UltraCrepidate

I never understood the amount of influence I have upon the red head until the arguments for and against are presented to me in juicy details following her watery-eyed declaration.

“Peter, are you asleep?”

“Huh?”

“Are you asleep?”

“I guess saying yes won’t change your mind?”

“X and I broke up.”

At which point a succession of ideas rushed into my mind’s gate, forcing me wide awake at the implication of this declaration. A flash back of an episode of “Felicity” which I watched during my forsh years with fellow floor mates suddenly seemed less like a TV show during that instance. Like an obedient viewer of the mass media, I promptly replied with the same line:

“Hold on, let me wake up a bit… “

Shit. Oh oh. Hmmm. Nah. Shit

Shit, I am not ready for this. Oh oh, I am going to be her venting machine for the next I don’t know how long. Hmmm, should I be her rebound? Nah, I used to be interested, but not anymore. Shit, that means I have to be stuck listening to her everyday from now on.

After making sure that I’d have no regret about not taking advantage of the situation, I proceeded on listening and understanding why they broke up. To my horror, she echoed a great number of points that I’ve revealed to her over the past 2 years. This is when it dawned on me that I am partly responsible for the questions that she used as argument that her relationship is going somewhere. I wished that Jo was here and promptly sent an email telling her so. There are some situations where the possibility of a rebound relationship happening became too great that a girl’s company is better positioned to guide her during buts of drunken stupors, slap jacks and affectionate rubbing.

Jo and I both predicted that they’d break up. When everyone think they’d do it soon, I guessed 1.5 years and initiated by the red head. Which was off by about 6 months. Correct me if I remembered this wrong. Even with this prediction, I still believe that they’d be a good couple together, because the only factor of the breakup, is her illusion of her need to have something better.

So after falling unconscious on my bed after a hard day of work, I’d spend an additional an hour a day listening, debating, discussing with her numerous issues that she decides to bring up. All the while enforcing X’s qualities. Not because I am a good fellow. I am no saint and I only want to escape and proceed on with my projects. For I am not learning anything new from her during our conversations anymore.

Today, I can finally relax…

There are 448 emails sitting in my inbox.
10 of which from today.
2 phone calls of complicated integration problems on average a day.
I handle 28 states in US, in which 68% of the population resides.
New York, Florida, Texas, Washington
52 folders for different universities and system integrators
4 OEMS
2 ongoing applications in development
Make that 3, someone decided to enter the DARPA challenge.
I am in charge of 4 different computers
The first one is a dual monitor bare bone PC that I use to connect to the 3 others
The second one is a 4 display system with 2 CRT and 2 medical monochrome True 10 bit LCD monitor.
The third one is a 64bit computer that has a few $10000 boards in it to do vision processing. Lots of wires
The fourth is a stand alone embedded system

I suppose freaking out and feeling rougher than usual is a more than accepted behavior at this moment.

An email reminder from my past self that I set through some online service, the password of which I’ve long forgotten, have put me back in my seat about the amount of control I am exerting on my circle of influence. “Lose control of yourself”.

It was set during a time when I realized a flaw in the way I go about achieving my goals. I’ve always been a chaser, not taking into consideration about tact and timing. I’d wake up one day, think up of something to do and proceed on accomplishing it that day no matter what. The result of which are sometimes devastating as the failure to consider other’s timing and my own timing often resulted in some hurt feelings, insensitivity and too much persistence.

I can’t say that it’s the wrong way of tackling life, because I would definitely have abandoned certain things if I was sensitive to my surrounding.

To my dismay, I discovered the power of pulling back: the human nature which dictates our valuation of worth. The emotional worth of a subject of interest is a factor of the amount of effort dedicated to the acquisition of said subject.

So what did I do? I cast out a web, wait patiently while refining what I am going to do once the events and timing are just right so the action is swift and decisive. I still get the same chance as everyone else, I am just more adept at handling it when it happens in my favor.

Which brings me back to the question of losing control. The achievements have lost their appeal, because the predictions have foretold the possible outcomes to me. Or I have locked myself in to the predefined outcome, leading to less variety in the events.

I don’t want to write down anything at the moment for the simple fact that things are on the move and I can feel the change happening. The all mighty has been known to have a laugh on the expenses of its subjects and this feels like one of them.

A choice has to be made and there will be happiness and regrets to come.

A simple request to the red headed vixen was answered by an avalanche of angry shouts. I’ve become more and more wary of having to turn on my human management skill with this particular person that the investor inside unconsciously made a few calculation on the benefits of keeping this relationship alive. I don’t want to be cold hearted logical, but the fact of the matter is, that it happened and a subconscious choice was made. I cannot ignore this part of me and decide to try and write it down for my conscious.

“Can you buy some toilet paper tomorrow?”
“Maybe, maybe not”
“What do you mean maybe?”
“If I feel like it, maybe, if not, maybe not”
“Well, can you make sure? Because…”
“NO! I don’t have anything to make sure!”
“What about a notebook?”
*Bangs door close

The benefit of the red head’s presence around me are few but important. She is probably the negative of me if I am the positive of a picture. Emotional, irrational, temperamental, messy with a weak sub type personality. That about sums her up. Her outbreak of anger are mostly caused by direct vocal command due to a past abusive relationship. Control can be easier established by making her feel she’s at fault or by simple leading through doing things together.

She teaches me how to look at the world from a pure emotional sense while polishing my skills at managing people and subtle language manipulations. I teach her how to be organized and understanding ways to bring her subconscious to the light.

I guess it is with certain surprise when I came home the next day discovering that not only do we have plenty of toilet papers, the red head also restocked everything else. Something iffy is going on, but I’ve been too tired to ponder that and proceeded to fall unconscious in my bed till the next morning.

“Are you still asleep?”
“huh?”

To be continued…

Ever so often, I catch glimpses of dancesport techniques from one of the strippers performing on stage. It’s like a bad after taste you get after smoking your first cigarette. I can’t help but stare.

A revulsion at the corruption of the art. A sense of disbelief that they’d be desperate enough to be showing up here. But between rent ($500), food ($300), lessons ($400), Competitions ($100) and costumes ($100) a month. Who am I to point fingers at someone who has dedicated their life to the art.
Though the enjoyment on their face while performing solo dances for customers certainly made me reconsider whether they are in such predicament at all. I failed to take into account that they might be enjoying this. Looking back now, I have to laugh at myself because I certainly felt like “Knight in shining armor” wanting to save a “Damsel in distress.”. Some of us actually enjoys the drama of a rotten situation.

I was able to make light of the whole situation and lay back to be an observer due to some funny interaction between Mark and financee. It was their first time at a strip club together. Very cute. Later, we discussed about this particular sensation of being eyed on by a bunch of lioness stalking for a fresh kill. Eye contact is very dangerous and it was only the expertise of Adrianne that saved us out from insane amount of unplanned spendings on lap dances.
This is as close as I can get to understand what being a girl is like at a club or bar.

Having no money to go anywhere, we all went crazy with dressing up and snapping pictures of each other. It feels great to be in my tail suit again with a slightly different atmosphere. A corset is often seen as a painful beauty piece that represent men’s suppression of women. What most people don’t know, is that donning a tail suit is as painful as the piece their ladies have to wear. I can still remember vividly, my partner’s evil smirk when she ties my neck collar to lock my neck in an elongated position. Ever wondered why those traditional high class ladies and gentlemen all looked so graceful? Because they can’t move any joints.

The pictures are heavily photoshopped. I used the glow technique on them. Then somehow stumbled into something that you see on the new layout. I originally intended for the layout to be red. Knowing that it’s a hard color to pull off without burning everyone’s retina. Then, I accepted the fact that maybe, just maybe, I am not so great with colors to be able to pull it off. You can see for yourself and form your own opinion below. I like this black and white layout right now. It conforms with my minimalist way of living. Add to that a pic of me in tail suit holding my black cat Lethe. It about sums up what I want to say to anyone on the first meeting.

As I stood in line surrounded by my group of friends with disco lights blaring around me. I get a sudden sense of bewilderment I would’ve had if I were still the 10-year-old boy who lived in Taiwan. I guess, back then, I’d never have imagined to be surrounded by Taiwanese who can only speak French or pale skinned barbarians with golden manes and their exquisite tall nosed counterparts with gray bluish eyes.

Yes indeed, that would’ve been frightening and uncomfortable if I never left the place I was born. Truth is, I think we are all as startled to be mashed together. After the initial awkward moment of communication, we settled down to English as the common language.

This is my first attempt at trying to bring my different social circles together. Since most of us play games at some time in our lives, I thought a gaming convention like Arcadia could act as a catalyst to ease the transition. I don’t know what to expect, or how to help the mingling process, so I resolved to just let everything be as I did in other situations. I’ve learned that often, the hardest path, and often the right one, is to let everything be without interfering. Human interactions are hard to control.

So with that in mind, I decided to brush away the disappointments of the day, which included the rain, heavy traffic and typical chick behaviors of being half an hour late, to focus on the star of the show: Nintendo Wii.

You see, I’ve been wondering about my investment in Nintendo Wii for a while, because I believe the idea will revolutionize gaming. However, I can never be sure until I tryout the service/product myself. If you are not a gamer, I suggest you skip the rest of this post.

Nintendo Wii gameplay review moved to my review site. Beware of ads and commercials. Wii Gameplay

Wii’s hype generated a lineup of 1 hour to get into the convention, another hour to wait in line to get into the Wii area and about half an hour in line to get to each game that are offered. I have to admit that this is not the actual figure, as I had to use connections and sometimes just plain assholeness to cut the waiting time by half.

I haven’t been to anywhere close to a gaming gathering of any sort for a while, so I was surprised to see the amount of people that showed up and the number of hot chicks that were in the convention. Girl and gaming didn’t mix in the generation that I was born. They weren’t hired by the organizer or anything, but rather, they are your average day to day high school kids hanging out and having fun with their guy friends. I wondered if they still call them geeks in school.

My cell phone couldn’t capture any images worth your time under the low lighting condition, but it isn’t important, as the graphic isn’t that stunning. I had initially thought that the innovative controller which will allow players unlimited movement in freedom will allow me to overlook this small blunder, but later on as I re-examined my own feelings at Microsoft’s Gears of war booth, I can’t help but feel a sense of “Wow” at the graphics. Wow that Microsoft has outdone itself and Wow that PS3 will be better than this.

First game up is Zelda Twilight Princess. I figured that I should get it over with the longest line while everyone’s still asleep in their bed at 10AM. The graphics is ok, comparable to that of a PS2 and the control was a big disappointment since it didn’t make use of the gyroscope or IR sensor much except to jump from predestined rooftop to another. It still feels like I am just playing ocarina of time with a controller that’s broken up in two.

Next up is Wii sport’s boxing game. It looks impressive as I gazed on in the line up, waiting the time when I can beat my friend to a pulp in cyberspace. Figuring that my past training in martial arts will help me dodge and attack. The reality is quite disappointing. It seems like the Wii-mote can only sense a change of direction and has a really hard time distinguishing the speed at which I punch and the direction that my punch is going. I spend the whole time trying to make my character do a right hook punch. I tried the proper boxing motion, slower/faster motion, moving the controller left and right in the air and just plain waiving it around in circles. The only thing that my character did on the screen was to throw straight punches at the same speed.

Wii tennis was another disappointment; because the only time you have to do anything is when the ball gets near the racket. You make an attempt at swinging the bat and voila, the game plays itself. Nope, you can’t do any curve balls.

There was another game that showcased the numerous capabilities of the Wiimote through a series of mini games. I was quite impressed by how precise the controller detected the movements. However, I later found out upon dissecting the experience against that of the boxing game and found out why.

Reading through the Internet, you can easily learn that the wii mote has a gyroscope and an IR sensor array. The gyroscope is perfect at detecting tilt while the IR sensor array will be able to determine where the remote is pointing. The wii mote is especially good at these two tasks, but it does not equate to a perfect triangulation of the controller in space. Nor is it a good device to detect motion. Which is why you can see this controller excel at car games or shooting games.

Overall, my excitement at having a new way to interact with games dimmed by quite a lot. I was expecting a game console that can help me in improving my tennis skill, or to help me train my reflexes in sword fighting. I was expecting it to be something of a “Brain Age” game for the motor skills. Instead, they simply moved button smashing to arm waving.

Disclaimer: I own Nintendo stocks. I do not own Sony or Microsoft stocks.

There’s a time in each person’s life when they come face to face with this very problem. That of a flat tire while driving on the highway. The piss rain, stolen credit card and $1 in the pocket are just side dressings to the soon to be eventful day.

Unfortunately, the stable design of a Toyota took away most of the fun associated with flat tires. That includes and is not limited to: swirling uncontrollably, loud screeching noises, screaming driver with a big “I am fucked” expression and of course your favorite crash and explosion. The reality is a solemn faced me, thinking about how happy my life is right now and how I have this eerie feeling that it is just too perfect to be true. I barely noticed anything wrong.

The car skid a little when I turned a curve, resembling the handling of ZR-350 in GTA San Andreas. Oh goody, my first flat tire, but no worries, I think I know what to do. Propped up the car, took out the replacement and feeling smug about being able to do this under 10 minutes. Then I noticed that the wheel nuts are too big for the wrench. It is at this moment that the last string snapped on in my otherwise easy to amuse temper and I deem it necessary to seek comfort in more primitive behaviors. “YOU BITCH”.

First of all, thank you for visiting. The site has grown quite a lot since I started, although most of you still prefer to lurk around the bushes, I enjoy this non-relationship with those of you who deem my writing worthy for 1~3 minutes of your life.

With this realization, I understand that I need to take blogging more seriously and think for the comfort of the readers as well. So to that effect, I am going to adapt a more consistent writing schedule. It’s going to be twice a week with the majority of the updates happening around Monday and Thursday.

Upon oversaturating my tolerance for computers, my body rebelled and dragged me out to numerous events that a normal young adult like me indulges in to replenish my reservoir of human contacts and conversations. Then the snowball effect proceeded on honing skills in arts.

What you are seeing is the result of a flash drawing game. This is a fun game I play to train my drawing skills. Basically, I sit on the second floor of Chapters with a cup of second cup café americano and proceed to draw the strangers crossing the street beneath. The game is to improve my capability to instantly recognize the most prominent features and bring it to life in the least amount of line possible. The process involves picking out an interesting target, spend 5 seconds to study the features, close my eyes and go over the feature in my mind then draw it out on paper without looking again.

A party, several interesting conversations, games and food later, I finally satisfied my appetitive for other parts of life to allow myself to continue the 3d animation project. So far, 3 hours of work resulted in 5 seconds of animation. This is a snapshot of one of the poses between movements. Please note that the model is naked so use your own discretion. I took a shot from the back in case any of you accidently clicked on it at an inappropriate time. As much as I’d like to add clothing and hair to the model, they simply slow down the total design time too much at this point as the additional physics and particle rendering will triple the cpu time required. 1 frame = 5 min right now… I need a new computer.

When I decided to court the stock market in all my fanfare, I imagined a slow and smooth ride to some extra earning. What I didn’t expect is a spiraling dark path against an ancient foe. To sleep with la femme fatale, requires the coming to terms with my own barbaric desires.

La chase, is the most fundamental behavior of human, or any animal still procreating on earth if you think about it. Got a dog or a cat? Stand still, then run away from it, it will follow. The emotions that overwhelm you when a limited supply of hot goods is slowly dripping away from you can lead to an explosion of unreasonable needs.
Yet, once you fucked with the desire to chase, there’s still the need to kiss Greed. Greed is the one that locks you up in chains and urges you on to take on more beating, to endure more pain as the prices soar to a record high. It speaks to you in challenging tones in order to appease your competitive nature to maximize your desire to perform. Giving you a false sense of trust that are reciprocated by the hightened sense of umph… Until the codeword is given and everyone came crashing back down to reality.

Meet Hope at last, the gaisha with a poison hairpin who whispers and promises you all sort of possibilities that can never be to dim your pain and wash away your tears. Although I’ve always regarded money as anything but important in my life. I feel sorry for myself at having these three powerful sources swirling within me. It is transforming me in ways I didn’t expect and affecting the way I feel, live and interact with people. I can only hope that I will emerge with a mastery over these fundamentals instead of becoming a slave to their whims. Think you are tough enough? Put all your savings in a stock, watch it go down and examine how you feel. (By the way, that’s a stupid idea)