Category: Uncategorized

A White Elephant was held over at Glendia’s house last night. White Elephant Gift Exchange is described as:

Traditionally, a “White Elephant” is something lying around the house that you don’t want (some horridly ugly item that someone gave you as a gift or some other item unwanted for some reason). I am of the belief that in most parts of the country, if you tell someone to bring a White Elephant gift it will almost certainly be a gag gift and not something genuinely useful or desirable.

The type of gift exchange that you have described, I have always heard referred to as a “Yankee Swap”.

THE GIFTS:

1. This party’s gift theme is XYZ.
2. The gift should be valued as close to $xx.00 as is reasonable.
3. The gift should be something someone would actually want or use. It should be in new or good condition.
4. The gift should be wrapped or in an envelope before arriving to the party. Gift bags are OK only if a wrapped item is inside.
5. Gift certificates are OK only if it is accompanied by some other item as part of the gift. For instance, a $xx Starbucks gift certificate, by itself, is not OK, but a $yy Starbucks gift certificate together with a coffee mug is OK.
6. As guests arrive to the party, the gifts should be placed in an area where few people can see who brought which gift. All efforts should be made to hide who brought which gift.

THE GAME:

1. Each guest who wishes to participate must contribute a gift. Everyone sits or stands in roughly a circle around the pile of gifts.
2. Prepare slips of paper equal to the number of gifts with clearly written numbers. Be sure to distinguish 6 from 9, 1 from 7. Each participating guest draws a number and holds onto that slip of paper.
3. On the first turn, the guest with paper slip #1 chooses a gift, opens it, and all admire it.
4. On the second turn, the guest with paper slip #2 gets the choice of “stealing” any unwrapped gift (#1’s) or choosing a wrapped one. If #2 steals #1’s gift, then #1 must open a wrapped gift.
5. On the third turn, the guest with paper slip #3 gets the choice of “stealing” any unwrapped gift (#1’s or #2’s) or choosing a wrapped one.

The game continues based on the following:

1. If a gift is stolen from you, you can steal a gift (within limits, described below), or open a wrapped one.
2. The turn proceeds until a wrapped gift is chosen.
3. A gift cannot be immediately stolen back from the guest who just stole it.
4. The fourth “owner” of a gift gets to keep it. The gift is “dead” after it has been stolen three times.
5. “Owners” of “live” gifts must keep them visible and hold them up when requested.
6. The gift exchange ends when the last wrapped gift is opened. Usually, guests are encouraged to perpetuate the gift stealing as long as there are “live” gifts, but no one is obligated to do this.

The set price for our gifts was $20 and I got something from the Microsoft Company Store before I left from Seattle: Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000. It sells on Amazon.com for $37, but with employee discount, it was a lot closer to the set price of $20.

While we were waiting for everyone to arrive, Glendia being the host, made baked some cookies and put ice cream on top of it which was really good, but also super sweet. She also busted out the IceWine (Eiswein) which she brought back from Germany and shared it with us. I declined since I didn’t like wine either. Ohfuee was toasting to every hot actress he could think of.

We modified the rules a bit since there were only 8 people: Antegra, Glendia, JoeHK, LilSneezy, Ohfuee, DNG, Chheang, and I. Also, THE GIFTS RULE #6 was completely violated because almost everyone knew at least what one other person brought. I think the only 2 people who did not know any other gift was Chheang and me. Quite a few interesting gifts showed up and I ended with the Puzz3D Empire State Building which I stole from Antegra.

Some needed to leave as midnight came along because they wanted to open presents with the family. The rest of us stayed to play Taboo. There weren’t really any teams, we just went around in circles guessing. There were moments that were so funny when someone would say something like: “Lily is BLANK.” or “What you do when you’re bored.” or “Heang does this to me.” Glendia had to drive to Vegas the next day, so we left around 3am.

LilSneezy was hungry so we ended up at ABC Cafe. Almost everyone ordered their $2.29 wonton noodles. Cheap. Cheap. Ohfuee also ordered a warm milk with raw egg drink. I didn’t dare to try it, but supposedly it wasn’t that bad. Suddenly out of nowhere, Kalekkos shows up. Apparently, it’s the thing to hang out at ABC Cafe at 5am in the morning on Christmas.

Check out the photos I took.

PhatFreeza would be happy to see this.

Guys awaiting for the present stealing to begin!

Kyle’s Birthday was this past Saturday the 24th, but we celebrated with him on Friday. A bunch of us guys got together cand chilled at his place. Antegra and DNG had set it up, but apparently most of the people had other plans already, so only a few showed up. In fact, besides the 2 who setup, only JoeHK and I accepted the Evite. JoeHK was going to arrive later, but the rest of up met up at DNG’s place before we headed off to Kyle’s place. Just when we were about to leave, Chheang gave us a call and asked if he could join. Of course! The more the merrier.

We went to Ralph’s to buy some booze to celebrate Kyle’s birthday. It was suppose to be international beer testing, but no one really knew what beer tasted good. So we did a coin flip between hard alcohol and and beer and hard alcohol won. We ended up with Smirnoff Vodka (green apple flavor) along with some coke. JoeHK being a party pooper called us and told us he might not be able to make it because his company’s Christmas party was extending to karoake.

Antegra, DNG, and JoeHK had chosen a gift certificate from Sports Chalet since Kyle’s really into fishing and they didn’t really know what fishing equipment he needed. Chheang and I chipped in later. They also got him a “Would Rather Be Fishing” license plate holder, which Kyle was able to guess immediately without opening the wrapping.

Kyle busted out his sister’s Grey Goose and Absolut Vodka which they did shots with. I didn’t join in since I didn’t particularily like the taste, but they convinced me to do Coke and half a shot of vodka, which basically tasted like bitter Coke with a hint of green apple.

We talked about a bunch of things and Kyle’s parents are so cool. We played with their cat Zion (yes, the last city of humans in The Matrix). We got Zion to jump between the car and the boat back and forth with a catnip toy. Well, I never got it to jump, but DNG and Kyle did. I guess cats just don’t like me.

Kyle had these really cool BB guns. One was in the form of an assault rifle with semi-automatic shooting. However, the battery was low. We also played with his glock which was powered by CO2 and we were shooting into cardboard boxes.

JoeHK and N0rybic finally showed up and we decided to play some poker. Buy in was only $1 so it was basically a friendly game. They had just gotten a whole poker set with card shuffler, chips, and table. The shuffler didn’t really work, so we basically shuffled on our own. Not really going to get into the details of the game, but Kyle ended up winning with me as #2. The payout was $5 for 1st place and $2 for 2nd. Hehe. I doubled my money. ;p

and once again:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KYLE!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

I’m down to 2 more episodes of 24 – Season Three. It’s 4:30am and I have work tomorrow, plus I’m starting to get sick of the M&M’s I’ve been eating this entire time. Do note, I started to watch the series on Saturday and it’s only Monday night. Well I did get half of the series done on Saturday, and 25% more (75% total) by Sunday. So I just watched 4 more today, leaving me with 2.

Major Spoilers:

So if you’ve watched the series, you’ll know that Sherry was called in by President David Palmer to deal deal with Alan Milliken and then Alan dies of a heart attack because Sherry stopped Julia (his wife) from giving medication to Alan in time. However, that backfires when Palmer lies to the police chief giving Sherry a false alibi. For some reason, this series makes Palmer make quite a few immoral decisions which he would’ve never done in the previous 2 seasons.

To get to the point, Sherry and Keeler (the other party’s presidential candidate) blackmail Palmer, trying to force him to resign from the race for reelection. However, this brought back an interesting memory I had…

Don’t all presidents get one free kill/assassination? I don’t remember where I heard it from, probably a movie or something on TV, but a secret service agent would come up to that president and offer to take care of the problem because he had one free kill. What do I mean by free? By FREE, I mean that the president would need no reason for requesting that kill or have any consequences. Could be a personal grudge. Could be something bigger. Could even be that he just doesn’t like the look on his face. But either way, the president will only have one during his entire term (not sure if he gets another one if re-elected).

That’d be so cool!

From One Free Kill Theory, ljc brings up an interesting point:

Now I found his response highly amusing. But the whole “One Free Kill Theory” rather frightens me. It’s the concept that everyone in the world has One Free Kill. They can request, carry out, authorize the death of one person, without any repercussions. But you only get one. The idea is that you would think twice before cutting someone off in traffic for fear they may still have their “One Free Kill” and use it on you. The result is supposed to be a more polite, considerate society.

I see problems arising from this. People auctioning off their Free Kills on Ebay to the highest bidder and so on. And with my luck I’d get killed off for something inane like unknowingly taking the last jar of Marshmallow Fluff at the Wegmans.

So I didn’t find much with Google, but I did happen to find this. In one of the comments for the book Who’s Looking Out for You? by Bill O’Reilly, a user states:

I consider myself a moderate- I think that both parties screw up more than they do what they ought to do. However, I think that, if I were president, Bill O’Reilly would be my one free kill. The simple fact that his show is the “number 1 news show” on cable television sickens me… mostly because it’s not actually news. It’s O’Reilly’s opinion packaged as fact, which is not news, it’s a seperate kind of show and should be treated as such. But that’s O’Reilly for ya. And now Bill pops out another bs book of obvious advice (make good friends… geez why haven’t I thought of that) and paranoia-inducing drivel. Bill O’Reilly, congrats- you’ve made money off of people less educated than you and you ought to feel proud… or ashamed, but for you proud, I guess. And, since this is a review, I should probably mention how poorly written this book is. I mean, even by self-help standards, this is low-quality and uninteresting. It’s more than condescending and obvious- it’s bad literature.

So it’s definitely just not something I pull out of thin air and there must be some background to this. If anyone knows where I may have picked this up or have any other sources, I’d like to know!

Derek invited a bunch of us from work to have a small fun get together before everyone heads of for vacation for Christmas. It was really nice, warm, and FUN! There were tons of interesting food and lots of people showed up. More than I had expected. We just chilled. There were also hard alcohol and tons of people got drunk. Tekman made me try his Manhattan and it was so gross!

Derek had setup a Home Theater PC with Windows XP Media Center Edition (which I’ll be installing this winter on my own Home Theater PC). Derek’s songs got boring and DW logged into his Napster account. It was actually pretty neat and only costs $10/month, but it was perfect for parties like this. Asaf was dedicated song chooser and we went through many 80’s songs followed by OHW (one-hit wonders). It was pretty crazy when everyone started to sing along. Too bad I suck at remember lyrics. ;p Near the end of the party, O-Zone’s Dragostea din Tei came on the Media Center PC and everyone was dancing crazy to that song.

At the end of the party, Tekman played a song: Mephiskapheles – Bumble Bee Tuna (whole song provided by uberg33k.com). At first I didn’t get what a bumblebee tuna sandwich was, then I was told Bumblebee was a brand of tuna. However, several suggested there was a deeper meaning to the song and the word cunninglingus slipped from Tekman’s mouth. For some reason, no one would tell me what that word meant, but Tekman told me he’d tell me at work the following day. However, he broke his promise and I had to urbandictionary the word when I got home today. Now I see why no one would tell me what it meant. But even after looking at the lyrics, I still don’t get how the song is related to cunninglingus.

So once again, thanks Derek and Shannah for hosting such a wonderful party!

---

Added 3 new links under my Friend’s category:
evilkashi, davidwas, and derekdc, all photo galleries of my co-workers. I’m also in evilkashi’s CSD Holiday Party, December 2005 which I spoke of back a week ago:

I posted about the ASIMO Robot several days ago. I finally got the chance to watch the videos today. All I can say is I’m AWED.

Remember those little robots from sony that can run, and by running I mean being able to have both feet above the ground at the same time? From Sony shows off jogging robot: Running is a much more difficult task for a robot to perform as both of the machine’s feet must be off the floor at the same time. The robot was called the QRIO. They also did a little dance with miniature flags. You can check out the archives of videos for it here.

What’s cool about this new Honda robot is that it can do almost everything + more that the QRIO can do, but using a human sized robot. It can run, go up and down stairs, run in circles and change directions while moving, detect edges and stay on track, have face and voice recognition, push or carry objects around, follow people around while holding their hands and even run upto 6km/hr (that’s 3.73mph). To put this into perspective, the fatest human can run 36km/hr.

Just started to watch 24 – Season Three. I’ve heard bad reviews about the Season 3, but with so many rave reviews of Season 4 and Season 5 just about to be released, I decided it wasn’t worth it to skip Season 3 and go directly to Season 4.

Here’s a funny quote from the first episode:

Tony: And you’ll come along as the wife? Without a job?
Michelle: I’ll go anywhere with you. As long as I don’t have to cook.
Tony: Sweetheart, if you promise not to cook, I will take you with me anywhere.

So I just went through 12 episodes of Season 3 today. That’s 1pm to 1am of the season. So far, the storyline has changed more times than Senator Kerry flip flopped. And they’ve introduced yet an another annoying girl: Chloe. She’s suppose to be Jack Bauer’s secretary or something, but also specializes in audio filter. Ugh… Now both Kim and Chloe annoy the heck out of me. Spoilers ahead: Nina Meyers shows up again in this story. She and Michelle are probably the only redeeming females in this series. I’m only 1/2 through the story and it seems like it should’ve ended 6 episodes ago. But then they’d have to rename the series to 6 and not 24. Anyway, besides that, the story’s pretty decent. Lots of action, lots of stupid terrorist moves, and lots of luck for Jack Bauer.

I’ve posted several of these photos before, but I finally got the entire pack from a Microsoft newsgroup. I just can’t believe how much ice formed around the city, covering entire trees and cars and how the ice keeps growing longer and longer. Enjoy!

This incredible spectacle you are about to see, takes place in Versoix, a town close to Geneva City, Switzerland.

The water in the background is the Léman Lake.

Thanks to Deep and Reshma for setting this up. A bunch of us UC Berkeley folks got together on Wednesday and had lunch at Claim Jumpers. It was actually pretty cool and fun to see some familiar faces. We all talked about… work. Haha. It was weird telling each other our experiences and where we see ourselves in the future. The people that found time to come included Deep, Arjun, Jeffrey, Lexin, Krishnan, and Reshma. There were 7 people altogether: 6 guys and 1 girl. There were also 6 software engineers and 1 marketing. Guess who was marketing. You’re right if you said the girl.

Speaking of food, last night I decided to cook lasagna. No, not home made. I actually bought the frozen Kirkland Signature lasagna at Costco. Got home around 7:45. The instructions said to put it in the oven for 115-125 minutes. For some reason, I thought I was going to be able to eat around 9pm. Maybe cause I was thinking 115mins was 1hr and 15mins or maybe I was thinking it was 7 and +2hours equals 9pm. Either way, I didn’t get to eat until it was 10pm. I’m not sure if that was a deciding factor in how delicious the lasagna was, but it was darn good! Most Kirkland Signature stuff I’d have to save are above average and should not be considered a generic brand. Ungsunghero and I had a long discussion on what what types of products we’d use a generic brand and what generic stuff are just as good as brand name stuff. The only 2 items I can come up with that I see generics equally as good as brand name was medicine and gasoline. Kirkland Signature was brought up because there’s many many Kirkland Signature products I used, but I wouldnt for generic brands. Anyway, back to the lasagna. I was only able to eat about 25% of it, maybe less. I have so much left overs. hahaha. Oh well, the microwave’s going to like me for the next few days.

Here I’m actually going to tangent into 2 different categories. I’d talk about microwaves first. Microwaves are so cool. You know what? They condense what takes an oven 12 minutes to cook into 4 minutes of high microwave power. That’s a savings of 2/3 of the time. I was also looking at my chicken wings and that condensed 25 minutes to 5 minutes which saved 4/5 of the time! One time I was told when I was small, was NEVER to stand in front of a microwave when it’s on due to the radiation. Is there any truth in that? Do microwave radiation really leak out of the microwave? If they do, it wouldn’t necessarily be coming out from the window only right?

The 2nd category I wanted to talk about was Costco. Several interesting things I found today when browsing Wikipedia. It all started several weeks ago when I couldn’t remember the name of that big department store we used to go to in Pasadena. It was a fun place to go to. The only gripe my dad had against it was it was so far. While ungsunghero and I were talking about Target (that’s another whole ballpark which I don’t feel like getting into), I suddently remembered the name Fedco. I wasn’t too sure if I was right. Googling it didn’t help much either. So I wikied it and bingo! It actually went bankrupt back in 1994: Fedco (Southern California). Membership-based department store—including grocery, and in some locations, furniture—that served middle class. Went bankrupt. Circa 1950-1994. and was under the list “Defunct U.S. chains not acquired by extant chains or liquidated”. But right above that was something interesting which led me to investigate Costco so more:

• Fedmart (Southern California) First mass-market discount retail/grocery chain Sol Price founded. Was headquartered in San Diego in the 92111 ZIP Code. Price voluntarily closed the chain. Price later founded Price Club based upon what he learned from his Fedmart days. Price Club has since been merged into Costco. Circa 1965-75.
• In 1997, PriceCostco changed its name back to Costco, under which the company currently operates. Costco has also changed the site of its corporate headquarters from the city of Kirkland, Washington, to Issaquah, Washington. – The first Costco (in Kirkland) is actually the Costco I go to. Unless there’s 2 Costcos in Kirkland…
• Costco caps its profit margin on most products at 14% and allows itself slightly higher margins only on its Kirkland Signature store brand (a name derived from its previous headquarters in Kirkland) with a strict 15% profit limit. – I actually knew the name Kirkland Signature was derived because the Costco was their first HQ, but I didn’t realize the profit margins were capped. But even capped higher that the other products, Kirland Signature items are STILL SIGNIFICANTLY CHEAPER.

---

Random Crap:

I was checking out this movie: The Game of Their Lives. IMDB users gave it a 7.6. It’s a documentary about how the North Koreans got into the World Cup (soccer). I haven’t watched it yet, but during the skim through of it, I found a really nice scene. Enjoy!

Forlorn Lover Leaves Ring in Unlocked Car – An anonymous gift-giver, apparently depressed over a lost love, left a $15,000 diamond engagement ring in somebody’s else’s unlocked car in a commuter parking lot. The ring came in a box topped with a white bow and accompanied by a note, which read: “Merry Christmas. Thank you for leaving your car door unlocked. Instead of stealing your car I gave you a present. Hopefully this will land in the hands of someone you love, for my love is gone now. Merry Christmas to you.“

Superman ‘too big’ (from rayalome) – The new Superman is giving movie bosses a headache – because of the size of his bulge. They fear Brandon Routh’s profile in the superhero’s skintight costume could be distracting, reports the Sun. Hollywood executives have ordered the makers of Superman Returns to cover it up with digital effects. Haha. Did you also know they had to digitally resize Lindsey Lohan’s breasts in Herbie: Fully Loaded because mothers during screening were complaining they were too big? Maybe next time when they audition for the next Superman, one of the questions they’ll need to ask is, “How well endowed are you?” I don’t think they can ask how long his *cough* directly, can they? Would that be sexual harassment? Here’s some shots of Superman in his skintight costume:

2005 Offers Fresh Tales of the Bizarre – some really funny stories!

Kaptain Krunk (photoshopped by deadlock) – Parody of Captain Morgan

---

Random Crap:

Court pardons smitten bra burglar – He told the court he swiped the woman’s MP3 player because it was in need of repair, but admitted he “took her bra and photos out of love for her.”

Weebls Stuff – Toy Ad (from deadlock) – Remember that Lions and Tigers in Kenya flash? Well, they are now selling the plushies for it!!! They’re so cute! Check them out at the Weebls Stuff Store.

Honda Debuts New ASIMO (from /.) – Honda Motor Co., Ltd. today debuted a new ASIMO humanoid robot that features an advanced level of physical capabilities. Compared to the previous model, the new ASIMO achieves the enhanced ability to act in sync with people. In addition, ASIMO is now capable of running at a speed of 6km/hour and of running in a circular pattern. Videos available here. The robots pretty cool!

Top 10 System Administrator Truths (from /.):

1. Users Lie
2. Email is the Lifeblood of Non-Techies
3. Printers Suck
4. Cleanliness is Godliness
5. Backups are Crucial
6. Switches and Hubs (Usually) Die One Port At A Time
7. No One Ever Got Fired For Buying Microsoft
8. Politeness > Brevity
9. Know Your Needs
10. The Holy Grail of Tech Support

Click the above link to see the actual descriptions of these truths.

Someone later in that thread posted this interesting piece which differentiated between 4 types of administrators:

1. The TECHNICAL THUG. Usually a systems programmer who has been forced into system administration; writes scripts in a polyglot of the Bourne shell, sed, C, awk, perl, and APL.
2. The ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST. Usually a retentive drone (or rarely, a harridan ex-secretary) who has been forced into system administration.
3. The MANIAC. Usually an aging cracker who discovered that neither the Mossad nor Cuba are willing to pay a living wage for computer espionage. Fell into system administration; occasionally approaches major competitors with indesp schemes.
4. The IDIOT. Usually a cretin, morpohodite, or old COBOL programmer selected to be the system administrator by a committee of cretins, morphodites, and old COBOL programmers.

So you’d like to… fireproof your fish pond (from Microsoft newsgroup) – Pretty funny guide. You’ve probably seen it before, but someone commented they’ve finally figured out how to create a phishing firewall.