Category Archives: General

Don’t read the reviews, just see Oldboy.

I’ve only been waiting for a couple of months to see Oldboy and I’ve heard it’s violent, twisted, and incredible. It’s even more twisted and incredible than I thought. I shouldn’t oversell the movie, since it’s not for everyone, but my friend Il and I just sat at dinner afterwards saying two things:

  1. Man, that movie was twisted.
  2. Man, that movie was awesome.

In any case, if you can put up with the violence, it’s worth seeing. Don’t read the reviews, it’ll just slow down what you’re watching. The trailer only covers the first fifteen minutes (or less!) of the movie, so just see that and go.

Movies for all!

I’m not much of a movie goer, but lately I’ve done my fair share. Today I went to see The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill and tomorrow I’m going to see Oldboy, both at Cinema 21. I still think Mondovino was better than The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill but my friend Jennifer disagrees.

In any case, it’s almost movie time again!

They’re not sending ME on a business trip.

I guess there’s only one guy they’re thinking of sending and it’s not me. I’m probably a far second on this one. For one thing, I’d probably go and cheese someone off. Heck, we’re “acquiring an asset” from a different company so I don’t think we need to tip-toe around these people. However, I’m sure I’d find out somehow that they make more money than I do (along with most everyone else) and that would make me upset because I’m making less than them, and it’s worry them because they’ll know that the acquiring company is a bunch of cheapskates. Yah, well, whatever. I just heard some internal planning during a meeting that seemed so optimistic that it made me too nervous to do much of anything for a couple of hours. Well, actually, it made me so nervous that I outlined a contingency plan and presented it to my boss.

I heard from Megan today and she’s jet-setting around everywhere. She’s been to Thailand and Vermont already this year and she’s planning on Italy this summer. Heck, I’m planning on going all the way to Seaside, Oregon and that’s probably going to take OVER AN HOUR of driving.

Got my copy of “Nando Demo” today and it only cost $13.55. Of course, they played it three times in an hour this morning. Ah, well. I’m just hoping no one wakes me up at 3AM, which has happened two nights in a row now.

Nando demo

So I’ve been listening to a lot of j-pop lately, mainly from SickOnion.com. (Be forewarned that the programming originates in Costa Rica and they have a little problem with blue language in their promos.) I found out that one of my favorite bands, Dreams Come True has a new single out, “Nando demo.” It’s the theme song from a Japanese TV show about a hospital emergency room. I’m not sure what sort of show it is, but after seeing them cart off a kid from the neighborhood in a Japanese ambulance, I don’t have much faith in Japanese Emergency Medical System.

In any case, the video is goofy, but I really like the song. I’ll have to buy the CD single from Japan and it might cost me $20 for two songs. Sure is a lot more than iTunes.

OK, so now what?

I can’t remember exactly what I was up to today. I remember the gardening, and then starting to move files around on my computer. I think that’s what I wasted all my time on. I decided I was going to move some files around because I wanted to clear out all the extra stuff off of the big disk and repartition, etc, etc. Basically, I did on the disk what I did out in the yard: various weeding.

Oh, I met the new neighbors, a pair of physicians. They seem nice enough and have an adorable daughter.

My sister signed onto her Yahoo account for the first time in years so I sent her a message. It freaked her out and she couldn’t figure out who I was. She even called me on the phone to ask what was going on.

I don’t think that torch is going to work.

How did I get so sunburned? I don’t remember being out in the sun that long. In any case, the big torch — at least the $30 one from Harbor Freight — didn’t work quite right. There’s a lot of water in weeds and you have to boil that off before a weed burns. A large leafy weed can take minutes to burn up. And then while the weed is burning, it puts out a lot of smoke and steam and if you have allergies, the smoke and steam isn’t all that pleasant.

What you can do is start fires with the torch. Not that we, on a no-burn day, burned anything.

We did finally made it to Industrial Café and Saloon and I guess the dinner chef is the husband of my sister’s grade school classmate. Perhaps a few too many degrees of separation, but still sort of friends.

OK, who turned up the heat?

So the high a week ago was 62°F. Today it was 95°F at the airport. That means it was probably a couple degrees warmer here in the city. It’s supposed to drop about 20&degF to a more civilized temperature, but for the moment it is HOT. The walk home wasn’t so bad, but I was stumbling around the gym. They had the air conditioning turned on, so it was cooler than usual, but I was still feeling kind of off. And I probably wasn’t the only one. There were only about four people there at any time. I suppose the yoga people could have been hiding in their dark room, but out on the floor, where there are usually at least a dozen people on a slow day, the place was empty.

So even after lots of sugar from orange juice and part of a Jack-in-the-Box milkshake, I’m still feeling tired. Better hit the hay early.

How to annoy the boss.

I’m not one to keep secrets, so when I find out things like grade school teachers make a lot more money than I do, or that postal workers make a lot more money than I do, I tell my boss. I think he’s reasonable enough to know that cheap labor comes with its drawbacks and unless he wants to outsource everything to someone incompetent or someone in a third-world country, he’s going to have to listen to some complaining. The past few days have been especially bad for me. Some of my co-workers (one in particular) is driving me nuts. One of my peers at work usually has that problem but now it’s my turn to be annoyed at the particular co-worker and my peer is able to ignore the irritations.

I better keep my eyes peeled for civil service tests, especially with the US Postal Service, if I want to raise my pay level. Computers are for the birds.

Another late day at work.

This time I needed to get some data off of our CEO’s laptop so I had to do it while she was with a customer and away from her laptop. Unfortunately, the process was SLOW and it took around FIVE hours. That meant I was at work until almost 9PM on a day I got there early (early for me, around 8:25AM).

Since I spent most of my day at work, I don’t have much interesting to talk about. I didn’t even get to go outside much on this day where it was 86°F today. Well, it’ll be warmer tomorrow.

The big torch.

I still feel like getting a weed burning torch and here’s a biggie! The small one I’m probably going to get is at Harbor Freight Tools. The only thing that everyone suggests is that I keep a hose running and wait until a rainy day. The weather s good now, and it’s supposed to be about 90°F on Thursday, but every good Oregonian knows that Memorial Day is coming and it’s always nice until Friday and rains on Saturday through Monday.

I should probably find something else to do over the weekend, but the fire sounds like fun.

I think my horoscope told me to start a romance today, but that’s not happening, is it?

I should write earlier.

Usually I forget about this thing, and most people on the planet wouldn’t care. But, for some reason, I have friends who like keeping up with what I’m doing. OK, so the keeping up with friends thing isn’t so weird but reading all the nonsense here is a bit off. In any case, if you’re about to complain about my pollution of the web, you’re a loon.

The reason I should write earlier is because I forget about all the stuff that I was meaning to write about. I don’t go through my day thinking, “Whoa, I gotta write about this,” but there are things, like my dream about the vampire cow last night, that I mean to write about but I forget. (The vampire cow had a big burn in its back, severing the spine, but it still kept walking towards me with it’s evil red eyes and a frightening, “Moooooo.” Surprising the things that wake you up.)

So I got to work today and they were talking about fasting and how it makes you poo or not poo. My contribution was that the volume of poo is probably related to the amount of bacteria in the gut. I even found a journal article that confirms what I remember, that about half of your poo (55%) is bacteria. I never got into medical school, and I can’t remember much of the basic sciences from my prereq classes, but I do remember random crap. Crap about poo.

Oh, and my horoscope today said something about hitting on people and getting rebuffed. Just like always, I hit on NOBODY. I supposed I waved at a girl at the gym and talked to a guy with a nice Volvo, but neither really matches my horoscope.

Oh, and a bunch of kids chastised me today. Greg’s kid told him to quit talking to me on the phone because I was interrupting their TV show, and an old schoolmate Jason’s three sons told him to quit talking to me because I was interrupting their baseball game. So, while my horoscope wasn’t correct, I still feel like a big jerk.