Turtles, Pugs, Kendo, and More!

"You still doing that kindoo fighting thing?"

2012-01-19T14:44:00.007-05:00

Kendo still continues for me. It is a never ending process that keeps going even when I'm not practicing it. Just thinking about it is a form of training. Currently this is the normally busy time of the year for us as we've got Rutgers and Cleveland tournaments as well as prep for testing. We also will be hosting a visiting 8th-dan (one that isn't Kato-sensei) come mid-Feb, which will be a nice treat for us. Kato-sensei will be visiting us sometime soon, too, which is always a treat. If I'm not mistaken DC will also be host for the AUSKF board meeting later in December. Important stuff for us, similar to hosting last year's AUSKF camp.

My mind has been mainly focused on getting ready for testing. I'll be testing for 2nd-dan at the Cleveland tournament at the end of March. Will I pass? I think/hope so. There are always doubts in my mind. I continually worry about how my opponent will be during the match. Will they treat it like a proper testing bout and show off the quality of their kendo strikes and form, or will they act like a total asshat and treat the match like a tournament, flailing about with utter disregard to how they look in order to strike a target? It's hard to stay in proper form when up against the latter type.

But that is just an excuse! In actuality you shina (testing) fighting should look and be exactly the same as your shiai (tournament) fighting; nice and elegant, precise movements and forms. That's the ideal thought, at least. Not everyone is capable of doing that or is even aware. I was, like a lot of people currently are, under the impression that they were two very distinct things and you only use one form for testing and one for tournaments. That's not how it should be, but at the same time that's how it kinda is and how people treat it.

In the end none of that matters. I've just got to concentrate on what it is that I need to pass. Good, solid men/kote-men is what I'm being told. Back straight with good footwork and leg movement and timing. Be aware of my hitting distance and feeling out the opponent with my sword. Avoid do strikes (they are more likely to get me in trouble) and blocking or any advanced waza. Basically, I need to show the good foundation of the basics. Anything non-basic will be to my disadvantage. Sounds simple, but I'm already seeing my foundation hasn't been built very solidly (thanks VT!) so it's a continually work-in-progress.

Now that we have an 8th-dan sensei as part of our school there has just been more pressure on us it seems to pass exams. The sensei hate to see their students go in for an exam and fail because in a way it's a representation of them and the school. "Kendoka #203 didn't pass? Oh, he must not have a good teacher, or they must not be showing them proper technique. Don't they have an 8th-dan in their school?". Maybe I could have taken the 2nd-dan test earlier, right away when I was eligible awhile ago last year or the year before if we didn't have a megaboss 8th dan, but it just seems like times have somewhat changed. I understand it, though, because no one wants to see their people fail and you want to make sure they are ready. Well, technically I was given the go ahead to test at Rutgers in February but I was also told if I was going to Cleveland then I should test there with the others since it's only a month away. One more month won't hurt anything. I won't be changing shiai divisions, I'll be testing with other dojo members, and it'll give me an entire additional month to more finely hone what skills I have. So come March/April I will be testing for ni-dan and hopefully have a new rank!

This whole post was actually just going to be me linking a picture I just threw together and it somehow turned into kendo testing thoughts. Anyway, the picture that kinda inspired this post was an old image of me standing side by side with images of this kendo figurine I bought just because I thought it looked somewhat like me. The figure is in a glass case at home but it's been lying on it's side. I've got to remember to set it right side up again.

House of Wax

2012-01-18T14:48:00.003-05:00

So...all my resolutions so far have been broken/not kept up. Sitting here digesting a nice Vanilla Coke and feeling that the broken resolution was absolutely worth it. Hell, I never really liked the idea that resolutions had to start at the first of the year anyway. It's the same logic in thinking that the year 2000 somehow has some sort of magical meaning of significance to it over another year like 2003 because it's a nice, big round number that's divisible by 10. I'll get back on track, though. I guess. Also lost pretty bad at a friend's poker game last weekend. Took last place out of 8 without ever winning a hand, and the worst part about that is that when you're out that early you still have to watch all the other hands while thinking "I would play it like this...".

But all that aside! Taje and I, on MLK day, went to Madame Tussauds' wax museum in DC. It was a pretty nice experience seeing all the life like celebrities and politicians and such. Everything was done in such detail and perfection, especially the figures of those people still living (thanks to modern technology). The care they gave to designing these was such that every sculptures hair was INDIVIDUALLY placed in their hair, dyed, and done up. Here's a sampling of some of the photos we took:

If you want to see all the pictures here's a link to the entire album. Some of these I really enjoyed taking and looking at. ALBUM HERE!

So, yes, it was really an enjoyable outing for us. The one thing that kept going through my mind, while looking at all these real-life figures, was that while sitting next to one they would suddenly grab me and say "Boo!" a la Osbourne.

Do You Have It?

2012-01-05T12:48:00.004-05:00

SWAGGER

Saw this at the store and couldn't help but think, "Who is this intended for?". This product is the exact same kind of thing you'd see in a parody video of items meant to be sold to douchebags, for douchebags, by douchebags. There are guys out there right now with overly gelled haired, sunglasses, and popped collars looking specifically for this deodorant because no other one out there will quite give them that 'beer kegging, frat boy' scent.

2012: A New Beginning

2012-01-03T10:12:00.002-05:00

Well, here we are once more. A new year has started, another new chance for me to update this blog and then forget about it for weeks at a time. Supposedly, though, this time will be different! 2012 shall usher in some new changes for me (excluding the end of the world, which is a shared resolution for us all). These are more reasonable resolutions, I feel, ones that are actually doable and more specific as opposed to previous ones like "Be a better person" or "Get in shape". Unstructured, undefined resolutions are the easiest ones to break. This year I'm looking to put on more weight with a goal set at 190 lbs, get my Network+ certification by the end of February, win at least 1 match at the Cleveland kendo tournament and get ni-dan rank. Can goals be resolutions? I'm not really certain the difference.

One other resolution that I keep starting and breaking is to quit soda. I can do it cold turkey for maybe a week or two, but then the urge just becomes too strong. I came to the conclusion that it's just not going to happen. I need soda. I'm a junkie. I've decided to do the next best thing and that to ration out when I can have soda. Soda is now a weekend ONLY drink (Fri/Sat/Sun). No carbonated drinks of any kind on any of those other days. Right now, as I type this, I have a nice refreshing lemonade to sort of soothe my jangled nerves. Just 3 more days before Friday...

I also would like to exercise more and read more, but there aren't really any true goals for either of those. I suppose studying for the Network+ exam would count as reading more. The latest exam book just got published at the end of last year and it was already scheduled to be shipped to me, so I should be able to start reading it by tomorrow or Thursday evening.

So that's what I'm looking forward to this year. Subtle improvements here and there to ultimately lead me to new success somehow. As for my previous end-of-year activities I spent Christmas day at 3 different family locations (shooting crossbows and eating rice crackers), went out bowling with Taje and friends at a place called King Pinz in Leesburg, and spent a quiet New Year's Eve night at home watching When Harry Met Sally and playing trivia games. What were you up to, and what do you plan on doing for 2012?

Christmas Is A-Comin'

2011-12-13T16:07:00.002-05:00

Christmas is right around the corner and I had almost forgotten how much of a hit it takes to ones wallet. I think next year I'm just going to Scrooge it up and stick with $15 of less gifts for EVERYBODY. I did make a little more money with overtime recently so that's a bit of help there.

One thing that has changed this year is that I won't be spending the morning with my family, but with Taje's. It's not really a huge thing for me not to be there on Christmas (I think), but it will feel a bit different as this will be the first time I'm not there. But hell, it was bound to happen sometime. That is one of the exchanges of being in a relationship with somewhere, not being able to spend all holidays with everyone you want. My folks will be fine with it I'm sure, since all we do is open presents and then go to our rooms to admire the presents. Thanksgiving is actually a bigger holiday for us and we spent it this year with them. Only thing now is that I need to eventually tell them I won't be there next weekend...

I've completed pretty much all the shopping I wanted to do, with maybe the exception of picking up something or other for some other friends maybe this weekend sometime but it's not a big deal. All the major players are taken care of and it's now just a matter of waiting on all the presents to be delivered and/or wrapped. I've got all that wrapping paper stuff ready, just need to find the time to do it. We've also got our little Christmas tree put up. It's nothing major since we just live in a little condo and I'm not looking on getting anything huge, just a 3' tall artificial one that came with lights attached. Doesn't look that bad. Some little stockings hung, maybe throw some tinsel around the place and we are ready to go.

Chicken Trucking Along

2011-11-29T15:55:00.002-05:00

This is a video of a truck. This truck contains chickens. I don't know why I am speaking in that tone in the video. This is an obscure update.

A Day At Whole Foods

2011-11-11T16:07:00.001-05:00

Went to Whole Foods today in Alexandria. I've already forgotten why or what we even got. All I cared about was this:

Food: Tofu Curry and Curry Pan

2011-11-09T12:22:00.004-05:00

I like to watch a lot of cooking shows because I'm already amazed at the wonderful things people can just seemingly produce from foods that are just sitting there in the grocery store. For some reason I have this illogical misconception in the back of my mind that is always telling me "Oh, you see that restaurant food? You can only make that if you have culinary training, a great kitchen and tools, and all the freshest, most expensive ingredients from around world. That's why you pay for it because you can't make this yourself". Well, for the most part I still feel that's true, haha. But that doesn't mean I can't still attempt!

I'm subscribed to a Japanese cooking channel on youtube and one of the recipes I really like the look of and wanted to try was Tofu Curry/Fried Curry Pan from runnyrunny999. Check out the video:

So last night I went to the local GrandMart Asian food store, stocked up on necessary ingredients and gave it try.

The ingredients I'd be using for the task at hand. I've never actually cooked with some of this stuff (ginger, curry powder, Bulldog Brand sauce, tofu and even ground pork). I didn't really clean up enough to give myself a good working space but ingredients that went in together I just combined into one container.

Sauteed minced onions, then added ginger and garlic. After getting that aromatic smell I added ground pork. While browning the pork meat I found that it surprisingly didn't let out as much oil/fat as I'd normally get when browning ground beef. Added and mixed in curry powder and flour after pork was cooked.

Guess this would have been considered the "wet phase" of the dish. Diced tomato and tomato juice, Bulldog Brand sauce (a sweet, Japanese specific sauce used for things like pork tonkatsu), and soy sauce added to give it that proper curry texture and to even it out after adding the curry powder and flour.

After another good mixture chunks of tofu were added to the curry. Now, despite being called tofu curry this dish is by and large mostly pork, so people who are hesitant to trying it because of the word 'tofu' or who might think it's a vegetarian dish you couldn't be more wrong. The tofu almost gets lost in the mixture and is sort of hidden as an aftertaste as it takes on the flavoring of everything else. After the tofu was added the curry was essentially complete. Let it simmer a bit, then combine with some rice.

I realized midway cooking the curry that I hadn't started any rice at all. This was fine because it gave me time to attempt the other portion of the recipe, fried curry pan (bread).

The basic ingredient setup. One glaring difference was that after coming back from the store I realized I didn't have panko bread crumbs. Luckily, I did have some sort of Italian seasoning bread crumbs stored away in the pantry from well over a year ago. The consistency of these was also small and light like panko, so it worked out well in addition to providing some extra flavor.

Here I've got the scoop of curry in the center of one slice of bread with the edges brushed with egg wash. I then combined the two pieces of bread together and crimped their edges tightly so that it wouldn't inadvertently open up during the fry process.

Gave the entire outside of the curry packet a good brushing with egg wash and then covered it entire in bread crumbs. I don't have a normal deep fryer, so I filled a little soup pot about half way with vegetable oil and heated it up. Should I be using vegetable oil for deep frying things? I really don't know.

The final product of the fried curry pan. The one on the right was actually the second one to be fried. There was a whole lot of leftover crumbs from the first one in the pot that continued to heat up and brown in the oil, so when the second one was put into the pot it took on a whole lot of those darker crumbs and I guess the oil was also a bit dirtier, too. They both still tasted fine.

Final curry product on top of bowl of rice. Very good stuff. I maybe could have used a bit more spicy curry, so maybe next time.

See all that black, burnt looking stuff at the bottom of the pot? Those are leftover crumbs from the curry pan that just continued to fry. I would love to know a method of avoiding getting all that next time aside from putting everything in at once or changing out the oil. Was it the ingredients I used, or maybe the oil was too hot? I'm not really certain about any of the measurements I used in these dishes. I was pretty much going entirely by eye.

This whole cooking experiment was actually a very fun thing for me. Used some new foods and cooking processes and just really enjoyed doing it. I also have some left over dinner for tonight, so that's one other less thing I need to buy. Must remember to add this recipe to my recipe book later on.

More Tough Mudder (Media Day)

2011-10-31T13:18:00.011-04:00

More pictures (and videos) from the previous weekend's Tough Mudder event have surfaced. This time they are all of our TM team, Team ManBearCobra! Team ManBearCobra features sisters Katie and Christie, Fred, Stacey, and myself. We were all donning the team bandana throughout.

Team ManBearCobra

[Official Tough Mudder Virginia 2011 Video]

[POV - All Obstacles In 5 Minutes]

One of the many, many piles of old discarded muddy shoes.

Top Chef

2011-10-27T16:38:00.003-04:00

So one of the shows I've been watching a bit more of recently is one of my favorite competitive cooking shows, Top Chef. It's a very simple premise: talented chefs from across the country compete with one another in a series of teamed or individual cooking challenges given to them by the judges in a bid to be the last one voted off the show by given the judges a dish that both meets the requirements of the challenge and tastes good. Why do they do this? The person crowned Top Chef gets that coveted title, $200,000, a feature in Food and Wine magazine, and a showcase at Food and Wine festival in Aspen.

Every show there is a Quickfire challenge, a sort of mini-cooking battle, that usually involves them creating a quick dish or showcasing their cooking skills in order to win the event. The winner of the challenge is awarded either immunity from elimination at the end of the episode, or (nearing the latter episodes of a season) some sort of advantage in the next challenge. After the Quickfire they then are told what the Elimination challenge is, given time to shop for food, and then told to prep their food for whatever event it is they are cooking for. Sometimes they are tasked with making a healthy, nutritious meal for a family with only a $10 budget, or maybe they are catering for a wedding based on the bride/groom's desires, or maybe they are told they have 3 hours to cook a meal for a dining event but mid-cooking are thrown a curve ball that it's only 1.5 hours and now they've got to adjust their meals based on this sudden restrictive.

After all the cooking is done they are then taken in front of the judges which usually are composed of the host, Padma "Hot Stuff, Would Hit It Anytime Anywhere" Lakshmi, the head-judge, Tom Colicchio, and two guest judges for the episode. The guest judges are usually other highly re-known chefs in their own right or owners of certain venues, or charities that the chefs are cooking for. The winner of the chefs gets bragging rights and sometimes an additional featured prize presented to them by the guest judge like new kitchen appliances or a trip for two to some exotic location overseas. The person who made the worst dish gets sent home. The final of the season then usually pits the final two or three competitors against each other with the challenge of just making the best 3 course meal they can come up with (no real restraints, purely whatever they want to cook). The person who makes the best dish then becomes a Top Chef.

What really interests me most about this show is seeing all the various cooking techniques and methods people use to make food. There are so many foods featured on this show that I've never even heard of that the chefs even know how to use in a dish with other things is amazing. I really appreciate the effort these guys put into their dishes, especially under the time restraints, pressures, and requirements put upon them in order to show their culinary fortitude. It looks tough. Even as a guy who maybe cooks one authentic home cooked meal a month I understand the difficulty of these dishes. At the same time, though, while watching the show I fall into the habit of being that annoying TV viewer who can easily sit back and say "Oh, what were they thinking doing that?" or "Well obviously that person is going home, they should know better than to cook THAT way" when in reality I'm not even THERE and have NO idea how to even approach cooking the things they do. I guess it just brings more fun to watching it that way.

One thing I am sure of, when it comes to watching this show, is that I just don't understand people's desire to immediately, right out of the gate try something daring and bold and something they've never done before and aren't sure will even taste good JUST to show the judges that they are daring. Ok, really? It's one thing to try something crazy and outside the box if you're somewhat familiar with it, but why would you play it risky with something you're not sure of when elimination is on the line? I see this in soooo many seasons of Top Chef and more often than not it doesn't pan out well for that person. Other things that don't make sense are people who are told that their challenge is to make something super simple meal that even a kid could copy and they then go to make some overly convoluted, complex, super French technique style dish using rare ingredients because "that's who they are, they don't want to dumb down their style of cooking ever". I wish some of those chefs would just put their pride and ego about their cooking style aside and just focus on the task. Don't try to defend your dish when you're on the chopping block with an excuse of "that's just how I cook" and expect that to mean anything to the judges. They aren't going to give you a pass because you stuck to your guns and just ignored the rules of the competition.

Similar along those lines are the chefs who join the competition who either only do one style/type of cooking, like Southern American or Asian or French, or those who don't really know how to make any desserts or any other culinary classic dishes. I always feel like those people are either overly confident or just woefully ignorant in what the entire show has in store for them. It's not like the first or second season where the show was still new and no one knew what to expect. Season 9 is starting up soon, so if the competitors haven't watched all the previous seasons to understand that, yes, you will eventually need to know how to make a dessert or fillet a fish or make home-made mayo or shuck a clam, then they are just bringing any misery on themselves. I think the most bizarre was the fact that a vegetarian, who only cooked vegetarian/vegan style dishes was on the show. MEAT IS IN EVERY SINGLE DAMN EPISODE AND THEY THEN WHINE THEY THEY ARE OUT OF THEIR ELEMENT WHAT THE HELL, DID YOU HONESTLY EXPECT TO WIN TOP CHEF WITH ALL VEGGIES??? To be Top Chef you really have to be well-rounded and versed in all chefly aspects, I think. The winners have always been true masters.

Like any other reality show it has plenty of personality from the nice guy to the gay person to the silent one to the asshole who doesn't care to the unrememberable one. Plenty of arguments and conflict, and also plenty of people just syncing together. The variety of cooking styles, personalities, events, and challenges in the show really make it a must watch type of show if you enjoy watching people cook. If you can't stand food shows then this would just be one of the worst things for you, but for me I love it. It makes me want to learn to cook more and enjoy different foods from around the world.

I leave this post with a video recipe from Season 6 Top Chef winner. Good stuff.

Engagement

2011-10-27T15:30:00.003-04:00

That one big announcement I mentioned before? Oh, got engaged last week, NBD.

Why is she with me? Does she not know I just desire her brains?

Settling for a kiss on the cheeks.

iPad not really the best resolution for picture taking. Does not do that ring justice!

Utter shock that I'm engaged now.

Yep. Definitely a new chapter in my life.

Tough Mudder VA 2011 (Part 4)

2011-10-25T16:57:00.004-04:00

Last bit of it. Before coming up to this course we also saw one of the greatest things we were hoping for - the Mile 8 marker. Just one more mile to go, meaning the rest of the obstacles were relatively close to one another.

This was the mystery course, one thing we knew we'd come across but had no idea what it would be. From the way the obstacle was angled we couldn't really tell what was on the other side. All we knew was that it was a little climb up the wooden contraption, the sign said we must go feet first, and for whatever reason there is smoke coming out of the top. We also couldn't see what was happening at the top as it was covered and shrouded in black trash bags to keep the mystery going until you actually got to the drop off zone at the top.

When I got to the top I realized it was just a drop straight down a ramp/slide. The only real awkward thing about it was that the drop seemed to be straight down before catching on the curve of the ramp. That slightly worried me, so I tried to position myself in a way that I would huge the side of the wall as I went down with minimal pain. I was probably over thinking it and the thing was real quick. The other mystery thing about this was that yes, once you got to the top you could look down the drop but you had ZERO idea what was on the other side. Would you slide into water? Maybe some mud? Turned out to be nothing, just some cushions. The whole build up was the most exciting part about this course and when it was over it made you look back and just go "Was that it...?" in a state of sudden disappointment because you expected a bit more maybe. Onward!

Here's one of those easy ones again. Crawl through these 'darkened' wooden tunnels like a mouse in a maze. Well, it wasn't all that dark and you could still see light shining in from cracks or openings. Hell, at some bends I could see into the tubes next to me as people to my sides crawled by. Only issue for me again was size restraint, but it just meant I went slightly slow is all. It was a nice wind down given all the other stuff, but nothing of a challenge.

Here's a fun one. Climb up one side of the wooden tower and crawl/walk across the ropes to the other side while a guy sprays you with water. I mention walk because it is possible to walk across these ropes while keeping your balance. I did it for a little while but ever so slowly because I kept getting worried at the thought my foot would slip between the holes and my leg would fall through, making it super hard for me to get out of. The rope was tight enough to walk on and I was managing it for a bit, but then water in my face was getting to me and I just crawled across it and climbed down the other side.

The last of the upper body strength ones. This was a combination of both being able to climb up, running at a quick enough pace, and knowing not to stop running but instead try to keep running up the walls before reaching for the top or a hand. Like the wall obstacles I could get my hands to the top but definitely needed help pulling myself up. Shame.

Ok, this one I was looking forward to just to help me dry off. I wanted to just be engulfed by fire and be warm and toasty. It was quite like the picture shown here, though. This was more of a path laid out and on both sides were piles of kerosene soaked hay on fire, but mostly just emitting a lot of smoke everywhere. This event became more of a run through all the smoke than a fire run. Even the final little line of fire at the end seemed to have died down by the time our wave had got there. Alas.

And this last one marked the finale of our journey and one of the obstacles I was most curious about. I have never been tasered, shocked, zapped or done anything with electricity before so it was interesting to see what this would feel like. Not really what I was expecting. Remember back in school, with those cheap plastic chairs and the metal legs, the ones you could rub your ass on and then get up and shock somebody with when you touched them? These were like getting statically shocked by someone but just way way stronger. The ones I ran through hit me mostly on my right side arm and leg. Wasn't the worst thing in the world, and definitely got me moving. And right after that, not even 50 meters away? The finish line!

As soon as we crossed we were awarded with our ceremonial Tough Mudder orange headbands, indicating we had completed the challenge, a TM t-shirt, some food and milk shakes and a beer.

Mission complete. There is so much more I could say, but it's best if everyone knows that it is truly is an amazing event and great feeling of accomplishment to complete this course. Our team completion time was about 4h50m for this 9~ mile course up and down hills and through obstacles all along this mountain. I'm happy with what I did. I've lived through it all, completed it all, came back sore and I'm still here. One of things I'm glad I at least tried. Will I make it an annual thing? Probably not, but one things for sure that if I did I would get myself in much better shape before attempting it again.

I am tough!

Tough Mudder VA 2011 (Part 3)

2011-10-25T16:20:00.003-04:00

Back for more.

The longest, seemingly non-stop uphill march of the day. Felt like at LEAST 1 mile in length of just trudging through uphill fields of mud and grass and rocks. Hated this so much. After every turn we came to that looked like it could be the top and the ground would level off it just turned and we could see another path of more uphill grinding. Foot-by-foot we marched on. I'd be truly amazed if anybody actually ran this uphill event. After the Chernobyl this was the 2nd worst event in my opinion. I think this was way worse for me because I had hurt my hip/leg on the slide so by this time I was starting to hobble and having burning calves wasn't helping any much either. This obstacle is probably the one that caused me the most pain. Plus, there really is no good place to stop to just rest because if you do you're just standing there trying to balance yourself at an angle while on this hill. Just had to keep going on. I hate hills.

This course I honestly didn't mind because I didn't realize it was a course. I seriously thought we were still on the death march because this was also uphill, just a bit muddier. It all blended together for me as "uphill obstacle I hate".

Truly there was no better course for the name of this whole event than this one. Crawling through this mud actually wasn't bad. I think the wires were held up much hire than 8" off the ground as people were just crawling on hands and knees just fine without having to get their whole chest on the ground. I did, though. Same problem as with the tubes, my legs are just too long so my back kept hitting the wiring. Angled forward, got a little muddy and kept on trucking through. I think it would have been a bit better if it was muddier (more wet) and wires lower, forcing everyone on their belly for a real mud crawl. Still had that primal feeling to it we were all looking for in any case.

This one was too easy for me. The low logs you have to climb over I could almost step over and the high logs you go under I just glide under when I bend. I thought it was just real simple, no real challenge here. Shorter people got more out of it for the low logs because they at least had to throw their bodies over and climb them.

After thinking about it I'm realizing there WAS another course that I don't think was featured on the map or events description early on even before the log carry and it seemed to be some sort of climbing over wet hay stacks one.

Thinking about it again and there actually were TWO hack stack/barrel type courses not listed, aside from all these other ones. The second one was closer to the end and featured jumping up one barrel and then up onto another barrel then climing down the other side. Interesting ones, not overly difficult especially once you made it up the first barrel.

If I do remember correctly this one actually came right AFTER the Chernobyl ice bath event much earlier on than is listed on the map. Climbing up these ropes was actually pretty fun with all the other people next to you. After getting over the top I took a turn and replaced some guy who was keeping the nets stable enough for people to climb at the bottom. Holding down the ropes is really very helpful as they were just very loose without people there and it's always nice to help out all the others doing all this crazy stuff with you.

So after the hay barrels we came across the 2nd set of walls. Hated these just as much. Actually, no, even more because these were maybe a foot or so taller than the previous walls. Couldn't make it over without help again. Bah.

Ughhh. Get lightly sprayed by water and crawl through sand. Doesn't like a lot fun at all. This wasn't as horrible as it could have been, although it still had it's downsides. This was set up identical to the mud crawl under the wire except replace mud with sand. The thing about this sand was that it wasn't just pure dry sand; it was semi-wet and like a soft mud so it had a different texture to it then imagined so less sand stuck to you. Sand did still get stuck to you, though. Much like the previous mud crawl the wire was higher than expected so a lot of people didn't get it all on their stomachs (knees/hands/elbows were still very sandy).

One more part to finish this all off.

Tough Mudder VA 2011 (Part 2)

2011-10-25T14:41:00.003-04:00

Tough Mudder rundown continued!

I liked this one a bit. It had the whole running through a forest, jumping over logs and stumps thing going for it. It gave it a real outdoorsy feel to it. It might also have something to do with the fact that I like to imagine myself sometimes being chased or chasing someone in the movies through the woods, you know? "Ahh, look at how that guy is moving and jumping slowly over these logs. I could do it way better no problem!" It's definitely a weird sensation hopping over these downed logs. It's just not something you're accustomed to, especially for people who don't live anywhere near a wooded area. What could have made this way better would have been not having to go at a slugs pace due to all the other people in front and around me. There were so many people you really were only given one path to go over the logs (unless you just got in people's way), and after you got back on the path you couldn't really go at a faster pace than the person in front of you without jumping off course into the bushes.

Alright, THIS was the goddamn devil. Easily the worst obstacle of the course and it wasn't because of any difficulty factory (it was just get dunked in water and come out the other side). The reason this one sucked was because it was the first time you had to get submerged in water, assuming you didn't fall in previous ones, and the fact that this was arctic ice cold water. The absolute coldest water I've ever been in. It was the shock and realization of the temperature once you dived in that got to people, and then the fact it was actually pretty hard to climb out of on the other side due to lack of any foot stool. When we came up on the other side of the wooden board we had to duck under we were just submerged in what seemed like pure ice/slush almost. Words can't really describe this one, which is also why it sucked. The description of the obstacle mentions ice but almost as a passing thought, whereas everybody was thinking about the meanings of the "chemicals", the dyes, and the use of the word "Chernobyl". It would have been less of a hated thing if it had been called "Hell's Ice Bath" instead.

Notice the amount of ice that greets you on the other side of the wooden board.

And the general reaction everyone had to realizing what they had just done.

Yes, this just absolutely was the worst obstacle and we would continue talking about it the entire day. It couldn't be helped because the effects of the cold ice water lingered with us for the entire day. Now out clothes were all cold and wet, there's no real way to dry off, the temperature has risen above mid-50s, and our shoes/socks are soaked. Have you ever gotten tennis wet before, as in you went walking-in-a-lake-with-them wet? Unlike a shirt they don't get dry just by themselves. And they never got dry. My shoes were soaking wet the entire adventure and even in the plastic bag I put them in that evening. They're sitting on my porch outside right now and are probably still wet. Cold wet shoes and socks are the worst thing to have. So yeah, after that obstacle we were not only starting to get tired from all the jogging, hills, and obstacles but we were also cold and wet. Oh, and around that time we also passed the Mile 2 marker. Only roughly 4/5 of the whole event to go.

And the fun continues! Once again we had to fully submerge ourselves in water and duck our heads under rows of these tubes. Keep in mind, throughout this whole trek we can't really see the next obstacle, nor did any of us memorize what was supposed to be next. All we know is that after that horrible ice bath we went marching and then came upon another water station. Not the funnest thing to see. We had just started to slightly dry off, too, and then more water. It's very detrimental to our goal of getting warm, but no matter, we went forward like troops! This wasn't really that bad or hard, it was just the whole getting wet again so soon that got to us. Thankfully this was NOT ice water, just regular cold water. Got out of there as soon as we could and moved on to the next place.

This bastard of an obstacle had mixed reviews by everybody. In theory, it looks like a big slip-n-slide down a hill and into a mini pool of water. One of the problems we had with this thing was that it wasn't very slippery at all in some places and you had to force yourself to slide. When I went down I actually just stopped at one place and had to stand up and maneuver myself and 're-slide'. It's ironic because if it wasn't slippery enough other found it too slippery and were losing control, crashing into others. Last thing about this was that it seemed to be just a plastic tarp thrown over a hill. When we were going down we could clearly feel patches of rocks here and there as we slid. One of my teammates got really hurt on her back because of this and that just ruins the fun. When parts of the obstacle just flat out hurt you as opposed to you getting hurt because of something you did it makes you question why you signed up for the event. So yes, wasn't that great of an obstacle at all and definitely in the top 3 worst ones there just because of the feeling of rocks scrapping your sides as you slide. Oh, yeah, we also got wet again at the bottom of the slide to add insult to injury. Moving on.

Another wet course. I can't tell you how tired we were of getting wet at this point so we just flew through this one. Crawl through the tube, tube is partially submerged in muddy water. No real problems here other than for me, due to my size, my back and shoulders were constantly pressed up against the sides of the tube. This made my crawling a bit more difficult (damnable long legs!) so I had to lurch forward a bit more at a weird angle in order to continue through. The tube also started to go uphill and I had to change positions again (a more lay on my side position) because I couldn't get a good enough grip on the ground/sides in my current angle to also move upward. It was a little weird but I managed.

Personal bane for me, and it was more how the wall was presented. This was another obstacle that caused traffic so we were waiting in line to complete it. Once it was our turn we basically just walk straight up to the wall, jump up and grab the top and have to pull ourselves up. Not happening for me. I just don't have the upper body strength to pull my entire self up. My arms are far to long and lanky to do it from an idle position. I was really not thinking about the obstacle before because I had assumed I'd have gotten a running start/jump and then use momentum to carry me over, but that wasn't happening with all the people. Thankfully, those who could manage the wall would climb up and wait at the top and then basically pull others up who couldn't. For me it wasn't a reaching the top issue, just a getting my body over it. Others just couldn't reach the top. I swear, without the help of the other Mudders and my teammates this is one obstacle I would have NOT been able to do on my own. So thank you all for pulling my orangutang like body up and over.

Still more to come!

Tough Mudder VA 2011 (Part 1)

2011-10-25T12:10:00.004-04:00

So, last weekend I completed a very difficult obstacle course/race/event with some of my friends called the Tough Mudder. I came back from this thing feeling wiped out and sore, especially in the legs. It was a great event all around and I just thought I'd share some of my thoughts on the obstacles that stood between me and a free beer at the end of the course.

This is a map of the whole layout and courses. It was approximately 9-10 miles in length with 25 different obstacles to go through in between the jogging up and down hills and through the mountains.

The MC at the opening gates was doing a good job prepping people for the event. We all got in that communal tribe mentality with our hooping and hollering, beating our chest to the thought of conquering the beast before us. We made our pledge, paid respect to the flag, and vocalized in unison our desires and then we were off! At this point in the event we weren't tired, we were mentally excited and eager to go and that's just what we did. Everyone was at a jogging/running pace and the day had begun.

Some of these events might actually be out of place on the map. I think this was our third thing, but no matter. There really wasn't much to this one, just run underneath the nets at a lower gap then normal. For a taller person it's obviously worse but nothing that hindered me.

Still nothing really difficult. This didn't feel like much of an obstacle at all, more like just continually running through the fields except now there was a bit of mist in the air from hoses. It was more annoying than anything because who wants to be misted by cold water early in the morning as a way to start their run?

Alright, I must say that even though this was only the 4th event it took us about an hour to get there. Well before this we had been greeted with ungodly uphill treks up the mountain and slow dangerous footstep ones down it. That's one thing that needs to be mentioned is that this whole place is normally a ski resort, the black diamond variety, and we are going up and down these hills CONSTANTLY. I can't stress that CONSTANTLY enough because these are easily 3-4 miles worth of hills alone throughout the whole event which your legs will not appreciate latter on.

Now, as for this event we had the option of either doing team logs or individual ones. By the time our wave of runners had made it to the log pile there were not a whole lot of team logs left and we all decided to just carry our own. I made the mistake of getting a log that looked hefty (as to garner man points) but was really short. This meant I couldn't balance it properly on my shoulder, which would have been the best way of doing it, and had to underhand it up and down another hill. Not fun. Good log selection can really make the difference in this event.

Ok, this event was a fun one that I was looking forward to doing. I remember monkey bars back in the day as being really fun to do as a kid and I knew completing this would be a testament to my lack of upper body strength issue. The challenge with these bars, however, wasn't the threat of falling into cold water below but that the angle of the bars goes upward so you'd have to reach out farther. The other problem, from what I was told, was that the bars themselves were rotating. I didn't notice that really, wasn't too busy concerning myself with not letting go. Once I started this it became apparent that just taking my time and going methodically from bar to bar wasn't going to be enough given the angle I had to reach at. My body quickly built up momentum from swinging itself and I used it to carry myself across like a pendulum. Would not have made it otherwise. The good news was once I got to the half way mark then the bars angled back downwards making it easier to grab them. I completed this tasks san-water drop and I was happy. When I looked back on pictures posted by the Tough Mudder facebook group I noticed some people had taken interesting approaches to this challenge such as hooking their legs between the bars instead of dangling, and even once person got up OVER the bars and just crawled on top of them to the other side. Kind of ruins the whole swing-like-a-monkey vibe you normally associate with monkey bars, but it works!

One other obstacle I looked forward to was balance beam over water. I've always felt I had good balance and I thought this would be easy. Well, not as easy as it could have been. The problem was that the obstacle had become so clustered with people waiting in line and people going so slowly across the beams that the coordinators started telling us to go multiple people at a time, not to wait for the person in front to fall or complete it first before we started. This meant that all the movement and vibrations from the other persons steps traveled to your end of the beam, forcing you to constantly readjust your balance so you wouldn't take a dive. I managed to make it across although there were severely times I was standing there wobbling, even crouching down almost ready to fall over. Made it across and then watched one of the funniest things of the day happened. One of my teammates started coming across and we were rooting him on, watching as he was wobbling and adjusting with his arms to stay up. The whole beam is shaky and it's a pain and he's taking his time rightly so and he makes it a little more than half way across. But then, a guy on another beam (not as far along across) next to him loses his balances and falls over in the direction of my friend's beam. The guy puts out his arms to prevent injuring himself on the beam and grabs it, shaking it just enough for my friend to finally keel over the side into the water. When he came across he was sad he fell over, and then we told him what happened and he wasn't to pleased. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I got a real tickle out of watching my friend get soaked on account of someone else doings. It put a smile on my face. He was fine with it, but still just annoyed he got unnecessarily wet.

Alright, this is turning out to be a super long post and that was only 6 out of the 25 obstacles! I will have to make several other posts about this latter as there's just too much to talk about in one entry.

FILLER

2011-10-24T11:08:00.004-04:00

This has been an atrocious month for me in terms of even attempting to update this site. A lot has been going on recently for me from work to activities to real world drama and my head feels like it's just been up in the clouds lately. I really haven't had much time to even think about posting, but now I think I do. Stuff is still going on and it looks like it will continue to go on almost every weekend for quite some time, but maybe that's just life. It feels so weird having things to do!

In any case, tomorrow(*) I will have a huge post about an event I went to this last weekend which is still killing me even today, the VA Tough Mudder. It was a pretty huge event and really difficult, so much in fact that I don't even know if my body will be ready for this coming weekend's Kato-sensei kendo seminar. There's also another major announcement which I will post about it in own separate post later this week as well.

* - Subject to change if I remember or care.

Slow

2011-09-27T14:58:00.002-04:00

It feels like a slow day today. Nothing really is going on with me here. There isn't any events happening in the near future for me, work has slowed down back to it's old snail pace, and things are starting to become habitual in all parts of my life for the first time. Oh, I guess the condo people turned off our building's A/C so that's something, I guess.

I'm here at my work desk trying to clean up my PC desktop and found a few pictures I forgot to post so figured now was as good a time as any.

This is one of those McDonald's charity boxes you see when going through their drive-thru. A real shame that someone would use it as a waste receptacle.

I saw this picture and immediately thought it was a joke. Blockbuster already has enough financial problems, what with it's bankruptcy and all, so I don't understand how they can try to branch out to trying these dropbox bins. The local Blockbuster down the street had recently closed, and then a couple weeks later this thing appears. I mean, really?

Random thought - if I marry a princess do I become king?

Myers-Briggs Personality Test

2011-09-23T10:36:00.003-04:00

Based on this ONE website that had a quick Myers-Briggs personality test my personality type is ISTJ.

ISTJ Strength Preferences %

Introvert - 89%
Sensing - 12%
Thinking - 50%
Judging - 89%

You are:

very expressed introvert
slightly expressed sensing personality
moderately expressed thinking personality
very expressed judging personality

Careers that would suit my personality type include: law, military training, security services, management, administration management, accounting, computer programming, technology education, physician(surgery), and dentist/dental assistant.

Famous people who have the same personality type include Clint Eastwood, Herbert Hoover, Kirk Douglas, Harry S. Truman, and Greta Garbo.

So I guess what this thing was telling me is that I'm an extreme introvert, always looking in on myself while also judging you and I don't have much capability in sensing different things because I'm only kinda thinking about them.

Bad Good Kendo and Bad Bad Kendo

2011-09-08T11:35:00.003-04:00

One thing I've noticed during keiko is that it can suck when you fight someone so overwhelmingly better than you, especially when they are going at you full force as if you were an equal. I'm not overly good, so when I fight a high ranking sensei it would be nice of them not to just use me as their own personal target practice as I flail about trying to figure out what to do. I've been in situations where they would not give me any advice or chance, even when I try switching up my strikes and methods, and fight me as if I'm on par with them.

Ideally, I think it's best if you're really better than someone to fight just a bit better than them while giving them a chance to slowly realize what they need to do to get over that hump to get a good strike in. If kendo skill could be judge on a scale of (1-10) and you're a 9 fighting a 3 you do not need to be going at 9 pace, just bring it down to 4 or 5. This gives the person a better opportunity to learn and develop their abilities. If you just rape someone and give them no chance at all then that's going to mentally discourage them and they won't have learned anything from their mistakes. People have actually quit kendo after situations like that, feeling they haven't improved and they are just terrible, when in fact it may have just been the case of a merciless sempai wanting to show the world how great they were at beating up a 4-kyu. This is why it can suck to fight someone who is just way out of your league sometimes.

On the other hand, it's also no fun to fight someone who is so bad that you can't really fight them. An example of this would be people who have just started wearing bogu, especially those who sorta rushed into it. I've fought many people who don't have proper form/posture/timing/etc when it comes to keiko. When they do regular waza practice it's fine, yes, but as soon as they get into a match everything for them is thrown out the window because their targets are no longer standing still in one place but moving all about and fighting back. This is actually more of a rant because, yes, I know they are new, but at the same time it's hard to show them the 'flow' of a match when they just seem really scatter brained. The guy who moves forward to strike and then pauses or moves backwards after hitting, or the guy who just throws out kotes anywhere at anytime repeatedly without any ki-ken-tai-icchi, or the zanshinless silent ones. Ughh, drives me crazy. The type that makes it the hardest are the ones who still don't know how to move properly, the ones who have such an oddball method of coming at you it makes your own strikes impossible to land making your own kendo look ugly. It's all a part of the learning process, I know, but there are some folks out there who don't learn and have been doing the same things for a long time. THAT'S when it gets worrisome, when the bad keiko habits and forms become their norm.

Bad keiko/kendo can just really drive me nuts sometimes. Newbies are fine, but people like in this video wearing full bogu? NO!!!!

New Compudah

2011-09-01T09:55:00.004-04:00

The little one is super excited now because she finally got herself a new laptop to replace her smoking/burning HP one. This new one appears to have everything she desires (small screen, travel size, can play Sims 3) and she'll probably spend the rest of the weekend configuring it, installing programs, and transferring any data she has to it, specifically data she has downloaded onto my desktop PC. Now we will have a total of 6 machines at our place: 3 desktops and 3 laptops (3 of which are active). Her HP will probably just be used as a doorstop or temporary back-up/storage space since it can't really do much else.

The look of joy and happiness is priceless.

Car + Pole = Wutda?

2011-08-29T15:02:00.002-04:00

This is just a quick video I took of some random damage that happened a Sunday I was going into work. A car got out of control and split a powerline pole completely from it's base, sending it flying across the street. I would have really loved to have seen the damage to the car itself or at least known what kind was able to totally send the pole that far. The fact that the pole did not just collapse over with wires snapping and flaying is amazing. Instead, you get an image like it's just hovering in space kinda. Those cables/wires were able to keep the rest of the pole suspended AND keep their power. Durable!

Camp Photos

2011-08-24T14:54:00.003-04:00

Hey, I was in an earthquake yesterday and survived it. The sudden realization that I could die by earthquake at any second made me appreciate life much more and so I decided to post an update.

Actually, a photo album of the kendo camp has appeared just like I was hoping for so now I can share some of them with you. The entire thing was 144 photos worth and I just selected a few for your viewing pleasure that I thought had some more appeal to them.

Oh, look at that handsome unshaven devil in white.

Kato-sensei during a demonstration of waza.

Maybe this was kaeshi-do? Edit: More likely it's men-suriage-men!

Listen and learn...

Some of the shinsa (testing) candidates. We almost had a 100% passing rate this year!

Group photo. Only took about 10 minutes to get assembled and figure out how the timer worked.

Shidogakuin Kendo Camp 2011

2011-08-23T12:24:00.003-04:00

You know, camp seems like a blurr now. It's been over two weeks now since it happened and I've already started to forget some of the events. Like the other times I've been to camp it seemed hard at first but before you knew it everything was over in a flash. This camp for some reason I was in a bit of a haze, and it didn't really seem like I was aware of what was going on around me most of the time. I attribute this partially to the constant tiredness I was experiencing brought on both by the training and the swimming. I really didn't partake in a whole lot of the late night activities this year, favoring sleep instead, but it's all good.

Everyone had a great time, both veterans to the camp and those experience it for the first time. The nationals people got there own special training from one of the sensei, which from my vantage point looked to be non-stop keiko. My side got down and dirty with constant basic practice one waza after another. At some points it felt more like endurance training as there wasn't much moments rest in between. Surprisingly it didn't seem like I had the chance to do much sparring with non-sensei. Free keiko at the end of the day usually just ended up being lining up in front of a sensei, sparring them for a minute, then getting in another line and waiting awhile. Wish I could have had a chance to fight everyone maybe once.

I was really happy that this year we got to go swimming again. It was a good way to relax and just chill out and unwind. Swimming in the water, even just wading through it, is just so nice and a real reward to look forward to after a practice. I felt really bad for some of the people, though, since they stated a rule that if you were testing and required kata then you had to spend that swimming/kata free practice time doing kata. Some people had brought swim gear looking forward to the pool but then had to do kata instead. Making it a required thing seemed a bit much seeing as how we did kata in the morning for a bit AND had another hour and a half kata session every night, but I guess they wanted to make sure everyone had it absolutely down for shinsa. Also surprised that we didn't get shown the new kata that came out a bit ago like we did last year. Maybe it's just not as big a concern yet in the kendo world.

I usually left my phone in my room and I regret doing this as it meant I didn't have a chance to take a lot of pictures or video, especially of actual practice. There are a few pictures here and there but none of real practices. If I ever find a compilation of camp photos I'll probably link to it in another post.

Gi Tree

Late night bromance.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

2011-08-09T10:33:00.003-04:00

Good morning!

It has been awhile since I've made any kind of real update at all, but all with good reason. Been very busy with work (like always), kendo events, and more. A bunch of different things have been going on in my life lately but today I felt like just discussing really two of those things: Shidogakuin kendo camp 2011 has come and gone and Taje, featured girlfriend of this blog, has moved in with me.

Yeah, she moved in with me about two weeks ago. Is it a big change in our lives? Absolutely, but we felt we were ready for it. We spend so much time together any ways that it only made sense. Easier for us to spend time together, better financially for both of us, and was just the next step in our relationship. There's definitely been some adjustments in the lifestyle and ways I've normally done things when I was living alone but I'd be a fool not to have expected that, and there's adjustments for her as well.

Over the past several weeks we've spent time cleaning up her apartment and moving things back and forth. The most hassling thing was moving her furniture out, but thankfully her family showed up in droves to assist with that.

Her family sitting around the dining room table at our condo. It's somewhat ironic that in one day she has had 8-9 members of her family all over at the condo and I still have yet to have my parents over.

One other good thing about getting her moved in was that we needed to make room for her stuff. That meant we were forced to clean up the whole place INCLUDING the 2nd bedroom. Her furniture and much of her stuff in now in that bedroom and it actual looks like a real room instead of a waste dump I was using it as before.

The new look upon entering the 2nd bedroom. Couch, bookshelves, and desk all give it that 'real room' feel.

Her little glass desk, which she valued above all the other furniture.

Bags of clothing, books, DVDs, purses and shoes. Her dresser is going in the closet once room is made.

The one solitary piece of furniture that did not get put into the bedroom. The red chair actually gives the living room a bunch of color, and contrasts with the black furniture pretty well while also sectioning off the little TV area making it feel more communal. I do not find it very comfortable, though.

Well, that's been a little update about what's been going on in my life lately and another look into my condo. I mentioned kendo camp above but that can be it's own separate entry some other time.

Hey, It's Kinda Hot This Week

2011-07-22T10:28:00.003-04:00

Yes, this is very poor excuse of an update, I know. Believe me when I said I was planning on updating this blog way earlier with actual content but it's just been so tiring lately. Work continues to be work and my social life is just busy busy busy still with the girlfriend, kendo, events, and family.

Things should hopefully start to slow down here in the near future, though. That's a good thing as it will then give me time to get some things started that have long been overdue like the cleaning of my 2nd bedroom or the starting of studying for a new certification. I keep telling myself I've got to get these things done and then when I have time I just don't have the energy or desire. It's the same feeling I'm getting right now as I type this; I want to keep going and actually change this update into one about summer movies I've seen and new movies that will be coming out but no, I'm done for now. Maybe later.

Ok, Really?

2011-06-10T13:09:00.002-04:00

This is some serious false advertisement. Here's a picture of a new item from the vending machine that got my hopes up.

Saw it and started thinking I was going to be getting some nice, doughy little mini cinnamon bons. I was going to warm them up in the microwave and everything. What exactly did I get?

Hopes dashed. As for the taste? Absolutely crushed hopes.

Time Management

2011-05-26T14:48:00.003-04:00

Yesterday we had a scheduled, mandatory conference-call/meeting. It was an hour long~ meeting all about better ways of time management. The idea of time management meetings and them being over an hour long is, by itself, already priceless. The meeting also seemed to take away ALL senior staff and administrators away from their tasks just to attend. The meeting, like I figured it would be, was a waste of time.

When we arrived we were given a 15-page pdf handout that basically spelled out everything that was going to be discussed. It contained examples of what was wasteful activities such as chatting, e-mail, friends, family, procrastination, etc. and how you can avoid this sort of stuff like making lists of tasks, goal setting, charting how you spend your time, being a multi-tasker, etc. I can't speak for the other people there, but if those sort of things aren't already obvious then I feel sad for those who would actually benefit from this meeting.

It seemed random other stuff was listed as well, such as eat a good diet and get some sleep and take time for meditation/spiritual outlook. The book was all over the place. Some of it was helpful, other stuff just so bluntly obvious it felt insulting and made me sad to think we paid for this stuff. My favorite part reading through the booklet was a Q&A section where it asked you to list some time wasting activities you partake in, then it asked you how you felt doing them. How did I feel looking at the internet, checking my email, chatting with people, and generally goofing off? Pretty good. Glad I got paid to do that.

The other thing about this 'meeting' was that it wasn't really a meeting per se, but us dialing into a conference call number and just listening to a prerecorded track that started playing at a certain time. The people who set this up weren't there in person, or on the phone to take questions or anything. The whole thing was basically the equivalent of sending us a PDF to read and a WAV file to listen to AND THAT'S IT. And my job paid for us to be there! The other annoying part about this whole meeting was that in the room we were in we couldn't hear the audio really at all. It was garbled and loud and they spent about 10 minutes trying to adjust the volume while we just sat there unable to hear.

Eventually they came up with the grand idea to move everybody from the 1st floor meeting area to the 3rd floor conference room for better sound quality. Only 15 minutes into the actual lecture on time management, no irony there. When the 20 or so people started to leave for the 3rd floor what did they do? They decided to all wait outside the ELEVATOR and go up 5-6 people at a time as opposed to everyone getting up there in a minute by taking the stairs which were right next to the elevator. It really drove me crazy seeing people waste so much time trying to get into a time management meeting.

So, what did I do? I walked off. Decided I wasn't going to be a part of this meeting and went immediately to work on some computer issues that needed to be resolved. It felt good. I resolved about 4-5 computer related issues in the next 50 minutes while everybody else was upstairs listening to the unnecessary phone call. Hell, I read through the book AND did all my work while everyone was in the meeting, so not only was I ahead of the game in knowing about time management but I also got additional things done in the time it took for everybody to come back downstairs. So if anybody was going to comment on me not being there at a mandatory meeting then they would be getting an earful from me.

But am I saying I'm GOOD at time management? No, I'm just saying I understand it. Just because a person attends a meeting doesn't mean they suddenly become a master of X and are immediately able to use X. I understand time management just fine, I just choose not to use it in certain cases in favor of goofing off. Examples include all the time I just now spent writing this post, and the fact today after I burned a CD for a coworker instead of labeling it with simple text I felt the urge to look up Pokemon images and draw them on the cd.

I manage my time exactly how I feel it needs to be managed. My tasks still get done and no problems here!

My Blog! (Now With More 10% More Michael)

2011-05-25T21:03:00.002-04:00

Remember that post about how my glasses were broken and new ones were coming? Well, they arrived (like 2 weeks ago) and they are certainly very spiffy. These new ones have more of a fashion/design style going for them and they definitely feel like they are more prone to being broken while at the same time they feel sturdier, if that makes any sense. Voila!

I also got over 2 years worth of contacts. Normally it would be just a one year supply but because I'm not wearing them on a daily basis I was told I could stretch each one-month pair out to two months. For most people that would be pointless as they'd be getting a new check up and most likely new prescription in in a year so the extra contacts would be wasted. But I'm not most people. I feel fine starting my sentences with "but". I also don't visit all my doctors for my yearly checkups. The only reason I have new glasses now is because the old ones broke, forcing my hand, otherwise I would have been on a two year stretch.

It works for me, though. My prescription is ever so slowly steadying and one day it will be stable enough for some sort of Lasik surgery. But when that happens that means I'll no longer have to wear glasses. Glasses do give me a distinguishing intellectual look, too, so it will be a petty to be without them. Maybe I'll get some non-prescription frames or something just to be hip.

By Odin's BEARD

2011-05-06T16:34:00.002-04:00

I feel completely naked today. The frame works of my glasses completely snapped this morning when I was trying to clean the lens of smudges. I don't have a backup pair. Actually, that isn't true. I do have a backup pair someone in my place but it's got a prescription in it I think that dates back to when I was in high school still. Not even worth looking for them.

I've got my contacts in now, and will probably have them in for maybe the next 2 weeks. I scheduled a visit with the optometrist today and I'll be seeing them next Tuesday. I needed to do it anyway since my current prescription is about 2 years old. I've been avoiding an appointment solely because I'm lazy but I guess necessity has a way of lighting a fire up under one's ass. Going to get 2 new frames, more contacts, and updated prescription at least.

Since I've already got my contacts in today and I was planning on seeing Thor tonight I guess I might as well give this whole 3-D business another try. I really don't think it will be worth it, but who knows. Maybe the sight of Mjolnir being hurled out of the screen and nearly ALL UP IN MY THREE DIMENSIONAL FACE will make me a believer.

Four Thor For Sure Is More. Score!

Easter Media Post

2011-04-25T10:22:00.003-04:00

Hey, how are you? How did you spend your Easter? I played basketball with Taje's family.

Here is a video of a baby trying to be an old man.

Love!

Basketball

Baskteball, Too

Turtles

2011-04-22T01:34:00.001-04:00

From today's XKCD.com:

Life can be so simple sometimes.

8"

2011-04-18T11:26:00.002-04:00

"What would a combination of a pug, turtle and eagle look like?" - Evil Mike

It would look ugly, because of the pug DNA.

-Excerpt from the Urizone.

This weekend we had another kendo tournament out in Exton, PA. I did not do well at all. In fact, this was probably my worst tournament results ever. Lost immediately in individuals and lost my team match. This isn't the first time this has happened, but what makes it the worst is because my jaw was smashed in and I was struck by a "scrote", the scrote being a missed kote strike that goes no where near my wrist and instead finds it's way further down my leg and striking my scrotum. The strike hit my inner thigh and then the sword tip was carried upward with the force of a 250 lb man barreling into me. If you've never been hit there believe me that it is INVIGORATING to say the least. There is a distinct red mark on my thigh now and painful, psychological damage in my mind.

I find when I lose outright in tournaments like this I get moody and no longer wish to be social. I'll clam up and then sulk away in some corner. I like being left alone to ponder events. I actually do not like to be told "It's ok, you'll do better next time. Good effort!" Something about that just rubs me the wrong way. Is that bad sportsmanship, wanting to just be left alone to cool off? I don't know.

I really do need to practice more and get into more of a shia mindset. I give my opponents to many liberties. Like one of my sensei told me I am "too nice" during matches. Guess I'll just have to sweep the leg.

A Real Update For Real

2011-04-10T15:23:00.004-04:00

-You look like a 2 dollar whore. And keep in mind the dollar is weak right now."

Alright, so yes I am all too well aware that I haven't been updating in quite some time now. I've been busy, honest. Work, kendo, people, etc. have really picked up lately. Right now things seem like they are about to slow down, though, which is good. I need a break and I'm actually here writing this up at work (which is nice because it's been super quiet all weekend).

So this weekend I went to the annual Sakura Matsuri festival to check out the site. The weather wasn't all that good this time and we actually didn't even bother checking out the cherry blossums, despite the entire festival being named after them. I was more interested in watching Spirit+Noise play again this year more than anything else. We watched the Tamagawa University Taiko and Dance Troupe perform their act on one stage of the festival and S+N was scheduled to perform on the same stage in 50 minutes so we decided to head all the way across the festival to check out some other sights. When we got back S+N was finishing up removing their gear from the stage and giving last second closing statement. The pamphlet lied and they had apparently switched schedules with the group that was before them so I missed the entire thing which was a real bummer. Mega depressed I missed them. I did get a chance to purchase their CD album and stood in line and got them all to sign it. That's worth something as I was having trouble finding any of their music online.

It was also starting to get cold so I purchased a hat to keep my head warm. Shy-guy sombrero.

Additionally, I took a couple videos. Here is the taiko drum and dance group doing one of their numbers and a video of one of the local martial arts groups cutting some mats.

What else did I do? I also ate some takoyaki and some sweet and chewy dango. I completely avoided buying the chicken yakitori this year. Did not feel like paying $20+ on food AGAIN.

The remainder of the day was spent celebrating a birthday, drinking games, and watching Your Highness. That movie will not be winning any Oscar's for best picture but if you enjoyed the trailer then get ready for more of the exact same thing. It was enjoyable, especially while slightly intoxicated (Metro is your friend, btw).

I'll try to do more updates, at minimum once a week from now on. Just need the inspiration!

hey!

2011-04-05T22:16:00.002-04:00

here's an update.

lookin' good

Good Morning

2011-03-18T12:04:00.002-04:00

Had an interesting night at an Irish pub last night. There seemed to be a whole lot of green for whatever reason. I need to practice working on holding my alcohol a bit better. I do have a few texts, photos and videos of events, but after looking back on them I don't think they are something I want published on the interwebs.

So instead please enjoy this relaxing video that shows someone making a rolled Japanese omelet.

Guess What?

2011-03-03T15:25:00.000-05:00

I got a fever...and the only prescription is more certification!

Easy Update

2011-02-25T23:13:00.002-05:00

Just got back from dinner where I ate alligator, puppies, chicken, pigs, and cows all in one meal. Now I'm spending these last few hours of awake time to prep for the Rutger's kendo tournament. The event isn't actually until Sunday, but we're driving up there tomorrow morning in order to attend a practice being held in the afternoon. As a going away present I was given a new dashingly good looking men towel with a representation of one of my spirit animals:

Will this eagle help me soar to the heights of victory? Probably no. There's is a good chance it will instead chafe my head.

On a random off topic note, fuck Keyboard Cat. This dog has got him beat hands down.

I Have More Than One Readers

2011-02-24T00:00:00.001-05:00

Because you all demanded it here's a special "Reader Appreciation" video post!

This Does Not Bode Well

2011-02-16T17:03:00.001-05:00

One of the many signs it's a good idea to be looking for other work.

Weekend Plans

2011-02-11T14:15:00.005-05:00

So this weekend will probably turn out to be an interesting one. Any weekend I deem interesting when I have to work BOTH Saturday and Sunday, 9-5. Please note that just because I say something is "interesting" doesn't mean I'm giving it an automatic good connotation. Horrendous suckfest events where you get your eyes gouged out can also be interesting.

Anyway, work this weekend will involve decommisioning, removing, untangling, cleaning, setting up, re-wiring and configuring 80+ new workstations for all our call takers and dispatchers to use. The higher ups felt it was time to switch to a more powerful system so all the call takers will be getting their first taste of Windows 7 OS. Nothing about this event sounds promising. Sure, Windows 7 is a great OS to use and all and there shouldn't be any problems with software compatibility. The issues lies in the standard ID-10t user error, which is a common thing ALL IT personnel have to deal with when serving other people. These people won't know where anything is, will complain about it and just be outright obstinate when it comes to dealing with change. I can't even count how many times people complain the machines don't work after a new thing is introduced only to realize they just don't want to use it or refuse to figure it out because the new way doesn't look/respond/work the exact same way as the old version.

But all those issues I'll be seeing apparently sometime Tuesday morning as everyone will be at our secondary building until then while we slave away at the machines (roughly 14 person team work 2-3 days to accomplish this project). Other events include one of the lovely poker night events being held by the Uris this Saturday evening. This will be a pivotal switch from my standard poker affairs because my girlfriend will be in-tow joining me. She doesn't know how to play Texas Hold'em either, so this will be a fun night of learning and unawareness. The strongest hand in poker is the 'thrair' or the 'twet'? We might finish off the night afterwords with some more Wii Sports bowling or tennis.

Bonus Picture: Have barely had my car for 2 months and someone has already done a hit-and-run on me. Noticed this when I went to my car in condo parking lot the other day.

Bonus Video: Celebrating Chinese New Year at a bar in Arlington, Hunan Cafe. They like their beer.

Superbowl Smuperbowl

2011-02-07T02:28:00.005-05:00

This year's Superbowl game did not interest me at all. I did not watch it nor did I have any idea who was playing or when. Ever since the Budweiser frog Superbowl commercials aired I've always had more of an interest in the commercials than the actual game. The last few years the commercials seem to be either over the top or trying to hard to be clever or funny, though, and the quality really affects how well they are remembered. I checked out a site that had all the ads for yesterday's game up on Hulu and just one really struck a chord with me:

This ad struck a chord with me which is not the same as me saying it was actually good, just that it speaks to me. It really doesn't take much to get to me.

Return of the Turtle King

2011-02-03T15:44:00.003-05:00

Alright, so here's an actual update! I know it's been awhile since my last real update and it's starting to gnaw at the back of my mind that I haven't done so. There's been a whole lot of stuff going on, too. A whole lot of nothing as well (repeats of the same old stuff). I don't have any one particular thing to talk about this update so quickly I shoot off some news bits of different things that probably won't interest anybody in the long run.

Firstly, I got a new driver's license. Not because mine was set to expire any time soon (2017), but because it had my old address and an old picture of me I didn't really care for and it didn't list me as a donor which makes me think people will think less of me because I don't have a heart (on the card). So I finally got the new one in the mail the other day and I absolutely hate the photo. I had to take my glasses off due to glare, didn't know where to look and was in a somewhat cranky mood because the lady doing all this stuff was a bit rude and not very helpful. Also, the new Virginia license may be far more secure with it's little transparency photo and stylized writing and such but it's such a bland ugly looking color.

It's like some sort of Frankstein, ughhhhhh.

Next up on the list was the dish that put my faith back in pork chops. Girlfriend made some special homemade porkchops that had some sort of blend of spices from another planet and were somewhat breaded with something one could only describe as godly seasonings. And they came in two flavors of porkchop! These were then fried in a skillet and ladled with a bell pepper gravy and accompanied with a side of red potatoes and green beans (also gravied) for an aroma and taste that just had me completely satisfied beyond belief. This may have also been due to the fact the only porkchops I've eaten during my life were the ones my mom baked that, in retrospect, just had a light marinade coating and were also tough and dry and that's just how I always imagined them to be. I could never understand before how chefs on TV would rave about X restaurant's gormet porkchops but know I no better. Thanks, Taje.

And to keep in line with the kendo title of this blog I should briefly mention kendo shenanigans. There was another Kato-sensei seminar last weekend (fun stuff) followed by a baby shower for one of the sempai. Kato-sensei I believe came down to prep us all for next Monday's special ultra super seminar with Koda-sensei, another 8th-dan straight from Tokyo police department. That's elite. During this Koda-sensei seminar Kato-sensei will also be there as well as ANOTHER 8th-dan, Tagawa-sensei. That, my friends, is some crazy unheard of stuff to have THREE 8th-dan senseis giving a seminar for you, especially in America. People in Japan are lucky if they get to ever train with an 8th-dan. I've posted before about the difficulty it is to become one (test offered twice a year in Japan with less than 1% pass rate) and in the US there are only 3 of them (2 west coast and our Kato-sensei on the east coast). I'm getting goosebumps thinking about it. Here's a video of last year's 8th-dan championship match:

Other kendo stuff involves tournaments and testing. Rutgers collegiate tournament is now open for adults to participate in (not teams, though) and they also offer testing. I was almost tempted to fill in the forms to test for 2nd-dan but then I realized I hadn't been practicing hardly at all the last couple months, and especially not for 2nd-dan test. I'm just not ready, and after talking it over with my sensei I should be aiming for a summer camp test 5 months from now. So that's one goal I'll have to work on, especially my 'tenouchi' (grip/snap) and having more determined and exact strikes. I should have that down by the time the Cleveland tournament comes around at the end of March, which sadly will be the same as the weekend of William & Mary tournament this year. W&M or Cleveland? Hmmm....!

Sometimes I just feel like Dan Hibiki. He's got some talent, but because of his ego he never bothered to learn properly and just thinks he's a great fighter! I like him as a fighter because he's comical.

Lastly, looks like I'll finally be taking that Security+ exam this Saturday. I'm having bad feelings about it. I just don't have any confidence in this exam. I've never been a good test taker, but we'll see how it goes! One regret of mine is that I should've taken it last year. Had I passed the exam last year then I'd be credited with Security+ certification for life but as of 2011 CompTia inacted a new 3 year expiration policy meaning I'd have to take a re-exam for any new material in order to stay certified. It makes sense given the nature of the IT world and how often things change. Who cares if someone has a cert from 15 years ago? It doesn't mean squat really. I'd honestly laugh if I saw somebody with a resume that still had some old Windows NT/95/98 cert on it. Still...would be nice to have that cert for life!

Well, that's all for now. Maybe I'll think up something else to type up again tomorrow. Most likely not. You'll see!

update

2011-01-26T15:31:00.001-05:00

here's an update. ok, bye

Food

2011-01-14T11:44:00.002-05:00

This is probably the best breakfast I've had in a long time.

Yes, I realize my updates have been skimpy and sparse. I do not care. I don't feel inspired to write about anything currently and I blame you, the audience! Give me some ideas or even make requests on what should be written up about. Want a review on a movie based solely on the trailer? Done. Want a legendary chocolate chip cookie recipe that has been handed down for generations that I just thought of now? Done. Want some MSPaint artist renditions of historical moments that haven't happened yet? No, not happening because that's silly. I use Paint.net, bitches.

Happy New Year

2011-01-03T16:38:00.003-05:00

Top of the mid-late afternoon to you! Are you having a dandy 2011 so far? As for me I'm suffering through a bevy of bedbug bites all over my body. Look what those little buggers did to my poor arms alone!

It's all good, though. The calamine lotion takes me back to my salad days when I was afflicted with chicken pox and they are slowly subsiding. Waaay less itchy today than they were last year.

Happy Holidays

2010-12-27T23:32:00.000-05:00

Got the best Christmas gift ever this year.

Random Tidbits

2010-12-22T10:13:00.002-05:00

1) The very illogical and oppressive "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy that prevented openly gay people from serving in the military is GONE! President just recently signed a bill that repeals the policy, so sometime next year it will be a thing of the past. That's pretty cool and progressive. Sad that something like that could take so long to be corrected, and yes I do mean corrected because it was a serious problem.

2) Pedophiles have no place in society. Two different arrest stories I saw yesterday just made me cringe thinking about them. The first was about a guy who was selling a Pedophile How-To book online through Amazon. The book is disturbing in the fact that it was instructional in showing pedophiles how to not get caught, how to lure in children, how to pick out the weaker ones, how to get them to listen to you, and other disturbing crap like that. Through some weird work around law that's only in Florida the guy was arrested, but still he had the nerve to claim free speech about releasing his book. Just....no.

The other story was about some supposedly great missionary guy who went to Haiti who helped build schools and such for years, but during the entire time he was molesting the disadvantaged children he was helping. Yeah, his ass finally got caught and I hope he gets what's deserved.

3) North Korea really, chill out. You've got nothing going for you and if you even think about trying to start a war you're basically sealing your fate. You're using tier 1 units with 0/0 upgrades, we're tier 3 with 3/3. You've got no allies, no detection, you haven't scouted in decades, and your lame ass threats of nuking us is laughable when we know you haven't teched for ghosts yet. Do you really want to do a 7v1 NKor stomp?

Why Not Me?

2010-12-14T12:32:00.000-05:00

Newest Family Member

2010-12-12T00:41:00.000-05:00

Hyundai Elantra GLS 2010

Overly Silly

2010-12-06T22:59:00.001-05:00

There is nothing in the world that can describe how funny I think that is. Nothing.

I Has A Website

2010-12-01T13:51:00.002-05:00

Hi.

Guess what? I am totally done with my car. Time to get a new one. Didn't think I'd be getting a new car until at least 2011 started, but sometimes it's better to get things out of the way.

Took the taurus in today for some reluctant repairs because I could feel it acting funny in the way it handled, especially when making turns. Was trying to avoid any repairs at all in hopes of just getting a new car but the way it was acting wasn't sitting right with me (repair people had told me before there were some issues, but I ignored them at that time).

Well, got the call about my car and apparently it has multiple issues going on with it.

Yeah, my car was basically about to fall apart. The spring in the rear suspension is broken and if it breaks any more my car could at any time just collapse to the ground in the back. Technically I should NOT be driving my car at all, it is a liability and hazard and they even had to write on that invoice that I was warned about it. Oh, yeah, it also would cost more than 2x the actual value of the car itself to repair. No good. Got the keys back and drove my car back to my parents, all the while wondering if I would breakdown somewhere along the ways. Car is currently parked on the side. No idea what I'm going to do about transportation back to my place and work yet.

New car time.

Recipe: Candied Bacon

2010-11-12T15:02:00.005-05:00

Alright, so last night I had probably one of the greatest snacks of my life: candied bacon. It sounds weird, as if it were a lollipop wrapped bacon, but it's actual really delicious. Glad I found this recipe.

All candied bacon is is bacon coated with sugar and cooked in the oven until it gets crisp. That's pretty much the gist of it, and the sugar gets somewhat caramelized that goes well with the crisp of the bacon. Plus, the natural saltiness of the bacon goes exceptionally well with the sweetness of the sugar.

Here's what I did:

1. Take some sort of container and lay down a layer of brown sugar. Add to the brown sugar a few pinches of red cayenne pepper. The pepper is pretty strong so you do not want to use a whole lot of it or it will overpower the brown sugar. I'm thinking maybe an 8:1 brown sugar to cayenne pepper ratio. Mix those ingredients evenly in the container.

2. Take your bacon strips and cut them in equal halves (this is purely for handling and placement convenience). Take the bacon and start to coat them in the mixture you just made. You don't want to pack the coating thick, it's not a batter but a covering. Coat both sides of the bacon.

3. In either a baking pan or tray of some kind lay down some parchment paper. Begin to lay down the coated bacon on the parchment paper. You'll notice slowly the brown sugar will have then started to glean a bit which is due to it starting to absorb the oils from the bacon. The reason for the parchment paper is because as the sugar heats it will also start to melt off the side of the bacon as well as the bacon fat. When all that dries on a metal/glass surface it forms a super hard/sticky mess that's annoying to clean. Easier to just throw out the paper. You also don't want your bacon being stuck to the tray itself.

4. Place the tray in an already preheated oven at 325 degrees for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes is up turn the temperature up to 375 degrees. The reason for this is because if you cook the bacon at a greater temperature initially it will start to characteristically curl up in the oven as it's cooking. Going through a lower cooking temperature phase at first will allow the bacon to set in a nice flat shape as it's fat's are cooked out. After the first 15 minutes the bacon will look somewhat soggy and wet from the melted brown sugar.

5. After the temperature has been turned up it will take at least 5 minutes for it to crisp up properly. Exactly how crispy you want it is up to you, but it is good to check up on the bacon afterwords every minute or so as the bacon can burn easily if left unchecked. When you start to hear some sizzling and popping sounds that's a sign that the bacon is getting crispy.

A brown/dark brown look is nice and crispy. Blackened bacon may be an indication the sugar/bacon burned. Once you're satisfied with how it looks go ahead and pull it out of the oven, let it rest on a plate for a couple minutes then eat!

(This bacon was not as crispy as I would have liked. Got impatient and didn't want to wait any longer!)

So yeah, I have a feeling I'm going to be quite overweight here sometime soon.

Frog Legs

2010-11-11T23:39:00.003-05:00

So I wanted to touch base with an issue I've been having this week that I can't honestly tell is a problem or not. It's a physical thing involving my legs when they get overexerted during exercises. This past month at practice we did some of our normal footwork followed by something called 'frog jumps'. Frog jump looks similar to this video:

That is what our kendo version of frog jump is based on with the extreme difference that we're trying to keep our backs straight up while doing a strike upon landing. And when we land we aren't falling forward onto our hands for balance like a frog would (we're holding swords) so it makes trying to jump/strike/land without falling even more difficult. We're essentially doing a frog style jump but with just the back legs. This stuff is killer on the thighs. Really.

And that's what my problem is. We only did one set of these jumps across the room and after that it feels like my left leg from the thigh downward is all messed up. It's kinda weird to explain how, but my thigh has been feeling sorta sore and parts of my legs feel as if they are either asleep or have just lost sensation, as if there are no nerves in them, especially in my foot. Ever since then I've been finding myself walking awkward sometimes at work or when I take the stairs up a floor I find I'm using too much power in my feet, sending them up higher than I wanted unconsciously. These weird like occurrences last a few seconds and are then gone, but I also feel light in the legs, sometimes as if I don't realize they are there.

Going back quickly to the "foot feeling asleep" part it's not as if I could distinctively pinpoint which parts of my foot feels asleep, it's more like a haze of sleepiness in parts of the foot and leg. If my foot was a container of water and a normal layer of oil on that water represented it being asleep this sensation is more like someone blended the oil into the container and you can see little tiny oil blobs all over the place. I mean, I do still have control over my legs and everything but do you know how hard it is to walk with a leg that has almost fallen fully asleep? My leg currently feels like that 24/7.

What's weird is this has happened to me before after extreme kendo leg exercises and it's gone away but at that time it was still to the same leg mostly. It's making me question if it's a circulation issue in my leg? I try to explain to other people about it and they generally tend to pass it off as me being over dramatic about sore legs, but I'm really not.

I poured myself a bath today and got into my tub (quick note: my bathtub here is super awesome because it's big enough to fit me) and what happened then was what prompted me to bother to post about this thing. Water was nice and warm, got into tub with right leg first and immediately felt the heat. I then stepped in with my left leg and I could barely tell any difference. I though, well maybe it was because my left leg was situated closer to the other end of the tub where cooler water is. Moved it around, temperature didn't seem to change. Sat in tub a bit, massaged leg and lifted it out of the water and didn't feel that normal chill of being out of warm water and put it back in. Lifted right leg out of water and it immediately felt cold to air, put it back in and it warmed up.

So yeah, I don't know what to think about it still feeling like it's asleep AND not being able to gauge the temperature differences. I wasn't originally worried about it because I said it has happened before and went away after awhile, but now I'm starting to just think maybe I need to stretch it out more or am I missing out on some key daily vitamins or something? Something to do with strenuous thigh muscle exercises aggrevates my left leg to the point it goes into a half coma and I'm not quite certain what to make of it. Hrmmmm....

Halloween Weekend

2010-11-01T16:22:00.004-04:00

Weekend was filled with plenty of antics. If you ever want to attract attention to yourself walk around DC at night in a Power Rangers suit. People will cheer, they will yell, they will high five you, they will salute, they will chase buses after you, and they of course will confess they've always loved you and want to have pictures taken with you.

Click the photo for a select few other photos:

Drank and ate until 6am in DC, watched the Restore Sanity/Fear rally (too tired to bother going), went to a party, and relaxed. Abridged version of the weekend events FTW.

Video Game Review: Kirby's Epic Yarn

2010-10-28T14:38:00.005-04:00

Well, I finally caved in and bought Kirby's Epic Yarn, the latest Nintendo game starring the pink puff Kirby. I wasn't ever really planning on getting this game just because of the overly cartoony look it had going for it but I eventually broke down after reading a couple of reviews glorifying the game because of it's unique artistic visuals and statements that buyers shouldn't let that child like feel of the game distract them. My one regret is not reading a few more reviews before buying this game.

Let me get this out of the way first: this game is amazingly beautiful. The visual appeal of turning the whole world and characters into yarn works wonders for the cutesy type of environment Kirby is always found in. Watching Kirby turn into various string based forms, unravel enemies in the blink of an eye and distort the very fabric of the terrain (pun intended) to reveal new items is wonderful. It's almost an overload of cute. What's interesting to note is the game was never intended to be a Kirby game but over it's development the makers figured it would work well, and I think it does. To really get an understanding of how the game looks you should look over this gameplay video trailer:

Every little thing in the game looks like it could be purchased at a fabric store.

So if you don't care about anything else other than visuals to a game then read no more and go buy this game!

I suppose another thing that deserves some merit is the music and SFX to the game. The musical score isn't anything really epic (yarn). If you've played older Kirby games it's pretty much the same old Kirby stuff but with a softer, more childish tone to it (one of the tracks is playing in the video). SFX are appropriately cuddly.

And then there was the bad.

When I play a video game I enjoy to have a challenge of SOME kind. Completing complicated puzzles, getting past a difficult boss, or even just beating the game satisfies me greatly. There is ZERO challenge to Kirby's Epic Yarn. Why is that? Well, for one thing the game was apparently designed with little kids in mind as the target demographic. I didn't want to believe that since I've played Kirby games in the past and they all had some sort of challenge to them of some kind, but this game is basically set to Very Easy by default. Not saying there is a difficulty selection available at all (there isn't), it's just that this game is so freaking EASY it drives me crazy.

There are maybe 4-5 little enemies per stage that will get in your way and they all die the same way which is to be lassoed by your yarn and then thrown. In fact, even the controls are overly simplified (which can be good/bad). All you need is a Wiimote and you hold it horizontally like an old NES controller giving you just directions, jump, and lasso controls. There are no combination moves to buttons, no Hadoken fireballs you can throw, just plan on jump and attack. You can't even use Kirby's Suck-Guy-In-And-Take-His-Power thing anymore (probably because it was never originally a Kirby game, tho)!

The game being super easy and have simply controls isn't really the worst thing about the game. The worst thing about the game is that you CAN NOT DIE! There are no lives, no health bar, no life meter, and when you get hit by an enemy you just get 'hurt' and make an ouch face and get right back up. The worst thing that can happen to you is that when you take a hit you lose some of the gems/jewels you've been collecting throughout the stage (but you can go pick them up off the floor before they disappear). After I learned Kirby was immortal it was like getting punched in the stomached and having all the air leave me. Honestly, I've lost motivation for planning the game now. How can I get any thrill of adventure knowing I will always succeed and can just run into bad guys without any repercussions?

When you're playing a game where you can't lose at all, is stupidly easy and looks like an interactive pop-up book you start to realize that "Hey, maybe this isn't for me". Had this NOT been a Kirby game I definitely wouldn't have bought it. I realize what they did now. I got suckered into buying something solely because of character brand recognition and I have buyer's remorse! Have I beaten the game yet? No. Will I continue to play it? Probably not. There's just no point to it. It's the same reason I don't play children's activity books: the little "maze" isn't really that hard.

Let me make one quick correction. There is a slight challenge to the game and that's to see if you can collect X number of gems in a stage, increase your collected gem streak (how many gems you can collect without getting hit) and find all the hidden items within a certain amount of time. Although the gems don't matter at all other than to give you a better completed stage rating, and the hidden items are just unlockable music or furniture for your virtual apartment that other people can look at. None of it has any affect on gameplay or beating the bosses. I liken collecting gem challenges to achievements in video games in that sometimes you just have to be real ADD to spend so much time for so little reward. If a lion constantly spent it's entire day hunting, catching, and eating mice it would starve to death because it expends more energy getting the mouse than it gets back from eating it. The more you know!

So, my final say on the matter is the game is visually stunning. Gameplay is overly simplistic and it's quite obvious to me now that it was never intended to be any kind of challenge at all. The game is aimed at little kids under 10 given the look, design, controls, and challenge. It's not a bad game really, it's just not a game meant for me so my normal judging skills are thrown off. Giving this game a review made me feel like a New York Times editor reviewing Dr. Seuss. If you're planning on buying it I hope it as a gift to a young child. Anyone else won't really get much out of this game.

Weekend Update: On The Farm

2010-10-25T14:15:00.005-04:00

So this was quite an interesting weekend. It started off with us not having any kendo practice so I invited everyone over to my place instead for a night of gaming and drinking. This was the first time I've actually had people over so the parking situation was tricky. My place is 24/7 towing and all the free spots on the street are always taken so I came up with the idea of having everyone park their cars at the local shopping center parking lot and I would ferry them over, which worked out fine for the most part. The part that didn't work out? Well, when people started to leave at around 3am that's when we came to the saddening realization that every car in the lot had been towed, probably around midnight I'm guessing. Found the towing number and sadly they wouldn't be open until 7:30am, so everyone settled in at my place for the remainder of the morning. A few hours later it was a tiring drive down to Leesburg to rescue 3 cars and quite a bit of cash removed from bank account. Didn't get any real sleep until about 9am.

Waking up at 7am. 4 people were snuggled up in my bed for a couple hours of sleep, one of which not being me.

Woke up around 3pm Saturday and then got prepped for a trip out to Markham, VA to visit a farm with a pumpkin patch and corn maze. Met up with a bunch of other people, but by the time we had gotten there (7pm~) it was actually almost pitch black and there was very little light at all. What was nice about that day was it was a full moon and no clouds. The light from the moon was actually making it hard to see some of the stars. When we got their most of the group had done their pumpkin patch activities and already adopted Oliver (the pumpkin) so we then proceeded to go on a tractor hay ride across the farm and then spend 15 minutes running around the corn maze. As it turns out it's very difficult to walk through a corn wall and still scare people without them hearing you coming. When then hung out around a bonfire fire just chatting for a couple hours and eating smores.

I don't know why but it always just seems amazing how hot fire actually is, especially up close.

This next day was another farm type trip, except we headed out to Leesburg, VA for the Pumpkinville petting zoo/pumpkin patch/events. Let me just tell you that there are a lot of fun animals at a petting zoo. Camels, porcupines, fennec foxes, monkeys, sheep, turkeys, hairy chickens, bunnies, TORTOISES, pigs, goats, and even coatimundis were some of the things we saw and had the pleasure of petting/feeding/having hands licked by. There were tons of activities to do, most of which were aimed toward a younger crowd. That didn't stop us from getting into the moonbounce or going down the slides. I really regret not taking my actual camera with me because I would've had some quality shots and videos of the whole event. I did have my cell phone and all it's 3.2 MP action, though. After going through all the stuff there was to see there we got free mini-pumpkins!

Look, that's what they call a llama, boy.

The big pig on campus. So overweight but he just didn't care.

Pig organs are great substitutes for organ transplants. So similar in fact that it causes them to spoon like people.

There was a chill chicken just sitting inside a pot underneath a table. How he got there no one knows.

There was a pen with two huge tortoises and one random piglet inside. It's fun to see random animals just hanging out by each other.

This guy wasn't really amused by us, but at this angle he looks just sleepy.

Ducks and fish!

Big Porker~

Early Halloween Video

2010-10-20T00:00:00.002-04:00

*HALLOWEEN COSTUME SPOILERS*
Ok, here is a video of me in my Halloween costume. I'm wearing my Halloween costume early, so if you plan to see me sometime that weekend and want to be surprised by what I'm wearing then I advise you not to click on the youtube video.

Youtube Description:
Why just tell people what you're going to be for Halloween when you can SHOW them? Homemade video of me being a dork. If you're wondering why my movements seem to be stiff it's because the suit is actually a little small around my chest (BURLY MAN). I physically can NOT even get all the velcro straps on the back to line up and the helmet is very light and loose.

All video/audio editing done using Windows Movie Maker 2.6. Video filmed with a random Samsung 8.1 MP camera I had.

I don't really know which I'm more excited about; how awesome the costume is or how well I edited the video. This was actually my first attempt at combining multiple video clips and audio and syncing them all together. Other than this video the only other work I've done before was just cutting random video clips out of longer ones. Once I figured out how the program here worked it was all rather simple piecing it together. The setting up, putting on costume, making props and recording of scenes actually took way longer than editing it all together (about 15 minutes).

Maybe if I do some other kind of video in the future I'll include special effects and subtitles or something. Than again maybe I won't ever make another video, who knows! This was one of those rare moments of creativity I happen to get that causes me to just go full effort into designing/making something. Turned out nice.

King of the Random Updates

2010-10-14T11:30:00.003-04:00

First off, here is a little video composed by my fellow kendoka, James Tourtelotte, of our sunday practice Kato-sensei seminar session a couple weeks ago. It's mostly composed of images and music background but it looks really cool. Can you see me? Better hurry up and watch it before youtube disables audio for copyright infringement!

Next up on the docket: I've been wasting so much time on my Security+ book. The book I've been studying from for so long and finally completed I found out over the weekend was the wrong edition. My book is over 8 years old and in the IT world that's a HUGE time difference for advancement in computer concepts. I found the more updated version at Borders and purchased it. After looking through it I realized there was a TON of new stuff that wasn't in the previous book, this was actually a hugely edited new edition with a bunch of new pertinent information on the test. Had I studied everything in the old book and taken the test I'm pretty certain I would have failed just by not knowing about all the other content. A book on computer security concepts made in 2001 will NOT cover a 2008 based test on computer security concepts.

My update is all out of whack. I keep getting interrupted by people at work wanting to talk to me about work stuff. I had a vision for this update today and it feels out of sync now.

Hey

2010-10-12T13:53:00.000-04:00

This is my screensaver. There are many like it but this one is mine.

Ho-Hum

2010-09-28T15:32:00.002-04:00

I don't know what it really is specifically about last night's kendo practice but I'm feeling amazingly tired and worn out moreso than other times. Monday practices are usually lighter, yet last night everyone just felt exhausted. I also got struck several times in the arm (missed attacks) and sort of pulled my shoulder when going up against one of the senseis. My right arm started getting extremely tired to the point where I couldn't lift my sword anymore and I actually found myself sitting out at the end of practice, which I usually don't do. Arm still stung a little on the drive home and shoulder felt fine so I thought I'd sleep it off after a shower. Woke up today and whole right side just in pain, including shoulder.

Going to have to make a sudden switch in my workout schedule. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be in better shape. It will actually be better to do it Wednesday and skip Thursday since this entire weekend will be kendo filled. Kato sensei is coming to town and I can't be exhausted/sore from lifting right before Friday practice.

Other thing is I seem to be running out of food. It seems just the other day I was commenting how I have too much to eat, and now I'm constantly looking for snacks or something quick to make. I have food, obviously, but pot stickers and chicken pot pies take prep time. My oven doesn't have a temperature indicator on it so I have to guess when it reaches certain times. Rather than place a pot pie in too early I wait 20 minutes for it to heat up. Preheat + bake time on a pot pie is easily over an hour so that never really helps me when I'm hungry right then.

Tonight I'll head by the Harris Teeter down the street. Might get some ingredients for salsa and also random chips/snacks for when people ever do decide to come over. As for today's dinner I'm going to spoil myself and see what it's like to order out from home. I'm thinking some Chinese food: extra hot General Tso's, sweet and sour chicken, egg roll? I haven't had any real breakfast or lunch yet and it's almost 4pm. Going to ravage that food today and tomorrow.

Epicness

2010-09-26T22:28:00.001-04:00

BU finally got a cell phone. That's pretty epic news.

/end_of_epic_news_update

UPDATE
The BU update was actually just a cheap ploy to get me thousands of additional readers. Here is the real (although less amusing) update:

Final condo video.

"DC 911, What is your emergency?"

2010-09-24T10:50:00.002-04:00

I work in IT for the DC 911 call center, fixing the computers the people who handle 911 calls use and various other issues here. Since I'm constantly up on our call floor for one thing or another I'm always overhearing what people are saying about their calls and how they handle them. Also, some of the people who call 911 are just freaking ghetto retarded.

This morning one of the call takers could be overheard by every sort of being snarky with the person on the phone, just in her attitude in answering questions and such. She comes over after the call is over to tell her coworkers what the call was about.

So apparently a woman calls in to 911 because her boyfriend just proposed to her. He then immediately also proposed to this girls sister as well. Girl wasn't all too happy about that, especially because the guy then told her he wanted to have a 3-way with the sister and wanted this girl to watch. The girl then tells our call taker that she's at Safeway and wants to know what to do because she doesn't want that to happen. Call taker is already annoyed at this call because this is 911 EMERGENCY, right? She tells the girl to just leave and the girl is apparently clueless and doesn't know where to go. Call taker says she doesn't care, just go anywhere. Girl then says she wants police sent out to "watch over proposal proceedings" or some crap to make sure the guy only proposes to her. Call taker tells them police don't handle that kind of thing, but she still wants police to come out. Unfortunately, there's some mandate/protocol here that if you request police one will still have to be dispatched to you, even if all he's going to do is come there and tell you to fuck off and close his case report. It's a huge waste of time for somebody, but can't do anything about it. Call taker dispatches an officer out to the Safeway to deal with possible Family Disturbance.

Exhausted

2010-09-23T17:44:00.002-04:00

This has been an exhausting work week with really nothing out of the ordinary, just tiresome activities. The worst part about having many tasks at work is that it really eats into my afterwork affairs like shopping for dinner prep or kendo. I find myself often having to weasel out of work and leaving earlier than I should be just to make it to practices sometimes now. For the most part it's fine, but one day I know something important will go down and I'll be out of touch and won't have a good explanation.

If something like that happens I'll just look back at photos like this one and hopefully it will provide me with enough joy to last the night:

Kendo beginner class has started up again. I'm one of the sempais who volunteers my time to try to help those in need starting out, but sometimes my words seem to fall on "deaf" ears. We had a whole bunch of students last semester but still haven't seen hide nor hair from them. Maybe a total of one bothers to advance through the ranks into the regular class? It's kind of depressing that kendo requires such a commitment before you actually get into the meat and potatoes of it because we seem to be losing more people than we gain. Hoping to see more people tomorrow and Sunday.

Also, I'm getting big. Watch out.

I Did It!

2010-09-09T17:30:00.002-04:00

Ok, WOW! Triple update, although this one should be more of an appendix to the first than it's own maybe, but it's pretty big news.

Check out this CNN article:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/09/florida.quran.burning/index.html?hpt=T1&iref=BN1

So yeah, I spend all that effort writing my first blog post in almost a month about the Quran burnings and then the situation gets completely reversed today after over a month of coverage. The Quran burnings has been canceled. It's as if the event no longer happened or would have happened and everyone settles back down.

So, what else can I say but "You're welcome, America". Yes, I'm well aware that after reading my riveting and inspired political commentary earlier today that it struck your hearts and made you see things differently. My posts are magical.

KA-POW

2010-09-09T14:18:00.001-04:00

2nd post of the day, this video is just too hilarious:

In Belgium They Are Just Called Waffles

2010-09-09T12:32:00.008-04:00

Ok, so it was brought to my attention recently that I have a blog that hasn't been updated in a spell. Last update was almost 3 weeks ago it seems so I suppose I shall update it. "But with what?", he thought with an inquisitive furl of his eyebrows. Nothing really important has been going on lately and I've sorta been in a trance like state now that I'm moved into my own place. Now that there is no one to really bug me at my place I just go home and slouch about without a care in the world, all the while getting nothing of import done. Thought about what to mention today and it's actually more of a comment on current religious events: NYC mosque and the Quran book burning.

The Proposed NYC Ground-Zero Mosque
So people are angry about this supposed mosque that will be built on ground zero of the 9/11 attacks. They feel this is like a spit in the face of America and those who have died, as if the radical Muslims have somehow now won....something, by having a new building built there on 'hallowed' ground. People are protesting the plans and marching against it, even threatening Muslims in the area. This is all such ridiculous tripe that just reeks of mass ignorance. It's really scary how much people will just take anything the media says at face value without even stopping once to look at the details. Let's break down some important facts:

This is not a mosque. A mosque is a building dedicated solely to prayer. This is an Islamic Cultural Center. The media continues to call it a mosque. Are more people likely to react poorly to a mosque being built at ground zero or a cultural center?
The building is not being built at ground zero, it is being built blocks away nearby. When you say something is being built AT ground zero people take that to mean it is being built over top the ruins of the WTC buildings.
There are currently actual mosques already in the area. Why aren't people demanding these be torn down?
Here is a quote from an article about the contents of this cultural center, "The community center will have a monument to the people who died that day. The aim is to educate and increase religious tolerance and understanding. It will have a swimming pool, a culinary school, gymnasium, a theater, restaurants, mosque, and spaces open to the community." Yes, all this sounds like a terrible idea, NYC has no need for religious tolerance...And the idea that the community could benefit with cooking school and pools and shit? FUCK THAT BUILDING!
The building is supposedly 13-stories tall with the top floor being for prayer. The remainder of the building is all that other good stuff.

Quran Book Burning
Alright, this is even worse than protesting the building of a NYC Islamic Community Center. There's this one religious group down in Florida lead by preacher Terry Jones that, in 2 days on the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, will be launching what they refer to as 'Burn a Koran Day' in which they will be burning a ton of the holy book of the Islamic faith, the Quran. The reasoning? They are trying to show the Muslims radicals of the world they will not be intimidated. Of course the best way to do this is to piss off EVERYBODY IN THE GODDAMN WORLD! They claim their only target for this event is to send a message to the radicals, but it's like they are totally oblivious to the fact it's actually targeting everybody else. This is like saying "My intent is to just target fish with green fins" and you then drop fucking dynamite into the lake that doesn't have anyway of discriminating who the fuck it blows up.

This is a holy book of a religion. It is THE holy book of Islam. Burning these books will piss off radicals, yes no doubt, but fuck it's going to piss off moderate/liberal Muslims, too. And for fucks sake, why on earth do you think you have to burn the Quran to send a message to radical Muslims? If you want to encourage their wrath all you have to do is let your wife drive the car and go to market by herself with her face revealed. America is already sending that message to them just by living the way we do, that's one of the reasons they felt they had to attack us on 9/11 in the first place, you jackasses. This isn't sending them a message, this is openly taunting them and saying "Now we're purposefully giving you a definitive reason to come get us and to hate us, fuck you and your religion".

Honestly, is it cowardice to say 'Don't burn the books, it could cause problems.'? No, of course not. It's just trying to be respectful of other peoples religion. I'm an atheist but you don't see me pissing in holy water at a church because I don't agree with them or whatever. Most reasonable people understand the concept of religious tolerance. I may be of X religion but I will also respect your religion as well and not openly provoke it. It's a common courtesy, a sign of respect, something that this Florida group doesn't have.

The logic behind this guys idea is so fucking warped it's very disturbing, and the fact that nothing can be done about this event legally is more disturbing. I'm wondering if there's anyway we could label these guys as a sacrifices and just offer them up to some radical group? Here, do what you want with them, they don't represent us. President Obama, Hillary Clinton, General Patreus, the POPE, and even fucking Sarah Palin ALL condemn what these guys are doing. Nothing good will come of this event.

<Insert random witty Fahrenheit 451 comment here.>

Good To Go

2010-08-18T16:20:00.003-04:00

So, I finally have both internet and TV setup at my place now, which happened quicker than I expected. The only reason it's all taken care of now is because of the problems I had Monday waiting for Verizon to show up.

On Monday Verizon's DirecTV guy was supposed to come out SOMETIME between 8am-12pm, meaning I'd have to be at my place early in the morning in case he somehow miraculously showed up at the very beginning of his possible arrival date (like that ever happens). It came to be about 12:30pm when I started to grow testy. Called Verizon up asking where this guy was and they told me they'd have a guy from the head office in my area call me. Guy calls me and says the installer tried calling me to explain my situation but never got an answer, so he just left a message and left. The number he was calling? Some random 703-xxx-xxxx number Verizon just randomly assigned to me because I told them I didn't have a landline or want one and they just needed to add it because that's how they track accounts or something.

Anyway, the guy came back around 1pm and started talking to me how it was impossible for me to get DirecTV. They use a satellite dish and the dish has to go out on my balcony. Because of the orientation of my building and the satellite my dish would be pointing straight through into the building so it would never receive any type of signal. This also means EVERYONE on my side of the building can't get DirecTV or any other type of dish related service. Nothing could be done about it, I'd just have to get TV from some other service. That's not something you want to hear after waiting 5 hours for service and having to reschedule your day around it. First thing I was thinking about was my new TV had already gone to waste.

So I call Verizon back up because there's no way I'm paying them for internet and someone else for TV. That ruins the whole "double TV/internet" package deal I was going for so it only makes sense to cancel Verizon internet as well and go with Comcasts TV/internet package. Spent about 35 minutes waiting on the phone with Verizon before I was able to get them to cancel it. The girl who canceled it didn't seem to understand the concept of proof of cancellation when I asked if an email was going to be sent to me. She told me they don't send one out.

"Oh, it's canceled now."
"But what if I get charged for any work or service?"
"Then you just need to tell them you had canceled it already."
"Ok, but how will I be able to show that it was canceled? That's why I'm asking for email or proof or something."
"Well...I'm telling you now it's been canceled so it will be fine."
"No, it won't be fine. What if I have to keep going back every month telling them I had canceled the service? I'm just looking for cancellation proof to show I did cancel it."

She seemed to be getting annoyed at being unable to answer my request and because I didn't just fall in line to her word that it's canceled. She eventually gave me a confirmation # to the call we had (which is good enough, shows I called to have it canceled). After the phone call I also received an automatic "Your service has been canceled." email.

Then spent a total 1 hour 15 minutes on the phone with Comcast girl. Even more annoying because it should have been a simple 10 minute setup but they were having problems with their system and hey oops, looks like her computer crashed midway and she had to start all over. The one good thing about being on the phone for well over an hour was that they gave me my desired tier 2 internet speed at the tier 1 cost and waived any fees for my install (normally like $100+). Actually saved me a bit. Plus, the guy who came out today did both TV and internet, as opposed to Verizon spacing out the installs by two different people.

So everything is good now except for maybe the fact that I didn't get the modem in the location I would have preferred it be. TV and modem are hooked up to same cable so they are both just idly sitting in my living room. Comcast didn't mention anything about a router and I had just assumed I would get one for wireless, but no, I did not. I'll have to go buy one later if I ever expect to have internet in my own room without having to drag/install a longer cable across the hall. Arrghh, also means I have to miss kendo practice today since I had to change my work schedule to accommodate for these visits -.-

Oh, well. It's all done and over with now. With that I bid farewell to the helpfully unrestricted wireless connection 'shiloh'. It has been fun leeching your internet when it was needed. I will always remember your services, and should the time ever arise where I need more illegally downloaded media you will be on my mind.

I guess time to move all my clothing and remainder of junk into the place and...I'm done? Wow.

First Breath of Electronic Life

2010-08-13T13:52:00.003-04:00

Finally called Verizon to have them setup TV/Internet. TV will be hooked up Aug 16 and internet on Aug 23. Hopefully there won't be any problems with either install. There is no phone line or anything in my bedroom where I want modem/router setup but the guy said it would be fine. I HAVE to be hooked up directly to my modem, I just do. I'm tired of using wireless and it just periodically dropping on me while downloading or in a game. Really was hoping for FiOS to be available in my area, but naturally it isn't.

As for the TV install it might actually be beneficially if I had a TV to be hooked up. I've got an older, rather large and bulky TV at home that works perfectly well, it's just so...big. Takes 2 people to move and carry it. I might just get with the times and go purchase a new flat/thin screen and get a new tv stand set up for my living room. Saves the hassle of moving the old one to the new place, and although it will cost some I see it as an investment for my new home.

Condo Complete

2010-08-10T12:09:00.003-04:00

Well, it's taken awhile, but all the updates to my condo are finally complete. All that left to do is start the long, boring process of slowly moving my stuff over there the next couple of weeks. Since the place is technically fully livable I'm going to start bringing more of my work clothes and a sleeping bag over so I force myself to actually stay there over night. This will get me into that feeling of urgency, get me to take more initiative into actually moving my ass out of parents place. I think one of my next steps is to definitely get internet/TV setup there. I need the internet, seriously. Not just because I'm a web surfing whore, but because if something were to happen at work I might have to remote in from home. The few unsecure WEP connections in my building are so weak and unreliable it's not worth using them, so hopefully I can get some Verizon guys out soon to hook me up. I also have to look into changing all my billing/mailing addresses, hmmmm...

I did spend several hours last night at my place. I serenaded the completions and had my first homecooked meal there: a lovely honey breaded chicken breast meat with a Hawaiian based sweet & sour sauce. Perhaps this weekend I'll make a non-perishable food run and load up on somethings.

Here is the final condo update video!

Nobody Is Screaming

2010-07-29T14:37:00.002-04:00

Baskin Robbins, why do you have to be so useless? You're always going on about having so many flavors but in reality you don't. You only ever stock 48 at any given time and when you want to shack up on new ones you just get rid of older ones. Why don't you just increase the number of flavors you sell instead? Sometimes things just don't make sense.

Normally I wouldn't give a damn what BR does concerning it's flavor rotations. BR has some of the stupidest, and weirdest, flavors going for it: "America's Birthday Cake", "Splish Splash Sherbet", "Creole Cream Cheese", "Love Potion #31", and "Cotton Candy" to name a few. It's like they are inventing new flavors with no real cause, or maybe one single guy in the test group felt Honey Oats and Buckwheat was just for him and BR could really cash in on this underground ice cream flavor sleeper craze. Whatever.

I'm not really upset that they make random new ice cream flavors. I'm upset that they got rid of one of the few NORMAL flavors that I do enjoy: French Vanilla. I'm a very simple person when it comes to ice cream flavors. I like vanilla, strawberry, and french vanilla. For me, French Vanilla is taking regular vanilla to the EXTREME. It's got great flavor and simple look and it's just a classic ice cream to me. How in the world BR came to think it was a good idea to get rid of it is beyond me. So many people love that flavor. I don't think I have any good reason to go to Bakin Robbins anymore.

You have failed me, BR.

Here's a random article about french vanilla and Basking Robbins that goes well with what I said.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128699951

Penultimate Condo Update 6

2010-07-27T11:48:00.002-04:00

Condo nearing completion. Here's a video update.

Oh, also the long awaited Starcraft 2 finally came out today. Picked up a copy while on the way to work. Really looking forward to the single player campaign.

Kendo Prep

2010-07-26T12:17:00.004-04:00

So a bunch of kendo stuff is coming up within the next month. Starting next week is the annual Shidogakuin Summer Camp being held up in PA again this year. I attended last year's event and it was good times, albeit hot and tiring. I actually didn't practice every single chance I could because I would be so exhausted I would just fall asleep after lunch sometimes and sleep through practices. So, how to prevent this from happening again this year? More exercise. I started running again and doing some biking and trying to be more proactive in working out. It's only been going on for about two weeks now so I don't think any results will show in time for camp, but it's better than nothing. If I don't work on my stamina I won't be very effective in lasting through long kendo activities. We shall see!

Then the weekend immediately after camp is the Baltimore-Annapolis SEUSKF tournament. Last time I went I arrived super late and had just enough time to put my bogu on before having to fight my match. I think it's being held at a different location this year plus I'll have my GPS. Hopefully I'll learn some elite new ever before seen kendo trick at camp that will propel me to kendo championship at the tournament? Nah. Just work on basics and it should be fine. Hoping not to lose first round, though.

Hmmm, I guess I should actually start getting together my gear and such for the trip.

Kato-Sensei Sighting

2010-07-16T12:53:00.000-04:00

"Shozo Kato, the highest-ranked Kendo master in the US, demonstrates pre-battle meditation as well as the most lethal Kendo strikes at the Museum of the City of New York on Thursday, July 15."

Common Bathroom Stuff

2010-07-16T11:55:00.005-04:00

I wanted to talk a little bit about the bathroom, specifically the things that should and should definitely not be done in them. A lot of this is more aimed at public restrooms since habits shared by one person aren't necessarily mimicked by others, or desired. I would say for things that should be done are to treat bathrooms the way you would your own one at home, but then I think on that and remember that a lot of people are just terrible human beings, so forget that idea. DO is simple - do your business and keep the place clean. As for the do not....

When I am at a urinal and you, a stranger, pull up next to me let it be known I am not in the mood for socializing. Please do not start talking to me about the weather, your family, how rough the day has been, etc. I do not know you and it is a very awkward position you to want to be friendly with me while I'm doing my business. At most I will give you a 'Hey' or a nod of the head, but that is it.

This next part is aimed at guys (and I'm hoping women don't have this issue). When you use the toilet for #1 for god's sake raise the seat. And if you don't raise the seat you better have some good aim. And if you don't raise the seat and have bad aim you had better goddamn while wipe the thing off afterwords. There are few things grossing than going into a stale and realizing the seat is splattered with someone else's pee.

Be courteous and flush, both urinal and toilets. Is it really that hard? I don't even like recalling all the times I've gone into a bathroom to some sort of 'package' surprise or rank odor from hell that has just been festering for who knows how long. Also, WASH YOUR HANDS. It's so disturbing being next to someone in a urinal, I go to wash my hands, I hear them zip up and then they just leave. The handles on bathroom doors are so riddled with germs it's scary.

One other habit I've seen people do is walking into bathrooms while on the phone, never ending the conversation the entire time. I feel bad for the person on the other end because I know they can hear the sound of toilets/urinals flushing. Do people just not have sense about these things? It's like the stories you read about how a guy was doing a phone interview and doesn't get the job because the interviewer hears the toilet flushing. Whenever I'm in a bathroom and someone walks in on cell phone I purposefully will freeze what I'm doing to avoid making any sounds as if I'm afraid the person on the other line will know what I'm doing, forgoing the guy who brought the phone in.

I have my own weird habits, too, I guess. I don't really like pooping in public restrooms unless I'm alone. I will if I have to, but if someone walks in on me I will sit there frozen like a deer in headlights, waiting for them to do their business and leave. In the back of my mind I kind of think "I can't let them know I'm doing this in here. What would people think and say if they knew?". It's a stupid thought, but I can't help it. Some sort of OCD type of thing.

In conjunction with what I said earlier I refuse to answer my cell phone while in the bathroom. Not happening. Leave a message and I'll call you back.

BTW, over is the correct choice in toilet paper alignment. Having the roll sitting around nearby on a shelf (not on dispenser) is also acceptable. Never under, that's crazy.

Hey, I Know That Place!

2010-07-12T11:31:00.005-04:00

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2010/snapshots/PL5114440.html

It's the latest CNN article on best places to live in the US. My town ranks among the top 30? That's pretty cool. I mean, I don't understand how it actually got there because there's really nothing special about the city AT ALL. It's an ok place to live, but you really have to drive to other neighboring cities if you want to do anything.

Is proximity all it takes to really give it such a high rank? Maybe it's similar to that one social aspect girls have where you always see a really attractive girl hanging out with one not so attractive. By hanging out with an unattractive girl you make yourself look more attractive by comparison, and the unattractive girl also benefits because she gets to hangout with people attracted to the other girl and will undoubtedly get some action from someone just by being around.

In that analogy I'm actually saying Centreville is the attractive girl compared to it's neighbors. Suck it, Manassas.

Condo Updates 4 and 5

2010-07-07T11:30:00.003-04:00

Last two weeks put a damper on getting condo fixed up. Here are the last two videos of the works that's gone down on the place. The second video is the most up to date one, took it just last night after work. Everything should be completed before August hopefully.

New Kendo Gear and Random Pics

2010-07-06T12:26:00.007-04:00

So, it seems the worst of everything is over. Still picking up pieces of previous events, but it's mostly just paperwork stuff now. Here are a few less depressing pics of some stuff from my granddad's place as well as a look at some of the new kendo gear I had ordered which arrived weeks ago.

The territorial bobble-headed garden owl. Putting the fear into the hearts of mice 24/7.

Ok, my parents tried to see if I wanted to take this back home with me. There is not a single thing I could do with this antic as I don't own any cassettes or records. Hell, my parents don't even own any. They also tried to get me to take a 5-CD changer player thing, but once again I wouldn't use it. I have an iPod.

This thing is probably destiny or something. Apparently, my mom had made this little turtle back before I was born. We took it home with us and now it hangs out on our patio.

Some sort of tiki warrior carved statue. I thought the thing looked cool and saved it from the "Toss Out" pile of granddad's stuff. The shield is removable and I think it used to have a spear in it's right hand. I might make a makeshift shinai to replace it, though.

Ok, now for the kendo stuff. Over a month ago I placed an order for a ton of kendo stuff, most of which is pointless equipment I'll most likely never use and just wanted to have it for the novelty. Majority of it arrived the day I learned my granddad had passed so the box was left pretty much undisturbed in my room. Here's what the gear looks like and descriptions:

2 39" practice shinai (I was down to one worn shinai with no real spare parts to replace)
Nito-ryu set, a 37" daito (long) and shoto (short). Maybe I'll take up nito someday??
One hand suburi shinai, used for just training
A pair of little hand strengtheners to help improve my grip
A new blue tenugui. My other one I've had for 6 years almost and it's getting nasty
A kendoka figurine in jodan stance. This thing is just badass
A right foot protector (tabi). At one point I was having problems with my feet and wanted this for Christmas, but buying it alone S+H would cost more than the item itself.
One suburiko training weight for shinai. This just attaches to shinai for weight training, but using it too much can throw off your strike. Plus, I also ordered that heavy one handed shinai for weight training so I don't know why I got this again.

What you do not see in this photo are the backordered items to be shipped later this month which are my red oak bokken set (long and short) and my left foot protector. It's funny because the only thing I actually wanted/needed to order was originally just shinai, but when you start shopping online and see other stuff sometimes you just can't help but buy stuff. That's my pesky X chromosome kicking it :O

Finish post up with a close up of jodan statue. Sugei!!

Just Dust In The Wind

2010-07-02T21:47:00.004-04:00

So my grandfather passed away two weeks ago and one of the things that he left behind was a 2007 Toyota Camry. Our families collectively decided that I would get the car since my current 2001 Ford Taurus is slowly crapping out on me.

Dad and I decided to drive the thing across country in lieu of shipping the whole thing. The car was stuffed full of all the extra stuff we were taking with us from granddads house (San Diego) back home (Centreville, VA). What happened last Tuesday night concerning the car was probably one of the worst nights I've had in a long time.

After about 14 hours if driving we ended up in Texas. A lot of the exits had NOTHING off them (gas, hotels, buildings, etc). One exit we pull off into and realize the only buildings around are all closed, so we try to get back onto I-20. Now in Texas, we learned, it seems that when you try to get back onto an interstate you have to make that initial turn and then make an additional turn yielding left. Otherwise, if you just make that first turn you end up being on a parallel service road next to the interstate. All the interstates seem to have parallel service roads on them for whatever work they do out in Texas.

Normally this wouldn't be a huge issue. You just keep going down the service road, realize you can't make it over, turn around and make the correct turn. Not that night. It was around 11:00pm when we got onto this service road. It was pitch black and it had been raining heavily (for Texas) for the last 45 minutes or so and visibility is down about 3000%. As we were driving across the road we hit those normal puddles of water that splash a couple of times, no problem.

Then, as if we were on a water log ride at Six Flags, we came barreling into a pool of water, shooting columns up on either side of the car. The car didn't so much as hydroplane as it did float across. Before we realized it we we about 15 meters out from dry land with our car sitting smack in the middle of a flooded service road. The road was still parallel to the interstate, however at this spot the road had sloped downward because this was a flooding area and the interstate was now up on a bridge. I looked outside the car and saw that it was half-way submerged in this muddy as water and that if we opened either door it'd be immediately flooded.

As I sat there I realized my feet were getting wet. Then my ankles and then shins as water was quickly coming in through the cracks of the doors. My phone at the time had been on the floor and I finally got to it after it had been completely soaked. Dad and I rolled our windows down and crawled out of the car. We both hopped out into the water which reached up to our rib cages (we're both over 6' for reference). Every part of us below that was just sitting in whatever backwater mess Texas had to offer us. We tried desperately to push the car out of the water in hopes we could get back on land, dry it out and be back on our way. As I was pushing I could see frogs just swimming directly in front of me, constantly croaking and taunting me. I smacked this one frog since he got cheeky enough to rub up against my hand.

Alas, we tried for about 5 minutes pushing this now water logged car to no avail and had to make our way back up to land. Naturally, once we got out of the water and back onto land it started to rain heavily again. We were standing there dumbfounded. It was late, dark, raining, we were soaked, we had only one good usable cell phone, and my new car filled with all our family heirlooms and photos and junk was now sitting in about 4 ft of flood water.

(After looking at pic dad asked why I didn't use flash for pictures. Had to explain to him that WAS with flash, and that little camera flash just isn't bright enough to illuminate entire fucking Texas sky at night)

Took about 1 for a tow truck to respond, and we it did get there the wench didn't work and we had to wait on a second one. By the time the car was actually out of the water it had already been over 2 hours. Muddy water was pouring out of the AC vents. We could tell it was done for and the tow guy told us the same. Too much water and mud had gotten into all the systems and it was a complete loss. We hadn't been driving it for more than 24 hours and had already accumulated 2 tickets and a wreck.

The next day was no picnic either as it involved hiking to a bus station (town had no cab service or rental cars) in order to get dropped off in Odessa 1.5 hours away to rent another car so that we could drive BACK to the towing place to get all our water logged shit in order for us to drive back out again. Entire day was loss on that. I did confirm that most people from poedunk little towns in Texas are not very glassy when riding Greyhound. I don't even want to describe them. Just go look at peopleofwalmart.com for that type of thing.

Anyway, here is a ton of after pictures of the car and damage goods.

Dad's laptop. Dead.

Rental car, Kia Soul. When unable to recline seats back due to volume of stuff in car it's a very uncomfortable ride.

Soaked stuff.

Drenched all over.

Front of car...

...and under the hood.

We had all types of stuff floating around afterwords.

Dad's mp3 player ruined and all those CDs caked.

Water in cup holders sans-cup.

Even glove compartment has extra spare water from previous night.

We went back to service road area and of course they closed the road after last night. Cop told me the night before that it had been closed for 2 years almost and he had no idea why it got reopened because people always crash into the water when it rains and it's open there. Fuck.

Service road. One of those little puddles that are no big deal. Then you keep going down the road...

...keep going...

...hey, what's with that dip up ahead in the road?

Oh, it's just that unavoidable body of water that can't be seen in the pitch dark black Texas night when it rains, or else it looks just like one of those little puddles at first glance (until you run into it). Flood gauge meter there still reading the water level at about 4 ft next morning.

Back of the Kia Soul stuffed with water damaged possessions. You take for granted your ability to see out the rear view mirror until you can't anymore.

Muddied shoes, table, and a goddamn porcelain elephant. What the hell.

More stuff.

Antique clock w/ mud layer.

Random other electronics that were submerged in water. Do they work? Haha, no.

There were tons of other pictures and they are all being sent to Geico claims department, but you get the idea. Car ran into water, car and shit got wet, we lost car and got a ton of damaged shit. I'm still stuck with my Ford Taurus until insurance cuts us a check for damages. That was one of the coldest, wettiest, worst nights I've ever had. Waking up the next day and remembering that all that shit did happen was all a pretty bad experience.

No one was hurt and dad and I are home now so that's all that matters, I guess. Everything else is just material possessions....but goddamn I lose my 120gb ipod and a fucking new car!!!

/cry

RIP

2010-06-22T20:26:00.003-04:00

Grandfather passed away Friday morning. I've been in San Diego since Saturday with Dad and family. Funeral will be this Friday, although I won't be returning to Virginia until Tuesday. Lot of stuff to do concerning will, estate, etc. since grandmother passed several years before him.

I'm not going to go into a whole long blog post about him so I'll just say he was a real good man whose helped me my entire life and it's sad that's he's now gone.

Nothing Important

2010-06-16T13:43:00.003-04:00

The annual Shidogakuin summer kendo camp is coming up here in the first week of August. I've got my paperwork filled out and check ready to send off, only thing left to do is to triple-check with work to make sure that I'm not going to have any issues getting a week off for it. I never ask for any time off for vacations and one week off is the most I ever take so they had better not give me any excuses or complaints that I can't go.

I'll post more about the camp later. Maybe do an actual day-by-day update on camp events if I manage to find a laptop I can bring.

And this photo is just hilarious in a sad, cute kind of way.

Hrrrrr....

2010-06-14T19:34:00.002-04:00

Hrrrr.... is my "I'm getting tired of this stuff that should have been resolved long ago" sound effect. Got a call from Home Depot earlier this morning about the kitchen cabinet install that was going to happen this weekend. For whatever reason it is now impossible for them to be able to do the scheduled tasks until July 5th/6th, which is almost a 3 week delay. All my scheduled contracts and closing signings and appraisals were done AROUND the finishing of this install and it just messes everything up. It's just really annoying because now everybody has to try to reschedule everything or work around all this BS.

Hrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...........

PSA

2010-06-11T18:14:00.001-04:00

You are very welcome, mankind.

My Kendo

2010-06-10T13:06:00.003-04:00

This is my kendo. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Recently I've been doing some self-evaluations of my own kendo fighting style and right now I'm going to rate myself B-/C+. There were times I thought I was a solid B, maybe even advancing to A- status, but now I don't think so. See, it's REAL easy to sit back and watch other people's matches and comment on what they should be doing, what they mess up on, what they aren't doing properly, etc. It's an entirely different and difficult thing to accurately self-judge yourself, especially if you don't have any sort of reference material like pictures or videos. There are many times in practice where I've been doing the same move over and over, until I'm not even aware of it, only to be told later that it's entirely wrong. These are just habits that everyone has, I guess, and we gotta learn to get over them.

So, what started my thoughts on this topic originally was a video of one of my spars during a Kato-sensei seminar practice:

If this video was me maybe 4 years ago I would think nothing of it really, but this was 2 weeks ago. I looked over the video and realize I was fighting like crap. I seem overly slow, no solidness to attacks, constantly backing up....it's like it's a different person altogether because in my mind I am way better than that. But you can't deny what you see on video. I'm thinking maybe I'll get more videos of myself during matches just to see how I constantly fight. That will help show me what I'm doing good on and what needs improvement.

As for a description of my fighting method? I'd have to say I'm more the defensive, counter-attack type than a frontal strike first type person. That's just how I am, I'd rather see what's happening and react to it than to just dive right in. Ironically, for me, this is worst possible thing for me to do given my size. 99% of the time I am taller and have further reach than my opponents which means I need to take the initiative and strike first. It all has to do with the strike area on my sword. The strike zone for other people is shorter, so when they get into their zone it means I've already lost my distance. If I try to strike at other people's distances it means either two things: I'm hitting them with the wrong part of my sword, or my footwork is super short and provides no power. This is also why being a counter fighter is bad for me, because people don't attack until they get their distance which automatically messes up my own for any counter strikes.

I can't do quick, repetitive strikes at close distance. It's not in me. I like getting my distance, performing a single strike and going through the motion. Repeat. It just looks and feels cleaner. Going all out with a person in a range where it's highly unlikely to land a correct blow baffles me. At some tournaments little furious brawls are fine and may lead to some points, but it's just lacking in....elegance! Other things I've noticed with my fighting is that I tend to lean forward with my right shoulder at an angle as I strike with intent to move a bit diagonally away from opponent so as to not collide with them even though that's what we should be doing. Must correct this and speed up. As complimenting as it sounds moving at a turtle's pace isn't really helpful. One thing I have improved on is my extension of arms. Before I was leaning in, now not so much.

Announcement

2010-06-09T11:02:00.004-04:00

Ok, getting tired of the way some things are and are currently headed. I swear, here and now on the holy internet, that I will have my CompTIA Security+ certification by the end of June. That is my oath and my goal. I keep putting this bastard off and telling myself I'll get it later and time keeps on passing by. It's already June, and I don't even remember any longer when I first started this. This is pathetic on my part and must be rectified. If you want to help me out ask me sometime how my studying is going because something simple like a question about it will act as a slap in the face for me to get back on it.

Weekend Thing

2010-06-07T12:07:00.001-04:00

This weekend was pretty cool. That is all.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger?

2010-06-04T16:45:00.002-04:00

So yesterday I decided that I'm going to try my hand once again at getting buff and fit and strong and all that jazz. Mostly just the stronger part. I started lifting some weights once again, and of course it was far more difficult than it should have been. Couldn't do nearly as many reps or amounts that I did before, but that's to be expected when you haven't been in a gym in almost 3-4 months now. Feeling the burn today which won't really help me at all in kendo tonight.

One big change that I'm making with this exercise method is that I'm actually looking up stuff on how to build muscle. Before I would just lift once or twice a week, eat a few protein bars and eat like I normally eat. After doing a quick 10 minutes of internet research apparently all my previous efforts were in vain because I don't know what the hell I'm doing when it comes to building muscle. To build muscle your body needs a whole lot of proteins, which I did not calculate before or even gave any thought of. If you don't get enough protein then the muscles won't have enough resources to actually grow. That's why sometimes I'd see a little change in body structure but never anything really noticeable.

So now that I've done some basic research, calculated some stats based on body weight and BFI (body fat index) I've found out I need close to 200g of protein a day to build up some real muscle. Ok, 200g is actually a lot for me. Today, before I did any research I already had more than I normally do on any given day. I then calculated all that I ate and determined with more than half the day gone by I've barely made it to 100g of protein. So for dinner I'm going to have to cram in a whole lot of meat. That's what she said.

Destruction and Construction

2010-06-02T10:36:00.004-04:00

Here's a condo video update. This was taken before the place was cleaned out so I could always look back and remember how much stuff we got rid of.

Next, I went on a binder of sketches last night. Just had the urge to draw and did a few sketches within an hour. I had actually offered to draw any animal people made a request for on facebook and I got like 10 replies, so these are a few of those requested. I've still got to figure out how I'll handle the other requests of "Liam Neeson", "fred's penis", and "chupacabra".

Epic Weekend

2010-06-01T13:36:00.004-04:00

So last weekend was probably one of the most fun weekends I've had in a long time, and the fact that it was a 3-day weekend was a bonus. This was the highly anticipated Kato-sensei seminar celebration/potluck weekend which had me spending Fri/Sat/Sun just hanging out with kendo people and kendo demigods.

Friday nights practice Kato-sensei showed up and was honored by us all at out our Herndon dojo. He was then told by one of our members (a Herndon City council member) that he had pulled some strings and got May 30th to be recognized as official Shozo Kato day in the city of Herndon. That's just elite to have a day honored after you.

Immediately after practice I spent the next 2 hours at home in the kitchen in an effort to make my salsa recipe for the next day's potluck dinner. I thought I had learned my lesson when it came to handling habaneros, but apparently not. Cut up the peppers before onions, used same cutting board and didn't clean it off after the peppers. Wore gloves while cutting the peppers, took them off for onions, then scooped onions with my hand and knife effectively getting leftover habanero all over my hand. Rubbed my eye and presto, instant punishment for a stupid act. Live and learn, and learn, and relearn, and go back again and learn what you should've learned from already.

Next day was the first official seminar of the weekend over at the Rockville, MD dojo. Iaido was first on the schedule, but I showed up a bit after since I don't do it. After iaido we all walked over to a local Japanese/Chinese buffet for lucnh. Really good sushi and food there, and it was an extra treat because Yan-sensei treated everybody. Seminar was great as usual, and very packed. I must have fought every sensei (except for Kato) that day and I was exhausted afterwords. Went home, took a shower, and prepped for potluck. This was all after my dad got mad at me because for some reason he thought I was at VT until Sunday so he went and took down all the kitchen cabinets at my condo. I think he just assumes when I say I'm doing something kendo related Blacksburg must be involved.

From Sunday seminar, my "battle" with Kato-sensei."

Now, I've never actually been to a kendo potluck before and did not know what to expect. The last previous 3 planned get togethers had all been canceled due to snow. Kendo potluck is just great fun. There was tons of food and beer, friendly people, singing, story telling, and just general good times. I even beat up some of the young ones in some classic video gaming. Some of the highlights of the night were the improv "Kato-sensei is the greatest" song, the kendo cake(s), and learning the true story of the WEKENDO license plate of Yan-sensei (*psssst*, it involves hookers). All in all it was an excellent event.

This represents maybe 1/5th of all the food.

One of the kendo cakes.

Sunday brought about another day of kendo seminar. It was mostly just basic footwork exercises and explanations of how to properly strike and hold targets. There was a mini-tournament for the kids, and I actually got a chance to fight Kato-sensei, albeit poorly. Very fun stuff, especially watching sensei mess with the others. One of the kids he fought got pushed all the way across the room and thrown into a closet, and another was struck and then judo wrestled to the ground. That kind of thing is just too good.

With the seminar over kendo weekend ended and the rest of memorial weekend for me began. Had to get back home in an attempt to help out with BBQ and housework. Parents had invited about 10 people over for a cookout and we already had about 9 relatives visiting, too, so there was a lot to be cooked. Dad made use of a nice propane grill he purchased, a smoker, and our charcoal grill. Foods included standard BBQ sides at our place like beans, salad, potato salad, corn, and some other stuff like gumbo, okra and shrimp, dirty rice, etc. Stuff on the grill I can barely remember, but 4 different flavors/types of chicken, ribs, burgers, turkey burgers, hotdogs and hotlinks.

Can't...fit...all...food...in picture...

People continued to show up hour after hour and didn't finally leave until around 11pm. I got stuck with clean-up duty since I hadn't been around all weekend to help with anything of any nature. Next day was Memorial Day, which is normally a good thing, but this holiday I got put to work at my condo hauling stuff off. Thankfully, I had some unpaid help and the use of a wheelbarrow. Roughly 4 hours of just picking stuff up and dumping it outside really tires a person out, but it's a nice feeling knowing that you did accomplish something.

Some of the crap that was being removed.

Fred emptying the bathtub full of tiles.

After all that was finished I was done for the day. It was about 5pm then and I was absolutely done with anything and everything. My only plan was to get home, take a shower, eat something, and just relax. Parents didn't ask me to do a single thing Monday night and I was content. Condo tasked finished and ready to move onto next stage. Weekend over, had good time, met new people, got work done, ate well. Jumping back into the work world!

Headed home.

Condo Video 2

2010-05-23T14:13:00.003-04:00

Just an update. I've decided I'm going to take periodic videos of the condo showing the progressive nature of it's improvements. Some work has now taken place and we're slowly getting there.

Friday Thoughts

2010-05-21T14:25:00.002-04:00

It's Friday, which means I'm eagerly awaiting a chance to get the hell out of here. Friday's here at work are usually pretty slow. That's a good and bad thing. Good in that many people will just conveniently be out/sick/have something else to do so I won't see them or be asked to do more mundane work. It's bad in the sense that that sort of thing also makes it a good day to get certain projects done since it's slow. If I don't get any projects then it's still bad because I may just be bored the entire day (there's only so much internet one person can look at here at his desk). But not today! Today is one of those slow days where I don't have much to do while also having plenty of stuff to watch/read. Playing catch up on some manga!

Anyway, here's some random food for thought for food:

There is no reasonable way to shop in bulk for food when you're single. Everyone knows shopping in bulk as a Costco or something saves you money, but when I was living alone it didn't make any sense. 20 lbs bag of potatoes? Sure, I'll save $10 down the road buying this sack, but I'll never be able to eat them all before they go bad, so it'll be like throwing away money anyway! It's double worse because buying food for a single person (individual meals and amounts) is way more expensive. Families get the full benefit of food shopping because they can save money while still eating everything they buy without waste.
Never, under any circumstances, go grocery shopping when you're hungry. Ever. It is the quickest way to waste all your money on stuff you won't really want later. A lot of times I find myself hungry and craving one particular item from the store, but as I go down the aisles I start imagining how delicious that is and those are and how I'll definitely want some of that stuff later. Get home, eat one meal, then immediately realize I've wasted $50 on food I no longer want any more because I just ate.
For people who eat fastfood you must appreciate the value menu (formerly known as the dollar menu, thanks economy!). This is that little side menu with the cheaper items usually around $1 in price. For the price of one specialty burger you can easily buy like half the value menu. Yes, value menu items aren't as fancy but in the end they still produce the same effect which is to fill you up. 2 double cheeseburgers, 4-piece nugget, small fry and drink together is just about the cost of a Big-Mac itself.
God, I wish they would bring back the Wendy's Bacon Swiss Onion melt burger back.

What Da Heck

2010-05-15T22:05:00.001-04:00

Google image search for "cool kendo" returns this as a result:

I am actually not surprised in the least bit. Google rules.

Turtle vs Pug

2010-05-14T12:38:00.003-04:00

It's Friday and I'm feeling lazy here at work (similar to Mon-Thur). It's getting kind of hot outside and I spent this morning carrying heavy boxes into my condo getting it prepped. There was actually work to do this morning at work, and now that it's slowed down I will bless the Internet world with an update of easy going videos featuring primarily pugs and turtles TOGETHER as nature intended it.

Ok, so this first video isn't of a pug, but it's still really cool. Dog riding a tortoise as a means of travel is always great stuff in my book and it reminds me of the rescue scene in Milo and Otis. You know what I'm talking about. That scene where Otis is stranded on a little rocky island and the tide is coming in and the sea turtle appears and saves him by ferrying him back to shore. Top 10 scenes of all movies. Thank you Annie for bringing this video to my attention.

This pug takes on a little box turtle. Turtle puts the fear in the pug, which stymies his full on attack. Turtle, being the clever creature that he is, utilizes the natural living terrain of other dog as defense.

Pug and tortoise. Pug barks and the tortoise holds it's ground.

Condo 3: The Revenge of HOA Fees

2010-05-12T13:10:00.003-04:00

I tried doing the 12 of 12 idea when I first started this blog, which is a post containing 12 photos of my daily activity on the 12th of the month, but I am just so bad at remembering the dates and remembering to have a camera with me. Plus, I always have to purposefully try to vary the photos I take, otherwise the majority of my day would just be photos looking at my monitor. Too much! So that idea is scrapped.

I don't really have anything to replace it with, but please enjoy this video I took this morning of my condo. Nothing really going on, just me walking through a mostly empty place. AMAZING STUFF!

Yeah, More Condo

2010-05-11T14:09:00.003-04:00

Here's some condo photos of what the place currently looks like. It's very bare, but once I get more things moved in I'll have a comparison media day to see the metamorphosis of this little caterpillar.

Kitchen. Pretty much this whole place will be changed and updated. Better cabinets, better flooring, new stove/microwave, etc.

Master bedroom. One of the first things I brought over was my old computer to get it set up. Tested which outlets are controlled by the light switch and even found out that someone out there doesn't know the dangers of having unsecured wireless access. Some uncaring chap, like myself, might just tap into it and use up all your bandwidth to illegally download movies currently in the cinema!

View of the foyer and entrance. Plenty of space, not sure what I'll put in this room yet.

Opposite side, view from across living room and windows looking out onto the lovely dumpster and back of building parking lot.

Bathroom will also get a rehaul like the kitchen. One important thing I must remember to change immediately is the lack of toilet paper. The toilet works fine, but I keep forgetting I lack all the accommodations of most civilized homes.

Spoils of War

2010-05-07T23:10:00.003-04:00

All paperwork for condo purchased successfully signed. Keys have been acquired. Ability to move in and live there present. Still some things to look into to make the complete move and separation from home base. Moving into a permanent home is way more annoying than just getting an apartment. It will be nice once this is all over with.

"The father figure looking out the veranda, contemplating the new lodgings."

Semi-Art

2010-05-05T12:59:00.002-04:00

I'm doing some minor spring cleaning today, dusting off my desk and organizing any files I have. That basically involves me removing everything off my desk and looking through all the random paperwork piled on top of each other, seeing if any of the stuff is worth keeping or throwing out.

I found an old notebook I used to use to jot down stuff (notes mostly) when I first started working here last year. I knew going through it was really a waste of time as the notes I take that I need to refer back to are never in little steno pads, but I did it just in case I wrote down some random super secret awesome website address that I could go back and visit.

What I realized after looking through the pages was that a lot of our meetings I'm just sitting around doodling random things. Meetings here get so goddamn boring, with maybe 25% of the info going on being relevant to me at all. So, as to seem like I'm being productive, I will have my notebook with me as if I care what people are saying by transcribing their words, but in reality I'm just trying to occupy my mind so as not to fall asleep. I end up drawing random stuff, so here are some examples of the stuff.

I think I was drawing a bald man, but then it sorta turned into my rendition of the Monkey King from Journey to the West? Yes, my notes are messy but they just need to be quick and readable, not pretty.

I think someone mentioned something about radios which got me thinking about the radio backpacks used in World War II and Vietnam back then. Those things were freaking huge. Random set of shifty eyes up top.

This was my favorite and the only one I plan to keep in my portfolio. I'm not even certain what I was going for with this disproportionate fish (as indicated by my later note written in pen). For that day the fish was my ONLY set of notes, nothing else was written down during meeting. Yes, DC government, this is what you pay me for.

This Is A Car

2010-05-04T13:04:00.003-04:00

So over the weekend my family apparently got a new car. And by new car I mean we got an old car sent to us by my grandfather out in San Diego. He sent us this old, dark green 2-door 1950 Chevy Coupe he has had for a bit and been working on for some time. My dad and mom went to pick it up and now it's just sitting in our garage.

What my dad ultimately intends to do with the car I don't know. I know he wants to at least repaint it black and get it into a better drivable condition. Right now it seems the clutch has some sort of issues going on with it and there's trouble going from 1st to 2nd gear or some other such stick nonsense. Once it's up and running better it's not like we're going to drive it around all the time. Maybe take it out once or twice a year for kicks, but that's it. Probably will sell it eventually. Mom said someone had offered granddad $25,000 for the car and he turned it down? I don't know about that. I don't think it's even worth that much.

Here are some photos of this old timey car..

The Hunt Concludes

2010-05-03T15:01:00.003-04:00

So, one of the things I've been hinting at being a change for me is my living arrangements. Finally, I found and secured a condo of my own to live in. Well, that's not entirely true. I'm at about 94% truthness to that statement. Firstly, I wanted to wait to post about it until I was certain everything was set and in order concerning contracts and payment. If everything is still going smoothly I'm looking at a closing date of May 7th (4 days from now) and can start to move in over the weekend. So technically, shit could still hit the fan in these next few days, but I doubt it will.

Secondly, the condo is not actually mine. See, because for the last 8 months or so EVERY contract I've put in for places in Annandale/Alexandria have all lost to people paying everything to cash. I'm a first time buyer still trying to get started in life, I can't afford full cash purchases. My dad actually got annoyed that I had lost out on a 2 bedroom 2 bath place for a good price to cash, so what he did was went out and got a cash loan himself since he can afford it. With his cash then I went out, told him what place I wanted, and he bought it for me. So the condo that is being purchased is officially his until he sells it back to me in the next coming weeks. I will just be squatting on his land until then.

As for the condo location? It's out in Alexandria, inside the beltway near Landmark Mall and the area where Little River turn Pke becomes Duke St. Forgive me for not posting the exact address, that's a bit much. Instead please to be enjoying this google map overhead photo with my building conveniently marked for your perusal.

The place is in a pretty decent area/location. Easy access to the beltway and some shopping areas and close to DC. It is probably the best area right now in Virginia is terms of location/affordable cost. Moving there alone from my parents house in Centreville will easily shave off up to 25-30 minutes of my morning commute to work. The place is a 2 bedroom, 1 bath, fresh carpet and paint. Minor works needs to be done here and there but it's very move-in-able. Just got to set have utility people hook me up and start the moving process and everything and I'm set.

Only bad part about all this is because I'm not making my purchase of the condo until after my dad buys it I've already missed the extended first home buyer tax credit of $8000, although I've recently been told a multi-home buyer gets a $6500 credit so....yeah. Also, I've got to go through the whole buying process again and signing all the paperwork and everything. That is so boring, tedious, and I just wish it was as easy as trading items in WoW.

Well...There It Is

2010-04-30T17:33:00.002-04:00

Ok, April has easily been the worst month ever for my updates. I apologize to those 3-4 of you who check this site in hopes of being entertained for a minute (or because there's nothing better on the entire internet).

May will be a month of a ton of changes. Not to this site, although I plan on updating more, but changes in my personal life. More to be revealed as the events occur. So very glad today is Friday and it's almost over. I've got a bunch of stuff to prepare for this weekend and I am eager to get out of here.

Since all text updates are boring here is a nice picture.

Could It Be?

2010-04-26T18:02:00.000-04:00

This might be the one...