judyonthenet

Jeff found this video on Youtube, and it totally blew my mind.

Yes, that’s me. At Fanime 2000. On a stage. Dressed like a video game character. I’m half excited and half embarrassed that this video exists on the internet. It’s so freaky that something I did seven years ago is now immortalized on Youtube. The description even mentions how I got 3rd place fan’s choice that year. (Fan’s choice was where people go to this booth, look at cosplay pictures the staff took during the con, and vote on their favorite.) btw, the girl screaming my name at the beginning? That’s my number one fan (rofl), Sandra :) (Chris has reminded me that he was also there cheering for me, and I’m guessing Ravi was also.) I don’t even know where my Fanime pictures are anymore. If I ever find them, I’ll have to put them up. For those that don’t know, I was dressed up as Shorty from Bust-a-Move (Groove) 2:

Wow, the English rendition of Shorty’s theme is terrible. Anyway, the mouse on her head is named Columbo, and I made mine by hand. It was a good Columbo, tho I think it fell apart and is rotting away in my garage somewhere.

Checking out the rest of the videos, I remember the Grand Prize winner being incredibly good. The first girl in that performance dressed up as Shorty from Bust-a-Groove 1 the year before (she even got into her costume in 2000 briefly so we could take a Shorty picture together :) ). I remember this really well-done Rinoa; I talked to her a lot throughout the con, but I don’t remember her name! I know one of the Princess Miyu dudes was my classmate Jon, I think this one. I remember this NERV one was pretty goofy. I liked this one because it’s the first time I saw a group make fun of RPG fighting onstage (but I hear it’s done all the time now), and I think the girls in this group always has awesome costumes at Fanime back then. There was a group of nice guys dressed up as I-don’t-remember-what that I talked to a lot backstage, but I can’t figure out if they’re in any of the videos listed.

I’m really not surprised the San Jose City Council voted to get rid of free parking. Here’s a couple pictures I’ve taken in the last few days in the Market St. garage.

This one shows one of the entrance meter thingies with its pole knocked off.

The exit meter on the third floor has been broken for a whlle because it got its pole knocked off. The second floor has a meter that sections off regular parking and parking for employees of the local businesses; that meter’s pole is constantly in a state of wackiness.

This is a picture of the wall next to the stairwell on the ground floor.

There used to be a map here of restaurants and such nearby to go check out. I guess somebody needed their own personal copy.

A while ago, I linked an article from the Mercury News talking about the potential death of free parking, and it talked about parties in the garages. I thought this sounded ridiculous, but I actually saw one today… and it was only 7:30PM!

I was walking away while I took this picture, and I was trying to do it quickly so the people wouldn’t come beat me up. That’s why it’s so blurry (plus I always seem to take blurry pictures with this camera… bleh). It doesn’t look like that many people, but there were actually quite a few ghetto-looking people, especially on the left side of the picture. And they were just carrying around large bottles of alcohol, standing there and loitering. I mean, what the hell? They’re freaking out all the people desperately looking for parking, and they’re just leaving trash everywhere. AND IT’S A FREAKING GARAGE. Why do you want to hang out in a stupid garage? I DON’T GET IT. I hope Kelvin’s car makes it through the night okay.

Maybe I’ll have the guts to take a picture of the stairwell… but probably not.

There were a lot of people in town because of Music in the Park, and tonight’s band was Malo. I don’t know much about their music, but they sing one of my favorite songs “Suavecito”:

Here’s some random pictures I took from Kelvin’s window (to see exactly how crappy my camera does in low light). They were taking pretty early, so no masses of drunk people or gang fights.

Kelvin’s playing too much Pokemon… I must go play some so his Pokemon won’t surpass mine.

New thing I learned today: Malo is a San Francisco-based band led by Jorge Santana, younger brother of Carlos Santana.

One of the ways I like to waste my time is obsessively checking out my blog’s counter. I like to think I can try and figure out who’s seen my blog from IP addresses, but usually all it tells me is that the only people who check out my blogs are bots :( So, hi bots!

There was an interesting bot crawling my site today from a website called We Feel Fine. The website has a neat Java applet that compiles “feelings” from blogs all over the internet into a colorful particle system, serving as both blog aggregator and modern art piece. Some random blog quotes (a couple random, a couple from California):

“I’ll probably feel very stupid and really dislike myself eventually, but right now I just want to go water the plants and switch out the laundry like I’m supposed to.” - from someone in san diego california united states when it was cloudy

“i don’t feel that breathless overwhelmed feeling when i look at you anymore.” - from someone

“I’m feeling like me again.” - from someone

I think the applet is very neat. It reminds me a lot of this piece I saw last winter at the San Jose Museum of Art called “Listening Post“. It was a wall of LED displays connected with tubes of wires in a grid-like fashion, and it would display random words or excerpts from chats all over the internet in different “movements” or visual/audio arrangements. The piece is set-up in a dark room, where you sit, lounge, and just sort of immerse yourself in the internetz. Very cool. I wonder where it is now.

Okay, this post is kind of a whiny, downer sort of post, so people might want to skip this one.

Disappointment #1) I went to the jeweler’s today to pick up my ring appraisal, and I was disappointed that it didn’t contain a diamond plot. I didn’t think to ask about it when I got the ring appraised, and it’s just sort of something I thought of when I looked at my appraisal a few times. I think I may ask the jeweler when a diamond plot gets done. The people at Willow Glen Diamond Co. are super nice and easy to talk to. I know I’m talking about disappointments, but I wasn’t disappointed with their service. They helped me with insurance stuff and took my ring to be engraved at a good price. (Oh yeah, that’s another thing I’m bummed about… I’m temporarily separated from my ring. But the girl said they’d probably be able to have it done by Friday, which is pretty quick.) Also, I also feel kinda meh about the way they appraised my ring… like they gave some in-between areas the better benefit of the doubt. (I’m sure some would consider that a good thing.)

Disappointment #2) Getting my appraisal made me read up on the different diamond terminology online, particularly at a site called PriceScope. PriceScope is a really good reference for information on jewelry, particularly diamonds and rings. They also have very good forums with a lot of threads showing off people’s rocks. Unfortunately, I spent all afternoon reading the stupid site and got little work done, despite being somewhat productive in the morning.

Disappointment #3) I got my Jamba Juice free smoothie voucher in the mail today. Even though I originally bought an original, 24 oz. smoothie, my voucher was for a 16 oz. smoothie. I’m not upset or pissed about it (I’m glad they sent me anything), just disappointed.

Disappointment #4) I couldn’t reach Ravi this evening. I have a birthday present I was really excited to give him, and I told him I was going to drop by tonight. And I was going to… except I don’t remember where he lives. And I wanted to make sure he was home and not busy. Now I have to wait to give him his present. Bleh.

Disappointment #5) On Sunday, Kelvin and I tried to have lunch at Dac Phuc (my favorite pho place), but they closed early. A guy came out saying they were closing early, because they’re going on vacation until July 5th. No Dac Phuc for a while :( Even worse, Kelvin is moving out of downtown early July, which means I won’t have across-the-street access to Dac Phuc like I used to. So who knows when I’ll go back there to eat! (My guess is the next time Jeff comes back Michigan.)

Disappointment #6) Lipton Brisk Iced Tea has once again changed its look to something more… exciting, I guess? Actually, I’m not sure if this one’s really a disappointment; the old one didn’t look spectacular or anything.

New thing I learned today: Despite being used in fine jewelry, some white gold alloys contain nickel, which is often used because of color and to increase hardness. In fact, US jewelers often use nickel in their white gold alloys (despite the fact that at least 1 in 7 people have nickel allergies) since nickel use in jewelry isn’t regulated (unlike Europe, which banned nickel in jewelry).

Disappointment #7) Reading this thread in PriceScope, I discovered that my ring’s manufacturer does use nickel in its white gold alloys. I know that, with earrings at least, I am allergic to nickel, so with this new information plus that rash I got on my finger, I’m a bit paranoid. I didn’t even know white gold could have nickel in it. (Reading an older post, it sounded like I did, but I think I was BSing. How common this nickel-in-white-gold thing is is really surprising to me.) I just assumed expensive = hypoallergenic. I’m trying to think positive and assume that I’m not so sensitive to nickel that I can’t wear a white gold ring; more likely, I got some grossness underneath my ring and was allergic to that. I mean, that better be the case. I love my ring, and the last thing I want to do is give it up. I’ll see how my skin fares when I get my ring back.

Right now, Jamba Juice is having this buy 1 smoothie get another free deal that goes on until July 4th. The website link was sent out in the Jamba Juice e-newsletter last Tuesday, and it has since been spread all over the internet through deal sites and whatnot. Being an internet coupon, you can use it multiple times. However, considering how expensive Jamba Juice smoothies are, I’m pretty sure even at half price, they’re not losing anything with the promotion.

Last Wednesday, the first day after the coupon was sent out, my co-workers (Ted, Mike, Bobby) and I went to give this coupon a go at the local Jamba Juice near work (the one on Camden and Union). We went in the middle of the day, ditching work to partake in this deal. Ted and I went up to the register first, as we were going to split the coupon. When the girl at the register got the coupon, she looked at hesitantly, but in a familiar manner (like she had already seen it 20 bazillion times that day). Register girl showed manager girl the coupon, and manager girl told us that we couldn’t use the coupon. Manager girl said she got a message from the higher ups that they were not to accept this coupon until the next day. I mentioned that coupon doesn’t say anything about a start date on it. She said it was leaked early (or something) and that it had been spread all over the internet. That really confused me, since 1) the coupon didn’t have a start date, 2) other people online had mentioned using it without problems, 3) using this coupon one day early doesn’t hurt their business, and 4) the website/coupon was put up and sent out in a newsletter “early” by Jamba Juice. Ted said he was still going to get a smoothie since he was thirsty anyway and already here, and I followed suit. Mike and Bobby opted for Coldstone next door instead. As Ted and I drank our smoothies, he said he was going to write to Jamba Juice about this (inspired by my Best Buy experience), and I told him I was going to do the same. I mean, it was totally bait and switch, and buying the smoothie, I officially fell for it. I wouldn’t have ditched work to go to Jamba Juice if it weren’t for that coupon. Of course, when I got back to work, I wasted half an hour to write a complaint email through the Jamba Juice website :P I just told them what happened, when it happened, and why it doesn’t make sense. I don’t expect anything from this; I never expect anything from email complaints.

Surprise, surprise, two days later, I get an email response from Jamba Juice. Their customer service says they want to assure me that the coupon is totally legit, and that the district manager has been contacted for “extra training and coaching immediately” (*whip cracks*), so there should be no problem using the coupon in the future. AND they’re sending me a free smoothie coupon. Sweet! I know it costs them nothing to give me a free smoothie (especially since they were supposed to give me one in the first place), but I really appreciated their (very quick) personal response and that they actually took in my feedback.

And that’s not the end of it. The next day, I get an email from the district manager for the South Bay stores. He apologizes for the problems with the coupon and said he identified the worker who was “not following our coupon redemption policy and will take appropriate action” (*more whip cracks*). He also assures me there will be no problems with the coupon in the future. Wow, I must say, that’s quite a follow-up for a free smoothie I didn’t get. I hope I didn’t get any of the girls at Jamba Juice into too much trouble; they weren’t rude or anything. But if someone was purposely ignoring the coupon for no reason, I think more training/discipline/whatever is certainly necessary. But why would someone do that? Why would anyone care? I really do not understand that. (And yes, I’ve worked in retail/food service before.) Anyways, major kudos to Jamba Juice customer service. Everybody go buy their smoothies (and don’t forget the coupon) :P

Speaking of customer service responses, I got another letter from Best Buy. A much more personalized and specific letter than the one that came with the gift card. It was very polite and friendly, apologizing for my experience and thanking me for the feedback. They also said they were going to take appropriate action and have people go through training (or something like that, I don’t have the letter in front of me at the moment). They also said to expect a $42 gift card in 3-5 weeks (or in reality, -1 week). Well, now that I know they actually read my letter and responded directly to my complaints, I guess their customer service is a-okay with me now. Maybe I’ll even try shopping at the Sunnyvale store at some point. Maybe.

I was going to complain about some girl cutting in line at Wendy’s on Friday, but I want to play some Pokemon. (I got Pokemon Diamond for Kelvin today at the Toys’R'Us buy 2 DS games get 1 free sale this week, and he’s trying to catch up to where I am in the game. Can’t let that happen.) But if some little ho-bag cuts in front of your line using some sad-puppy-dog face/voice to convince the register person with some bullshit excuse about not being able to order through the drive-thru (”I only want a junior cheeseburger and small fries!”), make sure to bitch-slap her, okay?

New thing I learned today: Shiny Pokemon are Pokemon with an alternate color. The chances of meeting one in the wild or breeding one in Pokemon Diamond/Pearl is 1 in 8192.

If you didn’t, you might want to read part 1.

Angela (who went to Rodney’s high school in South Carolina as well as MIT and is also now living in SF) joined us at Urban Outfitters, which was convenient since she was right outside the store when she called Rodney to see what he was up to. We all went back to Rodney’s place, where we pondered dinner options. Looking at Yelp reviews, all I could figure out was that I wanted to go to Coco Bang, which had gotten okay reviews for soju and was only 0.2 miles away from Rodney’s place. The only reason the place hadn’t gotten better reviews was because people had expected it to be a restaurant too, since it has “Korean BBQ” on it’s sign. Apparently, the place doesn’t have much of a dinner selection and is more of a drinking hangout… at least according to Yelp people. We couldn’t decide on a place to eat, so we just walked in the general direction of Coco Bang and hoped we saw some place that looked promising. After walking around a bit with more indecision, Angela made the final decision of going to a Thai restaurant called Ar Roi.

Walking into Ar Roi, I was impressed with the decor. I don’t think Rodney or Angela were particularly impressed, so I’m guessing I’m just used to all the South Bay Thai restaurants that have incredibly tacky decor. We were seated in the back of the very narrow restaurant (another characteristic of SF restaurants I’m not used to). Despite the decent decor, the prices were reasonable and not much more than other Thai places I’ve been to. We each ordered a different curry, and aside from Kelvin, we ordered various drinks. All the curries were pretty delicious and had good portions. I think the only complaint was that the veggies that came with some of the curries were a bit on the few side; I think my yellow curry only had potatoes. Servers were decent, and the bathroom was clean. Overall, a good Thai restaurant.

During dinner, I showed Angela my engagement ring up close, and I was really amused with her reaction… because it was almost identical to when I first saw the ring. Looking at the ring on my finger, she had the normal it’s-very-nice reaction, but when she saw it from the side, I think she was pretty legitimately impressed based on her comments and close studying of the ring. And being an engineer from MIT, I think it’s fair to say she’s got some level of nerd in her, so I’m glad someone understands why I think the ring is cool in a techie kind of way. I think Kelvin got more validation for his ring choice from (Angela said she “approved” of the ring, hee.).

After dinner, Angela had to leave to meet up with her brother, so Rodney, Kelvin and I went over to Coco Bang (less than a block away from the restaurant). Kind of a hole-in-the-wall joint, and it was only 9PM, so nobody was there. All the tables are separated with little walls covered with ads of pretty happy Korean girls with glasses of soju. High on the back wall, there’s projector projecting Korean and American music videos for background music. Yay, for K-pop.

Speaking of K-pop, if you haven’t heard of Stephen Colbert’s intense rivalry with K-pop star Rain, this video is a must-watch:

The nice Korean waiter said we could sit wherever we want, and he gave us menus. We were here to drink soju, a mild Korean alcohol that is often mixed with sweet stuff to go down easier for alcohol wussies like me. In fact, the menu even highlighted this soju perk, mentioning soju as the “most no taste” drink. We ordered a bottle of yogurt soju and an order of kimchee fried rice as an appetizer (to lightly mask the fact we weren’t just there to drink soju). The kimchee fried rice was actually pretty good, but we were hella stuffed from dinner so we didn’t eat much of it. The Yelp reviews make mention of a spicy chicken that’s also supposed to be good, but we avoided it as it sounded heavy (and reviews also mentioned from not-so-pleasant after-effects from spicy chicken the next day).

Our first bottle of soju was pretty good. In fact, it was REALLY good. It tasted like… yogurt drink. I could barely taste any of the alcohol, IF there was any alcohol. Either there wasn’t any alcohol in the first bottle, or the guy in the back making to soju was increasing the soju-to-juice ratio with each successive bottle. Maybe it was some weird trick to get us all hooked on the first bottle and order more. And we did order more. Next up was apple soju, which was stronger and not as yummy as the yogurt one. (I also happen to really like yogurt drinks, always get them in Taiwan. Yan-leh-duo ftw!) For the apple soju, they also made too much, so there was an extra half-bottle of it, which the waiter said I specifically had to drink (which I did). We ordered another yogurt one, which was DEFINITELY stronger than the first bottle we got. The last bottle we ordered was mango, which was really sweet and mostly drunk by Rodney since Kelvin and I weren’t into the flavor. Around this time, nice Korean waiter guy brought us cheese corn on the house. It was something we saw on the menu but didn’t get because it sounded sketchy. And… it was pretty sketchy. It’s just… cheese on corn. Gwoss. We tried a little bit, felt a little ill, and couldn’t eat anymore. It was nice of them to give us free food, but it made me feel bad we wasted it.

After four bottles of soju, we couldn’t handle anymore. We probably shouldn’t have eaten so much at the Thai place, as it was inhibiting our getting-buzzed-from-soju attempt (which is already tough since soju isn’t very strong). I was both full from Thai food and soju, but I was at least a little buzzed. While it was nice to have background music, the music video player thing ended up on a DVD that only had ONE music video on it. And it’s not just ANY music video; it’s some music video promoting some Korean cell phone thing called AnyCall. So there’s also like 50 variations of this music video/cell phone commercial, playing the same damn song and club scene OVER and OVER again. Totally maddening.

Kelvin and Rodney, you guys might want to skip the next Youtube video if you want to preserve your sanity:

Imagine hearing and seeing parts of that video (particularly 4:04 to 5:15) repeatedly in various iterations ranging from 30 secs to two minutes in length, all ending with some Korean chick whispering “AnyCall”. Ugh. Despite this minor issue, I still really enjoyed Coco Bang; decent soju and food (aside from cheese corn :P) and good service. I’d certainly recommend it if you’re looking for some soju in Nob Hill.

After Coco Bang, Rodney wanted to take us to Cantina since we’ve just warmed up on soju. We went to Rodney’s place to drop off the leftover kimchee rice, and then I decided I didn’t want to leave because I was tired from pigging out and felt like water/soju balloon. So instead of going to get more drinks at Cantina, we did some more boring-Judy-like and played Settlers of Catan. (If only we could do both…) Rodney had just gotten the game and had been eager to play it. The last time I played was at a conference in high school with Chris’ board. Back then, Chris had also just gotten the set, and we were breaking it in with some really annoying guy plus a fourth person I don’t remember. I teamed up with anonymous fourth person to destroy annoying guy, but unfortunately Chris ended up being shafted in the process. Yeah, haven’t seen that board game since. Anyways, we played Settlers until 2AM with me as the winnah. Kelvin somehow managed to only have the initial two settlements throughout the entire game yet manage to get the longest road.

Great Wall of Catan!

Hmmm… I think I’ll give up on recapping the rest of the weekend. Summary of summary pt 3: Ate dim sum in Chinatown, rode train home, went to Kelvin’s Dad’s place for Father’s Day dinner, played with Naomi a lot.

New thing I learned today: Pompholyx is a common skin inflammation that occurs on hands (and sometimes feet) characterized by small, bubble-like blisters.

If anybody is wondering why I’m wearing my ring on my right hand, don’t worry; I’m still engaged :P However, on Monday, this small bubble of skin formed underneath my ring on my left ring finger. I’ve gotten this weird bubble thing before, and I usually just pop it cuz I’m bored. So I popped this one, which was a bad idea because the next day, two more formed next to it. I’ve never had more than one bubble, which is weird. And it’s annoying and itchy. So I’ve moved my engagement ring to my right ring finger, and my brass rat is on vacation in the meantime. I’m pretty sure it’s not an allergic reaction to the ring; most white gold mixtures don’t contain nickel (which I am allergic to), and I’ve already wore this ring for over 2 months. I’m guessing something yucky got caught in the ring and I had an unhappy reaction. I’ve wiped my ring down with alcohol, and I think my finger was unhappiest yesterday, as it seems to be less itchy today. My fingers and ring placement should be back to normal soon.

I’ve put a picture of my messed up finger in the spoiler thingy (which will make no different to people using RSS feed readers).
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I’ve been watching a lot of Avatar:The Last Airbender; we’re almost done with second season. That, along with a busy weekend, has made me a little slow with posting. I also realized Australia’s Next Top Model just finished their third season, so I started watching that as well. Tonight, I have to try and finish up some work, so I’m just going to post what I had so far.

Not much happened Friday. I went to a french cafe called Twist Cafe in downtown Campbell for lunch with my coworkers. I had their rotisserie chicken, which was very moist and delicious. (All their sandwiches sounded too weird for me.) While the chicken was really good, I think maybe French food isn’t my kind of food. None of sandwiches looked appealing to me. And their soda fountain was wonky and not putting enough carbonated water with the syrup (leading to some insanely sweet ginger ale). However, their food is good (if you like French food), they use cups made out of corn, and all the workers have very cool French accents.

Friday night, I took my mother out to Sushi Kuni, a place Mike introduced me to a while ago. I try to take my mother out to dinner every Friday, but I’ve been slacking lately. They were pretty busy, so we had to wait a bit, and eventually we sat at the bar. Which isn’t bad, because we got to watch the sushi chefs make all their goodies. Food was good as always, but the slow service was a bummer.

Saturday, Kelvin and I took the train up to San Francisco to go hang out with Rodney. He’s been meaning to celebrate with us since we got engaged. Thankfully, there was no major event in SF this weekend, so it didn’t take over an hour to get from the train station to Rodney’s place (which is only a few blocks away). While the weather was nice, there was still quite a chilly wind in the city, so after we dropped our stuff off, we went shopping so I can get a sweatshirt or jacket. After going to several stores, I eventually got an overpriced ($60+ after tax!!) sweatshirt at Urban Outfitters. What’s goofy is that, even tho Kelvin found the sweatshirt I got almost as soon as we got into the store, I still spent half an hour to see if there was something better. The same thing happened with my purse. I’m a pretty unsure and indecisive person; apparently the only way to make me make a decision is make the decision for me.

to be continued…

Oh, and I got a letter from Best Buy last week in regards to their messed up advertising concerning Avatar season 1 DVDs and the crappy service I got. It pretty much said… nothing. However, they did give me a $42 gift card to go get the Avatar set. Current price of $52.99 - advertised price of $10.99 = $42. While I’m sure the intent of the card is for me to get the Avatar set, I think I will just use it for whatever. Besides, $52.99+tax - gift card = $15.36 > $11.90 = $10.99+tax, so not exactly what I asked for anyway. I think in my poll, it’s technically the first choice (they responded and did something), even if their reply is pretty minimal and generic. But it’s a good attempt at customer service/appeasing, so I think I’m okay with Best Buy for the moment. Though, I don’t think I can get myself to go back to Sunnyvale store anytime soon.

New thing I learned today: The Sunnyvale Caltrain stop is in Zone 3, while the Lawrence stop is in Zone 4. Apparently, we had previously been spending an extra $1.75 per head per train ride (that’s $7 a round-way trip for 2 people) by taking the ghetto-er Lawrence station instead of Sunnyvale.