Sunday, March 30, 2003

Well, cable modem is down, so I'm post-dating this entry in anticipation of posting it tomorrow.

We had the CSEG Happy Hour at our apartment again on Friday, followed by Mongolian BBQ (completely different interpretation than that of Mongol's). That was cool. If I had a camera I'd take a picture of the about 50 empty beer bottles now sitting on our kitchen counter, neatly arranged. (Only one of them was mine.)

Bowling for Columbine is pretty good. Some of Michael Moore's "journalism" was annoying but overall I liked it.. pretty eye-opening and brought up interesting points. Basically it's a documentary/polemic exploring causes of gun violence in America. The bank that gives you a gun if you open an account really exists, according to the director. Don't let the word "documentary" scare you, it's not boring.

Brr, it's below freezing again. Guess it's not time to put away the winter gear just yet. It's supposed to warm up in a couple days, though.

Got some exams this week. March flew by fast, didn't it?

Thursday, March 27, 2003

You know the spaghetti sauce with the meat already in it? That's pretty cool because it's easy to make a meal.. all you have to do is make the spaghetti itself.. and it tastes pretty good. They should expand that concept. Make various canned or bottled things (things being saucy meaty type deals, but not necessarily Italian) that you can heat up over the stove, add to rice or noodles, and eat. Rice and noodles are easy to make, it's the stuff that goes on top of them that gives flavor that we lazy and unskilled people have trouble with.

I saw this 1000-page guitar tab book at Barnes and Noble today. I didn't buy it because I wanted to see if I could find it cheaper online. I wound up ordering it online even though it was the same price, because I lumped it in with something else and got the free shipping. But since it's apparently not very common, the expected ship date isn't until mid-May. Which could be a problem since I may not be living here in May. ("May I be born in May?") Oh well.

Good luck to Allan on his TT Z search. That is one sweet car.

Monday, March 24, 2003

Saw Boondock Saints again. That was good. I hadn't seen it for a while so I didn't really remember the key parts, so it was kinda like watching all over again. They're making a sequel.

It was warm today. We had enough people to actually play some football. Of course since we're out of shape we got tired after about 4 possessions.

Today's my sister's birthday. Happy Birthday!

Sunday, March 23, 2003

Went home "incognito" (as some would say) this weekend, to visit my grandmother. That was nice. You Californians sure have expensive gas. Out here premium is $1.95. I was seeing it for $2.40 in LA.

Planes are cool. Both times I landed at O'Hare on runway 27R and there was another plane landing simultaneously on the parallel 27L. Kinda like flying in formation. Heh. Also at LAX we landed on 25L, meaning we had to hold short of 25R for departing traffic. I had a starboard-side window seat so I could see the two "strings of pearls" of planes lined up on finals for 25L and 24R in the night sky. Neat sight.

So I saw the Oscar results. I've seen almost none of the movies that won awards.

Monday, March 17, 2003

1. I was looking at the IMDb top 250 movies and realized that there are probably more than 20 movies that go into my "top 20 movies."

2. It was really foggy last night, as in can't see the lines in the road. I actually got some use out of my rewired fog lights.

3. The weather today was so good. It was in the high 60's or so, and I actually walked to and from campus today. We also got a football to throw around on the quad. (Although the grass was very muddy from all the snow melt.) Just think, last week it was below freezing.

4. Good luck on finals, UCLA people.

5. Happy St. Patty's Day!

Sunday, March 16, 2003

I saw Donnie Darko today. Great movie. I think this goes into my top 20 movies.

Saturday, March 15, 2003

Today I did a lot of work on my car, though I didn't plan to.

When I got up, my roommates were making shelves for the pantry. The sound of power tools in combination with the warm weather (in the 50's for once.. short sleeve weather! woo hoo) caused me to want to finally do some car work. I got rid of my old car radio (which had been sitting idle next to the MP3 CD player) and put in the pocket that Allan returned to me over spring break. This involved drilling out the old screws and was pretty uneventful.

Then I went for a drive, whereupon I happened on a huge, mean, sharp-edged, deep, camouflaged-under-water pothole. This caused my right rear tire to go flat, and the corresponding wheel to be dented.

So I changed to the spare and went to Discount Tire where they bent the rim back and sold me two new tires. (It's about time to replace them anyway, they had 5/32" left.)

Interesting tidbit: here in Michigan they recommend you put new tires on the rear wheels. In California you put 'em on the front. Reason: in bad weather places it's more important to avoid spinning out, which happens when you lose traction in the rear, but in CA you don't need to worry about such things and you put new tires on the front because your fronts wear faster (they do the accelerating, turning, and most of the braking).

By this time it was around 4 or 5. So I figured, since my day is pretty shot in terms of doing productive work, I may as well do other car stuff that I haven't gotten around to while the sun is still up. So I rewired the fog lights so they can come on without the headlights. I don't quite see the point of fog lights if you can't turn them on without headlights.

So that was pretty much my day today. We're supposed to be in the 50's and 60's until late next week. Nice.

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I added a new album for the "faces of ..." pictures.

Friday, March 14, 2003

Today I saw Brazil. That movie makes NO FRICKIN SENSE.

Cinematographically (is that a word?) it's really dark, kinda like Blade Runner, but content-wise it reminds me of some Stanley Kubrick stuff, or 1984. But, of course, making much less sense than any of the above. And the lead character is the guy from the Infiniti commercials (Jonathan Pryce) which was kind of weird. Robert De Niro is in it too, as probably the only character that I liked.

Monday, March 10, 2003

I didn't want to be productive tonight, so instead I sat down and wrote way too much about my car. Looking back I realize most of it won't be interesting to most of you.

Sunday, March 9, 2003

Check this out. FAN is on the list of three-letter combinations banned from California license plates. I'm in league with ASS, BUT, COK, FUK, SEX, and SHT.

Unrelated question: do Californians use the phrase "parked up" to mean there's a lot of cars parked in an area (parking lot or street)? As in "this street gets parked up on school days." I don't think I heard it until I came out here.

Other interesting regional stuff is here. Especially note coo-pon vs. cyoo-pon.

Friday, March 7, 2003

My turn to have a "Meaningful Conversation of the Month."

BlackEagle365: I should have gotten to know more smart foos in college
KeFanMan: true, true
BlackEagle365: some turn out to be too egotistical though... can't stand that shit
KeFanMan: yeah
KeFanMan: shoulda found some more cool people such as ourselves
BlackEagle365: HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH
KeFanMan: hahahaha

Tuesday, March 4, 2003

I did my taxes last weekend. Taxes are easy (and free) to do online. I get a nice refund; yay.

One of my roommates came back from vacation today and her car was frozen to the road (it had been parked there for two weeks and there was a big snow storm a couple weekends ago -- I guess the snow melted and refroze). Well it wasn't really frozen, the tires could still turn, but since each tire was kind of in a depression of ice they couldn't move the car.. they just spun there.

When I came back from LA there was this big (couple-inch diameter) icicle (and several smaller icicles) connecting my car to the ground so the first time I started driving it made loud CRACKing noises as they broke. That was interesting.

You never run into these kinds of problems in CA.

My knees are a little sore from playing racquetball. What! I exerted myself?! Yes. Right before I drove my car two blocks to go home.

I can now (sometimes) successfully install the rubber band onto my braces without a mirror. Yess: I'm officially a nerd. (Because I wasn't, before.) Where are my pocket protector and coke-bottle glasses? Maybe Eugene is borrowing them. Just kidding.

Have you guys seen Donnie Darko? I have the avi so I intend to watch it some time. I hear it's weird. The IMDB description seems to agree with this assessment: "Highschooler Donnie is plagued by visions of a giant evil rabbit who orders him to commit acts of violence and predicts the impending end of the world." I imagine this is what would happen if you allowed Wes to write a screenplay. (Thank goodness that is illegal in the state of CA.)

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Happy Birthday, Kyung. (Since I probably won't post tomorrow.) This is the only picture I have of him:

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Jenny and I were just thinking. Other than this year, do you remember what you did for past New Year's Eves? We can't even remember what we did in 2000, which was supposed to be a big deal year. When I was in high school typically we'd just go to someone's house and watch new year stuff on TV. (Therefore my house would typically get nominated since we used to have a big screen.) But I can't remember any of my new years since college.

Oh yeah, one year I was at my apartment playing Xbox with some friends. We didn't even bother to watch the new years stuff.

I guess normal people go to parties.

By the way, Happy Fat Tuesday, everyone. Trivia for non-French speakers: Mardi = Tuesday, Gras = Fat. (Hey, I just found this out today. I never knew there was a connection between Fat Tuesday and Mardi Gras.) It's called Fat Tuesday because it's the day right before Ash Wednesday (first day of Lent), so you get all the partying out of your system before you have to be all penancy and sacrificey. Something like that. See Allan's page for a better explanation of Lent.

Strange, Google didn't decorate their logo for Mardi Gras. Btw, I met the guy at Google who does the logo artwork two summers ago. (So I suppose it may not be the same person anymore.) What a cool job. He also does admin stuff. Furthermore, he has no idea who I am.

I almost bought the latest Creed album because of some song they're playing on the radio whose name I didn't know. Luckily, I didn't, because it turns out the song is from their first album.

I don't think I've ever had two edits to the same post before. (That's what the ** is for, in case you didn't figure it out.)

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Edit #3: HAHAHAHA. The Barkley quote on Brian's page is too hilarious. (The 3-4-03 9:45 am entry to be specific, since he updates like 100 times a day.)

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Edit #4: Okay, I got complaints, so I'll just copy the quote here. I guess I should have at least linked.

Barkley: "I cannot believe that Dan Rather didn't just kill Saddam Hussein when he was interviewing him, and that would have saved us all that money going to war."

Ernie Johnson: "How do you reckon Dan Rather would have pulled that off?"

Barkley: "He could have said 'Hey Saddam, let's go get something to eat' and then stabbed him in the neck with a fork. That could have saved us $26 billion dollars we're giving to Turkey. We could have used that money to fix the public school system here in America... You think a real fork or a salad fork?"

EJ: "I don't think a salad fork is getting it done."

Saturday, March 1, 2003

I'm back after a week in LA! That was fun.

I'll keep the recap short since I personally find that recaps on blogs aren't that interesting. The gist of it was, I got to see a lot of friends and eat good food (both home-cooked and restaurant-served). I saw City of God, which was good. And, I got to ride my motorcycle. (And properly prep it for storage this time.)

All in all, a good spring break.

If you're interested in such things, this site (pashnit.com) has a comprehensive listing of great mountain roads in California. Though the site is called "California Motorcycle Roads," they're just as fun to drive through.

Panera Bread is coming to California, according to what I read in the Southwest Airlines magazine. Now, I've never actually been there since I'm not a big bread person. But two of them have just opened in Ann Arbor. And my roommate brought back some bagels from a Panera Bread in Chicago a while ago and they weren't bad. Anyway it's sorta like Starbucks for bread. You guys might like it.