PAX reinforcement!

Let me extend the invitation to the Veggies to come hang out during Penny Arcade Expo 2007! It is the August 24-26th weekend. You probably read Velius's post about early registration, etc. Personally I think the difference really isn't that much. I didn't pre register last year and there was plenty of room. But just to keep it on everybody's mind. Here are all the reasons you should come:

1) I have lots of space for people to stay (well not as much as Veliu's but enough).
2) Free car rides everywhere + tour guide
3) tons of cool stuff including the Guitar Hero tournament and Game music concerts.
4) Seattle is like the best around August with sunny weather everyday.
5) This is going to be the biggest PAX since its start.

You only have to take one day off if you like, get here early Friday and leave Sunday. Think about it people!!! :)

amazing technology

Recently I noticed M is watching chinese tv on the computer all the time. I was curious since I know she doesn't do all that p2p downloading stuff that I do so I asked her. Apparently she has discovered this software called UUsee from just surfing on random chinese websites. It is really an incredible thing. It is a FREE online streaming television network that uses the p2p technology. So basically you download a client that acts like internet tv. It has a bunch of channels like a real cable network with schedules of various tv shows, movies, anything you can possibly think of. Basically you can watch it immediately just like watching real tv, of course the more people who are watching the faster the stream is. I tried it out tonight and there was almost no lag. The only time I noticed lag was when we were watching the overly popular Chinese New Years Show, and that was only about 20 minute buffering. It has a DVR like option also. The quality is not bad either. I am so impressed that this exists and is completely free. It indicates that the piracy industry in China has climbed to an awesome godlike state. Look, one channel is playing the wide screen format of "300" with appropriate chinese subtitles as I am typing this.

Triumphant!

We finally climbed our way out of loser valley yesterday at Trivia Night after hours of hard study and memorization...... ok ok, not really. We asked Plop (See media 1001 blog) to join us and he was totally helpful ;). We finished about middle of the pack with 59 out of 90 points. The winner of the $1 pitchers got 33 muhhahahaha! There were actually quite a few interesting questions this round and the rounds were very exciting. The categories ranged from Broadway shows, the Year 1999, one named celebrities, and best supporting actors from the Oscars. Some of the highlights:

1) What was the real name of the song usually called Teenage Wasteland (Velius! you should know this one)!
2) The full definition of the acronym NASDAQ - we were totally clueless
3) Bonus: name the 10 plagues of Egypt from the Bible - We got pretty close on that one

All in all, an extremely satisfying night! :)

Answers:

1) Bubba O'REilly- This is the song House was finger playing in one of the first season when Vogler was still there.
2) National Assocation of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations
3) Fires from the Sky, Lice, Beetles, Cattle Death, Death of First Born, Locusts, Darkness, raining Frogs, Water turned to Blood, Flies, Boils. Those poor Egyptians.

WE rock!

Completely within expectations, we were again LAST PLACE at yesterday's Trivia night despite an herculean effort. There were no sports questions but we were totally stumped by obscure movie quotes and text quoted from books. How can I possibly remember passages from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest? There was also an entire section about obscure coffee beans *headdesk* Well anyway, we were again the proud recipient of the $1 loser pitcher. Everybody in the pub cheered for us !:). The good thing is that we got 22 points, 5 more than last week!! Next week the saga continues as we courageously try to climb out of the loser valley.

St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!! Now I don't really have much feeling attached to this popular Irish holiday with an green obsession. But it is a good excuse as any to go do some partying. K really wanted to go to an authentic Irish pub with some Irish music and beer so the three of us drove around downtown Seattle looking for a happening pub. We finally ended up at Fado in Pioneer Square. It seemed pretty cool as it says "Irish Pub" on the front underneath the name and there was a long line with lots of green covered people so I figure we were at the right place. Only on St. Patrick's day that pubs can charge $15 for cover but as K said, we must have the authentic experience! The line was actually pretty long but entertaining as they had the Seattle Firefighter's Pipes & Drums group doing some traditional bagpiping out front. They also had a beer stand outside for the poor souls waiting. The bagpipes definitely brought some party atmosphere. It is a weird combination as the club next door is pumping some heavy tech beats in between. I felt like doing some riverdancing but it was too cold =P. After about an half hour wait we finally got inside. The pub is actually pretty big with multiple rooms. It is too dark to really make out anything but I liked the fact it is roomy. In the second room, they had the McKinley Brothers doing some acoustic jamming. That was fun as they played alot of oldies like Brown Eyed Girl and I Love Rock and Roll (man I hear this everywhere now since GH). So we spent the rest of the night jumping around and having a good time. All in all, it was a very cool "Authentic" St. Patrick's Day celebration complete with Bagpiping and drinks and some weird old guy who keeps trying to give K a back massage (>_<)

beer and trivia night

Tonight my friend and I went to trivia night at a local pub "The Celtic Bayou" which as the name suggest, is a mix of Irish and Louisiana food. A very weird combination if you ask me. We didn't really go in with much confidence since we are by no means trivia kings. But it was a fun way to spent a night. The prizes goes as follows:

1st place: 35 dollars
2nd place: 25 dollars
3rd place: 15 dollars
last place: $1 pitcher of beer

Since the top 3 is pretty much out of our grasp, we figure it would be pretty cool to get last place, (with proper effort of course). The quiz had about 60 questions, ranging from current events to sports to weird deaths(Edward II was weeeirrd.) As expected, we were able to sweep the entertainment news and completely miss all the sports questions. The bonus round was TV theme song trivia and we failed terribly at that as well. So in the end, we have achieved our lofty goal of coming in last at 17 /60 points. The graders had to make sure we didn't try to deliberately throw the game. -_-. Since we were only two people and I don't drink we ended up giving the $1 loser pitcher to a group of 10 sitting next to us. We plan to come back next week as well, if we can keep our current record pretty soon we will be the most popular losers in the pub ;)

Impressive...

And this is why Dukies are awesome ;)
Article on MSNBC. Also I didn't know you can earn money from Metacafe?? is it like Googel Ads? hmm..

Tooting my own horn for a bit :)

This is probably going to be the only 15 seconds of fame in my life. Laughing at silly names are not allowed! Well ok, It is totally a groaning party whenever we have meetings to talk about this stuff. Because people can't stop snickering at me. I was totally embarrassed but at the same time, when will I ever see my name on a commercial website again?. Also for the record, they totally picked the name without telling me first. These are meant to be samples for beginners so of course they will continue to put up better and more worthy games but mine was the smallest and simplest so it made the deadline. :) Yay me!

Also, if you are just dying to make your dream game, they are hosting a competition for the best game developed in 4 months with some nice prizes.

A totally different sort of party

In the continuation of my social experimentation, I went to a totally different sort of party this Sunday. I was invited to a "Pride and Prejudice" viewing party. It all came about quite accidentaly as I was having lunch of my coworkers and some of her friends whom I never met. One of them mentioned that they are doing this party and I guess I squeaked in excitement, forcing them to invite me =P. Anyway, for those who don't know, the quintessential edition of "Pride and Prejudice" adaptations is the BBC/A&E miniseries starring Colin Firth. It is close to 6 hours long and officially brought about the revival of Jane Austen fever in '98. I already seen this like 10 times but it is always fun to see it with a group, kind of like a LOTR sitting (but much shorter haha).

So anyways, I was a little nervous since I have never met any of these people before and my coworker wasn't even going to be there. But anything for Jane Austen! There I met about 30 other people. They turned out to be extremely nice and interesting people. Most of them belong to this Christian Fellowship mailing list so that is how they know each other. All the guys there pretty much worked at The Company. We had scones, cream puffs and tea and watched English gentlemen and ladies flirt on a big projection screen in the basement. I had a great time. This is a totally different sort of party from the one I went to last week. There was no drinking, people were extremely nice and polite. The conversation was stimulating. The only downside is most are introverts like me , which makes starting conversations even more difficult than talking to drunk extroverts. In the case of latter, you just have to stand and let them speak. So more practice to be had to have good conversation that does not always start with "so where do you work" especially since I was the only stranger there. But I am glad I made that leap there. And for those that are thinking "P&P, eww girl cooties!", I have to report all the guys there liked it. Even the ones that were reluctant to watch it :).

and I thought I was the only one

I was just coming to do a post on this Akon song I heard on the radio yesterday and how I think it is exactly the same as the R kelly song Ignition. I was all prepared to delve deep in analysis to prove my point until I saw this. Why do people have to get ahead of me like that hmmph. Now I saw in one of the post that Akon supposedly "sampled" the R Kelly song to make his own song. But seriously, if Vanilla Ice can't get away with Ice Ice Baby (Under Pressure by Queen). Why should Akon get away basically singing the exact same song as R Kelly but with different lyrics. At least Vanilla Ice tried to do a totally different song.

ETA: 30 second survey for a friend at school.

Jumping On the Bandwagon

We all know that "The Departed" is the newly minted Oscar's Best Film of the Year, giving Martin Scorsese his first oscar after more films than can be counted. He actually jokingly said this is his first movie that actually had a plot. The ironic thing is of course that "The Departed" is basically a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong movie "Infernal Affairs". I thought it was funny when the script writer won for "adapting the other movie". Is that really a huge accomplishment to take a movie that was made just a couple of year ago and switch around the actors and add more bloody scenes and call it best film of the year? To add insult to injury, the announcer lady said it was a Japanese movie when doing the introduction. I feel like it is such a ripoff. It saddens me to think the audience in America will never see how great the original was (which by the way I actually saw at Velius' during a party, good times :)).

Anyway, I was just discussing this with my cousin in China when she mentions that there is a rumor going around of Hollywood buying another Andrew Lau movie "Confession of Pain" featuring the awesome Tony Leung. Anyway, I haven't seen the movie yet so I can't comment on whether it will be good *runs to download*. This gets me thinking though, does this mean that there will be a whole slew of remakes of Asian movies now that one has earned the prestige of an Oscar? I think I will be both gratified by the recognition and annoyed at the fact the original will never be seen. Although I hope that if this does happen, it will jilt the mainland movie scene out of their ridiculous pseudo kung fu epic movie trend they got going on. They all suck! When are they going to realize nooexistent dialog, extravagant costumes and no plot does not a movie make?

ETA: I really shouldn't post after midnight, I had to edit this like 10 times cause I was writing nonsense

going to the dark side

I recently downloaded some Arcade games on my xbox (company perk) for M to play with. She is now completely addicted to Bejeweled 2 (a matching game with colored gems.) She played for 5 hours straight over the weekend and her world ranking jumped from 50,000 to 10,000 over night with no sign of slowing down. I had to go make dinner because she is so busy with the game. Isn't it usually the otherway around? -_-!

In other news, we finally bite the bullet and got some DX10 cards for work. These geforce 8800 GTX are monsters that take up two PCI slots. The heatsink and fan is bigger than the card itself. In fact, it is so massive they had to put an fan outlet on the connection plate itself in addition to the big fan on the body so it doesn't overheat the computer. It is ridiculous! Now if I only have a DX10 game to play with :)

random weekend post

I was invited to a housewarming party thrown by these 4 guys from my company. I knew them through a mutual acquaintance. They lived in an apartment on the waterfront with a gorgeous view of the pacific ocean in downtown Seattle. They are in all respects the perfect example of young successful people in a sophisticated urban living. They had a professional bartender friend come to do the drinks and played club music on their giant lcd tv using windows media center. The party started at 9 and didn't end til 3 am where all the drunken people left. Now I must confess I don't have much experience with these "social" parties as they call them. Mine more gravitate towards the "chainsaw that monster" type of parties (:)) so this is a very interesting experience for me. I did not know most of the people there, nor they each other so it is my duty to mingle and get to know people as my friend told me. I had a great deal of fun trying to talk to people, of course the whole evening is littered with awkward silences as my very small social skills failed to keep the conversation going. This is a very hard thing for me as I am not used to such surroundings, standing around and having to come up with suitable topics of conversation in extremely loud music. Incidentally this reminds me alot of those period movies where people go to a ball and having to make conversation and appear sociable, minus the hiphop and booze. So I guess society really hasn't changed all that much except for the disturbing trend of binge drinking that seems to be prevalent at all such parties. I of course declined to drink but that caused everyone to look at me like some sort of alien. They seem to think it is some sort of affront to not partake in this "ritual". Now I have nothing against drinking or drinking people. If I did that means I would have to hate like 90% of the world. Of course I have never been drunk so I might indeed be missing something profoundly awesome. but I have to say people really did seem to have more fun without their inhibitions. They danced and yelled and in general made very sociable and happy people. Lots of friends were made and experiences shared. So the dual purpose of making friends and having a good time was served. I did find it amusing that almost everyone seem to think that I must not be having any fun since I don't have some alcohol in me. When did this relationship start to develop? Alcohol = fun or rather Alcohol -> fun. I can't decide if I am just too "conservative" for this modern American world where social scene is inevitably linked to alcohol or rather this trend is an anomaly only in youth society. I just haven't been to enough parties to form a informed opinion. Should I try to integrate myself more into this seeing how obviously I need more social skills? stuff to ponder about..

ETA: on a totally different note, I also received mail to pick up that free thong from Victoria Secret as Bunky did. As I am unable to resist free stuff I had to go pick it up. I had the same thought as Kolaap did in his post but since I read his post first I was not as surprised. Having seen it in person I have serious doubt about the practicality of such things as it seems to position one for a permanent wedgie. And since I cannot imagine any woman will wear that of her own volition I can safely say "this is all the men's fault!" ;)

Happy Chinese New Year!!

Happy Chinese New Years!!

Everybody who reads this message must send me a red packet or else.....^^

AI 6 hollywood round

The hollywood round contains group auditions so you gotta know how to harmonize and sing in a group. Most of it was a trainwreck as usual but there was one group that really stood out. These 4 guys was great! If they don't make idol they should totally just form a group themselves. Between them, they have a rocker, a beat boxer, a boyband extraordinaire and a crooner. what more can you ask for!

Idol Hollywood group song: Chris, Tom, Rudy and Blake.



Another aspect of the show I don't like is how they showed so much drama. Do I really need to know how many people are divas and how many can't get picked to be in a group? I hate how they keep reinforce the stereotype that girls just can't get along. And if it is not a stereotype, there is something seriously wrong with education of girls in this country.

Puzzle Hunt Weekend!

This is one of the best weekend I had in a long time. I joined a team for our semiannual company Puzzle Hunt weekend. It is a great traditional here where people divide into groups of no more than 12 and do a 48 hour puzzle hunt marathon. The puzzles are devised by the previous' year's winners over couple months and they are extremely complex and entertaining (and totally geeky!). This year's theme is Atlantean Culture and all the puzzles are devised to solve 5 meta puzzles that will lead us to the Atlantean WMD that is going to destroy the world at 6 pm on Sunday. There were 72 teams involved. That is close to 1000 people all together. We completely took over buildings on main campus and it was a hard fight to schedule a conference room as our headquarters. But we managed to secure a building right across from the Puzzle Hunt headquarters for easy retrieval of puzzles ( they are released throughout the day to teams based on their progress). I haven't done puzzles in a long time so it was very hard to get into that frame of mind at first but soon I was pretty engrossed in it. The puzzles are extremely complicated in that they require 15 steps to arrive at the final answer which is then used to solve the bigger meta puzzle. This is often frustrating as I was only able to go through the first 3 steps before i am stuck and have to move on to something else. The first meta puzzle came in the form of 6 foam squares with intricate holes cut into them, we had to figure out 10 smaller puzzles and use their answer to assembly the squares and then at the end, pour seed down the top of them so that they go through the right holes and form a phone number at the buttom which we can call to get the next clue. I wish I had a picture.


There is nothing more fun than being in the same room as 10 other nerds for 14 hours straight solving puzzles! I don't even think I ate food on Saturday because we are concentrating so hard we don't notice the time pass by. Our team was by no means the best as we came in 55/72 in the final rankings and we were only able to solve maybe 1/3 of the puzzles but it was still a great time. I think I will definitely do it again in the fall!

ETA: I just remembered something else, besides word and math puzzles, there were also spacial puzzles like assembling a celtic knot. The field puzzles including diving down the gym pool to retrive a clue and figure out buildings from sketches and go there to look at the windows for clues. So we did get some exercise haha.

crazy cars

I am normally not a car enthusiast at all. My understanding of cars stays at "Japanese cars are small, American cars are big!!" level. But this video of a Bugatti Veyron doing 250 miles an hour impressed even me. That is going the length of a football field every second!!. Of course it is totally unpractical even without a speed limit, since the tires would burn out in 15 minutes and gas in 12. Now if they can only make wear resistant tires.

Pan's Labyrinth

Ok so I finally saw the movie tonight. I am totally depressed now. *shake fists at all eloquent movie reviewers*. I guess they did warn you by showing you the girl at the beginning but I still managed to tear up at the end. The movie deserves all its accolades and praises. It is superbly done and very well acted. The Captain was incredibly convincing. Ofelia was lovely, especially the part where she tells the story to her brother. I think one thing that struck me the most about this movie is that despite its fantasy elements, it is still full of realism at heart. This is not some sanitized Hollywood violence but cold and harsh realities of the cruelty of men. I keep cringing at the various parts but I appreciate their efforts to keep it real so to speak. I mean if I was tied up in that barn with the Captain behind me, I would be full of despair too knowing that there won't be some miraculous rescue to save me from fate worse than death. It is amazing what human beings will do to one another. I also had a hard time trying to understand all the symbolisms from the fantasy side. Do they have counterparts in reality or not. One of my favorite things is the soundtrack. It was hauntingly beautiful and I think without it, the movie would not have been so sad and poignant. So I have to agree with everyone and rate it 100!. I love the fact that it was subbed and not dubbed, because bad dubbing could have totally ruined it since there are so much dialog. I spent a little bit of time trying to see how much I can understand the dialog without looking at the sub, but give up soon hehe.

That is another one off my list, oh one more thing, I got CARDED when I was buying the movie ticket because it was rated R. *headdesk*

Pseudo science for sale

Came across this article yesterday while I was reading about the new climate report on Global Warming that IPCC is coming out with today: Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study.

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.
Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). ...etc.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this lunacy of politics trying to dictate science. I think the administration does not understand that wishful thinking and reality are two different things. You can't make reality come out your way just by throwing money at it (well I guess really you can temporarily but catastrophy is not far behind). The art of pseudoscience has reached its zenith here in the U.S. with the hugely successful process of establishing a organization with a neutral and vague name such as the American Enterprise Insitute, hide your funding source and then start to put out "scientific papers" with enough jargon to impress even the most skeptical media (those are hard to come by as it is). With any luck, you will start being quoted as an authority on this subject and your agenda will be on its way to the top.

So here is what I propose as our new money making scheme, we should totally register a nonprofit think tank, lets say named "Climate Research and Prediction" institute. Then we can spend couple hours making up some papers about how the glaciers are not melting off and a warmer Earth will really be better for the tourism industry. Voila, 10 grand in the pocket! It is that easy!

I am pretty sick of the pseudoscience agenda being advanced by the people like the "CO2 is our friend" American Enterprise Institute, the "All we need is more troops in Iraq" Heritage Foundation, and especially the "Evolution is just a theory" Discovery Institute. It is bad enough that they have faked their way to the top of the stack, it is even worse when they get quoted wholesale by Media. Stop this madness!!

Idol update

I saw the classiest audition on Idol yet last night. 60 years old Sherman Pore went to audition for his "lady" who passed away from cancer just two days before. It was such a sweet moment, very rare in a show that has gotten increasingly vulgar.

In other news, "someone" was asking for an update on my favoritest singer in the world Clay Aiken yesterday so I thought I would copy over his blog post on clayonline.com from today. He isn't doing much these days but he is definitely keeping himself amused. :) and he will be a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Feb 14th. When those two get together, you know there will be some mayhem.

02/01/07 : Lend a Helping Hand

It seems over the past few weeks, the tabloids and gossip mongers have had their hands full coming up with new and exciting "scandals" for me to be a part of. Yet, for all of their efforts to be on the "cutting edge" and the forefront of bull$#@& journalism, it seems that some of them may be running out of ideas and resorting to recycling and re-hashing some of their older tall tales. How sad!?
With this in mind, we thought maybe we would try to give them a finger.... er.. a hand.
For all of the contests that we hold here on the OFC, this one promises to be one of my favorites.
Build-Your-Own-Scandal!
That's right! Let's show off the creative abilities of the greatest group of fans on Earth.
The contest is simple, but will require some thinking and planning...

Come up with the most outlandish story you can that places me (either alone or with others close to me) in a really juicy/tawdry/scandalous/shameful story.
Then, use any photos, videos, audio clips of me that you can find along with your favorite multimedia enhancing/"doctoring" program (like a PhotoShop or a sound/video editor) to create your "evidence"!
Maybe you have "pictures" of me being "abducted by oversized turnips"... or ... "video" of me "dancing with a three legged gorilla". Be creative!

You'll submit your "story" and "evidence" to an address that you'll find online here at the OFC very soon.

I'll personally pick the "story" that not only is most creative, but has the most CONVINCING and REALISTIC looking "evidence"!
(It obviously can't be that hard to come up with!)

The winner(s) will be featured here... PLUS... there will be a great prize to go along with the honor of being the creator of "Scandal 2007"

This one is gonna be fun!!

Feel free to get started thinking...but, keep your eye out for details on rules/requirements for entry and deadlines and prizes. they be announced here soon.

Happy Fabricating!!

c

Current Mood: Excited