Hoshiko999's Xanga

i Mac

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 18:30:07 GMT

I have to post something on this site or I'll lose it.

A couple of days ago, my laptop died. There was something wrong with the power supply, which eventually killed the hard drive.

I decided to make the switch and go with a Mac. I can say that it is the best computer I've ever owned. Of course that's not saying much considering that my last one was about six years old. It's kind of like saying Nick is less gay than Jon. I'll see if Mac OS X is that much better than Windows XP. It's certainly better than Vista, but that OS is a piece of shit.

SQUID

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 20:00:36 GMT

For many people, squid is a cephalopod. For many stupid people, squid is a fish. For me, squid stands for Super-conducting Quantum Interference Device. I drove down to UCSD on Thursday to run a magnetic study on one of my manganese complexes. Running SQUID samples takes hours, so I had a lot of time to kill. I spent most of it at the mall near campus. I got to play Mario Galaxy for the Wii. I must say the game is amazing. It's on par with how innovative Mario 64 was when it first came out. They did a great job using the Wii-mote without straying too far from the game play of the other Mario games.

While I was eating dinner, two little girls come up to me and start babbling about some fund raiser for ice skating. They wanted me to buy one of those red Santa caps. I wasn't really paying attention, because I was thinking of an excuse to get them to leave me alone. Then I looked up and see their dad (that or he's some creepy old guy) and he gave me this look like, "if you don't buy that hat, I'm gonna' beat your fucking ass." So I said, "I'd love to buy a hat," and get out my wallet, and he looks so much happier. I figured I could either buy one hat or I could get repeatedly punched in the face and buy ten hats. So to keep in the Christmas spirit I added this video I remember from a few years back.

UFC 78

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:46:24 GMT

Last Saturday, I watched UFC 78 at Hurricanes. I'm a big fan of Hurricanes. They have happy hour (I guess it's really happy hours) on Saturdays until 7:30, and the waitresses are all really hot. Well with one exception, the waitress we had on Saturday wasn't that hot, but she's the only one thus far. I think Max and Grant will agree with me.

Overall the fights were pretty good. The main event was a high energy fight. It was a close fight, but I'm surprised it was a split decision. Then again, I was surprised that Bisping won the fight against Matt Hamill. Maybe I'm biased, but I think if you can take a guy down at will and keep the stand-up battle a draw, you are the better fighter. The way it looks right now, I think Rashad Evans should fight Keith Jardine, and if Jardine dominates, he should get a shot at the title. Ed Herman shocked Joe Doerksen and the rest of the world with a nice left hook. He hadn't come close to knocking anyone out before then. Fight of the night was Houston Alexander vs. Thiago Silva. Like all of Alexander's fights, this one was quick. Silva took him to the ground, passed his guard (way too easily), and beat the shit out of him. I think Alexander learned that you can't knock everyone out. Still he'll be in the UFC for a long time, because none of his fights go longer than three minutes. I'd like to see him fight Keith Jardine again, and Chuck Liddell, and Wanderlei Silva, and because it'd be funny, I want to see him knock out Michael Bisping and Tito Ortiz.

I'm trying out Fantasy UFC. It's not really fantasy UFC because you don't have a team or anything. Instead, you just pick the winner, winning method (e.g. submission or TKO), the round, and the minute. You get points for each on you guess correctly--even if you pick the wrong guy to win the fight. I'm not doing too bad. Out of about 14500 players I was ranked 72nd for UFC 77, and 84th for UCF 78. I was feeling pretty good about that, until I realized that when two players tie, they don't bump everyone else down. So there could have been 10,000 people tied for 60th place. I wont know exactly what place I'm in because they only show the people who are in the top 20. Top 20 get stuff like UFC jerseys and signed posters. If you want to try it out, you can join my league. It's free. Just let me know. As a matter of fact, if my league is the best (I'm still not quite sure how they determine that), we win something.

Car Crash

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 20:07:48 GMT

Last night while I was driving home, I saw a car crash. I was sitting at a red light at Beach and Ellis when an old man towing a small motor boat crosses the intersection (he had a green light) and turned right into the Jack In The Box parking lot. He's taking his time and understandably so--I wouldn't want to trash by boat either. The problem is that now there are two cars behind him, and one, a white Tacoma, is sitting in the middle of the intersection. I started looking left down Beach to see if some asshole was driving in the right lane at 80mph--it happens. The old man finally makes it into the drive though making enough room for the Tacoma to clear the intersection, but the boat is still blocking the street. Two kids, who were maybe 18 or so, pull up beside me in a beat up red Mazda (I don't know the model) in the right lane. The driver looks left, sees it's clear and floors it right into the back of the Tacoma. It was like a cartoon. The Mazda was going fast enough to pop its rear wheels off the ground, and also send the Tacoma into the car in front of it. Of course I'm watching this whole thing slow motion, and I actually reach out and yell "NOOO!" as if I could somehow grab the Mazda and stop it. Does that count as me trying to use The Force? Dave from my lab (he has a blog too, very funny) asked me if I ever tried to use The Force, and up until now I never have. I'm just wondering if that counts even though it was involuntary. I was also wondering if there was anything I could have done to prevent the accident. Yelling "NOOO!" obviously didn't work; they couldn't hear me. I can't honk, because then the honk comes from the wrong direction. I think the only thing that could have worked involves discovering that I have superpowers.

On a side note this reminded me of another Louis C.K. clip I saw on YouTube. It's only an audio clip with pictures, but it was the only one I could find.

Louis CK

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 01:07:44 GMT

Here are a couple of clips of Louis CK I found on Youtube.

Happy Fourth of July

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 06:56:55 GMT

I hope everyone had a good Fourth of July. Mine was pretty good. I saw Transformers and went to a barbecue.

I got back from Vegas on the third. I must say that going to Vegas by yourself is kind of boring. I could see it being a blast if you were a gambling addict, an alcoholic, or a pimp, but apparently I am none of the above. None the less, I still had a good time, surprisingly relaxing.

The first thing I did when I drove into Vegas was check in. Normally, I would just skip this part of the story, but I while I was waiting in line, I ran into Kimi's parents. Who'd a thunk it? After I checked in, I rushed over to the Rio and registered for the S.H.O.E. event. By the way, you need a players club card to register for any tournament hosted by Harrah's.

My first table at the tournament was pretty solid. I expected that; all the shitty action players play no-limit. There was one idiot at the table so everyone gunned for him. Luckily he didn't hit any long shots on me and I was able to build my chip stack to $2400 (from an original $2000). Then the table broke and I moved to Erik Siedel's table. As a matter of fact, I sat on his immediate left. He's not the most talkative guy in the world. I was there for maybe 5 or 10 minutes then that table broke too. I played for another two hours, then I take a big hit in stud eight or better and drop to $1100. I wont go into details, but I don't think I could have played it any better. If you'd like to share your opinion I'd be happy to discuss the hand. Nothing else happens except for a player yelling at the dealer, and we all go on break for dinner. Harrah's takes care of the players; they give you a $10 voucher for food. After a quick meal, I we all sit back down to play again. The player to my left busts out on the very first hand. Lo and behold he's replaced by Chris Ferguson. Now Jesus is a really friendly person. You all should meet him. To make a long story short, the stakes go up, the antes kill me, and Ferguson busts me out of the tournament. He shakes my hand and I head back to the hotel. I finished somewhere around 500th out of 730 players. I know I can do a lot better than that, but I don't think I could have played much better given the circumstances.

Hot Fuzz

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 01:41:44 GMT

I saw Hot Fuzz about a month ago. Though I only saw two new movies so far this year, it will be by far the funniest movie of the year. By the way, Spiderman 3 sucked and I'll leave it at that. I've also been told that Knocked Up was hilarious too, but I couldn't imagine it being funnier than Hot Fuzz.

So Hot Fuzz was made by Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright--the same people who made Shaun of the Dead. If you liked Shaun of the Dead, you'll like this movie too; it has the same kind of humor with a different premise. I'm a big fan of both films. For that reason, Simon Pegg is a newfound hero of mine. Comedic genius? I'll wait for his third movie. If he can three-peat, I'll call him a genius.

Pegg and Frost have a good formula of a frustrated hero and an overweight man-child. Kind of like me and Jon. Too bad he'll never know I said that because he never reads this crap anymore. This formula provides a decent amount of humor in itself. Then they wrote a story around it, spoofing cheesy action movies. They also managed to make fun of a couple other stupid movies from the 90s. All in all, it's definitely worth seeing.

Las Vegas

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 03:57:55 GMT

Does anyone (all two of you) want to go to Vegas on Sunday July 1st? I really want to play in the S.H.O.E. event. It's one of the smaller events. The championship Pot-Limit Omaha event is the same day too, so any pros playing in the S.H.O.E. event will be a little more tired. Let me know if you're interested.

NBA Finals

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 03:41:50 GMT

It's sad. No one else in my lab is remotely interested in basketball. I guess my advisor is, but we tend to only talk about chemistry. I only got to see game 1 and part of game 2, and now it's already over. Did Tony Parker deserve to win MVP?

What pisses me off the most is sportswriters calling the finals boring. If you truly understand the game, which I hope most sportswriters do, then how can a close game be boring? I can think of one example: Division V girls JV. The final score was 11 to 8. That was brutal to watch.

Happy Brithday to Me

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 19:52:01 GMT

Today is my birthday. To celebrate, I'm working in lab. Like I said, I have no life.

Well that's not entirely true. Friday, I went to Morton's Steak House with my parents and my sister. My brother couldn't make it so he can die of gonorrhea and rot in hell. Just like Dan Marino. (What move, Nick?)

Yesterday, I had some people over (graduate students mostly) to my house for a BBQ. Nick showed up making the total number of times I've seen him this year three. That's a six-year high and the year isn't over yet! He came late, though. When he called to make up an excuse, we had a five minute conversation about adopting kittens. Well it was more like five minutes of Nick talking while I feigned interest. I swear, Nick, you are a woman. Jon and Vi were supposed to be there too, but Jon got sick. Seriously, all he had to say was that he hates all my graduate student friends, and that would have been fine.