well, it's been a hectic couple of days....but i'm still managing to do my yearly soul searching.

every year around this time, last day of the year, i look into my life. sometimes it's to be thankful for what i have and sometimes it's to feel guilt for everything that i regret. this time, i'm not quite sure. i have many friends around me, i have created all my goals for next year and i've accomplished a lot of goals that i made for myself last year. thats exactly what i have to be thankful for. i'm lonely, and sometimes i feel without a purpose. thats why i feel the way that i feel.

so tonight, i'm looking through letters from old friends and looking through pictures of old memories. i love to reminisce. it's my weakness and sometimes it's my downfall. living in the past is sometimes too easy to do. which is why sometimes, i live the way i live.

update: i don't feel so depressed anymore. happy new year to my relatives in the philippines.

i'm not even going to update.....bertie's summed it all up!

and the invasion starts.....

never, and i mean never bring 4 americans into a rogers video where they have signs that says "we're canadian", "we're funny", etc. why? unless you want mj taking pictures of the canadians holding up the "we're canadian" signs. another is the fact that jesse (after having a few drinks at boston pizza) starts oogling at the fact that everything is translated into french, why the "dollar store" is called a "looney store" and what the heck boston is famous for pizza (get it? boston pizza?).

oh yea, pot pie is actually very cool and needs a girlfriend. any takers? [personal ad type pictures forthcoming] and bertie is actually sick, so she was passed out most of the time chanting something about a pc lan card before she collapsed into my beanbag chair.

oi vey! don't worry pictures will soon come.

so, i'm growing my hair (and it has nothing to do with a hair obsession with actors either). it just kinda grew.

but like all hair, it must be styled or you end up looking like a 19-forgotten kung-fu movie character. so i went for a hair cut today. a nice lady very recommended by my mom (who has great hair, by the way), so thats where i went.

so i walked in, made small talk and started getting down to the nitty gritty. i told her that this was my first time growing out my hair and besides a few suggestions from my lady friends, assume that i know nothing. she suggested a "layered cut" to make it drop and give it a little bit of volume (yes, i even asked her to explain what all these ment). so i'm sitting there watching her even out my hair, style it and honestly, it's looking pretty good until... she took out the blow dryer. she starts explaining something about "giving my hair volume" and starts doing this thing where she blow drys my hair with one of those roller combs and my hair just kinda poofs up! i'm not sure if this is some sort of crazy salon magic cause i've tried emulating this and i haven't been able to do it.

so how did my hair look like before i came home? well lets just say that i looked very similar to the long lost asian relative of jennifer aniston. i ran into the shower, took out all the mousse and styling products that were lodged into my hair and started to style it my way. it looks better now and i don't look like a girl (i hope), and i don't have a mullet (once again, i hope).

christmas day is almost over and who's hanging around in my room playing video games?

it's been so long since the boys have known each other. i'd like to just give a quick shoutout to them because they mean a lot to me. first off, is cedric and archie who i practically grew up with. these two boys are like my adopted brothers. gerard is the baby of the group, man, you gotta start eating some vegetables or some carbs man. you're hella skinny still. john, my confidant don't ever change. i still don't understand why you have soo many girls after you now that you're single. whats you're secret?

so here we are together again after another year of turmoil, we've stuck through it all. all i gotta say is thank you, don't ever change who you guys are.

merry christmas

breakout the food! i've punched an extra hole at the end of my belt and i'm ready to pour on the gravy!

its christmas eve already? oh no!

so let's see, besides getting ecards galore saying.... happy holidays, merry christmas, pray, and all the other good stuff. what else have i don't to make it feel like it's the holidays? honestly, i haven't. besides the vacation and the large amount of spending and the being broke, the season hasn't really kicked in for me.

maybe tonight, but then again. i always think this way during the holidays.

you know it's dangerous when your bored (and procrastinating).

today, i worked the normal day, did all the regular routines and even learned a few new things. but once, bordeom set in it was deadly. i started logging on to apartment 107 and asianavenue, checking updating my page and even starting conversation with a few people. i know this might be deemed ghetto asian faboulous, but hey it was fun, i actually understand the community. but one thing you won't see me do is login with a nick like: shy_babyface!

so after i logged out. one thing that i did notice is the amount of webpages in there hosting personal sites. and a good good portion of them had ThIs SoRt Of WrItInG On tHeM. first reaction? me too! me too! i want to write like that. but lets face it writing like that can give your shift key a good run for it's money. so what does the lazy programmer do?

build a tool to convert normal text to GhEtTo T3Xt! yes i did write the program!

ahh, it's back to the grind of work for 4 days!

did i say i'm just here for 4 more days? then i'm gone for the rest of the year! so, there are a few things that i plan on accomplishing while i'm here at work. why? well, this is where i feel most productive. so for the next 4 days, i don't plan on blogging but i'm going to put my task list up for all to see.

	finish icemag's content management system
	prototype slavemaster dave's cms
	(make my christmas gift list and) christmas shop
	watch lord of the rings
	make my goals list for next year not saying that i accomplished many goals for myself this year
	pay mastercard bill good lord dinner set me back that much?
	try to find cheap accomodations for people coming in from san francisco
	meet up with matt p, and cindy y
	write stuff for the next (and last) team-swollen performance
	create e-card list for this year!
	dispose of dead body err...finish new design for icemag.
	assemble buy and assemble new desk
	pick up mortal kombat arcade from john (err and pay john)

so being that i don't really have a next week to run around and do stuff, i have to get this all done this week. wow, what a change from last year, actually not really, last year we were taking out the edmonton girls. ahh well, c'est la vie.

so did i mention that the big formal christmas party was yesterday?

it was a pretty big deal, why? well, us as friends have been planning this for years but it has never pushed through. (1) because of the lack of money and (2) the laziness of the planning staff (ie, me!). this year, the plan actually pushed through because, (1) we had 2 months to save for it and (2) the planning committee was re-formed (ie emily).

so belle was here for it. she was my date, loosely speaking. notice the change from ghetto asian posers to suave sexxy dot com billionaires. *ahem* and no! there isn't anything "dirty" with the first picture, that is a mustache that i shaved for the dinner *sad sad christmas*.

so we partied (ate, talked and drank) at the revolving restaurant. jokes were made about a guy on a bicycle below powering the whole restaurant. then it was off to archies where we reminisced about old times, listen to some cds and watched a few old school videos. (i was 50 lbs, lighter and less hair on my head.) a few laughed at it, it was fun going down memory lane (i like doing that a lot, as the boys would say).

but let me tell you, this is probably going to only be a yearly thing. know why? well, just because it takes a year to save for this fancy schmancy restaurant! trust me, we have the bill to prove it!

i guess everyone's been wondering what i've been up to....

well, belle is here has been here since thursday night. why? well you guys might remember that big formal dinner night that my friends and i have been planning. yes, she is my imported date from america.

and this is one of the few occassions that my friends and i have actually planned something and it has gone through. so we're all excited about that. i know i kinda fell through with the planning because of other things, so i'd like to publicly thank emily for stepping up.

so what have we been doing? well, it's shopping, eat, shopping, eat, shopping, hang out for the last few days. go around downtown, eat at all-you-can-eat places. belle has already managed to wear out her credit card's magna stripe in the past few days. shop-a-holics eat-a-holics gluttons (really i was going somewhere with this) much?

so now, we're all resting and waiting, i need to see if i still fit into my "formal" pants from 2 years go and belle has the whole up-do thing going on.

fyi: did you know that the only krispy kreme in the washington area is a few hours away from seattle? soo far! and no, i wasn't crazy enough to get some.

yes, i eat rice. does that make me a rice boy? <link via="miss wahine">

alright alright, maybe i do fall under a few of those categories. but i know a few people who fall in more categories than i do. personally, i don't even know what a "negative camber" is. and no i don't put my automatic shifter into neutral just so i roll back and fool people in to thinking that my car is standard.

honestly, i completely suck at driving standard. i stalled 10 times and i almost burned paulo's clutch trying to park his car on an uphill. (sorry paulo) but lets face it, my car in it's state where things are falling apart will not make it to the track (although, it'll probably come a second below the standard version of it in a quarter mile). i have to admit that fixing up the car was fun in it's days and i did have fun installing and just spending hours and hours staring at it. what i don't miss was the amount of money that i spent. i wish i didn't lower my car, or bought the new steering wheel. little things like that add up in time, if you don't believe me just ask archie to show you his credit card bill.

actually a few nights ago there was some public access television show asking random teens if they would "go" for a person with a riced out car. of course, they ask the asian girls and i remember 1 girl saying "well, if his parents paid for the sooping up then no. but if he paid for it himself then yea". hey baby, i "sooped" up my car myself will you "go" for me? i don't know about you, but if i got together with a person and i found out that this person was just with me because of my car, i think i'd be out the relationship faster than a big scary biker guy running to an in-an-out.

if i were to redesign the user interface of windows nt, i would....

now i'm not claiming to be some sort of ui expert. i'm far from it actually, but i am a user. you know, the type of user that keeps the technical support on the phone for 15 minutes because my cup holder is broken cause i spilled chai latte all over it. well, i'm not as bad but i usually complain a lot (internally) about user interface. why? well i'm lazy, what's usually intuitive for others is completely alien to me.

but anyways, let me get back to why i even started to write this post. oh yea, thats right, the stupid uninstall <program name> icon is always beside the program itself. now i have accidentally clicked on the uninstall routine exactly 5 times this morning. so to all your program designers? don't put the uninstall icon beside the icon that launches to program (on the start --> programs). just don't!

and another thing! i want my computer to read my mind and dynamically write code, indent it and put relevant comments. all without me typing a single key on the keyboard. ok, bill get on it!

top ten things that i did (or didn't do) to be in this zombie-like state of mind....

1. and the number 1 reason for my zombie-like state is: no sleep!
2. come up with a make-work content management system for icemag, cause i'm too lazy to proofread the articles.
3. not drink enough coffee
4. realize that my car insurance expired on dec 12. what? what do you mean today's date is dec 12?.... shit!
5. realize that i haven't taken my car to aircare, a crucial part of getting car insurance. why? well you can't get insurance if your car doesn't pass aircare!
6. stay up until 3am, playing spiderman for dreamcast cause i couldn't save it without my memory card!
7. do a lot of work for the past few days thinking that i was going to get some sleep. when in reality, the most sleep that i've been getting for the past few days can be numbered with 1 hand.
8. realize that driving my car in freezing weather with no thread on my tires, while in a state of fatigue isn't good for the mental wellness of my being.
9. listening to the relaxing voice of barry manilow and the backstreet boys (2 separate songs, cause only weirdo fans like me would like to see a collabo)
10. team-meetings at work, need i say more?

update: ok, my lack of sleep is really getting to me.....and who's the reader that didn't tell me? it's not the 12th today! that means i have 1 more day to procrastinate get my insurance!

it has occured to me that a good part of my life has been spent in the virtual world.

before in the bulletin board world, i was calling and running my own bbs. i had a significant amount of users primarily because i ran this game that everyone and their mom's wanted to play. i had email, to keep in touch with my friends even though i saw them everyday in high school. i have to admit that was a lot of fun. a few years later, the internet came to be for me (whoohoo that rhymes) but besides surfing for pr0n and answering a few research questions it wasn't really such a big deal.

so now, i can't go anywhere without being connected. i spend a good portion of my day looking around in the net working on web technologies. if i go on vacation, the first thing (well, not the first thing) that comes to my mind is how i'm going to layout the photo album site for that vacation.

as i think about it, i get more and more amazed at how much my life is spent "connected" and how much of it can live without being "connected". if i had the chance i'd probably get a wireless pci card built right into my head (ok, thats gross! maybe not).

guess who made the switch to windows xp?

yes folks, with a new harddrive and a bit more ram, i'm on the new microsoft bandwagon. i'm sporting the hillside and blue skies now! really! no joke, and it only took a few hours to get back to the point i was at. i'm really happy too.

now, i bet you didn't expect to hear that. well, it's really well done. the cleartype, the windows, the task oriented start menu along with the new views when you're viewing files really increaseses.... uumm productivity? .... surf time! my only and 1 complaint out there is that, i can't find me a cool theme! so it's time to take out the reading glasses, photoshop and make me a dexter's lab theme. or atleast, something cool and not this geeky green meadow and blue skies theme.

i have a big headache, with all the cool new game consoles out... i don't know what to pick!

i've always leaned towards a playstation 2 because of final fantasy. i'm a huge final fantasy fan, the games, the movie you name it i've played/watched it. when i bought the final fantasy dvd, it had a preview of the game (good lord thats a 27mb download!). i don't need to tell you that it looked very good. when a game starts to blur the line of animation and real people, then thats cool!

then, yesterday i played a few games on the xbox. although i think it is a more powerful machine than the ps2; the games had no problem showing off it's power. they were amazing! totally playable (and a few thousand dollars down the hole too).

but last night i also saw... the new smash brothers melee game for the game cube. and it blew my mind! take into account that the game cube is tiny, and it's disks are smaller than normal. what i saw was just the introduction to the game itself and it was very good. now i don't know what to get. damn it! too many choices, too little time.

so this morning, i was getting dressed and i noticed something....

i have an unusually weird amount of gap clothes. actually, too much of my clothes originate from the sale rack at the gap. why is that?

it also occured to me that in microserfs most of the "g33ks" that were described wore gap clothes. now, does this make me the typical geek? this doesn't mean that i like uber geek clothing and i should start wearing the pda/cellphone holster?

well, it probably appeals to me on a subconcious level. see, i like the thinkgeek <geek> shirt and having the the "g" in the gap clothes appeals to me because of that. at least that's my theory. i could just wish that i could sing, dance and be cool by being in their commercials like alayna.

and would you believe that i fell asleep at 8pm last night? and is it harder to believe that i still woke up at 7am this morning.

i'm tired, blog more tomorrow....yea

like most only childs, i'm really close to my family.

i think it happens naturally when your family is composed of 3 members and the odd pet. this means that we are unusually close to each other. we like to fiddle around in each other's business (which isn't as bad as it sounds).

i think that i'm unusually close to my mom. to think of all the time that i spent with her growing up, i'm not surprised. she used to bring me to her work when she used to teach chemistry in the university of the philippines. i was known as "inaanak ng bayan" cause i was the adopted nephew of all her co-workers. she drove me to everything: piano lessons, art classes and soccer practice (good lord, i am a typical asian kid) when i was growing up. of course, she does like to go snooping around in my room for possible drug usage, but then again she is just looking out for me.

if your wondering whats up with the webcam shots? well i just registered my cam software; so being the cheepo that i am; i'm trying to exhaust the use of it and get my money's worth. another trait i got from my mom.

i saw the 2001 billboard music awards.

but who could've missed it? it was on every channel up here in canada. let's see, it was on muchmusic, fox and i think it was on 3 other channels. so who could've watched anything else? i ended up turning the tv off after alicia key's performance. she should let her hair down more often and not braid it; did i mention she is a hottie?. lil romeo? what the heck? i've never even heard of this kid before, and he won rap artist of the year? what? he can't even ride the carousel ride at disney land cause he's comes under that "you-must-be-this-tall-to-ride" line.

well, over all it wasn't too exciting. it was a bunch of new artists singing; a bunch of old artists dressing in skanky dresses trying to keep up with britney spears. and why the heck was master t interviewing backstage?

note to master t: if you're interviewing people; don't change your accent to suit them. it's not like interviewing shaggy in a jamaican accent will make a difference with interviewing him with a straight english accent. if it does make a difference.. it makes you look stupid when the editors cut the show together and you're interviewing one person with a normal canadian accent (whatever that sounds like) to a ghetto'd out street kid wanna be slang talk to all-of-a-sudden-i'm-jamaican accent. you just look stupid and very fake! just like the fake dollar store jewelry that you got on your fingers and neck. trust me.

reasons why not to wear a turtle neck....

• form fitting ribbed turtle necks are made for people who are (1) skinny or (2) muscular... not for flabby fat-flaps-in-the-wind people
• turtle-neck sweatshirts are made from really itchy material
• did i mention that i wasn't skinny or muscular?
• your co-workers start to think that your new wardrobe consists of "power sweaters"
• you can be cool and make everyone think that you're hiding a hickey from your non-existent date last night

reason to wear a turtle-neck.....it's cold and it's starting to snow!

good lord, when did the whole sf crew decide to invade vancouver? [more details as it comes to me...]

and this is exactly why i should be paying for support!

i'm so sorry to all my hosted people. i know your sites are all down. i'm not quite sure what happened yet, i'll have to examine some logs. but trust that all your sites are backed up and nothing was lost. <excuses>now the big problem here is that, i'm at work. where everyone is anal retentive about giving people internet access, and if they do, it's very limited. so my hands are tied at the moment, but rest-assured that once i get off here, i will be rushing home to fix everything. i'm soo sorry, especially to tony (who apparently had a project to hand in).</excuses>

i've been trying to get a hold of my support person there, but due to language barrier(s) all i get from their receptionist is: "he's working outside". if he's working "outside" can't you just call him "inside" and get him to quickly fix my problem.

oh yea, did i tell you that i'm not the "hip" vancouverite blogger anymore? apprently there are other people in the weblogging world and they're from vancouver.

did i ever tell you i'm a sucker for slow jams? yea, i'm sure you all knew that.

any slow jam will do, i love listening to slow music. slow music actually keeps me awake while driving instead of hard-core rap beats or mind numbing techno. i have a sneaking suspicion that my friends dread riding with me cause i'm completely into it that they can't find any other cd's in my car. it's all part of being a hopeless romantic, i guess.

so last night, after my work day, i drove home listening to slow jams. i came home; ate dinner and crashed infront of the television. i was falling asleep because i was completely tired and my body was about to give up. well, the barry manilow live concert was on tv and the channel happened to be there. well, to make a very very long story short (because hearing completely funky old school slow jams and an orchestra to back them up messed up my sleepiness). i went downstairs and started downloading the music that i heard. now i have a complete collection of his works. err... it's for my mom really! i eventually fell asleep (listening to my most recently downloaded music). and thats when cedric and archie came to pick me up because they wanted to hang out.

now, what do you say to your friends when they walk into your room blasting barry manilow's "mandy" and "weekend in new england" songs?