Moving!

I had a deep sleep last night, I woke up today not knowing what time it was, what day it is nor where I am for a good few minutes. Actually Cedric's call woke me up earlier today. He had to tell me what day it was, and it took me about 5 seconds to realize that he was telling me the truth. I was wide awake too (I had like about 7 hours of sleep) That was wierd! I felt like I had just woken up with a major hang over, but then, I've never drunk before so how the heck would I know what a hang over feels like!

Anyhow, later on the day, I received a call from Kim asking me to help her move some stuff out of her current place back to her parents' house. So I proceeded to spend the entire night helping Kim with Omar move furniture and her clothings from the city of San Bernadino all the way back to her parents' place in Montclair. It was quite a long night. After we were done with the moving. Kim treated us out to Denny's (the only place that is open at friggin 1 in the morning!) for dinner/breakfast. Here are some pictures at Denny's from the period of 1 to 2 AM. I actually made an effort to take some pictures tonight. I've realized that I haven't been taking as much pictures after I've gotten my new camera as before! I'm going to try to take more from now on whenever I get a chance!

Denny's at 2 AM in the morning in La Verne

Omar and Kim, exhausted after 5 hours of moving!

Our dinners/breakfasts!

Bedtime!

I wasn't going to post at all today but I figured I might as well post a quick one just for the sake of keeping this blog alive while I'm either figuring things out in my life or too busy doing things that are neither productive or very useful...

I finally dropped one of my only two classes last week. That was pretty much the mark of my departure...

from graduate school for now. Nothing is for sure, but the chance of that is accurately high now. I think I'm still too emotionally and mentally unstable to do anything to the extent of schooling or anything that requires hardous and stressful work at the moment. For those of you who knows me know what kind of craps I'm going through for quite a while now.

Anyhow, I might just end up dropping all my classes! That's how much I've loathed and dreaded them.

Onto something else, here is a link to my buddy David's blog, he has two comic strips on there that are too damn funny! It cracks me up pretty good and it's 6 AM in the morning! Check it out! By the way, David, check your mail for the Guttbuster I sent

http://themaingate.net/blog/index.php?p=63

For the past few days, I have been quite busy helping out at a National Ballroom Dance Competition down at the Irvine Marriott, I even missed my guild raid for it too! It was exhausting but nonetheless enjoyable. I took a few pictures and a good amount of video clips with my camera. But maybe one day, I'll figure out the compression on it and post them up here. Samba and Paso Doble have to be the coolest styles ever! I love the music, so upbeat! Paso Doble is probably one of the 5 international styles that I have yet to know how to dance. Jive is also so cool too, but I think I might pass out if I try it! Hehe.

Anyways, time for bed, see ya. Awww crap, I have a test in the Latin dance class (it doesn't count as one of my real classes if you are wondering) this Thursday, man I'm so going to choke! Let's hope not! The worse part is that my partner and I are going to be video recorded too. Time to review. Or not!

Badluck! Continue...

It's actually my name in chinese. I drew the design and it was custom made at my aunt's shop in Vietnam a long time ago.

As I promised that I will write more about this later. And now is that later! So here goes...one summer approximately 7 years ago, my family and I were visiting my home country of Vietnam for vacation. Around that time, now that I thought about it, I was in a very similar situation as I'm having right now; I thought that I needed something to help me out of that rut. So I figured a lucky charm of some sort will rescue me(!) and since my aunt owns a jewelry store there. I thought that maybe I can get something cool for my necklace at the time. Anyhow, to abridge the long story, I ended up drawing a sketch of my name in Chinese in a circle fashion that can be fitted with one of the existing default border in her store. Well the result of it as you can see in the picture above looks pretty cool eh?

Well after 7 years have gone by, I've not always had it in my possession the entire time. A particular special person has kept it for me for a good part of those 7 years. However, for some strange reason, ever since I've gotten it back, the charm has been more of a jinx to me than anything else and every single time I wear it, something bad, unwanted or unlucky seems to occur around me or directly toward me! It's a little creepy. Maybe it's just coincidental? Who knows! But a few days ago, I have decided to start wearing it again on my necklace. Hopefully I can wear the badluck out of it I said! Maybe not...it will probably kill me before that happens!

COMPUTER:

Anyways, funny things have happened so far...for example, last night, my UI during my WoW gaming session decided to freeze up my computer for no apparent reason! It caused me to think that my video card was overheating so I had to replace it with an older video card that I had lying around. This older video card then started to flicker really bad and I couldn't see anything on my screen as it was booting up. Moreover, I kept restarting my computer time after time trying to figure out the source of the problem. Anyhow, I somehow managed to corrupt my Windows XP OS main files. Afterward, I proceeded to enter the Super Duper Recovery Session for the Safe Mode of Windows XP and thought that I should try out the 'holy' FIXMBR command since the CHKDSK command gave me the okay. Again, to make the story much shorter, I basically killed the file table of my main hard drive and render it into a worthless 160 GB chunk of non-readable data! I immediately ran into the bathroom and began to cry up a river! :lol: Actually I literally sat there with my head down and chuckled quietly at myself! What luck I have!

After a few hours of thinking and crying...I mean chuckling about the problems, I've finally figured out what's going on with it. I went back into the Recovery Session and basically did a manual repair on the Master Boot Record for the main hard drive and THAT finally fixed the problem. Fortunately, everything seems to be back to normal now. Thanks to my brother's help on narrowing down to the correct source of the problem relating back to WoW and my fancy User Interface customization that messes everything up! Everything's okay for now...

UMMMM....

Well...onto the funnier part of the day, well I don't even know how funny it really was. But I think I've officially earned my jerk badge! I had a girl (those who know me know who I am referring to) today actually asked me why I am being so mean to her when she's trying to be nice to me! I thought that was so funny! I think she must have hated my gut pretty bad by now! But hey, she stood in the cold talking to me for an hour and a half...so go figure! Man, I'm a nice guy and I hate to be mean but when I have to, I will. She did although admit that she was being "annoying" to me last quarter...whatever that means...With that said, I do feel bad for the things I've said to her, but whatever, although I don't think this is going to as planned or anywhere for that matter, nonetheless, I don't think I have any other choice. I really think I'm going to get that slap I've been waiting for soon enough! :lol: Anyways, it's a long story and if you don't know about it, then don't worry about it.

SCHOOL

Onto schoooooool! Still hate it! I think I'm going to end up having to take that dreadful leave of absence that I've been procrastinating for quite a while now. Maybe it's time to start venturing in a different direction or path. I feel like I'm just hanging by my very last thread here in CS grad school waiting for something to piss me off before I call it quit. I'm not happy there nor passionate about the work. I feel like I'm just prolonging the inevitable, so I might as well cut my losses before it's too late and that I have wasted more money, energy and time into it. What'cha think?

Oh and by the way, my car's radiator is undoubtedly effed up! Sigh! Hopefully the car's engine won't overheat before I can get it repaired! Dang, I'm going to be so busy toward the end of this week too, a bunch of dance competitions that I have to attend. Time to sleep now! Adios!

Badluck!

See next post!

I'm going to wear the badluck out of this one! Hopefully! I will write more about this later, maybe tomorrow when I find some free time. Anyhow, in short, this year looks like it's going to be as bad or even worse than the last year so far. :( How unfortunate!

Life is Chess

Nothing in life ever goes to as planned! It's incredibly BS. I have yet to encounter anything at all that has ever come close to whatever I've envisioned or planned. I guess that's part of life, the unpredictable events that I can't possibly foresee. It's like a game of chess, but much much much more complicated. It's funny how I've always thought that I have everything under control in my mind, and that I've planned and forecasted every situation, move and countermove possible! However, life is such an impossible worthy opponent. It has proven to me time after time that it always has its trump card ready to defeat me no matter how many moves I have thought ahead. One day, I shall win. Or maybe and hopefully, one day, it will let me win or at least be in the lead for once.

Anyhow, belly dancing is cool, it's actually a good hips workout especially for the Rumba and Samba dances. I can't believe I know about 9 different dance styles. Not really that great at any particular one but mediocre at almost all of them!

Happy Lunar New Year!

It's a brand spanking new year! The year of the Rooster has come and the year of the Monkey is the thing of the past for now! Happy New Year or as we call it, Tet! I'm a Rooster and it's my year (well and for everyone else who were born on the year 1981, 1993, and 2005, etc.)! So let's hope that this year will be one of the greatest one there is!

This is going to be somewhat a picture-entry! I have a few cool pictures! So enjoy!

My Dad bought me this on his trip to Vietnam sometime last year.

My character stat sheet at level 60 for anyone that knows what it is can see it! Best Warbrand ever!

About an hour ago, I've finally reached the highest level that WoW has allowed me to at the moment. Level 60! After two long months of grinding and questing, I've finally completed another of my life goals! ;) I was determined! Have I beat the game? Nope! There're still a lot to do! Like killing gnomes! Let that be my secondary life goals! j/k j/k

Roco joined me for a celebration pose in Thunderbluff! We flexed it good!


Sarah! Don't worry if you have no idea what's going on! It meant to be that way!

Finally a new post

Yeah finally...a new post. I can't even remember the last time I actually blogged.

4 days to go until the Chinese New Year or as we call it in Vietnamese...Tet. According to the Chinese Lunar Zodiac, the incoming new year will be the year of the Rooster. The Chinese Lunar Zodiac consisted of cycle of 12 years each representing 12 different animals. Since I was born approximately 24 years ago, I'm a Rooster. Moreover, the year of the Rooster has come around in full circle again for the second time in my life. I'm not sure if it means much or not, but I do hope for some better and greater things to come along soon.

(Hehe...I can now justify why I still have my cool looking Happy Holidays banner on top! You see, technically, I'm still celebrating the holidays right at this moment! :lol: Ummm, it's either that or maybe I'm just plain busy/lazy to revert back the change)

Anyhow, Happy Belated Birthday to Hong and Dexter, I attended their little party last week. It was fun guys, even though some of the girls were a bit too crazy! You know who you are! ;) Let's not try to use monetary incentive to make Son dance plz...Here is one of the many pictures taken at the partay.

Left to Right: Hong, Derek, Darren (back), me, and Dexter

School: I still hate school as always. It's nothing too exciting to write or even discuss about. I'm currently trying to figure out some alternatives so I can maybe postpone schooling until a later time or totally go to school for something else different from Computer Science.

Recently, in between of my dreadful ICS classes, I have been sitting in a Political Science class with Derek, a good friend of mine at UCI. I am actually enjoying the lectures in this class more than any of my ICS classes. The professor is quite good and preachy at time. But nonetheless. his storytelling style lectures are very interesting and thought-provoking. What's funny is that, since this class is held in a large auditorium, the professor has to use a wireless microphone to do his lectures. So most of the time, I can only hear him through the speakers in the auditorium. I've told Derek this too, this guy, the way he speaks sounds very similar, if not exactly, to Tom Leykis! I thought that was pretty cool!

Dance rehearsals have been pretty interesting lately (3 hours at a time), it's much harder than dance classes. I actually have to learn and memorize a whole choreographed routine. We are actually doing a Westcoast Swing medley. I must say that I like doing Westcoast swinging better than Eastcoast. It has more body movements and these movements, in my opinion, are more relaxed and smoother than Eastcoast. Conversely, Eastcoast seems a bit more structured and formal. Anyways, each style has its own uniqueness and ideas.

Fun: Onto the World of Warcraft world! I've finally made it to level 58 already. Only 2 more levels until I hit the max level that anyone can achieve at the moment. Here are some cool screenshots that were taken by me in the last few days of WoW'ing.

Self screenshot at level 58! Best looking sword ever!



My brother and I chillin in the Western Plagueland



Group shot of our party right after we killed the giant boss in Uldaman. Jeremy was there too but he had to take off right before I took this screenshot. Left to Right: Darren, Francis, me, Brina (hahah), and my pet.

Longest day ever: This past Thursday/Friday has to be the longest couple of days ever for me. Thursday morning, I woke up around 9 AM, headed to school. Attended my first class until 11:30 AM. Went into the computer lab, checked my email and made a few phone calls. 2PM comes around, I headed to audit a Political Science class. At 2:30PM I had to leave the class early to attend a group meeting for a project for a class in which I might eventually drop pretty soon. At 3PM, I politely excused myself from the meeting early to head off to my Latin dance class. That lasted until 4:30PM. After that, I ran to my 5PM ICS class. Fortunately, the professor let us out earlier than usual. I was able to then make it to the dance rehearsal at 6PM and this was one gruesome tiring 2-hour period until 8 o'clock. I then sped home in the not-so-bad traffic. Got home, played WoW for a couple of hours, leveled my character. Then I started designing and implementing a website project until 7 in the morning! Felt asleep and woke up 5 hours later...got back on WoW for an hour or so and then I left for work. It was my very last day officially working at the ITC department where I have been working at for the past 4 years. After work, I hung around with Brian, Francis and Laureen for most of the night as they are now officially my ex-coworkers. Got back on WoW when I got home and I'm barely writing this blog right now at 5 in the morning the next day.

I apologize if my post seems so random and jumbled, :), that's what I get for not posting more often.

Well...Off to sleep I go...I've only had about 10 hours of sleep or so in the past 2 days. So exhausted.

New Post Will Go Here ASAP

I know I haven't updated in a while, I promise to have something up ASAP!