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Monday, July 30, 2007

Level Of Difficulty at Work: .25 out of 10
Time During Lunch: Medium



Da New hutch chillin next to my sorta new piano.
Looks pretty good where it's at, both the hutch and piano. I was seeking a piano for my birthday and found one on ebay. I need to stop purchasing large as well as big ticket ($$) items, it gets sketchy at times.
If i didn't look on ebay i wouldn't have found this piano. It's a Casio Privia-555R MSRP 1100$, i got for 380$ shipped. #1 He was a new user with a feedback of 1 i think, 2# he wanted a money order. When i sent the payment it had his phone number with the address, so that was cool, then i asked for some kinda ID in case i need to bust some inter-state action. The guy brings it back n forth to the UPS store and gets different price quotes each time. So he asks if i can call him, which i do. The guys from minnesota and sounded alright, he had a band and needed a keyboardist etc.etc. So shipping went from 40$ to $100 to $180. I agree to pay 80 or 90, he's on the fence of doing this, but sends it and eats the rest.
Transit time was supposed to be 5 days but it became 8. And i was hoping it would come on the one week gap inbetween my 2 vacations. But of course it didn't. My neighbor happens to see it and knew that we were getting a boatload of stuff. I come back from LaLaLand and get the piano but theres a taped up hole on the bottom. Further Emails with the guy, theres supposed to be a tupperware with the AC adapter and screws for the wooden stand. Great, i go on amazon and get a AC adapter, go down to a few musician stores and find a decent stand. Waited forever for the AC adapter, plug it in and the piano works fine. Thats all that matters, and thats it's story.
So i paid $420 + ac adapter + stand = $480. the Base model the Privia PX-110 costs $395, now i gotta make the UPS claim. Lets see what happens. Also it's gonna take me a while to get back into the piano playing days, so chill..

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Seems like we're going all out!!

My brother n i had one of those mechanic days where we just go fixin everything that has a motor in sight. I installed some Galfer HH+ brake pads on the moto, easy as pie. Glad i learned how to do it, it's not that hard, think of it as swapping a video card, sorta. They work, which is a good thing, and they have a pretty good grab to them. I like how these silly engineered things work. While looking at the old pads, they seemed to be made to be replaced in 32,000 mile intervals, which happens to be the "BIG" tune up schedule. I think i remember getting new pads with the new stainless brake lines back a while back at 4k miles. Nothing like doing it all at once, i still have 4k to go but hey i've already pulled the calipers off..

On Jenny's Rav4, we did an oil change as well as a coolant flush. He's going to a friends to do the Transmission fluids as well as possibly doing a brake fluid flush. Bangbangbang! do it all!

Got home and the in-laws were ready to flow, off to the Tachi reservation for some 'cha-chinging' as mums says. They can now call while on the road.. Oooo!

Sat around for a while and was informed that fluffielady has found a hutch for a decent price on craigslist and received a reply stating it's still there ready to be picked up. Took out the rear seats on the rav4 and headed to Rossmoor, which is embedded at Walnut Creek. It's a gated community, make that more like a gated city, with it's own police and mall areas.
The people we met were nice and was replacing their furniture. We find out that you need to be at least 55 years old to live in Rossmoor. Everybody lives in condos and their association pays for everything even tax assistance for retirement. The nice lady we guessed from her stories comes to an age of 79 while her 2nd husband (we think) is a little younger. They both were pretty mobile and spry. The husband helped me load the hutch into the rav4 and he was hopping in and out of the back seats with no trouble. I wanna be this guy when i'm that age!! Everybody around was nice and the weather was a sunny 80 degrees. It's like dorm life, minus the kegs, but who knows what these people do at night.
Stopped by Nan Yangs at Oakland (or edge of Berkeley?) and headed home with not much traffic. Fluffielady got all giddy and filled the display area quickly. It matches the dinner table quite well, almost exactly. Now i have a little area for my martini glasses and scotch crystal, woo!. Pic coming soon.
We're cool until project wine closet comes online.

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Saturday, July 28, 2007

The world is coming to an end!! Da in-laws are now in the 20th century with *Ooooo* Cell phones!! My aunt got them going with a basic moto moto and was a bit more pleasant than usual, probably cuz it wasn't the usual hectic weekday madhouse at the store. She wants me to switch over cuz she got played by Cingular and hates them. But i like the fact that unlocked phones and Sim Cards make it easy to bounce from phone to phone. Also the plan that i have is still cheapest of them all, which is wierd since i've had the plan now for 3+ years usually more and more minutes get tacked on at cheaper price points. Not anymore. Remember the days when a cell plan was 60-minutes a month at 30$ and people only used it after 7pm for the unlimited nights / weekends.. ahh yea the good old days of racking 2000-4000minutes a month. Now i barely use mine, i think i'm averaging 150-200minutes a month now.

Roamed around ate at Neiman Marcus's Rotunda, it opened at 11am and we arrived just as the sign was pulled away. We sat right at the apex of the circle tables overlooking the windows. Neato!

Hmmz, lets see what else.. The new front door knob is done, now i gotta find someone that'll cut a hole on both the door and the metal frame for the deadbolt. Tommorrow my brother and i are gonna go medieval on both my Moto and Jenny's Rav4 for some DIY-maintenance. Galfer HH+ Brake pads!! here we go!

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Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Level Of Difficulty at Work: .25 out of 10
Time During Lunch: Medium

Moto's Back home with a fresh set of shoes and fuses. Jen n crew at Werkstatt couldn't figure whats going on with the moto, probably old fuse. Oh well, got some brake pads at cyclegear on sale. We ate at Eliza's at Potrero Hill, it's like a Eric's or Alice's, with the thick gravy, it's tasty but not fluffielady's style.

Got home and then went to Lowes for some rugs and door handles. Our ghetto indoor kwikset used as our front door knob has gotten hard to insert the key into. We need to drill for a deadbolt but the frame is metal. Metal frames, who puts metal frames in Pacifica? Our windows were replaced by the previous owner and it too is metal framed. Plastics baby, resins and composites for me.
This Schlage is guaranteed for life on it's finish, i can tell you that the set we have now is finished.

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Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Level Of Difficulty at Work: .25 out of 10
Time During Lunch: Nada

Nothing like heading to work and looking at 2 tons of metal heading your way.

i drive to work with the two Pirelli Diablos, which i bought waay back, in the trunk. I park in my secret spot and head to work, which require me to cross Portola. i sneak off halfway since i know the cars are on a red. The light is green from O'Shaughnessy to Woodside and not the other way around, these cars can turn left into O'Shaughnessy which is where i'm at. Light turns red for these guys, i look and see a van which looks like it's slowing down, the front end dipping etc... For the pedestrians, the light turns and i get the walking man sign, so it's already been 1-2 seconds past the red light. I start from halfway towards the flowershop, i don't know why but i'm not minding the traffic, i shouldn't, i have the walking man sign. I hear the sound of ABS braking which is interesting because a car shouldn't be heading my way, lo and behold looking to the right the van is about 10ft from me. I stop, stare at the dood and continue walking. The van i'm guessing was stopping and then the guy decides to bust it past the red, not the yellow, the red and come face to face with me. A few people turning left from Portola to Woodside looked at me knowing the van was in the wrong, since it was right in front of them. I still say to this day, if you can't touch it, your not close enough, this was one of those. I'm glad i wear my blazing yellow coat.

Sweet, let's have an event everyday for this week. lets see what fun comes to me.

So the Moto is done, they think it's a blown fuse. Not the simple clear plastic kind that you can see the burnmark. I looked before i decided to call for the tow + repair. Theres a few big square ones that doesn't show if it's been blown. At least my new tires have been installed.

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Monday, July 23, 2007

Level Of Difficulty at Work: .25 out of 10
Time During Lunch: Medium

You know it's a bad day when I took the bus today..

Ugh today is one of those hassle days where your walking upstream against the flow.
I woke up a bit late, instead of the usual 6:25am, i get up at 7:15am, which is about the time i leave to work. I get ready to rock n roll and leave for work slightly late. On the way there, at the base of O'Shaughnessy St, the moto just quits. Dies, bails, no-nada, nah-uh, fagettaboutit, etc.. I pull over, push it up the hill to an intersection close by. Put it on neutral, lights work, gauges work, no starter, no engine rev nada, no vroom.. Great, at least it didn't die while on the freeway.
I had the notion of walking up the hill, but reality set in and i headed to the bus stop. I haven't ridden the bus in 10 years or so, last time it was with Capt'n D heading downtown for the bay to breakers, and previous before that was 6 years or so. I arrived at work 10minutes late.
Around noon the moto was towed to Werkstatt and they'll look at it tommorrow, by then i'll have my new set of tires which i bought before hawaii to be replaced. Might as well, it's at the shop anyway. Fluffielady got the courage to venture into s.f. and picked me up, yay! We headed to office depot for some ink cartridges.
At least i got my poster that i'm going to frame to be mounted behind the couch. It'll probably be a 60$ frame on a 40$ pic.
Lets see what tommorrow brings..

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Sunday, July 22, 2007

Yesterday we worked it. Fluffielady had a booth show at the community center and i had extra duties due to the fact that on the way to the center we spotted an opened UPS box on the side of the road. fluffielady wanted to see what it was, so we pulled over and it was a box of eyewear brochures to a guy in daly city. Someone musta took the box, drove off, opened it and realized it was worthless. So of course after dropping off fluffielady, i had the duty to find the address and deliver.

Ahhh yea Sizzler and Bowling action rocked last night and some of the crew hung out at our place till 2:30am (and yes here i am 8:30am posting this)! Man the last time i stayed up that late was ages! And at that time i knew it was time to sleep when the sunrise was coming!
But the Sizzler was super busy, our server was pretty good at getting things flowing.
Bowling ruled, Roz taught me how to bowl two fingered to create the hooking type bowling. It became whole bodied and it wasn't effortless but it wasn't as tiring as the swinging arm in an arc type bowling. Right now my arm and wrist is a little sore, it's not too bad. After a 2-hour gaming session (thx roz n robyn!), everybody was quite beat. It wasn't no wii bowling today!
All i need is a 12-pounder in a large, thats the sweet spot for me.
I just happen to look up bowling on youtube and found this..

Somehow i can see my brother doing this stuff.

Thanks guys for coming! I smell a red robins and a bowl creeping up soon.

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Friday, July 20, 2007

Thats what i'm talking about! Still on the Lego trip..

Joel Hesselgren creates the salt / pepper shaker combo with legos! At least this one is practical, unlike that 350lb aircraft carrier, but then i don't have much Top Gun Fantasies either.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Level Of Difficulty at Work: .25 out of 10
Time During Lunch: Medium

Theres nothing like witnessing a car accident when it's about 30 yards away from you.

Entering the Highway 1 south exit heading up the hill theres a merge on the right lane thats coming from 280 north. Well there was an asian lady in a stalled BMW sitting inside the gore. The gore is where the solid white triangluar line extends when two roads merge or split. So the BMW is stuck in the merge, it was light traffic and cars aren't hampered by this BMW.
So with that i notice one car decided to change lanes by cutting into the gore, he started into it and then realized that theres a parked car with the hazards flashing. He swerves but clips the back left corner of the BMW. Then he really swerves and whizzes in front of me from the right lane of the freeway all the way to the center divider, hits the divider and rides up it. At that point i've passed him and exited, i did a loop and came back to see a SFPD officer who was heading back to the station as well as some paramedics who happen to be there as well.
The Lady in the BMW is ok with the dinged up rear corner, probably more shocked and stunned than before. The other guy was a bit bloody'd up, airbags deployed and the front end smashed, that car is toast.
Well that was fun.

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Monday, July 16, 2007

Level Of Difficulty at Work: .25 out of 10
Time During Lunch: Long

Man coming back to work after a bit on vacation sucks! i come back and it's all different, something always changes when i come back. We got one more person working with us and with that a slew of new lockers which causes me to park my bicycle somewhere else. ugh!

i post just to post these two tidbits:
1)
I've always been a lego fan and when i was little it sucked to see that a medium sized lego kit (with 90-130 pieces) was 30-50$ back in the day. I'm interested in how much a 200,000 piece kit like this one costs!

This dood, Mr. Hawking created this 16ft long, 350 pound sucker with movable aircraft elevators and lights to go with it.. Sweet!
2)
if i were to win the lotto i'd go for one of these.

The Frank Muller Aeternitas Mega 4 and unlike the $35,000 watch i latched onto my wrist at Vegas, this one isn't fully functional nor is it priced yet. 1000 year perpetual calendar, with automatic adjustments for leap year as well as the usual 30 or 31 calendar dates. It also chimes at the hour! The only negative i'd say is that it's very thick, so it's more like a bracelet that tells time.

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Friday, July 13, 2007

Added the Twitter column, i don't know if i'm going to use it much, we'll see.

San Bruno Fog.. The Natural Stuff!

Homehome back to the lovely fluffy fog. We escaped from 97degree Bakersfield without much hitch. As we passed the 92 freeway we saw the fluffy fog creeping inward, talk about a 35 degree drop! As i download some photos that i've taken, i remembered a few as we were driving to LA last monday.

Cresting over the grapevine. L.A. Fog, 85 degrees, The Artificial stuff!

Before heading back home we headed one last time to break in a little more of my new shotgun. Since i'm home, here is thy video:

The first few times there was a bit of rise and kick, but after seeing what goes on, i sorta now have the hang of it. .16-.18 seconds between shots, sweet! But some shooting forums have stated .11-.14! One day.. one day, i've never really did the shotgun sports. Shooting clay birds was fun! i've only done it a few times and it's a different skill set than pistoling or rifling, it's more reactive and instinctual. Good thing about instinctual is that since the shotgun is spewing a hundred pellets or so pinpoint precision isn't required. Still though you do need to aim!

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Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Roaming some more.
After a nice deep sleep in the crib we headed northward to Burbank and met up with an old buddy, Jen from fresno state. Shes working had doing the usual actress lifestyle, work in the day and rehearsal at night. Along with the drama and usual hollywood madness with it. Shes doing good and maybe coming to visit the NorCal soon!
Fluffielady and i venture to one of her old clothing haunts called It's a Wrap! It's a secondhand clothing store which sells clothing, some used, some not, from the Hollywood Lots. I got 4 Banana republic shirts for 2-3$ each! Its marked from CBS, so i'd like to thank those guys for the clothing hookup!
We roamed Ventura Blvd and had enough around 4pm. Joined the wave of cars northward to Bakersfield, weee! Traffic wasn't bad this whole way, the worse i still remember was at 1:30AM on a tuesday night (wednesday morning now), bumper to bumper going about 15mph. No construction, just an orgy of metal and red lights! WTF was that about??

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Monday, July 09, 2007

(Entered 7-10-07)

The LA trip i dub thee: The reality show tour.
Our original intended destination is Laguna Beach. We woke up and drove around the congested highways across LA and got to our location. After peaking on the grapevine we saw this gigantic layer of what looks like fog, yet it's 80 degrees, so you know what that stuff is, yummy pollution! Air in LA has a taste to it!
We reach Laguna Beach without much traffic, using Microcrap Streets and Trips '07 it lead us to where we wanted, but the software itself is not really GPS software. It tries to be one of those extra large map books without the gps reciever, but with the reciever on it's got a few ugly quirks. 1) The most annoying thing, when you turn on the GPS reciever on the program, you get the typical warning message about don't type and drive etc. This is pretty standard on all GPS software, the only difference is whenever this option is enabled again, even if you accidentally click it off, the warning appears again! 2) The route does not refresh itself, once you go off course, thats it, your off course. Theres a little trip advisor thing where you plan your route, and you can have multiple stop points etc. Start point #1 says: current GPS location. What it really meant was current gps location of when you first clicked on it 45minutes ago. So when you refresh the route, you get the same route and same answer of 'OFF ROUTE'. Excellent, now my attention is REALLY on the laptop and not on the road and now what Microsoft??! thanks! I gotta redo start and end points etc.etc. 3) You can't choose other routes on the fly, i know software isn't up to that point yet, but this program LOOKS like it can do everything. 4) The program is written by asian people, i'm not trying to sound racist but on the points of interest, you can search for restaurants and SOME are categorized such as: Italian, Greek, Chinese, Asian, Thai, Japanese. Theres not even american food, there is Steakhouses, but most Points are in the OTHER section. 5) Once in a while i would like to scan around the area of where i'm driving, or to be zoomed in yet see what is ahead. The zoom is either too close or too far and when you pan the map, it immediately flicks back to center view. The solution is to turn off 'keep centered', but by doing that the map twists back to North being on top, if your headed south and had the map set to align map to heading. I'm gonna look for another program, i'm digressing.
Ok...
Laguna Beach reminds me of Carmel by the Sea, or to that fact a hilly half moon bay but with a warmer temperature and larger houses. Tons of Gated communities, big dollar car and yacht showrooms, woo! Theres parking meters all over the place but if you park a bit up into the neighborhood, then your good to go. We parked a bit and walked it. The one thing i forgot to do is hang off a pole near this Lifeguard tower, heck i didn't take any pics this week. Man!
After roaming around a little, we went north to Newport Beach, which is pretty cool too. They have a mall called the Fashion Island, no it doesn't have an ice skating rink, it does have a carousel though. Its there where i played with the iPhone.
The iPhone is neat, but i dunno, it took a few minutes to get used to the whacky touch sensitive keyboard, man was i typing some wierd crap! I'll wait n see what other goodie phones are coming, but if i can find one near the $220 it costs to build one, hehehe.
Next to Fashion Island was another smaller hidden mall, there we found Sprinkles Cupcakes. Yep its a store dedicated to the cupcake. Each costing $3.25, they were Bridget's (from The Girls Next door (Hugh Hefner's girlfriend) favorite. The one we had was slightly dry, the frosting was pretty good though, but a 6-pack of cupcakes at 19$?! Holy!
After going through Newport Beach, we floated up to Alhambra and slept over Jerry n Vicky's pad. The guest room is also the nursery so i got to try out the crib. Thanks jerry-o!

Sunday, July 08, 2007

(Posted 7-10-07)
Fearing that it's going to be blazing hot out at the range, we head out on a shotgunning day. With my new FN SLP ready to roll, it was easy and fun to shoot. The recoil is quite reduced and repeated shots are somewhat fast. I guess i just need to get used to it a little more. At the 5Dogs Range, we shot a bit of 20-gauge and my 12 on clay birds. I did ok, not as good as fluffielady's dad. But then i haven't really shotgunned much.
The FN points pretty good when immediately shouldered. I have some video that i'll post when i get home. i just need to remember the mantra of skeet and clay shooting: "The shotgun is a paintbrush and you sweep away the clay in the air." I also need to mount the thing a bit faster. The SLP does have some weight to it. After shooting a remington 870 in 20-gauge, that thing is light and quick to mount and aim, but the recoil is a touch more then the SLP!
About 90 rounds have gone through the SLP already, and a case of clays gone. We might need more for friday, if we decide to go for it again. Shot some pistol and called it a day around 11:30am, it was hot (85degrees) but not crazy flaming hot.
I like this gun!

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Saturday, July 07, 2007

(Posted 7/10/07)


Congrats goes to Jerry and Vicky for she has one in the oven. A little lady is expected around the end of september, we hung out at their baby shower. Chilled with some peoples i haven't seen in ages and got to play with a Nokia N95 cellphone and used it's wifi capabilities to 'assist' me in this baby shower quiz: "Who is the gerber baby pictured?" the cellphone works pretty good, for what he paid, the iphone (which i got to play later this week) is a bit better. The iphone is wider but it's also slimmer, about as slim as the 30gb video ipod! Good job apple!

After the usual, eat, play games (we won 2nd on that quiz thing), hung out. We drove on downward to Bakersfield as a launching pad to LaLaLand.. Man i get around!

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Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Happy 4th of July!!

Remember the Magic School Bus on PBS? I thought it was cool until i saw this:



What did i get to do today?

Bust a temporal displacement on the living room. Yep, things that were here are now there, etc. Our previous positioning of gear was ok, except for the huge sofa that we had to get just cuz it was on sale. After a while the sofa became a barrier and we put it to the side and it was lonely and unused and fluffielady had watched one too many HGTV shows and decided to bust a Paradigm shift.
Everything went well except for the positioning of the rear speakers, we don't know where thats gonna go, and i need to go underground once again to feed one wire. ugh. i dunno, we've got the sofa where the TV was and we can move the sofa up to put both rear channels but they would be right at the back of your head. Right now i'm thinking of putting one behind the sofa and the other across from the fireplace. Still though, oi! At least i don't think i need new wires, thats a good thing.
So whats up with the fireworks, not today buddy, i'm tired, sorting through all the wires, funfunfun!

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Sunday, July 01, 2007

After having our last Portuguese Sausage, Eggs and Rice at McDonalds we flew back home without incident. Today we're just chilling. Man do i miss My Religion, it's been away from my pocket in a week! PoorPoor thing!
I just can't believe that it's july?!

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