Check out Swanksigns. It's Sha Sha week! Swanksigns is run by Chris, who I "met" (in quotations because we've never met in person) when I bought a computer from GamePC, where he works. He also has a sweet personal site. Swanky.

OMG.

Google Maps does not lie.

Edit: Many, many more awesome GoogleMaps images here: Google Sightseeing.

• Videoscope - The only video store in Mountain View that carries Veronica Mars, and discs are only $1.50 to rent! The staff is super friendly, and according to the reviews, they have a good selection of rare and hard-to-find movies. Blockbuster no more.
• Actual Window Guard - When I remote desktopped into my work computer last night, Outlook got confused, and when I unlocked my computer at work this morning, the window was restoring off screen. I installed the free trial of this software and was able to restore the window position with no problem. Sweet!
• JerryC & CBand - Canon Rock Live - A self-indulgent 6-minute guitar shredding arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon played by Taiwanese 20-somethings. Totally awesome. A live version of the video most of you have probably already seen. The best part is that he ends by saying xie xie da jia, which just reminds me of Chinese karaoke nights with my parents' friends. In a related note, here's a video of the Canon rock played without the background music. Sounds a lot less awesome.
• Human Katamari - Not a commercial for Katamari Damacy, but it may as well be.
• The Arrow of Time - A family takes pictures of themselves once a year for 30 years. Very cool idea.

[16:11] Yar: i think I want to be known as "inimitable"
[16:11] Yar: the inimitable yar woo
[16:11] Sha: i don't think i know what that means
[16:11] Yar: i can't be imitated
[16:44] Sha: i think I want to be known as "inimitable"
[16:44] Sha: the inimitable sha sha chu
[16:45] Yar: i don't even know what that means
[16:50] Sha: i can't be imitated
[16:50] Yar: you just imitated me
[16:51] Sha: guess you can't be known as the inimitable yar woo
[16:51] Sha: QED

Here's a list of interesting links:

• The Movie Spoiler. Find out what happens in all the crappy movies you didn't want to watch. Has actual writeups of the entire movie, as opposed to Movie Pooper, which gives only the endings.
• Panorama's photos. A Flickr photo set comprised completely of panoramic photos (stitched in software.)
• stoneth's photos. A Flickr photo set of pictures of homeless people in San Francisco. Very raw, but quite amazing. This one in particular is powerful. (Warning: not for the squeamish)
• The Inner Life of the Cell. A cool 3D animation showing the inside of a cell. From Kahn.
• C2C's 2005 DMC Routine. C2C is a French DJ crew that has won the team DMC championships for 3 years in a row. Very cool.

The more observant of you will notice that I did indeed sign up for a Flickr pro account over the weekend, and even uploaded two sets of photos, woo! I put up Yosemite photos and New York photos. You'll notice that I've kind of done away with the whole private photo thing, which never really worked considering my friends would post up their photos willy-nilly, but if any of you have any objections, just let me know.

I'll eventually be moving over some more recent sets of photos like my New Orleans and Australia photos, and taking down the super-old photos that are currently up on this site. I'll also take a look at all the unposted photos currently wasting away on my desktop, and hopefully get those up pretty soon.

So far Flickr has been treating me pretty well. Uploading and tagging is relatively painless, and I like the little Flash badge over thataway ----->

In other news, last week I was named the "Legendary Team Member of the Week" at work. What this means is that I get a little certificate, a $25 gift card, and I had to go in front of everyone, put on an orc helmet and hold a shield and sword, and yell, "Find the half-lings!" No, seriously.

This weekend I went to my very first yoga class ever, a Vinyasa class at Yoga is Youthfulness in Mountain View. I liked it, and I thought it was a good class for beginners. I have 2 more classes left in my 3-class intro pack, but if I decide to do yoga regularly, I should probably just go to Planet Granite, considering the yoga classes are included in my membership fee.

Anyone else watch the season premier of Grey's Anatomy yesterday? I give it a 4/10. Very uneven episode and overall disappointing. It wasn't a total waste, though, as during the commercial breaks, I learned how to take blood pressure with a stethescope and blood pressure cuff. Just call me Dr. Chu.

In more TV-related news, we're making good progress through Season 2.5 of Battlestar Galactica, which I'm enjoying. The past couple episodes haven't been as good, but it's still better than most stuff on El Television. I'm eagerly awaiting to find out what happens in the "crazy" season finale.

In an unrelated note, I'm thinking of starting to use Flickr to post my photos rather than using Movable Type and hosting them on my site. Although Moveable Type offers a lot of flexibility in terms of layout, it's really cumbersome to use as a photo tool, and ends up being a barrier to me posting up my photos, as most of you know. Also, I'm finally running into my site's 1GB disk quota, and with Flickr pro, I get unlimited storage and a 2GB/month upload limit for $25/year, which is pretty compelling.

Since I have nothing of actual factual significance to report, (unless you count finally checking in a couple weeks of work last night) I thought I'd give you, my dear readers, an update on my climbing progress.

It's been just over a year since I started climbing, and I've been fairly consistent about going regularly, though every couple months or so, I tend to have an unplanned climbing drought that lasts a couple weeks for one reason or another. Despite this, I have been improving, though perhaps not as quickly as I could have. One of the nice things about climbing is that since all of the climbs are rated, you can literally see the progress you're making if you can climb higher and higher rated climbs. I did my first 10a a long time ago, but kind of plateued around that level. Recently, I've started to do 10.bs and even the odd 10c (though they really kill me), which is exciting. Part of this may be due to the re-rating of all the climbs at Planet Granite, but I'd like to think it's because I've gotten better. I've also started to enjoy bouldering a lot more, but I still can only do V0s and the occasional V1.

In a completely unrelated note, here's a video of Enzo playing with his favorite toy:

A bit late notice, but I'm participating in the San Mateo County Heart Walk, so if you feel so inclined, my donation page is here. Thanks!

A typical IM conversation:

We am smrt.

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish a Happy Birthday to the coolest lil' friend anyone could ask for, Domi! As is tradition, here's your chorus line of dancing bunnies:

In unrelated news, I had a good weekend. How about you?

The world is a very different place than it was in 2001, and I am fortunate enough to still have my friends and family with me. For those who weren't so lucky, I can't imagine what today has been like. Five years have passed, and for some people, that's not long enough.

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish Justin and Rahul a Happy Happy Birthday. Yar got to me first, so I was unfortunately only able to attend Rahul's birthday party. We had dinner at Park Chow, which was pretty good. I had a meatball sandwich, shared a spinach salad, and finished with the ginger cake, which was good, but not the "ten thumbs up" that John claimed.

This weekend was pretty relaxed, which was nice. I bought a new game for myself (well, new to me): Zelda: The Minish Cap. It's basically like all Zelda games, which means it's fun and satisfying. I also busted out my Game Boy Player, which is a sweet Game Cube peripheral that lets you play GBA games through your Game Cube, so you can play them on the TV. Sweet!

I was pretty sad to hear of Steve Irwin's death yesterday. He was a arguably a total nut, but it was amazing to see someone so passionate about what he did. Hopefully we can all find work in something we love so much.