Costly Wedding

I'm sure we all know by now that the runaway bride, Jennifer Wilbanks, is one crazy individual. I found it quite humorous that she has now agreed to pay $13,250 for the costs that the city spent on searching for her when she was reported missing.



I am so disappointed that her fiance decided to stand by his bride for what she had done a month ago.

If a woman somehow convinced me to marry her, but disappeared from the face of the earth a few days before the wedding, here is what I would do:

Nothing.

I would not alert the cops, I would not alert my relatives. I would just pick up my golf bag, hit the closest golf course, and play two rounds of 18 holes with my buddies and pretend that nothing has happened.

Back from Memorial Weekend

Just so you know I'm not dead or anything, I just wanted to drop a quick note here to tell everyone that I had just come back from my family trip in Yosemite. More updates tonight with photos.

Check out these two geniuses

This has got to be the story of the year. Apparently, two die-hard star wars fans in the UK were filming a light sabre fight as one of the light sabres (they're actually fluorescent tube) broke and injured themselves.

Check this out:

Two hurt in mock light sabre duel

More Google Map Hacks

Found two useful google map hacks today:

• Find cheap gas
• Find movie times

Enjoy.

and I thought I was messy...

Once upon a time, my bedroom was very neat and clean. It has recently become so messy that it is almost intolerable. Before I went to bed last night, I promised myself that I would spend this weekend to clean up my room.

Thanks to the Internet, this morning I stumbled upon this awesome house that's owned by a crazy eBay mom. I think I am going to leave my room as is and see if I can accumulate enough junk to top her.

/me goes to make a bigger mess.

Trackerless Bittorrent?

Right when I thought the fame of Bram Cohen, the creator of Bittorrent, was about to be taken over by the open sourced java Bittorrent client Azureus, he came out and announced the release of the trackerless bittorrent!

This should make it so much easier for anyone to start sharing their torrent files without trying to set up a tracker themselves. I guess bittorrent can still get better afterall.

You go, Bram!

Being Attacked by Birds

CNN: Swooping grackles attack Houston residents

Haha. Even birds hate lawyers:

The grackles zeroed in on a lawyer who shooed a bird away before he tripped and injured his face, Jue said. The lawyer was treated for several cuts.

Since it appears that the birds are not randomly attacking people, I have no problem with them continuing with what they are doing. These lawyers deserve it anyway. What are they gonna do, sue the birds?

Bay to Breakers - I did it!

What a ride it has been! All the training finally paid off as I finished 8599th place out of over 70,000 runners (and drunks) at Bay to Breakers. According to the race results, I finished the 7.5 mile race in 1:29:24, which was precisely 14 minutes and 24 seconds slower than my original goal... D'oh! I am going to blame it on the fact that I was surrounded by a mob of naked men during the first mile of the race, and the fact that I took a few breaks to do keg stands midway through the race.

In any case, I am still happy because the website says that the names of the first 10,000 timed finishers were published on today's sovenir edition of the San Francisco Examiner! How cool is that?

I need to go get myself a copy. Does anyone know where I can still find newspapers from this morning?

Bay to Breakers day!

Time to head up to the city! Just so you know, I have been training extremely hard this whole last week for this event by:

Getting 4 hours of sleep each night
Not running at all
Eating nothing but carbs all week
drinking nothing but coke and coffee all week

I will update this with my finish times and other pictures (no naked people, i promise) later.

I am still alive!

Yes! it is 9:34pm and Rico and I are still here at work. Why are we still here? I'm not sure...

Oh I know why. Perhaps the Aeron chair in my cube is so comfortable that I decide to stay instead of going home and watch the American Idol? Or is it because of the fact that two of my coworkers are leaving, and I now have to work 24 hours a day?

Whatever the reason may be, I am definitely enjoying the fact that I have finally found time to write my first blog of the week.

French etiquette

I overheard this amazing conversation last night while I was in the bathroom at a very nice French restaurant in San Francisco last night. There were these two guys who were peeing at the urinal, and one of them was a French waiter who's working there; The other guy was some random guy who obviously had a little bit too much to drink. They started a very interesting discussion, and it went like this:

Drunk guy: Hey man, can I ask you a question?
French waiter: Yeah sure.
Drunk guy: In French culture, is it okay to fart while you're in the bathroom?
French waiter: Oh yes. I always fart as loud as I can, especially when I'm standing right next to some guy. I go for the volume. I want the guy peeing next to me to look at me and go 'oh wow! who the hell is this guy?'
Drunk guy: Oh cool, I just wanted to make sure that it's cool to do that here. *proceeds to fart very very loud*
French waiter: good job dude.
At this moment, they both started laughing really hard, and that's when the drunk guy threw up in the urinal all of a sudden.
French waiter: dude! I didn't say it's ok to throw up here!

I guess you learn something new each and every day. Definitely a once in a life time experience. I am glad I was at the right place at the right time to witness this.

E*TRADE merging with Ameritrade?

E*Trade, Ameritrade options busy on takeover talk

That's an interesting thought. I am just curious what the name would be once it's merged. E*TRADEtrade? E*Ameritrade?

Rumors suck because they're just speculations. The nice thing is though it usually gives the stock a big pop. For example, ET and AMTD both went up by 9% today during market hours.

So is this really going to happen? According to the article:

An E*Trade spokeswoman declined to comment, citing "a long-standing corporate policy not to comment" on market rumors or speculation. An Ameritrade spokesman did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

What's wrong with these reps at Ameritrade? Can't they return phone calls?

I am talented and I didn't even know it

I was once told that I would talk and sleepwalk in my dreams. I thought that was BS until I did a search for my own name on Google, where I found out how much more I have accomplished in life than being just an ordinary engineer.

Besides being an Engineer in the Bay area, here are my other professions:

• Art Director
• Adult Film Director
• Top Badminton player at Harvard
• A Quake player with a really sweaty lookin' face
• A destroyer
• Someone who can magically speak a foreign language

Training Day #2

With only two weeks left until Bay to Breakers, Duc and I increased the intensity of my training by picking a brand new route. We started from work and ran along Bayfront Expressway all the way to Sun Microsystems. We then crossed 101 highway, through the flood park and finished the run on Bay road. It was approximately 6 miles, and we were able to finish it in 1 hour and 4 minutes. At this pace, we should be able to finish the actual Bay to Breakers run in about 1 hour 15 minutes.

I am also using this bay to breakers opportunity to raise money for my buddy Rico, whom so unfortunately had to get brand new tires for his AWD car. Once we have reached the donation target, all extra proceeds goes straight to my savings account for undisclosed purposes.


New training route. 6 miles long

May - The Worst Month of the Year

Why do I know so many people whose birthdays are in May? I think I have to attend at least three birthday parties per week for the entire month, and that is just going to kill me. It's time to declare bankruptcy.

Birthday parties are such scams - you first need to reserve time out of your schedule to attend the dinner. Then, you need to spend time finding a creative gift, and finally you need to pay for your meal and the birthday boy/girl's meal. Altogether, I usually end up spending ~ $100 on every birthday party that I attend.

This year, I am saving money by buying the birthday cards at the dollar store (buy 1 get 1 free). To figure out how much I should spend on gifts, I will use a complex formula which involves variables such as how long I know the person, whether there's a blood relation, what I received from them during my previous birthdays, and pi (3.14159265358979323846).

On the other hand, I received a beautiful invitation to attend my friend's wedding. I will make sure that I get my money's worth by bringing empty bottles with me and filling them up with hard liquor.

The Real American Idol

This guy really should have participated in the American Idol because if he did, he would have been the outright champion after just one week of competition. He's going to replace my previous favorite idol, William Hung, as the best singer of all time.

Watch him perform here. It is very important that you watch this.