You may or may not know that it has been a long-time dream of mine to work on special effects for film. I specifically remember a phone conversation with a friend from middle school, and when I told her this, her response was, "Huh?" I admit that it's a fairly specific dream, but there is something about visual effects that has always captured my interest. It's true that I now work in a vaguely-related field (games), but it's actually not digital effects that I've always been interested in; it's been old-school live action effects like animatronics and puppetry. So when I heard that Stan Winston was coming to speak at EA, I jumped at the chance to meet him. For those of you who don't recognize the name, he is responsible for the "creature" and makeup effects for movies like Terminator and Terminator 2, Aliens, Jurassic Park, and probably most blockbuster sci-fi or fantasy films that you can think of. Though he's not really a household name, he is definitely a legend in his field, and I'm sure all of you have seen his work.

I found out that he would be signing autographs as well, but I didn't have anything proper for him to sign, so I just brought my work notebook. I geeked out for the minute or so that I talked to him, and told him about how Terminator 2 was my favorite movie when I was a kid and that the effects in it blew my mind. (I actually said it in those words; I felt pretty dorky.) He responded with, "It's one of my favorites, too" and signed my notebook "To Sha Sha, Cool Name Good Luck Stan Winston".

He started by showing a reel of his work, then talked mostly about his career, and how he got started in the industry. All in all, he was a fun speaker, and seemed like a very personable guy. It was definitely an honor to meet him.

- Paying $29.82 for a tank of gas for a '95 Honda Accord is just wrong. I even use 87 octane!

- The concept of the "fast lane" is lost on most drivers in the Bay Area

- When I was a kid, I suffered from severe allergy-related asthma. My asthma is much better now, but in the past couple years, I've developed "normal" allergies: runny nose, itchy eyes, etc. I should think that I've paid my allergy dues back in the 2nd grade when I missed 36 days of school, but I guess not.

- TurboTax rules.

- I've discovered that there is a woman down the street who appears to have some sort of OCD-related ritual she goes through before she gets in her car to go to work. Several times when I've been walking Enzo in the morning, I see this woman's Audi with the drivers side door open sitting in her driveway. She'll be at the front door of her house, then she'll walk towards her car, turn around about half way there, and go back to the front door to unlock and relock the door. Wash, rinse, and repeat. I find it fascinating, but I figure it would be rude to just stop walking and watch her.

I'd like to formally welcome Domi to the world of online ego-stroking. Welcome! People are mean, and the water's ice cold! But seriously, her entries are very well-written and often reminiscent of advice columns. (The good ones, not the Dear Abby kind.)

I also found out that this page has convinced Storey that he never wants to have a comments feature on his site. Woohoo! Come on, you mean you don't want comments like this one? I can't imagine why.

Today in the cafeteria I saw something which I had always assumed was impossible: low-carb bread.

It reminds me of the dehydrated water from Space Quest.

Last night I had a birthday party, nay, a birthday event at the park at our apartment complex. We got food from Beppos and had not one, but two pinatas! Much fun was had by all. Well, I don't know for sure, but much fun was had by me, and isn't that really what's important?

I'd also like to point out that Yar, Rahul, and Jan fulfilled what can only be described as a childhood dream of mine by getting me a Megatron transformer. Yes, Megatron. I think I might have squealed like a school girl.

[pictures here]

Happy Birthday to Me
Happy Birthday some more
Please don't start another war
And now I'm 24!

CONGRATUMACATIONS!

This post is restricted. Click here to login or here to request access. Read this post if you want to know why.

This past weekend was a bit of a change from my usual sit-around-in-my-pajamas-and-watch-TV routine. On Friday we went out to dinner at Mountain Mike's for Brendan's 24th birthday. I had a vegetarian pizza, which tasted suprisingly meaty. Afterwards, some of us went to World Karaoke in Santa Clara, and enjoyed a couple hours of bizarre 80s-style videos and bad covers of popular songs. I took some pictures, but only a couple of them were worth posting: Brendan singing a little ditty about Brendan and Diane.

On Saturday, I watched Stanford win the Pac-10 championships (woo!) and then we met up with Babs and Charlene for yummy Korean food at Korea House in Santa Clara. The food there is quite good, but it's worth going just to see the owner's hairstyle.

Sunday afternoon, I went to see Joshua Bell perform for the Stanford Lively Arts series. For those of you who don't know who he is, Joshua Bell is like the Justin Timberlake of the violin world. He's Justin Timberlake in the sense that he's the resident heartthrob, not in the sense that he exposes his female colleagues on national television. At least I don't think he does. He played Schubert, Tchiakovsky, and Ravel sonatas, as well as a Chausson concert for violin, piano, and string quartet with the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Stanford's resident String Quartet. The concert was really good, but I was surrounded by a whole lotta old people.

Later that night, Mariel and I tried out one of the Greatest Inventions Ever Known to Mankind: the egg-shaped Jello mold. I had been obsessed with these ever since I saw a television commercial for them last spring, but I didn't get any until last week. It also answered the age-old question: what would a it look like if you submerged an egg-shaped Jello mold into a glass of ginger ale? Well, my friends, wonder no more.

Also, Happy Birthday to Arthur and Brendan! Woo!

In case anybody cares, (and by "anybody" I mean "nobody") I hacked Movable Type so that when I upload a JPEG with EXIF data and create a new entry with it, it will use the EXIF date and time as the date of the entry, rather than the date and time that the entry was created. What this means is that I can upload old pictures (of which I have many) and the date on them will be the actual date the picture was taken. Woo!

Are we excited yet!??? I thought so.

As a break from my usual egotistical ramblings, I thought I'd take a moment to talk about what some of my friends are doing. Yes, I do have some. They're on a payment plan.

I recently reconnected with a good friend of mine from high school, Lisa, and found out that she has started a jewelry-making business with a friend of hers. They make all of their pieces from musical instrument strings, which is pretty cool. Even cooler is that they are working on getting strings from famous musicians (I want to say Allison Krauss and Yo Yo Ma, but I could very well be making that up). You can check out their website: Star Strings.

In other news, Domi was recently accepted into her first-choice med school, Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine. A big congratulations is in order for her, especially since she was one of the few pre-med students I knew of who actually wanted to become a doctor. Imagine that.

NICE TO MEET YOU, TOO

This post is restricted. Click here to login or here to request access. Read this post if you want to know why.

I discovered last night while watching Jay Leno that pop-punkers Yellowcard have a violinist. Dammit, that coulda been me... I think I'd look good with a mohawk.

Thoughts on Oscar night:

- The performance of the song from "The Triplets of Bellville" was fun, but it wasn't until about half way through the song that I realized the woman was actually speaking English.

- RotK winning every award: eh... I think it's definitely "The" Academy's way of giving a nod to the trilogy as a whole, rather than actually agreeing that RotK was the best picture of the year. One award that I disagree with, though, is editing. I mean, come on -- the 14 endings of RotK were a little much.

- Jack Black and Will Farrell: excellent.

- 8 trillion bonus points to Sting for playing a Hurdy Gurdy during his performance of "You Will Be My Ain True Love." But what the heck does "Ain" mean?

- Peter Jackson sure does clean up good... Ah, who am I kidding. He should have cast himself as a Hobbitt.

- First Jack Nicholson, now Michael Douglas. What is it about old men and wearing sunglasses indoors?

- Sofia Coppola may be a brilliant writer, director, and producer, but that sure doesn't keep her from being boring.

- There wasn't enough (if any) bad fashion. How else are we supposed to feel good about ourselves if we can't make fun of celebrities?

I also attended another, albeit slightly less glitzy, awards ceremony on Saturday night -- the Asian American Engineer of the Year awards banquet. My dad, along with 13 other Asian engineers, got about 2 minutes in the spotlight as they received their awards. It was a nice banquet, and it was fun to see my dad in a tux.