Near the copy machine on my floor is a big first aid box with things like band-aids, tylenol, etc. I was looking at it one day about a month ago, and noticed that they had a box of Clean 'n Safe Moistened Lens Cleaning Towelettes for "Clean and Safe Eye Protection for Glass or Polycarbonate Lenses. Anti-Static/Anti-Fog Action." Though I don't usually wear glasses, I decided to take one of these magical towelettes in case I did one day. There it sat on my desk for 4 weeks, calling for its anti-static/anti-fog action to be put to use.

Last night I fell asleep with my contacts on, so this morning I decided to just wear glasses today. This afternoon, I noticed my glasses had a smudge on them. How would I ever clean them off? My Clean 'n Safe! With trembling fingers I carefully tore open the little white packet, and removed the towelette. I slowly unfolded it to find that...

...that what? What was it?

An alcohol wipe.

A friggin' alcohol wipe. And it didn't even clean my glasses very well.

My life is so hard.

And also Customer Service. Each quarter at our company meeting they hand out "A.C.T.I.O.N." awards, to people or teams who exemplify the "core ACTION values": Achievement, Customer Service, Teamwork, Integrity, Ownership, and Now.

Paul (the other engineer I work with) and I were nominated for the "Customer Service" award for the work we did for the Bond and Return of the King teams. Unfortunately, we didn't win, (and I can't remember who did; probably one of those "other" teams like finance or marketing) but the president of the company did say "I've always wanted to say this" before he announced my name. A big congrats also goes out to Rahul, who was nominated for the "Now" award but didn't win either.

We demand a recount.

This past weekend I went up to Tahoe to snowboard. Becky has a timeshare up there, and she invited us to stay with her. It took me a while to get used to snowboarding again, but after some practice and some good tips from Becky, (not that she's bragging) I got much better at turning both ways. (Or, "carving" as the cool kids say.) It's still not really natural yet, but at least there were no catostrophic falls this time. Winter X Games, here I come!

(Unfortunately, I totally spaced and didn't take any pictures, which is a shame because everything looked really pretty covered in snow.)

One more thing: I am proud (?) to announce that I have broken 500 comments! Woohoo! Unfortunately, the honors go to "joe shmoe", who berated me for working on a video game that will clearly turn all of America's children into murderers. Oh well.

Today is a big day for me: my very first shipped game! James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing is in stores today. Woo! We haven't gotten our copies yet, but I am very anxious to get one, because I have a secret fear that they somehow left my name out of the credits. I'll believe it once I see "Sha Sha Chu" in there.

Edit [2/18/04]: We got our copies today and I just checked -- I'm in there! Woohoo! Maybe I can get a screenshot... But I have a feeling I'm the only one excited about this.

Edit [2/19/04]: Added a "screenshot"!

If you ever wondered where Avril Lavigne gets inspiration for her super-awesome lyrics, look no further than her description of Alanis Morrisette's "Ironic" on her iTunes celebrity playlist: "I love how this song was written with all of the different examples Alanis uses of things being ironic...this song is just really good lyrically."

It's like a black fly in my chardonnay...

Been really sick today... got some sort of bad food poisoning, maybe from the salad bar at work on Friday. Stupid salad bar.

This morning as I was walking Enzo, I was thinking, "I wonder if they translated the musical 'Annie' into Spanish?"

Maaaaañana, Mañana,
Te amo, Mañana!

In the midst of all the Democratic primaries, I've realized that soon it will be my turn to vote in the California primary. However, I'm ashamed to admit that I know next to nothing about the current crop of Democratic hopefuls, other than the fact that Howard Dean screams like a madman. Does anyone have any pointers to a website with fairly unbiased summaries of all the candidates? And I don't mean just their education and background, but also their positions on various issues (budget, economy, seal clubbing, etc.) Does such a site exist? Something along the lines of "Democrats for Dummies".

My Dad informed this past weekend that he is a recipient of the 2004 Asian-American Engineer of the Year award! Go Dad! I assume this is no small feat since we all know that there is not exactly a lack of Asian engineers in this country...

This past Saturday morning, Mariel and I were planning on going to Dim Sum with Cheryl. At about 10 am, we were both woken (awoken?) by a knock at the door. I went up to the door and looked out the peephole to see who it was. I saw the distorted image of two women in black suits carrying . . . bibles? My eyes grew wide and I ran up to Mariel and whispered, "It's Jehova's Witnesses!" Imagine how a normal person might say, "It's a man with an axe carrying a severed head!" and you'll have an idea of how I said it.

Mariel looked slightly panicked and tried to get Enzo to stop bouncing around in the living room with the oh-so-loud tags jingling on his collar. Now please understand that we have nothing against Jehova's Witnesses, per se, but we were in no mood to have a long conversation about religion while in our pajamas.

We sat for a few moment, frozen, when another knock came. And a third.

"They sure are persistant, aren't they?" I observed.

"Shhhh!"

"Oh right. Jehova's Witnesses do have superhuman hearing..."

After a minute or so, I peeked out of the peephole again, and saw that they had moved on to our neighbor's apartment across the way. Mariel and I crossed our fingers that they wouldn't answer, but our hopes were dashed when I saw that one of them had opened the door. I peeked through the blinds and heard the word "converting". We were at an impasse -- how would we sneak out without making it painfully obvious that we had intentionally not answered the door?

At this point, it was getting late. We still had to take Enzo on his morning walk (he was doing the dog version of the pee pee dance), shower, and get to the Dim Sum restaurant in time to meet Cheryl.

"I hope they're actually Jehova's Witnesses, and not the Publishers Clearing House Prize Patrol," I mused.

"Hmm... It is Superbowl Weekend," Mariel said, "Did they have balloons? And a giant check?"

"No... I'm pretty sure they didn't."

Mariel dragged a chair up to the front window, and camped out, watching the two women through the blinds. After what seemed like an enternity, but was probably closer to 15 minutes, the neighbor's door closed, and the women moved on to our other neighbor's door. They stood in front of the door without knocking for a few minutes, writing down notes and chatting to each other.

I decided to call Cheryl to let her know that we were running late. She didn't answer, so I left a message.

"Hey Cheryl, I'm just letting you know that we'll be late. We're trapped in our apartment by, um, Jehova's Witnesses.... So... uh, yeah. We'll call you later."

Finally, Mariel and I decided to shower and get dressed first, and hope that when we were done, the two women would have moved on to another building.

In the end, our plan worked out okay. We successfully avoided religious confrontation, Enzo's bladder remained intact, and Cheryl, in all her lateness, wasn't even awake. The Dim Sum was good, too, except when we accidentally ordered a huge bowl of beef tripe.

sha_sha_new@hotmail.com

Woohoo! I got my first piece of spam today to one of my new hotmail accounts. It was to the address that is published on this site, and not only was it a piece of spam, it was one of those cool e-mails from a "government official" asking to transfer millions of dollars into my bank account.

I'm going to start keeping a spam count on the left bar. It's not exactly fair right now, because I haven't actually done anything with the other two addresses, but I will. Maybe.

sha_sha_new@hotmail.com