sjamesho.v3

i have been rather lax in my posting lately because i’ve been a little busier than usual. but before i go into the bulk of my busyness i’d like to show you something that i don’t really see a whole lot… well at least to this extreme.

if you look at the “Analysis display:” bar you’ll immediately notice the amount of red which the legend below tells you that it stands for “Fragmented files”. my friends, if you have an older computer… and when i say “older” i mean 2-3 plus years old… and you’re a bit annoyed that its a bit slow, try defragging your hard drive. of course, if you have spyware and other nefarious crapware on your computer it’ll take some doing to clean it out. so if you’re not up to tackling that sort of thing, a defrag after 2-3 years of not defragging will help make it a bit snapper and turn the display bar to a nice blue. in this example, the laptop was about 5-6 years old and i would assume that there was no defragging during that time.

ok… over the last two and half weeks, i’ve been operating the video camera at a Bible seminar that my church, being one of the sponsors, is participating in.

the seminar is being held at the Heritage Theatre in Campbell five nights a week. we finish between 8:45-9:00p and depending on who hangs around to visit or what needs to be taken down and stored, i would leave the place anytime between 9:30-10:00p. so by the time i get back home, i’m in the mood for getting some rest as opposed to making a blog entry which is why there hasn’t been one in a while.

i typically get there between 6:30-7:00p to make sure the video camera equipment is set up right and the audio is being directed into the camera accordingly. but usually at that time there is still light out which the lighted balls on the water feature outside the theatre aren’t lighted yet. so here’s what they look like lighted.

and this is what the theatre looks like on the inside. i had left my camera in my car before the meeting started, so this is shot is post-meeting. the meetings will conclude on 07 october which will come up pretty fast. when meetings like these start it seems like its so long, but now that’s its a little more than half way done it doesn’t seem long enough.

there’s more stories to tell, but i’m tired so you’ll have to wait. but hopefully, God-willing, you won’t have to wait too long till my next post.

today, after having lunch at Bombay Garden with my parents and a trip to Costco, we stopped of at Lion Supermarket to get some asian groceries. about 10 minutes of browsing for the stuff that we needed, i saw my mom on the other end of the aisle and caught up with her and her shopping cart. i discovered as she had before me two tables of moon cake boxes of all varieties and combinations. the moon festival is always on the 15th day of the 8th month by the Chinese lunar calendar. confused? well, its 06 October for this year.

there was one nice packaging that wasn’t taped shut so i opened it up and took this picture of the moon cake with lotus seed paste with egg yolk – not my favorite but passable if there was none around.

as i was about to close the lid i saw this printed on the underside. now my Chinese reading ability is pathetic but i want you to notice what you can recognize in alphanumeric lettering – “ISO 9001:2000″. having had clients in the tech industry, i’ve learned that ISO certification is way of managaing quality. its used throughout the tech industry but using it for food? what the heck? this amuses me to no end. if you’re interested in understanding why i’m so tickled you can check out the International Organization for Standardization for information regarding the ISO 9001:2000. if you can’t be bothered, well i won’t be bothered.

have you ever waited for a good deal and then after you saw it and bought it you later saw a better deal? of course you have. that’s just the way it is… whatever “it” is. after playing Half-Life 2: Episode One, i’ve had the hankering to play something new but there wasn’t anything that i was interested in. that is until Prey. i just happened to miss picking it up at a discounted price the week of its release so i figured that i’d wait longer till it came back down… although i wasn’t going to wait a year out till it drops even more. i found a coupon and used it last friday and was looking forward to installing and playing it on saturday night. but when i got back home, i found that another store had a price $20 off the regular price which was a lot less than i had paid for it with the coupon. thankfully i didn’t open the packaging yet. so i went to pick it up at the other store and plan to return my first purchase and get a refund.

paying a little extra for the DVD-ROM version of the game is well worth it to avoid multiple CD-ROMs.

plus, the DVD-ROM version is a “limited collector’s edition” which comes in a shiny tin case. is this bling or what?

neglecting to read the outer cover to view the contents of this edition, i was pleasantly surprised by the contents as i opened the case.

i would have been totally thrilled for the pewter figurines of the “Hunter” and “Tommy”, but i treat them as dust-collecting items.

so i pull them out for a little close-up camera action and then away they go… back into the case from whence they came!

it also came with The Art of Prey illustrated booklet which, being an artist myself, i appreciated very much. i had other things to do on saturday night so i was only able to install it and had about 10 minutes of play time before bed. as busy as i am, i wonder how long it’ll take me to go through it.

my cousin Jannine and her boyfriend Nathan came up on wednesday and stopped at our place for a couple of days on their way up to Sebastapol to their friends wedding. they arrived after dinner so we just chatted for an hour or two before turning in. i had to work on thursday and Jannine and Nathan wanted to visit Carmel so we ended up having dinner at Lu Lai Vegetarian Restaurant for Chinese cuisine.

if i remember correctly, we had sweet and sour pork, garlic pepper tofu, and string beans with pickled radish. the surprising thing about the string beans was that we had overlooked the little chili icon next to it and although i was fine with it, it turned out to be rather spicy for Jannine.

the odd thing about my palette is that after eating Chinese food, i have to have either an ice cream or pearl tea chaser. so we headed to Tapioca Express for some pearl tea action. my go-to flavor is passion fruit because i get rather confused with their ginormous selection of flavors and combinations. Nathan is across from me sipping his mango pearl tea.

we got back and Jannine printed out internet directions for the rest of their trip and then we watched Toy Story and a bit of old Alias episodes which Jannine’s sister Shelley let me borrow since i missed the first two seasons.

sleeping in on friday, we woke up and got ready and went for lunch at Macaroni Grill where i had my eggplant parmagiana.

Jannine, Nathan, and i at Macaroni Grill – where we not only feasted on tasty Italian food but also on crazy stories of weddings and worship service peculiarities.

after lunch i said goodbye to Jannine and Nathan as they headed from Macaroni Grill to SF to visit and stay with a friend of theirs before the wedding. i then took the opportunity of a sale and bought a new chair but this one isn’t it. it is very evident that this is old and busted.

as you can see its rather worn and torn up after five years of supporting my big fat butt. the padding even collapses to the supporting board underneath making my posterior rather uncomfortable.

so here’s the new hotness in the form of a brand new shiny leather chair which i’m hoping will take me and butt for the next five years. the integrity of the padding is firm but comfortable… so much so that its like giving my butt the spa treatment compared to the old one. goodbye old and busted!