EBC'in it, and P-Dizzin' it

Today was awesssssssssssome.

Instead of schlepping all the way back to Oakland last night, Chris slept on my air mattress, which again was amazing because he offered to drive us all to Emeryville instead of us having to take the BART and the bus. Sweet.

We headed to EBC for an 'ol time brunch like the good 'ol intern days. It was really fun. We had some of the old greasy food which was great, and saw some of our favourite waitresses there. They were so happy to see us and it was just really awesome to be there at our old hangout. Then I finaaaaaaaaally got my new hard drive!!!! That is soooo awesome, and I've been planning on getting it for so long. It's become a necessity lately (since now I have 150Mb free on my computer), and I really need to do some backups of my files and especially my photos. Good stuff.

Then off to Pixar to hang out with Sarah and make sure our sweet, special hidden Pixar Intern-created hideaway room was still intact (and it is, and it rocks)... good stuff. Signed the wall in there again with today's date!! Awesome.

Then dropped off Kurt and hung out with Chris a bit, and then Sarah and I headed back across the bay. There were several more ridiculous adventures along the way, including hitting a pothole on the corner of Fell St and Laguna St in San Francisco. The funniest thing was that as we hit it, the front left hubcap of Sarah's car flew off. We stopped and parked and went looking for the hubcap - the guy Sarah got it from said, "I said to my buddy, as soon as you turned the corner... oh, her hubcap's gonna fly off for sure"... apparently this corner is notorious for flying hubcaps?!??! I guess this specific pothole is perfectly sized to send your hubcaps flying. Hilarious. We got the hubcap back on and then headed back to Haight St. Chilled for a bit, then had some random left over food and chatted a bunch, great times. It was great to catch up with Sarah and everyone else too so much over this weekend, I haven't seen them in quite a while, so it sure was nice to spend some quality time with my old friends. Awesome.


Elona and Chris at EBC


Phelpssssssin' ittttttttt!!


Alex and Elona workin' the EBC


Kurt and Sarah rockin' the P-Dizz


Wandering around at Pixar for 'ol times sake


These are the load lifters that the walkers in Star Wars were based on!!!!!


Kurt and I at Chris's place


Sarah in a sunglassy mood


Chris and Kurt


Sarah in a pensive mood


Sarah after we got the hubcap back on the car


Super cooool van we saw taking photos of the street, Google Maps style


My awesome new hard drive, sooooooo awesome

Party, then Haight St

So totally last minute plan, but it was the best idea so that we could get all the people together from across town, and then head out somewhere afterwards. Good times. We had a few drinks here and thankfully I had a few different things here so we had something to serve people. We chilled for a couple of hours which was awesome, and then headed out to a bar on Haight St, which played really good music, and everyone had a great time. Awesome!! It was a bit of a Sept-Dec 2006 Pixar intern reunion, Sarah, Bill, Yisheng, Kurt, Me... awesome times.


Chris and Jessica


Seth, Eric and Kurt


Jess's cool new purple hair, awesome


Me and Frizzle-Grizzle


Yisheng rockin' out


Me looking like I am running a corporate meeting with Bill and Sarah


Dec 2006 Pixar Intern reunion awesomness


Workin' it


Jess and Eric in iPhone web browser land


Another serious looking conversation for a party


Josh looking a bit hip hop


Kurt playing with silly putty


More silly putty fascination


Sarah in my siiiiiiiiiiiick Marc Ecko Star Wars hoodie!!!


Me protecting Sarah from the elements

Blue Bottle Cafe, Mel's Drive In

Saturday morning Chris was looking at a place in the city near me, and came to pick us up and drove us downtown. That was fun and we dropped off the car and did a bunch of fun random stuff. I mailed an Indiana Jones hat to my friend Andrew (promised him a little Indiana Jones belated Christmas present), then headed to the fancy new Blue Bottle Cafe in San Francisco. I saw that reaaaaally cool Siphon Coffee Machine that was mentioned in that New York Times article I posted last week. Chris and Kurt both hate coffee (why did I take them to a coffee place again?!?!) They got Apple Juice and I got a Cappuccino. I'll have to go there again soon with some people so I can try this Siphon Coffee, sounds awessssssome.

Then off to the Apple Store to play with the new Apple MacBook Air laptop, which was in fact ridiculously thin and slick. Pretty awesome stuff. We played around with some iPhones too and that was fun. Then headed to Mel's Drive In to meet up with Jess and Josh. Then to a Toy Store, and back to my apartment to relax... because I was throwing a party?!?! Yep.


Kurt making a list of all the people he needed to get in touch with


Me doing some sort of Eggo Waffle concerto?!?!


Word up


Kurt and the hilarious inside joke shirt I got for him


Kurt at the Blue Bottle Cafe


Waiting for our Apple Juice and Cappuccino


The Siphon Coffee maker


Siphon Coffee in action


Kurt and his apple juice


Me and Chris


Chris and I wandering in Mint Plaza


Apple MacBook Air ad


Josh, Jess, Me


Kurt and Chris at Mel's Drive In


My excited face

Tasty dinner, Kurt arriving

Made some tasty dinner last week, a new twist on the famed Jutan Caprese salad, and it was freakin' good.

Thursday night I emailed all my Pixar homeys and told them that our friend Kurt from our Pixar intern days was coming to visit NEXT weekend. Turns out he was actually coming... THIS WEEKEND. I had NO IDEA. :) And he was staying at my house!!! Ahh!!! So I found that out Friday morning that Kurt was coming Friday night, haha, and got things together quickly for his arrival.

Chris, who also interned at Pixar way back but went to school with Kurt, Frank, Jess, Jake and basically everyone else at A&M came to hang out and it was pretty awesome to chill cause we work together but haven't had a major chance to hang out yet. Good stuff.

Friday night we went for Indian Food and then hung out here for a while. Kurt passed out really quickly since he ate too much Indian Food. :)


Mmm... good times


Chris and Kurt in my apartment


Chris loving the Indian Food

Article on the new Blue Bottle Cafe

Cool article that Matt sent me about this fancy new coffee maker at the new Blue Bottle Cafe in San Francisco!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/dining/23coff.html?_r=1&em&ex=1201323600&en=22de8c37aa4b5b4f&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin

Some really inspiring photography

This is reaaaaaaally amazing, it's an annual travel photography contest and has some really amazing and inspiring photos in it.

http://www.pdngallery.com/contests/worldinfocus/2008/

We just heard about it today as ILM artist Joel Aron has a winning photo in the contest!! Amazing!! Check it out, there is some pretty fantastic stuff here.

I'm going to GDC!!!

This is pretty super awesome, I am going to GDC!! This is the annual Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco. It's going to be pretty awesome, I am going to check out a talk about Game Pipelines and that should be pretty interesting and awesome. Also looks like there is a couple of big parties and so on which is always fun. Looking forward to it!!!

http://www.gdconf.com/

Pretty cool stuff!!!

Weird blue vertical line on my Dell Laptop

This morning I turned on my Dell Laptop and noticed a vertical blue line along the screen. Crap.

So I hoped it was a fluke but turns out it's a known monitor defect with 17" monitors on Dell Inspiron notebooks from the time period I bought mine.

I looked into it and found out that they are replacing the screens...
http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/04/09/10675.aspx

It says it is free parts and labour as long as it's within 3 years of purchase. I am sitting at 3 years + 1 month. Crap. So hopefully they honour it.

Video by the Black Eyed Peas in support of Barack Obama

Awesome video here that my friend Tim sent to me, it's by the Black Eyed Peas and several other celebrity friends in support of Barack Obama.


Barack Obama video

Dave Matthews endorses Barack Obama for President

Pretty awesome quote here from the Dave Matthews Band website. Dave Matthews has just announced that he supports Barack Obama for President.

Dear Friends,

I hope this finds you well.

A question, a reflection, and an endorsement.

Why is our country divided?
Why has this division been growing?

Can we not all agree that we are a country that supports its families, that protects its citizens and respects its neighbors?
A country that educates its children?
Are we not a country that can lead by example rather than by force?
Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people?

I would like to think so.
But I believe that corporate greed and its involvement in policy making, along with political cronyism have made it nearly impossible for the people to govern.
So we fight amongst ourselves over the spin of political slogans and half truths.
And so we are divided.

It is time for a change and that is why I support Barack Obama for President.

Respectfully,

Dave Matthews

Pretty cool stuff.

Superbowl Party!!

I don't know anything much about football, but other than some really fast plays that I didn't catch and had no idea what was going on, I liked it and it was really fun!!!!!!! I went to Jake and Amanda's place in Walnut Creek today, and chilled with a bunch of my old school Pixar peeps. They are awesome, and super great to see them. There was a new Wall-E trailer as well, during the 3rd quarter of the game. And it was AWESOME!!!!!!! I actually hadn't seen it yet, and my buddy Joel sent it to me this morning. The trailer online was the full Wall-E meets a Vacuum trailer, but the one shown at the Superbowl had a cool preable by Buzz and Woody from Toy Story. It was cool to see them on screen again!! :)

Anyway, great time at the party, met some more of Jake's friends from basketball, and cheered for the game and ate some junk food. Fantastic.


J-Kiz and A-Griz


Jake "salting" some beer?!?!!


Weird pic of me and Angelique


Everyone having fun


Jon and the glorious food

Cleaner apartment, Jess's celebration dinner

Today was pretty successful for getting some housework done. I literally did 6 loads of laundry. Crazy. I washed all my towels, my sheets and my guest sheets... everything. It was pretty nuts but great to get everything taken care of. Took out the garbage and the recycling... you know, the usuals. Got all my sheets washed eventually too which is great, and sorted out my photo albums. I took a break and wandered outside but it was a bit rainy today, so made a quick stop at a coffee shop near my place for a chocolate croissant and a Passionfruit Italian soda. That was fun, I thought I'd try the Passionfruit flavour but it wasn't too awesome, I think I should stick with the peach one instead. :)

Jess, Frank's wife, just got a job at ILM after 6 or 7 months of looking for work so she is soooo happy and we are all happy for her too. So we went up to the Marin Brewing Company and got dinner there together and chatted for ages. It was really fun and Stephan and Katherine gave me a ride again, they are really awesome and it was really nice of them to pick me up on the way. They rock and they are friends with Frank and Jess but now I've hung out with them quite a few times too. They definitely have to come to my next party at my place! It is going to be ILM-themed and I'll invite all my friends from work.

Tonight was really fun and I am finally starting not to feel terrible and my cold is definitely almost gone. Today definitely I have felt better than I have since last Monday. Good times!! Jon, Angelique and Kevin were there tonight too, and I'm going to see them tomorrow at Jake's place for Jake's SuperBowl party. Sweet!!!!!!

I'm on a mission for a cleaner apartment

Time to get this place sorted out. I am about to do a good 4 loads of laundry... then it's time to attack my bookshelf and crank some Dave Matthews all day while I sort out this mess.

Also, gotta make some blue bottle coffee. Instead of schlepping down to the ferry building today (although I do love it there), I'm going to just stay home and get a ton of stuff done all day. Tonight we are celebrating something ammmmmmmazing for Jess, Frank's wife... (she posted this on her Facebook so it's public knowledge now...) she got a job at ILM!!!!!!! That is so awesome, and I am so happy for her. She is really excited too and I think the plan is to have a bit of a dinner party dealie in Berkeley tonight. So if I want to clean my house I have to get up before Noon (done) get this darn laundry done (starting now) and get a ton of good stuff done here before heading out tonight.

Tomorrow is apparently the Super Bowl?! Haha. So yeah, but my Pixar peeps are partyin', and I miss chillin' with them a lot so I'll probably chill with them for an afternoon of BBQ and big screen TVs... sweet.

Anyway, so it seems blogging isn't cleaning my apartment for me, so off I go. Wish me luck... this place is a mess. :)

Thank goodness for Green Tea

I've been hitting those liquids hard and as Matt Parrott told me today at work, "I'll have to check out your blog to hear about how your cold is doing", so I don't want to disappoint my audience by not blogging random quasi-irrelevant details about how much Green Tea I drank today and why I like honey and lemon in glorious combination with Arrested Development Season 2 on DVD when I am sick.

Anyhow, good times. I went into work today and DAMN I love that PLACE!!!!!!!!!!!! :) I was really happy to be back, although I was still coughing like a maniac and was still feeling mostly terrible for the entire morning and most of the afternoon. Rachel, one of my team members, told me I looked terrible, but then thought that might have been rude and tried to cover it up, haha. I told her no worries, and actually I looked at myself in the mirror this morning and said, "Dude, you're taking THAT to work?!" It's pretty clear externally that I've been sick for a good 3 or 4 days, and my general high energy attitude was decently calm today due to a general pounding headache. Anyway, all is well.

This afternoon there were some presentations which were cool and I had a good time. In other news, my buddy Matt Parrott is still a freakin' genius.

Ok what else. I am obviously feeling somewhat better since it's 12:47 and I'm not in bed yet, and I'm not complaining too much about how I am cold (or alternating between hot and cold) and coughing like a madman. So things are looking better. Also I've been working on some suuuuper cool stuff at work, having a great time, and glad to get back to some of it. Everyone was nice today and said they missed me. :) I said it once, I'll say it again. Awesome place to work.

This weekend apparently it is the Superbowl?!?! So with my upbringing and general immigrant parenting I never got much time in my tightly packed schedule as a kid to "waste time" watching "garbage TV" like "Sports." And so there you have it. I totally didn't grow up with the fierce passion for this so-called College Football that they sure seem to love over here in the USA. So although my football knowledge was basically learned through a few rounds of some EA Sports football video game like John Madden 2004 on the Xbox, I still can't say no to a good time with my old Pixar buddies. So we'll see what they are up to. I am not sure if they are "takin' it easy", but I'm hoping for an invite to someone's house and some BBQ and Big Screen TV action. You know, American stuff.

My friend Anna from France came to visit last weekend and no doubt you've already seen the photos of us all bustin' a move at a pretty slick club here in San Francisco. It was fun, but man that 4 hours of hip hop flava was just about enough to take me out for like... oh right, yeah, I just missed 2 days of work. :) No I think this cold was building for a bit, and biking to work in the rain (bad idea) on Friday and sitting with wet pants and socks and shoes all day (bad idea) was definitely... well, you know.

I haven't had french toast for a while. I gotta hit some of that up.

Actually, on that note, Kurt Phillips is coming to visit. Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He is my legendary Frank Chance-like friend turned best buddy after 4 months of EBC'in it, yelling several hip hop related puns that could have easily caused us problems since we were living literally 3 blocks from Oakland, and rockin' it P-Dizzle in the hizzle?!!! Yeehaw. Looking forward to seeing Kurt, I guess it's been a good 14 months or so, since we were last chillin' back when I was still at Pixar (would have been end of December 2006) Craaaaaaaazy!! Anyway, good times shall be had in about 2 weeks.

More importantly, gotta chill over the next couple of weekends. I don't want to rush out and do a bazillion things. I might even skip out on the Ferry Building this weekend just to chill around home. Gotta get my apartment cleaned up, but there are a couple of things I need to get. I need a duvet, but I am still waiting for another coupon from Macy's to show up in the mail. I also need a new external hard drive, but not sure if I really want to spend that kind of money at the moment due to spending too much on stuff I don't really need in the last few months. But I actually do need a new hard drive pretty soon, so I guess that's not a terrible investment. Also I need to get a vacuum cleaner, not sure if I really want to buy a particularly good one, or if I can just get one from someone at work for a good price. I should try that first I guess. I also want to see Persepolis. But all of this stuff costs time and money, and in the end all I really want to do this weekend is stay home and do some work in my apartment. I also just got a sweeeeeeeeet new Wall-E poster that I want to put up. And I really gotta get this place into shape. So that's my general plan for the next couple of weekends. Kurt's coming after that, and then more chillin' after that. Not planning any major trips until South Africa this summer!!

Yes, so it looks like I'm going to South Africa for sure. Not sure exactly when yet, but it will be sooooo awesome.

Alrighty I think that's enough blogging for tonight. Glad I am finally feeling decent enough. Tomorrow is Friday already which is nice, and looking forward to a relaxing weekend, watching a movie, and getting my apartment together.