monkey nonsense

the young canadian pair just ice danced to bohemian rhapsody!! that was my idea!!

gold for vonn, white, and davis!
silver for mancuso!
bronze for lago and hedrick!

that’s SIX medals! all in one evening!

and ohno, celski, and US short track relay team qualifying!

i don’t know why i become so patriotic when it comes to the olympics! it’s got to be all the american biased olympic commentary i grew up with!

snowstorms always make me want to do a lot of stuff… i guess because i’ll be stuck for awhile with a lot of free time?

i think like 4 years ago, i did a 101 list… i’m just going to make a list of things i want to do during snowstorms this winter. we’ve already had one, about to have another, and supposedly there’s another one midweek next week so i should have lots of time to get everything done.

1. finish reading books – green revolution, dexter
2. practice more guitar. not guitar hero. real guitar.
3. finish organizing all my files
4. start that nerdy project i’ve been wanting to start for some time now…
5. finish an online project i’ve been putting off… this one’s got a due date of march!

so obama’s budget cuts has constellation amongst the programs being cut. constellation was the program that was supposed to follow up the space shuttle program (ending this year) with the goal of getting man to the moon again by 2020.

supposedly the plan is for NASA to invest in space technology research and pay private companies to develop the technologies instead of doing it themselves. NASA outsourcing!!

i don’t know how much it costs to send a man to the moon. i imagine it’s pretty expensive. so those private companies that millionaires pay to get them into space… they might not be making a profit when they charge millions for the ride. but i wonder if in the future, if NASA is going to end up having to pay a private company a fortune each time (after all, those companies have to be able to make money too so they won’t be charging at just cost) they try to send someone to space. if it’s just going to be spending more money later (to buy private companies), i’d rather NASA just keep its own program and forget funding private companies.

does that make me less capitalist? i think i’m just biased because i’ve always loved space and astronauts and going to the moon, etc. etc.

read an article on usa today that got some very interesting internet comments. for sanity sake, you can’t read too many of them because they start to get ridiculous. but at least in small quantities, they provide entertainment!

usa today article: Do you use more energy than your neighbors?

some amusing comments:

• “turned on every light and electrical device in my home and cranked my AC on full blast with the windows opened last earth day. I’ll do it again this year.” hahaha
• people saying everyone’s going to start to go angry mob on the neighbors that use more electricity… uh, the report is only for yourself and won’t reveal the exact neighbor who uses more than you. similarly, you won’t be revealed as the energy hoard of the neighborhood so you don’t have to worry about the angry mob showing up at your door.
• “My house is smaller than my neighbors, plus thay have a bigger family. Course my bill will be lower.” Other people asking if their 32984923 kids will be factored into the comparison… teenagers using more electricity than a small village, etc.

if you read the description in the article, the reports aren’t a means for you to police your neighbors’ usage. but it’s to help you get a gauge of your own usage. cars report their MPG, but for home energy, it’s a lot harder to get a gauge of your usage. you can compare it to your previous year’s bill, but what if last Feb was unseasonably warm and this year is unseasonably cold?

turkey day is my favorite holiday. it’s a holiday entirely devoted to overeating! if there’s anything i’m good at in this world, it’s overeating! so having a holiday where you can do just that? it’s awesome!

i think im going to start marking my calendar by turkey day. so happy new year! only 364 more days until the next turkey day!! oo, i should start a countdown!!

i guess the other part of turkey day is that whole thanks part. i dunno. to me, turkey day has always been about food. yes, the pilgrims were thankful to squanto… but they were thankful because he brought food!! say squanto just came over to say hi to the new neighbors… would the pilgrims really be that thankful? no. (btw, read the wikipedia article on squanto… it is NOTHING like what they taught us in school. in school, squanto comes walking up to the pilgrims holding cornucopias of food…)

but anyways… for this year, i’m turkeyful for

• continued health for family, friends, and self… it’s scary to think time progresses… when you’re a kid, i feel like time barely moves! now… i feel older each day i’m glad my maternal grandparents are still alive and playing old school japanese video games, my parents are healthy and having fun, and for so many healthy baby additions to the family (yay cedy, hugo, and other cousin’s baby who i don’t know its name… don’t even know it’s gender!!)
• finding a house! after “looking” for so many years… and then really looking for half a year… find a house that feels like home! no more moving!!!
• changes! i usually hate change but i think the challenge of a new job is good for me! and driving a rice rocket isn’t all that bad… no, i take that back. i still miss the camry…
• fun! i like having fun! i feel fortunate that i’m able to have fun…. playing games, playing outside, eating food, or just goofing off. anyone want to play with me???

my old office made the dcist!

http://dcist.com/2009/11/increased_urban_walkability_for_the.php

of course the pic is from 1992 before my old company even existed… and before they were located in that area. i like to look at old pictures of areas… see how much the area has changed and what hasn’t changed…

i should’ve been a transportation/traffic engineer…

my new favorite blog to read right now is: http://unsuckdcmetro.blogspot.com!

oh man, finally a place where people share my similar hatred towards metro. seriously, i thought the metro system was ok in high school because i rarely rode it. but once i started working in dc, the commute on metro was just terrible! i can actually get to work faster driving some times than metro-ing! and the cost is outrageous. there should be NO reason why driving into DC and parking should be cheaper than metro-ing in… but it was for me!! (granted i parked in a ghetto parking lot, but whatevs)

my favorite post so far:
http://unsuckdcmetro.blogspot.com/2009/08/if-i-ran-metro-i-would.html… i think one of my “when i rule the world” posts was actually about metro!

so it’s been a few weeks at the new job… and i’ve noticed some things that both my current company and previous company have in common. things that i’m surprised about.

• “non-casual tuesdays”/”tie tuesdays”… so both of these companies have pretty casual dress codes. flipflops (havent tried this yet at the new job… but that’s because it’s fall/winter), jeans, etc. and for whatever reasons, both companies feel compelled to have a non-casual day to allow people to dress up. and for whatever reason, they’ve targeted tuesdays as the day for non-casual-ness! when i got the meeting invite for “tie tuesday” at my new job, i cracked up because it was as if they wanted to match up with my old company’s “non-casual tuesdays!”
• meeting free times… old company had a meeting free zone on thursdays. interestingly enough, new company tries not to put meetings on tuesdays and thursdays! i think this is a pretty good idea though… i hate having my whole day consumed by meetings.

some things are very different…

• my desk has no wheels… my old company had everyone’s desk on wheels… and we would re-configure and roll around our desks pretty often! my new desk does not seem mobile.
• i have a phone number… but no phone! there is no phone at my desk. if you tried to call my number (and i don’t even know it), i’m not sure where it’d go… we all have numbers. i was given a phone list on my first day… but very few people have phones!
• so both my first job and second companies were in the process of merging (one as the acquire-e and other as the acquire-r) with a canadian company. this time, there does not appear to be any canadians in sight!! maybe i shouldn’t say that too soon…

an observation made by some friends during small group – i’m apparently the benjamin button of car owners.

(zeroth car – i learned on a pontaic grandam station wagon. but then it broke down too often (if you turned too fast), leaked when it rained, and had no side view mirror on the passenger side, so then i ended up driving the newer car more often. it wasn’t really my car.)
first car – buick regal. i loved my regal! when i think about how awesome it was to drive that boat and all the features it had in it? steering wheel audio controls! in a 1996(? maybe 95) model! that didn’t come to the camry until 2005!
second car – toyota camry. i downgraded to a smaller car with the camry. but it was still a family sized car. i loved how smooth the camry’s ride was, how many people could sit in it, and how large the trunk was!
third car – scion tc. it’s a sporty car.

so i’ve gone from (station wagon->) buick regal -> toyota camry -> scion tc. the cars keep skewing younger! at this rate, i’ll be on a bicycle by the time i’m old!