Insanely Awe-dical

MSN had a link to win "a trip with 3 friends." I found it interesting that I would choose to go with Kate, Olga and Romes. It would be fun, the gender balance would be even, and everyone gets along with everyone, with no 2 or 3-person combination being awkward.

That would be fun....

Jonas: my registration for seattle is $820
Jonas: and $600 of it is the freaking monorail freaking tax
Jonas: ugh
Jonas: so expensive
Me: wtf
Me: registration for your car?
Jonas: yeah
Me: wtf
Jonas: to register it in WA
Me: a tax on your car for public transportation?
Me: lol
Me: ironic
Jonas: yeah
Me: wow
Jonas: when i heard that i was like
Jonas: fuck the monorail
Me: i guess "those who are more fortunate and can travel on their own should pay for those less fortunate who travel by mass"
Me: a sort of socialist idea
Jonas: i travel using the bus!!
Jonas: i don't drive to work
Me: what?
Jonas: yeah
Me: well at least you're using it
Me: well you're not using the monorail
Jonas: nope
Me: wow
Jonas: it doesn't affect me

Interesting idea -- It is similar to how the working population pays for the elderly population's Social Security, but at least everyone will eventually get it (theoretically). In this scenario, my brother will probably never need to use the monorail on a constant basis.

Congratulations to Mike and Michelle -- may your happiness only be exceeded by your love for each other =) Kate and I had a great time at your wedding, and I hope you have a great time on your honeymoon.

"And I just wanted you to know that every pool of water reminds me of you...did you know my sweet, that I once took the liberty of watching you in your sleep?"

Who'd think I'd even find love in Saves the Day?

I'm compiling a list of books to read. I already have a fairly extensive list of books that I have heard positive things about, and enough to the point that I feel I would be enlightened (a bit more than just being entertained) by reading it. Here is my list so far...

Books to read
1.Atlas Shrugged -- My boss' favorite book and the summary sounded fairly compelling. Anything that inspires my boss sounds like it should be a good read.
2.Malcolm X -- I never knew his story, and thinking about my whole need to be enlightened turned me to want to read this
3.Hitchhiker's Guide -- A cult favorite; I've read substories/summaries about some concepts in the book, and can't help but enjoy its quirky humor.
4.Cat's Cradle -- Kurt Vonnegut. I loved Slaughterhouse-5. So I want to read more by this thoughtful author.
5.Flowers for Algernon -- "We can't live in the other apartment after living in the big one. Didn't you ever read Flowers for Algernon?" A line from friends reminded me of this children's book (it is a children's book right?) that I've alwas heard positive things about, and I feel I would learn from it.
6.Dune -- Another sci-fi cult favorite, but also a darling to the critics (according to that list where Ulysses topped the charts. Damn you James Joyce).
7.Prayer for Owen Meany -- An interesting book I shoulda read in high school, but didn't. The test for "what book are you" chose this book (in addition to Watership down, which the only difference was whether I more closely associated myself to a rabbit or an armadillo. I'm afraid I won't understand until I read them).
8. Watership Down -- read above.
9.Clockwork Orange -- loved the movie, and want to see its gruesomeness in text.
10.Color Purple -- supposedly a great book about racial strife, and I might have the wrong idea. I heard great things, and am interested.
11.Outsiders -- A teen-level book with some interesting ideas of social circles in that area. I'm told it has a Dead Poets Society/Breakfast Club feel in the sense that they are coming-of-age simple social ideas which describe larger concepts.

Any other suggestions?

Statistics for 1and1.com

times (ms) min 40
avg 41
max 51

Statistics for nextmill.net

times (ms) min 30
avg 34
max 40

ms = milliseconds.

These are stats for a PING (Packet InterNet Groper: An Internet utility used to check the connection with another site. It repeatedly bounces a signal off the remote site and shows you how long it took to complete the round trip each time).

It took an average of 41 milliseconds to go to 1and1.com, and 34 ms to go to nextmill.net Less time = faster = better.

Thanks to Millennium Systems, bozasm.com has a new home, and has been renewed for another year of awesomeness.

Millennium Systems. We want to host your website for the NEXT MILLennium.

I'm never one to be very political. Just like a Laker fan who only pays attention during the playoffs, I only check politics (and sparingly at that) when an election/voting comes along. I guess I would be characterized as relatively liberal, but then again, I'm still in this frame of life where it makes the most sense. Seems like people become republicans as they get older because it seems to fit their point in life more. I'm not slamming anyone, just observing.

The point being is that I am not one to get very interested in politics, or take sides in terms of "fighting the good fight for social justice" or "this is what got us here, so let us support it and keep it strong" kind of sides.

But the kind of politics I am slowly becoming a lot more interested in is computer politics. I'm talking about open source. The picture up there is Linus Torvalds, spearhead of the whole Linux idea, and, for those of you who know Linux, is a big supporter of Open Source. Heck, he works for a group called Open Source Development Lab.

I've been talking with Dave about his whole belief on how information should be free. Libraries have vast amounts of knowledge, and the only fines you pay are late fees. So no regular standard charges are incurred, and information can be sought (for those who desire it) for free. Open source supports this idea of free information.

Open source allows everyone to help and contribute. It isn't profit-driven, but development-driven. It has a lot of good ideas. Of course the whole idea of intellectual property is an issue to many, which creates the opposite belief.

This is one kind of politics that more and more, I am becoming interested in.

I passed by Pottery Barn Kids yesterday, and my old manager (for whom I haven't worked for in about two years) greets me warmly and asks if I want to work for the Christmas season. I ask her if she is understaffed for the season, and she replies that they aren't really, but they could always use an extra hand for the morning trucks, and she knows my work ethic, so she would definitely like me helping.

It came as great flattery to know that I am told that I have a good work ethic. Alex was telling me how him and Pop were talking about me, measuring my work ethic and how I would do in the workforce. They seemed hesitant to comment, seeing as I am fairly lazy, generally speaking. When Alex told me this, I initially accepted, but thought again -- how IS my work ethic in the workplace?

YMCA -- I guess I could have worked harder, but I did my job well with smiles. I could have put a bit more effort into writing the reports, but I did plan out my lessons, and I did follow the guidelines (and I definitely looked like a hard worker next to that lazy Mi Hee).

Pottery Barn Kids -- apparently I had a good work ethic there, and I think I honestly did. I greeted with smiles, I learned the system, I've had numerous positive customer comments, and I do my job well, both selling to adults, and catering to the children.

Coffee Bean -- I think I liked working at Coffee Bean the most, just because I love coffee, I love the smell, and the co-workers were cool and around me enough for it to matter. At the Y, there were cool people, but not much interaction, and so many people at PBK that it was hard to get really close to anyone. But both times I worked at CB, I found that I enjoyed the company I had there, and that I feel I was pretty damn good at my job.

Pat and Oscars -- This was a physically tough job for me, and I didn't do anything to stand out, but I didn't suck at the job either. Rolled those breadsticks, and I guess if I stuck it out for a couple more months, I woulda got a higher spot in the cooking department. If only I wasn't still working at PBK during training, I woulda started as a server.

QLF -- I think I'm pretty hard working there. When the calls become holy shit time, I can hold my own and take care of the calls. When the calls are continuous, but not crazy, I still take care of business, and if any workplace makes me look good by comparison, it is this one.

Maybe my inherent laziness that my family sees isn't indicative of how I am. Maybe the idea of an authority figure punishing me is enough to encourage me to do well.

I watch a bunch of episodes from Simpsons, Season 3. I never realized what a well-made cartoon it was. Yes it was funny, clever, and violent. But it has a great charm that I notice more as I am a bit older. Plus Mr. Burns has become one of my favorite characters for some odd reason. I don't know why. But its great liking the show so much.

Omg the pistons and the pacers.

Let me know if the link is down.

Linkin Park/Jay-Z songs to be released on CD

It was awesome on MTV, and it'll be nice to have a CD with all of those performances on em

Also discovered the a9.com search engine, with its unique powers:

-- usage of google search, google image search, IMDB search, amazon book search, and gurunet reference/definition/translation service to create a multi-tiered search engine
-- implemented an interesting drag-and-drop bookmark service to save search results
-- a new notetaking system in the form of a "diary"

check it out.

Found that GMail extension thing Steve told me about:

http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm

This program allows you to use your 1GB GMail account as hard drive space. With 1GB its fairly useful. I installed it and am currently uploading a Lewis Black album. The downside is that it will take a while -- like it would be to upload something of that size to your email. But for remote storage space, it works fine, since you can log into your gmail account and dl it, as the program basically emails yourself an email with the file as an attachment.

I found out that the director of Super Troopers is the same person who directs Arrested Development.

I found out that Firefox got 250,000 in donations, and that should keep it running smoothly. Microsoft isn't threatened, but lets hope they feel unthreatened, and Firefox takes over.

Firefox's main pros seem to be added functionality and great handling of pop-ups/flash image ad crap. That makes it a great alternative to IE, which has developers exploiting it, creating tons of pop-ups (relatively solved with SP2's installation), and lots of stupid flash ads. I'm afraid that at some point, the usage of Firefox will be so large that people will develop the tools necessary to create the same kind of ads (or some new kind of ads) that Firefox cannot stop.

At this point, I'm completely satisfied with my browser and I hope things stay strong with it. Supposedly Mozilla is trying to get Firefox integrated/pre-installed in new computers, but seeing as it is a nonprofit organization, it may be hard to come up with the motivation, compared to MS pushing the big bucks to keep its monopoly.

*shows quake 3 cd to vic*
Me: Te gusta?
Vic: *nodding approvingly and accepting disk* Te gusta...
*puzzled pause*
Me: it's "me gusta"
*laughter*

edgar: BRIAN!
edgar: omg
Me: yo
Me: wha?
edgar: you gotta check this out
Me: k
edgar: i laughed my ass off
edgar:
Me: wow
Me: !
edgar: i cant belive i stil have it
edgar: i was looking aournd on my old site
Me: awesome
edgar: you either get it... or you don't.
edgar: i have no idea why i saved it
Me: psh you know the truth
Me: cuz its awesome
edgar: that was 7 years ago, man

Good times. I can't believe we saw the prowler at magic mountain. It made me "wow."

"I realize that we're the only country that tells the rest of the world on a nearly constant basis that we're the greatest country on Earth, and that is a little fucking obnoxious. If you were in an office, and there was someone there that came in everyday and said 'I'm the greatest fucker here! and you snivelling shits would die without me hahaha!' I guarantee that by the end of the week, you'd have killed him" -- Lewis Black

Awesome.

Practice is going great. I'm feeling less out of shape, but still feel overweight. That's fine so far, but the more the merrier.

Lyrics that say two things

I was listening to Good Charlotte, and they had a song called "Boys and Girls" with the line "Boys will laugh at girls when they're not funny."

Is it
A. The girl isn't funny and the boy is laughing at her.
or
B. The girl isn't funny, like her jokes aren't that clever or whatever, but the boy is humoring her with laughter.

Also there was a line in "Boys of Summer" by Don Henley.

"I never will forget those nights
I wonder if it was a dream
Remember how you made me crazy
Remember how I made you scream"

Is it
A. Those nights were a bad dream, where she made him crazy, and he made her scream in a fight.
or
B. Those nights were a great dream, where the she drove him crazy because he was in love with her, and he made her scream, inferring sexual noises.

I always thought about those two sets of lines. Any comments, lemme know.

"First they said eggs were good. Then they said eggs were bad. Then good. Then bad. MAKE UP YOUR MIND! It's breakfast -- I gotta eat!" -- Lewis Black

Eggs. Yolk is high in cholesterol, and that seems to be pretty much common knowledge. Of course, eggs are regarded to have a lot of great stuff, especially protein. Now, do you have to get that bad yolk cholesterol to get that good stuff? Yes and no.

I finally found a website that defines nutritional facts of the yolk and the white seperately. Here are my findings:

1. Protein is found in both the white and the egg, but about 60% of it is in the white, 40% in the yolk.
2. The yolk has a lot of vitamins, but most in relatively small amounts (exceptions would be Vitamin A (skin, bones, hair), B12 (healthy red blood cells and nervous system), phosphorous (bones), and Riboflavin (increased energy from metabolism)). In order to get all of these relatively small amounts of vitamins, you'll have to ingest 213mg of cholesterol, which would pretty much max you out for the day. Say no to more than one yolk, or any sort of cholesterol infested meat source later that day.

The American Health Association used to have a stance where 4 eggs a week were okay, provided cholesterol intake otherwise was monitored (2 eggs a week for those with heart problems). Currently, they make no recommendation -- apparently eggs are a good and bad thing at the same time.

Solution: Eat the whites, and skip the yolk. Normally I get a whole guilt trip for tossing the yolk, so egg beaters is definitely the way to go for me. Of course, in order to get the protein of one FULL egg, I'll need to eat about one and a half egg's worth of egg whites.

Interesting fact: Chicken eggs have 213mg of cholesterol. The same amount of goose, quail, duck, and turkey egg have about double that amount. At least we're eating the least evil eggs.

Florida Part 2: Apparently Ohio is having a Florida-esque fiasco over 14 hour voting lines and too-close-to-call insanity. I really hate how "X state decides the presidency" idea is propogated, but eh.

Late night jogs feel great.

Looks like I'm going for one specialty.

Yay, Bozasm is up and running again. No Scrubs or Father of the Pride though =( Watch Drawn Together -- hilarious random cartoon on Comedy Central based on reality shows. Not for all audiences -- very random humor, but hilarious stuff.

Florida Part 2: Apparently Ohio is having a Florida-esque fiasco over 14 hour voting lines and too-close-to-call insanity. I really hate how "X state decides the presidency" idea is propogated, but eh.

Late night jogs feel great.

Looks like I'm going for one specialty.

Yay, Bozasm is up and running again. No Scrubs or Father of the Pride though =( Watch Drawn Together -- hilarious random cartoon on Comedy Central based on reality shows. Not for all audiences -- very random humor, but hilarious stuff.

A loan officer at work borrowed my CD named "Awe-dical" which includes a delicoius mix of music created to elevate the listeners mindset to a new distinct level of bozasticness, and he just came in here to tell me to remind him to return it. I asked him if he liked it, and he said "it is totally awe-dical. Part awesome, part radical."

That was totally cool.

Bush 197, Kerry 188 as of 8:04pm PST

California just closed, and cnn predicts kerry wins california and the race suddenly becomes close, much to the surprise (and chagrin) of many loan officers watching in the lobby.

Interesting how these predictions are done. Apparently CNN waits till the polls of that time zone closes, decides which (if any) states in that zone are majority R/D and adds those electoral votes to that candidate. California just closed, and since its apparently mostly Demo, Kerry just got those 55 electoral votes added to his total, making it look a lot closer.

I don't think any of these numbers are official, but interesting enough =P

Bush 176, Kerry 112 (as of 7:06pm)

There is the current count. The Bush supporters in the receptionist room are cheering, while I patiently wait – only half of the votes have been counted, and there is still plenty of time. Bush has many supporters, and I give the man kudos for inspiring that many to have faith in him – whatever the outcome is, I’ll have to accept it. I revel in the fact that there are two Kerry supporters here who voted, and two Bush supporters who didn’t register.

On another note, I went to grad check today, and everything is looking smooth for my graduation in the spring. Even better, I have some options.

I have 3 more non-project classes to take for sure, while the others are still a variable.

1. Bachelor’s degree – 3 project classes, for a total of 6 classes in my last two quarters, creating two relatively easy 12 unit quarters to finish off my college career.

2. Bachelor’s degree with a specialization in Software Systems – 3 project classes + 1 specialty class for a total of 7 classes in my last two quarters, creating 1 relatively easy 12 unit quarter and 1 more difficult 16 unit quarter.

3. Bachelor’s degree with a specialization in Software Systems and Information Systems – 3 project classes plus 2 specialty classes, for a total of 8 classes in my last two quarters, creating two relatively difficult 16 unit quarters.

Another thought is that regardless of my decision, one of these quarters will include two project courses. This makes the “relatively easy 12 unit quarters” a bit harder. Another thought is that regardless of my decision, I am balancing work/internship in it.

So far I am taking at least one project class next quarter, and probably 2 of my non-project classes so I can set that up to fit my schedule best. It’ll suck when spring quarter requires a certain schedule and it might interfere with work/internship.

Any suggestions?

Yay! another month with my Kate. 3 yrs + 7 months. It's tough being so far from her, but things are doing alright lately. We're both so busy, that when we have time together, its just nice to hear her.

She already showed me her potential schedule for next year, and it looks super duper dense. I'm a little scared of how my next quarter schedule is going to turn out, considering that I have a fixed 4-10pm TuTh slot for work. At least at the internship, the guys don't have a FIXED time for me to come in -- just that I am able to come in during those work hours (weekdays 7am-4pm).

Honestly, I like my schedule at the moment -- I just wished that I wouldn't have to go to school, back to internship and back to school -- one first, then the other would be preferable. I guess if I started up an early schedule like 8-12pm, then interned from 1-4, that would be a good idea. I'd like to have no class after 4pm for MWF, so that I will have time to study, and I'll have time to meet with project teams next quarter.

It's going to be tough next quarter. ::sigh:: To think that I was bitching about my schedule a bit, but it can get a lot worse. Kate has a hell of a time managing her study time and class/job/research. We're both kicking ass this year so far though. *knocks on wood* Let's keep that going!