Nerf balls are not cheap

I'm sure the title seems kind of cryptic but you'll have to read my little story first. My younger cat Nala decided that my nerf football was a chew toy about a week ago and pieces of it were missing. I found some here and there around the apartment and figured she just bit off pieces. Well this week I found out she ate some of it and started throwing up every few hours which is really gross when you have carpet. I took her to the vet today (not cheap!!) to get her x-rayed to make sure she's alright. They gave her a sedative and threw her around like a lump of meat (I didn't witness this, I'm just assuming here). Anyway, I have her back now and she has to take some pills for the next week or so but yeah, thats why nerf balls are not cheap in my house hold, some kitty always ends up going to the vet!

Cafeteria Food

No matter what cafeteria I go to, the food is ALWAYS nasty. Today I forogt to bring a container to heat up my lunch so I had to go to the cafe to get some. I chose the special thinking it would be alright. Yellow rice and black grouper. I mean it can't be that hard to make right? Well the fish if tough and tastes kinda funny so I'm not going to speculate on it and the rice is TASTELESS. I eat a lot of rice being an asian and this is one of the first times that I can say that rice disgusts me. Why can't cafeteria food be somewhat decent and not gross and expensive? Bleh!

Diesel vs Hybrid

With the rising gas prices, I decided to check out some of the new hybrids and diesels that have been coming out recently from some of the automakers. I have to say that these puppies are expensive. I looked at Honda, VW, Mercedes Benz, and Toyota and all the hybrids and diesels they were selling were almost $10,000 more than my gas powered Altima. I guess I'll list out some things I liked and some things that I didn't like about the hybrids and the diesels.

Lets start with diesel power! When I think of diesel power, I normally think of those huge ass trucks on the highway going way to fast and tailgating me on my way to some city in FL. I equate diesel with power but when I went on the VW site and looked up the TDI's that they were selling, the power on those cars were pathetic. It stated that they use 4 cylinder 100hp diesel engines. No wonder those things get such great gas milage, they hardly guzzle anything and maybe have the horse power of Lance Armstrong on a tricycle. I thought maybe Mercedes Benz would be better and I thought maybe I could find a small car tha was relatively cheap. HA! Talk about expensive, they were starting their cars over $30,000 and by the time I was finished fine tuning mine it was over $40,000 so that took care of that idea pretty quick. On the plus side though, the cars can litteraly last forever since they don't require tune ups and if you modify it a certain way, you can use old vegetable cooking oil as fuel.

On to the Hybrid's! YAY! The new wave of cars (but enviromentally sound??) of the future so we can conserve gasoline. I looked at the Toyota Prius and the Ford Escape to do some comparison shopping. This is just my opinion but the Prius is just ugly as sin and its not even cheap! Nicely equiped it would cost over $30,000 bucks for this little hunk of tin foil. The gas mileage is pretty good but the electric engine is only used when you're doing under 25. Thats fine if you live in NYC or something but out here in Tampa, I'm hitting at least 60mph on my way home most of the time so the gas savings go right out of the window. I also took a look at the Ford Escape. This thing looks just like the gas version but its supposed to get better gas mileage hm......... after looking at its specs it maybe gets 2-3 miles per gallon more than the gas version of the car. How is that supposed to save you money? I was also thinking long term and I wondered, in about 6 years I'm going to have to replace all the batteries for my hybrid. The batteries will cost around eighty bucks a pop and there's a whole battery pack stuffed somewhere in the car which increases its overall weight. Not to mention the battery acid is highly toxic, where are we gonna be dumping this stuff? Almost seems more prudent to chug diesel in my car than throw out batteries.

Well thats my rant on hybrids and diesels :P I'm sticking to my gas efficient Altima until someone comes up with a car with plenty of power and cheap fuel for it. Why can't we have a Mr. Fusion like in the end of the movie Back to the Future? Imaging running your car on your trash, that would be AWESOME!

For all your Mac Haters

I found this blog entry on CNet.com yesterday and I was going to post it yesterday but blogger was acting kinda funny. I think it was freakin hilarious how this man describes the problems with Mac OSX. Mac's suck!

Crazy Frog

I saw this music video at the movie thearter when I went to see Corpse Bride, it was so freakin funny I just had to get the song and the rest of the album isn't half bad either. You can follow this link and then go to Crazy Frog Video and watch it for yourself. TOO FUNNY!

A Bad Day

This morning wasn't so hot, I got up late which already made me late to begin with this morning. After I got ready and was already out of my apartment and loading my things into my car, I realized that I didn't have my wedding ring on. So.......... I trucked myself back up 3 flights of stairs to get my ring and then off to work I went where I hit some bad traffic making me even more late. I didn't get to the parking garage till around 8:40 this morning. Just as I left my car I started walking to my office building, then I realized I forgot my security badge!! HUMBUG! Yeah, today hasn't started off well. I'm hoping the rest of the day will be better............

Hurricane Rita

Wow, this is what I call a big ass storm. I think we're starting to run out of names for this hurricane season and hurricane season doesn't end until the end of November. This looks a lot like the past few I've experienced in the past year or so when things really started to pick up. If I see one of these bad boys coming my way, I'm taking the first plane to CT.

The angry kitty

This picture is just too funny, my friend at work sent this gem to me.

A new link to an old friend

I added a link to my friend Anabela's blog that she keeps on Xanga. She can't see my Blogger stuff since I think its banned in China or something since thats where she lives now. I've known Anabela from I think the 4th grade or something like that. Ahh the wonders of the internet in allowing people to stay connected.

Do you remember.........

When air at gas stations were free?? I was thinking about this on my morning commute into work. I need air in my front right tire. I dunno if its leaking air or not, I just know that I need 10 PSI in there so my car drives straight again. The thing is, it costs $0.50 just to start an air pump these days. I think thats kinda crazy that you have to pay for air now. When I lived in Stamford, there was a gas station kinda near my house and they always had free air. I don't know if they charge for it now, but it was nice to know that if I wanted air, I could get it for free. I don't have any cash or change with me today so I'm going to have to scrounge around for some I get home.

Return of the Godfather

I picked up Return of the Godfather from Barnes and Noble this weekend. Its kind of interesting to read considering I saw all 3 of the movies. Being that Mario Puzo is dead, the author of this book (I can't remember his name right now) decided to fill in some of the gaps between the first and second movies. Stuff like the Corleone's move to Vegas and Tahoe and some sort of war with a trusted capo (thats Captain for you non-Soprano watching souls). I'd write more but my cat is meowing at my bedroom door and I have to read more of the book too :)

Google Earth

Wow, this is what I call a really cool tool. If anyone has ever used Google Maps, this is sorta the same thing but its even cooler than Google Maps by far. It does this cool zoom thing when you find an address on it and you can tilt the image and everything. I found out that there are also 3D models of some buildings in major cities so you can see what they would actually look like in polygons.

I've used it just to find out different places that I know and I noticed that ALL of freakin NJ is mapped out just fine but where I used to live in CT has NO maps at all. How freakin insulting! I couldn't find my mom's house or anything on the map. Bleh, maybe it will be more useful later on when they finally get around to mapping CT. Other than that, Google Earth is pretty bad ass.

Burnout Revenge!

I just picked up the newest Burnout game for the Xbox and I have to say its freakin SWEET! There are tons of new courses to play, lots of short cuts, and new crash events for my wife to play as well. There are a few new twists this time around but I won't bore you with the details. I've spent most of my weekend playing this game. Right now its my wife's turn to play so thats why I'm able to actually blog on a Sunday evening. I'll write more up this coming week if I have the time.

In the mean time here's the link to EA Games' website

I'm back from Cali!

I'm finally back from Cali and I'm so glad to be home. It was a fun trip. I hit up Rodeo Drive to look around at all the rich people stuff and I must say I'll take Greenwich CT anyday of the week. I thought it would be nicer or something but I guess not. I have some pics to prove I was actually there. I have one of the smog, one of the Beverly Hills Sign and of course one of Rodeo Drive.

Just a note on my flight home. I had to be on one of the oldest planes that Delta flies. It was an aging 767. You can tell its old because they had to manually put up screen so we can watch in flight movies and stuff. Now thats old school! Not to mention the bins weren't made for the hand carry luggage that people use today so it was a pain in the ass just trying to get your stuff on board. Delta should just concentrate on Song and get rid of all their old planes because they're so not worth flying.

And now some pictures.

My trip to LA, Part 1!

I'm here in LA California and this is the first time I've actually had internet access. I haven't had internet access since Sunday which really sucked. Well thats not totally true, I had access with my Treo Smartphone but that really doesn't count. I'm getting off topic so here goes.

I got up insanely early on Sunday (4:30AM) for a 7AM flight. The flight itself wasn't bad, I must say that Song Airlines has some awesome interactive TV where I played trivia games and watched Direct TV. Once we landed I landed I went through the struggles of finding a Super Shuttle to take me to my hotel. The hotel itself was pretty awesome. I have a nice balcony that I use a lot and I had two beds as well. The coolest part about Sunday was that I was able to go out and eat lunch with my internet sis Ali. We went to some diner that I can't remember, I think the name of it is on her blog, and we also went with her boyfriend Alex. I've known Ali for close to a decade but this is the first time I've actually met her. I wasn't able to stay out long with Ali and Alex since I had to go to my first conference meeting at 4PM. The conference begining was fine, not too interesting but all in all a good start. I ended the day watching lots of TV and cursing a lot because I had no internet.

Monday was the first full day and I had to be there before 8AM. I am not a morning person in any sense so getting up that early is almost foreign to me. There were lots of good speakers but it was SO LONG! I didn't get out till about 6:15. The thing that made up for it was that I went out to eat at Houston's and had my Hawaiian Steak which is just da bomb! I ended the night again watching more TV since there isn't much else to do around here. Oh and there was the LA black out too which was fairly interesting.

Tuesday started off pretty good. They keynote speaker was some Stanford University Law professor and he had the best presentation so far. I'm going to search the CD I got at the begining for his presentation so I can look at it some more. I brought my laptop in but the wireless in the conference rooms didn't work. How crappy is that? There are over 800 techs in LA for this conference and the wireless wouldn't work. I'm sure between all of us we could have gotten it to work so we could at least have done SOMETHING. I had something interesting for lunch, I went out with my co-worker to this place at the mall but they "californiaized" it by adding this weird dressing, avocado's, COLD noodles, and mango. Btw I ordered Salmon. LOL

It's now Wednesday and I'm sitting here writing this blog waiting for the conference keynote to start up. Fun eh? I should be able to get online more later on today booyah!!

I'm going going, to Cali Cali

Tomorrow at an insanely early hour, I'm going to be heading over to Cali for a conference for work. This will be my first foray to LA since I was 13 years old. I'll be going with one of my co-workers and I'll also be meeting Ali there to go out to lunch on Sunady. I'll probably have these haunted eyes but thats ok, no big deal really. What I really need to do is go to the ATM and get some money out for traveling. After this, I have one more trip in October to my mom's place and then I dunno what the rest of the year holds. Good thing I'm all packed, now I can just be lazy and enjoy the US Open.

US Open last night

Last night I watched the US Open with my wife but it ran really late. The highlight of course was the James Blake and Andre Agassi match. I watched most of it and I totally think that Blake should have won. He was kicking some ass but then kinda lost some steam. The tie break was painful to watch, he was SO close to winning. I'm sure he'll do well next year and he might even make it on the Davis Cup team.

Oh and on the Lindsay Davenport match. I gotta say she was truely horrible. She was going up against a teenager with the weakest serve in womens tennis and got her ass handed to her on a platter. The finals are this weekend, too bad I'm flying out on Sunday to a conference, I'm going to miss the mens finals :(

Crazy Cat

My older cat Thumper was acting a little strange a couple nights ago. He was staring up at my sliding glass door that led to my lanai area that I don't use. Normally I would think he's just looking at some little flying bug but this time there was nothing there and he had this look in his eye and body movement that told me he was gauging distance or something. He was rising up on his hind legs and stuff, then going back down and he did this for at least 10 minutes just staring off into space or so I thought. The thing he was looking at was the alarm wire for the sliding glass door. Once he got the measurments right, he jumped in the air and grabbed the wire and ripped it out of the sensor unit. I yelled at him calling him nuts and then had to attempt to fix the wire he just took out. Luckily it was a job that packing tape could fix. I put the wire in a place where he won't see it so hopefully he won't go looking for it again and making leaps of faith at the sliding glass door anymore.

Being sick stinks

I don't know how I got it (I suspect from someone at work) but I have a cold and it sucks badly. Of course I'm here at work, I don't believe in taking sick days unless I can't bring myself to get out of bed or something or my doctor tells me to stay at home. There is always a huge pile of crap waiting whenever I get back from vacations so if I can avoid taking sick days I do. I don't enjoy the stuffed up, head pounding feeling I get not to mention the hot and cold flashes while sleeping. The only thing that I am looking forward to tonight is a nice dinner with my wife and some quality time in front of the TV with my wife and cats.

Mmm these Halls aren't a bad consolation prize for right now though..............

More gas craziness

I'm back from my trip to South Florida and I have to tell ya, its kinda strange to see gas being CHEAPER down there than in Tampa. On average I saw prices hovering around $2.99 for regular. Thats still pretty damn expensive but Tampa is about $3.09 on average and a lot of stations are actually out of gas. I'm running on fumes right now so after work I'm going to have to search for a gas station that actually has gas. Sucks.

Where's the gas?

I'm down here in South Florida and I got here last night. I had a full tank of gas when I left but I figured that on the way down, I should really get some gas before I hit Alligator Alley and I knew that the prices of gas were also really high in South Florida so I decided to stop off at Naples Florida and get some gas. There were cars everywhere searching for gas it seemed. I went past 5 different gas stations before finding one that had gas and even then there was a limit of $35.00. I had the better part of half a tank and I knew that $20.00 should be able to fill up my tank. Lo and behold, here I am with more than 3/4 of a tank so I should be able to get back to Tampa on it if I don't travel too far down here with my car. I hope they have gas in Tampa or else I won't be getting to work at all unless I steal my wifes car.

Gas Prices

My friend from work sent this to me, I found it quite amusing! LOL!

Done with the Da Vinci Code

This book was pretty good although I must say I think I like Angels and Demons a bit more. I'll have to re-read both to be sure :)

No new brakes for me

I dropped my car off this morning at Nissan thinking that I needed new brakes because they were squeaking a lot when I hit them in traffic. After they did a test drive they determined that I don't need new brakes and that there's plenty of wear and tear left on my brake pads. Granted they charged me $40 for this but its bettern than the $400 I was expecting to drop today.