my life, as far as i know.

last night i ate so much garlic it felt like it burned a hole in my tongue.

one of my best friends and i took a common friend tim out to dinner. tim is one of my favorite people. unfortauntely, his life has been steered by the economic downturn of the tech industry. come friday, he’ll be back in his native toronto. lately he has been reading a series of books on economic freedom and careers. he has been really into it and, after having him talk to me about it, it does sounds pretty interesting. one of the key points is departing from the usual definition of assets and liabilities and deciding really where you want to be, financially.

i took the three of us to this awesome little restaurant in ben lomond, california. its name is “ciao bella!”. it’s this crazily decorated restaurant in a converted house. its outdoors patio is circled by coastal redwoods. the food was amazing.. and the service was great.

in talking with tim and my step-brother lately, i’ve realized that my friends (for whatever value that word has) can largely be put into one big group. what i mean by that is, there are a few people i know who are really cool people. they stand out from the other people i know. the rest are very similar. i have known most of them for years and it feels like hardly anything has changed. recently in thinking about things……. i think i value those unique friends a lot more.

i used to know this graphic designer. very talented. it was really cool watching him work. he inspired me to be more artistic. i say “used to know” because he has moved away and i have stayed behind. we dont really keep in touch, either. anyways.. my step-brother is artistic in the kitchen. he likes experimenting with different ingredients, spices, techniques. and my best friend is a photographer. he’s introduced me to infrared photography (he frequently shows me new things to learn about) and he used to teach classes. and tim. i am not sure if tim has a particular talent or hobby. i am still drawn to him.. it could be his thoughtful insight.. his attraction to artistic venues.. he has a nose and ear for interesting events.

over dinner last night, tim asked us what our personal goals were for this year. i was drawing a half blank– i knew i was going on vacation this year (my first time out of this country) with family. later i remembered my real goals.. i kept them to myself. here they are:

that third item draws additional inspiration from tim, who would always encourage me to move forward (and onward) with my passion.

i have been so lazy in my endeavors as of late. i’m not sure why. maybe it is part of living by myself for the first time.

anyways, i will miss tim. i do already. i need to snap myself out of this lethargy. and, perhaps, do something concerning my friends and who i would like to hang out and associate with.

well, i’m still here. this week turned out fun.

been eating out more. but doing so wisely. on wednesday i took part in an “dining out for life” fundraiser, at la moone, possibly my most favorite restaurant in san francisco. we ate for three hours. that, plus the bar tab, and gratuity resulted in a $750 bill. we managed to pay it in cash, which is great for a party of ten people! a quarter of the profits (plus the donations we all made) go to a good cause: helping stop the spread of hiv.

hrm, what else. been spending time with my stepbrother. he’s a really cool guy. he’s 21 and has the same want to explore life and the world as i did when i was in school. only i never really got out of west lafayette. getting acquainted with him has brought back a more measurable passion for life in myself. we’ve had deep discussions about religion and social interaction. and i’m back on a kick of foreign music. i’ve been introducing him to classic rock and more obscure stuff, such as air and early pink floyd.

my younger step brother turned 13. i got him the ultimate brainchild toy: mindstorms. i looked around.. it’s clearly the cheapest way to get into that level of robotics.

oh, and i’ve lost 15 pounds.

these past few weeks have been pleasantly quiet. and this weekend was incredibly fun. and next week is booked nearly solid. so things are speeding up for a bit. this week brings a dinner/movie night, a social fundraiser dinner, and pre-move activities. the weekened has a move and a party in store, so far. and i want to try some new recipes this week. oh, and im borrowing a camera from so i can play with this infrared film. man, so many things at all once. maybe i’ll do some lunch-break shooting this week!

this morning i realized i like where my life is right now. when people ask me how i am, how life is for me, etc.. i respond with, “really well, actually.” my good spirits have also made living by myself a great experience. maybe i needed a healthy dose of solitude. or maybe it’s the fact that i’ve lost nearly all the weight i wanted to shed. and 2003 has even more in store for me: my brother is getting married and i’m later going on a week vacation with family. at home, i’ve started collecting wine. i’ve added a few plants to my apartment which are doing well. and i’ve been having a lot of fun cooking. i’ll try not to think too hard about why things are going so well for me personally, and make the most of my feelings. maybe use this time to explore new areas with renewed esteem.

chicken and bok choy.

each time i cook it’s like a lesson.. i learn new things. tonight.. i learned that the chicken was too thick to cook evenly. and the pan stuff afterwards would have made a good sauce, since the chicken ended up a little dry. better luck next time..

tonight i made spicy beef and broccoli. with a real wok this time. turned out pretty well, tho it could have used a bell pepper.

so the mp3s on the raid set seem corrupted. the chkdsk probably trashed everything. it sucks having 120gb of stuff you dont know the integrity of. hooray modern filesystems.

a second day with family. food, food, present, movie. we watched ‘better luck tomorrow’. next on my list is ‘bend it like beckham’.

so patience and persistence have paid off. after replacing a disk, sending the controller back to its maker to be fixed, and later taking out another broken disk, my raid set is back online. i’ve even completed a disk-to-disk copy of it. yay! now to think about the next step for me, with respect to storage. and i need to rma this last disk. i should already have one on its way back.

so today i stumlbed through a few livejournals. one that caught my eye made mention of me.

i’d gone up to ess-eff to watch a musical with friends. someone i hadn’t seen in ages (and only once or twice even before this time) was there. our common friend suggested i offer a ride home, since i live down the street in the same city. apparently it was a bad decision, as was written in lj:

“… met that scary guy from down the street. ummm, he freaks me out.. a “sarcastic” thank you to [our common friend] for offering up him as a way home (grrrrrr…..) …”

sent away a disk and raid controller for replacement. wish me luck.

tonight i cook a teriyaki stir-fry. beef, snow peas, bean sprouts, yellow and orange bell pepper, steamed broccoli, red onion. came out pretty well, but the flavour was a bit intense. usually things arent flavourful enough.

my stepbrother suggested i keep a list of the dishes i cook every week.

had a really nice lunch today. drove down (over?) to cupertino to eat at whole foods. it was a perfectly clear day out.. very sunny and warm out. i had some chicken and a really good salad. and, of course, my w.f. stable — fiji water. had a nice lunch, and took a little different route back to work. listened to some joni mitchell, the ‘blue’ album. its nice to have such an enjoyable excursion during the day, even if only for an hour or so.

ok, this raid controller is driving me nuts. the integrity of about 120 gigs of crap is at stake. i finally got the controller to rebuild the raid. then it still locked up trying to get the data off it. so i decided to upgrade the firmware. then the computer wouldn’t even boot. the “rescue” disk was useless. so.. hrm. i put the controller in my desktop computer. and i cant get it working under winxp. so.. ok, i’ll install win2k on the file server’s original boot disk. what the hell. so i guess i’ll install win2k and then try adding the controller. and then pray my data is still on this raid set.

tonight i tried a recipe for brandied chicken. it turned out so well. it was a pretty easy recipe to follow, as well. i served it with spinach salad and red wine.

today my file server at home horked. so long, mp3 collection. it was fun while it lasted. life moves on.

last night i realized the steak i had in my fridge was too old. the frequency of my cooking at home has been sporadic, since i’ve found some restaurants that are passable with my current diet. so chalk up another one up for experience. each week i learn something new about being more domestic. i’ve gotten myself in the habbit now of keeping all the dishes clean.

oh, also my cable tv (and internet connection) have been out since yesterday. apparently there’s a mountain view area outage. i won’t know again until late tonight since i’m going out after work. that reminds me, i need to call up comcast internet to cancel the appointment for someone to come “fix” the internet connection… don’t they talk to comcast broadband?

my internet connection used to be @home and my cable was.. uh, i forget. then my connection became att@home and my cable, att broadband. and now it’s all comcast. and still the two groups aren’t linked together… despite one service piggybacking on top of the other.

i have the comcast 800 number memorized since it took so many tries to get through some of their automated menus.

i called comcast to cancel the appointment. i love it when they ask, “is there anything more i can do for you today?” i so want to just yell at them.

anyways.. happy thursday. maybe it’s a blessing that i’ve been without tv and internet at home.

today at work there was a strange issue happening just before i left for lunch. i saw some symptoms but couldnt tell if they were growing. so i stepped out for lunch. i made sure my work cell phone was turned on.

i came back from lunch to find out the apps guys rebooted the front-end servers which seemed to clear things up. i came back to my desk.. the manager who sits in an office two cubes away was talking to my supervisor about the issue. i couldn’t hear enough to discern what was going on.

it annoys me when i overhear things i feel i should be a part of. half the time i just walk to whoever’s talking and at least listen. but it does make me feel rather useless.

everything’s rebooted (i did check the reboots.. they seem clean) so there’s not much more i can do now. i emailed one of the apps guys offering my help if it was still needed. i also let him know i felt a bit left out.

:-/