Guess which one is me?

One of these little boys raising a toast is me, the other one is my kindergarten buddy, Jason. Oddly enough, after not talking to one another since kindergarten. We met up again in Taichung City, Taiwan. He was an English teacher living in Taiwan just like I was. We bumped into each other in Chinese class of all places. I am amazed at what a small world it is sometimes. Jason and I lived a few doors down the street from each other on Richmond Drive in Muncie Indiana. Ball State University was in our backyards, and we were best friends. When my family moved that summer, we kept in touch with a couple letters, as we started first grade, but never talked after that. To think that he moved to Korea for a year, then moved to Taiwan... just like I did. And we met after living in the same city for a couple years and never knowing the other was there. We have the modern version of this picture, where we're all growns up and holding beers.

• One of the best stories of my life.

Cheers Jason.

The Curse of 690

I just love a good typo. I saw this while looking on the course site for a class I took spring semester. The course was on statistics and academic writing. It looks like the summer session is a lot more structured. The session I took had nothing but improvised cursing.

Monday

Not sure what to post. I just know its been a long time since I've posted, and hey, time to slop some more words up on the bullplop log. An update of what's been going on. I spent Thursday at a 7 habits of highly effective people training session, I spent friday working on a website for myself. Sending the link to my portfolio off to Thailand. Saturday i got to work two hours late, and my boss didn't care. In fact, he was taking a nap when i got there. Three cheers for my boss. Sunday i got to see my sisters and scrub the !@#% out of my mom's old house to complete the final move-out. And today i worked in corporate america for the first time ever. It wasn't too bad. I went through new hire training, and then tomorrow will get to work on how to redo new hire training. Kind of a cool job. Now I'm at the lab listening to someone blather on and on... I'm quite impressed with how long this guy can talk about nothing.

Super Market

Living at the beach is rough. Today, on my way to Henry's to get groceries I stopped the car, went swimming, sat on the sand for a little bit, listening to the waves, then got back in my car, got my groceries and went to work. Life is rough.

Family is Forever

My Mom and sisters are loading up the moving van that will take all their things from San Diego to Fullerton. It'll be sad having my little sister living far away. An hour and a half isn't that far, but it'll be harder to see her, which is a shame since she's so darn funny. My two sisters are pretty close. They have a frame with a picture taken of them a few years back. The frame says "Sisters are Forever" My sister had attached a note to it that said "So There!" I guess there's no escaping family.

Still Can't Believe It

BIG and his biggest moment in all his years as a Laker. Good luck as a "Heatian".

Life as a Federali Take Two

I posted to blogger on Friday while in the LARC Lab and none of it showed up. When I previewed, it had messed up my post somehow. I was in a hurry since it was during presentations at the end of the DMA Workshop 2004 and should have been paying attention, not blogging. Certainly not troubleshooting and blogging at the same time so I hit submit, and then we end up with a blank blogpost. That blog discussed the first day I had in corporate training at Mission Federal Credit Union. its hard to rewrite friday's post on sunday, but its hard to look at your own blog with an empty post. The part I liked best about my day was grinning and meeting new people on thursday morning all the while hoping my gray pants didn't raise high enough to expose my one gray, one green sock combination. After the DMA Workshop where I thanked everyone for using the LARC Moodle I worked on, we went out and did a bachelor party for Brave Sir Robin. I'd love to have a picture of Rindi in her vail, and Robin with his ball and chain. Wedding Bells Aug 1st. Gong Xi Gong Xi. Saturday, I enjoyed watching the episode of The OC called Christmasukkah with Raj, a Punjabi Computer Science student who just started working in the lab with us. Then I took a saturday afternoon nap, then went for a bikeride that finished at the beach at sunset. Ain't life grand?

Life as a Federali

It Pays to be a geek

I heard back from Mission Federal and am pleased to say they've offered me a full-time job working with them as an instructional designer. three cheers for me!

Geek Training

For my application to Mission Federal, they asked for a sample of instructional design work i'd done. Knowing they were looking for a fun and creative solution, I put together a geek training program. I thought it was pretty funny, and straddles the line of showing design talent and creativity and an odd sense of humor. I was planning on working on it last night when i got home, but ended up falling asleep at 8:30 PM. I woke up at 1:30AM and made five web pages, then went back to sleep from 6-8AM, visited the County Office of Education and am now at work playing an awesome game called Bow Man where you get to shoot your opponent with a bow and arrow. Simple game, but a lot of fun.

more domestic mishaps

For dinner last night I was going to have an amazing meal, complete with five courses. It was going to have the perfect mix of tastes and flavors. It was going to be healthy and delicious. It was going to be so good those expert chefs on the food channel were going to be jealous... but I was tired when I got home, so I decided just to pop open a can of chili, dump some cheese on it. heat it up and call it dinner. simple enough, right? The problem came not from the actual "cooking" part of the meal, but in the preparation. All the fault of my can opener. I have an old can opener that just barely makes its way around the top of a can. It's not automatic. The wheels are kind of rusty. For some reason, its turquoise. Its happened before where I make it most of the way around a can, then the opener has trouble opening part of the can. I usually just go to another part of the circle and can complete the open that way. However, last night I ended up with a quarter inch sliver that refused to be cut by my can opener.. twice. They were on opposite sides of the lid, and I was stuck with a can that wouldn't open. I finally got my crappy opener to get one of the stubborn bits to cut nearly all of it. It was so close that I thought i could just push down on the lid and break that last bit of metal. i could. I did. A little push and the lid collapsed into the chili. I guess the push was harder than it needed to be. Chili went flying all over my wall, my floor, my shorts, face and arm. I wouldn't have been surprised to find vegetarian chili on my ceiling. That shit just exploded everywhere. What can you do but laugh? I'm off to the grocery store to buy a new can opener.... and more chili.

That could've sucked

I just walked in the door, and was changing clothes in my bedroom. I heard a sort of scuffling sound outside my window. Its a narrow little space of not more than a foot and a half between the wall on this side of the apartment and the neighbor's fence, but the noise was clearly coming from there. I heard a distinct scuffling sound, but I couldn't tell if it was a person, animal, or what... I squinted out my window to try and see, but the reflection from my ceiling light blocked me from seeing into the dark outside. I kept hearing the noise and was pretty convinced that it was just a rat or something.. maybe a possum. I was just about to make a big noise and try and startle whatever was out there and scare it away then it shuffled into an area I could see. I saw a black animal with two white stripes and a big fluffy tail. Skunk! I was just moments away from leaning out the window to try and scare it, which could've been a disaster. I closed the window and wrote this post instead.

Fuller Town

My mom has been unemployed for the last year. The whole story has been rather sad and gloomy, so I was relieved to spend the weekend with her, watching her get settled into a new job and new condo in Orange County. It will be tough to see my sister move high schools before her junior year, but it ain't like she's moving to Indiana. Fullerton and Brea are real nice and even though she lives close to a CSUF frat house I think it'll be a good move for her. I'm hoping today's the day I find out about Mission Federal.

nothing lumpy about today

today is great. its 8:30 on a friday morning... I ain't got shit to do. Hopefully the news coming back from Mission Federal will be good. My potential manager recognized me from my life as tech support in the classes. here's hoping. I'm off to write copy for my portfolio site at the beach. Its so great living one and a half songs away from Dog Beach. P.S. my cereal rocked today. cinnamon cripix isn't as good as Cinnamon Toast crunch. The Empty Bowl is your place to go for all your definitive cereal needs.

Lumpy Milk

A few years ago I had such a bad start to my day that I had to take a picture of it. I was going to the bathroom while brushing my teeth and the brush slipped out of my hand, passed right through my stream and plunked down into the bowl. (i used a pair of chopsticks to get it out... in case you're wondering) Today wasn't that bad. I woke up this morning particularly hungry. Maybe nerve-induced hunger. (I've got an interview coming up at ten this morning.) I decided Cinnamon Crispix would be the best choice for my morning cereal. Its a brand new box of a cereal I've never had before, so I poured out a generous bowl, then poured the milk out on top... so gross. big chunks of milk came crashing out on top of it. even thinking of it makes my stomach turn. so gross.

fit to be Thai'ed

So I have to wear a tie tomorrow. I have an interview with Mission Federal Credit Union. They are looking at re-doing their new hire orientation materials. They specifically asked for something fun adding games to what they've already been doing. I like being able to sit at home with shorts and no shirt, then shuffle off to the lab in jeans and a t-shirt, but there's something nice and "grown-up" about dressing up and going in to work. I have also been offered a position in Thailand. It would be working at a school that teaches Thai children English and Chinese. Its an amazing opportunity to make an impact in my chosen field, or i wouldn't have been thinking about it so much. I heard about the group touring the US the same day as my Hairy Potter post, which was me sharing a highlight of my trip to Thailand... hmmm. Tough to imagine leaving my life here in the SD, but I've been thinking about it a lot. Trying desperately to work as an international consultant. Here six months a year, elsewhere the rest of the time. Bangkok at the Concordian School finding ways to put technology into a multilingual language environment. Awesome opportunity for me. Its like a dream job in a lot of ways. Moving isn't one of them. I'm very torn by making this decision. One way or another. My unemployed, broke, single, bordering-on-pathetic-ass lifestyle will hopefully come to an end via one tie or another.

A Tidy Solution

Its so great to be able to bike down to the beach. It takes me slightly longer than one song on my headphones to get from my apartment to the sand. Awesome. I can't figgir out why I don't end up down there more often. Its July 4th weekend, which means a lot of people were down there. Including me, all by myself reading a book called Design for Community which is a great read, but its about one tenth as interesting as the way some people look in their bathing suits and a million times less scary than other people look. Basically I was a geek at the beach. and i loved it. I just got back home and feel terrific. I still can't believe I live close enough to ride my bike to the beach. I rule! Another bike story... This morning, Robin and I headed out for a nice AM bikeride, which means I've been up since six. When i woke up and sleepily began rolling my bike to the car, i realized I had another flat tire. Third flat in three rides, I wonder what's going on... Anyway, I did nothing about it until i was a little more awake, when we stopped at the Mobil station in Tierresanta. In case you don't know, if you have a hole in your inner tube, all you have to do is find the hole, then put a patch over it. The tricky part is finding the hole. Unless it is a huge hole that you can see easily, the best thing to do is to put the tube in water and see where the air is leaking out. When we got to the mobil station, I headed for the gas station bathroom. For the first time I went to their "john" fix a leak rather than take one. The sink was one of those that turns on automatically when you put your hands under it, but it didn't have a stopper. I needed the sink to be half full so I tried covering the drain with my hand, which didn't work that well. Even if it did, I wasn't in any position to see little bubbles coming out of the tube since the auto-faucet kept adding new water to the mix. So, as a testament to my desperation at that point, and the good clean folks at that particular Mobil station, I abandoned the sink and plunged my tube into the toilet. I proudly told Robin about my fine solution, and he got a good laugh out of it and told me it was blog-worthy. I guess he's right. I love having a place to share stoopid stories like that. I love knowing that people read them. In case your are grossed out by putting your hands in toilet water, i will let you know there was no trace of bullplop or plop of any kind in the bowl.