monkey nonsense

i don’t think this needs much explanation. i think a 4 on - 3 off instead of a 3 on - 4 off because we need to still be productive somehow. but in general, i think we should have longer weekends. who’s with me!?

so i normally don’t travel too much so i’m rather inexperienced when it comes to travel arrangements. and i’m a normally very disorganized person so i usually make really simple plans and hope that i don’t mess them up. but this past weekend, i had the worst travel experience to date.

• the friend who i was staying with had been asking all week for my flight information but i’d been really busy at work so kept putting it off. finally, late thursday afternoon, right before leaving the office, i decided to online check-in. for some strange reason, my confirmation number does not work. that’s when i noticed…. my flight was for THAT morning. i had booked for the wrong day! BAH!!! i couldn’t believe how stupid i was, but on the same side, i was surprised that it hadn’t happened to be before considering how disorganized i am.
• so i had to drive to BWI and get a standby voucher. this allowed me to keep my original ticket and not have to pay again. had i not realized my mistake until friday morning, my ticket would’ve already been processed and i would be out of luck. thank you american airline! your customer support people really helped me!
• so after driving to BWI and back, it was already past 9pm. i fretted about how to pack when flying standby… can you check in baggage? how do they know whether to put it on the flight if you’re not certain to be on the flight?! i bugged a bunch of different people and got all sorts of different responses and then finally called american airlines again to confirm what would happen. oh, and also because i realized i had a connecting flight that i also needed to be on standby for. (american was on it… i was already on the standby list for both flights!) after i packed, i slept for about 2 hours and then went to may’s place because she’d offered to drive me to the airport at the buttcrack of the morning (thanks!). when i called her, she was surprisingly awake for the hour! (important later!!) i drove to the airport and then gave her my car (because she’d drive it down to dulles when she flew out).
• luckily, i got standby seats on both flights. so at the airport gate, i remembered i had to text my friend to let her know i got on the flight. so i got my cell phone out to text her… aaaaaaand then i realized i left my cell phone in my car from when i called may!! so i don’t have many phone numbers memorized (luckily i have some! because i went through a stretch of like 6 months where my cell phone screen was cracked so i had to dial by memory) so i didn’t know may’s number and i wasn’t sure that she was still in my car (and had noticed the cell phone in there) so i was trying to remember someone else who knew may who could call her. but who’d be awake at like 5am! finally, i decided to call tina because she mentioned she would be in CA by the time i arrived… so i figured she’d either be at the airport like me orrrrr she’d already be there and it’d be 2am and she might be awake hanging out or something. so i used my credit card to use a pay phone to call her LONG DISTANCE… only to have her hang up on me. hang up! worse than just letting it go to voicemail! jerk. FINALLY, i got online through my work laptop’s iConnect that lets me piggyback off other people’s pay-to-use wifi and i sent may an email asking her to bring my cell phone (and i got a few phone numbers written down)
• when i landed in san jose, i had to get back online to ask my friend if she was done with work (she would be by the time i arrived in SF). i also emailed to let tina and people in san jose know that i wouldn’t be able to hang out with them in san jose since i was without cell phone. apparently, one of them called the airport to page me…. but i was so out of it, i didn’t even hear… so i drove to SF with no problems and parked my car right on the same block as my friend. i darted inside to drop off my stuff and then we went to go eat. because it was noon… which was 3pm my time and i’d been awake for 12 hours without food!!! … and that’s when we saw the parking ticket. in the ~20 minutes i was in her apartment… i got a parking ticket for not curbing my tires! bah!!! because she lives on one of the hills in SF… i didn’t even remember all those rules from driving school! BOOO

the rest of the trip was less eventfilled. the wedding was nice, i ate lots of good food, i got a nice tour of all the little streets of SF. very fun trip. just a very stressful start.

a couple of months ago, i blogged about my shopping trip with my parents to get a “little mei” (a stuffed dog to supposedly be me. since they already hava a “little jie”)

a couple of weeks ago, i went home and “little mei” wasn’t upstairs watching tv with “little jie”. what the heck right??? when i went into the basement, i saw “little mei” facedown on one of the chairs. i started to complain to my mom, asking why “little mei” was in the basement?! and then she told me to look at the dog.

do you notice anything special about her?

for comparison… the original whiffer

SHE’S GOT EYEBROWS!!! my mom sewed some on for her! so for the longest time, my mom kept the tag on “little mei” and i kept telling her if she wasn’t happy with her, she should return her. my mom claimed “little mei” was fine, she just looked a little weird. about a month ago, she triumphantly proclaimed she had figured out why “little mei” looked a little off… she had no eye brows! so she said she’d sew some on. i just didn’t think she really would….

here’s another picture of “little mei” and “little jie”… they’re sitting in a flower pot my mom was going to donate to her church. but i came home one weekend and put the two stuffed animals in it and now my mom’s thinking of donating a different flower pot to the church. hehe, my parents put the flower pot on the divider (between the family room and kitchen) so that they watch whenever my parents are watching TV or eating dinner.

http://www.youparklikeanasshole.com/

awhile back, my cousin jenny posted on her xanga about leaving a letter for a SUV that parked in the compact spots. someone responded to her post with this url - www.youparklikeanasshole.com

BRILLIANT! absolutely brilliant! this is the best thing ever!

So the parking garage I park in is oddly configured. I think because of the pillars, they made the flow of the “road” kind of kooky. As a result, there’s this little nest of a few spots that are deep within some other spots. Please see picture.

So the innermost spots (marked in blue), is usually where i park my car. ‘Cause actually, after all the bends and turns, they’re directly in front of the ramp out of the parking lot. Last week, i noticed two different cars on separate occasions park on the “road” thereby blocking the innermost spots (marked in red). it didn’t really matter for me since i usually leave work late after all the cars have left (and therefore am able to cut through the front spots and not have to worry about re-tracing my steps along the curvy road). however, i did think it was kind of annoying for the cars to do that. i mean, what happens if someone parks in the innermost spots and then needed to leave!? they’d be blocked in!

this morning, i woke up late. by the time i got into work, two cars had completely blocked in a third! exactly what i thought might happen. should i leave them a youparklikeanasshole note?! it’s not a spot!!!

This one is a biggie. I thought about making it Action Item #1 because it is that important. But then I had a lousy commute to work recently so that too more precedent. That is not to belittle the importance of this… this one has more long-term, future impact.

Because if I ever have kids, my kids will need to compete somehow and there are way too many smart people marrying smart people. Why do you guys have to be so selfish like that? Huh? Mediocrity is the key here. By limiting the combined IQs of married couples (and hopefully marrying a uber-genius), my kids’ IQ won’t be that much lower than the average person’s. But what will mess this all up is if people start producing uber-geniuses. No uber-geniuses! (except the one that I need to marry).

It’s a simple enough plan. i just need to hurry up and take over the world because i already know too many smart people marrying each other and already the smart married people are creating smart littler people!! at first i thought about grandfathering in all the smart married people… but i’m seriously reeconsidering that now. so all you smart married people? you have the shums to blame! they ruined it for all of you guys.

I’ve created a new category called “When I Rule the World”… it’s going to have awesome posts about things I’d do when I rul the world. First on my list…

IMPLODE DC Metro and start over again

Because it cannot handle the booming DC population. It was not designed to! (or poorly designed to) With row seats, carpet, cleanliness, and not much standing room, occasional metro riders will think Metro is awesome! But it just can’t carry the rush hour rush of people. And with only a single track in each direction, there’s no way they’d ever be able to run an express train between stations. The single track also limits them whenever a track goes down. A delay on any one line can quickly escalate to a System-Wide delay! So many times my commute has been foiled by a “delay” of 1 hour sitting in a disabled train (within sight of a station!), not being able to get into the station because it’s backed up to the point that they are no longer allowing passengers to go down to the platform, fires (fires!), or doors not opening. Seriously… for an entity whose slogan is “Metro Opens Doors”, it’s really ironic that one time, my commute took an extra 20 minutes because the doors would not open at a stop.

With all these plans to add an additional line going through Reston and onto Dulles Airport, there is NO WAY Metro can handle this. In my opinion, the Orange-Blue line in downtown DC is the crappiest line because the trains must alternate (between Blue and Orange) on the same track. It’s a headache at Rosslyn where the two train lines converge/diverge. Introducing a “Silver” line at West Falls Church forces Orange and Silver to alternate now between West Falls into DC! And also makes West Falls Church a headache as trains must merge in from Dunn Loring and the new Silver stations. Metro - improve your infrastructure before expanding!!

Implosion is the key here. It’ll be painful. (Actually really painful. Maybe implosion isn’t the best way…) But I’m convinced (in my completely non-expert opinion) that we need multiple train tracks in order to support the kind of ridership Metro currently has and wishes to continue to grow. You NEED an express train, like Vienna to Rosslyn or West Falls Church (and points westward) to Rosslyn. Oh, and you NEED a monthly pass! Charge a flat rate like NYC’s subway per trip or something. But GET ME A MONTHLY PASS! Because it’s freaking ridiculous to pay over $120 in metro fare each month. If you want to cater to the daily commuter, MONTHLY PASS!

So… #1 - Implode DC metro, #1b - Monthly Passes on Metro!

the latest trend seems to be “go green” - be environmentally friendly, save the earth, yada yada. don’t get me wrong, i think it’s great to conserve the earth’s resources, but i have issues with the “go green” campaign. i think it needs to choose a new banner color. green, as a color, isn’t really in the spirit of conservation.

Green isn’t a primary color. Therefore, it costs more to produce. You have to mix blue and yellow together. And mix well! Otherwise, you end up with streaky, puke-ish green. It just doesn’t make much sense to expend extra energy to produce a color that is supposed to represent our efforts to conserve energy.

based upon my scientific* calculations, if we conserved all the energy we expend producing green hues, we’d have enough oil, natural gas, grain, and other natural resources to live on earth for another 9184719824791827498149712984291 million years!

so rather than going green… let’s “go blue and yellow!” you must admit, it’s a great color scheme.

* made up

this weekend:

• exerted my DOMINANCE at settlers beating jen, dan, danny, and johnson to start the long weekend. i. am. awesome. at settlers! err… kind of
• changer banger came to visit!
• i went to annandale late at night TWICE! i only ate once though…
• SUPER target! dude, that target is HUGE. i kept losing changer banger and ann in the store and having to walk all over to find them!
• went shopping at the outlets and actually bought stuff. got shoes for vicky’s wedding and some pants
• while shopping, ran into some random asian girl who seemed to recognize me… it wasn’t til after talking to her for a few minutes that i realized she was from chinese school and the last time i had seen her she was probably… 11, 12?? i’m old
• flew a kite at gravelly point! it went so high and changer banger got a pic of the kite with the plane in the background. then we flew it EVEN higher and used up my entire spool of kite string! oh by the way… kite flying? at gravelly point? illegal. oops. a bicyclist (who claimed to be a pilot as well), followed shortly by a nice policeman, stopped by to tell us we weren’t supposed to fly our kite. well, where are all the signs prohibiting kite flying?! they seriously shouldn’t rely on people’s common sense regarding kite flying at that park… because i clearly don’t have any. when i googled gravelly point, one website even claimed that it’s a mecca for kite flying! (though other websites clearly stated kite flying is prohibited…)

booo, but now it’s back to work! the summer is such a tease. i don’t feel like doing any work, but i’m still stuck in the office 8 hours x 5 days of the week. and the weekends are just too short!

washingtonpost had an article about using “airport business” as an excuse to use the HOV lanes during rush hour - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/15/AR2008061502136.html?hpid=topnews

darn it!! i’ve been using this excuse for about a year now. mostly for the afternoon. especially when i tutored in reston. i would just take the tollroad all the way to the airport, stop by the exxon and grab some candy to bribe my student, and take a nap in the cell phone waiting area and then take the toll road to reston (so going west, then east, just to go west).

i never thought about using it as an excuse in the morning… pretty good idea!!! i always assumed that the airport excuse wouldn’t be valid to use in the morning. in fact, i’ve actually had legitimate airport business in the morning (dropping off someone) and then i’d get OFF I-66 after the toll road because i assumed that i wouldn’t belong! i never knew that it meant i could ride all the way into the city!! brilliant!

but now if washingtonpost had an article on it… they’re probably going to crack down on it now darnit! ruin my commute!!!