judyonthenet

Today during lunch, I ate at Sushi Expo with Kelvin. It’s a cheap generic sushi place that’s mediocre (it’s okay, not bad). I decided to have their “Hawaiian Pokki”, which is actually their weird way of saying “poke” and not the Japanese cookie treat. I really shouldn’t have gotten their poke. Their sashimi wasn’t that fresh, and the poke had a lot of seaweed and was drenched in very salty sauce. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the awesome poke that Kimi makes.

After lunch, Kelvin went with me to the American Kickboxing Academy, which is one of the places I’ve been meaning to check out. (I’ve been trying to get myself to do kickboxing, and this place got good Yelp reviews.) When we went in, there was nobody at the front desk. Looking into the large studio for someone to help me, I saw the facilities. Very large, kinda old-looking space that includes an entire freaking boxing ring. And everywhere, in various states of training, were very, very large guys. Kelvin described them as “top-heavy”. I describe them as guys who look like they can snap me in two.

So, the reason why I had Kelvin come with me was because I had been afraid to enter other martial arts facilities. Like, there was a different boxing place near work I went to check out, but their windows had all these pictures of large, scary men which totally intimidated me and made me turnaround. Looking at the American Kickboxing Academy website, their instructors all look like big, scary men, too. But the Yelp reviews mentioned they’re really good about newbs of all types, and I remember their schedule used to have a women’s class, so I figured I’d check it out anyway. Kelvin was there so I could just get into the place. Well, maybe I shouldn’t have come in during lunch, since I guess some of the more hardcore people would probably go train there during the day. I got into the place, no one was at the front desk to comfort and do their sales pitch to this newb, and all the large, scary men doing their exercises freaked me out, so after standing there a while, instead of asking of the large men where I could get some help, I just grabbed some pamphlets and left. There’s still a couple other places near work I’m hoping to check out. Hopefully, they’ll be less intimidating…

I had a craving for pho this evening, but no one was around to eat dinner with. Scanning my AIM buddy list at work, I noticed that Eubin (an old friend from my high school years… tho not from my high school) was online. Which I thought was interesting, because I haven’t talked to him online or in person for a while. I figured it’d be a good time to bug him to hang out for dinner and catch up on things. After all, I hadn’t seen him in person for a long time. And by long time, I mean years, which is really lame since I consider him a good friend. We were always in touch during college, but I dunno what happened since I graduated college… I guess we both got lazy.

My favorite pho place, Dac Phuc, is closed after 7PM, so I wanted to try someplace different. Based on Yelp reviews and location, I suggested we go to Pho Long Thinh. That turned out to be convenient, because apparently it’s Eubin’s main pho joint. Eubin met me at my place so we could go together to the restaurant; I was very relieved that he no longer had a mullet, though he claims I’ve seen him at least once after he got rid of it. (The last time I remember seeing him was running into him at Fry’s and seeing he had gotten a mullet, which freaked me out. He says we ate dinner with Kelvin sometime later after he got rid of it, and I think I vaguely remember that.) But yeah, apparently we hadn’t seen each other for a really long time, because he never saw my house after we added an extension, and he’d never seen my Prius and I’d never seen his Civic.

We drove over to Pho Long Thinh, which is in this ghetto strip mall I’ve passed by on several occasions but mostly ignored (the only thing that stands out is this giant sign that says “Tropical Fish”). I remember one time, as Kelvin was driving by it, I mentioned to him we should try some of the stuff in that ghetto little strip mall, since often times the best places are hole-in-the-wall places like the retailers in this strip mall. Eubin apparently frequents this strip mall, and he also recommended the ribs at the BBQ place a few doors down. At Pho Long Thinh, I ordered pho, lemonade, and split a pork sandwich with Eubin. The pho was typical pho, but not too greasy and pretty tasty. The sandwich was okay, but I noticed they were generous with the mayo, which I’m not too fond off. The Vietnamese lemonade was, well, Vietnamese lemonade: simple and good. I still like Dac Phuc better, but this place is a really good alternative to Pho Hoa that’s close to home. Plus the place is clean, which is atypical. And they’ve also randomly got a large HDTV; good for all those single Asian males that like to have pho for dinner every other day. Pretty inexpensive, and they take credit card.

So I spent dinner enjoying my food and catching up with Eubin. Apparently, aside from my engagement, there wasn’t really anything new in my life or his life since two years ago. Though I hadn’t seen him since when I was still in college, we still talked occasionally online after I moved back. He always lived pretty close to my place, but during the last couple years he moved out of his parents’ place to his friend’s place… which is even closer to my house. You’d think it’d be pretty easy for us to go see each other, but we’re just THAT lazy. We just talked about games through AIM. That is, until the last few months, when Eubin seemed the fall off the face of the Earth. I never saw him online, and he was never good with email, so I figured he must have either moved on to better things in life or was dead. Then I finally saw him online today. Where was Eubin all this time? Even though he was working fulltime, he decided to get a second job. A second job in World of Warcraft. That’s right, he disappeared for a while because all he did when he wasn’t working was play WoW. Terrible. So why was he online today? What made him stop? He reached level 70 last week and got sick of raids. Ugh, I’m glad I didn’t get this game yesterday. Anyways, it was really good to see Eubin again, and I hope we’ll hang out a little more now that I’ve finally got a hold of him.

Note to the guys at work: Eubin plays Magic. (Well, he plays really, really old Magic, but I’m sure we convince him to try a draft with the new stuff :P )

Rodney just mentioned to me that South Park episode 11×06 spoofs 300, which reminded me that I wanted to share a couple great webcomic 300 spoofs in case you guys hadn’t seen the them yet: VGCats, PVP.

New thing I learned today: Thought Madame Rose in The Protector was rather mannish? That’s because she used to be a man, man! Jin Xing, Chinese actress/dancer and villain of The Protector, is a transgendered woman.

Just saw this one Kotaku:

Sweet. Shouldn’t be hard for me to get these since I only eat at Wendy’s, like, every other day. Though, I did manage to miss half the plush Snoopy toys when they had that promo; I guess I wasn’t in the mood for Wendy’s that month. And I was gonna use the Snoopy from that promo as a dash decoration, but it disappeared when I had to take my car to the shop. Sad. Now all I have is stupid Charlie Brown.

I originally had a long rant about my commute here, but in hindsight, it wasn’t particularly bad, and there was only one incident worth highlighting.

I was left turning from Santa Clara onto Montgomery, which is a one way road going away from the Pavilion. Montgomery has two lanes, and Santa Clara has two left turn lanes going into each one. I’m turning in the right left-turn lane, and I drive by an old man in an old car sitting in the left lane of Montgomery at the intersection, facing the Pavilion. Yeah, he’s facing the wrong direction. He must have forgotten the road is one way when leaving a nearby parking lot. I give him the WTF glare as I pass him, as I’m sure the the two trucks behind me do as well. The old man is towards the middle of the lane, too, which implies he wants to make a left turn. Which means he has to wait for a left-turn light. Which means he’s probably really confused, because there probably aren’t any traffic lights in the direction he’s facing. I wonder if he ever turned or figured out he was going the wrong way…

Well, the deal of the day is actually just Burning Crusade for $24.99, but if you look down, you can get a combo with the original WoW software for $30 total (no tax and free shipping). I doubt anybody cares, since everybody I know that has/had any remote desire to play this has this game anyway… but just in case…

btw, Amazon is weird in that DOTD’s tend to have fluctuating prices throughout the day, so it might get cheaper later. Of course, credit for this info goes to CAG…

What better way to celebrate Earth Day than hanging around in a convention hall with a bunch of nerds. Yeah.

Me, Kelvin, Mike, Ted, Bobby, Ravi, Calvin, and Gordon went to the Future Sight pre-release yesterday, which has been relocated to the Santa Clara Convention Center. (I guess people didn’t like that the convention center in downtown San Jose didn’t have free parking.) The pre-release wasn’t the only event going on there; there was also a veterinary conference, a bird and reptile show, a MySQL seminar, and children’s pop audition. The pre-release room wasn’t too hard to find tho… just look for the room with 200+ nerds ranging from 10ish to 50ish with low hygiene standards :P

I got a pretty good set of cards, with Linessa, Teferi, and (dun-dun-DUN) Akroma. I think Ted and Kelvin got decent cards, and Ravi got a freaking Akroma’s Memorial. Unfortunately, I think Mike and Gordon got crap, as they were the only two with a loss-loss record this time around. Even tho I managed to avoid that, even with my decent cards, I still suck. Though, to be honest, my only goal was to bring out Teferi and flash out Akroma on somebody’s ass :)

First guy I played was, I think, in high school. A very nerdy, but friendly teenager. And somewhat talkative and easily distracted. Both our decks were slow, and our three games were pretty drawn out, with the last one not finishing. During the last game, when we were kind of in a rush, he would hear his friends talking about something behind him, and then during his turn while he was thinking, he’d butt into their conversation with some comment. I’d be like, come on dude, stop listening to them, shut up, and let’s finish this so it’ll be less likely that one of us has to be stuck here longer than we need to. In hindsight, it probably wouldn’t have mattered, because there was no clear leader at the end of the third game anyways. I think for all three games, I’d get him down to 10 or less, and totally lose steam and not be able to bust out anything good. Stupid draws. Also in hindsight, I think both of us weren’t totally clear on some of the rules on our cards and may not have played appropriately. Anyways, I wasn’t the only one with a draw the first game. Ted and Bobby also drew…

… so they ended up being at the same table as me for round 2. Ted was sitting across from the guy to my left, while the Ted’s last opponent was sitting to the left of the guy on my left. And the guy on my left’s opponent was sitting to next to Ted on Ted’s right. Got that? Bobby was sitting three seats down on my left on the same side. Across from me was, of course, my opponent #2. And he turned out to be a kind of jerkhole. Didn’t smile at all, looked pissy, and was anal retentive about everything. At one point, he’s like, “I’m going to cast spell #1, and then because of spell #1’s casting cost requires discarding a card, I’m going to do madness with spell #2.” I’m like, “Okay, well, then I counter spell #1.” And he has to call a judge over to determine if I can do that because he thinks I didn’t do it in time, because somehow saying all your spells really fast means your opponent can’t do anything about them. Jerk. Judge is like, “Whatever, she can counter it.” (For the record, you’re supposed to give your opponents a chance to respond to everything you do.) I’m totally pissed because he’s being stupid, and it’s not like ANY of this affects the second spell he cast (which I think he was originally concerned about) because he still had to discard the card anyways. Also, at another point, I try to bounce back his Firemaw Kavu, and then he asks me if I really want to do that. Rereading it, I’m thinking okay, maybe I don’t want to do this. I was originally okay with it since I figured my creatures were expendable, but whatever. I guess it’s not a good idea, so I’ll bounce back something else. After I do that, he makes five more remarks about how it was a bad idea to bounce back his kavu, like he wants to rub in how stupid I am or something.

Anyways, I lose to him after two games. And I’m fine with this, as I generally have all-out losses at these pre-release events anyway. As long as the people are nice, and I feel like I’ve learned something, I don’t really care. I just go to these things to have fun. I have no expectation to win anything. But apparently this guy wants to help me or something, which is usually okay, but I don’t like him. And people usually ask to look to at my cards and offer their help, and I’m cool with that. Not this guy. He just grabs my deck out of my hands as I’m looking at it. He proceeds to tell me how I have nothing for blue and white except for Akroma, and then he starts looking through all the cards in my box. He talks about how my red, green, and black cards are stronger, and how I should completely rebuild my deck to use those. He says several times phrases like “if I were you” and “that’s what I would do” and “that’s just me”. I’m keep saying very sternly, “I’m fine with my colors.” The only useful information he spouted out was that I should have put my Amrou Seekers in my deck, but I chose to ignore it because I was too busy glaring at him. I know he doesn’t sound that horrible, but you have to understand this is all done in a very condescending manner. I eventually get my cards back and ignore him so I can watch Ted and guy-next-to-me’s game.

I bitched about this to Kelvin later, and he said I should have asked a judge to make him lose the game. Apparently, touching somebody else’s cards without their permission is enough to lose the game… at least that’s what some kid near Kelvin’s seat was having a hissy-fit about. If that’s actually true, to think all those times I could have won when somebody untapped stuff for me or put stuff into play for me because I forgot to take off suspend counters…

So, now I was at draw-loss. And once again, I wasn’t the only one, as I was sitting right between Ted (left) and Bobby (right) for round three. My opponent? Why, it’s the guy who was sitting right of Ted! And Ted’s opponent? Why, it’s my first opponent! I guess he didn’t do too well second round either. Mike was already out with a loss-loss record, so he sat behind the three of us, spectating and going “Go Team Xilinx!” Hehe. Opponent #3 was way nicer than the jerk I played before. Very friendly, normal guy, but I think he was older than me, so he probably got all his teenage nerdy awkwardness out of his system a long time ago. I did pretty poorly against him, mostly because of poor decisions and some mana issues. During my second game, during the last or second-to-last turn before my almost pretty-much guaranteed death, I decided to attack him for kicks with my Looter il-Kor, even though I had nothing in my hand. I figured, I might as well attack him and kill my library for one card, I doubt there’s anything that could save me anyway. Of course, when I do that, what do I mill? My dear, sweet Akroma. I let out an, “Oh fuck” and my opponent’s like “What? What did you lo- Holy crap, you have an Akroma??” In a test of my luck, as my opponent’s friend put it, “You failed.” It wouldn’t have saved me that turn, but in hindsight (so much hindsight), there was a turn or two where I forgot to attack with the Looter. If I had done that, I would have been able to draw her and possibly prolong the game a bit. Oh well. At least the whole table had a good laugh about it. My opponent said I shouldn’t feel too bad about losing, since I at least got a Teferi and Akroma out of this pre-release, which is certainly true. I was still bummed I never got to flash her in… or even put her into play at all.

Ted and Bobby unfortunately failed to achieve victories as well, so Team Xilinx majorly failed. Kelvin was win-loss-loss, so he didn’t get anything either. Ravi and Calvin were both win-win-loss (not in that order… they had to play each other first round!), but for some reason both of their fourth opponents refused to draw. (Each person is guaranteed 3 packs with a 2-1-1 record. Any two losses means no packs.) Ravi’s opponent was at least nice enough to give him one pack, but that still sucks. Despite what losers we were, I was still happy with the pre-release, and I really liked the deck I had. I’ll probably play with it a few more times (even did that today after work!) before I take apart the deck. I will not stop until I flash in Akroma!

Okay, sorry for that ridiculously long rant about MTG. And because Kelvin’s camera is still broken, no random pictures either. However, I did decide to order a red DSC-T100 today. I hope it’s not too bulky, but if it is, I can probably return it. I got it from abtelectronics.com (which I also became an affiliate of today :P). Abtelectronics.com has a 5% off coupon ABT71YEARS right now until 4/30, which is applied on top of their already cheaper price, so the camera came out to a total of ~$360. And there’s free shipping and no tax in CA. Unfortunately, the camera is backordered, so who knows when I’ll get it.

Today I picked up my mom from the airport, who was back from her trip to Taiwan/Japan. She gave me goodies to bring to my boss and coworkers, which was really nice of her… especially considering she works for a competitor. I kind of think she treats me like a kid in school, and I have to go give treats to my teacher and classmates. No complaints about that or anything, just what it reminded me off. So I’ve been munching on sweets all day, so I’m feeling pretty fat today :P

New thing I learned today: A laopo bing (wife cake) is also called a “sweetheart cake” and is made of almond paste and winter melon from China/HK.

Well, not anymore. Kelvin was using this post to debug his silly little plugin. I’m still not being productive at work (my boss, his boss, and his boss aren’t here), which is bad… because I’m going to get owned when my boss gets back from vacation next week. So I’m gonna post about his plugin.

Last night, I mentioned Kelvin that it’d be funny if there was a way to visually show him interjecting comments into my post. Like, have a picture of him with his mouth open and with a talk bubble, like they sometimes have in magazines. Being the nerd that he is, he hears this and goes straight to work and makes me a plugin. So here I present to you, Kelvin’s Talkies:

ZOMG, I’m stupid!

Isn’t he such a narcissist? He’s very proud of his work. I think it’s entertaining. I suggested that he to add a lot of features to the plugin, but he sounds lazy. For some reason, it’s missing the upper and lower borders of the talk bubble when I see it in Bloglines, so it may not look right in your blog reader.

Kai and Lillian warned me of questions, so here’s a FAQ for some of them. I’ll add more when I can think of more or people ask me more stuff.

When did you get engaged? March 27th, 2007.

Have you guys set a date? No. It’s not going to be at least for another year or so, when Kelvin finishes school. According to my mom, he needs to have a full-time job, too. Besides, this whole marriage thing is still intimidating, and just the thought of planning a wedding scares me. Yep. November 1st, 2008.

How did he propose? Read this.

Were you expecting it? Not really. I did consider it a small possibility, but only because it’s always a possibility since we’ve been dating so long… but I didn’t think it would actually happen anytime soon. I actually thought he would propose in October, when he planned a date for the first time ever (by planned, I mean we set a date to go out together with just us two… all we did was go watch the very unromantic movie, The Prestige). And I also had complained about how unromantic he was on Valentine’s Day, so I thought that dinner was just a make-up date. We certainly hadn’t discussed getting engaged and only talked about marriage in a very-distant-future manner.

Let me see the ring! Here’s a couple pictures from my gallery:

It’s a white gold ring with a single diamond in a tension setting. (If you want more details, feel free to ask me personally.)

Do you like the ring? I love it! It’s simple and elegant and even a little nerdy… definitely my style. I’d say it’s pretty much perfect, except it’s not engraved. But Kelvin said he didn’t do that because he’d have a harder time reselling it with an engraving if I rejected him :P

How did Kelvin know what to get you? I guess it’s a combination of him being smart and knowing me so well, because I gave him no input on what sort of ring I wanted. I wasn’t looking to get engaged anytime soon, so it’s not like I was dropping hints. He said he spent a lot of time researching rings and trying to figure out what I’d like, and even just ordering the ring to have it made gave him a lot of stress. The ring size he got from stealing my class ring, which I often forget to put back on after a shower.

How did your families react to the news? Kelvin’s family was hunky-dory; he had told all of them of his plans beforehand and had gotten help with ring/proposal stuff from them. Their reaction was to have a party for the engagement :) My mother found out right after the proposal dinner. I believe she was slightly irked, with her first comment upon me showing her the ring was, “How much did that ring cost?” And then she gave Kelvin a hard time for not being more traditional and asking her permission beforehand (and something about bribing her with Chinese bridal cakes… but I think she just wanted sweets). She made it clear he still needs to finish school and get a job before any marriage can happen and that he has to treat me right or she’ll kick his butt. I tell other people about this reaction, and people think that she doesn’t like Kelvin, but she does. It’s just how my mom is. She said in Chinese tradition, the son-in-law is 50% your son. Since we’re engaged, she considers him 25% her son now, which apparently is enough to get him keys to the house :P My dad seems cool with it, and my relatives in Taiwan, particularly my grandparents, seem happy about the whole thing, too.

How does it feel to be engaged? Thankfully, it doesn’t feel much different than before we were engaged.