Dear Bicyclist,

We both enjoy the road. Specifically, we both enjoy those twisty 2-lane mountain roads that grace us throughout the hils and mountains around here. Particularly when the weather is nice like today, there’s many of both our types… Us car guys are out there driving through the twisties and putting our cars through it’s paces. On the other hand, you guys are out there enjoying the great outdoor weather and having a great workout. Fantastic, but when they say “Share the Road” that means you too.

Here’s how I see it. I don’t want to run you over… I’m going to get in trouble, you’re going to get hurt or die, I’m going to have to repair my car, and you’re going to have to get a new bike. And for those reasons, you don’t want me to run you over too, I think. I also understand that there are probably drivers who are not very nice to you bicyclists. Therefore, when I’m driving up to you I am extra nice to you guys. I slow down, and won’t pass you on a blind corner that’s going to get us both killed. I leave you sufficient room to ride while I pass you and I don’t tailgate you while I’m waiting for a good time to pass.

Now, when I’m driving up towards you, I expect to have some courtesies as well since “Share the Road” means that YOU (the bicyclist) has to SHARE the road with ME (the car driver) as well. And this is what you’re NOT supposed to do… When I’m approaching you or your group, it’d be nice if you could break your side-by-side configuration and move to the side in 1 line so I can pass without going to the other lane. Or if you’re riding alone, it’s not quite necessary to ride in the middle of the whole lane. I mean really, the whole profile of the bike is about 18″ wide, you can scoot to the side and I’ll have plenty of space to pass you. And finally, unless you are literally superman, you’re not going bike as fast as I’m driving, so don’t try to speed up and lose me somehow.

Let’s bring some science into this. I’m driving a a 3600lb car. You’re riding on a 192.5lb bike, and that’s with you on top of it. My car is equipped with 10 air bags, safety belts, power steering and brakes, and a slew of safety features meant to keep me alive when I hit another CAR at 40MPH. You are wrapped in high tech spandex that offers minimal wind resistance, along with a plastic and foam helmet. So realistically, if we were to collide, my chances of injury would be very low. Chances of death? Nearly nil. Your chances on your bike are not as admirable unfortunately, and I understand that, which is why I try to be considerate when you are on the road with me.

Why is it (with consideration of the above paragraph), that you are so adamant about not sharing the road with me and deliberately make the driver of a 3600lb car angry at you? You heard me drive up, I saw you peeking into your rear view mirror in your sunglasses, and shifting your head just slightly to see me behind you. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and even revved my engine so you were sure to hear me. You still sat right in the middle of the lane going 20MPH. Fast for you, slow for me. We cruised through a few more corners and you sped up a few MPH to “get away” but you didn’t go that much faster. Finally, a small stretch of straight road where we could see ahead and you could pull to the right so I could pass. Yet, you did not do so. Dead center of the lane. So I downshift and start to pass you on the left, going far into the other lane. And now you actually swerve over towards me to “block” me from passing?? Are you serious? On your bicycle?!

Fine, be a prick, I can be too, don’t you know the brand of car I drive? I’m already an associated prick by purchasing this car! I really don’t like myself doing this, but sometimes the worst just comes out of me when something like this happens. You really had to provoke it and it wasn’t nice. I slammed on the brakes and got back behind you, since you didn’t want me to pass obviously. Now my bumper is 2 feet away from your back tire. You know I’m there, you can feel it, the hum of my tires and engine seem louder than before. And then, I lay on the horn. And I keep laying on it. Damn, it’s really loud, and that’s when I’m inside the car so I’m sure it is deafeningly loud when you’re 2′ in front of it. It doesn’t matter if you turn around and give me a dirty look, I think we’re beyond that now. Just pull to the side now and stop so I can pass. I think by laying on the horn for nearly a minute would signal to you do so. But apparently it was not very clear.

Another straightaway is coming up and I decide that I’ve been bad enough and I’m just going to pass you quickly and enjoy the rest of my drive. I start to pass you on the left, and you can yell things at me but my windows are up and it’s hard to hear you. It was much more clear when you gave me the finger though as I was driving by. You should really keep both hands on the handle bars though because while you were giving me the finger, I was starting to drive towards you to give you a final “thanks for sharing” gesture. As you noticed, I can steer the wheel on my car easily with one hand, and you have much more difficulty, causing lots of unbalance, a bunch of wobbling. Long after I passed you, you were still wobbling around on your bike and nearly flew off the road until you stopped. Good job champ, next time, just share the road.

Sincerely,
Driver

I think I’m a pretty considerate person. I often think before I say things or think about how it would be like to be in someone else’s shoes. Is that so much to ask from other people? For example…

I fly down to LA at least once a month, sometimes twice, or more to visit Vincy (although she’s done with school now!), and I always take Southwest since the flights are cheap and there are so many of them. Anybody who travels often knows how to quickly get through security and board the plane quickly so we can all get up and go ASAP. Now, there is nothing wrong with people who are not familiar with the process, but first, you can replicate what other seasoned travelers are doing, and second, you can just use common sense.

Everyone is taking off their shoes, and taking their laptops out of their bags to put into bins to get scanned. Maybe you should do the same Mr. Hold-up-the-line. While everyone is taking off their metal jewelry, shoes, liquids, laptops etc. to get scanned in that big x-ray like machine, you were standing there looking at the ceiling. When the TSA security officers were yelling to everyone to take their shoes off and take their laptops out, you must have thought that doesn’t include you. Oh, and please, don’t take your turtle with you onto the plane, ok? No, I’m not joking.

We’re all about to board the plane, and Southwest has very clear instructions that if your boarding pass begins with an “A” then you should line up, in numerical order of your boarding pass. So Mrs. A29 would stand behind Ms. A28, but in front of Mr. A30. Simple right? You’ll be amazed…

OK, we’re getting onto the plane now, and in typical Southwest fashion it is delayed just a little. So now everyone is kinda pissy and annoyed. So let’s try and get this thing going and do several things. 1) Put your luggage away. 2) Get your ass in a seat. 3) Put on your seatbelt and turn off your electronic crap since they’re so anal about it. There’s thorough explanation needed for this though, so let’s break it down thoroughly in the next 3 paragraphs.

1) Put your luggage away. There are the overhead bins, and then the space under the seat in front of you. Who cares about the reasons why there isn’t enough storage space, but we just know there isn’t, and nobody is changing that. So, put your big ass roller suitcase up top, since it doesn’t fit under the seat. Then your purse, your laptop bag, camera bag, suit jacket, shopping bags, pizza boxes, and $7 bottles of water can fit under the seat in front of you. Therefore, when Mr. I-need-every-inch-of-legroom-for-this-1-hour-flight stuffs all of his stuff in that overhead bin and takes up the whole thing, then somebody else can’t fit their big ass roller suitcase up there. This means that they will have to check it in. It’s inconvenient for them, and it delays the flight another 5 minutes. Good job buddy. You’ve got great legroom for for your 1 hour and 15 minute flight. What you don’t know is how many people have left their beer farts in your seat cushion.

2) Get your ass in a seat. I like sitting on the aisle way seat. Quick in and out. I’ve seen the view a million times so I don’t care for the window. But, I understand if you don’t fly too often, it’s awesome to have the window seat and it’s really a great view especially when you fly into/out of certain cities. Herein lies the problem, which would not exist if you didn’t stuff all your belongings into your overhead bin. You sat down in the window seat, and now you want your iPod, and your water, and your CPK Express pizza. So you get up, straddle across 2 people to get your stuff out, take 2 minutes doing it, and reverse the process. Meanwhile, your big ass is blocking the aisle and nobody can get past you to board the plane. We’re delayed another 4 minutes, thanks.

3) Put on your seatbelt and turn off your electronic crap since they’re so anal about it. I know, it’s dumb that you can’t talk on your cell phone the second they close the door and you haven’t even left the gate. Yet, the second the plane touches the ground and the plane is on the runway taxi-ing to the gate, you can blabber on your cell. It doesn’t make sense, but I don’t make the rules, and neither do the flight attendants. Point is, that dumb rule is just one you’ll have to follow, so just hang up your phone and turn it off. Having an argument with the flight attendant on why it’s safe to have your iPod on while the plane is taking off is stupid. She probably agrees with you and she knows that your iPod isn’t going to interfere with the communications equipment. She’s not the FAA, and all she gives a crap about is getting the plane in the air so she can stop baby sitting you. Shut up, turn off your electronics and put on your seatbelt. If the plane crashes, you’re dying, seatbelt or not. It’s there to help you feel safe so just put it on let’s get this show on (actually, off) the road, thanks.

In the future, please follow these simple tips to help reduce delays and make flying for everyone just a little bit smoother. Thank you.

It’s been way too long. Too many things have happened. Maybe another day I will write about it, but not right now as I’m a little aggravated and stressed out. Instead, here’s just a picture of my car.

A quick update and some pictures… Happy New Year to everyone. I went to NYC with Vincy for Christmas and had a great time there. Here are the pictures, click it for the album.

Since I was about 2, I’ve been obsessed with cars. On my 2nd birthday, my grandma bought me this toy car thing where you sit in it and there were pedals inside so when you pedaled it, the rear wheels would propel the car. And of course you could steer the car too. Within a short amount of time I could back my car into a make-believe parking spot made out of furniture. I didn’t read or write until 3 or 4 or something like that, and that was obviously of less importance than parallel parking and 3-point-turns.

By the time I moved to Chicago, I had a magazine subscription to Road & Track, and I looked at every page, probably 50 times each, until the next issue came. I knew the specs of every car that they reviewed and wondered what most of the words and columns meant. The pictures were cool though and I had them all over my wall in my room.

Fast forward back to Hong Kong / Singapore era when I was between 6-10. My sole purpose of living at the time seemed to be building the little plastic models of cool cars. I had so many little car models, micro machines, and any toy that was a car I probably wanted for Christmas. And then came radio controlled cars… Man, that changed a lot of things. I got to actually build something that I could control and put together the mechanics of the whole thing. I stayed awake all night for many nights putting these R/C cars together and tweaking them and then going out the next day racing them around the park. I did this for years and couldn’t wait until I could drive.

Luckily, in California you can start driving when you’re 15, and get your license when you’re 16. I got my driving permit as soon as I could get it, and on my 16th birthday I skipped school and went to get my license. And from then on I was out of control. Drive drive drive was all I did. Then my first speeding ticket several months after getting my license… crap. And then another… super crap. Before long I went to my first sanctioned race at the drag strip - Sacramento Raceway. I skipped my junior prom and (feel bad for this one…) canceled on my date because there was some big race day there and went racing instead.

I got into the habit of tinkering with cars and that lead to another phase of money draining and addiction. But man was it fun… I started from wondering where the air filter was on my car to switching out transmissions in short time. I went to more and more racing events, put on more and more miles on my cars, and got more and more tickets. Before I know it, I’ve been driving for over 10 years now. Been through a handful of cars, about 15 tickets, uncountable track events, and somewhere between 250,000 to 300,000 miles. I figured that I couldn’t do something that much, for that long, and not be bored with it. Sometimes to relax I get in the car and just go somewhere, anywhere, for as long as I can or want to go with no destination in mind.

I recently took my new car out during lunch time on a slow day at work. I went all the way to the Pacific coast for no reason at all and just enjoyed the view the entire way. It was one of my best lunches ever. After so many years of driving about, there’s still something weird about me and how much I like to get in the car and squeeze the accelerator all the way down… then brake hard as the corner approaches, heel-and-toe rev-match a downshift, hang tight as the tires just barely squeal against the surface, and step on the accelerator again. At least there’s something I can do millions of times and not get bored of!

Click for the rest of the pictures…

I used to like Halloween… when I was like 5 or so. It was fun to go around trick or treating in the neighborhood in my superhero costume. But now, Halloween sucks. I hate Halloween, even though I enjoyed a good part of it this year in the office. We have a huge Halloween party on our floor here and everyone gets into it. There’s a competition between the teams and it’s a pretty big deal around here. This year our theme was professional wrestling. We actually built the whole wrestling ring in the office, made a 1/2 hour skit, made promotional videos that looped in the background the whole day, and had posters of our team members photoshopped onto wrestlers. I dressed up as a sumo wrestler, and had a ninja for a tag team partner…

Back to why I hate Halloween… I hate it because it’s a day where, for some reason, empowers people to become total idiots and assholes. And I don’t mean funny idiots and assholes, but actual idiots and assholes. It’s the day when teenagers run around vandalizing cars and throwing eggs at anything and everything. People dress up and hide their faces and act retarded. It’s stupid, and what the hell is up with the old ass teenagers going trick or treating? Dude, if you’re driving yourself to go trick or treat, you’re way too old.

Sad news… one of my geckos died. The dad died last night… I’ve had them for many years now but I guess it was time. I got 2 of them as juveniles which ended up becoming a pair and mating, and I hatched one of their babies too who is still doing well. It’s weird that I only have the mom and son left. I really liked the dad gecko… He was easy to handle and wasn’t jittery and was calm all the time. He was also huge for a Leopard gecko, being nearly a foot long and had some heft to him when he was in your hand… Pretty sad to see my gecko in the terrarium lifeless and limp… Hope all is well for him in gecko heaven…

Winter is just about upon us now. The days are getting shorter, the rain will be here soon and the sting of the cold weather will not be nice. But I like the winter… The smell of a rainy day and the “fresh” smell of cold winter is nice. Less people are out and about during the bad weather, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years is around the corner, and I own a lot of jackets… all good reasons for enjoying winter.

So much has happened since the last time I blogged on here that I cannot possibly fit it all on here. Some notable things though… had an anniversary, passed through a couple birthdays (and Happy Birthday to Erica today), attended Olivia’s wedding - congratulations, did a bunch of stuff to my car, smoked Acks at the autocross (twice),  and a bunch of other stuff, just too much to list. There are some new developments coming along right now which may change a lot of things around here so I’ll be busy for the rest of the year. I’ll try to blog again before that…

Over the past few weeks I have been hammered with stress. And I’m not a typical stressed out kinda guy. I find that I typically let things go by and smooth-sail my way through stressful situations and unhappy days without caring too much about it. But not lately. Starting from my last post where my Audi S4 crapped out halfway down to LA, in the middle of the desert. I ended up getting it back to the Bay Area and after some diagnosis, it turns out that the timing belt snapped. Once the timing belt snaps, it pretty much grenaded the engine. What’s worse is that I had 98k miles on the car, and I had changed the timing belt at 70k miles, so it’s not like I didn’t maintain it and change the belt. Check out what it looks like right now just to see what happened to the timing belt:

Anyway, I ended up selling the S4 for a measly amount of money as it sat to the owner of a local car shop. It was a little sad parting with it like that, but hey, what can you do… shit happens. Not only did I sell the S4, but I also sold the New Yorker a few days before that. Somebody really wanted it and picked it up with a tow truck. Good memories from that car as well. It was such a funny car… everything about it you could laugh at. From the fact that it was darn near 20′ long, it was green, and green on the inside, and had a power bench seat, and had big ass fuzzy dice, and Ray got a lap dance in the back seat of it… Too many stories. But alas, that had to come to an end too… Somebody picked it up on the back of a tow truck (and it barely fits!):

There I was, with no cars and stressed out and upset because of the way things turned out lately. I was also looking for an apartment to move into so that I could be closer to work. The search didn’t turn out quite that well, but it’s not horrible because you have to keep searching and filtering, and only have to find ONE good place to live. Nevertheless, it can be a downer if you keep looking for a place and don’t find something which you really like.

Once I had no cars, I was lucky enough to be able to drive my dad’s car since he’s out of the country. I went back down to LA to see Vincy again, and to pick up a bunch of my stuff which was stored at her place. I was already a little hesitant because I did not have my radar detector with me… I get down there without issue, but once I’m there, the car starts idling extremely rough and the car was surging like crazy. The next day I took it to the Mercedes dealership, bribed them $50 to fix it right away rather than wait til Monday, and paid $600 to replace a tube. More car problems, just what I needed. On Sunday I drove back up, and got a speeding ticket for 85mph in a 70mph. I was going quite a bit faster than that though and the CHP guy was actually pretty cool to cut me a break on the ticket so I could go to traffic school. It was a classic situation where my radar detector would have saved my butt. Too bad the wiring is still in the Audi, and is probably not coming out.

Throughout this time, I’ve been trying to find a car. Without a car, I don’t get to work and that will make it really difficult to live and to move anywhere. That became top priority and I had about 2 weeks to find a car before my Dad came back into the country. I looked at everything - new crappy cars, old(er) nicer cars, old crappy cars, and new nice cars. I really couldn’t make a decision, everything was either a little too unreliable, or too expensive, or it just wasn’t a car that I would drive. I looked all over the place and after many days of looking, test driving, and negotiating, I bought a BMW 335i sedan last night. So far I’m loving it even though it cost quite a bit more than I wanted to spend. But it comes with a lot of gadget-y little things which I really did not need but paid for it since I needed a car pretty quickly. But anyway, it’s sweet and I’m happy now that this whole episode of car problems is over with.

What I really learned throughout these few weeks is how lucky I am to have the people I have around me. Although we had our frustrations with each other, my parents were there to help me out every step of the way. Lending me the car, money if I needed it, meals when I didn’t have time or energy to go out, and going car shopping with me. And Vincy, for putting up with me in my hyper-stressed out state for the past few weeks. I mean I have been in a bad mood for weeks and that is a shitty thing to have to deal with. She also helped me look for apartments and gave me whatever support I needed whenever I needed it. Finally, my friends here who simply offered rides and general laughter when I needed it the most. I had people willing to drive me 100 miles to look at a car with an hour notice. They knew what my situation was and all of them were here to give me a hand. It’s great that I have a new car and a fun toy now, but it’s even better to know that I have these people by my side all the time.

I really don’t try to wait a whole month before I update my blog, it just seems to happen that way all the time. This month’s update includes a number of events, some good but a lot which are a bit painful… Starting with the cars.

The New Yorker has taken a dump. Nothing really bad but it’s something electrical and I’ve already replaced the battery and the alternator. Regardless, it broke down 2 blocks away from my house so luckily I quickly got a ride back home and dealt with it in the morning. I’m basically junking the car as in getting rid of it cheap and as is, or crashing it and burning it into the ground. And now the Audi is sitting at a dealership in Fresno because on my way down to LA it literally died without warning on interstate 5, 220 miles from LA. Vincy drove up to pick me up from the dealership and my car is stuck there until Monday when somebody can diagnose it.

It’s hard to explain the feeling you get when your car just dies on you like that… This wasn’t my beater car, it was my nice car and I care for it and maintain it regularly. But I was so frustrated and pissed off to be in the middle of nowhere and stuck there with a $45k car which is now a fancy paperweight. But the tow truck came quickly, and after I got everything sorted out at the dealership, Vincy arrived to pick me up and drive me back down to LA. Thanks babe.

Apart from car problems, my fishtank nearly burned down the house. Yeah, it’s a long story, but it nearly happened. So that is also coming to an end and the tank is up for sale, the whole thing is gone. That is the last aquarium in my collection right now… So after that’s gone, aquariums are no more. It was such a huge part of my life that it is strange to get out of it. But things change and inconveniences arise, so the fishtank and the aquarium hobby will be gone. I’ll miss it and the dedication which I had put into it…

Onto some better news… My new position at HP is going well. I’m still getting accustomed to working with the big company feel and the red tape which encompasses any large corporation compared to a small business of 50 employees where I quit working at about a month ago. However, it was a very good choice for me to jump ship when I did. On Friday, 2 of my old co-workers got laid off with no advance notice because the parent company that acquired the company I worked for decided their positions were suddenly unnecessary. They may have received several weeks of severance, but other than that, they got a boot up the ass and a thanks-for-your-time. On top of that, most of the office staff will see their last day in October. So much for all these better opportunities available after the acquisition… Anyway, back to HP! It’s a cool company to work for and it’s a pretty nice place to work at. I’m quickly realizing the strengths and weaknesses of a huge corporation but in the end, I like where I am at and don’t plan on a change in the near future.

And on the opposite end of the spectrum, I bought an Apple iPhone even though I’m working at HP. lol. Traitor? I figured that it would have been nuts to line up for one on Friday night when it was released. I’m just not the type of person who really waits in line for anything. That’s why you don’t see me at Disneyland or something. I don’t really like waiting in line to get a good seat in a movie theater. There’s simply a better way - assigned seating. Other theaters around the world do it, it’s just the US which seems to have this fascination with lining up not just once to buy the ticket, but another time to get a good seat. WTF? Anyway, so I didn’t wait in line on Friday but on Saturday morning, I walked into the Apple store and I picked one up within minutes without any lines. Sweet. Got home and activated it and I have to admit, it’s a pretty sweet little gadget. As a phone itself, it’s just OK, nothing great really. But as a general internet device it’s pretty well done. If there’s no wifi connection around you need to use the slow as hell EDGE network, but it’s better than nothing when you really need it. Overall, I’m impressed with it and would recommend it to others but I wouldn’t say it’s as hyped up as the best thing since the internet.

I’m just dead tired after this weekend of crazy happenings, so I’m sleeping at midnight on Saturday night.

Ever since I moved my website to Wordpress, a number of extra features were added. One of the features is the ability to categorize each one of my posts. I can set up multiple categories and if you checked out my archives, you can see posts only from one category. And each post can have multiple categories. So I can have a post which is tagged “Geeky” and “Random” at the same time. Well this one is categorized under “w00t!” and “Ranting” at the same time…

In the movie Vanilla Sky, Tom Cruise’s buddy, that writer guy who is also in the movie Enemy of the State, says “The sweet is never as sweet without the sour.” Makes sense, if everything in life were just fine and dandy, you’d probably never really enjoy the fact that it’s always fine and dandy. You need to get your share of crap to truly enjoy the good things in life. I guess it’s an extension of that little saying: with the good, come the bad. But sometimes don’t you just feel like you’re getting hammered with the bad??? And then something good happens, and you think, FINALLY! And then BAM! The bad comes around again. Story of my life (OK, not really my life, story of this week).

Without further adieu, let’s get bitchin’ shall we? I return from my vacation to go back to work, and I have a ton of stuff to catch up with. Not only the regular work that I have to catch up with, but while I was gone, the parent company who bought us out decided to start implementing a lot of changes which they were not planning to do until the end of this year. What’s even better, nobody tells me about it even though I’m involved. So I am suddenly in meetings and all day sessions with VPs and Senior VPs with no prep time and walk in there blind having no idea what’s going on. Thanks. I pick up my paychecks, and low and behold, not a single one of them are correct. Although I have confirmed that nobody has received an accurate paycheck yet, so there’s obviously some growing pains with the acquisition. It would just be nice to not deal with something so simple and something that should very much be accurate.

Next, I find the windshield on my beater car cracked in 3 places after being parked for the weekend. It is the type of cracking which is obvious vandalism. Not that I particularly care about that car, but it still sucks, and it’s impossible to find replacement glass for that car since it’s such an old piece of crap. I left it alone, and moved on. Until the following day I find the dipshit neighbor kids shooting at my windshield with a BB gun. Well that set me off and I went on a yelling rampage at some 11 year old kids. It’s such a shame you cannot “discipline” kids here - bring them elsewhere and whoop their ass and bring them back, that’s the solution. Did I mention that I hate kids?

Going along with the car theme, I had planned to go racing with Acks this weekend. Great track, great weather, and it was just the perfect weekend to go. I did a quick once over my car, to realize that my CV boot is torn and there is bearing grease all over the inside of the wheel. It wasn’t that bad, but I would not pass tech inspection and I shouldn’t be flinging grease all over the track anyway. So I canceled that and made him ditch out on it too since it’s no fun going by himself and without a bit of friendly competition between us, it’s just not the same. For those who may not know, Acks and I have a friendly rivalry where whoever loses between the two of us, buys lunch. Let me tell you, he has bought lunch for me more often than I have bought lunch for him.

Really, we’re getting close to the end of bitch-fest 2007, so hang tight.

Since I ditched Acks for racing, I thought that we could go have a little video game virtual racing instead. I drove down to San Jose to meet up with him at his place to play Forza Motorsport 2 on Xbox 360. There’s a newly discovered 24 hour Starbucks by him as well and we had to go and visit. Went there, had a coffee and the weather was actually very nice last night - a good thing (See, I don’t just focus on the negative all the time). When we decided to leave, we get into a car accident. I was passenger, and Acks was driving in the right hand lane approaching the stoplight, which was currently red. The car in front of him backed up a bit, and turned right (there was a right-turn island there). We joked that he needed a new paint job at that time. We were still driving toward the red light then. The light turns green and Acks starts to accelerate straight through the light, when the dipshit in the middle lane decides it would be a good idea to follow his buddy who just made a right, and turn right from the middle lane. We plowed into his passenger side door, sending his car onto the other side of the street, and we rolled to a stop not far from where we hit him. They pull into the gas station across the street and come by to see if things were cool. The dipshit’s ricer buddies all pull up and they all come across the street to Acks’ car. They see we’re fine and I made sure they were OK, and they decide to exchange insurance information. The entire group of ricers go back across the street to the gas station, and get into their cars and take off. Yay. So we call the cops on a hit-and-run and gave them the descriptions and everything. We wait for the police, and 40 minutes later, dipshit comes back alone in his car to exchange insurance information with Acks.

“Supposedly,” he just went home to get his insurance information, and he had actually instructed his ricer friends to stay behind and let us know that he went home to pick that up. Because, you know, he couldn’t have told us that himself. And when he left to go home for a second, he had to run to his car and take off as fast as he could out of the gas station. Right… Or is it more likely that he realized he just committed a felony, and that there were cameras all over the gas station which could have captured his license plate, and he got scared and came back? Let’s leave that one to the judge. Dipshit’s car is totaled, and Acks car got kinda messed up. My left knee smashed into the dash and it’s hurting a bit right now but the doctor said it is nothing major after I spent my Saturday afternoon at Kaiser wasting my life away in a waiting room.

And that concludes bitch-fest 2007. At least to me, there seems to be plenty of sour go to around this week.

There has to be a w00t! part and here it is… First off, I told Vincy about the accident today since I figured there was no point waking her up in the middle of the night last night to make her worry. She is also aware of the crap that has been going on since I’ve been bitching to her about it for the last week and most probably making her life miserable as well. And she decided to drive up and visit me for the weekend; very nice of her. And the final w00t! of this week… Since our company had been acquired, I’ve been applying to a lot of jobs and taking a look at what else is out there. I interviewed with HP when I came back from Hong Kong, and it was a position that I really wanted. On Friday they called me and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, and I will be signing on with HP in a few weeks. I’m very excited and can’t wait to move on!

Over the last 3 weeks, I think I’ve spent 5 nights or so at home. I’ve been in and out so much that I just realized I haven’t slept on my comfy bed and my ergo pillow for quite a while! Prior to my trip to Hong Kong, I flew to Atlanta, GA for a few days for work. I had never been to Atlanta before, nor was I particularly excited to go truthfully. However, I got put up in the extravagant W Hotel, and then when I checked in, I got upgraded to a suite. That made the stay a lot nicer, and it is probably the nicest hotel that I have stayed in thus far, at least on my own. I might have stayed at some pretty sweet places as a kid when Dad’s company forked out the cash to stay somewhere, but I don’t remember now. So I was there for a couple nights, flew back into the Bay Area, and then left to Hong Kong for about 10 days.

I haven’t posted about it, and the more I think about it, the more I realize there is not THAT much for me to post about. I very much enjoyed the trip, it was a blast. However, it’s not like I did anything quite different in Hong Kong this time than my previous visits. Well, the one thing that was different is I went with my girlfriend this time around, and I had never been back to Hong Kong with anyone before. I typically flew back and met up with a lot of friends, but times have changed when everyone is working now, and they only have a little time at night and weekends available. So it was great that Vincy was with me and we got to hang out quite a bit and enjoy the mutthaland. I typically don’t get to spend that much time with her so it was great for both of us to have a vacation together. I will post some pictures from Hong Kong later, but I haven’t even looked at them, much less processed any of them to put online. I didn’t end up taking many pictures anyway, so it will be a small album. I will mention my favorite time on the trip… At the rooftop pool at the Metropark Hotel, lounging around in the pool and poolside with food delivered. Great view, great company, and an absolutely relaxing time. Oh, and small cup of coke which costs $6.

After returning from Hong Kong, I slept another night at home, then went to a couple job interviews, and flew out to LA again. Went to visit the woman again since I still had time off, and yet again I did not do too much there yet enjoyed my stay. And Sunday I finally came back and have slept at home since then. I guess it’s quite novel to be able to sleep in your own bed sometimes. You don’t do it for a while and you kinda miss it. Nothing like your own blanket and pillow and the familiar sight of your room when you wake up. And for some people, the familiar wet drool spot when they wake up, but let’s not mention any names now.

I’m going to stay home this week, and probably all of next week. I was about to take another business trip but that has been canceled thankfully. Time to enjoy my bed.