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!

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:

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

Well hello again. I was going to try to do a weekly blog update like I did a year or so ago, but I have already failed. I definitely want to blog more than the pitiful amount I did last year though, so here goes! I suppose when my thoughts are too deep, they don’t make it on the blog due to its public nature… Take that however you want for what that meant for 2011.

Anyways, Mozilla is growing and he’s 18 pounds now! He was naughty one day while I was at work (teething, anxious, and/or both) and made two holes in my wall. The worst of which is pictured…

So, now he has a crate that he will be spending his days in until at least he’s done teething. Other than that though he’s been a pretty good puppy and I really enjoy his personality. I will miss him when I go to Hawaii. =( Oh yes, I know, poor little Oliver has to go to Hawaii and will miss his dog. How unfortunate. =p

I’ve also been playing a heavier amount of Magic with the gang, reviving a near decade old hobby of mine. I ended up attending some tournaments and resurrecting my old DCI number, which was apparently amusing to the tournament organizers due to its small number of digits. Yeah, nerd cred! Wait…

I logged into my account and saw some of my records at tournaments as far back as 1999. I’m doing much better now than I did back then, but that’s probably more due to the fact that I played constructed then but didn’t have enough money to really have a “tier 1” competitive deck. That said, I haven’t done any constructed tournaments (just limited) recently. I’ve managed to at least recoupe my entry fees though and have gotten top 4 in the last three I’ve went to. Perhaps this is a new career option calling out to me… (joking). I spent some time today sorting through piles of cards that have accumulated on my tables…

I also watched Smash tonight and am perfectly prepared to have Mark call me a fruit-bag again. As Oriana has mentioned, I apparently have quite a bit of overlap in my TV watching habits to a girl in her early 20’s. =D

Oh, I have also started to send my Instagram pics to flickr, which can be found here. I’m sure they’ll still be mostly Mozilla for the foreseeable future.

Well, this was an uneventful weekend, so I’ll just drop some puppy photos.

[instapress url=http://instagr.am/p/jehlc/ size=400]

[instapress url=http://instagr.am/p/irnFq/ size=400]

[instapress url=http://instagr.am/p/ipPN6/ size=400]

I’m owiber on Instagram if you want to follow me, or view my photos on the web here.

I also threw together some short clips of Mozilla in a video here:

At work this past week, I got to pick up a quick short-term project that involved building something basically from scratch in one week. It was pretty fun, but the combination of Facebook and Internet Explorer is currently highly annoying me. Thumbs down!

See ya!

This was a good weekend.

To celebrate Oriana and my mom’s birthdays, we went to Uchiko on Saturday. They were 30 minutes late seating us, but definitely made up for it by either being extremely generous with a single omakase order (usually meant for a pair, but four of us were fed) or giving us one for free. Then they also threw in an appetizer or two and extra fried milk desserts which is probably my favorite dessert second only to the craziness that is Alinea. I think that experience has cemented Uchiko as my favorite restaurant in Austin.

Earlier that day, I took Mozilla over to meet Syndey where he chased her around the yard (she was kind of scared of him) until she threw up. Sydney is a big lab, so it was fairly comical.

On Sunday, I hooked up with the owners of one of Mozilla’s brothers, Texas, who just so happens is also in Austin. They came over and the puppies played for quite a while:

Olivia also has lots of good photos.

I took Mozilla to the vet at the end of last month and he had gained a pound since getting him (about a week’s time). I realized then I should take lots of pictures as he won’t stay a puppy for long. He’s actually really good with the camera and will usually just continue doing whatever he’s doing and occasionally looking at me as I snap photos. This puppy is pretty awesome.

Haha, fat looking puppy:

I went to The Domain along with some peeps primarily for Jonney and FiFi’s engagement (actual event and photos). I took the opportunity to socialize Mozilla a bit more and took him too. He was quite the popular little puppy there. I had one guy stop me and gave me his email so I could send him information (breeder, etc.). Here are some photos:

“How you doin’?”

Oh, and if you’re interested in Jonney and FiFi’s engagement photos, you’ll have to bug Sam and Kat. =p

Shiba inus are infamous for not recalling well. You can tell them to come and they may look at you but then there’s a good chance they’ll ignore you. Mozilla hasn’t been too bad at this so far, but last night when it was rainy and wet outside, I would wipe his feet every time he came back inside. He apparently isn’t much of a fan of this so he got progressively more stubborn about not coming in. Luckily he is a little guy and I just catch him and pick him up. =)

ANNNNNDDDD… Happy birthday, Oriana. =)

This is the year the world’s supposed to end, right? =p

In usual planeteers fashion (we have a mailing list called planeteers, so that’s the name “the group” has inherited), we rang in the new year by playing Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield and at midnight we mass suicided by shooting each other and throwing frag grenades at our feet. Good times. Back in the day, we used to play Raven Shield a lot of the max difficulty which is really hard and you almost always die in one hit from “the terrorists.” Whenever only a few of us were left and we weren’t near completing the map, someone would yell “all hope is lost!” which would usually prompt some/all of the remaining players to turn on each other and then suicide themselves so a new round would start. Sometimes, though, “all hope is lost!” would be called prematurely by someone who just didn’t want to wait around that long for the next round… you’d immediately hear “NO NO NO!” but it’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy as we don’t need a lot of reason to kill each other. =p

Here are some instagram photos of Mozilla from my phone. I need to try to take more “real” photos of him while he’s still a puppy…

On the way back from Arkansas:
[instapress url=http://instagr.am/p/bL98k/ size=400]

Chewing, with pink crate in the background:
[instapress url=http://instagr.am/p/bVD9i/ size=400]

Tired out after playing with pink ball:
[instapress url=http://instagr.am/p/b9nKo/ size=400]

Mozilla snuggled up against my leg and passed out:
[instapress url=http://instagr.am/p/cQ5My/ size=400]

Mozilla’s raccoon tail:
[instapress url=http://instagr.am/p/dVtqc/ size=400]

Also, I decided to get a new car (Accord Coupe V6):

[instapress url=http://instagr.am/p/dWO7f/ size=400]

2011 was kind of an off year for blogging for me. I’ll try to pick it back up this year. That’s my resolution.

ALL HOPE IS LOST!

Well December was certainly a rough one, but I’ll try to stick to the positives on the blog. Despite the plethora of suck, there was actually a lot of silver lining too. I just wanted to say thanks to all my friends and family for being awesome. I’ll also throw a shout out to Bazaarvoice too for being so incredibly understanding and making things as easy as possible for me.

Now, on to the positives!

I’m sure it was a combination of things, but I finally broke down and got a puppy. Nancy says it’s about time and I’m two years late. Well, better late than never? =p I feel a little ashamed at not rescuing a dog, but my little shiba inu pup, Mozilla, is so awesome, I honestly can’t say I have any regrets. Sorry? =p

On Christmas Eve, Andrew, Nancy, Sam, Viraj and I hit the road. Here’s a short video of our trip to Arkansas to get the little guy:

And now, some photos. I made sure to wear my Mozilla Firefox shirt given the planned name I had for him.

On another topic, here’s a video of Oriana opening the Christmas gift I got her:

Bye for now!