Thursday, September 30, 2004

Augh! Nate got married! The wedding was Friday. It was fun. Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures.

Went to my first game at the Big House on Saturday, where we beat Iowa. Pretty good game. Couple of nice catches by Braylon Edwards and that Iowa guy who made a one-handed diving catch in the end zone. Also the home crowd advantage was in full effect, as we forced Iowa into a lot of false start penalties. Interestingly, Michigan Stadium felt smaller than the Rose Bowl even though it seats more. I think the seats in the Big House are more packed together and closer to the field.

On Monday I went with Bill to see Josh Ritter (folk artist) perform. I like that kind of music because it's very clean sounding, and actually sounds better live than recorded, unlike a lot of very "produced" music.

The Dodgers keep pulling out these crazy wins.. coming back from 4 runs down in the bottom of the 9th on Tuesday, winning on a walk-off homer by David Ross (of all people) today.

It's getting colder in Michigan and leaves are starting to change color.. Last night it was in the 30s. Fall is here...

I went flying this morning, which was a lot of fun. Rather than staying in the traffic pattern and doing takeoffs and landings, we took advantage of the great weather and visited a few other airports in the vicinity (Adrian and Jackson), and saw various landmarks from the air. It was cool to see things like the Big House, Michigan International Speedway, and the auto proving grounds from above. I could also see Detroit, Toledo, and Lake Erie in the distance. Pretty cool.

We have a new pool table in the north campus commons.. it was the class of 2003's class gift. It's nice because the table and all the associated equipment are brand new, and best of all, it's free to use. Mike and I have played several games of 8-ball there. I find it strange actually that the table is not more heavily used.

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Bill talked me into playing broomball on Monday night, and our team won by default when the other team didn't show up. Mike says I was the MVP because I drove. Had I not driven us there, we would not have won! We did end up playing a 2-on-2 game among ourselves and now I have some bruises. Falling on ice hurts.

I've been listening to Muse, based on reading about 'em on Erin's cousin's blog. The Absolution album is quite good.

Sunday, September 19, 2004

These pics are from when my sister and I visited my cousin Teresa and her twins, Evan (in blue) and Nicholas (in red). Technically they are my cousins-once-removed, but that's such a clumsy relation.. I would prefer to call them something like 2nd nephews, or just nephews. And I don't even want to think what the relation would be in Chinese. By the way, like my helmet hair (with cowlick)?

What else has been going on?... Well, on Friday I saw Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra perform here in Ann Arbor. It was a good performance, and all the solos were impressive... especially the piano solos, I liked those. And the encore performance with four trumpets playing off each other was really cool.

Also Friday I had my first flying lesson in several weeks. It was nice to get up in the air again, although it was quite windy that day which made for a bumpy ride. Yesterday, I saw Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which was pretty good cinematographically, but otherwise unimpressive. Finally, today was the first day of the IM softball season, which I'm taking part in. We lost, but at least I had a hit and an RBI...

Thursday, September 16, 2004

This is from Nate's bachelor party last Friday:

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

So I got a parking ticket today, my first of 2004. These 9 months probably represent my longest streak ever without a parking ticket since I got my drivers license. Luckily it's an expired meter ticket which only costs $6. It's funny because a 1-day pass at UCLA already costs $7.

It's annoying how basic things still don't work right in Linux. I was using OpenOffice earlier today (my first mistake), and it highlighted a misspelled word, so I right-clicked on it to see what the right spelling was. The computer proceeded to grind to a halt, the hard drive going crazy and the mouse and keyboard being unresponsive (not even the NumLock key!) for the next five minutes. And then, all of a sudden, I was logged out. I can only guess that during those five minutes my random keypresses and mouse clicks were all queued up and when the computer finally decided to process them, it turned out that I had (unknowingly) clicked the Gnome menu, log off, and OK. Damn computers. Oh well, Linux is still cool as long as you only use it for stuff like development. Just don't do any word processing.

You know what they need more of is adventure games. Sam and Max, Grim Fandango, Monkey Island type games. For some reason I had this urge to play an adventure game yesterday, but there are no good ones out there that I know of.

Thursday, September 9, 2004

Just got back last week from a 2-week trip to Cali. Spent some time in the Bay Area for a conference and industry visit, and saw some friends. Then in LA I got to hang out with lots of people, play football, lose some money at Texas Hold 'Em, and eat lots of good food (Asakuma, Claim Jumper, a Thai place Jon took me to, home cooking, In-N-Out, a cheap but good sushi place, Sam Woo, Versailles, and Celine's garlic chicken). Yum. I'm having some good-food withdrawal.

So while I was in the Bay Area, I visited Tony, which was cool. We had dinner and all that, but the interesting part was we went to a shooting range. I fired 30 rounds of .22-caliber ammo and 20 rounds of 9mm ammo into paper targets and did pretty well, hitting the orange part in the guy's center most of the time (granted, the target wasn't very far away). That was my first time firing a gun. Pretty cool. The .22 was almost like a toy.. very little recoil and pretty easy to fire. The 9mm was a bit more substantial. Anyway, I've posted the 9mm target on the wall in the lab; it makes for an intimidating wall decoration.

Interestingly, it turns out that a good friend of mine from elementary school who I lost touch with after he moved away in middle school now works with Xiaochin up in NorCal. Though I didn't get to meet up with either of them on this trip, I did get to talk to them on the phone. It was funny because in a voice mail message he said to guess who he was... but this was basically impossible because I hadn't talked to him since before his voice changed. Heh.

In LA, I got to enjoy the pleasures of motorcycle riding once again. Once I got the bike started (I was a little overzealous with the gas on my first attempt and flooded it), I took a ride up PCH to Zuma, and went up and down through the canyons a bit (Kanan Dume, Latigo, and Topanga). Later in the week I got to visit Erin and Donn; I headed there early so I could ride up and down the Angeles Crest Hwy, since she lives near there. I'd never been on that stretch of road; it was fun.

Last week was probably the last time I'll get to ride my Hawk, since Toliver is buying it. Another person joining the two-wheel ranks. Woohoo! I intend to buy another bike once I start living somewhere that doesn't have seasons as drastic as we have here.

Saw a couple of good movies while I was in LA, Maria Full of Grace and Garden State. What I liked about both of them is that they seemed real... both were well written and acted. I didn't really like the ending of Garden State, but it's still a good movie.

I got to visit my cousin who recently had twins. That was cool. I don't usually get to interact with little kids, but it was fun. They have cooler toys than I did (though they can't quite use them all yet). I might have some photos to post in the future.

You know how A&E has the reality TV show "Airline" where they show stuff that happens on Southwest Airlines? Well, I flew Southwest on my return from LA to Michigan, and we stopped in Chicago Midway. In the terminal was a sign saying something to the effect of "Warning: by entering this terminal you agree to be filmed for purposes of this TV show." Kinda interesting. Not like you have a choice to enter or not enter the terminal, if you're going to catch your flight. Heh, maybe I should have done something controversial, I could have gotten on TV.

Anyway, it's back-to-school time. The campus was deserted all summer but now all the new students are here, the dorms are populated and lecture halls are full again. Got to readjust. On the plus side, there isn't that much readjusting to do since I don't have any classes left to take.