OK, I caved...

A friend is a frequent visitor to OkCupid. I am not really into the online dating thing, so I didn't ever figure I'd register an account there. But anyways, I was following links one night and ended up taking one of their tests---which of course asks you to register to get the answer. Well, a few days later I took most of the tests and answered quite a few of the 1,400-odd questions. (The more things you answer the better the profile their computer has of you, of course.) So I was looking over my page and lo and behold a little meter sits right on the side:


I have to love the fact I'm listed as being hornier than other girls my age and yet at the same time "more pure". Go figure.

And the "extroverted" part? I guess so... I mean, I used to be a total introvert. In a way I think that's funny too.

Help needed for Hurricane Katrina

I'm sure by now you have seen the wake of destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina that has pounded the Louisiana coast near New Orleans. And just when you thought the storm was done and over with ... a levee breaks. Please help if you can---even better if your corporation has a gift matching program. You can view more on the American Red Cross web site:


Thank you.

Real world ABCs

Thanks to ClipTip, here is an edutainment video from Soulwax: E Talking (Windows Media).

I'd like 97% off, please

Ever notice some small things come in big packages? I got sick a couple days ago so I went down to the nearest drug store to buy some Triaminic---mom's old remedy for the sniffles. Just as I was about to pick up the orange bottle I saw the shiny new Claritin boxes. Well, I had not tried it before and a friend had given a strong recommendation for it. Anyways I picked up this fairly large box (but not their largest) and paid for it at the counter.

Once outside and I tore open the side of the box and started looking for a couple sheets of pills. No, inside was a very small, light foil pouch. Huh? Where's the beef? I thought there had been some mistake so I turned the big cardboard box back over to the front had it says 4, yes 4 whopping tablets. Um, OK, that was a waste of a big box.

Then I proceeded to tear open the foil pouch and out comes this even tinier plastic/foil tray with the advertised 4 tablets...


Wow. 4 tablets. Whee.
OK, let's take another look at this:


Honey, who shrunk the product?
Wow. 16 cubic inches down to a measly 0.5 cubic inches. Gee, I'm glad I paid $6.00 for a box of almost all air. (Comments and questions can be directed to 1-800-CLARITIN.)

But, to Claritin's credit, it does seem to be holding the sniffles at bay. I guess they had to somehow justify the $1.50/tablet.

The IKEA billboard

Oh this is just perfect.

So, my friend Muffin and I are driving up 101 northbound just about to exit onto University Avenue and I tell her this sign sometimes does weird things ... and then we spot it. The broken sign screen. So we ducked into the Home Depot parking lot and snapped a few precious pictures...


Just about 8:30p after we got to the parking lot.


HA! Caught you!


The last picture cropped a little.

These are not Photoshopped, I swear.

Spanglish

There I was reading another blog (in Spanish) when I came across the phrase related to MP3s:

software para ripear

Somehow this just struck me funny. Firstly, "software" isn't Spanish. We all know that---"para" is, of course. But then the next word is a blend of the English word "rip" turned into a Spanish vowel. Oh, and later in this same blog she refers to her "compu", short for "computer". Sheesh.

Of course many languages absorb other langauges, but in this Internet Age computer terms apparently are left in English most of the time. Doesn't this strike you as odd? Like the term doesn't get phonetically translated. No, the original word plus some language conjugation is all you need to reclaim the word in a different language.

Sleep deprivation ...

I think I found the limts of my ability to survive sleep deprivation last week:

• Tuesday: stayed up writing music. 1.5 hours sleep.
• Wendesday: stayed up finishing the music. 1.5 hours sleep.
• Thursday: went out to a concert in the City. 5 hours sleep.
• Friday: a Girl's Night out where we drank and talked into the morning. 4 hours sleep.
• Saturday: picnic up in the City followed by a movie. 3 hours sleep.
• Sunday: 6-mile walk in the morning followed by an afternoon walking around San José's Jazz Festival. Crashed pretty hard in the evening. 11 hours sleep.

When I woke up this morning I had just come out of one of the longest sleep periods I've had in months. And I was still tired. Just after lunch I got the Food Coma baaaaad and I literally zonked out for about 10 minutes or so at my desk.

I've found I start acting really weird when I get sleep deprived. I make really lame jokes, or at least attempt to because everything just seems funnier. Ha ha. Fortunately my friends I guess put up with me. Thank goodness.

Bye bye squishy feeling

I was out in the company of the person that made me all squishy 'n stuff, and there was this other girl he was with. And he was clearly smitten with her. Rats. Just when I thought I was making some sort of headway with him do I find that he's all into this other girl. Oh well. Move on. Keep looking. Poo.

I don't like to try to "put out" or impress other people. I mean, that's just not me. I have always figured that just by doing what I normally do that I'll eventually meet someone. That has always worked for me in the past. It should still work. But I guess when you have gone a while without having someone in particular in your life and all of your friends are getting married and having kids, it makes you sort of feel left out. Or like an extra dessert someone brought to a party that no one ate.

That warm and squishy feeling ... ?

I refuse to say I'm in love because I don't think I am. But ... you know ... there's this guy ... and ... you know ... Well when I talk to him sometimes I get that squishy feeling. And, no, I'm positive that feeling isn't the result of having some incontinence problem. At least, not the last time I checked. But ... I don't really know where I stand with him. I know he's interested in a couple of other people. But I guess sometimes I still hope and wonder.

It's funny because I've been sort of coaching this other friend on how to capture the heart of this cute little girl. I've been telling him not to try to impress this person or do anything much out of the ordinary. You know, just be yourself? And here I find myself almost becoming a hypocrite by going out of my way to impress this guy. As if that would somehow make him mine? (Of course, if I really wanted to make him mine I suppose there's electronic collars and sedatives, but I don't really want him that bad.)

*sigh!*

I'm invincible

With a warm cup of coffee in hand I can do anything.  (Well, almost anything.  [Otherwise that would be false advertising.])  But I'm currently defying the bounds of fatigue propped up on sugar and caffeine.  And I have such a long day to go.

I got back much later from yesterday's run than I thought.  So, after my shower and a brief dinner I sat down at my computer to write some music (I use a MIDI studio now) and ended up tweaking virtual knobs and whatchamacallits until like 5:00a, knowing full well I had to be at work by 9:00a for a meeting.  And you know how when you're really tired sometimes you just keep hitting that snooze button because you forgot why you set the alarm in the first place?  So 8:30a rolls around and then Reality slaps me upside the head: you gotta get to work, kid!  <Expletive> <Expletive> <Expletive>!#!?!

Right, so I got to the meeting 15 minutes late and by 10:00a I was in dire need of energy.  A Mountain Dew kept me going until lunch, and then a couple cans of Diet Pepsi got me until 3:30p.  At which point the Craving started.  That's right: coffee pangs.  So I made an emergency run for Starbuck's white chocolate mocha.  Oh gawd, that stuff is like Liquid Schwartz.*  But I still realize now, cup in hand, that I have to get through a friend's dinner tonight, and get back to my audio workstation by 10:30p if I am to get any more work done on the music before my 9:00a doctor's appointment tomorrow.  I just hope I have a couple of cans of Red Bull still in the fridge for emergency...**

*Spaceballs reference to the most powerful fuel in the known Universe, named after the pervasive cosmic energy called the Schwartz.

**Amster does not endorse nor recommend humans to consume Red Bull.  It contains extreme amounts of sugar and caffeine, both of which can be poisonous to the human body.  However, since Amster is not human, she is allowed to consume as much Red Bull as she can get her shaking hands on.

i pwn j00

I did it.  All 8.8 miles of it.  I successfully ran from my house, to a friend's house about 4 miles away, and back again in about 1.5 hours.  I'm finally starting to show that road who's boss!

I used to run cross-country in highschool.  I was in so good shape back then, I could eat just about anything and not pay for it because I knew I'd burn it off the next day.  Now just looking at chocolate makes me gain like 3 lbs.  :(  So, when I recently dusted off my runners and started trying to get back into distance running, every mile killed me.  Last week I ran to my friend's house and nearly collapsed---she ended up driving me back.  But not today.  Noooooo...My plan was to own that road and complete the circuit without anyone's help.  Yeah!

So, now I know my body is getting used to the distance it's time to step up the pace and try to really go for decent times.  I've got a race coming up in a couple of months and I want to be in race-ready shape by then!  :)

For those who do not speak L33T, the title of this post basically means "My skills are so superior that I dominate you".

Grrr... Why I oughtta...

I had a really bad day yesterday.  My boss and I bashed heads over my not updating my secondary project's documentation after his repeated discussions with me.  I don't think he's quite wrapped his brain around the fact that I support one of our internal applications and when it has problems (as it frequently does) 99% of my time gets sucked up dealing with that.  Of course his response was along the lines of maybe I shouldn't devote so much time to supporting the app.  Which, of course, flies right in the face of what my job description was supposed to be---to support the app first, do documentation second.  *sigh*

There are an increasing number of days where I just want to get one of those really big anime mallets and whack him over the head.  Grr!

This is what happens when you put engineers in management that manage purely by task lists without considering mitigating factors.

It's the Amster smackdown.  *paf!*

Stinky B-Day

I love birthdays.  Especially those when celebrated by friends.  So what better way for us to wish Bo-Bo her I'm-a-year-older Day than to go kayaking?  After all it's a healthy group activity and fun for everyone.  Well, if it's sweaty, stinky, achy, then I'm not so sure...

You see, even though we're a pretty active group of friends there were a number of factors working against us.  First, there's the current in the bay to contend with.  It's not strong but just sitting idle would draw your kayak far away from the dock.  Second, the wind was relentless.  Third, Bo-Bo's mom was there.

So we all got a quick lesson on how to paddle and control the rudder, then we were shoved off by an all-too-happy assistant.  We spun around for a while near the dock just getting used to the controls and making forward progress.  Easy, right?  So we go out a little farther.  We're zooming around and then we notice two things: the water gets much more turbulent away from the dock and the wind/current are stronger out there too.  So, the bright idea of crossing the bay to the opposite end is nixed in short order.  After all, our muscles were already starting to burn.

OK, crossing the bay is out.  We had 4 hours to kill, so we decided to head north to a nearby beach.  As Puchu and I pushed northward we turned to notice that the kayak with Bo-Bo's mom and sister was drifting oddly.  Poor mom wasn't really able to contribute much to moving the boat and so the little sister (who does have some crew experience) was huffing and puffing to make any sort of forward progress.  But they simply could not do it with the current and wind slapping them back... We finally suggested to them that they head back to the dock where it was safer and easier.  So, they turned sideways and inched their way back to the dock...

What's up with this current?!  Puchu and I dug in hard to try to catch up to the 3 kayaks that had already gone ahead to that beach.  About halfway there we see this couple more drifting than paddling back in the opposite direction.  It was Cupcake and her husband Chef.  They had given up.  Their poor kayak meandered back to join Bo-Bo's mom and sister back at the start.  Puchu and I resumed our northward fight, muscles burning.

We did it though!  We pulled our weary bodies and watercraft onto the shore next to the two remaining boats.  Bo-Bo and her boyfriend Rocker were wading into the water.  Tri-Girl was splashing about while her boyfriend, Pacer, just stood there shivering.  We all told him the water was fine and warm (actually it was!) but the only response we got back was the ch-ch-chatter-r-r of h-his t-t-teeth.  Of course, Tri-Girl wasn't about to stand for that so she dragged him into the water, him squeaking in resistance.  :)

And there I was enjoying the oddly lukewarm water along with them.  Gee, I've never been in warm-ish water in the vicinity of San Francisco.  Bo-Bo was starting to really enjoy herself too.  Then somehow the conversation got onto topics of how when Puchu was younger he used to stand underwaterfalls and go pee in the water.  And the turned to look at Tri-Girl who had this funny look on her face as she talked about her peeing in the water.  Then we suddenly realized why the water might have been so warm ... EW!  After a collective knee-jerk reaction we all got out of the water and into our boats, the still-smiling Tri-Girl coming up to join us. 

*sniff* *sniff*  Oh, and did I mention that beachwater area started to smell like horse crap?  Oh ... DOUBLE EW!

Well, Puchu and I hightailed it back to the dock.  (At least this time we were paddling with the current.)  So we got back in record time, leaving the warm "water" and the horsecrap smell far behind us.

We joined up with Cupcake and the mom who were already showered and dry, Bo-Bo and the rest following a few minutes later.  Tired, salty, stinky, and aching we all got back into our cars for the long drive home...

Tryy CIA.LIS tooday 19872

I hate spam e-mail.  Really.  Worse than cauliflower.  And cauliflower is pretty nasty bad.  But I have a pretty effective way of figuring out what is spam and what isn't.  The problem with spammers is that (besides being annoying) is that they have no imagination and the programs they use to mass-mail everyone have quite the limited vocabulary.  So, if you wait long enough the subject lines begin repeating.

I had this one e-mail account that I had pretty much left for dead, but I kept it open just in case some of my old contacts hadn't updated their address books---being the lazy people they are anyways.  I found that if I only checked e-mail about 1x every week I'd end up with about 300 odd messages, 99.9% of them being spam.  But if you sort by header it neatly bunched together all the messages that were probably spam.  Of course, once in a while I'd end up clicking onto a "Subj: Hi!" message only to have it tell me about the latest in making my erection last longer or how this widow needed to entrust some money to me.  However, some people receive some real gems: looking for quality inflatable sheep?

Dibs

*click*

And the Blogsicle was born.

The first post is always the hardest. What do you say? Why is this blog here? What did you have for breakfast? Yadayada.

Well, I came to the realization the other day while riding Red Bull-induced high that writing is actually a hobby of mine. It's fun. It's theraputic. It clears the clutter in my head. I guess it's a sign of the times that blogging is an accepted social activity these days. Go figure.

Like most bloggers out there I don't really have a purpose for the blog right now. :P But if I were to pick a Mission Statement I'd say that the world is waaaaaaaay too serious and a little "healthy insanity" couldn't hurt. :)

Bye!

p.s. Of course most of the blog names are taken out there but "blogsicle" had the fewest number of Google matches and the other Blogsicle seems to have gone away anyways. Oh, and don't sue me over name infingement. I have no money. :P