So This Is How it Feels

To win the lottery!!!

Ok I didn't, but it feels like it.  I don't even know how to act right now.  In shock. 



Thanks to everybody who joined forces and kept their fingers crossed.  

我得到了！
ah maa, ngo duk joh lah!
I did it! woooooooooooooooo

What next? plane tickets to ___, take family out, take family out, take friends out, take a time out (breathe) ,take friends out, take family out, rince rinse* repeat

*Note to self: Start reading and writing proper English again, you're going to need it. Fool.

2-Peat Baby!

The NBA regular season has just wrapped up, which means this years Fantasy BBall is over and who's the champ? Yours Truly! Man it feels great to win it two years in a row.  This year was much more fun for sure because:

1. It was way more engaging playing in a stacked 14 team league (54 vs 13 moves)
2. I knew everybody in the league this year, which made for better smack talking, pride stealing
3. Lastly, I get $crilla for winning :)

Now what am I gonna spend my free time on?  Yea.. seriously I spent way too much time on this damned game. But it's addicting man.  I didn't draft well, so I was scrounging for the best of the scraps all season.  Which was fun, especially when you find that hidden gem! But really, it doesn't do any good in the real world.  Whatevs.  I got my internet picture of a trophy to keep me warm at night
 

 What the F Yahoo, where's my '10 trophy??

Season Summary (warning fantasy nerd things ahead): 
Strategy: Just mad stats and researching.  Best time to find a gem?  Trades and injuries that give opportunities to the sleepers. 
Resources: 
Yahoo! Matt Buser Fantasy articles are solid. 

Rotoworld's Headlines are probably the most frequently updated on Player statuses
CBS Sports Fantasy Site: The Most Viewed tab shows the recent hottest players (most added, most dropped)
The Final Five: Out of 13 original draftees, only 5 remained:  Chauncey Billups, Tim Duncan, Kevin Durant, Mo Williams (??), Dorell Wright.
Best Draft Sleeper: Dorell Wright aka DWrightWay.  3's, rebounds, steals, assists, blocks he can do it all!
Mr. Reliable: Kevin Durant aka Durantulla aka Velvet Hoops of course.
Best Mid Season Pickup: Marcin Gortat aka Polish Hammer.  Damn he's gonna be hot next season. Great work ethic, consistent center.  72% FT's too
Late Season Stars: Jerryd Bayless and Jordan Crawford definitely beasted it for the last few weeks.  Couldn't have done it without them.
Pivotal Trade: JJ Hickson!  Thank you to Joey for taking Vince Carter off my hands for him.  I feel bad.  I definitely wouldn't have won without JJ getting enough boards to build Noahs Ark.
Notes for next season: Don't fall in love with a player (see Jamal Crawford, Roddy B, Shane Battier). and especially, Don't fall in love with an injured player (see Camby, Mo Williams, Yao Ming?!). 
Playoffs Recap:  

• 1st round faced off with my buddy H, it was close till the end.  I panicked cus I lost Camby and Duncan.  But my team pulled through (Jordan Crawford)
• 2nd round faced off with my buddy AL,  craaazy close. I won by 2 turnovers! If he had benched 1 or 2 players, he would have won. 
• Finals faced off against a guy named More Poop On You.  Crazy close again.  I won by a few steals and like .008% FG (thats probably like 5-8 shots difference).  He was dealt a bad hand with Boston sitting three of his allstars twice in the last week.  

So this win was pretty lucky.  but I'll take it! Good game to everyone that played, especially those that played for money.  I hope there will be more in the pot next year! 

Please no Lockout, and go Warriors.

Covert Letter

 This pic's dedicated to my fellow bloggers: Cora and Thunderlips

 
So I was looking up job postings today, and I noticed that there was this swell feller next to me with a red beanie.  I asked him is name: "Caz with a Z", he said.  He looked like an educated soul, so I asked if he would write my cover letter for me:

Dear Hiring Manager,

From the time of my birth some twenty-four years ago, it has been a dream built into the very code of my deoxyribonucleic acid to become an NX CAM Engineer.  As I grew from ovum to fetus and on to the natural breathing world, one thought emerged as a domineering guide in my future fate: "Be the best NX CAM Engineer in the world."  My parents, each Chinese rice farmers, instilled in me the necessary themes of our ancient ancestry: the Ninja arts of the Samurai, which read that one must be self-disciplined, stoic and great at NX CAM Engineering.  I have, in every breath and step I have taken in this life, lived to make true on the promise I made my dying mother as I fled my homeland.  As the cancer from the toxic sewage that Wal-Mart had dumped in our paddy-field ate away at her brain from the inside out, I told her, "I move America.  Become big star.  Make much money.  Bang hot America girl.  And I will become the greatest NX CAM Engineer that the world has ever seen before!"  My English has since improved, but my motivations and my desires have remained as steadfast as the migrant workers on whose backs the Chinese economy today grows.

Thank you for your consideration,

Lick McWick

The goal is to stand out right? I hope I get it!  Thanks Caz with a Z 

Camping and Casino Weekend

Who likes lists? I do.  I present to you, the highlights of my trip:

1. Dill and I hitched a ride with Andy and Lisa, but the car had no MP3 capabilities! What did we do? we serenaded the lovely couple with the roadtrip classics.  You've Lost That Loving Feeling, Baby On Board, Still of the Night, Copa Cabana (wish you could join us Henry).  It was fun and funny as hell, to hell with ipods.
2. Deciding to make a campfire without matches or lighters was very educational.  I learned some nifty techniques from Andy who took a wilderness survival class recently.  But most importantly, I learned to always bring matches with you cus if you had to build a fire from scratch you're SOL.
3. Finding out somebody was no longer in the tent.  and in his place was a puddle of puke.  I almost died laughing from the absurdness of the sight.  I'm sorry, that was probably one of the roughest night of his life... but i couldn't stop laughing. 
4. Prime Rib & Crab buffet at the local buffet.  'nuff sed.
5. Playing roulette for over an hour and only losing 40 bucks.  That's probably the best gambling session I've had in a casino and I'm not being sarcastic. Anyways the lady next to us who was going to "teach us how to play"  kept on shelling out hundreds.  She probably lost over a grand of her rich husband's treasure that night. 
6. Serenading Doug with You've Lost that Loving Feeling, Top Gun style way past the campsite's quiet hours. 
7. Watching Doug re-enact the Warriors scene waaaaay past quiet hours.  HAHA

Retro in the Metro: Home 4 July 4

3 days is not enough! I had a great time at home last weekend for Independence Day weekend. It's always good to be bask in the fog and see everyone (although I missed a few).

Friday Fireworks (and the incident)
T picked me up (thaaaaanks) from the airport to go straight to the Alameda County Fair.  We mucked (is that a word?) around with all the farm animals and it was pretty fun.  I believe I got urinated on by Babe, and shorts chewed up by a goat, but I got the last laugh because I've been eating bacon and lamb chops like crazy!! haha maybe not like crazy..  but we tried our first chocolate covered bacon! Sounds disgusting? It's actually pretty damned good, very bacon-maple bar like but too much of a good thing will make you kinda nauseous.  She kinda liked the chocolate more, and I kinda liked the bacon more.. so we ended up eating them separately haha.

Mmm... .delicious

beautiful shot! credits to T for the excellent iPhone-tography

The Iincident all started when I saw a dude carrying a Brian PBJ Time doll.  and I had to have one!  We saw this dart throwing game with the Brian PBJ and I walked right up.

Carnie: "First throw's free!"
I throw, and pop one
Carnie: "Keep on going and you win a prize!"
I throw, and pop one.  Throw and pop another."


Carnie: "read the sign, whats 5 and 5?"  (turns out, if you hit one, you pay 5 bucks per dart, if you dont its free, SCAM)
me: "huh? what do you mean? .....10?"
Carnie: "yep, you owe me 10, here's your prize"  
It's this crappy bear worth 25 cents.  I didn't want the stupid bear, I wanted Brian! so... he continued to con me until I paid 20 bucks for PBJ Brian *sigh*. 
T challenged the guy: "you do this all the time?"
Cockface: "yep, how else do I make 60k in 4 months" 


He made me look like a foolastnight... but I'm over it!  Brian is pretty awesome :)

Cou-Gary's Birthday
The rest of the weekend was pretty action packed, I don't think I even spent much time at home (wish I had more time!)  Jimmy's B-Day at Brunos and Gary's at Bliss Bar.

Highlights:
1.  Being very drunk after Jimmy's thang, getting forcefed a slice of pizza and all of a sudden it's morning.
2.  Gary coming back to the backroom (pretty awesome caged room) with a gash in his arm from falling on stairs!  It was still early in the night I think haha what a trooper.  Happy Birthday man
3.  Watching Gary's interactions with the older women at the bar haha, one of them gave him a little more than a bear hug?
4.  Xin!

Don't blame him, poor guy has to drive back to Hayward

Retrospect: SF Weddings!

I know, it's been over the month since I've posted, but it's because I was having too much fun back home.  Now I'm doing a couple of posts in retrospect to reminisce about the good times in June.  The main reasons I came back were because of two weddings.

1.  Xiao's wedding

Wow.  This was the first wedding I've been to without my family, and it was so beautiful.  I remember driving up the windy road through the vineyard hills and seeing the building appear ahead.  Wow.  The word Tuscany came to mind.  I didn't even remember what Tuscany was at the time!  But now that I googled it, I totally agree with what my subconscious blurted out.  I wish I took a picture coming down the road, but here's a close up shot i took.

 The wedding photographer (http://www.dannyphotostudio.com) took a much better picture (snagged from fb)

 Ain't it beautiful? The wedding ceremony was even more awesome.  It was outdoors and they had a harp!  Man the harp was my favorite part.  The harpist just seamlessly and subtly switched from wedding song to wedding song.  I felt like I was in a movie or something.  Actually my favorite part was when the flower girls came through, it was hilarious!  This little 3 year old girl comes in and instead of throwing the petals on the carpet, she tries to plant them into the dirt off to the side!  She totally stole the show and I wish I got it on video. 
 
2.  Leeme's Wedding

I was stoked for this wedding because a bunch of my closest friends were going too.  Originally my brother and I were supposed to play as a duet during the ceremony, but plans were changed.  Oh well, maybe next time! (taking reservations from friends, will play for food haha).  This wedding was also at a vineyard, so it was also very classy.  Hors d' oeuvres and open bar, what more can I say?  We all knew it was gonna be a kickass time, and everyone looked smashing in their get-ups (I heard someone was gonna come in jeans?).



Highlights:

1. The Decor: It was really nice inside the banquet room.  The lit flowery walls were a very nice touch, and it just made me feel classy.  The running slideshow was really touching, back-in-the-day pics are awesome!
   

2. Father-Daughter dance:  Man, I don't see myself as someone who'd cry at a wedding.  Maybe it was too much champagne? too much other misc. drinks?  But when Leeme and her dad started dancing, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  Tears started pooling up in my eyes, and I had to look away to compose myself. I'm feeling it a little even right now godamn!  I think it was the look papa Luong had in his eyes, pure joy and pride.  wah wah wah moving on. 
3. Food:  Leeme did a great job planning her wedding, and the dinner was delicious.  Family style, what a great idea!  Steak, Fish, mash potatoes, pasta, she sure knows what a man likes to eat.  Then there were tacos, sliders, and candy afterwards.   She's a genius.
4. Shenanigans:  I know from past weddings that the dance floor is always slow to start.  Not this time!  Readers listen, if you wanna have a poppin' wedding, you have to invite a guy named Hiep Dang.  Best part was watching him groovin' with the mature ladies haha, I bet it was the time of their life! 
5. More Shenanigans:  We were definitely the younger rowdier bunch.  The Mike! chants, the Lee-ME! chants, the Isn't She Lovely crooning (i think it happened like 3 times, I know theres a video out there somewhere).  Hilarious times. 
6. The After After Party: we all know what went down.  Smell my breath?

 Thanks for the invite buddy, I had a blast!

Who's next?!

(thanks Hen for the pics)

Return, View and Review

Return

I'm back! it's been a while because of this fixture design and manufacturing project that I've just officially finished. WOO! Boy, there was overtime, and weekend working, and major hurdles, but I'd rather not get into details.  This weekend was just what I needed to unwind and I didn't even know it was coming.  My uncle tells me on Thursday night that I have to drive him down to Eugene so that  he can drive my cousin's car back to Portland to get it Smogged.  Oregon has this crazy backwards rule where you have to get the car DEQ'ed (Smogged in Cali) in the city that it was registered in?  So instead of having it smogged conveniently in Eugene, we had to have two cars travel over 200 miles roundtrip to get it done.  Thats great for the environment...

View

But it was a blessing in disguise, because when I showed up in Eugene I found out that we were going to the beach on Saturday.  Woohoo! I forgot how long it's been since I've seen the Pacific Ocean.  I've taken living 1 mile from an ocean for granted.  This portion of the blog shall be in pictures.  I present to you:: Hobbit Beach (credits to LN and JY for their beautiful pics!)

Nice view of Hobbit Beach (left) We spent probably over 2 hours building our  manly wave protection wall hahah.  It was destroyed in 15 minutes.  Damn you nature! (right)

 We then proceed to fight back against nature by trying to destroy boulders.  BAMM!! ROCK SMASH! 

You always gotta do handstands at a beach.  Guess who's the gymnast and who's a good fer' nuthin' scalliwag?

 The Ferocious Five

 I draw the only thing that I know how to draw, Turtle Power!

 I get buried, and it was so comfortable I damn nearly fell asleep!  (feel free to caption-ize this pic)

Heh, thanks to Jenny's action picture taking skills, I had to make this.  He was merely helping me get all that sand off, don't judge. 

 Then we went into town and ate Prime Rib for $12.95.  Hell yes. 

Ahh it was a great Saturday at Hobbit Beach in(around?) Florence.  Thanks for bringing me guys!

What else is new? ah yess, I splurged and bought myself something nice and shiny.  So let's get on to the

Review
I always despised Bluetooth Headsets.  So hard to use!  The first one I got was this crappy cheap logitech one where I was never sure when it was on or connected or off.   It would drain out of batteries cus I left it on, and I probably spent a total of 9 minutes actually using it.  So since then, I stuck with the tried and true wired earpiece or the even more tried and true "cellphone held by wrenched neck" method.

But then I decided to look for one recently, because I had this Call of Duty session where there were 5+ buddies with headsets trying to talk to me, but I remained a mute.  It was like I wasn't even playing with them at all!  And plus, I was tired of the CHBWN method.  And plus, I'm going to be driving a heck of a lot and will need emergency calling to keep myself alert (like last time when I played "I Never" over the phone).  Anyways I scoured through the net seeing what the most recent new fangled reasonably priced Bluetooth headset was, and I came across this baby

Behold the Motorola H17

This thing is so cool! the microphone boom flips open and close to turn the headset on and off! Now I'll definitely know if its on or off, and it's super quick so that I can flip it open, put it on my ear and still be able to answer the incoming call.  Another big feature for this is that it can connect to 2 devices at once.   So imagine this: I'm playing COD with my friends, smack talking, yelling, having a grande time when suddenly my phone rings.  This headset will let me switch over to my phone with one touch of a button, and when I'm done I'm back in my game.  Yay!  Now I understand this use case scenario doesn't apply to a lot of you, but I really love the design of this headset.  Simple, elegant, and it just works.  Plus it charges in 15 minutes haha

So when I'm driving back to home, feel free to give me a call.  I won't end up in a ditch trying to fumble for my phone, I promise! (plus, thats illegal)

RIP CITY

I had another chill out weekend, and it was sunny to boot! (I don't know what that means, I just heard that somewhere and I hope I used it right).  Tiana and Julien were in town and we went to go yum cha at Wong's King.  It was so good, I haven't had good Fung Jaos (chicken feet) in a long time.  Julien never had them before and I was hoping he'd try them but he mentions that they look like a baby's hand O_O.  Haha, I see where he's coming from, but I still love my Fung Jaos.   They went to Saturday's Blazers-Suns playoff game and got me these!:

(thats the sound it makes, for real)

Now I can twang by myself in my living room!  (you're sick)  Ahh.. they're so lucky to be there, it was a great game too! With Brandon Roy making a surprise appearance and Blazers with a W. RIP CITY!!!

So a lot of people wonder why Portland is called Rip City.  Even my cousins didn't know.  So here it is:

From Wikipedia: 
"The term was coined by the team's play-by-play announcer Bill Schonely during a game against the Los Angeles Lakers on February 18, 1971, the Blazers' first season.^[13] In the days prior to the three-point field goal, Blazers' guard Jim Barnett took an ill-advised long distance shot that nonetheless went in, giving the new team hope for a victory against the powerful Lakers. Excited, Schonely exclaimed "Rip City! All right!" Schonely admits that he has no idea how he came up with the expression, but it became synonymous with the team and the city of Portland.^[14]" 

Interesting how Jim Barnett is now the announcer for the Warriors!  Also from Wikipedia, Portland is called Razorblade City....for its relatively high depression and sucide rates....wonk..wonk..wonk....

ANYWAYS, on Monday Nate called me up to go watch the Blazers game at Mission Theater (a bar theater).  It was awesome, packed with Blazers fans watching the game on a movie theater screen.  Man the 1st few minutes of this game was a blast! We came out in full fury and the Sun's were ice cold.  The theater was going crazy, it felt like I was at the game, so fun!  but.. the Blazers streak got stopped dead in its tracks with relentless foul calling the whole game.  The most memorable and ridiculous one is this one:



Watch it! Even if you don't watch basketball, its so ridiculous!

McMenamin's Mission Theater was a great time out.  They show movies here too and you get to drink, eat meals while you watch!  For those that don't know McMenamin's owns a bunch of restaurants and pubs in Oregon.  Nate and Emily told me that they even have a place called the Kennedy School, which is a ex-school turned into a hotel!  wowza.  another place on the "to check out" list

 What it kinda looks like in there.  Imagine a sea of red and black, with an endless supply of beer pitchers.(please excuse my poor photochopping skills)

Food Tour Weekend

This past weekend was very eventful.  I've been wanting to post about it, but I was waiting for Angel's pics to be uploaded.  That and I got lazy.  Julia and Angel decided to come up for their spring break to checkout the raved about food scene in Portland. Yay! Friends!  Dillon and David (happy bday) came up too, I was psyched. Now I got the chance to try food places with buddies.

Food Tour:
1.  The Big Egg:  Great breakfast egg sandwiches and wraps here.  Only 4-5 bucks!  I got "The Portlander" and it was this stacked egg sandwich.  The bread was thick and flavorful and the scrambled egg was perfectly fluffy.

2.  Voodoo Doughnuts:  After many people telling me to go, I finally got some!  They have two locations here and they are both RIDICULOUSLY packed.  We had to wait half and hour to get into the store.  We got a dozen of our own picks but they ran out of my long awaited Bacon Maple Bar.  I gotta say my favorite was the Portland Creme. mm..  Chocolate covered, custard filled.  The other ones were unique but sugary as hell.  The bubble gum flavored one actually tasted like bubblicious, blegh. 

3.  Potato Champion:  Known for making the best french fries ever.  I gotta say, they are pretty good.  Not big on french fries, so I won't be rushing back.  But I did invent my MusKetchRacha sauce here! Equal parts mustard, ketchup, and sriracha, with 3 drops of vinegar.  Stir until evenly orange.  It's damned good.

4.  Waffle Window:  Really delicious waffles.  You order from a window in the side of a building!  I got the strawberry cheesecake waffle and it was the best waffle I've ever eaten.

5.  Pok Pok:  Southeast Asian dishes.  This was our last stop of our tour.  This place is so popular that the wait was an hour long! So what did we do?  We ordered to go and ate in the car in front of the restaurant lol.  It was ghetto as hell, but we were hungry.  Hey, they had the top 10 best chicken wings in the US in 2007!

Devil's Point: At the nudie bar!  It was my first time at one, and it was a lot of fun!  This place is great, totally deserves the 4.5 stars on Yelp.  No cover, cheap beer, friendly staff (talking about the bouncer and bartenders).  Judging from the dive bar interior, I did not expect the girls to be very pretty.  But they were hot!, and a few were extremely talented on the pole.  We missed out on their fire dancers and Stripparaoke (Stippers + Karaoke on a Sunday night!)  So next time ya'll are in town, let's gooooooooooo.

[Sorry no pics haha]

Dollar Scholar:  The coolest dollar store I've been to.  It's on Hawthorne (I missed it the 1st time I went).  The guy is hilarious.  When I was about to walk into the store, he starts throwing sticky blobs at the door. haha I was like wtf.  I go in, and he gives me a turn while other people try to walk in.  He lets you play with anything in there, and the best thing is everything is a dollar or less.  When I left, he gave me a flier for a Pirate Treasure Hunt on 4/18 on Hawthorne Blvd.  Damn! my costume is in SF

POGS HAHA

Powell's City of Books: It is definitely a city of books.  You can get lost in here.  Great place if you love books! Me not so much.  So Dillon and I mischievously browsed the Erotica section.  Point, Laugh, Giggle, "what the??"  I spot the name 'Chadwick' 

Places we didn't get to hit up:  Ground Kontrol Barcade,  Glowing Greens (black light indoor mini-golf!), Pho Le (Vietnamese Sandwiches and Pho from a cart!, Koi Fusion. 

It was fun to go exploring with friends, despite the gloomy rainy weather.  I bet it'd be an even better time if it was sunny.

Thanks Angel for the pictures.  In return, I will use your Yelp posts as links.

Hiatus Over! Call of Duty

My Call of Duty

P1: Hi, My Name is LickWick, and I'm a MW2-holic
P2: You're in a safe place LickWick, but we don't use gamertags here.
P1: oh I'm sorry.. I'll try again.  Hi, My Name is....uh.. oh yea, Chunlick, and I'm a MW2-holic. 
All: Hi Chunlick!

Dear World, 

I'm back at blogspot! It's been a while, and we can all lay blame to CoD: Modern Warfare 2.  It all started two weeks ago, when I was playing at Gary's house.  I was horrible, always dying 5x more than I was killing.  But the Wu-man starts giving me these pro-tips (he's godly) and I come back to Portland and straight up start killin' foos left and right!  That's when I got hooked @_@. POWPOWPOW

I've been playing almost every night, bleeding away my hours like they were nothing! It was crazy, and I didn't care! Now, 40 levels later I look back and see all the destruction (in real life) I've caused.  I flashbanged this blog, jammed my online friends RADAR, and took an RPG to my own personal hygiene.  (It's not too bad, I just accidentally skipped brushing my teeth ONCE...is that bad?)  So now I'm putting a limit to how much I play.  I'm feeling the urge to play at this very moment.  But I can't neglect this blog, my friends, and my teeth forever!

Sincerely,
LickWick

PS3: In all honesty, the recent global shutdown of fatPS3's may have caused me to stop playing momentarily.  I have a slimPS3, but today, all these highlevel fatPS3er's came on PSN to binge play and shot the hell out of me.  I had a 0-9 record.  I rage quitted.  The end.

Same Question, Different Approach

These were all from conversations today. 

Friend #1: "meet any new cool kids yet?"
Friend #2: "you meet anyone new yet?"
Friend #3: "HEY PLAYA. HAVE YOU SEEN ANY FINE HONEYS UP IN DEM PARTS?"

HAHAHAHA man that last one.  But it was a weird coincidence that they all asked on the same day.

Can you guess who said what?
here's your word bank to choose from "Alex, Andy, Andrew, Brian, Gary, Henry, Morgan"

SF ROX

Even though it was a short time I had in SF before I had to leave for Portland, I had tons of fun.  I’m very grateful and happy that we all got together and hung out.  I think I’m still riding on some of the high from the last two weeks!  Good times, Great city, Best of friends yay-uh:

• Zoo (the asian look, chris-anju incident, and seals not sea lions!)
• Legion of Honor (pretty random)
• Snowboarding (beautiful view, cracked phone screen, steaming pile of feet)
• Dad’s Dinner + CS LAN (so fun, then less fun when Andy was awping)
• Lot’s of Pho and Burrito in between.  (I acknowledge Gordo’s now, but Chino’s has crack in it)
• Warriors Vs. Bucks (loss) with Drew – but lower level seats! (fat dude getting angry haha, dude made 3 pointer for year of free tri-tip)
• 1st Live Hockey Game – Thanks LexLai, dude it’s way more fun watching in the stadium.  I like hockey more now.  But there’s no hockey here.  How far is Vancouver?

Last Night Out

Had a blast that night! Like going out with a bang.  Planned on 1-3 drinks, ended up drinking 6.

Pics:

Good lookin' bunch

This was awesome, I read the box when I got home and it was hilarious haha.

Tech: Nerd Disaster Averted

Phewf!

What a sweat I had yesterday.  I was supposed to help fix Angel's slow laptop so she dropped it off in the morning.  I assumed that she had backed up everything already because she said she had an external at home.  So I proceeded to re-install her Windows.

1. Insert CD
2. Enter Boot Menu to select CD
3. Quick Format
4. Install!

Easy as 1,2, 3, 4.

I was happy because everything went smoothly.  The key from her Dell sticker worked, no activation problems and most importantly her laptop was quick now! That is.. until she came to pick it up.

A: "Hey it looks different"
C: "yep! I just reformatted it, its quick now!"
A: "oh...cool... you backed up all my stuff right?"
C: "..........uh......"
A: "NO WAY You're Kidding Right!?"
C: "nope, i thought you backed it up"
A: "OMG my life is flashing before my eyes"
C: "OH SHIT" (facepalm)
A: "my pictures! my music! my documents! good thing I didn't start on my essay yet!"

(A runs away distraught and lamenting)

Good thing for technology, I didn't panic.  I had my trusty usb-SATA/IDE adapter kit and an awesome 6mb program that I found earlier: EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Pro 4.3.6

Within a couple hours, we were able to recover most of her pictures, music, and documents even though the drive was quick-formatted and a new OS was installed.  YAY!  I remember hearing that it usually costs hundreds of dollars to recover lost data.  Being able to do it myself was sweeeeet.  I even found files that I deleted earlier in the recycle bin! (Oh the power) Technology is beautiful

Life is like a box of chocolates

You never know what you're gonna get.  Or where you're going to wind up. 

Yea I was gonna do a New Years post about the great times of 2009, but its 4AM now and I won't do 2009 justice if I try to power through.  So this will be an announcement of sorts of the huge change in 2010 that I'm going through.  It's kind of a new chapter in life.

My uncle has asked me to help out on his new design project and business venture.  Pretty exciting!  But the thing is, I'll be spending most of my time in Portland.  Wow, I've been in the Bay Area my whole life so this will be a complete lifestyle change.  All of my closest friends are here in the city, and it's going to be tough being away from everybody. 

But I've made my decision.  This project we're doing is something I'mvery interested in.  It involves implementing green technology and will really help the environment. (I'm not gonna post the details online, but you can ask me in the real world!) It's going to take a lot of hard work and dedication because it will certainly be challenging.  I'm going to be able to do a lot of engineering design which is what I really like doing.  So I guess this is somewhat of a calling. 

I've been telling people little by little, and I'm happy all my friends have been supportive.  There's some suggestions of a going away party, but I really don't want that.  Those things are way too emotional.  For these two weeks in SF, I'd just wanna hang out with my friends and chill.  Portland's not far away, and I'll definitely be back a few times every year.  But I'm gonna miss everybody and the fun of the citay by the bay.

From: San Francisco

To: Portland

2009 was all play and pretty much no work :P heh

2010 will be my productive year!  It's time to make something of myself. 

Goooooodnight!