google is so nice

last week or so, i casually posted my "top 100" pics on picasa web albums, which i rarely use. to my surprise, one night i started receiving tons of foreign language comments on my pics. nobody even knows about my picasa web albums, so i figured this must be spam. when i woke up the next morning, i had ~30 more comments/email notifications, most of which were in foreign languages. "what in the world is going on here?" i then noticed that 2 of my pics made google picasa web's main page, amongst the thumbnail images!

i'm not sure how long it'll be featured, but it's been about 5 days so far. check it out: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/explore# we all know that google gets tons of web traffic. well, it's still been a wake-up call to me as to how much they really get; my featured pic(s) is usually just 1 of the 12. yet, within 5 days my 100 picture have received roughly 250,000 views, with the highest pics receiving over 20,000 views. how crazy is that!

i know my pics aren't phenomenal or anything, but it's still been cool to see tons of strangers from all of the world say "nice picture!" in so many different languages.

KFC's double down!

in case you haven't seen it, KFC has released a double down sandwich: http://www.kfc.com/doubledown/

instead of bread, they use chicken as the outer layers. sheley and i whimsically stopped at a KFC/taco bell on our drive home recently, so of course i had to try it. it was pretty darn good!

it clearly looks fattening and overboard, i know. so, i feel obligated to defend myself, or it, or something, heh:

1. it's actually only 540 calories (although about half of your RDA of fat).
2. my mint.com report shows that i've only eaten fast food 5 times in the last 4 months, all at subway for a grand total of $25.
3. i've eaten-out/ordered-in 5 times during the last month.
4. all other meals (aside from some lunches at work) were cooked at home.

anyway, i recommend the double down! or, if you're feeling in even more courageous or in need of clogging arteries, ask for a quadruple down.

crazy recruiter

lately i've been randomly contacted by recruiters from facebook, google, etc. this is usually flattering, but i explain to them that i'm happily employed with MIT lincoln laboratory. yesterday though, i definitely encountered the oddest recruiter.

at 7:40pm, my phone rang. the guy on the other end of the phone immediately spoke in such a casual tone that it suggested that he already knew me. he almost sounded like he was joking, and his accent was like a surfer's mixed with a southern guy trying to act ghetto.

chris: hello?

guy: hey, hows it going, man?

chris: fine. um, who is this? (wondering if i know him)

guy: my name is ___, i'm with calvin group. i have an exciting opportunity to share with you.

chris: wait, what's calvin group?

guy: calvin group is your life, man!

(chris pauses)

guy: haha, jk. nah, check it. calvin group is a recruiting agency out in LA, and i got an exciting opening to share with ya. it's for a senior python programmer workin with django out in el segundo.

chris: ah, sorry, i'm happily employed with MIT lincoln lab out in boston.

guy: ah, good ole 'MIT', eh? (he prounded it MIT as in a glove, not the initials).

chris: heh, yea.

guy: you learnin to count cards and stuff like that?

chris: what? (i didn't hear him clearly)

guy: you learnin to count cards and stuff?

chris: haha, something like that (nothing like that)

guy: that's coo, that's coo

(at this point, i'm still wondering if it's an old friend just joking with me the whole time).

chris: wait, how did you get my info?

guy: i dunno man. i just got an old copy of your resume from 2007. the last job you listed is with google in santa monica.

chris: hmm, maybe someone forwarded it from a ucla career fair?

guy: ha, no idea man. well, thanks for your time. keep on truckin' man.

(he didn't say the last sentence, but it was something like that).

how strange. his tone definitely reminded me of southern california and the beach lifestyle. haha.

losing a little bit of faith in human decency, again.

kind of long, but that's what happens i guess when i never update this anymore... plus, i guess i'm just really shocked that people can be this rude.

i often feel a great urge to help out others when they need it. even when a complete stranger needs something small, and if i'm fully capable, then i'm more than willing to help out. usually it's just something like directions, or even if it's questions about grad school, photography, or weight lifting, i am glad to provide any bit of advice that i can. the intent of this writing is not to paint a portrait of me as being atypically generous or selfless, but rather the opposite; i've always believed that i am typical in my generosity or charity. i believe my friends would donate their time and help just as willingly and eagerly as i do, and i have always thought that most people share these traits, too. recently, i'm starting to think that i'm wrong, and that the general population can at times be way more rude than what i've thought.

sure, there can be outliers, and one may occasionally see some punk driver or someone act completely rude to someone at a store or something. this isn't about that. i'm referring to situations that occur repeatedly and within a pretty neutral medium that would contain a distribution of people that is pretty unbiased and representative of the population at large.

the first example that comes to mind is craigslist. during my transitions of moving, i've had to sell stuff on craigslist several times. let's say 7 separate listings. craigslist surely covers a wide spectrum of individuals. many times, it goes like this:

• i post ad on craigslist
• several people express interest
• i contact the first responder. they arrange a time that they will come to my place to pick it up (once, i agreed for their bringing a uhaul at a certain time)
• they never come
• i call them to see what's up; no response. i leave a voicemail.
• i never hear back from them

this was mostly in LA. and, when i'm the buyer, similar stories occur, whereby they may respond to an email or even say that i can come at a certain time. later, i find out that they in fact sold it to someone else. this is even with my acting very quickly, too. it's not just like $25 misc tables or anything; this has happened with my buying a car for around $4k, and my renting an apartment (after we arrange a time later in the day for me to go give them money, i find out that they went ahead and sold it to someone else). it's not only surprising that people don't have the decency to keep their word, but that they don't even have the decency to follow up.

but, i didn't get caught up with this. i just dismissed it and convinced myself that maybe it's an LA thing, or maybe it's just because these situations don't involve face-to-face confrontation, so they can hide behind craigslist emails or unanswered cells. seeing people hold the door for each other in real life, well, things like this serve as assurance to me that people are all still nice in real life, ya know. not quite.

today, sheley and i went to the movies at 2pm. upon purchasing tickets, we were informed there were few seats remaining, so finding two contiguous seats may be hard. we braved it anyway and went into the theatre, only to find a packed house. there were a few singleton seats open, and a few people shifting due to the movie attendants' instruction. but, two seats together was impossible. the point is that we saw how desperate people were to find 2 consecutive seats together, and how badly some people wanted to find a seat. a huge slew of us had to return our tickets and wait for the 3pm showing. no biggie.

we get seats early for the 3pm showing. as we watch more and more people pack into the theater, we see what it was like to be us just 1 hour earlier, now from the other perspective. we see people desperately looking for seats. having just been in their shoes, sheley and i were sympathetic and very willing to move seats to help make room. to our surprise, nobody else was. it made no sense at all.

first, we saw a couple desperately ask someone to slide down one seat in order to open up 2 consecutive seats. the woman refused to move. i actually didn't believe that it happened. i thought that surely we didn't read the situation right, and that the seat was reserved or something. nope.

second occasion: in the row right in front of us, there was an open seat. a boyfriend desperately wanting a seat for his girlfriend and himself asked the kid in front of us to slide over. the kid simply replied, 'um... sorry, i rather not.' what type of ownership does this kid feel with his chair? he's been there maybe 10 minutes, and he's already that attached and unwilling to move? the boyfriend asked again, to which the kid had no good excuse other than, 'sorry, i rather not.' the boyfriend left in frustration, exclaiming 'thats pretty inconsiderate!'

third occasion: same open seat in front of us, but the people on the other side of the seat were asked to shift one seat over. those being asked to slide over avoided answering for a second, until a girl in the group finally responded, 'we've actually already been here for like 20 minutes.' so what? this makes you entitled to not help out others? this example is just so hard to believe because it takes an insanely minimal amount of effort on their behalf, and it would bring the other party so much pleasure. yet, even with direct confrontation, people not only refused to help out, but repeatedly vocalized their refusal to help in a defensive manner with confidence. it's as if they were asserting, 'how dare you ask me to move. it's your fault.'

it was so very strange to witness.

stop backing into me!

note: if you're viewing this from facebook, the google maps won't appear, so please go to omggetthis.blogspot.com

i've been lucky in that during my 10 yrs of driving, i've never been in a car accident. well, kind of. i've had 2 people back into me, and lately, 2 more people come very close to backing into me. how strange -- does this happen to others often? here's the play-by-play:

1. july 2002, norcross, georgia. back home in georgia before i left for college. i was waiting in the designated left turning lane (seen to the right of the google map below) at position #2. the woman ahead of me was waaay in the middle of traffic (center of map below), waiting to turn. yet, when the light changed from yellow to red, she didn't turn. cars to our right started to cross the intersection, but she was so far in the middle of the road that she was in their way. they honked at her. so, naturally, instead of turning left, she tried to retreat back into her turning lane by reversing into me. before she hit me, i frantically tried to honk, but my 88 honda's horn buttons were not in the center like most cars; they were 4 tiny buttons on the outer center pad. the funniest thing is that after hitting me, she refused to get out of her car and exchange info. she spoke almost no english and gave me her phone #, which had 8 digits.
   
   
   View Larger Map
   
2. september 2002, melbourne, florida. during my first semester at florida tech. i was driving my good friend francisco to a local check cashing place. while waiting to exit the parking lot, the car in front of me saw a bicyclist approaching from the right. the car was blocking the sidewalk path, so he reversed into me, despite my repeated honking. this is the parking lot we were exiting:
   
   
   View Larger Map
3. october, 2009, quechee gorge, vermont. as mentioned in my last post, i went on a solo sight-seeing road trip. i got away from the city life for a few days, but apparently i couldn't get away from crazy drivers trying to hit me. quechee gorge is a huge gorge, and there is an overpass bridge which allows everyone to look at the gorge. it's a tiny bridge, and there are crosswalks both before and after it. toooons of people were on the bridge, and cars were very respectful/cautious of pedestrians on this tiny road. apparently they weren't cautious of other cars though.

   
   i was trying to leave the gravel parking lot which was located immediately before the bridge and the crosswalks. i waited for the slow-moving cars to clear before turning onto the bridge road. i started to pull out, but the last car just kind of stopped prematurely before the crosswalk. so, i'm half out of the parking lot, half on the road, waiting to fully pull-out as we are in this stop-sign-type place. but yea, why did the car in front of me stop? he wasn't even quite at the crosswalk section yet. i was just inches behind him as i saw his reverse lights come on. flashbacks from 7 yrs ago came back to me. i know how to handle this situation. the driver started to reverse FAST into me, as if he was trying to back into the exit-only direction of the parking lot. he clearly had no idea that i was exiting the parking lot, and maybe he was just trying to gain clearance before making an illegal u-turn. eitherway, i held down my horn and simultaneously threw the car into reverse as fast as i could. i stepped on the gas pedal hard. really hard. our cars reversed together, really fast, while being just inches from one another. it was like synchronized ice skating or something, without the ice skating. i admit, i'm not an amazing driver, for i'm not that great at parallel parking, and many city drivers are better than i. in that i'm too cautious at times and don't change lanes as carefree as others. with that said, i gotta say though that this stunt was pretty slick, and i felt like i did some maneuver from a movie. my heart was racing big time. luckily, i avoided getting hit.
   the parking lot i was exiting:
   
   
   View Larger Map

4. november, 2009, boston, ma. i was leaving my apartment's parking lot. the exit is a narrow 1 lane passage that feeds into a neighborhood street. exiting requires making a sharp left turn, and to be careful not to hit all of the cars that are packed in like sardines on the side of the road. as i made the left turn, someone was trying parallel park into me. there was no way i could reverse back into the narrow passage in a bourne-identity-esque manner that i did previously. so, i relied on my horn. it was a close call, but they didn't hit me.

   the alleyway from which i exited, and to the right is the spot in which the car was trying to parallel park:
   
   View Larger Map
   

based on my history, i expect 2016 to include 2 incidents of cars trying to rear-end me, within a 2 month span.

solo road trip to new hampshire and vermont

first, if you're viewing this from facebook, please go to my blog to see the original posting; facebook fails to import videos, so go to http://omggetthis.blogspot.com

------------
two weekends ago, i took a solo 3-day road trip to new hampshire and vermont. yea, that was a while ago, but before it got any longer, i just wanted to document it here. to most of my friends, this trip is old news.

as for new content, i finally uploaded a video of my trip:


i didn't take video clips too often; i mainly just took tons of pics. below are 3 albums, 1 for each successive day:
(1)

new hampshire foliage - day 1 - 10/10/09

(2)

vermont foliage - day 2 - 10/11/09

(3)

vermont foliage drive home - day 3

basically, i woke up super early on saturday. i drove to new hampshire and explored the white mountains. that day, i saw 4 waterfalls, went on some mini-hikes into the woods, and went to 2-3 state parks. very late at night i arrived at my remote, sketchy hostel that was located about 2 hours away from civilization. (i stayed there because it was perfectly en route to my path to vermont for the next day).

the hostel was the most interesting and unique hostel at which i've ever stayed. i arrived there after 9pm, and after driving on gravel and dirt roads for a while, i finally found it at the end of a 1-mile-long dead-end road. upon entering the hostel, i was greeted by a hippie. the house was really decked-out and well-groomed. but, everything was organic. yep, i quickly learned why my 18-person shared room was called the "yoga room" -- there were no mattresses, but only 18 yoga mats on the floor. after having been awake and driving for the entire day, lying down on that yoga mat was far from comfortable. oh, the bathroom looked amazing. seriously. it was probably the nicest shower i've ever been in, including nice hotels. however, the toilet, which although nice looking, was actually rigged-up like an outhouse. there was a long chute down somewhere, and there was a nearby bucket of woodchunks and instructions to use 1 cup of woodchucks per bathroom visit. as i read the sign that stated urination was encouraged outdoors, i quickly wondered what type of place have i got myself into.

anyway, it was definitely an interesting place, and the hippie owner offered chai tea and cookies. i had none.

sunday, i drove down to the border b/w new hampshire and vermont, to see the longest covered bridge in the nation. i explored some nearby areas then drove all the way up through vermont's green mountains. like new hampshire, everything was really pretty. i had never seen leaves that looked like this. even when the skies were overcast, the roads appeared to be lit due to the radiating, saturated tree leaves. i saw 2 waterfalls on sunday and went on a hike. at one time, i slipped and fell a few feet down a bank. if i slid further, well, it was pretty much a 180-degree cliff that dropped a long ways until a river. it was fun though. sunday night, i was exhausted, and i checked in early at 6pm into the next hostel.

this hostel was also interesting, but for brevity, i'll just say it was really well set-up and was owned by (2) 25-year olds. very impressive. they even fully owned and operated a restaurant and bar within the hostel, with the help of their sister and friend. very professional and good.

by the time i went to sleep on sunday -- day 2 -- i could see orange leaves everytime i closed my eyes. for this reason, i decided to not explore much on monday. instead of heading further north up until being a few miles shy of canada, i decided to just head home. yet, even though my eyes had been over-saturated by the leaves, i still couldn't resist pulling off the road several times to take pics, of barns, rivers, and trees. the drive home ended up taking many hours.

it was a very fun, unforgettable trip.

the pursuit of happyness healthiness

i love that movie.

now that i've finally become an adult (i.e., finished school and started a full-time job), i'm not allowed to make any more excuses regarding not having enough time to do the things and live the way i want. when i was a student, i would tell myself that school is a never-ending time commitment, and that a full-time job will provide me with tons of free time to do what i want. haha, well, apparently that's not quite true. i still wish to do way more than what i actually do. my week days are often not too action-packed, but the schedule seems to still fill up quickly. typically:

• wake up at 7am-something
• make a 1-liter morning shake by throwing ~7 of the following items into blender:
  • 2 cups of milk
    
  • 2 cups of oats
  • 5+ strawberries
  • handfuls of blueberries
  • 1 apple
  • 1 plum
  • 1 nectarine
  • 1 kiwi fruit
  • limes
  • 1 banana
  • 40g strawberry whey protein
• commute to work (35-45 minute drive)
• work 8 hours
• gym for 1 hour
• commute home (40-50 minute drive)
• cook dinner
• do misc chores (i.e., dishes, laundry)
• talk with sheley
  

BAM, it's 10pm already!

on the days that i go out or have some errand to run, something from the list above gets dropped.

i wish i made enough time to:

• learn to play guitar
• learn to play piano
• learn mandarin
• play basketball
  
• play baseball on a team
• jog regularly
• paint
  
• take more random photography walks
• work on a AI-side project
• do volunteer work
  
• read
  

these things have been on my to-do list for a long time, and there have been like 10 books on my to-read list for the last few years. i'm finally making the time to do some of these, but i definitely have a long way to go.

i don't like making excuses, and i hate the idea of one not being in his peak. well, it's sad when people reminisce about how they were so much better at sport-whatever or skill-whatever "back in the day." well, i'm starting to ramble/stray. i guess i'll just say that i hate slacking, and i fear (1) not taking the time to do the activities i enjoy, and (2) becoming worse at them than what i once was.

specifically, art and baseball used to be my biggest passions until i went off to college. i was pretty good at drawing and painting, but i haven't painted since like 2004. i never produced earth-shattering work, but i was good, and most importantly, i enjoyed it. as for baseball, i definitely wasn't on the level of being able to receive a college scholarship for it, but i was pretty good. many of the best times of my life are from playing baseball with friends, and i still dream about it at night every few weeks. i took time to play on ucla's intramural softball team, but the season was short, and i still crave it all the time.

so yea, i'm trying to have a healthy balance of fitting in everything that i enjoy; i'm trying not to desert my interests, leaving them to become merely faded memories. recently, i've been exercising:

• my heart by reading some about religions and going to church every week for over a year now -- i had never been before then
  
• my mind by working at mit lincoln lab
• my body by going to the gym 5 days a week

regarding that last note, well, i counted calories one day recently and realized i consume about 3,000 - 4,000 calories a day. so, maybe i'm not living so healthy after all. haha.

purple berry in the making:



kiwi berry in the making:



pink berry, ready: