President Fuckface

My intention is to not clutter up my blog with mention of President Fuckface news, but it seems disingenuous to completely ignore. This is a post I made on Facebook a few days before inauguration. I think it captures a lot of my thoughts on the topic without being just bursts of anger, so I’d like to keep it around here, if only to look back on someday (hopefully).

Growing up, I’ve always felt positively about the country I’ve lived in. There’s always corruption in the world, including here at home, but we were steadily moving in the right direction despite the stumbles along the way. In history class, we learned about slavery, the Nazis, world wars, dictators and presidents of the past. We’re told “those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

I consider myself incredibly blessed to have the life I’ve had in the US. While I’ve faced mild racial mockery, mostly as a child, I’ve never felt being Asian has significantly limited me, and certainly not impacted my safety. I know that’s certainly not the case for everyone. You can blame the media, Trump putting on a show, or whatever, but this past election cycle shook something in me that I’ve never really had to deal with before.

I see the messages Trump sends. Either willingly, ignorantly, or whatever - it doesn’t matter. I see the creation of divisions between our neighbors and fellow Americans. I recall that as American kids, we take a pledge holding our hearts and state “with liberty and justice for all,” but not really too long ago, America fell into deep fear and rallied up thousands of Japanese based solely on their ethnicity and imprisoned them. I see Trump making broad statements on Muslims, on Hispanics, on women. I see him instigating China, a nation I have no association with other than my lineage, and for the first time in my life I’ve asked myself whether I’m still safe here.

I’m not trying to be alarmist. If I truely thought I was in significant danger here, I would not be typing this in my home in Austin. However, I felt the needle move in the wrong direction, even if minutely. The trust I had in us not repeating mistakes in the past I never thought were possible is now not quite as solid.

My hope is we as people continue to push forward and progress. However, I also see many warning signs with the incoming administration and they are difficult for me to ignore despite my temptation to be blissfully ignorant. Hopefully they are just warning signs, but if they are not, I will strive to be on the right side of history.

As such, I will be traveling to DC on Thursday to take part in inauguration protests. I plan on taking a lot of photos. I expect the day to at least be historic and I consider it no harm done in showing our government there are those who will resist should we turn our backs on the ideals we teach our children.

Happy MLK Day, everyone. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

The photos I took are in a FB album that starts here:

Unfortunately, I planned my trip before I knew about the Women’s March, so I was on a plane heading back to Austin during all of those. Would have loved to capture pics in either DC or Austin of that.

Overall, it was actually a pretty interesting experience and I’m glad I went. It made me realize that it’d be really cool to be present when we elect our first female President, especially if I felt positively about her.

Holidays

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

This year, everyone corralled in Austin and we gave each other terrible (awesome) gifts and played lots of Magic.

Magic:

Christmas 2015 - 005

Franklin’s brisket on the deck:

Christmas 2015 - 006

Hats:

Christmas 2015 - 034

Crazy onesies:

Christmas 2015 - 042

Trailer:

Some other notables:


  • Oriana loves Wonderful Christmastime and begged me to play nearly a dozen different covers of it in a row

  • To satisfy Oriana’s love of Taytay, I gave her a Saint Taylor Swift candle, a Taylor Swift blanket, and a Taylor Swift “haters gonna hate” mug. She loved them.

  • Mozilla thought the world was ending last night (NYE)

  • I’m quite fond of the new Star Wars. It has its flaws, but I just had a blast the entire time watching it.

Doing my big brother duties

State Fair 2015

We had our traditional annual Dallas trip this past weekend. Usually we go OU weekend, but there were too many conflicts this year, so we ended up doing it a week earlier. I flew into Dallas directly from SF to join up with the gang, made Oriana pick me up, then we watched UT get slaughtered and hung out at the State Fair.

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State Fair 2015 - 009

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More photos on the flickr. Here’s also a video of Sam:

And… I’ve started to populate viraj.fail!

NEW HOUSE

Mark and I have purchased a sweet house and we moved in last weekend. We’ve still got a number of things on order that have yet to arrive, but it’s pretty great. It has two master bedrooms, so it was convenient to co-purchase. Here’s a video of when I took Mozilla to the house shortly after closing:

This is a Facebook album of pre-closing photos.

And here are some photos of the game room:

August!

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:
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:
Why hello there, familiar face.

More childhood nostalgia:
Memory lane @livizilla

Love this stuff:
Ahh memories

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:
Lazies

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:
Mozilla checking out a big turtle

Terrible Movies and Terrible Music

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

IMG_2184

When I made Oriana watch High School Musical with me:

High School Musical with @oreoreoeoo !!!!

Then, she was super happy when we moved on to Taylor Swift: Journey to Fearless:
Now we're watching Taylor Swift: Journey to Fearless. @oreoreoeoo is exploding with happiness

The above shenanigans have humorously led to the following:
2013-02-27 06.05.50 pm

And… here’s some random photo dumping…

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

Mozilla’s support was not enough for the 49ers to win:
Found this old shirt. It's too big for me, so Mozilla gets to represent

The 11th Dress Up Viraj Day

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:

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

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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:
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Mine:
DressUpVirajDay 004

From Oriana:
DressUpVirajDay 003

From Aaron, all the way from down under in Australia:
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From Greg:
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From Sam:
DressUpVirajDay 006

From Andrew, in Dallas:
DressUpVirajDay 007

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!”

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):

AJ Wedding 002

AJ Wedding 007

AJ Wedding 013

AJ Wedding 017

AJ Wedding 018

AJ Wedding 022

AJ Wedding 024

AJ Wedding 026

AJ Wedding 030

AJ Wedding 034

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.