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Archive for September, 2004

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Go Go Gadget Sha

Thursday, September 30th, 2004

Most of you know that I have a particular weakness for all things gadgety. If it’s shiny or has lots of buttons, I probably want it. Here are a few things I’ve been thinking about wasting my money on:

  • Camera phone – If you’ve ever talked about cell phones with me, you’ve probably heard my “I just want a phone that’s a phone” rant. However, I find the instant gratification of a camera phone very, very appealing.
  • Canon EOS 20D – 8 megapixels, 0.2-second start up time, 5 fps burst shooting… Now I know that a nice camera does not a photographer make, but this camera is so cool. Plus, it is probably the best affordable <ahem> dSLR camera on the market.
  • TiVo – I don’t watch that much TV anymore, but how else am I going to make sure to catch The O.C. every week?
  • iPod – I, too, want to be one of the cool people walking around with white earbuds.

In other, completely unrelated news, I saw Garden State last night with Buddy and enjoyed it quite a lot. (“it” being the movie, not Buddy. Not that I don’t enjoy Buddy, but his soundtrack isn’t as good.) Mad props to Zach Braff for an amazing first movie. Plus, Super Bonus™ for writing into it making out with Natalie Portman. Let’s be honest here — who among us, given the chance, wouldn’t do that?

On the subject of Natalie Portman, (not making out with her, just her) I thought she was very good in the movie. Now this came as a bit of a surprise, given the craptastic performances she gave in the last two Star Wars movies. Was this merely a fluke? Or was Star Wars the fluke? It is important to note that Haydn Christensen also gave a sucktacular performance in Star Wars. However, his performance in Shattered Glass was widely praised. Thus, we can come to a single, inevitable conclusion: George Lucas makes good actors bad. That’s gotta suck. Being totally ignorant about both the art of acting and the art of directing, I always assumed that good actors were always good actors, regardless of who is directing them. But I guess this proves that indeed, directors actually do something. Who knew?

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Portland

Monday, September 27th, 2004

Since I was in Portland for my cousin’s wedding, I missed our first pace group run. My very capable Assistant Pace Group Leader, Sahara, led the group in my absence, and from what I hear, it went very well.

In lieu of the 4-mile group run, I did a 4-mile solo run along the Willamette River in Portland. It was an okay run — pretty hot, but I made it without much trouble. It was at least a nice change of scenery from running laps around the park at home.

Current fundraising amount: $1000

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Una Sangre

Monday, September 27th, 2004

I was in Portland for most of this weekend. The main reason was to attend my cousin’s wedding reception. But the Super Bonus™ of the weekend was that I got to have brunch with none other than Domi, med student extraodinaire. It was great to catch up with her, and I was glad to be able to provide her with some non-medical-related conversation.

Afterwards, my parents and I went on a drive along the Columbia River gorge and saw some nice waterfalls. My mom got impatient with all the nature, though, so we headed back to downtown for some shopping.

Since I was missing our Saturday training run, after we got back to the hotel, I went on an afternoon run along the Willamette River. It was nice, although it did smell like sewage in places. Mmm…sewage…

The wedding reception was in the evening, and it was quite nice. Got to hang out with the family, which is always a good time. It was quite entertaining to see my 90-year-old grandma busting it out on the dance floor, too.

I came back to California on Sunday morning. Didn’t do too much during the day, although I did get my car washed, restoring it to its previous shiny shiny glory.

In the evening I was fortunate enough to attend a concert by Lila Downs. For those of you who have seen the movie Frida, you would have seen Lila Downs singing during the infamous tango scene. It was an amazing performance. It took place at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz, which was a small, intimate performance space. Her songs were sung mostly in Spanish or Indian languages of Mexico, but she always took a moment to explain the meaning of each of her songs. She is an incredibly expressive, passionate singer and she also had an extremely talented band backing her up. I felt lucky to have been able to see her perform.

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Lame

Thursday, September 23rd, 2004

I am officially lame. This is because although I remembered to call her (with a gentle reminder,) I didn’t do a proper online shout-out to Domi for her birthday! So I hope this is acceptable, if not a little late.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DOMI!

Whew.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to congratulate Steve for authoring this website’s 800th (!) comment!

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Windfall

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004

The AIDS Marathon website is puzzlingly slow at updating our fundraising total. You would think that online donations should show up immediately, but it has been taking anywhere from 3-6 days for each donation to come through. However, today a whole mess o’ donations showed up, and I just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone. I really appreciate your support! Things on the fundraising front are certainly looking up. :)

Current fundraising amount: $1000

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A Numbers Game, Part Deux

Tuesday, September 21st, 2004

Buddy was nice enough to lend me his talking pedometer. After getting over the fact that it was in metric units, and vowing to never ever use its “music” feature, I decided to use it yesterday to try once more to measure the distance of my morning run. You input your stride distance and it counts the number of steps you make to measure distance. I brought a tape measure outside, stepped in a puddle of water, ran a bit, and measured the distance between footsteps. After doing a quick inches to centimeters conversion in my head (you already know that this is going to go badly), I set my stride distance in the pedometer, and off I went.

About 40 minutes later, I came back to my computer to do the km to miles conversion. The first thing I realized is that my inches to centimeters conversion was off (stupid head), so my stride distance was off. Fortunately, I still had the number of steps, so I recalculated the distance. The pedomter claims that the distance is 3.8 miles, which is more in-line with my 10:20-10:30 mile time. So Mapquest lied, but only by about .2 miles. Woo!

Current fundraising amount: $170

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Three MCs and One DJ

Sunday, September 19th, 2004

Friday night Buddy and I went to the Beastie Boys concert in the city. We were supposed to be joined by Cort, but he unfortunately had to work. We were able to sell his ticket to some British punk girls, though.

The first act was, strangely enough, Bob Moore’s Amazing Mongrels which is exactly what it sounds like — a performing dog troupe. There were a dozen or so dogs onstage doing tricks like jumping through hoops and walking on tightropes. The highlight of the act was when a shaggy dog named Scooter balanced on a rope on his hind legs. It took him a couple tries, but when he did, the entire crowd was chanting, “SCOOTER! SCOOTER!”

The real opening act was up-and-coming rapper Talib Kweli. I had only heard one of his songs before last night, but I thought he was really good. He had a lot of energy and interacted a lot with the crowd. Plus, he could actually perform live. Imagine that.

But of course we were all really there to see the Beastie Boys. The show started with a video feed of Mix Master Mike standing outside the venue, and it followed him into the building and onstage. The rest of them joined him onstage shortly afterwards. Overall, the show was awesome. They did several songs from their new album as well as some older favorites. They messed up the lyrics a couple times and had to restart the song in places, but nobody seemed to mind. They also did a few songs playing instruments, which was pretty cool. I had sort of forgotten that they really started out more as a band than an rap group. But for the most part they were backed by Mix Master Mike, who has some mad DJ skillz.

There is one thing I have to say though: Beastie Boys is OLD. MCA turned 40 last month, and boy is he showing it. Fortunately, their age doesn’t seem to have affected their ability to rap, nor has it brought Mike D’s voice to a post-puberty range.

All in all, it was a great concert. If you ever get a chance, go see the Beastie Boys! Even if you don’t like their music, they put on an amazing show.

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Kathy Switzer

Saturday, September 18th, 2004

Today was our first day of training in Golden Gate Park. I picked up Buddy on the way, and we got horribly lost trying to find the run site. We eventually got there with about 5 minutes to spare. They had us do a 3-mile run, which they used to put us in our pace groups. I ran it in 31:03, which put me in the 11:30 minute/mile pace group (they slow you down a minute or two), named the “Kathy Switzer” group. I assume that Kathy Switzer is some famous runner, and not just our organizer’s mom or something. This time is about what I expected, and should mean a 5-hour marathon.

My group was small and kind of quiet, so I was trying to be friendly and introducing myself to everyone and chatting. Before I knew what was happening, I was somehow elected the pace group leader, despite telling Buddy several times that I would do everything in my power not to be one. (They have to show up 15-minutes earlier than everyone else. Sorry Buddy!) I hope I don’t get them all lost, seeing as I don’t know San Francisco at all. Whee!

Edit: Some quick Googling reveals that Kathy Switzer was the first woman to run the Boston Marathon. This was before women were officially allowed to run the race, so she obtained her number by entering as “K. Switzer.” In a much-publicized event, race officials tried to tear her number off her shirt before being clocked by her boyfriend. Kathy Switzer rules! :D

Current fundraising amount: $120

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Cash Money

Friday, September 17th, 2004

I would like to say a huge thank you to Becky for being my very first marathon donor! Woohoo! You rock, Becky! :D

Current fundraising amount: $100

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Holy Awesome

Friday, September 17th, 2004

If any of you wonder what I work on, wonder no more! (Or wonder slightly less…)

Go to this link on Gamespot and watch the third “Behind the Scenes” video. At the part where he is talking about looking at the Balrog in x-ray mode and showing the model animating with all the bone names (about 1:30 in), the software he is using is the tool I work on! Woohoo! We’re famous!

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