never knows best...

dry as toast

Pokerbots Making Online Players Sad. If only the Texas Hold'em AI me and my fellow team members coded up for the software engineering class didn't suck and take like 5 minutes to make a move (we tried implementing University of Alberta's stuff), I could be raking up the online poker money too...

Gelato from Tuesday night:

Starting at the spoon and moving clockwise it has flavors: nutella, green tea, thai ice tea, champagne, mango, and blueberry.

"Just a second," I interrupted and reached into my blazer pocket. "I have a present for you."

I handed her the small black leather case.

"What is it?" she asked, turning over the curious metal object she removed from the case.

"I'll show you. Watch carefully."

She watched.

"Nail clippers?"

"Right! Folds back in reverse order. Like this."

"Very interesting," she said. "Tell me, though, do you often give nail clippers to women?"

"No, you're the first. Just now while I was waiting, I went into a hardware store and felt like buying something. The woodcarving sets were too big."

"Thank you. I'll keep them in my bag and think of you every time I use them."

Stolen from Murakami's Hard-Boilded Wonderland. I just noticed in this read through that the said nail clipper gift was made by Henckels, which seems pretty cool. Though as far as chef knife brands I like Global, Forschner, or this (not that I actually every used any of them, and I would probably be pretty scared of using a very sharp knife anyways, even Henckels nail clippers seem a little intimidating).

Nick's dream (not my hopes and desires, but just what I do when I sleep):

So I drive down to the south bay to have dinner with Amy and Amy's mom at Fry's, which now has some sort of Asian buffet for some reason (seems like a logical move for an electronics chain doesn't it?). It's pretty generic cheap buffet food, but it's still surprisingly empty in the restaurant area.

Anyhow after dinner, I have to drive back to work of course because there's an all hands meeting. After the meeting, me and the coworkers go to play a game of basketball.

When suddenly traitor coworker shows up at the basketball court. Everyone's pissed off and traitor and other coworker start fighting, which I then break up with cool Tae Kwon Do move.

However, just as I think things are settling down, another coworker sends phone virus to traitor's phone, further pissing everyone off. And then I cry becaues my integrity does nothing to help the situation, and I have no control over what other people do and their intentions.

I think the dream was heavily influenced by eating lots of cheap Chinese buffet, Amy taking Tae Kwon Do, and watching Kung Fu Soccer (wherein tonights episode invovled beating the crap out of traitor players).

If only the rest of the world would catch on to my generic variable names of 'frank' and 'bob', we could have even more randomly named geekfests.

Meanwhile, Bar Camp is also soothing the tempers of some former Foo Camp attendees who found themselves off the invite list this year.

From Geeks to hold open-source campout

Woot! My big fat $250 rebate check for this computer is listed as approved! One step closer to getting to that final $150 (after $300 in rebates) price.

I dislike the feeling that there are all sorts of things I should be doing (quite a few that I really, really should be doing). It's all by my own standards of what I should do, so I really shouldn't complain, but it really makes you feel like days go by too fast.

I did clean the bathroom though. Now my roommates better not crap all over it, which is what happened like 1 day after I cleaned it last time.

Adventures in mid-fi (I'm not blowing enough cash for it to be considered hi-fi). So, I finally got around to setting up my old computer speakers to my computer (some 3 piece Altec Lansing set or another), and listening to it, it kinda sucks. Well after 2 hours or so of listening to it, I'm getting used to the bloated bass, but my first impression was pretty bad. It was all bass, which is nice in comparison to my bookshelf system, but it was hard to make out anything else. Oh well, anything was better than using the speakers stuck in the monitor I'm using.

Trip 3: Went to watch Wedding Crashers (pretty good movie and the Will Ferrell cameo towards the end keeps the movie chugging along with comedy) and more Dave and Busters afterwards. I got slightly less schooled on the "easy" basketball game by Ian.

And thus ends the trips to the south bay. But then again I'm probably driving down again this weekend to catch a bus down to socal.

Berkeley Bowl gets a mention in the New York Times. I like Berkeley Bowl, if it weren't for the fact that it closed so early. Though the fact that it closed so early on Sunday meant that me and Amy got to go to 99 Ranch, which is even cheaper and has a different sort of variety.

The last thought for the day was that I thought it would be cool if I actually had enough meaningful "event-like" posts to form a personalized talking astrolabe. This thought was presented by randomly thinking abpit the episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets a talking astrolabe and ruins the families Christmas, then subsequently destroys and saves Christmas while at work. I would like a talking astrolabe that says: "This day in history, Nick ate his first burrito at El Farolito Taqueria."

More noteworthiness to move through.

I imagine hearing the Jane Eyre's plot synopsis from Amy was a lot more fun that actually reading it. And now I have the excuse that I already know the plot to avoid reading it for real. Maybe it just works extra well for Jane Eyre and all it's weird events and plot twists, but getting daily updates on Amy's progress was kinda addicting. I wanted to know what happened next, so Amy needed to read faster. Sadly, it's all done and Jane and Mr. Rochester are as happy as they can be.

I almost got the scoring the mango half and cutting out beautiful cube like pieces of mango trick to work. Good thing I have another 3 to practice with. Yay for $5 box of 9 mangoes!

Ditching the title and catch up.

So over the past week I've been scrambling around way too much. Outside of the normal trips to visit Amy (calling it normal sounds kinda mean in it's own way), I've gone back to the south bay more than a couple times.

Trip 1: farewall dinner and Dave and Busters for Marcus. Originally planned to go see Wedding Crashers (which has now been passed down to be the activity for Ian's farewell), but they were pretty late getting there, and I was even later getting there so it was scratched. Dave and Busters to the rescue. Got worked on the "easy" basketball game, and only felt slightly redeemed by some skeeball.

Trip 2: high school reunion and Dave and Busters (part 2). The original plan was to go down to south to help my brother move (after falling prey to stomach flu), but then the reunion pops up. The unforseen reunion (I wasn't on the mailing list or on the degrees of seperation that get emailed) prompted lots of info gathering and hand waving and probably just generally pissed me off into going (sorry Amy). So reunion hey and drinking hey, and Dave and Busters with Marcus again. Get schooled on the "easy" basketball game again.

Maybe if I use my "spirit points" to get a foosball table or air hockey table the need for Dave and Busters will disappear.