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| Thursday, August 6th, 2009 | | 3:06 pm |
so... did you buy?
A couple months ago I saw my own company's stock (NVDA) at 7.25 and predicted it would double within 3 years. So did you buy? because it went all the way down to 5, and today it is back up to 14.25 (in after-hours trading). If you took my advice, I would advise you to sell now only so that I can claim my rightful glory. I actually think it's going to go up more, but I just want my "I was right" sticker now (even tho it hasn't doubled just yet -- I figure I'm close enough, right?). A few years ago, I made another suggestion to NVDA, and it was a good move, as far as I can recall. But I didn't say when you should sell, and I think that's part of it too. BTW, if you bought back then (May 7,2004 -- it was at about 7 -- at the time it was near 22, but the 7 reflects adjustments based on stock-splits)), then my prediction that it would have doubled within two years was also correct, altho I never cashed in on that being right. (NVDA was at 20 on Apr 3, 2006). As full-disclosure. I'm going to be selling some, even tho it pains me to do (b/c as I said, I think it's going to go up more). My employee blackout period is ending, I need to diversify, and we need more cash for home improvements, and just to have more cash in case of more rainy days ahead. So I'm 2 for 2. Too bad my only expertise is in predicting my own company. | | Sunday, June 7th, 2009 | | 10:41 pm |
a productive weekend
did the first day of p90x, and boy am I sore. I didn't even have any of the accessories except a pair of dumbells, so i mostly just rested or did sit-ups during the pull-ups section. at about 2/3 of the way in, I was doing like 1-2 push-ups per set of push-ups. This is the first video? Ridiculous. I prolly shouldn't have done like 35-40 in the first set, but they didn't tell me that we were going to do like 14 sets of push-ups. Holy Moly. I do see the appeal tho. The pacing of the video is long enough to get a burn doing each set, but doesn't give you time to get bored. And I found his constant encouragement to be a slight reminder of wrestling days. This guys didn't yell into my ear like coach would do, but I was able to bring up the same imagery in my head, and it worked in terms of getting me to squeeze out those last few reps. All the little things that they tell you to do -- I'm sure they help -- like writing down how many reps you did, with what weight, etc, but I didn't do any of that either. In college, when i was working out a lot, I'd do a ton of heavy weights. I'd walk into the gym in street clothes and do three sets of bench press, and then take off. But I'd do that at least once a day, sometimes 2-3. Totally Anerobic stuff, whereas this stuff was making my heart pound. It would be nice to bulk up again, but if health is main goal, then Aerobic stuff is the right choice, so I'll see if I can stick to this, altho I doubt I'll get in more than once a week. Sydney did some push-ups too (her own brand of push-ups tho). When she decided to help me by climbing on my back while I was doing push-ups, that hurt. But it was fun. Momma seemed to laugh the hardest. Also did some weeding and cleared a bird's nest from above a window that's pretty high up on our house. I have a sunburn and a story about the bird's nest falling on my head that came out of it. Why does it seem like everything good I did this weekend caused me some kind of pain? Actually, cleaning up my office was all good. I got my computer fixed, and even played some warcraft 3. I had to blog about this because I might not have another week as productive in years. | | Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 | | 5:17 pm |
quick notes
I bought Rock Band 2 a week ago, but haven't played it yet. WRGPT is open for registration. http://www.wrgpt.orgMy company stock NVDA is at 7.25. If I were not in the employee blackout window, I would consider buying some. The market might go down more. But as soon as the market bottoms out, I think it would be a great purchase. I think NVDA is going to destroy it's GPU competition in the next year or two, and the fact that mobile is doing well may turn NVDA into a "growth" company in investor's eyes, which means that it's stock price will go crazy. I predict NVDA will hit 15 within 3 years. | | 11:00 am |
| | Sunday, October 5th, 2008 | | 5:13 pm |
a drop in the bucket
You know when you drop something in very calm waters -- there's that drop of water that shoots straight back up? That happened to me the other day at work while I was pinching a loaf and I dunno, I just feel like that's not cool. Getting shot in the ass with a water drop. Do people find that using the toilet seat covers avoids this action? We're looking to buy a home in San Ramon. If things work out, we might buy the house 3 doors away from willchill and ljkskis! A part of me gets super nervous every time I think about San Ramon -- What if I lose my job and we can't rent out Lenox? Besides financial worries, there's the other life changes to worry about: commute and/or working from home, making new friends, even finding your way about. But the upside is huge. Good schools, big house, and a surrounding community that seems a lot like us, married couples w/ kids who care enough about schooling that they'll deal a somewhat nasty commute. This would be the house that we plan to live in for a long time, so we can feel comfortable pouring big slabs of cash into improvements or just niceties. Buying a new property lets us start turning Lenox into a rental property, which is just good for our long-term prosperity as well. If it doesn't break us, this investment seems like a good one. In the short-term, real estate prices may go even lower. But my reasoning is that there isn't room for the prices to go down by too much more, so by concentrating on buying now, we're maximizing what we get to choose from -- and that's what ultimately will have the greatest value -- finding the right location or floorplan has been, by far, the hardest in the home search. Honestly, there have been multiple properties that have been great. It is a scary time. But I feel like I'm being encouraged to take a big bet here. Seems like everyone I know stretched a bit to buy their houses when they did, including my parents, and most of my buds -- And everyone has done well by those decisions. Hopefully, I won't be the first to buck the trend. | | Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 | | 2:46 pm |
life and parenting
For the mommies out there -- I know of you can relate: http://www.babble.com/content/articles/features/personalessays/bishop/mommytrack/index.aspxLittle Sydney is doing well with words, sometimes singing and dancing along with her favorite TV shows like the little einsteins, the mickey mouse clubhouse, and the wiggles -- btw, did the wiggles just go off the air? It wasn't on at its normal 11am time this morning. Yesterday, we went to the pool for maybe the 4th or 5th time in her life, but the 1st time ever prepared for swimming (sunscreened and swimsuited). Very leery of the water at first, our little girl wanted to touch the pretty water at first, and before she knew it, she was splashing about. The weather was perfect, and she didn't want to leave when the time came (we only stayed in the water for about 30-40 minutes). After a jaunt home for a bite to eat, we grabbed mama, and went back for another run at the pool. Mama even found a swimsuit that caught the attention of daddy's periscope. Leaving for afternoon nap was a bit of a struggle again, but once home, little pea crashed for a long hard nap. G-funk IM'd me the other day and said he was in a musical -- http://www.hillbarntheatre.org/redesign/I'm going to try to check him out this thursday at 8pm. I was gonna post a bit more, but I need to do some work now. | | Monday, January 15th, 2007 | | 1:40 am |
Blast from the past
I must have just finished watching rambo when I had this picture taken, because man, was I PUMPED UP! Missy found this picture of me and we all had a good laugh. Thanks to songmonk for hosting.  | | Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 | | 2:33 pm |
omg
hm, michelle turned 30 LAST YEAR. I guess I was cleaning out some old e-mails and stumbled upon an evite from last year. Have to remember that for next time when I sort by sender. I followed the link and was all embarassed, like how could we have forgotten, and where the heck was my reminder e-mail? Ok, so I don't feel so bad for missing that -- I guess there was nothing to miss! Now I just feel dumb. =) | | 12:08 pm |
updates
i'm listening to launchcast at work. it's taken it quite awhile to figure out what I like. after very liberally applying "never play that again" on many songs, launchcast's picks are now on track. Billy Idol's "dancing with myself" came on, and yeah, I like that song. But it got me thinking about my brother giving me a hard time about how in the song "mony mony" I thought I heard billy say "ride your pony". It's a pony out of nowhere, but the song's title doesn't really mean much, heck -- I'm not sure how you write a song like mony mony as I look at the lyrics. Maybe they were inspried by Neil Diamond "no one heard, not even the chair." Anyways, I did a few web searchs and many lyrics references say that I'm right that he actually does say "ride your pony", so yah vindication many years later. I browsed evite today to find out that we missed michelle eng's 30th b-day celebration after saying we'd go. whoops! and I still haven't hung out with ryan after his b-day thing got cancelled. we are such bad friends, sorry guys! missy has been much better since we've gotten off the depakote -- it's like night and day in terms how much energy melissa has. She basically slept all day while on the depakote, and now she is using our elliptical runner, sleeping normal hours, and just doing better overall. While missy's memory is still less than 100%, but the doctor is telling us that things are going to progress very slowly if at all. After we have our little girl undergo eye-surgery later this month, we'll be going to the stanford epilepsy center to have missy go through some more tests. It's been a year, and I'm just so thankful that we've got so many good friends and family that help us out in so many ways. pang is engaged! no ring yet, but I think the wedding planning has started, with a target being some destination wedding around May 2007. It's not pang's style to do the "tried-and-true" kind of bachelor's party -- he'll want to do something new, so we're thinking some kind of outdoor's adventure like rafting. It's always good to reconnect with folks like Joe, Pang, and Shahram -- who was in town yesterday for a "special" poker session. While I wasn't successful in making shahram have a negative session in the book, at least his average winnings per session went down, so I guess that is a win. =) | | Monday, April 18th, 2005 | | 1:07 pm |
long time, short post
20 Artists I've seen: 1. Garbage 2. Barenakedladies 3. Erasure 4. No Doubt 5. Dave Matthews Band 6. Sarah McLachlan 7. Matchbox 20 8. Janet Jackson 9. Alanis Morissette 10. Michelle Branch 11. Depeche Mode 12. Sheryl Crow 13. Everclear 14. Live 15. Semisonic 16. Beth Orton 17. Aimee Mann 18. Lifehouse 19. The Pretenders 20. Ryan Adams heh, ryan adams. I plain ran out of concerts. Guess I have to see a concert sometime soon to bump his ass off the list. I had to think for awhile to whip out the Pretenders from that one new year's party. Well I turned 30 a few weeks back and my very thoughtful wife (with the help of willchill apparently) got me my supertastic Sony PSP! Woot Woot! Thx very much for that. The screen is amazingly crisp, and I can't wait to play more games against my fellow PSP'ers, but at $50 a game, it's got to be the right game. I heard an old song on the radio the other day -- anyone recognize these lyrics? Ha! Do you want to hustle? Break! That's Right! Ha! Do you want to salsa? >whistle< >whistle< My company's stock is in the toilet. Still profitable, but much not by much. That makes me sad. =( While I'm starting to like a few of my fellow engineers more, something isn't right. I'll have to think about exactly what that is, but I'm starting to suspect that it is in no small degree, actually me. | | Tuesday, November 16th, 2004 | | 4:26 pm |
announcement
So we've been kind of excited to let people know for awhile, but we were specifically advised not to talk about it until just recently, and normally we would wait to say it to people in person, but we sensed that people were going to be asking soon and I even leaked it to a few people. Anyway, I figure it's now a good time to announce that portalplayer is going public this week! Yes, very exciting, and I'm not even completely sure what it all entails, but hopefully I'll be in for a little bonus cash when my options vest in about a year. On the home front, songmonk sadly left the lenox nest for greener pastures, and missy and I had some issues letting go, but we looked forward to the freedom to do it in the kitchen and not have to worry about anyone coming home. I feel kinda bad that I didn't help out with songmonk's move more. I basically put in 15-30 minutes of labor, then went back to skinning, mining, and fighting in the world of warcraft. I might already be addicted to this game, and was in a zombie-like state after having stayed up playing the dang thing for about 30 hours straight before crashing. Missy was quite sick for the past couple days and so I have been questing for contact solution, kfc mashed potatoes and gravy with biscuits, as well as other unparticularly glorious assorted sorties for sundries. I think of it as good experience for the glorious day when one of my brave warriors finally conquers the egg quest. Not that I'm one to blame, but I have been pumping out plenty of premium lately, but no word has ever come back, and I'm starting to worry that my guys are venturing into hostile territory. here's the url in case you're interested: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041115/ap_on_hi_te/ipo_outlook_2 | | Saturday, November 6th, 2004 | | 12:16 am |
quality post
songmonk rightly observes that I have been playing lots of UB lately. I guess I have, but I've been winning, so I guess that is a positive reinforcement cycle that's good for the family pocketbook, so i s'pose it is alright. We played broomball for the shellster's b-day and man it was a good time. it was good to see some old faces that I haven't in awhile: queso's sister (who I mistakenly called stacy instead of janelle once), lisa sorenson and her love andrew, b-day girl's sis, her friend chris, and the venerable mr. G-pack. broomball is an interesting event to describe. It's your social crowd, slapped into a athletic, physical contest. Society has this wonderful way of sorting people out so that people generally play with people of a common skill level. But this kind of thing breaks those normal divisions, giving us more of a middle-school Physical Education class feel, and it is kind of cool in that you get to share in all of the bizarre happenings of unagile action, but without the mean-spirited taunting that you'd get on the middle school yard. On top of that, and this is the true *genius* of broomball, is that people fall down. I have no shame in admitting the joy of watching people slip and spill. It's almost better when there are several slips involved, perhaps a moment of near-recovery, and the conclusion feels like it was destined for our entertainment value. Yes, the lack of traction is a great equalizer for game play as well, and much fun, much slipping, and a decent amount of scoring was had. Right now, I can feel that a lot of my inner body muscles that I don't use normally were worked like crazy in this game. You know, those pilates muscles that give you good posture and balance. I'm going to have funky-aches tomorrow, I'm pretty sure of it. Sure, you still have people who are more capable than others, but the point is that there is such a lack of experience that everyone is in experimental mode. Some people find a comfort zone and do stuff pretty commonly. I see that there are ass-sliders -- people who go to the ground often, usually as a combo method to slow down but also to impede the ball from getting hit past them -- and there are non-sliders -- people who generally avoid the floor. Despite all the slide tackling, general slips and falls, and big swings swung, we were fortunate to have no one majorly injured (that we knew of right now. We're all going to be busted tomorrow morning). I was especially scared of the people who took big swings, mostly because of the lack of helment and faceguard that I felt was a little troublesome. I had little dancing missy's waving very unhappy fingers at me... "you better not get hurt mister" and had a little laugh to myself. Lisa ran a running slide tackle and roared her most ferocious roar, but I chuckled when I heard her coming at me. Ryan however went after some girl I didn't know -- she screamed and dropped her broom, which make the very appropiate sound of something like a frozen shit-brick hitting the ice. Ryan ended up sliding right past her, not touching her, and a few seconds later when she recovered from her trauma, she let out a very meek, but slightly accusational "you scared me!", to which ryan laughed his deep guffaw, and I chuckled to myself as I am known to do. After I came home I played some UB. Dread was sitting at my table! but I played pretty poorly, and was out of the tourney pretty fast. I jumped into another table and got second, tho I think I made a questionable all-in raise when I was heads up with 23o. I really thought he might lay down some hand like he had (77), but I turned out to be wrong, and had to settle for 2nd. But then I thought I'd press my luck, and I played yet another tourney, and got first (!), tho i have to say I drew out quite a few times in dire situations. It also helps having flopped broadway, a set of jacks, turned a flush, getting aces near the end, having a stack of 1500 sit out starting from hand #20 because he kept losing connection (unfortunately, he was on my immediate right, so I could not take advantage of it as much as I would have liked, but let me tell you, I basically took about 85% of his stack as it was). I was chip leader for that entire game, and I have to say that I'm getting pretty frisky when it comes to being a bully. That shit works. I'm tired. I'm going to be sore tomorrow. But I'm going to bed a happy man. | | Friday, November 5th, 2004 | | 4:35 pm |
some thoughts
well apparently it was too much to hope for a kim jong ill post at the time of the mysterious korean explosions or the large train wreck disaster. Just when I thought his voice had faded into darkness, the illmatic has risen from the ashes to provide us with comical words to ease the pain of our disappointing erection. [ Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<insert [...] erection?">') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] well apparently it was too much to hope for a kim jong ill post at
the time of the mysterious korean explosions or the large train
wreck disaster. Just when I thought his voice had faded into darkness,
the illmatic has risen from the ashes to provide us with comical words
to ease the pain of our disappointing erection. <insert queso joke here:
"cheesy bush erection?" arg terrible>
Unfortunately, the fearless korean leader has fallen into a deep
conspiracy, and I've found it only worth a half-smile. But maybe I am
missing something. What I had previously found so interesting about the
series was that in addition to the simple word plays, there seemed to me
to be a funny under-current that was kim's gay love for bush. Did anyone
else pick up on that storyline? I didn't at first, but then when I realized
that was what was going on, I had to laugh a little more. Is there a new
under-current that I am missing?
Even if there is something there that I'm missing, I just think I'm less
entertained by that whole series. luckily, there's that korean couple
in the "lost" tv series instead to replace my kimchee quota. They're a
cool couple. I guess I'm less interested in the Kate and Jack romance
because it's a little too clear what's going on. She digs him. She wants
for him to come after her, but she ends up going after him most of the
time. He appears to like her too, but he doesn't make that clear -- he
is more concerned with dealing with his own issues of being the island's
professor and getting people organized for now. Props to a man for
bypassing getting some girly action for getting needed work done, but I
just don't buy it. The story about Jack is going to have to filled in a
little more acceptably before I can believe he wouldn't have jumped her
bones by now. Is anyone else watching this series?!
So 4 of us played Halo2 at the Lenox Arena this friday lunch. It was fun
stuff. We're going to try to get Dread to make an appearance next week,
and maybe even willchill, but then we'll have to spill over to another TV!
John wanted to play capture the flag (that game usually takes like 45
minutes minimum). what a nut. I say maybe assault. But we don't even
know the maps yet! Well, maybe john does and he isn't letting us know.
sneaky bastard -- I wouldn't put it past him!
Funny today that I had a conversation where Dave wanted to go all-in
with his WRGPT pocket jacks. I had first said, uh no don't do that,
as he expected me to say. The pot had already be raised, then
re-raised all-in by two players before him. So dave's all-in would
be a call for his entire stack. We did some research and found that
at least one of the players has placed in the top 100 of WRGPT twice
and that he was in the top 200 in the past three years, so probably
knew what he was doing. An all-in raise that was such an overbet looked
like AA or KK, suffice to say a hand that he didn't want to call with.
But Dave was persistent and I said ok fine go all-in, which is what I
knew he wanted to hear. And the lucky guy drew out against both KK and
QQ. Crazy. And I busted out with AJo vs. A5s. Is there no justice?!
I've been playing a lot of ultimatebet sit'n'go's. And my bank account
is even up from where I started, so that is great! Sometimes, songmonk
will wander by when the clickety-click sound of ultimatebet chips will
lure him into the room. I like that I have a little poker coach next
to me when I'm playing. Coach spurned me on to steal countless blinds
when the table was down to 4 and I was the big stack. They were all good
little players who didn't want to bust out 4th (out of the money) and
we robbed them blind.
Unfortunately I only got 2nd place on that one after quite a big lead,
but no matter, profitsezes is profitsezes.
Missy says UB has replaced warcraft, since I said I wouldn't play warcraft
for a week if she went to work out twice in a week. But I defintely only
play less than an hour a day average, so I think that's quite good. I was
inspired by akumaX's vacation from the game, tho I worry about his account
being swallowed up if he doesn't get a game in. That would be most unfortunate
after almost attaining 1500 (wins).
John said something about my TV -- that Halo2 looked better on his plasma.
poo-poo, i say. Of course you are going to see the pixels more clearly on
a screen that is 30% larger. Especially when the resolution is running 480i
or 480p. But let me say this -- if I run anything with a real resolution,
my screen is crisp and the colors are bright. Anyway, I'm curious to see
what it looks like on his. I have half a mind to interface via PC and scale
the image to run it at the same size as a 42" would be, and I bet it looks
at least as good, but that's too much work for now. I'll wait to see how it
looks while actually at John's, but as far as I can tell, it is impossible
to judge quality of TV's unless they are right next to each other, running
the same exact thing. That is what stores like Magnolia hi-fi are all about,
and when I last checked, DLP's were still kicking ass without the plasma
issues of burn in, higher power, longevity.
Now the only thing that is pissing me off is comcast's weird issue where hi-def
picture just cuts out sometimes, as what happened when we watched CSI this week.
I'm going to call them up and give them a piece of my mind. hmph.
I'm also on yahoo messenger now. I agree that the background and icons are cooler.
I've also been thinking about getting a sidekick 2. I like IM, but I think it is
the web browsing that I would really love on that machine. Especially if it can
basically guarantee that I'll never be lost on the road again. Anyway, we'll see.
I think the jury is still deliberating that one. I think the phone I have now gets
great reception. I get signal where other people don't, and I don't really want
to risk that. Since the sidekick ii is free after rebates, I think if I get one,
missy should get one too. It'll be a team thing. =) | | Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004 | | 2:19 pm |
things that don't go your way
I'm pretty saddened by the recent news of today. Yes, I have sadly busted out of WRGPT (poker tournament). I went all-in pre-flop with AJo, was called by A5s, and a 5 was on the board by the end. I normally would not make such a move, but suffice to say I did think it could be a profitable move, and I was kind of right, but not as right as I would have liked (esp. regarding the outcome). =) oh well. Oh yah, and the Bush re-election -- that's kind of saddening too. It's been about two weeks at the new job. Besides the exciting prospect of going public and making some small amount of cash, it is good to get that startup feel again. I had a bigger post about why I decided to change jobs, but to summarize, I saw that altho Nvidia could be a great place to work, it somehow hadn't been that way for me. To have no control over your own destiny, that is quite disheartening for me, and I guess that is kind of how I feel about the presidential election -- I feel a bit powerless to stop the dumbasses. Howard Dean had said he didn't want to talk about guns, gods, and gays anymore, but what can you do when that talk is forced upon you? People in the end care about guns, gods, and gays. Those things are taught by parents -- they are engrained into culture, and it will be a long, hard road to change those mindsets -- if it can even be done. | | Tuesday, September 7th, 2004 | | 2:43 pm |
things that kick ass
I've never read any of the Arianna Huffington articles that gopackgo and queso have recommended, mostly because I decided I didn't like her from what she said in her run for governor of california. But while reading http://slashdot.org today, I stumbled across the 2nd essay I've read from Paul Graham (see http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html) and decided that this guy kicks ass. I'll be reading him a lot from now on, and I recommend you do the same. There are times when I think that I want to be a writer because I have cool notions in my head, and from his latest article "The Age of the Essay", I feel reinforced and justified to really investigate those things that prickle my mind such as whether, how, and why people use toilet seat covers. We've all seen the occassional blow-you-away coolness of a blog that seems to really hit home with us, and by that, I mostly mean writings that seem to strike a chord of truth. I'd like to write one of those. Convince my friends of some truth that I've recently become aware of -- perhaps that I only became aware of because I sat down to write about something that was interesting to me, and found a course of logic that seemed to reach a conclusion that is worthwhile knowledge (chuckling along the way). I'm probably going to be changing jobs within a few months -- not to become a writer, but to escape the boredom that is nvidia. It is so odd that everyone else is running around busy as hell, and here i am asking if I can help people out and basically being told no, because I don't know enough and because everyone who knows enough is too busy to teach me how I can help. Oh wait, but i can help -- by doing these menial tasks over here. Great thanks, I think it's time to leave. I'll probably be hammering out more engineering with Alex Henderson at a new startup that will be CEO'd by Larry Roberts, an MIT alum, and one of the fathers of the internet. That is exciting, and tho I still believe that Nvidia will do great in the next few years, I am just not well placed, and not on a trajectory that is going to lead me to anything better in the near future, so screw it. Anyway let me know what you guys think about some of the paul graham articles. | | Monday, August 2nd, 2004 | | 12:10 pm |
the justice league interviews the puzzle fighters
I forgot that the game was based on new super heroes (us) that wanted to join the justice league. There was an application process, part of which included this interview: From the December 2003 issue of Superhero Monthly Up Close and Personal with the Puzzle Fighters, by Violette Ramsey The Puzzle Fighters are a group of superheroes who have joined forces to solve crimes and join in the war against uncracked mysteries. Yes, you already know about their successes against the diabolical puzzlers of the underworld, but today, we get Up Close and Personal with Dark Gigolo, Gorilla Ice, The Relocator, Mr. Roboto and Supermonk and learn about a few things you may not know from seeing them in the evening news. Violette Ramsey: Welcome, Puzzle Fighters, and thank you for taking the time from your busy schedules. Dark Gigolo: It's no problem, Violette. We're happy to be here. VR: I think first we'd like to learn a little bit about your history. Who were some of your favorite superheroes growing up? Relocator? The Relocator: I admired The Flash. He could really get around. DG: I liked Wonder Woman. VR: Oh, you admired her strong nature and her no-nonsense attitude? DG: No, not really. Gorilla Ice: I admired Gleek from The Superfriends. Eventually I became his student. I will forever be indebted to him. VR: I don't know if he really counts as a superhero, but OK. Over the past few years, there has been a resurgence in the movies of the superhero genre. Spiderman, The X-Men, The Hulk – these have all been blockbuster films. How do you feel about the popularity of these movies, and do you think they reflect well on real life superheroes? DG: Well, Violette, I think that overall it has been positive for the superhero community, because for the most part the superheroes have been portrayed positively, and one of the things that these recent movies have done that not all movies in the past have done is to really show the human side of superheroes. It's not all glory and gratitude. There's a lot of antagonism we have to put up with too. Mr. Roboto: One thing that I don't appreciate is how powerful they make the superheroes in the movies. I know they have artistic license to make things exciting, but did you see some of the things The Hulk did? Ridiculous. We do our best to help the people, but if they start getting unrealistic expectations, what are we supposed to do? We're not them. That's the movies. That's fiction. Supermonk: I think it's a sellout. Superheroes should not be profiting from selling their names to the movie studios. We should use our powers to fight crime, not make a buck. That's not what it's all about. VR: What *is* it all about? S: It's about helping others. Helping others to help themselves. VR: Did you steal that line? S: Uh, no. VR: Let's switch to a more lighthearted topic. What sort of fan interactions do you experience? Interesting gifts or fan mail? GI: People send me bananas all the time. It's ridiculous. VR: You don't like bananas? GI: [withering stare] DG: Adoring ladies send me their panties. It happens quite a bit. VR: What about you, Relocator? Do you ever get interesting gifts? TR: I might, if I ever knew where they were sent to. VR: Finally, I have to ask you for our female readers, are any of you seeing anyone? Let's hear from all of you. GI: Yes, I just recently got married. Quite happy. MR: I don't have a girlfriend, but I'm getting around. It really helps to be immortalized in song. Even if that's not actually me. S: I really can't put my own desires before that of the people. To have a steady relationship would be unfair to my wife or girlfriend. That said, no-commitment nookie never hurt anyone. TR: I really don't stay in one place long enough to hold a steady relationship. DG: What are *you* doing tonight, Violette? VR: Oh, Dark Gigolo! | | 12:10 pm |
justice
This weekend I played in the game called "justice unlimited". It was a superhero theme which was cool in my eyes, since the superfriends and the league of justice were some of favorite early TV memories. People often dress up for these adventures, and costumes did abound, from recognizable people like the dynamic duo, to lesser known creations like team advil caption john owens, who came in a blue speedo over grey tights and matching blue cape (I didn't get his actual name). Before the game, there was some creation of each player, who had to be a super-hero. akuma made up the stuff for me since I was either wedding planning or on my honeymmon, but it was pretty funny. yahoogroups is down right now, and I think that is where we have our applications stored (which has the descriptions made up for the superheros we represented), so I'll get that later. There was also an interview with the puzzle fighters. I'm pretty sure this was made up since I wasn't there (but my super-hero alter ego Gorilla Ice was). In any case, I'll post that interview separately next. The game itself had some cool elements, like having this computer-strapped-to-your-forearm device. This was pretty cool in many ways, since it had several different capabilities. Disappointly most of these features didn't work as advertised, thus making us pretty much hate the damn thing. For instance, the arm-band had a proximity sensor to help you find the physical location of the next clue. But this didn't work, making us search for much longer than we otherwise would have done. But the theme of superheroes remained strong and fun thru the game, with fun things like a telegram from kryton (get it? a krypton-gram), hero trivia -- (did you know that there were like 5 green lanterns? well we had to find out the secret identity of all of 'em!), tracking down a riddle from the riddler, and then actually getting the answer. Teamwork was somewhat emphasized (JUSTICE was often referred to, meaning the league of superfriends) and we had to use teamwork to physically run down a person of "pure evil" -- his visor told us that this person was so -- capture him with our truth lasso, and question him until we could determine his master's name. We even had to stop off at a coffee shop to order something "justice-style" to get our next clue. I think they expected to order a drink, because the clue was actually on a little drink umbrella, so the way that it was served with Feinberg's croissant was a bit unexpected, but we got the idea. There were some pretty locations, like a beach, where we scanned the cliffs for our clue (it turned out to be a big ole candle, whose puzzle was inside the candle) and the "bay model". This place is an actual model of the bay area. It actually models the entire water/tidal levels of pretty much every major body of water. The puzzle there required us to use the model to help us determine which body of water was which. We also had to determine the right order in which a series of postcards written amongst the superfriends went, and use tidal adjustment factors to determine our next location. This game made us go pretty late into sunday. In fact, they had enough puzzles so that even the best teams were kept busy until 3pm on sunday (which is pretty late -- the best teams usually finish like around 10-11am sunday). Around 3pm, game control called everyone in, which was interesting because everyone was there to hang out togheter, whereas in other games, teams slowly trickle in thru the day, and truthfully want to hang out, but are quite tired and want to go home and recover from the weekend. So yah, I managed to miss John's b-day thing (sorry about that!). I'm taking him out for some lunch at cluck-u tomorrow. Last nite, I slept quite a bit, and woke myself up from a bit of laughter in my sleep. I was able to tell missy about my dream later. It involved saddam hussein (who was still in power in my dream). In my dream, Saddam punished some prisoner with a quick three-slap combo, which was amusing to me, since the sound of the three slap combo (psh-psh-psh), came up during this weekend. While amusing, what actually made me laugh was that later in my dream, Saddam's nipples shot off, and they became large inter-continental ballistic missiles! This is the part that made me giggle in increduility. Missy makes fun of how I dream of things that amuse me in my sleep. I think she is jealous because she is occassionally haunted by scary things in her dreams, which is not nearly as fun. It is either that, or sometimes missy dreams of things where she has to defend herself by trying to bite her enemy. Anyway, I'm thankful that it has been a long time since I have had a scary dream. Perhaps it hasn't been that long, since I don't seem to remember many dreams. At times this weekend, I was so sleepy that the whole thing seemed like a dream. Bingo tonite should be fun. I'm looking forward to going. | | Monday, July 19th, 2004 | | 4:30 pm |
playing ketchup
better late than never. 850 pictures from the wedding, and I'm sure there were many more that didn't make the cut of even being shown to us. http://loebphotography.com/cabanasome notes on other things to write about since the last update. not very interesting to you -- this stuff is more for me than for you. but if you want a spoiler, then i guess you can peaky peak. 1. bachelor party: find the stripper game. aladdin buffet. ho's in different area codes. erick's asparagus. poker tournaments. gambol, gambol. surrendering our way to victory. lawry's beef bowl. the return of liquid cocaine. the art of maintaining a buzz. 2. wedding weekend: hotel courtyard issue, slideshow, rehearsal dinner, picture site, vows, speeches, dancing (saw wedding video), our room on the wedding nite, gift opening 3. honeymoon: bangkok, missy's long lost heritage, temples and scams, floating market, muay-thai kickboxing, sky train, blue elephant, internet terminals, malls and malls. chiang-mai, temples, tours, elephant show, golden triangle, modes of transport - goat cart, boat-taxi (more like bus), taxi, skytrain, mini-truck, aircon van, elephant, bamboo raft, motorcycle taxi, red truck. koh samui, village airport, banana chips, hotel view, pool, beaches, kayaking, floatie, spa, massages, shopping, too hot to try on jeans 4. post-wedding parental issues 5. genodix game, edible application, heron's head park, B&B RV, overpass semaphore-kpix, morse-tiburon angel island ferry, interleaving strips-pimpdaddy, mini-games on angel island, 3d stars, sound it out black-white, Z-drop, knights tour, dropping the hammer on the concrete block - yarn color, kgo station driveby, cat scan, affymetrix holdem, tech museum skip, except Z, late nite scrolls, put them on polls, late nite hills, han spills, hazy memory from there, rectangles, ticker tape 6. magic tournaments (2): closed universe, no trade, no draft, just booster cards. drafting cards, thought for next time 7. water heater 8. toilet seat covers things to do: 1. write and send more thank you's 2. scan in rest of photos, return photos, distribute CD-soft copy version of. 3. replace dining room chairs (probably whole set) 4. outdoor patio furniture? 5. plan to put on a game. | | Friday, June 18th, 2004 | | 3:01 pm |
Greetings from halfway across the world!
Well, Missy and I landed safely in the land of elephants and temples a few days ago and already we are tired of various things. Mostly, the heat and humidity has taken a lot of wind out of our sails, but yesterday we managed to sleep 14 hours, so I have to think that we are somewhat rejuvenated by that. So far, we have seen lots of buddha figures. The various thai people seem quite religious, so we are mixing in with the crowd, and missy is often mistook for being Thai. Either that, or it is some kind of strange ploy to take our money. Lots of scam running around based on "The temple you are seeking has been closed for an hour...why don't you come here for awhile while you wait?" kind of thing. luckily, we have been prepared by various books and hotel people who tell us the local scams. the danger is keeping us from being maximally adventurous -- we've only really tried some curry and noodle soups, and fried bananas, altho it has been reasonably tasty so far. The morning buffet that came free with the hotel room has lots of bacon and eggs, and we've been using that to keep us from being homesick. Today has not been so good. We've been looking for magic cards for paul, but the few places that have sold the cards are apparently legit (!), and so we don't get great deals. But they are selling a few chrome foil guys that are relatively good cards for cheapy (about 25 to 50 cents, when they are 4-8 bucks in the states), but even those are rare. I picked up a 50-cent memnarch for paul, but no lotuses or moxes in sight. I'll keep looking... Ok, so much, much, much time was spent hunting down these magic cards. we must have seen hundred of little shops so far. There are malls that are basically conglomerates of bazaars, and there are also mega-malls of the american style where every store has a store front and many levels like valley-fair or hillsdale mall, only there are like 15 levels! So this day we've gotten lots of exercising in walking around the shops, but during lunch, the fake tooth that I had that replaced a tooth that I had chipped during wrestling, broke off. Ther's no pain, but it looks like I'll have to be careful eating for the rest of the trip. Also, a $2 umbrella that missy bought broke, so we're feeling a bit run-down. Having had a bit of thai ice tea and coffee, we're jumping again. maybe we'll catch the harry potter or shrek movie or do some people watching at a nearby park when the rain stops. Sorry for a not-so-interesting post. Thjis is kind of a stream of thoughts that has no organization. We'll spice up the stories before we come home. But it hasn't been a very pampering-type trip so far (sorry hunnypie!) but we'll get to the massages and relaxing portion soon enough. To have seen the variuos Thai people trying to make a Baht by doing all kind of crap to milk out every bit of value stored in a coconut is pretty damn humbling. I guess that's it for now. we'll try to speedread what you guys are up to in our 8 minutes left! Miss you all! | | Friday, May 7th, 2004 | | 4:41 pm |
a day in the life of borris
today there was a company meeting and things look pretty healthy for the company. Without explaining why (because that would be a less interesting post, but I'm glad to gab about with you guys when isee you), I think the stock price is going to double sometime within the next two years. For the record, NVDA was at 22.08 at the end of the trading day today. We'll see how this goes. I don't get investment ideas often, and here was my last one: Short SCO. There were at about 15 at the time, and they are at about 6 today. But I couldn't act on it because I couldn't short-sell. I'm still kind of scared of doing that, and I'm looking into short-sell options that basically limit your risk, but yah...darn on that. I had been looking at going to Jack's startup, and decided that where I'm at is better for now. There's a whole story behind deciding against Jack's company, but not now on that. The reason I bring it up is just to bask in the happiness of being at a *very good* company (nvidia), so that I only have to entertain opportunities that I deem are *super good*. Despite feeling under-challenged, the upcoming end of the current project (which should be very soon, like this week or next) is really an opportunity to start working on something new -- which hopefully will be design, and therefore will be learning, which therefore should be fun. The timing could be better, because learning means investment of time, and that is not good because the wedding and honeymoon are coming, but the opportunity is definitely something to look forward to. Today, I was messing around with some ideas I have for "magic the gathering" decks, when Don came into my cube to see how I was doing. I was done with the thing he asked me to do (and it was strange he came to see me, since I wrote him an e-mail to say "it's done, is there anything else that needs doing?"), but I had all this text up in my text editor about notes on magic cards. Now text just looks like text, so what I wrote might look like code, kind of (mixed in with the other crap on my screen, trust me, it does). I didn't feel the need to close the window or anything. I was pretty sure that, from where Don was standing, he wasn't able to read the text. Even if he could, I thought he wouldn't, as he was prolly more interested in what I had to say (and thus would just be looking at me). But I defintely noticed that he was glancing behind me while we were talking. Was he a screen-looker? Well I didn't want him to see, so i flipped a few windows around until it was gone. He still glanced one or more times, and I started to get all hot and ... sweaty. This reminded me of Lauren's "instant sweat" -- the feeling of sweat came over incredibly fast! I had a bit of a nervous chuckle to myself thinking of lauren's friend, but now it was not so funny as it was really happening to me. When Don left, I noticed something that I hadn't before. There was this big ole roll of toilet paper, somewhat misshapen, sitting on my desk, just in front of me. Because I keep my keyboard below my desk for better ergonomics, the TP rool was right under my of nose, and basically unnoticed by me. The TP paper was the very-thin, clearly-from-the-office-bathroom kind. A replay came up in my mind where I had a particularly stubborn log today and I guess I was physically squeezing the roll for extra expulsion power. I was instantly very embarassed. Don had long since left, but because I had just replayed today's poop story in my head, along with the conclusion that I must have just carried the TP with me on the way out, I guess I tricked myself into thinking that Don somehow knew about my physically-strained poop today. I was feeling so embarassed, but then I was trying to put the pieces back to together and something was wrong. I mean, I remembered walking back to my desk after my poop (it was a slower walk than usual), and while I did that I checked both my pants pockets for my cell phone. I didn't find it -- it was at my desk charging. Anyway this was significant because it was very unlikely that I carried the TP to my desk then -- since I had checked both pockets, I probably used both hands, and I probably was not carrying anything. I also remembered a conversation I had with someone while washing up, so it was doubly unlikely that I brought the tp out, put it down to wash up, and then picked it up again for the walk back to my desk! But this roll of toilet paper was definitely from the office. How did it get there? It must have been me. Then I finally put it all together. Yesterday I was sneezing a lot and my kleenex box ran out. (I actually only thought that I run out. I actually had another unopened box in my desk). So I grabbed a roll from the bathroom. That I was squeezing a roll today was just coincidental. So wow, what an emotional rollercoaster. Suspicion that don was looking at my screen, fear of being caught goofin' around at work, surprise at finding the TP roll, then embarassment, and then much more embarassment, then puzzlement, then finally epiphany of putting together the strange resolution. And now, all of you know about my poop story for the day and I'm embarassed again. Well, poops to me are like farts to ryan. They make me laugh. I just think poop is inherently funny. Unless it's baby poop. That's not funny, that's just gross. It's not even really solid! Have you heard the Outkast song "roses?". That makes me laugh. I think living with AkumaX made me this way. Ma Chou had this story about bigbro when he was young (purportedly 5 years old or something like that): akuma: mom, is God everywhere? ma chou: yes, God is everywhere. akuma: Everywhere? ma chou: yes, everywhere. akuma: what about poo? is God in poo? lol, there are so many reasons that this is funny to me, but I better just squeeze the cheeks on this one before I get accused of bad length-control again. too late? was this one a bit-sized morsel? |
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