LionZoo's Xanga

Friday, May 11, 2007

Fri, 11 May 2007 21:45:15 GMT

What I learned today: Don't give me the Deathnote, I'd be tempted to use it.

Friday, May 04, 2007

Fri, 04 May 2007 16:55:45 GMT

If this keeps up, someone is going to get hurt.

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Thu, 03 May 2007 02:28:41 GMT

After a couple months, my wheels are mounted with tires (Yokohama Advan Neova AD07s) and on my car. Here are some pictures. Please excuse the lack of picture taking skills.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 06:12:58 GMT

...and I'll aim at what I believe is the best choice and try to hit the pinpoint speck of hope. In the end, life is a zero sum game...

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 06:15:34 GMT

So quite a bit has happend in the past 2 weeks and change: eCsTASy, Cornell, starting at Cisco, karting, etc. etc. However, that's all old news so I'm going to skip all that. I'm just going to say that life is rather boring right now at Cisco as I get in at 9:30, go home at 5:30, and generally have a very relaxed work atmosphere. The highlight of my day is probably watching Deathnote, which asks the always relevant question, "If you have a notebook that can kill anyone you know the name and face of, what would you do?" Of course, it's really obvious the answer is that we'll then change our xanga and facebook so that it doesn't reveal our real name and face.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 11:14:21 GMT

Hello from the airport, this will be a quick entry. My flight should leave in about an hour. I say should since I overheard that they're fixing the plane; which of course throws a bit of doubt into the scheduled take off time, as well as makes me feel a bit uneasy. I've flying Malaysia air into Los Angeles for any of you keeping track.

An interesting fact about my trip here: the artist I heard the most while walking on the streets of Taiwan was L'Arc~en~Ciel. I bought a pair of jeans at a store that was playing L'Arc. The music certainly didn't hurt, neither did the fact that the girl helping me was rather pretty.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 08:43:56 GMT

A couple months ago my car was a victim of a hit and run at the airport. I did not post about it then and now I will only say that it's repaired and my new wheels are going on sooner than I thought they would since one my stock ones is pretty badly scratched. I haven't finalized tire choices yet and I'm a bit apprehensive about what an 8mm offset change to the wheels will do to my handling, but we will know soon enough.

But anyway, the main point of this post is to inform all that I am in Taiwan. I've been here for a week and a half and today is my last full day as I leave for LA tomorrow night. It's the rainy season here, but I've gotten pretty lucky in that there hasn't been a ton of rain, which isn't to say I haven't been caught out a couple times. In the past week I've visited Taipei 101, the Sun Yat-sen Mueseum, and the Chiang Kai-shek Mueseum. I did not go visit the Forbidden Palace mueseum, an oversight that probably needs to be corrected in a future trip. I also went to a rock themed bar (yes, such a thing does exist in Taiwan!) and went shopping a few times. My guide for most of this has been Jin-Ho, who is currently working in a lawfirm in Taipei. The treatment I've received from him has been great. Taipei has been fun and the food here is quite good. And yes, I did spend One Night in Shihlin and every stall vendor seemed sketchy.

One of my objectives for this trip has been to go shopping for clothes. Sadly, my mission will probably be unaccomplished pending some miracle tonight. The majority of shoes is for girls and if you are one I think shopping here would be quite good. However, the selection for guys is rather limited and the prices aren't Asia cheap like I'm used to. Still, it's been a good trip and I'll keep my eye open tonight.

Next up, Cornell University for eCsTASy VI!

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 07:01:13 GMT

As many of you know I do all the work on my car. The exceptions are recalls (which need to be performed by the dealer), warranty work (which are free), and stuff that I don't have the tools to do myself like alignment. I distrust dealers like no other and always do a through inspection of my car every time I get it back from them. Some (most, perhaps all) think I'm extremely paranoid, but I feel I have a good reason to be so distrustful and here is why:

The past two times I've taken my car to the dealer were for them to take off my wheellocks and patch a tire since I had lost my wheellock key and for them to investigate a faint smell of gear oil as well as perform a gascap recall. The first time I got my wheel back scratched, though the dealer denied doing it. However, the service manager was nice and tried to rectify it by arranging a shop to touch up the wheel. Still, it didn't look nearly as good as new. The second time, the dealer put dye in the transmission (unnecessary since I run Royal Purple gear oil and it already comes dyed purple) to check for leaks as well as changing my gascap to the new part. They gave the car back to me saying they couldn't find the smell. However, when I went to pick up my car I found my dipstick lying in a rail underneath my hood when doing my post delivery inspection. I also found out they had removed three of the spacers I use for my custom gas pedal extension. Unfortunately I found that out in the middle of a turn and it scared the crap out of me to realize that I wasn't getting the gas pedal when I expected to. Finally, I found out this morning that they didn't put a washer on my transmission fill plug when they put the dye it. I know that the dealer doesn't stock the actual part since I had to special order the washer, it still amazes me that dealers that are expected to do maintenance don't stock common needed parts like washers. Even worse, they could have just reused my old washer, which would have been okay if you do it a time or two or even put in a diff drain washer that I know they stock since that is the same bolt diameter so it works. Instead, they just left out the washer completely and instead torqued the plug down hard, making it difficult for me to remove. What the hell!

Needless to say, I will no longer be going to Almaden Mazda.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 06:26:26 GMT

Apparently I now have a monthly post tradition. This slothy schedule does not concern me much though, nor am I here to help that situation. This post is just to say that I just took delivery of four of the items in the picture below. To the best of my knowledge, this is the last new set of these in the 18x8 inch size in America. They're also quite light at 17.5 pounds each, which is a 5 pound saving over my stock RX-8 wheels. Sadly, they won't be mounted on my car for a few months as I won't be taking my current tires off my rim to mount on these, I'll just wait until I need new tires.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 07:03:06 GMT

I haven't posted much of anything and certainly anything of value in a long time. That might just change now.

This past weekend Masato came to visit the Bay Area, which meant a departure from my usual reclusiveness on the weekends that I'm stuck up here. On Friday I met up with him, Sally, Andrew, Alex (Aleks?), and Mia (from CMU) for dinner and a tour of EA. Of course Masato had to show up on the coldest weekend of the year, which made for a dismal outside experience. Still, we ate sushi for dinner and then had a visit to EA's Redwood City office, which meant a good time was had by all. I must say that EA has an extremely nice working environment. With so many gaming systems, toys, and other distractions in the office, no wonder EA employees are famous for crunching; they must not get any work done the first couple months of a project. This was proven when even at midnight on a Friday night, we discovered that there were still employees there. Since our discovery of them meant they found us as well, they promptly joined us in playing Guitar Hero. If real life were a PS2 game, some of us would be bonafide rockstars. Sadly I'd be the person in the corner playing the triangle.

On Saturday, it was once again up to San Mateo for lunch, movie, snack, and dinner. This time it was with Masato, "I don't like Shanghainese food" Sally, Alex "The Russian that can't drink", and Ko "The Japanese that isn't Japanese." It seemed that the day was spent continuously eating, or at least Masato's complaints made it seem like that. He claimed he was constantly full and couldn't take the amount of food being served up. Nonetheless, I and everyone else felt the eating was quite moderate, therefore it must be that Californians simply eat more, which was Masato's conclusion as well. Harmony in opinion is a wonderful thing.

We watched Children of Men in the afternoon, which must be one of the most random directing I've seen in a long time. It was somewhat entertaining, but definitely not a five star movie. It also killed my plans for driving (terrorizing) the hills of the Peninsula, but there is always another day to drive, while Masato visiting is a momentuous occasion. We had good shabu shabu for dinner and afterwards went to a Japanese pub where Masato filled up on Japanese alcohol that he can't find anywhere in Pittsburgh. We also ate at this pub for lunch, but the tab for drinks was much higher than that spent on lunch, even though the time spent sitting there was about the same for each instance. The pub also had random Japanese TV and Sally and Ko both seemed a bit tipsy by the end of it. There were plans to go to San Francisco, but a combination of laziness, video game addicted nerdiness, and casual dress killed them.

Afterwards, it was over to Sally's apartment for wine (yes more alcohol) and From Beijing With Love. The movie was a shining example of Stephen Chow in his prime and Anita Yuen back when, well, when we still knew she existed. However, I think the Chinese speakers of the group (Sally and I) enjoyed the movie a lot more than the others, but overall it was agreed that the random shtick in the movie was pretty funny. Also, the movie settled the misconception that bringing a knife to a gunfight is a bad thing. Well, it might still be a bad thing for anyone else no named ling ling chat. Afterwards, Alex took Masato back to his hotel while Ko stayed at Sally's since he was in no condition to drive. I went home to sleep.

The next day I changed my transmission and differential oil (yes, again) with Royal Purple MaxGear oil. The shifting is now much better, a huge improvement over Redline. This time I tried to do the change while wearing latex gloves, which made the labor five times more fun. Who knew that latex with oil would be so slippery?