Wow, it's been a week since I last desecrated this page. Sorry, I slipped and fell off the face of the Earth. Let's see, what has happened since last week?

I watched my first Indian movie: Asoka. I was told that it wasn't a typical Indian movie, and when I watched it, it didn't really feel like one. It was more like a Greek tragedy with a bunch of Indian people in it. Oh, and there was random singing and dancing. I liked it though. There was a kid in there who's a prince and he plays that role really well. Of course, if I had to deal with him in real life, I'd give him the brat of the century award. Such are the qualities of a fine young prince. One of my co-workers suggested another 20 Indian movies that I have now added to my queue. There were some others that she told me NOT to add, so I added them anyway. Without bad, there can be no good, right?

This same co-worker also decided that I would make a good woman. I apparently have very fair complexion or something. She went so far as to threaten to dress me up as a woman. That won't happen. Dresses make me look fat. But thanks to all my friends for reassuring me that I wouldn't make a good woman. It means a lot to me.

After reading my previous orange adventure, another one of my co-workers gave me an orange peeler. It's a little plastic stick with a...dude, I can't even describe it. One end of it is used to score the peel and the other end is used to remove the peel. So I tried it and ended up squirting orange juice into my eye while scoring the peel. These results provide conclusive proof of the commonly-accepted theory that I have not yet evolved the tool-using abilities of apes. I'm working on it.

Last night, after going to BJ's, I played Scrabble with Sri, Dave, and Allen. Dave was dominating for most of the game but barely beat out Sri with 7 points at the end of the game. As usual, I lost pretty badly. I blame my letters. Early in the game, my rack looked like this:

   V I O I O I H

What can you do with that besides spell a bunch of ASCII characters? I also managed to get stuck with the Q at the end of the game and I learned that HORNILY is not a word. But CLIMES is.

Today, I wanted to go to work and clean some stuff up, but I'm having so much fun installing a new version of Slackware on my computer that I might not go.

We had a minor crisis at home today. There was no more toilet paper left. Not good. Fortunately, Costco had a coupon for a pack of 96 rolls of bum cleaner. This is great because by the time I need to shop for toilet paper again, I'll be eligible for the senior discount. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the 96-roll pack at Costco.

One of my co-workers lent me an Indian CD and now parts of the songs are stuck in my head. I haven't listened to it since Thursday. What's going on? I should get an Indian movie from Netflix either tomorrow or Wednesday. This should be fun....

With those guiding words, I proceeded to shave off my beard. Beard #1 and I have gone through a lot these past five and a half weeks and I was sorry to see it go. But it was time.

Another thing that left me today were the nose pads on my glasses. Both of them. The metal parts that were attached to the frame are still there, but the rubber comfort parts are gone. When I lose something that's normally so close to my mouth, I must wonder if I ate it or not.

I took the day off from work today. A funny thing happened: as I was coming home from lunch with Steph and Cheng, I realized, for the first time ever, that not working is actually kind of cool. Strange. I wasn't even drunk.

Another crazy thing happened to me today: I went for a bike ride. It was my first time in about six months or so. Probably more. Anyway, instead of doing my usual Fremont Older ride, I went to Stevens Creek County Park. I hadn't been there for a while and apparently neither has anyone else. Back before they charged for parking, there would always be cars there and people having picnics, but now it's very empty and all the places that were great for sitting around are now overgrown with vegetation. It's really too bad.

There's a way to go from Stevens Creek County Park to Fremont Older. I think it's the Coyote Ridge Trail. And it's a really long downhill... from the Fremont Older side. Going the other way is a different story. I'm way too out of shape to tackle the whole trail so gave up, turned around, and went home the way I came. The great part was that it was downhill. The greater part was that it was muddy. I didn't realize how muddy it was until I got home and looked in the mirror. I had a pretty bad case of mud acne. On my way home, my wonderful sense of timing kicked in and I met all the dudes leaving Monta Vista and Kennedy. I almost got run off the road by a fool driving a black Acura 3.2TL. I've always wondered what TL stands for and now I know: Total Lunatic. If it had been a Mercedes, it would stand for Total Lunatique. I think I caught part of the license plate: PUNK. I'm not too sure because one of my fingers was in the way. Fine fine. I made up the part about the plate. And the part about the finger. But the rest of it is true.

After I got home and removed myself from my coat of dirt, I went to Target to get something to clear a slow-running shower drain. This is due to one of my strongest beliefs: Cleaning one's self while standing in a growing pool of one's own filth is a sub-stellar shower experience. It was raining outside so my shoes were wet so I made some really irritating squeaking sounds on the floor of Target. I resolved to dry my shoes off by walking on the nearest carpet. The nearest carpet happened to be in the lingere section. Walking through there was a frightening experience. I shall remember to dry my shoes before I walk through Target next time.

Through extensive research, I can now concluded that Boomer from BSG was not the Asian Dancer who displayed her bare mammary gland in Romeo Must Die. For the record, that was the most random moment of nudity I've ever seen in a movie. I think the producer decided that since there was so much foul language and violence in that movie, why not show a boob? Bah. Artists.

Wow. Now yesterday was a Valentine's Day I'll never forget. Me and that other person both took the day off from work and drove down (or was it up?) to this place. We looked at all the stuff they had there. My favorite was the bunch of things that smelled like that thing. She didn't like that one, however. She preferred the ones that smelled like someplace she used to live some time ago. For lunch, we went to a place with a restaurant where they served food. I had the thing on the menu, and she had some other thing on the menu. Afterwards, we visited another place that had some other stuff. You could also do this thing where you interacted with objects in a way that was unique to this action. You'll never guess what happened next. But in case you do, let me know, because I completely blacked out. When I came to, it was some time later. I remember it like it was yesterday.

Actually, I just went to work and did the work thing.

One of my co-workers said (to another co-worker who said to me) that Valentine's Day is unfair to those who are single. Her reasoning was that the day is so heavily "marketed" towards the happy couple that those poor single folk miss out on the Valentine's Day Experience(r). Interesting. I don't really agree though. Sure, Miss Singleperson might not be able to fully savor the standard-issue festivities but she gets to participate in her own brand of fun. So a single person calling Valentine's Day unfair is like a man having to use a men's room and complaining about missing out on the Ladies' Room Extravaganza(r). He can still get his job done, it's just a different experience. Bsdies, why single out a particular day of the year to "show that special someone you care"? Wouldn't it be great to show that kind of love every day?

That being said, the special someone I referred to earlier in this post better not be expecting a dozen chocolate-covered roses from me tomorrow because it ain't happening. Too bad she's imaginary. It could be worse, though. She could be complex, in which case I'd have to add in the real part. And don't get me started about conjugates.

I joined Netflix again and got my first two DVDs today: Battlestar Galactica: The Miniseries and the bonus materials disk. Let me just say that the show is awsome. And it's not just because I'm madly in love with Boomer or something. (Cally is cool too.) I like all of the characters. They're all very real people. Each one of them has their strengths but, more importantly, they each have flaws that drive the storylines. That creates characters that I can identify with (or at least pretend I can) and it lends creditabilty to the story. Anyway, watching the mini-series again reminded me about some of the points that haven't really been touched on in the series. Tomorrow, I'll have to check out the director commentary. If only I could be a viper pilot....

It's Saturday and here I am at work. I haven't been so excited to come in on a Saturday for a really long time. I'm getting shivers just thinking about it. Actually, I came here because I left two peeled oranges in my desk drawer yesterday and I wanted to claim them. I prefer to peel oranges at home rather than at work because my office and my fingers will smell like oranges for the rest of the day if I peel at work.

Hmm, two well-dressed kids just ran past my window.

As I was peeling my oranges yesterday morning, someone from work called me on my cell phone and I answered, smearing orange juices all over my phone. I also tried to finish peeling the orange with one hand but I just made a hole in the orange. Anyway, after I finished talking on the phone, I meant to wipe the orange fluids off of it but I decided to finish peeling (with both hands) the half-peeled orange first and forgot all about my phone. Who needs a cell phone when you can leave home with two nicely peeled oranges. And that's why I didn't answer my phone yesterday.

Anyway, the oranges didn't run away from my drawer and tasted non-bad. So that's good.

And now one of those kids is looking at me through the window.

I guess I should mention that I'm no longer a vegetarian. Apparently I only needed to follow that for the morning on Chinese New Year. Oops. On Thursday morning I ate some meat to recallibrate my omnivorousness ratio. And yesterday I had a blackened ribeye steak at Birk's. That was some good stuff.

What the heck? One of the kids is looking at the cardkey reader by the door. I'm getting, like, so totally freaked out here it's not even funny.

Happy Lunar New Year! It's the year of the rooster...dunno what that means. In the spirit of New Year part deux, I decided to not eat meat today. Yup, just vegetation for me today. It wasn't really a problem for me, except that my co-workers had fun mocking me for trying to be vegetarian. For lunch, we went to On The Boarder in Milpitas. Trying to be a vegetarian in a Mexican restaurant isn't easy. They didn't have an explicit Mexican dish so I had to hunt through all the dishes to find a meatless version of quesidillas and enchiladas. My co-workers screaming "You're a vegetarian? Say it ain't so!" in my ear didn't help my quest for vegetation. Actually they didn't say that. I ended up with spinach and mushroom enchiladas. Not something you'd find on the border, maybe a few hundred miles north.

I went to Beverages & More for the first time in my life earlier tonight and bought some hemp juice. No, really. I did. Didn't drink it though. Hemp might be an animal. I'm not sure.

Well, here's to a new year. So far, this year has been sucky for a lot of people. Hope it'll get better soon.

Sorry for the title Steph. Can someone explain to me why the CTU in 24 manages to get so many moles? There are so many security holes in that agency it's like Swiss cheese. I think they should call it SCATU: Swiss Cheese Anti-Terrorism Unit. Nah, CTU sounds better. But the group does have its highlights. Actually, just one: Edgar. He must be the best geek on TV right now. I'm not sure there is another geek on TV that aspiring geeks around the world can look up to like Edgar Stiles. He's loyal, dependable, pretty bright, and really l33t. If he turns out to be some sleezy creep like all the other formerly cool characters become, I may need to call Mr. Bauer and tell him that a certain writer for the show has dognapped Jack's cat and won't let him go unless they clear Edgar of all past and future wrongdoings. Jack should then spring into action and make Edgar cool again.

On another note, what happened to Penny Arcade? I can't live with out my thrice-weekly Tycho-and-Gabe fix.

Here's the cell phone that I've been waiting for. Yup, it's been cancelled. The closest phone on the market is the i500, which is now pretty dated both in the hardware and software side of things. The only PalmOS cell phone I can get now is the Treo. I'd much rather have a flip phone though because there's no way I'll take good care of that screen. So it looks like I might be stuck with my T68i for a while unless I go with a less geeky phone. And no, a camera does not make a phone geeky.

I'm brilliant. Last week, many people at work were sick. Then, on Thursday a whole bunch of us went to lunch and I decided to ride with all the folks who were sick. And now I'm sick. Sometimes I wonder why I'm not a rocket scientist. Or a rocket. I seem to be getting better now, so I guess that's good.

So I missed Vishnu's Super Bowl party, but I watched it at home. When it comes to Patriots or Eagles, I'd root for the Patriots. The problem is that when I'm watching, the teem I'm cheering for tends to perform poorly. Today was no different. I watched the first quarter and the second quarter up to the first Eagle's touchdown. Then I stopped watching just long enough so what when I checked back, the Eagles scored their second touchdown. Bah. I did catch the last minute of the game (which took about 5 hours) and the Pats won, so I'm satisfied.

What wasn't very satisfying was American Dad. It seemed a lot like Family Guy, but it wasn't quite there. I didn't finish the episode. Maybe the next one will be better.

I finally finished the first season of 24 yesterday. The ending sucked. I suppose the way the events leading up to it didn't leave much room for a different ending, but I still hated the ending. I liked the outcome of the alternate ending better, but it didn't make sense for the season to end like that. So there it is, I watched the whole season and wound up with a crappy ending. The only character I liked in the show was the senator. He was the only one with some honor. Everyone else annoyed me at one point or another. Or constantly through the whole season. Hopefully season 4 won't piss me off as much. The geek in there is much cooler than anything they could come up with in the first season.

I just found out that, when putting on a jacket, I must put my left arm in first. If my right arm goes in first, I get really confused. Is this normal? Oh wait, of course not. But is it cause for concern?

February used to be my favorite month. I liked it because I could turn my calendar sooner. Staring at the same picture for a whole 30 days was taxing on my mind. But now I don't really use a calendar that I need to flip so this month is less significant to me.

Last night was interesting. While I was busy explaining the merits of taking your float days before you get sacked to a co-worker, several people tried to IM me or get me to chat with them. Dave ended up telling me about a Rojoz excursion at 7. Thanks Dave. So I leave work and who do I see when I get there? Grace! Whoa! Totally unexpected! (But then I checked the blog this morning and realized how stupid it was to be surprised.) And then we saw Yen-Pao. Listening to him talk about the incident made me really sad. But he's holding up well, and I was glad to see that. Afterwards, Howard, whom I haven't seen for ages, showed up. Badass^2! We had a great time listening to everyone's master plans. No one but me had a master plan. I'm still on track to being an evil criminal mastermind, though, so I'm doing well. Bah. We're an aimless bunch. Oh, and finally, Sri graced us with his presence. Can't have Rojoz without Sri. I definately didn't have a case of the Mundays yesterday. (It was Monday, right?)

Of course it was. On the 24 front, I managed to watch the latest episode this time, but I missed the first 15-20 minutes. Doh. Dave, I'll get it right next week. I have two more episodes of the first season left to watch. The senator's wife is Absolut Evil and Kim...argh...my blood pressure doubles just thinking about her counterproductive antics. Why doesn't she tie herself up and sit in a corner. That would mean she isn't doing anything, which is a lot more valuable than making a mess of a messy situation. It's like the CTU folks are raking up a yard full of leaves and just before they finish a rabid donkey jumps into the pile and messes it up. ARGH!

Woosah woosah...