island fire

Here are some pictures from the recent fam vacation to Maui. AKA tourist island. I felt pretty bad for the locals there, they are surrounded 24/7 by annoying white people constantly slathering sunscreen on eachother. They act hard with their “Tapout” gear, but I can tell they are dying inside.

Ovaline pools on the north shore of Maui. This is actually the adjacent inlet to the pool area which is to the left, this place looked like MAD good snorkeling (tons of coral) except for the crazy wave action in there.

random stuff that doesnt belong on facebook (6.19.08)

Here is some random stuff that was on my phone/laptop.

Huge GTA IV mural on Figeroua and Olympic in downtown LA. This was up about a week before the game came out. Usually they use the space for Nike ads, there was a sick one with Kobe and P-Rod before they put this up.

This was when I was still in LA. Duh. In a Best Buy parking lot this fool was taking home this in his vette. I was behind him for a bit when I turned onto Venice, luckily I made it around him soon after.

My male friend Raymond at UW tennis courts a few weeks ago. This was taken after playing a through a set after working out earlier in the day and not eating dinner. Needless to say I was super tired and lost. Shortly after this photo was taken the lights for the court were shut off without warning. We were already finished playing so it wasn’t a big deal, but the other courts were full of people in mid swing.

Downtown Seattle. This was taken while we were walking to Pacfic Place to watch the Hulk starring Edward “Histoy X” Norton. Pablo had made the poor choice to drink two (2) 16oz cans of Tilt energy drink. He was actually about 3/4 of the way through he second can which he had transferred to a Solo cup for the walk. Classy. We had also stopped at Dick’s beforehand and Pablo decided to wait to eat his cheeseburger, so I was holding his Solo and burger while he relieved himself by some trash cans. Interestingly enough a guy, which Pablo recounted as being a female, walked down as Pablo was finishing to throw away some trash. I would hate to live there. The movie was pretty good and Pablo busted out his cheeseburger midway through the movie, leading me to believe he forgot it was in his jacket.

Metro theater about 2 min before “Don’t Mess With the Zohan” started. Later two groups of people showed up totaling six people viewing the movie in total for that showing. One of the groups was a father and son (I hope), which must have made it awkward during the numerous boner and old lady sex scenes.

new heat: Nike Dunk SB ‘Piet Mondrian’

I got these a couple weeks ago, I haven’t worn them so still fresh to me. I laced them up ladder style as I did with the Trainer 2s. I like how the laces stay neat and orderly, only downside is that there is usually a lot of leftover length after lacing up so I have to hide it under the tongue. It is all about exterior experience isn’t it? Anyways the shoes are inspired by the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian and his Composition series of paintings. If you are not familiar with the name here is a pic to remind you:

And here are the shoes:

Get the picture?

I laced one up normal cross-style for comparison, too messy for me especially considering the orthogonal lines of Mondrian’s paintings.

Rear view, check the blue.

Mmm clean.

The shoes themselves have great materials and the black piping is hot. I was looking for some clean shoes (white) for summer and it was love at first sight with these. I am nervous to wear them out since they are so icy white and the white fabric is canvas which scares me cleaning-wise.

10 worst things about driving back from LA to Seattle

So I made it back to Seattle. Finally. I will be back until the end of August while Mitsubishi and I sort out my Visa so I can legally enter Japan.

Also I got a job with Mitsubishi in Japan. Most people that I know already know this so I will probably give some updates later. They sent me the Visa application forms and a certificate of entry form to fill out along with a hardback book about the history of Mitsubishi Electric. I hope there isn’t a quiz on this when I get there.

Anyways I drove back from LA starting last Wednesday and I arrived Thursday afternoon. I have done this drive multiple times before, I always take I-5 north and haven’t had any serious problems.

My car loaded up and ready to roll. So I thought.

This drive proved to be the toughest, as if California was trying to do everything it could to stop me from leaving. It failed. I had never seen so many different conditions that made the drive, interesting, let’s say. So here are some pics and a list of my top ten worst things about driving from LA to Seattle. Some of them are unique to this trip others seem to be constants.

10. Rain

This welcomed me on the second day when I was in Oregon, I had read the weather reports for Medford and Portland the night before, and it said 30%, apparently this meant 30% of the drive in Oregon would have rain coming down.

9. Cows next to I-5 in California

These cows are a fixture of the drive from LA to Seattle, you can smell them about 2 miles before you actually see them, there must be over 100,000 cows in this area and the only reason this isn’t higher on the list is that it is over relatively quickly.

8. Road work

This necessary evil can cause traffic congestion and major slow downs in the run. I respect the need to maintain the roads, but in Oregon there was apparently a statewide effort to replace seemingly working overpasses with new ones complete with decorative facades.

7. Dust

This was a new experience for me in Southern California as the high winds kicked up dust in certain areas and blanketed the road in sometimes a very thick fog of dust decreasing visibility and increasing the ineptitude of other drivers.

6. People going under the speed limit in the passing lane

Not surprisingly there are quite a few human failings in this list and this is the first. In Europe and other areas of the world where driving is seen as a privilege and not a right there are clear rules for staying the F out of the passing lane. Failing to do this leads to the next entry…

5. People passing on the right

Not only is this dangerous it is also stupid and in moderate traffic usually fails the moment there is a truck in the right lane. Going fast in the right lane prevents those in the passing lane from moving over and thus perpetuates the problem mentioned in #6.

4. Trucks passing each other

This is super annoying when one truck driver feels like taking the lead and moves to pass another truck. I have no problem with this in areas where some trucks need to go dramatically slower than others (i.e. hills, twisties, etc.), but in straight stretches of road this just slows everyone else down for the 1 to 2 minutes it takes for this operation to take place.

3. Fog

This occurred in morning going through the hills in Oregon. I was taken by surprise by the thickness of the fog at times and had to slow down. There is nothing like worrying about rear ending a truck in passing lane to start your morning.

2. Fire

Thanks to the high winds and super dryness thanks to the pitiful rainfall in Southern California there were a bunch of fires next to I-5. Dying in a fire was something I definitely did not want to experience.

1. Wind

This was the base cause of many of other issues and caused the most white knuckle driving during the first few hours of the trip. The winds would push my car laterally, I don’t have much of a profile so I can’t imagine what it was doing to the big rigs. I had to plan my position so I wouldn’t be next to them in the event of them squashing me. Having my bike strapped to the back of my car with a not really-OEM bike rack was worrying enough, then seeing it move due to wind gust in my rear view mirror was terrible. The thought of having to run across the highway and pick up my bike off of the road was constantly popping in my head. After an hour of driving I removed the wheels from my bike so I could loosen up a little. This did not help my mental state as much as I thought it would and I had to keep going with the constant thought of disaster in my head.

Even with all these negative things I made it safe and sound. I am happy to be back and I am looking forward to an enjoyable summer with the homies.

All my stuff that was in my car excluding my bike.

hold onto your butts: part duex

So classes are over, only finals to go. I just got back from Iron Man and I have some thoughts on the movie. Without a doubt this was one of the best comic book movies to come out ever. They managed to combine the intrigue of the advanced technology with a lot of Tony Stark’s “charisma”. I think that Robert Downey Jr. was very successful in bringing TS into reality. The impression I have had from the comics is that TS is a alcoholic jackass, and this was captured very well in beginning of the movie, when Tony constantly had a scotch in hand. This petered off towards the end, I don’t remember TS giving up the drink in the comics after he put on the suit. The beginning did have some issues, like how backwards are these middle eastern guys that they can’t figure out that you don’t need giant robot legs to make a 100 lb missile and the thing that gets them to charge the room is that they can’t see stark for five minutes. There were plenty of easter eggs for the fans in the movie, most notably Rhodes scoping out the MKII suit. Additionall after the credits there was another cameo

**SPOILER ALERT**

as Nick Fury was waiting for TS in his house, played by Samuel L. Jackson. This was kinda confusing since I had watched about 30 min of the Shaft movie before watching this.

S.H.I.E.L.D. is coming and so are the Avengers, so I hope.

**SPOILERS END**

Besides the obvious terrorist stereotype, which is forgivable I guess, there was also a nice woman driver stereotype near the end. Hilarious. I saw the movie in the Arclight Dome in Hollywood, at the theater there was some interesting stuff. They had a R8 outside, with a bored security guard watching it, you can bet it didn’t have a starter or something. Also inside the main lobby there was one of the suits that they used for filming. PIC

He looks shorter in person. I just hope they do what Toyota did with the Supra for the next movie, make everything bigger on the MKIV. Toon Disney is showing two and a half hours of Iron Man the animated series in a minute, I love that channel. Except for that they only show early episodes of Batman: TAS, only go up to Apokolips Now in Superman: TAS, and they haven’t shown Ducktales for a long time. On the other hand they just started showing Spider Man and they do show Talespin.

jack off all trades

It has been a while since the last post, I have been busy and having constant anxiety attacks due to new job related issues, more on that to come. Anyways I wanted to post on an event that happened today.

Let me set the stage, on the main level of the Lyon Center, the school gym, there is a mixed cardio free weight room with a row of ellipticals, treadmills, and stair climbers facing out a storefront window (for those not in the building industry that means big ass windows). Anyways people on the machines can look out of the windows to a foot path where people walk by frequently. The glass is not very reflective since it does not get much sun and that means people walking on the thoroughfare can see in easily. This means that people can easily see girls working it on all manner of machines. For those not used to the standard gym sights this can be very erotic, I would assume. I have been tempered to it and realize that even those these girls wear the tightest and shortest clothes imaginable, they would rather eat cold mud than have anyone ogle them (you know they like the attention).

What all this leads to is a unkempt man stopping in front of the window to, err, get his rocks off. This led to a DPS officer walking up to him, drawing his Beretta on him, and then holstering that and pulling out the mace, and eventually cuffing him. this was all very exciting since I was on the stationary bike for my pre-workout cardio. I did not see him choking the snake, but was told by a girl next to me that he was “jackng off”.

This is all noteworthy, but the reason I am posting this is that it is not the first person I have seen do this. About two weeks ago I noticed a man stop in front of the window in front of two girls on ellipticals and walk right next to the window. He stood there for about five minutes staring directly at them. When he finally left his left hand was in his pants. Fantastic.

weekend double-post gangbang pt.I

After last week’s excitement (see previous post), there hasn’t been too much of note happening. I have noticed that there has been quite a bit of filming happening lately. Here are some examples:

- There has been filming all this week on campus for “Ghost Whisperer” starring the hotness J. Love Hewitt. Apparently USC is also Rockwood University on the show, or whatever the name is. I saw some guys putting up a fake kiosk while I was doing some Japanese HW. PIC:

Yesterday as I was riding from the bus stop to home there was a set setup in one of the major footpaths on campus, there were a ton of gawkers around, in awe of the hundreds of surly grips that were around this week.

- Last weekend I saw a couple of camera crews on the way from my office to Chinatown in order to grab some Phillipe’s sandwiches. There was on crew filming three guys on crotchrockets (Torque II?).

Finally today, right outside my building, there was a crew setup in the alley leading to the garage. It looked like they were going for that urban, gritty look. This is probably easily done next to an apartment building whose population is primarily asian girls and indians. PIC:

The one thing that stood out to me was that they were had all African-American actors, or blacktors. I guess they were really trying to get the feel of the streets around here. Except they left out the majority latino crowd.

Stay tuned for pt.II

california……..super cool to the homeless

I have been busy and lazy for the past weeks and I haven’t really had anything substantial to put on here. Until today.

Around 4:30 pm I am sitting at my desk at work and I hear one of our EEs (Electrical Engineers) talking to someone with a very gravely and incoherent voice. At first I make the snap judgment that this guy must be well over 300lbs. I didn’t really think much of it as the EE didn’t seem at all distressed while he was talking to this behemoth and we do have vendors coming in frequently to sell their warez to us so we will specify them in our plans.

As the ‘conversation’ continued I picked up the words “lithium”,  “Cedars Sinai”, and “jail”. Putting these pieces together I realized that this might not be a vendor after all. I finally sat up from my chair to scope out the situation. I saw our EE calmly talking to a dishelved black guy who had a stack of free newspapers next to him. He proceeded to give a sob story of how he had walked from Westwood and needed $12 for lithium. He repeated that he didn’t want to go to jail and that he needed people who went to college to help him. Here is a pic:

Eventually everyone who was left in to office realized something irregular was happening and took notice. My boss came out and pressed him for information, which resulted in the guy walking further into the office, getting close to my cube.

At this point I had searched my desk area for possible weapons. This resulted in a choice between a ball point pen or a mesh drawing holder. Not very promising options. I kept standing and was ready to charge if he became physical. It never got to that point, so I was never tested. Eventually my boss produced some cash and I guess he gave it to they guy after leading him outside the office. He was then escorted out of the building by the ’security’ officer.

My boss came back in and grabbed one of the Lysol wipes and the EE threw away the stack of newspapers using some paper towels to protect himself.

This whole incident was surprising for a couple of reasons. First of all, this guy, who had a dirty, ripped t-shirt walked up to the security desk and told him he was making a delivery. This was amazingly savvy for a guy who literally got on his knees and begged for money from my boss. Secondly, this guy picked our floor and then our office to hit up. Even though there is a lawyer’s office directly in front of the elevator lobby. I am thinking he followed someone in from the can.

Los Angeles has a monumental homeless population that is significantly larger than the entire homeless population of Japan. I realize that some people are failed by our government and other systems, but the fact that other communities actually ship their homeless to California is aggravating. This incident has used up all sympathy for beggars, I will never give out any handouts again.

thanks wordpress stats

So I just looked at the stats for my page views, apparently recently most are coming from people looking for NO Shotgun info, which is fine. But it also seems that there is a consistant amount of people that reach the site after searching for things containing the words “burning” and “sensation”. Time to change the page title? Perhaps.

new heat: Air Trainer 2 SB

After a the usual long process of deciding on a target shoe and hunting on eBay and other various sources I finally got a pair of Air Trainer 2 SBs. I justify this by saying that I need a new gym shoe. When the 2 SBs dropped in November(?) as four different colorways of a Supreme exclusive version I thought they were alright. None of the colorways popped to me and I decided not to stand outside the store in westwood for 4 hours or whatever those fools did to get a pair. Thankfully Nike got their shiz together and put out a regular version with a dark gray and silver colorway. This was perfect for me as I was looking to get some dark-colored gym shoes. And honestly I would not get anything much less expensive then these turned out to be. More justification. The pics I saw prior to purchasing these looked good, but I had no idea just how sick they were. So on Monday an auction for size 10.5s was coming to an end and I sniped it in the last minute. The seller was in Anaheim, making for very quick shipping (got them this morning) and relatively cheap shipping.

After getting back from the gym this morning I checked the UPS tracking and was surprised to see that they were delivered around 9 am. I went down to the office and had to wait for the building manager to turn away from the multitudes of people signing leases for next year. I feel sorta bad for them, but whatever. I had to look in the mail room for my package which was fortunately not stolen. The seller was a powerseller and he sent a perfect double-boxed package with the new gold SB box inside. Hot. Here is a pic fresh out of the box:

I would have used my actual camera, but Ralph’s only had 4-packs of AA batteries and I need them for the Sonicare. I had class in 15 minutes or I would have re-laced them with the extra black laces included. Size 10.5 is my lower limit for Nikes and I was slightly worried that these would press on my feet. This disappeared when I slipped them on, which was a little tight, but my feet fit in the shoes perfectly. No pressure points at all. This was amazing since every other pair of Nikes have had a breaking in period until they formed to my feet. These are the most comfortable NEW shoes I have ever had.

Not only are the comfortable, but the hodgepodge of materials used makes these shoes pop in almost any condition imaginable. The majority of the shoe is covered in a smooth suede, giving them a muted appearance and making them resistant to fine scratches. The toe box is a smooth perforated leather (extremely perforated). There is some more smooth leather (this time non perforated) on the tongue and on the heel. On the upper heel they placed a small bit of 3M reflective material, allowing it to pop when hit by a camera flash. The Velcro toe strap is black shiny plastic, the only shiny part of the shoe really, and this makes a great accent. The sides have the classic Air Trainer 2 waffle pattern and the swoosh is silver leather, almost the same color as the 3M, but not as reflective. Although the materials may not stack up against the Supreme edition I still enjoy the use of so many materials in appropriate areas.

As soon as I got home from class I switched out the white laces for the black ones and laced them up horizontally hiding the crosses. PIC:

Black and white, I like the stealthiness. The white, admittedly, does make it pop a little more. But I will bet on black for now. The shoe has an awful lot of Nike symbols, there are 3 Nike SB logos; on the tongue, on the heel, and on the sole. This does not include the logo on the insert of course. Add the “NIKE” on the strap and there are 4 visible logos. Too much? Maybe. I hope this is the start of long journey of Nike SB making Trainer 2s, there are a lot of colorways possible.

This was a good distraction to the continuing rape in the stock market. Thanks again home-buyers.