On Thoughts

Week-ends But Weekdays Starts

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These past cou­ple of days have been total­ly busy at work. I actu­al­ly co-pro­duced a train­ing ses­sion last Wednes­day amongst my oth­er cowork­ers on what Web Stan­dards can pro­duce in terms of the com­pa­ny’s site, Military.com. It went pret­ty well, but I was a lit­tle upset at myself for not hav­ing enough time to plan the dry-run pre­sen­ta­tion with the Engi­neer­ing depart­ment last Tues­day. So, I decid­ed to put in a lot of hours after work the same night.

I think I was up till 5am Wednes­day morn­ing research­ing and plan­ning the pre­sen­ta­tion, to make it real­ly under­stand­able amongst the peers. I guess you reap what you sow, the end jus­ti­fy the means… you get the point. Mean­while, we got a lot of good feed­backs and ques­tions from our cowork­ers, which we want­ed to have and get.

I think the pre­sen­ta­tion made them re-think and re-orga­nize their thought process and work­flow. That is good, espe­cial­ly in the busi­ness were in—Online. You have to do things more effi­cient and think about the future. These two things hope­ful­ly were cov­ered in our pre­sen­ta­tion. I guess we’ll see in a cou­ple of months how the seed is gonna grow. Hope­ful­ly it pro­vides our com­pa­ny with a good har­vest.

Mean­while, as I men­tion late­ly in my pre­vi­ous posts, I have been bowl­ing a lot week­ly. I guess this has been re-ignite with the com­pe­ti­tion I have been get­ting from Bigs late­ly. Its all in good fun.

I out­bowled him this past Fri­day. I had an aver­age of about 155 in 3 games. Pret­ty good for some­one re-hash­ing the way they bowl, from straight-throw­er to a slide-and-hook one (or how­ev­er you call ’em). But yah, bowl­ing seems to be the thing that this house­hold is cur­rent­ly doing every week these days. Its fun and every­one can do it.

It just sucks that we have to bowl on Fri­day 11:30am because the spot, Manor Bowl in San Lean­dro, has a $10 2‑hour unlim­it­ed bowl­ing spe­cial. So we usu­al­ly get home from it late, like around 2–3am. How­ev­er, you real­ly can’t com­plain. The spe­cial comes with $0.50 beers and fries as well. But man, I think I only about three-fourths of it and I was buzzin’ already. So yah, I bare­ly bowled around the 110/120 my last game because of it.

I guess from all of this, it goes to show that things might suck at one end… but it all just works out at the oth­er. Good times.

From my mind to yours, keep your eye on the ball—concentrate, don’t pro­cras­ti­nate.

Casual Carpool

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So today, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty again to hitch a ride with a com­plete stranger via “casu­al car­pool”. I got picked up (HA!) from a bus-stop instead of the stat­ed pick­up places on this site. I was some­what late for my reg­u­lar bus-line that takes me straight to the Trans­bay Ter­mi­nal in the city, so I just took my alter­nate route.

Any­ways, its my third time doing casu­al car­pool since get­ting here in the bay. Its pret­ty cool, just got­ta make sure you get lucky with a sane per­son who can dri­ve well. Today, I got a ride from this lady who was dri­ving a con­vert­ible. I think it might be a Mia­ta, or some oth­er com­pact con­vert­ible. All I know was that it can only site two.

At first I though, why was this lady pick­ing up car­pools if the car­pool here requires 3 or more. But she told me that its okay, as she can only site two in her car, includ­ing the dri­ver. So we took off from the bus-stop, and into the city.

It was cool ride. The top down, and me just try­ing to lis­ten to what she is say­ing. I think I was yelling at some parts of the ride just to get my words across the car. Mean­while, its just weird how many peo­ple do this “casu­al car­pool” thing. I won­der if it’ll work in LA county—or maybe not.

I don’t know… It might be hard to apply such a thing down south. Every­one pret­ty much dri­ves. Even peo­ple who only work a block away from their homes dri­ve their cars. That’s prob­a­bly a rea­son why freakin’ LA has so much smog. But its just weird to see such a com­par­i­son. I guess being in LA itself war­rants the rea­son to have a car. You pret­ty much need it to go to most places before/to/during/after work.

Anoth­er thing that I noticed is that the pub­lic trans­porta­tion here in the Bay is bet­ter than LA’s… I’ll give them that. It is easy to get around if you don’t have a car. Only thing I don’t like is that you have to pay for a grip if you have to take your car and park in the city dur­ing a week­day. I mean, $15–30 in some places… come on!

Blah… what am I com­plain­ing about, maybe its the fact that I’m rid­ing the bus again. I rode it from 5th grade, all the way to senior year in high-school. I made that ear­ly morn­ing, hour and a half com­mute from 3rd and West­ern (in LA) all the way to the Val­ley. And man, can I tell you—it sucks ass being on any LA free­way dur­ing rush hour. Any­ways, on the lighter side of things, we can’t always get the best part of the cake. All we can do is be greate­ful that we are invit­ed to the par­ty so-called Life.

From my mind to yours, save the air… car­pool.

The Week of Busy

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Busy week last week. More than usu­al at least for me. It seemed that 24/7 became 8/5 and that lunch is �to-go� and at my desk. Even the free Wednes­day lunch my com­pa­ny have every week, I took back to my desk because I need­ed to brain­storm some con­cept for a new cre­ative I have been put on.

Oh man, the chal­lenges we face every­day seem to be so huge that we just don�t look for a crack of sun­light amongst the fog­gy city of SF (late­ly). Yah, the weath­er has been gloomy in �the city� for the past week or so. Oth­er than that, peo­ple are cool with it, and keep­ing things right than keep­ing it real.

The roomies (Bigs, Jay and Lance) are all good as well. Had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to roll with to the DeLeon Ranch in Vacav­ille this past Sat­ur­day. One of their fam­i­ly friends had their engage­ment par­ty over there. It was freakin� hot. The tem­per­a­ture soared way above the hun­dreds but it was worth the trou­ble.

The food was just great. I always keep say­ing it, the best food is FREE-good food. Uncle (Big­gy’s dad) was play­ing match­mak­er the whole day. He cracks me up�he�s a good man. I just can�t believe that they found them­selves a patch of heav­en in a place far away. But on the real, their ranch is nice and huge.

Mean­while, the day after, we all went to the Alo­ha Fes­ti­val. It was held at the Pre­sidio of SF. It was my first time there. One of the first times I heard of the word �presidio� as well (at least I thought I haven�t heard of it). But yah, here�s its def­i­n­i­tion:

A gar­ri­son, espe­cial­ly a fortress of the kind estab­lished in the south­west Unit­ed States by the Span­ish to pro­tect their hold­ings and mis­sions.

It�s all nice over there. Too bad it was some­what fog­gy and chilly. How­ev­er, it turned out to be just right when we entered the fes­ti­val grounds. Great food, music, per­for­mances and peo­ple. Good times.

In oth­er news, I final­ly found a new bowl­ing throw. My ball final­ly does a lit­tle hook to hit �the pocket�. I have been con­sis­tent the past cou­ple of games. I think I�m hov­er­ing on the high 150s for my aver­age late­ly. Not bad for com­plete­ly chang­ing the mechan­ics that I have had for the past 10 or so years of my bowl­ing-life. I guess my goal is to get back my straight-ball aver­age of 180s of long ago. That�ll be nice and gravy.

Speak­ing of nice, I final­ly got the surge of being pro­duc­tive in terms of cre­at­ing new projects of my own. Even though I still have to start and fin­ish the Rhythm Natives site. I set a goal for myself to get it done before I roll to Chica­go on Labor Day. But we�ll see, class and work just seems to take most of my time late­ly. It�s just a bless­ing that when I get free time, it�s either play­ing sports or just relax­ing with the peeps.

From my mind to yours, just do it.

Freedom Working From Home

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I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to chat with James to plan our shindig to see the Flickr staff at the Apple Store in the city (SF). Here’s the high­light of it:

james: alright..i’m gonna get ready to go
me: aite… what you have to do? put clothes on? haha
me: bas­tard
james: yeah

Just goes to show, some­times “work­ing” is plain “free­dom”.