The other night Rahul's mom made us dinner (this isn't a "your mom" joke; she was actually in town). Over dinner, Yar, Jan, Maureen, Rahul, and I were discussing the top 10 tooliest people in Hollywood. Here are my picks:

1) Carson Daly
2) Ben Affleck

Any others? We thought of a lot of candidates (e.g. Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Lopez) but Carson Daly and Ben Affleck definitely topped the list.

In other news, long weekend coming up. Yahoo!

Poll: When Darth Vader is breathing, does it go: inhale then exhale, or exhale then inhale? I say definitely inhale first.

A sound clip for your reference.

Sub-poll: If you had to put Darth Vader's breathing in print, how would you spell it?

Please advise.

Last week was chock full of nerdly activities. Before I get into that, I should say that Bay to Breakers was lots of fun. I placed 8556th. Woo! That means I had my name printed in a special edition of the San Francisco Examiner. I've ordered it already.

Now on to the nerdiness. As most of you know, I was in LA last week for E3. It was my first E3 so I was pretty excited about it. Rahul and Yar and I flew down Wednesday morning, met up with Corey at the Convention Center, and spent most of the rest of the day at the expo. First impressions? Loud noises and flashing lights. For someone with self-diagnosed ADD, it was a dream come true. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all had huge booths, but Microsoft was the only one that had their next-gen stuff on the floor. There was a 3-hour wait to see the PS3 and a 2-hour wait just to see the next Zelda (on current-gen), so we skipped out on that.

It was disappointingly difficult to get good swag. You either had to win it, or stand in line for hours. I did get a cute Monkey Ball stuffed monkey, but I kinda stole it. Yar and I had heard about the stuffed monkeys, so we headed to the Sega booth to check it out. Just as we got there, we saw a lady with a box full of them walking across the floor. I reached in and grabbed one for Yar, and she didn't seem to notice. Then I reached in and grabbed another one for myself, unsubtley smacking her arm in the process. She turned to me and told me, "Oh, those are for the people in line. But you guys can keep them anyway." It was definitely one of my most Asian Mom moments.

There were some cool looking games like DOA4, Soul Calibur 3, etc., but Yar and I completely agree that by far the Best in Show was: Nintendogs. He and I stood in line for about 15 minutes to play it, and decided that it was the only game that gave us that "I-must-have-it" feeling. SOOOO cute.

Earlier in the day, while we were waiting to board the plane in San Jose, I ran into Ted, a guy from work. I was chatting with him and mentioned that I had heard he was going to see Star Wars that night at midnight. He said that he might have a few extra tickets, and lo and behold, later that day he called to tell me that he had 4 extra tickets. So after E3, Yar, Rahul, Corey and I headed to Universal Studios City Walk for dinner and the movie. We got there around 7pm, and there was alread a significant line. For the midnight showing. After a nice dinner at Tony Roma's ("America's Best Ribs! Except not.") we went to the theater, got our tickets from Ted, and discovered that they had already let the line in. So we headed into the theater for a couple hours of napping, talking, and watching lightsaber fights. The movie was....okay. I shan't say more at this time, but if you'd like to discuss it here, feel free.

While at E3, and while waiting around for Star Wars, I had a revelation. I've always thought I was pretty damn geeky (just ask Camila!) but what I've come to realize is that there is a huge spectrum of people WAY geekier (and incidentally, smellier) than I am. I don't know if that makes me happy or sad.

Edit: Forgot to mention that yesterday Babs and I went to an arts festival thingy in down town. The weather was beautiful. Later in the day, Yar, Maureen and I made cassoulet for dinner. I normally don't like stuff with beans in it, but it was really good.

Finally, Happy Birthday Lisa! And a much belated Happy Birthday to Yar, Cheryl, and Buddy!

Last Saturday we had Gong Gong's funeral. It was a nice service. Mae Mae played violin, and I said a few mostly-improvised words. I was fairly together until we actually placed his urn into the burial plot, when we all started crying. Although he passed away over a year ago, that really put a sense of finality to the whole thing. But it was nice to see the whole family.

Saturday evening I saw with peeps from work and I really liked it. Perhaps even more than Shaolin Soccer.

Sunday morning we had a nice Mother's Day brunch at my cousin Albert's house, thanks to his wife Karen. Afterwards I drove my sister to the airport. In the afternoon, just for kicks, my parents and I looked at some condos for sale in the area. It was depressing. So much money, so little condo.

The task I was working on last week (i.e. the reason I worked so much) got pushed until after E3. I found this out on Tuesday, and just got really really depressed.

But things work-wise were better this week than last, though I have definitely fallen into the pattern where leaving at 9:30 is normal. I must break myself of that habit, lest I become pastier than I usually am. Last night I was able to escape for a couple hours to have dinner at Ryan's place and watch The O.C. But I came back afterwards to work on a bug and ended up getting home around midnight.

This weekend we're running Bay to Breakers, which should be really fun. Looking forward to it.

Here's a list of Non-Obvious Things Engineers Like:

• Frisbee
• Swing dancing
• Juggling
• White sneakers

Finally, courtesy of Scott: Fainting goats. You must watch this. It's awesome.

...must come to an end. Wrapped up a 67-hour work week tonight. Buddy and Rahul and I were trying to calculate how much we would be getting paid if we were paid hourly (8-12 hours are 1 1/2 times pay, over 12 is double pay) and I just got sad. My group did give me a $20 Best Buy card because of the work I've been doing lately, though. So yay.

This won't come as a surprise to anyone whose ever had the pleasure of riding in my car, but I got pulled over last night for speeding. The guy was nice, though, and let me off with a warning even though I was going 84. Maybe he felt sorry for me because it was nearly 1 a.m. and I told him I was going home from work.

My car was in the shop yesterday. I brought it in for its 15,000 mile maintenence, but I asked them to check about whirring noise I've been hearing lately. It turns out an idler pulley was worn down, so they replaced the part, and my engine is sounding good as new.

Since I was sans auto for a day, they hooked me up with a rental car from Enterprise. While there, when I was filling out the paperwork, the agent there asked me about insurance coverage. He said, "Would you like the Basic or the Full coverage?" Since "Basic" sounded cheaper, I chose that one. It was only later in the day, when I had signed all the paperwork that I realized that I could have declined the supplemental insurance altogether. Under normal circumstances, I would gladly pay the extra $$ for the insurance, but seeing as I was only going to be using the car for exactly 2 drives, it didn't make much sense to me. Granted it is technically my fault for not examing the paperwork more carefully, but generally the word "or" implies that you have two, and only two choices. It reminded me of the time I was in San Antonio for SIGGRAPH. My professors took us all out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. When we were ordering, after each person stated their order, the waiter said, "Would you like a house salad or a caesar's salad?" And sure enough, when we got the bill afterwards, all of us were charged extra for our salads.

• It's looking like another 65 or 70-hour week. My day consists of: get up, walk Enzo, go to work, come home from work, walk Enzo, go to sleep. Whee.
• My harddrive at work died on Tuesday, so I spent the day reinstalling everything on my new drive. Such a waste of time. It was depressing.
• The fam is coming into town this weekend. Will be nice to see everyone.
• You know you're in Silicon Valley when the traffic at 9:30 a.m. is heavier than the traffic at 8:45 a.m.
• I know I had more stuff to say, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. I am so very very tired....

Life has been (even more) painfully boring lately because I've been working sooper long hours. Last week was a 4-day week, but I worked 50 hours in those 4 days. Boo. The weekend was a bit better. On Saturday Babs and I volunteered with Rebuilding Together (Silicon Valley) where we fixed up the Daytop Center in Redwood City, which is a facility for teenagers with substance abuse problems. It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. The director of the center and a few of the residents also talked to us, which was nice. Warm fuzzies. That night I saw The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which I actually liked. But my memory of the books is a bit fuzzy, so I think it deserves a re-read. The Hitchhiker's trilogy are (is?) some of my favorite books ever.

Sunday morning May Ling, Buddy and I ran The Dish which, although being a paltry 3 1/2 miles, totally kicked my butt (or more specifically, my quads and calves) because of the hills. But it's good training for Bay to Breakers, with the infamous Hayes Street Hill. Afterwards Babs joined us for brunch at The Creamery and yummy ice cream at Rick's. Full of hash brown pie, I headed back to San Jose to do laundry, clean the room, etc before conking out on the couch for about an hour to the sounds of Queen of the Damned on TV. Since it was such a nice day outside, I took Enzo on a nice walk on the Stanford campus after I regained consciousness.

Here's hoping for more normal hours this week. Hey, I can dream...

Finally, a linkdump:

• 2005 rankings of the top 150 most expensive zip codes in America. Lots of Northern California cities! Woohoo!
• Sony's Qrio robot attending nursery school in California. Do you think he takes dumps on the floor too? (From Buddy)
• God is Great, by which I mean, Very Very Large. An analysis of the size of Jesus based on the number of people who take communion. A must-read. (From Ryan)