1 Year and 4 Days away from...

TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE (LIVE)

http://www.transformersmovie.com/

New Trailer Available now!

This is Rick Sund, GM of the Sonics, and our newest draft pick:



what's wrong with this team?

First Photos with New Camera

Well, here are some photos from my first play-around with my new Canon S2 IS digital camera. Below are 150px x 113px thumbnails. Click on the photo for the full 1600 x 1200 photo. I was just playing around with scenery and these photos are approximately medium to just above medium quality compared to the highest camera settings.

Poor Use of Tax Dollars

King County decided to choose my neighborhood street to re-pave, so they're removing the existing asphalt and putting new asphalt in this week. It's such a waste of money -- our street has no pot holes in it, its completely drivable and really nothing wrong with it. It's not extroardinarily flat, but thats because its made to push water to the sides, instead of having water gushing down the hill. And thus far, they've only grated up the sides of the street, leaving the middle intact, and have not been back in a couple days. Not totally sure what the plan is, but its probably not worth it. Use it for something better!

He is the Ocean. Ok?

Uh huh. Uh Huh. uh Huh.

Former UW Dean of Engineering commits suicide

Denice Denton, who was most recently the Chancellor for UC Santa Cruz, and former University of Washington's Dean of the College of Engineering, my college, jumped off the 43rd floor of an apartment complex in San Francisco yesterday in a suicide. That's freakin crazy! I remember her when she was at the UW and her life-partner (she was a lesbian gay) was Prof. Gretchen Kalonji, who was a faculty member in my small Materials Science department. They both took off for UC midway through 2004, and apparently, things didn't work out. :(

Pretty crazy stuff.

Here's the CNN news article.
Here's an AP article.

Canon S2 IS

Coming to an Ant near you... Bought this thing on Amazon.com for a steal of a deal -- $279. I guess I could wait a bit longer to see it drop some more (I remember seeing the previous Canon S1 IS for as low as $229 on Dell once last year), but I want it for my upcoming vacations and trips.

Canon S2 IS

• Type of camera: Compact digital camera with built-in flash and 12x Optical / 4x Digital / 48x Combined Zoom
• Image capture device: 5.0-megapixel, 1/2.5-inch type Charge Coupled Device (CCD)
• Total pixels: Approximately 5.3 megapixels
• Effective pixels: Approximately 5.0 megapixels
• Lens focal length: 6.0-72.0mm, f2.7-3.5 (35mm film equivalent: 36-432mm)
• Digital zoom: 4x
• Focusing range: Normal: 1.6 feet/50 centimeters to infinity (wide), 3.0 feet/90 centimeters to infinity (telephoto); macro: 3.9 inches to 1.6 feet/10 to 50 centimeters; super macro: 0 to 3.9 inches/0 to 10 centimeters; TTL sutofocus (continuous/single)
• Optical viewfinder: 0.33-inch low-temperature polycrystalline silicon TFT color LCD
• LCD monitor: 1.8-inch low-temperature polycrystalline silicon TFT color LCD with variable-angle function
• LCD pixels: Approximately 115,000 pixels
• LCD coverage: 100%
• Maximum aperture: f2.7 (wide) to f3.5 (telephoto)
• Shutter speed: 15 seconds to 1/3200 second; slow shutter speed of 15 to 1.3 seconds is only available in select modes
• Sensitivity: AUTO, ISO 50/100/200/400 equivalent
• Light metering method: Evaluative, center-weighted average, spot metering frame with spot mode is center-fixed
• Exposure control method: Program AE, Shutter speed-priority AE, Aperture-priority AE, ManualAE Lock is available
• Exposure compensation: +/-2 stops in 1/3-stop increments
• White balance control: Auto, pre-set (Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, Flash), custom flash
• Built-in flash: Operation modes: Auto, Red-Eye Reduction ON/OFF
• Flash range: Normal: 2.3 to 17.1 feet/0.7 to 5.2 meters (wide), 2.3 to 13.1 feet/0.7 to 4.0 meters (telephoto); macro: 1.0 feet to 2.3 feet/0.3 to 0.7 meters (when sensitivity is set to ISO 100 equivalent)
• Recycling time: Approximately 10 seconds or less (battery voltage=7.4V)
• Flash exposure compensation: +/- 2 stops in 1/3-stop increments
• Shooting modes: Auto; creative zone: P, Av, Tv, M, C; image zone: Portrait, Landscape, Night Scene, Special Scene (Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, Indoor, Night Snapshot), Stitch Assist, Movie, My Colors
• Photo effects: Off, Vivid, Neutral, Low Sharpening, Sepia, Black and White, Custom
• Self-timer: Activates shutter after an approximately 2 second or 10 second delay, or custom
• Wireless control: Not available
• Continuous shooting: High-speed: approximately 2.4 shots/seconds; normal: approximately 1.5 shots/second (Large/Fine mode)
• Storage media: SD memory card
• File format: Design rule for camera file system, DPOF Version 1.1 (Digital Print Order Format)
• Image recording format: Normal, Fine, SuperFine
• JPEG compression mode: Still image: Exif 2.2 (JPEG); movie: AVI (Image data: Motion JPEG;Audio data: WAVE (Stereo))
• Number of recording pixels: Still image: 2,592 x 1,944 (Large), 2,048 x 1,536 (Medium 1), 1,600 x 1,200 (Medium 2), 640 x 480 (Small); movie: 640 x 480 (VGA Fine/VGA), 320 x 240 (QVGA)
• Playback modes file: Single, Index (9 thumbnail images), Slide show, Magnification (approximately 2 to 10x), Jump, Movie
• Erase modes: Still image: single image, all images; movie: part of movie, all of movie
• Computer interface: USB 2.0 Hi-Speed (mini-B PTP)
• Video out: NTSC, PAL
• Audio out: Stereo
• Other: SD memory card slot; direct connection to Canon CP Printers and PIXMA photo printers via camera's USB cable (no computer required) or PictBridge-compatible printers
• Power source: Four AA-size alkaline battery; four AA-size NiMH battery; compact power adapter CA-PS700
• Shooting capacity: Still image: approximately 130 shots with AA-size alkaline battery, approximately 550 shots with AA-size NiMH battery; movie: approximately 210 minutes (AA-size Alkaline battery), approximately 300 minutes (AA-size NiMH battery)
• Playback time: Approximately 800 minutes (AA-size Alkaline batteries), approximately 900 minutes (AA-size NiMH batteries)
• Language display: 21 display languages: English, German, French, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Spanish, simplified/traditional Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Portuguese, Korean, Greek, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Turkish
• Operating temperature: 32 to 104 degrees F/0 to 40 degrees C
• Operating humidity: 10 to 90%
• Dimensions (W x H x D): 4.45 x 3.07 x 2.97 inches/113.0 x 78.0 x 75.5mm (excluding protrusions)
• Weight: Approximately 14.3 ounces/405 grams (camera body only)
• What's in the box: PowerShot S2 IS body, neck strap NS-DC3, AA-size Alkaline batteries (x4), stereo video cable STV-250N, interface cable IFC-400PCU, SD memory card SDC-16MB, digital camera solution CD-ROM, lens cap

Beckham's Free Kick

He has such a nasty free kick... him and Roberto Carlos from Brazil have got to be the two deadliest set kickers in the world. Today, David Beckham made a beautiful slicing/dropping free kick into the goal over a 6 man wall to beat out Ecquador. It was marvelous... too bad that's all he can do: kick set shots.

Get into the Groove

I've been to QFC in U-Village twice in the past month and half, and I've seen the same really cute dark brown haired girl walking around shopping alone. It must be fate... Third time's a charm? haha.

The Weekend of June 16-18

Accomplishments? Not too much, but I did do quite a bit this weekend. There was alot of world cup football, more of it, drinks and drinks, movies, and foodings.

Friday:
-World cup + work
-met up with Griffin and Prashant and later Adria and Dan downtown for Gordon Bierche
-we all met up with a couple others and watched Nacho Libre to complete my trifecta of movies for the week
-stayed in downtown with Neil and had drinks at Vons

Saturday:
-World Cup, of course
-Went to Circuit City with Jennifer and bought World Cup 2006 for xbox.
-Went to some party with Melissa, Jennifer, and Katie

Sunday:
-Softball -- we are now 0-6, but its still fun! :)
-Took my dad and family out to dinner at Tony Roma's hehe.

And that is all.

Friday 6pm, and i'm still at work

Well I can't say that work is the real reason behind this craziness, but I do have stuff (endless amounts) to do here, like write this report up to send to a few people. But I'm really here to just kill time before I leave to meet up with some folks downtown to hang out, eat, and watch a movie. So to kill more time, why not write something on here? That's nerd talk.

I'm booking Vegas vacation tickets for July 8-10. Anyone else game? Hotel will be cheap cause we're dumping alot of people into a couple rooms. :)

Love's Got the World in Motion

The title is the theme song from the 1990 England World Cup team by New Order, and well its great! And England one today in stunning fashion to advance to the 2nd round. The Sweden-Paraguay game, however, was freakin awesome! All of the games the past two days have been intense. I love this event!

Other random tidbits:
-I went to the Rock twice this week already...

-ESPN360 kicks.

-I finished day 2 of 3 for my movie watching bonanza. Two were cartoons and the third is essentially going to be one... Cars, Monster House (SIFF movie), and tommorow's Nacho Libre

-Boeing Wellness website says I'm a low to moderate risk for health issues. My biggest concerns are emotional stress and weight. Duh for the latter! It also says one of my strengths is my alcohol use... what's that suppose to mean?!

ESPN360 is a new friend of mine

ESPN360, you've got a friend in me. The new ESPN streaming content server is wonderful! I've been able to watch a couple World Cup matches live and online before work with absolutely no lagging/buffering and no glitches. Its nice! Now I think I figured out how to get it working at work, so let's see how productivity plays out tommorow around my area cause I know my friend who sits next to me is even a bigger fan than I am.

Update: It works! It works! IT WORKS!!!!

Smile

It's always nice to be able to sit down and talk to someone and vent out on issues and dilemnas. I'm glad there are people in my life who I can do that with. Thanks cousin Vu! Tonight was fun and enjoying.

Speaking of conversational pieces, yesterday I had a discussion on the effects of age differences and the power it has on making or breaking a relationship. In both situations, we have a sibling who is ±7 years difference - in my case I'm 7 years elder and in her case 7 years younger than her respective sibling. We are 1 day of age apart from each other, but there's a 14 year gap between our siblings! Crazy! Anyway, it's definitely hard to really have a close connection with my sister since the two of us practically grew up in different generations. The late 80s and early 90s is quite a big change from the late 90s and early 2000s. Oh well, I gotta work on it and it'll be easier now that my sister is maturing. It's always nice to be able to look back and tell the youth what to look out for. I guess I took alot of that for granted when I was younger and I can totally see some of the things people say can be true. Its the convincing of the youth to believe what you say has validity that's difficult.

one last thing..

Ann Coulter is an idiot.

The other things in my life

This will conclude my three post bonanza for Sunday night. The first two are below on the topics of World Cup and the Electric Car. This one will be more of a personal blog post.

This weekend was insanely fun. I did so much slept at weird times and completely trashed my sleep cycle I think. I'm recovering it back now -- I'm going to force myself to bed in a bit here, even though I'd usually go to sleep about 30 mins ago.

Friday:
-watched some World Cup futbol at lunch time with the co-workers :)
-watched Who Killed the Electric Car? with Ravi and ran into co-worker Will there -- we met some electric car folks and checked out their cars

Saturday:
-Woke up at 5:30am and watch World Cup futbol - England vs Paraguay mmm.
-Went to UW's Materials Science & Engineering graduation at Mueller Hall to support my buddies at 9:30am
-Went to cousin's house (Kiet and talked to Honna and Gordon) at 7PM
-Went out to Jake's rooftop graduation bbq at 7:30pm and hung out there til 11:30p
-Richard and a bunch of people met up at the bbq; Vu and friends met up at bbq; Fun!
-Picked up Adria and a bunch of us went to Dad Watson's in Fremont for Ruby Ales and tator tots at midnight, as we listened to Kiet talk about lawyer stories again for the 100000th time and try to have a skateboard war with Gord while saying all kinds of funny things to Adria. Also saw Jason "the Blackout" blackout.. as his name implies. :)
-Hung out at the apt for a bit (too late am)
-Got to bed finally at 4am

Sunday:
-Woke up early (9am) and watched a little bit of world cup Mexico vs Iran
-Got World Wraps smoothies with Adria -- man i love Triathelete Smoothies (11am)
-SOFTBALL in Ballard where we got crushed by the Heavy Hitters (11:30am)
-Hung out with the Sea-Men softball team and watched the next game
-Pho in Ranier/South Seattle with Adria -- pho: definitely a good thing when you're not feeling so stellar
-Crashed in bed for a while-- big time naps are always good.
-Found out I left my car light on all that time -- car still works yay.
-being a myspace/blog/espn internet whore. - as always

Monday:
TBD but I'm hoping to watch the USA world cup match tommorow morning somehow!

Oh yea, I was announced as the SAMPE (Society for the Advancement of Materials and Process Engineering) Secretary for the local chapter on Friday. Yay I guess!

I went 0-2 today in softball but I did get on base on an error and scored a run. My batting average dropped to .667! :( My play of the day... I was on 1st, Adria at the bat. She hit a grounder to short and I slid into 2nd base to make it close and I ended up hitting the basemen's glove and the ball went rolling into the OF. I got to third base on it. :)

Play of the Day though -- Pop up between Short and LF. Alec comes running in and Jake goes running out. They both dive for the ball -- Alec catches it and they collide but he holds on and its an out!

Who Killed the Electric Car?

I watched this upcoming documentary film on Friday with Ravi (who's a bio-diesel researcher and entrepreneur) called "Who Killed the Electric Car?" at the Egyptian Theatre as part of the Seattle International Film Festival. This Sony Classic Films movie is set to release around the middle of July nationwide but I got a chance to catch it in advance. Here's the quick synopsis:

The EV1 was the first battery electric vehicle produced by General Motors in the United States. The experimental cars were the only vehicles in the history of the company to bear the "General Motors" badge. GM leased over 800 EV1 cars (out of about 1100 manufactured - [1]) with the proviso that after the three-year leases were up, the cars reverted to the company. They were only available in California and Arizona and could only be serviced at designated Saturn dealers. The first generation EV1s used lead-acid battery batteries in 1996 (as model year 1997) and a second generation batch with nickel metal hydride batteries in 1999. As cars came off lease, they were refurbished and upgraded to second generation. GM claims to have spent more than $1 billion developing and marketing the EV1, much of which was defrayed by the Clinton Administration's (especially Al Gore's) $1.25 Billion Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) project[2][3], but the company claimed that it could not sell the car in enough quantities to make the EV1 profitable, despite long waiting lists and customers motivated enough to market the EV1 on their own dimes. The program was stopped in 2003. [4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EV-1

The movie was really sad to tell you the truth. Being an engineer and scientist myself, its hard to see such great technological innovations being crushed with an iron fist like that. There's so much improvement still to be made, and the corporate gods decided against it, even though it was a perfectly viable product that was also as green as you can want for a transportation vehicle.

The film was shot as a pseudo murder-mystery with a general background beginning and then showing "murder" suspects and the rise and fall of the EV-1 from that point of view. These included such things as the government, oil companies, GM, the battery itself, and other alternative fuels such as hydrogen fuel cell. The pieces thrown together to create each segment is packed full of funny Bush quotes and videos, insight from industry reps, and celebrities.

It's a totally solid film and I'd watch it again. There's just so much to talk about in this subject -it's crazy. I posted earlier on here about the clueless move to push billions of research dollars into hydgrogen fuel cells by Bush's administration, and this film not only goes over that but even dumps more supporting facts that I wouldnt even imagine existed -- car manufacturer chief engineers (toyota's specifically) claiming that hydrogen fuel cells are still 20+ years away and are not viable for anything any time soon, even as he's driving a Rav4 hydrogen fuel cell car.

World Cup 2006 Begins

World Cup 2006 kicked off Friday morning at 8:55AM PST with an ugly match between host team Germany and Costa Rica. Unfortunately, I was at work during the game and could not find a viable live stream to watch it with. But I hear the game was pretty sloppy as shown by a 4-2 score.

However, I did watch the 2nd match -- Equador beating Poland with some solid defense and ground attack. Their first goal was wonderful. A throw-in that went half way into the box and then two headers for a goal. Spectacular!

I love this event. It's the best thing out there -- better than the Super Bowl, and even more comparatively right now -- better than the NBA Playoffs. I'm really blown away by the lack of enthusiasm the United States has at this "soccer" sport. Everywhere else, its a gigantic mass appeal sport and here, its sits quietly on the bench behind everything else including synchronized swimming and golf!! Ugh!

And yes, I did get up at 5am to prepare myself for the England vs Paraguay match on Saturday morning. It was grand.

Yay better.

Ah, better already. Magic Toyota/Scion fixed up my scratch problem and didn't charge me so that's wonderful! I was really surprised they got it finished within the day cause that was a bit weird. I thought it'd take at least 24 hours for paint to dry, but apparently I'm wrong. The finish looks basically new and I'm more than thrilled with the how this episode turned out. This dealership has been a most wonderful experience so far for not just me but our family; it was my parents that told me to buy my car here cause they had a good experience with them when they bought their Camry a couple years back.

Softball Wrapup for 6/04/2006

It didn't rain in the afternoon afterall. It was actually fairly sunny and the ground dried up quick, and so, we actually played ball! In a game I think we should have won, we ended up losing. I can't say I wasn't part of the losing effort -- I made an error that gave up an extra run sorta. There was a single hit into the OF, but when I was playing it to bounce to me, I expected the ball to bounce in the grass and into my glove... It landed just at the end of the mud and the grass and went right below my glove. Big mistake! Argh!

I did however, go 2 for 3 and now my season BA dropped to .714. The last ball I hit pretty good but it was right to the left fielder. I did get to run into a pickle on a 2 out ground ball, where I was on second base and the third basemen fielded the ball and instead of trying to throw it to first, she tried to tag me out... I ran at her, stopped, turned around and went back to 2nd and slid to beat out the tag. It allowed a run to score and runner to safe on first. Pretty cool!

I also made an Outfield assist which was really weird. The batter had a runner on first and two outs. He hit a single up the middle, and I scooped it up and saw that the runner on first wasn't at second base yet so I threw it at Gord on 2nd and got the out. It was pretty cool, and cost the guy a basehit. Hehe.

chicken strike

The rain is bugging me. It should be nice and sunny... not this rain. Don't get me wrong, I do like rain, but not this time of year. I want the sun to be out, and the sky's mostly clear so that I can go and enjoy myself out in the sun! I have a softball match today and I just don't see it happening -- not with this constant downfall of rain. It's blah!

DIY -- ugh. I can't do anything right. Haha. I laugh it off as if I don't care, but I do. It's not just that thing, but it's everything. I find the right people to be around yet I still feel distant alot. I'm outgoing but to limitations. I can be here and there and everywhere, but it's not like I do a whole lot. I'm boooooring. ugh, I need to eat.

blasssssssst

My 'daily' blog isn't become so daily anymore. I've been a bit lazy and busy and just tired lately so I haven't really gotten into the swing of this. Man, sometimes I feel like I'm sofa-king wee-tard-Ed. Ugh! I tried to fix some deep scratches in my car and I think I made it worse! Ugh... i think it's time to call into the body shop and get it recoated professionally. It's only a small area, but its quite noticeable. In my experimenting, I'm like ruining my new car... I gotta just let the pros handle these things. And now I gotta wait til Monday to set up anything... the longest 24 hours...