Well October just kind of flew by and we’re nearing the end of November and my blog is severely neglected. Maybe next year I’ll try to do my once a week blog post thing again. I kept up with that fairly well back in, uh… 2011?

I’ve successfully moved into the new house and sold the old one. Yays! Antoinette was on the market for less than 24 hours and I got multiple bids and took one that was significantly over the asking price. It was sweet. So far I’m enjoying Mueller pretty well too. There’s a decent amount of construction going on around me, but once that’s done I expect it to be a lot better. It’s really awesome having an HEB super nearby. Also in a year or so, the town center area will be getting populated and that’s just two blocks-ish away.

Tomorrow, the family flies out to San Francisco to be with Olivia for Thanksgiving. It’ll be the first Wong Thanksgiving in SF since a very long time ago! TIME TO PUT YUMMIES IN MY TUMMY.

I will now leave you with a photo of Andrew and I from when I visited Dallas last month or something. People were taking pictures in front of this thing, so we joined the bandwagon. /shrug

Well, I guess I’m at a once a month cadence of blog posts. My builder is supposedly still on track for a September 30th closing date. cross fingers I’ll be picking up boxes and starting to pack this weekend. Wooo!

Mass Rel has “MR Nights” every Tuesday where a bunch of us (mostly devs, but not limited to) hang out late and we invite outsiders to join us at the office (or somewhere else nearby). A week ago, I had a bunch of my old BV team over and it was good to work late with them again, even if it wasn’t on the same stuff. =) That team meshed together in a way that will be hard to replicate and I’m starting to appreciate the experience more as I reflect on it. We’ve since scattered into the winds, so it’s likely to be a unique experience, though I’m optimistic to have other positive unique experiences in the future. =) That’s also not to knock on my time at MR thus far at all. I’m having a pretty good time there too.

I swear, it’s not me that picked the music:

I really want to make a duckling.js but I have no idea what to make it do so the minified version can be called ugly.duckling.js. Someone help me with ideas.

On the MTG front, I’m really looking forward to Theros. It seems pretty fun so far from the spoilers. I’ve been avoiding going to drafts of M14 because it’s so boring after having RTR block.

And… sibling hangout!

Dang, it’s August already. There’s a lot of moving going on (or about to be). Unless delayed again, it’s looking like to move to Mueller at the end of September and Olivia and Garrick are going to San Francisco. I don’t mind another reason to go back to visit that city. =) We checked out the new Mueller HEB’s cafe their opening weekend and it was decent enough. I could see myself talking a walk there with Mozilla frequently, especially once the weather isn’t so scorching. Viraj and I have some tentative plans to get wasted there cause it’d be hilarious.

Ryan’s decided to take a gig at Mozilla, which is pretty sweet for him, but it’s unfortunate that my time working with him again will only be 1.5 months. =p Right before I started at MR, I took a trip to San Francisco to do some hanging out with recent ex-coworkers and just chill. In a rare occurrence, I decided not to take my DSLR and man did it make a difference walking around. I felt so much lighter! I don’t think this means I won’t bring it with me on future trips, but I’ve pics of SF enough and plan on coming back many times in the future, so I figured I’d be lazy. Here are some randoms from my iPhone though:

Coffee time:

My parents used to own an ice cream shop around this area and I have multiple baby pics here. Always fun to return, and this time there was actually water running:

More childhood nostalgia:

Love this stuff:

Oriana recently got the dogs some cow hoof to chew on at Andrew’s suggestion and this resulted in the first time I’ve had to break up a Mozilla and Badger fight. I’m pretty sure Badger started it, but maybe I’m biased. =) They’re normally pretty good though:

This past Friday I went to Town Lake (yes, I’ll still call it that) with the MR crew for their “fantastic friday” and took Mozilla along with me. He spent a decent amount of time looking at some large turtles:

I’m moving to Mueller! I’m getting something that looks like this, but not as crazy (it’s the model home, so it’s got a bunch of the extra craziness in it). I’ll be pretty close to the new Mueller HEB and will have no more yard to maintain (yay!).

I’m a little worried I’ll regret not having a yard for the dogs to run around, but it will force me to walk them, which is probably a good thing. I’ll have to make some visits to the dog parks so Mozilla can get his sprinting on. Deciding whether I want to sell or rent my current home (leaning towards selling). Home switching is such a hassle! I’m pretty excited about my new location though.

In other news, I’m also psyched about this new Superman movie. It better not be a let down like the last one.

Dang, blog. Sorry it’s been so long. =)

I was holding off on mentioning this because there was so much I wanted to talk about, but I’ll just go ahead and throw it out there and if there’s anything else for me to say, I’ll do it another time. =p After about 6.5 years at Bazaarvoice, I’m off to Mass Relevance starting July 1. BV’s been such a great experience filled with lots of opportunity for me that it’s bittersweet to say goodbye. The team I’ve been on for the past year-ish has been awesome and I’d be lucky to experience that type of passion, camaraderie, and teamwork in the future. I’ll miss you guys!

That said, it’s time I start a new adventure, so I’m headed to MR where I’ll have the benefit of working with a lot of ex-BVers who I think highly of. If they switch to first.last email addresses before I get there I’ll be very sad! ;)

I added more to my nerd XP by going to a Magic draft with Jonney on Wednesday. Despite drafting what I thought was the worst deck I’ve ever drafted, I got second place with it, so that’s good I guess. I’ve always thought that Magic was a game I could be really competitively good at if I wanted to invest the time into it and “go pro” despite how silly that sounds (hey, some of the prizes are no joke though). =) That said, I don’t know if I can handle playing it for days straight.

I saw the new GI JOE with Mark and Greg. It was fairly bad, but I guess enjoyable enough. My expectations were for an enjoyable bad movie and it probably met those expectations, but did not exceed. Maybe next time it can apply for a raise.

In a week, a few of us make a quick hop to Phoenix to stuff our faces with some more grub! About a month after that, I will be taking a vacation with the family to San Diego. It’s been forever ago since we’ve taken a family trip, so this is almost like a first time, especially since we’re all older now. I’m looking forward to it, but I think my eardrums are bracing themselves. :p

The site I was helping the Greater Good Labs guys with launched a little while ago, SnapKind.com. Check it, but be gentle… it’s a baby and needs some growing up still. ;)

My sisters love it when I expose them to terrible entertainment.

When I made Oriana watch High School Musical with me:

Then, she was super happy when we moved on to Taylor Swift: Journey to Fearless:

The above shenanigans have humorously led to the following:

And… here’s some random photo dumping…

On Valentine’s, Oriana and I went to Amy’s with the pups:

Mozilla’s support was not enough for the 49ers to win:

Viraj has a bit of a germaphobe problem. One time a while back, he was charging his phone, but was scared of the germs on the ground, so he wasted a perfectly good tissue to guard his phone from the evils of the floor:

To teach him a lesson, I replaced it with a fruit roll-up wrapper:

Back in my early days of college, my friends and I had an unsuccessful web comic using a recycled domain of mine, MrTechHappy. It was primarily filled with inside jokes, and yes, used Flash because that’s what you did back in 2001.

Well, eleven years ago from yesterday (the 21st), I created Dress Up Viraj Day:

I’ve been waiting to celebrate it annually for many years now but I’ve always forgotten and missed it by a few days.

Not this year!

In memory of our beloved Teetar Baghat, I asked people to submit a photo of their phones with a picture of Viraj. We also made sure to guard our phones from the floor. You never know what might infect it. I hope for this tradition to grow and get ever more so obnoxious in the years to come.

Ladies and gentlemen, on this 11th annual Dress Up Viraj Day, I present to you the inaugural Dress Up Viraj Day tradition of our phones on the floor graced with the image of Viraj:

From Ochs:

Mine:

From Oriana:

From Aaron, all the way from down under in Australia:

From Greg:

From Sam:

From Andrew, in Dallas:

If you’d like to send in late submissions, I’ll let it slide this year and append this post to include them. For your convenience, here is a collection of Viraj photos to choose from.

As Viraj would say it, “squirt yeah!”

I guess I should post something before January is gone!

First, I got Oriana a puppy. He had a cool name at the humane society, Thor, but she changed it to Badger.

This guy also got Mozilla sick, but he’s getting over it now. He’s also very fat, and looks like he’s always sad. He seems like a pretty fun puppy though. Here are a few more photos of the little punk:

Mozillabomb:

In other news, I am taking a six week sabbatical from Bazaarvoice and helping out the crew at Greater Good Labs. It’s bittersweet as the team I’m leaving is super great, but I’m looking forward to helping start something new. Super kudos to BV for giving me the opportunity to take some time away.

It’s been about a month and a week and I’m still sitting at about half a tank of gas. Given this, I think even when I do need to fill up, I’m not going to fill up all the way. Pretty pleased with the Volt so far. I did the calculation and during the winter, it’s probably around 65 cents to charge up all the way. In the summer, it’ll probably be around $1.

With that, I will leave you with this:

“My gosh! Just kill myself listening to you.” - sister @livizilla to me

— Oliver Wong (@owiber) December 23, 2012

The rumors are true, I got a Volt.

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. =)