I don’t usually do these but I’m in “one of those moods” so Sam gets a nice post today. At least that’s my plan as of this sentence, we’ll see how it goes. =)

I’ve known many of my friends for a very long time (some for over half my life), and I love all of them… some in different ways than others. ;) Sam will probably be the first to tell you we have a special relationship. I met Sam back in high school when he was the tall, goofy, asian ROTC guy in the halls. I think he actually knew Olivia before me, but I do remember him showing up to computer club once (maybe he voted for me for president? haha). Back then, he looked something like this:

Sam’s of the class of 2002, so when I graduated in 2001, I went off to UT with a bunch of the gang and never really expected to see this guy again. Well, a year of shenanigans happens, then I stumble upon Sam again on the church’s internet forums and I borrow My Sassy Girl from him cause it’s supposedly a good movie. Somewhere during this time, it’s also discovered that we’re both looking for roommates for the coming semester, so the adventures of JW152 begin.

It’s here where Sam meets Mark who triggers what we dub “the downfall of Sam” which all started with a game of mario kart (or was it super monkey ball?) and a big green button. You can ask one of them about this, but suffice it to say that Sam then realized we’re a bunch of asses, especially Mark, and he didn’t quite know how to handle that. The remainder of our Jester days entailed, but were not limited to:

• Getting in the Daily Texan for having an infamously dirty dorm room:
  


• A $1 blow-up doll from eBay with some… accessories


• Getting noise complaints from below, above, and around our dorm room and having the RA kick people out of our room


• Sam looking at me while I slept and wondering what it would be like if I were a girl and we were watching the sun rise (don’t ask me, man, I found out cause he wrote about it on his xanga!)


• Webcam hijinks


• Drunken Pauls


• Food “accidents” on Sam’s bedding


• Hot sauce filled donuts


• Spilt milk


• Sam founded TiSA and didn’t even tell me until a semester or so later


• Sam changed his legal name and became an American citizen

Well, after that, a bunch of us moved into some really ghetto apartments just north of the Target near campus on I35. It was here that the Tower of Che-Kang was built:

Throughout the years, my Xanga has gone through two iterations dedicated to Sam (I wish I had kept the first one… sorry. I do remember it being very pink). I even joined Facebook originally back in the day to get my Sam loving Xanga more exposure! ;)

Speaking of which, here are some old FB posts. Sam hadn’t quite perfected his come-back to “suck it” at this point…

More recently, I built Samitic.us and the Samboard.

We’ve been to Key West:

Taiwan/Singapore:

New York City:

Vegas:

… and even Arkansas:

I’ve known Sam for over ten years now and he’s been the butt of many jokes (I swear he asks for most of them), and though I don’t admit this often, one of my bestest friends. Happy birthday, Sam!

I caught something last night, apparently, so now I’m all congested and I have a sore throat. =( These past few weeks have not been kind to my nose (allergies + cold).

On Thursday night, Andrew and Viraj came in to town for their three-day weekend. We went to Papa Tino’s, which was pretty good but the lighting was really dark. I wouldn’t really have gotten much with my Mark II, but the Mark III at 12800 ISO let me get these:

Certainly noisy, but not bad! I’m pretty pleased. These pics have more detail than I could make out with my eyes in that lighting.

And… here are some more Mozilla pics for your viewing pleasure. First, some Facebook timline fun. =)

I’ve got some shots of Mozilla and Ally playing in the grass, but I forgot to upload them to Flickr. Another time. =)

On Saturday, we played some frisbee game that involved two rectangular areas:

Viraj, at one point, called a disc out of bounds and reasoned “based on the line from that one cone, it’s out.” Apparently Viraj has redefined what makes a line and one can now be defined based on one point. The disc was in, it turns out.

I finished Catching Fire, and Mockingjay, the second and third books of the Hunger Games trilogy. I enjoyed Catching Fire quite a bit and it was certainly the best of the three (Hunger Games, I thought was mediocre). Mockingjay was probably somewhere in the middle, but I didn’t find the ending all that appealing. It felt awkward to me. Maybe the whole series was overhyped for me, but I felt a bit let-down by the ending. I’ve found that I’ve been enjoying books with complexity in not only plot but how the story’s told. I know Hunger Games is a “young adult” series, so that’s probably why it didn’t live up to my impression of the hype, but I thought the first and third books were a bit too.. simple I guess.

In related news, Harry Potter is now available in e-book formats (legit), so I’ve purchased the series and will start to read them. I kind of lost interest in the Dark Tower series (I’m somewhere in the middle of the third book I think), but maybe I’ll come back and finish that one day too. Guess all these books should come in handle tomorrow while I’m sitting at home recuperating…

Night!

Okay, I’m seriously considering changing my middle name for reasons I won’t dive into right now, but maybe you can ask me in person if you’re really curious. The real point of this post is that I’m not entirely sure what I want to change it to. Currently, I have two comical front-runners and no other solid ideas.

1. Danger


2. Tyrone/Tirone

I don’t think I could actually commit to going with Tyrone, but Danger is sounding fairly appealing to me at the moment. I’m looking for something clever/fun so if you have ideas, share!

Oh! I should mention… this is NOT and April 1st joke. =P

In other news, I found a wonderful program to make fake Magic cards and had a blast of a time creating Sam and Viraj cards. I’m sure Gene, Liang, Mark, and Sam can attest to the many giggles that came from my desk as I tinkered with this. I was so pleased with myself. Here are draft versions of two Virajs. You’ll have to wait for the Sam one. I think I’m going to redo what I’ve got.

=D

Liang brought over Kiba to play with Mozilla today. The last time this happened, there was pee everywhere, including all over my couch, so it was dubbed the “pee party.” I was hoping for an improvement this time and it was better, but…

I got my 5D Mark III and it’s been a very pleasant experience so far. I’ve really only taken photos of Mozilla, though. Here are a few for your viewing pleasure:

Olivia brought to my attention that Mozilla now has a unibrow. =( However, I will say that he has an “M” for Mozilla on his head.

Mozilla just farted in his sleep. =(

Here’s a set of tweets that makes me smile (it’s from newest to oldest, so you probably want to read it in reverse).

My 5D Mark III comes in tomorrow! YEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!

I asked the social networks whether or not it was weird that I sometimes like going to the movies by myself. I got a number of responses that seemed to indicate that that is not one of the reasons that makes me weird. I haven’t gone in a while by myself, but it does feel appealing occasionally. I never really got why movie-going was viewed as such a social event, since you don’t really interact while watching the movie. There are certainly some exceptions (like watching Expendables next to OMan - that makes the movie uber awesome), but it seems most people viewed going alone sometimes positively.

I posted a few pics from Andrew and Jen’s engagement party thing to flickr. I wasn’t really out to document the entire event (there were plenty of other photographers there), so I just have a few random ones. I wish I had actually taken at least one picture of Jen though (sorry!). Here’re a few and some of the after-party:

I used to have a hard time answering what my favorite restaurant was in Austin, but over the past few months, Uchiko has solidified itself as one I give. I usually like to get the tasting menu and getting surprised. That means the experience fluctuates and sometimes it’s better than others (but they’re all really good), but I really like not having to make decisions and getting a variety of tastes that I probably wouldn’t have if I chose dishes myself.

Chad, Nancy, Mark and I went to Uchiko today for the start of restaurant week and it was pretty good. I didn’t think about bringing my camera and taking any pics, so you get none. =) We went there at 5PM cause they were full on reservations and I didn’t want to end up waiting a million hours during “prime dinner time.” We ended up not having to wait long at all and they didn’t seem too packed. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were busier later though, just something to note for those of you who want to go there and may not have reservations (get there early instead!).

Mozilla has started to shed a bunch and I think we’ve entered into the “blowing the coat” phase that happens twice a year. I’ve been taking him outside and combing him almost every day and I get a good bit of fur every time. He cooperates pretty well though, so that’s good. I’ve seen photos of shibas blowing their coat that look all funky, but Mozilla still looks to have a pretty good coat (not patchy), so we’ll see if that sticks.

MY 5D MARK III IS SUPPOSED TO SHIP SOON. WE SO EXCITED.

Whenever I write a blog post while it’s raining, it reminds me of Sam. You can ask him about that sometime. While you’re at it, you can also ask him about the time he watched me as I slept in our Jester dorm and imagined what it would be like if I were a girl and we were watching the sun rise together. I never asked him how that story ended in his head, but I’m pretty sure it’s not pretty.

Speaking of sleep, here’s one of Mozilla sleeping next to my modem:

A few days ago, Mozilla ran out the front door for the first time (I blame Mark). Greg and I chased after him and despite the worry in me that he’d get run over by a car, I was fairly amused by how elated he looked. He ran across the street a few times and went as far as two houses down, but he came back and started sniffing a bush for long enough for me to sneak up on him and grab his leg. After learning how fun it was to run free, he snuck out again later as Greg was leaving, but Greg managed to corral him back into the house. Shiba inus are infamous for not having good recall and while he’s not bad when he’s in the backyard (I’ve been positively reinforcing him by giving him treats after calling him back), that doesn’t work at all when he’s out front, so I’m going to have to take more care with making sure he doesn’t sneak out.

Take this broken heart,
if it brings You praise,
Take this beaten soul,
shivering hands I will raise.

Hope Unstoppable,
Sing the morning sun,
Wake up oh sleeper,
the Daylight has come.
- Brave Saint Saturn

Chad, Nancy, Mark, Julie, Dean and I went to Kauai last week. TC was supposed to come, but he got all lame and bailed out. Sam had “school” or something and Viraj was Viraj.

Here are some pics!

I arrived early and stayed at a hotel for a night. In the morning as I waited for the rest to show up, here is where I chilled:

This is the upper floor of the house we rented:

We went on a crazy four mile hike (one way). On the way, Mark and Chad posed. Nancy’s prompt to Chad was “do something awesome like Mark.”

These girls had this awesome dog on the hike that followed us for a while:

This was the waterfall at the end (or middle… depending on how you think about it…)!

Mark and I swam in this… it was very cold.

This was the beach next to our house:

At a luau:

Visiting Pearl Harbor:

We kayaked then hiked to another waterfall:

Chad chilled back at the kayaks because he wore slippers:

Kayaking back:

Nancy and Julie commandeer my camera and I find this in the morning:

(Almost) passed out:

We drove out to this secluded beach and played ultimate in the rain:

Double bombed:

Haha:

We visited Waimea Canyon (pictures don’t do this justice):

Chad and I wore our horrible Singapore shirts to dinner:

More on flickr!

I’m in Hawaii! Today, I plan on not doing much at all. =)

I’ll post pics and videos later (though you can probably find a decent amount of pics on Facebook/Flickr). For now, I will leave you this:

Also, Oriana told me a while ago she threw away the copy of Twilight I got her from London (so what if it was infected with glitter?!). I am very disappointed, so I think I will be giving her some more copies from airports around the world…

=)

I’m heading to Hawaii for some fun/relaxation next Sunday so this week is probably going to be a busy one at work. I also, somewhat coincidentally, have a rather pleasant schedule of foodie events at the end of the week with stops planned at at least Foreign & Domestic and Uchiko. Yay!

I’ve had to keep an eye out on Mozilla this weekend as he got neutered on Thursday and I’m trying to not have to resort to the cone of shame. He’s been fairly good so far but seems to be rather reluctant to pee (does so much less frequently than before). I’ll probably give the vet a ring tomorrow to see if I should bring him in for a check-up.

Viraj is back from India, apparently, but did not return with a wife. We are all disappointed. On the plus side, he did his chip eating thing where he would only eat the part of the chip he didn’t touch. He had built up a small pile of chip pieces that were “tainted” with his fingers. I saw them, shook my head, and made him eat them. There’s that to be proud of, I guess. ;p