybe a few weeks into the quarter, I might consider bringing..

-a hammock
-my army of bunnies and my body pillow (by request of everyone.. >.>)

I missing anything?

newer is better

That phrase does NOT apply to bedsheets. I got my dorm sheets a few weeks ago, and yesterday, I figured, hey, lets try them out. They're kinda rough, so I threw them into the wash, and out they came, still kinda rough. Sure, my old bedsheets were rough when they were new too, but they're nice and soft now, after a few months of sweat and fabric softener. So now I have to wear in these bedsheets, which sucks because my bed is a queen, and the bedsheets are twin XL.

So I stuck them on my sister's bed. She can wear them in for me. She's probably going to hate me too.

aerodynamics

So, in my boredom today, I decided to fold paper airplanes. Spike gave me some weird looks cause I was flying the planes indoors, and they pretty much crashed into the wall all the time. My first plane crashed into the wall so much that it became unflyable (stfu spell check, I know that's not a word). So I went outside to fly my 2nd plane. It landed on my roof.

:(

Then I fixed up my kite and tried to fly it in my backyard. Then I realized there is no wind and my backyard is right under power lines.

Oh well.

boogie monster!

No, not quite...

My mom gave the "you're moving out, so clean your room so we can use it for something else" order a few days ago. I figured, since I had nothing to do, I might as well clean under my bed.

Other than everything being covered in layers and layers of fur-like dust (myself included). I found:

-3 yard sticks. I can have sword fights with my mom and sister again.
-3 pairs of house slippers. I'm not too sure who would want to wear them seeing how they're ashy gray colored now.
-3 small bean bags. I can learn to juggle now. Now to find the other 3...
-A huge box of legos.
-A paper bag. WTF.
-A small Big5 bag. I don't remember buying anything small from Big5.
-My Chem Honors binder. It still has a picture of a chocobo chasing a water drop in it that Clarice gave me.
-A spool of red thread.
-Pokemon Crystal. I have 4 badges!
-A black shirt with 龍 on it. OK Technically it was under my mattress.
-3 Shoeboxes. Saucony (running shoes). Adidas (track spikes). Vans (work shoes).
-My mobo box. P4P800s-X. This thing is ancient.
-Wii box. My wiimote afro's in there!
-2 Denn tennis balls. Uhh.. I'm pretty sure they come in 3 packs. Missing one. =/
-A box containing paint and all the styrofoam balls of various sizes I didn't use for my ChemAP project
-Chess/Backgammon/Checkers board and peices. I don't even know how to play backgammon.
-Wireless router box. It supports Windows Vista! and only contains a warrenty information packet. I wonder why I keep all these empty boxes.
-One of those hook things that rock climbers use to secure cables, that I use to hang my keys off my belt hooks. Forgot the name. This one is actually usable for rock climbing. Stainless steel too.
-Lots of magazines. Get your mind out of the gutter. Includes Time, Entertainment, a Dell PC brochure, and a USC Viterbi booklet.
-A die. (as in dice)
-A expandable ball thing thats super colorful and looks like its made of sticks. It's one of those toys you get at the discovery store.
-A penny
-The build-it-yourself paper bunny Jono gave me. Somehow during the earthquake it jumped off my bookshelf and ran under my bed. Smart bunny.
-A stapler.
-A string that probably came out of my track hoodie.

Now my rooms messier than before. Oh well.

my earthquake story

Huh, the windows are rattling. Probably someone who has their stereo turned up too high. Oh, bed's shaking now; big truck that's speeding with stereo turned up too high. Everything's shaking now. OH! Earthquake o.O; Closest earthquake proof place? Doorway! What? It stopped already? time to wait outside for aftershocks. Hi mom.

Pretty much my train of thought after I got woken up by the Earthquake. After the initial shock subsided, it was pretty much my mom and I standing in our backyard going like, "Why are we standing here? We're right next to the power lines. Maybe the front yard was a better choice. Geez mom, the dining table that survived the '94 Northridge quake, that has battle scars from our chandelier crashing on it is right next to you and you decide to run outside and stand next to power lines. Smart. Where's Spike?"

Spike is my dog that I think you all know very well. He likes to sleep under tables and pianos, especially that aforementioned dining table. We always joke that if we ever have an earthquake, I'll die cause I sleep through everything, and Spike will just fine cause he stays under tables all time. Real life earthquake scenario though, Spike stared at the two of us standing in the backyard like we're retards 10 minutes after the initial shock, then yawns, then goes back to sleep. Then my mom starts yelling at him for the next 15 minutes.

Afterward, we just turned on the news, and laughed at all the people who claimed the shake was over a minute long (really, it felt like 10 seconds) and ran out of buildings screaming, crying, and praying. At least the tourists at Disneyland thought it was fun.

Damage done? My stack of CDs fell off my bookshelf. A few vases fell off the outside bookshelf. Our dish soap bottle fell into the sink. All the pictures in my hallway are slanted now. All the pictures on the piano fell over like dominos. We're all gonna die!

paper bunny!

Jono gave me an self-assembly paper bunny :D So this is what it looks like after assembly. Its a lot harder to put together than it looks. Took about 2 hours to put together D: Then again, I was supposed to use a razor blade, not scissors to cut it.


Final Product next to the instructions diagram.


I used a mug to hold it together while the glue dried (you can see the bunny ears stick out from under the mug) cause I was too lazy to. Use super glue, it dries faster, it stays stuck together.

Now I'm not sure what to do with this. O_o

my rant on fry's

So my sister's laptop computer broke. Long story short, hard drive died, it needed a new one. So I decided, hey lets swing around Fry's and grab a new one, we stopped by PCClub on the way there, for price comparison.

We went in, told the salesperson that greeted us that we were looking for laptop hard drives, gave him our old hard drive for comparison. He went into laptop hard drive section and began comparing for one that match. While he was doing that, the manager glanced over from half a room away, and told us that they don't carry PATA drives, and only SATA drives. So we told her, thanks, and she offered to order one for us. The salesperson couldn't see a difference. We asked the manager about ram, and various other things. She responded quite well. Manager told us it would take a few days to order a new drive, we declined, we thanked her, and we left. Turns out she would be the only person that actually knows what they were talking about.

Now study this chart carefully. It's not that complicated of a chart (courtesy of wikipedia)

OK. If you don't understand the chart, it's basically a list of interfaces for hard drives from oldest to most current. Left column is the official name, right column is the other names for the same thing. Feel free to refer to the above chart for any confusion caused by below text.

So I go up to the salesperson, saying, "Hi, I'm looking for a laptop hard drive."
*He go to the shelf, and grabs one based on the dead one I showed him*
me: Do you have any with the ATA-6 interface?
him: ATA-6? You mean ATA/66? That's old and slow, we don't carry anything that old.
me: No no, ATA-6
him: We don't carry ATA/66
me: ..... OK. Can you get me one with ATA-7 interface then?
him: What's that? We only carry ATA/133 and ATA/100
me: Why does the hard drive you just handed to me say ATA-7 then.
him: where does it say that?
me: here *points* (see below picture)

him: uhhh. Oh that ATA/133
me: Yes, and it's also known as ATA-7 as the box says, now do you carry ATA-6 interface hard drives?
him: No we don't carry ATA/66
me: ........... fine then, can you get me an ATA/100 drive then?
him: Why would you want that?
me: Because my old drive was an ATA/100 and I want to replace it with an ATA/100 drive
him: Let me see your old hard drive
me: *hands him old hard drive*
him (after closely examing drive): It doesn't say anything on there.
me: google the part number, here *points* hdd2181 and you'll get hundreds of links telling you this is a ATA-6 drive
him: But it doesn't say anything on the actual drive, so you can't tell.
me: ........................ nevermind.

Turns out they didn't carry ATA-6. Most ATA-7 drives are backwards compatible with ATA-6. This one happened to be part of that majority. Drive worked perfectly.

So what do I think about Fry's? It's a fun place to look around, or shop for simple things, such as blank DVDs or power surges. My mom wonders why I never ask for help in Fry's. Well, I know where everything is, and I'm better off without their help most of the time. Oh, and I like their $10 wireless card that caused me so much trouble because I can't find my drivers disk. Card works super well, it's just a pain in the ass to find the correct drivers. (current frustration)

The dead hard drive makes a cute paperweight though.

AP scores!

suck.

English: 2
Calc BC:4
AB subscore: 4
Government: 5

Funny, cause the entire year, I never did anything for gov or calc, just sleep and not turn in homework. Yet, those are the two APs I passed. Oh well.

a summer update, week 3

I like how the weather's finally cooling off a little.. like 6 degrees, which is better than nothing I guess.

What have I done in my free time at home during this week? I read manga, Soul Eater and Fullmetal Alchemist from beginning to current. Talk about long chapters. For Fullmetal Alchemist, I like the anime more. Its a nice story. The manga on the other hand, just keeps going, and going, solve a problem, new problem appears, someone dies, repeat.

I like Soul Eater though. The manga is fun to read, though annoying at times since I still do get confused during fight scenes.. The anime has very nice animation, and follows the manga exactly. Anime more fun to watch, but anime is slow. Oh well.

my nose exploded!

I sneezed and it went sloosh all over my desk. Halfway through cleaning it up, I thought it would make a interesting picture. Now if it was on my arm it would've made a nice emo picture.

Oh, and while I was cleaning the blood off my face, my mom told me to stuff ginger up my nose to make it stop bleeding faster...

life with clearer vision

I got my eyes checked today. The computer test of my eyes says that they're pretty much the same as before, about 75° on both eyes. The letter on the wall reading test says my eyes are about 175° on my left with astigmatism, and 200° on my right. So the doctor gave me contacts of 125° for both eyes.

So my mom was horrified as I learned how to put them on. The assistant that was teaching me kept laughing at me. SHUTUP I KNOW I HAVE SMALL EYES. She kept saying, "you need to open your eyes bigger, bigger, bigger, now move your eyelashes out of the way, open eyes bigger" So yes, it is hard putting soft contacts into small eyes. Plus she kept laughing at me cause I kept poking my eye with my finger instead of with the contact. Its actually kinda fun poking my eye, it feels funny. Oh, and every now and then, she would tell me my contacts were dry, I would ask how do you tell, she told me I should be able to feel that they are dry. They feel the same to me. She thought I was weird. During all those times I kept putting on, and removing my contacts, one time, one of my eyelashes fell off, and got caught under my contact. That hurt.

During my eye exam, my mom kept asking the doctor, "are you sure his eyes arn't too small?" He said they're not abnormally small, they only seem small because I have single eyelids. Plus, there are advantages to small eyes. They don't dry as easily and less stuff flies into it. Doctor is cool.

Now what life is like with contacts...
-Our house's carpet is ugly. Before I wouldn't notice because it would just appear as a big blob of beige.
-My room is very dirty. I can actually see all the doghair and dust everywhere now from far far away. Before I had to be within arms length to see dust and doghair.
-I can't read my computer screen from where my chair is with contacts on. It's actually less clear. However, I can read my computer screen from my bed. Not too sure if thats a good thing, but not being able to read my computer screen from my chair is definitely a bad thing.
-I can't rub my eyes when I'm tired.
-Everything looks ugly because suddenly, everything is sharp and dirty looking.

Don't really need to wear contacts or glasses around the house, don't really need them anywhere unless I'm driving or trying to read very small font from very far away.

random costco story

So today I went to Costco with my mom and sister. We ditched my mom right when we got in, like we normally do. When we found her later, she was standing next to a shopping cart looking at meat. We saw a sample cup with some nuts inside, so we both took some.

Then came the interesting part, mom took the meat and walked away, to our shopping cart. Turns out the shopping cart with the nut sample wasn't ours. The cart with the sample's owner didn't seem to notice half her nuts missing, nor did she seem to care.

So now you know I steal food from people I don't know too. Now if your mom comes home, and tells you some random kids stole her nut sample, I'm sorry!

i did have a nice, relevant title for this entry 10 minutes ago, but forgot it as i began to type

My summer sucks. Yes, that right, it sucks so far, really only because of two things, which is really caused by one thing. I'm stuck at home, and I have to deal with the morons in the government.

Super short version of my bad luck and error in judgment. Its dark. Police officers blocked road with their trucks with all headlights facing me. They're not moving. I thought they were opposing traffic on the other side of the road. They're on my side of the road. I ended up about 10 ft away facing the front of their truck. Pissy pansy officers take away my license and write me up for speeding and failure to yield. May they die in a traffic accident for poor road blocks.

Now so far, every government employees that heard that story, and/or the officers story pretty much had the same confused response. The DMV safety clerk told me it was a very minor violation, and I could still drive. I told him the officers took my license. Then he asked his boss, who asked his boss, who then called up half the employees in the office and had a super long discussion about what to do. Their answer? Police officers were not supposed to take away my license; they wrote up a temporary one for me. They're still confused. Same goes for the officer that took my statement on what happened. She couldn't make sense of the officers report. She took forever to understand my side of the story. In the end, she still let me drive, but I had to pass another behind the wheel just to keep my license, or so she said.

So I go to the DMV for my behind the wheel. I'm pretty sure I pissed everyone else off there cause even though I was behind like 20 people for the drive test, I was the first to actually take the drive test. They gave me the extensive test, not the simple short 5 minute test that only takes up a few columns of the score sheet, the full test that used every box and every line of the score sheet, plus freeway that takes 30-45 minutes. I also got the supervisor of all the proctors to test me. I swear he catches every mistake possible. So thats, 30-45 minutes of change lanes, change lanes again, right turn, left turn, right turn, left turn, left turn, left turn, right turn, lets go on the freeway, lane change, lane change, exit the freeway, right turn, right turn, etc. You'd think after 20 right turns he'd assume I'd know how to right turn before making me turn right 20 more times, then on the 39th right turn, oh, you turn was not sharp enough, you were a little bit farther away from the right curb than you needed to be. I ended up getting 5 errors(20 to fail), 2 of which were driving slightly off center in a lane, 1 for not being right enough on a right turn, 1 for doing a California roll on a stop sign (oops. bad habit), and 1 for slightly speeding, I think 28mph in a 25mph residential area. He told me I was a very very good driver, and had no idea what I was doing in the DMV for a reexamination. I told him my story, he laughed cause he thought I totaled a car and killed several people, or something like that. Course, then he also told me it didn't matter if I passed or failed, they wouldn't take away my license away unless they thought I had serious serious problems operating a car.

So what was my first week of summer like? Two trips of the DMV safety office, one trip to the West Co. DMV. Two vision exams. One traffic laws exam. One behind the wheel exam. My mom calling me stupid every time I talk to her. My dad passing trucks on the dirt part of the on ramp for the freeway in my car. My mom calling him stupid. My dad having no ride to the airport because both licensed drivers were at the DMV (my mom ended up ditching me at the DMV to take him to the airport. Connie had to find herself a new ride because I couldn't drive. Thankfully, most of this is over now, except the DMV wants another vision exam, but I can drive again without restrictions. Mom still calls me stupid though (I'm starting to think her evaluation of my intelligence is highly dependent on her current mood), and now she's panicking over the whereabouts of my actual license, since the DMV has no idea, and those incompetent officers probably have no idea. Identity theft paranoia. At least I still have my government ID card, so I can still use my credit cards. Oh, and there's all the work I have to do for my court case, which as of right now, I will go to to contest my citations, unless heavily advised against by people with more law experience.

Other than the hectic driving issue, my summer so far has been very busy yet very slow. My mom managed to make a super long to do list for my and my dad to do before I leave for college. So its fix the garage wall that I crashed into 3 times with the Mercedes, get rid of the Mercedes, buy insurance for the Mazda, fix our wooden deck in Monterey Park, don't fix the deck, replace it, kill the fat yellow snake living under the wooden deck, take a family portrait, cover windows, fix the couch, fix one of our dining table chairs, move a file cabinet from the office into the master bedroom, dust the house, vacuum the house, return all the bowls we borrowed from my cousin, wash dishes, clean my room, laundry. We didn't finish half that list, oh well. That fat yellow snake can live happy for a few more months (gopher snakes are harmless anyways).

Then theres the few big events parents had planned. I went to a wedding, ditched the banquet for Char's BBQ. I went to my cousin's 8th grade graduation (sure, we call it a promotion). I ended up having a long text message conversation after the 2nd of 5 speeches lasting until my phone died cause my dad called his office.

I feel fat since I don't exercise as much now, even though I'm actually slowly but surely losing weight. I need to find somewhere cool to exercise during the summer. Sister says my 4am jogs might scare the old grandmas walking around during that time, I think shes psycho for jogging during daytime. Time to get myself a gym membership!

Everyones also out of town. Vacations are nice.. when you're on them. Last vacation with my mom caused more stress than it relieved, so my next vacation will probably be without her, or with someone other than her, or both. It feels like everyone just disappeared.

Since there's no one to hangout with or talk to, and I'm poor and unemployed (like everyone else in the U.S. yay poor economy) I find myself sleeping a lot. Sleeping in the daytime isn't exactly great, since it's hot, which makes me sweat, and it screws up my internal clock, which is pretty screwed up anyways, hence 4am jogs! All that sweat during my daytime sleep pretty much made my room smell more like a guy's room. My mom is still mystified by how my sister can stand being in my room for such long periods of time. Oh, and it's impossible to walk around without stepping on dirty laundry. Something else I didn't do on that list.

Half my time not sleeping is spent playing video games with my sister. Because our Wii is outside in the living room, and my mom is watching that TV 24/7, and she hates us playing the Wii, we relocated to the TV in her room, playing the SNES. :D Hours and hours of Tetris attack. Awesome game, my first video game actually. Since we both grew up playing that game, were not too bad at it. Even my mom knows how to play decently, apparently she pulled her first all nighter outside of college trying to beat the one player for that game. Which was funny cause when we woke up when we were like, 6 years old or something, she was super happy cause she finally beat the piranha plant. Though now she hates it cause one night we were playing it at 2am in her room when she was trying to sleep, and it's pretty hard to sleep when you hear a bunch of "HOCAS POCAS! hehe~ hehe~ hehe~ hehe~ HOCAS POCAS! HOCAS POCAS! hehe~ HOCAS POCAS!" all night long, followed by "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH! You lost again! You suck, make your difficulty harder, harder, there we go..... HA! I win! That's because you're on easy and I'm on hard..." She started attacking us with pillows half an hour later.

Now all the remaining free time I had was spent on, surprisingly, not eating, since we have no food at home cause I am no longer employed in a supermarket and my mom just doesn't do grocery shopping, watching American dramas on the computer. Well, not exactly, my sister watched them on my computer, I had nothing better to do so I watched them with her when I'm not sleeping. I slept through pretty much all of Gossip Girl, catfights! one hour at a time, 18 times. Only thing I remember form that is just some girl sleeping with a gay guy.

Now the other series I ended up watching with her is One Tree Hill. I've seen like, 10 minute segments from two different episodes when it aired on TV. That's just how I watch TV, I watch something until the commercials start, then I leave the room to get food or something and I end up not coming back. I ended up watching the first Pirates of the Caribbeans that way, after it aired 5 times, though I'm still not sure what order the events happen in. One Tree Hill I actually like, they have wonderful friendships with crappy events that ruins their otherwise wonderful life. It'd be boring to watch otherwise though. I'm sure my sister was very annoyed with all my questions since she tended to watch episodes out of order cause some of them shes seen before, and some of them just didn't download correctly. So it pretty much sounded like "Who's she? Brooke, oh. Who's that? Thats Rachael. Which one's the cheerleader again? They're all cheerleaders. Why does their school have pretty cheerleaders? Because we go to Walnut. Now who's that? That's still Brooke. What's she doing in her house? Who's house? ...Haley's...? That's not Haley, that's Peyton. Now that's Haley. So what's.... Brooke doing in Haley's house? They live together. Oh. Then how'd she get into Peyton's house? and whose house is she in now? Lucas'. Why is she so good at getting into people's houses when they're sleeping? Shut up" or random comments like "Look! He has a pimple right there. Move your finger, you're blocking the screen. But he has a pimple~. Yes. -_- high schoolers have pimples. But he's an actor! Actors aren't supposed to have pimples. He's still a hot actor. So pimples are hot? really now? Look, he has another one right there. That's the same one, now SHH. Oh, it disappeared, I like how his pimples disappear overnight. Pimple. Singular. He had ONE, and he still good looking, now SHHH." I seriously need better to something to do.

new car!

I actually planned on updating while I was still test driving the cars, except I never got around to it. Bought this car over the Mitsubishi lancer because it has a quieter engine, its a lot lighter, and drives better overall.

Now there's all the small things I don't like too much. For starters, when we test drove cars, we tested the '09 model. When we hunted around for a better deal, dad bought the '08 model. It's a $5000 difference, go figure. I loved everything about the '09 model, and I think my dad expected the '08 model to not be so different. Well, unlike the '09 base model, the '08 base model doesn't have..

Power mirrors. Whatever, it's a pain in the ass to adjust the first time, but since I'm the only one driving, I don't think I need to readjust them anytime soon.

Power windows. Theres a plus and minus side to this. Plus side is I can open and close my windows without the engine on. So my mom thought I was weird when I had my windows open in the garage. Downside is when I'm driving, I can only open and close my own windows, since I probably shouldn't be trying to open my other 3 windows while driving. Funny comment from mom was, look, now when you drive your car into a large body of water, you can open your windows and everyone else in the same situation as you're in with power windows will die, see? useful! But until I drive the car into a lake or something, power windows > no power windows.

Power locks. Now this is my biggest cause of irritation. Even the old Mercedes had power locks. It gets very very annoying because I like to throw stuff into the back seats, and when I take those stuff out, I have to manually unlock the door, then relock it, or unlock it, throw stuff back there, relock it, then unlock it again when I want to take it out. So, no keyless lock/unlock. No alarm. No long distance trunk opener. Maybe one of these days, we might ask them to install it.

Ironic part is, when we started shopping for cars last year, dad said he wanted me to have a car with power windows, power locks, radio, and air conditioning. (Well, obviously, he wanted the standard safety options too, air bags, anti-lock brakes, seat belts, w/e. Most cars have all that these days).

Now what I like about the car.. (with mom's comparison to her Pilot)

It's light. Like, very very light. It accelerates fast, and stops fast, and is super easy to control. Mom complains how the car is too light. Well, it's less than half the weight of the pilot. Makes sense. She also complains how since my car is so light, it has a higher chance of spinning out than her pilot. Counter-argument, Pilot has a higher chance of tilting over.

Since I got home first, I snagged the Pilot's parking spot in the garage, next to the Mercedes that we probably will never sell now. The car is so much small than the Pilot, so I can actually fully open all the car doors, the car hood, and the trunk, and Spike can still run around quite freely in the garage. With the Pilot, we couldn't even open two doors on the opposite sides far enough to let a not skinny human out without it hitting either the kitchen door, or the Mercedes. Now the landlord's description of the garage being "very big" when we toured the house for the first time seems likely.

I have a AUX jack! I can plug in my iPod (or any other similar device) to my car. :D Except I normally keep my max volume limit on my iPod around 20% of the absolute maximum (hey calculus!) cause of super loud earphone. So I need to adjust that too. But it's nice, I have music on long drives.

Now the sad part is that my mom won't let me drive it, cause she wants to drive it. Which isn't half bad, cause she's helping me break in the car anyways. So if she wants to spend the next 1000 miles driving local or in traffic, without sudden acceleration or braking, or abrupt sudden maneuvers, she can be my guest. :P New car smell makes my head hurt too, dunno why.

random post about roof racks

Well, I always tell my mom she should have put a roof rack on her Pilot. She thinks the roof rack is the most useless and ugly accessory a car can have. I think it makes the car look tough, after all, it is an SUV. She thinks it looks better without it, and make the car easier to identify in the parking lot. What SUV doesn't have a roof rack? Even mini-vans have roof racks.

Mom wants to buy herself a Nissan 350z convertible. I told her I would drive it away and keep it for myself. She told me I could have the Pilot to drive when she gets a new car.

I told her to add a roof rack to her 350z. She told me two things.

It's a convertible, it doesn't have a roof for you to put a rack on. and. It's ugly and useless, the hells wrong with you.

I guess I'll try to convince my dad to stick a roof rack on his Mercedes next.

oh, and this came up because we saw an Audi commercial.

hot

It's hot. I hate it. It makes me lazy.

Plus I got a nosebleed.

Sure, I have no problem exercising in warm weather, and actually prefer it to cold weather, but, it's really really hard to start, once I start it's easy...

I need a pool.

product of too much free time

Since I'm home all day, and my moms home all day too, now we actually see each other. It was bad enough back when both of us worked and we only saw each other for 2 hours tops per day, but now its closer to about 12 hours a day that I have to spend around my mom.

Most of us all know how stereotypical Asian moms are. "Why you have A-? You should have A+++. I disown you now failure son" etc. etc.

Spending so much time around my mom made me realize what other... lets call them "talents" she posses.

What stood out the most would be the wonderful illogical connections. Pretty sure all Asian parents have said something about how many grains of rice left in your dinner bowl is how many pimples your future spouse has. It has no scientific basis and is just said so little kids don't waste food. Apparently my mom thinks it works with everything. So we hear her say stuff like "you have allergies because you don't wash dishes enough" or "stop slouching, that's why you have white hair" or mix and match "you have allergies because you slouch". Then there's college related stuff like "you got rejected form UCLA because you listen to your ipod" or "M.I.T. will reject you because you're not listening to me in the car". And the all time classic, "You're not tall enough because you..
-Sleep too much
-Sleep too little
-Run track
-Swim too little
-Don't jump enough
-Don't weight train enough
-Don't play with Spike enough
-Didn't buy me water"
The reason changes depending on what's convenient.

Honestly, WTF. Normally we would just ignore her and let her ramble on, except now we have to ignore her for longer amounts of time because shes around us more often. Plus she's getting really really clingy.

She also has a very creative imagination, usually mentioned when I drive. "You're going to drive to Vons, then on the way the way there, you're going to get mugged, then get into a car accident, then get lost, then your car will run out of gas and a electric pole will crash down on you, then when you're on the freeway there will be a 15.9 earthquake where the freeway bridge will collapse and your insurance rates will go up and your car will have scratches in it. Oh, then the police will pull you over for drunk driving. That's why you don't need to drive" How is it even possible for all that to happen on a 3 minute drive to Vons, with no freeway use? I don't know either. She also seems to think our vacuum cleaner will explode after 5 minutes of continuous use and my computer is the cause of global warming.

too much free time

I no longer work. Track is over. I don't (and didn't) need to study for my APs.

I'm finding myself spending a lot of time doing a lot of nothing. Other than going to school, just to sleep in class, I don't do much these days.

I realized I spent a lot of that time eating, and sleeping. Well, I'm starting to play games again, not something I wanted to super into again, because it is a waste of time.

I need a cheap meaningful hobby, or just something to do, hopefully before I get fat and die of diabetes or something.

vacuum cleaner!

So our old vacuum cleaner broke down. It went, hot hot hot, black smoke, black smoke, R.I.P. Everyone loves vacuum cleaners, you can suck up mosquitoes and spiders with them. So we got a new one.

When we used it, Spike went berserk, and started growling at it. He's fine now. That dog learns too fast.

So we try it out and see how much dirt we can pick up, since it's one of those clear-tank-empty kind. We suck up like 10 feet and our tank is already pretty full with dog hair and lots of dust/lint/dirt. Well the whole house is pretty much like that.

So everyone in the house pretty much jokes about the vacuum cleaner now. Conversations while using it pretty much sound like..

"Don't go farther than 10 feet"
"Why?"
"You'll overfill the tank"
"No I won't"
"If you do it might break and we're screwed"
"We could just return it and get another one, we do have 1 year warrenty"
"Yeah, and they will be like, Ma'am, this vacuum cleaner is for indoor use only"
"Yes I know, we did use it indoors"
"I find that hard to believe ma'am, it looks like you decided to stand on a pile of dirt and vacuum until it broke"
"Just replace it, we're under warranty"
"And by then the customer service rep will probably be horrified at how 'clean' our house is and how its able to break vacuum machines"
"Is that why you're vacuuming now?"
"House should be clean"
"Tanks full"
"No it's not"
"See this line, it says full. You're two inches above the line"
*sigh*

or..

"You know who would really like this vacuum machine?"
"Who?"
"Dad."
"OMG. It can be like, his new best friend ever."
"I KNOW"
"Then the whole day the only thing we'll hear is WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Boom."

or..

"Do you know what you're doing?"
"Yes mom, I know how to use a vacuum machine"
"Don't break it"
"You're the one in the family that breaks things"
"Still, be careful"
"WHAT?"
"I SAID BE CAREFUL"
"I CAN'T HEAR YOU VACUUM IS ON"
"TURN IT OFF"
clack clack clack
"What happens when I suck in a paper clip?"
"WHAT?"
"Nothing."


At least the house is cleaner now. Spike's dog hair still manages to tangle inside the machine though, at least it's off the carpet, well, most of it is.

no calcy

Well, another random update, since I really don't feel like doing a calc packet of torture.

My phone's phone chain hook is annoying. There are two type of phone hooks, the actual hook, and the bridge type. Bridge type you spend an hour trying to thread the string through and then you loop through itself and it stays. Hook type you just hook the string on, and it stays, or it's supposed to.

Clarice bought me a flying pig. Connie got me a Totoro bunny thing with a leaf umbrella, and a mushroom that Eric thinks looks like... things, lets leave it at that.

Well my S500i happens to be a hook type. Plus side is I don't need a sharp object or infinite patience to attach the phone chain. Downside? It falls off, easily. Just tug on the chain a few times and it detaches. Go figure, it's a hook, one side is open. Well, normally, when I just attached one chain, it wasn't too much of a problem, since it stayed on fairly well, because it actually fit on the hook. It would only fall off when it got caught onto something.

Well recently, I thought that, well, since I have two chains, lets put both on there.For the bridge type hooks, you would just string one chain through, then attach the 2nd chain to the 1st chain's knot. Well, for the hook types, you would think, oh. just put them both on the hook. I thought that too.

No. Doesn't work that way. Hook designed for one chain. Attach one only. No more. Realistically designed for less.

The hook just isn't long enough to fit both chains. Chains falling off was annoying enough as it is when there was only one chain that fell off occasionally. Having both on the same hook just meant that they would both fall off, often.

Since I wanted both chains on there. It was time to use my wonderful engineering mind to use.

I threw out super glue, since I actually wanted to be able to detach it.

So I tried a variety of things. Some worked, until I couldn't put the cover back on, or fell when I moved my phone, or fell when I tugged on one or both of the chains, or made one chain fall, or seemed good in theory but didn't fit because the hook was too small, etc.

Well the one solution that worked for a bit was that I used a 3rd piece of string to hold the two chains together then tie the string to the hook, and since the string is tied on, it wouldn't fall off as easily, and tugging on the string didn't cause it to fall off the hook because it was tied tightly enough to not move off the hook. If I wanted to remove the chains, I would just break the 3rd piece of string. Well thats exactly what happened, the string broke.

So then I went back to the drawing board. Which gave me the great idea that branched off the old idea. Knots. So I went through various knots attempts to make both chains stay on. Most of the knots were too big, and wouldn't fit into the little gap.

Except the reef knot. It's wonderful. Now both chains won't separate from each other, and it's thin enough for me to stab into the gap with a paper clip, yet too fat to remove by tugging at the normal angel, as tugging only pulls on the other chain, and causes the knot to get fatter and less likely to pop out.

That probably was too in depth and made little sense without picture illustrations and diagrams. Many many diagrams, that I'm way too lazy to draw.

Hope my phone chains stay attached.

Plus, this wasted a good 10 minutes that I otherwise spent on calculus, which I think now I just won't do because it's late.

San Antonio League Finals @ Rowland

HJ: They made the starting height 5'8" (instead of 5'). The average of the finalist had a PR of 5'6" (myself included). Well, 8 of the 12 got eliminated right at the beginning because they couldn't clear the opening height. They also went berserk and bonkers at the outrageous starting height, just like everyone else, just even more so. I managed to clear (new PR :D). Then was left with the best high jumpers of the remaining schools that jump 6'-ish. So I got 4th, but I PRed. Didn't expect to win, expected to PR. Everything here went according to plan.

TJ: On the other hand, my triple was horrible. 36'10" at best. Winning jump was 40'8". If i had a good day, I probably could've beaten that, and I planned on having a good day and planning on winning this, but I didn't. Oh well. Guess I didn't take into account that I would be tired at the end of the day, and still weak from prelims.

It's still fun though. From now on I'm just a spectator.

San Antonio League Prelims @ Rowland

I got a lot of sleep from late start, so I was bouncy the whole time before the meet. We got to get out of class early, which was nice also.

One of our buses broke down, so we only had one bus. The bus driver for varsity baseball happened to be a very nice person, and baseball has like 10 people on the team, she offered to take us there with baseball. They probably all hate us now because before we came onto the bus, each person had a whole row to himself. We made it 2-3 to a bench.

The meet was really fun. They also have a very nice, new track with the astro-turf grass. (see West Co. post for details) Everyone was all hyped up, and there were a lot of people there. Everyone hyped up just cheered for everyone Walnut that ran by. Especially near the end of the meet when they had nothing better to do. The other schools looked at us like we were crazy, screw them, we got team spirit.

TJ: I jumped a 38'4" and 39'-. I didn't try very hard on both jumps because I was being cautious of the wind. Then of course, the official told me I only needed to jump a 37'+ to qualify for finals. So I stopped jumping because I already qualified. It would've been nice if he told us that before we all jumped though.

So then I was all pumped up for high jump. They told me everyone auto qualified for finals since there wasn't that many people. OK. I kind of expected that to happen, but I was still warmed up and ready for it.

So then I realized since I only needed to jump triple today, I could've very well qualified for finals for long jump too. Coach didn't let me do long jump so I could focus my efforts on my other two jumps, and let people who actually spend their whole season practicing long jump to have a chance. They weren't jumping that great today.

Meet lasted until 8:30 though. Bus ride back, I rode the emptier bus whee we got 1 person per bench, and the other bus was 3 to a bench. Obviously they didn't listen when we told them we had two buses.

vs. West Covina

West Co. has the most awesome track ever, their field, not so much, but their track is godly. When you land on it, it feels almost squishy, but still firm, and you kinda bounce off of it. Its great cause out track is super crappy, and as soon as we land, there's a shot of pain running up our legs. Their field is just, astroturf, fake plasticly grass with black stuff. Since today was hot, the nice looking plastic grass gets hot too. But the field was squishy too, so it was ok for warm-ups.

It seemed like everyone did better on the good track, well, everyone on our team anyways. When we would land for jumps, we would be like, "hey! this doesn't hurt like it normally does, lets try to jump a bit farther because we can afford to land harder." So technically, I got two PRs today, and I tied my other PR.

HJ: still 5'6". I laughed at my own patheticalness. I was wayyy over 5'6", but I lost my form jumping 5'8", first time by looking down to see if I cleared it or not, which I didn't. Second time I underestimated the height of the bar. Third time was the same problem as the first jump. Next week, at league prelims, I'll do better.

TJ: 39'10". Super small 2nd phase. Probably a 17' first phase, and 6' second phase, and a 17' final phase. I know I can probably stretch out that second phase to at least 10', though ideally, second phase should be larger than first phase, but shorter than last phase. Lots of space for improvement here. Plus, it didn't hurt to land, so I could afford to make a super long first phase, instead of the normal, not so long, but completely painless first phase I do. If I can improve by league finals, I might be able to go to CIF for this, only 2" more to qualify.

LJ: 18'10¼". My second long jump this season. It's not 20', but it very well could've been. I just didn't have enough time to finish my jumps, and of the two I did finish, one of them was a scratch by an inch. Not to mention that I have no form for this, since the last time I jumped long jump was two years ago. Also CIF possibility here.

After the meet, when we were cleaning up, our ice water buckets were still full, so normally we would jump dump the water so it's lighter to carry. Guess the other guys thought, it's the last team dual meet, lets dump it on the coaches. So Andrea got drenched first with a full bucket of mostly ice. Thompson next with half a bucket of mostly water. Peralta ran far far away while a few guys attempted to dump a bucket of ice on him, which they did, partially, he was wearing the waterproof coach jacket though. Brad ran too, not enough water left for him either way. Polite is off limits, he might actually die of heart attack.

Then afterwards, when we were back in walnut. The coaches wanted to have a team dinner in the village. Most of the guys went to In-N-Out. Guess I missed that memo. I went to Applebee's with the coaches. It ended up being Thompson, Brad, Andrea, and me there, 3 coaches and a captain. Conversation with them was pretty interesting. Thompson treated us even though we all insisted to pay. Some of the guys came to visit us from In-N-Out, who were then asked by the waiter to move to a nearby table because they were "obstructing waiter traffic."

It was a fun day. Sad that track season's coming to an end though.

edit: Forgot to mention the sand. They have those nice white super soft beach sand in their jump pits. Well, for my first long jump, or my only scored long jump, I landed a bit early, and ended up kicking a whole bunch of sand into my face, into my mouth, and up my nose, and into my eyes. Well, it's easy getting the sand out of the eyes, a few teardrops does the trick. Mouth took a few cups of water to wash out. Worst was the nose. It was just kinda stuck up there, like, in the back part of the nose near the throat. So pretty much spent the rest of the meet trying to blow/wash sand out of my nose whenever I could, which wasn't that often cause I was in 3 events. Even when I showered, it took a lot a lot of effort to get the sand out of my nose. I think most of it's out now. Some good advise, Don't get sand up your nose. The sand was soft though, so it didn't hurt to land. But yeah, sine I landed pre-maturely, I pretty much lost the distance equal to the distance from my ankle to my knee.

And I still don't know how well I ranked. I think I may have placed 1st in triple, and 3rd in long. High for sure is 2nd place. I really didn't care because just by listening to the PA, it was obvious that we won, since they would announce the who placed, and it would sound like "3rd place, ___ from Walnut. 2nd place, ___ from Walnut. 1st place, ___ from Walnut" for just about every race.

you forgot to say goodbye...

So my boss told me that since I missed saying goodbye to our mystery shopper on my 2nd week of work, they're sending me back to customer service training. But at least she congratulated me on getting the greet and offering service.

At Vons, they send in an anonymous shopper, and random days, every month, to rate how the store's customer service is doing. Course, that happened to be on my 2nd week of work where I was like, "Hi... uhh.. lemme find the manager for you... which manager is in today...?" Course, it was also 2 weeks after my last customer service training.

Well, customer service training isn't too bad, you just sit there, for 4 hours, going like, yes, no, yes, yes, no, no, yes, yes, and get paid. Actually, It's kinda boring, whatever, I get paid for doing nothing.

That day, Saturday, was also the first day I worked until midnight (when the store "closes"). Super boring after 10:00pm. Apparently, right when it hits midnight, all the light timers expire, and half the display lights in the store go off. Few minutes later, half of the remaining lights go off. Course, I forgot that they set all the automatic doors to manual-locked, so I crashed into one as I was trying to leave.

vs. Rowland

Did poorly today, not too sure why. Headache throughout the whole track meet, maybe that contributed to it. We won though, which puts us back in the lead. :D

HJ: 5'4
TJ: 35'10''

I got eliminated from high jump in the saddest way possible. As I was approaching for jump, I slipped on the floor right before the jump and hit the mat. Since it was my last jump, I was out. Plus, since I slipped and was wearing spikes, my right spikes sliced up the back of my left leg, on exactly the same spot it did 2 years ago during high jump. So right on top of my old scars, are fresh wounds.

What bothered me a little is that at the end of the meet when we were all huddled up, the football players did their Samoan battle dance. Since Rowland was still there, it looked like we were taunting them. Whatever. It was nice seeing coach all happy and stuff.


After dinner my cousin treated us to yogurtland. I like it more than pinkberry, it has more flavors and more topping choices, and they allow you to mix and match however many you want, at however much you want. So I had this mix of peach, kiwi, green tea, strawberry, mango ice cream with strawberry, mini-gummy bears, watermelon and mochi toppings.

kite flying

Well, its a lot harder than it seems. Probably because the wind was erratic today, and I was attempting to fly the kite on the football field, which happens to be located between two very tall walls of stadium stairs/seats that makes the wind go in weird directions nearing the middle of the field.

The kite sure was popular today though. Everyone wants to fly a kite. I started a trend... kinda. :D

There was one time, where we had a moderate gust of wind, which make the kite fly up up up until I ran out of string. Then it stayed up there for a minute or two, then the wind died down and it crashed into the PA mic. stand.

The kite also attacked many people via kamikaze.

10 min silence

I did my 10 minutes of silence in my backyard, which is as silent as it will get. My first thoughts were about the assignment. Technically, it’s not completely silent in my backyard, there are crickets chirping, and every time I move my jacket makes a sound. Then the following thoughts were just random and without order, they went something like this:

Procrastination is bad. If I didn’t procrastinate, I wouldn’t be out here in the cold at midnight. Plus, I could be using this time to work on other works I procrastinated on. Movies suck. If it wasn’t for movies, I wouldn’t have to turn in something about book to film adaptations.

I must look like a retard out here, if the neighbors looked out at me, they must think, what is he doing? Who sits out in their backyard in the middle of the night in the cold? My feet are cold, shouldn’t have worn flip flops. Come to think of it, this jacket isn’t too warm either.

A breeze. Great. I can fly my kite. Wait, no, the breeze is gone. It wasn’t strong enough to carry that kite anyways. I hope it is windy tomorrow, I really want to fly my kite. Hope Thompson doesn’t get mad with us me flying at kite during practice. I need to run to make the kite fly, so I am getting exercise. I guess that might work out to be a good enough excuse. Who wears green Hawaiian flip flips? Seriously, what was my dad thinking when he bought these for me?

The moon is pretty tonight. No stars though. Wait, there’s three, I think. It’s hard to tell here, that’s the downside of living in the city, no stars. Well, it’s nice how my watch glows in the dark, expect it really isn’t necessary, the moon’s bright enough so I can read the hands without the need for them to glow.

Seven more minutes.

Our neighbors have old school antennas. Maybe they don’t use them.

Why, hello Spike. He must think it’s so weird for me to be out in the backyard. I’m never in the backyard. It’s nice to have someone keep me company out here. It’s awfully boring. Time passes so slowly.

If I get sick because of this, I will be very very angry. My cousin must think I’m weird sitting in the backyard.

I wonder if this bench is clean.

I’m pretty sure she already thinks I’m weird.

Hey, I can see my shadow from the moon.

Spike seems pretty bored too. I think time’s up, let’s go inside.

That was pretty much the gist of it.

Just an insight to how I think. No surprises there.