The below was written on the train this morning... I'm still at work, pushing out a new feature now!
Hey all,
Boy, this has been an exciting week! I visited Berkeley on Tuesday, delivered a slightly-old-but-still-delicious pair of Patties burritos to Shelley, and hung out with Sketchy-David and his friend Janik (probably butchering the spelling, pronounced Jan-ick) for a while which was lots of fun! It also made for my 3rd tip to Berkeley in 4 days, which was a little much, but worse things have happened in life.
My brother and his friends arrived in San Francisco on Wednesday and I had dinner with them and then train/car-ed back to my house for an evening of chatting and watching hilariously awesome shows on TV.
As a sidebar, I don't really watch too much TV, but I've gradually accumulated a fairly large list of TV shows that I watch and really really enjoy. How I Met Your Mother, 30 Rock, and Big Bang Theory are the major three. All are fantastic and come highly recommended. Maybe I will gush more about them in a different post.
Anyway, my brother and friends stayed with me on Thursday too. They managed to see the MOMA and, unfortunately, mis-timed seeing the Exploratorium, but overall got a good tour/wander through the city. We had delicious delicious back a yard for dinner and then again engaged in chat & TV. I was particularly happy to go for a walk with just my brother and get to just chat with him for a while. Its always great to actually get to chat ^_^.
Friday was exciting because I presented the paper on GFS to the rest of engineering for work as part of a paper-reading group that we are doing. I think the talk went well overall, but that is largely because it moved primarily to Q&A pretty quickly. I was once more reminded that, no matter how casual of a talk, *I* always need to actually practice beforehand or I will get a bit lost & confusing while I actually give the talk. I'm a bit frustrated with myself for that, but I guess I will make it better next time.
Sunday is the final notable part of my past week. Greg was in the area for a conference that ended around noon yesterday, but he doesn't leave until today (monday) at ~3PM. So, I picked him up around 1:30 and drove up to SF to meet up with Doug and Shelley. We had an all-round fantastic, if not too exciting, day. I was extremely happy seeing Greg and getting to hang out with all of them!
We basically wandered around SOMA & surrounding neighborhoods. We went to the comic book museum that I walk by every day at work. I have decided that such museums are not great for groups of people that just want to socialize, but nonetheless it was very neat. I found the Watchmen exhibit to be particularly excellent, especially since it had real props and costumes from the movie!
After comic books we wandered to Yerba Buena gardens and had lunch/tea at Samovar which was *delicious*, beautiful, and much better for chatting. The one downside is that I forgot that most tea has caffeine in it. I don't normally ever drink anything with caffeine, so I credit the tea with messing me up for the rest of the day a little bit (basically just loopy/tired).
After wandering through Union Square we retired to Berkeley for dinner at a Thai/Soul Food place that was excellent, and provided us with plenty of food. We hung out at Shelley's for a while after that, stopped by Doug's, and then I took Greg back to my house where we rockbanded, chatted and went to sleep far to late for this to be an entirely excellent day of work. Overall, fantastic day ^_^
Thats all for now folks!
Cheers,
Jason
Monday, March 23, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Parkour!
Hey all,
Sorry I didn't post last weekend. I was was busy driving back up from Mudd, where I had a terrifically fantastic time!
The exciting news from this weekend is that I learned some parkour on Saturday. For those not familiar with the term, check out wikipedia and youtube (there is plenty more on youtube ^_^). While I didn't do anything nearly as badass as what you see on the youtube video, I did learn how to roll and do a whole bunch of vaults and jumps over walls. It was really really really fun and I am definitely going to keep it up (even though my whole body hurts today). The event I went to was a beginner jam held by SF Parkour, which I highly recommended if you are at all interested in learning!
This was actually a pretty active weekend, in addition to the parkour on Saturday, I made perogi on Friday with a whole bunch of people. I love perogi, it is just about the only Polish connection I have, despite being half polish, and is a cherished piece of my childhood. What I'm saying is that people, beer, and perogi all combined with finishing Arrested Development (finally! its a great show!) made for an awesome Friday.
After parkour on Saturday I hung out/drank beer with Doug before driving home and then going up to San Mateo for dinner with Morgan, Jay, and Kelly along with watching a ton of ZeroPunctuation and the newest Futurama movie.
Today was generally lazy, though I did drive up to Berkeley and have dinner with Shelley, Sayuri, Corrine, and a bunch of other Mudders going to Berkeley. We went out to Ethiopian, which I have only had once before. It was quite good, and it was surprised by the vegetarian offerings, but I'm not sure I'm fully a fan of taff (maybe not spelled like that), which is the Ethiopian flat sourdough bread that you eat everything with. It just adds a little bit of a sour edge to everything and I'm not sure I'm a fan.
Well, I want sleep, so I think that is all for now.
Cheers,
Jason
Sorry I didn't post last weekend. I was was busy driving back up from Mudd, where I had a terrifically fantastic time!
The exciting news from this weekend is that I learned some parkour on Saturday. For those not familiar with the term, check out wikipedia and youtube (there is plenty more on youtube ^_^). While I didn't do anything nearly as badass as what you see on the youtube video, I did learn how to roll and do a whole bunch of vaults and jumps over walls. It was really really really fun and I am definitely going to keep it up (even though my whole body hurts today). The event I went to was a beginner jam held by SF Parkour, which I highly recommended if you are at all interested in learning!
This was actually a pretty active weekend, in addition to the parkour on Saturday, I made perogi on Friday with a whole bunch of people. I love perogi, it is just about the only Polish connection I have, despite being half polish, and is a cherished piece of my childhood. What I'm saying is that people, beer, and perogi all combined with finishing Arrested Development (finally! its a great show!) made for an awesome Friday.
After parkour on Saturday I hung out/drank beer with Doug before driving home and then going up to San Mateo for dinner with Morgan, Jay, and Kelly along with watching a ton of ZeroPunctuation and the newest Futurama movie.
Today was generally lazy, though I did drive up to Berkeley and have dinner with Shelley, Sayuri, Corrine, and a bunch of other Mudders going to Berkeley. We went out to Ethiopian, which I have only had once before. It was quite good, and it was surprised by the vegetarian offerings, but I'm not sure I'm fully a fan of taff (maybe not spelled like that), which is the Ethiopian flat sourdough bread that you eat everything with. It just adds a little bit of a sour edge to everything and I'm not sure I'm a fan.
Well, I want sleep, so I think that is all for now.
Cheers,
Jason
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Videogame music and other momentous things
Hey all,
Today has been a big day! I just finished doing my taxes for the first time on my own. Yay for H&R Block's semi-free only system to make sense of that whole mess, boo for having to spend a bunch of time on it, yay for getting $$$ from the government, and *fingers crossed* that I didn't fuck anything up too badly...
In even larger news, I'm not going to Cornell next year and I just emailed them today. I feel like kind of a terrible person for doing this, since I told them that I was accepting their deferred admission at the start of February. The decision has gotten a *lot* of thought though and I think that staying in California is what will be best for me. You can IM/email if you want more details.
That is the big exciting life news. Now for other things that happened this week.
Yesterday I went to a videogame music concert with Mike (http://videogameslive.com). It was very nerdy, and very very fun. Basically is videogame music performed live by a full orchestra along with really cool light show + videos. Definitely something for videogamers though. Half of the fun was getting all the references, and it was way more fun to listen to songs I knew (e.g. Mario & Zelda) than those I didn't (e.g. other games that I didn't play as much). That said, the WoW music + epic Blizzard video was amazing, and my favorite songs were the last two: One Winged Angel (the Sephiroth song from FF7) and Castlevania. Both of these were full orchestra + heavy metal style guitar, and were *so* full of energy. It was amazing. And I *really* should go to metal concerts, because I really really like that music (sorry to all you classical music players out there, it just doesn't do it for me).
The concert actively encourages you to take video and put it up on YouTube ^_^. Here is an example of what they do for Mario:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4LVJSzt-Ds
Man, I just keep thinking of other highlights from the concert. They had Martin Leung (youtube him) play a bunch of oldschool stuff on the piano (which he could also do blindfolded and at *incredible* speed). They had a Guitar Hero contest and had the winner come on stage and play while accompanied by a full orchestra. He had to get over 150,000 pts on 'Hard' to win a prize, and instead did it on 'Expert' (the audience was screaming & cheering him on. Soooo fun).
Ok, I'm going to stop gushing now. And I think this post is long enough to. Back next week with more updates!
Cheers,
Jason
Today has been a big day! I just finished doing my taxes for the first time on my own. Yay for H&R Block's semi-free only system to make sense of that whole mess, boo for having to spend a bunch of time on it, yay for getting $$$ from the government, and *fingers crossed* that I didn't fuck anything up too badly...
In even larger news, I'm not going to Cornell next year and I just emailed them today. I feel like kind of a terrible person for doing this, since I told them that I was accepting their deferred admission at the start of February. The decision has gotten a *lot* of thought though and I think that staying in California is what will be best for me. You can IM/email if you want more details.
That is the big exciting life news. Now for other things that happened this week.
Yesterday I went to a videogame music concert with Mike (http://videogameslive.com). It was very nerdy, and very very fun. Basically is videogame music performed live by a full orchestra along with really cool light show + videos. Definitely something for videogamers though. Half of the fun was getting all the references, and it was way more fun to listen to songs I knew (e.g. Mario & Zelda) than those I didn't (e.g. other games that I didn't play as much). That said, the WoW music + epic Blizzard video was amazing, and my favorite songs were the last two: One Winged Angel (the Sephiroth song from FF7) and Castlevania. Both of these were full orchestra + heavy metal style guitar, and were *so* full of energy. It was amazing. And I *really* should go to metal concerts, because I really really like that music (sorry to all you classical music players out there, it just doesn't do it for me).
The concert actively encourages you to take video and put it up on YouTube ^_^. Here is an example of what they do for Mario:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4LVJSzt-Ds
Man, I just keep thinking of other highlights from the concert. They had Martin Leung (youtube him) play a bunch of oldschool stuff on the piano (which he could also do blindfolded and at *incredible* speed). They had a Guitar Hero contest and had the winner come on stage and play while accompanied by a full orchestra. He had to get over 150,000 pts on 'Hard' to win a prize, and instead did it on 'Expert' (the audience was screaming & cheering him on. Soooo fun).
Ok, I'm going to stop gushing now. And I think this post is long enough to. Back next week with more updates!
Cheers,
Jason
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