Volt

The rumors are true, I got a Volt.

Accord wasn't doing it for me. There might be something wrong with me.

I decided the Accord wasn’t going to be a good long-term car for me, so it was kind of pointless for me to be buying it. Dumped it to lease a Volt. Pretty happy with it so far. Going to get the 240V charger installed in my garage. Austin Energy has a 50% rebate on purchase+installation, so it works out pretty well for me.

I probably have some pics to post here. I’ll get to that eventually. =)

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Well, it’s been a year since. I’ve found myself to be noticeably more emotional this past year (though perhaps not outwardly). I don’t consider that a bad thing, but here’s an emotional post for ya.

A year ago, things were pretty sucky. Despite that, I continue to have so much to be thankful for that in reflection of everything that’s happened, I consider myself extremely blessed. As I’ve previously mentioned, I view Mozilla as kind of a symbol of all the love and support I got during a dark time in my life. He was kind of a poetic gift to myself to cap off a depressing time with something positive. Maybe that’s cheesy, I don’t care. =) Sometimes you don’t see or value the gems in your life as much when everything’s peachy. My friends and family were awesome for us and whenever I have a quiet time to contemplate everything’s that’s happened, I can’t help but come out of it with a kind of solemn happiness. So, in that spirit, I’m going to cap off this dark anniversary by talking about the ladies in my life, my mother and sisters.

Before I get to my family, a quick shout out to Nancy because she’s like the big sister I don’t have and a year ago she gave me a perfect hug right when I needed it and I’ll never forget that. All of my friends were great during that time, but since Nancy’s the girl of “the group” she tends to be my emotional vent more often than not. Maybe next time I’ll talk about what my guy friends did, because they were definitely there for me too.

So… I’ve been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to buy my mom a car a few years back. She gave me no sense of obligation to do so, but it just kind of made sense. I got her a new RAV4 and while presenting it to her, she mentioned how she’s wanted a car like it so she could carry kids to/from church, and other ways she could serve others. The things that make her happy allow her to love and serve others even better and that’s why she’s awesome and we love her.

RAV4

This is a picture of Oriana at her baptism back in 2007:

She made everyone cry

I’m pretty sure this was shortly after she mentioned our mom. I’m also pretty sure that before she finished her sentence, there was not a dry eye anywhere in the room. I’m not a good enough writer to even get close to describing how powerful I found this moment, but I hope you can get a glimpse of the love my mom’s given us in our lives by knowing that a young high schooler brought a room full of people to tears by barely conveying the words “mom” and “love.” Everyone who knows my mom knows that she’s a bottomless pit of love. She’s one of the biggest reasons I believe there’s a God. The love she’s given me and my siblings, not to mention the other people she’s positively touched, is too powerful, too beautiful, to merely be a result of chemistry and physics. I would not be where I am today, or the person I am today, if she wasn’t in my life. Her love gives me a glimpse of Love, and I couldn’t ask for a better reason to have faith. I’m so blessed to have her as my mom, it’s almost not even fair. ;)

Olivia is, as my mom says, “the spicy one.” As siblings two years apart, I’m sure we went through the typical love/hate relationship that many go through. I’m happy that that flip flopping ended up on the love side though. =p Olivia’s certainly the more extroverted of us, but I like to think we balance each other out pretty well. She gave me the worst present I’ve ever gotten - a sheet of half-used stickers. Her fear of E.T. allowed me to pay her back well enough though when I bought a plush toy of him off eBay and put him in the hallway facing her room. =)

We’ve both grown to be foodies, and it’s fun to enjoy and share awesome food experiences we’ve had. We also both enjoy ruining Oriana’s food. I fulfill my quota of making her angry every so often, I’m sure, but I know we love each other and it makes me happy to think about growing up together and perhaps someday in the future, having larger family reunions where I can have my kids torment hers.

My mom says that I never hit Olivia, although I do remember one time when I punched her in the head. That said, she was wearing a karate helmet, so maybe that doesn’t count? =p Instead, I resorted to psychological warfare and just annoyed her like crazy, which you can even see in this video of us fighting at a young age:

Once, I made her so angry she kicked a shoe at me. I dodged it and she ended up breaking a window. My mom didn’t punish her though, cause I guess she understood how annoying brothers can be. =) I have a lot of memories of Olivia, and I’m happy I do. She’s been my sister since as far as my memory goes back and I wouldn’t have it any other way. <3

Oriana is my baby sister, eight years younger than me. Given the large age difference, we never really fought, but we also didn’t really play with each other as much as she and Olivia did (expected, I suppose). I annoyed Olivia a lot to get even, but I do it to Oriana just for fun. ;) I once walked in her room as she was reading and just let drool fall out of my mouth onto her leg. She gave me a quite satisfying yell when she realized what was going on.

I remember trying to make her stop crying as a baby, and trying to change her diaper with Olivia. Now, she’s about to turn 21 next month and that’s crazy. Oriana likes to gives me hugs, and I appreciate that because I like hugs, but I don’t often initiate. She lives with me now as she’s going to school at UT, which is pretty cool even though most of the time we just sit quietly. We’re the introverts, so I think we understand each other there. =)

She gives me good fodder for my videos, like this one:

I hope she knows I tease her to show my love, which I guess means I love her a lot.

Uh huh. Life's like this.

Life sometimes sucks, but I’m glad I went through it with these women and I was there for them and they were there for me.

<3

SF

BV flew me out to San Fran this past week to spend some time with my BV West brethren. I didn’t do anything too crazy, but there was a mall and lots of food options around where I was (4th, between Mission and Market). Made me realize how much I like big cities and being able to walk/mass-transit my way everywhere. I walked over to the mall across the street and saw Cloud Atlas (not very good), and bought some clothes since I packed particularly light.

I have a special relationship with SF since I was born there and visited so often. I guess having that deeper history makes me wonder what my life would be like had I decided to go to UC Berkeley instead of UT Austin (which was my middle school plan). I can think of a whole crazy butterfly effect on my current life since I likely would have stayed in the bay area after graduation. What company would I have been working at? One of the hot startups of the past decade? Would I be married? Homeless? =p Where would my Austin friends be without me? How has my existence impacted their lives? Imagining an entirely different timeline post-2001 is kind of crazy. Would I be a significantly different person?

I have the itch to leave Austin sometimes, and though avoiding poop on the street on my daily commute is a mighty tempting proposition, I’ve yet to make the leap of taking off to one of the big cities I find attractive (SF/NYC). I suppose I still have too much in Austin to keep me around and vacationing suffices for now… ;)

Ultimately, I’m blessed with the life I have and certainly don’t regret going to UT, but it’s fun to think of alternate realities sometimes, eh?

Dawns

Sometimes, I really enjoy watching really terrible movies. It’s even better if I can sucker friends to join me. I guess I’m kind of a masochistic troll like that. =p Last week, I saw both Red Dawn and Twilight: Breaking Dawn - Part 2. I went to see the first one, with Sam and he got the choice between the two, so he picked Red Dawn. It was pretty terrible.

Viraj, got left with the remaining option and we saw that this past weekend. We were the only pair of guys in the theater, which was quite hilarious. The fact that my suffering through the movie included Viraj suffering through the movie made it all awesome.

Here is Viraj with his shame:

The shame.

At the office, somehow I got added to the BV West office’s mailing list and I found out they were doing holiday decorations. That inspired my team (“code named” Firebird) to do our own in our little area. Here’s that:

We noticed the San Fran office was decorating for the holidays so we did too in our own way. I contributed the firebird-hand-turkey

I made the firebird-hand-turkey.

Milestones

I hit my “unofficial” six year anniversary at Bazaarvoice near the end of last month (I was a contractor for the first two months). It’s certainly been a great experience for me as I’ve played multiple roles throughout the years. I’ve had the opportunity to grow immensely both technically and non-technically and have gained a lot of confidence in my own abilities.

Today (well, technically yesterday) I have the privilege of being the official team lead for one of the highest concentrations of talent and passion I’ve ever worked with. That’s saying a lot because many of my past teammates have been no slouches! I feel honored with the designation and look forward to continuing to push the envelope of what the team can accomplish. I’m super thankful to everyone who had a part in getting me here and on this team.

In other news, December brings a large mix of emotions to me. I have a hard time identifying my feelings often times, so this feels a bit like rapid spontaneous mood swings. I generally find myself listening to terrible music, then forcing Mozilla to cuddle. Seems to work well enough.

Andrew & Jen Wedding

We spent this weekend in Dallas celebrating Andrew & Jen’s marriage! Yay!

I didn’t take many photos, but here are a few I did take (or someone with my camera took, and I edited):

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The rest here.

Also, here’s the video we made as a wedding gift. Enjoy!

Our family decided to have Thanksgiving at Olivia’s this year, so I’m sticking it out in Dallas for the week.

Catch up

The poor blog’s been neglected. I’ve been very busy!

Back when Sam and I roomed together in Jester, I had this half bottle of chocolate milk that I thought would be fun to seal up with tape and then leave on my shelf… well, that’s basically what happened until we moved out. It was probably there for a whole semester or two until we finally threw it away. It was quite solid by that time. Anyways, something reminded me of this on Facebook, so I went looking for a picture of it. I didn’t find that, but I thought I’d tell you about it. =p

I also went on a hunt for an old W2. I didn’t find that either, but I found an old yearbook, so I took a trip down memory lane and went through a few old things and took pictures of them.

Here’s my Senior Scrap Book and some select pages:

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Like I mentioned earlier, I found an old yearbook and and noticed that Chad, Nancy and myself made a good concentration of photos since we were usually placed around the same general area. There’s not really another set of my friends that had this same clump. I took some pics going back to middle school, too.

Chad and I, 1997 (7th grade). The writing’s from Nancy, years later.

Chad, Oliver, 1997. Writing is by Nancy a number of years later. I think this is my favorite school photo of myself.

Chad and Nancy, 1999 (10th grade). They messed up my photo and put me somewhere else with a different name.

Chad, Nancy, 1999. They messed mine up and put me somewhere else.

Chad, Nancy, and I, 2000 (11th grade):

While looking for something else, I found my 2000 yearbook. It's me + Nancy + Chad!

Chad, Nancy, and I, 2001 (12th grade):

Chad, Nancy, Oliver, 2001

For fun, here’s one of Olivia and Doris (2001):

Doris, Olivia, 2001

A few weekends ago, Van came into town for his brother’s wedding. We decided to treat him to Uchi, and then decided that we couldn’t let him go back to Boston without having the brussel sprouts and fried milk from Uchiko, so we immediately went there afterwards. The waiter at Uchiko was quite pleased when we told him what we had done, haha.

Taking Van to Uchi!

For my birthday, my family got me a Nest at my request. It’s pretty!

Birthday present! Thanks, family!

Just stuffs

So here’s a video montage of my vacation. Probably filled with inside jokes and immature humor. I don’t expect anyone to watch or enjoy the whole thing, but here it is. =)

I’m getting some estimates done on some major renovations to my house. Haven’t decided if that’s the route I’m going to take, but it’s exciting to think about! I’ve been looking at a bunch of pictures on Houzz.com, which is pretty cool, though they have so many photos, it’s overwhelming sometimes.

I started watching West Wing and I’m well into the third season now. It’s been pretty enjoyable and some of the episodes have been surprisingly emotional (that is, triggered a strong emotional response from me).

I also had a crazy dream last night where I went to NYC/Vegas (it seemed to randomly change in my dream), and went to some hotel room with a girl. Somewhere in there I really had to take a crap, so I went into the bathroom and found an extremely complicated toilet. After that was done, it became apparent that this girl was supposed to kill me based on orders from some drug lord. Fortunately, she decided that she wouldn’t kill me and smuggled me out of the city instead. I woke up worrying about the safety of this girl since she just disobeyed some powerful bad guy, but that quickly faded into a chuckle as I realized I was dreaming.

That’s all you get for now. Tata!

West Coast Road Trip 2

…so after the aquarium, we went to Kokkari Estiatorio for first dinner. The appetizers and the dessert I got were pretty awesome. I’m pretty tempted to say the dessert I got (the galaktoboureko, which I pronounced “galactic burrito”), was the best I had the entire trip. The main dishes were good, but out-classed by what came before/after. Overall, highly recommended.

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Second dinner was at Commonwealth, which I feel was good, but we were already somewhat full from Kokkari, so probably couldn’t fully appreciate it.

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In the morning, we discovered the place we had planned to eat at, Red Door Cafe, was closed, so we went to Brenda’s French Soul Food. Their breakfast was alright. I liked the beignets, but the rest were okay. I hear their lunch/dinner is pretty good though.

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Off to Los Angeles we go, where we meet up with Beika to eat at Animal. Very recommended. We devoured many creatures.

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For a late night snack, we went to a ramen place, which was pretty good. It’s Sam Approved.

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The next morning, we did first lunch at a Korean place, Seongbukdong. Recommended. It was very solid.

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Next up for second lunch, a visit to Umami Burger. I enjoyed the Manly Burger pretty well!

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Finally, for third lunch, because we’re crazy, we get sushi at Sushi-Gen. It was a good deal, but nothing crazy.

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For dinner, we go to Angelini Osteria, which I enjoyed pretty well. I would go back. The desserts were tasty. Allegedly, Nancy and Grace saw Justin Timberlake here, but Nancy took an extremely poor photo of the sighting, so it’s impossible to verify their claims.

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Plus, TC really hit it up with Grace:

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More dessert at Diddy Riese Cookies. It was so-so.

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The next day, we went to Mole of the Gods. They were closed when we first rolled up and we were about to leave when they opened their doors. We were lucky of our timing! They were very good.

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Then, we take off to Phoenix where our first stop is the renowned Pizzeria Bianco. Highly recommended, especially the Rosa (we got two and added prosciutto to one).

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For dinner, we headed off to Binkley’s, which surprisingly was the best meal of the trip. It was freaking amazing and extremely competitively priced. I highly urge anyone in Phoenix that is prepared for a very long, awesome meal, to go to this place. The food wasn’t quite as unique and various as Alinea, but at a fraction of the cost and spectacular on pure “OMG-that-tasted-awesome.” Mark says that the chef was ex-French Laundry, but if our experience was any indication, he’s completely surpassed them. I’m serious. This place is so awesome, we’re going to watch for cheap Phoenix tickets so we can return on some random weekend. Plus, hotels in Phoenix are cheap!

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The next morning, we go to Vegas! On the way, a quick photo-op at the Hoover Dam:

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After getting to Vegas, we eat lunch at Comme Ça. It was not bad.

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For dinner, we went off the strip to Kabuto. Would definitely go again. I felt bad I couldn’t eat that much because we had a late lunch.

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Brunch the next day was at Bouchon. I liked it a lot.

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CRAP! I just realized I didn’t get a group shot in front of Bouchon. DARN IT!

Later, we met up with Olivia, where I gave in to being uncomfortable and had a shot. Woo?

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For dinner, we went to Cut. My steak was disappointing, unfortunately, as it wasn’t as marbled as I expected, but I tried some of the crazy stuff Andrew/TC/Mark got and it was pretty intense.

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That’s it! Mark and I finaled back in Austin with Greg at Uchi. I took it easy on myself and didn’t take any pictures there, so that’s it! Tata!