my drive to work this morning was weird.

i had the strange craving to listen to trance. i think, due to the recent events, i've developed this strange attraction to trance music. it just reminds me of things that went down at mj's party. that's about all i can write about the infamous, scandalous party this past weekend.

home sweet home!

the beauty of driving to sf is the ability to control the speed at which you travel. granted that said speed is limited to that of a car. its still much more fun travelling through mountain roads at 160kph (100mph, for you americans) than to be travelling in a plane.... err what am i saying?! i'll take a 2 hour plane ride over a 13 hour drive anyday! i'm back home kiddies. excuse me while i kiss my bed.

best party ever! (pt.2)

why are the best partys always the ones that you can't blog about?! ok, now i have to psyche myself up for the drive home. uugh!

so lets see what i've done since i've been here.

(1) sleep, (2) sleep, (3) eat, (4) code some asp for blinddateblog, (5) sleep and finally (6) watch a movie. everyone is here now, we're going to head out for the big party tonight after we grab a bite to eat.

i'm here! a 14 hour drive is a tiring thing to ....zzZZzz

let me tell you my plan to survive the drive tonight.

1. redbull and rockstar will be my very good friends!
2. play alot of audio stuff. mp3's, cd's, books on tape and dvd's
3. cigarettes and candy, the devil's alarm clock
4. occasionally make random prank calls to my friends who decided to backout @ 4am (no hard feelings guys, really)
5. attempt to cook steak with the george foreman grill (yes, it's possible with the dc/ac converter) while driving

to be honest, i haven't really thought about the drive that much. now i'm getting a bit anxious.

oh look! i finally got my playlist area up.

so the plan is that, i'm going to update this on a monthly basis. so i make a new cd every month (stealing from my dad's cd pile) and actually put the effort into making a cover. i really had fun with picking out the songs for this one. the theme is:bump-in-your-car-while-you-cruise-the-strip music. yea, cause when you have a car with big ass subwoofers like mine people expect me to have music that have at least a little bass. the problem with this is, i love slow jams. i'm addicted to slow jams. so in honor of my friends who hate to ride in my car because they all end up falling asleep, in honor of the lady who gave me the wierd stare as i cruised down the road playing: lionel richie - do it to me 1 more time, in honor of all the people who were laughing at me because i was singing along with my slow jams. this cd is for you.

so everything is set for tomorrow.

i've booked the rental car. i've bought the insurance. i have the lighter adaptor for my ipaq. i know which laptop cigarette adaptor i want to buy. i know which dvd's i'm gonna bring to watch on my laptop. i've bought the supply of soda that i will need to keep the 2 drivers awake. now all that needs to be done is to do the 18 hour drive down to san francisco.

oh yea, i forgot: finish configuring the linux server, burn some cd's, pack my clothes, charge various electronic equiptment and get me some sleep!

happy birthday min jung!

burn baby burn!

so i got a cd yesterday from jay. i guess we both got each other's cd at the same time since he got mine too. i'm amazed at the amount of creativity that went into making these cd's. i've exchanged with a few extra people and i've been very happy that i invested the time into getting into it. everyone is so creative with their music and their covers, mine was a black and grey cd that had "burn, baby burn!" on the front.

jay's cd made me laugh. i loved it! why? well the cd had an 80's theme; music that were hits or brings back memories of the 80's. i was still in my younger days back then. i was below 13 years old and still in grade school. i was already a teeny-bopper in the making! i mean isn't cindy lauper and madonna the 80's britney spears and j-lo? (oh god! i think all the madonna fans are gonna kick my butt for comparing her to j-lo.) so listening to this cd totally made me remember the days when i used to jump around in my room to borderline, karma cameleon and girls just wanna have fun. thanks a lot jay! you made my day!

oh man! slacking off already? i will get my playlist section up soon with the burn baby burn information. promise. don't be mad.

sleep, my enemy! i loathe you!

this whole weekend i've been battling with sleep. work has really taken a toll on my already sleep deprived schedule. the problem is that my sleeping hours have been slowly decreasing as time passes along.

i'm very worried. my sleeping habits have dwindled down to a good 2 hours a night. i take naps sometimes but most times i can't fall asleep. being sleep deprived can also cause you to be borderline narcoleptic. falling alseep mid sentence while on the phone isn't cool, "yea and then i went to work and then i .... zzZZzz." leaving the person on the other end wondeing what the hell just happened to me. my body is that fatigued. i'm trying and sleep more this week but i doubt it'll happen.

so what did ritchie do the whole weekend?

well, for starters, i grinded my nose to computer monitor until its flatter than it is already. why? everyone knows that icemag has been dormant for a while. everyone also knows that this is what i've been working on since the beginning of time this year! it's finally there, the new design, the new articles and the new staff. all there or rather.... here!

i've also been getting ready for minjung's party next weekend, a few nearly all the people backed out. i'm still going though and still driving. we'll see how i make out with that.

another miracle has happened! ritchie's room is clean, ritchie's car is clean and ritchie will kill himself if he refers to himself in the third person again! allergies suck!

wild consomme! it's wild alright!

those crazy japanese people! what will they think of next. frank, who has just come back from japan, has brought me back pringles! i have a wierd obsession with pringles; i love pringles! he didn't bring me back just any pringles though. he brought me back wild consomme pringles.

let me explain why this is so weird. isn't consomme that powdered soup stock found in a packet of mr. noodles? so, imagine if you will, regular pringles sprinkled with wild consomme powder. so how do people decide about chips flavors? who the heck looks at mr. noodles flavor packets and says, "hey! that would be great on chips!" who? c'mon! i guess the same people who looks at fries and gravy and says, "hey! that would be great on chips! go dehydrate it! we'll powder it, and sell it!" i kid you not!

some people would just eat anything i guess.

let's figure out when ritchie should go to sleep.

so let's say that the average person functions on 7.5 hours of sleep. i'm not talking about the geek programmer who functions like a night owl and sleeps 2 hours a week running on coffee and wake-up pills. i'm talking about joe schmoe who's some sort of manager at some law firm with a wife, 2.5 kids and a dog. if i wanted to get 7.5 hours of sleep with my current work schedule i would have to sleep at 10:00pm the night before. this would guarantee me 7.5 hours of sleep plus 30 minutes of hitting that beautiful snooze button and an hour to shower and get ready (because picking out the right clothes takes a while for someone who has close a fashion sense close to nill).

so, currently, what time does ritchie go to bed? let's take yesterday for example. i got home from developer days at 2pm, napped until 8pm, worked on icemag for an hour, went to breadgarden, drank 2 cups of coffee and managed to get home by 11. already, i'm behind schedule. i work on icemag for another 30 minutes, talked to person x until 3am and read a book for another hour (3am + 1 hour = 4am). my alarm is currently set for 5:30am! that's 2 hours of sleep (counting the times i hit the snooze)!

i'm sure they'll manage to make a television movie of this someday. insomniac's revenge: sleep-deprived programmers gone wild! coming to a theater near you!

sorry boys and girls no blogging today... maybe later on tonight. for now, just click on these people. i'm sure they have something more interesting to say besides, "i'm in a room with a bunch of geeks who have only seen sunlight twice in the last 3 weeks." today, i'm at developer days to be brainwashed away from microsoft.

damn it! i missed the registration for my courses.

most of the courses that i was aiming for either started already or is full. crap! i tried looking for other little courses that i could take but no luck. damn all these responsible students! *shakes fist in the air* so now i'm course-less and my school learning opportunity has gone out the window for this term. hopefully i can get a book and learn something new outside of the computer realm.

i've always had the innate need to be in school. it's one of those pesky personality quirks that i've inherited from my mom or it could be her nagging me to study all the time. she would say, "study everyday, finish my bachelors and get my masters." oh wait! that last one is mine. see look what i've turned into. i'm appending things to my own mothers naggings.

mcdonalds is crap!

this morning as part of my little indulgance, i went to mcdonalds. i ordered the breakfast burrito meal supersized with coffee (cream and sugar). so what does the average person expect to get when they order this combo. a large coffee (with cream and sugar), 2 breakfast burritos and 2 hash browns. a lot to expect? not really.

what does the average person get when they order from the mcdonalds in the quay? yea, the one where there is, apparently, no one that speaks english. 2 breakfast burritos with the wrappers stuck to the burritos, 1 hash brown (over oily) and coffee (lid not closed, tiny bit of cream and no sugar). breakfast the most important part of the day right? now i remember why i don't eat it.

i'm doing catch up. this whole month, i'm playing catch up with myself.

i never wanted to slack off but it just seems like a habit for me to just let things slip by the cracks. yesterday i realized that i've been playing catch up this whole month. my finances are back to being stable and able to support my extravagant lifestyle. i've been reading a lot more too. in my new years resolution i promised to read at least 2 books a month. has it been happening? no, but at least i'm catching up to my quota. i've been good about my writing. i have a few pieces established and in the works already. once i get icemag up there will be more of me to read. be scared!

i've never liked playing catch up but it's the story of my life. i tend to slack off a lot. this time i'm nipping it in the butt early. i hope.

you'll never guess what i'm watching right now.

its a disney tv movie called dance till dawn. you know its bad when the stud sterotype looks like scott hall with a really bad mullet. you know its bad when the kids starring in the movie are sitcom kid stars. you also know that its bad when the main plot is "going to the prom". oh and another thing, you know its bad when one of the subplots is starting to form into a bad remake of she's all that.

so.. why can't i turn away from the television?

let this be a lesson to you kiddies. never let your domain registration expire.

things other people accomplished when they were my age or how to make ritchie feel like an unaccomplished bum.

at age 24 [click to see the list]

• Nelly Bly made a solo trip around the world in less than 80 days for the New York World, beating Phileas Fogg's fictional record.
• Radioastronomy grad student Jocelyn Bell Burnell observed an unknown signal from outer space; this resulted in the discovery of pulsars.
• John Couch Adams became the first person to predict the position of a planetary mass beyond Uranus.
• Johannes Kepler defended the Copernican theory and described the structure of the solar system.
• Entrepreneur Ted Turner took over his father's billboard advertising business. He later launched CNN.
• Tracy Chapman released her first album, winning three Grammies.
• Scottish physician Mungo Park became the first European to reach the West African interior.
• Edgar Allen Poe won a $50 prize for the story "MS. Found in a Bottle."
• Noah Webster published a spelling book.
• Isaac Pitman devised the first scientific shorthand system.
• Security guard Frank Wills alerted D.C. police to the Watergate

for my age, i've accomplished quite a bit. at least i think i have. i've worked hard to be where i am but sometimes looking at lists like these can make you feel a little bad. ted turner, at my age, had already managed to create the all powerful cnn (and later on create wcw which is a bigger accomplishment in my circle of friends). what did i do? well, i've managed to keep a website for 2 years. i'm in a stable job. i'm saving and i think hope i've grown to be more responsible...err...i can code "hello world" in 15 different languages.

well, i don't feel completely bad. i think that feeling only comes to people when they feel that they can do more and haven't really strived to reach their potential. so i guess that unaccomplished feeling is my own doing. what can i say? i'm lazy. <link via="bottledbliss">

i'm not ignoring anyone really! i'm not!

i woke up this morning with 4 unanswered phone calls and 3 text messages on my cellphone. i'm really very good with answering my phone, after i screen the number i pick up after 2 rings. last night, i fell asleep at 9:00pm. right when i crept into the couch my eyes were shut and snoring commenced. trust me, with a 3 year old and a 1 year old running around the house my ability to sleep in the most remote places have improved drastically. i can literally sleep sitting down infront of my laptop while in the middle of typing out a url. having insomnia doesn't help either.

i picked myself up around 12:30am and dragged myself to bed downstairs. i was literally snoring the night away until 6:45am this morning. 30 minutes past my usual waking time. oversleep isn't a good feeling.

on a completely different tangent. do you know what jolt espresso taste like? i mean, besides strong coffee and flat coke mixed together? it tastes like mocha icecream floats!

it's been a rough morning.

insomnia is never good. not in any case. i know a few people who would argue that insomnia is good if you just work or study through it (as long as you do something productive). trust me, insomnia is not good in any case. the next morning is like a bad hangover.

my morning, so far, has consisted of routine maintenance things. i love doing maintenance things. its such a no-brain-needed thing. i just sit there as i double click on scripts that i wrote a long time ago. it also makes it easier when scripts are labeled step1.bat, step2.bat... etc. beautiful isn't it? this is as mind-numbing as it gets around here. scratch that. this has been the busiest day i've had in a while.

i'm the office typoid mary mark. keep away!

i just got over the flu and some sort of ear and throat infection. last week i was out of commission two out of the four day work week. i was sick in bed, gasping for air, spitting out multi-coloured things, feverish and irritable all last week. this week i'm cheery, bubbly and full of vigor for work (well, not really).

today, dave isn't in. he's sick with the flu and a swollen throat. i ruined his 1 and a half year no-sick streak. was it the coughing? maybe. was it the infectious air that i brought into the office? maybe. could it be the dark coloud of sickness that followed me around last week? maybe. could it be that i licked his phone headset while he was away on meetings? that could be a strong possibility.

deep thoughts by an overcaffinated employee at 9:20am.

why isn't anyone online? why won't any of these n/a people respond to my icq messages? why?! why! wow! i didn't know that my thumbs could move that fast when i'm texting. i'm a texting machine! why won't the 50 people that i've sent text messages to answer me?! why?! why! answer me damn it!

work? you mean the stuff that i managed to finished 30 minutes ago? damn it! i should really stop it with the caffinated energy drinks. i'm a caffinated energy drink connoisseur! don't mess!

ok, sometimes i wonder about the so-called webdevelopers around the world in this company.

so they want an error message to pop up when something happens. no problem. so they want something bolded and italicized. no problem. so they want it to save the changes to the database. no problem. they want funky things to happen that aren't "normal" things in the web world. no problem. when they start asking for a beeping sound (and just a beeping sound) when a user does something is a problem.

keep in mind that i'm supposed to be dealing with a fellow webdeveloper. oh yea! i forgot that everyone and their grandmother who knows the <i> html tag is a webdeveloper.

next they'll be asking me to stand behind every user in the company and baby sit them as they fill out this form (maybe let out a beep! when they make a mistake?).

stupid daylight saving time screwed me up today.

the alarm clock in my room is usually an hour ahead. why? well, its to scare me out of the bed in the morning into thinking that i'm already an hour late when i'm really 2 hours early. yes, i'm really that dumb in the morning.

we're supposed to advance our clocks 1 hour this morning. i needed an extra hour of sleep today and not lose an hour. god is laughing at me right now for looking at my clock and thinking that it was only 11:30am, when it was really at the right time. damn it! who the heck pulls a global april fools joke (7 days late mind you) by advancing the clocks 1 hour? who the heck came up with that idea? damn it!

ok i'm better its time to go out!

i've been stuck at home for the past 2 and a half days. i'm starting to get cabin fever. i'm sick of my dvds and i need to go buy some more or at least rent some. i've reinstalled my laptop from scratch and everything is kinda back to normal. i have 1 more cd to make for the blogger exchange cd project (i have 8 people to exchange with). saturday morning cartoons are entertaining until you start realizing that they all have the same plot.

i'm also starting to get my appetite back. it's time for all-you-can-eat sushi!

throughout the day i will be documenting what i have done.

why? because i can. why? because i'm bored. why? because it keeps me sane while i'm inside the house.

• did my much neglected accounting
• watched x-men
• finished my blogger cd exchange mix. my theme: songs that remind me of summer. i pity the people getting my mix: bump-in-your-car-teeny-bopper-hip-hop-wannabe-songs; and 1 slow jam
• burnt my blogger cd exchange cd's.
• still reading neuromancer
• still learning how to play diablo
• send out evite for the road trip
• reinstall my laptop programs

i'm not lying down today...

i refuse to lie down. i've been lying down for the past 48 hours. i'm sick and tired of my room and i feel so unaccomplished and unproductive. so today, i'm going to force myself to get up and get some things from my personal to-do list checked off. just forget the fact that i slept at 3:40am or the fact that i lazily stayed in bed for an extra hour since i've been awake or the fact that i've been to lazy to read any of my books or do any of my accounting. yea, lets forget those little tidbits of information and start anew. i'm getting up from my bed and being productive today, sickness or no sickness.

err forget the fact that i've been blogging for the past 15 minutes.

dear mr dvorak,

in regards to your article on blogging:

you suck! boo on you!
i guess every bald middle age creepy looking man with a column in a dying pc magazine needs to be heard sometimes. but who's stooping down to name calling?

sincerly,
snowbal... err ritchie

and in response to archie's and janice's comments on my guestbook.

yes it does look like belle's site. but then you can start criticizing if i can make fun of yours. and sorry for putting up said popstar picture. didn't mean to scare anyone. i dunno why i put it up anyways, she didn't even buy me a tuque. no its got nothing to do with the feet thing either. yea kill me now. just one of those, never live down moments for me huh? just like new years again.

ps, no more blogging this late. i realized that as the night goes on my ability to stay coherent becomes more miniscule.

i've tossed and turned but still nothing.

its been a good hour since i was awoken so suddenly by the heaters. its been uneasy nights here especially when a coughing fit sends me upstairs begging the medicine cabinet for more nyquil. my pillows are fluffed and my blanket is extra warm still i'm here lying on my back wide awake as if i've had many cups of coffee.

i've even stooped to logging into the laptop and playing internet reversi. now its about an hour away from when i have to wake up and take my antibiotics. should i just fight sleep for another hour? i hate being sick.

i think i woke up too early today.

i woke up before any sun came up and before my alarm went off. its totally weird because i went to bed at my usual 12:30am insomnia time. usually i'm struggling with the alarm clock and dragging myself out of bed. today, i woke up before anything else. i went upstairs stared at my over-the-counter medication for a bit and went into the shower. it's such a surreal feeling trying to make sense of things in the dark while in a half awake state. i did my whole morning routine in the dark without any light.

being medicated is fun!

so i finally got my redesign up.

you might be wondering why it took me so long to put this site up. there are soo many reasons but i won't bore any of you guys with poor excuses. the important thing is that the redesign is up. i'm not at all that creative so i feel i should give props to people who's ideas i stole. i was looking around and i noticed bluishorange's old design a while back which overlapped layers and changed the opacity. ernie was going to put a redesign up with a tableless layout but he was having trouble getting it to work. i, on the other hand, don't really care if this layout gets messed up in a browser you linux guys designed. oh yea, i also stole the code to make the blog archive's disappear and appear from him. belle's site is my design, but i kinda used the basic layout of it for this one as well.

don't you just love highway robbery internet style?

the problems with being sick... aka listen to ritchie whine again.

1. people around you are just soo much more dumber when your sick
2. you can't talk because your throat hurts and everyone seems to phone you rather than the write the usual email
3. your alarm is set to go off at 5:30am, the kids next door will start crying at 5:00am
4. you can't smoke, which makes you irritable and pissed off at the world
5. you can't figure out why the shower is spitting out super hot water (even on the coldest setting), so you decide to brave it and suffer 2nd degree burns
6. dayquil and nyquil tastes like devil stew
7. your bag is super heavy because of all the work that you took home but never finished
8. soup is the only thing that you can eat, and everything else seems to look soo good
9. the fact that you're too scared to call in sick because your mom would just nag you to go to work thinking that your faking
10. the fact that you're too scared to call in sick because your manager might give you the talk that you have sick days above the corporate average

i love being sick.

really folks i will find time to redesign my sites.

the plan this weekend was to stick my nose into the computer and code grind until i came up with new site designs. did it happen? obviously not! i will get it up though. there will be new layouts. i will fight this flu sickness and knock things from my to-do list.

i've been at work since 7am this morning. i couldn't sleep, i've been heavily medicated and completely zoned out. i honestly don't know how i even got out of bed. its a crying shame though because it's a nice day to be outside but when i'm sick i don't feel like doing anything but keep myself in a room devoid of sunshine.