My weekend with family

I am in Eugene, Oregon with my family and we all got drunk and played Guitar Hero World Tour and yeah, craziness. I am coming back tomorrow and I hope I won’t have a massive headache from too much tequila. I am a tequila virgin, so this is so far kinda interesting. At least Guitar Hero with alcohol is somewhat interesting, but probably not something I would repeat in the future.

I took pictures of my cousin Jeremy KO’d on the toilet from too much alcohol. I can’t wait to get home and post them up. Yeah, good weekend!

My commercial for AmEx

I knew it was coming.

My XBox 360 has been crashing randomly lately, generally during play back of video. I initially thought it might be the video content since there may theoretically may be codec compatibility issues and what not, but even after purchasing content from the XBox store, it still crashed. Sometimes, the XBox would not even boot up after a hard crash, requiring me to pull out power and then power it up. Last night, it crashed hard yet again and when I rebooted, it signaled to me that it had given up permanently by displaying the infamous red ring of death.

Lucky me - I had purchased a refurb that only came with a 90 day warranty. And here I was, 4 months in and now without a warranty. As I lamented the death of my XBox, I recalled that I had purchased it with my super duper American Express card which happens to extend most warranties an additional year! Woohoo! I searched through my emails, found out who I had purchased it from, got the purchase details from the site and made a quick phone call to American Express. Five minutes later, they gave me a case number, let me know I would likely get a refund in 2 weeks time and I quickly hit the road to Target to buy myself yet another new XBox 360 on my AmEx.

I’m trying to figure out if Microsoft will actually repair the device, but seeing as how it is a refurb, I probably have no chance of that happening.

And now an update. It turns out that my console is covered by Microsoft due to the nature of the failure (3 rings). Therefore, I’m soon going to have two XBox 360s.

Personality test results

Highly entertaining or highly insightful? I took an online test and here are my results:

Self-Confidence

As someone with high self-confidence, you feel quite comfortable interacting with other people. Indeed, you find the company of others very stimulating and enjoy meeting new people. Your relaxed demeanor in groups makes people around you comfortable too. Perhaps because you feel comfortable talking about yourself, others tend to enjoy being around you and perceive you as socially competent.

The confidence that helps you feel comfortable talking to people also spills into your own personal beliefs about yourself. Although you have several strengths, it’s likely that you also acknowledge and accept your weaknesses. But unlike some people, you take full responsibility for your actions—you rarely regret things you’ve done in the past and are not embarrassed easily.

Perhaps the defining feature that sets you apart from most people is the exceptionally high standards that you set for yourself. Your competence in social gatherings as well as at work should provide ample evidence for this. With these characteristics, it’s very likely that people come to you for advice and generally think of you as someone with leader-like qualities.

Family Orientation

As someone low in family orientation, you’re not sure whether raising children and developing a family is what you want out of life. If you already have children, you enjoy spending time with them, but may feel somewhat constrained by the stress of being a parent and wish to “cut-loose” more often than you may be able to. If you don’t have children, you’re probably not very sure whether you desire having any in the future. Or, perhaps you’re not ready to settle down into a serious relationship just yet.

It’s not necessarily that you are opposed to the idea of having a family, it’s just that you’re not convinced that the domestic lifestyle is for you. This sentiment is illustrated by the fact that you don’t particularly enjoy doing things around the house—like cooking and entertaining guests. Instead, you tend to prefer eating out at restaurants and going to clubs and parties. It’s possible that in time you might prefer spending more time at home as you may eventually grow tired of late nights out. However, your voracious appetite for excitement might make staying at home on a weekend night unappealing.

One thing in particular that sets you apart from more family oriented people is that you tend to be expressive and tend to make your frustrations known to others. In addition, you tend to appreciate spending time with other people and work well with others. In fact, you very much enjoy getting things done, and by attending to familial issues while continuing to get your work done you may find settling down in a traditional romantic relationship stressful and unpleasant.

Self-Control

The self-control personality dimension captures the way in which a person regulates and directs him or herself. Being moderate in self-control can be both good and bad. People may be compelled to follow their intuitions and give in to their temptations, and your degree of self-control means that this may happen occasionally. This can be good in situations where focus and control are very important.

However, on certain occasions being able to give in to one’s temptations can be fun and even healthy (as long as it’s in moderation). As someone who exerts a moderate amount of control of your actions, you may find that you exert too much stress on yourself sometimes. For example, you may be inclined to take more responsibility on projects, which may not always be necessary. This might be because you have a slight tendency to focus on the details and feel as though others may not be able to do as good of a job noticing such details as yourself. You might find it difficult to let others do certain jobs, and as a result, increase your own workload and stress level.

Having moderate self-control is generally a good thing. Although you have good control over your impulses, you also take notice of your emotions and sometimes take them into account while making decisions. This can be good when making important decisions because you acknowledge that your underlying feelings may be trying to tell you something important.

Openness

As someone high in openness, you have a strong appreciation for beauty, both in art and nature. Indeed, it’s likely that you are easily absorbed in music and art, as well as natural phenomena. Another aspect of your openness is your emotional insight; that is, you probably have good access to and awareness of your own emotions.

Another aspect of the openness dimension is the tendency to think about abstract concepts and ideas. This thinking style may take the form of artistic and metaphorical use of language, and/or music composition or performance. Thus, it is likely that, either in your work or spare time, you enjoy activities that get your “creative juices” flowing.

Your tendency to be open-minded can have advantages and disadvantages. For instance, when there are no clear rules about how to approach a particular problem, your openness makes it easier for you to identify new ways to solve problems that might not be very obvious to people that are not as open as you are. In contrast, you may be bored easily in situations that lack high amounts of intellectual stimulation. In such cases, you might have difficulty excelling on projects that do not provide much stimulation or require much creative thinking.

Easygoingness

Easygoingness refers to one’s ability to relax. Based on your score, you appear to “take things as they come” and enjoy having a good time. However, being high in easygoingness also has the potential to produce stress in a number of ways. For example, you may find it difficult to complete tasks thoroughly and efficiently. In this way, being high in easygoingness cannot only make your life difficult, but also the lives of the people around you. Another potential problem with being too high in easygoingness is that it can provide you with gratification in the short-term, but in the long-term provide undesirable consequences.

High easygoingness, even when not seriously destructive, may also diminish your effectiveness at work, for example. You may find it aversive and difficult to put in all the effort that may sometimes be needed to effectively accomplish certain tasks. For this reason, your colleagues might view you as forgetful and unfocused.

How does your personality affect your love life?

Given the strong degree of confidence that you have, it’s no surprise that you get along well with most people. Indeed, it’s self-confidence that allows people to feel comfortable interacting with others without feeling insecure and vulnerable. For this reason, you shouldn’t have much difficulty in romance, at least not initially. Your social skills will likely help relieve any anxiety your romantic partners might have on those first few dates. However, over time, the high standards that you have for yourself could potentially frustrate your partner.

As someone who enjoys the excitement of a night on the town and is uncertain about the prospects of settling down in a serious romantic relationship, you would probably be most satisfied in a relationship with someone that shares these qualities. For this reason, you would probably be quite content in a romantic relationship with someone who also enjoys going out to parties and staying-up late at night. Finding yourself in a relationship with someone that wants to cultivate a family in the near future may lead to eventual conflict in the relationship due to different life aspirations.

You may find it difficult to get along well with people that are too uptight or too impulsive. For this reason, you would probably be most satisfied in a romantic relationship with someone who also has a good degree of self-control.

Being in a relationship with someone who has too much might be frustrating because that person might find it difficult to relax; whereas being in a relationship with someone who does not have enough self-control could be frustrating because that person may not always take your thoughts and feelings into account when making decisions. Thus, it might be easiest and most satisfying for you to develop a long-lasting relationship with a person who is equally capable of regulating his/her urges, but who also knows how to relax from time to time.

Your openness probably makes it easy for you to respect and appreciate people that are different from you. However, when it comes to romantic relationships, your openness might make it difficult for you to tolerate people that cannot appreciate diversity as much as you. Therefore, you may be happiest in serious relationships with people that share your open-mindedness. But, your openness might occasionally cause a certain degree of dependency on your end because you may be so open that you easily adopt the preferences and habits of your partners and gradually relinquish things that make you so unique.

Workout updates

I’d like to start out with a reiteration that my legs have been dead for the past couple days. Unfortunately for me, my cross fit class today as follows: 50 squats followed by running one lap. Repeat times 4. After the first 20 squats, I could barely take it, yet I soldiered on, did all 50 and ran the lap as fast as I could which was absolutely slow for what I know I can do when my legs are not dead. I had planned on running 8 miles tomorrow morning, but I think I’ll be lucky to run 2 tomorrow. I’ll try of course, still, because I need to get my cardio back in good shape again.

The diet, so far, has proven to be quite enjoyable! I get to eat every 3 hours which means I generally have energy throughout the day and I’ve gotten used to eating unsweetened apple sauce mixed with whey protein powder at breaks.

I’m not ready to report any kind of progress just yet, but I hope to in the next couple weeks or so.

Changes

The crossfit class is crazy! I went yet again despite how sore I was like a sucker and was subjected to the work out of the day: 30 jumping squats, 20 kettle bell swings and 10 .. well, I don’t remember the name, but you had to drop, do a push up, get up and jump. Yeah, so we did that 3 times over followed by running an a lap and I did it all (minus the lap) in .. 11 minutes! Not too shabby, but I had to pace myself when performing the jumping squats as they were an absolute ass kicker. Consequently, my legs are dead and I look like I’m crippled when I walk. Oh the hotness.

Post workout, I met with the owner to go over my new diet plan. Being a vegetarian and trying to gain muscle doesn’t necessarily work out. My new diet therefore is filled with one meat type - fish, and it’s so far not a very exciting diet. It consists of raw almonds, fish, apple sauce with protein powder, spinach, mushrooms, cucumbers, avocado, egg whites, pears, tuna and cantaloupe. I eat every 3 hours and split it up evenly: 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat. The big problem is that I recently purchased a lot of Muscle Milk which I have for breakfast and now I have to figure out what to do with it - throw it away or attempt to sell it to someone? I’ve also been eating raw carrots and hummus and that is apparently bad news as carrots are basically candy and hummus is a starch. Maybe that is why I’ve been gaining weight lately? Anyhow, tonight I had some salmon, mushrooms and spinach. This is going to be painful.

My lucky day?

In theory, today was my lucky day. 

It started off with a major mix up on my part.  I woke up at 9.30am this morning, which is altogether too late considering I had a 9am meeting that was very important.  I thought that there was no way it was 9.30am and that I had merely forgotten to adjust my clocks, so I went around my house changing the time to 8.30am.  What was peculiar, though, was that my Vista laptop also said 9.30am - did the time update on Vista malfunction?  No biggie - I changed the time on my laptop to 8.30am as well.  I made my coffee, started to do my morning relaxation routine for around 30 minutes and decided to check my iPhone for any potential missed SMS’s.  Strangely, my iPhone now read 10am.  Fuck.  Every clock in my house was correct and I had indeed woken up that late.  I freaked out, checked my email to see what happened at the 9am meeting I had missed.. and ahh, so lucky.  The VP who had planned the meeting sent an email early that morning saying he had fallen ill and could not make the meeting.

I took my shower, slammed my coffee down, hopped into my car and took off to work.  As I was exiting the freeway to get to work, I saw the lights turning yellow so I sped up and barely made it through the intersection onto the street as the light just about turned red.  I looked behind to see if any cops or CHP had seen me, but all I saw was my coworker behind me.  I got to the next light which quickly turned green, took my left and got to work a minute or so later.  My coworker who was behind me drove up and parked next to me, got out of his car and told me a funny story.  He told me that that today was my lucky day as I had apparently not only sped through the corner, but apparently ran a red light.  Hidden behind some bushes was a cop on a motorcycle who witnessed what I had done.  He decided to go after me, turned on his lights, attempted to turn onto the street, but was held back by oncoming traffic.  The light that had quickly turned green for me was red for him and he waited and waited for the light to go green.  Fortunately for me, the lights tested the cops patience and deciding that I was probably long gone by now, turned off his lights, looked around and did a u-turn.  Pure, unadulterated luck, I tell you.

And now onto boring subject matter.

Yesterday, I convinced Chris to sign up to the crossfit gym and today was our first day.  He got the moves down rather quickly, while I flailed like a sucker.  I got the moves down towards the end, which were mostly shoulder presses and the like, but it was frustrating because the trainer gave me directions that simply weren’t clear enough.  Nonetheless, once I got things down, I could feel the impact already of the work outs and with only minimal weights.  As a result of todays work out, my shoulders and traps are sore as hell.  I’m hoping to go tomorrow so long as I am able to lift my hands up above my shoulders.

Obama won. Yay!

I’m going to LA this month for the LA auto show.  Yay!

I’m going to turn 35 this month.  Hmm.

The ex-wife and I are on speaking terms.  Double hmm.

I’m being lazy about prepping my place to rent out.  I suck.

That is all.

A not so quick update

Might as well write about stuff that has not happened since it’s late and I feel the need to find an outlet.

My homey Khalid sold his website FlyUpload to a guy who lives in Rome, Italy and we might go out there to work with the guy on some new business ideas. Between our iPhone apps and upcoming HottieSpotters web site and Ucash.in, we’re probably spreading ourselves too thin, but it’s perfectly reasonable as an excuse to get the hell out of the US for a while and visit a new country. I’ve never been to Italy, so it might be fun and a worthwhile place for taking pics. I personally don’t think it is going to happen especially with my employment concerns and the market the way it is, but I’d *like* to visit the place and escape for a while nonetheless.

I was thinking about the possibility of getting laid off since so many friends and even family are feeling the pain of lay offs. If it happened to me, I’d foreclose on my house in seconds - no questions asked. It’s already lost value and likely won’t appreciate for 5 - 10 years, so losing this place while painful would be such a blessing in so many ways. What was particularly awesome was when the ex-wife and I were going through the motions of our divorce and she just dumped the house on me because she could not afford it. There was never a question of *if* I wanted it, she just said “it’s yours” and more or less walked away. So if I foreclosed on the place, well it’s hard to feel guilty for ruining her credit as she did not even attempt to find out if I wanted the place and neglected to investigate any alternatives such as short selling, etc. I don’t miss that kind of behavior or attitude whatsoever.

Halloween is coming up and I need to decide what to do. I was hoping to hang out in SF with my friends, but that is probably not going to happen. I’ve been invited to multiple parties, but nothing particularly interesting for a single guy like myself. Actually, there is only really one person I’d like to hang out with during Halloween, but I believe I’ve effectively killed the possibility of that happening due to being such a skilled guy with women. My Halloween plans are up in the air, unfortunately and I’ve yet to make any concrete decisions on what to do. Do I go to the party with my female friend and her boyfriend that may end up being boring, going to my cousins party which will will definitely be boring AND a far drive or go see my friends band play at a bar in Livermore? Hmm maybe I need to see what craziness my friend Jason is doing - knowing him, he will be getting drunk and attempting to hook with any cute girl he can find. He’s a funny guy and he will probably be the best choice to hang out with if I want to have a crazy time.

When I was young, there was never this issue with girls. I had such supreme confidence and I just didn’t *care* if a girl was into me or otherwise and it actually made me more successful with women. Now, 7 years in one relationship, it’s changed everything, especially my outlook on dealing with women and it seems like it is actually for the worse on the initial phases of establishing a relationship of some kind. I’ve turned into a nice guy and honestly, I don’t think that is of particular interest to girls even though I am simply attempting emotional congruence.

Anyhow, newest song I’ve been murdering by playing over and over is by Handsome Boy Modeling School’s “I’ve Been Thinking”, with vocals by Cat Power. This is such a chill song and almost perfect except for a few annoying lyrics and an annoying break half way through the song. I’m surprised that I never heard it on Groove Salad.

Now to crash out and try to get at least 6 hours of sleep for once. Oh and I have not purchased any electronics lately, though admittedly a 73″ dlp hdtv at Frys has been tempting me.

Jan - Truly Solo

My roommate officially moved out today. So to recap: I am a single divorced male, sadly not dating anyone and have no roommate. If I didn’t own this house and have a car payment, I would be as free as possible with nothing to hold me back from altering my lifestyle or traveling as I deemed fit.

Now I get to spend a few days packing, cleaning and prepping this place for rental if I am going to move out to SF by December.

Last night was crazy! I went out with my friend Sarah, her boyfriend Mickey, Pete and his girlfriend Kat to a yearly huge Halloween party run by some fellow whom is referred to as Doctor Rick which, sadly, had mellowed out by the time we arrived at 1.30am. We stayed there till the cops shut the place down at 2.30 or 3am and then went off to Sparky’s for a late night .. or is that an early mornign breakfast? Yeah, I’ll call it breakfast since that’s actually what I ate. So right, out until 4.30am, got home at 5.30am, showered and crashed at 6am and woke up 11am because my ex-roommate was making so much noise packing up all his stuff. What is the point of me sharing this? None really, except to share that I had a late night, I am extremely tired and lack motivation to do anything other than mope around the house.

Oh yesterday, I dug up some ancient pictures of myself on an old harddrive I found.

Here is a picture of me from either 1996 or 1997, working at Apple in Valley Green 6.

And then I found a picture I had scanned of my brother and sister when we but mere children.

This has motivated me to fire up my old pc and see what other ancient yet classic pictures I can find. Hopefully, nothing illegal or questionable turns up or else I will be forced to share them with the world for the sake of entertainment.

San Francisco and me on the move

I’ve been looking into moving to San Fran for a bit now at the urging of my friends and have come to the conclusion that while I am going to make the move, San Francisco is actually a pretty shitty town. It’s messy as hell, everything is old, it is filled with hipsters and crazy people trying so hard to be so different and feel superior to the rest of the world (”We come from a city with culture!!”), it is overly expensive especially where real estate is concerned, driving there is an absolute horror and moreover, it is crime ridden, for example, Portero Hill where I am considering moving to. So how can anyone legitimately justify living in such conditions? The only real answer is because somehow, for some reason, they like living in a second rate environment like this. I suspect it’s due to some rebellious nature that people have yet to grow out of, the need to show competence in living in semi-squalor. I certainly don’t love San Jose or it’s surrounding areas, but by contrast, my neighborhood is effortless to drive in, real estate values, ok, real estate now sucks here, there is culture here so long as you like hip hop and drunken college kids, it is easy to drive in, you don’t feel like you’re living in a trash compactor and crime here is generally not too bad thanks to the crushing hands of the SJPD and their ability to arrest anyone for being “drunk and disorderly” without any evidence to prove as such.

The only real reason I am moving to San Francisco is so I can hang out with friends and hopefully meet a nice, single girl (or girls if it comes down to that, but that isn’t my preference). It is going to make my commute to work worse (tack on an extra hour a day plus each way versus my 6 minute commute each way), I will lose my super duper gigabit fiber internet connection, I will have to rent out my townhome and I will be forced to rent a much, much smaller place for probably way too much money.

I suppose at the end of the day, the draw to SF is based purely upon females and their seemingly high rate of availability there. Nearly all the ones I’ve met here in San Jose are average people - suburbanites who love sports, R&B, getting married and having kids: people who’s life has been defined for them and lack the ability to question the path set out for them. Just typical, boring, average thinking, very white person in nature, no edge, no thinking outside the box. For example, my ex-wife: we split because she was unhappy because I did not want to have kids, but her complaints against me got appended with such profound aspects such as my inability to appreciate mindless sports such as baseball, football and other distractions that add no value to any humans existence or evolutionary ability (the movie Idoicracy warns us of people such as this!). Let’s face it: sports don’t make you any more wealthy, they don’t make you any more intelligent, they don’t assist you in understanding the big picture, they don’t reveal any profound secrets of the universe or get us any closer to a singularity, for example. They’re really designed to erode the value of your time and create revenue - akin to being part of a religion. At the end of the day, we’re all subject to our own value system that we’ve been subjected to via nature and nurture, I suppose, so who am I to say ultimately what is right and wrong in this universe? But it is the hope that using our nature, we can break free from the bonds and constraints of the nurture our society has bound us down with. But I suppose we need these average unthinking masses because when you go to the grocery store, someone has to bag your groceries, right?

Dynamic Social Homeostasis

I love this except from a book I am reading:

“All social animals, including people, live under constant pressure from two competing interests: protecting themselves from others and aligning themselves with others. When these two interests are balanced, the result is dynamic homeostasis.”

Too much protection, and you’re too scared to do anything with anyone. Too little and you suffer the potential consequences. The key is to seek balance in your own life and from an outsiders perspective, the other key is to disarm the defenses if you seek to create alignment. Love it.